THE
FIRESIDE
DICKENS
A
Cyclopedia
BEST THOUGHTS
DE FONTAINE
828
D548
D3
888
B 1,247,135
TRE ST
DICKEN
LUSTRATED
(ΥΥΥΥ
Tappan Presbyterian Association
Presented by
LIBRARY.
J. Huff Jones

Detroit
Jieb. 1893
•
828
D548
D3
1888

CHARLES DICKENS.
T. 53.
From a Photograph taken in England, 1865.
THE
FIRESIDE DICKENS.

A CYCLOPEDIA
OF THE
BEST THOUGHTS
OF

CHARLES DICKENS.
COMPRISING
A CAREFUL SELECTION OF IIIS BEST WRITINGS.
ARRANGED IN SUBJECTS AND IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
WITH A COMPLETE INDEX.
DESIGNED AS A
READY REFERENCE TO HIS ENTIRE WORKS
AND FOR
FIRESIDE HALF-HOUR READINGS.
BY
F. G. DE FONTAINE.
WITH NUMEROUS CHARACTER ILLUSTRATIONS.
NEW YORK:
G. W. Dillingham, Publisher.
1888.
[SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION.]
COPYRIGHT,
F. G. DE FONTAINE,
1883.

176931
WESTMINSTER
ABBEY.
THE GRAVE OF CHARLES DICKENS,
Near the Tombs of Shakspeare, Garrick, Chaucer and Dryden.
(Drawn by S. L. Fildes.)
gift
Tappan hest, Assoc.
1-30-1933
INTRODUCTION.
The object of this volume is to present in a compact form-alphabetically
arranged for Ready Reference and for Fireside Half-hour readings-a se-
lection of the Best Thoughts of CHARLES DICKENS. It is only a great genius
one which has identified itself with the reading millions—that will bear
such a test. But when an author has become a fountain of phrases and
characters, and for more than thirty-five years tinged our current literature
with his personages and phraseology-when Pickwick and the Wellers;
Pecksniff and Mark Tapley; Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness; Peggotty
and Barkis; Susan Nipper and Dot; Captain Cuttle and Wal'r; Sairey
Gamp and Mrs. Harris; Micawber and Mr. Turveydrop; Little Nell, "Jo,"
and Paul; nay, the entire roll of fourteen hundred and twenty-five creations
of his fancy, have become "as household words"-a collection of the "Best
Thoughts" of such an author will be neither unwelcome nor useless to those
who admire the existing monuments of his literary labors.
A compilation of this kind, indeed, has long been a want, for Charles
Dickens has so forcibly impressed his strong individualities upon all he has
written, that there is scarcely a profession, or trade, or stratum of society, or
subject, which, touched by his artistic pen, has not received some new light
or shadow that makes the picture more vivid than before. Hence, he who
reads simply to converse well or quote aptly, or he who would
"Steal a thought and clip it round its edge,
And challenge him whose 'twas, to swear to it,"
will find within these pages that which concerns every theme in life.
The Lawyer, Minister, Physician, Journalist, Artist, Actor, Author, Orator,
Inventor, Musician, Architect, School-master, Philanthropist, Life Insurance
Agent, Broker, Auctioneer, Collector, Short-hand Writer, Undertaker,
Jailor, Executioner, Stage Driver, House-keeper, Nurse,-all these and more
have their place in the intellectual phantasmagoria-all are the objects of
unmistakable satire, humor, or pathos-all will find something within these
pages which concerns their various callings. Critics may quarrel with the
art of Dickens, but the people will always admire his genius. Regarded
from any point of view, his works constitute a unique gallery of portraits,
wherein one may enjoy sympathy with all that is tender and true in
humanity, or, on the other hand, find not extravagant illustrations of that
which is false and forbidding.
The author dwells among powerful contrasts. Oliver Wendell Holmes
has described him as "a kind of Shakespeare, working in terra cotta instead
of marble;" while M. Taine, in his History of English Literature, alleges that
he "contains an English painter," who, with passionate art, gives a voice to
matter, and makes imaginary objects equivalent to realities.
Whatever Dickens has described, is impressed upon the imagination with
all the detail and truth of a living presence. Is it the massive machinery of
a "Dock Yard "-you hear the "scrunch
scrunch" of the power-press. Is it the
wind-you witness the "small tyranny with which it wreaks its vengeance
on the fallen leaves, and then goes whirling among the crazy timbers of a
steeple to mingle its moans with the Voices of the Bells." Is it an English
home, at Christmas-you are sitting at the same board with Tiny Tim and
Bob Cratchit, and there is not a detail of the feast missing, from the aroma
of the annual pudding to the brewing of the punch. Does he paint a por-
trait-his masterly touches fasten upon memory the hypocrisy of Pecksniff,
4
INTRODUCTION.
Chadband, and Stiggins; the rude devotion of Captain Cuttle, Sam Weller,
and Mark Tapley; the sturdy strength of Boythorn; the villainy of Carker,
. Jonas Chuzzlewit, Fagin, and Sikes; the noble generosity of the Cheeryble
Brothers; the selfish obstinacy of Dombey and Gradgrind; the imperious-
ness of Bounderby; the dying face of Stephen Blackpool, turned to the star
that "ha' shined upon me in my pain and trouble down below;" the sim-
plicity of Tom Pinch, and the sweet child-life of Paul Dombey, Florence,
and Little Nell!
As the diamond-cutter chips from the rough stone an angle here and an
angle there to give perfection to the brilliant, so did Dickens develop
thought until it became prismatic and picturesque, each character standing
out as the incarnation of some virtue, vice, or absurdity.
Nor was the satire of Dickens without a healthful purpose. His descrip-
tions of Debtor's Prisons, the Court of Chancery, the Yorkshire schools and
school-masters, the circumlocution Office, the spurious philanthropists,
hypocritical pretenders to goodness, organized business swindlers, stony-
hearted capitalists, and brutal hospital nurses, illustrate the power with
which he thrust his victim through and through until life was extinct. His
irony and ridicule thus concentrated upon all the classes of institutions
which he exposed, directed public attention to the existing evils, and resulted
in reform.
In the language of Thackeray, "As for the charities of Mr. Dickens, the
multiplied kindnesses which he has conferred upon us all, upon our children,
upon people educated and uneducated, upon the myriads who speak our
common tongue, have not you, have not I, all of us, reason to be thankful
to this kind friend, who soothed and charmed so many hours; brought
pleasure and sweet laughter to so many homes; made such multitudes of
children happy; endowed us with such a sweet store of gracious thoughts,
fair fancies, soft sympathies, hearty enjoyments? There are creations of
Mr. Dickens which seem to me to rank as personal benefits; figures so
delightful that one feels happier and better for knowing them, as one does
for being brought into the society of very good men and women.
Thankfully I take my share of the feast of love and kindness which this
gentle, and generous, and charitable soul has contributed to the happiness.
of the World. I take and enjoy my share, and say a benediction for the
meal."
No novelist has been more thoroughly identified and associated with the
illustrations originally made for his books than Charles Dickens. No
author has ever been more fortunate and happy in the artists employed to
embody and carry out to the eye the creations of his fancy, and rarely have
illustrations been designed which have appealed more forcibly to the imag-
ination of the reader.
Unlike most book illustrations, where the designers have been chosen by
the publisher, the original artists for illustrating Dickens' works were
chosen by the author himself, and most of the subjects were by
him selected and carefully considered.
The pictures throughout this volume are not only faithful realizations of
the Author's fancies, but they are exquisite designs in themselves-artistic
and graceful, tender and touching, dramatic and painful, humorous and
comic in the highest degree-while conveying a definite and truthful idea
of the period and the times in which the stories were written.
This "CYCLOPEDIA OF BEST THOUGHTS" Contains upwards of fifteen
hundred selections and embodies a versatility of thought and felicity of
expression that make it the cream of the works of the popular novelist.
It is therefore earnestly commended not only to those who have complete
editions and desire a companion volume for ready reference, but to the
general reader who may seek the pleasure that is to be derived from an
irregular and cursory perusal of these "Best Thoughts."
August 1, 1883.
F. G. DE FONTAINE,

ARTIST'S SUGGESTIONS FOR THE HEAD OF MR. DOMBEY;
SUBMITTED TO DICKENS, FOR HIS SELECTION.
THE
BEST THOUGHTS OF CHARLES DICKENS.
"So live thy better-let thy worst thoughts die.”
SIR WALTEr Raleigh.
ABBEY-Nell in the old.
Already impressed, beyond all telling, by the
silent building and the peaceful beauty of the
spot in which it stood-majestic age surrounded
by perpetual youth-it seemed to her, when she
heard these things, sacred to all goodness and
virtue. It was another world, where sin and
sorrow never came; a tranquil place of rest,
where nothing evil entered.
chapel, and here were effigies of warriors stretch-
ed upon their beds of stone with folded hands
crost-legged, those who had fought in the
Holy Wars-girded with their swords, and
cased in armor as they had lived. Some of
these knights had their own weapons, helmets.
coats of mail, hanging upon the walls hard by,
and dangling from rusty hooks. Broken and
dilapidated as they were, they yet retained their
ancient form, and something of their ancient
the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will
survive in mournful shapes long after those who
worked the desolation are but atoms of earth
When the bachelor had given her in con-
nection with almost every tomb and flat grave-aspect. Thus violent deeds live after men upon
stone some history of its own, he took her down
into the old crypt, now a mere dull vault, and
showed her how it had been lighted up in the
time of the monks, and how, amid lamps de-themselves.
pending from the roof, and swinging censers
exhaling scented odors, and habits glittering
with gold and silver, and pictures, and precious
stuffs, and jewels all flashing and glistening
through the low arches, the chaunt of aged
voices had been many a time heard there, at
midnight, in old days, while hooded figures
knelt and prayed around, and told their rosaries
of beads. Thence, he took her above ground
again, and showed her, high up in the old walls,
small galleries, where the nuns had been wont
to glide along-dimly seen in their dark dresses
so far off-or to pause, like gloomy shadows,
listening to the prayers. He showed her, too,
how the warriors, whose figures rested on the
tombs, had worn those rotting scraps of armor
up above-how this had been a helmet and that
a shield, and that a gauntlet—and how they
had wielded the great two-handed swords, and
beaten men down with yonder iron mace.
The child sat down, in this old silent place,
among the stark figures on the tombs-they
made it more quiet there than elsewhere, to her
fancy-and gazing round with a feeling of awe,
tempered with a calm delight, felt that now
she was happy, and at rest. She took a Bible
from the shelf, and read; then, laying it down,
thought of the summer days and the bright
springtime that would come of the rays of sun
that would fall in aslant upon the sleeping
forms-of the leaves that would flutter at the
window, and play in glistening shadows on the
pavement-of the songs of birds, and growth of
buds and blossoms out of doors-of the sweet
air that would steal in and gently wave the tat-
tered banners overhead. What if the spot
awakened thoughts of death! Die who would,
it would still remain the same; these sights and
sounds would still go on as happily as ever.
It would be no pain to sleep amidst them.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53.
ABILITY-Misdirected. (Stryver.)
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54.
The very light coming through sunken win-
dows, seemed old and gray, and the air, redolent
of earth and mould, seemed laden with decay, When his host followed him out on the stair
purified by time of all its grosser particles, and case with a candle, to light him down the stairs,
sighing through arch, and aisle, and clustered the day was coldly looking in through its grimy
pillars, like the breath of ages gone! Here was windows. When he got out of the house, the
the broken pavement, worn so long ago by pious air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the
feet that Time, stealing on the pilgrims' steps, river dark and dim, the whole scene like a life-
had trodden out their track, and left but crumb- less desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning
ling stones. Here were the rotten beam, the sink-round and round before the morning blast, as
ing arch, the sapped and mouldering wall, the
lowly trench of earth, the stately tomb on which
no epitaph remained-all, marble, stone, iron,
wood, and dust, one common monument of ruin. Waste forces within him, and a desert all
The best work and the worst, the plainest and around, this man stood still on his way across a
he richest, the stateliest and the least imposing- silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in
both of Heaven's work and man's-all found one the wilderness before him, a mirage of honora-
common level here, and told one common tale. ble ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In
Some part of the edifice had been a baronial | the fair city of this vision there were airy gal.i
if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the
first spray of it, in its advance, had begun the
overwhelming of the city.
ACTOR
в
ACTOR
every way he turned, some obstacle impeded
his progress. There were insects too, hideous,
crawling things, with eyes that stared upon him,
and filled the very air around-glistening hor-
ribly amidst the thick darkness of the place.
The walls and ceiling were alive with reptiles
-the vault expanded to an enormous size-
frightful figures flitted to and fro-and the
faces of men he knew, rendered hideous by
Ceries from which the loves and graces looked
upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life
hung ripening, waters of hope that sparkled in
his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climb-
ing 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 ex-gibing and mouthing, peered out from among
ercise, incapable of his own help and his own
happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and re-
signing himself to let it eat him away.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 5.
ACTOR-The Dying.
them-they were searing him with heated irons,
and binding his head with cords till the blood
started-and he struggled madly for life.
"At the close of one of these paroxysms,
when I had with great difficulty held him down
in his bed, he sank into what appeared to be a
"I kept my promise. The last four-and-slumber. Overpowered with watching and ex-
twenty hours had produced a frightful alteration. ertion, I had closed my eyes for a few minutes,
The eyes, though deeply sunk and heavy, shone when I felt a violent clutch on my shoulder
with a lustre frightful to behold. The lips were | I awoke instantly. He had raised himself up,
parched, and cracked in many places; the dry so as to seat himself in bed-a dreadful change
hard skin glowed with a burning heat, and there had come over his face, but consciousness had
was an almost unearthly air of wild anxiety in returned, for he evidently knew me. The child,
the man's face, indicating even more strongly who had been long since disturbed by his rav-
the ravages of the disease. The fever was at its ings, rose from his little bed, and ran towards
height.
its father, screaming with fright-the mother
hastily caught it in her arms, lest he should in-
jure it in the violence of his insanity; but, ter-
rified by the alteration of his features, stood
transfixed by the bedside. He grasped my
shoulder convulsively, and, striking his breast
with the other hand, made a desperate attempt
to articulate. It was unavailing-he extended
his arm towards them, and made another vio-
lent effort. There was a rattling noise in the
throat--a glare of the eye--a short stifled groan,
and he fell back-dead !"-Pick., Chap. 3.
ACTOR-His Reading of Hamlet.
I took the seat I had occupied the night be-
fore, and there I sat for hours, listening to
sounds which must strike deep to the heart of
the most callous among human beings-the
awful ravings of a dying man. From what I
had heard of the medical attendant's opinion, I
knew there was no hope for him: I was sitting
by his death-bed. I saw the wasted limbs,
which, a few hours before, had been distorted
for the amusement of a boisterous gallery,
writhing under the tortures of a burning fever
-I heard the clown's shrill laugh, blending
with the low murmurings of the dying man.
"It is a touching thing to hear the mind re-
verting to the ordinary occupations and pur-
suits of health, when the body lies before you
weak and helpless; but when those occupa-
tions are of a character the most strongly op-
posed to anything we associate with grave or
solemn ideas, the impression produced is infi-
nitely more powerful. The theatre, and the
public-house, were the chief themes of the
wretched man's wanderings. It was evening,
he fancied; he had a part to play that night; it
was late, and he must leave home instantly.
Why did they hold him, and prevent his going?
-he should lose the money-he must go. No!
they would not let him. He hid his face in his
burning hands, and feebly bemoaned his own
weakness, and the cruelty of his persecutors. A
short pause, and he shouted out a few doggerel
rhymes-the last he had ever learnt. He rose
in bed, drew up his withered limbs, and rolled
about in uncouth positions-he was acting-he
was at the theatre. A minute's silence, and he
murmured the burden of some roaring song.
He had reached the old house at last: how hot
the room was. He had been ill, very ill, but
he was well now, and happy. Fill up his glass.
Who was that, that dashed it from his lips? It
was the same persecutor that had followed him
before. He fell back upon his pillow and
moaned aloud. A short period of oblivion, and
he was wandering through a tedious maze of
low-arched rooms-so low, sometimes, that he
must creep upon his hands and knees to make
his way along; it was close and dark, and
"How did you like my reading of the charac-
ter, gentlemen ?" said Mr. Waldengarver, almost,
if not quite, with patronage.
Herbert said from behind (again poking me),
"massive and concrete." So I said boldly, as
if I had originated it, and must beg to insist
upon it, "massive and concrete."
"I am glad to have your approbation, gen-
tlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver, with an air
of dignity, in spite of his being ground against
the wall at the time, and holding on by the seat
of the chair.
"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengar-
ver," said the man who was on his knees, "in
which you're out in your reading. Now mind!
I don't care who says contrairy; I tell you so.
You're out in your reading of Hamlet when you
get your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I
dressed made the same mistakes in his reading
at rehearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer
on each of his shins, and then at that rehearsal
(which was the last) I went in front, sir, to the
back of the pit, and whenever his reading
brought him into profile, I called out, ‘I don't
see no wafers!' And at night his reading was
lovely."
*
*
**
*
*
When we were in a side alley, he turned and
asked, "How do you think he looked?-1
dressed him."
I don't know what he had looked like, ex-
cept a funeral; with the addition of a large
Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a
blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance
ACTOR
of being insured in some extraordinary Fire
Office. But I said he had looked very nice.
"When he come to the grave," said our con-
ductor, “he showed his cloak beautiful. But,
judging from the wing, it looked to me that
when he see the ghost in the queen's apartment,
he might have made more of his stockings."
Great Expectations, Chap. 31.
ACTOR-"Feeling a part."
"We had a first-tragedy man in our company
once, who, when he played Othello, used to
black himself all over. But that's feeling a
part and going into it as if you meant it; it isn't
usual-more's the pity."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 48.
ACTORS-A gathering of.
7
ADJECTIVES
ing or sculpturing people, or in acting people,
or in anything of that sort?" Possibly the pa-
tient answered yes, and mentioned somebody
of whom Sir Barnet had no more personal
knowledge than of Ptolemy the Great. Sir
Barnet replied, that nothing on earth was easier
as he knew him very well: immediately called
on the aforesaid somebody, left his card, wrote
a short note:-"My dear Sir-penalty of your
eminent position-friend at my house naturally
desirous-Lady Skettles and myself participate
trust that genius being superior to ceremo
nies, you will do us the distinguished favor o
giving us the pleasure," etc., etc.—and so killed
a brace of birds with one stone, dead as door-
nails.-Dombey and Son, Chap. 24.
ACQUAINTANCE-A Charity to Mr. Toots
Captain Gills," blurted out Mr. Toots, one
day all at once, as his manner was,
"do you
think you could think favorably of that propo-
sition of mine, and give me the pleasure of your
acquaintance?"
Why, I tell you what it is, my lad," replied
the Captain, who had at length concluded on a
course of action; "I've been turning that there
over."
""
A pretty general muster of the company had
by this time taken place; for besides Mr. Len- |
ville and his friend Tommy, there were present,
a slim young gentleman with weak eyes, who
played the low-spirited lovers and sang tenor
songs, and who had come arm-in-arm with the
comic countryman-a man with a turned-up
nose, large mouth, broad face, and staring eyes.
Making himself very amiable to the Infant Phe-
nomenon, was an inebriated elderly gentleman
in the last depths of shabbiness, who played the
calm and virtuous old men; and paying espe-
cial court to Mrs. Crummles was another elderly
gentleman, a shade more respectable, who played
the irascible old men-those funny fellows who
have nephews in the army, and perpetually run
about with thick sticks to compel them to marry "But you never can know me, Captain Gills,"
heiresses. Besides these, there was a roving-replied Mr. Toots, steadfast to his point, "if
looking person in a rough great-coat, who strode you don't give me the pleasure of your acquaint-
up and down in front of the lamps, flourishing ance."-Dombey and Son, Chap. 39.
a dress-cane, and rattling away, in an under-
tone, with great vivacity, for the amusement of
are ideal audience. He was not quite so young
as he had been, and his figure was rather run-
ning to seed; but there was an air of exag-
gerated gentility about him, which bespoke the
hero of swaggering comedy.
Captain Gills, it's very kind of you," retorted
Mr. Toots. "I'm much obliged to you. Upon-
my word and honor, Captain Gills, it would he
a charity to give me the pleasure of your ac-
quaintance. It really would."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 23.
ACQUAINTANCE-The art of extending.
Sir Barnet's object in life was constantly to
extend the range of his acquaintance. Like a
heavy body dropped into water-not to dispar-
age so worthy a gentleman by the comparison-
it was in the nature of things that Sir Barnet
must spread an ever-widening circle about him,
until there was no room left. Or, like a sound
in air, the vibration of which, according to the
speculation of an ingenious modern philosopher,
may go on travelling for ever through the inter-
minable fields of space, nothing but coming to
the end of his mortal tether could stop Sir Bar-
net Skettles in his voyage of discovery through
the social system.
Sir Barnet was proud of making people ac-
quainted with people. He liked the thing for
its own sake, and it advanced his favorite object
too.
For example, if Sir Barnet had the good
fortune to get hold of a raw recruit, or a country
gentleman, and ensnared him to his hospitable
villa, Sir Barnet would say to him on the morn-
ing after his arrival, "Now, my dear Sir, is
there anybody you would like to know? Who
is there you would wish to meet? Do you
take any interest in writing people, or in paint-
|
"You see, Brother," argued the Captain
slowly, "I don't know you.'
ADAPTABILITY—
Gentlemen of the free and easy sort, whe
plume themselves on being acquainted with a
move or two, and being usually equal to the
time-of-day, express the wide range of their
capacity for adventure by observing that they
are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to
manslaughter; between which opposite ex-
tremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide
and comprehensive range of subjects. Without
venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I
don't mind calling on you to believe that he
was ready for a good broad field of strange ap-
pearances, and that nothing between a baby
and rhinoceros would have astonished him very
much.-Chris. Carol, Stave 3.
ADDRESSES-Public.
"
Mayors have been knighted for "going up
with addresses: explosive machines intrepidly
discharging shot_and_shell into the English
Grammar.-Ed. Drood, Chap. 12.
ADJECTIVES—Bark's use of profane.
We enter, and Bark flies out of bed. Bark is
a red villain and a wrathful, with a sanguine
throat that looks very much as if it were ex-
pressly made for hanging, as he stretches it out,
in pale defiance, over the half-door of his hutch.
Bark's parts of speech are of an awful sort-
principally adjectives. I won't, says Bark, have
no adjective police and adjective strangers in
my adjective premises! I won't, by adjective
and substantive! Give me my trousers, and I'll
ADMIRER
send the whole adjective police to adjective and
substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective
trousers! I'll put an adjective knife in the
whole bileing of 'em. I'll punch their adjective
heads. I'll rip up their adjective substantives.
Give me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and
I'll spile the bileing of 'em!-On Duty with
Inspector Field. Reprinted Pieces.
ADMIRER—Quale as an indiscriminate.
While we were in London, Mr. Jarndyce was
constantly beset by the crowd of excitable ladies
and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much
astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented him-
self soon after our arrival, was in all such excite-
ments. He seemed to project those two shining
knobs of temples of his into everything that
went on, and to brush his hair farther and
farther back, until the very roots were almost
ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable
philanthropy. All objects were alike to him,
but he was always particularly ready for any-
thing in the way of a testimonial to any one.
His great power seemed to be his power of in-
discriminate admiration. He would sit for
any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment,
bathing his temples in the light of any order of
luminary. Having first seen him perfectly
swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I
had supposed her to be the absorbing object of
his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake,
and found him to be train-bearer and organ-
blower to a whole procession of people.
Bleak House, Chap. 15.
ADVERTISEMENTS-Peculiarities of.
Dreaming, Tom?"
เ
8
ADVERTISING
word of mouth; as if they found it a comfort
and consolation to proclaim, 'I want such and
such a thing, and I can't get it, and I don't ex-
pect I ever shall!'"-Martin Chuzzlewit, Ch. 36.
ADVERTISING—As a means of revenge.
If I had an enemy whom I hated-which
Heaven forbid !-and if I knew of something
that sat heavy on his conscience, I think I
would introduce that something into a Posting-
Bill, and place a large impression in the hands
of an active sticker. I can scarcely imagine a
more terrible revenge. I should haunt him, by
this means, night and day. I do not mean to
say that I would publish his secret, in red let-
ters two feet high, for all the town to read: I
would darkly refer to it. It should be between
him, and me, and the Posting-Bill. Say, for ex-
ample, that, at a certain period of his life, my
enemy had surreptitiously possessed himself of
a key. I would then embark my capital in the
lock business, and conduct that business on the
advertising principle. In all my placards and
advertisements, I would throw up the line
SECRET KEYS. Thus, if my enemy passed an
uninhabited house, he would see his conscience
glaring down on him from the parapets, and
peeping up at him from the cellars. If he took
a dead-wall in his walk, it would be alive with
reproaches. If he sought refuge in an omnibus,
the panels thereof would become Belshazzar's
palace to him. If he took a boat, in a wild en-
deavor to escape, he would see the fatal words
lurking under the arches of the bridges over the
Thames. If he walked the streets with down-
cast eyes, he would recoil from the very stones
of the pavement, made eloquent by lampblack
No," said Mr. Pinch, “No. I have been lithograph. If he drove or rode, his way would
looking over the advertising sheet, thinking be blocked up by enormous vans, each pro-
there might be something in it which would be claiming the same words over and over again
likely to suit me. But, as I often think, the from its whole extent of surface. Until, having
strange thing seems to be that nobody is suited. gradually grown thinner and paler, and having
Here are all kinds of employers wanting all at last totally rejected food, he would miserably
sorts of servants, and all sorts of servants want- perish, and I should be revenged. This con-
ing all kinds of employers, and they never seem clusion I should, no doubt, celebrate by laugh-
to come together. Here is a gentleman in a ing a hoarse laugh in three syllables, and fold-
public office in a position of temporary dif- ing my arms tight upon my chest, agreeably to
ficulty, who wants to borrow five hundred most of the examples of glutted animosity that
pounds; and in the very next advertisement I have had an opportunity of observing in con-
here is another gentleman who has got exactly nexion with the Drama-which, by-the-bye, as
that sum to lend. But he'll never lend it to involving a good deal of noise, appears to me
him, John, you'll find! Here is a lady possess- to be occasionally confounded with the Drum-
ing a moderate independence, who wants to mer.-Bill-Sticking. Reprinted Pieces.
board and lodge with a quiet, cheerful family:
and here is a family describing themselves in ADVERTISING—A building “billed.”
those very words, a quiet, cheerful family,'
who want exactly such a lady to come and live
with them. But she'll never go, John! Neither
do any of these single gentlemen who want an
airy bed-room, with the occasional use of a
parlor, ever appear to come to terms with these
other people who live in a rural situation, re-
markable for its bracing atmosphere, within
five minutes' walk of the Royal Exchange.
Even those letters of the alphabet, who are
always running away from their friends and
being entreated at the tops of columns to come
back, never do come back, if we may judge from
the number of times they are asked to do it,
and don't. It really seems," said Tom, relin-
quishing the paper, with a thoughtful sigh, "as
if people had the same gratification in printing
their complaints as in making them known by
(
The foregoing reflections presented them-
selves to my mind, the other day, as I contem
plated an old warehouse which rotting paste
and rotting paper had brought down to the
condition of an old cheese. It would have
been impossible to say, on the most conscien
tious survey how much of its front was brick
and mortar, and how much decaying and de-
cayed plaster. It was so thickly encrusted with:
fragments of bills, that no ship's keel after a
long voyage could be half so foul. All traces
of the broken windows were billed out, the
doors were billed across, the waterspout was
billed over. The building was shored up tc
prevent its tumbling into the street; and the
very beams erected against it, were less wood
than paste and paper, they had been so con-
tinually posted and reposted. The forlorn dreg”
ADVERTISING
of old posters so encumbered this wreck, that
there was no hold for new posters, and the
stickers had abandoned the place in despair,
except one enterprising man who had hoisted
the last masquerade to a clear spot near the
level of the stack of chimneys, where it waved
and drooped like a shattered flag. Below the
rusty cellar-grating, crumpled remnants of old
bills torn down rotted away in wasting heaps of
fallen leaves. Here and there, some of the
thick rind of the house had peeled off in strips,
and fluttered heavily down, littering the street;
but still, below these rents and gashes, layers
of decomposing posters showed themselves, as if
they were interminable. I thought the building
could never even be pulled down, but in one
adhesive heap of rottenness and poster. As to
getting in-I don't believe that if the Sleeping
Beauty and her Court had been so billed up,
the young prince could have done it.
*
*
*
Reprinted Pieces.
*
*
Robbery, fire, murder, and the ruin of the
United Kingdom-each discharged in a line by
itself, like a separate broadside of red-hot shot
-were among the least of the warnings ad-
dressed to an unthinking people.
Reprinted Pieces. "Bill-sticking."
ADVERTISING-Show-bills.
Next day the posters appeared in due course,
and the public were informed, in all the colors
of the rainbow, and in letters afflicted with
every possible variation of spinal deformity,
how that Mr. Johnson would have the honor of
making his last appearance that evening, and
how that an early application for places was re-
quested, in consequence of the extraordinary
overflow attendant on his performances. It
being a remarkable fact in theatrical history,
but one long since established beyond dispute,
that it is a hopeless endeavor to attract people
to a theatre unless they can be first brought to
believe that they will never get into it.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 30.
ADVERTISEMENTS
swers to.
Alphabetical an-
Answers out of number were received, with
all sorts of initials; all the letters of the al-
phabet seemed to be seized with a sudden wish
to go out boarding and lodging; voluminous
was the correspondence between Mrs. Tibbs
and the applicants; and most profound was
the secrecy observed. "E." did'nt like this;
E." did'nt like this;
"I." couldn't think of putting up with that;
“I. O. U.” did'nt think the terms would suit
him; and "G. R." had never slept in a French
bed.-Tales. The Boarding House, Chap. 1.
ADVERTISEMENT—A walking.
So, he stopped the unstamped advertisement
-an animated sandwich, composed of a boy
between two boards.
Characters (Sketches), Chap. 9.
9
AFFECTION
do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing
underhanded or mysterious, and never to put
his foot where he cannot see the ground."
Bleak House, Chap. 27.
ADVICE OF MR. MICAWBER-On pro-
crastination and money.
My dear young friend," said Mr. Micawber,
"I am older than you; a man of some experi-
ence in life, and—and of some experience-in
short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At
present, and until something turns up (which I
am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing
to bestow but advice. Still, my advice is so far
worth taking that-in short, that I have never
taken it myself, and am the "-here Mr. Mi-
cawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all
over his head and face, up to the present mo-
ment, checked himself and frowned-"the mis-
erable wretch you behold."
46
My dear Micawber!" urged his wife.
"I say," returned Mr. Micawber, quite for-
getting himself, and smiling again, "the mis-
erable wretch you behold. My advice is, never
do to-morrow what you can do to-day. Pro-
crastination is the thief of time. Collar him."
My poor papa's maxim," Mrs. Micawber
observed.
"My dear," said Mr. Micawber, "your papa
was very well in his way, and heaven forbid
that I should disparage him. Take him for all
in all, we ne'er shall-in short, make the ac-
quaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing,
at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and
able to read the same description of print with-
out spectacles. But he applied that maxim to
our marriage, my dear; and that was so far
prematurely entered into, in consequence, that
I never recovered the expense."
Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber,
and added: "Not that I am sorry for it. Quite
the contrary, my love." After which he was
grave for a minute or so.
My other piece of advice, Copperfield,"
said Mr. Micawber, "you know. Annual in-
come twenty pounds, annual expenditure nine-
teen nineteen six, result, happiness. Annual
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
twenty pounds ought and six, result, misery.
The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the
god of day goes down upon the dreary scene
and-and, in short, you are for ever floored.
As I am!"-David Copperfield, Chap. 12.
AFFECTION—The expression of.
"Mature affection, homage, devotion, does
not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is
modest and retiring; it lies in ambush, waits
and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Some-
times a life glides away, and finds it still ripen-
ing in the shade."-David Copperfield, Chap. 41
AFFECTION-The subtlety of.
There is a subtlety of perception in real at-
tachment, even when it is borne towards man
by one of the lower animals, which leaves the
ADVICE OF MRS. BAGNET-On conduct.highest intellect behind. To this mind of the
Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "give him my heart, if I may call it so, in Mr. Dick, some
opinion. You know it. Tell him what it is." bright ray of the truth shot straight.
"It is, that he cannot have too little to do with
people who are too deep for him, and cannot
be too careful of interference with matters he
does not understand; that the plain rule is, to
*
*
*
*
*
When I think of him, with his impenetrably
wise face, walking up and down with the
Doctor, delighted to be battered by the hard
AFFECTION
words in the Dictionary; when I think of him,
carrying huge watering-pots after Annie; kneel-
ing down, in very paws of gloves, at patient
microscopic work among the little leaves; ex-
pressing as no philosopher could have expressed,
in everything he did, a delicate desire to be her
friend; showering sympathy, trustfulness, and
affection, out of every hole in the watering-pot;
when I think of him, never wandering in that
better mind of his to which unhappiness ad-
dressed itself, never bringing the unfortunate
King Charles into the garden, never wavering
in his grateful service, never diverted from his
knowledge that there was something wrong, or
from his wish to set it right-I really feel
almost ashamed of having known that he was
not quite in his wits, taking account of the
utmost I have done with mine.
10
AFFLICTION
new feelings should usurp their place, as it is
that the sweetest productions of the earth, left
untended, should be choked with weeds and
briars."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 46.
AFFECTIONS-Of childhood.
"Shall we make a man of him?” repeated
the Doctor.
"I had rather be a child," replied Paul.
"Indeed!" said the Doctor. Why?"
The child sat on the table looking at him,
with a curious expression of suppressed emotion
in his face, and beating one hand proudly on
his knee, as if he had the rising tears beneath
it, and crushed them. But his other hand
strayed a little way the while, a little farther-
farther from him yet-until it lighted on the
neck of Florence. "This is why," it seemed to
say, and then the steady look was broken up
and gone; the working lip was loosened; and
the tears came streaming forth.
Dombey and Son, Chap. II.
David Copperfield, Chap. 42.
AFFECTION—Of the idiot (Barnaby Rudge).
Heaven alone can tell with what vague
thoughts of duty and affection; with what
strange promptings of nature, intelligible to AFFLICTION—The agony of,
him as to a man of radiant mind and most en-
larged capacity; with what dim memories of
children he had played with when a child him-
self, who had prattled of their fathers, and of
loving them, and being loved; with how many
half-remembered, dreamy associations of his
mother's grief and tears and widowhood, he
watched and tended this man. But that a
vague and shadowy crowd of such ideas came
slowly on him; that they taught him to be
sorry when he looked upon his haggard face,
that they overflowed his eyes when he stooped
to kiss him, that they kept him waking in a
tearful gladness, shading him from the sun,
fanning him with leaves, soothing him when he
started in his sleep-ah! what a troubled sleep
it was—and wondering when she would come to
join them and be happy, is the truth. He sat
beside him all that day; listening for her foot-
steps in every breath of air, looking for her
shadow on the gently waving grass, twining the
hedge-flowers for her pleasure when she came,
and his when he awoke; and stooping down
from time to time to listen to his mutterings,
and wonder why he was so restless in that quiet
place. The sun went down, and night came
on, and he was still quite tranquil; busied with
these thoughts, as if there were no other people
in the world, and the dull cloud of smoke hang-
ing on the immense city in the distance, hid no
vices, no crimes, no life or death, or causes of
disquiet-nothing but clear air.
They little know, who coldly talk of the
poor man's bereavements, as a happy release
from pain to the departed, and a merciful relief
from expense to the survivor-they little know,
I say, what the agony of those bereavements is.
A silent look of affection and regard when all
other eyes are turned coldly away-the con-
sciousness that we possess the sympathy and
affection of one being when all others have
deserted us--is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the
deepest affliction, which no wealth could pur-
chase, or power bestow."-Pick. Chap. 21.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 68.
AFFECTIONS-Wounded.
Agitation and anxiety of mind scatter wrinkles
and grey hairs with no unsparing hand; but
deeper traces follow on the silent uprooting of
old habits, and severing of dear, familiar ties.
The affections may not be so easily wounded as
the passions, but their hurts are deeper, and
more lasting.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 81.
AFFECTIONS-The natural.
"Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir,
are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works,
but like other beautiful works of His, they
must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural
that they should be wholly obscured, and that
AFFLICTION-Assuaged by Memory.
"If anything could soothe the first sharp pain
of a heavy loss, it would be-with me-the re-
flection that those I mourned, by being inno-
cently happy here, and loving all about them,
had prepared themselves for a purer and hap-
pier world. The sun does not shine upon this
fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon
| it.
""
“I believe you are right,” said the gentleman
who had told the story.
(<
"Believe!" retorted the other, can anybody
doubt it? Take any subject of sorrowful re-
gret, and see with how much pleasure it is asso-
ciated. The recollection of past pleasure may
become pain-’
"It does," interposed the other.
Well; it does. To remember happiness
which cannot be restored, is pain, but of a soft-
ened kind. Our recollections are unfortunately
mingled with much that we deplore, and with
many actions which we bitterly repent; still, in
the most chequered life I firmly think there are
so many little rays of sunshine to look back
upon, that I do not believe any mortal (unless
he had put himself without the pale of hope)
would deliberately drain a goblet of the waters
of Lethe, if he had it in his power."
"
"Possibly you are correct in that belief," said
the grey-haired gentleman, after a short reflec-
tion.
"I am inclined to think you are.'
"Why, then," replied the other," the good in
this state of existence preponderates over the
bad, let mis-called philosophers tell us what
they will. If our affections be tried, our affec-
tions are our consolation and comfort; and
AFFLICTION
memory, however sad, is the best and purest
link between this world and a better."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6.
AFFLICTION-Comfort in.
In the exhaustless catalogue of Heaven's
mercies to mankind, the power we have of find-
ing some germs of comfort in the hardest trials
must ever occupy the foremost place; not only
because it supports and upholds us when we
most require to be sustained, but because in this
source of consolation there is something, we
have reason to believe, of the divine spirit;
something of that goodness which detects,
amidst our own evil doings, a redeeming qual-
ity; something which, even in our fallen nature,
we possess in common with the angels; which
had its being in the old time when they trod
the earth, and lingers on it yet, in pity.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 47.
AFFRONT-Mr. Pickwick's.
"Sir," said Mr. Tupman, "you're a fellow!"
Sir," said Mr. Pickwick, "you're another!"
Mr. Tupman advanced a step or two, and
glared at Mr. Pickwick. Mr. Pickwick re-
turned the glare, concentrated into a focus by
means of his spectacles, and breathed a bold
defiance. Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle
looked on, petrified at beholding such a scene
between two such men.
'Sir," said Mr. Tupman, after a short pause,
speaking in a low, deep voice, “you have called
me old.
I have," said Mr. Pickwick.
"And fat."
"I reiterate the charge."
"And a fellow."
"So you are!"
There was a fearful pause.
My attachment to your person, sir," said
Mr. Tupman, speaking in a voice tremulous
with emotion, and tucking up his wristbands
meanwhile, “is great-very great—but upon
that person I must take summary vengeance."
"Come on, sir!" replied Mr. Pickwick. Stim-
ulated by the exciting nature of the dialogue,
the heroic man actually threw himself into a
paralytic attitude, confidently supposed by the
two bystanders to have been intended as a pos-
ture of defence.
"What!" exclaimed Mr. Snodgrass, sud-
denly recovering the power of speech, of which
intense astonishment had previously bereft him,
and rushing between the two, at the imminent
hazard of receiving an application on the tem-
ple from each, "What! Mr. Pickwick, with the
eyes of the world upon you! Mr. Tupman,
who, in common with us all, derives a lustre
from his undying name! For shame, gentle-
men; for shame.
37
The unwonted lines which momentary pas-
sion had ruled in Mr. Pickwick's clear and
open brow, gradually melted away as his young
friend spoke, like the marks of a black-lead
pencil beneath the softening influence of India
rubber. His countenance had resumed its
usual benign expression ere he concluded.
Pickwick, Chop. $5.
AGE-A youthful old.
"Brother Ned, my dear boy returned the
other old fellow, "I believe that Tim Linkin-
11
ALPHABET
water was born a hundred-and-fifty years old,
and is gradually coming down to five-and-twen-
ty; for he's younger every birthday than he
was the year before."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 37.
AGE-The duties of old.
"Dear me !" said Mr. Omer,
said Mr. Omer, "when a man
is drawing on to a time of life where the two
ends of life meet; when he finds himself, how-
ever hearty he is, being wheeled about for the
second time in a species of go-cart; he should
be over-rejoiced to do a kindness if he can. He
wants plenty. And I don't speak of myself
particular," said Mr. Omer, "because, sir, the
way I look at it is, that we are all drawing on
to the bottom of the hill, whatever age we are,
on account of time never standing still for a
single moment. So let us always do a kindness,
and be over-rejoiced. To be sure!"
David Copperfield, Chap. 51.
AGE-Revered by the poor.
Age, especially when it strives to be self-re-
liant and cheerful, finds much consideration
among the poor.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 6.
ALIBI-The Elder Weller's idea of an.
"The first matter relates to your governor,
Sammy," said Mr. Weller. "He's a goin' to be
tried to-morrow, ain't he?"
The trial's a comin' on," replied Sam.
"Vell," said Mr. Weller, "Now I s'pose he'll
want to call some witnesses to speak to his
character, or p'haps to prove a alleybi. I've
been a turnin' the bisness over in my mind, and
he may make his-self easy, Sammy. I've got
some friends as'll do either for him, but my ad-
vice 'ud be this here-never mind the charac-
ter, and stick to the alleybi. Nothing like a
alleybi, Sammy, nothing." Mr. Weller looked
very profound as he delivered this legal opinion;
and burying his nose in his tumbler, winked
over the top thereof at his astonished son.
Why, what do you mean?" said Sam; "you
don't think he's a-goin' to be tried at the Old
Bailey, do you?"
"That ain't no part of the present con-sider-
ation, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller. "Verever
he's a-goin' to be tried, my boy, a alleybi's the
thing to get him off. Ve got Tom Vildspark
off that 'ere manslaughter, with a alleybi, ven
all the big vigs to a man said as nothing
couldn't save him. And my 'pinion is, Sammy,
that if your governor don't prove a alleybi,
he'll be what the Italians call reg'larly flum
moxed, and that's all about it."
*
*
*
Pickwick, Chap. 33.
*
*
*
Sam had put up the steps, and was preparing
to jump upon the box, when he felt himself
gently touched on the shoulder; and looking
round, his father stood before him. The old
gentleman's countenance wore a mournful ex-
pression, as he shook his head gravely, and
said, in warning accents:
"I know'd what 'ud come o' this here mode
o' doing bisness. Oh, Sammy, Sammy, vy
worn't there a alleybi !"-Pickwick, Chap. 34.
ALPHABET-Learning the.
To this day, when I look upon the fat black
ALPHABET
letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of
their shapes, and the easy good nature of O and
Q and S, seem to present themselves again be-
fore me as they used to do. But they recall no
feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the con-
trary, I seem to have walked along a path of
flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have
been cheered by the gentleness of my mother's
voice and manner all the way.
David Copperfield, Chap. 4.
12
ALPHABET-Reminiscences of its study.
We never see any very large, staring, black, |
Roman capitals, in a book, or shop-window, or
placarded on a wall, without their immediately
recalling to our mind an indistinct and confused
recollection of the time when we were first in-
itiated in the mysteries of the alphabet. We
almost fancy we see the pin's point following
the letter, to impress its form more strongly on
our bewildered imagination; and wince invol-
untarily, as we remember the hard knuckles
with which the reverend old lady who instilled
into our mind the first principles of education
for ninepence per week, or ten and sixpence
per quarter, was wont to poke our juvenile
head occasionally, by way of adjusting the con-
fusion of ideas in which we were generally in-
volved.-Scenes, Chap. II.
ALPS-Among the.
*
*
* * We began rapidly to descend;
passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of
arched galleries, hung with clusters of dripping
icicles; under and over foaming waterfalls;
near places of refuge, and galleries of shelter
against sudden danger; through caverns, over
whose arched roofs the avalanches slide, in
spring, and bury themselves in the unknown
gulf beneath. Down, over lofty bridges, and
through horrible ravines: a little shifting speck
in the vast desolation of ice and snow, and
monstrous granite rocks: down through the
deep Gorge of the Saltine, and deafened by the
torrent plunging madly down, among the riven
blocks of rock, into the level country, far below.
Gradually down, by zig-zag roads, lying between
an upward and a downward precipice, into
warmer weather, calmer air, and softer scenery,
until there lay before us, glittering like gold or
silver in the thaw and sunshine, the metal-cov-
ered, red, green, yellow, domes and church-
spires of a Swiss town.-Pictures from Italy..
AMERICANS-Their Characteristics.
They are by nature frank, brave, cordial,
hospitable, and affectionate. Cultivation and
refinement seem but to enhance their warmth
of heart and ardent enthusiasm; and it is the
possession of these latter qualities in a most
remarkable degree which renders an educated
American one of the most endearing and most
generous of friends. I never was so won upon
as by this class; never yielded up my full con-
fidence and esteem so readily and pleasurably
as to them; never can make again in half a
year so many friends for whom I seem to enter-
tain the regard of half a life.
AMERICANS
but little present promise of their healthy restora
tion, is a truth that ought to be told.
It is an essential part of every national char-
acter to pique itself mightily upon its faults,
and to deduce tokens of its virtue or its wisdom
from their very exaggeration. One great blem-
ish in the popular mind of America, and the
prolific parent of an innumerable brood of
evils, is Universal Distrust. Yet the Ameri-
can citizen plumes himself upon this spirit,
even when he is sufficiently dispassionate to per-
ceive the ruin it works, and will often adduce
it, in spite of his own reason, as an instance of
the great sagacity and acuteness of the people,
and their superior shrewdness and independ-
ence.
You carry," says the stranger, "this jeal-
ousy and distrust into every transaction of pub-
lic life. By repelling worthy men from your
legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of
candidates for the suffrage, who, in their every
act, disgrace your Institutions and your peo-
ple's choice. It has rendered you so fickle and
so given to change that your inconstancy has
passed into a proverb; for you no sooner set up
an idol firmly, than you are sure to pull it down
and dash it into fragments; and this because
directly you reward a benefactor or a public
servant you distrust him, merely because he is
rewarded; and immediately apply yourself to
find out, either that you have been too bounti-
ful in your acknowledgments, or he remiss in
his deserts. Any man who attains a high
place among you, from the President down-
wards, may date his downfall from that moment;
for any printed lie that any notorious villain
pens, although it militate directly against the
character and conduct of a life, appeals at once
to your distrust, and is believed. You will
strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and
confidence, however fairly won and well deserv-
ed; but you will swallow a whole caravan of
camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts
and mean suspicions. Is this well, think you,
or likely to elevate the character of the govern-
ors or the governed among you?"
The answer is invariably the same: "There's
freedom of opinion here, you know. Every
man thinks for himself, and we are not to be
easily overreached. That's how our people
come to be suspicious."
Another prominent feature is the love of
"smart ""
dealing, which gilds over many a
swindle and gross breach of trust, many a defal-
cation, public and private, and enables many
a knave to hold his head up with the best, who
well deserves a halter; though it has not
been without its retributive operation, for this
smartness has done more, in a few years,
to impair the public credit, and to cripple
the public resources, than dull honesty, how-
ever rash, could have effected in a century.
The merits of a broken speculation, or a bank-
ruptcy, or of a successful scoundrel, are not
gauged by its or his observance of the golden
rule, "Do as you would be done by," but are
considered with reference to their smartness.
I recollect, on both occasions of our passing
These qualities are natural, I implicitly be- that ill-fated Cairo on the Mississippi, remark
lieve, to the whole people. That they are, how-ing on the bad effects such gross deceits must
ever, sadly sapped and blighted in their growth
among the mass, and that there are influences at
work which endanger them still more, and give
have when they exploded, in generating a want
of confidence abroad, and discouraging foreign
investment; but I was given to understand that
AMERICANS
this was a very smart scheme, by which a deal
of money had been made, and that its smartest
feature was that they forgot these things abroad
in a very short time, and speculated again as
freely as ever. The following dialogue I have
held a hundred times: "Is it not a very dis-
graceful circumstance that such a man as So-
and-so should be acquiring a large property by
the most infamous and odious means, and, not-
withstanding all the crimes of which he has
been guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by
your citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he
not?" "Yes, sir." "A convicted liar?" "Yes,
sir."
He has been kicked, and cuffed, and
caned?" Yes, sir."
"And he is utterly dis-
honorable, debased, and profligate?
"Yes,
sir." "In the name of wonder, then, what is his
merit?" "Well, sir, he is a smart man."
Am. Notes, Chap. 18.
*
*
*
*
*
*
They certainly are not a humorous people,
and their temperament always impressed me as
being of a dull and gloomy character. In
shrewdness of remark, and a certain cast-iron
quaintness, the Yankees, or people of New Eng-
land, unquestionably take the lead, as they do
in most other evidences of intelligence. But
in travelling about out of the large cities—as I
have remarked in former parts of these vol-
umes-I was quite oppressed by the prevailing
seriousness and melancholy air of business,
which was so general and unvarying, that at
every new town I came to I seemed to meet
the very same people whom I had left behind
me at the last. Such defects as are perceptible
in the national manners seem to me to be refer-
able, in a great degree, to this cause; which has
generated a dull, sullen persistence in coarse
usages, and rejected the graces of life as unde-
serving of attention. There is no doubt that
Washington, who was always most scrupulous
and exact on points of ceremony, perceived
the tendency towards this mistake, even in his
time, and did his utmost to correct it.—Chap. 18.
AMERICANS-Their Devotion to Dollars.
13
AMERICANS
pursuit, could cast no stigma upon them, foi
the hot knavery of theirs. Thus, Martin learn-
ed in the five minutes' straggling talk about
the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative
assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such
peaceful toys; to seize opponents by the
throat, as dogs or rats might do; to bluster,
bully, and overbear by personal assailment,
were glowing deeds. Not thrusts and stabs at
Freedom, striking far deeper into her House
of Life than any sultan's scimitar could reach;
but rare incense on her altars, having a grateful
scent in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward
to the seventh heaven of Fame.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 16.
AMERICAN EAGLE-The.
"What are you thinking of so steadily?"
said Martin.
แ
"Why, I was a thinking, sir," returned Mark,
"that if I was a painter and was called upon
to paint the American Eagle, how should I do
it?
"Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I
suppose.
""
"No," said Mark, "that wouldn't do for
me, sir. I should want to draw it like a Bat,
for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam, for its
bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like
a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for
its putting its head in the mud, and thinking
nobody sees it—”
"And like a Phoenix, for its power of spring-
ing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and
soaring up anew into the sky!" said Martin.
'Well, Mark, let us hope so.'
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 34.
AMERICAN HABITS
nomena.
Salivatory Phe-
The journey from New York to Philadel-
phia is made by railroad and two ferries, and
usually occupies between five and six hours. It
was a fine evening when we were passengers in
the train; and, watching the bright sunset from
a little window near the door by which we sat,
my attention was attracted to a remarkable ap-
pearance issuing from the windows of the gen-
tlemen's car immediately in front of us, which
number of industrious persons inside ripping
open feather-beds, and giving the feathers to
the wind. At length it occurred to me that
they were only spitting, which was indeed the
case; though how any number of passengers
which it was possible for that car to contain
could have maintained such a playful and in-
cessant shower of expectoration, I am still at a
loss to understand, notwithstanding the experi-
ence in all salivatory phenomena which I after-
wards acquired.
All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues,
and associations, seemed to be melted down
into dollars. Whatever the chance contribu-
tions that fell into the slow cauldron of their | I supposed for some time was occasioned by a
talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with
dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars,
measures gauged by their dollars; life was
auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked
down for its dollars. The next respectable
thing to dollars was any venture having their
attainment for its end. The more of that
worthless ballast, honor and fair-dealing, which
any man cast overboard from the ship of his
Good Name and Good Intent, the more ample
stowage-room he had for dollars. Make com-
merce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface
the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pol-
lute it star by star, and cut out stripe by stripe,
as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do
anything for dollars! What is a flag to them!
One who rides at all hazards of limb and
life in the chase of a fox, will prefer to ride
recklessly at most times. So it was with
these gentlemen. He was the greatest patriot,
in their eyes, who brawled the loudest, and who
cared the least for decency. He was their
champion, who, in the brutal fury of his own
I made acquaintance, on this journey, with
a mild and modest young Quaker, who opened
the discourse by informing me, in a grave whis-
per, that his grandfather was the inventor of
cold-drawn castor-oil. I mention the circum-
stance here, thinking it probable that this is the
first occasion on which the valuable medicine in
question was ever used as a conversational ape-
rient.-American Notes, Chap. 7.
AMERICANS-In Washington.
*
There were some fifteen or twenty persons
•
AMERICAN PUBLICISTS
in the room. One, a tall, wiry, muscular old
man, from the West, sunburnt and swarthy,
with a brown-white hat on his knees and a giant
umbrella resting between his legs, who sat bolt
upright in his chair, frowning steadily at the
carpet, and twitching the hard lines about his
mouth, as if he had made up his mind "to fix"
the President on what he had to say, and
wouldn't bate him a grain. Another, a Ken-
tucky farmer, six feet in height, with his hat on,
and his hands under his coat-tails, who leaned
against the wall and kicked the floor with his
heel, as though he had Time's head under his
shoe, and were literally "killing" him. A third,
an oval-faced, bilious-looking man, with sleek
black hair cropped close, and whiskers and
beard shaved down to blue dots, who sucked
the head of a thick stick, and from time to time
took it out of his mouth to see how it was get-
ting on. A fourth did nothing but whistle. A
fifth did nothing but spit. And indeed all these
gentlemen were so very persevering and ener-
getic in this latter particular, and bestowed their
favors so abundantly upon the carpet, that I take
it for granted the Presidential housemaids have
high wages, or, to speak more genteelly, an am-
ple amount of "compensation."
American Notes, Chap. 8.
AMERICAN PUBLICISTS.
It is no great matter what Mrs. Hominy said,
save that she had learnt it from the cant of a
class, and a large class, of her fellow-country-
men, who, in their every word, avow themselves
to be as senseless to the high principles on
which America sprang, a nation, into life, as
any Orson in her legislative halls. Who are no
more capable of feeling, or of caring, if they
did feel, that by reducing their own country to
the ebb of honest men's contempt, they put in
hazard the rights of nations yet unborn, and
very progress of the human race, than are the
swine who wallow in their streets. Who think
that crying out to other nations, old in their
iniquity, "We are no worse than you!" (No
worse!) is high defence, and 'vantage-ground
enough for that Republic, but yesterday let
loose upon her noble course, and but to-day so
maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers,
foul to the eye, and almost hopeless to the sense,
that her best friends turn from the loathsome
creature with disgust. Who, having by their
ancestors declared and won their Independence,
because they would not bend the knee to cer-
tain public vices and corruptions, and would not
abrogate the truth, run riot in the Bad, and turn
their backs upon the Good; and lying down
contented with the wretched boast that other
Temples also are of glass, and stones which
batter theirs may be flung back; show them-
selves, in that alone, as immeasurably behind
the import of the trust they hold, and as un-
worthy to possess it, as if the sordid huckster-
ings of all their little governments-each one a
kingdom in its small depravity-were brought
into a heap for evidence against them.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 22.
AMERICAN WOMEN-Fashionable.
14
AMERICANS
every article of dress on the same extensive
scale as the little shoes and the thin silk stock.
ings. This suggested to him that they were
great proficients in the French fashions, which
soon turned out to be the case, for though their
information appeared to be none of the newest,
it was very extensive and the eldest sister, in
particular, who was distinguished by a talent
for metaphysics, the laws of hydraulic pressure,
and the rights of human kind, had a novel way
of combining these acquirements and bringing
them to bear on any subject from Millinery to
the Millennium, both inclusive, which was at
once improving and remarkable; so much so,
in short, that it was usually observed to reduce
foreigners to a state of temporary insanity in
five minutes.
Martin felt his reason going; and as a means
of saving himself, besought the other sister (see-
ing a piano in the room) to sing. With this re-
quest she willingly complied; and a bravura
concert, solely sustained by the Misses Norris,
presently began. They sang in all languages-
except their own. German, French, Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss; but nothing na-
tive; nothing so low as native. For, in this
respect, languages are like many other travel-
lers: ordinary and commonplace enough at
home, but 'specially genteel abroad.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 17.
AMERICANS-The social observances of.
The Honorable Elijah Pogram looked at
Martin as if he thought " You don't mean that,
I know!" and he was soon confirmed in this
opinion.
Sitting opposite to them was a gentleman in
a high state of tobacco, who wore quite a little
beard, composed of the overflowings of that
weed, as they had dried about his mouth and
chin: so common an ornament that it would
scarcely have attracted Martin's observation,
but that this good citizen, burning to assert his
equality against all comers, sucked his knife for
some moments, and made a cut with it at the
butter just as Martin was in the act of taking
some. There was a juiciness about the deed
that might have sickened a scavenger.
When Elijah Pogram (to whom this was an
every-day incident) saw that Martin put the
plate away, and took no butter, he was quite de-
lighted, and said:
"Well! The morbid hatred of you British to
the institutions of our country, is as-TON-ish
ing!
Upon my life!" cried Martin, in his turn,
"this is the most wonderful community that
ever existed. A man deliberately makes a hog
of himself, and that's an institution!"
"We have no time to ac-quire forms, sir,"
said Elijah Pogram.
But it's not a
Acquire!" cried Martin.
question of acquiring anything. It's a question
of losing the natural politeness of a savage,
and that instinctive good breeding which ad-
monishes one man not to offend and disgust
another. Don't you think that man over the
way, for instance, naturally knows better, but
considers it a very fine and independent thing
to be a brute in small matters?"
In order that their talk might fall again into
ts former pleasant channel, Martin addressed "He is a na-tive of our country, and is nat
himself to the young ladies, who were very gor-rally bright and spry, of course," said Mr. Po
geously attired in very beautiful colors, and had | gram.
ANATOMICAL SUBJECT
"Now, observe what this comes to, Mr. Po-
gram," pursued Martin.
"The mass of your
countrymen begin by stubbornly neglecting
little social observances, which have nothing to
do with gentility, custom, usage, government,
or country, but are acts of common, decent,
natural, human politeness. You abet them in
this, by resenting all attacks upon their social
offences as if they were a beautiful national
feature. From disregarding small obligations
they come in regular course to disregard great
ones; and so refuse to pay their debts. What
they may do, or what they may refuse to do
next, I don't know; but any man may see if he
will, that it will be something following in nat-
ural succession, and a part of one great growth,
which is rotten at the root."
The mind of Mr. Pogram was too philosoph-
ical to see this; so they went on deck again,
where, resuming his former post, he chewed
until he was in a lethargic state, amounting to
insensibility.—Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 34.
AMERICANS-Mark Tapley's opinion of.
"Take notice of my words, sir. If ever the
defaulting part of this here country pays its
debts—along of finding that not paying 'em
won't do in a commercial point of view, you
see, and is inconvenient in its consequences-
they'll take such a shine out of it, and make
such bragging speeches, that a man might sup-
pose no borrowed money had ever been paid
afore, since the world was first begun. That's
the way they gammon each other, sir. Bless
you, I know 'em.
Take notice of my words,
now!"-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 23.
ANATOMICAL SUBJECT-Wegg as an.
Now, look here, what did you give for
"
me?"
Well," replies Venus, blowing his tea, his
head and face peering out of the darkness, over
the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the
old original rise in his family: "you were one
of a warious lot, and I don't know."
Silas puts his point in the improved form of
"What will you take for me?"
Well," replies Venus, still blowing his tea,
"I'm not prepared, at a moment's notice, to
tell you, Mr. Wegg."
Come! According to your own account,
I'm not worth much," Wegg reasons persua-
sively.
"Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant
you, Mr. Wegg; but you might turn out valu-
able yet, as a
here Mr. Venus takes a gulp
of tea, so hot that it makes him choke, and sets
his weak eyes watering; "as a Monstrosity, if
as a Monstrosity, if
you'll excuse me."
*
*
*
*
*
*
15
"I have a prospect of getting on in life and
elevating myself by my own independent exer-
tions," says Wegg, feelingly, "and I shouldn't
like I tell you openly I should not like-un- |
der such circumstances, to be what I may call
dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me
there, but should wish to collect myself like a
genteel person."
*
*
*
*
*
"Mr. Wegg, not to name myself as a work-
man without an equal, I've gone on improving
myself in my knowledge of anatomy, till both
by sight and by name I'm perfect. Mr. Wegg,
ANCESTRY
if you was brought here loose in a bag to be
articulated, I'd name your smallest bones blind-
fold equally with your largest, as fast as I could
pick 'em out, and I'd sort 'em all, and sort your
wertebræ in a manner that would equally sur-
prise and charm you."
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 7.
ANCESTRY—A satire on the pride of.
As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to
polite breeding, can possibly sympathize with
the Chuzzlewit family without being first as-
sured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is
a great satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly
descended in a direct line from Adam and Eve';
and was, in the very earliest times, closely con-
nected with the agricultural interest.
If it
should ever be urged by grudging and malicious
persons that a Chuzzlewit, in any period of the
family history, displayed an overweening
amount of family pride, surely the weakness.
will be considered not only pardonable but
laudable, when the immense superiority of the
house to the rest of mankind, in respect of this,
its ancient origin, is taken into account.
It is remarkable that as there was, in the
oldest family of which we have any record, a
murderer and a vagabond, so we never fail to
meet, in the records of all old families, with in-
numerable repetitions of the same phase of
character. Indeed, it may be laid down as a
general principle, that the more extended the
ancestry, the greater the amount of violence
and vagabondism; for in ancient days, those
two amusements, combining a wholesome ex-
citement with a promising means of repairing
shattered fortunes, were at once the ennobling
pursuit and the healthful recreation of the
Quality of this land.
Consequently, it is a source of inexpressible
comfort and happiness to find, that in various
periods of our history, the Chuzzlewits were
actively connected with divers slaughterous con-
spiracies and bloody frays. It is further re-
corded of them, that being clad from head to
heel in steel of proof, they did on many occa-
sions lead their leather-jerkined soldiers to the
death, with invincible courage, and afterwards
return home gracefully to their relations and
friends.
There can be no doubt that at least one
Chuzzlewit came over with William the Con-
queror. It does not appear that this illustrious
ancestor came over that monarch, to employ
the vulgar phrase, at any subsequent period:
inasmuch as the Family do not seem to have
been ever greatly distinguished by the posses-
sion of landed estate. And it is well known
that for the bestowal of that kind of property
upon his favorites, the liberality and gratitude
of the Norman were as remarkable as those
virtues are usually found to be in great men
when they give away what belongs to other
people.
Perhaps in this place the history may pause
to congratulate itself upon the enormous amount
of bravery, wisdom, eloquence, virtue, gentle
birth, and true nobility, that appears to have
come into England with the Norman Invasion:
an amount which the genealogy of every an-
cient family lends its aid to swell, and which
would, beyond all question, have been found tc
be just as great, and to the full as prolific is
ANCESTRY
giving birth to long lines of chivalrous de-
scendants, boastful of their origin, even though
William the Conqueror had been William the
Conquered: a change of circumstances which,
it is quite certain, would have made no man-
per of difference in this respect.
*
*
*
*
*
*
It is also clearly proved by the oral tradi-
tions of the Family, that there existed, at some
one period of its history which is not distinctly
stated, a matron of such destructive principles,
and so familiarized to the use and composition
of inflammatory and combustible engines, that
she was called "The Match Maker:" by which
nickname and byword she is recognized in the
Family legends to this day. Surely there can
be no reasonable doubt that this was the
Spanish lady, the mother of Chuzzlewit Fawkes.
*.
*
*
*
*
*
It has been rumored, and it is needless to
say the rumor originated in the same base quar-
ters, that a certain male Chuzzlewit, whose
birth must be admitted to be involved in some
obscurity, was of very mean and low descent.
How stands the proof? When the son of that
individual, to whom the secret of his father's
birth was supposed to have been communicated
by his father in his lifetime, lay upon his death-
bed, this question was put to him in a distinct,
solemn, and formal way: Toby Chuzzlewit,
who was your grandfather?” To which he,
with his last breath, no less distinctly, solemnly,
and formally replied: and his words were taken
down at the time, and signed by six witnesses,
each with his name and address in full: "The
Lord No Zoo." It may be said-it has been
said, for human wickedness has no limits-that
there is no Lord of that name, and that among
the titles which have become extinct, none at
all resembling this, in sound even, is to be dis-
covered. But what is the irresistible inference?
-Rejecting a theory broached by some well-
meaning but mistaken persons, that this Mr.
Toby Chuzzlewit's grandfather, to judge from
his name, must surely have been a Mandarin
(which is wholly insupportable, for there is no
pretence of his grandmother ever having been
out of this country, or of any Mandarin having
been in it within some years of his father's
birth; except those in the tea-shops, which can-
not for a moment be regarded as having any
bearing on the question, one way or other),
rejecting this hypothesis, is it not manifest that
Mr. Toby Chuzzlewit had either received the
name imperfectly from his father, or that he
had forgotten it, or that he had mispronounced
it? and that even at the recent period in ques-
tion, the Chuzzlewits were connected by a bend
sinister, or kind of heraldic over-the-left, with
some unknown noble and illustrious House?
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. I.
16
|
ANIMALS
and decently battened up above the Family
grave, the present chapter is content to leave it
as it is; merely adding, by way of a final spade-
ful, that many Chuzzlewits, both male and
female, are proved to demonstration, on the
faith of letters written by their own mothers, to
have had chiselled noses, undeniable chins, forms
that might have served the sculptor for a model,
heads of so transparent a texture that the blue
exquisitely-turned limbs, and polished fore-
veins might be seen branching off in various
directions, like so many roads on an ethereal
map. This fact in itself, though it had been a
solitary one, would have utterly settled and
clenched the business in hand; for it is well
known, on the authority of all the books which
treat of such matters, that every one of these
phenomena, but especially that of the chiselling,
are invariably peculiar to, and only make them-
selves apparent in, persons of the very best con-
dition.
This history, having, to its own perfect satis-
faction (and, consequently, to the full content-
ment of all its readers), proved the Chuzzlewits
to have had an origin, and to have been at one
time or other of an importance which cannot
fail to render them highly improving and accept
able acquaintance to all right-minded individu-
als, may now proceed in earnest with its task.
And having shown that they must have had, by
reason of their ancient birth, a pretty large
share in the foundation and increase of the hu-
man family, it will one day become its province
to submit, that such of its members as shall be
introduced in these pages, have still many
counterparts and prototypes in the Great World
about us. At present it contents itself with re-
marking, in a general way, on this head.
Firstly, that it may be safely asserted, and yet
without implying any direct participation in the
Monboddo doctrine touching the probability of
the human race having once been monkeys,
that men do play very strange and extraordi-
nary tricks. Secondly, and yet without trench-
ing on the Blumenbach theory as to the de-
scendants of Adam having a vast number of
qualities which belong more particularly to
swine than to any other class of animals in the
creation, that some men certainly are remark-
able for taking uncommonly good care of them-
selves.—Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 1.
ANCESTORS-Remote and Doubtful.
The better class of minds did not need to be
informed that the Powlers were an ancient
stock, who could trace themselves so exceed-
ingly far back that it was not surprising if they
sometimes lost themselves-which they had
rather frequently done, as respected horse-flesh,
blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions,
and the Insolvent Debtors' Court.
Hard Times, Chap. 7.
ANCESTRY-Its Personal Importance. ANIMALS-Their Weather Instincts.
It is needless to multiply instances of the There may be some motions of fancy among
high and lofty station, and the vast importance the lower animals at Chesney Wold.
The
of the Chuzzlewits, at different periods. If it horses in the stables-the long stables in a bar-
came within the scope of reasonable probabil-ren, red brick court-yard, where there is a great
ity that further proofs were required, they might
be reaped upon each other until they formed
an Alps of testimony, beneath which the bold-
est scepticism should be crushed and beaten
flat. As a goodly tumulus is already collected,
bell in a turret, and a clock with a large
face, which the pigeons who live near it, and
who love to perch upon its shoulders, seem to be
always consulting-they may contemplate some
mental pictures of ine weather on occasion3,
ANIMALS
and may be better artists at them than the
grooms. The old roan, so famous for cross-
country work, turning his large eyeball to the
grated window near his rack, may remember the
fresh leaves that glisten there at other times,
and the scents that stream in; and may have a
fine run with the hounds, while the human
helper, clearing out the next stall, never stirs
beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The
grey, whose place is opposite the door, and who,
with an impatient rattle of his halter, pricks
his ears and turns his head so wistfully when it
is opened, and to whom the opener says, "Woa
grey, then, steady! Nobody wants you to
day!" may know it quite as well as the man.
The whole seemingly monotonous and uncom-
panionable half-dozen, stabled together, may
pass the long wet hours, when the door is shut,
in livelier communication than is held in the
servants' hall, or at the Dedlock Arms-or may
even beguile the time by improving (perhaps
corrupting) the pony in the loose-box in the
corner.
17
So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel, in the
courtyard, with his large head on his paws, may
think of the hot sunshine, when the shadows of
the stable buildings tire his patience out by
changing, and leave him, at one time of the day,
no broader refuge than the shadow of his own
house, where he sits on end, panting and growl-
ing short, and very much wanting something
to worry, besides himself and his chain. So, now,
half-waking, and all-winking, he may recall the
house full of company, the coach-houses full of
vehicles, the stables full of horses, and the out-
buildings full of attendants upon horses, until
he is undecided about the present, and comes
forth to see how it is. Then, with that impa-
tient shake of himself, he may growl in the
spirit, “Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain
and no family here!” as he goes in again, and
lies down with a gloomy yawn.
APARTMENT
ANNO DOMINI.
Mr. Cruncher always spoke of the year of
our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under
the impression that the Christian era dated from
the invention of a popular game, by a lady who
had bestowed her name upon it.
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 1.
APARTMENTS-Of Mr. Tartar.
Mr. Tartar's chambers were the neatest, the
cleanest, and the best-ordered chambers ever
seen under the sun, moon, and stars. The floors
were scrubbed to that extent that you might
have supposed the London blacks emancipated
forever and gone out of the land for good.
Every inch of brass work in Mr. Tartar's pos-
session was polished and burnished till it shone
like a brazen mirror. No speck, nor spot, nor
spatter soiled the purity of any of Mr. Tartar's
household gods, large, small, or middle-sized
His sitting-room was like the admiral's cabin,
his bath-room was like a dairy, his sleeping-
chamber, fitted all about with lockers and
drawers, was like a seedsman's shop; and his
nicely-balanced cot just stirred in the midst as
if it breathed. Everything belonging to Mr.
Tartar had quarters of its own assigned to it;
his maps and charts had their quarters; his
books had theirs; his brushes had theirs; his
boots had theirs; his clothes had theirs; his
case-bottles had theirs; his telescopes and other
instruments had theirs. Everything was readily
accessible. Shelf, bracket, locker, hook, and
drawer were equally within reach, and were
equally contrived with a view to avoiding waste
of room, and providing some snug inches of
stowage for something that would have exactly
fitted nowhere else. His gleaming little service
of plate was so arranged upon his sideboard as
that a slack salt-spoon would have instantly be-
trayed itself; his toilet implements were so
arranged upon his dressing-table as that a tooth-
So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings pick of slovenly deportment could have been
across the park, who have their restless fits, and reported at a glance. So with the curiosities he
whose doleful voices, when the wind has been had brought home from various voyages. Stuffed,
very obstinate, have even made it known in the dried, re-polished, or otherwise preserved, ac-
house itself: up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my cording to their kind; birds, fishes, reptiles.
lady's chamber. They may hunt the whole arms, articles of dress, shells, sea weeds, grasses,
country-side, while the raindrops are pattering or memorials of coral reef; each was displayed
round their inactivity. So the rabbits, with in its especial place, and each could have been
their self-betraying tails, frisking in and out of displayed in no better place. Paint and var-
holes at roots of trees, may be lively with nish seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight,
ideas of the breezy days when their ears are in constant readiness to obliterate stray finger-
blown about, or of those seasons of interest marks wherever any might become perceptible
when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. in Mr. Tartar's chambers. No man-of-war was
The turkey in the poultry-yard, always troub- ever kept more spick and span from careless
led with a class-grievance (probably Christmas), touch. On this bright summer day a neat awn-
may be reminiscent of that summer morning ing was rigged over Mr. Tartar's flower-garden
wrongfully taken from him, when he got into as only a sailor could rig it; and there was a
the lane among the felled trees, where there sea-going air upon the whole effect, so delight-
was a barn and barley. The discontented fully complete that the flower-garden might
goose, who stoops to pass under the old gateway, have appertained to stern-windows afloat, and
twenty feet high, may gabble out, if we only
knew it, a waddling preference for weather
when the gateway casts its shadow on the
ground.
Be this as it may, there is not much fancy
otherwise stirring at Chesney Wold. If there
be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a lit-
tle noise in that old, echoing place, a long way,
and usually leads off to ghosts and mystery.
Bleak House, Chap. 7.
the whole concern might have bowled away
gallantly with all on board, if Mr. Tartar had
only clapped to his lips the speaking-trumpet
that was slung in a corner, and given hoarse or-
ders to have the anchor up, look alive there,
men, and get all sail upon her!
Edwin Drood, Chap. 22:
APARTMENT—A grim.
They mounted up and up, through the musty
smell of an old, close house, little used, to a
2
APARTMENT
large garret bed-room. Meagre and spare, like
all the other rooms, it was even uglier and grim-
mer than the rest, by being the place of banish-
ment for the worn-out furniture. Its movables
were ugly old chairs with worn-out seats, and
ugly old chairs without any seats; a thread-
bare, patternless carpet, a maimed table, a crip-
pled wardrobe, a lean set of fire-irons, like the
skeleton of a set deceased, a washing-stand
that looked as if it had stood for ages in a hail
of dirty soap-suds. and a bedstead with four
bare atomies of posts, each terminating in a
spike, as if for the dismal accommodation of
lodgers who might prefer to impale them-
selves.-Little Dorrit, Chap. 3.
APARTMENTS-Old and abandoned.
18
APARTMENT
Mr. Richard Swiveller's apartments were in
the neighborhood of Drury Lane, and, in addi-
tion to this conveniency of situation, had the
advantage of being over a tobacconist's shop,
so that he was enabled to procure a refreshing
sneeze at any time by merely stepping out on
the staircase, and was saved the trouble and
expense of maintaining a snuff-box. It was in
these apartments that Mr. Swiveller made use
of the expressions above recorded, for the con-
solation and encouragement of his desponding
friend; and it may not be uninteresting or im-
proper to remark that even these brief observa-
tions partook in a double sense of the figurative
and poetical character of Mr. Swiveller's mind,
as the rosy wine was in fact represented by one
glass of cold gin-and-water, which was replen-
The gaunt rooms, deserted for years upon ished, as occasion required, from a bottle and
years, seemed to have settled down into a jug upon the table, and was passed from one
gloomy lethargy from which nothing could to another, in a scarcity of tumblers which, as
rouse them again. The furniture, at once spare Mr. Swiveller's was a bachelor's establishment,
and lumbering, hid in the rooms rather than may be acknowledged without a blush. By a
furnished them, and there was no color in all like pleasant fiction his single chamber was
the house; such color as had ever been there, always mentioned in the plural number. In
had long ago started away on lost sunbeams- its disengaged times, the tobacconist had an-
got itself absorbed, perhaps, into flowers, but-nounced as apartments" for a single gentle-
terflies, plumage of birds, precious stones, what man, and Mr. Swiveller, following up the hint,
There was not one straight floor, from never failed to speak of it as his rooms, his
the foundation to the roof; the ceilings were lodgings, or his chambers: conveying to his
so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, hearers a notion of indefinite space, and leav-
that old women might have told fortunes in ing their imaginations to wander through long
them, better than in grouts of tea; the dead-suites of lofty halls, at pleasure.
cold hearths showed no traces of having ever
been warmed, but in heaps of soot that had
tumbled down the chimneys, and eddied about
in little dusky whirlwinds when the doors were
opened. In what had once been a drawing-
room, there were a pair of meagre mirrors, with
dismal processions of black figures carrying
black garlands, walking round the frames; but
even these were short of heads and legs, and
one undertaker-like Cupid had swung round on
his own axis and got upside down, and another
had fallen off altogether.
not.
Little Dorrit, Chap. 5.
APARTMENT-A spacious.
With these words, the stranger put a thick
square card into Kate's hand, and, turning to
his friend, remarked, with an easy air, "that
the rooms was a good high pitch;" to which
the friend assented, adding, by way of illustra-
tion, "that there was lots of room for a little
boy to grow up a man in either on 'em, vithout
much fear of his ever bringing his head into
contract vith the ceiling."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 21.
APARTMENT-A small.
Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that
there wasn't room to swing a cat there; but, as
Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down
on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, "You
know, Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat.
I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does
that signify to me!"
David Copperfield, Chap. 35.
APARTMENT-of Dick Swiveller.
64
Fred," said Mr. Swiveller, "remember the
once popular melody of 'Begone, dull care:'
fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing
of friendship; and pass the rosy wine!"
In this flight of fancy, Mr. Swiveller was as-
sisted by a deceptive piece of furniture, in
reality a bedstead, but in semblance a book-
case, which occupied a prominent situation in
his chamber, and seemed to defy suspicion and
challenge inquiry. There is no doubt that, by
day, Mr. Swiveller firmly believed this secret
convenience to be a bookcase and nothing
more; that he closed his eyes to the bed, re-
solutely denied the existence of the blankets,
and spurned the bolster from his thoughts. No
word of its real use, no hint of its nightly ser-
vice, no allusion to its peculiar properties, had
ever passed between him and his most intimate
friends. Implicit faith in the deception was
the first article of his creed. To be the friend
of Swiveller you must reject all circumstantial
evidence, all reason, observation, and experi
ence, and repose a blind belief in the book-
case. It was his pet weakness, and he cherish-
ed it.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 7.
APARTMENT-An ancient.
•
The room into which they entered was a
vaulted chamber, once nobly ornamented by
cunning architects, and still retaining, in its
beautiful groined roof and rich stone tracery,
choice remnants of its ancient splendor. Foli-
age carved in the stone, and emulating the
mastery of Nature's hand, yet remained to tell
how many times the leaves outside had come
and gone, while it lived on unchanged. The
broken figures supporting the burden of the
chimney-piece, though mutilated, were still dis-
tinguishable for what they had been-far differ-
ent from the dust without-and showed sadly by
the empty hearth, like creatures who had out-
lived their kind, and mourned their own toc
slow decay.
An open door leading to a small room or cell
dim with the light that came through leaves of
APARTMENTS
ivy, completed the interior of this portion of
the ruin. It was not quite destitute of furni-
ture. A few strange chairs, whose arms and
legs looked as though they had dwindled away
with age; a table, the very spectre of its race;
a great old chest that had once held records in
the church, with other quaintly-fashioned do-
mestic necessaries, and store of fire-wood for
the winter, were scattered around, and gave evi-
dent tokens of its occupation as a dwelling-
place at no very distant time.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 52.
APARTMENTS-Dirty.
19
APARTMENT
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, say, 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 crip-
ples, were offering black baskets of Dead Sea
fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender
-and he made his formal bow to Miss Ma-
nette.-Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4.
APARTMENT-A cozy.
It was a prettily furnished room, with a piano,
and some lively furniture in red and green, and
some flowers. It seemed to be all old nooks
and corners; and in every nook and corner
there was some queer little table, or cupboard,
or book-case, or seat, or something or other,
that made me think there was not such another
good corner in the room; until I looked at the
next one, and found it equal to it, if not better.
David Copperfield, Chap. 15.
This, however, was not the most curious fea-
ture of those chambers; that consisted in the
profound conviction entertained by my esteemed
friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean.
Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or
whether it was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggot,
the laundress, I never could ascertain. But I
believe he would have gone to the stake upon
the question. Now they were so dirty that I
could take off the distinctest impression of my
figure on any article of furniture by merely
lounging upon it for a few moments; and it APARTMENT-Its grandeur in decay.
used to be a private amusement of mine to It was spacious enough in all conscience.
print myself off-if I may use the expression-occupying the whole depth of the house, and
all over the rooms. It was the first large circu-
lation I had. At other times I have accident-
ally shaken a window curtain while in animated
conversation with Parkle, and struggling insects,
which were certainly red, and were certainly
not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my
hand. Yet Parkle lived in that top set years,
bound body and soul to the superstition that
they were clean.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14.
APARTMENTS-Dusty.
There was so much dust in his own faded
chambers, certainly, that they reminded me of
a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic anticipation
of the present time, which had newly been
brought to light, after having remained buried
a few thousand years.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14.
APARTMENT—Mark Tapley's idea of a
•
jolly.
'Jolly sort of lodgings," said Mark, rubbing
his nose with the knob at the end of the fire-
shovel, and looking round the poor chamber:
"that's a comfort. The rain's come through
the roof too. That ain't bad. A lively old
bedstead, I'll be bound; popilated by lots of
wampires, no doubt. Come my spirits is a
getting up again. An uncommon ragged night-
cap this. A very good sign. We shall do yet!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13.
APARTMENT—And gloomy furniture.
It was a large, dark room, furnished in a fu-
nereal 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 re-
flected on every leaf; as if they were buried in
deep graves of black mahogany, and no light to
speak of could be expected from them until they
were dug out.
*
*
*
*
*
*
having at either end great bay-window, as
large as many modern. Jums; in which some
few panes of stained glass, emblazoned with
fragments of armorial bearings, though cracked,
and patched, and shattered, yet remained ·
attesting, by their presence, that the former
owner had made the very light subservient to
his state, and pressed the sun itself into his
list of flatterers; bidding it, when it shone into
his chamber, reflect the badges of his ancient
family, and take new hues and colors from
their pride.
But those were old days, and now every little
ray came and went as it would; telling the
plain, bare, searching truth. Although the best
room of the inn, it had the melancholy aspect
of grandeur in decay, and was much too vast
for comfort. Rich, rustling hangings, waving
on the walls; and, better far, the rustling of
youth and beauty's dress; the light of women's
eyes, outshining the tapers and their own rich
jewels; the sound of gentle tongues, and music,
and the tread of maiden feet, had once been
there, and filled it with delight.
But they
were gone, and with them all its gladness. It
was no longer a home; children were
born and bred there; the fireside had become
mercenary-a something to be bought and sold
-a very courtezan: let who would die, or sit
beside, or leave it, it was still the same-it
missed nobody, cared for nobody, had equal
warmth and smiles for all. God help the man
whose heart ever changes with the world, as an
old mansion when it becomes an inn.
never
No effort had been made to furnish this
chilly waste, but before the broad chimney a
colony of chairs and tables had been planted
on a square of carpet, flanked by a ghostly
screen, enriched with figures, grinning and gro
tesque.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 10.
APARTMENT-And furniture.
I thought I had never seen such a large
room as that into which they showed me. It
As his eyes rested on these things, a sudden had five windows, with dark-red curtains that
APARTMENT
20
would have absorbed the light of a general
illumination; and there were complications of
drapery at the top of the curtains, that went
wandering about the wall in a most extraordi-
nary manner. I asked for a smaller room, and
they told me there was no smaller room. They
could screen me in, however, the landlord said.
They brought a great old japanned screen,
with natives (Japanese, I suppose), engaged in
a variety of idiotic pursuits, all over it; and
left me roasting whole before an immense fire.
My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off,
up a great staircase, at the end of a long gal-
lery; and nobody knows what a misery this is
to a bashful man who would rather not meet
people on the stairs. It was the grimmest
room I have ever had the nightmare in; and
all the furniture, from the four posts of the bed
to the two old silver candlesticks, was tall,
high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted. Below,
in my sitting-room, if I looked round my screen,
the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I
stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to
the color of a new brick. The chimney-piece
was very high, and there was a bad glass-what |
I may call a wavy glass-above it, which, when
I stood up, just showed me my anterior phre-
nological developments—and these never look
well, in any subject, cut short off at the eye-
brow. If I stood with my back to the fire, a
gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the
screen insisted on being looked at; and, in its
dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten cur-
tains of the five windows went twisting and
creeping about, like a nest of gigantic worms.
I suppose that what I observe in myself
must be observed by some other men of simi-
lar character in themselves: therefore I am em-
boldened to mention, that, when I travel, I
never arrive at a place but I immediately want
to go away from it.-The Holly Tree.
APARTMENT-The hangings of an.
A mouldering reception-room, where the fad-
ed hangings, of a sad sea-green, had worn and
withered until they looked as if they might
have claimed kindred with the waifs of sea-
weed drifting under the windows, or clinging
to the walls, and weeping for their imprisoned
relations. Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6.
APARTMENT.
APARTMENT
every circumstance of Tom's employment there,
which had a strange charm in it. Every morn-
ing, when he shut his door at Islington, he turned
his face towards an atmosphere of unaccounta-
ble fascination, as surely as he turned it to the
London smoke; and from that moment, it
thickened round and round him all day long,
until the time arrived for going home again,
and leaving it, like a motionless cloud, behind.
It seemed to Tom, every morning, that he ap-
proached this ghostly mist, and became envelop-
ed in it, by the easiest succession of degrees
imaginable. Passing from the roar and rat-
tle of the streets into the quiet court-yards of
the Temple, was the first preparation. Every
echo of his footsteps sounded to him like a
sound from the old walls and pavements, want-
ing language to relate the histories of the dim,
dismal rooms; to tell him what lost documents
were decaying in forgotten corners of the shut-
up cellars, from whose lattices such mouldy
sighs came breathing forth as he went past; to
whisper of dark bins of rare old wine, bricked
up in vaults among the old foundations of the
Halls; or mutter in a lower tone yet darker le
gends of the cross-legged knights, whose mar-
ble effigies were in the church. With the first
planting of his foot upon the staircase of his
dusty office, all these mysteries increased; un-
til, ascending step by step, as Tom ascended,
they attained their full growth in the solitary
labors of the day.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40.
APARTMENT—A mouldy.
Certain wintry branches of candles on the
high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber;
or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly
troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and Í
dare say had once been handsome, but every dis-
cernible thing in it was covered with dust and
mould, and dropping to pieces. The most
prominent object was a long table with a table-
cloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in
preparation when the house and the clocks
all stopped together. An epergne or centre-
piece of some kind was in the middle of this
cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs
that its form was quite undistinguishable; and,
as I looked along the yellow expanse out of
which I remember its seeming to grow, like
a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders
with blotchy bodies running home to it, and
running out from it, as if some circumstance of
the greatest public importance had just trans-
pired in the spider community.
Great Expectations, Chap. II
The lady whom they had come to see, if she
were the present occupant of the house, appear-
ed to have taken up her quarters there, as she
might have established herself in an Eastern
caravanserai. A small square of carpet in the
middle of the room, a few articles of furniture
that evidently did not belong to the room, and | APARTMENT-To let; its advantages.
a disorder of trunks and travelling articles, "I believe, sir," said Richard Swiveller, tak-
formed the whole of her surroundings. Under ing his pen out of his mouth, "that you desire
some former regular inhabitant, the stifling lit-
tle apartment had broken out into a pier-glass
and a gilt table; but the gilding was as faded
as last year's flowers, and the glass was so
clouded that it seemed to hold in magic pres-
ervation all the fogs and bad weather it had
ever reflected.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap 27
APARTMENTS—The ghostly air of.
There was a ghostly air about these uninhab-
to look at these apartments. They are very
charming apartments, sir. They command an
uninterrupted view of-of over the way, and
they are within one minute's walk of-of the
corner of the street. There is exceedingly mild
porter, sir, in the immediate vicinity, and the
contingent advantages are extraordinary."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 34.
APARTMENT—A snug.
"An uncommon snug little box, this," said
ited chambers in the Temple. and attending | Mr. Lenville, stepping into the front room, and
APARTMENT
taking his hat off before he could get in at all.
Pernicious snug."
"For a man at all particular in such matters,
it might be a trifle too snug," said Nicholas;
for, although it is, undoubtedly, a great con-
venience to be able to reach anything you want
from the ceiling or the floor, or either side of
the room, without having to move from your
chair, still these advantages can only be had in
an apartment of the most limited size."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 24.
APARTMENT-Of a Suicide.
21
APARTMENT
a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what
your room and what mine must one day be. My
Lady's state has a hollow look, thus gloomy and
abandoned; and in the inner apartment, where
Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisi-
tion, the traces of her dresses and her orna-
ments, even the mirrors accustomed to reflect
them when they were a portion of herself, have
a desolate and vacant air.
Bleak House, Chap. 58,
APARTMENT-The Growlery of Jarndyce.
"Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce.
"This, you must know, is the Growlery. When
I am out of humor, I come and growl here."
The air of the room is almost bad enough to
have extinguished it, if he had not. It is a
small room, nearly black with soot, and grease,
and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate,
pinched at the middle as if Poverty had grip-
ped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the cor-
ner by the chimney, stand a deal table and a
broken desk; a wilderness marked with a rain
of ink. In another corner, a ragged old port-
manteau on one of the two chairs, serves for APARTMENT—in a cosy tavern.
cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is needed,
for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man.
The floor is bare; except that one old mat,
trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing
upon the hearth. No curtain veils the darkness
of the night, but the discolored shutters are
drawn together: and through the two gaunt
holes pierced in them, famine might be staring
in-the Banshee of the man upon the bed.
"You must be here very seldom, sir,” said I.
"O, you don't know me!" he returned.
"When I am deceived or disappointed in-the
wind, and it's Easterly, I take refuge here. The
Growlery is the best-used room in the house!"
Bleak House, Chap. 8.
For, on a low bed opposite the fire-a confu-
sion of dirty patch-work, lean-ribbed ticking,
and coarse sacking--the lawyer, hesitating just
within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there,
dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare feet. He
has a yellow look in the spectral darkness of a
candle that has guttered down, until the whole
Jength of its wick (still burning) has doubled
over, and left a tower of winding-sheet above
it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his whis-
kers and his beard—the latter, ragged too, and
grown, like the scum and mist around him, in
neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul
and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive
what fumes those are which most oppress the
senses in it; but through the general sickliness
and faintness, and the odor of stale tobacco,
there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter,
vapid taste of opium.
"
Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his
iron candlestick against the door.
He thinks he has awakened his friend. He
lies a little turned away, but his eyes are surely
open.
""
Hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "Hallo!
Hallo!"
As he rattles on the door, the candle which
has drooped so long, goes out, and leaves him
in the dark; with the gaunt eyes in the shutters
staring down upon the bed.
Bleak House, Chap. 10.
The
associations
of
APARTMENTS
empty.
"Rooms get an awful look about them when
they are fitted up, like these, for one person you
are used to see in them, and that person is away
under any shadow; let alone being God knows
where.
He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow
the great final one-so empty rooms, bereft of
|
It was one of those unaccountable little
rooms which are never seen anywhere but in a
tavern, and are supposed to have got into tav-
erns by reason of the facilities afforded to the
architect for getting drunk while engaged in
their construction. It had more corners in it
than the brain of an obstinate man; was full
of mad closets, into which nothing could be put
that was not specially invented and made for
that purpose; had mysterious shelvings and
bulk-heads, and indications of staircases in the
ceiling; and was elaborately provided with a
bell that rung in the room itself, about two feet
from the handle, and had no connection what-
ever with any other part of the establishment.
It was a little below the pavement, and abutted
close upon it; so that passengers grated against
the window-panes with their buttons, and
scraped it with their baskets; and fearful boys
suddenly coming between a thoughtful guest
and the light, derided him; or put out their
tongues as if he were a physician; or made
white knobs on the ends of their noses by flat-
tening the same against the glass, and vanished
awfully, like spectres.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 35.
APARTMENT-Mr. Fips' office.
In a very dark passage on the first floor,
oddly situated at the back of a house, they
found a little blear-eyed glass door up in one
corner, with MR. FIPS painted on it in charac-
ters which were meant to be transparent. There
was also a wicked old sideboard hiding in the
gloom hard by, meditating designs upon the
ribs of visitors; and an old mat worn into lat-
tice work, which, being useless as a mat (ever
if anybody could have seen it, which was im-
possible), had for many years directed its in
dustry into another channel, and regularly
tripped up every one of Mr. Fips' clients.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39.
APARTMENT-A model bedroom.
It was none of your frivolous and preposter-
ously bright bedrooms, where nobody can close
an eye with any kind of propriety or decent re-
gard to the associations of ideas; but it was a
good, dull, leaden, drowsy place, where every
article of furniture reminded you that you cama
APARTMENT
22
there to sleep, and that you were expected to
go to sleep. There was no wakeful reflection
of the fire there, as in your modern chambers,
which upon the darkest nights have a watchful
consciousness of French polish; the old Span-
ish mahogany winked at it now and then, as a
dozing cat or dog might, nothing more. The
very size, and shape, and hopeless immovability
of the bedstead and wardrobe, and, in a minor
degree, of even the chairs and tables, provoked
sleep; they were plainly apoplectic, and dis-
posed to snore.
ARGUMENT
thenceforward be kept in nosegays for nothing
on application to the writer hereof.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14.
APPETITES-The advice of Squeers.
That's right," said Squeers, calmly getting
on with his breakfast; "keep ready till I tell
you to begin. Subdue your appetites, my dears,
and you've conquered human natur. This is
the way we inculcate strength of mind, Mr.
Nickleby," said the schoolmaster, turning to
Nicholas, and speaking with his mouth very
full of beef and toast.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 5.
There were no staring portraits to remon-
strate with you for being lazy; no round-eyed
birds upon the curtains, disgustingly wide-
awake, and insufferably prying. The thick APPRENTICESHIP-of Oliver Twist.
neutral hangings, and the dark blinds, and the
heavy heap of bed-clothes, were all designed to
hold in sleep, and act as non-conductors to the
day and getting up. Even the old stuffed fox
upon the top of the wardrobe was devoid of
any spark of vigilance, for his glass eye had
fallen out, and he slumbered as he stood.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 3.
APARTMENT-A solitary.
An air of retreat and solitude hung about the
rooms, and about their inhabitant. He was
much worn, and so were they. Their sloping
ceilings, cumbrous rusty locks and grates, and
heavy wooden bins and beams, slowly moulder-
ing withal, had a prisonous look, and he had
the haggard face of a prisoner. Yet the sun-
light shone in at the ugly garret window, which
had a penthouse to itself thrust out among the
tiles; and on the cracked and smoke-black-
ened parapet beyond, some of the deluded
sparrows of the place rheumatically hopped,
like little feathered cripples who had left their
crutches in their nests; and there was a play
of living leaves at hand that changed the air,
and made an imperfect sort of music in it that
would have been melody in the country.
APARTMENTS
Inns.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 17.
The loneliness of Law
It is to be remarked of chambers in general,
that they must have been built for chambers, to
have the right kind of loneliness. You may
make a great dwelling-house very lonely, by iso-
lating suites of rooms, and calling them cham-
bers, but you cannot make the true kind of lone-
liness. In dwelling-houses there have been
family festivals; children have grown in them,
girls have bloomed into women in them, court-
ships and marriages have taken place in them.
True chambers never were young, childish,
maidenly; never had dolls in them, or rocking-
horses, or christenings, or betrothals, or little
coffins. Let Gray's Inn identify the child who
first touched hands and hearts with Robinson
Crusoe in any one of its many "sets," and
that child's little statue, in white marble with a
golden inscription, shall be at its service, at my
cost and charge, as a drinking-fountain for the
spirit, to freshen its thirsty square. Let Lin-
coln's produce from all its houses a twentieth
of the procession derivable from any dwelling-
house, one-twentieth of its age, of fair young
brides who married for love and hope, not set-
lements, and all the Vice-Chancellors shall
Oliver roused himself, and made his best obei-
sance. He had been wondering, with his
eyes fixed on the magistrates' powder, whether
all boards were born with that white stuff on
their heads, and were boards from thenceforth
on that account.
"Well," said the old gentleman, “I suppose
he's fond of chimney-sweeping?"
"He doats on it, your worship," replied
Bumble, giving Oliver a sly pinch, to intimate
that he had better not say he didn't.
"And he will be a sweep, will he?" inquired
the old gentleman.
"If we was to bind him to any other trade
to-morrow, he'd run away simultaneous, your
worship," replied Bumble.
Oliver Tunst, Chap. 3.
ARCHITECT-His designs.
Mr. Pecksniff was surrounded by open books,
and was glancing from volume to volume, with
a black-lead pencil in his mouth, and a pair of
compasses in his hand, at a vast number of
mathematical diagrams, of such extraordinary
shapes that they looked like designs for fire
works.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5.
ARGUMENT-A gift of Nature.
"-IF," said John Willet, turning his eyes
from the ceiling to the face of his interrupter,
and uttering the monosyllable in capitals, to ap-
prise him that he had put in his oar, as the vul-
gar say, with unbecoming and irreverent haste:
IF, sir, Natur has fixed upon me the gift of
argeyment, why should I not own to it, and rath-
er glory in the same? Yes, sir, I am a tough
customer that way. You are right, sir. My
toughness has been proved, sir, in this room
many and many a time, as I think you know:
and if you don't know," added John, putting
his pipe in his mouth again, "so much the bet-
ter, for I an't proud, and am not going to tell you.
"For the matter o' that, Phil!" observed
Mr. Willet, blowing a long, thin, spiral cloud of
smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and
staring at it abstractedly as it floated away; “for
the matter o' that, Phil, argeyment is a gift of
Natur. If Natur has gifted a man with pow-
ers of argeyment, a man has the right to make
the best of 'ein, and has not a right to stand
on false delicacy, and deny that he is so gifted;
for that is a turning of his back on Natur, a
flouting of her, a slighting of her precious
caskets, and a proving of one's self to be a
swine that isn't worth her scattering pears be
fore."-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 1.

KATE NICKLEBY SITTING TO MISS LACREEVY.
ן ה'
ARISTOCRACY
ARISTOCRACY—A Sign of.
'There's something in his appearance quite
-dear, dear, what's that word again?"
"
“What word?" inquired Mr. Lillyvick.´
'Why-dear me, how stupid I am," replied
Miss Petowker, hesitating. "What do you call
it when Lords break off door-knockers, and
beat policemen, and play at coaches with other
people's money, and all that sort of thing?"
"
Aristocratic?" suggested the collector.
Ah! aristocratic," replied Miss Petowker;
something very aristocratic about him, isn't
there?"-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 15.
ARITHMETIC.
As figures are catching, a kind of cyphering
measles broke out in that locality, under the
influence of which the whole Yard was light-
headed.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 32.
AROMA.
"A young Simoon of ham."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 27.
AROMA-Of a punch.
The latter perfume, with the fostering aid of
boiling water and lemon-peel, diffused itself
throughout the room, and became so highly
concentrated around the warm fireside, that the
wind passing over the house-roof must have
rushed off charged with a delicious whiff of it,
after buzzing like a great bee at that particular
chimney-pot. Our Mutual Friend, Chap. 4.
AROMA-Of wine.
Now, Mrs. Gamp, what's your news?”
The lady in question was by this time in the
doorway, curtseying to Mrs. Mould. At the
same moment a peculiar fragrance was borne
upon the breeze, as if a passing fairy had hic-
coughed, and had previously been to a wine-
vault.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 25.
ART-Miss La Creevy's difficulties of.
28
ART AND NATURE
doubled up on round tables, or marble slabs.
are serious, you know; and all the ladies whe
are playing with little parasols, or little dogs,
or little children-it's the same rule in art, only
varying the objects are smirking. In fact,"
said Miss La Creevy, sinking her voice to a
confidential whisper, "there are only two styles
of portrait painting, the serious and the smirk;
and we always use the serious for professional
people (except actors sometimes), and the smirk
for private ladies and gentlemen, who don't
care so much about looking clever."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10.
ART-Family Pictures.
"If you have seen the picture-gallery of any
one old family, you will remember how the
same face and figure-often the fairest and
slightest of them all-come upon you in differ-
ent generations; and how you trace the same
sweet girl through a long line of portraits-
never growing old or changing-the Good
Angel of the race-abiding by them in all re-
verses-redeeming all their sins."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 69.
ART-A top-heavy portrait.
Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait again.
The artist had given it a head that would have
been, in an intellectual point of view, top-heavy
for Shakespeare.-Little Dorrit, Chap. 24.
ART AND NATURE—A criticism.
At the head of the collections in the palaces
of Rome, the Vatican, of course, with its treas
ures of art, its enormous galleries, and stair-
cases, and suites upon suites of immense cham-
bers, ranks highest and stands foremost. Many
most noble statues, and wonderful pictures, are
there; nor is it heresy to say that there is a
considerable amount of rubbish there, too.
When any old piece of sculpture dug out of the
ground, finds a place in a gallery because it is
old, and without any reference to its intrinsic
Ah! The difficulties of Art, my dear, are merits; and finds admirers by the hundred, be-
great."
"They must be, I have no doubt," said Kate,
humoring her good-natured little friend.
"They are beyond anything you can form
the faintest conception of," replied Miss La
Creevy. "What with bringing out eyes with
all one's power, and keeping down noses with
all one's force, and adding to heads, and taking
away teeth altogether, you have no idea of the
trouble one little miniature is."
"The remuneration can scarcely repay you,"
said Kate.
Why, it does not, and that's the truth," an-
swered Miss La Creevy; "and then people are
so dissatisfied and unreasonable, that, nine
times out of ten, there's no pleasure in painting
them. Sometimes they say, 'Oh, how very
serious you have made me look, Miss La
Creevy!' and at others, 'La, Miss La Creevy,
how very smirking!' when the very essence of
a good portrait is, that it must be either seri-
ous or smirking, or it's no portrait at all."
"Indeed!" said Kate, laughing.
cause it is there, and for no other reason on
earth-there will be no lack of objects, very in-
different in the plain eyesight of any one who
employs so vulgar a property, when he may
wear the spectacles of Cant for less than noth-
ing, and establish himself as a man of taste for
the mere trouble of putting them on.
I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I can-
not leave my natural perception of what is nat-
ural and true at a palace-door, in Italy or else-
where, as I should leave my shoes if I were
travelling in the East. I cannot forget that
there are certain expressions of face, natural to
certain passions, and as unchangeable in their
nature as the gait of a lion, or the flight of an
eagle. I cannot dismiss from my certain know-
ledge such common-place facts as the ordinary
proportions of men's arms, and legs, and heads;
and when I meet with performances that do
violence to these experiences and recollections,
no matter where they may be, I cannot honestly
admire them, and think it best to say so; in
spite of high critical advice that we should
sometimes feign an admiration, though we have
Certainly, my dear; because the sitters are
always either the one or the other," replied Miss | it not.
La Creevy. "Look at the Royal Academy! Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I
All those beautiful shiny portraits of gentlemen see a Jolly Young Waterman representing a
in black velvet waistcoats, with their fists cherubim, or a Barclay and Perkins's Drayman
ART
24
ARTIST
*
*
*
*
*
*
I see
depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing to com- something shining out, that haunts me.
mend or admire in the performance, however it now, as I see this paper, or my pen. The
great its reputed Painter. Neither am I partial | head is loosely draped in white; the light hair
to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and falling down below the linen folds. She has
bassoons, for the edification of sprawling monks, turned suddenly towards you; and there is an
apparently in liquor. Nor to those Monsieur expression in the eyes-although they are very
Tonsons of galleries, Saint Francis and Saint tender and gentle-as if the wildness of a mo-
Sebastian; both of whom I submit should have mentary terror, or distraction, had been strug-
very uncommon and rare merits, as works of gled with and overcome that instant: and
art, to justify their compound multiplication by nothing but a celestial hope, and a beautiful
Italian Painters.
sorrow, and a desolate earthly helplessness re-
mained. Some stories say that Guido painted
it the night before her execution; some other
stories, that he painted it from memory, after
having seen her on her way to the scaffold. I
am willing to believe that, as you see her on his
canvas, so she turned towards him, in the
crowd, from the first sight of the axe, and
stamped on mine as though I had stood beside
him in the concourse. The guilty palace of
the Cenci-blighting a whole quarter of the
town, as it stands withering away by grains-
had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch,
and at its black, blind windows, and flitting up
and down its dreary stairs, and growing out of
the darkness of its ghostly galleries. The His-
tory is written in the Painting; written in the
dying girl's face, by Nature's own hand. And
oh! how in that one touch she puts to flight
(instead of making kin) the puny world that
claim to be related to her, in right of poor con-
ventional forgeries !-Pictures from Italy.
When I observe heads inferior to the subject,
in pictures of merit, in Italian galleries, I do
not attach that reproach to the Painter, for I
have a suspicion that these great men, who
were, of necessity, very much in the hands of
monks and priests, painted monks and priests a
great deal too often. I frequently see, in pic-stamped upon his mind a look which he has
tures of real power, heads quite below the story
and the painter and I invariably observe that
those heads are of the Convent stamp, and have
their counterparts among the Convent inmates
of this hour; so, I have settled with myself
that, in such cases, the lameness was not with
the painter, but with the vanity and ignorance
of certain of his employers, who would be apos-
tles-on canvas, at all events.
The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's
statues; the wonderful gravity and repose of
many of the ancient works in sculpture, both
in the Capitol and the Vatican; and the strength
and fire of many others, are, in their different
ways, beyond all reach of words. They are
especially impressive and delightful, after the
works of Bernini and his disciples, in which
the churches of Rome, from St. Peter's down-
ward, abound; and which are, I verily believe,
the most detestable class of productions in the
wide world. I would infinitely rather (as mere
works of art) look upon the three deities of the
Past, the Present, and the Future, in the Chi-
nese Collection, than upon the best of these
breezy maniacs; whose every fold of drapery
is blown inside out; whose smallest vein, or
artery, is as big as an ordinary forefinger;
whose hair is like a nest of lively snakes; and
whose attitudes put all other extravagance to
shame. Insomuch that I do honestly believe,
there can be no place in the world where such
intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor's
chisel, are to be found in such profusion as in
Rome.-Pictures from Italy.
ART-Italian pictures; Beatrice di Cenci.
In the private palaces, pictures are seen to
the best advantage. There are seldom so many
in one place that the attention need become |
distracted, or the eye confused. You see them
very leisurely; and are rarely interrupted by a
crowd of people. There are portraits innumer-
able, by Titian, and Rembrandt, and Vandyke:
heads by Guido, and Domenichino, and Carlo
Dolci: various subjects by Correggio, and Mu-
rillo, and Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and
Spagnoletto-many of which it would be diffi-
cult, indeed, to praise too highly, or to praise
enough; such is their tenderness and grace,
their noble elevation, purity, and beauty.
The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Pa-
lazzo Berberini, is a picture almost impossible
to be forgotten. Through the transcendent
ART-Family pictures-Skimpole's descrip-
tion of.
There was a Sir Somebody Dedlock, with a
battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke, flashes
of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed
fort, all in full action between his horse's two
hind legs; showing, he supposed, how little a
Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race
he represented as having evidently been, in life,
what he called "stuffed people," -a large col-
lection, glassy eyed, set up in the most ap-
proved manner on their various twigs and
perches, very correct, perfectly free from ani-
mation, and always in glass cases.
Bleak House, Chap. 37.
ART-Pictures in Italian churches.
It is miserable to see great works of art-
something of the Souls of Painters-perishing
and fading away, like human forms. This Ca-
thedral is odorous with the rotting of Correg-
gio's frescoes in the Cupola. Heaven knows
how beautiful they may have been at one time.
Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now;
but such a labyrinth of arms and legs: such
heaps of fore-shortened limbs, entangled and
involved and jumbled together, no operative
surgeon, gone mad, could imagine in his wild-
est delirium.-Pictures from Italy.
ARTIST-An amateur (Gowan).
He appeared to be an artist by profession,
and to have been at Rome some time; yet he
had a slight, careless, amateur way with him-
a perceptible limp, both in his devotion to art
and his attainments.
*
*
*
*
*
His genius, during his earlier manhood, was
sweetness and beauty of the face, there is a of that exclusively agricultural character which
ASHES
applies itself to the cultivatior of wild oats
A last he had ueclared that he would become a
Painter; partly because he had always had an
idle knack that way, and partly to grieve the
souls of the Barnacles-in-chief who had not pro-
vided for him. So it had come to pass succes-
sively, first, that several distinguished ladies
had been frightfully shocked: then, that port-
folios of his performances had been handed
about o' nights, and declared with ecstacy to be
perfect Claudes, perfect Cuyps, perfect phæno-
mena; then, that Lord Decimus had bought his
picture, and had asked the President and Coun-
cil to dinner at a blow, and had said, with his
own magnificent gravity, "Do you know, there
appears to me to be really immense merit in that
work?" and, in short, that people of condition
had absolutely taken pains to bring him into
fashion. But, somehow, it had all failed. The
prejudiced public had stood out against it ob-
stinately. They had determined not to admire
Lord Decimus's picture. They had determined
to believe that in every service, except their
own, a man must qualify himself, by striving,
early and late, and by working heart and soul,
might and main. So now Mr. Gowan, like that
worn-out old coffin which never was Mahomet's
nor anybody else's, hung midway between two
points; jaundiced and jealous as to the one he
had left; jaundiced and jealous as to the other
he couldn't reach.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 17.
25
AUCTION SALE
terchange of ideas going on among them; that
no man considered himself or his neighbor by
any means silent; and that each of them nod-
ded occasionally when he caught the eye of an-
other, as if he would say, "You have expressed
yourself extremely well, sir, in relation to that
sentiment, and I quite agree with you."
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 33.
ASTHMA-The want of breath.
"I smoke on srub and water myself," said
Mr. Omer, taking up his glass, "because it's
considered softening to the passages, by which
this troublesome breath of mine gets into ac-
tion. But, Lord bless you," said Mr. Omer,
huskily, "it ain't the passages that's out of or-
der! Give me breath enough,' says I to my
daughter Minnie, and I'll find passages, my
dear!'"-David Copperfield, Chap. 30.
AUCTION SALE—of Dombey's furniture.
After a few days, strange people began to
call at the house, and to make appointments
with one another in the dining-room, as if they
lived there. Especially, there is a gentleman,
of a Mosaic Arabian cast of countenance, with
a very massive watch-guard, who whistles in the
drawing-room, and while he is waiting for the
other gentleman, who always has pen and ink
in his pocket, asks Mr. Towlinson (by the easy
name of "Old Cock,") if he happens to know
what the figure of them crimson and gold
hangings might have been, when new bought.
ASHES—of a home.
The callers and appointments in the dining-
The ashes of the commonest fire are melan-room become more numerous every day, and
choly things, for in them there is an image of
death and ruin-of something that has been
bright, and is but drll, cold, dreary dust-with
which our nature forces us to sympathise. How
much more sad the crumbled embers of a home;
the casting down of that great altar, where the
worst among us sometimes perform the worship
of the heart; and where the best have offered up
such sacrifices, and done such deeds of heroism,
as, chronicled, would put the proudest temples
of old Time, with all their vaunting annals, to
the blush.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 81.
ASPERITY-The expression of.
every gentleman seems to have pen and ink in
his pocket, and to have some occasion to use it.
At last it is said that there is going to be a
Sale; and then more people arrive, with pen
and ink in their pockets, commanding a de-
tachment of men with carpet-caps, who imme-
diately begin to pull up the carpets, and knock
the furniture about, and to print off thousands
of impressions of their shoes upon the hall and
staircase.
*
*
*
*
*
*
The men in the carpet-caps go on tumbling
the furniture about; and the gentlemen with
the pens and ink make out inventories of it,
In a hard way, and in an uncertain way that and sit upon pieces of furniture never made to
fluctuated between patronage and putting down, be sat upon, and eat bread and cheese from the
the sprinkling from a watering-pot and hy-public-house on other pieces of furniture never
draulic pressure, Mrs. Clennam showed an in-
terest in this dependant. As there are degrees
of hardness in the hardest metal, and shades of
color in black itself, so, even in the asperity of
Mrs. Clennam's demeanor towards all the rest of
humanity and towards little Dorrit, there was a
fine gradation.—Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5.
ASSOCIATION-The influence of.
made to be eaten on, and seem to have a de-
light in appropriating precious articles to strange
uses. Chaotic combinations of furniture also
take place. Mattresses and bedding appear
in the dining-room; the glass and china get
into the conservatory; the great dinner service
is set out in heaps on the long divan in the
large drawing-room; and the stair-wires, made
into fasces, decorate the marble chimney-
Whether people, by dint of sitting together pieces. Finally, a rug, with a printed bill upon
in the same place and the same relative posi-it, is hung out from the balcony: and a simi-
tions, and doing exactly the same things for a lar appendage graces either side of the hall
great many years, acquire a sixth sense, or some door.
unknown power of influencing each other which
serves them in its stead, is a question for philos-
ophy to settle. But certain it is that old John
Willet, Mr. Parkes, and Mr. Cobb, were one
and all firmly of opinion that they were very
jolly companions-rather choice spirits than
otherwise; that they looked at each other every
now and then as if there were a perpetual in-
Then, all day long, there is a retinue of moul-
dy gigs and chaise-carts in the street; and
herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian,
over-run the house, sounding the plate-glass
mirrors with their knuckles, striking discordant
octaves on the Grand Piano, drawing wet fore-
fingers over the pictures, breathing on the blades
of the best dinner-knives, punching the squabs
AUGUST
26
of chairs and sofas with their dirty fists, touz-
ling the feather beds, opening and shutting all the
drawers, balancing the silver spoons and forks,
looking into the very threads of the drapery
and linen, and disparaging everything. There
is not a secret place in the whole house. Fluffy
and snuffy strangers stare into the kitchen-
range as curiously as into the attic clothes-
press. Stout men with napless hats on, look
out of the bedroom windows, and cut jokes
with friends in the street. Quiet, calculating
spirits withdraw into the dressing-rooms, with
catalogues, and make marginal notes thereon,
with stumps of pencils. Two brokers invade
the very fire-escape, and take a panoramic sur-
vey of the neighborhood from the top of the
house. The swarm, and buzz, and going up
and down, endure for days. The Capital
Modern Household Furniture, etc., is on view.
Then there is a palisade of tables made in
the best drawing-room; and on the capital,
french-polished, extending, telescopic range of
Spanish mahogany dining-tables with turned
legs, the pulpit of the Auctioneer is erected;
and the herds of shabby vampires, Jew and
Christian, the strangers fluffy and snuffy, and
the stout men with the napless hats, congre-
gate about it and sit upon everything within
reach, mantel-pieces included, and begin to bid.
Hot, humming, and dusty are the rooms all day;
and-high above the heat, hum, and dust-the
head and shoulders, voice and hammer, of the
Auctioneer, are ever at work. The men in the
carpet-caps get flustered and vicious with tum-
bling the Lots about, and still the Lots are
going, going, gone; still coming on. Some-
times there is joking and a general roar.
This
lasts all day and three days following. The
Capital Modern Household Furniture, etc., is
on sale.
Then the mouldy gigs and chaise-carts re-
appear; and with them come spring-vans and
wagons, and an army of porters with knots.
All day long, the men with carpet-caps are
screwing at screw-drivers and bed-winches, or
staggering by the dozen together on the stair-
case under heavy burdens, or upheaving perfect
rocks of Spanish mahogany, best rosewood, or
plate-glass, into the gigs and chaise-carts, vans
and wagons.
All sorts of vehicles of burden
are in attendance, from a tilted wagon to a
Poor Paul's little bedstead is
wheelbarrow.
carried off in a donkey-tandem. For nearly a
whole week, the Capital Modern Household
Furniture, etc., is in course of removal.
At last it is all gone. Nothing is left about
the house but scattered leaves of catalogues,
littered scraps of straw and hay, and a battery of
pewter pots behind the hall-door. The men
with the carpet-caps gather up their screw-
drivers and bed-winches into bags, shoulder
them, and walk off. One of the pen and ink
gentlemen goes over the house as a last atten-
tion; sticking up bills in the windows respecting
the lease of this desirable family mansion, and
shutting the shutters. At length he follows the
men with the carpet-caps. None of the invad-
ers remain. The house is a ruin, and the rats
fly from it.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 59.
AUSTERITY
than in the month of August. Spring has many
beauties, and May is a fresh and blooming
month, but the charms of this time of year are
enhanced by their contrast with the winter sea
son. August has no such advantage. It comes
when we remember nothing but clear skies,
green fields, and sweet-smelling flowers-when
the recollection of snow, and ice, and bleak winds
has faded from our minds as completely as they
have disappeared from the earth-and yet what a
pleasant time it is! Orchards and corn-fields
ring with the hum of labor; trees bend beneath
the thick clusters of rich fruit which bow their
branches to the ground; and the corn, piled in
graceful sheaves, or waving in every light
breath that sweeps above it, as if it wooed the
sickle, tinges the landscape with a golden hue.
A mellow softness appears to hang over the
whole earth.-Pickwick Papers, Chap. 16.
AUSTERITY-Its chilling influence.
The dignified old gentleman turned out to
be Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking, who had been
maintained by the Circumlocution Office for
many years as a representative of the Britannic
Majesty abroad. This noble Refrigerator had
iced several European courts in his time, and
had done it with such complete success that
the very name of Englishman yet struck cold to
the stomachs of foreigners who had the distin-
guished honor of remembering him, at a dis-
tance of a quarter of a century.
He was now in retirement, and hence (in a
ponderous white cravat, like a stiff snow-drift)
was so obliging as to shade the dinner. There
was a whisper of the pervading Bohemian char-
acter in the nomadic nature of the service, and
its curious races of plates and dishes: but the
noble Refrigerator, infinitely better than plate
or porcelain, made it superb. He shaded the
dinner, cooled the wines, chilled the gravy, and
blighted the vegetables.
There was only one other person in the
room: a microscopically small footboy, who
waited on the malevolent man who hadn't got
into the Post-Office. Even this youth, if his
jacket could have been unbuttoned and his
| heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a dis-
tant adherent of the Barnacle family, already to
aspire to a situation under government.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 26.
*
*
*
*
*
In the course of a couple of hours the noble
Refrigerator, at no time less than a hundred
years behind the period, got about five cen-
turies in arrear, and delivered solemn political
oracles appropriate to that epoch. He finished
by freezing a cup of tea for his own drinking.
and retiring at his lowest temperature.
*
*
*
*
*
*
Chap. 26.
The dinner and dessert being three hours'
long, the bashful member cooled in the shadow
of Lord Decimus faster than he warmed with
food and drink, and had but a chilly time of it.
Lord Decimus, like a tall tower in a flat coun-
try, seemed to project himself across the table-
cloth, hide the light from the honorable mem-
ber, cool the honorable member's marrow, and
give him a woful idea of distance. When he
asked this unfortunate traveller to take wine,
There is no month in the whole year, in he encompassed his faltering steps with the
which nature wears a more beautiful appearance | gloomiest of shades; and when he said, "Your
AUGUST-Nature in.
AUSTERITY
health, sir!" all around him was barrenness
and desolation.
At length Lord Decimus, with a coffee-cup
in his hand, began to hover about among the
pictures, and to cause an interesting speculation
to arise in all minds as to the probabilities of
his ceasing to hover, and enabling the smaller
birds to flutter up-stairs; which could not be
done until he had urged his noble pinions in
that direction. After some delay, and several
stretches of his wings, which came to nothing,
he soared to the drawing-rooms.
Book II., Chap. 12.
AUSTERITY—of Mr. Dombey.
27
It happened to be an iron-gray autumnal day,
with a shrewd east wind blowing-a day in
keeping with the proceedings. Mr. Dombey
represented in himself the wind, the shade, and
the autumn of the christening. He stood in his
library to receive the company, as hard and
cold as the weather; and when he looked out
through the glass room, at the trees in the little
garden, their brown and yellow leaves came
fluttering down, as if he blighted them.
Dombey and Son, Chap. 5.
AUSTERITY-in politeness.
How do you do, sir?" said Chick.
He gave Mr. Dombey his hand, as if he fear-
ed it might electrify him. Mr. Dombey took
it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such
clammy substance, and immediately returned
it to him with exalted politeness.
Dombey and Son, Chap. 5.
AUSTERITY-The selfishness of.
AUTHOR
possessions. Austere faces, inexorable disci-
pline, penance in this world and terror in the
next-nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and
the void in my cowed heart everywhere-this
was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word
as to apply it to such a beginning of life."
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 2.
AUSTERITY IN RELIGION-Mrs. Clen-
nam's.
Woe to the suppliant, if such a one there
were or ever had been, who had any concession
to look for in the inexorable face at the cabinet!
Woe to the defaulter whose appeal lay to the
tribunal where those severe eyes presided!
Great need had the rigid woman of her mysti-
cal religion, veiled in gloom and darkness, with
lightnings of cursing, vengeance, and destruc-
tion, flashing through the sable clouds. For-
give us our debts as we forgive our debtors, was
a prayer too poor in spirit for her. Smite thou
my debtors, Lord, wither them, crush them; do
Thou as I would do, and thou shalt have my
worship: this was the impious tower of stone
she built up to scale Heaven.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5.
AUTHOR-His loss of imaginary friends.
It is the fate of most men who mingle with
the world, and attain even the prime of life, to
make many real friends, and lose them in the
course of nature. It is the fate of all authors
or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and
lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the
full extent of their misfortunes; for they are
required to furnish an account of them besides.
Pickwick, Chap. 57.
AUTHOR-Mr. Dick, the mad.
In all his life, he had never made a friend.
His cold and distant nature had neither sought |
one, nor found one. And now, when that na-
"I wish you'd go up stairs," said my aunt, as
ture concentrated its whole force so strongly on she threaded her needle, "and give my compli-
a partial scheme of parental interest and ambi-ments to Mr. Dick, and I'll be glad to know
tion, it seemed as if its icy current, instead of
being released by this influence, and running
clear and free, had thawed for but an instant to
admit its burden, and then frozen with it into
one unyielding block.
Dombey and Son, Chap. 5.
AUSTERITY—Its influence on youth.
"I have no will. That is to say," he colored
a little, “next to none that I can put in action
now. Trained by main force; broken, not
bent; heavily ironed with an object on which
I was never consulted and which was never
mine; shipped away to the other end of the
world before I was of age, and exiled there un-
til my father's death there, a year ago; always
grinding in a mill I always hated; what is to
be expected from me in middle life? Will,
purpose, hope?
All those lights were extin-
guished before I could sound the words."
Light 'em up again!" said Mr. Meagles.
"Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr.
Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am
the only child of parents who weighed, meas-
ured, and priced everything; for whom what
could not be weighed, measured, and priced,
had no existence. Strict people, as the phrase
is, professors of a stern religion, their very re-
ligion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sym- |
pathies that were never their own, offered up
is a part of a bargain for the security of their
|
how he gets on with his Memorial.
I went up stairs with my message; thinking,
as I went, that if Mr. Dick had been working
at his Memorial long, at the same rate as I had
seen him working at it, through the open door,
when I came down, he was probably getting on
very well indeed. I found him still driving at
it with a long pen, and his head almost laid
upon the paper. He was so intent upon it,
that I had ample leisure to observe the large
paper kite in a corner, the confusion of bundles
of manuscript, the number of pens, and, above
all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed to
have in, in half-gallon jars, by the dozen), before
he observed my being present.
"Ha! Phoebus!" said Mr. Dick, laying down
his pen. "How does the world go? I'll tell
you what," he added in a lower tone, “I
shouldn't wish it to be mentioned, but it's a—”
here he beckoned to me, and put his lips close
to my ear-"It's a mad world. Mad as Bed-
lam, boy!" said Mr. Dick, taking snuff from a
round box on the table, and laughing heartily.
Without presuming to give my opinion on
this question, I delivered my message.
""
"Well," said Mr. Dick, in answer, "my com-
pliments to her, and I-I believe I have made
a start.
a start. I think I have made a start,' said Mr.
Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and
casting anything but a confident look at his
manuscript. "You have been to school?"
AUTHOR, MAD
"Yes, sir," I answered: "for a short time."
"Do you recollect the date," said Mr. Dick,
looking eamestly at me and taking up his pen
to note it down, "when King Charles the First
had his head cut off?"
28
AUTUMN SCENERY
Martin by degrees became so far awake, that
he had a sense of a terrible oppression on his
mind; an imperfect dream that he had ourde)-
ed a particular friend, and couldn't get rid of
the body. When his eyes opened it was staring
I said I believed it happened in the year six-him full in the face. There was the horrible Hom-
teen hundred and forty-nine.
Well," returned Mr. Dick, scratching his
ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me,
so the books say; but I don't see how that
can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how
could the people about him have made that mis-
take of putting some of the trouble out of his
head, after it was taken off, into mine?"
*
*
*
*
*
*
In fact, I found out afterwards that Mr. Dick
had been for upwards of ten years endeavoring
to keep King Charles the First out of the Me-
morial;
but he had been constantly getting into
it, and was there now.
David Copperfield, Chap. 14.
AUTHOR, MAD-Mr. Dick's diffusion of
facts.
I was going away, when he directed my atten-
tion to the kite.
"What do you think of that for a kite?" he
said.
I
I answered that it was a beautiful one.
should think it must have been as much as seven
feet high.
iny, talking deep truths in a melodious snuffle,
and pouring forth her mental endowments to
such an extent that the Major's bitterest ene-
my, hearing her, would have forgiven nim
from the bottom of his heart. Martin might
have done something desperate if the gong had
not sounded for supper; but sound it did most
opportunely; and having stationed Mrs. Hom-
iny at the upper end of the table, he took refuge
at the lower end himself; whence, after a hasty
meal, he stole away, while the lady was yet
busied with dried beef and a saucer-full of
pickled fixings.
It would be difficult to give an adequate idea
of Mrs. Hominy's freshness next day, or of the
avidity with which she went headlong into mor-
al philosophy, at breakfast. Some little addi-
tional degree of asperity, perhaps, was visible
in her features, but not more than the pickles
would have naturally produced. All that day
she clung to Martin. She sat beside him while
he received his friends (for there was another
Reception yet more numerous than the former),
propounded theories and answered imaginary ob-
jections, so that Martin really began to think
he must be dreaming, and speaking for two;
she quoted interminable passages from cer-
tain essays on government, written by herself;
used the Major's pocket-handkerchief as if the
snuffle were a temporary malady, of which she
was determined to rid herself by some means or
other; and, in short, was such a remarkable
"There's plenty of string," said Mr. Dick, companion, that Martin quite settled it between
and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long himself and his conscience, that in any new set
way. That's my manner of diffusing 'em. Itlement it would be absolutely necessary to
don't know where they may come down. It's have such a person knocked on the head for the
according to circumstances, and the wind, and general peace of society.
so forth; but I take my chances of that."
"I I made it.
said Mr. Dick.
We'll go and fly it, you and I,"
"Do you see this?"
He showed me that it was covered with man-
uscript, very closely and laboriously written;
but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines,
I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles
the First's head again, in one or two places.
David Copperfield, Chap. 14.
AUTHORESS-Mrs. Hominy, an American.
Mrs. Hominy was a philosopher and an au-
thoress, and consequently had a pretty strong
digestion; but this coarse, this indecorous
phrase, was almost too much for her. For a
gentleman sitting alone with a lady-although
the door was open-to talk about a naked eye!
A long interval elapsed before even she,
woman of masculine and towering intellect
though she was, could call up fortitude enough
to resume the conversation. But Mrs. Hominy
was a traveller. Mrs. Hominy was a writer of
reviews and analytical disquisitions. Mrs. Hom-
iny had had her letters from abroad, beginning
My ever dearest blank," and signed "The
Mother of the Modern Gracchi" (meaning the
married Miss Hominy), regularly printed in a
public journal, with all the indignation in capi-
tals, and all the sarcasm in italics. Mrs. Homi-
ny had looked on foreign countries with the eye
of a perfect republican hot from the model
oven; and Mrs. Hominy could talk (or write)
about them by the hour together. So Mrs. Hom-
iny at last came down on Martin heavily, and as
he was fast asleep, she had it all her own way,
and bruised him to her heart's content.
*
*
*
Martin Chuzzlewnt, Chap. 22.
AUTUMN SCENERY.
It was a warm autumn afternoon, and there
had been heavy rain. The sun burst suddenly
from among the clouds; and the old battle-
ground, sparkling brilliantly and cheerfully at
sight of it in one green place, flashed a respon-
sive welcome there, which spread along the
country side as if a joyful beacon had been
lighted up, and answered from a thousand sta-
tions.
How beautiful the landscape kindling in the
light, and that luxuriant influence passing on
like a celestial presence, brightening everything!
The wood, a sombre mass before, revealed its
varied tints of yellow, green, brown, red; its
different forms of trees, with raindrops glitter-
ing on their leaves and twinkling as they fell.
The verdant meadow-land, bright and glowing,
seemed as if it had been blind, a minute since,
and now had found a sense of sight wherewith
to look up at the shining sky. Cornfields, hedge-
rows, fences, homesteads, the clustered roofs,
the steeple of the church, the stream, the water-
mill, all sprang out of the gloomy darkness
smiling. Birds sang sweetly, flowers raised
their drooping heads, fresh scents arose from
the invigorated ground; the blue expanse above
extended and diffused itself; already the sun's
AUTUMN
29
AVARICE
slanting rays pierced mortally the sullen bank while others (hardy evergreens this class)
of cloud that lingered in its flight; and a rain-showed somewhat stern and gloomy in their
how, spirit of all the colors that adorned the
earth and sky, spanned the whole arch with its
triumphant glory.-Battle of Life, Chap. 3.
AUTUMN-Wind at twilight.
Not only is the day waning, but the year.
The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the
monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the
Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red
leaves down on the pavement. There has been
rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes
among the little pools on the cracked, uneven
flag-stones, and through the giant elm-trees as
they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves
lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves,
in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low-
arched Cathedral door.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 2.
AUTUMN-Nature in.
It was pretty late in the autumn of the year,
when the declining sun, struggling through the
mist which had obscured it all day, looked
brightly down upon a little Wiltshire village.
within an easy journey of the fair old town or
Salisbury.
vigor, as charged by nature with the admonition
that it is not to her more sensitive and joyous
favorites she grants the longest term of life.
Still, athwart their darker boughs, the sunbeams
struck out paths of deeper gold; and the red
light, mantling in among their swarthy branches,
used them as foils to set its brightness off, and
aid the lustre of the dying day.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
AUTUMN-The voices of nature.
On a healthy autumn day, the Marshalsea
prisoner, weak, but otherwise restored, sat
listening to a voice that read to him. On a
healthy autumn day; when the golden fields
had been reaped and ploughed again, when the
summer fruits had ripened and waned, when
the green perspectives of hops had been laid
low by the busy pickers, when the apples clus-
tering in the orchards were russet, and the ber-
ries of the mountain ash were crimson among
the yellowing foliage. Already, in the woods,
glimpses of the hardy winter that was coming,
were to be caught through unaccustomed open-
ings among the boughs, where the prospect
shone defined and clear, free from the bloom
of the drowsy summer weather, which had rest-
ed on it as the bloom lies on the plum. So, from
the sea-shore the ocean was no longer to be
seen lying asleep in the heat, but its thousand
sparkling eyes were open, and its whole breadth
was in joyful animation, from the cool sand on
the beach to the little sails on the horizon,
drifting away like autumn-tinted leaves that
had drifted from the trees.
Like a sudden flash of memory or spirit kin-
dling up the mind of an old man, it shed a
glory upon the scene, in which its departed
youth and freshness seemed to live again. The
wet grass sparkled in the light; the scanty
patches of verdure in the hedges-where a few
green twigs yet stood together bravely, resisting
to the last the tyranny of nipping winds and
early frosts-took heart and brightened up; the
stream which had been dull and sullen all day Changeless and barren, looking ignorantly at
long, broke out into a cheerful smile; the birds all the seasons with its fixed, pinched face of
began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, poverty and care, the prison had not a touch
as though the hopeful creatures half believed of any of these beauties on it. Blossom what
that winter had gone by, and spring had come would, its bricks and bars bore uniformly the
already. The vane upon the tapering spire of same dead crop. Yet Clennam, listening to the
the old church glistened from its lofty station in voice as it read to him, heard in it all that great
sympathy with the general gladness; and from Nature was doing, heard in it all the soothing
the ivy-shaded windows such gleams of light songs she sings to man. At no Mother's knee
shone back upon the glowing sky, that it seemed but hers had he ever dwelt in his youth on
as if the quiet buildings were the hoarding-hopeful promises, on playful fancies, on the
place of twenty summers, and all their ruddi- harvests of tenderness and humility that lie
ness and warmth were stored within.
hidden in the early-fostered seeds of the im-
Even those tokens of the season which em-agination; on the oaks of retreat from blight-
phatically whispered of the coming winter, ing winds, that have the germs of their strong
graced the landscape, and, for the moment, roots in nursery acorns. But, in the tones of
inged its livelier features with no oppressive air the voice that read to him, there were memo-
of sadness. The fallen leaves, with which theries of an old feeling of such things, and echoes
ground was strewn, gave forth a pleasant fra- of every merciful and loving whisper that had
grance, and subduing all harsh sounds of dis- ever stolen to him in his life.
tant feet and wheels, created a repose in gentle
unison with the light scattering of seed hither
and thither by the distant husbandman, and
with the noiseless passage of the plough as it
turned up the rich brown earth, and wrought a
graceful pattern in the stubbied fields. On the
motionless branches of some trees, autumn ber-
ries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in
those fabled orchards where the fruits were jew-
els; others, stripped of all their garniture,
stood, each the centre of its little heap of bright
red leaves, watching their slow decay; others
again, still wearing theirs, had them all crunched
and crackled up, as though they had been burnt;
about the stems of some were piled, in ruddy
mounds, the apples they had borne that year;
Little Dorrit, Chap. 34.
AVARICE—The miser.
A little further on, a hard-featured old man
with a deeply wrinkled face, was intently pe-
rusing a lengthy will, with the aid of a pair of
horn spectacles; occasionally pausing from his
task, and slily noting down some brief memo-
randum of the bequests contained in it. Every
wrinkle about his toothless 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
AVARICE
30
BABY
canister, told of wealth, and penury, and secured in that particular description of iron
ava rice.-Scenes, Chap. 8.
safe which is commonly called a coffin, and
banked in the grave.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 8.
AVARICE-Fledgeby, the young miser.
Whether this young gentleman (for he was
but three-and-twenty) combined with the miserly
vice of an old man any of the open-handed
vices of a young one, was a moot point; so
very honorably did he keep his own counsel.
He was sensible of the value of appearances as
an investment, and liked to dress well; but he
drove a bargain for every moveable about him,
from the coat on his back to the china on his
breakfast-table; and every bargain, by repre-
senting somebody's ruin or somebody's loss,
acquired a peculiar charm for him. It was a
part of his avarice to take, within narrow
bounds, long odds at races; if he won, he
drove harder bargains; if he lost, he half
starved himself until next time. Why money
should be so precious to an Ass too dull and
mean to exchange it for any other satisfaction,
is strange: but there is no animal so sure to
get laden with it as the Ass who sees nothing
written on the face of the earth and sky but the
three letters L. S. D.-not Luxury, Sensuality,
Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but
the three dry letters. Your concentrated Fox is
seldom comparable to your concentrated Ass in
money-breeding.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 5.
AVARICE AND CUNNING.
AWAKE-Lying.
"My uncle lay with his eyes half closed, and his
nightcap drawn almost down to his nose. His
fancy was already wandering, and began to
mingle up the present scene with the crater of
Vesuvius, the French Opera, the Coliseum at
Rome, Dolly's Chop-house in London, and all
the farrago of noted places with which the
brain of a traveller is crammed; in a word,
he was just falling asleep."
Thus, that delightful writer, WASHINGTON
IRVING, in his Tales of a Traveller. But, it
happened to me the other night to be lying,
not with my eyes half closed, but with my eyes
wide open; not with my nightcap drawn almost
down to my nose, for on sanitary principles I
never wear a nightcap: but with my hair
pitchforked and touzled all over the pillow;
not just falling asleep by any means, but glar-
ingly, persistently, and obstinately broad
awake. Perhaps, with no scientific intention or
invention, I was illustrating the theory of the
Duality of the Brain; perhaps one part of my
brain, being wakeful, sat up to watch the other
part, which was sleepy. Be that as it may,
something in me was as desirous to go to sleep
as it possibly could be, but something else in
me would not go to sleep, and was as obstinate
as George the Third.
AWE.
Lying Awake. Reprinted Pieces.
There is a simplicity of cunning no less than
a simplicity of innocence; and in all matters
where a lively faith in knavery and meanness
was required as the ground-work of belief, Mr. |
Jonas was one of the most credulous of men. That solemn feeling with which we contem-
His ignorance, which was stupendous, may be plate the work of ages that have become but
taken into account, if the reader pleases, sep-drops of water in the great ocean of eternity.
arately.
This fine young man had all the inclination
to be a profligate of the first water, and only
lacked the one good trait in the common cata-
logue of debauched vices-open-handedness-
to be a notable vagabond. But there his. grip-
ing and penurious habits stepped in; and as
one poison will sometimes neutralize another,
when wholesome remedies would not avail, so
he was restrained by a bad passion from quaf-
fing his full measure of evil, when virtue might
have sought to hold him back in vain.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. II.
AVARICE-And heartlessness.
The education of Mr. Jonas had been con-
ducted from his cradle on the strictest princi-
ples of the main chance. The very first word
he learnt to spell was "gain," and the second
(when he got into two syllables), "money."
But for two results, which were not clearly
foreseen perhaps by his watchful parent in the
beginning, his training may be said to have
been unexceptionable. One of these flaws was,
that having been long taught by his father to
overreach everybody, he had imperceptibly
acquired a love of overreaching that venerable
monitor himself. The other, that from his early
habits of considering everything as a question
of property, he had gradually come to look
with impatience on his parent, as a certain
amount of personal estate, which had no right
whatever to be going at large, but ought to be
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 52.
B
BABY-Its martyrdom-Mr. Meeks's pro-
test.
The voice of Nature cries aloud in behalf of
Augustus George, my infant son. It is for him
that I wish to utter a few plaintive household
words. I am not at all angry; I am mild-but
miserable.
I wish to know why, when my child, Augus-
tus George, was expected in our circle, a provi-
sion of pins was made, as if the little stranger
was a criminal who was to be put to the torture
immediately on his arrival, instead of a holy
babe? I wish to know why haste was made to
stick those pins all over his innocent form, in
every direction? I wish to be informed why
light and air are excluded from Augustus George,
like poisons? Why, I ask, is my unoffending
infant so hedged into a basket-bedstead, with
dimity and calico, with miniature sheets and
blankets, that I can only hear him snuffle (and
no wonder !) deep down under the pink hood
of a little bathing-machine, and can never pe-
ruse even so much of his lineaments as his nose.
Was I expected to be the father of a French
Roll, that the brushes of All Nations were laid
BABY
in, to rasp Augustus George? Am I to be told
that his sensitive skin was ever intended by Na-
ture to have rashes brought out upon it, by the
premature and incessant use of those formida-
ble little instruments?
Is my son a Nutmeg, that he is to be grated
on the stiff edges of sharp frills? Am I the
parent of a Muslin boy, that his yielding sur-
face is to be crimped and small-plaited? Or is
my child composed of Paper or of Linen, that
impressions of the finer getting-up art, prac-
tised by the laundress, are to be printed off, all
over his soft arms and legs, as I constantly ob-
serve them? The starch enters his soul; who
can wonder that he cries?
Was Augustus George intended to have
limbs, or to be born a Torso? I presume that
limbs were the intention, as they are the usual
practice. Then, why are my poor child's limbs
fettered and tied up? Am I to be told that
there is any analogy between Augustus George
Meek and Jack Sheppard?
Analyse Castor Oil at any Institution of
Chemistry that may be agreed upon, and inform
me what resemblance, in taste, it bears to that
natural provision which it is at once the pride
and duty of Maria Jane to administer to Au-
gustus George!. Yet I charge Mrs. Prodgit
(aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with system-
atically forcing Castor Oil on my innocent son,
from the first hour of his birth. When that
medicine, in its efficient action, causes internal
disturbance to Augustus George, I charge Mrs.
Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with
insanely and inconsistently administering opium
to allay the storm she has raised! What is the
meaning of this?
If the days of Egyptian Mummies are past,
how dare Mrs. Prodgit require, for the use of
my son, an amount of flannel and linen that
would carpet my humble roof? Do I wonder
that she requires it? No! This morning,
within an hour, I beheld this agonising sight.
I beheld my son-Augustus George-in Mrs.
Prodgit's hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit's knee,
being dressed. He was at the moment, com-
paratively speaking, in a state of nature hav-
ing nothing on but an extremely short shirt,
remarkably disproportionate to the length of
his usual outer garments. Trailing from Mrs.
Prodgit's lap, on the floor, was a long narrow
roller or bandage-I should say of several yards
in extent. In this, I SAW Mrs. Prodgit tightly
roll the body of my unoffending infant, turning
him over and over, now presenting his uncon-
scious face upwards, now the back of his bald
head, until the unnatural feat was accomplished,
and the bandage secured by a pin, which I have
every reason to believe entered the body of my
only child. In this tourniquet he passes the
present phase of his existence. Can I know it
and smile?
I fear I have been betrayed into expressing
myself warmly, but I feel deeply. Not for my-
self; for Augustus George. I dare not inter-
fere. Will
Will any one? Will any publication?
Any doctor? Any parent? Any body? I do
not complain that Mrs. Prodgit (aided and abet-
ted by Mrs. Bigby) entirely alienates Maria
Jane's affections from me, and interposes an
impassable barrier between us. I do not com-
plain of being made of no account. I do not
want to be of any account. But, Augustus
31
BABY
George is a production of Nature (I cannot
think otherwise), and I claim that he should be
treated with some remote reference to Nature.
In my opinion, Mrs. Prodgit is, from first to
last, a convention and a superstition.
Births—Mrs. Meek.-Reprinted Pieces,
BABY-Description of a.
One of those little carved representations
that one sometimes sees blowing a trumpet on
a tombstone !—Tales, Bloomsbury Christening.
A weazen little baby, with a heavy head that
it couldn't hold up, and two weak, staring eyes,
with which it seemed to be always wondering
why it had ever been born.
David Copperfield, Chap. 22.
BABY-His welcome of pins.
The fatherless little stranger was welcomed by
some grosses of prophetic pins in a drawer up.
stairs, to a world not at all excited on the sub-
ject of his arrival.-David Copperfield, Chap. I
BABY TALK.
A mechanical power of reproducing scraps
of current conversation for the delectation of
the baby, with all the sense struck out of them,
and all the nouns changed into the plural num-
ber.-Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 1.
BABY-The birth of a.
There are certain polite forms and ceremo-
nies which must be observed in civilized life, or
mankind relapse into their original barbarism.
No genteel lady was ever yet confined-indeed,
no genteel confinement can possibly take place
without the accompanying symbol of a muf-
fled knocker. Mrs. Kenwigs was a lady of
some pretensions to gentility; Mrs. Kenwigs
was confined. And, therefore, Mr. Kenwigs
tied up the silent knocker on the premises in a
white kid glove.
"I'm not quite certain, neither," said Mr.
Kenwigs, arranging his shirt-collar, and walk-
ing slowly up-stairs, "whether, as it's a boy, I
won't have it in the papers."
Pondering upon the advisability of this step,
and the sensation it was likely to create in the
neighborhood, Mr. Kenwigs betook himself to
the sitting-room, where various extremely
diminutive articles of clothing were airing on
a horse before the fire, and Mr. Lumbey, the
doctor, was dandling the baby-that is, the old
baby-not the new one.
It's a fine boy, Mr. Kenwigs," said Mr. Lum
bey, the doctor.
You consider him a fine boy, do you, sir?"
returned Mr. Kenwigs.
"It's the finest boy I ever saw in all
ever saw in all my life,"
said the doctor. "I never saw such a baby."
It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and fur-
nishes a complete answer to those who contend
for the gradual degeneration of the human
species, that every baby born into the world is
a finer one than the last.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 36.
BABY-Cutting teeth.
It was
a peculiarity of this baby to be
always cutting teeth. Whether they never came,
or whether they came and went away again, is
not in evidence; but it had certainly cut
BABY
32
BABY
nough, on the showing of Mrs. Tetterby, to within; so stolid, but so good! Oh, Mother Na
make a handsome dental provision for the signare, give thy children the true poetry of heart
of the Bull and Mouth. All sorts of objects that hid itself in this poor Carrier's breast-he
were impressed for the rubbing of its gums, was but a Carrier, by the way-and we can
notwithstanding that it always carried, dang- bear to have them talking prose, and leading
ling at its waist (which was immediately under lives of prose; and bear to bless thee for their
its chin), a bone ring, large enough to have rep- company.
resented the rosary of a young nun. Knife- It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little
handles, umbrella-tops, the heads of walking- figure, and her baby in her arms-a very doll of
sticks selected from the stock, the fingers of a baby-glancing with a coquettish thoughtful-
the family in general, but especially of John-ness at the fire, and inclining her delicate little
ny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the handles of doors, | head just enough on one side to let it rest in an
and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling
among the commonest instruments indiscrimi- and agreeable manner, on the great rugged
nately applied for this baby's relief. The figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see
amount of electricity that must have been him, with his tender awkwardness, endeavoring
rubbed out of it in a week, is not to be calcu- to adapt his rude support to her slight need,
lated. Still Mrs. Tetterby always said "it was and make his burly middle-age a leaning-staff
coming through, and then the child would be not inappropriate to her blooming youth. It
herself;" and still it never did come through, was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slowboy,
and the child continued to be somebody else. waiting in the background for the baby, took
Christmas Stories, The Haunted Man, Chap. 3. special cognizance (though in her earliest teens)
of this grouping; and stood with her mouth
BABY-A patient.
and eyes wide open, and her head thrust for-
ward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it
less agreeable to observe how John the Carrier,
reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid
baby, checked his hand when on the point of
touching the infant, as if he thought he might
crack it; and bending down, surveyed it from
a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride,
such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed
to show, if he found himself, one day, the
father of a young canary.
A poor little baby-such a tiny old-faced
mite, with a countenance that seemed to be
scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little
lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under
its chin. It would lie in this attitude all day,
with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering
(as I used to imagine) how it came to be so
small and weak. Whenever it was moved it
cried; but at all other times it was so patient,
that the sole desire of its life appeared to be, |
to lie quiet, and think. It had curious little
dark veins in its face, and curious little
dark marks under its eyes, like faint remem-
brances of poor Caddy's inky days; and al-
together, to those who were not used to it, it
was quite a piteous little sight.
Bleak House, Chap. 50.
BABY-Announcement of a.
As he bent his face to hers, she raised hers to
meet it, and laid her little right hand on his
eyes, and kept it there.
"Do you remember, John, on the day we
were married, Pa's speaking of the ships that
might be sailing towards us from the unknown
seas?"
Perfectly, my darling!"
to
"I think. among them..... there is
a ship upon the ocean.... bringing
you and me. . . . . a little baby, John."
•
• • • • •
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 5.
BABY-" Dot's."
I
"I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, John.
don't like it," said Mrs. Peerybingle, pouting in
a way that clearly showed she did like it, very
much.
"Why, what else are you!" returned John,
looking down upon her with a smile, and giving
her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and
arm could give. "A dot and "-here he glanc-
ed at the baby-" a dot and carry-I won't say
it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very
near a joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer.
He was often near to something or other very
clever, by his own account: this lumbering,
slow, honest John; this John, so heavy, but so
light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but
so gentle at the core; so dull without, so quick |
|
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 1.
BABY—A Moloch of a.
Another little boy-the biggest there, but
still little--was tottering to and fro, bent on
one side, and considerably affected in his
knees by the weight of a large baby, which he
was supposed, by a fiction that obtains some-
times in sanguine families, to be hushing to
sleep. But oh the inexhaustible regions of
contemplation and watchfulness into which this
baby's eyes were then only beginning to com-
pose themselves to stare, over his unconscious
shoulder!
It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose
insatiate altar the whole existence of this par-
ticular young brother was offered up a daily
sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have
consisted in its never being quiet, in any one
place, for five consecutive minutes, and never
going to sleep when required. 'Tetterby's
baby," was as well known in the neighborhood
as the postman or the pot-boy. It roved from
door-step to door-step, in the arms of little
Johnny Tetterby, and lagged heavily at the
rear of troops of juveniles who followed the Tum-
blers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one
side, a little too late for everything that was
attractive, from Monday morning until Satur-
day night. Wherever childhood congregated to
play, there was little Moloch making Johnny
fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired to
stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would
not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted to go
out, Moloch was asleep, and must be watched.
Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home,
Moloch was awake, and must be taken out.
Yet Johnny was verily persuaded that it was a
faultless baby, without its peer in the realm of
BACHELORS
33
BACHELOR BAGSTOCK
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 unsusceptible of attach-
England; and was quite content to catch meek
glimpses of things in general from behind its
skirts, or over its limp flapping bonnet, and to
go staggering about with it like a very little
porter with a very large parcel, which was not
directed to anybody, and could never be deliv-ments. He revered the memory of Hoyle, as
ered anywhere.
Christmas Stories. The Haunted Man, Chap. 2.
BACHELORS-In society.
These are generally 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 rela-
tions poor-grow suspicious of everybody, and
do the misanthropical in chambers, taking 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 discon-
tented exclamations and the luxury of their din-
ners; 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 married 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 atro-
city of getting into debt with a hundred and
twenty-five pounds a-year, and other unpardon-
able crimes; winding up his exhortations with
a complacent review of his own conduct, and a
delicate allusion to parochial relief. He dies,
some day after dinner, of apoplexy, having be-
queathed his property to a Public Society, and
the Institution erects a tablet to his memory,
expressive of their admiration of his Christian
conduct in this world, and their comfortable
conviction of his happiness in the next.
(Characters), Sketches, Chap. I.
;
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. However, he could hardly be said
|
to hate anything in particular, because he dis-
liked everything in general; but perhaps his
greatest antipathies were cabs, old women, doors
that would not shut, musical amateurs, and om-
nibus cads. He subscribed to the "Society for
the Suppression of Vice," for the pleasure of
putting a stop to any harmless amusements: and
he contributed 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.
Sketches, Bloomsbury Christening.
BACHELOR-A miserable creature.
"A bachelor is a miserable wretch, sir," said
Mr. Lillyvick.
"Is he?" asked Nicholas.
"He is," rejoined the collector. "I have
lived in the world for nigh sixty year, and I
ought to know what it is."
"You ought to know, certainly," thought
Nicholas; "but whether you do or not, is
another question."
"If a bachelor happens to have saved a little
matter of money," said Mr. Lillyvick, "his sis-
ters and brothers, and nephews and nieces, look
to that money, and not to him; even if, by be-
ing a public character, he is the head of the
family, or, as it may be, the main from which all
the other little branches are turned on, they still
wish him dead all the while, and get low-spir-
ited every time they see him looking in good
health, because they want to come into his lit-
tle property.
tle property. You see that?
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 25.
BACHELOR-Major Bagstock.
Although Major Bagstock had arrived at
what is called in polite literature, the grand
meridian of life, and was proceeding on his
journey down-hill with hardly any throat, and
a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flap-
BACHELOR-A crusty.
ped elephantine ears, and his eyes and com-
Mr. Nicodemus Dumps, or, as his acquaint-plexion in the state of artificial excitement
ance called him, " long Dumps," was a bachelor, already mentioned, he was mightily proud of
six feet high, and fifty years old; cross, cadav- awakening an interest in Miss Tox, and tick-
erous, odd, and ill-natured. He was never led his vanity with the fiction that she was a
happy but when he was miserable; and always splendid woman, who had her eye on him.
miserable when he had the best reason to be This he had several times hinted at the club:
happy. The only real comfort of his existence in connection with little jocularities, of which
was to make everybody about him wretched-old Joe Bagstock, old Joey Bagstock, old J
then he might be truly said to enjoy life. He Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was
was afflicted with a situation in the Bank worth the perpetual theme: it being, as it were, the
five hundred a year, and he rented a first- Major's stronghold and donjon-keep of light
floor furnished," at Pentonville, which he origi-humor, to be on the most familiar terms with
nally took because it commanded a dismal his own name.
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
3
Joey B., Sir," the Major would say, with a
flourish of his walking-stick, "is worth a dozen
of you. If you had a few more of the Bag-
stock breed among you. Sir, you'd be none the
BAGSTOCK
worse for it. Old Joe, Sir, needn't look far for a
wife even now, if he was on the look-out; but
he's hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe-he's tough, Sir,
tough, and de-vilish sly!" After such a dec-
laration wheezing sounds would be heard; and
the Major's blue would deepen into purple,
while his eyes strained and started convul-
sively.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 7.
BAGSTOCK-The sayings of Major.
"
"An old campaigner, Sir," said the Major,
a smoke-dried, sun-burnt, used-up, invalided
old dog of a Major, Sir, was not afraid of being
condemned for his whim by a man like Mr.
Dombey."
*
*
*
*
*
*
My little friend here, Sir, will certify for
Joseph Bagstock that he is a thorough-going,
downright, plain-spoken, old Trump, Sir, and
nothing more."
*
*
*
*
*
*
34
"None but the tough fellows could live,
Sir, at Sandhurst. We put each other to the
torture there, Sir. We roasted the new fel-
lows at a slow fire, and hung 'em out of a three
pair of stairs window, with their heads down-
wards. Joseph Bagstock, Sir, was held out of
the window by the heels of his boots, for thir-
teen minutes by the college clock."
The Major might have appealed to his coun-
tenance in corroboration of this story. It cer-
tainly looked as if he had hung out a little too
long.
"But it made us what we were, Sir," said the
Major, settling his shirt frill. "We were iron,
Sir, and it forged us."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 10.
BALCONIES—An Italian street.
The Corso is a street a mile long; a street
of shops, and palaces, and private houses, some-
times opening into a broad piazza. There are
verandas and balconies, of all shapes and sizes,
to almost every house-not on one story alone,
but often to one room or another on every story
-put there in general with so little order or
regularity, that if, year after year, and season
after season, it had rained balconies, hailed bal-
conies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they
could scarcely have come into existence in a
more disorderly manner.-Pictures from Italy.
BALLOONIST-A.
BALL
more than an acre and a quarter in extent, and
they were filled with people! Never was such
a blaze of beauty, and fashion, and literature.
There was the young lady who "did" the poe-
try in the Eatanswill Gazette, in the garb of a
sultana, leaning upon the arm of the young
gentleman who "did" the review department,
and who was appropriately habited in a field
marshal's uniform-the boots excepted. There
were hosts of these geniuses, and any reason-
able person would have thought it honor enough
to meet them. But more than these, the:e weie
half a dozen lions from London-authors, real
authors, who had written whole books, and
printed them afterwards--and here you might
see 'em, walking about, like ordinary men,
smiling, and talking-aye, and talking pretty
considerable nonsense too, no doubt with the
benign intention of rendering themselves intel-
ligible to the common people about them.
Moreover, there was a band of music in paste-
costume of their country, and a dozen hired
board caps; four something-ean singers in the
waiters in the costume of their country-and
was Mrs. Leo Hunter in the character of Mi-
very dirty costume too. And above all, there
nerva, receiving the company, and overflow-
ing with pride and gratification at the notion
of having called such distinguished individuals
together.-Pickwick, Chap. 15.
BALLS-Spangles by daylight.
What can be prettier than spangles! It may
be objected that they are not adapted to the
daylight, but everybody knows that they would
glitter if there were lamps; and nothing can be
clearer than that if people give fancy balls in
the day-time, and the dresses do not show quite
as well as they would by night, the fault lies
solely with the people who give the fancy balls,
and is in no wise chargeable on the spangles.
Pickwick Papers, Chap. 15.
BALL-A fashionable.
"
This is a ball night," said the M. C., again
taking Mr. Pickwick's hand, as he rose to go.
"The ball-nights in Ba-th are moments
snatched from Paradise; rendered bewitching
by music, beauty, elegance, fashion, etiquette,
and-and-above all, by the absence of trades-
people, who are quite inconsistent with Para-
dise; and who have an amalgamation of them-
selves at the Guildhall every fortnight, which is,
"Mr. Green is a steady hand, Sir, and there's to say the least, remarkable.”
no fear about him.'
"
"Fear!" said the little man: "isn't it a love-
ly thing to 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 miles in three
hours or so, and then coming back in pochay-
ses? I don't know where this here science is to
stop, mind you; that's what bothers me."
(Scenes), Sketches, Chap. 14.
*
*
*
*
*
*
In the ball-room, the long card-room, the
octagonal card-room, the staircases, and the pas
sages, the hum of many voices, and the sound
of many feet, were perfectly bewildering.
Dresses rustled, feathers waved, lights shone,
and jewels sparkled. There was the music—
not of the quadrille band, for it had not yet
commenced; but the music of soft tiny foot-
steps, with now and then a clear merry laugh—
low and gentle, but very pleasant to hear in a
female voice, whether in Bath or elsewhere.
The preparations were on the most delightful Brilliant eyes, lighted up with pleasurable ex-
scale; fully realising the prophetic Pott's antici-pectation, gleamed from every side; and look
pations about the gorgeousness of Eastern
Fairyland, and at once affording a sufficient
contradiction to the malignant statements of
the reptile Independent. The grounds were
BALL-A fancy dress.
where you would, some exquisite form glided
gracefully through the throng, and was no sooner
lost, than it was replaced by another as dainty
and bewitching.
BANK
In the tea-room, and hovering round the card-
tables, were a vast number of queer old ladies
and decrepid old gentlemen, discussing all the
small talk and scandal of the day, with a relish
and gusto which sufficiently bespoke the inten-
sity of the pleasure they derived from the occu-
pation. Mingled with these groups, were three
or four matchmaking mammas, appearing to be
wholly absorbed by the conversation in which
they were taking part, but failing not from time
to time to cast an anxious sidelong glance upon
their daughters, who, remembering the maternal
injunction to make the best use of their youth,
had already commenced incipient flirtations in
the mislaying of scarves, putting on gloves, set-
ting down cups, and so forth; slight matters ap-
parently, but which may be turned to surpris-
ingly good account by expert practitioners.
Lounging near the doors, and in remote cor-
ners, were various knots of silly young men,
displaying various varieties of puppyism and
stupidity; amusing all sensible people near
them with their folly and conceit; and happily
thinking themselves the objects of general ad-
miration. A wise and merciful dispensation
which no good man will quarrel with.
35
BANK OFFICIALS
highly objectionable, but were only the more
respectable.
Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was
the triumphant perfection of inconvenience.
After bursting open a door of idiotic obstina-
cy 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
cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they
examined your signature by the dingiest of win-
dows, 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 musty odor,
as if they were fast decomposing into rags
And lastly, seated on some of the back again. Your plate was stowed away among
benches, where they had already taken up their the neighboring cesspools, and evil communi-
positions for the evening, were divers unmarried cations corrupted its good polish in a day or
ladies past their grand climacteric, who, not two. Your deeds got into extemporized strong-
dancing because there were no partners for rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fret-
them, and not playing cards lest they should be ted all the fat out of their parchments into the
set down as irretrievably single, were in the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of fam-
favorable situation of being able to abuse every-ily papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room,
body without reflecting on themselves. In that always had a great dining-table in it and
short, they could abuse everybody, because ev- never had a dinner, and where, even in the
erybody was there. It was a scene of gaiety, one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the
glitter, and show; of richly-dressed people, first letters written to you by your old love, or
handsome mirrors, chalked floors, girandoles, by your little children, were but newly released
and wax-candles; and in all parts of the scene, from the horror of being ogled through the
gliding from spot to spot in silent softness, bow-windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar
ing obsequiously to this party, nodding famil- with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy
iarly to that, and smiling complacently on all, of Abyssinia or Ashantee.
was the sprucely-attired person of Angelo Cy-
rus Bantam, Esquire, Master of the Ceremonies.
Pickwick Papers, Chap. 35.
*
*
*
*
*
year
kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he
had the full Tellson flavor and blue-mould up-
on him. Then only was he permitted to be
seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and
casting his breeches and gaiters into the gene-
weight of the establishment.
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
BANK-An old-fashioned.
young man into Tellson's London house, they
TELLSON'S Bank by Temple Bar was on old-hid him somewhere till he was old. They
fashioned place, even in the year one thousand
seven hundred and eighty. It was very small,
very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. 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 dark-ral
ness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incom-
modiousness. They were even boastful of its
eminence in those particulars, and were fired BANK OFFICIALS-Their individuality.
by an express conviction that, if it were less He pushed open the door with the weak rat-
objectionable, it would be less respectable. | tle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps,
This was no passive belief, but an active weap- got past the two ancient cashiers, and shoulder-
on which they flashed at more convenient places
of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no
elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tell-
son'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 disin-
herited 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 of-
ten disinherit its sons for suggesting improve-
ments in laws and customs that had long been
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. I.
ed 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 every-
thing 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 al-
ways 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
BANKRUPTCY
36
“BARKIS IS WILLIN.”
against the wall. The House itself, magnificently BAR-ROOM-The Maypole.
reading the paper quite in the far-off perspec-
tive, lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head
had been butted into its responsible waist-
coat.
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 Tell
son'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.
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 12.
BANKRUPTCY.
The Inquest was over, the letter was public,
the Bank was broken, the other model struc-
tures of straw had taken fire and were turned
to smoke. The admired piratical ship had
blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships
of all rates, and boats of all sizes; and on the
deep was nothing but ruin: nothing but burn-
ing hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self-
exploded tearing friends and neighbors to
pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy
spars and going down every minute, spent
swimmers, floating dead, and sharks.
Little Dorrit, Chap. 26.
BANKRUPTCY-The world's idea of.
Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey
and Son had stopped, and next night there was
a List of Bankrupts published, headed by that
name.
All bars are snug places, but the Maypole's
was the very snuggest, cosiest, and completest
bar, that ever the wit of man devised. Such
amazing bottles in old oaken pigeon-holes; such
gleaming tankards dangling from pegs at about
the same inclination as thirsty men would hold
them to their lips; such sturdy little Dutch
kegs ranged in rows on shelves; so many
lemons hanging in separate nets, and forming
the fragrant grove already mentioned in this
chronicle, suggestive, with goodly loaves of
snowy sugar stowed away hard by, of punch,
idealized beyond all mortal knowledge; such
closets, such presses, such drawers full of pipes,
such places for putting things away in hollow
window-seats, all crammed to the throat with
eatables, drinkables, or savory condiments;
lastly, and to crown all, as typical of the im-
mense resources of the establishment, and its
defiances to all visitors to cut and come again,
such a stupendous cheese!
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 19.
BAR-ROOM-A mob in John Willit's.
Yes. Here was the bar-the bar that the
boldest never entered without special invitation
-the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed
ground: here it was, crammed with men, clubs,
sticks, torches, pistols; filled with a deafening
noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; chang-
ed all at once into a bear-garden, a madhouse,
an infernal temple; men darting in and out,
by door and window, smashing the glass, turn-
ing the taps, drinking liquor out of China
punchbowls, sitting astride of casks, smoking
private and personal pipes, cutting down the
sacred
the celebrated cheese, breaking open inviolable
grove of lemons, hacking and hewing at
drawers, putting things in their pockets which
didn't belong to them, dividing his own money
before his own eyes, wantonly wasting, break-
ing, pulling down, and tearing up; nothing
above, below, overhead, in the bedrooms, in
quiet, nothing private; men everywhere
the kitchen, in the yard, in the stables-clam-
bering in at windows when there were doors
wide open; dropping out of windows when the
into chasms of passages: new faces and figures
stairs were handy; leaping over the banisters
presenting themselves every instant-some yell-
The world was very busy now, in sooth, and
had a deal to say. It was an innocently credu-
lous and a much ill-used world. It was a world
in which there was no other sort of bankruptcy
whatever. There were no conspicuous people
in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of
religion, patriotism, virtue, honor. There was
no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in
circulation, on which anybody lived pretty
handsomely, promising to pay great sums of
goodness with no effects. There were no
short-comings anywhere, in anything but
money. The world was very angry indeed :
and the people especially, who, in a worse
world, might have been supposed to be bank-ng, some singing, some fighting, some break-
rupt traders themselves in shows and pretences,
were observed to be mightily indignant.
Dombey and Son, Chap. 58.
BAR-ROOM — The Six Jolly Fellowship
Porters.
The bar of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters
was a bar to soften the human breast. The
available space in it was not much larger than
a hackney-coach: but no one could have wish-
ed the bar bigger, that space was so girt in by
corpulent little casks, and by cordial-bottles
radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and
by lemons in nets, and by biscuits in baskets,
and by the polite beer-pulls that made low
bows when customers were served with beer,
and by the cheese in a snug corner, and by the
landlady's own small table in a snugger corner
near the fire, with the cloth everlastingly laid.
Our Mutual Friend, Chap. 6.
ing glass and crockery, some laying the dust with
the liquor they couldn't drink, some ringing the
bells till they pulled them down, others beating
them with pokers till they beat them into frag-
ments: more men still--more, more, more-
swarming on like insects: noise, smoke, light,
darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans, plun-
der, fear, and ruin!
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 54.
"BARKIS IS WILLIN.”
He being of a phlegmatic temperament, and
not at all conversational-I offered him a cake
as a mark of attention, which he ate at one
gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which
made no more impression on his big face than
it would have done on an elephant's.
"Did she make 'em, now?" said Mr. Barkis,
always leaning forward, in his slouching way, on
the footboard of the cart with an arm on each
knee.
F

ANN
BARKIS "GOING OUT WITH THE TIDE.
37
(6
BARKIS
Peggotty, do you mean, sir?”
"Ah!" said Mr. Barkis. "Her."
"Yes. She makes all our pastry and does all
:ur cooking."
"Do she though?" said Mr. Barkis.
He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but
he didn't whistle. He sat looking at the horse's
ears, as if he saw something new there; and
sat so for a considerable time. By-and-by, he
saici :
"No sweethearts, I b'lieve?"
"Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?" For
I thought he wanted something else to eat, and
had pointedly alluded to that description of re-
freshment.
Hearts," said Mr. Barkis. "Sweethearts;
no person walks with her?"
"With Peggotty?"
"Ah!" he said.
"Her."
Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart."
"Didn't she, though?" said Mr. Barkis.
Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and
again he didn't whistle, but sat looking at the
horse's ears.
"So she makes," said Mr. Barkis, after a long
interval of reflection, "all the apple parsties,
"all the apple parsties,
and doos all the cooking, do she?"
I replied that such was the fact.
Well. I'll tell
I'll tell you what," said Mr. Barkis.
P'raps you might be writin' to her?"
"I shall certainly write to her," I rejoined.
“Ah!" he said, slowly turning his eyes to-
wards me. "Well! If you was writin' to her,
p'raps you'd recollect to say that Barkis was
willin'; would you?"
"That Barkis was willing," I repeated inno-
cently. "Is that all the message?'
Ye-es," he said, considering. "Ye-es.
Barkis is willin'."
"But you will be at Blunderstone again to-
morrow, Mr. Barkis," I said, faltering a little at
the idea of my being far away from it then,
"and could give your own message so much
better."
37
BASHFULNESS
ing but a face-like a conventional cherubim-
he looked the queerest object I ever beheld.
"What name was it as I wrote up in the cart,
sir?" said Mr. Barkis, with a slow rheumatic
smile.
"Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks
about that matter, hadn't we?"
"I was willin' a long time, sir!" said Mr.
Barkis.
"A long time,” said I.
"And I don't regret it," said Mr. Barkis.
"Do you remember what you told me once,
about her making all the apple parsties and do-
ing all the cooking?
"Yes, very well," I returned.
"It was as true," said Mr. Barkis, " as turnips
is. It was as true," said Mr. Barkis, nodding
his nightcap, which was his only means of em
phasis, as taxes is. And nothing's truer than
them."-David Copperfield, Chap. 21.
BARKIS—The death of.
"Barkis, my dear!" said Peggotty, almost
cheerfully, bending over him, while her brother
and I stood at the bed's foot. "Here's my dear
boy-my dear boy, Master Davy, who brought
us together, Barkis! That you sent messages
by, you know! Won't you speak to Master
Davy?"
He was as mute and senseless as the box
from which his form derived the only expression
it had.
"He's a going out with the tide,” said Mr.
Peggotty to me, behind his hand,
My eyes were dim, and so were Mr. Peggot-
ty's; but I repeated in a whisper, "With the
tide?"
(C
People can't die, along the coast," said Mr.
Peggotty, "except when the tide's pretty nigh
out. They can't be born, unless its pretty nigh
in-not properly born, till flood. He's a going
out with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three,
slack water half-an-hour. If he lives 'till it
turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and
go out with the next tide."
We remained there, watching him, a long
time-hours. What mysterious influence my
presence had upon him in that state of his
senses, I shall not pretend to say; but when he
at last began to wander feebly, it is certain he
was muttering about driving me to school.
As he repudiated this suggestion, however,
with a jerk of his head, and once more con-
firmed his previous request by saying, with pro-
found gravity,
"Barkis is willin'. That's the
message," I readily undertook its transmission.
While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel
at Yarmouth that very afternoon. I procured a
sheet of paper and an inkstand and wrote a
note to Peggotty, which ran thus: "My dear
Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is
willing. My love to mamma. Yours affec-a
tionately. P. S. He says he particularly wants
you to know-Barkis is willin'."
*
David Copperfield, Chap. 5.
*
*
*
When a man says he's willin',” said Mr.
Barkis, turning his glance slowly on me again;
"it's as much as to say, that man's a waitin' for
a answer."
"Well, Mr. Barkis?
""
"Well," said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes
back to his horse's ears; "that man's been a
waitin' for a answer ever since."
David Copperfield, Chap. 8.
BARKIS—"It's true as taxes is.'
""
As he lay in bed, face upward, and so covered,
"He's coming to himself," said Peggotty.
Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered
with much awe and reverence, "They are both
going out fast."
"No better
"Barkis, my dear!" said Peggotty.
"C. P. Barkis," he cried faintly.
woman anywhere!"
"Look! Here's Master Davy!" said Peg-
gotty. For he now opened his eyes.
I was on the point of asking him if he knew
me, when he tried to stretch out his arm, and
said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant smile:
"Barkis is willin'!"
And, it being low water, he went out with the
tide.-David Copperfield, Chap. 30.
BASHFULNESS-of Mr. Toots.
"How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?" said Mr.
"I'm very well, I thank you; how are
Toots.
you?"
Mr. Toots-than whom there were few bet
with that exception, that he seemed to be noth- ter fellows in the world, though there may have
BATTLE-FIELD
been one or two brighter spirits-had labori-
ously invented this long burst of discourse with
the view of relieving the feelings both of Flor-
ence and himself. But, finding that he had
run through his property, as it were, in an in-
judicious manner, by squandering the whole
before taking a chair, or before Florence had
uttered a word, or before he had well got in at
the door, he deemed it advisable to begin
again.
"How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?" said Mr.
Toots. I'm very well, I thank you; how are
you?"
Florence gave him her hand, and said she
was very well.
"I'm very well, indeed," said Mr. Toots,
taking a chair. "Very well, indeed, I am.
I don't remember," said Mr. Toots, after re-
flecting a little," that I was ever better, thank
you."
"It's very kind of you to
ence, taking up her work.
to see you."
come," said Flor-
"I am very glad
Mr. Toots responded with a chuckle. Think-
ing that might be too lively, he corrected it with
a sigh. Thinking that might be too melan-
choly, he corrected it with a chuckle. Not
thoroughly pleasing himself with either mode
of reply, he breathed hard.
*
Dombey and Son, Chap. 18.
*
*
*
*
38
BATTLE-FIELD
once at mothers' breasts sought mothers' eyes
or slumbered happily. Heaven keep us from
knowledge of the secrets whispered afterwards
upon the tainted wind that blew across the
scene of that day's work and that night's death
and suffering! Many a lonely moon was
bright upon the battle-ground, and many a star
kept mournful watch upon it, and many a wind
from every quarter of the earth blew over it, be-
fore the traces of the fight were worn away.
They lurked and lingered for a long time,
but survived in little things; for Nature, far
above the evil passions of men, soon recovered
her serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle-
ground as she had done before, when it was
innocent. The larks sang high above it; the
swallows skimmed and dipped and flitted to
and fro; the shadows of the flying clouds pur-
sued each other swiftly, over grass and corn and
turnip-field and wood, and over roof and church-
spire in the nestling town among the trees,
away into the bright distance on the borders
of the sky and earth, where the red sunsets
faded. Crops were sown, and grew up, and
were gathered in the stream that had been
crimsoned, turned a water-mill; men whistled
at the plough; gleaners and haymakers were
seen in quiet groups at work; sheep and oxen
pastured; boys whooped and called, in fields,
to scare away the birds; smoke rose from cot-
tage chimneys; sabbath bells rang peacefully;
old people lived and died; the timid creatures
of the field, and simple flowers of the bush and
garden, grew and withered in their destined
terms; and all upon the fierce and bloody
battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands
had been killed in the great fight.
So shy was Mr. Toots on such occasions, and
so flurried! But Lady Skettles entering at the
moment, Mr. Toots was suddenly seized with a
passion for asking her how she did, and hoping
she was very well; nor could Mr. Toots by any
possibility leave off shaking hands with her, But there were deep green patches in the
until Sir Barnet appeared: to whom he imme-growing corn at first, that people looked at
diately clung with the tenacity of desperation.
"We are losing, to-day, Toots," said Sir
Barnet, turning towards Florence, "the light
of our house, I assure you."
(C
"
Oh, it's of no conseq—I mean yes, to be
sure," faltered the embarrassed Toots. GOOD
morning!"-Dombey and Son, Chap. 28.
BATTLE-FIELD-An old.
Once upon a time, it matters little when, and
in stalwart England, it matters little where, a
fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a
long summer day when the waving grass was
green. Many a wild flower formed by the
Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for
the dew, felt its enamelled cup filled high
with blood that day, and shrinking dropped.
Many an insect deriving its delicate color from
harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew
that day by dying men, and marked its fright-
ened way with an unnatural track. The paint-
ed butterfly took blood into the air upon the
edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The
trodden ground became a quagmire, whence,
from sullen pools collected in the prints of
human feet and horses' hoofs, the one prevail
ing hue still lowered and glimmered at the
sun.
Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the
sights the moon beheld upon that field, when,
coming up above the black line of distant rising
ground, softened and blurred at the edge by
trees, she rose into the sky and looked upon
the plain, strewn with upturned faces that had
awfully. Year after year they reappeared; and
it was known that underneath those fertile
spots, heaps of men and horses lay buried, in-
discriminately, enriching the ground. The
husbandmen who ploughed those places shrun!
from the great worms abounding there; and
the sheaves they yielded were, for many a long
year, called the Battle Sheaves, and set apart;
and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be
among the last load at a Harvest Home. For
a long time, every furrow that was turned re-
vealed some fragments of the fight. For a long
time there were wounded trees upon the battle-
ground; and scraps of hacked and broken fence
and wall, where deadly struggles had been
made; and trampled parts where not a leaf or
blade would grow. For a long time no village
girl would dress her hair or bosom with the
sweetest flower from that field of death: and
after many a year had come and gone, the ber-
ries growing there were still believed to leave
too deep a stain upon the hand that plucked
them.
The Seasons in their course, however, though
they passed as lightly as the summer clouds
themselves, obliterated, in the lapse of time,
even these remains of the old conflict, and
wore away such legendary traces of it as the
neighboring people carried in their minds, un-
til they dwindled into old wives' tales, dimly
remembered round the winter fire, and waning
every year. Where the wild flowers and berries
had so long remained upon the stem untouch-
ed, gardens arose, and houses were built, and
BEAUTY
children played at battles on the turf. The
wounded trees had long ago made Christmas
logs, and blazed and roared away. The deep
green patches were no greener now than the
memory of those who lay in dust below. The
ploughshare still turned up from time to time
some rusty bits of metal, but it was hard to say
what use they had ever served, and those who
found them wondered and disputed. An old
dinted corslet, and a helmet, had been hanging
in the church so long, that the same weak, half-
blind old man who tried in vain to make them
out above the whitewashed arch, had marvelled
at them as a baby. If the host slain upon the
field could have been for a moment reanimated
in the forms in which they fell, each upon the
spot that was the bed of his untimely death,
gashed and ghastly soldiers would have stared
in, hundreds deep, at household door and win-
dow; and would have risen on the hearths of
quiet homes; and would have been the garner-
ed store of barns and granaries; and would
have started up between the cradled infant and
its nurse; and would have floated with the
stream, and whirled round on the mill, and
crowded the orchard, and burdened the meadow,
and piled the rickyard high with dying men.
So altered was the battle-ground, where thou-
sands upon thousands had been killed in the
great fight.—Battle of Life, Chap. 1.
BEAUTY—A grinning skull beneath.
"I am not a man to be moved by a pretty
face," muttered Ralph sternly. "There is a
grinning skull beneath it, and men like me,
who look and work below the surface, see that,
and not its delicate covering."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 31.
BED-"An out-an-outer."
Mr. Weller proceeded to inquire which
was the individual bedstead that Mr. Roker
had so flatteringly described as an out-an-outer
to sleep in.
39
BED-ROOM
himself of his shoes and gaiters. He then took
off and folded up his coat, waistcoat, and neck-
cloth, and slowly drawing on his tasseled night- .
cap, secured it firmly on his head, by tying
beneath his chin the strings which he always
had attached to that article of dress. It was at
this moment that the absurdity of his recent be-
wilderment struck upon his mind. Throwing
himself back in the rush-bottomed chair, Mr.
Pickwick laughed to himself so heartily, that it
would have been quite delightful to any man
of well-constituted mind to have watched the
smiles that expanded his amiable features as
they shone forth from beneath the night-cap.
"It is the best idea," said Mr. Pickwick to
himself, smiling till he almost cracked the
night-cap strings: "it is the best idea, my los-
ing myself in this place, and wandering about
those staircases, that I ever heard of. Droll,
droll, very droll." Here Mr. Pickwick smiled
again, a broader smile than before, and was
about to continue the process of undressing,
in the best possible humor, when he was sud-
denly stopped by a most unexpected interrup-
tion; to wit, the entrance into the room of some
person with a candle, who, after locking the
door, advanced to the dressing-table, and set
down the light upon it.
The smile that played on Mr. Pickwick's fea-
tures was instantaneously lost in a look of the
most unbounded and wonder-stricken surprise.
The person, whoever it was, had come in so
suddenly and with so little noise, that Mr.
Pickwick had had no time to call out, or oppose
their entrance. Who could it be? A rob-
ber? Some evil-minded person who had seen
him come up-stairs with a handsome watch in
his hand, perhaps. What was he to do!
The only way in which Mr. Pickwick could
catch a glimpse of his mysterious visitor with
the least danger of being seen himself, was by
creeping on to the bed, and peeping out from
between the curtains on the opposite side.
To this manoeuvre he accordingly resorted.
"That's it,” replied Mr. Roker, pointing to a Keeping the curtains carefully closed with his
very rusty one in a corner. It would make hand, so that nothing more of him could be
any one go to sleep, that bedstead would, wheth-seen than his face and night-cap, and putting
er they wanted to or not."
on his spectacles, he mustered up courage, and
looked out.
"I should think," said Sam, eyeing the piece
of furniture in question with a look of exces-
sive disgust, “I should think poppies was noth-
ing to it.'
'Nothing at all," said Mr. Roker.
"And I s'pose," said Sam, with a sidelong
glance at his master, as if to see whether there
were any symptoms of his determination being
shaken by what passed, "I s'pose the other
gen'l'men as sleeps here, are gen'l'men ?"
"Nothing but it," said Mr. Roker. "One of
'em takes his twelve pints of ale a-day, and
never leaves off smoking even at his meals."
"He must be a first-rater," said Sam.
"A 1,” replied Mr. Roker.
Nothing daunted, even by this intelligence,
Mr. Pickwick smilingly announced his deter-
mination to test the powers of the narcotic
bedstead for that night,
Pickwick Papers, Chap. 41.
BED-ROOM-Pickwick in the wrong.
Having carefully drawn the curtains of his
bed on the outside, Mr. Pickwick sat down on
the rush-bottomed chair, and leisurely divested
Mr. Pickwick almost fainted with horror and
dismay. Standing before the dressing-glass
was a middle-aged lady, in yellow curl-papers,
busily engaged in brushing what ladies call
their "back hair." However the unconscious
middle-aged lady came into that room, it was
quite clear that she contemplated remaining
there for the night; for she had brought a
rushlight and shade with her, which, with
praiseworthy precaution against fire, she had
stationed in a basin on the floor, where it was
glimmering away, like a gigantic light-house in
à particularly small piece of water.
"Bless my soul," thought Mr. Pickwick,
"what a dreadful thing!
"Hem!" said the lady; and in went Mr.
Pickwick's head with automaton-like rapidity.
"I never met with anything so awful as this,"
thought poor Mr. Pickwick, the cold perspira-
tion starting in drops upon his night-cap.
"Never. This is fearful."
It was quite impossible to resist the urgent
desire to see what was going forward. So out
went Mr. Pickwick's head again. The prospect
BED-ROOM
was worse than before. The middle-aged lady
had finished arranging her hair: had carefully
enveloped it in a muslin night-cap with a small
plaited border; and was gazing pensively on the
fire.
40
"This matter is growing alarming," reasoned
Mr. Pickwick with himself. "I can't allow
things to go on in this way. By the self-pos-
session of that lady it is clear to me that I must
have come into the wrong room. If I call out
she'll alarm the house; but if I remain here the
consequences will be still more frightful."
BED-ROOM
"I am almost ready to sink, Ma'am, beneath
the confusion of addressing a lady in my night
cap (here the lady hastily snatched off hers),
but I can't get it off, Ma'am (here Mr. Pickwick
gave it a tremendous tug, in proof of the state-
ment). It is evident to me, Ma'am, now, that
I have mistaken this bed-room for my own.
I
had not been here five minutes, Ma'am, when
you suddenly entered it."
"If this improbable story be really true,
sir," said the lady, sobbing violently, "you will
leave it instantly.'
"I will, Ma'am, with the greatest pleasure,"
Instantly, sir," said the lady.
Mr. Pickwick, it is quite unnecessary to say,
was one of the most modest and delicate-mind-replied Mr. Pickwick.
ed of mortals. The very idea of exhibiting his
night-cap to a lady overpowered him, but he
had tied those confounded strings in a knot, and
do what he would, he couldn't get it off. The
disclosure must be made. There was only one
other way of doing it. He shrunk behind the
curtains, and called out very loudly:
"Ha-hum !"
That the lady started at this unexpected
sound was evident, by her falling up against
the rush-light shade; that she persuaded her-
self it must have been the effect of imagination
was equally clear, for when Mr. Pickwick, under
the impression that she had fainted away stone-
dead from fright, ventured to peep out again,
she was gazing pensively on the fire as before.
"Most extraordinary female this," thought
Mr. Pickwick, popping in again.
hum!"
Certainly, Ma'am," interposed Mr. Pick
wick very quickly. "Certainly, Ma'am. I—I—
am very sorry, Ma'am," said Mr. Pickwick,
making his appearance at the bottom of the
bed, "to have been the innocent occasion of
this alarm and emotion; deeply sorry, Ma'am."
The lady pointed to the door. One ex-
cellent quality of Mr. Pickwick's character was
beautifully displayed at this moment, under the
most trying circumstances. Although he had
hastily put on his hat over his night-cap, after
the manner of the old patrol; although he car-
ried his shoes and gaiters in his hand, and his
coat and waistcoat over his arm, nothing
could subdue his native politeness.
"I am exceedingly sorry, Ma'am," said Mr.
"Ha-Pickwick, bowing very low.
These last sounds, so like those in which, as
legends inform us, the ferocious giant Blunder-
bore was in the habit of expressing his opinion
that it was time to lay the cloth, were too dis-
tinctly audible to be again mistaken for the
workings of fancy.
"Gracious Heaven!" said the middle aged
lady, "what is that?”
"It's it's only a gentleman, Ma'am," said
Mr. Pickwick from behind the curtains.
"A gentleman!" said the lady, with a ter-
rific scream.
“It's all over!" thought Mr. Pickwick.
'A strange man! shrieked the lady.
Another instant and the house would be alarm-
ed. Her garments rustled as she rushed to-
wards the door.
Ma'am," said Mr. Pickwick, thrusting out
his head, in the extremity of his desperation,
'Ma'am!"
Now, although Mr. Pickwick was not actuated
by any definite object in putting out his head,
it was instantaneously productive of a good
effect. The lady, as we have already stated,
was near the door. She must pass it, to reach
the staircase, and she would most undoubtedly
have done so by this time, had not the sudden
apparition of Mr. Pickwick's night-cap driven
her back into the remotest corner of the apart-
ment, where she stood staring wildly at Mr.
Pickwick, while Mr. Pickwick in his turn
stared wildly at her.
"Wretch," said the lady, covering her eyes
with her hands, "what do you want here?"
Nothing, Ma'am; nothing, whatever,
Ma'am;" said Mr. Pickwick earnestly.
"
'Nothing!" said the lady, looking up.
"Nothing, Ma'am, upon my honor," said Mr.
Pickwick, nodding his head so energetically
that the tassel of his night-cap danced again.
|
"If you are, sir, you will at once leave the
room," said the lady.
"
Immediately, Ma'am ; this instant, Ma'am,
said Mr. Pickwick, opening the door, and drop-
ping both his shoes with a crash in so doing.
"I trust, Ma'am," resumed Mr. Pickwick,
gathering up his shoes, and turning round to
bow again: "I trust, Ma'am, that my unblem-
ished character, and the devoted respect I en-
tertain for your sex, will plead as some slight
excuse for this-" But before Mr. Pickwick could
conclude the sentence the lady had thrust him
into the passage, and locked and bolted the
door behind him.
*
*
*
*
*
*
Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, suddenly appear-
ing before him, "where's my bedroom?"
Mr. Weller stared at his master with the
most emphatic surprise; and it was not until
the question had been repeated three several
times, that he turned round, and led the way to
the long-sought apartment.
"Sam," said Mr. Pickwick as he got into bed,
"I have made one of the most extraordinary
mistakes to-night, that ever were heard of."
Wery likely, sir," replied Mr. Weller drily.
"But of this I am determined, Sam," said
Mr. Pickwick; "that if I were to stop in this
house for six months, I would never trust my-
self about it, alone, again."
"That's the wery prudentest resolution as
you could come to, sir," replied Mr. Weller,
"You rayther want somebody to look arter you
sir, wen your judgment goes out a wisitin"."
"What do you mean by that, Sam?" said
Mr. Pickwick. He raised himself in bed and
extended his hand, as if he were about to say
something more; but suddenly checking him-
self, turned round, and bade his valet "Good
night."
Good night, sir," replied Mr. Weller. He

пиши
PICKWICK IN THE WRONG BEDROOM.
40
BEDSTEAD
paused when he got outside the door-shook
his head-walked on-stopped-snuffed the
candle-shook his head again-and finally pro-
ceeded slowly to his chamber, apparently buried
in the profoundest meditation.
Pickwick, Chap. 22.
BEDSTEAD-A despotic monster.
It was a sort of vault or the ground-floor at
the back, with a despotic monster of a four-post
bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place,
putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fire-
place and another into the door-way, and squeez-
ing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a
Divinely Righteous manner.
Great Expectations, Chap. 45.
BEDSTEADS-The characteristics of.
A turn-up bedstead is a blunt, honest piece
of furniture; it may be slightly disguised with
a sham drawer; and sometimes a mad attempt
is even made to pass it off for a book-case; or-
nament it as you will, however, the turn-up
bedstead seems to defy disguise, and to insist
on having it distinctly understood that he is a
on having it distinctly understood that he is a
turn-up bedstead, and nothing else—that he is
indispensably necessary, and that, being so use-
ful, he disdains to be ornamental.
How different is the demeanor of a sofa bed-
stead! 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 vir-
tues of a bed; every man who keeps a sofa
bedstead in his house, becomes a party to a wil-
ful and designing fraud-we question whether
you could insult him more than by insinuating
that you entertain the least suspicion of its real
·Scenes, Chap. 21.
use.
BEES-As models of industry.
41
Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast
as he had been over-night. There was honey
on the table, and it leď him into a discourse
about Bees. He had no objection to honey, he
said (and I should think he had not, for he
seemed to like it), but he protested against the
overweening assumptions of Bees. He didn't at
all see why the busy Bee should be proposed as
a model to him; he supposed the Bee liked to
make honey, or he wouldn't do it-nobody
asked him. It was not necessary for the Bee
to make such a merit of his tastes.
If every
BEGGARS
pole to be the Drone philosophy, and he
thought it a very good philosophy-always sup
posing the Drone to be willing to be on gcod
terms with the Bee: which, so far as he knew,
the easy fellow always was, if the consequential
creature would only let him, and not be so con-
ceited about his honey!-Bleak House, Chap. 3
BEES—Their example a humbug.
'But there's nothing like work. Look at
the bees."
I beg your pardon," returned Eugene, with
a reluctant smile, "but you will excuse my
mentioning that I always protest against being
referred to the bees."
"Do you?" said Boffin.
"I object on principle," said Eugene, “as a
biped-
"As a what?" asked Mr. Boffin.
principle, as a two-footed creature, to being
"As a two-footed creature ;-I object on
creatures. I object to being required to model
constantly referred to insects and four-footed
of the bee, or the dog, or the spider, or the
my proceedings according to the proceedings
of the bee, or the dog, or the spider, or the
camel. I fully admit that the camel, for in-
stance, is an excessively temperate person; hut
he has several stomachs to entertain himself
with, and I have only one. Besides, I am not
fitted up with a convenient cool cellar to keep
my drink in."
"But I said, you know," urged Boffin, rather
"the bee."
at a loss for an answer,
it's injudicious to say the bee? for the whole
Exactly. And may I represent to you that
it's injudicious to say the bee? for the whole
there is any analogy between a bee and a man
case is assumed. Conceding for a moment that
in a shirt and pantaloons (which I deny), and
that it is settled that the man is to learn from
the bee (which I also deny), the question still
remains, what is he to learn? To imitate ?
Or to avoid? When your friends the bees
worry themselves to that highly fluttered ex-
tent about their sovereign, and become per-
fectly distracted touching the slightest mon-
archical movement, are we men to learn the
greatness of Tuft-hunting, or the littleness of
the Court Circular? I am not clear, Mr. Boffin,
but that the hive may be satirical."
"At all events, they work," said Mr. Boffin.
Ye-es," returned Eugene, disparagingly,
they work; but don't you think they overdo it?
They work so much more than they need—they
make so much more than they can eat-they
are so incessantly boring and buzzing at their
don't you think they overdo it? And are
one idea till Death comes upon them-that
human laborers to have no holidays, because of
the bees? And am I never to have change of
air, because the bees don't? Mr. Boffin, I
think honey excellent at breakfast; but, regard-
ed in the light of my conventional schoolmaster
and moralist, I protest against the tyrannical
humbug of your friend the bee."
confectioner went buzzing about the world,
banging against everything that came in his
way, and egotistically calling upon everybody
to take notice that he was going to his work
and must not be interrupted, the world would
be quite an unsupportable place. Then, after
all, it was a ridiculous position, to be smoked
out of your fortune with brimstone, as soon as
you had made it. You would have a very mean
opinion of a Manchester man, if he spun cot-
ton for no other purpose. He must say he
thought a Drone the embodiment of a plea-
santer and wiser idea. The Drone said, un-
affectedly, "You will excuse me; I really can-
not attend to the shop! I find myself in a BEGGARS—in Italian churches.
world in which there is so much to see, and so There is a very interesting subterranean
short a time to see it in, that I must take the church here; the roof supported by marble pil-
liberty of looking about me, and begging to be lars, behind each of which there seemed to be
provided for by somebody who doesn't want to at least one beggar in ambush: to say nothing
Look about him." This appeared to Mr. Skim- of the tombs and secluded altars. From every
|
Our Mutual Friend, Chap. 8.
BEGGARS
42
BEGGARS
to every luxury of life (except spelling), who
little thought, when their gallant fathers waged
war in the Peninsula, that they would ever have
to appeal to those whom Providence, in its
one of these lurking-places, such crowds of
phantom-looking men and women, leading
other men and women with twisted limbs, or
chattering jaws, or paralytic gestures, or idiotic
heads, or some other sad infirmity, came hob-inscrutable wisdom, has blessed with untolà
bling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in
the cathedral above had been suddenly anima-
ted, and had retired to this lower church, they
could hardly have made a greater confusion, or
exhibited a more confounding display of arms
and legs.-Pictures from Italy.
BEGGARS-Italian.
|
gold, and from among whom they select the
name of Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, for a
maiden effort in this wise, understanding that
he has such a heart as never was. The Secre-
tary learns, too, that confidence between man
and wife would seem to obtain but rarely when
virtue is in distress, so numerous are the wives
who take up their pens to ask Mr. Boffin for
A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they money without the knowledge of their devoted
are! All beggars; but that's nothing. Look husbands, who would never permit it; while,
at them as they gather round. Some are too
Some are too on the other hand, so numerous are the hus
indolent to come down-stairs, or are too wise- bands who take up their pens to ask Mr. Boffin
ly mistrustful of the stairs, perhaps, to venture; for money without the knowledge of their de
so stretch out their lean hands from upper win-voted wives, who would instantly go out of their
dows, and howl; others come flocking about senses if they had the least suspicion of the
us, fighting and jostling one another, and de- circumstance. There are the inspired beggars,
manding, incessantly, charity for the love of too. These were sitting, only yesterday even-
God, charity for the love of the Blessed Vir- ing, musing over a fragment of candle which
gin, charity for the love of all the Saints. A must soon go out and leave them in the dark
group of miserable children, almost naked, for the rest of their nights, when surely some
screaming forth the same petition, discover Angel whispered the name of Nicodemus Bof-
that they can see themselves reflected in the fin, Esquire, to their souls, imparting rays of
varnish of the carriage, and begin to dance hope, nay, confidence, to which they had long
and make grimaces, that they may have the been strangers! Akin to these are the sugges
pleasure of seeing their antics repeated in this tively-befriended beggars. They were partak-
mirror. A crippled idiot, in the act of striking ing of a cold potato and water by the flick-
one of them who drowns his clamorous de- ering and gloomy light of a lucifer-match, in
mand for charity, observes his angry counter- their lodgings (rent considerably in arrear, and
part in the panel, stops short, and thrusting out heartless landlady threatening expulsion "like
his tongue, begins to wag his head and chat- a dog" into the streets), when a gifted friend
ter. The shrill cry raised at this, awakens half happening to look in, said, "Write immediate-
a dozen wild creatures wrapped in frowsy ly to Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire," and would
brown cloaks, who are lying on the church- take no denial. There are the nobly indepen-
steps with pots and pans for sale. These, dent beggars too. These, in the days of their
scrambling up, approach, and beg defiantly. "I abundance, ever regarded gold as dross, and
am hungry. Give me something. Listen to have not yet got over that only impediment in
me, Signor. I am hungry!" Then, a ghastly the way of their amassing wealth, but they
old woman, fearful of being too late, comes want no dross from Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire ;
hobbling down the street, stretching out one No, Mr. Boffin; the world may term it pride,
hand, and scratching herself all the way with paltry pride if you will, but they wouldn't take
the other, and screaming, long before she can it if you offered it; a loan, sir-for fourteen
be heard, "Charity, charity! I'll go and pray weeks to the day, interest calculated at the rate
for you directly, beautiful lady, if you'll give of five per cent. per annum, to be bestowed
me charity!" Lastly, the members of a broth-upon any charitable institution you may name
erhood for burying the dead-hideously mask--is all they want of you, and if you have the
ed, and attired in shabby black robes, white at meanness to refuse it, count on being despised
the skirts, with the splashes of many muddy by these great spirits. There are the beggars
winters, escorted by a dirty priest, and a con- of punctual business habits too. These will
genial cross-bearer-come hurrying past. Sur- make an end of themselves at a quarter to one
rounded by this motley concourse, we move out P. M. on Tuesday, if no Post-office order is in
of Fondi; bad bright eyes glaring at us, out of the interim received from Nicodemus Boffin,
the darkness of every crazy tenement, like Esquire; arriving after a quarter to one P. M.
glistening fragments of its filth and putrefac- on Tuesday, it need not be sent, as they will
tion.-Pictures from Italy.
then (having made an exact memorandum of
the heartless circumstances) be “cold in death."
There are the beggars on horseback too, in an-
other sense from the sense of the proverb. These
are mounted and ready to start on the highway to
affluence. The goal is before them, the road is
in the best condition, their spurs are on, the
steed is willing, but at the last moment, for
want of some special thing-a clock, a violin,
an astronomical telescope, an electrifying ma-
chine-they must dismount for ever, unless they
receive its equivalent in money from Nicode-
mus Boffin, Esquire. Less given to detail are
the beggars who make sporting ventures.
These, usually to be addressed in eply under
BEGGARS-of society: the
·
But there are, besides, the individual beg-
gars; and how does the heart of the Secretary
fail him when he has to cope with them! And
they must be coped with to some extent, be-
cause they all enclose documents (they call their
scraps documents; but they are, as to papers
deserving the name, what minced veal is to a
calf), the non-return of which would be their
ruin. That is to say, they are utterly ruined
now,
but they would be more utterly ruined
then. Among these correspondents are several
daughters of general officers, long accustomed
|
BEGGING-LETTER WRITER
initials at a country post-office, inquire in femi-
nine hands, Dare one who cannot disclose her-
self to Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, but whose
name might startle him were it revealed, solicit
the immediate advance of two hundred pounds
from unexpected riches exercising their noblest
privilege in the trust of a common humanity?
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 17.
BEGGING-LETTER WRITER-The.
43
I ought to know something of the Beg-
ging-Letter Writer. He has beseiged my door,
at all hours of the day and night; he has fought |
my servant; he has lain in ambush for me, go-
ing out and coming in; he has followed me out
of town into the country; he has appeared at
provincial hotels, where I have been staying for
only a few hours; he has written to me from
immense distances, when I have been out of
England. He has fallen sick; he has died, and
been buried; he has come to life again, and
again departed from this transitory scene; he
has been his own son, his own mother, his own
baby, his idiot brother, his uncle, his aunt, his |
aged grandfather. He has wanted a great coat,
to go to India in; a pound to set him up in life
for ever; a pair of boots, to take him to the
coast of China; a hat, to get him into a per-
manent situation under Government. He has
frequently been exactly seven-and-sixpence
short of independence. He has had such open-
ings at Liverpool-posts of great trust and con-
fidence in merchants' houses, which nothing but
seven-and-sixpence was wanting to him to se-
cure that I wonder he is not Mayor of that
flourishing town at the present moment.
The natural phenomena of which he has been
the victim, are of a most astounding nature.
He has had two children, who have never grown
up; who have never had anything to cover them
at night; who have been continually driving
him mad, by asking in vain for food; who have
never come out of fevers and measles (which, I
suppose, has accounted for his fuming his let-
ters with tobacco smoke as a disinfectant); who
have never changed in the least degree, through
fourteen long revolving years. As to his wife,
what that suffering woman has undergone, no-
body knows. She has always been in an inter-
esting situation through the same long period,
and has never been confined yet. His devotion
to her has been unceasing. He has never cared
for himself; he could have perished—he would
rather, in short-but was it not his Christian
duty as a man, a husband, and a father, to write
begging letters when he looked at her? (He
has usually remarked that he would call in the
evening for an answer to this question.)
He has been the sport of the strangest mis-
fortunes. What his brother has done to him
would have broken anybody else's heart. His
brother went into business with him, and ran
away with the money; his brother got him to
be security for an immense sum, and left him to
pay it; his brother would have given him em-
ployment to the tune of hundreds a year, if he
would have consented to write letters on a Sun-
day; his brother enunciated principles incom-
patible with his religious views, and he could
not (in consequence) permit his brother to pro-
vide for him. His landlord has never shown a
spark of human feeling. When he put in that
execution I don't know, but he has never taken
BELLS
it out.
The broker's man has grown gray in
possession. They will have to bury him some
day.
He has been attached to every conceivable
pursuit. He has been in the army, in the navy,
in the church, in the law; connected with the
press, the fine arts, public institutions, every de-
scription and grade of business. He has been
brought up as a gentleman: he has been at
every college in Oxford and Cambridge; he
can quote Latin in his letters (but generally
mis-spells some minor English word); he can
tell you what Shakespeare says about begging,
better than you know it. It is to be observed,
that in the midst of his afflictions he always
reads the newspapers; and rounds off his ap-
peals with some allusion, that may be supposed
to be in my way, to the popular subject of the
hour.
His life presents a series of inconsistencies.
Sometimes he has never written such a letter
before. He blushes with shame. That is the
first time; that shall be the last. Don't answer
it, and let it be understood that, then, he will
kill himself quietly. Sometimes (and more fre-
quently) he has written a few such letters. Then
he encloses the answers, with an intimation that
they are of inestimable value to him, and a re-
quest that they may be carefully returned. He
is fond of enclosing something-verses, letters,
pawnbrokers' duplicates, anything to necessitate
an answer. He is very severe upon
"the pam-
pered minion of fortune," who refused him the
half-sovereign referred to in the enclosure
number two--but he knows me better.
He writes in a variety of styles; sometimes
in low spirits; sometimes quite jocosely. When
he is in low spirits, he writes down-hill, and
repeats words these little indications being
expressive of the perturbation of his mind.
When he is more vivacious, he is frank with
me; he is quite the agreeable rattle. I know
what human nature is-who better? Well!
He had a little money once, and he ran through
it as many men have done before him. He
finds his old friends turn away from him now-
many men have done that before him, too!
Shall he tell me why he writes to me? Be-
cause he has no kind of claim upon me.
puts it on that ground, plainly; and begs to
ask for the loan (as I know human_nature) of
two sovereigns, to be repaid next Tuesday six
weeks, before twelve at noon.
*
*
*
*
*
*
He
The poor never write these letters. Nothing
could be more unlike their habits. The writers
are public robbers; and we who support them
are parties to their depredations. They trade
upon every circumstance within their know-
ledge that affects us, public or private, joyful or
sorrowful; they pervert the lessons of our lives;
they change what ought to be our strength and
virtue, into weakness and encouragement of
vice. There is a plain remedy, and it is in our
own hands. We must resolve, at any sacrifice
of feeling, to be deaf to such appeals, and crush
the trade.-Reprinted Pieces.
BELLS-The associations of Sunday.
It was Sunday evening in London, gloomy,
close, and stale. Maddening church bells of
all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, crack-
ed and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and
BELLS
44
BELL
mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in mind has ever pictured in its wildest dreams
a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of had risen up before him, he could not have stag-
the people who were condemned to look at gered backward from its touch, as he did from
them out of windows, in dire despondency. In the first sound of that loud iron voice. With
every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and eyes that started from his head, his limbs con-
down almost every turning, some doleful bell vulsed, his face most horrible to see, he raised
was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague one arm high up into the air, and holding some-
were in the city and the dead-carts were going thing visionary, back and down, with his other
round. Everything was bolted and barred that hand, drove at it as though he held a knife and
could by possibility furnish relief to an over- stabbed it to the heart. He clutched his hair,
worked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar an- and stopped his ears, and travelled madly round
imals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or and round; then gave a frightful cry, and with
artificial wonders of the ancient world-all it rushed away: still, still, the Bell tolled on
taboo with that enlightened strictness that the and seemed to follow him-louder and louder,
ugly South Sea gods in the British Museum hotter and hotter yet. The glare grew bright-
might have supposed themselves at home again. er, the roar of voices deeper; the crash of
Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. heavy bodies falling, shook the air; bright
Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. streams of sparks rose up into the sky; but
Nothing to change the brooding mind, or louder than them all-rising faster far, to Heav
raise it up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do, en-a million times more fierce and furious-
|
but to compare the monotony of his seventh day pouring forth dreadful secrets after its long si-
with the monotony of his six days, think what a lence-speaking the language of the dead-the
weary life he led, and make the best of it-or Bell-the Bell!
the worst, according to the probabilities.
**
*
*
*
*
*
Mr. Arthur Clennam sat in the window of
the coffee-house on Ludgate Hill, counting one
of the neighboring bells, making sentences and
burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself,
and wondering how many sick people it might
be the death of in the course of a year. As the
hour approached, its changes of measure made
it more and more exasperating. At the quar-
ter, it went off into a condition of deadly lively
importunity, urging the populace in a voluble
manner to Come to church, Come to church,
Come to church! At the ten minutes, it be-
came aware that the congregation would be
scanty, and slowly hammered out in low spirits,
They won't come, they won't come, they won't
come! At the five minutes it abandoned hope,
and shook every house in the neighborhood for
three hundred seconds, with one dismal swing
per second, as a groan of despair.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3.
BELLS-Grown worldly.
Since the time of noble Whittington, fair
flower of merchants, bells have come to have
less sympathy with humankind. They only
ring for money and on state occasions. Wan-
derers have increased in number; ships leave
the Thames for distant regions, carrying from
stem to stern no other cargo; the bells are si-
lent; they ring out no entreaties or regrets;
they are used to it and have grown worldly.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 31.
BELL-The voice of the alarm.
This time Mr. Willet indicated it correctly.
The man was hurrying to the door, when sud-
denly there came towards them, on the wind,
the loud and rapid tolling of an alarm bell,
and then a bright and vivid glare streamed up,
which illumined, not only the whole chamber,
but all the country.
It was not the sudden change from darkness
to this dreadful light, it was not the sound of
distant shrieks and shouts of triumph, it was
not this dread invasion of the serenity and
peace of night, that drove the man back as
though a thunderbolt had struck him. It was
the Bell. If the ghastliest shape the human
What hunt of spectres could surpass that
dread pursuit and flight! Had there been a
legion of them on his track, he could have bet-
ter borne it.
ter borne it. They would have had a begin-
ning and an end, but here all space was full.
The one pursuing voice was everywhere it
sounded in the earth, the air; shook the long
grass, and howled among the trembling trees.
The echoes caught it up, the owls hooted as it
flew upon the breeze, the nightingale was silent
and hid herself among the thickest boughs: it
seemed to goad and urge the angry fire, and
lash it into madness; everything was steeped in
one prevailing red; the glow was everywhere;
nature was drenched in blood: still the remorse-
less crying of that awful voice-the Bell-the
Bell!
It ceased; but not in his ears. The knell
was at his heart. No work of man had ever
voice like that which sounded there, and warn-
ed him that it cried unceasingly to Heaven.
Who could hear that bell, and not know what
it said! There was murder in its every note-
cruel, relentless, savage murder-the murder of
a confiding man, by one who held his every
trust. Its ringing summoned phantoms from
their graves. What face was that, in which a
friendly smile changed to a look of half incred-
ulous horror, which stiffened for a moment into
one of pain, then changed again into an im-
ploring glance at Heaven, and so fell idly
down with upturned eyes, like the dead stags
he had often peeped at when a little child,
shrinking and shuddering-there was a dread-
ful thing to think of now!-and clinging to an
apron as he looked! He sank upon the ground,
and grovelling down as if he would dig himself
a place to hide in, covered his face and ears
but no, no, no-a hundred walls and roofs of
brass would not shut out that bell, for in it
spoke the wrathful voice of God, and from that
voice, the whole wide universe could not affora
a refuge !-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 55.
BELL- -Its vibrations.
The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff
old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge
out of a Gothic window in the wall, became in-
visible, and struck the hours and quarters in the
clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as
BELLS
45
BELLS
if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were
there.-Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
BELLS-Church.
So many bells are ringing, when I stand un-
decided at a street corner, that every sheep in
the ecclesiastical fold might be a bell-wether.
The discordance is fearful. My state of inde-
cision is referable to, and about equally divisi-
ble among, four great churches, which are all
within sight and sound-all within the space of
a few square yards. As I stand at the street
corner, I don't see as many as four people at
once going to church, though I see as many as
four churches with their steeples clamoring for
people.- Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 9.
BELLS-At midnight.
When a church clock strikes on houseless
ears in the dead of the night, it may be at first
mistaken for company, and hailed as such. But
as the spreading circles of vibration, which you
may perceive at such a time with great clearness,
go opening out, for ever and ever afterwards
widening perhaps (as the philosopher has sug-
gested) in eternal space, the mistake is rectified,
and the sense of loneliness is profounder.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13.
they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the
wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against
it when it took an adverse whim, they would
pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear
right royally; and bent on being heard, on
stormy nights, by some poor mother watching
a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband
was at sea, they had been sometimes known to
beat a blustering Nor' Wester; aye,
"all to
fits," as Toby Veck said—
*
*
*
*
*
*
For, being but a simple man, he invested them
with a strange and solemn character. They
were so mysterious, often heard and never seen ;
so high up, so far off, so full of such deep strong
melody, that he regarded them with a species
of awe and sometimes when he looked up at
the dark, arched windows in the tower, he half
expected to be beckoned to by something which
was not a Bell, and yet what he heard so often
sounding in the Chimes.
*
*
*
*
*
*
As he was stooping to sit down, the Chimes
rang.
"Amen!" said Trotty, pulling off his hat
and looking up towards them.
"Amen to the Bells, father?" cried Meg.
They broke in like a grace, my dear," said
Trotty, taking his seat. They'd say a good
one, I am sure, if they could. Many's the kind
thing they say to me.
แ
"The Bells do, father!" laughed Meg, as
she set the basin, and a knife and fork before
him. "Well!"
BELL-The last stroke of the year.
We have scarcely written the last word of
the previous sentence, when the first stroke of
twelve peals from the neighboring churches.
There certainly-we must confess it-is some-
thing awful in the sound. Strictly speaking, it
may not be more impressive now than at any "Seem to, my Pet," said Trotty, falling to
other time; for the hours steal as swiftly on at with great vigor. "And where's the difference?
other periods, and their flight is little heeded. If I hear 'em, what does it matter whether they
But we measure man's life by years, and it is a speak it or not? Why bless you, my dear,"
solemn knell that warns us we have passed an- said Toby, pointing at the tower with his fork,
other of the landmarks which stand between us and becoming more animated under the influ-
and the grave. Disguise it as we may, the re-ence of dinner, "how often have I heard them
flection 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 glow within us now.
Sketches (Characters), Chap. 3.
BELLS—The Chimes.
High up in the steeple of an old church, far
above the light and murmur of the town and
far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the
wild and dreary place at night: and high up in
the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes
I tell of.
They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries
ago, these Bells had been baptized by bishops:
so many centuries ago, that the register of their
baptism was lost long, long before the memory
of man, and no one knew their names. They
had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these
Bells (for my own part, by the way, I would
rather incur the responsibility of being God-
father to a Bell than a Boy), and had had
their silver mugs no doubt, besides. But Time
had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry
the Eighth had melted down their mugs; and
they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the
church tower.
Not speechless, though. Far from it. They
had clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these
Bells; and far and wide they might be heard
bells say, 'Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good
heart, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a
good heart, Toby!' A million times? More!"
Well, I never !" cried Meg.
She had, though-over and over again. For
it was Toby's constant topic.
"When things is very bad," said Trotty;
"very bad indeed, I mean; almost at the worst;
then it's Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming
soon, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job
coming soon, Toby!
That way."
"
Christmas Stories, Chimes, Chap. 1.
BELLS-The Fairies of the.
Awake, and standing on his feet upon the
boards where he had lately lain, he saw this
Goblin Sight.
He saw the tower, whither his charmed foot-
steps had brought him, swarming with dwarf
phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells.
He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, pouring
from the Bells without a pause. He saw them
round him on the ground; above him in the air,
clambering from him, by the ropes below; look-
ing down upon him, from the massive iron-
girded beams; peeping in upon him, through
the chinks and loopholes in the walls; spreading
away and away from him in enlarging circles, as
the water ripples give place to a huge stone
that suddenly comes plashing in among them.
He saw them, of all aspects and all shapes. He
BENEVOLENCE
46
BETSEY TROTWOOD
saw them ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely Mrs. Crupp, by paying her off, throwing the first
formed. He saw them young, he saw them old, pitcher she planted on the stairs out of the
he saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw | window, and protecting, in person, up and down
them merry, he saw them grim; he saw them the staircase, a supernumerary whom she en-
dance, and heard them sing; he saw them tear gaged from the outer world. These vigorous
their hair, and heard them howl. He saw the measures struck such terror to the breast of Mrs.
air thick with them. He saw them come and Crupp, that she subsided into her own kitchen,
go, incessantly. He saw them riding down-under the impression that my aunt was mad.
ward, soaring upward, sailing off afar, perching
near at hand, all restless and all violently active.
Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became
transparent to him as to them. He saw them in
the houses, busy at the sleepers' beds. He saw
them soothing people in their dreams; he saw
them beating them with knotted whips; he saw
them yelling in their ears; he saw them playing
softest music on their pillows; he saw them
cheering some with the songs of birds and the
perfume of flowers; he saw them flashing awful
faces on the troubled rest of others, from en-
chanted mirrors which they carried in their
hands.
He saw these creatures, not only among sleep-
ing men, but waking also, active in pursuits
irreconcileable with one another, and possessing
or assuming natures the most opposite. He saw
one buckling on innumerable wings to increase
his speed; another loading himself with chains
and weights, to retard his. He saw some put-
ting the hands of clocks forward, some putting
the hands of clocks backward, some endeavor-
ing to stop the clock entirely. He saw them
representing, here a marriage ceremony, there a
funeral; in this chamber an election, in that a
ball; he saw, everywhere, restless and untiring
motion.
*
Bewildered by the host of shifting and extra-
ordinary figures, as well as by the uproar of the
Bells, which all this while were ringing, Trotty
clung to a wooden pillar for support, and turned
his white face here and there, in mute and
stunned astonishment.
As he gazed, the Chimes stopped.
*
*
*
*
*k
*
Then and not before, did Trotty see in every
Bell a bearded figure of the bulk and stature of
the Bell—incomprehensibly, a figure and the
Bell itself. Gigantic, grave, and darkly watch-
ful of him as he stood rooted to the ground.
|
My aunt being supremely indifferent to Mrs.
Crupp's opinion and everybody else's, and
rather favoring than discouraging the idea, Mrs.
Crupp, of late the bold, became within a few days
so faint-hearted, that, rather than encounter my
aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavor to
hide her portly form behind doors-leaving
visible, however, a wide margin of flannel petti-
coat-or would shrink into dark corners.
This
gave my aunt such unspeakable satisfaction, that
I believe she took a delight in prowling up and
down, with her bonnet insanely perched on the
top of her head, at times when Mrs. Crupp was
likely to be in the way.
David Copperfield, Chap. 37.
BETSEY TROTWOOD and Uriah Heep.
"Deuce take the man!" said my aunt
sternly, "what's he about? Don't be galvanic,
sir!"
"I ask your pardon, Miss Trotwood," re-
turned Uriah; "I'm aware you're nervous.'
"Go along with you, sir!" said my aunt,
anything but appeased. "Don't presume to
say so! I am nothing of the sort. If you're
an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you're
a man, control your limbs, sir! Good_God!"
said my aunt, with great indignation, "I am not
going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out
of my senses!"
Mr. Heep was rather abashed, as most people
might have been, by this explosion; which de-
rived great additional force from the indignant
manner in which my aunt afterwards moved in
her chair, and shook her head as if she were
making snaps or bounces at him.
David Copperfield, Chap. 35.
BETSEY TROTWOOD_"Janet! Donkeys!"
My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but
by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexi-
Mysterious and awful figures! Resting on bility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and
nothing: poised in the night air of the tower, carriage, amply sufficient to account for the
with their draped and hooded heads merged in effect she had made upon a gentle creature like
the dim roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy my mother; but her features were rather hand-
and dark, although he saw them by some light some than otherwise, though unbending and
|
belonging to themselves-none else was there-austere. I particularly noticed that she had a
each with its muffled hand upon its goblin very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was
mouth.-Christmas Stories, Chap. 3.
BENEVOLENCE-King Lear an Exempli-
fication of.
"A very prepossessing old gentleman, Mr.
Richard-charming countenance, sir-extremely
calm-benevolence in every feature, sir. He
quite realizes my idea of King Lear, as he ap-
peared when in possession of his kingdom, Mr.
Richard-the same good humor, the same white
hair and partial baldness, the same liability to
be imposed upon. Ah! A sweet subject for
contemplation, sir, very sweet !"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 57.
BETSEY TROTWOOD and Mrs. Crupp.
My aunt had obtained a signal victory over
grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under
what I believe would be called a mob-cap; I
mean a cap, much more common then than now,
with side-pieces fastening under the chin. Her
dress was of a lavender color, and perfectly
neat, but scantily made, as if she desired to be
as little encumbered as possible. I remember
that I thought it, in form, more like a riding
habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than
anything else. She wore at her side a gentle-
man's gold watch, if I might judge from its
size and make, with an appropriate chain and
seals; she had some linen at her throat not un·
like a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like
little shirt wristbands.
*
*
*
*
*
*
Janet had gone away to get the bath ready
BIBLE
47
BIRDS
the longest lifetime, without ever once stopping
of its own accord.
Pickwick Papers, Chap. 32.
ence.
when my aunt, to my great alarm, became in
one moment rigid with indignation, and had
hardly voice to cry out, "Janet! Donkeys!"
Upon which, Janet came running up the
stairs as if the house were in flames, darted out BIPEDS AND QUADRUPEDS—The differ-
on a little piece of green in front, and warned
off two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden, that had
presumed to set hoof upon it; while my aunt,
rushing out of the house, seized the bridle of a
third animal laden with a bestriding child,
turned him, led him forth from those sacred
precincts, and boxed the ears of the unlucky
urchin in attendance who had dared to profane
that hallowed ground.
To this hour I don't know whether my aunt
had any lawful right of way over that patch of
green; but she had settled it in her own mind
that she had, and it was all the same to her.
The one great outrage of her life, demanding to
be constantly avenged, was the passage of a
donkey over that immaculate spot. In what-
ever occupation she was engaged, however
interesting to her the conversation in which she
was taking part, a donkey turned the current of
her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him
straight. Jugs of water, and watering pots, were
kept in secret places ready to be discharged on
the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush
behind the door; sallies were made at all hours;
and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was
an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys:
or, perhaps, the more sagacious of the donkeys,
understanding how the case stood, delighted
with constitutional obstinacy in coming that
way. I only know that there were three alarms
before the bath was ready; and that, on the oc-
casion of the last and most desperate of all, I
saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a
sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy
head against her own gate, before he seemed to
comprehend what was the matter. These
interruptions were the more ridiculous to me,
because she was giving me broth out of a table-
spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded her-
self that I was actually starving, and must re-
ceive nourishment at first in very small quan-
tities), and, while my mouth was yet open to
receive the spoon, she would put it back into
the basin, cry, "Janet! Donkeys !" and go out
o the assault.-David Copperfield, Chap. 13.
BIBLE-The.
Harriet complied and read-read the eternal
book for all the weary and the heavy-laden; for
all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this
earth-read the blessed history, in which the
blind, lame, palsied beggar, the criminal, the
woman stained with shame, the shunned of all
our dainty clay, has each a portion, that no hu-
man pride, indifference, or sophistry, through all
the ages that this world shall last, can take
away, or by the thousandth atom of a grain re-
duce read the ministry of Him who, through
the round of human life, and all its hopes and
griefs, from birth to death, from infancy to age,
had sweet compassion for, and interest in, its
every scene and stage, its every suffering and
sorrow.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 59.
BILL-A.
A bill, by the by, is the most extraordinary
locomotive engine that the genius of man ever
produced. It would keep on running during
|
Quadruped lions are said to be savage only
when they are hungry; biped lions are rarely
sulky longer than when their appetite for dis-
tinction remains unappeased.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 15.
BIRDS-The unhappiness of caged.
In every pane of glass there was at least one
tiny bird in a tiny bird-cage, twittering and hop-
ping his little ballet of despair, and knocking
his head against the roof: while one unhappy
goldfinch who lived outside a red villa with his
name on the door, drew the water for his own
drinking, and mutely appealed to some good
man to drop a farthing's worth of poison in it.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.
BIRDS-The traits of.
Nothing in shy neighborhoods perplexes my
mind more than the bad company birds keep.
Foreign birds often get into good society, but
British birds are inseparable from low associates.
There is a whole street of them in St. Giles's;
and I always find them in poor and immoral
neighborhoods, convenient to the public-house
or the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead peo-
ple into drinking, and even the man who makes
their cages usually gets into a chronic state of
black eye. Why is this? Also, they will do
things for people in short-skirted velveteen coats
with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and
fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the
respectable orders of society to undertake. In
a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a
goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing
as much of it as if he were in a consuming
fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and
offered, in writing, to barter himself against old
clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen-stuff.
Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any
finch! I bought that goldfinch for money. He
was sent home, and hung upon a nail over
against my table. He lived outside a counter-
feit dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to
be a dyer's; otherwise it would have been im-
possible to account for his perch sticking out of
the garret window. From the time of his ap-
pearance in my room, either he left off being
thirsty-which was not in the bond-or he could
not make up his mind to hear his little bucket
drop back into his well when he let it go-a
shock which in the best of times had made him
tremble. He drew no water but by stealth and
under the cloak of night. After an interval of
futile and at length hopeless expectation, the
merchant who had educated him was appealed
to. The merchant was a bow-legged character,
with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new
strawberry. He wore a fur cap, and shorts, and
was of the velveteen race velveteeny. He sent
word that he would "look round." He looked
round, appeared in the doorway of the room,
and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the gold-
finch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird;
when it was appeased, he still drew several un-
necessary buckets of water; and finally leaped
about his perch, and sharpened his bill, as if he
BIRD
had been to the nearest wine-vaults and
drunk.-Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 10.
BIRD-The Raven of Barnaby.
got
"Halloa!" cried a hoarse voice in his ear.
"Halloa, halloa, halloa! Bow wow wow. What's
the matter here! Hal-loa!"
48
The speaker-who made the locksmith start,
as if he had seen some supernatural agent-was
a large raven, who had perched upon the top of
the easy chair, unseen by him and Edward, and
listened with a polite attention and a most ex-
traordinary appearance of comprehending every
word, to all they had said up to this point; turn-
ing his head from one to the other, as if his
office were to judge between them, and it were
of the very last importance that he should not
lose a word.
"Look at him!" said Varden, divided be-
tween admiration of the bird and a kind of fear
of him. "Was there ever such a knowing imp
as that! Oh, he's a dreadful fellow!"
The raven, with his head very much on one
side, and his bright eye shining like a diamond,
preserved a thoughtful silence for a few seconds,
and then replied in a voice so hoarse and
distant, that it seemed to come through his thick
feathers rather than out of his mouth.
"Halloa, halloa, halloa! What's the matter
here! Keep up your spirits. Never say die.
Bow wow wow. I'm a devil, I'm a devil, I'm a
devil. Hurrah!"-And then, as if exulting in
his infernal character, he began to whistle.
"I more than half believe he speaks the
truth. Upon my word I do," said Varden..
"Do you see how he looks at me, as if he knew
what I was saying?"
To which the bird, balancing himself on tip-
toe, as it were, and moving his body up and
down in a sort of grave dance, rejoined, "I'm a
devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil!" and flapped his
wings against his sides as if he were bursting
with laughter. Barnaby clapped his hands, and
fairly rolled upon the ground in an ecstacy of
delight.
"Strange companions, sir,” said the lock-
smith, shaking his head and looking from one
to the other. "The bird has all the wit."
44
Strange indeed!" said Edward, holding out
his forefinger to the raven, who, in acknow-
ledgement of the attention, made a dive at
it immediately with his iron bill. "Is he
old?"
"A mere boy, sir," replied the locksmith. "A
hundred and twenty, or thereabouts. Call him
down, Barnaby, my man.'
"But
"Call him!" echoed Barnaby, sitting upright
upon the floor, and staring vacantly at Gabriel
as he thrust his hair back from his face.
who can make him come! He calls me, and
makes me go where he will. He goes on before,
and I follow. He's the master, and I'm the
man.
Is that the truth, Grip?"
The raven gave a short, comfortable, confi-
dential kind of croak-a most expressive croak,
which seemed to say, "You need'nt let these
fellows into our secrets. We understand each
other. It's all right
"
"I make him come?" cried Barnaby, point-
ing to the bird, "Him, who never goes to sleep,
or so much as winks !-Why, any time of night,
you may see his eyes in my dark room, shining
like two sparks. And every night, and all night
BLUNTNESS
too, he's broad awake, talking to himself, think-
ing what he shall do to-morrow, where we shall
go, and what he shall steal, and hide, and bury.
I make him come! Ha, ha, ha!"
On second thoughts, the bird appeared dis-
posed to come of himself. After a short survey
of the ground, and a few sidelong looks at the
ceiling and at everybody present in turn, he
fluttered to the floor and went to Barnaby-not
in a hop, or walk, or run, but in a pace like that
of a very particular gentleman with exceedingly
tight boots on, trying to walk fast over loose
pebbles. Then, stepping into his extended
hand, and condescending to be held out at
arm's length, he gave vent to a succession of
sounds, not unlike the drawing of some eight or
ten dozen of long corks, and again asserted his
brimstone birth and parentage with great dis
tinctness.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 6.
*
*
*
*
*
*
The raven was in a highly reflective state;
walking up and down when he had dined, with
an air of elderly complacency which was strongly
suggestive of his having his hands under
his coat-tails; and appearing to read the
tomb-stones with a very critical taste. Some-
times, after a long inspection of an epitaph, he
would strop his beak upon the grave to which
it referred, and cry in his hoarse tones, "I'm a
devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil!" but whether
he addressed his observations to any supposed
person below, or merely threw them off as a
general remark, is matter of uncertainty.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 25.
BLINDNESS-The various degrees of.
blindness, widow.
"There are various degrees and kinds of
There is the connubial
blindness, ma'am, which perhaps you may have
observed in the course of your own experience,
and which is a kind of wilful and self-damaging
blindness. There is the blindness of party,
ma'am, and public men, which is the blindness
of a mad bull in the midst of a regiment of
soldiers clothed in red. There is the blind con-
kittens, whose eyes have not yet opened on the
fidence of youth, which is the blindness of young
world and there is that physical blindness,
ma'am, of which I am, contrary to my own de-
sire, a most illustrious example. Added to these,
ma'am, is that blindness of the intellect, of
which we have a specimen in your interesting
son, and which, having sometimes glimmerings
and dawnings of the light, is scarcely to be
trusted as a total darkness."
BLUSTER.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 45.
He had a certain air of being a handsome
man-which he was not; and a certain air of
being a well-bred man-which he was not. It
was mere swagger and challenge; but in this
particular, as in many others, blustering asser-
tion goes for proof, half over the world.
Little Dorrit, Book I. Chap. L
BLUNTNESS Versus Sincerity.
Mr. Gabriel Parsons was a rich sugar-baker
who mistook rudeness for honesty, and abrupt
bluntness for an open and candid manner!
many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness for sin
cerity.-Tales, Chap. 10.
BIRTH
BIRTH-The Curse on Adam.
A ceremony to which the usage of gossips has
given that name which expresses, in two syllables,
the curse pronounced on Adam.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.
BLIND-The Faces of the.
49
It is strange to watch the faces of the blind,
and see how free they are from all concealment |
of what is passing in their thoughts; observing
which, a man with his eyes may blush to con-
template the mask he wears. Allowing for one
shade of anxious expression which is never ab-
sent from their countenances, and the like of
which we may readily detect in our own faces
if we try to feel our way in the dark, every idea,
as it rises within them, is expressed with the
lightning's speed and nature's truth. If the
company at a rout, or drawing-room at court,
could only for one time be as unconscious of the
eyes upon them as blind men and women are,
what secrets would come out, and what a worker
of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of which we so
much pity, would appear to be!
The thought occurred to me as I sat down in
another room before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb,
destitute of smell, and nearly so of taste-before
a fair young creature with every human faculty
and hope and power of goodness and affection
enclosed within her delicate frame, and but one
outward sense-the sense of touch. There she
was before me; built up, as it were, in a marble
|
cell, impervious to any ray of light or particle
of sound; with her poor white hand peeping
through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some
good man for help, that an immortal soul might
be awakened.
BOARDING-HOUSE
Jonas. "I think it's liquid aggravation that
circulates through his veins, and not regular
blood."-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 11.
BLOOD-The Aristocracy of.
Traddles and I were separated at table, being
billeted in two remote corners; he, in the glare
of a red velvet lady: I, in the gloom of Hamlet's
aunt. The dinner was very long, and the con-
versation was about the Aristocracy-and Blood.
Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she
had a weakness, it was Blood.
*
*
*
*
*
We might have been a party of Ogres, the
conversation assumed such a sanguine com-
plexion.
"I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook's opin-
ion," said Mr. Waterbrook, with his wine-glass
at his eye. "Other things are all very well in
their way, but give me Blood!"
"Oh! There is nothing," observed Hamlet's
aunt, "so satisfactory to one! There is nothing
that is so much one's beau ideal of-of all that
sort of thing, speaking generally. There are
some low minds (not many, I am happy to be-
lieve, but there are some) that would prefer to
do what I should call bow down before
idols. Positively Idols! Before services, intel-
lect, and so on. But these are intangible points.
Blood is not so. We see Blood in a nose, and
we know it. We meet with it in a chin, and we
say, 'There it is! That's Blood!'
It is an
actual matter of fact. We point it out. It ad-
mits of no doubt."
The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who
had taken Agnes down, stated the question more
decisively yet, I thought.
(
Long before I looked upon her, the help had "Oh, you know, deuce take it," said this
come. Her face was radiant with intelligence gentleman, looking round the board with an
and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own imbecile smile, we can't forego Blood, you
hands, was bound about a head whose intellect- know. We must have Blood, you know.
ual capacity and development were beautifully Some young fellows, you know, may be a
expressed in its graceful outline and its broad, little behind their station, perhaps, in point of
open brow; her dress, arranged by herself, was education and behavior, and may go a little
a pattern of neatness and simplicity; the work wrong, yon know, and get themselves and other
she had knitted lay beside her; her writing-people into a variety of fixes-and all that—-
book was on the desk she leaned upon. From
the mournful ruin of such bereavement there had
slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless,
grateful-hearted being.
*
*
*
*
*
*
but, deuce take it, it's delightful to reflect that
they've got Blood in 'em! Myself, I'd rather at
any time be knocked down by a man who had
got Blood in him, than I'd be picked up by a
man who hadn't!"
BLUSH-A.
David Copperfield, Chap. 25.
Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes
and down to the chin, and exhibited a most ex-
tensive combination of colors as he confessed
the soft impeachment.-Tales, Chap. 10.
Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears
and hear not; ye who are as the hypocrites, of sad
countenances, and disfigure your faces that ye
may seem unto men to fast; learn healthy cheer-
fulness and mild contentment, from the deaf,
and dumb, and blind! Self-elected saints with
gloomy brows, this sightless, careless, voiceless
child may teach you lessons you will do well to
follow. Let that poor hand of hers lie gently BOARDING-HOUSE-Mrs. Todgers.
on your hearts, for there may be something in M. Todgers's Commercial Boarding-House
its healing touch akin to that of the Great was a house of that sort which is likely to be dark
Master, whose precepts you misconstrue, whose at any time; but that morning it was especially
lessons you pervert, of whose charity and sym- dark. There was an odd smell in the passage,
pathy with all the world not one among you in his as if the concentrated essence of all the dinners
daily practice knows as much as many of the that had been cooked in the kitchen since the
worst among those fallen sinners to whom you house was built, lingered at the top of the
are liberal in nothing but the preachment of per- kitchen stairs to that hour, and, like the Black
dition.-American Notes, Chap. 3.
Friar in Don Juan, "wouldn't be driven away."
In particular, there was a sensation of cabbage:
as if all the greens that had ever been boiled
there were evergreens, and flourished in immor-
tal strength. The parlor was wainscoted, and
BLOOD Versus Liquid Aggravation.
Ecod, you may say what you like of my
father, then, and so I give you leave," said
BOARDING-HOUSE-KEEPER
50
communicated to strangers a magnetic and in-
stinctive consciousness of rats and mice. The
staircase was very gloomy and very broad, with
balustrades so thick and heavy that they would
have served for a bridge. In a sombre corner
on the first landing, stood a gruff old giant of a
clock, with a preposterous coronet of three brass
balls on his head; whom few had ever seen—
none ever looked in the face-and who seemed
to continue his heavy tick for no other reason
than to warn heedless people from running into
him accidentally. It had not been papered or
painted, hadn't Todgers's, within the memory
of man.
It was very black, begrimed, and
mouldy. And, at the top of the staircase, was
an old, disjointed, rickety, ill-favored skylight,
patched and mended in all kinds of ways, which
looked distrustfully down at everything that
passed below, and covered Todgers's up as if it
were a sort of human cucumber-frame, and only
people of a peculiar growth were reared there.
BOOTS
thing; panes of glass which requested you not to
see them; many objects of various forms, feign-
ing to have no connection with their guilty se-
cret, a bed; disguised traps in walls, which
were clearly coal-cellars; affectations of no
thoroughfares, which were evidently doors to
little kitchens. Mental reservations and artful
mysteries grew out of these things. Callers,
looking steadily into the eyes of their receivers,
pretended not to smell cooking three feet off;
people, confronting closets accidentally left
open, pretended not to see bottles; visitors,
with their heads against a partition of thin can-
vas, and a page and a young female at high
words on the other side, made believe to be sit-
ting in a primeval silence. There was no end
to the small social accommodation-bills of this
nature which the gypsies of gentility were con-
stantly drawing upon, and accepting for, one an-
other.
Some of these Bohemians were of an irritable
M. Todgers was a lady, rather a bony and temperament, as constantly soured and vexed
hard-featured lady, with a row of curls in front by two mental trials; the first, the consciousness
of her head, shaped like little barrels of beer; that they had never got enough out of the pub-
and on the top of it something made of net-lic; the second, the consciousness that the pub-
you couldn't call it a cap exactly-which looked
like a black cobweb. She had a little basket on
her arm, and in it a bunch of keys that jingled
as she came. In her other hand she bore a
flaming tallow candle, which, after surveying
Mr. Pecksniff for one instant by its light, she
put down upon the table, to the end that she
might receive him with the greater cordiality.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 8.
BOARDING-HOUSE-KEEPER-Mrs. Tod-
gers.
Commercial gentlemen and gravy had tried
Mrs. Todgers's temper; the main chance-it
was such a very small one in her case, that she
might have been excused for looking sharp after
it, lest it should entirely vanish from her sight-
had taken a firm hold on Mrs. Todgers's atten-
tion. But in some odd nook in Mrs. Todgers's
breast, up a great many steps, and in a corner
easy to be overlooked, there was a secret door,
with "
Woman" written on the spring, which,
at a touch from Mercy's hand, had flown wide
open, and admitted her for shelter.
When boarding-house accounts are balanced
with all other ledgers, and the books of the
Recording Angel are made up for ever, perhaps
there may be seen an entry to thy credit, lean
Mrs. Todgers, which shall make thee beautiful!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 37.
lic were admitted into the building. Under the
latter great wrong, a few suffered dreadfully-
particularly on Sundays, when they had for
some time expected the earth to open and swal-
low the public up; but which desirable event
had not yet occurred, in consequence of some
reprehensible laxity in the arrangements of the
Universe.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 26.
BOLDNESS.
"A man can well afford to be as bold as brass,
my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27.
BOOKS-The readers of.
No one who can read, ever looks at a book,
even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 3.
BOOK-Of reference.
* * *
His Lexicon has got so dropsical
from constant reference, that it won't shut, and
yawns as if it really could not bear to be so
bothered."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 41.
BOOKS-The lost.
Master Humphrey's Clock, as originally con-
structed, became one of the lost books of the
earth-which, we all know, are far more precious
than any that can be read for love or money.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 1.
ach.
I have my doubts, too, founded on the acute
experience acquired at this period of my life,
whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can
develop itself freely in any human subject which
is always in torment from tight boots. I think
the extremities require to be at peace before the
stomach will conduct itself with vigor.
BOHEMIANS-The gypsies of gentility.
The venerable inhabitants of that venerable BOOTS-TIGHT-Their relation to the stom-
pile seemed, in those times, to be encamped
there like a sort of civilized gypsies. There
was a temporary air about their establishments,
as if they were going away the moment they
could get anything better; there was also a dis-
satisfied air about themselves, as if they took it
very ill that they had not already got something
much better. Genteel blinds and make-shifts
were more or less observable as soon as their
doors were opened; screens not half high
enough, which made dining-rooms out of arched BOOTS-Irreparable.
passages, and warded off obscure corners where
footboys slept at night with their heads among
the knives and forks; curtains which called
upon you to believe that they didn't hide any-
İ
David Copperfield, Chap. 28.
We were going up to the house, among some
dark, heavy trees, when he called after my con-
ductor,
"Hallo !"
BORES
We looked back, and he was standing at the
door of a little lodge, where he lived, with a
pair of boots in his hand.
"Here! The cobbler's been," he said, "since
you've been out, Mr. Mell, and he says he can't
mend 'em any more. He says there ain't a bit
of the original boot left, and he wonders you
expect it."-David Copperfield, Chap. 5.
BORES.
It is unnecessary to say that we keep a bore.
Everybody does. But, the bore whom we have
the pleasure and honor of enumerating among
our particular friends, is such a generic bore, and
has so many traits (as it appears to us) in com-
mon with the great bore family, that we are
tempted to make him the subject of the present
notes. May he be generally accepted!
51
BOWER
between them, and they get together afterwards,
and bore each other amicably. Whenever we
see our bore behind a door with another bore,
we know that when he comes forth, he will
praise the other bore as one of the most intelli-
gent men he ever met. And this bringing us to
the close of what we had to say about our bore,
we are anxious to have it understood that he
never bestowed this praise on us.
Our Bore-Reprinted Pieces.
BORE-A Practical.
make
The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all
other portions of my young life but himself, the
adamantine inadaptability of the man to my
favorite fancies and amusements, is the thing
for which I hate him most. What right had he
to bore his way into my Arabian Nights? Yet
Our bore is admitted on all hands to be a he did. He was always hinting doubts of the
good-hearted man. He may put fifty people out veracity of Sindbad the Sailor. If he could have
of temper, but he keeps his own. He preserves got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I knew he
a sickly stolid smile upon his face, when other would have trimmed it, and lighted. it, and de-
faces are ruffled by the perfection he has at-livered a lecture over it on the qualities of
tained in his art, and has an equable voice which sperm oil, with a glance at the whale-fisheries.
never travels out of one key or rises above one He would so soon have found out-on mechan-
pitch. His manner is a manner of tranquil in-ical principles-the peg in the neck of the En-
terest. None of his opinions are startling. chanted Horse, and would have turned it the
Among his deepest-rooted convictions, it may right way in so workmanlike a manner, that the
be mentioned that he considers the air of Eng- horse could never have got any height into the
land damp, and holds that our lively neighbors air, and the story couldn't have been. He
-he always calls the French our lively neigh- would have proved, by map and compass,
bors have the advantage of us in that particu- that there was no such kingdom as the
lar. Nevertheless, he is unable to forget that delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the fron-
John Bull is John Bull all the world over, and tiers of Tartary. He would have caused that
that England with all her faults is England still. hypocritical young prig, Harry, to
Our bore has travelled. He could not possi- an experiment-with the aid of a temporary
bly be a complete bore without having travelled. building in the garden and a dummy-demon-
He rarely speaks of his travels without intro- strating that you couldn't let a choked Hunch-
ducing, sometimes on his own plan of construc- back down an eastern chimney with a cord, and
tion, morsels of the language of the country- leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the
which he always translates. You cannot name Sultan's purveyor.
to him any little remote town in France, Italy,
Germany, or Switzerland, but he knows it well;
stayed there a fortnight under peculiar circum-
stances. And, talking of that little place, per-
haps you know a statue over an old fountain, up
a little court, which is the second-no, the
third-stay—yes, the third turning on the right,
after you come out of the Post-house, going up
the hill towards the market? You don't know
that statue? Nor that fountain? You surprise
him! They are not usually seen by travellers
(most extraordinary, he has never yet met with a
single traveller who knew them, except one Ger-
man, the most intelligent man he ever met in his
life!) but he thought that you would have been
the man to find them out. And then he de-
scribes them, in a circumstantial lecture half an
hour long, generally delivered behind a door
which is constantly being opened from the other
side; and implores you, if you ever revisit that
place, now do go and look at that statue and
fountain !
*
*
*
*
*
*
The instinct with which our bore finds out
*
*
*
*
*
With the dread upon me of developing into
of being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by
a Harry, and with the further dread upon me
bringing down upon myself a cold shower-bath
of explanations and experiments, I forebore en-
lightenment in my youth, and became, as they
say in melodramas, "the wreck you now be-
hold."
**
*
*
*
*
*
That Know-
Thought I, with a shudder, "Mr. Barlow is a
bore, with an immense constructive power of
making bores. His prize specimen is a bore.
He seeks to make a bore of me.
ledge is Power, I am not prepared to gainsay;
but, with Mr. Barlow, Knowledge is Power to
bore." Therefore, I took refuge in the Caves
of Ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since,
and which are still my private address.
Mr. Barlow, New Uncom. Samples.
BOTTLES.
* *
* A shelf laden with tall Flemish drink-
another bore, and closes with him, is amazing.ing-glasses, and quaint bottles: some with necks
We have seen him pick his man out of fifty like so many storks, and others with square,
men, in a couple of minutes. They love to
They love to go Dutch-built bodies and short, fat, apoplectic
(which they do naturally) into a slow argument throats.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 51.
on a previously exhausted subject, and to con-
tradict each other, and to wear the hearers out,
without impairing their own perennial freshness
as bores. It improves the good understanding
BOWER.
There was a bower at the further end, with
honeysuckle, jessamine, and creeping plants--one
BOY
of those sweet retreats which humane men erect
for the accommodation of spiders.
Pickwick Papers, Chap. 8.
BOY-Advice as to his Lodgings.
"C
CC
52
Major," I says, "be cool, and advise me
what to do with Joshua, my dead and
gone Lir-
riper's own youngest brother." Madam," says
the Major, "my advice is that you board and
lodge him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome
gratuity to the proprietor when exploded."
Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy, Chap. 1.
BOY-The Spartan.
I
** Like the Spartan boy with the fox biting
nim, which 1 hope you'll excuse my bringing up,
for of all the tiresome boys that will go tum-
bling into every sort of company, that boy's the
tiresomest."-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 24.
BOY-At Mugby.
I am the boy at Mugby. That's about what I
am.
You don't know what I mean? What a pity!
But I think you do. I think you must. Look
here. I am the Boy at what is called The Re-
freshment-Room at Mugby Junction, and what's
proudest boast is, that it never yet refreshed a
mortal being.
BOY
master; a superannuated old Grinder of savage
disposition, who had been appointed school-
master because he didn't know anything, and
wasn't fit for anything, and for whose cruel cane
all chubby little boys had a perfect fascination.
Dombey and Son, Chap. 6.
BOY-A Depraved.
A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand,
in size and form almost an infant's, but, in its
greedy, desperate little clutch, a bad old man's.
A face rounded and smoothed by some half-
dozen years, but pinched and twisted by the ex-
periences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youth-
ful. Naked feet, beautiful in their childish
delicacy-ugly in the blood and dirt that
cracked upon them. A baby savage, a young
monster, a child who had never been a child, a
creature who might live to take the outward
form of man, but who, within, would live and
perish a mere beast.-Haunted Man, Chap. I.
BOY-“ Jo” the Outcast.
As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along
the streets, where the high church spires and
the distances are so near and clear in the morn
ing light that the city itself seems renewed by
rest, Allan revolves in his mind how and where
he shall bestow his companion. "It surely is a
strange fact," he considers, "that in the heart of
a civilized world this creature in human form
should be more difficult to dispose of than an
unowned dog." But it is none the less a fact
because of its strangeness, and the difficulty re-
mains.
Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment-
Room at Mugby Junction, in the height of twenty-
seven cross draughts (I've often counted 'em while
they brush the First Class hair twenty-seven
ways), behind the bottles, among the glasses,
bounded on the nor'west by the beer, stood At first, he looks behind him often, to assure
pretty far to the right of a metallic object that's himself that Jo is still really following. But
at times the tea-urn and at times the soup-tureen look where he will, he still beholds him close to
according to the nature of the last twang im- the opposite houses, making his way with his
parted to its contents, which are the same ground-wary hand from brick to brick, and from door
work, fended off from the traveller by a barrier
of stale spongecakes erected atop of the counter,
and lastly exposed sideways to the glare of Our
Missis's eye-you ask a Boy so sitiwated, next
time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything
to drink; you take particular notice that he'll
try to seem not to hear you, that he'll appear in
a absent manner to survey the Line through a
transparent medium composed of your head
and body, and that he won't serve you as long
as you can possibly bear it. That's me.
BOY-A Street.
Boy at Mugby.
His son began to execute commissions in a
knowing manner, and to be of the prison, pris-
onous, and of the street, streety.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 6.
BOY-A Vagrant.
His social existence had been more like that
of an early Christian, than an innocent child
of the nineteenth century. He had been
stoned in the streets; he had been over-
thrown into gutters; bespattered with mud;
violently flattened against posts. Entire strangers
to his person had lifted his yellow cap off his
head, and cast it to the winds. His legs had not
only undergone verbal criticisms and revilings,
but had been handled and pinched. That very
morning, he had received a perfectly unsolicited
black eye on his way to the Grinders' establish-
ment, and had been punished for it by the
to door, and often, as he creeps along, glancing
over at him, watchfully. Soon satisfied that the
last thing in his thoughts is to give him the slip,
Allan goes on; considering with a less divided
attention what he shall do.
A breakfast-stall at a street corner suggests
the first thing to be done. He stops there, looks
round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses, and comes
halting and shuffling, slowly scooping the
knuckles of his right hand round and round in
the hollowed palm of his left-kneading dirt
with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a
dainty repast to Jo is then set before him, and
he begins to gulp the coffee, and to gnaw the
bread-and-butter; looking anxiously about him
in all directions, as he eats and drinks, like a
scared animal.
But he is so sick and miserable, that even
hunger has abandoned him. "I thought I was
a'most a-starvin', sir," says Jo, soon putting
down his food: but I don't know nothink-
not even that. I don't care for eating wittles
nor yet for drinking on 'em." And Jo stands
shivering, and looking at the breakfast wonder-
ingly.
""
Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse
and on his chest. "Draw breath, Jo!" "It
draws," says Jo, "as heavy as a cart.' He
might add," and rattles like it" but he only
mutters, "I'm a-moving on, sir."
Allan looks about for an apothecary's shop,
There is none at hand, br tavern does as well
or better. He obtains a little measure of wine
J
BOY
and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully.
He begins to revive almost as soon as it passes
his lips.
"We may repeat that dose, Jo," ob-
serves Allan, after watching him with his atten-
tive face. "So! we will now take five minutes'
rest, and then go on again.'
""
Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the
breakfast-stall, with his back against an iron
railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in
the early sunshine, casting an occasional look
towards him without appearing to watch him.
It requires no discernment to perceive that he
is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded
can brighten, his face brightens somewhat; and,
by little and little, he eats the slice of bread he
had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these
signs of improvement, Allan engages him in
conversation; and elicits, to his no small won-
der, the adventure of the lady in the veil, with
all its consequences. Jo slowly munches, as he
slowly tells it. When he has finished his story
and his bread, they go on again.
Bleak House, Chap. 47.
""
"Who took you away
"I dustn't name him," says Jo. "I dustn't
do it, sir."
"But I want, in the young lady's name, to
know. You may trust me. No one else shall
hear."
"Ah, but I don't know," replies Jo, shaking
his head fearfully, as he don't hear.
"
"
'Why, he is not in this place."
Oh, ain't he though?" says Jo.
all manner of places, all at wunst.'
"
"He's in
Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers
some real meaning and good faith at the bottom
of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits
an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his
patience than anything else, at last desperately
whispers a name in his ear.
Aye!" says Allan. "Why, what had you
been doing?"
Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get
myself into no trouble, 'sept in not moving on,
and the Inkwhich. But I'm a-moving on now.
Im a-moving on to the berryin ground-that's
the move as I'm up to."
No, no, we will try to prevent that. But
what did he do with you?"
"Put me in a horsepittle," replied Jo, whis-
pering, till I was discharged, then gave me a
little money-four half-bulls, wot you may call
half-crowns and ses' Hook it! Nobody wants
you here,' he ses. 'You hook it. You go and
tramp,' he ses. You move on,' he ses. 'Don't
let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile
of London, or you'll repent it.' So I shall, if
ever he does see me, and he'll see me if I'm
above ground," concludes Jo, nervously repeat-
ing all his former precautions and investiga-
tions.
53
BOY
him, "come with me, and I will find you a het-
If
ter place than this to lie down and hide in.
I take one side of the way, and you the other, to
avoid observation, you will not run away, I
know very well, if you make me a promise.'
"I won't, not unless I wos to see him a-com-
ing, sir."-Bleak House, Chap. 46.
*
*
*
*
*
"Look here, Jo!" says Allan. "This is Mr.
George."
Jo searches the floor for some time longer,
then looks up for a moment, and then down
again.
"He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to
give you lodging-room here."
Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is
supposed to be a bow. After a little more con-
sideration, and some backing and changing of
the foot on which he rests, he mutters that he is
wery thankful."
"You are quite safe here. All you have to do
at present is to be obedient, and to get strong.
And mind you tell us the truth here, whatever
you do, Jo."
Wishermaydie if I don't, sir," says Jo, re-
verting to his favorite declaration. "I never
done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get
myself into no trouble.
I never was in no
other trouble at all, sir-'sept not knowin' no-
think and starvation."
*
*
*
*
*
*
To Mr. Jarndyce, Jo repeats in substance
what he said in the morning; without any ma-
terial variation. Only, that cart of his is heavier
to draw, and draws with a hollower sound.
"Let me lay here quiet, and not be chivied. no
more," falters Jo; “and be so kind any person
as is a-passin' nigh where I used fur to sweep, as
jist to say to Mr. Sangsby that Jo, wot he known
once, is a-moving on right forards with his duty,
and I'll be wery thankful. I'd be more thank-
ful than I am aʼready, if it wos any ways possi-
ble for an unfortnet to be it."
Bleak House, Chap. 47.
BOY-An old "Bailey."
+
Mr. Bailey spoke as if he already had a leg
and three-quarters in the grave, and this had
happened twenty or thirty years ago. Paul
Sweedlepipe, the meek, was so perfectly con-
founded by his precocious self-possession, and
his patronising manner, as well as by his boots,
cockade, and livery, that a mist swam before his
eyes, and he saw-not the Bailey of acknow-
ledged juvenility, from Todger's Commercial
Boarding House, who had made his acquaint-
ance within a twelve-month, by purchasing, at
sundry times, small birds at two-pence each-
but a highly condensed embodiment of all the
sporting grooms in London; an abstract of all
the stable-knowledge of the time; a something
at a high pressure that must have had existence
many years, and was fraught with terrible ex-
periences. And truly, though in the cloudy at-
mosphere of Todgers's, Mr. Bailey's genius had
ever shone out brightly in this particular re-
spect, it now eclipsed both time and space,
cheated beholders of their senses, and worked
on their belief in defiance of all natural laws.
He walked along the tangible and real stones
of Holborn Hill, an under-sized boy; and yet
"Now, Jo," says Allan, keeping his eye upon | he winked the winks, and thought the thoughts
Allan considers a little; then remarks, turn-
ing to the woman, but keeping an encouraging
eye on Jo; "He is not so ungrateful as you sup-
posed. He had a reason for going away, though
it was an insufficient one."
"Thank'ee, sir, thank'ee!" exclaims Jo.
"There now! See how hard you wos upon me.
But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn
ses, and it's all right. For you wos wery good to
me too, and I knows it.”
BOZ
54
and did the deeds, and said the sayings of an an-
cient man.
There was an old principle within
him, and a young surface without. He became
an inexplicable creature: a breeched and booted
Sphinx. There was no course open to the
barber but to go distracted himself, or to take
Bailey for granted: and he wisely chose the
latter.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 26.
"BOZ "—The Original.
"
Boz," my signature in the Morning Chronicle,
and in the Old Monthly Magazine, appended
to the monthly cover of this book, and retained
long afterwards, was the nick-name of a pet
child, a younger brother, whom I dubbed
Moses, in honor of the Vicar of Wakefield;
which being facetiously pronounced through
the nose, became Boses, and, being shortened,
became Boz. Boz was a very familiar house-
hold word to me, long before I was an author,
and so I came to adopt it.
Preface to Pickwick.
BROKER-Pancks' Opinion of a.
snorts.
ture.
said Mr.
"I said to that-boiling-over old Christian,"
Mr. Pancks pursued, appearing greatly to relish
this descriptive epithet," that I had got a little
project on hand; a hopeful one; I told him a
hopeful one; which wanted a certain small capi-
tal. I proposed to him to lend me the money on
my note. Which he did, at twenty; sticking
the twenty on in a business-like way, and put-
ting it into the note to look like a part of the
principal. If I had broken down after that, I
should have been his grubber for the next seven
years at half wages and double grind. But he
is a perfect Patriarch: and it would do a man
good to serve him on such terms-on any
BREAD AND BUTTER
bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the entertain-
ment of such genial company as half-a-dozen
pokers, and a hall lamp. A set of window cur-
tains with no windows belonging to them, would
be seen gracefully draping a barricade of chests
of drawers, loaded with little jars from chemists'
shops; while a homeless hearthrug, severed
from its natural companion the fireside, braved
the shrewd east wind in its adversity, and trem-
bled in melancholy accord with the shrill com-
plainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a
string a day, and faintly resounding to the noises
of the street in its jangling and distracted brain.
Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger,
and seemed as incapable of being successfully
wound up as the pecuniary affairs of their
former owners, there was always great choice in
Mr. Brogley's shop: and various looking-glasses
accidentally placed at compound interest of re-
flection and refraction, presented to the eye an
eternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin.
Mr. Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-
complexioned, crisp-haired man, of a bulky fig-
ure and an easy temper-for that class of Caius
Marius who sits upon the ruins of other peo-
ple's Carthages, can keep up his spirits well
enough.-Dombey and Son, Chap. 9.
BROKERS'-SHOPS.
Noble old boy; ain't he?"
Pancks, entering on a series of the dryest of
“Generous old buck. Confiding old
boy. Philanthropic old buck. Benevolent old
boy! Twenty per cent. I engaged to pay him,
Our readers must often have observed in some
sir. But we never do business for less, at our
shop."
by-street, in a poor neighborhood, a small, dirty
Arthur felt an awkward consciousness of hay-shop, exposing for sale the most extraordinary
ing in his exultant condition been a little prema- articles, that can well be imagined. Our won-
and confused jumble of old, worn-out, wretched
der 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 different patterns; several locks, an old
-all odd volumes; and as many wine-glasses—
earthenware pan, full of rusty keys; two or
three gaudy chimney ornaments-cracked, of
course; the remains of a lustre, without any
drops; 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-
window are ranged some half-dozen high-backed
irons; and a tinder-box. In front of the shop-
chairs, with spinal complaints and wasted legs;
a corner cupboard; two or three very dark ma-
hogany tables with flaps like mathematical
problems; some pickle jars; some surgeons' dit-
to, 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 in-
calculable host of miscellanies of every descrip-
tion, including bottles and cabinets, rags and
bones, fenders and street-door knockers, fire-
irons, wearing-apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp,
and a room-door. Imagine, 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 with the squeezed-up inscription "Deal-
er in marine stores," in lanky white letters,
whose height is strangely out of proportion to
their width; and you have before you precisely
the kind of shop to which we wish to direct
your attention.-Scenes, Chap. 21.
BREAD AND BUTTER.
terms.
*
""
*
*
*
*
*
As to the brim of his hat, it's narrow. And
there's no more benevolence bubbling out of
him than out of a ninepin."
Little Dorrit, Chap. 35.
BROKER-In Second-Hand Furniture.
There lived in those days, round the corner
-in Bishopsgate Street Without-one Brogley,
sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop
where every description of second-hand furni-
ture was exhibited in the most uncomfortable
aspect, and under circumstances and in com-
binations the most completely foreign to its
purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to wash-
ing-stands, which with difficulty poised them-
selves on the shoulders of sideboards, which in
their turn stood upon the wrong side of dining-
tables, gymnastic with their legs upward on the
tops of other dining-tables, were among its most
reasonable arrangements. A banquet array of
dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was
generally to be seen spread forth upon the
Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three
BREATH
feather beds, and was slipping butter in between
the blankets, and covering it up.
Great Expectations, Chap. 19.
BREATH—A short.
"And how have you been since?"
Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had
been too.
Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know," said
Mr. Omer. "I find my breath gets short, but it
seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take
it as it comes, and make the most of it. That's
the best way, ain't it?"
David Copperfield, Chap. 21.
BRUISES-of Mr. Squeers.
“I was one blessed bruise, sir,” said Squeers,
touching first the roots of his hair, and then the
toes of his boots, "from here to there. Vinegar
and brown paper, vinegar and brown paper,
from morning to night. I suppose there was a
matter of half a ream of brown paper stuck
upon me, from first to last. As I laid all of a
heap in our kitchen, plastered all over, you
might have thought I was a large brown paper
parcel, chock full of nothing but groans."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 34.
55
BUTCHER
them occasionally with such memoranda and
references as their business purport required,
and parcelling them out into little heaps for dis-
tribution through the several departments of the
House. The post had come in heavy that morn-
ing, and Mr. Carker the Manager had a good
deal to do.
The general action of a man so engaged—
pausing to look over a bundle of papers in his
hand, dealing them round in various portions,
taking up another bundle and examining its con-
tents with knitted brows and pursed-out lips-
dealing, and sorting, and pondering by turns-
would easily suggest some whimsical resemblance
to a player at cards. The face of Mr. Carker
the Manager was in good keeping with such a
fancy. It was the face of a man who studied
his play, warily: who made himself master of
all the strong and weak points of the game:
who registered the cards in his mind as they fell
about him, knew exactly what was on them,
what they missed, and what they made: who
was crafty to find out what the other players
held, and who never betrayed his own hand.
The letters were in various languages, but Mr.
Carker the Manager read them all. If there had
been anything in the offices of Dombey and Son
that he could not read, there would have been a
BUSINESS MANAGER-Capt. Cuttle as a. card wanting in the pack. He read almost at a
"And how is master, Rob?" said Polly. glance, and made combinations of one letter
Well, I don't know, mother; not much to with another and one business with another as
boast on. There ain't no bis'ness done, you he went on, adding new matter to the heaps-
see. He don't know anything about it, the much as a man would know the cards at sight,
Cap'en don't. There was a man come into the and work out their combinations in his mind
shop this very day, and says, 'I want a so-and-after they were turned. Something too deep for
so,' he says-some hard name or another. A
which?' says the Cap'en. 'A so-and-so,' says
the man. <
Brother,' says the Cap'en, will you
take a observation round the shop?' 'Well,'
says the man, 'I've done it.' 'Do you see what
you want?' says the Cap'en. 'No, I don't,'
says the man. 'Do you know it when you do
see it?' says the Cap'en. 'No, I don't," says
the man.
'Why, then I tell you wot, my lad,'
says the Cap'en, 'you'd better go back and ask
wot it's like, outside, for no more don't I!'"
"That ain't the way to make money, though,
is it?" said Polly.
Money, mother! He'll never make money."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 38.
a partner, and much too deep for an adversary,
Mr. Carker the Manager sat in the rays of the
sun that came down slanting on him through
the skylight, playing his game alone.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 22.
Frequently, when the clerks were all gone,
the offices dark and empty, and all similar
places of business shut up, Mr. Carker, with the
whole anatomy of the iron room laid bare be-
fore him, would explore the mysteries of books
and papers, with the patient progress of a man
who was dissecting the minutest nerves and
fibres of his subject.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 46.
BUSINESS-The motto of Pancks.
"Take all you can get, and keep back all you
can't be forced to give up. That's business.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 24.
Captain Cuttle, also, as a man of business,
took to keeping books. In these he entered ob-
servations on the weather, and on the currents
of the wagons and other vehicles; which he
observed, in that quarter, to set westward in the
morning and during the greater part of the day, BUTCHER-Artistically considered.
and eastward towards the evening. Two or
three stragglers appearing in one week, who
spoke him "-so the Captain entered it-on
the subject of spectacles, and who, without posi-
tively purchasing, said they would look in again,
the Captain decided that the business was im-
proving, and made an entry in the day-book to
that effect the wind then blowing (which he
first recorded) pretty fresh, west and by north;
having changed in the night.
"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 39.
BUSINESS MANAGER-Carker the.
Mr. Carker the Manager sat at his desk,
smooth and soft as usual, reading those letters
which were reserved for him to open, backing
""
To see the butcher slap the steak, before he
laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpen-
ing, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was
agreeable, too-it really was-to see him cut it
off, so smooth and juicy. There was nothing
savage in the act, although the knife was large
and keen; it was a piece of art-high art; there
was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skillful
handling of the subject, fine shading. It was
the triumph of mind over matter; quite.
Perhaps the greenest cabbage-leaf ever grown
in a garden was wrapped about this steak, be-
fore it was delivered over to Tom. But the
butcher had a sentiment for his business, and
knew how to refine upon it. When he saw Tom
putting the cabbage-leaf into his pocket awk
BUTTONED-UP MEN
56
wardly, he begged to be allowed to do it for
nim; "for meat," he said with some emotion,
"must be humored, not drove."
CANAL-BOAT
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39.
BUTTONED-UP MEN-Their importance.
Mr. Tite Barnacle was a buttoned-up man,
and consequently a weighty one. All buttoned-ground. Then there is your own pantomime in
up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are
believed in. Whether or no the reserved and
never-exercised power of unbuttoning, fascinates
mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to
condense and augment when buttoned up, and
to evaporate when unbuttoned; it is certain
that the man to whom importance is accorded is
the buttoned-up man. Mr. Tite Barnacle never
would have passed for half his current value,
unless his coat had been always buttoned up to
his white cravat.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12.
C
objections which take their rise in perverse and
ill-conditioned minds. The getting into a cab
is a very pretty and graceful process, which,
when well performed, is essentially melodra
matic. First, there is the expressive pantomime
of every one of the eighteen cabmen on the
stand, the moment you raise your eyes from the
reply-quite a little ballet. Four cabs immedi
ately leave the stand, for your especial acconi-
modation; and the evolutions of the animals
who draw them are beautiful in the extreme, as
they 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 second; bend grace-
fully 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.-Scenes, Chap. 17.
CANAL-BOAT-An American.
each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blan-
ket; then I began dimly to comprehend that
the passengers were the library, and that they
were to be arranged, edgewise, on these shelves
till morning.
I have mentioned my having been in some
uncertainty and doubt, at first, relative to the
sleeping-arrangements on board this boat. I
remained in the same vague state of mind until
CABS AND DRIVERS-Description of. ten o'clock or thereabouts, when, going below,
Of all the cabriolet-drivers whom we ever had I found, suspended on either side of the cabin,
the honor and gratification of knowing by three long tiers of hanging book-shelves, de-
sight and our acquaintance in this way has signed apparently for volumes of the small oc-
been most extensive-there is one who made an tavo size. Looking with greater attention at
impression on our mind which can never be these contrivances (wondering to find such liter-
effaced, and who awakened in our bosom a feel-ary preparations in such a place), I descried on
ing of admiration and respect, which we enter-
tain a fatal presentiment will never be called
forth again by any human being. He was a
man of most simple and prepossessing appear-
ance. He was a brown-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
workmanship; his boots were of the Wellington
form, pulled up to meet his corduroy knee-smalls,
or at least to approach as near them as their di-
mensions would admit of; and his neck was
usually garnished with a bright yellow hand-
kerchief. In summer he carried in his mouth a
flower; in winter, a straw-slight, but to a con-
templative mind, certain indications of a love of
nature, and a taste for botany.
I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing
some of them gathered round the master of the
boat, at one of the tables, drawing lots with all
the anxieties and passions of gamesters depicted
in their countenances; while others, with small
pieces of card-board in their hands, were grop-
ing among the shelves in search of numbers
corresponding with those they had drawn. As
soon as any gentleman found his number, he
took possession of it by immediately undressing
himself and crawling into bed.
The rapidity
with which an agitated gambler subsided into a
His cabriolet was gorgeously painted—a snoring slumberer was one of the most singular
bright red; and wherever we went, City or effects I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies,
West End, Paddington or Holloway, North, they were already abed, behind the red curtain,
East, West, or South, there was the red cab, which was carefully drawn and pinned up the
bumping up against the posts at the street cor- centre; though, as every cough, or sneeze, or
ners, and turning in and out, among hackney-whisper behind this curtain was perfectly audible
coaches, and drays, and carts, and wagons, and before it, we had still a lively consciousness of
omnibuses, and contriving by some strange their society.
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 is unbounded. How
we should have liked to see 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
The politeness of the person in authority had
secured to me a shelf in a nook near this red
curtain, in some degree removed from the great
body of sleepers to which place I retired, with
many acknowledgments to him for his attention.
I found it, on after-measurement, just the width
of an ordinary sheet of Bath post letter-paper ;
and I was at first in some uncertainty as to the
best means of getting into it. But, the shelf
being a bottom one, I finally determined on
lying upon the floor, rolling gently in, stopping
immediately I touched the mattress, and remain-
CANDLE
57
CAPTAIN CUTTLE
ng for the night with that side uppermost, what-peated the Captain, to make his declaration the
ever it might be. Luckily. I came upon my more solemn and impressive, was ever deliver-
back at exactly the right moment. I was much ed unto Ed'ard Cuttle, Mariner, of England
alarmed, on looking upward to see, by the shape as lives at home at ease, and doth improve each
of his half-yard of sacking (which his weight had shining hour!"—Chab. 56.
bent into an exceedingly tight bag), that there
was a very heavy gentleman above me, whom
the slender cords seemed quite incapable of
holding; and I could not help reflecting upon
the grief of my wife and family in the event of
his coming down in the night. But as I could
not have got up again without a severe bodily
struggle, which might have alarmed the ladies,
and as I had nowhere to go to, even if I had,
I shut my eyes upon the danger, and remained
there.-American Notes, Chap. 10.
CANDLE-Lighting a.
The wretched candle burns down; the
woman takes its expiring end between her fin-
gers, lights another at it, crams the guttering,
frying morsel deep into the candlestick, and rams
it home with the new candle, as if she were
loading some ill-savored and unseemly weapon
of witchcraft.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 23.
G
His reverence for
CAPTAIN CUTTLE
Science.
"I suppose he could make a clock if he
tried?"
"I shouldn't wonder, Captain Cuttle," re-
turned the boy.
"And it would go!" said Captain Cuttle,
making a species of serpent in the air with his
hook. Lord, how that clock would go!"
For a moment or two he seemed quite lost in
contemplating the pace of this ideal timepiece,
and sat looking at the boy as if his face were
the dial.
"But he's chockfull of science," he observed,
waving his hook towards the stock-in-trade.
"Look 'ye here! Here's a collection of 'em.
Earth, air, or water. It's all one. Only say
where you'll have it. Up in a balloon? There
you are. Down in a bell? There you are.
D'ye want to put the North Star in a pair of
scales and weigh it? He'll do it for you.'
It may be gathered from these remarks that
Captain Cuttle's reverence for the stock of in-
struments was profound, and that his philosophy
knew little or no distinction between trading in
it and inventing it.
'Ah!" he said, with a sigh, "it's a fine thing
to understand 'em. And yet it's a fine thing
not to understand 'em. I hardly know which is
best. It's so comfortable to sit here and feel
that you might be weighed, measured, magnified,
electrified, polarized, played the very devil with;
and never know how."-Dombey & Son, Ch. 4.
CAPTAIN CUTTLE-His observations and
characteristics.
His rooms were very small, and strongly im-
pregnated with tobacco-smoke, but snug enough;
everything being stowed away, as if there were
an earthquake regularly every half hour.-Ch. 9.
"Sol Gills! The observation as I'm a-going
to make is calc'lated to blow every stitch of sail
as you can carry, clean out of the bolt-ropes,
and bring you on your beam ends with a lurch.
Not one of them letters was ever delivered to
Ed'ard Cuttle. Not one o' them letters," re-
"And with regard to old Sol Gills," here the
Captain became solemn, "who I'll stand by, and
not desert until death doe us part, when the
stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow-over
haul the Catechism," said the Captain paren-
thetically, "and there you'll find them expres-
sions-if it would console Sol Gills to have the
opinion of a seafaring man as has got a mind
equal to any undertaking that he puts it along-
side of, and as was all but smashed in his 'pren-
ticeship, and of which the name is Bunsby, that
'ere man shall give him such an opinion in his
own parlor as'll stun him. Ah!" said Captair
Cuttle, vauntingly, "as much as if he'd gone
and knocked his head again a door!"—Ch. 23.
My lady lass!" said the Captain, “you're as
safe here as if you was at the top of St. Paul's
Cathedral, with the ladder cast off. Sleep is what
you want, afore all other things, and may you
be able to show yourself smart with that there
balsam for the still small woice of a wounded
mind! When there's anything you want, my
Heart's Delight, as this here humble house or
town can offer, pass the word to Ed'ard Cuttle,
as'll stand off and on outside that door, and that
there man will wibrate with joy."-Chap. 48.
"Wal'r is a lad as'll bring as much success to
that 'ere brig as a lad is capable on. Wal'r,”
said the Captain, his eyes glistening with the
praise of his young friend, and his hook raised
to announce a beautiful quotation, "is what you
may call a out'ard and visible sign of a inʼard
and spirited grasp, and when found, make a note
of."-Chap. 23.
"
She
Florence had no words to answer with.
only said, "Oh, dear, dear Paul! oh, Walter !"
"The wery planks she walked on," murmured
the Captain, looking at her drooping face, was
as high esteemed by Wal'r, as the water brooks
is by the hart which never rejices! I see him
now, the wery day as he was rated on them
Dombey books, a speaking of her with his face
a glistening with doo-least ways with his modest
sentiments-like a new blowed rose, at dinner.
Well, well! If our poor Wal'r was here, my
lady lass—or if he could be-for he's drownded,
an't he?"—Chap. 49.
"But the ship's a good ship, and the lad's a
good lad; and it ain't easy, thank the Lord,”
the Captain made a little bow, "to break up
hearts of oak, whether they're in brigs or buz-
zums. Here we have 'em both ways, which is
bringing it up with a round turn, and so I ain't
a bit afeard as yet.”—Chap. 23.
Half a loaf's better than no bread, and the
same remark holds good with crumbs."-Ch. 10.
Wal'r, my lad," observed the Captain in a
deep voice: "stand by!
At the same time the Captain, coming a little
further in, brought out his wide suit of blue, his
conspicuous shirt-collar, and his knobby nose in
!
1
CAPTAIN CUTTLE
full relief, and stood bowing to Mr. Dombey, and
waving his hook politely to the ladies, with the
hard glazed hat in his one hand, and a red
equator round his head, which it had newly im-
printed there.-Chap. 10
"Wal'r, my boy," replied the Captain, "in
the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the fol-
lowing words, May we never want a friend in
need, nor a bottle to give him!' When found,
make a note of."-Chap. 15.
"Bunsby," said the Captain, striking home at
once, "here you are; a man of mind, and a man
as can give an opinion. Here's a young lady as
wants to take that opinion, in regard to my
friend Wal'r; likewise my t'other friend, Sol
Gills, which is a character for you to come within
hail of, being a man of science, which is the mo-
ther of inwention, and knows no law.”—Ch. 23.
The Captain, pale as Florence, pale in the
very knobs upon his face, raised her like a baby,
and laid her on the same old sofa upon which
she had slumbered long ago.
58
"It's Heart's Delight!" said the Captain, |
looking intently in her face. "It's the sweet
creetur grow'd a woman !"
|
CARDS
longer : he knew that when the wind stood in a
fair quarter, the weathercock was seldom nailed
there; and he was too well acquainted with the
determined and dauntless character of Mrs. Mac-
Stinger, to doubt that that heroic woman had de-
voted herself to the task of his discovery and cap-
ture. Trembling beneath the weight of these
reasons, Captain Cuttle lived a very close and re-
tired life; seldom stirring abroad until after dark ;
venturing even then only into the obscurest
streets; never going forth at all on Sundays;
and both within and without the walls of his
retreat, avoiding bonnets, as if they were worn
by raging lions.
He
The Captain never dreamed that in the event
of his being pounced upon by Mrs. MacStinger,
in his walks, it would be possible to offer resist-
ance. He felt that it could not be done.
saw himself, in his mind's eye, put meekly in a
hackney-coach, and carried off to his old lodg
ings. He foresaw that, once immured there, he
was a lost man.
*
*
**
*
*
*
"Now, my lad, stand by! If ever I'm took—”
"Took, Captain!" interposed Rob, with his
round eyes wide open.
"Ah!" said Captain Cuttle, darkly, “if ever I
goes away, meaning to come back to supper, and
Captain Cuttle was so respectful of her, and don't come within hail again twenty-four hours
had such a reverence for her in this new charac-arter my loss, go you to Brig Place and whistle
ter, that he would not have held her in his arms,
while she was unconscious, for a thousand
pounds.
that 'ere tune near my old moorings—not as if
you was a meaning of it, you understand, but as
if you'd drifted there, promiscuous. If I answer
My Heart's Delight!" said the Captain, in that tune, you sheer off, my lad, and come
withdrawing to a little distance, with the great- back four-and-twenty hours arterwards; if. I
est alarm and sympathy depicted on his coun- answer in another tune, do you stand off and on,
tenance. “If you can hail Ned Cuttle with a | and wait till I throw out further signals.”
finger, do it!"
But Florence did not stir.
"My Heart's Delight!" said the trembling
Captain. "For the sake of Wal'r drownded in
the briny deep, turn to, and histe up something
or another, if able."-Dombey & Son, Ch. 48.
CAPTAIN CUTTLE and Mrs. MacStinger.
"We had some words about the swabbing of
these here planks, and she-in short," said the
Captain, eyeing the door, and relieving himself
with a long breath, "she stopped my liberty."
"Oh! I wish she had me to deal with!" said
Susan, reddening with the energy of the wish,
"I'd stop her!"
"
"Would you, do you think, my dear?" rejoined
the Captain, shaking his head doubtfully, but re-
garding the desperate courage of the fair aspirant
with obvious admiration. I don't know. It's
difficult navigation. She's very hard to carry on
with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll
head, you see.
She's full one minute, and round
upon you next. And when she is a tartar," said
the Captain, with the perspiration breaking out
upon his forehead. There was nothing but a
whistle emphatic enough for the conclusion of
the sentence, so the Captain whistled tremu-
lously.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
*
*
*
*
*
*
Honest Captain Cuttle, as the weeks flew over
him in his fortified retreat, by no means abated
any of his prudent provisions against surprise,
because of the non-appearance of the enemy.
The Captain argue 1 that his present security was
too profound and wonderful to endure much
Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
CAPTAIN CUTTLE and Mr. Toots.
"Mr. Gills-"
"Awast!" said the Captain. "My name's
Cuttle."
Mr. Toots looked greatly disconcerted, while
the Captain proceeded gravely.
Cap'en Cuttle is my name, and England is
my nation, this here is my dwelling-place, and
blessed be creation-Job," said the Captain, as
an index to his authority.
"Oh! I couldn't see Mr. Gills, could I?" said
Mr. Toots; "because-"
"If you could see Sol Gills, young gen'l'm'n,"
said the Captain, impressively, and laying his
heavy hand on Mr. Toots' knee, "old Sol, mind
you-with your own eyes-as you sit there—you'd
be welcomer to me than a wind astarn to a ship
becalmed. But you can't see Sol Gills. And why
can't you see Sol Gills?" said the Captain, ap-
prised by the face of Mr. Toots that he was
making a profound impression on that gentle
"Because he's inwisible."
man's mind.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
CARDS—A game for love.
Two people who cannot afford to play cards
for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game
for love.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 1.
CARDS-Of Callers.
Next day, and the day after, and every day, all
graced by more dinner company, cards descend.
ed on Mr. Dorrit, like theatrical snow.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16.

PAUL AND MRS. PIPCHIN.
50
CARES
CARES-Second-hand.
59
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. |
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4.
CARES--The oppressiveness of.
Although a man may lose a sense of his own
importance when he is a mere unit among a busy
throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no
means follows that he can dispossess himself,
with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the
importance and magnitude of his cares.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 16.
CATACOMBS OF ROME
an instant, then breaks into a smile, and all is
over. The legs of the bird slide gently down
into a pool of gravy, the wings seem to melt from
the body, the breast separates into a row of
juicy slices, the smaller and more complicated
parts of his anatomy are perfectly developed, a
cavern of stuffing is revealed, and the goose is
gone!-Sketches of Couples.
CAT-Mrs. Pipchin and Paul.
Mrs. Pipchin had an old black cat, who gen-
erally lay coiled upon the centre foot of the
fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the
fire until the contracted pupils of his eyes were
like two notes of admiration. The good old
lady might have been-not to record it disre
spectfully-a witch, and Paul and the cat her
two familiars, as they all sat by the fire together.
It would have been quite in keeping with the
appearance of the party if they had all sprung
up the chimney in a high wind one night, and
never been heard of any more.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 45.
CARPET-SHAKING─The pleasures of.
It is not half as innocent a thing as it looks,
that shaking little pieces of carpet at least,
there may be no great harm in the shaking, but
the folding is a very insidious process. So long
as the shaking lasts, and the two parties are kept
the carpet's length apart, it is as innocent an
amusement as can well be devised; but when
the folding begins, and the distance between | CATACOMBS OF ROME-The graves of
them gets gradually lessened from one-half its
former length to a quarter, and then to an eighth,
and then to a sixteenth, and then to a thirty-
second, if the carpet be long enough: it becomes
dangerous. We do not know, to a nicety, how
many pieces of carpet were folded in this instance;
but we can venture to state that as many pieces
as there were, so many times did Sam kiss the
pretty housemaid.—Pickwick, Chap. 39.
CARVING—The art of.
Martyrs.
Below the church of San Sebastiano, two
miles beyond the gate of San Sebastiano, on the
Appian Way, is the entrance to the Catacombs of
Rome-quarries in the old time, but afterwards
the hiding-places of the Christians. These ghast-
ly passages have been explored for twenty miles,
and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty miles in
circumference.
A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright
eye, was our only guide, down into this profound
and dreadful place. The narrow ways and open-
ings hither and thither, coupled with the dead
and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any
and I could not help thinking, "Good Heaven,
if, in a sudden fit of madness, he should dash
the torches out, or if he should be seized with a
fit, what would become of us!" On we wandered,
among martyrs' graves: passing great subterra-
nean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions,
and choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves
and murderers may not take refuge there, and
form a population under Rome even worse than
that which lives between it and the sun. Graves,
graves, graves; Graves of men, of women, of
their little children, who ran crying to the perse-
cutors, "We are Christians! We are Christians!"
that they might be murdered with their parents;
Graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut
into their stone boundaries, and little niches,
made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' blood;
Graves of some who lived down here, for years
together, ministering to the rest, and preaching
truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude
altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this
hour; more roomy graves, but far more terrible,
where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed
in and walled up: buried before death, and killed
by slow starvation,
We have already had occasion to observe that
Mrs. Chirup is an incomparable housewife. In
all the arts of domestic arrangement and man-
agement, in all the mysteries of confectionery-recollection of the track by which we had come;
making, pickling, and preserving, never was such
a thorough adept as that nice little body. She
is, besides, a cunning worker in muslin and fine
linen, and a special hand at marketing to the
very best advantage. But if there be one branch
of housekeeping in which she excels to an utter-
ly unparalleled and unprecedented extent, it is
in the important one of carving. A roast goose
is universally allowed to be the great stumbling-
block in the way of young aspirants to perfection
in this department of science; many promising
carvers, beginning with legs of mutton, and
preserving a good reputation through fillets of
veal, sirloins of beef, quarters of lamb, fowls,
and even ducks, have sunk before a roast goose,
and lost caste and character forever. To Mrs.
Chirrup the resolving a goose into its smallest
component parts is a pleasant pastime-a prac-
tical joke—a thing to be done in a minute or so,
without the smallest interruption to the conver-
sation of the time. No handing the dish over
to an unfortunate man upon her right or left, no
wild sharpening of the knife, no hacking and
sawing at an unruly joint, no noise, no splash,
no heat, no leaving off in despair; all is confi-
dence and cheerfulness. The dish is set upon
the table, the cover is removed; for an instant,
and only an instant, you observe that Mrs. Chir-
rup's attention is distracted; she smiles, but
heareth not. You proceed with your story;
meanwhile the glitter ng knife is slowly upraised,
both Mrs. Chirrup's wrists are slightly but not
ungracefully agitated, she compresses her lips for
"The Triumphs of the Faith are not above
ground in our splendid churches," said the friar,
looking round upon us, as we stopped to rest in
one of the low passages, with bones and dust
surrounding us on every side. "They are here!
Among the Martyrs' Graves!" He was a gentle,
earnest man, and said it from his heart; but
when I thought how Christian men have dealt
CELLARS
with one another; how, perverting our most
merciful religion, they have hunted down and
tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaugh-
tered, and oppressed each other; I pictured to
myself an agony surpassing any that this Dust
had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering
in it, and how these great and constant hearts
would have been shaken-how they would have
quailed and drooped-if a foreknowledge of the
deeds that professing Christians would commit
in the Great Name for which they died, could
have rent them with its own unutterable anguish,
on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the
fearful fire.-Pictures from Italy.
CELLARS—And old ledgers.
Down in the cellars, as up in the bed-chambers,
old objects that he well remembered were
changed by age and decay, but were still in their
old places; even to empty beer-casks hoary with
cobwebs, and empty wine-bottles, with fur and
fungus choking up their throats. There, too,
among unused bottle-racks and pale slants of
light from the yard above, was the strong room,
stored with old ledgers which had as musty and
corrupt a smell as if they were regularly bal-
anced, in the dead small hours, by a nightly re-
surrection of old book-keepers.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5.
60
CHAIR
bringing out his head from under the bed.
clothes. There it was, plainly discernible by the
light of the fire, looking as provoking as ever.
"Tom gazed at the chair; and, suddenly, as
he looked at it, a most extraordinary change
seemed to come over it. The carving of the
back gradually assumed the lineaments and ex-
pression of an old, shrivelled, human face; the
damask cushion became an antique, flapped
waistcoat; the round knobs grew into a couple
of feet, encased in red cloth slippers; and the
old chair looked like a very ugly old man, of the
previous century, with his arms a-kimbo. Tom
sat up in bed, and rubbed his eyes to dispel the
illusion. No. The chair was an ugly old gen-
tleman; and what was more, he was winking at
Tom Smart.
"Tom was naturally a headlong, careless sort
of dog, and he had had five tumblers of hot
punch into the bargain; so, although he was a
little startled at first, he began to grow rather
indignant when he saw the old gentleman wink-
ing and leering at him with such an impudent
air. At length he resolved that he wouldn't
stand it; and as the old face still kept winking
away as fast as ever, Tom said, in a very angry
tone:
'What the devil are you winking at me for?'
"Because I like it, Tom Smart,' said the
chair; or the old gentleman, whichever you like
to call him. He stopped winking though, when
Tom spoke, and began grinning like a super-
annuated monkey.
CEREMONY-A frosty (Mrs. General).
Mrs. General at length retired. Her retire-
ment for the night was always her frostiest cere-
mony; as if she felt it necessary that the human "How do you know my name, old nut-
imagination should be chilled into stone, to pre-cracker face?' inquired Tom Smart, rather stag-
vent its following her. When she had gone gered; though he pretended to carry it off so
through her rigid preliminaries, amounting to a well.
sort of genteel platoon-exercise, she withdrew.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 15.
CHAIR-Tom Smart's vision.
"It was a good large room with big closets, and
a bed which might have served for a whole board-
ing-school, to say nothing of a couple of oaken
presses, that would have held the baggage of a
small army; but what struck Tom's fancy most
was a strange, grim-looking, high-backed chair,
carved in the most fantastic manner, with a
flowered damask cushion, and the round knobs
at the bottom of the legs carefully tied up in red
cloth, as if it had got the gout in its toes. Of any
other queer chair, Tom would only have thought
it was a queer chair, and there would have been
an end to the matter; but there was something
about this particular chair, and yet he couldn't
tell what it was, so odd and so unlike any other
piece of furniture he had ever seen, that it seemed
to fascinate him,
*
"
*
*
*
*
*
'In about half an hour, Tom woke up, with a
start, from a confused dream of tall men and
tumblers of punch; and the first object that pre-
sented itself to his waking imagination was the
queer chair.
"I won't look at it any more,' said Tom to
himself, and he squeezed his eyelids together,
and tried to persuade himself he was going to
sleep again. No use; nothing but queer chairs
danced before his eyes, kicking up their legs,
jumping over each other's backs, and playing all
kinds of antics.
"I may as well see one real chair, as two or
three complete sets of false ones,' said Tom,
Come, come, Tom,' said the old gentleman,
'that's not the way to address solid Spanish Ma-
hogany. Dam'me, you couldn't treat me with
less respect if I was veneered.' When the old
gentleman said this, he looked so fierce that Tom
began to grow frightened.
*
*
*
*
*
*
"I have been a great favorite among the wo-
men in my time, Tom,' said the profligate old
debauchee; 'hundreds of fine women have sat
in my lap for hours together. What do you
think of that, you dog, eh?' The old gentleman
was proceeding to recount some other exploits
of his youth, when he was seized with such a
violent fit of creaking that he was unable to pro-
ceed.
'Just serves you right, old boy,' thought
Tom Smart; but he didn't say anything.
.
"Ah!' said the old fellow, I am a good
deal troubled with this now. I am getting old,
Tom, and have lost nearly all my rails. I have
had an operation performed, too—a small piece
let into my back-and I found it a severe trial,
Tom.'
"I dare say you did, sir,' said Tom Smart.
"However,' said the old gentleman,' that's
not the point. Tom! I want you to marry the
widow.'
66 C
'Me, sir!' said Tom.
"You,' said the old gentleman.
"Bless your reverend locks,' said Tom-(he
had a few scattered horsehairs left)—' bless your
reverend locks, she wouldn't have me.' And
Tom sighed involuntarily as he thought of the
bar.
*
*
CHARACTERS AND
"You may say that, Tom,' replied the old
fellow, with a very complicated wink. I am
the last of my family, Tom,' said the old gentle-
man, with a melancholy sigh.
61
CHARACTERISTICS
winking all the way as a vent for his superfluous
sagacity.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 17.
CHARACTERS and CHARACTERISTICS.
"Was it a large one?' inquired Tom Smart. ALLEN, BEN—and Bob Sawyer.-Mr. Ben
"There were twelve of us, Tom,' said the jamin Allen was a coarse, stout, thick-set young
old gentleman; 'fine, straight-backed, hand-man, with black hair cut rather short, and a
some fellows as you'd wish to see. None of
your modern abortions-all with arms, and with
a degree of polish, though I say it that should
not, which would have done your heart good to
behold.'
"And what's become of the others, sir?'
asked Tom Smart.
"The old gentleman applied his elbow to his
eye as he replied, Gone, Tom, gone. We had
hard service, Tom, and they hadn't all my con-
stitution. They got rheumatic about the legs
and arms, and went into kitchens and other hos-
pitals; and one of 'em, with long service and
hard usage, positively lost his senses; he got so
crazy that he was obliged to be burnt. Shock-
ing thing that, Tom.'
*
*
*
*
*
*
As the old gentleman solemnly uttered these
words, his features grew less and less distinct,
and his figure more shadowy. A film came over
Tom Smart's eyes. The old man seemed gradu-
ally blending into the chair, the damask waist-
coat to resolve into a cushion, the red slippers
to shrink into little red cloth bags. The light
faded gently away, and Tom Smart fell back on
his pillow, and dropped asleep."
Pickwick, Chap. 14.
CHARACTER-Simplicity of Capt. Cuttle.
Unlike as they were externally—and there
could scarcely be a more decided contrast than
between Florence in her delicate youth and
beauty, and Captain Cuttle with his nobby face,
his great, broad, weather-beaten person, and his
gruff voice-in simple innocence of the world's
ways and the world's perplexities and dangers,
they were nearly on a level. No child could
have surpassed Captain Cuttle in inexperience
of everything but wind and weather; in sim-
plicity, credulity, and generous trustfulness.
Faith, hope, and charity, shared his whole na-
ture among them. An odd sort of romance, per-
fectly unimaginative, yet perfectly unreal, and
subject to no considerations of worldly prudence
or practicability, was the only partner they had
in his character. As the Captain sat, and smoked,
and looked at Florence, God knows what im-
possible pictures, in which she was the principal
figure, presented themselves to his mind. Equally
vague and uncertain, though not so sanguine,
were her own thoughts of the life before her;
and even as her tears made prismatic colors in the
light she gazed at, so, through her new and heavy
grief, she already saw a rainbow faintly shining
in the far-off sky. A wandering princess and a
good monster in a story-book might have sat by
the fireside, and talked as Captain Cuttle and
poor Florence thought—and not have looked very
much unlike them.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 49.
white face cut rather long. He was embellished
with spectacles, and wore a white neckerchief.
Below his single-breasted black surtout, which
was buttoned up to his chin, appeared the usual
number of pepper-and-salt colored legs, termi-
nating in a pair of imperfectly polished boots.
Although his coat was short in the sleeves, it
disclosed no vestige of a linen wristband; and
although there was quite enough of his face to
admit of the encroachment of a shirt collar, it
was not graced by the smallest approach to that
appendage. He presented, altogether, rather a
mildewy appearance, and emitted a fragrant odor
of full-flavored Cubas.
Mr. Bob Sawyer, who was habited in a coarse
blue coat, which, without being either a great-
coat or a surtout, partook of the nature and
qualities of both, had about him that sort of
slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which
is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in
the streets by day, shout and scream in the same
by night, call waiters by their Christian names,
and do various other acts and deeds of an
equally facetious description. He wore a pair
of plaid trousers, and a large, rough, double-
breasted waistcoat; out of doors, he carried a
thick stick with a big top. He eschewed gloves,
and looked, upon the whole, something like a
dissipated Robinson Crusoe.
Pickwick, Chap. 30.
BAGNET, Mr.-Mr. Bagnet is an ex-artil-
leryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows,
and whiskers like the fibres of a cocoanut, not a
hair upon his head, and a torrid complexion.
His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all
unlike the tones of the instrument to which he
is devoted. Indeed, there may be generally ob-
served in him an unbending, unyielding, brass
bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of
the human orchestra.-Bleak House, Chap. 27.
BANTAM, ANGELO CYRUS.—A charming
young man of not much more than fifty, dressed
in a very bright blue coat with resplendent but-
tons, black trousers, and the thinnest possible
pair of highly-polished boots. A gold eye-glass
was suspended from his neck by a short, broad,
black ribbon; a gold snuff-box was lightly
clasped in his left hand; gold rings innumerable
glittered on his fingers; and a large diamond
pin set in gold glistened in his shirt-frill. He
had a gold watch, and a gold curb-chain with
large gold seals; and he carried a pliant ebony
cane with a heavy gold top. His linen was of
the very whitest, finest, and stiffest; his wig of
the glossiest, blackest, and curliest. His snuff
was princes' mixture; his scent bouquet du roi,
His features were contracted into a perpetua!
smile and his teeth were in such perfect order
Captain Cuttle, in the exercise of that sur-that it was difficult at a small distance to tell the
prising talent for deep-laid and unfathomable real from the false.
scheming, with which (as is not unusual in men
of transparent simplicity) he sincerely believed
himself to be endowed by nature, had gone to
Mr. Dombey's house on the eventful Sunday,
"Mr. Pickwick," said Mr. Dowler; my
friend, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Esquire, M. C.,
Bantam, Mr. Pickwick. Know each other."
Pickwick, Chap. 35.
CHARACTERS AND
62
CHARACTERISTICS
•
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 4.
BITZER.—Sissy, being at the corner of a row seven or eight added to it again, without sur-
on the sunny side, came in for the beginning ofprising anybody. He had not much hair. One
a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner might have fancied he had talked it off; and
of a row on the other side, a few rows in ad- that what was left, all standing up in disorder,
vance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was in that condition from being constantly
was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she blown about by his windy boastfulness.
seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous
color from the sun, when it shone upon her, the
boy was so light-eyed and light-haired, that the
selfsame rays appeared to draw out of him what
little color he ever possessed. His cold eyes
would hardly have been eyes, but for the short
ends of lashes which, by bringing them into im-
mediate contrast with something paler than
themselves, expressed their form. His short-
cropped hair might have been a mere continu-
ation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and
face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient
in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if
he were cut, he would bleed, white.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 2.
BLIMBER, Doctor.-The Doctor was a port-
ly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at his
knees, and stockings below them. He had a
bald head, highly polished; a deep voice; and
a chin so very double, that it was a wonder how
he ever managed to shave into the creases. He
had likewise a pair of little eyes that were al-
ways half shut up, and a mouth that was al-
ways half expanded into a grin, as if he had,
that moment, posed a boy, and were waiting to
convict him from his own lips. Insomuch, that
when the Doctor put his right hand into the
breast of his coat, and with his other hand be-
hind him, and a scarcely perceptible wag of
his head, made the commonest observation to a
nervous stranger, it was like a sentiment from
the sphinx, and settled his business.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 11.
BOYTHORN.-"You know my old opinion
of him," said Mr. Skimpole, lightly appealing
to us. An amiable bull, who is determined to
make every color scarlet !"
BRASS, SAMPSON (the Lawyer).-The le-
gal gentleman, whose melodious name was Brass,
might have called it comfort also but for two
drawbacks; one was, that he could by no exer-
tion sit easy in his chair, the seat of which was
very hard, angular, slippery, and sloping; the
other, that tobacco-smoke always caused him
great internal discomposure and annoyance. But
as he was quite a creature of Mr. Quilp's, and
had a thousand reasons for conciliating his good
opinion, he tried to smile, and nodded his ac-
quiescence with the best grace he could assume.
This Brass was an attorney of no very good
repute, from Bevis Marks in the city of London;
he was a tall, meagre man, with a nose like a
wen, a protruding forehead, retreating eyes, and
hair of a deep red. He wore a long black sur-
tout reaching nearly to his ankles, short black
trousers, high shoes, and cotton stockings of a
bluish gray. He had a cringing manner, but a
very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were
so extremely forbidding that to have had his
company under the least repulsive circumstan-
ces, one would have wished him to be out of
temper that he might only scowl.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 11.
BUNSBY. — Immediately there appeared,
coming slowly up above the bulk-head of the
cabin, another bulk-head-human, and very
large-with one stationary eye in the mahogany
face, and one revolving one, on the principle of
some light-houses. This head was decorated
with shaggy hair, like oakum, which had no gov-
erning inclination towards the north, east, west,
or south, but inclined to all four quarters of the
compass, and to every point upon it. The head
was followed by a perfect desert of chin, and by
a shirt-collar and neckerchief, and by a dread-
nought pilot-coat, and by a pair of dreadnought
Bleak House, Chap. 43.
BOUNDERBY, Mr.-A bully of humility.—
Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Grad-pilot-trousers, whereof the waistband was so very
grind's bosom friend, as a man perfectly devoid
of sentiment can approach that spiritual rela-
tionship towards another man perfectly devoid
of sentiment. So near was Mr. Bounderby-or |
if the reader should prefer it, so far off.
He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manu-
facturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a
stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out
of a coarse material, which seemed to have been
stretched to make so much of him. A man
with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled
veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to
his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and
lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading
appearance on him of being inflated like a bal-
loon, and ready to start. A man who could
never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made
man. A man who was always proclaiming,
through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice
of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A
man who was the Bully of humility.
A year or two younger than his eminently
practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older;
his seven or eight and forty might have had the
broad and high, that it became a succedaneum
for a waistcoat; being ornamented near the
wearer's breast-bone with some massive wooden
buttons, like backgammon men. As the lower
portions of these pantaloons became revealed,
Bunsby stood confessed; his hands in their
pockets, which were of vast size; and his gaze
directed, not to Captain Cuttle or the ladies, but
the masthead.
The profound appearance of this philosopher,
who was bulky and strong, and on whose ex-
tremely red face an expression of taciturnity sat
enthroned, not inconsistent with his character, in
which that quality was proudly conspicuous, al-
most daunted Captain Cuttle, though on familiar
terms with him. Whispering to Florence that
Bunsby had never in his life expressed surprise,
and was considered not to know what it meant,
the Captain watched him as he eyed his mast-
head, and afterwards swept the horizon; and
when the revolving eye seemed to be coming
round in his direction, said:
Bunsby, my lad, how fares it?"
A deep, gruff, husky utterance, which seemed

SOLEMN REFERENCE IS MADE TO MR. BUNSBY.
62
<
CHARACTERS AND
to have no connection with Bunsby, and certain-
ly had not the least effect upon his face, replied,
Aye, aye, shipmet, how goes it?" At the same
time Bunsby's right hand and arm, emerging
from a pocket, shook the Captain's, and went
back again.
CC
Bunsby," said the Captain, striking home at
once, "here you are; a man of mind, and a man
as can give an opinion. Here's a young lady as
wants to take that opinion, in regard to my
friend Wal'r; likewise my t'other friend, Sol
Gills, which is a character for you to come with-
in hail of, being a man of science, which is the
mother of inwention, and knows no law. Buns-
by, will you wear, to oblige me, and come along
with us?"
The great commander, who seemed by the ex-
pression of his visage to be always on the look-
out for something in the extremest distance, and
to have no ocular knowledge of anything within
ten miles, made no reply whatever.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
CALTON, Mr., a superannuated beau.-Mr.
Calton was a superannuated beau-an old boy.
He used to say of himself that although his fea-
tures were not regularly handsome, they were
striking. They certainly were. It was impos-
sible to look at his face without being reminded
of a chubby street-door knocker, half-lion, half-
monkey; and the comparison might be extended
to his whole character and conversation. He
had stood still, while everything else had been
moving. He never originated a conversation,
or started an idea; but if any commonplace
topic were broached, or, to pursue the compari-
son, if anybody lifted him up, he would hammer
away with surprising rapidity. He had the tic-
doloreux occasionally, and then he might be said
to be muffled, because he did not make quite as
much noise as at other times, when he would go
on prosing, rat-tat-tat, the same thing over and
over again.
63
CHARACTERISTICS
warmth that shone upon his table and the
ground as if they were a crooked dial-plate, and
himself the only figure on it. With hair and
whiskers deficient in color at all times, but fee-
bler than common in the rich sunshine, and
more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat :
with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened
with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt,
which made him pause sometimes and watch the
falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth
white hand or glossy linen; Mr. Carker the
Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of
foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of
heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty steadfast-
ness and patience at his work, as if he were
waiting at a mouse's hole.
*
*
*
Dombey & Son, Chap. 22.
*
*
*
The Captain said "Good day!" and walked
out and shut the door; leaving Mr. Carker still
reclining against the chimney-piece. In whose
sly look and watchful manner; in whose false.
mouth, stretched but not laughing; in whose
spotless cravat and very whiskers; even in whose
silent passing of his soft hand over his white
linen and his smooth face, there was something
desperately cat-like.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 17.
CHEERYBLE BROTHERS-The.-He
was a sturdy old fellow in a broad-skirted blue
coat, made pretty large, to fit easily, and with no
particular waist; his bulky legs clothed in drab
breeches and high gaiters, and his head protected
by a low-crowned broad-brimmed white hat, such
as a wealthy grazier might wear. He wore his
coat buttoned; and his dimpled double-chin
rested in the folds of a white neckerchief-not
one of your stiff-starched apoplectic cravats, but
a good, easy, old-fashioned white neck-cloth that
a man might go to bed in and be none the worse
for. But what principally attracted the attention
of Nicholas, was the old gentleman's eye-never
Tales.-The Boarding-House, Chap. 1. was such a clear, twinkling, honest, merry, happy
eye, as that. And there he stood, looking a lit-
CARKER, SENIOR.-Mr. Carker was a gen- tle upward, with one hand thrust into the breast
tleman thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid of his coat, and the other playing with his old-
complexion, and with two unbroken rows of glis-fashioned gold watch-chain; his head thrown a
tening teeth, whose regularity and whiteness little on one side, and his hat a little more on
were quite distressing. It was impossible to es- one side than his head (but that was evidently
cape the observation of them, for he showed accident; not his ordinary way of wearing it),
them whenever he spoke; and bore so wide a with such a pleasant smile playing about his
smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, mouth, and such a comical expression of mingled
very rarely, indeed, extending beyond his mouth), slyness, simplicity, kind-heartedness, and good-
that there was something in it like the snarl of a humor, lighting up his jolly old face, that Nicho-
las would have been content to have stood there,
and looked at him until evening, and to have for-
gotten, meanwhile, that there was such a thing
as a soured mind or a crabbed countenance to
be met with in the whole wide world.
cat.
He affected a stiff white cravat, after the
example of his principal, and was always close.7
buttoned up and tightly dressed.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
The stiffness and nicety of Mr. Carker's dress,
and a certain arrogance of manner, either natural
to him or imitated from a pattern not far off, Still, the old gentleman stood there, glancing
gave great additional effect to his humility. He from placard to placard, and Nicholas could not
seemed a man who would contend against the forbear raising his eyes to his face again. Grafted
power that vanquished him, if he could, but who | upon the quaintness and oddity of his appear-
was utterly borne down by the greatness and su-ance, was something so indescribably engaging,
periority of Mr. Dombey.
*
*
*
Dombey & Son, Chap. 76.
*
*
*
Although it is not among the instincts, wild or
domestic, of the cat tribe, to play at cards, feline
from sole to crown was Mr. Carker the Manager,
as he basked in the strip of summer light and
|
and bespeaking so much worth, and there were
so many little lights hovering about the corners
of his mouth and eyes, that it was not a mere
amusement, but a positive pleasure and delight
to look at him.
*
*
*
*
*
*
Both the brothers, it may be here remarked
CHARACTERS AND
had a very emphatic and earnest delivery; both
had lost nearly the same teeth, which imparted
the same peculiarity to their speech; and both
spoke as if, besides possessing the utmost seren-
ity of mind that the kindliest and most unsus-
pecting nature could bestow, they had, in col-
lecting the plums from Fortune's choicest pud-
ding, retained a few for present use, and kept
them in their mouths.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 35.
CHIVERY, JOHN.-Young John issued
forth on his usual Sunday errand; not empty-
handed, but with his offering of cigars. He
was neatly attired in a plum-colored coat, with
as large a collar of black velvet as his fig-
ure could carry; a silken waistcoat, bedecked
with golden sprigs; a chaste neckerchief much
in vogue at that day, representing a preserve of
lilac pheasants on a buff ground; pantaloons so
highly decorated with side stripes, that each leg
was a three-stringed lute; and a hat of state,
very high and hard. When the prudent Mrs.
Chivery perceived that in addition to these
adornments her John carried a pair of white kid
gloves, and a cane like a little finger-post, sur-
mounted by an ivory hand marshalling him the
way that he should go; and when she saw him,
in his heavy marching order, turning the corner
to the right, she remarked to Mr. Chivery, who
was at home at the time, that she thought she
knew which way the wind blew.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 18.
CHOLLOP, Mr.—An American.—Mr. Chol-
lop was, of course, one of the most remarkable
men in the country: but he really was a notorious
person besides. He was usually described by
his friends, in the South and West, as "a splendid
sample of our na-tive raw material, sir," and
was much esteemed for his devotion to rational
Liberty; for the better propagation whereof he
usually carried a brace of revolving pistols in his
coat pocket, with seven barrels a-piece. He also
carried, amongst other trinkets, a sword-stick,
which he called his "Tickler;" and a great
knife, which (for he was a man of a pleasant
turn of humor) he called "Ripper," in allusion
to its usefulness as a means of ventilating the
stomach of any adversary in a close contest. He
had used these weapons with distinguished effect
in several instances, all duly chronicled in the
newspapers; and was greatly beloved for the
gallant manner in which he had "jobbed out"
the eye of one gentleman, as he was in the act
of knocking at his own street-door.
Mr. Chollop was a man of a roving disposition;
and in any less advanced community, might
have been mistaken for a violent vagabond. But
his fine qualities being perfectly understood and
appreciated in those regions where his lot was
cast, and where he had many kindred spirits to
consort with, he may be regarded as having
been born under a fortunate star, which is not
always the case with a man so much before the
age in which he lives. Preferring, with a view
to the gratification of his tickling and ripping
fancies, to dwell upon the outskirts of society,
and in the more remote towns and cities, he was
in the habit of emigrating from place to place,
and establishing in each some business-usually
a newspaper—which he presently sold: for the
most part closing the bargain by challenging,
:
64
CHARACTERISTICS
stabbing, pistolling, or gouging, the new editor,
before he had quite taken possession of the prop
erty.
He had come to Eden on a speculation of this
kind, but had abandoned it, and was about to
leave. He always introduced himself to strangers
as a worshipper of Freedom; was the consistent
advocate of Lynch law, and slavery; and inva
riably recommended, both in print and speech,
the "tarring and feathering" of any unpopular
person who differed from himself. He called
this "planting the standard of civilization in the
wilder gardens of My country."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 33.
"CHUFFEY," the Old Clerk.-" I've lost my
glasses, Jonas," said old Anthony.
"Sit down without your glasses, can't you?"
returned his son. "You don't eat or drink out
of 'em, I think; and where's that sleepy-headed
old Chuffey got to! Now, stupid. Oh! you
know your name, do you?
""
It would seem that he didn't, for he didn't
come until the father called. As he spoke, the
door of a small glass office, which was parti
tioned off from the rest of the room, was slowly
opened, and a little blear-eyed, weazen-faced,
ancient man came creeping out. He was of a
remote fashion, and dusty, like the rest of the
furniture; he was dressed in a decayed suit of
black; with breeches garnished at the knees
with rusty wisps of ribbon, the very paupers of
shoe-strings; on the lower portion of his spindle
legs were dingy worsted stockings of the same
color. He looked as if he had been put away
and forgotten half a century before, and some
body had just found him in a lumber closet.
Such as he was, he came slowly creeping on
towards the table, until at last he crept into the
vacant chair, from which, as his dim faculties be-
came conscious of the presence of strangers, and
those strangers ladies, he rose again, apparently
intending to make a bow. But he sat down once
more, without having made it, and breathing on
his shrivelled hands to warm them, remained
with his poor blue nose immovable about his
plate, looking at nothing, with eyes that saw
nothing, and a face that meant nothing. Take
him in that state, and he was an embodiment of
nothing. Nothing else.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. II.
CREAKLE, Mr.-Mr. Creakle's face was
fiery, and his eyes were small, and deep in his
head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little
nose, and a large chin. He was bald on the top
of his head; and had some thin wet-looking
hair that was just turning gray, brushed across
each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on
his forehead. But the circumstance about him
which impressed me most, was that he had no
voice, but spoke in a whisper. The exertion
this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in
that feeble way, made his angry face so much
more angry, and his thick veins so much thicker,
when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on look-
ing back, at this peculiarity striking me as his
chief one.—David Copperfield, Chap. 6.
CURIOUS MAN-A.-There was a man on
board this boat, with a light, fresh-colored face,
and a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was
the most inquisitive fellow that can possibly be
CHARACTERS AND
65
CHARACTERISTIUS
a day's extinction; discolored with the soils of
many a stale debauch, and reeking yet with pot-
house odors. In lieu of buckles at his knees, he
wore unequal loops of packthread: and in his
grimy hands he held a knotted stick, the knob of
which was carved into a rough likeness of his
own vile face. Such was the visitor who doffed
his three-cornered hat in Gashford's presence,
and waited, leering, for his notice.
imagined. He never spoke otherwise than in- passions, malice, and ill-will. His dress was of
terrogatively. He was an embodied inquiry.threadbare velveteen—a faded, rusty, whitened
Sitting down or standing up, still or moving, black, like the ashes of a pipe or a coal-fire after
walking the deck or taking his meals, there he
was, with a great note of interrogation in each
eye, two in his cocked ears, two more in his
turned-up nose and chin, at least haif a dozen
more about the corners of his mouth, and the
largest one of all in his hair, which was brushed
pertly off his forehead in a flaxen clump. Every
button in his clothes said, “Eh? What's that?
Did you speak? Say that again, will you?" He
was always wide awake, like the enchanted bride
who drove her husband frantic; always restless,
always thirsting for answers, perpetually seeking
and never finding. There never was such a
curious man.-American Notes, Chap. 10.
a
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 37.
DISMAL FEMMY.-It was a care-worn
looking man, whose sallow face, and deeply-
sunken eyes, were rendered still more striking
than nature had made them, by the straight
CUTTLE, CAPTAIN.—But an addition to black hair which hung in matted disorder half-
the little party now made its appearance, in the way down his face. His eyes were almost unnat-
shape of a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with urally bright and piercing; his cheek-bones were
hook instead of a hand attached to his right high and prominent; and his jaws were so long
wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a thick and lank, that an observer would have supposed
stick in his left hand covered all over (like his that he was drawing the flesh of his face in, for
nose) with knobs. He wore a loose black silk a moment, by some contraction of the muscles,
handkerchief round his neck, and such a very if his half-opened mouth and immovable ex-
large, coarse shirt-collar, that it looked like a pression had not announced that it was his or-
small sail. He was evidently the person for dinary appearance. Round his neck he wore a
whom the spare wine-glass was intended, and green shawl, with the large ends straggling over
evidently knew it ; for having taken off his rough his chest, and making their appearance occasion-
outer coat, and hung up, on a particular peg be- ally beneath the worn button-holes of his old
hind the door, such a hard glazed hat as a sym- waistcoat. His upper garment was a long black
pathetic person's head might ache at the sight surtout; and below it he wore wide drab trou-
of, and which left a red rim round his own fore-sers, and large boots, running rapidly to seed.
head as if he had been wearing a tight basin, he
brought a chair to where the clean glass was,
and sat himself down behind it. He was usu-
ally addressed as Captain, this visitor; and had
been a pilot, or a skipper, or a privateer's-man,
or all three, perhaps ; and was a very salt-looking
man indeed.
His face, remarkable for a brown solidity,
brightened as he shook hands with uncle and
nephew; but he seemed to be of a laconic dis-
position, and merely said:
"How goes it?"
"All well,” said Mr. Gills, pushing the bottle
towards him.
He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt
it, said with extraordinary expression:
"The?"
The," returned the instrument-maker.
Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass,
and seemed to think they were making holiday
indeed.
“Wal'r!” he said, arranging his hair (which
was thin) with his hook, and then pointing it at
the instrument-maker, "Look at him! Love!
Honor! And Obey! Overhaul your catechism
till you find that passage, and when found turn
the leaf down. Success, my boy!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 4.
DENNIS, The Executioner.-The man who
now confronted Gashford was a squat, thick-set
personage, with a low, retreating forehead, a
coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and
near together, that his broken nose alone seemed
to prevent their meeting and fusing into one of
the usual size. A dingy handkerchief, twisted
like a cord about his neck, left its great veins
exposed to view, and they were swollen and
starting, as though with gulping down strong
Pickwick, Chap. 3.
DINGWALL, CORNELIUS BROOK-
an official.-Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq.,
M.P., was very haughty, solemn, and portentous.
He had, naturally, a somewhat spasmodic ex-
pression 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 a great comfort to him, as no
one else had; and in diplomacy, on a small
scale, in his own family arrangements, le con-
sidered himself unrivalled. He was a county
magistrate, and discharged the duties of his
station with all due justice and impartiality;
frequently committing poachers, and occasion-
ally committing himself. Miss Brook Dingwall
was one of that numerous class of young ladies,
who, like adverbs, may be known by their an-
swering to a commonplace question, and doing
nothing else.-Tales, Chap. 3.
LITTLE DORRIT'S UNCLE.-He stoop-
ed a good deal, and plodded along in a slow,
preoccupied manner, which made the bustling
London thoroughfares no very safe resort for
him. He was dirtily and meanly dressed, in a
threadbare coat, once blue, reaching to his an-
kles and buttoned to his chin, where it vanished.
in a pale ghost of a velvet collar. A piece f
red cloth with which that phantom had ben
stiffened in its lifetime was now laid bare and
poked itself up, at the back of the old nan's
neck, into a confusion of gray hair and rusty
stock and buckle which altogether nearly poked
his hat off. A greasy hat it was and a napless :
CHARACTERS AND
impending over his eyes, cracked and crumpled
at the brim, and with a wisp of pocket handker-
chief dangling out below it. His trousers were
so long and loose, and his shoes so clumsy and
large, that he shuffled like an elephant: though
how much of this was gait, and how much trail-
ing cloth and leather, no one could have told.
Under one arm he carried a limp and worn-out
case, containing some wind-instrument; in the
same hand he had a pennyworth of snuff in a
little packet of whitey-brown paper, from which
he slowly comforted his poor old blue nose with a
lengthened-out pinch, as Arthur Clennam looked
at him.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 8.
There was a ruined uncle in the family group
- ruined by his brother, the Father of the
Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than
his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an
inevitable certainty-on whom her protection
devolved. Naturally a retired and simple man,
he had shown no particular sense of being ruined,
at the time when that calamity fell upon him,
further than that he left off washing himself when
the shock was announced, and never took to that
luxury any more. He had been a very indiffer-
ent musical amateur in his better days; and
when he fell with his brother, resorted for sup-
port to playing a clarionet as dirty as himself in
a small Theatre Orchestra. It was the theatre
in which his niece became a dancer; he had been
a fixture there a long time when she took her
poor station in it; and he accepted the task of
serving as her escort and guardian, just as he
would have accepted an illness, a legacy, a feast,
starvation-anything but soap.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 7.
DOYCE, the Inventor. He was not much to
look at, either in point of size or in point of
dress; being. merely a short, square, practical-
looking man, whose hair had turned gray, and
in whose face and forehead there were deep
lines of cogitation, which looked as though they
were carved in hard wood. He was dressed in
decent black, a little rusty, and had the appear-
ance of a sagacious master in some handicraft.
He had a spectacle-case in his hand, which he
turned over and over while he was thus in ques-
tion, with a certain free use of the thumb that
is never seen but in a hand accustomed to tools.
*
*
*
*
*
*
"This Doyce,” said Mr. Meagles, "is a smith
and engineer. He is not in a large way, but he
is well known as a very ingenious man. A
dozen years ago, he perfected an invention (in
volving a very curious secret process) of great
importance to his country and his fellow-crea-
tures. I won't say how much money it cost him,
or how many years of his life he had been about
it, but he brought it to perfection a dozen years
ago. Wasn't it a dozen?” said Mr. Meagles,
addressing Doyce. "He is the most exasper-
ating man in the world; he never complains!"
"Yes. Rather better than twelve years ago."
"Rather better?" said Mr. Meagles, you
mean rather worse. Well, Mr. Clennam. He
addresses himself to the Government. The
moment he addresses himself to the Govern-
ment, he becomes a public offender! Sir," said
Mr. Meagles, in danger of making himself ex-
cessively hot again, "he ceases to be an innocent
citizen, and becomes a culprit. He is treated,
66
CHARACTERISTICS
from that instant, as a man who has done some
infernal action. He is a man to be shirked, put
off, brow-beaten, sneered at, handed over by this
highly-connected young or old gentleman to that
highly-connected young or old gentleman, ana
dodged back again; he is a man with no rights
in his own time, or his own property; a mere
outlaw, whom it is justifiable to get rid of any
how; a man to be worn out by all possible
means.
""
It was not so difficult to believe, after the morn-
ing's experience, as Mr. Meagles supposed.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10.
DRUMMLE, BENTLEY.—Bentley Drum-
mle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even
took up a book as if its writer had done him an
injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more
agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement,
and comprehension-in the sluggish complexion
of his face, and in the large awkward tongue
that seemed to loll about in his mouth as he
himself lolled about in a room-he was idle,
proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He
came of rich people down in Somersetshire, who
had nursed this combination of qualities until
they made the discovery that it was just of age
and a blockhead.-Great Expectations, Chap. 25.
Drummle, an old-looking young man of a
heavy order of architecture, was whistling.
Startop, younger in years and appearance, was
reading and holding his head, as if he thought
himself in danger of exploding it with too
strong a charge of knowledge.
Great Expectations, Chap. 23.
DURDLES.-In a suit of coarse flannel, with
horn buttons, a yellow neckerchief with draggled
ends, an old hat more russet-colored than black,
and laced boots of the hue of his stony calling,
Durdles leads a hazy, gypsy sort of life, carry-
ing his dinner about with him in a small bundle,
and sitting on all manner of tombstones to dine.
This dinner of Durdles's has become quite a
Cloisterham institution; not only because of his
never appearing in public without it, but be-
cause of its having been, on certain renowned
occasions, taken into custody along with Dur-
dles (as drunk and incapable), and exhibited be-
fore the Bench of Justices at the Town Hall.
These occasions, however, have been few and
far apart, Durdles being as seldom drunk as
sober. For the rest, he is an old bachelor, and
he lives in a little antiquated hole of a house
that was never finished, supposed to be built, so
far, of stones stolen from the city wall. To this
abode there is an approach, ankle-deep in stone-
chips, resembling a petrified grove of tombstones,
urns, draperies, and broken columns, in all
stages of sculpture. Herein, two journeymen
incessantly chip, while other two journeymen,
who face each other, incessantly saw stone, dip.
ping as regularly in and out of their sheltering
sentry-boxes, as if they were mechanical figures
emblematical of Time and Death.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 4.
FLAMWELL, Mr. (a Social Pretender).—
Mr. Flamwell was one of those gentlemen of
remarkably extensive information whom one oc
casionally meets in society, who pretend to
know everybody, but in reality know nobody
67

MR. AND MRS. FLINTWITCH.
CHARACTERS AND
67
CHARACTERISTICS
At Malderton's, where any stories about great "Which you have that growed," said Joe
people were received with a greedy ear, he was "and that swelled, and that gentlefolked ;" Joe
an especial favorite; and, knowing the kind of considered a little before he discovered this
people he had to deal with, he carried his pas-word; "as to be sure you are a honor to your
sion of claiming acquaintance with everybody, king and country."
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.
Tales, Chap. 5.
FLINTWITCH, JEREMIAH.—His neck
was so twisted, that the knotted ends of his
white cravat usually dangled under one ear; his
natural acerbity and energy, always contending
with a second nature of habitual repression, gave
his features a swollen and suffused look; and al-
together, he had a weird appearance of having
hanged himself at one time or other, and of hav-
ing gone about ever since, halter and all, exactly
as some timely hand had cut him down.
*
*
*
*
*
*
His head was awry, and he had a one-sided,
crab-like way with him, as if his foundations
had yielded at about the same time with those
of the house, and he ought to have been propped
up in a similar manner.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3.
FOGG, Mr. (Lawyer).-—“ Take a seat, sir,"
said Fogg;
"there is the paper, sir; my partner
will be here directly, and we can converse about
this matter, sir."
Mr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but,
instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top
of it, and took a survey of the man of business,
who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet
sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trou-
sers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being
who seemed to be an essential part of the desk
at which he was writing, and to have as much
thought or sentiment.-Pickwick, Chap. 20.
GARGERY, JOE.-Presently I heard Joe
on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his
clumsy manner of coming up-stairs-his state
boots being always too big for him—and by the
time it took him to read the names on the other
floors in the course of his ascent. When at last
he stopped outside our door, I could hear his
finger tracing over the painted letters of my
name, and I afterward distinctly heard him
breathing in at the keyhole. Finally, he gave a
faint single rap, and Pepper-such was the com-
promising name of the avenging boy-announced
"Mr. Gargery!" I thought he never would
have done wiping his feet, and that I must have
gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he
came in.
Joe, how are you, Joe?"
Pip, how AIR you, Pip?
With his good honest face all glowing and
shining, and his hat put down on the floor be-
tween us, he caught both my hands and worked
them straight up and down, as if I had been the
last-patented Pump.
"I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your
hat."
"And you, Joe, look wonderfully well."
"Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval to most.
And your sister, she's no worse than she were.
And Biddy, she's ever right and ready. And all
friends is no backerder, if not no forarder.”
Great Expectations, Chap. 27.
GASHFORD.-Gashford, the secretary, was
taller, angularly made, high-shouldered, bony,
and ungraceful. His dress, in imitation of
his superior, was demure and staid in the ex-
treme; his manner, formal and constrained.
This gentleman had an overhanging brow, great
hands and feet and ears, and a pair of eyes that
seemed to have made an unnatural retreat into
his head, and to have dug themselves a cave to
hide in. His manner was smooth and humble,
but very sly and slinking. He wore the aspect
of a man who was always lying in wait for
something that wouldn't come to pass; but he
looked patient-very patient-and fawned like
a spaniel dog. Even now, while he warmed
and rubbed his hands before the blaze, he had
the air of one who only presumed to enjoy it in
his degree as a commoner; and though he knew
his lord was not regarding him, he looked intc
his face from time to time, and with a meek and
deferential manner, smiled as if for practice.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 35.
There was a remarkable contrast between this
man's occupation at the moment, and the expres
sion of his countenance, which was singularly
repulsive and malicious. His beetling brow al-
most obscured his eyes; his lip was curled con-
temptuously; his very shoulders seemed to sneer
in stealthy whisperings with his great flapped
ears.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 36.
GEORGE, Mr., the Trooper." And how
does the world use you, Mr. George?" Grand-
father Smallweed inquires, slowly rubbing his
hands.
"
'Pretty much as usual. Like a football."
He is a swarthy brown man of fifty; well-
made, and good-looking; with crisp dark hair,
bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and
powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have
evidently been used to a pretty rough life. What
is curious about him is, that he sits forward on
his chair as if he were, from long habit, allow-
ing space for some dress or accoutrements that
he has altogether laid aside. His step, too, is
measured and heavy, and would go well with
a weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is
close-shaved now, but his mouth is set as if his
upper lip had been for years familiar with a great
moustache; and his manner of occasionally lay-
ing the open palm of his broad brown hand
upon it, is to the same effect. Altogether, one
might guess Mr. George to have been a trooper
once upon a time.
A special contrast Mr. George makes to the
Smallweed family. Trooper was never yet bil-
But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, leted upon a household more unlike him. It is
like a bird's-nest with eggs in it, wouldn't hear a broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed
of parting with that piece of property, and per- figure, and their stunted forms; his large mar-
sisted in standing talking over it in a most un-ner, filling any amount of room, and their little
narrow pinched ways; his sounding voice, and
comfortable way.
CHARACTERS AND
68
their sharp spare tones; are in the strongest and
the strangest opposition. As he sits in the mid-
dle of the grim parlor, leaning a little forward,
with his hands upon his thighs and his elbows
squared, he looks as though, if he remained
there long, he would absorb into himself the
whole family and the whole four-roomed house,
extra little back-kitchen and all.
Bleak House, Chap. 21.
CHARACTERISTICS
of about seventy or seventy-five years of age, of
a very lean figure, much bent, and slightly twist-
ed. He wore a gray coat with a very narrow
collar, an old-fashioned waistcoat of ribbed black
silk, and such scanty trousers as displayed his
shrunken spindle-shanks in their full ugliness,
The only articles of display or ornament in his
dress, were a steel watch-chain to which were
attached some large gold seals; and a black
ribbon into which, in compliance with an old
fashion scarcely ever observed in these days, his
gray hair was gathered behind. His nose and
chin were sharp and prominent, his jaws had
fallen inwards from loss of teeth, his face was
shrivelled and yellow, save where the cheeks
were streaked with the color of a dry winter
apple; and where his beard had been, there lin-
the ragged eyebrows, to denote the badness of
the soil from which they sprung. The whole air
and attitude of the form was one of stealthy,
cat-like obsequiousness; the whole expression
of the face was concentrated in a wrinkled leer,
compounded of cunning, lecherousness, slyness,
and avarice.
GORDON, LORD.—The lord, the great per-
sonage, who did the Maypole so much honor,
was about the middle height, of a slender make,
and sallow complexion, with an aquiline nose,
and long hair of a reddish brown, combed per-
fectly straight and smooth about his ears, and
slightly powdered, but without the faintest ves-
tige of a curl. He was attired, under his great-gered yet a few gray tufts which seemed, like
coat, in a full suit of black, quite free from any
ornament, and of the most precise and sober cut.
The gravity of his dress, together with a cer-
tain lankness of cheek and stiffness of deport-
ment, added nearly ten years to his age, but his
figure was that of one not yet past thirty. As
he stood musing in the red glow of the fire, it
was striking to observe his very bright large eye,
which betrayed a restlessness of thought and
purpose, singularly at variance with the studied
composure and sobriety of his mien, and with
his quaint and sad apparel. It had nothing
harsh or cruel in its expression; neither had his
face, which was thin and mild, and wore an air
of melancholy; but it was suggestive of an in-
definable uneasiness, which infected those who
looked upon him, and filled them with a kind
of pity for the man; though why it did so, they
would have had some trouble to explain.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 35.
Such was old Arthur Gride, in whose face
there was not a wrinkle, in whose dress there
was not one spare fold or plait, but expressed
the most covetous and griping penury, and suffi-
ciently indicated his belonging to that class of
which Ralph Nickleby was a member. Such
was old Arthur Gride, as he sat in a low chair
looking up into the face of Ralph Nickleby, who,
lounging on the tall office-stool, with his arms
upon his knees, looked down into his; a match
for him, on whatever errand he had come.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47.
of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded,
that I remember wondering how he went to
sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony;
dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a
neck-cloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had
a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly
attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's
head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at
us in the chaise.-David Copperfield, Chap. 15.
HEEP, URIAH.-The low arched door then
GREWGIOUS, Mr.- Mr. Grewgious had opened, and the face came out. It was quite as
been well selected for his trust, as a man of in- cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though
corruptible integrity, but certainly for no other in the grain of it there was that tinge of red
appropriate quality discernible on the surface. which is sometimes to be observed in the skins
He was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had been of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-
put into a grinding-mill, looked as if he would haired person-a youth of fifteen, as I take it
have ground immediately into high-dried snuff. now, but looking much older-whose hair was
He had a scanty flat crop of hair, in color and cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had
consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tip-hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes
pet; it was so unlike hair, that it must have been
a wig, but for the stupendous improbability of
anybody's voluntarily sporting such a head. The
little play of feature that his face presented was
cut deep into it, in a few hard curves that made
it more like work; and he had certain notches
in his forehead, which looked as though Nature
had been about to touch them into sensibility or re-
finement when she had impatiently thrown away
the chisel, and said, "I really cannot be wor-
ried to finish off this man; let him go as he is."
With too great length of throat at his upper
end, and too much ankle-bone and heel at his
lower; with an awkward and hesitating man-
ner; with a shambling walk, and with what is
called a near sight-which perhaps prevented
his observing how much white cotton stocking
he displayed to the public eye, in contrast with
his black suit,—Mr. Grewgious still had some
strange capacity in him of making on the whole
an agreeable impression.
I turned away without any ceremony; and left
him doubled up in the middle of the garden, like
a scarecrow in want of support.
David Copperfield, Chap. 42.
JAGGERS, Mr. (Lawyer).- Mr. Jaggers
never laughed; but he wore great bright creak-
ing boots; and, in poising himself on those
boots, with his large head bent down and his
eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer,
he sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if
they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As
he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick
was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick
GRIDE, ARTHUR (the Usurer).-The per- that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers's
son who made this reply was a little old man, | manner.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 9.
CHARACTERS AND
"Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compli-
ment," answered Wemmick; "he don't mean
"he don't mean
that you should know what to make of it-Oh!"
for I looked surprised, "it's not personal; it's
professional; only professional."
Wemmick was at his desk, lunching-and
crunching on a dry, hard biscuit; pieces of
which he threw from time to time into his slit of
a mouth, as if he were posting them.
Always seems to me," said Wemmick, "as
if he had set a man-trap and was watching it.
Suddenly-click-you're caught!
Without remarking that man-traps were not
among the amenities of life, I said I supposed he
was very skillful?.
Deep," said Wemmick, as Australia."
Pointing with his pen at the office floor, to ex-
press that Australia was understood, for the pur-
poses of the figure, to be symmetrically on the
opposite spot of the globe. "If there was any-
thing deeper," added Wemmick, bringing his
pen to paper, "he'd be it."
Great Expectations, Chap. 24.
69
CHARACTERISTICS
long service, and were strapped very tightly over
a pair of patched and mended shoes, as if to
conceal the dirty white stockings, which were
nevertheless distinctly visible. His long black
hair escaped in negligent waves from beneath
each side of his old pinched-up hat; and glimps-
es of his bare wrists might be observed be-
tween the tops of his gloves, and the cuffs of
his coat-sleeves. His face was thin and hag.
gard; but an indescribable air of jaunty impu-
dence and perfect self-possession pervaded the
whole man.-Pickwick, Chap. 2.
KITTERBELL, Mr.-"How are you ?"
said little Kitterbell, in a greater bustle than
ever, bolting out of the little back parlor with a
cork-screw in his hand, and various particles of
sawdust, looking like so many inverted commas,
on his inexpressibles.-Tales, Chap. 11.
KROOK.-Turning towards the door, he now
caught sight of us. He was short, cadaverous,
and withered; with his head sunk sideways be-
tween his shoulders, and the breath issuing in
visible smoke from his mouth, as if he were on
fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows
were so frosted with white hairs, and so gnarled
with veins and puckered skin, that he looked,
from his breast upward, like some old root in a
fall of snow.-Bleak House, Chap. 5.
LILLYVICK, Mr.-The features of Mr.
ap-
He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark
complexion, with an exceedingly large head and
n corresponding large hand. He took
my chin
in his large hand and turned up my face to have
a look at me by the light of the candle. He
was prematurely bald on the top of his head,
and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn't lie
down, but stood up bristling. His eyes were set
very deep in his head, and were disagreeably Lillyvick they were, but strangely altered. If
sharp and suspicious. He had a large watch-ever an old gentleman had made a point of
chain, and strong black dots where his beard pearing in public, shaved close and clean, that
and whiskers would have been if he had let old gentleman was Mr. Lillyvick. If ever a col-
lector had borne himself like a collector, and
them.-Great Expectations, Chap. 11.
assumed before all men a solemn and portentous
dignity, as if he had the world on his books and
JORKINS, the Silent Partner.—I was quite it was all two quarters in arrear, that collector
dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. was Mr. Lillyvick. And now, there he sat, with
But I found out afterwards that he was a mild the remains of a beard at least a week old, en-
man of a heavy temperament, whose place in cumbering his chin; a soiled and crumpled
the business was to keep himself in the back-shirt-frill crouching, as it were, upon his breast,
ground, and be constantly exhibited by name as instead of standing boldly out; a demeanor so
the most obdurate and ruthless of men. If a abashed and drooping, so despondent, and ex-
clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins pressive of humiliation, grief, and shame; that
wouldn't listen to such a proposition. If a client if the souls of forty unsubstantial housekeepers,
were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr. Jorkins all of whom had had their water cut off for non-
was resolved to have it paid; and however pain-payment of the rate, could have been concen-
ful these things might be (and always were) to
the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would
have his bond. The heart and hand of the
good angel Spenlow would have been always
open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As
I have grown older, I think I have had experi-
ence of some other houses doing business on the
principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!
David Copperfield, Chap. 23.
trated in one body, that one body could hardly
have expressed such mortification and defeat as
were now expressed in the person of Mr. Lilly-
vick, the collector.
Newman Noggs uttered his name, and Mr.
Lillyvick groaned; then coughed to hide it. But
the groan was a full-sized groan; and the cough
was but a wheeze.
"Is anything the matter?" said Newman
Noggs.
Matter, sir!" cried Mr. Lillyvick.
"The
plug of life is dry, sir, and but the mud is left."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 52.
JINGLE.-He was about the middle height,
but the thinness of his body, and the length of
his legs, gave him the appearance of being much
taller. The green coat had been a smart dress
garment in the days of swallow-tails, but had LIRRIPER, Mr.-My poor Lirriper was a
evidently in those times adorned a much shorter handsome figure of a man, with a beaming eye.
man than the stranger, for the soiled and faded and a voice as mellow as a musical instrumen
sleeves scarcely reached to his wrists. It was made of honey and steel, but he had ever been
buttoned closely up to his chin, at the imminent a free liver, being in the commercial travelling
hazard of splitting the back; and an old stock, line and travelling what he called a limekiln
without a vestige of shirt-collar, ornamented his road-"a dry road, Emma, my dear," my poor
His scanty black trousers displayed here Lirriper says to me, "where I have to lay the
and there those shiny patches which bespeak | dust with one drink or another all day long and
neck
CHARACTERS AND
70
CHARACTERISTICS
This," said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to my-
self, "is he."
alf the night, and it wears me, Emma"-and an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaur ty
this led to his running through a good deal and sort of a stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels
might have run through the turnpike, too, when to it; and a quizzing-glass hung outside his coat,
that dreadful horse that never would stand still-for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very
for a single instant set off; but for its being seldom looked through it, and couldn't see any-
night, the gate shut and consequently took his thing when he did.
wheel, my poor Lirriper, and the gig smashed to
atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a
handsome figure of a man, and a man with a
jovial heart and a sweet temper; but if they had
come up then, they never could have given you
the mellowness of his voice, and indeed, I con-
sider photographs wanting in mellowness as a
general rule, and making you look like a new-
ploughed field.
Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, Chap. I.
LOBLEY, the Sailor. He was a jolly
favored man, with tawny hair and whiskers, and
a big red face. He was the dead image of
the sun in old woodcuts, his hair and whiskers
answering for rays all round him. Resplendent
in the bow of the boat, he was a shining sight,
with a man-of-war's man's shirt on-or off, ac-
cording to opinion-and his arms and breast
tattooed all sorts of patterns. Lobley seemed to
take it easily, and so did Mr. Tartar; yet their
oars bent as they pulled, and the boat bounded
under them.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 22.
"This," said the stranger, with a certain con-
descending roll in his voice, and a certain inde-
scribable air of doing something genteel, which
impressed me very much, "is Master Copper.
field. I hope I see you well, sir?"
*
*
*
*
*
*
"This is Mr. Micawber," said Mr. Quinion to
"that is my
me.
"Ahem!" said the stranger,
name."
"Mr. Micawber," said Mr. Quinion, “is known
to Mr. Murdstone. He takes orders for us on
commission, when he can get any. He has been
written to by Mr. Murdstone, on the subject of
your lodgings, and he will receive you as a
lodger."
"My address," said Mr. Micawber, “is Wind-
sor Terrace, City Road. I—in short," said Mr.
Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in an-
other burst of confidence" I live there."
I made him a bow.
LOWRY, Mr., the Banker-Very orderly and
methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, "Under the impression," said Mr. Micawber,
and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon "that your peregrinations in this metropolis
under his flapped waistcoat, as though it pitted have not as yet been extensive, and that you
its gravity and longevity against the levity and might have some difficulty in penetrating the
evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction
leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown of the City Road-in short," said Mr. Micawber,
stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a in another burst of confidence," that you might
fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though lose yourself—I shall be happy to call this even.
plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleeking, and install you in the knowledge of the near-
crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: est way."-David Copperfield, Chap. II.
which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of
hair, but which looked far more as though it
were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His
linen, though not of a fineness in accordance
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 sup-
pressed 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.-Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4.
MICA WBER, Mr. The counting-house
clock was at half-past twelve, and there was gen-
eral preparation for going to dinner, when Mr.
Quinion tapped at the counting-house window,
and beckoned me to go in. I went in, and found
there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown
surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more
hair upon his head (which was a large one, and
very shining) than there is upon an egg, and
with a very extensive face, which he turned full
His clothes were shabby, but he had
upon me.
MINNS, Mr. AUGUSTUS (Bachelor).—
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 somewhat priggish,
and the most retiring man in the world. He
usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrin-
kle, light inexplicables 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 10,000l. 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 in-
tention to quit on the first day of every quarter,
and as regularly countermanding it on the sec
ond. There were two classes of created objects
which he held in the deepest and most unmin-
gled horror; these were dogs and children. He
was not unamiable, but he could, at any time,
have viewed the execution of a dog, or the as-
sassination of an infant, with the liveliest satis-
faction. Their habits were at variance with hig
love of order, and his love of order was as pow
erful as his love of life.-Tales, Chap. 2.
CHARACTERS AND
MONSEIGNEUR.—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 per-
sisted in changing color sometimes, 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 ca-
pacity of helping such a look was to be found in
the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits
of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin;
still, in the effect the face made, it was a hand-
some face, and a remarkable one.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 7.
MURDSTONE, Mr.-He had that kind of
shallow black eye—I want a better word to ex-
press an eye that has no depth in it to be looked
into-which, when it is abstracted, seems, from
some peculiarity of light, to be disfigured, for a
moment at a time, by a cast. Several times when
I glanced at him, I observed that appearance
with a sort of awe, and wondered what he was
thinking about so closely. His hair and whiskers
were blacker and thicker, looked at so near, than
even I had given them credit for being. A
squareness about the lower part of his face, and
the dotted indication of the strong black beard
he shaved close every day, reminded me of the
wax-work that had travelled into our neighbor-
hood some half-a-year before. This, his regular
eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, and
brown, of his complexion-confound his com-
plexion, and his memory!-made me think him,
in spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man.
I have no doubt that my poor dear mother
thought him so too.
David Copperfield, Chap. 2.
71
|
CHARACTERISTICS
his linen so secret by buttoning up and wrapping
over, that he might have had none-perhaps he
hadn't. He carried one stained beaver glove,
which he dangled before him by the forefinger
as he walked or sat; but even its fellow was a
secret. Some people said he had been a bank-
rupt, others that he had gone an infant into an
ancient Chancery suit which was still depending,
but it was all a secret. He carried bits of seal-
ing-wax and a hieroglyphical old copper seal in
his pocket, and often secretly indited letters in
corner boxes of the trysting-places before men-
tioned; but they never appeared to go to any-
body, for he would put them into a secret place
in his coat, and deliver them to himself weeks
afterwards, very much to his own surprise, quite
yellow. He was that sort of man that if he had
died worth a million of money, or had died
worth twopence halfpenny, everybody would
have been perfectly satisfied, and would have
said it was just as they expected. And yet he
belonged to a class; a race peculiar to the City;
who are secrets as profound to one another, as
they are to the rest of mankind.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27.
NOAKES, PERCY-a“ Society” Man.—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 com-
mand 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 mammas, do the amiable to
their daughters, make pleasure engagements 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. Percy
Noakes gave her away; if a juvenile wife pre-
sented her husband with a blooming cherub, Mr.
Percy Noakes was either godfather, or deputy
godfather; and if any member of a friend's fam-
ily 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 expressive description-
"like winkin'!
NADGETT, The Secret Man.-He was the
man at a pound a week who made the inquiries.
It was no virtue or merit in Nadgett that he
transacted all his Anglo-Bengalee business se-
cretly and in the closest confidence: for he was
born to be a secret. He was a short, dried-up,
withered old man, who seemed to have secreted
his very blood; for nobody would have given
him credit for the possession of six ounces
of it in his whole body. How he lived was a
secret; where he lived was a secret; and even It may readily be imagined that these numer-
what he was, was a secret. In his musty old ous avocations were rather calculated to inter-
pocket-book he carried contradictory cards, in fere with Mr. Percy Noakes's professional stud-
some of which he called himself a coal-merchant, ies. Mr. Percy Noakes was perfectly aware of
in others a wine-merchant, in others a commission the fact, and had, therefore, after mature reflec-
agent, in others a collector, in others an account- tion, made up his mind not to study at all—a
ant; as if he really didn't know the secret him- laudable determination, to which he adhered
self. He was always keeping appointments in in the most praiseworthy manner.
His sitting-
the City, and the other man never seemed to room presented a strange chaos of dress-gloves,
come. He would sit on 'Change for hours, look-boxing-gloves, caricatures, albums, invitation-
ing at everybody who walked in and out, and cards, foils, cricket-bats, card-board drawings,
would do the like at Garraway's, and in other paste, gum, and fifty other miscellaneous articles,
business coffee-houses, in some of which he would heaped together in the strangest confusion. He
be occasionally seen drying a very damp pocket- was always making something for somebody, or
handkerchief before the fire, and still looking planning some party of pleasure, which was his
over his shoulder for the man who never appear- great forte. He invariably spoke with astonish-
ed. He was mildewed, threadbare, shabby; al- ing rapidity; was smart, spoffish, and eight-and-
ways had flue upon his legs and back; and kept twenty.-Tales, Chap. 7.
CHARACTERS AND
NOGGS, NEWMAN.-The clerk got off
the high stool (to which he had communicated a
high polish by countless gettings off and on),
and presented himself in Mr. Nickleby's room.
He was a tall man of middle age, with two gog-
gle-eyes, whereof one was a fixture, a rubicund
nose, a cadaverous face, and a suit of clothes (if
the term be allowable when they suited him not
at all) much the worse for wear, very much too
small, and placed upon such a short allowance
of buttons that it was marvellous how he con-
trived to keep them on.
*
*
*
*
**
*
Noggs gave a peculiar grunt, as was his cus-
tom at the end of all disputes with his master, to
imply that he (Noggs) triumphed; and (as he
rarely spoke to anybody unless somebody spoke
to him) fell into a grim silence, and rubbed his
hands slowly over each other: cracking the
joints of his fingers, and squeezing them into all
possible distortions. The incessant performance
of this routine on every occasion, and the com-
munication of a fixed and rigid look to his un-
affected eye, so as to make it uniform with the
other, and to render it impossible for anybody to
determine where or at what he was looking,
were two among the numerous peculiarities of
Mr. Noggs, which struck an inexperienced ob-
server at first sight.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 2.
PANCKS.-He was dressed in black, and
usty iron gray; had jet-black beads of eyes; a
scrubby little black chin; wiry black hair striking
out from his head in prongs, like forks or hair-
pins; and a complexion that was very dingy by
nature, or very dirty by art, or a compound by
nature and art. He had dirty hands and dirty
broken nails, and looked as if he had been in
the coals; he was in a perspiration, and snorted
and sniffed and puffed and blew, like a little
laboring steam-engine.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
72
CHARACTERISTICS
on the face of the earth, so clever a man as the
curate, so imposing an apartment as the vestry-
room, or so well-ordered a seminary as his own,
Once, and only once, in his life, Nathaniel Pip-
kin had seen a bishop-a real bishop, with his
arms in lawn sleeves, and his head in a wig. He
had seen him walk, and heard him talk, at a con-
firmation, on which momentous occasion Na-
thaniel Pipkin was so overcome with reverence
and awe, when the aforesaid bishop laid his
hand on his head, that he fainted right clean
away, and was borne out of church in the arms
of the beadle.-Pickwick, Chap. 17.
POGRAM, ELIJAH, M.C.-Among the
passengers on board the steamboat, there was a
faint gentleman sitting on a low camp-stool, with
his legs on a high barrel of flour, as if he were
looking at the prospect with his ankles ; who at-
tracted their attention speedily.
He had straight black hair, parted up the mid-
dle of his head, and hanging down upon his
coat; a little fringe of hair upon his chin; wore
no neck-cloth; a white hat; a suit of black, long
in the sleeves, and short in the legs; soiled
brown stockings, and laced shoes. His com-
plexion, naturally muddy, was rendered muddier
by too strict an economy of soap and water; and
the same observation will apply to the washable
part of his attire, which he might have changed
with comfort to himself and gratification to his
He was about five and thirty; was
friends.
crushed and jammed up in a heap, under the
shade of a large green cotton umbrella; and
ruminated over his tobacco-plug like a cow.
+
He was not singular, to be sure, in these re-
spects; for every gentleman on board appeared
to have had a difference with his laundress, and
to have left off washing himself in early youth.
Every gentleman, too, was perfectly stopped up
with tight plugging, and was dislocated in the
greater part of his joints. But about this gentle-
man there was a peculiar air of sagacity and
wisdom, which convinced Martin that he was no
PINCH, TOM.-An ungainly, awkward-common character; and this turned out to be
looking man, extremely short-sighted, and pre- the case.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 34.
maturely bald, availed himself of this permission;
and seeing that Mr. Pecksniff sat with his back POTT, the Editor.-This was a tall, thin man,
towards him, gazing at the fire, stood hesitating, with a sandy-colored head inclined to baldness,
with the door in his hand. He was far from and a face in which solemn importance was
handsome, certainly; and was dressed in a snuff-blended with a look of unfathomable profundity.
colored suit, of an uncouth make at the best,
which, being shrunk with long wear, was twisted
and tortured into all kinds of odd shapes; but
notwithstanding his attire, and his clumsy figure,
which a great stoop in his shoulders, and a ludi-
crous habit he had of thrusting his head forward,
by no means redeemed, one would not have been
disposed (unless Mr. Pecksniff said so) to con-
sider him a bad fellow by any means.
perhaps about thirty, but he might have been
almost any age between sixteen and sixty; being
one of those strange creatures who never decline
into an ancient appearance, but look their oldest
when they are very young, and get it over at
once.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
He was
A
He was dressed in a long brown surtout, with a
black cloth waistcoat and drab trousers.
double eye-glass dangled at his waistcoat; and
on his head he wore a very low-crowned hat
with a broad brim. The new-comer was intro-
duced to Mr. Pickwick as Mr. Pott, the editor
of the Eatanswill Gazette.
Pickwick, Chap. 13.
PUMBLECHOOK.-" Mrs. Joe," said Uncle
Pumblechook: a large, hard-breathing, middle-
aged, slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull
staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on
his head, so that he looked as if he had just beer
all but choked, and had that moment come to.
Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
PIPKIN, NATHANIEL.-Nathaniel Pip-
kin was a harmless, inoffensive, good-natured The mere sight of the torment, with his
being, with a turned-up nose, and rather turned- fishy eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair in-
in legs; a cast in his eye, and a halt in his gait; quisitively on end, and his waistcoat heaving
and he divided his time between the church and with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in my
his school, verily believing that there existed not, I reticence.—Great Expectations, Chap. 9.

இன்
TOM PINCH.
72
CHARACTERS AND
73
CHARACTERISTICS
shirt buttons, all over her face, and whose own
yellow tresses were rather scrubby than luxuri
ant; * * -Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 25.
SCROOGE, the Miser.-Oh! But he was a
tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a
squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutch-
ing, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
from which no steel had ever struck out generous
fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an
oyster. The cold within him froze his old fea-
tures, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his
cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his
thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head,
and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He
carried his own low temperature always about
with him; he iced his office in the dog days.
and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
QUILP.-The child was closely followed by
an elderly man of remarkably hard features and
forbidding aspect, and so low in stature as to be
quite a dwarf, though his head and face were
large enough for the body of a giant. His black
eyes were restless, sly, and cunning; his mouth
and chin, bristly with the stubble of a coarse,
hard beard; and his complexion was one of that
kind which never looks clean or wholesome.
But what added most to the grotesque expression
of his face, was a ghastly smile, which, appear-
ing to be the mere result of habit, and to have
no connection with any mirthful or complacent
feeling, constantly revealed the few discolored
fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and
gave him the aspect of a panting dog. His dress
consisted of a large high-crowned hat, a worn
dark suit, a pair of capacious shoes, and a dirty
white neckerchief, sufficiently limp and crumpled
to disclose the greater portion of his wiry throat. External heat and cold had little influence on
Such hair as he had was of a grizzled black, cut Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry
short and straight upon his temples, and hang-weather chill him. No wind that blew was bit-
ing in a frowsy fringe about his ears. His hands,
which were of a rough, coarse grain, were very
dirty; his finger-nails were crooked, long, and
yellow.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 3.
terer than he, no falling snow was more intent
upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to
entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to
have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and
hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage
over him in only one respect. They often
came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never
did.
RUDGE, BARNABY (Idiot).-As he stood,
at that moment, half shrinking back and half
bending forward, both his face and figure were
full in the strong glare of the link, and as dis- Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say,
tinctly revealed as though it had been broad with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how
day. He was about three-and-twenty years old, are you? When will you come to see me?”
and though rather spare, of a fair height and No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no
strong make. His hair, of which he had a great | children asked him what it was o'clock, no man
profusion, was red, and, hanging in disorder or woman ever once in all his life inquired the
about his face and shoulders, gave to his restless way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even
looks an expression quite unearthly-enhanced the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and
by the paleness of his complexion, and the glassy when they saw him coming on, would tug their
lustre of his large protruding eyes. Startling as owners into doorways and up courts; and then
his aspect was, the features were good, and there would wag their tails as though they said, “No
was something even plaintive in his wan and eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark mas-
haggard aspect. But the absence of the soul ister!"-Christmas Carol, Stave I.
far more terrible in a living man than in a dead
one; and in this unfortunate being its noblest
powers were wanting.
SLAMMER, Dr.-One of the most popular
personages, in his own circle, present, was a little
His dress was of green, clumsily trimmed here fat man, with a ring of upright black hair round
and there-apparently by his own hands-with his head, and an extensive bald plain on the top
gaudy lace; brightest where the cloth was most of it-Doctor Slammer, surgeon to the 97th.
worn and soiled, and poorest where it was the The Doctor took snuff with everybody, chatted
best. A pair of tawdry ruffles dangled at his with everybody, laughed, danced, made jokes,
wrists, while his throat was nearly bare. He had played whist, did everything, and was every-
ornamented his hat with a cluster of peacock's where. To these pursuits, multifarious as they
feathers, but they were limp and broken, and were, the little Doctor added a more important
now trailed negligently down his back. Girt to one than any-he was indefatigable in paying
his side was the steel hilt of an old sword with- the most unremitting and devoted attention to a
out blade or scabbard; and some parti-colored little old widow, whose rich dress and profusion
ends of ribands and poor glass toys completed of ornament bespoke her a most desirable ad-
the ornamental portion of his attire. The flut-dition to a limited income.
tered and confused disposition of all the motley
scraps that formed his dress, bespoke, in a
scarcely less degree than his eager and unsettled
manner, the disorder of his mind, and by a gro-
tesque contrast set off and heightened the more
impressive wildness of his face.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 3.
RUGG, Mr. and Miss.—In the society of Mr.
Rugg, who had a round white visage, as if all
his blushes had been drawn out of him long
ago, and who had a ragged yellow head like a
worn-out hearth-broom; and in the society of
Miss Rugg, who had little nankeen spots, like
Pickwick, Chap. 2.
SLOPPY.-" Is he called by his right name?"
Why, you see, speaking quite correctly, he
has no right name. I always understood he
took his name from being found on a Sloppy
night.
"He seems an amiable fellow."
"Bless you, sir, there's not a bit of him," re-
turned Betty, "that's not amiable. So you may
judge how amiable he is, by running your eye
along his height.”
Of an ungainly make was Sloppy. Too much
of him longwise, too little of him broadwise
CHARACTERS AND
and too many sharp angles of him anglewise.
One of those shambling male human creatures,
born to be indiscreetly candid in the revelation
of buttons; every button he had about him
glaring at the public to a quite preternatural ex-
tent. A considerable capital of knee and elbow
and wrist and ankle had Sloppy, and he didn't
know how to dispose of it to the best advan-
tage, but was always investing it in wrong se-
curities, and so getting himself into embarrassed
circumstances. Full-Private Number One in the
Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life, was
Sloppy, and yet had his glimmering notions of
standing true to the Colors.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 16.
SLYME, CHEVY.-He might have added
that he hated two sorts of men; all those who
did him favors, and all those who were better
off than himself; as in either case their position
was an insult to a man of his stupendous merits.
But he did not; for with the apt closing words
above recited, Mr. Slyme-of too haughty a
stomach to work, to beg, to borrow, or to steal;
yet mean enough to be worked or borrowed,
begged or stolen for, by any catspaw that would
serve his turn; too insolent to lick the hand that
fed him in his need, yet cur enough to bite and
tear it in the dark-with these apt closing words,
Mr. Slyme fell forward with his head upon the
table, and so declined into a sodden sleep.
"Was there ever," cried Mr. Tigg, joining the
young men at the door, and shutting it carefully
behind him, "such an independent spirit as is
possessed by that extraordinary creature? Was
there ever such a Roman as our friend Chiv?
Was there ever a man of such a purely classical |
turn of thought, and of such a toga-like sim-
plicity of nature? Was there ever a man with
such a flow of eloquence? Might he not, gents
both, I ask, have sat upon a tripod in the ancient
times, and prophesied to a perfectly unlimited
extent, if previously supplied with gin-and-water
at the public cost?"
74
CHARACTERISTICS
himself into the discounting profession. Going
out early in life, and marrying late, as his father
had done before him, he, too, begat a lean and
anxious-minded son; who, in his turn, going out.
early in life and marrying late, became the father
of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, twins.
During the whole time consumed in the slow
growth of this family-tree, the house of Small-
weed, always early to go out and late to marry,
has strengthened itself in its practical character,
has discarded all amusements, discountenanced
all story-books, fairy tales, fictions, and fables,
and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence
the gratifying fact, that it has had no child born
to it, and that the complete little men and
women whom it has produced, have been ob-
served to bear a likeness to old monkeys with
something depressing on their minds.
*
*
*
*
+
*
Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually
sliding down in his chair since his last adjust-
ment, and is now a bundle of clothes, with a
voice in it calling for Judy.
Bleak House, Chap. 21.
SNITCHEY (Lawyer).-A cold, hard, dry
man, dressed in gray and white, like a flint; with
small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck
sparks out of them. The three natural king-
doms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative
among this brotherhood of disputants; for
Snitchey was like a magpie or a raven (only not
so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face
like a winter-pippin, with here and there a dim-
ple to express the peckings of the birds, and a
very little bit of pigtail behind that stood for the
stalk.—Battle of Life, Chap. I.
""
SNAGSBY, Mr. and Mrs.—In his lifetime,
and likewise in the period of Snagsby's "time
of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer, in
the same law-stationering premises, a niece-a
short, shrewd niece, something too violently com-
pressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7. like a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be
frosty towards the end. The Cook's-Courtiers
SMALLWEED, Grandfather, (Usurer).-- | had a rumor flying among them, that the mother
The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the of this niece did, in her daughter's childhood,
neighborhood of Mount Pleasant, was a horny-moved by too jealous a solicitude that her figure
skinned, two-legged, money-getting species of should approach perfection, lace her up every
spider, who spun webs to catch unwary flies, and morning with her maternal foot against the bed-
retired into holes until they were entrapped. post for a stronger hold and purchase; and fur-
The name of this old pagan's God was Com-ther, that she exhibited internally pints of vine-
pound Interest. He lived for it, married it,
died of it. Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest
little enterprise, in which all the loss was in-
tended to have been on the other side, he broke
something-something necessary to his exist-
ence; therefore it couldn't have been his heart-
and made an end of his career. As his charac-
ter was not good, and he had been bred at a
Charity School, in a complete course, according
to question and answer, of those ancient people
the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently
quoted as an example of the failure of educa-
tion.
gar and lemon-juice; which acids, they held, had
mounted to the nose and temper of the patient.
With whichsoever of the many tongues of Rumor
this frothy report originated, it either never
reached, or never influenced, the ears of young
Snagsby; who, having wooed and won its fair
subject on his arrival at man's estate, entered
into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook's
Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece
are one; and the niece still cherishes her figure
which, however tastes may differ, is unques
tionably so far precious, that there is mighty little
of it.
His spirit shone through his son, to whom he Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone
had always preached of "going out" early in and one flesh, but, to the neighbors' thinking.
life, and whom he made a clerk in a sharp one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed
scrivener's office at twelve years old. There, from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's
the young gentleman improved his mind, which | Court very often. Mr. Snagsby, otherwise than
was of a lean and anxious character; and, de- as he finds expression through these dulcet
veloping the family gifts, gradually elevated tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid

#m
い
​STIGGINS (THE REVEREND SHEPHERD).
75
CHARACTERS AND
75
CHARACTERISTICS
could hardly bend himself; being obliged, when
he glanced at some papers on his desk, after sit
ting down in his chair, to move his whole body
from the bottom of his spine, like Punch.
David Copperfield, Chap. 23.
man, with a shining head, and a scrubby clump
of black hair sticking out at the back. He tends
to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his
door in Cook's Court, in his gray shop-coat and
black calico sleeves, looking up at the clouds; or
stands behind his desk in his dark shop, with a
heavy flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheep- SQUEERS (Schoolmaster).— Mr. Squeers's
skin, in company with his two 'prentices; he is appearance was not prepossessing. He had but
emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor
From beneath his feet, at such times, as from a of two. The eye he had was unquestionably
shrill ghost unquiet in its grave, there frequently useful, but decidedly not ornamental; being of
arise complainings and lamentations in the voice a greenish gray, and in shape resembling the
already mentioned; and haply, on some occa-fan-light of a street door. The blank side of his
sions, when these reach a sharper pitch than
usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the 'prentices,
"I think my little woman is a-giving it to Gus-
ter !"
*
*
*
*
*
*
face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which
gave him a very sinister appearance, especially
when he smiled, at which times his expression
bordered closely on the villanous. His hair was
very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it
Rumor, always flying, bat-like, about Cook's was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding
Court, and skimming in and out at everybody's forehead, which assorted well with his harsh
windows, does say that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous voice and coarse manner. He was about two or
and inquisitive; and that Mr. Snagsby is some- three and fifty, and a trifle below the middle
times worried out of house and home, and that size; he wore a white neckerchief with long
if he had the spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand ends, and a suit of scholastic black; but his
it. It is even observed that the wives who quote | coat-sleeves being a great deal too long, and his
him to their self-willed husbands as a shining trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill
example, in reality look down upon him; and at ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a per-
that nobody does so with greater supercilious-petual state of astonishment at finding himself
ness than one particular lady, whose lord is more so respectable.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 4.
than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as
an instrument of correction. But these vague
whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby's being,
in his way, rather a meditative and poetical man;
loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer
time, and to observe how countrified the spar-
rows and the leaves are; also to lounge about
the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon, and to
remark (if in good spirits) that there were old
times once, and that you'd find a stone coffin or
two, now, under that chapel, he'll be bound, if
you was to dig for it. He solaces his imagina-
tion, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors
and Vices, and Masters of the Rolls, who are de-
ceased; and he gets such a flavor of the country
out of telling the two 'prentices how he has
heard say that a brook as clear as crystial" once
ran right down the middle of Holborn, when
Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap
away into the meadows-gets such a flavor of
the country out of this, that he never wants to
go there.-Bleak House, Chap. 10.
“
SOWERBERRY (the Undertaker). — Mr.
Sowerberry was a tall, gaunt, large-jointed man,
attired in a suit of threadbare black, with darned
cotton stockings of the same color, and shoes to
answer. His features were not naturally intended
to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general
rather given to professional jocosity. His step
was elastic, and his face betokened inward pleas-
antry.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 4.
SPENLOW (the Lawyer).—He was a little
light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots,
and the stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars.
He was buttoned up mighty trim and tight, and
must have taken a great deal of pains with his
whiskers, which were accurately curled. His
gold watch-chain was so massive, that a fancy
came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy
golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which
are put up over the gold-beaters' shops. He was
got up with such care, and was so stiff, that he
|
SQUOD, PHIL.-"Shut up shop, Phil!"
As Phil moves about to execute this order, it
appears that he is lame, though able to move
very quickly. On the speckled side of his face
he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has
a bushy black one, which want of uniformity
gives him a very singular and rather sinister ap-
pearance. Everything seems to have happened
to his hands that could possibly take place, con-
sistently with the retention of all the fingers;
for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled
all over. He appears to be very strong, and
lifts heavy benches about as if he had no idea
what weight was. He has a curious way of
limping round the gallery with his shoulder
against the wall, and tacking off at objects he
wants to lay hold of, instead of going straight to
them, which has left a smear all round the four
walls, conventionally called "Phil's mark."
*
*
*
*
*
*
The little man is dressed something like a
gunsmith, in a green baize apron and cap; and
his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder,
and begrimed with the loading of guns. As he
lies in the light, before a glaring white target,
the black upon him shines again. Not far off is
the strong, rough, primitive table, with a více
upon it, at which he has been working. He is
a little man with a face all crushed together, who
appears, from a certain blue and speckled ap-
pearance that one of his cheeks presents, to have
been blown up, in the way of business, at some
odd time or times.-Bleak House, Chap. 21.
STIGGINS (the Reverend Shepherd).—“ Now,
then!" said a shrill female voice the instant
Sam thrust his head in at the door, "what dc
you want, young man?”
Sam looked round in the direction whence the
voice proceeded. It came from a rather stout
lady of comfortable appearance, who was seated
beside the fire-place in the bar, blowing the fire
to make the kettle boil for tea. She was not
CHARACTERS AND
alone; for on the other side of the fire-place,
sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair, was a
man in threadbare black clothes, with a back
almost as long and stiff as that of the chair
itself, who caught Sam's most particular and
especial attention at once.
He was a prim-faced, red-nosed man, with a
long, thin countenance, and a semi-rattlesnake
sort of eye-rather sharp, but decidedly bad.
He wore very short trousers, and black cotton
stockings, which, like the rest of his apparel,
were particularly rusty. His looks were starched,
but his white neckerchief was not, and its long
limp ends straggled over his closely-buttoned
waistcoat in a very uncouth and unpicturesque
fashion. A pair of old, worn beaver gloves, a
broad-brimmed hat, and a faded green umbrella,
with plenty of whalebone sticking through the
bottom, as if to counterbalance the want of a
handle at the top, lay on a chair beside him, and,
being disposed in a very tidy and careful man-
ner, seemed to imply that the red-nosed man,
whoever he was, had no intention of going
away in a hurry.
76
To do the red-nosed man justice, he would
have been very far from wise if he had enter-
tained any such intention; for, to judge from all
appearances, he must have been possessed of a
most desirable circle of acquaintance, if he could
have reasonably expected to be more comfortable |
anywhere else. The fire was blazing brightly
under the influence of the bellows, and the ket-
tle was singing gaily under the influence of both.
A small tray of tea-things was arranged on the
table, a plate of hot buttered toast was gently
simmering before the fire, and the red-nosed
man himself was busily engaged in converting a
large slice of bread into the same agreeable
edible, through the instrumentality of a long
brass toasting-fork. Beside him stood a glass of
reeking hot pine-apple rum and water, with a
slice of lemon in it; and every time the red-
nosed man stopped to bring the round of toast
to his eye, with the view of ascertaining how it
got on, he imbibed a drop or two of the hot
pine-apple rum and water, and smiled upon the
rather stout lady, as she blew the fire.
Pickwick, Chap. 27.
STRYVER (Lawyer).—So, he pushed open
the door with the weak rattle in its throat,
stumbled down the two steps, got past the two
ancient cashiers, 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 fig-
ures 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 al-
ways 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 re-
monstrance, as though he squeezed them against
the wall. The House itself, magnificently read-
ing the paper quite in the far-off perspective,
lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had
been butted into its responsible waistcoat.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 12.
STRONG, Dr.-Doctor Strong looked almost
as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall iron rails
CHARACTERISTICS
and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff
and heavy as the great stone urns that flanked
them, and were set up, on the top of the red-
brick wall, at regular distances all round the
court, like sublimated skittles, for Time to play
at. He was in his library (I mean Doctor Strong
was), with his clothes not particularly well-
brushed, and his hair not particularly well-
combed; his knee-smalls unbraced; his long
black gaiters unbuttoned; and his shoes yawn-
ing like two caverns on the hearth-rug. Turn-
ing upon me a lustreless eye, that reminded me
of a long-forgotten blind old horse who once
used to crop the grass, and tumble over the
graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he
was glad to see me; and then he gave me his
hand; which I didn't know what to do with, as
it did nothing for itself.
David Copperfield, Chap. 16.
SWIVELLER, DICK.-It was perhaps not
very unreasonable to suspect from what had al-
ready passed, that Mr. Swiveller was not quite
recovered from the effects of the powerful sun-
light to which he had made allusion; but if no
such suspicion had been awakened by his speech,
his wiry hair, dull eyes, and sallow face, would
still have been strong witnesses against him.
His attire was not, as he had himself hinted,
remarkable for the nicest arrangement, but was
in a state of disorder which strongly induced
the idea that he had gone to bed in it. It con-
sisted of a brown body-coat with a great many
brass buttons up the front, and only one behind;
a bright check neckerchief, a plaid waistcoat,
soiled white trousers, and a very limp hat, worn
with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in
the brim. The breast of his coat was ornamented
with an outside pocket from which there peeped
forth the cleanest end of a very large and very
ill-favored handkerchief; his dirty wristbands
were pulled down as far as possible and ostenta-
tiously folded back over his cuffs; he displayed
no gloves, and carried a yellow cane having at
the top a bone hand with the semblance of a
ring on its little finger and a black ball in its
grasp. With all these personal advantages (to
which may be added a strong savor of tobacco-
smoke, and a prevailing greasiness of appear-
ance) Mr. Swiveller leaned back in his chair with
his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and occasionally
pitching his voice to the needful key, obliged the
company with a few bars of an intensely dismal
air, and then, in the middle of a note, relapsed
into his former silence.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 2.
TACKLETON.-He didn't look much like
a Bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier's kit-
chen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw
in his body, and his hat jerked over the bridge
of his nose, and his hands tucked down into the
bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic
ill-conditioned self peering out of one little cor-
ner of one little eye, like the concentrated es-
sence of any number of ravens. But, a Bride-
groom he designed to be.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 1.
TAPPERTIT, SIMON.-Sim, as he was
called in the locksmith's family, or Mr. Simon
Tappertit, as he called himself, and required all
men to style him out of doors, on holidays, and

MR. STRYVER AT TELLSON'S BANK.
76
CHARACTERS AND
Sundays out-was an old-fashioned, thin-faced,
sleek-haired, sharp-nosed, small-eyed little fel-
low, very little more than five feet high, and
thoroughly convinced in his own mind that he
was above the middle size; rather tall, in fact,
than otherwise. Of his figure, which was well
enough formed, though somewhat of the leanest,
he entertained the highest admiration; and with
his legs, which, in knee-breeches, were perfect
curiosities of littleness, he was enraptured to a
degree amounting to enthusiasm. He also had
some majestic, shadowy ideas, which had never
been quite fathomed by his intimate friends,
concerning the power of his eye. Indeed, he
had been known to go so far as to boast that he
could utterly quell and subdue the haughtiest
beauty by a simple process, which he termed
eyeing her over; but it must be added, that
neither of this faculty, nor of the power le claim-
ed to have, through the same gift, of vanquishing
and heaving down dumb animals, even in a rabid
state, had he ever furnished evidence which could
be deemed quite satisfactory and conclusive.
**
It may be inferred from these premises, that
in the small body of Mr. Tappertit there was
locked up an ambitious and aspiring soul. As
certain liquors, confined in casks too cramped
in their dimensions, will ferment, and fret, and
chafe in their imprisonment, so the spiritual es-
sence or soul of Mr. Tappertit would sometimes
fume within that precious cask, his body, until,
with great foam and froth and splutter, it would
force a vent, and carry all before it. It was his
custom to remark, in reference to any one of
these occasions, that his soul had got into his
head; and in this novel kind of intoxication,
many scrapes and mishaps befell him, which he
had frequently concealed with no small difficulty
from his worthy master.
Sim Tappertit, among the other fancies upon
which his before-mentioned soul was for ever
feasting and regaling itself (and which fancies,
like the liver of Prometheus, grew as they were
fed upon), had a mighty notion of his order; and
had been heard by the servant-maid openly ex-
pressing his regret that the 'prentices no longer
carried clubs wherewith to mace the citizens;
that was his strong expression.
*
*
*
*
*
*
In respect of dress and personal decoration,
Sim Tappertit was no less of an adventurous
and enterprising character. He had been seen
beyond dispute to pull off ruffles of the finest
quality at the corner of the street on Sunday
night, and to put them carefully in his pocket
before returning home; and it was quite notori-
ous that on all great holiday occasions it was his
habit to exchange his plain steel knee-buckles
for a pair of glittering paste, under cover of a
friendly post, planted most conveniently in that
same spot. Add to this, that he was in years
just twenty, in his looks much older, and in con-
ceit at least two hundred; that he had no ob-
jection to be jested with, touching his admira-
tion of his master's daughter; and had even,
when called upon at a certain obscure tavern to
pledge the lady whom he honored with his love,
toasted with many winks and leers, a fair crea-
ture whose Christian name, he said, began with a
D; and as much is known of Sim Tappertit,
who has by this time followed the locksmith in to
breakfast, as is necessary to be known in making
his acquaintance.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 4.
mying
CHARACTERISTICS
TIBBS, Mr. and Mrs. Mrs. Tibbs was
somewhat short of stature, and Mr. Tibbs was
by no means a large man.
He had, moreover,
very short legs, but, by way of indemnification,
his face was peculiarly long. He was to his
wife what the o is in 90-he was of some impor
tance with her-he was nothing without her.
Mrs. Tibbs was always talking. Mr. Tibbs
rarely spoke; but, if it were at any time possible
to put in a word when he should have said
nothing at all, he had that talent. Mrs. Tibbs
detested long stories, and Mr. Tibbs had one,
the conclusion of which had never been heard
by his most intimate friends. It always began,
"I recollect when I was in the volunteer corps,
in eighteen hundred and six,"-but, as he spoke
very slowly and softly, and his better half very
quickly and loudly, he rarely got beyond the
introductory sentence. He was a melancholy
specimen of the story-teller. He was the wan-
dering Jew of Joe Millerism.
Tales. The Boarding-House, Chap. I.
TIGG, MONTAGUE.-Mr. Pecksniff found
himself immediately collared by something which
smelt like several damp umbrellas, a barrel of
beer, a cask of warm brandy-and-water, and a
small parlor-full of stale tobacco-smoke mixed;
and was straightway led down stairs into the
bar from which he had lately come, where he
found himself standing opposite to, and in the
grasp of, a perfectly strange gentleman of still
stranger appearance, who, with his disengaged
hand, rubbed his own head very hard, and
looked at him, Pecksniff, with an evil counte-
nance.
The gentleman was of that order of appear-
ance which is currently termed shabby-genteel,
though in respect of his dress he can hardly be
said to have been in any extremities, as his fin-
gers were a long way out of his gloves, and the
soles of his feet were at an inconvenient dis-
tance from the upper leather of his boots. His
nether garments were of a bluish gray-violent in
its colors once, but sobered now by age and din-
giness-and were so stretched and strained in a
tough conflict between his braces and his straps,
that they appeared every moment in danger of
flying asunder at the knees. His coat, in color
blue and of a military cut, was buttoned and
frogged up to his chin. His cravat was, in hue
and pattern, like one of those mantles which
hair-dressers are accustomed to wrap about their
clients, during the progress of the professional
mysteries. His hat had arrived at such a pass
that it would have been hard to determine
whether it was originally white or black. But
he wore a moustache-a shaggy moustache, too;
nothing in the meek and merciful way, but quite
in the fierce and scornful style; the regular Sa-
tanic sort of thing-and he wore, besides, a vast
quantity of unbrushed hair. He was very dirty
and very jaunty; very bold and very mean;
very swaggering and very slinking; very much
like a man who might have been something bet-
ter, and unspeakably like a man who deserved
to be something worse.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 4.
TIGG (the Financier.)-The appearance of
Mr. Bailey's governor as he drove along, fully
justified that enthusiastic youth's description of
him to the wondering Poll. He had a world
1
CHARACTERS AND
of jet-black shining hair upon his head, upon
his cheeks, upon his chin, upon his upper lip.
His clothes, symmetrically made, were of the
newest fashion and the costliest kind. Flowers
of gold and blue, and green and blushing red,
were on his waistcoat; precious chains and jew-
els sparkled on his breast; his fingers, clogged
with brilliant rings, were as unwieldy as summer
flies but newly rescued from a honey-pot. The
daylight mantled in his gleaming hat and boots
as in a polished glass. And yet, though changed
his name, and changed his outward surface, it
was Tigg. Though turned and twisted upside
down, and inside out, as great men have been
sometimes known to be; though no longer Mon-
tague Tigg, but Tigg Montague; still it was
Tigg; the same Satanic, gallant, military Tigg.
The brass was burnished, lacquered, newly-
stamped; yet it was the true Tigg metal not-
withstanding.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27.
TOODLE, Mr.-He was a strong, loose,
round shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on
whom his clothes sat negligently; with a good
deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural
tint, perhaps, by smoke and coal-dust; hard
knotty hands; and a square forehead, as coarse
in grain as the bark of an oak.
*
*
*
*
*
*
He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly
besmeared with coal-dust and oil, and had cin-
ders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-slaked
ashes all over him. He was not a bad-looking
fellow, nor even what could be fairly called a
dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this; and, in
short, he was Mr. Toodle, professionally clothed.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 2.
78
CHARACTERISTICS
Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state
of single blessedness, as bachelors say, or single
cursedness, as spinsters think; but the idea of
matrimony had never ceased to haunt him.
Tales, Chap. 10.
TUGGSES, The.-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 button of his waist-
coat in front to the ornamental buttons of his
coat behind. The figure of the amiable Mrs.
Tuggs, if not perfectly symmetrical, was decided-
ly comfortable; and the form of her only daugh-
ter, the accomplished Miss Charlotte Tuggs, was
fast ripening into that state of luxuriant plump-
ness which had enchanted the eyes, and capti-
vated 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
constituted in mind, from the remainder of his
family. There was that elongation in his
thoughtful face, and that tendency to weakness.
in his interesting legs, which tell so forcibly of a
great mind and romantic disposition.
slightest traits of character in such a being pos-
sess no mean interest to speculative 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 descrip-
tion.-Tales, Chap. 4.
The
TURVEYDROP (Deportment).—Just then,
there appeared from a side-door old Mr. Turvey-
drop, in the full lustre of his Deportment.
TOOTS, Mr.—There young Toots was, pos-
sessed of the gruffest of voices and the shrillest
of minds; sticking ornamental pins into his He was a fat old gentleman, with a false com-
shirt, and keeping a ring in his waistcoat pocket plexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig.
to put on his little finger by stealth, when the He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast
pupils went out walking; constantly falling in to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad
love by sight with nurserymaids, who had no blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched
idea of his existence; and looking at the gas-in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped
lighted world over the little iron bars in the
left-hand corner window of the front three pairs
of stairs, after bed-time, like a greatly overgrown
cherub who had sat up aloft much too long.
Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
TOTTLE, WATKINS (a Bachelor).-Mr.
Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon com-
pound 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 stocking 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-
son himself might have envied. He lived on an
annuity, which was well adapted to the indi-
vidual who received it, in one respect-it was
rather small. He received it in periodical
payments on every alternate Monday; but he
ran himself out, about a day after the expiration
of the first week, as regularly as an eight-day
clock; and then, to make the comparison com-
plete, his landlady wound him up, and he went
on with a regular tick.
down, as much as he could possibly bear. He
had such a neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes
out of their natural shape), and his chin and even
his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though
he must inevitably double up, if it were cast
loose. He had, under his arm, a hat of great
size and weight, shelving downward from the
crown to the brim; and in his hand a pair of
white gloves, with which he flapped it, as he
stood poised on one leg, in a high-shouldered,
round-elbowed state of elegance not to be sur-
passed. He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he
had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands,
he had everything but any touch of nature; he
was not like youth, he was not like age, he was
not like anything in the world but a model of
Deportment.
"Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend,
Miss Summerson."
Distinguished," said Mr. Turveydrop, "by
Miss Summerson's presence." As he bowed to
me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw
creases come into the whites of his eyes.
Bleak House, Chap. 14.
VAGABOND, A.-This last man was an ad-
mirable specimen of a class of gentry which
CHARACTERS AND
never can be seen in full perfection but in such
places; they may be met with, in an imperfect
state, occasionally about stable-yards and pub-
lic-houses; but they never attain their full bloom
except in these hot-beds, which would almost
seem to be considerately provided by the Legis-
lature for the sole purpose of rearing them.
He was a tall fellow, with an olive complexion,
long dark hair, and very thick bushy whiskers
meeting under his chin. He wore no necker-
chief, as he had been playing rackets all day,
and his open shirt-collar displayed their full
luxuriance. On his head he wore one of the
common eighteenpenny French skull-caps, with
a gaudy tassel dangling therefrom, very happily
in keeping with the common fustian coat. His
legs-which, being long, were afflicted with
weakness-graced a pair of Oxford-mixture trou-
sers, made to show the full symmetry of those
limbs. Being somewhat negligently braced, how-
ever, and, moreover, but imperfectly buttoned,
they fell in a series of not the most graceful folds
over a pair of shoes sufficiently down at heel to
display a pair of very soiled white stockings.
There was a rakish, vagabond smartness, and a
kind of boastful rascality, about the whole man,
that was worth a mine of gold.
This figure was the first to perceive that Mr.
Pickwick was looking on; upon which he winked
to the Zephyr, and entreated him, with mock
gravity, not to wake the gentleman.
Pickwick, Chap. 41.
VHOLES (the Lawyer).-Mr. Vholes is a
very respectable man. He has not a large bus-
iness, but he is a very respectable man. He is
allowed by the greater attorneys who have made
good fortunes, or are making them, to be a most
respectable man. He never misses a chance in
his practice; which is a mark of respectability.
He never takes any pleasure; which is another
mark of respectability. He is reserved and
serious; which is another mark of respectability.
His digestion is impaired, which is highly re-
spectable. And he is making hay of the grass
which is flesh, for his three daughters. And his
father is dependent on him in the Vale of Taun-
ton.
The one great principle of the English law is,
to make business for itself. There is no other
principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently
maintained through all its narrow turnings.
Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent
scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity
are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly
perceive that its grand principle is to make bus-
iness for itself at their expense, and surely they
will cease to grumble.-Bleak House, Chap. 39.
WEMMICK, Mr.-Casting my eyes on Mr.
Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was
like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry
man, rather short in stature, with a square wood-
en face, whose expression seemed to have been
imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel.
There were some marks in it that might have
been dimples, if the material had been softer
and the instrument finer, but which, as it was,
were only dints. The chisel had made three or
four of these attempts at embellishment over his
nose, but had given them up without an effort to
smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor
from the frayed condition of his linen, and he
*79
CHARACTERISTICS
appeared to have sustained a good many bereave
ments; for he wore at least four mourning rings,
besides a brooch representing a lady and a
weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I
noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at
his watch-chain, as if he were quite laden with
remembrances of departed friends. He had glit-
tering eyes-small, keen, and black-and thin
wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the
best of my belief, from forty to fifty years.
*
*
*
*
*
*
He wore his hat on the back of his head, and
looked straight before him; walking in a self-
contained way as if there were nothing in the
streets to claim his attention. His mouth was
such a post-office of a mouth that he had a me-
chanical appearance of smiling. We had got to
the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it
was merely a mechanical appearance, and that
he was not smiling at all.
Great Expectations, Chap. 21.
WILFER, REGINALD, the Conventional
Cherub.-Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather
a grand sound, suggesting on first acquaintance
brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained-
glass windows, and generally the De Wilfers who
came over with the Conqueror. For it is a re-
markable fact in genealogy that no De Anyones
ever came over with Anybody else.
But, the Reginald Wilfer family were of such
common-place extraction and pursuits, that
their forefathers had for generations modestly
subsisted on the Docks, the Excise Office and
the Custom House, and the existing R Wilfer
was a poor clerk. So poor a clerk, though hav-
ing a limited salary and an unlimited family, that
he had never yet attained the modest object of
his ambition; which was, to wear a complete
new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at
one time. His black hat was brown before he
could afford a coat, his pantaloons were white at
the seams and knees before he could buy a pair
of boots, his boots had worn out before he could
treat himself to new pantaloons, and, by the time
he worked round to the hat again, that shining
modern article roofed-in an ancient ruin of va-
rious periods.
If the conventional Cherub could ever grow
up and be clothed, he might be photographed as
a portrait of Wilfer. His chubby, smooth, in-
nocent appearance was a reason for his being
always treated with condescension when he was
not put down. A stranger entering his own
poor house at about ten o'clock P.M. might have
been surprised to find him sitting up to supper.
So boyish was he in his curves and proportions,
that his old schoolmaster, meeting him in Cheap-
side, might have been unable to withstand the
temptation of caning him on the spot. In short,
he was the conventional Cherub, rather gray, with
signs of care on his expression, and in decidedly
insolvent circumstances.
*
*
*
*
*
*
He was shy, and unwilling to own to the
name of Reginald, as being too aspiring and
self-assertive a name. In his signature he used
only the initial R., and imparted what it really
stood for, to none but chosen friends, under the
seal of confidence. Out of this, the facetious
habit had arisen in the neighborhood surround-
ing Mincing Lane of making Christian names
for him of adjectives and participles beginning
CHARACTERS AND
80
with R. Some of these were more or less appro-
priate; as Rusty, Retiring, Ruddy, Round, Ripe,
Ridiculous, Ruminative; others derived their
point from their want of application, as Raging,
Rattling, Roaring, Raffish. But his popular
name was Rumty, which in a moment of inspi-
ration had been bestowed upon him by a gentle- |
man of convivial habits connected with the drug
market, as the beginning of a social chorus, his
leading part in the execution of which had led
this gentleman to the Temple of Fame, and of
which the whole expressive burden ran :
"Rumty, iddity, row dow dow,
Sing toodlely, teedlely, bow wow wow."
Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor
notes on business, as "Dear Rumty:" in answer
to which, he sedately signed himself, "Yours
truly, R. Wilfer."
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 4.
WILKINS, SAMUEL.—Mr. Samuel Wil-
kins was a carpenter, a journeyman carpenter,
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-sufficient for his wants, varying
from eighteen shillings to one pound five, weekly
-his manner undeniable-his Sabbath waist-
coats dazzling.—Sketches (Characters), Chap. 4.
WILLIAM, Mr. and Mrs.-Mrs. William,
like M William, was a simple, innocent-looking
person, in whose smooth cheeks the cheerful red
of her husband's official waistcoat was very
pleasantly repeated. But whereas Mr. Wil-
liam's light hair stood on end all over his head,
and seemed to draw his eyes up with it in an
excess of bustling readiness for anything, the
dark brown hair of Mrs. William was carefully
smoothed down, and waved away under a trim
tidy cap, in the most exact and quiet manner
imaginable. Whereas Mr. William's very trou-
sers hitched themselves up at the ankles, as if it
were not in their iron-gray nature to rest with-
out looking about them, Mrs. William's neatly-
flowered skirts-red and white, like her own
pretty face-were as composed and orderly as
if the very wind that blew so hard out of doors
could not disturb one of their folds. Whereas
his coat had something of a fly-away and half-off
appearance about the collar and breast, her little
bodice was so placid and neat, that there should
have been protection for her, in it, had she needed
any, with the roughest people. Who could have
had the heart to make so calm a bosom swell
with grief, or throb with fear, or flutter with a
thought of shame! To whom would its repose
and peace have not appealed against disturb-
ance, like the innocent slumber of a child!
CHARACTERISTICS
WATERBROOK, Mr., and Company. — 1
found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gen
tleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of
shirt collar, who only wanted a black nose to be
the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was
happy to have the honor of making my acquaint-
ance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs.
Waterbrook, presented me, with much cere
mony, to a very awful lady in a black velvet
dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I re
member as looking like a near relation of Ham-
let's say his aunt.
let's-say
Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady's name; and
her husband was there too; so cold a man, that
his head, instead of being gray, seemed to be
sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense deference
was shown to the Henry Spikers, male and fe-
male, which Agnes told me was on account of
Mr. Henry Spiker being solicitor to something
or to somebody, I forget what or which, remotely
connected with the Treasury.
I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a
suit of black, and in deep humility. "He told
me, when I shook hands with him, that he was
proud to be noticed by me, and that he really
felt obliged to me for my condescension. I
could have wished he had been less obliged to
me, for he hovered about me in his gratitude all
the rest of the evening; and whenever I said a
word to Agnes, was sure, with his shadowless
eyes and cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly
down upon us from behind.
There were other guests-all iced for the oc-
casion, as it struck me, like the wine. But there
was one who attracted my attention before he
came in, on account of my hearing him an-
nounced as Mr. Traddles! My mind flew back
to Salem House; and could it be Tommy, I
thought, who used to draw the skeletons!
I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual inter-
est. He was a sober, steady-looking young man,
of retiring manners, with a comic head of hair,
and eyes that were rather wide open; and he
got into an obscure corner so soon, that I had
some difficulty in making him out. At length I
had a good view of him, and either my vision de-
| ceived me, or it was the old unfortunate Tommy
David Copperfield, Chap. 25.
CHARACTERS General Description of.
Tobacco-smoky Frenchman in Algerine wrap-
per, with peaked hood behind, who might be
Abd-el-Kader dyed rifle-green, and who seems
to be dressed entirely in dirt and braid, carries
pineapples in a covered basket. Tall, grave,
melancholy Frenchman, with black Vandyke
beard, and hair close-cropped, with expansive
chest to waistcoat, and compressive waist to
coat: saturnine as to his pantaloons, calm as to
his feminine boots, precious as to his jewelry,
smooth and white as to his linen; dark-eyed,
high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed got up, one
thinks, like Lucifer, or Mephistopheles, or Za-
miel, transformed into a highly genteel Parisian
WIT, a “Social."— He could imitate the-has the green end of a pineapple sticking out
French horn to admiration, sang comic songs of his neat valise.-A Flight.-Reprinted Pieces.
most inimitably, and had the most insinuating
way of saying impertinent nothings to his doting CHARACTERS.-A Haunted Man.
female admirers. He had acquired, somehow or
other, the reputation of being a great wit, and
accordingly, whenever he opened his mouth,
everybody who knew him laughed very heartily.
Tales, Chap. II,
Haunted Man, Chap. 1,
Who could have seen his hollow cheek, his
sunken brilliant eye; his black-attired figure,
indefinably grim, although well-knit and well-
proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like
tangled sea-weed, about his face-as if he had
CHARACTERS AND
been, through his whole life, a lonely mark for
the chafing and beating of the great deep of
humanity-but might have said he looked like a
haunted man?-Haunted Man, Chap. 1.
81
|
CHARACTERISTICS
him, do nothing but cry-except mcan. Then
there was Anthony Chuzzlewit, and his son
Jonas: the face of the old man so sharpened by
the wariness and cunning of his life, that it
seemed to cat him a passage through the crowd-
It was the voice of the same Richard, who had ed room, as he edged away behind the remotest
come upon them unobserved, and stood before chairs; while the son had so well profited by the
the father and daughter; looking down upon precept and example of the father, that he looked
them with a face as glowing as the iron on which a year or two the elder of the twain, as they
his stout sledge-hammer daily rung. A hand-stood winking their red eyes, side by side, and
some, well-made, powerful youngster he was; whispering to each other softly. Then there
with eyes that sparkled like the red-hot drop- was the widow of a deceased brother of Mr. Mar-
pings from a furnace-fire; black hair that curled tin Chuzzlewit, who being almost supernaturally
about his swarthy temples rarely; and a smile-disagreeable, and having a dreary face and a
a smile that bore out Meg's eulogium on his
style of conversation.
bony figure and a masculine voice, was, in right
of these qualities, what is commonly called a
strong-minded woman; and who, if she could,
would have established her claim to the title,
and have shown herself, mentally speaking, a
perfect Samson, by shutting up her brother-in-
law in a private mad-house, until he proved his
complete sanity by loving her very much. Be-
side her sat her spinster daughters, three in num-
ber, and of gentlemanly deportment, who had
so mortified themselves with tight stays, that
their tempers were reduced to something less
than their waists, and sharp lacing was expressed
in their very noses. Then there was a young
gentleman, grand-nephew of Mr. Martin Chuz-
zlewit, very dark and very hairy, and apparently
born for no particular purpose but to save look-
ing-glasses the trouble of reflecting more than
just the first idea and sketchy notion of a face,
which had never been carried out. Then there
was a solitary female cousin who was remarkable
for nothing but being very deaf, and living by
herself, and always having the toothache. Then
there was George Chuzzlewit, a gay bachelor-
cousin, who claimed to be young, but had been
younger, and was inclined to corpulency, and
rather over-fed himself: to that extent, indeed,
that his eyes were strained in their sockets, as if
with constant surprise; and he had such an ob-
vious disposition to pimples, that the bright
spots on his cravat, the rich pattern on his waist-
coat, and even his glittering trinkets, seemed to
But when the company arrived! That was have broken out upon him, and not to have come
the time. When Mr. Pecksniff, rising from his into existence comfortably. Last of all there
seat at the table's head, with a daughter on either were present Mr. Chevy Slyme and his friend
hand, received his guests in the best parlor and Tigg. And it is worthy of remark, that although
motioned them to chairs, with eyes so over-each person present disliked the other, mainly
flowing and countenance so damp with gracious
perspiration, that he may be said to have been in
a kind of moist meekness! And the company;
the jealous, stony-hearted, distrustful company, Such was the pleasant little family circle now
who were all shut up in themselves, and had no assembled in Mr. Pecksniff's best parlor, agree-
faith in anybody, and wouldn't believe anything, ably prepared to fall foul of Mr. Pecksniff or any-
and would no more allow themselves to be soft-body else who might venture to say anything
ened or lulled asleep by the Pecksniffs than if whatever upon any subject.
they had been so many hedgehogs or porcupines!
First, there was Mr. Spottletoe, who was so
bald and had such big whiskers, that he seemed CHARACTERS-Miscellaneous.
to have stopped his hair, by the sudden applica-
tion of some powerful remedy, in the very act of
falling off his head, and to have fastened it irre-
vocably on his face. Then there was Mrs. Spot-
tletoe, who, being too slim for her years, and of
a poetical constitution, was accustomed to inform
her more intimate friends that the said whiskers
the lodestar of her existence;" and who
could now, by reason of her strong affection for
her uncle Chuzzlewit, and the shock it gave her
to be suspected of testamentary designs upon
Christmas Chimes, 1st Quarter.
CHARACTERS-A Family Party at Peck-
sniff's.
If ever Mr. Pecksniff wore an apostolic look,
he wore it on this memorable day. If ever his
unruffled smile proclaimed the words: "I am a
messenger of peace! that was its mission now.
If ever man combined within himself all the
mild qualities of the lamb with a considerable
touch of the dove, and not a dash of the croco-
dile, or the least possible suggestion of the very
mildest seasoning of the serpent, that man was
he. And, oh, the two Miss Pecksniffs! Oh, the |
serene expression on the face of Charity, which
seemed to say, "I know that all my family have
injured me beyond the possibility of reparation,
but I forgive them, for it is my duty so to do!"
And, oh, the gay simplicity of Mercy; so charm-
ing, innocent, and infant-like, that if she had
gone out walking by herself, and it had been a
little earlier in the season, the robin-redbreasts
might have covered her with leaves against her
will, believing her to be one of the sweet chil-
dren in the wood, come out of it, and issuing
forth once more to look for blackberries, in the
young freshness of her heart! What words can
paint the Pecksniffs in that trying hour? Oh,
none; for words have naughty company among
them, and the Pecksniffs were all goodness!
were
6
because he or she did belong to the family, they
one and all concurred in hating Mr. Tigg because
he didn't.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 4.
A corpulent man, with a fortnight's napkin
under his arm and coeval stockings on his legs.
Pickwick, Chap. 22.
Humph! Caleb, come here! Who's that
with the gray hair?"
"I don't know, sir," returned Caleb, in a
whisper. "Never see him before, in all my life.
A beautiful figure for a nut-cracker; quite a new
model. With a screw-jaw opening down into his
waistcoat, he'd be lovely."
64
CHARACTERS AND
Not ugly enough," said Tackleton.
"Or for a fire-box, either," observed Caleb, in
deep contemplation, "what a model! Unscrew
his head to put the matches in; turn him heels
up'ards for the light; and what a fire-box for a
gentleman's mantel-shelf, just as he stands!"
"Not half ugly enough," said Tackleton. “No-
thing in him at all."
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. I.
Two other gentlemen had come out with him.
One was a low-spirited gentleman of middle age,
of a meagre habit, and a disconsolate face; who
kept his hands continually in the pockets of his
scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and
dog's eared from that custom; and was not par-
ticularly well brushed or washed. The other, a
full-sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman, in
a blue coat with bright buttons, and a white
cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as
:f an undue proportion of the blood in his body
were squeezed up into his head; which perhaps
accounted for his having also the appearance of
being rather cold about the heart.
Christmas Chimes, 1st Quarter.
A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was;
a government officer; in his way (and in most
other people's too) a professed pugilist; always
in training, always with, a system to force down
the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard
of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to
fight All England. To continue in fistic phrase-
ology, he had a genius for coming up to the
scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and prov-
ing himself an ugly customer. He would go in
and damage any subject whatever with his right,
follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter,
bore his opponent (he always fought All Eng-
land) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly.
He was certain to knock the wind out of com-
mon sense, and render that unlucky adversary
deaf to the call of time.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 2.
There was a hanger on at that establishment
(a supernaturally preserved Druid, I believe him
to have been, and to be still), with long white
hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar
off: who claimed to have been a shepherd, and
who seemed to be ever watching for the reap-
pearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some
ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for
many ages. He was a man with a weird belief
in him that no one could count the stones of
Stonehenge twice, and make the same number
of them; likewise, that any one who counted
them three times nine times, and then stood in
the centre and said "I dare!" would behold a
tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead.
CHARACTERS-Female.
The Holly-Tree.
82
CHARACTERISTICS
she paid the coachman she took her money out
of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in
a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm
by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had
never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady al-
together as Miss Murdstone was.
*
*
*
*
*
*
She began to "help" my mother next morn
ing, and was in and out of the store-closet alì
day, putting things to rights, and making havoc
in the old arrangements. Almost the first re-
markable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone
was, her being constantly haunted by a suspicion
that the servants had a man secreted somewhere
on the premises. Under the influence of this
delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the
most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened
the door of a dark cupboard without clapping .t
to again, in the belief that she had got him.
Though there was nothing very airy about
Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point
of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to
this hour, looking for that man) before anybody
in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as
her opinion that she even slept with one eye
open; but I could not concur in this idea; for
I tried it myself after hearing the suggestion
thrown out, and found it couldn't be done.
David Copperfield, Chap. 4.
CLEMENCY NEWCOME.-She was about
thirty years old, and had a sufficiently plump and
cheerful face, though it was twisted up into an
odd expression of tightness that made it comical.
But the extraordinary homeliness of her gait
and manner would have superseded any face in
the world. To say that she had two left legs,
and somebody else's arms, and that all four limbs
seemed to be out of joint, and to start from per-
fectly wrong places when they were set in mo-
tion, is to offer the mildest outline of the reality.
To say that she was perfectly content and satis-
fied with these arrangements, and regarded them
as being no business of hers, and that she took
her arms and legs as they came, and allowed
them to dispose of themselves just as it happened,
is to render faint justice to her equanimity. Her
dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes,
that never wanted to go where her feet went;
blue stockings; a printed gown of many colors
and the most hideous pattern procurable for
money; and a white apron. She always wore
short sleeves, and always had, by some accident,
grazed elbows, in which she took so lively an
interest, that she was continually trying to turn
them round and get impossible views of them.
In general, a little cap perched somewhere on
her head; though it was rarely to be met with
in the place usually occupied in other subjects
by that article of dress; but from head to foot
she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a
kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable
anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own con-
science as well as in the public eye, gave rise to
one of her most startling evolutions, which was
to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden
handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called
a busk), and wrestle as it were with her gar-
ments, until they fell into a symmetrical arrange-
MISS MURDSTONE.-It was Miss Murd-
stone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking
lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she
greatly resembled in face and voice; and with
very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her
large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs
of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had car-ment.-The Battle of Life, Chap. ▲
ried them to that account. She brought with
her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with PEGGOTTY.-The first objects that assume
her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When a distinct presence before me, as I look far back,
83

палини муродг
MR. F'S AUNT IS CONDUCTED INTO RETIREMENT.
CHARACTERS AND
into the blank of my infancy, are my mother,
with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and
Peggotty, with no shape at all, and eyes so dark
that they seemed to darken their whole neigh-
borhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so
hard and red that I wondered that the birds
didn't peck her in preference to apples.
I believe I can remember these two at a little
distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping
down or kneeling on the floor, and I going un-
steadily from the one to the other. I have an
impression on my mind which I cannot distin-
guish from actual remembrance, of the touch of
Peggotty's fore-finger as she used to hold it out
to me, and of its being roughened by needle-
work, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.
David Copperfield, Chap. 2.
83
DOLLY VARDEN.- How well she looked!
Well? Why, if he had xhausted every lauda-
tory adjective in the dictionary, it wouldn't have
been praise enough. When and where was there
ever such a plump, rogui :h, comely, bright-eyed,
enticing, bewitching, caj tivating, maddening lit-
tle puss in all this world, as Dolly! What was the
Dolly of five years ago .o the Dolly of that day!
How many coach-makers, saddlers, cabinet-ma-
kers, and professors of other useful arts, had de-
scrted their fathers, moʻhers, sisters, brothers, and,
most of all, their cousins, for the love of her!
How many unknown gentlemen-supposed to be
of mighty fortunes, it not titles-had waited round
the corner after dark, and tempted Miggs, the
incorruptible, with golden guineas, to deliver
offers of marriage folded up in love-letters! How |
many disconsolate fathers and substantial trades-
men had waited on the locksmith for the same
purpose, with dismal tales of how their sons had
lost their appetites, and taken to shut themselves
up in dark bed-rooms, and wandering in deso-
late suburbs with pale faces, and all because of
Dolly Varden's loveliness and cruelty! How
many young men, in all previous times of unpre-
cedented steadiness, had turned suddenly wild
and wicked for the same reason, and, in an
ecstasy of unrequited love, taken to wrench off
door-knockers, and invert the boxes of rheu-
matic watchmen ! How had she recruited the
king's service, both by sea and land, through
rendering desperate his loving subjects between
the ages of eighteen and twenty-five! How
many young ladies had publicly professed with
tears in their eyes, that for their tastes she was
much too short, too tall, too bold, too cold, too
stout, too thin, too fair, too dark-too everything
but handsome! How many old ladies, taking
counsel together, had thanked Heaven their
daughters were not like her, and had hoped she
might come to no harm, and had thought she
would come to no good, and had wondered what
people saw in her, and had arrived at the con-
clusion that she was "going off" in her looks, or
had never come on in them, and that she was a
thorough imposition and a popular mistake!
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 41.
MR. F's AUNT.-There was a fourth and
most original figure in the Patriarchal tent, who
also appeared before dinner. This was an
amazing little old woman, with a face like a
staring wooden doll too cheap for expression,
and a stiff yellow wig perched unevenly on the
top of her head, as if the child who owned the
CHARACTERISTICS
doll had driven a tack through it anywhere, so
that it only got fastened on. Another remark-
able thing in this little old woman was, that the
same child seemed to have damaged her face in
two or three places with some blunt instrument
in the nature of a spoon; her countenance, and
particularly the tip of her nose, presenting the
phenomena of several dints, generally answering
to the bowl of that article. A further remark-
able thing in this little old woman was, that she
had no name but Mr. F's Aunt.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
Mr. F's Aunt was so stiffened that she had the
appearance of being past bending, by any means
short of powerful mechanical pressure. Her
bonnet was cocked up behind in a terrific man-
ner; and her stony reticule was as rigid as if it
had been petrified by the Gorgon's head, and
had got it at that moment inside.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 34.
SALLY BRASS.-The office commonly held
two examples of animated nature, more to the
purpose of this history, and in whom it has a
stronger interest and more particular concern.
Of these, one was Mr. Brass himself, who has
already appeared in these pages. The other was
his clerk, assistant, housekeeper, secretary, con-
fidential plotter, adviser, intriguer, and bill-of-
cost increaser, Miss Brass-a kind of Amazon at
common law, of whom it may be desirable to
offer a brief description.
Miss Sally Brass, then, was a lady of thirty-
five or thereabouts, of a gaunt and bony figure,
and a resolute bearing, which, if it repressed the
softer emotions of love, and kept admirers at a
distance, certainly inspired a feeling akin to awe
in the breasts of those male strangers who had
the happiness to approach her. In face she bore
a striking resemblance to her brother Sampson-
so exact, indeed, was the likeness between them,
that had it consorted with Miss Brass's maiden
modesty and gentle womanhood to have assumed
her brother's clothes in a frolic and sat down be-
side him, it would have been difficult for the old-
est friend of the family to determine which was
Sampson and which Sally, especially as the lady
carried upon her upper lip certain reddish
demonstrations, which, if the imagination had
been assisted by her attire, might have been
mistaken for a beard. These were, however, in
all probability, nothing more than eye-lashes in a
wrong place, as the eyes of Miss Brass were free
quite from any such natural impertinencies. In
complexion Miss Brass was sallow-rather a
dirty sallow, so to speak-but this hue was
agreeably relieved by the healthy glow which
mantled in the extreme tip of her laughing nose.
Her voice was exceedingly impressive-deep and
rich in quality, and, once heard, not easily for-
gotten. Her usual dress was a green gown,
color not unlike the curtain of the office-window,
made tight to the figure, and terminating at the
throat, where it was fastened behind by a pe-
culiarly large and massive button. Feeling, no
doubt, that simplicity and plainness are the soul
of elegance, Miss Brass wore no collar or ker-
chief except upon her head, which was invariably
ornamented with a brown gauze scarf, like the
wing of the fabled vampire, and which, twisted
into any form that happened to suggest itself,
formed an easy and graceful head-dress.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 33.
in
CHARACTERS AND
ROSA DARTLE.-There was a second lady
in the dining-room, of a slight, short figure, dark,
and not agreeable to look at, but with some ap-
pearance of good looks too, who attracted my
attention: perhaps because I had not expected to
see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting
opposite to her: perhaps because of something
really remarkable in her. She had black hair and
eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar
upon her lip. It was an old scar-I should
rather call it seam, for it was not discolored, and
had healed years ago-which had once cut
through her mouth, downward towards the chin,
but was now barely visible across the table, ex-
cept above and on her upper lip, the shape of
which it had altered. I concluded in my own
mind that she was about thirty years of age, and
that she wished to be married She was a little
dilapidated—like a house with having been so
long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appear-
ance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be
the effect of some wasting fire within her, which
found a vent in her gaunt eyes.
David Copperfield, Chap. 20.
MADAME DEFARGE.—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 predicted 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 Ďe-
farge said nothing when her lord came in, but
coughed just one grain of cough. This, in com-
bination with the lifting of her darkly-defined
eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a
line, suggested to her husband that he would do
well to look round the shop among the custom-
ers, for any new customer who had dropped in
while he stepped over the way.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 5.
LITTLE DORRIT.—It was not easy to make
out Little Dorrit's face; she was so retiring,
plied her needle in such removed corners, and
started away so scared if encountered on the
stairs. But it seemed to be a pale transparent
face, quick in expression, though not beautiful in
feature, its soft hazel eyes excepted. A delicately
bent head, a tiny form, a quick little pair of
busy hands, and a shabby dress-it must needs
have been very shabby to look at all so, being so
neat-were Little Dorrit as she sat at work.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5.
SAIREY GAMP.-She was a fat old wo-
man, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a
moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of
turning up, and only showing the white of it.
Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble
to look over herself, if one may say so, at those
to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty
84
CHARACTERISTICS
black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a
shawl and bonnet to correspond. In these
dilapidated articles of dress she had, on prin
ciple, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such
occasions as the present; for this at once ex-
pressed a decent amount of veneration for the
deceased, and invited the next of kin to present
her with a fresher suit of weeds; an appea sc
frequently successful, that the very fetch and
ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, might be
seen hanging up, any hour in the day, in at least
a dozen of the second-hand clothes shops about
Holborn. The face of Mrs. Gamp-the nose in
particular-was somewhat red and swollen, and
it was difficult to enjoy her society without be-
coming conscious of a smell of spirits. Like
most persons who have attained to great emi-
nence in their profession, she took to hers very
kindly; insomuch, that setting aside her natural
predilections as a woman, she went to a lying-in
or a laying-out with equal zest and relish.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.
Mrs. JOE GARGER Y.-My sister, Mrs. Joe
Gargery, was more than twenty years older than
I, and had established a great reputation with
herself and the neighbors because she had brought
me up "by hand." Having at that time to find
out for myself what the expression meant, and
knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand,
and to be much in the habit of laying it upon
her husband as well as upon me, I supposed
that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by
hand.
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister;
and I had a general impression that she must
have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe
was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each
side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a
very undecided blue that they seemed to have
somehow got mixed with their own whites. He
was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-
going, foolish, dear fellow—a sort of Hercules in
strength, and also in weakness.
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes,
had such a prevailing redness of skin that I some-
times used to wonder whether it was possible she
washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of
soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always
wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure be-
hind with two loops, and having a square impreg-
nable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins
and needles. She made it a powerful merit in
herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that
she wore this apron so much. Though I really
see no reason why she should have worn it at all
or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not
have taken it off every day of her life.
"
Great Expectations, Chap. 2.
And she ain't over-partial to having scholars
on the premises," Joe continued, “and in par-
tickler would not be over-partial to my being a
scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of
rebel, don't you see?"
I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had
got as far as "Why" when Joe stopped me.
"Stay a bit. I know what you're a going to
say, Pip; stay a bit! I don't deny that your
sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and again
I don't deny that she do throw us back-falls, and
that she do drop down upon us heavy. At such
times as when your sister is on the Ram-page,
CHARACTERS AND
Pip," Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced
at the door, "candor compels fur to admit that
she is a buster."
Joe pronounced this word as if it began with
at least twelve capital B's.
เ
85
CHARACTERISTICS
were never to be mentioned before her. Passioł
was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs. Gen-
eral, and blood was to change to milk and water
The little that was left in the world, when all
these deductions were made, it was Mrs. Gen-
Why don't I rise? That were your observa-eral's province to varnish. In that formation
tion when I broke it off, Pip?,"
Yes, Joe."
"Well," said Joe, passing the poker into his
left hand, that he might feel his whisker; and I
had no hope of him whenever he took to that
placid occupation; "your siste:s a master-mind.
A master-mind.'
"
'What's that?" I asked, in some hope of
bringing him to a stand. But Joe was readier
with his definition than I had expected, and com-
pletely stopped me by arguing circularly, and
answering with a fixed look, "her."
"And I ain't a master-mind," Joe resumed,
when he had unfixed his look, and got back to
his whisker. "And last of all, Pip-and this I
want to say very serous to you, old chap—I see
so much in my poor mother, of a woman drudg-
ing and slaving and breaking her honest hart
and never getting no peace in her mortal days,
that I'm dead afeerd of going wrong in the way
of not doing what's right by a woman, and I'd
fur rather of the two go wrong the 'tother way,
and be a little ill-con wenienced myself. I wish
it was only me that got put out, Pip; I wish
there warn't no tickler for you, old chap; I wish
I could take it all on myself; but this is the up-
and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope
you'll overlook shortcomings.'
"
Great Expectations, Chap. 7.
process of hers, she dipped the smallest of
brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished
the surface of every object that came under con-
sideration. The more cracked it was, the more
Mrs. General varnished it.
There was varnish in Mrs. General's voice,
varnish in Mrs. General's touch, an atmosphere
of varnish round Mrs. General's figure. Mrs.
General's dreams ought to have been varnished-
if she had any-lying asleep in the arms of the
good Saint Bernard, with the feathery snow fall-
ing on his house-top.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 2.
“GUSTER,” Mrs. Snagsby's Maid.-Guster,
really aged three or four and twenty, but looking
a round ten years older, goes cheap with this un-
accountable drawback of fits; and is so appre-
hensive of being returned on the hands of her
patron saint, that, except when she is found with
her head in the pail, or the sink, or the copper,
or the dinner, or anything else that happens to
be near her at the time of her seizure, she is al-
ways at work. She is a satisfaction to the
parents and guardians of the 'prentices, who feel
that there is little danger of her inspiring tender
emotions in the breast of youth; she is a satis-
faction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can always find
fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr
Snagsby, who thinks it a charity to keep her.
MRS. GENERAL.-In person, Mrs. Gen- The law-stationer's establishment is, in Guster's
eral, including her skirts, which had much to do eyes, a Temple of plenty and splendor. She be-
with it, was of a dignified and imposing appear- lieves the little drawing-room up-stairs, always
ance; ample, rustling, gravely voluminous; al-kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers and
ways upright behind the proprieties. She might its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apart-
have been taken-had been taken-to the top of ment in Christendom.
the Alps and the bottom of Herculaneum, without
disarranging a fold in her dress, or displacing a
pin. If her countenance and hair had rather a
floury appearance, as though from living in some
transcendently genteel Mill, it was rather because
she was a chalky creation altogether, than be-
cause she mended her complexion with violet
powder, or had turned gray. If her eyes, had
no expression, it was probably because they had
nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it
was because her mind had never traced its name
or any other inscription on her face. A cool,
waxy, blown-out woman, who had never lighted
well.
Mrs. General had no opinions. Her way of
forming a mind was to prevent it from forming
opinions. She had a little circular set of mental
grooves or rails, on which she started little trains
of other people's opinions, which never overtook
one another, and never got anywhere. Even
her propriety could not dispute that there was im-
propriety in the world; but Mrs. General's way
of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight,
and make believe that there was no such thing.
This was another of her ways of forming a mind
-to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards,
lock them up, and say they had no existence. It
was the easiest way, and, beyond all comparison,
the properest.
Mrs. General was not to be told of anything
shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences,
Bleak House, Chap. 10.
MRS. HUBBLE.—I remember Mrs. Hubble
as a little, curly, sharp-edged person in sky-blue,
who held a conventionally juvenile position, be-
cause she had married Mr. Hubble-I don't
know at what remote period-when she was
much younger than he.
|
than he. I remember Mr. Hub-
ble as a tough, high-shouldered, stooping old man,
of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraor
dinarily wide apart; so that in my short days I
always saw some miles of open country between
them when I met him coming up the lane.
Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
TILLY SLOWBOY.—It may be noted of
Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting the cau
tion with some vivacity, that she had a rare and
surprising talent for getting this baby into diffi-
culties; and had several times imperilled its
short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own.
She was of a spare and straight shape, this
young lady, insomuch that her garments appeared
to be in constant danger of sliding off those
sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were
loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for
the partial development, on all possible occa-
sions, of some flannel vestment of a singular
structure; also for affording glimpses, in the
region of the back, of a corset, or pair of stays,
in color a dead-green. Being always, in a state
7
CHARACTERS AND
86
CHARACTERISTICS
of gaping admiration at everything, and ab- As a general principle and abstract proposition,
sorbed, besides, in the perpetual contemplation Miggs held the male sex to be utterly contempti
of her mistress's perfections and the baby's, ble and unworthy of notice; to be fickle, false,
Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment base, sottish, inclined to perjury, and wholly
may be said to have done equal honor to her undeserving. When particularly exasperated
head and to her heart; and though these did against them (which, scandal said, was when Sim
less honor to the baby's head, which they were Tappertit slighted her most) she was accustomed
the occasional means of bringing into contact to wish with great emphasis that the whole race
with deal-doors, dressers, stair-rails, bedposts, of women could but die off, in order that the
and other foreign substances, still they were the men might be brought to know the reai value
honest results of Tilly Slowboy's constant aston- of the blessings by which they set so little store;
ishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and nay, her feeling for her order ran so high, that
installed in such a comfortable home. For the she sometimes declared, if she could only have
maternal and paternal Slowboy were alike un- good security for a fair, round number-say ten
known to Fame, and Tilly had been bred by thousand-of young virgins following her exam-
public charity, a foundling; which word, though ple, she would, to spite mankind, hang, drown,
only differing from fondling by one vowel's stab, or poison herself, with a joy past all ex-
length, is very different in meaning, and ex-pression.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 7.
presses quite another thing.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. I.
MRS. KITTERBELL. 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.-- Tales, Chap. 11.
MISS MARTIN.-Miss Amelia Martin was
pale, tallish, thin, and two-and-thirty-what ill-
natured people would call plain, and police re-
ports interesting. She was a milliner and dress-
maker, living on her business, and not above it.
Sketches (Characters), Chap. 8.
MRS. MIFF, The Pew-Opener.-Mrs. Miff,
the wheezy little pew-opener—a mighty dry old
lady, sparely dressed, with not an inch of fullness
anywhere about her is also here, and has been
waiting at the church-gate half-an-hour, as her
place is, for the beadle.
A vinegary face has Mrs. Miff, and a mortified
bonnet, and eke a thirsty soul for sixpences and
shillings. Beckoning to stray people to come
into pews, has given Mrs. Miff an air of mystery;
and there is reservation in the eye of Mrs. Miff,
as always knowing of a softer seat, but having
her suspicions of the fee. There is no such fact
as Mr. Miff, nor has there been these twenty
years, and Mrs. Miff would rather not allude to
him.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 31.
"Well, well," says Mrs. Miff, "you might do
worse. For you're a tidy pair!'
MRS. MARKLEHAM.-Mrs. Strong's mam-
ma was a lady I took great delight in. Her
name was Mrs. Markleham; but our boys used
to call her the Old Soldier, on account of her
generalship, and the skill with which she mar-
shalled great forces of relations against the Doc-
tor. She was a little, sharp-eyed woman, who
used to wear, when she was dressed, one un-
changeable cap, ornamented with some artificial
flowers, and two artificial butterflies supposed to
be hovering about the flowers. There was a
superstition among us that this cap had come
from France, and could only originate in the
workmanship of that ingenious nation; but all
I certainly know about it is, that it always made
its appearance of an evening, wheresoever Mrs.
Markleham made her appearance; that it was
carried about to friendly meetings in a Hindoo
basket; that the butterflies had the gift of trem-
bling constantly; and that they improved the
shining hours at Dr. Strong's expense, like busy
bees.-David Copperfield, Chap. 16.
MAGGIE.-She was about eight-and-twenty,
with large bones, large features, large feet and
hands, large eyes, and no hair. Her large eyes
were limpid and almost colorless; they seemed
to be very little affected by light, and to stand
unnaturally still. There was also that attentive,
listening expression in her face, which is seen in
the faces of the blind; but she was not blind,
having one tolerably serviceable eye. Her face
was not exceedingly ugly, though it was only
redeemed from being so by a smile; a good-
humored smile, and pleasant in itself, but ren-
There is nothing personal in Mrs. Miff's re-dered pitiable by being constantly there. A
mark. She merely speaks of stock in trade. She
is hardly more curious in couples than in coffins.
She is such a spare, straight, dry old lady-such
a pew of a woman-that you should find as
many individual sympathies in a chip.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 57.
great white cap, with a quantity of opaque frill
ing that was always flapping about, apologized
for Maggy's baldness, and made it so very diffi
cult for her old black bonnet to retain its place
upon her head, that it held on round her neck
like a gypsy's baby. A commission of haber-
dashers could alone have reported what the rest
MISS MIGGS.—Mrs. Varden's chief aider and of her poor dress was made of; but it had a
abettor, and at the same time her principal vic-strong general resemblance to sea-weed, with
tim and object of wrath, was her single domestic
servant, one Miss Miggs; or, as she was called,
in conformity with those prejudices of society
which lop and top from poor handmaidens all
such genteel excrescences-Miggs. This Miggs
was, a tall young lady, very much addicted to
paltens in private life; slender and shrewish, of
a rather uncomfortable figure, and though not
al solutely ill-looking, of a sharp and acid visage.
here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her shawl
looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long in-
fusion.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 9.
MISS MOWCHER.-I looked at the door.
way and saw nothing. I was still looking
at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher
was a long while making her appearance,
when, to my infinite astonishment there came

I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MISS MOWCHER.
86
amaturgia e 2 1 411
མ་“་་་
བ་པ་
فة
CHAMBERMAID
87
CHEEK
nothing respecting them was half so clear to us,
as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ec-
stasies with everybody else's mission, and that
it was the most popular mission of all.
waddling round a sofa which stood between me
and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five,
with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish
gray eyes, and such extremely little arms, that,
to enable herself to lay a finger archly against Mr.
r. Jarndyce had fallen into this company, in
her snub nose as she ogled Steerforth, she was the tenderness of his heart, and his earnest desire
obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her to do all the good in his power; but, that he
nose against it. Her chin, which was what is felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company,
called a double-chin, was so fat that it entirely where benevolence took spasmodic forms; where
swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and charity was assumed, as a regular uniform, by
all. Throat she had none; waist she had none; loud professors and speculators in cheap notori-
legs she had none, worth mentioning; for though ety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in
she was more than full-sized down to where her action, servile in the last degree of meanness to
waist would have been, if she had had any, and the great, adulatory of one another, and intolera
though she terminated, as human beings gener-ble to those who were anxious quietly to help the
ally do, in a pair of feet, she was so short that weak from falling, rather than with a great deal
she stood at a common-sized chair as at a table, | of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a
resting a bag she carried on the seat. This
lady, dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bring-
ing her nose and her forefinger together, with the
difficulty I have described; standing with her
head necessarily on one side, and, with one of
her sharp eyes shut up, making an uncommonly
knowing face; after ögling Steerforth for a few
moments, broke into a torrent of words.
David Copperfield, Chap. 22.
CHAMBERMAID.
I rang the chambermaid's bell; and Mrs.
Pratchett marched in, according to custom, de-
murely carrying a lighted flat candle before her,
as if she was one of a long public procession, all
the other members of which were invisible.
Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 3.
little way when they were down; he plainly fold
us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr.
Quale, by Mr. Gusher (who had already got one,
originated by Mr. Quale), and when Mr. Gusher
spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a
meeting, including two charity-schools of small
boys and girls, who were specially reminded of
the widow's mite, and requested to come forward
with halfpence, and be acceptable sacrifices; I
think the wind was in the east for three whole
weeks.-Bleak House, Chap. 15.
CHARITY-The Romance of.
There are many lives of much pain, hardship,
and suffering, which, having no stirring interest
for any but those who lead them, are disregarded
by persons who do not want thought or feeling,
but who pamper their compassion, and need high
stimulants to rouse it.
CHANGE-The Results of.
Change begets change. Nothing propagates There are not a few among the disciples of
so fast.
If a man habituated to a narrow circle charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely
of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in
travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief theirs; and hence it is that diseased sympathy
a space, his departure from the monotonous and compassion are every day expended on out-
scene on which he has been an actor of impor-of-the-way objects, when only too many demands
tance, would seem to be the signal for instant
confusion. As if, in the gap he had left, the
wedge of change were driven to the head, rend-
ing what was a solid mass to fragments; things
cemented and held together by the usages of
years, burst asunder in as many weeks. The
mine which Time has slowly dug beneath famil-
iar objects, is sprung in an instant; and what
was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.
Most men, at one time or other, have proved
this in some degree.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 18.
CHARITY—of the Poor.
The man came running after them, and press-
ing her hand left something in it-two old, bat-
tered, smoke-encrusted penny pieces. Who knows
but they shone as brightly in the eyes of angels,
as golden gifts that have been chronicled on
tombs ?-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 45.
CHARITY-Held by Main Force.
Mr. Wegg smokes and looks at the fire with a
most determined expression of Charity; as if he
had caught that cardinal virtue by the skirts as
she felt it her painful duty to depart from him,
and held her by main force.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 7.
CHARITY-Speculators in.
In short, we heard of a great many Missions,
of various sorts, among this set of people; but,
9
upon the legitimate exercise of the same virtues
in a healthy state, are constantly within the sight
and hearing of the most unobservant person alive.
In short, charity must have its romance, as the
novelist or playwright must have his. A thief in
fustian is a vulgar character, scarcely to be thought
of by persons of refinement; but dress him in
green velvet, with a high-crowned hat, and change
the scene of his operations from a thickly-
peopled city to a mountain road, and you shall
find in him the very soul of poetry and adven-
ture. So it is with the one great cardinal virtue,
which, properly nourished and exercised, leads
to, if it does not necessarily include, all the
others. It must have its romance; and the less
of real, hard, struggling, work-a-day life there is
in that romance the better.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 18.
CHEEK-An Unsympathetic.
<<
'My child is welcome, though unlooked for,"
said she, at the time presenting her cheek as if
it were a cool slate for visitors to enroll them-
selves upon.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 16.
"This," said Mrs. Wilfer, presenting a cheek
to be kissed, as sympathetic and responsive as
the back of the bowl of a spoon, "is quite
an honor!"
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 8.
CHEER
88
CHILD
CHEER-An English.
myself that I was pretty well versed in all those
No men on earth can cheer like Englishmen, little arts and graces which distinguish men of
who do so rally one another's blood and spirit | the world from boors and peasants, and separate
when they cheer in earnest, that the stir is like their character from those intensely vulgar sen-
the rush of their whole history, with all its stand-timents which are called the national character.
ards waving at once, from Saxon Alfred's down-
ward.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 22.
CHEERFULNESS-Kit's Religion.
“I don't believe, mother, that harmless cheer-
fulness and good humor are thought greater sins
in Heaven than shirt-collars are, and I do be-
lieve that those chaps are just about as right and
sensible in putting down the one as in leaving
off the other-that's my belief. Whenever a Lit-
tle Bethel parson calls you a precious lamb, or
says your brother's one, you tell him it's the
truest thing he's said for a twelvemonth, and
that if he'd got a little more of the lamb himself,
and less of the mint-sauce-not being quite so
sharp and sour over it-I should like him all
the better."-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 41.
CHEERFULNESS-Kit's Philosophy of.
"Can you suppose there's any harm in looking
as cheerful and being as cheerful as our poor cir-
cumstances will permit? Do I see anything in
the way I'm made, which calls upon me to be a
snivelling, solemn, whispering chap, sneaking
about as if I couldn't help it, and expressing
myself in a most unpleasant snuffle? on the con-
trary, don't I see every reason why I shouldn't?
Just hear this! Ha ha ha! Ain't that as nat'ral
as walking, and as good for the health? Ha ha
ha! Ain't that as natʼral as a sheep's bleating,
or a pig's grunting, or a horse's neighing, or a
bird's singing? Ha ha ha! Isn't it, mother?"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 22.
CHEMIST—The.
Who that had seen him in his inner chamber,
part library and part laboratory—for he was, as
the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in
chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands
a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily-
who that had seen him there, upon a winter
night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instru-
ments and books; the shadow of his shaded
lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless
among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by
the flickering of the fire upon the quaint objects
around him; some of these phantoms (the re-
flections of glass vessels that held liquids) trem-
bling at heart like things that knew his power
to uncombine them, and to give back their com-
ponent parts to fire and vapor; who that had
seen him then, his work done, and he pondering
in his chair before the rusted grate and red
flame, moving his thin mouth as if in speech,
but silent as the dead, would not have said that
the man seemed haunted and the chamber too?
Haunted Man, Chap. I.
CHESTERFIELD-as a Man of the World.
66
Shakespeare was undoubtedly very fine in
his way; Milton good, though prosy; Lord Ba-
con deep, and decidedly knowing; but the writer
who should be his country's pride, is my Lord
Chesterfield."
He became thoughtful again, and the tooth-
pick was in requisition.
"
I thought I was tolerably accomplished as a
man of the world," he continued; "I flattered
Apart from any natural prepossession in my own
favor, I believed I was. Still, in every page of
this enlightened writer, I find some captivating
hypocrisy which has never occurred to me be-
fore, or some superlative piece of selfishness to
which I was utterly a stranger. I should quite
blush for myself before this stupendous creature,
if, remembering his precepts, one might blush at
anything. An amazing man! a nobleman in
deed! any king or queen may make a lord, but
only the Devil himself-and the Graces-can
make a Chesterfield."
Many who are thoroughly false and hollow,
seldom try to hide those vices from themselves;
and yet, in the very act of avowing them, they
lay claim to the virtues they feign most to de-
spise. "For," say they, "this is honesty, this is
truth. All mankind are like us, but they have
not the candor to avow it." The more they af-
fect to deny the existence of any sincerity in the
world, the more they would be thought to pos-
sess it in its boldest shape; and this is an un-
conscious compliment to Truth on the part of
these philosophers, which will turn the laugh
against them to the Day of Judgment.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 23.
CHILD-A matured (Mr. Grewgious).
"Young ways were never my ways. I was the
only offspring of parents far advanced in life,
and I half believe I was born advanced in life
myself. No personality is intended towards the
name you will so soon change, when I remark
that while the general growth of people seem to
have come into existence buds, I seem to have
come into existence a chip. I was a chip-and
a very dry one-when I first became aware of
myself."-Edwin Drood, Chap. 9.
-
CHILD Sickness of Johnny Harmon-
Sloppy's account.
Mr. Sloppy being introduced, remained close
to the door; revealing, in various parts of his
form, many surprising, confounding, and incom-
prehensible buttons.
"I am glad to see you," said John Rokesmith,
in a cheerful tone of welcome. "I have been
expecting you."
Sloppy explained that he had meant to come
before, but that the orphan (of whom he made
mention as Our Johnny) had been ailing, and he
had waited to report him well.
"Then he is well now?" said the Secretary.
"No he ain't," said Sloppy.
Mr. Sloppy having shaken his head to a con-
siderable extent, proceeded to remark that he
thought Johnny "must have took 'em from the
Minders." Being asked what he meant, he an
swered, them that come out upon him and par-
tickler his chest. Being requested to explain
himself, he stated that there was some of 'em
wot you couldn't kiver with a sixpence. Pressed
to fall back upon a nominative case, he opineá
that they wos about as red as ever red could be.
But as long as they strikes out'ards, sir," con-.
tinued Sloppy, "they ain't so much. It's their
striking in'ards that's to be kep off.”
John Rokesmith hoped the child had had
CHILD
medical attendance? Oh, yes, said Sloppy, he
had been took to the doctor's shop once. And
what did the doctor call it? Rokesmith asked
him. After some perplexed reflection, Sloppy
answered, brightening," He called it something
as was wery long for spots." Rokesmith sug-
gested measles. No," said Sloppy, with con-
fidence, ever so much longer than them, sir!"
(Mr. Sloppy was elevated by this fact, and seem-
ed to consider that it reflected credit on the poor
little patient.)
*
虚​荡
​*
*
*
*
"Last night," said Sloppy, "when I was a-
turning at the wheel pretty late, the mangle
seemed to go like our Johnny's breathing. It
begun beautiful, then as it went out it shook a
little and got unsteady, then as it took the turn
to come home it had a rattle-like and lumbered
a bit, then it come smooth, and so it went on till
I scarce know'd which was mangle and which
was Our Johnny. Nor Our Johnny, he scarce
know'd either, for sometimes when the mangle
lumbers he says, 'Me choking, Granny!' and
Mrs. Higden holds him up in her lap and says
to me, 'Bide a bit, Sloppy,' and we all stops to-
gether. And when Our Johnny gets his breath-
ing again, I turns again, and we all goes on
together."
Sloppy had gradually expanded with this de-
scription into a stare and a vacant grin. He now
contracted, being silent, into a half-repressed
gush of tears, and, under pretence of being
heated, drew the under part of his sleeve across
his eyes with a singularly awkward, laborious,
and roundabout smear.
*
*
*
*
*
*
"So bad as that!" cried Mrs. Boffin. "And
Betty Higden not to tell me of it sooner!"
"I think she might have been mistrustful,
mum," answered Sloppy, hesitating.
Of what, for Heaven's sake?'
"I think she might have been mistrustful,
mum," returned Sloppy, with submission, "of
standing in Our Johnny's light. There's so much
trouble in illness, and so much expense, and she's
seen such a lot of its being objected to."
No, mum, but she might have thought (as a
habit-like) of its standing in Johnny's light, and
might have tried to bring him through it unbe-
knownst."
89
|
CHILD
CHILD-Death of Little Johnny Harmon.
At the Children's Hospital, the gallant steed,
the Noah's ark, the yellow bird, and the officer
in the Guards, were made as welcome as their
child-owner. But the doctor said aside to Roke-
smith, "This should have been days ago. Ton
late!"
However, they were all carried up into a fresh
airy room, and there Johnny came to himself,
out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was, to
find himself lying in a little quiet bed, with a
little platform over his breast, on which were al-
ready arranged, to give him heart and urge him
to cheer up, the Noah's ark, the noble steed, and
the yellow bird; with the officer in the Guards
doing duty over the whole, quite as much to the
satisfaction of his country as if he had been
upon Parade. And at the bed's head was a col-
ored picture beautiful to see, representing as it
were another Johnny seated on the knee of some
Angel surely, who loved little children. And,
marvellous fact, to lie and stare at: Johnny had
become one of a little family, all in little quiet
beds (except two playing dominoes in little arm-
chairs at a little table on the hearth); and on all
the little beds were little platforms whereon were
to be seen dolls' houses, woolly dogs with me-
chanical barks in them, not very dissimilar from
the artificial voice pervading the bowels of the
yellow bird, tin armies, Moorish tumblers,
wooden tea-things, and the riches of the earth.
As Johnny murmured something in his placid
admiration, the ministering women at his bed's
head asked him what he said. It seemed that
he wanted to know whether all these were
brothers and sisters of his? So they told him
yes. It seemed then, that he wanted to know
whether God had brought them all together
there? So they told him yes again. They made
out then, that he wanted to know whether they
would all get out of pain? So they answered
yes to that question likewise, and made him un-
derstand that the reply included himself.
Johnny's powers of sustaining conversation
were as yet so very imperfectly developed, even
in a state of health, that in sickness they were
"But she never can have thought," said Mrs. little more than monosyllabic. But, he had to
Boffin, "that I would grudge the dear child any-be washed and tended, and remedies were ap-
thing?"
plied, and though those offices were far, far
more skillfully and lightly done than ever any-
thing had been done for him in his little life, so
rough and short, they would have hurt and tired
him but for an amazing circumstance which laid
hold of his attention. This was no less than the
appearance on his own little platform in pairs,
of All Creation, on its way into his own particu-
lar ark: the elephant leading, and the Âly, with
a diffident sense of his size, politely bringing up
the rear. A very little brother lying in the next
bed with a broken leg, was so enchanted by this
spectacle that his delight exalted its enthralling
interest; and so came rest and sleep.
Sloppy knew his ground well. To conceal
herself in sickness, like a lower animal; to creep
out of sight and coil herself away, and die; had
become this woman's instinct. To catch up in
her arms the sick child who was dear to her, and
hide it as if it were a criminal, and keep off all
ministration but such as her own ignorant ten-
derness and patience could supply, had become
this woman's idea of maternal love, fidelity, and
duty. The shameful accounts we read, every
week in the Christian year, my Lords and Gen-
tlemen and Honorable Boards, the infamous re-
cords of small official inhumanity, do not pass
by the people as they pass by us. And hence
these irrational, blind, and obstinate prejudices,
so astonishing to our magnificence, and having
no more reason in them-God save the Queen
and confound their politics—no, than smoke has
in coming from fire!
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 9.
"I see you are not afraid to leave the dear
child here, Betty," whispered Mrs. Boffin.
"No, ma'am. Most willingly, most thankful-
ly, with all my heart and soul."
So, they kissed him, and left him there, and
old Betty was to come back early in the morn-
ing, and nobody but Rokesmith knew for certain
how that the doctor had said, "This should have
been days ago. Too late!"
But, Rokesmith knowing it, and knowing tha
his bearing it in mind would be acceptable there-
1
·
CHILD
after to that good woman who had been the only
light in the childhood of desolate John Harmon
dead and gone, resolved that late at night he
would go back to the bedside of John Harmon's
namesake, and see how it fared with him.
The family whom God had brought together
were not all asleep, but were all quiet. From
bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a pleasant
fresh face passed in the silence of the night. A
little head would lift itself up into the softened
light here and there, to be kissed as the face
went by for these little patients are very loving
-and would then submit itself to be composed
to rest again. The mite with the broken leg
was restless, and moaned; but after a while
turned his face towards Johnny's bed, to fortify
himself with a view of the ark, and fell asleep.
Over most of the beds, the toys were yet grouped
as the children had left them when they last
laid themselves down, and, in their innocent
grotesqueness and incongruity, they might have
stood for the children's dreams.
The doctor came in too, to see how it fared
with Johnny. And he and Rokesmith stood to-
gether, looking down with compassion upon
him.
"What is it, Johnny?" Rokesmith was the
questioner, and put an arm round the poor baby
as he made a struggle.
"Him!" said the little fellow. "Those !"
The doctor was quick to understand children,
and, taking the horse, the ark, the yellow bird,
and the man in the Guards, from Johnny's bed,
softly placed them on that of his next neighbor,
the mite with the broken leg.
With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and
with an action as if he stretched his little figure
out to rest, the child heaved his body on the
sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith's face
with his lips, said:
""
90
CHILDHOOD
a bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His
boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a plough.
man; while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with
scratches that they looked like maps, were bare,
below a very short pair of plaid drawers, finished
off with two frills of perfectly different patterns.
The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evi-
dently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's
coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much
too large. Most extraordinary specimens of nee-
dlework appeared on several parts of his dress,
where it had been hastily mended; and I recog-
nized the same hand on Miss Jellyby's.
"
Oh, dear me !" said my guardian, “Due
East!"-Bleak House, Chap. 14.
CHILD AND FATHER-A Contrast.
Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened
room, in the great arm-chair by the bed-side, and
Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bed-
stead, carefully disposed on a low settee immedi-
ately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his
constitution were analogous to that of a muffin,
and it was essential to toast him brown while he
was very new.
Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age.
Son about eight-and-forty minutes. Dombey was
rather bald, rather red, and though a handsome,
well-made man, too stern and pompous in appear-
ance to be prepossessing. Son was very bald,
and very red, and though (of course) an undeniably
fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his
general effect, as yet. On the brow of Dombey,
Time and his brother Care had set some marks,
as on a tree that was to come down in good time
remorseless twins they are for striding through
their human forests, notching as they go-while
the countenance of Son was crossed and recrossed
with a thousand little creases, which the same
deceitful Time would take delight in smoothing
out and wearing away with the flat part of his
scythe, as a preparation of the surface for his
"A kiss for the boofer lady.'
Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose
of, and arranging his affairs in this world, John-deeper operations.
ny, thus speaking, left it.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 9.
CHILD-A Fashionable.
There was a Miss Podsnap. And this young
rocking-horse was being trained in her mother's
art of prancing in a stately manner without ever
getting on. But the high parental action was not
yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an
undersized damsel, with high shoulders, low
spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of
nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty
peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to
shrink back again, overcome by her mother's
head-dress, and her father from head to foot
-crushed by the mere dead-weight of Podsnap-
pery —Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 11.
CHILD-Of a Female Philanthropist..
་
I was sitting at the window with my guardian,
on the following morning, and Ada was busy writ-
ing--of course to Richard-when Miss Jellyby
was announced, and entered, leading the identical
Peepy, whom she had made some endeavors to
render presentable, by wiping the dirt into cor-
ners of his face and hands, and making his hair
very wet, and then violently frizzing it with her
fingers. Everything the dear child wore was
either too large for him or too small. Among his
other contradictory decorations he had the hat of
Dombey, exulting in the long-looked for event,
jingled and jingled the heavy gold watch-chain
that depended from below his trim blue coat,
whereof the buttons sparkled phosphorescently
in the feeble rays of the distant fire. Son, with
his little fists curled up and clenched, seemed, in
his feeble way, to be squaring at existence for
having come upon him so unexpectedly.
Dombey & Son, Chap. I.
CHILDHOOD-The Power of Observation in.
I believe the power of observation in numbers
of very young children to be quite wonderful for
its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that
most grown men who are remarkable in this
respect, may, with greater propriety, be said not
to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it ;
the rather, as I generally observe such men to
retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and
capacity of being pleased, which are also an in-
heritance they have preserved from their child.
hood.-David Copperfield, Chap. 2.
CHILDHOOD-The Fortitude of Little Nell.
In the pale moonlight, which lent a wanness
of its own to the delicate face, where thoughtful
care already mingled with the winning grace and
loveliness of youth, the too bright eye, the spirit-
ual head, the lips that pressed each other with
such high resolves and courage of the heart, the
CHILDHOOD
slight figure, firm in its bearing, and yet so very
weak, told their silent tale; but told it only to
the wind that rustled by, which, taking up its
burden, carried, perhaps to some mother's pillow,
faint dreams of childhood fading in its bloom,
and resting in the sleep that knows no waking.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 43.
CHILDHOOD-The early experience of.
It always grieves me to contemplate the in-
itiation of children into the ways of life, when
they are scarcely more than infants. It checks
their confidence and simplicity-two of the best
qualities that Heaven gives them—and demands
that they share our sorrows before they are ca-
pable of entering into our enjoyments."
"It will never check hers," said the old man,
looking steadily at me; "the springs are too
deep. Besides, the children of the poor know
but few pleasures. Even the cheap delights of
childhood must be bought and paid for.'
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. I.
CHILDHOOD-in a city.
}).
I don't know where she was going, but we saw
her run, such a little, little creature, in her wo-
manly bonnet and apron, through a covered way
at the bottom of the court; and melt into the
city's strife and sound, like a dewdrop in an
ocean.-Bleak House, Chap. 15..
CHILDHOOD-Sad remembrances of.
91
CHILDREN
along that shining path, to look upon me as she
had looked when I last saw her sweet face. I
remember how I seemed to float, then, down
the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea,
away into the world of dreams.
David Copperfield, Chap. 13.
CHILDHOOD-Neglected.
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 dis-
cover that she was one of those children, born
and bred in neglect and vicc, 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 in-
nocence, 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 after-times, 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.-Scenes, Chap. 25.
CHILDISHNESS-A Misnomer.
We call this a state of childishness, but it is
the same poor hollow mockery of it, that death
is of sleep. Where, in the dull eyes of doting
men, are the laughing light and life of child-
hood, the gayety that has known no check, the
frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has
never withered, the joys that fade in blossom-
ing? Where, in the sharp lineaments of rigid
and unsightly death, is the calm beauty of slum-
The dreams of childhood-its airy fables; its
graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adorn-
ments of the world beyond; so good to be be-
lieved in once, so good to be remembered when
outgrown, for then the least among them rises to
the stature of a great Charity in the heart, suf-
fering little children to come into the midst of
it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in
the stony ways of this world, wherein it was
better for all the children of Adam that they
should oftener sun themselves, simple and trust-ber, telling of rest for the waking hours that are
ful, and not worldly-wise-what had she to do
with these? Remembrances of how she had
journeyed to the little that she knew, by the en-
chanted roads of what she and millions of inno-
cent creatures had hoped and imagined; and how
first coming upon Reason through the tender
light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god,
deferring to gods as great as itself; not a grim
Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand
to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a
sightless stare, never to be moved by anything
but so many calculated tons of leverage-what
had she to do with these? Her remembrances of
home and childhood were remembrances of the CHILDREN-Injustice to.
drying up of every spring and fountain in her
young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters
were not there. They were flowing for the ferti-
lization of the land where grapes are gathered
from thorns, and figs from thistles.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 9.
CHILDHOOD-The Dreams of.
The room was a pleasant one, at the top of
the house, overlooking the sea, on which the
moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said
my prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I
remember how I still sat looking at the moon-
light on the water, as if I could hope to read my
fortune in it, as in a bright book; or to see my
mother with her child, coming from Heaven,
past, and gentle hopes and loves for those which
are to come? Lay death and sleep down, side
by side, and say who shall find the two akin.
Send forth the child and childish man together,
and blush for the pride that libels our own old
happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and
distorted image.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 12.
CHILDREN-The blessing of.
Humanity is indeed a happy lot, when we
can repeat ourselves in others, and still be young
as they.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 27.
In the little world in which children have
their existence, whosoever brings them up, there
is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt,
as injustice. It may be only small injustice that
the child can be exposed to; but the child is
small, and its world is small, and its rocking-
horse stands as many hands high, according to
scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.
Within my-
self, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a per-
petual conflict with injustice. I had known,
from the time when I could speak, that my sis-
ter, in her capricious and violent coercion, was
unjust to me. I had cherished a profound con-
viction that her bringing me up by hand gave
her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through
all my punishments, disgracer, fasts, and vigils
聚
​CHILDREN
and other penitential performances, I had nursed
this assurance; and to my communing so much
with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in
great part refer the fact that I was morally timid
and very sensitive.
Great Expectations, Chap. 8.
CHILDREN-Keeping and losing.
You have a son, I believe?" said Mr. Dom-
bey.
Four on 'em, sir. Four hims and a her. All
alive!"
Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep
them!" said Mr. Dombey.
"I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the
world less, sir.'
}}
"What is that?
"To lose 'em, sir."-Dombey & Son, Ch. 2.
CHILDREN-A lawyer's view of.
Pretty nigh all the children he saw in his
daily business life, he had reason to look upon
as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that
were to come to his net-to be prosecuted, de-
fended, forsworn, made orphans, be-devilled
somehow.-Great Expectations, Chap. 51.
CHILDREN-The sympathy of.
No man ever really loved a woman, lost her,
and knew her with a blameless though an un-
changed mind, when she was a wife and a moth-
er, but her children had a strange sympathy with
him-an instinctive delicacy of pity for him.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 21.
CHILDREN-at church.
92
CHILDREN
gradually shut up; and, from seeming to lear
the clergyman singing a drowsy song in the heat,
I hear nothing, until I fall off the seat with a
crash, and am taken out, more dead than alive,
by Peggotty.-David Copperfield, Chap. 2.
CHILDREN-of Nature.
There was once a child, and he strolled about
a good deal, and thought of a number of things.
He had a sister, who was a child too, and his
constant companion. These two used to won-
of the flowers; they wondered at the height and
der all day long. They wondered at the beauty
of the bright water; they wondered at the good-
blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth
ness and the power of GOD, who made the lovely
world.
They used to say to one another, sometimes,
Supposing all the children upon earth were to
die, would the flowers, and the water, and the
sorry. For, said they, the buds are the children
sky be sorry? They believed they would be
of the flowers, and the little playful streams that
gambol down the hill-sides are the children
of the water; and the smallest bright specks
playing at hide and seek in the sky all night,
must surely be the children of the stars; and
they would all be grieved to see their playmates
the children of men, no more.
Child's Dream of a Star.-Reprinted Pieces.
geologists have identified on the face of a cliff
and this speculation came over me: If this mud
could petrify at this moment, and could lie con-
cealed here for ten thousand years, I wonder
whether the race of men then to be our succes-
sors on the earth could, from these or any marks,
by the utmost force of the human intellect, un-
assisted by tradition, deduce such an astounding
inference as the existence of a polished state of
society that bore with the public savagery of
neglected children in the streets of its capital
city, and was proud of its power by sea and
land, and never used its power to seize and save
them!-An Amateur Beat-New Uncommercial
Samples.
CHILDREN, Neglected-Their footprints.
I looked at him, and I looked about at the
disorderly traces in the mud, and I thought of
the drops of rain and the footprints of an ex-
Here is our pew in the church. What a high-tinct creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that
backed pew! With a window near it, out of
which our house can be seen, and is seen many
times during the morning's service, by Peg-
gotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she
can that it's not being robbed, or is not in flames.
But though Peggotty's eye wanders, she is much
offended if mine does, and frowns to me, as I
stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the
clergyman. But I can't always look at him-I
know him without that white thing on, and I am
afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and per-
haps stopping the service to inquire-and what
am I to do? It's a dreadful thing to gape, but I
must do something. I look at my mother, but
she pretends not to see me. I look at a boy in
the aisle, and he makes faces at me. I look at
the sunlight coming in at the open door through
the porch, and there I see a stray sheep-I don't The couple who dote upon their children
mean a sinner, but mutton-half making up his recognize no dates but those connected with
mind to come into the church. I feel that if I their births, accidents, illnesses, or remarkable
looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to deeds. They keep a mental almanac with a
say something out loud; and what would become vast number of Innocents' days, all in red let-
of me then? I look up at the monumental tab-ters. They recollect the last coronation, because
lets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers,
late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs.
Bodgers must have been, when affliction sore,
long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were
in vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr.
Chillip, and he was in vain; and if so, how he
likes to be reminded of it once a week. I look
from Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the
pulpit; and think what a good place it would be
to play in, and what a castle it would make, with
another boy coming up the stairs to attack it,
and having the velvet cushion with the tassels
thrown down on his head. In time my eyes
CHILDREN-Who are doted upon.
on that day little Tom fell down the kitchen
stairs; the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot,
because it was on the fifth of November that
Ned asked whether wooden legs were made in
heaven and cocked hats grew in gardens. Mrs.
Whiffler will never cease to recollect the last
day of the old year as long as she lives, for it
was on that day that the baby had the four red
spots on its nose which they took for measles.
*** The children of this couple can know no
medium. They are either prodigies of good
health or prodigies of bad health; whatever they
are, they must be prodigies.-Sketches of Coupies.
CHILDREN
93
CHILDREN-Their legs calendars of dis-ness.
tress.
The children tumbled about, and notched
memoranda of their accidents in their legs,
which were perfect little calendars of distress.
Bleak House, Chap. 5.
CHILDREN—The love of.
I love these little people; and it is not a slight
thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love
us.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. I.
CHILDREN-In the hospitals.
In its seven-and-thirty beds I saw but little
beauty, for starvation in the second or third gen-
eration takes a pinched look; but I saw the suf-
ferings both of infancy and childhood tenderly
assuaged; I heard the little patients answering
to pet, playful names; the light touch of a deli-
cate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for
me to pity; and the claw-like little hands, as
she did so, twined themselves lovingly around
her wedding-ring.
One baby mite there was as pretty as any of
Raphael's angels. The tiny head was bandaged
for water on the brain, and it was suffering with
acute bronchitis too, and made from time to
time a plaintive, though not impatient or com-
plaining, little sound. The smooth curve of the
cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its con-
densation of infantine beauty, and the large
bright eyes were most lovely. It happened, as I
stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes
rested upon mine with that wistful expression of
wondering thoughtfulness which we all know
sometimes in very little children. They re-
mained fixed on mine, and never turned from
me while I stood there. When the utterance of
that plaintive sound shook the little form, the
gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as though
the child implored me to tell the story of the lit-
tle hospital in which it was sheltered to any gen-
tle heart I could address. Laying my world-
worn hand upon the little unmarked clasped
hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that
I would do so.-A Small Star in the East. New
Uncommercial Samples.
CHILDREN
Therefore, after vainly endeavoring to
convince his reason by shakes, pokes, bawlings.
out, and similar applications to his head, she led
him into the air, and tried another method;
which was manifested to the marriage-party by a
quick succession of sharp sounds, resembling
applause, and, subsequently, by their seeing
Alexander in contact with the coolest paving.
stone in the court, greatly flushed, and loudly
lamenting.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 60.
"The fine little boy with the blister on is
nose is the eldest. The blister, I believe," said
Miss Tox, looking round upon the family, “is
not constitutional, but accidental."
The apple-faced man was understood to growl
"Flat-iron."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Miss Tox, "diċ
you—"
Flat-iron," he repeated.
Oh yes," said Miss Tox. "Yes! quite true.
I forgot. The little creature, in his mother's
absence, smelt a warm flat-iron. You're quite
right, sir.”—Dombey & Son, Chap. 2.
CHILDREN-The Gauntlet of their diseases.
All this vigilance and care could not make
little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate,
perhaps, he pined and wasted after the dismissal
of his nurse, and for a long time seemed but to
wait his opportunity of gliding through their
hands, and seeking his lost mother. This dan-
gerous ground in his steeple-chase towards man-
hood passed, he still found it very rough riding,
and was grievously beset by all the obstacles in
his course. Every tooth was a break-neck fence,
and every pimple in the measles a stone-wall to
him. He was down in every fit of the whooping-
cough, and rolled upon and crushed by a whole
field of small diseases, that came trooping on
each other's heels to prevent his getting up again.
Some bird of prey got into his throat instead of
the thrush; and the very chickens, turning fero-
cious-if they have anything to do with that in-
fant malady to which they lend their name-wor-
ried him like tiger-cats.-Dombey & Son, Ch. 8.
CHILDREN-In love.
CHILDREN-Captain Cuttle's advice.
Boots could assure me that it was better than
"Hear him!” cried the Captain, "good moral- a picter, and equal to a play, to see them babies,
ity!
Wal'r, my lad. Train up a fig-tree in the with their long, bright, curling hair, their spark-
way it should go, and when you are old sit un-ling eyes, and their beautiful, light tread, a ram-
der the shade on it. Overhaul the-Well," said bling about the garden, deep in love. Boots
the Captain, on second thoughts, "I ain't quite was of opinion that the birds believed they was
certain where that's to be found, but when found birds, and kept up with 'em, singing to please
make a note of. Sol Gills, heave ahead again!"'em. Sometimes they would creep under the
Dombey & Son, Chap. 19.
CHILDREN-Their martyrdom.
Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms
round one another's necks, and their soft cheeks
touching, a reading about the Prince, and the
At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and
the farinaceous and vegetable kind, when Miss the king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would
Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child, hear them planning about having a house in a
who was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living en-
in danger of being rubbed away altogether) was tirely on milk and honey. Once he came upon
led in from captivity by the ogress herself, and them by the pond, and heard Master Harry say,
instructed that nobody who sniffed before visit-" Adorable Norah, kiss me and say you love me
ors ever went to Heaven.-Dombey & Son, Ch. 8.
However touching these marks of a tender
disposition were to his mother, it was not in the
character of that remarkable woman to permit
her recognition of them to degenerate into weak-
"
to distraction, or I'll jump in head-foremost.'
And Boots made no question he would have done
it if she hadn't complied. On the whole, Boots
said it had a tendency to make him feel as if he
was in love himself-only he didn't exactly know
who with.-The Holly Tree.
CHILDREN-HATER
94
CHRISTIAN
a complaint on oath and applying for a warran'
before a magistrate. But this was not her most
inconvenient characteristic, for that took the
form of an impression, usually recurring in in-
clement weather and at about daybreak, that she
had something on her mind, and stood in im-
mediate need of the Reverend Frank to come
and take it off. Many a time had that kind
creature got up, and gone out to Mrs. Sprodgkin
(such was the disciple's name), suppressing a
strong sense of her comicality by his strong
sense of duty, and perfectly knowing that noth-
ing but a cold would come of it. However, be-
yond themselves, the Reverend Frank Milvey
and Mrs. Milvey seldom hinted that Mrs.
Sprodgkin was hardly worth the trouble she
gave; but both made the best of her, as they did
of all their troubles.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 11.
CHILDREN-HATER-Tackleton, the.
Tackleton, the Toy merchant, pretty generally
known as Gruff & Tackleton-for that was the
firm, though Gruff had been bought out long
ago; only leaving his name, and as some said
his nature, according to its Dictionary meaning,
in the business-Tackleton, the Toy merchant,
was a man whose vocation had been quite mis-
understood by his Parents and Guardians. If
they had made him a Money-Lender, or a sharp
Attorney, or a Sheriff's Officer, or a Broker, he
might have sown his discontented oats in his
youth, and, after having had the full-run of him-
self in ill-natured transactions, might have
turned out amiable, at last, for the sake of a lit-
tle freshness and novelty. But, cramped and
chafing in the peaceable pursuit of toy-making,
he was a domestic Ogre, who had been living on
children all his life, and was their implacable
enemy. He despised all toys; wouldn't have
bought one for the world; delighted, in his CHRISTIAN-A professing (Mrs. Varden)
malice, to insinuate grim expressions into the "Let us be sincere, my dear madam-"
faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to "-and Protestant," murmured Mrs. Varden.
market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers' "-and Protestant above all things. Let us
consciences, movable old ladies who darned be sincere and Protestant, strictly moral, strictly
stockings or carved pies; and other like samples just (though always with a leaning towards mer-
of his stock in trade. In appalling masks; cy), strictly honest, and strictly true, and we gain
hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vam--it is a slight point, certainly, but still it is
pire Kites; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn't
lie down, and were perpetually flying forward, to
stare infants out of countenance; his soul per-
fectly revelled. They were his only relief and
safety-valve. He was great in such inventions.
Anything suggestive of a Pony nightmare was
delicious to him. He had even lost money (and
he took to that toy very kindly) by getting up
Goblin slides for magic lanterns, whereon the
Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of
supernatural shell-fish, with human faces. In
intensifying the portraiture of Giants, he had
sunk quite a little capital; and, though no
painter himself, he could indicate, for the in-
struction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a
certain furtive leer for the countenances of those
monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace
of mind of any young gentleman between the
ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas
or Midsummer Vacation.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 1.
CHIN-A double.
"That," repeated Mrs. Gowan, furling her
green fan for the moment and tapping her chin
with it (it was on the way to being a double
chin; might be called a chin and a half at pres-
ent), "that's all!"
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 33.
CHRISTIAN—A conventional (Mrs. Sprodg-
kin).
She was a member of the Reverend Frank's
congregation, and made a point of distinguish-
ing herself in that body, by conspicuously weep-
ing at everything, however cheering, said by the
Reverend Frank in his public ministration; also
by applying to herself the various lamentations
of David, and complaining in a personally in-
jured manner (much in arrear of the clerk and
the rest of the respondents) that her enemies
were digging pit-falls about her, and breaking
her with rods of iron. Indeed, this old widow
discharged herself of that portion of the Morn-
ing and Evening Service as if she were lodging
something tangible; we throw up a groundwork
and foundation, so to speak, of goodness, on
which we may afterwards erect some worthy
superstructure.
"?
Now, to be sure, Mrs. Varden thought, here is
a perfect character. Here is a meek, righteous,
thoroughgoing Christian, who, having mastered
all these qualities, so difficult of attainment;
who, having dropped a pinch of salt on the tails
of all the cardinal virtues, and caught them
every one; makes light of their possession,
and pants for more morality. For the good
woman never doubted (as many good men and
women never do) that this slighting kind of
profession, this setting so little store by great
matters, this seeming to say, "I am not proud, I
am what you hear, but I consider myself no bet-
ter than other people; let us change the subject,
pray -was perfectly genuine and true. He so
contrived it, and said it in that way that it ap-
peared to have been forced from him, and its
effect was marvellous.
Aware of the impression he had made-few
men were quicker than he at such discoveries--
Mr. Chester followed up the blow by propound-
ing certain virtuous maxims, somewhat vague
and general in their nature, doubtless, and occa-
sionally partaking of the character of truisms,
worn a little out at elbow, but delivered in so
charming a voice and with such uncommon
serenity and peace of mind, that they answered
as well as the best. Nor is this to be wondered
at; for as hollow vessels produce a far more
musical sound in falling than those which are
substantial, so it will oftentimes be found that
sentiments which have nothing in them make
the loudest ringing in the world, and are the
most relished.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 27.
CHRISTIAN
mother).
W
A rigid (Esther's
God.
I was brought up, from my earliest remem-
brance-like some of the princesses in the fairy
stories, only I was not charming-by my god.
mother. At least I only knew her as such. She
CHRISTMAS
95
CHRISTMAS
was a good, good woman! She went to church hearts that have yearned towards each other, but
three times every Sunday, and to morning prayers have been withheld by false notions of pride and
on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures self-dignity, are again re-united, and all is kind-
whenever there were lectures; and never missed. ness and benevolence! Would that Christmas
She was handsome; and if she had ever smiled, lasted the whole year through (as it ought), and
would have been (I used to think) like an angel—that the prejudices and passions which deform
but she never smiled. She was always grave our better nature were never called into action
and strict. She was
so very good herself, I among those to whom they should ever be
thought, that the badness of other people made strangers!-Sketches (Characters), Chap. 2.
her frown all her life. I felt so different from
her, even making every allowance for the differ-
ences between a child and a woman; I felt so
poor, so trifling, and so far off; that I never
could be unrestrained with her-no, could never
love her as I wished.-Bleak House, Chap. 3.
CHRISTMAS.
CHRISTMAS-Its Associations.
the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to
a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great
multitude; again, with a child upon his knee,
and other children round; again, restoring sight
to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the
deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame,
knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a
Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick dark-
ness coming on, the earth beginning to shake,
and only one voice heard: Forgive them, for
they know not what they do!'
But, hark! The Waits are playing, and they
break my childish sleep! What images do I as-
| sociate with the Christmas music as I see them
set forth on the Christmas tree? Known before
all the others, keeping far apart from all the
others, they gather round my little bed. An
Christmas time! That man must be a mis- angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a
anthrope indeed, in whose breast something like field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted, follow-
a jovial feeling is not roused-in whose minding a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a
some pleasant associations are not awakened-spacious temple, talking with grave men; a
by the recurrence of Christmas. There are peo- solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face,
ple who will tell you that Christmas is not to raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a
them what it used to be; that each succeeding city-gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his
Christmas has found some cherished hope or bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through
happy prospect of the year before, dimmed or the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and
passed away; that the present only serves to re-letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes;
mind them of reduced circumstances and strait-
ened incomes-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 Still, on the lower and maturer branches of
was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick.
with reeking punch instead of sparkling wine, School-books are shut up; Ovid and Virgil si-
put a good face on the matter, and empty it off-lenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool imperti-
hand, and fill another, and troll off the old dittynent inquiries, long disposed of; Terence and
you used to sing, and thank God it's no worse. Plautus acted no more, in an arena of huddled
Look on the merry faces of your children (if you desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and
have any) as they sit round the fire. One little inked; cricket-bats, stumps, and balls, left higher
seat may be empty; one slight form that glad-up, with the smell of trodden grass and the soft-
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 many-not on your past
misfortunes, of which all men have some. Fill
your glass again, with a merry face and con-
tented heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas
shall be merry, and your new-year a happy one.
Who can be insensible to the outpourings of
good feeling, and the honest interchange of
affectionate attachment, which abound at this
season of the year? A Christmas family party!
We know nothing in nature more delightful!
There seems a magic in the very name of Christ-
mas. Petty jealousies and discords are forgot-thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have
ten; social feelings are awakened in bosoms to
which they have long been strangers; father
and son, or brother and sister, who have met and
passed with averted gaze, or a look of cold
recognition, for months before, proffer and re-
turn the cordial embrace, and bury their past
animosities in their present happiness. Kindly
•
ened noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree
is still fresh, still gay. If I no more come home.
at Christmas time, there will be girls and boys
(thank Heaven) while the world lasts.
*
*
*
*
*
Among the later toys and fancies hanging
there-as idle often, and less pure-be the
images once associated with the sweet old Waits,
the softened music in the night, ever unalterable!
Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas
time, still let the benignant figure of my child-
hood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image
and suggestion that the season brings, may the
bright star that rested above the poor roof, be
the star of all the Christian world! A moment's
pause, oh, vanishing tree, of which the lower
boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me look
once more! I know there are blank spaces on
shone and smiled; from which they are de-
parted. But, far above, I see the raiser of the
dead girl, and the widow's son; and God is
good! If Age be hiding for me in the unseen
portion of thy downward growth, oh, may I, with
a gray head, turn a child's heart to that figure
yet, and a child's trustfulness and confidence!
CHRISTMAS
Now, the tree is decorated with bright merri-
ment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness.
And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome
be they ever held, beneath the branches of the
Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow !
But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper
going through the leaves: "This, in com-
memoration of the law of love and kindness,
mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance
of Me!”—Christmas Tree-Reprinted Pieces.
CHRISTMAS DAY.
They stood in the city-streets on Christmas
morning, where (for the weather was severe) the
people made a rough, but brisk and not un-
pleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow
from the pavement in front of their dwellings,
and from the tops of their houses, whence it was
mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping
down into the road below, and splitting into
artificial little snow-storms.
The house-fronts looked black enough, and
the windows blacker, contrasting with the
smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and
with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which
last deposit had been ploughed up in deep fur-
rows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons;
furrows that crossed and recrossed each other
hundreds of times where the great streets branch-
ed off; and made intricate channels, hard to
trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water.
The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets
were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed,
half frozen, whose heavier particles descended
in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chim-
neys in Great Britain had, by one consent,
caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear
hearts' content. There was nothing very cheer-
ful in the climate or the town, and yet there was
an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest
summer air, and brightest summer sun, might
have endeavored to diffuse in vain.
96
CHRISTMAS
paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very
gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice
fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that
there was something going on: and, to a fish,
went gasping round and round their little world
in slow and passionless excitement.
The grocers! oh, the grocers! nearly closed,
with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but
through those gaps such glimpses! It was not
alone that the scales descending on the counter
made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters
were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or
even that the blended scents of tea and coffee
were so grateful to the nose, or even that the rai-
sins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so
extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long
and straight, the other spices so delicious, the
candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten
sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel
faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that
the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French
plums blushed in modest tartness from their
highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was
good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the
customers were all so hurried and so eager in the
hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up
against each other at the door, crashing their
wicker-baskets wildly; and left their purchases
upon the counter, and came running back to fetch
them; and committed hundreds of the like mis-
takes, in the best humor possible; while the
grocer and his people were so frank and fresh
that the polished hearts with which they fastened
their aprons behind might have been their own,
worn outside for general inspection, and for
Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off
the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled in-
cense on their dinners from his torch. And it
was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once
or twice, when there were angry words between
some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other,
he shed a few drops of water on them from it,
and their good humor was restored directly.. For
they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christ-
mas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it
was!
But soon the steeples called good people all
to church and chapel, and away they came, flock-
ing through the streets in their best clothes, and
with their gayest faces. And at the same time
For, the people who were shovelling away on there emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes,
the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling and nameless turnings, innumerable people, car-
out to one another from the parapets, and now rying their dinners to the bakers' shops. The
and then exchanging a facetious snowball-bet-sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest
ter-natured missile far than many a wordy jest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge
laughing heartily if it went right, and not less
heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops
were still half open, and the fruiterers' shops
were radiant in their glory. There were great
round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped
like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling
at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in
their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy,
brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions,
shining, in the fatness of their growth, like
Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves
in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by,
and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe.
There were pears and apples, clustered high in
blooming pyramids; there were bunches of
grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence,
to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's
mouths might water gratis as they passed; there
were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling,
in their fragrance, ancient walks among the
woods, and pleasant shufflings, ankle deep,
through withered leaves; there were Norfolk
Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow
of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently en-
treating and beseeching to be carried home in
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were
shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing
forth of all these dinners and the progress of
their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above
each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked
as if its stones were cooking too.
Christmas Carol, Stave 3.
CHRISTMAS-Its lessons.
"I will honor Christmas in my heart. I will live
in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The
Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will
not shut out the lessons that they teach. O, tell
me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!
Christmas Carol, Stave 4
CHRISTMAS
CHRISTMAS-Scrooge's opinion of.
Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
"What else can I be," returned the uncle,
"when I live in such a world of fools as this?
Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas!
What's Christmas time to you but a time for pay-
ing bills without money; a time for finding your-
self a year older, and not an hour richer; a time
for balancing your books and having every item
in 'em through a round dozen of months pre-
sented dead against you? If I could work my
will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who
goes about with Merry Christmas' on his lips.
should be boiled with his own pudding, and
buried with a stake of holly run through his
heart. He should!"-Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
CHRISTMAS-Scenes.
The noise in this room was perfectly tumul-
tuous, for there were more children there than
Scrooge, in his agitated state of mind, could
count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the
poem, they were not forty children conducting
themselves like one, but every child was con-
ducting itself like forty. The consequences
were uproarious beyond belief; but no one
seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother
and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it
very much; and the latter, soon beginning to
mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young
brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not
have given to be one of them! Though I never
could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn't
for the wealth of all the world have crushed
that braided hair, and torn it down; and for
the precious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked
it off, God bless my soul! to save my life. As
to measuring her waist in sport, as they did,
bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I
should have expected my arm to have grown
round it for a punishment, and never come
straight again. And yet I should have dearly
liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
questioned her, that she might have opened
them; to have looked upon the lashes of her
downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to
have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which
would be a keepsake beyond price; in short, I
should have liked, I do confess, to have had the
lightest license of a child, and yet to have been
man enough to know its value.
*
*
*
*
*
97
CHRISTMAS
false alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and ec-
stasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is
enough that, by degrees, the children and their
emotions got out of the parlor, and, by one stair
at a time, up to the top of the house, where they
went to bed, and so subsided.
Christmas Carol, Stave 2.
CHRISTMAS—A charitable time.
"There are many things from which I might
have derived good, by which I have not profited,
I dare say," returned the nephew, "Christmas
among the rest. But I am sure I have always
thought of Christmas time, when it has come
round-apart from the veneration due to its
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging
to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a
kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the
only time I know of, in the long calendar of the
year, when men and women seem by one con-
sent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to
think of people below them as if they really
were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not
another race of creatures bound on other jour-
neys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never
put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I
believe that it has done me good, and will do
me good; and I say, God bless it!
Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
CHRISTMAS EVE.
Christmas Eve in
in Cloisterham. A few
strange faces in the streets; a few other faces,
half strange and half familiar, once the faces of
Cloisterham children, now the faces of men and
women who come back from the outer world
at long intervals to find the city wonderfully
shrunken in size, as if it had not washed by any
means well in the meanwhile. To these, the
striking of the Cathedral clock, and the cawing
of the rooks from the Cathedral tower, are like
voices of their nursery time. To such as these,
it has happened in their dying hours afar off,
that they have imagined their chamber floor to
be strewn with the autumnal leaves fallen from
the elm-trees in the Close; so have the rustling
sounds and fresh scents of their earliest impres-
sions revived, when the circle of their lives was
very nearly traced, and the beginning and the
end were drawing close together.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 14.
CHRISTMAS-At sea.
But now a knocking at the door was heard,
and such a rush immediately ensued that she, Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks,
with laughing face and plundered dress, was some league or so from shore, on which the
borne towards it in the centre of a flushed and waters chafed and dashed the wild year through,
boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps
who came home attended by a man laden with of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds-
Christmas toys and presents. Then the shout-born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed
ing and the struggling, and the onslaught that of the water-rose and fell about it, like the
was made on the defenceless porter! The waves they skimmed.
scaling him, with chairs for ladders, to dive into
his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels,
hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the
neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in
irrepressible affection. The shouts of wonder
and delight with which the development of
every package was received! The terrible an-
nouncement that the baby had been taken in the
act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth,
and was more than suspected of having swal-
lowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden
platter! The immense relief of finding this a
But even here, two men who watched the
light had made a fire, that through the loophole
in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of bright-
ness on the awful sea. Joining their horny
hands over the rough table at which they sat,
they wished each other Merry Christmas in their
can of grog; and one of them-the elder too,
with his face all damaged and scarred with hard
weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might
be-struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale
in itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and
CHRISTMAS
heaving sea-on, on-until, being far away, as
he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on
a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the
wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who
had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their
several stations; but every man among them
hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas
thought, or spoke below his breath to his com-
panion of some by-gone Christmas Day, with
homeward hopes belonging to it. And every
man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad,
had had a kinder word for one another on that
day than on any day in the year; and had
shared to some extent in its festivities; and had
remembered those he cared for at a distance,
and had known that they delighted to remem-
ber him.-Christmas Carol, Stave 3.
CHRISTMAS-The recollections of.
Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff
and hearty honesty: it was the season of hos-
pitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the
old year was preparing, like an ancient philoso-
pher, to call his friends around him, and amidst
the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently
and calmly away. Gay and merry was the time,
and gay and merry were at least four of the nu-
merous hearts that were gladdened by its com-
ing.
And numerous indeed are the hearts to which
Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and
enjoyment. How many families, whose mem-
bers have been dispersed and scattered far and
wide in the restless struggles of life, are then
re-united, and meet once again in that happy
state of companionship and mutual good-will,
which is a source of such pure and unalloyed
delight; and one so incompatible with the cares
and sorrows of the world, that the religious be-
lief of the most civilized nations, and the rude
traditions of the roughest savages, alike number
it among the first joys of a future condition of
existence, provided for the blest and happy!
How many old recollections, and how many
dormant sympathies, does Christmas time
awaken!
We write these words now, many miles dis-
tant from the spot at which, year after year, we
met on that day a merry and joyous circle.
Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then,
have ceased to beat; many of the looks that
shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow;
the hands we grasped have grown cold; the
eyes we sought have hid their lustre in the
grave; and yet the old house, the room, the
merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the
laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances
connected with those happy meetings, crowd
upon our mind at each recurrence of the season,
as if the last assemblage had been but yester-
day! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win
us back to the delusions of our childish days;
that can recall to the old man the pleasures of
his youth; that can transport the sailor and the
traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his
own fireside and his quiet home!
CHRISTMAS CAROL-A.
Pickwick, Ch. 28.
I care not for Spring; on his fickle wing
Let the blossoms and buds be borne;
He woos them amain with his treacherous rain,
And he scatters them ere the morn.
98
CHRISTMAS DINNER
An inconstant elf, he knows not himself,
Nor his own changing mind an hour,
He'll smile in your face, and, with wry grimace,
He'll wither your youngest flower.
Let the Summer sun to his bright home run,
He shall never be sought by me;
When he's dimmed by a cloud I can laugh aloud,
And care not how sulky he bc
For his darling child is the madness wild
That sports in fierce fever's train;
And when love is too strong it don't last long,
As many have found to their pain.
A mild harvest night, by the tranquil light
Of the modest and gentle moon,
Has a far sweeter sheen, for me, I ween,
Than the broad and unblushing noon.
But every leaf awakens my grief,
As it lieth beneath the tree;
So let Autumn air be never so fair,
It by no means agrees with me.
But my song I troll out, for CHRISTMAS Stout,
The hearty, the true, and the bold;
A bumper I drain, and with might and main
Give three cheers for this Christmas old!
We'll usher him in with a merry din
That shall gladden his joyous heart,
And we'll keep him up while there 's bite or sup,
And in fellowship good we'll part.
[trace
In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide
One jot of his hard-weather scars;
They're no disgrace, for there 's much the same
On the cheeks of our bravest tars.
Then again I'll sing till the roof doth ring,
And it echoes from wall to wall--
To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night,
As the King of the Seasons all !
Pickwick, Ch. 28.
CHRISTMAS DINNER-Bob Cratchit's.
And how did little Tim behave?" asked
Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his
credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to
his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, “and better.
Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself
so much, and thinks the strangest things you
ever heard. He told me, coming home, that
he hoped the people saw him in the church, be-
cause he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant
to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who
made lame beggars walk and blind men see.'
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them
this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny
Tim was growing strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the
floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another
word was spoken, escorted by his brother and
sister to his stool beside the fire; and while
Bob, turning up his cuffs-as if, poor fellow,
they were capable of being made more shabby
-compounded some hot mixture in a jug, with
gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round
and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter
and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went
to fetch the goose, with which they soon re-
turned in high procession.
thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a
Such a bustle ensued that you might have
feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan
was a matter of course-and in truth it was
something very like it in that house. Mrs.
Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in
a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter
mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce ;
Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny
Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table;
the two young Cratchits set chairs for every.
CHRISTMAS
body, not forgetting themselves, and mounting
guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into
their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose
before their turn came to be helped. At last
the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It
was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs.
Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-
knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but
when she did, and when the long-expected gush
of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight
arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the
table with the handle of his knife, and feebly
cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he
didn't believe there ever was such a goose
cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and
cheapness were the themes of universal admi-
ration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed
potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole
family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great
delight (surveying one small atom of a bone
upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last!
Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage
and onion to the eyebrows! But now the
plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs.
Cratchit left the room alone too nervous to
bear witnesses-to take the pudding up, and
bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Sup-
pose it should break in turning out! Suppose
somebody should have got over the wall of the
back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry
with the goose-a supposition at which the two
young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of hor-
rors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The púd-
ding was out of the copper. A smell like a
washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell
like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next
door to each other, with a laundress's next door
to that! That was the pudding! In half a
minute Mrs. Cratchit entered-flushed, but smil-
ing proudly-with the pudding, like a speckled
cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half
of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and be-
dight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said,
and calmly too, that he regarded it as the great-
est success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their
marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the
weight was off her mind, she would confess she
had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Everybody had something to say about it, but
nobody said or thought it was at all a small pud-
ding for a large family. It would have been
flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have
blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was
cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up.
The compound in the jug being tasted, and con-
sidered perfect, apples and oranges were put
upon the table, and a shovel full of chestnuts
on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a
circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Crat-
chit's elbow stood the family display of glass,
two tumblers and a custard-cup without a
handle.
99
|
CHRISTMAS
the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked
noisily. Then Bob proposed,
"A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God
bless us.
"
Which all the family re-echoed,
God bless us every one !" said Tiny Tim,
the last of all.-Christmas Carol, Stave 3.
CHRISTMAS-Of Scrooge.
"I don't know what day of the month it is,"
said Scrooge; "I don't know how long I have
been among the Spirits. I don't know any-
thing. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I
don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo!
Whoop! Hallo here!"
He was checked in his transports by the
churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had
ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer; ding, dong,
bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash!
Oh, glorious, glorious!
Running to the window, he opened it, and
put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear,
bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for
the blood to dance to; golden sunlight; heav-
enly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells.
glorious! Glorious!
Oh,
"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling
downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who
perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
"EH?" returned the boy, with all his might
of wonder.
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said
Scrooge.
To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRIST-
MAS DAY."
"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to him-
self. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have
done it all in one night. They can do anything
they like. Of course they can. Of course they
can. Hallo, my fine fellow !"
"Hallo!" returned the boy.
"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next
street but one, at the corner?" Scrooge inquired,
"I should hope I did,” replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge.
"A re-
markable boy! Do you know whether they've
sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up
there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big
one?"
boy.
a
What, the one as big as me?" returned the
"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's
pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"
"It's hanging there now,” replied the boy.
"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.
No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest.
Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that
I may give them the directions where to take it.
Come back with the man, and I'll give you a
shilling. Come back with him in less than five
minutes, and I'll give half-a-crown !”
The boy was off like a shot. He must have
had a steady hand at a trigger who could have
got a shot off half so fast.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's," whispered
Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with
a laugh. 'He shan't know who sends it. It's
twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never
made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will
These held the hot stuff from the jug, how-be !"
ever, as well as golden goblets would have done; The hand in which he wrote the address was
and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while not a steady one; but write it he did, somehow
CHRISTMAS
100
and went down stairs to open the street-door,
ready for the coming of the poulterer's man. As
he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker
caught his eye.
"I shall love it as long as I live!" cried
Scrooge, patting it with his hand. "I scarcely
ever looked at it before. What an honest ex-
pression it has in its face! It's a wonderful
knocker!—Here's the Turkey. Hallo! Whoop!
How are you! Merry Christmas!"
It was a Turkey! He never could have stood
upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped
'em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-
wax.
'Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden
Town," said Scrooge. "You must have a cab."
The chuckle with which he said this, and the
chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and
the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and
the chuckle with which he recompensed the
boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle
with which he sat down breathless in his chair
again, and chuckled till he cried.
Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand
continued to shake very much; and shaving re-
quires attention, even when you don't dance
while you are at it. But if he had cut the end
of his nose off, he would have put a piece of
sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied. |
He dressed himself "all in his best," and at
last got out into the streets. The people were
by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them
with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and walk-
ing with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded
every one with a delighted smile. He looked
so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or
four good-humored fellows said, "Good morn-
ing, sir! A merry Christmas to you!" And
Scrooge said often afterward, that of all the
blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the
blithest in his ears.
*
*
*
*
*
He went to church, and walked about the
streets, and watched the people hurrying to and
fro, and patted the children on the head, and
questioned beggars, and looked down into the
kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and
found that everything could yield him pleasure.
He had never dreamed that any walk-that
anything could give him so much happiness.
In the afternoon, he turned his steps toward his
nephew's house.
He passed the door a dozen times, before he
had the courage to go up and knock. But he
made a dash, and did it.
"Is your master at home, my dear?" said
Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl! Very.
"Yes, sir."
'Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
'He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mis-
tress. I'll show you up stairs, if you please."
'Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge,
with his hand already on the dining-room lock.
"I'll go in here, my dear."
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in,
round the door. They were looking at the table
(which was spread out in great array); for these
young housekeepers are always nervous on such
points, and like to see that everything is right.
"Fred!" said Scrooge
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage
started. Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment,
about her sitting in the corner with the foot-
CHRISTMAS
stool, or he wouldn't have done it, on any ac
count.
"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred. "Who's
that?"
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come
to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?"
Let him in! It's a mercy he didn't shake his
arm off. He was at home in five minutes,
Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked
just the same. So did Topper when he came.
So did the plump sister, when she came. So
did every one when they came. Wonderful par-
ty, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity won-
der-ful happiness.
But he was early at the office next morning.
Oh, he was early there. If he could only be
there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late.
That was the thing he had set his heart upon.
And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck
nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He
was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his
time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that
he might see him come into the Tank.
His hat was off before he opened the door;
his comforter too. He was on his stool in a
jiffy, driving away with his pen, as if he were
trying to overtake nine o'clock.
"Hallo!" growled Scrooge, in his accustomed
voice as near as he could feign it. 'What do
you mean by coming here at this time of day?"
"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob.
"I am
behind my time."
"You are!" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I
think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, ap-
pearing from the Tank. “It shall not be re-
peated. I was making rather merry, yesterday
sir.'
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said
Scrooge, "I am not going to stand this sort of
thing any longer. And therefore," he continued,
leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a
dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into
the Tank again: "and therefore I am about to
raise your salary!"
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the
ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking
Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling
to the people in the court for help and a strait-
waistcoat.
"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge,
with an earnestness that could not be mistaken,
as he clapped him on the back. A merrier
Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have
given you for many a year! I'll raise your
salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling
family, and we will discuss your affairs this very
afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking
bishop, Bob! Make up the fires and buy an-
other coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob
Cratchit!"
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it
all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who
did NOT die, he was a second father. He be-
came as good a friend, as good a master, and as
good a man as the good old city knew, or any
other good old city, town, or borough in the
good old world. Some people laughed to see
the alteration in him, but he let them laugh,
and little heeded them; for he was wise enough
to know that nothing ever happened on this
globe, for good, at which some people did not
have their fill of laughter in the outset; and
CHURCHES
101
CHURCHES
knowing that such as these would be blind any-attractions had induced several young priests o
way, he thought it quite as well that they should deacons, in black bibs for waistcoats, and several
wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the mala-young ladies interested in that holy order (the
dy in less attractive forms. His own heart proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen
laughed and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits,
but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle
ever afterward; and it was always said of him,
that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any
man alive possessed the knowledge. May that
be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as
Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
Christmas Carol, Stave 5.
CHURCHES—A Sunday experience among.
There is a pale heap of books in the corner
of my pew, and while the organ, which is hoarse
and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear
more of the rusty working of the stops than of
any music, I look at the books, which are mostly
bound in faded baize and stuff.
*
*
*
*
*
The opening of the service recalls my wander-
ing thoughts. I then find, to my astonishment,
that I have been, and still am, taking a strong
kind of invisible snuff up my nose, into my
eyes, and down my throat. I wink, sneeze, and
cough. The clerk sneezes, the clergyman winks,
the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and
probably winks); all our little party wink,
sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made
of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron,
earth, and something else. Is the something
else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults be-
low? As sure as Death it is! Not only in the
cold, damp February day do we cough and
sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but
dead citizens have got into the very bellows of
the organ, and half-choked the same. We
stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citizens
arise in heavy clouds Dead citizens stick upon
the walls, and lie pulverized on the sounding-
board over the clergyman's head, and, when a
gust of air comes, tumble down up
upon him.
*
*
*
*
young ladies to a deacon), to come into the City
as a new and odd excitement. It was wonder-
ful to see how these young people played out
their little play in the heart of the City, ali
among themselves, without the deserted City's
knowing anything about it. It was as if you
should take an empty counting-house on a Sun-
day, and act one of the old Mysteries there. They
had impressed a small school (from what neigh-
borhood I don't know) to assist in the perform-
ances; and it was pleasant to notice frantic
garlands of inscription on the walls, especially
addressing those poor innocents, in characters
impossible for them to decipher. There was a
remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this
congregation.
But in other cases rot and mildew and dead
citizens formed the uppermost scent, while in-
fused into it, in a dreamy way not at all dis-
pleasing, was the staple character of the neigh-
borhood. In the churches about Mark Lane,
for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat;
and I accidentally struck an airy sample of bar-
ley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From
Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts,
there was often a subtle flavor of wine; some-
times of tea. One church near Mincing Lane
smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the
Monument the service had a flavor of damaged
oranges, which a little farther down towards the
river tempered into herrings, and gradually
toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one
church, the exact counterpart of the church in
the Rake's Progress where the hero is being
married to the horrible old lady, there was no
specialty of atmosphere, until the organ shook
a perfume of hides all over us from some ad-
jacent warehouse.
Be the scent what it would, however, there
was no specialty in the people. There were
never enough of them to represent any calling
or neighborhood. They had all gone elsewhere
overnight, and the few stragglers in the many
churches languished there inexpressively.
But we receive the signal to make that unan-
imous dive which surely is a little conven-
tional-like the strange rustlings and settlings
and clearings of throats and noses which are Among the uncommercial travels in which I
never dispensed with at certain points of the have engaged, this year of Sunday travel oc-
Church service, and are never held to be neces-cupies its own place apart from all the rest.
sary under any other circumstances. In a min- Whether I think of the church where the sails
ute more it is all over, and the organ expresses of the oyster-boats in the river almost flapped
itself to be as glad of it as it can be of anything against the windows, or of the church where the
in its rheumatic state, and in another minute we railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed
are all of us out of the church, and Whity- by above the roof, I recall a curious experience.
brown has locked it up. Another minute or little On summer Sundays, in the gentle rain or the
more, and, in the neighboring churchyard-not bright sunshine-either deepening the idleness of
the yard of that church, but of another-a | the idle city-I have sat, in that singular silence
churchyard like a great shabby old mignonette which belongs to resting-places usually astir, in
box, with two trees in it, and one tomb-I meet
Whity-brown, in his private capacity, fetching
a pint of beer for his dinner from the public-
house in the corner, where the keys of the rotting
fire-ladders are kept and were never asked for,
and where there is a ragged, white-seamed, out-
at-elbowed bagatelle-board on the first floor.
*
*
*
*
*
In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon
one obscure church which had broken out in
the melodramatic style, and was got up with
various tawdry decorations, much after the man-
ner of the extinct London Maypoles. These
scores of buildings, at the heart of the world's
metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers of
people speaking the English tongue than the an-
cient edifices of the Eternal City, or the Pyramids
of Egypt. The dark vestries and registries into
which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in
churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have
left impressions on my memory as distinct and
quaint as any it has in that way received. In
all those dusty registers that the worms are eat-
ing, there is not a line but made some hearts
leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and
dry now, still and dry! and the old tree at the
CHURCH
102
window, with no room for its branches, has seen
them all out. So with the tomb of the old
Master of the old Company, on which it drips.
His son restored it and died, his daughter re-
stored it and died, and then he had been re-
membered long enough, and the tree took pòs-
session of him, and his name cracked out.
There are few more striking indications of
the changes of manners and customs that two or
three hundred years have brought about, than
these deserted churches. Many of them are
handsome and costly structures, several of them
were designed by WREN, many of them arose
from the ashes of the great fire, others of them
outlived the plague and the fire too, to die a
slow death in these later days. No one can be
sure of the coming time; but it is not too much
to say of it that it has no sign, in its outsetting
tides, of the reflux to these churches of their
congregations and uses. They remain, like the
tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them
and around them, Monuments of another age.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 9.
CHURCH.
We have a church, by the bye, a hideous tem-
ple of flint, like a great, petrified hay-stack.
Reprinted Pieces.
CHURCH AND PREACHER-A child's
first experiences of.
CHURCH
over and all through, while I was very young,
and that I left him behind at an early period of
life. Peace be with him! More peace than he
brought to me!
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 9.
CHURCH-A hideous.
A very hideous church with four towers
at the four corners, generally resembling some
petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its
back, with its legs in the air.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 1.
CHURCH-An apology to Heaven.
*
*
*
* Laying violent hands
upon a quantity of stone and timber which be-
longed to a weaker baron, he built a chapel as
an apology, and so took a receipt from Heaven,
in full of all demands.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6.
CHURCHES-In Italy.
Sitting in any of the churches toward evening,
is like a mild dose of opium.
Pictures from Italy.
CHURCH-A wedding in.
then the air is quiet, and the day is darkened,
and she is trembling in a church which has a
strange smell, like a cellar.
The shabby little old man, ringer of the dis-
appointed bell, is standing in the porch, and has
put his hat in the font-for he is quite at home
there, being sexton. He ushers them into an
old, brown, panelled, dusty vestry, like a corner-
cupboard with the shelves taken out; where the
wormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff,
which has set the tearful Nipper sneezing.
Her heart beats quicker now, for Walter tells
her that their church is very near. They pass a
few great stacks of warehouses, with wagons at
the doors, and busy carmen stopping up the way
Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful-but Florence does not see or hear them-and
preachers. Time was, when I was dragged by
the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear too
many. On summer evenings, when every
flower and tree and bird might have better ad-
dressed my soft young heart, I have in my day
been caught in the palm of a female hand by
the crown, have been violently scrubbed from
the neck to the roots of the hair as a purifica-
tion for the Temple, and have then been
carried off, highly charged with saponaceous
electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the
unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges
Boiler and his congregation, until what small
mind I had was quite steamed out of me. In
which pitiable plight I have been haled out of
the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the
exercises, and catechised respecting Boanerges
Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly, and his seventhly,
until I have regarded that reverend person in
the light of a most dismal and oppressive
Charade. Time was, when I was carried off to
platform assemblages at which no human child,
whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep
its eyes open, and when I felt the fatal sleep
stealing, stealing over me, and when I gradually
heard the orator in possession spinning and
humming like a great top, until he rolled, col-screen, and round the gallery, and over the in-
lapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered, to scription about what the Master and Wardens
my burning shame and fear, that as to that last of the Worshipful Company did in one thou
stage it was not he, but I. I have sat under sand six hundred and ninety-four. There are
Boanerges when he has specifically addressed dusty old sounding-boards over the pulpit and
himself to us—us, the infants-and at this pres-reading-desk, looking like lids to be let dowr
ent writing I hear his lumbering jocularity on the officiating ministers, in case of their giv-
(which never amused us, though we basely pre- ing offence. There is every possible provision
tended that it did), and I behold his big round for the accommodation of dust, except in the
face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched churchyard, where the facilities in that respect
coat-sleeve, as if it were a telescope, with the are very limited.
stopper on, and I hate him with an unwhole-
some hatred for two hours. Through such
means did it come to pass that I knew the
powerful preacher from beginning to end, all
Youthful, and how beautiful the young bride
looks, in this old dusty place, with no kindred
object near her but her husband. There is a
dusty old clerk, who keeps a sort of evaporated
news-shop underneath an archway opposite, be-
hind a perfect fortification of posts. There is a
dusty old pew-opener who only keeps herself,
and finds that quite enough to do. There is a
dusty old beadle (these are Mr. Toots's beadle
and pew-opener of last Sunday), who has some-
thing to do with a worshipful Company who
have got a Hall in the next yard, with a stained-
glass window in it that no mortal ever saw.
There are dusty wooden ledges and cornices
poked in and out over the altar, and over the
*
*
*
*
No gracious ray of light is seen to fall on Flor-
ence, kneeling at the altar with her timid head
bowed down. The morning luminary is buil
CHURCHES
103
· out, and don't shine there. There is a meagre
tree outside, where the sparrows are chirping a
little; and there is a blackbird in an eyelet-hole
of sun in a dyer's garret, over against the win-
dow, who whistles loudly whilst the service is
performing; and there is the man with the
wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the
dusty clerk appear, like Macbeth's, to stick in
his throat a little; but Captain Cuttle helps him
out, and does it with so much good-will that he
interpolates three entirely new responses of that
word, never introduced into the service before.
They are married, and have signed their
names in one of the old sneezy registers, and
the clergyman's surplice is restored to the dust,
and the clergyman is gone home.
CHURCHES-Old.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 57.
The tall shrouded pulpit and reading-desk;
the dreary perspective of empty pews stretching
away under the galleries, and empty benches
mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of
the great grim organ; the dusty matting and
cold stone slabs; the grisly free seats in the
aisles; and the damp corner by the bell-rope,
where the black tressels used for funerals were
stowed away, along with some shovels and
baskets, and a coil or two of deadly-looking
rope; the strange, unusual, uncomfortable
smell, and the cadaverous light, were all in
unison. It was a cold and dismal scene.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 28.
CHURCHYARD
vane new burnished, and seeming to look out
with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the
distant shore of country.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 21.
CHURCHYARDS-In London
Such strange churchyards hide in the City of
London-churchyards sometimes so entirely
detached from churches, always so pressed upon
by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so for-
gotten, except by the few people who ever look
down into them from their smoky windows.
As I stand peeping in through the iron gates
and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off like bark
from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are
all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape
in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lom-
bardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a dry-
salter's daughter and several common council-
men, has withered like those worthies, and its
departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion
of slow ruin overhangs the place. The dis-
colored tiled roofs of the environing buildings
stand so awry that they can hardly be proof
against any stress of weather. Old crazy stacks
of chimneys seem to look down as they over-
hang, dubiously calculating how far they will
have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what
was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots
away, incrusted with toadstools.
Pipes and
spouts for carrying off the rain from the encom-
passing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old
lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash
as it list upon the weedy earth. Sometimes
there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as
I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it
working under an unknown hand with a creak-
ing protest, as though the departed in the
churchyard urged, "Let us lie here in peace;
don't suck us up and drink us!"
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 21.
CHURCHYARD—A.
The church was a mouldy old church in a
yard, hemmed in by a labyrinth of back streets
and courts, with a little burying ground round
it, and itself buried in a kind of vault, formed
by the neighboring houses, and paved with
echoing stones. It was a great, dim, shabby
pile, with high old oaken pews, among which
about a score of people lost themselves every
Sunday; while the clergyman's voice drowsily
resounded through the emptiness, and the organ
rumbled and rolled as if the church had got the
colic, for want of a congregation to keep the
wind and damp out. But so far was this city
church from languishing for the company of
other churches, that spires were clustered round
it, as the masts of shipping cluster on the river.
It would have been hard to count them from
its steeple-top, they were so many. In almost
every yard and blind-place near, there was a CHURCHYARD-Little Nell in an old.
church. The confusion of bells when Susan
and Mr. Toots betook themselves towards it on
the Sunday morning, was deafening. There
were twenty churches close together, clamoring
for people to come in.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 56.
CHURCH-Windows.
So little light lives inside the churches in my
churchyards, when the two are coexistent, that
it is often only by an accident and after long
acquaintance that I discover their having stained
glass in some odd window. The westering sun
slants into the churchyard by some unwonted
entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old
tombstone, and a window that I thought was
only dirty is for the moment all bejewelled.
Then the light passes, and the colors die.
Though even then, if there be room enough for
me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to
the top of the church tower, I see the rusty
A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man
whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath
the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in
by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the
growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked
up with too much burying; fat with repleted
appetite. A worthy place!
Christmas Carol, Stave 4.
The sun was setting when they reached the
wicket-gate at which the path began, and, as the
rain falls upon the just and unjust alike, it shed
its warm tint even upon the resting-places of the
dead, and bade them be of good hope for its
rising on the morrow. The church was old and
gray, with ivy clinging to the walls, and round
the porch. Shunning the tombs, it crept about
the mounds, beneath which slept poor humble
men; twining for them the first wreaths they
had ever won, but wreaths less liable to wither
and far more lasting in their kind, than some
which were graven deep in stone and marble,
and told in pompous terms of virtues meekly
hidden for many a year, and only revealed at
last to executors and mourning legatees.
The clergyman's horse, stumbling with a dull
blunt sound among the graves, was cropping the
grass; at once deriving orthodox consolation
from the dead parishioners, and enforcing last
CIRCUS
Sunday's text that this was what all flesh came
to; a lean ass who had sought to expound it
also, without being qualified and ordained, was
pricking his ears in an empty pound hard by,
and looking with hungry eyes upon his priestly
neighbor.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 16.
CIRCUS-The philosophy of the.
104
CITY
black hair, parted high on the forehead, to im-
part to the countenance an appearance of deep
thought and poetic melancholy. His soft and
pleasing voice, too, is in perfect unison with his
noble bearing, as he humors the clown by in-
dulging in a little badinage; and the striking
recollection of his own dignity with which he
exclaims, "Now, sir, if you please, inquire for
"People mutht be amuthed, Thquire, thome- Miss Woolford, sir," can never be forgotten.
how," continued Sleary, rendered more pursy The graceful air, too, with which he introduces
than ever, by so much talking; "they can't be Miss Woolford into the arena, and after assist-
alwayth'a working, nor yet they can't be alwaything her to the saddle, follows her fairy courser
a learning. Make the betht of uth; not the round the circle, can never fail to create a deep
wurtht. I've got my living out of the horthe-impression in the bosom of every female servant
riding all my life, I know; but I conthider that present.-Scenes, Chap. II.
I lay down the philothophy of the thubject when
I thay to you, Thquire, make the betht of uth;
not the wurtht!"
The Sleary philosophy was propounded as
they went down stairs; and the fixed eye of
Philosophy-and its rolling eye, too-soon lost
the three figures and the basket in the darkness
of the street. Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 6.
CIRCUS-PEOPLE-Mr. Sleary on.
Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht!
Don't be croth with uth poor vagabondth. Peo-
ple mutht be amuthed. They can't be alwayth
a learning, nor yet they can't be alwayth a work-
ing, they an't made for it. You mutht have
uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind
thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the
wortht!
"And I never thought before," said Mr.
Sleary, putting his head in at the door again to
say it, "that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!"
Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 8.
CIRCUS-The performers.
CITY-An old and drowsy.
An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet
dwelling-place for any one with hankerings after
the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city,
deriving an earthy flavor throughout from its
Cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges
of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham chil-
dren grow small salad in the dust of abbots and
abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars;
while every ploughman in its outlying fields
renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, Arch-
bishops, Bishops, and such-like, the attention
which the Ogre in the story-book desired to
render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds their
bones to make his bread.
A
A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants
seem to suppose, with an inconsistency more
strange than rare, that all its changes lie behind
it, and that there are no more to come.
queer moral to derive from antiquity, yet older
than any traceable antiquity. So silent are the
streets of Cloisterham (though prone to echo on
the smallest provocation), that of a summer-day
the sunblinds of its shops scarce dare to flap in
the south wind; while the sun-browned tramps
who pass along and stare, quicken their limp a
little, that they may the sooner get beyond the
confines of its oppressive respectability. This
is a feat not difficult of achievement, seeing that
the streets of Cloisterham city are little more
than one narrow street by which you get into it
and get out of it: the rest being mostly disap-
pointing yards with pumps in them and no
thoroughfare-exception made of the Cathedral
close, and a paved Quaker settlement, in color
and general conformation very like a Quakeress's
bonnet, up in a shady corner.
We defy any one who has been to Astley's
two or three times, and is consequently capable
of appreciating the perseverance with which
precisely the same jokes are repeated night after
night, and season after season, not to be amused
with one part of the performances at least-we
mean the scenes in the circle. For ourself, we
know that when the hoop, composed of jets of
gas, is let down, the curtain drawn up for the
convenience of the half-price on their ejectment
from the ring, the orange-peel cleared away, and
the sawdust shaken, with mathematical preci-
sion, into a complete circle, we feel as much
enlivened as the youngest child present; and
actually join in the laugh which follows the In a word, a city of another and a bygone
clown's shrill shout of "Here we are!" just for time is Cloisterham, with its hoarse Cathedral
old acquaintance sake. Nor can we quite divest bell, its hoarse rooks hovering about the Cathe-
ourself of our old feeling of reverence for thedral tower, its hoarser and less distinct rooks in
riding-master, who follows the clown with a the stalls far beneath. Fragments of old wall,
long whip in his hand, and bows to the audience saint's chapel, chapter-house, convent, and mon-
with graceful dignity. He is none of your sec-astery have got incongruously or obstructively
ond-rate riding-masters, in nankeen dressing- built into many of its houses and gardens, much
gowns, with brown frogs, but the regular gen- as kindred jumbled notions have become incor-
tleman attendant on the principal riders, who porated into many of its citizens' minds. All
always wears a military uniform with a table-things in it are of the past.
Even its single
cloth inside the breast of the coat, in which pawnbroker takes in no pledges, nor has he for
costume he forcibly reminds one of a fowl a long time, but offers vainly an unredeemed
trussed for roasting. He is—but why should stock for sale, of which the costlier articles are
we attempt to describe that of which no de- dim and pale old watches apparently in a slow
scription can convey an adequate idea? Every-perspiration, tarnished sugar-tongs with ineffec-
body knows the man, and everybody remembers tual legs, and odd volumes of dismal books.
his polished boots, his graceful demeanor, stiff, The most abundant and the most agreeable
as some misjudging persons have in their jeal- evidences of progressing life in Cloisterham are
ousy considered it, and the splendid head of the evidences of vegetable life in its many gar.
CITY
105
CITY
dens; even its drooping and despondent little come nearer to the truth, and let it out mor
theatre has its poor strip of garden, receiving | plainly.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 44.
the foul fiend, when he ducks from its stage into
the infernal regions, among scarlet beans or CITY OF PHILADELPHIA.
oyster-shells, according to the season of the
year.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 3.
CITY-A quiet nook in London.
Behind the most ancient part of Holborn,
London, where certain gabled houses some cen-
turies of age still stand looking on the public
way, as if disconsolately looking for the Old
Bourne that has long run dry, is a little nook
composed of two irregular quadrangles, called
Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turn-
ing into which out of the clashing street imparts
to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of hav-
ing put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on
his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few
smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as
though they called to one another, “Let us play
at country," and where a few feet of garden
mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to
do that refreshing violence to their tiny under-
standings. Moreover, it is one of those nooks
which are legal nooks; and it contains a little
Hall, with a little lantern in its roof; to what
obstructive purposes devoted, and at whose ex-
pense, this history knoweth not.
Edwin Drood, Chap. II.
It is a handsome city, but distractingly regu
lar. After walking about it for an hour or two
I felt that I would have given the world for e
crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared
to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand,
beneath its Quakerly influence. My hair shrunk
into a sleek short crop, my hands folded them-
selves upon my breast of their own calm accord,
and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane,
over against the Market Place, and of making
a large fortune by speculations in corn, came
over me involuntarily.-American Notes, Chap. 7.
CITY-The approach to New York.
We were now in a narrow channel, with slo-
ping banks on either side, besprinkled with plea-
sant villas, and made refreshing to the sight by
turf and trees. Soon we shot in quick succes-
sion past a light-house, a mad-house (how the
lunatics flung up their caps and roared in
sympathy with the headlong engine and the
driving tide !), a jail, and other buildings, and
so emerged into a noble bay, whose waters
sparkled in the now cloudless sunshine, like
Nature's eyes turned up to Heaven.
Then there lay stretched out before us to the
CITY CROWD-Its expressions.
right, confused heaps of buildings, with here
The throng of people hurried by, in two op- the herd below: and here and there again a
and there a spire or steeple, looking down upon
posite streams, with no symptom of cessation or
exhaustion; intent upon their own affairs; and cloud of lazy smoke; and in the foreground a
undisturbed in their business speculations by forest of ships' masts, cheery with flapping sails
the roar of carts and wagons laden with clash- and waving flags. Crossing from among them
ing wares, the slipping of horses' feet upon the to the opposite shore were steam ferry-boats
wet and greasy pavement, the rattling of the laden with people, coaches, horses, wagons, bas-
rain on windows and umbrella-tops, the jostlingkets, boxes; crossed and recrossed by other ferry-
of the more impatient passengers, and all the
noise and tumult of a crowded street in the high
tide of its occupation; while the two poor
strangers, stunned and bewildered by the hurry
they beheld but had no part in, looked mourn
fully on; feeling, amidst the crowd, a solitude
which has no parallel but in the thirst of the
shipwrecked mariner, who, tost to and fro upon
the billows of a mighty ocean, his red eyes
blinded by looking on the water which hems
him in on every side, has not one drop to cool
his burning tongue.
They withdrew into a low archway for shelter
from the rain, and watched the faces of those
who passed, to find in one among them a ray of
encouragement or hope. Some frowned, some
smiled, some muttered to themselves, some made
slight gestures, as if anticipating the conversa-
tion in which they would shortly be engaged,
some wore the cunning look of bargaining and
plotting, some were anxious and eager, some
slow and dull; in some countenances were
wriften gain; in others loss. It was like being
in the confidence of all these people to stand
quietly there, looking into their faces as they
flitted past. In busy places, where each man
has an object of his own, and feels assured that
every other man has his, his character and pur-
pose are written broadly in his face. In the
public walks and lounges of the town, people
go to see and to be seen, and there the
same expression, with little variety, is repeated
a hundred times. The working-day faces
boats; all travelling to and fro, and never idle.
Stately among these restless Insects were two
or three large ships, moving with slow, majestic
pace, as creatures of a prouder kind, disdainful
of their puny journeys, and making for the
broad sea. Beyond were shining heights, and
islands in the glancing river, and a distance
scarcely less blue and bright than the sky it
seemed to meet. The city's hum and buzz, the
clinking of capstans, the ringing of bells, the
barking of dogs, the clattering of wheels, tin-
gled in the listening ear. All of which life and
stir, coming across the stirring water, caught
new life and animation from its free companion-
ship; and, sympathizing with its buoyant spirits,
glistened, as it seemed, in sport upon its surface,
and hemmed the vessel round, and plashed the
water high about her sides, and, floating her
gallantly into the dock, flew off again to wel-
come other comers and speed before them to
the busy port.-American Notes, Chap. 5.
CITY-Travellers to the.
Day after day, such travellers crept past, but
always, as she thought, in one direction-always
towards the town.
towards the town. Swallowed up in one phase
or other of its immensity, towards which they
seemed impelled by a desperate fascination, they
never returned. Food for the hospitals, the
churchyards, the prisons, the river, fever, mad-
ness, vice, and death,—they passed on to the
monster, roaring in the distance, and were lost:
Dombey & Son, Chap. 33.
CITY
CITY-Approach to a.
106
CITY SQUARE
lay awake in bed or hurried through the streets
And now he approached the great city, which Long stands of hackney-chairs and groups of
lay outstretched before him like a dark shadow chairmen, compared with whom the coachmer
on the ground, reddening the sluggish air with of our day are gentle and polite, obstructed the
a deep, dull light, that told of labyrinths of pub-way and filled the air with clamor; night-cel-
lic ways and shops, and swarms of busy people. lars, indicated by a little stream of light cross-
Approaching nearer and nearer yet, this halo ing the pavement, and stretching out half-way
began to fade, and the causes which produced into the road, and by the stifled roar of voices
it slowly to develop themselves. Long lines from below, yawned for the reception and enter-
of poorly lighted streets might be faintly traced, tainment of the most abandoned of both sexes;
with here and there a lighter spot, where lamps under every shed and bulk small groups of link-
were clustered about a square or market, or boys gamed away the earnings of the day; or
round some great buildings; after a time these one, more weary than the rest, gave way to sleep,
grew more distinct, and the lamps themselves and let the fragment of his torch fall hissing on
were visible; slight yellow specks, that seemed the puddled ground.
to be rapidly snuffed out, one by one, as inter- Then there was the watch, with staff and lan-
vening obstacles hid them from the sight. Then thorn, crying the hour, and the kind of weather;
sounds arose the striking of church clocks, the and those who woke up at his voice and turned
distant bark of dogs, the hum of traffic in the them round in bed, were glad to hear it rained
streets; then outlines might be traced-tall or snowed, or blew, or froze, for very comfort's
steeples looming in the air, and piles of unequal sake. The solitary passenger was startled by
roofs oppressed by chimneys; then, the noise the chairmen's cry of "By your leave there!"
swelled into a louder sound, and forms grew as two came trotting past him with their empty
more distinct and numerous still, and London-vehicle-carried backwards to show its being
visible in the darkness by its own faint light,
and not by that of Heaven-was at hand.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 3.
CITY-London in old times.
A series of pictures representing the streets
of London in the night, even at the compara-
tively recent date of this tale, would present to
the eye something so very different in character
from the reality which is witnessed in these
times, that it would be difficult for the beholder
to recognize his most familiar walks in the al-
tered aspect of little more than half a century
ago.
disengaged—and hurried to the nearest stand.
Many a private chair too, inclosing some fine
lady, monstrously hooped and furbelowed, and
preceded by running footmen bearing flambeaux
-for which extinguishers are yet suspended be-
fore the doors of a few houses of the better sort-
made the way gay and light as it danced along,
and darker and more dismal when it had passed.
It was not unusual for these running gentry, who
carried it with a very high hand, to quarrel in
the servants' hall while waiting for their masters
and mistresses; and, falling to blows either
there or in the street without, to strew the place
of skirmish with hair-powder, fragments of bag-
wigs, and scattered nosegays. Gaming, the vice
which ran so high among all classes (the fashion
They were, one and all, from the broadest and
best to the narrowest and least frequented, very
dark. The oil and cotton lamps, though regu-being of course set by the upper), was generally
larly trimmed twice or thrice in the long winter
nights, burnt feebly at the best; and at a late
hour, when they were unassisted by the lamps
and candles in the shops, cast but a narrow track
of doubtful light upon the footway, leaving the
projecting doors and house-fronts in the deepest
gloom. Many of the courts and lanes were left
in total darkness; those of the meaner sort,
where one glimmering light twinkled for a score
of houses, being favored in no slight degree.
Even in these places, the inhabitants had often
good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soon
as it was lighted; and the watch being utterly
inefficient, and powerless to prevent them, they
did so at their pleasure. Thus, in the lightest
thoroughfares, there was at every turn some ob-
scure and dangerous spot whither a thief might
fly for shelter, and few would care to follow; and
the city being belted round by fields, green
lanes, waste grounds, and lonely roads, dividing
it at that time from the suburbs that have joined
it since, escape, even when the pursuit was hot,
was rendered easy.
There were many other characteristics-not
quite so disagreeable-about the thoroughfares
of London then, with which they had been long
familiar. Some of the shops, especially those
to the eastward of Temple Bar, still adhered to
the old practice of hanging out a sign, and the
creaking and swinging of these boards in their
iron frames on windy nights, formed a strange
and mournful concert for the ears of those who
the cause of these disputes; for cards and dice
were as openly used, and worked as much mis-
chief, and yielded as much excitement below
stairs, as above. While incidents like these,
arising out of drums and masquerades and
parties at quadrille, were passing at the west
end of the town, heavy stage-coaches and scarce
heavier wagons were lumbering slowly toward
the city, the coachmen, guard, and passengers
armed to the teeth, and the coach-a day or so,
perhaps, behind its time, but that was nothing-
despoiled by highwaymen ; who made no
scruple to attack, alone and single-handed, a
whole caravan of goods and men, and some-
times shot a passenger or two, and were some-
times shot themselves, just as the case might be.
On the morrow, rumors of this new act of dar-
ing on the road yielded matter for a few hours'
conversation through the town, and a Public
Progress of some fine gentlemen (half drunk)
to Tyburn, dressed in the newest fashion and
damning the ordinary with unspeakable gal-
lantry and grace, furnished to the populace at
once a pleasant excitement and a wholesome
and profound example.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 16.
CITY SQUARE-The office of the Cheery-
bles.
The square in which the counting-house of
the brothers Cheeryble was situated, although
it might not wholly realize the very sanguine
CITY SQUARE
expectations which a stranger would be disposed
to form on hearing the fervent encomiums be-
stowed upon it by Tim Linkinwater, was, never-
theless, a sufficiently desirable nook in the heart
of a busy town like London, and one which oc-
cupied a high place in the affectionate remem-
brances of several grave persons domiciled in
the neighborhood, whose recollections, however,
dated from a much more recent period, and
whose attachment to the spot was far less ab-
sorbing than were the recollections and attach-
ment of the enthusiastic Tim.
107
CITY NEIGHBORHOOD
Tim held the fabled goodness of that at the
Horse Guards to be a pleasant fiction, invented
by jealous Westenders), the old clerk performed
the minutest actions of the day, and arranged
the minutest articles in the little room in a
precise and regular order, which could not have
been exceeded if it had actually been a real
glass case, fitted with the choicest curiosities.
Paper, pens, ink, ruler, sealing-wax, wafers,
pounce-box, string-box, fire-box, Tim's hat,
Tim's scrupulously folded gloves, Tim's other
coat-looking precisely like a back view of
And let not those Londoners whose eyes have himself as it hung against the wall—all had
been accustomed to the aristocratic gravity of their accustomed inches of space. Except the
Grosvenor Square and Hanover Square, the clock, there was not such an accurate and un-
dowager barrenness and frigidity of Fitzroy | impeachable instrument in existence as the
Square, or the gravel-walks and garden-seats of little thermometer which hung behind the door.
the Squares of Russell and Euston, suppose that There was not a bird of such methodical and
the affections of Tim Linkinwater, or the infe- business-like habits in all the world, as the
rior lovers of this particular locality, had been blind blackbird, who dreamed and dozed away
awakened and kept alive by any refreshing asso- his days in a large snug cage, and had lost his
ciations with leaves, however dingy, or grass, voice from old age, years before Tim first bought
however bare and thin. The City Square has him. There was not such an eventful story in
no enclosure, save the lamp-post in the middle; the whole range of anecdote, as Tim could tell
and has no grass but the weeds which spring up concerning the acquisition of that very bird;
round its base. It is a quiet, little-frequented, how, compassionating his starved and suffering
retired spot, favorable to melancholy and con- condition, he had purchased him, with the view
templation, and appointments of long-waiting; of humanely terminating his wretched life; how
and up and down its every side the Appointed he determined to wait three days and see whether
saunters idly by the hour together, wakening the the bird revived; how, before half the time was
echoes with the monotonous sound of his foot-out, the bird did revive; and how he went on
steps on the smooth, worn stones, and counting, reviving and picking up his appetite and good
first the windows, and then the very bricks of looks until he gradually became what-"what
the tall silent houses that hem him round about. you see him now, sir!"-Tim would say, glanc-
In winter-time, the snow will linger there, long ing proudly at the cage. And with that, Tim
after it has melted from the busy streets and would utter a melodious chirrup, and cry
highways. The summer's sun holds it in some 'Dick;" and Dick, who, for any sign of life he
respect, and, while he darts his cheerful rays had previously given, might have been a wooden
sparingly into the Square, keeps his fiery heat or stuffed representation of a blackbird, indiffer-
and glare for noisier and less imposing pre-ently executed, would come to the side of the
cincts. It is so quiet, that you can almost hear
the ticking of your own watch when you stop to
cool in its refreshing atmosphere. There is a
distant hum-of coaches, not of insects-but no
other sound disturbs the stillness of the square.
The ticket porter leans idly against the post at
the corner, comfortably warm, but not hot, al- Nor was this all. Everything gave back, be..
though the day is broiling. His white apron sides, some reflection of the kindly spirit of the
flaps languidly in the air, his head gradually brothers. The warehousemen and porters were
droops upon his breast, he takes very long winks such sturdy, jolly fellows, that it was a treat to
with both eyes at once; even he is unable to see them. Among the shipping-announcements
withstand the soporific influence of the place, and steam-packet lists which decorated the
and is gradually falling asleep. But now, he counting-house wall, were designs for alms-
starts into full wakefulness, recoils a step or houses, statements of charities, and plans for
two, and gazes out before him with eager wild-new hospitals. A blunderbuss and two swords
ness in his eye. Is it a job, or a boy at mar-
bles? Does he see a ghost, or hear an organ?
No; sight more unwonted still-there is a but-
terfly in the square-a real, live butterfly! astray
from flowers and sweets, and fluttering among
the iron heads of the dusty area railings.
|
cage in three small jumps, and, thrusting his
bill between the bars, would turn his sightless-
head towards his old master-and at that mo-
ment it would be very difficult to determine
which of the two was the happier, the bird or
Tim Linkinwater.
hung above the chimney-piece, for the terror of
evil-doers; but the blunderbuss was rusty and
shattered, and the swords were broken and
edgeless. Elsewhere, their open display in such
a condition would have raised a smile; but
there, it seemed as though even violent and
offensive weapons partook of the reigning influ
ence, and became emblems of mercy and for
CITY NEIGHBORHOOD—A.
But if there were not many matters immedi-
ately without the doors of Cheeryble Brothers,
to engage the attention or distract the thoughts | bearance.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 37:
of the young clerk, there were not a few within,
to interest and amuse him. There was scarcely
an object in the place, animate or inanimate,
which did not partake in some degree of the
scrupulous method and punctuality of Mr. Tim-
othy Linkinwater. Punctual as the counting-
house dial, which he maintained to be the best
time-keeper in London next after the clock of
some old, hidden, unknown church hard by (for
In that quarter of London in which Golden
Square is situated, there is a by-gone, faded,
tumble-down street, with two irregular rows of
tall, meagre houses, which seem to have stared
each other out of countenance years ago.
very chimneys appear to have grown dismal and
melancholy, from having had nothing better to
The
CLEANLINESS
look at than the chimneys over the way. Their
tops are battered, and broken, and blackened
with smoke; and, here and there, some taller
stack than the rest, inclining heavily to one
side, and toppling over the roof, seems to medi-
tate taking revenge for half a century's neglect,
by crushing the inhabitants of the garrets be-
neath.
The fowls who peck about the kennels, jerk-
ing their bodies hither and thither with a gait
which none but town fowls are ever seen to
adopt, and which any country cock or hen would
be puzzled to understand, are perfectly in keep-
ing with the crazy habitations of their owners.
Dingy, ill-plumed, drowsy flutterers, sent, like
many of the neighboring children, to get a live-
lihood in the streets, they hop from stone to
stone, in forlorn search of some hidden eatable
in the mud, and can scarcely raise a crow among
them. The only one with anything approach-
ing to a voice, is an aged bantam at the baker's ;
and even he is hoarse, in consequence of bad
living in his last place.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 14.
CLEANLINESS-Uncomfortable.
Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but
had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness
more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt
itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and
some people do the same by their religion.
Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
108
CLERK
bestowing the most vigorous, scientific, and
straightforward blows upon the empty air
But
At first sight, this would have appeared mere
ly a wise precaution in a man of sedentary
habits, with the view of opening the chest and
strengthening the muscles of the arms.
the intense eagerness and joy depicted in the
face of Newman Noggs, which was suffused
with perspiration; the surprising energy with
which he directed a constant succession of blows
towards a particular panel about five feet eight
from the ground, and still worked away in the
most untiring and persevering manner, would
have sufficiently explained to the attentive ob-
server, that his imagination was threshing, to
within an inch of his life, his body's most active
employer, Mr. Ralph Nickleby.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 29.
CLERK-His office.
Every morning, with an air ever new, Her-
bert went into the City to look about him. I
often paid him a visit in the dark back-room in
which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a
coal-box, a string-box, an almanac, a desk and
stool, and a ruler; and I do not remember that
I ever saw him do anything else but look about
him. If we all did what we undertake to do, as
faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a
Republic of the Virtues.
Great Expectations, Chap. 34.
CLERKS-Offices of merchants'.
CLERK-A Lawyer's.
It appeared to me that the eggs from which
"I'll take the opportunity, if you please, of young Insurers were hatched, were incubated in
entering your name in our Callers' Book for the dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging
day." Young Blight made another great show from the places to which those incipient giants
of changing the volume, taking up a pen, suck-repaired on a Monday morning. Nor did the
ing it, dipping it, and running over previous en- counting-house where Herbert assisted, show in
tries before he wrote. "As, Mr. Alley, Mr. my eyes as at all a good Observatory; being a
Balley, Mr. Calley, Mr. Dalley, Mr. Falley, Mr. back second floor up a yard, of a grimy pres-
Galley, Mr. Halley, Mr. Lalley, Mr. Malley.ence in all particulars, and with a look into an-
And Mr. Boffin."
other back second floor, rather than a look-out.
Great Expectations, Chap. 22.
"Strict system here; eh, my lad?" said Mr.
Boffin, as he was booked.
Yes, sir," returned the boy. "I couldn't
get on without it.”
By which he probably meant that his mind
would have been shattered to pieces without this
fiction of an occupation. Wearing in his soli-
tary confinement no fetters that he could polish,
and being provided with no drinking-cup that
he could carve, he had fallen into the device of
ringing alphabetical changes into the two vol-
umes in question, or of entering vast numbers
of persons out of the Directory as transacting
business with Mr. Lightwood. It was the more
necessary for his spirits, because, being of a
sensitive temperament, he was apt to consider
it personally disgraceful to himself that his
master had no clients.
CLERK-The faithful old.
"Damn your obstinacy, Tim Linkinwater,"
said brother Charles, looking at him without the
faintest spark of anger, and with a countenance
radiant with attachment to the old clerk.
"Damn your obstinacy, Tim Linkinwater, what
do you mean, sir?"
"It's forty-four year," said Tim, making a
calculation in the air with his pen, and drawing
an imaginary line before he cast it up, "forty-
four year, next May, since I first kept the books
of Cheeryble Brothers. I've opened the safe
every morning all that time (Sundays excepted)
as the clock struck nine, and gone over the
house every night at half-past ten (except on
Foreign Post nights, and then twenty minutes
before twelve) to see the doors fastened, and the
fires out. I've never slept out of the back attic
one single night. There's the same mignonette
box in the middle of the window, and the same
four flower-pots, two on each side, that I brought
with me when I first came. There ain't-I've
said it again and again, and I'll maintain it—
there ain't such a square as this in the world. I
Newman Noggs was the sole actor. He know there ain't," said Tim, with sudden ener-
stood at a little distance from the door, with his gy, and looking sternly about him.
"Not one.
face towards it; and with the sleeves of his For business or pleasure, in summer-time or win.
coat turned back at the wrists, was occupied inter-I don't care which-there's nothing like it.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 8.
CLERK-An indignant (Newman Noggs).
As the usurer turned for consolation to his
books and papers, a performance was going on
outside his office-door, which would have occa-
sioned him no small surprise, if he could by
any means have become acquainted with it.

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MR. CHADBAND.-HIS EXHORTATIONS.
CLERGYMEN.
109
CLERGYMAN.
There's not such a spring in England as the CLERGYMAN-The True.
pump under the archway. There's not such a
view in England as the view out of my window.
I've seen it every morning before I shaved, and
I ought to know something about it. I have
slept in that room," added Tim, sinking his
voice a little, "for four-and-forty year; and if
it wasn't inconvenient, and didn't interfere
with business, I should request leave to die
there."
Damn you, Tim Linkinwater, how dare you
talk about dying?" roared the twins by one im-
pulse, and blowing their old noses violently.
"That's what I've got to say, Mr. Edwin and
Mr. Charles," said Tim, squaring his shoulders
again. "This isn't the first time you've talked
about superannuating me; but, if you please,
we'll make it the last, and drop the subject for
evermore."
So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affecta-
tion, as true practical Christianity ever is! I
read more of the New Testament in the fresh,
frank face going up the village beside me, in
five minutes, than I have read in anathematizing
discourses (albeit put to press with enormous
flourishing of trumpets) in all my life. I heard
more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice
that had nothing to say about its owner, than in
all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that
have ever blown conceit at me.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 2.
CLERGYMAN—The Rev. Mr. Chadband.
Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man, with a
fat smile, and a general appearance of having a
good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs. Chad-
band is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman.
Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not
unlike a bear who has been taught to walk up-
right. He is very much embarrassed about the
arms, as if they were inconvenient to him, and
he wanted to grovel; is very much in a per-
spiration about the head; and never speaks
"He must be done something with, brother without first putting up his great hand, as de-
Ned," said the other, warmly; we must disre-livering a token to his hearers that he is going
gard his old scruples; they can't be tolerated to edify them.-Bleak House, Chap. 19.
or borne. He must be made a partner, brother
With those words, Tim Linkinwater stalked
out, and shut himself up in his glass-case, with
the air of a man who had had his say, and was
thoroughly resolved not to be put down.
The brothers interchanged looks, and coughed
some half-dozen times without speaking.
Ned; and if he won't submit to it peaceably, CLERGYMAN-The Exhortations of Mr.
we must have recourse to violence."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 35.
CLERGYMEN-Advice to.
Chadband.
"Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising
and wiping the oily exudations from his reverend
visage, "Peace be with us! My friends, why
with us? Because," with his fat smile, "it can-
not be against us, because it must be for us;
because it is not hardening, because it is soften-
ing; because it does not make war like the
hawk, but comes home untoe us like the dove.
Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My
human boy, come forward!"
•
Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband
lays the same on Jo's arm, and considers where
to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his re-
verend friend's intentions, and not at all clear
but that something practical and painful is going
to be done to him, mutters, "You let me alone.
I never said nothink to you. You let me
alone."
There is a third head, taking precedence of
all others, to which my remarks on the discourse
I heard have tended. In the New Testament
there is the most beautiful and affecting history
conceivable by man, and there are the terse
models for all prayer, and for all preaching. As
to the models, imitate them, Sunday preach-
ers-else why are they there, consider? As to
the history, tell it. Some people cannot read,
some people will not read, many people (this
especially holds among the young and ignorant)
find it hard to pursue the verse form in which
the book is presented to them, and imagine that
those breaks imply gaps and wants of continuity.
Help them over that first stumbling-block, by
setting forth the history in narrative, with no "No, my young friend," says Chadband,
fear of exhausting it. You will never preach smoothly, "I will not let you alone. And why?
so well, you will never move them so profoundly, Because I am a harvest-laborer, because I am a
you will never send them away with half so toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered
much to think of. Which is the better inter- over untoe me, and are become as a precious in-
est-Christ's choice of twelve poor men to help strument in my hands. My friends, may I so
in those merciful wonders among the poor and employ this instrument as to use it toe your ad-
rejected, or the pious bullying of a whole Union-vantage, toe your profit, toe your gain, toe your
ful of paupers? What is your changed philoso-
pher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out
of the mud of the streets and of my life, when
you have the widow's son to tell me about, the
ruler's daughter, the other figure at the door
when the brother of the two sisters was dead,
and one of the two ran to the mourner, crying,
"The Master is come, and calleth for thee?"
Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget
himself, and remember no individuality but
one, and no eloquence but one, stand up before
four thousand men and women at the Britannia
Theatre any Sunday night, recounting that nar-
rative to them as fellow-creatures, and he shall
see a sight!
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 4.
welfare, toe your enrichment! My young friend,
sit upon this stool."
Jo, apparently possessed by an impression
that the reverend gentleman wants to cut his
hair, shields his head with both arms, and is got
into the required position with great difficulty,
and every possible manifestation of reluctance.
When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure,
Mr. Chadband, retiring behind the table, holds
up his bear's-paw, and says, "My friends!"
This is the signal for a general settlement of the
audience. The 'prentices giggle internally, and
nudge each other. Guster falls into a staring
and vacant state, compounded of a stunned ad
miration of Mr. Chadband and pity for the
friendless outcast, whose condition touches her
CLERGYMAN
nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of
gunpowder. Mrs. Chadband composes herself
grimly by the fire, and warms her knees; find-
ing that sensation favorable to the reception of
eloquence.
110
It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit
habit of fixing some member of his congrega-
tion with his eye, and fatly arguing his points
with that particular person; who is understood
to be expected to be moved to an occasional
grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression
of inward working, which expression of inward
working, being echoed by some elderly lady in
the next pew, and so communicated, like a game
of forfeits, through a circle of the more ferment-
able sinners present, serves the purpose of par-
liamentary cheering, and gets Mr. Chadband's
steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chad-
band, in saying "My friends!
My friends!" has rested his
eye on Mr. Snagsby; and proceeds to make that
ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused,
the immediate recipient of his discourse.
*
*
*
*
*
*
'We have here among us, my friends," says
Chadband, "a Gentile and a Heathen, a dweller
in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's, and a mover-on
upon the surface of the earth. We have here
among us, my friends," and Mr. Chadband, un-
twisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail, be-
stows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying
that he will throw him an argumentative back-
fall presently, if he be not already down, "a
brother and a boy."
*
*
*
*
*
*
"I say this brother, present here among us, is
devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid
of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver,
and of precious stones, because he is devoid of
the light that shines in upon some of us. What
is that light? What is it? I ask you what is |
that light."
Mr. Chadband draws back his head and
pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not to be lured on to
his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning
forward over the table, pierces what he has got
to follow, directly into Mr. Snagsby, with the
thumb-nail already mentioned.
"It is," says Chadband, "the ray of rays, the
sun of suns, the moon of moons, the star of
stars. It is the light of Terewth."
|
CLERGYMAN
position, when Mr. Chadband accidentally
finishes him.-Bleak House, Chap. 25.
CLERGYMAN-The fashionable.
Our curate is a young gentleman of such pre-
possessing 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 sc
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 exhibited. 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 sepul-
chral voice of unusual solemnity. Innumerable
were the calls made by prudent mammas on our
new curate, and innumerable the invitations
with which he was assailed, 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 pulpit 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 love 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
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 ser-
mons, 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 washer-
woman'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 defraying the expense of the watch-
box on wheels which the new curate had ordered
for himself, to perform the funeral service in, 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 was 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 pre-
senting the curate with a piece of plate, as a
Mr. Chadband draws himself up again, and
looks triumphantly at Mr. Snagsby, as if he
would be glad to know how he feels after that.
Of Terewth," says Mr. Chadband, hitting
him again.
Say not to me that it is not the
lamp of lamps. I say to you, it is, I say to you,
a million times over, it is. It is! I say to you
that I will proclaim it to you, whether you like
it or not; nay, that the less you like it, the more
I will proclaim it to you. With a speaking-mark of esteem for his valuable services rendered
trumpet! I say to you that if you rear your-
self against it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised,
you shall be battered, you shall be flawed, you
shall be smashed."
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
The present effect of this flight of oratory- inkstand was made, and engraved with an ap-
much admired for its general power by Mr. Chad-propriate inscription; the curate was invited to
band's followers-being not only to make Mr.
Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent
the innocent Mr. Snagsby in the light of a deter-
mined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of brass
and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate trades-
man becomes yet more disconcerted; and is in
a very advanced state of low spirits and false
à public breakfast, at the before-mentioned Goat
and Boots; the inkstand was presented in a
neat speech by Mr. Gubbins, the ex-church-
warden, and acknowledged by the curate in
terms which drew tears into the eyes of all pre-
sent-the very waiters were melted.
One would have supposed that, by this time
CLOCK
111
COACH
the theme of universal admiration was lifted to they are strapping the luggage on the roof, and
the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. heaping it into a kind of tray behind, have a
The curate began to cough; four fits of cough- good opportunity of looking at the driver.
ing one morning between the Litany and the He is a negro-very black indeed. He is
Epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here dressed in a coarse pepper-and-salt suit, exces-
was a discovery-the curate was consumptive. sively patched and darned (particularly at the
How interestingly melancholy! If the young knees), gray stockings, enormous unblacked
ladies were energetic before, the sympathy and high-low shoes, and very short trousers. He
solicitude now knew no bounds. Such a man has two odd gloves-one of party-colored
as the curate-such a dear—such a perfect love worsted, and one of leather. He has a very
-to be consumptive! It was too much. Anony- short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged
mous presents of black-currant jam, and lozen-up with string. And yet he wears a low-
ges, elastic waistcoats, bosom friends, and warm
stockings, poured in upon the curate until he
was as completely fitted out with winter cloth-
ing, 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 half-a-dozen times a day; and the curate
was in the very zenith of his popularity.
(Scenes) Sketches, Chap. 2.
CLOCK-Its expression.
There was the large, hard-featured clock on
the sideboard, which he used to see bending its
figured brows upon him with a savage joy when
he was behind-hand with his lessons, and which,
when it was wound up once a week with an iron
handle, used to sound as if it were growling in
ferocious anticipation of the miseries into which
it would bring him.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3.
CLOCK-What it said.
The Doctor was sitting in his portentous
study, with a globe at each knee, books all
round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva |
on the mantel-shelf. "And how do you do,
Sir?" he said to Mr. Dombey; "and how is
my little friend?" Grave as an organ was the
Doctor's speech; and when he ceased the great
clock in the hall seemed (to Paul at least) to
take him up, and to go on saying, "how, is, my,
lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?" over
and over and over again.
CLOCKS.
Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
We have a faint remembrance of an unearthly
collection of clocks, purporting to be the work
of Parisian and Genevese artists-chiefly bilious-
faced clocks, supported on sickly white crutches,
with their pendulums dangling like lame legs-
to which a similar course of events occurred for
several years, until they seemed to lapse away
of mere imbecility.
Reprinted Pieces, English Watering Place.
COACH-Riding in a.
Every shake of the coach in which I sat, half
dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some new
recollection out of its place, and to jerk some
other new recollection into it; and in this state
I fell asleep.-Pictures from Italy.
COACH-Experiences in a Virginia.
The coach holds nine inside, having a seat
across from door to door, where we in England
put our legs: so that there is only one feat more
difficult in the performance than getting in,
and that is getting out again. There is only
one outside passenger, and he sits upon the
box. As I am that one, I climb up, and, while
crowned, broad-brimmed black hat, faintly
shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of
an English coachman! But somebody in au-
thority cries, "Go ahead!" as I am making
these observations. The mail takes the lead in
a four-horse wagon, and all the coaches follow
in procession, headed by No. 1.
"
By the way, whenever an Englishman would
cry, All right!" an American cries, "Go
ahead!" which is somewhat expressive of the
national character of the two countries.
The first half-mile of the road is over bridges
made of loose planks laid across two parallel
poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over them,
and IN the river. The river has a clayey bot-
tom and is full of holes, so that half a horse is
constantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can't
be found again for some time.
We come
But we get past even this, and come to the
road itself, which is a series of alternate swamps
and graver-pits. A tremendous place is close
before us; the black driver rolls his eyes, screws
his mouth up very round, and looks straight
between the two leaders, as if he were saying to
himself, "We have done this often before, but
now I think we shall have a crash." He takes
a rein in each hand, jerks and pulls at both, and
dances on the splashboard with both feet (keep-
ing his seat, of course) like the late lamented
Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers.
to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the
coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of
forty-five degrees, and stick there. The insides
scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses
flounder; all the other six coaches stop; and
their four-and-twenty horses flounder likewise,—
but merely for company, and in sympathy with
ours. Then the following circumstances occur:
BLACK DRIVER (to the horses). "Hi!
Nothing happens. Insides scream again.
BLACK DRIVER (to the horses). "Ho!"
Horses plunge, and splash the black driver.
GENTLEMAN INSIDE (looking out). "Why,
what on airth—”
"
Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and
draws his head in again, without finishing his
question, or waiting for an answer.
BLACK DRIVER (still to the horses). "Jiddy!
Jiddy!"
Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of
the hole, and draw it up a bank, so steep that
the black driver's legs fly up into the air, and
he goes back among the luggage on the roof
But he immediately recovers himself, and cries
(still to the horses),—
"Pill!"
No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins
to roll back upon No. 2, which rolls back upon
No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and so on,
until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, nearly
a quarter of a mile behind.
•
COACH
BLACK DRIVER (louder than before). “Pill!”
Horses make another struggle to get up the
bank, and again the coach rolls backward.
BLACK DRIVER (louder than before).
e-ill!"
Horses make a desperate struggle.
BLACK DRIVER (recovering spirits).
Jiddy, Jiddy, Pill!"
"Pe-e-
"Ally
Horses make another effort.
BLACK DRIVER (with great vigor).
Loo! Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo!"
Horses almost do it.
BLACK DRIVER (with his eyes starting out of
his head). "Lee, den, Lee, dere. Hi. Jiddy,
Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. Lee-e-e-e-e!"
112
COACHES
of
There is a hackney-coach stand under the
very window at which we are writing; there is
only one coach on it now, but it is a fair speci-
men of the class of vehicles to which we have
alluded--a great, lumbering, square concern,
a dingy yellow color (like a bilious brunette),
"Hi, with very small glasses, but very large frames;
the panels are ornamented with a 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 multiplicity of
capes, and some extraordinary-looking clothes;
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, now 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 him-
self is in the watering-house; and the water-
man, with his hands forced into his pockets as
far as they can possibly go, is dancing the “dou-
ble shuffle" in front of the pump, to keep his
feet warm.-Scenes, Chap. 7.
They run up the bank and go down again on
the other side at a fearful pace. It is impossi-
ble to stop them, and at the bottom there is a
deep hollow, full of water. The coach rolls
frightfully. The insides scream. The mud and
water fly about us. The black driver dances
like a madman. Suddenly we are all right by
some extraordinary means, and stop to breathe.
A black friend of the black driver is sitting
on a fence. The black driver recognizes him by
twirling his head round and round like a harle-
quin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders,
and grinning from ear to ear. He stops short,
turns to me, and says:
"We shall get you through, sa, like a fiddle, |
and hope a please you when we get you through,
sa. Old 'ooman at home, sir,"-chuckling very
much, "outside gentleman, sa, he often re-
member old 'ooman at home, sa," grinning
again.
COACHES-The ghosts of mail.
"I wonder what these ghosts of mail-coaches
carry in their bags," said the landlord, who had
listened to the whole story with profound atten-
tion.
ma
"The dead letters, of course," said the Bag-
Ay, ay, we'll take care of the old woman. |
Don't be afraid."
The black driver grins again, but there is an-
other hole, and beyond that another bank, close
before us.
So he stops short; cries (to the
horses again), "Easy. Easy den. Ease. Steady.
Hi. Jiddy. Pill. Ally. Loo," but never "Lee!"
until we are reduced to the very last extremity, COACHES-decayed-the associations of.
and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication
from which appears to be all but impossible.
And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts
in two hours and a half; breaking no bones,
though bruising a great many; and, in short,
getting through the distance "like a fiddle."
"Oh, ah! To be sure," rejoined the landlord,
"I never thought of that."
Pickwick, Chap. 49.
This singular kind of coaching terminates at
Fredericksburg, whence there is a railway to
Richmond.-American Notes, Chap. 9.
COACH-The early morning.
The frosty night wears away, and the dawn
breaks, and the post-chaise comes rolling on
through the early mist, like the ghost of a chaise
departed. It has plenty of spectral company, in
ghosts of trees and hedges, slowly vanishing and
giving place to the realities of day.
Bleak House, Chap. 55.
COACH-An old style.
We are as great friends to horses, hackney-
coach and otherwise, as the renowned Mr. Mar-
tin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we 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 de-
positing oneself upon it, to those who like them,
by hackney-coach stands we take our stand.
|
"There might be a dozen of them, or there
might be more-my uncle was never quite cer-
tain on this point, and being a man of very
scrupulous veracity about numbers, didn't like
to say-but there they stood, all huddled toge-
ther in the most desolate condition imaginable.
The doors had been torn from their hinges and
removed; the linings had been stripped off,
only a shred hanging here and there by a rusty
nail; the lamps were gone; the poles had long
since vanished; the iron-work was rusty; the
paint was worn away; the wind whistled through
the chinks in the bare wood-work; and the rain,
which had collected on the roofs, fell, drop by
drop, into the insides, with a hollow and melan-
choly sound. They were the decaying skeletons
of departed mails, and in that lonely place, at
that time of night, they looked chill and dismal.
"My uncle rested his head upon his hands,
and thought of the busy bustling people who
had rattled about, years before, in the old coaches,
and were now as silent and changed; he thought
of the numbers of people to whom one of those
crazy, mouldering vehicles had borne, night after
night, for many years, and through all weathers,
the anxiously-expected intelligence, the eagerly
looked-for remittance, the promised assurance
of health and safety, the sudden announcement
of sickness and death. The merchant, the
lover, the wife, the widow, the mother, the

THE MAIL.
312
↑
COACHES
113
schoolboy, the very child who tottered to the
door at the postman's knock-how had they all |
looked forward to the arrival of the old coach!
And where were they all now?”
Pickwick, Chap. 49.
COACHES-Mr. Weller's opinion of.
Coaches, Sammy, is like guns-they requires
to be loaded with wery great care, afore they go
off."-Pickwick, Chap. 23.
COACHES—Their autobiography.
COACHMAN
would have started him forth on his last travels;
leaving him mercilessly to all the tortures which
the waiters, landlords, coachmen, guards, boots,
chambermaids, and other familiars on his line
of road might think proper to inflict.
Scenes, Chap. 15.
COACHMAN-A representative of pomp.
There were some stately footmen; and there
was a perfect picture of an old coachman, who
looked as if he were the official representative
of all the pomps and vanities that had ever been
put into his coach.-Bleak House, Chap. 18.
COACHMAN-Tom Pinch's journey with
the.
things with his hat which nothing but an un-
limited knowledge of horses, and the wildest
freedom of the road, could ever have made him
perfect in. Valuable little parcels were brought
to him with particular instructions, and he
pitched them into his hat, and stuck it on again;
as if the laws of gravity did not admit of such
an event as its being knocked off or blown off,
and nothing like an accident could befall it.
The guard, too! Seventy breezy miles a day
were written in his very whiskers. His man
ners were a canter; his conversation a round
trot. He was a fast coach upon a down-hil,
turnpike road; he was all pace.
couldn't have moved slowly, with that guard and
his key-bugle on the top of it.
A wagon
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- And really it might have confused a less mod-
down hackneyed dramatist, and it might tell as est man than Tom to find himself sitting next
much of its travels with the pole, as others have that coachman; for of all the swells that ever
of their expeditions to it. How many stories flourished a whip, professionally, he might have
might be related of the different people it had been elected emperor. He didn't handle his
conveyed on matters of business or profit- gloves like another man, but put them on—even
pleasure or pain! And how many melancholy when he was standing on the pavement, quite
tales of the same people at different periods! detached from the coach-as if the four grays
The country-girl-the showy, over-dressed wo- were, somehow or other, at the end of the fin-
man-the drunken prostitute! The raw ap-gers. It was the same with his hat. He did
prentice the dissipated spendthrift-the thief!|
Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases
of expedition, when it's a matter of neck or
nothing, life or death, your temporary home or
your long one. But, beside a cab's lacking that
gravity of deportment which so peculiarly dis-
tinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be for-
gotten 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 public 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, escorted 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 juve-
nile for his office, progressing lower and lower in
the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at
last it comes to-a stand!-Scenes, Chap. 7.
COACH-TRAVELLING-The miseries of.
We have often wondered how many months'
incessant travelling in a post-chaise it would
take to kill a man; and, wondering by anal-
ogy, we should very much like to know how
many months of constant travelling in a suc-
cession 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 punishment of Ixion (the
only practical person, by-the-bye, who has dis-
covered the secret of the 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 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 re-
mainder of the places for stout men with a
slight tendency to coughing and spitting, we
|
These were all foreshadowings of London,
Tom thought, as he sat upon the box, and looked
about him. Such a coachman and such a guard
never could have existed between Salisbury and
any other place. The coach was none of your
steady-going, yokel coaches, but a swaggering,
rakish, dissipated London coach; up all night,
and lying by all day, and leading a devil of a
life. It cared no more for Salisbury than if it
had been a hamlet. It rattled noisily through
the best streets, defied the Cathedral, took the
worst corners sharpest, went cutting in every-
where, making everything get out of its way;
and spun along the open country-road, blowing
a lively defiance out of its key-bugle, as its last
glad parting legacy.
It was a charming evening, mild and bright.
And even with the weight upon his mind which
arose out of the immensity and uncertainty of
London, Tom could not resist the captivating
sense of rapid motion through the pleasant air.
The four grays skimmed along, as if they liked
it quite as well as Tom did; the bugle was in as
high spirits as the grays; the coachman chimed
in sometimes with his voice; the wheels hum.
med cheerfully in unison; the brass work on the
harness was an orchestra of little bells; and thus,
as they went clinking, jingling, rattling smoothly
on, the whole concern, from the buckles of the
leaders' coupling-reins to the handle of the hind
boot, was one great instrument of music.
COLD
Yoho! past hedges, gates, and trees; past cot-
tages, and barns, and people going home fron
work. Yoho! past donkey-chaises, drawn aside
into the ditch, and empty carts with rampant
horses, whipped up at a bound upon the little
water-course, and held by struggling carters
close to the five-barred gate, until the coach had
passed the narrow turning in the road. Yoho!
by churches dropped down by themselves in
quiet nooks, with rustic burial-grounds about
them, where the graves are green, and daisies
sleep-for it is evening-on the bosoms of the
dead. Yoho! past streams, in which the cattle
cool their feet and where the rushes grow; past
paddock-fences, farms, and rick-yards; past last
year's stacks, cut, slice by slice, away, and show-
ing, in the waning light, like ruined gables, old
and brown. Yoho! down the pebbly dip, and
through the merry water-splash, and up at a
canter to the level road again. Yoho! Yoho!
*
*
*
*
*
114
COMMON SENSE
seventeen; let me see, four and five are ninc
and-yes, eighteen hundred and seventeen, that
I thought I never should get rid of; actually
and seriously, that I thought I should never get
rid of; I was only cured at last by a remedy
that I don't know whether you ever happened
to hear of, Mr. Pluck. You have a gallon of
water as hot as you can possibly bear it, with a
pound of salt and six pen'orth of the finest bran,
and sit with your head in it for twenty minutes.
every night just before going to bed; at least, I
don't mean your head-your feet. It's a most
extraordinary cure-a most extraordinary cure.
I used it for the first time, I recollect, the day
after Christmas Day, and by the middle of April
following the cold was gone. It seems quite a
miracle, when you come to think of it, for I had
it ever since the beginning of September.'
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 26.
COLLECTOR-Mr. Pancks, the.
>>
See the bright moon! High up before we Throughout the remainder of the day, Bleed
know it; making the earth reflect the objects on | ing Heart Yard was in consternation, as the grim
its breast like water. Hedges, trees, low cotta- Pancks cruised in it; haranguing the inhabitants
ges, church steeples, blighted stumps, and flour-on their backslidings in respect of payment, de-
ishing young slips, have all grown vain upon the
sudden, and mean to contemplate their own fair
images until morning. The poplars yonder rus-
tle, that their quivering leaves may see them-
selves upon the ground. Not so the oak; trem-
bling does not become him; and he watches
himself in his stout old burly steadfastness,
without the motion of a twig. The moss-grown
gate, ill-poised upon its creaking hinges, crip-
pled and decayed, swings to and fro before its
glass, like some fantastic dowager; while our
own ghostly likeness travels on, Yoho! Yoho!
through ditch and brake, upon the ploughed
land and the smooth, along the steep hill-side
and steeper wall, as if it were a phantom |
Hunter.
Clouds too! And a mist upon the Hollow!
Not a dull fog that hides it, but a light, airy,
gauze-like mist, which in our eyes of modest
admiration gives a new charm to the beauties
it is spread before: as real gauze has done ere
now, and would again, so please you, though
we were the Pope. Yoho! Why now we travel
like the Moon herself. Hiding this minute in
a grove of trees; next minute in a patch of
vapor; emerging now upon our broad, clear
course; withdrawing now, but always dashing
on, our journey is a counterpart of hers. Yoho!
A match against the moon.
The beauty of the night is hardly felt, when
Day comes leaping up. Yoho! Two stages,
and the country roads are almost changed to a
continuous street. Yoho! past market-gardens,
rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and
squares; past wagons, coaches, carts; past early
workmen, late stragglers, drunken men, and
sober carriers of loads; past brick and mortar
in its every shape; and in among the rattling
pavements, where a jaunty seat upon a coach is
not so easy to preserve! Yoho! down countless
turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until
an old Inn-yard is gained, and Tom Pinch, get-
ting down, quite stunned and giddy, is in
London!-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 36.
COLD-Mrs. Nickleby's cure for a.
"I had a cold once," said Mrs. Nickleby, "I
think it was in the year eighteen hundred and
manding his bond, breathing notices to quit and
executions, running down defaulters, sending a
swell of terror on before him, and leaving it in
his wake. Knots of people, impelled by a fatal
attraction, lurked outside any house in which
he was known to be, listening for fragments of
his discourses to the inmates; and, when he was
rumored to be coming down the stairs, often
could not disperse so quickly but that he would
be prematurely in among them, demanding their
own arrears, and rooting them to the spot.
Throughout the remainder of the day, Mr.
Pancks's What were they up to? and What did
they mean by it? sounded all over the Yard.
Mr. Pancks wouldn't hear of excuses, wouldn't
hear of complaints, wouldn't hear of repairs,
wouldn't hear of anything but unconditional
money down. Perspiring and puffing and dart-
ing about in eccentric directions, and becoming
hotter and dingier every moment, he lashed the
tide of the Yard into a most agitated and turbid
state. It had not settled down into calm water
again, full two hours after he had been seen
fuming away on the horizon at the top of the
steps.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 23.
COMMON SENSE- Skimpole's idea of.
It was very unfortunate for Richard," I said.
"Do you think so?" returned Mr. Skimpole.
"Don't say that, don't say that. Let us suppose
him keeping company with Common Sense-an
excellent man-a good deal wrinkled-dread-
fully practical-change for a ten-pound note in
every pocket-ruled account-book in his hand-
say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer.
Our dear Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleap-
ing obstacles, bursting with poetry like a young
bud, says to this highly respectable companion,
'I see a golden prospect before me; it's very
bright, it's very beautiful, it's very joyous; here
I go, bounding over the landscape to come
at it!' The respectable companion instantly
knocks him down with the ruled account-book;
tells him, in a literal, prosaic way, that he sees
no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees,
fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns.
you know that's a painful change;-sensible in
the last degree, I have no doubt, but disagreea
Now
COMPROMISE
ble. I can't do it. I haven't got the ruled
account-book, I have none of the tax-gathering
elements in my composition, I am not at all
respectable, and I don't want to be. Odd, per-
haps, but so it is!"-Bleak House, Chap. 37.
COMPROMISE-With cleanliness-An in-
comprehensible.
Durdles then gives the Dean a good evening,
and adding, as he puts his hat on, "You'll find
me at home, Mister Jarsper, as agreed, when you
want me; I'm a going home to clean myself,"
soon slouches out of sight. This going home to
clean himself is one of the man's incomprehen-
sible compromises with inexorable facts; he,
and his hat, and his boots, and his clothes,
never showing any trace of cleaning, but being
uniformly in one condition of dust and grit.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 12.
COMPLIMENTS-Of a lawyer.
It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit
of paying compliments kept a man's tongue
oiled without any expense; and, as that useful
member ought never to grow rusty or creak in
turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner
of the law, in whom it should be always glib
and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving
himself by the utterance of handsome speeches
and eulogistic expressions. And this had passed
into such a habit with him, that, if he could not
be correctly said to have his tongue at his fin-
gers' ends, he might certainly be said to have it
anywhere but in his face: which being, as we
have already seen, of a harsh and repulsive
character, was not oiled so easily, but frowned
above all the smooth speeches-one of nature's
beacons, warning off those who navigated the
shoals and breakers of the World, or of that
dangerous strait the Law, and admonishing
them to seek less treacherous harbors and try
their fortune elsewhere.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 35.
CONCEIT-Mr. Podsnap a type of.
Mr. Podsnap was well to do, and stood very
high in Mr. Podsnap's opinion. Beginning with
a good inheritance, he had married a good in-
heritance, and had thriven exceedingly in the
Marine Insurance way, and was quite satisfied.
He never could make out why everybody was
not quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he
set a brilliant social example in being particu-
larly well satisfied with most things, and, above
all other things, with himself.
115
CONCEIT
upon commerce with other countries, he con
sidered other countries, with that important re-
servation, a mistake, and of their manners and
customs would conclusively observe, "Not Eng-
lish!" when, PRESTO! with a flourish of the
arm, and a flush of the face, they were swept
away. Elsewise, the world got up at eight,
shaved close at a quarter-past, breakfasted at
nine, went to the City at ten, came home at
half-past five, and dined at seven. Mr. Pod-
snap's notions of the Arts in their integrity
might have been stated thus. Literature; large
print, respectfully descriptive of getting up at
eight, shaving close at a quarter-past, breakfast-
ing at nine, going to the City at ten, coming
home at half-past five, and dining at seven.
Painting and sculpture; models and portraits
representing professors of getting up at eight,
shaving close at a quarter-past, breakfasting at
nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at
half-past five, and dining at seven. Music; a
respectable performance (without variations) on
stringed and wind instruments, sedately expres-
sive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a
quarter-past, breakfasting at nine, going to the
City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and
dining at seven. Nothing else to be permitted to
those same vagrants the Arts, on pain of excom-
munication. Nothing else To Be-anywhere!
As a so eminently respectable man, Mr. Pod"
snap was sensible of its being required of him to
take Providence under his protection. Conse-
quently he always knew exactly what Providence
meant. Inferior and less respectable men might
fall short of that mark, but Mr. Podsnap was
always up to it. And it was very remarkable
(and must have been very comfortable) that
what Providence meant was invariably what Mr.
Podsnap meant.
These may be said to have been the articles
of faith of a school which the present chapter
takes the liberty of calling after its representa-
tive man, Podsnappery. They were confined
within close bounds, as Mr. Podsnap's own head
was confined by his shirt-collar; and they were
enunciated with a sounding pomp that smacked
of the creaking of Mr. Podsnap's own boots.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. II.
CONCEIT-The grandeur of Podsnappery.
That they, when unable to lay hold of him,
should respectfully grasp at the hem of his man-
tle; that they, when they could not bask in the
glory of him, the sun, should take up with the
pale reflected light of the watery young moon,
Thus happily acquainted with his own merit his daughter, appeared quite natural, becom-
and importance, Mr. Podsnap settled that what-ing, and proper. It gave him a better opinion
ever he put behind him he put out of existence. of the discretion of the Lammles than he had
There was a dignified conclusiveness-not to heretofore held, as showing that they appreciated
add a grand convenience-in this way of get- the value of the connection. So, Georgiana re-
ting rid of disagreeables, which had done much pairing to her friend, Mr. Podsnap went out to
towards establishing Mr. Podsnap in his lofty dinner, and to dinner, and yet to dinner, arm in
place in Mr. Podsnap's satisfaction. "I don't arm with Mrs. Podsnap; settling his obstinate
want to know about it; I don't choose to dis-head in his cravat and shirt-collar, much as if he
cuss it; I don't admit it!" Mr. Podsnap had
even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm
in often clearing the world of its most difficult
problems, by sweeping them behind him (and
consequently sheer away) with those words and
a flushed face. For they affronted him.
Mr. Podsnap's world was not a very large
world, morally; no, nor even geographically;
seeing that although his business was sustained
were performing on the Pandean pipes, in his
own honor, the triumphal march, See the con-
quering Podsnap comes, Sound the trumpets,
beat the drums!
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 4.
CONCEIT-SPIRITUAL-The Experience
of Charles Dickens.
I had experiences of spiritual conceit, for
CONCEIT
116
which, as giving me a new warning against that
curse of mankind, I shall always feel grateful to
the supposition that I was too far gone to pro-
test against playing sick lion to any stray don-
key with an itching hoof. All sorts of people
seemed to become vicariously religious at my
expense. I received the most uncompromising
warning that I was a Heathen; on the conclu-
sive authority of a field preacher, who, like the
most of his ignorant and vain and daring class,
could not construct a tolerable sentence in his
native tongue or pen a fair letter. This in-
spired individual called me to order roundly,
and knew in the freest and easiest way where I
was going to, and what would become of me if
I failed to fashion myself on his bright exam-
ple, and was on terms of blasphemous confi-
dence with the Heavenly Host. He was in
the secrets of my heart, and in the lowest
soundings of my soul-he-and could read
the depths of my nature better than his A B C,
and could turn me inside out, like his own
clammy glove. But what is far more extraordi-
nary than this-for such dirty water as this
could alone be drawn from such a shallow and
muddy source-I found, from the information
of a beneficed clergyman, of whom I never
heard, and whom I never saw, that I had not,
as I rather supposed I had, lived a life of some
reading, contemplation, and inquiry; that I
had not studied, as I rather supposed I had, to
inculcate some Christian lessons in books; that
I had never tried, as I rather supposed I had,
to turn a child or two tenderly towards the
knowledge and love of our Saviour; that I had
never had, as I rather supposed I had had, de- |
parted friends, or stood beside open graves;
but that I had lived a life of "uninterrupted
prosperity," and that I needed this "check,
overmuch," and that the way to turn it to ac-
count was to read these sermons and these
poems, enclosed, and written and issued by my
correspondent! I beg it may be understood
that I relate facts of my own uncommercial ex-
perience, and no vain imaginings. The docu-
ments in proof lie near my hand.
A Fly-leaf in a life-New Uncom..Samples.
CONCEIT-Self (Theodosius Butler).
Mr. Theodosius Butler was one of those im-
mortal geniuses who are to be met with in almost
every circle. They have, usually, very deep,
monotonous voices. They always persuade
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 individual in question, Mr. Theo-
dosius, had written a pamphlet containing
some very weighty considerations on the expe-
diency of doing something or other; and as
every sentence contained a good many words
of four syllables, his admirers took it for grant-
ed that he meant a good deal.
Tales, Chap. 3.
CONFUSION-Sometimes agreeable.
Confusion is not always necessarily awk-
ward, but may sometimes present a very plea-
sant appearance.--Edwin Drood, Chap. 22.
CONSUMPTION
CONGRESS of the United States.
Did I recognize in this assembly a body of
men, who, applying themselves in a new world
to correct some of the falsehoods and vices of
the old, purified the avenues to Public Life,
paved the dirty ways to Place and Power, de-
bated and made laws for the Common Good,
and had no party but their Country?
I saw in them the wheels that move the
meanest perversion of virtuous Political Ma-
chinery that the worst tools ever wrought.
Despicable trickery at elections; underhanded
tamperings with public officers; cowardly at-
tacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspa-
pers for shields, and hired pens for daggers;
shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose
claim to be considered is, that every day and
week they sow new crops of ruin with their
venal types, which are the dragon's teeth of
yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and
abettings of every bad inclination in the popu
lar mind, and artful suppressions of all its good
influences: such things as these, and, in a word,
Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and
most unblushing form, stared out from every
corner of the crowded hall.
Did I see among them the intelligence and
refinement, the true, honest, patriotic heart of
America? Here and there were drops of its
blood and life, but they scarcely colored the
stream of desperate adventurers which sets that
way for profit and for pay. It is the game of
these men, and of their profligate organs, to
make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal,
and so destructive of all self-respect in worthy
men, that sensitive and delicate-minded persons
shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as they,
be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked.
And thus this lowest of all scrambling fights
goes on, and they who in other countries would,
from their intelligence and station, most aspire
to make the laws, do here recoil the furthest
from that degradation.
That there are, among the representatives of
the people in both Houses, and among all par-
ties, some men of high character and great abil-
ities, I need not say. The foremost among
these politicians who are known in Europe have
been already described, and I see no reason to
depart from the rule I have laid down for my
guidance, of abstaining from all mention of in-
dividuals. It will be sufficient to add, that to
the most favorable accounts that have been
written of them I more than fully and most
heartily subscribe; and that personal inter-
course and free communication have bred with-
in me, not the result predicted in the very
doubtful proverb, but increased admiration and
respect. They are striking men to look at
hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy
Crichtons in varied accomplishments, Indians
in fire of eye and gesture, Americans in strong
and generous impulse; and they as well repre-
sent the honor and wisdom of their country at
home as the distinguished gentleman who is
now its minister at the British Court sustains
its highest character abroad.
CONSUMPTION.
American Notes, Chap. 8.
There is a dread disease which so prepares
its victim, as it were, for death; which so refines
it of its grosser aspect, and throws around fami-
CONSCIENCE
liar looks unearthly indications of the coming
change; a dread disease, in which the struggle
between soul and body is so gradual, quiet, and
solemn, and the result so sure, that day by day,
and grain by grain, the mortal part wastes and
withers away, so that the spirit grows light and
sanguine with its lightening load, and, feeling
immortality at hand, deems it but a new term
of mortal life; a disease in which death and life
are so strangely blended, that death takes the
glow and hue of life, and life the gaunt and
grisly form of death; a disease which medicine
never cured, wealth never warded off, or poverty
could boast exemption from; which sometimes
moves in giant strides, and sometimes at a tardy,
sluggish pace, but, slow or quick, is ever sure
and certain.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 49.
CONSCIENCE-Mr. Pecksniff's bank.
I
"For myself, my conscience is my bank.
have a trifle invested there, a mere trifle, Mr.
Jonas; but I prize it as a store of value, I assure
you.
117
CONVICT
ignorant, the sweet face of nature was a never-
failing source of cheerfulness and joy. He saw
those who had been delicately nurtured and
tenderly brought up, cheerful under privations,
and superior to suffering, that would have crushed
many of a rougher grain, because they bore
within their own bosoms the materials of hap-
piness, contentment, and peace. He saw that
women, the tenderest and most fragile of all
God's creatures, were the oftenest superior to
sorrow, adversity, and distress; and he saw that
it was because they bore, in their own hearts, an
inexhaustible well-spring of affection and de-
votion. Above all, he saw that men like him-
self, who snarled at the mirth and cheerfulness
of others, were the foulest weeds on the fair
surface of the earth; and, setting all the good
of the world against the evil, he came to the
conclusion that it was a very decent and res-
pectable sort of world after all.
Gabriel Grub, in Pickwick, Chap. 29.
CONTENTMENT.
"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56.
The good man's enemies would have divided "Ha!" said Brass, no matter. If there's
upon this question into two parties. One would little business to-day, there'll be more to-mor-
have asserted without scruple that if Mr. Peck-row. A contented
A contented spirit, Mr. Richard, is the
sniff's conscience were his bank, and he kept a sweetness of existence."
running account there, he must have overdrawn
it beyond all mortal means of computation.
The other would have contended that it was a
mere fictitious form; a perfectly blank book;
or one in which entries were only made with a
peculiar kind of invisible ink to become legible
at some indefinite time; and that he never
troubled it at all.—Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 20.
CONSCIENCE-A troubled.
He stirred the fire, and sat down on one side
of it. It struck eleven, and he made believe to
compose himself patiently. But gradually he
took the fidgets in one leg, and then in the other
leg, and then in one arm, and then in the
other arm, and then in his chin, and then in his
back, and then in his forehead, and then in his
hair, and then in his nose; and then he stretched
himself recumbent on two chairs, and groaned;
and then he started up.
"Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm
in this place. I am tickled and twitched all over.
Mentally, I have now committed a burglary
under the meanest circumstances, and the myr-
midons of justice are at my heels."
Our Mutual Friend, Book I, Chap. 13.
CONSCIENCE-A convenient garment.
In the majority of cases, conscience is an
elastic and very flexible article, which will bear
a deal of stretching, and adapt itself to a great
variety of circumstances. Some people, by pru-
dent management, and leaving it off piece by
piece, like a flannel waistcoat in warm weather,
even contrive, in time, to dispense with it alto-
gether; but there be others who can assume the
garment and throw it off at pleasure; and this,
being the greatest and most convenient improve-
ment, is the one most in vogue.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 6.
CONTENTMENT-The vision of Gabriel
Grub.
He saw that men who worked hard, and
earned their scanty bread with lives of labor,
were cheerful and happy; and that to the most
CONTENT-The tranquillity of.
Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly in
their entranced and happy ears! Blessed Sun-
day peace and quiet, harmonizing with the calm-
ness in their souls, and making holy air around
them! Blessed twilight stealing on, and shad-
ing her so soothingly and gravely, as she falls
asleep, like a hushed child, upon the bosom she
has clung to I-Dombey & Son, Chap. 51.
Complacent and affable as man could be, Mr.
Carker picked his way along the streets and
hummed a soft tune as he went. He seemed to
purr, he was so glad.—Dombey & Son, Chap. 22,
CONTENT-The generosity of.
Mr. Dombey's cup of satisfaction was so full
at this moment, however, that he felt he could
afford a drop or two of its contents, even to
sprinkle on the dust in the by-path of his little
daughter.-Dombey & Son.
CONTRASTS-In life.
In my solitude, the ticket-porters being all
gone with the rest, I venture to breathe to the
quiet bricks and stones my confidential wonder-
ment why a ticket-porter, who never does any
work with his hands, is bound to wear a white
apron; and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary,
who never does any work with his hands either,
is equally bound to wear a black one.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 21.
CONTRITION—Of Mr. Toots.
"If I could by any means wash out the remem-
brance of that day at Brighton, when I con-
ducted myself-much more like a Parricide than
a person of independent property," said Mr.
Toots, with severe self-accusation, "I should
sink into the silent tomb with a gleam of joy."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 50.
CONVICT-His early experiences.
"Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a-
CONVENTIONAL PHRASES
118
COUGH
COOKING-The melodious sounds of.
going fur to tell you my life, like a song, or a
story-book. But to give it you short and handy, Mrs. Wilfer then solemnly divested herself
I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. of her handkerchief and gloves, as a prelimi.
In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in nary sacrifice to preparing the frying-pan, and
jail and out of jail. There, you've got it. R. W. himself went out to purchase the viand,
That's my life pretty much, down to such times He soon returned, bearing the same in a frest
as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend. cabbage-leaf, where it coyly embraced a rasher
"I've been done everything to, pretty well—of ham. Melodious sounds were not long in
except hanged. I've been locked up, as much
as a silver tea-kettle. I've been carted here
and carted there, and put out of this town, and
put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks,
and whipped and worried and drove. I've no
more notion where I was born than you have-
if so much. I first become aware of myself,
down in Essex, a-thieving turnips for my liv-
ing. Summun had run away from me-a man
—a tinker—and he'd took the fire with him,
and left me wery cold.
"I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chris-
en'd Abel. How did I know it? Much as I
know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be
chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought
it was all lies together, only as the birds' names
come out true, I supposed mine did.
"So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul
that see young Abel Magwitch, with as little
on him as in him, but wot caught fright at him,
and either drove him off, or took him up. I
was took up, took up, took up, to that extent
that I reg'larly grow'd up took up.
4
rising from the frying-pan on the fire, or in
seeming, as the firelight danced in the mellow
halls of a couple of full bottles on the table, to
play appropriate dance-music.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 4.
| COOKING.
The slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked
loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and
peeled.-Christmas Stories.
CORPORATIONS, PUBLIC-BOARDS, &c.
-Boythorn's opinion of.
"As to Corporations, Parishes, Vestry-Boards,
and similar gatherings of jolter-headed clods,
who assemble to exchange such speeches that,
by Heaven! they ought to be worked in quick-
silver mines for the short remainder of their
miserable existence, if it were only to prevent
their detestable English from contaminating a
language spoken in the presence of the sun-as
to those fellows, who meanly take advantage
of the ardor of gentlemen in the pursuit of
knowledge, to recompense the inestimable ser-
vices of the best years of their lives, their long
study, and their expensive education, with pit-
tances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I
would have the necks of every one of them
wrung, and their skulls arranged in Surgeon's
Hall for the contemplation of the whole profes-
sion-in order that its younger members might
understand from actual measurement, in early
life, how thick skulls may become !"
"This is the way it was, that when I was a
ragged little creetur, as much to be pitied as
ever I see (not that I looked in the glass, for
there warn't many insides of furnished houses
known to me), I got the name of being har-
dened. This is a terrible hardened one,' they
says to prison wisitors, picking out me. May
be said to live in jails, this boy.' Then they
looked at me, and I looked at them, and they
measured my head, some on 'em-they had
better a-measured my stomach- and others on
'em giv me tracts what I couldn't read, and
made me speeches what I couldn't understand.
They always went on agen me about the Devil.
But what the devil was I to do? I must put
something into my stomach, mustn't I?-IIow-
comever, I'm a-getting low, and I know what's
ue. Dear boy and Pip's comrade, don't you | CORNS-Treading on people's.
be afeered of me being low.
"
He wound up his vehement declaration by
looking round upon us with a most agreeable
smile, and suddenly thundering, Ha, ha, ha
over and over again, until anybody else might
have been expected to be quite subdued by the
exertion.-Bleak House, Chap. 13.
He was an antipathetical being, with a pecu-
Tramping, begging, thieving, working some- liar power and gift of treading on everybody's
times when I could-though that warn't as oftenderest place. They talk in America of a
ten as you may think, till you put the question man's "Platform." I should describe the Plat-
whether you would ha' been over ready to give form of the Long-lost as a Platform composed
me work yourselves-a bit of a poacher, a bit of other people's corns, on which he had
of a laborer, a bit of a wagoner, a bit of a hay-stumped his way, with all his might and main,
maker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things to his present position.
that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be
a man. A deserting soldier in a Traveller's
Rest, what lay hid up to the chin under a lot | COUGH-A choking.
of taturs, learned me to read; and a travelling
Giant what signed his name at a penny a time
learned me to write. I warn't locked up as of-
ten now as formerly, but I wore out my good
share of key-metal still."
Great Expectations, Chap. 42.
CONVENTIONAL PHRASES.
Conventional phrases are a sort of fireworks,
easily let off, and liable to take a great variety
of shapes and colors not at all suggested by
their orginal form.
David Copperfield, Chap. 41.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 19.
The company were seized with unspeakable
consternation, owing to his springing to his feet,
turning round several times in an appalling
spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and rushing
out at the door; he then became visible through
the window, violently plunging and expectora
ting, making the most hideous faces, and ap-
parently out of his mind.
Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
COUGH-An expressive.
"Yes, sir." Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas,
and coughs behind his hand, modestly antici
COUGH
pating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is
accustomed to cough with a variety of expres-
sion, and so to save words.
Bleak House, Chap. 10.
COUGH-The monosyllabic.
Mrs. Chick was laboring under a peculiar lit-
tle monosyllabic cough; a sort of primer, or
easy introduction to the art of coughing.
COUNTRY-The.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 29.
119
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN
crossed each other in their quest; plump pigeons
skimming round the roof or strutting on the
eaves and ducks and geese, far more graceful
in their own conceit, waddling awkwardly about
the edges of the pond or sailing glibly on its
surface. The farm-yard passed, then came the
little inn, the humbler beer-shop, and the vil-
lage tradesman's; then the lawyer's and the
parson's, at whose dread names the beer-shop
trembled; the church then peeped out modestly
from a clump of trees; then there were a few
more cottages; then the cage, and pound, and
not unfrequently, on a bank by the way-side, a
deep, old, dusty well. Then came the trim-hedged
fields on either hand, and the open road again.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 15.
Mr. Carker cantered behind the carriage, at
the distance of a hundred yards or so, and
watched it, during all the ride, as if he were
a cat, indeed, and its four occupants, mice.
Whether he looked to one side of the road or
to the other-over distant landscape, with its COUNTRY-Scenery.
smooth undulations, wind-mills, corn, grass, bean- The rich, sweet smell of the hayricks rose to
fields, wild-flowers, farm-yards, hayricks, and the his chamber window; the hundred perfumes of
spire among the wood-or upward in the sunny the little flower-garden beneath scented the air
air, where butterflies were sporting round his around; the deep-green meadows shone in the
head, and birds were pouring out their songs-morning dew that glistened on every leaf as it
or downward, where the shadows of the branches
interlaced, and made a trembling carpet on the
road-or onward, where the overhanging trees
formed aisles and arches, dim with the softened
light that steeped through leaves-one corner
of his eye was ever on the formal head of Mr.
Dombey.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.
COUNTRY-Mrs. Skewton's Arcadia.
"But seclusion and contemplation are my
what's-his-name-"
"If you mean Paradise, Mamma, you had
better say so, to render yourself intelligible,"
said the younger lady.
46
My dearest Edith," returned Mrs. Skewton,
'you know that I am wholly dependent upon
you for those odious names. I assure you, Mr.
Dombey, Nature intended me for an Arcadian.
I am thrown away in society. Cows are my
passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been
to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely sur-
rounded by cows-and china.'
trembled in the gentle air; and the birds sang
as if every sparkling drop were a fountain of
inspiration to them.-Pickwick, Chap. 7.
COUNTRY EXCURSIONS - Of Barnaby
Rudge.
Their pleasures on these excursions were sim
ple enough. A crust of bread and scrap of meat,
with water from the brook or spring, sufficed for
their repast. Barnaby's enjoyments were, to
walk, and run, and leap, till he was tired; then
to lie down on the long grass, or by the growing
corn, or in the shade of some tall tree, looking
upward at the light clouds as they floated over
the blue surface of the sky, and listening to the
lark as she poured out her brilliant song. There
were wild-flowers to pluck-the bright-red pop-
py, the gentle harebell, the cowslip, and the
rose. There were birds to watch; fish; ants;
worms; hares or rabbits, as they darted across
the distant pathway in the wood and so were
gone; millions of living things to have an in-
This curious association of objects, suggest-terest in, and lie in wait for, and clap hands and
ing a remembrance of the celebrated bull who
got by mistake into a crockery shop, was re-
ceived with perfect gravity by Mr. Dombey, who
intimated his opinion that Nature was, no doubt,
a very respectable institution.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
COUNTRY SCENERY-Journey of little
Nell.
They were now in the open country; the
houses were very few and scattered at long in-
tervals, often miles apart. Occasionally they
came upon a cluster of poor cottages, some with
a chair or low board put across the open door,
to keep the scrambling children from the road,
others shut up close, while all the family were
working in the fields. These were often the
commencement of a little village: and after an
interval came a wheelwright's shed or perhaps
a blacksmith's forge; then a thriving farm, with
sleepy cows lying about the yard, and horses
peering over the low wall and scampering away
when harnessed horses passed upon the road, as
though in triumph at their freedom. There
were dull pigs too, turning up the ground in
search of dainty food, and grunting their mo-
notonous grumblings as they prowled about, or
shout in memory of, when they had disappeared.
In default of these, or when they wearied, there
was the merry sunlight to hunt out, as it crept
in aslant through leaves and boughs of trees,
and hid far down-deep, deep, in hollow places
-like a silver pool, where nodding branches
seemed to bathe and sport; sweet scents of sum-
mer air breathing over fields of beans or clover;
the perfume of wet leaves or moss; the life of
waving trees, and shadows always changing.
When these or any of them tired, or in excess
of pleasing tempted him to shut his eyes, there
was slumber in the midst of all these soft de-
lights, with the gentle wind murmuring like
music in his ears, and everything around melt-
ing into one delicious dream.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 45.
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN—An English.
Now this gentleman had various endearing
appellations among his intimate friends. By
some he was called "a country gentleman of the
true school," by some a fine old country gen
tleman," by some a sporting gentleman," by
some "a thorough-bred Englishman," by some
a genuine John Bull;" but they all agreed in
one respect, and that was, that it was a pity
COURT
there were not more like him, and that because
there were not, the country was going to rack
and ruin every day. He was in the commission
of the peace, and could write his name almost
legibly; but his greatest qualifications were,
that he was more severe with poachers, was a
better shot, a harder rider, had better horses,
kept better dogs, could eat more solid food,
drink more strong wine, go to bed every night
more drunk and get up every morning more
sober, than any man in the county. In know-
ledge of horse-flesh he was almost equal to a
farrier, in stable-learning he surpassed his own
head groom, and in gluttony not a pig on his
estate was a match for him. He had no seat
in Parliament himself, but he was extremely
patriotic, and usually drove his voters up to the
poll with his own hands. He was warmly at-
tached to church and state, and never appointed
to the living in his gift any but a three-bottle
man and a first-rate fox-hunter. He mistrusted
the honesty of all poor people who could read
and write, and had a secret jealousy of his own
wife (a young lady whom he had married for
what his friends called "the good old English
reason," that her father's property adjoined his
own) for possessing those accomplishments in a
greater degree than himself.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 47.
COURT-Trial in (Old Bailey).
120
COURT
er 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 deliv-
ers 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 gaoler. 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.-Scenes, Chap. 24.
COURT-Description of a Doctor of Civil
Law.
The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell
spectacles 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 complete 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 coun-
tenance, 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 stupid-
est dogs alive.—Scenes, Chap. 8.
Curiosity has occasionally led us into both
Courts at the Old Bailey. Nothing is so likely
to strike the person who enters 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 in-
terest, but no sympathy. Take the Old Court,
for example. There sit the Judges, with whose
great dignity everybody is acquainted, and of
whom, 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 im-
mense bouquet before him, and habited in all
the splendor of his office. Then, there are the
Sheriffs, who are almost as dignified as the Lord
Mayor himself; and the Barristers, who are
quite dignified enough in their own opinion;
and the spectators, who, having paid for their
admission, look upon the whole scene as if it
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 whis-
pers, and others, again, quietly dozing away an| COURT-Description of Doctors' Commons..
hour-and you can scarcely believe that the re-
sult 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 moments; 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 be-
fore him; observe the ashy paleness of his face
when a particular witness appears, and how he
changes his position and wipes his clammy
forehead and feverish hands when the case for
the prosecution is closed, as if it were a relief
to him to feel that the jury knew the worst.
The defense is concluded; the judge pro-
ceeds to sum up the evidence; and the prison-
Now, Doctors' Commons being familiar by
name to everybody, as the place where they grant
marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and di-
vorces to unfaithful ones; register the wills
of people who have any property to leave, and
punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by un-
pleasant names, we no sooner discovered that
we were really within its precincts, than we felt
a laudable desire to become better acquainted
therewith.
*
*
*
**
*
At a more elevated desk in the centre sat a
very fat and red-faced gentleman, in tortoise-
shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance an-
nounced the judge; and round a long green
baized table below, something like a billiard-table
without the cushions and pockets, were a num-
COURT
121
COURT
ber of very self-important looking personages, he is, by telling you what Doctors' Commons is.
in stiff neckcloths, and black gowns with white It's a little out-of-the-way place, where they ad-
fur collars, whom we at once set down as proc-minister what is called ecclesiastical law, and
tors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old mon-
an individual in an arm-chair, and a wig, whom sters of Acts of Parliament, which three-fourths
we afterwards discovered to be the registrar; of the world know nothing about, and the other
and seated behind a little desk, near the door, fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil
were a respectable looking man in black, of state, in the days of the Edwards. It's a place
about twenty stone weight or thereabouts, and that has an ancient monopoly in suits about
a fat-faced, smirking, civil-looking body, in a people's wills and people's marriages, and dis
black gown, black kid gloves, knee shorts, and putes among ships and boats.'
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.-Scenes, Chap. 8.
COURT-Doctors' Commons.
"}
Nonsense, Steerforth !" I exclaimed. "You
don't mean to say that there is any affinity be-
tween nautical matters and ecclesiastical mat-
ters?"
"I don't, indeed, my dear boy," he returned;
"but I mean to say that they are managed and
decided by the same set of people, down in that
same Doctors' Commons. You shall go there
one day, and find them blundering through
half the nautical terms in Young's Dictionary,
apropos of the 'Nancy' having run down the
'Sarah Jane,' or Mr. Peggotty and the Yar-
mouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind
with an anchor and cable to the 'Nelson' India-
man in distress; and you shall go there another
day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro
and con, respecting a clergyman who has mis-
behaved himself; and you shall find the judge
in the nautical case the advocate in the clergy-
man's case, or contrariwise. They are like ac-
tors; now a man's a judge,.and now he's not a
judge; now he's one thing, now he's another;
now he's something else, change and change
about; but it's always a very pleasant, pro-
fitable little affair of private theatricals, pre-
sented to an uncommonly select audience."
David Copperfield, Chap. 23.
Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved
courtyard formed of grave brick houses, which I
inferred, from the Doctors' names upon the
doors, to be the official abiding-places of the
learned advocates of whom Steerforth had told
me; and into a large, dull room, not unlike a
chapel to my thinking, on the left hand. The
upper part of this room was fenced off from the
rest; and there, on the two sides of a raised
platform of the horse-shoe form, sitting on easy
old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were sundry
gentlemen in red gowns and gray wigs, whom I
found to be the Doctors aforesaid. Blinking
over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in the curve
of the horseshoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if
I had seen him in an aviary, I should certainly
have taken for an owl, but who, I learned, was
the presiding judge. In the space within the
horse-shoe, lower than these, that is to say on
about the level of the floor, were sundry other
gentlemen of Mr. Spenlow's rank, and dressed
like him in black gowns with white fur upon
them, sitting at a long green table. Their cra- COURT-The Insolvent.
vats were in general stiff, I thought, and their In a lofty room, ill-lighted and worse venti-
looks haughty; but in this last respect, I pres-lated, situated in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn
ently conceived I had done them an injustice, for
when two or three of them had to rise and answer
a question of the presiding dignitary, I never saw
anything more sheepish. The public-repre-
sented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby.
genteel man secretly eating crumbs out of his
coat pockets, was warming itself at a stove in
the centre of the Court. The languid stillness
of the place was only broken by the chirping of
this fire and by the voice of one of the Doctors,
who was wandering slowly through a perfect
library of evidence, and stopping to put up,
from time to time, at little road-side inns of ar-
gument on the journey. Altogether, I have
never, on any occasion, made one at such
a cozy, dozy, old-fashioned, time-forgotten,
sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life;
and I felt it would be quite a soothing opiate
to belong to it in any character-except perhaps
as a suitor.-David Copperfield, Chap. 23.
COURTS-And lawyers.
"6
"
What is a proctor, Steerforth?" said I.
Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney," re-
plied Steerforth. "He is, to some faded courts
held in Doctors' Commons-a lazy old nook
near St. Paul's Churchyard-what solicitors are
to the courts of law and equity. He is a func-
tionary whose existence, in the natural course
of things, would have terminated about two
hundred years ago. I can tell you best what
Fields, there sit nearly the whole year round,
one, two, three, or four gentlemen in wigs, as
the case may be, with little writing-desks before
them, constructed after the fashion of those used
by the judges of the land, barring the French
polish. There is a box of barristers on their
right hand; there is an inclosure of insolvent
debtors on their left; and there is an inclined
plane of most especially dirty faces in their front.
These gentlemen are the Commissioners of the
Insolvent Court, and the place in which they
sit is the Insolvent Court itself.
It is, and has been, time out of mind, the re-
markable fate of this Court to be, somehow or
other, held and understood, by the general con-
sent of all the destitute shabby-genteel people in
London, as their common resort, and place of
daily refuge. It is always full. The steams of
beer and spirits perpetually ascend to the ceiling,
and, being condensed by the heat, roll down the
walls like rain; there are more old suits of
clothes in it at one time than will be offered for
sale in all Houndsditch in a twelvemonth; more
unwashed skins and grizzly beards than all the
pumps and shaving-shops between Tyburn and
Whitechapel could render decent between sun-
rise and sunset.
It must not be supposed that any of these
people have the least shadow of business in, or
the remotest connection with, the place they so
indefatigably attend. If they had, it would be
4
COURT
122
COURT
"Do you spell it with a 'V' or a 'W?'" in
quired the judge.
"That depends upon the taste and fancy of
speller, my lord," replied Sam. "I never had
occasion to spell it more than once or twice in
my life, but I spells it with a 'V.'”
no matter of surprise, and the singularity of the
thing would cease. Some of them sleep during
the greater part of the sitting; others carry
small portable dinners wrapped in pocket-hand-the
kerchiefs or sticking out of their worn-out pock-
ets, and munch and listen with equal relish;
but no one among them was ever known to have
the slightest personal interest in any case that
was ever brought forward. Whatever they do,
there they sit from the first moment to the last.
When it is heavy, rainy weather, they all come
in wet through; and at such times the vapors
of the Court are like those of a fungus-pit.
A casual visitor might suppose this place to
be a Temple dedicated to the Genius of Seedi-
ness.
There is not a messenger or process-
server attached to it who wears a coat that was
made for him; not a tolerably fresh, or whole-
some-looking man in the whole establishment,
except a little white-headed, apple-faced tipstaff,
and even he, like an ill-conditioned cherry pre-
served in brandy, seems to have artificially dried
and withered up into a state of preservation to
which he can lay no natural claim. The very
barristers' wigs are ill-powdered, and their curls
lack crispness.
But the attorneys, who sit at a large bare table
below the Commissioners, are, after all, the
greatest curiosities. The professional establish-
ment of the more opulent of these gentlemen,
consists of a blue bag and a boy-generally a
youth of the Jewish persuasion. They have no
fixed offices, their legal business being transacted
in the parlors of public-houses, or the yards of
prisons-whither they repair in crowds, and
canvass for customers after the manner of omni-
bus cads. They are of a greasy and mildewed
appearance; and if they can be said to have any
vices at all, perhaps drinking and cheating are
the most conspicuous among them. Their resi-
dences are usually on the outskirts of "the
Rules," chiefly lying within a circle of one mile
from the obelisk in St. George's Fields. Their
looks are not prepossessing, and their manners
are peculiar.
Mr. Solomon Pell, one of this learned body,
was a fat, flabby, pale man, in a surtout which
looked green one minute and brown the next,
with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints.
His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head
large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature,
indignant with the propensities she observed in
him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak
which it had never recovered. Being short-
necked and asthmatic, however, he respired prin-
cipally through this feature; so, perhaps, what
it wanted in ornament, it made up in usefulness.
Pickwick, Chap. 43.
COURT-Examination of Sam Weller.
Serjeant Buzfuz now rose with more impor-
tance than he had yet exhibited, if that were
possible, and vociferated: "Call Samuel Weller."
It was quite unnecessary to call Samuel Wel-
ler; for Samuel Weller stepped briskly into the
box the instant his name was pronounced; and
placing his hat on the floor, and his arms on the
rail, took a bird's-eye view of the bar, and a
comprehensive survey of the bench, with a re-
markably cheerful and lively aspect.
"What's your name, sir?" inquired the judge.
"Sam Weller, my lord," replied the gentle-
man.
|
|
Here a voice in the gallery exclaimed aloud,
"Quite right too, Samivel, quite right. Put it
down a we, my lord, put it down a we.
"
"Who is that, who dares to address the
court?" said the little judge, looking up.
"Usher."
"
'Yes, my lord."
'Bring that person here instantly."
Yes, my lord."
But as the usher didn't find the person, he
didn't bring him; and, after a great commotion,
all the people who had got up to look for the
culprit, sat down again. The little judge turned
to the witness as soon as his indignation would
allow him to speak, and said,
"Do you know who that was, sir?”
"I rayther suspect it was my father, my lord,"
replied Sam.
"Do you see him here now?" said the judge.
No, I don't, my lord," replied Sam, staring
right up into the lantern in the roof of the
court.
"If you could have pointed him out, I would
have committed him instantly," said the judge.
Sam bowed his acknowledgments, and turned
with unimpaired cheerfulness of countenance
towards Serjeant Buzfuz.
Now, Mr. Weller," said Serjeant Buzfuz.
Now, sir," replied Sam.
I believe you are in the service of Mr. Pick-
wick, the defendant in this case. Speak up, if
you please, Mr. Weller."
"I mean to speak up, sir," replied Sam; “I
am in the service o' that 'ere gen'l'man, and a
wery good service it is."
"Little to do, and plenty to get, I suppose,"
said Serjeant Buzfuz, with jocularity.
Oh, quite enough to get, sir, as the soldier
said ven they ordered him three hundred and
fifty lashes," replied Sam.
You must not tell us what the soldier, or
any other man, said, sir," interposed the judge;
"it's not evidence.'
Wery good, my lord," replied Sam.
"Do you recollect anything particular hap-
pening on the morning when you were first
engaged by the defendant; eh, Mr. Weller?"
said Serjeant Buzfuz.
"Yes, I do, sir," replied Sam.
"Have the goodness to tell the jury what it
was.
"
"I had a reg'lar new fit out o' clothes that
mornin', gen'l'men of the jury," said Sam, “and
that was a wery partickler and uncommon cir-
cumstance vith me in those days.'
"
Hereupon there was a general laugh; and the
little judge, looking with an angry countenance
over his desk, said, "You had better be careful,
sir."
"So Mr. Pickwick said at the time, my lord,"
replied Sam; "and I was wery careful o' that
'ere suit o' clothes; wery careful indeed, my
lord."
The judge looked sternly at Sam for full two
minutes, but Sam's features were so perfe ly
calm and serene that the judge said nothing, a d
motioned Serjeant Buzfuz to proceed.
COURT
123
COURT
the case on spec, and to charge nothing at all
for costs, unless they got 'em out of Mr. Pick-
wick."
"Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Weller," said
Serjeant Buzfuz, folding his arms emphatically,
and turning half round to the jury, as if in
mute assurance that he would bother the witness At this very unexpected reply, the spectators
yet; "Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Weller, tittered again, and Dodson and Fogg, turning
that you saw nothing of this fainting on the very red, leant over to Serjeant Buzfuz, and
part of the plaintiff in the arms of the defend-in a hurried manner whispered something in
ant, which you have heard described by the
witnesses?
"}
Certainly not," replied Sam, "I was in the
passage till they called me up, and then the old
lady was not there."
"You
Now, attend, Mr. Weller," said Serjeant
Buzfuz, dipping a large pen into the inkstand
before him, for the purpose of frightening Sam
with a show of taking down his answer.
were in the passage, and yet saw nothing of
what was going forward. Have you a pair of
eyes, Mr. Weller?"
Yes, I have a pair of eyes," replied Sam,
"and that's just it. If they wos a pair o' patent
double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of
hextra power, p'raps I might be able to see
through a flight o' stairs and a deal door; but
bein' only eyes, you see, my wision's limited."
At this answer, which was delivered without
the slightest appearance of irritation, and with
the most complete simplicity and equanimity of
manner, the spectators tittered, the little judge
smiled, and Serjeant Buzfuz looked particularly
foolish. After a short consultation with Dod-
son and Fogg, the learned Serjeant again turned
towards Sam, and said, with a painful effort
to conceal his vexation, "Now, Mr. Weller, I'll
ask you a question on another point, if you
please."
"If you please, sir," rejoined Sam, with the
utmost good-humor.
"Do you remember going up to Mrs. Bardell's
house, one night in November last?"
"Oh yes, wery well."
Oh, you do remember that, Mr. Weller,'
said Serjeant Buzfuz, recovering his spirits; "I
thought we should get at something at last."
I rayther thought that, too, sir," replied
Sam, and at this the spectators tittered again.
Well; I suppose you went up to have a
little talk about this trial-eh, Mr. Weller?"
said Serjeant Buzfuz, looking knowingly at the
jury.
"I went up to pay the rent; but we did get a
talkin' about the trial," replied Sam.
Oh, you did get a talking about the trial,"
said Serjeant Buzfuz, brightening up with the
anticipation of some important discovery.
"Now what passed about the trial; will you
have the goodness to tell us, Mr. Weller?"
his ear.
"You are quite right," said Serjeant Buzfuz
aloud, with affected composure.
"It's perfectly
useless, my lord, attempting to get at any evi
dence through the impenetrable stupidity of
this witness. I will not trouble the court by
asking him any more questions. Stand down,
sir."
Would any other gen'l'man like to ask me
anythin'?" inquired Sam, taking up his hat,
and looking round most deliberately.
"Not I, Mr. Weller, thank you," said Serjeant
Snubbin, laughing.
"You may go down, sir," said Serjeant Buz-
fuz, waving his hand impatiently.
Pickwick, Chap. 34.
COURT-Trial of the convict.
The trial was very short and very clear. Such
things as could be said for him, were said—how
he had taken to industrious habits, and had
thriven lawfully and reputably. But nothing
could unsay the fact that he had returned, and
was there in the presence of the Judge and Jury.
It was impossible to try him for that, and do
otherwise than find him Guilty.
At that time it was the custom (as I learned
from my terrible experience of that Sessions) to
devote a concluding day to the passing of Sen-
tences, and to make a finishing effect with the
Sentence of Death. But for the indelible pic-
ture that my remembrance now holds before me,
I could scarcely believe, even as I write these
words, that I saw two-and-thirty men and wo-
men put before the Judge to receive that sentence
together. Foremost among the two-and-thirty,
was he; seated, that he might get breath enough
to keep life in him.
The whole scene starts out again in the vivid
colors of the moment, down to the drops of
April rain on the windows of the court, glitter-
ing in the rays of April sun. Penned in the
dock, as I again stood outside it at the corner,
with his hand in mine, were the two-and-thirty
men and women; some defiant, some stricken
with terror, some sobbing and weeping, some
covering their faces, some staring gloomily
about. There had been shrieks from among
the women convicts, but they had been stilled,
and a hush had succeeded. The sheriffs, with
their great chains and nosegays, other civic gew-
gaws and monsters, criers, ushers, a great gal-
"Vith all the pleasure in life, sir," replied
Sam. "Arter a few unimportant obserwations
from the two wirtuous females as has been ex-lery full of people-a large theatrical audience-
amined here to-day, the ladies gets into a very
great state o' admiration at the honorable con-
¿ect of Mr. Dodson and Fogg-them two
gent'l'men as is settin' ncar you now." This,
of course, drew general attention to Dodson
and Fogg, who looked as virtuous as possible.
"The attorneys for the plaintiff," said Mr.
Serjeant Buzfuz. "Well! They spoke in high
praise of the honorable conduct of Messrs. Dod-
son and Fogg, the attorneys for the plaintiff,
did they?"
"Yes," said Sam, "they said what a wery
gen'rous thing it was o' them to have taken up
looked on, as the two-and-thirty and the Judge
were solemnly confronted. Then, the Judge
addressed them. Among the wretched creatures
before him whom he must single out for special
address, was one who almost from his infancy
had been an offender against the laws; who,
after repeated imprisonments and punishments.
had been at length sentenced to exile for a term
of years; and who, under circumstances of great
violence and daring, had made his escape and
been re-sentenced to exile for life. That miser-
able man would seem for a time to have be-
come convinced of his errors, when far removed
COURT
124
COURT
from the scenes of his old offences, and to have COURT—The Judge and witness.
lived a peaceable and honest life. But in a fatal
moment, yielding to those propensities and pas-
sions, the indulgence of which had so long ren-
dered him a scourge to society, he had quitted
his haven of rest and repentance, and had come
back to the country where he was proscribed.
Being here presently denounced, he had for a
time succeeded in evading the officers of Jus-
tice, but being at length seized while in the act
of flight, he had resisted them, and had-he best
knew whether by express design, or in the blind-
ness of his hardihood-caused the death of his
denouncer, to whom his whole career was
known. The appointed punishment for his
return to the land that had cast him out, being
Death, and his case being this aggravated case,
he must prepare himself to Die.
"Now, sir," said Mr. Skimpin, "have the
goodness to let his Lordship and the jury know
what your name is, will you?" and Mr. Skimpin
inclined his head on one side to listen with great
sharpness to the answer, and glanced at the jury
meanwhile, as if to imply that he rather expected
Mr. Winkle's natural taste for perjury would
induce him to give some name which did not
belong to him.
Winkle," replied the witness.
What's your Christian name, sir?" angrily
inquired the little judge.
"Nathaniel, sir."
"
Daniel-any other name?"
"Nathaniel, sir-my Lord, I mean.
"Nathaniel Daniel, or Daniel Nathaniel?"
"No, my Lord, only Nathaniel; not Daniel
at all."
"What did you tell me it was Daniel for, then,
sir?” inquired the judge.
"I didn't, my Lord,” replied Mr. Winkle.
"You did, sir," replied the judge, with a se-
vere frown. "How could I have got Daniel on
my notes, unless you told me so, sir?"
This argument, was, of course, unanswerable.
Pickwick, Chap. 34
COURT-The juryman.
66
Here," said the green-grocer.
"Thomas Groffin.
Here," said the chemist.
The sun was striking in at the great windows
of the court, through the glittering drops of rain
upon the glass, and it made a broad shaft of
light between the two-and-thirty and the Judge,
linking both together, and perhaps reminding
some among the audience, how both were pass-
ing on, with absolute equality, to the greater
Judgment that knoweth all things and cannot
err. Rising for a moment, a distinct speck of
face in this way of light, the prisoner said, "My
Lord, I have received my sentence of Death
from the Almighty, but I bow to yours," and sat
down again. There was some hushing, and the
Judge went on with what he had to say to the
rest. Then, they were all formally doomed, and
some of them were supported out, and some of
them sauntered out with a haggard look of bra- "I beg this court's pardon," said the chem-
very, and a few nodded to the gallery, and two ist, who was a tall, thin, yellow-visaged man,
or three shook hands, and others went out chew-"but I hope this court will excuse my attend-
ing the fragments of herb they had taken from
the sweet herbs lying about. He went last of
all, because of having to be helped from his
chair and to go very slowly; and he held my
hand while all the others were removed, and
while the audience got up (putting their dresses
right, as they might at church or elsewhere),
and pointed down at this criminal or at that,
and most of all at him and me.
Great Expectations, Chap. 56.
COURT-Pickwick in.
Mr. Pickwick stood up in a state of great agi-
tation, and took a glance at the court. There
were already a pretty large sprinkling of specta-
tors in the gallery, and a numerous muster of
gentlemen in wigs, in the barristers' seats: who
presented, as a body, all that pleasing and ex-
tensive variety of nose and whisker for which
the bar of England is so justly celebrated. Such
of the gentlemen as had a brief to carry, carried
it in as conspicuous a manner as possible, and
occasionally scratched their noses therewith, to
impress the fact more strongly on the observa-
tion of the spectators. Other gentlemen who
had no briefs to show, carried under their arms
goodly octavos, with a red label behind, and
that underdone-pie-crust-colored cover which is
technically known as "law calf." Others, who
had neither briefs nor books, thrust their hands
into their pockets, and looked as wise as they
conveniently could; others, again, moved here
and there with great restlessness and earnest-
ness of manner, content to awaken thereby the
admiration and astonishment of the uninitiated
strangers.-Pickwick, Chap. 34.
Take the book, gentlemen. You shall well
and truly try-"
ance."
“On what grounds, sir?” said Mr. Justice
Stareleigh.
"I have no assistant, my Lord," said the
chemist.
"Swear the gentleman," said the judge, per-
emptorily.
The officer had got no further than the "You
shall well and truly try," when he was again in-
terrupted by the chemist.
"I am to be sworn, my Lord, am I?" said
the chemist.
Certainly, sir," replied the testy little judge.
Very well, my Lord," replied the chemist,
in a resigned manner. "Then there'll be mur-
der before this trial's over; that's all. Swear
me if you please, sir;" and sworn the chemist
was, before the judge could find words to utter.
and
I merely wanted to observe, my Lord,"
said the chemist, taking his seat with great de-
liberation, "that I've left nobody but an errand-
boy in my shop. He is a very nice boy, my
Lord, but he is not acquainted with drugs;
I know that the prevailing impression on his
mind is, that Epsom salts means oxalic acid;
and syrup of senna, laudanum. That's all, my
Lord." With this, the tall chemist composed
himself into a comfortable attitude, and, assum
ing a pleasant expression of countenance, ap-
peared to have prepared himself for the worst.
Pickwick, Chap. 34.
COURT-The Judge.
Serjeant Buzfuz, who had proceeded with
such volubility that his face was perfectly crim-
son, here paused for breath. The silence
COURT
awoke Mr. Justice Stareleigh, who immediately
wrote down something with a pen without any
ink in it and looked unusually profound, to im-
press the jury with the belief that he always
thought most deeply with his eyes shut.
Pickwick, Chap. 34.
COURT—Serjeant Buzfuz's appeal for dam-
ages.
125
COURT
Pickwick, Chap. 34.
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
child is hushed; his infant sports are disre-
garded when his mother weeps; his 'alley tors
and his commoneys' are alike neglected; he
forgets the long familiar cry of 'knuckle down,'
and at tip-cheese, or odd and even, his hand is
out. But Pickwick, gentlemen, Pickwick, the
ruthless destroyer of this domestic oasis in the
desert of Goswell street-Pickwick, who has
choked up the well, and thrown ashes on the
"And now, gentlemen, but one word more. sward-Pickwick, who comes before you to-day
Two letters have passed between these parties, with his heartless Tomata sauce and warming-
letters which are admitted to be in the hand- pans-Pickwick still rears his head with un-
writing of the defendant, and which speak vol-blushing effrontery, and gazes without a sigh
umes indeed. These letters, too, bespeak the on the ruin he has made. Damages, gentlemen
character of the man. They are not open, fer-heavy damages-is the only punishment with
vent, eloquent epistles, breathing nothing but which you can visit him; the only recompense
the language of affectionate attachment. They you can award to my client. And for those
are covert, sly, underhanded communications, damages she now appeals to an enlightened, a
but, fortunately, far more conclusive than if high-minded, a right-feeling, a conscientious, a
couched in the most glowing language and the dispassionate, a sympathizing, a contemplative
most poetic imagery-letters that must be jury of her civilized countrymen." With this
viewed with a cautious and suspicious eye-beautiful peroration, Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz sat
letters that were evidently intended at the down, and Mr. Justice Stareleigh woke up.
time, by Pickwick, to mislead and delude any
third parties into whose hands they might fall.
Let me read the first:-Garraway's, twelve | COURT-A trial in.
o'clock. Dear Mrs. B.-Chops and Tomata Everybody present, except the one wigged
sauce. Yours, PICKWICK.' Gentlemen, what gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at
does this mean? Chops and Tomata sauce.
Yours, Pickwick! Chops! Gracious heavens!
and Tomata sauce! Gentlemen, is the happi-
ness of a sensitive and confiding female to be
trifled away by such shallow artifices as these?
The next has no date whatever, which is in it-floor of the court laid their hands on the
self suspicious. 'Dear Mrs. B., I shall not be
at home till to-morrow. Slow coach.' And
then follows this very remarkable expression,
'Don't trouble yourself about the warming-
pan.' The warming-pan! Why, gentlemen,
who does trouble himself about a warming-pan!
When was the peace of mind of man or woman
broken or disturbed by a warming-pan, which
is in itself a harmless, a useful, and I will add,
gentlemen, a comforting article of domestic
furniture? Why is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly
entreated not to agitate herself about this
warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it The object of all this staring and blaring was
is a mere cover for hidden fire-a mere substi- a young man of about five-and-twenty, well-
tute for some endearing word or promise, agree-grown, and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek
ably to a preconcerted system of correspond-
ence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with a
view to his contemplated desertion, and which
I am not in a condition to explain? And
what does this allusion to the slow coach mean?
For aught I know, it may be a reference to
Pickwick himself, who has most unquestionably
been a criminally slow coach during the whole
of this transaction, but whose speed will now
be very unexpectedly accelerated, and whose
wheels, gentlemen, as he will find to his cost,
will very soon be greased by you!"
*
*
*
*
*
|
shoulders 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 broke upon the great windows
behind him in an impure mist and rain.
and a dark eye. His condition was that of a
young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in
black, 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 way 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, show-
ing 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
"But enough of this, gentlemen," said Mr. stared and breathed at, was not a sort that ele-
Serjeant Buzfuz, "it is difficult to smile with vated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a
an aching heart; it is ill jesting when our deep-less horrible sentence-had there been a chance
est sympathies are awakened. My client's of any one of its savage details being spared-
hopes and prospects are ruined, and it is no fig-by just so much would he have lost in his fasci-
ure of speech to say that her occupation is gone nation. The form that was to be doomed to be
indeed. The bill is down-but there is no ten-so shamefully mangled, was the sight; the im
ant. Eligible single gentlemen pass and re-
pass-but there is no invitation for them to in-
quire within or without. All is gloom and
silence in the house; even the voice of the
mortal creature that was to be so butchered and
torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever
gloss the various spectators put upon the in-
terest, according to their several arts and powers
COURT
of self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of it,
Ogreish.--Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 2.
COURT-The Lord Chancellor in.
126
When we came to the court, there was the
Lord Chancellor-the same whom I had seen in
his private room in Lincoln's Inn-sitting in
great state and gravity, on the bench; with the
mace and seals on a red table below him, and
an immense flat nosegay, like a little garden,
which scented the whole court. Below the
table, again, was a long row of solicitors, with
bundles of papers on the matting at their feet;
and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in
wigs and gowns—some awake and some asleep,
and one talking, and nobody paying much at-
tention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor
leaned back in his very easy chair, with his
elbow on the cushioned arm, and his forehead
resting on his hand: some of those who were
present, dozed: some read the newspapers;
some walked about, or whispered in groups; all
seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in
a hurry, very unconcerned, and extremely com-
fortable.
COURT OF CHANCERY
or why; whole families have inherited legend-
ary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff
or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-
horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be
settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a
real horse, and trotted away into the other world.
Fair wards of court have faded into mothers
and grandmothers; a long procession of Chan-
cellors has come in and gone out; the legion of
bills in the suit have been transformed into mere
bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces
left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarn-
dyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-
house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and
| Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the
court, perennially hopeless.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke.
That is the only good that has ever come of it.
It has been death to many, but it is a joke in
the profession. Every master in Chancery has
had a reference out of it. Every Chancellor
was "in it," for somebody or other, when he was
counsel at the bar. Good things have been said
about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old bench-
ers, in select port-wine committee after din-
ner in hall. Árticled clerks have been in the
habit of flashing their legal wit upon it. The
last Lord Chancellor handled it neatly, when,
correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown
who said that such a thing might happen when
the sky rained potatoes, he observed, "or when,
we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr.
Blowers; -a pleasantry that particularly tickled
the maces, bags, and purses.
To see everything going on so smoothly, and
to think of the roughness of the suitors' lives
and deaths; to see all that full dress and cere-
mony, and to think of the waste, and want, and
beggared misery it represented; to consider that
while the sickness of hope deferred was raging
in so many hearts, this polite show went calmly
on from day to day, and year to year, in such
good order and composure; to behold the Lord
Chancellor, and the whole array of practitioners How many people out of the suit Jarndyce
under him, looking at one another and at the and Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwhole-
spectators, as if nobody had ever heard that all some hand to spoil and corrupt, would be a very
over England the name in which they were as-wide question. From the master, upon whose
sembled was a bitter jest; was held in universal
horror, contempt, and indignation; was known
for something so flagrant and bad, that little
short of a miracle could bring any good out of
it to any one.
•
*
*
*
*
*
When we had been there half an hour or so,
the case in progress-if I may use a phrase so
ridiculous in such a connection-seemed to die
out of its own vapidity, without coming, or being
by anybody expected to come, to any result. The
Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of
papers from his desk to the gentlemen below
him, and somebody said, JARNDYCE AND
JARNDYCE." Upon this there was a buzz, and
a laugh, and a general withdrawal of the by-
standers, and a bringing in of great heaps, and
piles, and bags and bagsfull of papers.
Bleak House, Chap. 24.
COURT OF CHANCERY-Jarndyce v. Jarn-
dyce.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This
scarecrow of a suit has in course of time become
so complicated, that no man alive knows what
it means. The parties to it understand it least;
but it has been observed that no two Chancery
lawyers can talk about it for five minutes with-
out coming to a total disagreement as to all the
premises. Innumerable children have been
born into the cause; innumerable young people
have married into it; innumerable old people
have died out of it. Scores of persons have
deliriously found themselves made parties in
Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how
impaling files reams of dusty warrants in Jarn-
dyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into
many shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the
Six Clerks' Office, who has copied his tens of
thousands of Chancery-folio-pages under that
eternal heading; no man's nature has been
made better by it. In trickery, evasion, pro-
crastination, spoliation, botheration, under false
pretences of all sorts, there are influences that
can never come to good. The very solicitors'
boys who have kept the wretched suitors at bay,
by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle,
Mizzle, or otherwise, was particularly engaged,
and had appointments until dinner, may have
got an extra moral twist and shuffle into them-
selves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The re-
ceiver in the cause has acquired a goodly sum
of money by it, but has acquired too a distrust
for his own mother, and a contempt for his own
kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and otherwise, have
lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising them-
selves that they will look into that outstanding
little matter, and see what can be done for Driz-
zle-who was not well used-when Jarndyce
and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office.
Shirking and sharking, in all their many varieties,
have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause;
and even those who have contemplated its his-
tory from the outermost circle of such evil, have
been insensibly tempted into a loose way of let-
ting bad things alone to take their own bad
course, and a loose belief that if the world go
wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never
meant to go right.
Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart
-
COURT OF CHANCERY
of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his
High Court of Chancery.
Bleak House, Chap. 1.
COURT OF CHANCERY
CHANCERY - Jarndyce v.
Jarndyce.
"
Mlud," says Mr. Tangle. Mr. Tangle knows
more of Jarndyce and Jarndyce than anybody.
He is famous for it-supposed never to have
read anything else since he left school.
"Have you nearly concluded your argu-
ment?
Mlud, no-variety of points-feel it my duty
tsubmit-ludship," is the reply that slides out of
Mr. Tangle.
"Several members of the bar are still to be
heard, I believe?" says the Chancellor, with a
slight smile.
Eighteen of Mr. Tangle's learned friends, each
armed with a little summary of eighteen hun-
dred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a
piano-forte, make eighteen bows, and drop into
their eighteen places of obscurity.
"We will proceed with the hearing on Wednes-
day fortnight," says the Chancellor. For, the
question at issue is only a question of costs, a
mere bud on the forest-tree of the parent suit,
and really will come to a settlement one of these
days.
*
*
*
*
*
The Chancellor has dexterously vanished.
Everybody else quickly vanishes too. A bat-
tery of blue bags is loaded with heavy charges
of papers, and carried off by clerks; the little
mad old woman marches off with her docu-
ments; the empty court is locked up. If all
the injustice it has committed, and all the misery
it has caused, could only be locked up with it,
and the whole burnt away in a great funeral
pyre-why, so much the better for other parties
than the parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!
Bleak House, Chap. I.
COURT OF CHANCERY-The.
Never can there come fog too thick, never
can there come mud and mire too deep, to as-
sort with the groping and floundering condition
which this High Court of Chancery, most pesti-
lent of hoary sinners, holds, this day, in the
sight of heaven and earth.
127
COURT OF CHANCERY
it), between the register's red table and the silk
gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders,
injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to mas-
ters, masters' reports, mountains of costly non-
sense, piled before them. Well may the court
be dim, with wasting candles here and there;
well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would
never get out; well may the stained glass win-
dows lose their color, and admit no light of day
into the place; well may the uninitiated from
the streets, who peep in through the glass panes
in the door, be deterred from entrance by its
owlish aspect, and by the drawl languidly echo-
ing to the roof from the padded dais where the
Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern
that has no light in it, and where the attendant
wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the
Court of Chancery; which has its decaying
houses and its blighted lands in every shire;
which has its worn-out lunatic in every mad-
house, and its dead in every churchyard; which
has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels
and threadbare dress, borrowing and begging
through the round of every man's acquaintance,
which gives to moneyed might the means, abund-
antly, of wearying out the right; which so ex-
hausts finances, patience, courage, hope; sc
overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that
there is not an honorable man among its prac-
titioners who would not give-who does not
often give-the warning,
"Suffer any wrong
that can be done you, rather than come here!"
Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's
court this murky afternoon besides the Lord
Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three
counsel who are never in any cause, and the
well of solicitors before mentioned? There is
the registrar, below the judge in wig and gown;
and there are two or three maces, or petty bags,
or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in
legal court suits. These are all yawning; for
no crumb of amusement ever falls from JARN-
DYCE AND JARNDYCE (the cause in hand), which
was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The
short-hand writers, the reporters of the court,
and the reporters of the newspapers, invariably
decamp with the rest of the regulars when Jarn-
dyce and Jarndyce comes on.
Their places are
a blank. Standing on a seat at the side of the
hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanc-
tuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed
bonnet, who is always in court, from its sitting
to its rising, and always expecting some incom-
prehensible judgment to be given in her favor.
Some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit;
but no one knows for certain, because no one
cares. She carries some small litter in a reticule,
which she calls her documents; principally con-
sisting of paper matches and dry lavender.
COURT
OF
Bleak House, Chap. I.
CHANCERY-Its bedevil-
On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High
Chancellor ought to be sitting here-as here he
is-with a foggy glory round his head, softly
fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, ad-
dressed by a large advocate with great whiskers,
a little voice, and an interminable brief, and
outwardly directing his contemplation to the
lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing
but fog. On such an afternoon, some score of
members of the High Court of Chancery bar
ought to be as here they are-mistily engaged
in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless
cause, tripping one another up on slippery pre-
cedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities,
running their goat-hair and horse-hair warded
heads against walls of words, and making a pre- And of course I shook my head.
tence of equity with serious faces, as players "I don't know who does," he returned.
might. On such an afternoon, the various soli- "The lawyers have twisted it into such a state
citors of the cause, some two or three of whom of bedevilment that the original merits of the
have inherited it from their fathers, who made a case have long disappeared from the face of the
fortune by it, ought to be as are they not?-earth. It's about a Will, and the trusts under
ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you a Will-or it was, once. It's about nothing but
night look in vain for Truth at the bottom of Costs, now. We are always appearing, and dis.
ments.
“Of course, Esther," he said, “you don't un-
derstand this Chancery business?"
COURT OF CHANCERY
128
COURT OF CHANCERY
end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane-will
have something to say about it; Counsel will
have something to say about it; the Chancellor
will have something to say about it; the Satel
appearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and
filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing,
and motioning, and referring, and reporting,
and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and
all his satellites, and equitably waltzing our-lites will have something to say about it; they
selves off to dusty death, about Costs. That's
the great question. All the rest, by some ex-
traordinary means, has melted away.
will all have to be handsomely fee'd, all round,
about it; the whole thing will be vastly cere-
monious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive,
and I call it in general Wiglomeration. How
mankind ever came to be afflicted with Wiglom-
eration, or for whose sins these young people
"A certain Jarn-ever fell into a pit of it, I don't know; so it is.'
"But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back,
for he began to rub his head, "about a Will?"
Why, yes, it was about a Will when it was
about anything," he returned.
dyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune, and
made a great Will. In the question how the
trusts under that Will are to be administered,
the fortune left by the Will is squandered away;
the legatees under the Will are reduced to such
a miserable condition that they would be suf-
ficiently punished, if they had committed an
enormous crime in having money left them;
and the Will itself is made a dead letter. All
through the deplorable cause, everything that
everybody in it, except one man, knows already,
is referred to that only one man who don't
know it, to find out-all through the deplora-
ble cause, everybody must have copies, over and
over again, of everything that has accumulated
about it in the way of cart-loads of papers (or
must pay for them without having them, which
is the usual course, for nobody wants them); |
and must go down the middle and up again,
through such an infernal country-dance of costs
and fees and nonsense and corruption, as was
never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a
Witch's Sabbath. Equity sends questions to
Law, Law sends questions back to Equity;
Law finds it can't do this, Equity finds it can't
do that; neither can so much as say it can't do
anything, without this solicitor instructing and
this counsel appearing for A, and that solicitor
instructing and that counsel appearing for B;
and so on through the whole alphabet, like the
history of the Apple Pie. And thus, through
years and years, and lives and lives, everything
goes on, constantly beginning over and over
again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get
out of the suit on any terms, for we are made
parties to it, and must be parties to it, whether
we like it or not. But it won't do to think of
it ! When my great-uncle, poor Tom Jarn-
dyce, began to think of it, it was the beginning
of the end!"-Bleak House, Chap. 8.
COURT OF CHANCERY—Its Wiglomera-
tion.
"However," said Mr. Jarndyce, " to return to
our gossip. Here's Rick, a fine young fellow full
of promise. What's to be done with him?"
my goodness, the idea of asking my advice
on such a point!
"Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce,
comfortably putting his hands into his pockets
and stretching out his legs. "He must have a
profession; he must make some choice for him-
self. There will be a world more Wiglomera-
tion about it, I suppose, but it must be done."
"More what, Guardian!" said I.
"More Wiglomeration," said he. "It's the
only name I know for the thing. He is a ward
in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will
have something to say about it; Master Some-
body-a sort of ridiculous Sexton, digging graves
for the merits of causes in a back room at the
He began to rub his head again, and to hint
he felt the wind. But it was a delightful in-
stance of his kindness towards me, that whether
he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did
both, his face was sure to recover its benignant
expression as it looked at mine; and he was
sure to turn comfortable again, and put his
hands in his pockets and stretch out his legs.
Bleak House, Chap. 8.
COURT-The end of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce.
"Is this Will considered a genuine docu-
ment, sir?" said Allan; "will you tell us that?"
"Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge;
"but we have not gone into that, we have not
gone into that."
"We have not gone into that," repeated Mr.
Vholes, as if his low inward voice were an echo.
"You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," ob
served Mr. Kenge, using his silver trowel, per-
suasively and smoothingly, "that this has been
a great cause, that this has been a protracted
cause, that this has been a complex cause.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not
inaptly, a Monument of Chancery practice."
"And Patience has sat upon it a long time,"
said Allan.
For
"Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge,
with a certain condescending laugh he had.
"Very well! You are further to reflect, Mr.
Woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to se-
verity, "that on the numerous difficulties, con-
tingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of pro-
cedure in this great cause, there has been ex-
pended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, in-
tellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high intellect.
many years, the-a-I would say the flower of
the Bar, and the-a-I would presume to add,
the matured autumnal fruits of the Woolsack
-have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarn-
dyce. If the public have the benefit, and if
the country have the adornment, of this great
Grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's
worth, sir.
"
Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlight-
ened all in a moment. "Excuse me, our time
presses. Do I understand that the whole es-
tate is found to have been absorbed in costs?"
"Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge.
Mr. Vholes, what do you say?"
"I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.
"And that thus the suit lapses and melts
away?"
"Mr.
Probably," returned Mr. Kenge.
Vholes?"
"Probably," said Mr. Vholes.
COURT
Bleak House, Chap. 65.
CHANCERY - Boythorn's
OF
opinion of the.
"There never was such an infernal caldron
•
COURTS
129
as that Chancery, on the face of the earth!"
said Mr. Boythorn. "Nothing but a mine be-
low it on a busy day in term time, with all its
records, rules, and precedents collected in it,
and every functionary belonging to it also, high
and low, upward and downward, from its son
the Accountant-General to its father the Devil.
and the whole blown to atoms with ten thou-
sand hundred-weight of gunpowder, would re-
form it in the least!"
It was impossible not to laugh at the ener-
getic gravity with which he recommended this
strong measure of reform. When we laughed,
he threw up his head, and shook his broad
chest, and again the whole country seemed to
echo to his Ha, ha, ha, ha! It had not the
least effect in disturbing the bird, whose sense
of security was complete; and who hopped
about the table with its quick head now on this
side and now on that, turning its bright sud-
den eye on its master, as if he were no more
than another bird.-Bleak House, Chap. 9.
COURTS—Like powder-mills (Betsey Trot-
wood.)
My aunt regarded all Courts of Law as a sort
of powder-mills that might blow up at any time.
David Copperfield, Chap. 23.
CRIME AND FILTH-In London.
Wheresoever Mr. Rogers turns the flaming
eye, there is a spectral figure rising, unshrouded,
from a grave of rags. Who is the landlord
here?—I am, Mr. Field! says a bundle of ribs
and parchment against the wall, scratching itself.
-Will you spend this money fairly, in the morn-
ing, to buy coffee for 'em all?-Yes Sir, I will!
-O
Ö he'll do it, Sir, he'll do it fair. He's honest!
cry the spectres. And with thanks and Good
Night sink into their graves again.
crowd. With such scenes at our doors, with all
CRIME
salute, my Christmas greeting, my parting with
the old year. STOP THIEF!
And to know that I must be stopped, come
what will. To know that I am no match for this
individual energy and keenness, or this organized
and steady system! Come across the street,
here, and, entering by a little shop, and yard,
examine these intricate passages and doors, con-
trived for escape, flapping and counter-flapping,
like the lids of the conjuror's boxes. But wha*
avail they? Who gets in by a nod, and shows
their secret working to us? Inspector Field.-On
Duty with Inspector Field. Reprinted Pieces.
CRIME-A kind of disorder.
The man was not unnaturally cruel or hard-
hearted. He had come to look upon felony as
a kind of disorder, like the scarlet fever or ery-
sipelas; some people had it—some hadn't-
just as it might be.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 61.
CRIMINALS-Their struggles with crime.
If great criminals told the truth-which, be-
ing great criminals, they do not-they would
very rarely tell of their struggles against the
crime. Their struggles are towards it. They
buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody
shore, not to recede from it.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. II.
CRIME-The fascination of.
"You have a strong fancy," said the blind
man, with a smile.
Strengthen yours with blood, and see what
it will come to.'
""
He groaned, and rocked himself, and look-
ing up for the first time, said, in a low, hollow
voice:
gree.
"Eight-and-twenty years! Eight-and-twenty
Thus, we make our New Oxford Streets, and years! He has never changed in all that time,
our other new streets, never heeding, never ask- never grown older, nor altered in the least de-
He has been before me in the dark night,
ing, where the wretches whom we clear out, and the broad sunny day; in the twilight, the
the plagues of Egypt tied up with bits of cob-moonlight, the sunlight, the light of fire, and
web in kennels so near our homes, we timo- lamp, and candle, and in the deepest gloom.
rously make our Nuisance Bills and Boards of Always the same! In company, in solitude, on
Health nonentities, and think to keep away the for months, and sometimes always with me.
land, on shipboard; sometimes leaving me alone
Wolves of Crime and Filth by our electioneer- have seen him at sea, come gliding in the dead
ing ducking to little vestrymen and our gentle- of night along the bright reflection of the moon
manly handling of Red Tape!
*
*
*
*
Wherever the turning lane of light becomes
stationary for a moment, some sleeper appears
at the end of it, submits himself to be scru-
tinized, and fades away into the darkness.
There should be strange dreams here, Deputy.
They sleep sound enough, says Deputy, taking
the candle out of the blacking bottle, snuffing
it with his fingers, throwing the snuff into the
bottle, and corking it up with the candle, that's
all I know. What is the inscription, Deputy,
on all the discolored_sheets? A precaution
against loss of linen. Deputy turns down the
rug of an unoccupied bed and discloses it.
STOP THIEF!
To lie at night, wrapped in the legend of my
sfinking life; to take the cry that pursues me,
waking, to my breast in sleep; to have it star-
ing at me, and clamoring for me, as soon as con-
sciousness returns; to have it for my first-foot
on New Year's day, my Valentine, my Birthday
I
in the calm water; and I have seen him, on
quays and market-places, with his hand uplifted,
towering, the centre of a busy crowd, uncon-
scious of the terrible form that had its
silent stand among them. Fancy! Are you
real? Am I? Are these iron fetters, riveted
on me by the smith's hammer, or are they
fancies I can shatter at a blow?"
*
*
*
*
*
"Why did you return?" said the blind man.
"Why is blood red? I could no more help
it than I could live without breath. I struggled
against the impulse, but I was drawn back,
through every difficult and adverse circumstance,
as by a mighty engine. Nothing could stop me.
The day and hour were none of my choice.
Sleeping and waking, I had been among the
old haunts for years-had visited my own grave.
Why did I come back? Because this jail was
gaping for me, and he stood beckoning at the
door.
"You were not known?" said the blind man.
"
CROWD
I was a man who had been twenty-two years
dead. No. I was not known."
46
'You should have kept your secret better."
My secret? Mine? It was a secret any
breath of air could whisper at its will. The
stars had it in their twinkling, the water in its
flowing, the leaves in their rustling, the seasons
in their return. It lurked in strangers' faces,
and their voices. Everything had lips on which
it always trembled―My secret.
It was revealed by you own act, at any rate,"
said the blind man.
130
"The act was not mine. I did it, but it was
not mine. I was forced at times to wander
sound, and round, and round that spot. If you
had chained me up when the fit was on me, I
should have broken away, and gone there. As
truly as the loadstone draws iron towards it, so
he, lying at the bottom of his grave, could draw
me near him when he would. Was that fancy?
Did I like to go there, or did I strive and wres-
tle with the power that forced me?”
CROWD-A.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 62.
From the dimly-lighted passages of the court,
the last sediment of the human stew that had
been boiling there all day, was straining off.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4.
CROWD-Passing.
Who could sit upon anything in Fleet Street
during the busy hours of the day, and not be
dazed and deafened by two immense proces-
sions, 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.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 14.
CRUPP-Mrs.-Her “ spazzums."
At about this time, too, I made three dis-
coveries: first, that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to
a curious disorder called "the spazzums," which
was generally accompanied with inflammation
of the nose, and required to be constantly treated
with peppermint ; secondly, that something pe-
culiar in the temperature of my pantry, made
the brandy-bottles burst; thirdly, that I was
alone in the world, and much given to record
that circumstance in fragments of English versi-
fication.-David Copperfield, Chap. 26.
CRUPP-Mrs.-Her advice on love.
She came up to me one evening, when I was
very low, to ask (she being then afflicted with
the disorder I have mentioned) if I could oblige
her with a little tincture of cardamoms mixed
with rhubarb, and flavored with seven drops of
the essence of cloves, which was the best remedy
for her complaint or, if I had not such a thing
by me, with a little brandy, which was the next
best. It was not, she remarked, as palatable to
her, but it was the next best. As I had never
even heard of the first remedy, and always harl
the second in the closet, I gave Mrs. Crupp a
glass of the second, which (that I might have
CUPBOARD
no suspicion of its being devoted to any impro-
per use) she began to take in my presence.
"Cheer up, sir," said Mrs. Crupp. "I can't
abear to see you so, sir: I'm a mother myself."
I did not quite perceive the application of
this fact to myself, but I smiled on Mrs. Crupp
as benignly as was in my power.
"Excuse me,
"
Come, sir," said Mrs. Crupp.
I know what it is, sir. There's a lady in the
case.
"}
'Mrs. Crupp!" I returned, reddening.
"Oh, bless you! Keep a good heart, sir!"
said Mrs. Crupp, nodding encouragement.
"Never say die, sir! If she don't smile upon
you, there's a many as will. You are a young
gentleman to be smiled on, Mr. Copperfull, and
you must learn your walue, sir.”
Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull
firstly, no doubt, because it was not my name;
and secondly, I am inclined to think in some
indistinct association with a washing-day.
"What makes you suppose there is any young
lady in the case, Mrs. Crupp?" said I.
Mr. Copperfull," said Mrs. Crupp, with a
great deal of feeling, "I'm a mother myself."
For some time Mrs. Crupp could only lay her
hand upon her nankeen bosom, and fortify her-
self against returning pain with sips of her
medicine. At length she spoke again.
When the present set were took for you by
your dear aunt, Mr. Copperfull," said Mrs. Crupp,
my remark were, I had now found summun I
could care for. 'Thank Ev'in !' were the expres-
for!'-You don't eat enough, sir, nor yet drink."
sion, 'I have now found summun I can care
Mrs. Crupp?" said I.
"Is that what you found your supposition on,
66
Sir," said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching
to severity, "I've laundressed other young
gentlemen besides yourself. A young gentleman
may be over-careful of himself, or he may be
under-careful of himself.
hair too regular, or too unregular.
He may brush his
He may
wear his boots much too large for him, or much
too small. That is according as the young gen-
tleman has his original character formed. But
let him go to which extreme he may, sir, there's
a young lady in both of 'em."
'
*
*
*
*
It was but the gentleman which died here
before yourself," said Mrs. Crupp, "that fell in
love-with a barmaid-and had his waistcoats
took in directly, though much swelled by drink-
ing."
"Mrs. Crupp," said I, “I must beg you not
to connect the young lady in my case with a
barmaid, or anything of that sort, if you please."
"Mr. Copperfull," returned Mrs. Crupp, "I'm
a mother myself, and not likely. I ask your
pardon, sir, if I intrude. I should never wish
to intrude where I were not welcome. But you
are a young gentleman, Mr. Copperfull, and my
advice to you is, to cheer up, sir, to keep a good
heart, and to know your own walue. If you
was to take to something, sir," said Mrs. Crupp,
"if you was to take to skittles, now, which is
healthy, you might find it divert your mind, and
do you good."-David Copperfield, Chap. 26.
CUPBOARD-Mrs. Crisparkle's.
As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell
a-musing, his good mother took it to be an in-
fallible sign that he "wanted support," the
3
CUPBOARD
131
DANCE
CURSES.
"The curse may pass your lips," said Ed-
ward, "but it will be but empty breath. I do
not believe that any man on earth has greater
power to call one down upon his fellow-least
of all, upon his own child-than he has to make
one drop of rain or flake of snow fall from the
clouds above us at his impious bidding."
CYNICS.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 32.
blooming old lady made all haste to the dining-spread out upon shelves, in company with por-
room closet, to produce from it the support em- tentous bottles, would the Reverend Septimus
bodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-submissively be led, like the highly popular
made biscuit. It was a most wonderful closet, lamb who has so long and unresistingly beer
worthy of Cloisterham and of Minon Canon Cor-led to the slaughter, and there would he, unlike
ner. Above it, a portrait of Handel, in a flow- that lamb, bore nobody but himself. Not even
ing wig, beamed down at the spectator, with a doing that much, so that the old lady were busy
knowing air of being up to the contents of the and pleased, he would quietly swallow what
closet, and a musical air of intending to com- was given him, merely taking a corrective dip
bine all its harmonies in one delicious fugue. of hands and face into the great bowl of dried
No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges, rose-leaves and into the other great bowl of
openable all at once, and leaving nothing to be dried lavender, and then would go out, as con-
disclosed by degrees, this rare closet had a lock fident in the sweetening powers of Cloisterham
in mid-air, where two perpendicular slides met; Weir and a wholesome mind, as Lady Macbeth
the one falling down, and the other pushing up. was hopeless of those of all the seas that roll.
The upper slide, on being pulled down (leaving
Edwin Drood, Chap. 10.
the lower a double mystery), revealed deep
shelves of pickle-jars, jam-pots, tin-canisters,
spice-boxes, and agreeably outlandish vessels
of blue and white, the luscious lodgings of pre-
served tamarinds and ginger. Every benevo-
lent inhabitant of this retreat had his name in-
scribed upon his stomach. The pickles, in a
uniform of rich brown double-breasted but-
toned coat, and yellow or sombre drab continua-
tions, announced their portly forms, in printed
capitals, as Walnut, Gherkin, Onion, Cabbage,
Cauliflower, Mixed, and other members of that
noble family. The jams, as being of a less
masculine temperament, and as wearing curl-
papers, announced themselves in feminine calig-
raphy, like a soft whisper, to be Raspberry,
Gooseberry, Apricot, Plum, Damson, Apple,
and Peach. The scene closing on these charm-
ers, and the lower slide ascending, oranges
were revealed, attended by a mighty japanned
sugar-box, to temper their acerbity if unripe.
Home-made biscuits waited at the Court of
these Powers, accompanied by a goodly frag-
ment of plum-cake, and various slender ladies'
fingers, to be dipped into sweet wine and kissed.
Lowest of all, a compact leaden vault enshrined
the sweet wine and a stock of cordials: whence
issued whispers of Seville, Orange, Lemon, Al-
mond, and Caraway-seed. There was a crown-
ing air upon this closet of closets, of having
been for ages hummed through by the Cathe-
dral bell and organ, until those venerable bees
had made sublimated honey of everything in
store; and it was always observed that every
dipper among the shelves (deep, as has been
noticed, and swallowing up head, shoulders,
and elbows) came forth again mellow-faced,
and seeming to have undergone a saccharine
transfiguration.
He knew himself well, and choosing to ima-
gine that all mankind were cast in the same
mould, hated them; for, though no man hater
himself-the coldest among us having too much
self-love for that-yet most men unconsciously
judge the world from themselves, and it will be
very generally found that those who sneer habit-
ually at human nature, and affect to despise it,
are among its worst and least pleasant samples.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 44.
The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up
quite as willing a victim to a nauseous medici-
nal herb closet, also presided over by the china
shepherdess, as to this glorious cupboard. To
what amazing infusions of gentian, peppermint,
gilliflower, sage, parsley, thyme, rue, rosemary,
and dandelion, did his courageous stomach
submit itself! In what wonderful wrappers, en-
closing layers of dried leaves, would he swathe
his rosy and contented face, if his mother sus-
pected him of a toothache! What botanical
blotches would he cheerfully stick upon his
cheek, or forehead, if the dear old lady con-
victed him of an imperceptible pimple there!
Into this herbaceous penitentiary, situated on
an upper staircase-landing,-a low and narrow
whitewashed cell, where bunches of dried leaves
hung from rusty hooks in the ceiling, and were
DANCE-A negro.
D.
The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend
who plays the tambourine, stamp upon the board-
ing of the small raised orchestra in which they
sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six
couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a
lively young negro, who is the wit of the as-
sembly, and the greatest dancer known. He
never leaves off making queer faces, and is the
delight of all the rest, who grin from ear to ear
incessantly. Among the dancers are two young
mulatto girls, with large, black, drooping eyes,
and head-gear after the fashion of the hostess,
who are as shy, or feign to be, as though they
never danced before, and so look down before
the visitors, that their partners can see nothing
but the long, fringed lashes.
But the dance commences. Every gentleman
sets as long as he likes to the opposite lady, and
the opposite lady to him, and all are so long
about it that the sport begins to languish, when
suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the res
cue. Instantly the fiddler grins, and goes at it
tooth and nail; there is new energy in the tam-
bourine; new laughter in the dancers; new smiles
in the landlady; new confidence in the andlord;
DANCE
new brightness in the very candles.
candles. Single
Single
shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut; snap-
ping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his
knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front,
spinning about on his toes and heels like noth-
ing but the man's fingers on the tambourine;
dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two
wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs,-
all sorts of legs and no legs,-what is this to
him? And in what walk of life, or dance of
life, does man ever get such stimulating applause
as thunders about him, when, having danced his
partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes
by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and
calling for something to drink, with the chuckle
of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows in one
inimitable sound!-American Notes, Chap. 6.
DANCE-A country.
Not like opera-dancers. Not at all. And
not like Madame Anybody's finished pupils.
Not the least. It was not quadrille dancing, nor
minuet dancing, nor even country-dance danc-
ing. It was neither in the old style, nor the
new style, nor the French style, nor the English
style; though it may have been, by accident, a
trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free and
joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air
of off-hand inspiration from the chirping little
castanets. As they danced among the orchard
trees, and down the groves of stems and back
again, and twirled each other lightly round and
round, the influence of their airy motion seemed
to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene,
like an expanding circle in the water. Their
streaming hair and fluttering skirts, the elastic
grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled
in the morning air, the flashing leaves, the
speckled shadows on the soft green ground, the
balmy wind that swept along the landscape,
glad to turn the distant windmill cheerily
everything between the two girls and the man
and team at plough upon the ridge of land,
where they showed against the sky as if they
were the last things in the world-seemed-danc-
ing too.—Battle of Life, Chap. 1.
DANCE-A Christmas.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and
went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra
of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In
came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.
In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and
loveable. In came the six young followers whose
hearts they broke. In came all the young men
and women employed in the business. In came
the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In
came the cook, with her brother's particular
friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over
the way, who was suspected of not having board
enough from his master; trying to hide himself
behind the girl from next door but one, who
was proved to have had her ears pulled by her
mistress. In they all came, one after another;
some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some
awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they
all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all
went, twenty couple at once; hands half round
and back again the other way; down the mid-
dle and up again; round and round in various
stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple
always turning up in the wrong place; new top
couple starting off again, as soon as they got
132
|
DANDYISM
there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom
one to help them! When this result was
brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands
to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and
the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of
porter, especially provided for that purpose.
But scorning rest upon his reappearance, he in-
stantly began again, though there were no dan-
cers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried
home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a
bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight,
or perish.-Christmas Carol, Stave 2.
DANCE-A solemn.
We danced for an hour with great gravity;
the melancholy child doing wonders with his
lower extremities, in which there appeared to
be some sense of enjoyment, though it never
rose above his waist.-Bleak House, Chap. 38.
DANCING-A trial to the feelings.
Could he believe his eyes! Mrs. Budger was
dancing with Mr. Tracy Tupman, there was no
mistaking the fact. There was the widow be-
fore him, bouncing bodily here and there, with
unwonted vigor; and Mr. Tracy Tupman hop-
ping about, with a face expressive of the most
intense solemnity, dancing (as a good many peo-
ple do) as if a quadrille were not a thing to be
laughed at, but a severe trial to the feelings,
which it requires inflexible resolution to en-
counter.-Pickwick, Chap. 2.
DANDYISM-In religion and politics.
On Sunday, the chill little church is almost
warmed by so much gallant company, and the
general flavor of the Dedlock dust is quenched
in delicate perfumes.
The brilliant and distinguished circle compre-
hends within it no contracted amount of educa-
tion, sense, courage, honor, beauty, and virtue.
Yet there is something a little wrong about it,
in despite of its immense advantages. What
can it be?
Dandyism? There is no King George the
Fourth now (more's the pity!) to set the dandy
fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel
neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false
calves, no stays. There are no caricatures now,
of effeminate Exquisites so arrayed, swooning
in opera-boxes with excess of delight, and being
revived by other dainty creatures, poking long-
There is
necked scent-bottles at their noses.
no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake
into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the
executions, or who is troubled with the self-
reproach of having once consumed a pea. But
is there Dandyism in the brilliant and distin-
guished circle notwithstanding, Dandyism of a
more mischievous sort, that has got below the
surface, and is doing less harmless things than
jack-towelling itself and stopping its own di-
gestion, to which no rational person need par-
ticularly object?
Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There
are, at Chesney Wold this January week, some
ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who
have set up a Dandyism-in religion, for instance.
Who, in mere lackadaisical want of an emotion,
have agreed upon a little dandy talk about the
Vulgar wanting faith in things in general.
meaning, in the things that have been tried and
found wanting, as though a low fellow should
DANTE
133
unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling, after
finding it out! Who would make the Vulgar
very picturesque and faithful, by putting back
the hands upon the Clock of Time, and cancel-
ling a few hundred years of history.
DEAF AND DUMB
fledged, and I'm not afeerd to perch upon a
scarecrow. If there's Death hid inside of it,
there is, and let him come out, and I'll face him,
and then I'll believe in him and not afore."
Great Expectations, Chap. 40.
DAVID COPPERFIELD-Dickens'
love of.
Of all my books, I like this the best. It will
be easily believed that I am a fond parent to
every child of my fancy, and that no one can
ever love that family as dearly as I love them.
But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart
of hearts a favorite child. And his name is
DAVID COPPERFIELD.—Preface.
DAWN-Description of.
Dawn, with its passionless blank face, steals
shivering to the church beneath which lies the
dust of little Paul and his mother, and looks in
at the windows. It is cold and dark. Night
crouches yet upon the pavement, and broods,
sombre and heavy, in nooks and corners of the
building. The steeple-clock, perched up above
the houses, emerging from beneath another of
the countless ripples in the tide of time that re-
gularly roll and break on the eternal shore, is
grayly visible-like a stone beacon, recording
how the sea flows on; but within doors, dawn,
at first, can only peep at night, and see that it is
there.
There are also ladies and gentlemen of an-
other fashion, not so new, but very elegant, who
have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world,
and to keep down all its realities. For whom
everything must be languid and pretty. Who
have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who
are to rejoice at nothing, and be sorry for
nothing. Who are not to be disturbed by ideas.
On whom even the Fine Arts, attending in pow-
der, and walking backward like the Lord
Chamberlain, must array themselves in the mil-
liners' and tailors' patterns of past generations,
and be particularly careful not to be in earnest,
or to receive any impress from the moving age.
Then there is my Lord Boodle, of consider-
able reputation with his party, who has known
what office is, and who tells Sir Leicester Ded-
lock with much gravity, after dinner, that he
really does not see to what the present age is
tending. A debate is not what a debate used to
be; the House is not what the House used to
be; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was.
He perceives with astonishment, that, supposing
the present Government to be overthrown, the
limited choice of the Crown, in the formation
of a new Ministry, would lie between Lord Hovering feebly round the church, and look-
Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle-supposing it ing in, dawn moans and weeps for its short reign,
to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act and its tears trickle on the window-glass, and
with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the the trees against the church-wall bow their
case in consequence of the breach arising out of heads, and wring their many hands in sympathy.
that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Night, growing pale before it, gradually fades
Home Department and the Leadership of the out of the church, but lingers in the vaults be-
House of Commons to Joodle, the Exche-low, and sits upon the coffins. And now comes
quer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the
Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do
with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presi-
dency of the Council; that is reserved for
Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and
Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle.
What follows? That the country is shipwrecked,
lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to
the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock), because
you can't provide for Noodle!
*
*
*
*
*
In this, too, there is perhaps more Dandyism
at Chesney Wold than the brilliant and distin-
guished circle will find good for itself in the
long run. For it is, even with the stillest and
politest circles, as with the circle the necroman-
cer draws around him-very strange appearances
may be seen in active motion outside. With
this difference; that, being realities and not
phantoms, there is the greater danger of their
breaking in.-Bleak House, Chap. 12.
DANTE-Mr. Sparkler's idea of.
Miss Fanny showed to great advantage on a
sofa, completing Mr. Sparkler's conquest with
some remarks upon Dante-known to that gentle-
man as an eccentric man in the nature of an
Old File, who used to put leaves round his head,
and sit upon a stool for some unaccountable
purpose, outside the cathedral at Florence.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6.
DARING-Death.
"As to what I dare, I'm a old bird now, as has
dared all manner of traps since first he was
bright day, burnishing the steeple-clock, and
reddening the spire, and drying up the tears of
dawn, and stifling its complaining; and the
scared dawn, following the night, and chasing
it from its last refuge, shrinks into the vaults
itself and hides, with a frightened face, among
the dead; until night returns, refreshed, to drive
it out.-Dombey & Son.
(C
DEAF AND DUMB-Their responsibility.
Here, woman," he said, "here's your deaf
and dumb son. You may thank me for restor-
ing him to you. He was brought before me,
this morning, charged with theft; and with any
other boy it would have gone hard, I assure you.
But, as I had compassion on his infirmities, and
thought he might have learnt no better, I have
managed to bring him back to you. Take more
care of him for the future."
"And won't you give me back my son?" said
the other woman, hastily rising and confronting
him. "Won't you give me back my son, sir,
who was transported for the same offence?"
'Was he deaf and dumb, woman?" asked the
gentleman, sternly.
"Was he not, sir?"
You know he was not."
He was," cried the woman.
"He was deaf,
dumb, and blind, to all that was good and right,
from his cradle. Her boy may have learnt no
better! where did mine learn better? where
could he? who was there to teach him better,
or where was it to be learnt ?"
"Peace, woman," said the gentleman, “your
boy was in possession of all his senses.'
DEAD
134
'He was," cried the mother; "and he was
the more easy to be led astray because he had
them. If you save this boy because he may not
know right from wrong, why did you not save
mine who was never taught the difference? You
gentlemen have as good a right to punish her
boy, that God has kept in ignorance of sound
and speech, as you have to punish_mine, that
you kept in ignorance yourselves. How many
of the girls and boys-ah, men and women too
-that are brought before you and you don't
pity, are deaf and dumb in their minds, and go
wrong in that state, and are punished in that
state, body and soul, while you gentlemen are
quarrelling among yourselves whether they ought
to learn this or that!-Be a just man, sir, and
give me back my son."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 45.
DEAD-The memory of.
It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our
nature, that when the heart is touched and soft-
ened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate
feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it
most powerfully and irresistibly. It would al-
most seem as though our better thoughts and
sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the
soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysteri-
ous intercourse with the spirits of those whom
we dearly loved in life. Alas! how often and
how long may those patient angels hover above
us, watching for the spell which is so seldom
uttered, and so soon forgotten.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 43.
DEAD-The influence of the.
<<
'And do you think," said the schoolmaster,
marking the glance she had thrown around,
"that an unvisited grave, a withered tree, a
faded flower or two, are tokens of forgetfulness
or cold neglect? Do you think there are no
deeds, far away from here, in which these dead
may be best remembered? Nell, Nell, there
may be people busy in the world at this instant,
in whose good actions and good thoughts these
very graves-neglected as they look to us-are
the chief instruments."
"Tell me no more," said the child quickly.
"Tell me no more. I feel, I know it. How
could I be unmindful of it, when I thought of
you?"
"There is nothing," cried her friend, "no,
nothing innocent or good, that dies, and is for-
gotten. Let us hold to that faith, or none. An
infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will
live again in the better thoughts of those who
loved it, and will play its part, through them, in
the redeeming actions of the world, though its
body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the
deepest sea. There is not an angel added to
the Host of Heaven but does its blessed work
on earth in those that loved it here. Forgotten!
oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could
be traced to their source, how beautiful would
even death appear; for how much charity,
mercy, and purified affection, would be seen to
have their growth in dusty graves!"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54.
DEAD-Memory of the.
Passion seemed not only to do wrong and
violence to the memory of the dead, but to be
infected by death, and to droop and decline be-
DEAD-HOUSE
side it. All the living knaves and liars in the
world were nothing to the honesty and truth of
one dead friend.—Dombey & Son, Chap. 33
"Wal'r, my dear lad," said the Captain, “fare-
well! Wal'r, my child, my boy, and man, I
loved you! He warn't my flesh and blood,"
said the Captain, looking at the fire—“I an't
got none-but something of what a father feels
when he loses a son, I feel in losing Wal'r. For
why?" said the Captain, "because it an't one
loss, but a round dozen. Where's that there
young schoolboy with the rosy face and curly
hair, that used to be as merry in this here parlor,
come round every week, as a piece of music?
Gone down with Wal'r. Where's that there
fresh lad, that nothing couldn't tire nor put out,
and that sparkled up and blushed so, when we
joked him about Heart's Delight, that he was
beautiful to look at? Gone down with Wal'r.
Where's that there man's spirit, all afire, that
wouldn't see the old man hove down for a min-
ute, and cared nothing for itself? Gone down
with Wal'r. It an't one Wal'r. There was a
dozen Wal'rs that I know'd and loved, all hold-
ing round his neck when he went down, and
they're a-holding round mine now!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 15.
DEAD-The memory of Lady Dedlock.
It is known for certain that the handsome
Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park,
where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the
owl is heard at night making the woods ring;
but whence she was brought home, to be laid
among the echoes of that solitary place, or how
she died, is all mystery. Some of her old
friends, principally to be found among the
peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton
throats, did once occasionally say, as they toyed
in a ghastly manner with large fans-like charm-
ers reduced to flirting with grim Death, after
losing all their other beaux-did once occasion-
ally say, when the World assembled together
that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks,
entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against
the profanation of her company. But the dead-
and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly, and have
never been known to object.
Bleak House, Chap. 66.
DEAD-HOUSE-—In Paris.
Those who have never seen the Morgue may
see it perfectly by presenting to themselves an in-
differently paved coach-house, accessible from
the street by a pair of folding-gates; on the left
of the coach-house, occupying its width, any
large London tailor's or linen-draper's plate-glass
window, reaching to the ground; within the win-
dow, on two rows of inclined planes, what the
coach-house has to show; hanging above, like
irregular stalactites from the roof of a cave, a
quantity of clothes-the clothes of the dead and
buried shows of the coach-house.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 18.
DEAD-HOUSE-The ghosts of the Morgue,
Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by in-
visible force into the Morgue. I never want to
go there, but am always pulled there. One
Christmas day, when I would rather have been
anywhere else, I was attracted in to see an old
gray man lying all alone on his cold bed, with

PALHEL
CHARLES DICKENS LEAVING THE MORGUE.
134
DEATH
135
DEAD
a tap of water turned on over his gray hair, and
running, drip, drip, drip, down his wretched face
until it got to the corner of his mouth, where it
took a turn, and made him look sly. One New
Year's morning (by the same token, the sun was
shining outside, and there was a mountebank,
balancing a feather on his nose, within a yard
of the gate), I was pulled in again to look at a
flaxen-haired boy of eighteen with a heart hang-
ing on his breast,-" From his mother," was en-
graven on it,-who had come into the net across
the river, with a bullet-wound in his fair fore-
head, and his hands cut with a knife, but whence | DEAD-Flowers above the (Little Nell).
or how was a blank mystery. This time I was
forced into the same dread place to see a large,
dark man, whose disfigurement by water was in
a frightful manner comic, and whose expression
was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his
eyelids under a heavy blow, but was going im-
mediately to open them, shake his head, and
"come up smiling." Oh, what this large dark
man cost me in that bright city!
children. It would be difficult to overstate the
intensity and accuracy of an intelligent child's
observation. At that impressible time of life,
it must sometimes produce a fixed impression.
If the fixed impression be of an object terrible
to the child, it will be (for want of reasoning
upon) inseparable from great fear. Force the
child at such a time, be Spartan with it, send it
into the dark against its will, leave it in a lonely
bedroom against its will, and you had better
murder it.-Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 7.
*
*
*
*
Of course I knew perfectly well that the large
dark creature was stone dead, and that I should |
no more come upon him out of the place where
I had seen him dead than I should come upon
the Cathedral of Notre Dame in an entirely new
situation. What troubled me was the picture
of the creature; and that had so curiously and
strongly painted itself upon my brain, that I
could not get rid of it until it was worn out.
I noticed the peculiarities of this possession,
while it was a real discomfort to me. That very
day, at linner, some morsel on my plate looked
like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up
and go out.
*
*
*
*
*
There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an
unusual fragrance in Paris) in the little ante-
room of my apartment at the hotel. The large
dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct
experience associated with my sense of smell,
because, when I came to the knowledge of him,
he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass, as good
as a wall of steel or marble, for that matter.
Yet the whiff of the room never failed to repro-
duce him. What was more curious was the
capriciousness with which his portrait seemed to
light itself up in my mind elsewhere. I might
be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying
the shop windows, and might be regaling myself
with one of the ready-made clothes shops that
are set out there. My eyes, wandering over im-
possible-waisted dressing-gowns, and luminous
waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the
shopman, or even the very dummy at the door,
and would suggest to me, "something like
him!"—and instantly I was sickened again.
This would happen at the theatre in the same
manner. Often it would happen in the street,
when I certainly was not looking for the like-
ness, and when probably there was no likeness
there. It was not because the creature was dead
that I was so haunted, because I know that I
might have been (and I know it because I have
been) equally attended by the image of a living
aversion. This lasted about a week. The pic-
ture did not fade by degrees, in the sense that
it became a whit less forcible and distinct, but
in the sense that it obtruded itself less and
less frequently. The experience may be
worth considering by some who have the care of
"You were telling me," she said, "about
your gardening. Do you ever plant things
here?"
In the churchyard?" returned the sexton.
Not I."
"I have seen some flowers and little shrubs
about," the child rejoined; "there are some
over there, you see. I thought they were of
your rearing, though indeed they grow but
poorly."
"They grow as Heaven wills," said the old
man; "and it kindly ordains that they shall
never flourish here."
"I do not understand you."
Why, this it is," said the sexton. "They
mark the graves of those who had very tender,
loving friends."
"I was sure they did!" the child exclaimed.
"I am very glad to know they do!"
Aye," returned the old man, "but stay.
Look at them. See how they hang their heads,
and droop, and wither. Do you guess the rea-
son?"
""
No," the child replied.
"Because the memory of those who lie be-
low passes away so soon. At first they tend
them, morning, noon, and night; they soon be-
gin to come less frequently; from once a day,
to once a week; from once a week, to once a
month; then, at long and uncertain intervals ›
then, not at all. Such tokens seldom flourish
long. I have known the briefest summer flow-
ers outlive them."
"
I grieve to hear it," said the child.
"Ah! so say the gentlefolks who come down
here to look about them," returned the old
man, shaking his head, "but I say otherwise.
It's a pretty custom you have in this part of
the country,' they say to me sometimes, 'to
plant the graves, but it's melancholy to see
these things all withering or dead.' I crave
their pardon and tell them that, as I take it,
'tis a good sign for the happiness of the living.
And so it is. It's nature.
<<
Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the
blue sky by day, and to the stars by night, and
to think that the dead are there, and not in
graves," said the child in an earnest voice.
Perhaps so," replied the old man doubt-
It may be."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54.
fully.
DEAD-Of a city.
Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society
for another quarter of an hour; suggesting a
wonderful procession of its dead among the
dark arches and pillars, each century more
amazed by the century following it than by all
the centuries going before. And indeed it was
a solemn consideration what enormous hosts of
DEATH
dead belong to one old great city, and how, if
they were raised while the living slept, there
would not be the space of a pin's point in all the
streets and ways for the living to come out into.
Not only that, but the vast armies of dead
would overflow the hills and valleys beyond the
city, and would stretch away all round it, God
knows how far.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13.
DEATH-Thoughts of.
136
The golden water she remembered on the
wall, appeared to Florence only as a current
flowing on to rest, and to a region where the
dear ones, gone before, were waiting, hand in
hand; and often, when she looked upon the
darker river rippling at her feet, she thought |
with awful wonder, but not terror, of that river
which her brother had so often said was bear-
ing him away.-Dombey & Son.
DEATH-Scenes before the funeral.
There is a hush through Mr. Dombey's house.
Servants gliding up and down-stairs rustle but
make no sound of footsteps. They talk togeth-
er constantly, and sit long at meals, making
much of their meat and drink, and enjoying
themselves after a grim, unholy fashion. Mrs.
Wickam, with her eyes suffused with tears, re-
lates melancholy anecdotes; and tells them
how she always said at Mrs. Pipchin's that it
would be so; and takes more table-ale than
usual; and is very sorry but sociable. Cook's
state of mind is similar. She promises a little
fry for supper, and struggles about equally
against her feelings and the onions. Towlin-
son begins to think there's a fate in it, and
wants to know if anybody can tell him of any
good that ever came of living in a corner house.
It seems to all of them as having happened a
long time ago; though yet the child lies, calm
and beautiful, upon his little bed.
After dark there come some visitors-noise-
less visitors, with shoes of felt-who have been
there before; and with them comes that bed of
rest which is so strange a one for infant sleep-
ers. All this time, the bereaved father has not
been seen even by his attendant; for he sits in
an inner corner of his own dark room when
any one is there, and never seems to move at
other times, except to pace it to and fro. But
in the morning it is whispered among the house-
hold that he was heard to go up stairs in the
dead night, and that he stayed there-in the
room-until the sun was shining.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 18.
DEATH-Scenes after funeral.
|
DEATH
she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman
had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they
had quite worn the subject out, and began to
think their mourning was wearing rusty too.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
DEATH-A levelling upstart.
The Honorable Mrs. Skewton, like many
genteel persons who have existed at various
times, set her face against death altogether,
and objected to the mention of any such low
and levelling upstart.-Dombey & Son, Ch. 30.
DEATH-Of a remorseful woman.
Night after night, the light burns in the win-
dow, and the figure lies upon the bed, and
Edith sits beside it, and the restless waves are
calling to them both the whole night long.
Night after night, the waves are hoarse with
repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled
upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover;
the winds and clouds are on their trackless
flight; the white arms beckon, in the moon-
light, to the invisible country far away.
And still the sick old woman looks into the
corner, where the stone arm-part of a figure
of some tomb, she says-is raised to strike her.
At last it falls; and then a dumb old woman
lies upon the bed, and she is crooked and
shrunk up, and half of her is dead.
Such is the figure, painted and patched for
the sun to mock, that is drawn slowly through
the crowd from day to day; looking, as it goes,
for the good old creature who was such a mother,
and making mouths as it peers among the crowd
in vain. Such is the figure that is often wheeled
down to the margin of the sea, and stationed
there: but on which no wind can blow fresh-
ness, and for which the murmur of the ocean
has no soothing word. She lies and listens to
it by the hour; but its speech is dark and
gloomy to her, and a dread is on her face, and
when her eyes wander over the expanse, they
see but a broad stretch of desolation between
earth and heaven.
**
*
*
*
*
A shadow even on that shadowed face, a
sharpening even of the sharpened features,
and a thickening of the veil before the eyes
into a pall that shuts out the dim world, is
come. Her wandering hands upon the cover-
let join feebly palm to palm, and move towards
her daughter; and a voice not like hers-not
like any voice that speaks our mortal language
-says, "For I nursed you!"
*
*
*
*
*
Edith touches the white lips, and for a mo-
ment all is still. A moment afterwards, her
mother, with her girlish laugh, and the skeleton
of the Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed.
Draw the rose-colored curtains. There is
something else upon its flight besides the wind
and clouds. Draw the rose-colored curtains
close !—Dombey & Son, Chap. 41.
DEATH-And stamina.
The funeral of the deceased lady having
been "performed" to the entire satisfaction of
the undertaker, as well as of the neighborhood
at large, which is generally disposed to be cap-
tious on such a point, and is prone to take of-
fence at any omissions or shortcomings in the
ceremonies, the various members of Mr. Dom-
bey's household subsided into their several
places in the domestic system. That small Damme, Sir, she never wrapped up enough,
world, like the great one out of doors, had the If a man don't wrap up," said the Major, taking
capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and in another button of his buff waistcoat, "he
when the cook had said she was a quiet-tem-has nothing to fall back upon. But some peo-
pered lady, and the housekeeper had said it was
the common lot, and the butler had said who'd
have thought it, and the housemaid had said
ple will die. They will do it. Damme, they
will. They're obstinate. I tell you what,
Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may not
may
DEATH
be refined; it be rough and tough; but a
little of the genuine old English Bagstock sta-
mina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to
the human breed."
After imparting this precious piece of in-
formation, the Major, who was certainly true-
blue, whatever other endowments he may have
possessed or wanted, coming within "genuine
old English" classification, which has never
been exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes
and his apoplexy to the club, and choked there
all day.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 40.
DEATH-Of the good.
Oh! cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up
thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors
as thou hast at thy command; for this is thy
dominion! But of the loved, revered, and hon-
ored head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy
dread purposes, or make one feature odious.
It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall
down when released; it is not that the heart
and pulse are still; but that the hand was open,
generous, and true; the heart, brave, warm,
and tender; and t'e pulse a man's. Strike,
Shadow strike! And see his good deeds
springing from the wound, to sow the world
with life immortal!-Christmas Carol, Stave 4.
DEATH-The approach of.
137
DEATH
Even so.
one day make his journey?
Who
shall say, that I may not then be tortured by
such late regrets: that I may not then look
from my exile on my empty place and undone
work? I stand upon a seashore, where the
waves are years. They break and fall, and I
may little heed them: but, with every wave the
sea is rising, and I know that it will float me
on this traveller's voyage at last.
The Long Voyage-Reprinted Pieces.
DEATH-The discovery of its approach.
When I took her up, and felt that she was
lighter in my arms, a dead, blank feeling came
upon me, as if I were approaching to some
frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life
David Copperfield, Chap. 48.
DEATH-The inequality of.
Stephen added to his other thoughts the
stern reflection, that of all the casualties of
this existence upon earth, not one was dealt
out with so unequal a hand as Death. The in-
equality of Birth was nothing to it. For, say
that the child of a King and the child of a
Weaver were born to-night in the same moment,
what was that disparity to the death of any hu-
man creature who was serviceable to, or beloved
by, another, while this abandoned woman lived
on!-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 13.
DEATH-Not to be frightened by.
It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for
the approach of death; to know that hope is
gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and "The sun sets every day, and people die every
count the dreary hours through long, long minute, and we mustn't be scared by the com-
nights-such nights as only watchers by the mon lot. If we failed to hold our own, because
bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to that equal foot at all men's doors was heard
hear the dearest secrets of the heart-the pent-knocking somewhere, every object in this world
up, hidden secrets of many years-poured forth would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-
by the unconscious, helpless being before you; shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do,
and to think how little the reserve and cunning but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and
of a whole life will avail, when fever and deli-win the race!"—David Copperfield, Chap. 28.
rium 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.-Tales, Chap. 12.
DEATH-Thoughts on the approach of.
There were many things he had neglected.
Little matters while he was at home and sur-
rounded by them, but things of mighty moment
when he was at an immeasurable distance.
There were many, many blessings that he had
inadequately felt, there were many trivial inju-
ries that he had not forgiven, there was love
that he had but poorly returned, there was
friendship that he had too lightly prized; there
were a million kind words that he might have
spoken, a million kind looks that he might
have given, uncountable slight easy deeds in
which he might have been most truly great and
good. O for a day (he would exclaim), for but
one day to make amends! But the sun never
shone upon that happy day, and out of his re-
mote captivity he never came.
DEATH-Its expressions.
It was no unfit messenger of death that had
disturbed the quiet of the matron's room.
Her
body was bent by age; her limbs trembled
with palsy; and her face, distorted into a
mumbling leer, resembled more the grotesque
shaping of some wild pencil, than the work of
Nature's hand.
Alas! how few of Nature's faces are left to
gladden us with their beauty! The cares, and
sorrows, and hungerings, of the world change
them as they change hearts; and it is only
when those passions sleep, and have lost their
hold forever, that the troubled clouds pass off,
and leave Heaven's surface clear. It is a com-
mon thing for the countenances of the dead,
even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside
into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping
infancy, and settle into the very look of early
life; so calm, so peaceful do they grow again,
that those who knew them in their happy child-
hood kneel by the coffin's side in awe, and see
the Angel even upon earth.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 24.
DEATH-Of Stephen Blackpool.
Rachael, my dear."
66
She took his hand. He smiled again and
said, "Don't let 't go."
Why does this traveller's fate obscure, on
New Year's Eve, the other histories of travel-
lers with which my mind was filled but now,
and cast a solemn shadow over me! Must Iphen?"
"Thou'rt in great pain, my own dear Ste
DEATH
"I ha' been, but not now. I ha' been-
dreadful, and dree, and long, my dear—but 'tis
ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle! Fro'
first to last, a muddle!"
The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as
he said the word.
138
DEATH
"
"I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee,
Stephen, all the way.'
"Bless thee! Will soombody be pleased to
coover my face!"
They carried him very gently along the fields,
and down the lanes, and over the wide land-
scape; Rachael always holding the hand in hers.
Very few whispers broke the mournful silence.
It was soon a funeral procession. The star had
shown him where to find the God of the poor;
and through humility, and sorrow, and forgive
Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 6.
DEATH-In the street.
"I ha' fell into th' pit, my dear, as have cost
wi'in the knowledge o' old folk now livin', hun-
dreds and hundreds o' men's lives-fathers,
sons, brothers, dear to thousands an' thousands,
an' keeping 'em fro' want and hunger. I ha'
fell into a pit that ha' been wi' th' Fire-dampness, he had gone to his Redeemer's rest.
crueller than battle. I ha' read on't in the
public petition, as onny one may read, fro' the
men that works in pits, in which they ha'
pray'n an' pray'n the law-makers for Christ's
sake not to let their work be murder to 'em,
but to spare 'em for th' wives and children that
they loves as well as gentlefolk loves theirs.
When it were in work, it killed wi'out need;
when 'tis let alone, it kills wi'out need. See
how we die an' no need, one way an' another—
in a muddle-every day!"
He faintly said it, without any anger against
any one. Merely as the truth.
"Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not for-
got her. Thou'rt not like to forget her now,
and me so nigh her. Thou know'st-poor,
patient, suff'rin' dear-how thou didst work for
her, seet'n all day long in her little chair at thy
winder, and how she died, young and misshap-
en, awlung o' sickly air as had'n no need to be,
an awlung o' working people's miserable homes.
A muddle! Aw a muddle!"
Louisa approached him; but he could not
see her, lying with his face turned up to the
night sky.
"If aw th' things that tooches us, my dear,
was not so muddled, I should'n ha' had'n need
to coom heer. If we was not in a muddle
among ourseln, I should'n ha' been by my own
fellow-weavers and workin' brothers, so mis-
took. If Mr. Bounderby had ever know'd me
right—if he'd ever know'd me at aw-he would'n
ha' took'n offence wi' me. He would'n ha' sus-
pect'n me. But look up yonder, Rachael! Look
aboove!"
Following his eyes, she saw that he was gaz-
ing at a star.
"It ha' shined upon me," he said reverently,
'in my pain and trouble down below. It ha'
shined into my mind. I ha' look'n at't an'
thowt o' thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my
mind have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope."
*
*
*
*
*
*
The bearers being now ready to carry him
away, and the surgeon being anxious for his re-
moval, those who had torches or lanterns, pre-
pared to go in front of the litter. Before it was
raised, and while they were arranging how to
go, he said to Rachael, looking upward at the
star:
"Often as I coom to myseln, and found it
shinin on me down there in my trouble, I thowt
it were the star as guided to Our Saviour's home.
I awmust think it be the very star!"
They lifted him up, and he was overjoyed to
find that they were about to take him in the
direction whither the star seemed to him to
lead.
66
Rachael beloved lass! Don't let go my
hand. We may walk toogether t'night, my
dear!"
As the load was put down in the street, Riah
drew the head of the party aside, and whispered
that he thought the man was dying. "No, surely
not?" returned the other. But he became less
confident, on looking, and directed the bearers
to "bring him to the nearest doctor's shop."
Thither he was brought; the window becom-
ing from within a wall of faces, deformed into
all kinds of shapes through the agency of glo-
bular red bottles, green bottles, blue bottles
and other colored bottles. A ghastly light
shining upon him that he did'nt need, the beast
so furious but a few minutes gone, was quiet,
enough now, with a strange mysterious writing
on his face, reflected from one of the great bot-
tles, as if Death had marked him: "Mine."
The medical testimony was more precise and
more to the purpose than it sometimes is in a
Court of Justice. "You had better send for
something to cover it. All's over."
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 9.
DEATH-Of Quilp.
"If I could find a wall or fence," said the
dwarf, stretching out his arms, and walking
slowly on, "I should know which way to turn.
A good, black, devil's night this, to have my
dear friend here! If I had but that wish, it
might, for anything I cared, never be day again."
As the word passed his lips, he staggered and
fell-and next moment was fighting with the
cold, dark water!
For all its bubbling up and rushing in his
ears, he could hear the knocking at the gate
again-could hear a shout that followed it-
could recognize the voice. For all his strug-
gling and plashing, he could understand that
they had lost their way, and had wandered back
to the point from which they started; that they
were all but looking on, while he was drowned;
that they were close at hand, but could not make
an effort to save him; that he himself had shut
and barred them out. He answered the shout
with a yell, which seemed to make the hun-
dred fires that danced before his eyes tremble
and flicker, as if a gust of wind had stirred them.
It was of no avail. The strong tide filled his
throat, and bore him on upon its rapid current.
Another mortal struggle, and he was up again,
beating the water with his hands, and looking
out with wild and glaring eyes, that showed him
some black object he was drifting close upon.
The hull of a ship! He could touch its smooth
and slippery surface with his hand. One loud
cry now-but the resistless water bore him down
before he could give it utterance, and, driving
him under it, carried away a corpse.
It toyed and sported with its ghastly freight
DEATH
now bruising it against the slimy piles, now hid-
ing it in mud or long rank grass, now dragging
it heavily over rough stones and gravel, now
feigning to yield it to its own element, and in
the same action luring it away, until, tired of the
ugly plaything, it flung it on a swamp-a dis-
mal place, where pirates had swung in chains,
through many a wintry night—and left it there
to bleach.
And there it lay, alone. The sky was red
with flame, and the water that bore it there had
been tinged with the sullen light as it flowed
along. The place the deserted carcass had left
so recently, a living man, was now a blazing
ruin. There was something of the glare upon
its face. The hair, stirred by the damp breeze,
played in a kind of mockery of death such a
mockery as the dead man himself would have
delighted in when alive—about its head, and its
dress fluttered idly in the night wind.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 67.
DEATH,Of Mrs. Weller. (Mr. Weller's let-
ter.)
"Never mind my eyes; you had much better
read your letter," said the pretty housemaid; and
as she said so, she made the eyes twinkle with
such slyness and beauty that they were perfectly
irresistible.
Sam refreshed himself with a kiss, and read
as follows:
"Markis Gran
"My dear Sammle.
By dorken
Wensdy.
139
DEATH
DEATH OF THE RICH MAN-Its cause.
"Pressure.”
The report that the great man was dead, got
about with astonishing rapidity. At first, he was
dead of all the diseases that ever were known,
and of several bran-new maladies invented with
the speed of Light to meet the demand of the oc-
casion. He had concealed a dropsy from in-
fancy, he had inherited a large estate of water
on the chest from his grandfather, he had had
an operation performed upon him every morning
of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject
to the explosion of important veins in his body
after the manner of fireworks, he had had some-
thing the matter with his lungs, he had had
something the matter with his heart, he had had
something the matter with his brain. Five hun-
dred people who sat down to breakfast entirely
uninformed on the whole subject, believed
before they had done breakfast, that they private-
ly and personally knew Physician to have said
to Mr. Merdle, "You must expect to go out,
some day, like the snuff of a candle," and that
they knew Mr. Merdle to have said to Physician,
“A man can die but once." By about eleven
o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter
with the brain, became the favorite theory
against the field; and by twelve the something
had been distinctly ascertained to be "Pressure.
Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the
public mind, and seemed to make everybody so
comfortable, that it might have lasted all day
but for Bar's having taken the real state of the
case into Court at half-past nine. This led to
"I am wery sorry to have the plessure of bein its beginning to be currently whispered all over
a Bear of ill news your Mother in law cort cold London by about one, that Mr. Merdle had kill-
consekens of imprudently settin too long on the ed himself. Pressure, however, so far from be-
damp grass in the rain a hearin of a shepherding overthrown by the discovery, became a
who warnt able to leave off till late at night
owen to his havin vound his-self up with brandy
and vater and not being able to stop his-self till
he got a little sober which took a many hours to
do the doctor says that if she'd svallo'd varm
brandy and vater artervards insted of afore she
mightn't have been no vus her veels wos im-
medetly greased and everythink done to set her
agoin as could be inwented your farther had
hopes as she vould have vorked round as usual
but just as she wos a turnen the corner my boy
she took the wrong road and vent down hill vith
a welocity you never see and notvithstandin that
the drag wos put on drectly by the medikel man
it wornt of no use at all for she paid the last
pike at twenty minutes afore six o'clock yester-
day evenin havin done the journey wery much
under the reglar time vich praps was partly owen
to her havin taken in wery little luggage by the
vay your father says that if you vill come and
see me Sammy he vill take it as a wery great
favor for I am wery lonely Samivel n b he vill
have it spelt that vay vich I say ant right and
as there is sich a many things to settle he is
sure your guvner wont object of course he vill
not Sammy for I knows him better so he sends
his dooty in which I join and an Samivel in-
fernally yours
"TONY VELLER."
"Wot a incomprehensible letter," said Sam;
"who's to know wot it means, vith all this he-
ing and I-ing! It ain't my father's writin', 'cept
this here signater in print letters; that's his.'
Pickwick, Chap. 52.
|
greater favorite than ever. There was a general
moralizing upon Pressure, in every street. All
the people who had tried to make money and
had not been able to do it, said, There you were!
You no sooner began to devote yourself to the
pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure. The
idle people improved the occasion in a similar
manner. See, said they, what you brought your-
self to by work, work, work! You persisted in
working, you overdid it, Pressure came on, and
you were done for! This consideration was
very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more
so than among the young clerks and partners
who had never been in the slightest danger of
overdoing it. These one and all declared, quite
piously, that they hoped they would never forget
the warning as long as they lived, and that their
conduct might be so regulated as to keep off
Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their
friends, for many years.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 25.
DEATH-Of the prisoner.
It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a
number of stump bedsteads made of iron: on
one of which lay stretched the shadow of a man ;
wan, pale, and ghastly. His breathing was hard
and thick, and he moaned painfully as it came
and went. At the bedside sat a short old man
in a cobbler's apron, who, by the aid of a pair
of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible
aloud. It was the fortunate legatee.
The sick man laid his hand upon his attend-
ant's arm, and motioned him to stop. He closed
the book, and laid it on the bed.
DEATH
140
"Open the window," said the sick man.
He did so.
The noise of carriages and carts,
the rattle of wheels, the cries of men and boys,
all the busy sounds of a mighty multitude in-
stinct with life and occupation, blended into one
deep murmur, floated into the room. Above the
hoarse loud hum, arose, from time to time, a
boisterous laugh; or a scrap of some jingling
song, shouted forth by one of the giddy crowd,
would strike upon the ear, for an instant, and
then be lost amidst the roar of voices and the
tramp of footsteps; the breaking of the billows
of the restless sea of life, that rolled heavily on,
without. Melancholy sounds to a quiet listener
at any time; how melancholy to the watcher by
the bed of death!
"There is no air here," said the sick man,
faintly. "The place pollutes it. It was fresh
round about, when I walked there, years ago;
but it grows hot and heavy in passing these walls.
I cannot breathe it.
""
"We have breathed it together for a long
time," said the old man. Come, come.'
There was a short silence, during which the
two spectators approached the bed. The sick
man drew a hand of his old fellow-prisoner to-
wards him, and pressing it affectionately between
both his own, retained it in his grasp.
I hope," he gasped after a while: so faintly
that they bent their ears close over the bed to
catch the half-formed sounds his pale lips gave
vent to: "I hope my merciful Judge will bear
in mind my heavy punishment on earth. Twenty
years, my friend, twenty years in this hideous
grave! My heart broke when my child died,
and I could not even kiss him in his little coffin.
My loneliness since then, in all this noise and
riot, has been very dreadful. May God forgive
me! He has seen my solitary, lingering death."
He folded his hands, and murmuring some
thing more they could not hear, fell into a sleep
only a sleep at first, for they saw him smile.
They whispered together for a little time, and
the turnkey, stooping over the pillow, drew has
tily back.
"He has got his discharge, by G-!"
said the man.
He had. But he had grown so like death in
life, that they knew not when he died.
Pickwick, Chap. 44.
DEATH-Of Little Nell.
She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and
calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look
upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the
hand of God, and waiting for the breath of life;
not one who had lived and suffered death.
Her couch was dressed with here and there
some winter berries and green leaves gathered
in a spot she had been used to favor.
"When
I die, put near me something that has loved the
light, and had the sky above it always." Those
were her words.
She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble
Nell was dead. Her little bird-a poor slight
thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed
-was stirring nimbly in its cage; and the strong
heart of its child mistress was mute and motion-
less for ever.
Where were the traces of her early cares, her
sufferings, and fatigues? All gone. Sorrow
was dead indeed in her, but peace and perfect
happiness were born; imaged in her tranquil
beauty and profound repose.
DEATH
And still her former self lay there, unaltered
in this change. Yes. The old fireside had
smiled upon that same sweet face; it had passed,
like a dream, through haunts of misery and
care; at the door of the poor schoolmaster on
the summer evening, before the furnace fire upon
the cold, wet night, at the still bed-side of the
dying boy, there had been the same mild, lovely
look. So shall we know the angels in their
majesty after death.
The old man held one languid arm in his, and
had the small hand tight folded to his breast,
for warmth. It was the hand she had stretched
out to him with her last smile-the hand that
led him on, through all their wanderings.
Ever and anon he pressed it to his lips; then
hugged it to his breast again, murmuring that it
was warmer now; and, as he said it, he looked,
in agony, to those who stood around, as if im-
ploring them to help her.
She was dead, and past all help, or need of
it. The ancient rooms she had seemed to fill
with life, even while her own was waning fast-
the garden she had tended-the eyes she had
gladdened-the noiseless haunts of many a
thoughtful hour-the paths she had trodden as it
were but yesterday-could know her never more.
"It is not," said the schoolmaster, as he bent
down to kiss her on the cheek, and gave his
tears free vent, "it is not on earth that Hea-
ven's justice ends. Think what earth is, com-
pared with the World to which her young spirit
has winged its early flight; and say, if one de-
liberate wish expressed in solemn terms above
this bed could call her back to life, which of us
would utter it!"
*
*
*
*
*
*
"She is sleeping soundly," he said; "but no
wonder. Angel hands have strewn the ground
deep with snow, that the lightest footstep may
be lighter yet; and the very birds are dead,
that they may not wake her. She used to feed
them, sir. Though never so cold and hungry,
the timid things would fly from us. They never
flew from her!"
Again he stopped to listen, and scarcely
drawing breath, listened for a long, long time.
That fancy past, he opened an old chest, took
out some clothes as fondly as if they had been
living things, and began to smooth and brush
them with his hand.
Why dost thou lie so idle there, dear Nell,"
he murmured, "when there are bright red ber-
ries out of doors waiting for thee to pluck them!
Why dost thou lie so idle there, when thy little
friends come creeping to the door, crying 'where
is Nell-sweet Nell?'-and sob, and weep, be-
cause they do not see thee. She was always
gentle with children. The wildest would do
her bidding-she had a tender way with them
indeed she had!"
Old Curiosity Shop. Chap. 71.
DEATH-Of the young.
'Oh! it is hard to take to heart
The lesson that such deaths will teach,
But let no man reject it,
For it is one that all must learn,
And is a mighty, universal Truth.
When Death strikes down the innocent and young
For every fragile form from which he lets
The parting spirit free,
A hundred virtues rise,
In shapes of mercy, charity, and love,
To walk the world and bless it.
DEATH
Of every tear
That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves
Some good is born, some gentler nature comes.
Old Curiosity Shop.
DEATH-By starvation.
"
The man's face was thin and very pale; his
hair and beard were grizzly; his eyes were
bloodshot. The old woman's face was wrinkled;
her two remaining teeth protruded over her un-
der lip; and her eyes were bright and piercing.
Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the
man. They seemed so like the rats he had seen
outside.
Nobody shall go near her," said the man,
starting fiercely up, as the undertaker approached
the recess. Keep back! d-n you, keep back,
if you've a life to lose!"
"Nonsense, my good man," said the under-
taker, who was pretty well used to misery in all
its shapes. "Nonsense!"
"I tell you," said the man; clinching his
hands, and stamping furiously on the floor,-
"I tell you I won't have her put into the ground.
She couldn't rest there. The worms would
worry her-not eat her-she is so worn away."
<<
141
I
The undertaker offered no reply to this rav-
ing; but, producing a tape from his pocket,
knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.
Ah!" said the man, bursting into tears,
and sinking on his knees at the feet of the dead
woman; kneel down, kneel down-kneel
round her, every one of you, and mark my
words! I say she was starved to death. Ι
never knew how bad she was, till the fever
came upon her; and then her bones were start-
ing through the skin. There was neither fire
nor candle; she died in the dark-in the dark!
She couldn't even see her children's faces,
though we heard her gasping out their names.
I begged for her in the streets; and they sent
me to prison. When I came back, she was
dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried
up, for they starved her to death. I swear it
before the God that saw it! They starved her!"
He twined his hands in his hair; and, with a
loud scream, rolled grovelling upon the floor:
his eyes fixed, and the foam covering his lips.
The terrified children cried bitterly; but the
old woman, who had hitherto remained as quiet
as if she had been wholly deaf to all that passed,
menaced them into silence. Having unloosed
the cravat of the man, who still remained ex-
tended on the ground, she tottered toward the
undertaker.
"
"She was my daughter," said the old woman,
nodding her head in the direction of the corpse,
and speaking with an idiotic leer, more ghastly
than even the presence of death in such a place.
Lord, Lord! Well, it is strange that I, who
gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should
be alive and merry now, and she lying there; so
cold and stiff! Lord, Lord!-to think of it ;-
it's as good as a play-as good as a play!"
DEATH
A
frame, fought like a strong devil, mad to be re
leased, and rent its ancient prison-house.
young man in the fullness of his vigor, struggling
with so much strength of desperation, would
have been a dismal sight; but an old, old,
shrunken body, endowed with preternatural
might, and giving the lie in every motion of its
every limb and joint to its enfeebled aspect, was
a hideous spectacle indeed.
*
*
*
*
*
On his livid face, and on his horny hands,
and in his glassy eyes, and traced by an eternal
finger in the very drops of sweat upon his brow,
was one word-Death.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 18.
DEATH-Weller's philosophy at his loss.
"Sammy," said Mr. Weller, "you're vel-
come."
"I've been a callin' to you half a dozen
times," said Sam, hanging his hat on a peg,
"but you didn't hear me.
"3
"No, Sammy," replied. Mr. Weller, again
looking thoughtfully at the fire. "I was in a
referee, Sammy."
"Wot about?" inquired Sam, drawing his
chair up to the fire.
"In a referee, Sammy," replied the elder Mr.
Weller, "regarding her, Samivel." Here Mr.
Weller jerked his head in the direction of Dor-
king churchyard, in mute explanation that his
words referred to the late Mrs. Weller.
"I wos a thinkin', Sammy," said Mr. Weller,
eyeing his son, with great earnestness, over his
pipe; as if to assure him that however extraor
dinary and incredible the declaration might ap-
pear, it was nevertheless calmly and deliberately
uttered. "I wos a thinkin', Sammy, that upon
the whole I wos wery sorry she wos gone."
"Vell, and so you ought to be," replied Sam.
Mr. Weller nodded his acquiescence in the
sentiment, and again fastening his eyes on the
fire, shrouded himself in a cloud, and mused
deeply.
*
*
*
*
*
"Vell," said Sam, venturing to offer a little
homely consolation, after the lapse of three or
four minutes, consumed by the old gentleman in
slowly shaking his head from side to side, and
solemnly smoking; "vell, gov'ner, ve must all
come to it, one day or another."
"So we must, Sammy," said Mr. Weller the
elder.
"There's a Providence in it all," said Sam.
"O' course there is," replied his father, with a
nod of grave approval. "Wot 'ud become of the
undertakers vithout it, Sammy?"
Lost in the immense field of conjecture opened
by this reflection, the elder Mr. Weller laid his
pipe on the table, and stirred the fire with a
meditative vision.-Pickwick, Chap. 52.
DEATH-Of “Jo.”
Jo is very glad to see his old friend; and says,
when they are left alone, that he takes it uncom-
mon kind as Mr. Sangsby should come so fa
out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr.
Sangsby, touched by the spectacle before him,
immediately lays upon the table half-a-crown ;
that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 5.
DEATH-In old age (Anthony Chuzzlewit).
He had fallen from his chair in a fit, and lay
there, battling for each gasp of breath, with
every shrivelled vein and sinew starting in its
place, as if it were bent on bearing witness to
his age, and sternly pleading with Nature against
his recovery. It was frightful to see how the
principle of life, shut up within his withered | sympathy.
"And how do you find yourself, my poor
lad?" inquires the stationer, with his cough of
DEATH
142
"I am in luck, Mr. Sangsby, I am," returns
Jo, "and don't want for nothink. I'm more
cumfbler nor you can't think. Mr. Sangsby !
I'm wery sorry that I done it, but I didn't go fur
to do it, sir."
The stationer softly lays down another half-
crown, and asks him what it is that he is sorry
for having done ?
"Mr. Sangsby," says Jo, "I went and giv a
illness to the lady as wos and yit as warn't the
t'other lady, and none of 'em never says no-
think to me for having done it, on accounts of
their being ser good and my having been s'un-
fortnet. The lady come herself and see me
yesday, and she ses, 'Ah Jo!' she ses. 'We
thought we'd lost you, Jo!' she ses. And she
sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don't pass a
word nor yit a look upon me for having done it,
she don't, and I turns again the wall, I doos, Mr.
Sangsby. And Mr. Jarnders, I see him a-forced
to turn away his own self. And Mr. Woodcot,
he come fur to giv me somethink fur to ease me,
wot he's allus a-doin on day and night, and wen
he come a-bendin over me and a-speakin up so
bold, I see his tears a-fallin, Mr. Sangsby."
The softened stationer deposits another half-
crown on the table. Nothing less than a repe-
tition of that infallible remedy would relieve his
feelings.
เ
Wot I wos a-thinkin on, Mr. Sangsby," pro-
ceeds Jo, "wos, as you wos able to write wery
large, p'raps?"
Yes, Jo, please God," returns the stationer.
"Uncommon precious large, p'raps?" says
Jo, with eagerness.
"Yes, my poor boy."
Jo laughs with pleasure. "Wot I wos a-
thinking on then, Mr. Sangsby, wos, that when
I wos moved on as fur as ever I could go and
couldn't be moved no furder, whether you might
be so good p'raps, as to write out, wery large, so
that any one could see it anywheres, as that I
wos wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and
that I never went fur to do it; and that though
I didn't know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr.
Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved
over it, and that I hoped as he'd be able to for-
give me in his mind. If the writin could be
made to say it wery large, he might."
It shall say it, Jo. Very large."
Jo laughs again. "Thankee, Mr. Sangsby.
It's wery kind of you, sir, and it makes me more
cumfbler nor I wos afore."
DEATH
cast in the web of very different lives. There,
too, the trooper is a frequent visitor, filling the
doorway with his athletic figure, and, from is
superfluity of life and strength, seeming to sned
down temporary vigor upon Jo, who never fails
to speak more robustly in answer to his cheer-
ful words.
Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and
Allan Woodcourt, newly arrived, stands by him,
looking down upon his wasted form. After a
while he softly seats himself upon the bedside
with his face towards him-just as he sat in the
law-writer's room-and touches his chest and
heart. The cart had very nearly given up, but
labors on a little more.
The trooper stands in the doorway, still and
silent. Phil has stopped in a low clinking noise,
with his little hammer in his hand. Mr. Wood-
court looks round with that grave professional
interest and attention on his face, and, glancing
significantly at the trooper, signs to Phil to
carry his table out. When the little hammer
is next used, there will be a speck of rust
upon it.
Well, Jo! What is the matter? Don't be
frightened."
I thought," says Jo, who has started, and is
looking round, "I thought I was in Tom-all-
Alone's agin. Ain't there nobody here but you,
Mr. Woodcot?"
"Nobody."
"And I ain't took back to Tom-all-Alone's.
Am I, sir?"
"No." Jo closes his eyes, muttering, "I'm
wery thankful."
After watching him closely a little while,
Allan puts his mouth very near his ear, and says
to him in a low, distinct voice:
Jo! Did you ever know a prayer?"
"Never knowd nothink, sir."
"Not so much as one short prayer?
No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands
he wos a-prayin wunst at Mr. Sangsby's and I
heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin
to hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but
I couldn't make out nothink on it. Different
times, there wos other genlmen come down
Tom-All-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly
sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong, and all
mostly sounded to be a-talking to theirselves, or
a passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin
to us. We never knowd nothink. I never
knowd what it wos all about.'
"}
The meek little stationer, with a broken and It takes him a long time to say this; and few
unfinished cough, slips down his fourth half- but an experienced and attentive listener could
crown-he has never been so close to a case re-hear, or, bearing, understand him. After a short
quiring so many-and is fain to depart. And
Jo and he, upon this little earth, shall meet no
more. No more.
For the cart, so hard to draw, is near its jour-
ney's end, and drags over stony ground. All
round the clock it labors up the broken steps,
shattered and worn. Not many times can the
sun rise, and behold it still upon its weary road.
Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage,
at once acts as nurse and works as armorer
at his little table in a corner; often looking
round, and saying, with a nod of his green baize
cap, and an encouraging elevation of his one eye-
brow, "Hold up, my boy! Hold up!" There,
too, is Mr. Jarndyce many a time, and Allan
Woodcourt almost always; both thinking much
how strangely Fate has entangled this rough out.
relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sud
den, a strong effort to get out of bed.
"C
Stay, Jo! What now?"
"It's time for me to go to that there berryin
ground, sir," he returns, with a wild look.
"Lie down, and tell me. What burying
ground, Jo ?"
"Where they laid him as wos wery good to
me, wery good to me indeed, he was. It's time
fur me to go down to that there berryin ground
sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants
to go there and be berried. He used fur to say
to me, 'I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,' he ses.
I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him
now, and have come there to be laid along with
him."
"By-and-bye, Jo. By-and-bye."
DEATH
143
"Ah! P'raps they wouldn't do it if I wos to
go myself. But will you promise to have me
took there, sir, and laid along with him?"
"I will, indeed."
"Thank'ee, sir. Thank'ee, sir.
Thank'ee, sir. They'll have
to get the key of the gate afore they can take
me in, for it's allus locked. And there's a step
there, as I used fur to clean with my broom.-
It's turned wery dark, sir. Is there any light a-
comin?
"It is coming fast, Jo."
DEATH
through the rustling blinds, and quivered on the
opposite wall like golden water, he knew that
evening was coming on, and that the sky was
red and beautiful. As the reflection died away.
and a gloom went creeping up the wall, he
watched it deepen, deepen, deepen, into night.
Then he thought how the long streets were
dotted with lamps, and how the peaceful stars
were shining overhead. His fancy had a strange
tendency to wander to the river, which he knew
was flowing through the great city; and now he
Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and thought how black it was, and how deep it
the rugged road is very near its end.
"
Jo, my poor fellow!"
"I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm a-gropin
--a-gropin—let me catch hold of your hand.”
"Jo, can you say what I say?"
"I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows
it's good."
"OUR FATHER."
"Our Father!—yes, that's very good, sir."
"WHICH ART IN HEAVEN."
"Art in Heaven-is the light a-comin, sir?"
"It is close at hand. HALLOWED BE THY
NAME!
"Hallowed be—thy-"
The light is come upon the dark benighted
way. Dead!
Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and
gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong
Reverends of every order. Dead, men and wo-
men, born with Heavenly compassion in your
hearts. And dying thus around us every day.
Bleak House, Chap. 47.
DEATH-Its oblivion.
So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her
dear friends, who are deaf to the waves that are
hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and
blind to the dust that is piled upon the shore,
and to the white arms that are beckoning, in
the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.
But all goes on, as it was wont, upon the margin
of the unknown sea; and Edith, standing there
alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed
cast up at her feet, to strew her path in life
withal.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 41.
DEATH-Of a mother.
"Mamma!" said the child.
The little voice, familiar and dearly loved,
awakened some show of consciousness, even at
that ebb. For a moment, the closed eye-lids
trembled, and the nostril quivered, and the
faintest shadow of a smile was seen.
Mamma!" cried the child, sobbing aloud. |
"Oh dear Mamma! oh dear Mamma!
"
The Doctor gently brushed the scattered ring-
lets of the child aside from the face and mouth
of the mother. Alas! how calm they lay there
how little breath there was to stir them!
Thus, clinging fast to that slight spar within
her arms, the mother drifted out upon the dark
and unknown sea that rolls round all the world.
Dombey & Son, Chap. I.
DEATH-Of youth.
Paul had never risen from his little bed. He
lay there, listening to the noises in the street,
quite tranquilly; not caring much how the time
went, but watching everything about him with
observing eyes.
When the sunbeams struck into his room
|
would look, reflecting the hosts of stars-and
more than all, how steadily it rolled away to
meet the sea.
As it grew later in the night, and footsteps in
the street became so rare that he could hear
them coming, count them as they passed, and
lose them in the hollow distance, he would lie
and watch the many-colored ring about the can-
dle, and wait patiently for day. His only trou-
ble was, the swift and rapid river. He felt
forced, sometimes, to try to stop it-to stem it
with his childish hands-or choke its way with
sand-and when he saw it coming on, resistless,
he cried out! But a word from Florence, who
was always at his side, restored him to himself;
and leaning his poor head upon her breast, he
told Floy of his dream, and smiled.
When day began to dawn again, he watched
for the sun; and when its cheerful light began
to sparkle in the room, he pictured to himself—
pictured! he saw the high church towers rising
up into the morning sky, the town reviving, wak
ing, starting into life once more, the river glisten.
ing as it rolled (but rolling fast as ever), and the
country bright with dew. Familiar sounds and
cries came by degrees into the street below; the
servants in the house were roused and busy;
faces looked in at the door, and voices asked
his attendants softly how he was.
Paul always
answered for himself, "I am better. I am a
great deal better, thank you. Tell Papa so!"
By little and little he got tired of the bustle
of the day, the noise of carriages and carts, and
people passing and re-passing; and would fall
asleep, or be troubled with a restless and uneasy
sense again-the child could hardly tell whether
this were in his sleeping or his waking mo-
ments-of that rushing river. "Why, will it
never stop, Floy?" he would sometimes ask
her. "It is bearing me away, I think!"
But Floy could always soothe and re-assure
him; and it was his daily delight to make her
lay her head down on his pillow, and take some
rest.
*
*
*
*
*
"Now lay me down," he said, "and Floy,
come close to me, and let me see you!"
Sister and brother wound their arms around
each other, and the golden light came streaming
in, and fell upon them, locked together.
"How fast the river runs, between its green
banks and the rushes, Floy! But it's very near
the sea. I hear the waves! They always said
so!"
Presently he told her that the motion of the
boat upon the stream was lulling him to rest
How green the banks were now, how bright the
flowers growing on them, and how tall the
rushes! Now the boat was out at sea, but
gliding smoothly on. And now there was a
shore before him. Who stood on the bank !—
DEATH
He put his hands together, as he had been
ased to do at his prayers. He did not remove
his arms to do it; but they saw him fold them
so, behind her neck.
"Mamma is like you, Floy. I know her by
the face! But tell them that the print upon the
stairs at school is not divine enough. The light
about the head is shining on me as I go !"
The golden ripple on the wall came back
again, and nothing else stirred in the room.
The old, old fashion! The fashion that came
in with our first garments, and will last un-
changed until our race has run its course, and
the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll.
The old, old fashion-Death!
144
DEPORTMENT
and easy moral from what she had seen that
night, and to store it deep in her mind.
Her dreams were of the little scholar; not cof-
fined and covered up, but mingling with angels,
and smiling happily. The sun, darting his
cheerful rays into the room, awoke her: and
now there remained but to take leave of the
poor schoolmaster and wander forth once more.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 26.
DEBT-Skimpole's idea of.
His furniture had been all cleared off, it ap-
peared, by the person who took possession of it
on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday; but he
seemed quite relieved to think that it was gone.
Chairs and tables, he said, were wearisome ob-
Oh, thank GOD, all who see it, for that older
fashion yet, of Immortality! And look upon us,jects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no
angels of young children, with regards not quite
estranged, when the swift river bears us to the
ocean!-Dombey & Son.
DEATH-Of Marley.
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is
no doubt whatever about that. The register of
his burial was signed by the clergyman, the
clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.
Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was
good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to
put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of
my own knowledge, what there is particularly
dead about a door-nail. I might have been in-
clined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the
deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.
But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the
simile;
and my unhallowed hands shall not
disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will
therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically,
that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he
did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and
he were partners for I don't know how many
years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole
administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary
legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And
even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by
the sad event, but that he was an excellent man
of business on the very day of the funeral, and
solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.
Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
DEATH-Of the young-(Thoughts of little
Nell).
But the sad scene she had witnessed was not
without its lesson of content and gratitude; of
content with the lot which left her health and
freedom; and gratitude that she was spared to
the one relative and friend she loved, and to
live and move in a beautiful world, when so
many young creatures as young and full of
hope as she were stricken down and gathered
to their graves. How many of the mounds in
that old churchyard where she had lately strayed,
grew green above the graves of children! And
though she thought as a child herself, and did not,
perhaps, sufficiently consider to what a bright and
happy existence those who die young are borne,
and how in death they lose the pain of seeing
others die around them, bearing to the tomb
some strong affection of their hearts (which
makes the old die many times in one long life),
still she thought wisely enough, to draw a plain
|
variety of expression, they looked you out of
countenance, and you looked them out of coun-
tenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to
no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like
a butterfly among all the furniture on hire, anc
to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from
mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to
that, as the humor took one!
"The oddity of the thing is," said Mr. Skim-
pole, with a quickened sense of the ludicrous,
"that my chairs and tables were not paid for,
and yet my landlord walks off with them as
composedly as possible. Now, that seems
droll! There is something grotesque' in it.
The chair and table merchant never engaged
to pay my landlord my rent. Why should my
landlord quarrel with him? If I have a pim-
ple on my nose which is disagreeable to my
landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my landlord
has no business to scratch my chair and table
merchant's nose, which has no pimple on it.
His reasoning seems defective!”
Bleak House, Chap. 17.
DEBTORS-Paying debts a disease.
It was evident from the general tone of the
whole party, that they had come to regard in-
solvency as the normal state of mankind, and
the payment of debts as a disease that occa
sionally broke out.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 8.
DEPORTMENT-Turvey drop on.
"A lady so graceful and accomplished," he
said, kissing his right glove, and afterwards ex-
tending it towards the pupils, "will look leni-
ently on the deficiencies here. We do our best
to polish-polish-polish!"
He sat down beside me; taking some pains
to sit on the form, I thought, in imitation of
the print of his illustrious model on the sofa.
And really he did look very like it.
"To polish-polish-polish!" he repeated,
taking a pinch of snuff and gently fluttering his
fingers. "But we are not-if I may say so, to
one formed to be graceful both by Nature and
Art;" with the high-shouldered how, which it
seemed impossible for him to make without lift-
ing up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes—“ we
are not what we used to be in point of Deport-
ment.'
"Are we not, sir?" said I.
"We have degenerated," he returned, shak-
ing his head, which he could do to a very limi
ted extent, in his cravat. "A levelling age is
not favorable to Deportment. It develops vul-
DEPORTMENT
145
DESTINY
garity. Perhaps I speak with some little parti-people who have no human heart, and who must
ality. It may not be for me to say that I have be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of
been called, for some years now, Gentleman the way. They are but few, I hope; but I have
Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness the seen (in this world here where I find myself, and
Prince Regent did me the honor to inquire, on even at the little Break of Day) that there are
my removing my hat as he drove out of the such people.”—Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. II.
Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), 'Who
is he? Who the Devil is he? Why don't I DEPRAVITY-Its written lessons.
know him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand
a-year?' But these are little matters of anec-
dote the general property, ma'am-still re-
peated, occasionally, among the upper classes."
"Indeed?" said I.
46
He replied, with the high-shouldered bow,
"Where what is left among us of Deportment,"
he added, still lingers. England-alas, my
country!—has degenerated very much, and is
degenerating every day. She has not many
gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to
succeed us but a race of weavers."
"One might hope that the race of gentlemen
would be perpetuated here," said I.
You are very good," he smiled, with the
high-shouldered bow again. "You flatter me.
But, no-no! I have never been able to imbue
my poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven
forbid that I should disparage my dear child,
but he has no Deportment.'
""
"He appears to be an excellent master," I
observed.
|
I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest
good may not be drawn from the vilest evil. I
have always believed this to be a recognized and
established truth, laid down by the greatest men
the world has ever seen, constantly acted upon
by the best and wisest natures, and confirme
by the reason and experience of every thinking
mind. I saw no reason, when I wrote thi
book, why the dregs of life, so long as thei:
speech did not offend the ear, should not serv
the purpose of a moral, at least as well as it
froth and cream. Nor did I doubt that ther
lay festering in Saint Giles's as good material.
toward the truth as any to be found in Sain
James's.
In this spirit, when I wished to show, in little
Oliver, the principle of Good surviving through
every adverse circumstance, and triumphing at
last; and when I considered among what com-
panions I could try him best, having regard to
that kind of men into whose hands he would
most naturally fall; I bethought myself of those
who figure in these volumes. When I came to
"He is celebrated, almost everywhere, for his discuss the subject more maturely with myself,
Deportment."
"Does he teach?" asked Ada.
No, he don't teach anything in particular,"
replied Caddy. "But his Deportment is beau-
tiful."-Bleak House, Chap. 14.
The power of his Deportment was such, that
they really were as much overcome with thank-
fulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon
them for the rest of his life, he were making
some munificent sacrifice in their favor.
"For myself, my children," said Mr. Turvey-
drop, "I am falling into the sear and yellow
leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the
last feeble traces of gentlemanly Deportment
may linger in this weaving and spinning age.
But, so long, I will do my duty to society, and
will show myself, as usual, about town.”
Bleak House, Chap. 23.
DEPORTMENT-" Botany Bay Ease."
*
Good morning, my dear," said the princi-
pal, addressing the young lady at the bar, with
Botany Bay ease, and New South Wales gen-
tility; "which is Mr. Pickwick's room, my
dear?"-Pickwick, Chap. 40.
DEPRAVITY-Natural.
Hold there, you and your philanthropy,"
cried the smiling landlady, nodding her head
more than ever. "Listen then. I am a woman,
I am a woman,
I. I know nothing of philosophical philan-
thropy. But I know what I have seen, and what
I have looked in the face, in this world here,
where I find myself. And I tell you this, my
friend, that there are people (men and women
both, unfortunately) who have no good in them
-none. That there are people whom it is
necessary to detest without compromise. That
there are people who must be dealt with as
enemies of the human race. That there are
I saw many strong reasons for pursuing the
course to which I was inclined. I had read of
thieves by scores-seductive fellows (amiable for
the most part), faultless in dress, plump in pock-
et, choice in horse-flesh, bold in bearing, fortu-
nate in gallantry, great at a song, a bottle, pack
of cards or dice-box, and fit companions for the
bravest. But I had never met (except in Ho-
GARTH) with the miserable reality. It appeared
to me that to draw a knot of such associates in
crime as really do exist; to paint them in all
their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all
the squalid poverty of their lives; to show them
as they really are, forever skulking uneasily
through the dirtiest paths of life, with the great,
black, ghastly gallows closing up their prospect,
turn them where they may; it appeared to me
that to do this, would be to attempt a something
which was greatly needed, and which would be
a service to society. And therefore I did it as
I best could.-Oliver Twist. Preface.
DEPRESSION—Of spirits.
And Mr. Jaggers made not me alone intensely
melancholy, because, after he was gone, Herbert
said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire,
that he thought he must have committed a felony
and forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected
and guilty.—Great Expectations, Chap. 36.
DESTINY.
"
Shaken out of destiny's dice box."
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. II.
DESTINY-The high-roads and by-roads of.
Strange, if the little sick-room fire were in ef-
fect a beacon fire, summoning some one, and
that the most unlikely some one in the world, to
the spot that must be come to. Strange, if the
little sick-room light were in effect a watch-light,
burning in that place every night until an ap.
DETECTIVE
pointed event should be watched out! Which
of the vast multitude of travellers, under the
sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills and
toiling along the weary plains, journeying by
iand and journeying by sea, coming and going
so strangely, to meet and to act and re-act on
one another, which of the host may, with no sus-
picion of the journey's end, be travelling surely
hither?
146
DEVOTION
and purposeless. It is the drifting icebergs, set-
ting with any current anywhere, that wreck the
ships.
When the Devil goeth about like a roaring
lion, he goeth about in a shape by which few
but savages and hunters are attracted. But,
when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished,
according to the mode; when he is aweary of
vice, and aweary of virtue; used up as to brim-
stone, and used up as to bliss; then, whether he
take to serving out of red tape, or to the kin-
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 8.
DEVOTION-Of Little Dorrit.
Time shall show us. The post of honor and
the post of shame, the general's station and the
drummer's, a peer's statue in Westminster Ab-dling of red fire, he is the very Devil.
bey and a seaman's hammock in the bosom
of the deep, the mitre and the workhouse, the
woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the
guillotine-the travellers to all are on the high-
road; but it has wonderful divergencies, and
only time shall show us whither each traveller is
bound.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 15.
DETECTIVE-Mr. Bucket, the.
At first, such a baby could do little more than
sit with him, deserting her livelier place by the
high fender, and quietly watching him. But
this made her so far necessary to him that he
became accustomed to her, and began to be
sensible of missing her when she was not there.
Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much Through this little gate, she passed out of child-
in consultation together under existing circum-hood into the care-laden world.
stances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this
pressing interest under his consideration, the
fat forefinger seems to rise to the dignity of a
familiar demon. He puts it to his ears, and it
whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and
it enjoins him to secrecy; he rubs it over his
nose, and it sharpens his scent; he shakes it be-
fore a guilty man, and it charms him to his des-
truction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple
invariably predict, that when Mr. Bucket and
that finger are in much conference, a terrible
avenger will be heard of before long.
What her pitiful look saw, at that early time,
in her father, in her sister, in her brother, in the
jail; how much, or how little, of the wretched
truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies
hidden with many mysteries. It is enough that
she was inspired to be something which was not
what the rest were, and to be that something,
different and laborious, for the sake of the rest.
Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of the inspira-
tion of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart
impelled by love and self-devotion to the low-
liest work in the lowliest way of life!
Otherwise mildly studious in his observation With no earthly friend to help her, or so much
of human nature, on the whole a benignant as to see her, but the one so strangely assorted;
philosopher, not disposed to be severe upon the with no knowledge even of the common daily
follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast tone and habits of the common members of the
number of houses, and strolls about an infinity of free community who are not shut up in prisons;
streets to outward appearance rather languish-born and bred, in a social condition, false even
ing for want of an object. He is in the
friendliest condition towards his species, and
will drink with most of them. He is free with
his money, affable in his manners, innocent in
his conversation-but, through the placid stream
of his life, there glides an under-current of
fore-finger.
Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket.
Like man in the abstract, he is here to-day and
gone to-morrow-but, very unlike man indeed,
he is here again the next day. This evening he
will be casually looking into the iron extin-
guishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock's
house in town; and to-morrow morning he will
be walking on the leads at Chesney Wold,
where erst the old man walked whose ghost is
propitiated with a hundred guineas. Drawers,
desks, pockets, all things belonging to him, Mr.
Bucket examines. A few hours afterwards, he
and the Roman will be alone together, compar-
ing forefingers.-Bleak House, Chap. 53.
DETERMINATION.
And again," repeats Mademoiselle, catalep-
tic with determination.-Bleak House, Chap. 42.
DEVIL-When he is dangerous.
with a reference to the falsest condition outside
the walls; drinking from infancy of a well whose
waters had their own peculiar stain, their own
unwholesome and unnatural taste; the Child of
the Marshalsea began her womanly life.
No matter through what mistakes and dis-
couragements, what ridicule (not unkindly
meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little
figure, what humble consciousness of her own.
babyhood and want of strength, even in the
matter of lifting and carrying; through how
much weariness and helplessness, and how
many secret tears, she trudged on, until recog-
nized as useful, even indispensable. That time
came. She took the place of eldest of the
three, in all things but precedence; was the
head of the fallen family; and bore, in her own
heart, its anxieties and shames.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 7.
DEVOTION-Of Tom Pinch.
God's love upon thy patience, Tom! Who,
that had beheld thee, for three summer weeks,
poring through half the deadlong night over the
jingling anatomy of that inscrutable old harpsi-
chord in the back parlor, could have missed the
entrance to thy secret heart: albeit it was dimly
And yet he had not, even now, any earnest known to thee? Who that had seen the glow
wickedness of purpose in him. Publicly and upon thy cheek when, leaning down to listen,
privately, it were much better for the age in after hours of labor, for the sound of one incor-
which he lived, that he and the legion of whom rigible note, thou foundst that it nad a voice at
he was one were designedly bad, than indifferent | last, and wheezed out a flat something, distantly

}
"JOE BAGSTOCK, SIR."
147
NA
DIAMONDS
akin to what it ought to be, would not have
known that it was destined for no common
touch, but one that smote, though gently as an
angel's hand, upon the deepest chord within
thee! And if a friendly glance-aye, even
though it were as guileless as thine own, Dear
Tom-could but have pierced the twilight of
that evening, when, in a voice well tempered to
the time, sad, sweet, and low, yet hopeful, she
first sang to the altered instrument, and won-
dered at the change; and thou, sitting apart at
the open window, kept a glad silence and a
swelling heart; must not that glance have read
perforce the dawning of a story, Tom, that it
were well for thee had never been begun!
DIAMONDS.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 24.
The arch of diamonds spanning her dark
hair, flashed and glittered like a starry bridge.
There was no warning in them, or they would
have turned as dull and dim as tarnished honor.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 47.
DIGESTION-The process of "winding
up."
147
DINNER
nonce, in his unbending form, if not in his atti-
tude, Mr. Dombey looked down into the cold
depths of the dead sea of mahogany on which
the fruit dishes and decanters lay at anchor.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 30.
DINNER-Bagstock at.
Between his mental excitement, and the ex-
ertion of saying all this in wheezy whispers, the
Major sat gurgling in the throat, and watering
at the eyes, until dinner was ready.
The Major, like some other noble animals,
exhibited himself to great advantage at feeding
time.
During the first course or two, the Major was
usually grave; for the Native, in obedience to
general orders, secretly issued, collected every
sauce and cruet round him, and gave him a
great deal to do, in taking out the stoppers, and
mixing up the contents in his plate. Besides
which, the Native had private zests and flavors
on a side-table, with which the Major daily
scorched himself: to say nothing of strange
machines out of which he spirted unknown
liquids into the Major's drink.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 26
"The process of digestion, as I have been in-
formed by anatomical friends, is one of the DINNER-Bagstock after.
most wonderful works of nature. I do not
know how it may be with others, but it is a
great satisfaction to me to know, when regaling
on my humble fare, that I am putting in motion
the most beautiful machinery with which we
have any acquaintance. I really feel at such
times as if I was doing a public service. When
I have wound myself up, if I may employ such
a term," said Mr. Pecksniff, with exquisite ten-
derness, "and know that I am Going, I feel
that in the lesson afforded by the works within
me, I am a Benefactor to my Kind!"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 8.
DIGNITY—An expression of.
He threw himself on a bench with the air of
a man who was faint with dignity.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 8.
DIGNITY-Like an eight-day clock.
He carried himself like an eight-day clock at
all times like one of a race of eight-day clocks
in gorgeous cases, that never go and never went
-Ha ha ha!-but he will have some extra
stiffness.-Bleak House, Chap. 18.
DINING-ROOM-A gloomy.
So thought Mr. Dombey, when he was left
alone at the dining-table, and mused upon his
past and future fortunes: finding no uncongeni-
ality in an air of scant and gloomy state that
pervaded the room, in color a dark brown, with
black hatchments of pictures blotching the
walls, and twenty-four black chairs, with almost
as many nails in them as so many coffins, wait-
ing like mutes, upon the threshold of the Tur-
key carpet; and two exhausted negroes holding
up two withered branches of candelabra on the
sideboard, and a musty smell prevailing, as if
the ashes of ten thousand dinners were en-
tombed in the sarcophagus below it.
*
It was so funereal as to want nothing but a
body in it to be quite complete.
No bad representation of the body, for the
The Major being by this time in a state of
repletion, with essence of savory pie oozing out
at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grill
and kidneys tightening his cravat; and the
time moreover approaching for the departure
of the railway train to Birmingham, by which
they were to leave town; the Native got him
into his great-coat with immense difficulty, and
buttoned him up until his face looked staring
and gasping, over the top of that garment, as
if he were in a barrel.
*
*
*
*
*
*
He sat for a long time afterwards, leering
and choking, like an over-fed Mephistopheles.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
DINNER-And dinner-time.
44
There's nothing," said Toby, "more regular
in its coming round than dinner time, and noth-
ing less regular in its coming round than dın-
ner. That's the great difference between 'em
It's took me a long time to find it out. I won-
der whether it would be worth any gentleman's
while now, to buy that obserwation for the pa-
pers; or the Parliament!"
Christmas Chimes, Ist quarter.
DINNER-Toby Veck's.
'He'd eat his dinner with an appetite, who-
ever he was, if it smelt like this," said Meg,
cheerfully. "Make haste, for there's a hot po-
tato besides, and half a pint of fresh-drawn
beer in a bottle. Where will you dine, father'
On he Post, or on the Steps? Dear, dear,
how grand we are. Two places to choose
from !"
"The steps to-day, my pet," said Trotty.
There's
Steps in dry weather. Post in wet.
a greater conveniency in the steps at all times,
because of the sitting down; but they're rheu-
matic in the damp."
Christmas Chimes, Ist quarter.
DINNER-An American.
It was a numerous company, eighteen or
DINNER
148
DINNER
orandum-book from his pocket and made an
entry therein.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 8.
DINNER-Mrs. Bagnet's birthday.
twenty, perhaps. Of these some five or six
were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little
phalanx by themselves. All the knives and
forks were working away at a rate that was
quite alarming; very few words were spoken; A great annual occasion has come round in
and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in the establishment of Mr. Joseph Bagnet, other-
self-defence, as if a famine were expected to wise Lignum Vitæ, ex-artilleryman and present
set in before breakfast-time to-morrow morn-bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and
ing, and it had become high time to assert the festival. The celebration of a birthday in the
first law of nature. The poultry, which may family.
perhaps be considered to have formed the sta-
ple of the entertainment-for there was a tur-
key at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom,
and two fowls in the middle-disappeared as
rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its
wings, and had flown in desperation down a
human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled,
leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid
by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The
sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at
once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his
eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted
away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn
and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals
bolted their food in wedges; feeding, not them-
selves, but broods of nightmares, who were con-
tinually standing at livery within them. Spare
men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out un-
satisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes,
and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry.
What Mrs. Pawkins felt each day at dinner-
time is hidden from all human knowledge. But
she had one comfort. It was very soon over.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 16.
DINNER-Dick Swiveller's observations
on.
May the present moment," said Dick, stick-
ing his fork into a large carbuncular potato,
"be the worst of our lives! I like this plan of
sending 'em with the peel on; there's a charm
in drawing a potato from its native element
(if I may so express it) to which the rich and
powerful are strangers. Ah! Man wants but
little here below, nor wants that little long!'
How true that is!-after dinner."
"I hope the eating-house keeper will want
but little and that he may not want that little
long," returned his companion; "but I suspect
you've no means of paying for this!"
"I shall be passing presently, and I'll call,"
said Dick, winking his eye significantly. "The
waiter's quite helpless. The goods are gone,
Fred, and there's an end of it.'
It is not Mr. Bagnet's birthday. Mr. Bagnet
merely distinguishes that epoch in the musical
instrument business, by kissing the children
with an extra smack before breakfast, smoking
an additional pipe after dinner, and wondering
towards evening what his poor old mother is
thinking about it—a subject of infinite specu-
lation, and rendered so by his mother having
departed this life twenty years. Some men
rarely revert to their father, but seem, in the
bank-books of their remembrance, to have trans-
ferred all the stock of filial affection into their
mother's name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these.
Perhaps his exalted appreciation of the merits
of the old girl, causes him usually to make the
noun-substantive, Goodness, of the feminine
gender.
It is not the birthday of one of the three chil-
dren. Those occasions are kept with some
marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap
the bounds of happy returns and a pudding.
It is the old girl's birthday; and that is the
greatest holiday and reddest-letter day in Mr.
Bagnet's calendar. The auspicious event is al-
ways commemorated according to certain forms
settled and prescribed by Mr. Bagnet some years
since. Mr. Bagnet being deeply convinced that
to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain
the highest pitch of imperial luxury, invariably
goes forth himself very early in the morning of
this day to buy a pair; he is, invariably, taken
in by the vendor, and installed in the possession
of the oldest inhabitants of any coop in Europe.
Returning with these triumphs of toughness tied
up in a clean blue and white cotton handker
chief (essential to the arrangements), he in a
casual manner invites Mrs. Bagnet to declare at
breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs.
Bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail,
replying Fowls, Mr. Bagnet instantly produces
his bundle from a place of concealment, amidst
general amazement and rejoicing. He further
requires that the old girl shall do nothing all
day long, but sit in her very best gown, and be
In point of fact, it would seem that the wait-served by himself and the young people. As
er felt this wholesome truth, for when he re- he is not illustrious for his cookery, this may be
turned for the empty plates and dishes and was supposed to be a matter of state rather than en-
informed by Mr. Swiveller with dignified care-joyment on the old girl's part; but she keeps
lessness that he would call and settle when he her state with all imaginable cheerfulness.
should be passing presently, he displayed some
perturbation of spirit, and muttered a few re-
marks about "payment on delivery," and "no
trust," and other unpleasant subjects, but was
fain to content himself with inquiring at what
hour it was likely the gentleman would call, in
order that, being personally responsible for the
beef, greens, and sundries, he might take care
to be in the way at the time. Mr. Swiveller,
after mentally calculating his engagements to a
nicety, replied that he should look in at from
two minutes before six to seven minutes past:
and the man disappearing with this feeble con-
solation, Richard Swiveller took a greasy mem-
Further conversation is prevented, for the
time, by the necessity under which Mr. Bagnet
finds himself of directing the whole force of his
mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered
by the dry humor of the fowls in' not yielding
any gravy, and also by the made gravy acquiring
no flavor, and turning out of a flaxen com
plexion. With a similar perverseness, the po-
tatoes crumble off forks in the process of peel-
ing, upheaving from their centres in every di-
rection, as if they were subject to earthquakes.
The legs of the fowls, too, are longer than could
be desired, and extremely scanty. Overcoming

149
A FASHIONABLE DINNER.
DINNER
these disadvantages to the best of his ability,
Mr. Bagnet at last dishes, and they sit down at
table; Mrs. Bagnet occupying the guest's place
at his right hand.
149
DINNER
The proceedings commenced by Mr. Dom-
bey, in a cravat of extraordinary height and
stiffness, walking restlessly about the drawing-
room until the hour appointed for dinner,
It was well for the old girl that she has but punctual to which, an East India Director, of
one birthday in a year, for two such indulgences immense wealth, in a waistcoat apparently con
in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of structed in serviceable deal by some plain car
finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature penter, but really engendered in the tailor's art
of poultry to possess, is developed in these and composed of the material called nankeen
specimens in the singular form of guitar-strings. arrived, and was received by Mr. Dombey alone
Their limbs appear to have struck roots into The next stage of the proceedings was Mr
their breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike | Dombey's sending his compliments to Mrs.
roots into the earth. Their legs are so hard, as Dombey, with a correct statement of the time;
to encourage the idea that they must have de- and the next, the East India Director's falling
voted the greater part of their long and arduous prostrate, in a conversational point of view, and
lives to pedestrian exercises, and the walking of as Mr. Dombey was not the man to pick him
matches. But Mr. Bagnet, unconscious of these up, staring at the fire until rescue appeared in
little defects, sets his heart on Mrs. Bagnet eat- the person of Mrs. Skewton; whom the director,
ing a most severe quantity of the delicacies before as a pleasant start in life for the evening,
her; and as that good old girl would not cause mistook for Mrs. Dombey, and greeted with
him a moment's disappointment on any day, least enthusiasm.
of all on such a day, for any consideration, she
imperils her digestion fearfully. How young
Woolwich cleans the drumsticks without being
of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a
loss to understand.
The next arrival was a Bank Director, reputed
to be able to buy up anything-human Nature
generally, if he should take it in his head to in-
fluence the money market in that direction—but
who was a wonderfully modest spoken man, al-
most boastfully so, and mentioned his "little
place" at Kingston-upon-Thames, and its just
being barely equal to giving Dombey a bed and
a chop, if he would come and visit it. Ladies,
he said, it was not for a man who lived in his
quiet way to take upon himself to invite-but
if Mrs. Skewton and her daughter, Mrs. Dom-
bey, should ever find themselves in that direction,
and would do him the honor to look at a little
bit of a shrubbery they would find there, and a
poor little flower-bed or so, and a humble apo-
The old girl has another trial to undergo after
the conclusion of the repast, in sitting in state
to see the room cleared, the hearth swept, and
the dinner-service washed up and polished in
the back yard. The great delight and energy
with which the two young ladies apply them-
selves to these duties, turning up their skirts in
imitation of their mother, and skating in and
out on little scaffolds of pattens, inspire the
highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety
for the present. The same causes lead to con-
fusion of tongues, a clattering of crockery, a rat-Îogy for a pinery, and two or three little attempts
tling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and
an expenditure of water, all in excess; while
the saturation of the young ladies themselves is
almost too moving a spectacle for Mrs. Bagnet
to look upon, with the calmness proper to her
position. At last the various cleansing processes
are triumphantly completed; Quebec and Malta
appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes,
tobacco, and something to drink, are placed
upon the table; and the old girl enjoys the first
peace of mind she ever knows on the day of
this delightful entertainment.
Bleak House, Chap. 49.
DINNER-A fashionable. Its guests.
A series of entertainments in celebration of
the late nuptials, and in cultivation of society,
were arranged, chiefly by Mr. Dombey and Mrs.
Skewton; and it was settled that the festive
proceedings should commence by Mrs. Dombey's
being at home upon a certain evening, and by
Mr. and Mrs. Dombey's requesting the honor of
the company of a great many incongruous peo-
ple to dinner on the same day.
|
of that sort without any pretension, they would
distinguish him very much. Carrying out his
character, this gentleman was very plainly
dressed, in a wisp of cambric for a neckcloth,
big shoes, a coat that was too loose for him, and
a pair of trousers that were too spare ; and men-
tion being made of the Opera by Mrs. Skewton,
he said he very seldom went there, for he couldn't
afford it. It seemed greatly to delight and ex-
hilarate him to say so: and he beamed on his
audience afterwards, with his hands in his
pockets, and excessive satisfaction twinkling in
his eyes.
Now Mrs. Dombey appeared, beautiful and
proud, and as disdainful and defiant of them all
as if the bridal wreath upon her head had been
a garland of steel spikes put on to force conces-
sion from her which she would die sooner than
yield.
*
*
*
*
*
The arrivals quickly became
quickly became numerous.
More directors, chairmen of public companies,
elderly ladies carrying burdens on their heads
for full dress, Cousin Feenix, Major Bagstock,
Accordingly, Mr. Dombey produced a list of friends of Mrs. Skewton, with the same bright
sundry eastern magnates who were to be hidden bloom on their complexion, and very precious
to this feast on his behalf; to which Mrs. Skew-necklaces on very withered necks. Among
ton, acting for her dearest child, who was
haughtily careless on the subject, subjoined a
western list, comprising Cousin Feenix, and a
variety of moths of various degrees and ages,
who had, at various times, fluttered round the
light of her fair daughter or herself, without
any lasting injury to their wings.
*
*
*
these, a young lady of sixty-five, remarkably
coolly dressed as to her back and shoulders,
who spoke with an engaging lisp, and whose
eyelids wouldn't keep up well, without a great
deal of trouble on her part, and whose manners
had that indefinable charm which so frequently
As the
attaches to the giddiness of youth.
greater part of Mr. Dombey's list were disposed
•
DINNER
to be taciturn, and the greater part of Mrs.
Dombey's list were disposed to be talkative,
and there was no sympathy between them, Mrs.
Dombey's list, by magnetic agreement, entered
into a bond of union against Mr Dombey's list,
who, wandering about the rooms in a desolate
manner, or seeking refuge in corners, entangled
themselves with company coming in, and be-
came barricaded behind sofas, and had doors
opened smartly from without against their
heads, and underwent every sort of discomfi-
ture.
150
DINNER-PARTY
mild men (the ambitious one was utterly
quenched); and the Bank Director was a lowly
sight, making a plan of his little attempt at a
pinery, with dessert-knives, for a group of ad-
mirers; and Cousin Feenix was a thoughtful
sight, as he smoothed his long wristbands, and
stealthily adjusted his wig. But all these sights
were of short duration, being speedily broken
up by coffee, and the desertion of the room.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 36.
DINNER-After.
The
Giddiness prevails below stairs too.
very tall young man whose excitement came on
so soon, appears to have his head glued to the
table in the pantry, and cannot be detached
from it. Mr. Towlinson has a singing in his
ears and a large wheel going round and round
inside his head. The housemaid wishes it
wasn't wicked to wish that one was dead.
When dinner was announced, Mr. Dombey
took down an old lady like a crimson velvet
pincushion stuffed with bank notes, who might
have been the identical old lady of Thread-
needle Street, she was so rich, and looked so
unaccommodating; Cousin Feenix took down
Mrs. Dombey; Major Bagstock took down
Mrs. Skewton; the young thing with the
shoulders was bestowed, as an extinguisher, There is a general delusion likewise, in these
upon the East India Director; and the re- lower regions, on the subject of time; everybody
maining ladies were left on view in the draw- conceiving that it ought to be, at the earliest,
ing-room by the remaining gentlemen, until a ten o'clock at night, whereas it is not yet three
forlorn hope volunteered to conduct them down- in the afternoon. A shadowy idea of wicked-
stairs, and those brave spirits with their cap-ness committed, haunts every individual in the
tives blocked up the dining-room door, shutting
out seven mild men in the stony-hearted hall.
When all the rest were got in and were seated,
one of these mild men still appeared, in smiling
confusion, totally destitute and unprovided for,
and escorted by the butler, made the complete
circuit of the table twice before his chair could
be found, which it finally was, on Mrs. Dom-
bey's left hand; after which the mild man never
held up his head again.
party; and each one secretly 'thinks the other a
companion in guilt, whom it would be agreea-
ble to avoid. Any one reviving the notion of
the ball, would be scouted as a malignant idiot.
The hatchments in the dining-room look
down on crumbs, dirty plates, spillings of wine,
half thawed ice, stale, discolored heel-taps, scraps
of lobster, drumsticks of fowls, and pensive jel-
lies, gradually resolving themselves into a luke-
warm, gummy soup.-Dombey & Son.
DINNER-PARTY-A fashionable.
The great looking-glass above the sideboard
reflects the table and the company. Reflects
the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in
silver, frosted and also thawed, a camel of all
work. The Herald's College found out a Cru-
sading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel
on his shield (or might have done it if he had
thought of it), and a caravan of camels take
charge of the fruits and flowers and candles, and
kneel down to be loaded with the salt. Re-
flects Veneering; forty, wavy-haired, dark,
tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy
Now, the spacious dining-room, with the
company seated round the glittering table, busy
with their glittering spoons, and knives and
forks, and plates, might have been taken for a
grown-up exposition of Tom Tiddler's ground,
where children pick up gold and silver. Mr.
Dombey, as Tiddler, looked his character to
admiration; and the long plateau of precious
metal frosted, separating him from Mrs. Dom-
bey, whereon frosted Cupids offered scentless
flowers to each of them, was allegorical to see.
Cousin Feenix was in great force, and looked
astonishingly young. But he was sometimes
thoughtless in his good humor-his memory oc-
casionally wandering like his legs-and on this a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled
occasion caused the company to shudder.
*
*
*
*
*
*
Through the various stages of rich meats and
wines, continual gold and silver, dainties of
earth, air, fire, and water, heaped-up fruits, and
that unnecessary article in Mr. Dombey's ban-
quets-ice-the dinner slowly made its way:
the later stages being achieved to the sonorous
music of incessant double knocks, announcing
the arrival of visitors, whose portion of the feast
was limited to the smell thereof. When Mrs.
Dombey rose, it was a sight to see her lord,
with stiff throat and erect head, hoid the door
open for the withdrawal of the ladies; and to
see how she swept past him with his daughter
on her arm.
✔
Mr. Dombey was a grave sight, behind the
decanters, in a state of dignity; and the East
India Director was a forlorn sight, near the un-
occupied end of the table, in a state of solitude;
and the Major was a military sight, relating
stories of the Duke of York to six of the seven
prophet, not prophesying. Reflects Mrs. Ve-
neering; fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not
so much light hair as she might have, gorgeous
in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory,
conscious that a corner of her husband's veil is
over herself. Reflects Podsnap; prosperously
feeding; two little light-colored wiry wings, one
on either side of his else bald head, looking as
like his hairbrushes as his hair, dissolving view
of red beads on his forehead, large allowance
of crumpled shirt-collar up behind. Reflects
Mrs. Podsnap; fine woman for Professor Owen,
quantity of bone, neck, and nostrils like a rock-
ing-horse, hard features, majestic head-dress, in
which Podsnap has hung golden offerings. Re-
flects Twemlow; gray, dry, polite, susceptible
to east wind, First-Gentleman-in-Europe collar
and cravat, cheeks drawn in as if he had made
a great effort to retire into himself some years
ago, and had got so far and had never got any
farther. Reflects mature young lady; raven
locks, and complexion that lights up well when
DINNER
151
DINNERS
that had appeared, vanished; and the frost set
in again, as cold and hard as ever. Mr. Chick
was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom
of the table, but on both occasions it was a
fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The party
seemed to get colder and colder, and to be
gradually resolving itself into a congealed and
solid state, like the collation round which it
was assembled.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 5.
DINNERS-Description of public.
well powdered-as it is-carrying on consider
bly in the captivation of mature young gentle-
man, with too much nose in his face, too much
ginger in his whiskers, too much torso in his
waistcoat, too much sparkle in his studs, his
eyes, his buttons, his talk, and his teeth. Re-
flects charming old Lady Tippins on Veneer-
ing's right; with an immense obtuse drab ob-
long face, like a face in a table-spoon, and a
dyed Long Walk up the top of her head, as a
convenient public approach to the bunch of
false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs. All public dinners in London, from the Lord
Veneering opposite, who is pleased to be patron- Mayor's annual banquet at Guildhall, to the
ized. Reflects a certain "Mortimer," another Chimney-sweepers' anniversary at White Con-
of Veneering's oldest friends; who never was duit House; from the Goldsmiths' to the But-
in the house before, and appears not to want to chers', from the Sheriffs' to the Licensed Victual-
come again; who sits disconsolate on Mrs. | lers', are amusing scenes. Of all entertainments
Veneering's left, and who was inveigled by of this description, however, we think the an-
Lady Tippins (a friend of his boyhood) to come nual dinner of some public charity is the most
to these people's and talk, and who won't talk. amusing. At. a Company's dinner, the people
Reflects Eugene, friend of Mortimer; buried are nearly all alike—regular old stagers, who
alive in the back of his chair, behind a shoulder make it a matter of business, and a thing not
-with a powder-epaulette on it—of the mature to be laughed at. At a political dinner, every-
young lady, and gloomily resorting to the cham- body is disagreeable, and inclined to speechify
pagne chalice whenever proffered by the Ana--much the same thing, by-the-bye-but at a
lytical Chemist. Lastly, the looking-glass re- charity dinner you see people of all sorts, kinds,
flects Boots and Brewer, and two other stuffed and descriptions. The wine may not be re-
Buffers interposed between the rest of the com-markably special, to be sure, and we have heard
pany and possible accidents.
The Veneering dinners are excellent dinners |
-or new people wouldn't come-and all goes
well. Notably, Lady Tippins has made a series
of experiments on her digestive functions, so
extremely complicated and daring, that if they
could be published with their recults it might
benefit the human race. Having taken in
visions from all parts of the world, this hardy
old cruiser has last touched at the North Pole,
when, as the ice-plates are being removed, the
following words fall from her.
pro-
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 2.
DINNER-In state.
Every young gentleman had a massive silver
fork, and a napkin; and all the arrangements
were stately and handsome. In particular,
there was a butler in a blue coat and bright
buttons, who gave quite a winey flavor to the
table-beer; he poured it out so superbly.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
DINNER-An unsocial.
There they found Mr. Pitt turning up his
nose at a cold collation, set forth in a cold
pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like
a dead dinner lying in state than a social re-
freshment.
some hard-hearted monsters grumble at the col-
lection; but we really think the amusement to
be derived from the occasion sufficient to coun
terbalance even these disadvantages.
*
*
*
*
*
The first thing that strikes you, on your en
trance, 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 un-
becoming 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 im-
mediately undeceived by the waiter-" Up-stairs,
if you please, sir; this is the committee-room.
Up-stairs you go, accordingly; wondering, as
you mount, what the duties of the committee
can be, and whether they ever do anything be-
yond confusing each other, and running over the
waiters.
""
Having deposited your hat and cloak, and re-
ceived a remarkably small scrap of pasteboard
in exchange (which, as a matter of course, you
lose, before you require it again), you enter the
hall, down which there are three long tables for
the less distinguished guests, with a cross table
on a raised platform at the upper end for the re-
ception of the very particular friends of the in-
The very linkmen outside got hold of it, and
compared the party to a funeral out of mourn-
ing, with none of the company remembered indigent orphans. Being fortunate enough to find
the will.
a plate without anybody's card in it, you wisely
seat yourself at once, and have a little leisure to
look about you. Waiters, with wine-baskets in
their hands, are placing decanters of sherry
down the tables, at very respectable distances;
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
since the accession of George the First. The
Such temporary indications of a partial thaw musicians are scraping and grating and screwing
There was a toothache in everything. The
wine was so bitter colu that it forced a little
scream from Miss Tox, which she had great
difficulty in turning into a "Hem!" The veal
had come from such an airy pantry, that the first
taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead
to Mr. Chick's extremities. Mr. Dombey alone
remained unmoved. He might have been hung
up for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a
frozen gentleman.
DINNERS
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 everbody's card but
their own.
152
DINNER
posed to become talkative—and the hum of con-
versation is loud and general.
Scenes, Chap. 19.
DINNER-With a philanthropist (Mrs. Jel-
lyby).
I was a little curious to know who a mild, bald
gentleman in spectacles was, who dropped into
a vacant chair (there was no top or bottom in
particular) after the fish was taken away, and
seemed passively to submit himself to Borrio-
boola-Gha, but not to be actively interested in
that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he
might have been a native, but for his complex-
ion. It was not until we left the table, and he
remained alone with Richard, that the possi-
bility of his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my
head. But he was Mr. Jellyby; and a loqua-
cious young man called Mr. Quale, with large
shining knobs for temples, and his hair all
brushed to the back of his head, who came in
the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthro-
pist, also informed her that he called the matri-
monial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby with Mr. Jellyby
the union of mind and matter.
You turn round to take a look at the table be-
hind you, and—not being in the habit of attend-
ing 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 necker-
chief, and is addressed by his companions by the
familiar appellation of "Fitz," or some such
monosyllable. Near him is a stout man in a
white neckerchief and buff waistcoat, with
shining dark hair, cut very short in front, and a
great, round, healthy-looking face, on which he
studiously preserves a half-sentimental simper.
Next him, again, is a large-headed man, with
black hair and bushy whiskers; and opposite
them are two or three others, one of whom is a This young man, besides having a great deal
little, round-faced person, in a dress-stock and to say for himself about Africa, and a project of
blue under-waistcoat. There is something pecu- his for teaching the coffee colonists to teach the
liar in their air and manner, though you could natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an
hardly describe what it is; you cannot divest export trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby
yourself of the idea that they have come for out by saying, "I believe now, Mrs. Jellyby,
some other purpose than mere eating and drink-you have received as many as from one hundred
ing. You have no time to debate the matter, and fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa
however, for the waiters (who have been arrang-in a single day, have you not?" or,
ed in lines down the room, placing the dishes
on the 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 bursts the orchestra, up rise the visit-
ors, 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 remarkably 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.
As to the dinner itself-the mere dinner-it
goes off much the same everywhere. Tureens
of soup are emptied with awful rapidity-waiters
take plates of turbot away, to get lobster-sauce,
and bring back plates 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 with their recent exertions-people
who have looked very cross hitherto, become
remarkably bland, and ask you to take wine
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 dis-
"If my
memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Jellyby, you
once mentioned that you had sent off five thou-
sand circulars from one post-office at one time?"
always repeating Mrs. Jellyby's answer to us
like an interpreter. During the whole evening
Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against
the wall, as if he were subject to low spirits. It
seemed that he had several times opened his
mouth when alone with Richard, after dinner,
as if he had something on his mind; but had
always shut it again, to Richard's extreme con-
fusion, without saying anything.
Bleak House, Chap. 4.
DINNER-Pickwick after wine.
The wine, which had exerted its somniferous
influence over Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle,
had stolen upon the senses of Mr. Pickwick.
That gentleman had gradually passed through
the various stages which precede the lethargy
produced by dinner, and its consequences. He
had undergone the ordinary transitions from the
height of conviviality to the depth of misery,
and from the depth of misery to the height of
conviviality. Like a gas-lamp in the street,
with the wind in the pipe, he had exhibited for
a moment an unnatural brilliancy; then sunk
so low as to be scarcely discernible: after a
short interval he had burst out again, to en-
lighten for a moment, then flickered with an
uncertain, staggering sort of light, and then
gone out altogether. His head was sunk upon
his bosom; and perpetual snoring, with a par-
tial choke occasionally, were the only audible
indications of the great man's presence.
Pickwick, Chap. 2.
DINNER-Pip's misfortunes at.
Among this good company I should have felt
DINNER
153
DISAPPEARANCE
myself, even if I hadn't robbed the pantry, in a DISAPPEARANCE-A mysterious (Sam
false position. Not because I was squeezed in
Weller's story).
at an acute angle of the table-cloth, with the They had walked some distance; Mr. Hick
table in my chest, and the Pumblechookian | wick trotting on before, plunged in profound
elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed
to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because I
was regaled with the scaly tips of the drum-
sticks of the fowls, and with those obscure cor-
ners of pork of which the pig, when living, had
had the least reason to be vain. No; I should
not have minded that, if they would only have
left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me
alone. They seemed to think the opportunity
lost, if they failed to point the conversation at
me, every now and then, and stick the point
into me. I might have been an unfortunate
little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smarting-
ly touched up by these moral goads.
It began the moment we sat down to dinner.
Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declama-
tion-as it now appears to me, something like
a religious cross of the ghost in Hamlet with
Richard III.—and ended with the very proper
aspiration that we might be truly grateful. |
Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye,
and said, in a low, reproachful voice, "Do you
hear that? Be grateful."
Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be
grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by
hand."
Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contem-
plating me with a mournful presentiment that I
should come to no good, asked, "Why is it that
the young are never grateful?" This moral
mystery seemed too much for the company,
until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying,
Naterally wicious." Everybody then mur-
mured "True!" and looked at me in a particu-
larly unpleasant and personal manner.
66
Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
DINNER-A fashionable.
|
meditation, and Sam following behind, with a
countenance expressive of the most enviable
and easy defiance of everything and everybody:
when the latter, who was always especially
anxious to impart to his master any exclusive
information he possessed, quickened his pace
until he was close at Mr. Pickwick's heels; and,
pointing up to a house they were passing, said:
Wery nice pork-shop that 'ere, sir.'
Yes, it seems so," said Mr. Pickwick.
Celebrated sassage factory," said Sam.
'Is it?" said Mr. Pickwick.
(
"Is it!" reiterated Sam with some indigna-
tion; "I should rayther think it was. Why, sir,
bless your innocent eyebrows, that's were the
mysterious disappearance of a 'spectable trades-
man took place four year ago."
"You don't mean to say he was burked,
Sam?" said Mr. Pickwick, looking hastily
round.
"No, I don't indeed, sir,” replied Mr. Weller,
"I wish I did; far worse than that. He was the
master o' that 'ere shop, sir, and the inwenter o'
the patent never-leavin'-off sassage steam-ingine,
as ud swaller up a pavin' stone if you put it too
near, and grind it into sassages as easy as if it
was a tender young babby. Wery proud o' that
machine he was, as it was nat'ral he should be,
and he'd stand down in the celler a-lookin' at it
wen it was in full play, till he got quite melan-
choly with joy. A wery happy man he'd ha'
been, sir, in the procession o' that 'ere ingine
and two more lovely hinfants besides, if it
hadn't been for his wife, who was a most ow-
dacious wixin. She was always a follerin' him
about, and dinnin' in his ears, till at last he
couldn't stand it no longer. 'I'll tell you what
it is, my dear,' he says one day; 'if you perse-
were in this here sort of amusement,' he says,
'I'm blessed if I don't go away to 'Merriker,
and that's all about it.' 'You're a idle willin',
says she, 'and I wish the 'Merrikins joy of their
bargain.' Arter wich she keeps on abusin' of
him for half an hour, and then runs into the
little parlor behind the shop, sets to a-screamin',
says he'll be the death on her, and falls in a fit,
which lasts for three good hours-one o' them
fits which is all screamin' and kickin'. Well,
next mornin', the husband was missin'. He
hadn't taken nothin' from the till-hadn't even
put on his great-coat-so it was quite clear he
DINNER-A restaurant.
warn't gone to 'Merriker. Didn't come back
They walked on with him until they came to next day; didn't come back next week; Missis
a dirty shop-window in a dirty street, which had bills printed, sayin' that, if he'd come back,
was made almost opaque by the steam of hot he should be forgiven everythin' (which was very
meats, vegetables, and puddings. But glimpses liberal, seein' that he hadn't done nothin' at all);
were to be caught of a roast leg of pork, burst- the canals was dragged, and for two months
ing ato tears of sage and onion in a metal reser-artervards, wenever a body turned up, it was
voir rull of gravy, of an unctuous piece of roast
beef and blisterous Yorkshire pudding bubbling
hot in a similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of
real in rapid cut, of a ham in a perspiration
with the pace it was going at, of a shallow tank
of baked potatoes glued together by their own
richness, of a truss or two of boiled greens, and
other substantial delicacies.
It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though
he had not had one. The rarest dishes, sump-
tuously cooked and sumptuously served; the
choicest fruits; the most exquisite wines; mar-
vels of workmanship in gold and silver, china
and glass; innumerable things delicious to the
senses of taste, smell, and sight, were insinuated
into its composition. O, what a wonderful man
this Merdle, what a great man, what a master
man, how blessedly and enviably endowed-in
one word, what a rich man !
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 20.
carried, as a reg'lar thing, straight off to the
sassage shop. Hows'ever, none on 'em an-
swered; so they gave out that he'd run away,
and she kep on the bis'ness. One Saturday
night, a little thin old gen'l'm'n comes into the
shop in a great passion and says, 'Are you the
missis o' this here shop?' 'Yes, I am,' says
she. 'Well, ma'am,' says he, 'then I've just
looked in to say that me and my family ain't a
goin' to be choked for nothin'; and more than
that, ma'am,' he says, 'you'll allow me to ob
DISPLAY
154
DOG
streaming in the breeze, bandanna kerchiefs
floating from their shoulders, and crinoline not
wanting. Down by the Docks, you may hear
the Incomparable Joe Jackson sing the Standard
of England with a hornpipe, any night; or any
day may see at the waxwork, for a penny and no
serve, that as you don't use the primest parts of
the meat in the manafacter o' sassages, I think
you'd find beef come nearly as cheap as buttons.'
As buttons, sir!' says she. Buttons, ma'am,'
says the little old gentleman, unfolding a bit of
paper, and shewin' twenty or thirty halves of
buttons. Nice seasonin' for sassages, is trou-waiting, him as killed the policeman at Acton,
sers' buttons, ma'am.' They're my husband's
buttons!' says the widder, beginnin' to faint.
'What!' screams the little old gen'l'm'n, turnin'
wery pale. 'I see it all,' says the widder; in
a fit of temporary insanity he rashly converted
his-self into sassages!' And so he had, sir,"
said Mr. Weller, looking steadily into Mr. Pick-
wick's horror-stricken countenance, "or else he'd
been draw'd into the ingine; but however that
might ha' been, the little old gen'l'm'n, who had
been remarkably partial to sassages all his life,
rushed out o' the shop in a wild state, and was
never heerd on artervards!"
Pickwick, Chap. 31.
DISPLAY-Value of public.
"Why do you come here to do this?" said
the old man, sitting down beside them, and
looking at the figures with extreme delight.
and suffered for it. Down by the Docks, you
may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage pre-
parations various, if you are not particula:
what they are made of besides seasoning. Down
by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into
any gloomy cribs and entries they can hire, and
hang slops there,-pewter watches, sou'wester
hats, waterproof overalls,—"firtht rate articleth,
Thjack." Down by the Docks, such dealers, ex-
hibiting on a frame a complete nautical suit
without the refinement of a waxen visage in the
hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping
at the yard-arm, with his sea-faring and earth-
faring troubles over. Down by the Docks the
placards in the shops apostrophize the customer,
knowing him familiarly beforehand, as, " Look
here, Jack!" "Here's your sort, my lad!"
Try our sea-going mixed, at two and nine?"
"The right kit for the British tar!" Ship
"Why, you see," rejoined the little man, ahoy!" "Splice the main-brace, brother!"
"we're putting up for to-night at the public-"Come, cheer up, my lads, We've the best liquors
house yonder, and it wouldn't do to let them see
the present company undergoing repair."
"No!" cried the old man, making signs to
Nell to listen, "why not, eh? why not?"
"Because it would destroy all the delusion,
and take away all the interest, wouldn't it?"
replied the little man. "Would you care a
ha'penny for the Lord Chancellor if you know'd
him in private and without his wig?-certainly
not."-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 16.
DOCKS-Down by the.
My road lies through that part of London
generally known to the initiated as "Down by
the Docks." Down by the Docks is Home to
a good many people-to too many, if I may
judge from the overflow of local population in
the streets-but my nose insinuates that the
number to whom it is Sweet Home might be
easily counted. Down by the Docks is a region
I would choose as my point of embarkation
aboard ship if I were an emigrant. It would
present my intention to me in such a sensible
light; it would show me so many things to be
run away from.
here, And you'll find something new In our won-
derful Beer!" Down by the Docks, the pawn-
broker lends money on Union-Jack pocket-hand-
kerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching
fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical
instruments in cases, and such like. Down by
the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business
on the wretchedest scale-chiefly on lint and
plaster for the strapping of wounds-and with
no bright bottles, and with no little drawers.
Down by the Docks, the shabby undertaker's
shop will bury you for next to nothing, after the
Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing
at all: so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper
end. Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will
quarrel with anybody drunk or sober, and every-
body else will have a hand in it, and on the
shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool
of red shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair,
bare tattooed arms, Britannia's daughters, malice,
mud, maundering, and madness. Down by the
Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses
all day long, and shrill above their din, and all
the din, rises the screeching of innumerable
parrots brought from foreign parts, who appear
Down by the Docks they eat the largest oys- to be very much astonished by what they find
ters and scatter the roughest oyster-shells known on these native shores of ours. Possibly parrots
to the descendants of St. George and the Dragon. don't know, possibly they do, that Down by the
Down by the Docks they consume the slimiest Docks is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its
of shell-fish, which seem to have been scraped lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flow-
off the copper bottoms of ships. Down by the ers, and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells,
Docks, the vegetables at green-grocers' doors and the grim, blind idols muse in their shady
acquire a saline and a scaly look, as if they had groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests
been crossed with fish and sea-weed. Down by and chiefs. And possibly the parrots don't
the Docks they "board seamen" at the eating-know, possibly they do, that the noble savage is
houses, the public-houses, the slop-shops, a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has
the coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent
shops, mentionable and unmentionable,-board rhyme, and no reason, to answer for.
them, as it were, in the piratical sense, making
them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter.
Down by the Docks the seamen roam in mid-DOG-His friendship and fidelity.
street and midday, their pockets inside out, and
their heads no better. Down by the Docks, the
daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove,
clad in silken attire, with uncovered tresses
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 20.
But though Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog
as one would meet with on a summer's day; a
blundering, ill-favored, clumsy, bullet-headed
dog, continually acting on a wrong idea that

DIOGENES AND FLORENCE.
154
DOG
155
there was an enemy in the neighborhood, whom
it was meritorious to bark at; and though he
was far from good-tempered, and certainly was
hot clever, and had hair all over his eyes, and a
comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff
voice, he was dearer to Florence, in virtue of that
parting remembrance of him, and that request
that he might be taken care of, than the most
valuable and beautiful of his kind. So dear,
indeed, was this same ugly Diogenes, and so
welcome to her, that she took the jewelled hand
of Mr. Toots, and kissed it in her gratitude.
And when Diogenes, released, came tearing up
the stairs, and bouncing into the room (such a
business as there was first, to get him out of the
cabriolet !) dived under all the furniture, and
wound a long iron chain, that dangled from his
neck, round legs of chairs and tables, and
then tugged at it until his eyes became unnatu-
rally visible, in consequence of their nearly start-
ing out of his head; and when he growled at
Mr. Toots, who affected familiarity; and went
pell-mell at Towlinson, morally convinced that
he was the enemy whom he had barked at round
the corner all his life, and had never seen yet,
Florence was as pleased with him as if he had
been a miracle of discretion.
Putting out his tongue, as if he had come
express to a Dispensary, to be examined for his
health.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 18.
DOGS
And don't he hate other dogs as ain't of nis
breed!-Oh, no!”
ley.
He's an out-and-out Christian,” said Char-
This was merely intended as a tribute to the
animal's abilities, but it was an appropriate re-
mark in another sense, if Master Bates had only
known it; for there are a great many ladies and
gentlemen, claiming to be out-and-out Chris-
tians, between whom, and Mr. Sikes's dog, there
exist very strong and singular points of resem-
blance.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 18.
DOG-A pug.
The mistress of the Establishment holds no
place in our memory; but, rampant on one
eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and
narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal ani-
mosity towards us, who triumphs over Time.
The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiat-
ing way he had of snapping at our undefended
legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist black
muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of
his crisp tail, curled like a pastoral crook, all live
and flourish. From an otherwise unaccounta-
ble association of him with a fiddle, we con.
clude that he was of French extraction, and his
name Fidèle. He belonged to some female,
chiefly inhabiting a back-parlor, whose life ap-
pears to us to have been consumed in sniffing,
and in wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For
her, he would sit up and balance cake upon his
Diogenes would lay his head upon the win- nose, and not eat it until twenty had been
dow-ledge, and placidly open and shut his eyes counted. To the best of our belief we were
upon the street, all through a summer morning; once called in to witness this performance;
sometimes pricking up his head to look with when, unable, even in his milder moments, to
great significance after some noisy dog in a cart, endure our presence, he instantly made at us,
who was barking his way along, and sometimes, | cake and all.—Our School. Reprinted Pieces.
with an exasperated and unaccountable recol-
lection of his supposed enemy in the neighbor-DOG-The gambols of Boxer.
hood, rushing to the door, whence, after a deafen-
ing disturbance, he would come jogging back
with a ridiculous complacency that belonged to
him, and lay his jaw upon the window-ledge
again, with the air of a dog who had done a
public service.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
It was plain that he considered the Captain
one of the most amiable of men, and a man
whom it was an honor to a dog to know.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 48.
He soon appeared to comprehend, that with
the most amiable intentions he had made one
of those mistakes which will occasionally arise
in the best-regulated dogs' minds; as a friendly
apology for which he stuck himself up on end
between the two, in a very hot place in front of
the fire, and sat panting at it, with his tongue
out and a most imbecile expression of counte-
nance, listening to the conversation.
DOG-A Christian.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 35.
"He wouldn't so much as bark in a witness-
box, for fear of committing himself; no, not if
you tied him up in one, and left him there with-
out wittles for a fortnight," said the Dodger.
Then, Boxer gave occasion to more good-na-
tured recognitions of, and by, the Carrier, than
half a dozen Christians could have done! Every-
body knew him, all along the road-especially
the fowls and pigs, who, when they saw him ap-
proaching with his body all on one side, and
his ears pricked up inquisitively, and that nob
of a tail making the most of itself in the air,
immediately withdrew into remote back settle-
ments, without waiting for the honor of a near
acquaintance. He had business everywhere;
going down all the turnings, looking into all
the wells, bolting in and out of all the cottages,
dashing into the midst of all the Dame-Schools,
fluttering all the pigeons, magnifying the tails
of all the cats, and trotting into the public-
houses like a regular customer. Wherever he
went, somebody or other might have been heard
to cry, "Hallo! Here's Boxer!" and out came
that somebody forthwith, accompanied by at
least two or three other somebodies, to give
John Peerybingle and his pretty wife, Good
Day!-Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
DOGS-And cats.
As the dogs of shy neighborhoods usually be
tray a slinking consciousness of being in poor
circumstances for the most part manifested in
Not a bit of it," observed Charley.
an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their
"He's a rum dog. Don't he look fierce at play, and a misgiving that somebody is going to
any strange cove that laughs or sings when harness them to something, to pick up a living,
he's in company!" pursued the Dodger. "Won't -so the cats of shy neighborhoods exhibit a
he growl at all, when he hears a fiddle playing! | strong tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not
DONKEY
156
only are they made selfishly ferocious by rumi-
nating on the surplus population around them,
and on the densely crowded state of all the
avenues to cat's meat-not only is there a moral
and politico-economical haggardness in them,
traceable to these reflections-but they evince
a physical deterioration. Their linen is not
clean, and is wretchedly got up; their black
turns rusty, like old mourning; they wear very
indifferent fur, and take to the shabbiest cotton
velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms
of recognition with several small streets of cats,
about the Obelisk in Saint George's Fields, and
also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell Green, and
also in the back settlements of Drury Lane. In
appearance they are very like the women among
whom they live. They seem to turn out of their
unwholesome beds into the street, without any
preparation. They leave their young families
to stagger about the gutters unassisted, while
they frowzily quarrel and swear and scratch
and spit, at street corners. In particular, I re-
mark that when they are about to increase their
families (an event of frequent recurrence) the
resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain
dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and
general giving up of things. I cannot honestly
report that I have ever seen a feline matron of
this class washing her face when in an interesting
condition.- Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 10.
DONKEY-His obstinacy.
Taking a donkey towards his ordinary place
of residence is a very different thing, and a feat
much more easily to be accomplished, than tak-
ing him from it. It requires a great deal of
foresight and presence of mind in the one case,
to anticipate the numerous flights of his discur-
sive imagination; whereas, in the other, all you
have to do is, to hold on, and place a blind con-
fidence in the animal.-Tales, Chap. 4.
DONKEYS.
DOOR-KNOCKERS
the establishment of an elderly lady who sold
periwinkles; and he used to stand on Saturday
nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside
a gin-shop, pricking up his ears when a cus-
tomer came to the cart, and too evidently de-
riving satisfaction from the knowledge that they
got bad measure. His mistress was sometimes
overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever
saw him (about five years ago) he was in cir-
cumstances of difficulty, caused by this failing.
Having been left alone with the cart of peri-
winkles, and forgotten, he went off idling. He
prowled among his usual low haunts for some
time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not
taking the cart into his calculations, he endeav-
ored to turn up a narrow alley, and became
greatly involved. He was taken into custody
by the police, and, the Green Yard of the dis-
trict being near at hand, was backed into that
place of durance. At that crisis I encountered
him; the stubborn sense he evinced of being—
not to compromise the expression-a black-
guard, I never saw exceeded in the human sub-
ject. A flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck
in among his periwinkles, showed him, with his
ragged harness broken and his cart extensively
shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his
hanging head, a picture of disgrace and obdu-
racy. I have seen boys, being taken to station-
houses, who were as like him as his own brother.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 10.
DONKEYS-Blooded.
* * * Three donkeys which the proprie-
tor declared on his solemn asseveration to be
"three parts blood, and the other corn -were
engaged in the service.-Tales, Chap. 4.
>>
DOOR-KNOCKERS-The physiognomy of.
We are very fond of speculating, as we walk
through a street, on the character and pursuits
of the people who inhabit it; and nothing so
materially assists us in these speculations 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.
Donkeys again. I know shy neighborhoods
where the Donkey goes in at the street-door, and
appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined
the back yard from over the palings, and have
been unable to make him out. Gentility, no-
bility, royalty, would appeal to that donkey in
vain to do what he does for a costermonger.
Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an
infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers
on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a
nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Wind-
sor, and try what pace you can get out of him. For instance, there is one description of
Then starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck knocker that used to be common enough, but
with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from which is fast passing away-a large round one,
Whitechapel to Bayswater. There appears to with the jolly face of a convivial lion smiling
be no particular private understanding between blandly at you, as you twist the sides of your
birds and donkeys in a state of nature; but in hair into a curl, or pull up your shirt-collar while
the shy-neighborhood state you shall see them you are waiting for the door to be opened-we
always in the same hands, and always develop-never saw that knocker on the door of a churl-
ing their very best energies for the very worst ish man-so far as our experience is concerned,
company. I have known a donkey-by sight; it invariably bespoke hospitality, and another
we were not on speaking terms-who lived over
on the Surrey side of London Bridge, among
the fastnesses of Jacob's Island and Dockhead.
It was the habit of that animal, when his ser-
vices were not in immediate requisition, to go
out alone, idling. I have met him, a mile from
his place of residence, loitering about the streets;
and the expression of his countenance at such
times was most degraded. He was attached to
bottle.
No man ever saw this knocker on the door
of a small attorney or bill-broker; they always
patronise the other lion; a heavy ferocious-
looking fellow, with a countenance expressive
of savage stupidity-a sort of grand master
among the knockers, and a great favorite with
the selfish and brutal.
Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker
DRAMA
157
with a long, thin face, a pinched-up nose, and a
very sharp chin; he 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 impor-
tance.
DRESS
ing inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly try
to account for them or excuse them, just as
these do sometimes in respect of their waking
delusions? Said an afflicted man to me, when
I was last in an hospital like this, "Sir, I can
frequently fly." I was half ashamed to reflect
that so could I-by night. Said a woman to
We were greatly troubled a few years ago, by me on the same occasion, "Queen Victoria ire-
the innovation of a new kind of knocker, with- quently comes to dine with me; and her Majes-
out any face at all, composed of a wreath, de- ty and I dine off peaches and maccaroni in our
pending from a hand or small truncheon. A nightgowns, and his Royal Highness the Prince
little trouble and attention, however, enabled Consort does us the honor to make a third,
us to overcome this difficulty, and to reconcile on horseback in a Field-Marshal's uniform."
the new system to our favorite theory. You will | Could I refrain from reddening with conscious.
invariably find this knocker on the doors of coldness when I remembered the amazing royal par-
and formal people, who always ask you why you
don't come, and never say do.
Everybody knows the brass knocker is com-
mon to suburban villas, and extensive boarding-
schools; and, having noticed this genus, we have
recapitulated all the most prominent and strong-
ly-defined species.
Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation
of a man's brain by different passions, produces
corresponding developments in the form of his
skull. Do not let us be understood as pushing
our theory to the length of asserting, that any
alteration in a man's disposition would produce
a visible effect 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 chang-
ing his habitation without any reasonable pre-
text, depend upon it, that, although he may not
be aware of the fact himself, it is because he
and his knocker are at variance. This is a new
theory, but we venture to launch it, neverthe-
less, as being quite as ingenious and infallible
as many thousands of the learned speculations
which are daily broached for public good and
private fortune-making.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 7.
ties I myself had given (at night), the unac-
countable viands I had put on table, and
my extraordinary manner of conducting myself
on those distinguished occasions? I wonder
that the great master who knew everything,
when he called Sleep the death of each day's
life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each
day's sanity.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13.
DRESS-Individuality of.
The Captain was one of those timber-looking
men, suits of oak as well as hearts, whom it is
almost impossible for the liveliest imagination
to separate from any part of their dress, how-
ever insignificant. Accordingly, when Walter
knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly
poked his head out of one of his little front
windows, and hailed him, with the hard glazed
hat already on it, and the shirt collar like a
sail, and the wide suit of blue, all standing as
usual, Walter was as fully persuaded that he
was always in that state, as if the Captain had
been a bird and those had been his feathers.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 9.
DRESS-Of Miss Tox.
Miss Tox's dress, though perfectly genteel
and good, had a certain character of angularity
and scantiness. She was accustomed to wear
DRAMA-Mr. Curdle's opinion of the.
odd weedy little flowers in her bonnets and
"As an exquisite embodiment of the poet's caps. Strange grasses were sometimes per-
visions, and a realization of human intellectual-ceived in her hair; and it was observed by the
ity, gilding with refulgent light our dreamy mo-
ments, and laying open a new and magic world
before the mental eye, the drama is gone, per-
fectly gone," said Mr. Curdle.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 24.
DREAMS-Of the sane and insane.
curious, of all her collars, frills, tuckers, wrist-
bands, and other gossamer articles—indeed of
everything she wore which had two ends to it
intended to unite-that the two ends were never
on good terms, and wouldn't quite meet without
a struggle. She had furry articles for winter
wear, as tippets, boas, and muffs, which stood
From the dead wall associated on those up on end in a rampant manner, and were not
houseless nights with this too-common story, I at all sleek. She was much given to the carry-
chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital-ing about of small bags with snaps to them,
partly because it lay on my road round to West-
minster, partly because I had a night fancy in
my head which could be best pursued within
sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy
was this: Are not the sane and the insane
equal at night as the sane lie a-dreaming? Are
not all of us outside this hospital, who dream,
more or less in the condition of those inside it, Mrs. Blimber appeared, looking lovely, Paul
every night of our lives? Are we not nightly thought; and attired in such a number of skirts
persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate that it was quite an excursion to walk round
preposterously with kings and queens, emperors her. Miss Blimber came down soon after her
and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts? Do mamma; a little squeezed in appearance, but
we not nightly jumble events and personages very charming.
and times and places, as these do daily? Are
we not sometimes troubled by our own sleep-
that went off like little pistols when they were
shut up: and when full-dressed, she wore round
her neck the barrenest of lockets, representing
a fishy old eye, with no approach to speculation
in it.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
DRESS-Party toilette.
There was a grand array of white waistcoats
DRESS
158
DRESS
DRESS-Of Barkis.
Mr. Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of
which the tailor had given him such good meas-
ure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves
unnecessary in the coldest weather, while the
collar was so high that it pushed his hair up on
and cravats in the young gentlemen's bed-
rocms as evening approached; and such a smell
of singed hair, that Doctor Blimber sent up the
footman with his compliments, and wished to
know if the house was on fire. But it was only
the hair-dresser curling the young gentlemen,
and overheating his tongs in the ardor of busi-end on the top of his head. His bright buttons,
ness.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 14.
"Miss Tox!"
And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose
and indescribably frosty face, referable to her
being very thinly clad in a maze of fluttering
odds and ends, to do honor to the ceremony.
Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading
gauzes, went down altogether like an opera-
glass shutting-up.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 5.
Mr. Toots was one blaze of jewelry and but-
tons; and he felt the circumstance so strongly,
that when he had shaken hands with the Doctor,
and had bowed to Mrs. Blimber and Miss Blim-
ber, he took Paul aside, and said "What do you
think of this, Dombey?"
up,
But notwithstanding this modest confidence
in himself, Mr. Toots appeared to be involved
in a good deal of uncertainty whether, on the
whole, it was judicious to button the bottom
button of his waistcoat, and whether, on a calm
revision of all the circumstances, it was best to
wear his wristbands turned up or turned down.
Observing that Mr. Feeder's were turned
Mr. Toots turned his up; but the wristbands
of the next arrival being turned down, Mr.
Toots turned his down. The differences in point
of waistcoat buttoning, not only at the bottom,
but at the top too, became so numerous and
complicated as the arrivals thickened, that Mr.
Toots was continually fingering that article of
dress, as if he were performing on some instru-
ment; and appeared to find the incessant ex-
ecution it demanded, quite bewildering.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 14.
DRESS-The power of.
What an excellent example of the power of
dress young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in
the blanket which had hitherto formed his only
covering, he might have been the child of a
nobleman or a beggar; it would have been hard
for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him
his proper station in society. But now that he
was enveloped in the old calico robes which had
grown yellow in the same service, he was badged
and ticketed, and fell into his place at once-a
parish child-the orphan of a workhouse-the
humble, half-starved drudge-to be cuffed and
buffeted through the world-despised by all, and
pitied by none.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 1.
DRESS-Its relations to dignity.
There are some promotions in life, which, in
dependent of the more substantial rewards they
offer, acquire peculiar value and dignity from
the coats and waistcoats connected with them.
A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his
silk apron; a counsellor his silk gown; a beadle
his cocked hat. Strip the bishop of his apron,
or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are
they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even
holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of
coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 37.
too, were of the largest size. Rendered com.
plete by drab pantaloons and a buff waistcoat,
I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respecta-
bility.-David Copperfield, Chap. 10.
DRESS-Of Mr. Bounderby.
So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat-he al-
ways threw it on, as expressing a man who had
been far too busily employed in making himself,
to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat-and
with his hands in his pockets, sauntered out into
the hall. "I never wear gloves," it was his cus-
tom to say. "I didn't climb up the ladder in
them. Shouldn't be so high up, if I had."
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 4.
DRESS-A seedy.
Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere
adornment might require. His hat presents at
the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening
nature, as if it had been a favorite snail-promen-
ade. The same phenomenon is visible on some
parts of his coat, and particularly at the seams
He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in
embarrassed circumstances; even his light
whiskers droop with something of a shabby air.
Bleak House, Chap. 20.
DRESS-Of Joe.
I knew he made himself so dreadfully uncom-
fortable entirely on my account, and that it was
for me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high
behind, that it made the hair on the crown of
his head stand up like a tuft of feathers.
Great Expectations, Chap. 13.
As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they
were perplexing to reflect upon-insoluble mys-
teries both. Why should a man scrape himself
to that extent, before he could consider himself
full-dressed? Why should he suppose it neces
sary to be purified by suffering for his holiday
clothes?-Great Expectations, Chap. 27.
DRESS-Pip and Joe in uncomfortable.
My sister having so much to do, was going to
church vicariously; that is to say, Joe and I
were going. In his working clothes, Joe was a
well-knit, characteristic-looking blacksmith; in
his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow
in good circumstances than any thing else.
Nothing that he wore, then, fitted him or seemed
to belong to him; and everything that he wore
then, grazed him. On the present festive oc-
casion he emerged from his room, when the
blithe bells were going, the picture of misery,
in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me.
I think my sister must have had some general
idea that I was a young offender whom an ac-
coucheur policeman had taken up (on my birth-
day) and delivered over to her, to be dealt with
according to the outraged majesty of the law.
I was always treated as if I had insisted on be-
ing born, in opposition to the dictates of reason,
religion, and morality, and against the dissuad-
ing arguments of my best friends. Even wher
DRESS
I was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the
tailor had orders to make them like a kind of
reformatory, and on no account to let me have
the free use of my limbs.
Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
DRESS—Of Mr. Sloppy.
159
DROWNED
I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl
round my neck worn loose and easy. Sitting
down is my favorite posture. If I have a taste
in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-
pearl buttons. There you have me again, as
large as life.-Dr. Marigold.
DRESS—A bad fit.
The Native wore a pair of ear-rings in his
dark-brown ears, and his European clothes sat
with an outlandish impossibility of adjustment—
being, of their own accord, and without any ref-
to be short, short where they ought to be long,
tight where they ought to be loose, and loose
where they ought to be tight--and to which he
imparted a new grace, whenever the Major
attacked him, by shrinking into them like a
shrivelled nut, or a cold monkey.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
The consideration of Mrs. Boffin had clothed
Mr. Sloppy in a suit of black, on which the
tailor had received personal directions from
Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning of his
art, with a view to the concealment of the co-
hering and sustaining buttons. But, so mucherence to the tailor's art, long where they ought
more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy's
form than the strongest resources of tailoring
science, that he now stood before the Council a
perfect Argus in the way of buttons: shining
and winking and gleaming and twinkling out of
a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at the
dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some
unknown hatter had furnished him with a hat-
band of wholesale capacity, which was fluted
behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim,
and terminated in a black bunch, from which
the imagination shrunk discomfited and the rea-
son revolted. Some special powers with which
his legs were endowed, had already hitched up
his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged
them at the knees; while similar gifts in his
arms had raised his coat-sleeves from his wrists
and accumulated them at his elbows. Thus set
forth, with the additional embellishments of a
very little tail to his coat, and a yawning gulf
at his waistband, Sloppy stood confessed.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 10.
He was entombed by an honest jobbing tailor
of the district in a perfect Sepulchre of coat and
gaiters, sealed with ponderous buttons.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 9.
DRESS-Of Mrs. Wilfer.
DRESS-Of an artificial woman.
Whereabout in the bonnet and drapery an-
nounced by her name, any fragment of the real
woman may be concealed, is perhaps known to
her maid; but you could easily buy all you see
of her, in Bond Street; or you might scalp her,
and peel her, and scrape her, and make two
Lady Tippinses out of her, and yet not pene-.
trate to the genuine article. She has a large
gold eye-glass, has Lady Tippins, to survey the
proceedings with. If she had one in each eye,
it might keep that other drooping lid up, and
look more uniform. But perennial youth is in
her artificial flowers, and her list of lovers is full.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 10.
DRESS-The rustle of.
Through a fortuitous concourse of accidents,
the matronly Tisher heaves in sight, rustling
through the room like the legendary ghost of a
dowager in silken skirts.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 3.
DRESS-Its Influence on age.
Mrs. Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman and
an angular. Her lord being cherubic, she was
necessarily majestic, according to the principle
which matrimonially unites contrasts. She was What does she do to be so neat? How is it
much given to tying up her head in a pocket- that every trifle she wears belongs to her, and
handkerchief, knotted under her chin. This cannot choose but be a part of her? And even
head-gear, in conjunction with a pair of gloves Mystery, look at her! A model. Mystery is
worn within doors, she seemed to consider as at not young, not pretty, though still of an average
once a kind of armor against misfortune (inva- candle-light passability; but she does such mira-
riably assuming it when in low spirits or diffi- cles in her own behalf, that, one of these days,
culties), and as a species of full dress. It was when she dies, they'll be amazed to find an old
therefore with some sinking of the spirit that woman in her bed, distantly like her.
her husband beheld her thus heroically attired,
putting down her candle in the little hall, and
coming down the doorsteps through the little
front court to open the gate for him.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 4.
DRESS-Dr. Marigold's.
I am at present a middle-aged man of a broad-
ish build, in cords, leggings, and a sleeved waist-
coat, the strings of which is always gone behind.
Repair them how you will, they go like fiddle-
strings. You have been to the theatre, and you
have seen one of the wiolin-players screw up his
wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been
whispering the secret to him that it feared it
was out of order, and then you have heard it
snap. That's as exactly similar to my waist-
coat, as a waistcoat and a wiolin can be like one
another.
DRESS.
A Flight-Reprinted Pieces.
"Stop!" cried the gentleman, stretching forth
his right arm, which was so tightly wedged into
his threadbare sleeve that it looked like a cloth
sausage.—Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 4.
DRESS-An antediluvian pocket-handker-
chief.
* * *
Mr. Tigg took from his hat what
seemed to be the fossil remains of an antedilu-
vian pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes
therewith.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7.
DROWNED-And resuscitated. (Robin Ri
derhood.)
If you are not gone for good, Mr. Riderhood.
it would be something to know where you are
"
DROWNED
160
hiding at present. This flabby lump of mor-
tality that we work so hard at with such patient
perseverance, yields no sign of you. If you are
gone for good, Rogue, it is very solemn, and if
you are coming back, it is hardly less so. Nay,
in the suspense and mystery of the latter ques-
tion, involving that of where you may be now,
there is a solemnity even added to that of death,
making us who are in attendance alike afraid to
look on you and to look off you, and making
those below start at the least sound of a creak-
ing plank on the floor.
Stay! Did that eyelid tremble? So the doc-
tor, breathing low, and closely watching, asks
himself.
No.
Did that nostril twitch?
No.
This artificial respiration ceasing, do I feel
any faint flutter under my hand upon the chest?
No.
Over and over again No. No. But try over
and over again, nevertheless.
See! A token of life! An indubitable token
of life! The spark may smoulder and go out,
or it may glow and expand, but see! The four
rough fellows, seeing, shed tears. Neither
Riderhood in this world, nor Riderhood in the
other, could draw tears from them; but a
striving human soul between the two can do it
easily.
He is struggling to come back. Now, he is
almost here, now he is far away again. Now he
is struggling harder to get back. And yet-like
us all, when we swoon-like us all, every day
of our lives when we wake-he is instinctively
unwilling to be restored to the consciousness of
this existence, and would be left dormant, if he
could.
*
*
*
*
*
But they minister to him with such extraordin-
ary interest, their anxiety is so keen, their vigil-
ance is so great, their excited joy grows so
intense as the signs of life strengthen, that how
can she resist it, poor thing! And now he be-
gins to breathe naturally, and he stirs, and the
doctor declares him to have come back from that
inexplicable journey where he stopped on the
dark road, and to be here.
There is intelligence in his eyes. He wants
to ask a question. He wonders where he is.
Tell him.
"Father, you were run down on the river, and
are at Miss Abbey Potterson's."
He stares at his daughter, stares all round
him, closes his eyes, and lies slumbering on her
arm.
The short-lived delusion begins to fade. The
low, bad, unimpressible face is coming up from
the depths of the river, or what other depths, to
the surface again. As he grows warm, the doc-
tor and the four men cool. As his lineaments
soften with life, their faces and their hearts
harden to him.
"He will do now," says the doctor, washing
his hands, and looking at the patient with grow-
ing disfavor.
(6
Many a better man," moralizes Tom Tootle
with a gloomy shake of the head, " ain't had his
luck."
It's to be hoped he'll make a better use of
his life," says Bob Glamour, " than I expect he
will."
|
*
*
DRUNKARD
*
*
*
Becoming more and more uncomfortable, as
though the prevalent dislike were finding him
out somewhere in his sleep and expressing it-
self to him, the patient at last opens his eyes
wide, and is assisted by his daughter to sit up
in bed.
*
*
**
*
*
He has an impression that his nose is bleed-
ing, and several times draws the back of his
hand across it, and looks for the result, in a pu-
gilistic manner, greatly strengthening that in-
congruous resemblance.
"Where's my fur cap?" he asks in a surly
voice, when he has shuffled his clothes on.
"In the river," somebody rejoins.
"And warn't there no honest man to pick it
up? O' course there was, though, and to cut off
with it arterwards. You are a rare lot, all on
you!"
Thus, Mr. Riderhood: taking from the hands
of his daughter, with special ill-will, a lent cap,
and grumbling as he pulls it down over his ears.
Then, getting on his unsteady legs, leaning
heavily upon her, and growling
"Hold still,
can't you? What! You must be a-staggering
next, must you?" he takes his departure out of
the ring in which he has had that little turn-up
with Death.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 3.
DROWNED-Gaffer.
Father, was that you calling me? Father! I
thought I heard you call me twice before!
Words never to be answered, those, upon the
earth-side of the grave. The wind sweeps jeer-
ingly over Father, whips him with the frayed
ends of his dress and his jagged hair, tries to
turn him where he lies stark on his back, and
force his face towards the rising sun, that he
may be shamed the more. A lull, and the wind
is secret and prying with him; lifts and lets
fall a rag; hides palpitating under another rag;
runs nimbly through his hair and beard. Then,
in a rush, it cruelly taunts him. Father, was
that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless
and the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you
lie here in a heap? Was it you, thus baptized
unto Death, with these flying impurities now
flung upon your face? Why not speak, Father?
Soaking into this filthy ground as you lie here,
is your own shape. Did you never see such a
shape soaked into your boat? Speak, Father.
Speak to us, the winds, the only listeners left you!
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 14.
DRUNKARD-His descent.
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 thorough-
fares 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 remembers to
have seen in a very different condition, whom
he has observed sinking lower and lower, by
almost imperceptible degrees, and the shabbi
ness 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 much with society, or whose avocations
have caused him to mingle, at one time or other,
with a great number of people, who cannot call
DRUNKARD
181
DRUNKARD
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 illu-
sion was reality itself, he knew that he was sit-
ting alone in the deserted street, watching the
to mind the time when some shabby, miserable
wretch, in rags and filth, who shuffles past him
now in all the squalor of disease and poverty,
was a respectable tradesman, or a clerk, or a
man following some thriving pursuit, with good
prospects, and decent means?-or cannot any
of our readers call to mind from among 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-rain-drops as they pattered on the stones; that
that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison that
oversteps every other consideration; that casts
aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and sta-
tion; and hurries its victims madly on to degra-
dation and death.
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 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 lips; and his hands sought to
tear and lacerate his flesh. He was going mad,
and he shrieked for help till his voice failed
him.
Some of these men have been impelled, by
misfortune and misery, to the vice that has de-
graded them. The ruin of worldly expectations,
the death of those they loved, the sorrow that
slowly consumes, but will not break the heart,
has driven them wild; and they present the hid
eous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying by their He raised his head and looked up the long,
own hands. But by far the greater part have dismal street. He recollected that outcasts like
willfully, and with open eyes, plunged into the himself, condemned to wander day and night in
gulf from which the man who once enters it those dreadful streets, had sometimes gone dis-
never rises more, but into which he sinks deep-tracted with their own loneliness. He remem-
er and deeper down, until recovery is hopeless.
Tales, Chap. 12.
DRUNKARD-The death of the.
He begged his bread from door to door.
Every halfpenny he could wring from the pity
or credulity of those to whom he addressed him-
self, was spent in the old way. A year passed
over his head; the roof of a jail was the only
one that had sheltered him for many months.
He slept under archways, 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 drunkard still.
At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a
door-step, faint and ill. The premature decay
of vice and profligacy 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 mis-
spent 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 peo
pled it, and flocked about him then, until the
forms of his elder children seemed to rise from
the grave, and stand about him-so plain, 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.
bered to have heard many years before that a
homeless wretch had once been found in a soli-
tary corner, sharpening a rusty knife to plunge
into his own heart, preferring death to that end-
less, 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 Lreath 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 dis-
tance, he cautiously descended, and stood be-
neath 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 ap-
proach; dark gleaming eyes peered from the
water, and seemed to mock his hesitation, while
hollow murmurs from behind urged him on-
wards. He retreated a few paces, took a short
run, a desperate leap, and plunged into the water.
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 form, poverty,
misery, starvation-anything but death.
fought and struggled with the water that closed
over his head, and screamed in agon es of terror.
He
\
DRUNKENNESS
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 build-
ings 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. Unrecognised and unpit-
ied, it was borne to the grave; and there it has
long since mouldered away!-Tales, Chap. 12.
DRUNKENNESS-The Pickwickians.
162
Mr. Pickwick, with his hands in his pockets,
and his hat cocked completely over his left eye,
was leaning against the dresser, shaking his head
from side to side, and producing a constant suc-
cession of the blandest and most benevolent
smiles without being moved thereunto by any
discernible cause or pretence whatsoever; old
Mr. Wardle, with a highly-inflamed countenance,
was grasping the hand of a strange gentleman,
muttering protestations of eternal friendship;
Mr. Winkle, supporting himself by the eight-
day clock, was feebly invoking destruction upon
the head of any member of the family who
should suggest the propriety of his retiring for |
the night; and Mr. Snodgrass had sunk into a
chair, with an expression of the most abject and
hopeless misery that the human mind can im-
agine, portrayed in every lineament of his ex-
pressive face.
*
*
*
*
*
"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snod-
grass, in a broken voice.
"It was the salmon."
(Somehow or other, it never is the wine, in these
cases.)
"Hadn't they better go to bed, ma'am?" in-
quired Emma.
"Two of the boys will carry the
gentlemen up stairs.”
"I won't go to bed," said Mr. Winkle, firmly.
"No living boy shall carry me," said Mr.
Pickwick, stoutly; and he went on smiling as
before.
"Hurrah!" gasped Mr. Winkle, faintly.
"Hurrah!" echoed Mr. Pickwick, taking off
his hat and dashing it on the floor, and insanely
casting his spectacles into the middle of the
kitchen. At this humorous feat he laughed out-
right.
“Let's-have-'nother-bottle," cried Mr.
Winkle, commencing in a very loud key, and
ending in a very faint one. His head dropped
upon his breast; and, muttering his invincible
determination not to go to his bed, and a san-
guinary regret that he had not "done for old
Tupman" in the morning, he fell fast asleep;
in which condition he was borne to his apart-
ment by two young giants, under the personal
superintendence of the fat boy, to whose pro-
tecting care Mr. Snodgrass shortly afterwards
confided his own person. Mr. Pickwick ac-
cepted the proffered arm of Mr. Tupman and
|
DRUNKENNESS
quietly disappeared, smiling more than ever; and
Mr. Wardle, after taking as affectionate a leave
of the whole family as if he were ordered for
immediate execution, consigned to Mr. Trundle
the honor of conveying him up stairs, and re-
tired with a very futile attempt to look impres
sively solemn and dignified.
Pickwick, Chap. 8.
DRUNKENNESS-Of Dick Swiveller.
Mr. Swiveller chanced at the moment to be
sprinkling a glass of warm gin and water on the
dust of the law, and to be moistening his clay,
as the phrase goes, rather copiously. But as
clay in the abstract, when too much moistened,
becomes of a weak and uncertain consistency,
breaking down in unexpected places, retain-
ing impressions but faintly, and preserving no
strength or steadiness of character, so Mr. Swiv-
eller's clay, having imbibed a considerable
quantity of moisture, was in a very loose and
slippery state, insomuch that the various ideas
impressed upon it were fast losing their distinc-
tive character, and running into each other. It
is not uncommon for human clay in this condi-
tion to value itself above all things upon its
great prudence and sagacity.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 48.
DRUNKENNESS-Of Mr. Pecksniff.
They carried him up stairs, and crushed the
youngest gentleman at every step. His bedroom
was at the top of the house, and it was a long
way; but they got him there in course of time.
He asked them frequently on the road for a
little drop of something to drink. It seemed an
idiosyncrasy. The youngest gentleman in com-
pany proposed a draught of water. Mr. Peck-
sniff called him opprobrious names for the sug-
gestion.
Jinkins and Gander took the rest upon them-
selves, and made him as comfortable as they
could, on the outside of his bed; and when he
seemed disposed to sleep, they left him. But
before they had all gained the bottom of the
staircase, a vision of Mr. Pecksniff, strangely at-
tired, was seen to flutter on the top landing. He
desired to collect their sentiments, it seemed,
upon the nature of human life.
"My friends," cried Mr. Pecksniff, looking
over the banisters, "let us improve our minds
by mutual inquiry and discussion. Let us be
moral. Let us contemplate existence. Where
is Jinkins?"
"Here," cried that gentleman. "Go to bed
again!
To bed!" said Mr. Pecksniff. "Bed! 'Tis
the voice of the sluggard, I hear him complain,
you have woke me too soon, I must slumber
again. If any young orphan will repeat the
remainder of that simple piece from Doctor
Watts's collection an eligible opportunity now
offers.'
"}
Nobody volunteered.
"This is very soothing," said Mr. Pecksniff,
after a pause. "Extremely so.
Cool and re-
freshing; particularly to the legs! The legs of
the human subject, my friends, are a beautiful
production. Compare them with wooden legs,
and observe the difference between the anatomy
of nature and the anatomy of art. Do you
know," said Mr. Pecksniff, leaning over the
banisters, with an odd recollection of his familiar
DRUNKENNESS
manner among new pupils at home, "that I
should very much like to see Mrs. Todgers's
notion of a wooden leg, if perfectly agreeable
to herself!"
As it appeared impossible to entertain any
reasonable hopes of him after this speech, Mr.
Jinkins and Mr. Gander went up stairs again,
and once more got him into bed. But they had
not descended to the second floor before he was
out again; nor, when they had repeated the pro-
cess, had they descended the first flight, before
he was out again. In a word, as often as he
was shut up in his own room, he darted out
afresh, charged with some new moral sentiment,
which he continually repeated over the banisters,
with extraordinary relish, and an irrepressible
desire for the improvement of his fellow-creatures
that nothing could subdue.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9.
163
DRUNKENNESS
stage, too, looking very clean and smooth after
the streets; and there were people upon it, talk-
ing about something or other, but not at all in
telligibly. There was an abundance of bright
lights, and there was music, and there were ladies
down in the boxes, and I don't know what more.
The whole building looked to me as if it were
learning to swim; it conducted itself in such
an unaccountable manner, when I tried to
steady it.
On somebody's motion, we resolved to go
down stairs to the dress-boxes, where the ladies
were. A gentleman lounging, full-dressed, on
a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, passed
before my view, and also my own figure at full
length in a glass. Then I was being ushered
into one of these boxes, and found myself say-
ing something as I sat down, and people about
me crying "Silence!" to somebody, and ladies
casting indignant glances at me, and-what!
DRUNKENNESS-Of David Copperfield. yes!-Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in
Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside
window, refreshing his forehead against the cool her, whom I didn't know. I see her face now
stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon better than I did then, I dare say, with its in-
his face. It was myself. I was addressing my-delible look of regret and wonder turned upon
self as Copperfield," and saying, "Why did
you try to smoke? You might have known you
couldn't do it." Now, somebody was un-
steadily contemplating his features in the look-
ing-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in
the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appear-
ance; and my hair—only my hair, and nothing
else-looked drunk.
Somebody said to me, Let us go to the thea-
tre, Copperfield!" There was no bedroom be-
fore me, but again the jingling table covered
with glasses; the lamp; Grainger on my right
hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth op-
posite-all sitting in a mist, and a long way off.
The theatre! To be sure. The very thing.
Come along! But they must excuse me if I
saw everybody out first, and turned the lamp off
-in case of fire.
me.
"
Agnes!" I said thickly, “Lorblessmer! Ag-
nes!"
"Hush! Pray!" she answered, I could not
conceive why. "You disturb the company.
Look at the stage!"
I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear
something of what was going on there, but quite
in vain. I looked at her again by-and-by, and
saw her shrink into her corner, and put her
gloved hand to her forehead.
("
Agnes!" I said. “I'mafraidyou'renorwell."
Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood," she
returned. "Listen! Are you going away soon?"
Amigoarawaysoo?" I repeated.
"Yes.
I had a stupid intention of replying that I was
going to wait, to hand her down stairs. I sup-
pose I expressed it somehow; for, after she had
looked at me attentively for a little while, she
appeared to understand, and replied in a low
tone:
Owing to some_confusion in the dark, the
door was gone. I was feeling for it in the
window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing,
took me by the arm and led me out. We went
down stairs, one behind another. Near the bot- "I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell
tom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Some-you I am very earnest in it. Go away now, Trot-
body else said it was Copperfield. I was angry wood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take
at that false report, until, finding myself on my you home."
back in the passage, I began to think there
might be some foundation for it.
She had so far improved me, for the time,
that though I was angry with her, I felt ashamed,
A very foggy night, with great rings round the and with a short "Goori!" (which I intended
lamps in the streets! There was an indistinct for " Good-night!") got up and went away.
talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the
Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and box-door into my bedroom, where only Steer-
put my hat into shape, which somebody pro- forth was with me, helping me to undress, and
duced from somewhere in a most extraordinary where I was by turns telling him that Agnes was
manner, for I hadn't had it on before. Steer- my sister, and adjuring him to bring the cork-
forth then said, "You are all right, Copper-screw, that I might open another bottle of
field, are you not?" and I told him, "Never-
berrer."
wine.
How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying
A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole place, looked and doing all this over again, at cross purposes,
out of the fog, and took money from somebody, in a feverish dream all night-the bed a rocking
.nquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid sea that was never still! How, as that some-
for, and appearing rather doubtful (as I remem- body slowly settled down into myself, did I be-
ber in the glimpse I had of him) whether to gin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of
take the money for me or not. Shortly after-skin were a hard board; my tongue the, bottom
wards, we were very high up in a very hot theatre,
looking down into a large pit, that seemed to
me to smoke; the people with whom it was
crammed were so indistinct. There was a great
of an empty kettle, furred with long service, and
burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my
hands hot plates of metal which no ice could
cool!-David Copperfield, Chap. 24.
DRUNKENNESS
DRUNKENNESS-The effects of.
184
An odd confusion in my mind, as if a body of
Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed
the day before yesterday some months back.
David Copperfield, Chap. 25.
DRINKING-Without moderation.
Do you drink?' said the baron, touching
the bottle with the bowl of his pipe.
"Nine times out of ten, and then very hard,'
rejoined the figure, drily.
"Never in moderation?' asked the baron.
Never,' replied the figure, with a shudder;
that breed: cheerfulness.'
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6.
DRY ROT—in men—The.
A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men,
and difficult to detect the beginning of. It had
carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of the old
King's Bench prison, and it had carried him out
with his feet foremost. He was a likely man to
look at, in the prime of life, well to do, as clever
as he needed to be, and popular among many
friends. He was suitably married, and had
healthy and pretty children. But, like some
fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships, he
took the Dry Rot. The first strong external
revelation of the Dry Rot in men is a tendency
to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners
without intelligible reason; to be going any-
where when met; to be about many places
rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but
to have an intention of performing a variety of
intangible duties to-morrow or the day after.
When this manifestation of the disease is ob-
served, the observer will usually connect it with
a vague impression once formed or received,
that the patient was living a little too hard.
He will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over
in his mind, and form the terrible suspicion
Dry Rot," when he will notice a change for
the worse in the patient's appearance-a certain
slovenliness and deterioration, which is not pov-
erty, nor dirt nor intoxication, nor ill-health,
but simply Dry Rot. To this succeeds a smell
as of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a
looseness respecting money; to that, a stronger
smell as of strong waters, at all times; to that,
a looseness respecting everything; to that, a
trembling of the limbs, somnolency, misery, and
crumbling to pieces. As it is in wood, so it is
Dry Rot advances at a compound
usury quite incalculable. A plank is found in-
fected with it, and the whole structure is de-
voted. Thus it had been with the unhappy
Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small sub-
scription. Those who knew him had not nigh
done saying, “So well off, so comfortably estab-
lished, with such hope before him—and yet, it
is feared, with a slight touch of Dry Rot!"
when, lo! the man was all Dry Rot and dust.
in men.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13.
DUEL-Description of a.
“We shall just have comfortable time, my
lord," said the captain, when he had communi-
cated the arrangements, "to call at my rooms
for a case of pistols, and then jog coolly down.
If you will allow me to dismiss your servant,
we'll take my cab; for yours, perhaps, might be
recognized.
"
What a contrast, when they reached the street,
:
DUEL
to the scene they had just left! It was already
daybreak. For the flaring yellow light within,
was substituted the clear, bright, glorious morn.
ing for a hot, close atmosphere, tainted with
the smell of expiring lamps, and reeking with
the steams of riot and dissipation, the free, fresh,
wholesome air. But to the fevered head on
which that cool air blew, it seemed to come
laden with remorse for the time misspent and
countless opportunities neglected. With throb.
bing veins and burning skin, eyes wild and
heavy, thoughts hurried and disordered, he felt
as though the light were a reproach, and shrank
involuntarily from the day as if he were some
foul and hideous thing.
((
'Shivering?" said the captain. "You are
cold."
"Rather."
"It does strike cool, coming out of those hot
rooms. Wrap that cloak about you.
So, so;
now we're off."
They rattled through the quiet streets, made
their call at the captain's lodgings, cleared the
town, and emerged upon the open road without
hindrance or molestation.
Fields, trees, gardens, hedges, everything
looked very beautiful: the young man scarcely
seemed to have noticed them before, though he
had passed the same objects a thousand times.
There was a peace and serenity upon them all,
strangely at variance with the bewilderment
and confusion of his own half-sobered thoughts,
and yet impressive and welcome.
He had no
fear upon his mind; but, as he looked about
him, he had less anger; and though all old delu-
sions, relative to his worthless late companion
were now cleared away, he rather wished he
had never known him than thought of its hav-
ing come to this.
The past night, the day before, and many
other days and nights beside, all mingled them-
selves up in one unintelligible and senseless
whirl; he could not separate the transactions
of one time from those of another. Now, the
noise of the wheels resolved itself into some
wild tune in which he could recognize scraps
of airs he knew; now, there was nothing in his
ears but a stunning and bewildering sound, like
rushing water. But his companion rallied him
on being so silent, and they talked and laughed
boisterously. When they stopped, he was a
little surprised to find himself in the act of
smoking; but, on reflection, he remembered
when and where he had taken a cigar.
They stopped at the avenue gate and alighted,
leaving the carriage to the care of the servant,
who was a smart fellow, and nearly as well ac-
customed to such proceedings as his master.
Sir Mulberry and his friend were already there.
All four walked in profound silence up the
aisle of stately elm-trees, which, meeting far
above their heads, formed a long green per-
spective of Gothic arches, terminating, like some
old ruin, in the open sky.
After a pause, and a brief conference between
the seconds, they, at length, turned to the right,
and taking a track across a little meadow, passed
Ham House and came into some fields beyond.
In one of these they stopped. The ground was
measured, some usual forms gone through, t} e
two principals were placed front to front at t.ie
distance agreed upon, and Sir Mulberry turned
his face towards his young adversary for the firs'
DUST
165
EARLY RISING
time. He was very pale, his eyes were blood-alike in the large case and in the small. So al:
shot, his dress disordered, and his hair dishev- | true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was,
elled. For the face, it expressed nothing but ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing 'it-
violent and evil passions. He shaded his eyes tle to the really great in spirit.
with his hands; gazed at his opponent, stead-
fastly, for a few moments; and then, taking the
weapon which was tendered to him, bent his
eyes upon that, and looked up no more until
the word was given, when he instantly fired.
DUTY-To society.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 17.
"No, my good sir," said Mr. Pecksniff, firmly,
"No. But I have a duty to discharge which I
owe to society; and it shall be discharged, my
friend, at any cost!"
The two shots were fired, as nearly as possi-
ble, at the same instant. In that instant, the
young lord turned his head sharply round, fixed
upon his adversary a ghastly stare, and, withouting,
a groan or stagger, fell down dead.
He's gone!" cried Westwood, who, with
the other second, had run up to the body, and
fallen on one knee beside it.
His blood is on his own head," said Sir
Mulberry. He brought this upon himself, and
forced it upon me."
'Captain Adams," cried Westwood, hastily,
"I call you to witness that this was fairly done.
Hawk, we have not a moment to lose. We
must leave this place immediately, push for
Brighton, and cross to France with all speed.
This has been a bad business, and may be
worse, if we delay a moment. Adams, consult
your own safety, and don't remain here; the liv-
ing before the dead; good-bye!"
With these words, he seized Sir Mulberry by
the arm, and hurried him away. Captain Adams
-only pausing to convince himself, beyond all
question, of the fatal result-sped off in the same
direction, to concert measures with his servant
for removing the body, and securing his own
safety likewise.
So died Lord Frederick Verisopht, by the
hand which he had loaded with gifts, and
ciasped a thousand times; by the act of him,
but for whom, and others like him, he might
have lived a happy man, and died with chil-
dren's faces round his bed.
The sun came proudly up in all his majesty,
the noble river ran its winding course, the
leaves quivered and rustled in the air, the birds
poured their cheerful songs from every tree, the
short-lived butterfly fluttered its little wings; all
the light and life of day came on; and, amidst
it all, and pressing down the grass whose every
blade bore twenty tiny lives, lay the dead man,
with his stark and rigid face turned upward to
the sky.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 50.
DUST-In London.
A very dark night it was, and bitter cold; the
east wind blowing bleak, and bringing with it
stinging particles from marsh, and moor, and
fen-from the Great Desert and Old Egypt,
may be. Some of the component parts of the
sharp-edged vapor that came flying up the
Thames at London might be mummy-dust, dry
atoms from the Temple at Jerusalem, camels'
foot-prints, crocodiles' hatching places, loosened
grains of expression from the visages of blunt-
nosed sphynxes, waifs and strays from caravans
of turbaned merchants, vegetation from jungles,
frozen snow from the Himalayas. O! It was
very dark upon the Thames, and it was bitter,
bitter cold.
Oh, late-remembered, much-forgotten, mouth-
braggart duty! always owed, and seldom
paid in any other coin than punishment and
wrath, when will mankind begin to know thee?
When will men acknowledge thee in thy ne-
glected cradle and thy stunted youth, and not
begin their recognition in thy sinful manhood
and thy desolate old age? Oh, ermined Judge!
whose duty to society is, now, to doom the
ragged criminal to punishment and death, hadst
thou never, Man, a duty to discharge in barring
up the hundred open gates that wooed him to
the felon's dock, and throwing but ajar the por-
tals to a decent life? Oh, Prelate, Prelate! whose
duty to society it is to mourn in melancholy
phrase the sad degeneracy of these bad times
in which thy lot of honors has been cast, did
nothing go before thy elevation to the lofty seat,
from which thou dealest out thy homilies to
other tarriers for dead men's shoes, whose duty
to society has not begun? Oh, Magistrate! so
rare a country gentleman and brave a squire,
had you no duty to society, before the ricks
were blazing and the mob were mad; or did it
spring up, armed and booted from the earth, a
corps of yeomanry, full-grown?
Martin Chuzzlewit. Chap. 31.
DUTY-The world's idea of.
I have heard some talk about duty first and
last; but it has always been of my duty to other
people. I have wondered now and then-to
pass away the time-whether no one ever owed
any duty to me.”—Dombey & Son, Chap. 34.
E.
EAGLE-The French.
The Eagle of France, apparently afflicted with
the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on
the poultry, is in a very undecided state of
policy, and as a bird moulting.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 25.
EARLY RISING.
If there be one thing in existence more miser-
able than another, it most unquestionably is the
being compelled to rise by candle-light. If you
ever doubted the fact, you are painfully con-
vinced of your error, on the morning of your
departure. 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
DUTY-The test of a great soul.
of a large church clock with the small hand run-
He was simply and stanchly true to his duty, ning round, with astonishing rapidity, to every
Down with the Tide. Reprinted Pieces.
EATING
figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely
exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing
sleep-your thoughts grow confused-the stage-
coaches, which have been "going off" before
your eyes all night, become less and less dis-
tinct, until they go off altogether; one moment
you are driving with all the skill and smartness
of an experienced whip-the next you are ex-
hibiting, à la Ducrow, on the off leader; anon
you are closely muffled 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. Con-
found that other apprentice in the back shop,
how he is hammering !-rap, rap, rap-what an
industrious fellow he must be! you have heard
him at work for 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 vio-
lent exertion, and start up in bed. The vision
is at once dispelled; the trunk-maker's shop is
your own bed-room, and the other apprentice
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 panels of the door.
You proceed to dress yourself, with all possi-
ble 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 should awaken any of the family, and after
pausing in the common sitting-room for one
moment, just to have a cup of coffee (the said
common sitting-room looking remarkably com-
fortable, with everything out of its place, and
strewed with the crumbs of last night's supper),
you undo the chain and bolts of the street-door,
and find yourself fairly in the street.
Scenes, Chap. 15.
It became high time to remember the first
clause of that great discovery made by the an-
cient philosopher, for securing health, riches,
and wisdom; the infallibility of which has been
for generations verified by the enormous for-
tunes constantly amassed by chimney-sweepers
and other persons who get up early and go to
bed betimes.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5.
EATING—A pauper overfed.
"It's not madness, ma'am," replied Mr. Bum-
ble, after a few moments of deep meditation.
"It's meat."
166
EATING
You've raised a artificial soul and spirit in him,
ma'am, unbecoming a person of his cond tion;
as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practi-
cal philosophers, will tell you. What have pau-
pers to do with soul or spirit? It's quite enough
that we let 'em have live bodies. If you had
kept the boy on gruel, maʼam, this would never
have happened."-Oliver Twist, Chap. 7.
EATING-A bill of fare.
She put forth a bill of fare that might kindle
exhilaration in the breast of a misanthrope.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 24.
EATING-Bread and butter (Joe and Jip).
My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our
bread-and-butter for us, that never va ied.
First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf
hard and fast against her bib-where it s me-
times got a pin into it, and sometimes a ne dle,
which we afterward got into our mouths. 1 hen
she took some butter (not too much) on a 1 nife
and spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary lind
of way, as if she was making a plaster-u sing
both sides of the knife with a slapping deter-
ity, and trimming and moulding the butter off
round the crust. Then she gave the kni'e a
final smart wipe on the edge of the plaster,
and then sawed a very thick round off the
loaf: which she finally, before separating
from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of
which Joe got one, and I the other. I knew
Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest
kind, and that my larcenous researches might
find nothing available in the safe. Therefore
I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter
down the leg of my trousers. Joe was evi-
dently made uncomfortable by what he sup
posed to be my loss of appetite, and took
a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he
didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in
his mouth much longer than usual, pondering
over it a good deal, and after all gulped it
down like a pill. He was about to take an-
other bite, and had just got his head on one
side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell
on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter
was gone.
The wonder and consternation with which
Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and
stared at me, were too evident to escape my
sister's observation.
"What's the matter now?" said she, smartly.
as she put down her cup.
"I say, you know!" muttered Joe, shaking
his head at me in very serious remonstrance,
'Pip, old chap! You'll do yourself a mischief.
It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed
it, Pip."
What's the matter now?" repeated my sis-
ter, more sharply than before.
"If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip,
I'd recommend you to do it," said Joe, all
aghast. "Manners is manners, but still your
elth's your elth."
By this time, my sister was quite desperate,
so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the
two whiskers, knocked his head for a little
while against the wall behind him: while I sat
in the corner, looking guiltily on.
"What?" exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.
"Now, perhaps, you'll mention what's the
'Meat, ma'am, meat," replied Bumble, with matter," said my sister, out of breath "you
stern emphasis. "You've overfed him, ma'am. I staring great stuck pig.”
EATING AND GROWTH
Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then
took a helpless bite, and looked at me again.
"You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, with
his last bite in his cheek, and speaking in a
confidential voice, as if we two were quite
alone, "you and me is always friends, and I'd
be the last to tell upon you, any time. But
such a-" he moved his chair, and looked about
the floor between us, and then again at me-
"such a most oncommon bolt as that!"
"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried my
sister.
"
187
You know, old chap," said Joe, looking at
me, and not at Mrs. Joe, with his bite still in
his cheek, “I Bolted, myself, when I was your
age-frequent—and as a boy I've been among
a many Bolters; but I never see your bolting |
equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't Bolted
dead.' -Great Expectations, Chap. 2.
"
EATING AND GROWTH-Guppy's lunch.
Beholding him in which glow of contentment,
Mr. Guppy says:
66
"You are a man again, Tony!"
"Well, not quite, yet," says Mr. Jobling.
Say, just born.'
Will you take any other vegetables? Grass?
Peas? Summer cabbage?'
"}
Thank you, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling. "I
really don't know but what I will take summer
Cabbage."
Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from
Mr. Smallweed) of "Without slugs, Polly!"
And cabbage produced.
"I am growing up, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling,
plying his knife and fork with a relishing steadi-
ness.
Glad to hear it.”
In fact I have just turned into my teens,"
says Mr. Jobling.
EDUCATION
EATING-Its "mellering" influence.
Wegg, who had been going to put on his
spectacles, immediately laid them down, with
the sprightly observation:
"You read my thoughts, sir. Do my eyes
deceive me, or is that object up there a—a pie?
It can't be a pie."
Yes, it's a pie, Wegg," replied Mr. Boffin
with a glance of some little discomfiture at the
Decline and Fall.
Have I lost my smell for fruits, or is it a
apple pie, sir?" asked Wegg.
"It's a veal and ham pie," said Mr. Boffin.
"Is it indeed, sir? And it would be hard, sir,
to name the pie that is a better pie than a weal
and hammer," said Mr. Wegg, nodding his head
emotionally.
"Have some, Wegg?"
"Thank you, Mr. Boffin, I think I will, at
your invitation. I wouldn't at any other party's
at the present juncture; but at yours, sir-And
meaty jelly too, especially when a little salt,
which is the case where there's ham, is mellering
to the organ, is very mellering to the organ."
Mr. Wegg did not say what organ, but spoke
with a cheerful generality.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 5.
EATING-Beef and mutton.
"Here I am! This is my frugal breakfast.
Some men want legs of beef and mutton for
breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup
of coffee, and my claret; I am content. I don't
want them for themselves, but they remind me
of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of
beef and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction !"
Bleak House, Chap. 43.
EDUCATION-Of children.
Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-na-
tured little body, although a disciple of that
school of trainers of the young idea which holds
that childhood, like money, must be shaken and
rattled and jostled about a good deal to keep it
He says no more until he has performed his
task, which he achieves as Messrs. Guppy and
Small weed finish theirs; thus getting over the
ground in excellent style, and beating those two
gentlemen easily by a veal and ham and a cab-bright.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
bage.
Now, Small," says Mr. Guppy, "what would
you recommend about pastry?'
"Marrow puddings," says Mr. Smallweed, in-
stantly.
Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr.
Jobling adds, in a pleasant humor, that he is
coming of age fast. To these succeed, by com-
mand of Mr. Smallweed, "three Cheshires ;" and
to those, "three small rums." This apex of the
entertainment happily reached, Mr. Jobling puts
up his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own
side of the box to himself), leans against the
wall, and says, "I am grown up, now, Guppy.
I have arrived at maturity."
"
"What do you think, now," says Mr. Guppy.
"Why, what I may think after dinner," re-
turns Mr. Jobling, "is one thing, my dear Gup-
py, and what I may think before dinner is another
thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask my-
self the question, What am I to do? How am
I to live? Ill fo manger, you know," says Mr.
Jobling, pronouncing that word as if he meant
a necessary fixture in an English stable. Ill
fo manger.
That's the French saying, and
mangering is as necessary to ine as it is to a
Frenchman. Oi more so.
"
"
Bleak House, Chap. 20.
EDUCATION-Mrs. Pipchin's system.
Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a
pedigree from Genesis (judiciously selected by
Mrs. Pipchin), getting over the names with the
ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the
treadmill. That done, Miss Pankey was borne
away to be shampoo'd; and Master Bitherstone
to have something else done to him with salt
water, from which he always returned very blue
and dejected. About noon Mrs. Pipchin pre-
sided over some Early Readings. It being a
part of Mrs. Pipchin's system not to encourage
a child's mind to develop and expand itself like
a young flower, but to open it by force like an
oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of
a violent and stunning character: the hero-a
naughty boy-seldom, in the mildest catastrophe
being finished off by anything less than a lion,
or a bear.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 8.
EDUCATION—A victim of.
Rob the Grinder, whose reverence for the in-
spired writings, under the admirable system of
the Grinders School, had been developed by a
perpetual bruising of his intellectual shins against
all the proper names of all the tribes of Judah,
and by the monotonous repetition of hard verses,
EDUCATION
168
especially by way by punishment, and by the
parading of him at six years old in leather
breeches, three times a Sunday, very high up,
in a very hot church, with a great organ buz- |
zing against his drowsy head, like an exceedingly
busy bee-Rob the Grinder made a mighty show
of being edified when the Captain ceased to
read, and generally yawned and nodded while
the reading was in progress.
EDUCATION—Early.
Dombey & Son, Ch. 39.
There is a great deal of nonsense-and
worse-talked about young people not being
pressed too hard at first, and being tempted on,
and all the rest of it, Sir," said Mrs. Pipchin,
impatiently rubbing her hooked nose. 'It never
was thought of in my time, and it has no busi-
ness to be thought of now. My opinion is,
'keep 'em at it.'"-Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
EDUCATION-The_forcing process in Dr.
Blimber's School.
Whenever a young gentleman was taken in
hand by Doctor Blimber, he might consider him-
self sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The doctor
only undertook the charge of ten young gentle-
men, but he had, always ready, a supply of learn-
ing for a hundred, on the lowest estimate: and
it was at once the business and delight of his
life to gorge the unhappy ten with it.
It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too
hard upon him, or that Doctor Blimber meant
to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in
general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which
she had been bred; and the Doctor, in some
partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the
young gentlemen as if they were all Doctors,
and were born grown up. Comforted by the
applause of the young gentlemen's nearest rela-
tions, and urged on by their blind vanity and
ill-considered haste, it would have been strange
if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or
trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack.
Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor
Blimber said he made great progress, and was
naturally clever, Mr. Dombey was more bent
than ever on his being forced and crammed.
In the case of Briggs, when Doctor Blimber
reported that he did not make great progress
yet, and was not naturally clever, Briggs senior
was inexorable in the same purpose. In short,
however high and false the temperature at which
the Doctor kept his hot-house, the owners of the
plants were always ready to lend a helping hand
at the bellows, and to stir the fire.
*
*
*
*
*
In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was
a great hot-house, in which there was a forcing
apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys
blew before their time. Mental green-peas were
produced at Christmas, and intellectual aspar-
agus all the year round. Mathematical goose-
berries (very sour ones, too) were common at
untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of
bushes, under Doctor Blimber's cultivation.
Every description of Greek and Latin vegeta-
ble was got off the driest twigs of boys, under
the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no
consequence at all. No matter what a young
gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blim-
ber made him bear to pattern, somehow or
other.
|
|
EDUCATION
the system of forcing was attended with its usual
disadvantages. There was not the right taste
about the premature productions, and they
didn't keep well. Moreover, one young gentle-
man, with a swollen nose and an excessively
large head (the oldest of the ten who had "gone
through" everything), suddenly left off blowing
one day, and remained in the establishment a
mere stalk. And people did say that the Doc-
tor had rather overdone it with young Toots,
and that when he began to have whiskers he
left off having brains.
*
*
*
*
The young gentlemen were prematurely full
of carking anxieties. They knew no rest from the
pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-
substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and
ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in
their dreams. Under the forcing system, a
young gentleman usually took leave of his spi-
rits in three weeks. He had all the cares of the
world on his head in three months. He con-
ceived bitter sentiments against his parents or
guardians in four; he was an old misanthrope,
in five; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in
the earth, in six; and at the end of the first
twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion,
from which he never afterwards departed, that
all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the
sages, were a mere collection of words and gram-
mar, and had no other meaning in the world.
*
*
*
*
*
The studies went round like a mighty wheel,
and the young gentlemen were always stretched
upon it.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
EDUCATION-In England.
Of the monstrous neglect of education in Eng-
land, and the disregard of it by the state as
the means of forming good or bad citizens, and
miserable or happy men, private schools long
afforded a notable example. Although any
man who had proved his unfitness for any other
occupation in life, was free, without examina-
tion or qualification, to open a school anywhere;
although preparation for the functions he un-
dertook, was required in the surgeon who as-
sisted to bring a boy into the world, or might
one day assist, perhaps, to send him out of it;
in the chemist, the attorney, the butcher, the
baker, the candlestick-maker; the whole round
of crafts and trades, the schoolmaster excepted:
and although schoolmasters, as a race, were the
blockheads and impostors who might naturally
be expected to spring from such a state of
things, and to flourish in it; these Yorkshire
schoolmasters were the lowest and most rotten
round in the whole ladder. Traders in the ava-
rice, indifference, or imbecility of parents, and
the helplessness of children; ignorant, sordid,
brutal men, to whom few considerate persons
would have entrusted the board and lodging of
a horse or a dog; they formed the worthy cor-
ner-stone of a structure, which, for absurdity
and a magnificent high-minded laissez-aller neg-
lect, has rarely been exceeded in the world.
We hear sometimes of an action for damages
against the unqualified medical practitioner,
who has deformed a broken limb in pretending
to heal it. But what of the hundreds of thou-
sands of minds that have been deformed for
ever by the incapable pettifoggers who have
This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but | pretended to form them !
EDUCATION
I make mention of the race, as of the York-
shire schoolmasters, in the past tense. Though
it has not yet finally disappeared, it is dwin-
dling daily. A long day's work remains to be
done about us in the way of education, Heaven
knows; but great improvements and facilities
towards the attainment of a good one, have been
furnished of late years.
I cannot call to mind, now, how I came to
hear about Yorkshire schools when I was a not
very robust child, sitting in bye-places near
Rochester Castle, with a head full of PAR-
TRIDGE, STRAP, TOM PIPES, and SANCHO
PANZA; but I know that my first impressions
of them were picked up at that time, and that
they were somehow or other connected with a
suppurated abscess that some boy had come
home with, in consequence of his Yorkshire
guide, philosopher, and friend, having ripped it
open with an inky pen-knife. The impression
made upon me, however made, never left me.
I was always curious about Yorkshire schools
fell, long afterwards, and at sundry times, into
the way of hearing more about them-at last,
having an audience, resolved to write about
them.-Preface to Nicholas Nickleby.
EDUCATION-Practical.
"No man of sense who has been generally im-
proved, and has improved himself, can be called
quite uneducated as to anything. I don't par-
ticularly favor mysteries. I would as soon, on
a fair and clear explanation, be judged by one
class of man as another, provided he had the
qualification I have named."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 8.
169
EDUCATION
they must take everything on trust. Body
number two said, they must take everything
on political economy. Body number three
wrote leaden little books for them, showing
how the good grown-up baby invariably got
to the Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up
baby invariably got transported. Body number
four, under dreary pretences of being droll
(when it was very melancholy indeed), made
the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls
of knowledge, into which it was the duty of
these babies to be smuggled and inveigled.
But all the bodies agreed that they were never
to wonder.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 8.
EDUCATION-The misfortune of.
It seemed that Tozer had a dreadful uncle
who not only volunteered examinations of him,
in the holidays, on abstruse points, but twisted
innocent events and things, and wrenched them
took him to the Play, or, on a similar pretence
to the same fell purpose. So that if this uncle
of kindness. carried him to see a Giant, or a
Dwarf, or a Conjuror, or anything, Tozer
knew he had read up some classical allusion to
the subject beforehand, and was thrown into a
state of mortal apprehension: not foreseeing
he might not quote against him.
where he might break out, or what authority
*
*
*
Mr. Tozer, now a young man of lofty stature,
in Wellington boots, was so extremely full of
antiquity as to be nearly on a par with a genu-
ine ancient Roman in his knowledge of En-
glish a triumph that affected his good parents
with the tenderest emotions, and caused the
father and mother of Mr. Briggs (whose learn-
The
EDUCATION-The Gradgrind school of.
Let us strike the key-note again, before pur-ing, like ill-arranged luggage, was so tightly
suing the tune.
packed that he couldn't get at anything he
When she was half a dozen years younger, wanted) to hide their diminished heads.
Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversa-fruit laboriously gathered from the tree of
tion with her brother one day, by saying, "Tom,
I wonder "-upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who
was the person overhearing, stepped forth into
the light, and said, “Louisa, never wonder!"
knowledge by this latter young gentleman, in
fact, had been subjected to so much pressure,
that it had become a kind of intellectual Nor-
folk Biffin, and had nothing of its original form
or flavor remaining.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 60.
EDUCATION-Josiah Bounderby's practi-
cal.
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art
and mystery of educating the reason without
stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments
and affections. Never wonder. By means of
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and divi- "I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs.
sion, settle everything somehow, and never won- | Gradgrind. Whether I was to do it or not,
der. Bring to me, said M'Choakumchild, yon-ma'am, I did it. I pulled through it, though
der baby just able to walk, and I will engage
that it shall never wonder.
nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, er-
rand boy, vagabond, laborer, porter, clerk, chief
manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown. Those are the antecedents and the
culmination. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown
learned his letters from the outsides of the shops,
Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to tell the
Now, besides very many babies just able to
walk, there happened to be in Coketown a con-
siderable population of babies who had been
walking against time towards the infinite world,
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more.
These portentous infants being alarming crea-time upon a dial-plate, from studying the steeple-
tures to stalk about in any human society, the
eighteen denominations incessantly scratched
one another's faces, and pulled one another's
hair, by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken
for their improvement-which they never did;
8. surprising circumstance, when the happy adap-
tation of the means to the end is considered.
Still, although they differed in every other par-
ticular, conceivable and inconceivable (espe-
cially inconceivable), they were pretty well
united on the point that these unlucky infants
were never to wonder. Body number one said,
clock of St. Giles's Church, London, under the
direction of a drunken cripple, who was a con-
victed thief, and an incorrigible vagrant. Tell
Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district
schools, and your model schools, and your train
ing schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of
schools; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown
tells you plainly, all right, all correct he hadn't
such advantages-but let us have hard-headed,
solid-fisted people-the education that made him
won't do for everybody, he knows well-such
and such his education was, however, and you
EDUCATION
may force him to swallow boiling fat, but you
shall never force him to suppress the facts of
his life."-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 4.
EDUCATION-A perverted.
170
For the same reason, that young man's coarse
allusions, even to himself, filled him with a
stealthy glee; causing him to rub his hands and
chuckle covertly, as if he said in his sleeve, "I
taught him. I trained him. This is the heir
of my bringing-up. Sly, cunning, and covetous,
he'll not squander my money. I worked for
this; I hoped for this; it has been the great
end and aim of my life."
What a noble end and aim it was to contem-
plate in the attainment, truly! But there be
some who manufacture idols after the fashion of
themselves, and fail to worship them when they
are made; charging their deformity on outraged
nature. Anthony was better than these at any
rate.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. II.
EDUCATION-Early-The alphabet.
I struggled through the alphabet as if it had
been a bramble-bush; getting considerably wor-
ried and scratched by every letter. After that
I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who
seemed every evening to do something new to
disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But,
at last I began, in a purblind, groping way, to
read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest
scale.
*
*
*
*
I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my
forefinger, read him the whole letter.
Astonishing!" said Joe, when I had finished.
"You ARE a scholar."
EGOTISM.
ELECTION
And again he said "Dom-bey and Son," in
exactly the same tone as before.
Those three words conveyed the one idea of
Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for
Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and
moon were made to give them light. Rivers
and seas were formed to float their ships; rain-
bows gave them promise of fair weather; winds
blew for or against their enterprises; stars and
planets circled in their orbits, to preserve in-
violate a system of which they were the centre.
Common abbreviations took new meanings in
his eyes, and had sole reference to them: Ă. D.
had no concern with Anno Domini, but stood
for Anno Dombei—and Son.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
ELECTION-Mr. Weller at an.
"Oh, I know you,' says the gen'l'm'n
'know'd you when you was a boy,' says he.-
'Well, I don't remember you,' says my father-
C
That's very odd,' says the gen'l'm'n—' Werry,'
says my father-'You must have a bad memʼry,
Mr. Weller,' says the gen'l'm'n-'Well, it is a
werry bad 'un,' says my father-'I thought so,
says the gen'l'm'n. So then they pours him out
driving, and gets him into a reg'lar good humor,
a glass of wine, and gammons him about his
and at last shoves a twenty-pound note in his
hand. It's a werry bad road between this and
London,' says the gen'l'm'n-' Here and there
it is a heavy road,' says my father-'Specially
near the canal, I think,' says the gen'l'm'n—
Nasty bit that 'ere,' says my father-Well, Mr.
Weller,' says the gen'l'm'n, 'you're a wery good
whip, and can do what you like with your horses,
we know. We're all wery fond o' you, Mr.
Weller, so in case you should have an accident
when you're a bringing these here woters down,
and should tip 'em over into the canal vithout
hurtin' of 'em, this is for yourself,' says he-
Gen'l'm'n, you're wery kind,' says my father,
'and I'll drink your health in another glass of
wine,' says he; which he did, and then buttons
"On-common. Give me," said Joe,
Give me," said Joe, "a good up the money, and bows himself out. You
book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down wouldn't believe, sir," continued Sam, with a
afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!" look of inexpressible impudence at his master,
he continued, after rubbing his knees a little," that on the wery day as he came down with
"when you do come to a J and a O, and says them woters, his coach was upset on that 'ere
you, 'Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,' how interest- wery spot, and ev'ry man on 'em was turned into
ing reading is !"
"How do you spell Gargery, Joe?" I asked
him, with modest patronage.
"I don't spell it at all," said Joe.
"But supposing you did?"
"It can't be supposed," said Joe.
oncommon fond of reading, too."
"Are you, Joe?"
"Tho' I'm
I derived from this, that Joe's education, like
steam, was yet in its infancy.
Great Expectations, Chap. 7.
EDUCATION-From A to Z.
You are oncommon in some things. You're
oncommon small. Likewise, you're a oncom-
mon scholar."
66
No; I am ignorant and backward, Joe.”
"Well, Pip," said Joe, “be it so or be it son't,
you must be a common scholar afore you can be
a oncommon one, I should hope! The king upon
his throne, with his crown upon his 'ed, can't
sit and write his acts of Parliament in print,
without having begun, when he were a unpro-
moted prince, with the alphabet-ah!" added
Joe, with a shake of the head that was full of
meaning, "and begun at A too, and worked his
way to Z. And I know what that is to do,
though I can't say I've exactly done it.
Great Expectations, Chap. 7.
the canal."
"And got out again ?" inquired Mr. Pickwick,
hastily.
Why," replied Sam, very slowly, "I rather
think one old gen'l'm'n was missin'; I know his
hat was found, but I a'n't quite certain whether
his head was in it or not. But what I look at,
is the hex-traordinary and wonderful coinci-
dence, that arter what that gen'l'm'n said, my
father's coach should be upset in that wery place,
and on that wery day!”
Pickwick, Chap. 13.
ELECTION-A public; the devotion of par.
ty.
“Ah,” said Mr. Pickwick, "do they seem de
voted to their party, Sam?"
"Never see such dewotion in my life, sir."
Energetic, eh?" said Mr. Pickwick.
"Uncommon," replied Sam; "I never see
men eat and drink so much afore. I wonder
they a'n't afeer'd o' bustin."
ELECTION
171
EMIGRANT SHIP
"That's the mistaken kindness of the gentry ELECTION CANDIDATES.
here," said Mr. Pickwick.
"Wery likely," replied Sam, briefly.
Fine, fresh, hearty fellows they seem," said
Mr. Pickwick, glancing from the window.
(6
Wery fresh," replied Sam; "me, and the
two waiters at the Peacock, has been a pumpin'
over the independent woters as supped there last
night."
Pumping over independent voters!" ex-
claimed Mr. Pickwick.
"Yes," said his attendant, "every man slept
vere he fell down; we dragged 'em out, one by
one, this mornin', and put 'em under the pump,
and they're in reg'lar fine order, now. Shillin' a
head the committee paid for that 'ere job."
Mr. Horatio Fizkin, and the honorable Sam
uel Slumkey, with their hands upon their hearts,
were bowing with the utmost affability to the
troubled sea of heads that inundated the open
space in front; and from whence arose a storm
of groans, and shouts, and yells, and hootings,
that would have done honor to an earthquake.
Pickwick, Chap. 13.
EMIGRANT SHIP.
Gigantic in the basin just beyond the church
looms my Emigrant Ship, her name, the Ama-
zon. Her figure-head is not disfigured, as those
beauteous founders of the race of strong-minded
women are fabled to have been, for the conve-
Can such things be!" exclaimed the aston-nience of drawing the bow; but I sympathize
ished Mr. Pickwick.
with the carver:-
"Lord bless your heart, sir," said Sam, "why,
where was you half baptized?-that's nothin',
that a'nt."
"
Nothing?" said Mr. Pickwick.
"Nothin' at all, sir," replied his attendant.
"The night afore the last day o' the last election
here, the opposite party bribed the bar-maid at
the Town Arms, to hocus the brandy and water
of fourteen unpolled electors as was a stoppin'
in the house.'
"What do you mean by "hocussing' brandy
and water?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
"Puttin' laud'num in it," replied Sam.
"Blessed if she didn't send 'em all to sleep till
twelve hours arter the election was over. They
took one man up to the booth, in a truck, fast
asleep, by way of experiment, but it was no go-
they wouldn't poll him; so they brought him
back, and put him to bed again.'
*<c
Pickwick, Chap. 13.
ELECTION-A spirited.
"And what are the probabilities as to the
result of the contest?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
Why, doubtful, my dear sir; rather doubtful
as yet," replied the little man. "Fizkin's peo-
ple have got three-and-thirty voters in the lock-
up coach-house at the White Hart."
"In the coach-house!" said Mr. Pickwick,
considerably astonished by this second stroke
of policy.
They keep 'em locked up there till they
want 'em," resumed the little man. "The
effect of that is, you see, to prevent our getting
at them; and even if we could, it would be of
no use, for they keep them very drunk on pur-
pose. Smart fellow Fizkin's agent-very smart
fellow indeed."
"A flattering carver, who made it his care
To carve busts as they ought to be,-not as they
were."
My Emigrant Ship lies broadside on-to the wharf.
Two great gangways made of spars and planks
connect her with the wharf; and up and down
these gangways, perpetually crowding to and
fro and in and out, like ants, are the Emigrants
who are going to sail in my Emigrant Ship.
Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread,
some with cheese and butter, some with milk
and beer, some with boxes, beds, and bundles,
some with babies-nearly all with children—
nearly all with bran-new tin cans for their daily
allowance of water, uncomfortably suggestive
of a tin flavor in the drink. To and fro, up and
down, aboard and ashore, swarming here and
there and everywhere, my Emigrants. And
still, as the Dock Gate swings upon its hinges,
cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans appear,
bringing more of my Emigrants, with more
cabbages, more loaves, more cheese and butter,
more milk and beer, more boxes, beds, and
bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping
investments accumulated compound interest of
children.
I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to
the great cabin, and find it in the usual condi-
tion of a cabin at that pass. Perspiring lands-
men, with loose papers, and with pens and ink-
stands, pervade it; and the general appearance
of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon's funeral
had just come home from the cemetery, and the
disconsolate Mrs. Amazon's trustees found the
affairs in great disorder, and were looking high
and low for the will. I go out on the poop-
deck for air, and, surveying the emigrants on
the deck below (indeed they are crowded all
about me, up there too), find more pens and
"We are pretty confident, though," said Mr. inkstands in action, and more papers, and inter-
Perker, sinking his voice almost to a whisper.minable complications respecting accounts with
"We had a little tea-party here, last night-five-
and-forty women, my dear sir-and gave every
one of 'em a green parasol when she went away.
A parasol!" said Mr. Pickwick.
Mr. Pickwick stared, but said nothing.
(6
"
Fact, my dear sir, fact. Five-and-forty
green parasols, at seven and sixpence a-piece.
All women like finery,-extraordinary the effect
of those parasols. Secured all their husbands,
and h their brothers-beats stockings and
flannel, and all that sort of thing hollow. My
idea, my dear sir, entirely. Hail, rain, or sun-
shine, you can't walk half a dozen yards up the
street, without encountering half a dozen green
parasols."-Pickwick, Chap. 13.
But no-
individuals for tin cans and what not.
body is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse
for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses
coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody
is weeping; and down
weeping; and down upon the deck, in every
corner where it is possible to find a few square
feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people in every
unsuitable attitude for writing are writing letters.
Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this
day in June. And these people are so striking ly
different from all other people in like c'rcu -
stances whom I have ever seen, that I wɔnd ar
aloud, "What would a stranger suppose the e
emigrants to be 1”
EMIGRANTS
172
The vigilant, bright face of the weather-
browned captain of the Amazon is at my shoul-
der, and he says: "What, indeed! The most
of these came aboard yesterday evening. They
came from various parts of England in small
parties that had never seen one another before.
Yet they had not been a couple of hours on
board when they established their own police,
made their own regulations, and set their own
watches at all the hatchways. Before nine
o'clock the ship was as orderly and as quiet as
a man-of-war."
ENERGY
brightened as he looked. Here an old grand-
mother was crooning over a sick child, and rock-
ing it to and fro, in arms hardly more wasted
than its own young limbs; here a poor woman
with an infant in her lap, mended another little
creature's clothes, and quieted another who was
creeping up about her from their scanty bed
upon the floor. Here were old men awkwardly
engaged in little household offices, wherein they
would have been ridiculous but for their good-
will and kind purpose; and here were swarthy
fellows-giants in their way-doing such little
acts of tenderness for those about them, as might
have belonged to gentlest-hearted dwarfs. The
very idiot in the corner who sat mowing there
all day, had his faculty of imitation roused by
what he saw about him; and snapped his fin-
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 15.
EMBRACE-An earnest.
I looked about me again, and saw the letter-
writing going on with the most curious com-
posure. Perfectly abstracted in the midst of
the crowd; while great casks were swinging
aloft, and being lowered into the hold; while
hot agents were hurrying up and down, adjust-gers, to amuse a crying child.
ing the interminable accounts; while two hun-
dred strangers were searching everywhere for
two hundred other strangers, and were asking
questions about them of two hundred more ; You never will derive so much delight from
while the children played up and down all the seeing a glorious little woman in the arms of a
steps, and in and out among all the people's third party, as you would have felt if you had
legs, and were beheld, to the general dismay, seen Dot run into the Carrier's embrace. It was
toppling over all the dangerous places, the the most complete, unmitigated, soul-fraught
letter-writers wrote on calmly. On the star- little piece of earnestness that ever you beheld
board side of the ship a grizzled man dictated in all your days.
a long letter to another grizzled man in an im-
mense fur cap; which letter was of so profound
virtue.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 3.
By-and-by, I noticed Wemmick's arm begin-
ning to disappear again, and gradually fading
out of view. Shortly afterward, his mouth be-
gan to widen again. After an interval of sus-
pense on my part that was quite enthralling and
almost painful, I saw his hand appear on the
other side of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss
Skiffins stopped it with the neatness of a placid
boxer, took off that girdle or cestus as before,
and laid it on the table. Taking the table to
represent the path of virtue, I am justified in
stating that during the whole time of the Aged's
reading, Wemmick's arm was straying from the
path of virtue and being recalled to it by Miss
Skiffins.-Great Expectations, Chap. 37.
EMBRACE-An.
a quality, that it became necessary for the EMBRACE-An; likened to the path of
amanuensis at intervals to take off his fur cap
in both his hands, for the ventilation of his
brain, and stare at him who dictated, as a man
of many mysteries, who was worth looking at.
On the larboard side a woman had covered a
belaying-pin with a white cloth, to make a neat
desk of it, and was sitting on a little box, writ-
ing with the deliberation of a bookkeeper.
Down upon her breast on the planks of the
deck at this woman's feet, with her head diving
in under a beam of the bulwarks on that side,
as an eligible place of refuge for her sheet of
paper, a neat and pretty girl wrote for a good
hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the sur-
face occasionally for a dip of ink. Alongside the
boat, close to me on the poop-deck, another
girl, a fresh, well-grown country girl, was writ-
ing another letter on the bare deck. Later in
the day, when this self-same boat was filled
with a choir who sang glees and catches for a
long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her
part mechanically all the while, and wrote a
letter in the bottom of the boat while doing so.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 19.
EMIGRANTS—On ship-board.
There were English people, Irish people,
Welsh people, and Scotch people there; all with
their little store of coarse food and shabby
clothes; and nearly all, with their families of
children. There were children of all ages;
from the baby at the breast to the slattern-girl
who was as much a grown woman as her mother.
Every kind of domestic suffering that is bred in
poverty, illness, banishment, sorrow, and long
travel in bad weather, was crammed into the
little space; and yet was there infinitely less of
complaint and querulousness, and infinitely more
of mutual assistance and general kindness to be
found in that unwholesome ark, than in many
brilliant ball-rooms.
Mark looked about him wistfully, and his face
"
'A fraternal railing."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 14.
ENTHUSIASM.
"We are all enthusiastic, are we not, Mam-
ma?" said Edith, with a cold smile.
"Too much so for our peace, perhaps, my
dear," returned her mother; "but we won't
complain. Our own emotions are our recom-
pense. If, as your cousin Feenix says, the sword
wears out the what's-its-name-
""
"The scabbard, perhaps," said Edith.
#
Exactly-a
-a little too fast, it is because it is
bright and glowing, you know, my dearest love.'
Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.,
ENERGY.
"Then idiots talk," said Eugene, leaning
back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes
shut, and speaking slightly through his nose
"of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary
under any letter from A to Z that I abominate,
it is energy. It is such a conventional supersti-
tion, such parrot gabble! What the dence! Am
*
ENGLISHMEN
ì to rush out into the street, collar the first man
of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him,
and say, 'Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and
retain me, or I'll be the death of you?' Yet that
would be energy."
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 3.
ENGLISHMEN—As travellers.
We left Philadelphia by steamboat at six
o'clock one very cold morning, and turned our
faces towards Washington.
173
|
EVENING
ESSAY-Pott's mode of preparing an.
"They appeared in the form of a copious re
view of a work on Chinese metaphysics, sir,*
said Pott.
Oh," observed Mr. Pickwick; "from you
pen, I hope?"
"From the pen of my critic, sir,” rejoined
Pott, with dignity.
"An abstruse subject, I should conceive,”
said Mr. Pickwick.
the subject, at my desire, in the Encyclopædia
Britannica."
"Very, sir," responded Pott, looking in-
In the course of this day's journey, as on sub- tensely sage. "He crammed for it, to use a
sequent occasions, we encountered some Eng-technical but expressive term; he read up for
lishmen (small farmers, perhaps, or country
publicans at home) who were settled in America,
and were travelling on their own affairs. Of all "Indeed!" said Mr. Pickwick; "I was not
grades and kinds of men that jostle one in the aware that that valuable work contained any
public conveyances of the States, these are often information respecting Chinese metaphysics."
the most intolerable and the most insufferable "He read, sir," rejoined Pott, laying his hand
companions. United to every disagreeable on Mr. Pickwick's knee, and looking around
characteristic that the worst kind of American with a smile of intellectual superiority, "he
travellers possess, these countrymen of ours dis-read for metaphysics under the letter M, and
play an amount of insolent conceit and cool as- for China under the letter C, and combined his
sumption of superiority quite monstrous to information, sir!”—Pickwick, Chap. 51.
behold. In the coarse familiarity of their ap-
proach, and the effrontery of their inquisitive-
ness (which they are in great haste to assert, as
if they panted to revenge themselves upon the
decent old restraints of home), they surpass any
native specimens that came within my range of
observation; and I often grew so patriotic,
when I saw and heard them, that I would cheer-
fully have submitted to a reasonable fine, if I
could have given any other country in the whole
world the honor of claiming them for its chil-
dren.-American Notes, Chap. 8.
EPIDEMICS-Moral.
ETERNITY.
Alas, alas! that the few bubbles on the sur
face of eternity—all that Heaven wills we should
see of that dark, deep stream-should be so
lightly scattered!-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6.
EVIDENCE-of a witness.
I remember, too, how hard her mistress was
upon her (she was a servant of all work), and
with what a cruel pertinacity that piece of Vir-
tue spun her thread of evidence double by in-
tertwisting it with the sternest thread of con-
struction.-Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 18.
That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral
infection as a physical one; that such a disease EVIDENCE-Circumstantial.
will spread with the malignity and rapidity of
the Plague; that the contagion, when it has
once made head, will spare no pursuit or condi-
tion, but will lay hold on people in the soundest
health, and become developed in the most un-
likely constitutions, is a fact as firmly established
by experience as that we human creatures.
breathe an atmosphere. A blessing beyond ap-
preciation would be conferred upon mankind, if
the tainted, in whose weakness or wickedness
these virulent disorders are bred, could be in-
stantly seized and placed in close confinement
(not to say summarily smothered) before the
poison is communicable.
In his lay capacity, he persisted in sitting
down in the damp to such an insane extent,
that when his coat was taken off to be dried at
the kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on
his trousers would have hanged him if it had been
a capital offence.-Great Expectations, Chap. 6.
EVENING-The influences of a summer.
*
*
*
*
*
Bred at first, as many physical diseases are, in
the wickedness of men, and then disseminated
in their ignorance, these epidemics, after a
period, get communicated to many sufferers who
are neither ignorant nor wicked. Mr. Pancks
might or might not have caught the illness him-
self from a subject of this class; but, in this
category he appeared before Clennam, and the
infection he threw off was all the more virulent.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 13.
EPITHET-Definition of an.
A very common imprecation concerning the
most beautiful of human features: which, if it
were heard above, only once out of every fifty
thousand times that it is uttered below, would
render blindness as common a disorder as
measles.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 16.
No doubt there are a great many things to
be said appropriate to a summer evening, and
no doubt they are best said in a low voice, as
being most suitable to the peace and serenity
of the hour; long pauses, too, at times, and
then an earnest word or so, and then another
interval of silence, which, somehow, does not
seem like silence, either; and perhaps now and
then a hasty turning away of the head, or droop-
ing of the eyes towards the ground, all these
minor circumstances, with a disinclination to
have candles introduced and a tendency to con-
fuse hours with minutes, are doubtless mere in-
fluences of the time, as many lovely lips can
clearly testify.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 49.
EVENING-A summer Sunday.
It was a hot summer Sunday evening. The
residence in the centre of the habitable globe,
at all times stuffed and close as if it had an in-
curable cold in its head, was that evening par
ticularly stifling. The bells of the churches
had done their worst in the way of clanging
among the unmelodious echoes of the streets,
and the lighted windows of the churches had
܃
EVENING
174
ceased to be yellow in the gray dusk, and had
died out opaque black.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 24.
EVENING-In the city.
EXAGGERATION
The
An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter
branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in
skeleton dances, to its moaning music.
withering leaves, no longer quiet, hurried to and
fro, in search of shelter from its chill pursuit;
the laborer unyoked his horses, and with head
bent down, trudged briskly home beside them;
and from the cottage windows lights began to
glance and wink upon the darkening fields.
The City looked unpromising enough, as
Bella made her way along its gritty streets.
Most of its money-mills were slackening sail,
or had left off grinding for the day. The mas-
ter-millers had already departed, and the jour- Then the village forge came out in all its
neymen were departing. There was a jaded bright importance. The lusty bellows roared
aspect on the business lanes and courts, and Ha, ha! to the clear fire, which roared in turn,
the very pavements had a weary appearance, and bade the shining sparks dance gaily to the
confused by the tread of a million of feet. merry clinking of the hammers on the anvil.
There must be hours of night to temper down The gleaming iron, in its emulation, sparkled
the day's distraction of so feverish a place. too, and shed its red-hot gems around profusely,
As yet the worry of the newly-stopped whirling The strong smith and his men dealt such strokes
and grinding on the part of the money-mills upon their work as made even the melancholy
seemed to linger in the air, and the quiet was night rejoice, and brought a glow into its dark
more like the prostration of a spent giant than face as it hovered about the door and windows,
the repose of one who was renewing his strength. | peeping curiously in above the shoulders of a
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 16. dozen loungers. As to this idle company, there
they stood, spell-bound by the place, and, cast-
ing now and then a glance upon the darkness
in their rear, settled their lazy elbows more at
ease upon the sill, and leaned a little further in :
no more disposed to tear themselves away, than
if they had been born to cluster round the blaz-
ing hearth like so many crickets.
EVENING-in London-A dusty.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
A gray, dusty, withered evening in London
city has not a hopeful aspect. The closed
warehouses and offices have an air of death
about them, and the national dread of color
has an air of mourning. The towers and
steeples of the many house-encompassed
churches, dark and dingy as the sky that
seems descending on them, are no relief to the EXAGGERATION-Of Caleb Plummer.
general gloom; a sun-dial on a church-wall "So you were out in the rain last night, father,
has the look, in its useless black shade, of hav-in your beautiful new great-coat," said Caleb's
ing failed in its business enterprise and stopped | daughter.
payment forever; melancholy waifs and strays "In my beautiful new great-coat," answered
of housekeepers and porters sweep melancholy Caleb, glancing towards a clothes-line in the
waifs and strays of papers and pins into the room, on which the sackcloth garment, previous-
kennels, and other more melancholy waifs and ly described, was carefully hung up to dry.
strays explore them, searching and stooping and
poking for anything to sell.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 15.
EVENING-In the spring-time.
How glad I am you bought it, father!"
"And of such a tailor, too," said Caleb.
"Quite a fashionable tailor. It's too good for
me.
The Blind Girl rested from her work, and
laughed with delight. "Too good, father!
What can be too good for you?"
It was a lovely evening, in the spring-time of
the year; and in the soft stillness of the twi-
light, all nature was very calm and beautiful. "I'm half ashamed to wear it though," said
The day had been fine and warm; but at the Caleb, watching the effect of what he said, upon
coming on of night the air grew cool, and in her brightening face, "upon my word! When
the mellowing distance, smoke was rising gently I hear the boys and people say behind me,
from the cottage chimneys. There were a thou-Hal-loa! Here's a swell!' I don't know which
sand pleasant scents diffused around, from way to look. And when the beggar wouldn't
young leaves and fresh buds; the cuckoo had
been singing all day long, and was but just now
hushed; the smell of earth newly upturned, first
breath of hope to the first laborer, after his gar-
den withered, was fragrant in the evening breeze.
It was a time when most men cherish good re-
solves, and sorrow for the wasted past; when
most men, looking on the shadows, as they
gather, think of that evening which must close
on all, and that to-morrow which has none be-
yond.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 20.
EVENING-An autumn.
A moment, and its glory was no more. The
sun went down beneath the long dark lines of
hill and cloud which piled up in the west an
airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement
on battlement; the light was all withdrawn ; the
shining church turned cold and dark; the stream
forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the
gloom of winter dwelt on everything,
|
go away last night; and, when I said I was a
very common man, said 'No, your Honor!
Bless your Honor, don't say that!' I was quite
ashamed. I really felt as if I hadn't a right to
wear it."
Happy Blind Girl! How merry she was in
her exultation!
"I see you, father," she said, clasping her
hands, "as plainly, as if I had the eyes I never
want when you are with me.
A blue coat-"
"Bright blue," said Caleb.
"Yes, yes! Bright blue !" exclaimed the girl,
turning up her radiant face; "the color I can
just remember in the blessed sky! You told me
it was blue before! A bright blue coat-"
"Made loose to the figure," suggested Caleb.
"Yes! loose to the figure!" cried the Blind
Girl, laughing heartily; "and in it, you, dear
father, with your merry eye, your smiling face,
your free step, and your dark hair-looking so
young and handsome!"
EXECUTION
"Halloa! Halloa!" said Caleb. "I shall
be vain, presently."
"I think you are, already," cried the Blind
Girl, pointing at him, in her glee. "I know
you, father!
Ha, ha, ha! I've found you out,
you see!"
How different the picture in her mind, from
Caleb, as he sat observing her! She had spoken
of his free step. She was right in that. For
years and years, he had never once crossed that
threshold at his own slow pace, but with a foot-
fall counterfeited for her ear; and never had he,
when his heart was heaviest, forgotten the light
tread that was to render hers so cheerful and
courageous!
175
EXECUTION
Here and there among this knot of laborers,
one, with a lantern or a smoky link, stood by to
light his fellows at their work; and by its doubt.
ful aid, some might be dimly seen taking up the
pavement of the road, while others held great
upright posts, or fixed them in the holes thus
made for their reception. Some dragged slowly
on towards the rest an empty cart, which they
brought rumbling from the prison yard; while
others erected strong barriers across the street.
All were busily engaged. Their dusky figures
moving to and fro, at that unusual hour, so
active and so silent, might have been taken for
those of shadowy creatures toiling at midnight
on some ghostly, unsubstantial work, which,
like themselves, would vanish with the first
gleam of day, and leave but morning mist and
vapor.
Heaven knows! But I think Caleb's vague
bewilderment of manner may have half origin-
ated in his having confused himself about him-
self and everything around him, for the love of
his Blind Daughter. How could the little man
be otherwise than bewildered, after laboring for
so many years to destroy his own identity, and
that of all the objects that had any bearing on it? |
"There we are," said Caleb, falling back a
pace or two to form the better judgment of his
work; as near the real thing as sixpenn'orth
of halfpence is to sixpence. What a pity that
the whole front of the house opens at once! If
there was only a staircase in it, now, and regu-
lar doors to the rooms to go in at! But that's-and that was every quarter of an hour-a
the worst of my calling, I'm always deluding
myself, and swindling myself.”
"You are speaking quite softly. You are not
tired, father?
'Tired," echoed Caleb, with a great burst of
animation, "what should tire me, Bertha? I was
never tired. What does it mean?"
While it was yet dark, a few lookers-on col-
lected, who had plainly come there for the pur-
pose and intended to remain: even those who
had to pass the spot on their way to some other
place, lingered yet, as though the attraction of
that were irresistible. Meanwhile the noise of
saw and mallet went on briskly, mingled with
the clattering of boards on the stone pavement
of the road, and sometimes with the workmen's
voices as they called to one another. Whenever
the chimes of the neighboring church were heard
strange sensation, instantaneous and indescrib-
able, but perfectly obvious, seemed to pervade
them all.
Gradually a faint brightness appeared in the
east, and the air, which had been very warm
all through the night, felt cool and chilly.
Though there was no daylight yet, the darkness
To give the greater force to his words, he was diminished, and the stars looked pale. The
checked himself in an involuntary imitation of prison, which had been a mere black mass with
two half-length stretching and yawning figures little shape or form, put on its usual aspect; and
on the mantel-shelf, who were represented as in ever and anon a solitary watchman could be
one eternal state of weariness from the waist seen upon its roof, stopping to look down upon
upwards; and hummed a fragment of a song. the preparations in the street. This man, from
It was a Bacchanalian song, something about a forming, as it were, a part of the jail, and know-
Sparkling Bowl. He sang it with an assump-ing, or being supposed to know, all that was
tion of a Devil-may-care voice, that made his
face a thousand times more meagre and more
thoughtful than ever.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
EXECUTION-The gallows.
The time wore on. The noises in the streets
became less frequent by degrees, until silence
was scarcely broken save by the bells in church
towers, marking the progress-softer and more
stealthy while the city slumbered-of that Great
Watcher with the hoary head, who never sleeps
or rests. In the brief interval of darkness and
repose which feverish towns enjoy, all busy
sounds were hushed; and those who awoke from
dreams lay listening in their beds, and longed
for dawn, and wished the dead of the night were
past.
Into the street outside the jail's main wall,
workmen came straggling at this solemn hour,
in groups of two or three, and meeting in the
centre, cast their tools upon the ground and
spoke in whispers. Others soon issued from the
jail itself, bearing on their shoulders planks and
beams; these materials being all brought forth,
the rest bestirred themselves, and the dull sound
ef hammers began to echo through the still-
ness.
passing within, became an object of as much
interest, and was as eagerly looked for, and as
awfully pointed out, as if he had been a spirit.
By-and-bye, the feeble light grew stronger, and
the houses, with their sign-boards and inscrip-
tions, stood plainly out, in the dull gray morning.
Heavy stage wagons crawled from the inn-yard
opposite, and travellers peeped out; and as
they rolled sluggishly away, cast many a back-
ward look towards the jail. And now the sun's
first beams came glancing into the street; and
the night's work, which, in its various stages and
in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken
a hundred shapes, wore its own proper form-a
scaffold and a gibbet.
As the warmth of cheerful day began to shed
itself upon the scanty crowd, the murmur of
tongues was heard, shutters were thrown open
and blinds drawn up, and those who had slept
in rooms over against the prison, where places
to see the execution were let at high prices, rose
hastily from their beds. In some of the houses,
people were busy taking out the window sashes
for the better accommodation of spectators; in
others, the spectators were already seated, and
beguiling the time with cards, or drinks, or jokes
among themselves. Some had purchased seats
upon the house-tops, and were already crawling
1.
EXECUTION
to their stations from parapet and garret win-
dow. Some were yet bargaining for good places,
and stood in them in a state of indecision;
gazing at the slowly-swelling crowd, and at the
workmen as they rested listlessly against the
scaffold-affecting to listen with indifference to
the proprietor's eulogy of the commanding view
his house afforded, and the surpassing cheapness
of his terms.
A fairer morning never shone. From the
roofs and upper stories of these buildings, the
spires of city churches and the great cathedral
dome were visible, rising up beyond the prison,
into the blue sky, and clad in the color of light
summer clouds, and showing in the clear atmos-
phere their every scrap of tracery and fret-work,
and every niche and loophole. All was bright-
ness and promise, excepting in the street below,
into which (for it yet lay in shadow) the eye
looked down as into a dark trench, where, in
the midst of so much life, and hope, and re-
newal of existence, stood the terrible instrument
of death. It seemed as if the very sun forebore
to look upon it.
But it was better, grim and sombre in the
shade, than when, the day being more advanced,
it stood confessed in the full glare and glory of
the sun, with its black paint blistering, and its
nooses dangling in the light like loathsome gar-
lands. It was better in the solitude and gloom
of midnight, with a few forms clustering about it,
than in the freshness and the stir of morning,
the centre of an eager crowd. It was better
haunting the street like a spectre, when men
were in their beds, and influencing perchance
the city's dreams, than braving the broad day,
and thrusting its obscene presence upon their
waking senses.
Five o'clock had struck - six seven-and
eight, Along the two main streets at either end
of the cross-way, a living stream had now set in,
rolling towards the marts of gain and business.
Carts, coaches, wagons, trucks, and barrows,
forced a passage through the outskirts of the
throng, and clattered onward in the same direc-
tion. Some of these, which were public convey-
ances and had come from a short distance in the
country, stopped; and the driver pointed to the
gibbet with his whip, though he might have
spared himself the pains, for the heads of all the
passengers were turned that way without his
help, and the coach windows were stuck full of
staring eyes. In some of the carts and wagons,
women might be seen, glancing fearfully at the
same unsightly thing; and even little children
were held up above the people's heads to see
what kind of toy a gallows was, and learn how
men were hanged.
176
Two rioters were to die before the prison, who |
had been concerned in the attack upon it; and
one directly afterwards in Bloomsbury Square.
*
*
*
*
*
As the hour approached, a buzz and hum arose,
which, deepening every moment, soon swelled
into a roar, and seemed to fill the air. No
words or even voices could be distinguished in
this clamor, nor did they speak much to each
other; though such as were better informed
upon the topic than the rest, would tell their
neighbors, perhaps, that they might know the
hangman when he came out, by his being the
shorter one: and that the man who was to suffer
with him was named Hugh: and that it was
EXECUTION
Barnaby Rudge who would be hanged in
Bloomsbury Square.
The hum grew, as the time drew near, so
loud, that those who were at the windows could
not hear the church-clock strike, though it was
close at hand. Nor had they any need to hear
it, either, for they could see it in the people's
faces. So surely as another quarter chimed,
there was a movement in the crowd-as if
something had passed over it—as if the light
upon them had been changed-in which the
fact was readable as on a brazen dial, figured
by a giant's hand.
Three quarters past eleven! The murmur now
was deafening, yet every man seemed mute.
Look where you would among the crowd, you
saw strained eyes and lips compressed; it would
have been difficult for the most vigilant observer
to point this way or that, and say that yonder
man had cried out. It were as easy to detect
the motion of lips in a sea-shell.
Three quarters past eleven! Many specta-
tors who had retired from the windows came
back refreshed, as though their watch had just
begun. Those who had fallen asleep roused
themselves; and every person in the crowd
made one last effort to better his position-
which caused a press against the sturdy barriers
that made them bend and yield like twigs.
The officers, who until now had kept together,
fell into their several positions, and gave the
words of command. Swords were drawn, mus-
kets shouldered, and the bright steel, winding
its way among the crowd, gleamed and glittered
in the sun like a river. Along this shining path
two men came hurrying on, leading a horse,
which was speedily harnessed to the cart at the
prison door. Then, a profound silence replaced
the tumult that had so long been gathering, and
a breathless pause ensued. Every window was
now choked up with heads; the house-tops teem-
ed with people-clinging to chimneys, peering
over gable-ends, and holding on where the sud-
den loosening of any brick or stone would dash
them down into the street. The church-tower,
the church-roof, the church-yard, the prison-
leads, the very water-spouts and lamp-posts--
every inch of room-swarmed with human life.
At the first stroke of twelve the prison-bell
began to toll. Then the roar-mingled now
with cries of "Hats off!" and "Poor fellows!"
and, from some specks in the great concourse,
with a shriek or groan-burst forth again. It
was terrible to see-if any one in that distrac-
tion of excitement could have seen-the world
of eager eyes, all strained upon the scaffold and
the beam.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 77.
EXECUTION OF FAGIN-Hours preced-
ing the.
He sat down on a stone bench opposite the
door, which served for seat and bedstead; and
casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground,
tried to collect his thoughts. After a while, he
began to remember a few disjointed fragments
of what the judge had said: though it had
seemed to him, at the time, that he could not
hear a word. These gradually fell into their
proper places, and by degrees suggested more:
so that in a little time he had the whole, almost
as it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck,
till he was dead-that was the end. To be
hanged by the neck till he was dead.

Georgs brukshank
FAGAN, THE JEW, IN THE CONDEMNED CELL.
ORDELED BY
The Sharry
Drally to thing
176
EXECUTION
As it came on very dark, he began to think
of all the men he had known who had died
apon the scaffold; some of them through his
neans. They rose up in such quick succession,
that he could hardly count them. He had seen
some of them die—and had joked, too, because
they died with prayers upon their lips. With
what a rattling noise the drop went down; and
how suddenly they changed, from strong and
vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!
Some of them might have inhabited that very
cell-sat upon that very spot. It was very
dark; why didn't they bring a light? The cell
had been built for many years. Scores of men
must have passed their last hours there. It
was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead
bodies-the cap, the noose,
the pinioned arms,
the faces that he knew, even beneath that hid-
eous veil.-Light, light!
At length, when his hands were raw with
beating against the heavy door and walls, two
men appeared: one bearing a candle, which
he thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against
the wall: the other dragging in a mattress on
which to pass the night; for the prisoner was
to be left alone no more.
1myy
Then came night—dark, dismal, silent night.
Other watchers are glad to hear the church-
clocks strike, for they tell of life and coming
day. To the Jew they brought despair. The
boom of every iron hell came laden with the
one, deep, hollow sound-Death. What availed
the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which
penetrated even there, to him? It was another
form of knell, with mockery added to the warn-
ing.
EXPRESSION
with a linen cloth. His red hair hung down
upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn,
and twisted into knots; his eyes shone with a
terrible light; his unwashed flesh crackled with
the fever that burnt him up. Eight-nine—
ten. If it was not a trick to frighten him, and
those were the real hours treading on each
other's heels, where would he be when they
came round again? Eleven! Another struck
before the voice of the previous hour had ceased
to vibrate. At eignt, he would be the only
mourner in his own funeral train; at eleven-
Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have
hidden so much misery and such unspeakable
anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often,
and too long, from the thoughts, of men, never
held so dread a spectacle as that. The few who
lingered as they passed, and wondered what the
man was doing who was to be hung to-morrow,
would have slept but ill that night, if they could
have seen him.
*
*
*
A great multitude had already assembled;
the windows were filled with people, smoking
and playing cards to beguile the time; the
crowd were pushing, quarrelling, and joking.
Everything told of life and animation, but one
dark cluster of objects in the very centre of all
the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and
all the hideous apparatus of death.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 52.
EXCITEMENT-Mental.
His little black eyes sparkled electrically.
His very hair seemed to sparkle, as he rough-
ened it. He was in that highly-charged state
that one might have expected to draw sparks
and snaps from him by presenting a knuckle to
any part of his figure.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 32.
The day passed off-day!-there was no
day; it was gone as soon as come-and night
came on again; night so long, and yet so short;
long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleet-
ing hours. At one time he raved and blas-
phemed, and at another howled and tore his EXPECTORATION-In America.
hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion
had come to pray beside him, but he had driven
them away with curses.
with curses. They renewed their
They renewed their
charitable efforts, and he beat them off.
Saturday night. He had only one night
more to live. And as he thought of this, the
day broke-Sunday.
It was not until the night of this last awful
day, that a withering sense of his helpless, des-
perate state came in its full intensity upon his
blighted soul; not that he had ever held any
defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he
had never been able to consider more than the
dim probability of dying so soon. He had
spoken little to either of the two men who re-
lieved each other in their attendance upon
him, and they, for their parts, made no effort
to rouse his attention. He had sat there, awake,
but dreaming. Now, he started up, every min-
ute, and with gasping mouth and burning skin,
hurried to and fro, in such a paroxysm of fear
and wrath that even they-used to such sights
-recoiled from him with horror. He grew so
terrible, at last, in all the tortures of his evil
conscience, that one man could not bear to sit
there, eying him alone; and so the two kept
watch together.
He cowered down upon his stone bed, and
thought of the past. He had been wounded
with some missiles from the crowd on the day
of his capture, and his head was bandaged
Chollop sat smoking and improving the cir-
cle, without making any attempts either to con-
verse, or to take leave; apparently laboring un-
der the not uncommon delusion, that for a free
and enlightened citizen of the United States to
convert another man's house into a spittoon for
two or three hours together, was a delicate at-
tention, full of interest and politeness, of which
nobody could ever tire.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 33.
EXPRESSION-A triumphant.
The hard-headed man looked triumphantly
round, as if he had been very much contradicted
last.-Pickwick, Chap. 6.
by somebody, but had got the better of him at
EXPRESSION—A fierce.
The old lady, quite unconscious that she had
spoken above a whisper, drew herself up, and
looked carving-knives at the hard-headed "delin
quent.-Pickwick, Chap. 6.
EXPRESSION-Of feature (Joe).
"
Supper's ready, sir," was the prompt reply.
'Have you just come here, sir?" inquired
Mr. Tupman, with a piercing look.
Just," replied the fat boy.
Mr. Tupman looked at him very hard again;
but there was not a vink in his eye, or a curve
EXPRESSION
in his face; there was not a gleam of mirth, or
anything but feeding in his whole visage.
Pickwick, Chap. 8.
EXPRESSION-An unhappy.
Mr. Winkle responded with a forced smile,
and took up the spare gun with an expression
of countenance which a metaphysical rook, im-
pressed with a foreboding of his approaching
death by violence, may be supposed to assume.
It might have been keenness, but it looked re-
markably like misery.-Pickwick, Chap. 7.
EXPRESSION-A weighty.
Amidst the general hum of mirth and conver-
sation that ensued, there was a little man with
a puffy Say-nothing-to-me,-or-I'll-contradict-you
sort of countenance, who remained very quiet;
occasionally looking round him when the con-
versation slackened, as if he contemplated put-
ting in something very weighty; and now and
then bursting into a short cough of inexpressible
grandeur.-Pickwick, Chap. 7.
EXPRESSION.
Mr. Craggs seemed positively to grate upon
his own hinges, as he delivered this opinion.
Battle of Life, Chap. I.
EXPRESSION~A convivial.
As they drank with a great relish, and were
naturally of a red-nosed, pimple-faced, convivial
look, their presence rather increased than de-
tracted from that decided appearance of com-
fort which was the great characteristic of the
party.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 49.
EXPRESSION-After sleep.
Here Bazzard awoke himself by his own
snoring; and, as is usual in such cases, sat
apoplectically staring at vacancy, as defying
vacancy to accuse him of having been asleep.
Edwin Drood, Chap. II.
EXPRESSION-The imitation of.
Any strongly marked expression of face on
the part of a chief actor in a scene of great in-
terest, to whom many eyes are directed, will be
unconsciously imitated by the spectators.
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 3.
EXPRESSION—Of dress.
"He is the most friendly and amenable crea-
ture in existence; and as for advice!-But no-
body knows what that man's mind is, except
myself."
My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her
head, as if she smoothed defiance of the whole
world out of the one, and shook it out of the
other.-David Copperfield, Chap. 14.
EXPRESSION-Of benevolence.
178
As to the General, he observed, with his usual
benevolence, that being one of the company, he
wouldn't interfere in the transaction on any
account; so he appropriated the rocking-chair
to himself, and looked at the prospect, like a
good Samaritan waiting for a traveller.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 21.
EXPRESSION-A concentrated.
With the quick observation of his class, Ste-
phen Blackpool bent his attentive face his face,
EYES
which, like the faces of many of his order, by
dint of long working with eyes and hands in the
midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the
concentrated look with which we are familiar in
the countenances of the deaf-the better to hear
what she asked him.
EYES.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 12.
But his eyes, too close together, were not so
nobly set in his head as those of the king of
beasts are in his, and they were sharp rather
than bright-pointed weapons with little surface
to betray them. They had no depth or change;
they glittered, and they opened and shut. So
far, and waiving their use to himself, a clock
maker could have made a better pair.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. I
EYES-Sinister.
He had eyes 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.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 3.
EYE-A solemn.
It made him hot to think what the Chief But-
ler's opinion of him would have been, if that
illustrious personage could have plumbed with
that heavy eye of his the stream of his medita-
tions.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 18.
EYES-Of Mr. Crisparkle.
He had the eyes of a microscope and a tele-
scope combined, when they were unassisted.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 6.
EYES-Inexpressive.
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, with the head and face partially re-
stored; and he had a cast in his eye which ren-
dered it quite impossible for any one with whom
he conversed to know where he was looking.
His eyes appeared fixed on the wall, and he was
staring you out of countenance; in short, there
was no catching his eye, and perhaps it is a mer-
ciful dispensation of Providence that such eyes
are not catching.—Tales, Chap. II.
EYES-Inquisitive.
A tall, thin, bony man, with an interrogative
nose, and little restless perking eyes, which ap-
pear to have been given him for the sole pur-
pose of peeping into other people's affairs with.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 4.
EYES-Of Ruth.
They walked up and down three or four times,
speaking about Tom and his mysterious employ-
ment. Now that was a very natural and in-
nocent subject, surely. Then why, whenever
Ruth lifted up her eyes, did she le. 'hem fall again
immediately, and seek the uncongenial pave-
ment of the court? They were not such eyes
as shun the light: they were not such eyes as
require to be hoarded to enhance their value,
EYES
179
They were much too precious and too genuine
to stand in need of arts like those. Somebody
nust have been looking at them!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 45.
There was no flour on Ruth's hands when she
received them in the triangular parlor, but there
were pleasant smiles upon her face, and a crowd
of welcomes shining out of every smile, and
gleaming in her bright eyes. By-the-bye, how
bright they were! Looking into them for but
a moment, when you took her hand, you saw, in
each, such a capital miniature of yourself, repre-
senting you as such a restless, flashing, eager,
brilliant little fellow-
Ah! if you could only have kept them for
your own miniature! But, wicked, roving, rest-
less, too impartial eyes, it was enough for any
one to stand before them, and straightway, there
he danced and sparkled quite as merrily as you!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39.
EYE-Its expression.
He gave me only a look with his aiming eye
-no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders
may be done with an eye by hiding it.
Great Expectations, Chap. 10.
EYES-Bright.
Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear
a world of looking in, before their depth was
fathomed. Dark eyes, that reflected back the
eyes which searched them; not flashingly, or at
the owner's will, but with a clear, calm, honest,
patient radiance, claiming kindred with that light
which Heaven called into being. Eyes that
were beautiful and true, and beaming with Hope.
With Hope so young and fresh; with Hope so
buoyant, vigorous, and bright, despite the twenty
years of work and poverty on which they had
looked, that they became a voice to Trotty
Veck, and said: "I think we have some busi-
ness here—a little !
"
Christmas Chimes, Ist quarter.
EYE-Its devilish expression.
Witch Two laughs at us. Witch Three
scowls at us. Witch sisterhood all stitch, stitch.
First Witch has a red circle round each eye. I
fancy it like the beginning of the development
of a perverted diabolical halo, and that, when it
spreads all round her head, she will die in the
odor of devilry.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 5.
EYE-A learned.
As Mr. Pickwick said this, he looked ency-
clopædias at Mr. Peter Magnus.
EYE-An expressive.
Pickwick, Chap. 24.
He had always one eye wide open, and one
eye nearly shut; and the one eye nearly shut
was always the expressive eye.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 1.
FACES
F
FACES-Their expression.
He had that rather wild, strained, seared
marking about the eyes, which may be observed
in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of
Jeffries downward, and which can be traced,
under various disguises of Art, through the
portraits of every Drinking Age.
*
*
*
*
*
Shouldering itself towards the visage of the
Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's
Bench, the florid countenance 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 garden-full of far-
ing companions.
Stryver, in Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 5.
Mr. Pancks was making a very porcupine of
himself by sticking his hair up, in the contem-
plation of this state of accounts.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 13.
Mrs. General stopped, and added internally
for the setting of her face, "Papa, potatoes,
poultry, prunes, and prism."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16.
Mr. Pancks listened with such interest that
regardless of the charms of the Eastern pipe,
he put it in the grate among the fire-irons, and
occupied his hands during the whole recital in
so erecting the loops and hooks of hair all over
his head, that he looked, when it came to a con-
clusion, like a journeyman Hamlet in conversa-
tion with his father's spirit.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 13.
His villainous countenance was a regular
stamped receipt for cruelty.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 3.
With a face that might have been carved out
of lignum vitæ, for anything that appeared to
the contrary.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 14.
At the word Suspect, she turned her eyes
momentarily upon her son, with a dark frown,
as if the sculptor of old Egypt had indented
it in the hard granite face, to frown for ages.
Mrs. Clennam, in Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5.
A pale, puffy-faced, dark-haired person of
thirty, with big dark eyes that wholly wanted
lustre, and a dissatisfied, doughy complexion,
that seemed to ask to be sent to the baker's.
A gloomy person, with tangled locks, and a
general air of having been reared under the
shadow of that baleful tree of Java which has
given shelter to more lies than the whole botan-
ical kingdom.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 11.
His color has turned to a livid white, and
ominous marks have come to light about his
nose, as if the finger of the very devil himself
had, within the last few moments, touched it
here and there.
*
*
*
*
Here, too, the bride's aunt and next relation;
a widowed female of a Medusa sort, in a stony
cap, glaring petrifiction at her fellow-creatures.
FACES
180
Here, too, the bride's trustee; an oilcake-fed
style of business-gentleman with mooney spec-
tacles, and an object of much interest.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 10.
Mrs. Varden slightly raised her hands, shook
her head, and looked at the ground, as though
she saw straight through the globe, out at the
other end, and into the immensity of space be-
yond.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 27.
"To be plain with you, friend, you don't
carry in your countenance a letter of recom-
mendation.'
>>
"It's not my wish," said the traveller. "My
humor is to be avoided."
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 2.
FACES
expression; he looked, indeed, like a man who
had got his feet in a tub of exceedingly hot
water, against his will.-Tales, Chap. 1.
"I told you not to bang the door so!" repeat-
ed Dumps, with an expression of countenance
like the knave of clubs, in convulsions.
Tales, Chap. II.
Such a thoroughly Irish face, that it seemed
as if he ought, as a matter of right and principle,
to be in rags, and could have no sort of business
to be looking cheerfully at anybody out of a
whole suit of clothes.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 17.
Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a
little, dry, brown, corrugated old woman, with a
small face, that might have been made of walnut-
shells, and a large mouth, like a cat's without
the whiskers.-Great Expectations, Chap. 11.
Mr. Willet drew back from his guest's ear,
and without any visible alteration of features,
chuckled thrice audibly. This nearest approach
to a laugh in which he ever indulged (and that
but seldom, and only on extreme occasions) All his features seemed, with delight, to be
never even curled his lip or effected the small-going up into his forehead, and never coming
est change in-no, not so much as a slight wag- back again any more.
ging of his great fat, double chin, which at
these times, as at all others, remained a perfect
desert in the broad map of his face; one change-
less, dull, tremendous blank.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 29.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13.
Her severe face had no thread of relaxation
in it, by which any explorer could have been
guided to the gloomy labyrinth of her thoughts.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5.
His imperturbable face has been as inexpres-
sive as his rusty clothes. One could not even Mrs. Meagles was like Mr. Meagles, comely
say he has been thinking all this while. He and healthy, with a pleasant English face which
has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor | had been looking at homely things for five-and-
attention nor abstraction. He has shown noth-fifty years or more, and shone with a bright re
ing but his shell. As easily might the tone of flection of them.
a delicate musical instrument be inferred from
its case, as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from
his case.-Bleak House, Chap. 11.
"Here, sir,” replied Job, presenting himself
on the staircase. We have described him, by-
the-bye, as having deeply sunken eyes, in the
best of times. In his present state of want and
distress, he looked as if those features had gone
Dut of town altogether.-Pickwick, Chap. 42.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable
shadow, as the other objects in the yard were,
but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lob-
ster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or fero-
cious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to
look, with ghostly spectacles turned up on its
ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stir-
red, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the
eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motion-
less. That, and its livid color, made it horrible;
but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face,
and beyond its control, rather than a part of its
own expression.-Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
A gracious change had come over Benjamin
from head to foot. He was much broader, much
redder, much more cheerful, and much jollier in
all respects. It seemed as if his face had been
tied up in a knot before, and was now untwisted
and smoothed out.-Battle of Life, Chap. 2.
He was tall, thin, and pale; he always fancied
he had a severe pain somewhere or other, and
his face invariably wore a pinched, screwed-up
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 2.
There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues
under the sun, at all like the whiteness of Mon-
there any expression of the human countenance
sieur Rigaud's face as it was then. Neither is
at all like that expression, in every little line of
which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both
difference is the whole deep gulf between the
are conventionally compared with death; but the
struggle done, and the fight at its most desper-
ate extremity.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 1.
"Persons don't make their own faces, and it's
no more my fault if mine is a good one than it
is other people's fault if theirs is a bad one."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 12.
The expression of a man's face is commonly
a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech;
but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his
ordinary moods, was a problem which no stretch
of ingenuity could solve.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 3.
Mr. Fang was a lean, long-backed, stiff-neck-
ed, middle-sized man, with no great quantity
of hair, and what he had, growing on the back
and sides of his head. His face was stern, and
much flushed. If he were really not in the
habit of drinking rather more than was exactly
good for him, he might have brought an action
against his countenance for libel, and have re-
covered heavy damages.-Oliver Twist, Chap. II
Squeers scowled at him with the worst and
FACE
181
most malicious expression of which his face was
capable—it was a face of remarkable capability,
too, in that way-and shook his fist stealthily.
Coom, coom, schoolmeasther," said John,
“dinnot make a fool o' thyself; for if I was to
sheake mine-only once-thou'd fa' doon wi' the
wind o' it."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 42.
"I will not look for blushes in such a quar-
ter," said Miss Squeers, haughtily, "for that
countenance is a stranger to everything but hig-
nominiousness and red-faced boldness."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 42.
He had the special peculiarity of some birds
of prey, that when he knitted his brow, his ruf-
fled crest stood highest.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 3.
What my aunt saw, or did not see, I defy
the science of physiognomy to have made out,
without her own consent. I believe there never
was anybody with such an imperturbable coun-
tenance when she chose. Her face might have
been a dead wall on the occasion in question,
for any light it threw upon her thoughts.
David Copperfield, Chap. 35.
Having done the honors of his house in this
hospitable manner, Mr. Peggotty went out to
wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, re-
marking that "cold would never get his muck
off." He soon returned, greatly improved in
appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn't
help thinking his face had this in common with
the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish-that it went
into the hot water very black and came out very
red.-David Copperfield, Chap. 3.
Tom stopping in the street to look at him,
Mr. Tapley for a moment presented to his view
an utterly stolid and expressionless face: a per-
fect dead wall of countenance. But opening
window after window in it, with astonishing
rapidity, and lighting them all up as for a gen-
eral illumination, he repeated.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 48.
With these parting words, and with a grin
upon his features altogether indescribable, but
which seemed to be compounded of every mon-
strous grimace of which men or monkeys are
capable, the dwarf slowly retreated and closed
the door behind him.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 48.
He was something the worse for it, undenia-
bly. The thick mist hung in clots upon his
eyelashes like candied thaw; and, between the
fog and fire together, there were rainbows in
his very whiskers.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 1.
FACE
calculated to impress the memory, Trotty could
at first allot to nobody he had ever known;
and yet he had some recollection of them too.
Chimes, 4th quarter.
With that, and with an expression of face in
which a great number of opposite ingredients
such as mischief, cunning, malice, triumph, and
patient expectation, were all mixed up together
in a kind of physiognomical punch, Miss Miggs
composed herself to wait and listen, like some
fair ogress who had set a trap and was watching
for a nibble from a plump young traveller.
Miss Miggs, in Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 9.
Happening to look down into the pit, I saw
Mr. Guppy, with his hair flattened down upon
his head, and woe depicted in his face, looking
up at me. I felt, all through the performance,
that he never looked at the actors, but con-
stantly looked at me, and always with a care-
fully prepared expression of the deepest misery
and the profoundest dejection.
Bleak House, Chap. 13.
With Mr. Gusher, appeared Mr. Quale again.
Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a
moist surface, and eyes so much too small for
his moon of a face that they seemed to have
been originally made for somebody else, was
not at first sight prepossessing.
Bleak House, Chap. 15.
66
By my soul, the countenance of that fellow,
when he was a boy, was the blackest image of
perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a
scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were to
meet that most unparalleled despot in the streets
to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree !"
Bleak House, Chap. 9.
The dear little fellow, having recovered his
animal spirits, was standing upon her most ten-
der foot, by way of getting his face (which looked
like a capital Ó in a red-lettered play-bill) on a
level with the writing-table.-Tales, Chap. 3.
The Major, with his complexion like a Stil-
ton cheese, and his eyes like a prawn's, went
roving about, perfectly indifferent.
Every knob in the Captain's face turned
white with astonishment and indignation; even
the red rim on his forehead faded, like a rain-
bow among the gathering clouds.
Was Mr. Dombey pleased to see this? He
testified no pleasure by the relaxation of a
nerve; but outward tokens of any kind of feel-
ing were unusual with him. If any sunbeam
stole into the room to light the children at their
play, it never reached his face. He looked on
so fixedly and coldly, that the warm light van-
ished even from the laughing eyes of little Flor-
ence, when, at last, they happened to meet his.
The features of her companion were less easy
to him. The great broad chin, with creases in
it large enough to hide a finger in; the aston-
ished eyes, that seemed to expostulate with There was an entire change in the Captain's
themselves for sinking deeper and deeper into face, as he went up stairs.
face, as he went up stairs. He wiped his eyes
the yielding fat of the soft face; the nose, af- with his handkerchief, and he polished the
flicted with that disordered action of its func-bridge of his nose with his sleeve as he had
tions which is generally termed The Snuffles; done already that morning, but his face was
the short thick throat and laboring chest, with absolutely changed. Now, he might have been
other beauties of the like description, though thought supremely happy; now, he might have
FACE
182
been thought sad; but the kind of gravity that
sat upon his features was quite new to them,
and was as great an improvement to them as if
they had undergone some sublimating process.
*
*
*
*
*
FACE
sung, did, with her rosy fingers, nip and tweak
Miss Pecksniff's nose. It was the frolicsome
custom of the Goddess, in her intercourse with
the fair Cherry, so to do; or, in more prosaic
phrase, the tip of that feature in the sweet girl's
countenance was always very red at breakfast-
time. For the most part, indeed, it wore, at
that season of the day, a scraped and frosty
phenomenon developed itself in her humor,
which was then observed to be of a sharp and
acid quality, as though an extra lemon (figura-
tively speaking) had been squeezed into the
nectar of her disposition, and had rather dam-
aged its flavor.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 6.
FACE-Of a proud and scornful woman.
But never in all his life had the Captain's
face so shone and glistened, as when, at last, he
sat stationary at the tea-board, looking from
Florence to Walter, and from Walter to Flor-look, as if it had been rasped; while a similar
ence. Nor was this effect produced or at all
heightened by the immense quantity of polish-
ing he had administered to his face with his
coat-sleeve during the last half-hour. It was
solely the effect of his internal emotions. There
was a glory and delight within the Captain that
spread itself over his whole visage, and made a
perfect illumination there.
* * * The yellow face with its grotesque
action, and the ferret eyes with their keen, cold,
wintry gaze.-Dombey & Son.
FACE-Of Mr. Grewgious.
Death is not pounds, shillings, and pence."
His voice was as hard and dry as himself, and
Fancy might have ground it straight, like him-
self, into high-dried snuff. And yet, through
the very limited means of expression that he
possessed, he seemed to express kindness. If
Nature had but finished him off, kindness might
have been recognizable in his face at this mo-
ment. But if the notches in his forehead
wouldn't fuse together, and if his face would
work and couldn't play, what could he do, poor
man?-Edwin Drood, Chap. 9.
FACE-Of Job Trotter.
Nature's handiwork never was disguised with
such extraordinary artificial carving as the man
had overlaid his countenance with, in one mo-
ment.
"It won't do, Job Trotter," said Sam. "Come!
None o' that 'ere nonsense. You ain't so wery
'andsome that you can afford to throw avay many
o' your good looks. Bring them 'ere eyes o'
your'n
'n back into their proper places, or I'll knock
'em out of your head. Dy'e hear?"
*
*
* Mr. Trotter burst into a regular in-
undation of tears, and flinging his arms around
those of Mr. Weller, embraced him closely, in
an ecstasy of joy.
"Get off!" cried Sam, indignant at this pro-
cess, and vainly endeavoring to extricate him-
self from the grasp of his enthusiastic acquaint-
ance. "Get off, I tell you. What are you crying
over me for, you portable ingine?"
Pickwick, Chap. 23.
FACE-Of a hypocrite.
His smooth face had a bloom upon it, like
ripe wall-fruit. What with his blooming face,
and that head, and his blue eyes, he seemed to
be delivering sentiments of rare wisdom and
virtue. In like manner, his physiognomical ex-
pression seemed to teem with benignity. No-
body could have said where the wisdom was, or
where the virtue was, or where the benignity
was; but they all seemed to be somewhere
about him.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
FACE-A frosty.
It was morning; and the beautiful Aurora, of
whom so much hath been written, said, and
|
The shadow in which she sat, falling like a
gloomy veil across her forehead, accorded very
well with the character of her beauty. One
could hardly see the face, so still and scornful,
set off by the arched dark eyebrows, and the
folds of dark hair, without wondering what its
expression would be if a change came over it.
That it could soften or relent, appeared next to
impossible. That it could, deepen into anger or
any extreme of defiance, and that it must change
in that direction when it changed at all, would
have been its peculiar impression upon most
observers. It was dressed and trimmed into no
ceremony of expression. Although not an open
face, there was no pretence in it. I am self-
contained and self-reliant; your opinion is
nothing to me; I have no interest in you, care
nothing for you, and see and hear you with in-
difference-this it said plainly. It said so in the
proud eyes, in the lifted nostril, in the hand-
some, but compressed and even cruel mouth.
Cover either two of those channels of expres-
sion, and the third would have said so still.
Mask them all, and the mere turn of the head
would have shown an unsubduable nature.
Lady Dedlock, in Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 2.
FACE-Shadowed by a memory.
She was about forty-perhaps two or three
years older-with a cheerful aspect, and a face
that had once been pretty. It bore traces of
affliction and care, but they were of an old date,
and Time had smoothed them. Any one who
had bestowed but a casual glance on Barnaby
might have known that this was his mother,
from the strong resemblance between them; but
where in his face there was wildness and vacan-
cy, in hers there was the patient composure of
long effort and quiet resignation.
One thing about this face was very strange
and startling. You could not look upon it in its
most cheerful mood without feeling that it had
some extraordinary capacity of expressing ter-
ror. It was not on the surface. It was in no
one feature that it lingered. You could not take
the eyes, or mouth, or lines upon the cheek, and
say if this or that were otherwise, it would not
be so. Yet there it always lurked-something
forever dimly seen, but ever there, and never
absent for a moment. It was the faintest, palest
shadow of some look, to which an instant of in-
tense and most unutterable horror only could
have given birth; but indistinct and feeble as it
was, it did suggest what that look must have
been, and fixed it in the mind as if it had had
existence in a dream.
FACTORY-TOWN
183
More faintly imaged, and wanting force and
purpose, as it were, because of his darkened in-
tellect, there was this same stamp upon the son.
Seen in a picture, it must have had some legend
with it, and would have haunted those who
looked upon the canvas.
the canvas. They who knew the
Maypole story, and could remember what the
widow was, before her husband's and his mas-
ter's murder, understood it well. They recol-
lected how the change had come, and could call
to mind that when her son was born, upon the
very day the deed was known, he bore upon his
wrist what seemed a smear of blood but half
washed out.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 5.
FACTORY-TOWN—A triumph of fact.
Coketown, to which Messrs. Bounderby and
Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact;
it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs.
Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note,
Coketown, before pursuing our tune.
FACTORY-TOWN
The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and
the school of design was all fact, and the rela
tions between master and man were all fact.
and everything was fact between the lying-in-
hospital and the cemetery, and what
you couldn't
state in figures, or show to be purchasable in
the cheapest market and salable in the dearest,
was not, and never should be, world without
end, Amen.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 5.
FACTORY-TOWN-Its peculiarities.
A sunny midsummer day. There was such a
thing sometimes, even in Coketown.
be seen.
Seen from a distance in such weather, Coke-
town lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which
appeared impervious to the sun's rays. You
only knew the town was there, because you knew
there could have been no such sulky blotch upon
the prospect without a town. A blur of soot
and smoke, now confusedly tending this way,
now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Hea-
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that ven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as
would have been red if the smoke and ashes had the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter :
allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town a dense, formless jumble, with sheets of cross
of unnatural red and black, like the painted face light in it, that showed nothing but masses of
of a savage. It was a town of machinery and darkness :-Coketown in the distance was sug-
tall chimneys, out of which interminable ser-gestive of itself, though not a brick of it could
pents of smoke trailed themselves forever and
ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black
canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-
smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of
windows, where there was a rattling and a trem-
bling all day long, and where the piston of the
steam-engine worked monotonously up and
down, like the head of an elephant in a state
of melancholy madness. It contained several
large streets all very like one another, and many
small streets still more like one another, inhab-
ited by people equally like one another, who all
went in and out at the same hours, with the
same sound upon the same pavements, to do the
same work, and to whom every day was the same
as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the
counterpart of the last and the next.
The wonder was, it was there at all. It had
been ruined so often, that it was amazing how it
had borne so many shocks. Surely there never
was such fragile china-ware as that of which the
millers of Coketown were made. Handle them
never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such
ease that you might suspect them of having been
flawed before.
It contained several flawed before. They were ruined when they
were required to send laboring children to
school; they were ruined when inspectors were
appointed to look into their works; they were
ruined when such inspectors considered it doubt-
ful whether they were quite justified in chopping
people up with their machinery; they were ut-
terly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps
they need not always make quite so much smoke.
Besides Mr. Bounderby's gold spoon, which was
generally received in Coketown, another preva-
lent fiction was very popular there. It took the
form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner felt
he was ill-used-that is to say, whenever he was
not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to
hold him accountable for the consequences of
any of his acts-he was sure to come out with
the awful menace, that he would " sooner pitch
his property into the Atlantic." This had terri-
fied the Home Secretary within an inch of his
life, on several occasions.
These attributes of Coketown were in the
main inseparable from the work by which it was
sustained; against them were to be set off, com- |
forts of life which found their way all over the
world, and elegancies of life which made, we
will not ask how much of the fine lady, who
could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned.
The rest of its features were voluntary, and they
were these.
However, the Coketowners were so patriotic,
after all, that they never had pitched their prop-
erty into the Atlantic yet, but on the contrary,
had been kind enough to take mighty good care
of it. So there it was, in the haze yonder; and
it increased and multiplied.
*
*
*
*
*
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was
severely workful. If the members of a religious
persuasion built a chapel there—as the members
of eighteen religious persuasions had done-they
made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with
sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamented
examples) à bell in a bird-cage on the top of it.
The solitary exception was the New Church; a
stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the
door, terminating in four short pinnacles like
florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions The streets were hot and dusty on the sum-
in the town were painted alike, in severe char-mer day, and the sun was so bright that it even
acters of black and white. The jail might have shone through the heavy vapor drooping over
been the infirmary, the infirmary might have Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily.
been the jail, the town-hall might have been Stokers emerged from low underground door-
either, or both, or anything else, for anything ways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and
that appeared to the contrary in the graces posts, and palings, wiping their swarthy visages,
of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, every- and contemplating coals. The whole town
where in the material aspect of the town; seemed to be frying in oil. There was a sti-
fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. fling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steam-
}
FACTORY-TOWN
184
FACTORIES
engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands the same somebody else's thorns in addition to
were soiled with it, the mills throughout their his own. He had known, to use his words,
many stories oozed and trickled it. The atmos-
a peck of trouble. He was usually called Old
phere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath | Stephen, in a kind of rough homage to the fact.
of the simoon; and their inhabitants, wasting A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a
with heat, toiled languidly in the desert. But pondering expression of face, and a hard-look-
no temperature made the melancholy - mading head sufficiently capacious, on which his iron-
elephants more mad or more sane. Their weari- grey hair lay long and thin, Old Stephen might
some heads went up and down at the same rate, have passed for a particularly intelligent man in
in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, his condition. Yet he was not. He took no
fair weather and foul. The measured motion place among those remarkable " Hands," who,
of their shadows on the walls, was the substitute piecing together their broken intervals of leisure
Coketown had to show for the shadows of rus- through many years, had mastered difficult
tling woods; while, for the summer hum of in- sciences, and acquired a knowledge of most
sects, it could offer, all the year round, from the unlikely things. He held no station among the
dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the Hands who could make speeches and carry on
whirr of shafts and wheels.
debates. Thousands of his compeers could talk
much better than he, at any time. He was a
good power-loom weaver, and a man of perfect
integrity. What more he was, or what else he
had in him, if anything, let him show for him-
self.
Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny
day, making the passenger more sleepy and more
hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills.
Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little
cooled the main streets and the shops; but the
mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a
fierce heat. Down upon the river, that was black
and thick with dye, some Coketown boys who
were at large-a rare sight there—rowed a crazy
boat, which made a spumous track upon the
water as it jogged along, while every dip of an
oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself,
however beneficent generally, was less kind to
Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked in
tently into any of its closer regions without
engendering more death than life. So does the
eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when
incapable or sordid hands are interposed between
it and the things it looks upon to bless.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. I.
FACTORY-TOWN-The workingmen.
I entertain a weak idea that the English peo-
ple are as hard-worked as any people upon whom
the sun shines. I acknowledge to this ridiculous
idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them
a little more play.
In the hardest working part of Coketown; in
the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel,
where Nature was as strongly bricked out as
killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the
heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon
courts, and close streets upon streets, which had
come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a
violent hurry for some one man's purpose, and
the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and
trampling, and pressing one another to death;
in the last close nook of this great exhausted
receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to
make a draught, were built in an immense vari-
ety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though
every house put out a sign of the kind of peo-
ple who might be expected to be born in it;
among the multitude of Coketown, generically
called "the Hands," -a race who would have
found more favor with some people, if Provi-
dence had seen fit to make them only hands, or
like the lower creatures of the sea-shore, only
hands and stomachs-lived a certain Stephen
Blackpool, forty years of age.
Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard
life. It is said that every life has its roses and
thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a
misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case,
whereby somebody else had become possessed
of his roses, and he had become possessed of
The lights in the great factories, which looked,
when they were illuminated, like Fairy palaces—
or the travellers by express-train said so-were
all extinguished; and the bells had rung for
knocking off for the night, and had ceased again;
and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl,
were clattering home. Old Stephen was stand-
ing in the street, with the odd sensation upon
him which the stoppage of the machinery always
produced-the sensation of its having worked
and stopped in his own head.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 10.
FACTORY-Iron-Works.
He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks
in, and sees a great perplexity of iron lying
about, in every stage, and in a vast variety of
shapes; in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks,
in boilers, in axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks,
in rails; twisted and wrenched into eccentric
and perverse forms, as separate parts of machin-
ery; mountains of it broken-up, and rusty in
its age; distant furnaces of it glowing and bub-
bling in its youth; bright fireworks of it shower-
ing about, under the blows of the steam ham-
mer; red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black
iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a Babel
of iron sounds.
*
*
*
*
*
There is iron-dust on everything; and the
smoke is seen, through the windows, rolling
heavily out of the tall chimneys, to mingle with
the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other
chimneys.-Bleak House, Chap. 63.
FACTORIES.
Machinery slackened; throbbing feebly like
a fainting pulse; stopped. The bell again; the
glare of light and heat dispelled; the factories,
looming heavy in the black wet night—their tall
chimneys rising up into the air like competing
Towers of Babel.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 12.
FACTORIES-The hands.
The Fairy palaces burst into illumination,
before pale morning showed the monstrous ser-
pents of smoke trailing themselves over Coke-
town. A clattering of clogs upon the pave-
ment; a rapid ringing of bells; and all the
melancholy-mad elephants, polished and oiled
FACTS
185
up for the day's monotony, were at their heavy
exercise again.
Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful,
and steady. A special contrast, as every man
was in the forest of looms where Stephen
worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing
piece of mechanism at which he labored.
Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of
mind, that Art will consign Nature to oblivion.
Set anywhere, side by side, the work of GOD
and the work of man; and the former, even
though it be a troop of Hands of very small ac-
count, will gain in dignity from the comparison.
So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so
many hundred horse Steam Power. It is
known, to the force of a single pound weight,
what the engine will do; but not all the calcu-
lators of the National Debt can tell me the ca-
pacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for
patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition |
of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single
moment in the soul of one of these, its quiet
servants, with the composed faces and the reg-
ulated actions. There is no mystery in it;
there is an unfathomable mystery in the mean-
est of them, forever.-Supposing we were to
reserve our arithmetic for material objects, and
to govern these awful unknown quantities by
other means!
FACTS
kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts,
and prepared to blow them clean out of the
regions of childhood at one discharge. He
seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged
with a grim mechanical substitute for the ten-
der young imaginations that were to be stormed
away.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 2.
FACTS-Gradgrind's lessons of.
Mr. Gradgrind walked homeward from the
school, in a state of considerable satisfaction
It was his school, and he intended it to be a mod.
el. He intended every child in it to be a model
just as the young Gradgrinds were all models.
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they
were models every one. They had been lec-
tured at, from their tenderest years; coursed
like little hares. Almost as soon as they could
run alone, they had been made to run to the
lecture-room. The first object with which they
had an association, or of which they had a re-
membrance, was a large black-board with a dry
Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.
Not that they knew, by name or nature, any-
thing about an Ogre. Fact forbid! I only use
the word to express a monster in a lecturing
castle, with Heaven knows how many heads
manipulated into one, taking childhood cap-
tive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical
The day grew strong, and showed itself out-dens by the hair.
side, even against the flaming lights within. No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in
The lights were turned out, and the work went the moon; it was up in the moon before it
The rain fell, and the Smoke-serpents, could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind
submissive to the curse of all that tribe, trailed had ever learned the silly jingle, Twinkle,
themselves upon the earth. In the waste-yard twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you
outside, the steam from the escape pipe, the litter are! No little Gradgrind had ever known won-
of barrels and old iron, the shining heaps of coals, der on the subject, each little Gradgrind hav-
the ashes everywhere, were shrouded in a veiling at five years old dissected the Great Bear
of mist and rain.
on.
The work went on until the noon-bell rang.
More clattering upon the pavements. The
looms, and wheels, and Hands all out of gear
for an hour.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. II.
FACTS-Gradgrind the man of.
Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities.
A man of facts and calculations. A man who
proceeds upon the principle that two and two
are four, and nothing over, and who is not to
be talked into allowing for anything over.
Thomas Gradgrind, sir-peremptorily Thomas
-Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair
of scales, and the multiplication table always
in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure
any parcel of human nature, and tell you ex-
actly what it comes to. It is a mere question
of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You
might hope to get some other nonsensical be-
lief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Au-
gustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Jo-
seph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent
persons), but into the head of Thomas Grad-
grind-no, sir.
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always men-
tally introduced himself, whether to his private
circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general.
In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words
"boys and girls," for "sir," Thomas Gradgrind
now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little
pitchers before him, who were to be filled so
full of facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from
the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a
|
like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's
Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No
little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a
field with that famous cow with the crumpled
horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat
who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with
that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom
Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities,
and had only been introduced to a cow as a
graminiverous, ruminating quadruped with sev-
eral stomachs.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 3.
FACTS-The man of.
In gauging fathomless deeps with his little
mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the uni-
verse with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he
had meant to do great things. Within the lim-
its of his short tether he had tumbled about, an-
nihilating the flowers of existence with greater
singleness of purpose than many of the blatant
personages whose company he kept.
Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 1.
FACTS-A disgust for.
"I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear
so much about," said Tom, spitefully setting his
teeth, "and all the Figures, and all the people
who found them out; and I wish I could put a
thousand barrels of gunpowder under them, and
blow them all up together!"
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. S.
FACTS-The Gradgrind philosophers.
The Gradgrind party wanted assistance in
cutting the throats of the Graces. They went
FACTS
about recruiting; and where could they enlist
recruits more hopefully, than among the fine
gentlemen who, having found out everything to
be worth nothing, were equally ready for any-
thing?
186
Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted
to this sublime height were attractive to many of
the Gradgrind school. They liked fine gentle-
men; they pretended that they did not, but they
did. They became exhausted in imitation of
them; and they yaw-yawed in their speech like
them; and they served out, with an enervated
air, the little mouldy rations of political econo-
my, on which they regaled their disciples. There
never before was seen on earth such a wonder-
ful hybrid race as was thus produced.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 2.
FACTS-Mr. Gradgrind on.
"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these
boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone
are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root
out everything else. You can only form the
minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing
else will ever be of any service to them. This
is the principle on which I bring up my own |
children, and this is the principle on which I
bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault
of a school-room, and the speaker's square fore-
finger emphasized his observations by under-
scoring every sentence with a line on the school-
master's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by
the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which
had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes
found commodious cellarage in two dark caves,
overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was
helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide,
thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped
by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry,
and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by
the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts
of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the
wind from its shining surface, all covered with
knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the
head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard
facts stored inside, The speaker's obstinate
carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoul-
ders-nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take
him by the throat with an unaccommodating
grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was-all helped
the emphasis.
"In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir;
nothing but Facts!"
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the
third grown person present, all backed a little,
and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of
little vessels then and there arranged in order,
ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured
into them until they were full to the brim.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. I.
FACTS versus fancies.
"
Girl number twenty," said the gentleman,
smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
"So you would carpet your room-or your
husband's room, if you were a grown woman,
and had a husband-with representations of
flowers, would you," said the gentleman. "Why
would you?"
If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,"
returned the girl.
FAINTING
"And is that why you would put tables and
chairs upon them, and have people walking over
them with heavy boots?"
"It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't
crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would
be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleas
ant, and I would fancy—”
(C
Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy," cried
the gentleman, quite elated by coming so hap
pily to his point. "That's it! You are never
to fancy."
"You are not, Cecilia Jupe," Thomas Grad-
grind solemnly repeated, "to do anything of that
kind."
"
Fact, fact, fact!" said the gentleman. And
Fact, fact, fact!" repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
You are to be in all things regulated and
governed," said the gentleman, "by fact. We
hope to have, before long, a board of fact, com-
posed of commissioners of fact, who will force
the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing
but fact. You must discard the word Fancy
altogether. You have nothing to do with it.
You are not to have, in any object of use or
ornament, what would be a contradiction in
fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact;
you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in
carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and
butterflies come and perch upon your crockery;
you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds
and butterflies upon your crockery. You never
meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls;
you must not have quadrupeds represented upon
walls. You must use," said the gentleman, “for
all these purposes, combinations and modifica-
tions (in primary colors) of mathematical figures
which are susceptible of proof and demonstra-
tion. This is the new discovery. This is fact.
|
This is taste.'
|
""
The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was
very young, and she looked as if she were fright-
ened by the matter of fact prospect the world
afforded.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 2.
FAINTING-Mrs. Varden's family tactics.
Mrs. Varden wept, and laughed, and sobbed,
and shivered, and hiccoughed, and choaked;
and said she knew it was very foolish, but she
couldn't help it; and that when she was dead
and gone, perhaps they would be sorry for it—
which really, under the circumstances, did not
appear quite so probable as she seemed to think
with a great deal more to the same effect.
In a word, she passed with great decency
through all the ceremonies incidental to such
occasions; and being supported up-stairs, was
deposited in a highly spasmodic state on her
own bed, where Miss Miggs shortly afterwards
flung herself upon the body.
The philosophy of all this was, that Mrs.
Varden wanted to go to Chigwell; that she did
not want to make any concession or explana-
tion; that she would only go on being im-
plored and entreated so to do; and that she
would accept no other terms. Accordingly,
after a vast amount of moaning and crying up-
stairs, and much dampening of foreheads, and
vinegaring of temples, and hartshorning of
noses, and so forth; and after most pathetic
adjurations from Miggs, assisted by warm bran.
dy-and-water not over-weak, and divers othe
cordials also of a stimulating quality, adminis
tered at first in teaspoonsful, and afterwards in
FAINTING
187
increasing doses, and of which Miss Miggs her-
self partook as a preventive measure (for faint-
ing is infectious); after all these remedies, and
many more too numerous to mention, but not
to take, had been applied; and many verbal
consolations, moral, religious, and miscellaneous,
had been superadded thereto, the locksmith
humbled himself, and the end was gained.
"If it's only for the sake of peace and quiet-
ness, father," said Dolly, urging him to go up-
stairs.
“Oh, Doll, Doll,” said her good-natured fa-
ther. If you ever have a husband of your
own-'
""
Dolly glanced at the glass.
"Well, when you have," said the locksmith,
never faint, my darling. More domestic un-
happiness has come of easy fainting, Doll, than
from all the greater passions put together. Re-
member that, my dear, if you would be truly
happy, which you never can be, if your hus-
band isn't. And a word in your ear, my pre-
cious. Never have a Miggs about you!"
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 19.
FAINTING-Of Miss Miggs.
Having helped the wayward 'prentice in, she
faintly articulated the words "Simmun is safe!"
and yielding to her woman's nature, immedi-
ately became insensible.
|
FAIR
as from a criminal, and reversing the precedent
of the murdered king of Denmark, regarded
her more in anger than in sorrow.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 29.
FAIR-A village.
It was a Saturday evening, and at such a time
the village dogs, always much more interested
in the doings of humanity than in the affairs of
their own species, were particularly active. At
the general shop, at the butcher's, and at the
public-house, they evinced an inquiring spirit
never to be satiated. Their especial interest in
the public-house would seem to imply some
latent rakishness in the canine character; for
little was eaten there, and they, having no taste
for beer or tobacco (Mrs. Hubbard's dog is said
to have smoked, but proof is wanting), could
only have been attracted by sympathy with loose
convivial habits. Moreover, a most wretched
fiddle played within; a fiddle so unutterably
vile, that one lean, long-bodied cur, with a bet-
ter ear than the rest, found himself under com-
pulsion at intervals to go round the corner and
howl. Yet, even he returned to the public-
house on each occasion with the tenacity of a
confirmed drunkard.
Fearful to relate, there was even a sort of little
Fair in the village. Some despairing ginger-
bread that had been vainly trying to dispose of
"I knew I should quench her," said Sim, itself all over the country, and had cast a quan-
rather embarrassed by this circumstance. "Of tity of dust upon its head in its mortification,
course I was certain it would come to this, but again appealed to the public from an infirm
there was nothing else to be done-if I hadn't booth. So did a heap of nuts, long, long exiled
eyed her over, she wouldn't have come down. from Barcelona, and yet speaking English so in-
Here. Keep up a minute, Miggs. What a slip-differently as to call fourteen of themselves a
pery figure she is! There's no holding her com- pint. A Peep-show which had originally started
fortably. Do keep up a minute, Miggs, will you?" with the Battle of Waterloo, and had since made
As Miggs, however, was deaf to all entrea- it every other battle of later date by altering the
ties, Mr. Tappertit leaned her against the wall Duke of Wellington's nose, tempted the student
as one might dispose of a walking-stick or um- of illustrated history. A Fat Lady, perhaps in
brella, until he had secured the window, when part sustained upon postponed pork, her pro-
he took her in his arms again, and, in short fessional associate being a Learned Pig, dis
stages and with great difficulty-arising mainly played her life-size picture in a low dress as she
from her being tall and his being short, and appeared when presented at Court, several yards
perhaps in some degree from that peculiar phy-round. All this was a vicious spectacle, as any
sical conformation on which he had already re-
marked—carried her up-stairs, and planting her
in the same umbrella or walking-stick fashion,
just inside her own door, left her to her repose.
"He may be as cool as he likes," said Miss
Miggs, recovering as soon as she was left alone;
"but I'm in his confidence and he can't help
himself, nor couldn't if he was twenty Sim-
munses!"-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 9.
FAINTING-The freemasonry of.
But none of that gentle concern which usually
characterizes the daughters of Eve in their tend-
ing of each other; none of that freemasonry in
fainting, by which they are generally bound to
gether in a mysterious bond of sisterhood, was
visible in Mrs. Chick's demeanor. Rather like
the executioner who restores the victim to sen-
sation previous to proceeding with the torture
(or was wont to do so, in the good old times for
vhich all true men wear perpetual mourning),
did Mrs. Chick administer the smelling-bottle,
the slapping on the hands, the dashing of cold
water on the face, and the other proved reme-
dies.
And when, at length, Miss Tox opened
her eyes, and gradually became restored to ani-
mation and consciousness, Mrs. Chick drew off
|
poor idea of amusement on the part of the
rougher hewers of wood and drawers of water
in this land of England ever is and shall be.
They must not vary the rheumatism with amuse-
ment. They may vary it with fever and ague,
or with as many rheumatic variations as they
have joints; but positively not with entertain-
ment after their own manner.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 6.
FAIR-The Greenwich.
If the Parks be "the lungs of London," we
wonder what Greenwich Fair is a periodical
breaking out, we suppose; a sort of spring-rash;
a three days' fever, which cools the blood for
six months afterwards, and at the expiration of
which London is restored to its old habits of
plodding industry, as suddenly and completely
as if nothing had ever happened to disturb them.
Pedestrians linger in groups at the roadside,
unable to resist the allurements of the stout pro-
prietress of the "Jack-in-the box, three shies a
penny," or the more splendid offers of the man
with three thimbles and a pea on a little round
board, who astonishes the bewildered crowd with
some such address as, "Here's the sort o' game
to make you laugh seven years arter you're dead,
FASHIONABLE PARTY
188
FASHIONABLE PEOPLE
Foremost among those leaving cards at the
eminently aristocratic door, before it is quite
painted, are the Veneerings; out of breath, one
might imagine, from the impetuosity of their
rush to the eminently aristocratic steps. One
and turn ev'ry air on your ed gray with delight! | nently aristocratic family mansion, an 1 behold
Three thimbles and vun little pea-with a vun, all manner of crawling, creeping, fluttering, and
two, three, and a two, three, vun: catch him who buzzing creatures, attracted by the gold-dust of
can, look on, keep your eyes open, and niver say the Golden Dustman!
die! niver mind the change, and the expense:
all fair and above board: them as don't play
can't vin, and luck attend the ryal sportsman!
Bet any gen'lm'n any sum of money, from harf-
a-crown up to a suverin, as he doesn't name the
thimble as kivers the pea!" Here some green-copper-plate Mrs. Veneering, two copper-plate
horn whispers his friend that he distinctly saw
the pea roll under the middle thimble-an im-
pression which is immediately confirmed by a
gentleman in top-boots, who is standing by, and
who, in a low tone, regrets his own inability to
bet in consequence of having unfortunately left
his purse at home, but strongly urges the stran-
ger not to neglect such a golden opportunity.
The "plant" is successful, the bet is made, the
stranger of course loses; and the gentleman
with the thimble consoles him, as he pockets the
money, with an assurance that it's "all the fortin
of war! this time I vin, next time you vin: niver
mind the loss of two bob and a bender! Do
it up in a small parcel, and break out in a fresh
place. Here's the sort o' game," etc.—and the
eloquent harangue, with some variations as the
speaker's exuberant fancy suggests, is again re-
peated to the gaping crowd, reinforced by the
accession of several new comers.
*
*
*
*
*
Mr. Veneerings, and a connubial copper-plate
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, requesting the honor
of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin's company at dinner with
the utmost Analytical solemnities. The enchant
ing Lady Tippins leaves a card. Twemlow
leaves cards. A tall custard-colored phaeton
tooling up in a solemn manner leaves four cards,
to wit, a couple of Mr. Podsnaps, a Mrs. Pod-
snap, and a Miss Podsnap. All the world and
his wife and daughter leave cards. Some-
times the world's wife has so many daughters,
that her card reads rather like a Miscellaneous
Lot at an Auction; comprising Mrs. Tapkins,
Miss Tapkins, Miss Frederica Tapkins, Miss
Antonia Tapkins, Miss Malviņa Tapkins, and
Miss Euphemia Tapkins; at the same time the
same lady leaves the card of Mrs. Henry George
Alfred Swoshle, née Tapkins; also a card, Mrs.
Tapkins at Home Wednesdays, Music, Port-
land Place.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 17.
Imagine yourself in an extremely dense crowd,
which swings you to and fro, and in and out, FASHIONABLE EXCLUSIVENESS.
and every way but the right one; add to this The Podsnaps lived in a shady angle adjoin-
the screams of women, the shouts of boys, the ing Portman Square. They were a kind of peo-
clanging of gongs, the firing of pistols, the ring-ple certain to dwell in the shade, wherever they
ing of bells, the bellowings of speaking-trum-
pets, the squeaking of penny dittos, the noise
of a dozen bands, with three drums in each, all
playing different tunes at the same time, the
hallooing of showmen, and an occasional roar
from the wild-beast shows; and you are in the
very centre and heart of the fair.
Scenes, Chap. 12.
FASHIONABLE PARTY—A.
And now the haunch of mutton vapor-bath
having received a gamey infusion, and a few last
touches of sweets and coffee, was quite ready,
the bathers came; but not before the dis-
creet automaton had got behind the bars of the
piano music-desk, and there presented the ap-
pearance of a captive languishing in a rosewood
jail.—Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 11.
FASHIONABLE SOCIETY.
They all go up again into the gorgeous draw-
ing rooms-all of them flushed with breakfast,
as having taken scarlatina sociably-and there
the combined unknowns do malignant things
with their legs to ottomans, and take as much as
possible out of the splendid furniture.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 10.
FASHIONABLE CONVENTIONALITIES.
The social ice on which all the children of
Podsnappery, with genteel souls to be saved, are
required to skate in circles, or to slide in long
rows.-Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 8.
dwelt. Miss Podsnap's life had been, from her
first appearance on this planet, altogether of a
shady order; for, Mr. Podsnap's young person
was likely to get little good out of association
with other young persons, and had therefore
been restricted to companionship with not very
congenial older persons, and with massive furni-
ture. Miss Podsnap's early views of life being
principally derived from the reflections of it in
her father's boots, and in the walnut and rose-
wood tables of the dim drawing-rooms, and in
their swarthy giants of looking glasses, were of
a sombre cast; and it was not wonderful that
now, when she was on most days solemnly
tooled through the Park by the side of her moth-
er, in a great, tall, custard-colored phaeton, she
showed above the apron of that vehicle like a
dejected young person sitting up in bed to take
a startled look at things in general, and very
strongly desiring to get her head under the
counterpane again.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. II.
FASHIONABLE PEOPLE-The Veneer-
ings.
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new peo-
ple in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter
of London. Everything about the Veneerings
was spick and span new. All their furniture
was new, all their friends were new, all their
servants were new, their plate was new, their
carriage was new, their harness was new, their
horses were new, their pictures were new, they
themselves were new, they were as newly mar-
ried as was lawfully compatible with their hav-
And now, in the blooming summer days, be-ing a bran-new baby, and if they had set up a
hold Mr. and Mr. Boffin established in the emi- | great-grandfather, he would have come home
FASHIONABLE CALLS.
FASHIONABLE PEOPLE
189
in matting from the Pantechnicon, without a
scratch upon him, French polished to the crown
of his head.
For, in the Veneering establishment, from the
hall-chairs with the new coat of arms to the
grand pianoforte with the new action, and up-
stairs again to the new fire-escape, all things
were in a state of high varnish and polish. And
what was observable in the furniture was ob-
servable in the Veneerings--the surface smelt a
little too much of the workshop and was a trifle
sticky.
There was an innocent piece of dinner-furni-
ture that went upon easy castors and was kept
over a livery stable-yard in Duke Street, St.
James's, when not in use, to whom the Veneer-
ings were a source of blind confusion. The
name of this article was Twemlow. Being first
cousin to Lord Snigsworth, he was in frequent
requisition, and at many houses might be said
to represent the dining-table in its normal state.
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, for example, arranging
a dinner, habitually started with Twemlow, and
then put leaves in him, or added guests to him.
Sometimes the table consisted of Twemlow and
half a dozen leaves; sometimes, of Twemlow
and a dozen leaves; sometimes, Twemlow was
pulled out to his utmost extent of twenty leaves.
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering on occasions of cere-
mony faced each other in the centre of the
board, and thus the parallel still held; for, it
always happened that the more Twemlow was
pulled out, the farther he found himself from
the centre, and the nearer to the sideboard at
one end of the room, or the window-curtains at
the other.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 2.
FASHIONABLE PEOPLE-How they are
managed.
There is this remarkable circumstance to be
noted in everything associated with my Lady
Dedlock as one of a class-as one of the leaders
and representatives of her little world-she
supposes herself to be an inscrutable Being,
quite out of the reach and ken of ordinary mor-
tals; seeing herself in her glass, where indeed
she looks so. Yet, every dim little star revolv-
ing about her, from her maid to the manager of
the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, pre-
judices, follies, haughtinesses, and caprices; and
lives upon as accurate a calculation and as nice
a mersure of her moral nature, as her dress-
maker takes of her physical proportions. Is a
new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new
dancer, a new form of jewelry, a new dwarf or
giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set
up? There are deferential people, in a dozen
callings, whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of
nothing but prostration before her, who can tell
you how to manage her as if she were a baby;
who do nothing but nurse her all their lives;
who, humbly affecting to follow with profound
subservience, lead her and her whole troop after
them; who, in hooking one, hook all and bear
them off, as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the
stately fleet of the majestic Lilliput. "If you
want to address our people, sir," say Blaze and
Sparkle, the jewellers-meaning by our people,
Lady Dedlock and the rest-" you must remem-
ber that you are not dealing with the general
public; you must hit our people in their weak-
est place, and their weakest place is such a
FASHION
place." "To make this article go down, gen-
tlemen," say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to
their friends the manufacturers, "you must come
to us, because we know where to have the fash-
ionable people, and we can make it fashiona-
ble." "If you want to get this print upon the
tables of my high connection, sir,” says Mr.
Sladdery, the librarian, "or if you want to get
this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high
connection, sir, or if you want to secure to this
entertainment the patronage of my high con-
nection, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to
me; for I have been accustomed to study the
leaders of my high connection, sir; and I may
tell you, without vanity, that I can turn them
round my finger."-in which Mr. Sladdery, who
is an honest man, does not exaggerate at all.
Bleak House, Chap. 2.
FASHION-In England.
Whatsoever fashion is set in England is cer-
tain to descend. This is the text for a perpetual
sermon on care in setting fashions.
When you
find a fashion low down, look back for the time
(it will never be far off) when it was the fashion
high up. This is the text for a perpetual ser-
mon on social justice. From imitations of Ethi-
opian Serenaders, to imitations of Prince's coats
and waistcoats, you will find the original model
in St. James's Parish. When the Serenaders be-
come tiresome, trace them beyond the Black
Country: when the coats and waistcoats become
insupportable, refer them to their source in the
Upper Toady Regions.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 23.
FASHIONS-Like human beings.
"Fashions are like human beings. They
come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and
they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how.
Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you
look at it in that point of view."
David Copperfield, Chap. 9.
FASHIONS-Second-hand clothes.
Probably there are not more second-hand
clothes sold in London than in Paris, and yet
the mass of the London population have a
second-hand look which is not to be detected
on the mass of the Parisian population. I
think this is mainly because a Parisian work-
man does not in the least trouble himself about
what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in
the way of his own class and for his own com-
fort. In London, on the contrary, the fashions
descend; and you never fully know how incon-
venient or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see
it in its last descent.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 23.
FASHION--The world of.
Both the world of fashion and the Court of
Chancery are things of precedent and usage;
over-sleeping Rip Van Winkles, who have played
at strange games through a deal of thundery
weather; sleeping beauties, whom the Knight
will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in
the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously!
It is not a large world. Relatively even to
this world of ours, which has its limits too (as
your Highness shall find when you have made
the tour of it, and are come to the brink of the
void beyond), it is a very little speck. There is
FASHION
190
much good in it; there are many good and true
people in it; it has its appointed place. But
the evil of it is, that it is a world wrapped up in
too much jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and
cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds,
and cannot see them as they circle round the
sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is
sometimes unhealthy for want of air.
Bleak House, Chap. 2.
FASHION-The ennui of.
FAT BOY
jumped up; and the leaden eyes which twinkled
behind his mountainous cheeks, leered horribly
upon the food as he unpacked it from the basket.
*
*
*
*
*
Mr. Wardle unconsciously changed the sub-
ject, by calling emphatically for Joe.
"Damn that boy," said the old gentleman
"he's gone to sleep again."
Very extraordinary boy, that," said Mr. Pick-
wick, "does he always' sleep in this way?"
"
Sleep!" said the old gentleman, "he's al-
ways asleep. Goes on errands fast asleep, and
snores as he waits at table.”
"How very odd!" said Mr. Pickwick.
Ah! odd indeed," returned the old gentle-
man; "I'm proud of that boy-wouldn't part
with him on any account-he's a natural curi-
osity! Here, Joe-Joe-take these things away,
and open another bottle-d'ye hear?"
My Lady Dedlock has been bored to death.
Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing
is new to my Lady, under the worn-out heavens.
Only last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay
-within the walls, playing with children among
the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace
Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian
Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs
and wooden horses; between whiles filtering The fat boy rose, opened his eyes, swallowed
(a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of our the huge piece of pie he had been in the act of
Lady, to say a word or two at the base of a masticating when he last fell asleep, and slowly
pillar, within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full obeyed his master's orders-gloating languidly
of gusty little tapers-without the walls, encom- over the remains of the feast, as he removed the
passing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-plates and deposited them in the hamper.
drinking,, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, bil-
Pickwick, Chap. 4.
liard, card, and domino playing, quack-doctoring,
and much murderous refuse, animate and inani-
mate-only last Sunday, my Lady, in the deso-
lation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant
Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in
spirits.
She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris.
Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies be-
hind-her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the
whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped-but
the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the
last place where it has been experienced. Fling
Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging
it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of
wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let it be
some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a
white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a
mere mound in a plain: two dark square towers
rising out of it, and light and shadow descend-
ing on it aslant, like the angels in Jacob's
dream!-Bleak House, Chap. 12.
FAT BOY-Joe, the.
"Joe, Joe!" said the stout gentleman, when
the citadel was taken, and the besiegers and be-
sieged sat down to dinner. "Damn that boy,
he's gone to sleep again. Be good enough to
pinch him, sir-in the leg, if you please; nothing
else wakes him-thank you. Undo the hamper,
Joe."
The fat boy, who had been effectually roused
by the compression of a portion of his leg be-
tween the finger and thumb of Mr. Winkle,
rolled off the box once again, and proceeded to
unpack the hamper, with more expedition than
could have been expected from his previous in-
activity.
*
*
*
*
*
"Plates, Joe, plates." A similar process em-
ployed in the distribution of the crockery.
Now, Joe, the fowls. Damn that boy, he's
gone to sleep again. Joe! Joe!" (Sundry taps
on the head with a stick, and the fat boy, with
some difficulty, roused from his lethargy.)
'Come, hand in the eatables."
There was something in the sound of the last
word which roused the unctuous boy. He
|
The object that presented itself to the eyes
of the astonished clerk, was a boy-a wonder-
fully fat boy-habited as a serving lad, standing
upright on the mat, with his eyes closed as if in
sleep. He had never seen such a fat boy in or
out of a travelling caravan; and this, coupled
with the calmness and repose of his appearance,
so very different from what was reasonably to
have been expected of the inflicter of such
knocks, smote him with wonder.
"What's the matter?" inquired the clerk.
The extraordinary boy replied not a word;
but he nodded once, and seemed, to the clerk's
imagination, to snore feebly.
"Where do you come from?" inquired the
clerk.
The boy made no sign. He breathed heavily,
but in all other respects was motionless.
The clerk repeated the question thrice, and
receiving no answer, prepared to shut the door,
when the boy suddenly opened his eyes, winked
several times, sneezed once, and raised his hand
as if to repeat the knocking. Finding the door
open, he stared about him with astonishment, and
at length fixed his eyes on Mr. Lowten's face.
"What the devil do you knock in that way
for?" inquired the clerk, angrily.
"Which way!" said the boy, in a slow and
voice.
sleepyhy, like forty hackney-coachmen,” replied
the clerk.
"Because master said I wasn't to leave off
knocking till they opened the door, for fear I
should go to sleep," said the boy.
Pickwick, Chap. 54.
FAT BOY-Joe as a spy.
"Missus!" shouted the fat boy.
'Well, Joe," said the trembling old lady
'I'm sure I have been a good mistress to you.
You have invariably been treated very kindly,
You have never had too much to do; and you
have always had enough to eat."
This last was an appeal to the fat boy's most
sensitive feelings. He seemed touched, as he
replied, emphatically—

"JOE," THE FAT BOY.
190
FAT BOY
"I knows I has."
191
"Then what can you want to do now?" said
the old lady, gaining courage.
"I wants to make your flesh creep," replied
the boy.
This sounded like a very bloodthirsty mode
of showing one's gratitude; and as the old lady
did not precisely understand the process by
which such a result was to be attained, all her
former horrors returned.
"What do you think I see in this very arbor
last night?" inquired the boy.
"Bless us! What?" exclaimed the old lady,
alarmed at the solemn manner of the corpulent
youth.
"The strange gentleman-him as had his arm
hurt-a kissin' and huggin'-
"
Who, Joe? None of the servants, I hope."
Worser than that," roared the fat boy, in
the old lady's ear.
"Not one of my grand-da'aters?"
"Worser than that.'
"Worse than that, Joe!" said the old lady,
who had thought this the extreme limit of hu-
man atrocity. "Who was it, Joe? I insist upon
knowing."
The fat boy looked cautiously round, and
having concluded his survey, shouted in the old
lady's ear:
"
Miss Rachael."
|
FEAR
"I knows a nicerer."
Indeed!' said Mary.
Yes, indeed!" replied the fat boy, with un-
wonted vivacity.
"What's her name?" inquired Mary.
"What yours?"
"C
Mary.'
"So's her's," said the fat boy. "You're her."
The boy grinned to add point to the compli-
ment, and put his eyes into something betweer
a squint and a cast, which there is reason to be-
lieve he intended for an ogle.
"You musn't talk to me in that way," said
Mary: "you don't mean it."
Don't I though?" replied the fat boy; “I
Well."
say!"
"
"Are you going to come here regular?"
No,” rejoined Mary, shaking her head, “ I'm
going away again to-night. Why?"
Oh!" said the fat boy in a tone of strong
feeling; "how we should have enjoyed our-
selves at meals, if you had been!"
*
*
*
*
"Don't go yet," urged the fat boy.
C
"I must," replied Mary. Good-bye, for
the present."
The fat boy, with elephantine playfulness,
stretched out his arms to ravish a kiss; but as
it required no great agility to elude him, his
What!" said the old lady, in a shrill tone. fair enslaver had vanished before he closed
"Speak louder.”
"Miss Rachael," roared the fat boy.
My da'ater!"
The train of nods which the fat boy gave by
way of assent, communicated a blanc-mange-like
motion to his fat cheeks.
"And she suffered him!" exclaimed the old
lady.
them again; upon which the apathetic youth
ate a pound or so of steak with a sentimental
countenance, and fell fast asleep.
Pickwick, Chap. 54.
FATHER-Child's idea of a.
The child glanced keenly at the blue coat
and stiff white cravat, which, with a pair of
A grin stole over the fat boy's features as he creaking boots and a very loud-ticking watch,
said:
"I see her a kissin' of him agin."
FAT BOY-Joe in love.
Pickwick, Chap. 8.
"Will you have some of this?" said the fat
boy, plunging into the pie up to the very fer-
ules of the knife and fork.
"A little, if you please," replied Mary.
The fat boy assisted Mary to a little, and
himself to a great deal, and was just going to
begin eating, when he suddenly laid down his
knife and fork, leant forward in his chair, and
letting his hands, with the knife and fork in
them, fall on his knees, said, very slowly:
I say! how nice you look!"
This was said in an admiring manner, and
was, so far, gratifying; but still there was
enough of the cannibal in the young gentle-
man's eyes to render the compliment a double
one.
"Dear me, Joseph," said Mary, affecting to
blush, "what do you mean?"
The fat boy, gradually recovering his former
position, replied with a heavy sigh, and remain-
ing thoughtful for a few moments, drank a long
draught of the porter. Having achieved this
feat he sighed again, and applied himself assid-
uously to the pie.
"
What a nice young lady Miss Emily is!"
said Mary, after a long silence.
The fat boy had by this time finished the pie.
He fixed his eyes on Mary, and replied:
|
embodied her idea of a father.-Dombey, Ch. 1.
FATHER—And children.
Then they would climb and clamber up stairs
with him, and romp about him on the sofa, or
group themselves at his knee, a very nosegay
of little faces, while he seemed to tell them
some story.-Dombey & Son.
FAVOR─The pleasure of a.
"Dear Mr. Toots," said Florence, “you are
so friendly to me, and so honest, that I am sure
I may ask a favor of you."
"Miss Dombey," returned Mr. Toots, "if
you'll only name one, you'll-you'll give me
an appetite. To which," said Mr. Toots, with
some sentiment, "I have long been a stranger."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 61.
"I have quite come into my property now,
you know, and-and I don't know what to do
with it. If I could be at all useful in a pecu-
niary point of view, I should glide into the si-
lent tomb with ease and smoothness."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 50.
FEAR-A means of obedience.
Repression is the only lasting philosophy.
The dark deference of fear and slavery, my
friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the
dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,"
looking up to it, “shuts out the sky."
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 9.
FEATURES
FEATURES-and manners-An excess of.
Veneering here pulls up his oratorical Pegasus
extremely short, and plumps down, clean over
his head, with: "Lammle, God bless you!"
Then Lammle. Too much of him every
way; pervadingly too much nose of a coarse
wrong shape, and his nose in his mind and his
manners; too much smile to be real; too much
frown to be false; too many large teeth to be
visible at once without suggesting a bite.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 16.
192
FEELINGS
She was a very ugly old woman, with red rims
round her eyes, and a mouth that mumbled and
chattered of itself when she was not speaking.
She was miserably dressed, and carried some
skins over her arm. She seemed to have fol-
lowed Florence some little way at all events, for
she had lost her breath; and this made her uglier
still, as she stood trying to regain it; working
her shrivelled yellow face and throat into all
sorts of contortions.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 6.
"Let me tell your fortune, my pretty lady,"
said the old woman, munching with her jaws, as
if the Death's Head beneath her yellow skin were
impatient to get out.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 10.
FEELINGS-Of public men.
FEATURES—And personal characteristics.
The lady thus specially presented, was a long
lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she
seemed not to have been made in what linen-
drapers call" fast colors" originally, and to have,
by little and little, washed out. But for this she
Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dread-
might have been described as the very pink of ful lonely feelings on me arter this.
I con-
general propitiation and politeness. From a long quered 'em at selling times, having a reputation
habit of listening admirably to everything that to keep (not to mention keeping myself), but
was said in her presence, and looking at the they got me down in private, and rolled upon
speakers as if she were mentally engaged in tak-
me. That's often the way with us public char-
ing off impressions of their images upon her
acters. See us on the footboard, and you'd
soul, never to part with the same but with life, give pretty well anything you possess to be us.
her head had quite settled on one side. Her
See us off the footboard, and you'd add a trifle
hands had contracted a spasmodic habit of rais-to be off your bargain. It was under those
ing themselves of their own accord as in in- circumstances that. I come acquainted with a
voluntary admiration. Her eyes were liable to giant. I might have been too high to fall into
a similar affection. She had the softest voice conversation with him, had it not been for my
that ever was heard; and her nose, stupendously lonely feelings. For the general rule is, going
aquiline, had a little knob in the very centre or round the country, to draw the line at dressing
key-stone of the bridge, whence it tended down-
wards towards her face, as in an invincible deter- ing to his undisguised abilities, you consider
wards towards her face, as in an invincible deter- up. When a man can't trust his getting a liv-
mization never to turn up at anything.
him below your sort. And this giant when on
view figured as a Roman.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
He was a slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful old
fellow, with eyes as red as if they had been small
suns looking at you through a fog; and a newly-
awakened manner, such as he might have ac-
quired by having stared for three or four days
successively through every optical instrument in
his shop, and suddenly came back to the world
again, to find it green.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 4.
And although it is not among the instincts,
wild or domestic, of the cat tribe to play at cards,
feline from sole to crown was Mr. Carker the
Manager, as he basked in the strip of summer
light and warmth that shone upon his table and
the ground as if they were a crooked dial-plate,
and himself the only figure on it. With hair
and whiskers deficient in color at all times, but
feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and
more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat;
with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened
with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt,
which made him pause sometimes and watch the
falling motes of dust, and rub them off his
smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr. Carker
the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft
of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of
heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty steadfast-
ness and patience at his work, as if he were
waiting at a mouse's hole.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 22.
tribute to the distance betwixt his extremities.
He was a languid young man, which I at-
He had a little head and less in it, he had weak
eyes and weak knees, and altogether you
couldn't look at him without feeling that there
was greatly too much of him both for his joints
and his mind.-Dr. Marigold.
FEELINGS-Sam Weller on the.
"I have considered the matter well, for a
long time, and I feel that my happiness is bound
up in her."
"That's wot we call tying it up in a small
parcel, sir," interposed Mr. Weller, with an
agreeable smile.
Mr. Winkle looked somewhat stern at this
interruption, and Mr. Pickwick angrily re-
quested his attendant not to jest with one of
the best feelings of our nature; to which Sam
replied, "That he wouldn't, if he was aware on
it; but there were so many on 'em, that he
hardly know'd which was the best ones wen he
heerd 'em mentioned."-Pickwick, Chap. 30.
FEELINGS-Of Mr. Pecksniff.
My goodness!" exclaimed that lady. "How
low you are in your spirits, sir!"
"I am a man, my dear madam," said Mr.
Pecksniff, shedding tears, and speaking with
an imperfect articulation, "but I am also a
father. I am also a widower. My feelings,
Mrs. Todgers, will not consent to be entirely
* * * A struggle which it was not very smothered, like the young children in the Tow-
difficult to parade, his whole life being a strug-er. They are grown up, and the more I press
gle against all kinds of apopletic symptoms. the bolster on them, the more they look round
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20. the corner of it."—Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9.
ọ.
FEELINGS
FEELINGS—Of Toots.
193
"I feel," said Mr. Toots, in an impassioned
tone, “as if I could express my feelings, at the
present moment, in a most remarkable manner,
if-if-I could only get a start."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 56.
FEVER-Its hallucinations.
That I had a fever and was avoided, that I
suffered greatly, that I often lost my reason,
that the time seemed interminable, that I con-
founded impossible existences with my own
identity; that I was a brick in the house wall,
and yet entreating to be released from the gid-
dy place where the builders had set me; that I
was a steel beam of a vast engine clashing and
whirling over a gulf, and yet that I implored in
my own person to have the engine stopped, and
my part in it hammered off; that I passed
through these phases of disease, I know of my
own remembrance, and did in some sort know
at the time. That I sometimes struggled with
real people, in the belief that they were mur-
derers, and that I would all at once compre-
hend that they meant to do me good, and would
then sink exhausted in their arms, and suffer
them to lay me down, I also knew at the time.
But, above all, I knew that there was a constant
tendency in all these people-who, when I was
very ill, would present all kinds of extraordinary
transformations of the human face, and would be
nuch dilated in size-above all, I say, I knew
that there was an extraordinary tendency in all
these people, sooner or later to settle down into
the likeness of Joe.
Great Expectations, Chap. 57.
The sun rose and sunk, and rose and sunk
again, and many times after that; and still the
boy lay stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling
away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever.
The worm does not his work more surely on the
dead body, than does this slow creeping fire
upon the living frame.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 12.
FICTION-Characters in.
It is remarkable that what we call the world,
which is so very credulous in what professes to
be true, is most incredulous in what professes
to be imaginary; and that, while, every day in
real life, it will allow in one man no blemishes,
and in another no virtues, it will seldom admit
a very strongly-marked character, either good
or bad, in a fictitious narrative, to be within the
limits of probability.
Preface to Nicholas Nickleby.
FIGHT
more attractively; but there is no better sort in
circulation.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 11.
FIGURE-Of Mrs. Kenwigs.
"
But such a woman as Mrs. Kenwigs was,
afore she was married! Good gracious, such a
woman!"
Mr. Lumbey shook his head with great solem.
nity, as though to imply that he supposed she
must have been rather a dazzler.
"Talk of fairies!" cried Mr. Kenwigs. "7
never see anybody so light to be alive, never.
Such manners too; so playful, and yet so se-
werely proper! As for her figure! It isn't
generally known," said Mr. Kenwigs, dropping
his voice; "but her figure was such, at that
time, that the sign of the Britannia over in the
Holloway road was painted from it."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 36.
FIGHT—A school-boy's.
The shade of a young butcher rises, like the
apparition of an armed head in Macbeth. Who
is this young butcher? He is the terror of the
youth of Canterbury. There is a vague belief
abroad, that the beef suet with which he anoints
his hair gives him unnatural strength, and that
he is a match for a man. He is a broad-faced,
bull-necked young butcher, with rough red
cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an inju-
rious tongue. His main use of this tongue is
to disparage Dr. Strong's young gentlemen. He
says, publicly, that if they want anything he'll
give it 'em. He names individuals among them
(myself included), whom he could undertake to
settle with one hand, and the other tied behind
him. He waylays the smaller boys to punch
their unprotected heads, and calls challenges
after me in the open streets. For these suffi-
cient reasons I resolve to fight the butcher.
It is a summer evening. Down in a green hol-
low, at the corner of a wall, I meet the butcher
by appointment. I am attended by a select
body of our boys; the butcher, by two other
butchers, a young publican, and a sweep. The
preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and
myself stand face to face. In a moment the
butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my
left eyebrow. In another moment, I don't
know where the wall is, or where I am, or where
anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and
which the butcher, we are always in such a tan-
gle and tussle, knocking about the trodden grass.
Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confi-
dent; sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping
on my second's knee; sometimes I go in at the
butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against
his face, without appearing to discompose him at
FIDELITY AND ORDER-Of Mr. Grew-all. At last I awake, very queer about the head,
gious.
Many accounts and account-books, many files
of correspondence, and several strong boxes,
garnished Mr. Grewgious's room. They can
scarcely be represented as having lumbered it,
so conscientious and precise was their orderly
arrangement. The apprehension of dying sud-
denly, and leaving one fact or one figure with |
any incompleteness or obscurity attaching to it,
would have stretched Mr. Grewgious stone dead
any day. The largest fidelity to a trust was the
life-blood of the man. There are sorts of life-
blood that course more quickly, more gayly,
as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walk-
ing off, congratulated by the two other butchers
coat as he goes; from which I augur, justly,
and the sweep and publican, and putting on his
that the victory is his.
David Copperfield, Chap. 18.
FIGHT-Between Quilp and Dick Swiveller.
Daniel Quilp found himself, all flushed and
dishevelled, in the middle of the street, with
Mr. Richard Swiveller performing a kind of
dance round him, and requiring to know
"whether he wanted any more?"
FIGHT
194
"There's plenty more of it at the same shop,"
said Mr. Swiveller, by turns advancing and re-
treating in a threatening attitude, "a large and
extensive assortment always on hand-country |
orders executed with promptitude and despatch
—will you have a little more, sir?—don't say no,
if you'd rather not.”
FIGHT-Pip's.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 13.
"Come and fight," said the palc young gentle-
man.
What could I do but follow him? I have
often asked myself the question since: but, what
else could I do? His manner was so final and
I was so astonished, that I followed where he
led, as if I had been under a spell.
"
"
Stop a minute, though," he said, wheeling
round before we had got many paces. I ought
to give you a reason for fighting, too. There it
is!" In a most irritating manner he instantly
slapped his hands against one another, daintily
flung one of his legs up behind him, pulled my
hair, slapped his hands again, dipped his head,
and butted it into my stomach.
The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, be-
sides that it was unquestionably to be regarded
in the light of a liberty, was particularly dis-
agreeable just after bread and meat. I there-
fore hit out at him and was going to hit out
again, when he said, “Aha! Would you?" and
began dancing backward and forward in a man-
ner quite unparalleled within my limited ex-
perience.
"Laws of the game!" said he. Here he
skipped from his left leg on to his right. Re-
gular rules!" Here he skipped from his right
leg on to his left. "Come to the ground, and
go through the preliminaries!" Here he dodg-
ed backward and forward, and did all sorts of
things, while I looked helplessly at him.
I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him
so dexterous; but I felt morally and physically
convinced that his light head of hair could have
had no business in the pit of my stomach, and
that I had a right to consider it irrelevant when
so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I fol-
lowed him without a word to a retired nook of
the garden, formed by the junction of two walls
and screened by some rubbish. On his asking
me if I was satisfied with the ground, and on
my replying Yes, he begged my leave to absent
himself for a moment, and quickly returned
with a bottle of water and a sponge dipped in
vinegar. "Available for both," he said, placing
these against the wall. And then fell to pulling
off, not only his jacket and waistcoat, but his
shirt too, in a manner at once light-hearted,
business-like, and blood-thirsty.
FIRE AND MOB
minutely choosing his bone. I never have been
so surprised in my life as I was when I let out
the first blow, and saw him lying on his back,
looking up at me with a bloody nose and his
face exceedingly fore-shortened.
But he was on his feet directly, and after
sponging himself with a great show of dexterity
began squaring again. The second greatest sur-
prise I have ever had in my life was seeing him
on his back again, looking up at me out of a
black eye.
His spirit inspired me with great respect. He
seemed to have no strength, and he never once
hit me hard, and he was always knocked down;
but he would be up again in a moment, spong-
ing himself or drinking out of the water-bottle,
with the greatest satisfaction in seconding him-
self according to form, and then came at me
with an air and a show that made me believe he
really was going to do for me at last. He got
heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that the
more I hit him, the harder I hit him; but he
came up again and again and again, until at last
he got a bad fall with the back of his head
against the wall. Even after that crisis in our
affairs, he got up and turned round and round
confusedly a few times, not knowing where I
was; but finally went on his knees to his sponge
and threw it up at the same time panting out,
"That means you have won."
He seemed so brave and innocent, that al-
though I had not proposed the contest I felt but
a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, I
go so far as to hope that I regarded myself, while
dressing, as a species of savage young wolf, or
other wild beast. However, I got dressed,
darkly wiping my sanguinary face at intervals,
and I said, "Can I help you?" and he said,
"No, thankee," and I said, "Good afternoon,"
and he said, "Same to you.”
FIRE.
Great Expectations, Chap. II.
The fire bounded up as if each separate flame
had had a tiger's life, and roared as though, in
every one, there were a hungry voice.
FIRE AND MOB.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 65.
It was not an easy task to draw off such a
throng. If Bedlam gates had been flung open
wide, there would not have issued forth such
maniacs as the frenzy of that night had made.
There were men there who danced and trampled
on the beds of flowers as though they trod down
human enemies, and wrenched them from the
stalks, like savages who twisted human necks,
There were men who cast their lighted torches
in the air, and suffered them to fall upon their
heads and faces, blistering the skin with deep
unseemly burns. There were men who rushed
Although he did not look very healthy-hav-
ing pimples on his face, and a breaking-out at
his mouth-these dreadful preparations quite ap-up to the fire, and paddled in it with their
palled me. I judged him to be about my own
age, but he was much taller, and he had a way
of spinning himself about that was full of ap-
pearance. For the rest, he was a young gentle-
man in a gray suit (when not denuded for bat-
tle), with his elbows, knees, wrists, and heels
considerably in advance of the rest of him as
to development.
My heart failed me when I saw him squaring
at me with every demonstration of mechanical
nicety, and eying my anatomy as if he were
hands as if in water; and others who were re-
strained by force from plunging in, to gratify
their deadly longing. On the skull of one
drunken lad-not twenty, by his looks-who
lay upon the ground with a bottle to his mouth,
the lead from the roof came streaming down in
a shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting his
head like wax. When the scattered parties
were collected, men-living yet, but singed as
with hot irons-were plucked out of the cellars,
and carried off upon the shoulders of others,
FIRE AND MOB
195
who strove to wake them as they went along,
with ribald jokes, and left them, dead, in the
passages of hospitals. But of all the howling
throng not one learned mercy from, or sickened
at, these sights; nor was the fierce, besotted,
senseless rage of one man glutted.
Slowly, and in small clusters, with hoarse
hurrahs and repetitions of their usual cry, the
assembly dropped away. The last few red-eyed
stragglers reeled after those who had gone be-
fore; the distant noise of men calling to each
other, and whistling for others whom they
missed, grew fainter and fainter; at length even
these sounds died away, and silence reigned
alone.
Silence indeed! The glare of the flames had
sunk into a fitful flashing light; and the gentle
stars, invisible till now, looked down upon the
blackening heap. A dull smoke hung upon the
ruin, as though to hide it from those eyes of
Heaven; and the wind forebore to move it.
Bare walls, roof open to the sky-chambers,
where the beloved dead had, many and many a
fair day, risen to new life and energy; where so
many dear ones had been sad and merry; which
were connected with so many thoughts and
hopes, regrets and changes-all gone. Nothing
left but a dull and dreary blank-a smouldering
heap of dust and ashes the silence and solitude
of utter desolation.
*
*
*
*
*
The more the fire crackled and raged, the
wilder and more cruel the men grew; as though
moving in that element they became fiends, and
changed their earthly nature for the qualities
that give delight in hell.
FIRE AND BREEZE
all the woodwork round the prison-doors they
did the like, leaving not a joist or beam un-
touched. This infernal christening performed,
they fired the pile with lighted matches and with
blazing tow, and then stood by, awaiting the
result.
The furniture being very dry, and rendered
more combustible by wax and oil, besides the
arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames
roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison
wall, and twining up its lofty front like burning
serpents. At first, they crowded round the blaze,
and vented their exultation only in their looks;
but when it grew hotter and fiercer-when it
crackled, leaped, and roared, like a great furnace
burst out upon the view, and things the most
familiar put on some new aspect-then the mob
began to join the whirl, and with loud yells, and
shouts, and clamor, such as happily is seldom
heard, bestirred themselves to feed the fire, and
keep it at its height.
when it shone upon the opposite houses, and
lighted up not only the pale and wondering faces
at the windows, but the inmost corners of each
habitation-when, through the deep red heat
and glow, the fire was seen sporting and toying
with the door, now clinging to its obdurate sur-
face, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and
soaring high into the sky, anon returning to fold
it in its burning grasp and lure it to its ruin-
when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the
church clock of St. Sepulchre's, so often point-
ing to the hour of death, was legible as in broad
day, and the vane upon its steeple-top glittered
in the unwonted light like something richly
jewelled-when blackened stone and sombre
brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and win-
dows shone like burnished gold, dotting the
longest distance in the fiery vista with their
specks of brightness-when wall and tower, and
roof and chimney-stack, seemed drunk, and in
the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger
The burning pile, revealing rooms and pas--when scores of objects, never seen before,
sages red-hot, through gaps made in the crum-
bling walls; the tributary fires that licked the
outer bricks and stones, with their long forked
tongues, and ran up to meet the glowing mass
within; the shining of the flames upon the vil-
lains who looked on and fed them; the roaring
of the angry blaze, so bright and high that it
seemed in its rapacity to have swallowed up the
very smoke; the living flakes the wind bore
rapidly away and hurried on with, like a storm
of fiery snow; the noiseless breaking of great
beams of wood, which fell like feathers on the
heap of ashes, and crumbled in the very act to
sparks and powder; the lurid tinge that over-
spread the sky, and the darkness, very deep by
contrast, which prevailed around; the exposure
to the coarse, common gaze, of every little nook
which usages of home had made a sacred place,
and the destruction by rude hands of every little
household favorite which old associations made
a dear and precious thing: all this taking place
-not among pitying looks and friendly mur-
murs of compassion, but brutal shouts and ex-
ultations, which seemed to make the very rats
who stood by the old house too long, creatures
with some claim upon the pity and regard of
those its roof had sheltered-combined to form
a scene never to be forgotten by those who saw
it and were not actors in the work, so long as
life endured.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 55.
*
*
*
*
Although the heat was so intense that the
paint on the houses over against the prison
parched and crackled up, and swelling into boils,
as it were, from excess of torture, broke and
crumbled away; although the glass. fell from the
window-sashes, and the lead and iron on the
roofs blistered the incautious hand that touched
them; and the sparrows in the eaves took wing,
and, rendered giddy by the smoke, fell fluttering
down upon the blazing pile, still the fire was
tended unceasingly by busy hands, and round it,
men were going always. They never slackened
in their zeal, or kept aloof, but pressed upon the
flames so hard, that those in front had much ado
to save themselves from being thrust in; if one
man swooned or dropped, a dozen struggled for
his place, and that, although they knew the pain,
and thirst, and pressure to be unendurable.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 64.
FIRE-Its red eyes.
The fire, which had left off roaring, winked
its red eyes at us-as Richard said-like a
drowsy old Chancery lion.
Bleak House, Chap. 3.
When all the keeper's goods were flung upon | FIRE AND BREEZE.
this costly pile, to the last fragment, they smear-
ed it with the pitch, and tar, and rosin they had
brought, and sprinkled it with turpentine. To
Now, too, the fire took fresh courage, favored
by the lively wind the dance awakened, and
burnt clear and high. It was the Genius of the
FIRE
196
room, and present everywhere. It shone in peo-
ple's eyes, it sparkled in the jewels on the snowy
necks of girls, it twinkled at their ears, as if it
whispered to them slyly, it flashed about their
waists, it flickered on the ground and made it
rosy for their feet, it bloomed upon the ceiling
that its glow. might set off their bright faces, and
it kindled up a general illumination in Mrs.
Craggs's little belfry.
Now, too, the lively air that fanned it, grew
less gentle as the music quickened and the dance
proceeded with new spirit; and a breeze arose
that made the leaves and berries dance upon the
wall, as they had often done upon the trees; and
the breeze rustled in the room as if an invisible
company of fairies, treading in the footsteps of
the good substantial revellers, were whirling after
them. Now, too, no feature of the Doctor's face
could be distinguished as he spun and spun; and
now there seemed a dozen Birds of Paradise in
fitful flight; and now there were a thousand little
bells at work; and now a fleet of flying skirts
was ruffled by a little tempest, when the music
gave in, and the dance was over.
FIRE-A bright.
Battle of Life, Chap. 2.
The music struck up, and the dance com-
menced. The bright fire crackled and sparkled,
rose and fell, as though it joined the dance itself,
in right good fellowship. Sometimes it roared
as if it would make music too. Sometimes it
flashed and beamed as if it were the eye of the
old room it winked, too, sometimes, like a
knowing Patriarch, upon the youthful whisperers
in corners. Sometimes it sported with the
holly-boughs; and, shining on the leaves by fits
and starts, made them look as if they were in
the cold winter night again, and fluttering in the
wind. Sometimes its genial humor grew
obstreperous, and passed all bounds; and then
it cast into the room, among the twinkling feet,
with a loud burst, a shower of harmless little
sparks, and in its exultation, leaped and bounded
like a mad thing, up the broad old chimney.
Battle of Life, Chap. 2.
FIRE Little Nell at the forge.
46
See yonder there-that's my friend."
The fire?" said the child.
It has been alive as long as I have," the
man made answer. "We talk and think to-
gether all night long."
The child glanced quickly at him in her sur-
prise, but he had turned his eyes in their former
direction and was musing as before.
"It's like a book to me," he said; "the only
book I ever learned to read; and many an old
story it tells me. It's music, for I should know
its voice among a thousand, and there are other
voices in its roar. It has its pictures too. You
don't know how many strange faces and differ-
ent scenes I trace in the red-hot coals. It's my
memory, that fire, and shows me all my life."
The child, bending down to listen to his
words, could not help remarking with what
brightened eyes he continued to speak and
muse.
Yes," he said, with a faint smile, "it was
the same when I was quite a baby, and crawled
about it, till I fell asleep. My father watched
it then."
"Had you no mother?" asked the child.
FIRE-PLACE
No, she was dead. Women work hard in
these parts. She worked herself to death, they
told me, and, as they said so then, the fire has
gone on saying the same thing ever since. I
suppose it was true. I have always believed it."
"Were you brought up here, then?" said the
child.
"Summer and winter," he replied. "Secretly
at first, but when they found it out, they let him
keep me here. So the fire nursed me-the same
fire. It has never gone out."
"You are fond of it?" said the child.
"Of course I am. He died before it. I saw
him fall down-just there, where those ashes
are burning now-and wondered, I remember,
why it didn't help him."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 44.
FIRE-Sykes, the murderer, at a.
The broad sky seemed on fire. Rising into
the air with showers of sparks, and rolling one
above the other, were sheets of flame, lighting
the atmosphere for miles round, and driving
clouds of smoke in the direction where he stood.
The shouts grew louder as new voices swelled
the roar, and he could hear the cry of "Fire !"
mingled with the ringing of an alarm-bell, the
fall of heavy bodies, and the crackling of flames
as they twined round some new obstacle, and
shot aloft as though refreshed by food. The
noise increased as he looked. There were peo-
ple there-men and women-light, bustle. It
was like new life to him.
was like new life to him. He darted onward-
straight, headlong-dashing through brier and
brake, and leaping gate and fence as madly as
the dog, who careered with loud and sounding
bark before him.
He came upon the spot. There were half-
dressed figures tearing to and fro, some endeav-
oring to drag the frightened horses from the
stables, others driving the cattle from the yard
and out-houses, and others coming laden from
the burning pile, amidst a shower of falling
sparks, and the tumbling down of red-hot beams.
The apertures, where doors and windows stood
an hour ago, disclosed a mass of raging fire;
walls rocked and crumbled into the burning
well; the molten lead and iron poured down,
white hot, upon the ground. Women and chil-
dren shrieked, and men encouraged each other
with noisy shouts and cheers. The clanking
of the engine-pumps, and the spirting and hiss-
ing of the water as it fell upon the blazing
wood, added to the tremendous roar.
shouted, too, till he was hoarse; and, flying
from memory and himself, plunged into the
thickest of the throng.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 48.
FIRE-PLACE-An ancient.
He
The fire-place was an old one, built by some
Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round
with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate
the Scriptures. There were Čains and Abels,
Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic
messengers descending through the air on
clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshaz
zars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,
hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and
yet that face of Marley's, seven years dead,
came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swal-
lowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had
been a blank at first, with power to shape some
“FIXING"
197
picture on its surface from the disjointed frag-
ments of his thoughts, there would have been a
copy of old Marley's head on every one.
Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
· FIXING ”—A provincialism of America.
“Will you try,” said my opposite neighbor,
handing me a dish of potatoes, broken up in
milk and butter,-" will you try some of these
fixings?"
FLUTE MUSIC
the hedges, and all sorts of flowers that I never
was among. For I have seen very few flowers
indeed, in my life."
"Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!" said
her friend: with a glance towards Eugene as if
she would have asked him whether they were
given the child in compensation for her losses.
"So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me.
And the birds I hear! Oh!" cried the little
creature, holding out her hand and looking up-
ward, "how they sing!"
There was something in the face and action
for the moment quite inspired and beautiful.
Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand
| again.
There are few words which perform such va-
rious duties as this word "fix." It is the Caleb
Quotem of the American vocabulary. You call
upon a gentleman in a country town, and his
help informs you that he is "fixing himself"
just now, but will be down directly; by
which you are to understand that he is dress-
ing. You inquire on board a steamboat, of a
fellow-passenger, whether breakfast will be
ready soon, and he tells you he should think so,
for when he was last below they were "fixing
the tables," in other words, laying the cloth.
You beg a porter to collect your luggage, and
he entreats you not to be uneasy, for he'll "fix
it presently;" and if you complain of indispo-
sition, you are advised to have recourse to Doc-setting up shrill noises, and they never mocked
tor so-and-so, who will "fix you" in no time.
One night I ordered a bottle of mulled wine
at a hotel where I was staying, and waited a
long time for it; at length it was put upon the
table with an apology from the landlord that
he feared it wasn't "fixed properly." And I
recollect once, at a stage-coach dinner, over-
hearing a very stern gentleman demand of a
waiter who presented him with a plate of under-
done roast beef, "whether he called that fixing
God A'mighty's vittles."
American Notes, Chap. 10.
FLAG-The American.
"Tut!" said Martin. You're a gay flag in
the distance. But let a man be near enough to
get the light upon the other side, and see through
you, and you are but sorry fustian !"
FLATTERER.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 21.
For, although a skillful flatterer is a most de-
lightful companion if you can keep him all to
yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when
he takes to complimenting other people.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 28.
"I dare say my birds sing better than other
birds, and my flowers smell better than other
flowers. For when I was a little child," in a tone
as though it were ages ago, "the children that I
used to see early in the morning were very dif-
ferent from any others that I ever saw. They
were not like me; they were not chilled, anxious,
ragged, or beaten; they were never in pain.
They were not like the children of the neigh-
bors; they never made me tremble all over, by
me. Such numbers of them too! All in white
dresses, and with something shining on the bor-
ders, and on their heads, that I have never been
able to imitate with my work, though I know it
so well. They used to come down in long,
bright, slanting rows, and say all together,
'Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!'
When I told them who it was, they answered,
'Come and play with us!' When I said ‘I
never play! I can't play!' they swept about
me and took me up, and made me light. Then
it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid
me down, and said, all together, ‘Have patience,
and we will come again.' Whenever they came
back, I used to know they were coming before
I saw the long bright rows, by hearing them
ask, all together, a long way off, 'Who is this in
pain! who is this in pain!
And I used to cry
out, 'O my blessed children, it's poor me. Have
pity on me. Take me up and make me light!""
By degrees, as she progressed in this remem-
brance, the hand was raised, the last ecstatic
Having so paused for a moment, silent, with a
look returned, and she became quite beautiful.
listening smile upon her face, she looked round
and recalled herself.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 2.
FLOWERS, BIRDS, AND ANGELS-The FLUTE-PLAYER-Mr. Mell, the.
vision of Jenny Wren.
"I wonder how it happens that when I am
work, work, working here, all alone in the sum-
mer-time, I smell flowers?"
"As a commonplace individual, I should say,"
Eugene suggested languidly-for he was grow-
ing weary of the person of the house-" that you
smell flowers because you do smell flowers.”
"No I don't," said the little creature, resting
one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her
chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly be-
fore her; "this is not a flowery neighborhood.
It's anything but that. And yet, as I sit at work,
I smell miles of flowers. I smell roses, till I
think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bush-
els, on the floor. I smell fallen leaves, till I put
down my hand-so-and expect to make them
ruştle. I smell the white and the pink May in
When he had put up his things for the night,
he took out his flute, and blew at it, until I al--
most thought he would gradually blow his whole.
being into the large hole at the top, and ooze
away at the keys.-David Copperfield, Chap. 5.
FLUTE MUSIC-Dick Swiveller's solace in
love.
Some men in his blighted position would have
taken to drinking; but as Mr. Swiveller had
taken to that before, he only took, on receiving
the news that Sophy Wackles was lost to him
forever, to playing the flute; thinking, after ma-
ture consideration, that it was a good, sound,
dismal occupation, not only in unison with his
own sad thoughts, but calculated to awaken a
fellow-feeling in the bosoms of his neighbors.
In pursuance of this resolution, he now drew a
FOG
198
FORTUNE-HUNTERS
little table to his bedside, and arranging the FORGIVENESS.
light and a small oblong music-book to the best
advantage, took his flute from its box, and began
to play most mournfully.
19
-a
"One always begins to forgive a place as soon
as it's left behind; I dare say a prisoner begins
to relent towards his prison, after he is let out.'
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 2
CC
The air was Away with Melancholy'
composition, which, when it is played very slow-
ly on the flute, in bed, with the further disadvan- FORGIVENESS—Pecksniffian.
tage of being performed by a gentleman but im- "You will shake hands, sir."
perfectly acquainted with the instrument, who
repeats one note a great many times before he
can find the next, has not a lively effect. Yet,
for half the night, or more, Mr. Swiveller, lying
sometimes on his back with his eyes upon the
ceiling, and sometimes half out of bed, to cor-
rect himself by the book, played this unhappy
tune over and over again; never leaving off,
save for a minute or two at a time to take breath
and soliloquize about the Marchioness, and then
beginning again with renewed vigor. It was
not until he had quite exhausted his several sub-
jects of meditation, and had breathed into the
flute the whole sentiment of the purl down to its
very dregs, and had nearly maddened the peo-
ple of the house, and at both the next doors,
and over the way, that he shut up the music-
book, extinguished the candle, and finding him-
self greatly lightened and relieved in his mind,
turned round and fell asleep.
'No, John," said Mr. Pecksniff, with a calm-
ness quite ethereal; "no, I will not shake hands,
John. I have forgiven you. I had already for-
given you, even before you ceased to reproach
and taunt me. I have embraced you in the
spirit, John, which is better than shaking hands. '
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
FOG-A sea of.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 58.
FORMAL PEOPLE.
The formal couple are the most prim, cold,
immovable, and unsatisfactory people on the face
of the earth. Their faces, voices, dress, house,
furniture, walk, and manner are all the essence
of formality, unrelieved by one redeeming touch
of frankness, heartiness, or nature.
Everything with the formal couple resolves
itself into a matter of form. They don't call
upon you on your account, but their own; not
to see how you are, but to show how they are:
it is not a ceremony to do honor to you, but to
themselves-not due to your position, but to
theirs. If one of a friend's children dies, the
formal couple are as sure and punctual in send-
ing to the house as the undertaker ; if a friend's
family be increased, the monthly nurse is not
The formal couple,
It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was
heavy and dark. Animate London, with smart-
ing eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheez-more attentive than they.
ing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty
spectre, divided in purpose between being visi-
ble and invisible, and so being wholly neither.
Gas-lights flared in the shops with a haggard and
unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-
creatures that had no business abroad under the
sun; while the sun itself, when it was for a few
moments dimly indicated through circling eddies
of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were
collapsing flat and cold. Even in the surround-
ing country it was a foggy day, but there the fog
was grey, whereas in London it was, at about
the boundary line, dark yellow, and a little with-
in it brown, and then browner, and then brown-
er, until, at the heart of the City-which call
Saint Mary Axe-it was rusty black. From any
point of the high ridge of land northward, it
might have been discerned that the loftiest build-
ings made an occasional struggle to get their
heads above the foggy sea, and especially that
the great dome of Saint Paul's seemed to die
hard; but this was not perceivable in the streets
at their feet, where the whole metropolis was a
heap of vapor charged with muffled sound of
wheels, and enfolding a gigantic catarrh.
in fact, joyfully seize all occasions of testifying
their good-breeding and precise observance of
the little usages of society; and for you, who
are the means to this end, they care as much as
a man does for the tailor who has enabled him
to cut a figure, or a woman for the milliner who
has assisted her to a conquest.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. I.
The mist, though sluggish and slow to move,
was of a keenly searching kind. No muffling up
in furs and broadcloth kept it out. It seemed
to penetrate into the very bones of the shrinking
wayfarers, and to rack them with cold and pains.
Everything was wet and clammy to the touch.
The warm blaze alone defied it, and leaped and
sparkled merrily. It was a day to be at home,
crowding about the fire, telling stories of travel-
lers who had lost their way in such weather on
heaths and moors; and to love a warm hearth
more than ever.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 67.
Having an extensive connection among that
kind of people who make acquaintances and
eschew friends, the formal gentleman attends,
from time to time, a great many funerals, to
which he is formally invited, and to which he
formally goes, as returning a call for the last
time. Here his deportment is of the most fault-
less description; he knows the exact pitch of
voice it is proper to assume, the sombre look he
ought to wear, the melancholy tread which
should be his gait for the day. He is perfectly
acquainted with all the dreary courtesies to be
observed in a mourning-coach; knows when to
sigh, and when to hide his nose in the white
handkerchief; and looks into the grave and
shakes his head when the ceremony is concluded,
with the sad formality of a mute.
The Formal Couple.
FORTUNE-HUNTERS.
"A mere fortune-hunter!" cried the son, in-
dignantly.
"What in the devil's name, Ned, would you
be?" returned the father. All men are for-
tune-hunters, are they not? The law, the church,
the court, the camp-see how they are all crowd-
ed with fortune-hunters, jostling each other in
the pursuit. The Stock-exchange, the pulpit,
the counting-house, the royal drawing-room, the
Senate-what but fortune-hunters are they filled
with? A fortune-hunter! Yes. You are one ;
and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned
FOUNDRY
199
if you were the greatest courtier, lawyer, legisla-
tor, prelate, or merchant, in existence. If you
are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself
with the reflection that at the worst your fortune-
hunting can make but one person miserable or
unhappy. How many people do you suppose
these other kinds of huntsmen crush in follow-
ing their sport? Hundreds at a step-or thou-
sands?"-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 15.
FOUNDRY-Description of a.
"This is the place," he said, pausing at a
door to put Nell down and take her hand.
Don't be afraid. There's nobody here will
harm you."
(6
FRENCH LANGUAGE
pens. When a railway goods-van that woul:
crush an elephant comes round the corner, tear-
ing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed
from under the horses, perfectly satisfied that
the whole rush was a passing property in the
air, which may have left something to eat be
hind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of
kettles and saucepans, and fragments of bon-
nets, as a kind of meteoric discharge for fowls
to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account
I think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain
or dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to
them as any other light; and I have more than
a suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords,
the early public-house at the corner has super-
seded the sun. I have established it as a cer-
tain fact, that they always begin to crow when
the public-house shutters begin to be taken
down, and that they salute the pot-boy, the in-
stant he appears to perform that duty, as if he
were Phoebus in person.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 10.
It needed a strong confidence in this assurance
to induce them to enter, and what they saw in-
side did not diminish their apprehension and
alarm. In a large and lofty building, supported
by pillars of iron, with great black apertures in
the upper walls, open to the external air; echo-
ing to the roof with the beating of hammers and
roar of furnaces, mingled with the hissing of red-
hot metal plunged in water, and a hundred | FRANCE-Scenes in Flemish.
strange, unearthly noises never heard elsewhere;
in this gloomy place, moving like demons among
the flame and smoke, dimly and fitfully seen,
flushed and tormented by the burning fires, and
wielding great weapons, a faulty blow from any
one of which must have crushed some work-
man's skull, a number of men labored like
giants. Others, reposing upon heaps of coals
or ashes, with their faces turned to the black
vault above, slept or rested from their toil.
Others again, opening the white-hot furnace-
doors, cast fuel on the flames, which came rush-
ing and roaring forth to meet it, and licked it up
like oil. Others drew forth, with clashing noise,
upon the ground, great sheets of glowing steel,
emitting an insupportable heat, and a dull deep
light like that which reddens in the eyes of sav-
age beasts.
Through these bewildering sights and deaf-
ening sounds, their conductor led them to
where, in a dark portion of the building, one
furnace burnt by night and day-so, at least,
they gathered from the motion of his lips, for
as yet they could only see him speak-not hear
him. The man who had been watching this
fire, and whose task was ended for the present,
gladly withdrew, and left them with their friend,
who, spreading Nell's little cloak upon a heap of
ashes, and showing her where she could hang
her outer-clothes to dry, signed to her and the
old man to lie down and sleep. For himself,
he took his station on a rugged mat before the
furnace-door, and resting his chin upon his
hands, watched the flame as it shone through
the iron chinks, and the white ashes as they
fell into their bright, hot grave below.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 44.
FOUNTAIN-The waters of the.
Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and
merrily the smiling dimples twinkled and ex-
panded more and more, until they broke into a
laugh against the basin's rim, and vanished.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 45.
FOWLS-Their peculiarities.
* * * An aged personage, afflicted with a
paucity of feather and visibility of quill, that
gives her the appearance of a bundle of office-
Wonderful poultry of the French-Flemish
country, why take the trouble to be poultry?
Why not stop short at eggs in the rising genera-
tion, and die out, and have done with it? Pa-
rents of chickens have I seen this day, followed
by their wretched young families, scratching
nothing out of the mud with an air-tottering
about on legs so scraggy and weak that the valiant
word "drumsticks becomes a mockery when
applied to them, and the crow of the lord and
master has been a mere dejected case of croup.
Carts have I seen, and other agricultural instru-
ments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous. Pop-
lar-trees by the thousand fringe the fields, and
fringe the end of the flat landscape, so that I
feel, looking straight on before me, as if, when
I pass the extremest fringe on the low horizon,
I shall tumble over into space. Little white-
washed black holes of chapels, with barred
doors and Flemish inscriptions, abound at road-
side corners, and often they are garnished
with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children's
swords; or, in their default, some hollow old
tree with a saint roosting in it, is similarly deco-
rated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint en-
shrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house.
Not that we are deficient in such decoration in
the town here, for, over at the church yonder,
outside the building, is a scenic representation
of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and
stones, and made out with painted canvas and
wooden figures; the whole surmounting the
dusty skull of some holy personage (perhaps),
shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if it
were originally put there to be cooked, and the
fire had long gone out. A windmilly country
this, though the windmills are so damp and
rickety that they nearly knock themselves off
their legs at every turn of their sails, and creak
in loud complaint.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 25.
FRENCH LANGUAGE—The.
What sort of language do you consider
French, sir?"
"How do you mean?" asked Nicholas.
"Do you consider it a good language, sir?"
said the collector; "a pretty language, a sensi.
ble language?"
醬
​7
FRIENDS
200
FRIENDLY SERVICE
"A pretty language, certainly," replied Nich- FRIENDSHIP-The Damons and Pythiases
olas; and as it has a name for everything, and
of modern life.
admits of elegant conversation about everything,
I presume it is a sensible one.”
"I don't know," said Mr. Lillyvick,
fully. "Do you call it a cheerful language,
now?"
"Yes,” replied Nicholas, “I should say it
was, certainly."
"It's very much changed since my time,
then," said the collector, "very much."
"Was it a dismal one in your time?" asked
Nicholas, scarcely able to repress a smile.
Damon and Pythias were undoubtedly very
good fellows in their way: the former for his ex-
doubt-treme 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, how-
ever, 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.-Characters (Sketches), Chap. II.
FRIENDLY SERVICE-Wemmick's opin-
ion of a.
"Very," replied Mr. Lillyvick, with some ve-
hemence of manner. "It's the war time that I
speak of; the last war. It may be a cheerful
language. I should be sorry to contradict any-
body; but I can only say that I've heard the
French prisoners, who were natives, and ought |
to know how to speak it, talking in such a dis-
mal manner, that it made one miserable to hear
them. Ay, that I have, fifty times, sir-fifty
times!"-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 16.
FRIENDS-The escort of a crowd.
"Of the two, and after experience of both, I
think I'd rather be taken out of my house by a
crowd of enemies, than escorted home by a mob
of friends!"-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 79.
FRIENDS-Not too many.
"I have not so many friends that I shall grow
confused among the number, and forget my best
one."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22.
FRIENDSHIP-Lowten's opinion of.
Friendship's a very good thing in its way;
we are all very friendly and comfortable at the
Stump, for instance, over our grog, where every
man pays for himself; but damn hurting your-
self for anybody else, you know! No man
should have more than two attachments-the
first, to number one, and the second to the
ladies."-Pickwick, Chap. 53.
FRIENDSHIP-Between opposite charac-
ters.
It may be observed of this friendship, such as
it was, that it had within it more likely materials
of endurance than many a sworn brotherhood
that has been rich in promise; for so long as the
one party found a pleasure in patronising, and
the other in being patronised (which was in the
very essence of their respective characters), it
was of all possible events among the least pro-
bable, that` the twin demons, Envy and Pride,
would ever arise between them. So, in very
many cases of friendship, or what passes for it,
the old axiom is reversed, and like clings to un-
like more than to like.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7.
FRIENDSHIP-A Pecksniffian.
"Did you hear him say that he could have
shed his blood for me?"
“Do you want any blood shed for you?” re-
turned his friend, with considerable irritation.
“Does he shed anything for you that you do
want? Does he shed employment for you, in-
struction for you, pocket-money for you? Does
he shed even legs of mutton for you in any de-
cent proportion to potatoes and garden stuff?”
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
"Mr. Wemmick," said I, "I want to ask your
opinion. I am very desirous to serve a friend."
Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook
his head, as if his opinion were dead against any
fatal weakness of that sort.
"This friend," I pursued, " is trying to get on
in commercial life, but has no money, and finds
it difficult and disheartening to make a begin-
ning. Now, I want somehow to help him to a
beginning."
With money down?" said Wemmick, in a
tone drier than any sawdust.
"With some money down," I replied, for an
uneasy remembrance shot across me of that sym-
metrical bundle of papers at home; “with some
money down, and perhaps some anticipation of
my expectations."
"Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, "I should like
just to run over with you on my fingers, if you
please, the names of the various bridges up as
high as Chelsea Reach. Let's see: there's Lon-
don, one; Southwark, two; Blackfriars, three;
Waterloo, four; Westminster, five; Vauxhall,
six." He had checked off each bridge in its
turn, with the handle of his safe-key on the palm
of his hand, There's as many as six, you see,
to choose from.”
"I don't understand you," said I.
"Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip," returned
Wemmick, "and take a walk upon your bridge,
and pitch your money into the Thames over the
centre arch of your bridge, and you know the
end of it. Serve a friend with it, and you may
know the end of it too-but it's a less pleasar.t
and profitable end."
I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth
he made it so wide after saying this.
"This is very discouraging," said I.
"Meant to be so," said Wemmick.
Then is it your opinion," I inquired, with
some little indignation, "that a man should
never-
"
"-Invest portable property in a friend?"
said Wemmick. 'Certainly he should not.
Unless he wants to get rid of the friend—and
then it becomes a question how much portable
property it may be worth to get rid of him."
"And that," said I, "is your deliberate opin
ion, Mr. Wemmick?"
1
FRIENDLESS MEN
“That,” he returned, "is my deliberate opin-
ion in this office."-Great Expectations, Chap. 36.
FRIENDLESS MEN.
It is strange with how little notice, good, bad,
or indifferent, a man may live and die in Lon-
don. He awakens no sympathy 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 people 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 employ-
ment, 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 recollections of happy days and old
times, which have been slumbering 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 cor-
respondents have become lost, like themselves,
in the crowd and turmoil of some busy city; and
they have gradually settled down into mere pas-
sive creatures of habit and endurance.
Sketches (Characters), Chap. 1.
FROGS-The music of.
The croaking of the frogs (whose noise in
these parts is almost incredible) sounded as
though a million of fairy teams with bells were
travelling through the air, and keeping pace
with us.-American Notes, Chap. 10.
FROST—The.
The frost was binding up the earth in its iron
fetters, and weaving its beautiful net-work upon
the trees and hedges.-Pickwick, Chap. 28.
FUNERAL—The request of Charles Dick-
ens.
201
FUNERAL
testator, have to this my last will and testament
set my hand this twelfth day of May, in the year
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-nine.
CHARLES DICKENS."
Will of Charles Dickens.
FUNERAL-Mr. Mould's philosophy of a.
At length the day of the funeral, pious and
truthful ceremony that it was, arrived. Mr
Mould, with a glass of generous port between
his eye and the light, leaned against the desk in
the little glass office, with his gold watch in his
unoccupied hand, and conversed with Mrs.
Gamp; two mutes were at the house-door, look-
ing as mournfúl as could be reasonably expected
of men with such a thriving job in hand; the
whole of Mr. Mould's establishment were on
duty within the house or without; feathers
waved, horses snorted, silks and velvets flut-
tered; in a word, as Mr. Mould emphatically
said, "everything that money could do was done."
"And what can do more, Mrs. Gamp?" ex-
claimed the undertaker, as he emptied his glass,
and smacked his lips.
Nothing in the world, sir."
Nothing in the world," repeated Mr. Mould.
"You are right, Mrs. Gamp. Why do people
spend more money:" here he filled his glass
again: "upon a death, Mrs. Gamp, than upon a
birth? Come, that's in your way; you ought to
know. How do you account for that now?"
"Perhaps it is because an undertaker's charges
comes dearer than a nurse's charges, sir," said
Mrs. Gamp, tittering, and smoothing down her
new black dress with her hands.
Ha, ha!" laughed Mr. Mould. "You have
been breakfasting at somebody's expense this
morning, Mrs. Gamp." But seeing, by the aid
of a little shaving-glass which hung opposite,
that he looked merry, he composed his features
and became sorrowful.
"Many's the time that I've not breakfasted at
my own expense along of your kind recommend-
ing, sir: and many's the time I hope to do the
same in time to come," said Mrs. Gamp, with an
apologetic curtsey.
him."
"An open-handed gentleman?" cried Mrs.
Gamp, with enthusiasm.
"So be it," replied Mr. Mould, “please Pro-
vidence. No, Mrs. Gamp; I'll tell you why it
is. It's because the laying out of money with a
“I emphatically direct that I be buried in an well-conducted establishment, where the thing
inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private is performed upon the very best scale, binds the
manner, that no public announcement be made broken heart, and sheds balm upon the wounded
of the time or place of my burial, that, at the spirit. Hearts want binding and spirits want
utmost, not more than three plain mourning-balming when people die-not when people are
coaches be employed, and that those who attend born. Look at this gentleman to-day; look at
my funeral wear no scarf, cloak, black bow,
long hat-band, or other such revolting absurdity.
I direct that my name be inscribed in plain
English letters on my tomb, without the addi-
tion of ‘Mr.' or ‘Esquire.' I conjure my friends
on no account to make me the subject of any
monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever.
I rest my claims to the remembrance of my
country upon my published works, and to the
remembrance of my friends upon their expe-
rience of me; in addition thereto I commit my
soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear chil-
dren humbly to try to guide themselves by the
teachings of the New Testament in its broad
spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow
construction of its letter here or there. In wit-
ness whereof, I, the said Charles Dickens, the
|
"No, no," said the undertaker; "not an open-
handed gentleman in general, by any means.
There you mistake him: but an afflicted gen-
tleman, an affectionate gentleman, who knows
what it is in the power of money to do, in giving
him relief, and in testifying his love and ven-
eration for the departed. It can give him," said
Mr. Mould, waving his watch-chain slowly round
and round, so that he described one circle after
every item; "it can give him four horses to each
vehicle; it can give him velvet trappings; i
can give him drivers in cloth cloaks and top-
boots; it can give him the plumage of the os-
trich, dyed black; it can give him any number
of walking attendants, dressed in the first style
FUNERAL
202
of a.
FUNERAL
of funeral fashion, and carrying batons tipped FUNERAL-The pretentious solemnities
with brass; it can give him a handsome tomb;
it can give him a place in Westminster Abbey
itself, if he choose to invest it in such a pur-
chase. Oh! do not let us say that gold is dross,
when it can buy such things as these, Mrs. Gamp."
'But what a blessing, sir," said Mrs. Gamp,
that there are such as you, to sell or let 'em out
on hire !"
<<
""
Ay, Mrs. Gamp, you are right,” rejoined the
undertaker. "We should be an honored call-
ing. We do good by stealth, and blush to have
it mentioned in our little bills. How much
consolation may I, even I," cried Mr. Mould,
"have diffused among my fellow-creatures by
means of my four long-tailed prancers, never
harnessed under ten pound ten.'
""
Mrs. Gamp had begun to make a suitable re-
ply, when she was interrupted by the appear-
ance of one of Mr. Mould's assistants-his chief
mourner, in fact-an obese person, with his
waistcoat in closer connection with his legs
than is quite reconcilable with the established
ideas of grace; with that cast of feature which
is figuratively called a bottle-nose; and with a
face covered all over with pimples. He had
been a tender plant once upon a time, but from
constant blowing in the fat atmosphere of funer-
als, had run to seed.
"Well, Tacker," said Mr. Mould, "is all
ready below?"
"A beautiful show, sir," rejoined Tacker.
"The horses are prouder and fresher than ever
I see 'em; and toss their heads, they do, as if
they knowed how much their plumes cost."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.
FUNERAL-Of Anthony Chuzzlewit.
Mr. Mould and his men had not exaggerated
the grandeur of the arrangements. They were
splendid. The four hearse-horses, especially,
reared and pranced, and showed their highest
action, as if they knew a man was dead, and
triumphed in it. They break us, drive us, ride
us; ill-treat, abuse, and maim us for their pleas-
ure-But they die; Hurrah, they die!"
Other funerals have I seen with grown-up
eyes, since that day, of which the burden has
been the same childish burden-making game.
Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have
been outraged, and the funeral has been "per-
formed." The waste for which the funeral cus-
toms of many tribes of savages are conspicuous
has attended these civilized obsequies; and
once, and twice, have I wished in my soul that,
if the waste must be, they would let the under-
taker bury the money, and let me bury the friend.
In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies
are more sensibly regulated, because they are
upon the whole less expensively regulated. I
cannot say that I have ever been much edified
by the custom of tying a bib and apron on the
front of the house of mourning, or that I would
myself particularly care to be driven to my
grave in a nodding and bobbing car, like an in-
firm four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow-crea-
ture in a cocked hat. But it may be that I am
constitutionally insensible to the virtues of a
cocked hat. In provincial France the solemni-
ties are sufficiently hideous, but are few and
cheap. The friends and townsmen of the de-
parted, in their own dresses, and not masquerad-
ing under the auspices of the African Conjuror,
surround the hand-bier, and often carry it. It
is not considered indispensable to stifle the
bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their
shoulders; consequently it is easily taken up,
and easily set down, and is carried through the
streets without the distressing floundering and
shuffling that we see at home.
*
"
*
*
*
Once I lost a friend by death, who had been
troubled in his time by the Medicine-Man and
the Conjuror, and upon whose limited resources
there were abundant claims. The Conjuror as-
sured me that I must positively "follow," and
both he and the Medicine-Man entertained no
doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and
must wear fittings. I objected to fittings as
having nothing to do with my friendship, and I
So through the narrow streets and winding objected to the black carriage as being in more
city ways, went Anthony Chuzzlewit's funeral: senses than one a job. So it came into my
Mr. Jonas glancing stealthily out of the coach- mind to try what would happen if I quietly
windows now and then, to observe its effect walked in my own way from my own house to
upon the crowd; Mr. Mould, as he walked my friend's burial-place, and stood beside his
along, listening with a sober pride to the ex- open grave in my own dress and person, rever-
clamations of the bystanders; the doctor whis- ently listening to the best of Services. It satis-
pering his story to Mr. Pecksniff, without ap-fied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I had
pearing to come any nearer the end of it; and
poor old Chuffey sobbing unregarded in a corner.
But he had greatly scandalised Mr. Mould at an
early stage of the ceremony by carrying his
handkerchief in his hat in a perfectly informal
manner, and wiping his eyes with his knuckles.
And as Mr. Mould himself had said already, his
behavior was indecent, and quite unworthy of
such an occasion; and he never ought to have
been there.
There he was, however; and in the church-
yard there he was, also, conducting himself in a
no less unbecoming manner, and leaning for
support on Tacker, who plainly told him that
he was fit for nothing better than a walking
funeral. But Chuffey, Heaven help him! heard
no sound but the echoes, lingering in his own
heart, of a voice forever silent.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.
been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf,
both trailing to my very heels, and as if I had
cost the orphan children, in their greatest need,
ten guineas.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 26.
FUNERAL-After the.
The pageant of a few short hours ago was
written nowhere half so legibly as in the under.
taker's books.
Not in the churchyard? Not even there.
The gates were closed; the night was dark and
wet; the rain fell silently among the stagnant
weeds and nettles. One new mound was there
which had not been there last night. Time,
burrowing like a mole below the ground, had
marked his track by throwing up another heap
of earth. And that was all.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.
FUNERAL
FUNERAL-A fashionable.
203
FUNERAL
FUNERAL-Of Mrs. Joe Gargery.
Lincoln's Inn It was the first time that a grave had opened
Sir Leicester in my road of life, and the gap it made in the
|
smooth ground was wonderful. The figure of
my sister, in her chair by the kitchen fire,
haunted me night and day. That the place
could possibly be, without her, was something
my mind seemed unable to compass; and where-
as she had seldom or never been in my thoughts
of late, I had now the strangest ideas that she
was coming toward me in the street, or that she
would presently knock at the door. In my
rooms too, with which she had never been at all
associated, there was at once the blankness of
death and a perpetual suggestion of the sound
of her voice or the turn of her face or figure, as
if she were still alive and had been often there.
A great crowd assembles in
Fields on the day of the funeral.
Dedlock attends the ceremony in person; strict-
ly speaking, there are only three other human
followers, that is to say, Lord Doodle, William
Buffy, and the debilitated cousin (thrown in as a
make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable
carriages is immense. The Peerage contributes
more four-wheeled affliction than has ever been
seen in that neighborhood. Such is the assem-
blage of armorial bearings on coach panels, that
the Herald's College might be supposed to have
lost its father and mother at a blow. The Duke
of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and
ashes, with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all
the last improvements, and three bereaved
worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a
bunch of woe. All the state coachmen in Lon-
don seem plunged into mourning; and if that
dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond
a taste in horseflesh (which appears impossible),
it must be highly gratified this day.
Whatever my fortunes might have been, I
could scarcely have recalled my sister with much
tenderness. But I suppose there is a shock of
regret which may exist without much tenderness.
*
*
*
It was fine summer weather again, and, as I
Quiet among the undertakers, and the equipa- walked along, the times when I was a little help-
ges, and the calves of so many legs all steeped less creature, and my sister did not spare me,
in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of vividly returned. But they returned with a gen-
the inconsolable carriages, and at his ease sur-tle tone upon them that softened even the edge
veys the crowd through the lattice blinds.
Bleak House, Chap. 53.
FUNERAL-An unostentatious.
The simple arrangements were of her own
making, and were stated to Riah thus:
"I mean to go alone, godmother, in my usual
carriage, and you'll be so kind as keep house
while I am gone. It's not far off. And when
I return, we'll have a cup of tea, and a chat over
future arrangements. It's a very plain last
house that I have been able to give my poor
unfortunate boy; but he'll accept the will for
the deed, if he knows anything about it; and
if he doesn't know anything about it," with a
sob, and wiping her eyes, why, it won't mat-
ter to him. I see the service in the Prayer-
book says, that we brought nothing into this
world, and it is certain we can take nothing out.
It comforts me for not being able to hire a lot
of stupid undertaker's things for my poor child,
and seeming as if I was trying to smuggle 'em
out of this world with him, when of course I
must break down in the attempt, and bring 'em
all back again. As it is, there'll be nothing to
bring back but me, and that's quite consistent,
for I shan't be brought back some day!"
of Tickler. For now the very breath of the
beans and clover whispered to my heart that the
day must come when it would be well for my
memory that others, walking in the sunshine,
should be softened as they thought of me.
At last I came within sight of the house, and
saw that Trabb and Co. had put in a funereal
execution and taken possession. Two dismally
absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a
crutch done up in a black bandage—as if that
instrument could possibly communicate any
comfort to anybody-were posted at the front
door; and in one of them I recognised a post-
boy discharged from the Boar for turning a young
couple into a saw-pit on their bridal morning, in
consequence of intoxication rendering it neces-
sary for him to ride his horse clasped round the
neck with both arms.
*
*
*
*
*
Another sable warder (a carpenter, who had
once eaten two geese for a wager) opened the
door, and showed me into the best parlor. Here,
Mr. Trabb had taken unto himself the best
table, and had got all the leaves up, and was
holding a kind of black Bazaar, with the aid of
a
quantity of black pins. At the moment of my
arrival, he had just finished putting somebody's
hat into black long-clothes, like an African baby;
so he held out his hand for mine. But I, misled
by the action, and confused by the occasion,
shook hands with him with every testimony of
warm affection.
*
*
*
*
*
After that previous carrying of him in the
streets, the wretched old fellow seemed to be
twice buried. He was taken on the shoulders
of half a dozen blossom-faced men, who shuf-
fled with him to the churchyard, and who were
preceded by another blossom-faced man, affect-
ing a stately stalk, as if he were a Policeman of Poor, dear Joe, entangled in a little black
the D(eath) Division, and ceremoniously pre-cloak tied in a large bow under his chin, was
tending not to know his intimate acquaintances,
as he led the pageant. Yet, the spectacle of only
one little mourner hobbling after, caused many
people to turn their heads with a look of interest.
At last the troublesome deceased was got into
the ground, to be buried no more, and the stately
stalker stalked back before the solitary dress-
maker, as if she were bound in honor to have
no notion of the way home. Those furies, the
conventionalities, being thus appeased, he left
her. Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 9.
seated apart at the upper end of the room;
where, as chief mourner, he had evidently been
stationed by Trabb. When I bent down and
said to him, "Dear Joe, how are you?" he said,
"Pip, old chap, you knowed her when she were
a fine figure of a- -" and clasped my hand and
said no more.
*
*
*
*
*
Standing at this table, I became conscious of
the servile Pumblechook, in a black cloak and
several yards of hat-band, who was alternately
FUNERAL
204
FURNITURE
That cover'd it; whose day on earth
Had been as fleeting.
Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,
She pass'd again, and the old church
Received her in its quiet shade.”
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 72.
stuffing himself, and making obsequious move-
ments to catch my attention. The moment he
succeeded he came over to me (breathing sherry
and crumbs), and said in a subdued voice, "May
I, dear sir?" and did. I then descried Mr. and
Mrs. Hubble; the last-named in a decent speech-
less paroxysm in a corner. We were all going
to follow," and were all in course of being tied FURNITURE-Old-fashioned.
up separately (by Trabb) into ridiculous bundles.
"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe whispered
me, as we were being what Mr. Trabb called
"formed
"in the parlor, two and two-and it
was dreadfully like a preparation for some grim
kind of dance; "which I mean tersay, sir, as I
would in preference have carried her to the
church myself, along with three or four friendly
ones wot come to it with willing harts and arms,
but it were considered wot the neighbors would
look down on such and would be of opinions as
it were wanting in respect."
"Pocket-handkerchiefs out, all!" cried Mr.
Trabb at this point, in a depressed business-like
voice. "Pocket-handkerchiefs out! We are
ready!"
It came on darker and darker. The old-fash
ioned furniture of the chamber, which was a
kind of hospital for all the invalided movables
in the house, grew indistinct and shadowy in its
many shapes; chairs and tables, which by day
were as honest cripples as need be, assumed a
doubtful and mysterious character; and one old
leprous screen of faded India leather and gold
binding, which had kept out many a cold breath
of air in days of yore and shut in many a jolly
face, frowned on him with a spectral aspect, and
stood at full height in its allotted corner, like
some gaunt ghost who waited to be questioned.
A portrait opposite the window-a queer, old
gray-eyed general, in an oval frame-seemed to
wink and doze as the light decayed, and at
length, when the last faint glimmering speck of
day went out, to shut its eyes in good earnest,
and fall sound asleep. There was such a hush
and mystery about everything, that Joe could
not help following its example; and so went off
into a slumber likewise, and dreamed of Dolly,
till the clock of Chigwell church struck two.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 31.
So we all put our pocket-handkerchiefs to our
faces, as if our noses were bleeding, and filed
out two and two; Joe and I; Biddy and Pumble-
chook; Mr. and Mrs. Hubble. The remains of
my poor sister had been brought round by the
kitchen door, and, it being a point of undertak-
ing ceremony that the six bearers must be stifled
and blinded under a horrible black velvet hous-
ing with a white border, the whole looked like
a blind monster with twelve human legs, shuf- FURNITURE-Covered.
fling and blundering along, under the guidance of
two keepers-the postboy and his comrade.
Great Expectations, Chap. 35.
FUNERAL-Of Little Nell.
[Mr. R. H. Horne pointed out twenty-five
years ago, that a great portion of the scenes de-
scribing the death of Little Nell in the "Old
Curiosity Shop," will be found to be written
whether by design or harmonious accident, of
which the author was not even subsequently
fully conscious-in blank verse, of irregular
metre and rhythms, which Southey, Shelley, and
some other poets have occasionally adopted.
The following passage, properly divided into
lines, will stand thus:]
NELLY'S FUNERAL
"And now the bell-the bell
She had so often heard by night and day,
And listen'd to with solemn pleasure,
Almost as a living voice—
Rung its remorseless toll for her,
So young, so beautiful, so good.
"Decrepit age, and vigorous life,
And blooming youth, and helpless infancy,
Pour'd forth-on crutches, in the pride of strength
And health, in the full blush
Of promise, the mere dawn of life-
To gather round her tomb. Old men were there,
Whose eyes were dim
And senses failing-
Grandames, who might have died ten years ago,
And still been old-the deaf, the blind, the lame,
The palsied.
The living dead in many shapes and forms,
To see the closing of that early grave.
What was the death it would shut in
To that which still
Could crawl and creep above it?
"Along the crowded path they bore her now;
Pure as the new-fall'n snow
Within a few hours the cottage furniture be-
gan to be wrapped up for preservation in the
family absence-or, as Mr. Meagles expressed
it, the house began to put its hair in papers.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 9.
FURNITURE-The home of a usurer.
In an old house, dismal, dark, and dusty, which
seemed to have withered, like himself, and to
him from the light of day, as he had in hoarding
have grown yellow and shrivelled in hoarding
his money, lived Arthur Gride. Meagre old
hard and cold as misers' hearts, were ranged in
chairs and tables, of spare and bony make, and
grim array against the gloomy walls; attenuated
presses, grown lank and lantern-jawed in guard-
ing the treasures they inclosed, and tottering, as
though from constant fear and dread of thieves,
shrunk up in dark corners, whence they cast no
shadows on the ground, and seemed to hide and
cower from observation. A tall grim clock upon
the stairs, with long lean hands and famished
face, ticked in cautious whispers; and when it
struck the time, in thin and piping sounds like
an old man's voice, it rattled, as if it were
pinched with hunger.
No fireside couch was there, to invite repose
and comfort. Elbow-chairs there were, but
they looked uneasy in their minds, cocked their
arms suspiciously and timidly, and kept on their
guard. Others were fantastically grim and
gaunt, as having drawn themselves up to their
utmost height, and put on their fiercest looks to
stare all comers out of countenance.
again, knocked up against their neighbors, of
leaned for support against the wall-somewhat
ostentatiously, as if to call all men to witness
that they were not worth the taking. The dark,
square, lumbering bedsteads seemed built for
Others,
FUTURE
205
GARDENS
restless dreams. The musty hangings seemed shoes looked too large; his sleeve looked too
to creep in scanty folds together, whispering long; his hair looked too limp; his features
among themselves, when rustled by the wind, looked too mean; his exposed throat looked as
their trembling knowledge of the tempting if a halter would have done it good. For a
wares that lurked within the dark and tight-minute or two, in fact, he was hot, and pale,
locked closets. Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 51.
FUTURE-The river a type of.
and mean, and shy, and slinking, and conse-
quently not at all Pecksniffian. But after that,
he recovered himself, and went home with as
He dipped his hand in the water over the beneficent an air as if he had been the High
boat's gunwale, and said, smiling with that soft-Priest of the summer weather.
ened air upon him which was not new to me:
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 30.
Ay, I suppose I think so, dear boy. We'd
he puzzled to be more quiet and easy-going than GAMBLERS-The frenzied.
we are at present. But-it's a flowing so soft
and pleasant through the water, p'raps, as makes
me think it-I was a thinking through my smoke
just then, that we can no more see the bottom
of the next few hours, than we can see to the
bottom of this river, what I catches hold of.
Nor yet we can't no more hold their tide than
I can hold this. And it's run through my fin-
gers and gone, you see!" holding up his drip-
ping hand.
"But for your face, I should think you were
a little despondent,” said I.
"Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flow-
ing on so quiet, and of that there rippling at the
boat's head making a sort of a Sunday tune.
Maybe I'm growing a trifle old, besides."
Great Expectations, Chap. 54.
GAYETY-Forced.
G
When the morning-the morning-came, and
we met at breakfast, it was curious to see how
eager we all were to prevent a moment's pause
in the conversation, and how astoundingly gay
everybody was, the forced spirits of each mem-
ber of the little party having as much likeness
to his natural mirth as hot-house peas at five
guineas the quart resemble in flavor the growth
of the dews and air and rain of Heaven.
American Notes, Chap. 1.
GALLANTRY-Pecksniffian.
They were now so near it that he stopped,
and holding up her little finger, said in playful
accents, as a parting fancy:
"Shall I bite it?"
Receiving no reply he kissed it instead; and
then, stooping down, inclined his flabby face to
hers (he had a flabby face, although he was a
good man), and with a blessing, which from
such a source was quite enough to set her up in
life, and prosper her from that time forth, per-
mitted her to leave him.
Gallantry in its true sense is supposed to
ennoble and dignify a man; and love has shed
refinements on innumerable Cymons. But Mr.
Pecksniff-perhaps because to one of his exalted
nature these were mere grossnesses-certainly
did not appear to any unusual advantage, now
that he was left alone. On the contrary, he
seemed to be shrunk and reduced; to be trying
to hide himself within himself; and to be
wretched at not having the power to do it. His
The excitement of play, hot rooms, and glar-
ing lights, was not calculated to allay the fever
of the time. In that giddy whirl of noise and
confusion, the men were delirious. Who thought
of money, ruin, or the morrow, in the savage
intoxication of the moment? More wine was
called for, glass after glass was drained, their
parched and scalding mouths were cracked with
thirst. Down poured the wine like oil on blaz-
ing fire. And still the riot went on. The de-
bauchery gained its height; glasses were dashed
upon the floor by hands that could not carry
them to lips; oaths were shouted out by lips.
which could scarcely form the words to vent
them in; drunken losers cursed and roared;
some mounted on the tables, waving bottles
above their heads, and bidding defiance to the
rest; some danced, some sang, some tore the
cards and raved. Tumult and frenzy reigned
supreme; when a noise arose that drowned all
others, and two men, seizing each other by the
throat, struggled into the middle of the room.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 50.
GARDEN.
A little slip of front garden abutting on the
thirsty high road, where a few of the dustiest of
leaves hung their dismal heads and led a life of
choking.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 25.
GARDEN-An old.
It was quite a wilderness, and there were old
melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it, which
seemed in their decline to have produced a
spontaneous growth of weak attempts at pieces
of old hats and boots, with now and then a
weedy offshoot into the likeness of a battered
saucepan.-Great Expectations, Chap. II.
GARDENS-In London.
Some London houses have a melancholy little
plot of ground behind them-usually fenced in
by four high whitewashed walls, and frowned
upon by stacks of chimneys-in which there
withers on, from year to year, a crippled tree,
that makes a show of putting forth a few leaves
late in autumn when other trees shed theirs,
and, drooping in the effort, lingers on, all
crackled and smoke-dried, till the following
season, when it repeats the same process; and
perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial,
even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirrup
in its branches. People sometimes call these
dark yards "gardens;" it is not supposed that
they were ever planted, but rather that they are
pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered
vegetation of the original brick-field. No man
thinks of walking in this desolate place, or of
turning it to any account. A few hampers, half
a-dozen broken bottles, and such-like rubbish
GENIUS
may be thrown there, when the tenant first
moves in, but nothing more; and there they
remain until he goes away again: the damp
straw taking just as long to moulder as it thinks
proper and mingling with the scanty box, and
stunted everbrowns, and broken flower-pots,
that are scattered mournfully about-a prey to
"blacks” and dirt.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 2.
GENIUS-In debt.
206
GENOA
sive to the somewhat contemptuous control and
sway of his wife.-Pickwick, Chap. 13.
GENOA.
The endless details of these rich Palaces: the
walls of some of them, within, alive with master
pieces by Vandyke! The great, heavy, stone
balconies, one above another, and tier over tier :
with here and there one larger than the rest,
towering high up-a huge marble platform-the
"Then I tell you what it is, gents both. doorless vestibules, massively barred lower win-
There is at this present moment in this very dows, immense public staircases, thick marble
place, a perfect constellation of talent and ge- pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary,
nius, who is involved, through what I cannot but dreaming, echoing, vaulted chambers; among
designate as the culpable negligence of my friend which the eye wanders again, and again, and
Pecksniff, in a situation as tremendous, perhaps, again, as every palace is succeeded by another-
as the social intercourse of the nineteenth cen- the terrace gardens between house and house,
tury will readily admit of. There is actually at with green arches of the vine, and groves of
this instant, at the Blue Dragon in this village-orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom,
an ale-house, observe: a common, paltry, low- twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street-the
minded, clodhopping, pipe-smoking ale-house-painted halls, mouldering, and blotting, and rot-
an individual, of whom it may be said, in the
language of the Poet, that nobody but himself
can in any way come up to him; who is detained
there for his bill. Ha! ha! For his bill. I
repeat it. For his bill. Now," said Mr. Tigg,
we have heard of Fox's Book of Martyrs, I
believe, and we have heard of the Court of Re-
quests, and the Star Chamber; but I fear the
contradiction of no man alive or dead, when I
assert that my friend Chevy Slyme being held
in pawn for a bill, beats any amount of cock-
fighting with which I am acquainted."
*
*
*
*
*
"Don't mistake me, gents both," he said,
stretching forth his right hand. "If it had been
for anything but a bill, I could have borne it,
and could still have looked upon mankind with
some feeling of respect: but when such a man
as my friend Slyme is detained for a score a
thing in itself essentially mean; a low perform-
ance on a slate, or possibly chalked upon the
back of a door-I do feel that there is a screw
of such magnitude loose somewhere, that the
whole framework of society is shaken, and the
very first principles of things can no longer be
trusted. In short, gents both," said Mr. Tigg,
with a passionate flourish of his hands and head,
"when a man like Slyme is detained for such a
thing as a bill, I reject the superstitions of ages,
and believe nothing. I don't even believe that
I don't believe, curse me if I do!"
*
*
*
*
*
"I swear," cried Mr. Slyme, giving the table
an imbecile blow with his fist, and then feebly
leaning his head upon his hand, while some
drunken drops oozed from his eyes, “that I am
the wretchedest creature on record. Society is
in a conspiracy against me, I'm the most lit-
erary man alive. I'm full of scholarship; I'm
full of genius; I'm full of information; I'm full
of novel views on every subject; yet look at my
condition! I'm at this moment obliged to two
strangers for a tavern bill!"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7.
GENIUS-The weaknesses of.
All men whom mighty genius has raised to a
proud eminence in the world, have usually some
little weakness which appears the more con-
spicuous from the contrast it presents to their
general character. If Mr. Pott had a weakness,
it was, perhaps, that he was rather too submis-
ting in the damp corners, and still shining out
in beautiful colors and voluptuous designs, where
the walls are dry-the faded figures on the out-
sides of the houses, holding wreaths and crowns,
and flying upward, and downward, and standing
in niches, and here and there looking fainter and
more feeble than elsewhere, by contrasts with
some fresh little Cupids, who, on a more recently
decorated portion of the front, are stretching out
what seems to be the semblance of a blanket, but
is, indeed, a sun-dial-the steep, steep, up-hill
streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for
all that), with marble terraces looking down into
close by-ways-the magnificent and innumerable
Churches; and the rapid passage from a street
of stately edifices into a maze of the vilest squa-
lor, steaming with unwholesome stenches, and
swarming with half-naked children and whole
worlds of dirty people-make up, altogether, such
a scene of wonder; so lively, and yet so dead;
so noisy, and yet so quiet; so obtrusive, and yet
so shy and lowering; so wide awake, and yet so
fast asleep; that it is a sort of intoxication to a
stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look
about him. "A bewildering phantasmagoria, with
all the inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain
and all the pleasure of an extravagant reality!
It is a place that "grows upon you" every day.
There seems to be always something to find out
in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys
and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose
your way (what a comfort that is, when you are
idle !) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn
up again, under the most unexpected and sur-
prising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest
contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly,
mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive,
break upon the view at every turn.
In the streets of shops, the houses are much
smaller, but of great size notwithstanding, and
extremely high. They are very dirty: quite un-
drained, if my nose be at all reliable; and emit
a peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad
cheese, kept in very hot blankets. Notwithstand-
ing the height of the houses, there would seem
to have been a lack of room in the city, for new
houses are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it
has been possible to cram a tumble-down tene-
ment into a crack or corner, in it has gone. If
there be a nook or angle in the wall of a church,

་་་
SIR LEICESTER DEDLOCK.
GENTILITY
207
or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any sort,
there you are sure to find some kind of habita-
tion-looking as if it had grown there, like a
fungus. Against the Government house, against
the old Senate house, round about any large
building, little shops stick close, like parasite
vermin to the great carcass. And for all this,
look where you may-up steps, down steps, any-
where, everywhere, there are irregular houses,
receding, starting forward, tumbling down, lean-
ing against their neighbors, crippling themselves
or their friends by some means or other, until
one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the
way, and you can't see any further.
Pictures from Italy.
GENTILITY-The distinctions of.
"I don't know why it should be a crack
thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that
while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake,
you may be as genteel as never was and brew.
You see it every day."
"Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-
house; may he?" said I.
Not on any account," returned Herbert;
"but a public-house may keep a gentleman."
Great Expectations, Chap. 22.
GENTILITY-Shabby.
There are certain descriptions of people who,
oddly enough, appear to appertain exclusively
to the metropolis. You meet them, every day,
in the streets of London, but no one ever en-
counters them elsewhere; they seem indigenous
to the soil, and to belong as exclusively to Lon-
don 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."
|
GENTLEMAN
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 in an old rusty suit of
threadbare black cloth, which shines with con-
stant wear as if it had been bees-waxed-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 neck-
erchief 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 de-
pressed face, and timorous air of conscious pov-
erty, will make your heart ache-always sup-
posing that you are neither a philosopher nor a
political economist.
Characters (Sketches), Chap. 10.
GENTLEMAN-" A wery good imitation o'
one " (Sam Weller).
"Person's a waitin'," said Sam, epigrammati-
cally.
"Does the person want me, Sam?" inquired
Mr. Pickwick.
"He wants you particklar; and no one else'll
do, as the Devil's private secretary said ven he
fetched away Doctor Faustus," replied Mr.
Weller.
He. Is it a gentleman?" said Mr. Pick-
wick.
'A
А wery good imitation o' one, if it ain't,"
replied Mr. Weller.-Pickwick, Chap. 15.
GENTLEMAN-An English (Sir Leicester
Dedlock).
Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but
there is no mightier baronet than he. His fam-
ily is as old as the hills, and infinitely more re-
spectable. He has a general opinion that the
Now, shabby people, God knows, may be world might get on without hills, but would be
found anywhere, and genteel people are not done up without Dedlocks. He would, on the
articles of greater scarcity out of London than whole, admit Nature to be a good idea (a little
in it; but this compound of the two-this shab- low, perhaps, when not enclosed with a park-
by-gentility is as purely local as the statue fence), but an idea dependent for its execution
at Charing Cross, or the pump at Aldgate. It is on your great county families. He is a gentle-
worthy of remark, too, that only men are shab- man of strict conscience, disdainful of all little-
by-genteel; a woman is always either dirty and ness and meanness, and ready, on the shortest
slovenly in the extreme, or neat and respectable, notice, to die any death you may please to
however poverty-stricken in appearance. A mention, rather than give occasion for the least
very poor man "who has seen better days," as impeachment of his integrity. He is an honor-
the phrase goes, is a strange compound of dirty able, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely.
slovenliness and wretched attempts at faded prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.
smartness.
Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure
older than my Lady. He will never see sixty.
five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet sixty.
seven. He has a twist of the gout now and
then, and walks a little stiffly. He is of a
worthy presence, with his light gray hair and
whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure white
waistcoat, and his blue coat with bright but-
tons, always buttoned. He is ceremonious
stately, most polite on every occasion to my
Lady, and holds her personal attractions in the
highest estimation.
at the sides, cocked highest estimation. His gallantry to my Lady,
which has never changed since he courted her
is the one little touch of romantic fancy in him
We will endeavor to explain our conception
of the term 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 ieg-wearing, also, what has
been a brown coat with bright buttons, and a
hat very much pinched 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
Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper
still goes about, that she had not even family;
howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that
perhaps he had enough, and could dispense
with any more. But she had beauty, pride, am-
J
GENTLEMAN
208
bition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to
portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and
station, added to these, soon floated her up-
ward;
and for years, now, my Lady Dedlock
has been at the centre of the fashionable in-
telligence, and at the top of the fashionable
tree.-Bleak House, Chap. 2.
GENTLEMAN-A French.
Monsieur Mutuel-a gentleman in every
thread of his cloudy linen, under whose wrinkled
hand every grain in the quarter of an ounce of
poor snuff in his poor little tin box became a
gentleman's property-Monsieur Mutuel passed
on, with his cap in his hand.
Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2.
GENTLEMAN-The grace of a true.
He went into Mr. Barkis's room like light
and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he
were healthy weather. There was no noise, no
effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but
in everything an indescribable lightness, a seem-
ing impossibility of doing anything else, or do-
ing anything better, which was so graceful, so
natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me,
even now, in the remembrance.
David Copperfield, Chap. 21.
GENTLEMAN-The true.
But that he was not to be, without ignorance
or prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my fa-
ther most strongly asseverates; because it is a
principle of his that no man who was not a true
gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world
began, a true gentleman in manner.
He says,
no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and
that the more varnish you put on, the more the
grain will express itself.
Great Expectations, Chap. 22.
HOSTS-And the senses.
GHOST
said the tenant, I don't apply the observation
personally to you, because it is equally ap-
plicable to most of the ghosts I ever heard of;
but it does appear to me somewhat inconsistent,
that when you have an opportunity of visiting
the fairest spots of earth-for I suppose space is
nothing to you-you should always return ex
actly to the very places where you have been
most miserable.' Egad, that's very true; 1
never thought of t..at before,' said the ghost.
'You see, sir,' pursued the tenant, 'this is a very
uncomfortable room. From the appearance of
that press, I should be disposed to say that it is
not wholly free from bugs; and I really think
you might find much more comfortable quarters;
to say nothing of the climate of London, which
is extremely disagreeable.' 'You are very right,
sir,' said the ghost, politely, 'it never struck me
till now; I'll try change of air directly.' In
fact, he began to vanish as he spoke; his legs,
indeed, had quite disappeared.´´And if, sir,
said the tenant, calling after him, ‘if you would
have the goodness to suggest to the other ladies
and gentlemen who are now engaged in haunt-
ing old empty houses, that they might be much
more comfortable elsewhere, you will confer a
great benefit on society.' I will,' replied the
ghost; 'we must be dull fellows, very dull
fellows, indeed; I can't imagine how we can
have been so stupid.' With these words the
spirit disappeared; and what is rather remark-
able," added the old man, with a shrewd look
round the table, "he never came back again.”
Pickwick, Chap. 21.
GHOSTS-Of clothes.
"Look down there," he said softly; "do you
mark how they whisper in each other's ears; then
dance and leap, to make believe they are in sport?
Do you see how they stop for a moment, when
they think there is no one looking, and mutter
among themselves again; and then how they roll
"You don't believe in me," observed the and gambol, delighted with the mischief they've
Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
been plotting? Look at 'em now. See how they
whirl and plunge. And now they stop again,
"What evidence would you have of my real- and whisper cautiously together-little thinking,
ity beyond that of your own senses?”
46
I don't know," said Scrooge.
Why do you doubt your senses?"
Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects
them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes
them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of
beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a
fragment of an underdone potato. There's more
of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you
are!"
mind, how often I have lain upon the grass and
watched them. I say what is it that they plot
and hatch?-Do you know?"
"They are only clothes," returned the guest,
"such as we wear; hanging on those lines to dry,
and fluttering in the wind.
""
"Clothes!" echoed Barnaby, looking close into
his face, and falling quickly back. "Ha ha!
Why, how much better to be silly, than as wise
as you! You don't see shadowy people there,
Scrooge was not much in the habit of crack-like those that live in sleep-not you. Nor eyes
ing jokes, nor did he feel in his heart, by any in the knotted panes of glass, nor swift ghosts
means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried
to be smart, as a means of distracting his own
attention, and keeping down his terror; for the
spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his
bones.-Christmas Carol, Stave I.
GHOST-An argument with a.
"This apartment is mine: leave it to me.'
'If you insist upon making your appearance
here,' said the tenant, who had had time to col-
lect his presence of mind during this prosy state-
ment of the ghost's, 'I shall give up possession
with the greatest pleasure; but I should like to
ask you one question, if you will allow me.'
Say on,' said the apparition, sternly. 'Well,'
when it blows hard, nor do you hear voices in
the air, nor see men stalking in the sky-not
you! I lead a merrier life than you, with all
your cleverness. You're the dull men. We're
the bright ones. Ha ha! I'll not change with
you, clever as you are-not I!"
With that, he waved his hat above his head,
and darted off.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 10.
GHOST-Of Marley.
His body was transparent; so that Scrooge,
observing him, and looking through his waist-
coat, could see the two buttons on his coat be-
hind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley

MARLEY'S GHOST.
GHOSTS
209
had no bowels, but he had never believed it until
now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though
he looked the phantom through and through,
and saw it standing before him; though he felt
the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and
marked the very texture of the folded kerchief
bound about its head and chin, which wrapper
he had not observed before; he was still incred-
ulous, and fought against nis senses.
How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold
as ever. "What do you want with me?”
Much!"-Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?"
"
"Ask me who I was."
"Who were you then?" said Scrooge, raising
his voice. You're particular, for a shade."
He was going to say "to a shade," but substitut-
"to a shade," but substitut-
ed this, as more appropriate.
"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
"Can you-can you sit down?" asked Scrooge,
looking doubtfully at him.
"I can.
"}
"Do it then.'
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't
know whether a ghost so transparent might find
himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt
that in the event of its being impossible, it might
involve the necessity of an embarrassing expla-
nation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite
side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to
it.-Christmas Carol, Stave I.
GHOSTS—A privilege of the upper classes.
“Sir Morbury Dedlock was the owner of
Chesney Wold. Whether there was any ac-
count of a ghost in the family before those days,
I can't say. I should think it very likely, in-
deed."
Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion, because
she considers that a family of such antiquity and
importance has a right to a ghost. She regards
a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper
classes; a genteel distinction to which the com-
mon people have no claim.
Bleak House, Chap. 7.
GHOSTS-Their anniversaries.
"I have heard it said that as we keep our
birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of
dead people, who are not easy in their graves,
keep the day they died upon.'
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 33.
GIANTS-Used up.
"Once get a giant shaky on his legs, and the
public care no more about him than they do for
à dead cabbage-stalk."
"What becomes of the old giants?" said
Short, turning to him again after a little reflec-
tion.
|
"They're usually kept in carawans to wait|
upon the dwarfs," said Mr. Vuffin.
"The maintaining of 'em must come expen-
sive, when they can't be shown, eh?" remarked
Short, eyeing him doubtfully.
"It's better that, than letting 'em go upon the
parish or about the streets," said Mr. Vuffin.
Once make a giant common, and giants will
never draw again. Look at wooden legs. If
there was only one man with a wooden leg
what a property he'd be!"
GOOD-NIGHT
"So he would!" observed the landlord and
Short both together. "That's very true.
""
"Instead of which," pursued Mr. Vuffin, "it
you was to advertise Shakspeare played entirely
by wooden legs, it's my belief you wouldn't draw
a sixpence."
"I don't suppose you would," said Short.
And the landlord said so too.
"This shows, you see," said Mr. Vuffin, wav-
ing his pipe with an argumentative air, “this
shows the policy of keeping the used-up giants
still in the carawans, where they get food and
lodging for nothing, all their lives, and in gen-
eral very glad they are to stop there."
"What about the dwarfs when they get old?"
inquired the landlord.
"The older a dwarf is, the better worth he
is," returned Mr. Vuffin: " a grey-headed dwarf,
well wrinkled, is beyond all suspicion. But a
giant weak in the legs and not standing up-
right!-keep him in the carawan, but never
show him, never show him, for any persuasion
that can be offered."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 19.
GIRLS-Traddles' idea of.
"The society of girls is a very delightful
thing, Copperfield. It's not professional, but it's
very delightful.”—David Copperfield, Chap. 59.
GIRLHOOD-Of Florence.
There had been a girl some six years before,
and the child, who had stolen into the chamber
unobserved, was now crouching timidly, in a
corner whence she could see her mother's face.
But what was a girl to Dombey and Son! In
such a child was merely a piece of a base coin
the capital of the House's name and dignity,
that couldn't be invested—a bad Boy-nothing
more.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
ing love of her young heart expended itself on
Thus living, in a dream wherein the overflow-
airy forms, and in a real world where she had
experienced little but the rolling back of that
strong tide upon itself, Florence grew to be
seventeen. Timid and retiring as her solitary
life had made her, it had not embittered her
sweet temper, or her earnest nature. A child
in innocent simplicity; a woman in her modest
self-reliance, and her deep intensity of feeling;
both child and woman seemed at once expressed
in her fair face and fragile delicacy of shape, and
gracefully to mingle there;—as if the spring
should be unwilling to depart when summer
came, and sought to blend the earlier beauties
of the flowers with their bloom. But in her
thrilling voice, in her calm eyes, sometimes in
a strange ethereal light that seemed to rest upon
her head, and always in a certain pensive air
upon her beauty, there was an expression, such
as had been seen in the dead boy; and the
council in the Servants' Hall whispered so
among themselves, and shook their heads, and
ate and drank the more, in a closer bond of
goodfellowship.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 57.
GOOD-NIGHT-An interrupted blessing.
Good-night-a-a-God bless you."
"
The blessing seemed to stick in Mr. Ralph
Nickleby's throat, as if it were not used to the
thoroughfare, and didn't know the way out.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 19.
GOLD
GOLD-The influence of riches.
210
Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more
destructive of all his old senses and lulling to
his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 1.
GOOD AND EVIL-In men.
It appeared, before the breakfast was over,
that everybody whom this Gowan knew was
either more or less of an ass, or more or less of
a knave; but was, notwithstanding, the most
lovable, the most engaging, the simplest, tru-
est, kindest, dearest, best fellow that ever lived.
The process by which this unvarying result
was attained, whatever the premises, might
have been stated by Mr. Henry Gowan thus:
"I claim to be always bookkeeping, with a pe-
culiar nicety, in every man's case, and posting
up a careful little account of Good and Evil
with him. I do this so conscientiously, that I
am happy to tell you I find the most worthless
of men to be the dearest old fellow too; and
am in a condition to make the gratifying re-
port, that there is much less difference than you
are inclined to suppose between an honest man
and a scoundrel." The effect of this cheering
discovery happened to be, that while he seemed
to be scrupulously finding good in most men,
he did in reality lower it where it was, and set
it up where it was not; but that was its only
disagreeable or dangerous feature.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 17.
GOOD PURPOSES-Perverted.
"
All good things perverted to evil purposes,
are worse than those which are naturally bad.
A thoroughly wicked woman is wicked indeed.
When religion goes wrong, she is very wrong,
for the same reason.
""
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 51.
GOODNESS-Its propagation.
Any propagation of goodness and benevo-
lence is no small addition to the aristocracy of
nature, and no small subject of rejoicing for
mankind at large.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 73.
GOSSIP.
It concentrated itself on the acknowledged
Beauty of the party, every stitch in whose dress
was verbally unripped by the old ladies then
and there, and whose "goings on " with another
and a thinner personage in a white hat might
have suffused the pump (where they were prin-
cipally discussed) with blushes for months af-
terwards.- Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 27.
GOUT-A patrician disorder.
GOURMAND
Leicester is, perhaps, not wholly without an im
pression, though he has never resolved it inte
words, that the angel of death, in the discharge
of his necessary duties, may observe to the shades
of the aristocracy, "My lords and gentlemen,
I have the honor to present to you another Ded
lock, certified to have arrived per the family
gout."
Hence, Sir Leicester yields up his family legs
to the family disorder, as if he held his name
and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels,
that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back, and
spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his ex-
tremities, is a liberty taken somewhere; but,
he thinks, "We have all yielded to this; it
belongs to us; it has, for some hundreds of years,
been understood that we are not to make the
vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble
terms; and I submit myself to the compromise."
Bleak House, Chap. 16.
GOUT-Mr. Weller's remedy for.
"Take care, old fellow, or you'll have a touch
of your old complaint, the gout."
I've found a sov'rin cure for that, Sammy,"
said Mr. Weller, setting down the glass.
"A sovereign cure for the gout," said Mr.
Pickwick, hastily producing his note-book ;
"what is it?"
"the
"The gout, sir," replied Mr. Weller,
gout is a complaint as arises from too much
ease and comfort. If ever you're attacked with
the gout, sir, jist you marry a widder as has got a
good loud woice, with a decent notion of usin' it,
and you'll never have the gout agin. It's a cap-
ital prescription, sir. I takes it reg'lar, and I
can warrant it to drive away any illness as is
caused by too much jollity." Having imparted
this valuable secret, Mr. Weller drained his
glass once more, produced a labored wink,
sighed deeply, and slowly retired.
Well, what do you think of what your father
says, Sam?" inquired Mr. Pickwick, with a
smile.
"
Think, sir!” replied Mr. Weller; "why, I
think he's the wictim o' connubiality, as Blue
Beard's domestic chaplain said, with a tear of
pity, ven he buried him."-Pickwick, Chap. 20.
GOUT-An aristocratic privilege.
""
The door will be opened immediately," he
said. "There is nobody but a very dilapidated
female to perform such offices. You will excuse
her infirmities? If she were in a more elevated
station in society, she would be gouty. Being
but a hewer of wood and drawer of water, she
is rheumatic. My dear Haredale, these are nat-
ural class distinctions, depend upon it."
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 26.
GOURMAND—A.
Sir Leicester receives the gout as a trouble-
some demon, but still a demon of the patrician
order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male
line, through a course of time during and be- If he really be eating his supper now, at
yond which the memory of man goeth not to what hour can he possibly have dined! A sec-
the contrary, have had the gout. It can be ond solid mass of rump-steak has disappear-
proved, sir. Other men's fathers may have died ed, and he ate the first in four minutes and
of the rheumatism, or may have taken base con- three-quarters, by the clock over the window.
tagion from the tainted blood of the sick vul- Was there ever such a personification of Fal-
gar, but the Dedlock family have communicated staff! Mark the air with which he gloats over
something exclusive, even to the levelling pro- that Stilton as he removes the napkin which has
cess of dying, by dying of their own family gout. been placed beneath his chin to catch the super-
It has come down, through the illustrious line, fluous gravy of the steak, and with what gusto
like the plate, or the pictures, or the place in he imbibes the porter which has been fetched,
Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities. Sir | expressly for him, in the pewter pot. Listen to
GRACE
211
the hoarse sound of that voice, kept down as 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 gourmand; 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 appearance, and that of the spare, squeak-
ing old man, who sits at the same table, and
who, elevating a little, cracked, bantam sort of
voice to its highest pitch, invokes damnation
upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the
commencement of every 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.
GRACE-Before meat.
Scenes, Chap. 18.
Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all im-
proved 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 he rather expected to see the loaf
disappear under the efficacy of his wife's peti-
tions. "I ain't a going to be blest out of house
and home. I won't have my wittles blest off my
table. Keep still!"
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. I.
GRAMMAR-For the laity.
"Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?"
"Yes, Mr. Dean."
"He has stayed late."
"Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him,
your Reverence.
He has been took a little
poorly."
"Say 'taken,' Tope-to the Dean," the
younger rook interposes in a low tone with
this touch of correction, as who should say,
"You may offer bad grammar to the laity, or
the humbler clergy, not to the Dean."
Edwin Drood, Chap. 2.
GRAMMAR-Of Mrs. Merdle.
In the grammar of Mrs. Merdle's verbs on
this momentous subject, there was only one
Mood, the Imperative; and that Mood had
only one tense, the Present. Mrs. Merdle's
verbs were so pressingly presented to Mr. Mer-
dle to conjugate, that his sluggish blood and
long coat-cuffs became quite agitated.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12.
GRANDFATHER-The.
Buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira
did, in its time; and dust and cobwebs thicken
on the bottles.
Autumn days are shining, and on the sea-
beach there are often a young lady, and a white-
haired gentleman. With them, or near them,
With them, or near them,
are two children: boy and girl. And an old
dog is generally in their company.
GRAVE
The white-haired gentleman walks with the
little boy, talks with him, helps him in his play,
attends upon him, watches him, as if he were
the object of his life. If he be thoughtful, the
white-haired gentleman is thoughtful too; and
sometimes, when the child is sitting by his side,
and looks up in his face, asking him questions,
he takes the tiny hand in his, and holding it,
forgets to answer. Then the child says:
What, grandpapa! Am I so like my poor
little uncle again!"
"Yes, Paul. But he was weak, and you are
very strong."
"Oh yes, I am very strong."
And he lay on a little bed beside the sea,
and you can run about."
And so they range away again, busily, for the
white-haired gentleman likes best to see the
child free and stirring; and as they go about
together, the story of the bond between them
goes about, and follows them.
But no one, except Florence, knows the meas-
ure of the white-haired gentleman's affection for
the girl. That story never goes about. The
child herself almost wonders at a certain secrecy
he keeps in it. He hoards her in his heart.
He cannot bear to see a cloud upon her face.
He cannot bear to see her sit apart. He fancies
that she feels a slight, when there is none.
steals away to look at her, in her sleep. It
pleases him to have her come, and wake him in
the morning. He is fondest of her and most
loving to her, when there is no creature by.
The child says then, sometimes:
He
"Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you
kiss me?"
He only answers "Little Florence! Little
Florence!" and smooths away the curls that
shade her earnest eyes.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 42.
GRATITUDE—A mother's.
Polly, who had passed Heaven knows how
many sleepless nights on account of this her
dissipated firstborn, and had not seen him for
weeks and weeks, could have almost kneeled to
Mr. Carker the Manager, as to a Good Spirit-
in spite of his teeth. But Mr. Carker rising to
depart, she only thanked him with her mother's
prayers and blessings: thanks so rich when
paid out of the heart's mint, especially for any
service Mr. Carker had rendered, that he might
have given back a large amount of change, and
yet been overpaid.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 22.
GRAVE—The.
Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one,
A few feet of cold earth, when life is done;
A stone at the head, a stone at the feet,
A rich, juicy meal for the worms to eat.
Rank grass over head, and damp clay around,
Brave lodgings for one, these, in holy ground.
Pickwick, Chap. 29.
GRAVE-Of the dead pauper.
Then the active and intelligent, who has got
into the morning papers as such, comes with his
pauper company to Mr. Krook's, and bears off
the body of our dear brother here departed, to a
hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene,
whence malignant diseases are communicated to
the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who
have not departed; while our dear brothers and
sisters who hang about official back-stairs-
GRAVE
212
would to Heaven they had departed!-are very
complacent and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap
of ground which a Turk would reject as a savage
abomination, and a Caffre would shudder at,
they bring our dear brother here departed, to
receive Christian burial.
With houses looking on, on every side, save
where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives
access to the iron gate-with every villainy of
life in action close on death, and every poison-
ous element of death in action close on life—
here, they lower our dear brother down a foot
or two; here, sow him in corruption, to be
raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at
many a sick-bedside: a shameful testimony to
future ages, how civilization and barbarism |
walked this boastful island together.
GRAVE-DIGGER
earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love-the
love beyond the grave of those whom they
knew in life, I believe that the shade of Agnes
sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I
believe it none the less because that nook is in
a church, and she was weak and erring.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 53.
GRAVE-Of Smike.
The grass was green above the dead boy's
grave, and trodden by feet so small and light,
that not a daisy drooped its head beneath their
pressure. Through all the spring and summer.
time, garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by in-
fant hands, rested on the stone; and when the
children came here to change them lest they
should wither and be pleasant to him no longer,
their eyes filled with tears, and they spoke low
and softly of their poor dead cousin.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 65.
Come night, come darkness, for you cannot
come too soon, or stay too long, by such a place
as this! Come, straggling lights, into the win-
dows of the ugly houses; and you who do ini-
quity therein, do it at least with this dread scene GRAVE-DIGGER-The.
shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so sul-
lenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned
air deposits its witch-ointment, slimy to the
touch! It is well that you should call to every
passer-by, "Look here!"
With the night, comes a slouching figure
through the tunnel-court, to the outside of the
iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and
looks in between the bars; stands looking in,
for a little while.
It then, with an old broom it carries, softly
sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean.
It does so, 'very busily and trimly; looks in
again, a little while; and so departs.
Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a re-
jected witness, who "can't exactly say" what
will be done to him in greater hands than men's,
thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is
something like a distant ray of light in thy mut-
tered reason for this;
(C
He wos wery good to me, he wos!"
Bleak House, Chap. II.
GRAVE-A child's.
Some young children sported among the
tombs, and hid from each other, with laughing
faces. They had an infant with them, and had
laid it down asleep upon a child's grave, in a
little bed of leaves. It was a new grave-the
resting-place, perhaps, of some little creature,
who, meek and patient in its illness, had often
sat and watched them, and now seemed, to their
minds, scarcely changed.
"That's the sexton's spade, and it's a well-
used one, as you see. We're healthy people
here, but it has done a power of work. If it
could speak now, that spade, it would tell you
of many an unexpected job that it and I have
done together; but I forget 'em, for my memory's
a poor one.— -That's nothing new," he added
hastily. "It always was.”
"There are flowers and shrubs to speak to
your other work," said the child.
"Oh yes. And tall trees. But they are not
so separate from the sexton's labors as you
think."
"No!"
"Not in my mind and recollection-such as
it is," said the old man. "Indeed, they often help
it. For say that I planted such a tree for such
a man. There it stands, to remind me that he
died. When I look at its broad shadow, and
remember what it was in his time, it helps me to
the age of my other work, and I can tell you
pretty nearly when I made his grave."
"But it may remind you of one who is still
alive," said the child.
"Of twenty that are dead, in connection with
that one who lives, then," rejoined the old man;
"wife, husband, parents, brothers, sisters, chil-
dren, friends—a score at least. So it happens
that the sexton's spade gets worn and battered.
I shall need a new one-next summer."
" Peɔ-
The child looked quickly towards him, think-
ing that he jested with his age and infirmity; but
the unconscious sexton was quite in earnest.
"Ah!" he said, after a brief silence.
ple never learn. They never learn. It's only
we who turn up the ground, where nothing grows
and everything decays, who think of such things
as these who think of them properly, I mean.
You have been into the church? '
She drew near and asked one of them whose
grave it was. The child answered that that was
not its name; it was a garden-his brother's.
It was greener, he said, than all the other gar-
dens, and the birds loved it better because he
had been used to feed them. When he had
done speaking, he looked at her with a smile,
and kneeling down and nestling for a moment
with his cheek against the turf, bounded merrily"
away.—Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53.
GRAVE-Of the erring.
(C
I am going there now," the child replied.
"There's an old well there," said the sexton,
right underneath the belfry; a deep, dark, echo-
ing well. Forty year ago, you had only to let
down the bucket till the first knot in the rope
was free of the windlass, and you heard it splash-
Within the altar of the old village church ing in the cold dull water. By little and little
there stands a white marble tablet, which bears the water fell away, so that in ten year after that
as yet but one word-"AGNES!" There is no a second knot was made, and you must unwind
coffin in that tomb; and may it be many, many so much rope, or the bucket swung tight and
years, before another name is placed above it! empty at the end. In ten years' time, the water
But if the spirits of the Dead ever come back to | fell again, and a third knot was made. In ten
GRAVESTONES
213
years more, the well dried up; and now, if you
lower the bucket till your arms are tired, and let
out nearly all the cord, you'll hear it, of a sud-
den, clanking and rattling on the ground below; |
with a sound of being so deep and so far down,
that your heart leaps into your mouth, and you
start away as if you were falling in.”
"A dreadful place to come on in the dark!"
exclaimed the child, who had followed the old
man's looks and words until she seemed to stand
upon its brink.
"What is it but a grave!" said the sexton.
"What else! And which of our old folks, know-
ing all this, thought, as the spring subsided, of
their own failing strength, and lessening life?
Not one!"-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53.
GRAVESTONES-Pip's reading of the.
At the time when I stood in the churchyard,
reading the family tombstones, I had just enough
learning to be able to spell them out. My con-
struction even of their simple meaning was not
very correct, for I read "wife of the above" as
a complimentary reference to my father's exalta-
tion to a better world; and if any one of my de-
ceased relations had been referred to as "below,"
I have no doubt I should have formed the worst
opinions of that member of the family.
Great Expectations, Chap. 7.
GRAVESTONES-Pip's family.
My father's family name being Pirrip, and
my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue
could make of both names nothing longer or
more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself
Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on
the authority of his tombstone and my sister-
Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.
As I never saw my father or my mother, and
never saw any likeness of either of them (for
their days were long before the days of photo-
graphs), my first fancies regarding what they
were like, were unreasonably derived from their
tombstones. The shape of the letters on my
father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a
square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair.
From the character and turn of the inscription,
"Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above," I drew a
childish conclusion that my mother was freckled
and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each
about a foot and a half long, which were ar-
ranged in a neat row beside their graves, and
were sacred to the memory of five little brothers
of mine who gave up trying to get a living
exceedingly early in that universal struggle—I
am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained
that they had all been born on their backs with
their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had
never taken them out in this state of existence.
GRAVE-YARD.
Great Expectations, Chap. 1.
A poor, mean burial-ground-a dismal place,
raised a few feet above the level of the street,
and parted from it by a low parapet-wall and
an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten
spot, where the very grass and weeds seemed, in
their frowsy growth, to tell that they had sprung
from paupers' bodies, and had struck their roots
in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in
steaming courts and drunken hungry dens.
And here, in truth, they lay, parted from the
GRIDIRON
living by a little earth and a board ce two-lay
thick and close-corrupting in body as they had
in mind-a dense and squalid crowd. Here they
lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down
than the feet of the throng that passed there
every day, and piled high as their throats. Here
they lay, a grisly family, all these dear departed
brothers and sisters of the ruddy clergyman who
did his task so speedily when they were hidden
in the ground!-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 62.
GRAVE-YARD—A City.
"He was put there," says Jo, holding to the
bars and looking in.
"Where? O, what a scene of horror!”
"There!" says Jo, pointing.
"Over yinder.
Among them piles of bones, and close to that
there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh
the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to
get it in. I could unkiver it for you with my
broom, if the gate was open. That's why they
locks it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. It's al-
ways locked: Look at the rat!" cries Jo, excited.
Hi! look! There he goes! Ho! into the
ground!"
""
The servant shrinks into a corner-into a
corner of that hideous archway, with its deadly
stains contaminating her dress; and putting out
her two hands, and passionately telling him to
keep away from her, for he is loathsome to her, so
remains for some moments. Jo stands staring,
and is still staring when she recovers herself.
Is this place of abomination consecrated
ground?"
"I don't know nothink of consequential
ground," says Jo, still staring.
"Is it blessed?
"WHICH?" says Jo, in the last degree
amazed.
""
"Is it blessed?"
"I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more
than ever; "but I shouldn't think it warn't.
Blest?" repeats Jo, something troubled in his
mind. "It ain't done it much good if it is.
Blest? I should think it was t'othered myself.
But I dont know nothink!"
Bleak House, Chap. 16.
GRAVY-The human passion for.
"Presiding over an establishment like this,
makes sad havoc with the features, my dear Miss
Pecksniffs," said Mrs. Todgers.
"The gravy
alone is enough to add twenty years to one's
age, I do assure you."
"Lor!" cried the two Miss Pecksniffs.
"The anxiety of that one item, my dears,'
said Mrs. Todgers, "keeps the mind continually
upon the stretch. There is no such passion in
human nature, as the passion for gravy among
commercial gentlemen. It's nothing to say a
joint won't yield—a whole animal wouldn't yield
-the amount of gravy they expect each day at
dinner. And what I have undergone in conse-
quence," cried Mrs. Todgers, raising her eyes,
and shaking her head, "no one would believe!"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9.
GRIDIRON—A Gridiron is a.
"The oncommonest workman can't show him-
self oncommon in a gridiron-for a gridiron Is
a gridiron," said Joe, steadfastly impressing it
upon me, as if he were endeavoring to rouse
me from a fixed delusion, “and you may haim
GRIEF
214
at what you like, but a gridiron it will come out,
either by your leave, or again your leave, and
you can't help yourself—'
Great Expectations, Chap. 15.
GUILLOTINE
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 occupation of the hands
is not so much as suspended, while the eyes sur-
vey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there,
As a man upon a field of battle will receive the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he
a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is points his finger, with something of the compla.
struck, so I, when I was left alone with my un-cency of a curator or authorized exponent, tc
disciplined heart, had no conception of the
wound with which it had to strive.
GRIEF-A burden.
*
*
*
*
*
It is not in my power to retrace, one by one,
all the weary phases of distress of mind through
which I passed. There are some dreams that
can only be imperfectly and vaguely described;
and when I oblige myself to look back on this
time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a
dream. I see myself passing on among the
novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals,
temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets
-the old abiding places of History and Fancy
-as a dreamer might; bearing my painful load
through all, and hardly conscious of the objects
as they fade before me. Listlessness to everything
but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell
on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up
from it as at last I did, thank Heaven!—and
from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn.
David Copperfield, Chap. 58.
GUILLOTINE.
The sharp female newly-born and called La
Guillotine.
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 1.
GUILLOTINE-Execution by the.
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rum-
ble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the
day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring
and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagina-
tion could record itself, are fused in the one reali-
zation, 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 peppercorn,
which will grow to maturity under conditions
more certain than those that have produced this
horror. Crush humanity out of shape once
more, under similar hammers, and it will twist
itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the
same seed of rapacious license and oppression
ever 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 were, thou power-
ful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to
be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equi-
pages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring
Jezebels, 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
wise Arabian stories, "then remain so! But, if
thou wear this form through mere passing con-
juration, then resume thy former aspect!"
Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.
As the sombre 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
this cart and to this, and seems to tell who sat
here yesterday, and who there the day before.
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 miserable 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.
*
*
*
*
*
The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the
furrow ploughed among the populace is turning
round, to come on into the place of execution,
and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to
that, now crumble in and close behind 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 diversion, are a number
of women, busily knitting. On one of the fore-
most chairs stands The Vengeance, looking
about for her friend.
*
*
*
*
*
The tumbrils began 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
to look at it a moment ago when 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 Evrémonde descends, and the
seamstress is lifted out next after him. He has
not relinquished her patient hand in getting out,
but still holds it as he promised. He 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.
*
*
*
*
*
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, heart
to heart, these two children of the Universal
Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have
come together on the dark highway to repair
home together, and to rest in her bosom.
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they sol-
emnly 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
knitting-women count Twenty-Two.
"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith
the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live: and whoso
GUILLOTINE
215
HABIT
ever liveth and believeth in me, shall never and it was bowed down to and believed in
die."
where the Cross was denied.
It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning
of many faces, the pressing on of many foot-ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It
steps 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.
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 15.
GUILLOTINE The reign of the.
was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a
young Devil, and was put together again when
occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent,
struck down the powerful, abolished the beauti-
ful and good. Twenty-two friends of high pub
lic 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.
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 4.
The new Era began; the king was tried,
doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Lib-
erty, 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 earth, rose from all the varying soils of
France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown
broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill
and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial nud,
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 solici-youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born
tude could rear itself against the deluge of the
Year One of Liberty-the deluge rising from
below, not falling from above, and with the
windows of Heaven shut, not opened!
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no
interval of relenting rest, no measurement of
time. Though days and nights circled as regu-
larly as when time was young, and the evening
and the 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 wife, which had had eight weary months
of imprisoned widowhood and misery to turn it
gray.
And yet, observing the strange law of con-
tradiction 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; a law of the Suspected, which
struck away all security for liberty 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 appointed
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 foundation of
the world-the figure of the sharp female called
La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the
best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented
the hair from turning gray, it imparted a pecu-
liar delicacy to the complexion, it was the Na-
tional Razer which shaved close: who kissed
La Guillotine, looked through the little window
and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of
the regeneration of the human race. It super-
seded the Cross. Models of it were worn
Models of it were worn on
breasts from which the Cross was discarded,
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 hus-
band'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;
and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillo-
tine, all daily brought into light from the dark
cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to
her through the streets to slake her devourirg
thirst. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death;
the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guil.
lotine!- Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 5.
GUILT-The pain of.
Although at the bottom of his every thought
there was an uneasy sense of guilt, and dread
of death, he felt no more than that vague con-
sciousness of it, which a sleeper has of pain.
It pursues him through his dreams, gnaws at
the heart of all his fancied pleasures, robs the
banquet of its taste, music of its sweetness,
makes happiness itself unhappy, and yet is no
bodily sensation, but a phantom without shape,
or form, or visible presence; pervading every-
thing, but having no existence; recognizable
everywhere, but nowhere seen, or touched, or
met with face to face, until the sleep is past,
and waking agony returns.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 62.
H
HABIT-Of reflection.
Instead of putting on his coat and waistcoat
with anything like the impetuosity that could
alone have kept pace with Walter's mood, he
declined to invest himself with those garments
at all at present; and informed Walter, that on
such a serious matter, he must be allowed to
"bite his nails a bit."
It's an old habit of mine, Wal'r," said the
Captain," any time these fifty year. When you
see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal'r, then you
may know that Ned Cuttle's aground.”
Thereupon the Captain put his iron hook
HABIT AND DUTY
216
between his teeth, as if it were a hand; and with
an air of wisdom and profundity that was the
very concentration and sublimation of all philo-
sophical reflection and grave inquiry, applied
himself to the consideration of the subject in
its various branches.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 15.
HABIT AND DUTY.
"We go on in our clock-work routine, from
day to day, and can't make out, or follow, these
changes. They-they're a metaphysical sort of
thing. We-we haven't leisure for it. We-we
haven't courage. They're not taught at schools
or colleges, and we don't know how to set about
it. In short, we are so dd business-like,"
said the gentleman, walking to the window, and
back, and sitting down again, in a state of ex-
treme dissatisfaction and vexation.
"I am sure," said the gentleman, rubbing his
forehead again; and drumming on the table as
before, "I have good reason to believe that a
jog-trot life, the same from day to day, would
reconcile one to anything. One don't see any-
thing, one don't hear anything, one don't know
anything; that's the fact. We go on taking every-
thing for granted, and so we go on, until what-
ever we do, good, bad, or indifferent, we do from
habit. Habit is all I shall have to report, when
I am called upon to plead to my conscience, on
my death-bed. 'Habit,' says I; 'I was deaf,
dumb, blind, and paralytic, to a million things,
from habit. Very business-like indeed, Mr.
What's-your-name,' says Conscience, but it
won't do here!'"-Dombey & Son, Chap. 33.
HABIT-Its influence.
It's this same habit that confirms some of
us, who are capable of better things, in Lucifer's
own pride and stubbornness-that confirms and
deepens others of us in villainy-more of us in
indifference-that hardens us from day to day,
according to the temper of our clay, like images,
and leaves us as susceptible as images to new
impressions and convictions.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 53.
He handed her down to a coach she had in
waiting at the door; and if his landlady had not
been deaf, she would have heard him muttering
as he went back up stairs, when the coach had
driven off, that we were creatures of habit, and
it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 58.
HABITS-Of work and life-Dickens, his.
I feel as if it were not for me to record, even
though this manuscript is intended for no eyes
but mine, how hard I worked at that tremen-
dous shorthand, and all improvement appertain-
ing to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora
and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have
already written of my perseverance at this time
of my life, and of a patient and continuous
energy which then began to be matured within
me, and which I know to be the strong part of
my character, if it have any strength at all, that
there, on looking back, I find the source of my
success. I have been very fortunate in worldly
matters; many men have worked much harder,
and not succeeded half so well; but I never
could have done what I have done, without
the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence,
without the determination to concentrate my-
HAIR
self on one object at a time, no matter how
quickly its successor should come upon its heels,
which I then formed. Heaven knows I write
this in no spirit of self-laudation. The man
who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going
on here from page to page, had need to have
been a good man indeed if he would be spared
the sharp consciousness of many talents neglect-
ed, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and
perverted feelings constantly at war within his
breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one
natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused.
My meaning simply is, that whatever I have
tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart
to do well; that whatever I have devoted my
self to, I have devoted myself to completely;
that in great aims and in small, I have always
been thoroughly in earnest. I have never be-
lieved it possible that any natural or improved
ability can claim immunity from the companion-
ship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities,
and hope to gain its end. There is no such
thing as such fulfillment on this earth. Some
happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity,
may form the two sides of the ladder on which
some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder
must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear
and there is no substitute for thorough-going,
ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put
one hand to anything, on which I could throw
my whole self; and never to affect depreciation
of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to
have been my golden rules.
David Copperfield, Chap. 42.
HACKMAN—A labelled.
66
Here you are, sir," shouted a strange speci-
men of the human race, in a sackcloth coat, and
apron of the same, who, with a brass label and
number round his neck, looked as if he were
catalogued in some collection of rarities.
HAIR-A head of.
Pickwick, Chap. 2.
His message perplexed his mind to that de-
gree that he was fain, several times, to take off
his hat to scratch his head. Except on the
crown, 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 was 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 dan-
gerous man in the world to go over.
HAIR-Unruly.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 3.
Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be,
and warmly attached to him as I was, I could
not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that
he had never contracted the habit of brushing
his hair so very upright. It gave him a surprised
look-not to say a hearth-broomy kind of ex-
pression-which, my apprehensions whispered,
might be fatal to us.
I took the liberty of mentioning it to Trad-
dles, as we were walking to Putney: and saying
that if he would smooth it down a little-
My dear Copperfield," said Traddles, lifting
off his hat, and rubbing his hair all kinds of
ways, "nothing would give me greater pleasure.
But it won't."
HAND
"Won't be smoothed down?" said I.
"
217
'No," said Traddles. Nothing will induce
it. If I was to carry a half-hundredweight upon
it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again
the moment the weight was taken off. You
have no idea what obstinate hair mine is,
perfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine."
*
*
*
*
HAPPINESS
HAND-A ghostly.
As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting
up the office; and, feeling friendly towards every-
body, went in and spoke to him, and at parting,
gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy
Cop-hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to the
sight! I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it,
and to rub his off.
*
They pretend that Sophy has a lock of it in
her desk, and is obliged to shut it in a clasped
book, to keep it down. We laugh about it.'
David Copperfield, Chap. 41.
HAND-Merdle's style of shaking.
It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when
I went to my room, it was still cold and wet
upon my memory. Leaning out of window,
and seeing one of the faces on the beam-ends
looking at me sideways, I fancied it was Uriah
Heep got up there somehow, and shut him out
in a hurry.-David Copperfield, Chap. 15.
HAND-Of sympathy.
Mr. Merdle was slinking about the hearth-rug,
waiting to welcome Mrs. Sparkler. His hand.
seemed to retreat up his sleeve as he advanced |
to do so, and he gave her such a superfluity of Long may it remain in this mixed world a
coat cuff that it was like being received by the point not easy of decision, which is the more
popular conception of Guy Fawkes. When he beautiful evidence of the Almighty's goodness-
put his lips to hers, besides, he took himself the delicate fingers that are formed for sensitive-
into custody by the wrists, and backed himself ness and sympathy of touch, and made to min-
among the ottomans and chairs and tables as if ister to pain and grief, or the rough, hard, Cap-
he were his own Police officer, saying to himself, tain Cuttle hand, that the heart teaches, guides,
"Now, none of that! Come! I've got you, you and softens in a moment.
know, and you go quietly along with me!
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16.
HAND-Its gentleness.
"
Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the ❘
touch of a woman. I have often thought him
since like the steam-hammer, that can crush a man
or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength
with gentleness. "Pip is that hearty welcome,"
said Joe, "to go free with his services, to honor
and fortun', as no words can tell him. But if you
think as money can make compensation to me for
the loss of the little child-what come to the forge
-and ever the best of friends !"
O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to
leave and so unthankful to, I see you again, with
your muscular blacksmith's arm before your
eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your
voice dying away. O dear good faithful tender
Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon
my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been
the rustle of an angel's wing!
Great Expectations, Chap. 18.
Dombey and Son, Chap. 48.
HAPPINESS-Of the unfortunate.
It is something to look upon enjoyment, so
that it be free and wild and in the face of na-
ture, though it is but the enjoyment of an idiot.
It is something to know that Heaven has left
the capacity of gladness in such a creature's
breast; it is something to be assured that, how-
ever lightly men may crush that faculty in their
fellows, the Great Creator of mankind imparts
it even to his despised and slighted work. Who
would not rather see a poor idiot happy in the
sunlight, than a wise man pining in a darkened
jail!
Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the
face of Infinite Benevolence with an eternal
frown; read in the Everlasting Book, wide open
to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its pic-
tures are not in black and sombre hues, but
bright and glowing tints; its music-save when
ye drown it-is not in sighs and groans, but
songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the mil-
lion voices in the summer air, and find one dis-
mal as your own. Remember, if ye can, the
As he stood, looking at his cap for a little sense of hope and pleasure which every glad
while before beginning to speak, I could not return of day awakens in the breast of all your
help observing what power and force of charac-kind who have not changed their nature; and
ter his sinewy hand expressed, and what a good
and trusty companion it was to his honest brow
and iron-grey hair.-David Copperfield, Chap. 51.
HAND-Its character.
HAND-A resolute.
His hand upon the table rested there in per-
fect repose, with a resolution in it that might
have conquered lions.
David Copperfield, Chap. 51.
HAND-Dr. Chillip's style of shaking.
He quite shook hands with me-which was a
violent proceeding for him, his usual course
being to slide a tepid little fish-slice an inch or
two in advance of his hip, and evince the greatest
discomposure when anybody grappled with it.
Even now, he put his hand in his coat pocket
as soon as he could disengage it, and seemed
relieved when he had got it safe back.
David Copperfield, Chap. 59.
learn some wisdom even from the witless, when
their hearts are lifted up they know not why, by
all the mirth and happiness it brings.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 25.
HAPPINESS-The power of trifles.
A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make
these silly folks so full of gratitude."
Small!" echoed Scrooge.
"
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two
apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts
in praise of Fezziwig; and when he had done
so said,
""
'Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few
pounds of your mortal money: three or four,
perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this
praise?"
"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the
remark, and speaking unconsciously like his
former, not his latter self. "It isn't that, Spirit.
+
HAPPINESS
He has the power to render us happy or un-
happy; to make our service light or burden-
some; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power
lies in words and looks; in things so slight and
insignificant that it is impossible to add and
count 'em up: what then? The happiness he
gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
Christmas Carol, Stave 2.
HAPPINESS-True.
* * * A strain of rational good-will and
cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympa-
thies of every member of the party in behalf of
his neighbor, and to perpetuate their good feel-
ing during the ensuing year, than half the homi-
lies that have ever been written, by half the
Divines that have ever lived.
Sketches (Characters), Chap. 2.
HASTE-The advantages of seeming.
More is done, or considered to be done-
which does as well-by taking cabs, and "going
about," than the fair Tippins knew of. Many
vast vague reputations have been made, solely
by taking cabs and going about. This par-
ticularly obtains in all Parliamentary affairs.
Whether the business in hand be to get a man
in, or get a man out, or get a man over, or pro-
mote a railway, or jockey a railway, or what
else, nothing is understood to be so effectual as
scouring nowhere in a violent hurry-in short,
as taking cabs and going about.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 3.
HAT-Sam Weller's apology for his.
"Sit down."
Thank'ee, sir," said Sam. And down he
sat, without further bidding, having previously
deposited his old white hat on the landing out-
side the door. ""Ta'nt a werry good 'un to look
at," said Sam, "but it's an astonishin' 'un to
wear; and afore the brim went, it was a werry
handsome tile. Hows'ever its lighter without
it, that's one thing, and every hole lets in some
air, that's another-wentilation gossamer I calls
it." On the delivery of this sentiment, Mr.
Weller smiled agreeably upon the assembled
Pickwickians.- Pickwick, Chap. 12.
HAT-The pursuit of a.
There are very few moments in a man's ex-
istence when he experiences so much ludicrous
distress, or meets with so little charitable com-
miseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own
hat. A vast deal of coolness, and a peculiar de-
gree of judgment, are requisite in catching a hat.
A man must not be precipitate, or he runs over
it; he must not rush into the opposite extreme,
or he loses it altogether. The best way is, to
keep gently up with the object of pursuit, to be
wary and cautious, to watch your opportunity
well, get gradually before it, then make a rapid
dive, seize it by the crown, and stick it firmly on
your head: smiling pleasantly all the time, as if
you thought it as good a joke as anybody else.
Pickwick, Chap. 4.
HEART-In the right place.
218
Thank you, sir," said Mr. Chivery, without
advancing; “it's no odds me coming in. Mr.
Clennam, don't you take no notice of my son (if
you'll be so good) in case you find him cut up
any ways difficult. My son has a 'art, and my
HEART
son's 'art is in the right place. Me and his
mother knows where to find it, and we find it
sitiwated correct."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 27.
HEARTS-Innocent.
"If we all had hearts like those which beat so
lightly in the bosoms of the young and beautiful,
what a heaven this earth would be! If, while
our bodies grow old and withered, our hearts.
could but retain their early youth and freshness,
of what avail would be our sorrows and suffer-
ings! But, the faint image of Eden which is
stamped upon them in childhood, chafes and
rubs in our rough struggles with the world, and
soon wears away: too often to leave nothing but
a mournful blank remaining."
HEARTS-Open.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6.
Among men who have any sound and sterling
qualities, there is nothing so contagious as pure
openness of heart.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 35.
HEART-A loving.
If the little Haymaker had been armed with
the sharpest of scythes, and had cut at every
stroke into the Carrier's heart, he never could
have gashed and wounded it as Dot had done.
It was a heart so full of love for her; so
bound up and held together by innumerable
threads of winning remembrance, spun from the
daily working of her many qualities of endear-
ment; it was a heart in which she had enshrined
herself so gently and so closely; a heart so sin-
gle and so earnest in its Truth, so strong in
right, so weak in wrong, that it could cherish
neither passion nor revenge at first, and had
only room to hold the broken image of its Idol.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 3.
HEART-a pure; Tom Pinch.
Tom, Tom! The man in all this world
most confident in his sagacity and shrewdness;
the man in all this world most proud of the dis-
trust of other men, and having most to show in
gold and silver as the gains belonging to his
creed; the meekest favorer of that wise doc-
trine, Every man for himself, and God for us all
(there being high wisdom in the thought that
the Eternal Majesty of Heaven ever was, or
can be, on the side of selfish lust and love!);
shall never find, oh, never find, be sure of that,
the time come home to him, when all his wis-
dom is an idiot's folly, weighed against a sim
ple heart !-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39.
HEART-The chance revelations of the.
There are chords in the human heart-
strange, varying strings-which are only struck
by accident; which will remain mute and sense-
less to appeals the most passionate and earnest,
and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.
In the most insensible or childish minds, there
is some train of reflection which art can seldom
lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself,
as great truths have done, by chance, and when
the discoverer has the plainest end in view.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 55.
HEART-Afflictions.
"You may file a strong man's heart away for
HEARTS
219
HOMAGE
a good many years, but it will tell all of a sud- of the blood-vessels and all that sort of thing-
den at last."-Bleak House, Chap. 23.
HEARTS-The necessity of shutters.
"I speak as I find, Mr. Sweedlepipes," said
Mrs. Gamp. "Forbid it should be otherways!
But we never knows wot's hidden in each
other's hearts; and if we had glass winders
there, we'd need keep the shetters up, some on
us, I do assure you!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 29.
HEARTS-Light.
Light hearts, light hearts, that float so gaily
on a smooth stream, that are so sparkling and
buoyant in the sunshine-down upon fruit,
bloom upon flowers, blush in summer air, life
of the winged insect, whose whole existence is a
day-how soon ye sink in troubled water!
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 71.
HEART-The coin of the.
The heart is not always a royal mint, with
patent machinery, to work its metal into cur-
rent coin. Sometimes it throws it out in strange
forms, not easily recognized as coin at all. But
it is sterling gold. It has at least that merit.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 20.
HEART—An empty.
He was touched in the cavity where his heart
should have been-in that nest of addled eggs,
where the birds of heaven would have lived, if
they had not been whistled away.
Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 2.
HEART-Like a bird-cage (Sampson Brass).
"I respect you, Kit," said Brass, with emo-
tion. "I saw enough of your conduct at that
time, to respect you, though your station is hum-
ble, and your fortune lowly. It isn't the waist-
coat that I look at. It is the heart. The checks
in the waistcoat are but the wires of the cage.
But the heart is the bird. Ah! How many sich
birds are perpetually moulting, and putting their
beaks through the wires to peck at all man-
kind!"
This poetic figure, which Kit took to be in
special allusion to his own checked waistcoat,
quite overcame him; Mr. Brass's voice and
manner added not a little to its effect, for he
discoursed with all the mild austerity of a her-
mit, and wanted but a cord round the waist of
his rusty surtout, and a skull on the chimney-
piece, to be completely set up in that line of
business.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56.
HEART-The silent influence of the.
There was heart in the room; and who that
has a heart, ever fails to recognise the silent
presence of another!
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 20.
HEARTS-Mere mechanisms.
"I was about to speak to you from my heart,
sir," returned Edward, " in the confidence which
should subsist between us; and you check me in
the outset."
'Now do, Ned, do not," said Mr. Chester,
raising his delicate hand imploringly, "talk in
that monstrous manner. About to speak from
your heart. Don't you know that the heart is
an ingenious part of our formation-the centre
which has no more to do with what you say or
think, than your knees have? How can you be
so very vulgar and absurd? These anatomical
allusions should be left to gentlemen of the
medical profession. They are really not agree-
able in society. You quite surprise me, Ned."
"Well there are no such things to wound,
or heal, or to have regard for. I know your
creed, sir, and will say no more," returned his
son.
"There again," said Mr. Chester, sipping his
wine, "you are wrong. I distinctly say there
are such things. We know there are. The
hearts of animals-of bullocks, sheep, and so
forth-are cooked and devoured, as I am told,
by the lower classes, with a vast deal of relish.
Men are sometimes stabbed to the heart, shot
to the heart; but as to speaking from the heart,
or to the heart, or being warm-hearted, or cold-
hearted, or broken-hearted, or being all heart,
or having no heart-pah! these things are non-
sense, Ned."-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 32.
HEARTS AND HEADS.
"Do you know how pinched and destitute I
am?" she retorted. I do not think you do, or
can. If you had eyes, and could look around
you on this poor place, you would have pity on
Oh! let your heart be softened by your
own affliction, friend, and have some sympathy
with mine."
me.
The blind man snapped his fingers as he an-
swered:
"-Beside the question, ma'am, beside the
question. I have the softest heart in the world,
but I can't live upon it. Many a gentleman
lives well upon a soft head, who would find a
heart of the same quality a very great draw-
back."-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 45.
HEARTLESSNESS.
He'd no more heart than a iron file, he was as
cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil
afore mentioned.
Great Expectations, Chap. 42.
HEAVEN-The real.
The real Heaven is some paces removed from
the mock one in the great chandelier of the
Theatre.—Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2.
HOLIDAYS-The happy associations of.
Oh, these holidays! why will they leave us
some regret? why cannot we push them back,
only a week or two, in our memories, so as to
put them at once at that convenient distance
whence they may be regarded either with a calm
indifference or a pleasant effort of recollection!
why will they hang about us, like the flavor of
yesterday's wine, suggestive of headaches and
lassitude, and those good intentions for the
future, which, under the earth, form the ever-
lasting pavement of a large estate, and, upon it,
usually endure until dinner-time or thereabouts?
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 40.
HOMAGE-To woman.
They did homage to Bella as if she were a
compound of fine girl, thorough-bred horse,
well-built drag, and remarkable pipe.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 5.
HOME OF DICKENS
HOME OF DICKENS -Gadshill.
So smooth was the old high-road, and so fresh
were the horses, and so fast went I, that it was
midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and
the widening river was bearing the ships, white-
sailed or black-smoked, out to sea, when I
noticed by the way-side a very queer small boy.
"Halloa!" said I, to the very queer small
boy, "where do you live?"
"At Chatham," says he.
"What do you do there?" says I.
I go to school," says he.
220
I took him up in a moment, and we went on.
Presently, the very queer small boy says, “This
is Gadshill we are coming to, where Falstaff
went out to rob those travellers, and ran away."
"You know something about Falstaff, eh?"
said I.
"All about him," said the very queer small
boy, "I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts
of books. But do let us stop at the top of the
hill, and look at the house there, if you please!"
You admire that house?" said I.
"Bless you, sir," said the very queer small
boy, "when I was not more than half as old as
nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought
to look at it. And now I am nine I come by
myself to look at it. And ever since I can re-
collect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has
often said to me, 'If you were to be very per-
severing, and were to work hard, you might
some day come to live in it.' Though that's
impossible!" said the very queer small boy,
drawing a low breath, and now staring at the
house out of window with all his might.
I was rather amazed to be told this by the
very queer small boy; for that house happens
to be my house, and I have reason to believe
that what he said was true.
Well! I made no halt there, and I soon drop-
ped the very queer small boy and went on.
Over the road where the old Romans used to
march, over the road where the old Canterbury
pilgrims used to go, over the road where the
travelling trains of the old imperious priests and
princes used to jingle on horseback between the
continent and this Island, through the mud and
water, over the road where Shakespeare hum-
med to himself, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind,"
as he sat in the saddle at the gate of the inn-
yard noticing the carriers; all among the cherry
orchards, apple orchards, cornfields, and hop-
gardens; so went I, by Canterbury to Dover.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 7.
HOME-Of Mr. Dombey.
|
HOME
trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as he
went along. It was soon gone again to return
no more that day; and the bands of music and
the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left
it a prey to the most dismal of organs, and
white mice; and now and then a porcupine, to
vary the entertainments; until the butlers whose
families were dining out, began to stand at the
house-doors in the twilight, and the lamp-lighter
made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten
up the street with gas.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
HOME-After a funeral.
When the funeral was over, Mr. Dombey
ordered the furniture to be covered up—perhaps
to preserve it for the son with whom his plans
were all associated-and the rooms to be un-
garnished, saving such as he retained for himself
on the ground floor. Accordingly, mysterious
shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped
together in the middle of rooms, and covered
over with great winding sheets. Bell-handles,
window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being paper-
ed up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded
fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadfui
murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled in
holland, looked like a monstrous tear depending
from the ceiling's eye. Odors, as from vaults
and damp places, came out of the chimneys.
The dead and buried lady was awful in a picture-
frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind
that rose, brought eddying round the corner
from the neighboring mews, some fragments of
the straw that had been strewn before the house
when she was ill, mildewed remains of which
were still cleaving to the neighborhood; and
these, being always drawn by some invisible at-
traction to the threshold of the dirty house to
let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal
eloquence to Mr. Dombey's windows.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
HOME-Of a tourist.
It was just large enough, and no more; was
as pretty within as it was without, and was per-
fectly well-arranged and comfortable. Some
traces of the migratory habits of the family were
to be observed in the covered frames and furni-
ture, and wrapped-up hangings; but it was easy
to see that it was one of Mr. Meagles's whims to
have the cottage always kept, in their absence,
as if they were always coming back the day after
to-morrow. Of articles collected on his various
expeditions, there was such a vast miscellany
that it was like the dwelling of an amiable Cor-
sair. There were antiquities from Central Italy,
Mr. Dombey's house was a large one, on the made by the best modern houses in that depart
slady side of a tall, dark, dreadfully genteel ment of industry; bits of mummy from Egypt
street in the region between Portland Place and (and perhaps Birmingham); model gondolas
Bryanstone Square. It was a corner house, with from Venice; model villages from Switzerland;
great wide areas containing cellars frowned upon morsels of tesselated pavement from Hercula-
by barred windows, and leered at by crooked-neum and Pompeii, like petrified minced veal;
eyed doors leading to dust-bins. It was a house
of dismal state, with a circular back to it, con-
taining a whole suit of drawing-rooms looking
upon a gravelled yard, where two gaunt trees,
with blackened trunks and branches, rattled
rather than rustled, their leaves were so smoke-
dried. The summer sun was never on the
street, but in the morning about breakfast-time,
when it came with the water-carts and the old
clothes-men, and the people with geraniums,
and the umbrella-mender, and the man who
ashes out of tombs, and lava out of Vesuvius ;
Spanish fans, Spezzian straw hats, Moorish slip-
pers, Tuscan hair-pins, Carrara sculpture, Tras-
taverini scarfs, Genoese velvets and filagree,
Neapolitan coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jew-
elry, Arab lanterns, rosaries blest all round by
the Pope himself, and an infinite variety of lum-
ber. There were views, like and unlike, of a
multitude of places; and there was one little
picture-room devoted to a few of the regular
sticky old Saints, with sinews like whip-cord,
HOME
221
HOME.
HOME
"O Home, our comforter and friend when
others fall away, to part with whom, at any
step between the cradle and the grave
*
*
*
*
,
""
*
hair like Neptune's, wrinkles like tattooing, and
such coats of varnish that every holy personage
served for a fly-trap, and became what is now
called in the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O.
Of these pictorial acquisitions Mr. Meagles spoke
in the usual manner. He was no judge, he said, "'O Home, so true to us, so often slighted in
except of what pleased himself; he had picked return, be lenient to them that turn away from
them up, dirt-cheap, and people had considered thee, and do not haunt their erring footsteps too
them rather fine. One man, who at any rate reproachfully! Let no kind looks, no well-
ought to know something of the subject, had de- remembered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom
clared that "Sage, Reading" (a specially oily face. Let no ray of affection, welcome, gentle-
old gentleman in a blanket, with a swan's-down ness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy
tippet for a beard, and a web of cracks all over white head. Let no old loving word or tone
him like rich pie-crust), to be a fine Guercino. rise up in judgment against thy deserter; but
As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you would if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in
judge for yourself; if it were not his later man-mercy to the Penitent!'"
ner, the question was, Who was it? Titian,
that might or might not be-perhaps he had
only touched it. Daniel Doyce said perhaps he
hadn't touched it, but Mr. Meagles rather de-
clined to overhear the remark.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 16.
HOME-The music of crickets at.
Battle of Life, Chap. 2.
HOME-Of a female philanthropist.
We expressed our acknowledgments, and sat
down behind the door, where there was a lame
invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good
hair, but was too much occupied with her African
duties to brush it. The shawl in which she had
"This has been a happy home, John; and I been loosely muffled, dropped on to her chair
love the Cricket for its sake!"
"Why, so do I then," said the Carrier. "So
do I, Dot."
"I love it for the many times I have heard it,
and the many thoughts its harmless music has
given me. Sometimes, in the twilight, when I
have felt a little solitary and down-hearted, John
—before baby was here, to keep me company
and make the house gay when I have thought
how lonely you would be if I should die; how
lonely I should be, if I could know that you had
lost me, dear; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp, upon the
hearth, has seemed to tell me of another little
voice, so sweet, so very dear to me, before whose
coming sound my trouble vanished like a dream.
And when I used to fear—I did fear once, John,
I was very young, you know that ours might
prove to be an ill-assorted marriage, I being
such a child, and you more like my guardian
than my husband; and that you might not,
however hard you tried, be able to learn to love
me, as you hoped and prayed you might; its
Chirp, Chirp, Ĉhirp, has cheered me up again,
and filled me with new trust and confidence. I
was thinking of these things to-night, dear, when
I sat expecting you; and I love the Cricket for
their sake!"-Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. I.
HOME—Of Mrs. Chickenstalker.
when she advanced to us; and as she turned to
resume her seat, we could not help noticing that
her dress didn't nearly meet up the back, and
that the open space was railed across with a
lattice-work of stay-lace-like a summer-house.
The room, which was strewn with papers, and
nearly filled by a great writing-table covered
with similar litter, was, I must say, not only
very untidy, but very dirty. We were obliged
to take notice of that with our sense of sight,
even while, with our sense of hearing, we fol-
lowed the poor child who had tumbled down-
stairs: I think into the back-kitchen, where
somebody seemed to stifle him.
*
*
*
*
*
and unhealthy-looking, though by no means
But what principally struck us was a jaded,
plain girl, at the writing-table, who sat biting
the feather of her pen, and staring at us. I
suppose nobody ever was in such a state of ink.
And, from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet,
which were disfigured with frayed and broken
seemed to have no article of dress upon her,
satin slippers trodden down at heel, she really
from a pin upwards, that was in its proper con-
dition or its right place.
You find me, my dears," said Mrs. Jellyby,
snuffing the two great office candles in tin can-
dlesticks, which made the room taste strongly of
hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was
nothing in the grate but ashes, a bundle of
wood, and a poker), "you find me, my dears, as
usual, very busy; but that you will excuse.
The African project at present employs my whole
time. It involves me in correspondence with
public bodies, and with private individuals anx-
ious for the welfare of their species all over the
country. I am happy to say it is advancing.
We hope by this time next year to have from a
hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy fami-
lies cultivating coffee and educating the natives
of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the
Fat company, rosy-cheeked company, com-
fortable company. They were but two, but they
were red enough for ten. They sat before a
bright fire, with a small low table between
them; and unless the fragrance of hot tea and
muffins lingered longer in that room than in
most others, the table had seen service very
lately. But all the cups and saucers being
clean, and in their proper places in the corner
cupboard; and the brass toasting-fork hanging
in its usual nook, and spreading its four idle
fingers out, as if it wanted to be measured for a
glove, there remained no other visible tokens | Niger."-Bleak House, Chap. 4.
of the meal just finished, than such as purred
and washed their whiskers in the person of the
basking cat, and glistened in the gracious, not
to say the greasy, faces of her patrons.
Chimes, 4th quarter.
HOME-A solitary.
His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like-
an old, retired part of an ancient endowment
for students, once a brave edifice planted in an
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222
HOME
open place, but now the obsolete whim of for- soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and
gotten architects; smoke-age-and-weather-dark-sterile, and the houses were more than usually
ened, squeezed on every side by the overgrowing brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens
of the great city, and choked, like an old well, had the unaccountable property of producing
with stones and bricks; its small quadrangles, nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in
lying down in very pits formed by the streets them; and where snails were constantly dis-
and buildings, which, in course of time, had covered holding on to the street doors, and
been constructed above its heavy chimney other public places they were not expected to
stacks; its old trees, insulted by the neighbor- ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses.
ing smoke, which deigned to droop so low when In the winter-time the air couldn't be got out
it was very feeble and the weather very moody; of the Castle, and in the summer-time it couldn't
its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed be got in. There was such a continual rever-
earth to be grass, or to win any show of com- beration of wind in it, that it sounded like a
promise; its silent pavement, unaccustomed to great shell, which the inhabitants were obliged
the tread of feet, and even to the observation to hold to their ears night and day, whether
of eyes, except when a stray face looked down they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a
from the upper world, wondering what nook it fresh-smelling house; and in the window of
was; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, the front parlor, which was never opened, Mrs.
where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots,
but where, in compensation for the sun's ne- which imparted an earthy flavor of their own
glect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay to the establishment. However choice exam-
nowhere else, and the black east wind would ples of their kind, too, these plants were of a
spin like a huge humming-top, when in all kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of
other places it was silent and still.
Mrs. Pipchin. There were half-a-dozen speci-
mens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath,
like hairy serpents; another specimen shooting
out broad claws, like a green lobster; several
creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and ad-
hesive leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot
hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have
boiled over, and tickling people underneath
with its long green ends, reminded them of
spiders-in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was
uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challen-
ged competition still more proudly, in the season,
in point of earwigs.—Dombey & Son, Chap. 8
His dwelling, at its heart and core-within
doors-at his fireside-was so lowering and
old, so crazy, yet so strong, with its worm-eaten
beams of wood in the ceiling and its sturdy
floor shelving downward to the great oak chim-
ney-piece; so environed and hemmed in by the
pressure of the town, yet so remote in fashion,
age, and custom; so quiet, yet so thundering
with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a
door was shut-echoes not confined to the many
low passages and empty rooms, but rumbling
and grumbling till they were stifled in the heavy
air of the forgotten Crypt where the Norman
arches were half buried in the earth.
Haunted Man, Chap 1.
HOME—Of Miss Tox.
Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that
had been squeezed, at some remote period of
English History, into a fashionable neighbor-
hood at the west end of the town, where it stood
in the shade like a poor relation of the great
street round the corner, coldly looked down up-
on by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a
court, and it was not exactly in a yard; but it was
in the dullest of No-Thoroughfares, rendered
anxious and haggard by distant double knocks.
*
*
*
*
*
The greater part of the furniture was of the
powdered head and pig-tail period; comprising
a plate-warmer, always languishing and sprawl-
ing its four attenuated bow legs in somebody's
way; and an obsolete harpsichord, illuminated
round the maker's name with a painted garland
of sweet peas.
*
*
*
*
*
Miss Tox's bedroom (which was at the back)
commanded a vista of Mews, where hostlers, at
whatever sort of work engaged, were continual-
ly accompanying themselves with effervescent
noises; and where the most domestic and con-
fidential garments of coachmen and their wives
and families, usually hung, like Macbeth's ban-
ners, on the outward walls.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 7.
HOME Of Mrs. Pipchin.
The Castle of this ogress and child-queller
was in a steep by-street at Brighton, where the
|
HOME—The love of.
And let me linger in this place for an instant,
to remark, if ever household affections and loves
are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor.
The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to
home may be forged on earth, but those which
link the poor man to his humble hearth are of
the truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven.
The man of high descent may love the halls
and lands of his inheritance as a part of him-
self; as trophies of his birth and power: his
associations with them are associations of pride,
and wealth, and triumph: the poor man's attach-
ment to the tenement he holds, which strangers
have held before, and may to-morrow occupy
again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a
purer soil. His household gods are of flesh
and blood, with no alloy of silver, gold, or pre-
cious stones; he has no property but in the af-
fections of his own heart; and when they en-
dear bare floors and walls, despite of rags and
toil and scanty fare, that man has his love of
home from God, and his rude hut becomes a
solemn place.
Oh! if those who rule the destinies of nations
would but remember this-if they would but
think how hard it is for the very poor to have
engendered in their hearts that love of home
from which all domestic virtues spring, when
they live in dense and squalid masses where
social decency is lost, or rather never found
if they would but turn aside from the wide
thoroughfares and great houses, and strive to
improve the wretched dwellings in by-ways,
where only Poverty may walk,-many low roofs
would point more truly to the sky, than the
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223
HOME
but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles down-stairs,
confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling
home, from week's end to week's end, is like one
great washing-day-only nothing's washed!"
Bleak House, Chap 14.
loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from
the midst of guilt, and crime, and horrible dis-
ease, to mock them by its contrast. In hollow
voices from Workhouse, Hospital, and Jail, this
truth is preached from day to day, and has been
proclaimed for years. It is no light matter-no
outcry from the working vulgar-no mere ques-HOME-A rosary of regrets.
tion of the people's health and comforts that He was tortured by anxiety for those he had
may be whistled down on Wednesday nights. left at home; and that home itself was but
In love of home, the love of country has its | another bead in the long rosary of his regrets.
rise; and who are the truer patriots or the bet-
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 61.
ter in time of need-those who venerate the
land, owning its wood, and stream, and earth,
and all that they produce-or those who love
their country, boasting not a foot of ground in
all its wide domain?
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 38.
HOME-The comforts of (Gabriel Varden).
That afternoon, when he had slept off his
fatigue; had shaved, and washed, and dressed,
and freshened himself from top to toe; when
he had dined, comforted himself with a pipe, an
extra Toby, a nap in the great arm-chair, and a
quiet chat with Mrs. Varden on everything that
had happened, was happening, or about to hap-
pen, within the sphere of their domestic con-
cern; the locksmith sat himself down at the
tea-table in the little back parlor; the rosiest,
cosiest, merriest, heartiest, best-contented old
buck in Great Britain, or out of it.
There he sat, with his beaming eye on Mrs.
V., and his shining face suffused with gladness,
and his capacious waistcoat smiling in every
wrinkle, and his jovial humor peeping from un-
der the table in the very plumpness of his legs:
a sight to turn the vinegar of misanthropy into
purest milk of human kindness. There he sat,
watching his wife as she decorated the room
with flowers for the greater honor of Dolly and
Joseph Willet, who had gone out walking, and
for whom the tea-kettle had been singing gaily
on the hob full twenty minutes, chirping as never
kettle chirped before; for whom the best ser-
vice of real undoubted china, patterned with di-
vers round-faced mandarins holding up broad
umbrellas, was now displayed in all its glory;
to tempt whose appetites a clear, transparent,
juicy ham, garnished with cool, green lettuce-
leaves and fragrant cucumber, reposed upon a
shady table, covered with a snow-white cloth;
for whose delight, preserves and jams, crisp
cakes and other pastry,, short to eat, with cun-
ning twists, and cottage loaves, and rolls of
bread, both white and brown, were all set forth
in rich profusion; in whose youth Mrs. V. her-
self had grown quite young, and stood there in
a gown of red and white; symmetrical in fig-
ure, buxom in bodice, ruddy in cheek and lip,
faultless in ankle, laughing in face and mood,
in all respects delicious to behold-there sat
the locksmith among all and every these de-
lights, the sun that shone upon them all: the
centre of the system: the source of light, heat,
life, and frank enjoyment in the bright house-
hold world.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 80.
HOME Of confusion and wretchedness.
"My dear!" said I, smiling. "Your papa,
no doubt, considers his family.
"O yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Sum-
merson," replied Miss Jellyby; "but what com-
fort is his family to him? His family is nothing
HOME-Of Captain Cuttle.
Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little
canal near the India Docks, where there was a
swivel bridge, which opened now and then to
let some wandering monster of a ship come
roaming up the street like a stranded leviathan.
The gradual change from land to water, on the
approach to Captain Cuttle's lodgings, was curi-
ous. It began with the erection of flagstaffs,
as appurtenances to public-houses; then came
slop-sellers' shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou'-
wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the
tightest and the loosest of their order, hanging
up outside. These were succeeded by anchor
and chain-cable forges, where sledge-hammers
were dinging upon iron all day long. Then
came rows of houses, with little vane-surmount-
ed masts uprearing themselves from among the
scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then pollard
willows. Then more ditches. Then unaccount-
able patches of dirty water, hardly to be des-
cried, for the ships that covered them. Then,
the air was perfumed with chips; and all other
trades were swallowed up in mast, oar, and
block-making, and boat-building. Then, the
ground grew marshy and unsettled. Then,
there was nothing to be smelt but rum and su-
gar. Then, Captain Cuttle's lodgings—at once
a first floor and a top story, in Brig Place-
were close before you.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 9.
HOME-The representative of character.
It is not a mansion; it is of no pretensions as
to size; but it is beautifully arranged, and taste-
fully kept. The lawn, the soft, smooth slope,
the flower-garden, the clumps of trees, where
graceful forms of ash and willow are not want-
ing, the conservatory, the rustic verandah, with
sweet-smelling creeping plants entwined about
the pillars, the simple exterior of the house, the
well-ordered offices, though all upon the dimin-
utive scale proper to a mere cottage, bespeak
an amount of elegant comfort within, that
might serve for a palace. This indication is
not without warrant; for within it is a house of
refinement and luxury. Rich colors, excellently
blended, meet the eye at every turn; in the
furniture-its proportions admirably devised to
suit the shapes and sizes of the small rooms;
on the walls; upon the floors; tingeing and
subduing the light that comes in through the
odd glass doors and windows here and there.
There are a few choice prints and pictures too;
in quaint nooks and recesses there is no want of
books; and there are games of skill and chance
set forth on tables-fantastic chess-men, dice,
back-gammon, cards, and billiards.
And yet, amidst this opulence of comfort,
there is something in the general air that is not
well. Is it that the carpets and the cushions
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224
HOME
are too soft and noiseless, so that those who move replete with that graceful charm which lingers
or repose among them seem to act by stealth? in every little tasteful work of woman's hands,
Is it that the prints and pictures do not com- how much patient endurance and how many
memorate great thoughts or deeds, or render gentle affections were entwined! He felt as
nature in the poetry of landscape, hall, or hut, though the smile of Heaven were on the little
but are of one voluptuous cast-mere shows of chamber; as though the beautiful devotion of
form and color-and no more? Is it that the so young and weak a creature had shed a ray
books have all their gold outside, and that the of its own on the inanimate things around, and
titles of the greater part qualify them to be made them beautiful as itself; as though the
companions of the prints and pictures? Is it halo with which old painters surround the bright
that the completeness and the beauty of the angels of a sinless world, played about a being
place are here and there belied by an affectation | akin in spirit to them, and its light were visibly
of humility, in some unimportant and inexpen- before him.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 46.
sive regard, which is as false as the face of the
too truly painted portrait hanging yonder, or HOME-The place of affection.
its original at breakfast in his easy-chair below
it? Or is it that, with the daily breath of that
original and master of all here, there issues
forth some subtle portion of himself, which
gives a vague expression of himself to every-
thing about him?-Dombey & Son, Chap. 33.
HOME-In the suburbs.
The neighborhood in which it stands has as
little of the country to recommend it, as it has
of the town. It is neither of the town or coun-
try. The former, like the giant in his travel-
ling boots, has made a stride and passed it, and
has set his brick and mortar heel a long way in
advance; but the intermediate space between
the giant's feet, as yet, is only blighted country,
and not town.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 33.
HOME-Disappointment in a.
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed
of home. There may be black ingratitude in
the thing, and the punishment may be retribu-
tive and well deserved; but, that it is a misera-
ble thing, I can testify.
Home had never been a very pleasant place
to me, because of my sister's temper. But, Joe
had sanctified it, and I believed in it. I had
believed in the best parlor as a most elegant
saloon; I had believed in the front door, as a
mysterious portal of the Temple of State, whose
solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of
roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a
chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had
believed in the forge as the glowing road to
manhood and independence. Within a single
year all this was changed.
HOME.
Great Expectations, Chap. 13.
At sunrise, one fair Monday morning--the
twenty-seventh of June, I shall not easily forget
the day, there lay before us old Cape Clear,
God bless it, showing, in the mist of early morn-
ing, like a cloud; the brightest and most wel-
come cloud to us that ever hid the face of
Heaven's fallen sister,-Home.
American Notes, Chap. 16.
HOME-Adornment of a.
'When I talk of homes," pursued Nicholas,
"I talk of mine-which is yours of course. If it
were defined by any particular four walls and a
roof, God knows I should be sufficiently puzzled
to say whereabouts it lay; but that is not what
I mean. When I speak of home, I speak of the
place where, in default of a better, those I love
are gathered together; and if that place were a
gipsy's tent, or a barn, I should call it by the
same good name notwithstanding. And now,
for what is my present home: which, however
alarming your expectations may be, will neither
terrify you by its extent nor its magnificence!"
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 35.
HOME-An abandoned.
God knows I had no part in it while they re-
mained there, but it pained me to think of the
dear old place as altogether abandoned; of the
weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen
leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I
imagined how the winds of winter would howl
round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the
window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts
on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their
solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave
in the churchyard, underneath the tree: and it
seemed as if the house were dead too, now, and
all connected with my father and mother were
faded away.-David Copperfield, Chap. 17.
HOME-A desolate.
Florence lived alone in the great dreary
house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived
alone; and the blank walls looked down upon
her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gor-
gon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty into
stone.
No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut
up in the heart of a thick wood, was ever more
solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her
father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood
lowering on the street: always by night, when
lights were shining from neighboring windows,
a blot upon its scanty brightness; always by
day, a frown upon its never-smiling face.
There were not two dragon sentries keeping
ward before the gate of this abode, as in magic
legend are usually found on duty over the
But how the graces and elegances which she wronged innocence imprisoned; but besides a
had dispersed about the poorly-furnished room, glowering visage, with its thin lips parted wicked-
went to the heart of Nicholas! Flowers, plants, ly, that surveyed all comers from above the arch-
birds, the harp, the old piano whose notes had way of the door, there was a monstrous fantasy of
sounded so much sweeter in by-gone times; rusty iron, curling and twisting like a petrifaction
how many struggles had it cost her to keep of an arbor over the threshold, budding in spikes
these two last links of that broken chain which and corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either
bound her yet to home! With every slender side, two ominous extinguishers that seemed to
ornament, the occupation of her leisure hours, say, "Who enter here, leave light behind!"
|
A FAMILY REUNION AT TOODLE'S.
225
*

HOME
225
There were no talismanic characters engraven on
the portal, but the house was now so neglected in
appearance, that boys chalked the railings and
the pavement-particularly round the corner
where the side wall was-and drew ghosts on the
stable door; and being sometimes driven off by
Mr. Towlinson, made portraits of him in return,
with his ears growing out horizontally from under
his hat. Noise ceased to be within the shadow of
the roof. The brass band that came into the
street once a week, in the morning, never brayed
a note in at those windows; but all such com-
pany, down to a poor little piping organ of weak
intellect, with an imbecile party of automaton
dancers, waltzing in and out of folding-doors,
fell off from it with one accord, and shunned it
as a hopeless place.
The spell upon it was more wasting than the
spell that used to set enchanted houses sleeping |
once upon a time, but left their waking fresh-
ness unimpaired.
The passive desolation of disuse was every-
where silently manifest about it. Within doors,
curtains, drooping heavily, lost their old folds
and shapes, and hung like cumbrous palls.
Hecatombs of furniture, still piled and covered
up, shrunk like imprisoned and forgotten men,
and changed insensibly. Mirrors were dim as
with the breath of years. Patterns of carpets
faded and became perplexed and faint, like the
memory of those years' trifling incidents.
Boards, starting at unwonted footsteps, creaked
and shook. Keys rusted in the locks of doors.
Damp started on the walls, and as the stains
came out, the pictures seemed to go in and
secrete themselves. Mildew and mould began
to lurk in closets. Fungus trees grew in corners
of the cellars. Dust accumulated, nobody knew
whence or how: spiders, moths, and grubs were
heard of every day. An exploratory black-beetle
now and then was found immovable upon the
stairs, or in an upper room, as wondering how
he got there. Rats began to squeak and
scuffle in the night-time, through dark galleries
they mined behind the panelling.
The dreary magnificence of the state-rooms,
seen imperfectly by the doubtful light admitted
through closed shutters, would have answered
well enough for an enchanted abode. Such as
the tarnished paws of gilded lions, stealthily
put out from beneath their wrappers; the marble
Îineaments of busts on pedestals, fearfully re-
vealing themselves through veils; the clocks
that never told the time, or, if wound up by any
chance, told it wrong, and struck unearthly
numbers, which are not upon the dial; the acci-
dental tinklings among the pendant lustres,
more startling than alarm-bells; the softened
sounds and laggard air that made their way
among these objects, and a phantom crowd of
others, shrouded and hooded, and made spectral
of shape. But, besides, there was the great
staircase, where the lord of the place so rarely
set his foot, and by which his little child had
gone up to Heaven. There were other staircases
and passages where no one went for weeks to
gether; there were two closed rooms associated
with dead members of the family, and with
whispered recollections of them; and to all the
house but Florence, there was a gentle figure
moving through the solitude and gloom, that
gave to every lifeless thing a touch of present
human interest and wonder.
|
HOME
For Florence lived alone in the deserted
house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived
alone. and the cold walls looked down upon her
with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like
mind to stare her youth and beauty into stone.
The grass began to grow upon the roof, and
in the crevices of the basement paving. A scaly,
crumbling vegetation sprouted round the win-
dow-sills. Fragments of mortar lost their hold
upon the inside of the unused chimneys, and
came dropping down. The two trees with the
smoky trunks were blighted high up, and the
withered branches domineered above the leaves.
Through the whole building white had turned
yellow, yellow nearly black and since the time
when the poor lady died, it had slowly become
a dark gap in the long monotonous street.
But Florence bloomed there, like the king's
fair daughter in the story.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
HOME-A fashionable.
The saying is, that home is home, be it never
so homely. If it hold good in the opposite
contingency, and home is home be it never so
stately, what an altar to the Household Gods is
raised up here.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 35.
HOME-Family reunion at Toodle's.
Mr. Toodle had only three stages of existence.
He was either taking refreshment in the bosom
just mentioned, or he was tearing through the
country at from twenty-five to fifty miles an hour,
or he was sleeping after his fatigues. He was
always in a whirlwind or a calm, and a peace-
able, contented, easy-going man Mr. Toodle
was in either state, who seemed to have made
over all his own inheritance of fuming and fret-
ting to the engines with which he was connected,
which panted, and gasped, and chafed, and
wore themselves out, in a most unsparing man-
ner, while Mr. Toodle led a mild and equable
life.
Polly, my gal," said Mr. Toodle, with a
young Toodle on each knee, and two more
making tea for him, and plenty more scattered
about-Mr. Toodle was never out of children,
but always kept a good supply on hand-" you
an't seen our Biler lately, have you?"
No," replied Polly, "but he's almost certain
to look in to-night. It's his right evening, and
he's very regular.'
"I suppose," said Mr. Toodle, relishing his
meal infinitely, " as our Biler is a doin' now about,
as well as a boy can do, eh, Polly?”
'Oh! he's a doing beautiful!" responded Polly.
"He an't got to be at all secret-like—has he,
Polly?" inquired Mr. Toodle.
"No!" said Mrs. Toodle, plumply.
*
*
*
"You see, my boys and gals," said Mr. Too-
dle, looking round upon his family, "wotever
you're up to in a honest way, it's my opinion
as you can't do better than be open. If you
find yourselves in cuttings or in tunnels, don't
you play no secret games. Keep your whistles
going, and let's know where you are.
*
*
*
*
*
This profound reflection Mr. Toodle washed
down with a pint mug of tea, and proceeded to
solidify with a great weight of bread and but-
ter; charging his young daughters, meanwhile,
to keep plenty of hot water in the pot, as he
HOME
226
was uncommon dry, and should take the indefi-
nite quantity of "a sight of mugs," before his
thirst was appeased.
In satisfying himself, however, Mr. Toodle
was not regardless of the younger branches
about him, who, although they had made their
own evening repast, were on the look-out for
irregular morsels as possessing a relish. These
he distributed now and then to the expectant
circle, by holding out great wedges of bread
and butter, to be bitten at by the family in law-
ful succession, and by serving out small doses
of tea in like manner with a spoon; which
snacks had such a relish in the mouths of these
young Toodles, that, after partaking of the same,
they performed private dances of ecstasy among
themselves, and stood on one leg a piece, and
hopped, and indulged in other saltatory tokens
of gladness. These vents for their excitement |
found, they gradually closed about Mr. Toodle
again, and eyed him hard as he got through
more bread and butter, and tea; affecting,
however, to have no further expectations of
their own in reference to those viands, but to
be conversing on foreign subjects, and whisper-
ing confidentially.
Mr. Toodle, in the midst of this family group,
and setting an awful example to his children in
the way of appetite, was conveying the two
young Toodles on his knees to Birmingham by
special engine, and was contemplating the rest
over a barrier of bread and butter, when Rob
the Grinder, in his sou'wester hat and mourning
slops, presented himself.
*
*
*
*
Why, Polly!" cried Jemima. "You! what
a turn you have given me! who'd have thought
it! come along in, Polly! How well you do
look to be sure! The children will go half
wild to see you, Polly, that they will."
HONOR
ginning with the bird waltz; passing, by a natu
ral association of ideas, to her bird-a very high-
shouldered canary, stricken in years, and much
rumpled, but a piercing singer, as Princess's
Place well knew; taking, next in order, the lit-
tle china ornaments, paper fly-cages, and so
forth; and coming round, in good time, to the
plants, which generally required to be snipped
here and there with a pair of scissors, for some
botanical reason that was very powerful with
Miss Tox.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 29.
|
HOME-Its peace and consolation.
Florence felt that, for her, there was greater
peace within it than elsewhere. It was better
and easier to keep her secret shut up there
among the tall dark walls, than to carry her
abroad into the light, and try to hide it from a
crowd of happy eyes. It was better to pursue
the study of her loving heart, alone, and find no
new discouragements in loving hearts about her.
It was easier to hope, and pray, and love on, all
uncared for, yet with constancy and patience, in
the tranquil sanctuary of such remembrances,
although it moulded, rusted, and decayed about
her; than in a new scene, let its gayety be what
it would. She welcomed back her old enchanted
dream of life, and longed for the old dark door
to close upon her, once again.
HOMELESSNESS.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 28.
In the wildness of her sorrow, shame, and
terror, the forlorn girl hurried through the sun-
shine of a bright morning, as if it were the dark-
ness of a winter night. Wringing her hands
and weeping bitterly, insensible to everything
but the deep wound in her breast, stunned by
the loss of all she loved, left like the sole sur-
vivor on a lonely shore from the wreck of a
great vessel, she fled without a thought, without
a hope, without a purpose, but to fly somewhere
That they did, if one might judge from the
noise they made, and the way in which they
dashed at Polly and dragged her to a low chair-anywhere.
in the chimney corner, where her own honest
apple-face became immediately the centre of a
bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy
cheeks close to it, and all evidently the growth
of the same tree.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 38.
HOME-Of Miss Tox.
The cheerful vista of the long street, burnished
by the morning light, the sight of the blue sky
and airy clouds, the vigorous freshness of the day,
so flushed and rosy in its conquest of the night,
awakened no responsive feelings in her so hurt
bosom. Somewhere, anywhere, to hide her
head! somewhere, anywhere, for refuge, never
more to look upon the place from which she fled!
But there were people going to and fro; there
were opening shops, and servants at the doors
of houses; there was the rising clash and roar
of the day's struggle. Florence saw surprise
and curiosity in the faces flitting past her,
saw long shadows coming back upon the pave-
ment; and heard voices that were strange to her
asking her where she went, and what the matter
was; and though these frightened her the more
at first, and made her hurry on the faster, they
did her the good service of recalling her in some
degree to herself, and reminding her of the
necessity of greater composure.
Miss Tox, all unconscious of any such rare
appearances in connection with Mr. Dombey's
house, as scaffoldings and ladders, and men with
their heads tied up in pocket-handkerchiefs, glar-
ing in at the windows like flying genii or strange
birds-having breakfasted one morning at about
this eventful period of time, on her customary
viands: to wit, one French roll rasped, one egg,
new laid (or warranted to be), and one little pot
of tea, wherein was infused one little silver
scoop-full of that herb on behalf of Miss Tox,
and one little silver scoop-full on behalf of the
teapot—a flight of fancy in which good house-
keepers delight; went up-stairs to set forth the
bird waltz on the harpsichord, to water and ar- Where to go? Still somewhere, anywhere!
range the plants, to dust the nick-nacks, and, still going on; but where? She thought of the
according to her daily custom, to make her little only other time she had been lost in the wide
drawing-room the garland of Princess's Place. wilderness of London-though not lost as now
Miss Tox endued herself with the pair of an--and went that way. To the home of Walter's
cient gloves, like dead leaves, in which she was uncle.-Dombey & Son, Chap, 48.
accustomed to perform these avocations-hidden
from human sight at other times in a table
drawer and went methodically to work; be-
HONOR-The true path of.
"Let no man turn aside. ever so slightly. fron
HONOR
227
HOPES
""
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 79.
the broad path of honor, on the plausible pre-entered, and the faces on which they shone, his
tence that he is justified by the goodness of his own face not excepted, were soon quietly cheer-
end. All good ends can be worked out by good ful. They talked of many subjects (his partner
means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may never had had such a ready store to draw upon
be counted so at once, and left alone.'
for the beguiling of the time), and so to bed, and
to sleep. While the flowers, pale and unreal in
the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and
thus do greater things that once were in our
breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the
eternal seas.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 28.
HOPES-Of Captain Cuttle.
HONOR-The word of.
My good fellow," retorted Mr. Boffin, "you
have my word; and how you can have that,
without my honor too, I don't know. I've
sorted a lot of dust in my time, but I never
knew the two things go into separate heaps."
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 14.
HONESTY-The luxury of.
""
|
Captain Cuttle, addressing his face to the
sharp wind and slanting rain, looked up at the
heavy scud that was flying fast over the wilder-
ness of house-tops, and looked for something
"A man,'
says Sampson, "who loses forty- cheery there in vain. The prospect near at hand
seven pound ten in one morning by his honesty, was no better. In sundry tea-chests and other
is a man to be envied. If it had been eighty | rough boxes at his feet, the pigeons of Rob the
pound, the luxuriousness of feeling would have Grinder were cooing like so many dismal breezes
been increased. Every pound lost, would have getting up. Upon the Captain's coarse blue
been a hundredweight of happiness gained. | vest the cold rain-drops started like steel beads;
The still small voice, Christopher," cries Brass, and he could hardly maintain himself aslant
smiling, and tapping himself on the bosom, " is against the stiff Nor'wester that came pressing
a-singing comic songs within me, and all is hap- against him, importunate to topple him over the
piness and joy!”—Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 57. parapet, and throw him on the pavement below.
If there were any Hope alive that evening, the
Captain thought, as he held his hat on, it cer-
tainly kept house, and wasn't out of doors; so
the Captain, shaking his head in a despondent
manner, went in to look for it.
HONEST MAN-An.
"I tell you, ma'am," said Mr. Witherden,
"what I think as an honest man, which, as the
poet observes, is the noblest work of God. I
agree with the poet in every particular, ma'am.
The mountainous Alps on the one hand, or a
humming-bird on the other, is nothing, in point
of workmanship, to an honest man-or woman.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 14.
HOPE-Disappointed.
Most men will be found sufficiently true to
themselves to be true to an old idea. It is no
proof of an inconstant mind, but exactly the
opposite, when the idea will not bear close com-
parison with the reality, and the contrast is a
fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam's case. In
his youth he had ardently loved this woman,
and had heaped upon her all the locked-up
wealth of his affection and imagination. That
wealth had been, in his desert home, like Robin-
son Crusoe's money; exchangeable with no one,
lying idle in the dark to rust, until he poured it
out for her. Ever since that memorable time,
though he had, until the night of his arrival, as
completely dismissed her from any association
with his Present and Future as if she had been
dead (which she might easily have been for any-
thing he knew), he had kept the old fancy of the
Past unchanged, in its old sacred place. And
now, after all, the last of the Patriarchs coolly
walked into the parlor, saying in effect, "Be
good enough to throw it down and dance upon
it."-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
HOPES-Disappointed.
When he had walked on the river's brink in the
peaceful moonlight, for some half-an-hour, he
put his hand in his breast, and tenderly took out
the handful of roses. Perhaps he put them to
his heart, perhaps he put them to his lips, but
certainly he bent down on the shore, and gently
launched them on the flowing river. Pale and
unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them
away.
The lights were bright within doors when he
Captain Cuttle descended slowly to the little
back parlor, and, seated in his accustomed chair,
looked for it in the fire; but it was not there,
though the fire was bright. He took out his
tobacco-box and pipe, and composing himself to
smoke, looked for it in the red glow from the
bowl, and in the wreaths of vapor that curled
upward from his lips; but there was not so
much as an atom of the rust of Hope's anchor
in either. He tried a glass of grog; but melan-
choly truth was at the bottom of that well, and
he couldn't finish it. He made a turn or two in
the shop, and looked for Hope among the instru-
ments; but they obstinately worked out reckon-
ings for the missing ship, in spite of any oppo-
sition he could offer, that ended at the bottom
of the lone sea.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
"Hope, you see, Wal'r," said the Captain,
sagely, "Hope. It's that as animates you. Hope
is a buoy, for which you overhaul your Little
Warbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my
lad, like any other buoy, it only floats; it can't
be steered nowhere. Along with the figure-head
of Hope," said the Captain, "there's a anchor
but what's the good of my having a anchor, if I
can't find no bottom to let it go in?”
Captain Cuttle said this rather in his charac-
ter of a sagacious citizen and householder, bound
to impart a morsel from his stores of wisdom to
an inexperienced youth, than in his own proper
person. Indeed, his face was quite luminous as
he spoke, with new hope, caught from Walter;
and he appropriately concluded by slapping
him on the back, and saying, with enthusiasm,
"Hooroar, my lad! Indiwidually, I'm o' your
opinion."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 50.
Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew
how much hope had survived within him under
discouragement, until he felt its death-shock.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
1
HOPES
HOPES-Unrealized.
228
HORSEBACK
thoughts and wishes centred, one bright frosty
morning: for with this gallant equipage he was
about to drive to Salisbury alone, there to meet
with the new pupil, and thence to bring him
It is when our budding hopes are nipped be-
yond recovery by some rough wind, that we are
the most disposed to picture to ourselves what
flowers they might have borne, if they had flour-home in triumph.—Martin Chuzzlewit, “Chap. 5.
ished.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 10.
HOPE-A subtle essence.
Such is Hope, Heaven's own gift to struggling
mortals; pervading, like some subtle essence
from the skies, all things, both good and bad;
as universal as death, and more infectious than
disease!-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 19.
HORSES AND DOGS.
"There ain't no sort of orse that I ain't bred,
and no sort of dorg. Orses and dorgs is some
men's fancy. They're wittles and drink to me-
lodging, wife, and children-reading, writing,
and 'rithmetic-snuff, tobacker, and sleep."
"That ain't the sort of man to see sitting be-
hind a coach-box, is it though?" said William
in my ear, as he handled the reins.
I construed this remark into an indication of
a wish that he should have my place, so I blush-
ingly offered to resign it.
Well, if you don't mind, sir," said William,
"I think it would be more correct."
David Copperfield, Chap. 19.
HORSE-The carrier's.
The carrier's horse was the laziest horse in
the world, I should hope, and shuffled along,
with his head down, as if he liked to keep peo-
ple waiting to whom the packages were directed.
I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled
audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said
he was only troubled with a cough.
David Copperfield, Chap. 3.
HORSE-Mr. Pecksniff's.
|
HORSE-Tenacity of life in a.
How old is that horse, my friend?" in-
quired Mr. Pickwick, rubbing his nose with the
shilling he had reserved for the fare.
Forty-two," replied the driver, eying him
askant.
"What!" ejaculated Mr. Pickwick, laying his
hand upon his note-book. The driver reiterated
his former statement. Mr. Pickwick looked very
hard at the man's face, but his features were im-
movable, so he noted down the fact forthwith.
And how long do you keep him out at a
time?" inquired Mr. Pickwick searching for
further information.
"Two or three veeks," replied the man.
"Weeks! said Mr. Pickwick in astonish-
ment-and out came the note-book again.
"He lives at Pentonwil when he's at home,"
observed the driver, coolly, "but we seldom
takes him home, on account of his veakness."
"On account of his weakness!" reiterated
the perplexed Mr. Pickwick.
"He always falls down when he's took out of
the cab," continued the driver; "but when he's
in it, we bears him up wery tight, and takes him
in wery short, so as he can't wery well fall
down; and we got a pair o' precious large
wheels on, so ven he does move, they run after
him, and he must go on-he can't help it."
Mr. Pickwick entered every word of this
statement in his note-book, with the view of
communicating it to the club, as a singular in-
stance of the tenacity of life in horses, under
trying circumstances.-Pickwick, Chap. 2.
HORSE—A fast.
"Here's the gen'lm'n at last!" said one,
touching his hat with mock politeness. "Wery
glad to see you, sir,—been a-waiting for you
these six weeks. Jump in, if you please, sir!"
"Nice light fly and fast trotter, sir," said
another: "fourteen miles a hour, and surround-
in' objects rendered inwisible by ex-treme we-
locity!
""
Large fly for your luggage, sir," cried a
Wery large fly here, sir-reg'lar blue-
third.
bottle!"
The best of architects and land surveyors
kept a horse, in whom the enemies already men-
tioned more than once in these pages, pretended
to detect a fanciful resemblance to his master.
Not in his outward person, for he was a raw-
boned, haggard horse, always on a much shorter
allowance of corn than Mr. Pecksniff; but in his
moral character, wherein, said they, he was full
of promise, but of no performance. He was
always, in a manner, going to go, and never
going. When at his slowest rate of travelling, |
he would sometimes lift up his legs so high, and
display such mighty action, that it was difficult "Here's your fly, sir!" shouted another aspir-
to believe he was doing less than fourteen miles ing charioteer, mounting the box, and inducing
an hour; and he was forever so perfectly satis- an old gray horse to indulge in some imperfect
fied with his own speed, and so little discon- reminiscences of a canter. "Look at him, sir!
certed by opportunities of comparing himself-temper of a lamb and haction of a steam-
with the fastest trotters, that the illusion was the ingein!"-Tales, Chap. 4.
more difficult of resistance. He was a kind of
animal who infused into the breasts of strangers
a lively sense of hope, and possessed all those
who knew him better with a grim despair. In
what respect, having these points of character,
he might be fairly likened to his master, that
good man's slanderers only can explain. But
it is a melancholy truth, and a deplorable in-
stance of the uncharitableness of the world, that
they made the comparison.
In this horse, and the hooded vehicle, what-
ever its proper name might be, to which he was
usually harnessed-it was more like a gig with
a tumor, than anything else—all Mr. Pinch's
HORSEBACK-Mr. Winkle on.
Bless my soul !" said Mr. Pickwick, as they
stood upon the pavement while the coats were
being put in. Bless my soul! who's to drive?
"
I never thought of that.
Oh! you, of course," said Mr. Tupman.
"Of course," said Mr. Snodgrass.
"I!" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.
"Not the slightest fear, sir," interposed the
hostler. "Warrant him quiet, sir; a hinfant in
arms might drive him."
"He don't shy, does he?" inquired Mr. Pick-
wick.
HOSPITAL
229
Shy, sir?-He wouldn't shy if he was to
meet a vaggin-load of monkeys with their tails
burnt off."
The last recommendation was indisputable.
Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass got into the
bin; Mr. Pickwick ascended to his perch, and
deposited his feet on a floor-clothed shelf,
erected beneath it for that purpose.
66
"Now, Shiny Villiam," said the hostler to the
deputy hostler, "give the gen❜lm'n the ribbins."
Shiny Villiam"-so called, probably from his
sleek hair and cily countenance-placed the
reins in Mr. Pickwick's left hand; and the
upper hostler thrust a whip into his right.
"Wo-o!" cried Mr. Pickwick, as the tall
quadruped evinced a decided inclination to
back into the coffee-room window.
"Wo-o!" echoed Mr. Tupman and Mr.
Snodgrass, from the bin.
Only his playfulness, gen'lm'n," said the
head hostler encouragingly; "jist kitch hold on
him, Villiam." The deputy restrained the ani-
mal's impetuosity, and the principal ran to assist
Mr. Winkle in mounting.
T'other side, sir, if you please."
"Blowed if the gen'lm'n worn't a gettin' up on
the wrong side," whispered a grinning post-boy
to the inexpressibly gratified waiter.
Mr. Winkle, thus instructed, climbed into his
saddle, with about as much difficulty as he would
have experienced in getting up the side of a
first-rate man-of-war.
"All right?" inquired Mr. Pickwick, with an
inward presentiment that it was all wrong.
"All right,” replied Mr. Winkle, faintly.
"Let 'em go," cried the hostler,-" Hold him
in, sir," and away went the chaise, and the sad-
dle-horse, with Mr. Pickwick on the box of the
one, and Mr. Winkle on the back of the other,
to the delight and gratification of the whole inn-
yard.
"What makes him go sideways?" said Mr.
Snodgrass in the bin, to Mr. Winkle in the saddle.
I can't imagine,” replied Mr. Winkle. His
horse was drifting up the street in the most
mysterious manner-side first, with his head
towards one side of the way, and his tail to-
wards the other.
|
HOSPITAL
O the sunken eyes that turned to me as 1
walked between the rows of beds, or-worse
still-that glazedly looked at the white ceiling,
and saw nothing and cared for nothing! Here
lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly covered
with a thin, unwholesome skin, that not a bone
in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp
the arm above the elbow in my finger and thumb.
Here lay a man with the black scurvy eating
his legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth all
gaunt and bare. This bed was empty because
gangrene had set in, and the patient had died
but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless one,.
because its occupant was sinking fast, and could
only be roused to turn the poor pinched mask
of face upon the pillow, with a feeble moan.
The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful
brightness of the deep-set eyes, the lips of lead,
the hands of ivory, the recumbent human images
lying in the shadow of death with a kind of
solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had
died aboard the ship and were lying at the bot-
tom of the sea, O Pangloss, GOD forgive you!
In one bed lay a man whose life had been
saved (as it was hoped) by deep incisions in the
feet and legs. While I was speaking to him, a
nurse came up to change the poultices which
this operation had rendered necessary, and I
had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to
turn away merely to spare myself. He was
sorely wasted and keenly susceptible, but the
efforts he made to subdue any expression of
impatience or suffering were quite heroic. It
was easy to see in the shrinking of the figure,
and the drawing of the bedclothes over the head,
how acute the endurance was, and it made me
shrink too, as if I were in pain; but when the
new bandages were on, and the poor feet were
composed again, he made an apology for him-
self (though he had not uttered a word), and said
plaintively, "I am so tender and weak, you see,
sir!" Neither from him, nor from any one sufferer
of the whole ghastly number, did I hear a com-
plaint. Of thankfulness for present solicitude and
care, I heard much; of complaint, not a word.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 8.
HOSPITAL-Associations of a.
Mr. Pickwick had no leisure to observe either In our rambles through the streets of London
this or any other particular, the whole of his fac- after evening has set in, we often pause beneath
ulties being concentrated in the management of the windows of some public hospital, and pic-
the animal attached to the chaise, who displayed ture to ourselves the gloomy and mournful scenes
various peculiarities, highly interesting to a by- that are passing within. The sudden moving
stander, but by no means equally amusing to of a taper as its feeble ray shoots from window
any one seated behind him. Besides constantly to window, until its light gradually disappears,
jerking his head up, in a very unpleasant and as if it were carried farther back into the room
uncomfortable manner, and tugging at the reins to the bedside of some suffering patient, is
to an extent which rendered it a matter of great enough to awaken a whole crowd of reflections;
difficulty for Mr. Pickwick to hold them, he had the mere glimmering of the low-burning lamps,
a singular propensity for darting suddenly every which, when all other habitations are wrapped
now and then to the side of the road, then stop-in darkness and slumber, denote the chamber
ping short, and then rushing forward for some
minutes, at a speed which it was wholly impos-
sible to control.-Pickwick, Chap. 5.
HOSPITAL-The patients in a.
We went into a large ward containing some
twenty or five-and-twenty beds. We went into
several such wards, one after another. I find
it very difficult to indicate what a shocking
sight I saw in them without frightening the
reader from the perusal of these lines, and defeat-
ing my object of making it known.
where so many forms are writhing with pain,
or wasting with disease, is sufficient to check
the most boisterous merriment.
Who can tell the anguish of those weary
hours, when the only sound the sick man
hears, is the disjointed wanderings of 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
HOSPITAL
230
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?
Characters (Sketches), Chap. 6.
HOSPITAL-A female.
HOTEL
HOSPITALS-The sick in.
Abed in these miserable rooms, here on bed-
steads, there (for a change, as I understood it)
on the floor, were women in every stage of dis-
tress and disease. None but those who have
attentively observed such scenes can conceive
the extraordinary variety of expression still la
In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such tent under the general monotony and uniform-
fables of a golden time as youth, the prime of ity of color, attitude, and condition. The form
life, or a hale old age. In ten minutes all the a little coiled up and turned away, as though it
lights of womankind seemed to have been had turned its back on this world forever; the
blown out, and nothing in that way to be left uninterested face, at once lead-colored and yel-
this vault to brag of but the flickering and ex- the haggard mouth a little dropped; the hand
low, looking passively upward from the pillow;
piring snuffs.
outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent, so
light and yet so heavy-these were on every
said ever so slight a word to the figure lying
pallet; but when I stopped beside a bed, and
there, the ghost of the old character came into
the face, and made the Foul ward as various as
the fair world. No one appeared to care to
live, but no one complained; all who could
speak said that as much was done for them as
And what was very curious was, that these
dim old women had one company notion which
was the fashion of the place. Every old woman
who became aware of a visitor, and was not in
who became aware of a visitor, and was not in
bed, hobbled over a form into her accustomed
seat, and became one of a line of dim old women
confronting another line of dim old women
across a narrow table. There was no obliga-
tion whatever upon them to range themselves
in this way; it was their manner of "receiv-
ing." As a rule, they made no attempt to talk
to one another, or to look at the visitor, or to
look at anything, but sat silently working their
mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows.
Among the bedridden there was great pa-
tience, great reliance on the books under the
pillow, great faith in GOD. All cared for sym-
pathy, but none much cared to be encouraged
with hope of recovery; on the whole, I should
say, it was considered rather a distinction to
have a complication of disorders, and to be in a
worse way than the rest.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 3.
HOSPITAL-Maggy's experience in a.
"My history?" cried Maggy. "Little
mother."
could be done there-that the attendance was
heavy, but they had nothing to ask for.
kind and patient-that their suffering was very
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 3.
HOTEL-A fashionable.
Now, Jairing's being an hotel for families and
counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up a great
gentlemen, in high repute among the midland
spirit when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she
felt that she was going to see Life. Arriving
should have a chop there. That lady likewise
on that gay and festive scene, they found the
second waiter, in a flabby undress, cleaning the
windows of the empty coffee-room; and the first
waiter, denuded of his white tie, making up his
cruets behind the Post-Office Directory. The
latter (who took them in hand) was greatly put
out by their patronage, and showed his mind to
be troubled by a sense of the pressing necessity
of instantly smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into
the obscurest corner of the building.
slighted lady (who is the pride of her division
of the county) was immediately conveyed, by
several dark passages, and up and down several
steps, into a penitential apartment at the back
of the house, where five invalided old plate-
warmers leaned up against one another under a
discarded old melancholy sideboard, and where
the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables in the
house lay thick. Also, a sofa, of incomprehen-
"Ten years old,” said Maggy, nodding her sible form regarded from any sofane point of
head. "But what a nice hospital! So com-view, murmured, "Bed;" while an air of min-
fortable, wasn't it? Oh, so nice it was. Such
a Ev'nly place!"
"She means me," said Dorrit, rather con-
fused;
"she is very much attached to me.
Her old grandmother was not so kind to her as
she should have been ; was she, Maggy?
""
Maggy shook her head, made a drinking-ves-
sel of her clenched left-hand, drank out of it,
and said, Gin." Then beat an imaginary
child, and said, "Broom-handles and pokers."
"When Maggy was ten years old," said Dor-
rit, watching her face while she spoke, 'she
had a bad fever, sir, and she has never grown
any older ever since."
“She had never been at peace before, sir,"
said Dorrit, turning towards Arthur for an in-
stant and speaking low, "and she always runs
off upon that."
"Such beds there is there!" cried Maggy.
"Such lemonades! Such oranges! Such d'li-
cious broth and wine! Such Chicking! Oh,
AIN'T it a delightful place to go and stop
at?"
"So Maggy stopped there as long as she
could," said Dorrit, in her former tone of tell-
ing a child's story; the tone designed for Mag-
gy's ear, "and at last when she could stop there
no longer, she came out.
"
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 9.
This
gled fluffiness and heeltaps added, "Second
Waiter's." Secreted in this dismal hold, ob-
jects of a mysterious distrust and suspicion,
Mr. Grazinglands and his charming partner wait-
ed twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never
came to a fire), twenty-five minutes for the
sherry, half an hour for the table-cloth, forty
minutes for the knives and forks, three quarters
of an hour for the chops, and an hour for the
potatoes. On settling the little bill-which
was not much more than the day's pay of a
Lieutenant in the navy-Mr. Grazinglands took
heart to remonstrate against the general quality
and cost of his reception. To whom the waiter
replied, substantially, that Jairing's made it a
merit to have accepted him on any terms,
'For," added the waiter (unmistakably coughing
HOTELS
231
at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her division
of the county)" when individuals is not staying
in the 'Ouse, their favors is not as a rule looked
upon as making it worth Mr. Jairing's while; nor
is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing
wishes." Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands
passed out of Jairing's hotel for Families and
Gentlemen in a state of the greatest depression,
scorned by the bar, and did not recover their
self-respect for several days.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 6.
HOTELS-Their characteristics.
We all know the new hotel near the station,
where it is always gusty, going up the lane
which is always muddy, where we are sure to
arrive at night, and where we make the gas start
awfully when we open the front door. We all
know the flooring of the passages and staircases
that is too new, and the walls that are too new,
and the house that is haunted by the ghost of
mortar. We all know the doors that have
cracked, and the cracked shutters through which
we get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon. We
all know the new people who have come to keep
the new hotel, and who wish they had never
come, and who (inevitable result) wish we had
never come. We all know how much too scant
and smooth and bright the new furniture is, and
how it has never settled down, and cannot fit
itself into right places, and will get into wrong
places. We all know how the gas, being lighted,
shows maps of Damp upon the walls. We all
know how the ghost of mortar passes into our
sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up to bed with
us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and
prevents the smoke from following. We all
know how a leg of our chair comes off at break-
fast in the morning, and how the dejected waiter
attributes the accident to a general greenness
pervading the establishment, and informs us, in
reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to
say he is an entire stranger in that part of the
country, and is going back to his own connec-
tion on Saturday.
We all know, on the other hand, the great
station hotel, belonging to the company of pro-
prietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the
back outskirts of any place we like to name,
and where we look out of our palatial windows
at little back-yards and gardens, old summer-
houses, fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties.
We all know this hotel, in which we can get
anything we want, after its kind, for money; but
where nobody is glad to see us, or sorry to see
us, or minds (our bill paid) whether we come or
go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about us.
We all know this hotel, where we have no in-
dividuality, but put ourselves into the general
post, as it were, and are sorted and disposed of
according to our division. We all know that
we can get on very well indeed at such a place,
but still not perfectly well; and this may be
because the place is largely wholesale, and there
is a lingering personal retail interest within us
that asks to be satisfied.
•
T: sum up. My uncommercial travelling has
hot yet brought me to the conclusion that we are
close to perfection in these matters. And just
as I do not believe that the end of the world will
ever be near at hand, so long as any of the very
tiresome and arrogant people who constantly
predict that catastrophe are left in it, so I shall
HOUSE
have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while
any of the uncomfortable superstitions I have
glanced at remain in existence.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 6.
HOUSE-Of a Barnacle.
Arthur Clennam came to a squeezed house,
with a ram-shackle bowed front, little dingy
windows, and a little dark area like a damp
waistcoat-pocket, which he found to be number
twenty-four Mews Street, Grosvenor Square.
To the sense of smell, the house was like a sort
of bottle filled with a strong distillation of mews;
and when the footman opened the door, he
seemed to take the stopper out.
The footman was to the Grosvenor Square
footmen, what the house was to the Grosvenor
Square houses. Admirable in his way, his way
was a back and a bye way. His gorgeousness
was not unmixed with dirt; and both in com-
plexion and consistency, he hau suffered from
the closeness of his pantry. A sallow flabbiness
was upon him, when he took the stopper out,
and presented the bottle to Mr. Clennam's nose.
"Be so good as to give that card to Mr. Tite
Barnacle, and to say that I have just now seen
the younger Mr. Barnacle, who recommended
me to call here."
The footman (who had as many large buttons
with the Barnacle crest upon them, on the flaps
of his pockets, as if he were the family strong
box, and carried the plate and jewels about with
him, buttoned up) pondered over the card a
little; then said, "Walk in." It required some
judgment to do it without butting the inner hall-
door open, and in the consequent mental con-
fusion and physical darkness slipping down the
kitchen stairs. The visitor, however, brought
himself up safely on the door-mat.
Still the footman said "Walk in," so the vis-
itor followed him. At the inner hall-door,
another bottle seemed to be presented, and
another stopper taken out. This second vial
appeared to be filled with concentrated provis-
ions, and extract of Sink from the pantry. After
a skirmish in the narrow passage, occasioned by
the footman's opening the door of the dismal
dining-room with confidence, finding some one
there with consternation, and backing on the
visitor with disorder, the visitor was shut up,
pending his announcement, in a close back
parlor. There he had an opportunity of re-
freshing himself with both the bottles at once,
looking out at a low blinding back wall three
feet off, and speculating on the number of Bar-
nacle families within the bills of mortality who
lived in such hutches of their own free flunkey
choice.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10.
HOUSE-A sombre.
He stepped into the sober, silent, air-tight
house-one might have fancied it to have been
stifled by Mutes in the Eastern manner-and
the door, closing again, seemed to shut out
sound and motion. The furniture was formal,
grave, and quaker-like, but well kept; and
had as prepossessing an aspect as anything, from
a human creature to a wooden stool, that is
meant for much use and is preserved for little,
can ever wear. There was a grave clock, tick-
ing somewhere up the staircase; and there was
a songless bird in the same direction, pecking
at his cage as if he were ticking too,
The par
HOUSE
232
lor-fire ticked in the grate. There was only one
person on the parlor-hearth, and the loud watch
in his pocket ticked audibly.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
HOUSE-An old.
Passing, now the mouldy hall of some obsolete
Worshipful Company, now the illuminated win-
dows of a Congregationless Church, that seemed
to be waiting for some adventurous Belzoni to
dig it out and discover its history; passing
silent warehouses and wharves, and here and
there a narrow alley leading to the river, where
a wretched little bill. FOUND DROWNED, was
weeping on the wet wall; he came at last to
the house he sought. An old brick house, so
dingy as to be all but black, standing by itself
within a gateway. Before it, a square court-
yard whe e a shrub or two and a patch of grass
were as rank (which is saying much) as the
iron railings inclosing them were rusty; behind
it, a jumble of roots. It was a double house,
with long, narrow, heavily-framed windows.
Many years ago it had had it in its mind to slide
down sideways; it had been propped up, how-
ever, and was leaning on some half-dozen gi-
gantic crutches; which gymnasium for the
neighboring cats, weather-stained, smoke-black-
ened, and overgrown with weeds, appeared in
these latter days to be no very sure reliance.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3.
In the course of the day too, Arthur looked
through the whole house. Dull and dark he
found it. The gaunt rooms, deserted for years
upon years, seemed to have settled down into a
gloomy lethargy from which nothing could rouse
them again. The furniture, at once spare and
lumbering, hid in the rooms rather than fur-
nished them, and there was no color in all the
house; such color as had ever been there, had
long ago started away on lost sunbeams-got
itself absorbed, perhaps, into flowers, butterflies,
plumage of birds, precious stones, what not.
There was not one straight floor, from the foun-
dation to the roof; the ceilings were so fantas-
tically clouded by smoke and dust, that old
women might have told fortunes in them, better
than in grouts of tea; the dead-cold hearths
showed no traces of having ever been warmed,
but in heaps of soot that had tumbled down the
chimneys, and eddied about in little dusky
whirlwinds when the doors were opened. In
what had once been a drawing-room, there were
a pair of meagre mirrors, with dismal proces-
sions of black figures carrying black garlands,
walking round the frames; but even these were
short of heads and legs, and one undertaker-like
Cupid had swung round on his own axis and
got upside down, and another had fallen off al-
together. Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5.
HOUSE-A tenement.
The house was very close, and had an un-
wholesome smell. The little staircase windows
looked in at the back windows of other houses
as unwholesome as itself, with poles and lines
thrust out of them, on which unsightly linen
hung: as if the inhabitants were angling for
clothes, and had had some wretched bites not
worth attending to. In the back garret-a
sickly-room, with a turn-up bedstead in it, so
HOUSE
hastily and recently turned up that the blankets
were boiling over, as it were, and keeping the
lid open-a half-finished breakfast of coffee and
toast, for two persons, was jumbled down any.
how on a rickety table.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 9.
surroundings
(of Mrs.
HOUSE — And
Gowan).
The house, on a little desert island, looked as
if it had broken away from somewhere else, and
had floated by chance into its present anchorage,
in company with a vine almost as much in want
of training as the poor wretches who were lying
under its leaves. The features of the surround-
ing picture were, a church with boarding and
scaffolding about it, which had been under sup-
posititious repair so long that the means of repair
looked a hundred years old, and had themselves
fallen into decay; a quantity of washed linen,
spread to dry in the sun; a number of houses
at odds with one another and grotesquely out
of the perpendicular, like rotten pre-Adamite
cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of
mites; and a feverish bewilderment of windows,
with their lattice-blinds all hanging askew, and
something draggled and dirty dangling out of
most of them.
On the first-floor of the house was a Bank-a
surprising experience for any gentleman of com-
mercial pursuits bringing laws for all mankind
from a British city-where the two spare clerks,
like dried dragoons, in green velvet caps adorned
with golden tassels, stood, bearded, behind a
small counter in a small room, containing no
other visible objects than an empty iron safe,
with the door open, a jug of water, and a paper-
ing of garlands of roses; but who, on lawful
requisition, by merely dipping their hands out
of sight, could produce exhaustless mounds of
five-franc pieces. Below the Bank was a suite of
three or four rooms with barred windows, which
had the appearance of a jail for criminal rats.
Above the Bank was Mrs. Gowan's residence.
Notwithstanding that its walls were blotched,
as if missionary maps were bursting out of them
to impart geographical knowledge; notwith-
standing that its weird furniture was forlornly
faded and musty, and that the prevailing Vene-
tian odor of bilge water and an ebb-tide on a
weedy shore was very strong; the place was
better within than it promised. The door was
opened by a smiling man like a reformed assas-
sin-a temporary servant-who ushered them
into the room where Mrs. Gowan sat.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6.
HOUSE-A gloomy.
A dead sort of house, with a dead wall over
the way and a dead gateway at the side, where
a pendant bell-handle produced two dead tinkles,
and a knocker produced a dead, flat, surface-tap-
ping, that seemed not to have depth enough in
it to penetrate even the cracked door. However,
the door jarred open on a dead sort of spring;
and he closed it behind him as he entered a
dull yard, soon brought to a close at the back
by another dead wall, where an attempt had
been made to train some creeping shrubs, which
were dead; and to make a little fountain in a
grotto, which was dry; and to decorate that with
a little statue, which was gone.
Little Dorrit Book II., Chap. 20.
HOUSE
HOUSE-In fashionable locality.
Like unexceptionable society, the opposing
rows of houses in Harley Street were very grim
with one another. Indeed, the mansions and
their inhabitants were so much alike in that re-
spect, that the people were often to be found
drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables,
in the shade of their own loftiness, staring at
the other side of the way with the dullness of
the houses.
233
Everybody knows how like the street, the
two dinner-rows of people who take their stand
by the street will be. The expressionless uni-
form twenty houses, all to be knocked at and
rung at in the same form, all approachable by the
same dull steps, all fended off by the same pat-
tern of railing, all with the same impracticable
fire-escapes, the same inconvenient fixtures in
their heads, and everything, without exception, to
be taken at a high valuation-who has not dined
with these? The house so drearily out of re
pair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed
house, the newly-fronted house, the corner house
with nothing but angular rooms, the house with
the blinds always down, the house with the
hatchment always up, the house where the col-
lector has called for one quarter of an Idea, and
found nobody at home-who has not dined
with these? The house that nobody will take,
and is to be had a bargain-who does not know
her? The showy house that was taken for life by
the disappointed gentleman, and which doesn't
suit him at all-who is unacquainted with that
haunted habitation?
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 21.
HOUSE-A debilitated.
HOUSE
Princess. I had stopped to look at the house
as I passed; and its seared red brick walls,
blocked windows, and strong green ivy, clasp.
ing even the stacks of chimneys with its
twigs and tendons, as if with sinewy old armis,
had made up a rich attractive mystery, of which
I was the hero.-Great Expectations, Chap. 29.
HOUSE-A fierce-looking.
They lived at Camberwell; in a house so hig
and fierce, that its mere outside, like the outside
of a giant's castle, struck terror into vulgar minds
and made bold persons quail. There was a great
front gate; with a great bell, whose handle was
in itself a note of admiration; and a great
lodge; which, being close to the house, rather
spoilt the look out certainly, but made the look-
in tremendous. At this entry, a great porter
kept constant watch and ward; and when he
gave the visitor high leave to pass, he rang a
second great bell, responsive to whose note a
great footman appeared in due time at the great
hall-door, with such great tags upon his liveried
shoulder that he was perpetually entangling and
hooking himself among the chairs and tables,
and led a life of torment which could scarcely
have been surpassed, if he had been a blue-bot-
tle in a world of cobwebs.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9.
HOUSE-An ancient, renovated.
Some attempts had been made, I noticed, to
infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by
repairing the costly old wood-work here and
there with common deal; but it was like the
marriage of a reduced old noble to a plebeian
pauper, and each party to the ill assorted union
shrunk away from the other.
David Copperfield, Chap. 50.
The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped
in its mantle of soot, and leaning heavily on the
crutches that had partaken of its decay and
worn out with it, never knew a healthy or cheer-HOUSE-An old-fashioned.
ful interval, let what would betide. If the sun
ever touched it, it was but with a ray, and that
was gone in half an hour; if the moonlight ever
fell upon it, it was only to put a few patches on
its doleful cloak, and make it look more wretched.
The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when
the nights and the smoke were clear enough;
and all bad weather stood by it with a rare
fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost,
and thaw lingering in that dismal enclosure,
when they had vanished from other places; and
as to snow, you should see it there for weeks,
long after it had changed from yellow to black,
slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place
had no other adherents. As to street noises, the
rumbling of wheels in the lane merely rushed in
at the gateway in going past, and rushed out
again; making the listening Mistress Affery
feel as if she were deaf, and recovered the sense
of hearing by instantaneous flashes. So with
whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all
pleasant human sounds. They leaped the gap
in a moment, and went upon their way.
At length we stopped before a very old house
bulging out over the road; a house with long,
low, lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and
beams with carved heads on the ends bulging
out too, so that I fancied the whole house was
leaning forward, trying to see who was passing
on the narrow pavement below. It was quite
spotless in its cleanliness. The old-fashioned
brass knocker on the low arched door, ornament-
ed with carved garlands of fruit and flowers,
twinkled like a star; the two stone steps de-
scending to the door were as white as if they had
been covered with fair linen; and all the angles
and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and
quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little
windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure
as any snow that ever fell upon the hills.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 15.
HOUSE-Illuminated by love.
She reserved it for me to restore the desolate
house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms,
set the clocks a going and the cold hearths a
blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the
vermin-in short, do all the shining deeds of
the young Knight of romance, and marry the
David Copperfield, Chap. 15.
HOUSE—A stiff looking.
The Town Hall stands like a brick and mor-
tar private on parade.—Reprinted Pieces.
HOUSE-Of a Southern planter.
The planter's house was an airy, rustic dwell
ing, that brought Defoe's description of such
places strongly to my recollection. The day was
very warm, but, the blinds all being closed, and
the windows and doors set wide open, a shady
coolness rustled through the rooms,which was ex-
quisitely refreshing after the glare and heat with-
out.
Before the windows was an open piazza,
HOUSE
234
HOUSE
where, in what they call the hot weather-what- seen all there are, and where there is a bounti
ever that may be they sling hammocks, and ful provision of little halls and passages, and
drink and doze luxuriously. I do not know how where you find still older cottage-rooms in un-
their cool refections may taste within the ham- expected places, with lattice windows and green
mocks, but, having experience, I can report that, growth pressing through them. Mine, which
out of them, the mounds of ices and the bowls we entered first, was of this kind, with an up-
of mint-julep and sherry-cobbler they make in and-down roof, that had more corners in it than
these latitudes are refreshments never to be I ever counted afterwards, and a chimney (there
thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who was a wood-fire on the hearth) paved all around
would preserve contented minds.
with pure white tiles in every one of which a
bright miniature of ne fire was blazing. Out
of this room you went down two steps, into a
charming little sitting-room, looking down upon
a flower-garden, which room was henceforth to
belong to Ada and me. Out of this you went
American Notes, Chap. 9.
HOUSE-A monotonous pattern.
An indescribable character of faded gentility
that attached to the house I sought, and made
it unlike all the other houses in the street-up three steps, into Ada's bed-room, which had
though they were all built on one monotonous
pattern, and looked like the early copies of a
blundering boy who was learning to make
houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped
brick-and-mortar pothooks-reminded me still
more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber.
David Copperfield, Chap. 27.
HOUSE-Of Caleb Plummer.
Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived
all alone by themselves, in a little cracked nut-
shell of a wooden house, which was, in truth, no
better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick
nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of
Gruff and Tackleton were the great feature of
the street; but you might have knocked down
Caleb Plummer's dwelling with a hammer or
two, and carried off the pieces in a cart.
*
*
*
*
*
It stuck to the premises of Gruff and Tackle-
ton, like a barnacle to a ship's keel, or a snail to
a door, or a little bunch of toadstools to the
stem of a tree. But it was the germ from which
the full-grown trunk of Gruff and Tackleton had
sprung; and under its crazy roof, the Gruff be-
fore last had, in a small way, made toys for a
generation of old boys and girls, who had play-
ed with them, and found them out, and broken
them, and gone to sleep.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
HOUSE-A shy looking.
In one of these streets, the cleanest of them
all, and on the shady side of the way-for good
housewives know that sunlight damages their
cherished furniture, and so choose the shade
rather than its intrusive glare-there stood the
house with which we have to deal. It was a
modest building, not very straight, not large, not
tall; not bold-faced, with great staring windows,
but a shy, blinking house, with a conical roof
going up into a peak over its garret window of
four small panes of glass, like a cocked hat on
the head of an elderly gentleman with one eye.
It was not built of brick or lofty stone, but of
wood and plaster; it was not planned with a
dull and wearisome regard to regularity, for no
one window matched the other, or seemed to
have the slightest reference to anything besides
itself.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 4.
HOUSE-Description of Bleak House and
furniture.
It was one of those delightfully irregular
houses where you go up and down steps out of
one room into another, and where you come
upon more rooms when you think you have
a fine broad window, commanding a beautiful
view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying
underneath the stars), to which there was a hol-
low window-seat, in which, with a spring-lock,
three dear Adas might have been lost at once.
Out of this room you passed into a little gallery,
with which the other best rooms (only two) com-
municated, and so, by a little staircase of shallow
steps, with a number of corner stairs in it, con-
sidering its length, down into the hall. But if,
instead of going out at Ada's door, you came
back into my room, and went out at the door
by which you had entered it, and turned up a
few crooked steps that branched off in an unex-
pected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself
in passages, with mangles in them, and three-
cornered tables, and a Native-Hindoo chair,
which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead,
and looked, in every form, something between a
bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had
been brought from India nobody knew by whom
or when. From these you came on Richard's
room, which was part library, part sitting-room,
part bed-room, and seemed indeed a comfortȧ-
ble compound of many rooms. Out of that,
you went straight, with a little interval of pas-
sage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce
slept, all the year round, with his window open,
his bedstead, without any furniture, standing in
the middle of the floor for more air, and his
cold-bath gaping for him in a smaller room
adjoining. Out of that, you came into another
passage, where there were back-stairs, and where
you could hear the horses being rubbed down,
outside the stable, and being told to Hold up,
and Get over, as they slipped about very much
on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you
came out at another door (every room had at
least two doors), go straight down to the hall
again by half-a-dozen steps and a low archway,
wondering how you got back there, or had ever
got out of it.
The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old,
like the house, was as pleasantly irregular. Ada's
sleeping-room was all flowers-in chintz and pa-
per, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of
two stiff courtly chairs, which stood, each at-
tended by a little page of a stool for greatet
state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sit-
ting-room was green; and had, framed and
glazed, upon the walls, numbers of surprising
and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a
real trout in a case, as brown and shining as if
it had been served with gravy; at the death of
Captain Cook; and at the whole process of pre
paring tea in China, as depicted by Chinese art
ists. In my room there were oval engravings
HOUSE
235
HOUSE AND GARDEN
of the months-ladies haymaking, in short rooms, bright damask does penance in brown
waists, and large hats tied under the chin, for holland, carving and gilding puts on mortifica
Tune-smooth-legged noblemen, pointing, with tion, and the Dedlock ancestors retire from the
cocked-hats, to village steeples, for October. light of day again. Around and around the
Half-length portraits, in crayons, abounded all house the leaves fall thick-but never fast, for
through the house; but were so dispersed that they come circling down with a dead lightness
I found the brother of a youthful officer of mine that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener sweep
in the china-closet, and the gray old age of my and sweep the turf as he will, and press the
pretty young bride, with a flower in her bodice, leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off,
in the breakfast-room. As substitutes I had four still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the shrill wind
angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a com- round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain beats, the
placent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with windows rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists
some difficulty; and a composition in needle- hide in the avenues, veil the points of view, and
work, representing fruit, a kettle, and an alpha- move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds.
bet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to On all the house there is a cold, blank smell,
the chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to like the smell of a little church, though some-
the pin-cushions and scent-bottles on the dress- | thing dryer : suggesting that the dead and buried
ing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. Dedlocks walk there, in the long nights, and
They agreed in nothing but their perfect neat-leave the flavor of their graves behind them.
ness, their display of the whitest linen, and their
Bleak House, Chap. 29.
storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a draw-
er, small or large, rendered it possible, of quan-
tities of rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such,
with its illuminated windows, softened here and
there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon
the starlight night; with its light, and warmth,
and comfort; with its hospitable jingle, at a
distance, of preparations for dinner; with the
face of its generous master brightening every-old family of human beings and their ghostly
thing we saw; and just wind enough without to
sound a low accompaniment to everything we
heard; were our first impressions of Bleak
House.-Bleak House, Chap. 6.
HOUSE—A sombre.
It was a dreary, silent building, with echoing
courtyards, desolated turret-chambers, and whole
suites of rooms shut up and mouldering to ruin.
The terrace-garden, dark with the shades of
overhanging trees, had an air of melancholy that
was quite oppressive. Great iron gates, disused
for many years, and red with rust, drooping on
their hinges and overgrown with long rank grass,
seemed as though they tried to sink into the
ground, and hide their fallen state among the
friendly weeds. The fantastic monsters on the
walls, green with age and damp, and covered
here and there with moss, looked grim and de-
solate. There was a sombre aspect even on that
part of the mansion which was inhabited and
kept in good repair, that struck the beholder
with a sense of sadness; of something forlorn
and failing, whence cheerfulness was banished.
It would have been difficult to imagine a bright
fire blazing in the dull and darkened rooms, or
to picture any gaiety of heart or revelry that the
frowning walls shut in. It seemed a place where
such things had been, but could be no more—
the very ghost of a house, haunting the old spot
in its old outward form, and that was all.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 13.
HOUSE-A dissipated-looking.
She stopped at twilight, at the door of a mean
little public house, with dim red lights in it. As
haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of cus-
tom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had
gore the way all drunkards go, and was very
near the end of it.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 5.
HOUSE-In winter.
Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled
into great scrolls in corners of comfortless
|
HOUSE-A dull fashionable.
For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is
a vast blank of overgrown house looking out
upon trees, sighing, wringing their hands, bow-
ing their heads, and casting their tears upon the
window-panes in monotonous depression. A
labyrinth of grandeur, less the property of an
likenesses, than of an old family of echoings and
thunderings which start out of their hundred
graves at every sound, and go resounding through
the building. A waste of unused passages and
staircases, in which to drop a comb`upon a bed-
room floor at night is to send a stealthy footfall
on an errand through the house. A place where
few people care to go about alone; where a
maid screams if an ash drops from the fire,
takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes
the victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and
gives warning and departs.
Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself
abandoned to darkness and vacancy; with so
little change under the summer shining or the
wintry lowering; so sombre and motionless al-
ways-no flag flying how by day, no rows of
lights sparkling by night; with no family to
come and go, no visitors to be the souls of pale
cold shapes of rooms, no stir of life about it ;—
passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye,
have died away from the place in Lincolnshire,
and yielded it to dull repose.
Bleak House, Chap. 66.
HOUSE AND GARDEN-A country.
He lived in a pretty house, formerly the Par
sonage-house, with a lawn in front, a bright
flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked
orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed
with a venerable wall that had of itself а
ripened, ruddy look. But, indeed, everything
about the place wore an aspect of maturity and
abundance. The old lime-tree walk was like
green cloisters, the very shadows of the cherry-
trees and apple-trees were heavy with frukt.
the gooseberry-bushes were SO laden that
their branches arched and rested on the earth,
the strawberries and raspberries grew in like
profusion, and the peaches basked by the hun-
dred on the wall. Tumbled about among the
spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and
winking in the sun, there were such heaps of
drooping pods, and marrows, and cucumbers
HOUSE-FRONT
236
HOUSE-AGENT
was a young house, playing at hide-and-serk
with other houses, and have forgotten the way
out again.-Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
HOUSES-In St. Louis.
that every foot of ground appeared a vegetable
treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all
kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of
the neighboring meadows, where the hay was
carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay.
Such stillness and composure reigned within the In the old French portion of the town the
orderly precincts of the old red wall, that even thoroughfares are narrow and crooked, and some
the feathers, hung in garlands to scare the birds, of the houses are very quaint and picturesque,
hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripen-being built of wood, with tumble-down galler-
ing influence that where, here and there, highies before the windows, approachable by stairs,
up a disused nail and scrap of list still clung to
it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed
with the changing seasons, and that they had
rusted and decayed according to the common
fate.-Bleak House, Chap. 18.
HOUSE-FRONT-Like an old beau.
The house-front is so old and worn, and the
brass plate is so shining and staring, that the
general result has reminded imaginative stran-
gers of a battered old beau with a large modern
eye-glass stuck in his blind eye.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 3.
HOUSE-Mr. Gradgrind's.
or rather ladders, from the street. There are
queer little barbers' shops and drinking-houses
too, in this quarter; and abundance of crazy
old tenements with blinking casements, such as
may be seen in Flanders. Some of these an-
cient habitations, with high garret gable-win-
dows perking into the roofs, have a kind of
French shrug about them; and being lop-sided
with age, appear to hold their heads askew, be-
sides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment
at the American Improvements.
American Notes, Chap. 12.
HOUSES-Isolated in a city.
But it is neither to old Almshouses in the
A very regular feature on the face of the country, nor to new Almshouses by the railroad,
country, Stone Lodge was. Not the least dis- that these present Uncommercial notes relate.
guise toned down or shaded off that uncompro- They refer back to journeys made among those
mising fact in the landscape. A great square commonplace smoky-fronted London Alms-
house, with a heavy portico darkening the prin-houses, with a little paved court-yard in front
cipal windows, as its master's heavy brows over- enclosed by iron railings, which have got snowed
shadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, bal-up, as it were, by bricks and mortar ; which were
anced, and proved house. Six windows on this
side of the door, six on that side; a total of
twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the
other wing; four-and-twenty carried over to the
back wings. A lawn and garden and an infant
avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical ac-
count-book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and
water-service, all of the primest quality. Iron
clamps and girders, fireproof from top to bot-
tom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with
all their brushes and brooms; everything that
heart could desire.
once in a suburb, but are now in the densely
populated town,-gaps in the busy life around
them, parentheses in the close and blotted texts
of the streets.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 27.
HOUSES-Involved in law.
"I told you this was the Growlery, my dear.
Where was I?"
I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had
made in Bleak House.
"Bleak House: true. There is, in that city
Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little of London there, some property of ours, which
Gradgrinds had cabinets in various departments is much at this day what Bleak House was then,
of science, too. They had a little conchologi--I say property of ours, meaning of the Suit's,
cal cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet,
and a little mineralogical cabinet; and the
specimens were all arranged and labelled, and
the bits of stone and ore looked as though they
might have been broken from the parent sub-
stances by those tremendously hard instruments,
their own names.
HOUSES-Old.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 3.
On either side of him, there shot up against
the dark sky, tall, gaunt, straggling houses, with
time-stained fronts, and windows that seemed
to have shared the lot of eyes in mortals, and to
have grown dim and sunken with age. Six,
seven, eight stories high, were the houses; story
piled above story, as children build with cards-
throwing their dark shadows over the roughly
paved road, and making the dark night darker.
Pickwick, Chap. 49.
HOUSES-A neighborhood of.
They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a low-
ering pile of building up a yard, where it had
so little business to be, that one could scarcely
help fancying it must have run there when it
but I ought to call it the property of Costs; for
Costs is the only power on earth that will ever
get anything out of it now, or will ever know it
for anything but an eyesore and a heartsore. It
is a street of perishing blind houses, with their
eyes stoned out; without a pane of glass, with-
out so much as a window-frame, with the bare
blank shutters tumbling from their hinges and
falling asunder; the iron rails peeling away in
flakes of rust; the chimneys sinking in; the
stone steps to every door (and every door might
be Death's Door) turning stagnant green; the
very crutches on which the ruins are propped,
decaying. Although Bleak House was not in
Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped
with the same seal. These are the Great Seal's
impressions, my dear, all over England-the
children know them!"-Bleak House, Chap. 8.
HOUSE-AGENT-Casby, the.
A heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who, having
stumbled, in the course of his unwieldy jostlings
against other men, on the discovery that to get
through life with ease and credit, he had but to
hold his tongue, keep the bald part of his head
well polished, and leave :ais hair alone, had had
HOUSE-TOP
237
just cunning enough to seize the idea and stick
to it. It was said that his being town-agent to
Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle was referahle, not
to his having the least business capacity, but to
his looking so supremely benignant that nobody
could suppose the property screwed or jobbed
under such a man; also, that for similar reasons
he now got more money out of his own wretched
lettings, unquestioned, than anybody with a less
knobby and less shining crown could possibly
have done. In a word, it was represented |
(Clennam called to mind, alone in the ticking
parlor) that many people select their models,
much as the painters, just now mentioned, select
theirs; and that, whereas in the Royal Academy
some evil old ruffian of a Dog-stealer will an-
nually be found embodying all the cardinal vir-
tues, on account of his eyelashes, or his chin, or
his legs (thereby planting thorns of confusion
in the breasts of the more observant students
of nature), so in the great social Exhibition,
accessories are often accepted in lieu of the in-
ternal character.
Calling these things to mind, and ranging
Mr. Pancks in a row with them, Arthur Clen-
nam leaned this day to the opinion, without
quite deciding on it, that the last of the Patri-
archs was the drifting Booby aforesaid, with the
one idea of keeping the bald part of his head
highly polished; and that, much as an unwieldy
ship in the Thames river may sometimes be
seen heavily driving with the tide, broadside on,
stern first, in its own way and in the way of
everything else, though making a great show of
navigation, when all of a sudden, a little coaly
steam-tug will bear down upon it, take it in tow,
and bustle off with it; similarly, the cumbrous
Patriarch had been taken in tow by the snorting
Pancks, and was now following in the wake of
that dingy little craft.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
HOUSE-KEEPER
and foremost, if the day were bright, you ob-
served upon the house-tops, stretching far away,
a long dark path-the shadow of the Monu-
ment: and turning round, the tall original was
close beside you, with every hair erect upon his
golden head, as if the doings of the city fright-
ened him. Then there were steeples, towers,
belfries, shining vanes, and masts of ships; a
very forest. Gables, house-tops, garret-win-
dows, wilderness upon wilderness. Smoke and
noise enough for all the world at once.
After the first glance, there were slight fea
tures in the r idst of this crowd of objects,
which sprung out from the mass without any
reason, as it were, and took hold of the atten-
tion whether the spectator would or no. Thus,
the revolving chimney-pots on one great stack
of buildings, seemed to be turning gravely to
each other every now and then, and whispering
the result of their separate observation of what
was going on below. Others, of a crook-backed
shape, appeared to be maliciously holding them-
selves askew, that they might shut the prospect
out and baffle Todgers's. The man who was
mending a pen at an upper window over the
way, became of paramount importance in the
scene, and made a blank in it, ridiculously dis-
proportionate in its extent, when he retired.
The gambols of a piece of cloth upon the dyer's
pole had far more interest for the moment than all
the changing motion of the crowd. Yet even
while the looker-on felt angry with himself for
this, and wondered how it was, the tumult
swelled into a roar; the hosts of objects seemed
to thicken and expand a hundredfold ; and after
gazing round him, quite scared, he turned into
Todgers's again, much more rapidly than he
came out; and ten to one he told M. Todgers
afterwards that if he hadn't done so, he would
certainly have come into the street by the short-
est cut that is to say, head foremost.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9.
His turning of his smooth thumbs over one
another as he sat there, was so typical to Clen-HOUSE-KEEPER-Ruth as a.
nam of the way in which he would make the Oh, you are going to work in earnest, are
subject revolve if it were pursued, never show-you?"
ing any new part of it, nor allowing it to make
the smallest advance, that it did much to help
to convince him of his labor having been in
vain. He might have taken any time to think
about it, for Mr. Casby, well accustomed to get
on anywhere by leaving everything to his bumps
and his white hair, knew his strength to lie in
silence. So there Casby sate, twirling and twirl-
ing, and making his polished head and fore-
head look largely benevolent in every knob.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 9.
Ayes aye! That she was. And in such pleas-
ant earnest, moreover, that Tom's attention
wandered from his writing every moment. First,
she tripped down stairs into the kitchen for the
flour, then for the pie-board, then for the eggs,
then for the butter, then for a jug of water, then
for the rolling-pin, then for a pudding-basin,
then for the pepper, then for the salt, making a
separate journey for everything, and laughing
every time she started off afresh. When all the
materials were collected, she was horrified to
find she had no apron on, and so ran up-stairs,
by way of variety, to fetch it. She didn't put
it on upstairs, but came dancing down with it in
her hand; and being one of those little women
to whom an apron is a most becoming little
vanity, it took an immense time to arrange;
having to be carefully smoothed down beneath
HOUSE-TOP-Scene from Todgers's.
The top of the house was worthy of notice.
There was a sort of terrace on the roof, with
posts and fragments of rotten lines, once in-
tended to dry clothes upon; and there were
two or three tea-chests out there, full of earth,
with forgotten plants in them, like old walking--Oh, heaven, what a wicked little stomacher !
stick. Whoever climbed to this observatory,
was stunned at first from having knocked his
head against the little door in coming out; and
after that, was for the moment choked from
having looked, perforce, straight down the
kitchen chimney; but these two stages over,
there were things to gaze at from the top of
Todgers's well worth your seeing too. For, first
and to be gathered up into little plaits by the
strings before it could be tied, and to be tapped.
rebuked, and wheedled, at the pockets, before
it would set right, which at last it did, and when
it did-but never mind; this is a sober chronicle.
And then, there were cuffs to be tucked up, for
fear of flour; and she had a little ring to pull
off her finger, which wouldn't come off (foolish
HOUSE-KEEPER
little ring!): and during the whole of these
preparations she looked demurely every now and
then at Tom, from under her dark eye-lashes, as
if they were all a part of the pudding, and in-
dispensable to its composition.
*
*
*
*
*
Such a busy little woman as she was! So full
of self-importance, and trying so hard not to
smile, or seem uncertain about anything! It
was a perfect treat to Tom to see her with
her brows knit, and her rosy lips pursed up,
kneading away at the crust, rolling it out, cut-
ting it up into strips, lining the basin with it,
shaving it off fine round the rim, chopping up
the steak into small pieces, raining down pepper
and salt upon them, packing them into the basin,
pouring in cold water for gravy, and never ven-
turing to steal a look in his direction, lest her
gravity should be disturbed; until, at last, the
basin being quite full, and only wanting the top
crust, she clapped her hands, all covered with
paste and flour, at Tom, and burst out heartily
into such a charming little laugh of triumph,
that the pudding need have had no other sea-
soning to commend it to the taste of any rea-
sonable man on earth.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39.
HOUSE-KEEPER-Ruth.
Well! she was a cheerful little thing; and had
a quaint, bright quietness about her, that was
infinitely pleasant. Surely she was the best
sauce for chops ever invented. The potatoes
seemed to take a pleasure in sending up their
grateful steam before her; the froth upon the
pint of porter pouted to attract her notice. But
t was all in vain. She saw nothing but Tom.
Tom was the first and last thing in the world,
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 37.
Pleasant little Ruth! Cheerful, tidy, bust-
ling, quiet little Ruth! No doll's house ever
yielded greater delight to its young mistress,
than little Ruth derived from her glorious do-
minion over the triangular parlor and the two
small bedrooms.
To be Tom's housekeeper. What dignity!
Housekeeping, upon the commonest terms, as-
sociated itself with elevated responsibilities of
all sorts and kinds; but housekeeping for Tom
implied the utmost complication of grave trusts
and mighty charges. Well might she take the
keys out of the little chiffonnier which held the
tea and sugar; and out of the two little damp
cupboards down by the fire-place, where the
very black beetles got mouldy, and had the shine
taken out of their backs by envious mildew;
and jingle them upon a ring before Tom's eyes
when he came down to breakfast! Well might
she, laughing musically, put them up in that
blessed little pocket of hers with a merry pride!
For it was such a grand novelty to be mistress
of anything, that if she had been the most re-
lentless and despotic of all little housekeepers,
she might have pleaded just that much for her
xcuse, and have been honorably acquitted.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39.
238
HOUSE-KEEPER-Servants a curse to the.
After several varieties of experiment, we had
given up the housekeeping as a bad job. The
house kept itself, and we kept a page. The
principal function of this retainer was to quarrel
|
HOUSE-KEEPER
with the cook; in which respect he was a per
fect Whittington, without his cat, or the remotest
chance of being made Lord Mayor.
He appears to me to have lived in a hail of
saucepan-lids. His whole existence was a scuffle.
He would shriek for help on the most improper
occasions,-as when we had a little dinner
party, or a few friends in the evening,—and would
come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron
missiles flying after him. We wanted to get
rid of him, but he was very much attached to us,
and wouldn't go. He was a tearful boy, and
broke into such deplorable lamentations, when
a cessation of our connection was hinted at,
that we were obliged to keep him. He had no
mother-no anything in the way of a relative,
that I could discover, except a sister, who fled
to America the moment we had taken him off
her hands-and he became quartered on us like
a horrible young changeling. He had a lively
perception of his own unfortunate state, and
was always rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his
jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on the extreme
corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which
he never would take completely out of his pocket,
but always economised and secreted. This un-
lucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six
pounds ten per annum, was a source of contin-
ual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew
and he grew like scarlet beans-with painful
apprehensions of the time when he would begin
to shave; even of the days when he would be
bald or grey. I saw no prospect of ever get-
ting rid of him; and, projecting myself into the
future, used to think what an inconvenience he
would be when he was an old man.
David Copperfield, Chap. 48.
HOUSE-KEEPER - The neatness of Mrs.
Tibbs.
Mrs. Tibbs was, beyond all dispute, the most
tidy, fidgety, thrifty little personage, that ever
inhaled the smoke of London: and the house
of Mrs. Tibbs was, decidedly, the neatest in all
Great Coram Street. The area and the area
steps, and the street-door, and the street-door
steps, and the brass handle, and the door-plate,
and the knocker, and the fan-light, were all as
clean and bright as indefatigable white-washing,
hearth-stoning, and scrubbing and rubbing could
make them. The wonder was, that the brass
door-plate, with the interesting inscription,
" MRS. TIBBS," had never caught fire from con-
stant friction, so perseveringly was it polished.
There were meat-safe-looking blinds in the par-
lor windows, blue and gold curtains in the
drawing-room, and spring-roller blinds, as Mrs.
Tibbs was wont in the pride of her heart to
boast, "all the way up." The bell-lamp in the
passage looked as clear as a soap-bubble; you
could see yourself in all the tables, and French-
polish yourself on any one of the chairs. The
banisters were bees'-waxed; and the very stair-
wires made your eyes wink, they were so glit-
tering.- Tales. The Boarding-House, Chap. 1.
HOUSE-KEEPER-Mrs. Sweeney.
The genuine laundress, too, is an institution
not to be had in its entirety out of and away from
the genuine Chambers. Again, it is not denied
that you may be robbed elsewhere. Elsewhere
you may have-for money-dishonesty, drunk-
enness, dirt, laziness, and profound incapacity.
HOUSE-KEEPER
But the veritable shining-red-faced, shameless
laundress; the true Mrs. Sweeney,-in figure,
color, texture, and smell like the old damp fam-
ily umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomina-
tion of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, loose-
ness, and larceny, is only to be drawn at the
fountain-head. Mrs. Sweeney is beyond the
reach of individual art. It requires the united
efforts of several men to insure that great result,
and it is only developed in perfection under an
Honorable Society and in an Inn of Court.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14.
HOUSE-KEEPER-Of Dedlock Hall.
""
239
HUCKSTER
his apples, the stomach-ache to look at his
oranges, the tooth-ache to look at his nuts. Of
the latter commodity he had always a grim little
heap, on which lay a little wooden measure
which had no discernible inside, and was con-
sidered to represent the penn'orth appointed by
Magna Charta. Whether from too much east
wind or no-it was an easterly corner-the stall,
the stock, and the keeper, were all as dry as the
desert. Wegg was a knotty man, and a close-
grained, with a face carved out of very hard ma
terial, that had just as much play of expression
as a watchman's rattle. When he laughed, cer-
tain jerks occurred in it, and the rattle sprung.
Sooth to say, he was so wooden a man that he
seemed to have taken his wooden leg naturally,
and rather suggested to the fanciful observer,
that he might be expected-if his development re-
ceived no untimely check-to be completely set
up with a pair of wooden legs in about six months.
Mrs. Rouncewell might have been sufficiently
assured by hearing the rain, but that she is
rather deaf, which nothing will induce her to
believe. She is a fine old lady, handsome,
stately, wonderfully neat, and has such a back
and such a stomacher, that if her stays should
turn out when she dies to have been a broad Mr. Wegg was an observant person, or, as he
old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who himself said, "took a powerful sight of notice."
knows her would have cause to be surprised. He saluted all his regular passers-by every day,
Weather affects Mrs. Rouncewell little. The as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamp-
house is there in all weathers, and the house, as post; and on the adaptable character of these
she expresses it, "is what she looks at.' She salutes he greatly plumed himself. Thus, to the
sits in her room (in a side passage on the ground rector, he addressed a bow, compounded of lay
floor, with an arched window commanding a deference, and a slight touch of the shady pre-
smooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals | liminary meditation at church; to the doctor, a
with smooth round trees and smooth round confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose
blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to acquaintance with his inside he begged respect-
play at bowls with the stones), and the whole fully to acknowledge; before the Quality he de-
house reposes on her mind. She can open it lighted to abase himself; and for Uncle Parker,
on occasion, and be busy and fluttered; but it who was in the army (at least so he had settled
is shut up now, and lies on the breadth of Mrs. | it), he put his open hand to the side of his hat,
Rouncewell's iron-bound bosom, in a majestic in a military manner which that angry eyed,
sleep.-Bleak House, Chap. 7.
buttoned up, inflammatory-faced old gentleman
appeared but imperfectly to appreciate.
I
HOUSE-KEEPER-Mrs. Billickin, the.
Personal faintness and an overpowering per-
sonal candor were the distinguishing features of
Mrs. Billickin's organization. She came lan-
guishing out of her own exclusive back-parlor,
with the air of having been expressly brought
to for the purpose from an accumulation of sev-
eral swoons.
"I hope I see you well, sir," said Mrs. Bil-
lickin, recognizing her visitor with a bend.
"Thank you, quite well. And you, ma'am?"
returned Mr. Grewgious.
"I am as well," said Mrs. Billickin, becoming
aspirational with excess of faintness, " as I hever
ham.
"
"My ward and an elderly lady," said Mr.
Grewgious, "wish to find a genteel lodging for
a month or so. Have you any apartments
available, ma'am?"
"Mr. Grewgious," returned Mrs. Billickin,
"I will not deceive you, far from it. I have
apartments available."
*
*
*
*
|
The only article in which Silas dealt, that
was not hard, was gingerbread. On a certain
day, some wretched infant having purchased the
damp gingerbread-horse (fearfully out of condi-
tion), and the adhesive bird-cage, which had
been exposed for the day's sale, he had taken
a tin box from under his stool to produce a relay
of those dreadful specimens, and was going to
look in at the lid, when he said to himself, paus-
ing: "Oh! here you are again !"
The words referred to a broad, round-shoul-
dered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming
comically ambling towards the corner, dressed
in a pea over-coat, and carrying a large stick.
He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters,
and thick gloves like a hedger's. Both as to
his dress and to himself, he was of an overlap-
ping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks,
and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips,
and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly
inquiring, grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows
and broad-brimmed hat. A very odd-looking
old fellow altogether.
"Coals is either by the fire, or per the scuttle."
She emphasized the prepositions as marking amusing.
subtle but immense difference. "Dogs is not
viewed with favior. Besides litter, they gets
stole, and sharing suspicions is apt to creep in,
and unpleasantness takes place."
Edwin Drood, Chap. 22.
HUCKSTER-The stall of Silas Wegg.
Assuredly, this stall of Silas Wegg's was the
hardest little stall of all the sterile little stalls in
London. It gave you the face-ache to look at
"Here you are again," repeated Mr. Wegg,
"And what are you now? Are you
in the Funns, or where are you? Have you
lately come to settle in this neighborhood, or do
you own to another neighborhood? Are you
in independent circumstances, or is it wasting
the motions of a bow on you? Come; I'll
speculate! I'll invest a bow in you."
Which Mr. Wegg, having replaced his tin box,
accordingly did, as he rose to bait his ginger.
bread-trap for some other devoted infant.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 5
HUCKSTER
AUCKSTEB - Mr. Wegg as a.
240
All weathers saw the man at the post. This
is to be accepted in a double sense, for he con-
trived a back to his wooden stool, by placing it
against the lamp-post. When the weather was
wet, he put up his umbrella over his stock in
trade, not over himself; when the weather was
dry, he furled that faded article, tied it round
with a piece of yarn, and laid it cross-wise under
the trestles; where it looked like an unwhole-
somely-forced lettuce that had lost in color and
crispness what it had gained in size.
He had established his right to the corner,
by imperceptible prescription. He had never
varied his ground an inch, but had in the begin-
ning diffidently taken the corner upon which the
side of the house gave. A howling corner in
the winter time, a dusty corner in the summer
time, an undesirable corner at the best of times.
Shelterless fragments of straw and paper got up
revolving storms there, when the main street
was at peace; and the water-cart, as if it were
drunk or short-sighted, came blundering and
jolting round it, making it muddy when all
else was clean.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 5.
HUMAN ILLS-" The world full of wisita-
tions."
<<
Why, sir," said Mr. Squeers, "I'm pretty
well. So's the family, and so's the boys, except
for a sort of rash as is a running through the
school, and rather puts 'em off their feed. But
it's a ill wind as blows no good to nobody:
that's what I always say when them lads has a
wisitation. A wisitation, sir, is the lot of mor-
tality. Mortality itself, sir, is a wisitation. The
world is chock full of wisitations; and if a boy
repines at a wisitation and makes you uncom-
fortable with his noise, he must have his head
punched. That's going according to the scripter,
that is."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 56.
HUMANITY—Its extremes.
Were this miserable mother, and this miser-
able daughter, only the reduction to their lowest
grade, of certain social vices sometimes prevail-
ing higher up? In this round world of many
circles within circles, do we make a weary jour-
ney from the high grade to the low, to find at
last that they lie close together, that the two ex-
tremes touch, and that our journey's end is but
our starting-place? Allowing for great difference
of stuff and texture, was the pattern of this
woof repeated among gentle blood at all?
Dombey & Son, Chap. 35.
HUMAN HELP-And God's forgiveness.
I have been where convicts go," she added,
looking full upon her entertainer. "I have been
one myself."
"Heaven help you and forgive you !" was the
gentle answer.
<<
Ah! Heaven help me and forgive me!" she
returned, nodding her head at the fire. "If man
would help some of us a little more, God would
forgive us all the sooner perhaps."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 33.
HUMBUGS-Official.
"
And the invention?" said Clennam.
My good fellow," returned Ferdinand, "if
you'll excuse the freedom of that form of address.
|
HUMBUGS
nobody wants to know of the invention, and no-
body cares twopence-halfpenny about it."
Nobody in the Office, that is to say?
"Nor out of it. Everybody is ready to dis-
like and ridicule any invention. You have no
idea how many people want to be left alone.
You have no idea how the Genius of the country
(overlook the Parliamentary nature of the phrase,
and don't be bored by it) tends to being left
alone. Believe me, Mr. Clennam," said the
sprightly young Barnacle, in his pleasantest
manner, our place is not a wicked Ĝiant to be
charged at full tilt; but only a windmill, show-
ing you, as it grinds immense quantities of chaff,
which way the country wind blows."
"If I could believe that," said Clennam, "it
would be a dismal prospect for all of us.”
Oh! don't say so!" returned Ferdinand.
"It's all right. We must have humbug, we all
like humbug, we couldn't get on without hum-
bug. A little humbug, and a groove, and every-
thing goes on admirably, if you leave it alone.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 28.
HUMBUGS-Social-Miss Mowcher's opin-
ion of.
"Face like a peach!" standing on tiptoe tc
pinch my cheek as I sat. "Quite tempting
I'm very fond of peaches. Happy to make your
acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I'm sure."
Í said that I congratulated myself on having
the honor to make hers, and that the happiness
was mutual.
Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!" ex-
claimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous
attempt to cover her large face with her morsel
of a hand. "What a world of gammon and
spinnage it is, though, ain't it !”
This was addressed confidentially to both of
us, as the morsel of a hand came away from the
face, and buried itself, arm and all, in the bag
again.
"What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?" said
Steerforth.
"Ha! ha! ha! What a refreshing set of hum-
bugs we are, to be sure, ain't we, my sweet
child?" replied that morsel of a woman, feeling
in the bag with her head on one side and her
eye in the air. "Look here!" taking something
out. 'Scraps of the Russian Prince's nails!
Prince Alphabet turned topsy-turvy, I call him,
for his name's got all the letters in it, higgledy-
piggledy."
"6
"The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is
he?" said Steerforth.
"I believe you, my pet," replied Miss Mow-
cher. "I keep his nails in order for him. Twice
a week! Fingers and toes."
He pays well, I hope?" said Steerforth.
"Pays as he speaks, my dear child-through
the nose," replied Miss Mowcher. "None of
your close shavers the Prince ain't. You'd say
so, if you saw his moustachios. Red by nature,
black by art."
"By your art, of course," said Steerforth.
Miss Mowcher winked assent. "Forced tc
send for me. Couldn't help it. The climate
affected his dye; it did very well in Russia, but
it was no go here. You never saw such a rusty
Prince in all your born days as he was. Like old
iron!"
·
"Is that why you called him a humbug, just
now?" inquired Steerforth.
HUMILITY
241
"Oh, you're a broth of a boy, ain't you?" re-
turned Miss Mowcher,shaking her head violently.
"I said, what a set of humbugs we were in gen-
eral, and I showed you the scraps of the Prince's
nails to prove it. The Prince's nails do more for
me in private families of the genteel sort, than
all my talents put together. I always carry 'em
about. They're the best introduction. If Miss
Mowcher cuts the Prince's nails, she must be all
right. I give 'em away to the young ladies.
They put 'em in albums, I believe. Ha! ha!
ha! Upon my life, 'the whole social system' (as
the men call it when they make speeches in
Parliament) is a system of Prince's nails!" said
this least of women, trying to fold her short
arms, and nodding her large head.
David Copperfield, Chap. 22.
HUMILITY-Of Uriah Heep.
My stool was such a tower of observation,
that as I watched him reading on again, after
this rapturous exclamation, and following up the
lines with his fore-finger, I observed that his
nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp
dints in them, had a singular and most uncom-
fortable way of expanding and contracting them-
selves; that they seemed to twinkle instead of
his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.
"I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?"
I said, after looking at him for some time.
'Me, Master Copperfield?" said Uriah. "Oh,
no! I'm a very umble person."
It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I
observed; for he frequently ground the palms
against each other as if to squeeze them dry and
warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy
way, on his pocket-handkerchief.
16
'I am well aware that I am the umblest per-
son going," said Uriah Heep, modestly; "let
the other be where he may. My mother is like-
wise a very umble person. We live in a um-
ble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much
to be thankful for. My father's former calling
was umble. He was a sexton."
"What is he now?" I asked.
"He is a partaker of glory at present, Master
Copperfield," said Uriah Heep. "But we have
much to be thankful for. How much have I to
be thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield !
*
*
*
*
"Perhaps you'll be a partner in Mr. Wick-
field's business, one of these days," I said, to
make myself agreeable; "and it will be Wick-
field and Heep, or Heep late Wickfield."
"
Oh no, Master Copperfield," returned Uriah,
shaking his head, "I am much too umble for
that!"
He certainly did look uncommonly like the
carved face on the beam outside my window,
as he sat, in his humility, eying me sideways,
with his mouth widened, and the creases in his
cheeks.
"Mr. Wickfield is a most excellent man, Mas-
ter Copperfield," said Uriah. "If you have
known him long, you know it, I am sure, much
better than I can inform you."
I replied that I was certain he was; but that
I had not known him long myself, though he
was a friend of my aunt's.
“Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield," said Uriah.
"Your aunt is a sweet lady, Master Copper-
field!"
He had a way of writhing when he wanted to
HUMILITY
express enthusiasm, which was very ugly; and
which diverted my attention from the compli
ment he had paid my relation, to the snaky
twistings of his throat and body.
David Copperfield, Chap. 16.
“I am not fond of professions of humility," I
returned, "or professions of anything else."
"There now!" said Uriah, looking flabby
and lead-colored in the moonlight. "Didn't I
know it! But how little you think of the right-
ful umbleness of a person in my station, Master
Copperfield! Father and me was both brought
up at a foundation school for boys; and mother,
she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of
charitable, establishment. They taught us all a
deal of umbleness-not much else that I know
of, from morning to night. We was to be um-
ble to this person, and umble to that; and to
pull off our caps here, and to make bows there;
and always to know our place, and abase our-
selves before our betters. And we had such a
lot of betters! Father got the monitor-medal
by being umble. So did I. Father got made
a sexton by being umble. He had the charac-
ter, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-
behaved man, that they were determined to
bring him in. 'Be umble, Uriah,' says father
to me, 'and you'll get on. It was what was
always being dinned into you and me at school ;
it's what goes down best. Be umble,' says
father, and you'll do!' And really it ain't
done bad!"
It was the first time it had ever occurred to
me, that this detestable cant of false humility
might have originated out of the Heep family.
I had seen the harvest, but had never thought
of the seed.
"When I was quite a young boy," said Uriah,
"I got to know what umbleness did, and I took
to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I
stopped at the umble point of my learning, and
says I, 'Hold hard!' When you offered to teach
me Latin, I knew better. People like to be
above you,' says father; 'keep yourself down.'
I am very umble to the present moment, Master
Copperfield, but I've got a little power!"
And he said all this-I knew, as I saw his face
in the moonlight—that I might understand he
was resolved to recompense himself by using his
power. I had never doubted his meanness, his
craft and malice; but I fully comprehended
now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting,
and revengeful spirit must have been engen-
dered by this early, and this long, suppression.
David Copperfield, Chap. 39.
HUMILITY-Description of Carker, Jr.
The
He was not old, but his hair was white; his
body was bent, or bowed as if by the weight
of some great trouble; and there were deep
lines in his worn and melancholy face.
fire of his eyes, the expression of his features,
the very voice in which he spoke, were all sub-
dued and quenched, as if the spirit within him
lay in ashes. He was respectably, though very
plainly dressed, in black; but his clothes,
moulded to the general character of his figure,
seemed to shrink and abase themselves upon
him, and to join in the sorrowful solicitation
which the whole man from head to foot ex
pressed, to be left unnoticed, and alone in his
humility.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 6.
HUNGEL
HUNGER-In an English workhouse.
202
I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose
meat and drink turn to gall within him, whose
blood is ice, whose heart is iron, could have seen
Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that
the dog had neglected. I wish he could have
witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver
tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of
famine. There is only one thing I should like
better; and that would be to see the philoso-
pher making the same sort of meal himself,
with the same relish.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 4.
The bowls never wanted washing. The boys
polished them with their spoons till they shone
again; and when they had performed this oper-
ation (which never took very long, the spoons
being nearly as large as the bowls), they would
sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes,
as if they could have devoured the very bricks
of which it was composed; employing them-
selves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most
assiduously, with a view of catching up any stray
splashes of gruel that might have been cast
thereon. Boys have generally excellent appe-
tites. Oliver Twist and his companions suf-
fered the tortures of slow starvation for three
months; at last they got so voracious and wild
with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his
age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing
(for his father had kept a small cook's shop),
hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he
had another basin of gruel per diem, he was
afraid he might some night happen to eat the
boy who slept next him, who happened to be a
weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild,
hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him.
A council was held; lots were cast who should
walk up to the master after supper that even-
ing, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver
Twist.
The evening arrived; the boys took their
places. The master, in his cook's uniform, sta-
tioned himself at the copper; his pauper assist-
ants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel
was served out; and a long grace was said over
the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the
boys whispered each other, and winked at Oli-
ver; while his next neighbors nudged him. Child |
as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and
reckless with misery. He rose from the table;
and advancing to the master, basin and spoon
in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own.
temerity,-
"Please, sir, I want some more."
HUNGER
Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oli-
ver Twist has asked for more!
There was a general start. Horror was de
picted on every countenance.
"For more!" said Mr. Limbkins. 'Com-
pose yourself, Bumble, and answer
me dis-
tinctly. Do I understand that he asked for
more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by
the dietary?"
"He did, sir," replied Bumble.
"That boy will be hung," said the gentle.
man in the white waistcoat. I know that boy
will be hung."-Oliver Twist, Chap. 2.
HUNGER-Before the French Revolution.
And now that the cloud settled on Saint An-
toine, 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 grinding
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 win-
dow, 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 that hung upon poles and
lines; Hunger was patched into 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 smokeless chim-
neys, and started up from the filthy 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 loaf of his scanty
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 turned cylinder; Hun-
ger was shred into atomies 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 di-
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he verging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and
turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied aston-all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visi-
ishment on the small rebel for some seconds;
and then clung for support to the copper. The
assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the
boys with fear.
"What!" said the master at length, in a
faint voice.
"Please, sir,” replied Oliver, "I want some
more."
The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head
with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and
shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board was sitting in solemn conclave,
when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in
great excitement, and addressing the gentleman
in the high chair, said,—
ble things with a brooding look upon them that
looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there
was yet some wild-beast thought of the possi-
bility of turning at bay. Depressed and slink-
ing 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 illustrations 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

ГТ
HIN
George Gruckshank's
"PLEASE, SIR, I WANT SOME MORE.”
242
HUSBANDS
their scanty measures of thin wine and beer,
and were gloweringly confidential together.
Nothing was represented in a flourishing con-
dition, save tools and weapons; but the cutler's
knives and axes were sharp and bright, the
smith's hammers were heavy, and the gun-
maker's stock was murderous. The crippling
stones of the pavement, with their many little
reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways,
but broke off abruptly at the doors. The ken-
nel, 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 wide 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 overhead, 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 idleness and hunger, so
long, as to conceive the idea of improving on
his method, and hauling up men by those ropes
and pulleys, 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.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 5.
HUSBANDS-A tea-party opinion of.
"Before I'd let a man order me about as
Quilp orders her," said Mrs. George; "before I'd
consent to stand in awe of a man as she does of
him, I'd—I'd kill myself, and write a letter first
to say he did it!”—Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 4.
HUSBANDS-Mrs. Jiniwin's treatment of.
All the ladies then sighed in concert, shook
their heads gravely, and looked at Mrs. Quilp
as at a martyr.
"Ah!" said the spokeswoman, "I wish you'd
give her a little of your advice, Mrs. Jiniwin,”-
Mrs. Quilp had been a Miss Jiniwin, it should
be observed-" nobody knows better than you,
ma'am, what us women owe to ourselves."
Owe indeed, ma'am !" replied Mrs. Jiniwin.
"When my poor husband, her dear father, was
alive, if he had ever ventur'd a cross word to
me, I'd have ——" the good old lady did not
finish the sentence, but she twisted off the head
of a shrimp with a vindictiveness which seemed
to imply that the action was in some degree a
substitute for words. In this light it was clearly
understood by the other party, who immediately
replied with great approbation, "You quite enter
into my feelings, ma'am, and it's jist what I'd
do myself."-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 4.
HUSBAND—A surly.
“Is it a chilling thing to have one's husband
sulking and falling asleep directly he comes
home-to have him freezing all one's warm-
heartedness, and throwing cold water over the
fireside?"-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 7.
HUSBAND-Pott, the subjugated.
"Upon my word, sir," said the astonished
Mrs. Pott, stooping to pick up the paper.
"Upon my word, sir!"
243
HYPOCRITE
Mr. Pott winced. beneath the contemptuous
gaze of his wife. He had made a desperate
struggle to screw up his courage, but it was fast
coming unscrewed again.
There appears nothing very tremendous in
this little sentence, "Upon my word, sir," when
it comes to be read; but the tone of voice in
which it was delivered, and the look that ac-
companied it, both seeming to bear reference to
some revenge to be thereafter visited upon the
head of Pott, produced their full effect upon
him. The most unskillful observer could have
detected in his troubled countenance, a readi-
ness to resign his Wellington boots to any effi-
cient substitute who would have consented to
stand in them at that moment.
*
*
*
*
*
Pott looked very frightened. It was time to
finish him.
(6
"And now," sobbed Mrs. Pott,
now, after
all, to be treated in this way; to be reproached
and insulted in the presence of a third party,
and that party almost a stranger. But I will
not submit to it! Goodwin," continued Mrs
Pott, raising herself in the arms of her atten-
dant, my brother, the Lieutenant, shall inter-
fere. I'll be separated, Goodwin!
"It would certainly serve him right, maʼam,”
said Goodwin.
((
"
Whatever thoughts the threat of a separation
might have awakened in Mr. Pott's mind, he
forebore to give utterance to them, and con-
tented himself by saying, with great humility:
'My dear, will you hear me?"
A fresh train of sobs was the only reply, as
Mrs. Pott grew more hysterical, requested to be
informed why she was ever born, and required
sundry other pieces of information of a similar
description.-Pickwick, Chap. 18.
HYPOCRITES-Their moral book-keeping.
There are some men who, living with the one
object of enriching themselves, no matter by
what means, and being perfectly conscious of
the baseness and rascality of the means which
they will use every day towards this end, affect
nevertheless—even to themselves—a high tone
of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and
sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of
the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this
earth, or rather-for walking implies, at least,
an erect position and the bearing of a man-
that ever crawled and crept through life by its
dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot
down in diaries the events of every day, and
keep a regular debtor and creditor account with
Heaven, which shall always show a floating bal-
ance in their own favor. Whether this is a gra-
tuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood
and trickery of such men's lives, or whether they
really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up
treasure in the next world by the same process
which has enabled them to lay up treasure in
this-not to question how it is, so it is. And,
doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain auto-
biographies which have enlightened the world)
cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one re-
spect of sparing the recording Angel some time
and labor.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 44.
HYPOCRITE-The.
Mr. Carker the Manager rose with the lark.
and went out walking in the summer day. His
HYPOCRISY AND CONCEIT
244
HYPOCHONDRIACS
meditations—and he meditated with contracted HYPOCRITE-Pecksniff as a.
brows while he strolled along-hardly seemed
to soar as high as the lark, or to mount in that
direction; rather they kept close to their nest
upon the earth, and looked about, among the
dust and worms. But there was not a bird in
the air, singing unseen, farther beyond the reach
of human eye than Mr. Carker's thoughts. He had
his face so perfectly under control, that few could
say more, in distinct terms, of its expression,
than that it smiled or that it pondered. It pon-
dered now, intently. As the lark rose higher,
he sank deeper in thought. As the lark poured
out her melody clearer and stronger, he fell
into a graver and profounder silence. At length
when the lark came headlong down, with an
accumulating stream of song, and dropped among
the green wheat near him, rippling in the breath
of the morning`like a river, he sprang up from
his reverie, and looked around with a sudden
smile, as courteous and as soft as if he had had
numerous observers to propitiate: nor did he
relapse, after being thus awakened; but clear-
ing his face, like one who bethought himself
that it might otherwise wrinkle and tell tales,
went smiling on, as if for practice.
It was a special quality, among the many
admirable qualities possessed by Mr. Pecksniff,
that the more he was found out, the more hypoc
risy he practised. Let him be discomfited in
one quarter, and he refreshed and recompensed
himself by carrying the war into another. If
his workings and windings were detected by A,
so much the greater reason was there for prac-
tising without loss of time on B, if it were only
to Reep his hand in. He had never been such
a saintly and improving spectacle to all about
him, as after his detection by Thomas Pinch.
He had scarcely ever been at once so tender in
his humanity, and so dignified and exalted in
his virtue, as when young Martin's scorn was
fresh and hot upon him.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.
HYPOCRISY AND CONCEIT.
Mere empty-headed conceit excites our pity,
but ostentatious hypocrisy awakens our disgust.
Sketches of Couples.
HYPOCRISY.
"You see," he continued, with a smile, and
softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have
laid its sheathed claws, on Mr. Dombey's arm.
Mr. Carker bowed his head, and rising from
the table, and standing thoughtfully before the
fire, with his hands to his smooth chin, looked
down at Mr. Dombey with the evil slyness of
some monkish carving, half human and half
brute; or like a leering face on an old water-
spout.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 42.
HYPOCRITES-Mr. Weller's opinion of
clerical.
Mr. Weller smoked for some minutes in si-
lence, and then resumed:
Having this large stock of superfluous senti-
ment and morality on hand, which must posi-
tively be cleared off at any sacrifice, Mr. Peck-
sniff no sooner heard his son-in-law announced
than he regarded him as a kind of wholesale
or general order, to be immediately executed.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 44.
It would be no description of Mr. Pecksniff's
gentleness of manner to adopt the common par-
lance, and say, that he looked at this moment as
if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He ra-
ther looked as if any quantity of butter might
have been made out of him, by churning the
milk of human kindness, as it spouted upwards
from his heart.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 3.
HYPOCRITE-Quilp's description of a.
"This Kit is one of your honest people; one
of your fair characters; a prowling, prying
hound; a hypocrite; a double-faced, white
livered, sneaking spy; a crouching cur to those
that feed and coax him, and a barking, yelping
dog to all besides."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 51.
HYPOCHONDRIACS.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle wear an ex-
traordinary quantity of flannel, and have a habit
of putting their feet in hot water to an unnatu-
ral extent. They indulge in chamomile tea
and such-like compounds, and rub themselves
"The worst o' these here shepherds is, my on the slightest provocation with camphorated
boy, that they reg'larly turns the heads of all the spirits and other lotions applicable to mumps,
young ladies about here. Lord bless their lit-sore-throat, rheumatism, or lumbago.
tle hearts, they thinks it's all right, and don't
know no better; but they're the wictims o' gam-
mon, Samivel, they're the wictims o' gammon."
"I s'pose they are," said Sam.
Nothin' else," said Mr. Weller, shaking his
head gravely; "and wot aggrawates me,
Samivel, is to see 'em a wastin' all their time
and labor in making clothes for copper-colored
people as don't want 'em, and taking no notice
of flesh-colored Christians as do. If I'd my vay,
Samivel, I'd just stick some o' these here lazy
shepherds behind a heavy wheelbarrow, and run
'em up and down a fourteen-inch-wide plank all
day. That 'ud shake the nonsense out of 'em,
if anythin' vould.”
Mr. Weller having delivered this gentle re-
cipe with strong emphasis, eked out by a va-
riety of nods and contortions of the eye, emp-
tied his glass at a draught, and knocked the
ashes out of his pipe, with native dignity.
Pickwick, Chap. 27.
Mr. Merrywinkle's leaving home to go to
business on a damp or wet morning is a very
elaborate affair.
elaborate affair. He puts on wash-leather socks
over his stockings, and India-rubber shoes above
his boots, and wears under his waistcoat a cui-
rass of hare-skin. Besides these precautions, he
winds a thick shawl round his throat, and blocks
up his mouth with a large silk handkerchief.
Thus accoutred, and furnished besides with a
great-coat and umbrella, he braves the dangers
of the streets; travelling in severe weather at a
gentle trot, the better to preserve the circulation,
and bringing his mouth to the surface to take
breath but very seldom, and with the utmost
caution. His office door opened, he shoots past
his clerk at the same pace, and diving into his
own private room, closes the door, examines the
window-fastenings, and gradually unrobes him-
self; hanging his pocket-handkerchief on the
fender to air, and determining to write to the
newspapers about the fog, which, he says, "has
1
HYPOCHONDRIAC
really got to that pitch that it is quite unbear-
able."
Our readers may rest assured of the accuracy
of these general principles:—that all couples
who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful
that they charge upon every wind that blows,
every rain that falls, and every vapor that hangs
in the air, the evils which arise from their own
imprudence or the gloom which is engendered
in their own tempers-and that all men and
women, in couples or otherwise, who fall into
exclusive habits of self-indulgence, and forget
their natural sympathy and close connection
with everybody and everything in the world
around them, not only neglect the first duty of
life, but, by a happy retributive justice, deprive
themselves of its truest and best enjoyment.
Sketches of Couples.
245
IDLERS
"And such a man to speak," said Mr. Muzzle.
"How his ideas flow, don't they?"
Wonderful," replied Sam; "they comes a
pouring out, knocking each other's heads so fast,
that they seems to stun one another; you hardly
know what he's arter, do you?"
Pickwick, Chap. 25.
IDEAS-Mr. Willet's cooking process.
Although it was hot summer weather, Mr.
Willet sat close to the fire. He was in a state
of profound cogitation, with his own thoughts,
and it was his custom at such times to stew him-
self slowly, under the impression that that pro-
cess of cookery was favorable to the melting out
of his ideas, which, when he began to simmer,
sometimes oozed forth so copiously as to aston-
ish even himself.
*
*
*
*
*
And this dim ray of light did so diffuse itself
within him, and did so kindle up and shine,
that at last he had it as plainly and visibly be-
fore him as the blaze by which he sat: and fully
persuaded that he was the first to make the dis-
HYPOCHONDRIAC-Mr. Gobler, the.
"It's rather singular," continued Mrs. Tibbs,
with what was meant for a most bewitching
smile, "that we have a gentleman now with us,
who is in a very delicate state of health-a Mr.covery, and that he had started, hunted down,
Gobler-His apartment is the back drawing-
room."
"The next room?" inquired Mrs. Bloss.
"The next room," repeated the hostess.
How very promiscuous!" ejaculated the
widow.
He hardly ever gets up," said Mrs. Tibbs in
a whisper.
"Lor!” cried Mrs. Bloss, in an equally low
tone.
((
"And when he is up," said Mrs. Tibbs, we
never can persuade him to go to bed again."
"Dear me !" said the astonished Mrs. Bloss,
drawing her chair nearer Mrs. Tibbs. "What is
his complaint?
66
Why, the fact is," replied Mrs. Tibbs, with
a most communicative air, "he has no stomach
whatever."
"No what?" inquired Mrs. Bloss, with a look
of the most indescribable alarm.
"L
No stomach," repeated Mrs. Tibbs, with a
shake of the head.
"Lord bless us ! what an extraordinary case!"
gasped Mrs. Bloss, as if she understood the com-
munication in its literal sense, and was astonish-
ed at a gentleman without a stomach finding it
necessary to board anywhere.
"When I say he has no stomach," explained
the chatty little Mrs. Tibbs, "I mean that his
digestion is so much impaired, and his interior
so deranged, that his stomach is not of the least
use to him-in fact, it's an inconvenience."
"Never heard such a case in my life!" ex-
claimed Mrs. Bloss. Why, he's worse than I
am."- Tales, Chap. I.
IDEAS-A flow of.
is."
T
|
fallen upon, and knocked on the head, a per-
fectly original idea, which had never presented
itself to any other man, alive or dead, he laid
down his pipe, rubbed his hands, and chuckled
audibly.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 78.
IDEA-A "penned up."
But her abiding reliance was on Mr. Dick.
That man had evidently an idea in his head, she
said; and if he could once pen it up into a cor-
ner, which was his great difficulty, he would dis-
tinguish himself in some extraordinary manner.
David Copperfield, Chap. 45.
IDEAS-The association of.
We have all some experience of a feeling, that
comes over us occasionally, of what we are say-
ing and doing having been said and done be-
fore, in a remote time-of our having been
surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces,
objects, and circumstances of our knowing
perfectly what will be said next, as if we sud-
denly remembered it!
David Copperfield, Chap. 39.
IDLE LIFE—An.
Sir Leicester is content enough that the iron-
master should feel that there is no hurry there;
there, in that ancient house, rooted in that quiet
park, where the ivy and the moss have had time
to mature, and the gnarled and warted elms,
and the umbrageous oaks, stand deep in the
fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where
the sun-dial on the terrace has dumbly recorded
for centuries that Time, which was as much the
property of every Dedlock-while he lasted-as
the house and lands.-Bleak House, Chap. 28.
IDLERS-City.
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 commiseration for the .
man who can take up his hat and stick, and
Ah," said Sam, "what a pleasant chap he walk from Covent Garden to St. Paul's Church-
"Ain't he?" replied Mr. Muzzle.
"So much humor," said Sam.
yard, and back, into the bargain, without de
riving some amusement-we had almost said
instruction-from his perambulation. And yet
IMAGINATION
246
INDECISION
"Thank you for the compliment," said Clen.
nam, ill at ease; "you are too, I hope?"
So, so," rejoined the other. "To be candid
with you, tolerably. I am not a great impostor
confidence, it will not be worth the money. Buy
one of another man's-any great professor who
beats me hollow-and the chances are that the
more you give him, the more he'll impose upon
They all do it."
"All painters?"
66
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 busi-Buy one of my pictures, and I assure you, in
ness, 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:
nothing short of being knocked down by a por-you.
ter, or run over by a cab, will disturb their equa-
nimity. You will meet them on a fine day in Painters, writers, patriots, all the rest who
any of the leading thoroughfares : peep through have stands in the market. Give almost any
the window of a west-end cigar-shop in the man I know, ten pounds, and he will impose
evening, if you can manage to get a glimpse upon you to a corresponding extent; a thousand
between the blue curtains which intercept the pounds-to a corresponding extent; ten thou-
vulgar gaze, and you see them in their only en- sand pounds-to a corresponding extent. So
joyment of existence. There they are, lounging great the success, so great the imposition. But
about, on round tubs and pipe-boxes, in all the what a capital world it is!" cried Gowan with
dignity of whiskers and gilt watch-guards; whis-warm enthusiasm. "What a jolly, excellent
pering soft nothings to the young lady in amber, loveable world it is!"
with the large ear-rings, who, as she sits behind
the counter in a blaze of adoration and gas-light,
is the admiration of all the female servants in
the neighborhood, and the envy of every milli-
ner's apprentice within two miles round.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 3.
IMAGINATION—A starved.
Struggling through the dissatisfaction of her
face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon,
a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagina-
tion keeping life in itself somehow, which bright-
ened its expression. Not with the brightness
natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain,
eager, doubtful flashes, which had something
painful in them, analogous to the changes on a
blind face groping its way.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 3.
IMPERTINENCE-Rebuked.
"He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond,
that's what he is, in English."
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 26.
CREDULITY-As
IMPUDENCE AND
passports.
Impudence and the marvellous are pretty sure
passports to any society.-Tales, Chap. 7.
INCOMPREHENSIBILITY — The
pound interest of.
com-
As nobody on the face of the earth could be
more incapable of explaining any single item
in the heap of confusion than the debtor him-
self, nothing comprehensible could be made of
his case. To question him in detail, and en-
deavor to reconcile his answers; to closet him
with accountants and sharp practitioners, learn-
ed in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy
was only to put the case out at compound inter
est of incomprehensibility.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 6.
INDECISION—Of character.
"It's all the same to me what he is or what To be in the halting state of Mr. Henry
he is not, whether in English or whether in Gowan; to have left one of two Powers in dis-
French," retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, facing gust, to want the necessary qualifications for
about. “I am telling your friend what's the finding promotion with another, and to be loi-
fact; if you don't like to hear it, you can avail tering moodily about on neutral ground, curs-
yourself of the open air. You give it mouthing both; is to be in a situation unwholesome
enough, you do; but give it mouth in your own for the mind, which time is not likely to im-
building at least," remonstrated E. W. B., with prove. The worst class of sum worked in the
stern irony. "Don't give it mouth in this build-every-day world, is cyphered by the diseased
ing, till you're called upon. You have got some
building of your own, I dare say, now?"
"Perhaps so," replied Mr. Bounderby, rat-
tling his money and laughing.
"Then give it mouth in your own building,
will you, if you please?" said Childers. "Be-
cause this isn't a strong building, and too much
of you might bring it down!"
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 6.
IMPRESSIONS OF PEOPLE-The first.
In real life the peculiarities and oddities of a
man who has anything whimsical about him,
generally impress us first, and it is not until we
are better acquainted with him that we usually
begin to look below these superficial traits, and
to know the better part of him.
IMPOSTORS-Social.
"You are genuine also."
Pickwick, Preface.
arithmeticians who are always in the rule of
Subtraction as to the merits and successes
of others, and never in Addition as to their
own.
The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recom
pense in the discontented boast of being disap-
pointed, is a habit fraught with degeneracy.
A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of
consistency soon comes of it. To bring de-
serving things down by setting undeserving
things up, is one of its perverted delights; and
there is no playing fast and loose with the
truth, in any game, without growing the worse
for it.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6.
INDECISION-Of character (Sparkler).
He had no greater will of his own than a
boat has when it is towed by a steam-ship; and
he followed his cruel mistress through rough
and smooth, on equally strong compulsion.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 14.
INDIFFERENCE
INDIFFERENCE.
247
A display of indifference to all the actions
and passions of mankind was not supposed to
be such a distinguished quality at that time, I
think, as I have observed it to be considered
since. I have known it very fashionable in-
deed. I have seen it displayed with such suc-
cess, that I have encountered some fine ladies
and gentlemen who might as well have been
born caterpillars.-David Copperfield, Chap. 36.
INNS
haps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps
older, which will sometimes happen with houses
of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age.
Its windows were old diamond-pane lattices, its
floors were sunken and uneven, its ceilings
blackened by the hand of time, and heavy with
massive beams. Over the door-way was an
ancient porch, quaintly and grotesquely carved ;
and here on summer evenings the more favored
customers smoked and drank-ay, and sang
many a good song too, sometimes-reposing on
two grim-looking, high-backed settles, which,
It is not possible to know how far the influ-like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded
ence of any amiable, honest-hearted, duty-do- the entrance to the mansion.
ing man flies out into the world; but it is very
possible to know how it has touched one's self
in going by, and I know right well that any
good that intermixed itself with my apprentice-
ship came of plain, contented Joe, and not of
restless, aspiring, discontented me.
INFLUENCES-Kind.
Great Expectations, Chap. 14.
INTEREST AND CONVENIENCE.
"Our interest and convenience commonly
oblige many of us to make professions that we
cannot feel. We have partnerships of interest
and convenience, friendships of interest and
convenience, dealings of interest and conveni-
ence, marriages of interest and convenience,
every day."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 45.
INN-An English.
The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, already
mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance,
had long settled down into a state of hale in-
firmity. In its whole constitution it had not a
straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it
had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast,
many a better-trimmed building, many a spru-
cer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow,
lopsided jumble of corpulent windows, heaped
one upon another as you might heap as many
toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah
impending over the water; indeed, the whole
house, inclusive of the complaining flagstaff on
the roof, impended over the water, but seemed
to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted
diver, who has paused so long on the brink that
he will never go in at all.
*
*
*
*
*
The wood forming the chimney-pieces, beams,
partitions, floors, and doors of the Six Jolly Fel-
lowship-Porters, seemed in its old age fraught
with confused memories of its youth. In many
places it had become gnarled and riven, accord-
ing to the manner of old trees; knots started
out of it; and here and there it seemed to twist
itself into some likeness of boughs. In this
state of second childhood, it had an air of being
in its own way garrulous about its early life.
Not without reason was it often asserted by the
regular frequenters of the Porters, that when
the light shone full upon the grain of certain
panels, and particularly upon an old corner cup-
board of walnut-wood in the bar, you might
trace little forests there, and tiny trees like the
parent-tree, in full umbrageous leaf.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 6.
INN-An old (The Maypole).
In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swal-
lows had built their nests for many a long year,
and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole
colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in
the eaves. There were more pigeons about the
dreary stable-yard and out-buildings than any-
body but the landlord could reckon up. The
wheeling and circling flights of runts, fantails,
tumblers, and pouters, were perhaps not quite
consistent with the grave and sober character of
the building, but the monotonous cooing, which
never ceased to be raised by some among them
all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to
lull it to rest. With its overhanging stories,
drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging
out and projecting over the pathway, the old
house looked as if it were nodding in its sleep.
Indeed, it needed no very great stretch of fan-
cy to detect in it other resemblances to hu-
manity. The bricks of which it was built had
originally been a deep dark red, but had grown
yellow and discolored, like an old man's skin
the sturdy timbers had decayed like teeth; and
here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to
comfort it in its age, wrapped its green leaves
closely round the time-worn walls.
It was a hale and hearty age though, still:
and in the summer or autumn evenings, when
the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak
and chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the
old house, partaking of its lustre, seemed their
fit companion, and to have many good years of
life in him yet.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 1.
INN—A roadside.
Indeed, The Tilted Wagon-as a cool establish-
ment on the top of a hill, where the ground be-
fore the door was puddled with damp hoofs and
trodden straw; where a scolding landlady
slapped a moist baby (with one red sock on and
one wanting) in the bar; where the cheese was
cast aground upon a shelf, in company with a
mouldy tablecloth and a green-handled knife,
in a sort of cast-iron canoe; where the pale-faced
bread shed tears of crumb over its shipwreck, in
another canoe; where the family linen, half
washed and half dried, led a public life of
lying about; where everything to drink was
drunk out of mugs, and everything else was
suggestive of a rhyme to mugs-The Tilted
Wagon, all these things considered, hardly kept
its painted promise of providing good entertain-
ment for Man and Beast.
INNS-Of Europe.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 15.
Whether these, and many other stories of the Next to the provincial Inns of France, with
like nature, were true or untrue, the Maypole the great church-tower rising above the court-
was really an old house, a very old house, per- | yard, the horse-bells jingling merrily up and
INNS
248
INN
sir; reading-room, sir: over four hundred sleep-
ing-rooms, sir; and the entire planned and finited
within twelve calendar months from the first clear
ing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a
cost of five hundred thousand dollars, sir
Again I found, as to my individual way of think
ing, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and
the more dollarous the establishment was, the
less desirable it was. Nevertheless, again I
drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in
all good-will, to my friend the General, and my
friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians all;
full well knowing that, whatever little motes my
beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, they
belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and
great people.-The Holly Tree.
INN-Memories of an old.
Or take any other of the numerous travelling
instances in which, with more time at your dis-
posal, you are, have been, or may be, equally ill-
served. Take the old-established Bull's Head,
with its old-established knife-boxes on its old-
established side-boards, its old-established flue
under its old-established four-post bedsteads in
its old-established airless rooms, its old-estab-
lished frowziness up-stairs and down-stairs, its
old-established cookery, and its old-established
principles of plunder. Count up your injuries,
in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in white
poultices, of apothecaries' powders in rice for
curry, of pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually
relying for an adventitious interest on forcemeat
balls. You have had experience of the old-
established Bull's Head's stringy fowls, with
lower extremities like wooden legs sticking up
out of the dish; of its cannibalic boiled mutton,
gushing horribly among its capers, when carved;
of its little dishes of pastry,-roofs of spermaceti
ointment erected over half an apple or four
gooseberries. Well for you if you have yet for-
gotten the old-established Bull's Head's fruity
port; whose reputation was gained solely by the
old-established price the Bull's Head put upon
it, and by the old-established air with which the
Bull's Head set the glasses and D'Oyleys on, and
held that Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny
wax-candle, as if its old-established color hadn't
come from the dyer's.
down the street beyond, and the clocks of all
descriptions in all the rooms, which are never
right, unless taken at the precise minute when,
by getting exactly twelve hours too fast or too
slow, they unintentionally become so. Away I
went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy;
where all the dirty clothes in the house (not in
wear) are always lying in your ante-room; where
the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your
face in summer, and the cold bites it blue in
winter; where you get what you can, and for-
get what you can't; where I should again like
to be boiling my tea in a pocket-handkerchief
dumpling, for want of a teapot. So to the old
palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in towns
and cities of the same bright country; with their
massive quadrangular staircases, whence you
may look from among clustering pillars high
into the blue vault of Heaven; with their stately
banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories; with
their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, and
their glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no
appearance of reality or possibility. So to the
close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with
their pale attendants, and their peculiar smell of
never letting in the air. So to the immense
fantastic Inns of Venice, with the cry of the
gondolier below, as he skims the corner; the
grip of the watery odors on one particular little
bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never
released while you stay there); and the great
bell of St. Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight.
Next I put up for a minute at the restless Inns
upon the Rhine, where your going to bed, no
matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin
for everybody else's getting up; and where, in
the table d'hôte room, at the end of the long
table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the
other end, all made of white plates), one knot of
stoutish men, entirely dressed in jewels and
dirt, and having nothing else upon them, will
remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing
about the river that flows and the grape that
grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine
woman that smiles, and hi drink drink my friend
and ho drink drink my brother, and all the rest
of it. I departed thence as a matter of course,
to other German Inns, where all the eatables are
sodden down to the same flavor, and where the
mind is disturbed by the apparition of hot pud-
dings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at
awfully unexpected periods of the repast. After
a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird—if it
glass jug, and a glance of recognition through had only some confused idea of making a com
the windows of the student beer-houses at Hei- fortable nest-I could hope to get through the
delberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the hours between this and bed-time, without being
Inns of America, with their four hundred beds consumed by devouring melancholy. But the
apiece, and their eight or nine hundred ladies Dodo's habits are all wrong. It provides me
and gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I with a trackless desert of sitting-room, with a
stood in the bar-rooms thereof, taking my even-chair for every day in the year, a table for every
ing cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail. Again I
listened to my friend the General-whom I had
known for five minutes, in the course of which
period he had made me intimate for life with
two Majors, who again had made me intimate
for life with three Colonels, who again had made
me brother to twenty-two civilians-again, I say,
I listened to my friend the General, leisurely
expounding the resources of the establishment,
as to gentlemen's morning-room, sir; ladies'
morning-room, sir; gentlemen's evening-room,
sir; ladies' evening-room, sir; ladies' and gentle-
men's evening reuniting-room, sir; music-room,
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap.6.
INN-Scenes in an.
month, and a waste of sideboard where a lonely
China vase pines in a corner for its mate long
departed, and will never make a match with the
candlestick in the opposite corner if it live till
Doomsday. The Dodo has nothing in the
larder. Even now, I behold the boots return-
ing with my sole in a piece of paper; and with
that portion of my dinner, the Boots, perceiving
me at the blank bow window, slaps his leg as he
comes across the road, pretending it is some.
thing else. The Dodo excludes the outer air.
When I mount up to my bed-room, a smell of
closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like
INN
249
INNOCENCE
sleepy snuff.
The loose little bits of carpet in unruffled depths of old mahogany-and at
writhe under my tread, and take wormy shapes. the lamps, without a flaw in their trimming or
I don't know the ridiculous man in the looking- cleaning; and at the comfortable green curtains,
glass, beyond having met him once or twice in with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the
a dish-cover-and I can never shave him to- boxes; and at the two large coal fires, brightly
morrow morning! The Dodo is narrow-minded burning; and at the rows of decanters, burly as
as to towels; expects me to wash on a freema- if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive
son's apron without the trimming: when I ask old port wine below; and both England, and
for soap, gives me a stony-hearted something the law, appeared to me to be very difficult
white, with no more lather in it than the Elgin indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my
marbles. The Dodo has seen better days, and bed-room to change my wet clothes; and the
possesses interminable stables at the back-si- vast extent of that old wainscotted apartment
lent, grass-grown, broken-windowed, horseless. (which was over the archway leading to the inn,
I remember), and the sedate immensity of the
four-post bedstead, and the indomitable gravity
of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in
sternly frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or
on any such daring youth.
David Copperfield, Chap. 59.
This mournful bird can fry a sole, however,
which is much. Can cook a steak, too, which is
more. I wonder where it gets its Sherry! If I
were to send my pint of wine to some famous
chemist to be analyzed, what would it turn out
to be made of? It tastes of pepper, sugar, bit-
ter almonds, vinegar, warm knives, any flat
drink, and a little brandy. Would it unman a
Spanish exile by reminding him of his native
land at all? I think not. If there really be
any townspeople out of the churchyards, and if
a caravan of them ever do dine, with a bottle of
wine per man, in this desert of the Dodo, it
must make good for the doctor next day!
Where was the waiter born? How did he
come here? Has he any hope of getting away
from here? Does he ever receive a letter, or
take a ride upon the railway, or see anything
but the Dodo? Perhaps he has seen the Berlin
Wool. He appears to have a silent sorrow on
him, and it may be that. He clears the table;
draws the dingy curtains of the great bow win-
dow, which so unwillingly consent to meet, that
they must be pinned together; leaves me by the
fire with my pint decanter, and a little thin
funnel-shaped wine-glass, and a plate of pale
biscuits-in themselves engendering despera-
tion.
INN-Room in an.
The Concord bed-chamber being always as-
signed to a passenger by the mail, and passen-
gers by the mail being always heavily wrapped
up from head to foot, the room had the odd in-
terest 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.-Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4.
Inn-A wayside.
At such a time, one little roadside inn, snugly
sheltered behind a great elm-tree, with a rare
seat for idlers encircling its capacious bole, ad-
dressed a cheerful front towards the traveller, as
a house of entertainment ought, and tempted
him with many mute but significant assurances
of a comfortable welcome. The ruddy sign-
board perched up in the tree, with its golden
letters winking in the sun, ogled the passer-by,
from among the green leaves, like a jolly face,
No book, no newspaper! I left the Arabian and promised good cheer.
The horse-trough,
Nights in the railway carriage, and have nothing full of clear fresh water, and the ground below
to read but Bradshaw, and "that way madness it sprinkled with droppings of fragrant hay,
lies." Remembering what prisoners and ship-made every horse that passed prick up his ears.
wrecked mariners have done to exercise their The crimson curtains in the lower rooms, and
minds in solitude, I repeat the multiplication
table, the pence table, and the shilling table:
which are all the tables I happen to know.
What if I write something? The Dodo keeps
no pens
but steel pens; and those I always stick
through the paper, and can turn to no other
account.-A Plated Article. Reprinted Pieces.
INN-An unwholesome.
"I meantersay, you two gentlemen, which I
hope as you gets your elths in this close spot?
For the present may be a wery good inn, accord-
ing to London opinions," said Joe, confidential-
ly, "and I believe its character do stand i; but I
wouldn't keep a pig in it myself-not in the
case that I wished him to fatten wholesome, and
to eat with a meller flavor on him."
Great Expectations, Chap. 27.
INN-An ancient apartment.
the pure white hangings in the little bed-cham-
bers above, beckoned, Come in! with every
breath of air. Upon the bright green shut-
ters, there were golden legends about beer
and ale, and neat wines, and good beds; and an
affecting picture of a brown jug frothing over
at the top. Upon the window-sills were flower-
ing plants in bright red pots, which made a
lively show against the white front of the house;
and in the darkness of the doorway there were
streaks of light, which glanced off from the
surfaces of bottles and tankards.
Battle of Life, Chap. 3.
INNOCENCE-The affectation of advice of
Mr. Bucket.
"Now, Miss Summerson, I'll give you a piece
of advice that your husband will find useful
when you are happily married and have got a
family about you. Whenever a person says to
It had such a prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-you that they are as innocent as can be in all
established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced concerning money, look well after your own
about the room, which had had its sanded floor money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if
sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you
when the chief waiter was a boy-if he ever 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider
was a boy, which appeared improbable-and at that that person is only a-crying off from being
the shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, I held accountable, and that you
have got
that
per-
INNOCENCE
son's number, and it's Number One. Now, I
am not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal
way, when it goes round a company, but I'm a
practical one, and that's my experience. So's
is rule. Fast and loose in one thing, Fast and
loose in everything. I never knew it fail."
Bleak House, Chap. 57.
INNOCENCE-And guilt.
250
INQUISITION
ment and anxiety will subdue the stoutest
hearts; and that to one who has been close
shut up, though it be only for ten or eleven
days, seeing but stone walls and a very few
stony faces, the sudden entrance into a great
hall filled with life, is a rather disconcerting
and startling circumstance. To this it must be
added, that life in a wig is, to a large class of
people, much more terrifying and impressive
than life with its own head of hair.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 63.
Poor
"Well, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby, "you see
my little woman is-not to put too fine a point
upon it-inquisitive. She's inquisitive.
little thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good
for her to have her mind employed. In conse-
quence of which she employs it—I should say
upon every individual thing she can lay hold of,
whether it concerns her or not-especially not
My little woman has a very active mind, sir."
Bleak House, Chap. 22
INQUISITION-The tortures of the.
It was a curious contrast to see how the timid
country girl shrunk through the crowd that hur-
ried up and down the streets, giving way to the
press of people, and clinging closely to Ralph, INQUISITIVENESS-A cure for spasms.
as though she feared to lose him in the throng
and how the stern and hard-featured man of
business went doggedly on, elbowing the pas-
sengers aside, and now and then exchanging a
gruff salutation with some passing acquaintance,
who turned to look back upon his pretty charge,
with looks expressive of surprise, and seemed
to wonder at the ill-assorted companionship.
But it would have been a stranger contrast still,
to have read the hearts that were beating side
by side; to have laid bare the gentle innocence
of the one, and the rugged villany of the other;
to have hung upon the guileless thoughts of the
affectionate girl, and been amazed that, among
all the wily plots and calculations of the old
man, there should not be one word or figure de-
noting thought of death or of the grave. But
so it was; and stranger still-though this is a
thing of
every day-the warm young heart pal-
pitated with a thousand anxieties and apprehen-
sions, while that of the old worldly man lay
rusting in its cell, beating only as a piece of cun-
ning mechanism, and yielding no one throb of
hope, or fear, or love, or care, for any living thing.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10.
INNOCENT OFFENDERS-Public injustice
to.
Let moralists and philosophers say what they
may, it is very questionable whether a guilty man
would have felt half as much misery that night,
as Kit did, being innocent. The world, being
in the constant commission of vast quantities
of injustice, is a little too apt to comfort itself
with the idea that if the victim of its falsehood
and malice have a clear conscience, he cannot
fail to be sustained under his trials, and some-
how or other to come right at last; "in which.
case," say those who have hunted him down,
"-though we certainly don't expect it-nobody
will be better pleased than we." Whereas, the
world would do well to reflect, that injustice is
in itself, to every generous and properly consti-
tuted mind, an injury, of all others the most
insufferable, the most torturing, and the most
hard to bear; and that many clear consciences
have gone to their account elsewhere, and many
sound hearts have broken, because of this very
reason; the knowledge of their own deserts
only aggravating their sufferings, and rendering
them the less endurable.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 61.
INNOCENT-Hasty judgment of the.
To this indictment, Christopher Nubbles, in
a low and trembling voice, pleaded Not Guilty:
and here, let those who are in the habit of form-
ing hasty judgments from appearances, and who
would have had Christopher, if innocent, speak
out very strong and loud, observe, that confine-
A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in
which the prisoners of the Inquisition were con-
fined for forty-eight hours after their capture,
without food or drink, that their constancy
might be shaken, even before they were con-
fronted with their gloomy judges. The day has
not got in there yet. They are still small
cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard
walls; still profoundly dark; still massively
doored and fastened, as of old.
Goblin, looking back as I have described,
went softly on into a vaulted chamber, now
used as a store-room: once the chapel of the
Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat
was plain. The platform might have been re-
moved but yesterday. Conceive the parable of
the Good Samaritan having been painted on the
wall of one of these Inquisition chambers! But
it was, and may be traced there yet.
High up in the jealous wall, are niches where
the faltering replies of the accused were heard
and noted down. Many of them had been
brought out of the very cell we had just looked
into, so awfully; along the same stone passage.
We had trodden in their very footsteps.
I am gazing round me, with the horror that
the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by
the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but
the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites
me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so.
She
leads me out into a room adjoining-a rugged
room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof,
open at the top, to the bright day. I ask her
what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously
and stares. I ask again. She glances round,
to see that all the little company are there; sits
down upon a mound of stones; throws up her
arms, and yells out, like a fiend, "La SaÎle de
la Question!"
The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was
made of that shape to stifle the victim's cries!
Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile,
in silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short
arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap
of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame
out again.
Minutes! Seconds are not marked upon the
Palace clock, when, with her eyes flashing fire
INQUISITION
Goblin is up, in the middle of the chamber, de-
scribing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of
heavy blows. Thus it ran round! cries Gob-
lin. Mash, mash, mash! An endless routine
of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon
the sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough!
says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle,
swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honor!
Suck the bloody rag, deep down into your un-
believing body, Heretic, at every breath you
draw! And when the executioner plucks it
out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's
own Image, know us for His chosen servants,
true believers in the Sermon on the Mount,
elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle
but to heal who never struck a man with pal-
sy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, madness, or
any one affliction of mankind; and never
stretched His blessed hand out, but to give re-
lief and ease.
See! cries Goblin. There the furnace was.
There they made the irons red-hot. Those
holes supported the sharp stake, on which the
tortured persons hung poised; dangling with
their whole weight from the roof. "But; and
Goblin whispers this; "Monsieur has heard of
this tower? Yes? Let Monsieur look down,
then!"
251
INVALID
again, into the Chapel of the Holy Office. She
stops at a certain part of the flooring. Her
great effect is at hand. She waits for the rest.
She darts at the brave Courier, who is explain-
ing something; hits him a sounding rap on the
hat with the largest key; and bids him be si-
lent. She assembles us all round a little trap-
door in the floor, as round a grave. "Voilà!”
she darts down at the ring, and flings the door
open with a crash, in her goblin energy, though
it is no light weight. "Voilà les oubliettes!
Voilà les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful!
Black! Terrible! Deadly! Les oubliettes de
l'Inquisition!"
My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin,
down into the vaults, where these forgotten
creatures, with recollections of the world out-
side-of wives, friends, children, brothers-
starved to death, and made the stones ring with
their unavailing groans. But the thrill I felt on
seeing the accursed wall below, decayed and
broken through, and the sun shining in through
its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory
and triumph. I felt exalted with the proud de-
light of living, in these degenerate times, to see
it. As if I were the hero of some high achieve-
ment! The light in the doleful vaults was typi-
cal of the light that has streamed in on all per-
secution in God's name, but which is not yet at
its noon! It cannot look more lovely to a blind
man newly restored to sight, than to a traveller
who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading
down the darkness of that Infernal Well.
Pictures from Italy.
A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls
upon the face of Monsieur; for she has opened,
while speaking, a trap-door in the wall. Mon-
sieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, up-
ward to the top, of a steep, dark, lofty tower:
very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Execu-
tioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in
her head to look down also, flung those who | INTELLECT-Blighted by cruelty.
were past all further torturing, down here.
"But look! does Monsieur see the black stains
on the wall?" A glance, over his shoulder, at
Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur-and would,
without the aid of the directing-key-where
they are. "What are they?" "Blood!"
To prepare the mind for such a heavy sleep,
its growth must be stopped by rigor and cruelty
in childhood; there must be years of misery and
suffering, lightened by no ray of hope; the
chords of the heart, which beat a quick response
to the voice of gentleness and affection, must
In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at have rusted and broken in their secret places,
its height here, sixty persons; men and women and bear the lingering echo of no old word of
("and priests," says Goblin, "priests"), were love or kindness. Gloomy, indeed, must have
murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, been the short day, and dull the long, long twi
into this dreadful pit, where a quantity of quick-light, preceding such a night of intellect as his.
lime was tumbled down upon their bodies.
Those ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon
no more; but while one stone of the strong
building in which the deed was done, remains
upon another, there they will lie in the memo-
ries of men, as plain to see as the splashing of
their blood upon the wall is now.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 38.
INVALID-Philosophy of an.
"
I see more of the world, I can assure you,
said Mr. Omer, "in this chair, than ever I see
out of it. You'd be surprised at the number of
people that looks in of a day to have a chat.
Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retri-You really would! There's twice as much in
bution, that the cruel deed should be committed
in this place! That a part of the atrocities and
monstrous institutions, which had been, for
scores of years, at work, to change men's na-
ture, should, in its last service, tempt them with
the ready means of gratifying their furious and
beastly rage! Should enable them to show them-
selves, in the height of their frenzy, no worse
than a great, solemn, legal establishment, in the
height of its power! No worse! Much better.
They used the Tower of the Forgotten, in the
name of Liberty-their liberty; an earth-born
creature, nursed in the black mud of the Bastile
moats and dungeons, and necessarily betraying
many evidences of its unwholesome bringing-up
-but the Inquisition used it in the name of
Heaven.
Goblin's finger is lifted; and she steals out
|
the newspaper, since I've taken to this chair, as
there used to be. As to general reading, dear
me, what a lot of it I do get through! That's
what I feel so strong, you know! If it had been
my eyes, what should I have done? If it had
been my ears, what should I have done? Being
my limbs, what does it signify? Why, my limbs
only made my breath shorter when I used 'em.
And now, if I want to go out into the street or
down to the sands, I've only got to call Dick,
Joram's youngest 'prentice, and away I go in
my own carriage, like the Lord Mayor of Lon-
don."
He half suffocated himself with laughing here.
"Lord bless you!" said Mr. Omer, resuming
his pipe, "a man must take the fat with the lean
that's what he must make up his mind to, in this
life."-David Copperfield, Chap. 51.
INVALID
INVALID-Tim Linkinwater's friend.
"It is a good heart," said Nicholas, "that dis-
entangles itself from the close avocations of
every day, to heed such things. You were say-
ing-
"That the flowers belonged to this poor boy,"
said Tim, "that's all. When it is fine weather,
and he can crawl out of bed, he draws a chair
close to the window, and sits there, looking at
them and arranging them, all day long. We
used to nod, at first, and then we came to speak.
Formerly, when I called to him, of a morning,
and asked him how he was, he would smile and
say, 'better;' but now he shakes his head, and
only bends more closely over his old plants. It
must be dull to watch the dark house-tops and
the flying clouds, for so many months; but he
is very patient."
•
Is there nobody in the house to cheer or help
him?" asked Nicholas.
His father lives there, I believe," replied
Tim, "and other people too; but no one seems
to care much for the poor sickly cripple. I have
asked him, very often, if I can do nothing for
him ;
his answer is always the same, 'Nothing.'
His voice is growing weak of late, but I can see
that he makes the old reply. He can't leave his
bed now, so they have moved it close beside the
window, and there he lies all day; now looking
at the sky, and now at his flowers, which he still
makes shift to trim and water, with his own thin
hands. At night, when he sees my candle, he
draws back his curtain, and leaves it so, till I am
in bed. It seems such company to him to know
that I am there, that I often sit at my window
for an hour or more, that he may see that I am
still awake; and sometimes I get up in the night
to look at the dull melancholy light in his little
and wonder whether he is awake or sleep-
room,
ing.
"The night will not be long coming," said
Tim, "when he will sleep, and never wake
again on earth. We have never so much as
shaken hands in all our lives, and yet I shall
miss him like an old friend. Are there any
country flowers that could interest me like these,
do you think? Or do you suppose that the
withering of a hundred kinds of the choicest
flowers that blow, called by the hardest Latin
names that were ever invented, would give me
one fraction of the pain that I shall feel when
those old jugs and bottles are swept away as
lumber! Country!" cried Tim, with a con-
temptuous emphasis; "don't you know that I
couldn't have such a court under my bed-room
window, anywhere, but in London ?"
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 40.
INVALIDS-Their reveries.
252
Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon,
and night, each recurring with its accompanying
monotony, always the same reluctant return of
the same sequences of machinery, like a drag-|
ging piece of clock-work.
The wheeled chair had its associated remem-
brances and reveries, one may suppose, as every
place that is made the station of a human being
has. Pictures of demolished streets and altered
houses, as they formerly were when the occu-
pant of the chair was familiar with them; images
of people as they too used to be, with little or no
allowance made for the lapse of time since they
were seen; of these, there must have been
|
INVENTION AND DISCOVERY
many in the long routine of gloomy days. To
stop the clock of busy existence, at the hour
when we were personally sequestered from it;
to suppose mankind stricken motionless, when
we were brought to a stand-still; to be unable
to measure the changes beyond our view, by
any larger standard than the shrunken one of
our own uniform and contracted existence, is
the infirmity of many invalids, and the mental
unhealthiness of almost all recluses.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 29.
ITALY-Its lessons to the world.
What light is shed upon the world, at this
day, from amidst these rugged Palaces of Flor-
ence! Here, open to all comers, in their beau-
tiful and calm retreats, the ancient Sculptors
are immortal, side by side with Michael Angelo,
Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Poets,
Historians, Philosophers-those illustrious men
of history, beside whom its crowned heads and
harnessed warriors show so poor and small, and
are so soon forgotten. Here, the imperishable
part of noble minds survives, placid and equal,
when strongholds of assault and defence are
overthrown; when the tyranny of the many, or
the few, or both, is but a tale; when Pride and
Power are so much cloistered dust. The fire
within the stern streets, and among the massive
Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays from
Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the flick-
ering of war is extinguished and the household
fires of generations have decayed; as thousands
upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife
and passion of the hour, have faded out of the
old Squares and public haunts, while the name-
less Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion
by a Painter's hand, yet lives on, in enduring
grace and youth.
*
*
*
*
*
And let us not remember Italy the less re-
gardfully, because, in every fragment of her
fallen Temples, and every stone of her deserted
palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the
lesson that the wheel of Time is rolling for an
end, and that the world is, in all great essentials,
better, gentler, more forbearing, and more
hopeful, as it rolls!—Pictures from Italy.
INVENTION AND DISCOVERY-The men-
tal property in.
And so at home he had established himself in
business, and had invented and executed, and
worked his way on, until, after a dozen years of
constant suit and service, he had been enrolled
in the Great British Legion of Honor, the Legion
of the Rebuffed of the Circumlocution Office,
and had been decorated with the Great British
Order of Merit, the Order of the Disorder of
the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings.
"It is much to be regretted," said Clennam,
"that you ever turned your thoughts that way,
Mr. Doyce."
True, sir, true to a certain extent. But
what is a man to do? If he has the misfortune
to strike out something serviceable to the nation,
he must follow where it leads him.”
"Hadn't he better let it go?" asked Clen-
nam.
"He can't do it," said Doyce, shaking his head
with a thoughtful smile. "It's not put into his
head to be buried; it's put into his head to be
made useful. You hold your life on the ccndi-
INVENTORS
253
tion that to the last you shall struggle hard for
it. Every man holds a discovery on the same
terms."
*
*
*
*
*
A composed and unobtrusive self-sustainment
was noticeable in Daniel Doyce-a calm know-
ledge that what was true must remain true, in
spite of all the Barnacles in the family ocean, and
would be just the truth, and neither more nor
less, when even that sea had run dry-which
had a kind of greatness in it, though not of the
official quality.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 16.
INVENTORS-Their encouragement by bar-
baric powers.
A certain barbaric Power, with valuable pos-
sessions on the map of the world, had occasion
for the services of one or two engineers, quick
in invention and determined in execution; prac-
tical men, who could make the men and means
their ingenuity perceived to be wanted, out of
the best materials they could find at hand; and
who were as bold and fertile in the adaptation
of such materials to their purpose, as in the con-
This Power,
ception of their purpose itself.
being a barbaric one, had no idea of stowing
away a great national object in a Circumlocution
Office, as strong wine is hidden from the light
in a cellar, until its fire and youth are gone, and
the laborers who worked in the vineyard and
pressed the grapes are dust. With characteris-
tic ignorance, it acted on the most decided and
energetic notions of How to do it; and never
showed the least respect for, or gave any quarter
to, the great political science How not to do it.
Indeed, it had a barbarous way of striking the
latter art and mystery dead, in the person of
any enlightened subject who practised it.
JEALOUSY
pened to find it. So modest he was about it,
such a pleasant touch of respect was mingled
with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly
convinced he was that it was established on
irrefragable laws.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 8.
IVY GREEN-The.
Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old I
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stcne decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
And a staunch old heart has he.
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,
To his friend the huge Oak Tree !
And slily he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mould of dead men's graves.
Creeping where grim death has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been ;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant in its lonely days,
Shall fasten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise,
Is the Ivy's food at last.
Creeping on, where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
Pickwick, Chap. 6.
J
Accordingly, the men who were wanted, were
sought out and found; which was in itself a
most uncivilized and irregular way of proceed-
ing. Being found, they were treated with great | JEALOUSY-Of Mrs. Snagsby.
confidence and honor (which again showed dense
political ignorance), and were invited to come at
once and do what they had to do. In short,
they were regarded as men who meant to do
it, engaging with other men who meant it to be
done.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 22.
INVENTOR-Character of Daniel Doyce.
He had the power often to be found in union
with such a character, of explaining what he him-
self perceived and meant, with the direct force
and distinctness with which it struck his own
mind. His manner of demonstration was so or-
derly and neat and simple, that it was not easy to
mistake him. There was something almost ludi-
crous in the complete irreconcilability of a vague
conventional notion that he must be a visionary
man, with the precise, sagacious travelling of
his eye and thumb over the plans, their patient
stoppages at particular points, their careful re-
turns to other points whence little channels of
explanation had to be traced up, and his steady
manner of making everything good and every-
thing sound, at each important stage, before
taking his hearer on a line's breadth further.
His dismissal of himself from his description,
was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I
discovered this adaptation or invented that com-
bination; but showed the whole thing as if the
Divine artificer had made it, and he had hap-|
|
These various signs and tokens, marked by
the little woman, are not lost upon her. They
impel her to say, "Snagsby has, something on
his mind!” And thus suspicion gets into
Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. From suspicion
to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as nat-
ural and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery
Lane. And thus jealousy gets into Cook's
Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was
always lurking thereabout), it is very active and
nimble in Mrs. Snagsby's breast-prompting her
to nocturnal examinations of Mr. Snagsby's
pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's
letters; to private researches in the Day-Book
and Ledger, till, cash-box, and iron safe; to
watchings at windows, listenings behind doors,
and a general putting of this and that together
by the wrong end.
Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert,
that the house becomes ghostly with creaking
boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices
think somebody may have been murdered
there, in bygone times. Guster holds certain
loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting,
where they were found floating among the or-
phans), that there is buried money underneath
the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white
beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand
years, because he said the Lord's Prayer back-
wards.-Bleak House, Chap. 25.
JEWS
JEWS-Injustice to the.
254
KETTLE AND CRICKET
the effect, that if the relieving officer had-"
"Tush! Foolery!" interposed the beadle.
"If the board attended to all the nonsense that
ignorant jurymen talk, they'd have enough to
do."
"Very true," said the undertaker; "they
would indeed."
"Juries," said Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane
tightly, as was his wont when working into a
passion: “juries is ineddicated, vulgar, grovel-
ling wretches."
"It is not, in Christian countries, with the
Jews as with other peoples. Men say, 'This is
a bad Greek, but there are good Greeks. This
is a bad Turk, but there are good Turks.' Not
so with the Jews. Men find the bad among us
easily enough-among what peoples are the
bad not easily found?-but they take the worst
of us as samples of the best; they take the low-
est of us as presentations of the highest; and
they say 'All Jews are alike.' If, doing what I
was content to do here, because I was grateful
for the past and have small need of money now,
I had been a Christian, I could have done it,
compromising no one but my individual self.
But doing it as a Jew, I could not choose but
compromise the Jews of all conditions and all
countries. It is a little hard upon us, but it is
the truth. I would that all our people remem-red in the face.
bered it !"
Riah, in Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 9.
JOKES-Upon public men.
George," rejoined Mr. Kenwigs, “a joke
a joke is
a wery good thing-a wery good thing-but
when that joke is made at the expense of Mrs.
Kenwigs's feelings, I set my face against it. A
man in public life expects to be sneered at-
it is the fault of his elewated sitiwation, and
not of himself."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 14.
JURY.
The whole jury was as a jury of dogs empan-
elled to try the deer.
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 9.
JUSTICE-In America.
Poor Justice! she has been made to wear
much stranger garments in America than those
she pines in, in the Capitol. Let us hope that
she has changed her dress-maker since they
were fashioned, and that the public sentiment
of the country did not cut out the clothes she
hides her lovely figure in just now.
American Notes, Chap. 8.
JUDGES OF HORSEFLESH - Judges
anything.
of
“As four heads is better than two, Sammy,"
said Mr. Weller, as they drove along the Lon-
don Road in the chaise cart, "and as all this
here property is a wery great temptation to a
legal gen'l'm'n, ve'll take a couple o' friends o'
mine vith us, as 'll be wery soon down upon him
if he comes anythin' irreg'lar; two o' them as
saw you to the Fleet that day. They're the
wery best judges," added Mr. Weller in a half
whisper, "the wery best judges of a horse you
ever know'd."
"And of a lawyer too?" inquired Sam.
"The man as can form a ackerate judgment
of a animal, can form a ackerate judgment of
anythin'," replied his father; so dogmatically,
that Sam did not attempt to controvert the posi-
tion.-Pickwick, Chap. 55.
JURIES-Bumble's opinion of.
"The jury brought it in, 'Died from exposure
to the cold, and want of the common necessa-
ries of life,' didn't they?"
Mr. Bumble nodded.
"And they made it a special verdict, I think,"
said the undertaker, "by adding some words to
"So they are," said the undertaker.
They haven't no more philosophy no po-
litical economy about 'em than that," said the
beadle, snapping his fingers contemptuously.
"No more they have," acquiesced the under-
taker.
"I despise 'em," said the beadle, growing very
"So do I,” rejoined the undertaker.
"And I only wish we'd a jury of the inde-
pendent sort, in the house for a week or two,”
said the beadle; "the rules and regulations of
the board would soon bring their spirit down
for 'em."-Oliver Twist, Chap. 4.
JURYMEN-Hungry.
"
'Highly important; very important, my dear
sir," replied Perker. "A good, contented, well-
breakfasted juryman, is a capital thing to get
hold of. Discontented or hungry jurymen, my
dear sir, always find for the plaintiff."
K
Pickwick, Chap. 34.
KETTLE-An aggravating.
Besides, the kettle was aggravating and ob-
stinate. It wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted
on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of accommo-
dating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it
would lean forward with a drunken air, and
dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth.
It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered
morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid,
resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all
turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious
pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived.
sideways in-down to the very bottom of the
kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has
never made half the monstrous resistance to
coming out of the water, which the lid of that
kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle, be-
fore she got it up again.
It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even
then; carrying its handle with an air of defiance,
and cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at
Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, "I won't boil.
Nothing shall induce me!"
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 1.
KETTLE AND CRICKET- The music of
the.
The Cricket and the kettle were still keeping
it up, with a perfect fury of competition. The
kettle's weak side clearly being that he didn't
know when he was beat.

E.DALZIEL.S
THE SONG OF THE KETTLE.
255
KETTLE
255
There was all the excitement of a race about
it. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket a mile ahead.
Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle making play
in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp,
chirp Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum,
hum-m-m! Kettle sticking to him in his
own way: no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp,
chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum,
hum-m-m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp,
chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him.
Hum, hum, hum-m-m-! Kettle not to be
finished. Until at last, they got so jumbled
together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of
the match, that whether the kettle chirped and
the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and
the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and
both hummed, it would have taken a clearer
head than yours or mine to have decided with
anything like certainty. But, of this there is no
doubt that the kettle and the Cricket, at one
and the same moment, and by some power of
amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, |
each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into
a ray of the candle that shone out through the
window, and a long way down the lane. And
this light, bursting on a certain person who, on
the instant, approached towards it through the
gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, liter-
ally in a twinkling, and cried, "Welcome home,
old fellow! Welcome home, my boy!"
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 1.
KETTLE-Boiling a.
Having deposited my brown beauty in a red
nook of the hearth, inside the fender, where she
soon began to sing like an ethereal cricket, dif-
fusing at the same time odors as of ripe vine-
yards, spice forests, and orange groves,-I say,
having stationed my beauty in a place of secu-
rity and improvement, I introduced myself to
my guests by shaking hands all round, and giving
them a hearty welcome.
Seven Poor Travellers.
KETTLE—The song of the.
Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began
to spend the evening. Now it was, that the ket-
tle, growing mellow and musical, began to have
irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to in-
dulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in
the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind
yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after
two or three such vain attempts to stifle its con-
vivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness,
all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so
cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale
yet formed the least idea of.
So plain, too! Bless you, you might have un-
derstood it like a book-better than some books
you and I could name, perhaps. With its warm
breath gushing forth in a light cloud which mer-
nly and gracefully ascended a few feet, then
hung about the chimney-corner as its own
domestic Heaven, it trolled its song with that
strong energy of cheerfulness, that its iron body
hummed and stirred upon the fire; and the lid
itself, the recent rebellious lid-such is the in-
fluence of a bright example-performed a sort
of jig, and clattered like a deaf and dumb young
cymbal that had never known the use of its
twin brother.
That this song of the kettle's was a song of
invitation and welcome to somebody out of
|
KISSING
doors: to somebody at that moment coming
on, towards the snug small home and the crisp
fire: there is no doubt whatever. Mrs. Peery
bingle knew it perfectly, as she sat musing be-
fore the hearth. It's a dark night, sang the ket-
tle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way,
and above, all is mist and darkness, and below,
all is mire and clay; and there's only one relief
in all the sad and murky air; and I don't know
that it is one, for it's nothing but a glare; of
deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind
together; set a brand upon the clouds for being
guilty of such weather; and the widest open
country is a long, dull streak of black; and
there's hoar-frost on the finger-post, and thaw
upon the track; and the ice it isn't water, and
the water isn't free; and you couldn't say that
anything is what it ought to be; but he's com-
ing, coming, coming!-
And here, if you like, the Cricket DID chime
in! with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup, of such
magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so
astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as com-
pared with the kettle (size! you couldn't see it!),
that if it had then and there burst itself like an
over-charged gun, if it had fallen a victim on
the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty
pieces, it would have seemed a natural and in-
evitable consequence, for which it had expressly
labored.
The kettle had had the last of its solo per-
formance. It persevered with undiminished
ardor: but the Cricket took first fiddle and
kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its
shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through
the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer
darkness like a star. There was an indescrib-
able little trill and tremble in it at its loudest,
which suggested its being carried off its legs,
and made to leap again, by its own intense en-
thusiasm. Yet they went very well together, the
Cricket and the kettle. The burden of the song
was still the same; and louder, louder, louder
still, they sang it in their emulation.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. I.
KISSES-Lips and.
"The young lady put up her hand as if to
caution my uncle not to do so, and said-no,
she didn't say anything-she smiled. When
you are looking at a pair of the most delicious
lips in the world, and see them gently break in-
to a roguish smile-if you are very near them,
and nobody else by-you cannot better testify
your admiration of their beautiful form and
color than by kissing them at once. My uncle
did so, and I honor him for it."
Pickwick, Chap. 49.
KISSING-Mark Tapley's foreign manner.
When I first caught sight of the church to.
night, I thought the steeple would have choked
me, I did. One more! Won't you? Not a
very little one, to finish off with?"
You have had plenty, I am sure,” said the
hostess. Go along with your foreign man-
ners!"
"That ain't foreign, bless you!" cried Mark.
"Native as oysters, that is! One more, because
it's native! As a mark of respect for the land
we live in! This don't count as between you
and me, you understand," said Mr. Tapley. "I
ain't a kissing you now, you'll observe. I have
KISS
been among the patriots! I'm a kissin' my
country!"-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 43.
KISS-A cold.
She gave me one cold parting kiss upon my
forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch.
Bleak House, Chap. 3.
258
LANDLORD
I
LABOR-The evil of English.
"I don't understand, and I am not under-
stood. What is to come of such a state of
things!"
He was bending over his work, often asking
himself the question, when the news began to
spread that a pestilence had appeared among the
laborers, and was slaying them by thousands.
Going forth to look about him, he soon found
this to be true. The dying and the dead were
which his life was passed. New poison was
distilled into the always murky, always sicken-
ing air. The robust and the weak, old age and
infancy, the father and the mother, all were
stricken down alike.
KITCHEN-Of Clemency Newcome.
Clemency Newcome, in the meantime, having
accomplished her mission and lingered in the
room until she had made herself a party to the
news, descended to the kitchen, where her coad-
jutor, Mr. Britain, was regaling after supper, sur-mingled in the close and tainted houses among
rounded by such a plentiful collection of bright
pot-lids, well-scoured saucepans, burnished din-
ner covers, gleaming kettles, and other tokens of
her industrious habits, arranged upon the walls
and shelves, that he sat as in the centre of a hall
of mirrors. The majority did not give forth very
flattering portraits of him, certainly; nor were
they by any means unanimous in their reflec-
tions; as some made him very long-faced, others
very broad-faced, some tolerably well-looking,
others vastly ill-looking, according to their sev-
eral manners of reflecting: which were as vari-
ous, in respect of one fact, as those of so many
kinds of men. But they all agreed that in the
midst of them sat, quite at his ease, an individual |
with a pipe in his mouth, and a jug of beer at
his elbow, who nodded condescendingly to
Clemency, when she stationed herself at the
same table.-Battle of Life, Chap. 2.
What means of flight had he? He remained
there, where he was, and saw those who were
dearest to him die. A kind preacher came to
him, and would have said some prayers to soften
his heart in his gloom, but he replied:
“O what avails it, missionary, to come to me,
a man condemned to residence in this foetid
place, where every sense bestowed upon me for
my delight becomes a torment, and where every
minute of my numbered days is new mire added
to the heap under which I lie oppressed! But,
give me my first glimpse of Heaven, through a lit-
tle of its light and air; give me pure water; help
me to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere
and heavy life, in which our spirits sink, and we
KITE-Mr. Dick and his dissemination of become the indifferent and callous creatures you
facts.
It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think,
to see him with the kite when it was up a great
height in the air. What he had told me, in his
room, about his belief in its disseminating the
statements pasted on it, which were nothing but
old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have
been a fancy with him sometimes; but not
when he was out, looking up at the kite in the
sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He
never looked so serene as he did then. I used
to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a
green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in
the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its
confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish
thought) into the skies. As he wound the string |
in, and it came lower and lower down out of the
beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground,
and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to
wake gradually out of a dream; and I remem-
ber to have seen him take it up, and look about
him in a lost way, as if they had both come
down together, so that I pitied him with all my
heart.-David Copperfield, Chap. 15.
KNITTING.
She sat there, plying her knitting-needles as
monotonously as an hour-glass might have
poured out its sands. What the knitting was, I
don't know, not being learned in that art; but
it looked like a net: and as she worked away
with those Chinese chopsticks of knitting-
needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill-
looking enchantress, baulked as yet by the ra-
diant goodness opposite, but getting ready for a
cast of her net by-and-by.
David Copperfield, Chap. 39.
too often see us; gently and kindly take the
bodies of those who die among us, out of the
small room where we grow to be so familiar
with the awful change that even ITS sanctity is
lost to us; and, Teacher, then I will hear-none
know better than you, how willingly-of Him
whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and
who had compassion for all human sorrow!"
LAMP.
Nobody's Story. Reprinted Pieces.
A club-headed little oil wick, dying away in a
little dungeon of dirty glass.
David Copperfield, Chap. 59.
LANDLORD-A New England.
Our host, who was very attentive and anxious
to make us comfortable, was a handsome middle-
aged man, who had come to this town from
New England, in which part of the country he
was "raised." When I say that he constantly
walked in and out of the room with his hat on,
and stopped to converse in the same free-and-
easy state, and lay down on our sofa, and pulled
his newspaper out of his pocket, and read it at
his ease, I merely mention these traits as charac-
teristic of the country,-not at all as being mat-
ter of complaint, or as having been disagreeable
to me. I should undoubtedly be offended by
such proceedings at home, because there they
are not the custom, and where they are not,
they would be impertinences; but in America,
the only desire of a good-natured fellow of this
kind is to treat his guests hospitably and well;
and I had no more right, and, I can truly say,
no more disposition, to measure his conduct by
our English rule and standard, than I had to
quarrel with him for not being of the exact
LANDLORD
257
stature which would qualify him for admission
into the Queen's grenadier guards. As little
inclination had I to find fault with a funny old
lady, who was an upper domestic in this estab-
lishment, and who, when she came to wait upon
us at any meal, sat herself down comfortably in
the most convenient chair, and, producing a
large pin to pick her teeth with, remained per-
forming that ceremony, and steadfastly regarding
us meanwhile with much gravity and composure
(now and then pressing us to eat a little more),
until it was time to clear away. It was enough
for us, that whatever we wished done was done
with great civility and readiness, and a desire
to oblige, not only here, but everywhere else;
and that all our wants were, in general, zeal-
ously anticipated.-American Notes, Chap. 14.
LANDLORD-John Willet, the.
LANDLORD
receipts are not up to the mark. You must
squeeze them, sir, or our connection will not
continue to be as satisfactory as I could wish it
to be, to all parties. All parties.'
""
"Don't I squeeze 'em?" retorted Pancks,
"What else am I made for?"
"You are made for nothing else, Mr. Pancks.
You are made to do your duty, but you don't do
your duty. You are paid to squeeze, and you
must squeeze to pay." The Patriarch so much
surprised himself by this brilliant turn, after
Doctor Johnson, which he had not in the least
expected or intended, that he laughed aloud;
and repeated with great satisfaction, as he twirled
his thumbs and nodded at his youthful portrait,
"Paid to squeeze, sir, and must squeeze to pay.'
"Oh!" said Pancks. Anything more?"
Yes, sir. It appears to me, Mr. Pancks,
that you yourself are too often and too much in
that direction, that direction. I recommend
you,
Mr. Pancks, to dismiss from your attention both
your own losses and other people's losses, and
to mind your business, mind your business."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 32.
LANDLORD.
"
Reputed to be rich in weekly tenants, and to
get a good quantity of blood out of the stones
of several unpromising courts and alleys.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
The sturdy landlord had a large pair of dull,
fish-like eyes, and the little man who had haz-
arded the remark about the moon (and who was
the parish clerk and bell-ringer of Chigwell, a
village hard by) had little round black shiny
eyes like beads; moreover, this little man wore,
at the knees of his rusty black breeches, and on
his rusty black coat, and all down his long flap-
ped waistcoat, little queer buttons like nothing
except his eyes; but so like them, that as they
twinkled and glistened in the light of the fire,
which shone, too, in his bright shoe-buckles, he
seemed all eyes, from head to foot, and to be gaz- LANDLORD-Revenge of Pancks on the
ing with every one of them at the unknown
customer. No wonder that a man should grow
restless under such an inspection as this, to
say nothing of the eyes belonging to short Tom
Cobb, the general chandler and post-office
keeper, and long Phil Parkes, the ranger, both
of whom, infected by the example of their com-
panions, regarded him of the flapped hat no
Îess attentively.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 1.
LANDLORD-Pancks and the.
'Mr. Pancks," was the Patriarchal remark,
"you have been remiss, you have been remiss, sir."
"What do you mean by that?" was the short
rejoinder.
The Patriarchal state, always a state of calm-
ness and composure, was so particularly serene
that evening as to be provoking. Everybody
else within the bills of mortality was hot; but the
Patriarch was perfectly cool. Everybody was
thirsty, and the Patriarch was drinking. There
was a fragrance of limes or lemons about him;
and he had made a drink of golden sherry,
which shone in a large tumbler, as if he were
drinking the evening sunshine. This was bad,
but not the worst. The worst was, that with
his big blue eyes, and his polished head, and his
long white hair, and his bottle-green legs
stretched out before him, terminating in his easy
shoes, easily crossed at the instep, he had a
radiant appearance of having in his extensive
benevolence made the drink for the human
species, while he himself wanted nothing but
his own milk of human kindness.
Wherefore, Mr. Pancks said, "What do you
mean by that?" and put his hair up with both
hands, in a highly portentous manner.
hypocrite.
The population of the Yard were astonished
at the meeting, for the two powers had never
been seen there together, within the memory of
the oldest Bleeding Heart. But they were
overcome by unutterable amazement, when Mr.
Pancks, going close up to the most venerable of
men, and halting in front of the bottle-green
waistcoat, made a trigger of his right thumb and
forefinger, applied the same to the brim of the
broad-brimmed hat, and, with singular smart-
ness and precision, shot it off the polished head
as if it had been a large marble.
Having taken this little liberty with the Patri-
archal person, Mr. Pancks further astounded
and attracted the Bleeding Hearts by saying in
an audible voice, "Now, you sugary swindler, I
mean to have it out with you!"
*
*
"
*
*
*
*
"What do you pretend to be?" said Mr.
Pancks. "What's your moral game? What
do you go in for? Benevolence, ain't it? You
benevolent! Here Mr. Pancks, apparently
without the intention of hitting him, but merely
to relieve his mind and expend his superfluous
power in wholesome exercise, aimed a blow at
the bumpy head, which the bumpy head ducked
to avoid. This singular performance was re-
peated, to the ever increasing admiration of the
spectators, at the end of every succeeding article
of Mr. Pancks's oration.
"I have discharged myself from your service,"
said Pancks, "that I may tell you what you are.
You're one of a lot of impostors that are the
worst lot of all the lots to be met with. Speak-
ing as a sufferer by both, I don't know that I
wouldn't as soon have the Merdle lot as your
"I mean, Mr. Pancks, that you must be lot. You're a driver in disguise, a screwer by
sharper with the people, sharper with the people, deputy, a wringer, and squeezer, and shaver by
much sharper with the people, sir. You don't
You don't substitute. You're a philanthropic sneak
squeeze them. You don't squeeze them. Your You're a shabby deceiver !"
LANDLORD
258
(The repetition of the performance at this
point was received with a burst of laughter.)
"Ask these good people who's the hard man
here. They'll tell you, Pancks, I believe."
This was confirmed with cries of "Certainly,"
and "Hear!
46
"But I tell you, good people-Casby! This
mound of meekness, this lump of love, this
bottle-green smiler, this is your driver!" said
Pancks. 'If you want to see the man who
would flay you alive-here he is! Don't look
for him in me, at thirty shillings a-week, but
look for him in Casby, at I don't know how
much a-year!"
"Good!" cried several voices. "Hear Mr.
Pancks!"
“Hear Mr. Pancks?" cried that gentleman
(after repeating the popular performance).
"Yes, I should think so! It's almost time to
hear Mr. Pancks. Mr. Pancks has come down
into the Yard to-night, on purpose that you
should hear him. Pancks is only the Works;
but here's the Winder!"
The audience would have gone over to Mr.
Pancks, as one man, woman, and child, but for
the long, grey, silken locks, and the broad-brim-
med hat.
"Here's the Stop," said Pancks, "that sets the
tune to be ground. And there is but one tune,
and its name is Grind, Grind, Grind! Here's
the Proprietor, and here's his Grubber. Why,
good people, when he comes smoothly spinning
through the Yard to-night, like a slow-going
benevolent Humming-Top, and when you come
about him with your complaints of the Grubber,
you don't know what a cheat the Proprietor is!
What do you think of his showing himself to-
night, that I may have all the blame on
Monday? What do you think of his having
had me over the coals this very evening, because
I don't squeeze you enough? What do you
think of my being, at the present moment, under
special orders to squeeze you dry on Monday?"
The reply was given in a murmur of "Shame!"
and "Shabby!"
LANDLORD
uncomfortable, dreary Plodder and Grubber.
That's your humble servant. There's his full-
length portrait, painted by himself, and pre-
sented to you, warranted a likeness! But what's
a man to be, with such a man as this for his
Proprietor? What can be expected of him?
Did anybody ever find boiled mutton and ca-
per-sauce growing in a cocoa-nut?
None of the Bleeding Hearts ever had, it
was clear from the alacrity of their response.
"Well," said Mr. Pancks, "and neither will
you find in Grubbers like myself, under Propri-
etors like this, pleasant qualities. I've been a
Grubber from a boy. What has my life been?
Fag and grind, fag and grind, turn the wheel,
turn the wheel! I haven't been agreeable to
myself, and I haven't been likely to be agreeable
to anybody else. If I was a shilling a week less
useful in ten years' time, this impostor would
give me a shilling a week less; if as useful a
man could be got at sixpence cheaper, he would
be taken in my place at sixpence cheaper. Bar-
gain and sale, bless you! Fixed principles! It
is a mighty fine sign-post, is The Casby's Head,"
said Mr. Pancks, surveying it with anything
rather than admiration ; but the real name of
the House is The Sham's Arms. Its motto is,
Keep the Grubber always at it. Is any gentle-
man present," said Mr. Pancks, breaking off
and looking round, "acquainted with the En-
glish Grammar?"
Bleeding Heart Yard was shy of claiming
that acquaintance.
"It's no matter," said Mr. Pancks. "I mere-
ly wish to remark that the task this Proprietor
has set me, has been, never to leave off conjuga-
ting the Imperative Mood, Present Tense of
the verb To keep always at it. Keep thou
always at it. Let him keep always at it. Keep
we or do we keep always at it. Keep ye or do
ye or you keep always at it. Let them keep al-
ways at it. Here is your benevolent Patriarch
of a Casby, and there is his golden rule. He is
uncommonly improving to look at, and I am
not at all so. He is as sweet as honey, and I
Shabby?" snorted Pancks. "Yes, I should am
Yes, I should am as dull as ditchwater. He
He provides the
think so! The lot that your Casby belongs to, pitch, and I handle it, and it sticks to me.
is the shabbiest of all the lots. Setting their Now," said Mr. Pancks, closing upon his late
Grubbers on, at a wretched pittance, to do what Proprietor again, from whom he had withdrawn
they're ashamed and afraid to do, and pretend a little for the better display of him to the Yard;
not to do, but what they will have done, or give" as I am not accustomed to speak in public,
a man no rest! Imposing on you to give their
Grubbers nothing but blame, and to give them
nothing but credit! Why, the worst-looking
cheat in all this town, who gets the value of
eighteenpence under false pretences, ain't half
such a cheat as this sign-post of The Casby's
Head here!"
Cries of "That's true!" and "No more he
ain't!"
"And see what you get of these fellows, be-
sides," said Pancks. "See what more you get
of these precious Humming-Tops, revolving
among you with such smoothness that you've no
idea of the pattern painted on 'em, or the little
window in 'em! I wish to call your attention
to myself for a moment. I an't an agreeable
style of chap, I know that very well.'
The auditory were divided on this point; its
more uncompromising members crying, “No,
you are not," and its politer materials, "Yes,
you are."
"I am, in general." said Mr. Pancks, "a dry,
and as I have made a rather lengthy speech, all
circumstances considered, I shall bring my ob-
servations to a close, by requesting you to get
out of this."
The Last of the Patriarchs had been so seized
by assault, and required so much room to catch
an idea in, and so much more room to turn it
in, that he had not a word to offer in reply.
He appeared to be meditating some Patriarchal
way out of his delicate position, when Mr.
Pancks, once more suddenly applying the trig-
ger to his hat, shot it off again with his former
dexterity. On the preceding occasion, one or
two of the Bleeding Heart Yarders had obse-
quiously picked it up and handed it to its own-
er; but Mr. Pancks had now so far impressed
his audience, that the Patriarch had to turn and
stoop for it himself.
Quick as lightning, Mr. Pancks, who, for some
moments had had his right hand in his coat-
pocket, whipped out a pair of shears, swooped
upon the Patriarch behind, and snipped off short
LANGUAGES
the sacred locks that flowed upon his shoulders.
In a paroxysm of animosity and rapidity, Mr.
Pancks then caught the broad-brimmed hat out
of the astounded Patriarch's hand, cut it down
into a mere stewpan, and fixed it on the Patri-
arch's head.
259
LAUGH
to breathe, and once more dive down convulsed
with the laughter which came bursting forth
afresh-that somebody would have been scarcely
less amused than John Browdie himself.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 39.
LAUGHTER-Of Major Bagstock.
64
Before the frightful results of this desperate
action, Mr. Pancks himself recoiled in conster- All the way home to his own hotel, the
nation. A bare-polled, goggle-eyed, big-headed, Major incessantly said to himself, of himself,
lumbering personage stood staring at him, not Sly, Sir-sly, Sir-de-vil-ish sly!" And when
in the least impressive, not in the least vener- he got there, sat down in a chair, and fell into
able, who seemed to have started out of the a silent fit of laughter, with which he was some-
earth to ask what was become of Casby. After times seized, and which was always particularly
staring at this phantom in return, in silent awe, awful. It held him so long on this occasion
Mr. Pancks threw down his shears, and fled for that the dark servant, who stood watching him
a place of hiding, where he might lie sheltered at a distance, but dared not for his life approach,
from the consequences of his crime. Mr. Pancks twice or thrice gave him over for lost. His whole
deemed it prudent to use all possible despatch form, but especially his face and head, dilated
in making off, though he was pursued by noth-beyond all former experience; and presented to
ing but the sound of laughter in Bleeding Heart
Yard, rippling through the air, and making it
ring again.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 32.
LANGUAGES-An acquaintance with.
It is with languages as with people-when
you only know them by sight, you are apt to
mistake them; you must be on speaking terms
before you can be said to have established an
acquaintance.-Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2.
LANGUAGE-The difficulties of a foreign.
"We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she
spoke three foreign languages beautifully,
Arthur; you have heard her many a time), and
you must pull me through it, Mother, as well as
you can. I require a deal of pulling through,
Arthur," said Mr. Meagles, shaking his head, "a
deal of pulling through. I stick at everything
beyond a noun-substantive-and I stick at him,
if he's at all a tight one."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 9.
LAUGH-The melodramatic.
Mr. Swiveller did not wind up with a cheerful
hilarious laugh, which would have been undoubt
edly at variance with his solemn reflections, but
that, being in a theatrical mood, he merely
achieved that performance which is designated
in melodramas "laughing like a fiend"—for it
seems that your fiends always laugh in syllables,
and always in three syllables, never more nor less,
which is a remarkable property in such gentry,
and one worthy of remembrance.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56.
LAUGHTER-And good humor.
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance,
to know a man more blest in a laugh than
Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should like
to know him too. Introduce him to me, and
I'll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of
things, that while there is infection in disease
and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so
irresistibly contagious as laughter and good
humor.-Christmas Carol, Stave 3.
LAUGHTER-John Browdie's.
If there could only have been somebody by,
to see how the bed-clothes shook, and to see the
Yorkshireman's great red face and round head
appear above the sheets, every now and then,
like some jovial monster coming to the surface
the dark man's view nothing but a heavy mass
of indigo.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 10.
LAUGH.
A sharp thin laugh, and one little cough at
the end, like a note of admiration expressed.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 45.
"Ha, ha, ha!"
Really, for a man who had been out of prac-
tice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh,
a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long,
long line of brilliant laughs!
Christmas Carol, Stave 5.
LAUGH-An enjoyable.
Job, rubbing his hands with delight, uttered
the first sound he had given vent to, since he
entered the. house-a light, noiseless chuckle,
which seemed to intimate that he enjoyed his
laugh too much to let any of it escape in sound.
Pickwick, Chap. 25.
LAUGH—A sorrowful.
His laugh had not quite left him either; but
it was like the echo of a joyful sound, and that
is always sorrowful.-Bleak House, Chap. 60.
LAUGH-An internal chuckle.
'Ha, ha, ha!" At this the Serjeant's clerk
laughed again; not a noisy, boisterous laugh,
but a silent, internal chuckle, which Mr. Pick-
wick disliked to hear. When a man bleeds in-
wardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but
when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to
other people.-Pickwick, Chap. 31.
LAUGH-The contagion of a (Mr. Boythorn).
Talking thus, they went up-stairs; and pres-
ently we heard him in his bedroom thundering
"Ha, ha, ha!" and again "Ha, ha, ha!" until
the flattest echo in the neighborhood seemed to
catch the contagion, and to laugh as enjoyingly
as he did, or as we did when we heard him
laugh.
We all conceived a prepossession in his favor;
for there was a sterling quality in this laugh,
and in his vigorous, healthy voice, and in the
roundness and fulness with which he uttered
every word he spoke, and in the very fury of his
superlatives, which seemed to go off like blank
cannons and hurt nothing. He was not only a
very handsome old gentleman-upright and
stalwart as he had been described to us-with a
LAUNDRESSES
massive grey head, a fine composure of face
when silent, a figure that might have become
corpulent, but for his being so continually in
earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that
might have subsided into a double chin but for
the vehement emphasis in which it was con-
stantly required to assist; but he was such a
true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously
polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much
sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain
that he had nothing to hide, but showed him-
self exactly as he was-incapable (as Richard
said) of anything on a limited scale, and firing
away with those blank great guns, because he
carried no small arms whatever-that really
could not help looking at him with equal pleas-
ure as he sat at dinner, whether he smilingly
conversed with Ada and me, or was led by Mr.
Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives,
or threw up his head like a bloodhound, and
gave out that tremendous "Ha, ha, ha!"
Bleak House, Chap. 9.
LAUNDRESSES.
"I am Mr. Perker's laundress," replied the
old woman.
"Ah," said Mr. Pickwick, half aside to Sam,
"it's a curious circumstance, Sam, that they call
the old women in these inns, laundresses. I
wonder what that's for?"
"'Cos they has a mortal awersion to washing
anythin', I suppose, sir," replied Mr. Weller.
"I shouldn't wonder," said Mr. Pickwick,
looking at the old woman, whose appearance,
as well as the condition of the office, which she
had by this time opened, indicated a rooted an-
tipathy to the application of soap and water.
Pickwick, Chap. 20.
260
LAW
shopkeepers, and telling 'em to keep out of
Chancery, whatever they did, 'For,' says he,,
'it's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's
being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to
death by single bees; it's being drowned by
drops; it's going mad by grains.'
Bleak House, Chap. 5.
LAW-The fictions of.
There are many pleasant fictions of the law
in constant operation, but there is not one so
pleasant or practically humorous as that which
supposes every man to be of equal value in its
impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be
equally attainable, by all men, without the small-
est reference to the furniture of their pockets.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 46.
LAW-The hardship of the.
"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."
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 2.
LAW-STATIONER-Snagsby, the.
On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane,
that is to say, more particularly in Cook's Court,
Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby, Law-Stationer,
pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of
Cook's Court, at most times a shady place, Mr.
Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of
legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment;
in paper-foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white,
whitey brown, and blotting; in stamps; in of-
fice-quills, pens, ink, and India-rubber, pounce,
pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red
tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, alma-
nacs, diaries, and law lists; in string boxes,
rulers, inkstands-glass and leaden-penknives,
scissors, bodkins, and other small office-cutlery ;
"in short, in articles too numerous to mention;
ever since he was out of his time, and went into
partnership with Peffer. On that occasion,
Cook's Court was in a manner revolutionized by
the new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER and
SNAGSBY, displacing the time-honored and not
easily to be deciphered legend, PEFFER, only.
For smoke, which is the London ivy, had so
wreathed itself round Peffer's name, and clung
to his dwelling-place, that the affectionate para-
site overpowered the parent tree.
LAW-The majesty of.
"This is a private room, sir. A private room.
Mr. Grummer shook his head, and replied,
"No room's private to his Majesty when the
street door's once passed. That's law. Some
people maintains that an Englishman's house is
his castle. That's gammon.
""
The Pickwickians gazed on each other with
wondering eyes.
"Which is Mr. Tupman?" inquired Mr.
Grummer. He had an intuitive perception of
Mr. Pickwick; he knew him at once.
"My name's Tupman," said that gentleman.
"My name's Law," said Mr. Grummer.
"What?" said Mr. Tupman.
Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He
is not expected there, for he has been recumbent
this quarter of a century in the churchyard of
"Law," replied Mr. Grummer, "law, civil | St. Andrew's, Holborn, with the wagons and
power, and exekative; them's my titles; here's hackney-coaches roaring past him, all the day
my authority. Blank Tupman, blank Pickvick and half the night, like one great dragon.
against the peace of our sufferin Lord the
King-stattit in that case made and purwided-
and all regular. I apprehend you, Pickvick!
Tupman-the aforesaid."-Pickwick, Chap. 24.
LAW-An excuse for.
"It's a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very
pleasant world. There are bad people in it,
Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people,
there would be no good lawyers."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56.
LAW--The delays of the.
"Toni Jarndyce was often in here. He got
into a restless habit of strolling about when the
cause was on, or expected, talking to the little
Bleak House, Chap. 10.
LAW-A game of chess.
"
"Ah, cousin!" said Richard. Strange, in-
deed! all this wasteful, wanton chess-playing is
very strange. To see that composed Court yes-
terday jogging on so serenely, and to think of
the wretchedness of the pieces on the board,
gave me the headache and the heartache both
together. My head ached with wondering how
it happened, if men were neither fools nor ras-
cals; and my heart ached to think they could
possibly be either."-Bleak House, Chap. 5.
LAW-A joke.
"No," returned the Doctor. "God forbid !
LAW
May she live to laugh at it, as long as she can
laugh, and then say, with the French wit, 'The
farce is ended; draw the curtain."
261
"The French wit," said Mr. Snitchey, peep-
ing sharply into his blue bag, was wrong, Doc-
tor Jeddler, and your philosophy is altogether
wrong, depend upon it, as I have often told you.
Nothing serious in life! What do you call
law?"
A joke," replied the Doctor.
LAWYER'S CLERK
"Now, a' God's name," said Stephen Black.
pool, "show me the law to help me!"
"Hem! There's a sanctity in this relation
of life," said Mr. Bounderby, "and-and-it
must be kept up."
"No no, dunnot say that, sir. Tan't kep' up
that way. Not that way. 'Tis kep' down that
way. I'm a weaver, I were in a fact'ry when a
chilt, but I ha' gotten een to see wi' and eern to
year wi'.
I read in th' papers every 'Sizes,
"Did you ever go to law?" asked Mr. Snitch- every Sessions-and you read too-I know it!
ey, looking out of the blue bag.
Never," returned the Doctor.
If you ever do," said Mr. Snitchey, "per-
haps you'll alter that opinion."
Craggs, who seemed to be represented by
Snitchey, and to be conscious of little or no sep-
arate existence of personal individuality, offered
a remark of his own in this place. It involved
the only idea of which he did not stand seized
and possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey;
but he had some partners in it among the wise
men of the world.
"It's made a great deal too easy," said Mr.
Craggs.
"Law is?" asked the Doctor.
"Yes," said Mr. Craggs, "everything is.
Everything appears to me to be made too easy,
now-a-days. It's the vice of these times. If
the world is a joke (I am not prepared to say it
isn't), it ought to be made a very difficult joke |
to crack. It ought to be as hard a struggle, sir,
as possible. That's the intention. But it's
being made far too easy. We are oiling the
gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We
shall have them beginning to turn, soon, with a
smooth sound. Whereas they ought to grate
upon their hinges, sir.”—Battle of Life, Chap. 1.
LAW-A married man's opinion of the.
|
with dismay-how th' supposed unpossibility o'
ever getting unchained from one another, at any
price, on any terms, brings blood upon this
land, and brings many common married fok to
battle, murder, and sudden death. Let us ha'
this_right understood. Mine's a grievous case,
an I want-if yo will be so good-t'know the
law that helps me."
Now, I tell you what!" said Mr. Bounder-
by, putting his hands in his pockets. “There is
such a law."
Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and
never wandering in his attention, gave a nod.
"But it's not for you at all. It costs money.
It costs a mint of money."
How much might that be?" Stephen calmly
asked.
"Why, you'd have to go to Doctors' Com-
mons with a suit, and you'd have to go to a
court of Common Law with a suit, and you'd
have to go to the House of Lords with a suit,
and you'd have to get an Act of Parliament to
enable you to marry again, and it would cost
you (if it was a case of very plain-sailing), I
suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred
pound,” said Mr. Bounderby. "Perhaps twice
the money."
"There's no other law?"
Certainly not."
(<
"That is no excuse," replied Mr. Brownlow, Why then, sir," said Stephen, turning
"You were present on the occasion of the de- white, and motioning with that right hand of
struction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the his, as if he gave everything to the four winds,
more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law;"'tis a muddle. 'Tis just a muddle a'toogether,
for the law supposes that your wife acts under an the sooner I'm dead the better.”
your direction."
If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble,
squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands,
"the law is a ass-a idiot. If that's the eye of
the law, the law's a bachelor; and the worst. I
wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by
experience by experience."
Oliver Twist, Chap. 51.
LAW-A muddle to Stephen Blackpool.
"I mun be ridden o' this woman, and I want
t'know how?"
"No how," returned Mr. Bounderby.
(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety
of the people.)
Pooh, pooh! Don't you talk nonsense, my
good fellow," said Mr. Bounderby, about
things you don't understand; and don't you call
the Institutions of your country a muddle, or
you'll get yourself into a real muddle one of
these fine mornings. The institutions of your
country are not your piece-work, and the only
thing you have got to do is, to mind your piece-
work. You didn't take your wife for fast and for
loose; but for better for worse. If she has
turned out worse-why, all we have got to say
'If I do her any hurt, sir, there's a law to is, she might have turned out better."
punish me?"
"Of course there is."
"'Tis a muddle," said Stephen, shaking his
head as he moved to the door.. "'Tis a'
"If I flee from her, there's a law to punish a muddle!"-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. II.
me?"
Of course there is."
'If I marry t'oother dear lass, there's a law to
punish me?"
"Of course there is."
"If I was to live wi' her an not marry her-
saying such a thing could be, which it never
could or would, an her so good-there's a law
to punish me, in every innocent child belonging
to me?"
'Of course there is."
LAWYER'S CLERK-Description of a.
Accordingly they betake themselves to a neigh-
boring dining-house, of the class known among
its frequenters by the denomination Slap Bang,
where the waitress, a bouncing young female of
forty, is supposed to have made some impression
on the susceptible Smallweed; of whom it may
be remarked that he is a weird changeling, to
whom years are nothing. He stands precocious-
ly possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom. If
LAWYERS' CLERKS
he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must
have lain there in a tail-coat. He has an old,
old eye, has Smallweed; and he drinks and
smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is
stiff in his collar; and he is never to be taken
in; and he knows all about it, whatever it is.
In short, in his bringing up, he has been so
nursed by Law and Equity that he has become
a kind of fossil Imp, to account for whose ter-
restrial existence it is reported at the public
offices that his father was John Doe, and his
mother the only female member of the Roe
family; also that his first long-clothes were
made from a blue bag.-Bleak House, Chap. 20.
LAWYERS' CLERKS-At lunch.
262
LAWYERS' INNS.
Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket
for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at
the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and
there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal
where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer
yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in
meshes of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of
about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over
which bee-like industry, these benefactors of
their species linger yet, though office-hours be
past; that they may give, for every day, some
good account at last.-Bleak House, Chap. 32.
LAWYER-Without brains.
Mr. Samuel Briggs was a mere machine, a
sort of self-acting legal walking-stick.
Tales, Chap. 7.
LAWYER-His office.
There was a book-case in the room: I saw,
from the backs of the books, that they were about
evidence, criminal law, criminal biography,
trials, acts of Parliament, and such things. The
furniture was all very solid and good, like his
Into the dining-house, unaffected by the se-
ductive show in the window, of artificially
whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant bas-
kets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and
joints ready for the spit, Mr. Smallweed leads
the way. They know him there, and defer to
him. He has his favorite box, he bespeaks all
the papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs,
who keep them more than ten minutes after-watch-chain. It had an official look, however,
wards. It is of no use trying him with anything
less than a full-sized "bread," or proposing to
him any joint in cut, unless it is in the very best
cut. In the matter of gravy he is adamant.
and there was nothing merely ornamental to be
seen. In a corner, was a little table of papers
with a shaded lamp; so that he seemed to bring
the office home with him in that respect too,
and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to
work.-Great Expectations, Chap. 26.
LAWYERS' INNS-Their associations.
Conscious of his elfin power, and submitting
to his dread experience, Mr. Guppy consults
him in the choice of that day's banquet: turn-
ing an appealing look towards him as the wait-
ress repeats the catalogue of viands, and saying, "What do you know of the time when young
"What do you take, Chick?" Chick, out of the men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms
profundity of his artfulness, preferring "veal and read and read, hour after hour, and night
and ham and French beans-And don't you after night, till their reason wandered beneath
forget the stuffing, Polly" (with an unearthly their midnight studies; till their mental powers
cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. were exhausted; till morning's light brought no
Jobling give the like order. Three pint pots of freshness or health to them; and they sank be-
half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the wait- neath the unnatural devotion of their youthful
ress returns, bearing what is apparently a model energies to their dry old books? Coming down
of the tower of Babel, but what is really a pile to a later time, and a very different day, what
of plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr. Small- do you know of the gradual sinking beneath
weed, approving of what is set before him, con- consumption, or the quick wasting of fever-the
veys intelligent benignity into his ancient eye, grand results of 'life' and dissipation—which
and winks upon her. Then, amidst a constant men have undergone in these same rooms?
coming in, and going out, and running about, How many vain pleaders for mercy, do you think,
and a clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up have turned away heart-sick from the lawyer's
and down of the machine which brings the nice office, to find a resting-place in the Thames or
cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for a refuge in the gaol? They are no ordinary
more nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a houses, those. There is not a panel in the old
shrill reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that wainscoting, but what, if it were endowed with
have been disposed of, and a general flush and the powers of speech and memory, could start
steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a con- from the wall, and tell its tale of horror-the
siderably heated atmosphere in which the soiled romance of life, sir, the romance of life! Com-
knives and table-cloths seem to break out spon-mon-place as they may seem now, I tell you
taneously into eruptions of grease and blotches
of beer, the legal triumvirate appease their appe-
tites.-Bleak House, Chap. 20.
LAWYERS-Their offices at night.
they are strange old places, and I would rather
hear many a legend with a terrific sounding
name, than the true history of one old set of
chambers."
*
*
*
*
*
It is night in Lincoln's Inn-perplexed and Look at them in another light: their most
troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where common-place and least romantic. What fine
suitors generally find but little day-and fat places of slow torture they are! Think of the
candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks needy man who has spent his all, beggared him-
have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs, and self, and pinched his friends, to enter the pro-
dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o'clock, fession, which will never yield him a morsel of
has ceased its doleful clangor about nothing; bread. The waiting-the hope-the disappoint-
the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a sol- ment-the fear-the misery-the poverty-the
emn warder with a mighty power of sleep, blight on his hopes, and end to his career-the
keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of stair-suicide perhaps, or the shabby, slipshod drunk-
case windows, clogged lamps, like the eyes of ard. Am I not right about them?" And the
LAWYER
263
old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in
delight at having found another point of view
in which to place his favorite subject.
Pickwick, Chap. 21.
LAWYER-The old.
Like a dingy London bird among the birds
at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep
are all made into parchment, the goats into
wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer,
smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among man-
kind but not consorting with them, aged with-
out experience of genial youth, and so long
used to make his cramped nest in holes and
corners of human nature that he has forgotten
its broader and better range, comes sauntering
home. In the oven made by the hot pavements
and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer
than usual; and he has, in his thirsty mind, his
mellowed portwine, half a century old.
Bleak House, Chap. 42.
LAWYER-Tulkinghorn, the.
LAWYER
no clerks. He is a great reservoir of confi.
dences, not to be so tapped. His clients want
him; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires
to be drawn, are drawn by special pleaders in
the Temple on mysterious instructions; fair
copies that he requires to be made, are made at
the stationer's, expense being no consideration.
The middle-aged man in the Pew knows scarce-
ly more of the affairs of the Peerage, than any
crossing sweeper in Holborn.
Bleak House, Chap. 10.
Whether he be cold and cruel, whether im-
movable in what he has made his duty, whether
absorbed in love of power, whether determined
to have nothing hidden from him in ground
where he has burrowed among secrets all his
life, whether he in his heart despises the splen-
dor of which he is a distant beam, whether he
is always treasuring up slights and offences in
the affability of his gorgeous clients-whether
he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that
my Lady had better have five thousand pairs of
fashionable eyes upon her, in distrustful vigil-
ance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer,
with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black
breeches tied with ribbons at the knees.
Bleak House, Chap. 29.
It is let off in sets of chambers now; and in
those shrunken fragments of its greatness, law-
yers lie like maggots in nuts. But its roomy
staircases, passages, and antechambers still re-
main; and even its painted ceilings, where Al-
legory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen,
sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, He comes towards them at his usual method-
clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the headical pace, which is never quickened, never slack-
ache-as would seem to be Allegory's object ened. He wears his usual expressionless mask—
always, more or less. Here, among his many if it be a mask-and carries family secrets in
boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives every limb of his body, and every crease of his
Mr. Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to
home in country-houses where the great ones the great, or whether he yields them nothing
of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to- beyond the services he sells, is his personal se-
day, quiet at his table. An Oyster of the old cret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his
school, whom nobody can open.
clients; he is his own client in that matter, and
will never betray himself.
Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment
in the dusk of the present afternoon. Rusty,
out of date, withdrawing from attention, able to
afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned
mahogany and horsehair chairs, not easily lifted,
obsolete tables with spindle legs and dusty
baize covers, presentation prints of the holders of
great titles in the last generation, or the last but
one, environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey
carpet muffles the floor where he sits, attended
by two candles in old-fashioned silver candle-
sticks, that give a very insufficient light to his
large room. The titles on the backs of his
books have retired into the binding; every-
thing that can have a lock has got one; no key
is visible. Very few loose papers are about.
He has some manuscript near him, but is not
referring to it. With the round top of an ink-
stand, and two broken bits of sealing-wax, he
is silently and slowly working out whatever
train of indecision is in his mind. Now, the
ink-stand top is in the middle; now, the red
bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That's
not it. Mr. Tulkinghorn must gather them all
up and begin again.
Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with fore-
shortened Allegory staring down at his intru-
sion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and he
cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once
his house and office. He keeps no staff; only
one middle-aged man, usually a little out at el-
bows, who sits in a high Pew in the hall, and is
rarely overburdened with business. Mr. Tulk-
inghorn is not in a common way. He wants
|
Bleak House, Chap. 12.
And at her house in town, upon this muddy,
murky afternoon, presents himself an old fash-
ioned old gentleman, attorney-at-law, and eke
solicitor of the High Court of Chancery, who
has the honor of acting as legal adviser of the
Dedlocks, and has as many cast-iron boxes in
his office with that name outside, as if the pres-
ent baronet were the coin of the conjuror's
trick, and were constantly being juggled through
the whole set. Across the hall, and up the
stairs, and along the passages, and through the
rooms, which are very brilliant in the season
and very dismal out of it-Fairy-land to visit,
but a desert to live in-the old gentleman is
conducted, by a Mercury in powder, to my
Lady's presence.
The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is
reputed to have made good thrift out of aristocra-
tic marriage settlements and aristocratic wills,
and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mys-
terious halo of family confidences; of which he is
known to be the silent depository. There are
noble Mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired
glades of parks, among the growing timber and
the fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets
than walk abroad among men, shut up in the
breast of Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is
called the old school-a phrase generally meaning
any school that seems never to have been young
-and wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and
gaiters or stockings. One peculiarity of his black
LAWYER-
264
LAWYER
Mr. Vholes's office, in disposition retiring and
in situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner,
and blinks at a dead wall. Three feet of knotty
clothes, and of his black stockings, be they silk | mal, and perpetuated Symond's memory with
or worsted, is, that they never shine. Mute, congenial shabbiness. Quartered in this dingy
close, irresponsive to any glancing light, his dress hatchment commemorative of Symond, are the
is like himself. He never converses, when not legal bearings of Mr. Vholes.
professionally consulted. He is found sometimes,
speechless but quite at home, at corners of din-
ner-tables in great country houses, and near doors
of drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashion-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr.
able intelligence is eloquent: where everybody
knows him, and where half the Peerage stops to
say "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn ?" he re-
ceives these salutations with gravity, and buries
them along with the rest of his knowledge.
|
Vholes's jet black door, in an angle profoundly
dark on the brightest midsummer morning, and
encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage
staircase, against which belated civilians gener-
ally strike their brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers
are on so small a scale, that one clerk can open
the door without getting off his stool, while the
other who elbows him at the same desk has
equal facilities for poking the fire. A smell as
of unwholesome sheep, blending with the smell
of must and dust, is referable to the nightly (and
often daily) consumption of mutton fat in can-
dles, and to the fretting of parchment forms and
skins in greasy drawers. The atmosphere is
otherwise stale and close. The place was last
painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of
man, and the two chimneys smoke, and there is
a loose outer surface of soot everywhere, and the
dull cracked windows in their heavy frames have
but one piece of character in them, which is a
determination to be always dirty, and always
shut, unless coerced. This accounts for the
phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually
having a bundle of firewood thrust between its
jaws in hot weather.-Bleak House, Chap. 39.
Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady, and is
happy to see Mr. Tulkinghorn. There is an air
of prescription about him which is always agree-
able to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of
tribute. He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn's dress; there
is a kind of tribute in that, too. It is eminently
respectable, and likewise, in a general way, re-
tainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward
of the legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cel-
lar, of the Dedlocks.-Bleak House, Chap. 2.
LAWYER-The office of Sampson Brass.
In the parlor window of this little habitation,
which is so close upon the footway that the pas-
senger who takes the wall brushes the dim glass
with his coat sleeve-much to its improvement,
for it is very dirty-in this parlor window, in the
days of its occupation by Sampson Brass, there
hung, all awry and slack, and discolored by the
sun, a curtain of faded green, so threadbare from
long service as by no means to intercept the view
of the little dark room, but rather to afford a LAWYER-Sally Brass as a.
favorable medium through which to observe it
accurately. There was not much to look at. A
rickety table, with spare bundles of papers, yel-
low and ragged from long carriage in the pocket,
ostentatiously displayed upon its top; a couple
of stools set face to face on opposite sides of this
crazy piece of furniture; a treacherous old chair
by the fire-place, whose withered arms had hug-
ged full many a client and helped to squeeze him
dry; a second-hand wig box, used as a deposi-
tory for blank writs and declarations, and other
small forms of law, once the sole contents of the
head which belonged to the wig which belonged
to the box, as they were now of the box itself;
two or three common books of practice; a jar
of ink, a pounce box, a stunted hearth-broom,
a carpet trodden to shreds, but still clinging with
the tightness of desperation to its tacks-these,
with the yellow wainscot of the walls, the smoke-
discolored ceiling, the dust and cobwebs, were
among the most prominent decorations of the
office of Mr. Sampson Brass.
But this was mere still-life, of no greater im-
portance than the plate," BRASS, Solicitor," upon
the door, and the bill, "First floor to let to a
single gentleman," which was tied to the
knocker.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 33.
LAWYER-The office of Vholes.
The name of MR. VHOLES, preceded by the
legend GROUND FLOOR, is inscribed upon a
door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane; a
little, pale, wall-eyed, woe-begone inn, like a
large aust-bin of
two compartments and a
sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing
man in his way, and constructed his inn of old
building materials, which took kindly to the dry
rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dis-
|
❘
In mind, she was of a strong and vigorous
turn, having from her earliest youth devoted her-
self with uncommon ardor to the study of the
law; not wasting her speculations upon its
eagle flights, which are rare, but tracing it at-
tentively through all the slippery and eel-like
crawlings in which it commonly pursues its
way. Nor had she, like many persons of great
intellect, confined herself to theory, or stopped
short where practical usefulness begins; inas-
much as she could engross fair-copy, fill up
printed forms with perfect accuracy, and, in short,
transact any ordinary duty of the office down to
pouncing a skin of parchment or mending a pen.
It is difficult to understand how, possessed of
these combined attractions, she should remain
Miss Brass; but whether she had steeled her
heart against mankind, or whether those who
might have wooed and won her, were deterred
by fears that, being learned in the law, she might
have too near her fingers' ends those particular
statutes which regulate what are familiarly termed
actions for breach, certain it is that she was still
in a state of celibacy, and still in daily occupa-
tion of her old stool opposite to that of her
brother Sampson. And equally certain it is, by-
the-way, that between these two stools a great
many people had come to the ground.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 33.
Miss Brass, however accurately formed to be
beloved, was not of the loving kind. That
amiable virgin, having clung to the skirts of the
Law from her earliest youth; having sustained
herself by their aid, as it were, in her first run-
ning alone, and maintained a firm grasp upon
them ever since; had passed her life in a kind
of legal childhood. She had been remarkable
LAWYERS
267
LAWYERS' CLERKS.
excitin' to be pleasant. Come avay, sir. If you
want to ease your mind by blowing up some-
body, come out into the court and blow up me;
but it's rayther too expensive work to be carried
on here."-Pickwick, Chap. 20.
al eye-glass which dangled from a broad black
riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that
he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin
and weak, which was partly attributable to his
having never devoted much time to its arrange
ment, and partly to his having worn for five-and-
twenty years the forensic wig which hung on a LAWYERS—And their own prescriptions.
block beside him. The marks of hair-powder As Doctors seldom take their own prescrip-
on his coat-collar, and the ill-washed and worse- tions, and Divines do not always practice what
tied white neckerchief round his throat, showed they preach, so lawyers are shy of meddling
that he had not found leisure since he left the with the Law on their own account: knowing
court to make any alteration in his dress; while it to be an edged tool of uncertain application,
the slovenly style of the remainder of his cos- very expensive in the working, and rather re-
tume warranted the inference that his personal markable for its properties of close shaving than
appearance would not have been very much | for its always shaving the right person.
improved if he had. Books of practice, heaps
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 37.
of papers, and opened letters, were scattered
over the table, without any attempt at order or
arrangement; the furniture of the room was old
and rickety; the doors of the book-case were
rotting in their hinges; the dust flew out from
the carpet in little clouds at every step; the
blinds were yellow with age and dirt; the state
of everything in the room showed, with a clear-
ness not to be mistaken, that Mr. Serjeant
Snubbin was far too much occupied with his pro-
fessional pursuits to take any great heed or re-
gard of his personal comforts.
LAWYERS.
Pickwick, Chap. 31.
I despised them, to a man. Frozen-out old
gardeners in the flower-beds of the heart, I
took a personal offence against them all. The
Bench was nothing to me but an insensible
blunderer. The Bar had no more tenderness or
poetry in it, than the Bar of a public-house.
David Copperfield, Chap. 33.
LAWYERS-Always inquisitive.
"We lawyers are always curious, always in-
quisitive, always picking up odds and ends for
our patchwork minds, since there is no knowing
when and where they may fit into some corner.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12.
LAWYERS AND CLIENT-(Dodson and
Fogg).
"Perhaps you would like to call us swindlers,
sir," said Dodson. "Pray do, sir, if you feel
disposed; now pray do, sir."
I do," said Mr. Pickwick. "You are swin-
dlers.
"
"You can hear
"Very good," said Dodson.
down there, I hope, Mr. Wicks?”
"Oh yes, sir," said Wicks.
"You had better come up a step or two higher,
if you can't," added Mr. Fogg. "Go on, sir;
do go on. You had better call us thieves, sir;
or perhaps you would like to assault one of us.
Pray do it, sir, if you would: we will not make
the smallest resistance. Pray do it, sir."
As Fogg put himself very temptingly within
the reach of Mr. Pickwick's clenched fist, there
is little doubt that that gentleman would have
complied with his earnest entreaty, but for the
interposition of Sam, who, hearing the dispute,
emerged from the office, mounted the stairs, and
seized his master by the arm.
You just come avay," said Mr. Weller.
"Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good
game, vhen you an't the shuttlecock and two
lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too |
LAWYERS-Like undertakers.
We were a little like undertakers, in the
Commons, as regarded Probate transactions;
generally making it a rule to look more or less
cut up, when we had to deal with clients in
mourning. In a similar feeling of delicacy, we
were always blithe and light-hearted with the
licence clients.-David Copperfield, Chap. 33.
LAWYERS-Their distrustful nature.
Gentlemen of your profession, sir," continued
Mr. Pickwick, "see the worst side of human
nature.
All its disputes, all its ill-will and bad
blood, rise up before you. You know from your
experience of juries (I mean no disparagement to
you, or them) how much depends upon effect: and
you are apt to attribute to others, a desire to use,
for purposes of deception and self-interest, the
very instruments which you, in pure honesty and
honor of purpose, and with a laudable desire to
do your utmost for your client, know the temper
and worth of so well, from constantly employing
them yourselves. I really believe that to this
circumstance may be attributed the vulgar but
very general notion of your being, as a body, sus-
picious, distrustful, and over-cautious. Conscious
as I am, sir, of the disadvantage of making such a
declaration to you, under such circumstances, I
have come here, because I wish you distinctly to
understand, as my friend Mr. Perker has said,
that I am innocent of the falsehood laid to my
charge; and although I am very well aware of the
inestimable value of your assistance, sir, I must
beg to add, that unless you sincerely believe this,
I would rather be deprived of the aid of your
talents than have the advantage of them."
Pickwick, Chap. 31.
LAWYERS' CLERKS-And offices.
Scattered about in various holes and corners.
of the Temple, are certain dark and dirty cham-
bers, in and out of which, all the morning in Vaca-
tion, and half the evening too in Term time, there
may be seen constantly hurrying with bundles of
papers under their arms, and protruding from
their pockets, an almost uninterrupted succession
of Lawyers' Clerks. There are several grades of
Lawyers' Clerks. There is the Articled Clerk,
who has paid a premium, and is an attorney in
perspective, who runs a tailor's bill, receives in-
vitations to parties, knows a family in Gower
Street, and another in Tavistock Square: who
goes out of town every Long Vacation to see his
father, who keeps live horses innumerable; and
who is, in short, the very aristocrat of clerks.
There is the salaried clerk-out of door, or in door,
LAWYERS
288
*
LEGISLATORS
*
*
*
*
as the case may be-who devotes the major part wildered clients. There was a framed print of
of his thirty shillings a week to his personal pleas- a great judge in it, every curl in whose dreadful
ure and adornment, repairs half price to the Adel- wig had made a man's hair stand on end. Bales
phi Theatre at least three times a week, dissi- of papers filled the dusty closets, shelves, and ta-
pates majestically at the Cider Cellars afterwards, bles; and round the wainscot there were tiers
and is a dirty caricature of the fashion which ex- of boxes, padlocked and fire-proof, with peo-
pired six months ago. There is the middle-aged ple's names painted outside, which anxious visi
copying-clerk, with a large family, who is always tors felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment,
shabby, and often drunk. And there are the office obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to
lads in their first surtouts, who feel a befitting make anagrams of, while they sat seeming to
contempt for boys at day-schools; club as they go listen to Snitchey and Craggs, without compre-
home at night, for saveloys and porter; and think | hending one word of what they said.
there's nothing like "life." There are varieties
of the genus, too numerous to recapitulate, but
however numerous they may be, they are all to be
seen, at certain regulated business hours, hurrying
to and from the places we have just mentioned.
These sequestered nooks are the public offices
of the legal profession, where writs are issued,
judgments signed, declarations filed, and numer-
ous other ingenious machines put in motion for
the torture and torment of His Majesty's liege
subjects, and the comfort and emolument of the
practitioners of the law. They are, for the most
part, low-roofed, mouldy rooms, where innumera-
ble rolls of parchment, which have been perspir-
ing in secret for the last century, send forth an
agreeable odor, which is mingled by day with the
scent of the dry rot, and by night with the various
exhalations which arise from damp cloaks, fester-
ing umbrellas, and the coarsest tallow candles.
Pickwick, Chap. 31.
LAWYERS—Office of Snitchey and Craggs.
Snitchey and Craggs had a snug little office
on the old Battle Ground, where they drove a
snug little business, and fought a great many
small pitched battles for a great many contend-
ing parties. Though it could hardly be said
of these conflicts that they were running fights
-for in truth they generally proceeded at a
snail's pace-the part the Firm had in them
came so far within the general denomination,
that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and
now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made
a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and
now had some light skirmishing among an ir-
regular body of small debtors, just as the occa-
sion served, and the enemy happened to pre-
sent himself. The Gazette was an important
and profitable feature in some of their fields, as
in fields of greater renown; and in most of the
Actions wherein they showed their generalship, |
it was afterwards observed by the combatants
that they had had great difficulty in making
each other out, or in knowing with any degree
of distinctness what they were about, in conse-
quence of the vast amount of smoke by which
they were surrounded.
The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs
stood convenient, with an open door down two
smooth steps, in the market-place; so that any
angry farmer inclining towards hot water, might
tumble into it at once. Their special council-
chamber and hall of conference was an old back |
room up-stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which
seemed to be knitting its brows gloomily in the
consideration of tangled points of law. It was
furnished with some high-backed leathern chairs,
garnished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of
which, every here and there, two or three had
fallen out-or had been picked out, perhaps by
the wandering thumbs and forefingers of be-
In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and
Craggs made honey for their several hives.
Here, sometimes, they would linger of a fine
evening, at the window of their council-cham-
ber, overlooking the old battle-ground, and
wonder (but that was generally at assize time,
when much business had made them sentiment-
al) at the folly of mankind, who couldn't always
be at peace with one another and go to law
comfortably.—Battle of Life, Chap. 2.
LEAVE-Taking.
"My time being rather precious," said Mr.
Merdle, suddenly getting up, as if he had been
waiting in the interval for his legs, and they had
just come.—Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16.
LEGACIES—“Hankering after.”
* * * added Mr. Weller, "for it's a rum
sort o' thing, Sammy, to go a hankerin' arter any-
body's property, ven you're assistin' 'em in ill-
ness. It's like helping an outside passenger up;
ven he's been pitched off a coach, and puttin'
your hand in his pocket, vile you ask him vith a
sigh how he finds his-self, Sammy."
Pickwick, Chap. 55.
LEGISLATORS—American.
I was sometimes asked, in my progress through
other places, whether I had not been very much
impressed by the heads of the lawmakers at
Washington; meaning not their chiefs and lead-
ers, but literally their individual and personal
heads, whereon their hair grew, and whereby
the phrenological character of each legislator
was expressed; and I almost as often struck my
questioner dumb with indignant consternation
by answering, "No, that I didn't remember be-
ing at all overcome." As I must, at whatever
hazard, repeat the avowal here, I will follow it
up by relating my impressions on this subject
in as few words as possible.
In the first place-it may be from some im-
perfect development of my organ of veneration
I do not remember having ever fainted away.
or having even been moved to tears of joyful
pride, at sight of any legislative body. I have
borne the House of Commons like a man, and
have yielded to no weakness but slumber in the
House of Lords. I have seen elections for bor-
ough and county, and have never been impelled
(no matter which party won) to damage my hat
by throwing it up into the air in triumph, or to
crack my voice by shouting forth any reference
to our Glorious Constitution, to the noble purity
of our independent voters, or the unimpeacha-
ble integrity of our independent members. Hav-
ing withstood such strong attacks upon my for.
titude, it is possible that I may be of a cold and
insensible temperament. amounting to iciness
LEGS
269
in such matters; and therefore my impressions
of the live pillars of the Capitol at Washington
must be received with such grains of allowance
as this free confession may seem to demand.
American Notes, Chap. 8.
LEGS.
LIBRARY
"Me and my brother were then the victims of
his feury since which we have suffered very
much which leads us to the arrowing belief
that we have received some injury in our insides,
especially as no marks of violence are visible ex-
ternally. I am screaming out loud all the time
I write and so is my brother which takes off my
attention rather and I hope will excuse mis-
takes.
'You had better step into the marquee, I
think, sir,” said one very stout gentleman, whose
body and legs looked like half a gigantic roll of
flannel, elevated on a couple of inflated pillow-blood ran away, taking with him a boy of des-
cases.-Pickwick, Chap. 7.
LEGS-Simon Tappertit's.
Mr. Tappertit condescended to take the glass
from his outstretched hand. Stagg then dropped
on one knee, and gently smoothed the calves of
his legs, with an air of humble admiration.
"The monster having sasiated his thirst for
perate caracter that he had excited to rebellyon,
and a garnet ring belonging to my ma, and not
having been apprehended by the constables is
supposed to have been took up by some stage-
coach. My pa begs that if he comes to you the
ring may be returned, and that you will let the
thief and assassin go, as if we prosecuted him
he would only be transported, and if he is let
go he is sure to be hung before long which will
Hoping to hear from you when convenient
"I remain yours and cetrer
FANNY SQUEERS.
"P. S. I pity his ignorance and despise him."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 15.
"That I had but eyes!" he cried, " to behold
my captain's symmetrical proportions! That
I had but eyes, to look upon these twin invad-save us trouble and be much more satisfactory.
ers of domestic peace!"
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 8.
'Have my ears deceived me," said the 'Pren-
tice, or do I dream! am I to thank thee, For-
tun', or to cuss thee-which ?”
He gravely descended from his elevation,
took down his piece of looking-glass, planted it
against the wall upon the usual bench, twisted
his head round, and looked closely at his legs.
"If they're a dream," said Sim, let sculp-
tures have such wisions, and chisel 'em out
when they wake. This is reality. Sleep has
no such limbs as them. Tremble, Willet, and
despair."-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 31.
LEGS-Of Tilly Slowboy.
LETTER WRITING-Peggotty's.
To these communications Peggotty replied as
promptly, if not as concisely, as a merchant's
clerk. Her utmost powers of expression (which
were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted
in the attempt to write what she felt on the sub-
ject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent
and interjectional beginnings of sentences, that
had no end, except blots, were inadequate to
afford her any relief. But the blots were more
expressive to me than the best composition ;
for they showed me that Peggotty had been cry.
ing all over the paper, and what could I have
desired more?—David Copperfield, Chap. 17.
LIBERTY-In America.
If I might be allowed to mention a young
lady's legs, on any terms, I would observe of
Miss Slowboy's, that there was a fatality about
them which rendered them singularly liable to
be grazed; and that she never effected the
smallest ascent or descent, without recording the "Lord love you, sir," he added, "they're so
circumstance upon them with a notch, as Rob- fond of liberty in this part of the globe, that
inson Crusoe marked the days upon his wooden they buy her and sell her and carry her to mar-
calendar. But as this might be considered un-ket with 'em. They've such a passion for Lib-
genteel, I'll think of it.
erty, that they can't help taking liberties with
her. That's what it's owing to.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 17.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
LETTER-From Miss Fanny Squeers.
"DOTHEBOYS HALL, Thursday Morning.
SIR-My pa requests me to write to you,
the doctors considering it doubtful whether he
will ever recuvver the use of his legs which pre-
vents his holding a pen.
We are in a state of mind beyond everything,
and my pa is one mask of brooses both blue
and green likewise two forms are steepled in his
Goar. We were kimpelled to have him carried
down into the kitchen where he now lays. You
will judge from this that he has been brought
very low.
"When your nevew that you recommended
for a teacher had done this to my pa and jumped
upon his body with his feet and also langwedge
which I shall not pollewt my pen with describ-
ing, he assaulted my ma with dreadful violence,
dashed her to the earth, and drove her back
comb several inches into her head. A very little
more and it must have entered her skull. We
have a medical certifiket that if it had, the tor
tershell would have affected the brain.
LIBRARY—An unsocial.
"
Ugh! They were black, cold rooms; and
seemed to be in mourning, like the inmates of
the house. The books, precisely matched as to
size, and drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked
in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as if they
had but one idea among them, and that was a
freezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repu-
diated all familiarities. Mr. Pitt, in bronze on
the top, with no trace of his celestial origin
about him, guarded the unattainable treasure
like an enchanted Moor. A dusty urn at each
high corner, dug up from an ancient tomb,
preached desolation and decay, as from two pul-
pits; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr.
Dombey and his portrait at one blow, seemed
fraught with melancholy meditations.
The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim
a nearer relationship than anything else there to
Mr. Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his white
cravat, his heavy, gold watch-chain, and his
creaking boots.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 5.
LIES.
LIES
270
"There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip,"
said Joe, after some rumination, "namely, that
lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn't
ought to come, and they come from the father
of lies, and work round to the same. Don't you
tell no more of 'em, Pip. That ain't the way to
get out of being common, old chap."
*
*
*
*
*
"Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by
a true friend. Which this to you the true friend
say. If you can't get to be oncommon through
going straight, you'll never get to do it through
going crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em,
Pip, and live well and die happy!"
Great Expectations, Chap. 9.
LIGHT—At night.
It shone from what happened to be an old
oriel window, and being surrounded by the deep |
shadows of overhanging walls, sparkled like a
star. Bright and glimmering as the stars above
their heads, lonely and motionless as they, it
seemed to claim some kindred with the eternal
lamps of Heaven, and to burn in fellowship
with them.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 70.
LIGHT-HOUSE.
There the sea was tumbling in, with deep
sounds, after dark, and the revolving French
light on Cape Grinez was seen regularly burst-
ing out and becoming obscured, as if the head
of a gigantic light-keeper in an anxious state of
mind were interposed every half-minute, to look
how it was burning.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 7.
LIGHTS-The street.
He was passing at nightfall along the Strand,
and the lamplighter was going on before him,
under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred by
the foggy air, burst out one after another, like
so many blazing sunflowers coming into full-
blow all at once.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 9.
LIFE-A bargain across a counter.
It was a fundamental principle of the Grad-
grind philosophy, that everything was to be paid
for. Nobody was ever on any account to give
anybody anything, or render anybody help with-
out purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished,
and the virtues springing from it were not to be.
Every inch of the existence of mankind, from
birth to death, was to be a bargain across a
counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that
way, it was not a politico-economical place, and
we had no business there.
Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 8.
LIFE—A burden to Sim Tappertit.
"I am as well, sir," said Sim, standing up to
get nearer to his ear, and whispering hoarsely,
as any man can be under the aggrawations to
which I am exposed. My life's a burden to me.
If it wasn't for wengeance, I'd play at pitch and
toss with it on the losing hazard.”
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 27.
LIFE-A chequered.
We have been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung
himself, who has imposed on us a debt of obli-
gation which we fear we can never repay. The
life of this gentleman has been one of a very
LIFE
chequered description: he has undergone trans-
itions-not from grave to gay, for he never was
grave-not from lively to severe, for severity
forms no part of his disposition; his 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 unfortunate 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 redemp-
tion 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 always reappearing and bounding with the
stream buoyantly and merrily along.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 5.
LIFE-A contented.
Our reunited life was more than all that we
had looked forward to. Content and joy went
with us as the wheels of the two carts went
round, and the same stopped with us when the
two carts stopped. I was as pleased and as
proud as a Pug-Dog with his muzzle black-
leaded for an evening' party, and his tail extra
curled by machinery.-Dr. Marigold.
LIFE-An embodied conundrum.
When I became enough of a man to find my
self an embodied conundrum, I bored myself
to the last degree by trying to find out what I
meant. You know that at length I gave it up,
and declined to guess any more.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 6.
LIFE-A game.
"I don't stand up for life in general," he
added, rubbing his hands and chuckling, "it's
full of folly; full of something worse. Profes-
sions of trust, and confidence, and unselfishness,
and all that! Bah, bah, bah! We see what
they're worth. But you mustn't laugh at life;
you've got a game to play; a very serious game
indeed! Everybody's playing against you, you
know, and you're playing against them. Oh! it's
a very interesting thing. There are deep moves
upon the board. You must only laugh, Doctor
Jeddler, when you win-and then not much. He,
he, he! And then not much," repeated Snitchey,
rolling his head and winking his eye, as if he
would have added, "you may do this instead!"
Well, Alfred!" cried the Doctor, "what do
you say now?"
"I say, sir,” replied Alfred, "that the greatest
favor you could do me, and yourself too, I am in-
clined to think, would be to try sometimes to for-
get this battle-field and others like it in that
broader battle-field of Life, on which the sun
looks every day."
46
Really, I'm afraid that wouldn't soften his
opinions, Mr. Alfred," said Snitchey. "The com-
batants are very eager and very bitter in that same
battle of Life. There's a great deal of cutting and
slashing, and firing into people's heads from be-
hind. There is terrible treading down, and
trampling on. It is rather a bad business"
LIFE
"I believe, Mr. Snitchey," said Alfred, "there
are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices
of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it—even in
many of its apparent lightnesses and contradic-
tions-not the less difficult to achieve, because
they have no earthly chronicle or audience-done
every day in nooks and corners, and in little
households, and in men's and women's hearts-
any one of which might reconcile the sternest
man to such a world, and fill him with be-
lief and hope in it, though two-fourths of its
people were at war, and another fourth at
law; and that's a bold word."
Battle of Life, Chap. 1.
271
LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY
homes with children in them she had seen
grow up around her, how she had contentedly
pursued her own lone, quiet path-for him—
and how he had sometimes seen a shade of mel-
ancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with
remorse and despair. He set the picture of her
up, beside the infamous image of last night; and
thought, Could it be, that the whole earthly
course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying,
was subjugate to such a wretch as that!
Filled with these thoughts-so filled that he
had an unwholesome sense of growing larger,
of being placed in some new and diseased rela-
tion towards the objects among which he passed,
of seeing the iris round every misty light turn
red-he went home for shelter.
LIFE-A muddle to Stephen Blackpool.
"I've tried a long time, and 'ta'n't got better.
But thou'rt right; 'tmight mak folk talk, even
of thee. Thou hast been that to me, Rachael, | LIFE
through so many year: thou hast done me so
much good, and heartened of me in that cheer-
ing way, that thy word is a law to me. Ah, lass,
and a bright good law! Better than some real
ones.
""
"Never fret about them, Stephen," she an-
swered quickly, and not without an anxious
glance at his face. "Let the laws be."
"Yes," he said, with a slow nod or two. "Let
'em be. Let everything be. Let all sorts alone.
'Tis a muddle, and that's aw.
66
Always a muddle?" said Rachael, with
another gentle touch upon his arm, as if to re-
call him out of the thoughtfulness, in which he
was biting the long ends of his loose necker-
chief as he walked along. The touch had its
instantaneous effect. He let them fall, turned
a smiling face upon her, and said, as he broke
into a good-humored laugh," Ay, Rachael, lass,
awlus a muddle. That's where I stick. I come
to the muddle many times and agen, and I
never get beyond it."
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 10.
LIFE—A wasted.
of a.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 12.
ASSURANCE COMPANY-Office
The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and
Life Assurance Company started into existence
one morning, not an Infant Institution, but a
Grown-up Company running alone at a great
pace, and doing business right and left with a
"branch" in a first floor over a tailor's at the
West-end of the town, and main offices in a new
street in the City, comprising the upper part of
a spacious house, resplendent in stucco and plate-
glass, with wire blinds in all the windows, and
"
Anglo-Bengalee" worked into the pattern of
every one of them. On the door-post was paint-
ed again in large letters, "Offices of the Anglo-
Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance
Company," and on the door was a large brass
plate with the same inscription; always kept
very bright, as courting inquiry; staring the City
out of countenance after office hours on working
days, and all day long on Sundays; and looking
bolder than the Bank. Within, the offices were
newly plastered, newly painted, newly papered,
newly countered, newly floor-clothed, newly
tabled, newly chaired, newly fitted up in every
way, with goods that were substantial and expen
sive, and designed (like the company) to last.
Business! Look at the green ledgers with red
backs, like strong cricket-balls beaten flat; the
court-guides, directories, day-books, almanacks,
letter-boxes, weighing-machines for letters, rows
of fire-buckets for dashing out a conflagration
in its first spark, and saving the immense wealth
No word of a new marriage had ever passed in notes and bonds belonging to the company;
between them; but Rachael had taken great look at the iron safes, the clock, the office seal-
pity on him years ago, and to her alone he had in its capacious self, security for anything.
opened his closed heart all this time, on the Solidity! Look at the massive blocks of mar-
subject of his miseries; and he knew very well ble in the chimney-pieces, and the gorgeous
that if he were free to ask her, she would take parapet on the top of the house! Publicity!
him. He thought of the home he might at that Why, Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and
moment have been seeking with pleasure and Life Assurance Company is painted on the very
pride; of the different man he might have been coal-scuttles. It is repeated at every turn until
that night; of the lightness then in his now the eyes are dazzled with it, and the head is
heavy-laden breast; of the then restored honor, giddy. It is engraved upon the top of all the
self-respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces. letter-paper, and it makes a scroll-work round
He thought of the waste of the best part of his the seal, and it shines out of the porter's buttons,
life, of the change it made in his character for and it is repeated twenty times in every circular
the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of and public notice wherein one David Crimple,
his existence, bound hand and foot to a dead Esquire, Secretary and resident Director, takes
woman, and tormented by a demon in her the liberty of inviting your attention to the ac-
shape. He thought of Rachael, how young companying statement of the advantages offered
when they were first brought together in these by the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and
circumstances, how mature now, how soon to Life Assurance Company; and fully proves to
grow old. He thought of the number of girls you that any connection on your part with that
|
and women she had seen marry, how many establishment must result in a perpetual Christ-
O! Better to have no home in which to lay
his head, than to have a home and dread to go
to it, through such a cause. He ate and drank,
for he was exhausted-but he little knew or
cared what; and he wandered about in the chill
rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and
brooding.
LIFE
272
mas Box and constantly increasing Bonus to
yourself, and that nobody can run any risk by
the transaction except the office, which, in its
great liberality, is pretty sure to lose. And this
David Crimple, Esquire, submits to you (and the
odds are heavy you believe him), is the best
guarantee that can reasonably be suggested by
the Board of Management for its permanence
and stability.
*
*
*
*
*
LIFE
LIFE-The revenges of.
Tom was far from being sage enough to know,
that, having been disappointed in one man, it
would have been a strictly rational and eminently
wise proceeding to have revenged himself upon
mankind in general, by mistrusting them one
and all. Indeed, this piece of justice, though it
is upheld by the authority of divers profound
poets and honorable men, bears a nearer resem-
blance to the justice of that good Vizier in the
the destruction of all the Porters in Bagdad
because one of that unfortunate fraternity is sup-
posed to have misconducted himself, than to any
logical, not to say Christian, system of conduct,
known to the world in later times.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 36.
The Board-room had a Turkey carpet in it, a | Thousand-and-one Nights, who issues orders for
sideboard, a portrait of Tigg Montague, Esquire,
as chairman; a very imposing chair of office,
garnished with an ivory hammer and a little
handbell; and a long table, set out at intervals
with sheets of blotting-paper, foolscap, clean
pens, and inkstands. The chairman having
taken his seat with great solemnity, the secretary
supported him on his right hand, and the porter
stood bolt upright behind-them, forming a warm
background of waistcoat. This was the board;
everything else being a light-hearted little fic-
tion.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27.
LIFE-Its declining years.
I am not a young woman; and they do say,
that as life steals on toward 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 recollection of old friends long
since dead, and young ones—children perhaps—|
who have fallen off from, and forgotten one as
completely as if they had died too. My natu-
ral term of life cannot be many years longer,
and should be dear on that account; but I would
lay it down without a sigh-with cheerfulness-
with joy-if what I tell you now were only
false or imaginary.-Tales, Chap. 6.
LIFE-Its stations.
Philosophy would have taught her that the
degradation was on the side of those who had
sunk so low as to display such passions habitu-
ally, and without cause; but she was too young
for such consolation, and her honest feeling was
hurt. May not the complaint, that common peo-
ple are above their station, often take its rise
in the fact of uncommon people being below
theirs?-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 17.
LIFE—The influence of events.
That was a memorable day to me, for it made
great changes in me. But it is the same with
any life. Imagine one selected day struck out
of it, and think how different its course would
have been. Pause, you who read this, and think
for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold,
of thorns or flowers, that would never have
bound you, but for the formation of the first
link on one memorable day.
Great Expectations, Chap. 9.
LIFE-The melancholy side of.
And my advice to all men is, that if ever they
become hipped and melancholy from similar
causes (as very many men do), they look at both
sides of the question, applying a magnifying
glass to the best one; and if they still feel
tempted to retire without leave, that they smoke
a large pipe and drink a full bottle first, and
profit by the laudable example of the baron of
Grogewig."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6.
LIFE-The river of.
He lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad
and deep, which was always silently rolling on
to a vast undiscovered ocean.
It had rolled on,
ever since the world began. It had changed its
course sometimes, and turned into new channels,
leaving its old ways dry and barren; but it had
ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow
until Time should be no more. Against its
strong, unfathomable stream, nothing made head.
No living creature, no flower, no leaf, no particle
of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed
back from the undiscovered ocean. The tide of
the river set resistlessly towards it; and the tide
never stopped, any more than the earth stops in
its circling round the sun.
Nobody's Story. Reprinted Pieces.
LIFE-The social distinctions of.
"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so
many partings welded together, as I may say,
and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a white-
smith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a cop-
persmith. Diwisions among such must come,
and must be met as they come. If there's been
any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me
is not two figures to be together in London; nor
yet anywheres else but what is private and be-
known, and understood among friends. It ain't
that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as
you shall never see me no more in these clothes.
I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of
the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes. You
won't find half so much fault in me if you think
of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my
hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so
much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever
wish to see me, you come and put your head in
at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith,
there, at the old anvil, in the .old burnt apron,
sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I
hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of
this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old
Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!"
I had not been mistaken in my fancy that
there was a simple dignity in him. The fashion
of his dress could no more come in its way when
he spoke these words, than it could come in its
way in Heaven.-Great Expectations, Chap. 27.
LIFE-The transitions in real and mimic.
It is the custom on the stage, in all good mur.
derous melo-dramas, to present the tragic and
the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the
layers of red and white in a side of streaky
LIFE
273
well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his
straw bed, weighed down by fetters and mis-
fortunes; and, in the next scene, his faithful but
unconscious squire regales the audience with a
comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms,
the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless
baron; her virtue and her life alike in danger;
drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at
the cost of the other; and just as our expecta-
tions are wrought up to the highest pitch, a
whistle is heard, and we are straightway trans-
ported to the great hall of the castle, where a
grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with
a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all
sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces, and
roam about in company, carolling perpetually.
Such changes appear absurd, but they are not
so unnatural as they would seem at first sight.
The transitions in real life from well-spread
boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds
to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling;
only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive
lookers-on; which makes a vast difference. The
actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind
to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of
passion or feeling, which, presented before the
eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned
as outrageous and preposterous.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 17.
|
LITERATURE
me as short a time as you like to bolt my meals
in, and keep me at it. Keep me always at it,
I'll keep you always at it, you keep somebody
else always at it. There you are, with the Whole
Duty of Man in a commercial country."
When they had walked a little further in si
lence, Clennam said: "Have you no taste for
|
anything, Mr. Pancks?"
"What's taste?" dryly retorted Pancks.
Let us say inclination."
"I have an inclination to get money, sir,"
said Pancks, "if you'll show me how." He
blew off that sound again, and it occurred to
his companion for the first time that it was his
way of laughing. He was a singular man in all
respects; he might not have been quite in earn-
est, but that the short, hard, rapid manner in
which he shot out these cinders of principles,
as if it were done by mechanical revolvency,
seemed irreconcilable with banter.
"You are no great reader, I suppose?" said
Clennam.
"Never read anything but letters and accounts.
Never collect anything but advertisements rela-
tive to next of kin. If that's a taste, I have
got that."-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
LIFE-Tigg's idea of.
"I wish I may die, if this isn't the queerest
state of existence that we find ourselves forced
into, without knowing why or wherefore, Mr.
Pecksniff! Well, never mind! Moralize as we
LIFE-To be protected from impositions.
There are degrees in murder. Life must be
held sacred among us in more ways than one-will, the world goes on. As Hamlet says, Hercu-
sacred, not merely from the murderous weapon,
or the subtle poison, or the cruel blow, but
sacred from preventible diseases, distortions, and
pains. That is the first great end we have to
set against this miserable imposition. Physical
life respected, moral life comes next. What
will not content a Begging-Letter Writer for a
week, would educate a score of children for a
year.
The Begging-Letter Writer. Reprinted Pieces.
LIFE-Pancks' philosophy of its duties.
A fresh night!" said Arthur.
"Yes, it's pretty fresh," assented Pancks.
“As a stranger, you feel the climate more than
I do, I dare say. Indeed, I haven't got time to
feel it."
"You lead such a busy life?"
"Yes, I have always some of 'em to look up,
or something to look after. But I like business,"
said Pancks, getting on a little faster. "What's
a man made for?"
"For nothing else?" said Clennam.
Pancks put the counter-question, "What
else?" It packed up, in the smallest compass,
a weight that had rested on Clennam's life; and
he made no answer.
"That's what I ask our weekly tenants," said
Pancks. "Some of 'em will pull long faces to
me, and say, Poor as you see us, master, we're
always grinding, drudging, toiling, every minute
we're awake. I say to them, What else are you
made for? It shuts them up. They haven't a
word to answer. What else are you made for?
That clinches it."
"Ah dear, dear, dear!" sighed Clennam.
Here am I," said Pancks, pursuing his argu-
ment with the weekly tenant. "What else do
you suppose I think I am made for? Nothing.
Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give
les may lay about him with his club in every
possible direction, but he can't prevent the cats
from making a most intolerable row on the roofs
of the houses, or the dogs from being shot in
the hot weather if they run about the streets
unmuzzled. Life's a riddle: a most infernally
hard riddle to guess, Mr. Pecksniff. My own
opinion is that like that celebrated conundrum,
'Why's a man in jail like a man out of jail?'
there's no answer to it. Upon my soul and
body, it's the queerest sort of thing altogether
-but there's no use in talking about it.
ha!"-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 4.
LIKENESS—A.
Ha!
Speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of
a walking-stick shop.-Bleak House, Chap. 27.
LITERATURE—Mr. Britain's opinion of.
"You see I've made a good many investiga
tions of one sort and another in my time," pur-
sued Mr. Britain, with the profundity of a sage;
having been always of an inquiring turn of
mind; and I've read a good many books about
the general Rights of things and Wrongs of
things, for I went into the literary line myself
when I began life."
•
"Did you, though!" cried the admiring
Clemency.
Yes," said Mr. Britain; "I was hid for the
best part of two years behind a bookstall, ready
to fly out if anybody pocketed a volume; and
after that, I was light porter to a stay and man-
tua-maker, in which capacity I was employed to
carry about, in oilskin baskets, nothing but de-
ceptions-which soured my spirits and disturbed
my confidence in human nature; and after that,
I heard a world of discussions in this house, which
soured my spirits fresh; and my opinion after
all is, that, as a safe and comfortable sweetener
LITTLE PEOPLE
274
of the same, and as a pleasant guide through
life, there's nothing like a nutmeg-grater."
Battle of Life, Chap. 2.
LITTLE PEOPLE.
LOVE
ness, can compare with the belted blouse. As tc
our women;-next Easter or Whitsuntide look
at the bonnets at the British Museum or the
National Gallery, and think of the pretty white
French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Gen
oese mezzero.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 23.
LOST-Search for the.
Mr. and Mrs. Chirrup are the nice little
couple in question. Mr. Chirrup has the smart-
ness, and something of the brisk, quick manner
of a small bird. Mrs. Chirrup is the prettiest of
all little women, and has the prettiest little figure There, he mounts a high tower in his mind,
conceivable. She has the neatest little foot, and looks out far and wide. Many solitary fig-
and the softest little voice, and the pleasantestures he perceives, creeping through the streets;
little smile, and the tidiest little curls, and the many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads,
brightest little eyes, and the quietest little man- and lying under haystacks. But the figure that
ner, and is, in short, altogether one of the most he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he
engaging of all little women, dead or alive. perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over;
She is a condensation of all the domestic vir- and in shadowed places down by the river's
tues—a pocket edition of the Young Man's Best level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drift-
Companion—a little woman at a very high ing with the tide, more solitary than all, clings
pressure, with an amazing quantity of goodness with a drowning hold on his attention.
and usefulness in an exceedingly small space.
Little as she is, Mrs. Chirrup might furnish
forth matter for the moral equipment of a score
of housewives, six feet high in their stockings
-if, in the presence of ladies, we may be al-
lowed the expression-and of corresponding
robustness.-Sketches of Couples.
LITTLE PEOPLE-The qualities of.
Whether it is that pleasant qualities, being
packed more closely in small bodies than in
large, come more readily to hand than when
they are diffused over a wider space, and have
to be gathered together for use, we don't know,
but as a general rule-strengthened, like all
other rules, by its exceptions-we hold that lit-
tle people are sprightly and good-natured. The
more sprightly and good-natured people we
have, the better; therefore let us wish well to
all nice little couples, and hope that they may
increase and multiply.-Sketches of Couples.
LONDON-In comparison.
The shabbiness of our English capital, as
compared with Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort,
Milan, Geneva,—almost any important town on
the Continent of Europe,-I find very striking
after an absence of any duration in foreign parts.
London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh,
with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool,
with a bright little town like Bury St. Edmund's.
London is shabby in contrast with New York,
with Boston, with Philadelphia. In detail, one
would say it can rarely fail to be a disappoint-
ing piece of shabbiness to a stranger from any
of those places. There is nothing shabbier
than Drury Lane in Rome itself. The meanness
of Regent street, set against the great line of
Boulevards in Paris, is as striking as the abor-
tive ugliness of Trafalgar Square set against the
gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde.
London is shabby by daylight, and shabbier by
gaslight. No Englishman knows what gaslight
is until he sees the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais
Royal after dark.
Where is she? Living or dead, where is she?
If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully
puts it up, it were able, with an enchanted
power, to bring before him the place where she
found it, and the night landscape near the cot-
tage where it covered the little child, would he
descry her there? On the waste, where the
brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare;
where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in
which the bricks are made, are being scattered
by the wind; where the clay and water are hard
frozen, and the mill in which the gaunt blind
horse goes round all day, looks like an instru-
ment of human torture; traversing this desert-
ed, blighted spot, there is a lonely figure, with
the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and
driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem,
from all companionship. It is the figure of a
woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no
such clothes ever came through the hall, and out
at the great door, of the Dedlock mansion.
Bleak House, Chap 56.
LOOM-The household.
A weaving country, too; for in the way-side
cottages the loom goes wearily,-rattle and click,
rattle and click,-and, looking in, I see the poor
weaving peasant, man or woman, bending at the
work, while the child, working too, turns a lit-
tle hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its
height. An unconscionable monster, the loom,
in a small dwelling, asserting himself ungener
ously as the bread-winner, straddling over the
children's straw-beds, cramping the family in
space and air, and making himself generally ob-
jectionable and tyrannical. He is tributary, too,
to ugly mills and factories and bleaching-
grounds, rising out of the sluiced fields in an
abrupt bare way, disdaining, like himself, to be
ornamental or accommodating.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 25.
LOVE-A schoolmistress in.
Little Miss Peecher, from her little official
dwelling-house, with its little windows like the
The mass of London people are shabby. The eyes in needles, and its little doors like the
absence of distinctive dress has, no doubt, covers of school-books, was very observant in-
something to do with it. The porters of the deed of the object of her quiet affections. Love,
Vintners' Company, the draymen, and the butch- though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a
ers, are about the only people who wear distinc- vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him
tive dresses; and even these do not wear them on double duty over Mr. Bradley Headstone,
on holidays. We have nothing which for cheap- It was not that she was naturally given to play.
ness, cleanliness, convenience, or picturesque-ing the spy-it was not that she was at all
LOVE
275
secret, plotting, or mean—it was simply that she
loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the
primitive and homely stock of love that had
never been examined or certificated out of her.
If her faithful slate had had the latent qualities
of sympathetic paper, and its pencil those of in-
visible ink, many a little treatise calculated to
astonish the pupils would have come bursting
through the dry sums in school-time under the
warming influence of Miss Peecher's bosom.
*
*
*
*
*
LOVE
breast, and tried to think of him whose hand
had made it only with hope.
Her father did not know—she held to it from
that time-how much she loved him.
She was
very young, and had no mother, and had never
learned, by some fault or misfortune, how to ex-
press to him that she loved him. She would be
patient, and would try to gain that art in time,
and win him to a better knowledge of his only
child.
This became the purpose of her life. The
morning sun shone down upon the faded house,
and found the resolution bright and fresh within
the bosom of its solitary mistress. Through all
the duties of the day it animated her; for Flor-
ence hoped that the more she knew, and the
more accomplished she became, the more glad
he would be when he came to know and like
her. Sometimes she wondered, with a swelling
Though all unseen and unsuspected by the
pupils, Bradley Headstone even pervaded the
school exercises. Was Geography in question?
He would come triumphantly flying out of Ve-
suvius and Ætna ahead of the lava, and would
boil unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland, and
would float majestically down the Ganges and
the Nile. Did History chronicle a king of
men? Behold him in pepper-and-salt panta-heart and rising tear, whether she was proficient
loons, with his watch-guard round his neck.
Were copies to be written? In capital B's and
H's most of the girl's under Miss Peecher's tui-
tion were half a year ahead of every other letter
in the alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic, ad-
ministered by Miss Peecher, often devoted itself
to providing Bradley Headstone with a wardrobe
of fabulous extent; fourscore and four neck-ties
at two and ninepence-halfpenny, two gross of
silver watches at four pounds fifteen and six-
pence, seventy-four black hats at eighteen shil-
lings; and many similar superfluities.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. II.
LOVE--A smouldering fire.
Love at first sight is a trite expression, quite
sufficiently discussed; enough that, in certain
smouldering natures like this man's, that passion
leaps into a blaze, and makes such head as fire
does in a rage of wind, when other passions,
but for its mastery, could be held in chains. As
a multitude of weak, imitative natures are al-
ways lying by, ready to go mad upon the next
wrong idea that may be broached-in these
times, generally some form of tribute to Some-
body from something that never was done, or,
if ever done, that was done by Somebody Else
-so these less ordinary natures may lie by for
years, ready on the touch of an instant to burst
into flame.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 11.
LOVE-Alienated.
enough in anything to surprise him when they
should become companions. Sometimes she
tried to think if there were any kind of know-
ledge that would bespeak his interest more read-
ily than another. Always-at her books, her
music, and her work: in her morning walks,
and in her nightly prayers-she had her engross-
ing aim in view. Strange study for a child, to
learn the road to a hard parent's heart!
*
*
*
*
*
How few who saw sweet Florence, in her
spring of womanhood, the modest little queen
of those small revels, imagined what a load of
sacred care lay heavy in her breast! How few
of those who stiffened in her father's freezing
atmosphere, suspected what a heap of fiery coals
was piled upon his head !
Dombey & Son, Chap. 24.
LOVE-The consolations of disappointed.
It is not in the nature of pure love to burn
so fiercely and unkindly long. The flame that
in its grosser composition has the taint of earth,
may prey upon the breast that gives it shelter
but the sacred fire from heaven is as gentle in the
heart, as when it rested on the heads of the as-
sembled twelve, and showed each man his broth-
er, brightened and unhurt. The image conjured
up, there soon returned the placid face, the soft-
ened voice, the loving looks, the quiet trustful-
ness and peace; and Florence, though she wept
still, wept more tranquilly, and courted the re-
membrance.
Into her mind, as into all others contending
with the great affliction of our mortal nature,
there had stolen solemn wonderings and hopes,
arising in the dim world beyond the present life,
and murmuring, like faint music, of recognition
in the far-off land between her brother and her
mother; of some present consciousness in both
of her: some love and commiseration for her:
and some knowledge of her as she went her way
upon the earth. It was a soothing consolation
to Florence to give shelter to these thoughts,
until one day-it was soon after she had last
seen her father in his own room, late at night-LOVE-Unrequited-Of Toots.
the fancy came upon her, that, in weeping for
his alienated heart, she might stir the spirits of
the dead against him. Wild, weak,. childish,
as it may have been to think so, and to tremble
at the half-formed thought, it was the impulse
of her loving nature; and from that hour Flor-
ence strove against the cruel wound in her
It was not very long before the golden water,
dancing on the wall, in the old place, at the old
serene time, had her calm eye fixed upon it as it
ebbed away. It was not very long before that
room again knew her, often; sitting there alone,
as patient and as mild as when she had watched
beside the little bed. When any sharp sense of
its being empty smote upon her, she could kneel
beside it, and pray GoD-it was the pouring out
of her full heart—to let one angel love her and
remember her.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 18.
""
Bear a hand and cheer up," said the Cap-
tain, patting him on the back, "What! There's
more than one sweet creetur in the world!"
"Not to me, Captain Gills,” replied Mr. Toots
gravely. "Not to me, I assure you. The state
of my feelings towards Miss Dombey is of that
unspeakable description, that my heart is a desert
LOVE
276
island, and she lives in it alone. I'm getting
more used up every day, and I'm proud to be so.
If you could see my legs when I take my boots
off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited
affection is. I have been prescribed bark, but I
don't take it, for I don't wish to have any tone
whatever given to my constitution."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 48.
LOVE-Oppressiveness of.
"
Upon my word I-it's a hard thing, Captain
Gills, not to be able to mention Miss Dombey.
I really have got such a dreadful load here !"-
Mr. Toots pathetically touched his shirt front
with both hands-"that I feel night and day,
exactly as if somebody was sitting upon me."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 39.
"You know, Captain_Gills, I-I positively
adore Miss Dombey; -I-I am perfectly sore
with loving her;" the burst with which this
confession forced itself out of the unhappy Mr.
Toots, bespoke the vehemence of his feelings;
"but what would be the good of my regarding
her in this manner, if I wasn't truly sorry for
her feeling pain, whatever was the cause of it.
Mine an't a selfish affection, you know," said
Mr. Toots, in the confidence engendered by his
having been a witness of the Captain's tender-
ness. "It's the sort of thing with me, Captain
Gills, that if I could be run over-or-or tram-
pled upon-or-or thrown off a very high place
-or anything of that sort-for Miss Dombey's
sake, it would be the most delightful thing that
could happen to me."
*
*
*
*
*
LOVE
comfortable, but more comfortably and com、
pletely miserable.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 56.
"Well said, my lad," observed the Captain,
nodding his head_thoughtfully;
"and true.
Now look'ee here: You've made some observa-
tions to me, which gives me to understand as
you admire a certain sweet creetur. Hey?"
Captain Gills," said Mr. Toots, gesticulating
violently with the hand in which he heid his hat,
“Admiration is not the word. Upon my honor,
you have no conception what my feelings are.
If I could be dyed black, and made Miss Dom-
bey's slave, I should consider it a compliment.
If, at the sacrifice of all my property, I could
get transmigrated into Miss Dombey's dog--J
-I really think I should never leave off wag-
ging my tail. I should be so perfectly happy,
Captain Gills!"
Mr. Toots said it with watery eyes, and pressed
his hat against his bosom with deep emotion.
"My lad," returned the Captain, moved to
compassion, "if you're in arnest—'
""
Captain Gills," cried Mr. Toots, "I'm n
such a state of mind, and am so dreadfully in
earnest, that if I could swear to it upon a hot
piece of iron, or a live coal, or melted lead, or
burning sealing-wax, or anything of that sort, I
should be glad to hurt myself, as a relief to my
feelings." And Mr. Toots looked hurriedly
about the room, as if for some sufficiently painful
means of accomplishing his dread purpose.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 39.
LOVE-An outcast from a parent's.
'Not an orphan in the wide world can be so
"As I said before, I really want a friend, and deserted as the child who is an outcast from a
should be glad to have your acquaintance. Al- | living parent's love."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 24.
though I am very well off," said Mr. Toots, with
44
energy, you can't think what a miserable Beast LOVE-And appetite.
I am.
The hollow crowd, you know, when they In my love-lorn condition, my appetite lan-
see me with the Chicken, and characters of dis-guished; and I was glad of it, for I felt as
tinction like that, suppose me to be happy; but though it would have been an act of perfidy
I'm wretched. I suffer for Miss Dombey, Cap- towards Dora to have a natural relish for my
tain Gills. I can't get through my meals; I dinner.-David Copperfield, Chap. 28.
have no pleasure in my tailor; I often cry when
I'm alone. I assure you it'll be a satisfaction to
me to come back to-morrow, or to come back
fifty times."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
46
I beg your pardon, Captain Gills, but you
don't happen to see anything particular in me,
do you?
66
LOVE-And tight boots.
Within the first week of my passion, I bought
four sumptuous waistcoats-not for myself: I had
no pride in them; for Dora-and took to wear-
ing straw-colored kid gloves in the streets, and
laid the foundations of all the corns I have ever
had. If the boots I wore at that period could
No, my lad," returned the Captain. "No." only be produced and compared with the natu-
Because you know," said Mr. Toots with a ral size of my feet, they would show what the
chuckle, "I KNOW I'm wasting away. You state of my heart was, in a most affecting man-
needn't at all mind alluding to that. I-I should ner.-David Copperfield, Chap. 26.
|
like it. Burgess and Co. have altered my mea-
sure, I'm in that state of thinness. It's a gratifi-LOVE-Cymon Tuggs in.
cation to me. I—I'm glad of it. I-I'd a great
deal rather go into a decline, if I could. I'm a
mere brute you know, grazing upon the face of
the earth, Captain Gills."
*
"
*
*
*
*
As to sleep, you know, I never sleep now.
I might be a Watchman, except that I don't get
any pay, and he's got nothing on his mind."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 48.
Mr. Toots, as usual, when he informed her
and the Captain, on the way back, that now he
was sure he had no hope, you know, he felt
more comfortable-at least not exactly more
"Walter will return to-morrow," said Mrs.
Captain Waters, mournfully breaking silence.
Mr. Cymon Tuggs sighed like a gust of wind
through a forest of gooseberry bushes, as he re-
plied, "Alas, he will."
"
Oh, Cymon!" resumed Belinda, "the chaste
delight, the calm happiness, of this one week of
Platonic love, is too much for me!"
Cymon was about to suggest that it was too
little for him, but he stopped himself, and mur-
mured unintelligibly.
And to think that even this glimpse of hap.
piness, innocent as it is," exclaimed Belinda
"is now to be lost for ever!"
LOVE
277
'Oh, do not say for ever, Belinda," exclaimed
the excitable Cymon, as two strongly-defined
tears chased each other down his pale face-it
was so long that there was plenty of room for
a chase "Do not say for ever!"
"I must," replied Belinda. - Tales, Chap. 4.
LOVE-First-Of David Copperfield.
All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled
my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I
loved Dora Spenlow to distraction!
She was more than human to me. She was a
Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was-
anything that no one ever saw, and everything
that every body ever wanted. I was swallowed
up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was
no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or
looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I
had sense to say a word to her.
*
*
*
*
*
What a state of mind I was in! I was jeal-
ous of everybody. I couldn't bear the idea of
anybody knowing Mr. Spenlow better than I
did. It was torturing to me to hear them talk of
occurrences in which I had had no share. When
a most amiable person, with a highly polished
bald head, asked me across the dinner-table,
if that were the first occasion of my seeing the
grounds, I could have done anything to him
that was savage and revengeful.
|
LOVE
LOVE-For Little Nell.
The people of the village, too, of whom there
was not one but grew to have a fondness for
poor Nell; even among them there was the
same feeling; a tenderness towards her—a
compassionate regard for her, increasing every
day. The very schoolboys, light-hearted and
thoughtless as they were, even they cared for her.
The roughest among them was sorry if he
missed her in the usual place upon his way to
school, and would turn out of the path to ask
for her at the latticed window. If she were
sitting in the church, they perhaps might peep
in softly at the open door; but they never spoke
to her, unless she rose and went to speak to
them. Some feeling was abroad which raised
the child above them all.
So, when Sunday came. They were all poor
country people in the church, for the castle in
which the old family had lived was an empty
ruin, and there were none but humble folks for
seven miles around. There, as elsewhere, they
had an interest in Nell. They would gather
round her in the porch, before and after service;
young children would cluster at her skirts, and
aged men and women forsake their gossips, to
give her kindly greeting. None of them, young
or old, thought of passing the child without a
friendly word. Many who came from three or
four miles distant, brought her little presents;
the humblest and rudest had good wishes to
bestow.
I don't remember who was there, except Dora.
I have not the least idea what we had for din-
ner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I She had sought out the young children whom
dined off Dora entirely, and sent away half-a- she first saw playing in the churchyard. One
dozen plates untouched. I sat next to her. I of these he who had spoken of his brother
talked to her. She had the most delightful lit--was her little favorite and friend, and often
tle voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest
and most fascinating little ways that ever led a
lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was
rather diminutive altogether. So much the
more precious, I thought.
*
*
*
*
*
All I know of the rest of the evening is, that
I heard the empress of my heart sing enchant-
ing ballads in the French language, generally to
the effect that whatever was the matter, we
ought always to dance, Ta ra la, Ta ra la! ac-
companying herself on a glorified instrument,
resembling a guitar. That I was lost in blissful
delirium. That I refused refreshment. That
my soul recoiled from punch particularly. That
when Miss Murdstone took her into custody and
led her away, she smiled and gave me her deli-
cious hand. That I caught a view of myself in
a mirror, looking perfectly imbecile and idiotic.
That I retired to bed in a most maudlin state
of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble infatu-
ation.-David Copperfield, Chap. 26.
sat by her side in the church, or climbed with
her to the tower-top. It was his delight to
help her, or to fancy that he did so, and
they soon became close companions.
It happened, that, as she was reading in the
old spot by herself one day, this child came
running in with his eyes full of tears, and after
holding her from him, and looking at her eagerly
for a moment, clasped his little arms passion-
ately about her neck.
What now?" said Nell, soothing him.
"What is the matter?"
"She is not one yet," cried the boy, embracing
her still more closely. "No, no. Not yet."
She looked at him wonderingly, and putting
his hair back from his face, and kissing him,
asked what he meant.
You must not be one, dear Nell," cried the
boy. "We can't see them. They never come
to play with us, or talk to us. Be what you are.
You are better so."
"I do not understand you," said the child.
"Tell me what you mean.'
There was dust, I believe. There was a good
deal of dust, I believe. I have a faint impression
that Mr. Spenlow remonstrated with me for riding
in it; but I knew of none. I was sensible of a
mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of no-bright. Do not leave us!"
thing else. He stood up sometimes, and asked me
what I thought of the prospect. I said it was de-
lightful, and I dare say it was; but it was all Dora
to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang
Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wild
flowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud.
My comfort is, Miss Mills understood me. Miss
Mills alone could enter into my feelings thor-
oughly. -David Copperfield, Chap. 33.
Why, they say," replied the boy, looking up
into her face," that you will be an Angel before
the birds sing again. But you won't be, will
you? Don't leave us, Nell, though the sky is
The child dropped her head, and put her
hands before her face.
"She cannot bear the thought!" cried the
boy, exulting through his tears.
"You will not
go. You know how sorry we should be. Dear
Nell, tell me that you'll stay among us. Oh!
pray, pray, tell me that you will."
The little creature folded his hands, and
knelt down at her feet.
LOVE
278
"Only look at me, Nell," said the boy, "and
tell me that you'll stop, and then I shall know
that they are wrong, and will cry no more.
Won't you say yes, Nell?”
|
Still the drooping head and hidden face, and
the child quite silent-save for her sobs.
“After a time,” pursued the boy, trying to
draw away her hand,
her hand, "the kind angels will be
giad to think that you are not among them, and
that you stayed here to be with us. Willie went
away, to join them; but if he had known how
I should miss him in our little bed at night, he
never would have left me, I am sure.
Yet the child could make him no answer, and
sobbed as though her heart were bursting.
"Why would you go, dear Nell? I know
you would not be happy when you heard that
we were crying for your loss. They say that
Willie is in Heaven now, and that it's always
summer there, and yet I'm sure he grieves when
I lie down upon his garden bed, and he cannot
turn to kiss me. But if you do go, Nell," said
the boy, caressing her, and pressing his face to
hers, "be fond of him for my sake. Tell him
how I love him still, and how much I loved
you; and when I think that you two are to-
gether, and are happy, I'll try to bear it, and
never give you pain by doing wrong—indeed I
never will!"
The child suffered him to move her hands,
and put them round his neck. There was a
tearful silence, but it was not long before she
looked upon him with a smile, and promised
him, in a very gentle, quiet voice, that she would
stay, and be his friend, as long as Heaven would
let her. He clapped his hands for joy, and
thanked her many times; and being charged to
tell no person what had passed between them,
gave her an earnest promise that he never would.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 55.
LOVE-Its sorcery.
Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the only magic
art that still remains to us, the magic of devoted,
deathless love, Nature had been the mistress of
his study; and from her teaching all the won-
der came.
The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were
discolored, walls blotched and bare of plaster
here and there, high crevices unstopped and
widening every day, beams mouldering and tend-
ing downward. The Blind Girl never knew that
iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling
off; the size, and shape, and true proportion of
the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl
never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earth-
enware were on the board; that sorrow and
faint-heartedness were in the house; that Caleb's
scanty hairs were turning grayer and more gray,
before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never
knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and un-
interested--never knew that Tackleton was
Tackleton, in short; but lived in the belief of
an eccentric humorist who loved to have his jest
with them, and who, while he was the Guardian
Angel of their lives, disdained to hear one word
of thankfulness.
And all was Caleb's doing; all the doing of
her simple father! But he too had a Cricket on
his Hearth; and listening sadly to its music
when the motherless Blind Child was very young,
that Spirit had inspired him with the thought
that even her great deprivation might be almost
LOVE
changed into a blessing, and the girl made happy
by these little means. For all the Cricket tribe
are potent Spirits, even though the people who
hold converse with them do not know it (which
is frequently the case), and there are not in the
unseen world voices more gentle and more true,
that may be so implicitly relied on, or that are
so certain to give none but tenderest counsel,
as the Voices in which the Spirits of the Fire-
side and the Hearth address themselves to hu-
man kind.—Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
LOVE-MAKING-Pickwick's advice on.
"I should feel very much obliged to you for
any advice, sir," said Mr. Magnus, taking another
look at the clock; the hand of which was verg-
ing on the five minutes past.
"Well, sir," said Mr. Pickwick, with the pro-
found solemnity with which that great man could,
when he pleased, render his remarks so deeply
impressive: "I should commence, sir, with a
tribute to the lady's beauty and excellent quali-
ties; from them, sir, I should diverge to my own
unworthiness."
Very good," said Mr. Magnus.
Unworthiness for her only, mind, sir," re-
sumed Mr. Pickwick; "for to show that I was
not wholly unworthy, sir, I should take a brief
review of my past life, and present condition. I
should argue, by analogy, that to anybody else, I
must be a very desirable object. I should then
expatiate on the warmth of my love, and the
depth of my devotion. Perhaps I might then
be tempted to seize her hand."
"Yes, I see," said Mr. Magnus:
be a very great point."
"that would
"I should then, sir," continued Mr. Pickwick,
growing warmer as the subject presented itself
in more glowing colors before him: "I should
then, sir, come to the plain and simple question,
'Will you have me?' I think I am justified in
assuming that, upon this, she would turn away
her head."
"You think that may be taken for granted?"
said Mr. Magnus; "because, if she did not do
that at the right place, it would be embarrass-
ing."
"I think she would," said Mr. Pickwick.
"Upon this, sir, I should squeeze her hand, and
I think-I think, Mr. Magnus-that after I had
done that, supposing there was no refusal, I
should gently draw away the handkerchief, which
my slight knowledge of human nature leads me
to suppose the lady would be applying to her
eyes at the moment, and steal a respectful kiss.
I think I should kiss her, Mr. Magnus; and at
this particular point, I am decidedly of opinion
that if the lady were going to take me at all,
she would murmur into my ears a bashful ac-
ceptance."-Pickwick, Chap. 24.
LOVE-John Chivery in.
She preceded the visitor into a little parlor
behind the shop, with a little window in it com-
manding a very little dull back-yard. In this
yard, a wash of sheets and table-cloths tried (in
vain, for want of air) to get itself dried on a
line or two; and among those flapping articles
was, sitting in a chair, like the last mariner left
alive on the deck of a damp ship without the
power of furling the sails, a little woe begone
young man.
"Our John," said Mrs. Chivery.
:
LOVE
Not to be deficient in interest, Clennam asked
what he might be doing there?
279
LOVE
here and there appeared; the evening air; the
City's hum and stir; the very chiming of the old
church clocks; such exquisite enthralment, that
the divinest regions of the earth spread out be-
fore their eyes could not have held them captive
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 45.
"It's the only change he takes," said Mrs.
Chivery, shaking her head afresh. "He won't
go out, even in the back yard, when there's no
linen; but when there's linen to keep the neigh-in a stronger chain?
bors' eyes off, he'll sit there, hours. Hours he
will. Says he feels as if it was groves!" Mrs.
Chivery shook her head again, put her apron in
a motherly way to her eyes, and reconducted her
visitor into the regions of the business.
"Please to take a seat, sir,” said Mrs. Chivery.
Miss Dorrit is the matter with Our John, sir;
he's a breaking his heart for her, and I would
wish to take the liberty to ask how it's to be
made good to his parents when bust?”
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 22.
LOVE-Of Ruth and John Westlock.
Brilliantly the Temple Fountain sparkled in
the sun, and laughingly its liquid music played,
and merrily the idle drops of water danced and
danced, and peeping out in sport among the
trees, plunged lightly down to hide themselves,
as little Ruth and her companion came towards
it.
What a good old place it was! John said,
with quite an earnest affection for it.
*
*
*
*
*
"A pleasant place, indeed," said little Ruth.
"So shady!"
Oh, wicked little Ruth.
They came to a stop when John began to
praise it. The day was exquisite; and stopping
at all, it was quite natural-nothing could be
more so-that they should glance down Garden
Court; because Garden Court ends in the Gar-
den, and the Garden ends in the River, and that
glimpse is very bright and fresh and shining on
a summer's day. Then, oh little Ruth, why not
look boldly at it? Why fit that tiny, precious,
blessed little foot into the cracked corner of an
insensible old flagstone in the pavement; and
be so very anxious to adjust it to a nicety?
If the Fiery-faced matron in the crunched.
bonnet could have seen them as they walked
away, how many years' purchase might Fiery
Face have been disposed to take for her situa-
tion in Furnival's Inn as laundress to Mr. West-
lock?
Ah, but it would have been a good thing to
have had a coat of invisibility, wherein to have
watched little Ruth, when she was left to herself
in John Westlock's chambers, and John and her
brother were talking thus, over their wine! The
gentle way in which she tried to get up a little
conversation with the fiery-faced matron in the
crunched bonnet, who was waiting to attend her;
after making a desperate rally in regard of her
dress, and attiring herself in a washed-out yel-
low gown with sprigs of the same upon it, so
that it looked like a tesselated work of pats of
butter. That would have been pleasant. The
grim and griffin-like inflexibility with which the
fiery-faced matron repelled these engaging ad-
vances, as proceeding from a hostile and danger-
ous power, who could have no business there,
unless it were to deprive her of a customer, or
suggest what became of the self-consuming tea
and sugar, and other general trifles. That would
have been agreeable. The bashful, winning, They went away, but not through London's
glorious curiosity, with which little Ruth, when streets! Through some enchanted city, where
fiery face was gone, peeped into the books and the pavements were of air; where all the rough
nick-nacks that were lying about, and had a sounds of a stirring town were softened into
particular interest in some delicate paper-matches gentle music; where everything was happy;
on the chimney-piece, wondering who could have where there was no distance, and no time.
made them. That would have been worth see-There were two good-tempered burly draymen
ing. The faltering hand with which she tied
those flowers together; with which, almost blush-
ing at her own fair self as imaged in the glass,
she arranged them in her breast, and looking at
them with her head aside, now half resolved to
take them out again, now half resolved to leave
them where they were. That would have been
delightful!
John seemed to think it all delightful: for,
coming in with Tom to tea, he took his seat be-
side her like a man enchanted. And when the
tea-service had been removed, and Tom, sitting
down at the piano, became absorbed in some of
his old organ tunes, he was still beside her at
the open window, looking out upon the twi-
light.
letting down big butts of beer into a cellar,
somewhere; and when John helped her-almost
lifted her-the lightest, easiest, neatest thing
you ever saw-across the rope, they said he
owed them a good turn for giving him the
chance. Celestial draymen!
Green pastures in the summer tide, deep lit-
tered straw-yards in the winter, no stint of corn
and clover, ever, to that noble horse who would
dance on the pavement with a gig behind him,
and who frightened her, and made her clasp his
arm with both hands (both hands: meeting one
upon the other, so endearingly !), and caused her
to implore him to take refuge in the pastry-
cook's; and afterwards to peep out at the door
so shrinkingly; and then-looking at him with
those eyes-to ask him was he sure-now was
he sure-they might go safely on! Oh for a
string of rampant horses! For a lion, for a
bear, for a mad bull, for anything to bring the
little hands together on his arm, again!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 53.
There is little enough to see in Furnival's
Inn. It is a shady, quiet place, echoing to the
footsteps of the stragglers who have business
there; and rather monotonous and gloomy on
summer evenings. What gave it such a charm
to them, that they remained at the window as
unconscious of the flight of time as Tom himself,
the dreamer, while the melodies which had so
often soothed his spirit, were hovering again
about him? What power infused into the fad- "I came here," said Dick, rather oblivious of
ing light the gathering darkness; the stars that the purpose with which he had really come
LOVE-The disappointment of Dick Swivel-
ler.
LOVE
"with my bosom expanded, my heart dilated,
and my sentiments of a corresponding descrip-
tion. I go away with feelings that may be con-
ceived, but cannot be described feeling within
myself the desolating truth that my best affec-
tions have experienced, this night, a stifler!"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 8.
A day or two after the Quilp tea-party at the
Wilderness, Mr. Swiveller walked into Sampson
Brass's office at the usual hour, and being alone
in that Temple of Probity, placed his hat upon
the desk, and taking from his pocket a small
parcel of black crape, applied himself to folding
and pinning the same upon it, after the manner
of a hatband. Having completed the construc-
tion of this appendage, he surveyed his work
with great complacency, and put his hat on
again-very much over one eye, to increase the
mournfulness of the effect. These arrange-
ments perfected to his entire satisfaction, he
thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked
up and down the office with measured steps.
"It has always been the same with me," said
Mr. Swiveller, "always. 'Twas ever thus, from
childhood's hour, I've seen my fondest hopes
decay, I never loved a tree or flower but 'twas
the first to fade away; I never nursed a dear
Gazelle, to glad me with its soft black eye, but
when it came to know me well, and love me, it
was sure to marry a market-gardener."
Overpowered by these reflections, Mr. Swiv-
eller stopped short at the clients' chair, and
flung himself into its open arms.
280
"And this," said Mr. Swiveller, with a kind |
of bantering composure, "is life, I believe. Oh,
certainly! Why not! I'm quite satisfied. I
shall wear," added Richard, taking off his hat
again, and looking hard at it, as if he were only
deterred by pecuniary considerations from spurn-
ing it with his foot, "I shall wear this emblem
of woman's perfidy, in remembrance of her with
whom I shall never again thread the windings
of the mazy; whom I shall never more pledge
in the rosy; who, during the short remainder
of my existence, will murder the balmy. Ha,
ha, ha!"-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56.
LOVE-The disappointment of John Chiv-
ery.
"And good-bye, John," said Little Dorrit.
"And I hope you will have a good wife one
day, and be a happy man. I am sure you will
deserve to be happy, and you will be, John."
As she held out her hand to him with these
words, the heart that was under the waistcoat
of sprigs-mere slop-work, if the truth must be
known-swelled to the size of the heart of a
gentleman; and the poor, common little fellow,
having no room to hold it, burst into tears.
"O don't cry," said Little Dorrit, piteously.
"Don't, don't! Good-bye, John. God bless you!"
Good-bye, Miss Amy. Good-bye!"
It was an affecting illustration of the fallacy
of human projects, to behold her lover, with the
great hat pulled over his eyes, the velvet collar
turned up as if it rained, the plum-colored coat
buttoned to conceal the silken waistcoat of
golden sprigs, and the little direction-post
pointing inexorably home, creeping along by
the worst back-streets, and composing as he
went, the following new inscription for a tomb-
stone in Saint George's Churchyard:
LOVELINESS IN WOMAN
"Here lie the mortal remains of JOHN CHIV-
ERY, Never anything worth mentioning, Who
died about the end of the year one thousand
eight hundred and twenty-six, Of a broken
heart, Requesting with his last breath that the
word AMY might be inscribed over his ashes,
Which was accordingly directed to be done, By
his afflicted Parents.'
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 18.
LOVE-The elements of its growth.
Mystery and disappointment are not absolute.
ly indispensable to the growth of love, but they
are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries. "Out
of sight, out of mind," is well enough as a pro-
verb applicable to cases of friendship, though
absence is not always necessary to hollowness
of heart, even between friends, and truth and
honesty, like precious stones, are perhaps most
easily imitated at a distance, when the counter-
feits often pass for real. Love, however, is very
materially assisted by a warm and active imagi-
nation, which has a long memory, and will
thrive for a considerable time on very slight and
sparing food. Thus it is, that it often attains its
most luxuriant growth in separation and under
circumstances of the utmost difficulty; and thus
it was, that Nicholas, thinking of nothing but
the unknown young lady, from day to day and
from hour to hour, began, at last, to think that
he was very desperately in love with her, and
that never was such an ill-used and persecuted
lover as he.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 40.
LOVE-The period of.
What an idle time! What an unsubstantial,
happy, foolish time! Of all the times of mine
that Time has in his grip, there is none that in
one retrospect I can smile at half so much, and
think of half so tenderly.
David Copperfield, Chap. 33.
LOVELINESS IN WOMAN—The influence
of.
Whether there was life enough left in the
slow vegetation of Fountain Court for the smoky
shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest
and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is
a question for gardeners, and those who are
learned in the loves of plants. But, that it was
a good thing for that same paved yard to have
such a delicate little figure flitting through it;
that it passed like a smile from the grimy old
houses, and the worn flagstones, and left them
duller, darker, sterner than before, there is no
sort of doubt. The Temple fountain might have
leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of
hopeful maidenhood, that in her person stole on,
sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels
of the Law; the chirping sparrows, bred in
Temple chinks and crannies, might have held
their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks, as so
fresh a little creature passed: the dingy boughs,
unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny
growth, might have bent down in a kindred
gracefulness, to shed their benedictions on her
graceful head; old love letters, shut up in iron
boxes in the neighboring offices, and made of
no account among the heaps of family papers
into which they had strayed, and of which, in
their degeneracy, they formed a part, might
have stirred and fluttered with a moment's recol
lection of their ancient tenderness, as she went
LOVERS
lightly by. Anything might have happened that
did not happen. and never will, for the love of
Ruth.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 45.
LOVERS-Their power of condensation.
Though lovers are remarkable for leaving a
great deal unsaid on all occasions, and very
properly desiring to come back and say it, they
are remarkable also for a wonderful power of
condensation; and can, in one way or other,
give utterance to more language-eloquent lan-
guage in any given short space of time, than
all the six hundred and fifty-eight members in
the Commons House of Parliament of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland;
who are strong lovers, no doubt, but of their
country only, which makes all the difference;
for in a passion of that kind (which is not al-
ways returned) it is the custom to use as many
words as possible, and express nothing what-
ever.--Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 43.
LUNATIC.
He's a deal pleasanter without his senses
than with 'em. He was the cruellest, wicked-
est, out-and-outerest old flint that ever drawed
breath."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41.
LUNATIC ASYLUM-An American.
281
LUNATIC
of minds on which the most dreadful visitation
to which our nature is exposed has fallen, must
wear the glasses of some wretched side in Poli.
tics? Will it be believed that the governor of
such a house as this is appointed and deposed
and changed perpetually, as Parties fluctuate
and vary, and as their despicable weathercocks
are blown this way or that? A hundred times
in every week some new, most paltry, exhibition
of that narrow-minded and injurious Party
Spirit which is the Simoom of America, sicken-
ing and blighting everything of wholesome life
within its reach, was forced upon my notice;
but I never turned my back upon it with feel-
ings of such deep disgust and measureless con-
tempt as when I crossed the threshold of this
madhouse.-American Notes, Chap. 6.
LUNATIC-His courtship of Mrs. Nickleby.
Kate looked very much perplexed, and was
apparently about to ask for further explanation,
when a shouting and scuffling noise, as of an
elderly gentleman whooping, and kicking up his
legs on loose gravel, with great violence, was
heard to proceed from the same direction as the
former sounds; and, before they had subsided, a
large cucumber was seen to shoot up in the air
with the velocity of a sky-rocket, whence it de-
scended, tumbling over and over, until it fell at
Mrs. Nickleby's feet.
One day, during my stay in New York, I paid
a visit to the different public Institutions on
Long Island, or Rhode Island, I forget which.
One of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The build-
ing is handsome, and is remarkable for a spacious
and elegant staircase. The whole structure is
not yet finished, but it is already one of con-
siderable size and extent, and is capable of ac-
commodating a very large number of patients.
I cannot say that I derived much comforting, and bumping about in all directions.
from the inspection of this charity. The differ-
ent wards might have been cleaner and better
ordered; I saw nothing of that salutary system
which had impressed me so favorably elsewhere;
and everything had a lounging, listless, mad-
house air, which was very painful. The moping
idiot, cowering down, with long dishevelled hair;
the gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh
and pointed finger: the vacant eye, the fierce
wild face, the gloomy picking of the hands and
lips, and munching of the nails; there they were
all, without disguise, in naked ugliness and hor-
ror. In the dining-room, a bare, dull, dreary
place, with nothing for the eye to rest on but
the empty walls, a woman was locked up alone.
She was bent, they told me, on committing sui-
cide. If anything could have strengthened her
in her resolution, it would certainly have been
the insupportable monotony of such an exist-
This remarkable appearance was succeeded
by another of a precisely similar description ;
then a fine vegetable marrow, of unusually large
dimensions, was seen to whirl aloft, and come
toppling down; then, several cucumbers shot
up together; finally, the air was darkened by a
shower of onions, turnip-radishes, and other
small vegetables, which fell, rolling and scatter-
ence.
The terrible crowd with which these halls and
galleries were filled so shocked me, that I
.abridged my stay within the shortest limits, and
declined to see that portion of the building in
which the refractory and violent were under
closer restraint. I have no doubt that the gen-
tleman who presided over this establishment at
the time I write of was competent to manage it,
and had done all in his power to promote its
usefulness; but will it be believed that the mis-
erable strife of Party feeling is carried even into
this sad refuge of afflicted and degraded human-
ity? Will it be believed that the eyes which
are to watch over and control the wanderings
As Kate rose from her seat, in some alarm,
and caught her mother's hand to run with her
into the house, she felt herself rather retarded
than assisted in her intention; and following
the direction of Mrs. Nickleby's eyes, was quite
terrified by the apparition of an old black velvet
cap, which, by slow degrees, as if its wearer were
ascending a ladder or pair of steps, rose above
the wall dividing their garden from that of the
next cottage (which, like their own, was a de-
tached building), and was gradually followed by
a very large head, and an old face in which were
a pair of most extraordinary gray eyes: very
wild, very wide open, and rolling in their
sockets, with a dull, languishing, leering look,
most ugly to behold.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41.
"Very good," said the old gentleman, raising
his voice," then bring in the bottled lightning,
a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew."
Nobody executing this order, the old gentle-
man, after a short pause, raised his voice again
and demanded a thunder sandwich. This arti
cle not being forthcoming either, he requested
to be served with a fricassee of boot-tops and
goldfish sauce, and then, laughing heartily, grati
fied his hearers with a very long, very loud, and
most melodious bellow.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 49.
"I have estates, ma'am," said the old gentle
man, flourishing his right hand negligently, as
if he made very light of such matters, and speak
LYONS
282
ing very fast; "jewels, light-houses, fish-ponds, a
whalery of my own in the North Sea, and several
oyster-beds of great profit in the Pacific Ocean.
If you will have the kindness to step down to
the Royal Exchange and to take the cocked hat
off the stoutest beadle's head, you will find my
card in the lining of the crown, wrapped up in
a piece of blue paper. My walking-stick is also
to be seen on application to the chaplain of the
House of Commons, who is strictly forbidden to
take any money for showing it. I have enemies
about me, ma'am," he looked towards his house
and spoke very low, "who attack me on all oc-
casions, and wish to secure my property. If you
bless me with your hand and heart, you can
apply to the Lord Chancellor or call out the
military if necessary-sending my toothpick to
the commander-in-chief will be sufficient-and
so clear the house of them before the ceremony
is performed. After that, love, bliss, and rap-
ture; rapture, love, and bliss. Be mine, be
mine!"-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41.
LYONS.
MADMAN
Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not
mangles, but intricate machines, set with knives
and saws and planes, which cut smooth and
straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut
such a depth, and now miss cutting altogether,
according to the predestined requirements of the
pieces of wood that are pushed on below them,
each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is
roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes
its final leave of far-off forests, and sails
for England. Likewise I discern that the but-
terflies are not true butterflies, but wooden
shavings, which, being spirted up from the
wood by the violence of the machinery, and kept
in rapid and not equal movement by the impulse
of its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and
rise and fall, and conduct themselves as like
butterflies as heart could wish. Suddenly the
noise and motion cease, and the butterflies drop
dead. An oar has been made since I came in,
wanting the shaped handle. As quickly as I
can follow it with my eye and thought, the same
oar is carried to a turning-lathe. A whirl and a
nick! Handle made. Oar finished.
What a city Lyons is! Talk about people
feeling, at certain unlucky times, as if they had
tumbled from the clouds! Here is a whole
town that has tumbled, anyhow, out of the sky;
having been first caught up, like other stones
that tumble down from that region, out of fens
and barren places, dismal to behold! The two
great streets through which the two great rivers
dash, and all the little streets whose name is
Legion, were scorching, blistering, and swelter-
ing. The houses, high and vast, dirty to excess,
rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. |
All up the hills that hem the city in, these houses
swarm; and the mites inside were lolling out of
the windows, and drying their ragged clothes
on poles, and crawling in and out at the doors,
and coming out to pant and gasp upon the pave-
ment, and creeping in and out among huge piles
and bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods: and
living, or rather not dying till their time should
come, in an exhausted receiver. Every manu-noon's work with his axe.
facturing town, melted into one, would hardly
convey an impression of Lyons as it presented
itself to me: for all the undrained, unscaven-
gered qualities of a foreign town, seemed grafted
there, upon the native miseries of a manufactur-
ing one; and it bears such fruit as I would go
some miles out of my way to avoid encounter-
ing again.-Pictures from Italy.
The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this
machinery need no illustration, but happen to
have a pointed illustration to-day. A pair of
oars of unusual size chance to be wanted for a
special purpose, and they have to be made by
hand. Side by side with the subtle and facile
machine, and side by side with the fast-growing
pile of oars on the floor, a man shapes out these
special oars with an axe. Attended by no butter
flies, and chipping and dinting, by comparison,
as leisurely as if he were a laboring Pagan get-
ting them ready against his decease, at three-
score and ten, to take with him as a present tc
Charon for his boat, the man (aged about thirty)
plies his task. The machine would make a
regulation oar while the man wipes his forehead.
The man might be buried in a mound made of
the strips of thin, broad, wooden ribbon torn
from the wood whirled into oars as the minutes.
fall from the clock, before he had done a fore-
M
MACHINERY-Oar Making.
I have no present time to think about it, for I
am going to see the workshops where they make
all the oars used in the British Navy. A pretty
large pile of building, I opine, and a pretty long
job! As to the building, I am soon disappoint-
ed, because the work is all done in one loft.
And as to a long job-what is this? Two
rather large mangles, with a swarm of butterflies
hovering over them! What can there be in the
mangles that attracts butterflies?
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 24.
MADMAN-The raving of a.
"Yes! a madman's! How that word would
have struck to my heart, many years ago! How
it would have roused the terror that used to
come upon me sometimes; sending the blood
hissing and tingling through my veins, till the
cold dew of fear stood in large drops upon my
skin, and my knees knocked together with
fright! I like it now though. It's a fine name.
Show me the monarch whose angry frown was
ever feared like the glare of a madman's eye-
whose cord and axe were ever half so sure as a
madman's gripe. Ho! ho! It's a grand thing
to be mad! to be peeped at like a wild lion
through the iron bars-to gnash one's teeth and
howl, through the long still night, to the merry
ring of a heavy chain-and to roll and twine
among the straw, transported with such brave
music. Hurrah for the madhouse! Oh, it's a
rare place!
"I remember days when I was afraid of be-
ing mad; when I used to start from my sleep,
and fall upon my knees, and pray to be spared
from the curse of my race; when I rushed from
the sight of merriment or happiness, to hide
myself in some lonely place, and spend the
*
MAGNATE
283
MAN
weary hours in watching the progress of the
fever that was to consume my brain. I knew
that madness was mixed up with my very blood
and the marrow of my bones; that one genera-
tion had passed away without the pestilence
appearing among them, and that I was the first
in whom it would revive. I knew it must be
so, that so it always had been, and so it ever
would be; and when I cowered in some obscure
corner of a crowded room, and saw men whis- MAGISTRATE—An American.
per, and point, and turn their eyes towards me,
I knew they were telling each other of the
doomed madman; and I slunk away again to
mope in solitude.
at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite
a rampant way, of Bounderby. They made him
out to be the Royal Arms, the Union-Jack,
Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus,
the Bill of Rights, An Englishman's house is
his castle, Church and State, and God save the
Queen, all put together.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 7.
*
*
*
*
*
“At last it came upon me, and I wondered
how I could ever have feared it. I could go in-
to the world now, and laugh and shout with the
best among them. I knew I was mad, but they
did not even suspect it. How I used to hug my-
self with delight, when I thought of the fine trick
I was playing them after their old pointing and
leering, when I was not mad, but only dreading
that I might one day become so! And how I
used to laugh for joy, when I was alone, and
thought how well I kept my secret, and how
quickly my kind friends would have fallen from
me, if they had known the truth. I could have
screamed with ecstasy when I dined alone with
some fine, roaring fellow, to think how pale he
would have turned, and how fast he would have
run, if he had known that the dear friend who
sat close to him, sharpening a bright, glittering
knife, was a madman, with all the power, and
half the will, to plunge it in his heart. Oh, it
was a merry life!
*
*
*
*
*
'Straight and swift I ran, and no one dared
to stop me.
I heard the noise of feet behind
and redoubled my speed. It grew fainter and
fainter in the distance, and at length died away
altogether; but on I bounded, through marsh
and rivulet, over fence and wall, with a wild
shout which was taken up by the strange beings
that flocked around me on every side, and
swelled the sound till it pierced the air. I was
borne upon the arms of demons who swept along
upon the wind, and bore down bank and hedge
before them, and spun me round and round with
a rustle and a speed that made my head swim,
until at last they threw me from them with a
violent shock, and I fell heavily upon the earth.
When I woke I found myself here-here in this
gay cell where the sunlight seldom comes, and
the moon steals in, in rays which only serve to
show the dark shadows about me and that silent
figure in its old corner. When I lie awake, I
can sometimes hear strange shrieks and cries
from distant parts of this large place. What
they are, I know not; but they neither come
from that pale form nor does it regard them.
For from the first shades of dusk 'till the earliest
light of morning, it still stands motionless in
the same place, listening to the music of my iron
chain, and watching my gambols on my straw
bed."-Pickwick, Chap. II.
MAGNATE-Bounderby as a local.
It was one of the most exasperating attributes
of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own
praises but stimulated other men to sing them.
There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him.
Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up
On our way to Portland we passed a "Magis
trate's Office," which amused me, as looking far
more like a dame school than any police estab-
lishment; for this awful institution was nothing
but a little lazy good-for-nothing front parlor,
open to the street; wherein two or three figures
(I presume the magistrate and his myrmidons)
were basking in the sunshine, the very effigies
of languor and repose. It was a perfect picture
of Justice retired from business for want of cus-
tomers; her sword and scales sold off; napping
comfortably with her legs upon the table.
American Notes, Chap. 12.
MAGISTRATE-Office of a.
Although the presiding Genii in such an office
as this, exercise a summary and arbitrary power
over the liberties, the good name, the character,
almost the lives, of Her Majesty's subjects, es-
pecially of the poorer class; and although, with-
in such walls, enough fantastic tricks are daily
played to make the angels blind with weeping,
they are closed to the public, save through the me
dium of the daily press. Mr. Fang was conse-
quently not a little indignant to see an unbid-
den guest enter in such irreverent disorder.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 11.
MAGISTRATE-The Police.
This functionary, being, of course, well used
to such scenes; looking on all kinds of robbery,
from petty larceny up to housebreaking or ven-
tures on the highway, as matters in the regular
course of business; and regarding the perpetra-
tors in the light of so many customers coming to
be served at the wholesale and retail shop of
criminal law where he stood behind the counter;
received Mr. Brass's statement of facts with
about as much interest and surprise as an un-
|dertaker might evince if required to listen to a
circumstantial account of the last illness of a
person whom he was called in to wait upon pro-
fessionally; and took Kit into custody with a
decent indifference.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 60.
MAN-An Emaciated.
"Think so, sir! Why, as he is now," said
the manager, striking his knee emphatically;
"without a pad upon his body, and hardly a
touch of paint upon his face, he'd make such an
actor for the starved business as was never seen
in this country. Only let him be tolerably well
up in the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, with
the slightest possible dab of red on the tip of his
nose, and he'd be certain of three rounds the mo-
ment he put his head out of the practicable
door in the front grooves O. P.”
MAN-A surly.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22.
He is very rich, I have heard," rejoined
Kate. "I don't know that he is, but I believe so.'
MAN
284
Ah, you may depend upon it he is, or he
wouldn't be so surly," remarked Miss La Creevy,
who was an odd little mixture of shrewdness
and simplicity.
"When a man's a bear, he is
generally pretty independent.
"
His manner is rough," said Kate.
'Rough!" cried Miss La Creevy, a porcu-
pine's a feather bed to him! I never met with
such a cross-grained old savage."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10.
MAN-Mr. Pecksniff's views of.
"What are we," said Mr. Pecksniff, "but
coaches? Some of us are slow coaches-"
Goodness, Pa!" cried Charity.
"Some of us, I say," resumed her parent with
increased emphasis, are slow coaches; some of
us are fast coaches. Our passions are the horses;
and rampant animals too!”
Really, Pa!" cried both the daughters at
once. "How very unpleasant!"
"And rampant animals too!" repeated Mr.
Pecksniff, with so much determination, that he
may be said to have exhibited, at the moment, a
sort of moral rampancy himself: " and Virtue is
the drag. We start from The Mother's Arms,
and we run to The Dust Shovel."
When he had said this, Mr. Pecksniff, be-
ing exhausted, took some further refreshment.
When he had done that, he corked the bottle
tight, with the air of a man who had effectually
corked the subject also; and went to sleep for
three stages.
The tendency of mankind when it falls asleep
in coaches, is to wake up cross; to find its legs
in its way; and its corns an aggravation.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 8.
MANHOOD-A vigorous (Sir Lawrence
Boythorn).
Now, who was Boythorn? we all thought.
And I dare say we all thought, too—I am sure
I did, for one-would Boythorn at all interfere
with what was going forward?
MANHOOD
language is as sounding as his voice. He is al-
ways in extremes; perpetually in the superlative
degree. In his condemnation he is all ferocity.
You might suppose him to be an Ogre, from
what he says; and I believe he has the reputa
tion of one with some people. There! I tell
you no more of him beforehand. You must
not be surprised to see him take me under his
protection; for he has never forgotten that I
was a low boy at school, and that our friendship
began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's
teeth out (he says six) before breakfast."
Bleak House, Chap. 9.
MANHOOD-A boisterous.
"By my soul!" exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, sud-
denly firing another volley, "that fellow is,
and his father was, and his grandfather was,
the most stiff-necked, arrogant, imbecile, pig.
headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable
mistake of Nature, born in any station of life
but a walking-stick's! The whole of that family
are the most solemnly conceited and consummate
blockheads!-But it's no matter; he should
not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets
melted into one, and living in a hundred Ches-
ney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory
balls in a Chinese carving.
*
*
*
*
*
"The fellow sends a most abandoned villain
with one eye, to construct a gateway. I play
upon that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine,
until the breath is nearly driven out of his body.
The fellow erects a gate in the night. I chop it
down and burn it in the morning. He sends
his myrmidons to come over the fence, and pass
and repass. I catch them in humane man traps,
fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with
the engine-resolve to free mankind from the
insupportable burden of the existence of those
lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass;
I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions
for assault and battery: I defend them, and con-
tinue to assault and batter. Ha, Ha, Ha!
"I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence To hear him say all this with unimaginable
Boythorn," said Mr. Jarndyce, tapping the let-energy, one might have thought him the angriest
ter as he laid it on the table, "more than five-
and-forty years ago. He was then the most im-
petuous boy in the world, and he is now the
most impetuous man. He was then the loudest |
boy in the world, and he is now the loudest
man. He was then the heartiest and sturdiest
boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest
and sturdiest man, He is a tremendous fel-
low."
"In stature, sir?" asked Richard.
"Pretty well, Rick, in that respect," said Mr.
Jarndyce; "being some ten years older than I,
and a couple of inches taller, with his head
thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart
chest squared, his hands like a clean black-
smith's, and his lungs!-there's no simile for
his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they
make the beams of the house shake."
As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of
his friend Boythorn, we observed the favorable
omen that there was not the least indication of
any change in the wind.
"But it's the inside of the man, the warm
heart of the man, the passion of the man, the
fresh blood of the man, Rick-and Ada, and
little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in
a visitor!— that I speak of," he pursued. His
of mankind. To see him at the very same time,
looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb,
and softly smoothing its feathers with his fore-
finger, one might have thought him the gentlest.
To hear him laugh, and see the broad good
nature of his face then, one might have sup-
posed that he had not a care in the world, or a
dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole exis-
tence was a summer joke.
Bleak House, Chap. 9.
"He is a great favorite with my girls," said
Mr. Jarndyce," and I have promised for them.
"Nature forgot to shade him off, I think!"
observed Mr. Skimpole to Ada and me. “A lit-
tle too boisterous-like the sea! A little too
vehement-like a bull, who has made up his
mind to consider every color scarlet! But, I
grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!
Bleak House, Chap. 15.
MANHOOD-A useful and gentle.
He had not become a great man; he had not
grown rich; he had not forgotten the scenes and
friends of his youth; he had not fulfilled any
one of the Doctor's old predictions. But, in
his useful, patient, unknowing visiting of noor

10
a
MR. MANTALINI.-HIS CHARACTERISTICS.
285
MANTALINI
285
MANTALINI
men's homes; and in his watching of sick beds;
and in his daily knowledge of the gentleness and
goodness flowering the by-paths of this world,
not to be trodden down beneath the heavy foot
of poverty, but springing up, elastic, in its track,
and making its way beautiful; he had better
learned and proved, in each succeeding year,
the truth of his old faith. The manner of his
life, though quiet and remote, had shown him
how often men still entertained angels, unawares,
as in the olden time; and how the most un-ful voice.
likely forms—even some that were mean and My senses' idol!" said Mantalini.
ugly to the view, and poorly clad-became irra-
diated by the couch of sorrow, want, and pain,
and changed to ministering spirits with a glory
round their heads.-Battle of Life, Chap. 3.
Miss Nickleby offered no reply to this
inquiry, but turned her back upon the ques-
tioner, as if addressing herself to make answe:
to what his wife might demand.
"We keep twenty young women constantly
employed in the establishment," said Madame.
Indeed, ma'am!" replied Kate, timidly.
"Yes; and some of 'em demd handsome,
too," said the master.
MANTALINI-His characteristics.
The dress-maker was a buxom person, hand-
somely dressed and rather good-looking, but
much older than the gentleman in the Turkish
trousers, whom she had wedded some six months
before. His name was originally Muntle; but
it had been converted, by an easy transition,
into Mantalini; the lady rightly considering
that an English appellation would be of serious
injury to the business. He had married on his
whiskers; upon which property he had previ-
ously subsisted, in a genteel manner, for some
years; and which he had recently improved,
after patient cultivation, by the addition of a
moustache, which promised to secure him an
easy independence; his share in the labors of
the business being at present confined to spend-
ing the money, and occasionally, when that ran
short, driving to Mr. Ralph Nickleby to procure
discount at a percentage-for the customers'
bills.
My life," said Mr. Mantalini, "what a demd
devil of a time you have been !"
"I didn't even know Mr. Nickleby was here,
my love," said Madame Mantalini.
"Mantalini!" exclaimed his wife, in an aw
"
Do you wish to break my heart?"
Not for twenty thousand hemispheres pop-
ulated with-with-with little ballet-dancers,"
replied Mantalini, in a poetical strain.
"Then you will, if you persevere in that
mode of speaking," said his wife. "What can
Mr. Nickleby think when he hears you?"
"Oh! Nothing, ma'am, nothing," replied
Ralph. "I know his amiable nature, and
yours,-mere little remarks that give a zest to
your daily intercourse-lovers' quarrels that
add sweetness to those domestic joys which
promise to last so long-that's all; that's all."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10.
There was not much to amuse in the room;
of which the most attractive feature was, a half-
length portrait in oil, of Mr. Mantalini, whom
the artist had depicted scratching his head in an
easy manner, and thus displaying to advantage
a diamond ring, the gift of Madame Mantalini
before her marriage. There was, however, the
sound of voices in conversation in the next
room; and as the conversation was loud and
the partition thin, Kate could not help dis-
covering that they belonged to Mr. and Mrs.
Mantalini.
If you will be odiously, demnebly outri
geously jealous, my soul," said Mr. Mantalini,
you will be very miserable-horrid miserable
"Then what a doubly demd infernal rascal-demnition miserable." And then there was
that footman must be, my soul," remonstrated a sound as though Mr. Mantalini were sipping
Mr. Mantalini.
his coffee.
"My dear," said Madame, "that is entirely
your fault."
"
My fault, my heart's joy?"
Certainly," returned the lady; "what can
you expect, dearest, if you will not correct the
man?
ני
"Correct the man, my soul's delight?"
"Yes; I am sure he wants speaking to, badly
enough," said Madame, pouting.
"Then do not vex itself," said Mr. Mantalini;
"he shall be horsewhipped till he cries out
demnebly." With this promise Mr. Mantalini
kissed Madame Mantalini, and, after that per-
formance, Madame Mantalini pulled Mr. Man-
talini playfully by the ear; which done, they
descended to business.
"Now, ma'am," said Ralph, who had looked
on, at all this, with such scorn as few men can ex-
press in looks, "this is my niece."
"Just so, Mr. Nickleby," replied Madame
Mantalini, surveying Kate from head to foot,
and hack again. "Can you speak French,
child?"
"Yes, ma'am,” replied Kate, not daring to
look up; for she felt that the eyes of the odi-
ous man in the dressing-gown were directed
towards her.
"Like a demd native?" asked the husband.
"I am miserable," returned Madame Manta-
lini, evidently pouting.
"Then you are an ungrateful, unworthy, demd
unthankful little fairy," said Mr. Mantalini.
"
I am not," returned Madame, with a sob.
Do not put itself out of humor," said Mr.
Mantalini, breaking an egg. "It is a pretty, be
witching little demd countenance, and it should
not be out of humor, for it spoils its loveliness,
and makes it cross and gloomy like a fright-
ful, naughty, demd hobgoblin."
“I am not to be brought round in that way,
always," rejoined Madame, sulkily.
"It shall be brought round in any way it likes
best, and not brought around at all if it likes that
better," retorted Mr. Mantalini, with his egg-
spoon in his mouth.
"It's very easy to talk," said Mrs. Mantalini.
"Not so easy when one is eating a demnition
egg,” replied Mr. Mantalini: "for the yolk runs
down the waistcoat, and yolk of egg does not
match any waistcoat but a yellow waistcoat,
demmit."
“You were flirting with her during the whole
night," said Madame Mantalini, apparently de-
sirous to lead the conversation back to the point
from which it had strayed.
"
No, no, my life."
MANTALINI
"You were,” said Madame; “I had my eye
upon you all the time."
“Bless the little winking, twinkling eye; was
it on me all the time?" cried Mantalini, in a sort
of lazy rapture.
'Oh, demmit!"
And I say once more," resumed Madame,
"that you ought not to waltz with anybody but
your own wife; and I will not bear it, Mantalini,
if I take poison first."
She will not take poison and have horrid
pains, will she?" said Mantalini; who, by the
altered sound of his voice, seemed to have moved
his chair, and taken up his position nearer to his
wife. "She will not take poison, because she had
a demd fine husband who might have married
two countesses and a dowager—”
"Two countesses," interposed
"You told me one before!"
Madame.
"Two!" cried Mantalini. 'Two demd fine
women, real countesses and splendid fortunes,
demmit."
'And why didn't you?" asked Madame,
playfully.
Why didn't I!" replied her husband. "Had
I not seen, at a morning concert, the demdest
little fascinator in all the world; and while that
little fascinator is my wife, may not all the count-
esses and dowagers in England be-"
Mr. Mantalini did not finish the sentence, but
he gave Madame Mantalini a very loud kiss,
which Madame Mantalini returned; after which,
there seemed to be some more kissing mixed up
with the progress of the breakfast.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 17.
"What's the demd total?" was the first ques-
tion he asked.
"Fifteen hundred and twenty-seven pound,
four and ninepence ha'penny," replied Mr.
Scaley, without moving a limb.
The half-penny be demd," said Mr. Manta-
lini, impatiently.
"By all means, if you vish it," retorted Mr.
Scaley; "and the ninepence."
It don't matter to us if the fifteen hundred
and twenty-seven pound went along with it, that
I know on," observed Mr. Tix.
Not a button," said Scaley.
"Well," said the same gentleman, after a
pause, Wot's to be done-anything? Is it only
a small crack, or a out-and-out smash? A break-
up of the constitootion is it-werry good. Then
Mr. Tom Tix, esk-vire, you must inform your
angel wife and lovely family as you won't sleep
at home for three nights to come, along of being
in possession here. Wot's the good of the lady
a fretting herself?" continued Mr. Scaley, as
Madame Mantalini sobbed. "A good half of
wot's here isn't paid for, I des-say, and wot
a consolation oughtn't that to be to her feel-
ings!"
286
MANTALINI
sobbing. “You have ruined me, and that's
enough."
"Ruined!" cried Mr. Mantalini. "Have I
brought ruin upon the best and purest creature
that ever blessed a demnition vagabond! Dem-
mit, let me go." At this crisis of his ravings
Mr. Mantalini made a pluck at the breakfast
knife, and being restrained by his wife's grasp,
attempted to dash his head against the wall-
taking very good care to be at least six feet
from it.
*
*
*
*
Mr. Mantalini put the tips of his whiskers,
and, by degrees, his head, through the half-
opened door, and cried in a soft voice-
"Is my life and soul there?"
"No," replied his wife.
"How can it say so, when it is blooming in
the front room like a little rose in a demnition
flower-pot?" urged Mantalini. "May its pop-
pet come in and talk?"
"
(C
Certainly not," replied Madame : you
know I never allow you here. Go along!"
The poppet, however, encouraged perhaps by
the relenting tone of this reply, ventured to
rebel, and, stealing into the room, made toward
Madame Mantalini on tiptoe, blowing her a kiss
as he came along.
"Why will it vex itself, and twist its little
face into bewitching nutcrackers?" said Man-
talini, putting his left arm round the waist of his
life and soul, and drawing her toward him with
his right.
"Oh! I can't bear you,” replied his wife.
Not-eh, not bear me!" exclaimed Man-
talini. ·“ Fibs, fibs. It couldn't be. There's
not a woman alive that could tell me such a
thing to my face-to my own face." Mr. Man-
talini stroked his chin as he said this, and
glanced complacently at an opposite mirror.
"Such destructive extravagance," reasoned
his wife, in a low tone.
"All in its joy at having gained such a lovely
creature, such a little Venus, such a demd en-
chanting, bewitching, engrossing, captivating
little Venus," said Mantalini.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 21.
"What a demnition long time you have kept
me ringing at this confounded old cracked tea-
kettle of a bell, every tinkle of which is enough
to throw a strong man into blue convulsions,
upon my life and soul, oh demmit," said Mr.
Mantalini to Newman Noggs, scraping his boots.
as he spoke, on Ralph Nickleby's scraper.
"I didn't hear the bell more than once," re-
plied Newman.
"Then you are most immensely and out-
rigeously deaf," said Mr. Mantalini, as deaf as
a demnition post."
Mr. Mantalini had got by this time into the
With these remarks, combining great pleas-passage, and was making his way to the door of
antry with sound moral encouragement under
difficulties, Mr. Scaley proceeded to take the
inventory, in which delicate task he was mate-
rially assisted by the uncommon tact and expe-
rience of Mr. Tix, the broker.
*
*
*
*
*
"My cup of happiness's sweetener," said
Mantalini, approaching his wife with a peni-
tent air;
will you listen to me for two min-
utes ?"
"Oh! don't speak to me," replied his wife,
Ralph's office with very little ceremony, when
Newman interposed his body; and hinting that
Mr. Nickleby was unwilling to be disturbed, in-.
quired whether the client's business was of a
pressing nature.
"It is most demnebly particular," said Mr.
Mantalini. "It is to melt some scraps of dirty
paper into bright, shining, chinking, tinkling,
demd mint sauce."
*
*
*
*
#
"You have brought it upon yourself Alfred,"
MANTALINI
returned Madame Mantalini-still reproachfully,
but in a softened tone.
"I am a demd villain !" cried Mr. Mantalini,
smiting himself on the head. "I will fill my
pockets with change for a sovereign in halfpence
and drown myself in the Thames; but I will not
be angry with her, even then, for I will put a
note in the twopenny-post as I go along, to
tell her where the body is. She will be a lovely
widow. I shall be a body. Some handsome
women will cry; she will laugh demnebly."
แ
Alfred, you cruel, cruel creature," said Ma-
dame Mantalini, sobbing at the dreadful picture.
"She calls me cruel-me-me-who for her
sake will become a demd, damp, moist, unpleas-
ant body!" exclaimed Mr. Mantalini.
“You know it almost breaks my heart, even
to hear you talk of such a thing," replied Ma-
dame Mantalini.
"Can I live to be mistrusted?" cried her hus-
band. "Have I cut my heart into a demd ex-
traordinary number of little pieces, and given
them all away, one after another, to the same
little engrossing demnition captivator; and can I
live to be suspected by her! Demmit, no, I can't."
"Ask Mr. Nickleby whether the sum I have
mentioned is not a proper one," reasoned Ma-
dame Mantalini.
287
MANTALINI
like a pure and angelic rattlesnake! It will be
all up with my feelings; she will throw me into
a demd state."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 34.
"Nickleby," said Mr. Mantalini in tears, “you
have been made a witness to this demnition
cruelty, on the part of the demdest enslaver and
captivator that never was, oh dem! I forgive
that woman."
Forgive!" repeated Madame Mantalini, an-
grily.
"I do forgive her, Nickleby," said Mr. Manta-
lini. "You will blame me, the world will blame
me, the women will blame me; everybody will
laugh, and scoff, and smile, and grin most dem-
nebly. They will say, ' She had a blessing. She
did not know it. He was too weak; he was toc
good; he was a demd fine fellow, but he loved
too strong; he could not bear her to be cross,
and call him wicked names. It was a demd
case, there never was a demder.' But I forgive
her."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 44.
"You nasty, idle, vicious, good-for-nothing
brute," cried the woman, stamping on the ground,
"why don't you turn the mangle?"
"So I am, my life and soul!" replied a man's
voice. "I am always turning, I am perpetually
turning, like a demd old horse in a demnition
"I don't want any sum," replied her discon-
solate husband; "I shall require no demd allow-mill. My life is one demd horrid grind!"
ance. I will be a body."
*
*
*
*
*
Oh, you are here," said Madame Mantalini,
tossing her head.
"Yes, my life and soul, I am," replied her
husband, dropping on his knees, and pouncing
with kitten-like playfulness upon a stray sover-
eign. I am here, my soul's delight, upon Tom
Tiddler's ground, picking up the demnition gold
and silver.
(
"I am ashamed of you," said Madame Man-
talini, with much indignation.
Ashamed! Of me, my joy? It knows it is
talking demd charming sweetness, but naughty
fibs," returned Mr. Mantalini. "It knows it is
not ashamed of its own popolorum tibby."
Whatever were the circumstances which had
led to such a result, it certainly appeared as
though the popolorum tibby had rather miscal-
culated, for the nonce, the extent of his lady's
affection. Madame Mantalini only looked
scornful in reply, and, turning to Ralph, begged
him to excuse her intrusion.
"Then why don't you go and list for a sol-
dier?" retorted the woman, "you're welcome to."
"For a soldier!" cried the man. For a
soldier! Would his joy and gladness see him
in a coarse red coat with a little tail? Would
she hear of his being slapped and beat by drum-
mers demnebly? Would she have him fire off
real guns, and have his hair cut, and his whiskers
shaved, and his eyes turned right and left, and
his trousers pipeclayed?'
"
"Dear Nicholas," whispered Kate, “you don't
know who that is. It's Mr. Mantalini, I am
confident."
Do make sure! Peep at him while I ask
the way," said Nicholas. Come down a step
or two. Come!"
Drawing her after him, Nicholas crept down
the steps, and looked into a small boarded cellar.
There, amidst clothes-baskets and clothes, strip-
ped to his shirt-sleeves, but wearing still an old
patched pair of pantaloons of superlative make,
a once brilliant waistcoat, and moustache and
whiskers as of yore, but lacking their lustrous
dye-there, endeavoring to mollify the wrath of
"Which is entirely attributable," said Ma-
dame, "to the gross misconduct and most im-a buxom female-not the lawful Madame Mant-
proper behavior of Mr. Mantalini.'
"Of me, my essential juice of pine-apple!"
Of you," returned his wife. "But I will not
allow it. I will not submit to be ruined by the
extravagance and profligacy of any man. I call
Mr. Nickleby to witness the course I intend to
pursue with you.”
"Pray don't call me to witness anything,
ma'am," said Ralph. "Settle it between your-
selves, settle it between yourselves."
"No, but I must beg you as a favor," said
Madame Mantalini, "to hear me give him no-
tice of what it is my fixed intention to do-my
fixed intention, sir," repeated Madame Manta-
lini, darting an angry look at her husband.
"Will she call me, 'Sir !'" cried Mantalini.
"Me, who doat upon her with the demdest ar-
dor She, who coils her fascinations round me
|
alini, but the proprietress of the concern-and
grinding meanwhile as if for very life at the
mangle, whose creaking noise, mingled with her
shrill tones, appeared almost to deafen him-
there was the graceful, elegant, fascinating, and
once dashing Mantalini.
"Oh, you false traitor!" cried the lady, threat-
ening personal violence on Mr. Mantalini's face.
"False. Oh dem! Now, my soul, my gentle,
captivating, bewitching, and most demnebly en-
slaving chick-a-biddy, be calm," said Mr. Man-
talini, humbly.
"I won't!" screamed the woman. "I'll tear
your eyes out!"
"Oh! what a demd savage lamb!" cried Mr.
Mantalini.
"You're never to be trusted," screamed the
woman, "you were out all day yesterday, and
"
MARK TAPLEY
288
gallivanting somewhere I know. You know you
were! Isn't it enough that I paid two pound
fourteen for you, and took you out of prison and
ret you live here like a gentleman, but must
you go on like this; breaking my heart besides?"
'I will never break its heart, I will be a good
boy, and never do so any more; I will never be
naughty again; I beg its little pardon," said
Mr. Mantalini, dropping the handle of the man-
gle, and folding his palms together, "it is all up
with its handsome friend! He has gone to the
demnition bow-wows. It will have pity? It
will not scratch and claw, but pet and comfort?
Oh, demmit."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 64.
MARK TAPLEY-Wants misfortune.
"I used to think, sometimes," said Mr. Tap-
ley, "as a desolate island would suit me, but I
should only have had myself to provide for there,
and being naterally a easy man to manage,
there wouldn't have been much credit in that.
Now here I've got my partner to take care on,
and he's something like the sort of man for
the purpose. I want a man as is always a slid-
ing off his legs when he ought to be on 'em. I
want a man as is so low down in the school of
life, that he's always a making figures of one in
his copy-book, and can't get no further. I want
a man as is his own great-coat and cloak, and is
always a wrapping himself up in himself. And
I have got him too," said Mr. Tapley, after a
moment's silence. "What a happiness!"
He paused to look round, uncertain to which
of the log-houses he should repair.
"I don't know which to take," he observed;
"that's the truth. They're equally prepossess-
ing outside, and equally commodious, no doubt,
within; being fitted up with every convenience
that a Alligator, in a state of natur', could pos-
sibly require. Let me see ! The citizen as
turned out last night, lives under water, in the
right-hand dog-kennel at the corner. I don't
want to trouble him if I can help it, poor man,
for he is a melancholy object: a reg'lar Settler
in every respect. There's a house with a win-
der, but I am afraid of their being proud. I
don't know whether a door ain't too aristocratic;
but here goes for the first one!"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 33.
MARK TAPLEY
I expect. I never heard of any act of Parliament
as was made by Pecksniff. Pecksniff! Why,
I wouldn't see the man myself; I wouldn't hear
him; I wouldn't choose to know he was in com-
pany. I'd scrape my shoes on the scraper of
the door, and call that Pecksniff, if you liked;
but I wouldn't condescend no further."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 43.
MARK TAPLEY-Cannot do himself jus
tice.
"I must look for a private service, I suppose
sir. I might be brought out strong, perhaps, in
a serious family, Mr. Pinch."
Perhaps you might come out rather too
strong for a serious family's taste, Mark."
That's possible, sir. If I could get into a
wicked family, I might do myself justice: but
the difficulty is to make sure of one's ground,
because a young man can't very well advertise
that he wants a place, and wages an't so much
an object as a wicked sitivation ; can he, sir?"
'Why no," said Mr. Pinch, "I don't think
he can.'
"An envious family," pursued Mark, with a
thoughtful face; "or a quarrelsome family, or a
malicious family, or even a good out-and-out
mean family, would open a field of action as I
might do something in. The man as would
have suited me of all other men was that old
gentleman as was took ill here, for he really was a
trying customer. Howsever, I must wait and
see what turns up, sir; and hope for the worst."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7.
MARK TAPLEY-No credit in being jolly.
Mr. Tapley nodded assent. "Well sir! But
bein' at that time full of hopeful wisions, I ar-
rives at the conclusion that no credit is to be
got out of such a way of life as that, where every-
thing agreeable would be ready to one's hand.
Lookin' on the bright side of human life, in
short, one of my hopeful wisions is, that there's
a deal of misery a-waitin' for me; in the midst
of which I may come out tolerable strong, and
be jolly under circumstances as reflects some
credit. I goes into the world, sir, wery boyant,
and I tries this. I goes aboard ship first, and
wery soon discovers (by the ease with which I'm
jolly, mind you) as there's no credit to be got
there. I might have took warning by this, and
gave it up; but I didn't. I gets to the U-nited
MARK TAPLEY-His opinion of Pecksniff.
"Well, but we know beforehand," returned
the politic Mr. Tapley," that Pecksniff is a waga-States; and then I do begin, I won't deny it, to
bond, a scoundrel, and a willain."
A most pernicious villain!" said Martin.
"A most pernicious willain. We know that
beforehand, sir: and, consequently, it's no shame
to be defeated by Pecksniff. Blow Pecksniff!”
cried Mr. Tapley, in the fervor of his eloquence,
"Who's he? It's not in the natur of Peck-
sniff to shame us, unless he agreed with us, or
done us a service; and, in case he offered any
outdacity of that description, we could express our
sentiments in the English language, I hope. Peck-
sniff!" repeated Mr. Tapley, with ineffable dis-
dain. "What's Pecksniff, who's Pecksniff, where's
Pecksniff, that he's to be so much considered?
We're not a calculating for ourselves;" he laid
uncommon emphasis on the last syllable of that
word, and looked full in Martin's face: "we're
making a effort for a young lady likewise as has
undergone her share; and whatever little hope we
have this here Pecksniff is not to stand in its way,
feel some little credit in sustaining my spirits.
What follows? Jest as I'm a beginning to come
out, and am a treadin' on the werge, my master
deceives me."
"Deceives you!" cried Tom.
""
'Swindles me," retorted Mr. Tapley, with a
beaming face. "Turns his back on ev'ry-
thing as made his service a creditable one, and
leaves me, high and dry, without a leg to stand
upon. In which state I returns home. Wery
good. Then all my hopeful wisions be-
in' crushed; and findin' that there ain't no
credit for me nowhere; I abandons myself to
despair, and says, 'Let me do that as has the
least credit in it, of all; marry a dear, sweet
creetur, as is wery fond of me : me being, at the
same time, wery fond of her: lead a happy life,
and struggle no more again' the blight which
settles on my prospects.'
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 48.

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MARK TAPLEY.
289
MARK TAPLEY
289
MARK
MARK TAPLEY-No credit in being jolly. stances. But, Lord, there's no dullness at the
Mr. Pinch was jogging along, full of pleasant| Dragon! Skittles, cricket, quoits, nine-pins,
thoughts and cheerful influences, when he saw, comic songs, choruses, company round the
upon the path before him, going in the same di- chimney corner every winter's evening. Any
rection with himself, a traveller on foot, who man could be jolly at the Dragon. There's no
walked with a light, quick step, and sang as he credit in that.”
went for certain in a very loud voice, but not
unmusically. He was a young fellow, of some
five or six-and-twenty perhaps, and was dressed
in such a free and fly-away fashion, that the
long ends of his loose red neckcloth were stream-
ing out behind him quite as often as before ;
and the bunch of bright winter berries in the
buttonhole of his velveteen coat, was as visible
to Mr. Pinch's rearward observation, as if he
had worn that garment wrong side foremost.
He continued to sing with so much energy, that
he did not hear the sound of wheels until it was
close behind him; when he turned a whimsical
face and a very merry pair of blue eyes on Mr.
Pinch, and checked himself directly.
But if common report be true for once,
Mark, as I think it is, being able to confirm it
by what I know myself," said Mr. Pinch, "you
are the cause of half this merriment, and set it
| going."
There may be something in that, too, sir,"
answered Mark. But that's no consolation."
"Why, Mark!" said Tom Pinch, stopping.
"Who'd have thought of seeing you here?
Well! this is surprising !"
*
*
*
*
"I'm looking out this morning for something
new and suitable," he said, nodding towards the
city.
"What kind of thing now?" Mr. Pinch de-
manded.
"I was thinking," Mark replied, "of some-
thing in the grave-digging way."
"Good Gracious, Mark!" cried Mr. Pinch.
"It's a good, damp, wormy sort of business,
sir," said Mark, shaking his head argumentative-
ly," and there might be some credit in being
jolly, with one's mind in that pursuit, unless
grave diggers is usually given that way; which
would be a drawback.
said Mr. would be a drawback. You don't happen to
know how that is, in general, do you, sir?”
Mark touched his hat, and said, with a very
sudden decrease of vivacity, that he was going
to Salisbury.
"And how spruce you are, too!" said Mr.
Pinch, surveying him with great pleasure.
"Really, I didn't think you were half such a
tight-made fellow, Mark!"
"
Thankee, Mr. Pinch. Pretty well for that,
I believe. It's not my fault, you know. With
regard to being spruce, sir, that's where it is,
you see." And here he looked particularly
gloomy.
"Where what is?" Mr. Pinch demanded.
"Where the aggravation of it is. Any man
may be in good spirits and good temper when
he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in
that. If I was very ragged and very jolly, then
I should begin to feel I had gained a point,
Mr. Pinch."
"So you were singing just now, to bear up,
as it were, against being well dressed, eh,
Mark?" said Pinch.
"Your conversation's always equal to print,
sir," rejoined Mark, with a broad grin. "That
was it."
"
*
*
*
*
*
Lord bless you, sir," said Mark, "you don't
half know me, though. I don't believe there
ever was a man as could come out so strong un-
der circumstances that would make other men
miserable, as I could, if I could only get a chance.
But I can't get a chance. It's my opinion, that
nobody never will know half of what's in me,
unless something very unexpected turns up.
And I don't see any prospect of that. I'm a
going to leave the Dragon, sir."
"
(
Going to leave the Dragon!" cried Mr.
Pinch, looking at him with great astonishment.
Why, Mark, you take my breath away!"
"Yes, sir," he rejoined, looking straight be-
fore him and a long way off, as men do some-
times when they cogitate profoundly. "What's
the use of my stopping at the Dragon? It ain't
at all the sort of place for me. When I left
London (I'm a Kentish man by birth, though),
and took that sitivation here, I quite made up
my mind that it was the dullest little out-of-the-
way corner in England, and that there would be
some credit in being jolly under such circum-
"No," said Mr. Pinch, "I don't indeed. I
never thought upon the subject.”
"In case of that not turning cut as well as
one could wish, you know," said Mark, musing
again, "there's other businesses. Undertaking
now. That's gloomy. There might be credit to be
gained there. A broker's man in a poor neigh-
borhood wouldn't be bad perhaps. A jailor sees
a deal of misery. A doctor's man is in the very
midst of murder. A bailiff's an't a lively office
nat' rally. Even a tax-gatherer must find his
feelings rather worked upon, at times. There's
lots of trades, in which I should have an oppor-
tunity, I think.
*
*
*
*
*
"But bless my soul, Mark," said Mr. Pinch,
who in the progress of his observation just then
made the discovery that the bosom of his com-
panion's shirt was as much exposed as if it were
Midsummer, and was ruffled by every breath of
air, "why don't you wear a waistcoat?"
"
"What's the good of one, sir?" asked Mark.
Good of one?" said Mr. Pinch. "Why, to
keep your chest warm."
"Lord love you, sir!" cried Mark, "you don't
know me. My chest don't want no warming.
Even if it did, what would no waistcoat bring it
to? Inflammation of the lungs, perhaps? Well,
there'd be some credit in being jolly, with a in-
flammation of the lungs."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap.5.
MANHOOD-Modest (Tom Pinch).
To say that Tom had no idea of playing first
fiddle in any social orchestra, but was always
quite satisfied to be set down for the hundred
and fiftieth violin in the band, or thereabouts,
is to express his modesty in very inadequate
terms.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 12.
MARK-Up to the.
"I
may not myself," said Mr. Sparkler man-
fully, "be up to the mark on some other subjects
at a short notice, and I am aware that if you were
MARKET
to poll Society the general opinion would be
that I am not; but on the subject of Amy, I
AM up to the mark!"
Mr. Sparkler kissed her, in witness thereof.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 14.
MARKET-Fleet.
290
MARKET-DAY
like, on the jolliest little donkeys in the
world.
Our French Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces.
MARKET-A stroll in Covent Garden.
Many and many a pleasant stroll they had in
Covent Garden Market: snuffing up the per-
Fleet Market, at that time, was a long irregu- fume of the fruits and flowers, wondering at the
lar row of wooden sheds and pent-houses, occu- magnificence of the pine-apples and melons:
pying the centre of what is now called Farring-catching glimpses down side avenues, of rows
don Street. They were jumbled together in a
most unsightly fashion, in the middle of the road;
to the great obstruction of the thoroughfare and
the annoyance of passengers, who were fain to
make their way, as they best could, among carts,
baskets, barrows, trucks, casks, bulks, and
benches, and to jostle with porters, hucksters,
wagoners, and a motley crowd of buyers, sellers,
pickpockets, vagrants, and idlers. The air was
perfumed with the stench of rotten leaves and
faded fruit, the refuse of the butchers' stalls,
and offal and garbage of a hundred kinds. It
was indispensable to most public conveniences
in those days, that they should be public nui-
sances likewise and Fleet Market maintained
the principle to admiration.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 60.
MARKET-A French.
and rows of old women, seated on inverted
baskets, shelling peas; looking unutterable things
at the fat bundles of asparagus with which the
dainty shops were fortified as with a breast-
work; and, at the herbalists' doors, gratefully
inhaling scents as of veal-stuffing yet uncooked,
dreamily mixed up with capsicums, brown-paper,
seeds: even with hints of lusty snails and fine
young curly leeches. Many and many a pleas
ant stroll they had among the poultry markets
where ducks and fowls, with necks unnaturally
long, lay stretched out in pairs, ready for cook-
ing; where there were speckled eggs in mossy
baskets, white country sausages beyond impeach-
ment by surviving cat or dog, or horse or don-
key, new cheeses to any wild extent, live birds in
coops and cages, looking much too big to be
natural, in consequence of those receptacles be-
ing much too little; rabbits, alive and dead, in-
numerable. Many a pleasant stroll they had
among the cool, refreshing, silvery fish-stalls,
with a kind of moonlight effect about their stock
in trade, excepting always for the ruddy lobsters.
Many a pleasant stroll among the wagon-loads
of fragrant hay, beneath which dogs and tired
wagoners lay fast asleep, oblivious of the pie-man
and the public-house. But never half so good
a stroll, as down among the steam-boats on a
bright morning.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40.
MARKET-At Salisbury.
In the Place d'Armes of this town, a little
decayed market is held, which seems to slip
through the old gateway, like water, and go rip-
pling down the hill, to mingle with the murmur-
ing market in the lower town, and get lost in its
movement and bustle. It is very agreeable on
an idle summer morning to pursue this market-
stream from the hill-top. It begins dozingly
and dully, with a few sacks of corn; starts into a
surprising collection of boots and shoes; goes
brawling down the hill in a diversified channel of
old cordage, old iron, old crockery, old clothes,
civil and military, old rags, new cotton goods, Oh! what a different town Salisbury was in
flaming prints of saints, little looking-glasses and Tom Pinch's eyes to be sure, when the substan-
incalculable lengths of tape; dives into a backway, tial Pecksniff of his heart melted away into an
keeping out of sight for a little while, as streams idle dream! He possessed the same faith in the
will, or only sparkling for a moment in the shape wonderful shops, the same intensified apprecia-
of a market drinking-shop; and suddenly reap- tion of the mystery and wickedness of the place;
pears behind the great church, shooting itself made the same exalted estimate of its wealth,
into a bright confusion of white-capped women | population, and resources; and yet it was not
and blue-bloused men, poultry, vegetables, fruits,
flowers, pots, pans, praying-chairs, soldiers,
country butter, umbrellas and other sunshades,
girl-porters waiting to be hired, with baskets at
their backs, and one weazen little old man in a
cocked hat, wearing a cuirass of drinking-glasses,
and carrying on his shoulder a crimson temple
fluttering with flags, like a glorified pavior's
rammer without the handle, who rings a little
bell in all parts of the scene, and cries his cool-green with the same fresh show of dewy vegeta-
ing drink Hola, Hola, H-o-o! in a shrill
cracked voice that somehow makes itself heard
above all the chaffering and vending hum.
Early in the afternoon, the whole course of the
stream is dry. The praying-chairs are put back
in the church, the umbrellas are folded up, the
unsold goods are carried away, the stalls and
stands disappear, the square is swept, the hack-
ney-coaches lounge there to be hired, and on
all the country roads (if you walk about as much
as we do) you will see the peasant women,
always neatly and comfortably dressed, riding
home, with the pleasantest saddle furniture of | MARKET-DAY—And city scenes.
clean milk-pails, bright butter-kegs, and the
the old city nor anything like it. He walked
into the market while they were getting break-
fast ready for him at the Inn: and though it was
the same market as of old, crowded by the same
buyers and sellers; brisk with the same busi-
ness; noisy with the same confusion of tongues
and cluttering of fowls in coops; fair with the
same display of rolls of butter, newly made, set
forth in linen cloths of dazzling whiteness;
bles; dainty with the same array in higglers'
baskets of small shaving-glasses, laces, braces,
trouser-straps, and hardware; savory with the
same unstinted show of delicate pigs' feet, and
pies made precious by the pork that once had
walked upon them: still it was strangely changed
to Tom. For, in the centre of the market-place,
he missed a statue he had set up there, as in all
other places of his personal resort; and it looked
cold and bare without that ornament.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 36.
Mr. Pinch had a shrewd notion that Salisbury
MARKET-DAY
291
MARKET-DAYS
incident beyond; and store of books, with
many a grave portrait and time-honored naine,
whose matter he knew well, and would have
given mines to have, in any form, upon the nar-
row shelf beside his bed at Mr. Pecksniff's.
What a heart-breaking shop it was!
was a very desperate sort of place: an exceed-
ing wild and dissipated city; and when he had
put up the horse, and given the hostler to under-
stand that he would look in again in the course
of an hour or two to see him take his corn, he
set forth on a stroll about the streets with a
vague and not unpleasant idea that they teemed
with all kinds of mystery and bedevilment. To
one of his quiet habits this little delusion was
greatly assisted by the circumstance of its being
market-day, and the thoroughfares about the
market-place being filled with carts, horses,
donkeys, baskets, wagons, garden-stuff, meat,
tripe, pies, poultry, and hucksters' wares of
every opposite description and possible variety
of character. Then there were young farmers
and old farmers, with smock-frocks, brown great-lightest grain of sand. And there too were the
coats, drab great-coats, red worsted comforters,
leather-leggings, wonderful shaped hats, hunt-
ing-whips, and rough sticks, standing about in
groups, or talking noisily together on the tavern
steps, or paying and receiving huge amounts of
greasy wealth, with the assistance of such bulky
pocket-books that when they were in their
pockets it was apoplexy to get them out, and
when they were out it was spasms to get them
in again. Also there were farmers' wives in
beaver bonnets and red cloaks, riding shaggy
horses purged of all earthly passions, who went
soberly into all manner of places without desir-
ing to know why, and who, if required, would
have stood stock still in a china-shop, with a
complete dinner-service at each hoof. Also a
great many dogs, who were strongly interested in
the state of the market and the bargains of their
mastors; and a great confusion of tongues, both
brute and human.
*
*
*
*
*
First of all, there were the jewellers' shops,
with all the treasures of the earth displayed
therein, and such large silver watches hanging
up in every pane of glass, that if they were any-
thing but first-rate goers it certainly was not be-
cause the works could decently complain of
want of room. In good sooth, they were big
enough, and perhaps, as the saying is, ugly
enough, to be the most correct of all mechanical
performers; in Mr. Pinch's eyes, however, they
were smaller than Geneva ware; and when he
saw one very bloated watch announced as a
repeater, gifted with the uncommon power of
striking every quarter of an hour inside the
pocket of its happy owner, he almost wished
that he were rich enough to buy it.
But what were even gold and silver, precious
stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence
a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came
issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of
some new grammar had at school, long time
ago, with, "Master Pinch, Grove House Acad-
emy," inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-
leaf! That whiff of Russia leather, too, and all
those rows on rows of volumes, neatly ranged
within; what happiness did they suggest! And
in the window were the spick-and-span new
works from London, with the title-pages, and
sometimes even the first page of the first chap-
ter, laid wide open; tempting unwary men to
begin to read the book, and then, in the impos-
sibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and
buy it! Here too were the dainty frontispiece
and trim vignette, pointing like handposts on
the outskirts of great cities, to the rich stock of
There was another; not quite so bad at first,
but still a trying shop; where children's books
were sold, and where poor Robinson Crusoe stood
alone in his might, with dog and hatchet, goat-
skin cap and fowling-pieces; calmly surveying
Philip Quarll and the host of imitators round
him, and calling Mr. Pinch to witness that he,
of all the crowd, impressed one solitary foot-
print on the shore of boyish memory, whereof
the tread of generations should not stir the
Persian tales, with flying chests and students of
enchanted books shut up for years in caverns;
and there too was Abudah, the merchant, with
the terrible little old woman hobbling out of
the box in his bed-room; and there the mighty.
talisman, the rare Arabian Nights, with Cassim
Baba, divided by four, like the ghost of a dread-
ful sum, hanging up, all gory, in the robbers'
cave. Which matchless wonders, coming fast
on Mr. Pinch's mind, did so rub up and chaſe
that wonderful lamp within him, that when he
turned his face toward the busy street, a crowd
of phantoms waited on his pleasure, and he
lived again, with new delight, the happy days
before the Pecksniff era.
He had less interest now in the chemist's
shops, with their great glowing bottles (with
smaller repositories of brightness in their very
stoppers); and in their agreeable compromises
between medicine and perfumery, in the shape
of toothsome lozenges and virgin honey. Neither
had he the least regard (but he never had much)
for the tailors', where the newest metropolitan
waistcoat patterns were hanging up, which by
some strange transformation always looked
amazing there, and never appeared at all like
the same thing anywhere else. But he stopped
to read the playbill at the theatre, and surveyed
the doorway with a kind of awe, which was not
diminished when a sallow gentleman with long
dark hair came out, and told a boy to run home
to his lodgings and bring down his broadsword.
Mr. Pinch stood rooted to the spot on hearing
this, and might have stood there until dark, but
that the old cathedral bell began to ring for ves-
per service, on which he tore himself away.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5.
MARKET-DAYS,
On market-days alone, its Great Place sudden-
ly leaped out of bed. On market-days, some
friendly enchanter struck his staff upon the
stones of the Great Place, and instantly arose
the liveliest booths and stalls and sittings and
standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering and
huckstering from many hundreds of tongues,
and a pleasant, though peculiar blending of
colors-white caps, blue blouses, and green
vegetables-and at last the Knight destined for
the adventure seemed to have come in earnest.
and all the Vaubanois sprang up awake. And
now, by long, low-lying avenues of trees, jolting
in white-hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey-
back, and in tumbril and wagon, and cart and
cabriolet, and afoot, with barrow and burden-
and along the dikes and ditches and canals, in
:
鲁
​MARKET-MORNING
little peak-prowed country boats-came peasant
men and women in flocks and crowds, bringing
articles for sale. And here you had boots and
shoes, and sweetmeats, and stuffs to wear, and
here (in the cool shade of the Town Hall) you
had milk and cream and butter and cheese, and
here you
had fruits and onions and carrots, and
all things needful for your soup, and here you had
poultry and flowers and protesting pigs, and here
new shovels, axes, spades, and bill-hooks for
your farming work, and here huge mounds of
bread, and here your unground grain in sacks,
and here your children's dolls, and here the cake-
seller announcing his wares by beat and roll of
drum. And hark! fanfaronade of trumpets, and
here into the Great Place, resplendent in an
open carriage, with four gorgeously attired servi-
tors up behind, playing horns, drums, and cym-
bals, rolled "the Daughter of a Physician," in
massive golden chains and ear-rings, and blue-
feathered hat, shaded from the admiring sun by
two immense umbrellas of artificial roses, to dis-
pense (from motives of philanthropy) that small
and pleasant dose which had cured so many
thousands! Toothache, earache, headache,
heartache, stomach-ache, debility, nervousness,
fits, fainting, fever, ague, all equally cured by
the small and pleasant dose of the great Phy-
sician's great daughter!
Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2.
MARKET-MORNING-Covent Garden.
Covent Garden Market, when it was market-
morning, was wonderful company. The great
wagons of cabbages, with growers' men and boys
lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs
from market-garden neighborhoods looking after
the whole, were as good as a party. But one of
the worst night sights I know in London is to
be found in the children who prowl about this
place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the
offal, dart at any object they think they can lay
their thieving hands on, dive under the carts
and barrows, dodge the constables, and are per-
petually making a blunt pattering on the pave-
ment of the Piazza with the rain of their naked
feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of
the comparison one is forced to institute be-
tween the growth of corruption as displayed in
the so much improved and cared for fruits of
the earth, and the growth of corruption as dis-
played in these all uncared for (except inasmuch
as ever hunted) savages.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13.
292
MARRIAGE
ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued
from every public-house; the crowding, pushing,
driving, beating, whooping, and yelling; the
hideous and discordant din that resounded from
every corner of the market; and the unwashed,
unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly
running to and fro, and bursting in and out of
the throng, rendered it a stunning and bewil-
dering scene, which quite confounded the senses.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 21.
MARRIAGE.
Marriage is a civil contract; people marry to
better their worldly condition and improve ap-
pearances; it is an affair of house and furniture,
of liveries, servants, equipage, and so forth. The
lady being poor and you poor also, there is an
end of the matter. You cannot enter upon these
considerations, and have no manner of business
with the ceremony. I drink her health in this
glass, and respect and honor her for her extreme
good sense. It is a lesson to you.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 32.
Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertak-
ing. Like an overweening
Like an overweening predilection for
brandy-and-water, it is a misfortune 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.-Tales, Chap. 10.
Horses prance and caper; coachmen and foot-
men shine in fluttering favors, flowers, and new-
made liveries. Away they dash and rattle
through the streets: and as they pass along, a
thousand heads are turned to look at them, and
a thousand sober moralists revenge themselves
for not being married too, that morning, by re-
flecting that these people little think such hap-
piness can't last.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 31.
MARRIAGE-A ceremony of facts.
Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be
solemnized in eight weeks' time, and Mr. Bound-
erby went every evening to Stone Lodge as an
accepted wooer. Love was made on these occa-
sions in the form of bracelets; and, on all occa-
sions during the period of betrothal, took a
manufacturing aspect. Dresses were made, jew-
elry was made, cakes and gloves were made,
settlements were made, and an extensive assort-
ment of Facts did appropriate honor to the
contract. The business was all Fact, from first
to last. The Hours did not go through any of
those rosy performances, which foolish poets
have ascribed to them at such times; neither
did the clocks go any faster or any slower than
at other seasons. The deadly statistical recorder
in the Gradgrind observatory knocked every
second on the head as it was born, and buried
it with his accustomed regularity.
It was market-morning. The ground was
covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire;
and a thick steam, perpetually rising from the
reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with
the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chim-
ney-tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in
the centre of the large area-and as many tem-
porary ones as could be crowded into the vacant
space-were filled with sheep; tied up to posts
by the gutter side were long lines of beasts and
oxen, three or four deep. Countrymen, butchers,
drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vaga-
bonds of every low grade, were mingled together
in a dense mass; the whistling of drovers, the MARRIAGE—After.
barking of dogs, the bellowing and plunging of
oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and
squeaking of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the
shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides; the
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 15.
It was a strange condition of things, the
honey-moon being over, and the bridesmaids
gone home, when I found myself sitting down
in my own small house with Dora; quite thrown
MARRIAGE
out of employment, as I may say, in respect of
the delicious old occupation of making love.
It seemed such an extraordinary thing to have
Dora always there. It was so unaccountable
not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to
have any occasion to be tormenting myself about
her, not to have to write to her, not to be schem-
ing and devising opportunities of being alone
with her. Sometimes, of an evening, when I
looked up
from my writing, and saw her seated
opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and
think how queer it was that there we were, alone
together as a matter of course-nobody's busi-
ness any more—all the romance of our engage-
ment put away upon a shelf, to rust-no one to
please but one another—one another to please,
for life.
293
MARRIAGE
garden with ignominy.
in respect of garden with ignominy. This nerved me to get
rid of Mary Anne, who went so mildly, on re-
ceipt of wages, that I was surprised, until I
found out about the tea-spoons, and also about
the little sums she had borrowed in my name
of the trades-people without authority. After
an interval of Mrs. Kidgerbury-the oldest in-
habitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went
out charing, but was too feeble to execute her
conceptions of that art-we found another treas-
ure, who was one of the most amiable of women,
but who generally made a point of falling either
up or down the kitchen stairs with the tray, and
almost plunged into the parlor, as into a bath,
with the tea-things. The ravages committed
by this unfortunate rendering her dismissal
necessary, she was succeeded (with intervals of
When there was a debate, and I was kept out | Mrs. Kidgerbury) by a long line of Incapables;
very late, it seemed so strange to me, as I was terminating in a young person of genteel ap-
walking home, to think that Ďora was at home!pearance, who went to Greenwich Fair in
It was such a wonderful thing, at first, to have
her coming softly down to talk to me as I ate
my supper. It was such a stupendous thing to
know for certain that she put her hair in papers.
It was altogether such an astonishing event to
see her do it!
I doubt whether two young birds could have
known less about keeping house, than I and my
pretty Dora did.
We had a servant, of course.
She kept house for us. I have still a latent
belief that she must have been Mrs. Crupp's
daughter in disguise, we had such an awful time
of it with Mary Anne.
Her name was Paragon. Her nature was
represented to us, when we engaged her, as be-
ing feebly expressed in her name. She had a
written character as large as a proclamation;
and, according to this document, could do every-
thing of a domestic nature that ever I heard of,
and a great many things that I never did hear
of. She was a woman in the prime of life; of a
severe countenance; and subject (particularly
in the arms) to a sort of perpetual measles or
fiery rash. She had a cousin in the Life Guards,
with such long legs that he looked like the after-
noon shadow of somebody else. His shell-jacket
was as much too little for him as he was too big
for the premises. He made the cottage smaller
than it need have been, by being so very
much out of proportion to it. Besides which,
the walls were not thick, and whenever he
passed the evening at our house, we always
knew of it by hearing one continual growl in the
kitchen.
Our treasure was warranted sober and honest.
I am therefore willing to believe that she was
in a fit when we found her under the boiler;
and that the deficient teaspoons were attributa-
ble to the dustman,
|
|
Dora's bonnet. After whom I remember noth-
ing but an average equality of failure.
Everybody we had anything to do with
seemed to cheat us. Our appearance in a shop
was a signal for the damaged goods to be
brought out immediately. If we bought a lob-
ster, it was full of water. All our meat turned
out to be tough, and there was hardly any crust
to our loaves. In search of the principle on
which joints ought to be roasted, to be roasted
enough, and not too much, I myself referred to
the Cookery Book, and found it there estab-
lished as the allowance of a quarter of an hour
to every pound, and say a quarter over.
the principle always failed us by some curious
fatality, and we never could hit any medium be-
tween redness and cinders.
But
I had reason to believe that in accomplishing
these failures we incurred a far greater expense
than if we had achieved a series of triumphs.
It appeared to me, on looking over the trades-
men's books, as if we might have kept the base-
ment story paved with butter, such was the ex-
tensive scale of our consumption of that article.
I don't know whether the Excise returns of the
period may have exhibited any increase in the
demand for pepper; but if our performances did
not affect the market, I should say several fami-
lies must have left off using it. And the most
wonderful fact of all was, that we never had
anything in the house.
As to the washerwoman pawning the clothes,
and coming in a state of penitent intoxication
to apologize, I suppose that might have hap-
pened several times to anybody. Also the
chimney on fire, the parish engine, and perjury
on the part of the Beadle. But I apprehend
that we were personally unfortunate in enga-
ging a servant with a taste for cordials, who
But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully. swelled our running account for porter at the
We felt our inexperience, and were unable to public-house by such inexplicable items as
help ourselves. We should have been at her "quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.);" "Half-quartern
mercy, if she had had any; but she was a re-gin and cloves (Mrs. C.);” “Glass rum and pep-
morseless woman, and had none.
David Copperfield, Chap. 44.
MARRIAGE-Housekeeping after.
permint (Mrs. C.);"-the parentheses always
referring to Dora, who was supposed, it ap
peared on explanation, to have imbibed the
whole of these refreshments.
David Copperfield, Chap. 44.
MARRIAGE-In society.
The next domestic trial we went through, was
the Ordeal of Servants. Mary Anne's cousin
deserted into our coal-hole, and was brought
out, to our great amazement, by a piquet of his Mrs. Merdle reviewed the bosom which Soci
companions in arms, who took him away hand-ety was accustomed to review; and having as-
cuffed in a procession that covered our front- certained that show-window of Mr. Merdle's and
:
MARRIAGE
294
MARRIAGE
the London jewellers to be in good order, re- MARRIAGE-Its bickerings.
plied:
"As to marriage on the part of a man, my
dear, Society requires that he should retrieve
nis fortunes by marriage. Society requires that
he should gain by marriage. Society requires
that he should found a handsome establishment
by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise,
what he has to do with marriage.
Young men, and by young men you know
what I mean, my love-I mean people's sons
who have the world before them-must place
themselves in a better position towards Society
by marriage, or Society really will not have any
patience with their making fools of themselves.
Dreadfully worldly all this sounds,” said Mrs.
Merdle, leaning back in her nest and putting
up her glass again, "does it not?"
"But it is true," said Mrs. Gowan, with a high-
ly moral air.
My dear, it is not to be disputed for a mo-
ment," returned Mrs. Merdle; "because Soci-
ety has made up its mind on the subject, and
there is nothing more to be said. If we were
in a more primitive state, if we lived under roofs
of leaves, and kept cows and sheep and crea-
tures, instead of banker's accounts (which would
be delicious; my dear, I am a pastoral to a degree
by nature), well and good. But we don't live
under leaves, and keep cows and sheep and
creatures!"-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 33.
MARRIAGE—An unequal.
"Youth has many generous impulses which do
not last; and among them are some which,
being gratified, become only the more fleeting.
Above all, I think," said the lady, fixing her
eyes on her son's face, "that if an enthusias-
tic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on
whose name there is a stain, which, though it
originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by
cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his
children also; and, in exact proportion to his
success in the world, be cast in his teeth and
made the subject of sneers against him; he
may, no matter how generous and good his na-
ture, one day repent of the connection he formed
in early life. And she may have the pain and
torture of knowing that he does so."
Oliver Twist, Chap. 34.
|
|
In their matrimonial bickerings they were,
upon the whole, a well-matched, fairly-balanced,
give-and-take couple. It would have been, gen-
erally speaking, very difficult to have bet-
ted on the winner. Often when Mr. Chick
seemed beaten, he would suddenly make a start,
turn the tables, clatter them about the ears of
Mrs. Chick, and carry all before him. Being
liable himself to similar unlooked-for checks
from Mrs. Chick, their little contests usually
possessed a character of uncertainty that was
very animating.—Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
MARRIAGE-Of Dora and David Copper-
field.
The church is calm enough, I am sure; but
it might be a steam-power loom in full action,
for any sedative effect it has on me. I am too
far gone for that.
The rest is all a more or less incoherent
dream.
A dream of their coming in with Dora; of
the pew-opener arranging us, like a drill-ser-
geant, before the altar rails; of my wondering,
even then, why pew-openers must always be the
most disagreeable females procurable, and whe-
ther there is any religious dread of a disas-
trous infection of good-humor which renders it
indispensable to set those vessels of vinegar
upon the road to Heaven,
Of the clergyman and clerk appearing; of a
few boatmen and some other people strolling in ;
of an ancient mariner behind me, strongly fla-
voring the church with rum; of the service
beginning in a deep voice, and our all being
very attentive.
Óf Miss Lavinia, who acts as a semi-auxiliary
bridesmaid, being the first to cry, and of her
doing homage (as I take it) to the memory of
Pidger, in sobs; of Miss Clarissa applying a
smelling-bottle; of Agnes taking care of Dora ;
of my aunt endeavoring to represent herself as
a model of sternness, with tears rolling down
her face; of little Dora trembling very much,
and making her responses in faint whispers.
Of our kneeling down together, side by side;
of Dora's trembling less and less, but always
clasping Agnes by the hand; of the service be-
ing got through, quietly and gravely; of our all
looking at each other in an April state of smiles
and tears, when it is over; of my young
wife being hysterical in the vestry, and crying
for her poor papa, her dear papa.
David Copperfield, Chap. 43.
The barrier between Mr. Dombey and his
wife was not weakened by time. Ill-assorted
couple, unhappy in themselves and in each other,
bound together by no tie but the manacle that
joined their fettered hands, and straining that
so harshly, in their shrinking asunder, that it❘ MARRIAGE-Of young people.
wore and chafed to the bone, Time, consoler of
affliction and softener of anger, could do noth-
ing to help them. Their pride, however differ-
ent in kind and object, was equal in degree;
and, in their flinty opposition, struck out fire
between them which might smoulder or might
blaze, as circumstances were, but burned up MARRIAGE-The Anniversary.
everything within their mutual reach, and made
their marriage way a road of ashes.
*
*
*
*
"Poor little couple! And so you think you
were formed for one another, and are to go
through a party-supper-table kind of life, like
two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you, Trot?”
David Copperfield, Chap. 35.
Mr. and Mrs. Wilfer had seen a full quarter
of a hundred more anniversaries of their wed-
ding-day than Mr. and Mrs. Lammle had seen
A marble rock could not have stood more ob- of theirs, but they still celebrated the occasion
durately in his way than she; and no chilled in the bosom of their family. Not that these
spring, lying uncheered by any ray of light in celebrations ever resulted in anything particu
the depths of a deep cave, could be more sul-larly agreeable, or that the family was ever dis
len or more cold than he.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 47.
appointed by that circumstance on account of
having looked forward to the return of the aus
MARRIAGE
295
picious day with sanguine anticipations of en-
joyment. It was kept morally, rather as a Fast
than a Feast, enabling Mrs. Wilfer to hold a
sombre, darkling state, which exhibited that im-
pressive woman in her choicest colors.
The noble lady's condition on these delight-
ful occasions was one compounded of heroic en-
durance and heroic forgiveness. Lurid indica-
tions of the better marriages she might have
made, shone athwart the awful gloom of her
composure, and fitfully revealed the cherub as
a little monster unaccountably favored by
Heaven, who had possessed himself of a bless-
ing for which many of his superiors had sued
and contended in vain. So firmly had this his
position towards his treasure become established,
that when the anniversary arrived, it always
found him in an apologetic state. It is not im-
possible that his modest penitence may have
even gone the length of sometimes severely re-
proving him for that he ever took the liberty
of making so exalted a character his wife.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 4.
MARRIAGE—Of Bunsby.
The Captain made many attempts to accost
the philosopher, if only in a monosyllable or a
signal; but always failed, in consequence of the
vigilance of the guard, and the difficulty at all
times peculiar to Bunsby's constitution, of hav-
ing his attention aroused by any butward and
visible sign whatever. Thus they approached
the chapel, a neat whitewashed edifice, recently
engaged by the Reverend Melchisedech Howler,
who had consented, on very urgent solicitation,
to give the world another two years of existence,
but had informed his followers that, then, it
must positively go.
While the Reverend Melchisedech was offer-
ing up some extemporary orisons, the Captain
found an opportunity of growling in the bride-
groom's ear:
"What cheer, my lad, what cheer?"
To which Bunsby replied, with a forgetfulness
of the Reverend Melchisedech, which nothing
but his desperate circumstances could have ex-
cused:
"D-d bad.”
"Jack Bunsby," whispered the Captain,
you do this here, o' your own free will?”
Mr. Bunsby answered "No."
MARRIED COUPLES
Mr. Bunsby merely uttered a suppressed groan,
"Come!" said the Captain, nudging him with
his elbow, "now's your time! Sheer off! I'll
cover your retreat. The time's a flying. Buns-
by! It's for liberty. Will you once?"
Bunsby was immoveable.
Bunsby ! whispered the Captain, "will
you twice?"
Bunsby wouldn't twice.
"Bunsby !" urged the Captain, "its for liber-
ty; will you three times? Now or never!"
Bunsby didn't then, and didn't ever; for Mrs.
MacStinger immediately afterwards married
him.
One of the most frightful circumstances of the
ceremony to the Captain, was the deadly interest
exhibited therein by Juliana MacStinger: and
the fatal concentration of her faculties, with
which that promising child, already the image
of her parent, observed the whole proceedings.
The Captain saw in this a succession of man-
traps stretching out infinitely; a series of ages
of oppression and coercion, through which the
seafaring line was doomed. It was a more
memorable sight than the unflinching steadiness
of Mrs. Bokum and the other lady, the exulta-
tion of the short gentleman in the tall hat, or
even the fell inflexibility of Mrs. MacStinger.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 60.
MARRIED COUPLES—Advice to young.
Before marriage and afterwards, let them
learn to centre all their hopes of real and lasting
happiness in their own fireside; let them cherish
the faith that in home, and all the English
virtues which the love of home engenders, lies
the only true source of domestic felicity; let
them believe that round the household gods
Contentment and Tranquillity cluster in their
gentlest and most graceful forms; and that many
weary hunters of happiness through the noisy
world have learnt this truth too late, and found
a cheerful spirit and a quiet mind only at home
at last.
How much may depend on the education of
daughters, and the conduct of mothers-how
much of the brightest part of our old national
character may be perpetuated by their wisdom
"door frittered away by their folly-how much of it
may have been lost already, and how much more
in danger of vanishing every day—are questions
too weighty for discussion here, but well deserv-
ing a little serious consideration from all young
couples, nevertheless.
Why do you do it then, my lad?" inquired
the Captain, not unnaturally.
Bunsby, still looking, and always looking with
an immoveable countenance, at the opposite side
of the world, made no reply.
Why not sheer off?" said the Captain.
"Eh?" whispered Bunsby, with a momentary
gleam of hope.
"Sheer off," said the Captain.
"Where's the good?" retorted the forlorn
sage. "She'd capter me agen."
"
Try!" replied the Captain. "Cheer up!
Come! Now's your time. Sheer off, Jack
Bunsby !"
Jack Bunsby, however, instead of profiting
by the advice, said in a doleful whisper:
66
It all began in that there chest o' yourn. Why
did I ever conwoy her into port that night?"
"My lad,” faltered the Captain, “I thought
had come over her; not as she had come
over you. A man as has got such opinions as
you have!"
as
you
To that one young couple on whose bright
destiny the thoughts of nations are fixed, may
the youth of England look, and not in vain, for
an example. From that one couple, blest and
favored as they are, may they learn, that even
the glare and glitter of a court, the splendor of
a palace, and the pomp and glory of a throne,
yield in their power of conferring happiness to
domestic worth and virtue. From that one
young couple may they learn that the crown of
a great empire, costly and jewelled though it be,
gives place in the estimation of a Queen to the
plain gold ring that links her woman's nature to
that of tens of thousands of her humble subjects,
and guards in her woman's heart one secret store
of tenderness, whose proudest boast shall be
that it knows no Royalty save Nature's own,
and no pride of birth but being the child of
Heaven!
MARRIED-LIFE
So shall the highest young couple in the land
for once hear the truth, when men throw up
their caps, and cry with loving shouts-
GOD BLESS THEM!
"
Sketches of Couples.
296
MARRIED LIFE-Betsy Trotwood on.
These are early days, Trot," she pursued,
"and Rome was not built in a day, nor in a year.
You have chosen freely for yourself;" a cloud
passed over her face for a moment, I thought;
and you have chosen a very pretty and a very
affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and
it will be your pleasure too-of course I know
that;
I am not delivering a lecture—to estimate
her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has,
and not by the qualities she may not have. The
latter you must develop in her, if you can. And
if you cannot, child," here my aunt rubbed her
nose, "you must just accustom yourself to do
without 'em. But remember, my dear, your
future is between you two. No one can assist
you; you are to work it out for yourselves. This
is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless you both
in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you
are!"-David Copperfield, Chap. 44.
MARSEILLAISE-The.
"When these people howl, they howl to be
heard."
Most people do, I suppose."
Ah! But these people are always howl-
ing. Never happy otherwise."
"
'Do you mean the Marseilles people?"
MATRIMON
ment's peace was secured; and even that was
broken by the discovery that Johnny had sur-
reptitiously come back, and was at that instant
choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in his
indecent and rapacious haste.
Haunted Man, Chap. 3.
MATRIMONY-Mr. Weller on.
While the old gentleman was thus engaged, a
very buxom-looking cook, dressed in mourning,
who had been bustling about in the bar, glided
into the room, and bestowing many smirks of
recognition upon Sam, silently stationed herself
at the back of his father's chair, and announced
her presence by a slight cough; the which,
being disregarded, was followed by a louder
one.
"Hallo!" said the elder Mr. Weller, drop-
ping the poker as he looked round, and hastily
drew his chair away. "Wot's the matter now?"
"Have a cup of tea, there's a good soul," re-
plied the buxom female, coaxingly.
"I von't," replied Mr. Weller, in a somewhat
boisterous manner.
"I'll see you-
Mr.
Weller hastily checked himself, and added in a
low tone," furder fust."
'Oh, dear, dear! How adversity does change
people!" said the lady, looking upwards.
"It's the only think 'twixt this and the doc-
tor as shall change my condition," muttered Mr.
Weller.
I really never saw a man so cross," said the
buxom female.
“Never mind. It's all for my own good;
vich is the reflection vith wich the penitent
school-boy comforted his feelin's ven they
flogged him," rejoined the old gentleman.
I mean the French people. They're always
at it. As to Marseilles, we know what Mar-
seilles is. It sent the most insurrectionary tune
into the world that was ever composed. It The buxom female shook her head with a
couldn't exist without allonging and marshong-compassionate and sympathizing air; and, aƒ…-
ing to something or other-victory or death, or
blazes, or something."
The speaker, with a whimsical good humor
upon him all the time, looked over the parapet-
wall with the greatest disparagement of Mar-
seilles; and taking up a determined position by
putting his hands in his pockets, and rattling
his money at it, apostrophised it with a short
laugh.
pealing to Sam, inquired whether his father
really ought not to make an effort to keep up,
and not give way to that lowness of spirits.
*
*
*
*
"As I don't rekvire any o' your conversation
just now, mum, vill you have the goodness to
re-tire?” inquired Mr. Weller, in a grave and
steady voice.
Well, Mr. Weller," said the buxom female,
"I'm sure I only spoke to you out of kindness."
'Wery likely, mum," replied Mr. Weller.
"Samivel, show the lady out, and shut the door
Allong and marshong, indeed. It would be
more creditable to you, I think, to let other
people allong and marshong about their lawful
business, instead of shutting 'em up in quaran-arter her."
tine!"-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 2.
MATRIMONIAL QUARREL-A.
This hint was not lost upon the buxom fe-
male; for she at once left the room, and slam-
med the door behind her, upon which Mr.
Weller, senior, falling back in his chair in a vio-
lent perspiration, said:
66
over."
"Wot! Is she so wery fond on you?" in-
quired Sam.
In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The
little Tetterbys were not habituated to regard
that meal in the light of a sedentary occupation, Sammy, if I wos to stop here alone vun
but discussed it as a dance or trot; rather re- veek-only vun veek, my boy-that 'ere 'ooman
sembling a savage ceremony, in the occasional'ud marry me by force and wiolence afore it was
shrill whoops, and brandishings of bread and
butter, with which it was accompanied, as well
as in the intricate filings off into the street and
back again, and the hoppings up and down the
doorsteps, which were incidental to the perform-
ance. In the present instance, the contentions
between these Tetterby children for the milk
and water jug, common to all, which stood upon
the table, presented so lamentable an instance
of angry passions risen very high indeed, that it "I don't take no pride out on it, Sammy,"
was an outrage on the memory of Dr. Watts. replied Mr. Weller, poking the fire vehemently
It was not until Mr. Tetterby had driven the it's a horrid sitiwation. I'm actiwally drove
whole herd out of the front door, that a mo-out o' house and home by it. The breath was
"Fond!” replied his father, "I can't keep
her avay from me. If I was locked up in a
fire-proof chest, vith a patent Brahmin, she'd
find means to get at me, Sammy.'
""
"Wot a thing it is, to be so sought arter!
observed Sam, smiling.
7
MATRIMONY
297
MARRIAGE
“You are not an advocate for matrimony, I
think, Mr. Weller?"
scarcely out o' your poor mother-in-law's body MATRIMONY-Mr. Weller on the mar-
ven vun old 'ooman sends me a po ' jam, and riage of Sam.
another a pot o' jelly, and another brews a
blessed large jug o' camomile-tea, vich she
brings in vith her own hands." Mr. Weller
paused with an aspect of intense disgust, and,
looking round, added in a whisper : They
wos all widders, Sammy, all on 'em, 'cept the
camomile-tea one, as wos a single young lady o'
fifty-three."
Sam gave a comical look in reply, and the
old gentleman having broken an obstinate lump
of coal, with a countenance expressive of as
much earnestness and malice as if it had been
the head of one of the widows last mentioned,
said:
"In short, Sammy, I feel that I ain't safe
anyveres but on the box."
"How are you safer there than anyveres
else?" interrupted Sam.
'Cos a coachman's a privileged indiwidual,”
replied Mr. Weller, looking fixedly at his son.
"Cos a coachman may do vithout suspicion
wot other men may not; 'cos a coachman may
be on the wery amicablest terms with eighty
mile o' females, and yet nobody think that he
ever means to marry any vun among 'em. And
wot other man can say the same, Sammy?"
..
Vell, there's somethin' in that," said Sam.
"If your gov'ner had been a coachman," rea-
soned Mr. Weller, "do you s'pose as that 'ere
jury 'ud ever ha' conwicted him, s'posin' it pos-
sible as the matter could ha' gone to that ex-
tremity? They dustn't ha' done it."
|
Mr. Weller shook his head. He was wholly
unable to speak: vague thoughts of some wicked
widow having been successful in her designs on
Mr. Pickwick, choked his utterance.
"Did you happen to see a young girl down
stairs, when you came in just now with your
son?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
"Yes. I see a young gal,” replied Mr. Weller,
shortly.
"What did you think of her, now? Candidly,
Mr. Weller, what did you think of her?"
"I thought she wos wery plump, and vel
made," said Mr. Weller, with a critical air.
"So she is," said Mr. Pickwick, "so she is.
What did you think of her manner, from what
you saw of her?”
"Wery pleasant," rejoined Mr. Weller. "Wery
pleasant and comfortable."
The precise meaning which Mr. Weller at-
tached to this last-mentioned adjective, did not
appear; but, as it was evident from the tone in
which he used it that it was a favorable expres-
sion, Mr. Pickwick was as well satisfied as if he
had been thoroughly enlightened on the sub-
ject.
“I take a great interest in her, Mr. Weller,"
said Mr. Pickwick.
Mr. Weller coughed.
"
"I mean an interest in her doing well," re-
sumed Mr. Pickwick; "a desire that she may be
comfortable and prosperous. You understand?
"Wery clearly," replied Mr. Weller, who un-
derstood nothing yet.
Wy not?" said Sam, rather disparagingly.
Wy not?" rejoined Mr. Weller;
cos it
'ud ha' gone agin their consciences. A reg'lar
coachman's a sort o' con-nectin' link betwixt
singleness and matrimony, and every practica-"is attached to your son."
ble man knows it."
"Wot! You mean they're gen'ral favʼrites,
and nobody takes adwantage on 'em, p'raps?"
said Sam.
His father nodded.
I
'How it ever come to that 'ere pass," re-
sumed the parent Weller, "I can't say. Wy it
is that long-stage coachmen possess such insini-
wations, and is always looked up to-a-dored
may say—by ev'ry young 'ooman in ev'ry town
he vurks through, I don't know. I only know
that so it is. It's a reg'lation of natur—a dis-
pensary, as your poor mother-in-law used to
say."
"A dispensation," said Sam, correcting the
old gentleman.
"Wery good, Samivel, a dispensation if you
like it better," returned Mr. Weller; "I call it
a dispensary, and it's always writ up so, at the
places vere they gives you physic for nothin' in
your own bottles; that's all."
With these words, Mr. Weller re-filled and
re-lighted his pipe, and once more summoning
up a meditative expression of countenance, con-
tinued as follows:
"That young person," said Mr. Pickwick
"To Samivel Veller?" exclaimed the parent.
"
Yes," said Mr. Pickwick.
"It's nat'ral," said Mr. Weller, after some
consideration, "natʼral, but rayther alarmin.
Sammy must be careful."
<<
How do you mean?" inquired Mr. Pick-
wick.
"
'Wery careful that he don't say nothin' to
her," responded Mr. Weller. Wery careful that
he ain't led away, in a innocent moment, to say
anythink as may lead to a conwiction for breach.
You're never safe with 'em, Mr. Pickwick, ven
they vunce has designs on you; there's no know-
in' vere to have 'em ; and vile you're a-consid-
ering of it, they have you. I wos married fust
that vay myself, sir, and Sammy wos the con-
sekens o' the manoover.”
Pickwick, Chap. 56.
MARRIAGE-Mr. Weller's advice.
"I'm a goin' to leave you, Samivel my boy,
and there's no telling ven I shall see you again.
Your mother-in-law may' ha' been too much for
me, or a thousand things may have happened by
the time you next hears any news o' the celebrat-
Therefore, my boy, as I do not see the ad-ed Mr. Veller o' the Bell Savage. The family
sability o' stoppin' here to be marri'd vether
I vant to or not, and as at the same time I do
not vish to separate myself from them interest-
in' members o' society altogether, I have come
to the determination o' drivin' the Safety, and
puttin' up vunce more at the Bell Savage, vich
is my natural born element, Sammy."
Pickwick, Chap. 52.
name depends wery much upon you, Samivel,
and I hope you'll do wot's right by it. Upon all
little p'ints o' breedin', I know I may trust you
as vell as if it was my own self. So I've only
this here one little bit of adwice to give you. If
ever you gets to up'ards o' fifty, and feels dis-
posed to go a marryin' anybody-no matter who
-jist you shut yourself up in your own room, if
"MEANDERING"
you've got one, and pison yourself off hand.
Hangin's wulgar, so don't you have nothin' to
say to that. Pison yourself, Samivel, my boy,
pison yourself, and you're be glad on it arter-
wards."-Pickwick, Chap. 23.
"MEANDERING-Let us have no."
298
MEMOR
I've put my name down for an arm, at our
place," said Mr. Allen. “We're clubbing for a
subject, and the list is nearly full, only we can't
get hold of any fellow that want's a head. I
wish you'd take it.'
"
No," replied Bob Sawyer; "can't afford
expensive luxuries.”
66
Nonsense!" said Allen.
Can't indeed," rejoined Bob Sawyer. "I
wouldn't mind a brain, but I couldn't stand a
whole head.”—Pickwick, Chap. 30.
It is a fact which will be long remembered as
remarkable down there, that she was never
drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at
ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to
the last, her proudest boast, that she never had
been on the water in her life, except upon a MEDICINE-Mrs. Joe's administration of.
bridge; and that over her tea (to which she was My sister made a dive at me, and fished me
extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her up by the hair: saying nothing more than the
indignation at the impiety of mariners and awful words, "You come along and be dosed."
others, who had the presumption to go me-
Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in
andering" about the world. It was in vain to those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe al-
represent to her that some conveniences, tea per-ways kept a supply of it in the cupboard; hav-
haps included, resulted from this objectionable
practice. She always returned, with greater
emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of
the strength of her objection, "Let us have no
meandering."-David Copperfield, Chap. 1.
MEANNESS—The difference on two and
four legs.
Fledgeby deserved Mr. Alfred Lammle's eu-
logium. He was the meanest cur existing, with
a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word we
all clearly understand) going largely on four legs,
and reason always on two, meanness on four legs
never attains the perfection of meanness on two.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 5.
MEANNESS.
"All awry, as if his mean soul griped his
body."--David Copperfield, Chap. 25.
MEANS AND THE END.
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ing a belief in its virtues correspondent to its
nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this
elixir was administered to me as a choice re-
storative, that I was conscious of going about,
smelling like a new fence. On this particular
evening the urgency of my case demanded a
pint of this mixture, which was poured down
my throat, for my greater comfort, while Mrs.
Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot
would be held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with
half a pint; but he was made to swallow that
(much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munch-
ing and meditating before the fire), "because
he had had a turn." Judging from myself, I
should say he certainly had a turn afterward, if
he had had none before.
Great Expectations, Chap. 2.
MEEKNESS-Of Dr. Chillip.
He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of
little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to
take up the less space. He walked as softly as
the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He car-
ried his head on one side, partly in modest de-
preciation of himself, partly in modest propitia-
tion of everybody else. It is nothing to say
that he hadn't a word to throw at a dog. He
couldn't have thrown a word at a mad dog. He
might have offered him one gently, or half a one,
or a fragment of one-for he spoke as slowly as
he walked-but he wouldn't have been rude to
him, and he couldn't have been quick with him,
for any earthly consideration.
In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was
to fall on the bed of state in the flush of con-
quest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the
tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was
slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the
slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the
rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the
miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All be-
ing made ready with much labor, and the hour
come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the
night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever
the rope from the great iron ring was put into
his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope
parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell.
So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that MELANCHOLY.
tended to the end, had been accomplished; and
in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof
of my stronghold dropped upon me.
Great Expectations, Chap. 38.
MEDICAL STUDENTS-Conversation of.
Nothing like dissecting, to give one an ap-
petite," said Mr. Bob Sawyer, looking round the
table.
Mr. Pickwick slightly shuddered.
By the bye, Bob," said Mr. Allen, "have you
finished that leg yet?"
Nearly," replied Sawyer, helping himself to
half a fowl as he spoke. "It's a very muscular
one for a child's."
"Is it?" inquired Mr. Allen, carelessly.
Very," said Bob Sawyer, with his mouth
full.
David Copperfield, Chap. 1.
"In such a lonely, melancholy state, that he
was more like a pump than a man, and might
have drawed tears."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 32.
MELANCHOLY-In contrast with affection.
You have no idea what it is to have anybody
wonderful fond of you, unless you have been
got down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings
that I have mentioned as having once got the
better of me.-Dr. Marigold.
MEMORY.
'Is his memory impaired with age?"
Not a morsel of it, sir," replied Mr. Wil-
liam. "He don't know what forgetting means.
Haunted Man, Chap. 1.
MEMORY
MEMORY—A retentive.
299
"Take care she don't forget what I've been
saying to her."
"She never forgets," returned Caleb. "It's
one of the few things she an't clever in."
Every man thinks his own geese swans,"
observed the Toy merchant, with a shrug.
“Poor devil!”—Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
MEMORY-Its faces recalled.
After musing for some minutes, the old gen-
tleman walked, with the same meditative face,
into a back ante-room opening from the yard;
and there, retiring into a corner, called up be-
fore his mind's eye a vast amphitheatre of faces
over which a dusky curtain had hung for many
years. "No," said the old gentleman, shaking
his head; "it must be imagination."
He wandered over them again. He had
called them into view; and it was not easy to
replace the shroud that had so long concealed
them. There were the faces of friends, and
foes, and of many that had been almost stran-
gers, peering intrusively from the crowd; there
were the faces of young and blooming girls that
were now old women; there were faces that the
grave had changed and closed upon, but which
the mind, superior to its power, still dressed in
their old freshness and beauty, calling back the
lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile,
the beaming of the soul through its mask of
clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb,
changed but to be heightened, and taken from
earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft
and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven.
MICAWBER
making them reflect the only images their mir.ds
contain. The man who lives but in the breath
of princes, has nothing in his sight but stars for
courtiers' breasts. The envious man beholds
his neighbors' honors even in the sky; to the
money-hoarder, and the mass of worldly folk,
the whole great universe above glitters with ster-
ling coin-fresh from the mint-stamped with
the sovereign's head coming always between
them and heaven, turn where they may. So do
the shadows of our own desires stand between
us and our better angels, and thus their bright-
ness is eclipsed.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 29.
MEN OF THE WORLD.
"Men of the world, my dear sir," Jobling
whispered to Jonas; thorough men of the
world! To a professional person like myself,
it's quite refreshing to come into this kind of
society. It's not only agreeable-and nothing
can be more agreeable but it's philosophically
improving. It's character, my dear sir; charac-
ter!"
It is so pleasant to find real merit appreciated,
whatever its particular walk in life may be, that
the general harmony of the company was doubt-
less much promoted by their knowing that the
two men of the world were held in great esteem
by the upper classes of society, and by the gal
lant defenders of their country in the army and
navy, but particularly the former. The least of
their stories had a colonel in it; lords were as
plentiful as oaths; and even the Blood Royal
ran in the muddy channel of their personal re-
collections.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 28.
But the old gentleman could recall no one
countenance of which Oliver's features bore a MENAGERIE-The wonders of.
trace. So, he heaved a sigh over the recollec-
tions he had awakened; and being, happily for
himself, an absent old gentleman, buried them
again in the pages of the musty book.
Oliver Twist, Chap. II.
MEMORY-Windows in the house of.
But the windows of the house of Memory, and
the windows of the house of Mercy, are not so
easily closed as windows of glass and wood.
They fly open unexpectedly; they rattle in the
night; they must be nailed up. Mr. The Eng-
lishman had tried nailing them, but had not
driven the nails quite home.
Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2.
MEN OF THE WORLD-The thoughts of.
The thoughts of worldly men are forever reg-
ulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like
the physical one, holds them down to earth.
The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders
of a starlit night, appeal to their minds in vain.
There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon, or
in the stars, for their reading. They are like some
wise men, who, learning to know each planet by
its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small
heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance,
Universal Love, and Mercy, although they shine
by night and day so brightly that the blind may
see them; and who, looking upward at the
spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflec-
tion of their own great wisdom and book-
learning.
It is curious to imagine these people of the
world, busy in thought, turning their eyes toward
the countless spheres that shine above us, and
I brought away five wonderments from this
exhibition. I have wondered ever since
whether the beasts ever do get used to those
small places of confinement; whether the mor
keys have that very horrible flavor in their free
state; whether wild animals have a natural ear
for time and tune, and therefore every four-foot--
ed creature began to howl in despair when the
band began to play; what the giraffe does with
his neck when his cart is shut up; and, whether
the elephant feels ashamed of himself when he
is brought out of his den to stand on his head
in the presence of the whole collection.
Out of Town. Reprinted Pieces.
MERRY PEOPLE-Dick Swiveller's opinion
of.
"There are some people who can be
merry and
can't be wise, and some who can be wise (or
think they can) and can't be merry. I'm one
of the first sort. If the proverb's a good 'un, I
suppose it's better to keep to half of it than
none; at all events I'd rather be merry and not
wise, than be like you-neither one nor t'other."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 7.
MICAWBER-Wilkins
tics.
His
characteris-
"Gentlemen!" said Mr. Micawber, after the
first salutations, you are friends in need, and
friends indeed. Allow me to offer my inquiries
with reference to the physical welfare of Mrs.
Copperfield in esse, and Mrs. Traddles in posse,
presuming, that is to say, that my friend Mr.
Traddles is not yet united to the object of his
affections, for weal and for woe."
MICAWBER
300
We acknowledged his politeness, and made
suitable replies. He then directed our atten-
tion to the wall, and was beginning, "I assure
you, gentlemen," when I ventured to object to
that ceremonious form of address, and to beg
that he would speak to us in the old way.
เ
My dear Copperfield," he returned, pressing
my hand,
your cordiality overpowers me.
This reception of a shattered fragment of the
Temple once called Man-if I may be permitted
so to express myself-bespeaks a heart that is an
honor to our common nature. I was about to
observe that I again behold the serene spot
where some of the happiest hours of my exist-
ence fleeted by."
“Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber,"
said I. "I hope she is well?"
*
*
*
*
*
I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are
well, sir," said my aunt.
Mr. Micawber inclined his head. They are
as well, ma'am," he desperately observed, after
a pause,
as Aliens and Outcasts can ever hope
to be."
"Lord bless you, sir," exclaimed my aunt in
her abrupt way.
"What are you talking
about?"
"The subsistence of my family, ma'am," re-
turned Mr. Micawber, " trembles in the balance.
My employer-”
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MICAWBER
ber; and all he had reserved came breaking out
of him. "Good heavens, it is principally because
I am among friends that my state of mind is what
it is. What is the matter, gentlemen? What is
not the matter? Villany is the matter; baseness
is the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are
the matter: and the name of the whole atro-
icous mass is-HEEP!'
"
My aunt clapped her hands, and we all start-
ed up as if we were possessed.
"The struggle is over!" said Mr. Micawber,
violently gesticulating with his pocket-handker-
chief, and fairly striking out from time to time
with both arms, as if he were swimming under
superhuman difficulties. "I will lead this life no
longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from
everything that makes life tolerable. I have been
under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel's ser-
vice. Give me back my wife, give me back my
family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch
who walks about in the boots at present on my
feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword to-
morrow, and I'll do it. With an appetite!
"
I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried
to calm him, that we might come to something
rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and
wouldn't hear a word.
the
"I'll put my hand in no man's hand," said Mr.
Micawber, gasping, puffing, and sobbing to that
degree that he was like a man fighting with cold
Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off; and water, "until I have-blown to fragments—the-
began to peel the lemons that had been under a-detestable-serpent-HEEP! I'll partake of
my directions set before him, together with all no one's hospitality, until I have-a-moved-
the other appliances he used in making punch. Mount Vesuvius to eruption on—a—
"Your employer, you know," said Mr. Dick, abandoned rascal-HEEP! Refreshment-a—
jogging his arm as a gentle reminder.
underneath this roof-particularly punch-would
My good sir," returned Mr. Micawber, "you-a-choke me-unless I had previously-
recall me. I am obliged to you." They shook choked the eyes-out of the head-a-of-in-
hands again.
My employer, ma'am-Mr. terminable cheat, and liar-HEEP! I—a—I'll
Heep-once did me the favor to observe to me, know nobody-and-a-say nothing-and-a
that if I were not in the receipt of the stipen--live nowhere-until I have crushed-to—a—
diary emoluments appertaining to my engage- undiscoverable atoms-the-transcendent and
inent with him, I should probably be a moun- | immortal hypocrite and perjurer—HEEP!
tebank about the country, swallowing a sword-
blade, and eating the devouring element. For
anything that I can perceive to the contrary,
it is still probable that my children may be re-
duced to seek a livelihood by personal contor-
tion, while Mrs. Micawber abets their unnatural
feats, by playing the barrel organ."
Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive
flourish of his knife, signified that these per-
formances might be expected to take place after
he was no more; then resumed his peeling with
a desperate air.
"
I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber's dy-
ing on the spot. The manner in which he strug-
gled through these inarticulate sentences, and,
whenever he found himself getting near the name
of Heep, fought his way on to it, dashed at it
in a fainting state, and brought it out with a ve-
hemence little less than marvellous, was fright-
ful; but now, when he sank into a chair, steam
ing, and looked at us, with every possible color
in his face that had no business there, and an
endless procession of lumps following one an-
other in hot haste up his throat, whence they
seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the
appearance of being in the last extremity. I
would have gone to his assistance, but he waved
me off, and wouldn't hear a word.
David Copperfield, Chap. 49.
My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round
table that she usually kept beside her, and eyed
him attentively. Notwithstanding the aversion
with which I regarded the idea of entrapping
him into any disclosure he was not prepared to
make voluntarily, I should have taken him up
at this point, but for the strange proceedings MICAWBER-An Australian dinner speech
in which I saw him engaged: whereof his put-
ting the lemon-peel into the kettle, the sugar into
the snuffer-tray, the spirit into the empty jug,
and confidently attempting to pour boiling water
out of the candle-stick, were among the most
remarkable. I saw that a crisis was at hand,
and it came.
*
*
*
*
*
Mr. Micawber," said I, "what is the matter?
Pray speak out. You are among friends."
"Among friends, sir!" repeated Mr. Micaw-
from.
"Dr. Mell, in a speech replete with feeling,
then proposed 'Our distinguished Guest, the
ornament of our town. May he never leave us
but to better himself, and may his success among
us be such as to render his bettering himself
impossible !' The cheering with which the
toast was received defies description. Again
and again it rose and fell, like the waves of
ocean.. At length all was hushed, and WILKINS
MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, presented himself to re
MICAWBER
801
MICAWBER
turn thanks. Far be it from us, in the present
comparatively imperfect state of the resources
of our establishment, to endeavor to follow our
distinguished townsman through the smoothly-
flowing periods of his polished and highly ornate
address! Suffice it to observe, that it was a mas-
terpiece of eloquence; and that those passages
in which he more particularly traced his own
successful career to its source, and warned the
younger portion of his auditory from the shoals-our reception was cool."
of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they
were unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the
manliest eye present.
will not disguise from you, my dear Master Cop-
perfield, that when that branch of my family
which is settled in Plymouth became aware that
Mr. Micawber was accompanied by myself, and
by little Wilkins and his sister, and by the twi.s,
they did not receive him with that ardor which
he might have expected, being so newly releas-
ed from captivity. In fact," said Mrs. Micawher,
lowering her voice,-" this is between ourselves
David Copperfield, Chap. 63.
MICAWBER-"Fallen back for a spring.”
"You find us, Copperfield," said Mr. Micaw-
ber, with one eye on Traddles, "at present es-
tablished, on what may be designated as a small
and unassuming scale; but you are aware that
I have, in the course of my career, surmounted
difficulties, and conquered obstacles. You are
no stranger to the fact, that there have been
periods of my life when it has been requisite
that I should pause, until certain expected
events should turn up; when it has been neces-
sary that I should fall back, before making what
I trust I shall not be accused of presumption in
terming a spring. The present is one of those
momentous stages in the life of man. You find
me, fallen back, for a spring; and I have every
reason to believe that a vigorous leap will
shortly be the result.”
*
*
*
%
*
"I am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged
in the sale of corn upon commission. It is
not an avocation of a remunerative description
-in other words, it does not pay-and some
temporary embarrassments of a pecuniary na-
ture have been the consequence. I am, how-
ever, delighted to add that I have now an
immediate prospect of something turning up (I
am not at liberty to say in what direction),
which I trust will enable me to provide, per-
manently, both for myself and for your friend
Traddles, in whom I have an unaffected in-
terest. You may, perhaps, be prepared to hear
that Mrs. Micawber is in a state of health which
renders it not wholly improbable that an addi-
tion may be ultimately made to those pledges of
affection which-in short, to the infantine group.
Mrs. Micawber's family have been so good as to
express their dissatisfaction at this state of
things. I have merely to observe, that I am
not aware it is any business of theirs, and that I
repel that exhibition of feeling with scorn and
with defiance!"-David Copperfield, Chap. 27.
MICAWBER-His cool reception.
"I thought you were at Plymouth, maʼam,” I
said to Mrs. Micawber, as he went out.
'My dear Master Copperfield," she replied,
we went to Plymouth.
"
"To be on the spot," I hinted.
'Just so," said Mrs. Micawber. "To be on
the spot. But, the truth is, talent is not wanted
in the Custom House. The local influence of
my family was quite unavailing to obtain any
employment, in that department, for a man of
Mr. Micawber's abilities. They would rather
not have a man of Mr. Micawber's abilities. He
would only show the deficiency of the others.
Apart from which," said Mrs. Micawber, "I
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"Dear me !" I said.
"It is truly
Yes," said Mrs. Micawber.
painful to contemplate mankind in such an as-
pect Master Copperfield, but our reception was
decidedly cool."-David Copperfield, Chap. 17.
MICAWBER-Observations by.
Mr. Dick was at home. He was by nature so
exceedingly compassionate of any one who
seemed to be ill at ease, and was so quick to
find any such person out, that he shook hands
with Mr. Micawber, at least half-a-dozen times
in five minutes. To Mr. Micawber, in his trou-
ble, this warmth, on the part of a stranger, was
so extremely touching, that he could only say,
on the occasion of each successive shake, "My
dear sir, you overpower me!" Which gratified
Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it again with
greater vigor than before.
"The friendliness of this gentleman," said
Mr. Micawber to my aunt, "if you will allow
me, ma'am, to cull a figure of speech from the
vocabulary of our coarser national sports-floors
To a man who is struggling with a com-
plicated burden of perplexity and disquiet, such
reception is trying, I assure you.”
me.
a
My friend Mr. Dick," replied my aunt,
proudly, "is not a common man.”
"That I am convinced of," said Mr. Micawber.
My dear sir!" for Mr. Dick was shaking hands
with him again; "I am deeply sensible of your
cordiality.
"How do you find yourself?" said Mr. Dick,
with an anxious look.
"Indifferent, my dear sir," returned Mr. Mi-
cawber, sighing.
"You must keep up your spirits," said Mr.
Dick, "and make yourself as comfortable as
possible."
Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these
friendly words, and by finding Mr. Dick's hand
again within his own. "It has been my lot," he
observed, "to meet, in the diversified panorama
of human existence, with an occasional oasis,
but never with one so green, so gushing, as the
present!'
*
*
*
*
*
"How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber?"
said I, after a silence.
My dear Copperfield," returned Mr. Micaw-
ber, bursting into a state of much excitement,
and turning pale, "if you ask after my employer
as your friend, I am sorry for it; if you ask after
him as my friend, I sardonically smile at it. In
whatever capacity you ask after my employer, I
beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply to
this-that whatever his state of health may be,
his appearance is foxy-not to say diabolical.
You will allow me, as a private individual, to
decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me
to the utmost verge of desperation in my pro
fessional capacity."
*
MICAWBER
802
"It is my fate," said Mr. Micawber, znfeign-
edly sobbing, but doing even that, with the
shadow of the old expression of doing some-
thing genteel; "it is my fate, gentlemen, that
the finer feelings of our nature have become re-
proaches to me. My homage to Miss Wickfield
is a flight of arrows in my bosom. You had bet-
ter leave me, if you please, to walk the earth as
a vagabond. The worm will settle my business
in double-quick time."
*
*
*
*
*
Gentlemen," returned Mr. Micawber, "do
with me as you will! I am a straw upon the
surface of the deep, and am tossed in all direc-
tions by the elephants-I beg your pardon; I
should have said the elements."
David Copperfield, Chap. 49.
MICAWBER-On difficulties.
"Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?"
I said, to get Mr. Micawber away.
MICAWBER
suggestion of my family, and we find it falla-
cious."
Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair with
his hands in his pockets, eyed us aside, and
nodded his head, as much as to say that the case
was very clearly put.
'The articles of corn and coals," said Mrs.
Micawber, still more argumentatively, "being
equally out of the question, Mr. Copperfield, I
naturally look round the world, and say, 'What
is there in which a person of Mr. Micawber's
talent is likely to succeed?'"
*
*
*
*
*
I found myself afterwards sagely adding,
alone, that a person must either live or die.
"Just so," returned Mrs. Micawber. "It is
precisely that. And the fact is, my dear Mr.
Copperfield, that we can not live without some-
thing widely different from existing circum-
stances shortly turning up. Now I am convinc-
ed, myself, and this I have pointed out to Mr.
Micawber several times of late, that things can-
not be expected to turn up of themselves. We
must, in a measure, assist to turn them up. I
may be wrong, but I have formed that opinion."
Both Traddles and I applauded it highly.
"Very well," said Mrs. Micawber.
"Then
what do I recommend? Here is Mr. Micawber
with a variety of qualifications-with great tal-
ent-"
<<
"
Really, my love," said Mr. Micawber.
"If you will do her that favor, Copperfield,"
replied Mr. Micawber, rising. "I have no scru-
ple in saying, in the presence of our friends
here, that I am a man who has, for some years,
contended against the pressure of pecuniary
difficulties." I knew he was certain to say some-
thing of this kind; he always would be so boast-
ful about his difficulties. Sometimes I have
risen superior to my difficulties. Sometimes my
difficulties have-in short, have floored me.
There have been times when I have administer-
ed a succession of facers to them; there have
been times when they have been too many for
me, and I have given in, and said to Mrs.
Micawber, in the words of Cato, 'Plato, thou
reasonest well. It's all up now. I can show
fight no more.' But at no time of my life," said
Mr. Micawber, "have I enjoyed a higher degree
of satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if II would make a fact so disgraceful known, and
may describe difficulties, chiefly arising out of
warrants of attorney and promissory notes at
two and four months, by that word) into the
bosom of my friend Copperfield.”
Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude. Here
is Mr. Micawber, with a variety of qualifications
with great talent-I should say, with genius, but
that may be the partiality of a wife-'
Traddles and I both murmured "No."
And here is Mr. Micawber without any suit-
able position or employment. Where does that
responsibility rest? Clearly on society. Then
boldly challenge society to set it right. It ap
pears to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield," said
Mrs. Micawber. forcibly, "that what Mr. Mi-
cawber has to do, is to throw down the gauntlet
Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute to society, and say, in effect, 'Show me who will
by saying. "Mr. Heep! Good evening. Mrs. take that up. Let the party immediately step
Heep! Your servant," and then walking out forward.'"-David Copperfield, Chap. 28.
|
with me in his most fashionable manner, making
a good deal of noise on the pavement with his MICAWBER-"Ready in case of anything
shoes, and humming a tune as he went.
David Copperfield, Chap. 17.
MICAWBER-On corn and coals.
"As we are quite confidential here, Mr. Cop-
perfield," said Mrs. Micawber, sipping her punch,
"Mr. Traddles being a part of our domesticity,
I should much like to have your opinion on Mr.
Micawber's prospects. For corn," said Mrs.
Micawber argumentatively, " as I have repeated-
ly said to Mr. Micawber, may be gentlemanly,
but it is not remunerative. Commission to the
extent of two and ninepence in a fortnight can-
not, however limited our ideas, be considered
remunerative."
We were all agreed upon that.
46
Then," said Mrs. Micawber, who prided her-
self on taking a clear view of things, and keep-
ing Mr. Micawber straight by her woman's wis-
dom, when he might otherwise go a little
crooked, "then I ask myself this question. If
corn is not to be relied upon, what is? Are
coals to be relied upon? Not at all. We have
turned our attention to that experiment, on the
turning up."
"On such an occasion I will give you, Mas-
ter Copperfield," said Mrs. Micawber, "in a
little more flip," for we had been having some
already, "the memory of my papa and mamma."
"Are they dead, ma'am?" I inquired, after
drinking the toast in a wine-glass.
"My mamma departed this life," said Mrs.
Micawber, "before Mr. Micawber's difficulties
commenced, or at least before they became
pressing. My papa lived to bail Mr. Micaw-
ber several times, and then expired, regretted
by a numerous circle."
Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped
a pious tear upon the twin who happened to be
in hand.
As I could hardly hope for a more favorable
opportunity of putting a question in which I had
a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber:
May I ask, ma'am, what you and Mr. Mi-
cawber intend to do, now that Mr. Micawber is
out of his difficulties, and at liberty? Have you
settled yet?
"My family," said Mrs. Micawber, who al
303


TIDOS
SOMEBODY TURNS UP.
MICAWBER
303
MICAWBER
C
ways said those two words with an air, though see him too, and shook hands with him heartily
I never could discover who came under the de-inquiring how Mrs. Micawber was.
nomination, "my family are of opinion that Mr. Thank you," said Mr. Micawber, waving his
Micawber should quit London, and exert his hand as of old, and settling his chin in his shirt
talents in the country. Mr. Micawber is a man collar. "She is tolerably convalescent. The
of great talent, Master Copperfield."
twins no longer derive their sustenance from
I said I was sure of that.
Nature's founts-in short," said Mr. Micawber,
"Of great talent," repeated Mrs. Micawber. in one of his bursts of confidence, “they are
My family are of opinion, that, with a little weaned-and Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my
interest, something might be done for a man of travelling companion. She will be rejoiced,
his ability in the Custom House. The influ- Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one
ence of my family being local, it is their wish who has proved himself in all respects a worthy
that Mr. Micawber should go down to Plymouth. minister at the sacred altar of friendship."
They think it indispensable that he should be
upon the spot.”
""
That he may be ready?" I suggested.
Exactly," returned Mrs. Micawber. "That
he may be ready-in case of anything turning
up."-David Copperfield, Chap. 12.
MICAWBER-The family relations.
*
*
*
*
*
*
I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micaw-
ber away; and replied, with my hat in my hand,
and a very red face, I have no doubt, that I was
a pupil at Doctor Strong's.
"A pupil?" said Mr. Micawber, raising his
eyebrows, "I am extremely happy to hear it.
Although a mind like my friend Copperfield's;
"I cannot help thinking," said Mrs. Micaw-to Uriah and Mrs. Heep; "does not require
ber, with an air of deep sagacity," that there
are members of my family who have been ap-
prehensive that Mr. Micawber would solicit
them for their names. I do not mean to be
conferred in Baptism upon our children, but to
be inscribed on Bills of Exchange, and negotiat-
ed in the Money Market."
*
"C
*
*
*
*
'My dear," said Mr. Micawber, with some
heat, "it may be better for me to state distinct-
ly, at once, that your family are, in the aggre-
gate, impertinent Snobs; and, in detail, unmiti-
gated Ruffians."
*
*
*
*
"All I would say is, that I can go abroad
without your family coming forward to favor
me-in short, with a parting Shove of their
cold shoulders; and that, upon the whole, I
would rather leave England with such impetus
as I possess, than derive any acceleration of it
from that quarter."
David Copperfield, Chap. 54.
MICAWBER-Turns up.
I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and
to wish myself well out of the visit, when a fig-
ure coming down the street passed the door-it
stood open to air the room, which was warm,
the weather being close for the time of year-
came back again, looked in, and walked in, ex-
claiming loudly, Copperfield! Is it possi-
ble?"
that cultivation which, without his knowledge of
men and things, it would require, still it is a
rich soil, teeming with latent vegetation-in
short," said Mr. Micawber, smiling in another
burst of confidence, "it is an intellect capable
of getting up the classics to any extent."
David Copperfield, Chap. 17.
MICAWBER-As an emigrant.
Mr. Micawber, I must observe, in his adapta-
tion of himself to a new state of society, had ac-
quired a bold, buccaneering air not absolutely
lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might
have supposed him a child of the wilderness,
long accustomed to live out of the confines of
civilization, and about to return to his native wilds.
He had provided himself, among other things,
with a complete suit of oil-skin, and a straw
hat with a very low crown, pitched or caulked on
the outside. In this rough clothing, with a com-
mon mariner's telescope under his arm, and a
shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky as
looking out for dirty weather, he was far more
nautical, after his manner, than Mr. Peggotty.
His whole family, if I may so express it, were
cleared for action. I found Mrs. Micawber in
the closest and most uncompromising of bonnets,
made fast under the chin; and in a shawl which
tied her up (as I had been tied up, when my
aunt first received me) like a bundle, and was
secured behind at the waist, in a strong knot.
Miss Micawber I found made snug for stormy
It was Mr. Micawber! It was Mr. Micaw-weather, in the same manner; with nothing su-
ber, with his eye-glass, and his walking-stick,
and his shirt-collar, and his genteel air, and the
condescending roll in his voice, all complete!
"My dear Copperfield," said Mr. Micawber,
putting out his hand, "this is indeed a meeting
which is calculated to impress the mind with a
sense of the instability and uncertainty of all
human-in short, it is a most extraordinary
meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting
upon the probability of something turning up
(of which I am at present rather sanguine), I
find a young but valued friend turn up, who is
connected with the most eventful period of my
life; I may say, with the turning-point of my
existence. Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do
you do?"
perfluous about her. Master Micawber was.
hardly visible in a Guernsey shirt, and the shag-
giest suit of slops I ever saw; and the children
were done up, like preserved meats, in impervi-
ous cases.-David Copperfield, Chap. 56.
MICAWBER-As a law clerk.
66
'How do you like the law, Mr. Micaw-
ber?"
My dear Copperfield," he replied. “To a
man possessed of the higher imaginative powers,
the objection to legal studies is the amount of
detail which they involve. Even in our profes-
sional correspondence," said Mr. Micawber,
glancing at some letters he was writing, "the
mind is not at liberty to soar to any exalted
I cannot say I really cannot say that I was form of expression. Still, it is a great pursuit.
glad to see Mr. Micawber there; but I was glad to | A great pursuit !"
MICAWBER
He then told me that he had become the ten-
ant of Uriah Heep's old house; and that Mrs.
Micawber would be delighted to receive me
once more under her own roof.
"It is humble," said Mr. Micawber, "to quote
a favorite expression of my friend Heep; but it
may prove the stepping-stone to more ambitious
domiciliary accommodation."
I asked him whether he had reason, so far, to
be satisfied with his friend Heep's treatment of
him? He got up to ascertain if the door were
close shut, before he replied, in a lower voice:
"My dear Copperfield, a man who labors un-
der the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments,
is, with the generality of people, at a disadvan-
tage. That disadvantage is not diminished,
when that pressure necessitates the drawing of
stipendiary emoluments, before those emolu-
ments are strictly due and payable. All I can
say is, that my friend Heep has responded to
appeals to which I need not more particularly
refer, in a manner calculated to redound equally
to the honor of his head and of his heart.'
David Copperfield, Chap. 39.
MICAWBER-A crisis in his affairs.
"Master Copperfield," said Mrs. Micawber,
"I make no stranger of you, and therefore do
not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber's difficul-
ties are coming to a crisis.”
304
It made me very miserable to hear it, and I
looked at Mrs. Micawber's red eyes with the ut-
most sympathy.
"With the exception of the heel of a Dutch
cheese-which is not adapted to the wants of a
young family "—said Mrs. Micawber, "there is
really not a scrap of anything in the larder. I
was accustomed to speak of the larder when I
lived with papa and mamma, and I used the
word almost unconsciously. What I mean to
express is, that there is nothing to eat in the
house."
"Dear me !" I said, in great concern.
*
*
*
*
*
At last Mr. Micawber's difficulties came to a
crisis, and he was arrested early one morning,
and carried over to the King's Bench Prison in
the Borough. He told me, as he went out of
the house, that the God of day had now gone
down upon him-and I really thought his heart
was broken and mine too. But I heard, after-
wards, that he was seen to play a lively game at
skittles, before noon.
*
*
*
*
MICAWBER
of this obligation, would weigh upon my mind
to an insupportable extent. I have, therefore,
prepared for my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles,
and I now hold in my hand a document, which
accomplishes the desired object. I beg to hand
to my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles my I. O. U.
for forty-one, ten, eleven and a half, and I am
happy to recover my moral dignity, and to know
that I can once more walk erect before my
fellow-man!"
With this introduction (which greatly affected
him), Mr. Micawber placed his Ĩ. O. U. in the
hands of Traddles, and said he wished him well
in every relation of life. I am persuaded, not
only that this was quite the same to Mr. Micaw-
ber as paying the money, but that Traddles him-
self hardly knew the difference until he had had
time to think about it.
Mr. Micawber walked so erect before his fel-
low-man, on the strength of this virtuous action
that his chest looked half as broad again when
he lighted us down stairs.
David Copperfield, Chap. 36.
MICAWBER-His preparations as an emi-
grant.
<<
Madam, what I wish is, to be perfectly busi-
ness-like, and perfectly punctual. Turning over
as we are about to turn over, an entirely new
leaf; and falling back, as we are now in the
act of falling back, for a Spring of no common
magnitude; it is important to my sense of self-
respect, besides being an example to my son,
that these arrangements should be concluded as
between man and man.
In reference to our domestic preparations,
madam," said Mr. Micawber, with some pride,
"for meeting the destiny to which we are now
understood to be self-devoted, I beg to report
them. My eldest daughter attends at five every
morning in a neighboring establishment, to ac-
quire the process-if process it may be called-
of milking cows. My younger children are in-
structed to observe, as closely as circumstances
will permit, the habits of the pigs and poultry
maintained in the poorer parts of this city; a
pursuit from which they have, on two occasions,
been brought home, within an inch of being run
over. I have myself directed some attention,
during the past week, to the art of baking;
and my son Wilkins has issued forth with a
walking-stick and driven cattle, when permitted,
by the rugged hirelings who had them in charge,
to render any voluntary service in that direc-
tion—which I regret to say, for the credit of our
nature, was not often; he being generally
warned, with imprecations, to desist."
David Copperfield, Chap. 54.
MICAWBER-In statu quo.
Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the
gate, and we went up to his room (top story but
one), and cried very much. He solemnly con-
jured me, I remember, to take warning by his
fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty
pounds a year for his income, and spent nine-
teen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he I begged Traddles to ask his landlord to walk
would be happy, but that if he spent twenty up. Traddles accordingly did so, over the ban-
pounds one he would be miserable. After ister; and Mr. Micawber, not a bit changed-
which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, his tights, his stick, his shirt-collar, and his eye-
gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for glass, all the same as ever-came into the room
the amount, and put away his pocket-handker- with a genteel and youthful air.
chief, and cheered up.
David Copperfield, Chap. II.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Traddles,” said Mr.
Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, as he
checked himself in humming a soft tune. "I
MICAWBER-His mode of paying debts. was not aware that there was any individual,
"To leave this metropolis," said Mr. Micaw-alien to this tenement, in your sanctum."
ber, "and my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles,
Mr. Micawber slightly bowed to me, and
without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part pulled up his shirt-collar.
MICAWBER
805
"How do you do, Mr. Micawber?" said I.
"Sir," said Mr. Micawber, "you are exceed-
ingly obliging. I am in statu quo."
"And Mrs. Micawber?" I pursued.
MICAWBER

being ineffectual too, would sometimes go to
the extremity of crossing the street, and roaring
up at the windows of the second floor, where he
knew Mr. Micawber was. At these times, Mr.
Sir," said Mr. Micawber, "she is also, thank Micawber would be transported with grief and
God, in statu quo.'
"
"And the children, Mr. Micawber?"
“Sir,” said Mr. Micawber, "I rejoice to
that they are, likewise, in the enjoyment of
salubrity."
mortification, even to the length (as I was once
made aware by a scream from his wife) of mak-
replying motions at himself with a razor; but within
half an hour afterwards, he would polish up his
shoes with extraordinary pains, and go out, hum-
All this time, Mr. Micawber had not known ming a tune with a greater air of gentility than
me in the least, though he had stood face to face ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic. I
with me.
But now, seeing me smile, he ex- have known her to be thrown into fainting fits
amined my features with more attention, fell by the king's taxes at three o'clock, and to eat
back, cried, "Is it possible! Have I the pleas-lamb-chops breaded, and drink warm ale (paid
ure of again beholding Copperfield!" and shook
me by both hands with the utmost fervor.
David Copperfield, Chap. 27.
MICAWBER-Mrs.
for with two teaspoons that had gone to the
pawnbroker's) at four. On one occasion, when
an execution had just been put in, coming home
through some chance as early as six o'clock, I
saw her lying (of course with a twin) under the
My dear Mr. Copperfield," said Mrs. Micaw-grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about
ber, "of your friendly interest in all our affairs,
I am well assured. My family may consider it
banishment, if they please; but I am a wife and
mother, and I never will desert Mr. Micawber."
Traddles, appealed to, by Mrs. Micawber's
eye, feelingly acquiesced.
her face; but I never knew her more cheerful
than she was, that very same night, over a veal-
cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories
about her papa, and mamma, and the com-
pany they used to keep.
David Copperfield, Chap. II.
ject."
"That," said Mrs. Micawber, "that, at least,
is my view, my dear Mr. Copperfield and Mr. MICAWBER-Mrs.-Her
Traddles, of the obligation which I took upon
myself when I repeated the irrevocable words,
'I, Emma, take thee, Wilkins.' I read the ser-
vice over with a flat-candle on the previous
night, and the conclusion I derived from it was,
that I never could desert Mr. Micawber. And,"
said Mrs. Micawber, "though it is possible I
may be mistaken in my view of the ceremony, I
never will!"-David Copperfield, Chap. 36.
MICAWBER-His family.
"Is this all your family, maʼam?" said my
aunt.
"There are no more at present," returned
Mrs. Micawber.
>>
Good gracious, I didn't mean that, ma'am,"
said my aunt. "I mean are all these yours?'
Madam," replied Mr. Micawber, "it is a
true bill."-David Copperfield, Chap. 52.
MICAWBER-Mr. and Mrs. at home.
grasp of a sub-
"I must not forget that, when I lived at home
with my papa and mamma, my papa was in the
habit of saying, 'Emma's form is fragile, but her
grasp of a subject is inferior to none.' That my
papa was too partial, I well know; but that he
was an observer of character in some degree,
my duty and my reason equally forbid me to
doubt."
With these words, and resisting our entreaties
that she would grace the remaining circulation of
the punch with her presence, Mrs. Micawber re-
tired to my bedroom. And really I felt that she
was a noble woman-the sort of woman who
might have been a Roman matron and done all
manner of heroic things, in times of public
trouble.-David Copperfield, Chap. 28.
MICAWBER-Mrs.-Her opinion of the coal
trade.
"The opinion of those other branches of my
family," pursued Mrs. Micawber, "is, that Mr.
Micawber should immediately turn his atten-
tion to coals."
"To what, ma'am?"
To coals," said Mrs. Micawber. "To the
coal trade. Mr. Micawber was induced to
think, on inquiry, that there might be an open-
ing for a man of his talent in the Medway Coal
Trade. Then, as Mr. Micawber very properly
said, the first step to be taken clearly was, to
come and see the Medway. Which we came
and saw. I say 'we,' Master Copperfield; for I
Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried
to exert herself, and so, I have no doubt, she
had. The centre of the street-door was perfect-
ly covered with a great brass-plate, on which
was engraved "Mrs. Micawber's Boarding Es-
tablishment for Young Ladies:" but I never
found that any young lady had ever been to
school there; or that any young lady ever came,
or proposed to come; or that the least prepara-
tion was ever made to receive any young lady.
The only visitors I ever saw or heard of, were
creditors. They used to come at all hours, and
some of them were quite ferocious. One dirty-ever will," said Mrs. Micawber, with emotion,
faced man, I think he was a boot-maker, used to
edge himself into the passage as early as seven
o'clock in the morning, and call up the stairs to
Mr. Micawber-" Come! You ain't out yet,
you know. Pay us, will you? Don't hide, you
know; that's mean. I wouldn't be mean if I
was you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us,
d'ye hear? Come!" Receiving no answer to
these taunts, he would mount in his wrath to the
words "swindlers" and "robbers;" and these
"I never will desert Mr. Micawber."
I murmured my admiration and approbation.
"We came," repeated Mrs. Micawber, "and
saw the Medway. My opinion of the coal trade
on that river, is, that it may require talent, but
that it certainly requires capital. Talent, Mr.
Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not.
We saw, I think, the greater part of the Med-
way; and that is my individual conclusion. Be-
ing so near here, Mr. Micawber was of opinion
MICAWBER
806
Micawber.”
MIGGS
“And do you go too, ma'am?”
The events of the day, in combination with
the twins, if not with the flip, had made Mrs.
Micawber hysterical, and she sh 1 tears as she
replied:
that it would be rash not to come on, and see MICAWBER-Mrs.-"Will never desert Mr.
the Cathedral. Firstly, on account of its being
so well worth seeing, and our never having seen
it; secondly, on account of the great probability
of something turning up in a cathedral town.
We have been here," said Mrs. Micawber, "three
days. Nothing has, as yet, turned up; and it
may not surprise you, my dear Master Copper-
field, so much as it would a stranger, to know
that we are at present waiting for a remittance
from London, to discharge our pecuniary obli-
gations at this hotel. Until the arrival of that
remittance," said Mrs. Micawber with much
feeling, "I am cut off from my home (I allude
to lodgings in Pentonville), from my boy and
girl, and from my twins."
I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs.
Micawber in this anxious extremity, and said
as much to Mr. Micawber, who now returned;
adding that I only wished I had money enough,
to lend them the amount they needed. Mr.
Micawber's answer expressed the disturbance of
his mind. He said, shaking hands with me,
Copperfield, you are a true friend; but when
the worst comes to the worst, no man is without
a friend who is possessed of shaving materials."
At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber threw her
arms round Mr. Micawber's neck and entreated
him to be calm. He wept; but so far recovered,
almost immediately, as to ring the bell for the
waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding and
a plate of shrimps for breakfast in the morning.
David Copperfield, Chap. 17.
MICAWBER-Mrs.-On the law.
Only a barrister is eligible for such prefer-
ments; and Mr. Micawber could not be a bar-
rister, without being entered at an inn of court
as a student for five years.'
"Do I follow you?" said Mrs. Micawber,
with her most affable air of business. "Do I
understand, my dear Mr. Traddles, that at the
expiration of that period, Mr. Micawber would
be eligible as a Judge or Chancellor?"
"He would be eligible," returned Traddles.
with a strong emphasis on that word.
"Thank you," said Mrs. Micawber. "That
is quite sufficient. If such is the case, and Mr.
Micawber forfeits no privilege by entering on
these duties, my anxiety is set at rest. I speak,"
said Mrs. Micawber, "as a female, necessarily
but I have always been of opinion that Mr.
Micawber possesses what I have heard my papa
call, when I lived at home, the judicial mind;
and I hope Mr. Micawber is now entering on a
field where that mind will develop itself, and
take a commanding station.”
I quite believe that Mr. Micawber saw him-
self, in his judicial mind's eye, on the woolsack.
He passed his hand complacently over his
bald head, and said with ostentatious resigna-
tion:
'My dear, we will not anticipate the decrees
of fortune. If I am reserved to wear a wig, I
am at least prepared, externally," in allusion to
his baldness, "for that distinction. I do not,"
said Mr. Micawber, "regret my hair, and I may
have been deprived of it for a specific purpose.
I cannot say. It is my intention, my dear Cop-
perfield, to educate my son for the Church; I
will not deny that I should be happy, on his
account, to attain to eminence."
David Copperfield, Chap. 36.
"I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr.
Micawber may have concealed his difficulties
from me in the first instance, but his sanguine
temper may have led him to expect that he would
overcome them. The pearl necklace and brace.
lets which I inherited from mamma, have been
disposed of for less than half their value; and
the set of coral, which was the wedding-gift of
my papa, has been actually thrown away for
nothing. But I never will desert Mr. Micawber.
No!" cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than
before, "I never will do it! It's of no use ask-
ing me!"
I felt quite uncomfortable-as if Mrs. Micaw-
ber supposed I had asked her to do anything of
the sort!-and sat looking at her in alarm.
Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not deny
that he is improvident. I do not deny that he
has kept me in the dark as to his resources and
his liabilities, both," she went on, looking at
the wall! "but I never will desert Mr. Micaw
ber!"
Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voice
into a perfect scream, I was so frightened that I
ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr
Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table,
and leading the chorus of
Gee up, Dobbin,
Gee ho, Dobbin,
Gee up, Dobbin,
Gee up, and gee ho-o-01
-with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in
an alarming state, upon which he immediately
burst into tears, and came away with me with
his waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps.
of which he had been partaking.
'Emma, my angel!" cried Mr. Micawber,
running into the room; "what is the matter?"
I never will desert you, Micawber?" she ex-
claimed.
"C
""
My life!" said Mr.. Micawber, taking her in
his arms. 'I am perfectly aware of it!
"He is the parent of my children! He is the
father of my twins! He is the husband of my
affections," cried Mrs. Micawber, struggling;
"and I ne-ver-will-desert Mr. Micawber!"
David Copperfield, Chap. 12.
MIGGS-As a basilisk.
(C
'Miggs, my good girl, go to bed-do go to
bed. You're really worse than the dripping of a
hundred water butts outside the window, or the
scratching of as many mice behind the wainscot.
I can't bear it. Do go to bed, Miggs. To oblige
me-do."
"You haven't got nothing to untie, sir,” re-
turned Miss Miggs, "and therefore your requests
does not surprise me. But Missis has-and while
you set up, mim"-she added turning to the
locksmith's wife, "I couldn't, no not if twenty
times the quantity of cold water was aperiently
running down my back this moment, go to bed
with a quiet spirit."
Having spoken these words, Miss Miggs made
divers efforts to rub her shoulders in an impossi.
ble place, and shivered from head to foot; there-
MIGGS
307
by giving the beholders to understand that the
imaginary cascade was still in full flow, but that
a sense of duty upheld her under that, and all
other sufferings, and nerved her to endurance.
Mrs. Varden being too sleepy to speak, and
Miss Miggs having, as the phrase is, said her say,
the locksmith had nothing for it but to sigh and
be as quiet as he could.
MIND
MILE-STONES-And roving stones.
"Roving stones gather no moss, Joe," said
Gabriel.
"I'm
"Nor mile-stones much," replied Joe.
little better than one here, and see as much of
the world."
"
'Then, what would you do, Joe," pursued the
locksmith, stroking his chin reflectively.
"What
could you be? where could you go, you see?"
"I must trust to chance, Mr. Varden."
A bad thing to trust to, Joe."
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 3.
MILITARY REVIEW-A.
Astounding evolutions they were, one rank
firing over the heads of another rank, and then
running away; and then the other rank firing
over the heads of another rank, and running
away in their turn; and then forming squares,
with officers in the centre; and then descending
the trench on one side with scaling ladders, and
ascending it on the other again by the same
means; and knocking down barricades of bas-
kets, and behaving in the most gallant manner
possible. Then there was such a ramming
But to be quiet with such a basilisk before
him, was impossible. If he looked another way,
it was worse to feel that she was rubbing her
cheek, or twitching her ear, or winking her eye,
or making all kinds of extraordinary shapes with
her nose, than to see her do it. If she was for a
moment free from any of these complaints, it was
only because of her foot being asleep, or of her
arm having got the fidgets, or of her leg being
doubled up with the cramp, or of some other
horrible disorder which racked her whole frame.
If she did enjoy a moment's ease, then with her
eyes shut and her mouth wide open, she would
be seen to sit very stiff and upright in her chair;
then to nod a little way forward, and stop with a
jerk; then to nod a little farther forward, and
stop with another jerk; then to recover herself;
then to come forward again-lower-lower-down of the contents of enormous guns on the
lower-by very slow degrees, until, just as it
seemed impossible that she could preserve her
balance for another instant, and the locksmith
was about to call out in an agony, to save her
from dashing down upon her forehead and frac
turing her skull, then all of a sudden and with-
out the smallest notice, she would come upright
and rigid again with her eyes open, and in her
countenance an expression of defiance, sleepy
but yet most obstinate, which plainly said, "I've
never once closed 'em since I looked at you last,
and I'll take my oath of it!"
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 51.
MIGGS—Her misfortunes.
"I thank my goodness-gracious-blessed-stars I
can, miss,” returned Miggs, with increased en-
ergy. Ally Looyer, good gentlemen!"
Even Dolly, cast down and disappointed as
she was, revived at this, and bade Miggs hold
her tongue directly.
"Which, was you pleased to observe, Miss
Varden?” said Miggs, with a strong emphasis
on the irrelative pronoun.
Dolly repeated her request.
'Ho, gracious me !" cried Miggs, with hys-
terical derision. " Ho, gracious me! Yes, to be
sure I will. Ho yes! I am a abject slave, and
a oiling, moiling, constant-working, always-
being-found-fault-with, never-giving-satisfactions,
nor-having-no-time-to-clean onesself, potter's wes-
sel-an't I, miss! Ho yes! My situations is
lowly, and my capacities is limited, and my
duties is to humble myself afore the base degen-
erating daughters of their blessed mothers as is
fit to keep companies with holy saints, but is
born to persecutions from wicked relations-
and to demean myself before them as is no bet-
ter than infidels—an't it, miss! Ho yes! My
only becoming occupations is to help young
flaunting pagins to brush and comb and titiwate
theirselves into whitening and suppulchres, and
leave the young men to think that there an't a
bit of padding in it nor no pinching ins nor fill-
ings out nor pomatums nor deceits nor earthly
wanities-an't it, miss! Yes, to be sure it is—
ho yes!"—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 71
battery, with instruments like magnified mops;
such a preparation before they were let off, and
such an awful noise when they did go, that the
air resounded with the screams of ladies.
Pickwick, Chap. 4.
MIND-"A blunt, broadsword kind."
That's the plain state of the matter, as it
points itself out to a mere trooper, with a blunt,
broadsword kind of a mind.
Bleak House, Chap. 52.
MIND—A knock-kneed.
The sufferings of this young gentleman were
distressing to witness. If his mind for the
moment reeled under them, it may be urged, in
extenuation of its weakness, that it was consti-
tutionally a knock-kneed mind, and never very
strong upon its legs.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 4.
MIND-An unimproved.
Mr. Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the
party. He is in a helpless condition as to his
lower, and nearly so as to his upper limbs; but
his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it
ever held, the first four rules of arithmetic, and
a certain small collection of the hardest facts.
In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and
other such phrenological attributes, it is no
worse off than it used to be. Everything that
Mr. Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in
his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at
last. In all his life he has never bred a single
butterfly.-Bleak House, Chap. 21.
MIND-Fevers of the.
Mrs. Gamp shook her head mysteriously, and
pursed up her lips. "There's fevers of the
mind," she said, "as well as body. You may
take your slime drafts till you flies into the air
with efferwescence; but you won't cure that."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 29.
MIND-Influenced by external objects.
Oliver rose next morning, in better heart, and
went about his usual early occupations, with
!
MIND
808
more hope and pleasure than he had known for
many days. The birds were once more hung
out, to sing, in their old places; and the sweetest
wild flowers that could be found, were once
more gathered to gladden Rose with their beauty.
The melancholy which had seemed to the sad
eyes of the anxious boy to hang, for days past,
over every object, beautiful as all were, was dis-
pelled by magic. The dew seemed to sparkle
more brightly on the green leaves; the air to
rustle among them with a sweeter music; and
the sky itself to look more blue and bright.
Such is the influence which the condition of our
own thoughts exercises, even over the appear
ance of external objects. Men who look on
nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is
dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the
sombre colors are reflections from their own
jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are
delicate, and need a clearer vision.
MIND-A wreck.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 34.
"I fear," returned Mr. Dombey, with much
philosophy, "that Mrs. Skewton is shaken."
"L
MIND
heavily. The same intolerable awe and dread
that had come upon him in the night, returned
unweakened in the day. The monotonous ring-
ing of the bells and trampling of the horses;
the monotony of his anxiety, and useless rage;
the monotonous wheel of fear, regret, and pas-
sion, he kept turning round and round; made
the journey like a vision, in which nothing was
quite real but his own torment.
It was a vision of long roads, that stretched
away to an horizon, always receding, and never
gained; of ill-paved towns, up hill and down,
where faces came to dark doors and ill-glazed
windows, and where rows of mud-bespattered
cows and oxen were tied up for sale in the long
narrow streets, butting and lowing, and receiv-
ing blows on their blunt heads from bludgeons
that might have beaten them in; of bridges,
crosses, churches, post-yards, new horses being
put in against their will, and the horses of the
last stage reeking, panting, and laying their
drooping heads together dolefully at stable
doors; of little cemeteries, with black crosses
settled sideways in the graves, and withered
wreaths upon them drooping away; again of
Shaken, Dombey!" said the Major. “Smash-long, long roads, dragging themselves out, up
ed!"-Dombey & Son, Chap. 40.
MIND-Its haunting demon.
hill and down, to the treacherous horizon.
Of morning, noon, and sunset; night, and the
rising of an early moon. Of long roads, tempo-
rarily left behind, and a rough pavement reached ;
of battering and clattering over it, and looking
up, among house-roofs, at a great church-tower;
of getting out and eating hastily, and drinking
draughts of wine that had no cheering influence;
of coming forth afoot, among a host of beggars
The world. What the world thinks of him,
how it looks at him, what it sees in him, and
what it says-this is the haunting demon of his
mind. It is everywhere where he is, and, worse
than that, it is everywhere where he is not. It
comes out with him among his servants, and yet
he leaves it whispering behind; he sees it point--blind men with quivering eyelids, led by old
ing after him in the street; it is waiting for him
in his counting-house; it leers over the shoulders
of rich men among the merchants; it goes beck-
oning and babbling among the crowd; it always
anticipates him, in every place; and is always
busiest, he knows, when he has gone away.
When he is shut up in his room at night, it is in
his house, outside it, audible in footsteps on the
pavement, visible in print upon the table, steam-
ing to and fro on railroads and in ships; restless
and busy everywhere, with nothing else but him.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 51.
He drank a quantity of wine after dinner, in
vain. No such artificial means would bring
sleep to his eyes. His thoughts, more incoher-
ent, dragged him more unmercifully after them
-as if a wretch, condemned to such expiation,
were drawn at the heels of wild horses. No
oblivion, and no rest.
*
*
*
*
*
Strong mental agitation and disturbance was
no novelty to him, even before his late sufferings. |
It never is, to obstinate and sullen natures, for
they struggle hard to be such. Ground, long
undermined, will often fall down in a moment;
what was undermined here in so many ways,
weakened, and crumbled, little by little, more
and more, as the hand moved on the dial.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 55.
MIND-A perturbed-Flight of Carker.
Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture
gnawed at his heart; a constant apprehension
of being overtaken or met-for he was ground-
lessly afraid even of travellers who came towards
him by the way he was going-oppressed him
women holding candles to their faces; idiot
girls; the lame, the epileptic, and the palsied-
of passing through the clamor, and looking from
his seat at the upturned countenances and out-
stretched hands, with a hurried dread of recog-
nizing some pursuer pressing forward—of gal-
loping away again, upon the long, long road,
gathered up, dull and stunned, in his corner, or
rising to see where the moon shone faintly on a
patch of the same endless road miles away, or
looking back to see who followed.
Of never sleeping, but sometimes dozing with
unclosed eyes, and springing up with a start,
and a reply aloud to an imaginary voice.
Of
cursing himself for being there, for having fled,
for having let her go, for not having confronted
and defied him. Of having a deadly quarrel
with the whole world, but chiefly with himself.
Of blighting everything with his black mood as
he was carried on and away.
It was a fevered vision of things past and
present all confounded together: his life and
journey blended into one. Of being madly hur-
ried somewhere, whither he must go. Of old
scenes starting up among the novelties through
which he travelled. Of musing and brooding
over what was past and distant, and seeming to
take no notice of the actual objects he encoun-
tered, but with a wearisome, exhausting con-
sciousness of being bewildered by them, and
having their images all crowded in his hot
brain after they were gone.
A vision of change upon change, and still
the same monotony of bells, and wheels, and
horses' feet, and no rest. Of town and country,
post-yards, horses, drivers, hill and valley, light
and darkness, road and pavement, height an
MIND
hollow, wet weather and dry, and still the same
monotony of bells, and wheels, and horses' feet,
and no rest. A vision of tending on at last,
towards the distant capital, by busier roads, and
sweeping round by old cathedrals, and dashing
through small towns and villages, less thinly
scattered on the road than formerly, and sitting
shrouded in his corner, with his cloak up to his
face, as people passing by looked at him.
Of rolling on and on, always postponing
thought, and always racked with thinking; of
being unable to reckon up the hours he had been
upon the road, or to comprehend the points of
time and place in his journey. Of being parch-
ed and giddy, and half mad. Of pressing on,
in spite of all, as if he could not stop, and com-
ing into Paris, where the turbid river held its
swift course undisturbed, between two brawling
streams of life and motion.
A troubled vision, then, of bridges, quays, in-
terminable streets; of wine-shops, water-carriers,
great crowds of people, soldiers, coaches, mili-
tary drums, arcades. Of the monotony of bells,
and wheels, and horses' feet being at length lost
in the universal din and uproar. Of the grad-
ual subsidence of that noise as he passed out
in another carriage by a different barrier from
that by which he had entered. Of the restora-
tion, as he travelled on towards the sea-coast,
of the monotony of bells, and wheels, and
horses' feet, and no rest.
Of sunset once again, and nightfall. Of long
roads again, and dead of night, and feeble lights
in windows by the road-side: and still the old
monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet
and no rest. Of dawn, and daybreak, and the
rising of the sun. Of toiling slowly up a hill,
and feeling on its top the fresh sea-breeze,
and seeing the morning light upon the edges of
the distant waves. Of coming down into a
harbor when the tide was at its full, and seeing
fishing-boats float in, and glad women and chil-
dren waiting for them. Of nets and seamen's
clothes spread out to dry upon the shores; of
busy sailors, and their voices high among
ships' masts and rigging; of the buoyancy and
brightness of the water, and the universal spark
ling.
309
MIRRORS

mand of himself, and the balance of his mind.
Imbecile discomfiture and rage-so that, as he
walked about his room, he ground his teeth-
had complete possession of him. His thoughts,
not to be stopped or directed, still wandered
where they would, and dragged him after
them. He was stupefied, and he was wearied
to death.
But, as if there were a curse upon him that he
should never rest again, his drowsy senses would
not lose their consciousness. He had no more
influence with them in this regard, than if they
had been another man's. It was not that they
forced him to take note of present sounds and
objects, but that they would not be diverted
from the whole hurried vision of his journey.
It was constantly before him all at once.
stood there, with her dark disdainful eyes again
upon him; and he was riding on, nevertheless,
through town and country, light and darkness,
wet weather and dry, over road and pavement,
hill and valley, height and hollow, jaded and
scared by the monotony of bells, and wheels,
and horses' feet, and no rest.
She
Dombey & Son, Chap. 55.
MIND-The resurrection of.
Black are the brooding clouds and troubled
the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first
heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead. Mon-
sters uncouth and wild, arise in premature, im-
perfect resurrection; the several parts and shapes
of different things are joined and mixed by
chance; and when, and how, and by what won-
derful degrees, each separates from each, and
every sense and object of the mind resumes its
usual form and lives again, no man—though
every man is every day the casket of this type
of the Great Mystery-can tell.
Chimes, 3d Quarter.
MIRRORS—The reflection of.
The trees were bare of leaves, and the river
was bare of water-lilies; but the sky was not
bare of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected
it, and a delicious wind ran with the stream,
touching the surface crisply. Perhaps the old
mirror was never yet made by human hands,
Of receding from the coast, and looking back which, if all the images it has in its time re-
upon it from the deck when it was a haze upon flected could pass across its surface again, would
the water, with here and there a little opening fail to reveal some scene of horror or distress.
of bright land where the Sun struck. Of the But the great serene mirror of the river seemed
swell, and flash, and murmur of the calm sea. as if it might have reproduced all it had ever re-
Of another grey line on the ocean, on the ves-flected between those placid banks, and brought
sel's track, fast growing clearer and higher. nothing to the light save what was peaceful,
Of cliffs and buildings, and a windmill, and a pastoral, and blooming.
church, becoming more and more visible upon
it. Of steaming on at last into smooth water, and
mooring to a pier whence groups of people
looked down, greeting friends on board. Of dis-
embarking, passing among them quickly, shun- |
ning every one; and of being, at last, again in
England.
He had thought, in his dream, of going down
into a remote Country-place he knew, and lying
quiet there, while he secretly informed himself
of what transpired, and determined how to act.
Still in the same stunned condition, he remem-
bered a certain station on the railway, where he
would have to branch off to his place of desti-
nation and where there was a quiet Inn.
*
*
*
*
*
His object was to rest, and recover the com-
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 9.
MISANTHROPES AND HYPOCRITES.
The despisers of mankind-apart from the
mere fools and mimics, of that creed-are of two
sorts. They who believe their merit neglected
and unappreciated, make up one class; they
who receive adulation and flattery, knowing
their own worthlessness, compose the other.
Be sure that the coldest-hearted misanthropes
are ever of this last order.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 24.
MISANTHROPES AND PIKE-KEEPERS
—(Mr. Weller).
"Wery queer life is a pike-keeper's, sir."
A what?" said Mr. Pickwick.
14
MISFORTUNES
A pike-keeper."
"What do you mean by a pike-keeper?" in-
quired Mr. Peter Magnus.
310
MISSION
it was no figure of speech to say that debtors
rotted in prison, with no hope of release, and no
prospect of liberty! The atrocity in its full ex
"The old 'un means a turnpike-keeper, tent no longer exists, but there is enough of it
gen'lm'n," observed Mr. Samuel Weller, in ex-left to give rise to occurrences that make the
planation.
heart bleed."-Pickwick, Chap. 21.
"Oh," said Mr. Pickwick, "I see. Yes; very
curious life. Very uncomfortable."
"They're all on 'em men as has met vith
some disappointment in life," said Mr. Weller
senior.
Ay, ay?" said Mr. Pickwick.
MISFORTUNE-Its crushing character.
When an avalanche bears down a mountain-
forest, twigs and bushes suffer with the trees,
and all perish together.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 17.
"Yes. Consequence of vich, they retires from
the world, and shuts themselves up in pikes; MISSIONARY ENTERPRISES-Sam Wel-
partly vith the view of being solitary, and partly
to rewenge themselves on mankind, by takin'
tolls."
"Dear me," said Mr. Pickwick, "I never knew
that before."
"Fact, sir," said Mr. Weller; "if they was
gen'lm'n you'd call 'em misanthropes, but as it
is, they only takes to pike-keepin'."
Pickwick, Chap. 22.
MISFORTUNES.
Misfortunes, saith the adage, never come sin-
gly. There is little doubt that troubles are ex-
ceedingly gregarious in their nature, and flying
in flocks, are apt to perch capriciously; crowding
on the heads of some poor wights until there is
not an inch of room left on their unlucky crowns,
and taking no more notice of others who offer
as good resting-places for the soles of their feet,
than if they had no existence. It may have hap-
pened that a flight of troubles brooding over
London, and looking out for Joseph Willet,
whom they couldn't find, darted down hap-haz-
ard on the first young man that caught their
fancy, and settled on him instead. However
this may be, certain it is that on the very day of
Joe's departure they swarmed about the ears
of Edward Chester, and did so buzz and flap
their wings, and persecute him, that he was
most profoundly wretched.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 32.
MISFORTUNE-Pancks, a portrait of.
His steam-like breathings, usually droll in
their effect, were more tragic than so many
groans; while, from head to foot, he was in that
begrimed, besmeared, neglected state, that he
might have been an authentic portrait of Mis-
fortune, which could scarcely be discerned
through its want of cleaning.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 26.
ler on.
So you vouldn't subscribe to the flannel
veskits?" said Sam, after another interval of
smoking.
"Cert'nly not," replied Mr. Weller: "what's
the good o' flannel veskits to the young niggers
abroad? But I'll tell you what it is, Sammy,"
said Mr. Weller, lowering his voice, and bend-
ing across the fire-place; “I'd come down wery
handsome towards straight veskits for some
people at home."
As Mr. Weller said this, he slowly recovered
his former position, and winked at his first-born,
in a profound manner.
"
It cert'nly seems a queer start to send out
pocket ankerchers to people as don't know the
use on 'em," observed Sam.
"They're always a doin' some gammon of that
sort, Sammy,” replied his father.
"
Pickwick, Chap. 27.
MISSIONS-Of life-Moddle's ideas of the.
As for him, he more than corroborated the
account of Mrs. Todgers; possessing greater
sensibility than even she had given him credit
for. He entertained some terrible notions of
Destiny, among other matters, and talked much
about people's
"
Missions: upon which he
seemed to have some private information not
generally attainable, as he knew it had been
poor Merry's mission to crush him in the bud.
He was very frail and tearful; for being aware
that a shepherd's mission was to pipe to his
flocks, and that a boatswain's mission was to
pipe all hands, and that one man's mission was
to be a paid piper, and another man's mission
was to pay the piper, so he had got it into
his head that his own peculiar mission was to
pipe his eye. Which he did perpetually.
He often informed Mrs. Todgers that the sun
had set upon him; that the billows had rolled
over him; that the Car of Juggernaut had
crushed him; and also that the deadly Upas
tree of Java had blighted him. His name was
Moddle.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 32.
MISSION-Dick Swiveller on a charitable.
"You'll mention that I called, perhaps," said
Dick.
MISFORTUNE-Hope and despair in.
"Many eyes, that have long since been closed
in the grave, have looked round upon that scene
lightly enough, when entering the gate of the old
Marshalsea Prison for the first time: for despair
seldom comes with the first severe shock of mis-
fortune. A man has confidence in untried friends,
he remembers the many offers of service so freely Mr. Quilp nodded, and said he certainly
made by his boon companions when he wanted would, the very first time he saw them.
them not; he has hope-the hope of happy inex- And say," added Mr. Swiveller, "say, sir,
perience and however he may bend beneath the that I was wafted here upon the pinions of con-
first shock, it springs up in his bosom, and flour-cord; that I came to remove, with the rake of
ishes there for a brief space, until it droops be-
neath the blight of disappointment and neglect.
How soon have those same eyes, deeply sunken
in the head, glared from faces wasted with fam-
ine and sallow from confinement, in days when
friendship, the seeds of mutual wiolence and
heart-burning, and to sow in their place the
germs of social harmony. Will you have the
goodness to charge yourself with that commis
sion, sir?"Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 13.

MOB-A REVOLUTIONARY.
311
MISSIONS
MISSIONS.-Mr. Jellyby on.
311
MOB
engaged in the destruction of some building was
I mentioned, in my account of our first visit sufficiently apparent, and that it was a Catholic
in Thavies' Inn, that Richard described Mr. place of worship was evident from the spoils
Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after they bore as trophies, which were easily recognis
dinner without saying anything. It was a habitable for the vestments of priests, and rich frag-
of his. He opened his mouth now, a great
many times, and shook his head in a melan-
choly manner.
"What do you wish me not to have? Don't
have what, dear pa?" asked Caddy, coaxing
him, with her arms round his neck.
Never have a Mission, my dear child."
Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against
the wall again; and this was the only time I
ever heard him make any approach to express-
ing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question.
I suppose he had been more talkative and lively,
once; but he seemed to have been completely
exhausted long before I knew him.
Bleak House, Chap. 30.
MISSION-Mrs. Pardiggle's.
You can't tire me, good people," said Mrs.
Pardiggle to these latter. "I enjoy hard work;
and the harder you make mine, the better I like
it."
“Then make it easy for her!" growled the
man upon the floor. "I wants it done, and over.
I wants a end of these liberties took with my
place. I wants a end of being drawed like a
badger. Now you're a-going to poll-pry and
question according to custom-I know what
you're a-going to be up to. Well! You haven't
got no occasion to be up to it. I'll save you the
trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes, she is
a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That's
wot we drinks. How do you like it, and what
do you think of gin, instead? An't my place
dirty? Yes, it is dirty-it's natʼrally dirty, and
it's nat❜rally onwholesome; and we've had five
dirty and unwholesome children, as is all dead
infants, and so much the better for them, and for
us besides. Have I read the little book wot you
left? No, I an't read the little book wot you
left. There an't nobody here as knows how to
read it; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suit-
able to me. It's a book fit for a babby, and I'm
not a babby. If you was to leave me a doll, I
shouldn't nuss it. How have I been conduct-
ing of myself? Why, I've been drunk for three
days; and I'd a been drunk four, if I'd a had
the money. Don't I never mean for to go to
church? No, I don't never mean for to go to
church. I shouldn't be expected there, if I did;
the beadle's too genteel for me. And how did
my wife get that black eye? Why, I giv' it her;
and if she says I didn't, she's a Lie !
He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to
say all this, and he now turned over on his other
side, and smoked again. Mrs. Pardiggle, who
had been regarding him through her spectacles
with a forcible composure, calculated, I could not
help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled
out a good book, as if it were a constable s staff,
and took the whole family into custody. I mean
into religious custody, of course; but she really
did it as if she were an inexorable moral Po-
liceman, carrying them all off to a stationhouse.
Bleak House, Chap. 8.
MOB.
They had torches among them, and the chief
faces were distinctly visible. That they had been
ments of altar furniture. Covered with soot
and dirt, and dust, and lime; their garments torn
to rags; their hair hanging wildly about them;
their hands and faces jagged and bleeding with
the wounds of rusty nails; Barnaby, Hugh, and
Dennis hurried on before them all, like hideous.
madmen. After them, the dense throng came
fighting on; some singing; some shouting in tri-
umph; some quarrelling among themselves
some menacing the spectators as they passed;
some with great wooden fragments, on which they
spent their rage as if they had been alive, rend-
ing them limb from limb, and hurling the scat-
tered morsels high into the air; some in a drunk-
en state, unconscious of the hurts they had re-
ceived from falling bricks, and stones, and
beams; one borne upon a shutter, in the very
midst, covered with a dingy cloth, a senseless,
ghastly heap. Thus a vision of coarse faces,
with here and there a blot of flaring smoky light ;
a dream of demon heads and savage eyes, and
sticks and iron bars uplifted in the air, and
whirled about; a bewildering horror, in which
so much was seen, and yet so little, which seemed
so long and yet so short, in which there were sc
many phantoms, not to be forgotten all through
life, and yet so many things that could not be
observed in one distracting glimpse-it flitted
onward and was gone.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 50.
A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious
existence, particularly in a large city. Where it
comes from or whither it goes, few men can tell.
Assembling and dispersing with equal sudden-
ness, it is as difficult to follow to its various
sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel
stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and
uncertain, more terrible when roused, more un-
reasonable, or more cruel.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 52.
MOB-Shout with the largest.
Slumkey for ever!" echoed Mr. Pickwick,
taking off his hat.
"No Fizkin!" roared the crowd.
*
Certainly not!" shouted Mr. Pickwick.
Hurrah!" And then there was another
roaring like that of a whole menagerie when
the elephant has rung the bell for the cold
meat.
"Who is Slumkey?" whispered Mr. Tup-
man.
"I don't know," replied Mr. Pickwick, in the
same tone.
Hush. Don't ask any questions.
It's always best on these occasions to do what
the mob do."
"But suppose there are two mobs?" sug-
gested Mr. Snodgrass.
"Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pick
wick.
Volumes could not have said more.
Pickwick, Chap. 13.
MOB-A revolutionary.
Presently she heard a troubled movement.
and a shouting coming along which filled her
with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng
MODELS
812
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 were dancing like five thou-
sand demons. There was no other music than
their own singing. They danced to the popu-
iar 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 haz-
ard 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 ap-
parition 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
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 distract-
ed, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of
blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time.
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 5.
MODELS
He got off my table, and, looking up at the
ceiling, cocked his beard a little awry; at the
same time making it stick out before him.
Adoration, or a vow of vengeance," he ob-
served.
He turned his profile to me, making his up-
per lip very bulgy with the upper part of his
beard.
"Romantic character," said he.
He looked sideways out of his beard, as if it
were an ivy-bush. Jealousy," said he. He
gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and in-
formed me that he was carousing. He made it
shaggy with his fingers-and it was Despair;
lank-and it was Avarice; tossed it all kinds
of ways-and it was Rage. The beard did
everything.
"I am the Ghost of Art," said he. "Two bob
a-day now, and more when it's longer! Hair's
the true expression. There is no other. I SAID
I'D GROW IT, AND I'VE GROWN IT, AND IT SHALL
HAUNT YOU!"
He may have tumbled down stairs in the dark,
but he never walked down or ran down. I
looked over the banisters, and I was alone with
the thunder.
Need I add more of my terrific fate? It HAS
haunted me ever since. It glares upon me from
the walls of the Royal Academy (except wher
MACLISE subdues it to his genius), it fills my
soul with terror at the British Institution, i
lures young artists on to their destruction. Go
where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally work-
ing the passions in hair, and expressing every-
thing by beard, pursues me. The prediction is
accomplished, and the victim has no rest.
The Ghost of Art. Reprinted Pieces.
MODELS—Artists'—(Rome).
Among what may be called the Cubs or minor
Lions of Rome, there was one that amused me
mightily. It is always to be found there; and
its den is on the great flight of steps that lead
from the Piazza di Spagna, to the church of
Trínita del Monte. In plainer words, these steps
are the great place of resort for the artists'
MODELS-Hair as an auxiliary of art.
"What is this?" I exclaimed involuntarily," Models," and there they are constantly wait-
"and what have you become?"
"I am the Ghost of Art!" said he.
The effect of these words, slowly uttered in
the thunder-storm at midnight, was appalling to
the last degree. More dead than alive, I sur-
veyed him in silence.
"The German taste came up," said he, "and
threw me out of bread. I am ready for the taste
now."
"
ing to be hired. The first time I went up there
I could not conceive why the faces seemed fa-
miliar to me; why they appeared to have beset
me, for years, in every possible variety of action
and costume; and how it came to pass that they
started up before me, in Rome, in the broad day,
like so many saddled and bridled nightmares.
I soon found that we had made acquaintance,
and improved it, for several years, on the walls
of various Exhibition Galleries. There is one
old gentleman, with long white hair and an im-
mense beard, who, to my knowledge, has gone
I shuddered. It was so severe.
half through the catalogue of the Royal Acad-
He made his beard flowing on his breast, and emy. This is the venerable, or patriarchal
leaning both hands on the staff of a carpet-model. He carries a long staff; and every knot
broom which Mrs. Parkins had left among my
books, said:
He made his beard a little jagged with his
hands, folded his arms, and said,
"
Severity!
"Benevolence.”
I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment
was entirely in the beard. The man might have
left his face alone, or had no face. The beard
did everything.
He lay down, on his back, on my table, and
with that action of his head threw up his beard
at the chin.
"That's Death!" said he.
and twist in that staff I have seen, faithfully
delineated, innumerable times. There is another
man in a blue cloak, who always pretends to be
asleep in the sun (when there is any), and who,
I need not say, is always very wide awake, and
very attentive to the disposition of his legs. This
is the dolce far niente model. There is another
man in a brown cloak, who leans against the
wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and
looks out of the corners of his eyes; which are
just visible beneath his broad slouched hat.
MODEST GREATNESS
313
MONEY
"
"Of contact with yourself, sir?" echoed Mr.
Pecksniff.
This is the assassin model. There is another but can you tell me of any other living crea
man, who constantly looks over his own shoul-ture who will bear the test of contact with
der, and is always going away, but never goes. myself?
This is the haughty, or scornful model. As to
Domestic Happiness, and Holy Families, they |
should come very cheap, for there are lumps of
them, all up the steps; and then the cream of
the thing is, that they are all the falsest vaga-
bonds in the world, especially made up for the
purpose, and having no counterparts in Rome
or any other part of the habitable globe.
Pictures from Italy.
MODEST GREATNESS.
So modest was Mr. Merdle withal, in the
midst of these splendid achievements, that he
looked more like a man in possession of his
house under a distraint, than a commercial Co-
lossus bestriding his own hearth-rug while the
little ships were sailing in to dinner.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12.
MODESTY-Of Miggs.
"
44
'I wouldn't," cried Miggs, folding her hands
and looking upwards with a kind of devout
blankness, I wouldn't lay myself out as she
does; I wouldn't be as bold as her; I wouldn't
seem to say to all male creeturs 'come and kiss
me and here a shudder quite convulsed her
frame" for any earthly crowns as might be
offered. Worlds," Miggs added solemnly,
should not reduce me. No. Not if I was
Wenis."
"Well, but you are Wenus, you know," said
Mr. Dennis, confidentially.
CC
No, I am not, good gentlemen," answered
Miggs, shaking her head with an air of self-de-
nial which seemed to imply that she might be
if she chose, but she hoped she knew better.
“No, I am not, good gentlemen. Don't charge
me with it."-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 70.
MONEY-And its uses.
“For the same reason that I am not a hoarder
of money," said the old man, "I am not lavish
of it. Some people find their gratification in
storing it up and others theirs in parting with
it; but I have no gratification connected with
the thing. Pain and bitterness are the only goods
it ever could procure for me. I hate it. It is a
spectre walking before me through the world,
and making every social pleasure hideous.”
A thought arose in Mr. Pecksniff's mind,
which must have instantly mounted to his face,
or Martin Chuzzlewit would not have resumed
as quickly and sternly as he did :
|
Ay," returned the old man, "the test of con.
tact with me-with me. You have heard of him
whose misery (the gratification of his own foolish
wish) was, that he turned everything he touched
into gold. The curse of my existence, and the
realization of my own mad desire, is, that by the
golden standard which I bear about me I am
doomed to try the metal of all other men, and
find it false and hollow.
·
"I tell you, that I have gone, a rich man,
among people of all grades and kinds; relatives,
friends, and strangers; among people in whom,
when I was poor, I had confidence, and justly,
for they never once deceived me then, or, to me,
wronged each other. But I have never found
one nature, no, not one, in which, being wealthy
and alone, I was not forced to detect the latent
corruption that lay hid within it, waiting for such
as I to bring it forth. Treachery, deceit, and
low design; hatred of competitors, real or fan-
cied, for my favor; meanness, falsehood, base-
ness, and servility; or," and here he looked
closely in his cousin's eyes, or an assumption
of honest independence, almost worse than all;
these are the beauties which my wealth has
brought to light. Brother against brother, child
against parent, friends treading on the faces of
friends, this is the social company by whom my
way has been attended. There are stories told
-they may be true or false-of rich men, who,
in the garb of poverty, have found out virtue
and rewarded it. They were dolts and idiots
for their pains. They should have made the
search in their own characters. They should
have shown themselves fit objects to be robbed
and preyed upon and plotted against and adu-
lated by any knaves, who, but for joy, would
have spat upon their coffins when they died their
dupes; and then their search would have ended
as mine has done, and they would be what 1
am."-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 3.
MONEY-Barnaby's dream of.
"By stay-at-homes!" cried Barnaby, plucking
at his sleeve. "But I am not one. Now, there
you mistake. I am often out before the sun, and
travel home when he has gone to rest. I am
away in the woods before the day has reached
the shady places, and am often there when the
bright moon is peeping through the boughs, and
looking down upon the other moon that lives in
You would advise me for my peace of mind, water. As I walk along, I try to find, among
to get rid of this source of misery, and transfer it the grass and moss, some of that small money
to some one who could bear it better. Even for which she works so hard and used to shed
you, perhaps, would rid me of a burden under so many tears. As I lie asleep in the shade, I
which I suffer so grievously. But, kind stranger," dream of it-dream of digging it up in heaps;
said the old man, whose every feature darkened and spying it out, hidden under bushes; and
as he spoke, "good Christian_stranger, that is seeing it sparkle, as the dew-drops do, among
main part of my trouble. In other hands, I the leaves. But I never find it; tell me where it
have known money do good; in other hands is. I'd go there, if the journey were a whole
I have known it triumphed in, and boasted of, year long, because I know she would be happier
with reason, as the master-key to all the brazen when I came home and brought some with me,
gates that close upon the paths to worldly honor, Speak again. I'll listen to you if you talk all
fortune, and enjoyment. To what man or woman, | night."—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 46.
to what worthy, honest, incorruptible creature,
shall I confide such a talisman, either now, or
when I die? Do you know of any such per-
son? Your virtues are of course inestimable,
|
MONEY-A child's idea of.
Papa! what's money?"
The abrupt question had such immediate ref
MONEY
erence to the subject of Mr. Dombey's thoughts,
that Mr. Dombey was quite disconcerted.
"What is money, Paul?" he answered.
Money?"
314
"Yes," said the child, laying his hands upon
the elbows of his little chair, and turning the
old face up towards Mr. Dombey's; "what is
money?"
Mr. Dombey was in a difficulty. He would
have liked to give him some explanation involv-
ing the terms circulating-medium, currency, de-
preciation of currency, paper, bullion, rates of
exchange, value of precious metals in the mar-
ket, and so forth; but looking down at the little
chair, and seeing what a long way down it was,
he answered; "Gold, and silver, and copper.
Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know what
they are?"
"Oh yes, I know what they are," said Paul.
"I don't mean that, Papa. I mean what's
money after all."
Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as
he turned it up again towards his father's!
"What is money after all?" said Mr. Dombey,
backing his chair a little, that he might the
better gaze in sheer amazement at the pre-
sumptuous atom that propounded such an in-
quiry.
"I mean, Papa, what can it do?" returned
Paul, folding his arms (they were hardly long
enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up
at him, and at the fire, and up at him again.
Mr. Dombey drew his chair back to its former
place, and patted him on the head. "You'll
know better by-and-bye, my man," he said.
Money, Paul, can do anything." He took hold
of the little hand, and beat it softly against one
of his own, as he said so.
But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could,
and rubbing it gently to and fro on the elbow
of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm, and
he were sharpening it-and looking at the fire
again, as though the fire had been his adviser
and prompter-repeated, after a short pause:
Anything, Papa?"
“Yes. Anything-almost," said Mr. Dombey.
Anything means everything, don't it, Papa?"
asked his son: not observing, or possibly not
understanding, the qualification.
"It includes it: yes," said Mr. Dombey.
66
Why didn't money save me my Mamma?"
returned the child. It isn't cruel, is it?"
"Cruel!" said Mr. Dombey, settling his neck-
cloth, and seeming to resent the idea. No.
A good thing can't be cruel."
(6
If it's a good thing, and can do anything,"
said the little fellow, thoughtfully, as he looked
back at the fire, "I wonder why it didn't save
me my Mamma?”
MORNING
pounded to him how that money, though a very
potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any ac-
count whatever, could not keep people alive
whose time was come to die; and how that we
must all die, unfortunately, even in the City,
though we were never so rich. But how that
money caused us to be honored, feared, re-
spected, courted, and admired, and made us
powerful and glorious in the eyes of all men
and how that it could, very often, even keep off
death, for a long time together. How, for ex-
ample, it had secured to his Mamma the services
of Mr. Pilkins, by which he, Paul, had often
profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor
Parker Peps, whom he had never known. And
how it could do all that could be done. This,
with more to the same purpose, Mr. Dombey
instilled into the mind of his son, who listened
attentively, and seemed to understand the
greater part of what was said to him.
"It can't make me strong and quite well,
either, Papa; can it?" asked Paul, after a short
silence, rubbing his tiny hands.
"Why, you are strong and quite well," re-
turned Mr. Dombey. "Are you not?"
Oh! the age of the face that was turned up
again, with an expression, half of melancholy,
half of slyness, on it!
"You are as strong and well as such little
people usually are? Eh?" said Mr. Dombey.
"Florence is older than I am, but I'm not as
strong and well as Florence, I know," returned
the child; "but I believe that when Florence
was as little as me, she could play a great deal
longer at a time without tiring herself. I am so
tired sometimes," said Little Paul, warming his
hands, and looking in between the bars of the
grate, as if some ghostly puppet-show were per-
forming there, "and my bones ache so (Wickam
says it's my bones), that I don't know what to
do."
Aye! But that's at night," said Mr. Dom-
bey, drawing his own chair closer to his son's,
and laying his hand gently on his back; "little
people should be tired at night, for then they
sleep well."
"Oh, it's not at night, Papa," returned the
child, "it's in the day; and I lie down in Flor-
ence's lap, and she sings to me. At night I
dream about such cu-ri-ous things!"
And he went on, warming his hands again,
and thinking about them, like an old man or a
young goblin.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 8.
MONEY-LENDER.
"Yours, JOSHUA SMALLWEED.'- What dc
you make of that, Phil?"
Mischief, guv'ner."
Why?"
66
He didn't ask the question of his father this Guv'ner," says Phil, with exceeding gravity,
time. Perhaps he had seen, with a child's quick-"he's a leech in his dispositions, he's a screw
ness, that it had already made his father uncom- and a wice in his action, a snake in his twist-
fortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as ings, and a lobster in his claws."
if it were quite an old one to him, and had trou-
bled him very much; and sat with his chin rest-
ing on his hand, still cogitating and looking for
an explanation in the fire.
Mr. Dombey having recovered from his sur-
prise, not to say his alarm (for it was the very
first occasion on which the child had ever
broached the subject of his mother to him,
though he had had him sitting by his side, in
this same manner, evening after evening), ex-
MORNING.
Bleak House, Chap. 34.
Morning drew on apace. The air became
more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue-
the death of night, rather than the birth of day—
glimmered faintly in the sky.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 28.
The day came creeping on, halting and whim
MORNING
315
pering and shivering, and wrapped in patches of
cloud and rags of mist, like a beggar.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 43.
The great black velvet pall, shot with grey.
Great Expectations, Chap. 2.
MORNING—A damp.
The next was a very unpropitious morning
for a journey-muggy, damp, and drizzly. The
horses in the stages that were going out, and
had come through the city, were smoking so,
that the outside passengers were invisible. The
newspaper sellers looked moist, and smelt
mouldy; the wet ran off the hats of the orange-
venders as they thrust their heads into the coach
windows, and diluted the insides in a refreshing
manner. The Jews with the fifty-bladed pen-
knives shut them up in despair; the men with
the pocket-books made pocket-books of them.
Watch-guards and toasting-forks were alike at a
discount, and pencil-cases and sponge were a
drug in the market.-Pickwick, Chap. 35.
MORNING—A dismal.
He was up before day-break, and came upon
the Park with the morning, which was clad in
the least engaging of the three hundred and
sixty-five dresses in the wardrobe of the year.
It was raw, damp, dark, and dismal; the clouds
were as muddy as the ground; and the short
perspective of every street and avenue, was
closed up by the mist as by a filthy curtain
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 14.
The day comes like a phantom. Cold, color-
less, and vague, it sends a warning streak before
it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, “Look
what I am bringing, you who watch there!"
Bleak House, Chap. 58.
MORNING-A fickle Spring.
It was on one of those mornings, common in
early spring, when the year, fickle and change-
able in its youth, like all other created things, is
undecided whether to step backward into winter
or forward into summer, and in its uncertainty
inclines now to the one and now to the other,
and now to both at once-wooing summer, in
the sunshine, and lingering still with winter in
the shade-it was, in short, on one of those
mornings, when it is hot and cold, wet and dry,
bright and lowering, sad and cheerful, withering
and genial, in the compass of one short hour.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 10.
MORNING-A foggy Winter.
It was a cold, dry, foggy morning in early
spring. A few meagre shadows flitted to and
fro in the misty streets, and occasionally there
loomed through the dull vapor, the heavy outline
of some hackney-coach wending homewards,
which, drawing slowly nearer, rolled jangling
by, scattering the thin crust of frost from its
whitened roof, and soon was lost again in the
cioud. At intervals were heard the tread of
slipshod feet, and the chilly cry of the poor
sweep as he crept, shivering, to his early toil;
the heavy footfall of the official watcher of the
night, pacing slowly up and down, and cursing
the tardy hours that still intervened between
him and sleep; the rumbling of ponderous
carts and wagons; the roll of the lighter vehi-
MORNING
cles which carried buyers and sellers to the
different markets; the sound of ineffectual
knocking at the doors of heavy sleepers-all
these noises fell upon the ear from time to time,
but all seemed muffled by the fog, and to be ren-
dered almost as indistinct to the ear as was
every object to the sight. The sluggish dark-
ness thickened as the day came on; and those
who had the courage to rise and peep at the
gloomy street from their curtained windows,
crept back to bed again, and coiled themselves
up to sleep.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22.
MORNING-A gloomy.
The morning which broke upon Mr. Pick-
wick's sight. at eight o'clock, was not at all cal-
culated to elevate his spirits, or to lessen the de
pression which the unlooked-for result of his
embassy inspired. The sky was dark and
gloomy, the air was damp and raw, the streets
were wet and sloppy. The smoke hung slug-
gishly above the chimney-tops as if it lacked the
courage to rise, and the rain came slowly and
doggedly down, as if it had not even the spirit
to pour. A game-cock in the stable-yard, de-
prived of every spark of his accustomed anima-
tion, balanced himself dismally on one leg in a
corner; a donkey, moping with drooping head
under the narrow roof of an outhouse, appeared
from his meditative and miserable countenance
to be contemplating suicide. In the street, um-
brellas were the only things to be seen, and the
clicking of pattens and splashing of rain-drops
were the only sounds to be heard.
MORNING-A Summer.
Pickwick, Chap. 51.
"It was a bright and sunny morning in the
pleasant time of summer, when one of those
black monks emerged from the abbey portal,
and bent his steps towards the house of the fair
sisters. Heaven above was blue, and earth be-
neath was green; the river glistened like a path
of diamonds in the sun; the birds poured forth
their songs from the shady trees; the lark soared
high above the waving corn; and the deep buzz
of insects filled the air."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6.
MORNING-A Winter.
How well I recollect the kind of day it was!
I smell the fog that hung about the place;
I see
the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my
rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look
along the dim perspective of the school-room,
with a sputtering candle here and there to light
up the foggy morning, and the breath of the
boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as
they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet
upon the floor.—David Copperfield, Chap. 9.
MORNING-An early Autumn.
It was a fine morning-so fine that you would
scarcely have believed that the few months of an
English summer had yet flown by. Hedges;
fields, and trees, hill and moorland, presented
to the eye their ever-varying shades of deep
rich green; scarce a leaf had fallen, scarce a
sprinkle of yellow mingled with the hues of
summer, warned you that autumn had begun.
The sky was cloudless; the sun shone out
bright and warm; the songs of birds, and hum.
of myriads of summer insects, filled the air ¡
MORNING
318
and the cottage gardens, crowded with flowers
of every rich and beautiful tint, sparkled, in the
heavy dew, like beds of glittering jewels.
Everything bore the stamp of summer, and
none of its beautiful colors had yet faded from
the die.-Pickwick, Chap. 19.
MORNING-In London.
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
air 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 buildings, which through-
out the day are swarming with life and bustle,
that is very impressive.
MORNING
Numbers of men and women (principally the lat
ter), carrying upon their heads heavy baskets of
fruit, toil down the park side of Piccadilly, 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.
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
boisterous mirth contrasting forcibly with the de-
meanor of the little sweep, who, having knocked
and rung till his arm aches, and being interdicted
by a merciful legislature from endangering 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 lead-
The last drunken man who shall find his way ing to it, are thronged with carts of all sorts,
home before sun-light, has just staggered heavily sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering
along, roaring out the burden of the drinking-wagon, with its four stout horses, to the jing-
song of the previous night: the last houseless
vagrant whom penury and police have left in 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 im-
parted to them, cold and lifeless as they look in
the grey, sombre light of daybreak. The coach-
stands in the larger thoroughfares are de-
serted the night-houses are closed; and the
chosen promenades of profligate misery are
empty.
An occasional policeman may alone be seen
at the street-corners, listlessly gazing on the de-
serted 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 partially-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 rush-light, 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 habi-
tation.
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 impa-
tiently urging on his tired horses, or vainly en-
deavoring to awaken the boy, who, luxuriously
stretched on the top of the fruit-baskets, forgets,
in happy oblivion, his long-cherished curiosity to
behold the wonders of London.
Rough, sleepy-looking animals of strange ap-
pearance, something between ostlers and hack-
ney-coachmen, hegin 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.
ling costermonger's cart, with its consumptive
donkey. The pavement is already strewed with
decayed cabbage-leaves, broken haybands, and all
the indescribable litter of a vegetable market ;
men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing
boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen ex-
patiating on the excellence of their pastry, and
donkeys braying. These and a hundred other
sounds form a compound discordant enough to a
Londoner's ears, and remarkably disagreeable to
those of country gentlemen who are sleeping at
the Hummums for the first time.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 1.
MORNING-In the country.
The sun shone from out the clear blue sky,
the water sparkled beneath his rays, and the
trees looked greener, and the flowers more gay,
beneath his cheering influence. The water rip-
pled on, with a pleasant sound; the trees rustled
in the light wind that murmured among their
leaves; the birds sang upon the boughs; and the
lark carolled on high her welcome to the morn-
ing. Yes, it was morning: the bright, balmy morn
ing of summer; the minutest leaf, the smallest
blade of grass, was instinct with life. The ant
crept forth to her daily toil, the butterfly flut-
tered and basked in the warm rays of the sun;
myriads of insects spread their transparent wings,
and revelled in their brief but happy existence.
Man walked forth, elated with the scene; and
all was brightness and splendor.
MORNING-Early.
Pickwick, Chap. 29.
No day yet in the sky, but there was day in
the resounding stones of the streets; in the wag-
ons, carts and coaches; in the workers going
to various occupations; in the opening of early
shops; in the traffic at markets; in the stir of the
river-side. There was coming day in the flaring
lights, with a feebler color in them than they
would have had at another time; coming day in
the increased sharpness of the air, and the ghast-
ly dying of the night.
Little Dorrit, Bɔk I., Chap. 14.
MORNING-Sunshine.
The white face of the winter day came slug
gishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shad

BAKER
THE
RISING
SUN
George bruksbank
MORNING IN LONDON.
316
MORNING
owy ships in the river slowly changed to black
substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern
marshes, behind dark masts and yards, seemed
filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on
fire.-Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 6.
MORNING SUNSHINE-The.
317
A brilliant morning shines on the old city.
Its antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beauti-
ful, with the lusty ivy gleaming in the sun, and
the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes
of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of
birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields,
or, rather, from one great garden of the whole
cultivated island in its yielding-time,-penetrate
into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odor, and
preach the Resurrection and the Life. The
cold stone tombs of centuries ago grow warm:
and flecks of brightness dart into the sternest
marble corners of the building, fluttering there
like wings.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 23.
MOTHER
The moon had gone down, and a mist crept
along the banks of the river, seen through which
the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water
was the ghost of water. This earth looked
spectral, and so did the pale stars; while the cold
eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or color,
with the eye of the firmament quenched, might
have been likened to the stare of the dead.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 7.
MORNING-Winter.
Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon
brightened, the darkness faded, the sun rose red
and glorious, and the chimney-stacks and gables
of the ancient building gleamed in the clear air,
which turned the smoke and vapor of the city
into a cloud of gold. The very sundial in his
shady corner, where the wind was used to spin
with such un-windy constancy, shook off the
finer particles of snow that had accumulated on
his dull old face in the night, and looked out at
[The last beautiful thought written by DICKENS two round him. Doubtless some blind groping of the
the little white wreaths eddying round and
hours before his death.]
MORNING-The break of day.
The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the
bridge listening to the water as it splashed the
river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the pic-
turesque 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.
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 9.
MORNING—The time for exertion.
morning made its way down into the forgotten
crypt so cold and earthy, where the Norman
arches were half buried in the ground, and stir-
red the dull sap in the lazy vegetation hanging
to the walls, and quickened the slow principle
of life within the little world of wonderful and
delicate creation which existed there, with some
faint knowledge that the sun was up.
Haunted Man, Chap. 3.
MOTHER-Duty to a.
"See there, my boy," says George, very gently
smoothing the mother's hair with his hand,
"there's a good loving forehead for you! All
bright with love of you, my boy. A little
touched by the sun and weather, through fol-
lowing your father about and taking care of you,
but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a
Mr. Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its
wooden material lies, the highest approbation
and acquiescence.
"The time will come, my boy," pursues the
trooper, "when this hair of your mother's will
be grey, and this forehead all crossed and re-
crossed with wrinkles-and a fine old lady she'll
be then. Take care, while you are young, that
you can think in those days, 'I never whitened a
hair of her dear head-I never marked a sor-
rowful line in her face!' For of all the many
Although, to restless and ardent minds, morn-
ing may be the fitting season for exertion and
activity, it is not always at that time that hope is
strongest or the spirit most sanguine and buoy-tree."
ant. In trying and doubtful positions, youth,
custom, a steady contemplation of the difficulties
which surround us, and a familiarity with them,
imperceptibly diminish our apprehensions and
beget comparative indifference, if not a vague
and reckless confidence in some relief the means
or nature of which we care not to foresee. But
when we come, fresh, upon such things in the
morning, with that dark and silent gap between
us and yesterday; with every link in the brittle
chain of hope, to rivet afresh; our hot enthusi-
asm subdued, and cool, calm reason substituted
in its stead; doubt and misgiving revive. As
the traveller sees farthest by day, and becomes
aware of rugged mountains and trackless plains
which the friendly darkness had shrouded from
his sight and mind together, so, the wayfarer in
the toilsome path of human life, sees, with each
returning sun, some new obstacle to surmount,
some new height to be attained. Distances
stretch out before him which, last night, were
scarcely taken into account, and the light which
gilds all nature with its cheerful beams, seems
but to shine upon the weary obstacles that yet
lie strewn between him and the grave.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 53.
MORNING-The mist of the.
Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir-Mill
Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull
light in the east that was not the light of night.
|
things that you can think of when you are a
man, you had better have that by you, Wool-
wich!"-Bleak House, Chap. 34.
MOTHER-Her pride in her children.
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it
cannot be the pride of a mother in her children,
for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues
faith and hope.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 43.
MOTHERS-After marriage.
"It's very much to be wished that some
mothers would leave their daughters alone after
marriage, and not be so violently affectionate
They seem to think the only return that
can be made them for bringing an unfortunate
young woman into the world-God bless my
soul, as if she asked to be brought, or wanted
to come is full liberty to worry her out of it
again.”—David Copperfield, Chap. 45.
MOTHER
MOTHER-Love of a.
818
"There's such a difference between a father
and a mother, sir,” said Rob, after faltering for
á moment. "He couldn't hardly believe yet
that I was going to do better-though I know
he'd try to; but a mother-she always believes
what's good, sir; or at least I know my mother
does, God bless her!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 22.
MOTHER—Mrs. Toots a.
But here is Mr. Toots descending on the Mid-
shipman, with violent rapidity, and Mr. Toots's
face is very red as he bursts into the little
parlor.
Captain Gills," says Mr. Toots, "and Mr.
Sols, I am happy to inform you that Mrs. Toots
has had an increase to her family."
"And it does her credit!" cries the captain.
I give you joy, Mr. Toots!" says old Sol.
Thank'ee," chuckles Mr. Toots, "I'm very
much obliged to you. I knew that you'd be
glad to hear, and so I came down myself. We're
positively getting on, you know. There's Flor-
ence, and Susan, and now here's another little
stranger."
"
A female stranger?" inquires the captain.
"Yes, Captain Gills," says Mr. Toots, "and
I'm glad of it. The oftener we can repeat that
most extraordinary woman, my opinion is, the
better !"
MURDERER
Italy. But their fierce, savage nature was not
to be easily constrained, and they fought with
every limb of the wood; whirling it round and
round, stripping its bark away, dashing it against
pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and
roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it
back again from the bank with long, stout poles.
Alas concurrent streams of time and water car-
ried me down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely
clear day, to the Lausanne shore of the Lake of
Geneva, where I stood looking at the bright
blue water, the flushed white mountains oppo-
site, and the boats at my feet with their furled
Mediterranean sails, showing like enormous
magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is
now in my hand.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 7.
MOURNING GARB-The chilling influ-
ence of.
Kate might have said that mourning is some-
times the coldest wear which mortals can as-
sume; that it not only chills the breasts of those
it clothes, but extending its influence to summer
friends, freezes up their sources of good-will and
kindness; and withering all the buds of prom-
ise they once so liberally put forth, leaves noth-
ing but bared and rotten hearts exposed. There
are few who have lost a friend or relative con-
stituting in life their sole dependence, who have
not keenly felt this chilling influence of their
"Stand by!" says the Captain, turning to the sable garb. She had felt it acutely, and feeling
old case-bottle with no throat-for it is evening, it at the moment, could not quite restrain her
and the Midshipman's usual moderate provision | tears.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 17.
of pipes and glasses is on the board.
to her, and may she have ever so many more!"
Dombey and Son, Chap. 62.
MOTHER-A noun of multitude.
"Here's
MRS. MACSTINGER AND
*
CUTTLE.
*
*
*
CAPTAIN
*
In the meantime, Mrs. MacStinger, who never
entered upon any action of importance without
It then appeared that she had used the word, previously inverting Alexander MacStinger, to
not in its legal or business acceptation, when it bring him within the range of a brisk battery of
merely expresses an individual, but as a noun slaps, and then sitting him down to cool as the
of multitude, or signifying many; for Miss Tox reader first beheld him, performed that solemn
escorted a plump, rosy-cheeked, wholesome, ap-rite, as if on this occasion it were a sacrifice to
ple-faced young woman, with an infant in her the Furies.
arms; a younger woman not so plump, but ap-
ple-faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced "Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle!" said
child in each hand; another plump and also Mrs. MacStinger, making her chin rigid, and
apple-faced boy who walked by himself; and shaking it in unison with what, but for the
finally, a plump and apple-faced man, who car-weakness of her sex, might be described as her
ried in his arms another plump and apple-faced fist. Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle, do
boy, whom he stood down on the floor, and ad- you dare to look me in the face, and not be
monished, in a husky whisper, to "kitch hold struck down in the herth!"
of his brother Johnny."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 2.
MOTHERS-The virtues of.
I think it must be somewhere written that the
virtues of the mothers shall, occasionally, be
visited on the children, as well as the sins of the
fathers.-Bleak House, Chap. 17.
MOUNTAINS-Water among the.
Commend me to the beautiful waters among
these mountains! Though I was not of their
mind, they being inveterately bent on getting
down into the level country, and I ardently de-
siring to linger where I was. What desperate
leaps they took! what dark abysses they plunged
into! what rocks they wore away! what echoes
they invoked! In one part where I went they
were pressed into the service of carrying wood
down, to be burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in
"
The Captain, who looked anything but dar-
ing, feebly muttered "Stand by!"
*
*
*
*
*
"And he runs awa-a-a-ay!" cried Mrs. Mac-
Stinger, with a lengthening out of the last sylla
ble that made the unfortunate Captain regard
himself as the meanest of men;
"and keeps
away a twelvemonth! From a woman! Sitch
is his conscience! He hasn't the courage to
meet her hi-i-i-igh;" long syllable again; "but
steals away like a felion. Why, if that baby of
mine,” said Mrs. MacStinger, with sudden ra-
pidity, "was to offer to go and steal away, I'd
do my duty as a mother by him, till he was cov-
ered with wales."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 39.
MURDERER-Death of Sikes.
"Damn you!” cried the desperate ruffran,
throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd
"Do your worst! I'll cheat you yet!"

心​豐
​חושות
SIKES'S LAST CHANCE.
318
MURDERER
819
Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mor-
tal ears, none could exceed the cry of the infuri-
ated throng. Some shouted to those who were
nearest to set the house on fire; others roared
to the officers to shoot him dead. Among them
all, none showed such fury as the man on horse-
back, who, throwing himself out of the saddle,
and bursting through the crowd as if he were
parting water, cried, beneath the window, in a
voice that rose above all others, "Twenty guin-
eas to the man who brings a ladder!"
The nearest voices took up the cry, and hun-
dreds echoed it. Some called for ladders, some
for sledge-hammers; some ran with torches to
and fro as if to seek them, and still came back
and roared again; some spent their breath in
impotent curses and execrations; some pressed
forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus im-
peded the progress of those below; some among |
the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-
spout and crevices in the wall; and all waved
to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field
of corn moved by an angry wind: and joined
from time to time in one loud furious roar.
"The tide,” cried the murderer, as he stag-
gered back into the room, and shut the faces
out, “the tide was in as I came up. Give me a
rope, a long rope. They're all in front. I may
drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that
way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more
murders and kill myself."
The panic-stricken men pointed to where such
articles were kept; the murderer, hastily se-
lecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried
up to the housetop.
All the windows in the rear of the house had
been long ago bricked up, except one small trap
in the room where the boy was locked, and that
was too small even for the passage of his body.
But, from this aperture, he had never ceased to
call on those without to guard the back; and
thus when the murderer emerged at last on the
housetop by the door in the roof, a loud shout
proclaimed the fact to those in front, who im-
mediately began to pour round, pressing upon
each other in one unbroken stream.
He planted a board which he had carried up
with him for the purpose, so firmly against the
door that it must be matter of great difficulty to
open it from the inside; and creeping over the
tiles, looked over the low parapet.
The water was out, and the ditch a bed of
mud.
MURDERER
every house-top. Each little bridge (and there
were three in sight) bent beneath the weigh' of
the crowd upon it. Still the current poured on
to find some nook or hole from which to vent
their shouts, and only for an instant see the
wretch.
"They have him now," cried a man on the
nearest bridge. "Hurrah!"
The crowd grew light with uncovered heads;
and again the shouts uprose.
"I will give fifty pounds," cried an old gen-
tleman from the same quarter, "to the man who
takes him alive. I will remain here till he comes
to ask me for it.”
There was another roar. At this moment the
word was passed among the crowd that the door
was forced at last, and that he who had first
called for the ladder had mounted into the
room. The stream abruptly turned, as this in-
telligence ran from mouth to mouth; and the
people at the windows, seeing those upon the
bridges pouring back, quitted their stations, and
running into the street, joined the concourse
that now thronged pell-mell to the spot they
had left: each man crushing and striving with
his neighbor, and all panting with impatience
to get near the door, and look upon the criminal
as the officers brought him out. The cries and
shrieks of those wn were pressed almost to
suffocation, or trampled down and trodden un-
der foot in the confusion, were dreadful; the
narrow ways were completely blocked up; and
at this time, between the rush of some to regain
the space in front of the house, and the unavail-
ing struggles of others to extricate themselves
from the mass, the immediate attention was dis-
tracted from the murderer, although the univer-
sal eagerness for his capture was, if possible,
increased.
The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quell-
ed by the ferocity of the crowd, and the impos-
sibility of escape; but seeing this sudden
change with no less rapidity than it had oc-
curred, he sprang upon his feet, determined to
make one last effort for his life by dropping
into the ditch, and, at the risk of being stifled,
endeavoring to creep away in the darkness and
confusion.
Roused into new strength and energy, and
stimulated by the noise within the house, which
announced that an entrance had really been
effected, he set his foot against the stack of
chimneys, fastened one end of the rope tightly
and firmly round it, and with the other made a
strong running noose by the aid of his hands
and teeth almost in a second. He could let
himself down by the cord to within a less dis-
tance of the ground than his own height, and
had his knife ready in his hand to cut it then
and drop.
The crowd had been hushed during these few
moments, watching his motions and doubtful of
his purpose, but the instant they perceived it
and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of
triumphant execration to which all their pre-
vious shouting had been whispers. Again and
again it rose. Those who were at too great a
distance to know its meaning, took up the At the very instant when he brought the loop
sound it echoed and reëchoed: it seemed as over his head previous to slipping it beneath his
though the whole city had poured its popula-arm-pits, and when the old gentleman before men-
tion out to curse him.
On pressed the people from the front-on,
on, on, in a strong struggling current of angry
faces, with here and there a glaring torch to
light them up, and show them out in all their
wrath and passion. The houses on the opposite
side of the ditch had been entered by the mob;
sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily out; there
were tiers and tiers of faces in every window;
and cluster upon cluster of people clinging to
tioned (who had clung so tight to the railing of
the bridge as to resist the force of the crowd,
and retain his position) earnestly warned those
about him that the man was about to lower him-
self down-at that very instant the murderer,
looking behind him on the roof, threw his arms
above his head, and uttered a yell of terror.
"The eyes again !" he cried, in an unearthly
screech.
Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost
MURDERER
820
his balance and tumbled over the para-
pet. The noose was at his neck. It ran up
with his weight, tight as a bow-string, and swift
as the arrow it speeds. He fell for five-and-
thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific
convulsion of the limbs; and there he hung,
with the open knife clinched in his stiffening
hand.
The old chimney quivered with the shock,
but stood it bravely. The murderer swung
lifeless against the wall; and the boy, thrusting
aside the dangling body which obscured his
view, called to the people to come and take
him out, for God's sake.
A dog which had lain concealed till now, ran
backward and forward on the parapet with a
dismal howl, and, collecting himself for a
spring, jumped for the dead man's shoulders.
Missing his aim, he fell into the ditch, turning
completely over as he went; and striking his
head against a stone, dashed out his brains.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 50.
MURDERER-Discovered.
An irrepressible exclamation burst from the
lips of Jonas, as Lewsome entered at the door.
It was not a groan, or a shriek, or a word, but
was wholly unlike any sound that had ever
fallen on the ears of those who heard it, while
at the same time it was the most sharp and ter-
rible expression of what was working in his
guilty breast, that nature could have invented.
He had done murder for this! He had gir-
dled himself about with perils, agonies of mind,
innumerable fears, for this! He had hidden his
secret in the wood; pressed and stamped it
down into the bloody ground; and here it
started up when least expected, miles upon miles
away; known to many; proclaiming itself from
the lips of an old man, who had renewed his
strength and vigor as by a miracle, to give it
voice against him!
*
*
*
*
*
Jonas knew that they were on his heels, and
felt that they were resolute to run him to de-
struction. Inch by inch the ground beneath
him was sliding from his feet; faster and faster
the encircling ruin contracted and contracted
towards himself, its wicked centre, until it should
close in and crush him.
And now he heard the voice of his accom-
plice stating to his face, with every circumstance
of time and place and incident; and openly
proclaiming, with no reserve, suppression, pas-
sion, or concealment, all the truth. The truth,
which nothing would keep down; which blood
would not smother, and earth would not hide;
the truth, whose terrible inspiration seemed to
change dotards into strong men; and on whose
avenging wings, one whom he had supposed to
be at the extremest corner of the earth came
swooping down upon him.
*
*
Nadgett foremost.
*
*
*
Hark! It came on, roaring like a sea! Hawk-
ers burst into the street, crying it up and down;
windows were thrown open that the inhabitants
might hear it; people stopped to listen in the
road and on the pavement; the bells, the same
bells, began to ring; tumbling over one another
in a dance of boisterous joy at the discovery
(that was the sound they had in his distempered
MURDERER
thoughts), and making their airy playground
rock.
"That is the man," said Nadgett. “By the
window!
""
Three others came in, laid hands upon him,
and secured him. It was so quickly done, that
he had not lost sight of the informer's face for
an instant when his wrists were manacled to-
gether.
"Murder," said Nadgett, looking round
on the astonished group. Let no one inter-
fere."
The sounding street repeated Murder; bar-
barous and dreadful Murder; Murder, Murder,
Murder. Rolling on from house to house, and
echoing from stone to stone, until the voices died
away into the distant hum, which seemed to
mutter the same word!
They all stood silent; listening, and gazing in
each other's faces, as the noise passed on.
*
*
*
"How do you know much?"
*
'I have not been watching him so long for
nothing," returned Nadgett. "I never watched
a man so close as I have watched him.”
Another of the phantom forms of this terrific
Truth! Another of the many shapes in which
it started up about him, out of vacancy. This
man, of all men in the world, a spy upon him;
this man, changing his identity: casting off his
shrinking, purblind, unobservant character, and
springing up into a watchful enemy! The dead
man might have come out of his grave, and not
confounded and appalled him more.
The game was up. The race was at an end;
the rope was woven for his neck. If by a mira-
cle, he could escape from this strait, he had but
to turn his face another way, no matter where,
and there would rise some new avenger, front
to front with him; some infant in an hour grown
old, or old man in an hour grown young, or
blind man with his sight restored, or deaf man
with his hearing given him. There was no
chance. He sank down in a heap against the
wall, and never hoped again from that moment.
*
*
*
*
*
He whined, and cried, and cursed, and en-
treated them, and struggled, and submitted, in
the same breath, and had no power to stand.
They got him away and into the coach, where
they put him on a seat; but he soon fell moan-
ing down among the straw at the bottom, and
lay there.
The two men were with him, Slyme being on
the box with the driver; and they let him lie.
Happening to pass a fruiterer's on their way;
the door of which was open, though the shop
was by this time shut; one of them remarked
how faint the peaches smelt.
The other assented at the moment, but pres
ently stooped down in quick alarm, and looked
at the prisoner.
"
Stop the coach!
He has poisoned him-
self! The smell comes from this bottle in his
hand!”
The hand had shut upon it tight. With that
rigidity of grasp with which no living man, in
the full strength and energy of life, can clutch
a prize he has won.
They dragged him out, into the dark street;
but jury, judge, and hangman, could have done
no more, and could do nothing now. Dead
dead, dear!— Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 51.
MURDERER
MURDERER-His fascination.
321
He was aware of their presence, and of the
rage, discomfiture, and despair they brought
along with them; but he thought-of his own
controlling power and direction he thought-of
the one dread question only. When they would
find the body in the wood.
He tried he never left off trying-not to
forget it was there, for that was impossible, but
to forget to weary himself by drawing vivid pic-
tures of it in his fancy: by going softly about it
and about it among the leaves, approaching it
nearer and nearer through a gap in the boughs,
and startling the very flies that were thickly
sprinkled all over it, like heaps of dried cur-
rants. His mind was fixed and fastened on the
discovery, for intelligence of which he listened
intently to every cry and shout; listened when
any one came in, or went out; watched from
the window the people who passed up and down
the street; mistrusted his own looks and words.
And the more his thoughts were set upon the
discovery, the stronger was the fascination which
attracted them to the thing itself, lying alone in
the wood. He was for ever showing and present-
ing it, as it were, to every creature whom he
saw. "Look here! Do you know of this? Is
it found? Do you suspect me?" If he had
been condemned to bear the body in his arms,
and lay it down for recognition at the feet of
every one he met, it could not have been more
constantly with him, or a cause of more monoto-
nous and dismal occupation than it was in this
state of his mind.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 51.
MURDERER-His fears..
The passage way was empty when his mur-
derer's face looked into it. He stole on, to the
door, on tiptoe, as if he dreaded to disturb his
own imaginary rest.
He listened. Not a sound. As he turned
the key with a trembling hand, and pushed the
door softly open with his knee, a monstrous
fear beset his mind.
What if the murdered man were there before
him!
He cast a fearful glance all round. But there
was nothing there.
He went in, locked the door, drew the key
through and through the dust and damp in the
fire-place to sully it again, and hung it up as of
old. He took off his disguise, tied it up in a
bundle ready for carrying away and sinking in
the river before night, and locked it up in a
cupboard. These precautions taken, he un-
dressed, and went to bed.
MURDERER
life and motion, and a world astir, to divide
the attention of Day. It was the eye of Night:
of wakeful, watchful, silent, and attentive Night,
with so much leisure for the observation of his
wicked thoughts, that he dreaded most. There
is no glare in the night. Even Glory shows to
small advantage in the night, upon a crowded
battle-field. How then shows Glory's blood re-
lation, bastard Murder!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 47.
MURDERER-His purpose.
Did no men passing through the dim streets
shrink without knowing why, when he came
stealing up behind them? As he glided on, had
no child in its sleep an indistinct perception of
a guilty shadow falling on its bed, that troubled
its innocent rest? Did no dog howl, and strive
to break its rattling chain, that it might tear
him; no burrowing rat, scenting the work he had
in hand, essay to gnaw a passage after him, that
it might hold a greedy revel at the feast of his
providing? When he looked back, across his
shoulder, was it to see if his quick footsteps still
fell dry upon the dusty pavement, or were already
moist and clogged with the red mire that stained
the naked feet of Cain?
*
*
*
*
*
It is a common fancy that nature seems to
sleep by night. It is a false fancy, as who should
know better than he?
The fishes slumbered in the cold, bright glis-
tening streams and rivers, perhaps ; and the birds
roosted on the branches of the trees; and in
their stalls and pastures beasts were quiet; and
human creatures slept. But what of that, when
the solemn night was watching, when it never
winked, when its darkness watched no less than
its light! The stately trees, the moon and shin-
ing stars, the softly-stirring wind, the over-shad-
owed lane, the broad, bright country-side, they
all kept watch. There was not a blade of grow-
ing grass or corn, but watched; and the quieter
it was, the more intent and fixed its watch upon
him seemed to be.
And yet he slept. Riding on among those
sentinels of God, he slept, and did not change
the purpose of his journey. If he forgot it in
his troubled dreams, it came up steadily, and
woke him. But it never woke him to remorse,
or to abandonment of his design.
*
*
*
*
*
If there be fluids, as we know there are,
which, conscious of a coming wind, or rain, or
frost, will shrink and strive to hide themselves
in their glass arteries; may not that subtle liquor
of the blood perceive by properties within itself,
The raging thirst; the fire that burnt within that hands are raised to waste and spill it; and
him as he lay beneath the clothes; the aug-in the veins of men run cold and dull as his did,
mented horror of the room, when they shut it in that hour?
out from his view; the agony of listening, in
which he paid enforced regard to every sound,
and thought the most unlikely one the prelude
to that knocking which should bring the news;
the starts with which he left his couch, and,
looking in the glass, imagined that his deed
was broadly written in his face; and lying down
and burying himself once more beneath the
blankets, heard his own heart beating Murder,
Murder, Murder, in the bed; what words can
paint tremendous truths like these!
So cold, although the air was warm; so dull,
although the sky was bright: that he rose up,
shivering, from his seat, and hastily resumed his
walk. He checked himself as hastily: undecid-
ed whether to pursue the footpath which was
lonely and retired, or to go back by the road.
He took the footpath.
The glory of the departing sun was on his face.
The music of the birds was in his ears. Sweet
wild-flowers bloomed about him. Thatched
roofs of poor men's homes were in the distance;
and an old gray spire, surmounted by a Cross,
The sun was welcome to him. There were rose up between him and the coming night.
*
*
*
*
*
MURDERER
328
|
MURDERER
He had never read the lesson which these him now-always. He leaned his back against a
things conveyed; he had ever mocked and turned bank, and felt that it stood above him, visibly out
away from it; but, before going down into a hol- against the cold night-sky. He threw himself
low place, he looked round, once, upon the upon the road-on his back upon the road. At
evening prospect, sorrowfully. Then he went his head it stood, silent, erect, and still—a living
down, down, down, into the dell.
gravestone, with its epitaph in blood.
*
*
*
*
*
Let no man talk of murderers escaping jus-
tice, and hint that Providence must sleep. There
were twenty-score of violent deaths in one long
minute of that agony of fear.
The last rays of the sun were shining in,
aslant, making a path of golden light along the
stems and branches in its range, which, even as
he looked, began to die away, yielding gently to There was a shed in a field he passed, that
the twilight that came creeping on. It was so offered a shelter for the night. Before the door
very quiet that the soft and stealthy moss about were three tall poplar-trees, which made it very
the trunks of some old trees, seemed to have dark within; and the wind moaned through
grown out of the silence, and to be its proper them with a dismal wail. He could not walk on
offspring. Those other trees which were subdued till daylight came again; and here he stretched
by blasts of wind in winter-time, had not quite himself close to the wall-to undergo new tor-
tumbled down, but being caught by others, lay | ture.
all bare and scathed across their leafy arms, as For now, a vision came before him, as con
if unwilling to disturb the general repose by stant and more terrible than that from which he
the crash of their fall. Vistas of silence opened had escaped. Those widely staring eyes, so
everywhere, into the heart and innermost recesses lustreless and so glassy, that he had better borne
of the wood; beginning with the likeness of an to see them than think upon them, appeared in
aisle, a cloister, or a ruin open to the sky; then the midst of the darkness; light in themselves,
tangling off into a deep, green, rustling mystery, but giving light to nothing. There were but two,
through which gnarled trunks, and twisted but they were everywhere. If he shut out the
boughs, and ivy-covered stems, and trembling sight, there came the room with every well-
leaves, and bark-stripped bodies of old trees known object-some, indeed, that he would
stretched out at length, were faintly seen in have forgotten, if he had gone over its contents
beautiful confusion.
from memory-each in its accustomed place.
The body was in its place, and its eyes were as
What had he left within the wood, that he he saw them when he stole away. He got up,
sprang out of it, as if it were a hell!
*
*
*
*
*
and rushed into the field without. The figure
was behind him. He re-entered the shed, and
shrank down once more. The eyes were there,
before he had lain himself along.
The body of a murdered man. In one thick
solitary spot, it lay among the last year's leaves
of oak and beech, just as it had fallen headlong
down. Sopping and soaking in among the leaves And here he remained in such terror as none
that formed its pillow; oozing down into the but he can know, trembling in every limb, and
boggy ground, as if to cover itself from human the cold sweat starting from every pore, when
sight; forcing its way between and through the suddenly there arose upon the night-wind the
curling leaves, as if those senseless things re-noise of distant shouting, and the roar of voices
jected and forswore it, and were coiled up in
abhorrence, went a dark, dark stain that dyed
the whole summer night from earth to heaven.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 47.
MURDERER-The phantom of the.
He went on doggedly; but as he left the town
behind him, and plunged into the solitude and
darkness of the road, he felt a dread and awe
creeping upon him which shook him to the core.
Every object before him, substance or shadow,
still or moving, took the semblance of some
fearful thing; but these fears were nothing com-
pared to the sense that haunted him of that morn-
ing's ghastly figure following at his heels. He
could trace its shadow in the gloom, supply the
smallest item of the outline, and note how stiff
and solemn it seemed to stalk along. He could
hear its garments rustling in the leaves; and
every breath of wind came laden with that last
low cry. If he stopped it did the same. If he
ran, it followed-not running too; that would
have been a relief; but like a corpse endowed
with the mere machinery of life, and borne on
one slow melancholy wind that never rose or
fell.
At times he turned, with desperate determina-
tion, resolved to beat this phantom off, though it
should look him dead; but the hair rose on his
head, and his blood stood still: for it had turned
with him and was behind him then. He had kept
before him that morning, but it was behind
mingled in alarm and wonder. Any sound of
men in that lonely place, even though it con-
veyed a real cause of alarm, was something to
him. He regained his strength and energy at
the prospect of personal danger; and, springing
to his feet, rushed into the open air.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 48.
MURDERER-The philosophy of the.
The miserable man whom he had released for
the time, but not for long, went on towards Lon-
don. Bradley was suspicious of every sound he
heard, and of every face he saw, but was under
a spell which very commonly falls upon the shed-
der of blood, and had no suspicion of the real
danger that lurked in his life, and would have it
yet. Riderhood was much in his thoughts—
had never been out of his thoughts since the
night-adventure of their first meeting; but
Riderhood occupied a very different place there,
from the place of pursuer; and Bradley had
been at the pains of devising so many means of
fitting that place to him, and of wedging him
into it, that his mind could not compass the
possibility of his occupying any other. And
this is another spell against which the shedder
of blood forever strives in vain. There are fifty
doors by which discovery may enter. With in-
finite pains and cunning, he double locks and
bars forty-nine of them, and cannot see the
fiftieth standing wide open.
Now, too, was he cursed with a state of mind
MUSIC
823
more wearing and more wearisome than remorse.
He had no remorse, but the evil-doer who can
hold that avenger at bay, cannot escape the
slower torture of incessantly doing the evil
deed again and doing it more efficiently. In
the defensive declarations and pretended con-
fessions of murderers, the pursuing shadow of
this torture may be traced through every lie they
tell. If I had done it as alleged, is it conceiv-
able that I would have made this and this
mistake? If I had done it as alleged, should
I have left that unguarded place which that
false and wicked witness against me so in-
famously deposed to? The state of that wretch
who continually finds the weak spots in his
own crime, and strives to strengthen them when
it is unchangeable, is a state that aggravates
the offence by doing the deed a thousand times
instead of once; but it is a state, too, that
tauntingly visits the offence upon a sullen, un-
repentant nature with its heaviest punishment
every time.
MUSIC
had been in honor of their ashes, it would have
been impossible to surpass the unutterable de-
spair expressed in that one chorus, "Go where
glory waits thee!" It was a requiem, a dirge,
a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of
everything that is sorrowful and hideous in
sound. The flute of the youngest gentleman
was wild and fitful. It came and went in gusts
like the wind. For a long time together he
seemed to have left off, and when it was quite
settled by Mrs. Todgers, and the young ladies,
that, overcome by his feelings, he had retired in
tears, he unexpectedly turned up again at the
very top of the tune, gasping for breath. He
was a tremendous performer. There was no
knowing where to have him: and exactly when
you thought he was doing nothing at all, then
was he doing the very thing that ought to
astonish you most.
There were several of these concerted pieces;
perhaps two or three too many, though that, as
Mrs. Todgers said, was a fault on the right side.
But even then, even at that solemn moment,
when the thrilling sounds may be presumed to
have penetrated into the very depths of his na-
ture, if he had any depths, Jinkins couldn't
leave the youngest gentleman alone. He asked
him distinctly, before the second song began-
as a personal favor too, mark the villain in that
Bradley toiled on, chained heavily to the idea
of his hatred and his vengeance, and thinking
how he might have satiated both in many bet-
ter ways than the way he had taken. The in-
strument might have been better, the spot and
the hour might have been better chosen. To
batter a man down from behind in the dark, on
the brink of a river, was well enough, but he
ought to have been instantly disabled, whereas
he had turned and seized his assailant; and so,
to end it before chance-help came, and to be
rid of him, he had been hurriedly thrown back-
ward into the river before the life was fully
beaten out of him. Now, if it could be done
again, it must not be so done. Supposing his
head had been held down under water for a MUSIC-Vocal-Of Sampson Brass.
while. Supposing the first blow had been truer.
Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he had
been strangled. Suppose this way, that way,
the other way. Suppose anything but getting
unchained from the one idea, for that was in-
exorably impossible.
not to play. Yes; he said so; not to play.
The breathing of the youngest gentleman was
heard through the key-hole of the door. He
didn't play. What vent was a flute for the pas-
sions swelling up within his breast? A trom-
bone would have been a world too mild.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. II.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 7.
MUSIC-A melodious snore.
He had not what may be called a fine ear for
music, but he knew when it had a tranquillizing
influence on his soul; and that was the case
now, for it sounded to him like a melodious
snore.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 31.
MUSIC- A serenade at Todgers'.
The young ladies were at first so much
ed by the news, that they vowed they couldn't
think of going to bed until the serenade was
over. But half an hour of cool waiting so altered
their opinion that they not only went to bed, but
fell asleep; and were, moreover, not ecstatical-
ly charmed to be awakened some time afterward
by certain dulcet strains breaking in upon the
silent watches of the night.
Sampson Brass was no sooner left alone than
he began to write with extreme cheerfulness and
assiduity; humming as he did so. in a voice
that was anything but musical, certain vocal
snatches which appeared to have reference to
the union between Church and State, inasmuch
as they were compounded of the Evening Hymn
and God save the King.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56.
MUSIC-The sympathy of.
The violoncello lying on the sofa between the
two chairs, he took it up, without putting away
the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and
slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for
a long, long time. The expression he commu-
excit-nicated to the instrument at first, though mon-
strously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the
expression he communicated to his own face,
and bestowed upon the empty chair; which was
so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse
to Captain Cuttle's remedy more than once, and
to rub his face with his sleeve. By degrees,
however, the violoncello, in unison with his own
frame of mind, glided melodiously into the Har
It was very affecting, very. Nothing more monious Blacksmith, which he played over and
dismal could have been desired by the most fas-over again, until his ruddy and serene face
tidious taste. The gentleman of a vocal turn
was head mute, or chief mourner; Jinkins took
the bass; and the rest took anything they could
get. The youngest gentleman blew his melan-
choly into a flute. He didn't blow much out
of it, but that was all the better. If the two
Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished
by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade
gleamed like true metal on the anvil of a veri-
table blacksmith. In fine, the violoncello and
the empty chair were the companions of his
bachelorhood until nearly midnight; and when
he took his supper, the violoncello, set up on
end in the sofa corner, big with the latent har-
mony of a whole family full of harmonious
blacksmiths. seemed to ogle the empty chri
MUSIC
824
out of its crooked eyes, with unutterable intel-
ligence.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 58.
A certain skillful action of his fingers as he
hummed some bars, and beat time on the seat
beside him, seemed to denote the musician; and
the extraordinary satisfaction he derived from
humming something very slow and long, which
had no recognizable tune, seemed to denote
that he was a scientific one.
The gentleman was still twirling a theme,
which seemed to go round, and round, and
round, and in, and in, and in, and to involve
itself like a corkscrew twirled upon a table,
without getting any nearer to anything.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 33.
MUSIC-An Overture.
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.-Tales, Chap. 9.
MUSIC-Mrs. Skewton's definition of.
MYSTERY
It was not very long before, in the midst of
the dismal house so wide and dreary, her low
voice in the twilight, slowly and stopping some-
times, touched the old air to which he had so
often listened, with his drooping head upon her
arm. And after that, and when it was quite
dark, a little strain of music trembled in the
room: so softly played and sung, that it was
more like the mournful recollection of what she
had done at his request on that last night, than
the reality repeated. But it was repeated,
often-very often, in the shadowy solitude; and
broken murmurs of the strain still trembled on
the keys, when the sweet voice was hushed in
tears.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 18.
MUSIC-The power of,
At such a time, the Christmas music he had
heard before, began to play. He listened to it
at first, as he had listened in the churchyard;
but presently-it playing still, and being borne
towards him on the night air, in a low, sweet,
melancholy strain-he rose, and stood stretching
his hands about him, as if there were some
friend approaching within his reach, on whom
his desolate touch might rest, yet do no harm
As he did this, his face became less fixed and
wondering; a gentle trembling came upon him;
Undeveloped recollections of a previous state and at last his eyes filled with tears, and he put
of existence.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
his hands before them, and bowed down his
head.
MUSIC-Its associations.
For all that the child observed, and felt, and
thought, that night-the present and the absent;
what was then and what had been-were blend-
ed like the colors in the rainbow, or in the
plumage of rich birds when the sun is shining
on them, or in the softening sky when the same
sun is setting. The many things he had had to
think of lately, passed before him in the music;
not as claiming his attention over again, or as
likely ever more to occupy it, but as peacefully
disposed of and gone. A solitary window,
gazed through years ago, looked out upon an
ocean, miles and miles away; upon its waters,
fancies, busy with him only yesterday, were
hushed and lulled to rest like broken waves.
The same mysterious murmur he had wondered
at, when lying on his couch upon the beach, he
thought he still heard sounding through his
sister's song, and through the hum of voices,
and the tread of feet, and having some part in
the faces flitting by, and even in the heavy gen-
tleness of Mr. Toots, who frequently came up
to shake him by the hand. Through the uni-
versal kindness he still thought he heard it,
speaking to him; and even his old-fashioned
reputation seemed to be allied to it, he knew
not how. Thus little Paul sat musing, listening,
looking on, and dreaming; and was very
happy.
*
*
*
*
*
When they all drew a little away, that Paul
might see her; and when he saw her sitting
there alone, so young, and good, and beautiful,
and kind to him; and heard her thrilling voice,
so natural and sweet, and such a golden link
between him and all his life's love and happi-
ness, rising out of the silence; he turned his
face away and hid his tears. Not, as he told
them when they spoke to him, not that the mu-
sic was too plaintive or too sorrowful, but it was
so dear to him.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 14.
His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble,
had not come back to him; he knew that it was
not restored; he had no passing belief or hope
that it was. But some dumb stir within him
made him capable, again, of being moved by
what was hidden; afar off, in the music. If it
were only that it told him sorrowfully the value
of what he had lost, he thanked Heaven for
it with a fervent gratitude.
Haunted Man, Chap. 3.
MYSTERY—An enjoyable.
For a little knot of smokers and solemn gos-
sips, who had seldom any new topics of discus-
sion, this was a perfect Godsend. Here was a
good, dark-looking mystery progressing under
that very roof-brought home to the fireside as
it were, and enjoyable without the smallest pains
or trouble. It is extraordinary what a zest and
relish it gave to the drink, and how it heightened
the flavor of the tobacco. Every man smoked
his pipe with a face of grave and serious delight,
and looked at his neighbor with a sort of quiet
congratulation. Nay, it was felt to be such a
holiday and special night, that, on the motion
of little Solomon Daisy, every man (including
John himself) put down his sixpence for a can
of flip, which grateful beverage was brewed with
all despatch, and set down in the midst of them
on the brick floor; both that it might simmer
and stew before the fire, and that its fragrant
steam, rising up among them and mixing with
the wreaths of vapor from their pipes, might
shroud them in a delicious atmosphere of their
own, and shut out all the world. The very fur-
niture of the room seemed to mellow and deepen
in its tone: the ceiling and walls looked blacker
and more highly polished, the curtains of a rud-
dier red; the fire burnt clear and high, and the
crickets in the hearth-stone chirped with a more
than wonted satisfaction.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 11.
MYSTERY
MYSTERY-A respectable.
of
Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgment
my good opinion, and I felt about eight years
old. He touched it once more, wishing us a
good journey; and we left him standing on the
pavement, as respectable a mystery as any pyra-
mid in Egypt.-David Copperfield, Chap. 23.
MYSTERY-Captain Cuttle's.
825
The Captain made signals with his hook,
warning him to avoid the subject. Not that
the Captain's signals were calculated to have
proved very comprehensible, however attentively
observed, for, like those Chinese sages who are
said in their conferences to write certain learned
words in the air that are wholly impossible of
pronunciation, the Captain made such waves
and flourishes as nobody without a previous
knowledge of his mystery would have been at
all likely to understand.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 17.
MYSTERY—The charm of.
To surround anything, however monstrous or
ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it
with a secret charm, and power of attraction,
which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests,
false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false
prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceed-
ings in mystery, have always addressed them-
selves at an immense advantage to the popular
credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted
to that resource in gaining and keeping for a
time the upper hand of Truth and Common
Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole
catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and has
been from the creation of the world, a master-
passion. To awaken it, to gratify it by slight
degrees, and yet leave something always in sus-
pense, is to establish the surest hold that can be
had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of
mankind.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 37.
MYSTERY-The power of.
If a man had stood on London Bridge, call-
ing till he was hoarse, upon the passers-by, to
join with Lord George Gordon, although for an
object which no man understood, and which in
that very incident had a charm of its own,-the
probability is, that he might have influenced a
score of people in a month. If all zealous
Protestants had been publicly urged to join an
association for the avowed purpose of singing a
hymn or two occasionally, and hearing some in-
different speeches made, and ultimately of peti-
tioning Parliament not to pass an act abolishing
the penal laws against Roman Catholic priests,
the penalty of perpetual imprisonment de-
nounced against those who educated children in
that persuasion, and the disqualification of all
members of the Romish church to inherit real
property in the United Kingdom by right of
purchase or descent,-matters so far removed
from the business and bosoms of the mass,
might, perhaps, have called together a hundred
people. But when vague rumors got abroad,
that in this Protestant association a secret power
was mustering against the government for un-
defined and mighty purposes; when the air was
filled with whispers of a confederacy among the
Popish powers to degrade and enslave England,
establish an inquisition in London, and turn the
peus of Smithfield market into stakes and cal-
NAME
drons; when terrors and alarms which no man
understood were perpetually broached, both in
and out of Parliament, by one enthusiast who
did not understand himself; and bygone bugbears
which had lain quietly in their graves for cen-
turies, were raised again to haunt the ignorant
and credulous; when all this was done, as it
were, in the dark, and secret invitations to join
the Great Protestant Association in defence of
religion, life, and liberty, were dropped in the
public ways, thrust under the house-doors,
tossed in at windows, and pressed into the hands
of those who trod the streets by night; when
they glared from every wall, and shone on every
post and pillar, so that stocks and stones ap-
peared infected with the common fear, urging
all men to join together blindfold in resistance
of they knew not what, they knew not why :-
then the mania spread indeed, and the body,
still increasing every day, grew forty thousand
strong.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 37.
|
NAME—A sign.
N
They left me, during this time, with a very
nice man, with a very large head of red hair,
and a very small shiny hat upon it, who had got
a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat on, with "Sky-
I
lark" in capital letters across the chest.
thought it was his name; and that as he lived
on board ship, and hadn't a street-door to put
his name on, he put it there instead; but when
I called him Mr. Skylark, he said it meant the
vessel.-David Copperfield, Chap. 2.
NAME-An unchristian.
Peggotty!" repeated Miss Betsey, with
some indignation. "Do you mean to say, child,
that any human being has gone into a Christian
church, and got herself named Peggotty?"
David Copperfield, Chap. 1.
NAME-Betsey Trotwood's objection to a.
"You remember my aunt, Peggotty?" said I.
"For the love of goodness, child," exclaimed
my aunt, "don't call the woman by that South
Sea Island name! If she married and got rid of
it, which was the best thing she could do, why
don't you give her the benefit of the change?
What's your name now,-P?" said my aunt,
as a compromise for the obnoxious appellation.
Barkis, ma'am," said Peggotty, with a curt-
"
sey.
"" It
"Well! That's human," said my aunt.
sounds less as if you wanted a Missionary. How
d'ye do, Barkis? I hope you're well?"
David Copperfield, Chap. 34.
NAME-A morsel of grammar.
"Oh, what an agreeable man he is!" cried
Feggotty, holding up her hands. "Then there's
the sea; and the boats and ships; and the
fishermen; and the beach; and Am to play
with-
Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned
in my first chapter; but she spoke of him as a
morsel of English Grammar.
David Copperfield, Chap. 2.
NAME
NAME-An undesirable.
326
Babley-Mr. Richard Babley-that's the
gentleman's true name.
"But don't you call him by it, whatever you
do. He can't bear his name.
That's a pecu-
liarity of his. Though I don't know that it's
much of a peculiarity, either; for he has been
ill-used enough, by some that bear it, to have a
mortal antipathy for it. Heaven knows. Mr.
Dick is his name here, and everywhere else,
now—if he ever went anywhere else, which he
don't. So take care, child, you don't call him
anything but Mr. Dick."
NAME-A good.
David Copperfield, Chap. 14.
NAVY YARD
Squeers, solemnly, "is more easier conceived
than described. Oh what a blessed thing, sir,
to be in a state of natur!"
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 45.
NATURE-The child's love of.
So, he played with that child, the whole day
long, and they were very merry. The sky was
so blue, the sun was so bright, the water was so
sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers
were so lovely, and they heard such singing-
birds and saw so many butterflies, that every-
thing was beautiful. This was in fine weather.
When it rained, they loved to watch the falling
drops, and to smell the fresh scents. When it
blew, it was delightful to listen to the wind, and
Swidge' is the appellation by which they fancy what it said, as it came rushing from its
speak of Mrs. William in general, among them-home-where was that, they wondered!-whist-
selves, I'm told; but that's what I say, sir. Bet-ling and howling, driving the clouds before it,
ter be called ever so far out of your name, if it's bending the trees, rumbling in the chimneys,
done in real liking, than have it made ever so shaking the house, and making the sea roar in
much of, and not cared about! What's a name fury. But when it snowed, that was best of all;
for? To know a person by. If Mrs. William for they liked nothing so well as to look up at
is known by something better than her name the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down
-I allude to Mrs. William's qualities and dis- from the breasts of millions of white birds ; and
position-never mind her name, though it is to see how smooth and deep the drift was; and
Swidger, by rights."-Haunted Man, Chap. 1. to listen to the hush upon the paths and roads.
The Child's Story. Reprinted Pieces.
NAPOLEONIC FACES-In art.
As usually happens in almost any collection
of paintings, of any sort, in Italy, where there
are many heads, there is, in one of them, a strik-
ing accidental likeness of Napoleon. At one
time, I used to please my fancy with the specu-
lation whether these old painters, at their work,
had a foreboding knowledge of the man who
would one day arise to wreak such destruction
upon art; whose soldiers would make targets of
great pictures, and stable their horses among
triumphs of architecture. But the same Corsi-
can face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at
this day, that a more commonplace solution of
the coincidence is unavoidable.
Pictures from Italy.
NATURE-Not responsible for human er-
rors.
'Men fall into the very common mistake, of
charging upon Nature matters with which she has
not the smallest connection, and for which she
is in no way responsible. Men talk of nature
as an abstract thing, and lose sight of what is
natural while they do so. Here is a poor lad
who has never felt a parent's care, who has
scarcely known anything all his life but suffering
and sorrow, presented to a man who he is told
is his father, and whose first act is to signify his
intention of putting an end to his short term of
happiness, of consigning him to his old fate, and
taking him from the only friend he has ever had
-which is yourself. If Nature, in such a case,
put into that lad's breast but one secret prompt.
ing which urged him towards his father and
away from you, she would be a liar and an
idiot."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 45.
NATURE-Mr. Squeers' opinion of.
"It only shows what Natur is, sir," said Mr.
Squeers. "She's a rum 'un, is Natur."
"She is a holy thing, sir," remarked Snawley.
"I believe you," added Mr. Squeers, with a
moral sigh. "I should like to know how we
should ever get on without her. Natur,” said Mr.
NAVY YARD-Ship-building in a.
My good opinion of the Yard's retiring char-
acter was not dashed by nearer approach. It re-
sounded with the noise of hammers beating upon
iron; and the great sheds or slips under which
the mighty men-of-war are built loomed business-
like when contemplated from the opposite side
of the river. For all that, however, the Yard
made no display, but kept itself snug under hill-
sides of cornfields, hop gardens, and orchards;
its great chimneys smoking with a quiet-almost
a lazy-air, like giants smoking tobacco; and the
great Shears moored off it, looking meekly and
inoffensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe
of the machinery creation. The store of cannon
on the neighboring gun-wharf had an innocent,
toy-like appearance, and the one red-coated
sentry on duty over them was a mere toy figure,
with a clock-work movement. As the hot sun-
light sparkled on him, he might have passed for
the identical little man who had the little gun,
and whose bullets they were made of lead, lead,
lead.
Crossing the river, and landing at the Stairs,
where a drift of chips and weed had been trying
to land before me, and had not succeeded, but had
got into a corner instead, I found the very street-
posts to be cannon, and the architectural orna-
ments to be shells. And so I came to the Yard,
which was shut up tight and strong with great
folded gates, like an enormous patent safe. These
gates devouring me, I became digested into the
Yard; and it had, at first, a clean-swept, holiday
air, as if it had given over work till next war-
time. Though, indeed, a quantity of hemp for
rope was tumbling out of storehouses, even there,
which would hardly be lying like so much hay on
the white stones if the Yard was as placid as it
pretended.
Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash,
BANG, Clink, BANG, Dong, BANG, Clatter, Bang,
BANG, BANG! What on earth is this! This is,
or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armor-plated
ship. Twelve hundred men are working at her
NAVY-YARD
827
NAVY-YARD
Mon-
How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles
can ever be held by such comparatively little
anchors as those intended for her, and lying
near her here, is a mystery of seamanship which
I will refer to the wise boy. For my own part,
I should as soon have thought of tethering an
elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopota-
mus in the Zoological Gardens to my shirt-pin.
Yonder, in the river, alongside a hulk, lie two of
this ship's hollow iron masts. They are large
enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her
other appliances. I wonder why only her an
chors look small.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 24.
now: twelve hundred men working on stages gles out, hot from the monster's crunching toorn,
over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, and it is done. "Dutiful monster, observe this
under her keel, between her decks, down in her other mass of iron. It is required to be parea
hold, within her and without, crawling and creep-away, according to this delicately lessening and
ing into the finest curves of her lines, wherever arbitrary line, which please to look at.'
it is possible for men to twist. Twelve hundred ster (who has been in a revery) brings down its
hammerers, measurers, calkers, armorers, forgers, blunt head, and, much in the manner of Doctor
smiths, ship-wrights; twelve hundred dingers, Johnson, closely looks along the line-very
clashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers, closely, being somewhat near-sighted. "I don't
bangers, bangers! Yet all this stupendous uproar particularly want to do it; but if it must be
around the rising Achilles is as nothing to the done-!" Monster takes another near-sighted
reverberations with which the perfected Achilles look, takes aim, and the tortured piece writhes
shall resound upon the dreadful day when the off, and falls, a hot tight-twisted snake, among the
full work is in hand for which this is but note of ashes. The making of the rivets is merely a
preparation, the day when the scuppers that are pretty round game, played by a man and a boy,
now fitting, like great, dry, thirsty conduit-pipes, who put red-hot barley-sugar in a Pope Joan
shall run red. All these busy figures between board, and immediately rivets fall out of win-
decks, dimly seen bending at their work in smoke dow; but the tone of the great machines is
and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall the tone of the great Yard and the great
do work here of another kind in smoke and fire country: "We don't particularly want to do it;
that day. These steam-worked engines along- but if it must be done!"
side, helping the ship by travelling to and fro,
and wafting tons of iron plates about, as though
they were so many leaves of trees, would be rent
limb from limb if they stood by her for a minute
then. To think that this. Achilles, monstrous
compound of iron tank and oaken chest, can ever
swim or roll! To think that any force of wind
and wave could ever break her! To think that
wherever I see a glowing red-hot iron point thrust |
out of her side from within,--as I do now, there,
and there, and there!—and two watching men
on a stage without, with bared arms and sledge-
hammers, strike at it fiercely and repeat their
blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being
driven home, of which there are many in every
iron plate, and thousands upon thousands in the NAVY-YARD-Scenes in a.
ship! To think that the difficulty I experience
in appreciating the ship's size when I am on
board arises from her being a series of iron
tanks and oaken chests; so that internally she is
ever finishing and ever beginning, and half of
her might be smashed, and yet the remaining
half suffice and be sound. Then, to go over the
side again and down among the ooze and wet to
the bottom of the dock, in the depths of the
subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays that
hold her up, and to see the immense mass bulg-
ing out against the upper light, and tapering
down towards me, is, with great pains and much
clambering, to arrive at an impossibility of
realizing that this is a ship at all, and to become
possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous
immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphi-
theatre (say that at Verona), and almost filling
it! Yet what would even these things be with-
out the tributary workshops and their mechanical
powers for piercing the iron plates-four inches
and a half thick-for rivets, shaping them under
hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of
the ship's lines, and paring them away, with
knives shaped like the beaks of strong and cruel
birds, to the nicest requirements of the design!
These machines of tremendous force, so easily
directed by one attentive face and presiding |
hand, seem to me to have in them something of
the retiring character of the Yard. "Obedient
monster, please to bite this mass of iron through
and through, at equal distances, where these re-
gular chalk-marks are, all round." Monster
looks at its work, and, lifting its ponderous head,
replies: "I don't particularly want to do it; but
if it must be done!" The solid metal wrig-
|
Sauntering among the rope-making, I am spun
into a state of blissful indolence, wherein my
rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the pro-
cess as that I can see back to very early days in-
deed, when my bad dreams-they were frightful,
though my more mature understanding has never
made out why-were of an interminable sort of
rope-making, with long, minute filaments for
strands, which, when they were spun home to-
gether close to my eyes, occasioned screaming.
Next I walk among the quiet lofts of stores,—of
sails, spars, rigging, ships' boats,-determined to
believe that somebody in authority wears a gir-
dle, and bends beneath the weight of a massive
bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is
wanted, he comes, telling his keys like Blue-
Beard, and opens such a door. Impassive as the
long lofts look, let the electric battery send down
the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly
open, and such a fleet of armed ships, under
steam and under sail, shall burst forth, as will
charge the old Medway-where the merry Stuart
let the Dutch come, while his not so merry sail-
ors starved in the streets-with something worth
looking at to carry to the sea. Thus I idle round
to the Medway again, where it is now flood-
tide; and I find the river evincing a strong so-
licitude to force a way into the dry-dock where
Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred
bangers, with intent to bear the whole away be-
fore they are ready.
To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon
it; for I make my way to the gates through a
little quiet grove of trees, shading the quaintest
of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled
shadow of a shipwright just passing away at the
NECESSITY AND LAWYERS
328
NEIGHBORHOOD
farther end might be the shadow of Russian Peter
himself. So the doors of the great patent safe
at last close upon me, and I take boat again,-
somehow thinking, as the oars dip, of braggart
Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet monsters
of the Yard, with their "We don't particularly
want to do it; but if it must be done-!"
Scrunch.- Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 24.
NECESSITY AND LAWYERS.
Though necessity has no law, she has her wrought upon the stranger's senses
lawyers.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 66.
it. Cautious emigrants from Scotland or the
North of England had been known to reach it
safely, by impressing a charity-boy, town-bred,
and bringing him along with them; or by
clinging tenaciously to the postman; but these
were rare exceptions, and only went to prove
the rule that Todgers's was in a labyrinth, where-
of the mystery was known but to a chosen few.
Several fruit brokers had their marts near
Todgers's; and one of the first impressions
NEEDLEWORK-Love as a teacher of.
Mrs. John Rokesmith sat at needlework in
her neat little room, beside a basket of neat lit.
tle articles of clothing, which presented so much
of the appearance of being in the dolls' dress-
maker's way of business, that one might have
supposed she was going to set up in opposition
to Miss Wren. Whether the Complete British
Family Housewife had imparted sage council
anent them, did not appear, but probably not, as
that cloudy oracle was nowhere visible. For cer-
tain, however, Mrs. John Rokesmith stitched at
them with so dexterous a hand, that she must
have taken lessons of somebody. Love is in all
things a most wonderful teacher, and perhaps
love from a pictorial point of view, with nothing
on but a thimble, had been teaching this branch
of needlework to Mrs. John Rokesmith.
Placidly, though rather consequentially smiling,
she sat stitching away with a regular sound, like
a sort of dimpled little charming Dresden-china
clock by the very best maker.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. II.
NEIGHBORHOOD-An ancient.
Surely there never was, in any other borough,
city, or hamlet in the world, such a singular sort
of a place as Todgers's. And surely London,
to judge from that part of it which hemmed
Todgers's round, and hustled it, and crushed it,
and stuck its brick-and-mortar elbows into it,
and kept the air from it, and stood perpetually
between it and the light, was worthy of Tod-
gers's, and qualified to be on terms of close
relationship and alliance with hundreds and
thousands of the odd family to which Todgers's
belonged.
was of
oranges of damaged oranges, with blue and
green bruises on them, festering in boxes, or
mouldering away in cellars. All day long, a
stream of porters from the wharves beside the
river, each bearing on his back a bursting chest
of oranges, poured slowly through the narrow
passages; while underneath the archway by the
public-house, the knots of those who rested and
regaled within, were piled from morning until
night. Strange solitary pumps were found near
Todgers's, hiding themselves for the most part
in blind alleys, and keeping company with fire-
ladders. There were churches also by dozens,
with many a ghostly little church-yard, all
overgrown with such straggling vegetation
as springs up spontaneously from damp, and
graves, and rubbish. In some of these dingy
resting places, which bore much the same anal-
ogy to green church-yards as the pots of earth
for mignonnette and wall-flower in the windows
overlooking them did to rustic gardens, there
were trees-tall trees; still putting forth their
leaves in each succeeding year, with such a lan-
guishing remembrance of their kind (so one
might fancy, looking on their sickly boughs) as
birds in cages have of theirs. Here, paralyzed
old watchmen guarded the bodies of the dead
at night, year after year, until at last they joined
that solemn brotherhood; and, saving that
they slept below the ground a sounder sleep
than even they had ever known above it, and
were shut up in another kind of box, their con-
dition can hardly be said to have undergone
any material change when they in turn were
watched themselves.
Among the narrow thoroughfares at hand, there
lingered, here and there, an ancient doorway of
carved oak, from which, of old, the sounds of
revelry and feasting often came; but now these
You couldn't walk about in Todgers's neigh- mansions, only used for storehouses, were dark
borhood, as you could in any other neighbor- and dull, and, being filled with wool, and cotton,
hood. You groped your way for an hour and the like-such heavy merchandise as stifles
through lanes, and byeways, and court-yards, and sounds and stops the throat of echo-had an air
passages; and you never once emerged upon of palpable deadness about them which, added
anything that might be reasonably called a to their silence and desertion, made them very
street. A kind of resigned distraction came grim. In like manner, there were gloomy court-
over the stranger as he trod those devious yards in these parts, into which few but belat-
mazes, and, giving himself up for lost, went ined wayfarers ever strayed, and where vast bags
and out, and round about, and quietly turned and packs of goods, upward or downward bound,
back again when he came to a deal wall or was were forever dangling between heaven and earth
stopped by an iron railing, and felt that the from lofty cranes. There were more trucks near
means of escape might possibly present them- Todgers's than you would suppose a whole city
selves in their own good time, but that to antici- could ever need; not active trucks, but a vaga.
pate them was hopeless. Instances were known bond race, forever lounging in the narrow lanes
of people who, being asked to dine at Todgers's, before their masters' doors and stopping up the
had travelled round and round for a weary pass; so that when a stray hackney-coach or
time, with its very chimney-pots in view; and lumbering wagon came that way, they were the
finding it, at last, impossible of attainment, had cause of such an uproar as enlivened the whole
gone home again, with a gentle melancholy on neighborhood, and made the bells in the next
their spirits, tranquil and uncomplaining. No-church-tower vibrate again. In the throats and
body had ever found Todgers's on a verbal di-
rection, though given within a minute's walk of
maws of dark no-thoroughfares near Todgers's,
individual wine-merchants and wholesale deal
NEIGHBORHOOD
829
NEIGHBORHOOD
ings.
ers in grocery-ware had perfect little towns of ed rats to move away in quest of better lodg-
their own; and deep among the foundations of
these buildings, the ground was undermined and Here too are lanes and alleys, paved with mu1
burrowed out into stables, where cart-horses, knee-deep; underground chambers, where they
troubled by rats, might be heard on a quiet Sun-dance and game; the walls bedecked with rough
day rattling their halters, as disturbed spirits in designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and Ameri-
tales of haunted houses are said to clank their can Eagles out of number; ruined houses open to
the street, whence, through wide gaps in the
walls, other ruins loom upon the eye, as though
the world of vice and misery had nothing else
to show; hideous tenements which take their
name from robbery and murder; all that is
loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here.
American Notes, Chap. 6.
chains.
To tell of half the queer old taverns that had a
drowsy and secret existence near Todgers's,
would fill a goodly book; while a second volume
no less capacious might be devoted to an account
of the quaint old guests who frequented their
dimly-lighted parlors. These were, in general,
ancient inhabitants of that region; born, and
bred there from boyhood; who had long since NEIGHBORHOOD-An irregular.
become wheezy and asthmatical, and short of The schools were newly built, and there were
breath, except in the article of story-telling; in so many like them all over the country, that one
which respect they were still marvellously long- might have thought the whole were but one rest-
winded. These gentry were much opposed to less edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin's
steam and all new-fangled ways, and held bal- palace. They were in a neighborhood which
looning to be sinful, and deplored the degener-looked like a toy neighborhood taken in blocks
acy of the times; which that particular member out of a box by a child of particularly incoherent
of each little club who kept the keys of the mind, and set up anyhow; here, one side of a
nearest church professionally, always attributed new street; there, a large solitary public house
to the prevalence of dissent and irreligion: facing nowhere; here, another unfinished street
though the major part of the company inclined already in ruins; there, a church; here, an im-
to the belief that virtue went out with hair pow- mense new warehouse; there, a dilapidated old
der, and that Old England's greatness had de- country villa; then, a medley of black ditch,
cayed amain with barbers.
sparkling cucumber-frame, rank field, richly culti-
vated kitchen-garden, brick viaduct, arch-spanned
canal, and disorder of frowziness and fog. As
if the child had given the table a kick, and
gone to sleep.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9.
NEIGHBORHOOD-The Five Points, New
York.
Ascend those pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a
false footing on the trembling boards, and grope
your way with me into this wolfish den, where
neither ray of light nor breath of air appears to
come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by
the officer's voice-he knows it well-but com.
forted by his assurance that he has not come on
business, officiously bestirs himself to light a
candle. The match flickers for a moment, and
shows great mounds of dusky rags upon the
ground; then dies away and leaves a denser dark-
ness than before, if there can be degrees in such
extremes. He stumbles down the stairs and
presently comes back, shading a flaring taper
with his hand. Then the mounds of rags are
seen to be astir, and rise slowly up, and the floor
is covered with heaps of negro women, waking
from their sleep; their white teeth chattering,
and their bright eyes glistening and winking on
all sides with surprise and fear, like the countless
repetition of one astonished African face in some
strange mirror.
Mount up these other stairs with no less cau-
tion (there are traps and pitfalls here for those
who are not so well escorted as ourselves) into
the house-top; where the bare beams and raft-
ers meet overhead, and calm night looks down
through the crevices in the roof. Open the door
of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping
negroes. Pah! They have a charcoal fire within;
there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so
close they gather round the brazier; and vapors
issue forth that blind and suffocate. From every
corner, as you glance about you in these dark re-
treats, some figure crawls, half awakened, as if
the judgment hour were near at hand, and every
obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where
dogs would howl to lie, women and men and
boys slink off to sleep, forcing the dislodg-
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap..
NEIGHBORHOOD-A foul.
They left the busy scene, and went into an
obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had
never penetrated before, although he recognized
its situation, and its bad repute.
The ways
were foul and narrow; the shops and houses
wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slip-
shod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many
cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and
dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and
the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth,
and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was
a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house
roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and
greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor
within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails,
chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse
iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like
to scrutinize were bred and hidden in moun-
tains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat
and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the
wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of
old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly sev-
enty years of age; who had screened himself
from the cold air without, by a frowzy curtain-
ing of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line;
and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm
retirement.-Christmas Carol, Stave 4.
NEIGHBORHOOD-A corrupt; its influ-
ence.
Darkness rests upon Tom-all-Alone's. Di-
lating and dilating since the sun went down
last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills
every void in the place. For a time there were
some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of
NEIGHBORHOOD
880
NEWSBOY
Life burns in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily, heavily, indignation in the bosom of the individual ad-
in the nauseous air, and winking-as that lamp, dressed, than the most lavish abuse could possi-
too, winks in Tom-all-Alone's-at many horribly awaken.-Pickwick, Chap. 24.
ble things. But they are blotted out. The
moon has eyed Tom with a dull, cold stare, as NEWSPAPER-A diminutive reader of a.
admitting some puny emulation of herself in his
desert region, unfit for life and blasted by volca-
nic fires; but she has passed on, and is gone.
The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables
grazes on Tom-all-Aione's, and Tom is fast
asleep.
*
*
*
*
But he has his revenge. Even the winds are
his messengers, and they serve him in these
hours of darkness. There is not a drop of
Tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection
and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute, this
very night, the choice stream (in which chemists,
on analysis, would find the genuine nobility) of
a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be
able to say Nay to the infamous alliance. There |
is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch
of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one
obscenity or degradation about him, not an ig-
norance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of
his committing, but shall work its retribution,
through every order of society, up to the proud-
est of the proud, and to the highest of the high.
Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and
spoiling, Tom has his revenge..
It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's
be uglier by day or by night; but on the argu-
ment that the more that is seen of it the more
shocking it must be, and that no part of it left
to the imagination is at all likely to be made so
bad as the reality, day carries it. The day be-
gins to break now; and in truth it might be
better for the national glory even that the sun
should sometimes set upon the British domin-
ions, than that it should ever rise upon so vile
a wonder as Tom.-Bleak House, Chap. 46.
NEIGHBORHOOD-An ancient.
A place much changed in feature and in for-
tune, yet with some relish of ancient greatness
about it. Two or three mighty stacks of chim-
neys, and a few large, dark rooms which had
escaped being walled and subdivided out of the
recognition of their old proportions, gave the
Yard a character. It was inhabited by poor
people, who set up their rest among its faded
glories, as Arabs of the desert pitch their tents
among the fallen stones of the Pyramids; but
there was a family sentimental feeling prevalent
in the Yard, that it had a character.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 12.
#6 NEVER MIND!"
phrase.
-
A comprehensive
"Never mind."
There must be something very comprehensive
in this phrase of "Never mind," for we do not
recollect to have ever witnessed a quarrel in the
street, at a theatre, public room, or elsewhere, in
which it has not been the standard reply to all
belligerent inquiries. Do you call yourself a
gentleman, sir?"-" Never mind, sir." "Did I
offer to say anything to the young woman, sir?"
-"Never mind, sir." "Do you want your head
knocked up against that wall, sir?"-"Never
mind, sir. It is observable, too, that there
would appear to be some hidden taunt in this
universal "Never mind," which rouses more
The daily papers are so very large in propor-
tion to himself, shorn of his hat, that when he
holds up the Times to run his eye over the col-
umns, he seems to have retired for the night,
and to have disappeared under the bed-clothes.
Bleak House, Chap. 20.
NEWSPAPER-A smeared.
Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long
out of date, which had nothing half so legible in
its local news, as the foreign matter of coffee,
pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and
wine, with which it was sprinkled all over, as if
it had taken the measles in a highly irregular
form, I sat at my table while he stood before the
fire.-Bleak House, Chap. 43.
NEWS-Its rapid circulation.
By what means the news that there had been
a quarrel between the two young men got into
Miss Twinkleton's establishment before break-
fast, it is impossible to say. Whether it was
brought in by the birds of the air, or came
blowing in with the very air itself, when the
casement windows were set open; whether the
baker brought it kneaded into the bread, or the
milkman delivered it as part of the adulteration
of his milk; or the housemaids, beating the dust
out of their mats against the gateposts, received
it in exchange deposited on the mats by the town
atmosphere; certain it is that the news perme-
ated every gable of the old building before Miss
Twinkleton was down, and that Miss Twinkle-
ton herself received it through Mrs. Tisher, while
yet in the act of dressing; or (as she might have
expressed the phrase to a parent or guardian of
a mythological turn) of sacrificing to the Graces.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 9.
NEWSBOY-Adolphus Tetterby as a.
Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper
line of life, being employed, by a more thriving
firm than his father and Co., to vend newspapers
at a railway station, where his chubby little per-
son, like a shabbily disguised Cupid, and his
shrill little voice (he was not much more than ten
years old), were as well known as the hoarse
panting of the locomotive, running in and out.
His juvenility might have been at some loss for
a harmless outlet, in this early application to
traffic, but for a fortunate discovery he made of
a means of entertaining himself, and of dividing
the long day into stages of interest, without ne-
glecting business. This ingenious invention, re-
markable, like many great discoveries, for its
simplicity, consisted in varying the first vowel
in the word "paper," and substituting in its
stead, at different periods of the day, all the
other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus,
before daylight in the winter-time, he went to
and fro, in his little oil-skin cap and cape, and
his big comforter, piercing the heavy air with
his cry of "Morn-ing Pa-per!" which, about an
hour before noon, changed to "Morn-ing Pep-
per!" which, at about two, changed to "Morn-
ing t tp-per; which, in a couple of hours,
changed to "Morning Pop-per!" and so de-
clined with the sun into "Eve-ning Pup-per!"
""
NEW YORK
to the great relief and comfort of this young
gentleman's spirits.-Haunted Man, Chap. 2.
NEW YORK-The streets of.
331
NIAGARA
Five Points. But it is needful, first, that we
take as our escort these two heads of the police,
whom you would know for sharp and well-trained
officers if you met them in the Great Desert. So
true it is, that certain pursuits, wherever carried
on, will stamp men with the same character.
These two might have been begotten, born, and
bred in Bow Street.
We have seen no beggars in the streets by
night or day, but of other kinds of strollers
plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice are
rife enough where we are going now.
This is the place-these narrow ways diverg-
The streets and shops are lighted now; and
as the eye travels down the long thoroughfare,
dotted with bright jets of gas, it is reminded of
Oxford Street or Piccadilly. Here and there a
flight of broad stone cellar steps appears, and a
painted lamp directs you to the Bowling Saloon,
or Ten-Pin alley; Ten-Pins being a game of
mingled chance and skill, invented when the
legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins.
At other downward flights of steps are othering to the right and left, and reeking everywhere
lamps, marking the whereabouts of oyster cel-
lars-pleasant retreats, say I; not only by rea-
son of their wonderful cookery of oysters, pretty
nigh as large as cheese-plates (or for thy dear
sake, heartiest of Greek Professors!) but be-
cause, of all kinds of eaters of fish, or flesh, or
fowl, in these latitudes, the swallowers of oys-bling down, and how the patched and broken
ters alone are not gregarious, but, subduing
themselves, as it were, to the nature of what
they work in, and copying the coyness of the
thing they eat, do sit apart in curtained boxes,
and consort by twos, not by two hundreds.
But how quiet the streets are! Are there no
itinerant bands, no wind or stringed instru-
ments? No, not one. By day are there no
Punches, Fantoccini, Dancing-dogs, Jugglers,
Conjurers, Orchestrinas, or even Barrel-organs?
No, not one. Yes, I remember one. One bar-
rel-organ and a dancing monkey-sportive by
nature, but fast fading into a dull, lumpish mon-
key of the Utilitarian school. Beyond that,
nothing lively; no, not so much as a white
mouse in a twirling cage.
Are there no amusements? Yes, there is a
Lecture-room across the way, from which that
glare of light proceeds, and there may be even-
ing service for the ladies thrice a week, or
oftener. For the young gentlemen there is the
counting-house, the store, the bar-room; the
latter, as you may see through these windows,
pretty full. Hark! to the clinking sound of
hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool
gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process
of mixing, they are poured from glass to glass!
No amusements? What are these suckers of
cigars and swallowers of strong drinks, whose
hats and legs we see in every possible variety
of twist, doing, but amusing themselves? What
are the fifty newspapers, which those precocious
urchins are bawling down the street, and which
are kept filed within,—what are they but amuse-
ments? Not vapid, waterish amusements, but
good strong stuff, dealing in round abuse and
blackguard names, pulling off the roofs of pri-
vate houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain;
pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious
taste, and gorging with coined lies the most
voracious maw; imputing to every man in pub-
lic life the coarsest and the vilest motives; scar-
ing away from the stabbed and prostrate body-
politic every Samaritan of clear conscience and
good deeds; and setting on, with yell and whis-
tle, and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest of
vermin and worst birds of prey.-No amuse-
ments!
Let us go on again, and passing this wilder-
ness of an hotel with stores about its base, like
some Continental theatre or the London Opera
House shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the
with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here
bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The
coarse and bloated faces at the doors have coun-
terparts at home and all the wide world over.
Debauchery has made the very houses prema-
turely old. See how the rotten beams are tum-
windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that
have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of those
pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their
masters walk upright in lieu of going on
all fours? and why they talk instead of grunt-
ing?
So far nearly every house is a low tavern, and
on the bar-room walls are colored prints of
Washington, and Queen Victoria of England,
and the American Eagle. Among the pigeon-
holes that hold the bottles are pieces of plate-
glass and colored paper, for there is, in some
sort, a taste for decoration, even here. And as
seamen frequent these haunts, there are mari-
time pictures, by the dozen, of partings between
sailors and their lady-loves; portraits of William,
of the ballad, and his Black-Eyed Susan ; of Will
Watch, the Bold Smuggler; of Paul Jones, the
Pirate, and the like; on which the painted eyes
of Queen Victoria, and of Washington to boot,
rest in as strange companionship as on most of
the scenes that are enacted in their wondering
presence.-American Notes, Chap. 6.
NIAGARA.
It was a miserable day, chilly and raw, a
damp mist falling, and the trees in that northern
region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the
train halted I listened for the roar, and was con-
stantly straining my eyes in the direction where
I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river
rolling on towards them, every moment expect-
ing to behold the spray. Within a few minutes
of our stopping, not before, I saw two great
white clouds rising up slowly and majestically
from the depths of the earth. That was all.
At length we alighted, and then for the first
time I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt
the ground tremble underneath my feet.
The bank is very steep, and was slippery with
rain and half-melted ice. I hardly know how I
got down, but I was soon at the bottom, and
climbing, with two English officers who were
crossing and had joined me, over some broken
rocks, deafened by the noise, half blinded by
the spray, and wet to the skin. We were at the
foot of the American Fall. I could see an im-
mense torrent of water tearing headlong dowr
from some great height, but had no idea of
shape, or situation, or anything but vague im-
mensity.
When we were seated in the little ferry-boat,
NIAGARA
332
and were crossing the swollen river immediately | NIGHT.
before both cataracts, I began to feel what it
was; but I was in a manner stunned, and unable
to comprehend the vastness of the scene. It was
not until I came on Table Rock, and looked
Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright, green
water!—that it came upon me in its full might
and majesty.
Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I
was standing, the first effect and the enduring
one-instant and lasting-of the tremendous
spectacle, was Peace. Peace of mind, tranquil-
lity, calm recollections of the Dead, great
thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness; noth-
ing of gloom or terror. Niagara was at once
stamped upon my heart, an Image of Beauty;
to remain there, changeless and indelible, until
its pulses cease to beat forever.
Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life
receded from my view, and lessened in the dis-
tance, during the ten memorable days we passed
on that Enchanted Ground! What voices spoke
from out the thundering water; what faces, faded
from the earth, looked out upon me from its
gleaming depths: what Heavenly promise glis-
tened in those angels' tears, the drops of many
hues, that showered around, and twined them-
selves about the gorgeous arches which the
changing rainbows made!
NIGHT
Night was still heavy in the sky. On open
plains, from hill-tops, and from the decks of soli
tary ships at sea, a distant low-lying line, that
promised by-and-bye to change to light, was visi-
ble in the dim horizon; but its promise was re-
mote and doubtful, and the moon was striving
with the night-clouds busily.
Haunted Man, Chap. 3.
The wide stare stared itself out for one while;
the sun went down in a red, green, golden glory;
the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire-
flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men
may feebly imitate the goodness of a better
order of beings; the long dusty roads and the
interminable plains were in repose—and so deep
a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered
of the time when it shall give up its dead.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. I.
An awful survey, in a lonely and remote part
of an empty old pile of building, on a winter
night, with the loud wind going by upon its
journey of mystery-whence, or whither, no
man knowing since the world began-and the
stars, in unimaginable millions, glittering
through it, from eternal space, where the world's
bulk is as a grain, and its hoary age is infancy.
Haunted Man, Chap. I.
It was a fine dry night, and the light of a
young moon, which was then just rising, shed
evening-time its most delicious charm. The
lengthened shadows of the trees, softened as if
reflected in still water, threw their carpet on the
path the travellers pursued, and the light wind
stirred yet more softly than before, as though it
were soothing Nature in her sleep.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 14.
I never stirred in all that time from the Cana-
dian side, whither I had gone at first. I never
crossed the river again; for I knew there were
people on the other shore, and in such a place
it is natural to shun strange company. To wan-around that peace and tranquillity which gives to
der to and fro all day, and see the cataracts
from all points of view; to stand upon the edge |
of the Great Horseshoe Fall, marking the hur-
ried water gathering strength as it approached
the verge, yet seeming, too, to pause before it
shot into the gulf below; to gaze from the
river's level up at the torrent as it came stream-
ing down; to climb the neighboring heights and
watch it through the trees, and see the wreathing
water in the rapids hurrying on to take its fear-
ful plunge; to linger in the shadow of the
solemn rocks three miles below, watching the
river, as stirred by no visible cause, it heaved
and edd ed and awoke the echoes, being trou-
bled yet far down beneath the surface, by its
giant le up; to have Niagara before me, lighted
by the sun and by the moon, red in the day's
decline, and gray as evening slowly fell upon
it; to look upon it every day, and wake up in
the night and hear its ceaseless voice: this was
enough.
·
I think in every quiet season now, still do
those waters roll and leap, and roar and tumble,
all day long; still are the rainbows spanning
them, a hundred feet below. Still, when the
sun is on them, do they shine and glow like
molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do
they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away
like the front of a great chalk-cliff, or roll down
the rock like dense white smoke. But always
does the mighty stream appear to die as it
comes down, and always from its unfathomable
grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and
mist which is never laid,-which has haunted
this place with the same dread solemnity since
Darkness brooded on the deep, and that first
flood before the Deluge-Light-came rushing
on Creation at the word of God.
American Notes, Chap. 14.
Night, like a giant, fills the church, from pave-
ment to roof, and holds dominion through
the silent hours. Pale dawn again comes peep-
ing through the windows; and, giving place to
day, sees night withdraw into the vaults, and fol-
lows it, and drives it out, and hides among the
dead.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
There was no wind; there was no passing
shadow on the deep shade of the night; there
was no noise. The city lay behind him, lighted
here and there, and starry worlds were hidden
by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly
made out any shapes against the sky.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 55.
The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps
looked pale, and shook as if they were cold.
There was a distant glimmer of something that
was not quite darkness, rather than of light, in
the sky; and foreboding night was shivering
and restless, as the dying are who make a
troubled end. Florence remembered how, as a
watcher, by a sick bed, she had noted this bleak
time, and felt its influence, as if in some hidden
natural antipathy to it; and now it was very,
very gloomy.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 43.
The rich light had faded, the sombre hues of
night were falling fast upon the landscape,
and a few bright stars were already twinkling
NIGHT
833
overhead. The birds were all at roost; the
laisies on the green had closed their fairy hoods;
the honeysuckle twining round the porch ex-
haled its perfume in a two-fold degree, as
though it lost its coyness at that silent time
and loved to shed its fragrance on the night; |
the ivy scarcely stirred its deep green leaves.
How tranquil and how beautiful it was!
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 54.
It was one of those dark nights that hold their
breath by the hour together, and than heave a
long, low sigh, and hold their breath again.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 9.
NIGHT-And Morning.
The night crept on apace, the moon went
down, the stars grew pale and dim, and morning,
cold as they, slowly approached. Then, from
behind a distant hill, the noble sun rose up, driv-
ing the mists in phantom shapes before it, and
clearing the earth of their ghostly forms till
darkness came again.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 43.
NIGHT-A cloudy.
NIGHT
quiet. Now and then a drowsy watchman's
footsteps sounded on the pavement, or the lamp-
lighter on his rounds went flashing past, leaving
behind a little track of smoke mingled with
glowing morsels of his hot red link. He hid
himself even from these partakers of his lonely
walk, and shrinking in some arch or door-
way while they passed, issued forth again when
they were gone, and so pursued his solitary
way.
To be shelterless and alone in the open coun-
try, hearing the wind moan, and watching for day
through the whole long, weary night; to listen to
the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath
the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow
of a tree, are dismal things-but not so dismal
as the wandering up and down where shelter is,
and beds and sleepers are by thousands, a house-
less, rejected creature. To pace the echoing
stones from hour to hour, counting the dull
chimes of the clocks; to watch the lights twink-
ling in chamber windows; to think what hap-
py forgetfulness each house shuts in; that here
are children coiled together in their beds, here
youth, here age, here poverty, here wealth, all
equal in their sleep, and all at rest; to have
nothing in common with the slumbering world
around, not even sleep-Heaven's gift to all its
creatures-and be akin to nothing but despair;
on every hand, more utterly alone and cast away
than in a trackless desert; this is a kind of suf-
fering on which the rivers of great cities close
full many a time, and which the solitude in
crowds alone awakens.
It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shud-
dered in the wind. The rain had been thick and
heavy all day, and with little intermission for
many days. None was falling just then, how-to feel, by the wretched contrast with everything
ever. The sky had partly cleared, but was very
gloomy-even above us, where a few stars were
shining. In the north and north-west, where the
sun had set three hours before, there was a pale
dead light, both beautiful and awful; and into it
long sullen lines of cloud waved up, like a sea
stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards
London, a lurid glare overhung the whole dark
waste; and the contrast between these two lights,
and the fancy which the redder light engendered
of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen
buildings of the city, and on all the faces of its
many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was
as solemn as might be.-Bleak House, Chap. 31.
NIGHT The companionship of (Little
Nell).
In one of those rambles which had now be-
come her only pleasure or relief from care, light
had faded into darkness and evening deepened
into night, and still the young creature lingered
in the gloom; feeling a companionship in Nature,
so serene and still, when noise of tongues and
glare of garish lights would have been solitude
indeed.
NIGHT-A still.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 18.
A fine night, and a bright large moon, and
multitudes of stars. Mr. Tulkinghorn, in re-
pairing to his cellar, and in opening and shut-
ting those resounding doors, has to cross a little
prison-like yard. He looks up casually, think-
ing what a fine night, what a bright large
moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night,
too.
A very quiet night. When the moon shines
very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to
proceed from her, that influence even crowded
places, full of life. Not only is it a still night
on dusty high-roads and on hill-summits, whence
a wide expanse of country may be seen in
repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away
into a fringe of trees against the sky, with
the gray ghost of a bloom upon them;
not only is it a still night in gardens and in
woods, and on the river where the water mead-
ows are fresh and green, and the stream
sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring
weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the
stillness attend it as it flows where houses clus-
ter thick, where many bridges are reflected in it,
where wharves and shipping make it black and
awful, where it winds from these disfigurements
through marshes whose grim beacons stand lik
skeletons washed ashore, where it expands
through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich
in corn-field, wind-mill, and steeple, and where
it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is
it a still night on the deep, and on the shore
where the watcher stands to see the ship with
NIGHT-To the outcast.
her spread wings cross the path of light that
It was the dead time of the night, and all was appears to be presented to only him; but even
The sisters had gone home, and she was alone.
She raised her eyes to the bright stars, looking
down so mildly from the wide worlds of air, and,
gazing on them, found new stars burst upon her
view, and more beyond, and more beyond again,
until the whole great expanse sparkled with shin-
ing spheres, rising higher and higher in immeas-
urable space, eternal in their numbers as in their
changeless and incorruptible existence. She bent
over the calm river, and saw them shining in the
same majestic order as when the dove beheld
them gleaming through the swollen waters, upon
the mountain-tops down far below, and dead
mankind a million fathoms deep.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 42.
NIGHT
on this strangers' wilderness of London there is
some rest. Its steeples and towers, and its one
great dome, grow more ethereal; its smoky
house-tops lose their grossness, in the pale efful-
gence; the noises that arise from the streets are
fewer and are softened, and the footsteps on the
pavements pass more tranquilly away.
Bleak House, Chap. 48.
NIGHT-On the Thames.
334
NIGHT
NIGHT-A river at.
The river had an awful look, the buildings on
the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and
the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in
the water, as if the spectres of suicides were
holding them to show where they went down.
The wild moon and clouds were as restless as
an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the
very shadow of the immensity of London seemed
to lie oppressively upon the river.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13. ·
NIGHT-Out in a London.
My face confessing a surprised desire to have
some friendly conversation with
with Waterloo
Bridge, and my friend Pea being the most
obliging of men, we put about, pulled out of the Three o'clock, and half-past three, and they
force of the stream, and in place of going at had passed over London Bridge. They had
great speed with the tide, began to strive against heard the rush of the tide against obstacles;
it, close in shore again. Every color but black had looked down, awed, through the dark vapor
seemed to have departed from the world. The on the river; had seen little spots of lighted
air was black, the water was black, the barges water where the bridge lamps were reflected,
and hulks were black, the piles were black, the shining like demon eyes, with a terrible fasci-
buildings were black, the shadows were only a nation in them for guilt and misery. They had
deeper shade of black upon a black ground. shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in
Here and there a coal fire, in an iron cresset, nooks. They had run from drunkards. They
blazed upon a wharf; but, one knew that it too had started from slinking men, whistling and
had been black a little while ago, and would be singing to one another at bye corners, or run-
black again soon. Uncomfortable rushes of water ning away at full speed. Though everywhere
suggestive of gurgling and drowning, ghostly the leader and the guide, Little Dorrit, happy
rattlings of iron chains, dismal clankings of for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to
discordant engines, formed the music that ac- cling to and rely upon Maggy. And more than
companied the dip of our oars and their rattling once some voice, from among a knot of brawl-
in the rullocks. Even the noises had a blacking or prowling figures in their path, had called
sound to me as the trumpet sounded red to
the blind man.
Down with the Tide. Reprinted Pieces.
NIGHT-At sea.
The light shining on the dreary waste of
water, and showing it in all its vast extent of
loneliness, presents a solemn spectacle which
even night, veiling it in darkness and uncer-
tainty, does not surpass. The rising of the
moon is more in keeping with the solitary
ocean, and has an air of melancholy grandeur,
which, in its soft and gentle influence, seems to
comfort while it saddens. I recollect, when I
was a very young child, having a fancy that the
reflection of the moon in water was a path to
Heaven, trodden by the spirits of good people
on their way to God; and this old feeling often
came over me again, when I watched it on a tran-
quil night at sea.-American Notes. Chap. 16.
NIGHT-In prison (Barnaby Rudge).
The moon came slowly up in all her gentle
glory, and the stars looked out, and through the
small compass of the grated window, as through
the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky
life of guilt, the face of Heaven shone bright
and merciful. He raised his head; gazed upward
at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the
earth in sadness, as if the night, more thought-
ful than the day, looked down in sorrow on the
sufferings and evil deeds of men; and felt its
peace sink deep into his heart. He, a poor
idiot, caged in his narrow cell, was as much
lifted up to God, while gazing on the mild light,
as the freest and most favored man in all the
spacious city; and in his ill-remembered prayer,
and in the fragment of the childish hymn with
which he sung and crooned himself asleep, there
breathed as true a spirit as ever studied homily
expressed, or old cathedral arches echoed.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 73.
|
out to the rest, to "let the woman and the child
go by!"—Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 14.
NIGHT-In London.
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 cleans-
ing 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 themselves as
snug and comfortable as possible; and the
passengers in the streets have excellent reason
to envy the fortunate individuals who are seated
by their own firesides.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 2.
NIGHT-The approach and shadows of.
All that prospect, which from the terrace
looked so near, has moved solemnly away, and
changed-not the first nor the last of beautiful
things that look so near and will so change—
into a distant phantom. Light mists arise, and
the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the
garden are heavy in the air. Now, the woods
settle into great masses, as if they were each one
profound tree. And now the moon rises, to
separate them, and to glimmer here and there
in horizontal lines behind their stems, and to
make the avenue a pavement of light among
high cathedral arches fantastically broken.
Now, the moon is high; and the great house,
needing habitation more than ever, is like a
body without life. Now, it is even awful,
stealing through it, to think of the live people
who have slept in the solitary bedrooms; to say
nothing of the dead. Now is the time for
NIGHT-WALKS
shadow, when every corner is a cavern, and
every downward step a pit, when the stained
glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon the
floors, when anything and everything can be
made of the heavy staircase beams excepting
their own proper shapes, when the armor has
dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished
from stealthy movement, and when barred hel-
mets are frightfully suggestive of heads inside.
But, of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the
shadow in the long drawing-room upon my
lady's picture is the first to come, the last to be
disturbed. At this hour and by this light it
changes into threatening hands raised up, and
menacing the handsome face with every breath
that stirs.-Bleak House, Chap. 40.
NIGHT-WALKS—The associations of.
Although I am an old man, night is generally
my time for walking. In the summer I often
leave home early in the morning, and roam about
the fields and lanes all day, or even escape for
days or weeks together; but, saving in the coun-
try, I seldom go out until after dark, though,
Heaven be thanked, I love its light and feel the
cheerfulness it sheds upon the earth, as much
as any creature living.
335
I have fallen insensibly into this habit, both
because it favors my infirmity, and because it
affords me greater opportunity of speculating on
the characters and occupations of those who fill
the streets. The glare and hurry of broad noon
are not adapted to idle pursuits like mine; a
glimpse of passing faces caught by the light of
a street lamp, or a shop window, is often better
for my purpose than their full revelation in the
daylight; and, if I must add the truth, night is
kinder in this respect than day, which too often
destroys an air-built castle at the moment of its
completion, without the least ceremony or re-
morse.
That constant pacing to and fro, that never-
ending restlessness, that incessant tread of feet
wearing the rough stones smooth and glossy-is
it not a wonder how the dwellers in narrow ways
can bear to hear it? Think of a sick man, in
such a place as St. Martin's Court, listening to
the footsteps, and in the midst of pain and
weariness, obliged, despite himself (as though it
were a task he must perform) to detect the child's
step from the man's, the slipshod beggar from the
booted exquisite, the lounging from the busy,
the dull heel of the sauntering outcast from the
quick tread of an expectant pleasure-seeker
think of the hum and noise being always pres-
ent to his senses, and of the stream of life that
will not stop, pouring on, on, on, through all his
restless dreams, as if he were condemned to lie,
dead, but conscious, in a noisy churchyard, and
had no hope of rest for centuries to come!
Then, the crowds for ever passing and repass-
ing on the bridges (on those which are free of
toll, at least), where many stop on fine evenings,
looking listlessly down upon the water, with
some vague idea that by-and-bye it runs between
green banks which grow wider and wider, until
at last it joins the broad, vast sea-where some
halt to rest from heavy loads, and think, as they
look over the parapet, that to smoke and lounge
away one's life, and lie sleeping in the sun upon
a hot tarpaulin, in a dull, slow, sluggish barge,
must be happiness unalloyed-and where some,
and a very different class, pause with heavier
|
NIGHT-FANCIES
loads than they, remembering to have heard ɔɔ
read in some old time that drowning was not a
hard death, but of all means of suicide the easi
est and best.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 1.
NIGHT-FANCIES.
What a doleful night! How anxious, how
dismal, how long! There was an inhospitable
smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust;
and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester
over my head, I thought what a number of blue
bottle flies from the butchers', and earwigs from
the market, and grubs from the country, must
be holding on up there, lying by for next sum-
| mer. This led me to speculate whether any of
them ever tumbled down, and then I fancied
that I felt light falls on my face-a disagreeable
turn of thought, suggesting other and more ob-
jectionable approaches up my back. When I
had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary
voices with which silence teems, began to make
themselves audible. The closet whispered, the
fire-place sighed, the little washing-stand ticked,
and one guitar-string played occasionally in the
chest of drawers. At about the same time, the
eyes on the wall acquired a new expression,
and in every one of those staring rounds I saw
written, DON'T GO HOME.
Whatever night-fancies and night-noises
crowded on me, they never warded off this
DON'T GO HOME. It plaited itself into what-
ever I thought of, as a bodily pain would have
done. Not long before, I had read in the news-
papers, how a gentleman unknown had come to
the Hummums in the night, and had gone to
bed, and had destroyed himself, and had been
found in the morning weltering in blood. It
came into my head that he must have occupied
this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to
assure myself that there were no red marks
about; then opened the door to look out into
the passages, and cheer myself with the com-
panionship of a distant light, near which I
knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But all
this time, why I was not to go home, and what
had happened at home, and when I should go
home, and whether Provis was safe at home, were
questions occupying my mind so busily, that
one might have supposed there could be no
more room in it for any other theme. Even
when I thought of Estella, and how we had
parted that day for ever, and when I recalled
all the circumstances of our parting, and all her
looks and tones, and the action of her fingers
while she knitted-even then I was pursuing,
here and there and everywhere, the caution,
Don't go home. When at last I dozed, in sheer
exhaustion of mind and body, it became a vast
shadowy verb which I had to conjugate. Im-
perative mood, present tense: Do not thou go
home, let him not go home, let us not go home,
do not ye or you go home, let not them go home.
Then potentially: I may not and I cannot go
home; and I might not, could not, would not,
and should not go home; until I felt that I was
going distracted, and rolled over on the pillow,
and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall
again.-Great Expectations. Chap. 45.
In the quiet hours of the night, one house
shuts in as many incoherent and incongruous
fancies as a madman's head.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5
NIGHT-THOUGHTS
NIGHT-THOUGHTS—Of Little Nell.
836
NOSE
fess, Nicholas, my dear, if you would only have
At that silent hour, when her grandfather was strings to yours, and wear it like a Christian,
sleeping peacefully in his bed, and every sound instead of sticking it upon the very top of your
was hushed, the child lingered before the dying head like a blue-coat boy. You needn't think
embers, and thought of her past fortunes as if it an unmanly or quizzical thing to be particular
they had been a dream and she only now awoke. about your night-cap, for I have often heard
The glare of the sinking flame, reflected in the your poor dear papa, and the Reverend Mr.
oaken panels whose carved tops were dimly seen What's-his-name, who used to read prayers in
in the dusky roof-the aged walls, where strange that old church with the curious little steeple
shadows came and went with every flickering that the weathercock was blown off the night
of the fire-the solemn presence, within, of that week before you were born-I have often heard
decay which falls on senseless things the most them say, that the young men at college are un-
enduring in their nature; and without, and commonly particular about their night-caps, and
round about on every side, of Death-filled her that the Oxford night-caps are quite celebrated
with deep and thoughtful feelings, but with none for their strength and goodness; so much so,
of terror or alarm. A change had been gradu- | indeed, that the young men never dream of go-
ally stealing over her, in the time of her loneli-ing to bed without 'em, and I believe it's ad-
ness and sorrow. With failing strength and mitted on all hands that they know what's good,
heightening resolution, there had sprung up a and don't coddle themselves."
purified and altered mind; there had grown
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 37.
in her bosom blessed thoughts and hopes,
which are the portion of few but the weak and
drooping. There were none to see the frail,
perishable figure, as it glided from the fire and
leaned pensively at the open casement; none
but the stars to look into the upturned face and |
read its history. The old church bell rang out
the hour with a mournful sound, as if it had
grown sad from so much communing with the
dead and unheeded warning to the living; the
fallen leaves rustled; the grass stirred upon the
graves; all else was still and sleeping.
Some of those dreamless sleepers lay close
within the shadow of the church-touching the
wall, as if they clung to it for comfort and pro-
tection. Others had chosen to lie beneath the
changing shade of trees; others by the path,
that footsteps might come near them; others,
among the graves of little children. Some had
desired to rest beneath the very ground they had
trodden in their daily walks; some, where the
setting sun might shine upon their beds; some,
where its light would fall upon them when it
rose. Perhaps not one of the imprisoned souls
had been able quite to separate itself in living
thought from its old companion. If any had, it
had still felt for it a love like that which captives
have been known to bear towards the cell in
which they have been long confined, and, even
at parting, hung upon its narrow bounds affec-
tionately.
It was long before the child closed the win-
dow, and approached her bed. Again some-
thing of the same sensation as before-an in-
voluntary chill-a momentary feeling akin to
fear-but vanishing directly, and leaving no
alarm behind. Again, too, dreams of the little
scholar of the roof opening, and a column of
bright faces, rising far away into the sky, as she
had seen in some old scriptural picture once, and
looking down on her, asleep. It was a sweet
and happy dream. The quiet spot outside
seemed to remain the same, saving that there
was music in the air, and a sound of angels'
wings. After a time the sisters came there,
hand in hand, and stood among the graves.
And then the dream grew dim and faded.
NIGHT-CAPS.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 52.
"People may say what they like," observed
Mrs. Nickleby, "but there's a great deal of com-
fort in a night-cap, as I am sure you would con-
|
NOBILITY-True.
His formal array of words might have at any
other time, as it has often had, something ludic-
rous in it! but at this time it is serious and af-
fecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his
gallant shielding of her, his generous conquest
of his own wrong and his own pride for her
sake, are simply honorable, manly, and true.
Nothing less worthy can be seen through the
lustre of such qualities in the commonest me-
chanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the
best-born gentleman. In such a light both
aspire alike, both rise alike, both children of the
dust shine equal.-Bleak House, Chap. 58.
NOBODY-The story of.
If you were ever in the Belgian villages near
the field of Waterloo, you will have seen, in
some quiet little church, a monument erected
by faithful companions in arms to the memory
of Colonel A, Major B, Captains C, D, and E,
Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I, and J, seven
non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and
thirty rank and file, who fell in the discharge of
their duty on the memorable day. The story of
Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the
earth. They bear their share of the battle
they have their part in the victory; they fall;
they leave no name but in the mass. The march
of the proudest of us leads to the dusty way by
which they go. O! Let us think of them this
year at the Christmas fire, and not forget them
when it is burnt out.
Nobody's Story. Reprinted Pieces.
NOSES-In art.
"
看看
​Why, that depends in a great measure on
the pattern," replied Miss La Creevy.
'Snubs
and Romans are plentiful enough, and there are
flats of all sorts and sizes when there's a meet-
ing at Exeter Hall; but perfect aquilines, I am
sorry to say, are scarce, and we generally use
them for uniforms or public characters."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 5.
NOSE-A mixed or Composite.
"What may you call his nose, now, my dear?"
pursued Mrs. Nickleby, wishing to interest Nich-
olas in the subject to the utmost.
"Call it?" repeated Nicholas.
"Ah!" returned his mother, "what style of
nose? What order of architecture, if one may

'TENDER, EARNEST KATE."
337
NOSES
say so? I am not very learned in noses. Do
you call it a Roman or a Grecian?"
แ
837
Upon my word, mother," said Nicholas,
laughing, as well as I remember, I should call
it a kind of Composite, or mixed nose. But I
have no very strong recollection on the subject.
If it will afford you any gratification, I'll observe
it more closely, and let you know."
NOSES.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 55.
I think the Romans must have aggravated one
another very much, with their noses. Perhaps
they became the restless people they were, in
consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Roman
nose so aggravated me, during the recital of my
misdemeanors, that I should have liked to pull |
it until he howled.-Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
NURSE-Mrs. Pipchin, the.
*
*
NURSE
*
*
Mrs. Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair
complexion, with her eyebrows always elevated,
and her head always drooping; who was always
ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity
anybody else; and who had a surprising natural
gift of viewing all subjects in an utterly forlora
and pitiable light, and bringing dreadful prece
dents to bear upon them, and deriving the great.
est consolation from the exercise of that talent.
*
*
*
*
*
Mrs. Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed,
like a disconsolate spectre, most decidedly and
forcibly shook her head to negative this position.
"It matters very little!" said Alice, with a
faint smile. Better or worse to-day, is but a
day's difference—perhaps not so much.”
Mrs. Wickam, as a serious character, expressed
her approval with a groan; and having made
some cold dabs at the bottom of the bed-clothes,
as feeling for the patient's feet and expecting to
find them stony, went clinking among the medi-
cine bottles on the table.
*
*
*
*
This celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous
ill-favored, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping
figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a
hook nose, and a hard gray eye, that looked as if
it might have been hammered at on an anvil with- Mrs. Wickam having clinked sufficiently
out sustaining any injury. Forty years at least among the bottles, now produced the mixture.
had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been | Mrs. Wickam looked hard at her patient in the
the death of Mr. Pipchin; but his relict still wore act of drinking, screwed her mouth up tight,
black bombazine, of such a lustreless, deep, dead, her eyebrows also, and shook her head, express-
sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light hering that tortures shouldn't make her say it was a
up after dark, and her presence was a quencher hopeless case. Mrs. Wickam then sprinkled a
to any number of candles. She was generally
spoken of as a great manager" of children;
and the secret of her management was, to give
them everything that they didn't like, and nothing
that they did-which was found to sweeten their
dispositions very much. She was such a bitter
old lady, that one was tempted to believe there
had been some mistake in the application of the
Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of
gladness and milk of human kindness had been
pumped out dry, instead of the mines.
((
Dombey & Son, Chap. 8.
Mrs. Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with
her sable plumage and her hooked beak, like
a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath-for
Mr. Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked
fast-and she croaked hoarsely as she waited for
the opening of the door.
Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
NURSES-Their characteristics.
"I needn't beg you," he added, pausing for a
moment at the settee before the fire, "to take
particular care of this young gentleman, Mrs.
"
""
little cooling-stuff about the room, with the air
of a female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes
on ashes, dust on dust-for she was a serious
character-and withdrew to partake of certain
funeral baked meats down-stairs.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 58.
"My goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, you
naughty, sinful child, if you don't shut your eyes
this minute, I'll call in them hobgoblins that lives
in the cockloft to come and eat you up alive!"
Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing,
supposed to issue from a conscientious goblin of
the bull species, impatient to discharge the
severe duty of his position. Having further
composed her young charge by covering her
head with the bed-clothes, and making three or
four angry dabs at the pillow, she folded her
arms, and screwed up her mouth, and sat look-
ing at the fire for the rest of the evening.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 5.
NURSE-A gentle.
Who, slowly recovering from a disorder so
severe and dangerous, could be insensible to the
unremitting attentions of such a nurse as gentle,
Blockitt, Sir?" suggested the nurse, a sim- tender, earnest Kate? On whom could the
pering piece of faded gentility, who did not pre-sweet soft voice, the light step, the delicate hand,
sume to state her name as a fact, but merely of
fered it as a mild suggestion.
the quiet, cheerful, noiseless discharge of those
thousand little offices of kindness and relief
which we feel so deeply when we are ill, and
The excellent and thoughtful old system, hal- forget so lightly when we are well-on whom
lowed by long prescription, which has usually could they make so deep an impression as on a
picked out from the rest of mankind the most young heart stored with every pure and true
dreary and uncomfortable people that could affection that women cherish; almost a stranger
possibly be laid hold of, to act as instructors of to the endearments and devotion of its own sex,
youth, finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, moni- save as it learnt them from itself; rendered, by
tors, attendants on sick-beds, and the like, had calamity and suffering, keenly susceptible of the
established Mrs. Wickam in very good business sympathy so long unknown and so long sought
as a nurse, and had led to her serious qualities in vain! What wonder that days became as
being particularly commended by an admiring | years in knitting them together!
and numerous connection.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 55.
$
NURSE.
NURSE
A nurse attended her, who might have been
the figure-head of a pauper-ship.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 18.
NURSE-Mrs. Squeers as a.
"I remember very well, sir,” rejoined Squeers.
"Ah! Mrs. Squeers, sir, was as partial to that
lad as if he had been her own; the attention,
sir, that was bestowed upon that boy in his ill-
ness! Dry toast and warm tea offered him every
night and morning when he couldn't swallow
anything—a candle in his bed-room on the very
night he died-the best dictionary sent up for
him to lay his head upon. I don't regret it
though. It is a pleasant thing to reflect that
one did one's duty by him."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 4.
NURSES-Mercenary.
Quiet and solitude were destined to hold un-
interrupted rule no longer, beneath the roof that
sheltered the child. Next morning, the old man
was in a raging fever accompanied with deli-
rium; and sinking under the influence of this
disorder he lay for many weeks in imminent
peril of his life. There was watching enough
now, but it was the watching of strangers who
made a greedy trade of it, and who, in the inter-
vals of their attendance upon the sick man, hud-
dled together with a ghastly good-fellowship,
and ate and drank and made inerry; for disease
and death were their ordinary household gods.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 11.
NURSE-Sairey Gamp as a.
Why, highty tighty, sir!" cried Mrs. Gamp,
is these your manners? You want a pitcher
of cold water throw'd over you to bring you
round; that's my belief; and if you was under
Betsy Prig you'd have it, too, I do assure you,
Mr. Chuffey. Spanish Flies is the only thing to
draw this nonsense out of you; and if anybody
wanted to do you a kindness, they'd clap a blis-
ter of 'em on your head, and put a mustard
poultige on your back. Who's dead, indeed!
It wouldn't be no grievous loss if some one was,
I think !
"He's quiet now, Mrs. Gamp," said Merry.
"Don't disturb him."
338
NURSE
"Now, I hope, you're easy in your mind. If
you should turn at all faint, we can soon rewive
you, sir, I promige you. Bite a person's thumbs,
or turn their fingers the wrong way," said Mrs.
Gamp, smiling with the consciousness of at once
imparting pleasure and instruction to her audi-
tors, "and they comes to, wonderful, Lord bless
you !"
As this excellent woman had been formally
entrusted with the care of Mr. Chuffey on a pre-
vious occasion, neither Mrs. Jonas nor anybody
else had the resolution to interfere directly with
her mode of treatment: though all present (Tom
Pinch and his sister especially) appeared to be
disposed to differ from her views. For such is
the rash boldness of the uninitiated, that they
will frequently set up some monstrous abstract
principle, such as humanity, or tenderness, or the
like idle folly, in obstinate defiance of all prece-
dent and usage; and will even venture to main-
tain the same against the persons who have
made the precedents and established the usage,
and who must therefore be the best and most
impartial judges of the subject.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 46.
He was so wasted, that it seemed as if his
bones would rattle when they moved him.
His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes unnatu-
rally large. He lay back in the easy-chair like
one more dead than living; and rolled his lan-
guid eyes towards the door when Mrs. Gamp
appeared, as painfully as if their weight alone
were burdensome to move.
"And how are we by this time?" Mrs.
Gamp observed. "We looks charming."
"We looks a deal charminger than we are,
then," returned Mrs. Prig, a little chafed in her
temper. "We got out of bed back'ards, I
think, for we're as cross as two sticks. I never
see sich a man. He wouldn't have been washed,
if he'd had his own way.
"She put the soap in my mouth," said the
unfortunate patient, feebly.
"Couldn't you keep it shut, then?" retorted
Mrs. Prig. "Who do you think's to wash one
feater, and miss another, and wear one's eyes
out with all manner of fine-work of that de-
scription, for half-a-crown a day! If you wants
to be tittivated, you must pay accordin"."
"Oh, bother the old wictim, Mrs. Chuzzle- Oh, dear me!" cried the patient, “oh dear,
wit," replied that zealous lady. "I ain't no pa-
dear!"
tience with him. You give him his own way
"There!" said Mrs. Prig, "that's the way
too much by half. A worritin' wexagious cree-ne's been a conducting of himself, Sarah, ever
since I got him out of bed, if you'll believe it.”
"Instead of being grateful," Mrs. Gamp ob-
served, "for all our little ways. Oh, fie for
shame, sir, fie for shame!"
tur!"
No doubt with the view of carrying out the
precepts she enforced, and "bothering the old
wictim in practice as well as in theory, Mrs.
Gamp took him by the collar of his coat, and
gave him some dozen or two of hearty shakes
backward and forward in his chair; that exer-
cise being considered by the disciples of the
Prig school of nursing (who are very numerous
among professional ladies) as exceedingly con-
ducive to repose, and highly beneficial to the
performance of the nervous functions. Its effect
in this instance was to render the patient so
giddy and addle headed that he could say noth-
ing more; which Mrs. Gamp regarded as the
triumph of her art.
"There!" she said, loosening the old man's
cravat, in consequence of his being rather black
in the face after this scientific treatment
Here Mrs. Prig seized the patient by the
chin, and began to rasp his unhappy head with
a hair-brush.
"I suppose you don't like that, neither!” she
observed, stopping to look at him.
It was just possible that he didn't, for the
brush was a specimen of the hardest kind of in-
strument producible by modern art; and his
very eye-lids were red with the friction. Mrs.
Prig was gratified to observe the correctness of
her supposition, and said triumphantly, "she
know'd as much."
When his hair was smoothed down comforta-
bly into his eyes, Mrs. Prig and Mrs. Gamp put
on his neckerchief; adjusting his shirt-collar
NURSES
with great nicety, so that the starched points
should also invade those organs, and afflict them
with an artificial ophthalmia. His waistcoat
and coat were next arranged; and as every but-
ton was wrenched into a wrong button-hole, and
the order of his boots was reversed, he presented
on the whole rather a melancholy appearance.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 29.
NURSES-Children and.
339
If we all knew our own minds (in a more en-
larged sense than the popular acceptation of
that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses
responsible for most of the dark corners we are
forced to go back to against our wills.
OFFICE
passive to be gormed; but that they all regard
ed it as constituting a most solemn impreca-
tion.- David Copperfield, Chap. 3.
OBSTRUCTIONS-In life and travel.
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 them-
selves in his way appear not only to be innume-
rable, 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 just-
ice in the course of his drive. There are three
classes of animated objects which prevent your
driving with any degree of comfort or celerity
NURSE AND CHILD.
through streets which are but little frequented
Charley is accordingly introduced, and, under-they are pigs, children, and old women.
a heavy fire of eyes, sits down to her basin and
a Druidical ruin of bread-and-butter. In the
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 15.
Tales, Chap. 10.
active superintendence of this young person, OCCUPATIONS-Humanizing.
Judy Smallweed appears to attain a perfectly
geological age, and to date from the remotest
periods.-Bleak House, Chap. 21.
NURSERY-Child in a.
The purblind day was feebly struggling with
the fog, when I opened my eyes to encounter
those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon
me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down
in his bed-gown and cap, and was so cold that
his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them
all.-Bleak House, Chap. 4.
NURSERY—Miss Tox in the.
For myself, I know no station in which, the
occupation of to-day cheerfully done, and the
occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked to,
any one of these pursuits is not most humaniz-
ing and laudable. I know no station which is
rendered more endurable to the person in it or
more safe to the person out of it, by having
ignorance for its associate. I know no sta-
tion which has a right to monopolize the
means of mutual instruction, improvement, and
rational entertainment, or which has ever con-
tinued to be a station very long, after seeking
to do so.-American Notes, Chap. 4.
OFFICE—A lawyer's by candle light.
office candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as
he wrote in a corner, were decorated with dirty
winding-sheets, as if in remembrance of a host
of hanged clients.
At the little ceremonies of the bath and toi-
lette, she assisted with enthusiasm. The ad- As I stood idle by Mr. Jaggers's fire, its rising
ministration of infantine doses of physic awak- and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf
ened all the active sympathy of her character; look as if they were playing a diabolical game at
and being on one occasion secreted in a cup-bo-peep with me; while the pair of coarse fat
board (whither she had fled in modesty), when
Mr. Dombey was introduced into the nursery by
his sister, to behold his son, in the course of
preparation for bed, taking a short walk uphill
over Richards's gown, in a short and airy linen
jacket, Miss Tox was so transported beyond the
ignorant present as to be unable to refrain from
crying out, "Is he not beautiful, Mr. Dombey! They walked in. And a mighty yellow jaun-
Is he not a Cupid, Sir!" and then almost sink-diced little office Mr. Fips had of it; with a
ing behind the closet door with confusion and great, black, sprawling splash upon the floor in
blushes.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 5.
one corner, as if some old clerk had cut his
throat there years ago, and had let out ink in-
stead of blood.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39.
O
OATH-Of Mr. Peggotty.
The only subject, she informed me, on which
he ever showed a violent temper or swore an
oath, was this generosity of his; and if it were
ever referred to, by any one of them, he
struck the table a heavy blow with his right
hand (had split it on one such occasion), and
swore a dreadful oath that he would be
Gormed" if he didn't cut and run for good,
if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared,
in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the
least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb
Great Expectations, Chap. 48.
OFFICE—A smeary.
OFFICE-An intelligence.
The office looked just the same as when he
had left it last, and, indeed, with one or two ex-
ceptions, there seemed to be the very same pla-
cards in the window that he had seen before.
There were the same unimpeachable masters
and mistresses in want of virtuous servants, and
the same virtuous servants in want of unim-
peachable masters and mistresses, and the same
magnificent estates for the investment of capi-
tal, and the same enormous quantities of capital
to be invested in estates, and, in short, the
same opportunities of all sorts for people who
wanted to make their fortunes. And a most
extraordinary proof it was of the national pros-
perity, that people had not been found to avai'
themselves of such advantages long ago.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 35.
CFFICE
OFFICE-A business.
340
Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through
the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving
a black sediment upon the panes, showed the
books and papers, and the figures bending over
them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as
much abstracted in appearance from the world
without, as if they were assembled at the bot-
tom of the sea; while a mouldy little strong
room in the obscure perspective, where a shady
lamp was always burning, might have represent-
ed the cavern of some ocean-monster, looking
on with a red eye at these mysteries of the
deep.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 13.
OFFICE-The Circumlocution.
The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody
knows without being told) the most important
Department under government. No public busi-
ness of any kind could possibly be done at any
time, without the acquiescence of the Circumlo-
cution Office. Its finger was in the largest pub- |
lic pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was
equally impossible to do the plainest right and
to undo the plainest wrong, without the express
authority of the Circumlocution Office. If an-
other Gunpowder Plot had been discovered
half an hour before the lighting of the match,
nobody would have been justified in saving the
Parliament until there had been half a score of
boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks
of official memoranda, and a family vault full of
ungrammatical correspondence on the part of
the Circumlocution Office.
This glorious establishment had been early in
the field, when the one sublime principle involv-
ing the difficult art of governing a country, was
first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had
been foremost to study that bright revelation,
and to carry its shining influence through the
whole of the official proceedings. Whatever
was required to be done, the Circumlocution
Office was beforehand with all the public De-
partments in the art of perceiving-HOW NOT
TO DO IT.
Through this delicate perception, through the
tact with which it invariably seized it, and
through the genius with which it always acted
on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen
to overtop all the public departments; and
the public condition had risen to be-what it
was.
*
*
*
*
*
OFFICE
OFFICE-An Official's defence of the Cir.
cumlocution.
"No, but really! Our place is," said the easy
Young Barnacle," the most inoffensive place
possible. You'll say we are a Humbug. I won't
say we are not; but all that sort of thing is in-
tended to be, and must be. Don't you see?"
I do not," said Clennam.
"You don't regard it from the right point of
view. It is the point of view that is the essen.
tial thing. Regard our place from the point of
view that we only ask you to leave us alone, and
we are as capital a Department as you'll find
anywhere."
"Is your place there to be left alone?" asked
Clennam.
"You exactly hit it," returned Ferdinand.
"It is there with the express intention that
everything shall be left alone. That is what it
means. That is what it's for. No doubt there's
a certain form to be kept up that it's for some-
thing else, but its only a form. Why, good
Heaven, we are nothing but forms! Think
what a lot of our forms you have gone through.
And you have never got any nearer to an
end?"
Never," said Clennam.
It's
"Look at it from the right point of view, and
there you have us official and effectual.
like a limited game of cricket. A field of out-
siders are always going in to bowl at the Public
Service, and we block the balls."
Clennam asked what became of the bowlers?
The airy young Barnacle replied that they grew
tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their backs
broken, died off, gave it up, went in for other
games.
"And this occasions me to congratulate my-
self again," he pursued,
" on the circumstance
that our place has had nothing to do with your
temporary retirement. It very easily might
have had a hand in it; because it is undeniable
that we are sometimes a most unlucky place in
our effects upon people who will not leave us
alone."-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 28.
OFFICE-The Circumlocution.
The waiting-rooms of that Department soon
began to be familiar with his presence, and he
was generally ushered into them by its janitors.
much as a pickpocket might be shown into a
police-office; the principal difference being that
the object of the latter class of public business
is to keep the pickpocket, while the Circumlo-
cution object was to get rid of Clennam. How-
ever, he was resolved to stick to the Great De-
partment; and so the work of form-filling, cor-
responding, minuting, memorandum-making,
signing, counter-signing, counter-counter-sign-
ing backwards and forwards, and referring side-
ways, crosswise, and zigzag, recommenced.
Numbers of people were lost in the Circum-
locution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or
with projects for the general welfare (and they
had better have had wrongs at first, than have
taken that bitter English recipe for certainly
getting them), who, in slow lapse of time and
agony had passed safely through other public
departments; who, according to rule, had been
bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution
by the other; got referred at last to the Circum- Office, not previously mentioned in the present
locution Office, and never reappeared in the record. When that admirable Department got
light of day. Boards sat upon them, secre-into trouble, and was, by some infuriated Mem-
taries minuted upon them, commissioners gab- ber of Parliament, whom the smaller Barnacles
bled about them, clerks registered, entered, almost suspected of laboring under diabolic
checked, and ticked them off, and they melted possession, attacked, on the merits of no indi-
away. In short, all the business of the coun-vidual case, but as an Institution wholly abomi-
try went through the Circumlocution Office,
except the business that never came out of it;
and its name was Legion.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10.
nable and Bedlamite; then the noble or right
honorable Barnacle who represented it in the
House, would smite that Member and cleave
him asunder, with a statement of the quantity
OFFICE
341
*
*
OFFICE
*
*
If that airy young Barnacle had been there,
he would have frankly told them perhaps that
the Circumlocution Office had achieved its
functions. That what the Barnacles had to do,
was to stick on to the national ship as long as
they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the
ship, clean the ship, would be to knock them
off; that they could but be knocked off once
and that if the ship went down with them yet
sticking to it, that was the ship's look out, and
not theirs.—Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10.
OFFICE-Aspirants for (the Barnacles).
of business (for the prevention of business) done there was a reference of the invention to three
by the Circumlocution Office. Then would that | Barnacles and a Stiltstalking, who knew noth
noble or right honorable Barnacle hold in his ing about it; into whose heads nothing could
hand a paper containing a few figures, to which, be hammered about it; who got bored abou
with the permission of the house, he would en- it, and reported physical impossibilities about
treat its attention. Then would the inferior it. How the Circumlocution Office, in a
Barnacles exclaim, obeying orders, Hear, Minute, number eight thousand seven hundred
Hear, Hear!" and "Read!" Then would the and forty, "saw no reason to reverse the deci-
noble or right honorable Barnacle perceive, sir. sion at which my lords had arrived." How the
from this little document, which he thought | Circumlocution Office, being reminded that my
might carry conviction even to the perversest lords had arrived at no decision, shelved the
mind (Derisive laughter and cheering from the business. How there had been a final inter-
Barnacle fry), that within the short compass of view with the head of the Circumlocution
the last financial half-year, this much-maligned Office that very morning, and how the Brazen
Department (Cheers) had written and received Head had spoken, and had been, upon the
fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers), twenty- whole, and under all the circumstances, and
four thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and looking at it from the various points of view,
thirty-two thousand five hundred and seventeen of opinion that one of two courses was to be
memoranda (Vehement cheering). Nay, an in- pursued in respect of the business: that was to
genious gentleman connected with the Depart- say, either to leave it alone for evermore, or to
ment, and himself a valuable public servant, begin it all over again.
had done him the favor to make a curious cal-
culation of the amount of stationery consumed
in it during the same period. It formed a part
of this same short document; and he derived
from it the remarkable fact, that the sheets of
foolscap paper it had devoted to the public ser-
vice would pave the footways on both sides of
Oxford Street from end to end, and leave nearly
a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Im-
mense cheering and laughter): while of tape-
red tape-it had used enough to stretch, in
graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to
the General Post-Office. Then, amidst a burst
of official exaltation, would the noble or right
honorable Barnacle sit down, leaving the muti- And there too was a sprinkling of less distin-
lated fragments of the Member on the field. guished Parliamentary Barnacles, who had not
|
No one, after that exemplary demolition of him, as yet got anything snug, and were going
would have the hardihood to hint that the more through their probation to prove their worthi-
the Circumlocution Office did, the less was done, ness. These Barnacles perched upon staircases
and that the greatest blessing it could confer on and hid in passages, waiting their orders to
an unhappy public would be to do nothing.
make houses or not to make houses; and they did
all their hearing, and ohing, and cheering, and
barking, under directions from the heads of the
family; and they put dummy motions on the
paper in the way of other men's motions, and
they stalled disagreeable subjects off until late
in the night, and late in the session, and then,
with virtuous patriotism, cried out that
too late and they went down into the country,
whenever they were sent, and swore that Lord
Decimus had revived trade from a swoon and
commerce from a fit, and had doubled the har-
vest of corn, quadrupled the harvest of hay, and
prevented no end of gold flying out of the
Bank. Also these Barnacles were dealt, by the
heads of the family, like so many cards below
the court-cards, to public meetings and dinners;
where they bore testimony to all sorts of ser-
vices on the part of their noble and honorable
relatives, and buttered the Barnacles on all
sorts of toasts. And they stood, under similar
orders, at all sorts of elections; and they turned
out of their own seats, on the shortest notice
and the most unreasonable terms, to let in
other men; and they fetched and carried, and
toadied and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate
heaps of dirt, and were indefatigable in the
public service. And there was not a list in all
the Circumlocution Office, of places that might
fall vacant anywhere within half a century,
from a lord of the Treasury to a Chinese consul,
and up again to a governor-general of India, but,
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 8.
OFFICE-The trials of the Circumlocution.
Mr. Meagles went through the narrative; the
established narrative, which has become tire-
some; the matter-of-course narrative which we
all knew by heart. How, after interminable
attendance and correspondence, after infinite
impertinences, ignorances, and insults, my lords
made Minute, number three thousand four
hundred and seventy-two, allowing the culprit
to make certain trials of his invention at his
own expense. How the trials were made in
the presence of a board of six, of whom two an-
cient members were too blind to see it, two
other ancient members were too deaf to hear it,
one other ancient member was too lame to get
near it, and the final ancient member was too
pig-headed to look at it. How there were
more years; more impertinences, ignorances,
and insults. How my lords then made a
Minute, number five thousand one hundred
and three, whereby they resigned the business
to the Circumlocution Office. How the Cir-
cumlocution Office, in course of time, took up
the business as if it were a bran new thing of
yesterday, which had never been heard of be-
fore; muddled the business, addled the busi-
ness, tossed the business in a wet blanket.
How the impertinences, ignorances, and insults
went through the multiplication table. How
was
OFFICE-HOLDERS
as applicants for such places, the names of some
or of every one of these hungry and adhesive
Barnacles were down.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 34.
OFFICE-HOLDERS-The Barnacles.
342
OFFICIAL
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 churchwardens and
overseers being duly installed in their curtained
pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket,
To have got the whole Barnacle family to- erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle,
gether would have been impossible, for two and divides his attention between his prayer-
reasons. Firstly, because no building could have book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the com-
held all the members and connections of that mencement of the communion service, when the
illustrious house. Secondly, because wherever whole congregation is hushed into a profound
there was a square yard of ground in British silence, broken only by the voice of the officiat-
occupation, under the sun or moon, with a pub- ing clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the
lic post upon it, sticking to that post was a Bar- stone floor of the aisle with astounding clear-
nacle. No intrepid navigator could plant a ness. Observe the generalship of the beadle.
flagstaff upon any spot of earth, and take pos- His involuntary look of horror is instantly
session of it in the British name, but to that spot changed into one of perfect indifférence, as if
of earth, so soon as the discovery was known, he were the only person present who had not
the Circumlocution Office sent out a Barnacle heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After
and a despatch-box. Thus the Barnacles were putting forth his right leg now and then, as a
all over the world, in every direction-despatch- feeler, the victim who dropped the money ven-
boxing the compass.
tures 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, adminis-
tered with the cane before noticed, to the in-
tense delight of three young men in an adjacent
pew, who cough violently at intervals until the
conclusion of the sermon.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 34.
OFFICIAL-(Alderman Cute).
Seen the Alderman? Oh, dear! Who could
ever help seeing the Alderman? He was so
considerate, so affable, he bore so much in mind
the natural desire of folks to see him, that if he
had a fault, it was the being constantly On View.
And wherever the great people were, there, to
be sure, attracted by the kindred sympathy be-
tween great souls, was Cute.-Chimes, 3d Quarter.
OFFICIAL-The village.
His income is small, certainly, as the rusty
black coat and threadbare velvet collar de-
monstrate; 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 admirable specimen of
a small tyrant: morose, brutish, and ill-tem-
pered; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his
superiors, and jealous of the influence and au-
thority of the beadle.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 1.
OFFICIALS-Village (The parish beadle).
The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps
the most, important member of the local admin-
istration. 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
much his own way as either of them. But his
power is very great, notwithstanding; and the
dignity of his office is never impaired by the
absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.
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 busi- |
ness nights; and to hear what he said to the
senior churchwarden.
*
*
*
*
*
See him again on Sunday in his state-coat and
cocked-hat, with 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
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 1.
OFFICIALS-The nursery of.
Such a nursery of statesmen had the Depart-
ment become, in virtue of a long career of this
nature, that several solemn lords had attaine
the reputation of being quite unearthly prodi-
gies of business, solely from having practised
How not to do it, at the head of the Circuml-
cution Office. As to the minor priests and aco-
lytes of that temple, the result of all this was
that they stood divided into two classes, and,
down to the junior messenger, either believed
in the Circumlocution Office as a heaven-born
institution, that had an absolute right to do
whatever it liked; or took refuge in total in-
fidelity, and considered it a flagrant nuisance.
The Barnacle family had for some time helped
to administer the Circumlocution Office. The
Tite Barnacle Branch, indeed, considered them-
selves in a general way as having vested rights
in that direction, and took it ill if any other
family had much to say to it. The Barnacles
were a very high family, and a very large family.
They were dispersed all over the public offices,
and held all sorts of public places. Either the
nation was under a load of obligation to the
Barnacles, or the Barnacles were under a load
of obligation to the nation. It was not quite
unanimously settled which; the Barnacles hav
ing their opinion, the nation theirs.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10.
OFFICIAL-Barnacle at home.
Mr. Barnacle would see him. Would he walk
up-stairs? He would, and he did; and in the
drawing-room, with his leg on a rest, he found
Mr. Barnacle himself, the express image and
presentment of How not to do it.
Mr. Barnacle dated from a better time, when
the country was not so parsimonious, and the
Circumlocution Office was not so badgered. He
wound and wound folds of white cravat round
his neck, as he wound and wound folds of tape
OFFICIAL
343
and paper round the neck of the country. His
wristbands and collar were oppressive, his voice
and manner were oppressive. He had a large
watch-chain and bunch of seals, a coat buttoned
up to inconvenience, a waistcoat buttoned up to
inconvenience, an unwrinkled pair of trousers,
a stiff pair of boots. He was altogether splen-
did, massive, overpowering, and impracticable.
He seemed to have been sitting for his portrait
to Sir Thomas Lawrence all the days of his
life.
•
"Mr. Clennam?" said Mr. Barnacle.
seated."
Mr. Clennam became seated.
"Be
"You have called on me, I believe," said Mr.
Barnacle, "at the Circumlocution-" giving it
the air of a word of about five and twenty syl-
lables, "Office."
"I have taken that liberty."
Mr. Barnacle solemnly bent his head as who
should say "I do not deny that it is a liberty;
proceed to take another liberty, and let me know
your business."
Mr. Barnacle tapped his fingers on the table,
and, as if he were now sitting for his portrait to
a new and strange artist, appeared to say to his
visitor, "If you will be good enough to take me
with my present lofty expression, I shall feel
obliged."—Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10.
OFFICIAL-Barnacle, the public.
OLD AGE.
OLD BOYS
* * * a horse so old that his birthday was
lost in the mists of antiquity.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. I.
OLD AGE-The vanity of (The grave-dig-
gers).
"I have been thinking, Davy,” replied the
sexton, "that she," he pointed to the grave,
"must have been a deal older than you or
me.'
"Seventy-nine," answered the old man with
a shake of the head, "I tell you that I saw it."
"Saw it?" replied the sexton; "aye, but,
Davy, women don't always tell the truth about
their age."
"That's true, indeed," said the other old man,
with a sudden sparkle in his eye.
"She might
have been older."
"I am sure she must have been. Why, only
think how old she looked. You and I seemed
but boys to her."
"She did look old," rejoined David. "You're
right. She did look old.”
"Call to mind how old she looked for many
a long, long year, and say if she could be but
seventy-nine at last-only our age,” said the
sexton.
"Five year older at the very least!" cried
the other.
Five!" retorted the sexton. "Ten. Good
eighty-nine. I call to mind the time her daugh-
ter died. She was eighty-nine if she was a day,
and tries to pass upon us now for ten year young-
Oh! human vanity.”
For Mr. Tite Barnacle, Mr. Arthur Clennam
made his fifth enquiry one day at the Circumlo-
cution Office; having on previous occasions
awaited that gentleman successively in a hall, aer.
glass case, a waiting-room, and a fire-proof pas-
sage where the Department seemed to keep its
wind.
On this occasion Mr. Barnacle was not
engaged, as he had been before, with the noble
prodigy at the head of the Department; but was
absent. Barnacle Junior, however, was an-
nounced as a lesser star, yet visible above the
office horizon.
The other old man was not behindhand with
some moral reflections on this fruitful theme,
and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such
weight as to render it doubtful-not whether
the deceased was of the age suggested, but
whether she had not almost reached the patri-
archal term of a hundred. When they had
settled this question to their mutual satisfaction,
the sexton, with his friend's assistance, rose to go.
"It's chilly, sitting here, and I must be care-
ful-till the summer," he said, as he prepared
to limp away.
What?" asked old David.
"He's very deaf, poor fellow ! cried the
sexton. Good-bye!"
With Barnacle Junior he signified his desire to
confer; and found that young gentleman singe-
ing the calves of his legs at the parental fire, and
supporting his spine against the mantel-shelf.
It was a comfortable room, handsomely furnish-
ed in the higher official manner; and presenting
stately suggestions of the absent Barnacle, in the
thick carpet, the leather-covered desk to sit at,
the leather-covered desk to stand at, the formid-"He's failing very fast.
able easy-chair and hearth-rug, the interposed
screen, the torn-up papers, the despatch-boxes
with little labels sticking out of them, like
medicine bottles or dead game, the pervading
smell of leather and mahogany, and a general
bamboozling air of How not to do it.
The present Barnacle, holding Mr. Clennam's
card in his hand, had a youthful aspect, and the
fluffiest little whisker, perhaps, that ever was
seen. Such a downy tip was on his callow chin,
that he seemed half-fledged, like a young bird;
and a compassionate observer might have urged,
that if he had not singed the calves of his legs,
he would have died of cold. He had a
superior eye-glass dangling round his neck, but
unfortunately had such flat orbits to his eyes,
and such limp little eyelids, that it wouldn't
stick in when he put it up, but kept tumbling
out against his waistcoat buttons with a click
that discomposed him very much.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10.
"Ah!" said old David, looking after him.
He's failing very fast. He ages every day."
And so they parted; each persuaded that the
other had less life in him than himself; and
both greatly consoled and comforted by the lit-
tle fiction that they had agreed upon, respecting
Becky Morgan, whose decease was no longer
a precedent of uncomfortable application, and
would be no business of theirs for half a score
of years to come.
OLD BOYS.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54.
To
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 extensive
dimensions the old boys would require.
what precise causes the rapid advance of old boy
population is to be traced, we are unable to de-
termine. It would be an interesting and curi-
ous speculation, but, as we have not sufficient
space to devote to it here, we simply stat、
•
OLD CLOTHES
344
fact that the numbers 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 considering it minutely in detail, we
should be disposed to subdivide 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 Quadrant and Regent Street
in the daytime; the theatres (especially 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 certain stout old gen-
tlemen of clean appearance, who are always to
be seen in the same taverns, at the same hours
every evening, 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 fire-place, and smoked long cherry-stick
pipes which went under the table, with the bowls
resting on the floor. Grand old boys they were
Grand old boys they were
-fat, red-faced, white-headed old fellows-al-
ways there--one on one side the table, and the
other opposite-puffing and drinking away in
great state. Everybody knew them, and it was
supposed by some people that they were both
immortal.
OLD CLOTHES
of the illustrious dead, and to indulge in the
speculations to which they give rise; now fit-
ting a deceased coat, then a dead pair of trou-
sers, and anon the mortal remains of a gaudy
waistcoat, upon some being of our own conjur-
ing up, and endeavoring 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 buttonec
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
policeman at the opposite street corner.
We were occupied in this manner the other
day, endeavoring 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-win-
dow, 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 circumstan-
ces which will occur sometimes, come to be ex-
posed 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 legi-
bly on those clothes, as if we had his autobi-
ography engrossed on parchment before us.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 6.
OLD CLOTHES-Dealers in.
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, resi-
dent with three daughters-all grown up, and all
unmarried-in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane.
He was a short, round, large-faced, tubbish sort
of a 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 clock-work-breakfast at nine-tachment towards Monmouth Street, as the only
dress and tittivate a little-down to the Sir
Somebody's Head-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.
*
*
*
*
*
John Dounce, having lost his old friends,
alienated his relations, and rendered himself
ridiculous to everybody, made offers successively
to a schoolmistress, a landlady, a feminine to-
bacconist, and a housekeeper; and, being di-
rectly rejected by each and every of them, was
accepted by his cook, with whom he now lives,
a henpecked husband, a melancholy monument
of antiquated misery, and a living warning to all
exorious old boys.
Sketches (Characters), Chap. 7.
OLD CLOTHES-The depositories of.
Through every alteration and every change,
Monmouth Street has still remained the burial-
place of the fashions; 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
We have always entertained a particular at-
true and real emporium for second-hand wear-
ing apparel. Monmouth Street is venerable
from its antiquity, and respectable from its use-
fulness. 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 immersed in pro
found speculations, and deeply engaged in sed
entary pursuits.—Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 6.
OLD COUPLE
345
OLD MAN
OLD COUPLE-The.
younger branches with all manner of presents,
They are grandfather and grandmother to such as pocket-books, pencil-cases, pen-wipers,
a dozen grown people, and have great-grand-watch-papers, pincushions, sleeve-buckles, work-
children besides; their bodies are bent, their ed slippers, watch-guards, and even a nutmeg-
hair is gray, their step tottering and infirm. grater; the latter article being presented by a
Is this the lightsome pair whose wedding was very chubby and very little boy, who exhibits it
so merry, and have the young couple indeed in great triumph as an extraordinary variety
grown old so soon?
The old couple's emotion at these tokens of re
membrance occasions quite a pathetic scene, of
which the chief ingredients are a vast quantity
of kissing and hugging, and repeated wipings
of small eyes and noses with small square
pocket-handkerchiefs, which don't come at all
easily out of small pockets. Even the peevish
bachelor is moved, and he says, as he presents
the old gentleman with a queer sort of antique
ring from his own finger, that he'll be de'ed if
he doesn't think he looks younger than he did
ten years ago.
It seems but yesterday,—and yet what a host
of cares and griefs are crowded into the in-
tervening time, which, reckoned by them,
lengthens out into a century! How many new
associations have wreathed themselves about
their hearts since then! The old time is gone,
and a new time has come for others,-not for
them. They are but the rusting link that
feebly joins the two, and is silently loosening
its hold and dropping asunder.
It seems but yesterday,-and yet three of
their children have sunk into the grave, and
the tree that shades it has grown quite old.
One was an infant,—they wept for him. The
next a girl, a slight young thing too delicate
for earth, her loss was hard indeed to bear.
The third, a man. That was the worst of all,
but even that grief is softened now.
It seems but yesterday,—and yet how the
gay and laughing faces of that bright morning
have changed and vanished from above ground!
Faint likenesses of some remain about them
yet, but they are very faint, and scarcely to be
traced. The rest are only seen in dreams,
and even they are unlike what they were, in
eyes so old and dim.
*
*
*
*
*
The old couple sit side by side, and the old
time seems like yesterday indeed. Looking
back upon the path they have travelled, its dust
and ashes disappear; the flowers that withered
long ago show brightly again upon its borders,
and they grow young once more in the youth
of those about them.-Sketches of Couples.
OLD MAN-The conventional.
Anybody may pass, any day, in the thronged
thoroughfares of the metropolis, some meagre,
wrinkled, yellow old man (who might be sup
posed to have dropped from the stars, if there
were any star in the heavens dull enough to be
suspected of casting off so feeble a spark), creep-
One or two dresses from the bridal ward-
robe are yet preserved. They are of a quainting along with a scared air, as though bewilder-
and antique fashion, and seldom seen, except
in pictures. White has turned yellow, and
brighter hues have faded. Do you wonder,
child? The wrinkled face was once as smooth
as yours, the eyes as bright, the shrivelled skin as
fair and delicate. It is the work of hands
that have been dust these many years.
Where are the fairy lovers of that happy day,
whose annual return comes upon the old man
and his wife like the echo of some village
bell which has long been silent?
*
*
*
*
*
His
It has
ed and a little frightened by the noise and bustle.
This old man is always a little old man. If he
were ever a big old man, he has shrunk into a
little old man; if he were always a little old
man, he has dwindled into a less old man.
coat is of a color, and cut, that never was the
mode anywhere, at any period. Clearly, it was
not made for him, or for any individual mortal.
Some wholesale contractor measured Fate for
five thousand coats of such quality, and Fate
has lent this old coat to this old man, as one of
a long unfinished line of many old men.
This morning the old couple are cheerful but always large dull metal buttons, similar to no
serious, recalling old times as well as they can other buttons. This old man wears a hat, a
remember them, and dwelling upon many pas- thumbed and napless and yet an obdurate hat,
sages in their past lives which the day brings to which has never adapted itself to the shape of
mind. The old lady reads aloud, in a tremu- his poor head. His coarse shirt and his coarse
lous voice, out of a great Bible, and the old gen-neckcloth have no more individuality than his
tleman, with his hand to his ear, listens with coat and hat: they have the same character of
profound respect. When the book is closed, not being his-of not being anybody's. Yet
they sit silent for a short space, and afterwards this old man wears these clothes with a certain
resume their conversation, with a reference per- unaccustomed air of being dressed and elaborat-
haps to their dead children, as a subject not un-ed for the public ways; as though he passed the
suited to that they have just left. By degrees
they are led to consider which of those who sur-
vive are the most like those dearly remembered
objects, and so they fall into a less solemn
strain, and become cheerful again.
How many people in all, grandchildren, great-
grandchildren, and one or two intimate friends
of the family, dine together to-day at the eldest
son's to congratulate the old couple, and wish
them many happy returns, is a calculation be-
yond our powers; but this we know, that the
old couple no sooner present themselves, very
prucely and carefully attired, than there is a
violent shouting and rushing forward of the
greater part of his time in a nightcap and gown.
And so, like the country mouse in the second
year of a famine, come to see the town-mouse,
and timidly threading his way to the town-mouse's
lodging through a city of cats, this old man
passes in the streets.
Soinetimes, on holidays, towards evening, he
will be seen to walk with a slightly increased in-
firinity, and his old eyes will glimmer with a
moist and marshy light. Then the little old
man is drunk. A very small measure will over-
set him; he may be bowled off his unsteady legs
with a half-pint pot. Some pitying acquaintance
chance acquaintance, very often-has warmed
OLD TIMES
846
OLD MAIDS
up his weakness with a treat of beer, and the OLD PEOPLE-Dick Swiveller's opinion of
consequence will be the lapse of a longer time He don't look like it," said Dick, shaking his
than usual before he shall pass again. For the head, "but these old people-there's no trusting
little old man is going home to the Workhouse; 'em, Fred. There's an aunt of mine down in
and on his good behavior they do not let him Dorsetshire that was going to die when I was
out often (though methinks they might, consider-eight years old, and hasn't kept her word yet
ing the few years he has before him to go out They're so aggravating, so unprincipled, so spite
in, under the sun); and on his bad behavior ful. Unless there's apoplexy in the family, Fred,
they shut him up closer than ever, in a grove | you can't calculate upon 'em, and even then they
of two score and nineteen more old men, every deceive you just as often as not.”
one of whom smells of all the others.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 7.
OLD PEOPLE-The obstinacy of.
“Nothing but taking him in the very fact of
eloping, will convince the old lady, sir,” replied
Job.
Mrs. Plornish's father-a poor little reedy pip-
ing old gentleman, like a worn-out bird; who
had been in what he called the music-binding
business, and met with great misfortunes, and
who had seldom been able to make his way, or
to see it, or to pay it, or to do anything at all "All them old cats will run their heads agin
with it but find it no thoroughfare-had re-mile-stones," observed Mr. Weller in a parenthe
tired of his own accord to the Workhouse which sis.-Pickwick, Chap. 16.
was appointed by law to be the Good Samaritan
of his district.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 31.
OLD TIMES.
Those darling byegone times, Mr. Carker,"
said Cleopatra, "with their delicious fortresses,
and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful
places of torture, and their romantic vengeances,
and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and
everything that makes life truly charming! How
dreadfully we have degenerated!
"
Yes, we have fallen off deplorably," said Mr.
Carker.
"We have no Faith left, positively," said Mrs.
Skewton, advancing her shrivelled ear; for Mr.
Dombey was saying something to Edith. "We
have no Faith in the dear old Barons, who were
the most delightful creatures—or in the dear old
Priests, who were the most warlike of men―or
even in the days of that inestimable Queen Bess,
upon the wall there, which were so extremely
golden. Dear creature! She was all Heart!
And that charming father of hers! I hope you
doat on Harry the Eighth !
I admire him very much," said Carker.
So bluff!" cried Mrs. Skewton, "wasn't he?
So burly. So truly English. Such a picture, too,
he makes, with his dear little peepy eyes, and his
benevolent chin!"
*
*
*
*
*
"Oh !" cried Mrs. Skewton, with a faded little
scream of rapture, "the Castle is charming!-as-
sociations of the Middle Ages—and all that
which is so truly exquisite. Don't you doat upon
the Middle Ages, Mr. Carker?"
Very much, indeed," said Mr. Carker.
Such charming times!" cried Cleopatra. " So
full of faith! So vigorous and forcible! So pictu-
resque! So perfectly removed from common-
place! Oh dear! If they would only leave us
a little more of the poetry of existence in these
terrible days!"-Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.
Still the red-faced gentleman extolled the
good old times, the grand old times, the great
old times. No matter what anybody else said,
ne still went turning round and round in one set
form of words concerning them; as a poor squir-
rel turns and turns in its revolving cage; touch-
ing the mechanism and trick of which, it has
probably quite as distinct perceptions as ever
this red-faced gentleman had of his deceased
Millennium.-Chimes, 1st Quarter.
OLD MAN-A vigorous.
He was a strong and vigorous old man, with
a will of iron, and a voice of brass.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 3.
OLD LADY—A pretty.
What is prettier than an old lady—except a
young lady-when her eyes are bright, when her
figure is trim and compact, when her face is
cheerful and calm, when her dress is as the
dress of a china shepherdess; so dainty in its
colors, so individually assorted to herself, so
neatly moulded on her? Nothing is prettier
thought the good Minor Canon frequently, when
taking his seat at table opposite his long
widowed mother. Her thought at such times
may be condensed into the two words that
oftenest did duty together in all her conversa
tions: "My Sept!"-Edwin Drood, Chap. 6.
OLD MAIDS.
The house was the perfection of neatness-so
were the four Miss Willises. Everything 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 together. They were
three long graces in drapery, with the addition,
like a school-dinner, of another long grace after-
wards-the three fates with another sister-the
Siamese twins multiplied 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 harmony among themselves, and as
they sometimes went out, or saw company in
a quiet way" at home, occasionally icing the
neighbors. Three years passed over in this
way, when an unlooked-for and extraordinary
phenomenon occurred. The Miss Willises
showed symptoms of summer; the frost gradual-
ly broke up; a complete thaw took place. Was
OLD MAID
it possible? one of the four Miss Willises was
going to be married !—Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 3.
OLD MAID-Miss Volumnia, the.
Miss Volumnia, displaying in early life a
pretty talent for cutting ornaments out of col-
ored paper, and also for singing to the guitar in
the Spanish tongue, and propounding French
conundrums in country houses, passed the twen-
ty years of her existence between twenty and
forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Laps-
ing then out of date, and being considered to
bore mankind by her vocal performances in the
Spanish language, she retired to Bath; where
she lives slenderly on an annual present from
Sir Leicester, and whence she makes occasional
resurrections in the country houses of her cous-
ins. She has an extensive acquaintance at Bath
among appalling old gentlemen with thin legs
and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing
in that dreary city. But she is a little dreaded
elsewhere, in consequence of an indiscreet pro-
fusion in the article of rouge, and persistency in
an obsolete pearl necklace, like a rosary of little
bird's-eggs.-Bleak House, Chap. 28.
OLD MAID-A fashionable.
347
OLD FIRM
comfortable as a couple of marigolds run to sced.
They were very precise, had the strictest possible
ideas of propriety, wore false hair, and always
smelt very strongly of lavender.-Tales, Chap. 3
OLD FIRM-Their place of business.
The old-established firm of Anthony Chuzzle-
wit and Son, Manchester Warehousemen, and
so forth, had its place of business in a very nar-
row street somewhere behind the Post Office;
where every house was in the brightest summer
morning very gloomy; and where light porters
watered the pavement, each before his own cm-
ployer's premises in fantastic patterns, in the
dog-days; and where spruce gentlemen, with
their hands in the pockets of symmetrical trou-
sers, were always to be seen in warm weather,
contemplating their undeniable boots in dusty
warehouse doorways: which appeared to be the
hardest work they did, except now and then
carrying pens behind their ears. A dim, dirty,
smoky, tumble down, rotten old house it was,
as anybody would desire to see; but there the
firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son transacted
all their business and their pleasure too, such as
it was; for neither the young man nor the old
had any other residence, or any care or thought
beyond its narrow limits.
Business, as may be readily supposed, was the
main thing in this establishment: insomuch in-
deed that it shouldered comfort out of doors,
and jostled the domestic arrangements at every
turn. Thus in the miserable bed-rooms there
were files of moth-eaten letters hanging up
against the walls; and linen rollers, and frag-
ments of old patterns, and odds and ends of
spoiled goods, strewed upon the ground; while
the meagre bedsteads, washing-stands, and
scraps of carpet, were huddled away into cor-
The only great occasions for Volumnia, in
this changed aspect of the place in Lincolnshire,
are those occasions, rare and widely-separated,
when something is to be done for the county,
or the country, in the way of gracing a public
ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph
come out in fairy form, and proceed with joy
under cousinly escort to the exhausted old as-
sembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off; which,
during three hundred and sixty-four days and
nights of every ordinary year, is a kind of Anti-
podean lumber-room, full of old chairs and ta-
bles, upside down. Then, indeed, does she cap-ners as objects of secondary consideration, not
tivate all hearts by her condescension, by her
girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as in
the days when the hideous old general with the
mouth too full of teeth, had not cut one of them
at two guineas each. Then does she twirl and
twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through
the mazes of the dance. Then do the swains
appear with tea, with lemonade, with sandwiches,
with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, state-
ly and unassuming, various, beautifully wilful.
Then is there a singular parallel between her
and the little glass chandeliers of another age,
embellishing that assembly-room; which, with
their meagre stems, their spare little drops, their
disappointing knobs where no drops are, their
bare little stalks from which knobs and drops
have both departed, and their little feeble pris-
matic twinkling, all seem Volumnias.
Bleak House, Chap. 66.
OLD MAIDS-The Crumptons.
to be thought of but as disagreeable necessities,
furnishing no profit, and intruding on the one
affair of life. The single sitting-room was on
the same principle; a chaos of boxes and old pa-
pers, and had more counting-house stools in it
than chairs: not to mention a great monster of
a desk straddling over the middle of the floor,
and an iron safe sunk into the wall above the
fire-place. The solitary little table for purposes
of refection and social enjoyment, bore as fair a
proportion to the desk and other business furni-
ture, as the graces and harmless relaxations of
life had ever done, in the persons of the old
man and his son, to their pursuit of wealth. It
was meanly laid out now, for dinner; and in a
chair before the fire sat Anthony himself, who
rose to greet his son and his fair cousins as
they entered.
An ancient proverb warns us that we should
not expect to find old heads upon young shoul-
ders; to which it may be added, that we seldom
The Miss Crumptons, or, to quote the author- meet with that unnatural combination but we
ity of the inscription on the garden-gate of | feel a strong desire to knock them off; merely
Minerva House, Hammersmith, The Misses from an inherent love we have of seeing things
Crumpton," were two unusually tall, particularly in their right places. It is not improbable that
thin, and exceedingly skinny personages; very many men, in no wise choleric by nature, felt
upright, and very yellow. Miss Amelia Crump- this impulse rising up within them, when they
ton owned to thirty-eight, and Miss Maria first made the acquaintance of Mr. Jonas; but
Crumpton admitted she was forty; an admis- if they had known him more intimately, in his
sion which was rendered perfectly unnecessary own house, and had sat with him at his own
by the self-evident fact of her being at least board, it would assuredly have been paramount
fifty. They dressed in the most interesting to all other considerations.
manner-like twins; and looked as happy and
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 11.
OLD WOMEN
OLD WOMEN-A type of good.
348
She was one of those old women, was Mrs.
Betty Higden, who, by dint of an indomitable
purpose and a strong constitution, fight out
many years, though each year has come with its
new knock-down blows fresh to the fight against
her, wearied by it; an active old woman, with a
bright dark eye and a resolute face, yet quite a
tender creature too; not a logically-reasoning
woman, but God is good, and hearts may count
in Heaven as high as heads.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 16.
OMNIBUS-The.
man,
ORACLE
reflection, and considerable experience, we are
decidedly of opinion, that of all known ve
hicles, from the glass-coach in which we were
taken to be christened, to that sombre caravan
in which we must one day make our last earthly
journey, there is nothing like an omnibus.
Scenes, Chap. 15.
OMNIBUS-Experiences in an.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said a little prim¸
wheezing old gentleman, sitting opposite Dumps,
I beg your pardon; but have you ever observ
ed, when you have been in an omnibus on a
wet day, that four people out of five always
come in with large cotton umbrellas, without a
handle at the top, or the brass spike at the bot
tom?"-Tales, Chap. 11.
Of all the public conveyances that have been
constructed since the days of the 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 OPPORTUNITIES—Lost.
only six insides, and the chances are, that the
same people go all the way with you there is
no change, no variety. Besides, after the first
twelve hours or so, people get cross and sleepy,
and when you have seen a man in his nightcap,
you lose all respect for him; 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 un-
pleasant predilections. We once travelled four
hundred miles, inside a stage-coach, with a stout
who had a glass of rum-and water, warm,
handed in at the window at every place where
we changed horses. This was decidedly unpleas-
ant. We have also travelled, occasionally, with
a small boy of a pale aspect, with light hair,
and no perceptible neck, coming up to town
from school under the protection of the
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 conse-
quent on the 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, while he is looking be-
hind 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.
From the beginning, she had sat looking at
him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his
chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in
his turn, perhaps he might have seen one waver-
ing moment in her, when she was impelled to
throw herself upon his breast, and give him the
pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it,
he must have overleaped at a bound the artifi-
cial barriers he had for many years been erect-
ing, between himself and all those subtle es-
sences of humanity which will elude the utmost
cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to
be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck.
The barriers were too many and too high for
such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian,
matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and
the moment shot away into the plumbless depths
of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportu
nities that are drowned there.-Louisa Grad-
grind, in Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 15.
OPINION—A unanimity of.
66
"John Edward Nandy," said Mr. Plornish,
addressing the old gentleman. "Sir. It's not
too often that you see unpretending actions
without a spark of pride, and therefore when
you see them give grateful honor unto the same,
being that if you don't and live to want 'em it
follows serve you right.”
To which Mr. Nandy replied:
"I am heartily of your opinion, Thomas, and
which your opinion is the same as mine, and
therefore no more words and not being back-
wards with that opinion, which opinion giving
it as yes, Thomas, yes, is the opinion in which
yourself and me must ever be unanimously jined
by all, and where there is not difference of opin-
ion there can be none but one opinion, which
fully no, Thomas, Thomas, no!"
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 13.
OPINIONS-How changed.
Some men change their opinions from neces-
sity, others from expediency, others from inspi
ration!-Scenes, Chap. 18.
ORACLE-The village.
Now, you meet with none of these afflictions
in an omnibus; 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 ve-
hicles. 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? nobody could Nearest the fire, with his face towards the
possibly hear what he was talking about. Again: door at the bottom of the room, sat a stoutish
children, though occasionally, are not often to man of about forty, whose short, stiff, black hair
be found in an omnibus; and even when they curled closely round a broad high forehead, and
are, if the vehicle be full, as is generally the a face to which something besides water and ex-
case, somebody sits upon them, and we are un-ercise had communicated a rather inflamed ap
conscious of their presence. Yes, after mature pearance. He was smoking a cigar, with his
ORATOR
349
eyes fixed on the ceiling, and had that confident,
oracular air which marked him as the leading
politician, general authority, and universal an-
ecdote-relater of the place. He had evidently
just delivered himself of something very weigh-
ty; for the remainder of the company were puff-
ing at their respective pipes and cigars in a kind
of solemn abstraction, as if quite overwhelmed
with the magnitude of the subject recently under
discussion.
*
*
*
*
"What is an
"What is a man?" continued the red-faced
specimen of the species, jerking his hat indig-
nantly from its peg on the wall.
Englishman? Is he to be trampled upon by
every oppressor? Is he to be knocked down at
everybody's bidding? What's freedom? Not
a standing army. What's a standing army?
Not freedom. What's general 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 sentence, 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.-Sketches (Characters), Chap. 5.
"
<<
ORATOR-A windy.
ORGAN
ment of something else, not to be mentioned
more particularly. His principles, to sum up
all in a word, were, Hearths and Altars, Labor
and Capital, Crown and Sceptre, Elephant and
Castle.
Our Honorable Friend. Reprinted Pieces.
ORGAN-Tom Pinch at the.
What sounds are these that fall so grandly on
the ear? What darkening room is this?
And that mild figure seated at an organ, whe
is he? Ah Tom, dear Tom, old friend!
has passed between thee and our old associa
Thy head is prematurely gray, though Time
is thy wont to bear the twilight company, the
music of thy heart speaks out: the story of thy
tion, Tom. But, in those sounds with which it
life relates itself.
Thy life is tranquil, calm, and happy, Tom.
In the soft strain which ever and again comes
old love may find a voice perhaps; but it is a
stealing back upon the ear, the memory of thine
pleasant, softened, whispering memory, like that
in which we sometimes hold the dead, and does
not pain or grieve thee, God be thanked!
Touch the notes lightly, Tom, as lightly as
thou wilt, but never will thine hand fall half
so lightly on that Instrument as on the head of
thine old tyrant brought down very, very low;
and never will it make as hollow a response
to any touch of thine, as he does always!
Then Lord Decimus, who was a wonder on
For a drunken, squalid, begging-letter-writ-
his own Parliamentary pedestal, turned out to ing man, called Pecksniff (with a shrewish daugh-
be the windiest creature here: proposing hap-ter), haunts thee, Tom; and when he makes ap-
piness to the bride and bridegroom in a series
of platitudes that would have made the hair of
any sincere disciple and believer stand on end:
and trotting, with the complacency of an idiotic
elephant, among howling labyrinths of sentences
which he seemed to take for high roads, and
never so much as wanted to get out of.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 34.
ORATOR-His warmth.
And when the petition had been read and was
about to be adopted, there came forward the
Irish member (who was a young gentleman of
ardent temperament), with such a speech as only
an Irish member can make, breathing the true
soul and spirit of poetry, and poured forth with
such fervor, that it made one warm to look at
him.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 2.
ORATOR—A British.
peals to thee for cash, reminds thee that he
built thy fortunes better than his own; and when
he spends it, entertains the alehouse company
with tales of thine ingratitude and his munifi-
cence towards thee once upon a time; and then
he shows his elbows, worn in holes, and puts his
soleless shoes up on a bench, and begs his
auditors look there, while thou art comfortably
housed and clothed. All known to thee, and
yet all borne with, Tom!
So, with a smile upon thy face, thou passest
gently to another measure-to a quicker and
more joyful one-and little feet are used to
dance about thee at the sound, and bright young
eyes to glance up into thine. And there is one
slight creature, Tom-her child; not Ruth's-
whom thine eyes follow in the romp and dance;
who, wondering sometimes to see thee look so
thoughtful, runs to climb up on thy knee, and
put her cheek to thine: who loves thee, Tom,
above the rest, if that can be: and falling sick
once, chose thee for her nurse, and never
knew impatience, Tom, when thou wert by her
side.
He might be asked, he observed, in a perora-
tion of great power, what were his principles?
His principles were what they always had been.
His principles were written in the countenances
of the lion and unicorn; were stamped indeli- Thou glidest now into a graver air; an air
bly upon the royal shield which those grand an- devoted to old friends and byegone times; and
imals supported, and upon the free words of in thy lingering touch upon the keys, and the
fire which that shield bore. His principles were, rich swelling of the mellow harmony, they rise
Britannia and her sea-king trident! His prin- before thee. The spirit of that old man dead,
ciples were, commercial prosperity co-existently who delighted to anticipate thy wants, and
with perfect and profound agricultural content-never ceased to honor thee, is there among the
ment; but short of this he would never stop.
His principles were these,-with the addition
of his colors nailed to the mast, every man's
heart in the right place, every man's eye open,
every man's hand ready, every man's mind on
the alert. His principles were these, concur-
rently with a general revision of something-
speaking generally-and a possible re-adjust-
rest; repeating, with a face composed and calm,
the words he said to thee upon his bed, and
blessing thee!
And coming from a garden, Tom, bestrewn
with flowers by children's hands, thy sister, lit-
tle Ruth, as light of foot and heart as in old
days, sits down beside thee. From the Present,
and the Past, with which she is so tenderly en
ORGANIST
350
twined in all thy thoughts, thy strain soars on
ward to the Future. As it resounds within thee
and without, the noble music, rolling round ye
both, shuts out the grosser prospect of an earthly
parting, and uplifts ye both to Heaven!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 54.
ORGANIST—The.
The organist's assistant was a friend of Mr.
'Pinch's, which was a good thing, for he, too,
was a very quiet, gentle soul, and had been, like
Tom, a kind of old-fashioned boy at school,
though well liked by the noisy fellows too. As
good luck would have it (Tom always said he
had great good luck) the assistant chanced that
very afternoon to be on duty by himself, with
no one in the dusty organ-loft but Tom; so
while he played, Tom helped him with the stops;
and finally, the service being just over, Tom took
the organ himself. It was then turning dark,
and the yellow light that streamed in through
the ancient windows in the choir was mingled
with a murky red. As the grand tones resound-
ed through the church, they seemed, to Tom, to
find an echo in the depth of every ancient tomb,
no less than in the deep mystery of his own
heart. Great thoughts and hopes came crowd-
ing on his mind as the rich music rolled upon
the air, and yet among them-something more
grave and solemn in their purpose, but the
same—were all the images of that day, down to
its very lightest recollection of childhood. The
feeling that the sounds awakened, in the mo-
ment of their existence, seemed to include his
whole life and being; and as the surrounding
realities of stone and wood and glass grew
dimmer in the darkness, these visions grew so
much the brighter that Tom might have for-
gotten the new pupil and the expectant master,
and have sat there pouring out his grateful
heart till midnight.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5.
ORGAN-Its melody.
|
OUTCAST
his face with perfect confidence, “since father
died."
"And how do you live, Charley? O! Char-
ley," said my guardian, turning his face away
for a moment, "how do you live?"
Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work.
I'm out washing to-day."
"God help you, Charley," said my guardian.
" 'You're not tall enough to reach the tub!"
"In pattens I am, sir," she said quickly, “I've
got a high pair as belonged to mother."
"And when did mother die? Poor mother!'
"Mother died just after Emma was born!'
said the child, glancing at the face upon her
bosom. "Then father said I was to be as good
a mother to her as I could. And so I tried,
And so I worked at home and did cleaning, and
nursing, and washing, for a long time before I
began to go out. And that's how I know how.
Don't you see, sir?”
“And do you often go out?"
"As often as I can," said Charley, opening
her eyes, and smiling, "because of earning six-
pences and shillings."
"And do you always lock the babies up when
you go out?
"
1
"To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said
Charley. "Mrs. Blinder comes up now and
then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and
perhaps I can run in sometimes; and they can
play, you know, and Tom an't afraid of being
locked up, are you, Tom?"
"No-o!" said Tom, stoutly.
"When it comes on dark, the lamps are light-
ed down in the court, and they show up here
quite bright-almost quite bright. Don't
they, Tom?"
"
Yes, Charley," said Tom," almost quite
bright.
"
"Then he's as good as gold," said the little
creature-O! in such a motherly, womanly way!
"And when Emma's tired he puts her to bed.
And when he's tired he goes to bed himself.
And when I come home and light the candle,
and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has
with me. Don't you, Tom?"
"O yes, Charley!" said Tom. "That I do!"
And either in this glimpse of the great pleasure
of his life or in gratitude and love for Charley,
who was all in all to him, he laid his face among
the scanty folds of her frock, and passed from
laughing into crying.
The organ sounded faintly in the church
below. Swelling by degrees, the melody ascend-it
ed to the roof, and filled the choir and nave.
Expanding more and more, it rose up, up;
up, up; higher, higher, higher up; awakening
agitated hearts within the burly piles of oak,
the hollow bells, the iron-bound doors, the
stairs of solid stone; until the tower-walls were
insufficient to contain it, and it soared into the
sky.-Chimes, 3d Quarter.
ORPHANS-The.
It was the first time since our entry that a
tear had been shed among these children. The
little orphan girl had spoken of their father and
their mother, as if all that sorrow were subdued
by the necessity of taking courage, and by her
childish importance in being able to work, and
chil-childish
by her bustling, busy way. But now, when Tom
cried, although she sat quite tranquil, looking
quietly at us, and did not by any movement dis-
turb a hair of the head of either of her little
charges, I saw two silent tears fall down her
face.-Bleak House, Chap. 15.
"Look at this! For God's sake look at this!"
It was a thing to look at. The three chil-
dren close together, and two of them relying
solely on the third; and the third so young, and
yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so
Strangely on the childish figure.
Charley, Charley!" said my guardian.
"How old are you?"
"Over thirteen, sir," replied the child.
'O! What a great age," said my guardian.
"What a great age, Charley!
I cannot describe the tenderness with which
he spoke to her, half playfully, yet all the more
compassionately and mournfully.
(6
And do you live alone here with these babies,
Charley?" said my guardian.
"Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into
OUTCAST—“Jo," his ignorance.
It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To
shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the
shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning,
of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over
the shops, and at corners of the streets, and
on the doors, and in the windows! To see peo-
ple read, and to see people write, and to see the
•
OUTCAST
351
OUTCAST
his duties and knows how to discharge them.
He and Jo listen to the music, probably with
much the same amount of animal satisfaction;
likewise, as to awakened association, aspiration,
or regret, melancholy or joyful reference to
things beyond the senses, they are probably
upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the
human listener is the brute!
Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and
in a very few years they will so degenerate that
they will lose even their bark-but not their bite.
postman deliver letters, and not to have the
least idea of all that language-to be, to every
scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must be
very puzzling to see the good company going to
the churches on Sundays, with their books in
their hands, and to think (for perhaps Jo does
think at odd times) what does it all mean, and
if it means anything to anybody, how comes it
that it means nothing to me? To be hustled,
and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel
that it would appear to be perfectly true that I
have no business, here, or there, or anywhere;
and yet to be perplexed by the consideration
that I am here somehow, too, and everybody
overlooked me until I became the creature that
I am! It must be a strange state, not merely
to be told that I am scarcely human (as in the
case of my offering myself for a witness), but to
feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To
see the horses, dogs, and cattle go by me, and
to know that in ignorance I belong to them,
and not the superior beings in my shape, whose
delicacy I offend! Jo's ideas of a Criminal |
Trial, or a Judge, or a Bishop, or a Govern-
ment, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he
only knew it) the Constitution, should be
strange! His whole material and immaterial
life is wonderfully strange; his death, the stran-
stran-in.
gest thing of all.
Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone's, meeting the
tardy morning, which is always late in getting
down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread
as he comes along. His way lying through
many streets, and the houses not yet being
open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-
step of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gives it a brush
when he has finished, as an acknowledgment of
the accommodation. He admires the size of
the edifice, and wonders what it's all about.
He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual
destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific, or what
it costs to look up the precious souls among
the cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit.
He goes to his crossing, and begins to lay it
out for the day. The town awakes; the great
teetotum is set up for its daily spin and whirl;
all that unaccountable reading and writing,
which has been suspended for a few hours, re-
commences. Jo, and the other lower animals,
get on in the unintelligible mess as they can.
It is market-day. The blinded oxen, over-
goaded, over-driven, never guided, run into
wrong places and are beaten out; and plunge,
red-eyed and foaming, at stone walls; and of-
ten sorely hurt the innocent, and often sorely
hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order;
very, very like!
The day changes as it wears itself away, and
becomes dark and drizzly. Jo fights it out, at
his crossing, among the mud and wheels, the
horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a
scanty sum to pay for the unsavory shelter of
Tom-all-Alone's. Twilight comes on; gas be-
gins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter,
with his ladder, runs along the margin of the
pavement. A wretched evening is beginning to
close in.-Bleak House, Chap. 16.
OUTCAST-Jo, the.
"You Phil! Bring him in!"
Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to exe-
cute the word of command: and the trooper,
having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought
in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tocka-
hoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs. Jellyby's
lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrio-
boola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and
unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown
savage; he is the ordinary home-made article.
Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in
body a common creature of the common streets,
only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes
him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores
are in him, homely rags are on him: native
ignorance, the growth of English soil and cli-
mate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the
beasts that perish. . Stand forth, Jo, in uncom-
promising colors! From the soul of thy foot to
the crown of thy head, there is nothing interest-
ing about thee.
He shuffles slowly into Mr. George's gallery
and stands huddled together in a bundle, look-
ing all about the floor. He seems to know that
they have an inclination to shrink from him,
partly for what he is, and partly for what he has
caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He is not
of the same order of things, not of the same
place in creation. He is of no order, and no
place; neither of the beasts, nor of humanity.
Bleak House, Chap. 47.
OUTCAST-Betty Higden, the.
Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage
as many ruggedly honest creatures, women and
men, fare on their toiling way along the roads
of life. Patiently to earn a spare, bare living,
and quietly to die, untouched by workhouse
hands-this was her highest sublunary hope.
*
*
*
*
*
A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens
to it. So does a dog-a drover's dog, waiting
for his master outside a butcher's shop, and evi-
dently thinking about those sheep he has had
upon his mind for some hours, and is happily
rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three or In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you
four; can't remember where he left them; looks may hear the fall of the water over the weirs,
up and down the street, as half expecting to see or even, in still weather, the rustle of the rushes;
them astray; suddenly pricks up his ears and and from the bridge you may see the young river,
remembers all about it. A thoroughly vaga- dimpled like a young child, playfully gliding
bond dog, accustomed to low company and away among the trees, unpolluted by the defile-
public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep; ready atments that lie in wait for it on its course, and as
a whistle to scamper over their backs, and tear
out mouthfuls of their wool; but an educated,
improved, developed dog, who has been taught
yet out of hearing of the deep summons of the
sea. It were too much to pretend that Betty
Higden made out such thoughts; no; but she
OUTCAST
352
heard the tender river whispering to many like
herself, "Come to me, come to me! When the
cruel shame and terror you have so long fled
from, most beset you, come to me! I am the
Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance
to do my work; I am not held in estimation ac-
cording as I shirk it. My breast is softer than
the pauper-nurse's; death in my arms is peace-
fuller than among the pauper wards. Come to
me!"
There was abundant place for gentler fancies
too, in her untutored mind. Those gentlefolks
and their children inside those fine houses, could
they think, as they looked out at her, what it was
to be really hungry, really cold? Did they feel
any of the wonder about her, that she felt about
them? Bless the dear laughing children! If
they could have seen sick Johnny in her arms,
would they have cried for pity? If they could
have seen dead Johnny on that little bed, would
they have understood it? Bless the dear chil-
dren for his sake, anyhow! So with the hum-
bler houses in the little street, the inner firelight
shining on the panes as the outer twilight dark-
ened. When the families gathered in-doors
there, for the night, it was only a foolish fancy
to feel as if it were a little hard in them to close
the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the
lighted shops, and speculations whether their
masters and mistresses, taking tea in a perspec-
tive of back-parlor-not so far within but that
the flavor of tea and toast came out, mingled
with the glow of light, into the street-ate or
drank or wore what they sold, with the greater
relish because they dealt in it. So with the
churchyard, on a branch of the solitary way to
the night's sleeping-place. "Ah me! The dead
and I seem to have it pretty much to ourselves
in the dark and in this weather! But so much
the better for all who are warmly housed at
home." The poor soul envied no one in bitter-
ness, and grudged no one anything.
*
*
*
*
PARTING
him, as if the fitful autumn night were disturbed
by him.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. II.
P
PATRIOTISM-Of Miss Pross.
'Well, my sweet," said Miss Pross, nodding
her head emphatically, "the short and the long
of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gra-
cious 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!"
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 7.
PATRONS AND PATRONESSES-Boffin's
idea of.
"If Mr. Tom Noakes gives his five shillings
ain't he a Patron, and if Mrs. Jack Styles gives
her five shillings ain't she a Patroness? What
the deuce is it all about? If it ain't stark staring
impudence, what do you call it?"
"Don't be warm, Noddy," Mrs. Boffin urged.
"Warm!" cried Mr. Boffin. "It's enough to
make a man smoking hot. I can't go anywhere
without being patronized. I don't want to be
patronized. If I buy a ticket for a Flower
Show, or a Music Show, or any sort of Snów,
and pay pretty heavy for it, why am I to be
Patroned and Patronessed as if the Patrons and
the Patronesses treated me? If there's a good
thing to be done, can't it be done on its own
merits? If there's a bad thing to be done, can
it ever be Patroned and Patronessed right? Yet
when a new Institution's going to be built, it
seems to me that the bricks and mortar ain't
made of half so much consequence as the Pat-
rons and Patronesses; no, nor yet the objects.
I wish somebody to tell me whether other
countries get Patronized to anything like the ex-
tent of this one? And as to the Patrons and
Patronesses themselves, I wonder they're not
ashamed of themselves. They ain't Pills, or -
Hair-washes, or invigorating Nervous Essences,
By what visionary hands she was led along
upon that journey of escape from the Samaritan;
by what voices, hushed in the grave, she seemed
to be addressed; how she fancied the dead child
in her arms again, and times innumerable ad-
justed her shawl to keep it warm; what infinite
variety of forms of tower and roof and steeple
the trees took; how many furious horsemen | to be puffed in that way!"
rode at her, crying "There she goes! Stop!
Stop, Betty Higden!" and melted away as they
came close; be these things left untold. Faring
on and hiding, hiding and faring on, the poor
harmless creature, as though she were a Mur-
deress and the whole country were up after her,
wore out the day, and gained the night.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 8.
OUTCAST—An.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 14.
PARTY-A social.
The gentlemen immediately began to slide
about with much politeness, and to look as if
they wished their arms had been legs, so little
did they know what to do with them. The
ladies smiled, curtsied, and glided into chairs,
and dived for dropped pocket-handkerchiefs;
the gentlemen leaned against two of the curtain-
Cain might have looked as lonely and avoided. pegs; Mrs. Tibbs went through an admirable
With an old sheepskin knapsack at his back, bit of serious pantomime with a servant who
and a rough, unbarked stick cut out of some had come up to ask some questions about the
wood in his hand; miry, footsore, his shoes and fish-sauce; and then the two young ladies look-
gaiters trodden out, his hair and beard untrim-ed at each other; and everybody else appeared
med; the cloak he carried over his shoulder, to discover something very attractive in the
and the clothes he wore, soddened with wet; pattern of the fender.
limping along in pain and difficulty, he looked
as if the clouds were hurrying from him, as if
the wail of the wind and the shuddering of the PARTING-And meeting.
grass were directed against him, as if the low
Tales. The Boarding House, Chap. 1.
"The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of
mysterious plashing of the water murmured at meeting again."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 3.
|
PANIC
PANIC-The intoxication of a.
353
The prisoners were far from insensil le or un-
feeling; their ways arose out of the condition
of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle
difference, a species of fervor or intoxication,
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 in-
fection of the wildly shaken public mind. In
seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a se-
cret attraction to the disease-a terrible passing
inclination to die of it. And all of us have like
wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing
circumstances to evoke them.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 6.
PAPA-As a mode of address.
Papa is a preferable mode of address," ob-
served Mrs. General. "Father is rather vulgar,
my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty
form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes,
and prism, are all very good words for the lips;
especially prunes and prism. You will find it
serviceable, in the formation of a demeanor, if
you sometimes say to yourself in company-
on entering a room, for instance-Papa, pota-
toes, poultry, prunes, and prism, prunes and
prism.'
"Pray, my child," said Mr. Dorrit, "attend to
the-hum-precepts of Mrs. General."
Poor Little Dorrit, with a rather forlorn glance
at that eminent varnisher, promised to try.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 5.
PARALYSIS-Sir Leicester Dedlock.
The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that
grass-grown city of the ancients, Bath, to be
stimulated by an urgent curiosity, which impels
her on all convenient and inconvenient occa-
sions to sidle about with a golden glass at her
eye, peering into objects of every description.
Certain it is that she avails herself of the pres-
ent opportunity of hovering over her kinsman's
letters and papers, like a bird; taking a short
peck at this document, and a blink with her
head on one side at that document, and hopping
about from table to table, with her glass at her
eye, in an inquisitive and restless manner. In
the course of these researches, she stumbles over
something; and turning her glass in that direc-
tion, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like
a felled tree.
*
*
*
*
*
They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe,
and rub, and fan, and put ice to his head, and
try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the
day has ebbed away, and it is night in his room,
before his stertorous breathing lulls, or his
fixed eyes show any consciousness of the candle
that is occasionally passed before them. But
when this change begins, it goes on; and by-
and-bye he nods, or moves his eyes, or even his
hand, in token that he hears and comprehends.
He fell down this morning, a handsome,
stately gentleman; somewhat infirm, but of a
fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He
lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken
cheeks, the decrepit shadow of himself. His
voice was rich and mellow; and he had so long
been thoroughly persuaded of the weight and
import to mankind of any word he said, that
his words really had come to sound as if there
were something in them. But now he can only
PARLIAMENT
whisper; and what he whispers sounds like
what it is—mere jumble and jargon.
Bleak House, Chap. 56.
PARIS-Mrs. Lirriper's opinion of.
And of Paris I can tell you no more my dear
than that it's town and country both in one,
and carved stone and long streets of high houses
and gardens and fountains and statues and trees
and gold, and immensely big soldiers and im-
mensely little soldiers and the pleasantest nurses
with the whitest caps a playing at skipping-rope
with the bunchiest babies in the flattest caps,
and clean table-cloths spread everywhere for
dinner, and people sitting out of doors smoking
and sipping all day long and little plays being
acted in the open air for little people and every
shop a complete and elegant room, and every-
body seeming to play at everything in this
world. And as to the sparkling lights my dear
after dark, glittering high up and low down and
on before and on behind and all round, and the
crowd of theatres and the crowd of people and
the crowd of all sorts, it's pure enchantment.
And pretty well the only thing that grated on
me was that whether you pay your fare at the
railway or whether you change your money at a
money-dealer's or whether you take your ticket
at the theatre, the lady or gentleman is caged up
(I suppose by government) behind the strongest
iron bars having more of a Zoological appear-
ance than a free country.
Well to be sure when I did after all get my
precious bones to bed that night, and my Young
Rogue came in to kiss me and asks "What do
you think of this lovely, lovely Paris, Gran?” I
says "Jemmy I feel as if it was beautiful fire-
works being let off in my head." And very cool
and refreshing the pleasant cour.try was next
day when we went on to look after my Legacy,
and rested me much and did me a deal of good.
Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy, Chap. 1.
PARLIAMENT The national dust-heap.
Her father was usually sifting and sifting at
his parliamentary cinder-heap in London (with-
out being observed to turn up many precious
articles among the rubbish), and was still hard
at it in the national dust-yard.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 9.
PARLIAMENT-A member of.
Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather
dirty machinery, in a by-corner, and made him
Member of Parliament for Coketown: one of
the respected members for ounce weights and
measures, one of the representatives of the mul-
tiplication table, one of the deaf honorable gen-
tlemen, dumb honorable gentlemen, blind hon-
orable gentlemen, lame honorable gentlemen,
dead honorable gentlemen, to every other con-
sideration. Else wherefore live we in a Christian
land, eighteen hundred and odd years after our
Master?-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 14.
That singularly awkward and ungainly-look-
ing 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 sample of a Member
of the House of Commons concentrating in his
PASSIONS
354
PECKSNIFFIAN TRAITS
own person the wisdom of a constituency, Ob-erately buxom was her shape, and quite womanly
serve the wig, of a dark hue but indescribable too; but sometimes—yes, sometimes-she even
color, for if it be naturally brown, it has ac- wore a pinafore; and how charming that was!
quired a black tint by long service, and if it be Oh! she was indeed “a gushing thing" (as a
naturally black, the same cause has imparted young gentleman had observed in verse, in the
to it a tinge of rusty brown; and remark how Poet's corner of a provincial newspaper), was
very materially the great blinker-like spectacles the youngest Miss Pecksniff!
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 dulness, 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.-Scenes, Chap. 18.
PASSIONS-The influence of bad.
Verily, verily, travellers have seen many mon-
strous idols in many countries; but no human
eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and
shocking images of the Divine nature, than we |
creatures of the dust make in our own likenesses,
of our own bad passions.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 30.
PECKSNIFF-As a moral man.
Mr. Pecksniff was a moral man; a grave
man, a man of noble sentiments and speech
and he had had her christened Mercy. Mercy!
oh, what a charming name for such a pure-
souled being as the youngest Miss Pecksniff!
Her sister's name was Charity. There was a
good thing! Mercy and Charity! And Charity,
with her fine strong sense, and her mild, yet not
reproachful gravity, was so well named, and did
so well set off and illustrate her sister! What
a pleasant sight was that, the contrast they pre-
sented; to see each loved and loving one sym-
pathizing with, and devoted to, and leaning on,
and yet correcting and counter-checking, and,
as it were, antidoting, the other! To behold
each damsel, in her very admiration of her
sister, setting up in business for herself on an
entirely different principle, and announcing no
It has been remarked that Mr. Pecksniff was connection with over-the-way, and if the quality
a moral man. So he was. Perhaps there never of goods at that establishment don't please you,
was a more moral man than Mr. Pecksniff; es- you are respectfully invited to favor ME with
pecially in his conversation and correspondence. a call! And the crowning circumstance of the
It was once said of him by a homely admirer, whole delightful catalogue was, that both the
that he had a Fortunatus's purse of good sen- fair creatures were so utterly unconscious of all
timents in his inside. In this particular he was this! They had no idea of it. They no more
like the girl in the fairy tale, except that if they thought or dreamed of it, than Mr. Pecksniff
were not actual diamonds which fell from his did. Nature played them off against each
lips, they were the very brightest paste, and other; they had no hand in it, the two Miss
shone prodigiously. He was a most exemplary | Pecksniffs.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
man; fuller of virtuous precept than a copy-
book. Some people likened him to a direction-
post, which is always telling the way to a place,
and never goes there; but these were his ene-
mies; the shadows cast by his brightness; that
was all. His very throat was moral.
throat was moral. You saw
a good deal of it. You looked over a very low
fence of white cravat (whereof no man had ever
beheld the tie, for he fastened it behind), and
there it lay, a valley between two jutting heights
of collar, serene and whiskerless, before you. It
seemed to say, on the part of Mr. Pecksniff,
"There is no deception, ladies and gentlemen;
all is peace, a holy calm pervades me." So did
his hair, just grizzled with an iron-gray, which
was all brushed off his forehead, and stood bolt
upright, or slightly drooped in kindred action
with his heavy eye-lids. So did his person,
which was sleek, though free from corpulency.
So did his manner, which was soft and oily. In
a word, even his plain black suit, and state of
widower, and dangling double eye-glass, all
tended to the same purpose, and cried aloud,
"Behold the moral Pecksniff!"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
PECKSNIFF-And his daughters.
She was the most arch and at the same time
the most artless creature, was the youngest Miss
Pecksniff, that you can possibly imagine. It
was her great charm. She was too fresh and
guileless, and too full of child-like vivacity, was
the youngest Miss Pecksniff, to wear combs in
her hair, or to turn it up, or to frizzle it, or
braid it. She wore it in a crop, a loosely flow-
ing crop, which had so many rows of curls in
it that the top row was only one curl. Mod-
PECKSNIFFIAN MORALITY.
"Even the worldly goods of which we have
just disposed," said Mr. Pecksniff, glancing
round the table when he had finished, even
cream, sugar, tea, toast, ham
"And eggs," suggested Charity, in a low
voice.
"And eggs," said Mr. Pecksniff, even they
have their moral. See how they come and go !
Every pleasure is transitory. We can't even eat,
long. If we indulge in harmless fluids, we get
the dropsy: if in exciting liquids, we get drunk.
What a soothing reflection is that!"
"Don't say we get drunk, Pa," urged the eld-
est Miss Pecksniff.
"When I say, we, my dear," returned her
father, "I mean mankind in general; the human
race, considered as a body, and not as individu-
als. There is nothing personal in morality, my
love. Even such a thing as this," said Mr.
Pecksniff, laying the fore-finger of his left hand
upon the brown paper patch on the top of his
head, "slight casual baldness though it be, re-
minds us that we are but "-he was going to say
worms," but recollecting that worms were not
remarkable for heads of hair, he substituted
flesh and blood."
64
Which," cried Mr. Pecksniff after a pause,
during which he seemed to have been casting
about for a new moral, and not quite successfully,
which is also very soothing."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
PECKSNIFFIAN TRAITS,
Primed in this artful manner, Mr. Pecksniff
presented himself at dinner-time in such a state

MEEKNESS OF Mr. PecksnIFF AND HIS CHARMING Daughters.
354
PEDIGREE
855
PHILANTHROPISTS
our faces, as the dear child's head recorded its
passage with a bump on every stair-Richard
afterwards said he counted seven, besides onc
for the landing-received us with perfect equa
nimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive,
plump woman, of from forty to fifty, with hand-
some eyes, though they had a curious habit of
of suaviy, benevolence, cheerfulness, politeness,
and cordiality, as even he had perhaps never at-
tained before. The frankness of the country
gentleman, the refinement of the artist, the
good-hunored allowance of the man of the
world; piilanthropy, forbearance, piety, tolera-
tion, all bended together in a flexible adapta-
bility to anything and everything, were express-seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am
ed in Mr. ?ecksniff, as he shook hands with the
great specuator and capitalist.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 44.
PEDIGREE—The influence of time upon.
It is a ver, hard thing upon the great men of
past centurie, that they should have come into
the world so on, because a man who was born
three or four undred years ago, cannot reason-
ably be expected to have had as many relations
before him, asa man who is born now. The
last man, whover he is—and he may be a cob-
bler or some lor, vulgar dog for aught we know
-will have a lager pedigree than the greatest
nobleman now aive; and I contend that this is
not fair.-Nichors Nickleby, Chap. 6.
PENITENCE-ktra superfine (writing).
With this prelue, Mr. Pickwick placed four
closely written side of extra superfine wire-wove
penitence in the hnds of the astounded Mr.
Winkle, senior.-Pikwick, Chap. 50.
PEW-A church.
* * * a little del box without a lid (called
by courtesy a pew).
Sketch. (Characters), Chap. 9.
|
quoting Richard again-they could see nothing
nearer than Africa!-Bleak House, Chap. 4.
PHILANTHROPIST-Honeythunder,
professional.
the
Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share
of philanthropy when she beheld this very large
and very loud excrescence on the little party. Al-
ways something in the nature of a Boil upon the
face of society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded in-
to an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Cor-
ner. Though it was not literally true, as was
facetiously charged against him by public un-
believers, that he called aloud to his fellow-
creatures, "Curse your souls and bodies, come
here and be blessed!" still his philanthropy was
of that gunpowderous sort that the difference be-
tween it and animosity was hard to determine.
You were to abolish military force, but you were
first to bring all commanding officers who had
done their duty, to trial by court-martial for
that offence, and shoot them. You were to abol-
ish war, but were to make converts by making
war upon them, and charging them with loving
war as the apple of their eye. You were to have
no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off
the face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and
judges who were of the contrary opinion. You
were to have universal concord, and were to get
it by eliminating all the people who wouldn't,
or conscientiously couldn't, be concordant.
You were to love your brother as yourself, but
after an indefinite interval of maligning him
(very much as if you hated him), and calling him
all manner of names. Above all things, you
were to do nothing in private, or on your own
account. You were to go to the offices of the
Haven of Philanthropy, and put your name
down as a Member and a Professing Philanthro-
pist. Then you were to pay up your subscrip-
tion, get your card of membership and your
riband and medal, and were evermore to live
upon a platform, and evermore to say what Mr.
Honeythunder said, and what the Treasurer
said, and what the sub-Treasurer said, and
what the Committee said, and what the sub-
Committee said, and what the Secretary said,
and what the Vice-Secretary said. And this was
"And Mr. Jellyby, sir?" suggesteRichard. usually said in the unanimously carried resolu
"Ah! Mr. Jellyby," said Mr. Keb, "is-ation under hand and seal, to the effect: That
-I don't know that I can describe to you this assembled Body of Professing Philanthro-
better than by saying that he is the hand of pists views, with indignant scorn and contempt,
Mrs. Jellyby.
not unmixed with utter detestation and loathing
abhorrence,”-in short, the baseness of all those
who do not belong to it, and pledges itself to
make as many obnoxious statements as possible
about them, without being at all particular as to
facts.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 6.
PHILANTHROPIST-Mrs. Jellyby, the.
"In-deed! Mrs. Jelly," said Mr. Kenge,
standing with his back t the fire, and casting
his eyes over the dusty hrth-rug, as if it were
Mrs. Jellyby's biography, is a lady of very re-
markable strength of chacter, who devotes
herself entirely to the public She has devoted
herself to an extensive varie of public subjects
at various times, and is at Psent (until some-
thing else attracts her) devote to the subject of
Africa; with a view to the geral cultivation
of the coffee berry-and the tives- and the
happy settlement, on the bankof the African
rivers, of our superabundant he population.
Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous toid any work
that is considered likely to be a gd work, and
who is much sought after by philan ropists, has,
I believe, a very high opinion of M. Jellyby."
Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravathen looked
at us.
"A nonentity, sir?" said Richard, wit, droll
look.
"I don't say that," returned Mr. Kenge,-ave-
ly. "I can't say that, indeed, for I know th-
ing whatever of Mr. Jellyby. I never, tmy
knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr.
by. He may be a very superior man; but
is, so to speak, merged-Merged-in the m
shining qualities of his wife.'
*
*
*
*
y-
e
*
|
PHILANTHROPISTS—The traits of.
"
It is a most extraordinary thing," interpos-
ed the gentle Minor Canon, laying down his
knife and fork to rub his ear in a vexed man-
Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the
her, "that these Philanthropists are always
uneasiness which we could not help showing in enouncing somebody. Ard it is another most
PHILANTHROPY
856
PHILANTHROPY

extraordinary thing that they are always so and prevented his going any farther, when he had
violently flush of miscreants!"
*
*
*
*
*
And it is another most extraordinary
thing," remarked the Minor Canon in the same
tone as before, "that these Philanthropists are
so given to seizing their fellow-creatures by
the scruff of the neck, and (as one may say)
bumping them into the paths of peace. I
beg your pardon, Ma dear, for interrupting."
Edwin Drood, Chap. 6.
PHILANTHROPY-As a platform ma-
nœuvre.
remarked that there were two classes of charit-
able people; one, the people who did alittle and
made a great deal of noise; the other, the people
who did a great deal and made no noise at all.
We were therefore curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle,
suspecting her to be a type of the former class;
and were glad when she called one day with her
five young sons.
She was a formidable style of lady, with sper
tacles, a prominent nose, and a loud voice, who
had the effect of wanting a great dal of room.
And she really did, for she knocked down little
chairs with her skirts that were quie a great way
off. As only Ada and I were at home, we re-
ceived her timidly; for she seemd to come in
like cold weather, and to make he little Par-
diggles blue as they followed.
These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle,
with great volubility, after the irst salutations,
are my five boys. You mayhave seen their
names in a printed subscripton list (perhaps
more than one), in the possessia of our esteemed
friend, Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, ay eldest (twelve),
is the boy who sent out his poket-money, to the
amount of five-and-threepene, to the Tocka-
hoopo Indians. Oswald, m second (ten-and-a-
half), is the child who controuted two-and-nine-
"You make the platform discovery that War
is a calamity, and you propose to abolish it by
a string of twisted resolutions tossed into the
air like the tail of a kite. I do not admit the
discovery to be yours in the least, and I have
not a grain of faith in your remedy. Again,
your platform resource of representing me as
revelling in the horrors of a battle-field like a
fiend incarnate! Another time, in another of
your undiscriminating platform rushes, you
would punish the sober for the drunken. I
claim consideration for the comfort, conve-
nience, and refreshment of the sober; and you
presently make platform proclamation that I
have a depraved desire to turn Heaven's crea-pence to the Great Nationa Smithers Testimo-
tures into swine and wild beasts! In all such
cases your movers, and your seconders, and
your supporters—your regular Professors of all
degrees run amuck like so many mad Ma-
lays; habitually attributing the lowest and
basest motives with the utmost recklessness (let |
me call your attention to a recent instance in
yourself for which you should blush), and quot-
ing figures which you know to be as wilfully
one-sided as a statement of any complicated
account that should be all Creditor side and
no Debtor, or all Debtor side and no Creditor.
Therefore it is, Mr. Honeythunder, that I con-
sider the platform a sufficiently bad example
and a sufficiently bad school, even in public
life; but hold that, carried into private life, it
becomes an unendurable nuisance."
"These are strong words, sir!" exclaimed
the Philanthropist.
"
I hope so," said Mr. Crisparkle. "Good
morning.'
"
He walked out of the Haven at a great rate,
but soon fell into his regular brisk pace, and
soon had a smile upon his face as he went
along, wondering what the china shepherdess
would have said if she had seen him pound-
ing Mr. Honeythunder in the late little lively
affair. For Mr. Crisparkle had just enough of
harmless vanity to hope that he had hit hard,
and to glow with the belief that he had trim-
med the Philanthropic jacket pretty hand-
somely.
nial. Francis, my third (nie), one-and-sixpence-
halfpenny; Felix, my fouth (seven), eightpence
to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my
youngest (five) has volutarily enrolled himself
in the Infant Bouds of Jy, and is pledged never,
through life, to use tobeco in any form."
We had never seen ich dissatisfied children.
It was not merely tha they were weazened and
shrivelled-though the were certainly that too-
but they looked absottely ferocious with discon-
tent. At the mentiorf the Tockahoopo Indians,
I could really have upposed Egbert to be one
of the most balefu members of that tribe, he
gave me such a sarge frown. The face of each
child, as the amant of his contribution was
mentioned, darked in a peculiarly vindictive
manner, but hisvas by far the worst. I must
except, howevethe little recruit into the Infant
Bonds of Joywho was stolidly and evenly
miserable.Hak House, Chap. 8.
PHILANTROPY-Beggars in the name
of.
We live at first, rather a busy life at Bleak
House; f we had become acquainted with
many resimts in and out of the neighborhood
who kneyMr. Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and
me that erybody knew him, who wanted to do
anythingith anybody else's money. It amazed
us, whewe began to sort his letters, and to
answerome of them for him in the Growlery
of a prning, to find how the great object of
Mr. Crisparkle in Edwin Drood, Chap. 17.
the les of nearly all his correspondents ap-
pear to be to form themselves into committees
PHILANTHROPIST-Mrs. Pardiggle, the. for tting in and laying out money. The ladies
Among the ladies who were most distinguished we as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I
for this rapacious benevolence (if I may use the the they were even more so. They threw
expression), was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who seemed, tmselves into committees in the most impas
as I judged from the number of her letters to med manner, and collected subscriptions with
Mr. Jarndyce, to be almost as powerful a cor- vehemence quite extraordinary. It appeared
respondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself. We observ us that some of them must pass their whole
ed that the wind always changed, when Mrsives in dealing out subscription-cards to the
Pardiggle became the subject of conversation whole Post-office Directory-shilling cards, half-
and that it invariably interrupted Mr. Jarndye crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny cards.
PHILANTHROPISTS
357
PHYSICIAN
They wanted everything. They wanted wearing presenting, both in face and figure, a super-
apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted abundance of what is known to Pugilistic Ex-
money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, perts as Suet Pudding. Secondly, the Philan-
they wanted interest, they wanted autographs,thropists had not the good temper of the Pugil-
they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr.ists, and used worse language. Thirdly, their
Jarndyce had or had not. Their objects were as fighting code stood in great need of revision, as
various as their demands. They were going to empowering them not only to bore their man to
raise new buildings, they were going to pay off the ropes, but to bore him to the confines of dis-
debts on old buildings, they were going to estab- traction; also to hit him when he was down, hit
lish in a picturesque building (engraving of pro- | him anywhere and anyhow, kick him, stamp
posed West Elevation attached) the Sisterhood upon him, gouge him, and maul him behind his
of Medieval Marys; they were going to give a back without mercy. In these last particulars
testimonial to Mrs. Jellyby; they were going to the Professors of the Noble Art were much
have their Secretary's portrait painted, and pre- nobler than the Professors of Philanthropy.
sented to his mother-in-law, whose deep devotion
Edwin Drood, Chap. 17.
to him was well known: they were going to get
up everything, I really believe, from five hundred
thousand tracts to an annuity, and from a mar-
ble monument to a silver tea-pot. They took a
multitude of titles. They were the Women of
England, the Daughters of Britain, the Sisters
of all the Cardinal Virtues separately, the Fe-
males of America, the Ladies of a hundred de-
nominations. They appeared to be always
excited about canvassing and electing. They
seemed to our poor wits, and according to their
own accounts, to be constantly polling people
by tens of thousands, yet never bringing their
candidates in for anything. It made our heads
ache to think, on the whole, what feverish lives
they must lead.-Bleak House, Chap. 8.
PHILANTHROPISTS-The phrenological
formation of.
Full half a year had come and gone, and
Mr. Crisparkle sat in a waiting-room in the
London chief offices of the Haven of Philan-
thropy, until he could have audience of Mr.
Honeythunder.
|
|
PHILOSOPHY-Squeers on.
"What's the reason," said Mr. Squeers, deriv-
ing fresh facetiousness from the bottle; "what's
the reason of rheumatics? What do they mean?
What do people have 'em for-eh?"
Mrs. Sliderskew didn't know, but suggested
that it was possibly because they couldn't help
it.
"
'Measles, rheumatics, hooping-cough, fevers
agers, and lumbagers,” said Mr. Squeers, "is all
philosophy together; that's what it is. The
heavenly bodies is philosophy, and the earthly
bodies is philosophy. If there's a screw loose
in a heavenly body, that's philosophy; and if
there's a screw loose in a earthly body, that's
philosophy too; or it may be that sometimes
there's a little metaphysics in it, but that's not
often. Philosophy's the chap for me.
parent asks a question in the classical, commer-
cial, or mathematical line, says I, gravely,' Why,
sir, in the first place, are you philosopher?
'No, Mr. Squeers,' he says, I an't.' Then, sir,'
says I, 'I am sorry for you, for I shan't be able
to explain it.' Naturally, the parent goes away,
and wishes he was a philosopher, and, equally
naturally, thinks I'm one."
If a
Saying this, and a great deal more, with tipsy
profundity and a serio-comic air, and keeping
his eye all the time on Mrs. Sliderskew, who was
unable to hear one word, Mr. Squeers concluded
by helping himself and passing the bottle.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 57.
PHYSICIAN-Bob Sawyer's experience.
Anything new?”
""
"No, nothing particular. Rather a good ac-
cident brought into the casualty ward.
"What was that, sir?" inquired Mr. Pick
wick.
In his college-days of athletic exercises,
Mr. Crisparkle had known professors of the
Noble Art of fisticuffs, and had attended two or
three of their gloved gatherings. He had now
an opportunity of observing, that as to the phre-
nological formation of the backs of their heads,
the Professing Philanthropists were uncommon-
ly like the Pugilists. In the development of all
those organs which constitute, or attend, a pro-
pensity to "pitch into
pitch into" your fellow-creatures,
the Philanthropists were remarkably favored.
There were several Professors passing in and
out, with exactly the aggressive air upon them
of being ready for a turn-up with any Novice
who might happen to be on hand, that Mr. Cris-
parkle well remembered in the circles of the
Fancy. Preparations were in progress for a
moral little Mill somewhere on the rural circuit,
and other Professors were backing this or that
Heavy-Weight as good for such or such speech-
making hits, so very much after the manner of
the sporting publicans that the intended Reso-
lutions might have been Rounds. In an official
manager of these displays, much celebrated for
his platform tactics, Mr. Crisparkle recognized
(in a suit of black) the counterpart of a deceased
benefactor of his species, an eminent public
character, once known to fame as Frosty-faced "Best alive," replied Hopkins. "Took a
Fogo, who in days of yore superintended the boy's leg out of the socket last week,-boy ate
formation of the magic circle with the ropes | five apples and a ginger-bread cake-exactly two
and stakes. There were only three conditions
of resemblance wanting between these Profes-
sors and those. Firstly, the Philanthropists
were in very bad training: much too fleshy, and
|
|
Only a man fallen out of a four pair of stairs'
window ;—but it's a very fair case—very fair case
indeed."
"Do you mean that the patient is in a fair
way to recover?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
No," replied Hopkins, carelessly. “No, I
should rather say he wouldn't. There must be
a splendid operation though, to-morrow-mag-
nificent sight if Slasher does it."
"You consider Mr. Slasher a good operator?
said Mr. Pickwick.
minutes after it was all over, boy said he
wouldn't lie there to be made game of, and he'd
tell his mother if they didn't begin."
"Dear me !" said Mr. Pickwick, astonished.
PHYSICIAN
"Pooh ! That's nothing, that ain't," said
Jack Hopkins. "Is it, Bob?"
"
358
a
'Nothing at all," replied Mr. Bob Sawyer.
'By-the-bye, Bob," said Hopkins, with
scarcely perceptible glance at Mr. Pickwick's
attentive face, we had a curious accident
last night. A child was brought in, who had
swallowed a necklace."
"Swallowed what, sir?" interrupted Mr. Pick-
wick.
"
"A necklace," replied Jack Hopkins. "Not
all at once, you know, that would be too much
you couldn't swallow that, if the child did-eh,
Mr. Pickwick, ha! ha!" Mr. Hopkins appeared
highly gratified with his own pleasantry, and
continued. 'No, the way was this. Child's
parents were poor people who lived in a court.
Child's eldest sister bought a necklace; com-
mon necklace, made of large black wooden
beads. Child being fond of toys, cribbed the
necklace, hid it, played with it, cut the string,
and swallowed a bead. Child thought it capital
fun, went back next day, and swallowed another
bead."
"Bless my heart," said Mr. Pickwick, "what
a dreadful thing! I beg your pardon, sir. Go
on."
PHYSICIAN
"The powders for the child, at the large house
with the new family, and the piils to be taken
four times a day at the ill-tempered old gentle-
man's with the gouty leg?"
4.
16
Yes, sir."
"Then shut the door, and mind the shop."
Come," said Mr. Winkle, as the boy retired,
Things are not quite so bad as you would have
me believe, either. There is some medicine to
be sent out.'
"
Mr. Bob Sawyer peeped into the shop to see
that no stranger was within hearing, and lean-
ing forward to Mr. Winkle, said in a low tone:
"He leaves it all at the wrong houses."
Mr. Winkle looked perplexed, and Bob Saw-
yer and his friend laughed.
"Don't you see?" said Bob. "He goes up to
a house, rings the area bell, pokes a packet of
medicine without a direction into the servant's
hand, and walks off. Servant takes it into the
dining-parlor; master opens it, and reads the
label: Draught to be taken at bed-time—pills
as before-lotion as usual-the powder. From
Sawyer's, late Nockemorf's. Physicians' pre-
scriptions carefully prepared,' and all the rest
of it. Shows it to his wife-she reads the label;
it goes down to the servants--they read the label.
"Next day, child swallowed two beads; the Next day, boy calls: 'Very sorry-his mistake-
day after that, he treated himself to three, and so immense business-great many parcels to deli-
on, till in a week's time he had got through the ver-Mr. Sawyer's compliments-late Nockem-
necklace-five-and-twenty beads in all. The orf.' The name gets known, and that's the
sister, who was an industrious girl, and seldom thing, my boy, in the medical way. Bless your
treated herself to a bit of finery, cried her eyes heart, old fellow, it's better than all the adver-
out, at the loss of the necklace; looked high and tising in the world. We have got one four-
low for it; but, I needn't say, didn't find it. A ounce bottle that's been to half the houses in
few days afterwards, the family were at dinner- Bristol, and hasn't done yet."
baked shoulder of mutton, and potatoes under
"Dear me,
I see," observed Mr. Winkle;
it-the child, who wasn't hungry, was playing
"what an excellent plan !"-Pickwick, Chap. 38.
about the room, when suddenly there was heard
a devil of a noise, like a small hail storm. PHYSICIAN-The oracular.
'Don't do that, my boy,' said the father. ‘I
ain't a doin' nothing,' said the child. 'Well,
don't do it again,' said the father. There was a
short silence, and then the noise began again,
worse than ever. 'If you don't mind what I
say, my boy,' said the father, 'you'll find your-
self in bed, in something less than a pig's whis-
per.' He gave the child a shake to make him
obedient, and such a rattling ensued as nobody
ever heard before. 'Why, damme, it's in the
child!' said the father, he's got the croup in
the wrong place!' 'No I haven't, father,' said
the child, beginning to cry, 'it's the necklace;
I swallowed it, father.'-The father caught the
child up, and ran with him to the hospital: the
beads in the boy's stomach rattling all the way
with the jolting; and the people looking up in
the air, and down in the cellars, to see where the
unusual sound came from. He's in the hospital
now," said Jack Hopkins, "and he makes such
a devil of a noise when he walks about, that
they're obliged to muffle him in a watchman's
coat, for fear he should wake the patients!"
Pickwick, Chap. 32.
PHYSICIAN-Bob Sawyer's beginning.
"Who do you suppose will ever employ a
professional man, when they see his boy playing
at marbles in the gutter, or flying the garter in
the horse-road? Have you no feeling for your
profession, you groveller? Did you leave all
the medicine?"
"Yes, sir."
The doctor, who was a red-nosed gentleman,
with a great bunch of seals dangling below a
waistcoat of ribbed black satin, arrived with all
speed, and taking his seat by the bedside of
poor Nell, drew out his watch, and felt her
pulse. Then he looked at her tongue, then he
felt her pulse again, and while he did so, he
eyed the half-emptied wine-glass as if in pro-
found abstraction.
"I should give her-" said the doctor at
length, a tea-spoonful, every now and then, of
hot brandy and water.
Why, that's exactly what we've done, sir!"
said the delighted landlady.
"I should also," observed the doctor, who
had passed the foot-bath on the stairs, "I should
also," said the doctor, in the voice of an oracle,
"put her feet in hot water, and wrap them up
in flannel. I should likewise," said the doctor,
with increased solemnity, "give her something
light for supper-the wing of a roasted fowl
now-
'Why, goodness gracious me, sir, it's cook
ing at the kitchen fire this instant!" cried the
landlady. And so indeed it was, for the school-
master had ordered it to be put down, and it
was getting on so well that the doctor might
have smelt it if he had tried; perhaps he did.
"You may then," said the doctor, rising
gravely, "give her a glass of hot mulled port
wine, if she likes wine"
"And a toast, sir?" suggested the landlady.
'Ay," said the doctor, in the tone of a man
"
PHYSICIAN
859
who makes a dignified concession. "And a toast
-of bread. But be very particular to make it
of bread, if you please, ma'am.”
With which parting injunction, slowly and
portentously delivered, the doctor departed,
leaving the whole house in admiration of that
wisdom which tallied so closely with their own.
Everybody said he was a very shrewd doctor in-
deed, and knew perfectly what people's consti-
tutions were; which there appears some reason
to suppose he did.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 46.
PHYSICIAN-A fashionable.
Mr. Jobling was, as we have already seen, in
some measure a very popular character. He
had a portentously sagacious chin, and a pom-
pous voice, with a rich huskiness in some of its
tones that went directly to the heart, like a ray
of light shining through the ruddy medium of
choice old burgundy. His neck-kerchief and
shirt-frill were ever of the whitest, his clothes
of the blackest and sleekest, his gold watch-
chain of the heaviest, and his seals of the larg-
est. His boots, which were always of the bright-
est, creaked as he walked. Perhaps he could
shake his head, rub his hands, or warm himself
before a fire, better than any man alive; and he
had a peculiar way of smacking his lips and
saying, "Ah!" at intervals, while patients de-
tailed their symptoms, which inspired great
confidence. It seemed to express, "I know
what you're going to say better than you do;
but go on, go on.' As he talked on all occa-
sions whether he had anything to say or not, it
was unanimously observed of him that he was
"full of anecdote ;" and his experience and
profit from it were considered, for the same rea-
son, to be something much too extensive for de-
scription. His female patients could never
praise him too highly; and the coldest of his
male admirers would always say this for him to
their friends, "that whatever Jobling's profes-
sional skill might be (and it could not be de-
nied that he had a very high reputation), he
was one of the most comfortable fellows you
ever saw in your life!"
""
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27.
PHYSICIAN-The.
PHYSIOGNOMY
neither proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at
the corners of streets.
As no man of large experience of humanity,
however quietly carried it may be, can fail to be
invested with an interest peculiar to the posses-
sion of such knowledge, Physician was an at-
tractive man. Even the daintier gentlemen and
ladies who had no idea of his secret, and who
would have been startled out of more wits than
they had, by the monstrous impropriety of his
proposing to them, "Come and see what I see!"
confessed his attraction. Where he was, some-
thing real was. And half a grain of reality,
like the smallest portion of some other scarce
natural productions, will flavor an enormous
quantity of diluent.
It came to pass, therefore, that Physician's
little dinners always presented people in their
least conventional lights. The guests said to
themselves, whether they were conscious of it
or no, "Here is a man who really has an ac-
quaintance with us as we are, who is admitted
to some of us every day with our wigs and
paint off, who hears the wanderings of our
minds, and sees the undisguised expression of
our faces, when both are past our control; we
may as well make an approach to reality with
him, for the man has got the better of us and is
too strong for us." Therefore Physician's guests
came out so surprisingly at his round table, that
they were almost natural.
Bar's knowledge of that agglomeration of
Jurymen which is called humanity was as sharp
as a razor, yet a razor is not a generally conve-
nient instrument, and Physician's plain bright
scalpel, though far less keen, was adaptable to
far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the
gullibility and knavery of people; but Physi-
cian could have given him a better insight into
their tendernesses and affections, in one week
of his rounds, than Westminster Hall and all
the circuits put together, in threescore years
and ten. Bar always had a suspicion of this,
and perhaps was glad to encourage it (for, if the
world were really a great Law Court, one would
think that the last day of Term could not too
soon arrive); and so he liked and respected
Physician quite as much as any other kind of
man did.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 25.
The dinner-party was at the great Physician's.
Bar was there, and in full force. Ferdinand
Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging
state. Few ways of life were hidden from Phy-
sician, and he was oftener in its darkest places
than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies
about London who perfectly doted on him, my
dear, as the most charming creature and the
most delightful person, who would have been
shocked to find themselves so close to him if
they could have known on what sights those
thoughtful eyes of his had rested within an hour
or two, and near to whose beds, and under
what roofs, his composed figure had stood. But, PHYSIOGNOMY-Of a hotel.
Physician was a composed man, who performed
neither on his own trumpet, nor on the trumpets
of other people. Many wonderful things did he
see and hear, and much irreconcileable moral
contradiction did he pass his life among; yet
his equality of compassion was no more dis-
turbed than the Divine Master's of all healing
was. He went, like the rain, among the just
and unjust, doing all the good he could, and
PHYSICIAN-The riches of good deeds.
I never walk out with my husband, but I hear
the people bless him. I never go into a house
of any degree, but I hear his praises, or see
them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night
but I know that in the course of that day he has
alleviated pain, and soothed some fellow-creature
in the time of need. I know that from the beds
of those who were past recovery, thanks have
often, often gone up, in the last hour, for his
patient ministration. Is not this to be rich?
Bleak House, Chap. 67.
I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be
true; I am much of the same mind as to the
subtler expressions of the hand; I hold physi-
ognomy to be infallible; though all these sciences
demand rare qualities in the student. But I
also hold that there is no more certain index to
personal character than the condition of a set
of casters is to the character of any hotel. Know
ing, and having often tested this theory of mine,
PICKWICKIANS
360
Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when,
laying aside any remaining veil of disguise, I
held up before him in succession the cloudy oil
and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the dirty
salt, the obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy
sauce in a flannel waistcoat of decomposition.
A Dinner in an Hour. New Uncommercial
Samples.
PICKWICKIANS-The.
PICKWICK
'Mr. Blotton had no hesitation in saying
that he had not-he had used the words in its
Pickwickian sense. (Hear, hear.) He was
bound to acknowledge that, personally, he enter-
tained the highest regard and esteem for the
honorable gentleman; he had merely considered
him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view.
(Hear, hear.)
""
'Mr. Pickwick felt much gratified by the fair,
candid, and full explanation of his honorable
friend. He begged it to be at once understood,
that his own observations had been merely in-
tended to bear a Pickwickian construction.
(Cheers.)”—Pickwick, Chap. 1.
"Bless his old gaiters," rejoined Sam, looking
in the lane vith that 'ere dark lantern, like a
amiable Guy Fawkes? I never see such a fine
creetur in my days. Blessed if I don't think his
heart must ha' been born five-and-twenty year
arter his body, at least!"-Pickwick, Chap. 39.
"None o' that, I say, young feller," repeated
Sam, firmly. "No man serves him but me. And
|
now we're upon it, I'll let you into another secret
besides that," said Sam, as he paid for the beer.
"I never heerd, mind you, nor read of in story-
books, nor see in picters, any angel in tights
and gaiters-not even in spectacles, as I remem-
ber, though that may ha' been done for anythin'
I know to the contrairey-but mark my vords,
Job Trotter, he's a reg'lar thorough-bred angel
for all that; and let me see the man as wenturs
to tell me he knows a better vun.”
And how much more interesting did the
spectacle become, when, starting into full life
and animation, as a simultaneous call for " Pick-
wick" burst from his followers, that illustrious
man slowly mounted into the Windsor chair, on
which he had been previously seated, and ad- PICKWICK-Sam Weller's opinion of.
dressed the club himself had founded. What
a study for an artist did that exciting scene pre-out at the garden-door. "He's a-keepin' guard
sent! The eloquent Pickwick, with one hand
gracefully concealed behind his coat tails, and
the other waving in air, to assist his glowing
declamation; his elevated position revealing
those tights and gaiters, which, had they clothed
an ordinary man, might have passed without
observation, but which, when Pickwick clothed
them-if we may use the expression-inspired
voluntary awe and respect; surrounded by the
men who had volunteered to share the perils of
his travels and who were destined to participate
in'the glories of his discoveries. On his right hand
sat Mr. Tracy Tupman-the too-susceptible Tup-
man, who to the wisdom and experience of
maturer years superadded the enthusiasm and
ardor of a boy, in the most interesting and
pardonable of human weaknesses-love. Time
and feeding had expanded that once romantic
form; the black silk waistcoat had become more
and more developed; inch by inch had the gold
watch-chain beneath it disappeared from within
the range of Tupman's vision; and gradually
had the capacious chin encroached upon the
borders of the white cravat: but the soul of
Tupman had known no change-admiration of
the fair sex was still its ruling passion. On the "This is very strange," said Mr. Pickwick.
left of his great leader sat the poetic Snodgrass, "What is strange?" inquired Mr. Tupman,
and near him again the sporting Winkle, the staring eagerly at every object near him, but the
former poetically enveloped in a mysterious blue | right one. "God bless me, what's the matter?"
cloak with a canine-skin collar, and the latter This last was an ejaculation of irrepressible
communicating additional lustre to a new green astonishment, occasioned by seeing Mr. Pick-
shooting-coat, plaid neckerchief, and closely-wick, in his enthusiasm for discovery, fall on
fitted drabs. Pickwick, Chap. I.
his knees before the little stone, and commence
wiping the dust off it with his pocket handker-
chief.
PICKWICKIAN SENSE-The.
"Mr. Blotton (of Aldgate) rose to order. Did
the honorable Pickwickian allude to him? (Cries
of "Order," "Chair," "Yes," "No," "Go on,"
i 'Leave off," etc.)
"Mr. Pickwick would not put up to be put
down by clamor. He had alluded to the honor-
able gentleman. (Great excitement.)
"Mr. Blotton would only say then, that he re-
pelled the hon. gent.'s false and scurrilous accu-
sation, with profound contempt.
*
*
*
*
*
“The Chairman was quite sure the hon. Pick-
wickian would withdraw the expression he had
just made use of.
"Mr. Blotton, with all possible respect for the
chair, was quite sure he would not.
"The Chairman felt it his imperative duty to
demand of the honorable gentleman whether he
had used the expression which had just escaped
him in a common sense?
Pickwick, Chap. 45.
PICKWICK-His antiquarian discovery.
As they turned back, Mr. Pickwick's eye fell
upon a small broken stone, partially buried in
the ground, in front of a cottage door. He
paused.
"There is an inscription here," said Mr. Pick-
wick.
"Is it possible?" said Mr. Tupman.
"I can discern," continued Mr. Pickwick,
rubbing away with all his might, and gazing in-
tently through his spectacles; "I can discern a
cross, and a B, and then a T. This is import-
ant," continued Mr. Pickwick, starting up;
"this is some very old inscription, existing per-
haps long before the ancient alms-houses in this
place. It must not be lost."
He tapped at the cottage door. A laboring
man opened it.
"Do you know how this stone came here,
my friend?" inquired the benevolent Mr. Pick-
wick.
"No, I doan't, sir," replied the man civilly.
"It was here long afore I war born or any on us.
Mr. Pickwick glanced triumphantly at his
companion.
64
PICKWICK
361
'You-you-are not particularly attached to
it, I dare say," said Mr. Pickwick, trembling
with anxiety. "You wouldn't mind selling it,
now?"
“Ah! but who'd buy it?" inquired the man,
with an expression of face which he probably
meant to be very cunning.
I'll give you ten shillings for it at once,"
said Mr. Pickwick, "if you would take it up for
me."
The astonishment of the village may be easily
imagined, when (the little stone having been
raised with one wrench of a spade), Mr. Pick-
wick, by dint of great personal exertion bore it
with his own hands to the inn, and after having
carefully washed it, deposited it on the table.
The exultation and joy of the Pickwickians
knew no bounds, when their patience and assi-
duity, their washing and scraping, were crowned
with success. The stone was uneven and bro-
ken, and the letters were straggling and irregu-
lar, but the following fragment of an inscription
was clearly to be deciphered:
BILST
UM
PSHI
S. M.
ARK
Mr. Pickwick's eyes sparkled with delight, as
ne sat and gloated over the treasure he had dis-
covered. He had attained one of the greatest |
objects of his ambition. In a county known
to abound in remains of the early ages; in a
village in which there still existed some memo- |
rials of the olden time, he-he, the Chairman
of the Pickwick Club-had discovered a strange
and curious inscription of unquestionable an-
tiquity, which had wholly escaped the observa-
tion of the many learned men who had preced-
ed him. He could hardly trust the evidence of
his senses.-Pickwick, Chap. II.
PICKWICK—The antiquarian controversy.
It appears from the Transactions of the Club,
then, that Mr. Pickwick lectured upon the dis-
covery at a General Club Meeting, convened on
the night succeeding their return, and entered
into a variety of ingenious and erudite specula- |
tions on the meaning of the inscription. It also
appears that a skillful artist executed a faithful
delineation of the curiosity, which was engraven
on stone, and presented to the Royal Antiquarian
Society, and other learned bodies; that heart-
burnings and jealousies without number, were
created by rival controversies which were penned
upon the subject; and that Mr. Pickwick himself
wrote a Pamphlet, containing ninety-six pages of
very small print, and twenty-seven different read-
ings of the inscription. That three old gentlemen
cut off their eldest sons with a shilling a-piece for
presuming to doubt the antiquity of the fragment;
and that one enthusiastic individual cut him-
self off prematurely, in despair at being unable
to fathɔm its meaning. That Mr. Pickwick was
electa an honorary member of seventeen native
and foreign societies, for making the discovery;
that none of the seventeen could make anything
of it; but that all the seventeen agreed it was
very extraordinary.
Mr. Blotton, indeed-and the name will be
doomed to the undying contempt of those who
PICKWICK
cultivate the mysterious and the sublime-Mr.
Blotton, we say, with the doubt and cavilling
peculiar to vulgar minds, presumed to state a
view of the case, as degrading as ridiculous.
Mr. Blotton, with a mean desire to tarnish the
lustre of the immortal name of Pickwick, actu-
ally undertook a journey to Cobham in person,
and on his return, sarcastically observed in an
oration at the club, that he had seen the man
from whom the stone was purchased; that the
man presumed the stone to be ancient, but sol-
emnly denied the antiquity of the inscription—
inasmuch as he represented it to have been
rudely carved by himself in an idle mood, and
to display letters intended to bear neither more
nor less than the simple construction of-" BILL
STUMPS, HIS MARK;" and that Mr. Stumps,
being little in the habit of original composition,
and more accustomed to be guided by the sound
of words than by the strict rules of orthography,
had omitted the concluding "L" of his chris-
|tian name.
The Pickwick Club (as might have been ex-
pected from so enlightened an Institution), re-
ceived this statement with the contempt it de-
served, expelled the presumptuous and ill-con-
ditioned Blotton, and voted Mr. Pickwick a pair
of gold spectacles, in token of their confidence
and approbation; in return for which, Mr. Pick-
wick caused a portrait of himself to be painted,
and hung up in the club-room.
Mr. Blotton, though ejected, was not conquered.
He also wrote a pamphlet, addressed to the sev-
enteen learned societies, native and foreign, con-
taining a repetition of the statement he had al-
ready made, and rather more than half intimating
his opinion that the seventeen learned societies
were so many "humbugs." Hereupon the virtu-
ous indignation of the seventeen learned socie-
ties, native and foreign, being roused, several
fresh pamphlets appeared; the foreign learned
societies corresponded with the native learned
societies; the native learned societies translated
the pamphlets of the foreign learned societies
into English; the foreign learned societies trans-
lated the pamphlets of the native learned socie-
ties into all sorts of languages; and thus com-
menced that celebrated scientific discussion so
well known to all men, as the Pickwick contro-
versy.
But this base attempt to injure Mr. Pickwick
recoiled upon the head of its calumnious author.
The seventeen learned societies unanimously
voted the presumptuous Blotton an ignorant
meddler, and forthwith set to work upon more
treatises than ever. And to this day the stone
remains, an illegible monument of Mr. Pick-
wick's greatness, and a lasting trophy to the lit
tleness of his enemies.-Pickwick, Chap. 11.
PICKWICK-In a rage.
If any dispassionate spectator could have
beheld the countenance of the illustrious man
whose name forms the leading feature of the
title of this work, during the latter part of this
conversation, he would have been almost in-
duced to wonder that the indignant fire which
flashed from his eyes did not melt the glasses
of his spectacles-so majestic was his wrath.
His nostrils dilated, and his fists clenched in-
voluntarily, as he heard himself addressed by
the villain. But he restrained himself again-.
he did not pulverize him.
PIG
362
PIONEER
Mr. Pickwick was a philosopher, but philoso-
phers are only men in armor, after all. The
shaft had reached him, penetrated through his
philosophical harness, to his very heart. In the
frenzy of his rage, he hurled the inkstand madly
forward, and followed it up himself. But Mr.
Jingle had disappeared, and he found himself
caught in the arms of Sam.
“Here,” continued the hardened traitor, toss-hair trunks, spotted with unwholesome black
ing the license at Mr. Pickwick's feet: "get the blotches. They have long, gaunt legs too and
name altered-take home the lady-do for such peaked snouts that if one of them could
Tuppy."
be persuaded to sit for his profile nobody
would recognize it for a pig's likeness. They
are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or
caught, but are thrown upon their own re
sources in early life, and become preternaturally
knowing in consequence. Every pig knows
where he lives much better than anybody could
tell him. At this hour, just as evening is closing
in, you will see them roaming towards bed by
scores, eating their way to the last. Occasion-
ally some youth among them who has over-
eaten himself, or has been much worried by
dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodi-
gal son; but this is a rare case: perfect self-
possession and self-reliance and immovable
composure being their foremost attributes.
American Notes, Chap. 6.
Hallo," said that eccentric functionary, "fur-
niter's cheap where you come from, sir. Self-
acting ink, that 'ere; it's wrote your mark upon
the wall, old gen'lm'n. Hold still, sir; wot's |
the use o' runnin' arter a man as has made his
lucky, and got to t'other end of the Borough by
this time?"-Pickwick, Chap. 10.
PIG-An American.
PIGS.
Once more in Broadway! Here are the same
ladies in bright colors walking to and fro, in Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road
pairs and singly; yonder the very same light was perfectly alive with pigs of all ages; lying
blue parasol which passed and repassed the about in every direction, fast asleep; or grunt-
hotel window twenty times while we were sit-ing along in quest of hidden dainties. I had
ting there. We are going to cross here. Take always a sneaking kindness for these odd ani-
care of the pigs. Two portly sows are trotting mals, and found a constant source of amuse-
up behind this carriage, and a select party of ment, when all others failed, in watching their
half-a-dozen gentlemen hogs have just now proceedings. As we were riding along this
turned the corner.
morning, I observed a little incident between
two youthful pigs, which was so very human as
to be inexpressibly comical and grotesque at the
time, though I dare say, in telling, it is tame
enough.
Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward
by himself. He has only one ear, having parted
with the other to vagrant dogs in the course of
his city rambles. But he gets on very well
without it, and leads a roving, gentlemanly, One young gentleman (a very delicate porker,
vagabond kind of life, somewhat answering to with several straws sticking about his nose, be-
that of our club men at home. He leaves his tokening recent investigations in a dunghill)
lodgings every morning at a certain hour, throws was walking deliberately on, profoundly think-
himself upon the town, gets through his day in ing, when suddenly his brother, who was lying
some manner quite satisfactory to himself, and in a miry hole unseen by him, rose up immedi-
regularly appears at the door of his own house ately before his startled eyes, ghostly with damp
again at night like the mysterious master of Gil mud. Never was pig's whole mass of blood so
Blas. He is a free-and-easy, careless, indifferent turned. He started back at least three feet,
kind of pig, having a very large acquaintance gazed for a moment, and then shot off as hard
among other pigs of the same character, whom as he could go; his excessive little tail vibra-
he rather knows by sight than conversation, as ting with speed and terror, like a distracted
he seldom troubles himself to stop and exchange pendulum. But before he had gone very far,
civilities, but goes grunting down the kennel, he began to reason with himself as to the na-
turning up the news and small talk of the city ture of this frightful appearance; and as he rea-
in the shape of cabbage-stalks and offal, and soned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees
bearing no tails but his own, which is a very until at last he stopped, and faced about. There
short one, for his old enemies, the dogs, have was his brother, with the mud upon him glazing
been at that, too, and have left him hardly in the sun, yet staring out of the very same
enough to swear by. He is in every respect a hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings! He
republican pig, going wherever he pleases, and was no sooner assured of this-and he assured
mingling with the best society on an equal if not himself so carefully that one may almost say he
superior footing, for every one makes way when shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better
he appears, and the haughtiest give him the -than he came back at a round trot, pounced
wall if he prefer it. He is a great philosopher, upon him, and summarily took off a piece of his
and seldom moved unless by the dogs before tail, as a caution to him to be careful what he
mentioned. Sometimes, indeed, you may see was about for the future, and never to play
his small eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend, | tricks with his family any more.
whose carcass garnishes a butcher's door-post;
American Notes, Chap. 12.
but he grunts out, "Such is life; all flesh is
pork!" buries his nose in the mire again, and
waddles down the gutter, comforting himself
with the reflection that there is one snout the
less to anticipate stray cabbage-stalks, at any
rate.
They are the city scavengers, these pigs.
Ugly brutes they are; having for the most part
scanty, brown backs, like the lids of old horse
PIONEER-A Western.
The track of to-day had the same features as
the track of yesterday. There was the swamp,
the bush, the perpetual chorus of frogs, the rank
unseemly growth, the unwholesome steaming
earth. Here and there, and frequently too, we
encountered a solitary broken-down wagon, full
of some new settler's goods. It was a pitiful
·
PIPE-FILLING
363
PLAGIARISM
PIPE The pictures in the smoke.
sight to see one of these vehicles deep in the
mire, the axle-tree broken, the wheel lying idly And as he soberly and thoughtfully puffed at his
by its side, the man gone miles away to look for old pipe, and as the Dutch clock ticked, and as
assistance, the woman seated among their wan- the red fire gleamed, and as the Cricket chirped;
dering household gods, with a baby at her breast, that Genius of his Hearth and Home (for such
a picture of forlorn, dejected patience, the team the Cricket was) came out, in fairy shape, into
of oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud, the room, and summoned many forms of Home
and breathing forth such clouds of vapor from about him. Dots of all ages and all sizes.
their mouths and nostrils, that all the damp filled the chamber. Dots who were merry chil
mist and fog around seemed to have come direct | dren, running on before him, gathering flowers
from them.-American Notes, Chap. 13.
in the fields; coy Dots, half shrinking from.
half yielding to, the pleading of his own rough
image; newly-married Dots, alighting at the
door, and taking wonderful possession of the
household keys; motherly little Dots, attended
by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be
christened; matronly Dots, still young and
blooming, watching Dots of daughters, as they
danced at rustic balls; fat Dots, encircled and
beset by troops of rosy grand-children; wither-
ed Dots, who leaned on sticks, and tottered as
they crept along. Old Carriers too, appeared,
with blind old Boxers lying at their feet; and
newer carts with younger drivers (" Peerybingle
Brothers," on the tilt); and sick old Carriers,
tended by the gentlest hands; and graves of
dead and gone old Carriers, green in the church-
yard. And as the Cricket showed him all these
things- he saw them plainly, though his eyes
were fixed upon the fire-the Carrier's heart
grew light and happy, and he thanked his House-
hold Gods with all his might, and cared no more
for Gruff and Tackleton than you do.
The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced
old fellow (not so very old, either, for he was but
just turned sixty, I should think), who had been
out with the militia in the last war with Eng-
land, and had seen all kinds of service-except
a battle; and he had been very near seeing that,
he added-very near. He had all his life been
restless and locomotive, with an irresistible de-
sire for change, and was still the son of his old
self, for if he had nothing to keep him at home,
he said (slightly jerking his hat and his thumb
towards the window of the room in which the
old lady sat, as we stood talking in front of the
house), he would clean up his musket, and be
off to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one
of the very many descendants of Cain, proper to
this continent, who seem destined from their
birth to serve as pioneers in the great human
army, who gladly go on from year to year ex-
tending its outposts, and leaving home after
home behind them, and die at last, utterly re-
gardless of their graves being left thousands of
miles behind by the wandering generation who
succeed.
His wife was a domesticated, kind-hearted old
soul, who had come with him "from the queen
city of the world," which, it seemed, was Phila-
delphia; but had no love for this Western coun-
try, and indeed had little reason to bear it any,
having seen her children, one by one, die here
of fever, in the full prime and beauty of their
youth. Her heart was sore, she said, to think
of them, and to talk on this theme, even to
strangers, in that blighted place, so far from her
old home, eased it somewhat, and became a me-
lancholy pleasure.-American Notes, Chap. 14.
PIPE-FILLING-A fine art.
She was, out and out, the very best filler of a
pipe, I should say, in the four quarters of the
globe. To see her put that chubby little finger
in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to
clear the tube, and, when she had done so, affect
to think that there was really something in the
tube, and blow a dozen times, and hold it to her
eye like a telescope, with a most provoking
twist in her capital little face, as she looked
down it, was quite a brilliant thing. As to the
tobacco, she was perfect mistress of the subject;
and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of pa-
per, when the Carrier had it in his mouth-going
so very near his nose, and yet not scorching it
was Art, high Art.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chirp I.
PLAGIARISM-Dramatic.
"You're quite right, sir," interrupted the
literary gentleman, leaning back in his chair
and exercising his toothpick. "Human intel-
lect, sir, has progressed since his time, is pro-
gressing, will progress."
"Shot beyond him, I mean," resumed Nich-
olas, "in quite another respect, for, whereas he
brought within the magic circle of his genius,
traditions peculiarly adapted for his purpose,
and turned familiar things into constellations
which should enlighten the world for ages, you
drag within the magic circle of your dullness,
subjects not at all adapted to the purposes of
the stage, and debase as he exalted. For in-
stance, you take the uncompleted books of liv
ing authors, fresh from their hands, wet from
the press, cut, hack, and carve them to the pow
ers and capacities of
ers and capacities of your actors, and the capa-
bility of your theatres, finish unfinished
works, hastily and crudely vamp up ideas not
yet worked out by their original projector, but
which have doubtless cost him many thoughtful
days and sleepless nights; by a comparison of
incidents and dialogue, down to the very last
word he may have written a fortnight before,
do your utmost to anticipate his plot-all this
without his permission, and against his will
and then, to crown the whole proceeding, pub-
lish in some mean pamphlet, an unmeaning far-
rago of garbled extracts from his work, to which
you put your name as author, with the honor-
And the Cricket and the Kettle, tuning up
again, acknowledged it! The bright fire, blaz-
ing up again, acknowledged it! The little Mow-able distinction annexed, of having perpetrated
er on the clock, in his unheeded work, acknow-
ledged it! The Carrier, in his smoothing fore-
head and expanding face, acknowledged it,
the readiest of all.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chirp 1.
a hundred other outrages of the same description.
Now, show me the distinction etween such pil-
fering as this, and picking a man's pocket in
the street: unless, indeed, it be, that the legis
lature has a regard for pocket-handkerchiefs
PLATE-MAKING
364
and leaves men's brains (except when they are
knocked out by violence) to take care of them-
selves."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 48.
PLATE-MAKING.
Shall I break the plate? First let me look at
the back, and see who made it. COPELAND.
Copeland! Stop a moment. Was it yester-
day I visited Copeland's works, and saw them
making plates? In the confusion of travelling
about, it might be yesterday or it might be yes-
terday month; but I think it was yesterday. I
appeal to the plate: The plate says, decidedly,
yesterday. I find the plate, as I look at it,
growing into a companion.
POETICAL OBITUARY
to the nicest taste? And as to the flint and the
clay together, are they not, after all this, mixed
in the proportion of five of clay to one of flint?
and isn't the compound-known as "slip "-run
into oblong troughs, where its superfluous mois.
ture may evaporate? and finally, isn't it slapped
and banged and beaten and patted and kneaded
and wedged and knocked about like butter, un-
til it becomes a beautiful gray dough, ready for
the potter's use?
In regard of the potter, popularly so-called
(says the plate), you don't mean to say you have
forgotten that a workman called a Thrower is
the man under whose hand this gray dough takes
the shapes of the simpler household vessels as
Don't you remember (says the plate) how you quickly as the eye can follow? You don't mean
steamed away, yesterday morning, in the bright to say you cannot call him up before you, sitting
sun and the east wind, along the valley of the with his attendant woman, at his potter's wheel
sparkling Trent? Don't you recollect how many a disc about the size of a dinner-plate, revolv-
kilns you flew past, looking like the bowls of gi- ing on two drums slowly or quickly as he wills
gantic tobacco pipes, cut short off from the stem-who made you a complete breakfast set for a
and turned upside down? And the fires-and
the smoke-and the roads made with bits of
crockery, as if all the plates and dishes in
the civilized world had been Macadamised, ex-
pressly for the laming of all the horses? Of
course I do!
And don't you remember (says the plate) how
you alighted at Stoke-a picturesque heap of
houses, kilns, smoke, wharfs, canals, and river,
lying (as was most appropriate) in a basin-and
how, after climbing up the sides of the basin to
look at the prospect, you trundled down again at
a walking-match pace, and straight proceeded to
my father's, Copeland's, where the whole of my
family, high and low, rich and poor, are turned
out upon the world from our nursery and semi-
nary, covering some fourteen acres of ground?
And don't you remember what we spring from;
heaps of lumps of clay, partially prepared and
cleaned in Devonshire and Dorsetshire-whence
said clay principally comes-and hills of flint,
without which we should want our ringing sound,
and should never be musical? And as to the
flint, don't you recollect that it is first burnt in
kilns, and is then laid under the four iron feet of
a demon slave, subject to violent stamping fits,
who, when they come on, stamps away insanely
with his four iron legs, and would crush all the
flint in the Isle of Thanet to powder, without
leaving off? And as to the clay, don't you recollect
how it is put into mills or teazers, and is sliced,
and dug, and cut at, by endless knives, clogged
and sticky, but persistent—and is pressed out of
that machine through a square trough, whose
form it takes-and is cut off in square lumps
and thrown into a vat, and there mixed with
water, and beaten to a pulp by paddle-wheels-
ind is then run into a rough house, all rugged
beams and ladders splashed with white,-super-
intended by Grindoff, the Miller, in his working
clothes, all splashed with white-where it passes
through no end of machinery-moved sieves all
splashed with white, arranged in an ascending
scale of fineness (some so fine, that three hun-
dred silk threads cross each other in a single
square inch of their surface), and all in a violent
state of ague, with their teeth for ever chattering,
and their bodies for ever shivering? And as to
the flint again, isn't it mashed and mollified and
troubled and soothed, exactly as rags are in a
paper-mill, until it is reduced to a pap so fine
that it contains no atom of "grit" perceptible
bachelor, as a good-humored little off-hand joke?
You remember how he took up as much dough
as he wanted, and, throwing it on his wheel, in
a moment fashioned it into a tea-cup-caught
up more clay and made a saucer-a larger dab
and whirled it into a teapot-winked at a small-
er dab and converted it into the lid of the tea-
pot, accurately fitting by the measurement of his
eye alone-coaxed a middle-sized dab for two
seconds, broke it, turned it over at the rim, and
made a milk-pot-laughed, and turned out a
slop-basin-coughed, and provided for the
sugar?-A Plated Article. Reprinted Pieces.
POETRY-Its weakening effect on the mind.
"Half-a-crown," said Wegg, meditating.
"Yes. (It ain't much, sir.) Half-a-crown."
"Per week, you know."
"Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain
upon the intellect now. Was you thinking at
all of poetry?" Mr. Wegg inquired, musing.
"Would it come dearer?" Mr. Boffin asked.
"It would come dearer," Mr. Wegg returned.
"For when a person comes to grind off poetry
night after night, it is but right he should ex-
pect to be paid for its weakening effect on his
mind."
“To tell you the truth, Wegg," said Boffin,
"I wasn't thinking of poetry, except in so far as
this:-If you was to happen now and then to
feel yourself in the mind to tip me and Mrs.
Boffin one of your ballads, why then we should
drop into poetry."
"I follow you, sir," said Wegg. "But not
being a regular musical professional, I should
be loth to engage myself for that; and therefore,
when I dropped into poetry, I should ask to be
considered so fur, in the light of a friend.”
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 5.
POETICAL OBITUARY-By Joe.
"Well!" Joe pursued, "somebody must keep
the pot a-biling, Pip, or the pot won't bile, don't
you know?"
I saw that, and said so.
"'Consequence, my father didn't make objec-
tions to my going to work; so I went to work
at my present calling, which were his too, if he
would have followed it, and I worked tolerable
hard, I assure you, Pip. In time I were able to
keep him, and I kep him till he went off in a
purple leptic.fit. And it were my intentions to
POLICE
865
POLITICIAN
Joe recited this couplet with such manifest
pride and careful perspicuity, that I asked him
if he had made it himself?
have had put upon his tombstone that What- tions in any mild character you choose to pres-
sume'er the failings on his part, Remember rea-cribe to him, from a charity-boy upwards, and
der he were that good in his hart."
seem as innocent as an infant. They are, one
and all, respectable-looking men; of perfectly
good deportment and unusual intelligence; with
nothing lounging or slinking in their manners,
with an air of keen observation and quick per-
ception when addressed; and generally present-
ing in their faces, traces more or less marked
of habitually leading lives of strong mental ex-
citement. They have all good eyes; and they all
can, and they all do, look full at whomsoever
they speak to.
I made it," said Joe, "my own self. I made
it in a moment. It was like striking out a horse-
shoe complete, in a single blow. I never was so
much surprised in all my life-couldn't credit
my own ed-to tell you the truth, hardly believed
it were my own ed. As I was saying, Pip, it
were my intentions to have had it cut over him;
but poetry costs money, cut it how you will, small
or large, and it were not done."
Great Expectations, Chap. 7.
POLICE-The English detective.
*
*
*
*
*
Forever on the watch, with their wits stretched
to the utmost, these officers have, from day to
day and year to year, to set themselves against
every novelty of trickery and dexterity that the
Just at dusk, Inspectors Wield and Stalker are combined imaginations of all the lawless rascals
announced; but we do not undertake to war- in England can devise, and to keep pace with
rant the orthography of any of the names here every such invention that comes out. In the
mentioned. Inspector Wield presents Inspector Courts of Justice, the materials of thousands of
Stalker. Inspector Wield is a middle-aged man such stories as we have narrated-often elevated
of a portly presence, with a large, moist, know- into the marvellous and romantic, by the circum-
ing eye, a husky voice, and a habit of empha-stances of the case—are dryly compressed into
sizing his conversation by the aid of a corpulent the set phrase, "in consequence of information
fore-finger, which is constantly in juxtaposition I received, I did so and so." Suspicion was to
with his eyes or nose. Inspector Stalker is a
shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman-in appearance
not at all unlike a very acute, thoroughly-trained
schoolmaster, from the Normal Establishment
at Glasgow. Inspector Wield one might have
known, perhaps, for what he is-Inspector
Stalker, never.
The ceremonies of reception over, Inspectors
Wield and Stalker observe that they have
brought some sergeants with them. The ser-
geants are presented-five in number, Sergeant
Dornton, Sergeant Witchem, Sergeant Mith,
Sergeant Fendall, and Sergeant Straw. We
have the whole Detective force from Scotland
Yard, with one exception. They sit down in a
semi-circle (the two Inspectors at the two ends)
at a little distance from the round table, facing
the editorial sofa. Every man of them, in a
glance, immediately takes an inventory of the
furniture and an accurate sketch of the edito-
rial presence. The Editor feels that any gen-
tleman in company could take him up, if need
should be, without the smallest hesitation, twen-
ty years hence.
The whole party are in plain clothes. Ser-
geant Dornton, about fifty years of age, with a
ruddy face and a high, sun-burnt forehead, has
the air of one who has been a Sergeant in the
army-he might have sat to Wilkie for the
Soldier in the Reading of the Will. He is
famous for steadily pursuing the inductive pro-
cess, and, from small beginnings, working on
from clue to clue until he bags his man. Ser-
geant Witchem, shorter and thicker-set, and
marked with the small-pox, has something of a
reserved and thoughtful air, as if he were en-
gaged in deep arithmetical calculations. He is
renowned for his acquaintance with the sweil
mob. Sergeant Mith, a smooth-faced man with
a fresh bright complexion, and a strange air of
simplicity, is a dab at housebreakers. Sergeant
Fendall, a light-haired, well-spoken, polite per-
son, is a prodigious hand at pursuing private in-
quiries of a delicate nature. Straw, a little wiry
Sergeant of meek demeanor and strong sense,
would knock at a door and ask a series of ques-
be directed, by careful inference and deduction,
upon the right person; the right person was to
be taken, wherever he had gone, or whatever he
was doing to avoid detection; he is taken; there
he is at the bar; that is enough, From infor-
mation I, the officer, received, I did it ; and, ac-
cording to the custom in these cases, I say no
more.
These games of chess, played with live pieces,
are played before small audiences, and are
chronicled nowhere. The interest of the game
supports the player. Its results are enough for
Justice. To compare great things with small,
suppose LEVERRIER or ADAMS informing the
public that from information he had received he
had discovered a new planet; or COLUMBUS in-
forming the public of his day that from informa-
tion he had received he had discovered a new
continent; so the Detectives inform it that they
have discovered a new fraud or an old offender,
and the process is unknown.
The Detective Police. Reprinted Pieces.
POLICE-OFFICE—A.
The whitewashed room was pure white as of
old, the methodical book-keeping was in peace-
ful progress as of old, and some distant howler
was banging against a cell door as of old. The
sanctuary was not a permanent abiding-place,
but a kind of criminal Pickford's. The lower
passions and vices were regularly ticked off in
the books, warehoused in the cells, carted away
as per accompanying invoice, and left little
mark upon it.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 12.
POLITICIAN-His sentiments.
He was a great politician, of course, and ex-
plained his opinion at some length to one of our
company; but I only remember that he conclad-
ed with two sentiments, one of which was,
Somebody for ever, and the other, Blast every-
body else! which is by no means a bad abstract
of the general creed in these matters.
American Notes, Chap. 13.
POLITICIANS
POLITICIANS.
366
These are the great actors for whom the
stage is reserved. A People there are, no
doubt a certain large number of supernumer-
aries, who are to be occasionally addressed, and
relied upon for shouts and choruses, as on the
theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their
followers and families, their heirs, executors,
administrators, and assigns, are the born first-
actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can
appear upon the scene for ever and ever.
Bleak House, Chap. 12.
POLITICAL ECONOMY-Toots's idea of.
Mr. Baps was a very grave gentleman, with a
slow and measured manner of speaking; and
before he had stood under the lamp five
minutes, he began to talk to Toots (who had
been silently comparing pumps with him) about
what you were to do with your raw materials
when they came into your ports in return for
your drain of gold. Mr. Toots, to whom the
question seemed perplexing, suggested "Cook
'em.”—Dombey & Son, Chap. 14.
POMPOSITY-Mr. Sapsea as a type of.
Accepting the jackass as the type of self-suf-
ficient stupidity and conceit, a custom, per-
haps, like some few other customs, more con-
ventional than fair,-then the purest jackass in
Cloisterham is Mr. Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer.
Mr. Sapsea has many adinirers; indeed,
the proposition is carried by a large local ma-
jority, even including non-believers in his
wisdom, that he is a credit to Cloisterham.
He possesses the great qualities of being por-
tentous and dull, and of having a roll in
his speech, and another roll in his gait;
not to mention a certain gravely flowing
action with his hands, as if he were presently
going to Confirm the individual with whom he
holds discourse. Much nearer sixty years of
age than fifty, with a flowing outline of stomach,
and horizontal creases in his waistcoat; reputed
to be rich; voting at elections in the strictly
respectable interest; morally satisfied that
nothing but he himself has grown since he was
a baby; how can dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea be
otherwise than a credit to Cloisterham, and
society?-Edwin Drood, Chap. 4.
POMPOSITY-Its influence.
"Well!" said Wemmick, "that's over! He's
a wonderful man, without his living likeness;
but I feel that I have to screw myself up when
I dine with him—and I dine more comfortably
unscrewed."-Great Expectations, Chap. 48.
PONY-A theatrical.
"He's a good pony at bottom," said Mr.
Crummles, turning to Nicholas.
He might have been at bottom, but he cer-
tainly was not at top, seeing that his coat was
of the roughest and most ill-favored kind. So,
Nicholas merely observed that he shouldn't
wonder if he was.
|•
POOR AND UNFORTUNATE
fourteen years," said the manager; "fired pis-
tols, and went to bed in a night-cap; and, in
short, took the low comedy entirely. His
father was a dancer."
"He was
Was he at all distinguished?"
"Not very," said the manager.
rather a low sort of pony. The fact is, he had
been originally jobbed out by the day, and he
never quite got over his old habits. He was
clever in melodrama too, but too broad-toc
broad. When the mother died, he took the
port-wine business.”
"The port-wine business!" cried Nicholas.
"Drinking port-wine with the clown," said
the manager; "but he was greedy, and one
night bit off the bowl of the glass and choked
himself, so his vulgarity was the death of him at
last."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 23.
POOR-Their characteristics.
There was a string of people already strag
gling in, whom it was not difficult to identify as
the nondescript messengers, go-betweens, and
errand-bearers of the place. Some of them had
been lounging in the rain until the gate should
open; others, who had timed their arrival with
greater nicety, were coming up now,
and passing
in with damp whitey-brown paper bags from the
grocers, loaves of bread, lumps of butter, eggs,
milk, and the like. The shabbiness of these at-
tendants upon shabbiness, the poverty of these
insolvent waiters upon insolvency, was a sight
to see. Such threadbare coats and trousers, such
fusty gowns and shawls, such squashed hats and
bonnets, such boots and shoes, such umbrellas
and walking-sticks, never were seen in Rag
Fair. All of them wore the cast-off clothes of
other men and women; were made up of patches
and pieces of other people's individuality, and
had no sartorial existence of their own proper.
Their walk was the walk of a race apart. They
had a peculiar way of doggedly slinking round
the corner, as if they were eternally going to the
pawnbroker's. When they coughed, they coughed
like people accustomed to be forgotten on door-
steps and in draughty passages, waiting for an
swers to letters in faded ink, which gave the
recipients of those manuscripts great mental
disturbance, and no satisfaction. As they eyed
the stranger in passing, they eyed him with bor-
rowing eyes-hungry, sharp, speculative as to
his softness if they were accredited to him, and
the likelihood of his standing something hand-
some. Mendicity on commission stooped in
their high shoulders, shambled in their unsteady
legs, buttoned and pinned and darned and drag-
ged their clothes, frayed their button-holes,
leaked out of their figures in dirty little ends of
tape, and issued from their mouths in alcoholic
breathings.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 9.
POOR AND UNFORTUNATE-The voice
of the.
་
Oliver told them all his simple history, and was
often compelled to stop, by pain and want of
strength. It was a solemn thing, to hear, in
the darkened room, the feeble voice of the sick
child recounting a weary catalogue of evils and
calamities which hard men had brought upon
him. Oh! if, when we oppress and grind our
fellow-creatures, we bestowed but one thought
on the dark evidences of human error, which
"She ate apple-pie at a circus for upwards of like dense and heavy clouds, are rising, slowly
Many and many is the circuit this pony
has gone," said Mr. Crummles, flicking him
skillfully on the eyelid for old acquaintance sake.
"He is quite one of us. His mother was on
the stage."
"Was she?" rejoined Nicholas.
POOR
367
it is true, but not less surely, to Heaven, to pour
their after-vengeance on our heads; if we heard
but one instant, in imagination, the deep testi-
mony of dead men's voices, which no power
can stifle, and no pride shut out; where would
be the injury and injustice, the suffering, misery,
cruelty, and wrong, that each day's life brings
with it!-Oliver Twist, Chap. 30.
POOR-The plea of the.
POOR
sufficiently, of themselves) how very poor the
people were who lived in the crazy huts adja-
cent, and how foclhardy it might prove for one
who carried money, or wore decent clothes, to
walk that way alone, unless by daylight.
Poverty has its whims and shows of taste, as
wealth has. Some of these cabins were turreted,
some had false windows painted on their rotten
walls; one had a mimic clock, upon a crazy
tower of four feet high, which screened the chim-
ney; each in its little patch of ground had a rude
seat or arbor. The population dealt in bones,
in rags, in broken glass, in old wheels, in birds,
and dogs. These, in their several ways of stow-
age, filled the gardens; and shedding a perfume,
not of the most delicious nature, in the air, filled
it besides with yells, and screams, and howling.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 44.
POOR-Hospital scenes among the.
Among this congregation were some evil-look-
ing young women, and beetle-browed young
men; but not many-perhaps that kind of
characters kept away. Generally, the faces
(those of the children excepted) were depressed
and subdued, and wanted color. Aged people
were there in every variety. Mumbling, blear-
eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly
winking in the gleams of sun that now and then
crept in through the open doors from the paved
yard; shading their listening ears or blinking
eyes with their withered hands; poring over
their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep,
crouching and drooping in corners.
There were
weird old women, all skeleton within, all bon-
net and cloak without, continually wiping their
eyes with dirty dusters of pocket-handkerchiefs
and there were ugly old crones, both male and
female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon
them which was not at all comforting to see.
Upon the whole, it was the dragon, Pauperism,
in a very weak and impotent condition; tooth-
less, fangless, drawing his breath heavily enough,
and hardly worth chaining up.
"Now, gentlemen," said Will Fern, holding
out his hands, and flushing for an instant in his
haggard face. "See how your laws are made to
trap and hunt us when we're brought to this. I
tries to live elsewhere. And I'm a vagabond.
To jail with him! I comes back here.
I comes back here. I goes
a-nutting in your woods, and breaks-who
don't?-a limber branch or two. To jail with
him! One of your keepers sees me in the broad
day, near my own patch of garden, with a gun.
To jail with him ' I has a natʼral angry word
with that man, when I'm free again. To jail
with him! I cut a stick. To jail with him!
I eats a rotten apple or a turnip. To jail with
him! It's twenty mile away; and coming back,
I begs a trifle on the road. To jail with him!
At last the constable, the keeper-anybody-
finds me anywhere, a-doing anything. To jail
with him, for he's a vagrant, and a jail-bird
known; and jail's the only home he's got."
The Alderman nodded sagaciously, as who
should say,
"A very good home too!"
"Do I say this to serve My cause?" cried
Fern. "Who can give me back my liberty, who
can give me back my good name, who can give
me back my innocent niece? Not all the Lords
and Ladies in wide England. But, gentlemen,
gentlemen, dealing with other men like me, be-
gin at the right end. Give us, in mercy, better
Give us, in mercy, better
homes when we're a-lying in our cradles; give
us better food when we're a-working for our
lives; give us kinder laws to bring us back when
we're a-going wrong; and don't set Jail, Jail,
Jail, afore us, everywhere we turn. There an't
a condescension you can show the Laborer then,
that he won't take, as ready and as grateful as a In a room opening from a squalid yard, where
man can be; for he has a patient, peaceful, will- a number of listless women were lounging to
ing heart. But you must put his rightful spirit and fro, trying to get warm in the ineffectual
in him first; for, whether he's a wreck and ruin sunshine of the tardy May morning-in the
such as me, or is like one of them that stand "Itch Ward," not to compromise the truth-a
here now, his spirit is divided from you at this woman such as HOGARTH has often drawn, was
time. Bring it back, gentlefolks, bring it back! hurriedly getting on her gown before a dusty
Bring it back, afore the day comes when even fire. She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of
his Bible changes in his altered mind, and the that insalubrious department-herself a pauper
words seem to him to read, as they have some--flabby, raw-boned, untidy, unpromising, and
times read in my own eyes-in Jail, 'Whither
thou goest, I can Not go; where thou lodgest,
I do Not lodge; thy people are Not my peo-
ple; Nor thy God my God!'”
POOR-The homes of the.
Chimes, 3d quarter.
Great heaps of ashes; stagnant pools, over-
grown with rank grass and duckweed; broken
turnstiles; and the upright posts of palings long
since carried off for firewood, which menaced all
heedless walkers with their jagged and rusty
nails, were the leading features of the land-
scape; while here and there a donkey, or a rag-
ged horse, tethered to a stake, and cropping off
a wretched meal from the coarse, stunted turf,
were quite in keeping with the scene, and would
have suggested (if the houses had not done so
*
*
*
*
*
coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being
spoken to about the patients whom she had in
charge, she turned round, with her shabby gown
half on, half off, and fell a-crying with all her
might. Not for show, not querulously, not in
any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep grief
and affliction of her heart; turning away her
dishevelled head: sobbing most bitterly, wring-
ing her hands, and letting fall abundance of
great tears, that choked her utterance. Wha!
was the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward?
Oh, the "dropped child” was dead! Oh, the
child that was found in the street, and she had
brought up ever since, had died an hour ago
and see where the little creature lay, beneath
this cloth! The dear, the pretty dear!
The dropped child seemed too small and poor
a thing for Death to be in earnest with, but
+
POOR
Death had taken it; and already its diminutive
form was neatly washed, composed, and stretched
as if in sleep upon a box. I thought I heard a
voice from Heaven saying, It shall be well for
thee, O nurse of the itch-ward, when some less
gentle pauper does those offices to thy cold
form, that such as the dropped child are the
angels who behold my Father's face!
*
*
*
*
*
368
POOR
POOR-Public duty to the.
My Lords and Gentlemen and Honorable
Boards, when you, in the course of your dust-
shovelling and cinder-raking, have piled up a
mountain of pretentious failure, you must off
with your honorable coats for the removal of it,
and fall to the work with the power of all the
queen's horses and all the queen's men, or it
will come rushing down and bury us alive.
Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers
and other sick women in bed; groves of luna-
tics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs
day-rooms, waiting for their dinners; longer and
longer groves of old people, in up-stairs Infirm-with an enormous treasure at disposal to relieve
ary wards, wearing out life, God knows how
this was the scenery through which the walk lay,
for two hours. In some of these latter cham-
bers, there were pictures stuck against the wall,
and a neat display of crockery and pewter on a
kind of sideboard; now and then it was a treat
to see a plant or two: in almost every ward
there was a cat.
Yes, verily, my Lords and Gentlemen and
Honorable Boards, adapting your Catechism to
the occasion, and by God's help so you must.
For when we have got things to the pass that
the poor, the best of the poor detest our mer-
cies, hide their heads from us, and shame us by
starving to death in the midst of us, it is a pass
impossible of prosperity, impossible of contin-
uance. It may not be so written in the Gospel
according to Podsnappery; you may not " find
these words" for the text of a sermon, in the
Returns of the Board of Trade; but they have
been the truth since the foundations of the
universe were laid, and they will be the truth
until the foundations of the universe are shaken
by the Builder. This boastful handiwork of
ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional
In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm,
some old people were bed-ridden, and had been
for a long time; some were sitting on their beds
half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out
of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. A
sullen or lethargic indifference to what was ask-pauper, the sturdy breaker of windows, and the
ed, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth
and food, a moody absence of complaint as be-
ing of no use, a dogged silence and resentful
desire to be left alone again, I thought were
generally apparent.
*
*
*
*
Who could wonder, looking through those
weary vistas of bed and infirmity, that it should
do him good to meet with some other scenes,
and assure himself that there was something
else on earth? Who could help wondering why
the old men lived on as they did; what grasp
they had on life; what crumbs of interest or oc-
cupation they could pick up from its bare board; |
whether Charley Walters had ever described to
them the days when he kept company with some
old pauper woman in the bud, or Billy Stevens
ever told them of the time when he was a
dweller in the far-off foreign land called
Home !
The morsel of burnt child, lying in another
room, so patiently, in bed, wrapped in lint, and
looking steadfastly at us with his bright, quiet
eyes when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if
the knowledge of these things, and of all the
tender things there are to think about, might
have been in his mind-as if he thought, with
us, that there was a fellow-feeling in the pauper
nurses, which appeared to make them more
kind to their charges than the race of common
nurses in the hospitals-as if he mused upon
the Future of some older children lying around
him in the same place, and thought it best, per-
haps, all things considered, that he should die
-as if he knew, without fear, of those many
coffins, made and unmade, piled up in the store
below-and of his unknown friend, "the drop-
ped child," calm upon the box-lid, covered with
a cloth. But there was something wistful and
appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in the
midst of the hard necessities and incongruities
he pondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of the
helpless and the aged poor, for a little more
liberty and a little more bread.
A Walk in a Workhouse. Reprinted Pieces.
rampant tearer of clothes, strikes with a cruel
and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is
a horror to the deserving and unfortunate. We
must mend it, Lords and Gentlemen and Hon-
orable Boards, or in its own evil hour it will
mar every one of us.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 8.
POOR-To be cultivated.
It was but a hurried parting in a common
street, yet it was a sacred remembrance to these
two common people. Utilitarian economists,
skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of
Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of
many little dog's-eared creeds, the poor you will
have always with you. Cultivate in them, while
there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fan-
cies and affections, to adorn their lives, so much
in need of ornament; or, in the day of your
triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of
their souls, and they and a bare existence stand
face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn,
and make an end of you.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 6.
POOR-The parish.
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 wretch-
edness and successful knavery, are they associated.
A poor man with small earnings, and a large
family, just manages to live on from hand to
mouth, and to procure food from day to day; he
has barely sufficient to satisfy the present crav
ings of nature, and can take no heed of the future
His taxes are in arrear, quarter-day passes by, ano-
ther 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
POOR PATIENTS
369
PORTER
Angels in their daily lives, and lay but humble
siege to Heaven at last.
Which of us shall say what he would be, if
such realities, with small relief or change all
through his days, were his? Looking round
upon these people, far from home, houseless, in-
digent, wandering, weary with travel and hard
is his parish. There are the parish vestry, the
parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish
officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institu-
tions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The wo-
man 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 re-living, and seeing how patiently they nursed
lieved by the parish: and when distress and
drunkenness have done their work upon him,
he is maintained, a harmless, babbling idiot, in
the parish asylum.—Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 1.
POOR PATIENTS-Their patronage.
"
and tended their young children; how they
consulted over their wants first, then half sup-
plied their own; what gentle ministers of hope
and faith the women were; how the men prof-
ited by their example; and how very, very sei-
dom even a moment's petulance or harsh com-
plaint broke out among them-I felt a stronger
love and honor of my kind come glowing on my
heart, and wished to God there had been many
Atheists in the better part of human nature.
there to read this simple lesson in the book of
Life.-American Notes, Chap. 15.
“It's wonderful how the poor people patron-
ize me,” said Mr. Bob Ŝawyer, reflectively.
They knock me up, at all hours of the night;
they take medicine to an extent which I should
have conceived impossible; they put on blisters
and leeches with a perseverance worthy of a|
better cause; they make additions to their fam-
ilies, in a manner which is quite awful. Six of POOR-The-Their kindness to each other.
those last-named little promissory notes, all due
on the same day, Ben, and all entrusted to
me!"
"It's very gratifying, isn't it?" said Mr. Ben
Allen, holding his plate for some more minced
veal.
"
Oh, very,” replied Bob; "only not quite so
much so, as the confidence of patients with a
shilling or two to spare, would be. This busi-
ness was capitally described in the advertise-
ment, Ben. It is a practice, a very extensive
practice—and that's all."-Pickwick, Chap. 48.
POOR-The tenderness of the.
Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end
of all things, it is very much harder for the poor
to be virtuous than it is for the rich; and the
good that is in them shines the brighter for it.
In many a noble mansion lives a man, the best
of husbands and of fathers, whose private worth
in both capacities is justly lauded to the skies.
But bring him here, upon this crowded deck,
strip from his fair young wife her silken dress
and jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early
wrinkles on her brow, pinch her pale cheek
with care and much privation, array her faded
form in coarsely patched attire, let there be
nothing but his love to set her forth or deck
her out, and you shall put it to the proof in-
deed. So change his station in the world, that
he shall see in those young things who climb
about his knee, not records of his wealth and
name, but little wrestlers with him for his daily
bread, so many poachers on his scanty meal, so
many units to divide his every sum of comfort,
and further to reduce its small amount. In lieu
of the endearments of childhood in its sweetest
aspect, heap upon him all its pains and wants,
its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, caprice,
and querulous endurance; let its prattle be, not
of engaging infant fancies, but of cold and thirst
and hunger; and if his fatherly affection outlive
all this, and he be patient, watchful, tender,
careful of his children's lives, and mindful al-
ways of their joys and sorrows, then send him
back to Parliament, and Pulpit, and to Quarter
Sessions, and when he hears fine talk of the de-
pravity of those who live from hand to mouth,
and labor hard to do it, let him speak up, as one
who knows, and tell those holders forth that they,
by parallel with such a class, should be High
How the heart of each to each was softened
by the hard trials of their lives! I think the
best side of such people is almost hidden from
us. What the poor are to the poor is little
known, excepting to themselves and GOD.
Bleak House, Chap. 8.
POPULARITY (Slurk, the Editor).
"Are you the landlord?" inquired the gen-
tleman.
"I am, sir,” replied the landlord.
44
man.
Do you know me?" demanded the gentle-
"I have not that pleasure, sir," rejoined the
landlord.
My name is Slurk," said the gentleman.
The landlord slightly inclined his head.
66
tily.
Slurk, sir," repeated the gentleman, haugh-
"Do you know me now, man?”
The landlord scratched his head, looked at
the ceiling and at the stranger, and smiled
feebly.
"Do you know me, man?" inquired the
stranger, angrily.
The landlord made a strong effort, and at
length replied: "Well, sir, I do not know you."
"Great Heaven!" said the stranger, dashing
his clenched fist upon the table.
"And this is
popularity!"
The landlord took a step or two towards the
door; the stranger, fixing his eyes upon him, re-
sumed.
"This,” said the stranger, "this is gratitude
for years of labor and study in behalf of the
masses. I alight wet and weary; no enthusiastic
crowds press forward to greet their champion;
the church-bells are silent; the very name elicits
no responsive feeling in their torpid bosoms. It
is enough," said the agitated Mr. Slurk, pacing
to and fro, "to curdle the ink in one's pen, and
induce one to abandon their cause forever."
Pickwick, Chap. 51.
PORTER-Toby Veck, the.
They called him Trotty from his pace, which
meant speed if it didn't make it. He could have
walked faster perhaps; most likely; but rob him
of his trot, and Toby would have taken to his
bed and died. It bespattered him with mud in
dirty weather; it cost him a world of trouble;
he could have walked with infinitely greater
PORTER
370
POST-BOYS AND DONKEYS
POSITIVENESS-Mrs. Pratchett's.
"For instance," I says, to give her a little
encouragement, "who is Somebody?"
"I give you my sacred honor, Mr. Christo-
pher," answers Pratchett," that I haven't the ·
tase; but that was one reason for his clinging
to it so tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old
man, he was a very Hercules, this Toby, in his
good intentions. He loved to earn his money.
He delighted to believe-Toby was very poor,
and couldn't well afford to part with a delight-faintest notion."
that he was worth his salt. With a shilling or
an eighteen-penny message or small parcel in
hand, his courage, always high, rose higher. As
he trotted on, he would call out to fast Postmen
ahead of him, to get out of the way; devoutly
believing that in the natural course of things he
must inevitably overtake and run them down;
and he had perfect faith-not often tested-in
his being able to carry anything that man could
lift.
But for the manner in which she settled her
cap-strings, I should have doubted this; but in
respect of positiveness it was hardly to be dis-
criminated from an affidavit.
"Then you never saw him?" I followed her
up with.
"Nor yet," said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her
eyes and making as if she had just took a pill
of unusual circumference-which gave a re-
markable force to her denial-"nor yet any
servant in this house. All have been changed,
Mr. Christopher, within five year, and Some-
body left his Luggage here before then."
Somebody's Luggage, Chap. I.
ler's idea of.
Thus, even when he came out of his nook to
warm himself on a wet day, Toby trotted. Mak-
ing, with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of slushy
footprints in the mire; and blowing on his chilly
hands and rubbing them against each other,
poorly defended from the searching cold by POST-BOYS AND DONKEYS-Sam Wel-
threadbare mufflers of gray worsted, with a pri-
vate apartment only for the thumb, and a com-
mon room or tap for the rest of the fingers;
Toby, with his knees bent and his cane beneath
his arm, still trotted. Falling out into the road
to look up at the belfry when the Chimes re-
sounded, Toby trotted still.
PORTER-A solemn.
Chimes, Ist Quarter.
Lest, with all these proofs and confirmations,
any man should be suspicious of the Anglo-Ben-
galee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance
Company; should doubt in tiger, cab, or person,
Tigg Montague, Esquire (of Pall Mall and
Bengal), or any other name in the imaginative
List of Directors: there was a porter on the
premises a wonderful creature, in a vast red
waistcoat and a short-tailed pepper-and-salt coat
--who carried more conviction to the minds of
sceptics than the whole establishment without
him. No confidences existed between him
and the Directorship; nobody knew where he
had served last; no character or explanation
had been given or required. No questions had
been asked on either side. This mysterious
being, relying solely on his figure, had applied
for the situation, and had been instantly engaged
on his own terms. They were high; but he
knew, doubtless, that no man could carry such
an extent of waistcoat as himself, and felt the
full value of his capacity to such an institution.
When he sat upon a seat erected for him in a
corner of the office, with his glazed hat hang-
ing on a peg over his head, it was impossible to
doubt the respectability of the concern. It
went on doubling itself with every square inch
of his red waistcoat, until, like the problem of
the nails in the horse's shoes, the total became
enormous. People had been known to apply to
effect an insurance on their lives for a thousand
pounds, and looking at him, to beg, before the
form of proposal was filled up, that it might be
made two. And yet he was not a giant. His
coat was rather small than otherwise. The
whole charm was in his waistcoat. Respecta-
bility, competence, property in Bengal or any-
where else, responsibility to any amount on the
part of the company that employed him, were
all expressed in that one garment.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27.
"This is pleasant," said Bob Sawyer, turning
up his coat collar, and pulling the shawl over
his mouth to concentrate the fumes of a glass
of brandy just swallowed.
"Wery," replied Sam, composedly.
"You don't seem to mind it," observed Bob.
"Vy, I don't exactly see no good my mindin'
on it 'ud do, sir," replied Sam.
"That's an unanswerable reason, anyhow,"
said Bob.
"Yes, sir," rejoined Mr. Weller. "Wotever
is, is right, as the young nobleman sveetly re-
marked wen they put him down in the pension
list 'cos his mother's uncle's vife's grandfather
vunce lit the king's pipe with a portable tinder-
box."
"Not a bad notion that, Sam," said Mr. Bob
Sawyer approvingly.
"
Just wot the young nobleman said ev'ry
quarter-day afterwards for the rest of his life,"
replied Mr. Weller.
'Wos you ever called in," inquired Sam,
glancing at the driver, after a short silence, and
lowering his voice to a mysterious whisper:
wos you ever called in, ven you wos 'prentice ·
to a sawbones, to wisit a postboy?"
"I don't remember that I ever was," replied
Bob Sawyer.
"You never see a postboy in that 'ere hospital
as you walked (as they says o' the ghosts), did
you?" demanded Sam.
No," replied Bob Sawyer. "I don't think
I ever did."
"Never know'd a churchyard were there wos
a postboy's tombstone, or see a dead postboy,
did you?" inquired Sam, pursuing his catechism
No," rejoined Bob, "I never did."
"No!" rejoined Sam triumphantly. "No
never vill; and there's another thing that no
man ever see, and that's a dead donkey. No
man never see a dead donkey, 'cept the
gen'l'm'n in the black silk smalls as know'd the
young 'ooman as kep a goat; and that wos a
French donkey, so wery likely he warn't wun o'
the reg'lar breed."
"Well, what has that got to do with the post-
boys?" asked Bob Sawyer.
"This here," replied Sam. "Without goin'
so far as to as-sert, as some wery sensible people
do, that postboys and donkeys is both immortal
POVERTY
wot I say is this; that wenever they feels their-
selves gettin' stiff and past their work, they just
rides off together, wun postboy to a pair in the
usual way; wot becomes on 'em nobody knows,
but it's wery probable as they starts avay to take
their pleasure in some other vorld, for there ain't
a man alive as ever see either a donkey or a
postboy a-takin' his pleasure in this!"
Pickwick, Chap. 51.
POVERTY—The clutch of.
371
Mother had the gripe and clutch of Poverty
upon her face, upon her figure, and not least of
all, upon her voice. Her sharp and high-pitched
words were squeezed out of her, as by the com-
pression of bony fingers on a leathern bag;
and she had a way of rolling her eyes about
and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was
gaunt and hungry.
George Silverman's Explanation.
POVERTY-The pride of.
When this spirited young man, and his sister,
had begun systematically to produce the family
skeleton for the overawing of the College, this
narrative cannot precisely state. Probably at
about the period when they began to dine on
the College charity. It is certain that the more
reduced and necessitous they were, the more
pompously the skeleton emerged from its tomb;
and that when there was anything particularly
shabby in the wind, the skeleton always came
out with the ghastliest flourish.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 20.
POVERTY-And wrinkles.
PRAYER
POWER AND WILL.
"The power to serve is as seldom joined with
the will, as the will is with the power, I think."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 20.
POWER-The insolence of newly acquired.
If Wegg had been worse paid for his office,
or better qualified to discharge it, he would have
considered these visits complimentary and agree
able; but, holding the position of a handsomely-
remunerated humbug, he resented them. This
was quite according to rule, for the incompetent
servant, by whomsoever employed, is always
against his employer. Even those born gov-
ernors, noble and right honorable creatures, who
have been the most imbecile in high places,
have uniformly shown themselves the most op-
posed (sometimes in belying distrust, sometimes
in vapid insolence) to their employer. What is
in such wise true of the public master and ser-
vant, is equally true of the private master and
servant all the world over.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 7.
PRAYER-Cruncher on.
"Bust me, if she ain't at it again!"
A woman of orderly and industrious appear-
ance rose from her knees in a corner, with suffi-
cient haste and trepidation to show that she was
the person referred to.
66
"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 salu.
tation, 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. Crunch-
Mrs. Plornish was a young woman, made er's domestic economy, that, whereas he often
somewhat slatternly in herself and her belong-came home after banking hours with clean boots,
ings by poverty; and so dragged at by poverty he often got up next morning to find the same
and the children together, that their united boots covered with clay.
forces had already dragged her face into wrin-
kles.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 12.
POVERTY AND OYSTERS-Sam Weller
on.
"It's a wery remarkable circumstance, sir,"
said Sam, "that poverty and oysters always
seems to go together."
"I don't understand you, Sam," said Mr.
Pickwick.
"What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apos-
trophe 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?"
"I was not praying against you; I was pray-
ing 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 flop-
"What I mean, sir," said Sam, "is, that the
poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to
be for oysters. Look here, sir; here's a oyster
stall to every half-dozen houses. The street's
lined vith 'em. Blessed if I don't think that ven
a man's wery poor, he rushes out of his lodg-ping herself down, and praying that the bread-
ings, and eats oysters in reg'lar desperation."
To be sure he does," said Mr. Weller
senior; "and it's just the same vith pickled
salmon !"
"Those are two very remarkable facts, which
never occurred to me before," said Mr. Pick-
wick.-Pickwick, Chap. 22.
POWER-Its attraction for low natures.
Power (unless it be the power of intellect or
virtue) has ever the greatest attraction for the
lowest natures; and the mere defiance of the
unconscious house-front, with his power to strip
the roof off the inhabiting family like the roof
of a house of cards, was a treat which had a
charm for Silas Wegg.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 7.
and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of
her only child!"
*
*
*
*
"Bu-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 your-
self, 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
•
PRACTICAL MAN
372
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, Aggerawayter, and what do you
say now?"
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 1.
PRACTICAL MAN-A,
He was an affectionate father, after his man-
ner; but he would probably have described him-
self (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe, upon a
definition) as "an eminently practical" father.
He had a particular pride in the phrase emi-
nently practical, which was considered to have
a special application to him. Whatsoever the
public meeting held in Coketown, and whatso-
ever the subject of such meeting, some Coke-
towner was sure to seize the occasion of allud-
ing to his eminently practical friend Gradgrind.
This always pleased the eminently practical
friend. He knew it to be his due, but his due
was acceptable.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 3.
PRECEPTS-Of married ladies.
And to do Mrs. Nickleby justice, she never
had lost-and to do married ladies, as a body,
justice, they seldom do lose-any occasion of in-
culcating similar golden precepts, whose only
blemish is the slight degree of vagueness and
uncertainty in which they are usually enveloped.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 19.
PREDICAMENT.
It is always the person not in the predicament
who knows what ought to have been done in it,
and would unquestionably have done it too.
Christmas Carol, Stave 3.
PRESS-The American.
Schools may be erected, East, West, North,
and South; pupils be taught, and masters reared,
by scores upon scores of thousands; colleges
may thrive, churches may be crammed, temper-
ance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge
in all other forms walk through the land with
giant strides; but while the newspaper press of
America is in, or near, its present abject state,
high moral improvement in that country is hope-
less. Year by year it must and will go back;
year by year the tone of public feeling must sink
lower down; year by year the Congress and the
Senate must become of less account before all
decent men; and year by year the memory of
the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be out-
raged more and more in the bad life of their
degenerate child.
Among the herd of journals which are pub-
lished in the States there are some, the reader
scarcely need be told, of character and credit.
From personal intercourse with accomplished
gentlemen connected with publications of this
class, I have derived both pleasure and profit.
But the name of these is Few, and of the others
Legion; and the influence of the good is power-
less to counteract the mortal poison of the bad.
*
*
*
*
*
Among the gentry of America, among the
well-informed and moderate, in the learned pro-
fessions, at the bar and on the bench, there is,
as there can be, but one opinion, in reference to
the vicious character of these infamous journals.
|
PRIDE
It is sometimes contended-I will not say
strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for
such a disgrace—that their influence is not so
great as a visitor would suppose. I must be
pardoned for saying that there is no warrant for
this plea, and that every fact and circumstance
tends directly to the opposite conclusion.
When any man, of any grade of desert in in-
tellect or character, can climb to any public dis
tinction, no matter what, in America, without
first grovelling down upon the earth, and bend-
ing the knee before this monster of depravity;
when any private excellence is safe from its at-
tacks; when any social confidence is left un
broken by it, or any tie of social decency and
honor is held in the least regard; when any
man in that Free Country has freedom of opin-
ion, and presumes to think for himself, and
speak for himself, without humble reference to
a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance
and base dishonesty, he utterly loathes and de-
spises in his heart; when those who most acute-
ly feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon
the nation, and who most denounce it to each
other, dare to set their heels upon, and crush it
openly, in the sight of all men; then I will be-
lieve that its influence is lessening, and men
are returning to their manly senses. But while
that Press has its evil eye in every house, and
its black hand in every appointment in the state,
from a president to a postman; while, with ri-
bald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the
standard literature of an enormous class, who
must find their reading in a newspaper, or they
will not read at all; so long must its odium be
upon the country's head, and so long must the
evil it works be plainly visible in the Republic.
To those who are accustomed to the leading
English journals, or to the respectable journals
of the Continent of Europe-to those who are
accustomed to anything else in print and paper
it would be impossible, without an amount
of extract for which I have neither space nor
inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this
frightful engine in America.
American Notes, Chap. 18.
PRIDE-The arrogance of.
"His presence! His dignity! No portrait
that I have ever seen of any one has been half
so replete with those qualities. Something so
stately, you know; so uncompromising; so very
wide across the chest; so upright! A pecuniary
Duke of York, my love, and nothing short of
it!" said Miss Tox. "That's what I should
designate him."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
*
*
*
*
*
Towards his first wife, Mr. Dombey, in his
cold and lofty arrogance, had borne himself like
the removed Being he almost conceived him-
self to be. He had been "Mr. Dombey" with
her when she first saw him, and he was "Mr.
Dombey" when she died. He had asserted his
greatness during their whole married life, and
she had meekly recognized it. He had kept his
distant seat of state on the top of his throne, and
she her humble station on its lowest step; and
much good it had done him, so to live in solitary
bondage to his one idea! He had imagined that
the proud character of his second wife would
have been added to his own-would have
merged into it, and exalted his greatness. He
had pictured himself haughtier than ever, with

•
•
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MR. DOMBEY.
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IN
372
PRIDE
373
PRIDE
which his whole intellectual existence re.
solved itself. All the stubbornness and impla-
cability of his nature, all its hard impenetrable
quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all its
all its exag:
Edith's haughtiness subservient to his. He had
never entertained the possibility of its arraying
itself against him. And now, when he found it
rising in his path at every step and turn of his
daily life, fixing its cold, defiant, and contempt-gerated sense of personal importance, all its jeal-
uous face upon him, this pride of his, instead of
withering, or hanging down its head beneath
the shock, put forth new shoots, became more
concentrated and intense, more gloomy, sullen,
irksome, and unyielding, than it had ever been
before.
Who wears such armor, too, bears with him
ever another heavy retribution. It is of proof
against conciliation, love, and confidence!
against all gentle sympathy from without, all
trust, all tenderness, all soft emotion; but to
deep stabs in the self-love it is as vulnerable as
the bare breast to steel; and such tormenting
festers rankle there, as follow on no other
wounds, no, though dealt with the mailed hand
of Pride itself, on weaker pride, disarmed and
thrown down.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 40.
PRIDE-A duty.
"There is a kind of pride, Sir,” she returned,
after a moment's silence," or what may be sup-
posed to be pride, which is mere duty; I hope I
cherish no other."- Dombey & Son, Chap. 33.
PRIDE-Its egotism.
“He is, if I may say so, the slave of his own
greatness, and goes yoked to his own triumphal
car like a beast of burden, with no idea on earth
but that it is behind him and is to be drawn on,
over everything and through everything."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 45.
PRIDE-Its characteristics.
It was not in the nature of things that a man
of Mr. Dombey's mooa, opposed to such a spirit
as he had raised against himself, should be soft-
ened in the imperious asperity of his temper; or
that the cold hard armor of pride in which he
lived encased, should be made more flexible by
constant collision with haughty scorn and de-
fiance. It is the curse of such a nature-it is a
main part of the heavy retribution on itself it
bears within itself that while deference and con-
cession swell its evil qualities, and are the food
it grows upon, resistance and a questioning of
its exacting claims, foster it too no less. The
evil that is in it finds equally its means of growth
and propagation in opposites. It draws support
and life from sweets and bitters; bowed down
before, or unacknowledged, it still enslaves the
breast in which it has its throne; and worshipped
or rejected, is as hard a master as the Devil in
dark fables.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 40.
PRIDE-Controlling power of.
He silenced the distant thunder with the roll-
ing of his sea of pride. He would bear noth-
ing but his pride. And in his pride, a heap of
inconsistency, and misery, and self-inflicted tor-
ment, he hated her.—Dombey & Son, Chap..40.
PRIDE-Its rage.
Prying and tormenting as the world was,
it did Mr. Dombey the service of nerving
him to pursuit and revenge. It roused his pas-
sion, stung his pride, twisted the one idea of
his life into a new shape, and made some
gratification of his wrath, the object into
ous disposition to resent the least flaw in the
ample recognition of his importance by others,
set this way like many streams united into one,
and bore him on upon their tide. The most im-
petuously passionate and violently impulsive of
mankind would have been a milder enemy to
encounter than the sullen Mr. Dombey wrought
to this. A wild beast would have been easier
turned or soothed than the grave gentleman
without a wrinkle in his starched cravat.
But the very intensity of his purpose became
almost a substitute for action in it. While he
was yet uninformed of the traitor's retreat, it
served to divert his mind from his own calamity,
and to entertain it with another prospect. The
brother and sister of his false favorite had no
such relief; everything in their history, past and
present, gave his delinquency a more afflicting
meaning to them.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 53.
PRIDE—Its fall.
And it was strange, very strange, even to him-
self, to find, how by quick, though almost imper-
ceptible degrees he lost his delicacy and self-
respect, and gradually came to do that as a
matter of course, without the least compunction,
which, but a few short days before, had galled
him to the quick. The first time he visited the
pawnbroker's, he felt on his way there as if every
person whom he passed suspected whither he was
going; and on his way back again as if the whole
human tide he stemmed knew well where he
had come from. When did he care to think of
their discernment now? In his first wanderings
up and down the weary streets, he counterfeited
the walk of one who had an object in his view;
but soon there came upon him the sauntering,
slipshod gait of listless idleness, and the loung-
ing at street-corners, and plucking and biting
of stray bits of straw, and strolling up and
down the same place, and looking into the same
shop-windows, with a miserable indifference,
fifty times a day. At first, he came out from
his lodging with an uneasy sense of being ob-
served-even by those chance passers-by, on
whom he had never looked before, and hundreds
to one would never see again-issuing in the
morning from a public-house; but now, in his
comings-out and goings-in he did not mind to
lounge about the door, or to stand sunning him-
self in careless thought beside the wooden stem,
studded from head to heel with pegs, on which
the beer-pots dangled like so many boughs upon
a pewter-tree. And yet it took but five weeks
to reach the lowest round of this tall ladder.
Oh, moralists, who treat of happiness and
self-respect, innate in every sphere of life, and
shedding light on every grain of dust in God's
highway, so smooth below your carriage-wheels,
so rough beneath the tread of naked feet, be-
think yourselves, in looking on the swift descent
of men who have lived in their own esteem, that
there are scores of thousands breathing now,
and breathing thick with painful toil, who in
that high respect have never lived at all, nor
had a chance of life! Go ye, who rest so pla-
cidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young,
and when he strung his harp was old, and had
PRINCIPLE
874
PRISON
never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seedi-rascible old gen'l'm'n as the vaiter wos always
begging their bread; go, Teachers of content obliged to keep a sharp eye on, at sich times,
and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the fear he should be tempted to commit some rash
forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, act with the carving-knife. Vell, sir, here he'd
and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say stop, occupyin' the best place for three hours,
can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul and never takin' nothin'arter his dinner, but
that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as sleep, and then he'd go away to a coffee-house a
fast as it is kindled! And, oh! ye Pharisees of few streets off, and have a small pot o' coffee
the nineteen hundredth year of Christian Know- and four crumpets, arter wich he'd walk home
ledge, who soundingly appeal to human nature, to Kensington and go to bed."
see first that it be human. Take heed it has
Pickwick, Chap. 44.
not been transformed, during your slumber and
the sleep of generations, into the nature of the
Beasts. Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13.
PRINCIPLE-Skimpole's idea of.
"And he would probably add, 'Is there such
a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Skimpole?'"
"To which Harold Skimpole would reply,
you know," he returned in his gayest manner,
and with his most ingenuous smile, "Upon my
life I have not the least idea! I don't know
what it is you call by that name, or where it is,
or who possesses it. If you possess it, and find
it comfortable, I am quite delighted, and con-
gratulate you heartily. But I know nothing
about it, I assure you, for I am a mere child,
and I lay no claim to it, and I don't want it!'
So, you see, excellent Boythorn and I would go
to dinner after all!"-Bleak House, Chap. 18.
PRINCIPLE-A man of (Weller).
"The fame of the gentleman in question
never reached my ears.
"No, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Weller. "You
astonish me, sir; he wos a clerk in a gov'ment
office, sir."
"Was he?" said Mr. Pickwick.
PRISON-Newgate.
"The force of habit" is a trite phrase in
everybody's mouth; and it is not a little remark-
able that those who use it most as applied to
others, unconsciously afford in their own per-
sons 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 every 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 condition of the unhappy beings im-
mured 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 London, in one perpetual stream of
life and bustle, utterly unmindful 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
Yes, he wos, sir," rejoined Mr. Weller; "and of the massive wall, with a light laugh or a
a wery pleasant gen'lm'n too-one o' the precise merry whistle, they stand within one yard of a
and tidy sort, as puts their feet in little india- fellow-creature, bound and helpless, whose hours
rubber fire-buckets wen it's wet weather, and are numbered, from whom the last feeble ray of
never has no other bosom friends but hare- hope has fled forever, and whose miserable ca-
skins; he saved up his money on principle, wore reer will shortly terminate in a violent and
a clean shirt ev'ry day on principle; never spoke shameful death. Contact with death, even in
to none of his relations on principle, 'fear they its least terrible shape, is solemn and appalling.
shou'd want to borrow money of him; and wos How much more awful is it to reflect on this
altogether, in fact, an uncommon agreeable near vicinity to the dying-to men in full health
character. He had his hair cut on principle and vigor, in the flower of youth or the prime
vunce a fortnight, and contracted for his clothes of life, with all their faculties and perceptions
on the economic principle-three suits a year, as acute and perfect as your own; but dying,
and send back the old uns. Being a wery nevertheless-dying as surely-with the hand
reg'lar gen’lm'n, he din'd ev'ry day at the same of death imprinted upon them as indelibly-as
place, were it was one and nine to cut off the if mortal disease had wasted their frames to
joint, and a wery good one and nine's worth he | shadows, and corruption had already begun!
used to cut, as the landlord often said, with the
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 25.
tears a tricklin' down his face; let alone the
way he used to poke the fire in the vinter time, PRISON-Sunrise in.
which wos a dead loss o' four-pence ha'-penny a
day; to say nothin' at all o' the aggrawation o'
seein' him do it. So uncommon grand with it
too! Post arter the next gen'lm'n,' he sings
out ev'ry day ven he comes in. See arter the
Times, Thomas; let me look at the Mornin'
Herald, wen it's out o' hand; don't forget to be-
speak the Chronicle; and just bring the 'Tizer,
vill you;' and then he'd set with his eyes fixed
on the clock, and rush out, just a quarter of a
minit afore the time, to waylay the boy as was a
comin' in with the evenin' paper, wich he'd read
with sich intense interest and persewerance as
worked the other customers up to the wery con-
fines o' desperation and insanity, 'specially one
C
When she had stolen down stairs, and along
the empty yard, and had crept up to her own
high garret, the smokeless housetops and the
distant country hills were discernible over the
wall in the clear morning. As she gently open-
ed the window, and looked eastward down the
prison-yard, the spikes upon the walls were tip-
ped with red, then made a sullen purple pattern
on the sun as it came flaming up into the heav-
ens. The spikes had never looked so sharp
and cruel, nor the bars so heavy, nor the prison
space so gloomy and contracted. She thought
of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the sunrise
on wide seas, of the sunrise on rich landscapes,
of the sunrise on great forests where the birds
PRISON
875
were waking and the trees were rustling; and
she looked down into the living grave on which
the sun had risen, with her father in it, three-
and-twenty years, and said, in a burst of sorrow
and compassion, "No, no, I have never seen
him in my life."
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 19.
PRISON-In the French Revolution.
The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison,
dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul
sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome
flavor of imprisoned sleep becomes manifest in
all such places that are ill cared for!
"Come!" said the chief, at length, taking up
his keys, "come with me, emigrant."
Through the dismal prison twilight, his new
charge accompanied him by corridor and stair-
case, many doors clanging and locking behind
them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted
chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes.
The women were seated at a long table, reading
and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroider-
ing; the men were for the most part, standing
behind their chairs, or lingering up and down
the room.
In the instinctive association of prisoners
with shameful crime and disgrace, the new-comer
recoiled from this company. But the crowning
unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all
at once rising to receive him, with every refine-
ment of manner known to the time, and with
all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.
So strangely clouded were these refinements
by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral
did they become in the inappropriate squalor
and misery through which they were seen, that
Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company
of the de .d. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty,
the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance,
the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the
ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of
age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate
shore, all turning on him eyes that were chang-
ed by the death they had died in coming there.
|
PRISON DISCIPLINE

men were faded and haggard, so the iron was
rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten,
the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a
well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no
knowledge of the brightness outside; and would
have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one
of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. I.
PRISON-Old Bailey.
They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the
street outside Newgate had not obtained one in-
famous notoriety that has since attached to it.
But the gaol was a vile place, in which most
kinds of debauchery and villany were practised,
and where dire diseases were bred, that came
into court with the prisoners, and sometimes
rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief
Justice himself, and pulled him off the 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
citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so de-
sirable to be good use in the beginning. It was
famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institu-
tion, that inflicted a punishment of which no
one could foresee the extent; also, for the whip-
ping-post, another dear old institution, very
humanising and softening to behold in action;
also, for extensive transactions in blood-money,
another fragment of ancestral wisdom, system-
atically leading to the most frightful mercen-
ary crimes that could be committed under
Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, 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.
It struck him motionless. The gaoler stand- Making his way through the tainted crowd,
ing at his side, and the other gaolers moving dispersed up and down this hideous scene of
about, who would have been well enough as to action, with the skill of a man accustomed to
appearance in the ordinary exercise of their func- make his way quietly, the messenger found out
tions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted the door he sought, and handed in his letter
with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters through a trap in it. For people then paid to
who were there-with the apparitions of the co-see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid
quette, the young beauty, and the mature woman,
delicately bred-that the inversion of all experi-
ence and likelihood which the scene of shadows
presented, was heightened to its utmost. Surely,
ghosts all! Surely, the long unreal ride some
progress of disease that had brought him to
these gloomy shades!
to see the play in Bedlam-only the former en-
tertainment was much the dearer.
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 2.
PRISON DISCIPLINE.
The whip is a very contagious kind of thing,
and difficult to confine within one set of bounds.
"In the name of the assembled companions Utterly abolish punishment by fine-a barbarous
in misfortune," said a gentleman of courtly ap- device, quite as much out of date as wager by
pearance and address, coming forward, "I have battle, but particularly connected in the vulgar
the honor of giving you welcome to La Force, mind with this class of offence-at least quadru
and of condoling with you on the calamity that ple the term of imprisonment for aggravated as-
has brought you among us. May it soon termi-saults-and, above all, let us, in such cases,
nate happily!"
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 1.
PRISON.
A prison taint was on everything there. The
imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the impris-
oned damps, the imprisoned men, were all de-
teriorated by confinement. As the captive
have no Pet Prisoning, vain-glorifying, strong
soup, and roasted meats, but hard work, and one
unchanging and uncompromising dietary of
bread and water, well or ill; and we shall dc
much better than by going down into the dark
to grope for the whip among the rusty fragments
of the rack, and the branding-iron, and the
chains and gibbet from the public roads, and
PRISON
the weights that pressed men to death in the
cells of Newgate.
Lying Awake. Reprinted Pieces.
PRISON-The peace of a.
876
PRISON
prisonment were short; but now I solemnly de-
clare, that with no rewards or honors could I
walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day,
or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the
consciousness that one human creature, for any
length of time, no matter what, lay suffering
this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and
I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least
degree.
*
*
*
*
*
Over the head and face of every prisoner who
comes into this melancholy house a black hood
is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem
of the curtain dropped between him and the
living world, he is led to the cell from which he
never again comes forth, until his whole term
of imprisonment has expired. He never hears
of wife or children, home or friends, the life or
death of any single creature. He sees the
prison officers, but, with that exception, he never
looks upon a human countenance or hears a
human voice. He is a man buried alive,—to be
dug out in the slow round of years; and in the
mean time, dead to everything but torturing
anxieties and horrible despair.
"That a child would be born to you in a place
like this?" said the doctor. Bah, bah, sir,
what does it signify? A little more elbow-room
is all we want here. We are quiet here; we
don't get badgered here; there's no knocker
here, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and
bring a man's heart into his mouth. Nobody
comes here to ask if a man's at home, and to say
he'll stand on the door-mat till he is. Nobody
writes threatening letters about money, to this
place. It's freedom, sir, it's freedom! I have
had to-day's practice at home and abroad, on a
march, and aboard ship, and I'll tell you this:
I don't know that I have ever pursued it under
such quiet circumstances, as here this day.
Elsewhere, people are restless, worried, hurried
about, anxious respecting one thing, anxious
respecting another. Nothing of the kind here,
sir. We have done all that we know the worst
of it; we have got to the bottom, we can't fall,
and what have we found? Peace. That's the His name, and crime, and term of suffering
word for it. Peace." With this profession of are unknown, even to the officer who delivers
faith, the doctor, who was an old jail-bird, and him his daily food. There is a number over his
was more sodden than usual, and had the addi-cell door, and in a book of which the governor
tional and unusual stimulus of money in his
pocket, returned to his associate and chum in
hoarseness, puffiness, red-facedness, all-fours, to-
bacco, dirt, and brandy.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 6.
PRISON-Solitary confinement in an Amer-
ican.
In the outskirts stands a great prison, called
the Eastern Penitentiary, conducted on a plan
peculiar to the State of Pennsylvania. The sys-
tem here is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary
confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be
cruel and wrong.
of the prison has one copy, and the moral in-
structor another-this is the index to his history.
Beyond these pages the prison has no record of
his existence; and, though he live to be in the
same cell ten weary years, he has no means of
knowing, down to the very last hour, in what
part of the building it is situated; what kind
of men there are about him; whether in the
long winter nights there are living people near,
or he is in some lonely corner of the great jail,
with walls and passages and iron doors between
him and the nearest sharer in its solitary hor-
rors.-American Notes, Chap. 7.
PRISON-Solitary confinement in.
As I walked among these solitary cells, and
looked at the faces of the men within them, I
tried to picture to myself the thoughts and feel-
ings natural to their condition. I imagined the
hood just taken off, and the scene of their cap-
tivity disclosed to them in all its dismal mono-
tony.
In its intention, I am well convinced that it is
kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I
am persuaded that those who devised this sys-
tem of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent
gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not
know what it is that they are doing. I believe
that very few men are capable of estimating the
immense amount of torture and agony which
this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years,
At first, the man is stunned. His confine-
inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it ment is a hideous vision; and his old life a
myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen reality. He throws himself upon his bed, and lies
written upon their faces, and what to my certain there, abandoned to despair. By degrees the
knowledge they feel within, I am only the more insupportable solitude and barrenness of the
convinced that there is a depth of terrible en-place rouse him from this stupor, and when the
durance in it which none but the sufferers them-trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly
selves can fathom, and which no man has a begs and prays for work. Give me some work
right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold to do, or I shall go raving mad!"
this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries
of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any
torture of the body; and because its ghastly
signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye
and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh,-be-
cause its wounds are not upon the surface, and
it extorts few cries that human ears can hear,-
therefore I the more denounce it as a secret
punishment which slumbering humanity is not
roused up to stay. I hesitated once, debating
with myself, whether, if I had the power of say-
ing "Yes," or "No," I would allow it to be
tried in certain cases, where the terms of im-
He has it, and by fits and starts applies him-
self to labor; but every now and then there
comes upon him a burning sense of the years
that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and an
agony so piercing in the recollection of those
who are hidden from his view and knowledge,
that he starts from his seat, and, striding up and
down the narrow room with both hands clasped
on his uplifted head, hears spirits tempting him
to beat his brains out on the wall.
Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there
moaning. Suddenly he starts up, wondering
whether any other man is near; whether there
•
PRISON
is another cell like that on either side of him;
and listens keenly.
377
There is no sound; but other prisoners may
be near, for all that. He remembers to have
heard once, when he little thought of coming
here himself, that the cells were so constructed
that the prisoners could not hear each other,
though the officers could hear them. Where is
the nearest man—upon the right, or on the left?
or is there one in both directions? Where is he
sitting now—with his face to the light? or is
he walking to and fro? How is he dressed?
Has he been here long? Is he much worn
away? Is he very white and spectre-like?
Does he think of his neighbor too?
Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening
while he thinks, he conjures up a figure with his
back towards him, and imagines it moving
about in this next cell. He has no idea of the
face, but he is certain of the dark form of a
stooping man. In the cell upon the other side
he puts another figure, whose face is hidden from
him also. Day after day, and often when he
wakes up in the middle of the night, he thinks
of these two men until he is almost distracted.
He never changes them. There they are
they are
always, as he first imagined them--an old man
on the right; a younger man upon the left-
whose hidden features torture him to death, and
have a mystery that makes him tremble.
The weary days pass on with solemn pace,
like mourners at a funeral; and slowly he
begins to feel that the white walls of the cell
have something dreadful in them; that their
color is horrible; that their smooth surface
chills his blood; that there is one hateful corner
which torments him. Every morning when he
awakes, he hides his head beneath the coverlet,
and shudders to see the ghastly ceiling looking
down upon him. The blessed light of day itself
peeps in, an ugly phantom face, through the
unchangeable crevice which is his prison
window.
PRISONER
religious matters with the gentleman who visits
him, and has read his Bible, and has written a
prayer upon his slate, and hung it up as a kind
of protection, and an assurance of Heavenly
companionship. He dreams now, sometimes, of
his children or his wife, but is sure that they are
dead, or have deserted him. He is easily moved
to tears; is gentle, submissive, and broken-
spirited. Occasionally, the old agony comes
back; a very little thing will revive it; even a
familiar sound, or the scent of summer flowers
in the air; but it does not last long now; for
the world without has come to be the vision,
and this solitary life the sad reality.
I
On the haggard face of every man among
these prisoners the same expression sat.
know not what to liken it to. It had some-
thing of that strained attention which we see
upon the faces of the blind and deaf, mingled
with a kind of horror, as though they had all
been secretly terrified. In every little chamber
that I entered, and at every grate through which
I looked, I seemed to see the same appalling
countenance. It lives in my memory, with the
fascination of a remarkable picture. Parade
before my eyes a hundred men, with one among
them newly released from his solitary suffering,
and I would point him out.
The faces of the women, as I have said, it
humanizes and refines. Whether this be because
of their better nature, which is elicited in soli-
tude, or because of their being gentler creatures,
of greater patience and longer suffering, I do
not know; but so it is. That the punishment
is, nevertheless, to my thinking, fully as cruel
and as wrong in their case as in that of the men,
I need scarcely add.
My firm conviction is that, independent of the
mental anguish it occasions-an anguish so
acute and so tremendous, that all imagination
of it must fall far short of the reality-it wears
the mind into a morbid state, which renders it
unfit for the rough contact and busy action of
By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that the world. It is my fixed opinion that those
hateful corner swell until they beset him at all who have undergone this punishment MUST pass
times, invade his rest, make his dreams hide-into society again morally unhealthy and dis-
ous, and his nights dreadful. At first, he took
a strange dislike to it; feeling as though it gave
birth in his brain to something of correspond-
ing shape which ought not to be there, and
racked his head with pains. Then he began to
fear it, then to dream of it, and of men whis-
pering its name and pointing to it. Then he
could not bear to look at it, nor yet to turn
his back upon it. Now it is every night the
lurking-place of a ghost; a shadow; a silent
something, horrible to see, but whether bird or
beast, or muffled human shape, he cannot tell.
eased. There are many instances on record of
men who are chosen or have been condemned
to lives of perfect solitude, but I scarcely re
member one, even among sages of strong and
vigorous intellect, where its effect has not be-
come apparent in some disordered train of
thought or some gloomy hallucination. What
monstrous phantoms, bred of despondency and
doubt, and born and reared in solitude, have
stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly,
and darkening the face of Heaven!
American Notes, Chap. 7:
When he is in his cell by day, he fears the
little yard without. When he is in the yard, he PRISONER-Before execution.
dreads to re-enter the cell. When night comes,
there stands the phantom in the corner. If he
have the courage to stand in its place, and drive
it out (he had once, being desperate), it broods
upon his bed. In the twilight, and always at
the same hour, a voice calls to him by name; as
the darkness thickens, his Loom begins to live;
and even that, his comfort, is a hideous figure,
watching him till daybreak.
Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies
depart from him one by one; returning_some-
times, unexpectedly, but at longer intervals, and
in less alarming shapes. He has talked upon
We entered the first cell. It was a stone dun-
geon, eight feet long by six wide, with a bench.
at the upper end, under which were a common
rug, a Bible, and prayer-book. An iron candle-
stick was fixed into the wall at the side; and a
small, high window in the back admitted as
much air and light 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 undefined hope of reprieve, he
knew not why-indulging in some wild and
PRISONER
378
visionary idea of escaping, he knew not how
hour after hour of the three preceding days al-
lowed 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, exhausted
the attendants with importunities, neglected in
his feverish restlessness the timely warnings of
his spiritual consoler; and, now that the illu-
sion is at last dispelled, now that eternity is
before him and guilt behind, now that his fears
of death amount almost 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, heed-
less alike of the fast-decreasing time before
him, and the urgent entreaties of the good man
at his side. The feeble light is wasting gradu-
ally, 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 ter-
ror 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 vividly 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? He
starts upon his feet. It cannot be two yet.
Hark! Two quarters have struck-the third
-the fourth. It is! Six hours left. Tell him
not of repentance! Six hours' repentance for
eight times six years of guilt and sin! He
buries his face in his hands, and throws himself
on the bench.
PRISONER
affection-and he does not 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 wit-
nesses, 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 him! Verdict, "Guilty." No matter; he
will escape.
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 coun-
try 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 pur-
suit now; he will stretch himself on that bank
and sleep till sunrise.
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. Con-
fused by his dreams, he starts from his uneasy
bed in momentary uncertainty. It is but mo-
mentary. 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.—Sketches, Chap. 25.
PRISONER—The old.
He was a sallow man-all cobblers are; and
had a strong bristly beard-all cobblers have.
His face was a queer, good-tempered, crooked-
featured piece of workmanship, ornamented
with a couple of eyes that must have worn a
very joyous expression at one time, for they
sparkled yet. The man was sixty, by years, and
Heaven knows how old by imprisonment, so
that his having any look approaching to mirth
or contentment, was singular enough. He was
a little man, and being half doubled up as he
lay in bed, looked about as long as he ought to
have been without his legs. He had a great red
pipe in his mouth, and was smoking, and staring
at the rushlight, in a state of enviable placidity.
"Have you been here long?" inquired Sam,
breaking the silence which had lasted for some
time.
"Twelve year,” replied the cobbler, biting the
end of his pipe as he spoke.
Contempt?" inquired Sam.
The cobbler nodded.
Worn with watching and excitement, he
sleeps, and the same unsettled state of mind
pursues him in his dreams. An insupportable "Well, then," said Sam, with some sternness,
load is taken from his breast; he is walking "wot do you persevere in bein' obstinit for,
with his wife in a pleasant field, with the bright vastin' your precious life away, in this here mag-
sky above them, and a fresh and boundless pros-nified pound? Wy don't you give in, and tell
pect on every side-how different from the stone the Chancellorship that you're wery sorry for
walls of Newgate! She is looking-not as she makin' his court contemptible, and you won't
did when he saw her for the last time in that do so no more?"
dreadful place, but as she used when he loved The cobbler put his pipe in the corner of his
her-long, long ago, before misery and ill-treat-mouth, while he smiled, and then brought it back
ment had altered her looks, and vice had changed to its old place again; but said nothing.
his nature-and she is leaning upon his arm, and "Wy don't you?" said Sam, urging his ques-
looking up into his face with tenderness and | tion strenuously.
PRISONER
"Ah," said the cobbler, "you don't quite un-
derstand these matters. What do you suppose
ruined me, now?"
'Wy," said Sam, trimming the rush-light, "I
s'pose the beginnin' wos, that you got into debt,
eh?"
"Never owed a farden," said the cobbler;
"try again."
"
879
Well, perhaps," said Sam, "you bought
houses, wich is delicate English for goin' mad;
or took to buildin', wich is a medical term for
bein' incurable.”
The cobbler shook his head and said, "Try
again."
"You didn't go to law, I hope ?" said Sam,
suspiciously.
Never in my life," replied the cobbler.
"The fact is, I was ruined by having money
left me."
"Come, come," said Sam, "that von't do.
wish some rich enemy 'ud try to vork my
struction in that 'ere vay. I'd let him."
Pickwick, Chap. 44.
PRISONER-The dead.
PRISONER
turn, if once let loose, on any other terms. Mr.
Brass, struck with the humor of this jest, and
carrying out its spirit to the utmost, sought from
his wide connection a pair of friends whose
joint possessions fell some halfpence short of
fifteen pence, and proffered them as bail-for
that was the merry word agreed upon on both
sides. These gentlemen being rejected after
twenty-four hours' pleasantry, Mr. Brass con-
sented to remain, and did remain until a club of
choice spirits called a Grand Jury (who were in
the joke) summoned him to a trial before twelve
other wags for perjury and fraud, who in their
turn found him guilty with a most facetious joy
nay, the very populace entered into the whim,
and when Mr. Brass was moving in a hackney-
coach towards the building where these wags
assembled, saluted him with rotten eggs and
carcases of kittens, and feigned to wish to tear
him into shreds, which greatly increased the com-
de-icality of the thing, and made him relish it the
more, no doubt.
I
All was noise and tumult-save in a little
miserable shed a few yards off, where lay, all
quiet and ghastly, the body of the Chancery
prisoner who had died the night before, await-
ing the mockery of an inquest. The body!
It is the lawyer's term for the restless, whirling
mass of cares and anxieties, affections, hopes,
and griefs, that make up the living man. The
law had his body; and there it lay, clothed in
grave-clothes, an awful witness to its tender
mercy.-Pickwick, Chap. 45.
PRISONER-The friendless.
Friends!" interposed the man, in a voice
which rattled in his throat. If I lay dead at
the bottom of the deepest mine in the world;
tight screwed down and soldered in my coffin;
rotting in the dark and filthy ditch that drags
its slime along, beneath the foundations of this
prison; I could not be more forgotten or un-
ĥeeded than I am here. I am a dead man;
dead to society, without the pity they bestow
on those whose souls have passed to judgment.
Friends to see me! My God! I have sunk
from the prime of life into old age, in this place,
and there is not one to raise his hand above
my bed, when I lie dead upon it, and say,
'It is a blessing he is gone !'"
Pickwick, Chap. 42.
PRISONER-Conviction of Sampson Brass.
Mr. Sampson, then, being detained as already
has been shown, by the justice upcu whom he
called, and being so strongly pressed to protract
his stay that he could by no means refuse, re-
mained under his protection for a considerable
time, during which the great attention of his en-
tertainer kept him so extremely close, that he was
quite lost to society, and never even went abroad
for exercise saving into a small paved yard. So
well, indeed, was his modest and retiring
temper understood by those with whom he had
to deal, and so jealous were they of his absence,
that they required a kind of friendly bond to be
entered into by two substantial housekeepers, in
the sum of fifteen hundred pounds a-piece, before
they would suffer him to quit their hospitable
roof--doubting, it appeared, that he would re-
*
* * the upshot was, that, instead of
being desired to travel for a time in foreign parts
he was permitted to grace the mother country
under certain insignificant restrictions.
These were, that he should, for a term of
years, reside in a spacious mansion where sev
eral other gentlemen were lodged and boarded
at the public charge, who went clad in a sober
uniform of grey turned up with yellow, had
their hair cut extremely short, and chiefly lived
on gruel and light soup. It was also required
of him that he should partake of their exercise
of constantly ascending an endless flight of
stairs; and, lest his legs, unused to such exer-
tion, should be weakened by it, that he should
wear upon one ankle an amulet or charm of
iron. These conditions being arranged, he was
removed one evening to his new abode, and en-
joyed, in common with nine other gentlemen
and two ladies, the privilege of being taken
to his place of retirement in one of Royalty's
own carriages.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 73.
PRISONER-For debt (Sam Weller's story).
"It strikes me, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick,
leaning over the iron rail at the stair-head," It
strikes me, Sam, that imprisonment for debt is
scarcely any punishment at all."
"Think not, sir?" inquired Mr. Weller.
"You see how these fellows drink, and smoke,
and roar,” replied Mr. Pickwick.
"It's quite
impossible that they can mind it much."
Ah, that's just the wery thing, sir," rejoined
Sam, "they don't mind it; it's a regular holiday
to them-all porter and skittles. It's the t'other
vuns as gets done over, vith this sort o' thing:
them down-hearted fellers as can't svig avay at
the beer, nor play at skittles neither; them as
vould pay if they could, and gets low by being
boxed up. I'll tell you wot it is, sir; them as
is always a idlin' in public houses it don't dam-
age at all, and them as is alvays a workin' wen
they can, it damages too much. 'It's unekal,'
as my father used to say when his grog worn't
made half-and-half: 'It's unekal, and that's the
fault on it."
"I think you're right, Sam," said Mr. Pick-
wick, after a few moments' reflection, “quite
right."
P'raps, now and then, there's some honest
people as likes it," observed Mr. Weller, in a
PRISONER
ruminative tone, "but I never heerd o' one as I
can call to mind, 'cept the little dirty-faced
man in the brown coat: and that was force of
habit."
(<
'And who was he?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
Wy, that's just the wery point as nobody
never know'd," replied Sam.
"But what did he do?"
Wy, he did wot many men as has been much
better know'd has done in their time, sir," re-
plied Sam, "he run a match agin the constable,
and vun it."
380
PROFESSIONAL ENTHUSIASM
never even so much as peeped out o' the lodge-
gate."
'At the expiration of that time he died, I sup-
pose," said Mr. Pickwick.
"No he didn't, sir," replied Sam.
"He got a
curiosity to go and taste the beer at a new public-
house over the way, and it wos such a wery nice
parlor, that he took it into his head to go there
every night, wich he did for a long time, always
comin' back reg'lar about a quarter of an hour
afore the gate shut, wich wos all wery snug and
comfortable. At last he began to get so precious
"In other words, I suppose," said Mr. Pick-jolly, that he used to forget how the time vent,
wick, "he got into debt."
.
or care nothin' at all about it, and he vent or
gettin' later and later, till vun night his old
friend wos just a shuttin' the gate-had turned
the key in fact-wen he come up. ‘Hold hard,
Bill,' he says. Wot, ain't you come home yet,
Tventy?' says the turnkey, 'I thought you wos
in, long ago.' 'No I wasn't,' says the little man,
vith a smile. 'Well then, I'll tell you wot it is,
my friend,' says the turnkey, openin' the gate
very slow and sulky, 'it's my 'pinion as you've
got into bad company o' late, which I'm wery
sorry to see. Now, I don't wish to do nothing
harsh,' he says, 'but if you can't confine your-
self to steady circles, and find your vay back at
reglar hours, as sure as you're a standin' there,
I'll shut you out altogether!' The little man
was seized with a wiolent fit o' tremblin', and
never vent outside the prison walls artervards!”
Pickwick, Chap. 41.
PROFANITY.
PROFANITY-Of Old Lobbs.
'Just that, sir," replied Sam, "and in course
o' time he come here in consekens. It warn't
much—execution for nine pound nothin', multi-
plied by five for costs; but hows'ever here he
stopped for seventeen year. If he got any wrin-
kles in his face, they was stopped up vith the
dirt, for both the dirty face and the brown coat |
wos just the same at the end o' that time as they
wos at the beginnin'. He wos a wery peaceful
inoffendin' little creetur, and wos alvays a
bustlin' about for somebody, or playin' rackets
and never vinnin'; till at last the turnkeys they
got quite fond on him, and he wos in the lodge
ev'ry night, a chattering vith 'em, and tellin'
stories, and all that 'ere. Vun night he wos in
there as usual, along vith a wery old friend of
his, as wos on the lock, ven he says all of a sud-
den, 'I ain't seen the market outside, Bill,' he
says (Fleet Market wos there at that time)-
'I ain't seen the market outside, Bill,' he says,
'for seventeen year.' 'I know you ain't,' says A variety of expletive adjectives let loose up-
the turnkey, smoking his pipe. I should like on society without any substantive to accom-
to see it for a minit, Bill,' he says. 'Wery pro-pany them.-Pickwick, Chap. 42.
bable,' says the turnkey, smoking his pipe wery
fierce, and making believe he warn't up to what
the little man wanted. 'Bill,' says the little man
more abrupt than afore, 'I've got the fancy in
my head. Let me see the public streets once
more afore I die; and if I ain't struck with
apoplexy, I'll be back in five minits by the clock.'
'And wot 'ud become o' me if you was struck
with apoplexy?' said the turnkey. 'Wy,' says
the little creetur, 'whoever found me 'ud bring
me home, for I have got my card in my pocket,
Bill,' he says, 'No. 20, Coffee-room Flight;' and
that was true, sure enough, for wen he wanted
to make the acquaintance of any new-comer, he
used to pull out a little limp card vith them
words on it and nothin' else: in consideration
of vich, he wos alvays called Number Tventy.
The turnkey takes a fixed look at him, and at
last he says in a solemn manner, 'Tventy,' he
says, 'I'll trust you; you won't get your old
friend into trouble.' No, my boy; I hope I've
somethin' better behind here,' says the little man,
and as he said it he hit his little veskit wery hard,
and then a tear started out o' each eye, which
wos wery extraordinary, for it wos supposed as
water never touched his face. He shook the
turnkey by the hand; out he vent
66
"
And never came back again," said Mr. Pick-
wick.
"
Wrong for vunce, sir," replied Mr. Weller,
"for back he come, two minits afore the time, a
bilin' with rage; sayin' how he'd been nearly
run over by a hackney-coach; that he warn't
used to it and he was blowed if he wouldn't
write to the Lord Mayor. They got him pacifi-
ed at last; and for five years arter that, he
Now it did unfortunately happen, that old
Lobbs, being very hungry, was monstrous cross.
Nathaniel Pipkin could hear him growling away
like an old mastiff with a sore throat; and when-
ever the unfortunate apprentice with the thin
legs came into the room, so surely did old Lobbs
commence swearing at him in a most Saracenic
and ferocious manner, though apparently with no
other end or object than that of easing his bosom
by the discharge of a few superfluous oaths."
Pickwick, Chap. 17.
PROFESSIONAL ENTHUSIASM.
"It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's," said
Mrs. Badger, "speaking in his figurative naval
manner, that when you make pitch hot, you can-
not make it too hot; and that if you only have
to swab a plank, you should swab it as if Davy
Jones were after you. It appears to me that this
maxim is applicable to the medical, as well as to
the nautical profession."
"To all professions," observed Mr. Badger,
"it was admirably said by Captain Swosser.
Beautifully said."
"People objected to Professor Dingo, when
we were staying in the North of Devon, after
our marriage," said Mrs. Badger, "that he dis-
figured some of the houses and other buildings,
by chipping off fragments of those edifices with
his little geological hammer. But the Professor
replied that he knew of no building, save the
Temple of Science. The principle is the same,
I think "
"
Precisely the
same," said Mr. Badger
1
PROOFS
881
PUGILIST
64
bury.
Finely expressed! The Professor made the "I beg your pardon," interposed Nicholas,
same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last ill-doubtful whether he had heard aright.
ness; when (his mind wandering) he insisted on '—To be crammed, sir," repeated Mr. Gregs-
keeping his little hammer under the pillow, and
chipping at the countenances of the attendants.
The ruling passion!"—Bleak House, Chap. 17.
PROOFS-Smeared.
"
what
May I beg your pardon again, if I inquire
you mean, sir?" said Nicholas.
all accounts of public meetings, all leading arti-
cles, and accounts of the proceedings of public
bodies; and to make notes of anything which it
appeared to him might be made a point of, in
any little speech upon the question of some pe-
tition lying on the table, or anything of that
kind. Do you understand?"
"I think I do, sir,” replied Nicholas.
My meaning, sir, is perfectly plain," re-
plied Mr. Gregsbury, with a solemn aspect.
He smeared himself and he smeared the " My secretary would have to make himself
Proofs, the night through, to that degree that master of the foreign policy of the world, as it is
when Sol gave him warning to depart (in a four-mirrored in the newspapers; to run his eye over
wheeler), few could have said which was them,
and which was him, and which was blots. His
last instructions was, that I should instantly run
and take his corrections to the office of the
present Journal. I did so. They most likely
will not appear in print, for I noticed a message
being brought round from Beauford Printing
House, while I was a throwing this concluding
statement on paper, that the ole resources of
that establishment was unable to make out
what they meant.—Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 3.
PROSPERITY-The effect of (Mark Tapley).
There's a surprisin' number of men, sir, who,
as long as they've only got their own shoes and
stockings to depend upon, will walk down-hill,
along the gutters, quiet enough, and by them-
selves, and not do much harm. But set any on
'em up with a coach and horses, sir; and it's
wonderful what a knowledge of drivin' he'll
show, and how he'll fill his vehicle with passen-
gers, and start off in the middle of the road,
neck or nothing, to the Devil!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 52.
PROVERB-A flowing-bearded and patri-
archal.
"
Stop!" cried Mr. Tigg, holding out his
hand. "Hold! There is a most remarkably
long-headed, flowing-bearded, and patriarchal
proverb, which observes that it is the duty of a
man to be just before he is generous. Be just
now, and you can be generous presently. Do
not confuse me with the man Slyme. Do not
distinguish the man Slyme as a friend of mine,
for he is no such thing. I have been compelled,
sir, to abandon the party whom you call Slyme.
I have no knowledge of the party whom you
call Slyme. I am, sir," said Mr. Tigg, striking
himself upon the breast, a premium tulip, of a
very different growth and cultivation from the
cabbage Slyme, sir.”
"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13.
PUBLIC MAN-His self-importance.
For a gentleman who was rejoiced to see a
body of visitors, Mr. Gregsbury looked as un-
comfortable as might be; but perhaps this was
occasioned by senatorial gravity, and a states-
manlike habit of keeping his feelings under con-
trol. He was a tough, burly, thick-headed gen-
tleman, with a loud voice, a pompous manner, a
tolerable command of sentences with no mean-
ing in them, and, in short, every requisite for a
very good member indeed.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 16.
PUBLIC MAN-The duties of his secretary.
There are other duties, Mr. Nickleby, which
a secretary to a parliamentary gentleman must
never lose sight of. I should require to be
crammed, sir.
"
Then," said Mr. Gregsbury, "it would be
necessary for him to make himself acquainted,
from day to day, with newspaper paragraphs on
passing events; such as 'Mysterious disappear-
ance, and supposed suicide of a pot-boy,' or any-
thing of that sort, upon which I might found a
question to the Secretary of State for the Home
Department. Then, he would have to copy the
question, and as much as I remembered of the
answer (including a little compliment about in-
dependence and good sense); and to send the
manuscript in a frank to the local paper, with
perhaps half a dozen lines of leader to the effect,
that I was always to be found in my place in
Parliament, and never shrunk from the respon-
sible and arduous duties, and so forth. You see."
Nicholas bowed.
"Besides which," continued Mr. Gregsbury,
"I should expect him, now and then, to go
through a few figures in the printed tables, and
to pick out a few results, so that I might come
out pretty well on timber duty questions, and
finance questions, and so on; and I should like
him to get up a few little arguments about the
disastrous effects of a return to cash payments
and a metallic currency, with a touch now and
then about the exportation of bullion, and the
Emperor of Russia, and bank notes, and all that
kind of thing, which it's only necessary to talk
fluently about, because nobody understands it.
Do you take me?"-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 16
PUDDING-A successful.
I am a neat hand at cookery, and I'll tell you
what I knocked up for my Christmas-eve dinner
in the Library Cart. I knocked up a beefsteak
pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oys-
ters, and a couple of mushrooms, thrown in.
It's a pudding to put a man in good-humor with
everything, except the two bottom buttons of his
waistcoat.-Dr. Marigold.
PUGILIST-" Chicken," the.
With that, Mr. Toots, repairing to the shop-
door, sent a peculiar whistle into the night, which
produced a stoical gentleman in a shaggy white
great-coat and a flat-brimmed hat, with very
short hair, a broken nose, and a considerable
tract of bare and sterile country behind each ear.
"Sit down, Chicken," said Mr. Toots.
The compliant Chicken spat out some small
pieces of straw on which he was regaling him-
self, and took in a fresh supply from a reserve
he carried in his hand.
PUNCH
“There ain't no drain of nothing short handy,
is there?" said the Chicken, generally. "This
here sluicing night is hard lines to a man as lives
on his condition!"
Captain Cuttle proffered a glass of rum, which
the Chicken, throwing back his head, emptied
into himself, as into a cask, after proposing the
brief sentiment, "Towards us!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
382
This gentleman awakened in Miss Nipper
some considerable astonishment; for, having
been defeated by the Larkey Boy, his visage
was in a state of such great dilapidation, as to
be hardly presentable in society with comfort
to the beholders. The Chicken himself attrib-
uted this punishment to his having had the
misfortune to get into Chancery early in the
proceedings, when he was severely fibbed by
the Larkey one, and heavily grassed. But it
appeared from the published records of that
great contest that the Larkey Boy had had it
all his own way from the beginning, and that
the Chicken had been tapped, and bunged, and
had received pepper, and had been made grog-
gy, and had come up piping, and had endured
a complication of similar strange inconven-
iences, until he had been gone into and finished.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 50.
PUNCH
Micawber, tasting it, “like time and tide, waits
for no man. Ah! it is at the present moment
in high flavor.”—David Copperfield, Chap. 28.
PUNCH-Bob Sawyer's.
They sat down to dinner; the beer being
served up, as Mr. Sawyer remarked, " in its native
pewter.
"
After dinner, Mr. Bob Sawyer ordered in the
largest mortar in the shop, and proceeded to
brew a reeking jorum of rum-punch therein;
stirring up and amalgamating the materials
with a pestle in a very creditable and apothe-
cary-like manner. Mr. Sawyer, being a bach-
elor, had only one tumbler in the house, which
was assigned to Mr. Winkle as a compliment
to the visitor; Mr. Ben Allen being accommo-
dated with a funnel with a cork in the narrow
end; and Bob Sawyer contented himself with
one of those wide-lipped crystal vessels in-
scribed with a variety of cabalistic characters,
in which chemists are wont to measure out
their liquid drugs in compounding prescrip-
tions. These preliminaries adjusted, the punch
was tasted, and pronounced excellent; and it
having been arranged that Bob Sawyer and
Ben Allen should be considered at liberty to
fill twice to Mr. Winkle's once, they started
fair, with great satisfaction and good-fellowship.
Pickwick, Chap. 38.
PUNCH-And its results.
"Well, that certainly is most capital cold
punch." said Mr. Pickwick, looking earnestly at
the stone bottle; "and the day is extremely
warm, and-Tupman, my dear friend, a glass of
Mr. Toots informs the Chicken, behind his
hand, that the middle gentleman, he in the
fawn-colored pantaloons, is the father of his
love. The Chicken hoarsely whispers Mr.
Toots that he's as stiff a cove as ever he see,
but that it is within the resources of science to
double him up, with one blow in the waist-punch?"
coat.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 31.
Not being able quite to make up his mind
about it, he consulted the Chicken-without
taking that gentleman into his confidence;
merely informing him that a friend in York-
shire had written to him (Mr. Toots) for his opin-
ion on such a question. The Chicken replying
that his opinion always was, "Go in and win,'
and further, "When your man's before you and
your work cut out, go in and do it."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
PUNCH-Mr. Micawber's.
To divert his thoughts from this melancholy
subject, I informed Mr. Micawber that I
relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led
him to the lemons. His recent despondency,
not to say despair, was gone in a moment. I
never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself
amid the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar,
the odor of burning rum, and the steam of
boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that after-
noon. It was wonderful to see his face shin-
ing at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate
fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and
looked as if he were making, instead of punch,
a fortune for his family down to the latest pos-
terity. As to Mrs. Micawber, I don't know
whether it was the effect of the cap, or the
lavender-water, or the pins, or the fire, or the
wax-candles, but she came out of my room,
comparatively speaking, lovely. And the lark
was never gayer than that excellent woman.
*
*
*
*
Punch, my dear Copperfield," said Mr.
"With the greatest delight,” replied Mr. Tup-
man; and having drank that glass, Mr. Pick-
wick took another, just to see whether there
was any orange peel in the punch, because
orange peel always disagreed with him; and find-
ing that there was not, Mr. Pickwick took
another glass to the health of their absent friend,
and then felt himself imperatively called on to
propose another in honor of the punch-com-
pounder, unknown.
This constant succession of glasses produced
considerable effect upon Mr. Pickwick; his coun-
tenance beamed with the most sunny smiles,
laughter played around his lips, and good-hu-
mored merriment twinkled in his eye. Yield-
ing by degrees to the influence of the exciting
liquid, rendered more so by the heat, Mr. Pick-
wick expressed a strong desire to recollect a
song which he had heard in his infancy, and
the attempt proving abortive, sought to stimu-
late his memory with more glasses of punch,
which appeared to have quite a contrary effect;
for, from forgetting the words of the song, he
began to forget how to articulate any words at
all; and finally, after rising to his legs to address
the company in an eloquent speech, he fell into
the barrow and fast asleep, simultaneously.
Pickwick, Chap. 19.
PUNCH-Feeling, the groundwork of.
'Why, you smell rather comfortable here!
said Wegg, seeming to take it ill, and stopping
and sniffing as he entered.
"I am rather comfortable, sir!" said Venus.
"You don't use lemon in your business, do
you?" asked Wegg, sniffing again.
PURSE
383
"No, Mr. Wegg," said Venus. "When I use
it at all, I mostly use it in cobblers' punch."
"What do you call cobblers' punch?" de-
manded Wegg, in a worse humor than before.
"It's difficult to impart the receipt for it,
sir," returned Venus, "because, however par-
ticular you may be in allotting your materials,
so much will still depend upon the individual
gifts, and there being a feeling thrown into it.
But the groundwork is gin."
"In a Dutch bottle?" said Wegg, gloomily,
as he sat himself down.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 14.
PURSE-An empty.
Joe bought a roll, and reduced his purse to
the condition (with a difference) of that cele-
brated purse of Fortunatus, which, whatever
were its favored owner's necessities, had one
unvarying amount in it. In these real times,
when all the Fairies are dead and buried, there
are still a great many purses which possess that
quality. The sum-total they contain is expressed
in arithmetic by a circle, and whether it be
added to or multiplied by its own amount, the
result of the problem is more easily stated than
any known in figures.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 31.
Q
QUILP-A post-mortem examination of.
They think you're-you're drowned," re-
plied the boy, who in his malicious nature had
a strong infusion of his master. "You was last
seen on the brink of the wharf, and they think
you tumbled over. Ha ha!"
QUILP
ity of his position, Mr. Brass pushed his tum
bler as he spoke towards Mrs. Jiniwin for the
purpose of being replenished; and turned to-
wards the attendant mariners.
"The search has been quite unsuccessful
then?"
Quite, master. But I should say that if he
turns up anywhere, he'll come ashore some-
where about Grinidge to-morrow, at ebb tide,
eh, mate?
The other gentleman assented, observing that
he was expected at the Hospital, and that sev
eral pensioners would be ready to receive him
whenever he arrived.
"Then we have nothing for it but resigna
tion," said Mr. Brass; "nothing but resigna,
tion, and expectation. It would be a comfort
to have his body; it would be a dreary com-
fort."
66
Oh, beyond a doubt," assented Mrs. Jini-
win, hastily; "if we once had that, we should
be quite sure."
"With regard to the descriptive advertise-
ment," said Sampson Brass, taking up his pen.
"It is a melancholy pleasure to recall his traits.
Respecting his legs now-?"
Crooked, certainly," said Mrs. Jiniwin.
"Do you think they were crooked?" said
Brass, in an insinuating tone.
I think I see
them now coming up the street very wide apart,
in nankeen pantaloons a little shrunk and with-
out straps. Ah! what a vale of tears we live
in. Do we say crooked?"
"I think they were a little so,” observed Mrs.
Quilp with a sob.
Legs crooked," said Brass, writing as he
spoke. "Large head, short body, legs crook.
ed-"
Very crooked," suggested Mrs. Jiniwin.
"We'll not say very crooked, ma'am,” said
Brass, piously. "Let us not bear hard upon the
weaknesses of the deceased. He is gone, ma'am,
to where his legs will never come in question.
We will content ourselves with crooked, Mrs.
Jiniwin."
"I thought you wanted the truth," said the
old lady.
"That's all."
The prospect of playing the spy under such
delicious circumstances, and of disappointing
them all by walking in alive, gave more delight
to Quilp than the greatest stroke of good for-
tune could possibly have inspired him with. He
was no less tickled than his hopeful assistant,
and they both stood for some seconds, grinning
and gasping and wagging their heads at each
other, on either side of the post, like an un-punch!"
matchable pair of Chinese idols.
*
*
*
*
*
"Ah!" said Mr. Brass, breaking the silence,
and raising his eyes to the ceiling with a sigh,
"Who knows but he may be looking down upon
us now! Who knows but he may be surveying
of us from-from somewheres or another, and
contemplating us with a watchful eye! Oh
Lor!"
Here Mr. Brass stopped to drink half his
punch, and then resumed; looking at the other
half, as he spoke, with a dejected smile.
I can almost fancy," said the lawyer, shak-
ing his head, "that I see his eye glistening
down at the very bottom of my liquor. When
shall we look upon his like again? Never,
never! One minute we are here"-holding
his tumbler before his eyes-"the next we are
there"-gulping down its contents, and strik-
ing himself emphatically a little below the chest
"in the tomb. To think that I should be
drinking his very rum! It seems like a dream."
With the view, no doubt, of testing the real-
"Bless your eyes, how I love you," muttered
Quilp. "There she goes again. Nothing but
"This is an occupation," said the lawyer, lay-
ing down his pen and emptying his glass,
"which seems to bring him before my eyes like
the Ghost of Hamlet's father, in the very clothes
that he wore on work-a-days. His coat, his
waistcoat, his shoes and stockings, his trousers,
his hat, his wit and humor, his pathos and his
umbrella, all come before me like visions of my
youth. His linen!" said Mr. Brass, smiling
fondly at the wall, "his linen, which was always
of a particular color, for such was his whim
and fancy-how plain I see his linen now!"
"You had better go on, sir," said Mrs. Jini-
win impatiently.
"True, ma'am, true," cried Mr. Brass.
"Our
faculties must not freeze with grief. I'll trou-
ble you for a little more of that, ma'am. A
question now arises, with relation to his nose."
Flat," said Mrs. Jiniwin.
แ
""
Aquiline!" cried Quilp, thrusting in his
head, and striking the feature with his fist.
Aquiline, you hag. Do you see it? Do you
call this flat? Do you? Eh?"
QUILP
884
"Oh capital, capital!" shouted Brass, from
the mere force of habit. "Excellent! How
very good he is! He's a most remarkable man
-so extremely whimsical! Such an amazing
power of taking people by surprise!"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 49.
QUILP-At home.
"Mrs. Quilp!"
"Yes, Quilp."
"Am I nice to look at? Should I be the
handsomest creature in the world if I had but
whiskers? Am I quite a lady's man as it is?—
am I, Mrs. Quilp?
RACES
trampers on the road, wending their way to
wards it, and straggling out from every by-way
and cross-country lane, they gradually fell into
a stream of people, some walking by the side of
covered carts, others with horses, others with
donkeys, others toiling on with heavy loads.
upon their backs, but all tending to the same
point. The public-houses by the wayside, from
being empty and noiseless as those in the re-
moter parts had been, now sent out boisterous
shouts and clouds of smoke; and, from the
misty windows, clusters of broad red faces
looked down upon the road. On every piece of
waste or common ground, some small gambler
Mrs. Quilp dutifully replied, "Yes, Quilp;" drove his noisy trade, and bellowed to the idle
and fascinated by his gaze, remained looking passers-by to stop and try their chance; the
timidly at him, while he treated her with a suc- crowd grew thicker and more noisy; gilt gin-
cession of such horrible grimaces as none but gerbread in blanket-stalls exposed its glories to
himself and nightmares had the power of assum- the dust; and often a four-horse carriage, dash-
ing. During the whole of this performance, ing by, obscured all objects in the gritty cloud
which was somewhat of the longest, he preserved it raised, and left them, stunned and blinded,
a dead silence, except when, by an unexpected
skip or leap, he made his wife start backward
with an irrepressible shriek. Then he chuckled.
Mrs. Quilp," he said at last.
44
Yes, Quilp," she meekly replied.
Instead of pursuing the theme he had in his
mind, Quilp arose, folded his arms again, and
looked at her more sternly than before, while
she averted her eyes and kept them on the
ground.
"Mrs. Quilp."
44
Yes, Quilp."
"If ever you listen to these beldames again,
I'll bite you."-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 4.
QUILP-His domestic system.
far behind.
It was dark before they reached the town it-
self, and long indeed the few last miles had
been. Here all was tumult and confusion; the
streets were filled with throngs of people-many
strangers were there, it seemed, by the looks
they cast about-the church-bells rang out their
noisy peals, and flags streamed from windows
and house-tops. In the large inn-yards waiters
flitted to and fro and ran against each other,
horses clattered on the uneven stones, carriage-
steps fell rattling down, and sickening smells
from many dinners came in a heavy, lukewarm
breath upon the sense. In the smaller public-
houses, fiddles with all their might and main
were squeaking out the tune to staggering feet;
drunken men, oblivious of the burden of their
song, joined in a senseless howl, which drowned
the tinkling of the feeble bell, and made them
savage for their drink; vagabond groups assem-
bled round the doors to see the stroller woman
dance, and add their uproar to the shrill flageo-
let and deafening drum.
*
*
*
*
*
"How are you now, my dear old darling?"
Slight and ridiculous as the incident was, it
made him appear such a little fiend, and withal
such a keen and knowing one, that the old
woman felt too much afraid of him to utter a
single word, and suffered herself to be led with
extraordinary politeness to the breakfast table.
Here he by no means diminished the impression
he had just produced, for he ate hard eggs, shell
As the morning wore on, the tents assumed a
and all, devoured gigantic prawns with the heads gayer and more brilliant appearance, and long
and tails on, chewed tobacco and water-cresses lines of carriages came rolling softly on the turf.
at the same time and with extraordinary greedi- Men who had lounged about all night in smock-
ness, drank boiling tea without winking, bit his frocks and leather leggings, came out in silken
fork and spoon till they hent again, and, in vests and hats and plumes, as jugglers or mounte-
short, performed so many horrifying and uncom-banks; or in gorgeous liveries, as soft-spoken
mon acts that the women were nearly frightened
Dut of their wits and began to doubt if he were
really a human creature. At last, having gone
through these proceedings, and many others
which were equally a part of his system, Mr.
Quilp left them, reduced to a very obedient and
humbled state, and betook himself to the river-
side, where he took boat for the wharf on which
he had bestowed his name.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 4.
R
RACES-Going to the.
Meanwhile, they were drawing near the town
where the races were to begin next day; for,
from passing numerous groups of gipsies and
servants at gambling booths; or in sturdy yeo-
man dress, as decoys at unlawful games. Black-
eyed gipsy girls, hooded in showy handkerchiefs,
sallied forth to tell fortunes, and pale slender
women with consumptive faces lingered upon
the footsteps of ventriloquists and conjurors, and
counted the sixpences with anxious eyes long
before they were gained. As many of the chil-
dren as could be kept within bounds, were
stowed away, with all the other signs of dirt and
poverty, among the donkeys, carts, and horses
and as many as could not thus be disposed of
ran in and out in all intricate spots, crept be-
tween people's legs and carriage-wheels, and
came forth unharmed from under horses' hoofs.
The dancing-dogs, the stilts, the little lady and
the tall man, and all the other attractions, with
organs out of number and bands innumerable,
emerged from the holes and corners in which
they had passed the night, and flourished boldly
in the sun.—Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 19.
1
RACE-COURSE
RACE-COURSE—The scenes upon a.
The little race-course at Hampton was in the
full tide and height of its gaiety; the day as
dazzling as day could be; the sun high in the
cloudless sky, and shining in its fullest splendor.
Every gaudy color that fluttered in the air from
carriage-seat and garish tent-top, shone out in its
gaudiest hues. Old dingy flags grew new again,
faded gilding was re-burnished, stained rotten
canvas looked a snowy white, the very beggars'
rags were freshened up, and sentiment quite for-
got its charity in its fervent admiration of poverty
so picturesque.
385
RACE-COURSE
them, and many more, the general attention of
the company. Drinking-tents were full, glasses
began to clink in carriages, hampers to be un-
packed, tempting provisions to be set forth,
knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to
fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before,
and pickpockets to count their gains during the
last heat. The attention so recently strained on
one object of interest, was now divided among
a hundred; and, look where you would, there
was a motley assemblage of feasting, laughing,
talking, begging, gambling, and mummery.
Of the gambling-booths there was a plentiful
show, flourishing in all the splendor of carpeted
ground, striped hangings, crimson cloth, pin-
nacled roofs, geranium pots, and livery servants.
There were the Stranger's club-house, the Athe-
Saint James's club-house, half-a-mile of club-
houses, to play in; and there were rouge-et-noir,
French hazard, and other games, to play at. It
is into one of these booths that our story takes
its way.
It was one of those scenes of life and anima-
tion, caught in its very brightest and freshest
moments, which can scarcely fail to please; for,
if the eye be tired of show and glare, or the ear
be weary with the ceaseless round of noise, thenæum club-house, the Hampton club-house, the
one may repose, turn almost where it will, on
eager, happy, and expectant faces, and the other
deaden all consciousness of more annoying sounds
in those of mirth and exhilaration. Even the
sunburnt faces of gypsy children, half naked
though they be, suggest a drop of comfort. It
is a pleasant thing to see that the sun has been
there; to know that the air and light are on them
every day; to feel that they are children, and
lead children's lives; that if their pillows be
damp, it is with the dews of Heaven, and not
with tears; that the limbs of their girls are free,
and that they are not crippled by distortions,
imposing an unnatural and horrible penance
upon their sex; that their lives are spent, from
day to day, at least among the waving trees, and
not in the midst of dreadful engines which make
young children old before they know what child-
hood is, and give them the exhaustion and in-
firmity of age, without, like age, the privilege to
die. God send that old nursery tales were true,
and that gypsies stole such children by the
score !
Fitted up with three tables for the purposes
of play, and crowded with players and lookers-
on, it was, although the largest place of the kind
upon the course, intensely hot, notwithstanding
that a portion of the canvas roof was rolled back
to admit more air, and there were two doors for
a free passage in and out. Excepting one or
two men who, each with a long roll of half-
crowns chequered with a few stray sovereigns,
in his left hand, staked their money at every
roll of the ball with a business-like sedateness
which showed that they were used to it, and had
been playing all day, and most probably all the
day before, there was no very distinctive charac-
ter about the players. They were chiefly young
men, apparently attracted by curiosity, or stak-
ing small sums as part of the amusement of the
day, with no very great interest in winning or
losing. There were two persons present, how-
ever, who, as peculiarly good specimens of a
class, deserve a passing notice.
Of these, one was a man of six or eight and
fifty, who sat on a chair near one of the entrances
of the booth, with his hands folded on the top
of his stick, and his chin appearing above them.
He was a tall, fat, long-bodied man, buttoned
up to the throat in a light green coat, which
made his body look still longer than it was. He
wore, besides drab breeches and gaiters, a white
neckerchief, and a broad-brimmed white hat.
Amid all the buzzing noise of the games, and
the perpetual passing in and out of people, he
seemed perfectly calm and abstracted, without
the smallest particle of excitement in his com-
position. He exhibited no indication of weari-
The great race of the day had just been run;
and the close lines of people, on either side of
the course, suddenly breaking up and pouring
into it, imparted a new liveliness to the scene,
which was again all busy movement. Some
hurried eagerly to catch a glimpse of the win-
ning horse; others darted to and fro, searching,
no less eagerly, for the carriages they had left in
quest of better stations. Here, a little knot
gathered round a pea-and-thimble table to watch
the plucking of some unhappy greenhorn; and
there, another proprietor, with his confederates
in various disguises-one man in spectacles, an-
other, with an eye-glass and a stylish hat; a third,
dressed as a farmer well-to-do in the world, with
his top-coat over his arm, and his flash notes in
a large leathern pocket-book; and all with heavy-
handled whips to represent most innocent coun-ness, nor, to a casual observer, of interest either.
try fellows, who had trotted there on horseback
-sought, by loud and noisy talk and pretended
play, to entrap some unwary customer; while the
gentlemen confederates (of more villanous aspect
still, in clean linen and good clothes) betrayed
their close interest in the concern by the anxious,
furtive glance they cast on all new-comers.
These would be hanging on the outskirts of a
wide circle of people assembled round some
itinerant juggler, opposed, in his turn, by a noisy
band of music, or the classic game of "Ring
the Bull," while ventriloquists holding dialogues
with wooden dolls, and fortune-telling women
smothering the cries of real babies, divided with
There he sat, quite still and collected. Some-
times, but very rarely, he nodded to some pass-
ing face, or beckoned to a waiter to obey a call
from one of the tables. The next instant he
subsided into his old state. He might have
been some profoundly deaf old gentleman, who
had come in to take a rest, or he might have
been patiently waiting for a friend, without the
least consciousness of anybody's presence, or he
might have been fixed in a trance, or under the
influence of opium. People turned round and
looked at him; he made no gesture, caught no-
body's eye, let them pass away, and others come
on and be succeeded by others, and took no
RACE-COURSE
886
notice. When he did move, it seemed wonder-
ful how he could have seen anything to occasion
it. And so, in truth, it was. But there was not
a face that passed in or out, which this man
failed to see; not a gesture at any one of the
three tables that was lost upon him; not a word,
spoken by the bankers, but reached his ear; not
a winner or loser he could not have marked.
And he was the proprietor of the place.
RAILROAD
nore from Paris-quite a new game, I brought
it over myself, I did indeed-gentlemen, the
ball's a-rolling!"-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 50.
RAGE-Its effervescence.
He darted swiftly from the room with every
particle of his hitherto-buttoned-up indignation
effervescing, from all parts of his countenance,
in a perspiration of passion.-Pickwick, Chap. 2.
RAGE-A mad-house style of manner.
"Pshaw," rejoined Ralph, forcing a smile.
"It is but manner."
The other presided over the rouge-et-noir
table. He was probably some ten years young-
er, and was a plump, paunchy, sturdy-looking Gad, Nickleby," said Mr. Mantalini, retreat
fellow, with his underlip a little pursed, from a ing towards his wife, "what a demneble fierce
habit of counting money inwardly, as he paid old evil genius you are? You're enough to
it, but with no decidedly bad expression in his frighten my life and soul out of her little de-
face, which was rather an honest and jolly one licious wits-flying all at once into such a blaz-
than otherwise. He wore no coat, the weathering, ravaging, raging passion as never was, dem-
being hot, and stood behind the table with a mit!
huge mound of crowns and half-crowns before
him, and a cash-box for notes. This game was
constantly playing. Perhaps twenty people
"It is a demd uncomfortable, private-mad-
would be staking at the same time. This man house sort of manner," said Mr. Mantalini, pick-
had to roll the ball, to watch the stakes asing up his cane.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 34.
they were laid down, to gather them off the
color which lost, to pay those who won,
to do it all with the utmost despatch, to roll
the ball again, and to keep this game perpet-
ually alive. He did it all with a rapidity abso-ject, whatever it may be, that he becomes exas-
lutely marvellous; never hesitating, never
making a mistake, never stopping, and never
ceasing to repeat such unconnected phrases as
the following, which, partly from habit, and
partly to have something appropriate and busi-
ness-like to say, he constantly poured out with
the same monotonous emphasis, and in nearly
the same order, all day long :
"
RAGE-Of Mr. Smallweed.
This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Small-
weed, who finds it so difficult to resume his ob-
perated, and secretly claws the air with an im-
potent vindictiveness expressive of an intense
desire to tear and rend the visage of Mr. George.
As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long
and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and
his eyes green and watery; and, over and above
this, as he continues, while he claws, to slide
down in his chair and to collapse into a shape-
even in the accustomed eyes of Judy, that that
young virgin pounces at him with something
more than the ardor of affection, and so shakes
him up, and pats and pokes him in divers parts
of his body, but particularly in that part which
the science of self-defence would call his wind,
that in his grievous distress he utters enforced
sounds like a pavior's rammer.
Bleak House, Chap. 26.
Rooge-a-nore from Paris! Gentlemen, | less bundle; he becomes such a ghastly spectacle,
make your game and back your own opinions
-any time while the ball rolls-rooge-a-nore
from Paris, gentlemen, it's a French game, gen-
tlemen, I brought it over myself, I did indeed!
Rooge-a-nore from Paris-black wins-black
-stop a minute, sir, and I'll pay you directly
-two there, half a pound there, three there
and one there-gentlemen, the ball's a-rolling
-any time, sir, while the ball rolls!-The beau-
ty of this game is, that you can double
your stakes or put down your money, gen- RAILROAD-Construction of the.
tlemen, any time while the ball rolls
black again-black wins-I never saw such
a thing I never did, in all my life, upon
my word I never did; if any gentleman had
been backing the black in the last five minutes
he must have won five and forty pound in four
rolls of the ball, he must indeed. Gentlemen,
we've port, sherry, cigars, and most excellent
champagne. Here, wai-ter, bring a bottle of
champagne, and let's have a dozen or fifteen
cigars here and let's be comfortable, gen-
tlemen-and bring some clean glasses-any
time while the ball rolls!I lost one hundred
and thirty-seven pound yesterday, gentlemen,
at one roll of the ball, I did indeed!-how do
you do, sir" (recognizing some knowing gen-
tleman without any halt or change of voice,
and giving a wink so slight that it seems an acci-
dent), "will you take a glass of sherry, sir?-
here, wai-ter! bring a clean glass, and hand
the sherry to this gentleman-and hand it
round, will you, waiter-this is the rooge-a-
nore from Paris, gentlemen-any time while
the ball rolls!-gentlemen, make your game
and back your own opinions-it's the rooge-a-
The first shock of a great earthquake had,
just at that period, rent the whole neighborhood
to its centre. Traces of its course were visible
on every side. Houses were knocked down;
streets broken through and stopped; deep pits
and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps
of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that
were undermined and shaking, propped by great
beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, over-
thrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at
the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, con-
fused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in
something that had accidentally become a pond.
Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere;
thoroughfares that were wholly impassable;
Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their
height; temporary wooden houses and en-
closures, in the most unlikely situations; car-
cases of ragged tenements, and fragments of un-
finished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding,
and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of
cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing.
There were a hundred thousand shapes and sub-
stances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out
of their places, upside down, burrowing in the
KAILROAD
earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the
water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot
springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants
upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of
confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed
and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence,
also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing
forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights
of way, and wholly changed the law and custom
of the neighborhood.
In short, the yet unfinished and unopened
Railroad was in progress; and, from the very
core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly
away, upon its mighty course of civilization and
improvement.
But as yet, the neighborhood was shy to own
the Railroad. One or two bold speculators had
projected streets; and one had built a little, but
had stopped among the mud and ashes to con-
sider farther of it. A bran-new Tavern, redolent
of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at
all, had taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but
that might be rash enterprise-and then it
hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the
Excavators' House of Call had sprung up from
a beer shop; and the old-established Ham and
Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating
House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through
interested motives of a similar immediate and
popular description. Lodging-house keepers
Lodging-house keepers
were favorable in like manner; and for the like
reasons were not to be trusted. The general
belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields,
and cow-houses, and dung-hills, and dust-heaps,
and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses,
and carpet-beating grounds at the very door of
the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster-shells in
the oyster season, and of lobster-shells in the
lobster season, and of broken crockery and
faded cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached
upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old
cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean
houses, and patches of wretched vegetation,
stared it out of countenance. Nothing was
the better for it, or thought of being so. If the
miserable waste ground lying near it could have
laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like
many of the miserable neighbors.
887
|
RAILROAD
of the Railroad opening, if ever it did open,
two of his boys should ascend the flues of his
dwelling, with instructions to hail the failure
with derisive jeers from the chimney-pots.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 6.
RAILROAD-A finished.
There was no such place as Staggs's Gardens.
It had vanished from the earth. Where the old
rotten summer-houses once had stood, palaces
now reared their heads, and granite columns of
gigantic girth opened a vista to the railway
world beyond. The miserable waste ground,
where the refuse-matter had been heaped of
yore, was swallowed up and gone; and in its
frowzy stead were tiers of warehouses, crammed
with_rich goods and costly merchandise. The
old bye-streets now swarmed with passengers
and vehicles of every kind; the new streets,
that had stopped disheartened in the mud and
wagon-ruts, formed towns within themselves,
originating wholesome comforts and conveni-
ences belonging to themselves, and never tried
nor thought of until they sprung into existence.
Bridges that had led to nothing, led to villas,
gardens, churches, healthy public walks. The
carcasses of houses, and beginnings of new
thoroughfares, had started off upon the line at
steam's own speed, and shot away into the coun-
try in a monster train.
As to the neighborhood which had hesitated
to acknowledge the railroad in its straggling
days, that had grown wise and penitent, as any
Christian might in such a case, and now boasted
of its powerful and prosperous relation. There
were railway patterns in its drapers' shops, and
railway journals in the windows of its newsmen.
There were railway hotels, coffee-houses, lodg
ing-houses, boarding-houses; railway plans,
maps, views, wrappers, bottles, sandwich-boxes,
and time-tables; railway hackney-coach and
cab-stands; railway omnibuses, railway streets
and buildings, railway hangers-on and para-
sites, and flatterers out of all calculation. There
was even railway time observed in clocks, as if
the sun itself had given in. Among the van-
quished was the master chimney-sweeper, whi-
lome incredulous at Staggs's Gardens, who now
lived in a stuccoed house three stories high, and
gave himself out, with golden flourishes upon a
varnished board, as contractor for the cleansing
of railway chimneys by machinery.
Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly incredu-
lous. It was a little row of houses, with little
squalid patches of ground before them, fenced
off with old doors, barrel staves, scraps of tar-
paulin, and dead bushes; with bottomless tin To and from the heart of this great change,
kettles and exhausted iron fenders thrust into all day and night, throbbing currents rushed
the gaps. Here, the Staggs's Gardeners trained and returned incessantly like its life's blood.
scarlet beans, kept fowls and rabbits, erected Crowds of people and mountains of goods, de-
rotten summer-houses (one was an old boat), parting and arriving scores upon scores of times
dried clothes, and smoked pipes. Some were of in every four-and-twenty hours, produced a fer-
opinion that Staggs's Gardens derived its name mentation in the place that was always in action.
from a deceased capitalist, one Mr. Staggs, who The very houses seemed disposed to pack up
had built it for his delectation. Others, who and take trips. Wonderful Members of Parlia-
had a natural taste for the country, held that ment, who, little more than twenty years before,
it dated from those rural times when the had made themselves merry with the wild rail-
antlered herd, under the familiar denomination road theories of engineers, and given them the
of Staggses, had resorted to its shady precincts. liveliest rubs in cross-examination, went down
Be this as it may, Staggs's Gardens was regard- into the north with their watches in their hands
ed by its population as a sacred grove, not to be and sent on messages before by the electric tel-
withered by railroads; and so confident were egraph, to say that they were coming. Night
they generally of its long outliving any such and day the conquering engines rumbled at their
ridiculous inventions, that the master chimney-distant work, or, advancing smoothly to their
sweeper at the corner, who was understood to journey's end, and gliding like tame dragons
take the lead in the local politics of the Gar-into the allotted corners grooved out to the
dens, had publicly declared that on the occasion inch for their reception, stood bubbling and
RAILROAD
888
trembling there, making the walls quake, as if
they were dilating with the secret knowledge of
great powers yet unsuspected in them, and strong
purposes not yet achieved.
But Staggs's Gardens had been cut up root
and branch. Oh, woe the day when "not a
rood of English ground"-laid out in Staggs's
Dombey & Son, Chap. 15.
Gardens-is secure.
RAILROAD-The course of.
He found no pleasure or relief in the journey.
Tortured by these thoughts he carried monotony
with him, through the rushing landscape, and
hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied
country, but a wilderness of blighted plans and
gnawing jealousies. The very speed at which
the train was whirled along mocked the swift
course of the young life that had been borne
away so steadily and so inexorably to its fore-
doomed end. The power that forced itself upon
its iron way—its own-defiant of all paths and
roads, piercing through the heart of every obsta-
cle, and dragging living creatures of all classes,
ages, and degrees behind it, was a type of the
triumphant monster, Death.
RAILROAD
shows its surface flying past like a fierce stream.
Away once more into the day, and through the
day, with a shrill yell of exultation, roaring, rat-
tling, tearing on, spurning everything with its
dark breath, sometimes pausing for a minute
where a crowd of faces are, that in a minute
more are not: sometimes lapping water greedily,
and before the spout at which it drinks has ceased
to drip upon the ground, shrieking, roaring, rat-
tling, through the purple distance!
;
Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as
it comes tearing on resistless to the goal; and
now its way, still like the way of Death, is strewn
with ashes thickly. Everything around is black-
ened. There are dark pools of water, muddy
lanes, and miserable habitations far below.
There are jagged walls and falling houses close
at hand, and through the battered roofs and
broken windows, wretched rooms
where want and fever hide themselves in many
wretched shapes, while smoke, and crowded
gables, and distorted chimneys, and deformity of
brick and mortar penning up deformity of mind
and body, choke the murky distance.
are seen,
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, | RAILROAD-The rush of the engine.
from the town, burrowing among the dwellings
of men and making the streets hum, flashing
out into the meadows for a moment, mining in
through the damp earth, booming on in darkness
and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny
day so bright and wide; away, with a shriek,
and a roar, and a rattle, through the fields,
through the woods, through the corn, through
the hay, through the chalk, through the mould,
through the clay, through the rock, among ob.
jects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever
flying from the traveller, and a deceitful distance
ever moving slowly within him: like as in the
track of the remorseless monster, Death!
The ground shook, the house rattled, the
fierce impetuous rush was in the air! He felt it
come up, and go darting by; and even when he
had hurried to the window, and saw what it.
was, he stood, shrinking from it, as if it were no
safe to look.
Through the hollow, on the height, by the
heath, by the orchard, by the park, by the gar-
den, over the canal, across the river, where the
sheep are feeding, where the mill is going, where
the barge is floating, where the dead are lying,
where the factory is smoking, where the stream
is running, where the village clusters, where the
great cathedral rises, where the bleak moor lies,
and the wild breeze smooths or ruffles it at its
inconstant will; away, with a shriek, and a roar,
and a rattle, and no trace to leave behind but
dust and vapor: like as in the track of the re-
morseless monster, Death!
A curse upon the fiery devil, thundering along
so smoothly, tracked through the distant valley
by a glare of light and lurid smoke, and gone!
He felt as if he had been plucked out of its
path, and saved from being torn asunder. It
made him shrink and shudder even now, when
its faintest hum was hushed, and when the lines
of iron road he could trace in the moonlight,
running to a point, were as empty and as silent
as a desert.
A trembling of the ground, and quick vibra-
tion in his ears; a distant shriek; a dull light
advancing, quickly changed to two red eyes,
and a fierce fire, dropping glowing coals; an
irresistible bearing on of a great roaring and
dilating mass; a high wind, and a rattle-
another come and gone, and he holding to a
gate, as if to save himself.
He
He waited for another, and for another.
walked back to his former point, and back again
to that, and still, through the wearisome vision
of his journey, looked for these approaching
monsters. He loitered about the station, wait-
ing until one should stay to call there; and
when one did, and was detached for water, he
stood parallel with it, watching its heavy wheels
and brazen front, and thinking what a cruel
power and might it had Ugh! To see the
great wheels slowly turning, and to think of
being run down and crushed!
Dombey & Son, Chap. 55.
Breasting the wind and light, the shower and
sunshine, away, and still away, it rolls and roars,
fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, and great
works and massive bridges crossing up above,
fall like a beam of shadow an inch broad, upon
the eye, and then are lost. Away, and still
away, onward and onward ever; glimpses of
cottage-homes, of houses, mansions, rich estates,
of husbandry and handicraft, of people, of old
roads and paths that look deserted, small, and
insignificant as they are left behind: and so they
do, and what else is there but such glimpses, in
the track of the indomitable monster, Death! Ah! The fresh air is pleasant after the forc-
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, ing-frame, though it does blow over these inter
plunging down into the earth again, and work-minable streets, and scatter the smoke of this
ing on in such a storm of energy and persever- vast wilderness of chimneys. Here we are-no,
ance, that amidst the darkness and whirlwind I mean there we were, for it has darted far into
the motion seems reversed, and to tend furiously the rear-in Bermondsey, where the tanners
backward, until a ray of light upon the wet wall | live. Flash! The distant shipping in the
RAILROAD-On a.
KAILROAD
389
RAILROAD JOURNEY
Thames is gone. Whirr! The little streets of left as precipices, with torrents of rusty carts
new brick and red tile, with here and there a and barrows tumbling over them; tripods of
flag-staff growing like a tall weed out of the scar- tall poles appear on hill-tops, where there are
let beans, and, everywhere, plenty of open rumors of tunnels; everything looks chaotic,
sewer and ditch for the promotion of the public and abandoned in full hopelessness. Along
health, have been fired off in a volley. Whizz
Whizz! the freezing roads, and through the night, the
Dust-heaps, market gardens, and waste grounds.post-chaise makes its way without a railroad
Rattle! New Cross Station. Shock! There on its mind.-Bleak House, Chap. 55.
we were at Croydon. Bu-r-r-r! The tun-
nel.
I wonder why it is that when I shut my
eyes in a tunnel I begin to feel as if I were
going at an Express pace the other way. I am
I am
clearly going back to London now. Compact
Enchantress must have forgotten something,
and reversed the engine. No! After long
darkness, pale fitful streaks of light appear. I
am still flying on for Folkestone. The streaks
grow stronger become continuous-become
the ghost of day—become the living day-be-
came, I mean-the tunnel is miles and miles
away, and here I fly through sunlight, all
among the harvest and the Kentish hops.
I
There is a dreamy pleasure in this flying.
wonder where it was, and when it was, that we
exploded, blew into space somehow, a Parlia-
mentary Train, with a crowd of heads and fa-
ces looking at us out of cages, and some hats
waving. Moneyed Interest says it was at Rei-
gate Station. Expounds to Mystery how Rei-
gate Station is so many miles from London,
which Mystery again develops to Compact
Enchantress. There might be neither a Reigate
nor a London for me, as I fly away among the
Kentish hops and harvest. What do I care !
Bang! We have let another Station off, and
fly away regardless. Everything is flying. The
hop-gardens turn gracefully towards me, pre-
senting regular avenues of hops in rapid flight,
then whirl away. So do the pools and rushes,
hay-stacks, sheep, clover in full bloom, deli-
cious to the sight and smell, corn-sheaves,
cherry-orchards, apple-orchards, reapers, glean-
ers, hedgers, gates, fields that taper off into lit-
tle angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and
then a church. Bang, bang! A double-bar-
relled Station! Now a wood, now a bridge,
now a landscape, now a cutting, now a-Bang!
a single-barrelled Station-there was a cricket
match somewhere, with two white tents, and
then four flying cows, then turnips-now the
wires of the electric telegraph are all alive,
and spin, and blur their edges, and go up and
down, and make the intervals between each
other most irregular; contracting and expand-
ing in the strangest manner. Now we slacken.
With a screwing, and a grinding, and a smell
of water thrown on ashes, now we stop.
A Flight. Reprinted Pieces.
RAILROAD TRAIN.
Then, the train rattled among the house-tops,
and among the ragged sides of houses torn down
to make way for it, and over the swarming
streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot
across the river; bursting over the quiet surface
like a bomb-shell, and gone again as if it had
exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and
glare. A little more, and again it roared across
the river, a great rocket; spurning the watery
turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt,
and going straight to its end, as Father Time
goes to his. To whom it is no matter what liv-
ing waters run high or low, reflect the heavenly
lights and darknesses, produce their little growth
of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn there, are
noisy or still, are troubled or at rest, for their
course has one sure termination, though their
sources and devices are many.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. II.
RAILROAD-Arrival of the train.
The seizure of the station with a fit of trem-
bling, gradually deepening to a complaint of the
heart, announced the train. Fire, and steam,
and smoke, and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell,
and a shriek; the little station a desert speck in
the thunder-storm.*
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. II
RAILROAD JOURNEY-In America.
Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an
open country, glittering with some bright lake
or pool, broad as many an English river, but so
small here that it scarcely has a name: now
catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its
clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its
prim New England church and school-house;
when whi-r-r-r! almost before you have seen
them, comes the same dark screen, the stunted
trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water-
all so like the last that you seem to have been
transported back again by magic.
"
The train calls at stations in the woods, where
the wild impossibility of anybody having the
smallest reason to get out is only to be equalled
by the apparently desperate hopelessness of
there being anybody to get in. It rushes across
the turnpike road, where there is no gate, no
policeman, no signal, nothing but a rough wood-
en arch, on which is painted, "WHEN THE Bell
RAILROAD-Preparations for a.
RINGS, LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE. On
Railroads shall soon traverse all this coun- it whirls headlong, dives through the woods
try, and with a rattle and a glare the engine again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail
and train shall shoot like a meteor over the arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots
wide night-landscape, turning the moon paler; beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the
but, as yet, such things are non-existent in these light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens
parts, though not wholly unexpected. Prep- all the slumbering echoes in the main street of
arations are afoot, measurements are made, a large town, and dashes on, hap-hazard, pell-
ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and mell, neck or nothing, down the middle of the
their not yet united piers desolately look at one road. There with mechanics working at their
another over roads and streams, like brick and trades, and people leaning from their doors and
mortar couples with an obstacle to their union; windows, and boys flying kites and playing
fragments of embankments are thrown up, and marbles, and men smoking, and women talking
|
RAILROAD CARS
890
and children crawling, and pigs burrowing, and
unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close
to the very rails-there-on, on, on-tears the
mad dragon of an engine, with its train of cars;
scattering in all directions a shower of burning
sparks from its wood fire; screeching, hissing,
yelling, panting; until at last the thirsty monster
stops beneath a covered way to drink, the peo-
ple cluster round, and you have time to breathe
again.-American Notes, Chap. 4.
RAILROAD CARS-In America.
The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but
larger ; holding thirty, forty, fifty people. The
seats, instead of stretching from end to end,
are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two per-
sons. There is a long row of them on each side
of the caravan, a narrow passage up the middle,
and a door at both ends. In the centre of the
carriage there is usually a stove, fed with char-
coal or anthracite coal, which is for the most part
red-hot. It is insufferably close; and you see
the hot air fluttering between yourself and
any other object you may happen to look
at, like the ghost of smoke.
American Notes, Chap. 4.
RAILROAD-Its irresponsibility.
How its wheels clank and rattle, and the
tram-road shakes, as the train rushes on! And
now the engine yells, as it were lashed and tor-
tured like a living laborer, and writhed in agony.
A poor fancy; for steel and iron are of infinitely
greater account, in this commonwealth, than flesh
and blood. If the cunning work of man be urged
beyond its power of endurance, it has within it
the elements of its own revenge; whereas, the
wretched mechanism of the Divine Hand is
dangerous with no such property, but may be
tampered with, and crushed, and broken, at the
driver's pleasure. Look at that engine! It
shall cost a man more dollars in the way of
penalty, and fine, and satisfaction of the outrag-
ed law, to deface in wantonness that senseless
mass of metal, than to take the lives of twenty
human creatures. Thus the stars wink upon
the bloody stripes; and Liberty pulls down her
cap upon her eyes, and owns Oppression in its
vilest aspect, for her sister:
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 21.
RAILROAD DEPOT.
When there was no market, or when I want-
ed variety, a railway terminus with the morning
mails coming in was remunerative company.
But, like most of the company to be had in this
world, it lasted only a very short time. The
station lamps would burst out ablaze, the por-
ters would emerge from places of concealment,
the cabs and trucks would rattle to their places
(the post-office carts were already in theirs), and
finally the bell would strike up, and the train
would come banging in. But there were few
passengers and little luggage, and everything
scuttled away with the greatest expedition.
The locomotive post-offices, with their great
nets-as if they had been dragging the coun-
try for bodies-would fly open as to their doors,
and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhaust-
ed clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags
of letters; the engine would blow and heave
and perspire, like an engine wiping its forehead,
and saying what a run it had had; and within
|
RAIN
ten minutes the lamps were out, and I was
houseless and alone again.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13.
RAIN-In the city.
Presently the rain began to fall in slanting
lines between him and those houses, and people
began to collect under cover of the public pass-
age opposite, and to look out hopelessly at the
sky as the rain dropped thicker and faster.
Then wet umbrellas began to appear, draggled
skirts, and mud. What the mud had been doing
with itself, or where it came from, who could
say? But it seemed to collect in a moment, as
a crowd will, and in five minutes to have
splashed all the sons and daughters of Adam.
The lamplighter was going his rounds now; and
as the fiery jets sprang up under his touch, one
might have fancied them astonished at being
suffered to introduce any show of brightness in-
to such a dismal scene.
In the country, the rain would have developed
a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would
have had its bright association with some beau-
tiful form of growth or life. In the city, it de-
veloped only foul, stale smells, and was a sickly,
lukewarm, dirt-stained, wretched addition to the
gutters.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3.
RAIN.
The rain seemed to have worn itself out by
coming down so fast.
It must be confessed that, at that moment, he
had no very agreeable employment either for his
moral or his physical perceptions. The day was
dawning from a patch of watery light in the east,
and sullen clouds came driving up before it, from
which the rain descended in a thick, wet mist.
It streamed from every twig and bramble in the
hedge; made little gullies in the path; ran down
a hundred channels in the road; and punched in-
numerable holes into the face of every pond and
gutter. It fell with an oozy, slushy sound among
the grass; and made a muddy kennel of every
furrow in the ploughed fields. No living creature
was anywhere to be seen. The prospect could
hardly have been more desolate if animated
nature had been dissolved in water, and poured
down upon the earth again in that form.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13.
Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and
an angel could not have concealed the fact that
the eaves were shedding sooty tears outside the
window, like some weak giant of a Sweep.
Great Expectations, Chap. 27.
RAIN-After a.
The superabundant moisture, trickling from
everything after the late rain, set him off well.
Nothing near him was thirsty. Certain top-
heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his
neat, well-ordered garden, had swilled as much
as they could carry-perhaps a trifle more-and
may have been the worse for liquor; but the
sweet-briar, roses, wall-flowers, the plants at the
windows, and the leaves on the old tree, were
in the beaming state of moderate company that
had taken no more than was wholesome for
them, and had served to develop their best
qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them
on the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent
RAMPAGE
and sparkling mirth, that did good where it
lighted, softening neglected corners which the
steady rain could seldom reach, and hurting
nothing. Battle of Life, Chap. 3.
RAMPAGE—Mrs. Joe on a.
Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having
confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence
to me the moment I raised the latch of the door,
and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in
the chimney corner.
Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, look-
ing for you, Pip. And she's out now, making
it a baker's dozen."
"Is she?"
"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse,
she's got Tickler with her."
391
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only
button on my waistcoat round and round, and
looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler
was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by
collision with my tickled frame.
READING
vorite characters in them-as I did—and by
putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the
bad ones-which I did too. I have been Tom
Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless crea-
ture) for a week together. I have sustained my
own idea of Roderick Random for a month a'
a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy rel
ish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels-
I forget what, now-that were on those shelves
and for days and days I can remember to have
gone about my region of our house, armed with
the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees
the perfect realization of Captain Somebody,
of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being
beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at
a great price. The Captain never lost dignity,
from having his ears boxed with the Latin Gram-
mar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain
and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all
the languages in the world, dead or alive.
This was my only and my constant comfort.
When I think of it, the picture always rises in
"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play
and she made a grab at Tickler, and she Ram- in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed,
paged out. That's what she did," said Joe, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neigh-
slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars borhood, every stone in the church, and every
with the poker, and looking at it: "she Ram-foot of the churchyard, had some association of
paged out, Pip."
"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always
treated him as a larger species of child, and as
no more than my equal.
Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch
clock, “she's been on the Ram-page, this last
spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a coming!
Get behind the door, old chap, and have the
jack-towel betwixt you."
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throw-
ing the door wide open, and finding an obstruc-
tion behind it, immediately divined the cause,
and applied Tickler to its further investigation.
She concluded by throwing me-I often served
her as a connubial missile-at Joe, who, glad to
get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into
the chimney and quietly fenced me up there
with his great leg.
"Where have you been, you young monkey?"
said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. "Tell me direct-
ly what you've been doing to wear me away with
fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of
that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five
hundred Gargerys."-Great Expectations, Chap. 2.
READING-A boy's.
My father had left a small collection of books
in a little room up-stairs, to which I had access
(for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else
in our house ever troubled. From that blessed
little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle,
Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of
Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robin-
son Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep
me company. They kept alive my fancy, and
my hope of something beyond that place and
time-they, and the Arabian Nights, and the
Tales of the Genii-and did me no harm; for
whatever harm was in some of them was not
there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is as-
tonishing to me now, how I found time, in the
midst of my porings and blunderings over heav-
ier themes, to read those books as I did. It is
curious to me how I could ever have consoled
myself under my small troubles (which were
great troubles to me), by impersonating my fa-
|
its own, in my mind, connected with these
books, and stood for some locality made famous
in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing
up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap,
with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest
himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that
Commodore Trunnion held that Club with Mr.
Pickle, in the parlor of our little village ale-
house.-David Copperfield, Chap. 4.
READING-Wopsle's manner of.
Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large
shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which
he was uncommonly proud of; indeed, it was
understood among his acquaintance that if you
could only give him his head, he would read the
clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that
if the church was "thrown open," meaning to
competition, he would not despair of making
his mark in it. The church not being "thrown
open," he was, as I have said, our clerk. But
he punished the amens tremendously; and when
he gave out the psalm-always giving the whole
verse-he looked all round the congregation
first, as much as to say, "You have heard our
friend overhead; oblige me with your opinion
of this style!"-Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
READING-Words delicious to taste.
"C
I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to
such phrases as "The people's representatives
in Parliament assembled," Your petitioners
therefore humbly approach your honorable
house," His gracious Majesty's unfortunate
subjects," as if the words were something real
in his mouth, and delicious to taste: Mr. Mi
cawber, meanwhile, listening with a little of an
author's vanity, and contemplating (not severely)
the spikes on the opposite wall.
David Copperfield, Chap. 11.
READING-Mr. Wegg's difficulty in.
Mr. Wegg's laboring bark became beset by
polysyllables, and embarrassed among a perfect
archipelago of hard words.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap 14.
READING
READING-Dr. Blimber's style of.
892
RECREATION
speak, and the same gentleman was on one knee
The Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with before him, looking in at his teeth with the nice
his hand in his breast as usual, held a book scrutiny of a dentist. Amateurs in the physiog
from him at arm's length, and read. There nomical and phrenological sciences roved about
was something very awful in this manner of him with watchful eyes and itching fingers, and
reading. It was such a determined, unimpas- sometimes one, more daring than the rest, made
sioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to a mad grasp at the back of his head, and van-
work. It left the Doctor's countenance ex-ished in the crowd. They had him in all points
posed to view; and when the Doctor smiled aus-
piciously at his author, or knit his brows, or
shook his head and made wry faces at him,
as much as to say, "Don't tell me, Sir; I
know better," it was terrific.
•
Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
READING-Captain Cuttle's style of.
Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity,
shouldered his book—for he made it a point of
duty to read none but very large books on a
Sunday, as having a more staid appearance; and
had bargained, years ago, for a prodigious vol-
ume at a book-stall, five lines of which utterly
confounded him at any time, insomuch that he
had not yet ascertained of what subject it
treated and withdrew.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 50.
READING-On gin and water.
Now, what'll you read on?”
"Thank you, sir," returned Wegg, as if there
were nothing new in his reading at all. “I gen-
erally do it on gin and water.
Keeps the organ moist, does it, Wegg?"
asked Mr. Boffin, with innocent eagerness.
"N-no, sir,” replied Wegg, coolly, "I should
hardly describe it so, sir. I should say, mellers
it. Mellers it, is the word I should employ,
Mr. Boffin."-Our Mutual Friend, Chap. 5.
RECEPTION-An American.
|
of view: in front, in profile, three-quarter face,
and behind. Those who were not professional
or scientific, audibly exchanged opinions on his
looks. New lights shone in upon him, in respect
of his nose. Contradictory rumors were abroad
on the subject of his hair. And still the Cap-
tain's voice was heard-so stifled by the con-
course, that he seemed to speak from underneath
a feather-bed, exclaiming, "Gentlemen, you that
have been introduced to Mr. Chuzzlewit, will
you clear?"
Even when they began to clear, it was no bet-
ter: for then a stream of gentlemen, every one
with a lady on each arm (exactly like the chorus
to the National Anthem, when Royalty goes in
state to the play), came gliding in; every new
group fresher than the last, and bent on staying
to the latest moment. If they spoke to him,
which was not often, they invariably asked the
same questions, in the same tone: with no more
remorse, or delicacy, or consideration, than if
he had been a figure of stone, purchased, and
paid for, and set up there, for their delight.
Even when, in the slow course of time, these
died off, it was as bad as ever, if not worse; for
then the boys grew bold, and came in as a class
of themselves, and did everything that the
grown-up people had done. Uncouth stragglers
too, appeared; men of a ghostly kind, who, be-
ing in, didn't know how to get out again: inso-
much that one silent gentleman with glazed and
fishy eyes, and only one button on his waistcoat
(which was a very large metal one, and shone
prodigiously), got behind the door, and stood
there, like a clock, long after everybody else
was gone.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 22.
Up they came with a rush. Up they came
until the room was full, and, through the open
door, a dismal perspective of more to come, was
shown upon the stairs. One after another, one
after another, dozen after dozen, score after
score, more, more, more, up they came; all RECREATION-Gardening in London.
shaking hands with Martin. Such varieties of There is another and a very different class of
hands, the thick, the thin, the short, the long, men, whose recreation is their garden. An indi-
the fat, the lean, the coarse, the fine; such dif- vidual of this class resides some short distance
ferences of temperature, the hot, the cold, the from town-say in the Hampstead Road, or the
dry, the moist, the flabby; such diversities of Kilburn Road, or any other road where the
grasp, the tight, the loose, the short-lived, and houses are small and neat, and have little slips
the lingering! Still up, up, up, more, more, of back garden. He and his wife-who is as
more and ever and anon the Captain's voice clean and compact a little body as himself—have
was heard above the crowd; "There's more occupied the same house ever since he retired
below! there's more below. Now, gentlemen, from business twenty years ago. They have no
you that have been introduced to Mr. Chuzzle- family. They once had a son, who died at about
wit, will you clear, gentlemen? Will you clear? | five years old. The child's portrait hangs over
Will you be so good as clear, gentlemen, and the mantelpiece in the best sitting-room, and a
make a little room for more?"
little cart he used to draw about is carefully
preserved as a relic.
Regardless of the Captain's cries, they didn't
clear at all, but stood there, bolt upright, and
staring. Two gentlemen connected with the
Watertoast Gazette had come express to get
the matter for an article on Martin. They had
agreed to divide the labor. One of them took
him below the waistcoat; one above. Each
stood directly in front of his subject, with his
head a little on one side, intent on his depart-
ment. If Martin put one boot before the other,
the lower gentleman was down upon him; he
rubbed a pimple on his nose, and the upper gen-
tleman booked it. He opened his mouth to
|
In fine weather the old gentleman is almost
constantly in 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 some-
thing 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
like epitaphs to their memory; and in the even.
ing, when the sun has gone down, the persever
ance with which he lugs a great watering-po
RECREATIONS
393
RED TAPE
from twelve to four, for the small charge of
one shilling per head! With the exception of
these classes of society, however, and a few
weak and insignificant persons, we do not think
the attempt at imitation to which we have
alluded, prevails in any great degree.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 9.
RED TAPE.
about is perfectly astonishing. The only other
recreation he has, is the newspaper, which he
peruses every day, from beginning to end, gen-
erally reading the most interesting pieces of in-
telligence 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 goose- She was a Fairy, this Tape, and was a bright
berry than usual, it is carefully preserved under red all over. She was disgustingly prim and
a wine-glass on the sideboard, for the edification formal, and could never bend herself a hair's
of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So- breadth this way or that way, out of her natu-
and-so planted the tree which produced it, with rally crooked shape. But she was very po-
his own hands. On a summer's evening, when tent in her wicked art. She could stop the
the large watering-pot has been filled and emp-fastest thing in the world, change the strongest
tied some fourteen times, and the old couple thing into the weakest, and the most useful into
have quite exhausted themselves by trotting the most useless. To do this she had only to
about, you will see them sitting happily together put her cold hand upon it, and repeat her own
in the little summer-house, enjoying the calm name, Tape. Then it withered away.
and peace of the twilight, and watching the shad-
ows 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
recreations, and they require no more. They
have within themselves the materials of com-
fort 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 num-
bers may have diminished, and may decrease
still more. Whether the course female educa-
tion has taken of late days-whether the pur-
suit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings, has
tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic
life, in which they show far more beautifully
than in the most crowded assembly, is a ques-
tion we should feel little gratification in dis-
cussing; we hope not.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 9.
RECREATIONS-London.
The wish of persons in the humbler class-
es 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 aristo-
crats 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
complacency as the enviable few who are priv-
ileged to exhibit their magnificence in that
exclusive haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspir-
ing young ladies, who read flaming accounts
of some "
fancy fair in high life," suddenly
grow desperately charitable; visions of admi-
ration and matrimcny 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 forthwith
engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from
mere charity exhibit themselves for three days,
At the Court of Prince Bull-at least I don't
mean literally at his court, because he was a
very genteel Prince, and readily yielded to his
god-mother when she always reserved that for
his hereditary Lords and Ladies-in the do-
minions of Prince Bull, among the great mass
of the community who were called in the lan-
guage of that polite country the Mobs and
the Snobs, were a number of very ingenious
men, who were always busy with some inven-
tion or other, for promoting the prosperity of
the Prince's subjects, and augmenting the
Prince's power. But, whenever they submitted
their models for the Prince's approval, his god-
mother stepped forward, laid her hand upc n
them, and said “ Tape." Hence it came to
pass, that when any particularly good discovery
was made, the discoverer usually carried it off
to some other Prince, in foreign parts, who had
no old godmother who said Tape. This was
not on the whole an advantageous state of
things for Prince Bull, to the best of my un-
derstanding.
*
*
*
*
*
This, again, was very bad conduct on the
part of the vicious old nuisance, and she ought
to have been strangled for it if she had done
nothing worse; but, she did something worse
still, as you shall learn. For she got astride of
an official broomstick, and muttered as a spell
these two sentences,
"On Her Majesty's ser-
vice," and "I have the honor to be, sir, your
most obedient servant," and presently alighted
in the cold and inclement country where the
army of Prince Bull were encamped to fight the
army of Prince Bear. On the sea-shore of that
country, she found piled together a number of
houses for the army to live in, and a quantity of
provisions for the army to live upon, and a
quantity of clothes for the army to wear; while,
sitting in the mud gazing at them, were a group
of officers as red to look at as the wicked old
woman herself. So she said to one of them,
"Who are you, my darling, and how do you
do?" "I am the Quarter-master General's
Department, god-mother, and I am pretty well."
Then she said to another, "Who are you, my
darling, and how do you do?" "I am the Com-
missariat Department, god-mother, and I am
pretty well." Then she said to another, "Who
are you, my darling, and how do you do?”
"I am the head of the Medical Department,
god-mother, and I am pretty well.” Then she
RED-FACED MEN
394
REFORMS
said to some gentlemen scented with lavender, much, was also there; not in the character of a
who kept themselves at a great distance from disappointed lover, but as the Accepted of a
the rest, "And who are you, my pretty pets, young at least, an unmarried-lady, a Miss
and how do you do?" and they answered, Wisk, who was also there. Miss Wisk's mission,
We-aw-are-the-aw-Staff-aw-Department, god- my guardian said, was to show the world that
mother, and we are very well indeed." "I am woman's mission was man's mission; and that
delighted to see you all, my beauties," says this the only genuine mission of both man and
wicked old fairy, "-Tape!" Upon that, the woman, was to be always moving declaratory
houses, clothes, and provisions, all mouldered resolutions about things in general at public
away; and the soldiers who were sound, fell meetings. The guests were few; but were, as
sick; and the soldiers who were sick, died one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby's, all devoted
miserably, and the noble army of Prince Bull to public objects only. Besides those I have
perished.—Prince Buil. Reprinted Pieces. mentioned, there was an extremely dirty lady,
with her bonnet all awry, and the ticketed price
of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected
home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilder-
RED-FACED MEN.
very contentious gentleman, who said it was his
mission to be everybody's brother, but who ap-
peared to be on terms of coolness with the whole
of his large family, completed the party.
A numerous race are these red-faced men;
there is not a parlor, or club-room, or benefitness, but whose church was like a fancy fair. A
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, however good. So, just to hold a pattern
one up to know the others by, we took his like-
ness at once, and put him in here. And that is
the reason why we have written this paper.
Sketches (Characters), Chap. 5.
REFERENCES.
"As to being a reference," said Pancks,
"you know, in a general way, what being a
reference means. It's all your eye, that is!
Look at your tenants down the Yard here.
They'd all be references for one another, if
you'd let 'em. What would be the good of let-
ting 'em? It's no satisfaction to be done by
two men instead of one. One's enough. A per-
son who can't pay, gets another person who
can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like
a person with two wooden legs getting another
person with two wooden legs to guarantee
that he has got two natural legs. It don't make
either of them able to do a walking-match. And
four wooden legs are more troublesome to you
than two, when you don't want any." Mr.
Pancks concluded by blowing off that steam of
his.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 23.
REFINEMENT—An evidence of.
A party having less in common with such an
occasion, could hardly have been got together by
any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the do-
mestic mission, was the very last thing to be en-
dured among them; indeed, Miss Wisk informed
us, with great indignation, before we sat down to
breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying
chiefly in the narrow sphere of Home was an out-
rageous slander on the part of her Tyrant, Man.
One other singularity was, that nobody with a
mission-except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I
think I have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies
with everybody's mission-cared at all for any-
body's mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear
that the only one infallible course was her course
of pouncing upon the poor, and applying benevo-
lence to them like a strait-waistcoat, as Miss
Wisk was that the only practical thing for the
world was the emancipation of Woman from the
thraldom of her Tyrant, Man. Mrs. Jellyby, all
the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that
could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.
Bleak House, Chap. 30.
REFORMS-Public-Influence of literature
on.
"May I take this opportunity of remarking I have found it curious and interesting, look-
that it is scarcely delicate to look at vagrants ing over the sheets of this reprint, to mark what
with the attention which I have seen bestowed important social improvements have taken place
upon them by a very dear young friend of mine? about us, almost imperceptibly, since they were
They should not be looked at. Nothing disa- originally written. The license of Counsel, and
greeable should ever be looked at. Apart from the degree to which Juries are ingeniously be-
such a habit standing in the way of that grace- wildered, are yet susceptible of moderation;
ful equanimity of surface which is so expressive while an improvement in the mode of conduct-
of good breeding, it hardly seems compatible ing Parliamentary Elections (and even Parlia-
with refinement of mind. A truly refined mindments too, perhaps) is still within the bounds
will seem to be ignorant of the existence of any- of possibility. But legal reforms have pared
thing that is not perfectly proper, placid, and
pleasant." Having delivered this exalted senti-
ment, Mrs. General made a sweeping obeisance,
and retired with an expression of mouth indica-
tive of Prunes and Prism.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 5.
REFORMERS-A party of female.
Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party-
Mr. Pardiggle, an obstinate-looking man, with
a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who was
always talking in a loud bass voice about his
mite, or Mrs. Pardiggle's mite, or their five boys'
mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair brushed back
as usual, and his knobs of temples shining very
the claws of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg; a spirit
of self-respect, mutual forbearance, education,
and co-operation for such good ends, has dif-
fused itself among their clerks; places far apart
are brought together, to the present convenience
and advantage of the Public, and to the certain
destruction, in time, of a host of petty jealous-
ies, blindnesses, and prejudices, by which the
Public alone have always been the sufferers; the
laws relating to imprisonment for debt are al-
tered; and the Fleet Prison is pulled down!
Who knows, but by the time the series reaches
its conclusion, it may be discovered that there
are even magistrates in town and country, who
should be taught to shake hands every day with
•
RELATIONS
895
RELIGION
of being always new. One lecture treads so
quickly on the heels of another, that none are
remembered; and the course of this month may
be safely repeated next, with its charm of novel-
ty unbroken, and its interest unabated.
American Notes, Chap. 3.
Common-sense and Justice; that even Poor
Laws may have mercy on the weak, the aged,
and unfortunate; that Schools, on the broad
principles of Christianity, are the best adorn-
ment for the length and breadth of this civil-
ized land; that Prison-doors should be barred
on the outside, no less heavily and carefully
than they are barred within; that the universal
diffusion of common means of decency and
health is as much the right of the poorest of the
poor, as it is indispensable to the safety of the
rich, and of the State; that a few petty boards
and bodies-less than drops in the great ocean
of humanity which roars around them-are not
forever to let loose Fever and Consumption on
God's creatures at their will, or always to keep
their jobbing little fiddles going, for a Dance"
of Death.-Pickwick. Preface.
RELATIONS-Poor.
RELIGION-A vent for bad-humor.
"What such people miscall their religion, is
a vent for their bad-humors and arrogance. And
do you know I must say, sir," he continued,
mildly laying his head on one side, “that I don't
find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone ir
the New Testament?"
"I never found it either!" said I.
"In the meantime, sir," said Mr. Chillip,
they are much disliked; and as they are very
free in consigning everybody who dislikes them
to perdition, we really have a good deal of per-
dition going on in our neighborhood! How-
ever, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a
continual punishment; for they are turned in-
ward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their
own hearts are very bad feeding."
David Copperfield, Chap. 59.
It is a melancholy truth that even great men
have their poor relations. Indeed, great men
have often more than their fair share of poor
relations; inasmuch as very red blood of the
superior quality, like inferior blood unlawfully
shed, will cry aloud, and will be heard. Sir
Leicester's cousins, in the remotest degree, are RELIGION-Austerity in.
To many murders, in respect that they will
"out."
Among whom there are cousins who
are so poor, that one might almost dare to think
it would have been the happier for them never
to have been plated links upon the Dedlock
chain of gold, but to have been made of
mon iron at first, and done base service.
I so abhor and from my soul detest that bad
spirit, no matter by what class or sect it may be
entertained, which would strip life of its health-
ful graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures,
pluck from maturity and age their pleasant or-
com-naments, and make existence but a narrow path
towards the grave; that odious spirit which, if
it could have had full scope and sway upon the
earth, must have blasted and made barren the
imaginations of the greatest men, and left them,
in their power of raising up enduring images
before their fellow-creatures yet unborn, no bet-
ter than the beasts; that in these very broad-
brimmed hats and very sombre coats-in stiff-
necked solemn-visaged piety, in short, no matter
what its garb, whether it have cropped hair as
in a Shaker village, or long nails as in a Hindoo
temple—I recognize the worst among the ene-
mies of Heaven and Earth, who turn the water
at the marriage feasts of this poor world, not
into wine, but gall. And if there must be peo-
ple vowed to crush the harmless fancies and the
love of innocent delights and gayeties, which
Service, however (with a few limited reserva-
tions; genteel, but not profitable), they may not
do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they visit
their richer cousins, and get into debt when they
can, and live but shabbily when they can't,. and
find the women no husbands, and the men no
wives-and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit
at feasts that are never of their own making,
and so go through high life. The rich family
sum has been divided by so many figures, and
they are the something over that nobody knows
what to do with.-Bleak House, Chap. 28.
RELIGION AND LECTURES-In New
England.
The peculiar province of the Pulpit in New
England (always excepting the Unitarian min- | are a part of human nature,—as much a part of
istry) would appear to be the denouncement of
all innocent and rational amusements. The
church, the chapel, and the lecture-room are the
only means of excitement excepted; and to the
church, the chapel, and the lecture-room the
ladies resort in crowds.
Wherever religion is resorted to, as a strong
drink, and as an escape from the dull, monoto-
nous round of home, those of its ministers who
pepper the highest will be the surest to please.
They who strew the Eternal Path with the great-
est amount of brimstone, and who most ruth-
lessly tread down the flowers and leaves that
grow by the wayside, will be voted the most
righteous; and they who enlarge with the great-
est pertinacity on the difficulty of getting into
heaven will be considered by all true believers
certain of going there, though it would be hard
to say by what process of reasoning this conclu-
sion is arrived at. It is so at home, and it is so
abroad. With regard to the other means of ex-
titement, the Lecture, it has at least the merit
it as any other love or hope that is our common
portion,-let them, for me, stand openly revealed
among the ribald and licentious: the very idiots
know that they are not on the Immortal road,
and will despise them, and avoid them readily.
American Notes, Chap. 15.
RELIGION, INDIGESTION, AND LOVE.
She was an indigestive single woman, who
called her rigidity religion, and her liver love.
Great Expectations, Chap. 25.
RELIGION-Austere, of the Murdstones.
The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone
blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which
was austere and wrathful. I have thought sinca
that its assuming that character was a necessary
consequence of Mr. Murdstone's firmness, which
wouldn't allow him to let anybody off from the
utmost weight of the severest penalties he could
find any excuse for. Be this as it may, I well
remember the tremendous visages with which
RELIGION
396
RESPECTABILITY
we used to go to church, and the changed air of outside the door that night, had had foreknow.
the place. Again the dreaded Sunday comes ledge in their melancholy sound. He knew,
round, and I file into the old pew first, like a now, what he had done. He knew, now, that
guarded captive brought to a condemned service. he had called down that upon his head, which
Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black velvet gown, bowed it lower than the heaviest stroke of for-
that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, | tune. He knew, now, what it was to be reject.
follows close upon me; then my mother; thened and deserted; now, when every loving blos
her husband. There is no Peggotty now, as in som he had withered in his innocent daughter's
the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone heart was snowing down in ashes on him.
mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all
Dombey & Son, Chap. 59.
the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I
see her dark eyes roll round the church when REPARATION - Religious, of Mrs. Clen-
she says "miserable sinners," as if she were call-
ing all the congregation names. Again, I catch
rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timid-
ly between the two, with one of them muttering
at each ear, like low thunder. Again, I wonder
with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our
good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and
Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in
Heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I
move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss
Murdstone pokes me with her prayer-book, and
makes my side ache.
David Copperfield, Chap. 4.
RELIGION-True and false.
Lest there should be any well-intentioned
persons who do not perceive the difference (as
some such could not, when OLD MORTALITY
was newly published) between religion and the
cant of religion, piety and pretence of piety,
a humble reverence for the great truths of Scrip-
nam.
Reparation!" said she. "Yes, truly! It
is easy for him to talk of reparation, fresh from
journeying and junketing in foreign lands, and
living a life of vanity and pleasure. But let
him look at me, in prison and in bonds here.
I endure without murmuring, because it is ap-
pointed that I shall so make reparation for my
sins. Reparation! Is there none in this
room? Has there been none here this fifteen
years ?”
Thus was she always balancing her bargain
with the Majesty of heaven, posting up the
entries to her credit, strictly keeping her set-off,
and claiming her due. She was only remarka-
ble in this, for the force and emphasis with
which she did it. Thousands upon thousands
do it, according to their varying manner, every
day.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5.
REPINING-Useless tears.
ture and an audacious and offensive obtru- Repining is of no use, ma'am," said Ralph.
sion of its letter and not its spirit in the com- "Of all fruitless errands, sending a tear to look
monest dissensions and meanest affairs of life, | after a day that is gone, is the most fruitless."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10.
to the extraordinary confusion of ignorant minds,
let them understand that it is always the latter,
and never the former, which is satirized here. RESPECT-SELF-The modesty of.
Further, that the latter is here satirized as being,
according to all experience, inconsistent with
the former, impossible of union with it, and one
of the most evil and mischievous falsehoods ex-
istent in society-whether it establish its head-
quarters, for the time being, in Exeter Hall, or
Ebenezer Chapel, or both. It may appear un-
necessary to offer a word of observation on so
plain a head. But it is never out of season to
protest against that coarse familiarity with sacred
things which is busy on the lip, and idle in the
heart; or against the confounding of Christian-
ity with any class of persons who, in the words
of SWIFT, have just enough religion to make
them hate, and not enough to make them love,
one another.-Preface to Pickwick.
It has always been in my observation of
human nature, that a man who has any good
reason to believe in himself never flourishes
himself before the faces of other people in order
that they may believe in him. For this reason,
I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and
the more praise I got, the more I tried to deserve.
David Copperfield, Chap. 48.
REMORSE-Of Mr. Dombey.
RESPECTABILITY-A pattern of, (Litti-
mer.)
There was a servant in that house, a man
who, I understood, was usually with Steerforth,
and had come into his service at the university,
who was in appearance a pattern of respectabil-
ity. I believe there never existed in his station
a more respectable-looking man. He was taci-
turn, soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, defer-
"Let him remember it in that room, years to ential, observant, always at hand when wanted,
come. The rain that falls upon the roof, the and never near when not wanted; but his great
wind that mourns outside the door, may have claim to consideration was his respectability
foreknowledge in their melancholy sound. Let He had not a pliant face; he had rather a stiff
him remember it in that room, years to come!" neck, rather a tight smooth head, with short
He did remember it. In the miserable night hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of
he thought of it; in the dreary day, the wretch-speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering
ed dawn, the ghostly, memory-haunted twilight.
He did remember it. In agony, in sorrow, in
remorse, in despair! "Papa! papa! Speak
to me, dear papa!" He heard the words again
and saw the face. He saw it fall upon the
trembling hands, and heard the one prolonged
low cry go upward.
the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use
it oftener than any other man; but every pe-
culiarity that he had he made respectable. If
his nose had been upside-down, he would have
made that respectable. He surrounded himself
with an atmosphere of respectability, and
walked secure in it. It would have been next
Oh! He did remember it! The rain that to impossible to suspect him of anything
fell upon the roof, the wind that mourned wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable
RESERVE AND AFFECTATION
397
RESTAURANT
Nobody could have thought of putting him in REST-Tranquillity of.
a livery, he was so highly respectable. To It was dimly pleasant to him now, to lie
have imposed any derogatory work upon him, there, with the window open, looking out at the
would have been to inflict a wanton insult on summer sky and the trees; and, in the evening,
the feelings of a most respectable man. And at the sunset. To watch the shadows of the
of this, I noticed the women-servants in the clouds and leaves, and seem to feel a sympathy
household were so intuitively conscious, that with shadows. It was natural that he should.
they always did such work themselves, and gen- | To him, life and the world were nothing else.
erally while he read the paper by the pantry
fire.
Such a self-contained man I never saw.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 61.
But RESTAURANT—The question of refresh.
ment.
in that quality, as in every other he possessed,
he only seemed to be the more respectabie. To resume the consideration of the curious
Even the fact that no one knew his Christian question of refreshment. I am a Briton, and, as
name, seemed to form a part of his respecta-such, I am aware that I never will be a slave,—
bility. Nothing could be objected against his and yet I have latent suspicion that there must
surname, Littimer, by which he was known. be some slavery of wrong custom in this matter.
Peter might have been hanged, or Tom trans- I travel by railroad. I start from home at
ported; but Littimer was perfectly respectable.seven or eight in the morning, after breakfast-
David Copperfield, Chap. 21.
RESERVE AND AFFECTATION.
"
·
""
ing hurriedly. What with skimming over the
open landscape, what with mining in the damp
bowels of the earth, what with banging, boom-
Tottle," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, you ing, and shrieking the scores of miles away, I
know my way—off-hand, open, say what I mean, am hungry when I arrive at the "Refreshment
mean what I say, hate reserve, and can't bear station where I am expected. Please to observe,
affectation. One is a bad domino, which only-expected. I have said I am hungry; perhaps
hides what good people have about 'em, without I might say, with greater point and force, that
making the bad look better; and the other is am to some extent exhausted, and that I need
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."
Tales, Chap. 10.
in the expressive French sense of the word-
to be restored.
to be restored. What is provided for my res-
toration? The apartment that is to restore me
is a wind-trap, cunningly set to inveigle all the
draughts in that country-side, and to communi-
RESENTMENT-Mr. Buffle and the Major. cate a special intensity and velocity to them as
When the Major glared at Mr. Buffle with they rotate in two hurricanes,-one about my
those meaning words my dear I literally gasped wretched head, one about my wretched legs.
for a teaspoonful of salvolatile in a wineglass of The training of the young ladies behind the
water, and I says, "Pray let it go no further counter who are to restore me has been from
gentlemen I beg and beseech of you!" But their infancy directed to the assumption of a de-
the Major could be got to do nothing else but fiant dramatic show that I am not expected. It
snort long after Mr. Buffle was gone, and the is in vain for me to represent to them, by my
effect it had upon my whole mass of blood when humble and conciliatory manners, that I wish to
on the next day of Mr. Buffle's rounds the be liberal. It is in vain for me to represent to
Major spruced himself up and went humming myself, for the encouragement of my sinking
a tune up and down the street with one eye soul, that the young ladies have a pecuniary
almost obliterated by his hat there are not ex- interest in my arrival. Neither my reason nor
pressions in Johnson's Dictionary to state. But my feelings can make head against the cold,
I safely put the street door on the jar and got glazed glare of eye with which I am assured
behind the Major's blinds with my shawl on and that I am not expected, and not wanted. The
my mind made up the moment I saw danger to solitary man among the bottles would sometimes
rush out screeching till my voice failed me and take pity on me, if he dared, but he is powerless
catch the Major round the neck till my strength against the rights and mights of Woman. (Of
went and have all parties bound. I had not the page I make no account, for he is a boy,
been behind the blinds a quarter of an hour and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.)
when I saw Mr. Buffle approaching with his Col- Chilling fast in the deadly tornadoes to which
lecting-books in his hand. The Major likewise my upper and lower extremities are exposed,
saw him approaching and hummed louder and and subdued by the moral disadvantage at
himself approached. They met before the Airy which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on
railings. The Major takes off his hat at arm's the refreshments that are to restore me. I find
length and says "Mr. Buffle I believe?" Mr. that I must either scald my throat by insanely
Buffle takes off his hat at arm's length and ladling into it, against time and for no wager,
says "That is my name sir." Says the Major brown hot water stiffened with flour; or I must
Have you any commands for me, Mr. Buffle?" make myself flaky and sick with Banbury cake;
Says Mr. Buffle "Not any sir." Then my dear or I must stuff into my delicate organization a
both of 'em bowed very low and haughty and currant pincushion which I know will swell into
parted, and whenever Mr. Buffle made his rounds immeasurable dimensions when it has got there;
in future him and the Major always met and or I must extort from an iron-bound quarry,
bowed before the Airy railings, putting me much with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable
in mind of Hamlet and the other gentleman in soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and grease
mourning before killing one another, though I called pork-pie. While thus forlornly occupied,
could have wished the other gentleman had I find that the depressing banquet on the table
done it fairer and even if less polite no poison.is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory
Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy, Chap. 1. character, so like the banquet at the meanest
66
RESTAURANT
398
RETRIBUTION
punctuality, yet being taught to expect all this
to be done for it!"
A spirited chorus of "The Beast!"
I noticed that Sniff was agin a rubbing his
drored up one leg. But agin I didn't take par-
ticular notice, looking on myself as called upon
to stimilate public feeling. It being a lark be-
sides.
and shabbiest of evening parties, that I begin
to think I must have "brought down" to supper
the old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is
setting her teeth on edge with a cool orange at
my elbow; that the pastry-cook who has com-stomach with a soothing hand, and that he had
pounded for the company on the lowest terms
per head is a fraudulent bankrupt, redeeming his
contract with the stale stock from his window;
that, for some unexplained reason, the family
giving the party have become my mortal foes,
and have given it on purpose to affront me.
Or I fancy that I am "breaking up" again at
the evening conversazione at school, charged
two and sixpence in the half-year's bill; or
breaking down again at that celebrated evening
party given at Mrs. Bogles's boarding-house
when I was a boarder there, on which occasion
Mrs. Bogles was taken in execution by a branch
of the legal profession who got in as the harp,
and was removed (with the keys and subscribed
capital) to a place of durance, half an hour prior
to the commencement of the festivities.
*
*
*
*
*
"Putting everything together," said Our Mis-
sis, "French Refreshmenting comes to this, and
O, it comes to a nice total! First: eatable
things to eat, and drinkable things to drink.
A groan from the young ladies, kep' up by me.
"Second: convenience, and even elegance."
Another groan from the young ladies, kep' up
by me.
Third: moderate charges."
This time a groan from me, kep' up by the
young ladies.
"Fourth-and here," says Our Missis, "I
claim your angriest sympathy-attention, com-
mon civility, nay, even politeness!"
Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad
all together.
"And I cannot in conclusion," says Our Missis,
with her spitefullest sneer, "give you a com-
pleter pictur of that despicable nation (after
what I have related), than assuring you that they
wouldn't bear our constitutional ways and noble
independence at Mugby Junction for a single
month, and that they would turn us to the right
about and put another system in our places, as
soon as look at us; perhaps sooner, for I do not
believe they have the good taste to care to look
at us twice."-Boy at Mugby.
RESTAURANT—A.
He beheld nothing to eat but butter in vari-
ous forms, slightly charged with jam, and lan-
guidly frizzling over tepid water. Two ancient
turtle-shells, on which was inscribed the legend,
"SOUPS," decorated a glass partition within,
enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a ghastly
mockery of a marriage-breakfast, spread on a
rickety table, warned the terrified traveller. An
oblong box of stale and broken pastry at re-
duced prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented
the doorway; and two high chairs, that looked
as if they were performing on stilts, embellished
the counter. Over the whole a young lady pre-
sided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she surveyed
the street announced a deep-seated grievance
against society, and an implacable determina- I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a
tion to be avenged. From a beetle-haunted Geographical chop-house-where there were
kitchen below this institution, fumes arose, sug- maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every
gestive of a class of soup which Mr. Grazing- half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy
lands knew, from painful experience, enfeebles on every one of the knives—to this day there is
the mind, distends the stomach, forces itself into scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord
the complexion, and tries to ooze out at the Mayor's dominions which is not Geographical—
As he decided against entering, and and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs,
turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands, becoming per-staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of
ceptibly weaker, repeated, "I am rather faint, dinners.-Great Expectations, Chap. 47.
Alexander, but don't mind me." Urged to
new efforts by these words of resignation, Mr.
Grazinglands looked in at a cold and floury
baker's shop, where utilitarian buns, unrelieved
by a currant, consorted with hard biscuits, a
stone filter of cold water, a hard pale clock, and
a hard little old woman, with flaxen hair, of an
undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if she had
been fed upon seeds.
eyes.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 6.
RESTAURANT-A French.
RETRIBUTION.
"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 Lightning," said Defarge.
"How long," demanded madame, composedly,
"does it take to make and store the lightning?
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?"
On my experience south of Paris," said Our
Missis, in a deep tone, "I will not expatiate."
Too loathsome were the task! But fancy this.
Fancy a guard coming round, with the train at
full speed, to inquire how many for dinner.
Fancy his telegraphing forward the number of
diners. Fancy every one expected, and the ta-
ble elegantly laid for the complete party. Fan-
cy a charming dinner, in a charming room, and
the head-cook, concerned for the honor of every
dish, superintending in his clean white jacket
and cap. Fancy the Beast travelling six hun-
dred miles on end, very fast, and with great
"A long time, I suppose," said Defarge.
"But when it is ready, it takes place, and
grinds to pieces everything before it. In the
mean time, 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
RETICENCE
right hand, for emphasis, "that although it is a
long time on the road, it is on the road and com-
ing. 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.'
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 16.
399
REVOLUTION
France, less favored on the whole as to mat-
ters spiritual than her sister of the shield and
trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down-
hill, making paper money and spending it. Un-
der the guidance of her Christian pastors, she
entertained herself, besides, with such humane
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.
RETICENCE-Of Mr. Chivery.
It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of
He locked himself up as carefully as he locked France and Norway, there were growing trees,
up the Marshalsea debtors. Even his custom when that sufferer was put to death, already
of bolting his meals may have been a part of an marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down
uniform whole; but there is no question, that, and be sawn into boards, to make a certain
as to all other purposes, he kept his mouth as he movable framework with a sack and a knife in
kept the Marshalsea door. He never opened it it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that
without occasion. When it was necessary to let in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the
anything out, he opened it a little way, held it heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were shel-
open just as long as sufficed for the purpose, tered from the weather that very day, rude
and locked it again. Even as he would be spar- carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed
ing of his trouble at the Marshalsea door, and about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which
would keep a visitor who wanted to go out, the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be
waiting for a few moments if he saw another his tumbrils of the Revolution. But, that
visitor coming down the yard, so that one turn Woodman and that Farmer, though they work
of the key should suffice for both, similarly he unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard
would often reserve a remark if he perceived them as they went about with muffled tread:
another on its way to his lips, and would deliver the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any sus-
himself of the two together. As to any key topicion that they were awake, was to be atheis-
his inner knowledge being to be found in his tical and traitorous.
face, the Marshalsea key was as legible an index
to the individual characters and histories upon
which it was turned.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 25.
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
RETICENCE—Of Mrs. General.
cautioned not to go out of town without re-
"My goodness me, Amy," returned Fanny, moving their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses
is she the sort of woman to say anything? for security; the highwayman in the dark was
Isn't it perfectly plain and clear that she has a City tradesman in the light, and, being
nothing to do, at present, but to hold herself up-recognized and challenged by his fellow-trades-
right, keep her aggravating gloves on, and go
sweeping about? Say anything! If she had
the ace of trumps in her hand, at whist, she
wouldn't say anything, child. It would come
out when she played it.'
""
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 7.
REVOLUTION-Before the French.
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 Eng-
gland; 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.
man 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 ammuni-
tion;" after which the mail was robbed in
peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord
Mayor of London, was made to stand and de-
liver 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 ma-
jesty 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 drawing-rooms;
musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for
contraband goods, and the mob fired on the
musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the
mob, and nobody thought any of these occur-
rences much out of the common way. In
the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy
and ever worse than useless, was in constant
requisition; now, stringing up long rows of
miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a house-
breaker on Saturday who had been taken on
Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at
Newgate by the dozen, and now burning
pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall
to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murder
REVOLUTION
400
er, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who
had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.
REVOLUTION
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.
All these things, and a thousand like them,
came to pass in and close upon the dear old year
one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
Environed by them, while the Woodman 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 Great-
nesses, and myriads of small creatures-the
creatures of this chronicle among the rest-play.
along the roads that lay before them.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 1.
REVOLUTION-Scenes in the French.
'Patriots!" said Defarge, in a determined
voice, are we ready?"
"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
The people immediately behind Madame De
farge, explaining 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,
Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her and the winnowing of many bushels of words,
girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if | Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of im-
it and a drummer had flown together by magic; patience were taken up, with marvellous quick-
and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, ness, at a distance: the more readily, because
and flinging her arms about her head like all certain men who had by some wonderful exer-
the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house cise of agility climbed up the external archi-
to house, rousing the women.
tecture to look in from the windows, knew
Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph
between her and the crowd outside the build-
ing.
The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded
anger with which they looked from windows,
caught up what arms they had, and came pour-
ing down into the streets; but the women were
a sight to chill the boldest. From such house-
hold occupations 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 daugh-
ter! 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, when these
breasts were dry with want! O mother of God,
this Foulon! Ó 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 the women, lashed into
blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tear-
ing 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.
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 known directly, to the furthest confines
of the crowd. Defarge had sprung over a rail-
ing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch
in a deadly embrace-Madame Defarge had 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 al-
ways 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
Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not at: a mouse-and silently and composedly looked
moment! This Foulon was at the Hôtel 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.
at him while they made ready, and while he be-
sought her: the women passionately 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, wi‘*

2911
371113
י הים
THE REVOLUTION.
400
REVOLUTION
401
RICH MAN
grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine REVOLUTION—The knitting women of
to dance at the sight of.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 22.
REVOLUTION-The mobs of the French.
In the howling universe of passion and con-
tention 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 hus-
band!" she cried, pointing him out. "See De-
farge!" She stood immovable close to the grim
old officer, and remained immovable 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 ani-
mated, 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 Hôtel 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 unfathomed, and whose
forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea
of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of ven-
geance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suf-
fering 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 re-
leased by the storm that had burst their tomb,
were carried high overhead; all scared, all lost,
all wondering and amazed, as if 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, and bear witness with the
bloodless lips, "THOU DIDST IT!”
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 thou-
sand seven hundred and eighty-nine.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 21.
|
the French.
In the evening, at which season of all others
Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and
sat on door-steps and 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 Mission-
ary-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 mechani-
cal substitute for eating and drinking; the hands
moved for the jaws and the digestive appara-
tus; 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 knot 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, a grand woman, a
frightfully grand woman!"
Darkness closed around, and then came the
ringing of church 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 thundering
cannon; when the military drums should be
beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all
potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Free-
dom and Life. So much was closing in about
the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they
their very selves were closing in around a struc-
ture yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting,
knitting, counting dropping heads.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 16.
RHEUMATISM vs. TOMBATISM.
"How are you, Durdles?"
"I've got a touch of the Tombatism on me,
Mr. Jasper, but that I must expect."
"You mean the Rheumatism," says Sapsea,
in a sharp tone. (He is nettled by having his
composition so mechanically received.)
You
"No, I don't. I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the Tomb-
atism. It's another sort from Rheumatism.
Mr. Jasper knows what Durdles means.
get among them Tombs afore it's well light on
a winter morning, and keep on, as the Catechism
says, a walking in the same all the days of
your
life, and you'll know what Durdles means.
|
"It is a bitter cold place," Mr. Jasper assents,
with an antipathetic shiver.
"And if it's bitter cold for you, up in the
chancel, with a lot of live breath smoking out
about you, what the bitterness is to Durdles,
down in the crypt among the earthy damps
there, and the dead breath of the old´uns," re-
turns that individual, " Durdles leaves you to
judge.”—Edwin Drood, Chap. 4.
RICH MAN-His importance.
The famous name of Merdle became, every
day, more famous in the land. Nobody knew
that the Merdle of such high renown had ever
done any good to any one, alive or dead, or te
RICH MAN
402
any earthly thing; nobody knew that he had any
capacity or utterance of any sort in him, which
had ever thrown, for any creature, the feeblest
farthing-canile ray of light on any path of duty
or diversion, pain or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or
fancy, among the multiplicity of paths in the
labyrinth trodden by the sons of Adam; nobody
had the smallest reason for supposing the clay
of which this object of worship was made, to
be other than the commonest clay, with as clog-
ged a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept
an image of humanity from tumbling to pieces.
All people knew (or thought they knew) that he
had made himself immensely rich; and for that
reason alone, prostrated themselves before him,
more degradedly and less excusably than the
darkest savage creeps out of his hole in the
ground to propitiate, in some log or reptile, the
Deity of his benighted soul.
RIDE
might not be a temporary difficulty in "realizing"
it; whether there might not even be a temporary
suspension (say a month or so) on the part of
the wonderful Bank. As the whispers became
louder, which they did from that time every
minute, they became more threatening. He
had sprung from nothing, by no natural growth
or process that any one could account for; he
had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he
had been a down-looking man, and no one had
ever been able to catch his eye; he had been
taken up by all sorts of people, in quite an un-
accountable manner; he had never had any
money of his own; his ventures had been ut-
terly reckless, and his expenditure had been
most enormous. In steady progression, as the
day declined, the talk rose in sound and pur-
pose. He had left a letter at the Baths ad-
dressed to his physician, and his physician had
Nay, the high priest of this worship had the got the letter, and the letter would be produced
man before them as a protest against their mean- at the Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall
ness. The multitude worshipped on trust-
trust- like a thunderbolt upon the multitude he had
though always distinctly knowing why-but the deluded. Numbers of men in every profession
officiators at the altar had the man habitually in and trade would be blighted by his insolvency:
their view. They sat at his feasts, and he sat old people who had been in easy circumstances
at theirs. There was a spectre always attendant all their lives would have no place of repent-
on him, saying to these high priests, "Are such ance for their trust in him but the workhouse,
the signs you trust, and love to honor; this head, legions of women and children would have their
these eyes, this mode of speech, the tone and whole future desolated by the hand of this
manner of this man? You are the levers of the mighty scoundrel. Every partaker of his mag-
Circumlocution Office, and the rulers of men. nificent feasts would be seen to have been a
When half-a-dozen of you fall out by the ears, sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes;
it seems that mother earth can give birth to no every servile worshipper of riches who had
other rulers. Does your qualification lie in the helped to set him on his pedestal, would have
superior knowledge of men, which accepts, done better to worship the Devil point-blank.
courts, and puffs this man? Or, if you are So, the talk, lashed louder and higher by con-
|
competent to judge aright the signs I never fail firmation on confirmation, and by edition after
to show you when he appears among you, is edition of the evening papers, swelled into such
your superior honesty your qualification?" Two a roar when night came, as might have brought
rather ugly questions these, always going about one to believe that a solitary watcher on the
town with Mr. Merdle; and there was a tacit gallery above the Dome of Saint Paul's would
agreement that they must be stifled.
have perceived the night air to be laden with a
heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled
with every form of execration.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12.
RICH MAN-The world's tribute to the.
For, by that time it was known that the late
Commotion in the office of the hotel. Mer- Mr. Merdle's complaint had been, simply, For-
dle! The landlord, though a gentleman of a gery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of
haughty spirit, who had just driven a pair of such wide-spread adulation, the sitter at great
thorough-bred horses into town, turned out to men's feasts, the roc's egg of great ladies' assem
show him up-stairs. The clerks and servants blies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller
cut him off by back-passages, and were found of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain-
accidentally hovering in doorways and angles, driver with a Minister for Lordships of the Cir-
that they might look upon him. Merdle! O
Merdle! O cumlocution Office, the recipient of more ac-
ye sun, moon, and stars, the great man! The knowledgment within some ten or fifteen years,
rich man, who had in a manner revised the New at most, than had been bestowed in England
Testament, and already entered into the king- upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon
dom of Heaven. The man who could have all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences,
any one he chose to dine with him, and who with all their works to testify for them, during
had made the money! As he went up the two centuries at least-he, the shining wonder,
stairs, people were already posted on the lower the new constellation to be followed by the
stairs, that his shadow might fall upon them wise men bringing gifts, until it stopped over
when he came down. So were the sick brought certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and dis-
out and laid in the track of the Apostle-who had appeared-was simply the greatest Forger and
not got into the good society, and had not made the greatest Thief that ever cheated the gallows.
the money.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 25.
RICH MAN-His fall.
But, at about the time of High 'Change, Pres-
sure began to wane, and appalling whispers to
circulate east, west, north, and south. At first
they were faint, and went no further than a doubt
whether Mr. Merdle's wealth would be found to
be as vast as had been supposed; whether there
RICH AND POOR.
"Detestation of the high is the involuntary
homage of the low."-Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 9
RIDE-Tom Pinch's morning.
What better time for driving, riding, walking,
moving through the air by any means, than a

MR. MERDLE, A BORROWER.
402
RIDE
403
RIVER
RIVER AND FERRY-BOAT-Their moral.
Within view was the peaceful river and the
ferry-boat, to moralize to all the inmates, say-
ing: Young or old, passionate or tranquil, chaf-
ing or content, you, thus runs the current al-
ways. Let the heart swell into what discord it
will, thus plays the rippling water on the prow
of the ferry-boat ever the same tune. Year after
year, so much allowance for the drifting of the
boat, so many miles an hour the flowing of the
fresh, frosty morning, when hope runs cheerily the tidings to the water-mill, three miles a-
through the veins with the brisk blood, and way.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5,
tingles in the frame from head to foot! This
was the glad commencement of a bracing day
in early winter, such as may put the languid
summer season (speaking of it when it can't be
had) to the blush, and shame the spring for
being sometimes cold by halves. The sheep-
bells rang as clearly in the vigorous air, as if
they felt its wholesome influence like living
creatures; the trees, in lieu of leaves or blos-
soms, shed upon the ground a frosty rime that
sparkled as it fell, and might have been the dust
of diamonds. So it was, to Tom. From cot-stream, here the rushes, there the lilies, nothing
tage chimneys, smoke went streaming up high,
high, as if the earth had lost its grossness, being
so fair, and must not be oppressed by heavy
vapor. The crust of ice on the else rippling
brook, was so transparent and so thin in tex-
ture, that the lively water might, of its own
free will, have stopped-in Tom's glad mind
it had to look upon the lovely morning.
And lest the sun should break this charm too
eagerly, there moved between him and the
ground a mist like that which waits upon the
moon on summer nights-the very same to Tom
-and wooed him to dissolve it gently.
Tom Pinch went on; not fast, but with a
sense of rapid motion, which did just as well;
and as he went, all kinds of things occurred to
keep him happy. Thus when he came within
sight of the turnpike, and was-Oh a long way
off!-he saw the tollman's wife, who had that
moment checked a wagon, run back into the
little house again like mad, to say (she knew)
that Mr. Finch was coming up. And she was
right, for when he drew within hail of the gate,
forth rushed the tollman's children, shrieking
in tiny chorus, "Mr. Pinch!" to Tom's intense
delight. The very tollman, though an ugly
chap in general, and one whom folks were
rather shy of handling, came out himself to
take the toll, and gave him rough good-morn-
ing; and that with all this, and a glimpse of
the family breakfast on the little round table
before the fire, the crust Tom Pinch had brought
away with him acquired as rich a flavor as
though it had been cut from a fairy loaf.
But there was more than this. It was not
only the married people and the children who
gave Tom Pinch a welcome as he passed. No,
no. Sparkling eyes and snowy breasts came
hurriedly to many an upper casement as he clat-
tered by, and gave him back his greeting: not
stinted either, but sevenfold, good measure.
They were all merry. They all laughed. And
some of the wickedest among them even kissed
their hands as Tom looked back. For who
minded poor Mr. Pinch? There was no harm
in him.
And now the morning grew so fair, and all
things were so wide awake and gay, that the sun
seeming to say-Tom had no doubt he said-
"I can't stand it any longer: I must have a
look," streamed out in radiant majesty. The
mist, too shy and gentle for such lusty company,
fled off, quite scared, before it; and as it swept
away, the hills and mounds and distant pasture
lands, teeming with placid sheep and noisy
crows, came out as bright as though they were
unrolled bran new for the occasion. In com-
pliment to which discovery, the brook stood
still no longer, but ran briskly off to bear
uncertain or unquiet, upon this road that stead-
ily runs away; while you, upon your flowing
road of time, are so capricious and distracted.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 16.
RIVER-At evening.
A late, dull, autumn night was closing in upon
the river Saone. The stream, like a sullied look-
ing-glass in a gloomy place, reflected the clouds
heavily; and the low banks leaned over here
and there, as if they were half curious, and half
afraid, to see their darkening pictures in the
water. The flat expanse of country about Cha-
lons lay a long heavy streak, occasionally made
a little ragged by a row of poplar trees, against
the wrathful sunset.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. II.
RIVER SCENE-On the Thames.
It was flood-tide when Daniel Quilp sat him-
self down in the wherry to cross to the opposite
shore. A fleet of barges were coming lazily on,
some sideways, some head first, some stern first;
all in a wrong-headed, dogged, obstinate way,
bumping up against the larger craft, running
under the bows of steamboats, getting into every
kind of nook and corner where they had no
business, and being crunched on all sides like
so many walnut-shells; while each, with its pair
of long sweeps struggling and splashing in the
water, looked like some lumbering fish in pain.
In some of the vessels at anchor, all hands
were busily engaged in coiling ropes, spreading
out sails to dry, taking in or discharging their
cargoes; in others, no life was visible but two
or three tarry boys, and perhaps a barking dog
running to and fro upon the deck, or scrambling
up to look over the side and bark the louder
for the view. Coming slowly on through the
forests of masts, was a great steamship, beating
the water in short impatient strokes with her
heavy paddles, as though she wanted room to
breathe, and advancing in her huge bulk like a
sea-monster among the minnows of the Thames.
On either hand, were long black tiers of colliers;
between them, vessels slowly working out of
harbor with sails glistening in the sun, and
creaking noise on board, re-echoed from a hun-
dred quarters. The water and all upon it was
in active motion, dancing and buoyant and bub
bling up; while the old gray Tower and piles
of building on the shore, with many a church-
spire shooting up between, looked coldly on,
and seemed to disdain their chafing neighbor.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 5.
RIVER-A portal of eternity.
To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Win-
ter Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts
RIVER
of many who had sought a refuge there, before
her. Where scattered lights upon the banks
gleamed sullen, red, and dull, as torches that
were burning there, to show the way to Death.
Where no abode of living people cast its shadow
on the deep, impenetrable, melancholy shade.
To the River! To that portal of Eternity,
her desperate footsteps tended with the swift-
ness of its rapid waters running to the sea.
Chimes, 4th Quarter.
RIVER-A midnight funeral.
Pieces.
RIVER-Its foreknowledge of the sea.
404
Its river winding down from the mist on the ho-
rizon, as though that were its source, and already
heaving with a restless knowledge of its approach
towards the sea.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 12.
RIVER SCENERY
obviously were doing something that they
often did, and were seeking what they often
sought. Half savage as the man showed, with
no covering on his matted head, with his brown
arms bare to between the elbow and the shoul-
der, with the loose knot of a looser ker-
chief lying low on his bare breast in a wilder-
ness of beard and whisker, with su. h dress as
he wore seeming to be made out of the mud
that begrimed his boat, still there was busi-
ness-like usage in his steady gaze. So with
every lithe action of the girl, with every turn
of her wrist, perhaps most of all with her
look of dread or horror; they were things of
usage.-Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 1.
RIVER SCENERY-The Ohio.
I should like to know where Inspector Field
was born. In Ratcliff Highway, I would have
answered with confidence, but for his being
equally at home wherever we go. He does not
trouble his head as I do, about the river at
night. He does not care for its creeping, black
A fine broad river always, but in some parts
and silent, on our right there, rushing through much wider than in others; and then there is
sluice gates, lapping at piles and posts and usually a green island covered with trees, divid
iron rings, hiding strange things in its mud, run-ing it into two streams. Occasionally we stop for
ning away with suicides and accidentally drown- a few minutes, maybe to take in wood, maybe
ed bodies faster than midnight funeral should, for passengers, at some small town or village (I
and acquiring such various experience between ought to say city; every place is a city here);
its cradle and its grave. It has no mystery for but the banks are for the most part deep soli-
him.-On Duty with Inspector Field. Reprinted tudes overgrown with trees, which hereabouts
are already in leaf and very green. For miles
and miles and miles, these solitudes are unbro-
ken by any sign of human life or trace of human
footstep; nor is anything seen to move about
them but the blue-jay, whose color is so bright
and yet so delicate that it looks like a flying
flower, At lengthened intervals a log-cabin,
with its little space of cleared land about it,
nestles under a rising ground, and sends its
thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky.
It stands in the corner of the poor field of
wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps,
like earthy butchers' blocks. Sometimes the
ground is only just now cleared; the felled
trees lying yet upon the soil, and the log-house
only this morning begun. As we pass this clear-
ing, the settler leans upon his axe or hammer,
and looks wistfully at the people from the world.
The children creep out of the temporary hut,
which is like a gypsy tent upon the ground, and
clap their hands and shout. The dog only
glances round at us, and then looks up into his
master's face again, as if he were rendered un-
easy by any suspension of the common business,
and had nothing more to do with pleasurers.
And still there is the same eternal foreground.
RIVER THIEF.
In these times of ours, though concerning
the exact year there is no need to be precise,
a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance,
with two figures in it floated on the Thames,
between Southwark Bridge, which is of iron,
and London Bridge, which is of stone, as an
autumn evening was closing in.
The figures in this boat were those of a strong
man with ragged, grizzled hair, and a sun-
browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or
twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognizable
as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a
pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the
rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands
loose in his waistband, kept an eager look-out.
He had no net, hook, or line, and he could
not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for
a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appliance
beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope,
and he could not be a waterman; his boat was
too crazy and too small to take in cargo for
delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or
river-carrier; there was no clue to what he
looked for, but he looked for something, with a
most intent and searching gaze. The tide,
which had turned an hour before, was running
down, and his eyes watched every little race
and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made
slight headway against, or drove stern foremost
before it, according as he directed his daughter
by a movement of his head. She watched his
face as earnestly as he watched the river. But
in the intensity of her look there was a touch
of dread or horror.
Allied to the bottom of the river rather
than the surface, by reason of the slime and
ooze with which it was covered, and its sod-
den state, this boat and the two figures in it
*
*
*
*
Through such a scene as this the unwieldly
machine takes its hoarse, sullen way; venting
at every revolution of the paddles a loud, high-
pressure blast; enough, one would think, to
waken up the host of Indians who lie buried in
a great mound yonder; so old that mighty
oaks and other forest trees have struck their
roots into its earth; and so high that it is a hill,
even among the hills that nature planted round
it. The very river, as though it shared one's
feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who
lived so pleasantly here, in their blessed igno-
rance of white existence, hundreds of years ago,
steals out of its way to ripple near this mound
and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles
more brightly than in the Big Grave Creek.
*
*
*
*
*
The night is dark, and we proceed within the
shadow of the wooded bank, which makes it
darker. After gliding past the sombre maze of
RIVER
405
boughs for a long time, we come upon an open
space where the tall trees are burning. The
shape of every branch and twig is expressed in
a deep red glow; and, as the light wind stirs
and ruffles it, they seem to vegetate in fire. It
is such a sight as we read of in legends of en-
chanted forests; saving that it is sad to see these
noble works wasting away so awfully, alone;
and to think how many years must come and
go before the magic that created them will rear
their like upon this ground again. But the
time will come; and when, in their changed
ashes, the growth of centuries unborn has struck
its roots, the restless men of distant ages will
repair to these again unpeopled solitudes; and
their fellows, in cities far away, that slumber
now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read,
in language strange to any ears in being now,
but very old to them, of primeval forests where
the axe was never heard, and where the jungled
ground was never trodden by a human foot.
Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and
thoughts, and when the morning shines again,
it gilds the house-tops of a lively city, before
whose broad paved wharf the boat is moored,
with other boats, and flags, and moving wheels,
and hum of men around it; as though there
were not a solitary or silent rood of ground
within the compass of a thousand miles.
American Notes, Chap. II.
RIVER-Mississippi-On the.
On they toiled through great solitudes, where
the trees upon the banks grew thick and close;
and floated in the stream; and held up shrivelled
arms from out the river's depths; and slid down
from the margin of the land, half growing, half
decaying, in the miry water. On through the
weary day and melancholy night; beneath the
burning sun, and in the mist and vapor of the
evening; on, until return appeared impossible,
and restoration to their home a miserable
dream.
|
RIVER
festering elements of corruption and disease, be-
came a horror; this was the realm of Hope
through which they moved.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 23.
RIVER-A dreary neighborhood by the.
The neighborhood was a dreary one at that
time; as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night,
as any about London. There were neither
wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of
road near the great blank Prison. A sluggish
ditch deposited its mud by the prison walls.
Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all
the marshy land in the vicinity. In one part,
carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and
never finished, rotted away. In another, the
ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters
of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces,
paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails,
and I know not what strange objects, accumu-
lated by some speculator, and grovelling in the
dust, underneath which-having sunk into the
soil of their own weight in wet weather-they
had the appearance of vainly trying to hide
themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery
Works upon the river side, arose by night to
disturb everything except the heavy and un-
broken smoke that poured out of their chim-
neys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among
old wooden piles, with a sickly substance cling-
ing to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of
last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned
men fluttering above high-water mark, led down
through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide.
There was a story that one of the pits dug for
the dead in the time of the Great Plague was
hereabout; and a blighting influence seemed to
have proceeded from it over the whole place.
Or else it looked as if it had gradually decom-
posed into that nightmare condition, out of the
overflowings of the polluted stream.
David Copperfield, Chap. 47.
RIVER-(A water party).
They had now but few people on board, and
these few were as flat, as dull, and stagnant, as But the party arrives, and Dando, relieved
the vegetation that oppressed their eyes. No from his state of uncertainty, starts up into ac-
sound of cheerfulness or hope was heard; no tivity. They approach in full aquatic costume,
pleasant talk beguiled the tardy time; no little with round blue jackets, striped shirts, and caps
group made common cause against the dull de- of all sizes and patterns, from the velvet skull-
pression of the scene. But that, at certain cap of French manufacture, to the easy head-
periods, they swallowed food together from a dress familiar to the students of the old spelling-
common trough, it might have been old Charon's books, as having, on the authority of the portrait,
boat, conveying melancholy shades to judg-formed part of the costume of the Reverend Mr.
Dilworth.
ment.
*
*
*
*
*
As they proceeded further on their track, and
came more and more towards their journey's
end, the monotonous desolation of the scene in-
creased to that degree, that for any redeeming
feature it presented to their eyes, they might
have entered, in the body, on the grim domains
of Giant Despair. A flat morass, bestrewn with
fallen timber a marsh, on which the good growth
of the earth seemed to have been wrecked and
cast away, that from its decomposing ashes vile
and ugly things might rise; where the very trees
took the aspect of huge weeds, begotten of the
slime from which they sprung, by the hot sun
that burnt them up; where fatal maladies, seek-
ing whom they might infect, came forth at night,
in misty shapes, and creeping out upon the
water, hunted them like spectres until day;
where even the blessed sun, shining down on
This is the most amusing time to observe a
regular Sunday water-party. There has evi-
dently been up to this period no inconsiderable
degree of boasting on everybody's part relative
to his knowledge of navigation; the sight of
the water rapidly cools their courage, and the
air of self-denial with which each of them in-
sists on somebody else's taking an oar, is per-
fectly delightful. At length, after a great deal
of changing and fidgeting, consequent upon the
election of a stroke-oar, the inability of one
gentleman to pull on this side, of another to
pull on that, and of a third to pull at all, the
boat's crew are seated. Shove her off!" cries
the coxswain, who looks as easy and comfort-
able as if he were steering in the Bay of Biscay.
The order is obeyed; the boat is immediately
turned completely round, and proceeds towards
Westminster Bridge, amidst such a splashing
RIVER SPORTS
406
ROME
"
and struggling as never was seen before, except RIVER-SPORTS-(Water Excursions).
when the Royal George went down.
"Back
"Are you fond of the water?" is a questior.
wa'ater, sir," shouts Dando, "Back wa'ater, you very frequently asked, in hot summer weather,
sir, aft;" upon which everybody thinking he by amphibious-looking young men. "Very," is
must be the individual referred to, they all back the general reply.
"An't you?" Hardly ever
water, and back comes the boat, stern first, to off it," is the response, accompanied by sundry
the spot whence it started. "Back water, you adjectives, expressive of the speaker's heartfelt
sir, aft; pull round, you sir, for'ad, can't you?" admiration of that element. Now, with all re-
shouts Dando, in a frenzy of excitement. Pull spect for the opinion of society in general, and
round, Tom, can't you?" re-echoes one of the cutter clubs in particular, we humbly suggest
party. "Tom an't for'ad," replies another. that some of the most painful reminiscences in
Yes, he is," cries a third; and the unfortunate the mind of every individual who has occasion-
young man, at the imminent risk of breaking a ally disported himself on the Thames, must be
blood-vessel, pulls and pulls, until the head of connected with his aquatic recreations. Who
the boat fairly lies in the direction of Vauxhall ever heard of a successful water-party?-or, to
Bridge. "That's right-now pull all on you!" put the question in a still more intelligible form,
shouts Dando again, adding, in an undertone, who ever saw one? We have been on water-
to somebody by him, "Blowed if hever I see excursions out of number, but we solemnly de-
such a set of muffs!" and away jogs the boat in clare that we cannot call to mind one single
a zigzag direction, every one of the six oars occasion of the kind, which was not marked by
dipping into the water at a different time; and more miseries than any one would suppose
the yard is once more clear, until the arrival of could reasonably be crowded into the space of
the next party.-Scenes, Chap. 10.
some eight or nine hours. Something has al-
ways gone wrong. Either the cork of the salad.
dressing has come out, or the most anxiously
expected member of the party has not come out
or the most disagreeable man in company would
come out, or a child or two have fallen into the
water, or the gentleman who undertook to steer
has endangered everybody's life all the
way, or
the gentlemen who volunteered to row have
been "out of practice," and performed very
alarming evolutions, putting their oars down
into the water and not being able to get them
up again, or taking terrific pulls without put-
ting them in at all; in either case, pitching
over on the backs of their heads with startling
violence, and exhibiting the soles of their
pumps to the "sitters" in the boat, in a very
humiliating manner.-Scenes, Chap. 10.
RIVER SPORTS—A rowing match.
A well-contested rowing-match on the
Thames, is a very lively and interesting scene.
The water is studded with boats of all sorts,
kinds, and descriptions; places in the coal-
barges at the different wharfs are let to crowds
of spectators; beer and tobacco flow freely
about; men, women, and children wait for the
start in breathless expectation; cutters of six
and eight oars glide gently up and down,
waiting to accompany their protégés during the
race; bands of music add to the animation, if
not to the harmony of the scene; groups of
watermen are assembled at the different stairs,
discussing the merits of the respective candi-
dates; and the prize wherry, which is rowed
slowly about by a pair of sculls, is an object
of general interest.
Two o'clock strikes, and everybody looks
anxiously in the direction of the bridge through
which the candidates for the prize will come-
half-past two, and the general attention which
has been preserved so long begins to flag, when
suddenly a gun is heard, and the noise of dis-
tant hurra'ing along each bank of the river-
every head is bent forward-the noise draws
nearer and nearer-the boats which have been
waiting at the bridge start briskly up the river,
and a well-manned galley shoots through the
arch, the sitters cheering on the boats behind
them, which are not yet visible.
"
"
"Here they are,
is the general cry-and
through darts the first boat, the men in her
stripped to the skin, and exerting every muscle
to preserve the advantage they have gained-
four other boats follow close astern; there are
not two boats' length between them-the shout-
ing is tremendous and the interest intense.
Go on, Pink "—"Give it her, Red"-" Sulli-
win for ever "Bravo! George
Now,
Tom, now-now-now-why don't your partner
stretch out?"—"Two pots to a pint on Yellow,"
etc., etc. Every little public-house fires its gun,
and hoists its flag; and the men who win the
heat, come in amidst a splashing, and shouting,
and banging, and confusion, which no one can
imagine who has not witnessed it, and of which
any description would convey a very faint idea.
Scenes. Chap. 10.
|
ROME-Its past and present.
But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks,
or columns: ancient temples, theatres, houses,
porticoes, or forums: it is strange to see how
every fragment, whenever it is possible, has
been blended into some modern structure, and
made to serve some modern purpose—a wall, a
dwelling-place, a granary, a stable-some use
for which it never was designed, and associated
with which it cannot otherwise than lamely as-
sort. It is stranger still, to see how many ruins
of the old mythology, how many fragments of
obsolete legend and observance, have been in-
corporated into the worship of Christian altars
here; and how, in numberless respects, the false
faith and the true are fused into a monstrous
union.
*
*
*
*
What a bright noon it was, as we rode away
The Tiber was no longer yellow, but blue.
There was a blush on the old bridges, that
made them fresh and hale again. The Pan-
theon, with its majestic front, all seamed and
furrowed like an old face, had summer light
upon its battered walls. Every squalid and
desolate hut in the Eternal City (bear witness
every grim old palace, to the filth and misery of
the plebeian neighbor that elbows it, as certain
as Time has laid its grip on its patrician head!,
was fresh and new with some ray of the sun
The very prison in the crowded street, a whir
of carriages and people, had some stray sense
ROME
of the day, dropping through its chinks and
crevices; and dismal prisoners who could not
wind their faces round the barricading of the
blocked-up windows, stretched out their
hands, and clinging to the rusty bars, turned
them towards the overflowing street; as if it
were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in that
way.
*
*
*
*
*
407
ROME
smells, and palaces, and hovels, of an old Italian
street.-Pictures from Italy.
ROME-The Coliseum.
We said to the coachman, "Go to the Coli.
seum." In a quarter of an hour or so, he stop-
ped at the gate, and we went in.
It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth,
to say so suggestive and distinct is it at this
hour-that, for a moment-actually in passing
in-they who will, may have the whole great
pile before them, as it used to be, with
thousands of eager faces staring down into the
arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood,
and dust, going on there, as no language can
describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its
utter desolation, strike upon the stranger the
next moment, like a softened sorrow; and
never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved
and overcome by any sight, not immediately
connected with his own affections and afflic-
tions.
By way of contrast we rode out into old ruined
Rome, after all this firing and booming, to take
our leave of the Coliseum. I had seen it by
moonlight before (I never could get through a
day without going back to it), but its tremen-
dous solitude that night is past all telling. The
ghostly pillars in the Forum; the Triumphal
Arches of Old Emperors; those enormous mass-
es of ruin which were once their palaces; the
grass-grown mounds that mark the graves of
ruined temples; the stones of the Via Sacra,
smooth with the tread of feet in ancient Rome:
even these were dimmed, in their transcendent
melancholy, by the dark ghost of its bloody To see it crumbling there, an inch a year;
holidays, erect and grim; haunting the old its walls and arches overgrown with green; its
scene; despoiled by pillaging Popes and fight- corridors open to the day; the long grass
ing Princes, but not laid; wringing wild hands growing in its porches; young trees of yester-
of weed, and grass, and bramble; and lament- day, springing up on its ragged parapets, and
ing to the night in every gap and broken arch-bearing fruit-chance produce of the seeds
the shadow of its awful self, immovable!
ROME-Its relics.
Pictures from Italy.
Such are the spots and patches in my dream
of churches, that remain apart, and keep their
separate identity. I have a fainter recollection,
sometimes, of the relics; of the fragments of the
pillar of the Temple that was rent in twain; of
the portion of the table that was spread for the
Last Supper; of the well at which the woman
of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour; of two
columns from the house of Pontius Pilate; of
the stone to which the Sacred hands were bound,
when the scourging was performed; of the grid-
iron of St. Lawrence, and the stone below it,
marked with the frying of his fat and blood;
these set a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as
an old story or a fable might, and stop them for
an instant, as they flit before me. The rest is a
vast wilderness of consecrated buildings of all
shapes and fancies, blending one with another;
of battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up
from the ground, and forced, like giant captives,
to support the roofs of Christian churches; of
pictures, bad, and wonderful, and impious, and
ridiculous; of kneeling people, curling incense,
tinkling bells, and sometimes (but not often) of a
swelling organ; of Madonne, with their breasts
stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle
like a modern fan; of actual skeletons of dead
saints, hideously attired in gaudy satins, silks,
and velvets, trimmed with gold: their withered
crust of skull adorned with precious jewels, or
with chaplets of crushed flowers; sometimes, of
people gathered round the pulpit, and a monk
within it stretching out the crucifix, and preach-
ing fiercely: the sun just streaming down
through some high window on the sail-cloth
stretched above him and across the church, to
keep his high-pitched voice from being lost
among the echoes of the roof. Then my tired
memory comes out upon a flight of steps, where
knots of people are asleep, or basking in the
ight; and strolls away among the rags, and
dropped there by the birds who build their
nests within its chinks and crannies-to see its
Pit of Fight filled up with earth, and the
peaceful Cross planted in the centre; to climb
into its upper halls, and look down on ruin,
ruin, ruin, all about it; the triumphal arches
of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus
the Roman Forum; the Palace of the Cæsars,
the temples of the old religion, fallen down and
gone-is to see the ghost of old Rome,
wicked, wonderful, old city, haunting the very
ground on which its people trod. It is the most
impressive, the most stately, the most solemn,
grand, majestic, mournful sight, conceivable.
Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight
of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over
with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as
it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin.
GOD be thanked-a ruin !
As it tops the other ruins standing there, a
mountain among graves: so do its ancient influ-
ences outlive all other remnants of the old my-
thology and old butchery of Rome, in the na-
ture of the fierce and cruel Roman people.
The Italian face changes as the visito: ap-
proaches the city; its beauty becomes devilish;
and there is scarcely one countenance in a
hundred, among the common people in the
streets, that would not be at home and happy
in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow.
ROME St. Peter's.
Pictures from Italy.
It
The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, on
that second visit, was exactly what it was at
first, and what it remains after many visits.
is not religiously impressive or affecting. It is
an immense edifice, with no one point for the
mind to rest upon; and it tires itself with
wandering round and round. The very pur-
pose of the place is not expressed in anything
you see there, unless you examine its details—
and all examination of details is incompatible
with the place itself. It might be a Pantheon,
or a Senate House, or a great architectural
ROME
408
SAILOR
trophy, having no other object than an archi- ing were before the solitary girl often sitting on
tectural triumph.—Pictures from Italy.
ROME-Its ruins.
Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a
Rome as no one can imagine in its full and
awful grandeur! We wandered out upon the
Appian Way, and then went on, through miles
of ruined tombs and broken walls, with here
and there a desolate and uninhabited house;
past the Circus of Romulus, where the course
of the chariots, the stations of the judges, com-
petitors, and spectators, are yet as plainly to
be seen as in old time: past the tomb of Ce-
cilia Metella: past all inclosure, hedge, or
stake, wall or fence: away upon the open
Campagna, where, on that side of Rome, nothing
is to be beheld but Ruin. Except where the dis-
tant Apennines bound the view upon the left,
the whole wide prospect is one field of ruin.
Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque
and beautiful clusters of arches; broken tem-
ples; broken tombs. A desert of decay, som-
bre and desolate beyond all expression; and
with a history in every stone that strews the
ground.-Pictures from Italy.
ROUGE-Miss Mowcher on.
"I do something in that way myself-perhaps
a good deal-perhaps a little-sharp's the word,
my dear boy-never mind!”
"In what way do you mean? In the rouge
way?" said Steerforth.
|
|
some broken fragment; and in the lonely places
under the blue sky, she saw them both together
Up, then, would come Mrs. General; taking
all the color out of everything, as Nature and
Art had taken it out of herself; writing Prunes
and Prism, in Mr. Eustace's text, wherever she
could lay a hand; looking everywhere for Mr.
Eustace and company, and seeing nothing else,
scratching up the dryest little bones of antiquity
and bolting them whole without any human vis
|itings—like a Ghoul in gloves.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 15.
S
SAILOR-"Poor Mercantile Jack.”
Is the sweet little cherub, who sits smiling
aloft, and keeps watch on the life of poor Jack,
commissioned to take charge of Mercantile
Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy? If
not, who is? What is the cherub about, and
what are we all about, when poor Mercantile
Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out
by pennyweights, aboard the brig Beelzebub, or
the bark Bowie-knife,-when he looks his last
at that infernal craft, with the first officer's iron
boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying
body towed overboard in the ship's wake, while
the cruel wounds in it do "the multitudinous
seas incarnadine?"
Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if,
aboard the brig Beelzebub or the bark Bowie-
knife, the first officer did half the damage to cot.
ton that he does to men, there would presently
arise from both sides of the Atlantic so vocifer-
ous an invocation of the sweet little cherub who
sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the
markets that pay, that such vigilant cherub
would, with a winged sword, have that gallant
officer's organ of destructiveness out of his head,
in the space of a flash of lightning?
"Put this and that together, my tender pu-
pil," returned the wary Mowcher, touching her
nose, "work it by the rule of Secrets in all
trades, and the product will give you the de-
sired result. I say I do a little in that way my-
self. One Dowager, she calls it lip-salve.
Another, she calls it gloves. Another, she calls
it tucker-edging. Another, she calls it a fan.
I call it whatever they call it. I supply it for
'em, but we keep up the trick so, to one anoth-
er, and make believe with such a face, that they'd
as soon think of laying it on before a whole
drawing-room, as before me, And when I wait
upon 'em, they'll say to me sometimes-with it If it be unreasonable, then am I the most
on-thick, and no mistake-'How am I look-unreasonable of men, for I believe it with all
ing, Mowcher? Am I pale?' Ha! ha! ha!
ha! Isn't that refreshing, my young friend!"
David Copperfield, Chap. 22.
RUMOR-Popular.
Popular rumor, unlike the rolling stone of
the proverb, is one which gathers a deal of
moss in its wanderings up and down.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 48.
RUINS-Tourists among (Mrs. General).
my soul.
This was my thought as I walked the dock
quays at Liverpool, keeping watch on poor
Mercantile Jack. Alas for me! I have long
out-grown the state of sweet little cherub; but
there I was, and there Mercantile Jack was,
and very busy he was, and very cold he was; the
snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land,
and the northeast winds snipping off the tops
of the little waves in the Mersey, and rolling
them into hailstones to pelt him with. Mercan·
Mrs. General took life easily-as easily, that tile Jack was hard at it in the hard weather,—as
is, as she could take anything-when the Ro- he mostly is, in all weathers, poor Jack. He
man establishment remained in their sole occu-
was girded to ships' masts and funnels of
pation; and Little Dorrit would often ride out steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping
in a hired carriage that was left them, and alight and painting; he was lying out on yards, furl-
alone and wander among the ruins of old Rome. ing sails that tried to beat him off; he was dim-
The ruins of the vast old Amphitheatre, of the ly discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs,
old temples, of the old commemorative Arches, reefing and splicing; he was faintly audible
of the old trodden highways, of the old tombs, down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo
besides being what they were, to her were ruins he was winding round and round at capstans
of the old Marshalsea-ruins of her own old melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was of
life-ruins of the faces and forms that of old a diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Anti
peopled it—ruins of its loves, hopes, cares, and podes; he was washing decks barefoot, with the
joys. Two ruined spheres of action and suffer-breast of his red shirt open to the blast, though
SAILORS
409
SAILORS' DANCE-HOUSE
throw up a rocket in the night, or let them hear
through the angry roar the signal-guns of a
ship in distress, and these men spring up into
activity so dauntless, so valiant, and heroic, that
the world cannot surpass it. Cavillers may ob-
ject that they chiefly live upon the salvage of
valuable cargoes. So they do, and God knows
it is no great living that they get out of the
deadly risks they run. But put that hope of
gain aside. Let these rough fellows be asked
in any storm, who volunteers for the life-boat të
save some perishing souls, as poor and empty.
it was sharper than the knife in his leathern
girdle; he was looking over bulwarks, all eyes
and hair; he was standing by at the shoot of
the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks
in trade of several butchers, poulterers, and fish-
mongers poured down into the ice-house; he was
coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit in a
tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the
very last moment of his shore-going existence.
As though his senses, when released from the
uproar of the elements, were under obligation
to be confused by other turmoil, there was a
rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a clash-handed as themselves, whose lives the perfection
ing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and
casks and timber, an incessant deafening disturb-|
ance on the quays, that was the very madness
of sound. And as, in the midst of it, he stood
swaying about, with his hair blown all manner
of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of his
plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was
shrill in the wind, and every little steamer com-
ing and going across the Mersey was sharp in
its blowing-off, and every buoy in the river bob-
bed spitefully up and down, as if there were a
general taunting chorus of " Come along, Mer-
cantile Jack! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, ho-
cussed, entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out!
Come along! Poor Mercantile Jack, and be
tempest-tossed till you are drowned!"
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 5.
of human reason does not rate at the value of a
farthing each; and that boat will be manned,
as surely and as cheerfully, as if a thousand
pounds were told down on the weather-beaten
pier. For this, and for the recollection of their
comrades whom we have known, whom the rag-
ing sea has engulfed before their children's eyes
in such brave efforts, whom the secret sand has
buried, we hold the boatmen of our watering-
place in our love and honor, and are tender of
the fame they well deserve.
Our English Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces
SAILORS' DANCE-HOUSE—A.
This was the landlord, in a Greek cap and a
dress half-Greek and half-English. As master
of the ceremonies, he called all the figures,
and occasionally addressed himself parentheti-
cally after this manner. When he was very
loud, I use capitals.
·
down). Now den! Hoy! FOUR! Lemonade.
BAL-loon say, and swing. FOUR ladies meets
in 'um middle, FOUR gents goes round 'um
ladies, FoUR gents passes out under 'um ladies'
arms, SWING-and lemonade till 'a m.oosic can't
play no more! (Hoy, Hoy !)"
SAILORS-Their characteristics.
We have a pier―a queer old wooden pier, for-
tunately without the slightest pretensions to ar- "Now den! Hoy! ONE. Right and left.
chitecture, and very picturesque in consequence. (Put a steam on, gib 'um powder.) LA-dies'
Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all chail. BAL-loon say. Lemonade! Two. AD-
over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, warnse and go back (gib 'ell a breakdown, shake
sails, ballast, and rickety capstans, make a per- it out o' yerselbs, keep a movil). SWING-cor-
fect labyrinth of it. Forever hovering about ners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy !)
this pier, with their hands in their pockets, or THREE. GENT come for'ard with a lady and go
leaning over the rough bulwark it opposes to back, hoppersite come for'ard and do what yer
the sea, gazing through telescopes which they can. (Aeiohoy!) BAL-loon say, and leetle lem-
carry about in the same profound receptacles, onade (Dat hair nigger by 'um fireplace 'hind a'
are the Boatmen of our watering-place. Look-time, shake it out o' yerselbs, gib 'ell a break-
ing at them, you would say that surely these
must be the laziest boatmen in the world. They
lounge about, in obstinate and inflexible panta-
loons that are apparently made of wood, the
whole season through. Whether talking to
gether about the shipping in the Channel, or
gruffly unbending over mugs of beer at the
public-house, you would consider them the
slowest of men. The chances are a thousand
to one that you might stay here for ten seasons,
and never see a boatman in a hurry. A certain
expression about his loose hands, when they are
not in his pockets, as if he were carrying a con-
siderable lump of iron in each, without any in-
convenience, suggests strength, but he never
seems to use it. He has the appearance of per-
petually strolling-running is too inappropriate
a word to be thought of-to seed. The only
subject on which he seems to feel any approach
to enthusiasm, is pitch. He pitches everything
he can lay hold of the pier, the palings, his
boat, his house when there is nothing else left
Le turns to and even pitches his hat, or his rough-
weather clothing. Do not judge him by deceit-
ful appearances. These are among the bravest
and most skillful mariners that exist. Let a gale
arise and swell into a storm, let a sea run that
might appal the stoutest heart that ever beat,
let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands
The male dancers were all blacks, and one
was an unusually powerful man of six feet
three or four. The sound of their flat feet
on the floor was as unlike the sound of white
feet as their faces were unlike white faces. They
toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, dou-
ble-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat
the time out rarely, dancing with a great show
of teeth, and with a childish good-humored en-
joyment that was very prepossessing. They
generally kept together, these poor fellows, said
Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a dis-
advantage singly, and liable to slights in the
neighboring streets.
|
But if I were Light Jack,
I should be very slow to interfere oppressively
with Dark Jack; for, whenever I have had to
do with him, I have found him a simple and a
gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked
his friendly permission to leave him restoration
of beer, in wishing him good night, and thus it
fell out that the last words I heard him say, as
I blundered down the worn stairs, were, "Jeb
blem's elth! Ladies drinks fust!"
#
SAILOR
410
The night was now well on into the morning,
but for miles and hours we explored a strange
world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but
everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for
Jack. This exploration was among a labyrinth
of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries,
kept in wonderful order by the police, and in
much better order than by the corporation.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 5.
SAILOR-Description of Sol Gills.
A weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a suit of
battered oilskin, who had got tough and stringy
from long pickling in salt water, and who smelt
like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 8.
To s
nothing of his Welsh wig, which was
as plain and stubborn a Welsh wig as ever was
worn, and in which he looked like anything but
a Rover, he was a slow, quiet-spoken, thought-
ful old fellow, with eyes as red as if they had
been small suns looking at you through a fog;
and a newly-awakened manner, such as he
might have acquired by having stared for three
or four days successively through every optical
instrument in his shop, and suddenly came back
to the world again, to find it green.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 4.
SAILOR-Home of Sol Gills.
Such extraordinary precautions were taken in
every instance to save room, and keep the thing
compact; and so much practical navigation was
fitted, and cushioned, and screwed into every
box (whether the box was a mere slab, as some
were, or something between a cocked hat and a
star-fish, as others were, and those quite mild
and modest boxes as compared with others);
that the shop itself, partaking of the general in-
fection, seemed almost to become a snug, sea-
going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good
sea-room, in the event of an unexpected launch,
to work its way securely to any desert island in
the world.
Many minor incidents in the household life
of the Ships' Instrument-maker, who was proud
of his little Midshipman, assisted and bore out
this fancy.
His acquaintance lying chiefly
among ship-chandlers and so forth, he had al-
ways plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit on his
table. It was familiar with dried meats and
tongues, possessing an extraordinary flavor of
rope-yarn. Pickles were produced upon it, in
great wholesale jars, with "dealer in all kinds
of Ships' Provisions on the label; spirits were
set forth in case bottles with no throats. Old
prints of ships with alphabetical references to
their various mysteries, hung in frames upon
the walls; the Tartar Frigate under weigh,
was on the plates; outlandish shells, seaweeds,
and mosses, decorated the chimneypiece; the
little wainscotted back parlor was lighted by
a sky-light, like a cabin.
"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 4.
SAIREY GAMP and Betsey Prig.
Her toilet was simple. She had merely to
"chuck" her bonnet and shawl upon the bed;
give her hair two pulls, one upon the right side
and one upon the left, as if she were ringing a
couple of bells; and all was done. The tea
was already made, Mrs. Gamp was not long over
SAIREY GAM?
the salad, and they were soon at the height of
their repast.
The temper of both parties was improved, for
the time being, by the enjoyments of the table.
When the meal came to a termination (which it
was pretty long in doing), and Mrs. Gamp having
cleared away, produced the tea-pot from the top-
shelf, simultaneously with a couple of wine.
glasses, they were quite amiable.
Betsey," said Mrs. Gamp, filling her own
glass, and passing the tea-pot, "I will now pro-
poge a toast. My frequent pardner, Betsey Prig!'
"Which, altering the name to Sairah Gamp;
I drink," said Mrs. Prig, “with love and tender-
ness."
From this moment symptoms of inflammation
began to lurk in the nose of each lady; and per-
haps, notwithstanding all appearances to the
contrary, in the temper also.
*
*
*
*
*
The best among us have their failings, and it
must be conceded of Mrs. Prig, that if there
were a blemish in the goodness of her disposi-
tion, it was a habit she had of not bestowing all
its sharp and acid properties upon her patients
(as a thoroughly amiable woman would have
done), but of keeping a considerable remainder
for the service of her friends. Highly pickled
salmon, and lettuces chopped up in vinegar, may,
as viands possessing some acidity of their own,
have encouraged and increased this failing in
Mrs. Prig; and every application to the tea-pot
certainly did; for it was often remarked of her
by her friends, that she was most contradictory
when most elevated. It is certain that her coun-
tenance became about this time derisive and de-
fiant, and that she sat with her arms folded, and
one eye shut up, in a somewhat offensive, be-
cause obtrusively intelligent, manner.
Mrs. Gamp observing this, felt it the more
necessary that Mrs. Prig should know her place,
and be made sensible of her exact station in so-
ciety, as well as of her obligations to herself.
She therefore assumed an air of greater patronage
and importance, as she went on to answer Mrs.
Prig a little more in detail.
We
"Mr. Chuffey, Betsey," said Mrs. Gamp, "is
weak in his mind. Excuge me if I makes remark,
that he may neither be so weak as people thinks,
nor people may not think he is so weak as they
pretends, and what I knows, I knows; and what
you don't, you don't; so do not ask me, Betsey.
But Mr. Chuffey's friends has made propojals
for his bein' took care on, and has said to me,
'Mrs. Gamp, will you undertake it?
couldn't think,' they says, 'of trusting him to
nobody but you, for, Sairey, you are gold as has
passed the furnage. Will you undertake it, at
your own price, day and night, and by your own
self?' 'No,' I says, I will not. Do not reckon
on it. There is,' I says, 'but one creetur in the
world as I would undertake on sech terms, and
her name is Harris. But,' I says, 'I am ac
quainted with a friend, whose name is Betsey
Prig, that I can recommend, and will assist me.
Betsey,' I says, 'is always to be trusted, under
me, and will be guided as I could desire.'"
•
Here Mrs. Prig, without any abatement of her
offensive manner, again counterfeited abstrac
tion of mind, and stretched out her hand to the
tea-pot. It was more than Mrs. Gamp could
bear. She stopped the hand of Mrs. Prig with
her own, and said, with great feeling:

HOME OF SOL GILLS.
410
SAIREY GAMP
411
No, Betsey! Drink fair, wotever you do!"
Mrs. Prig, thus baffled, threw herself back in
her chair, and closing the same eye more em-
phatically, and folding her arms tighter, suffered
her head to roll slowly from side to side, while
she surveyed her friend with a contemptuous
smile.
Mrs. Gamp resumed:
"Mrs. Harris, Betsey—"
"Bother Mrs. Harris!" said Betsey Prig.
Mrs. Gamp looked at her with amazement,
incredulity, and indignation; when Mrs. Prig,
shutting her eye still closer, and folding her
arms still tighter, uttered these memorable and
tremendous words:
I don't believe there's no sich a person!"
After the utterance of which expressions, she
leaned forward, and snapped her fingers once,
twice, thrice; each time nearer to the face of Mrs.
Gamp, and then rose to put on her bonnet, as
one who felt that there was now a gulf between
them, which nothing could ever bridge across.
The shock of this blow was so violent and
sudden, that Mrs. Gamp sat staring at nothing
with uplifted eyes, and her mouth open as if she
were gasping for breath, until Betsey Prig had
put on her bonnet and her shawl, and was gath-
ering the latter about her throat. Then Mrs.
Gamp rose-morally and physically rose-and
denounced her.
SAIREY GAMP
SAIREY GAMP-And Mrs. Harris.
There are some happy creeturs," Mrs.
Gamp observed, "as time runs back'ards with,
and you are one, Mrs. Mould; not that he need
do nothing except use you in his most owl
dacious way for years to come, I'm sure; for
young you are and will be, I says to Mrs. Harris,"
Mrs. Gamp continued, "only t'other day; the
last Monday evening fortnight as ever dawned
upon this Piljian's Projiss of a mortal wale; I
says to Mrs. Harris when she says to me, 'Years
and our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us
all,'-'Say not the words, Mrs. Harris, if you
and me is to be continual friends, for sech is
not the case. Mrs. Mould,' I says, making so
free, I will confess, as to use the name" (she curt-
seyed here), "'is one of them that goes agen
the obserwation straight, and never, Mrs. Harris,
whilst I've a drop of breath to draw, will I set
by, and not stand up, don't think it.'-'I ast
your pardon, ma'am,' says Mrs. Harris, and I
humbly grant your grace; for if ever a woman
lived as would see her feller creeturs into fits to
serve her friends, well do I know that woman's
name is Sairey Gamp.'
"
At this point she was fain to stop for breath,
and advantage may be taken of the circumstance
to state, that a fearful mystery surrounded this
lady of the name of Harris, whom no one in
the circle of Mrs. Gamp's acquaintance had ever
"What!" said Mrs. Gamp, "you bage cree-seen, neither did any human being know her
tur, have I know'd Mrs. Harris five and thirty
year, to be told at last that there ain't no sech a
person livin'!
Have I stood her friend in all
her troubles, great and small, for it to come at
last to sech a end as this, which her own sweet
picter hanging up afore you all the time, to
shame your Bragian words! But well you
mayn't believe there's no sech a creetur, for she
wouldn't demean herself to look at you, and
often has she said, when I have made mention
of your name, which, to my sinful sorrow, I have
done, 'What, Sairey Gamp! debage yourself to
her! Go along with you!"
I'm a goin', ma'am, ain't I?” said Mrs. Prig,
stopping as she said it.
"You had better, ma'am," said Mrs. Gamp.
"Do you know who you're talking to,
ma'am?" inquired her visitor.
"
Aperiently," said Mrs. Gamp, surveying her
with scorn from head to foot, "to Betsey Prig.
Aperiently so. I know her. No one better.
Go along with you!"
*
*
*
*
*
Mrs. Gamp had in the meantime sunk into
her chair, from whence, turning up her over-
flowing eyes, and clasping her hands, she de-
livered the following lamentation:
'Oh, Mr. Sweedlepipes, which Mr. Westlock
also, if my eyes do not deceive, and a friend not
havin' the pleasure of bein' beknown, wot I
have took from Betsey Prig this blessed night,
no mortial creetur knows! If she had abuged
me, bein' in liquor, which I thought I smelt her
wen she come, but could not so believe, not
bein' used myself"-Mrs. Gamp, by the way,
was pretty far gone, and the fragrance of the
tea-pot was strong in the room-"I could have
bore it with a thankful art. But the words she
spoke of Mrs. Harris, lambs could not forgive.
No, Betsey!" said Mrs. Gamp, in a violent |
burst of feeling, "nor worms forget!"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 49.
place of residence, though Mrs. Gamp appeared
on her own showing to be in constant com-
munication with her. There were conflicting
rumors on the subject; but the prevalent opinion
was that she was a phantom of Mrs. Gamp's
brain-as Messrs. Doe and Roe are fictions of
the law-created for the express purpose of
holding visionary dialogues with her on all man-
ner of subjects, and invariably winding up with
a compliment to the excellence of her nature.
"And likewise what a pleasure," said Mrs.
Gamp, turning with a tearful smile towards the
daughters, “to see them two young ladies as I
know'd afore a tooth in their pretty heads was
cut, and have many a day seen-ah, the sweet
creeturs playing at berryins down in the
shop, and follerin' the order-book to its long
home in the iron safe!"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 25.
SAIREY GAMP-Her observations.
"You may say whatever you wish to say here,
Mrs. Gamp," said that gentleman, shaking his
head with a melancholy expression.
It is not much as I have to say, when people
is a mourning for the dead and gone," said
Mrs. Gamp; "but what I have to say is to the
pint and purpose, and no offence intended, must
be so considered. I have been at a many places
in my time, gentlemen, and I hope I knows what
my duties is, and how the same should be per-
formed; in course, if I did not, it would be very
strange, and very wrong in sich a gentleman as
Mr. Mould, which has undertook the highest
families in this land, and given every satisfaction,
so to recommend me as he does. I have seen a
deal of trouble my own self," said Mrs. Gamp,
laying greater and greater stress upon her words,
"and I can feel for them as has their feelings
tried, but I am not a Rooshan or a Prooshan,
and consequently cannot suffer spies to be set
over me."
SAIREY GAMP
Before it was possible that an answer could
be returned, Mrs. Gamp, growing redder in the
face, went on to say:
412
SAIREY GAMP
any woman could sick-nurse and monthly like-
ways, on the little that you takes to drink.'
'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'none on us knows
what we can do till we tries; and wunst, when
me and.Gamp kept ouse, I thought so too. Bul
satisfies; perwisin', Mrs. Harris, that it is
brought reg'lar, and draw'd mild. Whether I
sicks or monthlies, ma'am, I hope I does my
duty, but I am but a poor woman, and I earns
my living hard; therefore I do require it, which
I makes confession, to be brought reg'lar and
draw'd mild.'”
"It is not a easy matter, gentlemen, to live
when you are left a widder woman; particular
when your feelings works upon you to that ex-now,' I says, 'my half a pint of porter fully
tent that you often find yourself a going out, on
terms which is a certain loss, and never can re-
pay. But, in whatever way you earns your
bread, you may have rules and regulations of
your own, which cannot be broke through.
Some people," said Mrs. Gamp, again entrench-
ing herself behind her strong point, as if it were
not assailable by human ingenuity,
may be
Rooshans, and others may be Prooshans; they
are born so, and will please themselves. Them
which is of other naturs thinks different."
*
*
*
*
*
You have become indifferent since then, I
suppose?" said Mr. Pecksniff. "Use is second
nature, Mrs. Gamp."
The precise connection between these obser-
vations and the glass of rum, did not appear;
for Mrs. Gamp proposing as a toast “The best
of lucks to all!" took off the dram in quite a
scientific manner, without any further remarks.
Martin Chuzzletvit, Chap. 25.
SAIREY GAMP-On human anticipations.
"That is. the Antwerp packet in the middle,"
said Ruth.
“And I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do,"
cried Mrs. Gamp; appearing to confound the
prophet with the whale in this miraculous as-
piration.
"You may well say second nater, sir," re-
turned that lady. "One's first ways is to find
sich things a trial to the feelings, and so is one's
lasting custom. If it wasn't for the nerve a
little sip of liquor gives me (I never was able to
do more than taste it), I never could go through
with what I sometimes has to do. Mrs. Har- Ruth said nothing in reply; but as Mrs.
ris,' I says, at the very last case as ever I acted Gamp, laying her chin against the cool iron of
in, which it was but a young person, ' Mrs. Har- the rail, continued to look intently at the Ant-
ris,' I says, 'leave the bottle on the chimney- werp boat, and every now and then to give a
piece and don't ask me to take none, but let me little groan, she inquired whether any child of
put my lips to it when I am so dispoged, and hers was going abroad that morning? Or per-
then I will do what I'm engaged to do, accord-haps her husband, she said kindly.
ing to the best of my ability.' 'Mrs. Gamp,'
"Which shows," said Mrs. Gamp, casting up
she says, in answer, 'if ever there was a sober her eyes, "what a little way you've travelled into
creetur to be got at eighteen-pence a day for this wale of life, my dear young creetur! As a
working people, and three and six for gentle- good friend of mine has frequent made remark
folks-night watching,'" said Mrs. Gamp, with to me, which her name, my love, is Harris, Mrs.
emphasis, being a extra charge you are that Harris, through the square and up the steps a
inwallable person. 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, turnin' round by the tobacker shop, 'Oh Sairey,
'don't name the charge, for if I could afford to Sairey, little do we know wot lays afore us!
lay all my feller creeturs out for nothink, I would 'Mrs. Harris, ma'am,' I says, 'not much, it's
gladly do it, sich is the love I bears 'em. But true, but more than you suppoge. Our calcila-
what I always says to them as has the manage- tions, ma'am,' I says, 'respectin' wot the num-
ment of matters, Mrs. Harris ;'" here she kept | ber of a family will be, comes most times within
her eye on Mr. Pecksniff; "be they gents or one, and oftener than you would suppoge, ex-
be they ladies, is, don't ask me whether I won't act.' Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris, in an awful
take none, or whether I will, but leave the bot-way, 'Tell me wot is my indiwidgle number.'
tle on the chimney-piece, and let me put my 'No, Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'ex-cuge me,
lips to it when I am so dispoged.'
if you please. My own,' I says, 'has fallen out
The conclusion of this affecting narrative of three-pair backs, and had damp doorsteps
brought them to the house.
settled on their lungs, and one was turned up
smilin' in a bedstead, unbeknown. Therefore,
ma'am,' I says, 'seek not to proticipate, but take
SAIREY GAMP-On drinking.
'em as they come and as they go.' Mine," said
Mrs. Gamp took the chair that was nearest Mrs. Gamp, "mine is all gone, my dear young
the door, and casting up her eyes towards the chick. And as to husbands, there's a wooden
ceiling, feigned to be wholly insensible to the leg gone likeways home to its account, which
fact of a glass of rum being in preparation, until | in its constancy of walkin' into wine vaults,
it was placed in her hand by one of the young and never comin' out again 'till fetched by
ladies, when she exhibited the greatest sur- force, was quite as weak as flesh, if not weak-
prise.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.
"A thing," she said, "as hardly ever, Mrs.
Mould, occurs with me unless it is when I am
indispoged, and find my half a pint of porter
settling heavy on the chest. Mrs. Harris often
and often says to me, 'Sairey Gamp,' she says,
'you raly do amaze me!' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says
to her, 'why so? Give it a name, I beg.' 'Tell-
ing the truth then, ma'am,' says Mrs. Harris, ' and
shaming him as shall be nameless betwixt you
and me, never did I think till I know'd you, as
er."
C
When she had delivered this oration, Mrs.
Gamp leaned her chin upon the cool iron again :
and looking intently at the Antwerp packet,
shook her head and groaned.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40.
SAIREY GAMP-On steamboats.
She paused here, to look over the deck of the
packet in question, and on the steps leading
down to it, and on the gangways. Seeming to

SAIREY GAMP AND MRS. HARRIS.
412
SAIREY GAMP
413
SAVAGE
"Thank you, Sir," said Mrs. Pipchin, "I am
pretty well, considering."
Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
'Well," said Our Missis, with dilated nos-
have thus assured herself that the object of her SALUTATION-The Conventional.
commiseration had not yet arrived, she raised "Mrs. Pipchin," said Mr. Dombey, "How do
her eyes gradually up to the top of the escape- you do?"
pipe, and indignantly apostrophised the vessel:
Oh drat you!" said Mrs. Ġamp, shaking her
umbrella at it, "you're a nice spluttering nisy Mrs. Pipchin always used that form of
monster for a delicate young creetur to go and words. It meant, considering her virtues, sac-
be a passenger by; ain't you! You never do norifices, and so forth.
harm in that way, do you? With your ham-
mering, and roaring, and hissing, and lamp-iling,
you brute! Them Confugion steamers," said SANDWICH-A Mugby Station.
Mrs. Gamp, shaking her umbrella again, "has
done more to throw us out of our reg'lar work | trils. "Take a fresh, crisp, long, crusty, penny
and bring ewents on at times when nobody loaf made of the whitest and best flour. Cut
counted on 'em (especially them screeching rail- it longwise through the middle. Insert a fair
road ones), than all the other frights that ever and nicely fitting slice of ham. Tie a smart
was took. I have heerd of one young man, a piece of ribbon round the middle of the whole
guard upon a railway, only three years opened-to bind it together. Add at one end a neat
well does Mrs. Harris know him, which indeed wrapper of clean white paper by which to hold
he is her own relation by her sister's marriage it. And the universal French Refreshment sang-
with a master sawyer-as is godfather at this wich busts on your disgusted vision."
present time to six-and-twenty blessed little
strangers, equally unexpected, and all on 'um
named after the Ingeins as was the cause.
Ugh!" said Mrs. Gamp, resuming her apos-
trophe," one might easy know you was a man's in-
vention, from your disregardlessness of the weak-
ness of our naturs, so one might, you brute!”
It would not have been unnatural to suppose,
from the first part of Mrs. Gamp's lamentations,
that she was connected with the stage-coaching
or post-horsing trade. She had no means of
judging of the effect of her concluding remarks
upon her young companion; for she interrupted
herself at this point, and exclaimed:
"There she identically goes! Poor sweet
young creetur, there she goes, like a lamb to
the sacrifige! If there's any illness when that
wessel gets to sea," said Mrs. Gamp, propheti-
cally, "it's murder, and I'm the witness for the
persecution."--Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40.
SAIREY GAMP-Will not suffer "impo-
gician."
"I am but a poor woman, but I've been
sought arter, sir, though you may not think it.
I've been knocked up at all hours of the night,
and warned out by a many landlords, in conse-
quence of being mistook for Fire. I goes out
working for my bread, 'tis true, but I maintains
my independency, with your kind leave, and
which I will till death. I has my feelins as a
woman, sir, and I have been a mother likeways,
but touch a pipkin as belongs to me, or make
the least remarks on what I eats or drinks, and
though you was the favoritest young for'ard
hussy of a servant-gal as ever come into a
house, either you leaves the place, or me. My
earnings is not great, sir, but I will not be im-
poged upon. Bless the babe, and save the
mother, is my mortar, sir; but I makes so free
as add to that, Don't try no impogician with
the Nuss, for she will not a bear it!"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40.
SALUTATION-A hearty.
With great heartiness, therefore, the Captain
once again extended his enormous hand (not
unlike an old block in color), and gave him a
grip that left upon his smoother flesh a proof
impression of the chinks and crevices with
which the Captain's palm was liberally tattooed.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 17.
Boy at Mugby.
SANDWICHES-And entertainment.
Between the pieces we almost all of us went
out and refreshed. Many of us went the
length of drinking beer at the bar of the neigh-
boring public-house, some of us drank spirits,
crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer
at the refreshment bars established for us in
the Theatre. The sandwich
The sandwich-as substantial as
was consistent with portability, and as cheap
as possible-we hailed as one of our greatest
institutions. It forced its way among us at
all stages of the entertainment, and we were
always delighted to see it; its adaptability to
the varying moods of our nature was surprising;
we could never weep so comfortably as when
our tears fell on our sandwich; we could never
laugh so heartily as when we choked with sand-
wich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice
so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in
hand, to consider what would come of that res-
olution of Wickedness in boots to sever Inno-
cence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry
in striped stockings. When the curtain fell for
the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, to
help us through the rain and mire, and home
to bed.-Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 4.
SARCASM-Its expression.
The thin straight lines of the setting of the
eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the mark-
ings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that
looked handsomely diabolic.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 9.
SAVAGE-The noble, a delusion.
me.
To come to the point at once, I beg to say
that I have not the least belief in the Noble
Savage. I consider him a prodigious nuisance,
and an enormous superstition. His calling rum
fire-water, and .me a pale-face, wholly fail to
reconcile me to him. I don't care what he calls
I call him a savage, and I call a savage a
something highly desirable to be civilized off
the face of the earth. I think a mere gent
(which I take to be the lowest form of civiliza-
tion) better than a howling, whistling, cuck-
ing, stamping, jumping, tearing savage. It is
all one to me, whether he sticks a fish-bone
through his visage, or bits of trees through the
lobes of his ears, or birds' feathers in his head
SAVAGE
414
SAVAGE
whether he flattens his hair between two boards, also supported by a high-flavored party of male
or spreads his nose over the breadth of his face, friends-screeches, whistles, and yells (being
or drags his lower lip down by great weights, seated on the ground, he can't stamp) that there
or blackens his teeth, or knocks them out, or never was such a daughter in the market as his
paints one cheek red and the other blue, or daughter, and that he must have six more cows.
tattooes himself, or oils himself, or rubs his body The son-in-law and his select circle of backers,
with fat, or crimps it with knives. Yielding to screech, whistle, stamp, and yell in reply, that
whichsoever of these agreeable eccentricities, they will give three more cows. The father-in-
he is a savage-cruel, false, thievish, murder-law (an old deluder, over-paid at the beginning),
ous; addicted more or less to grease, entrails, accepts four, and rises to bind the bargain. The
and beastly customs; a wild animal with the whole party, the young lady included, then falling
questionable gift of boasting; a conceited, tire-into epileptic convulsions, and screeching, whist-
some, bloodthirsty, monotonous humbug.
Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some
people will talk about him, as they talk about
the good old times; how they will regret his
disappearance, in the course of this world's de-
velopment, from such and such lands-where his
absence is a blessed relief and an indispensable
preparation for the sowing of the very first seeds
of any influence that can exalt humanity-how,
even with the evidence of himself before them,
they will either be determined to believe, or
will suffer themselves to be persuaded into be-
lieving, that he is something which their five
senses tell them he is not.
*
*
*
*
*
ling, stamping, and yelling together-and no-
body taking any notice of the young lady
(whose charms are not to be thought of withou
a shudder)—the noble savage is considered mar
ried, and his friends make demoniacal leaps at
him by way of congratulation.
When the noble savage finds himself a little un-
well, and mentions the circumstance to his friends,
it is immediately perceived that he is under the
influence of witchcraft. A learned personage,
called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immedi-
ately sent for to Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell
out the witch. The male inhabitants of the
kraal being seated on the ground, the learned
doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, appears, and ad-
ministers a dance of a most terrific nature, during
the exhibition of which remedy he incessantly
gnashes his teeth and howls :-" I am the origi-
nal physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow,
Mine are no new views of the noble savage.
The greatest writers on natural history found
him out long ago. BUFFON knew what he was,
and showed him why he is the sulky tyrant that
he is to his women, and how it happens (Heav-yow, yow. No connection with any other
en be praised!) that his race is spare in num-
bers. For evidence of the quality of his moral
nature, pass himself for a moment and refer to
his "faithful dog." Has he ever improved a
dog, or attached a dog, since his nobility first
ran wild in woods, and was brought down (at a
very long shot) by POPE? Or does the animal
that is the friend of man, always degenerate in
his low society?
It is not the miserable nature of the noble
savage that is the new thing; it is the whimper-
ing over him with maudlin admiration, and the
affecting to regret him, and the drawing of any
comparison of advantage between the blemishes
of civilization and the tenor of his swinish life.
There may have been a change now and then
in those diseased absurdities, but there is none
in him.
*
*
*
*
*
establishment. Till, till, till! All other Um-
targarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo,
Boroo ! but I perceive here a genuine and real
Umtargartie, Hoosh, Hoosh, Hoosh! in whose
blood I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer
Blizzerum Boo! will wash these bear's claws of
mine. O yow, yow, yow!" All this time the
learned physician is looking out among the at-
tentive faces for some unfortunate man who
owes him a cow, or who has given him any small
offence, or against whom, without offence, he
has conceived a spite. Him he never fails to
Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is instant-
ly killed. In the absence of such an individual,
the usual practice is to Nooker the quietest
and most gentlemanly person in company. But
the nookering is invariably followed on the spot
by the butchering.
*
The noble savage sets a king to reign over When war is afoot among the noble savages
him, to whom he submits his life and limbs-which is always-the chief holds a council to
without a murmur or question, and whose whole ascertain whether it is the opinion of his
life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood; but brothers and friends in general that the enemy
who, after killing incessantly, is in his turn shall be exterminated. On this occasion, after
killed by his relations and friends, the moment the performance of an Umsebeuza, or war-song,
a gray hair appears on his head. All the noble-which is exactly like all the other songs,-the
savage's wars with his fellow-savages (and he
takes no pleasure in anything else) are wars of
extermination—which is the best thing I know
of him, and the most comfortable to my mind
when I look at him. He has no moral feelings
of any kind, sort, or description; and his "mis-
sion" may he summed up as simply diabolical.
The ceremonies with which he faintly diver-
sifies his life, are, of course, of a kindred
nature. If he wants a wife he appears before
the kennel of the gentleman whom he has select-
ed for his father-in-law, attended by a party of
male friends of a very strong flavor, who screech
and whistle and stamp an offer of so many cows for
the young lady's hand. The chosen father-in-law
chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends,
arranged in single file. No particular order is
observed during the delivery of this address,
but every gentleman who finds himself excited
by the subject, instead of crying "Hear, hear!"
as is the custom with us, darts from the rank and
tramples out the life, or crushes the skull, or
mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or breaks
the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities
on the body of an imaginary enemy. Several
gentlemen becoming thus excited at once, and
pounding away without the least regard to the
orator, that illustrious person is rather in the
position of an orator in an Irish House of Com-
mons. But several of these scenes of savage
SCHOLAR
415
life bear a strong generic resemblance to an
Irish election, and I think would be extremely
well received and understood at Cork.
*
*
*
*
*
To conclude as I began. My position is, that
if we have anything to learn from the Noble
Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a
fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility,
nonsense. We have no greater justification for
being cruel to the miserable object, than for be-
ing cruel to a WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE or an
ISAAC NEWTON; but he passes away before an |
immeasurably better and higher power than
ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the
world will be all the better when his place
knows him no more.
The Noble Savage. Reprinted Pieces.
SCHOLAR-The new.
Florence ran back to throw her arms round
his neck, and hers was the last face in the door-
way, turned towards him with a smile of en-
couragement, the brighter for the tears through
which it beamed.
It made his childish bosom heave and swell
when it was gone; and sent the globes, the
books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming
round the room. But they stopped, all of a sud-
den; and then he heard the loud clock in the
hall still gravely inquiring, "how, is, my, lit, tle,
friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?" as it had
done before.
"
He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal,
silently listening. But he might have answered
weary, weary! very lonely, very sad!" And
there, with an aching void in his young heart,
and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange,
Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and
the upholsterer were never coming.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 11.
SCHOLAR—A poor.
"Here he is!" said Ralph. My nephew
Nicholas, hot from school, with everything he
learnt there fermenting in his head, and nothing
fermenting in his pocket, is just the man you
want."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 4.
SCHOLAR-Sissy Jupe's ignorance of facts.
M'Choakumchild reported that she had a very
dense head for figures; that, once possessed
with a general idea of the globe, she took the
smallest conceivable interest in its exact meas-
urements; that she was extremely slow in the
acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident
happened to be connected therewith; that she
would burst into tears on being required (by the
mental process) immediately to name the cost
of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at
fourteen pence halfpenny; that she was as low
down, in the school, as low could be; that after
eight weeks of induction into the elements of
Political Economy, she had only yesterday been
set right by a prattler three feet high, for return-
ing to the question, "What is the first princi-
ple of this science?" the absurd answer, "To
do unto others as I would that they should do
unto me.
Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head,
that all this was very bad; that it showed the
necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of
knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book,
report, and tabular statements A to Z; and
|
SCHOOL.
that Jupe "must be kept to it." So Jupe was
kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no
wiser.-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 9.
SCHOLAR-A.
A certain portion of his time was passed at
Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as
a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contra-
band trade in European languages, instead of
conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom
House. The rest of his time he passed in
London.-Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 10.
SCHOOL-A holiday in.
"I think, boys," said the schoolmaster when
the clock struck twelve," that I shall give an
extra half-holiday this afternoon."
At this intelligence, the boys, led on and
headed by the tall boy, raised a great shout, in
the midst of which the master was seen to speak,
but could not be heard. As he held up his hand,
however, in token of his wish that they should
be silent, they were considerate enough to leave
off, as soon as the longest-winded among them
were quite out of breath.
"You must promise me first," said the school-
master, "that you'll not be noisy, or at least, if
you are, that you'll go away and be so-away out.
of the village, I mean. I'm sure you wouldn't
disturb your old playmate and companion."
There was a general murmur (and perhaps a
very sincere one, for they were but boys) in the
negative; and the tall boy, perhaps as since rely
as any of them, called those about him to witness
that he had only shouted in a whisper.
"Then pray don't forget, there's my dear
scholars," said the schoolmaster, "what I have
asked you, and do it as a favor to me.
Be as
happy as you can, and don't be unmindful that
you are blessed with health. Good-bye all!"
"Thank'ee, sir," and "good-bye, sir," were
said a great many times in a variety of voices,
and the boys went out very slowly and softly.
But there was the sun shining and there were
the birds singing, as the sun only shines and
the birds only sing on holidays and half-holi-
days; there were the trees waving to all free
boys to climb and nestle among their leafy
branches; the hay, entreating them to come
and scatter it to the pure air; the green corn,
gently beckoning towards wood and stream;
the smooth ground, rendered smoother still by
blending lights and shadows, inviting to runs
and leaps, and long walks, God knows whither.
It was more than boy could bear, and with a
joyous whoop the whole cluster took to their
heels and spread themselves about, shouting
and laughing as they went.
"It's natural, thank Heaven!" said the poor
schoolmaster, looking after them.
"I'm very
glad they didn't mind me!"
It is difficult, however, to please everybody, as
most of us would have discovered, even without
the fable which bears that moral; and in the
course of the afternoon several mothers and
aunts of pupils looked in to express their entire
disapproval of the schoolmaster's proceeding.
A few confined themselves to hints, such as
politely inquiring what red-letter day or saint's
day the almanac said it was; a few (these were
the profound village politicians) argued that it
was a slight to the throne, and an affront to
church and state, and savored of revolutionary
SCHOOL-DAYS
416
principles, to grant a half-holiday upon any
lighter occasion than the birth-day of the Mon-
arch; but the majority expressed their displeas-
ure on private grounds and in plain terms,
arguing that to put the pupils on this short al-
lowance of learning was nothing but an act of
downright robbery and fraud; and one old lady,
finding that she could not inflame or irritate the
peaceable schoolmaster by talking to him,
bounced out of his house and talked at him
for half-an-hour outside his own window, to
another old lady, saying that of course he
would deduct this half-holiday from his weekly
charge, or of course he would naturally expect
to have an opposition started against him; there
was no want of idle chaps in that neighborhood
(here the old lady raised her voice), and some
chaps who were too idle even to be schoolmas-
ters, might soon find that there were other chaps
put over their heads, and so she would have
them take care, and look pretty sharp about
them. But all these taunts and vexations failed
to elicit one word from the meek schoolmaster,
who sat with the child by his side-a little
more dejected perhaps, but quite silent and
uncomplaining.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 25.
SCHOOL-DAYS.
Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy
summer afternoon. A buzz and hum go up
around me, as if the boys were so many blue-
bottles. A cloggy sensation of the lukewarm
fat of meat is upon me (we dined an hour or
two ago), and my head is as heavy as so much
lead. I would give the world to go to sleep. I
sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at
him like a young owl; when sleep overpowers
me for a minute, he still looms through my
slumber, ruling those ciphering books, until he
softly comes behind me and wakes me to
plainer perception of him, with a red ridge
across my back.
Here I am in the playground, with my eye
still fascinated by him, though I can't see him.
The window at a little distance from which I
know he is having his dinner, stands for him,
and I eye that instead. If he shows his face
near it, mine assumes an imploring and submis-
sive expression. If he looks out through the
glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth excepted) stops
in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes
contemplative. One day, Traddles (the most
unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that win-
dow accidentally with a ball. I shudder at this
moment with the tremendous sensation of seeing
it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded
on to Mr. Creakle's sacred head.
Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that
made his arms and legs like German sausages,
or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and
most miserable of all the boys. He was always
being caned—I think he was caned every day
that half-year, except one holiday Monday when
he was only ruler'd on both hands-and was
always going to write to his uncle about it, and
never did. After laying his head on the desk for
a little while he would cheer up somehow, begin
to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his
slate, before his eyes were dry. I used at first
to wonder what comfort Traddles found in draw-
ing skeletons; and for some time looked upon
him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself
by those symbols of mortality that caning
|
SCHOOL
couldn't last for ever. But I believe he only
did it because they were easy, and didn't want
any features.
He was very honorable, Traddles was, and
held it as a solemn duty in the boys to stand by
one another. He suffered for this on severa
occasions; and particularly once, when Steer-
forth laughed in church, and the Beadle thought
it was Traddles, and took him out. I see him
now, going away in custody, despised by the
congregation. He never said who was the real
offender, though he smarted for it next day, and
was imprisoned so many hours that he came
forth with a whole churchyardful of skeletons
swarming all over his Latin Dictionary. But
he had his reward. Steerforth said there was
nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all
felt that to be the highest praise. For my part,
I could have gone through a good deal (though
I was much less brave than Traddles, and
nothing like so old) to have won such a recom-
pense.
*
*
*
*
*
The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my
recollection of the daily strife and struggle of
our lives; of the waning summer and the chang-
ing season; of the frosty mornings when we
were rung out of bed, and the cold cold smell
of the dark nights when we were rung into bed;
of the evening schoolroom, dimly lighted and
indifferently warmed, and the morning school-
room, which was nothing but a great shivering-
machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with
roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mut-
ton; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog's-eared
lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-
books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy
Sundays, suet puddings, and a dirty atmosphere
of ink surrounding all.
David Copperfield, Chap. 7.
SCHOOL-A jumble of a.
The school at which young Charley Hexam
had first learned from a book-the streets being,
for pupils of his degree, the great Preparatory
Establishment in which very much that is never
unlearned is learned without and before book-
was a miserable loft in an unsavory yard. Its
atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it
was crowded, noisy, and confusing; half the
pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of
waking stupefaction; the other half kept them
in either condition by maintaining a monoton-
ous droning noise, as if they were performing,
out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bag-
pipe. The teachers, animated solely by good
intentions, had no idea of execution, and a
lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind
endeavors.
It was a school for all ages, and for both
sexes. The latter were kept apart, and the for-
mer were partitioned off into square assort-
ments. But all the place was pervaded by a
grimly ludicrous pretence that every pupil was
childish and innocent. This pretence, much
favored by the lady-visitors, led to the ghastli-
est absurdities. Young women, old in the vices
of the commonest and worst life, were expected
to profess themselves enthralled by the good
child's book, the Adventures of Little Mar
gery, who resided in the village cottage by the
mill; severely reproved and morally squashed
the miller, when she was five and he was fifty;
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SCHOOL
down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and
wire, looking in all the corners with their red
eyes for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very
little bigger than himself, makes a mournful
rattle now and then in hopping on his perch,
two inches high, or dropping from it; but
neither sings nor chirps. There is a strange,
unwholesome smell upon the room, like mil-
dewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, and
rotten books. There could not well be more
ink splashed about it, if it had been roofless
from its first construction, and the skies had
rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through
the varying seasons of the year.
Mr. Mell having left me while he took his
irreparable boots up-stairs, I went softly to the
upper end of the room, observing all this as I
crept along. Suddenly I came upon a paste-
board placard, beautifully written, which was
lying on the desk, and bore these words: "Take
care of him, He bites."
I got upon the desk immediately, apprehen-
sive of at least a great dog underneath. But,
though I looked all round with anxious eyes, I
could see nothing of him. I was still engaged
in peering about when Mr. Mell came back,
and asked me what I did up there?
divided her porridge with singing birds; denied with three long rows of desks, and six of forms,
herself a new nankeen bonnet, on the ground and bristling all round with pegs for hats and
that the turnips did not wear nankeen bonnets, slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises
neither did the sheep who ate them; who litter the dirty floor. Some silkworms' houses,
plaited straw and delivered the dreariest ora- made of the same materials, are scattered over
tions to all comers, at all sorts of unseasonable the desks. Two miserable little white mice,
times. So, unwieldy young dredgers and hulk-left behind by their owner, are running up and
ing mudlarks were referred to the experiences
of Thomas Twopence, who, having resolved
not to rob (under circumstances of uncommon
atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of
eighteenpence, presently came into supernatu-
ral possession of three and sixpence, and lived
a shining light ever afterwards. (Note, that
the benefactor came to no good.) Several
swaggering sinners had written their own biog-
raphies in the same strain; it always appear-
ing from the lessons of those very boastful per-
sons, that you were to do good, not because it
was good, but because you were to make a
good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pu-
pils were taught to read (if they could learn)
out of the New Testament; and by dint of
stumbling over the syllables and keeping their be-
wildered eyes on the particular syllables coming
round to their turn, were as absolutely ignorant
of the sublime history as if they had never
seen or heard of it. An exceedingly and con-
foundingly perplexing jumble of a school, in
fact, where black spirits and gray, red spirits
and white, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jum-
bled, jumbled every night. And particularly
every Sunday night. For then, an inclined
plane of unfortunate infants would be handed
over to the prosiest and worst of all the teach-
ers with good intentions, whom nobody older
would endure. Who, taking his stand on the
floor before them as chief executioner, would
be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as
executioner's assistant. When and where it
first became the conventional system that
weary or inattentive infant in a class must have
its face smoothed downwards with a hot hand,
or when and where the conventional volunteer
boy first beheld such system in operation, and
became inflamed with a sacred zeal to admin-
ister it, matters not. It was the function of the
chief executioner to hold forth, and it was the
function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping in-
fants, yawning infants, restless infants, whim-
pering infants, and smooth their wretched faces
sometimes with one hand, as if he were anoint-
ing them for a whisker; sometimes with both
hands, applied after the fashion of blinkers.
And so the jumble would be in action in this
department for a mortal hour; the exponent
drawling on to My Dearerr Childerrenerr, let
us say, for example, about the beautiful coming
to the Sepulchre; and repeating the word Sep-
ulchre (commonly used among infants) five
hundred times, and never once hinting what it
meant; the conventional boy smoothing away
right and left, as an infallible commentary; the
whole hot-bed of flushed and exhausted infants
exchanging measles, rashes, whooping-cough,
fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were as-
sembled in High Market for the purpose.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. I.
SCHOOL-David Copperfield at.
a
I gazed upon the school-room into which he
took me, as the most forlorn and desolate place
I had ever seen. I see it now A long room,
"
"I beg your pardon, sir," says I, “if you
please, I'm looking for the dog.'
Dog?" says he. "What dog?'
"Isn't it a dog, sir?"
"Isn't what a dog?
"
"That's to be taken care of, sir; that bites!
'No, Copperfield," says he, gravely, "that's
not a dog. That's a boy. My instructions are,
Copperfield, to put this placard on your back.
I am sorry to make such a beginning with you,
but I must do it."
With that he took me down, and tied the
placard, which was neatly constructed for the
purpose, on my shoulders like a knapsack; and
wherever I went, afterwards, I had the consola-
tion of carrying it.-David Copperfield, Chap. 5.
SCHOOL-Of Dr. Blimber.
The Doctor's was a mighty fine house, front-
ing the sea. Not a joyful style of house with-
in, but quite the contrary. Sad-colored cur-
tains, whose proportions were spare and lean,
hid themselves despondently behind the win-
dows. The tables and chairs were put away in
rows, like figures in a sum; fires were so rarely
lighted in the rooms of ceremony, that they felt
like wells, and a visitor represented the bucket ;
the dining-room seemed the last place in the
world where any eating or drinking was likely
to occur; there was no sound through all the
house but the ticking of the great clock in the
hall, which made itself audible in the very gar-
rets; and sometimes a dull crying of young
gentlemen at their lessons, like the murmurings
of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons.
Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
SCHOOL-First hours in.
The Doctor, with his half-shut eyes, and his
E
SCHOOL
418
SCHOOL-ROOM
usual smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort sick scholar, and at the head of the row of pegs
of interest that might attach to some choice lit-on which those who came in hats or caps were
tle animal he was going to stuff.
*
*
*
*
He leered as if he would have liked to tackle
him with the Greek alphabet on the spot.
*
*
*
*
*
wont to hang them up, one was left empty. No
boy attempted to violate the sanctity of seat or
peg, but many a one looked from the empty
spaces to the schoolmaster, and whispered his
idle neighbor behind his hand.
of school; and in the midst of the din sat the
poor schoolmaster, the very image of meekness
and simplicity, vainly attempting to fix his mind
upon the duties of the day, and to forget his
little friend. But the tedium of his office re-
minded him more strongly of the willing scholar
and his thoughts were rambling from his pupils
Cornelia took him first to the school-room, Then began the hum of conning over lessons
which was situated at the back of the hall, and and getting them by heart, the whispered jest
was approached through two baize doors, which | and stealthy game, and all the noise and drawl
deadened and muffled the young gentlemen's
voices. Here, there were eight young gentle-
men in various stages of mental prostration, all
very hard at work, and very grave indeed.
Toots, as an old hand, had a desk to himself in
one corner; and a magnificent man, of immense
age, he looked, in Paul's young eyes, behind it.
Mr. Feeder, B.A., who sat at another little-it was plain.
desk, had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly None knew this better than the idlest boys,
grinding that tune to four young gentlemen. Of who, growing bolder with impunity, waxed
the remaining four, two, who grasped their fore- louder and more daring; playing odd-or-even
heads convulsively, were engaged in solving under the master's eye, eating apples openly and
mathematical problems; one, with his face like without rebuke, pinching each other in sport or
a dirty window, from much crying, was endea- malice without the least reserve, and cutting
voring to flounder through a hopeless number their autographs in the very legs of his desk.
of lines before dinner; and one sat looking at The puzzled dunce, who stood beside it to say
his task in stony stupefaction and despair-his lesson out of book, looked no longer at the
which it seemed had been his condition ever
since breakfast-time.
approving audience knew no constraint in their
delight. If the master did chance to rouse him-
self and seem alive to what was going on, the
noise subsided for a moment and no eyes met
his but wore a studious and a deeply humble look ;
but the instant he relapsed again, it broke out
afresh, and ten times louder than before."
ceiling for forgotten words, but drew closer to
the master's elbow and boldly cast his eye upon
The appearance of a new boy did not create the page; the wag of the little troop squinted
the sensation that might have been expected. and made grimaces (at the smallest boy, of
Mr. Feeder, B.A. (who was in the habit of shav-course), holding no book before his face, and his
ing his head for coolness, and had nothing but
little bristles on it), gave him a bony hand, and
told him he was glad to see him-which Paul
would have been very glad to have told him, if
he could have done so with the least sincerity.
Then Paul, instructed by Cornelia, shook hands
with the four young gentlemen at Mr. Feeder's
desk; then with the two young gentlemen at
work on the problems, who were very feverish:
then with the young gentleman at work against
time, who was very inky; and lastly with the
young gentleman in a state of stupefaction,
who was flabby and quite cold.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
SCHOOL-The village.
Oh! how some of those idle fellows longed
to be outside, and how they looked at the open
door and window, as if they half meditated
rushing violently out, plunging into the woods,
and being wild boys and savages from that time
forth. What rebellious thoughts of the cool
river, and some shady bathing-place beneath
willow trees with branches dipping in the water,
kept tempting and urging that sturdy boy, who,
A small, white-headed boy with a sunburnt with his shirt-collar unbuttoned and flung back
face appeared at the door, while he was speak- as far as it could go, sat fanning his flushed face
ing, and stopping there to make a rustic bow, with a spelling-book, wishing himself a whale,
came in and took his seat upon one of the forms. or a tittlebat, or a fly, or anything but a boy at
The white-headed boy then put an open book school on that hot, broiling day! Heat! ask
astonishingly dog's-eared, upon his knees, and that other boy, whose seat being nearest to the
thrusting his hands into his pockets began count-door gave him opportunities of gliding out into
ing the marbles with which they were filled;
displaying in the expression of his face a re-
markable capacity of totally abstracting his
mind from the spelling on which his eyes were
fixed. Soon afterwards another white-headed
little boy came straggling in, and after him a
red-headed lad, and after him two more with
white heads, and then one with a flaxen poll,
and so on until the forms were occupied by a
dozen boys or thereabouts, with heads of every
color but gray, and ranging in their ages from
four years old to fourteen years or more; for the
legs of the youngest were a long way from the
floor when he sat upon the form, and the eldest
was a heavy, good-tempered, foolish fellow,
about half a head taller than the schoolmaster.
At the top of the first form-the post of honor
in the school-was the vacant place of the little
the garden and driving his companions to mad-
ness by dipping his face into the bucket of the
well and then rolling on the grass,-ask him if
there were ever such a day as that, when even the
bees were diving deep down into the cups of
flowers and stopping there, as if they had made
up their minds to retire from business and be
manufacturers of honey no more. The day was
made for laziness, and lying on one's back in
green places, and staring at the sky till its bright-
ness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep;
and was this a time to be poring over musty books
in a dark room, slighted by the very sun itself?
Monstrous !-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 25.
SCHOOL-ROOM-The old master and schol-
ar.
The child looked round the room as she took
SCHOOL
419
SCHOOL
their core in silence, what an incipient Hell
was breeding here!
And yet this scene, painful as it was, had its
grotesque features, which, in a less interested ob-
server than Nicholas, might have provoked a
smile. Mrs. Squeers stood at one of the desks,
presiding over an immense basin of brimstone
and treacle, of which delicious compound she
administered a large instalment to each boy in
succession: using for the purpose a common
wooden spoon, which might have been origin-
ally manufactured for some gigantic top, and
which widened every young gentleman's mouth
considerably: they being all obliged, under
heavy corporal penalties, to take in the whole
of the bowl at a gasp. In another corner, hud-
dled together for companionship, were the little
boys who had arrived on the preceding night,
three of them in very large leather breeches,
and two in old trousers, a somewhat tighter fit
than drawers are usually worn; at no great dis-
her seat. There were a couple of forms, notched
and cut and inked all over; a small deal desk,
perched on four legs, at which no doubt the
master sat; a few dog's-eared books upon a
high shelf; and beside them a motley collection
of peg-tops, balls, kites, fishing-lines, marbles,
half-eaten apples, and other confiscated property
of idle urchins. Displayed on hooks upon the wall
in all their terrors, were the cane and ruler; and
near them, on a small shelf of its own, the
dunce's cap, made of old newspapers, and deco-
rated with glaring wafers of the largest size.
But the great ornaments of the walls were cer-
tain moral sentences fairly copied in good round
text, and well-worked sums in simple addition |
and multiplication, evidently achieved by the
same hand, which were plentifully pasted all |
round the room; for the double purpose, as it
seemed, of bearing testimony to the excellence
of the school, and kindling a worthy emulation
in the bosoms of the scholars.
"Yes," said the old schoolmaster, observ-tance from these was seated the juvenile son
ing that her attention was caught by these lat-
ter specimens. "That's beautiful writing, my
dear."
"Very, sir,” replied the child modestly; "is
it yours?"
"Mine!” he returned, taking out his specta-
cles and putting them on, to have a better view
of the triumphs so dear to his heart. "I couldn't |
write like that now-a-days. No. They're all
done by one hand; a little hand it is, not so old
as yours, but a very clever one."
As the schoolmaster said this, he saw that a
small blot of ink had been thrown on one of the
copies, so he took a penknife from his pocket,
and going up to the wall, carefully scraped it
out. When he had finished, he walked slowly
backward from the writing, admiring it as one
might contemplate a beautiful picture, but with
something of sadness in his voice and manner
which quite touched the child, though she was
unacquainted with its cause.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 24.
and heir of Mr. Squeers—a striking likeness of
his father-kicking, with great vigor, under the
hands of Smike, who was fitting upon him a
pair of new boots that bore a most suspicious
resemblance to those which the least of the lit-
tle boys had worn on the journey down-as the
little boy himself seemed to think, for he was
regarding the appropriation with a look of most
rueful amazement. Besides these, there was a
long row of boys waiting, with countenances of
no pleasant anticipation, to be treacled; and
another file, who had just escaped from the in-
fliction, making a variety of wry mouths indica-
tive of anything but satisfaction. The whole
were attired in such motley, ill-sorted, extraor-
dinary garments, as would have been irresistibly
ridiculous, but for the foul appearance of dirt,
disorder, and disease, with which they were
associated.
"Now," said Squeers, giving the desk a great
rap with his cane, which made half the little
boys nearly jump out of their boots, is that
physicking over?”
"
Just over," said Mrs. Squeers, choking the
last boy in her hurry, and tapping the crown of
his head with the wooden spoon to restore him.
Here, you Smike; take away now. Look
sharp!
where there was a small fire and a large kettle,
together with a number of little wooden bowls
which were arranged upon a board.
SCHOOL-Of Squeers (Dotheboys Hall).
Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures,
children with the countenances of old men, de-
formities with irons upon their limbs, boys of
stunted growth, and others whose long, meagre
legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, Smike shuffled out with the basin, and Mrs.
all crowded on the view together; there were Squeers having called up a little boy with a
the bleared eye, the hare-lip, the crooked foot, curly head, and wiped her hands upon it, hur-
and every ugliness or distortion that told of un-ried out after him into a species of wash-house,
natural aversion conceived by parents for their
offspring, or of young lives which, from the ear-
liest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible en-
durance of cruelty and neglect. There were Into these bowls, Mrs. Squeers, assisted by
little faces which should have been handsome, the hungry servant, poured a brown composition
darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suf- which looked like diluted pincushions without
fering; there was childhood, with the light of the covers, and was called porridge. A minute
its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its help- wedge of brown bread was inserted in each
lessness alone remaining; there were vicious- bowl, and when they had eaten their porridge
faced boys, brooding, with leaden eyes, like by means of the bread, the boys ate the bread
malefactors in a jail; and there were young itself, and had finished their breakfast; where-
creatures on whom the sins of their frail parents upon Mr. Squeers said, in a solemn voice, "For
had descended, weeping even for the mercenary what we have received, may the Lord make
nurses they had known, and lonesome even in us truly thankful!"—and went away to his
their loneliness. With every kindly sympathy own.
and affection blasted in its birth, with every
young and healthy feeling flogged and starved
down, with every revengeful passion that can
fester in swollen hearts cating its evil way to
Nicholas distended his stomach with a bowl
of porridge, for much the same reason which
induces some savages to swallow earth-lest
they should be inconveniently hungry when
SCHOOL-DAYS
there is nothing to eat. Having further dispos-
ed of a slice of bread and butter, allotted to him
in virtue of his office, he sat himself down to
wait for school time.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 8.
SCHOOL-DAYS-A retrospect.
420
My school-days! The silent gliding on of
my existence the unseen, unfelt progress of my
life-from childhood up to youth! Let me
think, as I look back upon that flowing water,
now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whe-
ther there are any marks along its course, by
which I can remember how it ran.
A moment, and I occupy my place in the Ca-
thedral, where we all went together, every Sun-
day morning, assembling first at school for that
purpose. The earthy smell, the sunless air, the
sensation of the world being shut out, the re-
sounding of the organ through the black and
white arched galleries and aisles, are wings that
take me back, and hold me hovering above
those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking
dream.
I am not the last boy in the school. I have
risen, in a few months, over several heads. But
the first boy seems to me a mighty creature;
dwelling afar off, whose giddy height is unat-
tainable. Agnes says, "No," but I say, "Yes,"
and tell her that she little thinks what stores of
knowledge have been mastered by the wonder-
ful Being, at whose place she thinks I, even I,
weak aspirant, may arrive in time. He is not
my private friend and public patron, as Steer-
forth was; but I hold him in a reverential re-
spect. I chiefly wonder what he'll be, when he
leaves Dr. Strong's, and what mankind will
do to maintain any place against him.
But who is this that breaks upon me?
is Miss Shepherd, whom I love.
This
Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Net-
tingall's establishment. I adore Miss Shepherd.
She is a little girl, in a spencer, with a round
face and curly flaxen hair. The Misses Nettin-
gall's young ladies come to the Cathedral too.
I cannot look upon my book, for I must look
upon Miss Shepherd. When the choristers
chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd. In the service
I mentally insert Miss Shepherd's name: I put
her in among the Royal Family. At home, in
my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry
out, "Oh, Miss Shepherd!" in a transport of
love.
For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shep-
herd's feelings, but, at length, Fate being propi-
tious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have
Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss
Shepherd's glove, and feel a thrill go up the
right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair.
I say nothing tender to Miss Shepherd, but we
understand each other. Miss Shepherd and my-
self live but to be united.
SCHOOL-BOY
a flying rumor that the Misses Nettingall have
stood Miss Shepherd in the stocks for turning ir
her toes!
Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme
and vision of my life, how do I ever come to
break with her? I can't conceive. And yet a
coolness grows between Miss Shepherd and my-
self. Whispers reach me of Miss Shepherd hav-
ing said she wished I wouldn't stare so, and
having avowed a preference for Master Jones-
for Jones! a boy of no merit whatever! The
gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens.
At last, one day, I meet the Misses Nettingall's
establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd
makes a face as she goes by, and laughs to her
companion. All is over. The devotion of a
life-it seems a life, it is all the same—is at an
end: Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning
service, and the Royal Family know her no
more.-David Copperfield, Chap. 18.
SCHOOL-Influence of cruelty in.
In a school carried on by sheer cruelty,
whether it is presided over by a dunce or not,
there is not likely to be much learned. I believe
our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set as any
schoolboys in existence; they were too much
troubled and knocked about to learn: they
could no more do that to advantage, than any
one can do anything to advantage, in a life of
constant misfortune, torment, and worry.
David Copperfield, Chap. 7.
SCHOOL-BOY-Death of the.
He was a very young boy; quite a little child.
His hair still hung in curls about his face, and
his eyes were very bright; but their light was
of Heaven, not earth. The schoolmaster took
a seat beside him, and stooping over the pillow,
whispered his name. The boy sprung up,
stroked his face with his hand, and threw his
wasted arms round his neck, crying out that he
was his dear kind friend.
"I hope I always was. I meant to be, God
knows," said the poor schoolmaster.
•
|
Who is that?" said the boy, seeing Nell.
"I am afraid to kiss her, lest I should make her
ill. Ask her to shake hands with me."
The sobbing child came closer up, and took
the little languid hand in hers. Releasing his
again after a time, the sick boy laid him gently
down.
"You remember the garden, Harry," whis-
pered the schoolmaster, anxious to rouse him,
for a dullness seemed gathering upon the child,
"and how pleasant it used to be in the evening
time? You must make haste to visit it again,
for I think the very flowers have missed you,
and are less gay than they used to be. You
will come soon, my dear, very soon now,-won't
you?"
The boy smiled faintly-so very, very faintly
Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve-and put his hand upon his friend's gray head.
Brazil nuts for a present, I wonder? They are He moved his lips too, but no voice came from
not expressive of affection, they are difficult to them; no, not a sound.
pack into a parcel of any regular shape, they
are hard to crack, even in room doors, and they
are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are
appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy bis-
cuits, also, I bestow upon Miss Shepherd; and
oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shep-
herd in the cloak room. Ecstasy! What are
my agony and indignation next day, when I hear | arm dropped powerless down.
In the silence that ensued, the hum of dis-
tant voices borne upon the evening air came
floating through the open window. What's
that?" said the sick child, opening his eyes.
"The boys at play upon the green.'
He took a handkerchief from his pillow, and
tried to wave it above his head. But the feeble
""
SCHOOL-BOYS
'Shall I do it?" said the schoolmaster.
Please wave it at the window," was the
faint reply. "Tie it to the lattice. Some of
them may see it there. Perhaps they'll think
of me, and look this way."
He raised his head, and glanced from the
fluttering signal to his idle bat, that lay with
slate and book and other boyish property upon a
table in the room. And then he laid him
softly down once more, and asked if the little
girl were there, for he could not see her.
421
SCHOOL-MASTER
and did the holy Sabbath work of strengthen.
ing and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
When the Midsummer vacation approached,
no indecent manifestations of joy were exhibit.
ed by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen as-
sembled at Doctor Blimber's. Any such violent
expression as "breaking up," would have been
quite inapplicable to that polite establishment.
The young gentlemen oozed away, semi-annu-
ally, to their own homes; but they never broke
up. They would have scorned the action.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
She stepped forward, and pressed the passive
hand that lay upon the coverlet. The two old
friends and companions-for such they were,
though they were man and child-held each other
in a long embrace, and then the little scholar SCHOOL-MASTER-Love as a teacher.
turned his face towards the wall, and fell asleep.
The poor schoolmaster sat in the same place,
holding the small cold hand in his, and chafing
it. It was but the hand of a dead child. He
felt that; and yet he chafed it still, and could
not lay it down.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 25.
SCHOOL-BOYS-Squeers on the diet of.
"He had as good grazing, that boy had, as
there is about us.'
Ralph looked as if he did not quite under-
stand the observation.
"
There is no school in which a pupil gets on
so fast, as that in which Kit became a scholar
when he gave Barbara the kiss. He saw what
Barbara meant now-he had his lesson by
heart all at once—she was the book—there it
was before him, as plain as print.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 69.
SCHOOL-MASTER—The old.
He is an old man now. Of the many who
once crowded round him in all the hollow
friendship of boon companionship, some have
Grazing," said Squeers, raising his voice, died, some have fallen like himself, some have
under the impression that as Ralph failed to prospered-all have forgotten him. Time and
comprehend him, he must be deaf. "When misfortune have mercifully been permitted to
boy gets weak and ill and don't relish his impair his memory, and use has habituated him
meals, we give him a change of diet-turn him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplain-
out, for an hour or so every day, into a neigh-ing, and zealous in the discharge of his duties,
bor's turnip-field, or sometimes, if it's a delicate
case, a turnip-field and a piece of carrots al-
ternately, and let him eat as many as he likes.
There an❜t better land in the county than this
perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he goes and
catches cold and indigestion, and what not,
and then his friends bring a lawsuit against
Now, you'd hardly suppose," added
Squeers, moving in his chair with the impatience
of an ill-used man, "that people's ingratitude
would carry them quite as far as that; would
you?"-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 34.
me!
SCHOOL-BOOKS-The.
he has been allowed to hold his situation long
beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt
continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him
incapable, or death releases him.
As the grey-
headed old man feebly paces up and down the
sunny side of the little 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.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. I.
SCHOOL-MASTER-The kind.
Some of the higher scholars boarded in the
They comprised a little English, and a deal Doctor's house, and through them I learned, at
of Latin-names of things, declensions of arti- second-hand, some particulars of the Doctor's
cles and substantives, exercises thereon, and history. As, how he had not yet been married
preliminary rules-a trifle of orthography, a twelve months to the beautiful young lady I
glance at ancient history, a wink or two at had seen in the study, whom he had married
modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights for love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a
and measures, and a little general information. | world of poor relations (so our fellows said)
When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he ready to swarm the Doctor out of house and
found he had no idea of number one; frag- home. Also, how the Doctor's cogitating man-
ments whereof afterwards obtruded themselves ner was attibutable to his being always engaged
into number three, which slided into number | in looking out for Greek roots; which, in my
four, which grafted itself on to number two.
So that whether twenty Romuluses made a
Remus, or hic hec hoc was troy weight, or a
verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or
three times four was Taurus, a bull, were open
questions with him.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
SCHOOL-Vacation.
Oh, Saturdays! Oh, happy Saturdays, when
Florence always came at noon, and never
would, in any weather, stay away, though Mrs.
Pipchin snarled, and growled, and worried her
bitterly. Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at
least two little Christians among all the Jews,
innocence and ignorance, I supposed to be a
botanical furor on the Doctor's part, especially
as he always looked at the ground when he
walked about, until I understood that they were
roots of words, with a view to a new Dictionary
which he had in contemplation. Adams, our
head-boy, who had a turn for mathematics, had
made a calculation, I was informed, of the time
this Dictionary would take in completing, on the
Doctor's plan, and at the Doctor's rate of going.
He considered that it might be done in one thou-
sand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting
from the Doctor's last, or sixty-second birthday.
But the Doctor himself was the idol of the
SCHOOL-MASTER
422
SCHOOL-MASTER
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. I.
Half the establishment was writhing and cry-
ing, before the day's work began; and how
much of it had writhed and cried before the
day's work was over, I am really afraid to recol-
lect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.
whole school: and it must have been a badly-imparted to his countenance a look of care;
composed school if he had been anything else, while the habit of questioning and being ques-
for lie was the kindest of men; with a simpletioned had given him a suspicious manner, or a
faith in him that might have touched the stone manner that would be better described as one
hearts of the very urns upon the wall. As he of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled
walked up and down that part of the court-yard trouble in the face. It was the face belonging
which was at the side of the house, with the to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect, that
stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with had toiled hard to get what it had won, and
their heads cocked slyly, as if they knew how that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He
much more knowing they were in worldly affairs always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should
than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get be missing from his mental warehouse, and tak-
near enough to his creaking shoes to attract his | ing stock to assure himself.
attention to one sentence of a tale of distress,
that vagabond was made for the next two days.
It was so notorious in the house, that the masters SCHOOL-MASTER-Creakle, the.
and head-boys took pains to cut these marauders
off at angles, and to get out of windows, and
turn them out of the court-yard, before they
could make the Doctor aware of their presence;
which was sometimes happily effected within a
few yards of him, without his knowing anything
of the matter, as he jogged to and fro. Outside
of his own domain, and unprotected, he was a
very sheep for the shearers. He would have
taken his gaiters off his legs, to give away. In
fact, there was a story current among us (I have
no idea, and never had, on what authority, but
I have believed it for so many years that I feel
quite certain it is true), that on a frosty day, one
winter-time, he actually did bestow his gaiters
on a beggar-woman, who occasioned some scan-
dal in the neighborhood by exhibiting a fine in- |
fant from door to door, wrapped in those gar-
ments, which were universally recognised, being
as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral.
The legend added that the only person who did
not identify them was the Doctor himself, who,
when they were shortly afterwards displayed at
the door of a little second-hand shop of no very
good repute, where such things were taken in
exchange for gin, was more than once observed
to handle them approvingly, as if admiring
some curious novelty in the pattern, and con-
sidering them an improvement on his own.
David Copperfield, Chap. 16.
SCHOOL-MASTER- Bradley Headstone,
the.
I should think there never can have been a
man who enjoyed his profession more than Mr.
Creakle did. He had a delight in cutting at the
boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving
appetite, I am confident that he couldn't resist
a chubby boy, especially; that there was a fasci-
nation in such a subject, which made him rest-
less in his mind, until he had scored and marked
him for the day. I was chubby myself, and
ought to know. I am sure when I think of the
fellow now, my blood rises against him with the
disinterested indignation I should feel if I could
have known all about him without having ever
been in his power; but it rises hotly, because I
know him to have been an incapable brute, who
had no more right to be possessed of the great
trust he held, than to be Lord High Admiral, or
Commander-in-chief—in either of which capa-
cities, it is probable, that he would have done
infinitely less mischief.
Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless
Idol, how abject we were to him!
What a
launch in life I think it now, on looking back,
to be so mean and servile to a man of such
parts and pretensions!
Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye
-humbly watching his eye, as he rules a cipher-
ing book for another victim whose hands have
Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat just been flattened by that identical ruler, and
and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and de- who is trying to wipe the sting out with a pock-
cent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of et-handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don't
pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in watch his eye in idleness, but because I am mor-
his pocket and its decent hair-guard round his bidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know
neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man what he will do next, and whether it will be my
of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any turn to suffer, or somebody else's. A lane of
other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness small boys beyond me, with the same interest in
in his manner of wearing this, as if there were his eye, watch it too. I think he knows it,
a want of adaptation between him and it, re- though he pretends he don't. He makes dread-
calling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. ful mouths as he rules the ciphering book; and
He had acquired mechanically a great store of now he throws his eyes sideways down our lane,
teacher's knowledge. He could do mental and we all droop over our books and tremble.
arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechan- A moment afterwards we are again eyeing him.
ically, blow various wind instruments mechan- An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect
ically, even play the great church organ mechan-exercise, approaches at his command. The cul-
ically. From his early childhood up, his mind prit falters excuses, and professes a determina-
had been a place of mechanical stowage. The tion to do better to-morrow. Mr. Creakle cuts
arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at it
it might be always ready to meet the demands miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our vis
of retail dealers—-history here, geography there,
astronomy to the right, political economy to the
left-natural history, the physical sciences, fig-
ures, music, the lower mathematics, and what
not, all in their several places-this care had
ages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking
into our boots.-David Copperfield, Chap. 7.
SCHOOL-MASTER-Mr. M'Choakumchild.
Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best man-

ہم
شاد
DOCTOR BLIMBER'S YOUNG GENTLEMEN.
423
SCHOOL-MASTER
423
ner. He and some one hundred and forty other
schoolmasters had been lately turned at the
same time, in the same factory, on the same prin-
ciples, like so many pianoforte legs. He had
been put through an immense variety of paces,
and had answered volumes of head-breaking
questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and
prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and
general cosmography, the sciences of compound
proportion, algebra, land-surveying and level-
ling, vocal music, and drawing from models,
were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers.
He had worked his stony way into Her Majes-
ty's most Honorable Privy Council's Schedule |
B, and had taken the bloom off the higher
branches of mathematics and physical science,
French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew
all about all the Water Sheds of all the world
(whatever they are), and all the histories of all
the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers.
and mountains, and all the productions, man-
ners, and customs of all the countries, and all
their boundaries and bearings on the two-and-
thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather over-
done, M'Choakumchild. If he had only learned
a little less, how infinitely better he might have
taught much more!
He went to work in this preparatory lesson,
not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: look-
ing into all the vessels ranged before him, one
after another, to see what they contained. Say,
good M'Choakumchild! when, from thy boil-
ing store, thou shalt fill each jar brim-full by-
and-bye, dost thou think that thou wilt always
kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within-
or sometimes only maim him and distort him?
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 2.
SCHOOL-MASTER.
The only branches of education with which he
showed the least acquaintance, were, ruling and
corporally punishing. He was always ruling
ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler,
or smiting the palms of offenders with the same
diabolical instrument, or viciously drawing a
pair of pantaloons tight with one of his large
hands, and caning the wearer with the other.
We have no doubt whatever that this occupation
was the principal solace of his existence.
*
*
*
*
*
Our remembrance of Our School, presents
the Latin master as a colorless, doubled-up,
near-sighted man with a crutch, who was always
cold, and always putting onions into his ears
for deafness, and always disclosing ends of flan-
nel under all his garments, and almost always
applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief to some
part of his face with a screwing action round
and round. He was a very good scholar, and
took great pains where he saw intelligence and
a desire to learn; otherwise, perhaps not. Our
memory presents him (unless teased into a pas-
sion) with as little energy as color-as having
been worried and tormented into monotonous
feebleness—as having had the best part of his
life ground out of him in a Mill of boys.
Our School. Reprinted Pieces.
SCHOOL-Master and mistress.
Here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs;
and here is Mrs. Blimber, with her sky-blue
cap; and here is Cornelia, with her sandy little
row of curls, and her bright spectacles, still
SCHOOL OF FACTS
working like a sexton in the graves of langua
ges.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 41.
As to Mr. Feeder, B.A., Dr. Blimber's assist
ant, he was a kind of human barrel organ, with
a little list of nes at which he was continually
working over and over again, without any vari-
ation. He might have been fitted up with a
change of barrels, perhaps, in early life, if his
destiny had been favorable; but it had not been;
and he had only one, with which, in a monoto-
nous round, it was his occupation to bewilder
the young ideas of Dr. Blimber's young gentle-
men.
But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the
Doctor's hothouse, all the time; and the Dọc-
tor's glory and reputation were great, when he
took his wintry growth home to his relations
and friends.—Dombey & Son, Chap. 11.
Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and grace-
ful maid, did no soft violence to the gravity of
the house. There was no light nonsense about
Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and
crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and
sandy with working in the graves of deceased
languages. None of your live languages for Miss
Blimber. They must be dead-stone dead-
and then Miss Blimber dug them like a Ghoul.
up
*
*
*
*
She said, at evening parties, that if she could
have known Cicero, she thought she could have
died contented. It was the steady joy of her
life to see the Doctor's young gentlemen go out
walking, unlike all other young gentlemen, in
the largest possible shirt-collars, and the stiff-
est possible cravats. It was so classical, she
said.-Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
A learned enthusiasm is very contagious.
*
-*-
*
*
Paul looked upon the young lady with con-
sternation, as a kind of learned Guy Faux, or
artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw,
Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
SCHOOL-MISTRESS-Miss Peecher in love.
Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom
was Miss Peecher; cherry-cheeked and tuneful
of voice. A little pincushion, a little house-
wife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set
of tables and weights and measures, and a little
woman, all in one. She could write a little es-
say on any subject, exactly a slate long, begin-
ning at the left-hand top of one side and ending
at the right-hand bottom of the other, and the
essay should be strictly according to rule. If
Mr. Bradley Headstone had addressed a writ-
ten proposal of marriage to her, she would
probably have replied in a complete little essay
on the theme, exactly a slate long, but would
certainly have replied Yes. For she loved him.
The decent hair-guard that went round his neck
and took care of his decent silver watch was an
object of envy to her. So would Miss Peecher
have gone round his neck and taken care of
him. Of him, insensible. Because he did not
love Miss Peecher.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 1.
SCHOOL OF FACTS.
Tell me some of your mistakes."
"I am almost ashamed," said Sissy, with
SCENERY
reluctance. "But to-day, for instance, Mr.
M'Choakumchild was explaining to us about
Natural Prosperity."
National, I think it must have been," ob-
served Louisa.
"Yes, it was.
timidly asked.
424
But isn't it the same?" she
"You had better say National, as he said so,"
returned Louisa, with her dry reserve.
"National Prosperity. And he said, Now,
this schoolroom is a Nation. And in this na-
tion, there are fifty millions of money. Isn't
this a prosperous nation? Girl number twenty,
isn't this a prosperous nation, and a'n't you in a
thriving state.
*
*
*
*
*
"Then Mr. M'Choakumchild said he would
try me once more. And he said, Here are the
stutterings-
"
""
Statistics," said Louisa.
Yes, Miss Louisa-they always remind me
of stutterings, and that's another of my mistakes
-of accidents upon the sea. And I find (Mr.
M'Choakumchild said) that in a given time a
hundred thousand persons went to sea on long
voyages, and only five hundred of them were
drowned or burnt to death. What is the
percentage? And I said, Miss "-here Sissy
fairly sobbed as confessing with extreme con-
trition to her greatest error-"I said it was
nothing."
"
Nothing, Sissy?
"Nothing, Miss-to the relations and friends
of the people who were killed. I shall never
learn," said Sissy. "And the worst of all is,
that although my poor father wished me so
much to learn, and although I am so anxious to
learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I
don't like it."-Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 9.
SCENERY—A Western swamp.
SCENERY
as they labored up the hills beyond it was pleas-
ant to look down, and see how the sluggish mass
rolled heavily off, before the cheering influence of
day. A broad, fine, hones. sun lighted up the green
pastures and dimpled water with the semblance
of summer, while it left the travellers all the in-
vigorating freshness of that early time of year.
The ground seemed elastic under their feet; the
sheep-bells were music to their ears; and exhil-
arated by exercise, and stimulated by hope,
they pushed onward with the strength of
lions.
The day wore on, and all these bright colors
subsided, and assumed a quieter tint, like young
hopes, softened down by time, or youthful fea-
tures by degrees resolving into the calm and
serenity of age. But they were scarcely less
beautiful in their slow decline, than they had
been in their prime; for nature gives to every
time and season some beauties of its own; and
from morning to night, as from the cradle to
the grave, is but a succession of changes so gen-
tle and easy, that we can scarcely mark their
progress.
*
*
*
*
*
Here, there shot up, almost perpendicularly,
into the sky, a height so steep as to be hardly
accessible to any but the sheep and goats that
fed upon its sides; and there, stood a mound of
green, sloping and tapering off so delicately,
and merging so gently into the level ground
that you could scarce define its limits. Hills
swelling above each other; and undulations,
shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, grace-
ful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by
side, bounded the view in each direction; while
frequently, with unexpected noise, there uprose
from the ground a flight of crows, cawing and
wheeling round the nearest hills, as if uncertain
of their course, suddenly poised themselves up-
on the wing and skimmed down the long vista
of some opening valley, with the speed of light
itself.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22.
SCENERY-From Rochester bridge.
On we go, all night, and by-and-bye the day
begins to break, and presently the first cheerful
rays of the warm sun come slanting on us
brightly. It sheds its light upon a miserable
waste of sodden grass, and dull trees, and On the left of the spectator lay the ruined
squalid huts, whose aspect is forlorn and griev- wall, broken in many places, and in some, over-
ous in the last degree,-a very desert in the hanging the narrow beach below in rude and
wood, whose growth of green is dank and nox-heavy masses. Huge knots of sea-weed hung
ious, like that upon the top of standing water; upon the jagged and pointed stones, trembling
where poisonous fungus grows in the rare foot in every breath of wind; and the green ivy
print on the oozy ground, and sprouts like clung mournfully round the dark and ruined
witches' coral from the crevices in the cabin battlements. Behind it rose the ancient castle,
wall and floor. It is a hideous thing to lie up-its towers roofless, and its massive walls crum-
on the very threshold of a city. But it was pur-bling away, but telling as proudly of its own
chased years ago, and, as the owner cannot be might and strength, as when, seven hundred
discovered, the State has been unable to reclaim years ago, it rang with the clash of arms, or
it. So there it remains, in the midst of culti-resounded with the noise of feasting and revel-
vation and improvement, like ground accursed, ry. On either side, the banks of the Medway,
and made obscene and rank by some great
crime.-American Notes, Chap. 14.
SCENERY-Country.
It was, by this time, within an hour of noon,
and although a dense vapor still enveloped the
city they had left, as if the very breath of its
busy people hung over their schemes of gain
and profit, and found greater attraction there
than in the quiet region above, in the open
country it was clear and fair. Occasionally, in
some low spots they came upon patches of mist
which the sun had not yet driven from their
strongholds; but these were soon passed, and,
covered with corn-fields and pastures, with here
and there a wind-mill, or a distant church
stretched away as far as the eye could see; pre
senting a rich and varied landscape, rendered
more beautiful by the changing shadows which
passed swiftly across it, as the thin and half-
formed clouds skimmed away in the light of
the morning sun. The river, reflecting the
clear blue of the sky, glistened and sparkled as
it flowed noiselessly on; and the oars of the
fishermen dipped into the water with a clear
and liquid sound, as the heavy but picturesque
boats glided slowly down the stream.
Pickwick, Chap. 5.
SCENERY
SCENERY-Landscape.
425
SCENERY
to beat in her frail keel as though it had been
pie-crust. Looking down upon the filthy river
after dark, it seemed to be alive with monsters,
as these black masses rolled upon the surface,
or came starting up again, head-first, when the
boat, in ploughing her way among a shoal of
such obstructions, drove a few among them, for
the moment, under water. Sometimes the engine
stopped during a long interval, and then before
her, and behind, and gathering close about her
obstacles, that she was fairly hemmed in,—the
centre of a floating island,—and was constrained
to pause until they parted somewhere, as dark
clouds will do before the wind, and opened by
degrees a channel out.
American Notes, Chap. 14.
Oh, the solemn woods over which the light
and shadow travelled swiftly, as if Heavenly
wings were sweeping on benignant errands
through the summer air; the smooth green
slopes, the glittering water, the garden where
the flowers were so symmetrically arranged in
clusters of the richest colors, how beautiful they
looked! The house, with gable, and chimney,
and tower, and turret, and dark doorway, and
broad terrace-walk, twining among the balus-on all sides, were so many of these ill-favored
trades of which, and lying heaped upon the
vases, there was one great flush of roses, seem-
ed scarcely real in its light solidity, and in the
serene and peaceful hush that rested on all
around it. To Ada and to me, that, above all,
appeared the pervading influence. On every-
thing, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, wa-
ter, old oaks, fern, moss, woods again, and SCENERY-On the Mississippi. Cairo.
far away across the openings in the prospect, to Nor was the scenery, as we approached the
the distance lying wide before us with a pur-junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, at
ple bloom upon it, there seemed to be such
undisturbed repose.-Bleak House, Chap. 18.
SCENERY—Of an American prairie.
all inspiriting in its influence. The trees were
stunted in their growth; the banks were low
and flat; the settlements and log-cabins fewer
in number; their inhabitants more wan and
wretched than any we had encountered yet.
No songs of birds were in the air, no pleasant
scents, no moving lights and shadows from swift
passing clouds. Hour after hour the changeless
glare of the hot unwinking sky shone upon the
same monotonous objects. Hour after hour the
river rolled along as wearily and slowly as the
time itself.
Looking toward the setting sun, there lay,
stretched out before my view, a vast expanse of
level ground; unbroken, save by one thin line
of trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch
upon the great blank, until it met the glowing
sky, wherein it seemed to dip, mingling with its
rich colors, and mellowing in its distant blue.
There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water,
if such a simile be admissible, with the day At length, upon the morning of the third day,
going down upon it; a few birds wheeling here we arrived at a spot so much more desolate than
and there, and solitude and silence reigning any we had yet beheld, that the forlornest places
paramount around. But the grass was not yet we had passed were, in comparison with it, full
high; there were bare, black patches on the of interest. At the junction of the two rivers,
ground; and the few wild-flowers that the eye on ground so flat, and low, and marshy, that at
could see were poor and scanty. Great as the certain seasons of the year it is inundated to
picture was, its very flatness and extent, which the house-tops, lies a breeding-place for fever,
left nothing to the imagination, tamed it down ague, and death; vaunted in England as a mine
and cramped its interest. I felt little of that of Golden Hope, and speculated in, on the faith
sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scot- of monstrous representations, to many people's
tish heath inspires, or even our English downs ruin. A dismal swamp, on which the half-built
awaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive houses rot away; cleared here and there for the
in its barren monotony. I felt that, in travers- space of a few yards; and teeming, then, with
ing the Prairies, I could never abandon myself rank, unwholesome vegetation, in whose bale-
to the scene, forgetful of all else, as I should do ful shade the wretched wanderers who are
instinctively, were the heather under my feet, or tempted hither droop, and die, and lay their
an iron-bound coast beyond ; but should often bones; the hateful Mississippi circling and
glance towards the distant and frequently receding eddying before it, and turning off upon its south-
line of the horizon, and wish it gained and past. It ern course, a slimy monster, hideous to behold;
is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave
one, I think (at all events, as I saw it), to remem-uncheered by any gleam of promise; a place
ber with much pleasure, or to covet the looking
on again, in after-life.
American Notes, Chap. 13.
SCENERY-On the Mississippi.
If the coming up this river, slowly making
head against the stream, be an irksome journey,
the shooting down it with the turbid current is
almost worse; for then the boat, proceeding at
the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, has
in force its passage through a labyrinth of float-
ing logs, which, in the dark, it is often impossi-
ble to see beforehand or avoid. All that night
the bell was never silent for five minutes at a
time;
and after every ring the vessel reeled
again, sometimes beneath a single blow, some-
times beneath a dozen dealt in quick succession,
the lightest of which seemed more than enough
without one single quality, in earth or air or
water, to commend it; such is this dismal
Cairo.
But what words shall describe the Mississippi,
the great father of rivers, who (praise be to
Heaven!) has no young children like him! An
enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles
wide, running liquid mud, six miles an hour;
its strong and frothy current choked and ob-
structed everywhere by huge logs and whole
forest trees; now twining themselves together
in great rafts, from the interstices of which a
sedgy, lazy foam works up, to float upon the
water's top; now rolling past, like monstrous
bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted
hair; now glancing singly by, like giant leeches;
and now writhing round and round in the vor-
tex of some small whirlpool, like wounded
SCENERY AND WEATHER
426
SCIENCE
snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the open air, an elderly gentleman of scientific
marshes swarming with frogs, the wretched attainments was seated in his library, two or
cabins few and far apart, their inmates hollow-three houses off, writing a philosophical treatise,
cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mos-
quitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice
of the boat, mud and slime on everything;
nothing pleasant in its aspect but the harmless
lightning which flickers every night upon the
dark horizon.-American Notes, Chap. 12.
SCENERY AND WEATHER.
Every day had been so bright and blue, that
to ramble in the woods, and to see the light
striking down among the transparent leaves,
and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of
the shadows of the trees, while the birds poured
out their songs, and the air was drowsy with
the hum of insects, had been most delightful.
We had one favorite spot, deep in moss and
last year's leaves, where there were some felled
trees from which the bark was all stripped off.
Seated among these, we looked through a green
vista supported by thousands of natural columns,
the whitened stems of trees, upon a distant
prospect made so radiant by its contrast with
the shade in which we sat, and made so precious
by the arched perspective through which we saw
it, that it was like a glimpse of the better land.
Upon the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce,
Ada, and I, until we heard thunder muttering in
the distance, and felt the large rain-drops rattle
through the leaves.
*
*
*
*
The lattice-windows were all thrown open,
and we sat, just within the doorway, watching
the storm. It was grand to see how the wind
awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain
before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear
the solemn thunder, and to see the lightning;
and while thinking with awe of the tremen-
dous powers by which our little lives are en-
compassed, to consider how beneficent they
are, and how upon the smallest flower and leaf
there was already a freshness poured from all
this seeming rage, which seemed to make crea-
tion new again.-Bleak House, Chap. 18.
SCIENCE-The mistakes of.
"That 'ere blessed lantern 'ull be the death
on us all," exclaimed Sam, peevishly. "Take
care wot you're a doin' on, sir; you're a sendin'
a blaze o' light right into the back parlor win-
der."
"Dear me!" said Mr. Pickwick, turning
hastily aside, "I didn't mean to do that."
"Now it's in the next house, sir," remon-
strated Sam.
"Bless my heart!" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick,
turning round again.
"Now it's in the stable, and they'll think
the place is a-fire," said Sam.
Shut it up,
sir, can't you?"
It's the most extraordinary lantern I ever
met with in all my life!" exclaimed Mr. Pick-
wick, greatly bewildered by the effects he had
so unintentionally produced. "I never saw
such a powerful reflector."
"It'll be vun too powerful for us, if you keep
blazin' avay in that manner, sir," replied Sam,
as Mr. Pickwick, after various unsuccessful
efforts, managed to close the slide.
*
*
*
*
While these things were going on in the
and ever and anon moistening his clay and his
labors with a glass of claret from a venerable-
looking bottle which stood by his side. In the
agonies of composition, the elderly gentleman
looked sometimes at the carpet, sometimes
at the ceiling, and sometimes at the wall; and
when neither carpet, ceiling, nor wall afforded
the requisite degree of inspiration, he looked
out of the window.
In one of these pauses of invention, the scien-
tific gentleman was gazing abstractedly on the
thick darkness outside, when he was very much
surprised by observing a most brilliant light
glide through the air, at a short distance above
the ground, and almost instantaneously vanish.
After a short time the phenomenon was repeat-
ed, not once or twice, but several times: at
last the scientific gentleman, laying down his
pen, began to consider to what natural causes
these appearances were to be assigned.
They were not meteors; they were too low.
They were not glow worms; they were too high.
They were not will-o'-the-wisps; they were not
fire-flies; they were not fire-works. What
could they be? Some extraordinary and won-
derful phenomenon of nature, which no philoso-
pher had ever seen before; something which
it had been reserved for him alone to discover,
and which he should immortalize his name by
chronicling for the benefit of posterity. Full of
this idea, the scientific gentleman seized his pen
again, and committed to paper sundry notes of
these unparalleled appearances, with the date,
day, hour, minute, and precise second at which
they were visible: all of which were to form
the data of a voluminous treatise of great re-
search and deep learning, which should aston-
ish all the atmospherical sages that ever drew
breath in any part of the civilized globe.
He threw himself back in his easy-chair, wrap-
ped in contemplations of his future greatness.
The mysterious light appeared more brilliantly
than before: dancing, to all appearance, up and
down the lane, crossing from side to side, and
moving in an orbit as eccentric as comets them-
selves.
The scientific gentleman was a bachelor. He
had no wife to call in and astonish, so he rang
the bell for his servant.
"Pruffle," said the scientific gentleman, "there
is something very extraordinary in the air to-
night. Did you see that?" said the scientific
gentleman, pointing out of the window, as the
light again became visible.
"Yes, I did, sir."
"What do you think of it, Pruffle?"
"Think of it, sir?"
"Yes. You have been bred up in this country.
What should you say was the cause of those
lights, now?"
The scientific gentleman smilingly anticipated
Pruffle's reply that he could assign no cause for
them at all. Pruffle meditated.
"I should say it was thieves, sir," said Pruffle
at length.
'You're a fool, and may go down stairs,"
said the scientific gentleman.
"Thank you, sir," said Pruffle. And down
he went.
But the scientific gentleman could not rest
SCIENCE
427
SEA
under the idea of the ingenious treatise he had SCOUNDRELS-Night-birds of prey.
projected being lost to the world, which must
inevitably be the case if the speculation of the
ingenious Mr. Pruffle were not stifled in its birth.
He put on his hat and walked quickly down the
garden, determined to investigate the matter to
the very bottom.
Now, shortly before the scientific gentleman
walked out into the garden, Mr. Pickwick had
run down the lane as fast as he could, to convey
a false alarm that somebody was coming that
way; occasionally drawing back the slide of the
dark lantern to keep himself from the ditch.
The alarm was no sooner given than Mr. Winkle
scrambled back over the wall, and Arabella ran
into the house; the garden-gate was shut, and
the three adventurers were making the best of
their way down the lane, when they were
startled by the scientific gentleman unlocking
his garden gate.
Hold hard," whispered Sam, who was, of
course, the first of the party. Show a light for
just vun second, sir."
Mr. Pickwick did as he was desired, and Sam,
seeing a man's head peeping out very cautiously
within half-a-yard of his own, gave it a gentle
tap with his clenched fist, which knocked it,
with a hollow sound, against the gate. Having
performed this feat with great suddenness and
dexterity, Mr. Weller caught Mr. Pickwick up
on his back, and followed Mr. Winkle down the
lane at a pace which, considering the burden he
carried, was perfectly astonishing.
Have you got your vind back agin, sir," in-
quired Sam, when they had reached the end.
"
Quite. Quite, now," replied Mr. Pickwick.
"Then come along, sir," said Sam, setting his
master on his feet again. "Come between us,
sir. Not half a mile to run. Think you're
vinnin a cup, sir. Now for it."
Thus encouraged, Mr. Pickwick made the
very best use of his legs. It may be confidently
stated that a pair of black gaiters never got over
the ground in better style than did those of Mr.
Pickwick on this memorable occasion.
The coach was waiting, the horses were fresh,
the roads were good, and the driver was willing.
The whole party arrived in safety at the Bush
before Mr. Pickwick had recovered his breath.
In vith you at once, sir," said Sam, as he
helped his master out. "Don't stop a second in
the street, arter that 'ere exercise. Beg your
pardon, sir," continued Sam, touching his hat
as Mr. Winkle descended. Hope there warn't
a priory 'tachment, sir."
Mr. Winkle grasped his humble friend by the
hand, and whispered in his ear, "It's all right,
Sam; quite right." Upon which Mr. Weller
struck three distinct blows upon his nose in
token of intelligence, smiled, winked, and pro-
ceeded to put the steps up, with a countenance
expressive of lively satisfaction.
As to the scientific gentleman, he demon-
strated, in a masterly treatise, that these won-
derful lights were the effect of electricity; and
clearly proved the same by detailing how a flash
of fire danced before his eyes when he put his
head out of the gate, and how he received a
shock which stunned him for a quarter of an
hour afterwards; which demonstration delighted
all the Scientific Associations beyond measure,
and caused him to be considered a light of sci-
ence ever afterwards.-Pickwick, Chap. 39.
|
Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and
sallow face upon the neighborhood of Leicester
Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out
of bed. Many of them are not early risers at
the brightest of times, being birds of night who
roost when the sun is high, and are wide awake
and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Be-
hind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story
and garret, skulking more or less under false
names, false hair, false titles, false jewelry, and
false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their
first sleep. Gentlemen of the green baize road,
who could discourse, from personal experience
of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies
of strong governments that eternally quake with
weakness and miserable fear, broken traitors,
cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers,
and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the
branding-iron, beneath their dirty braid; all
with more cruelty in them than was in Nero,
and more crime than is in Newgate. For, how-
soever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-
frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a
more designing, callous, and intolerable devil
when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls
himself a gentleman, backs a card or color,
plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a
little about bills and promissory notes, than in
any other form he wears.
SEA-Storm at.
Bleak House, Chap. 26.
The tremendous sea itself, when I could find
sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of
the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand,
and the awful noise, confounded me. As the
high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their
highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if
the least would engulf the town. As the reced-
ing wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it
seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach,
as if its purpose were to undermine the earth.
When some white-headed billows thundered
on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they
reached the land, every fragment of the late
whole seemed possessed by the full might of its
wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composi-
tion of another monster. Undulating hills were
changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a
solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through
them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water
shivered and shook the beach with a booming
sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as
soon as made, to change its shape and place,
and beat another shape and place away; the
ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and
buildings, rose and fell; the clouds flew fast
and thick; I seemed to see a rending and up-
heaving of all nature.
David Copperfield, Chap. 55.
SEA-An excursion party at.
The throbbing motion of the engine was but
too perceptible. There was a large, substantial,
cold boiled leg of mutton, at the bottom of the
table, shaking like blanc-mange; a previously
hearty sirloin of beef looked as if it had been
suddenly seized with the palsy; and some
tongues, which were placed on dishes rather too
large for them, went through the most surpris
ing evolutions; darting from side to side, and
from end to end, like a fly in an inverted wine
SEA
428
SEA AND LOVE
quiescence, turned over in his berth, and drew
his blanket over his head.
"-For," said Mr. Tapley, pursuing the theme
by way of soliloquy, in a low tone of voice;
"the sea is as nonsensical a thing as any going.
It never knows what to do with itself. It hasn't
got no employment for its mind, and is always
in the wild-beast-shows as is constantly a nod-
ding their heads from side to side, it never can
be quiet. Which is entirely owing to its un-
common stupidity."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 15.
glass. Then, the sweets shook and trembled,
till it was quite impossible to help them, and
people gave up the attempt in despair; and the
pigeon-pies looked as if the birds, whose legs
were stuck outside, were trying to get them in.
The table vibrated and started like a feverish
pulse, and the very legs were convulsed-every-
thing was shaking and jarring. The beams in a state of vacancy. Like them Polar bears
in the roof of 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; and 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 omi-
nous demands were made for small glasses of
brandy; the countenances of the company
gradually underwent most extraordinary changes;
one gentleman was observed suddenly to rush
from table without the slightest ostensible
reason, and dart up the steps with incredible
swiftness; thereby greatly damaging both him-
self and the steward, who happened to be com-
ing 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 announced 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.
SEA-Impartiality of the.
Tales, Chap. 7.
The sea has no appreciation of great men, but
knocks them about like the small fry. It is
habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose coun-
tenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-
cheese, and in whose aristocratic system it effects
a dismal revolution. It is the Radical of Nature.
Bleak House, Chap. 12.
SEA-Mark Tapley's opinion of the.
For the first objects Mr. Tapley recognized
when he opened his eyes were his own heels-
looking down to him, as he afterwards observed,
from a nearly perpendicular elevation.
"Well," said Mark, getting himself into a
sitting posture, after various ineffectual strug-
gles with the rolling of the ship. "This is
the first time as ever I stood on my head all
night."
"
You shouldn't go to sleep upon the ground
with your head to leeward, then," growled a
man in one of the berths.
"With my head to where?" asked Mark.
The man repeated his previous sentiment.
No, I won't another time," said Mark,
"when I know whereabouts on the map that
country is. In the meanwhile I can give you a
better piece of advice. Don't you nor any other
friend of mine never go to sleep with his head
in a ship, any more."
The man gave a grunt of discontented ac-
|
SEA-"On the bar.”
Early in the morning I was on the deck of
the steam-packet, and we were aiming at the
bar in the usually intolerable manner, and the
bar was aiming at us in the usually intolerable
manner, and the bar got by far the best of it,
and we got by far the worst,-all in the usual
intolerable manner.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 7.
SEA-The.
A taunting roar comes from the sea, and the
far-out rollers mount upon one another, to look
at the entrapped impostors, and to join in imp-
ish and exultant gambols.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 10.
SEA-Breakers.
The grim row of breakers enjoying themselves
fanatically on an instrument of torture called
"the Bar."-Reprinted Pieces.
SEA-The voice of the waves.
Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up,
and sat listening.
Florence asked him what he thought he
heard.
"I want to know what it says," he answered,
looking steadily in her face. "The sea, Floy,
what is it that it keeps on saying?"
She told him that it was only the noise of the
rolling waves.
'Yes, yes," he said. "But I know that they
are always saying something. Always the same
thing. What place is over there?" He rose up,
looking eagerly at the horizon.
She told him that there was another country
opposite, but he said he didn't mean that: he
meant farther away-farther away!
Very often afterwards, in the midst of their
talk, he would break off, to try to understand
what it was that the waves were always saying;
and would rise up in his couch to look towards
that invisible region, far away.
SEA AND LOVE.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 8.
"As I hear the sea," says Florence, "and sit
watching it, it brings so many days into my
mind. It makes me think so much-"
"Of Paul, my love. I know it does."
Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the
waves are always whispering to Florence, in
their ceaseless murmuring, of love-of love, eter-
nal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines
of this world, or by the end of time, but ranging
still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the in-
visible country far away!
Dombey & Son, Chap. 57.
SEA
SEA-Its associations.
429
All is going on as it was wont. The waves
are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the
dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds
soar and hover; the winds and clouds go forth
upon their trackless flight; the white arms
beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible coun-
try far away.
With a tender, melancholy pleasure, Florence
finds herself again on the old ground so sadly
trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the
quiet place where he and she have many and
many a time conversed together, with the water
welling up about his couch. And now, as she
sits pensive there, she hears in the wild low
murmur of the sea, his little story told again, his
very words repeated; and finds that all her life, |
and hopes, and griefs, since-in the solitary
house, and in the pageant it has changed to-
have a portion in the burden of the marvellous
song.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 41.
SEA-In a storm.
SEA-SICKNESS
Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever
sometimes unaccountably realized large fortunes,
and it was remarkable that nobody in the neigh-
borhood could endure a lamplighter.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4.
SEA-Scenery.
Sitting, on a bright September morning, among
my books and papers, at my open window on
the cliff overhanging the sea-beach, I have the
sky and ocean framed before me like a beautiful
picture. A beautiful picture, but with such
movement in it, such changes of light upon the
sails of ships and wake of steamboats, such
dazzling gleams of silver far out at sea, such
fresh touches on the crisp wave-tops as they
break and roll towards me a picture with such
me—a
music in the billowy rush upon the shingle, the
blowing of the morning wind through the corn-
sheaves, where the farmers' wagons are busy, the
singing of the larks, and the distant voices of
children at play-such charms of sight and
sound as all the Galleries on earth can but poorly
suggest.-Out of Town. Reprinted Pieces.
SEA-SHORE—At the.
Never had I seen a year going out, or going
on, under quieter circumstances. Eighteen hun-
dred and fifty-nine had but another day to live,
and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore
that morning.
"Aye," said the Captain, reverentially; "it's a
almighty element. There's wonders in the deep,
my pretty. Think on it when the winds is roar-
ing, and the waves is rowling. Think on it
when the stormy nights is so pitch dark," said
the Captain, solemnly holding up his hook, "as
you can't see your hand afore you, excepting
when the wiwid lightning reweals the same;
and when you drive, drive, drive through the
storm and dark, as if you was a driving, head
on, to the world without end, evermore, amen,
and when found making a note of. Them's the
times, my beauty, when a man may say to his
messmate (previously a overhauling of the wol-
ume), 'A stiff nor-wester's blowing, Bill; hark,
don't you hear it roar now! Lord help 'em,
how I pitys all unhappy folks ashore now!'"lass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at
Which quotation, as particularly applicable to
the terrors of the ocean, the Captain delivered
in a most impressive manner, concluding with a
sonorous "Stand by!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 49.
SEA-CAPTAIN-His face.
What have we here? The captain's boat!
and yonder the captain himself. Now, by all
our hopes and wishes, the very man he ought to
be! A well-made, tight-built, dapper little fel-
low, with a ruddy face, which is a letter of invi-
tation to shake him by both hands at once, and
with a clear, blue honest eye, that it does one
good to see one's sparkling image in.
American Notes, Chap. 1.
SEAPORT-(Dover).
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 tumb-
ling 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
brought the coast down, madly. The air among
the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavor
that one might have supposed 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 looking seaward: particularly at those
times when the fide made, and was near flood.
So settled and orderly was everything sea-
ward, in the bright light of the sun and under
the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it
was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years
past or to come, than it was that very day. The
Tug steamer lying a little off the shore, the
Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat
alongside the Lighter, the regularly turning wind-
work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and
down with the breathing of the sea,-all seemed
as much a part of the nature of the place as the
tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and had
been for some two hours and a half; there was
a slight obstruction in the sea within a few
yards of my feet, as if the stump of a tree, with
earth enough about it to keep it from lying hori-
zontally on the water, had slipped a little from
the land: and as I stood upon the beach, and
observed it dimpling the light swell that was
coming in, I cast a stone over it.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 2.
SEA-SICKNESS-The misery of.
I say nothing of what may be called the do-
mestic noises of the ship, such as the breaking
of glass and crockery, the tumbling down of
stewards, the gambols overhead of loose casks
and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very
remarkable and far from exhilarating sounds
raised in their various state-rooms by the seventy
passengers who were too ill to get up to break-
fast-I say nothing of them, for, although I lay
listening to this concert for three or four days,
I don't think I heard it for more than a quarter
of a minute, at the expiration of which term I
lay down again excessively sea-sick.
Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary
acceptation of the term; I wish I had been;
but in a form which I have never seen or heard
described, though I have no doubt it is very
common. I lay there all the day long quite
SEA-SICKNESS
430
coolly and contentedly, with no sense of weari-
ness, with no desire to get up, or get better, or
take the air, with no curiosity, or care, or regret
of any sort or degree, saving that I think I can
remember in this universal indifference having
a kind of lazy joy-of fiendish delight, if any-
thing so lethargic can be dignified with the title
-in the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to
me. If I may be allowed to illustrate my state
of mind by such an example, I should say that
I was exactly in the condition of the elder Mr.
Willet after the incursion of the rioters into his
bar at Chigwell. Nothing would have surprised
me. If, in the momentary illumination of any
ray of intelligence that may have come upon
me in the way of thoughts of Home, a goblin
postman with a scarlet coat and bell had come
into that little kennel before me, broad awake
in broad day, and, apologizing for being damp
through walking in the sea, had handed
me a letter directed to myself in familiar char-
acters, I am certain I should not have felt one
atom of astonishment; I should have been per-
fectly satisfied. If Neptune himself had walk-
ed in with a toasted shark on his trident, I
should have looked upon the event as one of the
very commonest every-day occurrences.
|
|
SEA-SIDE
drowned in the process of restoration to life.
One gentleman on board had a letter of intro-
duction to me from a mutual friend in London.
He sent it below with his card, on the morning
of the head-wind; and I was long troubled with
the idea that he might be up and well, and a
hundred times a day expecting me to call upon
him in the saloon. I imagined him one of those
cast-iron images-I will not call them men-
who ask, with red faces and lusty voices, what
sea-sickness means, and whether it really is
as bad as it is represented to be. This was
very torturing indeed; and I don't think I ever
felt such perfect gratification and gratitude of
heart as I did when I heard from the ship's doc-
tor that he had been obliged to put a large mus-
tard poultice on this very gentleman's stomach.
I date my recovery from the receipt of that in-
telligence.-American Notes, Chap. 2.
SEA-SICKNESS.
I beg your pardon, sir," said the steward,
running up to Mr. Percy Noakes, "I beg your
pardon, sir, but the gentleman as just went on
deck-him with the green spectacles-is uncom-
mon 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
wery subsistence depends on his breaking a wes-
sel, and he expects to do so every moment. The
flageolet's been wery ill, but he's better, only
he's in a dreadful prusperation."
*
*
*
*
*
Mr. Hardy was observed, some hours after-
wards, in an attitude which induced his friends
to suppose that he was busily engaged in con-
templating 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.—Tales, Chap. 7.
SEA-SIDE-Scenes at the.
Once-once-I found myself on deck. I
don't know how I got there, or what possessed
me to go there, but there I was; and completely
dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair
of boots such as no weak man in his senses
could ever have got into. I found myself stand-
ing, when a gleam of consciousness came upon
me, holding on to something. I don't know
what. I think it was the boatswain; or it may
have been the pump; or possibly the cow. I
can't say how long I had been there-whether
a day or a minute. I recollect trying to think
about something (about anything in the whole
wide world, I was not particular), without the
smallest effect. I could not even make out
which was the sea and which the sky; for the
horizon seemed drunk, and was flying wildly
about in all directions. Even in that incapable
state, however, I recognized the lazy gentleman As we walked by the softly lapping sea, all
standing before me, nautically clad in a suit of the notabilities of Namelesston, who are forever
shaggy blue, with an oilskin hat. But I was too going up and down with the changelessness of
imbecile, although I knew it to be he, to sepa- the tides, passed to and fro in procession. Pret-
rate him from his dress, and tried to call him, I ty girls on horseback, and with detested riding-
remember, Pilot. After another interval of total masters; pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in
unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and re- hats,-spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring
|
cognized another figure in its place. It seemed at the opposite or weaker sex. The Stock Ex-
to wave and fluctuate before me as though I saw change was strongly represented, Jerusalem
it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass; but I was strongly represented, the bores of the pro-
knew it for the captain; and such was the cheer- sier London clubs were strongly represented.
ful influence of his face, that I tried to smile; Fortune-hunters of all denominations
yes, even then I tried to smile. I saw by his there, from hirsute insolvency in a curricle to
gestures that he addressed me; but it was a long closely buttoned-up swindlery in doubtful
time before I could make out that he remon- boots, on the sharp lookout for any likely young
strated against my standing up to my knees in gentleman disposed to play a game at billiards
water as I was; of course I don't know why. round the corner. Masters of languages, their
I tried to thank him, but couldn't. I could only lessons finished for the day, were going to their
point to my boots-or wherever I supposed my homes out of sight of the sea; mistresses of
boots to be—and say, in a plaintive voice, “Cork accomplishments, carrying small portfolios,
soles ;" at the same time endeavoring, I am told, likewise tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic
to sit down in the pool. Finding that I was pupils, two and two, went languidly along the
quite insensible, and for the time a maniac, he beach, surveying the face of the waters as if
humanely conducted me below.
waiting for some Ark to come and take them
off. Spectres of the George the Fourth days
flitted unsteadily among the crowd, bearing the
outward 'semblance of ancient dandies, of every
one of whom it might be said, not that he had
There I remained until I got better; suffer-
ing, whenever I was recommended to eat any-
thing, an amount of anguish only second to that
which is said to be endured by the apparently
were
SEA-SIDE
431
SEA-SIDE
one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that he stakes and piles, leaning forward as if they were
was steeped in grave to the summit of his high vain of their personal appearance and looking,
shirt-collar, and had nothing real about him for their reflection in the water, will melt into
but his bones. Alone stationary in the midst any train of fancy. Equally adaptable to any
of all the movements, the Namelesston boat-purpose or to none are the pasturing sheep and
men leaned against the railings and yawned, kine upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and
and looked out to sea, or looked at the moored dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot)
fishing-boats and at nothing. Such is the un-going home from the rich harvest-fields, the
changing manner of life with this nursery of
our hardy seamen, and very dry nurses they
are, and always wanting something to drink.
A Little Dinner in an Hour. New Uncom-
mercial Samples.
The place seems to respond. Sky, sea, beach,
and village, lie as still before us as if they
were sitting for the picture. It is dead low-
water. A ripple plays among the ripening
corn upon the cliff, as if it were faintly trying
from recollection to imitate the sea; and the
world of butterflies hovering over the crop of
radish-seed are as restless in their little way as
the gulls are in their larger manner when
the wind blows. But the ocean lies winking
in the sunlight like a drowsy lion-its glassy
waters scarcely curve upon the shore-the fish-
ing-boats in the tiny harbor are all stranded |
in the mud—our two colliers (our watering-
place has a maritime trade employing that
amount of shipping) have not an inch of water
within a quarter of a mile of them, and turn, ex-
hausted, on their sides, like faint fish of an
antediluvian species. Rusty cables and chains,
ropes and rings, undermost parts of posts, and
piles, and confused timber defences against
the waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter
of tangled sea-weed and fallen cliff, which
looks as if a family of giants had been making
tea here for ages, and had observed an untidy
custom of throwing their tea-leaves on the shore.
Our English Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces.
heron that has been out a-fishing, and looks as
melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn't
agreed with him. Everything within the range
of the senses will, by the aid of the running
water, lend itself to everything beyond that
range, and work into a drowsy whole, not un-
like a kind of tune, but for which there is no
exact definition.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 24.
Again among the tiers of shipping, in and
out, avoiding rusty chain-cables, frayed hempen
hawsers, and bobbing buoys, sinking_for_the
moment floating broken baskets, scattering float-
ing chips of wood and shaving, cleaving floating
scum of coal, in and out, under the figure-head
of the John of Sunderland making a speech to
the winds (as is done by many Johns), and the
Betsy of Yarmouth with a firm formality of
bosom and her knobby eyes starting two inches
out of her head; in and out, hammers going in
ship-builders' yards, saws going at timber, clash-
ing engines going at things unknown, pumps
going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships go-
ing out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures
roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent
lightermen; in and out-out at last upon the
clearer river, where the ships' boys might take
their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled
waters with them over the side, and where the
festooned sails might fly out to the wind.
Great Expectations, Chap. 54.
SEA-SIDE-Children at the.
There are some small out-of-the-way landing- So many children are brought down to our
places on the Thames and the Medway, where watering-place that, when they are not out of
I do much of my summer idling. Running doors, as they usually are in fine weather, it is
water is favorable to day-dreams, and a strong wonderful where they are put; the whole vil-
tidal river is the best of running water for mine. lage seeming much too small to hold them un-
I like to watch the great ships standing out to der cover. In the afternoons, you see no end
sea or coming home richly laden, the active lit- of salt and sandy little boots drying on upper
tle steam-tugs confidently puffing with them to window-sills. At bathing-time in the morning,
and from the sea horizon, the fleet of barges the little bay re-echoes with every shrill variety
that seem to have plucked their brown and rus- of shriek and splash-after which, if the weather
set sails from the ripe trees in the landscape, be at all fresh, the sands team with smali blue-
the heavy old colliers, light in ballast, flounder- mottled legs. The sands are the children's
ing down before the tide, the light screw barks great resort. They cluster there like ants; so
and schooners imperiously holding a straight busy burying their particular friends, and mak-
course while the others patiently tack and going castles with infinite labor which the next tide
about, the yachts, with their tiny hulls and great
white sheets of canvas, the little sailing-boats
bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure
or business, and—as it is the nature of little It is curious, too, to observe a natural ease of
people to do—making a prodigious fuss about approach that there seems to be between the
their smali affairs. Watching these objects, I children and the boatmen. They mutually
still am under no obligation to think about make acquaintance, and take individual likings,
them, or even so much as to see them, unless it without any help. You will come upon one of
perfectly suits my humor. As little am I obliged those slow heavy fellows sitting down patiently
to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple mending a little ship for a mite of a boy, whom
at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the he could crush to death by throwing his lightest
humming steamship paddles farther away yet. pair of trowsers on him. You will be sensible
These, with the creaking little jetty on which I of the oddest contrast between the smooth little
sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-creature, and the rough man who seems to be
water marks in the mud, and the broken cause- carved out of hard-grained wood-between the
way, and the broken bank, and the broken delicate hand, expectantly held out, and the im
overthrows, that it is curious to consider how
their play, to the music of the sea, foreshadows
the realities of their after lives.
SEA-SIDE
432
SEA-VOYAGE
mense thumb and finger that can hardly feel and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a
the rigging of thread they mend-between the last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to
small voice and the gruff growl-and yet there be especially commended to the infernal gods.
is a natural propriety in the companionship, Thrice accursed be that garrison town, when it
always to be noted in confidence between dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a
a child and a person who has any merit of league or two to the right, with the packet
reality and genuineness, which is admirably | shivering and spluttering and staring about for
pleasant.
it!-Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 17.
Our English Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces.
SEA-SIDE-The.
We have a fine sea, wholesome for all peo-
ple; profitable for the body, profitable for the
mind. The poet's words are sometimes on its
awful lips;
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill
But O for the touch of a vanished haud,
And the sound of a voice that is still.
Break, break, break,
SEA-SIDE VIEWS-Landing at Calais.
The passengers were landing from the packet
on the pier at Calais. A low-lying place and a
low-spirited place Calais was, with the tide ebb-
ing out toward low-water mark. There had
been no more water on the bar than had sufficed
to float the packet in; and now the bar itself,
with a shallow break of sea over it, looked like
a lazy marine monster just risen to the surface,
whose form was distinctly shown as it lay asleep.
The meagre lighthouse, all in white, haunting
the seaboard, as if it were the ghost of an edi-
fice that had once had color and rotundity,
dripped melancholy tears after its late buffeting
by the waves.
Yet it is not always so, for the speech of the piles, slimy and wet and weather-worn, with
The long rows of gaunt black
sea is various, and wants not abundant resource funeral garlands of sea-weed twisted about them
of cheerfulness, hope, and lusty encouragement. by the late tide, might have represented an un-
And since I have been idling at the window sightly marine cemetery. Every wave-dashed,
And since I have been idling at the window
here, the tide has risen. The boats are dancing storm-beaten object, was so low and so little,
on the bubbling water; the colliers are afloat under the broad gray sky, in the noise of the
again; the white-bordered waves rush in; the
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me !
children
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back;
wind and sea, and before the curling lines of
surf making at it ferociously, that the wonder
was there was any Calais left, and that its
low gates and low wall and low roofs and low
ditches and low sand-hills and low ramparts and
the radiant sails are gliding past the shore, and flat streets, had not yielded long ago to the un-
shining on the far horizon; all the sea is spark-dermining and besieging sea, like the fortifica-
ling, heaving, swelling up with life and beauty, tions children make on the sea-shore.
this bright morning.
Our English Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces.
SEA-SIDE
Calais.
VIEWS-The approach
to
When I first made acquaintance with Calais,
it was as a maundering young wretch in a
clammy perspiration and dripping saline parti-
cles, who was conscious of no extremities but
the one great extremity, sea-sickness,-who was
a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache
somewhere in its stomach-who had been put
into a horrible swing in Dover Harbor, and had
tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast,
or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times have
changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and
rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep a
lookout for it, I recognize its landmarks when
I see any of them, I am acquainted with its
ways and I know-and I can bear-its worst
behavior.
Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evad-
ing the eyesight and discouraging hope! Dodg-
ing flat streak, now on this bow, now on that,
now anywhere, now everywhere, now no-
where! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frank-
ly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be
stout of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais,
prone behind its bar, invites emetically to de-
spair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal
itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of
falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless
than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the
bowsprit, and you think you are there-roll,
roar, wash!-Calais has retired miles inland,
After slipping among oozy piles and planks,
stumbling up wet steps and encountering many
salt difficulties, the passengers entered on their
comfortless peregrination along the pier ; where
all the French vagabonds and English outlaws in
the town (half the population) attended to pre-
vent their recovery from bewilderment. After
being minutely inspected by all the English,
and claimed, and reclaimed, and counter-claimed
as prizes by all the French, in a hand-to-hand
scuffle, three-quarters of a mile long, they were
at last free to enter the streets, and to make off
in their various directions, hotly pursued.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 20.
SEA-VOYAGE--The end of a.
It was mid-day, and high water in the English
port for which the Screw was bound, when,
borne in gallantly upon the fullness of the tide,
she let go her anchor in the river.
Bright as the scene was; fresh, and full of
motion; airy, free, and sparkling; it was noth-
ing to the life and exultation in the breasts of
the two travellers, at sight of the old churches,
roofs, and darkened chimney-stacks of Home.
The distant roar, that swelled up hoarsely from
the busy streets, was music in their ears; the
lines of people gazing from the wharves, were
friends held dear; the canopy of smoke that
overhung the town, was brighter and more beau-
tiful to them, than if the richest silks of Persia
had been waving in the air. And though the
water, going on its glistening track, turned ever
and again aside, to dance and sparkle round
great ships, and heave them up, and leaped from
SECRETS
433
off the blades of oars, a shower of diving dia-
monds; and wantoned with the idle boats, and
swiftly passed, in many a sportive chase, through
obdurate old iron rings, set deep into the stone-
work of the quays; not even it was half so
buoyant, and so restless. as their fluttering
hearts, when yearning to set foot, once more, on
native ground.
A year had passed, since those same spires
and roofs had faded from their eyes. It seemed,
to them, a dozen years. Some trifling changes,
here and there, they called to mind; and won-
dered that they were so few and slight. In
health and fortune, prospect and resource, they
came back poorer men than they had gone
away. But it was home. And though home is
a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger
than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to,
in strongest conjuration.
*
*
*
*
*
Even the street was made a fairy street, by
being half-hidden in an atmosphere of steak and
strong, stout, stand-up English beer. For, on
the window-glass hung such a mist, that Mr.
Tapley was obliged to rise and wipe it with his
handkerchief, before the passengers appeared
like common mortals. And even then, a spiral
little cloud went curling up from their two
glasses of hot grog, which nearly hid them
from each other.—Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap 35.
SECRETS.
"Such matters keep well, and, like good wine,
often double their value in course of time," an-
swered the matron, still preserving the resolute
indifference she had assumed. "As to lying dead,
there are those who will lie dead for twelve thou-
sand years to come, or twelve million, for any-
thing you or I know, who will tell strange tales
at last!"-Oliver Twist, Chap. 38.
SECRETS-Depositories of.
|
SELFISHNESS
gloom, and must, and dust of the whole tene
ment, were secret. At the heart of it his mother
presided, inflexible of face, indomitable of will,
firmly holding all the secrets of her own and his
father's life, and austerely opposing herself,
front to front, to the great final secret of all
life.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 10.
SECRETS-Of humanity.
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every
human creature is constituted to be that pro-
found 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 some
of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest
it! Something of the awfulness 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, forever
and forever, 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 individu-
ality, 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
innermost personality, to me, or than I am to
them?-Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 3.
SECRET-The possessor of a (Snagsby).
To know that he is always keeping a secret
from her; that he has, under all circumstances,
to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth,
which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out
of his head; gives Mr. Snagsby, in her dentisti
cal presence, much of the air of a dog, who has
a reservation from his master, and will look
anywhere rather than meet his eye.
SELF-DECEIT.
Bleak House, Chap. 25.
As he went along, upon a dreary night, the
dim streets by which he went seemed all de-
positories of oppressive secrets. The deserted
counting-houses, with their secrets of books and
papers locked up in chests and safes; the bank-
ing houses, with their secrets of strong rooms
and wells, the keys of which were in a very few
secret pockets and a very few secret breasts; the
secrets of all the dispersed grinders in the vast
mill, among whom there were doubtless plun-
derers, forgers, and trust-betrayers of many sorts,
whom the light of any day that dawned might
reveal; he could have fancied that these things,
in hiding, imparted a heaviness to the air. The All other swindlers upon earth are nothing
shadow thickening and thickening as he ap- to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences
proached its source, he thought of the secrets did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing.
of the lonely church-vaults, where the people That I should innocently take a bad half-crown
who had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable
were in their turn similarly hoarded, not yet at enough; but that I should knowingly reckon
rest from doing harm; and then of the secrets the spurious coin of my own make, as good
of the river, as it rolled its turbid tide between money! An obliging stranger, under pretence
two frowning wildernesses of secrets, extend- of compactly folding up my bank-notes for se-
ing, thick and dense, for many miles, and ward-curity's sake, abstracts the notes and gives me
ing off the free air and the free country, swept
by winds and wings of birds.
The shadow still darkening as he drew near
the house, the melancholy room which his father
had once occupied, haunted by the appealing
face he had himself seen fade away with him
when there was no other watcher by the bed, arose
before his mind. Its close air was secret.
The
nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to
mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and
pass them on myself as notes!
Great Expectations, Chap. 28.
SELFISHNESS.
"
'There is a kind of selfishness," said Mar-
tin; "I have learned it in my own experience
SELFISHNESS
434
of my own breast: which is constantly upon
the watch for selfishness in others; and hold-
ing others at a distance by suspicions and dis-
trusts wonders why they don't approach, and
don't confide, and calls that selfishness in them."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 52.
SHAKSPEARE
"But is it really possible to please the
world?" says some doubting reader. It is, in-ing, took away our bread; and also how he him-
deed. Nay, it is not only very possible, but
very easy. The ways are crooked, and some-
times foul and low. What then? A man need
but crawl upon his hands and knees, know
when to close his eyes and when his ears, when
to stoop and when to stand upright; and if by
the world is meant that atom of it in which he
moves himself, he shall please it, never fear.
SELFISHNESS-In love.
Sketches of Couples.
Is selfishness a necessary ingredient in the
composition of that passion called love, or does
it deserve all the fine things which poets, in the
exercise of their undoubted vocation, have said
of it? There are, no doubt, authenticated in-
stances of gentlemen having given up ladies
and ladies having given up gentlemen to meri-
torious rivals, under circumstances of great high-
mindedness; but it is quite established that the
majority of such ladies and gentlemen have not
made a virtue of necessity, and nobly resigned
what was beyond their reach; as a private sol-
dier might register a vow never to accept the
order of the Garter, or a poor curate of great
piety and learning, but of no family-save a very
large family of children-might renounce a bish-
opric.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 43.
SENTINEL-Sam Weller as a.
"O wery well," said the boots; "that's a
mere matter of taste-ev'ry one to his liking.
Hows'ever, all I've got to say is this here: You
sit quietly down in that chair, and I'll sit hop-
persite you here, and if you keep quiet and don't
stir, I won't damage you; but if you move hand
or foot till half-past twelve o'clock, I shall alter
the expression of your countenance so complete-
ly, 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."
Tales, Chap. 8.
SEPARATIONS-In life.
Breakings up are capital things in our school-
days, but in after life they are painful enough.
Death, self-interest, and fortune's changes, are
every day breaking up many a happy group, and
scattering them far and wide; and the boys and
girls never come back again.
Pickwick, Chap. 30,
SERVANT—The miseries of housekeeping.
He was taken to Bow Street, as well as I re-
member, on the completion of his fifteenth jour-
ney; when four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand
fife which he couldn't play, were found upon his
person.
The surprise and its consequences would have
been much less disagreeable to me if he had not
been penitent. But he was very penitent in-
deed, and in a peculiar way-not in the lump,
but by instalments. For example: the day after
that on which I was obliged to appear against
him, he made certain revelations touching a
hamper in the cellar, which we believed to be
full of wine, but which had nothing in it except
bottles and corks. We supposed he had now
eased his mind, and told the worst he knew of
the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his con-
science sustained a new twinge, and he disclosed
how she had a little girl, who, early every morn-
self had been suborned to maintain the milk-
man in coals. In two or three days more, I
was informed by the authorities of his having
led to the discovery of sirloins of beef among
the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A
little while afterwards, he broke out in an
entirely new direction, and confessed to a know-
ledge of burglarious intentions as to our prem-
ises, on the part of the pot-boy, who was imme-
diately taken up. I got to be so ashamed of
being such a victim, that I would have given
him any money to hold his tongue, or would
have offered a round bribe for his being per-
mitted to run away. It was an aggravating cir-
cumstance in the case that he had no idea of
this, but conceived that he was making me
amends in every new discovery: not to say,
heaping obligations on my head.
David Copperfield, Chap. 48.
SHADOWS-Evening.
It had grown darker as they talked, and the
wind was sawing and the sawdust was whirling
outside paler windows. The underlying church-
yard was already settling into deep dim shade,
and the shade was creeping up to the house-tops
among which they sat. "As if," said Eugene,
as if the churchyard ghosts were rising."
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 12.
SHAKERS-American.
They are governed by a woman, and her rule
is understood to be absolute, though she has the
assistance of a council of elders. She lives, it
is said, in strict seclusion in certain rooms above
the chapel, and is never shown to profane eyes.
If she at all resemble the lady who presided
over the store, it is a great charity to keep her
as close as possible, and I cannot too strongly
express my perfect concurrence in this benevo
lent proceeding.-American Notes, Chap. 15.
SHAKSPEARE—Mr. Wolf's idea of.
but
Shakspeare's an infernal humbug, Pip!
What's the good of Shakspeare, Pip? I never
read him. What the devil is it all about, Pip?
There's a lot of feet in Shakspeare's verse,
there ain't any legs worth mentioning in Shaks-
peare's plays, are there, Pip? Juliet, Desde-
mona, Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of 'em,
whatever their names are, might as well have no
legs at all, for anything the audience know about
it, Pip. Why, in that respect they're all Miss
Biffins to the audience, Pip. I'll tell you what
it is. What the people call dramatic poetry is
a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre
to be lectured? No, Pip. If I want that, I'd
go to church. What's the legitimate object of the
drama, Pip? Human nature. What are legs?
Human nature. Then let us have plenty of leg
pieces, Pip, and I'll stand by you, my buck!
And I am proud to say," added Pip, "that he
did stand by me, handsomely."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 28.
SHERRY-COBBLER
SHERRY-COBBLER—An American.
"I wish you would pull off my boots for me,"
said Martin, dropping into one of the chairs.
"I am quite knocked up. Dead beat, Mark."
"You won't say that to-morrow morning,
sir," returned Mr. Tapley ;
"nor even to-
night, sir, when you've made a trial of this."
With which he produced a very large tumbler,
piled up to the brim with little blocks of clear
transparent ice, through which one or two
thin slices of lemon, and a golden liquid of
delicious appearance, appealed from the still
depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator.
"What do you call this?" said Martin.
435
But Mr. Tapley made no answer: merely
plunging a reed into the mixture-which caus-
ed a pleasant commotion among the pieces of
ice and signifying, by an expressive gesture,
that it was to be pumped up through that agency
by the enraptured drinker.
Martin took the glass with an astonished
look; applied his lips to the reed; and cast up
his eyes once in ecstasy. He paused no more
until the goblet was drained to the last drop.
There, sir," said Mark, taking it from him
with a triumphant face; "If ever you should
happen to be dead beat again, when I ain't in
the way, all you've got to do is, to ask the near-
est man to go and fetch a cobbler."
“To go and fetch a cobbler?" repeated Mar-
tin.
"This wonderful invention, sir," said Mark,
tenderly patting the empty glass, "is called a
cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it
long; cobbler, when
when you name it short.
Now, you're equal to having your boots taken
off, and are, in every particular worth men-
tioning, another man.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 17.
SHIP-A hymn on board.
SHIP
a furious pace upon the waves, which filled one
with an indescribable sense of pride and exul-
tation. As she plunged into a foaming valley
how I loved to see the green waves, bordered
deep with white, come rushing on astern, to
buoy her upward at their pleasure, and curl
about her as she stooped again, but always own
her for their haughty mistress still! On, on we
flew, with changing lights upon the water, be-
ing now in the blessed region of fleecy skies; a
bright sun lighting us by day, and a bright
moon by night; the vane pointing directly
homeward, alike the truthful index to the favor-
ing wind and to our cheerful hearts.
SHIP-Cabin of a.
American Notes, Chap. 16.
Before descending into the bowels of the ship
we had passed from the deck into a long narrow
apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse with
windows in the sides, having at the upper end
a melancholy stove, at which three or four chilly
stewards were warming their hands, while on
either side, extending down its whole dreary
length, was a long, long table, over each of
which a rack, fixed to the low roof, and stuck
full of drinking-glasses and cruet-stands, hinted
dismally at rolling seas and heavy weather. I
had not at that time seen the ideal presentment
of this chamber which has since gratified me so
much, but I observed that one of our friends
who had made the arrangements for our voyage
turned pale on entering, retreated on the friend
behind him, smote his forehead involuntarily,
and said, below his breath, "Impossible! it
cannot be !"-American Notes, Chap. 1.
SHIP-Departure of an emigrant.
It was such a strange scene to me, and so
confined and dark, that, at first, I could make
out hardly anything; but, by degrees, it cleared,
There was a Sunday, when an officer of the as my eyes became more accustomed to the
ship read the service. It was quiet and im- gloom, and I seemed to stand in a picture by
pressive, until we fell upon the dangerous and OSTADE. Among the great beams, bulks, and
perfectly unnecessary experiment of striking ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths
up a hymn. After it was given out, we all and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps
rose, but everybody left it to somebody else to of miscellaneous baggage-lighted up, here and
begin. Silence resulting, the officer (no singer there, by dangling lanterns; and elsewhere by
himself) rather reproachfully gave us the first the yellow day-light straying down a windsail
line again, upon which a rosy pippin of an or a hatchway-were crowded groups of people,
old gentleman, remarkable throughout the making new friendships, taking leave of one
passage for his cheerful politeness, gave a little another, talking, laughing, crying, eating, and
stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off drinking; some, already settled down into the
a country dance), and blithely warbled us into possession of their few feet of space, with their
a show of joining. At the end of the first little households arranged, and tiny children
verse we
we became, through these tactics, so established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs ;
much refreshed and encouraged, that none of others, despairing of a resting-place, and wan-
us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit to dering disconsolately. From babies, who had
be left out of the second verse; while as to the but a week or two of life behind them, to
third, we lifted up our voices in a sacred howl crooked old men and women who seemed to
that left it doubtful whether we were the more have but a week or two of life before them;
boastful of the sentiments we united in pro-and from ploughmen bodily carrying out soil
fessing, or of professing them with a most dis-of England on their boots, to smiths taking
cordant defiance of time and tune.
Aboard Ship. New Uncommercial Samples.
SHIP-At sea.
At length and at last, the promised wind
came up in right good earnest, and away we
went before it, with every stitch of canvas set,
slashing through the water nobly. There was a
grandeur in the motion of the splendid ship, as,
overshadowed by her mass of sails, she rode at
away samples of its soot and smoke upon their
skins; every age and occupation appeared to
be crammed into the narrow compass of the
'tween decks.
*
*
*
*
*
We went over the side into our boat, and lay
at a little distance to see the ship wafted on her
course. It was then calm, radiant sunset. She
lay between us and the red light; and every
taper line and spar was visible against the glow
SHIP
A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and
so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on
the flushed water, with all the life on board her
crowded at the bulwarks, and there clustering,
for a moment, bare-headed and silent, I never
saw.-David Copperfield, Chap. 57.
SHIP-In a storm.
486
But what the agitation of a steam-vessel is, on
a bad winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is
impossible for the most vivid imagination to con-
ceive. To say that she is flung down on her
side in the waves, with her masts dipping
into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls
over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes
her with the noise of a hundred great guns, and
hurls her back—that she stops, and staggers, and
shivers, as though stunned, and then, with a
violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like
a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten
down, and battered, and crushed, and leaped on
by the angry sea-that thunder, lightning, hail,
and rain, and wind, are all in fierce contention
for the mastery—that every plank has its groan,
every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in
the great ocean its howling voice is nothing.
To say that all is grand, and all appalling and
horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words
cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it.
Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury,
rage, and passion.
*
*
*
*
*
Of the outrageous antics performed by that
ship next morning, which made bed a practical
joke, and getting up, by any process short of
falling out, an impossibility, I say nothing. But
anything like the utter dreariness and desolation
that met my eyes when I literally "tumbled up"
on deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky
were all of one dull, heavy, uniform lead-color.
There was no extent of prospect even over the
dreary waste that lay around us, for the sea ran
high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large
black hoop. Viewed from the air, or some tall
bluff on shore, it would have been imposing and
stupendous, no doubt; but seen from the wet
and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily
and painfully. In the gale of last night the life-
boat had been crushed by one blow of the sea,
like a walnut-shell; and there it hung dangling
in the air, a mere fagot of crazy boards. The
planking of the paddle-boxes had been torn
sheer away. The wheels were exposed and
bare; and they whirled and dashed their spray
about the decks at random. Chimney white
with crusted salt; topmast struck; storm-sails
set; rigging all knotted, tangled, wet, and
drooping; a gloomier picture it would be hard
to look upon.-American Notes, Chap. 2.
SHIP-Prayer on board.
Thus the scene. Some seventy passengers
assembled at the saloon tables. Prayer-books
on tables. Ship rolling heavily. Pause. No
Minister. Rumor has related that a modest
young clergyman on board has responded to the
captain's request that he will officiate. Pause
again, and very heavy rolling.
Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and
two strong stewards skate in, supporting minis-
ter between them. General appearance as of
somebody picked up, drunk and incapable, and
under conveyance to station-house. Stoppage,
SHIP
pause, and particularly heavy rolling. Stewards
watch their opportunity, and balance themselves,
but cannot balance minister; who, struggling
with a drooping head and a backward tendency,
seems determined to return below, while they are
as determined that he shall be got to the reading
desk in mid-saloon. Desk portable, sliding
away down a long table, and aiming itself at
the breasts of various members of the congrega
tion. Here the double doors, which have been
carefully closed by other stewards, fly open
again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, seem-
ingly with Pale Ale designs; who, seeking
friend, says "Joe!" Perceiving incongruity,
says, "Hullo! Beg yer pardon !" and tumbles
out again. All this time the congregation have
been breaking up into sects-as the manner of
congregations often is-each sect sliding away
by itself, and all pounding the weakest sect,
which slid first into the corner.
Utmost point
of dissent soon attained in every corner, and
violent rolling. Stewards at length make a
dash; conduct minister to the mast in the cen-
tre of the saloon, which he embraces with both
arms; skate out; and leave him in that con-
dition to arrange affairs with flock.
Aboard Ship. New Uncommercial Samples.
SHIP-Preparations for departure.
But we are made fast alongside the packet,
whose huge red funnel is smoking bravely, giv-
ing rich promise of serious intentions. Pack-,
ing-cases, portmanteaus, carpet-bags, and boxes
are already passed from hand to hand, and
hauled on board with breathless rapidity. The
officers, smartly dressed, are at the gangway,
handing the passengers up the side, and hurry.
ing the men. In five minutes' time the little
steamer is utterly deserted, and the packet is
beset and overrun by its late freight, who in-
stantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be
met with by the dozen in every nook and corner:
swarming down below with their own baggage,
and stumbling over other people's; disposing
themselves comfortably in wrong cabins, and
creating a most horrible confusion by having to
turn out again; madly bent upon opening locked
doors, and on forcing a passage into all kinds
of out-of-the-way places, where there is no
thoroughfare: sending wild stewards with elfin
hair to and fro upon the breezy decks on unintel
ligible errands, impossible of execution; and, in
short, creating the most extraordinary and be-
wildering tumult.
*
*
*
*
*
The state-room had grown pretty fast; but
by this time it had expanded into something
quite bulky, and almost boasted a bay-window
to view the sea from. So we went upon deck
again in high spirits; and there everything was
in such a state of bustle and active preparation,
that the blood quickened its pace, and whirled
through one's veins on that clear frosty morn-
ing with involuntary mirthfulness. For every
gallant ship was riding slowly up and down,
and every little boat was plashing noisily in the
water; and knots of people stood upon the
wharf, gazing with a kind of "dread delight" on
the far-famed fast American steamer; and one
party of men were "taking in the milk," or, in
other words, getting the cow on board; and
another were filling the ice-houses to the very
throat with fresh provisions,-with butchers',
24
SHIP
437
meat and garden-stuff, pale sucking-pigs, calves'
heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poul-
try out of all proportion; and others were coil-
ing ropes, and busy with oakum yarns; and
others were lowering heavy packages into the
hold: and the purser's head was barely visible
as it loomed in a state of exquisite perplexity
from the midst of a vast pile of passengers' lug-
gage; and there seemed to be nothing going on
anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of any-
body, but preparations for this mighty voyage.
This, with the bright cold sun, the bracing air,
the crisply curling water, the thin white crust
of morning ice upon the decks, which crackled |
with a sharp and cheerful sound beneath the
lightest tread, was irresistible. And when, again
upon the shore, we turned and saw from the ves-
sel's mast her name signalled in flags of joyous
colors, and fluttering by their side the beautiful
American banner, with its stars and stripes, the
long three thousand miles and more, and, long-
er still, the six whole months of absence, so
dwindled and faded, that the ship had gone
out and come home again, and it was broad
spring already in the Coburg Dock at Liver-
pool.-American Notes, Chap. 1.
SHIP-Scenes on board.
My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for
the firm of Human Interest Brothers have not
slackened since I last reported of them, but have
kept me continually on the move. I remain in
the same idle employment. I never solicit an
order, I never get any commission, I am the roll-
ing stone that gathers no moss,-unless any
should by chance be found among these Samples.
Some half a year ago, I found myself in my
idlest, dreamiest, and least accountable condi-
tion altogether, on board ship, in the harbor of
the city of New York, in the United States of
America. Of all the good ships afloat, mine
was the good steamship RUSSIA, CAPTAIN COOK,
Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. What more
could I wish for?
*
*
*
*
*
A bright sun and a clear sky had melted the
snow in the great crucible of nature, and it had
been poured out again that morning over sea
and land, transformed into myriads of gold and
silver sparkles.
|
SHI
Lady" was rendered sufficiently clear even to
my scared intellect by a very small manuscript,
announcing the fact, which was pinned on a
very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress
spread like a surgical plaster on a most inacces-
sible shelf.
*
*
*
*
That this room of state, in short, could be
anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful
jest of the captain's, invented and put in practice
for the better relish and enjoyment of the real
| state-room presently to be disclosed ;—these
were truths which I really could not, for the
moment, bring my mind at all to bear upon or
comprehend. And I sat down upon a kind of
horse hair slab, or perch, of which there were
two within; and looked, without any expression
of countenance whatever, at some friends who
had come on board with us, and who were
crushing their faces into all manner of shapes
by endeavoring to squeeze them through the
small doorway.-American Notes, Chap. I.
SHIPS-Their associations.
"Think of this wine, for instance," said old
Sol, "which has been to the East Indies and
back, I'm not able to say how often, and has
been once round the world. Think of the pitch-
dark nights, the roaring winds, and rolling seas.
"The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of
all kinds," said the boy.
"To be sure," said Solomon-" that this wine
has passed through. Think what a straining and
creaking of timbers and masts; what a whist-
ling and howling of the gale through ropes and
rigging:
"What a clambering aloft of men, vying with
each other who shall lie out first upon the yards
to furl the icy sails, while the ship rolls and
pitches, like mad!" cried his nephew.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 4.
SHIPS-The rigging of.
Arrived at the wharf, this great commander's
ship was jammed in among some five hundred
companions, whose tangled rigging looked like
monstrous cobwebs half swept down.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
SHIPWRECK- Japt. Cuttle's description
of a.
"
The ship was fragrant with flowers. Some-
thing of the old Mexican passion for flowers Day arter day that there unfort'nate ship be-
may have gradually passed into North America, haved noble, I'm told, and did her duty brave,
where flowers are luxuriously grown and taste- my pretty, but at one blow a'most her bulwarks
fully combined in the richest profusion; but, be was stove in, her masts and rudder carried away,
that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers her best men swept overboard, and she left to
had come on board, that the small officer's cabin the mercy of the storm as had no mercy, but
on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed over into blowed harder and harder yet, while the waves
the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other flowers dashed over her, and beat her in, and every time
that it could n't hold, made a garden of the they come a thundering at her, broke her like a
unoccupied tables in the passengers' saloon. shell. Every black spot in every mountain of
|
These delicious scents of the shore, mingling water that rolled away was a bit o' the ship's
with the fresh airs of the sea, made the atmos-life or a living man; and so she went to pieces,
phere a dreamy, an enchanting one. And so, Beauty, and no grass will never grow upon the
with the watch aloft setting all the sails, and graves of them as manned that ship.”
with the screw below revolving at a mighty rate,
and occasionally giving the ship an angry shake
for resisting, I fell into my idlest ways and lost my-
self.-Aboard Ship. New Uncommercial Samples.
SHIP-State-room of a.
That this state-room had been specially
engaged for "Charles Dickens, Esquire, and
Dombey & Son, Chap. 49.
SHIP-The voice of the Screw.
And now, lying down again, awaiting the sea-
son for broiled ham and tea, I would be com-
pelled to listen to the voice of conscience,-the
Screw.
It might be, in some cases, no more than
SHIP
438
the voice of Stomach, but I called it in my
fancy by the higher name. Because it seemed
to me that we were all of us, all day long, en-
deavoring to stifle the Voice. Because it was
Because it was
under everybody's pillow, everybody's plate,
everybody's camp-stool, everybody's book, every-
body's occupation. Because we pretended not
to hear it, especially at meal-times, evening
whist, and morning conversation on deck; but
it was always among us in an under monotone,
not to be drowned in pea-soup, not to be shuffled
with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to
be knitted into any pattern, not to be walked
away from.
It was smoked in the weediest
cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail; it
was conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies,
who lay there in their wrappers until the stars
shone; it waited at table with the stewards; no-
body could put it out with the lights. It was
considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknow-
ledge the Voice of Conscience. It was not
polite to mention it. One squally day an amia-
ble gentleman in love gave much offence to a
surrounding circle, including the object of his
attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded
him over two easy-chairs and a skylight,
"Screw!"
SHIPWRECK
Did she ever take a roll before like that last!
Did she ever take a roll before like this worse
one that is coming now? Here is the partition
at my ear down in the deep on the lee side.
Are we ever coming up again together? I think
not; the partition and I are so long about it
that I really do believe we have overdone it
this time. Heavens, what a scoop! What a
deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long
scoop! Will it ever end!
*
*
*
*
*
At last, at nine of the clock, on a fair evening
early in May, we stopped, and the Voice ceased.
A very curious sensation, not unlike having my
own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence;
and it was with a no less curious sensation that
I went over the side of the good Cunard ship
Russia, (whom Prosperity attend through all her
voyages) and surveyed the outer hull of the
gracious monster that the Voice had inhabited.
So, perhaps, shall we all, in the spirit, one day
survey the frame that held the busier Voice
from which my vagrant fancy derived this simil-
itude.
Aboard Ship. New Uncommercial Samples.
SHIPWRECK-(The death of Ham).
"A wreck! Close by!"
I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck ?
"A schooner from Spain or Portugal, laden
with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you
want to see her! It's thought, down on the
beach, she'll go to pieces every moment."
The excited voice went clamoring along the
staircase; and I wrapped myself in my clothes
as quickly as I could, and ran into the street.
The wind might by this time have lulled a
little, though not more sensibly than if the can-
nonading I had dreamed of had been diminish-
Sometimes it would appear subdued. In
fleeting moments, when bubbles of champagne
pervaded the nose, or when there was "hot
pot" in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we
had had regularly every day was described in
that official document by a new name-under |
such excitements, one would almost believe it
hushed. The ceremony of washing plates on
deck, performed after every meal by a circle as
of ringers of crockery triple-bob-majors for a
prize, would keep it down. Hauling the reel,
taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four
hours' run, altering the ship's time by the meri-ed by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of
dian, casting the waste food overboard, and at-
tracting the eager gulls that followed in our
wake; these events would suppress it for a
while. But the instant any break or pause
took place in any such diversion, the Voice
would be at it again, importuning us to the last
extent. A newly-married young pair, who
walked the deck affectionately some twenty
miles per day, would, in the full flush of their
exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and
stand trembling, but otherwise immovable, un-
der its reproaches.
*
*
*
*
*
Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind
rising, the Voice grows angrier and deeper.
Under the mattress and under the pillow, un-
der the sofa and under the washing-stand, un-
der the ship and under the sea, seeming to arise
from the foundations under the earth with every
scoop of the great Atlantic (and O, why scoop
so!), always the Voice. Vain to deny its exist-
ence in the night season; impossible to be hard
of hearing; Screw, Screw, Screw. Sometimes
it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a
whirr, like a ferocious firework-except that it
never expends itself, but is always ready to go
off again; sometimes it seems to be aguish and
shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified by
its last plunge, and has a fit which causes it to
struggle, quiver, and for an instant stop. And
now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so
fiercely screwed through time and space, day
and night, fair weather and foul, can roll.
hundreds. But the sea, having upon it the ad-
ditional agitation of the whole night, was infi- .
nitely more terrific than when I had seen it
last. Every appearance it had then presented,
bore the expression of being swelled and the
height to which the breakers rose, and, looking
over one another, bore one another down, and
rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most ap-
palling.
In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind
and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeak-
able confusion, and my first breathless efforts to
stand against the weather, I was so confused
that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw
nothing but the foaming heads of the great
waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next
me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo'd arrow
on it, pointing in the same direction), to the
left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in
upon us!
One mast was broken short off, six or eight
feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entan-
gled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that
ruin, as the ship rolled and beat-which she did
without a moment's pause, and with a violence
quite inconceivable, beat the side as if it would
stave it in. Some efforts were even then being
made, to cut this portion of the wreck away.
for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned
towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her
people at work with axes, especially one active
figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among
the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even
SHIPWRECK
489
above the wind and water, rose from the shore
at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the roll-
ing wreck, made a clean breach, and carried
men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of
such toys, into the boiling surge.
The second mast was yet standing, with the
rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of bro-
ken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship had
struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in
my ear, and then lifted in and struck again. I
understood him to add that she was parting
amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for
the rolling and beating were too tremendous for
any human work to suffer long. As he spoke,
there was another great cry of pity from the
beach four men arose with the wreck out of the
deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining
mast; uppermost, the active figure with the
curling hair.
SHIPBOARD
round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a
moment was buffeting with the water; rising
with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost be-
neath the foam: then drawn again to land.
They hauled in hastily.
He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from
where I stood; but he took no thought of that.
He seemed hurriedly to give them some direc-
tions for leaving him more free-or so I judg-
ed from the motion of his arm-and was gone
as before.
And now he made for the wreck, rising
with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost be-
neath the rugged foam, borne in towards the
shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard
and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but
the power of the sea and wind made the strife
deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He
was so near, that with one more of his vigor-
There was a bell on board; and as the ship ous strokes he would be clinging to it,-when
rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature | a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on
driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep shoreward from beyond the ship, he seemed
of her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the
towards the shore, now nothing but her keel, as ship was gone.
she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea,
the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those
unhappy men, was borne towards us on the
wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose.
Two men were gone. The agony on shore in-
creased. Men groaned, and clasped their hands;
women shrieked, and turned away their faces.
Some ran wildly up and down along the beach,
crying for help where no help could be. I
found myself one of these, frantically imploring
a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those
two lost creatures perish before our eyes.
They were making out to me, in an agitated
way-I don't know how, for the little I could
hear I was scarcely composed enough to under-
stand that the lifeboat had been bravely
manned an hour ago, and could do nothing;
and that, as no man would be so desperate as
to attempt to wade off with a rope, and estab-
lish a communication with the shore, there was
nothing left to try; when I noticed that some
new sensation moved the people on the beach,
and saw them part, and Ham come breaking
through them to the front.
*
*
*
*
*
Then I saw him standing alone, in a sea-
man's frock and trowsers: a rope in his hand,
or slung to his wrist: another round his body:
and several of the best men holding, at a little
distance, to the latter, which he laid out him-
self, slack upon the shore, at his feet.
The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was
breaking up. I saw that she was parting in
the middle, and that the life of the solitary man
upon the mast hung by a thread. Still, he
clung to it. He had a singular red cap on,-
not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer color; and
as the few yielding planks between him and
destruction rolled and bulged, and his antici-
pative death-knell rung, he was seen by all of
us to wave it. I saw him do it now, and
thought I was going distracted, when his action
brought an old remembrance to my mind of a
once dear friend.
Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with
the silence of suspended breath behind him,
and the storm before, until there was a great
retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at
those who held the rope which was made fast
Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as
if a mere cask had been broken, in running to
the spot where they were hauling in. Consterna
tion was in every face. They drew him to my
very feet-insensible-dead. He was carried
to the nearest house; and, no one preventing
me now, I remained near him, busy, while every
means of restoration were tried! but he had
been beaten to death by the great wave, and
his generous heart was stilled for ever.
David Copperfield, Chap. 55.
SHIPBOARD-Mark Tapley's jollity on.
It is due to Mark Tapley to state, that he suf-
fered at least as much from sea-sickness as any
man, woman, or child on board; and that he
had a peculiar faculty of knocking himself about
on the smallest provocation, and losing his legs
at every lurch of the ship. But resolved, in his
usual phrase, to "come out strong" under dis-
advantageous circumstances, he was the life and
soul of the steerage, and made no more of
stopping in the middle of a facetious conversa-
tion to go away and be excessively ill by him-
self, and afterwards come back in the very best
and gayest of tempers to resume it, than if such
a course of proceeding had been the commonest
in the world.
It cannot be said that as his illness wore off
his cheerfulness and good nature increased, be-
cause they would hardly admit of augmentation;
but his usefulness among the weaker members
of the party was much enlarged; and at all
times and seasons there he was exerting it. If
a gleam of sun shone out of the dark sky, down
Mark tumbled into the cabin, and presently up
he came again with a woman in his arms, or
half-a-dozen children, or a man, or a bed, or a
saucepan, or a basket, or something animate or
inanimate, that he thought would be the better
for the air. If an hour or two of fine weather
in the middle of the day tempted those who
seldom or never came on deck at other times,
to crawl into the long-boat, or lie down upon
the spare spars, and try to eat, there, in the
centre of the group, was Mr. Tapley, handing
about salt beef and biscuit, or dispensing tastes
of grog, or cutting up the children's provisions
with his pocket-knife, for their greater ease and
SHIPBOARD
440
comfort, or reading aloud from a venerable
newspaper, or singing some roaring old song to
a select party, or writing the beginnings of let-
ters to their friends at home for people who
couldn't write, or cracking jokes with the crew,
or nearly getting blown over the side, or emer-
ging, half-drowned, from a shower of spray, or
lending a hand somewhere or other: but always
doing something for the general entertainment.
At night, when the cooking-fire was lighted on
the deck, and the driving sparks that flew among
the rigging, and the cloud of sails, seemed to
menace the ship with certain annihilation by fire,
in case the elements of air and water failed to
compass her destruction; there, again, was Mr.
Tapley, with his coat off and his shirt-sleeves
turned up to his elbows, doing all kinds of culi-
nary offices; compounding the strangest dishes;
recognized by every one as an established au-
thority; and helping all parties to achieve some-
thing, which, left to themselves, they never
could have done, and never would have dreamed
of. In short, there never was a more popular
character than Mark Tapley became, on board
that noble and fast-sailing line-of-packet ship,
the Screw; and he attained at last to such a
pitch of universal admiration, that he began to
have grave doubts within himself whether a man
might reasonably claim any credit for being
jolly under such exciting circumstances.
SHIPBOARD
them with shadows. Streets, houses, rooms,
figures so like their usual occupants, that they
have startled me by their reality, which far ex-
ceeded, as it seemed to me, all power of mine to
conjure up the absent, have many and many a
time, at such an hour, grown suddenly out of
objects with whose real look and use and pur-
pose I was as well acquainted as with my own
two hands.-American Notes, Chap. 2.
SHIPBOARD-Scenes on.
Everything sloped the wrong way, which in
itself was an aggravation scarcely to be borne.
I had left the door open, a moment before, in
the bosom of a gentle declivity, and, when I
turned to shut it, it was on the summit of a
lofty eminence. Now, every plank and timber
creaked, as if the ship were made of wicker-
work; and now crackled, like an enormous fire
of the driest possible twigs. There was nothing
for it but bed; so I went to bed.
It was pretty much the same for the next
two days, with a tolerably fair wind and dry
weather. I read in bed (but to this hour I don't
know what) a good deal, and reeled on deck a
little, drank cold brandy-and-water with an un-
speakable disgust, and ate hard biscuit perse-
veringly; not ill, but going to be.
It is the third morning. I am awakened out
of my sleep by a dismal shriek from my wife,
"If this was going to last," said Mr. Tapley, who demands to know whether there's any dan-
"there'd be no great difference, as I can per- ger. I rouse myself and look out of bed. The
|
ceive, between the Screw and the Dragon. I water-jug is plunging and leaping like a lively
never am to get credit, I think. I begin to be dolphin; all the smaller articles are afloat, ex-
afraid that the Fates is determined to make the cept my shoes, which are stranded on a carpet-
world easy to me.'
bag high and dry, like a couple of coal-barges.
Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and be-
hold the looking-glass, which is nailed to the
wall, sticking fast upon the ceiling. At the
same time the door entirely disappears and a
new one is opened in the floor. Then I begin to
comprehend that the state-room is standing on
its head.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 15.
SHIPBOARD-Night scenes on.
The perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the
decks gave place to a heavy silence, and the
whole human freight was stowed away below,
excepting a very few stragglers, like myself, who
were probably, like me, afraid to go there.
To one unaccustomed to such scenes this is a
very striking time on shipboard. Afterwards,
and when its novelty had long worn off, it never
ceased to have a peculiar interest and charm for
me.
Before it is possible to make any arrangement
at all compatible with this novel state of things,
the ship rights. Before one can say, "Thank
Heaven!" she wrongs again. Before one can
cry she is wrong, she seems to have started for-
The gloom through which the great black ward, and to be a creature actively running of
mass holds its direct and certain course; the its own accord, with broken knees and failing
rushing water, plainly heard, but dimly seen; legs, through every variety of hole and pit-
the broad, white, glistening track that follows fall, and stumbling constantly. Before one can
in the vessel's wake; the men on the lookout so much as wonder, she takes a high leap into
forward, who would be scarcely visible against the air. Before she has well done that, she
the dark sky, but for their blotting out some takes a deep dive into the water. Before she
score of glistening stars; the helmsman at the has gained the surface, she throws a summerset.
wheel, with the illuminated card before him, | The instant she is on her legs she rushes back-
shining, a speck of light amidst the darkness, ward. And so she goes on, staggering, heaving,
like something sentient and of Divine intelli- wrestling, leaping, diving, jumping, pitching,
gence; the melancholy sighing of the wind throbbing, rolling, and rocking, and going
through block, and rope, and chain; the gleam-through all these movements, sometimes by
ing forth of light from every crevice, nook, and turns, and sometimes all together, until one feels
tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though disposed to roar for mercy.
the ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready to
burst through any outlet, wild with its resistless
power of death and ruin. At first, too, and even
when the hour and all the objects it exalts have
come to be familiar, it is difficult, alone and
thoughtful, to hold them to their proper shapes
and forms. They change with the wandering
fancy, assume the semblance of things left far
away, put on the well-remembered aspect of
favorite places dearly loved, and even people
►
"Sir?"
A steward passes. "Steward!"
"What is the matter? what do you call this?"
'Rather a heavy sea on, sir, and a head-wind."
A head-wind! Imagine a human face upon
the vessel's prow, with fifteen thousand Samsons
in one bent upon driving her back, and hitting
her exactly between the eyes whenever she at-
tempts to advance an inch. Imagine the ship
herself, with every pulse and artery of her huge
body swollen and bursting under this maltreat
SHIP
441
ment, sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind
winding
howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating, all in
furious array against her. Picture the sky both
dark and wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympa-
thy with the waves, making another ocean in the
air. Add to all this the clattering on deck and
down below, the tread of hurried feet, the loud |
hoarse shouts of seamen, the gurgling in and out
of water through the scuppers, with every now
and then the striking of a heavy sea upon the
planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound
of thunder heard within a vault-and there is
the head-wind of that January morning.
SHIP-Steam.
American Notes, Chap. 2.
SICKNESS
ing mass of bull's-eyes, which had melted in the
summer and congealed in the winter until all
hope of ever getting them out, or of eating
them without eating the lantern too, was gone
forever. Tetterby's had tried its hand at sev-
eral things. It had once made a feeble little
dart at the toy business; for, in another lantern,
there was a heap of minute wax dolls, all stick-
ing together upside down, in the direst confu-
sion, with their feet on one another's heads, and
a precipitate of broken arms and legs at the
bottom. It had made a move in the millinery
direction, which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes
remained in the corner of the window to attest.
It had fancied that a living might lie hidden in
the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a represen-
tation of a native of each of the three integral
portions of the British empire, in the act of con-
The steamer-which, with its machinery on
deck, looked, as it worked its long, slim legs, like
some enormously magnified insect or antediluv-suming that fragrant weed; with a poetic legend
ian monster-dashed at great speed up a beauti- |
ful bay; and presently they saw some heights,
and islands, and a long, flat, straggling city.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 15.
SHOP-A curiosity.
The place through which he made his way at
leisure, was one of those receptacles for old and
curious things which seem to crouch in odd cor-
ners of this town, and to hide their musty treas-
ures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust.
There were suits of mail, standing like ghosts
in armor, here and there; fantastic carvings
brought from monkish cloisters; rusty weapons
of various kinds; distorted figures in china, and
wood, and iron, and ivory; tapestry, and strange
furniture that might have been designed in
dreams. The haggard aspect of the little old
man was wonderfully suited to the place; he
might have groped among old churches, and
tombs, and deserted houses, and gathered all
the spoils with his own hands. There was noth-
ing in the whole collection but was in keeping
with himself; nothing that looked older or more
worn than he.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. I.
SHOP-An old clo'.
I happened to pass a little shop, where it was
written up that ladies' and gentlemen's ward
robes were bought, and that the best price was
given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The
master of this shop was sitting at the door in
his shirt-sleeves, smoking: and as there were a
great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling
from the low ceiling, and only two feeble can-
dles burning inside to show what they were, I
fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful
disposition, who had hung all his enemies and
was enjoying himself.
David Copperfield, Chap. 13.
SHOP-Tetterby's.
attached, importing that united in one cause
they sat and joked, one chewed tobacco, one
took snuff, one smoked: but nothing seemed to
have come of it-except flies. Time had been
when it had put a forlorn trust in imitative jew-
elry, for in one pane of glass there was a card
of cheap seals, and another of pencil-cases, and
a mysterious black amulet of inscrutable inten-
tion, labelled ninepence. But, to that hour,
Jerusalem Buildings had bought none of them.
In short, Tetterby's had tried so hard to get a
livelihood out of Jerusalem Buildings in one
way or other, and appeared to have done so in-
differently in all, that the best position in the
firm was too evidently Co.'s; Co., as a bodiless
creation, being untroubled with the vulgar in-
conveniences of hunger and thirst, being charge-
able neither to the poor's-rates nor the assessed
taxes, and having no young family to provide
for.-Haunted Man, Chap. 2.
SHREWDNESS.
"Ha ha! my dear," replied the Jew, "you
must get up very early in the morning, to win
against the Dodger.'
"
Morning!" said Charley Bates: "you must
put your boots on overnight; and have a tele
scope at each eye, and a opera-glass between
your shoulders, if you want to come over him."
Oliver Twist, Chap. 25.
SICKNESS-The suspense of.
Oh! the suspense, the fearful, acute suspense,
of standing idly by while the life of one we
dearly love is trembling in the balance! Oh!
the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind,
and make the heart beat violently, and the
breath come thick, by the force of the images
they conjure up before it: the desperate anxiety
to be doing something to relieve the pain, or
lessen the danger, which we have no power to
alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which
Tetterby's was the corner shop in Jerusalem the sad remembrance of our helplessness pro-
Buildings. There was a good show of literature duces: what tortures can equal these; what re-
in the window, chiefly consisting of picture-flections or endeavors can, in the full tide and
newspapers out of date, and serial pirates and
footpads. Walking-sticks, likewise, and mar- Morning came; and the little cottage was
bles, were included in the stock in trade. It lonely and still. People spoke in whispers;
had once extended into the light confectionery anxious faces appeared at the gate, from time to
line;
but it would seem that those elegancies of time; women and children went away in tears.
life were not in demand about Jerusalem Build- All the livelong day, and for hours after it had
ings, for nothing connected with that branch of grown dark, Oliver paced softly up and down
commerce remained in the window, except a the garden, raising his eyes every instant to the
sort of small glass lantern containing a languish-sick-chamber, and shuddering to see the dark.
fever of the time, allay them!
SIGH
442
SKIMPOLE
*
*
*
*
*
ened window, looking as if death lay stretched uine, her homage very real. Beneath the locke
inside.
with the fishy-eye in it, Miss Tox bears better
qualities than many a less whimsical outside;
such qualities as will outlive, by many courses
of the sun, the best outsides and brightest husks
that fall in the harvest of the great reaper.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 59.
The sun shone brightly: as brightly as if it
looked upon no misery or care; and, with every
leaf and flower in full bloom about her; with
life, and health, and sounds and sights of joy,
surrounding her on every side; the fair young
creature lay, wasting fast. Oliver crept away to
the old churchyard, and sitting down on one of
the green mounds, wept and prayed for her, in
silence.
There was such peace and beauty in the
scene; so much of brightness and mirth in the
sunny landscape; such blithesome music in the
songs of the summer birds; such freedom in
the rapid flight of the rook, careering overhead;
so much of life and joyousness in all; that,
when the boy raised his aching eyes, and looked
about, the thought instinctively occurred to him,
that this was not a time for death; that Rose
could surely never die when humbler things
were all so glad and gay; that graves were for
cold and cheerless winter: not for sunlight and
fragrance. He almost thought that shrouds
were for the old and shrunken; and that they
never wrapped the young and graceful form
within their ghastly folds.
*
*
*
*
*
We need be careful how we deal with those
about us, when every death carries to some
small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much
omitted, and so little done-of so many things
forgotten, and so many more which might have
been repaired! There is no remorse so deep
as that which is unavailing; if we would be
spared its tortures, let us remember this in time.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 33.
SIGH.
"Poor Edward!" sighed Little Dorrit, with
the whole family history in the sigh.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 14.
SIGN-A tobacco.
The business was of too modest a character
to support a life-size Highlander, but it main-
tained a little one on a bracket on the door post,
who looked like a fallen Cherub that had found
it necessary to take to a kilt.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 18.
SIGNS-The ghosts of dead businesses.
Very little life was to be seen on either bank;
windows and doors were shut, and the staring
black and white letters upon wharves and ware-
houses "looked," said Eugene to Mortimer,
“like inscriptions over the graves of dead busi-
nesses."— Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 14.
SINCERITY.
"Why are we not more natural! Dear me !
With all those yearnings, and gushings, and im
pulsive throbbings that we have implanted in
our souls, and which are so very charming, why
are we not more natural?”
Mr. Dombey said it was very true, very true.
"We could be more natural, I suppose, if we
tried?" said Mrs. Skewton.
Mr. Dombey thought it possible.
"Devil a bit, Ma'am," said the Major. "We
couldn't afford it. Unless the world was peo-
pled with J. B.'s-tough and blunt old Joes,
Ma'am, plain red herrings with hard roes, Sir-
we couldn't afford it. It wouldn't do."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
SKIMPOLE, HAROLD-His character.
When we went down stairs, we were pre-
sented to Mr. Skimpole, who was standing be-
fore the fire, telling Richard how fond he used
to be, in his school-time, of football. He was a
little, bright creature, with a rather large head;
but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there
was a perfect charm in him. All he said was
so free from effort, and spontaneous, and was
said with such a captivating gayety, that it was
fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more
slender figure than Mr. Jarndyce, and having a
richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked
younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance,
in all respects, of a damaged young man, than a
well-preserved elderly one. There was an easy
negligence in his manner and even in his dress
(his hair carelessly disposed, and his neckerchief
loose and flowing, as I have seen artists paint
their own portraits), which I could not separate
from the idea of a romantic youth who had un-
dergone some unique process of depreciation.
It struck me as being not at all like the manner
or appearance of a man who had advanced in
life by the usual road of years, cares, and ex-
periences.
I gathered from the conversation, that Mr.
Skimpole had been educated for the medical
profession, and had once lived, in his profes-
sional capacity, in the household of a German
prince. He told us, however, that as he had
always been a mere child in points of weights
and measures, and had never known anything
about them (except that they disgusted him), he
had never been able to prescribe with the requi-
site accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had
no head for detail. And he told us, with great
humor, that when he was wanted to bleed the
prince, or physic any of his people, he was gen-
erally found lying on his back, in bed, reading
the newspapers, or making fancy sketches in
pencil, and couldn't come. The prince at last
objecting to this, "in which," said Mr. Skimpole,
in the frankest manner, "he was perfectly right,'
the engagement terminated, and Mr. Skimpole
Miss Tox's sympathy is such that she can having (as he added with delightful gayety)
scarcely speak. She is no chicken, but she has "nothing to live upon but love, fell in love,
not grown tough with age and celibacy. Her and married, and surrounded himself with rosy
heart is very tender, her compassion very gen-cheeks." His good friend Jarndyce and some
"What I want," drawled Mrs. Skewton,
pinching her shrivelled throat, "is heart." It
was frightfully true in one sense, if not in that
in which she used the phrase. "What I want,
is frankness, confidence, less conventionality,
and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully
artificial."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
"
SKIMPOLE
443
SLEEP
SLANDER-Of the unfortunate.
At feasts and festivals also: in firmaments
she has often graced, and among constellations
she outshone but yesterday, she is still the
prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it?
When was it? Where was it? How was it?
She is discussed by her dear friends with al
the genteelest slang in vogue, the last new word,
the last new manner, the last new drawl, and
the perfection of polite indifference. A remark-
other of his good friends then helped him, in
quicker or slower succession, to several openings
in life; but to no purpose, for he must confess
to two of the oldest infirmities in the world;
one was that he had no idea of time; the other,
that he had no idea of money. In consequence
of which he never kept an appointment, never
could transact any business, and never knew the
value of anything! Well! So he had got on
in life, and here he was! He was very fond of
reading the papers, very fond of making fancy-able feature of the theme is, that it is found to
sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very
fond of art. All he asked of society was, to let
him live. That wasn't much. His wants were
few. Give him the papers, conversation, music,
mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a
few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret,
and he asked no more. He was a mere child in
the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He
said to the world, "Go your several ways in
peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves,
put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go
after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any ob-
ject you prefer; only-let Harold Skimpole
live!"
be so inspiring, that several people come out upor
it who never came out before-positively say
things! William Buffy carries one of these
smartnesses from the place where he dines,
down to the House, where the Whip for his
party hands it about with his snuff-box, to keep
men together who want to be off, with such
effect that the Speaker (who has had it private-
ly insinuated into his own ear under the corner
of his wig) cries "Order at the bar!" three
times without making an impression.
And not the least amazing circumstance con-
nected with her being vaguely the town talk,
is, that people hovering on the confines of Mr.
All this, and a great deal more, he told us, not Sladdery's high connection, people who know
only with the utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, nothing and ever did know nothing about
but with a certain vivacious candor-speaking her, think it essential to their reputation
of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, to pretend that she is their topic too;
as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he and to retail her at second-hand with the
knew that Skimpole had his singularities, but last new word, and the last new manner, and
still had his claims too, which were the general the last new drawl, and the last new polite in-
business of the community, and must not be difference, and all the rest of it, all at second-
slighted. He was quite enchanting. If I felt hand, but considered equal to new, in inferior
at all confused at that early time, in endeavoring systems and to fainter stars. If there be any
to reconcile anything he said with anything I man of letters, art, or science, among these lit-
had thought about the duties and accountabili-tle dealers, how noble in him to support the
ties of life (which I am far from sure of), I was feeble sisters on such majestic crutches!
confused by not exactly understanding why he
Bleak House, Chap. 58.
was free of them. That he was free of them, I
scarcely doubted; he was so very clear about it
himself.
SLANG-Of the pulpit.
All slangs and twangs are objectionable
everywhere, but the slang and twang of the
conventicle-as bad in its way as that of the
House of Commons, and nothing worse can be
said of it should be studiously avoided under
such circumstances as I describe. The avoid-
ance was not complete on this occasion. Nor
was it quite agreeable to see the preacher ad-
dressing his pet "points" to his backers on the
stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show
him up, and testify to the multitude that each
of those points was a clincher.
SLEEP.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 4.
Mr. Riderhood poetically remarking that he
would pick the bones of his night's rest, in his
wooden chair, sat in the window.
"I covet nothing," said Mr. Skimpole, in the
same light way.
"Possession is nothing to me.
Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent house. I
feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can
sketch it, and alter it. I can set it to music.
When I am here, I have sufficient possession of
it, and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsi-
bility. My steward's name, in short, is Jarndyce,
and he can't cheat me. We have been men-
tioning Mrs. Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed
woman, of a strong will and immense power of
business-detail, who throws herself into objects
with surprising ardor! I don't regret that I
have not a strong will and an immense power
of business-detail, to throw myself into objects
with surprising ardor. I can admire her without
envy. I can sympathize with the objects. I can
dream of them. I can lie down on the grass-
in fine weather-and float along an African
river, embracing all the natives I meet, as sensi- There is a drowsy state, between sleeping
ble of the deep silence, and sketching the dense and waking, when you dream more in five min-
overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if utes with your eyes half open, and yourself half
I were there. I don't know that it's of any di- conscious of everything that is passing around
rect use my doing so, but it's all I can do, and you, than you would in five nights with your
I do it thoroughly. Then, for Heaven's sake, eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in per-
having Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, fect unconsciousness. At such times, a mortal
petitioning you, the world, an agglomeration of knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to
practical people. of business habits, to let him form some glimmering conception of its mighty
live and admire the human family, do it some-powers, its bounding from earth and spurning
how or other, like good souls, and suffer him to
ride his rocking-horse !"-Bleak House, Chap. 6.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 7.
time and space, when freed from the restraint
of its corporeal associate. Cliver Twist, Chap.G
SLEEP
Gradually, he fell into that deep, tranquil sleep
which ease from recent suffering alone imparts;
that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to
wake from. Who, if this were death, would be
roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of
life; to all its cares for the present; its anxieties
for the future; more than all, its weary recollec-
tions of the past!—Oliver Twist, Chap. 12.
As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon
his forehead.
444
SLEEP
"The balmy" came almost as soon as it was
courted. In a very few minutes Mr. Swiveller
was fast asleep, dreaming that he had married
Nelly Trent, and come into the property, and
that his first act of power was to lay waste the
market-garden of Mr. Cheggs, and turn it into
a brick-field.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 8.
SLEEP-Of Uriah Heep.
I stole into the next room to look at him.
There I saw him, lying on his back, with his
The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as legs extending to I don't know where, gurglings
though these marks of pity and compassion had taking place in his throat, stoppages in his nose,
awakened some pleasant dream of love and affec- and his mouth open like a post-office. He was
tion he had never known. Thus, a strain of so much worse in reality than in my distem..
gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent pered fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to
place, or the odor of a flower, or even the men-him in very repulsion, and could not help wan-
tion of a familiar word, will sometimes call up dering in and out every half hour or so, and
sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never taking another look at him.
were, in this life; which vanish like a breath;
David Copperfield, Chap. 25.
which some brief memory of a happier exist-
ence, long gone by, would seem to have awak-
ened; which no voluntary exertion of the mind
can ever recall.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 30.
There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us
sometimes, which, while it holds the body pris-
oner, does not free the mind from a sense of
things about it, and enable it to ramble at its
pleasure. So far as an overpowering heaviness,
à prostration of strength, and an utter inability
to control our thoughts or power of motion, can
be called sleep, this is it; and yet, we have a con-
sciousness of all that is going on about us, and
if we dream at such a time, words which are
really spoken, or sounds which really exist at the
moment, accommodate themselves with surpris-
ing readiness to our visions, until reality and
imagination become so strangely blended that it
is afterward almost matter of impossibility to
separate the two. Nor is this the most striking
phenomenon incidental to such a state. It is an
undoubted fact, that although our senses of touch
and sight be for the time dead, yet our sleeping |
thoughts, and the visionary scenes that pass be-
fore us, will be influenced, and materially influ-
enced, by the mere silent presence of some external
object, which may not have been near us when
we closed our eyes, and of whose vicinity we
have had no waking consciousness.
SLEEP-After wine.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 34.
Mr. Spenlow being a little drowsy after the
champagne-honor to the soil that grew the
grape, to the grape that made the wine, to the
sun that ripened it, and to the merchant who
adulterated it—and being fast asleep in a corner
of the carriage, I rode by the side and talked to
Dora.-David Copperfield, Chap. 33.
SLEEP-A refreshing (Sam Weller on).
SLEEP-The snoring of Mr. Willet.
The room was so very warm, the tobacco so
very good, and the fire so very soothing, that
Mr. Willet by degrees began to doze; but as
he had perfectly acquired, by dint of long habit,
the art of smoking in his sleep, and as his breath
ing was pretty much the same, awake or asleep,
saving that in the latter case he sometimes ex-
perienced a slight difficulty in respiration (such
as a carpenter meets with when he is planing
and comes to a knot), neither of his companions
was aware of the circumstance, until he met
with one of these impediments and was obliged
to try again.
"Johnny's dropped off," said Mr. Parker, in
a whisper.
"Fast as a top," said Mr. Cobb.
Neither of them said any more until Mr.
Willet came to another knot one of surpass-
ing obduracy-which bade fair to throw him
into convulsions, but which he got over at last
without waking, by an effort quite superhu-
man.
"He sleeps uncommon hard," said Mr. Cobb.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 33.
SLEEP.
The witch region of sleep."
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 15.
SLEEP-And dreams, among the poor.
The cold, feeble dawn of a January morning
was stealing in at the windows of the common
sleeping-room, when Nicholas, raising himself
on his arm, looked among the prostrate forms
which on every side surrounded him, as though
in search of some particular object.
It needed a quick eye to detect, from among
the huddled mass of sleepers, the form of any
given individual. As they lay closely packed to-
gether, covered, for warmth's sake, with their
patched and ragged clothes, little could be dis-
tinguished but the sharp outlines of pale faces,
over which the sombre light shed the same dull
heavy color, with here and there a gaunt arm
thrust forth: its thinness hidden by no covering,
but fully exposed to view, in all its shrunken
ugliness. There were some who, lying on their
backs with upturned faces and clenched hands,
SLEEP-Dick Swiveller's "balmy."
just visible in the leaden light, bore more the
"In the meantime, as it's rather late, I'll try aspect of dead bodies than of living creatures ;
and get a wink or two of the balmy."
"And if I might adwise, sir," added Mr.
Weller, "I'd just have a good night's rest arter-
wards, and not begin inquiring arter this here
deep 'un 'till mornin'. There's nothin' so re-
freshin' as sleep, sir, as the servant-girl said
afore she drank the egg-cupful o' laudanum.”
Pickwick, Chap. 16.
and there were others coiled up into strange
SLEEPING
445
SMOKE
and fantastic postures; such as might have been "Sir!" cried Mr. Toc's, starting from his
taken for the uneasy efforts of pain to gain some chair and shaking hands with him anew, "the
temporary relief, rather than the freaks of slum-relief is so excessive and unspeakable, that if
ber. A few-and these were among the young-you were to tell me now that Miss Dombey was
est of the children-slept peacefully on, with married even, I could smile. Yes, Captain
smiles upon their faces, dreaming perhaps of Gills," said Mr. Toots, appealing to him, "upon
home; but ever and again a deep and heavy my soul and body, I really think, whatever
sigh, breaking the stillness of the room, an- I might do to myself immediately afterwards,
nounced that some new. sleeper had awakened to that I could smile, I am so relieved."
the misery of another day; and, as morning
Dombey & Son, Chap. 50.
took the place of night, the smiles gradually
faded away, with the friendly darkness which
had given them birth.
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and
legend, who sport on earth in the night season,
and melt away in the first beam of the sun,
which lights grim care and stern reality on
their daily pilgrimage through the world.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 13.
SLEEPING-In a stage coach.
I recollect being very much surprised by the
feint everybody made, then, of not having been
to sleep at all, and by the uncommon indigna-
tion with which every one repelled the charge.
I labor under the same kind of astonishment to
this day, having invariably observed that of all
human weaknesses, the one to which our com-
mon nature is the least disposed to confess (I
cannot imagine why) is the weakness of having
gone to sleep in a coach.
David Copperfield, Chap. 5.
SMILES-Description of.
A carved grin.
The very twilight of a smile; so singularly
were its light and darkness blended.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
An irrepressible smile that rather seemed to
strike upon the surface of his face and glance
away, as finding no resting-place, than to play
there for an instant.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 11.
A smile which had been at first but three
specks-one at the right-hand corner of his
mouth, and one at the corner of each eye-grad-
ually over-spread his whole face, and rippling up
into his forehead, lifted the glazed hat.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 15.
He was a weak-eyed young man, with the first
faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his
countenance. It was mere imbecility; but Mrs.
Pipchin took it into her head that it was impu-
dence, and made a snap at him directly.
Dombey & Son, Chap. II.
He sprang up from his reverie and looked
around with a sudden smile, as courteous and as
soft as if he had had numerous observers to
propitiate; nor did he relapse, after being thus
awakened; but clearing his face, like one who
bethought himself that it might otherwise wrin-
kle and tell tales, went smiling on, as if for
practice.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.
A stately look, which was instantaneous in its
duration, but inclusive (if any one had seen it)
of a multitude of expressions, among which that
of the twilight smile, without the smile itself,
overshadowed all the rest.-D. & S., Ch. 21.
Meanwhile, Toby, putting a hand on each
knee, bent down his nose to the basket, and took
a long inspiration at the lid; the grin upon his
withered face expanding in the process, as if he
were inhaling laughing gas.
Christmas Chimes, 1st Quarter.
He would slowly carve a grin out of his
wooden face, where it would remain until we
were all gone.-Our School. Reprinted Pieces.
As Clennam followed, she said to him, with
the same external composure and in the same
level voice, but with a smile that is only seen
on cruel faces; a very faint smile, lifting the
nostril, scarcely touching the lips, and not break-
ing away gradually, but instantly dismissed
when done with.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 27.
His very smile was cunning, as if he had
been studying smiles among the portraits of his
misers.
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 5,
A smile, which in common with all other to-
kens of emotion, seemed to skulk under his
face, rather than play boldly over it.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 19.
I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with
such demonstrative attention, that his lank fore-
finger followed up every line as he read, and
made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully
believed) like a snail.
"You are working late to-night, Uriah,"
says I.
Yes, Master Copperfield," says Uriah.
As I was getting on the stool opposite, to
talk to him more conveniently, I observed that
he had not such a thing as a smile about him,
and that he could only widen his mouth and
make two hard creases down his cheeks, one on
each side, to stand for one.
SMOKE.
David Copperfield, Chap. 16.
Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome
cough, in the midst of which she articulated
with much difficulty, "He was took ill here,
ma'am, and-ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me!—and
he died!"
"
'Hey? What did he die of?" asked my aunt.
"Well, ma'am, he died of drink," said Mrs.
Crupp, in confidence. "And smoke."
"Smoke? You don't mean chimneys?" said
my aunt.
(<
No, ma'am," returned Mrs. Crupp. "Cigars
and pipes."
"That's not catching, Trot, at any rate," re-
marked my aunt, turning to me.
David Copperfield, Chap. 23.
SMOKING.
SMOKING
446
The smoke came crookedly out of Mr. Flint-
winch's mouth, as if it circulated through the
whole of his wry figure and came back by his
wry throat, before coming forth to mingle with
the smoke from the crooked chimneys and the
mists from the crooked river.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 23.
SMOKING-Board and lodging.
"You don't find this sort of thing disagree-
able, I hope, sir?" said his right-hand neigh-
bor, a gentleman in a checked shirt, and Mosaic
studs, with a cigar in his mouth.
"Not in the least," replied Mr. Pickwick, "I
like it very much, although I am no smoker my-
self."
"I should be very sorry to say I wasn't," in-
terposed another gentleman on the opposite side
of the table. “It's board and lodging to me, is
smoke."
Mr. Pickwick glanced at the speaker, and
thought that if it were washing too, it would be
all the better.-Pickwick, Chap. 20.
SMOKING-The content of.
The manner in which the Captain tried to
make believe that the cause of these effects lay
hidden in the pipe itself, and the way in which
he looked into the bowl for it, and not finding
it there, pretended to blow it out of the stem,
was wonderfully pleasant. The pipe soon get-
ting into better condition, he fell into that state
of repose becoming a good smoker: but sat
with his eyes fixed on Florence, and with a
beaming placidity not to be described, and
stopping every now and then to discharge a lit-
tle cloud from his lips, slowly puffed it forth, as
if it were a scroll coming out of his mouth,
bearing the legend "Poor Wal'r, aye, aye.
Drownded, an't he?" after which he would re-
sume his smoking with infinite gentleness.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 49.
SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS.
"Wait a minute," said the stranger, "fun
presently-nobs not come yet-queer place-
Dock-yard people of upper rank don't know
Dock-yard people of lower rank--Dock-yard
people of lower rank don't know small gentry
-small gentry don't know tradespeople-Com-
missioners don't know anybody."
*
*
*
*
*
“Mr. Smithie, Mrs. Smithie, and the Misses
Smithie," was the next announcement.
"What's Mr. Smithie?" inquired Mr. Tracy
Tupman.
Something in the yard," replied the stranger.
Mr. Smithie bowed deferentially to Sir Thomas
Clubber; and Sir Thomas Clubber acknowledg-
ed the salute with conscious condescension.
Lady Clubber took a telescopic view of Mrs.
Smithie and family through her eye-glass, and
Mrs. Smithie stared in her turn at Mrs. Some-
body else, whose husband was not in the Dock-
yard at all.
*
*
*
*
Miss Bulder was warmly welcomed by the
Miss Clubbers; the greeting between Mrs. Colo-
nel Bulder and Lady Clubber was of the most
affectionate description; Colonel Bulder and
Sir Thomas Clubber exchanged snuff-boxes, and
SOCIETY
looked very much like a pair of Alexander Sel-
kirks—“ Monarchs of all they surveyed.”
Pickwick, Chap. 2.
SOCIALLY DILAPIDATED-Chevy Slyme,
He was brooding over the remains of yester-
day's decanter of brandy, and was engaged in
the thoughtful occupation of making a chain of
rings on the top of the table with the wet foot of
his drinking-glass. Wretched and forlorn as he
looked, Mr. Slyme had once been, in his way,
the choicest of swaggerers; putting forth his
pretensions, boldly, as a man of infinite taste
and most undoubted promise. The stock-in-
trade requisite to set up an amateur in this de-
partment of business is very slight, and easily
got together a trick of the nose and a curl of
the lip sufficient to compound a tolerable sneer,
being ample provision for any exigency. But,
in an evil hour, this off-shoot of the Chuzzlewit
trunk, being lazy, and ill qualified for any regular
pursuit, and having dissipated such means as he
ever possessed, had formally established himself
as a professor of Taste for a livelihood; and
finding, too late, that something more than his
old amount of qualifications was necessary to
sustain him in this calling, had quickly fallen to
his present level, where he retained nothing of
his old self but his boastfulness and his bile,
and seemed to have no existence separate or
apart from his friend Tigg. And now, so abject
and 'so pitiful was he-at once so maudlin, in-
solent, beggarly, and proud-that even his friend
and parasite, standing erect beside him, swelled
into a Man by contrast.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7.
SOCIETY-Its vices.
Was Mr. Dombey's master-vice, that ruled
him so inexorably, an unnatural characteristic?
It might be worth while, sometimes, to inquire
what Nature is, and how men work to change
her, and whether, in the enforced distortions
so produced, it is not natural to be unnatural.
Coop any son or daughter of our mighty mother
within narrow range, and bind the prisoner to
one idea, and foster it by servile worship of it
on the part of the few timid or designing peo-
ple standing round, and what is Nature to the
willing captive who has never risen up upon the
wings of a free mind-drooping and useless
soon-to see her in her comprehensive truth!
Alas! are there so few things in the world,
in being so! Hear the magistrate or judge ad-
about us, most unnatural, and yet most natural
monish the unnatural outcasts of society; un-
natural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of
all distinctions between good and evil; unnatu-
decency, unnatural in losing and confounding
ral in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in con-
tumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything. But
follow the good clergyman or doctor, who, with
his life imperilled at every breath he draws,
goes down into their dens, lying within the
echoes of our carriage-wheels and daily tread
upon the pavement stones. Look round upon
the world of odious sights-millions of immor-
tal creatures have no other world on earth-at
the lightest mention of which humanity revolts
and dainty delicacy, living in the next street,
stops her ears, and lisps, "I don't believe it!"
Breathe the polluted air, foul with every impuri-
ty that is poisonous to health and life; and have
SOCIETY
447
SOCIETY
making them acquainted with a perversion of
nature in their own contracted sympathies and
estimates; as great and yet as natural in its de-
velopment when once begun, as the lowest de
gradation known.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 47.
SOCIETY—At dinner.
every sense, conferred upon our race for its de- upon the world of human life around them, to a
light and happiness, offended, sickened, and dis-knowledge of their own relation to it, and for
gusted, and made a channel by which misery
and death alone can enter. Vainly attempt to
think of any simple plant, or flower, or whole-
some weed, that, set in this foetid bed, could
have its natural growth, or put its little leaves
off to the sun, as GOD designed it. And then,
calling up some ghastly child, with stunted form
and wicked face, hold forth on its unnatural
sinfulness, and lament its being, so early, far
away from Heaven-but think a little of its hav-
ing been conceived, and born, and bred, in
Hell!
|
Mr. Merdle himself was usually late on these
occasions, as a man still detained in the clutch
of giant enterprises when other men had shaken
off their dwarfs for the day. On this occasion,
he was the last arrival. Treasury said Merdle's
work punished him a little. Bishop said he was
glad to think that this wealth flowed into the
coffers of a gentleman who accepted it with
meekness.
ticles got into the dishes, and Society's meats
had a seasoning of first-rate footmen. Mr. Mer-
dle took down a countess who was secluded
somewhere in the core of an immense dress, tc
which she was in the proportion of the heart to
the overgrown cabbage. If so low a simile may
be admitted, the dress went down the staircase
like a richly brocaded Jack in the Green, and no-
body knew what sort of small person carried it.
Those who study the physical sciences, and
bring them to bear upon the health of Man, tell
us that if the noxious particles that rise from
vitiated air were palpable to the sight, we should
see them lowering in a dense black cloud above Powder! There was so much Powder in wait-
such haunts, and rolling slowly on to corrupting, that it flavored the dinner. Pulverous par-
the better portions of a town. But if the moral
pestilence that rises with them, and, in the eter-
nal laws of outraged Nature, is inseparable from
them, could be made discernible too, how terri-
ble the revelation! Then should we see deprav-
ity, impiety, drunkenness, theft, murder, and a
long train of nameless sins against the natural
affections and repulsions of mankind, overhang-
ing the devoted spots, and creeping on, to blight
the innocent and spread contagion among the
pure. Then should we see how the same poi-
soned fountains that flow into our hospitals and
lazar-houses, inundate the jails, and make the
convict-ships swim deep, and roll across the seas,
and over-run vast continents with crime. Then
should we stand appalled to know, that where
we generate disease to strike our children down
and entail itself on unborn generations, there
also we breed, by the same certain process, in-
fancy that knows no innocence, youth without
modesty or shame, maturity that is mature in noth-
ing but in suffering and guilt, blasted old age
that is a scandal on the form we bear. Unnat-
ural humanity! When we shall gather grapes
from thorns, and figs from thistles; when fields
of grain shall spring up from the offal in the
bye-ways of our wicked cities, and roses bloom
in the fat churchyards that they cherish; then
we may look for natural humanity, and find it
growing from such seed.
Oh, for a good spirit who would take the
house-tops off, with a more potent and benignant
hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show
a Christian people what dark shapes issue from
amidst their homes, to swell the retinue of the
Destroying Angel as he moves forth among
them! For only one night's view of the pale
phantoms, rising from the scenes of our.too-long
neglect; and from the thick and sullen air where
Vice and Fever propagate together, raining the
tremendous social retributions which are ever
pouring down, and ever coming thicker! Bright
and blest the morning that should rise on such
a night; for men, delayed no more by stumbling-
blocks of their own making, which are but specks
of dust upon the path between them and eter-
nity, would then apply themselves, like crea-
tures of one common origin, owing one duty
to the Father of one family, and tending to
one common end, to make the world a better
place.
Society had everything it could want, and
could not want, for dinner. It had everything
to look at, and everything to eat, and every-
thing to drink. It is to be hoped it enjoyed it-
self; for Mr. Merdle's own share of the repast
might have been paid for with eighteenpence.
Mrs. Merdle was magnificent. The chief but-
ler was the next magnificent institution of the
day. He was the stateliest man in company.
He did nothing, but he looked on as few other
men could have done. He was Mr. Merdle's
last gift to Society. Mr. Merdle didn't want
him, and was put out of countenance when the
great creature looked at him; but inappeasable
Society would have him—and had got him.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 21.
SOCIETY-Fashionable.
Society," said Mrs. Merdle, with another
curve of her little finger, "is so difficult to ex-
plain to young persons (indeed, is so difficult to
explain to most persons), that I am glad to hear
that. I wish Society was not so arbitrary, I
wish it was not so exacting-Bird, be quiet!
The parrot had given a most piercing shriek,
as if its name were Society, and it asserted its
right to its exactions.
"C
But," resumed Mrs. Merdle, "we must take
it as we find it. We know it is hollow and con-
ventional and worldly and very shocking, but
unless we are Savages in the Tropical seas,
(I should have been charmed to be one myself
-most delightful life and perfect climate, I am
told), we must consult it."
*
*
*
*
*
"A more primitive state of society would be
delicious to me. There used to be a poem
when I learned lessons, something about Lo,
the poor Indian, whose something mind! If a
few thousand persons moving in Society, could
only go and be Indians, I would put my name
down directly; but as moving in Society, we
Not the less bright and blest would that day can't be Indians, unfortunately-Good morn-
be for rousing some who never have looked outing!"—Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 20.
SOCIETY
SOCIETY-Mr. Merdle, the rich man.
Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was more
than aware of Mr. and Mrs. Merdle. Intruders
there were in Harley Street, of whom it was not
aware; but Mr. and Mrs. Merdle it delighted to
honor. Society was aware of Mr. and Mrs.
Merdle. Society had said "Let us license them;
let us know them."
Mr. Merdle was immensely rich; a man of
prodigious enterprise; a Midas without the ears,
who turned all he touched to gold. He was in
everything good, from banking to building. He
was in Parliament, of course. He was in the
City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this,
Trustee of that, President of the other. The
weightiest of men had said to projectors,
"Now, what name have you got? Have you
got Merdle?" And the reply being in the
negative, had said, "Then I won't look at
you."
This great and fortunate man had provided.
that extensive bosom, which required so much
room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest of
crimson and gold some fifteen years before. It
was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a
capital bosom to hang jewels upon. Mr. Mer-
dle wanted something to hang jewels upon, and
he bought it for the purpose. Storr and Mor-
timer might have married on the same specula-
tion.
Like all his other speculations, it was sound
and successful. The jewels shone to the richest
advantage. The bosom, moving in Society with
the jewels displayed upon it, attracted general
admiration. Society approving, Mr. Merdle
was satisfied. He was the most disinterested
of men,—did everything for Society, and got as
little for himself, out of all his gain and care, as
a man might.
448
SOLDIER
ness of flash and bang that might have been
expected, but rather hanging fire.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 34.
SOCIETY-The rich man of.
"Why, in the name of all the infernal powers,
Mrs. Merdle, who does more for Society than I
do? Do you see these premises, Mrs. Merdle?
Do you see this furniture, Mrs. Merdle? Do you
look in the glass and see yourself, Mrs. Merdle
Do you know the cost of all this, and who it's
all provided for? And yet will you tell me that
I oughtn't to go into Society? I, who shower
money upon it in this way? I, who might be
almost said-to-to-to harness myself to a
watering-cart full of money, and go about, satu-
rating Society, every day of my life!"
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 33.
SOLD-By friends and society.
Do you sell all your friends?"
Rigaud took his cigarette from his mouth,
and eyed him with a momentary revelation of
surprise. But he put it between his lips again,
as he answered with coolness:
"I sell anything that commands a price. How
do your lawyers live, your politicians, your in-
triguers, your men of the Exchange? How do
you live? How do you come here? Have you
sold no friend? Lady of mine! I rather think
yes!"
Clennam turned away from him towards the
window, and sat looking out at the wall.
'Effectively, sir," said Rigaud, "Society sells
itself and sells me; and I sell Society.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 28.
SOLDIER-Military glory.
"Is he recruiting for a-for a fine regiment?"
said Joe, glancing at a little round mirror that
hung in the bar.
I believe he is," replied the host. "It's much
the same thing, whatever regiment he's recruit-
ing for. I'm told there an't a deal of difference
between a fine man and another one, when
they're shot through and through.”
They're not all shot," said Joe.
"No," the Lion answered, "not all. Those
that are supposing it's done easy-are the best
off, in my opinion.'
""
"Ah!" retorted Joe, "but you don't care for
glory."
"
For what?" said the Lion.
Glory."
That is to say, it may be supposed that he
got all he wanted, otherwise with unlimited
wealth he would have got it. But his desire was
to the utmost to satisfy Society (whatever that
was), and take up all its drafts upon him for
tribute. He did not shine in company; he had
not very much to say for himself; he was a re-
served man, with a broad, overhanging, watch-
ful head, that particular kind of dull red color
in his cheeks which is rather stale than fresh,
and a somewhat uneasy expression about his
coat-cuffs, as if they were in his confidence, and
had reasons for being anxious to hide his hands.
In the little he said, he was a pleasant man
enough; plain, emphatic about public and pri-
vate confidence, and tenacious of the utmost
deference being shown by every one, in all
things, to Society. In this same Society (if that
were it which came to his dinners, and to Mrs.
Merdle's receptions and concerts), he hardly
seemed to enjoy himself much, and was mostly
to be found against walls and behind doors.
Also, when he went out to it, instead of its com- These remarks were not at all comforting. Jee
ing home to him, he seemed a little fatigued, walked out, stopped at the door of the next room,
and upon the whole rather more disposed for and listened. The serjeant was describing a
bed; but he was always cultivating it, neverthe-military life. It was all drinking, he said, ex-
less, and always moving in it, and always laying
out money on it with the greatest liberality.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 21.
"
"No," returned the Lion, with supreme indif-
ference. "I don't. You're right in that, Mr.
Willet. When Glory comes here, and calls for
anything to drink and changes a guinea to pay
for it, I'll give it him for nothing. It's my.be-
lief, sir, that the Glory's Arms wouldn't do a very
strong business."
"
cept that there were frequent intervals of eating
and love-making. A battle was the finest thing
in the world-when your side won it-and Eng-
lishmen always did that. Supposing you
SOCIETY—The fashionable young ladies. should be killed, sir?" said a timid voice in one
And the three expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, corner. "Well, sir, supposing you should be,"
double-loaded with accomplishments and ready said the serjeant," what then? Your country
to go off, and yet not going off with the sharp-loves you, sir: his Majesty King George the
SOLDIERS
449
Third loves you; your memory is honored,
revered, respected; everybody is fond of you,
and grateful to you; your name's wrote down
at full length in a book in the War-office.
Damme, gentlemen, we must all die some time
or another, eh?”
The voice coughed, and said no more.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 31.
SOLDIERS—A swarm of.
Though there was a great agglomeration of
soldiers in the town and neighboring country,
you might have held a grand Review and Field
Day of them every one, and looked in vain
among them all for a soldier choking behind his
foolish stock, or a soldier lamed by his ill-fitting
shoes, or a soldier deprived of the use of his
limbs by straps and buttons, or a soldier elabor-
ately forced to be self-helpless in all the small
affairs of life. A swarm of brisk, bright, active,
bustling, handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able
to turn to cleverly at anything, from a siege to
soup, from great guns to needles and thread,
from the broadsword exercise to slicing an
onion, from making war to making omelets, was
all you would have found.
SOLITUDE
country, and came to the surface three or four
miles off, blowing out incomprehensible mounds
and batteries among the quiet crops of chiccory
and beet-root,—from those days to these the town
had been asleep, and dust, and rust, and must
had settled on its drowsy Arsenals and Mag-
azines, and grass had grown up in its silent
streets. Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2.
SOLDIER-The Corporal.
The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of
thirty, perhaps a thought under the middle size,
but very neatly made a sunburnt Corporal
with a brown peaked beard-faced about at the
moment, addressing voluble words of instruc-
tion to the squad in hand. Nothing was amiss
or awry about the Corporal. A lithe and nimble
Corporal, quite complete, from the sparkling
dark eyes under his knowing uniform cap, to his
sparkling white gaiters. The very image and
presentment of a Corporal of his country's
army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of
his waist, the broadest line of his Bloomer
trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of
his leg.-Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2.
SOLITUDE-The blessings of.
What a swarm! From the Great Place under
the eye of Mr. The Englishman, where a few Here was one of the advantages of having
awkward squads from the last conscription were lived alone so long! The little, bustling, active,
doing the goose-step,-some members of those cheerful creature existed entirely within herself,
squads still, as to their bodies, in the chrysalis talked to herself, made a confidant of herself,
peasant-state of Blouse, and only military butter- was as sarcastic as she could be, on people who
Ĥlies as to their regimentally clothed legs,-from offended her, by herself; pleased herself, and
the Great Place, away outside the fortifications, did no harm. If she indulged in scandal, no-
and away for miles along the dusty roads, soldiers | body's reputation suffered; and if she enjoyed
swarmed. All day long, upon the grass-grown a little bit of revenge, no living soul was one
ramparts of the town, practising soldiers trumpet- atom the worse. One of the many to whom,
ed and bugled; all day long, down in angles of from straitened circumstances, a consequent in-
dry trenches, practising soldiers drummed and ability to form the associations they would wish,
drummed. Every forenoon, soldiers burst out and a disinclination to mix with the society they
of the great barracks into the sandy gymnasium- could obtain, (London is as complete a solitude
ground hard by, and flew over the wooden horse, as the plains of Syria), the humble artist had
and hung on to flying ropes, and dangled upside-pursued her lonely, but contented way for many
down between parallel bars, and shot them-years; and, until the peculiar misfortunes of the
selves off wooden platforms,—splashes, sparks, Nickleby family attracted her attention, had
coruscations, showers of soldiers. At every
corner of the town wall, every guard-house,
every gateway, every sentry-box, every draw-
bridge, every reedy ditch and rushy dike, sol-
diers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being
pretty well all wall, guard-house, gateway, sen-
try-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch and rushy dike,
the town was pretty well all soldiers.
made no friends, though brimfull of the fend-
liest feelings to all mankind. There are many
warm hearts in the same solitary guise as poor
little Miss La Creevy's.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 20.
SOLITUDE-The misery of.
Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into
What would the sleepy old town have been the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among
without the soldiers, seeing that even with them a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who
it had so overslept itself as to have slept its looks into ten thousand faces for some an-
echoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and swering look and never finds it, is in cheering
bolts and chains all rusty, and its ditches stag- society as compared with him who passes ten
nant! From the days when VAUBAN engineered averted faces daily, that were once the counten-
it to that perplexing extent that to look at it ances of friends. Such experience was to be
was like being knocked on the head with it, the Stephen's now, in every waking moment of his
stranger becoming stunned and stertorous under life; at his work, on his way to it and from it, at
the shock of its incomprehensibility,-from the his door, at his window, everywhere. By gene-
days when VAUBAN made it the express incor-ral consent, they even avoided that side of the
poration of every substantive and adjective in
the art of military engineering, and not only
twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to
the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over
there, in the dark, in the dirt, by gateway, arch-
way, covered way, dry way, wet way, fosse,
portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower,
pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likewise
took a fortifying dive under the neighboring
street on which he habitually walked; and left
it, of all the working men, to him only.
He had been for many years a quiet, silent
man, associating but little with other men, and
used to companionship with his own thoughts.
He had never known before the strength of the
want in his heart for the frequent recognition
of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense
amount of relief that had been poured into it
SONG
by drops, through such small means. It was
even harder than he could have believed possi-
ble, to separate in his own conscience his
abandonment by all his fellows, from a baseless
sense of shame and disgrace.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 4.
SONG-An unearthly.
I don't know what it was, in her touch or
voice, that made that song the most unearthly I
have ever heard in my life, or can imagine.
There was something fearful in the reality of it.
It was as if it had never been written, or set to
music, but sprung out of the passion within her;
which found imperfect utterance in the low
sounds of her voice, and crouched again when
all was still.-David Copperfield, Chap. 29.
SONG "The table-beer of acoustics.”
Mrs. Micawber was good enough to sing us
(in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered
to have considered, when I first knew her, the
very table-beer of acoustics) the favorite ballads
of "The Dashing White Serjeant," and "Little
Tafflin."-David Copperfield, Chap. 28.
SORROW-A teacher.
"But for some trouble and sorrow we should
never know half the good there is about us."
Haunted Man, Chap. 2.
SPARKS-In a Christmas fire.
This was the time for bringing the poker to
bear on the billet of wood. I tapped it three
times, like an enchanted talisman, and a bril-
liant host of merry-makers burst out of it, and
sported off by the chimney,-rushing up the
middle in a fiery country dance, and never com-
ing down again. Meanwhile, by their spark-
ling light, which threw our lamp into the shade,
I filled the glasses, and gave my Travellers,
CHRISTMAS !-CHRISTMAS EVE, my friends,
when the shepherds, who were Poor Travellers,
too, in their way, heard the Angels sing, "On
earth, peace. Good-will towards men!
SPARSIT, Mrs.
Seven Poor Travellers.
450
Mr. Bounderby being a bachelor, an elderly
lady presided over his establishment, in con-
sideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs.
Sparsit was this lady's name; and she was a
prominent figure in attendance on Mr. Boun-
derby's car, as it rolled along in triumph, with
the Bully of humility inside.
*
*
*
*
The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother's
side a Powler, married this lady, being by the
father's side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers (an
immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate
appetite for butcher's meat, and a mysterious
leg which had now refused to get out of bed for
fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a pe-
riod when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly
noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported
on two long slim props, and surmounted by no
head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair
fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before
he came into it, and spent it twice over imme-
diately afterwards. Thus, when he died at
twenty-four (the scene of his decease, Calais,
and the cause brandy), he did not leave his
widow, from whom he had been separated soon
SPARSIT
after the honeymoon, in affluent circumstances.
That bereaved lady, fifteen years older than he,
fell presently at deadly feud with her only rela-
tive, Lady Scadgers; and, partly to spite her
ladyship, and partly to maintain herself, went
out at a salary. And here she was now, in her
elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose
and the dense black eyebrows which had cap-
tivated Sparsit, making Mr. Bounderby's tea as
he took his breakfast.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 7.
The indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent
cold upon her, her voice reduced to a whisper,
and her stately frame so racked by continual
sneezes that it seemed in danger of dismember-
ment, gave chase to her patron until she found
him in the metropolis; and there, majestically
sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. James's
Street, exploded the combustibles with which
she was charged, and blew up. Having ex-
ecuted her mission with infinite relish, this
high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr.
Bounderby's coat-collar.
Mr. Bounderby's first procedure was to shake
Mrs. Sparsit off, and leave her to progress as she
might through various stages of suffering on the
floor. He next had recourse to the administra-
tion of potent restoratives, such as screwing the
patient's thumbs, smiting her hands, abundantly
watering her face, and inserting salt in her
mouth. When these attentions had recovered
her (which they speedily did), he hustled her
into a fast train without offering any other re-
freshment, and carried her back to Coketown
more dead than alive.
Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was
an interesting spectacle on her arrival at her
journey's end; but considered in any other light,
the amount of damage she had by that time
sustained was excessive, and impaired her claims
to admiration. Utterly heedless of the wear and
tear of her clothes and constitution, and ada-
mant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr. Bounderby
immediately crammed her into a coach, and
bore her off to Stone Lodge.
Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 3.
The same Hermetical state of mind led to her
renunciation of made dishes and wines at dinner,
until fairly commanded by Mr. Bounderby to
take them; when she said, "Indeed, you are
very good, sir;" and departed from a resolution
of which she had made rather formal and public
announcement, to "wait for the simple mutton."
She was likewise deeply apologetic for wanting
the salt; and, feeling amiably bound to bear out
Mr. Bounderby to the fullest extent in the testi-
mony he had borne to her nerves, occasionally
sat back in her chair and silently wept ; at which
periods a tear of large dimensions, like a crysta
ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must be,
for it insisted on public notice) sliding down her
Roman nose.-Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 8.
Mrs. Sparsit, lying by to recover the tone of
her nerves in Mr. Bounderby's retreat, kept such
a sharp look-out, night and day, under her Cori-
olanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of
lighthouses on an iron-bound coast, might have
warned all prudent mariners from that bold
rock her Roman nose, and the dark and craggy
region in its neighborhood, but for the placidity
SPECIALITY
451
SPECULATOR
ler, and his mind being exhausted by his late
effort, he replied, "No, thank you. I seldom
take it."—Little Dorrit, Book IÏ., Chap, ó.
66
of her manner. Although it was hard to be-
lieve that her retiring for the night could be
anything but a form, so severely wide awake
were those classical eyes of hers, and so impos-
sible did it seem that her rigid nose could yield | SPECULATOR-Scadder, the American.
to any relaxing influence, yet her manner of It was a small place: something like a turn-
sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to pike. But a great deal of land may be got into
say gritty, mittens (they were constructed of a a dice-box, and why may not a whole territory
cool fabric like a meat-safe) or of ambling to be bargained for in a shed? It was but a tem-
unknown places of destination with her foot in porary office too; for the Edeners were go-
her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly serene, that ing" to build a superb establishment for the
most observers would have been constrained to transaction of their business, and had already
suppose her a dove, embodied, by some freak of got so far as to mark out the site. Which is a
nature, in the earthly tabernacle of a bird of the great way in America. The office-door was
hook-beaked order.
wide open, and in the door-way was the agent :
no doubt a tremendous fellow to get through
his work, for he seemed to have no arrears, but
was swinging backwards and forwards in a
rocking-chair, with one of his legs planted
high up against the door-post, and the other
doubled up under him, as if he were hatching
his foot.
She was a most wonderful woman for prowling
about the house. How she got from story to story
was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so de-
corous in herself, and so highly connected, was
not to be suspected of dropping over the banis-
ters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary
facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea.
Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Spar-
sit was, that she was never hurried. She would
shoot with consummate velocity from the roof
to the hall, yet would be in full possession of
her breath and dignity on the moment of her
arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by
human vision to go at a great pace.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 9.
Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but
she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical
fancy into her head. Much watching of Louisa,
and much consequent observation of her impen-
etrable demeanor, which keenly whetted and
sharpened Mrs. Sparsit's edge, must have given
her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration.
She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase,
with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bot-
tom; and down those stairs, from day to day,
and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 10.
Wet through and through : with her
feet squelching and squashing in her shoes
whenever she moved; with a rash of rain upon
her classical visage; with a bonnet like an
over-ripe fig; with all her clothes spoiled;
with damp impressions of every button, string,
and hook-and-eye she wore, printed off upon
her highly-connected back; with a stagnant
verdure on her general exterior, such as accu-
mulates on an old park fence in a mouldy lane ;
Mrs. Sparsit had no resource but to burst into
tears of bitterness and say, "I have lost her!"
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. II.
SPECIALITY-Sparkler's idea of a.
'Pray, does Mr. Henry Gowan paint-ha-
Portraits?" inquired Mr. Dorrit.
Mr. Sparkler opined that he painted any-
thing, if he could get the job.
He was a gaunt man in a huge straw hat.
and a coat of green stuff. The weather being
hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar
wide open; so that every time he spoke some..
thing was seen to twitch and jerk up in his
throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord
when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the
Truth feebly endeavoring to leap to his lips.
If so,
it never reached them.
Two gray eyes lurked deep within this agent's
head, but one of them had no sight in it, and
stood stock still. With that side of his face
he seemed to listen to what the other side was
doing. Thus each profile had a distinct ex-
pression; and when the movable side was most
in action, the rigid one was in its coldest state
of watchfulness. It was like turning the man
inside out, to pass to that view of his features
in his liveliest mood, and see how calculating
and intent they were.
Each long black hair upon his head hung
down as straight as any plummet line; but
rumpled tufts were on the arches of his eyes,
as if the crow whose foot was deeply printed in
the corners, had pecked and torn them in a
savage recognition of his kindred nature as a
bird of prey.
Such was the man whom they now approach-
ed, and whom the General saluted by the name
of Scadder.
*
*
*
*
*
Mark
Martin thanked him, and took leave of
Mr. Scadder; who had resumed his post in the
rocking-chair immediately on the General's
rising from it, and was once more swinging
away as if he had never been disturbed.
looked back several times as they went down
the road towards the National Hotel, but now
his blighted profile was towards them, and
nothing but attentive thoughtfulness was writ-
ten on it. Strangely different to the other
"He has no particular walk?" said Mr. Dor-side! He was not a man much given to laugh-
rit.
Mr. Sparkler, stimulated by Love to brilliancy,
replied that for a particular walk, a man ought to
have a particular pair of shoes: as, for example,
shooting, shooting-shoes; cricket, cricket-shoes.
Whereas, he believed that Henry Gowan had
no particular pair of shoes.
"No speciality?" said Mr. Dorrit.
ing, and never laughed outright; but every
line in the print of the crow's-foot, and every
little wiry vein in that division of his head, was
wrinkled up into a grin! The compound figure
of Death and the Lady at the top of the old
ballad was not divided with a greater nicety,
and hadn't halves more monstrously unlike each
other, than the two profiles of Zephaniah Scad-
This being a very long word for Mr. Spark- der.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 21.
SPECULATORS
452
SPECULATORS-Mr. Lammle's friends on
'Change.
SPRING
"That ridiculous old spectacle, Sir," pursued
the Major, "aspires. She aspires sky-high, Sir
Matrimonially, Dombey."
"I am sorry for her," said Mr. Dombey.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
ster aunts, are as lighted gas to gunpowder, and
he determined to essay the effect of an explosion
without loss of time.-Pickwick, Chap. 8.
SPIRITUAL GROWTH-Of dead children.
"Pet had a twin sister who died when we could
just see her eyes-exactly like Pet's-above the
table, as she stood on tiptoe holding by it.”
"Ah! indeed, indeed?”
High-stepping horses seemed necessary to all
Mr. Lammle's friends-as necessary as their
transaction of business together in a gypsy way
at untimely hours of the morning and evening,
and in rushes and snatches. There were friends SPINSTERS-Influence of young men on.
who seemed to be always coming and going Fielding tells us that man is fire, and woman
across the Channel, on errands about the Bourse, tow, and the Prince of Darkness sets a light to
and Greek, and Spanish, and India, and Mexi-'em. Mr. Jingle knew that young men, to spin-
can, and par, and premium, and discount and
three-quarters, and seven-eighths. There were
other friends who seemed to be always lolling
and lounging in and out of the City, on ques-
tions of the Bourse, and Greek, and Spanish, and
India, and Mexican, and par, and premium,
and discount, and three-quarters, and seven-
eighths. They were all feverish, boastful, and in-
definably loose; and they all ate and drank a
great deal; and made bets in eating and drink-
ing. They all spoke of sums of money, and
only mentioned the sums and left the money to
be understood; as "Five and forty thousand,
Tom," or "Two hundred and twenty-two on every
individual share in the lot, Joe." They seem-
ed to divide the world into two classes of peo-
ple; people who were making enormous fortunes,
and people who were being enormously ruined.
They were always in a hurry, and yet seemed to
have nothing tangible to do; except a few of them
(these, mostly asthmatic and thick-lipped) who
were forever demonstrating to the rest, with
gold pencil-cases which they could hardly hold
because of the big rings on their forefingers,
how money was to be made. Lastly, they all
swore at their grooms, and the grooms were
not quite as respectful or complete as other men's
grooms; seeming somehow to fall short of the
groom point as their masters fell short of the
gentleman point.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 4.
SPEECH-A morsel of.
Smike opened his mouth to speak, but John
Browdie stopped him.
Stan' still," said the Yorkshireman, "and
doant'ee speak a morsel o' talk till I tell'ee."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 39.
SPEECH- "The gift of gab."
"Worn't one o' these chaps slim and tall,
with long hair, and the gift o' the gab wery gal-
lopin'?"-Pickwick, Chap. 20.
SPINSTER - Bagstock's opinion of Miss
Tox.
The major paused in his eating, and looked
mysteriously indignant. "That's a de-vilish
ambitious woman, Sir."
Mr. Dombey said "Indeed?" with frigid in-
difference: mingled perhaps with some con-
temptuous incredulity as to Miss Tox having the
presumption to harbor such a superior quality.
"That woman, Sir," said the Major, "is, in
her way, a Lucifer. Joey B. has had his day,
Sir, but he keeps his eyes. He sees, does Joe.
His Royal Highness the late Duke of York ob-
served of Joey, at a levee, that he saw."
The Major accompanied this with such a look,
and, between eating, drinking, hot tea, devilled
grill, muffins, and meaning, was altogether so
swollen and inflamed about the head, that even
Mr. Dombey showed some anxiety for him.
Pet and
"Yes, and being practical people, a result has
gradually sprung up in the minds of Mrs. Mea-
gles and myself which perhaps you may—or
perhaps you may not-understand.
her baby sister were so exactly alike, and so
completely one, that in our thoughts we have
never been able to separate them since. It
would be of no use to tell us that our dead
child was a mere infant. We have changed
that child according to the changes in the child
spared to us, and always with us. As Pet has
grown, that child has grown; as Pet has become
more sensible and womanly, her sister has be-
come more sensible and womanly, by just the
same degrees. It would be as hard to convince
me that if I was to pass into the other world to-
morrow, I should not, through the mercy of God,
be received there by a daughter just like Pet,
as to persuade me that Pet herself is not a
reality at my side."
SPITE.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 2.
Spite is a little word; but it represents as
strange a jumble of feelings, and compounds of
discords, as any polysyllable in the language.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 12.
SPORTSMAN-Winkle as a.
ure.
Mr. Winkle flashed, and blazed, and smoked
away, without producing any material results
worthy of being noted down; sometimes ex-
pending his charge in mid-air, and at others
sending it skimming along so near the surface
of the ground as to place the lives of the two
dogs on a rather uncertain and precarious ten-
As a display of fancy shooting, it was ex-
tremely varied and curious; as an exhibition of
firing with any precise object, it was, upon the
whole, perhaps a failure. It is an established
axiom, that "every bullet has its billet.”
apply in an equal degree to shot, those of Mr.
Winkle were unfortunate foundlings, deprived
of their natural rights, cast loose upon the
world, and billeted nowhere.
SPRING.
If it
Pickwick, Chap. 19.
The first of May! There is a merry fresh-
ness in the sound, calling to our minds a thou-
sand thoughts of all that is pleasant and beauti-
ful in Nature, in her most delightful form.
What man is there, over whose mind a bright
spring morning does not exercise a magic in-
SPRING-TIME
458
fluence-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 butterfly fluttered far more
gaily than he ever sees him now, in all his ram-
blings-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 perpetual 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 with 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 rain-
bow, and almost as fleeting-Scenes, Chap. 20.
SPRING-TIME.
STEAMBOAT
thought of nothing else but the lamps, from your
birth downwards.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22.
STARCHED PEOPLE.
There was a good deal of competition in the
Commons on all points of display, and it turned
out some very choice equipages then; though I
always have considered, and always shall con.
sider, that in my time the great article of com-
petition there was starch: which I think was
worn among the proctors to as great an extent
as it is in the nature of man to bear.
David Copperfield, Chap. 26.
STARS-Their alphabet yet unknown.
But Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing there, his
gaze wandered from the windows to the stars,
as if he would have read in them something that
was hidden from him. Many of us would if we
could; but none of us so much as know our
letters in the stars yet-or seem likely to do it
in this state of existence-and few languages
can be read until their alphabets are mastered
Edwin Drood, Chap. 17.
STARS-The eyes of angels.
'Hush!" said Barnaby, laying his fingers on
his lips. "He went out to-day a-wooing. I
wouldn't for a light guinea that he should never
go a-wooing again, for, if he did, some eyes
would grow dim that are now as bright as-see,
when I talk of eyes, the stars come out! Whose
eyes are they? If they are angels' eyes, why do
they look down here, and see good men hurt,
and only wink and sparkle all the night?”
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 3.
STEAMBOAT-An American.
Everything was fresh and gay, as though the
world were but that morning made, when Mr.
Chester rode at a tranquil pace along the Forest
road. Though early in the season, it was warm
and genial weather; the trees were budding
into leaf, the hedges and the grass were green,
the air was musical with songs of birds, and
high above them all the lark poured out her
richest melody. In shady spots, the morning
dew sparkled on each young leaf and blade of
grass; and where the sun was shining, some
diamond drops yet glistened brightly, as in un-
willingness to leave so fair a world, and have
such brief existence. Even the light wind,
whose rustling was as gentle to the ear as softly STEAMBOAT-Night scenes on the Poto-
falling water, had its hope and promise; and,
leaving a pleasant fragrance in its track as it
went fluttering by, whispered of its intercourse
with Summer, and of his happy coming.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 29.
STAGE—Adapted to the.
"The stage!" cried Nicholas, in a voice al-
most as loud.
She was a large vessel of five hundred tons,
and handsomely fitted up, though with high-
pressure engines; which always conveyed that
kind of feeling to me which I should be likely
to experience, I think, if I had lodgings on the
first floor of a powder-mill.
American Notes, Chap. 14.
mac.
I go on board, open the door of the gentle-
men's cabin, and walk in. Somehow or other
-from its being so quiet, I suppose-I have
taken it into my head that there is nobody
there. To my horror and amazement, it is full
of sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude, and
variety of slumber-in the berths, on the chairs,
on the floors, on the tables, and particularly
round the stove, my detested enemy. I take
another step forward, and slip upon the shining
face of a black steward, who lies rolled up in a
blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins, half
"The theatrical profession," said Mr. Vincent
Crummles. "I am in the theatrical profession
myself, my wife is in the theatrical profession,
my children are in the theatrical profession. I
had a dog that lived and died in it from a pup-in pain, half in hospitality; whispers my own
py; and my chaise-pony goes on, in Timour
the Tartar. I'll bring you out and your friend
too. Say the word. I want a novelty."
"I don't know anything about it," rejoined
Nicholas, whose breath had been almost taken
away by this sudden proposal. "I never acted
a part in my life, except at school."
"There's genteel comedy in your walk and
manner, juvenile tragedy in your eye, and touch-
and-go farce in your laugh," said Mr. Vincent
Crummles. "You'll do as well as if you had
name in my ear; and, groping among the sleep-
ers, leads me to my berth. Standing beside it,
I count these slumbering passengers, and get
past forty. There is no use in going farther,
so I begin to undress. As the chairs are all oc-
cupied, and there is nothing else to put my
clothes on, I deposit them upon the ground; not
without soiling my hands, for it is in the same
condition as the carpets in the Capitol, and from
the same cause. Having but partially undress-
ed, I clamber on my shelf, and hold the curtain
STEAMBOATS
open for a few minutes while I look round on
all my fellow-travellers again. That done, I
let it fall on them, and on the world, and turn
round, and go to sleep.
454
I wake, of course, when we get under way, for
there is a good deal of noise. The day is then
just breaking. Everybody wakes at the
same time. Some are self-possessed directly,
and some are much perplexed to make out
where they are, until they have rubbed their eyes,
and, leaning on one elbow, looked about them.
Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, and a
few get up. I am among the risers, for it is
easy to feel, without going into the fresh air,
that the atmosphere of the cabin is vile in the
last degree. I huddle on my clothes, go down
into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber,
and wash myself. The washing and dressing
apparatus for the passengers generally consists
of two jack-towels, three small wooden basins,
a keg of water, and a ladle to serve it out with,
six square inches of looking-glass, two ditto
ditto of yellow soap, a comb and brush for the
head, and nothing for the teeth. Everybody
uses the comb and brush except myself. Every-
body stares to see me using my own; and two
or three gentlemen are strongly disposed to ban-
ter me on my prejudices, but don't. When I
have made my toilet, I go upon the hurricane-
deck, and set in for two hours of hard walking
up and down. The sun is rising brilliantly; we
are passing Mount Vernon, where Washington
lies buried; the river is wide and rapid, and its
banks are beautiful. All the glory and splendor
of the day are coming on, and growing brighter
every minute.-American Notes, Chap. 9.
STEAMBOATS-In the harbor.
|
STEAMER
there I'm in a hurry it's done on purpose and
you ever oh my goodness do go on there!" and
so, in a state of mind bordering on distracion,
would be last seen drifting slowly through ‘he
mist into the summer light beyond, that m-de
it red.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40.
STEAMER-Crossing the Channel.
A stout wooden wedge, driven in at my right
temple and out at my left, a floating deposit of
lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression
of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pin-
cers, these are the personal sensations by which
I know we are off, and by which I shall con-
tinue to know it until I am on the soil of France.
My symptoms have scarcely established them-
selves comfortably, when two or three skating
shadows that have been trying to walk or stand
get flung together, and other two or three shad-
ows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners
and cover them up. Then the South Foreland
lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes
no good.
It is at about this period that my detestation
of Calais knows no bounds. Inwardly I resolve
afresh that I never will forgive that hated town.
I have done so before, many times; but that is
past. Let me register a vow. Implacable ani-
mosity to Calais everm-that was an awkward
sea; and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it
gives a complaining roar.
The wind blows stiffly from the Nor'-east, the
sea runs high, we ship a deal of water, the night
is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers
lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were
sorted out for the laundress; but for my own
uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I am
much inconvenienced by any of these things.
There they lay, alongside of each other; hard A general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling,
and fast forever, to all appearance, but design- and scooping, I am aware of, and a general
ing to get out somehow, and quite confident of knocking about of nature; but the impressions
doing it; and in that faith shoals of passengers, I receive are very vague. In a sweet, faint
and heaps of luggage, were proceeding hurriedly temper, something like the smell of damaged
on board. Little steamboats dashed up and oranges, I think I should feel languidly benevo-
down the stream incessantly. Tiers upon tiers lent if I had time. I have not time, because I
of vessels, scores of masts, labyrinths of tackle, am under a curious compulsion to occupy my-
idle sails, splashing oars, gliding row-boats, lum-self with the Irish Melodies. "Rich and rare
bering barges, sunken piles, with ugly lodgings
for the water-rat within their mud-discolored
nooks; church steeples, warehouses, house-roofs,
arches, bridges, men and women, children, casks,
cranes, boxes, horses, coaches, idlers, and hard-
laborers; there they were, all jumbled up to-seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet atti-
gether, any summer morning, far beyond Tom's
power of separation.
In the midst of all this turmoil, there was an
incessant roar from every packet's funnel, which
quite expressed and carried out the uppermost
emotion of the scene. They all appeared to be
perspiring and bothering themselves, exactly as
their passengers did; they never left off fretting
and chafing, in their own hoarse manner, once;
but were always panting out, without any stops,
Come along do make haste I'm very nervous
come along oh good gracious we shall never get
there how late you are do make haste I'm off
directly come along!" Even when they had
left off, and had got safely out into the current,
on the smallest provocation they began again:
for the bravest packet of them all, being stopped
by some entanglement in the river, would im-
mediately begin to fume and pant afresh, "Oh
here's a stoppage what's the matter do go on
were the gems she wore," is the particular melo-
dy to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to
myself in the most charming manner and with
the greatest expression. Now and then I raise
my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet
tudes, but I don't mind it), and notice that I
am a whirling shuttlecock between a fiery bat-
tledore of a light-house on the French coast and
a fiery battledore of a light-house on the Eng-
lish coast; but I don't notice it particularly,
except to feel envenomed in my hatred of Ca-
lais. Then I go on again, “Rich and rare were
the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold
ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O her beauty
was fa-a-a-a-r beyond,"-I am particularly proud
of my execution here, when I become aware of
another awkward shock from the sea.
*
*
*
*
So strangely goes the time, and on the whole,
so quickly-though still I seem to have been on
board a week-that I am bumped, rolled, gurg.
led, washed, and pitched into Calais Harbor be-
fore her maiden smile has finally lighted her
through the Green Isle. When blest forever is
she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of
STEAM-ENGINE
455
STORM
STORM.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 29.
The squall had come up, like a spiteful mes-
senger, before the morning; there followed in
its wake a ragged tier of light which ripped the
dark clouds until they showed a great gray hole
of day.-Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 14.
the tide. For we have not to land to-night then the darkness of an hour seemed to have
down among those slimy timbers-covered with gathered in an instant.
green hair, as if it were the mermaids' favored
combing-place-where one crawls to the surface
of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp; but we go
steaming up the harbor to the Railway Station
Quay. And, as we go, the sea washes in and
out among piles and planks, with dead heavy
beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof we
are proud); and the lamps shake in the wind,
and the bells of Calais striking One seem to
send their vibrations struggling against troubled It was a murky confusion-here and there blot-
air, as we have come struggling against troubled ted with a color like the color of the smoke from
water. And now, in the sudden relief and wip-damp fuel-of flying clouds tossed up into most
ing of faces, everybody on board seems to have remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in
had a prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this the clouds than there were depths below them
very instant free of the dentist's hands. And to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the
now we all know for the first time how wet and earth, through which the wild moon seemed to
cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance
love Calais with my heart of hearts!
of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and
were frightened. There had been a wind all
day; and it was rising then, with an extraordi-
nary great sound. In another hour it had much
increased, and the sky was more overcast, and
blew hard.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 17.
STEAM-ENGINE-A thinking.
"What a thinking steam-ingein this old lady
is. And she don't know how she does it.
Neither does the ingein!"
But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing
in and densely overspreading the whole sky,
then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and
harder. It still increased, until our horses
could scarcely face the wind. Many times, in
the dark part of the night (it was then late in
September, when the nights were not short), the
leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop;
and we were often in serious apprehension that
the coach would be blown over. Sweeping
gusts of rain came up before this storm, like
showers of steel; and, at those times, when
there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be
got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer inpossibil-
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 9.
STOCKS AND BONDS-The result of shares.
The mature young gentleman is a gentleman
of property. He invests his property. He goes
in a condescending amateurish way into the
City, attends meetings of Directors, and has to
do with traffic in Shares. As is well known to
the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is
the one thing to have to do with in this world.
Have no antecedents, no established character,
no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have
Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards
of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mys-ity of continuing the struggle.
terious business between London and Paris, As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the
and be great. Where does he come from? sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing
Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What dead on shore, its force became more and more
are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray
Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament? was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us.
Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved The water was out, over miles and miles of the
success in anything, never originated anything, flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every
never produced anything. Sufficient answer sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its
to all; Shares. O mighty Shares ! To set stress of little breakers setting heavily toward
those blaring images so high, and to cause us us. When we came within sight of the sea, the
smaller vermin, as under the influence of hen-waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above
bane or opium, to cry out, night and day, “Re-
lieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy us
and sell us, ruin us, only, we beseech ye, take
rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten
on us!"-Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 10.
STORM—Approach of a.
the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another
shore, with towers and buildings. When at last
we got into the town, the people came out to
their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair,
making a wonder of the mail that had come
through such a night.
David Copperfield, Chap. 55.
STORM-At night.
The blast went by, and the moon contended
with the fast-flying clouds, and the wild disorder
reigning up there made the pitiful little tumults
in the streets of no account. It was not that
the wind swept all the brawlers into places of
shelter, as it had swept the hail still lingering in
heaps wherever there was refuge for it; but that
it seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the
and the night were all in the air.
It had been gradually getting overcast, and
now the sky was dark and lowering, save where
the glory of the departing sun piled up masses
of gold and burning fire, decaying embers of
which gleamed here and there through the black
veil, and shone redly down upon the earth. The
wind began to moan in hollow murmurs, as the
sun went down, carrying glad day elsewhere;
and a train of dull clouds coming up against it,
menaced thunder and lightning. Large drops
of rain soon began to fall, and, as the storm-sky,
clouds came sailing onward, others supplied the
void they left behind and spread over all the
sky. Then was heard the low rumbling of dis-
tant thunder, then the lightning quivered, and
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 12.
It was one of those hot, silent nights, when
people sit at windows, listening for the thunder
STORM
456
which they know will shortly break; when they
recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes;
and of lonely travellers on open plains, and
lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning. Light-
ning flashed and quivered on the black horizon
even now; and hollow murmurings were in the
wind, as though it had been blowing where the
thunder rolled, and still was charged with its
exhausted echoes. But the storm, though gather-
ing swiftly, had not yet come up; and the pre-
vailing stillness was the more solemn, from the
dull intelligence that seemed to hover in the air,
of noise and conflict afar off.
STORM
from the repose below, and yet so tranquil and
solitary.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 47.
The weathercocks on spires and housetops
were mysterious with hints of stormy wind, and
pointed, like so many ghostly fingers, out to
dangerous seas, where fragments of great wrecks
were drifting, perhaps, and helpless men were
rocked upon them into a sleep as deep as the
unfathomable waters.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
STORM-At sea.
A dark and dreary night; people nestling
in their beds or circling late about the fire;
Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the
street corners; church-towers humming with
It was very dark; but in the murky sky
there were masses of cloud which shone with a
lurid light, like monstrous heaps of copper that
had been heated in a furnace, and were grow-the faint vibration of their own tongues, but
ing cold.
*
*
*
*
*
Louder and louder the deep thunder rolled,
as through the myriad halls of some vast temple
in the sky; fiercer and brighter became the
lightning; more and more heavily the rain
poured down.
The eye, partaking of the quickness of the
flashing light, saw in its every gleam a multitude
of objects which it could not see at steady noon
in fifty times that period. Bells in steeples, with
the rope and wheel that moved them; ragged |
nests of birds in cornices and nooks; faces full
of consternation in the tilted wagons that
came tearing past; their frightened teams ring-
ing out a warning which the thunder drowned;
harrows and plows left out in fields; miles upon
miles of hedge-divided country, with the distant
fringe of trees as obvious as the scarecrow in
the bean-field close at hand; in a trembling,
vivid, flickering instant, everything was clear
and plain: then came a flush of red into the
yellow light; a change to blue; a brightness so
intense that there was nothing else but light;
and then the deepest and profoundest darkness.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 42.
It was a melancholy time, even in the snug-
ness of the Dragon bar. The rich expanse of
corn-field, pasture-land, green slope, and gentle
andulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many
hedgerows, and its clumps of beautiful trees,
was black and dreary, from the diamond panes
of the lattice away to the far horizon, where the
thunder seemed to roll along the hills. The
heavy rain beat down the tender branches of
vine and jessamine, and trampled on them in its
fury; and when the lightning gleamed, it showed
the tearful leaves shivering and cowering to-
gether at the window, and tapping at it urgently,
as if beseeching to be sheltered from the dismal
night.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 43.
STORM.
She paced the staircase gallery outside, looked
out of window on the night, listened to the wind
blowing and the rain falling, sat down and
watched the faces in the fire, got up and
watched the moon flying like a storm-driven ship
through the sea of clouds.
*
*
*
*
newly resting from the ghostly preachment
One!" The earth covered with a sable pall
as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of
dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers,
waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noise-
less, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds
that skim across the moon, and the cautious
wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground,
it stops to listen, and goes rustling on, and
stops again, and follows, like a savage on the trail.
Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly?
If, like guilty spirits, they repair to some dread
conference with powers like themselves, in what
wild regions do the elements hold council, or
where unbend in terrible disport?
Here! Free from that cramped prison called
the earth, and out upon the waste of waters.
Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling, all
night long. Hither come the sounding voices
from the caverns on the coast of that small
island, sleeping, a thousand miles away, so qui-
etly in the midst of angry waves; and hither,
to meet them, rush the blasts from unknown
desert places of the world. Here, in the fury
of their unchecked liberty, they storm and
buffet with each other, until the sea, lashed into
passion like their own, leaps up, in ravings might-
ier than theirs, and the whole scene is madness.
On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry
space roll the long heaving billows. Moun-
tains and caves are here, and yet are not; for
what is now the one, is now the other; then, all
is but a boiling heap of rushing water. Pursuit,
and flight, and mad return of wave on wave,
and savage struggle, ending in a spouting-up
of foam, that whitens the black night; inces-
sant change of place, and form, and hue; con-
stancy in nothing, but eternal strife; on, on,
on, they roll, and darker grows the night, and
louder howls the wind, and more clamorous and
fierce become the million voices in the sea,
when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm,
"A ship!"
Onward she comes, in gallant combat with
the elements, her tall masts trembling, and her
timbers starting on the strain; onward she
comes, now high upon the curling billows, now
low down in the hollows of the sea, as hiding
for the moment from its fury; and every storm-
voice in the air and water cries more loudly
yet, "A ship!"
Florence, more agitated, paced the room, and Still she comes striving on; and at her bold-
paced the gallery outside; and looked out atness and the spreading cry, the angry waves
the night, blurred and wavy with the rain-drops
on the glass, and the tears in her own eyes; and
looked up at the hurry in the sky, so different
rise up above each other's hoary heads to look;
and round about the vessel, far as the mariners
on the decks can pierce into the gloom they
STORM
457
STREETS
ing at long intervals in a little absurd glass pot,
with a knob in the bottom like an oyster, blinks
and sulks at newer lights every night, like its
high and dry master in the House of Lords.
Bleak House, Chap. 48.
STREET-A gloomy.
press upon her, forcing each other down, and
starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in
dreadful curiosity. High over her they break;
and round her surge and roar; and, giving place
to others, moaningly depart, and dash them-
selves to fragments in their baffled anger. Still
she comes onward bravely. And though the
eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her It was one of the parasite streets; long, re-
all the night, and dawn of day discovers the un-gular, narrow, dull, and gloomy; like a brick
tiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in and mortar funeral. They inquired at several
an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, little area gates, where a dejected youth stood
with dim lights burning in her hull, and people spiking his chin on the summit of a precipitous
there, asleep; as if no deadly element were little shoot of wooden steps, but could gain no
peering in at every seam and chink, and no information. They walked up the street on one
drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to side of the way, and down it on the other, what
cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable time two vociferous news-sellers, announcing an
depths below.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 15. extraordinary event that had never happened
and never would happen, pitched their hoarse
voices into the secret chambers; but nothing
came of it.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 27.
STREET-A London.
STORM-Thunder.
The clouds were flying fast, the wind was
coming up in gusts, banging some neighboring
shutters that had broken loose, twirling the
rusty chimney-cowls and weathercocks, and
rushing round and round a confined adjacent
churchyard as if it had a mind to blow the dead
citizens out of their graves. The low thunder, |
muttering in all quarters of the sky at once,
seemed to threaten vengeance for this attempt-
ed desecration, and to mutter, "Let them rest
Let them rest!
Let them rest!"
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 29.
STORM-Its influence on human passions.
There are times when, the elements being in
unusual commotion, those who are bent on dar-
ing enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts,
whether of good or evil, feel a mysterious
sympathy with the tumult of nature, and are
roused into corresponding violence. In the
midst of thunder, lightning, and storm, many
tremendous deeds have been committed; men,
self-possessed before, have given a sudden loose
to passions they could no longer control. The
demons of wrath and despair have striven to
emulate those who ride the whirlwind and
direct the storm; and man, lashed into madness
with the roaring winds and boiling waters, has
become for the time as wild and merciless as
the elements themselves.
STREET—A dull.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 2.
It is a dull street under the best conditions;
where the two long rows of houses stare at each
other with that severity, that half-a-dozen of its
greatest mansions seem to have been slowly
stared into stone, rather than originally built in
that material. It is a street of such dismal
grandeur, so determined not to condescend to
liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a
gloomy state of their own in black paint and
dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry
and massive appearance, as if they were reserved
to stable the stone chargers of noble statues.
Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines it-
self over the flights of steps in this awful street;
and from these petrified bowers, extinguishers
for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the upstart gas.
Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through
which bold boys aspire to throw their friends'
caps (its only present use), retains its place
among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory
of departed oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet linger-
Mr. Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn
Road, which had set off from that thoroughfare
with the intention of running at one heat down
into the valley, and up again to the top of Pen-
tonville Hill; but which had run itself out of
breath in twenty yards, and had stood still ever
since. There is no such place in that part now ;
but it remained there for many years, looking
with a balked countenance at the wilderness
patched with unfruitful gardens and pimpled
with eruptive summer-houses, that it had meant
to run over in no time.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13.
STREETS-A repulsive neighborhood.
Near to that part of the Thames on which
the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the
buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the
vessels on the river blackest with the dust of
colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed
houses, there exists. at the present day, the fil-
thiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of
many localities that are hidden in London,
wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass
of its inhabitants.
To reach this place the visitor has to penetrate
through a maze of close, narrow, and muddy
streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of
water-side people, and devoted to the traffic
they may be supposed to occasion. The cheap-
est and least delicate provisions are heaped in
the shops; the coarsest and commonest articles
of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman's
door, and stream from the house-parapet and
windows. Jostling with unemployed laborers
of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whip-
pers, brazen women, ragged children, and the
very raff and refuse of the river, he makes his
way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive
sights and smells from the narrow alleys which
branch off on the right and left, and deafened
by the clash of ponderous wagons that bear great
piles of merchandise from the stacks of ware-
houses that rise from every corner. Arriving, at
length, in streets remoter and less-frequented
than those through which he has passed, he
walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting
over the pavement, dismantled walls that seem
to totter as he passes, chimneys half-crushed,
half-hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty
iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten
*
*
STREET
*
*
*
458
STREET SCENES
away, and every imaginable sign of desolation and general emporium of much disregarded
and neglect.
merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of
the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is an-
nounced in paint, to all whom it may concern
by one Krook.-Bleak House, Chap. 10.
STREETS-In London.
;
Crazy wooden galleries, common to the backs
of half a dozen houses, with holes from which
to look upon the slime beneath; windows
broken and patched: with poles thrust out, on
which to dry the linen that is never there
rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air
would seem too tainted even for the dirt and
squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers
thrusting themselves out above the mud, and
threatening to fall into it-as some have done;
dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations;
every repulsive lineament of poverty, every
loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage;
all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 50.
STREET—A quiet.
There is a repose about Lant Street, in the
Borough, which sheds a gentle melancholy upon
the soul. There are always a good many houses
to let in the street: it is a bye-street too, and its
dullness is soothing. A house in Lant Street
would not come within the denomination of a
first-rate residence, in the strict acceptation of
the term; but it is a most desirable spot never-
theless. If a man wished to abstract himself
from the world-to remove himself from within
the reach of temptation-to place himself be-
yond the possibility of any inducement to look
out of the window-he should by all means go
to Lant Street.
They rattled on through the noisy, bustling,
crowded streets of London, now displaying long
double rows of brightly-burning lamps, dotted
here and there with the chemists' glaring lights,
and illuminated besides with the brilliant food
that streamed from the windows of the shops,
where sparkling jewelry, silks and velvets of
the richest colors, the most inviting delicacies,
and most sumptuous articles of luxurious orna-
ment, succeeded each other in rich and glitter-
ing profusion. Streams of people apparently
without end poured on and on, jostling each
other in the crowd and hurrying forward, scarce-
ly seeming to notice the riches that surrounded
them on every side; while vehicles of all shapes
and makes, mingled up together in one moving
mass like running water, lent their ceaseless
roar to swell the noise and tumult.
As they dashed by the quickly-changing and
ever-varying objects, it was curious to observe in
what a strange procession they passed before the
eye. Emporiums of splendid dresses, the mate-
rials brought from every quarter of the world;
tempting stores of everything to stimulate and
pamper the sated appetite and give new relish
to the oft-repeated feast; vessels of burnished
gold and silver, wrought into every exquisite
form of vase, and dish, and goblet; guns,
swords, pistols, and patent engines of destruc-
tion; screws and irons for the crooked, clothes
for the newly-born, drugs for the sick, coffins for
the dead, church-yards for the buried-all these
jumbled each with the other and flocking side
by side, seemed to flit by in motley dance, like
the fantastic groups of the old Dutch painter,
and with the same stern moral for the unheed-
In this happy retreat are colonized a few
clear-starchers, a sprinkling of journeymen
bookbinders, one or two prison agents for the
Insolvent Court, several small housekeepers who
are employed in the Docks, a handful of mantua-
makers, and a seasoning of jobbing tailors.
The majority of the inhabitants either direct
their energies to the letting of furnished apart-
ments, or devote themselves to the healthful and
invigorating pursuit of mangling. The chiefing, restless crowd.
features in the still life of the street are green
shutters, lodging-bills, brass door-plates, and bell-
handles; the principal specimens of animated
nature, the pot-boy, the muffin youth, and the
baked-potato man. The population is migra-
tory, usually disappearing on the verge of quar-
ter-day, and generally by night. His Majesty's
revenues are seldom collected in this happy
valley; the rents are dubious; and the water
communication is very frequently cut off.
Pickwick, Chap. 32.
STREET-Crowd and mud.
It is quite dark, now, and the gas-lamps have
acquired their full effect. Jostling against clerks
going to post the day's letters, and against coun-
sel and attorneys going home to dinner, and
against plaintiffs and defendants, and suitors of
all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose
way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed
a million of obstacles to the transaction of the
commonest business of life-diving through law
and equity, and through that kindred mystery,
the street mud, which is made of nobody knows
what, and collects about us nobody knows
whence or how; we only knowing in general
that when there is too much of it, we find it
necessary to shovel it away-the lawyer and the
law-stationer come to a Rag and Bottle shop,
Nor were there wanting objects in the crowd
itself to give new point and purpose to the
shifting scene. The rags of the squalid ballad-
singer fluttered in the rich light that showed the
goldsmith's treasures; pale and pinched-up faces
hovered about the windows where was tempting
food; hungry eyes wandered over the profusion
guarded by one thin sheet of brittle glass-an
iron wall to them; half-naked, shivering figures
stopped to gaze at Chinese shawls and golden
stuffs of India. There was a christening party
at the largest coffin-maker's, and a funeral hatch-
ment had stopped some great improvements in
the bravest mansion. Life and death went hand
in hand; wealth and poverty stood side by side;
repletion and starvation laid them down to-
gether.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 32.
STREET SCENES-London.
It was now summer-time; a gray, hot, dusty
evening. They rode to the top of Oxford Street,
and there alighting, dived in among the great
streets of melancholy stateliness, and the little
streets that try to be as stately and succeed in being
more melancholy, of which there is a labyrinth
near Park Lane. Wildernesses of corner-houses,
with barbarous old porticoes and appurtenances;
horrors that came into existence under some wrong.
headed person, in some wrong-headed time
STREET SCENES
459
STREET SCENES
take, 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 ex-
change 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 stop-
ping 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 be-
fore 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 con-
siderable mental struggle to avoid investing a
part of the day's dinner-money in the purchase
of the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty
tins at the pastry-cook's doors; but a conscious-
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 mil-
liners' and staymakers' apprentices they meet-
poor girls!-the hardest worked, the worst paid,
and too often the worst used class of the com-
munity.-Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 1.
still demanding the blind admiration of all en-
suing generations, and determined to do so
until they tumbled down, frowned upon the
twilight. Parasite little tenements with the
cramp in their whole frame, from the dwarf
hall-door on the giant model of His Grace's in
the Square, to the squeezed window of the
boudoir commanding the dunghills in the
Mews, made the evening doleful. Rickety
dwellings of undoubted fashion, but of a capacity
to hold nothing comfortably except a dismal
smell, looked like the last result of the great
mansions' breeding in and-in; and, where their
little supplementary bows and balconies were
supported on thin iron columns, seemed to
be scrofulously resting upon crutches. Here and
there a Hatchment, with the whole science of
Heraldry in it, loomed down upon the street,
like an Archbishop discoursing on Vanity. The
shops, few in number, made no show; for pop-ness of their own importance and the receipt of
ular opinion was as nothing to them. The
pastry-cook knew who was on his books, and
in that knowledge could be calm, with a few
glass cylinders of dowager peppermint-drops in
his window, and half a-dozen ancient speci-
mens of currant-jelly. A few oranges formed
the greengrocer's whole concession to the vul-
gar mind. A single basket made of moss, once
containing plovers' eggs, held all that the
poulterer had to say to the rabble. Every-
body in those streets seemed (which is always
the case at that hour and season) to be gone It is odd enough that one class of men in
out to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving London appear to have no enjoyment beyond
the dinners they had gone to. On the door-leaning against posts. We never saw a regular
steps there were lounging, footmen with bright
parti-colored plumage and white polls, like an
extinct race of monstrous birds; and butlers,
solitary men of recluse demeanor, each of
whom appeared distrustful of all other butlers.
The roll of carriages in the Park was done for
the day; the street lamps were lighting; and
wicked little grooms in the tightest fitting gar-
ments, with twists in their legs answering to
the twists in their minds, hung about in pairs,
chewing straws and exchanging fraudulent se-
crets. The spotted dogs who went out with
the carriages, and who were so associated with
splendid equipages, that it looked like a conde-
scension in those animals to come out without
them, accompanied helpers to and fro on mes-
sages. Here and there was a retiring public-
house which did not require to be supported
on the shoulders of the people, and where gen-
tlemen out of livery were not much wanted.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 27.
|
STREET SCENES-In London ("The Di-
als ").
Walk
bricklayer's laborer take any other recreation,
fighting excepted. Pass through St. Giles's in
the evening of a week-day, there they are in
their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust
and whitewash, leaning against posts.
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 in-
volved. He traverses streets of dirty, strag
gling houses, with now and then an unexpected
court composed of buildings as ill-proportioned
and deformed as the half-naked children that
wallow in the kennels. Here and there, a little
dark chandler's shop, with a cracked bell hung
STREET SCENES-In London (Morning). up behind the door to announce the entrance
The shops are now completely opened, and of a customer, or betray the presence of some
apprentices and shopmen are busily engaged in young gentleman in whom a passion for shop
cleaning and decking the windows for the day. tills has developed itself at an early age; others,
The bakers' shops in town are filled with ser- as if for support, against some handsome lofty
vants and children waiting for the drawing of building, which usurps the place of a low, din-
the first batch of rolls-an operation which was gy public-house; long rows of broken and
performed a full hour ago in the suburbs; for patched windows expose plants that may have
the early clerk population of Somers and Cam- flourished when "The Dials " were built, in ves-
den Towns, Islington and Pentonville, are fast sels as dirty as "The Dials" themselves; and
pouring into the city, or directing their steps shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron,
towards Chancery Lane and the Inns of Court. and kitchen-stuff, vie in cleanliness with the
Middle-aged men, whose salaries have by no bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which one
means increased in the same proportion as their might fancy so many arks, but for the irresisti-
families, plod steadily along, apparently with no ble conviction that no bird in its proper senses,
object in view but the counting-house; knowing who was permitted to leave one of them, would
by sight almost everybody they meet or over-ever come back again. Brokers' shops, which
STREET-SINGER
460
SWIVELLER
"}
would seem to have been established by humane ing down the figures with evident delight, and
individuals as refuges for destitute bugs, inter-working like a steam-engine. There stood
spersed with announcements of day-schools, Dick, gazing, now at the green gown, now at the
penny theatres, petition-writers, mangles, and brown head-dress, now at the face, and now at
music for balls or routs, complete the "still the rapid pen, in a state of stupid perplexity,
life of the subject; and dirty men, filthy wondering how he got into the company of that
women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks, strange monster, and whether it was a dream,
noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more and he would ever wake. At last he heaved a
than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed deep sigh, and began slowly pulling off his coat.
dogs, and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful ac- Mr. Swiveller pulled off his coat, and folded
companiments.
it up with great elaboration, staring at Miss
Sally all the time; then put on a blue jacket,
with a double row of gilt buttons, which he had
originally ordered for aquatic expeditions, but
had brought with him that morning for office
purposes; and, still keeping his eye upon her,
suffered himself to drop down silently on Mr.
Brass's stool. Then he underwent a relapse,
and becoming powerless again, rested his chin
upon his hand, and opened his eyes so wide that
it appeared quite out of the question that he
could ever close them any more.
*
*
*
*
*
Now, anybody who passed through The Dials
on a hot summer's evening, and saw the differ-
ent 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
people than the native Diallers could not be
imagined. Alas! the man in the shop ill-treats
his family; the carpet-beater extends his pro-
fessional pursuits to his wife; the one-pair front
has an undying feud with the two-pair front,
in consequence of the two-pair front persisting When he had looked so long that he could see
in dancing over his (the one-pair front's) head, nothing, Dick took his eyes off the fair object
when he and his family have retired for the of his amazement, turned over the leaves of the
night; the two-pair back will interfere with the draft he was to copy, dipped his pen into the
front kitchen's children; the Irishman comes ink-stand, and at last, and by slow approaches,
home drunk every other night, and attacks every-began to write. But he had not written half-a-
body; and the one-pair back screams at every-dozen words when, reaching over to the ink-
thing. Animosities spring up between floor stand to take a fresh dip, he happened to raise
and floor; the very cellar asserts his equality. his eyes. There was the intolerable brown
Mrs. A. "smacks "'Mrs. B.'s child, for "making head-dress-there was the green gown-there,
faces." Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water in short, was Miss Sally Brass, arrayed in all her
over Mrs. A.'s child, for "calling names." The charms, and more tremendous than ever.
husbands are embroiled-the quarrel becomes
general-an assault is the consequence, and a po-
lice-officer the result.-Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 5.
STREET-SINGER-The.
This happened so often, that Mr. Swiveller
by degrees began to feel strange influences creep-
ing over him-horrible desires to annihilate this
Sally Brass-mysterious promptings to knock
her head-dress off and try how she looked with-
out it. There was a very large ruler on the
table; a large, black, shining ruler. Mr. Swiv-
eller took it up and began to rub his nose with it.
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, From rubbing his nose with the ruler, to
in the hope of wringing a few pence from the poising it in his hand and giving it an occa-
compassionate passer-by. A brutal laugh at her sional flourish after the tomahawk manner, the
weak voice is all she has gained. The tears fall transition was easy and natural. In some of
thick and fast down her own pale face; the these flourishes it went close to Miss Sally's
child is cold and hungry, and its low, half-head; the ragged edges of the head-dress flut-
stifled wailing adds to the misery of its wretched
mother, as she moans aloud, and sinks despair-
ingly 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 mock-
ery! Disease, neglect, and starvation, faintly
articulating the words of the joyous ditty that
has enlivened your hours of feasting and merri-
ment-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.
tered with the wind it raised; advance it but
an inch, and that great brown knot was on the
ground: yet still the unconscious maiden worked
away, and never raised her eyes.
Well, this was a great relief. It was a good
thing to write doggedly and obstinately until he
was desperate, and then snatch up the ruler and
whirl it about the brown head-dress with the
consciousness that he could have it off if he
liked. It was a good thing to draw it back,
and rub his nose very hard with it, if he thought
Miss Sally was going to look up, and to recom-
pense himself with more hardy flourishes when
he found she was still absorbed. By these means
Mr. Swiveller calmed the agitation of his feel-
ings, until his applications to the ruler became
less fierce and frequent, and he could even write
as many as half-a-dozen consecutive lines with-
stu-out having recourse to it,-which was a great
victory.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 33.
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 2.
SWIVELLER-Dick, and Sally Brass.
Dick stood at the desk in a state of utter
pefaction, staring with all his might at the beau-
teous Sally, as if she had been some curious
animal whose like had never lived.
Miss Brass being by this time deep in the
bill of costs, took no notice whatever of Dick,
but went scratching on with a noisy pen, scor-
M
SWIVELLER
drunkenness.
Dick His apology
for
"Sit down," repeated his companion.
Mr. Swiveller complied, and looking about

ཨུཟླ་་ངད་1
SICKNESS OF DICK SWIVELLER.
EKB
461
SWIVELLER
him with a propitiatory smile, observed that last
week was a fine week for the ducks, and this
week was a fine week for the dust; he also ob-
served that whilst standing by the post at the
street corner, he had observed a pig with a straw
in his mouth issuing out of the tobacco-shop,
from which appearance he argued that another
fine week for the ducks was approaching, and
that rain would certainly ensue. He further-
more took occasion to apologize for any negli-
gence that might be perceptible in his dress, on
the ground that last night he had had "the sun
very strong in his eyes; by which expression
he was understood to convey to his hearers in
the most delicate manner possible, the informa-
tion that he had been extremely drunk.
But what," said Mr. Swiveller with a sigh,
"what is the odds so long as the fire of soul is
kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the
wing of friendship never moults a feather!
What is the odds so long as the spirit is ex-
panded by means of rosy wine, and the present
moment is the least happiest of our existence !"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 2.
SWIVELLER-Dick-His sweetheart.
"She's the sphynx of private life, is Sally B."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 50.
SWIVELLER-Sickness of Dick.
461
SWIVELLER
ture, and associating them strangely with patches
of fresh turf, while the yellow ground between
made gravel-walks, and so helped out a long
perspective of trim gardens.
He was rambling in imagination on these ter-
races, and had quite lost himself among them,
indeed, when he heard the cough once more.
The walls shrunk into stripes again at the sound,
and raising himself a little in the bed, and hold
ing the curtain open with one hand, he looked
out.
The same room certainly, and still by candle-
light; but with what unbounded astonishment
did he see all those bottles, and basins, and arti-
cles of linen airing by the fire, and such-like
furniture of a sick chamber-all very clean and
neat, but all quite different from anything he
left there, when he went to bed! The atmos-
phere, too, filled with the cool smell of herbs and
vinegar; the floor newly sprinkled; the—the
what? The Marchioness?
Yes; playing cribbage with herself at the
table. There she sat, intent upon her game,
coughing now and then in a subdued manner,
as if she feared to disturb him-shuffling the
cards, cutting, dealing, playing, counting, peg-
ging-going through all the mysteries of crib-
bage as if she had been in full practice from her
cradle.
Mr. Swiveller contemplated these things for
a short time, and suffering the curtain to fall in-
to its former position, laid his head on the pil-
low again.
Here the small servant had another cough.
Tossing to and fro upon his hot, uneasy bed;
tormented by a fierce thirst which nothing could
appease; unable to find, in any change of pos-
ture, a moment's peace or ease; and rambling, "I'm dreaming," thought Richard, "that's
ever, through deserts of thought where there clear. When I went to bed, my_hands_were
was no resting-place, no sight or sound sugges-not made of egg-shells, and now I can almost
tive of refreshment or repose, nothing but a dull see through 'em. If this is not a dream, I have
eternal weariness, with no change but the rest-woke up, by mistake, in an Arabian Night, in-
less shiftings of his miserable body, and the stead of a London one. But I have no doubt
weary wandering of his mind, constant still to I'm asleep. Not the least."
one ever-present anxiety-to a sense of some-
thing left undone, of some fearful obstacle to be
surmounted, of some carking care that would not
be driven away, and which haunted the distem-
pered brain, now in this form, now in that; al-
ways shadowy and dim, but recognizable for the
same phantom in every shape it took; darken-
ing every vision like an evil conscience, and
making slumber horrible-in these slow tor-
tures of his dread disease, the unfortunate Rich-
ard lay wasting and consuming inch by inch,
until, at last, when he seemed to fight and strug.
gle to rise up, and to be held down by devils,
he sank into a deep sleep, and dreamed no
more.
He awoke. With a sensation of most bliss-
ful rest, better than sleep itself, be began grad-
ually to remember something of these sufferings,
and to think what a long night it had been, and
whether he had not been delirious twice or
thrice. Happening, in the midst of these cogi-
tations, to raise his hand, he was astonished to
find how heavy it seemed, and yet how thin and
light it really was. Still, he felt indifferent and
happy; and having no curiosity to pursue the
subject, remained in the same waking slumber
antil his attention was attracted by a cough.
This made him doubt whether he had locked
his door last night, and feel a little surprised
at having a companion in the room. Still, he
lacked energy to follow up this train of thought;
and unconsciously fell, in a luxury of repose, to
staring at some green stripes on the bed-furni-
Very remarkable !" thought Mr. Swiveller,
"I never dreamt such a real cough as that,
before. I don't know, indeed, that I ever dreamt
either a cough or a sneeze. Perhaps it's part
of the philosophy of dreams that one never
does. There's another-and another. I say!
-I'm dreaming rather fast!"
For the purpose of testing his real condition,
Mr. Swiveller, after some reflection, pinched
himself in the arm.
Queerer still!" he thought. "I came to
bed rather plump than otherwise, and now
there's nothing to lay hold of. I'll take another
survey."
The result of this additional inspection was,
to convince Mr. Swiveller that the objects by
which he was surrounded were real, and that he
saw them, beyond all question, with his waking
eyes.
'It's an Arabian Night; that's what it is,"
said Richard. "I'm in Damascus or Grand
Cairo. The Marchioness is a Genie, and hav-
ing had a wager with another Genie about who
is the handsomest young man alive, and the
worthiest to be the husband of the Princess of
China, has brought me away, room and all, to
compare us together. Perhaps," said Mr.
Swiveller, turning languidly round on his pillow,
and looking on that side of his bed which was
next the wall, "the Princess may be still--No,
she's gone."
Not feeling quite satisfied with this explana-
SWIVELLER
462
SWIVELLER
"Seen her!" cried the small servant.
you, I've run away!"
quired:
"And where do you live, Marchioness?
"Bless
tion, as, even taking it to be the correct one, it
still involved a little mystery and doubt, Mr.
Swiveller raised the curtain again, determined Mr. Swiveller immediately laid himself down
to take the first favorable opportunity of ad- again quite flat, and so remained for about five
dressing his companion. An occasion soon minutes. By slow degrees he resumed his sit
presented itself. The Marchioness dealt, turn-ting posture after that lapse of time, and in-
ed up a knave, and omitted to take the usual
advantage: upon which Mr. Swiveller called
out as loud as he could-" Two for his
heels!"
The Marchioness jumped up quickly, and
clapped her hands. "Arabian Night, certain-
ly," thought Mr. Swiveller r; they always clap
their hands instead of ringing the bell. Now
for the two thousand black slaves, with jars of
jewels on their heads!"
It appeared, however, that she had only
clapped her hands for joy; as, directly after-
wards she began to laugh, and then to cry;
declaring, not in choice Arabic but in familiar
English, that she was "so glad, she didn't
know what to do."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 64.
SWIVELLER-The Marchioness
nurse.
as his
Mr. Swiveller was silent for a long while.
By-and-bye, he began to talk again, inquiring
how long he had been there.
"Three weeks to-morrow," replied the small
servant.
"Three what?" said Dick.
"Weeks," returned the Marchioness emphati-
cally, "three long, slow weeks."
The bare thought of having been in such ex-
tremity caused Richard to fall into another si-
lence, and to lie flat down again, at his full
length. The Marchioness, having arranged the
bed-clothes more comfortably, and felt that his
hands and forehead were quite cool-a discovery
that filled her with delight-cried a little more,
and then applied herself to getting tea ready,
and making some thin dry toast.
While she was thus engaged, Mr. Swiveller
looked on with a grateful heart, very much as-
tonished to see how thoroughly at home she
made herself, and attributing this attention, in
its origin, to Sally Brass, whom, in his own
mind, he could not thank enough. When the
Marchioness had finished her toasting, she
spread a clean cloth on a tray, and brouglit him
some crisp slices and a great basin of weak tea,
with which (she said) the doctor had left word
he might refresh himself when he awoke. She
propped him up with pillows, if not as skillfully
as if she had been a professional nurse all her
life, at least as tenderly; and looked on with
unutterable satisfaction while the patient-stop-
ping every now and then to shake her by the
hand-took his poor meal with an appetite and
relish, which the greatest dainties of the earth,
under any other circumstances, would have
failed to provoke. Having cleared away, and
disposed everything comfortably about him
again, she sat down at the table to take her own
tea.
Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, "how's
Sally?"
The small servant screwed her face into an
expression of the very uttermost entanglement
of slyness, and shook her head.
What, haven't you seen her lately?" said
Dick.
|
Live!" cried the small servant. "Here!"
"Oh!" said Mr. Swiveller.
And with that he fell down flat again, as sud.
denly as if he had been shot. Thus he remained,
motionless and bereft of speech, until she had
finished her meal, put everything in its place,
and swept the hearth; when he motioned her to
bring a chair to the bedside, and being propped
up again, opened a farther conversation.
"And so," said Dick, "you have run away?"
"Yes," said the Marchioness, "and they've
been a tizing of me.”
"Been-I beg your pardon," said Dick-
"what have they been doing?"
Her
"Been a tizing of me-tizing you know-in
the newspapers," rejoined the Marchioness.
Aye, aye," said Dick, "advertising?
The small servant nodded and winked.
eyes were so red with waking and crying, that
the Tragic Muse might have winked with
greater consistency. And so Dick felt.
"Tell me," said he, "how it was that you
thought of coming here."
Why, you see," returned the Marchioness,
"when you was gone, I hadn't any friend at all,
because the lodger he never come back, and I
didn't know where either him or you was to be
found, you know. But one morning, when I
was-
"Was near a keyhole," suggested Mr. Swivel-
ler, observing that she faltered.
"Well then," said the small servant, nodding;
"when I was near the office keyhole-as you
see me through, you know-I heard somebody
saying that she lived here, and was the lady
whose house you lodged at, and that you was
took very bad, and wouldn't nobody come and
take care of you. Mr. Brass, he says, 'It's no
business of mine,' he says; and Miss Sally, she
says, He's a funny chap, but it's no business
of mine;' and the lady went away, and slammed
the door to, when she went out, I can tell you.
So I run away that night, and come here, and
told 'em you was my brother, and they believed
me, and I've been here ever since."
*
*
*
*
*
Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, plucking
off his nightcap and flinging it to the other end
of the room; "if you'll do me the favor to re-
tire for a few minutes and see what sort of a
night it is, I'll get up."
You mustn't think of such a thing,” cried
his nurse.
"I must indeed," said the patient, looking
round the room. Whereabouts are my
clothes?
Oh, I'm so glad—you haven't got any' re-
plied the Marchioness.
Ma'am !" said Mr. Swiveller, in great aston-
ishment.
"I've been obliged to sell them, every one, to
get the things that was ordered for you. But
don't take on about that," urged the Marchion-
ess, as Dick fell back upon his pillow. “You're
too weak to stand, indeed."
SWIVELLER
463
"I suppose," said Dick, as she closed the door
slowly, and peeped into the room again, to make
sure that he was comfortable, "I suppose there's
nothing left-not so much as a waistcoat even?"
No, nothing."
"It's embarrassing," said Mr. Swiveller, "in
case of fire-even an umbrella would be some-
thing-but you did quite right, dear Marchion-
ess, I should have died without you!"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 64.
SWIVELLER-The observations of Dick.
Emboldened, as it seemed, to enter into a
more general conversation, Mr. Swiveller plainly
laid himself out to captivate our attention.
SWIVELLER
about a dockyard with my number neatly em-
broidered on my uniform, and the order of the
garter on my leg, restrained from chafing my
ankle by a twisted belcher handkerchief? Shall
I be that? Will that do, or is it too genteel?
Whatever you please, have it your own way, of
course."
As he was entirely alone, it may be presumed
that, in these remarks, Mr. Swiveller addressed
himself to his fate or destiny, whom, as we learn
by the precedents, it is the custom of heroes to
taunt in a very bitter and ironical manner when
they find themselves in situations of an unpleas-
ant nature. This is the more probable from the
circumstance of Mr. Swiveller directing his ob-
servations to the ceiling, which these bodily per-
sonages are usually supposed to inhabit-except
in theatrical cases, when they live in the heart
of the great chandelier.
Quilp offers me this place, which he says he
can insure me," resumed Dick, after a thought-
ful silence, and telling off the circumstances of
his position, one by one, upon his fingers;
" Fred, who, I could have taken my affidavit,
would not have heard of such a thing, backs
Quilp, to my astonishment, and urges me to
take it also-staggerer, number one! My aunt
in the country stops the supplies, and writes an
affectionate note to say that she has made a new
will, and left me out of it—staggerer, number
two. No money; no credit; no support from
Fred, who seems to turn steady all at once;
He began by remarking that soda-water,
though a good thing in the abstract, was apt to
lie cold upon the stomach unless qualified with
ginger, or a small infusion of brandy, which lat-
ter article he held to be preferable in all cases,
saving for the one consideration of expense.
Nobody venturing to dispute these positions, he
proceeded to observe that the human hair was
a great retainer of tobacco-smoke, and that the
young gentlemen of Westminster and Eton,
after eating vast quantities of apples to conceal
any scent of cigars from their anxious friends,
were usually detected in consequence of their
heads possessing this remarkable property;
whence he concluded that if the Royal Society
would turn their attention to the circumstance,
and endeavor to find, in the resources of science,
a means of preventing such untoward revela-notice to quit the old lodgings-staggerers, three,
tions, they might indeed be looked upon as four, five, and six! Under an accumulation of
benefactors to mankind. These opinions being staggerers, no man can be considered a free
equally incontrovertible with those he had al- agent. No man knocks himself down; if his
ready pronounced, he went on to inform us that destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick
Jamaica rum, though unquestionably an agreea-him up again. Then I'm very glad that mine
ble spirit of great richness and flavor, had the has brought all this upon itself, and I shall be
drawback of remaining constantly present to as careless as I can, and make myself quite at
the taste next day; and nobody being venturous home to spite it. So go on, my buck," said Mr.
enough to argue this point either, he increased | Swiveller, taking his leave of the ceiling with a
in confidence and became yet more companion- significant nod, "and let us see which of us
able and communicative.
will be tired first?"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 34.
"Its a devil of a thing, gentlemen,” said Mr.
Swiveller, "when relations fall out and disagree.
If the wing of friendship should never moult a SWIVELLER-Dick-On extra sleep.
feather, the wing of relationship should never Have you been making that horrible noise?
be clipped, but be always expanded and serene. said the single gentleman.
Why should a grandson and grandfather peg
away at each other with mutual wiolence when
all might be bliss and concord? Why not jine
hands and forget it?"
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 2.
"I have been helping, sir," returned Dick,
keeping his eye upon him, and waving the ruler
gently in his right hand, as an indication of
what the single gentleman had to expect if he
attempted any violence.
How dare you, then," said the lodger,
"I say "-quoth Miss Brass, abruptly break-"Eh?"
ing silence, "you haven't seen a silver pencil-
case this morning, have you?”
"I didn't meet many in the street," rejoined
Mr. Swiveller. "I saw one—a stout pencil-case
of respectable appearance-but as he was in
company with an elderly penknife and a young
toothpick, with whom he was in earnest conver-
sation, I felt a delicacy in speaking to him."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 58.
SWIVELLER-Dick, soliloquises on his
destiny.
"So I'm Brass's clerk, am I?" said Dick.
"Brass's clerk, eh! And the clerk of Brass's
sister-clerk to a female Dragon. Very good,
very good! What shall I be next? Shall I be
a convict in a felt hat and a gray suit, trotting
To this, Dick made no other reply than by
inquiring whether the lodger held it to be con-
sistent with the conduct and character of a
gentleman, to go to sleep for six-and-twenty
hours at a stretch, and whether the peace of an
amiable and virtuous family was to weigh as
nothing in the balance?
"Is my peace nothing?" said the single gen-
tleman.
Is their peace nothing, sir?" returned Dick.
"I don't wish to hold out any threats, sir-
indeed, the law does not allow of threats, for to
threaten is an indictable offence-but if ever
you do that again, take care you are not set upon
by the coroner and buried in a cross-road before
you wake. We have been distracted with fears
that you were dead, sir,” said Dick, gently slid
SWIVELLER
404
ing to the ground, "and the short and the long
of it is, that we cannot allow single gentlemen
to come into this establishment and sleep like
double gentlemen without paying extra for it?"
Indeed!" cried the lodger.
SWIVELLER
The
door of a back kitchen immediately after Miss
Brass had entered the same, bearing in her hand
a cold leg of mutton. It was a very dark, mis.
erable place, very low and very damp : the walls
disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches.
"Yes sir, indeed," returned Dick, yielding to The water was trickling out of a leaky butt, and
his destiny and saying whatever came upper- a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops
most; an equal quantity of slumber was never with the sickly eagerness of starvation.
got out of one bed and bedstead, and if you're grate, which was a wide one, was wound and
going to sleep in that way, you must pay for a screwed up tight, so as to hold no more than a
double-bedded room.'
little thin sandwich of fire. Everything was
Instead of being thrown into a greater pas-locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the
sion by these remarks, the lodger lapsed into a salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked.
broad grin and looked at Mr. Swiveller with There was nothing that a beetle could have
twinkling eyes. He was a brown-faced, sun-lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect
burnt man, and appeared browner and more of the place would have killed a chameleon: he
sun-burnt from having a white night-cap on. would have known, at the first mouthful, that
As it was clear that he was a choleric fellow in the air was not eatable, and must have given up
some respects, Mr. Swiveller was relieved to find the ghost in despair.
him in such good humor, and to encourage him
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 36.
in it, smiled himself.
"Can
quiry.
you
drink anything?" was his next in-
Mr. Swiveller replied that he had very recently
been assuaging the pangs of thirst, but that he
was still open to "a modest quencher," if the
materials were at hand. Without another word
spoken on either side, the lodger took from his
great trunk a kind of temple, shining as of pol-
ished silver, and placed it carefully on the
table.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 35.
SWIVELLER-Dick and the Marchioness.
While these acts and deeds were in progress
in and out of the office of Sampson Brass Rich-
ard Swiveller, being often left alone therein, be-
gan to find the time hang heavy on his hands.
For the better preservation of his cheerfulness,
therefore, and to prevent his faculties from rust-
ing, he provided himself with a cribbage-board
and pack of cards, and accustomed himself to
play at cribbage with a dummy, for twenty, thir-
ty, or sometimes even fifty thousand pounds a
side, besides many hazardous bets to a consid
erable amount.
One circumstance troubled Mr. Swiveller's As these games were very silently conducted,
mind very much, and that was that the small notwithstanding the magnitude of the interests
servant always remained somewhere in the bow-involved, Mr. Swiveller began to think that on
els of the earth under Bevis Marks, and never
came to the surface unless the single gentleman
rang his bell, when she would answer it and
immediately disappear again. She never went
out, or came into the office, or had a clean face,
or took off the coarse apron, or looked out of
any one of the windows, or stood at the street
door for a breath of air, or had any rest or enjoy-
ment whatever. Nobody ever came to see her,
nobody spoke of her, nobody cared about her.
Mr. Brass had said once, that he believed she
was a "love-child" (which means anything but
a child of love), and that was all the information
Richard Swiveller could obtain.
*
*
*
*
*
Now," said Dick, walking up and down with
his hands in his pockets, “I'd give something—
if I had it-to know how they use that child,
and where they keep her. My mother must
have been a very inquisitive woman; I have no
doubt I'm marked with a note of interrogation
somewhere. My feelings I smother, but thou
hast been the cause of this anguish my-upon
my word," said Mr. Swiveller, checking himself
and falling thoughtfully into the client's chair,
"I should like to know how they use her!"
those evenings when Mr. and Miss Brass were
out (and they often went out now) he heard a
kind of snorting or hard-breathing sound in the
direction of the door, which, it occurred to him,
after some reflection, must proceed from the
small servant, who always had a cold from damp
living. Looking intently that way one night,
he plainly distinguished an eye gleaming and
glistening at the keyhole; and having now no
doubt that his suspicions were correct, he stole
softly to the door, and pounced upon her before
she was aware of his approach.
"Oh! I didn't mean any harm indeed, upon
my word I didn't," cried the small servant,
struggling like a much larger one. "Its so very
dull, down-stairs. Please don't tell upon me,
please don't.”
Tell upon you!" said Dick.
"Do you
mean to say you were looking through the key-
hole for company?”
Yes, upon my word I was," replied the small
servant.
"How long have you been cooling your eye
there?" said Dick.
Oh, ever since you first began to play them
cards, and long before."
"Well,-come in," he said, after a little con-
sideration. Here, sit down, and I'll teach you
how to play."
"Oh! I durstn't do it," rejoined the small
servant; "Miss Sally 'ud kill me, if she know'd
I come up here."
After running on, in this way, for some time,
Mr. Swiveller softly opened the office door, with
the intention of darting across the street for a
glass of the mild porter. At that moment he
caught a parting glimpse of the brown head-
dress of Miss Brass flitting down the kitchen
stairs. "And by Jove!" thought Dick, "she's
going to feed the small servant. Now or never!"
First peeping over the hand-rail and allowing
the head-dress to disappear in the darkness be-
low, he groped his way down, and arrived at the' went down there, so I'll come," said Richard
Have you got a fire down-stairs?" said
Dick.
"A very little one," replied the small servant.
"Miss Sally couldn't kill me if she know'd l

MELLS
L
DICK SWIVELLER AND THE MARCHIONESS.
465
SWIVELLER
465
putting the cards in his pocket. "Why, how
thin you are! What do you mean by it?"
fault."
"It an't my
"Could you eat any bread and meat?" said
Dick, taking down his hat. "Yes? Ah! I thought
so. Did you ever taste beer?"
“I had a sip of it once," said the small ser-
vant.
Here's a state of things!" cried Mr. Swiv-
eller, raising his eyes to the ceiling.
"She never
tasted it—it can't be tasted in a sip! Why, how
old are you?"
"I don't know.”
SWIVELLER
he now gave utterance to these apologetic obser-
vations, and slowly sipped the last choice drops
of nectar.
"The Baron Sampsono Brasso and his fair
sister are (you tell me) at the Play?" said Mr.
Swiveller, leaning his left arm heavily upon the
table, and raising his voice and his right leg
after the manner of a theatrical bandit.
The Marchioness nodded.
•
"Ha!" said Mr. Swiveller, with a porten-
tous frown. ""Tis well. Marchioness !-but no
matter. Some wine there. Ho!" He illus-
trated these melo-dramatic morsels, by handing
Mr. Swiveller opened his eyes very wide, and the tankard to himself with great humility, re-
appeared thoughtful for a moment; then, bid-ceiving it haughtily, drinking from it thirstily,
ding the child mind the door until he came back, and smacking his lips fiercely.
vanished straightway.
Presently he returned, followed by the boy
from the public-house, who bore in one hand a
plate of bread and beef, and in the other a great
pot, filled with some very fragrant compound,
which sent forth a grateful steam, and was in-
deed choice purl, made after a particular recipe
which Mr. Swiveller had imparted to the land-
lord, at a period when he was deep in his books
and desirous to conciliate his friendship. Re-
lieving the boy of his burden at the door, and
charging his little companion to fasten it to
vent surprise, Mr. Swiveller followed her into
the kitchen.
The small servant, who was not so well ac-
quainted with theatrical conventionalities as Mr.
Swiveller (having indeed never seen a play, or
heard one spoken of, except by chance through
chinks of doors and in other forbidden places),
was rather alarmed by demonstrations so novel
in their nature, and showed her concern so plain-
ly in her looks, that Mr. Swiveller felt it neces-
sary to discharge his brigand manner, for one
more suitable to private life, as he asked,
"Do they often go where glory waits 'em, and
leave
pre-
you here?
“Oh, yes: I believe you they do," returned
the small servant. 'Miss Sally's such a one-er
for that, she is."
"There!" said Richard, putting the plate
before her. "First of all clear that off, and then
you'll see what's next."
The small servant needed no second bidding,
and the plate was soon empty.
66
Next," said Dick, handing the purl, "take
a pull at that; but moderate your transports,
you know, for you're not used to it. Well, is it
good?"
Oh! isn't it?" said the small servant.
Mr. Swiveller appeared gratified beyond all
expression by this reply, and took a long draught
himself; steadfastly regarding his companion
while he did so. These preliminaries disposed
of, he applied himself to teaching her the game,
which she soon learnt tolerably well, being both
sharp-witted and cunning.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 57.
SWIVELLER-Dick and the Marchioness.
Mr. Swiveller and his partner played several
rubbers with varying success, until the loss of
three sixpences, the gradual sinking of the purl,
and the striking of ten o'clock, combined to
render that gentleman mindful of the flight of
time, and the expediency of withdrawing before
Mr. Sampson and Miss Sally Brass returned.
"With which object in view, Marchioness,"
said Mr. Swiveller gravely, "I shall ask your
ladyship's permission to put the board in my
pocket, and to retire from the presence when I
have finished this tankard; merely observing,
Marchioness, that since life, like a river, is flow-
ing, I care not how fast it rolls on, ma'am, on,
while such purl on the bank still is growing, and
such eyes light the waves as they run. Mar-
chioness, your health. You will excuse my wear-
ing my hat, but the palace is damp, and the
marble floor is-if I may be allowed the expres-
sion-sloppy."
As a precaution against this latter inconve-
nience, Mr. Swiveller had been sitting for some
time with his feet on the hob, in which attitude
"Such a what?" said Dick.
"Such a one-er," returned the Marchioness.
After a moment's reflection, Mr. Swiveller de-
termined to forego his responsible duty of set-
ting her right, and to suffer her to talk on; as it
was evident that her tongue was loosened by the
purl, and her opportunities for conversation were
not so frequent as to render a momentary check
of little consequence.
("
They sometimes go to see Mr. Quilp," said
the small servant with a shrewd look; "they go
to a many places, bless you!"
"
Is Mr. Brass a wunner?" said Dick.
Not half what Miss Sally is, he isn't," re-
plied the small servant, shaking her head.
"Bless you, he'd never do anything without
her."
"Oh! He wouldn't, wouldn't he?" said
Dick.
"Miss Sally keeps him in such order," said
the small servant; "he always asks her advice,
he does; and he catches it sometimes. Bless
you, you wouldn't believe how much he catches
it."
.
"I suppose," said Dick, "that they consult
together, a good deal, and talk about a great
many people-about me, for instance, some-
times, eh, Marchioness?"
The Marchioness nodded amazingly.
Complimentary?" said Mr. Swiveller.
The Marchioness changed the motion of her
head, which had not yet left off nodding, and
suddenly began to shake it from side to side,
with a vehemence which threatened to dislo-
cate her neck.
"Would it be
Humph;" Dick muttered.
any breach of confidence, Marchioness, to re-
late what they say of the humble individual
who has now the honor to-?"
"Miss Sally says you're a funny chap," replied
his friend.
"Well, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller,
SUBJECTS
466
"that's not uncomplimentary. Merriment,
Marchioness, is not a bad or a degrading qual-
ity. Old King Cole was himself a merry old
soul, if we may put any faith in the pages of
history."
"But she says," pursued his companion,
"that you an't to be trusted."
Why, really, Marchioness," said Mr. Swivel-
ler, thoughtfully; ." several ladies and gentle-
men-not exactly professional persons, but
tradespeople, ma'am, tradespeople have made
the same remark. The obscure citizen who
keeps the hotel over the way, inclined strongly
to that opinion to-night when I ordered him to
prepare the banquet. It's a popular prejudice,
Marchioness; and yet I am sure I don't know
why, for I have been trusted in my time to a
considerable amount, and I can safely say that I
never forsook my trust until it deserted me-
never. Mr. Brass is of the same opinion, I sup-
pose?
His friend nodded again, with a cunning
look which seemed to hint that Mr. Brass held
stronger opinions on the subject than his sister;
and seeming to recollect herself, added implor-
ingly, "But don't you ever tell upon me, or I
shall be beat to death."
Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, rising,
"the word of a gentleman is as good as his
bond-sometimes better, as in the present case,
where his bond might prove but a doubtful sort
of security. I am your friend, and I hope we
shall play many more rubbers together in this
same saloon. But, Marchioness," added Rich-
ard, stopping in his way to the door, and wheel-
ing slowly round upon the small servant, who
was following with the candle; "it occurs to
me that you must be in the constant habit of
airing your eye at keyholes, to know all this."
"I only wanted," replied the trembling Mar-
chioness, "to know where the key of the safe
was hid; that was all; and I wouldn't have
taken much, if I had found it-only enough to
squench my hunger."
"You didn't find it, then?" said Dick. "But
of course you didn't, or you'd be plumper.
Good night, Marchioness. Fare thee well-and
if for ever, then for ever, fare thee well-and
put up the chain, Marchioness, in case of acci-
dents."-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 58.
SUBJECTS-For sermons.
He considered the subject of the day's homily
ill chosen; which was the less excusable, he
added, when there were so many subjects
"going about."
"True again," said Uncle Pumblechook,
"You've hit it, sir! Plenty of subjects going
about, for them that know how to put salt upon
their tails. That's what's wanted. A man
needn't go far to find a subject if he's ready
with his salt box."-Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
SUBLIME INTELLIGENCE-The power
of.
|
SUBURB
knowledge can split a ray of light and analyze
the manner of its composition, so, sublimer in-
telligences 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.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 16.
SUBPŒNA-Sam Weller receives.
"Samuel Weller?" said Mr. Jackson, inquir-
ingly.
"Vun o' the truest things as you've said for
many a long year," replied Sam, in a most com-
posed manner.
"Here's a subpoena for you, Mr. Weller," said
Jackson.
What's that, in English?" inquired Sam.
"Here's the original," said Jackson, declining
the required explanation.
"Which?" said Sam.
This," replied Jackson, shaking the parch-
ment.
Oh, that's the 'rig'nal, is it," said Sam.
"Well, I'm wery glad I've seen the 'rig'nal, 'cos
it's a gratifyin' sort o'thing, and eases vun's
mind so much."
"And here's the shilling," said Jackson "Its
from Dodson and Fogg's.
"And it's uncommon handsome o' Dodson
and Foggs, as knows so little of me, to come
down vith a present," said Sam. "I feel it as
a wery high compliment, sir; its a wery hon'ra-
ble thing to them, as they knows how to reward
merit werever they meets it. Besides wich, its
affectin' to one's feelins."
As Mr. Weller said this, he inflicted a little
friction on his right eye-lid, with the sleeve of
his coat, after the most approved manner of
actors when they are in domestic pathetics.
Pickwick, Chap. 31.
SUBURB-A Lendon.
In the venerable suburb-it was a suburb
once-of Clerkenwell, towards that part of its
confines which is nearest to the Charter House,
and in one of those cool, shady streets, of which
a few, widely scattered and dispersed, yet remain
in such old parts of the metropolis-each tene-
ment quietly vegetating like an ancient citizen
who long ago retired from business, and dozing
on in its infirmity until in course of time it
tumbles down, and is replaced by some extrava-
gant young heir, flaunting in stucco and orna-
mental work, and all the vanities of modern
days-in this quarter, and in a street of this
description, the business of the present chapter
lies.
At the time of which it treats, though only
six-and-sixty years ago, a very large part of what
is London now had no existence. Even in the
brains of the wildest speculators, there had
sprung up no long rows of streets connecting
Highgate with Whitechapel, no assemblages of
palaces in the swampy levels, nor little cities in
the open fields. Although this part of town was
then, as now, parcelled out in streets, and plen-
Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling fig-tifully peopled, it wore a different aspect. There
ure, 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 in-
to a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole
world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses,
ie in a twinkling star. And as mere human
And as mere human
were gardens to many of the houses, and trees
by the pavement side; with an air of freshness
breathing up and down, which in these days
would be sought in vain. Fields were nigh at
hand, through which the New River took its
winding course, and where there was merry hay-
making in the summer-time. Nature was not
SUCCESS
467
so far removed, or hard to get at, as in these
days and although there were busy trades in
Clerkenwell, and working jewelers by scores, it
was a purer place, with farm-houses nearer to
it than many modern Londoners would readily
believe, and lovers' walks at no great distance,
which turned into squalid courts, long before
the lovers of this age were born, or, as the
phrase goes, thought of.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 4.
SUCCESS-A crime.
"If a
man would commit an inexpiable
offence against any society, large or small, let
him be successful. They will forgive him any
crime but that."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 30.
-
SUCCESS-Constancy the secret of.
"Look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the
Rick, the
world is before you; and it is most probable
that as you enter it, so it will receive you. Trust
in nothing but in Providence and your own
efforts. Never separate the two, like the hea-
then wagoner. Constancy in love is a good
thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing,
without constancy in every kind of effort. If
you had the abilities of all the great men, past
and present, you could do nothing well without
sincerely meaning it, and setting about it. If
you entertain the supposition that any real suc-
cess, in great things or in small, ever was or
could be, ever will or can be, wrested from For-
tune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea
here, or leave your cousin Ada here."
Bleak House, Chap. 13.
SUICIDE-Excuse for.
SUMMER
the Courts shut up; to walk a little farther and
see the Two Houses shut up; to stand in the
Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of the grand
English History (concerning which unfortunate
man a whole rookery of mares' nests is general-
ly being discovered), and gloat upon the ruins
of Talk. Returning to my primitive solitude, and
lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands
with the consciousness that there is no adjourned
Debate, no ministerial explanation, nobody to
give notice of intention to ask the noble Lord
at the head of her Majesty's government five-
and-twenty bootless questions in one, no term
time with legal argument, no Nisi Prius with
eloquent appeal to British jury; that the air will
to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, re-
main untroubled by this superbundant genera-
ting of Talk. In a minor degree it is a delicious
triumph to me to go into the club, and see the
carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust
dispersed to the four winds. Again, New Zea-
lander-like, I stand on the cold hearth, and say
in the solitude: "Here I watched Bore A 1, with
voice always mysteriously low, and head always
mysteriously drooped, whispering political se-
crets into the ears of Adam's confiding children.
Accursed be his memory forever and a day!"
*
*
*
*
*
I might stand, night and day, for a month to
come, in Saville Row, with my tongue out, yet
not find a doctor to look at it for love or money.
The dentists' instruments are rusting in their
drawers, and their horrible cool parlors, where
people pretend to read the Every-Day Book and
not to be afraid, are doing penance for their
grimness, in white sheets. The light-weight of
shrewd appearance, with one eye always shut
"Do you know," simpered Cleopatra, revers-up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in
ing the knave of clubs, who had come into her
game with his heels uppermost, "that if anything
could tempt me to put a period to my life, it
would be curiosity to find out what it's all about
and what it means; there are so many provok-
ing mysteries, really, that are hidden from us."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
SUMMER-Quiet, in London.
all seasons, who usually stands at the gateway
of the livery-stables on very little legs under a
very large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster.
Of such undesigning aspect is his guileless yard
now, with its gravel and scarlet beans, and the
yellow Break housed under a glass roof in a
corner, that I almost believe I could not be
taken in there, if I tried. In the places of busi-
ness of the great tailors, the cheval glasses are
dim and dusty for lack of being looked into.
Ranges of brown paper coat and waistcoat bod-
ments of the customers with whose names they
are inscribed; the measuring tapes hang idle
on the wall; the order-taker, left on the hope
less chance of some one looking in, yawns in
the last extremity over the book of patterns, as
if he were trying to read that entertaining libra-
ry.
The hotels in Brook Street have no one in
them, and the staffs of servants stare disconso-
lately for next season out of all the windows.
The very man who goes about like an erect
Turtle between two boards recommendatory of
the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is aware of him-
self as a hollow mockery, and eats filberts while
he leans his hinder shell against a wall.
But these are small oases, and I am soon back
again in metropolitan Arcadia. It is my impres-
sion that much of its serene and peaceful charac-ies look as funereal as if they were the hatch-
ter is attributable to the absence of customary
Talk. How do I know but there may be subtle
influences in Talk to vex the souls of men who
don't hear it? How do I know but that Talk,
five, ten, twenty miles off, may get into the air,
and disagree with me? If I rise from my bed
vaguely troubled and wearied and sick of my
life in the session of Parliament, who shall say
that my noble friend, my right reverend friend,
my right honorable friend, my honorable friend,
my honorable and learned friend, or my honor-
able and gallant friend, may not be responsible
for that effect upon my nervous system? Too
much Ozone in the air, I am informed and fully
believe (though I have no idea what it is), would
affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way;
why may not too much Talk? I don't see or hear
the Ozone; I don't see or hear the Talk. And
there is so much Talk; so much too much; such
loud cry, and such scant supply of wool; such a
deal of fleecing, and so little fleece! Hence, in the
Arcadian season, I find it a delicious triumph
to walk down to deserted Westminster and see
Among these tranquillizing objects it is my
delight to walk and meditate. Soothed by the
repose around me, I wander insensibly to con-
siderable distances, and guide myself back by
the stars. Thus I enjoy the contrast of a few still
partially inhabited and busy spots, where all the
lights are not fled, where all the garlands are not
dead, whence all but I have not departed. Then
does it appear to me that in this age three things
SUMMER
468
are clamorously required of Man in the miscella-
neous thoroughfares of the metropolis. Firstly,
that he have his boots cleaned. Secondly, that
he eat a penny ice. Thirdly, that he get him-
self photographed. Then do I speculate, what
have those seam-worn artists been who stand
at the photograph doors in Greek caps, sample
in hand, and mysteriously salute the public-the
female public with a pressing tenderness-to
come in and be "took?" What did they do
with their greasy blandishments before the era of
cheap photography? Of what class were their
previous victims, and how victimized? And
how did they get, and how did they pay for,
that large collection of likenesses, all purport-
ing to have been taken inside, with the taking of
none of which had that establishment any more
to do than with the taking of Delhi?
SUMMER
in every light breath that sweeps above it, as if
it wooed the sickle, tinges the landscape with a
golden hue.
A mellow softness appears to
hang over the whole earth; the influence of the
season seems to extend itself to the very wagon,
whose slow motion across the well-reaped field
is perceptible only to the eye, but strikes with
no harsh sound upon the ear.
delight.
The
As the coach rolls swiftly past the fields and
orchards which skirt the road, groups of women
and children, piling the fruit in sieves, or gath-
ering the scattered ears of corn, pause for an
instant from their labor, and shading the sun-
burnt face with a still browner hand, gaze upon
the passengers with curious eyes; while some
stout urchin, too small to work, but too mis-
chievous to be left at home, scrambles over the
side of the basket in which he has been depos
A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquil-ited for security, and kicks and screams with
lity. Charming picture, but it will fade. The delight. The reaper stops in his work, and
iron age will return, London will come back to stands with folded arms, looking at the vehicle
town; if I show my tongue then in Saville Row as it whirls past; and the rough cart-horses be-
for half a minute, I shall be prescribed for; the stow a sleepy glance upon the smart coach team,
Doctor's man and the Dentist's man will then which says, as plainly as a horse's glance can,
pretend that these days of unprofessional inno-
cence never existed. Where Mr. and Mrs.
Klem and their bed will be at that time passes
human knowledge: but my hatter hermitage
will then know them no more, nor will it then
know me.
The desk at which I have written
these meditations will retributively assist at the
making-out of my account, and the wheels of
gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of high-
stepping horses will crush the silence out of
Bond Street-will grind Arcadia away, and
give it to the elements in granite powder.
SUMMER.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 16.
Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came. If
the village had been beautiful at first, it was now
in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness.
The great trees, which had looked shrunken and
bare in the earlier months, had now burst into
strong life and health; and stretching forth
their green arms over the thirsty ground, con-
verted open and naked spots into choice nooks,
where was a deep and pleasant shade from
which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped
in sunshine, which lay stretched beyond. The
earth had donned her mantle of brightest green;
and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was
the prime and vigor of the year; all things were
glad and flourishing.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 33.
SUMMER-August scenery.
There is no month in the whole year, in which
nature wears a more beautiful appearance than
in the month of August. Spring has many beau-
ties, and May is a fresh and blooming month,
but the charms of this time of year are en-
hanced by their contrast with the winter sea-
son. August has no such advantage. It comes
when we remember nothing but clear skies,
green fields, and sweet-smelling flowers-when
the recollection of snow, and ice, and bleak
winds, has faded from our minds as completely
as they have disappeared from the earth,—and
yet what a pleasant time it is! Orchards and
corn-fields ring with the hum of labor; trees
bend beneath the thick clusters of rich fruit
which bow their branches to the ground; and
the corn, piled in graceful sheaves, or waving
It's all very fine to look at, but slow going,
over a heavy field, is better than warm work
like that, upon a dusty road, after all." You
cast a look behind you, as you turn a corner of
the road. The women and children have re-
sumed their labor: the reaper once more stoops
to his work: the cart-horses have moved on:
and all are again in motion.
Pickwick, Chap. 16.
SUMMER-A legal vacation.
It is the hottest long vacation known for
many years. All the young clerks are madly in
love, and, according to their various degrees,
pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Mar-
gate, Ramsgate, or Gravesend. All the middle-
aged clerks think their family too large. All
the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of
Court, and pant about staircases and other dry
places, seeking water, give short howls of ag
gravation. All the blind men's dogs in the
streets draw their masters against pumps, or
trip them over buckets. A shop with a sun-
blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of
gold and silver fish in the window, is a sanc-
tuary. Temple Bar gets so hot, that it is, to the
adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater
is in an urn, and keeps them simmering all
night.
There are offices about the Inns of Court in
which a man might be cool, if any coolness were
worth purchasing at such a price in dullness
but the little thoroughfares immediately out-
side those retirements seem to blaze. În Mr.
Krook's court, it is so hot that the people turn
their houses inside out, and sit in chairs upon
the pavement.
*
*
*
*
*
}
Over all the legal neighborhood, there hangs,
like some great veil of rust, or gigantic cobweb,
the idleness and pensiveness of the long vaca.
tion. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer, of Cook's
Court, Cursitor Street, is sensible of the influ-
ence; not only in his mind as a sympathetic
and contemplative man, but also in his business
as a law-stationer aforesaid. He has more lei-
sure for musing in Staple Inn and in the Rolls
Yard, during the long vacation, than at other
seasons; and he says to the two 'prentices, what
SUMMER SCENERY
469
a thing it is in such hot weather to think that
you live in an island, with the sea a-rolling and
a-bowling right round you.
Bleak House, Chap. 19.
SUMMER SCENERY, and sentiment.
Plashwater Weir-Mill Lock looked tranquil
and pretty on an evening in the summer-time.
A soft air stirred the leaves of the fresh green
trees, and passed like a smooth shadow over the
river, and like a smoother shadow over the
yielding grass. The voice of the falling water,
like the voices of the sea and the wind, were as
an outer memory to a contemplative listener;
but not particularly so to Mr. Riderhood, who
sat on one of the blunt wooden levers of his
lock-gates, dozing. Wine must be got into a
butt by some agency before it can be drawn
out; and the wine of sentiment never having
been got into Mr. Riderhood by any agency,
nothing in nature tapped him.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 1.
SUMMER VACATION—Of Courts.
It is the long vacation in the regions of
Chancery Lane. The good ships Law and
Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-
fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means
fast-sailing Clippers, are laid up in ordinary.
The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of ghostly
clients imploring all whom they may encounter
to peruse their papers, has drifted, for the time
being, Heaven knows where. The Courts are
all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep;
Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude
where nightingales might sing, and a tenderer
class of suitors than is usually found there,
walk.
The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn,
and Lincoln's Inn even unto the Fields, are like
tidal harbors at low water; where stranded pro-
ceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging
on lop-sided stools that will not recover their
perpendicular until the current of Term sets in,
lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vaca-
tion. Outer doors of chambers are shut up by
the score, messages and parcels are to be left at
the Porter's Lodge by the bushel. A crop of
grass would grow in the chinks of the stone
pavement outside Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that
the ticket-porters, who have nothing to do be-
yond sitting in the shade there, with their white
aprons over their heads to keep the flies off,
grub it up and eat it thoughtfully.
|
SUNDAY
dously indignant at the unprecedented outrage
committed on the feelings of his client by the
opposite party, that he never seems likely to re-
cover it, is doing infinitely better than might be
expected, in Switzerland. The learned gentle-
man who does the withering business, and who
blights all opponents with his gloomy sarcasm,
is as merry as a grig at a French watering-place,
The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint
on the smallest provocation, has not shed a tear
these six weeks. The very learned gentleman
who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery
complexion in pools and fountains of law, until
he has become great in knotty arguments for
term-time, when he poses the drowsy Bench
with legal "chaff," inexplicable to the uniniti-
ated and to most of the initiated too, is roam-
|ing, with a characteristic delight in aridity and
dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed
fragments of the same great Palladium are to
be found on the canals of Venice, at the second
cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany,
and sprinkled on the sea-sand all over the Eng-
lish coast. Scarcely one is to be encountered in
the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such
a lonely member of the bar do flit across the
waste, and come upon a prowling suitor who is
unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his
anxiety, they frighten one another, and retreat
into opposite shades.—Bleak House, Chap. 19.
SUMMER WEATHER.
The summer weather in his bosom was re-
flected in the breast of Nature. Through deep
green vistas where the boughs arched over-head,
and showed the sunlight flashing in the beautiful
perspective; through dewy fern, from which the
startled hares leaped up, and fled at his approach;
by mantled pools, and fallen trees, and down in
hollow places, rustling among last year's leaves,
whose scent woke memory of the past, the pla-
cid Pecksniff strolled. By meadow gates and
hedges fragrant with wild roses; and by thatch-
ed-roofed cottages whose inmates humbly bowed
before him as a man both good and wise: the
worthy Pecksniff walked in tranquil meditation.
The bee passed onward, humming of the work
he had to do; the idle gnats, for ever going
round and round in one contracting and ex-
panding ring, yet always going on as fast as he,
danced merrily before him; the color of the
long grass came and went, as if the light clouds
made it timid as they floated through the dis-
tant air. The birds, so many Pecksniff con-
sciences, sang gaily upon every branch; and
Mr. Pecksniff paid his homage to the day by
ruminating on his projects as he walked along.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 30.
SUNDAY-In London.
There is only one Judge in town. Even he
only comes twice a-week to sit in chambers. If
the country folks of those assize towns on his
circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed
wig, no red petticoats, no fur, no javelin-men,
no white wands. Merely a close-shaved gentle-
man, in white trousers and a white hat, with Where are all the people who on busy work-
sea-bronze on the judicial countenance, and a ing-days pervade these scenes? The locomo-
strip of bark peeled by the solar rays from the tive banker's clerk, who carries a black port-
judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop folio chained to him by a chain of steel,-
as he comes along, and drinks iced ginger-beer! where is he? Does he go to bed with his
The bar of England is scattered over the face chain on,-to church with his chain on,-or
of the earth. How England can get on through does he lay it by? And if he lays it by, what
four long summer months without its bar-which becomes of his portfolio when he is unchained
is its acknowledged refuge in adversity, and its for a holiday? The waste-paper baskets of
only legitimate triumph in prosperity-is beside these closed counting-houses would let me into
the question; assuredly that shield and buckler many hints of business matters if I had the ex-
of Britannia are not in present wear. The ploration of them; and what secrets of the
learned gentleman who is always so tremen-heart should I discover on the "
pads" of the
a
SUNDAYS
470
SUN
picquet of teachers three times a day, morally
handcuffed to another boy; and when he would
willingly have barte:ed two meals of indigesti
ble sermon for another ounce or two of inferior
mutton at his scanty dinner in the flesh. There
was the interminable Sunday of his nonage, when
his mother, stern of face and unrelenting of
heart, would sit all day behind a bible-bound,
like her own construction of it, in the hardest,
harest, and straightest boards, with one dinted
ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain,
and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges
of the leaves-as if it, of all books! were a fortifi-
cation against sweetness of temper, natural affec-
tion, and gentle intercourse. There was the re-
sentful Sunday of a little later, when he sat
glowering and glooming through the tardy
length of the day, with a sullen sense of injury
in his heart, and no more real knowledge of the
beneficent history of the New Testament, than
if he had been bred among idolaters. There was
a legion of Sundays, all days of unserviceable
bitterness and mortification, slowly passing be-
fore him.—Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3.
SUNDAY-EVENING-In London.
young clerks, the sheets of cartridge-paper
and blotting-paper interposed between their
writing and their desks! Pads are taken into
confidence on the tenderest occasions; and
oftentimes, when I have made a business visit,
and have sent in my name from the outer
office, have I had it forced on my discursive
notice, that the officiating young gentleman has
over and over again inscribed AMELIA, in ink
of various dates, on corners of his pad. Indeed,
the pad may be regarded as the legitimate mod-
ern successor of the old forest-tree, whereon
these young knights (having no attainable for-
est nearer than Epping) engraved the names
of their mistresses. After all, it is a more sat-
isfactory process than carving, and can be
oftener repeated. So these courts in their
Sunday rest are courts of Love Omnipotent
(I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they look.
And here is Garraway's, bolted and shuttered
hard and fast! It is possible to imagine the
man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in
a hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk,
like the desk of a clerk at church, without him,—
but imagination is unable to pursue the men
who wait at Garraway's all the week for the
men who never come. When they are forcibly
put out of Garraway's on Saturday night,-
which they must be, for they never would go
out of their own accord,-where do they van-
ish until Monday morning? On the first Sun-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a
day that I ever stayed here, I expected to find
them hovering about these lanes, like restless
ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway's
through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavor-
ing to turn the lock of the door with false
keys, picks, and screw-drivers. But the won-
der is that they go clean away! And, now I
think of it, the wonder is that every working-
day pervader of these scenes goes clean away.
The man who sells the dogs' collars and the
little toy coal-scuttles feels under as great an obli-
gation to go afar off as Glyn and Co., or Smith,
Payne, and Smith. There is an old monastery-
crypt under Garraway's (I have been in it
among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway's,
taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in
its public room all their lives, gives them cool
house-room down there over Sundays; but the
catacombs of Paris would not be large enough
to hold the rest of the missing. This charac-
teristic of London City greatly helps its being
the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of
business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation
in it of being the Last Man.
•
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 21.
SUNDAYS-In childhood.
"Heaven forgive me," said he, "and those
who trained me. How I have hated this day!"
There was the dreary Sunday of his child-
hood, when he sat with his hands before him,
scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which
commenced business with the poor child by ask-
ing him in its title, Why he was going to Perdi-
tion ?—a piece of curiosity that he really, in a
frock and drawers, was not in a condition to sat-
isfy-and which, for the further attraction of his
infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other
line with some such hiccupping reference as
2 Ep. Thess. c. iii. v. 6 & 7. There was the
sleepy Sunday of his boyhood, when, like a mili-
tary deserter, he was marched to chapel by a
It was Sunday evening in London, gloomy,
close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all
degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked
and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and
penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the
people who were condemned to look at them
out of windows, in dire despondency. In every
thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down
almost every turning, some doleful bell was
throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were
in the city and the dead-carts were going round.
Everything was bolted and barred that could by
possibility furnish relief to an overworked peo-
ple. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare
plants or flowers, no natural or artificial won-
ders of the ancient world—all taboo with that
enlightened strictness that the ugly South Sea
gods in the British Museum might have sup-
posed themselves at home again. Nothing to
see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to
breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to
change the brooding mind, or raise it up. No-
thing for the spent toiler to do, but to compare
the monotony of his seventh day with the mo-
notony of his six days, think what a weary life he
led, and make the best of it-or the worst, ac-
cording to the probabilities.
SUN.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3.
"This brigand of a sun.
Little Dorrit, Chap. 1.
SUN-A punctual servant.
That punctual servant of all work, the sun,
had just risen, and begun to strike a light on
the morning of the thirteenth of May, one
thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, when
Mr. Samuel Pickwick burst like another sun
from his slumbers, threw open his chamber win-
dow, and looked out upon the world beneath.
Goswell Street was at his feet, Goswell Street
was on his right hand-as far as the eye could
reach, Goswell Street extended on his left; and
the opposite side of Goswell Street was over
the way. Such," thought Mr. Pickwick,
"
+
SUN
471
are the narrow views of those philosophers
who, content with examining the things that
lie before them, look not to the truths which
are hidden beyond. As well might I be con-
tent to gaze on Goswell Street forever, without
one effort to penetrate to the hidden countries
which on every side surround it." And having
given vent to this beautiful reflection, Mr. Pick-
wick proceeded to put himself into his clothes,
and his clothes into his portmanteau.
SUN-In the city.
Pickwick, Chap. 2.
There was a tiny blink of sun peeping in
from the great street round the corner, and the
smoky sparrows hopped over it and back again, |
brightening as they passed: or bathed in it, like
a stream, and became glorified sparrows, uncon-
nected with chimneys.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 29.
SUN-Its influence on Bagstock,
"Sit down," said Cleopatra, listlessly waving
her fan, "a long way off. Don't come too near
me, for I am frightfully faint and sensitive this
morning, and you smell of the Sun. You are
absolutely tropical."
SUNSHINE
hills from which verdure was burnt away. The
only things to be seen not fixedly staring and
glaring were the vines, drooping under their load
of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little
as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves.
There was no wind to make a ripple on the
foul water within the harbor, or on the beautiful
sea without. The line of demarcation between
the two colors, black and blue, showed the
point which the pure sea would not pass; but it
lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which
it never mixed. Boats without awnings were
too hot to touch; ships blistered at their moor-
ings; the stones of quays had not cooled, night
or day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese,
Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen,
Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks,
descendants from all the builders of Babel, come
to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike-
taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too
intensely blue to he looked at, and a sky of pur-
ple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire.
The universal stare made the eyes ache.
Towards the distant line of Italian coast, in-
deed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of
mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the
sea; but it softened nowhere else. Far away,
By George, Ma'am," said the Major, "the the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the
time has been when Joseph Bagstock has been hill-side, stared from the hollow, stared from
grilled and blistered by the Sun; the time was, the interminable plain. Far away, the dusty
when he was forced, Ma'am, into such full blow, vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the
by high hothouse heat in the West Indies, that monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees
he was known as the Flower. A man never without shade, drooped beneath the stare of
heard of Bagstock, Ma'am, in those days; he earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy
heard of the Flower-the Flower of Ours. The bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly to-
Flower may have faded, more or less, Ma'am," wards the interior; so did their recumbent dri-
observed the Major, dropping into a much nearer vers, when they were awake, which rarely hap-
chair than had been indicated by his cruel Di-pened; so did the exhausted laborers in the
vinity, “but it is a tough plant yet, and constant
as the evergreen."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 26.
SUNRISE-Its associations.
He turned to where the sun was rising, and
beheld it, in its glory, as it broke upon the
scene.
So awful, so transcendent in its beauty, so
divinely solemn. As he cast his faded eyes upon
it, where it rose, tranquil and serene, unmoved
by all the wrong and wickedness on which its
beams had shone since the beginning of the
world, who shall say that some weak sense of
virtue upon Earth, and its reward in Heaven,
did not manifest itself, even to him? If ever
he remembered sister or brother with a touch of
tenderness and remorse, who shall say it was
not then?
He needed some such touch then. Death
was on him. He was marked off from the living
world, and going down into his grave.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 55.
SUN-A blazing summer's.
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in
the sun, one day.
A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was
no greater rarity in southern France then, than
at any other time, before or since. Everything
in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at
the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, un-
til a staring habit had become universal there.
Strangers were stared out of countenance by star-
ing white houses, staring white walls, staring
white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring
fields. Everything that lived or grew, was op-
pressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing
swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala,
chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The
very dust was scorched brown, and something
quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself
were panting.
Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all
closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant
it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a
white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest
from it. To come out of the twilight of pillars
and arches-dreamily dotted with winking
lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows,
piously dozing, spitting, and begging-was to
plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to
the nearest strip of shade.
lounging and lying wherever shade was, with
but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs,
with occasional jangling of discordant church
bells, and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles,
a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broil
ing in the sun one day.
SUNSHINE.
So, with people
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. I.
The clear cold sunshine glances into the
brittle woods, and approvingly beholds the
sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the
moss. It glides over the park after the mov-
ing shadows of the clouds, and chases them,
and never catches them, all day. It looks in at
the windows, and touches the ancestral por-
traits with bars and patches of brightness, nev-
er contemplated by the painters. Athwart the
SUNSET
472
picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-
piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light,
that strikes down crookedly into the hearth,
and seems to rend it.
Bleak House, Chap. 12.
SUNSET-A summer.
SUNSET.
SUSAN NIPPER
SUNSET-Its effect on pictures.
The sun was getting low in the west, and,
glancing out of a red mist, pierced with its rays
opposite loop-holes and pieces of fret-work in
the spires of city churches, as if with golden ar-
rows that struck through and through them—
and far away, athwart the river and its flat
A tranquil summer sunset shone upon him as banks, it was gleaming like a path of fire-and
he approached the end of his walk, and passed out at sea it was irradiating sails of ships-and,
through the meadows by the river-side. He looked towards, from quiet churchyards, upon
had that sense of peace, and of being lightened hill-tops in the country, it was steeping distant
of a weight of care, which country quiet awak-prospects in a flush and glow that seemed to
ens in the breasts of dwellers in towns. Every-mingle earth and sky together in one glorious
thing within his view was lovely and placid. suffusion.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 49.
The rich foliage of the trees, the luxuriant
grass diversified with wild flowers, the little
green islands in the river, the beds of rushes, Through some of the fiery windows, beautiful
the water-lilies floating on the surface of the from without, and set, at this sunset hour, not in
stream, the distant voices in boats, borne music- dull gray stone but in a glorious house of gold,
ally towards him on the ripple of the water and the light excluded at other windows pours in,
the evening air, were all expressive of rest. In rich, lavish, overflowing like the summer plenty
the occasional leap of a fish, or dip of an oar, in the land. Then do the frozen Dedlocks thaw.
or twittering of a bird not yet at roost, or dis- Strange movements come upon their features,
tant barking of a dog, or lowing of a cow-in as the shadows of leaves play there. A dense
all such sounds there was the prevailing breath Justice in a corner is beguiled into a wink. A
of rest, which seemed to encompass him in staring Baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple
every scent that sweetened the fragrant air. in his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony
The long lines of red and gold in the sky, and shepherdess there steals a fleck of light and
the glorious track of the descending sun, were warmth, that would have done it good a hun-
all divinely calm. Upon the purple tree-tops dred years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia,
far away, and on the green height near at in high-heeled shoes, very like her-casting the
hand, up which the shades were slowly creep-shadow of that virgin event before her full two
ing, there was an equal hush. Between the centuries-shoots out into a halo and becomes a
real landscape and its shadow in the water, saint. A maid of honor of the court of Charles
there was no division; both were so untroubled the Second, with large round eyes (and other
and clear, and, while so fraught with solemn charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glow-
mystery of life and death, so hopefully reas- ing water, and it ripples as it glows.
suring to the gazer's soothed heart, because so
tenderly and mercifully beautiful.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 28.
SUNSET-In a Cathedral.
"Dear me," said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in,
"it's like looking down the throat of Old
Time."
Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb
and arch and vault; and gloomy shadows be-
gan to deepen in corners; and damps began
to rise from green patches of stone; and jewels,
cast upon the pavement of the nave from stain-
ed glass by the declining sun, began to perish.
Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the
steps surmounted loomingly by the fast-dark-
ening organ, white robes could be dimly seen,
and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a
cracked, monotonous mutter, could at intervals
be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the
river, the green pastures, and the brown arable
lands, the teeming hills and dales, were
reddened by the sunset; while the distant little
windows in windmills and farm homesteads,
shone, patches of bright, beaten gold. In the
Cathedral, all became gray, murky, and sepul-
chral, and the cracked, monotonous mutter
went on like a dying voice, until the organ and
the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea
of music. Then the sea fell, and the dying
voice made another feeble effort, and then the
sea rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the
roof, and surged among the arches, and pierced
the heights of the great tower; and then the
sea was dry, and all was still.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 9.
But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now
the floor is dusky, and shadow slowly mounts
the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age
and death. And now, upon my Lady's picture
over the great chimney-piece, a weird shade
falls from some old tree, that turns it pale, and
flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a
veil or hood, watching an opportunity to
draw it over her. Higher and darker rises the
shadow on the wall-now a red gloom on the
ceiling-now the fire is out.
Bleak House, Chap. 40.
SUNSET-On the Mississippi.
The decline of day here was very gorgeous,
tingeing the firmament deeply with red and
gold up to the very keystone of the arch
above us. As the sun went down behind the
bank, the slightest blades of grass upon it.
seemed to become as distinctly visible as the
arteries in the skeleton of a leaf, and when, as
it slowly sank, the red and golden bars upon
the water grew dimmer and dimmer yet, as if
they were sinking too, and all the glowing
colors of departing day paled, inch by inch,
before the sombre night, the scene became a
thousand times more lonesome and more dreary
than before, and all its influences darkened with
the sky.-American Notes, Chap. 12.
SUSAN NIPPER.-Her sayings.
“Oh well, Miss Floy! And won't your Pa
be angry neither!" cried a quick voice at the
door, proceeding from a short, brown, womanly
girl of fourteen, with a little snub nose, and
black eyes like jet beads. "When it was 'tick
SUSAN NIPPER
erlerly given out that you wasn't to go and wor-
rit the wet nurse."
"She don't worry me," was the surprised
rejoinder of Polly. "I am very fond of chil-
dren."
Oh! but begging your pardon, Mrs. Rich-
ards, that don't matter, you know," returned the
black-eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp
and biting that she seemed to make one's eyes
"I may be very fond of pennywinkles,
Mrs. Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to
have 'em for tea."
*
water.
*
*
*
*
"This house ain't so exactly ringing with
merry-making," said Miss Nipper, "that one
need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes
and your Chickses may draw out my two front
double teeth, Mrs. Richards, but that's no rea-
son why I need offer 'em the whole set."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
"You might keep me in a strait-waistcoat for
six weeks," said Nipper, "and when I got it off
I'd only be more aggravated. Who ever heard
the like of them two Griffins, Mrs. Richards?"
*
*
*
*
*
"Oh! bless your heart, Mrs. Richards," cried
Susan, "temporaries always orders permanen-
cies here, didn't you know that, why wherever
was you born, Mrs. Richards? But wherever
you was born, Mrs. Richards," pursued Spitfire,
shaking her head resolutely, "and whenever,
and however (which is best known to yourself),
you may bear in mind, please, that it's one thing
to give orders, and quite another thing to take
'em. A person may tell a person to dive off a
bridge head foremost into five-and-forty feet of
water, Mrs. Richards, but a person may be very
far from diving."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 5.
Now, Miss Floy, you come along with me,
and don't go hanging back like a naughty
wicked child that judgments is no example to,
don't."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
473
SUSAN NİPPER
was to fling at Mrs. Pipchin's head, I'd buy a
cart-load.”—Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
"Talk of him being a change, indeed!" ob-
served Miss Nipper to herself with boundless
contempt. "If he's a change give me a con-
stancy."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 18.
My comfort is," said Susan, looking back at
Mr. Dombey, "that I have told a piece of truth
this day which ought to have been told long be-
fore, and can't be told too often or too plain, and
that no amount of Pipchinses-I hope the num-
ber of 'em mayn't be great" (here Mrs. Pipchin
uttered a very sharp "Go along with you" and
Miss Nipper repeated the look)
what I have said, though they gave a whole year
full of warnings beginning at ten o'clock in
the forenoon, and never leaving off till twelve
at night, and died of the exhaustion which
would be a jubilee !"-Dombey & Son, Chap. 44.
can unsay
As the knight-errants of old relieved their
minds by carving their mistresses names in des-
erts, and wildernesses, and other savage places
where there was no probability of there ever
being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan
Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and
wardrobes, put away winks of disparagement in
cupboards, shed derisive squints into stone pitch-
ers, and contradict and call names out of the
passage.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 5.
"How dare you talk in this way to a gentle-
woman who has seen better days."
To which Miss Nipper rejoined from her
castle, that she pitied the better days that had
seen Mrs. Pipchin; and that for her part she
considered the worst days in the year to be
about that lady's mark, except that they were
much too good for her.
"But you needn't trouble yourself to make a
noise at my door," said Susan Nipper, "nor to
contaminate the key-hole with your eye. I'm
packing up and going you may take your affida-
"If I hadn't more manliness than that insipid-vit."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 44.
est of his sex, I'd never take pride in my hair
again, but turn it up behind my ears, and wear
coarse caps, without a bit of border, until death
released me from my insignificance. I may not
be a Amazon, Miss Floy, and wouldn't so de-
mean myself by such disfigurement, but anyways
I'm not a giver up, I hope."
"Give up! What?" cried Florence, with a
face of terror.
"Why, nothing, Miss," said Susan. "Good
gracious, nothing! It's only that wet curl-paper
of a man, Perch, that any one might almost make
away with, with a touch, and really it would be
a blessed event for all parties if some one would
take pity on him, and would have the goodness!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
"
Giving consent when asked, and offering
when unasked, Miss, is quite two things; I may
not have my objections to a young man's keep-
ing company with me, and when he puts the
question, may say 'yes,' but that's not saying
'would you be so kind as like me.
C
'But you can buy me the books, Susan; and
you will, when you know I want them."
“Well, Miss, and why do you want 'em?" re-
plied Nipper; adding, in a lower voice, "If it
"
'I thought you would have been pleased,"
said Polly.
Oh yes, Mrs. Richards, I'm very well pleased,
thank you," returned Susan, who had suddenly
become so very upright that she seemed to have
put an additional bone in her stays.
"
"You don't show it," said Polly.
'Oh! Being only a permanency, I couldn't be
expected to show it like a temporary," said Su-
san Nipper. Temporaries carries it all before
'em here, I find, but though there's a excellent
party-wall between this house and the next,
mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs. Richards,,
notwithstanding.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
"Oh, it's very well to say 'don't,' Miss Floy,"
returned the Nipper, much exasperated: "but
raly begging your pardon we're coming to such
passes that it turns all the blood in a person's
body into pins and needles, with their pints all
ways.”—Dombey & Son, Chap. 43.
"For though I can bear a great deal, I am not
a camel, neither am I," added Susan, after a
moment's consideration, “if I know myself, a
dromedary neither."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
SURPRISES
474
"Well Miss Floy," returned the Nipper,
"when you say don't, I never do I hope, but
Mrs. Pipchin acts like early gooseberries upon
me Miss, and nothing less.'
""
Dombey & Son, Chap. 43.
Don't speak to me, Miss Floy, for though I'm
pretty firm I'm not a marble doorpost, my own
dear."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 44.
SURPRISES.
Surprises, like misfortunes, rarely come alone.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 6.
SUSPICION—A maxim of life.
'You will not have forgotten that it was a
maxim with Foxey-our revered father, gentle-
men-'Always suspect everybody.' That's the
maxim to go through life with!”
*
*
*
*
*
With deference to the better opinion of Mr.
Brass, and more particularly to the authority of
his Great Ancestor, it may be doubted, with
humility, whether the elevating principle laid
down by the latter gentleman, and acted upon
by his descendant, is always a prudent one, or
attended in practice with the desired results.
This is, beyond question, a bold and presump-
tuous doubt, inasmuch as many distinguished
characters, called men of the world, long-headed
customers, knowing dogs, shrewd fellows, capi-
tal hands at business, and the like, have made,
and do daily make, this axiom their polar star
and compass. Still, the doubt may be gently
insinuated. And in illustration it may be ob-
served, that if Mr. Brass, not being over-suspi-
cious, had, without prying and listening, left his
sister to manage the conference on their joint
behalf, or, prying and listening, had not been in
such a mighty hurry to anticipate her (which he
would not have been, but for his distrust and
jealousy), he would probably have found him-
self much better off in the end. Thus, it will
always happen that these men of the world,
who go through it in armor, defend themselves
from quite as much good as evil; to say nothing
of the inconvenience and absurdity of mounting
guard with a microscope at all times, and of
wearing a coat of mail on the most innocent
occasions.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 66.
SUSQUEHANNA-Crossing the.
The mist, wreathing itself into a hundred fan-
tastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water;
and the gloom of evening gave to all an air of
mystery and silence which greatly enhanced its
natural interest.
We crossed this river by a wooden bridge,
roofed and covered in on all sides, and nearly a
mile in length. It was profoundly dark, per-
plexed with great beams crossing and recrossing
it at every possible angle; and through the
broad chinks and crevices in the floor, the rapid
river gleamed, far down below, like a legion of
eyes. We had no lamps; and as the horses
stumbled and floundered through this place,
towards the distant speck of dying light, it
seemed interminable.
SYMPATHY.
American Notes, Chap. 9.
"What are we to live for but sympathy? What
else is so extremely charming? Without that
TASTE
gleam of sunshine on our cold, coid earth," said
Mrs. Skewton, arranging her lace tucker, and
complacently observing the effect of her bare
lean arm, looking upward from the waist, "how
could we possibly bear it? In short, obdurate
man!" glancing at the Major, round the screen,
'I would have my world all heart; and Faith
is so excessively charming, that I won't allow
you to disturb it, do you hear?"
The Major replied that it was hard in Cleo-
patra to require the world to be all heart, and
yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the
world.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
SYMPATHY-Silent.
Florence, with her hand upon the Captain's
arm, so sorrowful and timid, and the Captain,
with his rough face and burly figure, so quietly
protective of her, stood in the rosy light of the
bright evening sky, without saying a word.
However strange the form of speech into which
he might have fashioned the feeling, if he had
had to give it utterance, the Captain felt as
sensibly as the most eloquent of men could
have done, that there was something in the tran-
quil time and in its softened beauty that would
make the wounded heart of Florence overflow;
and that it was better that such tears should
have their way. So not a word spake Captain
Cuttle. But when he felt his arm clasped closer,
and when he felt the lonely head come nearer
to it, and lay itself against his homely coarse
blue sleeve, he pressed it gently with his rugged
hand, and understood it, and was understood.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 49.
SYMPATHY-The influence of.
Surrounded by unfeeling creditors, and mei-
cenary attendants upon the sick, and meeting
in the height of her anxiety and sorrow with
little regard or sympathy, even from the women
about her, it is not surprising that the affection-
ate heart of the child should have been touched
to the quick by one kind and generous spirit,
however uncouth the temple in which it dwelt.
Thank Heaven, that the temples of such spirits
are not made with hands, and that they may be
even more worthily hung with poor patch-
work than with purple and fine linen!
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. II.
T
TASTE-Viewed from Gradgrind's stand-
point.
There was a library in Coketown, to which
general access was easy. Mr. Gradgrind greatly
tormented his mind about what the people read
in this library: a point whereon little rivers of
tabular statements periodically flowed into the
howling ocean of tabular statements, which no
diver ever got to any depth in and came up sane.
It was a disheartening circumstance, but a melan-
choly fact, that even these readers persisted in
wondering. They wondered about human nature,
human passions, human hopes and fears, the
struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and
TASTES AND HABITS
475
TEA-DRINKING
joys and sorrows, the lives and deaths, of com- is well known. Try dancing. It is a better ex-
mon men and women! They sometimes, after ercise, and has the unspeakable recommenda-
fifteen hours' work, sat down to read mere fables | tion that it couldn't be reported. The honor-
about men and women, more or less like them-able and savage member who has a loaded gun,
selves, and about children, more or less like
their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms,
instead of Euclid, and seemed to be on the
whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by
Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was for ever working,
in print and out of print, at this eccentric sum,
and he never could make out how it yielded
this unaccountable product.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 8.
TASTES AND HABITS—Social.
and has grown impatient of debate, plunges out
of doors, fires in the air, and returns calm and
silent to the Palaver. Let the honorable and
civilized member similarly charged with a speech
dart into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in
the silence of night, let his speech off, and come
back harmless. It is not at first sight a very
rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe
across one's nose and both cheeks, and a broad
red stripe from the forehead to the chin, to attach
a few pounds of wood to one's under lip, to
My voyages (in paper boats) among savages stick fish-bones in one's ears and a brass cur-
often yield me matter for reflection at home. It tain-ring in one's nose, and to rub one's body
is curious to trace the savage in the civilized all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary to en-
man, and to detect the hold of some savage cus-tering on business. But this is a question of
toms on conditions of society rather boastful of taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uni-
being high above them.
form. The manner of entering on the busi-
ness itself is another question. A council of six
hundred savage gentlemen entirely independent
of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring, smok-
ing, and occasionally grunting, seem to me, ac-
cording to the experience I have gathered in my
voyages and travels, somehow to do what they
come together for; whereas, that is not at all the
general experience of a council of six hundred
civilized gentlemen very dependent on. tailors,
and sitting on mechanical contrivances. It is
better that an Assembly should do its utmost to
envelop itself in smoke, than that it should di-
rect its endeavors to enveloping the public in
smoke; and I would rather it buried half a hun-
dred hatchets than buried one subject demanding
attention.— Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 26.
TEA - DRINKING
I wonder, is the Medicine-Man of the North
American Indians never to be got rid of, out of
the North American country? He comes into
my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and
with the absurdest "Medicine." I always find
it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply
impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam.
For his legal "Medicine" he sticks upon his
head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the
same with fat, and dirty-white powder, and talks
a gibberish quite unknown to the men and
squaws of his tribe. For his religious "Medi-
cine" he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black
aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut,
collarless coats, with Medicine button-holes,
Medicine stockings and gaiters and shoes, and
tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medici-
nal hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am quite
free from him. On occasions when the Medi-
cine-Man in general, together with a large num-
ber of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his
village, both male and female, are presented to
the principal Chief, his native" Medicine" is a
comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of
traders), and new things in antiquated shapes,
and pieces of red cloth (of which he is particu-
larly fond), and white and red and blue paint
for the face. The irrationality of this particular
Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from
which many of the squaws are borne out much
dilapidated. I need not observe how unlike
this is to a Drawing-Room at St. James's Palace.
*
*
*
*
*
"
Weller's.
-
A pastoral, at Mrs.
What do you think them women does t'other
day," continued Mr. Weller, after a short pause,
during which he had significantly struck the side
of his nose with his fore-finger some half dozen
times. "What do you think they does, t'other
day, Sammy?"
"Don't know," replied Sam, "what?"
"Goes and gets up a grand tea drinkin' for a
feller they calls their shepherd," said Mr. Weller.
"I was a standing starin' in at the pictur shop
down at our place, when I sees a little bill about
it; 'tickets half-a-crown. All applications to
be made to the committee. Secretary, Mrs.
Weller;' and when I got home there was the
If we submit ourselves meekly to the Medi- committee a sittin' in our back parlor. Four-
cine-Man and the Conjuror, and are not exalted teen women; I wish you could ha' heard 'em,
by it, the savages may retort upon us that we Sammy. There they was, a passin' resolutions,
act more unwisely than they in other matters and wotin' supplies, and all sorts o' games.
wherein we fail to imitate them. It is a widely Well, what with your mother-in-law a worrying
|
diffused custom among savage tribes, when they me to go, and what with my looking forʼard to
meet to discuss any affair of public importance, seein' some queer starts if I did, I put my name
to sit up all night making a horrible noise, dan- down for a ticket; at six o'clock on the Friday
cing, blowing shells, and (in cases where they evenin' I dresses myself out wery smart, and
are familiar with fire-arms) flying out into open off I goes with the old 'ooman, and up we walks
places and letting off guns. It is questionable into a fust floor where there was tea-things for
whether our legislative assemblies might not thirty, and a whole lot o' women as begins whis-
take a hint from this. A shell is not a melo- perin' to one another, and lookin' at me, as if
dious wind-instrument, and it is monotonous; they'd never seen a rayther stout gen❜lm'n of
but it is as musical as, and not more monoto-eight-and-fifty afore. By-and-bye, there comes
nous than, my Honorable friend's own trumpet, a great bustle down stairs, and a lanky chap with
or the trumpet that he blows so hard for the a red nose and a white neckcloth rushes up, and
Minister. The uselessness of arguing with any sings out, 'Here's the shepherd a coming to
supporter of a Government or of an Opposition, wisit his faithful flock; and in comes a fat
<
TEA-DRINKING
chap in black, vith a great white face, a
smilin' avay like clockwork. Such goin's on,
Sammy! The kiss of peace,' says the shep-
herd; and then he kissed the women all round,
and ven he'd done, the man vith the red nose
began. I was just a thinkin' whether I hadn't
better begin too-'specially as there was a wery
nice lady a sittin' next me-ven in comes the
tea, and your mother-in-law, as had been makin'
the kettle bile down-stairs. At it they went,
tooth and nail. Such a precious loud hymn,
Sammy, while the tea was a brewing; such a
grace; such eatin' and drinkin'! I wish you
could ha' seen the shepherd walkin' into the
ham and muffins. I never see such a chap to
eat and drink; never. The red-nosed man
warn't by no means the sort of person you'd
like to grub by contract, but he was nothin' to
the shepherd. Well; arter the tea was over,
they sang another hymn, and then the shepherd
began to preach: and wery well he did it, con-
siderin' how heavy them muffins must have lied
on his chest. Presently he pulls up, all of a
sudden, and hollers out 'Where is the sinner;
where is the mis'rable sinner?' Upon which,
all the women looked at me, and began to groan
as if they was a dying. I thought it was rather
sing❜ler, but hows'ever, I says nothing. Present-
ly he pulls up again, and lookin' wery hard at
me, says, 'Where is the sinner; where is the
mis'rable sinner?' and all the women groans
again, ten times louder than afore. I got rather
wild at this, so I takes a step or two for'ard and
says, My friend,' says I, 'did you apply that
'ere obserwation to me?' 'Stead of begging
my pardon as any gen'lm'n would ha' done, he
got more abusive than ever; called me a wessel,
Sammy-a wessel of wrath-and all sorts o'
names. So my blood being reg'larly up, I first
give him two or three for himself, and then two
or three more to hand over to the man with the
red nose, and walked off. I wish you could ha'
heard how the women screamed, Sammy, ven
they picked up the shepherd from under the
table."-Pickwick, Chap. 22.
TEA-DRINKING—A serious.
On this particular occasion the women drank
tea to a most alarming extent; greatly to the
horror of Mr. Weller, senior, who, utterly regard-
less of all Sam's admonitory nudgings, stared
about him in every direction with the most un-
disguised astonishment.
Sammy," whispered Mr. Weller, "if some o'
these here people don't want tappin' to-morrow
mornin', I ain't your father, and that's wot it is.
Why, this here old lady next me is a drowndin'
herself in tea."
"Be quiet, can't you?" murmured Sam.
Sam," whispered Mr. Weller, a moment
afterwards, in a tone of deep agitation, "mark
my vords, my boy. If that 'ere secretary fellow
keeps on for only five minutes more, he'll blow
hisself up with toast and water."
66
Well, let him, if he likes," replied Sam; "it
ain't no bis'ness o' yourn.'
"
"If this here lasts much longer, Sammy," said
Mr. Weller, in the same low voice, "I shall feel
it my duty, as a human bein', to rise and address
the cheer. There's a young 'ooman on the next
form but two, as has drunk nine breakfast cups
and a half: and she's a swellin' wisibly before
my wery eyes."
476
TEARS
There is little doubt that Mr. Weller would
have carried his benevolent intention into ima-
mediate execution, if a great_noise, occasioned
by putting up the cups and saucers, had not
very fortunately announced that the tea-drink-
ing was over.-Pickwick, Chap. 33.
TEA-DRINKER-Mr. Venus as a.
"Brother," said Wegg, when this happy un-
derstanding was established, "I should like to
ask you something. You remember the night
when I first looked in here, and found you float-
ing your powerful mind in tea?”
Still swilling tea, Mr. Venus nodded assent.
"And there you sit, sir," pursued. Wegg with
an air of thoughtful admiration, "as if you had
never left off! There you sit, sir, as if you had
an unlimited capacity of assimilating the fragrant
article! There you sit, sir, in the midst of your
works, looking as if you'd been called upon
for Home, Sweet Home, and was obleeging
the company!"
མ
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 7.
TEA-A Termagant at.
There was no one with Flora but Mr. F's
Aunt, which respectable gentlewoman, basking
in a balmy atmosphere of tea and toast, was en-
sconced in an easy chair by the fireside, with a
little table at her elbow, and a clean white hand-
kerchief spread over her lap on which two pieces
of toast at that moment awaited consumption.
Bending over a steaming vessel of tea, and look-
ing through the steam, and breathing forth the
steam, like a malignant Chinese enchantress en
gaged in the performance of unholy rites, Mr.
F's Aunt put down her great teacup and ex-
claimed, "Drat him, if he an't come back
again!"—Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 9.
TEARS.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of
our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding
dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
Great Expectations, Chap. 19.
TEARS-Sam Weller's opinion of.
"Come, come," interposed Sam, who had
witnessed Mr. Trotter's tears with considerable
impatience, "blow this here water-cart bis'ness.
It won't do no good, this won't."
'Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, reproachfully, “I
am sorry to find that you have so little respect
for this young man's feelings."
"His feelins is all wery well, sir," replied
Mr. Weller; and as they're so wery fine, and
it's a pity he should lose 'em, I think he'd bet-
ter keep 'em in his own buzzum, than let 'em
ewaporate in hot water, 'specially as they do no
good. Tears never yet wound up a clock, or
worked a steam ingen'. The next time you go
out to a smoking party, young fellow, fill your
pipe with that 'ere reflection; and for the pres-
ent just put that bit of pink gingham into your
pocket. T'an't so handsome that you need
keep waving it about, as if you was a tight-
rope dancer."-Pickwick, Chap. 16.
TEARS-Of disappointment.
Many a man who would have stood within
a home dismantled, strong in his passion and
design of vengeance, has had the firmness of
his nature conquered by the razing of an air
TEARS
477
built castle. When the log-hut received them
for the second time, Martin lay down upon the
ground, and wept aloud.
"Lord love you, sir!" cried Mr. Tapley, in
great terror; "Don't do that! Don't do that,
sir! Anything but that! It never helped man,
woman, or child, over the lowest fence yet, sir,
and it never will. Besides its being no use to
you, it's worse than of no use to me, for the
least sound of it will knock me flat down. I
can't stand up agin it, sir. Anything but
that!"-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 23.
TEARS-Pecksniffian.
He was not angry, he was not vindictive, he
was not cross, he was not moody, but he was
grieved; he was sorely grieved. As he sat down
by the old man's side, two tears-not tears like
those with which recording angels blot their
entries out, but drops so precious that they use
them for their ink-stole down his meritorious
cheeks.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 31.
TEARS-The mist of.
But Florence cannot see him plainly, in a lit-
tle time, for there is a mist between her eyes
and him, and her dead brother and dead mother
shine in it like angels.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
It was a natural emotion, not to be suppress-
ed, and it would make way even between the
fingers of the hands with which she covered up
her face. The overcharged and heavy-laden
breast must sometimes have that vent, or the
poor, wounded, solitary heart within it would
have fluttered like a bird with broken wings,
and sunk down in the dust.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 18.
TEARS-Hydraulic.
Mr. Brownlow's heart, being large enough for
any six ordinary old gentlemen of humane dis-
position, forced a supply of tears into his eyes,
by some hydraulic process which we are not
sufficiently philosophical to be in a condition to
explain.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 12.
TEARS-A remedy.
But, tears were not the things to find their
way to Mr. Bumble's soul; his heart was water-
proof. Like washable beaver hats that improve
with rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and
more vigorous by showers of tears, which, be-
ing tokens of weakness, and so far tacit admis-
sions of his own power, pleased and exalted
him. He eyed his good lady with looks of great
satisfaction, and begged, in an encouraging man-
ner, that she should cry her hardest; the exer-
cise being looked upon, by the faculty, as
strongly conducive to health.
"
It opens the lungs, washes the countenance,
exercises the eyes, and softens down the tem-
per," said Mr. Bumble.
"So cry away!"
Oliver Twist, Chap. 37.
TEARS-Not the only proofs of distress.
"There is no deception now Mr. Weller.
Tears," said Job, with a look of momentary sly-
ness, tears are not the only proofs of distress,
nor the best ones."
**
No, they ain't," replied Sam, expressively.
They may be put on, Mr. Weller," said Job.
TEETH
'I know they may,” said Sam;
"some peo-
ple, indeed, has 'em always ready laid on, and
can pull out the plug wenever they likes.'
Yes," replied Job; “but these sort of things
are not so easily counterfeited, Mr. Weller, and
it is a more painful process to get them up."
As he spoke, he pointed to his sallow, sunken
cheeks, and, drawing up his coat-sleeve, dis-
closed an arm which looked as if the bone could
be broken at a touch: so sharp and brittle did
it appear, beneath its thin covering of flesh.
Pickwick, Chap. 45.
TEARS-Of Job Trotter.
Job Trotter bowed low; and in spite of Mi
Weller's previous remonstrance, the tears agair
rose to his eyes.
"
I never see such a feller," said Sam. "Bless
ed if I don't think he's got a main in his head
as is always turned on."-Pickwick, Chap. 16.
TEARS-Valuable.
"Tears!" cried the old gentleman, with such
an energetic jump, that he fell down two or
three steps and grated his chin against the wall.
Catch the crystal globules-catch 'em-bottle
'em up-cork 'em tight-put sealing-wax on the
top-seal 'em with a cupid-label 'em 'Best
quality' and stow 'em away in the fourteen
binn, with a bar of iron on the top to keep the
thunder off!"
Issuing these commands, as if there were a
dozen attendants all actively engaged in their
execution, he turned his velvet cap inside out
put it on with great dignity so as to obscure his
right eye and three-fourths of his nose, and
sticking his arms a-kimbo, looked very fiercely
at a sparrow hard by, till the bird flew away.
He then put his cap in his pocket with an air
of great satisfaction, and addressed himself with
respectful demeanor to Mrs. Nickleby.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41.
TEAR-DROP-A.
A tear trembled on his sentimental eye-lid,
like a rain-drop on a window-frame.
Pickwick, Chap. II.
TEARS-Of Miggs.
At this cruel rebuke, Miggs, whose tears were
always ready for large or small parties, on the
shortest notice and the most reasonable terms,
fell a crying violently; holding both her hands
tight upon her heart meanwhile, as if nothing
less would prevent its splitting into small frag-
ments.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 7.
TEETH-The attraction of.
He had no power of concealing anything with
that battery of attraction in full play.
*
*
*
*
*
Mr. Carker the Manager did a great deal of
business in the course of the day, and bestowed
his teeth upon a great many people. In the
office, in the court, in the street, and on 'Change,
they glistened and bristled to a terrible extent.
Five o'clock arriving, and with it Mr. Carker's
bay horse, they got on horseback, and went
gleaming up Cheapside.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 22.
TEETH-Chattering.
“Ugh, you disgraceful boy !" exclaimed Miss
TELEGRAPH
478
Wren, attracted by the sound of his chattering
teeth, "I wish they'd all drop down your throat
and play at dice in your stomach!"
Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 10.
TELEGRAPH-Wires.
Plain to the dark eyes of her mind, as the
electric wires which ruled a colossal strip of
music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain
to the dark eyes of her body; Mrs. Sparsit saw
her staircase, with the figure coming down.
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. II.
TEMPTATION—A teacher.
"Jacques," said Defarge; "judiciously show
a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Ju-
diciously show a dog his natural prey, if you
wish him to bring it down one day.'
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 15.
THEATRE
and especially in instruments so sensitively and
delicately constructed as Mrs. Varden. Thus,
at dinner Mrs. V. stood at summer heat; genial,
smiling, and delightful. After dinner, in the
sunshine of the wine, she went up at least half-
a-dozen degrees, and was perfectly enchanting.
As its effect subsided, she fell rapidly, went to
sleep for an hour or so at temperate, and woke
at something below freezing. Now she was at
summer heat again, in the shade; and when tea
was over, and old John, producing a bottle of
cordial from one of the oaken cases, insisted on
her sipping two glasses thereof in slow succes-
sion, she stood steadily at ninety for one hour
and a quarter. Profiting by experience, the
locksmith took advantage of this genial weather
to smoke his pipe in the porch, and in conse-
quence of this prudent management, he was
fully prepared, when the glass went down again,
to start homewards directly.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 21.
TEMPER-And devotion.
Like some other ladies who in remote ages
flourished upon this globe, Mrs. Varden was
most devout when most ill-tempered. When-
ever she and her husband were at unusual va-
riance, then the Protestant Manual was in high
feather.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 4.
TEMPER-Mrs. Joe Gargery's.
When I got home at night, and delivered this
message for Joe, my sister "went on the Ram-
page," in a more alarming degree than at any
previous period. She asked me and Joe whether
we supposed she was door-mats under our feet,
and how we dared to use her so, and what com-
pany we graciously thought she was fit for?
When she had exhausted a torrent of such in-
quiries, she threw a candlestick at Joe, burst
into a loud sobbing, got out the dustpan-which THEATRE-Maggy's idea of a.
was always a very bad sign-put on her coarse Maggy and I have been to-night," she an-
apron, and began cleaning up to a terrible ex-swered, subduing herself with the quiet effort
tent. Not satisfied with a dry cleaning, she
took to a pail and scrubbing-brush, and cleaned
us out of house and home, so that we stood
shivering in the back yard.
Great Expectations, Chap. 12.
that had long been natural to her, "to the thea-
tre where my sister is engaged."
"And oh ain't it a Ev'nly place," suddenly
interrupted Maggy, who seemed to have the
power of going to sleep and waking up when-
ever she chose. Almost as good as a hospital.
Only there ain't no Chicking in it."
Here she shook herself, and fell asleep again.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 14.
Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after
me as the dustpan had retired before us, drew
the back of his hand across his nose with a con-
ciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at
him, and, when her eyes were withdrawn, se- THEATRE-Deserted.
cretly crossed his two forefingers, and exhibited
them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in
a cross temper. This was so much her normal
state, that Ĵoe and I would often, for weeks to-
gether, be, as to our fingers, like monumental
Crusaders as to their legs.
Great Expectations, Chap. 4.
TEMPER-The thermometer of Mrs. Var-
den's.
Mrs. Varden was seldom very Protestant at
meals, unless it happened that they were under-
done, or over-done, or indeed that anything oc-
curred to put her out of humor. Her spirits
rose considerably on beholding these goodly
preparations, and from the nothingness of good
works, she passed to the somethingness of ham
and toast with great cheerfulness. Nay, under
the influence of these wholesome stimulants, she
sharply reproved her daughter for being low
and despondent (which she considered an unac-
ceptable frame of mind), and remarked, as she
held her own plate for a fresh supply, that it
would be well for Dolly, who pined over the loss
of a toy and a sheet of paper, if she would reflect
upon the voluntary sacrifices of the missionaries
in foreign parts who lived chiefly on salads.
The proceedings of such a day occasioned
various fluctuations in the human thermometer,
Grim
Between the bridge and the two great thea-
tres there was but the distance of a few hun-
dred paces, so the theatres came next.
and black within, at night, those great dry
Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the rows
of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and
the seats all empty. One would think that
nothing in them knew itself at such a time but
Yorick's skull. In one of my night walks, as
the church steeples were shaking the March
winds and rain with the strokes of Four, I
passed the outer boundary of one of these great
deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in
my hand, I groped my well-known way to the
stage, and looked over the orchestra-which
was like a great grave dug for a time of pesti-
lence-into the void beyond. A dismal cavern
of an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone
dead like everything else, and nothing visible
through mist and fog and space but tiers of
winding-sheets. The ground at my feet where,
when last there, I had seen the peasantry of
Naples dancing among the vines, reckless of the
burning mountain which threatened to over-
whelm them, was now in possession of a strong
serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait
for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it
showed its forked tongue. A ghost of a watch-
man, carrying a faint corpse candle, haunted the
THEATRE
479
THOUGHT
distant upper gallery and flitted away. Retir- Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the
ing within the proscenium, and holding my light rag-merchant, display their goods, as sign-boards
above my head towards the rolled-up curtain- to the petty thief; here, stores of old iron and
green no more, but black as ebony-my sight bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of wool-
lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint in-len-stuff and linen, rust and rot in the grimy
dications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cellars.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 26.
cordage. Methought I felt much as a diver
might at the bottom of the sea.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13.
THEATRE-An old.
THIEF—“ Stop."
"
'Stop thief! Stop thief!" There is a magic
in the sound. The tradesman leaves his coun-
ter, and the carman his wagon; the butcher
throws down his tray; the baker his basket;
the milk-man his pail; the errand-boy his par-
cels; the school-boy his marbles; the pavior
his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away
they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash:
tearing, yelling, and screaming: knocking down
the passengers as they turn the corners: rousing
up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and
streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the
sound.
Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre,
enhanced in the spectator's fancy by its gay in-
tention and design, none but worms can be
familiar with. A hundred and ten years have
passed since any play was acted here. The sky
shines in through the gashes in the roof; the
boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and
only tenanted by rats; damp and mildew smear
the faded colors, and make spectral maps upon
the panels; lean rags are dangling down where
there were gay festoons on the proscenium; the "Stop thief! Stop thief!" The cry is taken
stage has rotted so, that a narrow wooden gal-up by a hundred voices, and the crowd accumu-
lery is thrown across it, or it would sink be-
neath the tread, and bury the visitor in the
gloomy depths beneath. The desolation and
decay impress themselves on all the senses. The
air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste;
any stray outer sounds that straggle in with
some lost sunbeam, are muffled and heavy; and
the worm, the maggot, and the rot have changed
the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as
time will seam and roughen a smooth hand. If
ever Ghosts act plays, they act them on this
ghostly stage.-Pictures from Italy.
THEATRE- First impressions of a.
It was Covent Garden Theatre that I chose;
and there, from the back of a centre box, I saw
Julius Cæsar and the new Pantomime. To have
all those noble Romans alive before me, and
walking in and out for my entertainment, in-
stead of being the stern taskmasters they had
been at school, was a most novel and delightful
effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of
the whole show, the influence upon me of the
poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the
smooth stupendous changes of glittering and
brilliant scenery, were so dazzling, and opened
up such illimitable regions of delight, that when
I came out into the rainy street, at twelve o'clock
at night, I felt as if I had come from the clouds,
where I had been leading a romantic life for
ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, um-
brella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, pat-
ten-clinking, muddy, miserable world.
David Copperfield, Chap. 19.
THEFT-An emporium of.
late at every turning. Away they fly: splashing
through the mud, and rattling along the pave-
ments: up go the windows, out run the people,
onward bear the mob, a whole audience desert
Punch in the very thickest of the plot, and, join-
ing the rushing throng, swell the shout, and
lend fresh vigor to the cry, "Stop thief! Stop
thief!"
Stop thief! Stop thief!" There is a passion
for hunting something deeply implanted in the
human breast. One wretched, breathless child,
panting with exhaustion, terror in his looks,
agony in his eye, large drops of perspiration
streaming down his face, strains every nerve to
make head upon his pursuers; and as they follow
on his track, and gain upon him every instant,
they hail his decreasing strength with still louder
shouts, and whoop and scream with joy.
thief!" Ay, stop him for God's sake, were it
only in mercy!—Oliver Twist, Chap. 10.
Stop
THIS AND THAT—The success of a combi-
nation.
According to the success with which you put
this and that together, you get a woman and a
fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 3.
THOUGHTS-Depressing.
Whatever thoughts he called up to his aid,
they came upon him in depressing and discourag-
ing shapes, and gave him no relief. Even the
diamonds on his fingers sparkled with the
brightness of tears, and had no ray of hope in
all their brilliant lustre.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 17.
THOUGHT—A jumble of.
Thinking begets, not only thought, but
drowsiness occasionally, and the more the
locksmith thought, the more sleepy he be-
came.
In its filthy shops are exposed for sale, huge
bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of
all sizes and patterns; for here reside the traders
who purchase them from pickpockets. Hundreds
of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs
outside the windows or flaunting from the door-
post; and the shelves, within, are piled with A man may be very sober-or at least firmly
them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, set upon his legs on that neutral ground which
it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, lies between the confines of perfect sobriety and
and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial slight tipsiness—and yet feel a strong tendency
colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny: to mingle up present circumstances with others
visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, which have no manner of connection with them;
by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back- to confound all consideration of persons,
parlors; and who go as strangely as they come. | things, times, and places; and to jumble his
THOUGHTS
480
disjointed thoughts together in a kind of mental
kaleidoscope, producing combinations as unex-
pected as they are transitory.
THOUGHTS.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 3.
TIDE
rode at anchor by the haunting topic, and would
hold to no other idea. As though a criminal
should be chained in a stationary boat on a deep,
clear river, condemned, whatever countless
leagues of water flowed past him, always to see
the body of the fellow-creature he had drowned
lying at the bottom, immovable and unchange-
"My lad," said the Captain, whose opinion
of Mr. Toots was much improved by this can-able, except as the eddies made it broad o
did avowal, "a man's thoughts is like the winds,
and nobody can't answer for 'em for certain,
any length of time together. Is it a treaty as
to words?"-Dombey & Son, Chap. 39.
"My lad," gasped the Captain, in a choked
and trembling voice, and with a curious action
going on in the ponderous fist; "there's a many
words I could wish to say to you, but I don't
rightly know where they're stowed just at
present. My young friend, Wal'r, was drownded
only last night, according to my reckoning, and
it puts me out, you see. But you and me will
come alongside o' one another again, my lad,"
said the Captain, holding up his hook, "if we
live."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common
notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little be-
fore they will explain themselves; and Toots
had long left off asking any questions of his own
mind. Some mist there may have been, issuing
from that leaden casket, his cranium, which, if
it could have taken shape and form, would have
become a genie; but it could not; and it only
so far followed the example of the smoke in the
Arabian story, as to roll out in a thick cloud,
and there hang and hover. But it left a little
figure visible upon a lonely shore, and Toots
was always staring at it.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
The Captain found it difficult to unload his
old ideas upon the subject, and to take a per-
fectly new cargo on board, with that rapidity
which the circumstances required, or without
jumbling and confounding the two.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 14.
"Dombey," said the Major, rapping him on
the arm with his cane, “don't be thoughtful.
It's a bad habit. Old Joe, Sir, wouldn't be as
tough as you see him, if he had ever encouraged
it. You are too great a man, Dombey, to be
thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you're far
above that kind of thing."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
"Polly, old 'ooman," said Mr. Toodle, "I
don't know as I said it partickler along o' Rob,
I'm sure.
I starts light with Rob only; I comes
to a branch; I takes on what I finds there; and
a whole train of ideas gets coupled on to him,
afore I knows where I am, or where they comes
from. What a junction a man's thoughts is,"
said Mr. Toodle, "to be sure!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 38.
THOUGHT-A haunting topic of.
Left alone, with the expressive looks and ges-
tures of Mr. Baptist, otherwise Giovanni Bap-
tista Cavalletto, vividly before him, Clennam
entered on a weary day. It was in vain that he
tried to control his attention, by directing it to
any business occupation or train of thought; it
long, now expanding, now contracting its ter-
rible lineaments; so Arthur, below the shifting
current of transparent thoughts and fancies
which were gone and succeeded by others as
soon as come, saw, steady and dark, and not tc
be stirred from its place, the one subject that he
endeavored with all his might to rid himself of,
and that he could not fly from.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 23.
TIDE-High.
But, the moment the tide begins to make, the
Pavilionstone Harbor begins to revive. It feels
the breeze of the rising water before the water
comes, and begins to flutter and stir. When the
little shallow waves creep in, barely overlapping
one another, the vanes at the mastheads wake,
and become agitated. As the tide rises, the
fishing-boats get into good spirits and dance,
the flag-staff hoists a bright red flag, the steam-
boat smokes, cranes creak, horses and carriages
dangle in the air, stray passengers and luggage
appear. Now, the shipping is afloat, and comes
up buoyantly, to look at the wharf. Now, the
carts that have come down for coals, load away
as hard as they can load. Now, the steamer
smokes immensely, and occasionally blows at
the paddle-boxes like a vaporous whale-greatly
disturbing nervous loungers. Now, both the
tide and the breeze have risen, and you are
holding your hat on (if you want to see how the
ladies hold their hats on, with a stay, passing
over the broad brim and down the nose, come
to Pavilionstone). Now, everything in the har-
bor splashes, dashes, and bobs. Now, the Down
Tidal Train is telegraphed, and you know (with-
out knowing how you know), that two hundred
and eighty-seven people are coming. Now, the
fishing-boats that have been out, sail in at the
top of the tide. Now, the bell goes, and the
locomotive hisses and shrieks, and the train
comes gliding in, and the two hundred and
eighty-seven come scuffling out. Now, there is
not only a tide of water, but a tide of people,
and a tide of luggage-all tumbling and flowing
and bouncing about together. Now, after in-
finite bustle, the steamer steams out, and we
(on the Pier) are all delighted when she rolls as
if she would roll her funnel out, and are all dis-
appointed when she don't. Now, the other
steainer is coming in, and the Custom-House
prepares, and the wharf-laborers assemble, and
the hawsers are made ready, and the Hotel
Porters come rattling down with van and truck,
eager to begin more Olympic games with more
luggage. And this is the way in which we go
on, down at Pavilionstone, every tide. And, if
you want to live a life of luggage, or to see it
lived, or to breathe sweet air which will send
you to sleep at a moment's notice at any period
of the day or night, or to disport yourself upon
or in the sea, or to scamper about Kent, or to
come out of town for the enjoyment of all or any
of these pleasures, come to Pavilionstone.
Out of Town. Reprinted Pieces.
TIMBER-YARD
TIMBER-YARD.
481
To go gliding to and fro among the stacks of
timber would be a convenient kind of travelling
in foreign countries,-among the forests of
North America, the sodden Honduras swamps,
the dark pine woods, the Norwegian frosts, and
the tropical heats, rainy seasons, and thunder-
storms. The costly store of timber is stacked
and stowed away in sequestered places, with the
pervading avoidance of flourish or effect. It
makes as little of itself as possible, and calls to
no one, "Come and look at me!" And yet it
is picked out from the trees of the world; picked
out for length, picked out for breadth, picked
out for straightness, picked out for crookedness,
chosen with an eye to every need of ship and
boat. Strangely twisted pieces lie about, pre-
cious in the sight of shipwrights. Sauntering
through these groves, I come upon an open
glade where workmen are exainining some tim-
ber recently delivered. Quite a pastoral scene,
with a background of river and windmill! And
no more like War than the American States are
at present like a Union.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 24.
TIME-Its progress.
tr
Another Christmas come, another
come, another year
gone!" murmured the Chemist with a gloomy
sigh.
"More figures in the lengthening sum of
recollection that we work and work at to our
torment till Death idly jumbles all together, and
rubs all out."—Haunted Man, Chap. 1.
TIME-Is money.
I.
"He will talk about business, and won't give
away his time for nothing. He's very right.
Time is money, time is money."
"He was one of us who made that saying,
I should think," said Ralph. "Time is money,
and very good money too, to those who reckon
interest by it. Time is money! Yes, and time
costs money; it's rather an expensive article to
some people we could name, or I forget my
trade."-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47.
TIME—A slippery animal.
And talk of Time slipping by you, as if it was
an animal at rustic sports with its tail soaped."
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 12.
TIME—The factory of.
It seemed as if, first in her own fire with-
in the house, and then in the fiery haze without,
she tried to discover what kind of woof Old
Time, that greatest and longest established
Spinner of all, would weave from the threads he
had already spun into a woman. But his factory
is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his
Hands are mutes.-Hard Times, Bk. I., Chap.14.
TIME-Its changes.
Time went on in Coketown like its own
machinery; so much material wrought up, so
much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out,
so much money made. But, less inexorable
than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying
seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and
brick, and made the only stand that ever was
made in the place, against its direful uniformity.
"Louisa is becoming," said Mr. Gradgrind,
"alinost a young woman.
Time, with his innumerable horse-power,
TOBACCO-CHEWING
worked away, not minding what anybody said,
and presently turned out young Thomas a foot
taller than when his father had last taken par.
ticular notice of him.
Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 14.
TIME-And the havoc of suffering.
We all change, but that's with Time; Time
does his work honestly, and I don't mind him,
A fig for Time, sir. Use him well, and he's a
hearty fellow, and scorns to have you at a dis-
advantage. But care and suffering (and those
have changed her) are devils, sir-secret,
stealthy, undermining devils-who tread down
the brightest flowers in Eden, and do more havoc
in a month than Time does in a year.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 26.
TIME-A gentle parent.
The looker-on was a round red-faced, sturdy
yeoman, with a double chin, and a voice husky
with good living, good sleeping, good humor,
and good health. He was past the prime of
life, but Father Time is not always a hard pa-
rent, and, though he tarries for none of his chil-
dren, often lays his hand lightly upon those
who have used him well; making them old
men and women inexorably enough, but leaving
their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor.
With such people the gray head is but the im
pression of the old fellow's hand in giving them
his blessing, and every wrinkle buť a notch in
the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.
TIME.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 2.
On the brow of Dombey, Time and his bro-
ther Care had set some marks, as on a tree that
was to come down in good time-remorseless
twins they are for striding through their hu-
man forests, notching as they go-while the
countenance of Son was crossed and recrossed
with a thousand little creases, which the same
deceitful Time would take delight in smooth-
ing out and wearing away with the flat part of
his scythe, as a preparation of the surface for
his deeper operations.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a
whole year. Through a whole year the winds
and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless
work of Time had been performed, in storm
and sunshine. Through a whole year the tides
of human chance and change had set in their
allotted courses.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 58.
TIME-Its changes.
"The world has gone past me. I don't blame
it; but I no longer understand it. Trådesmen
are not the same as they used to be, apprentices
are not the same, business is not the same,
business commodities are not the same. Seven-
eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an
old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a
street that is not the same as I remember it. I
have fallen behind the time, and am too old to
catch it again. Even the noise it makes a long way
ahead, confuses me."-Dombey & Son. Chap. 4.
TOBACCO-CHEWING-In America.
As Washington may be called the head-quar-
ters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come
when I must confess, without any disguise, that
TOBACCO
482
the prevalence of those two odious practices of
chewing and expectorating began about this
time to be anything but agreeable, and soon be-
came most offensive and sickening. In all the
public places of America this filthy custom is
recognized. In the courts of law the judge has
his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and
the prisoner his; while the jurymen and spec-
tators are provided for, as so many men who in the
course of nature must desire to spit incessantly.
In the hospitals the students of medicine are
requested, by notices upon the wall, to eject
their tobacco-juice into the boxes provided for
that purpose, and not to discolor the stairs. In
public buildings, visitors are implored, through
the same agency, to squirt the essence of their
quids, or "plugs," as I have heard them called
by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweet-
meat, into the national spittoons, and not about
the bases of the marble columns. But in some
parts this custom is inseparably mixed up with
every meal and morning call, and with all the
transactions of social life. The stranger who
follows in the track I took myself will find it in
its full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its
alarming recklessness, at Washington. And let
him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my
shame), that previous tourists have exaggerated
its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration
of nastiness which cannot be outdone.
On board this steamboat there were two young
gentlemen, with shirt-collars reversed as usual,
and armed with very big walking-sticks, who
planted two seats in the middle of the deck, at
a distance of some four paces apart, took out
their tobacco-boxes, and sat down opposite each
other to chew. In less than a quarter of an
hour's time, these hopeful youths had shed about
them on the clean boards a copious shower of
yellow rain; clearing, by that means, a kind of
magic circle, within whose limits no intruders
dared to come, and which they never failed to
refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry.
This, being before breakfast, rather disposed
me, I confess, to nausea; but looking atten-
tively at one of the expectorators, I plainly saw
that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly
uneasy himself. A glow of delight came over
me at this discovery; and as I marked his face
turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco
in his left cheek quiver with his suppressed
agony, while yet he spat and chewed and spat
again, in emulation of his older friend, I could
have fallen on his neck and implored him to go
on for hours.-American Notes, Chap. 8.
TOBACCO-Its use in America.
The Senate is a dignified and decorous body,
and its proceedings are conducted with much
gravity and order. Both houses are handsomely
carpeted; but the state to which these carpets
are reduced by the universal disregard of the
spittoon with which every honorable member
is accommodated, and the extraordinary im-
provements on the patterns which are squirted
and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not
admit of being described. I will merely ob-
serve, that I strongly recommend all strangers
not to look at the floor; and if they happen to
drop anything, though it be their purse, not to
pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account.
It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say
the least, to see so many honorable members
|
TOILETTE
with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less re-
markable to discover that this appearance is
caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive
to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is
strange enough, too, to see an honorable gentle-
man leaning back in his tilted chair, with his
legs on the desk before him, shaping a conve-
nient "plug" with his penknife, and when it is
quite ready for use, shooting the old one from
his mouth, as from a popgun, and clapping the
new one in in its place.
I was surprised to observe that even steady
old chewers of great experience are not always
good marksmen, which has rather inclined me
to doubt that general proficiency with the rifle
of which we have heard so much in England.
Several gentlemen called upon me who, in the
course of conversation, frequently missed the
spittoon at five paces, and one (but he was cer-
tainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for
the open window, at three. On another occa-
sion, when I dined out, and was sitting with two
ladies and some gentlemen round a fire before
dinner, one of the company fell short of the
fireplace, six distinct times. I am disposed to
think, however, that this was occasioned by his
not aiming at that object, as there was a white
marble hearth before the fender, which was
more convenient, and may have suited his pur
pose better.-American Notes, Chap. 8.
*
*
*
*
Either they carry their restlessness to such a
pitch that they never sleep at all, or they expec-
torate in dreams, which would be a remarkable
mingling of the real and ideal. All night long,
and every night, on this canal, there was a per-
fect storm and tempest of spitting; and once,
my coat being in the very centre of a hurricane
sustained by five gentlemen (which moved ver-
tically, strictly carrying out Reid's Theory of the
Law of Storms), I was fain the next morning to
lay it on the deck, and rub it down with fair
water before it was in a condition to be worn
again.-American Notes, Chap. 10.
TOILETTE-A boy's.
With that, she pounced on me, like an eagle
on a lamb, and my face was squeezed into
wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put
under taps of water-butts, and I was soaped,
and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped, and
harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite
beside myself. (I may here remark that I sup-
pose myself to be better acquainted than any
living authority, with the ridgy effect of a wed-
ding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the
human countenance.)
When my ablutions were completed, I was
put into clean linen of the stiffest character, like
a young penitent into sack-cloth, and was truss-
ed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I
was then delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook,
who formally received me as if he were the
sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that
I knew he had been dying to make all along:
"Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but especi
ally unto them which brought you up by hand!"
Good-by, Joe!"
"God bless you, Pip, old chap!
I had never parted from him before, and what
with my feelings and what with soap-suds, 【
could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart,
Great Expectations, Chap. 7.
TOILETTE
TOILETTE-Of Miss Tippins.
483
How the fascinating Tippins gets on when
arraying herself for the bewilderment of the
senses of men, is known only to the Graces and
her maid; but perhaps even that engaging crea-
ture, though not reduced to the self-dependence
of Twemlow, could dispense with a good deal of
the trouble attendant on the daily restoration of
her charms, seeing that as to her face and neck
this adorable divinity is, as it were, a diurnal
species of lobster-throwing off a shell every
forenoon, and needing to keep in a retired spot
until the new crust hardens.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 16.
TOLERATION.
What a mighty pleasant virtue toleration
should be when we are right, to be so very plea-
sant when we are wrong, and quite unable to
demonstrate how we came to be invested with
the privilege of exercising it!
TOMBSTONES.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 5.
The court brought them to a churchyard; a
paved square court, with a raised bank of earth
about breast high, in the middle, enclosed by
iron rails. Here, conveniently and healthfully
elevated above the level of the living, were the
dead, and the tombstones; some of the latter
droopingly inclined from the perpendicular, as
if they were ashamed of the lies they told.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 15.
TOURISTS-English.
Mr. Davis always had a snuff-colored great-
coat on, and carried a great green umbrella in
his hand, and had a slow curiosity constantly
devouring him, which prompted him to do ex-
traordinary things, such as taking the covers off
urns in tombs, and looking in at the ashes as if
they were pickles and tracing out inscriptions
with the ferule of his umbrella, and saying,
with intense thoughtfulness, “Here's a B you
see, and there's a Ř, and this is the way we goes
on in; is it!" His antiquarian habits occasion-
ed his being frequently in the rear of the rest;
and one of the agonies of Mrs. Davis, and the
party in general, was an ever-present fear that
Davis would be lost. This caused them to
scream for him, in the strangest places, and at
the most improper seasons. And when he came,
slowly emerging out of some Sepulchre or other,
like a peaceful Ghoule, saying, "Here I am!
Mrs. Davis invariably replied, "You'll be buried
alive in a foreign country, Davis, and it's no use
trying to prevent you!"
Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, pro-
bably, been brought from London in about nine
or ten days. Eighteen hundred years ago, the
Roman legions under Claudius protested against
being led into Mr. and Mrs. Davis's country,
urging that it lay beyond the limits of the
world.-Pictures from Italy.
TOURISTS.
The whole body of travellers seemed to be a
collection of voluntary human sacrifices, bound
hand and foot, and delivered over to Mr. Eustace
and his attendants, to have the entrails of their
intellects arranged according to the taste of that
sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains
of temples and tombs and palaces and senate
TOWN AND COUNTRY
halls and theatres and amphitheatres of ancient
days, hosts of tongue-tied and blindfolded mo
derns were carefully feeling their way, inces
santly repeating Prunes and Prism, in the en
deavor to set their lips according to the received
form. Mrs. General was in her pure element.
Nobody had an opinion. There was a forma-
tion of surface going on around her on an
amazing scale, and it had not a flaw of courage
or honest free speech in it.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 7
TOWN AND COUNTRY SCENERY—The
journey of Little Nell.
She felt that to bid farewell to anybody now,
and most of all to him who had been so faithful
and so true, was more than she could bear. It
was enough to leave dumb things behind, and
objects that were insensible both to her love
and sorrow. To have parted from her only
other friend upon the threshold of that wild
journey, would have wrung her heart indeed.
Why is it that we can better bear to part in
spirit than in body, and while we have the for-
titude to act farewell, have not the nerve to say
it? On the eve of long voyages or an absence
of many years, friends who are tenderly attached
will separate with the usual look, the usual press-
ure of the hand, planning one final interview
for the morrow, while each well knows that it is
but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that
one word, and that the meeting will never be.
Should possibilities be worse to bear than cer-
tainties? We do not shun our dying friends
the not having distinctly taken leave of one
among them, whom we left in all kindness and
affection, will often embitter the whole remain-
der of a life.
The town was glad with morning light; places
that had shown ugly and distrustful all night
long, now wore a smile; and sparkling sunbeams
dancing on chamber windows, and twinkling
through blind and curtain before sleepers' eyes,
shed light even into dreams, and chased away
the shadows of the night. Birds in hot rooms,
covered up close and dark, felt it was morning,
and chafed and grew restless in their little cells;
bright-eyed mice crept back to their tiny homes
and nestled timidly together; the sleek house-
cat, forgetful of her prey, sat winking at the
rays of sun starting through keyhole and cran-
ny of the door, and longed for her stealthy run
and warm sleek bask outside. The nobler
beasts confined in dens, stood motionless be-
hind their bars, and gazed on fluttering boughs,
and sunshine peeping through some little win-
dow, with eyes in which old forests gleamed-
then trod impatiently the track their prisoned
feet had worn-and stopped and gazed again.
Men in their dungeons stretched their cramp
cold limbs and cursed the stone that no bright
sky could warm. The flowers that slept by night,
opened their gentle eyes and turned them to the
day. The light, creation's mind, was every-
where, and all things owned its power.
The two pilgrims, often pressing each other's
hands, or exchanging a smile or cheerful look,
pursued their way in silence. Bright and happy
as it was, there was something solemn in the
long, deserted streets, from which, like bodies
without souls, all habitual character and expres-
sion had departed, leaving but one dead uni-
form repose, that made them all alike.
All was
2
TOWN AND COUNTRY
so still at that early hour, that the few pale peo-
ple whom they met seemed as much unsuited to
the scene, as the sickly lamp which had been
here and there left burning, was powerless and
faint in the full glory of the sun.
484
TOWN
grass and oyster-shells, heaped in rar.k confu
sion-small dissenting chapels to teach, with no
lack of illustration, the miseries of Earth, and
plenty of new churches, erected with a little
superfluous wealth, to show the way to Heaven.
Then came
a
Before they had penetrated very far into the At length these streets becoming more strag-
labyrinth of men's abodes which yet lay between gling yet, dwindled and dwindled away, until
them and the outskirts, this aspect began to melt there were only small garden-patches bordering
away, and noise and bustle to usurp its place. the road, with many a summer-house innocent
Some straggling carts and coaches rumbling by, of paint and built of old timber or some frag-
first broke the charm, then others came, then ments of a boat, green as the tough cabbage-
others yet more active, then a crowd. The won- stalks that grew about it, and grottoed at the
der was, at first, to see a tradesman's room win-seams with toad-stools and tight-sticking snails.
dow open, but it was a rare thing to see one To these succeeded pert cottages, two and two,
closed; then, smoke rose slowly from the chim- with plots of ground in front, laid out in angu-
neys, and sashes were thrown up to let in air, lar beds with stiff box borders and narrow
and doors were opened, and servant girls, look-paths between, where footstep never strayed to
ing lazily in all directions but their brooms, make the gravel rough. Then came the public-
scattered brown clouds of dust into the eyes of house, freshly painted in green and white,
shrinking passengers, or listened disconsolately with tea-gardens and a bowling-green, spurn-
to milkmen who spoke of country fairs,and told of ing its old neighbor with the horse-trough
wagons in the mews, with awnings and all things where the wagons stopped; then, fields; and
complete, and gallant swains to boot, which then, some houses, one by one, of goodly size
another hour would see upon their journey.
with lawns, some even with a lodge where
This quarter passed, they came upon the dwelt a porter and his wife.
haunts of commerce and great traffic, where turnpike; then, fields again with trees and hay-
many people were resorting, and business was stacks; then, a hill; and on the top of that,
already rife. The old man looked about him the traveller might stop, and-looking back at
with a startled and bewildered gaze, for these old Saint Paul's looming through the smoke
were places that he hoped to shun. He pressed its cross peeping above the cloud (if the day
his finger on his lip, and drew the child along were clear), and glittering in the sun; and
by narrow courts and winding ways, nor did he casting his eyes upon the Babel out of which it
seem at ease until they had left it far behind, grew until he traced it down to the furthest
often casting a backward look towards it, mur-outposts of the invading army of bricks and
muring that ruin and self-murder were crouch-mortar whose station lay for the present nearly
ing in every street, and would follow if they at his feet-might feel at last that he was clear
scented them; and that they could not fly too fast. of London.
Again, this quarter passed, they came upon a Near such a spot as this, and in a pleasant
straggling neighborhood, where the mean houses field, the old man and his little guide (if guide
parcelled off in rooms, and windows patched she were, who knew not whither they were
with rags and paper, told of the populous pov-bound) sat down to rest. She had had the
erty that sheltered there. The shops sold goods caution to furnish her basket with some slices
that only poverty could buy, and sellers and of bread and meat, and here they made their
buyers were pinched and griped alike. Here frugal breakfast.
were poor streets where faded gentility essayed
with scanty space and shipwrecked means to
make its last feeble stand, but tax-gatherer and
creditor came there as elsewhere, and the pov-
erty that yet faintly struggled was hardly less
squalid and manifest than that which had long
ago submitted and given up the game.
pre-
The freshness of the day, the singing of the
birds, the beauty of the waving grass, the deep
green leaves, the wild flowers, and the thous-
and exquisite scents and sounds that floated in
the air,-deep joys to most of us, but most of
all to those whose life is in a crowd or who live
solitarily in great cities as in the bucket of a
human well,-sunk into their breasts and made
them very glad. The child had repeated her
artless prayers once that morning, more earn
estly perhaps than she had ever done in all
her life, but as she felt all this, they rose to her
lips again. The old man took off his hat-he
had no memory for the words-but he said
amen, and that they were very good.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 15.
TOWN-A factory.
This was a wide, wide track-for the humble
followers of the camp of wealth pitch their tents
round about it for many a mile-but its charac-
ter was still the same. Damp, rotten houses,
many to let, many yet building, many half-built
and mouldering away-lodgings, where it would
be hard to tell which needed pity most, those
who let or those who came to take-children,
scantily fed and clothed, spread over every street,
and sprawling in the dust-scolding mothers,
stamping their slipshod feet with noisy threats
upon the pavement-shabby fathers, hurrying A long suburb of red brick houses,—some
with dispirited looks to the occupation which with patches of garden-ground, where coal-dust
brought them "daily bread,” and little more- and factory-smoke darkened the shrinking leaves,
mangling-women, washerwomen, cobblers, tai- and coarse, rank flowers, and where the strug-
lors, chandlers, driving their trades in parlors gling vegetation sickened and sank under the
and kitchens and back rooms and garrets, and hot breath of kiln and furnace, making them by
sometimes all of them under the same roof-its presence seem yet more blighting and un-
brick-fields skirting gardens paled with staves
of old casks, or timber pillaged from houses
burned down, and blackened and blistered by
the flames—mounds of dock-weed, nettles, coarse
wholesome than in the town itself,—a long, flat,
straggling suburb passed, they came, by slow
degrees, upon a cheerless region, where not a
blade of grass was seen to grow, where not a
TOWNS
485
bud put forth its premise in the spring, where
nothing green could live but on the surface of
the stagnant pools, which here and there lay
idly sweltering by the black road-side.
TOWN
"The consumption of tobacco in these towns
(continues Mr. Pickwick) must be very great;
and the smell which pervades the streets must
be exceedingly delicious to those who are ex-
tremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller
might object to the dirt which is their leading
characteristic; but to those who view it as an
indication of traffic and commercial prosperity
it is truly gratifying."-Pickwick, Chap. 2.
TOWN-Approach to a manufacturing.
says Mr. Pickwick, "appear to be soldiers, sail
ors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard
men. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale
in the public streets are marine stores, hard-
Advancing more and more into the shadow bake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters. The streets
of this mournful place, its dark depressing in- present a lively and animated appearance, occa-
fluence stole upon their spirits, and filled them sioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military.
with a dismal gloom. On every side, and far as It is truly delightful to a philanthropic mind, to
the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall see these gallant men staggering along under
chimneys, crowding on each other, and present- the influence of an overflow, poth of animal
ing that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly and ardent spirits; more especially when we
form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, remember that the following them about, and
poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the jesting with them, affords a cheap and innocent
light, and made foul the melancholy air. On amusement for the boy population. Nothing
mounds of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only (adds Mr. Pickwick) can exceed their good hu-
by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house mor. It was but the day before my arrival that
roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like one of them had been most grossly insulted in
tortured creatures; clanking their iron chains, the house of a publican. The bar-maid had
shrieking in their rapid whirl from time to time positively refused to draw him any more liquor;
as though in torment unendurable, and making in return for which he had (merely in playful-
the ground tremble with their agonies. Dis-ness) drawn his bayonet, and wounded the girl
mantled houses here and there appeared, tot- in the shoulder. And yet this fine fellow was
tering to the earth, propped up by fragments of the very first to go down to the house next
others that had fallen down, unroofed, window-morning, and express his readiness to overlook
less, blackened, desolate, but yet inhabited. the matter, and forget what had occurred.
Men, women, children, wan in their looks and
ragged in attire, tended the engines, fed their
tributary fire, begged upon the road, or scowled
half-naked from the doorless houses. Then,
came more of the wrathful monsters, whose like
they almost seemed to be in their wildness and
their untamed air, screeching and turning round
and round again; and still, before, behind, and
to the right and left, was the same interminable
perspective of brick towers, never ceasing in
their black vomit, blasting all things living or in-
animate, shutting out the face of day, and closing
in on all these horrors with a dense dark cloud.
But, night-time in this dreadful spot !-night,
when the smoke was changed to fire; when
every chimney spirted up its flame; and places
that had been dark vaults all day, now shone
red-hot, with figures moving to and fro within
their blazing jaws, and calling to one another
with hoarse cries-night, when the noise of
every strange machine was aggravated by the
darkness; when the people near them looked
wilder and more savage; when bands of unem-
ployed laborers paraded the roads, or clustered
by torch-light round their leaders, who told
them, in stern language, of their wrongs, and
urged them on to frightful cries and threats;
when maddened men, armed with sword and
firebrand, spurning the tears and prayers of
women who would restrain them, rushed forth
on errands of terror and destruction, to work no
ruin half so surely as their own-night, when
carts came rumbling by, filled with rude coffins
(for contagious disease and death had been busy
with the living crops); when orphans cried, and
distracted women shrieked and followed in their
wake-night, when some called for bread, and
some for drink to drown their cares, and some
with tears, and some with staggering feet, and
some with bloodshot eyes, went brooding home
-night, which, unlike the night that Heaven
sends on earth, brought with it no peace, nor
quiet, nor signs of blessed sleep-who shall tell
the terrors of the night to the young wandering
child-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 45.
TOWNS-Pickwick's description of.
"The principal productions of these towns,"
They had, for some time, been gradually ap-
proaching the place for which they were bound.
The water had become thicker and dirtier;
other barges, coming from it, passed them fre-
quently; the paths of coal-ash and huts of star-
ing brick, marked the vicinity of some great
manufacturing town; while scattered streets
and houses, and smoke from distant furnaces,
indicated that they were already in the out-
skirts. Now, the clustered roofs, and piles of
buildings, trembling with the working of en-
gines, and dimly resounding with their shrieks
and throbbings; the tall chimneys vomiting
forth a black vapor, which hung in a dense ill-
favored cloud above the housetops and filled the
air with gloom; the clank of hammers beating
upon iron, the roar of busy streets and noisy
crowds, gradually augmenting until all the va-
rious sounds blended into one and none was
distinguishable for itself, announced the termina-
tion of their journey.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 43.
TOWN-A lazy.
It was a pretty large town, with an open
square which they were crawling slowly across,
and in the middle of which was the Town-Hall,
with a clock-tower and a weather-cock. There
were houses of stone, houses of red brick,
houses of yellow brick, houses of lath and plas
ter; and houses of wood, many of them very
old, with withered faces carved upon the beams,
and staring down into the street. These had
very little winking windows, and low-arched
doors, and, in some of the narrower ways, quite
overhung the pavement. The streets were
very clean, very sunny, very empty, and very
TOY-MAKER
dull. A few idle men lounged about the two
inns, and the empty market-place, and the
tradesmen's doors, and some old people were
dozing in chairs outside an alms-house wall;
but scarcely any passengers who seemed bent
on going anywhere, or to have any object in
view, went by; and if perchance some straggler
did, his footsteps echoed on the hot bright
pavement for minutes afterwards. Nothing
seemed to be going on but the clocks, and they
had such drowsy faces, such heavy lazy hands,
and such cracked voices, that they surely must
have been too slow. The very dogs were all
asleep, and the flies, drunk with moist sugar in
the grocer's shop, forgot their wings and brisk-
ness, and baked to death in dusty corners of
the window.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 28.
TOY-MAKER-His home.
486
TRANSCENDENTALISM
tape, and coming down, head first, on the other
side; and there were innumerable old gentle.
men of respectable, not to say venerable appear.
ance, insanely flying over horizontal pegs, in
serted, for the purpose, in their own street doors.
There were beasts of all sorts; horses, in parti-
cular, of every breed, from the spotted barrel on
four pegs, with a small tippet for a mane, to
the thoroughbred rocker on his highest mettle.
As it would have been hard to count the dozens
upon dozens of grotesque figures that were ever
ready to commit all sorts of absurdities on the
turning of a handle, so it would have been no
easy task to mention any human folly, vice, or
weakness, that had not its type, immediate or
remote, in Caleb Plummer's room. And not in
an exaggerated form, for very little handles will
move men and women to as strange perform-
ances as any Toy was ever made to undertake.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
TRADES-The eccentricity of.
Caleb and his daughter were at work togeth-
er in their usual working-room, which served
them for their ordinary living-room as well;
and a strange place it was. There were houses We will cite two or three cases in illustration
in it, finished and unfinished, for Dolls of all of our meaning. Six or eight years ago, the epi
stations in life. Suburban tenements for Dolls demic began to display itself among the linen-
of moderate means; kitchens and single apart-drapers and haberdashers. The primary symp-
ments for Dolls of the lower classes; capital toms were an inordinate love of plate-glass, and
town residences for Dolls of high estate. Some | a passion for gas-lights and gilding. The lis-
of these establishments were already furnished ease gradually progressed, and at last attained
according to estimate, with a view to the con- a fearful height. Quiet dusty old shops in
venience of Dolls of limited income; others different parts of town, were pulled down;
could be fitted on the most expensive scale, at a spacious premises with stuccoed fronts and gold
moment's notice, from whole shelves of chairs letters, were erected instead; floors were cover-
and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and upholstery. ed with Turkey carpets; roofs, supported by
The nobility and gentry and public in general, massive pillars; doors, knocked into windows
for whose accommodation these tenements were a dozen squares of glass into one; one shop
designed, lay, here and there, in baskets, staring man into a dozen; and there is no knowing
straight up at the ceiling; but, in denoting their what would have been done, if it had not been
degrees in society, and confining them to their fortunately discovered just in time, that the
respective stations (which experience shows to Commissioners of Bankrupts were as compe-
be lamentably difficult in real life), the makers tent to decide such cases as the Commissioners
of these Dolls had far improved on Nature, who of Lunacy, and that a little confinement and
is often froward and perverse; for they, not gentle examination did wonders. The disease
resting on such arbitrary marks as satin, cotton- abated. It died away. A year or two of com-
print, and bits of rag, had superadded striking | parative tranquillity ensued. Suddenly it burst
personal differences which allowed of no mis- out again among the chemists; the symp-
take. Thus the Doll-lady of distinction had toms were the same, with the addition of a
wax limbs of perfect symmetry; but only she strong desire to stick the royal arms over the
and her compeers. The next grade in the so- shop-door, and a great rage for mahogany, var-
cial scale being made of leather, and the next of nish, and expensive floor-cloth. Then the ho-
coarse linen stuff. As to the common-people, siers were infected, and began to pull down their
they had just so many matches out of tinder-shop-fronts with frantic recklessness.
boxes, for their arms and legs, and there they
were-established in their sphere at once, be-
yond the possibility of getting out of it.
The
mania again died away, and the public began to
congratulate themselves on its entire disappear-
ance, 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 illumi-
There were various other samples of his handi-
craft besides Dolls, in Caleb Plummer's room.
There were Noah's Arks, in which the Birds
and Beasts were an uncommonly tight fit, I assure
you; though they could be crammed in, any-
how, at the roof, and rattled and shaken into the
smallest compass. By a bold poetical license,
most of these Noah's Arks had knockers on the
doors; inconsistent appendages perhaps, as sug-nated clocks, at the corner of every street.
gestive of morning callers and a Postman, yet a
pleasant finish to the outside of the building.
There were scores of melancholy little carts, TRANSCENDENTALISM-In America
which, when the wheels went round, performed
most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums,
and other instruments of torture; no end of
cannon, shields, swords, spears, and guns.
There were little tumblers in red breeches, in-
cessantly swarming up high obstacles of red
Scenes, Chap. 22
The fruits of the earth have their growth in
corruption. Out of the rottenness of these
things there has sprung up in Boston a sect of
philosophers known as Transcendentalists. On
inquiring what this appellation might be sup.
posed to signify, I was given to understand
TRAVEL
487
that whatever was unintelligible would be cer-
tainly transcendental. Not deriving much com-
fort from this elucidation, I pursued the inquiry
still further, and found that the Transcendental-
ists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or, I
should rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph
Waldo Emerson. This gentleman has written
a volume of Essays, in which, among much that
is dreamy and fanciful (if he will pardon me for
saying so), there is much more that is true and
manly, honest and bold. Transcendentalism
has its occasional vagaries (what school has
not?), but it has good healthful qualities in spite
of them; not least among the number a hearty
disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to detect her
in all the million varieties of her everlasting
wardrobe. And therefore, if I were a Boston-
ian, I think I would be a Transcendentalist.
American Notes, Chap. 3.
TRAVEL
plough-birds in the trees and hedges, and boys
in solitary fields, frightening them away with
rattles. The coming to a town-people busy
in the markets; light carts and chaises round
the tavern yard; tradesmen standing at their
doors; men running horses up and down the
street for sale; pigs plunging and grunting in
the dirty distance, getting off with long strings
at their legs, running into clean chemists' shops
and being dislodged with brooms by 'prentices;
the night coach changing horses-the passen-
gers cheerless, cold, ugly, and discontented, with
three months' growth of hair in one night-the
coachman fresh as from a band-box, and exquis-
itely beautiful by contrast-so much bustle,
so many things in motion, such a variety of in-
cidents-when was there a journey with so many
delights as that journey in the wagon?
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 46
TRAVEL-Scenes of.
TRAVEL-The attractions of highway.
What a soothing, luxurious, drowsy way of Among the day's unrealities would be roads
travelling, to lie inside that slowly-moving moun- where the bright red vines were looped and
tain, listening to the tinkling of the horses' bells, garlanded together on trees for many miles;
the occasional smacking of the carter's whip, the woods of olives; white villages and towns on
smooth rolling of the great broad wheels, the hill-sides, lovely without, but frightful in their
rattle of the harness, the cheery good-nights of dirt and poverty within; crosses by the way;
passing travellers jogging past on little short-deep blue lakes with fairy islands, and cluster-
stepped horses-all made pleasantly indistinct ing boats with awnings of bright colors and
by the thick awning, which seemed made for sails of beautiful forms; vast piles of building
lazy listening under, till one fell asleep! The mouldering to dust; hanging-gardens where
very going to sleep, still with an indistinct idea, the weeds had grown so strong that their stems,
as the head jogged to and fro upon the pillow, like wedges driven home, had split the arch and
of moving onward with no trouble or fatigue, rent the wall; stone-terraced lanes, with the
and hearing all these sounds like dreamy music, lizards running into and out of every chink;
lulling to the senses-and the slow waking up, beggars of all sorts everywhere: pitiful, pictur-
and finding one's self staring out through the esque, hungry, merry: children beggars and
breezy curtain half-opened in the front, far up aged beggars. Often, at posting-houses, and
into the cold bright sky with its countless stars, other halting-places, these miserable creatures
and downward at the driver's lantern, dancing would appear to her the only realities of the
on like its namesake Jack of the swamps and day; and many a time, when the money she
marshes, and sideways at the dark grim trees, had brought to give them was all given away,
and forward at the long bare road, rising up, she would sit with her folded hands, thought-
up, up, until it stopped abruptly at a sharp high fully looking after some diminutive girl leading
ridge as if there were no more road, and all be- her gray father, as if the sight reminded her of
yond was sky-and the stopping at the inn to something in the days that were gone.
bait, and being helped out, and going into a
room with fire and candles, and winking very
much, and being agreeably reminded that the
night was cold, and anxious for very comfort's
sake to think it colder than it was!-What a
delicious journey was that journey in the wagon.
Then the going on again-so fresh at first,
and shortly afterwards so sleepy. The waking
from a sound nap as the mail came dashing past
like a highway comet, with gleaming lamps and
rattling hoofs, and visions of a guard behind,
standing up to keep his feet warm, and of a gen-
tleman in a fur cap opening his eyes and look-
ing wild and stupefied-the stopping at the
turnpike, where the man was gone to bed, and
knocking at the door until he answered with a
smothered shout from under the bed-clothes in
the little room above, where the faint light was
burning, and presently came down, night-capped
and shivering, to throw the gate wide open, and
wish all wagons off the road except by day.
The cold sharp interval between night and
morning—the distant streak of light widening
and spreading, and turning from gray to white,
and from white to yellow, and from yellow to
burning red-the presence of day, with all its
cheerfulness and life-men and horses at the
Again, there would be places where they
stayed the week together, in splendid rooms,
had banquets every day, rode out among heaps
of wonders, walked through miles of palaces
and rested in dark corners of great churches ;
where there were winking lamps of gold and
silver among pillars and arches; kneeling fig-
ures dotted about at confessionals and on the
pavements; where there was the mist and scent
of incense; where there were pictures, fantas-
tic images, gaudy altars, great heights and dis-
tances, all softly lighted through stained glass,
and the massive curtains that hung in the door-
ways. From these cities they would go on
again, by the roads of vines and olives, through
squalid villages where there was not a hovel
without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window
with a whole inch of glass or paper; where
there seemed to be nothing to support life,
nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to
grow, nothing to hope, nothing to do but die.
Again, they would come to whole towns of
palaces, whose proper inmates were all banish-
ed, and which were all changed into barracks:
troops of idle soldiers leaning out of the state-
windows, where their accoutrements hung dry.
ing on the marble architecture, and showing
TRAVEL
488
TRAVEL
of the boat. The sea makes noises against the
pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at
it, and were prevented by circumstances over
which they had no control from drinking peace-
ably. We, the hoat, become violently agitated,
to the mind like hosts of rats who were happily
eating away the props of the edifices that sup-
ported them, and must soon, with them, be
smashed on the heads of the other swarms of
soldiers, and the swarms of priests, and the
swarms of spies, who were all the ill-looking-rumble, hum, cream, roar, and establish an
population left to be ruined, in the streets below.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 3.
TRAVEL-The associations of.
immense family washing-day at each paddle-
box. Bright patches break out in the train as
the doors of the post-office vans are opened;
and instantly stoo ing figures with sacks upon
their backs begin be beheld among the piles,
descending, as it would seem, in ghostly pro-
cession to Davy Jones's Locker. The passen-
gers come on boa d,-a few shadowy French
men, with hat-boxes, shaped like the stoppers
of gigantic case-boi les; a few shadowy Germans
in immense fur coa and boots; a few shadowy
Englishmen prepared for the worst, and pre-
tending not to exper: it. I cannot disguise from
my uncommercial rind the miserable fact that
we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants
on us are as scant in number as may serve to
get rid of us with the least possible delay; that
there are no night-lo ingers interested in us;
that the unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at
us; that the sole object is to commit us to the
deep and abandon us Lo, the two red eyes
glaring in increasing distance, and then the very
train itself has gone to bed before we are off.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 17.
When the wind is blowing and the sleet or
rain is driving against the dark windows, I love
to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read
in books of voyage and travel. Such books
have had a strong fascination for my mind
from my earliest childhood; and I wonder it
should have come to pass that I never have
been round the world, never have been ship-
wrecked, ice-environed, tomahawked, or eaten.
Sitting on my ruddy hearth in the twilight
of New Year's Eve, I find incidents of travel
rise around me from all the latitudes and longi-
tudes of the globe. They observe no order or
sequence, but appear and vanish as they will
come like shadows, so depart." Columbus,
alone upon the sea with his disaffected crew,
looks over the waste of waters from his high sta-
tion on the poop of his ship, and sees the first
uncertain glimmer of the light, "rising and fall-
ing with the waves, like a torch in the bark
of some fisherman," which is the shining star of
a new world. Bruce is caged in Abyssinia, sur- TRAVEL-Preparations for.
rounded by the gory horrors which shall often
startle him out of his sleep at home when years
have passed away. Franklin, come to the end
of his unhappy overland journey—would that it
had been his last!-lies perishing of hunger
with his brave companions: each emaciated
figure stretched upon its miserable bed without
the power to rise: all dividing the weary days
between their prayers, their remembrances of
the dear ones at home, and conversation on the
pleasures of eating; the last-named topic being
ever present to them, likewise, in their dreams.
All the African travellers, way-worn, solitary,
and sad, submit themselves again to drunken,
murderous, man-selling despots, of the lowest
order of humanity; and Mungo Park, fainting
under a tree and succored by a woman, grate-
fully remembers how his Good Samaritan has
always come to him in woman's shape, the wide
world over.
The Long Voyage. Reprinted Pieces.
TRAVEL-Experiences of.
As I wait here on board the night packet for
the South Eastern Train to come down with
the Mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated
for some intensely aggravating festivity in my
personal dishonor. All its noises smack of
taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of
the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The
drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I
know they would rattle taunts against me for
having my unsteady footing on this slippery
deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine
Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if
with derision. The distant dogs of Dover bark
at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were
Richard the Third.
Who has not experienced the miseries inevi-
tably consequent upon a summons to under-
take a hasty journey? You receive an intima-
tion 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 immedi-
ately despatched to the washerwoman's; every-
body is in a bustle; and you, yourself, with a
feeling of dignity which you cannot altogether
conceal, sally forth to the booking-office to se-
cure your place. Here a painful consciousness
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 lum
bering 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 passen.
A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come glid-gers' names in the books with a coolness which
ing down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness is inexpressibly provoking; and the villain whis-
of notion rendered more smooth by the heaving tles-actually whistles-while a man asks him
TRAVELLING
489
what the fare is outside--all the way to Holy-
head!—in frosty weather, too! They are clearly
an isolated race, evidently possessing no sympa-
thies 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 whis-
tler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you have
just parted with, into a wooden bowl on the
desk. "Rather before than arter," adds the man
with the semi-roasted unmentionables, 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 home-
wards on the extent to which men become hard-
ened in cruelty, by custom.-Scenes, Chap. 15.
TRAVELLING-In imagination.
There are not many places that I find it more
agreeable to revisit, when I am in an idle mood,
than some places to which I have never been.
For my acquaintance with those spots is of such
long standing, and has ripened into an intimacy
of so affectionate a nature, that I take a particu-
lar interest in assuring myself that they are un-
changed.
|
*
*
TRAVELLERS
*
*
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 15.
TRAVELLER-Bagstock as a.
I
I was never in the robbers' cave, where Gil
Blas lived; but I often go back there and find
the trap-door just as heavy to raise as it used to
be while that wicked old disabled Black lies
everlastingly cursing in bed. I was never in
Don Quixote's study, where he read his books
of chivalry until he rose and hacked at imagin-
ary giants, and then refreshed himself with great
draughts of water; yet you couldn't move a
book in it without my knowledge or with my
consent. I was never (thank Heaven!) in com-
pany with the little old woman who hobbled
out of the chest, and told the merchant Abudah
to go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes ;
yet I make it my business to know that she is
well preserved and as intolerable as ever.
was never at the school where the boy Horatio
Nelson got out of bed to steal the pears, not be-
cause he wanted any, but because every other
boy was afraid; yet I have several times been
back to this Academy to see him let down out
of window with a sheet. So with Damascus,
and Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which has the
curious fate of being usually misspelt when
written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile,
and Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North
I never was in Robinson Crusoe's Islund, yet Pole, and many hundreds of places-I was
I frequently return there. The colony he estab- never at them; yet it is an affair of my life to
lished on it soon faded away, and it is unin-keep them intact, and I am always going
habited by any descendants of the grave and back to them.
courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the
other mutineers, and has relapsed into its origi-
nal condition. Not a twig of its wicker houses
remains, its goats have long run wild again, its
screaming parrots would darken the sun with a
cloud of many flaming colors if a gun were fired
there, no face is ever reflected in the waters of
the little creek which Friday swam across when
pursued by his two brother cannibals with
sharpened stomachs. After comparing notes
with other travellers who have similarly revisit-
ed the Island, and conscientiously inspected it,
I have satisfied myself that it contains no ves-
tige of Mr. Atkins's domesticity or theology;
though his track on the memorable evening of
his landing to set his captain ashore, when he
was decoyed about and round about until it was
dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength
and spirits failed him, is yet plainly to be traced.
So is the hill-top on which Robinson was struck
dumb with joy when the reinstated captain
pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of
the shore, that was to bear him away, in the
nine-and-twentieth year of his seclusion in that
lonely place. So is the sandy beach on which
the memorable footstep was impressed, and TRAVELLING-By twilight.
where the savages hauled up their canoes, when The savage herdsmen and the fierce-looking
they came ashore for those dreadful public din- peasants, who had chequered the way while the
ners, which led to a dancing worse than speech-light lasted, had all gone down with the sun,
making. So is the cave where the flaring eyes and left the wilderness blank. At some turns
of the old goat made such a goblin appearance of the road, a pale flare on the horizon, like an
in the dark. So is the site of the hut where exhalation from the ruin-sown land, showed that
Robinson lived with the dog, and the parrot, and the city was yet far off; but this poor relief was
the cat, and where he endured those first agonies rare and short-lived. The carriage dipped down
of solitude, which-strange to say-never in-again into a hollow of the black, dry sea, and
volved any ghostly fancies; a circumstance so for a long time there was nothing visible save
very remarkable, that perhaps he left out some- its petrified swell and the gloomy sky.
thing in writing his record? Round hundreds
of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical
The Native had previously packed, in all
possible and impossible parts of Mr. Dombey's
chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual quan-
tity of carpet-bags and small portmanteaus, no
less apoplectic in appearance than the Major
himself; and having filled his own pockets with
Seltzer water, East India sherry, sandwiches,
shawls, telescopes, maps, and newspapers, any
or all of which light baggage the Major might
require at any instant of the journey, he an-
nounced that everything was ready. To com-
plete the equipment of this unfortunate foreigner
(currently believed to be a prince in his own
country), when he took his seat in the rumble
by the side of Mr. Towlinson, a pile of the
Major's cloaks and great-coats was hurled upon
him by the landlord, who aimed at him from
the pavement with those great missiles like a
Titan, and so covered him up, that he proceeded
in a living tomb to the railroad station.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 19.
foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore; and TRAVELLERS-Unsociable.
over them the tropical sky, saving in the short
rainy season, shines bright and cloudless.
There are three meals a day. Breakfast at
seven, dinner at half past twelve, supper about
TRAVELLER
490
TREES
I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill;
when I come home from my journeys I never get
any commission. I know nothing about prices,
and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how
to wheedle a man into ordering something he
doesn't want. As a town traveller I am never
to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a
young and volatile piano-forte van, and internal-
ly like an oven in which a number of flat boxes
are baking in layers. As a country traveller I
am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to
be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on
the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid
in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.
And yet-proceeding now to introduce my-
self positively-I am both a town traveller and
country traveller, and am always on the road.
Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house
of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a
large connection in the fancy-goods way, Liter-
ally speaking, I am always wandering here and
there from my rooms in Covent Garden, Lon-
six. At each there are a great many small
dishes and plates upon the table, with very little
in them; so that, although there is every ap.
pearance of a mighty "spread," there is seldom
really more than a joint; except for those who
fancy slices of beet-roots, shreds of dried beef,
complicated entanglements of yellow pickle,
maize, Indian corn, apple-sauce, and pumpkin.
Some people fancy all these little dainties to-
gether (and sweet preserves beside), by way of
relish to their roast pig. They are generally
those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat
unheard-of quantities of hot corn-bread (almost
as good for the digestion as a kneaded pin-
cushion) for breakfast and for supper. Those
who do not observe this custom, and who help
themselves several times instead, usually suck
their knives and forks meditatively, until they
have decided what to take next; then pull them
out of their mouths, put them in the dish, help
themselves, and fall to work again. At dinner
there is nothing to drink upon the table, but
great jugs full of cold water. Nobody says any-don,-now about the city streets, now about the
thing at any meal to anybody. All the passen
gers are very dismal, and seem to have tremen-
dous secrets weighing on their minds. There is
no conversation, no laughter, no cheerfulness,
no sociality, except in spitting; and that is done
in silent fellowship round the stove when the
meal is over. Every man sits down, dull and
languid, swallows his fare as if breakfasts, din-
ners, and suppers were necessities of nature
never to be coupled with recreation or enjoy-
ment; and, having bolted his food in a gloomy
silence, bolts himself in the same state. But
for these animal observances, you might suppose
the whole male portion of the company to be
the melancholy ghosts of departed book-keepers,
who had fallen dead at the desk, such is their
weary air of business and calculation. Under-
takers on duty would be sprightly beside them;
and a collation of funeral-baked meats, in com-
parison with these meals, would be a sparkling
festivity.
The people are all alike, too. There is no di-
versity of character. They travel about on the
same errands, say and do the same things in ex-
actly the same manner, and follow in the same
dull, cheerless round. All down the long table
there is scarcely a man who is in anything differ-
ent from his neighbor. It is quite a relief to
have sitting opposite that little girl of fifteen
with the loquacious chin; who, to do her justice,
acts up to it, and fully identifies Nature's hand-
writing; for, of all the small chatter-boxes that
ever invaded the repose of drowsy ladies' cabins,
she is the first and foremost.
American Notes, Chap. 11.
TRAVELLER-The uncommercial.
Allow me to introduce myself-first, nega-
tively.
No landlord is my friend and brother, no
chambermaid loves me, no waiter worships me,
no boots admires and envies me. No round of
beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for
me, no pigeon pie is especially made for me, no
hotel advertisement is personally addressed to
me, no hotel-room tapestried with great coats
and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no
house of public entertainment in the United
Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its
brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys
country by-roads,-seeing many little things,
and some great things, which, because they in
terest me, I think may interest others.
These are are my brief credentials as the Un-
commercial Traveller.
TREES.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 1.
As the elms bent to one another, like giants
who were whispering secrets, and after a few
seconds of such repose, fell into a violent flurry,
tossing their wild arms about, as if their late
confidences were really too wicked for their
peace of mind, some weather-beaten, ragged old
rooks'-nests burdening their higher branches,
swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea.
David Copperfield, Chap. 1.
Some ancient trees before the house were still
cut into fashions as formal and unnatural as the
hoops and wigs and stiff skirts; but their own
allotted places in the great procession of the
dead were not far off, and they would soon drop
into them and go the silent way of the rest.
Great Expectations, Chap. 33.
The river has washed away its banks, and
stately trees have fallen down into the stream.
Some have been there so long that they are
mere dry, grisly skeletons. Some have just top-
pled over, and, having earth yet about their
roots, are bathing their green heads in the river,
and putting forth new shoots and branches,
Some are almost sliding down, as you look at
them. And some were drowned so long ago
that their bleached arms start out from the mid-
dle of the current, and seem to try to grasp the
boat, and drag it under water.
American Notes, Chap. II.
The gaunt trees, whose branches waved grim-
ly to and fro, as if in some fantastic joy at the
desolation of the scene.
Oliver Twist, Chap. 21.
The trunk of one large tree, on which the ob-
durate bark was knotted and overlapped like
the hide of a rhinoceros or some kindred mon
ster of the ancient days before the flood.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.
TREES
491
TWILIGHT
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 12.
The eye was pained to see the stumps of doubtful trumpet blown by fame has lustily re
great trees thickly strewn in every field of sounded. Doubtful, because from its long hov-
wheat, and seldom to lose the eternal swampering over scenes of violence, the smoke and
and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks steam of death have clogged the keys of tha:
and twisted branches steeped in its unwhole-brave instrument; and it is not always that its
some waters. It was quite sad and oppressive notes are either true or tuneful.
to come upon great tracts where settlers had
been burning down the trees, and where their
wounded bodies lay about, like those of mur-
dered creatures, while here and there some
charred and blackened giant reared aloft two
withered arms, and seemed to call down curses
and seemed to call down curses
on his foes.-American Notes, Chap. 10.
TREES-Dead American.
TRUTH-Its sacredness.
The bachelor, among his various occupations
found in the old church a constant source of in-
terest and amusement.
As he was not one of those rough spirits who
would strip fair Truth of every little shadowy
vestment in which time and teeming fancies love
pleasantly enough, serving, like the waters of
her well, to add new graces to the charms they
half conceal and half suggest, and to awaken
interest and pursuit rather than languor and
indifference—as, unlike this stern and obdurate
class, he loved to see the goddess crowned with
those garlands of wild-flowers which tradition
wreaths for her gentle wearing, and which are
often freshest in their homeliest shapes,-he
trod with a light step and bore with a light
hand upon the dust of centuries, unwilling to
| demolish any of the airy shrines that had been
raised above it, if any good feeling or affec-
tion of the human heart were hidden there-
abouts.
These stumps of trees are a curious feature into array her—and some of which become her
American travelling. The varying illusions they
present to the unaccustomed eye, as it grows
dark, are quite astonishing in their number and
reality. Now there is a Grecian urn erected in
the centre of a lonely field; now there is a
woman weeping at a tomb; now a very com-
monplace old gentleman in a white waistcoat,
with a thumb thrust into each armhole of his
coat; now a student poring on a book; now a
crouching negro; now a horse, a dog, a can-
non, an armed man, a hunchback throwing off
his cloak and stepping forth into the light.
They were often as entertaining to me as so
many glasses in a magic lantern, and never took
their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force
themselves upon me, whether I would or no;
and, strange to say, I sometimes recognized in
them counterparts of figures once familiar to me
in pictures attached to childish books forgotten
long ago.-American Notes, Chap. 14.
TREES-In a city.
Even in the winter-time, these groups of well-
grown trees, clustering among the busy streets
and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint
appearance, seeming to bring about a kind of
compromise between town and country, as if
each had met the other half-way, and shaken
hands upon it, which is at once novel and pleas-
ant.-American Notes, Chap. 5.
TROUBLE-Skimpole on taking.
"And why should you take trouble? Here
ain I, content to receive things childishly, as they
fall out and I never take trouble! I come
down here, for instance, and I find a mighty
potentate, exacting homage. Very well! I say
Mighty potentate, here is my homage! It's
easier to give it than to withhold it. Here it is.
If you have anything of an agreeable nature to
show me, I shall be happy to see it; if you have
anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I
shall be happy to accept it.' Mighty potentate
replies in effect, 'This is a sensible fellow. I
find him accord with my digestion and my
bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me
the necessity of rolling myself up like a hedge-
hog with my points outward. I expand, I open,
I turn my silver lining outward like Milton's
cloud, and it's more agreeable to both of us.'
That's my view of such things: speaking as a
child!"-Bleak House, Chap. 18.
TRUMPET-NOTES-Not always true.
It may have required a stronger effort to per-
form this smple act with a pure heart, than to
achieve many and many a deed to which the
*
*
*
*
*
In a word, he would have had every stone
and plate of brass, the monument only of deeds
whose memory should survive. All others he
was willing to forget. They might be buried in
consecrated ground, but he would have had
them buried deep, and never brought to light
again.—Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54.
TRUTH.
There is no playing fast and loose with the
truth, in any game, without growing the worse
for it.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6.
TRUTH-Not always welcome.
The truth has come out, as it plainly has, in a
manner that there's no standing up against-and
a very sublime and grand thing is truth, gentle-
men, in its way, though, like other sublime and
grand things, such as thunder-storms and that,
we're not always over and above glad to see it.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 66.
TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.
There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which
men mount, as on bright wings, towards heaven.
There are some truths, cold, bitter, taunting
truths, wherein your worldly scholars are very
apt and punctual, which bind men down to
earth with leaden chains. Who would not
rather have to fan him, in his dying hour, the
lightest feather of a falsehood such as thine,
than all the quills that have been plucked
from the sharp porcupine, reproachful truth,
since time began.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13.
TWILIGHT-In Summer.
It was one of those summer evenings when
there is no greater darkness than a long twi-
light. The vista of street and bridge was plain
to see, and the sky was serene and beautiful.
TWILIGHT
492
People stood and sat at their doors, playing with
children, and enjoying the evening; numbers
were walking for air: the worry of the day had
almost worried itself out, and few but themselves
were hurried. As they crossed the bridge, the
clear steeples of the many churches looked as if
they had advanced out of the murk that usually
enshrouded them, and come much nearer. The
smoke that rose into the sky had lost its dingy
hue and taken a brightness upon it. The beau-
ties of the sunset had not faded from the long,
light films of cloud that lay at peace in the
horizon. From a radiant centre, over the whole
length and breadth of the tranquil firmament,
great shoots of light streamed among the early
stars, like signs of the blessed later covenant
of peace and hope that changed the crown of
thorns into a glory.
TWILIGHT
were a cheerful sight. When the mill stopped,
the wheelwright and the blacksmith shut their
workshops, the turnpike-gate closed, the plough
and harrow were left lonely in the fields, the
laborer and team went home, and the striking
of the church clock had a deeper sound than at
noon, and the church-yard wicket would be
swung no more that night.
When twilight everywhere released the shad-
ows, prisoned up all day, that now closed in
and gathered like mustering swarms of ghosts.
When they stood lowering in corners of rooms,
and frowned out from behind half-opened doors.
When they had full possession of unoccupied
apartments. When they danced upon the floors,
and walls, and ceilings of inhabited chambers
while the fire was low, and withdrew like ebb-
ing waters when it sprung into a blaze. When
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 31. they fantastically mocked the shapes of house-
hold objects, making the nurse an ogress, the
TWILIGHT—Its scenes, shadows, and as-rocking-horse a monster, the wondering child,
sociations.
You should have seen him in his dwelling,
about twilight, in the dead winter-time.
When the wind was blowing, shrill and
shrewd, with the going down of the blurred sun.
When it was just so dark, as that the forms of
things were indistinct and big-but not wholly
lost. When sitters by the fire began to see
wild faces and figures, mountains and abysses,
ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When
people in the streets bent down their heads and
ran before the weather. When those who were
obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry cor-
ners, stung by wandering snow-flakes alighting
on the lashes of their eyes,-which fell too
sparingly, and were blown away too quickly, to
leave a trace upon the frozen ground. When
windows of private houses closed up tight and
warm. When lighted gas began to burst forth in
the busy and the quiet streets, fast blackening
otherwise. When stray pedestrians, shivering
along the latter, looked down at the glowing
fires in kitchens, and sharpened their sharp ap-
petites by sniffing up the fragrance of whole
miles of dinners.
When travellers by land were bitter cold, and
looked wearily on gloomy landscapes, rustling
and shuddering in the blast. When mariners
at sea, outlying upon icy yards, were tossed and
swung above the howling ocean dreadfully.
When light-houses, on rocks and headlands,
showed solitary and watchful; and benighted
seabirds breasted on against their ponderous lan-
terns, and fell dead.
When little readers of story-books, by the
fire-light, trembled to think of Cassim Baba cut
into quarters, hanging in the Robbers' Cave, or
had some small misgivings that the fierce little
old woman, with the crutch, who used to start
out of the box in the merchant Abudah's bed-
room, might, one of these nights, be found upon
the stairs, in the long, cold, dusky journey up to
bed.
half-scared and half-amused, a stranger to itself,
the very tongs upon the hearth a straddling
giant with his arms a-kimbo, evidently smelling
the blood of Englishmen, and wanting to grind
people's bones to make his bread.
When these shadows brought into the minds
of older people other thoughts, and showed them
different images. When they stole from their
retreats, in the likenesses of forms and faces
from the past, from the grave, from the deep,
deep gulf, where the things that might have
been, and never were, are always wandering.
When he sat, as already mentioned, gazing at
the fire. When, as it rose and fell, the shadows
went and came. When he took no heed of them,
with his bodily eyes; but, let them come or let
them go, looked fixedly at the fire. You should
have seen him, then.
When the sounds that had arisen with the
shadows, and come out of their lurking-places
at the twilight summons, seemed to make a
deeper stillness all about him. When the wind
was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes
crooning, sometimes howling, in the house.
When the old trees outward were so shaken
and beaten, that one querulous old rook, unable
to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble,
dozy, high-up, "Caw!" When, at intervals, the
window trembled, the rusty vane upon the tur-
ret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded
that another quarter of an hour was gone, or the
fire collapsed and fell in with a rattle.
Haunted Man, Chap. 1.
TWILIGHT.
The shudder of the dying day.
Great Expectations, Chap. 5.
TWILIGHT-A winter.
It is now twilight. The fire glows brightly
on the panelled wall, and palely on the win-
dow-glass, where, through the cold reflection of
the blaze, the colder landscape shudders in
the wind, and a gray mist creeps along-the
only traveller besides the waste of clouds.
Bleak House, Chap. 12.
When, in rustic places, the last glimmering of
daylight died away from the ends of avenues;
and the trees, arching overhead, were sullen
and black. When, in parks and woods, the
high wet fern, and sodden moss, and beds of fall- TWILIGHT-Evening scenes.
en leaves, and trunks of trees, were lost to
view, in masses of impenetrable shade. When
mists arose from dyke, and fen, and river.
When lights in old halls and in cottage windows
There were many little knots and groups of
persons in Westminster Hall: some few look
ing upward at its noble ceiling, and at the rays
of evening light, tinted by the setting sun,
TYRANNY
498
which streamed in aslant through its small win.
dows, and growing dimmer by degrees, were
quenched in the gathering gloom below; some,
UNDERTAKER
U
noisy passengers, mechanics going home from UNCONGENIALITY-In marriage.
work, and otherwise, who hurried quickly
Standing together, arm in arm, they had the
through, waking the echoes with their voices, appearance of being more divided than if seas
and soon darkening the small door in the dis-had rolled between them. There was a differ-
tance, as they passed into the street beyond; ence even in the pride of the two, that removed
some, in busy conference together on political them farther from each other, than if one had been
or private matters, pacing slowly up and down, the proudest, and the other the humblest spe-
with eyes that sought the ground, and seeming, cimen of humanity in all creation. He, self-
by their attitudes, to listen earnestly from head important, unbending, formal, austere. She,
to foot. Here, a dozen squabbling urchins lovely and graceful in an uncommon degree,
made a very Babel in the air; there, a solitary but totally regardless of herself and him and
man, half clerk, half mendicant, paced up and everything around, and spurning her own at-
down with hungry dejection in his look and tractions with her haughty brow and lip, as if
gait: at his elbow passed an errand-lad, swing- they were a badge or livery she hated. So un-
ing his basket round and round, and with his matched were they, and opposed; so forced and
shrill whistle riving the very timbers of the linked together by a chain which adverse haz
roof; while a more observant schoolboy, half-ard and mischance had forged; that fancy might
way through, pocketed his ball, and eyed the
distant beadle as he came looming on. It was
that time of evening when, if you shut your
eyes and open them again, the darkness of an
hour appears to have gathered in a second.
The smooth-worn pavement, dusty with foot-
steps, still called upon the lofty walls to reit-ing to God's altar. Quiet waters in landscapes,
erate the shuffle and the tread of feet unceas-
ingly, save when the closing of some heavy
door resounded through the building like a
clap of thunder, and drowned all other noises
in its rolling sound.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 43.
TYRANNY-Domestic.
have imagined the pictures on the walls around
them, startled by the unnatural conjunction,
and observant of it in their several expressions.
Grim knights and warriors looked scowling on
them. A churchman, with his hand upraised
denounced the mockery of such a couple com-
with the sun reflected in their depths, asked,
if better means of escape were not at hand,
was there no drowning left? Ruins cried,
"Look here, and see what We are, wedded
to uncongenial Time!" Animals, opposed
by nature, worried one another as a moral to
them. Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid,
and Martyrdom had no such torment in its
painted history of suffering.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.
A homely proverb recognizes the existence
of a troublesome class of persons, who, having
an inch conceded them, will take an ell. Not
to quote the illustrious examples of those heroic
Scourges of mankind, whose amiable path in UNDERTAKER—The.
life has been from birth to death through
blood, and fire, and ruin, and who would seem
to have existed for no better purpose than to
teach mankind that as the absence of pain is
pleasure, so the earth, purged of their presence,
may be deemed a blessed place-not to quote
such mighty instances, it will be sufficient to
refer to old John Willet.
The African magician I find it very difficult
to exclude from my Wigwam, too. This crea-
ture takes cases of death and mourning under
his supervision, and will frequently impoverish
a whole family by his preposterous enchant-
ments. He is a great eater and drinker, and
always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a
grieving exterior. His charms consist of an in-
Old John having long encroached a good finite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he
standard inch, full measure, on the liberty of charges very high. He impresses on the poor,
Joe, and having snipped off a Flemish ell in bereaved natives, that the more of his followers
the matter of the parole, grew so despotic and so they pay to exhibit such scraps on their persons
great that his thirst for conquest knew no for an hour or two (though they never saw the
bounds. The more young Joe submitted, the deceased in their lives, and are put in high
more absolute old John became. The ell soon spirits by his decease), the more honorably and
faded into nothing. Yards, furlongs, miles, piously they grieve for the dead.
The poor
arose; and on went old John in the pleasantest people submitting themselves to this conjuror,
manner possible, trimming off an exuberance an expressive procession is formed, in which
in this place, shearing away some liberty of bits of stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity
speech or action in that, and conducting him- of other unmeaning objects besmeared with
self in his small way with as much high mighti- black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly
ness and majesty, as the most glorious tyrant order of which no one understands the mean-
that ever had his statue reared in the publicing, if it ever had any, to the brink of the grave,
ways, of ancient or of modern times.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 30.
and are then brought back again.
In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed
to have a soul, so that, when a hatchet is irre-
parably broken, they say, "His immortal part
has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-
plains." This belief leads to the logical sequence
that, when a man is buried, some of his eating
and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike
implements, must be broken, and buried with
him. Superstitious and wrong, but surely a
more respectable superstition than the hire of
UNDERTAKER
antic scraps for a show that has no meaning
based on any sincere belief.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 26.
UNDERTAKER-Mr. Mould, the.
In the passage they encountered Mr. Mould,
the undertaker: a little, elderly gentleman, tald,
and in a suit of black; with a note-book in his
hand, a massive gold watch-chain dangling from
his fob, and a face in which a queer attempt at
melancholy was at odds with a smirk of satis-
faction; so that he looked as a man might, who,
in the very act of smacking his lips over choice
old wine, tried to make believe it was physic.
"Well, Mrs. Gamp, and how are you, Mrs.
Gamp?" said this gentleman, in a voice as soft
as his step.
Pretty well, I thank you, sir," dropping a
curtsey.
"You'll be very particular here, Mrs. Gamp.
This is not a common case, Mrs. Gamp. Let
everything be very nice and comfortable, Mrs.
Gamp, if you please," said the undertaker, shak-
ing his head with a solemn air.
"It shall be, sir," she replied, curtseying
again. "You knows me of old, sir, I hope."
"I hope so, too, Mrs. Gamp," said the under-
taker ; "and I think so, also." Mrs. Gamp
curtseyed again. This is one of the most im-
pressive cases, sir," he continued, addressing
Mr. Pecksniff, that I have seen in the whole
course of my professional experience."
494
UNDERTAKER
right to be performing on celestial trumpets
The bodiless cherubs in the shop, who were de-
picted as constantly blowing those instruments
forever and ever, without any lungs, played, it
is to be presumed, entirely by ear.
Mr. Mould looked lovingly at Mrs. Mould,
who sat hard by, and was a helpmate to him in
his punch as in all other things. Each seraph
daughter, too, enjoyed her share of his regards,
and smiled upon him in return. So bountiful
were Mr. Mould's possessions, and so large his
stock in trade, that even there, within his house-
hold sanctuary, stood a cumbrous press, whose
mahogany maw was filled with shrouds, and
winding-sheets, and other furniture of funerals.
But, though the Misses Mould had been brought
up, as one may say, beneath his eye, it had cast
no shadow on their timid infancy or blooming
youth. Sporting behind the scenes of death
and burial from cradlehood, the Misses Mould
knew better. Hat-bands, to them, were but so
many yards of silk or crape; the final robe but
such a quantity of linen. The Misses Mould
could idealise a player's habit, or a court
lady's petticoat, or even an act of parliament.
But they were not to be taken in by palls. They
made them sometimes.
The premises of Mr. Mould were hard of
hearing to the boisterous noises in the great
main streets, and nestled in a quiet corner,
where the City strife became a drowsy hum, that
sometimes rose, and sometimes fell, and some-
Indeed, Mr. Mould!" cried that gentleman. times altogether ceased; suggesting to a thought-
"Such affectionate regret, sir, I never saw. ful mind a stoppage in Cheapside. The light
There is no limitation, there is positively NO
came sparkling in among the scarlet runners, as
limitation," opening his eyes wide, and stand- if the churchyard winked at Mr. Mould, and
ing on tiptoe: "in point of expense! I have said, "We understand each other;" and from
orders, sir! to put on my whole establishment the distant shop a pleasant sound arose of coffin-
of mutes; and mutes come very dear, Mr. Peck-making, with a low melodious hammer, rat,
sniff; not to mention their drink. To provide tat, tat, tat, alike promoting slumber and diges-
silver-plated handles of the very best descrip-
tion, ornamented with angels' heads from the
most expensive dies. To be perfectly profuse
in feathers. In short, sir, to turn out something
absolutely gorgeous."
"My friend, Mr. Jonas, is an excellent man,"
said Mr. Pecksniff.
"
tion.
เ
Quite the buzz of insects," said Mr. Mould,
closing his eyes in a perfect luxury.
It puts
one in mind of the sound of animated nature
in the agricultural districts. It's exactly like
the woodpecker tapping."
"The woodpecker tapping the hollow elm
tree," observed Mrs. Mould, adapting the words
of the popular melody to the description of
wood commonly used in trade.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 25.
I have seen a good deal of what is filial in
my time, sir," retorted Mould, "and what is
unfilial too. It is our lot. We come into the
knowledge of those secrets. But anything so
filial as this; anything so honorable to human
nature; so calculated to reconcile all of us to UNDERTAKER-Experiences of an.
the world we live in, never yet came under my
observation. It only proves, sir, what was so
forcibly observed by the lamented theatrical
poet-buried at Stratford-that there is good
in everything."
"It is very pleasant to hear you say so, Mr.
Mould," observed Pecksniff.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.
UNDERTAKER—Mr. Mould at home.
The partner of his life and daughters twain
were Mr. Mould's companions. Plump as any
partridge was each Miss Mould, and Mrs. M.
was plumper than the two together. So round
and chubby were their fair proportions, that
they might have been the bodies once belonging
to the angels' faces in the shop below, grown
up with other heads attached to make them
mortal. Even their peachy cheeks were puffed
out and distended, as though they ought of
As Oliver accompanied his master in most of
his adult expeditions, too, in order that he might
acquire the equanimity of demeanor and full
command of nerve which are so essential to a
finished undertaker, he had many opportunities
of observing the beautiful resignation and for-
titude with which some strong-minded people
bear their trials and losses.
For instance; when Sowerberry had an order
for the burial of some rich old lady or gentle-
man, who was surrounded by a great number of
nephews and nieces, who had been perfectly in-
consolable during the previous illness, and
whose grief had been wholly irrepressible even
on the most public occasions, they would be as
happy among themselves as need be-quite
cheerful and contented; conversing together
with as much freedom and gayety, as if nothing
whatever had happened to disturb them. Hus-
bands, too, bore the loss of their wives with the
UNDERTAKER
495
USURER
most heroic calmness. Wives, again, put on UNIVERSITIES—American.
weeds for their husbands, as if, so far from
grieving in the garb of sorrow, they had made
up their minds to render it as becoming and at-
tractive as possible. It was observable, too,
that ladies and gentlemen who were in passions
of anguish during the ceremony of interment,
recovered almost as soon as they reached home,
and became quite composed before the tea-
drinking was over. All this was very pleasant
and improving to see; and Oliver beheld it
with great admiration.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 6.
UNDERTAKER-Shop of the.
same school. Whatever the defects of American
universities may be, they disseminate no pre-
judices; rear no bigots; dig up the buried ashes
of no old superstitions; never interpose between
the people and their improvement; exclude no
man because of his religious opinions; above all,
in their whole course of study and instruction,
recognize a world, and a broad one, too, lying
beyond the college walls.
There is no doubt that much of the intellect
ual refinement and superiority of Boston is re-
ferable to the quiet influence of the University
of Cambridge, which is within three or four
miles of the city. The resident professors at
that University are gentlemen of learning and
varied attainments; and are, without one excep.
tion that I can call to mind, men who would
shed a grace upon, and do honor to, any society
in the civilized world. Many of the resident
gentry in Boston and its neighborhood, and I
think I am not mistaken in adding, a large ma-
jority of those who are attached to the liberal
Oliver, being left to himself in the under-professions there, have been educated at this
taker's shop, set the lamp down on a workman's
bench, and gazed timidly about him with a feel-
ing of awe and dread, which many people a
good deal older than he will be at no loss to
understand. An unfinished coffin on black
trestles, which stood in the middle of the shop,
looked so gloomy and deathlike that a cold
tremble came over him every time his eyes
wandered in the direction of the dismal object;
from which he almost expected to see some
frightful form slowly rear its head, to drive him
mad with terror. Against the wall were ranged,
in regular array, a long row of elm boards cut
into the same shape, looking, in the dim light,
like high-shouldered ghosts with their hands in
their breeches-pockets. Coffin-plates, elm chips,
bright-headed nails, and shreds of black cloth,
lay scattered on the floor: and the wall behind
the counter was ornamented with a lively repre-
sentation of two mutes, in very stiff neckcloths,
on duty at a large private door, with a hearse
drawn by four black steeds, approaching in the
distance. The shop was close and hot; and the
atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of
coffins. The recess beneath the counter, in
which his flock mattress was thrust, looked like
a grave.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 5.
UNITIES-Dramatic.
"I hope you have preserved the unities, sir?"
said Mr. Curdle.
"The original piece is a French one," said
Nicholas. "There is abundance of incident,
sprightly dialogue, strongly-marked characters-"
“—All unavailing without a strict observance
of the unities, sir," returned Mr. Curdle. "The
unities of the drama, before everything."
Might I ask you,” said Nicholas, hesitating |
between the respect he ought to assume, and
his love of the whimsical, "might I ask you
what the unities are?"
It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to
me to observe the almost imperceptible, but not
less certain, effect, wrought by this institution
among the small community of Boston: and to
note at every turn the humanizing tastes and de-
sires it has engendered; the affectionate friend-
ships to which it has given rise; the amount of
vanity and prejudice it has dispelled. The
golden calf they worship at Boston is a pigmy
compared with the giant effigies set up in other
parts of that vast counting-house which lies be-
yond the Atlantic; and the almighty dollar
sinks into something comparatively insignificant,
amidst a whole Pantheon of better gods.
American Notes, Chap. 3.
UPS AND DOWNS-The philosophy of
Plornish,
Mr. Plornish amiably growled, in his philo-
sophical but not lucid manner, that there was
ups, you see, and there was downs. It was in wain
to ask why ups, why downs; there they was,
you know. He had heerd it given for a truth
that accordin' as the world went round, which
round it did rewolve undoubted, even the best
of gentlemen must take his turn of standing
with his ed upside down and all his air a flying
the wrong way into what you might call Space.
Wery well then. What Mr. Plornish said was,
wery well then. That gentleman's ed would
come up'ards when his turn come, that gentle-
man's air would be a pleasure to look upon be-
ing all smooth again, and wery well then.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 27.
USURER-Newman Noggs' opinion of
Ralph Nickleby.
I don't believe he ever had an appetite," said
Newman, "except for pounds, shillings, and
pence, and with them he's as greedy as a wolf.
I should like to have him compelled to swallow
one of every English coin. The penny would be
an awkward morsel-but the crown-ha! ha!"
Mr. Curdle coughed and considered. "The
unities, sir," he said, "are a completeness-a
kind of a universal dovetailedness with regard
to place and time-a sort of a general oneness, if
I may be allowed to use so strong an expression.
I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as
I have been enabled to bestow attention upon
the:n, and I have read much upon the subject,
and thought much. I find, running through the
performances of this child," said Mr. Curdle,
turning to the phenomenon, “a unity of feeling,
a breadth, a light and shade, a warmth of color- His good humor being in some degree restored
ing, a tone, a harmony, a glow, an artistical de- by the vision of Ralph Nickleby swallowing,
velopment of original conceptions, which I perforce, a five-shilling piece, Newman slowly
look for in vain among older performers. I brought forth from his desk one of those port-
don't know whether I make myself under-able bottles, currently known as pocket-pistols,
stood?"-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 24.
and shaking the same close to his ear so as to
USURER
496
produce a rippling sound very cool and pleas-
ant to listen to, suffered his features to relax,
and took a gurgling drink, which relaxed them
still more.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47.
USURER-Ralph Nickleby, the.
He appeared to have a very extraordinary
and miscellaneous connection, and very odd
calls he made; some at great rich houses, and
some at small poor houses, but all upon one
subject, money. His face was a talisman to the
porters and servants of his more dashing clients,
and procured him ready admission, though he
trudged on foot, and others, who were denied,
rattled to the door in carriages. Here, he was
all softness and cringing civility; his step so
light, that it scarcely produced a sound upon
the thick carpets; his voice so soft that it was
not audible beyond the person to whom it was
addressed. But in the poorer habitations Ralph
was another man; his boots creaked on the pas-
sage-floor as he walked boldly in; his voice was
harsh and loud as he demanded the money that
was overdue; his threats were coarse and angry.
With another class of customers, Ralph was
again another man. These were attorneys of
more than doubtful reputation, who helped him
to new business, or raised fresh profits upon old.
With them Ralph was familiar and jocose, hu-
morous upon the topics of the day, and es-
pecially pleasant upon bankruptcies and pecu-
niary difficulties that made good for trade. In
short, it would have been difficult to have recog-
nized the same man under these various aspects,
but for the bulky leather case, full of bills and
notes, which he drew from his pocket at every
house, and the constant repetition of the same.
complaint (varied only in tone and style of de-
livery), that the world thought him rich,
and that perhaps he might be if he had his
own; but that there was no getting money in
when it was once out, either principal or
interest, and it was a hard matter to live;
even to live from day to day.
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 44.
V
VAGABOND-" Not of the mean sort.”
"Thank you. You wouldn't object to say,
perhaps, that although an undoubted vagabond,
I am a vagabond of the harum scarum order,
and not of the mean sort."
Bleak House, Chap. 63.
VALENTINE-Sam Weller's.
"Vell, Sammy," said the father.
"Vell, my Prooshan Blue," responded the
son, laying down his pen. What's the last
bulletin about mother-in-law?"
"Mrs. Veller passed a very good night, but
is uncommon perwerse and unpleasant this
mornin'. Signed upon oath, S. Veller, Esquire,
Senior. That's the last vun as was issued,
Sammy," replied Mr. Weller, untying his shawl.
'No better yet?" inquired Sam.
"All the symptoms aggerawated," replied Mr.
VALENTINE
Weller, shaking his head. "But wot's that
you're a doin' of? Pursuit of knowledge under
difficulties, Sammy."
"I've done now," said Sam, with slight em-
barrassment; "I've been a writin'."
"So I see," replied Mr. Weller.
"Not to
any young 'ooman, I hope, Sammy?”
Why, it's no use a sayin' it ain't,” replied
Sam; "it's a walentine."
"Á what!" exclaimed Mr. Weller, apparent-
ly horror-stricken by the word.
"A walentine," replied Sam.
"Samivel, Samivel," said Mr. Weller, in re-
proachful accents, I did'nt think you'd ha'
done it. Arter the warnin' you've had o' your
father's wicious propensities; arter all I've said
to you upon this here wery subject; arter acti-
wally seein' and bein in the company o' your
own mother-in-law, vich I should ha' though
was a moral lesson as no man could never ha'
forgotten to his dyin' day! I didn't think you'd
ha' done it, Sammy, I didn't think you'd ha'
done it!" These reflections were too much for
the good old man. He raised Sam's tumbler to
his lips and drank off its contents.
"
""
Wot's the matter now?" said Sam.
'Nev'r mind, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller,
"it'll be a wery agonizin' trial to me at my
time of life, but I'm pretty tough, that's vun con
solation, as the wery old turkey remarked wen
the farmer said he wos afeerd he should be
obliged to kill him for the London market.”
"Wot'll be a trial?" inquired Sam.
"To see you married, Sammy, to see you a
dilluded wictim, and thinkin' in your innocence
that it's all wery capital," replied Mr. Weller.
"It's a dreadful trial to a father's feelin's that
'ere, Sammy."
"Nonsense," said Sam. "I ain't a goin' to
get married, don't you fret yourself about that.
I know you're a judge of these things; order
in your pipe, and I'll read you the letter.
There!"
*
*
*
*
*
Sam dipped his pen into the ink to be ready
for any corrections, and began with a very the
atrical air.
66 6
Lovely
Stop," said Mr. Weller, ringing the bell
"A double glass o' the inwariable, my dear."
"
Very well, sir,” replied the girl; who with
great quickness appeared, vanished, returned,
and disappeared.
"They seem to know your ways here," ob-
served Sam.
Yes," replied his father, "I've been here.
before, in my time. Go on, Sammy."
Lovely creetur,'" repeated Sam.
""Tain't in poetry, is it?" interposed his
father.
No, no," replied Sam.
Wery glad to hear it," said Mr. Weller.
Poetry's unnat'ral: no man ever talked po-
etry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day, or Warren's
blackin', or Rowland's oil, or some o' them low
fellows; never you let yourself down to talk
poetry, my boy. Begin agin, Sammy."
Mr. Weller resumed his pipe with a critical
solemnity, and Sam once more commenced, and
read as follows:
'Lovely creetur i feel myself a dammed
"That ain't proper," said Mr. Weller, taking
his pipe from his mouth.

CID
CUINE!
QUAL
STOY
SAM WELLER'S VALENTINE.
496
VALENTINE
No; it ain't 'dammed.'" observed Sam,
holding the letter up to the light, "it's shamed,'
there's a blot there-'I feel myself asham-
ed.'"
"
Wery good," said Mr. Weller. "Go on."
"Feel myself ashamed, and completely cir—'
I forget what this here word is," said Sam,
scratching his head with the pen, in vain at-
tempts to remember.
"
Why don't you look at it, then?" inquired
Mr. Weller.
"So I am a lookin' at it," replied Sam, "but
there's another blot. Here's a 'c,' and a 'i,'
and a 'd.'"
ler.
"Circumwented, p'haps," suggested Mr. Wel-
No, it ain't that," said Sam, "circumscrib-
ed; that's it."
"That ain't as good a word as circumwented,
Sammy," said Mr. Weller, gravely.
"Think not?" said Sam.
Nothin' like it," replied his father.
"But don't you think it means more?" in-
quired Sam.
497
VAUXHALL GARDENS
glass on complete, with a hook at the end
to hang it up by, and all in two minutes and a
quarter.'
"I am afeerd that werges on the poeticaì,
Sammy," said Mr. Weller, dubiously.
"No it don't," replied Sam, reading on very
quickly, to avoid contesting the point:
'Except of me Mary my dear as your wal
entine and think over what I've said. My dear
Mary, I will now conclude.' That's all," said
Sam.
"That's rather a sudden pull up, ain't it,
Sammy?" inquired Mr. Weller.
"Not a bit on it," said Sam; "she'll vish
there wos more, and that's the great art o' letter
writin'."-Pickwick, Chap. 33.
VALET-Bagstock's Native.
"Where is my scoundrel?" said the Major,
looking wrathfully round the room.
The Native, who had no particular name, but
answered to any vituperative epithet, presented
himself instantly at the door and ventured to
come no nearer.
"Vell, p'raps it is a more tenderer word,"
said Mr. Weller, after a few moments' reflection."where's the breakfast ?”
“Go on, Sammy."
"You villain!" said the choleric Major,
"Feel myself ashamed and completely cir-
cumscribed in a dressin' of you, for you are a
nice gal and nothin' but it.'
"That's a wery pretty sentiment," said the
elder Mr. Weller, removing his pipe to make
way for the remark.
Yes, I think it is rayther good," observed
Sam, highly flattered.
"Wot I like in that 'ere style of writin',"
said the elder Mr. Weller, "is, that there ain't
no callin' names in it,-no Wenuses, nor no-
thin' o' that kind. Wot's the good o' callin' a
young 'ooman a Wenus or a angel, Sammy?"
"Ah! what, indeed?" replied Sam.
"
'You might jist as well call her a griffin, or a
unicorn, or a king's arms at once, which is
wery well known to be a col-lection o' fabulous
animals," added Mr. Weller.
Just as well," replied Sam.
"Drive on, Sammy," said Mr. Weller.
Sam complied with the request, and pro-
ceeded as follows:-his father continuing to
smoke, with a mixed expression of wisdom
and complacency, which was particularly edify-
ing.
"Afore I see you, I thought all women was
alike.'"
<<
So they are," observed the elder Mr. Wel-
ler, parenthetically.
"But now,
continued Sam, "" now I find
what a reg'lar soft-headed, ink-red'lous turnip I
must ha' been: for there ain't nobody like you,
though I like you better than nothin' at all.' I
thought it best to make that rayther strong,"
said Sam, looking up.
Mr. Weller nodded approvingly, and Sam re-
sumed.
"So I take the privilidge of the day, Mary,
my dear as the gen'l'm'n in difficulties did,
ven he valked out of a Sunday,-to tell you
that the first and only time I see you, your like-
ness was took on my hart in much quicker time
and brighter colors than ever a likeness was
took by the profeel macheen (wich p'raps you
may have heerd on Mary my dear) altho it
does finish a portrait and put the frame and
The dark servant disappeared in search of it,
and was quickly heard reascending the stairs in
such a tremulous state, that the plates and dishes
on the tray he carried, trembling sympathetical-
ly as he came, rattled again, all the way up.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
The unfortunate Native, expressing no opin
ion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in his
moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed
by the Major every hour in the day, and riddled
through and through, but in his sensitiveness to
bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept con-
tinually on the stretch. For six entire weeks
after the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner
lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks and
brushes.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 58.
VAUXHALL GARDENS.
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 day-
light! A porter-pot without porter, the House
of Commons 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 ex-
periments, 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 were, by a process known
only to themselves, incessantly employed in re-
ducing fowls to a mere combination of skin and
bones.
Vague rumors of this kind, together with
many others of a similar nature, cast over Vaux-
hall 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
VEGETABLES
498
events, the pleasure they afforded was not a lit-
tle enhanced by this very circumstance.
VENICE
if he could have got a chance. But it was denied
him."-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 48.
VENICE-A dream of.
Of this class of people we confess to having
made one. We loved to wander among these
illuminated groves, thinking of the patient and I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went
laborious researches which had been carried on in and out among its many arches: traversing
there during the day, and witnessing their re-its whole extent. A grand and dreamy stru
sults in the suppers which were served up be- ture, of immense proportions; golden with old
neath the light of lamps, and to the sound of mosaics; redolent of perfumes; dim with the
music, at night. The temples and saloons and smoke of incense; costly in treasures of precious
cosmoramas and fountains glittered and spark-stones and metals, glittering through iron bars;
led before our eyes; the beauty of the lady
singers and the elegant deportment of the gen-
tlemen, captivated our hearts; a few hundred
thousand of additional lamps dazzled our senses;
a bowl or two of reeking punch bewildered our
brains; and we were happy.-Scenes, Chap. 14.
VEGETABLES-The language of love.
You know, there is no language of vegeta-
bles, which converts a cucumber into a formal
declaration of attachment."
'My dear," replied Mrs. Nickleby, tossing
her head and looking at the ashes in the grate,
"he has done and said all sorts of things.'
"Is there no mistake on your part?" asked
Nicholas.
"Mistake!" cried Mrs. Nickleby. "Lord,
Nicholas, my dear, do you suppose I don't know
when a man's in earnest?
Well, well!" muttered Nicholas.
Every time I go to the window," said Mrs.
Nickleby, "he kisses one hand, and lays the
other upon his heart-of course it's very foolish
of him to do so, and I dare say you'll say its very
wrong, but he does it very respectfully-very
respectfully indeed—and very tenderly, extreme-
ly tenderly. So far, he deserves the greatest
credit; there can be no doubt about that. Then,
there are the presents which come pouring over
the wall every day, and very fine they certainly
are, very fine; we had one of the cucumbers at
dinner yesterday, and think of pickling the rest
for next winter. And last evening," added Mrs.
Nickleby, with increased confusion, “he called
gently over the wall, as I was walking in the
garden, and proposed marriage, and an elope-
ment. His voice is as clear as a bell or a musi-
cal glass―very like a musical glass indeed-but
of course I didn't listen to it. Then, the ques-
tion is, Nicholas my dear, what am I to do?"
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 37.
VERB-Mark Tapley as a.
"Mark!" said Tom Pinch, energetically: "if
you don't sit down this minute, I'll swear at
you!"
Well, sir," returned Mr. Tapley, "sooner
than you should do that, I'll com-ply. It's a
considerable invasion of a man's jollity to be
made so partikler welcome, but a Werb is a
word as signifies to be, to do, or to suffer (which
is all the grammar, and enough too, as ever I
wos taught); and if there's a Werb alive, I'm it.
For I'm always a bein', sometimes a doin', and
continually a sufferin"."
"
((
Not jolly, yet?" asked Tom, with a smile.
Why, I was rather so, over the water, sir,"
returned Mr. Tapley; "and not entirely with-
out credit. But Human Natur' is in a conspir-
acy again' me; I can't get on. I shall have to
leave it in my will, sir, to be wrote upon my tomb:
'He was a man as might have come out strong
holy with the bodies of deceased saints; rain.
bow-hued with windows of stained glass; dark
with carved woods and colored marbles; ob-
scure in its vast heights and lengthened distan-
ces; shining with silver lamps and winking
lights; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable
throughout. I thought I entered the old palace;
pacing silent galleries and council-chambers,
where the old rulers of this mistress of the
waters looked sternly out, in pictures, from the
walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still
victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as
of old. I thought I wandered through its halls
of state and triumph-bare and empty now!-
and musing on its pride and might, extinct-for
that was past-all past-heard a voice say,
"Some tokens of its ancient rule, and some
consoling reasons for its downfall, may be traced
here yet!"
*
*
*
*
*
Pictures were
Sometimes alighting at the doors of churches
and vast palaces, I wandered on, from room to
room, from aisle to aisle, through labyrinths of
rich altars, ancient monuments, decayed apart-
ments, where the furniture, half awful, half‍gro-
tesque, was mouldering away.
there, replete with such enduring beauty and
expression; with such passion, truth, and power;
that they seemed so many young and fresh reali-
ties among a host of spectres. I thought these,
often intermingled with the old days of the city:
with its beauties, tyrants, captains, patriots,
merchants, courtiers, priests: nay, with its very
stones, and bricks, and public places; all of
which lived again, about me, on the walls.
Then, coming down some marble staircase,
where the water lapped and oozed against the
lower steps, I passed into my boat again, and
went on in my dream.
Floating down narrow lanes, where carpen-
ters, at work with plane and chisel in their
shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon
the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed
away before me in a tangled heap. Past open
doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in
the wet, through which some scanty patch of
vine shone green and bright, making unusual
shadows on the pavement with its trembling
leaves. Past quays and terraces, where women,
gracefully veiled, were passing and repassing,
and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine,
on flag-stones and on flights of steps. Past
bridges, where there were idlers too: loitering
and looking over. Below stone balconies, erected
at a giddy height, before the loftiest windows of
the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden, thea-
tres, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture-
Gothic-Saracenic-fanciful with all the fancies
of all times and countries. Past buildings that
were high, and low, and black, and white, and
straight, and crooked; mean and grand, crazy
and strong. Twining among a tangled lot of
VERONA
499
boats and barges, and shooting out at last into
a Grand Canal! There, in the errant fancy of
my dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro
upon a bridge, all built upon with shops, and
humming with the tongues of men: a form I
seemed to know for Desdemona's, leaned down
through a latticed blind to pluck a flower. And,
in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare's spirit |
was abroad upon the water somewhere, stealing
through the city.—Pictures from Italy.
VERONA.
Pleasant Verona! With its beautiful old pal-
aces, and charming country in the distance, seen
from terrace walks, and stately, balustraded gal-
leries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the
fair street, and casting, on the sunlight of to-day,
the shade of fifteen hundred years ago. With
its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich
architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares,
where shouts of Montagues and Capulets once
resounded,
And made Verona's ancient citizens
Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments,
To wield old partizans.
With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old
bridge, great castle, waving cypresses, and pros-
pect so delightful, and so cheerful! Pleasant
Verona !-Pictures from Italy.
VEXATION-A cheap commodity.
VISIONS
poor people too. All its people were poor, and
many of them were sitting at their doors, shred-
ding 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 inscription in the little village, until the
wonder was, that there was any village left un-
swallowed.
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs.
As to the men and women, their choice on earth
was stated in the prospect-Life on the lowest
terms that could sustain it, down in the little vil
lage under the mill; or captivity and Death in
the dominant prison on the crag.
Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 8.
VINES-Of Piacenza.
In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the
vines on trellis-work, supported on square clum-
sy pillars, which, in themselves, are anything
but picturesque. But here, they twine them
around trees, and let them trail among the
hedges; and the vineyards are full of trees, reg-
ularly planted for this purpose, each with its
own vine twining and clustering about it. Their
leaves are now of the brightest gold and deep-
est red; and never was anything so enchant-
Chiv-ingly graceful and full of beauty. Through
miles of these delightful forms and colors, the
road winds its way. The wild festoons, the ele-
gant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all
shapes; the fairy nets flung over great trees,
and making them prisoners in sport; the tum-
bled heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes upon
the ground; how rich and beautiful they are!
And every now and then, a long, long line of
trees will be all bound and garlanded together;
as if they had taken hold of one another, and
were coming dancing down the field!
"I had a visit from Young John to day,
ery. And very smart he looked, I assure you."
So Mr. Chivery had heard. Mr. Chivery must
confess, however, that his wish was that the boy
didn't lay out so much money upon it. For what
did it bring him in? It only brought him in
Wexation. And he could get that anywhere,
for nothing.-Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 19.
VICTUALS-Quarrelling with one's.
"Mobbs's mother-in-law," said Squeers, "took
to her bed on hearing that he wouldn't eat fat,
and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to
know, by an early post, where he expects to go
to, if he quarrels with his vittles; and with what
feelings he could turn up his nose at the cow's
liver broth, after his good master had asked a
blessing on it."—Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 8.
VICE-Virtue in excess.
"It would do us no harm to remember often-
er than we do, that vices are sometimes only
virtues carried to excess !
VICES-Kindred.
"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 58.
That heart where self has found no place and
raised no throne, is slow to recognize its ugly
presence when it looks upon it. As one pos-
sessed of an evil spirit, was held in old time to
be alone conscious of the lurking demon in the
breasts of other men, so kindred vices know
each other in their hiding-places every day,
when Virtue is incredulous and blind.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 14.
VILLAGE-The poor.
The village had its one poor street, with its
poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor
stable-yards for relays of post-horses, poor foun-
tain, all usual poor appointments. It had its
Pictures from Italy.
VIRTUES AND VICES—Of weak men.
It is the unhappy lot of thoroughly weak
men, that their very sympathies, affections, con-
fidences-all the qualities which in better-con-
stituted minds are virtues-dwindle into foibles,
or turn into downright vices.
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 36.
VISIONS-Psychological experiences of.
I have always noticed a prevalent want of
courage, even among persons of superior intelli-
gence and culture, as to imparting their own
psychological experiences when those have been
of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid
that what they could relate in such wise would
find no parallel or response in a listener's internal
life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A
truthful traveller, who should have seen some
extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea-
serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it;
but the same traveller, having had some singu-
lar presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought,
vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable
mental impression, would hesitate considerably
before he would own to it. To this reticence I
attribute much of the obscurity in which such
subjects are involved. We do not habitually
VISITOR
500
VOICE
communicate our experiences of these subjective that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely
things as we do our experiences of objective wandering in a wilderness, would have remem
creation. The consequence is, that the general bered home and friends in such a tone before
stock of experience in this regard appears ex- lying down to die.-Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 6.
ceptional, and really is so, in respect of being
miserably imperfect.
VOICE-A disagreeable.
Two Ghost Stories, Chap. I.
VISITOR-A constant (Toots).
Nothing seemed to do Mr. Toots so much
good as incessantly leaving cards at Mr. Dom-
bey's door. No tax-gatherer in the British do-
minions-that wide-spread territory on which
the sun never sets, and where the tax-gatherer
never goes to bed—was more regular and per-
severing in his calls than Mr. Toots.
K
*
*
Dombey & Son, Chap. 22.
Called regularly every other
day, and left a perfect pack of cards at the hall-
door; so many, indeed, that the ceremony was
quite a deal on the part of Mr. Toots, and a
hand at whist on the part of the servant.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 28.
VOICE-Its expressions.
"No, I will not." This was said with a most
determined air, and in a voice which might have
been taken for an imitation of anything; it was
quite as much like a Guinea-pig as a bassoon.
Tales, Chap. 7.
"As pleasant a singer, Mr. Chuzzlewit, as ever
you heerd, with a voice like a Jew's-harp in the
bass-notes, that it took six men to hold at sech
times, foaming frightful."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 46.
A loud, well-sustained, and continuous roar—
something between a mad bull and a speaking-
trumpet.-Oliver Twist, Chap. 13.
"I called in consequence of an advertise-
ment," said the stranger, in a voice as if she had
been playing a set of Pan's pipes for a fortnight
without leaving off.-Tales, Chap. 1.
"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.- Tales, Chap. II.
VOICE-Little Dorrit's blessing.
Little Dorrit turned at the door to say "God
bless you!" She said it very softly, but per-
haps she may have been as audible above-who
knows?-as a whole cathedral choir.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 14.
VOICE—A faint.
|
If an iron door could be supposed to quarrel
with its hinges, and to make a firm resolution
to open with slow obstinacy, and grind them to
powder in the process, it would emit a pleas-
anter sound in so doing, than did these words
in the rough and bitter voice in which they were
uttered by Ralph. Even Mr. Mantalini felt
their influence, and turning affrighted round,
exclaimed. "What a demd horrid croaking!"
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10.
VOICE-And eyes, of Mrs. Pardiggle.
"Mrs. Jellyby," pursued the lady, always
speaking in the same demonstrative, loud, hard
tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy as if it
had a sort of spectacles on too-and I may take
the opportunity of remarking that her spectacles
were made the less engaging by her eyes being
what Ada called "choking eyes," meaning very
prominent.-Bleak House, Chap. 8.
VOICE-A bass.
After a great deal of preparatory crowing and
humming, the captain began the duet from the
opera of “Paul and Virginia,” in that grunting
tone in which a man gets down, Heaven knows
where, without the remotest chance of ever get-
ting up again. This, in private circles, is fre
quently designated “a bass voice."
VOICE-A buttoned up.
Tales, Chap. 7.
Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat,
who is patiently watching a mouse's hole, fixes
his charmed gaze again on his young client, and
proceeds in his buttoned-up half-audible voice,
as if there were an unclean spirit in him that
will neither come out nor speak out.
Bleak House, Chap. 39.
VOICE-Not of Toby.
When he had found his voice-which it took
him some time to do, for it was a long way off,
and hidden under a load of meat-he said, in a
whisper.-Chimes, 2d Quarter.
He couldn't finish her name. The final letter
swelled in his throat, to the size of the whole
alphabet,-Chimes, 2d Quarter.
VOICE-Sam Weller's signals,
As soon as she came nearly below the tree,
Sam began, by way of gently indicating his
presence, to make sundry diabolical noises simi-
lar to those which would probably be natural to
a person of middle age who had been afflicted
with a combination of inflammatory sore throat,
croup, and hooping-cough, from his earliest in-
fancy.-Pickwick, Chap. 39.
VOICE-Like a hurricane.
The faintness of the voice was pitiable and
readful. It was not the faintness of physical
weakness, though confinement and hard fare
no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable
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 The interview with Mr. Boythorn was a long
human voice, that it affected the senses like a one-and a stormy one too, I should think; for
once beautiful color, faded away into a poor although his room was at some distance, I heard
weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, his loud voice rising every now and then like a
that it was like a voice underground. So ex-high wind, and evidently blowing perfect broad
pressive it was of a hopeless and lost creature, sides of denunciation.-Bleak House, Chap. 9.
VOICE.
VOICE
501
Her pleasant voice-O what a voice it was, for
making household music at the fireside of an
honest man-Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 3.
VOICE-A muffled.
"Well, sir," said Doctor Parker Peps in a
round, deep, sonorous voice, muffled for the oc-
casion, like the knocker; "do you find that
your dear lady is at all roused by your visit?"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
|
WAITERS
In case confusion should arise in the public
mind (which it is open to confusion on many
subjects) respecting what is meant or implied
by the term, Waiter, the present humble lines
would wish to offer an explanation. It may
not be generally known that the person as goes
out to wait is not a Waiter. It may not be gen-
erally known that the hand as is called in ex-
tra, at the Freemasons' Tavern, or the London,
or the Albion, or otherwise, is not a Waiter.
Such hands may be took on for Public Din
ners by the bushel (and you may know them
VOICE—A sharp.
by their breathing with difficulty when in at-
Pitched her voice for the upper windows in of- tendance, and taking away the bottle ere yet it
fering these remarks, and cracked off each clause is half out); but such are not Waiters. For you
sharply by itself as if from a rifle possessing an cannot lay down the tailoring, or the shoemak-
infinity of barrels.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 23. ing, or the brokering, or the green-grocering,
or the pictorial-periodicalling, or the second-
But Edith stopped him, in a voice which, al-hand wardrobe, or the small fancy businesses,-
though not raised in the least, was so clear, em-
phatic, and distinct, that it might have been
heard in a whirlwind.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 47.
VOICE—Of an old friend.
you cannot lay down those lines of life at your
will and pleasure by the half-day or evening,
and take up Waitering. You may suppose you
can, but you cannot; or you may go so far as to
say you do, but you do not. Nor yet can you
lay down the gentleman's-service when stimula-
ted by prolonged incompatibility on the part of
Cooks (and here it may be remarked that Cook-
"His wery woice," said the Captain, looking
round with an exultation to which even his face
could hardly render justice-"his wery woice,
as chock full o' science as ever it was! Soling and incompatibility will be mostly found
Gills, lay to, my lad, upon your own wines and
fig-trees, like a taut ould patriark as you are,
and overhaul them there adwentures o' yourn,
in your own formilior woice. 'Tis the woice,"
said the Captain, impressively, and announcing
a quotation with his hook, "of the sluggard,
I heerd him complain, you have woke me too
soon, I must slumber again. Scatter his ene-
mies, and make 'em fall!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 56.
VOICE-Oppressed.
Nor did the Major improve it at the Royal
Hotel, where rooms and dinner had been or-
dered, and where he so oppressed his organs of
speech by eating and drinking, that when he
retired to bed he had no voice at all, except to
cough with, and could only make himself intel-
ligible to the dark servant by gasping at him.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
W.
WAITERS-Their traits.
The writer of these humble lines being a
Waiter, and having come of a family of Waiters,
and owning at the present time five brothers
who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sis-
ter who is a Waitress, would wish to offer a
few words respecting his calling; first, having
the pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner of-
fering the Dedication of the same unto JOSEPH,
much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam
Coffee-House, London, E. C., than which a in-
dividual more eminently deserving of the name
of man, or a more amenable honor to his own
head and heart, whether considered in the light
of a Waiter, or regarded as a human being, do
not exist.
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united), and take up Waitering. It has been
ascertained that what a gentleman will sit meek
under, at home, he will not bear out of doors,
at the Slamjam or any similar establishment.
Then, what is the inference to be drawn re-
specting true Waitering? You must be bred to
it. You must be born to it.
Would you know how born to it, Fair Read-
er,—if of the adorable female sex? Then learn
from the biographical experience of one that
is a Waiter in the sixty-first year of his age.
You were conveyed,-ere yet your dawning
powers were otherwise developed than to harbor
vacancy in your inside,-you were conveyed, by
surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the
Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining-
Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful
sustenance which is the pride and boast of the
British female constitution. Your mother was
married to your father (himself a distant Waiter)
in the profoundest secrecy; for a Waitress known
to be married would ruin the best of businesses,
-it is the same as on the stage. Hence your
being smuggled into the pantry, and that—to add
to the infliction by an unwilling grandmother.
Under the combined influence of the smells of
roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt
liquors, you partook of your earliest nourish-
ment; your unwilling grandmother sitting pre-
pared to catch you when your mother was called
and dropped you; your grandmother's shawl ever
ready to stifle your natural complainings; your
innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets,
dirty plates, dish-covers, and cold gravy; your
mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks,
instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes.
Under these untoward circumstances you were
early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever
growing more unwilling as your food assimilated
less, then contracted habits of shaking you till
your system curdled, and your food would not
assimilate at all. At length she was no longer
spared, and could have been thankfully spared
much sooner. When your brothers began to ap
pear in succession, your mother retired, left off
WAITERS
502
WAITERS
hand, attained to manhood and to be the Waiter
that you find yourself.
*
*
*
*
*
A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail.
He must be at one extremity or the other of the
social scale. He cannot be at the waist of it, or
anywhere else but the extremities. It is for him
to decide which of the extremities.
Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 1.
WAITERS-Their habits.
her smart dressing (she had previously been a
smart dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had
previously been flowing), and haunted your
father late of nights, lying in wait for him,
through all weathers, up the shabby court which
led to the back door of the Royal Old Dust-Bin
(said to have been so named by George the
Fourth), where your father was Head. But the
Dust-Bin was going down then, and your father
took but little,-excepting from a liquid point
of view. Your mother's object in those visits
was of a housekeeping character, and you was It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is
set on to whistle your father out. Sometimes he very cold to you. Account for it how you may,
came out, but generally not. Come or not come, smooth it over how you will, you cannot deny
however, all that part of his existence which was that he is cold to you. He is not glad to see
unconnected with open Waitering was kept a you, he does not want you, he would much
close secret, and was acknowledged by your rather you hadn't come. He opposes to your
mother to be a close secret, and you and your flushed condition an immovable composure.
mother flitted about the court, close secrets both As if this were not enough, another waiter,
of you, and would scarcely have confessed under born, as it would seem, expressly to look at you
torture that you knew your father, or that your in this passage of your life, stands at a little dis-
father had any name than Dick (which wasn't tance, with his napkin under his arm and his
his name, though he was never known by any hands folded, looking at you with all his might.
other), or that he had kith or kin, or chick or You impress on your waiter that you have ten
child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, minutes for dinner, and he proposes that you
combined with your father's having a damp com- shall begin with a bit of fish which will be ready
partment to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at in twenty. That proposal declined, he suggests
the Dust-Bin,-a sort of a cellar compartment, -as a neat originality-" a weal or mutton cut-
with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, let." You close with either cutlet, any cutlet,
and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn't anything. He goes leisurely behind a door, and
match each other or anything else, and no day- calls down some unseen shaft. A ventriloquial
light,—caused your young mind to feel convinced dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect
that you must grow up to be a Waiter too; but that weal only is available on the spur of the
you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your moment. You anxiously call out, "Veal, then !”
brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you Your waiter, having settled that point, returns
felt convinced that you was born to the Waiter- to array your tablecloth with a table napkin
ing. At this stage of your career, what was your folded cocked-hat wise (slowly, for something out
feelings one day when your father came home to of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass,
your mother in open broad daylight,-of itself a green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tum-
an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter, bler, and a powerful field battery of fourteen
and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother and castors with nothing in them, or, at all events,
family's bed), with the statement that his eyes-which is enough for your purpose, with
were devilled kidneys! Physicians being in nothing in them that will come out. All this
vain, your father expired, after repeating at in- time the other waiter looks at you,-with an air
tervals for a day and a night, when gleams of of mental comparison and curiosity now, as if
reason and old business fitfully illuminated his it had occurred to him that you are rather like
being, "Two and two is five. And three is six- his brother. Half your time gone, and nothing
pence." Interred in the parochial department come but the jug of ale and the bread, you im-
of the neighboring churchyard, and accompa-plore your waiter to "see after that cutlet, waiter;
nied to the grave by as many Waiters of long pray do!" He cannot go at once, for he is car-
standing as could spare the morning time from rying in seventeen pounds of American cheese
their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved for you to finish with, and a small landed estate
form was attired in a white neckankecher, and of celery and water-cresses. The other waiter
you was took on from motives of benevolence changes his leg, and takes a new view of you,
at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and sup- doubtfully now, as if he had rejected the resem-
per. Here, supporting nature on what you found blance to his brother, and had begun to think
in the plates (which was as it happened, and but you more like his aunt or his grandmother.
too often thoughtlessly immersed in mustard), Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic in-
and on what you found in the glasses (which dignation, to "see after that cutlet!" He steps
rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by out to see after it, and by-and-bye, when you are
night you dropped asleep standing, till you was going away without it, comes back with it. Even
cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing then he will not take the sham silver cover off
every individual article in the coffee-room. Your without a pause for a flourish, and a look at the
couch being saw-dust; your counterpane being musty cutlet, as if he were surprised to see it,-
ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy which cannot possibly be the case, he must have
heart under the smart tie of your white neck-seen it so often before. A sort of fur has been
ankecher (or correctly speaking lower down and
more to the left), you picked up the rudiments
of knowledge from an extra, by the name of
Bishops, and by calling plate-washer; and gra-
dually elevating your mind with chalk on the
back of the corner-box partition, until such time
as you used the inkstand when it was out of
produced upon its surface by the cook's art,
and, in a sham silver vessel staggering on two
feet instead of three, is a cutaneous kind of
sauce, of brown pimples and pickled cucumber.
You order the bill, but your waiter cannot bring
your bill yet, because he is bringing, instead,
three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim heads

YC
AUCTION
ROBINSON
ఈ
WILL SELL-
FREEHOLD
PLANTS
THE WORLD
MERCATORS CHART
WINES
SOUP
[COURT CUMAX}
THE FRIENDLY WAITER.
.....
YORKSHIRE
THEATRE
TWO CEXTLE METE
VERONA
THE DEVIL
TO PAY
503
WAITER
503
WAITING
of broccoli, like the occasional ornaments only, and at the same time lightly, on Mr. Dorrit's
area railings, badly boiled. You know that you mind. It was the Chief Butler. That stupen-
will never come to this pass, any more than to dous character looked at him in the course of
the cheese and celery, and you imperatively de- his official looking at the dinners, in a manne:
mand your bill; but it takes time to get, even that Mr. Dorrit considered questionable, He
when gone for, because your waiter has to com- looked at him, as he passed through the hall and
municate with a lady who lives behind a sash-up the staircase, going to dinner, with a glazed
window in a corner, and who appears to have fixedness that Mr. Dorrit did not like. Seated
to refer to several Ledgers before she can make at table in the act of drinking, Mr. Dorrit still
it out—as if you had been staying there a year. saw him through his wine-glass, regarding him
You become distracted to get away, and the with a cold and ghostly eye. It misgave him
other waiter, once more changing his leg, still that the Chief Butler must have known a Col-
looks at you, but suspiciously, now, as if you legian, and must have seen him in the College—
had begun to remind him of the party who took perhaps had been presented to him. He looked
the great-coats last winter. Your bill at last as closely at the Chief Butler as such a man
brought and paid, at the rate of sixpence a could be looked at, and yet he did not recall
mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds that he had ever seen him elsewhere. Ultimate-
you that "attendance is not charged for a single ly he was inclined to think that there was no
meal," and you have to search in all your pock-reverence in the man, no sentiment in the great
ets for sixpence more. He has a worse opinion
of you than ever, when you have given it to him,
and lets you out into the street with the air of
one saying to himself, as you cannot doubt he
is, "I hope we shall never see you here again!"
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 6.
WAITER-His misfortunes.
creature. But he was not relieved by that;
for, let him think what he would, the Chief But-
ler had him in his supercilious eye, even when
that eye was on the plate and other table-garni-
ture; and he never let him out of it. To hint
to him that this confinement in his eye was dis-
agreeable, or to ask him what he meant, was an
act too daring to venture upon; his severity
"If I didn't support a aged pairint, and a with his employers and their visitors being ter-
lovely sister,"-here the waiter was greatly agi-rific, and he never permitting himself to be ap-
tated—“I wouldn't take a farthing. If I had a proached with the slightest liberty.
good place, and was treated well here, I should
beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of
it. But I live on broken wittles-and I sleep
on the coals"-here the waiter burst into tears.
Great Expectations, Chap. 27.
WAITER-The wrongs of a.
"Well!" cried Mr. Bailey, "Wot if I am?
There's something gamey in it, young ladies, an't
there? I'd sooner be hit with a cannon-ball
than a rolling-pin, and she's always a catching up
something of that sort, and throwing it at me,
wen the gentlemen's appetites is good. Wot,"
said Mr. Bailey, stung by the recollection of his
wrongs, wot if they do con-sume the per-
vishuns. It an't my fault, is it?"
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. II.
WAITER-A dignified.
The Chief Butler, the Avenging Spirit of this
great man's life, relaxed nothing of his severity.
He looked on at these dinners when the bosom
was not there, as he looked on at other dinners
when the bosom was there; and his eye was a
basilisk to Mr. Merdle. He was a hard man,.
and would never abate an ounce of plate or a
bottle of wine. He would not allow a dinner
to be given, unless it was up to his mark. He
set forth the table for his own dignity. If the
guests chose to partake of what was served, he
saw no objection: but it was served for the main-
tenance of his rank. As he stood by the side-
board he seemed to announce, "I have accept-
ed office to look at this which is now before me,
and to lock at nothing less than this." If he
missed the presiding bosom, it was as a part of his
own state of which he was, from unavoidable
circumstances, temporarily deprived. Just as
he might have missed a centrepiece, or a choice
wine-cooler, which had been sent to the Bank-
er's—Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12.
WAITER-The Chief Butler.
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Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16.
WAITER-The model.
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. Accord-
ing to the immemorial usage of waiters in all
ages.-Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4.
WAITERS-Their characteristics.
apparently relieved from
"Soda water, sir? Yes, sir." With his mind
an overwhelming
weight, by having at last got an order for some-
thing, the waiter imperceptibly melted away.
Waiters never walk or run. They have a pe-
culiar and mysterious power of skimming out of
rooms, which other mortals possess not.
Pickwick, Chap. 30.
WAITING-The misery of.
if
you
There are few things more worrying than
sitting up for somebody, especially if that some-
body be at a party. You cannot help thinking
how quickly the time passes with them, which
drags so heavily with you; and the more you think
of this, the more your hopes of their speedy arrival
decline. Clocks tick so loud, too, when you are
sitting up alone, and you seem as
had an
under garment of cobwebs on. First, some-
thing tickles your right knee, and then the
same sensation irritates your left. You have
no sooner changed your position, than it comes
again in the arms: when you have fidgeted
your limbs into all sorts of odd shapes, you
have a sudden relapse in the nose, which you
rub as if to rub it off-as there is no doubt you
would, if you could. Eyes, too, are mere per-
sonal inconveniences, and the wick of one
candle gets an inch and a half long, while you
Only one thing sat otherwise than auriferous-are snuffing the other. These. and various
WALKING
504
other little nervous annoyances, render sitting
up for a length of time after everybody else
has gone to bed, anything but a cheerful amuse-
ment.-Pickwick, Chap. 36.
WALKING-Better than riding.
WALK
the ground to shirk the wind, a blot of ink upon
the landscape. But though it drives and drifts
against them as they walk, stiffening on their
skirts, and freezing in the lashes of their eyes,
they wouldn't have it fall more sparingly, no,
not so much as by a single flake, although they
Better! A rare, strong, hearty, healthy walk had to go a score of miles. And, lo! the towers
-four statute miles an hour-preferable to of the Old Cathedral rise before them, even
that rumbling, tumbling, jolting, shaking, scrap- now! and by-and-bye they come into the shel
ing, creaking, villanous old gig? Why, the tered streets, made strangely silent by their white
two things will not admit of comparison. It is carpet; and so to the Inn for which they are
an insult to the walk, to set them side by side. | bound; where they present such flushed and
Where is an instance of a gig having ever circu- burning faces to the cold waiter, and are so
lated a man's blood, unless when, putting him brimful of vigor, that he almost feels assaulted
in danger of his neck, it awakened in his veins by their presence; and having nothing to op-
and in his ears, and all along his spine, a ting- pose to the attack (being fresh, or rather stale,
ling heat, much more peculiar than agreeable? from the blazing fire in the coffee-room), is quite
When did a gig ever sharpen anybody's wits put out of his pale countenance.
and energies, unless it was when the horse bolt-
ed, and, crashing madly down a steep hill with
a stone wall at the bottom, his desperate cir-
cumstances suggested to the only gentleman
left inside, some novel and unheard-of mode
of dropping out behind? Better than the gig!
The air was cold, Tom; so it was, there was
no denying it; but would it have been more
genial in the gig? The blacksmith's fire
burned very bright, and leaped up high, as
though it wanted men to warm; but would it
have been less tempting, looked at from the
clammy cushions of a gig? The wind blew
keenly, nipping the features of the hardy wight
who fought his way along; blinding him with
his own hair if he had enough of it, and wintry
dust if he hadn't; stopping his breath as though
he had been soused in a cold bath ; tearing
aside his wrappings-up, and whistling in the
very marrow of his bones; but it would have
done all this a hundred times more fiercely to
a man in a gig, wouldn't it? A fig for gigs!
Better than the gig! When were travellers
by wheels and hoofs seen with such red-hot
cheeks as those? when were they so good-hu-
moredly and merrily bloused? when did their
laughter ring upon the air, as they turned them
round, what time the stronger gusts came
sweeping up; and, facing round again as they
passed by, dashed on, in such a glow of ruddy
health as nothing could keep pace with, but
the high spirits it engendered? Better than
the gig! Why, here is a man in a gig coming
the same way now. Look at him as he passes
his whip into his left hand, chafes his numbed
right fingers on his granite leg, and beats those
marble toes of his upon the foot-board. Ha,
ha, ha! Who would exchange this rapid hur-
ry of the blood for yonder stagnant misery,
though its pace were twenty miles for one?
Better than the gig! No man in a gig could
have such interest in the milestones. No man in
a gig could see, or feel, or think, like merry users
of their legs. How, as the wind sweeps on, upon
these breezy downs, it tracks its flight in dark-
ening ripples on the grass, and smoothest shadows
on the hills! Look round and round upon this
bare bleak plain, and see, even here, upon a win-
ter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas!
it is the nature of their kind to be so, The
loveliest things in life, Tom, are but shadows;
and they come and go, and change and fade
away, as rapidly as these!
Another mile, and then begins a fall of snow,
making the crow, who skims away so close above
A famous Inn! the hall a very grove of dead
game, and dangling joints of mutton; and in
one corner an illustrious larder, with glass doors
developing cold fowls, and noble joints, and tarts,
wherein the raspberry jam coyly withdrew itself,
as such a precious creature should, behind a lattice
work of pastry.-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 12.
WALK-An egotistic.
The Doctor's walk was stately, and calculated
to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feel-
ings. It was a sort of march; but when the
Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely turned
upon his axis, with a semicircular sweep towards
the left; and when he put out his left foot, he
turned in the same manner towards the right.
So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to
look about him, as though he were saying, “Can
anybody have the goodness to indicate any
subject, in any direction, on which I am unin-
formed? I rather think not.”
Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
The Major, more blue-faced and staring-
more over-ripe, as it were, than ever-and giv-
ing vent, every now and then, to one of the
horse's coughs, not so much of necessity as in
a spontaneous explosion of importance, walked
arm-in-arm with Mr. Dombey up the sunny side
of the way, with his cheeks swelling over his
tight stock, his legs majestically wide apart, and
his great head wagging from side to side, as if he
were remonstrating within himself for being such
a captivating object.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
WALK-A fast.
"Walk fast, Wal'r, my lad," returned the
Captain, mending his pace; "and walk the
same all the days of your life. Overhaul the
catechism for that advice, and keep it!"
Dombey & Son, Chap. 9.
WALK-A dignified.
"What's the matter, what's the matter?" said
the gentleman for whom the door was opened;
coming out of the house at that kind of light-
heavy pace-that peculiar compromise between
a walk and a jog-trot-with which a gentleman
upon the smooth down-hill of life, wearing
creaking boots, a watch-chain, and clean linen,
may come out of his house; not only without
any abatement of his dignity, but with an ex
pression of having important and wealthy en
gagements elsewhere. "What's the matter? "
Christmas Chimes, 1st Quarter.
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON.
505
WATER-PIPES
ington Irving, my dear friend, who had recently
been appointed Minister at the court of Spain,
and who was among them that night, in his new
character, for the first and last time before go-
ing abroad. I sincerely believe that, in all the
madness of American politics, few public men
would have been so earnestly, devotedly, and
affectionately caressed as this most charming
writer; and I have seldom respected a public
assembly more than I did this eager throng,
when I saw them turning with one mind from
noisy orators and officers of state, and flocking
with a generous and honest impulse round the
man of quiet pursuits; proud in his promotion,
as reflecting back upon their country, and grate
ful to him with their whole hearts for the store
of graceful fancies he had poured out among
them. Long may he dispense such treasures
with unsparing hand; and long may they re-
member him as worthily!
American Notes, Chap. 8.
Take the worst parts of the City Road and
Pentonville, or the straggling outskirts of Paris,
where the houses are smallest, preserving all
their oddities, but especially the small shops and
dwellings, occupied in Pentonville (but not in
Washington) by furniture brokers, keepers of
poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn
the whole down; build it up again in wood and
plaster: widen it a little; throw in part of St.
John's Wood; put green blinds outside all
the private houses, with a red curtain and a
white one in every window; plough up all the
roads; plant a great deal of coarse turf in every
place where it ought not to be; erect three
handsome buildings in stone and marble any-
where, but the more entirely out of everybody's
way the better; call one the Post Office, one
the Patent Office, and one the Treasury; make
it scorching hot in the morning, and freezing
cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado
of wind and dust; leave a brick-field without
the bricks, in all central places where a street | WATCH-A model.
may naturally be expected; and that's Washing-
ton.
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*
L
I walk to the front window, and look across
the road upon a long, straggling row of houses,
one-story high, terminating nearly opposite,
but a little to the left, in a melancholy piece of
waste ground, with frowzy grass, which looks
like a small piece of country that has taken to
drinking, and has quite lost itself. Standing
anyhow and all wrong, upon this open space,
like something meteoric that has fallen down
from the moon, is an odd, lop-sided, one-eyed
kind of wooden building, that looks like a
church, with a flag-staff as long as itself stick-
ing out of a steeple something larger than a tea-
chest.
*
*
*
*
*
The Captain immediately drew Walter into a
corner, and with a great effort, that made his
face very red, pulled up the silver watch, which
was so big, and so tight in his pocket, that it
came out like a bung.
Wal'r," said the Captain, handing it over,
and shaking him heartily by the hand, “a part.
ing gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour every
morning, and about another quarter towards
the arternoon, and it's a watch that'll do you
credit."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
WATCH-Of Sol Gills.
He wore a very precise shirt-frill, and carried
a pair of first-rate spectacles on his forehead,
and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather
than doubt which precious possession, he would
have believed in a conspiracy against it on the
part of all the clocks and watches in the City,
and even of the very sun itself.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 4.
If Uncle Sol had been going to be hanged
by his own time, he never would have allowed
that the chronometer was too fast by the least
fraction of a second.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 19.
WATCH-Of Captain Cuttle.
It is sometimes called the City of Magnifi-
cent Distances, but it might with greater pro-
priety be termed the City of Magnificent Inten-
tions; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of
it from the top of the Capitol, that one can at
all comprehend the vast designs of its pro-
jector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious ave-
nues, that begin in nothing and lead nowhere;
streets, mile long, that only want houses, roads,
and inhabitants; public buildings that need but
a public to be complete; and ornaments of great "You've done her some good, my lad, I be-
thoroughfares which only lack great thorough-lieve," said the Captain, under his breath, and
fares to ornament,-are its leading features.
One might fancy the season over, and most of
the houses gone out of town forever with their
masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Bar-
mecide Feast; a pleasant field for the imagina-
tion to rove in; a monument raised to a deceased
project, with not even a legible inscription to
record its departed greatness.
American Notes, Chap. 8.
WASHINGTON IRVING-At the White
House.
That these visitors, too, whatever their sta-
tion, were not without some refinement of taste
and appreciation of intellectual gifts, and grati-
tude to those men who by the peaceful exercise
of great abilities shed new charms and associa-
tions upon the homes of their countrymen, and
elevate their character in other lands, was most
earnestly testified by their reception of Wash-
throwing an approving glance upon his watch.
"Put you back half an hour every morning, and
about another quarter towards the arternoon,
and you're a watch as can be ekalled by few
and excelled by none."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 48.
WATCH-Like an anchor.
There was nothing about him in the way of
decoration but a watch, which was lowered into
the depths of its proper pocket by an old black
ribbon, and had a tarnished copper key moored
above it, to show where it was sunk.
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3.
WATER-PIPES.
All the water-pipes in the neighborhood
seemed to have Macbeth's Amen sticking in
their throats, and to be trying to get it out.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14.
WATER
506
WATER.
Close about the quays and churches, palaces
and prisons: sucking at their walls, and well-
ing up into the secret places of the town-crept
the water always. Noiseless and watchful:
coiled round and round it, in its many folds,
like an old serpent: waiting for the time, I
thought, when people should look down into its
depths for any stone of the old city that had
claimed to be its mistress.-Pictures from Italy.
WATERING-PLACE
Bath.
Mr. Pickwick at
As Mr. Pickwick contemplated a stay of at
least two months in Bath, he deemed it advisa-
ble to take private lodgings for himself and
friends for that period; and as a favorable op-
portunity offered for their securing, on moder-
ate terms, the upper portion of a house in the
Royal Crescent, which was larger than they re-
quired, Mr. and Mrs. Dowler offered to relieve
them of a bed-room and sitting-room. This
proposition was at once accepted, and in three
days' time they were all located in their new
abode, when Mr. Pickwick began to drink the
waters with the utmost assiduity. Mr. Pick-
wick took them systematically. He drank a
quarter of a pint before breakfast, and then
walked up a hill; and another quarter of a pint
after breakfast, and then walked down a hill;
and after every fresh quarter of a pint, Mr. Pick-
wick declared, in the most solemn and emphatic
terms, that he felt a great deal better; whereat
his friends were very much delighted, though
they had not been previously aware that there
was anything the matter with him.
WEALTH
"I never saw any wax-work, ma'am,” said
Nell. 'Is it funnier than Punch?”
"Funnier!" said Mrs. Jarley in a shrill voice.
"It is not funny at all."
Oh!" said Nell, with all possible humility.
It isn't funny at all," repeated Mrs. Jarley.
"It's calm and--what's that word again-criti-
cal?-no-classical, that's it—it's calm and clas-
sical. No low beatings and knockings about,
no jokings and squeakings like your precious
Punches, but always the same, with a constantly
unchanging air of coldness and gentility; and
so like life, that if wax-work only spoke and
walked about, you'd hardly know the difference
I won't go so far as to say, that, as it is, I've
seen wax-work quite like life, but I've certainly
seen some life that was exactly like wax-work.”
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 27.
These audiences were of a very superior de-
scription, including a great many young ladies'
boarding-schools, whose favor Mrs. Jarley had
been at great pains to conciliate, by altering the
face and costume of Mr. Grimaldi as clown to
represent Mr. Lindley Murray as he appeared
when engaged in the composition of his English
Grammar, and turning a murderess of great re-
nown into Mrs. Hannah More--both of which
likenesses were admitted by Miss Monflathers,
who was at the head of the head Boarding and
Day Establishment in the town, and who con-
descended to take a Private View with eight
chosen young ladies, to be quite startling from
their extreme correctness. Mr. Pitt, in a night-
cap and bedgown, and without his boots, repre-
sented the poet Cowper with perfect exactness;
The great pump-room is a spacious saloon, and Mary, Queen of Scots, in a dark wig, white
ornamented with Corinthian pillars, and a mu- shirt-collar, and male attire, was such a complete
sic-gallery, and a Tompion clock, and a statue image of Lord Byron that the young ladies quite
of Nash, and a golden inscription, to which all screamed when they saw it. Miss Monflathers,
the water-drinkers should attend, for it appeals however, rebuked this enthusiasm, and took oc-
to them in the cause of a deserving charity. casion to reprove Mrs. Jarley for not keeping
There is a large bar with a marble vase, out of her collection more select: observing that His
which the pumper gets the water; and there are Lordship had held certain opinions quite incom-
a number of yellow-looking tumblers, out of patible with wax-work honors, and adding some-
which the company get it: and it is a most edi-thing about a Dean and Chapter, which Mrs.
fying and satisfactory sight to behold the perse- Jarley did not understand.
verance and gravity with which they swallow it.
There are baths near at hand, in which a part
of the company wash themselves; and a band WEAKNESS-Human.
plays afterwards, to congratulate the remainder
on their having done so. There is another
pump-room, into which infirm ladies and gen-
tlemen are wheeled, in such an astonishing
variety of chairs and chaises, that any adven-
turous individual who goes in with the regular WEALTH-Ignorant men of.
number of toes, is in imminent danger of com-
ing out without them; and there is a third, into
which the quiet people go, for it is less noisy
than either. There is an immensity of prom-
enading, on crutches and off, with sticks and
without, and a great deal of conversation, and
liveliness, and pleasantry.—Pickwick, Chap. 36.
WAX-WORK-Mrs. Jarley's.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 29.
Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and
meannesses are usually committed for the sake
of the people whom we most despise.
Great Expectations. Chap. 27.
Mr. Malderton was a man whose whole scope
of ideas was limited to Lloyd's, the Exchange,
the India House, and the Bank. A few success-
ful speculations had raised him from a situation
of obscurity and comparative poverty, to a state
of affluence. As frequently happens in such
cases, the ideas of himself and his family be
came elevated to an extraordinary pitch as their
means increased; they affected fashion, taste.
and many other fooleries, in imitation of their
betters, and had a very decided and becoming
horror of anything which could, by possibility,
be considered low. He was hospitable from
ostentation, illiberal from ignorance, and preju-
diced from conceit. Egotism and the love of
"Never go into the company of a filthy display induced him to keep an excellent table,
Punch any more," said Mrs. Jarley, "after this." I convenience, and a love of good things of this
When she had brought all these testimonials
of her important position in society to bear upon
her young companion, Mrs. Jarley rolled them
up, and having put them carefully away, sat
down again, and looked at the child in tri-
umph.
WEALTH
507
life, ensured him plenty of guests. He liked
to have clever men, or what he considered such,
at his table, because it was a great thing to talk
about; but he never could endure what he
called "sharp fellows." Probably, he cherished
this feeling out of compliment to his two sons,
who gave their respected parent no uneasiness in
that particular. The family were ambitious of
forming acquaintances and connections in some
sphere of society superior to that in which they
themselves moved; and one of the necessary con-
sequences of this desire, added to their utter ig-
norance of the world beyond their own small
circle, was, that any one who could lay claim to
an acquaintance with people of rank and title,
had a sure passport to the table at Oak Lodge,
Camberwell.-Tales, Chap. 5.
WEATHER
humility when discovered by the passing Bof-
fins taking the air in a mutton grove. Presents
are made to the Boffin servants, and bland
strangers with business-cards, meeting said ser-
vants in the street, offer hypothetical corruption.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 17.
WEALTH-The rich man.
Mr. Dombey was one of those close-shaved,
close-cut, moneyed gentlemen who are glossy
and crisp like new bank-notes, and who seem
to be artificially braced and tightened as by the
stimulating action of golden shower-baths.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 2.
WEALTH-Without station.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 8.
The minion of fortune and the worm of the
hour, or in less cutting language, Nicodemus
WEALTH-The conceit, intolerance, and Boffin, Esquire, the Golden Dustman, had be-
ignorance of Podsnap.
come as much at home in his eminently aristo-
Mr. Podsnap could tolerate taste in a mush-cratic family mansion as he was likely ever to
room man who stood in need of that sort of be. He could not but feel that, like an eminent-
thing, but was far above it himself. Hideously aristocratic family cheese, it was much too
solidity was the characteristic of the Podsnap large for his wants, and bred an infinite amount
plate. Everything was made to look as heavy of parasites; but he was content to regard
as it could, and to take up as much room as this drawback on his property as a sort of per-
possible. Everything said boastfully, "Here petual Legacy Duty.
you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I
were only lead; but I am so many ounces of
precious metal, worth so much an ounce: WEATHER-Stormy-The Maypole.
wouldn't you like to melt me down?" A cor- One wintry evening, early in the year of
pulent, straddling epergne, blotched all over as our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
if it had broken out in an eruption rather than eighty, a keen north wind arose as it grew dark,
been ornamented, delivered this address from and night came on with black and dismal
an unsightly silver platform in the centre of the looks. A bitter storm of sleet, sharp, dense,
table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished and icy-cold, swept the wet streets, and rattled
with four staring heads, each head obtrusively on the trembling windows. Sign-boards, sha-
carrying a big silver ring in each of its ears, ken past endurance in their creaking frames, fell
conveyed the sentiment up and down the table, crashing on the pavement; old tottering chim-
and handed it on to the pot-bellied silver salt-neys reeled and staggered in the blast; and
cellars. All the big silver spoons and forks
widened the mouths of the company expressly
for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment
down their throats with every morsel they ate.
many a steeple rocked again that night, as
though the earth were troubled.
It was not a time for those who could by any
means get light and warmth, to brave the fury
The majority of the guests were like the of the weather. In coffee-houses of the better
plate, and included several heavy articles weigh- sort, guests crowded round the fire, forgot to be
ing ever so much. But there was a foreign gen-political, and told each other with a secret glad.
tleman among them, whom Mr. Podsnap had
invited after much debate with himself-be-
lieving the whole European continent to be in
mortal alliance against the young person-and
there was a droll disposition, not only on the
part of Mr. Podsnap, but of everybody else, to
treat him as if he were a child who was hard
of hearing.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. II.
ness that the blast grew fiercer every minute.
Each humble tavern by the water-side had its
group of uncouth figures round the hearth;
who talked of vessels foundering at sea, and all
hands lost, related many a dismal tale of ship-
wreck and drowned men, and hoped that some
they knew were safe, and shook their heads in
doubt. In private dwellings, children clustered
near the blaze; listening with timid pleasure to
tales of ghosts and goblins and tall figures clad
WEALTH-The world's tribute to.
in white standing by bedsides, and people who
Tradesmen's books hunger, and Tradesmen's had gone to sleep in old churches and being
mouths water, for the gold dust of the Golden overlooked had found themselves alone there at
Dustman. As Mrs. Boffin and Miss Wilfer the dead hour of the night: until they shud-
drive out, or as Mr. Boffin walks out at his jog-dered at the thought of the dark rooms up-stairs;
trot pace, the fishmonger pulls off his hat with yet loved to hear the wind moan, too, and hoped
an air of reverence founded on conviction. it would continue bravely. From time to time
His men cleanse their fingers on their woollen
aprons before presuming to touch their fore-
heads to Mr. Boffin or Lady. The gaping
salmon and the golden mullet lying on the slab
seem to turn up their eyes sideways, as they
would turn up their hands, if they had any, in
worshipping admiration. The butcher, though a
portly and a prosperous man, doesn't know what
to do with himself, so anxious is he to express
these happy in-door people stopped to listen, or
one held up his finger and cried "Hark!" and
then, above the rumbling in the chimney, and the
fast pattering on the glass, was heard a wailing,
rushing sound, which shook the walls as though
a giant's hand were on them; then a hoarse
roar as if the sea had risen; then such a whirl
and tumult that the air seemed mad; and
then, with a lengthened howl, the waves of
WEATHER
wind swept on, and left a moment's interval of
rest.
BOS
Cheerily, though there were none abroad to
see it, shone the Maypole light that evening.
Blessings on the red-deep, ruby, glowing red
-old curtain of the window; blending into
one rich stream of brightness, fire and candle,
meat, drink, and company, and gleaming like
a jovial eye upon the bleak waste out of doors!
Within, what carpet like its crunching sand,
what music merry as its crackling logs, what
perfume like its kitchen's dainty breath, what
weather genial as its hearty warmth! Blessings
on the old house, how sturdily it stood! How
did the vexed wind chafe and roar about its
stalwart roof; how did it pant and strive with
its wide chimneys, which still poured forth from
their hospitable throats great clouds of smoke,
and puffed defiance in its face; how, above all,
did it drive and rattle at the casement, emulous
to extinguish that cheerful glow, which would
not be put down and seemed the brighter for
the conflict.
|
WEATHER
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, police.
men 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 al-
lowed 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 ventures to walk fast to keep
himself warm, and nobody could succeed in
keeping himself warm if he did.
Scenes, Chap. 15.
WEATHER-Frosty.
You couldn't see very far in the fog, of course;
but you could see a great deal! It's astonish-
ing how much you may see, in a thicker fog
than that, if you will only take the trouble to
look for it. Why, even to sit watching for the
Fairy-rings in the fields, and for the patches of
hoar-frost still lingering in the shade, near
hedges and by trees, was a pleasant occupation,
to make no mention of the unexpected shapes
in which the trees themselves came starting out
of the mist, and glided into it again. The
edges were tangled and bare, and waved a mul-
titude of blighted garlands in the wind; but
there was no discouragement in this. It was
agreeable to contemplate; for it made the fire-
side warmer in possession, and the summer
greener in expectancy. The river looked chil-
ly; but it was in motion, and moving at a good
The profusion, too, the rich and lavish bounty,
of that goodly tavern! It was not enough that
one fire roared and sparkled on its spacious
hearth; in the tiles which paved and compassed
it, five hundred flickering fires burnt brightly
also. It was not enough that one red curtain
shut the wild night out, and shed its cheerful
influence on the room. In every saucepan lid,
and candlestick, and vessel of copper, brass, or
tin that hung upon the walls, were countless
ruddy hangings, flashing and gleaming with
every motion of the blaze, and offering, let the
eye wander where it might, interminable vistas
of the same rich color. The old oak wainscot-pace-which was a great point. The canal was
ing, the beams, the chairs, the seats, reflected it
in a deep, dull glimmer. There were fires and
red curtains in the very eyes of the drinkers, in
their buttons, in their liquor, in the pipes they
smoked.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 33.
WEATHER-The snow.
There is no improvement in the weather.
From the portico, from the eaves, from the para-
pet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips
the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter,
into the lintels of the great door-under it, into
the corners of the windows, into every chink
and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies.
It is falling still; upon the roof, upon the sky-
light; even through the skylight, and drip, drip,
drip, with the regularity of the Ghost's Walk,
on the stone floor below.
Bleak House, Chap. 58.
WEATHER-Wintry.
A thaw, by all that 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 pavement, 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 coachmen have gone home in
despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with
that gentle regularity which betokens a dura-
tion 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
rather slow and torpid; that must be admitted.
Never mind. It would freeze the sooner when
the frost set fairly in, and then there would be
skating, and sliding; and the heavy old barges,
frozen up somewhere near a wharf, would smoke
their rusty iron chimney pipes all day, and
have a lazy time of it.
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
WEATHER-A November fog.
Implacable November weather. As much
mud in the streets as if the waters had but
newly retired from the face of the earth, and it
would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus,
forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephan-
tine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering
down from chimney-pots, making a soft black
drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-
grown snow-flakes-gone into mourning, one
might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs,
undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely
better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot
passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in
a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their
foothold at street-corners, where tens of thous-
ands of other foot-passengers have been slipping
and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever
broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon
crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously
to the pavement, and accumulating at compound
interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it
flows among green aits and meadows; fog down
the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers
of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a
great (and dirty) city. Fog in the Essex marshes,
WEATHER
509
fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into
the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on
the yards and hovering in the rigging of great
ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges
and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats
of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by
the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and
bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful
skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly
pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering
little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on
the bridges peeping over the parapets into a
nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as
if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the
misty clouds.-Bleak House, Chap. 1.
WEATHER-Cold.
"Well, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, as that
favored servitor entered his bedchamber with
his warm water, on the morning of Christmas
Day, "still frosty?
"}
"Water in the wash-hand basin 's a mask o'
ice, sir," responded Sam.
"Severe weather, Sam," observed Mr. Pick-
wick.
"Fine time for them as is well wropped up,
as the Polar Bear said to himself, ven he was
practising his skating," replied Mr. Weller.
Pickwick, Chap. 30.
WEATHER-Beautiful.
The sky was serene and bright, the air clear,
perfumed with the fresh scent of newly-fallen
leaves, and grateful to every sense. The neigh-
boring stream sparkled, and rolled onward with
a tuneful sound; the dew glistened on the green
mounds, like tears shed by Good Spirits over
the dead.-Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53.
WEATHER-Toby Veck in stormy.
WEATHER
houses and trees appeared and vanished, and
then it was hard, black, frozen day. People
were lighting their fires; smoke was mounting
straight up high into the arefied air; and we
were rattling for Highgate Archway over the
hardest ground I have ever heard the ring of
iron shoes on. As we got into the country,
everything seemed to have grown old and gray.
The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages
and homesteads, the ricks in farmers' yards.
Out-door work was abandoned, horse-troughs
at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers
lounged about, doors were close shut, little turn-
pike houses had blazing fires inside, and chil-
dren (even turnpike people have children, and
seem to like them) rubbed the frost from the
little panes of glass with their chubby arms, that
their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the
solitary coach going by. I don't know when the
snow began to set in; but I know that we were
changing horses somewhere when I heard the
guard remark, "That the old lady up in the sky
was picking her geese pretty hard to-day.'
Then, indeed, I found the white down falling
fast and thick.
>>
The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out,
as a lonely traveller does. I was warm and
valiant after eating and drinking-particularly
after dinner; cold and depressed at all other
times. I was always bewildered as to time
and place, and always more or less out of my
senses. The coach and horses seemed to exe-
cute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without a
moment's intermission. They kept the time
and tune with the greatest regularity, and rose
into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain,
with a precision that worried me to death.
While we
we changed horses, the guard and
coachman went stumping up and down the road,
printing off their shoes in the snow, and poured
so much liquid consolation into themselves with-
out being any the worse for it, that I began to
confound them, as it darkened again, with two
great white casks standing on end. Our horses
tumbled down in solitary places, and we got
them up-which was the pleasantest variety I
had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and
snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off
snowing.
*
*
*
*
*
When we came in sight of a town, it looked,
to my fancy, like a large drawing on a slate,
with abundance of slate-pencil expended on the
churches and houses where the snow lay thick-
est.
Wet weather was the worst; the cold, damp,
clammy wet, that wrapped him up like a moist
great-coat-the only kind of great-coat Toby
owned, or could have added to his comfort by
dispensing with. Wet days, when the rain came
slowly, thickly, obstinately down; when the
street's throat, like his own, was choked with
mist; when smoking umbrellas passed and re-
passed, spinning round and round like so many
teetotums, as they knocked against each other
on the crowded footway, throwing off a little
whirlpool of uncomfortable sprinklings; when
gutters brawled and water-spouts were full and
noisy; when the wet from the projecting stones
and ledges of the church fell drip, drip, drip, on When we came within a town, and found
Toby, making the wisp of straw on which he the church-clocks all stopped, the dial-faces
stood mere mud in no time; those were the choked with snow, and the Inn-signs blotted
days that tried him. Then, indeed, you might out, it seemed as if the whole place were over-
see Toby looking anxiously out from his shelter grown with white moss. As to the coach, it
in an angle of the church wall-such a meagre was a mere snow-ball; similarly, the men and
shelter that in summer-time it never cast a boys who ran along beside us to the town's end,
shadow thicker than a good-sized walking-stick| turning our clogged wheels and encouraging
upon the sunny pavement-with a disconsolate our horses, were men and boys of snow; and
and lengthened face. But coming out a minute
afterwards, to warm himself by exercise, and
trotting up and down some dozen times, he
would brighten even then, and go back more
brightly to his niche.
Christmas Chimes, Ist quarter.
WEATHER-A snow-storm.
It was still dark when we left the Peacock.
For a little while, pale, uncertain ghosts of
the bleak, wild solitude to which they at last
dismissed us was a snowy Sahara. One would
have thought this enough; notwithstanding
which, I pledge my word that it snowed and
snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off
snowing. The Holly Tree.
WEATHER-Dismal.
We were soon equipped, and went out. It
was a sombre day, and drops of chill rain feli
WEATHER
510
at intervals. It was one of those colorless days
when everything looks heavy and harsh. The
houses frowned at us, the dust rose at us, the
smoke swooped at us, nothing made any com-
promise about itself, or wore a softened aspect.
I fancied my beautiful girl quite out of place in
the rugged streets; and I thought there were
inore funerals passing along the dismal pave-
ments, than I had ever seen before.
Bleak House, Chap. 51.
WEATHER-Suggestive of roast pig.
"Kate, my dear," said Mrs. Nickleby; “I
don't know how it is, but a fine warm summer
day like this, with the birds singing in every
direction, always puts me in mind of roast pig,
with sage and onion sauce, and made gravy."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41.
WEATHER-Rainy.
""
It was a rainy morning, and very damp. I
had seen the damp lying on the outside of my
little window, as if some goblin had been crying
there all night, and using the window for a
pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp
lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a
coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself
from twig to twig, and blade to blade. On
every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the
marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger
on the post directing people to our village-a
direction which they never accepted, for they
never came there—was invisible to me until I
was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up
at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed
conscience like a phantom devoting me to the
Hulks. Great Expectations, Chap. 3.
WEATHER-Foggy.
WEDDING
ing out his legs before the fire, and rubbing as
much of them as his short arms could reach
with an air that added, "Here I am if it's bad,
and I don't want to go out if it's good."
Blowing and sleeting hard," returned his
wife; "and threatening snow. Dark. And very
cold."
"I'm glad to think we had muffins," said the
former porter, in a tone of one who had set his
conscience at rest. "It's a sort of night that's
meant for muffins. Likewise crumpets. Also
Sally Lunns."
The former porter mentioned each successive
kind of eatable, as if he were musingly summing
up his good actions. After which, he rubbed
his fat legs as before, and jerking them at the
knees to get the fire upon the yet unroasted
parts, laughed as if somebody had tickled him.
"You're in spirits, Tugby, my dear,” observed
his wife.
The firm was Tugby, late Chickenstalker.
No," said Tugby. No. Not particular.
a little elewated. The muffins came so
I'm
pat
With that he chuckled until he was black in
the face; and had so much ado to become any
other color, that his fat legs took the strangest
excursions into the air. Nor were they reduced
to anything like decorum until Mrs. Tugby had
thumped him violently on the back, and shaken
him as if he were a great bottle.
"Good gracious, goodness, lord-a-mercy bless
and save the man!" cried Mrs. Tugby, in great
terror. "What's he doing?"
Mr. Tugby wiped his eyes, and faintly re-
peated that he found himself a little elewated.
"Then don't be so again, that's a dear good
soul," said Mrs. Tugby, "if you don't want to
frighten me to death, with your struggling and
fighting!"
The fog came pouring in at every chink and
keyhole, and was so dense without, that although Mr. Tugby said he wouldn't; but his whole
the court was of the narrowest, the houses op- existence was a fight, in which, if any judgment
posite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy might be founded on the constantly increasing
cloud come drooping down, obscuring every-shortness of his breath and the deepening purple
thing, one might have thought that Nature of his face, he was always getting the worst of it.
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
Chimes, 4th Quarter.
Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
WEATHER-Misty.
There was a steaming mist in all the hollows,
and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill,
like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none.
A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its
slow way through the air in ripples that visibly
followed and overspread one another, as the
waves of an unwholesome 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 laboring horses steamed into it, as
if they had made it all.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 1.
WEATHER-Mournful.
Fog and frost so hung about the black old
gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the
Genius of the Weather sat in mournful medita-
tion on the threshold.-Christmas Carol, Stave 1.
WEDDING-The regrets of a.
A wedding is a licensed subject to joke upon,
but there really is no great joke in the matter
after all; -we speak merely of the ceremony,
and beg it to be distinctly understood that we
indulge in no hidden sarcasm upon a married
life. Mixed up with the pleasure and joy of the
occasion, are the many regrets at quitting home,
the tears of parting between parent and child,
the consciousness of leaving the dearest and
kindest friends of the happiest portion of human
life, to encounter its cares and troubles with
others still untried and little known: natural
feelings which we would not render this chapter
mournful by describing, and which we should
be still more unwilling to be supposed to ridi-
cule.-Pickwick, Chap. 28.
WEDDING, CHRISTENING, AND FU-
NERAL-Pleasant Riderhood's views
of a.
Show Pleasant Riderhood a Wedding in the
WEATHER-And muffins (Mr. Tugby's street, and she only saw two people taking out
opinion).
a regular license to quarrel and fight. Show her
"What sort of a night is it, Anne?" inquired a Christening, and she saw a little heathen per-
the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley, stretch-sonage having a quite superfluous name bestowed

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Sam WELLER AS " Boots."
511
WELLER
511
|
WELLER
capers, and don't care for horse-radish wen ve
can get beef."
"you're a wag,
"
Ah," said the little man,
ain't you?"
66
My eldest brother was troubled with that
complaint," said Sam; “it may be catching—I
used to sleep with him."
"This is a curious old house of yours," said
the little man, looking round him.
upon it, inasmuch as it would be commonly ad-
dressed by some abusive epithet: which little
personage was not in the least wanted by any-
body, and would be shoved and banged out of
everybody's way, until it should grow big enough
to shove and bang. Show her a Funeral, and
she saw an unremunerative ceremony in the
nature of a black masquerade, conferring a tem-
porary gentility on the performers, at an immense
expense, and representing the only formal party
ever given by the deceased. Show her a live
father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own
father, who from her infancy had been taken
with fits and starts of discharging his duty to "We want to know," said the little man, sol-
her, which duty was always incorporated in the emnly; "and we ask the question of you, in
form of a fist or a leathern strap, and being dis-order that we may not awaken apprehensions
charged, hurt her.
inside-we want to know who you've got in this
house, at present?"
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 12.
If you'd sent word you was a coming, we'd
ha' had it repaired,” replied the imperturbable
Sam.
*
*
*
*
*
"Who there is in the house!" said Sam, in
whose mind the inmates were always represent-
which came under his immediate superintend-
ence. "There's a wooden leg in number six;
there's a pair of Hessians in thirteen; there's
two pair of halves in the commercial; there's
these here painted tops in the snuggery inside
the bar; and five more tops in the coffee.
room."
WELLER-Sam, personal appearance of.
It was in the yard of one of these inns-ofed by that particular article of their costume
no less celebrated a one than the White Hart-
that a man was busily employed in brushing the
dirt off a pair of boots, early on the morning
succeeding the events narrated in the last chap-
ter. He was habited in a coarse, striped waist-
coat, with black calico sleeves, and blue glass
buttons; drab breeches and leggings. A bright |
red handkerchief was wound in a very loose and
unstudied style round his neck, and an old white
hat was carelessly thrown on one side of his
head. There were two rows of boots before
him, one cleaned and the other dirty, and at
every addition he made to the clean row, he
paused from his work, and contemplated its
results with evident satisfaction.
Pickwick, Chap. 10.
WELLER-Sam, as " Boots."
"
Nothing more?" said the little man.
Stop a bit," replied Sam, suddenly recol
lecting himself. Yes; there's a pair of Wel-
lington's a good deal worn, and a pair o' ladv's
shoes, in number five."
*
*
*
*
A loud ringing of one of the bells was fol
lowed by the appearance of a smart chamber-
maia in the upper sleeping gallery, who, after
tapping at one of the doors, and receiving a
request from within, called over the balus-
trades-
"Sam !"
(6
Mr. Samuel Weller happened to be at that
moment engaged in burnishing a pair of painted
tops, the personal property of a farmer who was
refreshing himself with a slight lunch of two or
three pounds of cold beef and a pot or two of
porter, after the fatigues of the Borough mar-
ket; and to him the thin gentleman straightway | ply.
advanced.
66
'My friend," said the thin gentleman.
"You're one o' the adwice gratis order,"
thought Sam, "or you wouldn't be so werry
fond o' me all at once." But he only said-
"Well, sir."
"My friend," said the thin gentleman, with a
conciliatory hem-" Have you got many peo-
ple stopping here, now? Pretty busy? Eh?"
Sam stole a look at the inquirer. He was a
little, high-dried man, with a dark, squeezed-up
face, and small, restless, black eyes, that kept
winking and twinkling on each side of his lit-
tle, inquisitive nose, as if they were playing a
perpetual game of peep-bo with that feature.
He was dressed all in black, with boots as shiny
as his eyes, a low white neck cloth, and a clean
shirt with a frill to it. A gold watch-chain,
and seals, depended from his fob. IIe carried
his black kid gloves in his hands, not on them;
and as he spoke, thrust his wrists beneath his
coat-tails, with the air of a man who was in
the habit of propounding some regular posers.
Pretty busy, eh?" said the little man.
C6
"
(4
Oh, werry well, sir," replied Sam, we
shan't be bankrupts, and we shan't make our
fort'ns. We eats our boiled mutton without
'Hallo," replied the man with the white hat.
Number twenty-two wants his boots."
"Ask number twenty-two whether he'll have
'em now, or wait till he gets 'em," was the re-
Come, don't be a fool, Sam," said the girl,
coaxingly, "the gentleman wants his boots di-
rectly.
"
"
Well, you are a nice young 'ooman for a
musical party, you are," said the boot-cleaner.
"Look at these here boots - eleven pair oʻ
boots; and one shoe as b'longs to number six,
with the wooden leg. The eleven boots is to be
called at half-past eight, and the shoe at nine.
Who's number twenty-two, that's to put all the
others out? No, no; reg'lar rotation, as Jack
Ketch said, when he tied the men up. Sorry
to keep you a waitin', sir, but I'll attend to you
directly.
Saying which, the man in the white hat set to
work upon a top-boot with increased assiduity.
There was another loud ring; and the bus-
tling old landlady of the White Hart made her
appearance in the opposite gallery.
"
Sam," cried the landlady; "where is that
lazy, idle-why, Sam-oh, there you are; why
don't you answer?"
"Wouldn't be gen-teel to answer, till you'd
done talking," replied Sam, gruffly.
Here, clean them shoes for number seven-
teen directly, and take 'em to private sitting,
room number five, first floor."
WELLER
The landlady flung a pair of lady's shoes into
the yard, and bustled away.
512
"Number five," said Sam, as he picked up
the shoes, and taking a piece of chalk from his
pocket, made a memorandum of their destina-
tion on the soles—“Lady's shoes and private
sittin'-room! I suppose she didn't come in the
wagin."
"She came in early this morning," cried the
girl, who was still leaning over the railing of the
gallery, “with a gentleman in a hackney-coach,
and it's him as wants his boots, and you'd bet-
ter do 'em, that's all about it.”
แ
Vy didn't you say so before," said Sam, with
great indignation, singling out the boots in
question from the heap before him. 'For all I
know'd he vas one of the regular three-
pennies. Private room! and a lady too! If
he's anything of a gen'l'm'n, he's vorth a shil-
lin' a day, let alone the arrands."
Pickwick, Chap. 10.
WELLER-Sam, engaged by Pickwick.
A sunbeam of placid benevolence played on
Mr. Pickwick's features as he said, "I have half
made up my mind to engage you myself."
Have you, though?" said Sam. "Take the
bill down. I'm let to a single gentleman, and
the terms is agreed upon."
"You accept the situation?" inquired Mr.
Pickwick.
Cert'nly," replied Sam. "If the clothes fits
me half as well as the place, they'll do."
Pickwick, Chap. 12.
WELLER
cious shawls which muffled his throat and
chest, and slowly uttered these sounds,—“ Wy,
Sammy!
"Who's that, Sam?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
"Why, I wouldn't ha' believed it, sir," replied
Mr. Weller with astonished eyes. "It's the old
'un."
"Old one," said Mr. Pickwick. 'What old
one?"
"My father, sir," replied Mr. Weller. "How
are you, my ancient?" With which beautiful
ebullition of filial affection, Mr. Weller made
room on the seat beside him for the stout man,
who advanced, pipe in mouth and pot in hand,
to greet him.-Pickwick, Chap. 20.
WELLER-And the new birth of Mrs. W.
How's mother-in-law this mornin'?"
แ
Queer, Sammy, queer," replied the elder
Mr. Weller, with impressive gravity.
"She's
been gettin' rayther in the Methodistical order
lately, Sammy; and she is uncommon pious,
to be sure. She's too good a creetur for me,
Sammy. I feel I don't deserve her."
"Ah," said Mr. Samuel," that's wery self-de-
nyin' o' you."
Wery," replied his parent, with a sigh.
"She's got hold o' some inwention for grown-up
people being born again, Sammy; the new birth,
I thinks they calls it. I should wery much like
to see that system in action, Sammy. I should
wery much like to see your mother-in-law born
again. Wouldn't I put her out to nurse!"
Pickwick, Chap. 22.
"
"I never could a-bear that Job," said Mary.
No more you never ought to, my dear re-
plied Mr. Weller.
'Why not?" inquired Mary.
"Cos ugliness and svindlin' never ought tc
be formiliar vith elegance and wirtew," replied
Mr. Weller. Ought they, Mr. Muzzle?"
"Not by no means," replied that gentleman.
Here Mary laughed, and said the cook had
made her, and the cook laughed, and said she
hadn't.
"I han't got a glass," said Mary.
WELLER-Sam, recognizes "the old 'un." | WELLER-Sam, his observations.
The room was one of a very homely descrip-
tion, and was apparently under the especial pa-
tronage of stage coachmen; for several gentle-
men, who had all the appearance of belonging
to that learned profession, were drinking and
smoking in the different boxes. Among the
number was one stout, red-faced, elderly man |
in particular, seated in an opposite box, who at-
tracted Mr. Pickwick's attention. The stout
man was smoking with great vehemence, but
between every half-dozen puffs, he took his pipe
from his mouth, and looked first at Mr. Weller
and then at Mr. Pickwick. Then, he would
bury in a quart pot as much of his countenance
as the dimensions of the quart pot admitted of
its receiving, and take another look at Sam and
Mr. Pickwick. Then he would take another
half-dozen puffs with an air of profound medi-
tation and look at them again. At last the
stout man, putting up his legs on the seat, and
leaning his back against the wall, began to puff
at his pipe without leaving off at all, and to
stare through the smoke at the new comers, as
if he had made up his mind to see the most he
could of them.
"Drink with me, my dear," said Mr. Weller.
"Put your lips to this here tumbler, and then
can kiss you by deputy?”
I
"For shame, Mr. Weller!" said Mary.
"Wot's a shame, my dear?"
"Talkin' in that way."
"Nonsense; it ain't no harm.
ain't it, cook?
*
*
*
It's natur;
*
*
Mr. Trotter suffered himself to be forced into
a chair by the fireside. He cast his small eyes,
first on Mr. Weller, and then on Mr. Muzzle, but
said nothing.
'Well, now," said Sam, "afore these here
ladies, I should jest like to ask you, as a sort of
curiosity, wether you don't con-sider yourself
as nice and well-behaved a young gen'l'm'n as
ever used a pink check pocket-handkerchief,
and the number four collection?"
Pickwick, Chap. 25.
At first the evolutions of the stout man had
escaped Mr. Weller's observation, but by degrees,
as he saw Mr. Pickwick's eyes every now and
then turning towards him, he began to gaze in
the same direction, at the same time shading
his eyes with his hand, as if he partially recog-
nized the object before him, and wished to make
quite sure of its identity. His doubts were
speedily dispelled, however: for the stout man, WELLER-Sam, as a dutiful son.
having blown a thick cloud from his pipe, a "I am very glad to see that you have so high
hoarse voice, like some strange effort of ven- a sense of your duties as a son, Sam," said Mr,
triloquism, emerged from beneath the capa- Pickwick.
(4
WELLER
I always had, sir," replied Mr. Weller.
"That's a very gratifying reflection, Sam," said
Mr. Pickwick approvingly.
518
"Wery, sir," replied Mr. Weller; "if ever I
wanted anythin' o' my father, I always asked
for it in a wery 'spectful and obligin' manner.
If he didn't give it me, I took it, for fear I
should be led to do anythin' wrong, through not
havin' it. I saved him a world o' trouble in this
vay, sir."
"That's not precisely what I meant, Sam,"
said Mr. Pickwick, shaking his head, with a
slight smile.
"All good feelin', sir-the wery best inten-
tions, as the gen'l'm'n said ven he run away
from his wife 'cos she seemed unhappy with
him," replied Mr. Weller.-Pickwick, Chap. 27.
WELLER-Sam, on the marriage of his
father.
WELLER
the lawyer, dippin his pen in the ink.—' Susan
Clarke, Markis o' Granby, Dorking,' says my
father; 'she'll have me, if I ask, I des-say-I
never said nothing to her, but she'll have me, I
know.' The license was made out, and she did
have him, and what's more she's got him now;
and I never had any of the four hundred pound,
worse luck. Beg your pardon, sir," said Sam,
when he had concluded, "but wen I gets on
this here grievance, I runs on like a new bar-
row vith the wheel greased." Having said
which, and having paused for an instant to see
whether he was wanted for anything more, Sam
left the room.-Pickwick, Chap. 10.
WELLER-Sam, and Job Trotter.
Early on the ensuing morning, Mr. Weller
was dispelling all the feverish remains of the
previous evening's conviviality, through the in-
strumentality of a halfpenny shower-bath (hav-
"Two coves in vhite aprons touches their hatsing induced a young gentleman attached to the
wen you walk in-License, sir, license?'
Queer sort, them, and their masʼrs too, sir-Old
Bailey Proctors-and no mistake."
•
<
stable department, by the offer of that coin, to
pump over his head and face, until he was per-
fectly restored), when he was attracted by the ap-
pearance of a young fellow in mulberry-colored
livery, who was sitting on a bench in the yard,
reading what appeared to be a hymn-book, with
an air of deep abstraction, but who occasionally
stole a glance at the individual under the pump,
as if he took some interest in his proceedings,
nevertheless.
very sunken eyes, and a gigantic head, from
which depended a quantity of lank black hair.
"You're a rum 'un!" thought Mr. Weller; and
thinking this, he went on washing himself, and
thought no more about him.
Still the man kept glancing from his hymn-
book to Sam, and from Sam to his hymn-book,
as if he wanted to open a conversation. So at
last, Sam, by way of giving him an opportunity,
said with a familiar nod-
"How are you, governor?”
"I am happy to say, I am pretty well, sir."
said the man, speaking with great deliberation,
and closing the book. "I hope you are the
same, sir?
What do they do?" inquired the gentleman.
"Do! You, sir! That ain't the wost on
it, neither. They puts things into old gen'l'm'n's
heads as they never dreamed of. My father,
sir, wos a coachman. A widower he wos, and
fat enough for anything-uncommon fat, to be
sure. His missus dies, and leaves him four
hundred pound. Down he goes to the Com- "You're a rum 'un to look at, you are!"
mons, to see the lawyer and draw the blunt-thought Mr. Weller, the first time his eyes en-
wery smart-top boots on-nosegay in his but countered the glance of the stranger in the mul-
ton-hole-broad-brimmed tile-green shawl-berry suit: who had a large, sallow, ugly face,
quite the gen❜lm'n. Goes through the archvay,
thinking how he should inwest the money-up
comes the touter, touches his hat-' License,
sir, license?'—'What's that?' says my father.
'License, sir,' says he.-'What license?' says
my father. Marriage license,' says the touter.-
Dash my veskit,' says my father, I never |
thought o' that.'-'I think you wants one, sir,'
says the touter. My father pulls up, and thinks
a bit-'No,' says he, damme, I'm too old,
b'sides I'm a many sizes too large,' says he.—
'Not a bit on it, sir,' says the touter. Think
not?' says my father.-'I'm sure not,' says he;
we married a gen'l'm'n twice your size, last
Monday.'-'Did you, though?' said my father.
To be sure we did,' says the touter, 'you're
a babby to him—this way, sir-this way!'—and
sure enough my father walks arter him, like a
tame monkey behind a horgan, into a little
back office, vere a feller sat among dirty papers
and tin boxes, making believe he was busy.
Pray take a seat, vile I makes out the affidavit,
sir,' says the lawyer. Thankee, sir,' says my fa-
ther, and down he sat, and stared with all his
eyes, and his mouth vide open, at the names on
the boxes. 'What's your name,
What's your name, sir?' says the
lawyer.-' Tony Weller,' says my father.-' Par-
ish?' says the lawyer.—' Bel'e Savage,' says my
father; for he stopped there wen he drove up,
and he know'd nothing about parishes, he didn't.
--' And what's the lady's name?' says the law-
yer. My father was struck all of a heap.
Blessed if I know,' says he.-'Not know!'
says the lawyer.-'No more nor you do,' says
my father;' can't I put that in afterwards?'-
'Impossible!' says the lawyer.-'Wery well,'
says my father, after he'd thought a moment,
'put down Mrs. Clarke.'-'What Clarke?' says
"Why, if I felt less like a walking brandy-
bottle, I shouldn't be quite so staggery this
mornin'," replied Sam. "Are you stoppin' in
this house, old 'un?”
"
The mulberry man replied in the affirmative.
'How was it you worn't one of us, last
night?" inquired Sam, scrubbing his face with
the towel. You seem one of the jolly sort
looks as conwivial as a live trout in a
lime basket," added Mr. Weller, in an under
tone.
*
*
*
*
"Give us your hand," said Mr. Weller, ad-
vancing; “I should like to know you. I like
your appearance, old fellow.”
"
Well, that is very strange," said the mul-
berry man, with great simplicity of manner. “I
like yours so much, that I wanted to speak to
you, from the very first moment I saw you under
the pump."
Did you though?"
Upon my word. Now, isn't that curious?"
"Wery sing'ler," said Sam, inwardly con
·
WELLER
514
gratulating himself upon the softness of the
stranger. "What's your name, my patriarch?"
"Job."
"And a wery good name it is-only one I
know that ain't got a nickname to it. What's
the other name?
"Trotter," said the stranger. "What is
yours!"
Sam bore in mind his master's caution, and
replied-
'My name's Walker; my master's name's
Wilkins. Will you take a drop o' somethin'
this mornin', Mr. Trotter?"—Pickwick, Chap. 16.
WELLER-Sam, and Job Trotter (Tears).
"You must ha' been wery nicely brought
up," said Sam.
'Oh, very, Mr. Weller, very," replied Job.
At the recollection of the purity of his youthful
days, Mr. Trotter pulled forth the pink hand-
kerchief, and wept copiously.
"You must ha' been an uncommon nice boy
to go to school vith," said Sam.
"I was, sir," replied Job, heaving a deep
sigh. "I was the idol of the place."
""
Ah," said Sam, "I don't wonder at it.
What a comfort you must ha' been to your
blessed mother."
At these words, Mr. Job Trotter inserted an
end of the pink handkerchief into the corner of
each eye, one after the other, and began to weep
copiously.
"Wot's the matter vith the man?" said Sam,
indignantly. "Chelsea water-works is nothin'
to you. What are you melting vith now? The
consciousness o' willainy?”—Pickwick, Chap. 23.
WELLER-Sam, as a philosopher.
Delightful prospect, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick.
"Beats the chimley-pots, sir," replied Mr.
Weller, touching his hat.
"I suppose you have hardly seen anything
but chimney-pots and bricks and mortar all your
life, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, smiling.
"I worn't always a boots, sir," said Mr. Wel-
ler, with a shake of the head. I wos a wag-
giner's boy, once.'
"When was that?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
"When I wos first pitched neck and crop
into the world, to play at leap-frog with its
troubles," replied Sam. "I wos a carrier's boy
at startin'; then a wagginer's, then a helper,
then a boots. Now I'm a gen'l'm'n's servant.
I shall be a gen'l'm'n myself one of these days,
perhaps, with a pipe in my mouth, and a sum-
mer-house in the back-garden. Who knows? I
shouldn't be surprised, for one."
"You are quite a philosopher, Sam," said Mr.
Pickwick.
WELLER
and afore I took up with the wagginer, I had
unfurnished lodgin's for a fortnight."
"Unfurnished lodgings?" said Mr. Pick
wick.
"Yes-the dry arches of Waterloo Bridge.
Fine sleeping-place-within ten minutes' walk
of all the public offices-only if there is any ob-
jection to it, it is that the sitivation's rayther
too airy. I see some queer sights there."
Ah, I suppose you did," said Mr. Pickwick,
with an air of considerable interest.
Sights, sir," resumed Mr. Weller, "as 'ud
penetrate your benevolent heart, and come out
on the other side. You don't see the reg'lar
wagrants there; trust 'em, they knows better
than that. Young beggars, male and female, as
hasn't made a rise in their profession, takes up
their quarters there sometimes; but it's gener-
ally the worn-out, starving, houseless creatures
as rolls themselves in the dark corners o' them
lonesome places-poor creeturs as ain't up to
the twopenny rope."-Pickwick, Chap. 16.
WELLER-Sam's opinion of "weal pie."
'Weal pie," said Mr. Weller, soliloquising, as
he arranged the eatables on the grass. Wery
good thing is weal pie, when you know the lady
as made it, and is quite sure it ain't kittens; and
arter all though, where's the odds, when they're
so like weal that the wery piemen themselves
don't know the difference?"
"Don't they, Sam?" said Mr. Pickwick.
"Not they, sir," replied Mr. Weller, touching
his hat. "I lodged in the same house with a
pieman once, sir, and a wery nice man he was
—reg'lar clever chap, too-make pies out o' any-
thing, he could. 'What a number o' cats you
keep, Mr. Brooks,' says I, when I'd got intimate
with him. Ah,' says he, 'I do-a good many,'
says he. You must be wery fond o' cats,' says
I. Other people is,' says he, a winkin' at me;
they ain't in season till the winter though,' says
he. 'Not in season!' says I. 'No,' says he,
'fruits is in, cats is out.' 'Why, what do you
mean?' says I. 'Mean?' says he. 'That I'll
never be a party to the combination o' the
butchers, to keep up the prices o' meat,' says he.
'Mr. Weller,' says he, a squeezing my hand wery
hard, and vispering in my ear-don't mention
this here agin-but it's the seasonin' as does it.
They're all made o' them noble animals,' says
he, a pointin' to a wery nice little tabby kitten,
'and I seasons 'em for beefsteak, weal, or kid-
ney, 'cordin' to the demand. And more than
that,' says he, 'I can make a weal a beefsteak,
or a beefsteak a kidney, or any one on 'em a
mutton, at a minute's notice, just as the market
changes, and appetites wary !'
"He must have been a very ingenious young
man that, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, with a
slight shudder.
"It runs in the family, I b'lieve, sir," replied
Mr. Weller. "My father's wery much in that
line, now. If my mother-in-law blows him up, Just was, sir," replied Mr. Weller, continu-
he whistles. She flies in a passion, and breaks ing his occupation of emptying the basket,
his pipe; he steps out, and gets another. Then" and the pies was beautiful. Tongue; well,
she screams wery loud, and falls into 'sterics;
and he smokes wery comfortably till she comes
to agin. That's philosophy, sir, ain't it?”
"A very good substitute for it, at all events,"
replied Mr. Pickwick, laughing. "It must have
been of great service to you, in the course of
your rambling life, Sam."
Service, sir," exclaimed Sam.
"You may
that's a wery good thing when it an't a woman's.
Bread-knuckle o' ham, reg'lar picter-cold
beef in slices, wery good. What's in them
stone jars, young touch-and-go?"
Pickwick, Chap. 19.
<<
WELLER-Sam, and the Sawbones.
Wery good, sir," replied Sam.
say that. Arter I run away from the carrier, couple o' Sawbones down-stairs.
There's a
WELLER
515
"A couple of what?" exclaimed Mr. Pick-
wick, sitting up in bed.
"A couple o' Sawbones," said Sam.
"What's a Sawbones?" inquired Mr. Pick-
wick, not quite certain whether it was a live
animal, or something to eat.
"What! Don't you know what a Sawbones
is, sir?" inquired Mr. Weller. "I thought
everybody know'd as a Sawbones was a Sur-
geon.'
*
"
*
*
'They're a smokin' cigars by the kitchen
fire," said Sam.
"Ah!" observed Mr. Pickwick, rubbing his
hands, overflowing with kindly feelings and
animal spirits. Just what I like to see.'
WELLER
"Nice place, sir," said the powdered-headed
footman.
"Seems so," observed Sam.
"Pleasant_society, sir," remarked the pow-
dered-headed footman. Very agreeable ser-
vants, sir."
"I should think they wos," replied Sam.
"Affable, unaffected, say-nothin'-to-nobody sort
o' fellers."
"Oh, very much so, indeed, sir," said the
powdered-headed footman, taking Sam's remark
as a high compliment. "Very much so, indeed.
Do you do anything in this way, sir," inquired
the tall footman, producing a small snuff-box
with a fox's head on the top of it.
((
"Not without sneezing," replied Sam.
“And one on 'em," said Sam, not noticing his Why, it is difficult, sir, I confess," said the
master's interruption, "one on 'em's got his legs tall footman.
It may
be done by degrees, sir.
on the table, and is a drinkin' brandy neat, vile Coffee is the best practice. I carried coffee, sir,
the t'other one-him in the barnacles-has got a for a long time. It looks very like rappee, sir.”
|
barrel o' oysters atween his knees, wich he's a Here, a sharp peal at the bell reduced the
openin' like steam, and as fast as he eats 'em, he powdered-headed footman to the ignominious
takes a aim vith the shells at young dropsy, necessity of putting the fox's head in his pocket,
who's a sittin' down fast asleep, in the chimbley and hastening with a humble countenance to
Mr. Bantam's "study." By-the-bye, who ever
knew a man who never read or wrote either,
.who hadn't got some small back parlor
which he would call a study !
corner."
Eccentricities of genius, Sam, "said Mr. Pick-
wick. 'You may retire."-Pickwick, Chap. 30.
WELLER-Sam, on social proprieties.
Now, young man, what do you want?"
"Is there anybody here named Sam?" in-
quired the youth, in a loud voice of treble
quality.
"What's the t'other name?" said Sam Weller,
looking round.
Pickwick, Chap. 35.
WELLER-Sam, at a footman's "swarry."
"How do you do, Mr. Weller?" said Mr.
John Smauker, raising his hat gracefully with
one hand, while he gently waved the other in a
condescending manner. "How do you do,
sir?"
C
}
Why, reasonably conwalescent," replied
"How do you find yourself, my dear
Sam.
feller?"
|
C
"How should I know?" briskly replied the
young gentleman below the hairy cap.
"You're a sharp boy, you are," said Mr. Wel-
er; "only I wouldn't show that wery fine edge
too much, if I was you, in case anybody took it
off. What do you mean by comin' to a hot-el,
and asking arter Sam, vith as much politenessed Sam. "I was fearful you would; it won't
as a vild Indian?"
'Cos an old gen'l'm'n told me to," replied
the boy.
"Wot old gen'l'm'n?" inquired Sam, with
deep disdain.
"Him as drives a Ipswich coach, and uses
our parlor," rejoined the boy. "He told me
yesterday mornin' to come to the George and
Wultur this arternoon, and ask for Sam."
"It's my father, my dear," said Mr. Weller,
turning with an explanatory air to the young
lady in the bar; "blessed if I think he hardly
knows wot my other name is. Vell, young
brockiley sprout, wot then?"
Pickwick, Chap. 33.
WELLER-Sam, among the fashionable
footmen.
"Tell the old gen'l'm'n not to put himself in
a perspiration. No hurry, six-foot. I've had
ay dinner."
"You dine early, sir," said the powdered-
headed footman.
"I find I gets on better at supper when I
does," replied Sam.
"
Have you been long in Bath, sir?" inquired
the powdered-headed footman. I have not
had the pleasure of hearing of you before."
"I haven't created any wery surprisin' sensa-
tion here, as yet," rejoined Sam, "for me and
the other fash'nables only come last night."
'Only so so," said Mr. John Smauker.
"Ah, you've been a workin' too hard," observ-
do, you know; you must not give way to that
'ere uncompromisin' spirit o' your'n.'
"It's not so much that, Mr. Weller,” replied
Mr. John Smauker, "as bad wine; I'm afraid
I've been dissipating."
"Oh! that's it, is it?" said Sam; "that's a
wery bad complaint, that.”
And yet the temptation, you see, Mr. Wel-
ler," observed Mr. John Smauker.
Ah, to be sure," said Sam.
<<
Plunged into the very vortex of society, you
know, Mr. Weller,” said Mr. John Smauker with
a sigh.
Dreadful, indeed!" rejoined Sam.
"But it's always the way," said Mr. John
Smauker; if your destiny leads you into public
life, and public station, you must expect to be
subjected to temptations which other people is
free from, Mr. Weller."
'Precisely what my uncle said, ven he vent
into the public line," remarked Sam, "and wery
| right the old gen'l'm'n wos, for he drank hisself
to death in somethin' less than a quarter."
Mr. John Smauker looked deeply indignant
at any parallel being drawn between himself and
the deceased gentleman in question; but as
Sam's face was in the most immovable state of
calmness, he thought better of it, and looked
affable again.
*
*
*
*
*
"Perhaps we had better be walking," said
ง
WELLER
516
*
Mr. Smauker, consulting a copper time-piece I des-say.
which dwelt at the bottom of a deep watch-bye."
pocket, and was raised to the surface by means
of a black string, with a copper key at the other
end.
P'raps we had," replied Sam, "or they'll
overdo the swarry, and that'll spile it."
"Have you drank the waters, Mr. Weller?"
inquired his companion, as they walked towards
*High Street.
Once," replied Sam.
"What did you think of 'em, sir?”
I thought they wos particklery unpleasant,"
replied Sam.
<<
Ah," said Mr. John Smauker, "you disliked
the killibeate taste, perhaps."
"I don't know much about that 'ere," said
Sam. "I thought they'd a wery strong flavor
o' warm flat irons.
""
That is the killibeate, Mr. Weller," observed
Mr. John Smauker, contemptuously.
“Well, if it is, it's a wery inexpressive word,
that's all," said Sam. "It may be, but I ain't
much in the chimical line myself, so I can't say."
And here, to the great horror of Mr. John Smau-
ker, Sam Weller began to whistle.
*
*
*
*
*
"This way," said his new friend, apparently
much relieved as they turned down a bye street;
we shall soon be there."
"Shall we?" said Sam, quite unmoved by
the announcement of his close vicinity to the
select footmen of Bath.
"
Yes," said Mr. John Smauker. "Don't be
alarmed, Mr. Weller."
Oh, no," said Sam.
"You'll see some very handsome uniforms,
Mr. Weller," continued Mr. John Smauker;
' and perhaps you'll find some of the gentlemen
rather high at first, you know, but they'll soon
come round."
66
That's wery kind on 'em,” replied Sam.
And you know," resumed Mr. John Smauker,
with an air of sublime protection; you know,
as you're a stranger, perhaps they'll be rather
hard upon you at first.'
They won't be wery cruel, though, will
they?" inquired Sam.
66
No, no," replied Mr. John Smauker, pull-
ing forth the fox's head, and taking a gentle-
manly pinch. "There are some funny dogs
among us, and they will have their joke, you
know; but you mustn't mind 'em, you mustn't
mind 'em.
""
"I'll try and bear up agin such a reg'lar
knock-down o' talent," replied Sam.
*
"
*
*
*
Gentlemen, my friend Mr. Weller."
""
*
Sorry to keep the fire off you, Weller," said
Mr. Tuckle with a familiar nod. Hope you're
not cold, Weller."
"Not by no means, Blazes,” replied Sam.
"It 'ud be a wery chilly subject as felt cold
wen you stood opposit. You'd save coals if
they put you behind the fender in the waitin'
room at a public office, you would."
As this retort appeared to convey rather a
personal allusion to Mr. Tuckle's crimson livery,
that gentleman looked majestic for a few seconds,
but gradually edging away from the fire, broke
into a forced smile, and said it wasn't bad.
Wery much obliged for your good opinion,
sir," replied Sam. We shall get on by degrees,
WELLER
We'll try a better one, by-and-
*
*
*
At the conclusion of this speech, everybody
took a sip in honor of Sam; and Sam having
ladled out, and drunk, two full glasses of punch
in honor of himself, returned thanks in a neat
speech.
((
'Wery much obliged to you, old fellers,” said
Sam, ladling away at the punch in the most un-
embarrassed manner possible, "for this here
compliment: wich, comin' from sich a quarter,
is wery overvelmin'. I've heerd a good deal on
you as a body, but I will say, that I never thought
you was sich uncommon nice men as I find you
air. I only hope you'll take care o' yourselves,
and not compromise nothin' o' your dignity,
which is a wery charmin' thing to see, when
one's out a walkin', and has always made me
wery happy to look at, ever since I was a boy
about half as high as the brass-headed stick o'
my wery respectable friend, Blazes, there.
to the wictim of oppression in the suit o' brim-
stone, all I can say of him, is, that I hope he'll
get jist as good a berth as he deserves; in vich
case it's wery little cold swarry as ever he'll be
troubled with agin."
As
Here Sam sat down with a pleasant smile,
and his speech having been vociferously ap-
plauded, the company broke up.
Pickwick, Chap. 37.
WELLER-Sam, and the fat boy.
'Your master's a wery pretty notion of keep-
in' anythin' up, my dear," said Mr. Weller; I
never see such a sensible sort of a man as he is,
or such a reg'lar gen'l'm'n."
"Oh, that he is!" said the fat boy, joining
in the conversation; "don't he breed nice
pork!" The fat youth gave a semi-cannibalic
leer at Mr. Weller, as he thought of the roast
legs and gravy.
"
Oh, you've woke up, at last, have you?'
said Sam.
The fat boy nodded.
"I'll tell you wot it is, young boa construct-
er," said Mr. Weller, impressively; "if you
don't sleep a little less, and exercise a little
more, wen you comes to be a man you'll lay
yourself open to the same sort of personal in-
conwenience as was inflicted on the old gen'l'-
m'n as wore the pigtail."
"What did they do to him?" inquired the
fat boy, in a faltering voice.
"I'm a-goin' to tell you," replied Mr. Weller;
"he was one o' the largest patterns as was ever
turned out-reg'lar fat man, aş hadn't caught a
glimpse of his own shoes for five-and-forty
year.'
"Lor!" exclaimed Emma.
No, that he hadn't, my dear," said Mr. Wel-
ler; "and if you'd put an exact model of his
own legs on the dinin' table afore him, he
wouldn't ha' known 'em. Well, he always
walks to his office with a wery handsome gold
watch-chain hanging out, about a foot and a
quarter, and a gold watch in his fob pocket as
was worth-I'm afraid to say how much, but as
much as a watch can be—a large, heavy, round
manafacter, as stout for a watch as he was for a
man, and with a big face in proportion. 'You'd
better not carry that 'ere watch,' says the old
gen'l'm'n's friends; 'you'll be robbed on it,' says
}
WELLER
517
they. Shall I?' says he. 'Yes, you will,'
says they. Vell,' says he, 'I should like to see
the thief as could get this here watch out, for
I'm blest if I ever can, it's such a tight fit,' says
he; and venever I wants to know what's
o'clock, I'm obliged to stare into the bakers'
shops,' he says. Well, then he laughs as hearty
as if he was a-goin' to pieces, and out he walks
agin with his powdered head and pigtail, and
rolls down the Strand vith the chain hangin'
out furder than ever, and the great round watch
almost bustin' through his gray kersey smalls.
There warn't a pickpocket in all London as
didn't take a pull at that chain, but the chain
'ud never break, and the watch 'ud never come
out, so they soon got tired o' dragging such a
heavy old gen'l'm'n along the pavement, and
he'd go home and laugh till the pigtail wibrated
like the penderlum of a Dutch clock. At last,
one day the old gen'l'm'n was a-rollin' along, and
he sees a pickpocket as he know'd by sight,
a-comin' up, arm in arm vith a little boy vith
a wery large head. 'Here's a game,' said the
old gen'l'm'n to himself, 'they're a-goin' to have
another try, but it won't do! So he begins a-
chucklin' wery hearty, wen, all of a sudden, the
little boy leaves hold of the pickpocket's arm,
and rushes head-foremost straight into the old
gen'l'm'n's stomach, and for a moment doubles
him right up vith the pain. 'Murder!' says
the old gen'l'm'n. 'All right, sir,' says the
pickpocket, a-wisperin' in his ear. And wen
he come straight agin, the watch and chain was
gone, and what's worse than that, the old gen'l'-
m'n's digestion was all wrong ever arterwards,
to the wery last day of his life; so just you look
about you, young feller, and take care you don't
get too fat."-Pickwick, Chap. 28.
WELLER-Sam-His compliments.
Sam inquired, with a countenance of great
anxiety, whether his master's name was not
Walker.
"
No, it ain't," said the groom.
Nor Brown, I s'pose?" said Sam.
No, it ain't."
Nor Vilson?"
No; nor that neither," said the groom.
'Vell," replied Sam, then I'm mistaken,
and he hasn't got the honor o' my acquaintance,
which I thought he had. Don't wait here out
o' compliment to me," said Sam, as the groom
wheeled in the barrow, and prepared to shut
the gate.
“Ease afore ceremony, old boy; I'll
excuse you."
"I'll knock your head off for half-a-crown,"
said the surly groom, bolting one half of the gate.
"Couldn't afford to have it done on those
terms," rejoined Sam. "It 'ud be worth a life's
board vages at least, to you, and 'ud be cheap at
that. Make my compliments in-doors. Tell
'em not to vait dinner for me, and say they
needn't mind puttin' any by, for it'll be cold
afore I come in."-Pickwick, Chap. 39.
WELLER-Sam-At home.
"Mother-in-law," said Sam, politely saluting
the lady, "wery much obliged to you for this
here wisit. Shepherd, how air you?"
"Oh, Samuel!" said Mrs. Weller, "this is
dreadful."
"Not a bit on it, mum," replied Sam. “
shepherd."
Is it,
WELLER
Mr. Stiggins raised his hands, and turned up
his eyes, till the whites-or rather the yellows→
were alone visible; but made no reply in words.
"Is this here gen'l'm'n troubled with any
painful complaint?" said Sam, looking to his
mother-in-law for explanation.
"The good man is grieved to see you here,
Samuel," replied Mrs. Weller.
"Oh, that's it, is it?" said Sam. "I was
afeerd, from his manner, that he might ha' for-
gotten to take pepper vith that 'ere last cowcum-
ber he eat. Set down, sir, ve make no extra
charge for the settin' down, as the king remarked
wen he blowed
up
his minister."
Young man, said Mr. Stiggins, ostenta-
tiously, "I fear you are not softened by imprison-
ment.
"wot
">
""
Beg your pardon, sir," replied Sam;
wos you graciously pleased to hobserve?
"I apprehend, young man, that your nature
is no softer for this chastening," said Mr. Stig-
gins, in a loud voice.
'Sir," replied Sam, "you're wery kind to say
so. I hope my natur is not a soft vun, sir. Wery
much obliged to you for your good opinion, sir.
At this point of the conversation, a sound, in-
decorously approaching to a laugh, was heard
to proceed from the chair in which the elder
Mr. Weller was seated; upon which Mrs. Weller,
on a hasty consideration of all the circumstances
of the case, considered it her bounden duty to
become gradually hysterical.
66
CC
Weller," said Mrs. W. (the old gentleman
was seated in a corner): "Weller! Come forth."
Wery much obleeged to you, my dear," re-
plied Mr. Weller; "but I'm quite comfortable
vere I am
"}
Upon this Mrs. Weller burst into tears.
"Wot's gone wrong, mum ?" said Sam.
"Oh, Samuel!" replied Mrs. Weller, "your
father makes me wretched. Will nothing do
him good?"
"Do you hear this here?" said Sam. "Lady
wants to know vether nothin' 'ull do you good.'
"Wery much indebted to Mrs. Weller for her
po-lite inquiries, Sammy," replied the old gen-
tleman. I think a pipe vould benefit me a
good deal. Could I be accommodated, Sammy?
Pickwick, Chap. 45.
WELLER-Sam, and his mother-in-law.
The appearance of the red-nosed man had in-
duced Sam, at first sight, to more than half sus-
pect that he was the deputy shepherd of whom
his estimable parent had spoken. The moment
he saw him eat, all doubt on the subject was re-
moved, and he perceived at once that if he pur-
posed to take up his temporary quarters where
he was, he must make his footing good without
delay. He therefore commenced proceedings
by putting his arm over the half door of the
bar, coolly unbolting it, and leisurely walking in.
"Mother-in-law," said Sam, "how are you?
Why, I do believe he is a Weller!" said
Mrs. W., raising her eyes to Sam's face, with no
very gratified expression of countenance.
"I rayther think he is," said the imperturba-
ble Sam; "and I hope this here reverend gen-
'I'm'n 'll excuse me saying that I wish I was the
Weller as owns you, mother-in-law."
This was a double-barrelled compliment. It
implied that Mrs. Weller was a most agreeable
female, and also that Mr. Stiggins had a clerical
1
WELLER
518
appearance. It made a visible impression at
once; and Sam followed up his advantage by
kissing his mother-in-law.
"Get along with you!" said Mrs. Weller,
pushing him away.
"For shame, young man !" said the gentleman
with the red nose.
"No offence, sir, no offence," replied Sam;
"you're wery right, though; it ain't the right
sort o' thing, wen mothers-in-law is young and
good-looking, is it, sir?"
"It's all vanity," said Mr. Stiggins.
Ah, so it is," said Mrs. Weller, setting her
cap to rights.
Sam thought it was, too, but he held his peace.
Pickwick, Chap. 27.
WELLER-Sam, and Rev. Mr. Stiggins.
I'm afeerd, mum," said Sam, "that this
here gen'l'm'n, with the twist in his countenance,
feels rayther thirsty, with the melancholy spec-
tacle afore him. Is it the case, mum?"
The worthy lady looked at Mr. Stiggins for a
reply; that gentleman, with many rollings of
the eye, clenched his throat with his right hand,
and mimicked the act of swallowing to intimate
that he was athirst.
"I am afraid, Samuel, that his feelings have
made him so, indeed," said Mrs. Weller mourn
fully.
"Wot's your usual tap, sir?" replied Sam.
"Oh, my dear young friend," replied Mr. Stig-
gins, "all taps is vanities!
"Too true, too true, indeed," said Mrs. Wel-
ler, murmuring a groan, and shaking her head
assentingly.
Well," said Sam, "I des-say they may be,
sir; but which is your pertickler wanity? Vich
wanity do you like the flavor on best, sir?"
"Oh, my dear young friend,” replied Mr. Stig-
gins, "I despise them all. If," said Mr. Stig-
gins, "if there is any one of them less odious
than another, it is the liquid called rum. Warm,
my dear young friend, with three lumps of sugar
to the tumbler."
Wery sorry to say, sir," said Sam, that
they don't allow that particular wanity to be
sold in this here establishment."
Oh, the hardness of heart of these inveter-
ate men!" ejaculated Mr. Stiggins. "Oh, the
accursed cruelty of these inhuman persecutors!"
With these words, Mr. Stiggins again cast up
his eyes, and rapped his breast with his um-
brella; and it is but justice to the reverend gen-
tleman to say, that his indignation appeared
very real and unfeigned indeed.
After Mrs. Weller and the red-nosed gentle-
man had commented on this inhuman usage in
a very forcible manner, and had vented a vari-
ety of pious and holy execrations against its
authors, the latter recommended a bottle of port
wine, warmed with a little water, spice, and sugar,
as being grateful to the stomach, and savor-
ing less of vanity than many other compounds.
It was accordingly ordered to be prepared.
Pending its preparation, the red-nosed man and
Mrs. Weller looked at the elder W., and
groaned.
*
*
*
*
*
Try an in'ard application, sir," said Sam, as
the red-nosed gentleman rubbed his head with
a rueful visage. "Wot do you think o' that for a
go o' wanity warm, sir?"
WELLER
Mr. Stiggins made no verbal answer, but his
manner was expressive. He tasted the contents
of the glass which Sam had placed in his hand;
put his umbrella on the floor, and tasted it
again, passing his hand placidly across his
stomach twice or thrice; he then drank the
whole at a breath, and smacking his lips, held
out the tumbler for more.
Nor was Mrs. Weller behind-hand in doing
justice to the composition. The good lady be-
gan by protesting that she could'nt touch a drop
-then took a small drop-then a large drop
then a great many drops; and her feelings being
of the nature of those substances which are pow
erfully affected by the application of strong
waters, she dropped a tear with every drop of
negus, and so got on, melting the feelings down,
until at length she had arrived at a very pathetic
and decent pitch of misery.
The elder Mr. Weller observed these signs and
tokens with many manifestations of disgust, and
when, after a second jug of the same, Mr. Stig-
gins began to sigh in a dismal manner, he plain-
ly evinced his disapprobation of the whole pro-
ceedings, by sundry incoherent ramblings of
speech.
*
*
*
*
*
"I think there must be somethin' wrong in
your mother-in-law's inside, as vell as in that o
the red-nosed man.'
"Wot do you mean?" said Sam.
"I mean this here, Sammy, replied the old
gentleman, "that wot they drink don't seem no
nourishment to 'em; it all turns to warm water,
and comes a' pourin' out o' their eyes. 'Pend
upon it, Sammy, its a constitootional infirmity."
Pickwick, Chap 45.
WELLER-Sam-Imprisoned for debt.
'Well," said Sam, "you've been a-prophesyin'
avay, about wot'll happen to the gov'nor, if he's
left alone. Don't you see any vay o' takin' care
on him?"
'No, I don't, Sammy," said Mr. Weller, with
a reflective visage.
"No vay at all?" inquired Sam.
66
No vay," said Mr. Weller, "unless"-and a
gleam of intelligence lighted up his countenance
as he sunk his voice to a whisper, and applied
his mouth to the ear of his offspring: "unless
it is getting him out in a turn-up bedstead,
unbeknown to the turnkeys, Sammy, or dressin'
him up like a old 'ooman with a green wail."
Sam Weller received both of these sugges-
tions with unexpected contempt, and again pro-
pounded his question.
"No," said the old gentleman;
"if he von't
let you stop there, I see no vay at all. It's no
thoroughfare, Sammy, no thoroughfare."
"Well, then, I'll tell you wot it is," said Sam,
"I'll trouble you for the loan of five-and-twenty
pound."
"Wot good 'ull that do?" inquired Mr.
Weller.
Never mind," replied Sam. "P'raps you may
ask for it, five minits artervards; p'raps I may
say I von't pay, and cut up rough. You von't
think o' arrestin' your own son for the money,
and send him off to the Fleet, will you, you
unnatʼral wagabone?"
At this reply of Sam's, the father and son ex-
changed a complete code of telegraphic nods
and gestures, after which, the elder Mr. Weller
WELLER
519
sat himself down on a stone step, and laughed
till he was purple.
WELLER
heard his own name proclaimed in some distant
passage. Nor was he mistaken, for it quickly
passed from mouth to mouth, and in a few
seconds the air teemed with shouts of " Weller."
Here!" roared Sam, in a stentorian voice,
"Wot's the matter? Who wants him? Has
an express come to say that his country-hous℗
is a-fire?"
'Wot a old image it is!" exclaimed Sam, in-
dignant at this loss of time. "Wot are you
a-settin' down there for, con-wertin' your face
into a street-door knocker, wen there's so much" Wot's the matter?
to be done. Where's the money?"
"In the boot, Sammy, in the boot," replied
Mr. Weller, composing his features.
Hold my
hat, Sammy."
"
Having divested himself of this incumbrance,
Mr. Weller gave his body a sudden wrench to
one side, and, by a dexterous twist, contrived to
get his right hand into a most capacious pocket,
from whence, after a great deal of panting and
exertion, he extricated a pocket-book of the
large octavo size, fastened by a huge leathern |
strap. From this ledger he drew forth a couple
of whip-lashes, three or four buckles, a little
sample-bag of corn, and finally a small roll of
very dirty bank-notes: from which he selected the
required amount, which he handed over to Sam.
"And now, Sammy," said the old gentleman,
when the whip lashes, and the buckles, and the
samples, had been all put back, and the book
once more deposited at the bottom of the same
pocket, "Now, Sammy, I know a gen'l'm'n here,
as'll do the rest o' the bizness for us in no time
-a limb o' the law, Sammy, as has got brains,
like the frogs, dispersed all over his body, and
reachin' to the wery tips of his fingers; a friend
of the Lord Chancellorship's, Sammy, who'd
only have to tell him what he wanted, and he'd
lock you up
for life, if that wos all."
I say," said Sam, "none o' that."
None o' wot?" inquired Mr. Weller.
Why, none o' them unconstitootional ways
o' doing it," retorted Sam. "The have-his-car-
case, next to the perpetual motion, is vun of the
blessedest things as wos ever made. I've read
that 'ere in the newspapers, wery of'en."
Well, wot's that got to do vith it?" inquired
Mr. Weller.
Somebody wants you in the hall,” said a
man who was standing by.
(C
'Just mind that 'ere paper and the pot, old
feller, will you?" said Sam. "I'm a comin'.
Blessed, if they was a callin' me to the bar, they
couldn't make more noise about it!"
Accompanying these words with a gentle rap
on the head of the young gentleman before
noticed, who, unconscious of his close vicinity
to the person in request, was screaming "Wel-
ler!" with all his might, Sam hastened across
the ground, and ran up the steps into the hall.
Here, the first object that met his eyes was his
beloved father sitting on a bottom stair, with
his hat in his hand, shouting out "Weller!" in
his very loudest tone, at half-minute intervals.
•
Wot are you a roarin' at?" said Sam impet-
uously, when the old gentleman had discharg-
ed himself of another shout; "makin' yourself
so precious hot that you looks like a aggrawated
glass-blower. Wot's the matter?”
"Aha!" replied the old gentleman, “I began
to be afeerd that you'd gone for a walk round
the Regency Park, Sammy."
""
"
Come," said Sam, none o' them taunts
agin the wictims o' avarice, and come off that
'ere step. Wot are you a sittin' down there
for? I don't live there."
I've got such a game for you, Sammy," saic
the elder Mr. Weller, rising.
'Stop a minit," said Sam, "you're all vite
behind."
"That's right, Sammy, rub it off,” said Mr.
Weller, as his son dusted him. "It might look
personal here, if a man walked about with
Just this here," said Sam, "that I'll patron-whitevash on his clothes, eh, Sammy?"
ize the inwention, and go in, that vay. No vis-
perin's to the Chancellorship, I don't like the
notion. It mayn't be altogether safe, vith ref-
erence to gettin' out agin.'
"}
Deferring to his son's feeling upon this point,
Mr. Weller at once sought the erudite Solomon
Pell, and acquainted him with his desire to is-
sue a writ, instantly, for the sum of twenty-five
pounds, and costs of process; to be executed
without delay upon the body of one Samuel Wel-
ler; the charges thereby incurred, to be paid in
advance to Solomon Pell.-Pickwick, Chap. 43.
"Wot a game it is!" said the elder Mr. Wel-
ler, with a chuckle. "A reg'lar prodigy son!"
Prodigal, prodigal son, sir," suggested Mr.
Pell, mildly.
CC
Never mind, sir," said Mr. Weller, with dig-
nity. "I know wot's o'clock, sir. Wen I don't,
I'll ask you, sir."
*
*
*
*
*
"Yes, gen'l'm'n," said Sam, "I'm a-stand
steady, sir, if you please-I'm a pris'ner,
gen'l'm'n. Con-fined, as the lady said.'
Pickwick, Chap. 44.
WELLER-Sam in prison.
He had hardly composed himself into the
needful state of abstraction, when he thought he
As Mr. Weller exhibited in this place une-
quivocal symptoms of an approaching fit of
chuckling, Sam interposed to stop it.
Keep quiet, do," said Sam, "there never vos
such a old picter-card born. What are you
bustin' vith, now?"
Sammy," said Mr. Weller, wiping his fore-
head, "I'm afeerd that vun o' these days I shall
laugh myself into a appleplexy, my boy."
Vell then, wot do you do it for?" said Sam.
"Now; wot have you got to say?
"Who do you think's come here with me,
Samivel?" said Mr. Weller, drawing back a
pace or two, pursing up his mouth, and extend-
ing his eyebrows.
"Pell?" said Sam.
Mr. Weller shook his head, and his red cheeks
expanded with the laughter that was endeav-
oring to find a vent.
"Mottled faced man, p'r'aps?" suggested Sam.
Again Mr. Weller shook his head.
"Who then?" asked Sam.
"Your mother-in-law," said Mr. Weller; and
it was lucky he did say it, or his cheeks must in-
evitably have cracked, from their most unnatu
ral distension.
"Your mother-in-law, Sammy," said Mr. Wel
ler, "and the red-nosed man, my boy; and the
red-nosed man. Ho! ho! ho!"
>
+
WELLER
520
With this, Mr. Weller launched into convul-
sions of laughter, while Sam regarded him with
a broad grin gradually overspreading his whole
countenance.
They've come to have a little serious talk
with you, Samivel," said Mr. Weller, wiping his
eyes.
"Don't let out nothin' about the un-
natʼral creditor, Sammy."-Pickwick, Chap. 45.
WELLER-Sam, and his father.
แ
Well," said Sam, "good bye."
"Tar, tar, Sammy," replied his father.
|
WELLER
WELLER, Mrs.—And Mr. Stiggins.
"Leave off rattlin' that 'ere nob o' yourn, if
you don't want it to come off the springs alto-
gether," said Sam impatiently, and behave
reasonable. I vent all the vay down to the
Markis o' Granby, arter you, last night.”
"Did you see the Marchioness o' Granby,
Sammy?" inquired Mr. Weller, with a sigh.
“Yes, I did,” replied Sam.
"How was the dear creetur a lookin'?"
I think she's a
Wery queer," said Sam.
injurin' herself gradivally vith too much o' that
ere pine-apple rum, and other strong medicines
the same natur.'
"You don't mean that, Sammy," said the
senior, earnestly.
"I've only got to say this here," said Sam,
stopping short, "that if I was the properiator o'o'
the Markis o' Granby, and that 'ere Stiggins
came and made toast in my bar, I'd—-”
"What?" interposed Mr. Weller, with great
anxiety. "What?"
"-Pison his rum and water," said Sam.
"No!" said Mr. Weller, shaking his son ea-
gerly by the hand, “would you raly, Sammy;
would you, though?”
"I would," said Sam. "I wouldn't be too
hard upon him at first. I'd drop him in the
water-butt, and put the lid on; and if I found
he was insensible to kindness, I'd try the other
persvasion."
The elder Mr. Weller bestowed a look of
deep, unspeakable admiration on his son; and,
having once more grasped his hand, walked
slowly away, revolving in his mind the numer-
ous reflections to which his advice had given
rise.-Pickwick, Chap. 27.
WELLER-Father and son.
Werry glad to see you, Sammy," said the
elder Mr. Weller, "though how you've managed
to get over your mother-in-law, is a mystery to
me. I only vish you'd write me out the re-
ceipt, that's all."
"Hush!" said Sam, "she's at home, old feller."
"She ain't vithin hearin'," replied Mr. Weller;
'she always goes and blows up, down-stairs, for
a couple of hours arter tea; so we'll just give
ourselves a damp, Sammy."
"I do, indeed,” replied the junior. Mr. Wel-
ler seized his son's hand, clasped it, and let it
fall. There was an expression on his counte-
nance in doing so-not of dismay or apprehen-
sion, but partaking more of the sweet and gen-
tle character of hope. A gleam of resignation,
and even of cheerfulness, passed over his face
too, as he slowly said, “I ain't quite certain
Sammy; I wouldn't like to say I wos altogether
positive, in case of any subsekent disappint.
ment, but I rayther think, my boy, I rayther
think, that the shepherd's got the liver com.
plaint!"
"Does he look bad?" inquired Sam.
"He's uncommon pale," replied his father,
"'cept about the nose, which is redder than ever.
His appetite is wery so-so, but he imbibes wun-
derful."
Some thoughts of the rum appeared to obtrude
themselves on Mr. Weller's mind, as he said
this; for he looked gloomy and thoughtful; but
he very shortly recovered, as was testified by
a perfect alphabet of winks, in which he was
only wont to indulge when particularly pleased.
Pickwick, Chap. 43.
WELLER, MR.-And "the Gentle Shep-
herd."
That's a pint o' domestic policy, Sammy,"
said Mr. Weller. "This here Stiggins-"
"Red-nosed man?" inquired Sam.
Saying this, Mr. Weller mixed two glasses of
spirits and water, and produced a couple of
pipes. The father and son sitting down oppo-
site each other; Sam on one side of the fire, in"
the high-backed chair, and Mr. Weller senior
on the other, in an easy ditto: they proceeded
to enjoy themselves with all due gravity.
""
Anybody been here, Sammy?" asked Mr.
Weller senior, drily, after a long silence.
Sam nodded an expressive assent.
"Red-nosed chap?" inquired Mr. Weller.
Sam nodded again.
"Amiable man that 'ere, Sammy," said Mr.
Weller, smoking violently.
"Seems so," observed Sam.
"Good hand at accounts," said Mr. Weller.
Is he?" said Sam.
"Borrows eighteenpence on Monday, and
comes on Tuesday for a shillin' to make it up
half-a-crown; calls again on Vensday for another
half-crown to make it five shillin's; and goes
on doubling, till he gets it up to a five pound
note in no time, like them sums in the 'rithme-
tic book 'bout the nails in the horse's shoes,
Sammy."
Sam intimated by a nod that he recollected
the problem alluded to by his parent.
Pickwick, Chap. 27.
"The wery same," replied Mr. Weller.
This here red-nosed man, Sammy, wisits your
mother-in-law vith a kindness and constancy as
I never see equalled. He's sitch a friend o' the
family, Sammy, that wen he's avay from us, he
can't be comfortable unless he has somethin' to
remember us by."
“And I'd give him somethin' as 'ud turpen
tine and bees'-vax his memory for the next ten
years or so, if I wos you," interposed Sam.
"Stop a minute," said Mr. Weller; "I wos
a-going to say, he always brings now, a flat
bottle as holds about a pint and a-half, and
fills it vith the pine-apple rum afore he goes
avay."
"And empties it afore he comes back, I
s'pose?" said Sam.
"Clean !" replied Mr. Weller; "never leaves
nothin' in it but the cork and the smell; trust
him for that, Sammy."-Pickwick, Chap. 33.
WELLER-The elder drives Mr. Stiggins.
"Vere are they?" said Sam, reciprocating all
the old gentleman's grins.
"In the snuggery," rejoined Mr. Weller,
"Catch the red-nosed man a goin' anyvere but
WELLER
521
WELLER
vere the liquors is; not he, Samivel, not he. Ve'd WELLER-The elder, at dinner.
a wery pleasant ride along the road from the We have said that Mr. Weller was engaged
Markis this mornin', Sammy," said Mr. Weller, in preparing for his journey to London-he was
when he felt himself equal to the task of speak-taking sustenance, in fact. On the table be-
ing in an articulate manner. "I drove the old
piebald in that 'ere little shay-cart as belonged
to your mother-in-law's first wenter, into vich
a harm-cheer wos lifted for the shepherd; and
I'm blest," said Mr. Weller, with a look of deep
scorn; I'm blest if they didn't bring a portable
flight o' steps out into the road a front o' our
door, for him to get up by.
"You don't mean that?"" said Sam.
“I do mean that, Sammy," replied his father,
"and I vish you could ha' seen how tight he
held on by the sides wen he did get up, as if he
wos afeerd o' being precipitayted down full six
foot, and dashed into a million o' hatoms. He
tumbled in at last, however, and avay ve vent;
and I rayther think, I say I rayther think, Sam-
ivel, that he found hisself a little jolted wen ve
turned the corners."
"
Wot, I s'pose you happened to drive up agin
a post or two?" said Sam.
"I'm afeered,” replied Mr. Weller in a rapture
of winks, "I'm afeered I took vun or two on 'em,
Sammy; he wos a flyin' out o' the harm-cheer
all the way."
Here the old gentleman shook his head from
side to side, and was seized with a hoarse inter-
nal rumbling, accompanied with a violent swell-
ing of the countenance, and a sudden increase
in the breadth of all his features; symptoms
which alarmed his son not a little.
"Don't be frightened, Sammy, don't be fright-
ened," said the old gentleman, when, by dint of
much struggling, and various convulsive stamps
upon the ground, he had recovered his voice.
"It's only a kind o'quiet laugh as I'm a tryin' to
come, Sammy.'
(6
Well, if that's wot it is," said Sam, "you'd
better not try to come it agin. You'll find it
rayther a dangerous inwention."
Don't you like it, Sammy?" inquired the
old gentleman.
"Not at all," replied Sam.
"Well," said Mr. Weller, with the tears still
running down his cheeks, "it 'ud ha' been a
wery great accommodation to me if I could ha'
done it, and 'ud ha' saved a good many vords
atween your mother-in-law and me, sometimes;
but I am afeerd you're right, Sammy; it's too
much in the appleplexy line-a deal too much,
Samivel."-Pickwick, Chap. 45.
WELLER-The elder, on married life.
Goin', Sammy?" inquired Mr. Weller.
Off at once," ieplied Sam.
"
"
"I vish you could muffle that 'ere Stiggins,
and take him with you," said Mr. Weller.
|
fore him stood a pot of ale, a cold round of
beef, and a very respectable-looking loaf, to
each of which he distributed his favors in turn,
with the most rigid impartiality. He had just
cut a mighty slice from the latter, when the
footsteps of somebody entering the room,
caused him to raise his head; and he beheld
his son.
Mornin', Sammy!" said the father.
The son walked up to the pot of ale, and
nodding significantly to his parent, took a
long draught by way of reply.
Wery good power o' suction, Sammy," said
Mr. Weller the elder, looking into the pot, when
his first-born had set it down half empty,
"You'd ha' made an uncommon fine oyster,
Sammy, if you'd been born in that station o'
life."
"Yes, I des-say I should ha' managed to pick
up a respectable livin'," replied Sam, applying
himself to the cold beef with considerable vigor.
Pickwick, Chap. 23.
WELLER-His opinion of widows.
"I'm wery sorry, Sammy," said the elder
Mr. Weller, shaking up the ale, by describing
small circles with the pot, preparatory to drink-
ing. "I'm wery sorry, Sammy, to hear from
your lips, as you let yourself be gammoned by
that 'ere mulberry man. I always thought, up
to three days ago, that the names of Veller
and gammon could never come into contract,
Sammy, never.'
"Always exceptin' the case of a widder, of
course." said Sam.
Widders, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller,
slightly changing color, "widders are 'cep-
tions to ev'ry rule. I have heerd how many
ord'nary women one widder's equal to, in pint
o' comin' over you. I think it's five-and-twen-
ty, but I don't rightly know vether it an't
more."
"Well; that's pretty well," said Sam.
·
"Besides," continued Mr. Weller, not noti-
cing the interruption, "that's a wery different
thing. You know what the counsel said, Sam-
my, as defended the gen'lem'n as beat his wife
with the poker, venever he got jolly. And
arter all, my Lord,' says he, 'it's a amable
weakness.' So I says respectin' widders, Sam-
my, and so you'll say, ven you gets as old as me.'
"I ought to ha' know'd better, I know," said
Sam.
Ought to ha' know'd better!" repeated Mr.
Weller, striking the table with his fist. "Ought
to ha' know'd better! why, I know a young
"I am ashamed on you!" said Sam, reproach-'un as hasn't had half nor quarter your eddica-
fully: "what do you let him show his red nose tion-as hasn't slept about the markets, no, not
in the Markis o' Granby at all, for?"
six months-who'd ha' scorned to be let in, in
Pickwick, Chap. 23.
Mr. Weller the elder fixed on his son an such a vay; scorned it, Sammy." In the ex-
earnest look, and replied, "'Cause I'm a mar-citement of feeling produced by this agonizing
ried man, Samivel, 'cause I'm a married man. reflection, Mr. Weller rang the bell, and order-
Wen you're a married man, Samivel, you'll un-ed an additional pint of ale.
derstand a good many things as you don't under-
stand now; but vether it's worth while goin'
through so much to learn so little, as the charity-WELLER-The elder, in a quandary.
boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet,
is a matter o' taste. I rayther think it isn't."
Pickwick, Chap. 27.
"I wanted to have a little bit o' conwersa-
tion with you, sir," said Mr. Weller; "if you
could spare me five minits or so, sir."
66
WELLER
Certainly," replied Mr. Pickwick. "Sam,
give your father a chair."
"
522
Thankee, Samivel, I've got a cheer here,"
said Mr. Weller, bringing one forward as he
spoke; uncommon fine day it's been, sir,"
added the old gentleman, laying his hat on the
floor as he sat himself down.
Remarkably so, indeed,” replied Mr. Pick-
wick. "Very seasonable."
WELLER
ler, impatiently, "that it ain't o' no use to me.
I'm a-goin' to vork a coach reg'lar, and ha'nt
got noveres to keep it in, unless I vos to pay the
guard for takin' care on it, or to put it in vun o'
the coach pockets, vich 'ud be a temptation to
the insides. If you'll take care on it for me, sir,
I shall be wery much obliged to you. P'raps,'
said Mr. Weller, walking up to Mr. Pickwick
and whispering in his ear, "p'raps it'll go a lit-
"Seasonablest veather I ever see, sir," re- tle vay towards the expenses o' that 'ere conwic-
joined Mr. Weller. Here, the old gentleman tion. All I say is, just you keep it till I ask you
|
was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which for it again." With these words, Mr. Weller
being terminated, he nodded his head and placed the pocket-book in Mr. Pickwick's
winked and made several supplicatory and hands, caught up his hat, and ran out of the
threatening gestures to his son, all of which room with a celerity scarcely to be expected
Sam Weller steadily abstained from seeing. from so corpulent a subject.
Mr. Pickwick, perceiving that there was some
embarrassment on the old gentleman's part,
affected to be engaged in cutting the leaves of
a book that lay beside him, and waited patient-
ly until Mr. Weller should arrive at the object
of his visit,
"I never see sich a aggerawatin' boy as you
are, Samivel," said Mr. Weller, looking in-
dignantly at his son; never in all my born
days."
"What is he doing, Mr. Weller?" inquired
Mr. Pickwick.
"He von't begin, sir," rejoined Mr. Weller;
"he knows I ain't ekal to ex-pressin' myself ven
there's anythin' partickler to be done, and yet
he'll stand and see me a settin' here takin' up
your walable time, and makin' a reg'lar spec-
tacle o' myself, rayther than help me out vith a
syllable. It ain't filial conduct, Samivel," said
Mr. Weller, wiping his forehead; "wery far
from it."
"
You said you'd speak," replied Sam; “how
should I know you wos done up at the
up at the wery be-
ginnin'?"
'You might ha' seen I warn't able to start,"
rejoined his father; I'm on the wrong side of
the road, and backin' into the palins, and all
manner of unpleasantness, and yet you von't
put out a hand to help me. I'm ashamed on
you, Samivel."
"The fact is, sir," said Sam, with a slight
bow, "the gov'ner's been a drawin' his money."
'Wery good, Samivel, wery good," said Mr.
Weller, nodding his head with a satisfied air.
"I didn't mean to speak harsh to you, Saminy.
Wery good. That's the vay to begin. Come
to the pint at once. Wery good, indeed, Sam-
ivel."
*
*
*
*
*
"This here money," said Sam, with a little
hesitation, "he's anxious to put someveres, vere
he knows it'll be safe, and I'm wery anxious
too, for if he keeps it, he'll go a lendin' it to
somebody, or inwestin' property in horses, or
droppin' his pocket-book down a airy, or makin'
a Egyptian mummy of his-self in some vay or
another.'
46
Wery good, Samivel," observed Mr. Weller,
in as complacent a manner as if Sam had been
passing the highest eulogiums on his prudence
and foresight. Wery good."
"For vich reasons," continued Sam, plucking
nervously at the brim of his hat; "for vich rea-
sons, he's drawd it out to-day, and come here
vith me to say, least-vays to offer, or in other
vords to-
"
"-To say this here," said the elder Mr. Wel-
|
|
46
Stop him, Sam!" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick,
earnestly. "Overtake him; bring him back in
stantly! Mr. Weller-here-come back!"
Sam saw that his master's injunctions were
not to be disobeyed; and catching his father by
the arm as he was descending the stairs, dragged
him back by main force.
'My good friend," said Mr. Pickwick, taking
the old man by the hand; "your honest confi-
dence overpowers me."
"I don't see no occasion for nothin' o' the
kind, sir," replied Mr. Weller, obstinately.
"I assure you, my good friend, I have more
money than I can ever need; far more than a
man at my age can ever live to spend," said Mr.
Pickwick.
"No man knows how much he can spend,
till he tries," observed Mr. Weller.
WELLER
elder.
Pickwick, Chap. 56.
Personal appearance of the
It is very possible that at some earlier period
of his career, Mr. Weller's profile might have
presented a bold and determined outline. His
face, however, had expanded under the influence
of good living, and a disposition remarkable for
resignation; and its bold fleshy curves had so
far extended beyond the limits originally as-
signed them, that unless you took a full view of
his countenance in front, it was difficult to dis-
tinguish more than the extreme tip of a very
rubicund nose. His chin, from the same cause,
had acquired the grave and imposing form which
is generally described by prefixing the word
"double" to that expressive feature; and his
complexion exhibited that peculiarly mottled
combination of colors which is only to be seen
in gentlemen of his profession, and in underdone
roast beef. Round his neck he wore a crimson
travelling-shawl, which merged into his chin by
such imperceptible gradations, that it was diffi-
cult to distinguish the folds of the one from the
folds of the other. Over this, he mounted a long
waistcoat of a broad pink-striped pattern, and
over that again, a wide-skirted green coat, orna-
mented with large brass buttons, whereof the
two which garnished the waist were
so far
apart, that no man had ever beheld them both.
at the same time. His hair, which was short,
sleek, and black, was just visible beneath the
capacious brim of a low-crowned brown hat.
His legs were encased in knee-cord breeches,
and painted top-boots: and a copper watch-
chain, terminating in one seal, and a key of the
same material, dangled loosely from his capa
cious waistband.-Pickwick, Chap. 23.
WHISKERS
WHISKERS-The peachy cheek of Fledge-
by.
523
Young Fledgeby was none of these. Young
Fledgeby had a peachy cheek, or a cheek com-
pounded of the peach and the red red wall on
which it grows, and was an awkward, sandy-
haired, small-eyed youth, exceeding slim (his
enemies would have said lanky), and prone to
self-examination in the articles of whisker and
moustache. While feeling for the whisker that
he anxiously expected, Fledgeby underwent re-
markable fluctuations of spirits, ranging along
the whole scale from confidence to despair.
There were times when he started, as exclaim-
ing, "By Jupiter, here it is at last!" There
were other times when, being equally depressed, |
he would be seen to shake his head, and give up
hope. To see him at those periods, leaning on
a chimney-piece, like as on an urn containing
the ashes of his ambition, with the cheek that
would not sprout, upon the hand on which
that cheek had forced conviction, was a distress-
ing sight.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 4.
Fledgeby has devoted the interval to taking
an observation of Boots's whiskers, Brewer's
whiskers, and Lammle's whiskers, and consider-
ing which pattern of whisker he would prefer
to produce out of himself by friction, if the
Genie of the cheek would only answer to his
rubbing.
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 16.
WHISKERS—The shaving of Mr. Bailey's.
Mr. Bailey stroked his chin, and a thought ap-
peared to occur to him.
"Poll," he said, "I ain't as neat as I could
wish about the gills. Being here, I may as well
have a shave, and get trimmed close.”
The barber stood aghast; but Mr. Bailey di-
vested himself of his neck-cloth, and sat down
in the easy shaving chair, with all the dignity
and confidence in life. There was no resisting
his manner. The evidence of sight and touch
became as nothing. His chin was as smooth as
a new-laid egg or a scraped Dutch cheese; but
Poll Sweedlepipe wouldn't have ventured to
deny, on affidavit, that he had the beard of a
Jewish rabbi.
"Go with the grain, Poll, all around, please,"
said Mr. Bailey, screwing up his face for the re-
ception of the lather. "You may do wot you
like with the bits of whisker. I don't care for
'em."
WHIST
seemed, with a microscopic eye, to detect some
bristles in it; for he murmured more than once,
"Reether redder than I could wish, Poll." The
operation being concluded, Poll fell back and
stared at him again, while Mr. Bailey, wiping
his face on the jack-towel, remarked, "that arter
late hours nothing freshened up a man so much
as a easy shave "-Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 29.
WHISPERING—The effect of.
Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices,
near and distant, resounding from towers of va-
rious heights, in tones more various than their
situations. When these at length cease, all
seems more mysterious and quiet than before.
One disagreeable result of whispering is, that it
seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunt-
ed by the ghosts of sound-strange cracks and
tickings, the rustling of garments that have no
substance in them, and the tread of dreadful
feet, that would leave no mark on the sea sand
or the winter snow. So sensitive the two friends
happen to be, that the air is full of these phan-
toms; and the two look over their shoulders by
one consent, to see that the door is shut.
Bleak House, Chap. 32.
WHISPER-A double-barrelled.
"I ask your pardons, Governors," replied the
ghost, in a hoarse double-barrelled whisper,
"but might either on you be Lawyer Light-
wood?"
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 12.
WHIST-Pickwick at.
Poor Mr. Pickwick! he had never played
with three thorough-paced female card-players
before. They were so desperately sharp, that
they quite frightened him. If he played a
wrong card, Miss Bolo looked a small armory
of daggers; if he stopped to consider which
was the right one, Lady Snuphanuph would
throw herself back in her chair, and smile with
a mingled glance of impatience and pity to
Mrs. Colonel Wugsby; at which Mrs. Colonel
Wugsby would shrug up her shoulders, and
cough, as much as to say she wondered whether
he ever would begin. Then, at the end of
every hand, Miss Bolo would inquire with a
dismal countenance and reproachful sigh, why
Mr. Pickwick had not returned that diamond,
or led the club, or roughed the spade, or finessed
the heart, or led through the honor, or brought
out the ace, or played up to the king, or some
such thing; and in reply to all these grave
charges, Mr. Pickwick would be wholly unable to
plead any justification whatever, having by this
time forgotten all about the game. People came
and looked on, too, which made Mr. Pickwick
nervous. Besides all this, there was a great deal
of distracting conversation near the table, be-
tween Angelo Bantain and the two Miss Matin-
ters, who, being single and singular, paid great
court to the Master of the Ceremonies, in the
hope of getting a stray partner now and then.
All these things, combined with the noises and
interruptions of constant comings in and goings
out, made Mr. Pickwick play rather badly; the
cards were against him, also; and when they
Poll Sweediepipe obeyed, and scraped the left off at ten minutes past eleven, Miss Bolo
lather off again with particular care. Mr. Bailey rose from the table considerably agitated, and
squinted at every successive dab, as it was de- went straight home, in a flood of tears, and a
posited on a cloth on his left shoulder, and | sedan-chair.-Pickwick, Chap. 35.
The meek little barber stood gazing at him
with the brush and soap-dish in his hand, stir-
ring them round and round in a ludicrous uncer-
tainty, as if he were disabled by some fascination
from beginning. At last he made a dash at Mr.
Bailey's cheek. Then he stopped again, as if the
ghost of a beard had suddenly receded from his
touch; but receiving mild encouragement from
Mr. Bailey, in the form of an adjuration to “Go
in and win,” he lathered him bountifully. Mr.
Bailey smiled through the suds in his satisfac-
tion.
Gently over the stones, Poll. Go a tip-toe
over the pimples?"
WHIST
524
WIFE
WHIST.
As Mr. Weller delivered this infallible max.
The rubber was conducted with all that gra-im-the result of many years' personal experi.
vity of deportment and sedateness of demeanor ence and observation-he contrived, by a dex.
which befit the pursuit entitled "whist"-a terous twist of his body, to get the bottom but-
solemn observance, to which, as it appears to ton of his coat to perform its office.
us, the title of “game "has been very irrever-
ently and ignominiously applied.
*
*
*
*
*
A solemn silence: Mr. Pickwick humorous,
the old lady serious, the fat gentleman captious,
and Mr. Miller timorous.-Pickwick, Chap. 6.
WIDOW-Her weeds (Mrs. Heep).
It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep's humil-
ity, that she still wore weeds. Notwithstanding
the lapse of time that had occurred since Mr.
Heep's decease, she still wore weeds. I think
there was some compromise in the cap; but
otherwise she was as weedy as in the early days
of her mourning.-David Copperfield, Chap. 18.
•
WIFE-An unhappy.
Pickwick, Chap. 55.
* * * Whose happiness was in the past,
and who was content to bind her broken spirit tc
the dutiful and meek endurance of the present.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 1.
WIFE-Loss of a.
He was not a man of whom it could properly
be said that he was ever startled or shocked;
but he certainly had a sense within him, that if
his wife should sicken and decay, he would be
very sorry, and that he would find a something
gone from among his plate and furniture, and
other household possessions, which was well
Even her black dress assumed something of a worth the having, and could not be lost without
deadly-lively air from the jaunty style in which sincere regret. Though it would be a cool, busi-
it was worn; and, eked out as its lingering at-ness-like, gentlemanly, self-possessed regret, no
tractions were, by a prudent disposal, here and doubt.-Dombey & Son, Chap. I.
there, of certain juvenile ornaments of little or
no value, her mourning garments assumed
quite a new character. From being the out- "But Lord bless me," pursues Mr. Toots,
ward tokens of respect and sorrow for the dead," she was as entirely conscious of the state of
they became converted into signals of very
slaughterous and killing designs upon the liv-
ing.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41.
WIFE-Toots's opinion of his.
my feelings as I was myself. There was no-
thing I could tell her. She was the only person
who could have stood between me and the silent
Tomb, and she did it in a manner to command
WIDOWS-Opinion of Mr. Weller, the el- my everlasting admiration. She knows that
เ
der.
"How's mother-in-law?"
Wy, I'll tell you what, Sammy," said Mr.
Weller, senior, with much solemnity in his man-
ner;
"there never was a nicer woman as a wid-
der, than that 'ere second wentur o' mine-a
sweet creetur she was, Sammy; all I can say on
her now, is, that as she was such an uncommon
pleasant widder, it's a great pity she ever changed
her con-dition. She don't act as a vife, Sammy."
"Don't she, though?” inquired Mr. Weller,
junior.
The elder Mr. Weller shook his head, as he
replied with a sigh, "I've done it once too often,
Sammy; I've done it once too often.
Take ex-
ample by your father, my boy, and be wery care-
ful o' widders all your life, specially if they've
kept a public-house, Sammy. Having deliv-
ered this parental advice with great pathos, Mr.
Weller senior refilled his pipe from a tin box he
carried in his pocket, and, lighting his fresh pipe
from the ashes of the old one, commenced smok-
ing at a great rate.
Beg your pardon, sir," he said, renewing the
subject, and addressing Mr. Pickwick, after a
considerable pause, "nothin' personal, I hope,
sir; I hope you han't got a widder, sir."
Pickwick, Chap. 20.
WIDTH AND WISDOM-Weller's maxim.
"Vait a minit, Sammy; ven you grow as old
as your father, you von't get into your veskit
quite as easy as you do now, my boy.'
"If I couldn't get into it easier than that. I'm
blessed if I'd vear vun at all," rejoined his son.
"You think so now," said Mr. Weller, with
the gravity of age; "but you'll find that as you
get vider, you'll get viser. Vidth and visdom,
Sammy, alvays grows together."
there's nobody in the world I look up to as I do
to Miss Dombey. She knows that there's no-
thing on earth I wouldn't do for Miss Dombey.
She knows that I consider Miss Dombey the
most beautiful, the most amiable, the most an-
gelic of her sex. What is her observation upon
that? The perfection of sense. 'My dear,
you're right. I think so, too.'
"And so do I!" says the Captain.
"So do I," says Sol Gills.
"Then," resumes Mr. Toots, after some con-
templative pulling at his pipe, during which his
visage has expressed the most contented reflec-
tion, "what an observant woman my wife is!
What sagacity she possesses! What remarks
she makes!"-Dombey & Son, Chap. 62.
But, Susan, my dear," said Mr. Toots, who
had spoken with great feeling and high admira-
tion, "all I ask is, that you'll remember the
medical man, and not exert yourself too much."
Dombey & Son, Chap. 61.
WIFE-Her duties to a husband.
CC
To be his patient companion in infirmity and
age; to be his gentle nurse in sickness, and his
constant friend in suffering and sorrow; to
know no weariness in working for his sake; to
watch him, tend him, sit beside his bed and
talk to him awake, and pray for him asleep;
what privileges these would be!
What op.
portunities for proving all her truth and her
devotion to him!"
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2.
WIFE-A solemn.
"Your brothers and sisters have all in their
turns been companions to me, to a certain ex-
tent, but only to a certain extent. Your mother
WIFE
has, throughout life, been a companion that any
man might-might look up to-and-and com-
mit the sayings of, to memory-and-form him-
self upon--if he-
11
525
WILLS
Indeed, the worthy housewife was of such a ca.
pricious nature, that she not only attained a
higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect
of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and
furious, loyal and neutral, in an instant, but
would sometimes ring the changes backwards
and forwards on all possible moods and flights
in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as
it were, a kind of triple-bob-major on the peal
of instruments in the female belfry, with a skill-
fulness and rapidity of execution that astonished
all who heard her.
It had been observed in this good lady (who
did not want for personal attractions, being
plump and buxom to look at, though, like her
fair daughter, somewhat short in stature) that
this uncertainty of disposition strengthened and
increased with her temporal prosperity; and
divers wise men and matrons on friendly terms
with the locksmith and his family even went so
far as to assert, that a tumble-down some half-
dozen rounds in the world's ladder-such as the
"If he liked the model?" suggested Bella.
We-ell, ye-es," he returned, thinking about
it, not quite satisfied with the phrase: or per-
haps I might say, if it was in him. Supposing,
for instance, that a man wanted to be always
marching, he would find your mother an inesti-
mable companion. But if he had any taste for
walking, or should wish at any time to break in-
to a trot, he might sometimes find it a little
difficult to keep step with your mother. Or
take it this way, Bella," he added, after a mo-
ment's reflection: "Supposing that a man had
to go through life, we won't say with a compan-
ion, but we'll say to a tune. Very good. Sup-
posing that the tune allotted to him was the
Dead March in Saul. Well. It would be a
very suitable tune for particular occasions-
none better-but it would be difficult to keep
time within the ordinary run of domestic trans-breaking of the bank in which her husband kept
actions. For instance, if he took his supper
after a hard day, to the Dead March in Saul,
his food might be likely to sit heavy on him. Or,
if he was at any time inclined to relieve his
mind by singing a comic song or dancing a
hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the Dead
March in Saul, he might find himself put out in
the execution of his lively intentions."
Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 8.
WIFE-A bad-tempered.
his money, or some little fall of that kind-
would be the making of her, and could hardly
fail to render her one of the most agreeable
companions in existence. Whether they were
right or wrong in this conjecture, certain it is
that minds, like bodies, will often fall into a
pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess
of comfort, and like them, are often successfully
cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous
and unpalatable.-Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 7.
WILL-Won't, and can't.
WILLS-The depositaries of human pas-
sions.
She wasn't a bad wife, but she had a temper.
If she could have parted with that one article "How I envy you your constitution, Jarn-
at a sacrifice, I wouldn't have swopped her away dyce!" returned Mr. Skimpole, with playful
in exchange for any other woman in England. | admiration. "You don't mind these things,
Not that I ever did swop her away, for we lived neither does Miss Summerson. You are ready
together till she died, and that was thirteen year. at all times to go anywhere, and do anything.
Now, my lords and ladies and gentlefolks all, Such is Will! I have no Will at all-and no
I'll let you into a secret, though you won't be- | Won't-simply Can't."-Bleak House, Chap. 31.
lieve it. Thirteen year of temper in a Palace
would try the worst of you, but thirteen year of
temper in a Cart would try the best of you.
You are kept so very close to it in a cart, you
see. There's thousands of couples among you
getting on like sweet ile upon a whetstone in
houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that
would go to the Divorce Court in a cart.
Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't un-
dertake to decide; but in a cart it does come
home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a
cart is so wiolent, and aggrawation in a cart is
so aggrawating.
*
*
*
*
*
My dog knew as well when she was on the
turn as I did. Before she broke out, he would
give a howl and bolt. How he knew it, was a
mystery to me; but the sure and certain know-
ledge of it would wake him up out of his sound-
est sleep, and he would give a howl, and bolt. At
such times I wished I was him.-Dr. Marigold.
WIFE (Mrs. Varden).
Mrs. Varden was a lady of what is commonly
called an uncertain temper-a phrase which be-
ing interpreted signifies a temper tolerably cer-
tain to make everybody more or less uncomfort-
able. Thus it generally happened, that when
other people were merry, Mrs. Varden was dull;
and that when other people were dull, Mrs.
Varden was disposed to be amazingly cheerful.
We naturally fell into a train of reflection
as we walked homewards, upon the curious
old records of likings and dislikings; of jeal-
ousies and revenges; of affection defying the
power of death, and hatred pursued beyond
the grave, which these depositaries contain;
silent but striking tokens, some of them, of
excellence of heart, and nobleness of soul;
melancholy examples, others, of the worst pas-
sions of human nature. How many men, as
they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of
death, would have given worlds for but the
strength and power to blot out the silent evi-
dence of animosity and bitterness, which now
stands registered against them in Doctors'
Commons.-Scenes, Chap. 8.
WILLS-The making of.
The maxim, that out of evil cometh good,
is strongly illustrated by these establishments
at home, as the records of the Prerogative Of-
fice in Doctors' Commons can abundantly prove.
Some immensely rich old gentleman or lady,
surrounded by needy relatives, makes, upon a low
average, a will a week. The old gentleman or lady,
never very remarkable in the best of times for
good temper, is full of aches and pains from
head to foot, full of fancies and caprices, full
WILL
526
of spleen, distrust, suspicion, and dislike. To
cancel old wills, and invent new ones, is at last
the sole business of such a testator's existence;
and relations and friends (some of whom have
been bred up distinctly to inherit a large share
of the property, and have been, from their cra-
dles, specially disqualified from devoting them-
selves to any useful pursuit, on that account)
are so often and so unexpectedly and summarily
cut off, and reinstated, and cut off again, that
the whole family, down to the remotest cousin,
is kept in a perpetual fever. At length it be-
comes plain that the old lady or gentleman has
not long to live; and the plainer this becomes,
the more clearly the old lady or gentleman per-
ceives that everybody is in a conspiracy against
their poor old dying relative; wherefore the
old lady or gentleman makes another last will,
-positively the last this time,-conceals the
in a china teapot, and expires next
day. Then it turns out that the whole of the
real and personal estate is divided between half
a dozen charities, and that the dead and gone
testator has in pure spite helped to do a great
deal of good at the cost of an immense amount
of evil passion and misery.
same
American Notes, Chap. 3.
WILL-Mr. Boffin's "tight."
"Make me as compact a little will as can be
reconciled with tightness, leaving the whole of
the property to my beloved wife, Henrietty
Boffin, sole executrix.' Make it as short as you
can, using those words; but make it tight.”
At some loss to fathom Mr. Boffin's notions of
a tight will, Lightwood felt his way.
""
I beg your pardon, but professional profun-
dity must be exact. When you say tight-
"I mean tight," Mr. Boffin explained.
""
Exactly so. And nothing can be more
laudable. But is the tightness to bind Mrs.
Boffin to any and what conditions?"
"Bind Mrs. Boffin?" interposed her husband.
"What are you thinking of? What I want is to
make it all hers so tight as that her hold of it
can't be loosed."
"Hers freely, to do what she likes with? Hers
absolutely?"
66
Absolutely!" repeated Mr. Boffin, with a
short, sturdy laugh.
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 8.
WIND-A winter.
It was a bitter day. A keen wind was
blowing, and rushed against them fiercely;
bleaching the hard ground, shaking the white
frost from the trees and hedges, and whirling it
away like dust.
But little cared Kit for
weather. There was a freedom and freshness
in the wind as it came howling by, which, let it
cut never so sharp, was welcome. As it swept
on with its cloud of frost, bearing down the dry
twigs and boughs and withered leaves, and car-
rying them away pell-mell, it seemed as though
some general sympathy had got abroad, and
everything was in a hurry like themselves. The
harder the gusts, the better progress they ap-
peared to make. It was a good thing to go
struggling and fighting forward, vanquishing
them one by one; to watch them driving up,
gathering strength and fury as they came along;
to bend for a moment, as they whistled past;
and then to look back, and see them speed
*
WIND
away, their hoarse noise dying in the distance,
and the stout trees cowering down before them.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 69.
WIND-And snow.
As it grew dusk, the wind feil; its distant
moanings were more low and mournful; and,
as it came creeping up the road, and rattling
covertly among the dry brambles on either hand,
it seemed like some great phantom for whom
the way was narrow, whose garments rustled as
it stalked along. By degrees it lulled and died
away, and then it came on to snow.
The flakes fell fast and thick, soon covering
the ground some inches deep, and spreading
abroad a solemn stillness. The rolling wheels
were noiseless, and the sharp ring and clatter of
the horses' hoofs became a dull, muffled tramp.
The life of their progress seemed to be slowly
hushed, and something death-like to usurp its
place.
Shading his eyes from the falling snow, which
froze upon their lashes and obscured his sight,
Kit often tried to catch the earliest glimpse of
twinkling lights denoting their approach to some
not distant town. He could descry objects
enough at such times, but none correctly. Now,
a tall church spire appeared in view, which pres-
ently became a tree, a barn, a shadow on the
ground, thrown on it by their own bright lamps.
Now, there were horsemen, foot-passengers, car
riages, going on before, or meeting them in nar-
row ways; which, when they were close upon
them, turned to shadows too. A wall, a ruin, a
sturdy gable end, would rise up in the road;
and, when they were plunging headlong at it,
would be the road itself. Strange turnings, too,
bridges, and sheets of water, appeared to start
up here and there, making the way doubtful
and uncertain; and yet they were on the same
bare road, and these things, like the others, as
they were passed, turned into dim illusions.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 70.
WIND-The East, of Mr. Jarndyce.
Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a
little while up-stairs, that this caprice about the
wind was a fiction; and that he used the pre-
tence to account for any disappointment he
could not conceal, rather than he would blame
the real cause of it, or disparage or depreciate
any one. We thought this very characteristic
of his eccentric gentleness; and of the difference
between him and those petulant people who
make the weather and the winds (particularly
that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such
a different purpose) the stalking-horses of their
splenetic and gloomy humors.
WIND-A gale of.
Bleak House, Chap. 6.
The wind blew-not up the road, or down
it, though that's bad enough, but sheer across
it, sending the rain slanting down like the lines
they used to rule in the copybooks in school, to
make the boys slope well. For a moment it
would die away, and the traveller would begin
to delude himself into the belief that, exhausted
with its previous fury, it had quietly lain itself
down to rest, when, woo! he would hear it
growling and whistling in the distance, and on
it would come, rushing over the hili-tops, and
sweeping along the plain gathering sound and
WIND
527
strength as it drew nearer, until it dashed with
a heavy gust against horse and man, driving the
sharp rain into their ears, and its cold, damp
breath into their very bones; and past them it
would scour, far, far away, with a stunning roar,
as if in ridicule of their weakness, and triumph-
ant in the consciousness of its own strength and
power."-Pickwick, Chap. 14.
WIND--The whistling of the.
The evening grew more dull every moment,
and a melancholy wind sounded through the
deserted fields, like a distant giant whistling for
his house-dog. The sadness of the scene im-
parted a sombre tinge to the feelings of Mr.
Winkle. He started as they passed the angle
of the trench-it looked like a colossal grave.
Pickwick, Chap. 2.
WIN D-STORM—At night.
The red light burns steadily all the evening
in the lighthouse on the margin of the tide of
busy life. Softened sounds and hum of traffic
pass it and flow on irregularly into the lonely
Precincts; but very little else goes by, save vio-
lent rushes of wind. It comes on to blow a
boisterous gale.
The Precincts are never particularly well
lighted; but the strong blasts of wind blowing
out many of the lamps (in some instances shat-
tering the frames too, and bringing the glass rat-
tling to the ground), they are unusually dark to-
night. The darkness is augmented and con-
fused by flying dust from the earth, dry
twigs from the trees, and great ragged frag-
ments from the rooks' nests up in the tower.
The trees themselves so toss and creak, as this
tangible part of the darkness madly whirls
about, that they seem in peril of being torn out
of the earth; while ever and again a crack, and
a rushing fall, denote that some large branch
has yielded to the storm.
WIND
easterly wind, as in Johnson's, Jackson's, Dick.
son's, Smith's, and Jones's Seasons. The grat
ing wind sawed rather than blew; and as it
sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit
Every street was a sawpit, and there were no
top-sawyers; every passenger was an under-
sawyer, with the sawdust blinding him and
choking him.
That mysterious paper currency which circu-
lates in London when the wind blows, gyrated
here and there and everywhere. Whence can
it come, whither can it go? It hangs on every
bush, flutters in every tree, is caught flying by
the electric wires, haunts every enclosure, drinks
at every pump, cowers at every grating, shud-
ders upon every plot of grass, seeks rest in vain
behind the legions of iron rails. In Paris, where
nothing is wasted, costly and luxurious city
though it be, but where wonderful human ants
creep out of holes and pick up every scrap,
there is no such thing. There, it blows nothing
but dust. There, sharp eyes and sharp stomachs
reap even the east wind, and get something out
of it.
The wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled.
The shrubs wrung their many heads, bemoaning
that they had been over-persuaded by the sun
to bud; the young leaves pined; the sparrows
repented of their early marriages, like men
and women; the colors of the rainbow were
discernible, not in floral spring, but in the
faces of the people whom it nibbled and
pinched. And ever the wind sawed, and the
sawdust whirled.
When the spring evenings are too long and
light to shut out, and such weather is rife, the
city which Mr. Podsnap so explanatorily called
London, Londres, London, is at its worst. Such
a black shrill city, combining the qualities of a
smoky house and a scolding wife; such a gritty
city; such a hopeless city, with no rent in the
leaden canopy of its sky; such a beleaguered
city, invested by the great Marsh Forces of Essex
and Kent. So the two old school-fellows felt it
to be, as, their dinner done, they turned towards
the fire to smoke. Young Blight was gone, the
coffee-house waiter was gone, the plates and
dishes were gone, the wine was going-but not
No such power of wind has blown for many
a winter night. Chimneys topple in the streets,
and people hold to posts and corners, and to
one another, to keep themselves upon their
feet. The violent rushes abate not, but increase
in frequency and fury, until at midnight, when
the streets are empty, the storm goes thunder-in the same direction.
ing along them, rattling at all the latches, and
tearing at all the shutters, as if warning the peo-
ple to get up and fly with it, rather than have
the roofs brought down upon their brains.
All through the night the wind blows, and!
abates not. But early in the morning, when
there is barely enough light in the east to dim
the stars, it begins to lull. From that time,
with occasional wild charges, like a wounded
monster dying, it drops and sinks; and at full
daylight it is dead.--Edwin Drood, Chap. 14.
WIND-A solemn sound.
As the deep Cathedral bell strikes the hour,
a ripple of wind goes through these at their
distance, like a ripple of the solemn sound that
hums through tomb and tower, broken niche
and defaced statue, in the pile close at hand.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 2.
WIND-An easterly, in London.
It was not summer yet, but spring; and it
was not gentle spring, ethereally mild, as in
Thomson's Seasons, but nipping spring with an
Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 12.
WIND-A penetrating.
We had been lying here some half an hour.
With our backs to the wind, it is true; but the
wind being in a determined temper blew straight
through us, and would not take the trouble to
go round. I would have boarded a fireship to
get into action.
*
*
*
*
*
The shrewd East rasped and notched us, as
with jagged razors.
Down with the Tide. Reprinted Pieces.
WIND-An angry.
Out upon the angry wind! how, from sighing,
it began to bluster round the merry forge, bang-
ing at the wicket, and grumbling in the chim-
ney, as if it bullied the jolly bellows for doing
anything to order. And what an impotent
swaggerer it was too, for all its noise; for if it
had any influence on that hoarse companion, it
was but to make him roar his cheerful song the
louder, and by consequence to make the fire
WIND
528
burn the brighter, and the sparks to dance more
gaily yet at length, they whizzed so madly
round and round, that it was too much for such
a surly wind to bear: so off it flew with a howl;
giving the old sign before the ale-house door
such a cuff as it went, that the Blue Dragon was
more rampant than usual ever afterwards, and
indeed, before Christmas, reared clean out of its
crazy frame.
It was small tyranny for a respectable wind
to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor crea-
tures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happen-
ing to come up with a great heap of them just
after venting its humor on the insulted Dragon,
did so disperse and scatter them that they fled
away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling
over each other, whirling round and round upon
their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the
air, and playing all manner of extraordinary
gambols in the extremity of their distress. Nor
was this enough for its malicious fury: for not
content with driving them abroad, it charged
small parties of them and hunted them into the
wheelwright's saw-pit, and below the planks
and timbers in the yard, and, scattering the saw-
dust in the air, it looked for them underneath,
and when it did meet with any, whew! how it
drove them on and followed at their heels!
The scared leaves only flew the faster for all
this, and a giddy chase it was: for they got into
unfrequented places, where there was no outlet,
and where their pursuer kept them eddying
round and round at his pleasure; and they crept
under the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to
the sides of hay-ricks, like bats; and tore in at
open chamber-windows, and cowered close to
hedges; and in short went anywhere for safety.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
WIND-The west.
I never had so much interest before, and
very likely I shall never have so much interest
again, in the state of the wind, as on the long-
looked-for morning of Tuesday the seventh of
June. Some nautical authority had told me a
day or two previous, "Anything with west in
it will do;" so when I darted out of bed at
daylight, and, throwing up the window, was sa-
luted by a lively breeze from the northwest,
which had sprung up in the night, it came up
on me so freshly, rustling with so many happy
associations, that I conceived upon the spot a
special regard for all airs blowing from that
quarter of the compass, which I shall cherish, I
dare say, until my own wind has breathed its
last frail puff, and withdrawn itself forever from
the mortal calendar.—American Notes, Chap. 16.
|
WINE
up stealthily, and creeps along the walls, seem-
ing to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions sacred
to the Dead At some of these, it breaks out
shrilly, as with laughter; and at others, moans
and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a
ghostly sound too, lingering within the altar
where it seems to chaunt in its wild way, of
Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods wor-
shipped, in defiance of the Tables of the Law,
which look so fair and smooth, but are so flawed
and broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting
snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice,
that wind at Midnight, singing in a church!
But, high up in the steeple! There the foul
blast roars and whistles! High up in the stee-
ple, where it is free to come and go through
many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist
and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl
the groaning weathercock, and make the very
tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple,
where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged
with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shriv-
elled by the changing weather, crackle and
heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and
birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old oak-
en joists and beams; and dust grows old and
gray; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat
with long security, swing idly to and fro in the
vibration of the bells, and never loose their
hold upon their thread-spun castles in the air,
or climb up sailor-like in quick alarm, or drop
upon the ground and ply a score of nimble legs
to save one's life!
Christmas Chimes, 1st Quarter.
WINE-The broken cask.
A large cask of wine had been dropped and
broken, in the street. The accident had hap-
pened 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 dammed 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
For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wan-made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine
dering round and round a building of that sort,
and moaning as it goes; and of trying with its
unseen hand the windows and the doors; and
seeking out some crevices by which to enter.
And when it has got in, as one not finding
what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails
and howls to issue forth again; and not con-
tent with stalking through the aisles, and glid-
ing round and round the pillars, and tempting
the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and
strives to rend the rafters; then flings itself des-
pairingly upon the stones below, and passes,
muttering, into the vaults. Anon, it comes
WIND-Around a church.
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 there might have been a
scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted
with it could have believed in such a miraculous
presence.
WINE
529
A shrill sound of laughter and of amused
voices-voices of men, women, and children-
resounded in the street while this wine-game
lasted. There was little roughness in the sport,
and much playfulness. There was a special
companionship in it, an observable inclination
on the part of every one to join some other one,
which led, especially among the luckier or
lighter-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 a 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 besmeared, 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.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 5.
WINE-Journey of a bottle of.
And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly
beloved and highly treasured Bottle began to
cost me, no man knows. It was my precious
charge through a long tour; and for hundreds
of miles I never had it off my mind by day or
by night. Over bad roads-and they were
many-I clung to it with affectionate despera-
tion. Up mountains, I looked in at it, and saw
it helplessly tilting over on its back, with terror.
At innumerable inn doors, when the weather
was bad, I was obliged to be put into my vehi-
cle before the Bottle could be got in, and was
obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before
human aid could come near me. The Imp of
the same name, except that his associations
were all evil and these associations were all
good, would have been a less troublesome trav-
elling companion. I might have served Mr.
Cruikshank as a subject for a new illustration
of the miseries of the Bottle. The National
Temperance Society might have made a power-
ful Tract of me.
WINE
ma pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany
tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it,
Austria accused it, Soldiers suspected it, Jesuits
jobbed it. I composed a neat Oration, develop-
ing my inoffensive intentions in connection with
this Bottle, and delivered it in an infinity of
guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and
on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart of a
complete system of fortifications. Fifty times a
day, I got down to harangue an infuriated
soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy
degradation of the abject and vile Roman States,
I had as much difficulty in working my way
with the Bottle, as if it had bottled up a com-
plete system of heretical theology. In the Nea-
politan country, where everybody was a spy, a
soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless
beggars of all four denominations incessantly
pounced on the Bottle, and made it a pretext
for extorting money from me. Quires-quires
do I say? Reams-of forms illegibly printed
on whitey-brown paper were filled up about the
Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamping
and sanding than I had ever seen before. In
consequence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it
was always irregular, and always latent with
dismal penalties of going back or not going for-
ward, which were only to be abated by the sil-
ver crossing of a base hand, poked, shirtless, out
of a ragged uniform sleeve. Under all dis-
couragements, however, I stuck to my Bottle,
and held firm to my resolution that every drop
of its contents should reach the Bottle's desti-
nation.
The latter refinement cost me a separate heap
of troubles on its own separate account. What
corkscrews did I see the military power bring
out against that Bottle; what gimlets, spikes,
divining-rods, gauges, and unknown tests and
instruments! At some places they persisted in
declaring that the wine must not be passed
without being opened and tasted; I, pleading
to the contrary, used then to argue the question,
seated on the Bottle, lest they should open it in
spite of me. In the southern parts of Italy,
more violent shrieking, face-making, and ges-
ticulating, greater vehemence of speech and
countenance and action, went on about that
Bottle than would attend fifty murders in a
northern latitude. It raised important func
tionaries out of their beds in the dead of night,
I have known half a dozen military lanterns
to disperse themselves at all points of a great
sleeping Piazza, each lantern summoning
some official creature to get up, put on his
cocked hat instantly, and come and stop the
Bottle. It was characteristic that while this
innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty
in getting from little town to town, Signor
Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing
Italy from end to end.
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 28.
WINE-Old.
The host had gone below to the cellar, and
had brought up bottles of ruby, straw-colored,
and golden drinks, which had ripened long ago
in lands where no fogs are, and had since lain
slumbering in the shade. Sparkling and ting-
ling after so long a nap, they pushed at their
corks to help the corkscrew (like prisoners
helping rioters to force their gates), and danced
Par-out gayly.—Edwin Drood, Chap. 11.
The suspicions that attached to this innocent
Bottle greatly aggravated my difficulties. It
was like the apple-pie in the child's book.
✅INK.
WINK
530
Mr. Weller communicated this secret with
great glee, and winked so indefatigably after
doing so, that Sam began to think he must have
got the tic doloureux in his right eye-lid.
WINK—A slow.
Pickwick, Chap. 33.
This was said with a mysterious wink; or
what would have been a wink if, in Mr. Grew-
gious's hands, it could have been quick enough.
Edwin Drood, Chap. II.
WINTER-DAY—A.
The month appointed to elapse between that
night and the return, was quick of foot, and
went by like a vapor.
The day arrived. A raging winter-day, that
shook the old house, sometimes, as if it shivered
in the blast. A day to make home doubly
home. To give the chimney-corner new de-
lights. To shed a ruddier glow upon the faces
gathered round the hearth, and draw each fire-
side group into a closer and more social league,
against the roaring elements without. Such a
wild winter day as best prepares the way for
shut-out night; for curtained rooms, and cheer-
ful looks; for music, laughter, dancing, light,
and jovial entertainment.
Battle of Life, Chap. 2.
WINTER—A ride in.
How well I recollect the wintry ride! The
frozen particles of ice, brushed from the blades |
of grass by the wind, and borne across my face:
the hard clatter of the horse's hoofs, beating a
tune upon the ground; the stiff-tilled soil;
'he snow-drift lightly eddying in the chalk-pit
as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with
the wagon of old hay, stopping to breathe on
the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically;
the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land
lying against the dark sky, as if they were
drawn on a huge slate!
David Copperfield, Chap. 62.
WIT—And money.
“What a blessing to have such a ready wit, and
so much ready money to back it!"
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47.
WOMAN-Deal lightly with her faults.
Oh woman, God beloved in old Jerusalem!
The best among us need deal lightly with thy
faults, if only for the punishment thy nature
will endure, in bearing heavy evidence against
us, on the Day of Judgment!
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 28.
WOMAN-Her perceptions.
"You women," said Tom, "you women, my
dear, are so kind, and in your kindness have
such nice perception; you know so well how to
be affectionate and full of solicitude without ap-
pearing to be; your gentleness of feeling is like
your touch; so light and easy, that the one en-
ables you to deal with wounds of the mind as
tenderly as the other enables you to deal with
wounds of the body."
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 46.
WOMEN
worlds to conquer, everybody knows-or has
some reason to know by this time, the matter
having been rather frequently mentioned. My
Lady Dedlock, having conquered her world, fell,
not into the melting, but rather into the freezing
mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out pla-
cidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruf-
fled by interest or satisfaction, are the trophies
of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If
she could be translated to Heaven to-morrow,
she might be expected to ascend without any
rapture.
She has beauty still, and, if it be not in its
heyday, it is not yet in its autumn. She has a
fine face-originally of a character that would
be rather called very pretty than handsome, but
improved into classicality by the acquired ex-
pression of her fashionable state.
Her figure
is elegant, and has the effect of being tall. Not
that she is so, but that "the most is made," as
the Honorable Bob Stables has frequently as-
serted upon oath, "of all her points." The
same authority observes, that she is perfectly
got up; and remarks, in commendation of her
hair especially, that she is the best-groomed
woman in the whole stud.
Bleak House, Chap. 2.
WOMAN-The frosty Mrs. Wilfer.
Indeed, the bearing of this impressive woman,
throughout the day, was a pattern to all impres-
sive women under similar circumstances. She
renewed the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs.
Boffin, as if Mr. and Mrs. Boffin had said of her
what she had said of them, and as if Time alone
could quite wear her injury out. She regarded
every servant who approached her as her sworn
enemy, expressly intended to offer her affronts
with the dishes, and to pour forth outrages on
her moral feelings from the decanters. She sat
erect at table, on the right hand of her son-in-
law, as half suspecting poison in the viands, and
as bearing up with native force of character
against other deadly ambushes. Her carriage
towards Bella was as a carriage towards a young
lady of good position, whom she had met in so-
ciety a few years ago. Even when, slightly thaw-
ing under the influence of sparkling champagne,
she related to her son-in-law some passages of
domestic interest concerning her papa, she in-
fused into the narrative such Arctic suggestions
of her having been an unappreciated blessing to
mankind, since her papa's days, and also of that
gentleman's having been a frosty impersonation
of a frosty race, as struck cold to the very soles
of the feet of the hearers. The Inexhaustible
being produced, staring, and evidently intend-
ing a weak and washy smile shortly, no sooner
beheld her, than it was stricken spasmodic and
inconsolable. When she took her leave at last,
it would have been hard to say whether it was
with the air of going to the scaffold herself, or
of leaving the inmates of the house for immedi-
ate execution.
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 16.
WOMEN-Quarrelsome.
To many a single combat with Mrs. Pipchin,
did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself; and if
ever Mrs. Pipchin in all her life had found her
match, she had found it now. Miss Nipper
threw away the scabbard the first morning she
How Alexander wept when he had no more arose in Mrs. Pipchin's house. She asked and
WOMAN-A stately.
.
WOMAN
531
gave no quarter. She said it must be war, and
war it was; and Mrs. Pipchin lived from that
time in the midst of surprises, harassings, and
defiances, and skirmishing attacks that came
bouncing in upon her from the passage, even in
unguarded moments of chops, and carried des-
olation to her very toast.
WOMAN
WOMAN-a handsome.
"Not to be wondered at!" says Mr. Bucket.
"Such a fine woman as her, so handsome and
so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon
on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she
goes."-Bleak House, Chap. 53.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 12.
WOMAN-Madam Defarge, the tigress.
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 WOMAN-Toots's opinion of.
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 circumstances. But, imbued
from her childhood with a brooding sense of
wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class, oppor-
tunity had developed her into a tigress. She
was absolutely without pity. If she had ever
had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of
her.
WOMAN-A brave and tender.
WOM
"My dear," he returned, "when a young lady
is as mild as she's game, and as game as she's
mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect.
She then becomes a Queen, and that's about
what you are yourself."
Bleak House, Chap. 59.
It was nothing to her, that an innocent man
was to die for 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 pun-
ishment, because they were her natural ene-
mies and her prey, and as such had no right to
live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by
her having no sense of pity, even for herself.
If she had been laid low in the streets, in any
of the many encounters 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 feel-
ing than a fierce desire to change places with
the man who sent her there.
cap.
Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under
her rough robe. Carelessly worn, it was a be-
coming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and
her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red
Lying hidden in her bosom was a loaded
pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharp-
ened 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, barefoot and
bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame
Defarge took her way along the streets.
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 14.
WOMAN-An angelic.
Mrs. Todgers vowed that anything one quar-
ter so angelic she had never seen. "She want-
ed but a pair of wings, a dear," said that good
woman, "to be a young syrup: meaning, pos-
sibly, young sylph, or seraph.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9.
WOMAN-An old bundle of clothes.
"
How's Mrs. Fibbitson to-day?" said the
Master, looking at another old woman in a large
chair by the fire, who was such a bundle of
clothes that I feel grateful to this hour for not
having sat upon her by mistake.
David Copperfield, Chap. 5.
|
"And now, Feeder," said Mr. Toots, "I should
be glad to know what you think of my union."
Capital," returned Mr. Feeder.
"You think it's capital, do you, Feeder?" said
Mr. Toots, solemnly. "Then how capital must
it be to Me. For you can never know what
an extraordinary woman that is."
Mr. Feeder was willing to take it for granted,
but Mr. Toots shook his head, and wouldn't hear
of that being possible.
"You see," said Mr. Toots, "what I wanted
in a wife was-in short, was sense. Money,
Feeder, I had. Sense I-I had not, particu-
larly."
Mr. Feeder murmured, "Oh, yes, you had,
Toots!" But Mr. Toots said:
No, Feeder, I had not. Why should I dis-
guise it? I had not. I knew that sense was
there," said Mr. Toots, stretching out his hand
towards his wife, "in perfect heaps. I had no
relation to object or be offended, on the score
of station; for I had no relation. I have never
had anybody belonging to me but my guardian,
and him, Feeder, I have always considered as a
Pirate and a Corsair. Therefore, you know it
was not likely," said Mr. Toots, "that I should
take his opinion."
"No," said Mr. Feeder.
Accordingly,” resumed Mr. Toots, “I acted
on my own. Bright was the day on which I did
so! Feeder! Nobody but myself can tell
what the capacity of that woman's mind is. If
ever the Rights of Women, and all that kind of
thing, are properly attended to, it will be through
her powerful intellect.-Susan, my dear!" said
Mr. Toots, looking abruptly out of the window-
curtains, "pray do not exert yourself!"
"My dear," said Mrs. Toots, "I was only
talking."
"But my love," said Mr. Toots, "pray do not
exert yourself. You really must be careful. Do
not, my dear Susan, exert yourself. She's so
easily excited," said Mr. Toots, apart to Mrs.
Blimber, "and then she forgets the medical man
altogether."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 42.
WOMAN-An old.
Munching, like that sailor's wife of yore, who
had chestnuts in her lap, and scowling like the
witch who asked for some in vain, the old
woman picked the shilling up, and going back-
wards, like a crab, or like a heap of crabs; for
her alternately expanding and contracting hands
might have represented two of that species,
and her creeping face some half-a-dozen more:
crouched on the veinous root of an old tree,
pulled out a short black pipe from within the
WOMAN
crown of her bonnet, lighted it with a match,
and smoked in silence, looking fixedly at her
questioner.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.
WOMAN-The influence of a true.
The spirit of Agnes so pervaded all we
thought, and said, and did, in that time of sor-
row, that I assume I may refer the project to
her influence. But her influence was so quiet
that I know no more.
532
WOMAN
ed Mr. Sparkler in her light, and shone for
both and twenty more. No longer feeling that
want of a defined place and character which
had caused her so much trouble, this fair ship
began to steer steadily on a shaped course, and
to swim with a weight and balance that developed
her sailing qualities.
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 15.
WOMAN-Tackleton's opinion of.
CC
And now, indeed, I began to think that in "Bah! what's home?" cried Tackleton.
my old association of her with the stained-"Four walls and a ceiling! (why don't you kill
glass window in the church, a prophetic fore- that Cricket; I would! I always do. I hate
shadowing of what she would be to me, in the their noise.) There are four walls and a ceil-
calamity that was to happen, in the fullness of ing at my house. Come to me!"
time, had found a way into my mind. In all
that sorrow, from the moment, never to be for-
gotten, when she stood before me with her up-
raised hand, she was like a sacred presence in
my lonely house. When the Angel of Death
alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep-they
told me so when I could bear to hear it-on her
bosom, with a smile. From my swoon, I first
awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate
tears, her words of hope and peace, her gentle
face bending down as from a purer region
nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart,
and softening its pain.
David Copperfield, Chap. 54.
She was so true, she was so beautiful, she
was so good, I owed her so much gratitude,
she was so dear to me, that I could find no
utterance for what I felt. I tried to bless her,
tried to thank her, tried to tell her (as I had
often done in letters) what an influence she had
upon me; but all my efforts were in vain. My
love and joy were dumb.
With her own sweet tranquillity she calmed
my agitation; led me back to the time of our
parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had
visited, in secret, many times; spoke to me ten-
aerly of Dora's grave. With the unerring in-
stinct of her noble heart, she touched the chords
of my memory so softly and harmoniously, that
not one jarred within me; I could listen to the
sorrowful, distant music, and desire to shrink
from nothing it awoke. How could I, when,
blended with it all, was her dear self, the better
angel of my life?
*
*
*
*
*
|
You kill your Crickets, eh?" said John.
"Scrunch 'em, sir," returned the other, set-
ting his heel heavily on the floor.
"You'll say
you'll come? It's as much your interest as
mine, you know, that the women should per-
suade each other that they're quiet and content-
ed, and couldn't be better off. I know their
way. Whatever one woman says, another
woman is determined to clinch, always. There's
that spirit of emulation among 'em, sir, that if
your wife says to my wife, 'I'm the happies:
woman in the world, and mine's the best hus-
band in the world, and I dote on him,' my wife
will say the same to yours, or more, and half
believe it."-Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. I.
WOMAN-A delicate.
"Mrs. Wititterly is of a most excitable nature,
Sir Mulberry. The snuff of a candle, the wick
of a lamp, the bloom on a peach, the down on
a butterfly. You might blow her away, my
lord; you might blow her away."
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 27.
WOMAN-An enraged.
With these last words, she snaps her teeth
together, as if her mouth closed with a spring.
It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket gets
her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a man-
ner so peculiar to himself; enfolding and per-
vading her like a cloud, and hovering away with
her as if he were a homely Jupiter, and she the
object of his affections.
Bleak House, Chap. 54.
WOMEN-Fainting.
"
And now, as I close my task, subduing my She's a goin' off," soliloquised Sam in great
desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But perplexity. "Wot a thing it is, as these here
one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light young creaturs will go a faintin' avay just wen
by which I see all other objects, is above they oughtn't to."-Pickwick, Chap. 39.
them and beyond them all. And that re-
mains.
I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful
serenity, beside me. My lamp burns low, and I
have written far into the night; but the dear
presence, without which I were nothing, bears
me company.
Oh, Agnes! Oh, my soul, so may thy face be
by me when I close my life indeed; so may I,
when realities are melting from me like the shad-
ows which I now dismiss, still find thee near
me, pointing upward!
David Copperfield, Chap. 60.
WOMAN-A betrothed.
Now, and not before, Miss Fanny burst upon
the scene, completely arrayed for her new
part. Now, and not before, she wholly absorb-
WOMEN—As drivers.
We are not a heavy load, George?"
a
That's always what the ladies say," replied
the man, looking a long way round, as if he
were appealing to Nature in general against
such monstrous propositions. "If you see
woman a driving, you'll always perceive that
she will never keep her whip still; the horse
can't go fast enough for her. If cattle have got
their proper load, you can never persuade a
woman that they'll not bear something more."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 26.
WOMAN-A pretty.
She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty.
With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face;
a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be
WOMAN
kissed-as no doubt it was; all kinds of good
little dots about her chin, that melted into one
another when she laughed: and the sunniest
pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's
head. Altogether she was what you would have
called provoking, you know; but satisfactory,
Oh, perfectly satisfactory.
too.
Christmas Carol, Stave 3.
A young and beautiful girl; fresh, lovely,
bewitching, and not nineteen. Dark eyes, long
eyelashes, ripe and ruddy lips, that to look at is
to long to kiss, beautiful clustering hair, that
one's fingers itch to play with, such a waist as
might make a man clasp the air involuntarily,
thinking of twining his arm about it, little feet
that tread so lightly they hardly seem to walk
upon the ground-to marry all this, sir, this-
ney, hey!"-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47.
WOMAN-A wolf-like.
533
WOMAN
conjured down the devil within her, though it
had had between sixty and seventy years to do
it in, came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of
which she was the keeper, with some large keys
in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we
should go. How she told us, on the way, that
she was a Government Officer (concierge du
palais apostolique), and had been, for I don't
know how many years; and how she had shown
these dungeons to princes; and how she was the
best of dungeon demonstrators; and how she
had resided in the palace from an infant,—had
been born there, if I recollect right,—I needn't
relate. But such a fierce, little, rapid, ark-
ling, energetic she-devil I never beheld. She
was alight and flaming all the time. Her action
was violent in the extreme. She never spoke,
without stopping expressly for the purpose.
She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms,
flung herself into attitudes, hammered against
walls with her keys, for mere emphasis; now
now shrieked as if she were on the rack her-
self; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with
her forefinger, when approaching the remains
of some new horror-looking back and walking
stealthily, and making horrible grimaces-that
might alone have qualified her to walk up and
down a sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion
of all other figures, through a whole fever.
Pictures from Italy.
WOMAN-An unselfish; Miss Pross.
My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two-whispered as if the Inquisition were there still:
and-thirty, from somewhere in the southern
country about Avignon and Marseilles—a large-
eyed brown woman with black hair; who would
be handsome, but for a certain feline mouth, and
general uncomfortable tightness of the face, ren-
dering the jaws too eager, and the skull too
prominent. There is something indefinably
keen and wan about her anatomy; and she has
a watchful way of looking out of the corners of
her eyes without turning her head, which could
be pleasantly dispensed with-especially when
she is in an ill-humor and near knives. Through
all the good taste of her dress and little adorn-
ments, these objections so express themselves,
that she seems to go about like a very neat She-
Wolf, imperfectly tamed. Besides being accom-
plished in all the knowledge appertaining to her
post, she is almost an Englishwoman in her
acquaintance with the language-consequently,
she is in no want of words to shower upon
Rosa for having attracted my Lady's attention;
and she pours them out with such grim ridicule
as she sits at dinner, that her companion, the
affectionate man, is rather relieved when she
arrives at the spoon stage of that performance.
Bleak House, Chap. 12.
WOMEN-Elderly.
Ultimately I found myself backing Traddles
into the fire-place, and bowing in great confu-
sion to two dry little elderly ladies, dressed in
black, and each looking wonderfully like a pre-
paration in chip or tan of the late Mr. Spenlow.
*
*
*
*
They both had little, bright, round, twink-
ling eyes, by the way, which were like birds'
cyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether;
naving a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a
little, short, spruce way of adjusting themselves,
like canaries.
*
*
*
*
Exactly at the expiration of the quarter of
an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity
than they had disappeared. They had gone
rustling away as if their little dresses were made
of autumn-leaves; and they came rustling back,
in like manner.-David Copperfield, Chap. 41.
WOMAN-A she devil.
A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of
flashing black eyes,-proof that the world hadn't
Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous,
but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath
the surface of her eccentricity, one of those un-
selfish creatures-found only among women-
who will, for pure love and admiration, bind
themselves 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 faithful 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 immeasurably
better got up both by Nature and Art, who had
balances at Tellson's.
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 6.
WOMAN-An edge-tool (Rosa Dartle).
She took everything, herself included, to a
grindstone, and sharpened it. She is an edge-
tool, and requires great care in dealing with.
She is always dangerous.
David Copperfield, Chap. 29.
WOMAN-A sharp (Rosa Dartle).
"She is very clever, is she not?" I asked.
"Clever! She brings everything to a grind-
stone," said Steerforth, "and sharpens it, is she
has sharpened her own face and figure these
years past. She has worn herself away by con-
stant sharpening. She is all edge."
David Copperfield, Chap. 20.
WOMAN-An artificial.
Thus they remained for a long hour, without
}
|
WOMAN
534
WOMAN
a word, until Mrs. Skewton's maid appeared, WOMAN-The instincts and prejudices of.
according to custom, to prepare her gradually
for night. At night, she should have been a
skeleton, with dart and hour-glass, rather than a
woman, this attendant; for her touch was as the
touch of Death. The painted object shrivelled
underneath her hand; the form collapsed, the
hair dropped off, the arched dark eyebrows
changed to scanty tufts of gray; the pale lips
shrunk, the skin became cadaverous and loose;
an old, worn, yellow, nodding woman, with
red eyes, alone remained in Cleopatra's place,
huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in a
greasy flannel gown.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 27.
And to prepare her for repose, tumbled into
ruins like a house of painted cards.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 20.
WOMAN-Of fashion, paralyzed.
Edith hurried with her to her mother's room.
Cleopatra was arrayed in full dress, with the
diamonds, short-sleeves, rouge, curls, teeth, and
other juvenility all complete; but Paralysis was
not to be deceived, had known her for the ob-
ject of its errand, and had struck her at her
glass, where she lay like a horrible doll that had
tumbled down.
They took her to pieces in very shame, and
put the little of her that was real on a bed.
*
*
*
*
*
It was a tremendous sight to see this old
woman in her finery leering and mincing at
Death, and playing off her youthful tricks upon
him as if he had been the Major.
*
*
*
*
*
When the carriage was closed, and the wind
shut out, the palsy played among the artifi-
cial roses again like an almshouse full of su-
perannuated zephyrs.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 37.
It has been often enough remarked that wo
men have a curious power of divining the
characters of men, which would seem to be in-
nate and instinctive; seeing that it is arrived at
through no patient process of reasoning, that it
can give no satisfactory or sufficient account of
itself, and that it pronounces in the most con-
fident manner even against accumulated obser-
vation on the part of the other sex. But it has
not been quite so often remarked that this power
(fallible, like every other human attribute), is
for the most part absolutely incapable of self-
revision; and that when it has delivered an ad-
verse opinion, which by all human lights is sub-
sequently proved to have failed, it is undis-
tinguishable from prejudice, in respect of its
determination not to be corrected. Nay, the
very possibility of contradiction or disproof,
however remote, communicates to this feminine
judgment from the first, in nine cases out of
ten, the weakness attendant on the testimony of
an interested witness; so personally and strongly
does the fair diviner connect herself with her
divination.-Edwin Drood, Chap. 10.
WOMAN-Influence of a good.
Strange to say, that quiet influence which was
inseparable in my mind from Agnes, seemed to
pervade even the city where she dwelt. The
venerable cathedral towers, and the old jack-
daws and rooks whose airy voices made them
more retired than perfect silence would have
done; the battered gateways, once stuck full
with statues, long thrown down, and crumbled
away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed
upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied
growth of centuries crept over gabled ends and
ruined walls; the ancient houses, the pastoral
landscape of field, orchard, and garden; every-
where on everything-I felt the same serener
air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit.
David Copperfield, Chap. 39.
WOMAN-Of fashion.
Walking by the side of the chair, and carry-WOMAN-Her revenge on dress.
ing her gossamer parasol with a proud and wea-
ry air, as if so great an effort must be soon
abandoned and the parasol dropped, sauntered
a much younger lady, very handsome, very
haughty, very willful, who tossed her head and
drooped her eyelids, as though, if there were
anything in all the world worth looking into,
save a mirror, it certainly was not the earth or
sky.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 21.
WOMAN-Sympathy for a fallen.
As her hands, parting on her sunburnt fore-
head, swept across her face, and threw aside the
hindrances that encroached upon it, there was
a reckless and regardless beauty in it; a daunt-
less and depraved indifference to more than
weather; a carelessness of what was cast upon
her bare head from Heaven or earth, that,
coupled with her misery and loneliness, touched
the heart of her fellow-woman. She thought
of all that was perverted and debased within
her, no less than without; of modest graces of
the mind, hardened and steeled, like these at-
tractions of the person; of the many gifts of
the Creator flung to the winds like the wild
hair; of all the beautiful ruin upon which the
storm was beating and the night was coming.
Dombey & Son, Crap. 33.
The Peasant Women, with naked feet and
legs, are so constantly washing clothes, in the
public tanks, and in every stream and ditch, that
one cannot help wondering, in the midst of all
this dirt, who wears them when they are clean.
The custom is to lay the wet linen which is be-
ing operated upon, on a smooth stone, and ham-
mer away at it, with a flat wooden mallet. This
they do, as furiously as if they were revenging
themselves on dress in general for being con-
nected with the Fall of Mankind.
Pictures from Italy.
WOMAN-The character of Mrs. Bagnet
"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing,
saves. Has a stocking somewhere. With
money in. I never saw it. But I know she's
got it. Wait till the greens is off her mind.
Then she'll set you up.
"She is a treasure!" exclaims Mr. George.
"She's more.
But I never own to it before
her. Discipline must be maintained. It was
the old girl that brought out my musical abili-
ties. I should have been in the artillery now,
but for the old girl. Six years I hammered at
the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old girl said
it wouldn't do; intention good, but want of
flexibility; try the bassoon. The old girl bor.
535
MRS. BAGNet.
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LOADING
WOMAN
iowed a bassoon from the band-master of the
Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches.
Got on, got another, get a living by it!"
George remarks that she looks as fresh as a
rose, and as sound as an apple.
t
The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet in reply, "is
a thoroughly fine woman. Consequently, she is
like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as she gets
I never saw the old girl's equal. But I
never own to it before her. Discipline must be
maintained!"-Bleak House, Chap. 27.
on.
WOMAN-Mrs. Bagnet as a true.
"6
George, you know the old girl-she's as
sweet and as mild as milk. But touch her on
the children-or myself—and she's off like gun-
powder."
"It does her credit, Mat!"
George," says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight
before him, "the old girl-can't do anything
that don't do her credit. More or less. I never
say so. Discipline must be maintained."
"She's worth her weight in gold," says the
trooper.
"
"In gold?" says Mr. Bagnet. I'll tell you
what. The old girl's weight-is twelve stone
six. Would I take that weight-in any
metal-for the old girl? No. Why not?
Because the old girl's metal is far more pre-
cious-than the preciousest metal. And she's
all metal!"
You are right, Mat!"
"When she took me and accepted of the
ring-she 'listed under me and the children-
heart and head; for life. She's that earnest,"
says Mr. Bagnet, "and true to her colors-that,
touch us with a finger-and she turns out-and
stands to her arms. If the old girl fires wide-
once in a way—at the call of duty-look over it,
George. For she's loyal!"
Bleak House, Chap. 34.
WOMAN-Her devotion.
535
WOMEN
dressed in homely stuffs, and indicating nothing
but the dull household virtues, that have so lit-
tle in common with the received idea of hero-
ism and greatness, unless, indeed, any ray of
them should shine through the lives of the great
ones of the earth, when it becomes a constella-
tion and is tracked in Heaven straightway—
this slight, small, patient figure, leaning on the
man, still young, but worn and gray, is she his
sister, who, of all the world, went over to him.
in his shame and put her hand in his, and with
a sweet composure and determination, led him
hopefully upon his barren way.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 33.
WOMAN-Her better nature.
Notwithstanding Mr. Toodle's great re¹iance
on Polly, she was perhaps in point of artificial
accomplishments very little his superior. But
she was a good plain sample of a natur⚫ that
is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler.
quicker to feel, and much more constant to re-
tain, all tenderness and pity, self-denial and de-
votion, than the nature of men.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 3.
WOMAN-Her art at home.
The Captain's delight and wonder at the quiet
housewifery of Florence in assisting to clear
the table, arrange the parlor, and sweep up the
hearth-only to be equalled by the fervency of
his protest when she began to assist him-were
gradually raised to that degree, that at last he
could not choose but do nothing himself, and
stand looking at her as if she were some Fairy
daintily performing these offices for him, the
red rim on his forehead glowing again, in his
unspeakable admiration.
But when Florence, taking down his pipe
from the mantel-shelf, gave it into his hand, and
entreated him to smoke it, the good Captain
was so bewildered by her attention that he held
it as if he had never held a pipe in all his life.
Likewise, when Florence, looking into the little
cupboard, took out the case-bottle and mixed a
perfect glass of grog for him, unasked, and set
it at his elbow, his ruddy nose turned pale, he
felt himself so graced and honored. When he
had filled his pipe in an absolute reverie of
satisfaction, Florence lighted it for him-the
Captain having no power to object, or to pre-
vent her-and resuming her place on the old
sofa, looked at him with a smile so loving and
so grateful, a smile that showed him so plainly
how her forlorn heart turned to him, as her face
did, through grief, that the smoke of the pipe
got into the Captain's throat and made him
cough, and got into the Captain's eyes and
made them blink and water.
So Florence lived in her wilderness of a home,
within the circle of her innocent pursuits and
thoughts, and nothing harmed her. She could
go down to her father's rooms now, and think
of him, and suffer her loving heart humbly to
approach him, without fear of repulse. She
could look upon the objects that had surrounded
him in his sorrow, and could nestle near his
chair, and not dread the glance that she so well
remembered. She could render him such little
tokens of her duty and service, as putting every-
thing in order for him with her own hands,
binding little nosegays for his table, changing |
them as one by one they withered, and he did
not come back, preparing something for him
every day, and leaving some timid mark of her
presence near his usual seat. To-day, it was a
little painted stand for his watch; to-morrow
she would be afraid to leave it, and would sub- WOMEN-Inquisitive.
stitute some other trifle of her making not so
likely to attract his eye. Waking in the night,
perhaps, she would tremble at the thought of
his coming home and angrily rejecting it, and
would hurry down with slippered feet and
quickly-beating heart, and bring it away. At
another time, she would only lay her face upon
his desk, and leave a kiss there, and a tear.
Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
Yes. This slight, small, patient figure, neatly
Dombey & Son, Chap. 49.
True, I had no Avenger in my service now,
but I was looked after by an inflammatory old
female, assisted by an animated rag-bag whom
she called her niece; and to keep a room secret
from them would be to invite curiosity and ex-
aggeration. They both had weak eyes, which
I had long attributed to their chronically look-
ing in at keyholes, and they were always at
hand when not wanted; indeed that was their
only reliable quality besides larceny. Not to
get up a mystery with these people, I resolved
WORDS
to announce in the morning that my uncle had
unexpectedly come from the country.
Great Expectations, Chap. 40.
WORDS-Their influence.
536
Words, sir, never influence the course of the
cards, or the course of the dice. Do you know |
that? You do? I also play a game, and words
are without power over it."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 28. ·
WORD-The last a new injury.
Why, I'd as soon have a spit put through
me, and be stuck upon a card in a collection of
beetles, as lead the life I have been leading
here."
"Well, Mr. Meagles, say no more about it,
now it's over," urged a cheerful feminine voice.
Over!" repeated Mr. Meagles, who ap-
peared (though without any ill-nature) to be in
that peculiar state of mind in which the last
word spoken by anybody else is a new injury.
"Over! and why should I say no more about it
because it's over?"
WORDS.
"
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 2.
Scouring a very prairie of wild words."
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 27.
WORDS-And high-sounding phrases.
“Oh Pa!” cried Mercy, holding up her fin-
ger archly. "See advertisement !
Playful-playful warbler," said Mr. Peck-
sniff. It may be observed in connection with
his calling his daughter a warbler," that she
was not at all vocal, but that Mr. Pecksniff was
in the frequent habit of using any word that
occurred to him as having a good sound, and
rounding a sentence well, without much care
for its meaning. And he did this so boldly, and
in such an imposing manner, that he would
sometimes stagger the wisest people with his
eloquence, and make them gasp again.
His enemies asserted, by the way, that a
strong trustfulness in sounds and forms, was the
master-key to Mr. Pecksniff's character.
WORDS.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2.
Peggotty's militia of words.
David Copperfield, Chap. 3.
WORDS-Versus oaths.
"I give you my word, constable-" said
Brass. But here the constable interposed with
the constitutional principle "words be blowed;"
observing that words were but spoon-meat for
babes and sucklings, and that oaths were the
food for strong men.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 60.
WORDS—The parade of.
WORKING PEOPLE
nate, and abjure, or so forth; and the old an
athemas were made relishing on the same prin-
ciple. We talk about the tyranny of words, but
we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond
of having a large superfluous establishment of
words to wait upon us on great occasions; we
think it looks important, and sounds well. As
we are not particular about the meaning of our
liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine
and numerous enough, so, the meaning or neces-
sity of our words is a secondary consideration,
if there be but a great parade of them. And as
individuals get into trouble by making too great
a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too
numerous rise against their masters, so I think
I could mention a nation that has got into many
great difficulties, and will get into many greater,
from maintaining too large a retinue of words.
David Copperfield, Chap. 52.
WORDS-To be economized.
He was so perfectly satisfied both with his
quotation and his reference to it, that he could
not help repeating the words again in a low
voice, and saying he had forgotten 'em these
forty year.
But I never wanted two or three words in
my life that I didn't know where to lay my
hand upon 'em, Gills," he observed. "It comes
of not wasting language as some do.”
The reflection perhaps reminded him that he
had better, like young Norval's father, "in-
crease his store."-Dombey & Son, Chap. 4.
WORDS.
The persecutors denied that there was any
particular gift in Mr. Chadband's piling ver-
bose flights of stairs, one upon another, after
this fashion. But this can only be received as
a proof of their determination to persecute, since
it must be within everybody's experience, that
the Chadband style of oratory is widely received
and much admired.-Bleak House, Chap. 19.
WORDS-In earnest.
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
Bleak House, Chap. 6.
WORKING PEOPLE.
For the first time in her life, Louisa had
come into one of the dwellings of the Coketown
hands; for the first time in her life, she was face
to face with anything like individuality in con-
nection with them. She knew of their exist-
ence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew
what results in work a given number of them
would produce, in a given space of time. She
knew them in crowds passing to and from their
nests, like ants or beetles. But she knew from
her reading infinitely more of the ways of toil-
ing insects than of these toiling men and
women.
Something to be worked so much and paid so
Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal pil- much, and there ended; something to be infal-
ing up of words, which, however ludicrously libly settled by laws of supply and demand;
displayed in his case, was, I must say, not at all something that blundered against those laws,
peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the and floundered into difficulty; something that
course of my life, in numbers of men. It seems was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and
to me to be a general rule. In the taking of over-ate itself when wheat was cheap; some.
legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to en- thing that increased at such a rate of percent-
joy themselves mightily when they come to sev- age, and yielded such another percentage of
cral good words in succession, for the expression crime, and such another percentage of pauper.
of one idea; as, that they utterly detest, abomi-ism; something wholesale, of which vast fox-
WORKINGMEN
537
WORKINGMEN
touch of condescension, no shadow of patron
age. In the great working districts this truth is
studied and understood. "When the American
civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glas-
gow, and afterwards in Manchester, that the
tunes were made; something that occasionally
rose like a sea, and did some harm and waste
(chiefly to itself), and fell again; this she knew
the Coketown Hands to be. But, she had scarce-
ly thought more of separating them into units,
than of separating the sea itself into its compo-working people should be shown how to avail
nent drops.-Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 6.
WORKINGMEN-English.
themselves of the advantages derivable from
system, and from the combination of numbers,
in the purchase and the cooking of their food,
this truth was above all things borne in mind.
The quick consequence was, that suspicion and
reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort
resulted in an astonishing and a complete suc
cess.- Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 23.
Reverting for a moment to his former refuge,
Gentlemen's clubs were once maintained for
purposes of savage party warfare; working-
men's clubs of the same day assumed the same
character. Gentlemen's clubs became places
of quiet inoffensive recreation; workingmen's
clubs began to follow suit. If workingmen
have seemed rather slow to appreciate advanta- | WORKINGMEN—The troubles of.
ges of combination which have saved the pock-
ets of gentlemen, and enhanced their comforts, he observed a cautionary movement of her eyes
it is because workingmen could scarcely, for towards the door. Stepping back, he put his
want of capital, originate such combinations hand upon the lock. But he had not spoken
without help; and because help has not been out of his own will and desire; and he felt it
separable from that great impertinence, Pat-in his heart a noble return for his late injurious
ronage. This instinctive revolt of his spirit treatment to be faithful to the last to those who
against patronage is a quality much to be re- had repudiated him. He stayed to finish what
spected in the English workingman. It is the was in his mind.
base of the base of his best qualities. Nor is it
surprising that he should be unduly suspicious of
patronage, and sometimes resentful of it even
where it is not, seeing what a flood of washy
talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or
with what complacent condescension the same
devoted head has been smoothed and patted.
It is a proof to me of his self-control, that he
never strikes out pugilistically, right and left,
when addressed as one of " My friends
or
"My assembled friends;" that he does not become
inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay,
whenever he sees a biped in broadcloth getting
on a platform to talk to him; that any pre-
tence of improving his mind does not instantly
drive him out of his mind, and cause him to
toss his obliging patron like a mad bull.
>>
'Sir, I canna, wi' my little learning, an my
common way, tell the genelman what will better
aw this though some working men o' this town
could, above my powers-but I can tell him
what I know will never do't. The strong hand
will never do't. Vict'ry and triumph will never
do't. Agreeing fur to mak one side unnat❜rally
awlus and forever right, and toother side un-
nat'rally awlus and forever wrong, will never,
never do't. Nor yet lettin alone will never do't.
Let thousands upon thousands alone, aw leadin
the like lives and aw faw'en into the like mud-
dle, and they will be as one, and yo will be as
anoother, wi' a black unpassable world betwixt
yo, just as long or short a time as sitch-like
misery can last. Not drawin nigh to fok, wi’
kindness and patience an cheery ways, that so
For how often have I heard the unfortunate draws nigh to one another in their monny trou-
workingman lectured, as if he were a little bles, and so cherishes one another in their dis-
charity-child, humid as to his nasal develop- tresses wi' what they need themseln—like, I
ment, strictly literal as to his Catechism, and humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha
called by Providence to walk all his days in a seen in aw his travels can beat-will never do't
station in life represented on festive occasions till th' Sun turns t' ice. Most o' aw, ratin 'em as
by a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun! so much Power, and reg'latin 'em as if they was
What popguns of jokes have these ears tingled figures in a soom, or machines: wi'out loves
to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, and likens, wi'out memories and inclinations,
what impotent conclusions, what spelling-book wi'out souls to weary and souls to hope-when
moralities, what adaptations of the orator's in-aw goes quiet, draggin on wi' 'em as if they'd
sufferable tediousness to the assumed level of
his understanding! If his sledgehammers, his
spades and pickaxes, his saws and chisels, his
paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and
engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and
the machines that drove him at his work, were
all toys in one little paper box, and he the baby
who played with them, he could not have been
discoursed to more impertinently and absurdly Stephen looked at him with some little irreso-
than I have heard him discoursed to times in-lution for a moment, and then seemed to make
numerable. Consequently, not being a fool or up his mind.
nowt o' th' kind, and when aw goes onquiet,
reproachin 'em for their want o' sitch humanly
feelins in their dealins wi' yo-this will never
do't, sir, till God's work is onmade."
*
*
*
*
What," repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding
his arms, "do you people, in a general way,
complain of ?”
a fawner, he has come to acknowledge his "Sir, I never were good at showin' o't, though
patronage by virtually saying: "Let me alone.
If you understand me no better than that, sir
and madam, let me alone. You mean very
well, I dare say; but I don't like it, and I won't
come here again to have any more of it."
Whatever is done for the comfort and ad-
vancement of the workingman must be so far
done by himself. And there must be in it no
I ha had'n ny share in feeling o't. 'Deed we
are in a muddle, sir. Look round town-so
rich as 'tis--and see the numbers o' people as has
been broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an
to card, an to piece out a livin', aw the same one
way, somehows, twixt their cradles and their
graves. Look how we live, an wheer we live,
an in what numbers, an by what chances, and
WORKSHOP
538
wi' what sameness; and look how the mills is
awlus a goin, and how they never works us no
nigher to ony dis'ant object-ceptin awlus,
Death. Look how you considers of us, an
writes of us, an talks of us, an goes up wi' yor
deputations to Secretaries o' State 'bout us, and
how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus
wrong, and never had'n no reason in us sin ever
we were born. Look how this ha growen an
growen, sir, bigger an bigger, broader an
broader, harder an harder, fro year to year, fro
generation unto generation. Who can look on't,
sir, and fairly tell a man 'tis not a muddle?"
"Of course," said Mr. Bounderby. 'Now
perhaps you'll let the gentleman know, how you
would set this muddle (as you're so fond of call-
ing it) to rights."
"I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to't.
'Tis not me as should be looken to for that, sir.
'Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the
rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln,
sir, if not to do't?”
"I'll tell you something towards it, at any
rate," returned Mr. Bounderby. "We will
make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges.
We'll indict the blackguards for felony, and get
'em shipped off to penal settlements.
Stephen gravely shook his head.
"Don't tell me we won't, man," said Mr.
Bounderby, by this time blowing a hurricane,
"because we will, I tell you!"
WORLD
went rumbling by, horrible cries proceeded from
the lungs of hawkers; still it struck in again,
no higher, no lower, no louder, no softer; not
thrusting itself on people's notice a bit the more
for having been outdone by louder sounds-
tink, tink, tink, tink, tink.
It was a perfect embodiment of the still small
voice, free from all cold, hoarseness, huskiness,
or unhealthiness of any kind; foot-passengers
slackened their pace, and were disposed to lin-
ger near it; neighbors who had got up splene-
tic that morning, felt good-humor stealing on
them as they heard it, and by degrees became
quite sprightly; mothers danced their babies to
its ringing; still the same magical tink, tink,
tink, came gaily from the workshop of the Gold-
en Key.
Who but the locksmith could have made such
music? A gleam of sun shining through the
unsashed window, and chequering the dark
workshop with a broad patch of light, fell full
upon him, as though attracted by his sunny
heart. There he stood working at his anvil,
his face all radiant with exercise and gladness,
his sleeves turned up, his wig pushed off his
shining forehead-the easiest, freest, happiest
man in all the world. Beside him sat a sleek
cat, purring and winking in the light, and fall-
ing every now and then into an idle doze, as
from excess of comfort. Toby looked on from
a tall bench hard by; one beaming smile, from
'Sir," returned Stephen, with the quiet con- his broad nut-brown face down to the slack.
fidence of absolute certainty, "if yo wast' tak baked buckles in his shoes. The very locks
a hundred Slackbridges-aw as there is, and aw that hung around had something jovial in their
the number ten times towd-an was t' sew 'em rust, and seemed like gouty gentlemen of hearty
up in separate sacks, an sink 'em in the deepest natures, disposed to joke on their infirmities.
ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to There was nothing surly or severe in the whole
be, yo'd leave the muddle just wheer 'tis. Mis- scene. It seemed impossible that any one of
cheevous strangers!" said Stephen, with an anx- the innumerable keys could fit a churlish strong-
ious smile; “when ha we not heern, I am sure, box or a prison-door. Cellars of beer and wine,
sin ever we can call to mind, o' th' mischeevous rooms where there were fires, books, gossip, and
strangers! 'Tis not by them the trouble's male, cheering laughter- these were their proper
sir. 'Tis not wi' them 't commences. I ha no sphere of action. Places of distrust and cruelty,
favor for 'em-I ha no reason to favor 'em-and restraint, they would have left quadruple-
but 'tis hopeless and useless to dream o' takin | locked forever.—Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 41.
them fro their trade, 'stead o'takin their trade
fro them! Aw that's now about me in this WORLD-The material and moral.
room were heer afore I coom, an will be heer
when I am gone. Put that clock aboard a ship |
an pack it off to Norfolk Island, an the time
will go on just the same. So 'tis wi' Slackbridge
every bit."-Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 5.
WORKSHOP-Gabriel Varden's.
From the workshop of the Golden Key, there
issued forth a tinkling sound, so merry and
good-humored, that it suggested the idea of
some one working blithely, and made quite
pleasant music. No man who hammered on at
a dull monotonous duty, could have brought
such cheerful notes from steel and iron; none
but a chirping, healthy, honest-hearted fellow,
who made the best of everything, and felt kindly
towards everybody, could have done it for an
instant. He might have been a coppersmith,
and still been musical. If he had sat in a jolt-
ing wagon, full of rods of iron, it seemed as if
he would have brought some harmony out of it.
Tink, tink, tink-clear as a silver bell, and
audible at every pause of the streets' harsher
noises, as though it said, "I don't care; nothing
puts me out; I am resolved to be happy."
Women scolded, children squalled, heavy carts
In the material world, as I have long taught,
nothing can be spared; no step or atom in the
wondrous structure could be lost, without a
blank being made in the great universe. I
know, now, that it is the same with good and
evil, happiness and sorrow, in the memories of
men.- -Haunted Man, Chap. 2.
WORLD-The.
The world-a conventional phrase which, be-
ing interpreted, often signifieth all the rascals
in it.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 3.
WORLD-A battlefield.
"It's a world full of hearts," said the Doctor
hugging his younger daughter, and bending
across her to hug Grace—for he couldn't separ-
ate the sisters; "and a serious world, with all
its folly-even with mine, which was enough to
have swamped the whole globe; and it is a
world on which the sun never rises, but it looks
upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some
set-off against the miseries and wickedness of
Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need be
careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it
is a world of sacred msteries, and its Creator
WORLD
only knows what lies beneath the surface of His
lightest image!"—Battle of Life, Chap. 3.
WORLD-Its hollowness.
"The world is a lively place enough, in which
we must accommodate ourselves to circum-
stances, sail with the stream as glibly as we
can, be content to take froth for substance, the
surface for the depth, the counterfeit for the
real coin. I wonder no philosopher has ever
established that our globe itself is hollow. It
should be, if Nature is consistent in her works."
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 12.
WORLD-The opinion of the.
539
Let it be remembered that most men live in
a world of their own, and that in that limited
circle alone are they ambitious for distinction |
and applause. Sir Mulberry's world was peo-
pled with profligates, and he acted accordingly.
Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and
tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are
in constant occurrence among us every day. It
is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder
and astonishment at the chief actors therein,
setting at defiance so completely the opinion of
the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is
precisely because they do consult the opinion of
their own little world that such things take place
at all, and strike the great world dumb with
amazement.-Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 28.
WORLD-Toots's idea of the.
WRITING
then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I
was picking them up, I dropped the other frag.
ments of the system; in short, it was almost
heart-breaking.
It might have been quite heart-breaking, but
for Dora, who was the stay and anchor of my
tempest-driven bark. Every scratch in the
scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of diffi-
culty, and I went on cutting them down, one
after another, with such vigor, that in three or
four months I was in a condition to make an
experiment on one of our crack speakers in the
Commons. Shall I ever forget how the crack
speaker walked off from me before I began, and
left my imbecile pencil staggering about the
paper as if it were in a fit?
This would not do, it was quite clear. I was
flying too high, and should never get on, so I
resorted to Traddles for advice. who suggested
that he should dictate speeches to me, at a pace,
and with occasional stoppages, adapted to my
weakness. Very grateful for this friendly aid,
I accepted the proposal; and night after night,
almost every night, for a long time, we had a
sort of private Parliament in Buckingham
Street, after I came home from the Doctor's.
I should like to see such a Parliament any-
where else! My aunt and Mr. Dick represent-
ed the Government or the Opposition (as the
case might be), and Traddles, with the assist-
ance of Enfield's Speaker or a volume of par-
liamentary orations, thundered astonishing in-
vectives against them. Standing by the table,
Oh, upon my word and honor," cried Mr. with his finger in the page to keep the place,
Toots, whose tender heart was moved by the and his right arm flourishing above his head,
Captain's unexpected distress, "this is a most Traddles, as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan,
wretched sort of affair, this world is! Some- Mr. Burke, Lord Castlereagh, Viscount Sid-
body's always dying, or going and doing some-mouth, or Mr. Canning, would work himself
thing uncomfortable in it. I'm sure I never
should have looked forward so much, to coming
into my property, if I had known this. I never
saw such a world.”—Dombey & Son, Chap. 32.
WRITING-Short-hand.
I did not allow my resolution, with respect to
the Parliamentary Debates, to cool. It was one
of the irons I began to heat immediately, and
one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at,
with a perseverance I may honestly admire. I
bought an approved scheme of the noble art
and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten
and sixpence), and plunged into a sea of per-
plexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the
confines of distraction. The changes that were
rung upon dots, which in such a position meant
such a thing, and in such another position some-
thing else, entirely different; the wonderful
vagaries that were played by circles; the unac-
countable consequences that resulted from marks
like flies' legs; the tremendous effects of a curve
in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking
hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep.
When I had groped my way, blindly, through
these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet,
which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there
then appeared a procession of new horrors,
called arbitrary characters; the most despotic
characters I have ever known; who insisted, for
instance, that a thing like the beginning of a
cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-
ink sky-rocket stood for disadvantageous. When
I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found
that they had driven everything else out of it;
into the most violent heats, and deliver the most
withering denunciations of the profligacy and
corruption of my aunt and Mr. Dick; while I
used to sit, at a little distance, with my note-
book on my knee, fagging after him with all
my might and main. The inconsistency and
recklessness of Traddles were not to be exceed-
ed by any real politician. He was for any de-
scription of policy, in the compass of a week;
and nailed all sorts of colors to every denomi-
nation of mast. My aunt, looking very like
an immovable Chancellor of the Exchequer,
would occasionally throw in an interruption or
two, as "Hear!" or "No!" or "Oh!" when the
text seemed to require it—which was always a
signal to Mr. Dick (a perfect country gentle.
man) to follow lustily with the same cry.
Mr. Dick got taxed with such things in the
course of his Parliamentary career, and was
made responsible for such awful consequences,
that he became uncomfortable in his mind
sometimes. I believe he actually began to be
afraid he really had been doing something,
tending to the annihilation of the British con-
stitution, and the ruin of the country.
Bu
Often and often we pursued these debates until
the clock pointed to midnight, and the candles
were burning down. The result of so much good
practice was, that by-and-bye I began to keep
pace with Traddles pretty well, and should have
been quite triumphant if I had had the least idea
what my notes were about. But, as to reading
them, after I had got them, I might as well have
copied the Chinese inscriptions on an immense
collection of tea-chests, or the golden characters
WRITING
on all the great red and green bottles in the
chemists' shops!
540
WRITER
WRITING-An ecstasy of pen and ink.
In his epistolary communication, as in his dia-
logues and discourses on the great question to
which it related, Mr. Dorrit surrounded the sub-
ject with flourishes, as writing-masters embellish
copy-books and ciphering-books; where the
titles of the elementary rules of arithmetic
diverge into swans, eagles, griffins, and other cal-
igraphic recreations, and where the capital letters
go out of their minds and bodies into ecstasies
of pen and ink.-Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 15.
There was nothing for it, but to turn back
and begin all over again. It was very hard,
but I turned back, though with a heavy heart,
and began laboriously and methodically to plod
over the same tedious ground at a snail's pace:
stopping to examine minutely every speck in
the way, on all sides, and making the most
desperate efforts to know these elusive charac-
ters by sight wherever I met them. I was
always punctual at the office; at the Doctor's
too; and I really did work, as the common | WRITING-The efforts of Sam Weller.
expression is, like a cart-horse.
David Copperfield, Chap. 38.
"Let'
Wery good, my dear," replied Sam.
me have nine penn'orth o' brandy and water,
luke, and the ink-stand, will you, Miss?"
The brandy and water, luke, and the ink-
stand, having been carried into the little parlor.
and the young lady having carefully flattened
down the coals to prevent their blazing, and car-
ried away the poker to preclude the possibility
of the fire being stirred, without the full privity
and concurrence of the Blue Boar being first had
and obtained, Sam Weller sat himself down in a
box near the stove, and pulled out the sheet of
gilt-edged letter-paper, and the hard-nibbed pen.
Then looking carefully at the pen to see that
there were no hairs in it, and dusting down the
table, so that there might be no crumbs of bread
under the paper, Sam tucked up the cuffs of his
coat, squared his elbows, and composed himself
to write.
WRITING-The attempts of ignorance.
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin sat, after breakfast, in
the Bower, a prey to prosperity. Mr. Boffin's
face denoted Care and Complication. Many
disordered papers were before him, and he
looked at them about as hopefully as an inno-
cent civilian might look at a crowd of troops
whom he was required at five minutes' notice to
manœuvre and review. He had been engaged
in some attempts to make notes of these papers;
but being troubled (as men of his stamp often |
are) with an exceedingly distrustful and correct-
ive thumb, that busy member had so often in-
terposed to smear his notes, that they were
little more legible than the various impressions
of itself, which blurred his nose and forehead.
It is curious to consider, in such a case as Mr. To ladies and gentlemen who are not in the
Boffin's, what a cheap article ink is, and how | habit of devoting themselves practically to the
far it may be made to go. As a grain of musk science of penmanship, writing a letter is no very
will scent a drawer for many years, and still lose easy task; it being always considered necessary
nothing appreciable of its original weight, so a in such cases for the writer to recline his head
halfpenny-worth of ink would blot Mr. Boffin on his left arm, so as to place his eyes as nearly
to the roots of his hair, and the calves of his as possible on a level with the paper, while
legs, without inscribing a line on the paper be- glancing sideways at the letters he is con-
fore him, or appearing to diminish in the ink-structing, to form with his tongue imaginary
stand.
*
*
*
*
*
"And I tell you, my deary," said Mrs. Boffin,
"that if you don't close with Mr. Rokesmith
now at once, and if you ever go a muddling
yourself again with things never meant nor
made for you, you'll have an apoplexy-besides
iron-moulding your linen-and you'll break my
heart."-Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 15.
WRITING-Short-hand.
I have come legally to man's estate. I have
attained the dignity of twenty-one. But this is
a sort of dignity that may be thrust upon one.
Let me think what I have achieved.
characters to correspond. These motions, al-
though unquestionably of the greatest assist-
ance to original composition, retard in some
degree the progress of the writer; and Sam had
unconsciously been a full hour and a half writ-
ing words in small text, smearing out wrong
letters with his little finger, and putting in new
ones, which required going over very often to
render them visible through the old blots, when
he was roused by the opening of the door, and
the entrance of his parent.-Pickwick, Chap. 33.
WRITER-A smeary.
He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful
bad hand. Utterly regardless of ink, he lavished
I have tamed that savage stenographic mys-it on every undeserving object,-on his clothes,
tery. I make a respectable income by it. I am his desk, his hat, the handle of his tooth brush,
in high repute for my accomplishment in all his umbrella. Ink was found freely on the cof-
pertaining to the art, and am joined with eleven fee-room carpet, by No. 4 table, and two blots
others in reporting the debates in Parliament were on his restless couch. A reference to the
for a Morning Newspaper. Night after night | document I have given entire will show that on
I record predictions that never come to pass,
professions that are never fulfilled, explanations
that are only meant to mystify. I wallow in
words. Britannia, that unfortunate female, is
always before me, like a trussed fowl; skewered
through and through with office-pens, and bound
hand and foot with red tape. I am sufficiently
behind the scenes to know the worth of politi-
cal life. I am quite an Infidel about it, and
shall never be converted.
David Copperfield, Chap. 43.
the morning of the third of February, eighteen
fifty-six, he procured his no less than fifth pen
and paper. To whatever deplorable act of un-
governable composition he immolated those ma-
terials obtained from the bar, there is no doubt
that the fatal deed was committed in bed, and
that it left its evidences but too lainly, long
afterwards, upon the pillow-case.
He had put no Heading to any of his writings.
Alas! Was he likely to have a Heading without
a Head, and where was his Head when he took
WRITING
541
such things into it? In some cases, such as his
Boots, he would appear to have hid the writings;
thereby involving his style in greater obscurity.
But his Boots were at least pairs; and no two of
his writings can put in any claim to be so
regarded. Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 1.
WRITING.
Rob sat down behind the desk with a most
assiduous demeanor; and in order that he might
forget nothing of what had transpired, made
notes of it on various small scraps of paper,
with a vast expenditure of ink. There was no
danger of these documents betraying anything,
if accidentally lost; for long before a word was
dry, it became as profound a mystery to Rob,
as if he had had no part whatever in its produc-
tion.-Dombey & Son, Chap. 23.
WRITING-Dick Swiveller as a correspond-
ent.
WRITE
begin, and when he did begin he made every
down-stroke so slowly that it might have been
six feet long, while at every up-stroke I could
hear his pen spluttering extensively. He had a
curious idea that the inkstand was on the side
of him where it was not, and constantly dipped
his pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied
with the result. Occasionally, he was tripped
up by some orthographical stumbling-block, but
on the whole he got on very well indeed, and
when he had signed his name, and had removed
a finishing blot from the paper to the crown of
his head with his two forefingers, he got up and
hovered about the table, trying the effect of his
performance from various points of view as it
lay there, with unbounded satisfaction.
Great Expectations, Chap. 57.
WRITING-Preparations for.
Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of laughter
at the idea of her own importance and dignity,
"Is that a reminder, in case you should for- brooded over the whole table with her two
get to call?" said Trent with a sneer.
formation of certain cabalistic characters, which
required a deal of ink, and imaginary counter-
parts whereof she executed at the same time
with her tongue. Having once tasted ink, she
became thirsty in that regard, as tame tigers are
said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and
wanted to sign everything, and put her name in
all kinds of places.—Battle of Life, Chap. 1.
elbows, like a spread eagle, and reposed her
"Not exactly, Fred," replied the imperturba-head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the
ble Richard, continuing to write with a busi-
ness-like air, "I enter in this little book the
names of the streets that I can't go down while
the shops are open. This dinner to-day closes
Long Acre. I bought a pair of boots in Great
Queen Street last week, and made that no
thoroughfare too. There's only one avenue in
the Strand left open now, and I shall have to
stop up that to-night with a pair of gloves.
The roads are closing so fast in every direction,
that in about a month's time, unless my aunt
sends me a remittance, I shall have to go three
or four miles out of town to get over the way."
"There's no fear of her failing, in the end?"
said Trent.
"
Why, I hope not," returned Mr. Swiveller,
"but the average number of letters it takes to
soften her is six, and this time we have got as
far as eight without any effect at all. I'll write
another to-morrow morning. I mean to blot it
a good deal and shake some water over it out
of the pepper-castor, to make it look penitent.
'I'm in such a state of mind that I hardly know
what I write '-blot-' if you could see me at
this minute shedding tears for my past miscon-
duct-pepper castor- my hand trembles when
I think-blot again-if that don't produce the
effect, it's all over."
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 8.
WRITING-Of Joe Gargery.
WRITING-Of a beginner.
Writing was a trying business to Charley, who
seemed to have no natural power over a pen,
but in whose hand every pen appeared to be-
come perversely animated, and to go wrong and
crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into
corners, like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd,
to see what old letters Charley's young hand had
made; they, so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and
tottering; it, so plump and round. Yet Charley
was uncommonly expert at other things, and
had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.
"
Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy
of the letter O in which it was represented as
square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed
in all kinds of ways, we are improving."
Bleak House, Chap. 31.
WRITING-DESK-A spattered.
He comes out of his dull room-where he has
inherited the deal wilderness of desk bespatter-
ed with a rain of ink.-Bleak House, Chap. 20.
The writing looked like a skein of thread in
a tangle, and the note was ingeniously folded
into a perfect square, with the direction squeez-
ed up into the right-hand corner, as if it were
ashamed of itself. The back of the epistle was
pleasingly ornamented with a large red wafer,
which, with the addition of divers ink-stains,
bore a marvellous resemblance to a black beetle
trodden upon.-Tales, Chap. I.
WRITE-Kit learning to.
Evidently, Biddy had taught Joe to write.
As I lay in bed looking at him, it made me, in | WRITING-A letter.
my weak state, cry again with pleasure to see
the pride with which he set about his letter.
My bedstead, divested of its curtains, had been
removed, with me upon it, into the sitting-room,
as the airiest and largest, and the carpet had
been taken away, and the room kept always
fresh and wholesome night and day. At my
own writing-table, pushed into a corner and
cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down
to his great work, first choosing a pen from the
pen-tray as if it were a chest of large tools, and
tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to
wield a crowbar or sledge-hammer. It was
necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the
table with his left elbow, and to get his
right leg well out behind him, before he could
To relate how it was a long time before his
modesty could be so far prevailed upon as to
admit of his sitting down in the parlor, in the
presence of an unknown gentleman-how, when
he did sit down, he tucked up his sleeves and
WRITERS
542
squared his elbows, and put his face close to the
copy-book, and squinted horribly at the lines-
how, from the very first moment of having the
pen in his hand, he began to wallow in blots,
and to daub himself with ink up to the very
roots of his hair-how, if he did by accident |
form a letter properly, he immediately smeared
it out again with his arm in his preparations to
make another-how, at every fresh mistake,
there was a fresh burst of merriment from the
child and a louder and not less hearty laugh
from poor Kit himself and how there was all
the way through, notwithstanding, a gentle wish
on her part to teach, and an anxious desire on
his to learn to relate all these particulars
would no doubt occupy more space and time
than they deserve.
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 3.
WRITERS-Public.
Flaming placards are rife on all the dead
walls in the borough, public-houses hang out
banners, hackney-cabs burst into full-grown
flowers of type, and everybody is, or should be,
in a paroxysm of anxiety.
At these momentous crises of the national
fate, we are much assisted in our deliberations
by two eminent volunteers; one of whom sub-
scribes himself A Fellow Parishioner, the other,
A Rate-Payer. Who they are, or what they
are, or where they are, nobody knows; but
whatever one asserts, the other contradicts.
They are both voluminous writers, inditing
more epistles than Lord Chesterfield in a single
week; and the greater part of their feelings are
too big for utterance in anything less than capi-
tal letters. They require the additional aid of
whole rows of notes of admiration, like balloons,
to point their generous indignation: and they
sometimes communicate a crushing severity to
stars.-Our Vestry. Reprinted Pieces.
Y
YAWN-An unfinished.
Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind his
wineglass, puts down that screen and calls up a
look of interest. It is a little impaired in its
expressiveness by his having a shut-up gape still
to dispose of, with watering eyes.
YEAR-New.
Edwin Drood, Chap. 4.
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 com-
plimentary, both to the old year that has rolled
away, and to the New Year that is just begin-
ning to dawn upon us, to see the old fellow out,
and the new one in, with gaiety and glee.
There must have been some few occurrences
In the past year to which we can look back with
YEAR
a smile of cheerful recollection, 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 himself unworthy the confidence we
repose in him.
This is our view of the matter; and enter-
taining it, notwithstanding our respect for the
old year, one of the few remaining 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 this arti-
cle with as jovial a face as if nothing extra-
ordinary had happened, or was about to hap-
pen, to disturb our good humor.
Characters (Sketches), Chap. 3.
YEARS-The death of.
40
Hard weather indeed," returned his wife,
shaking her head.
Years," said Mr. Tugby,
are like Chris-
tians in that respect. Some of 'em die hard;
some of 'em die easy. This one hasn't many
days to run, and is making a fight for it. I
like him all the better."
Chimes, 4th Quarter.
YEAR-The old and new.
It was a hard frost, that day. The air was
bracing, crisp, and clear.
The wintry sun,
though powerless for warmth, looked brightly
down upon the ice it was too weak to melt, and
set a radiant glory there. At other times, Trotty
might have learned a poor man's lesson from the
wintry sun; but, he was past that, now.
The Year was Old, that day. The patient
Year had lived through the reproaches and mis-
uses of its slanderers, and faithfully performed
its work. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. It
had labored through the destined round, and
now laid down its weary head to die. Shut out
from hope, high impulse, active happiness, it-
self, but messenger of many joys to others, it
made appeal in its decline to have its toiling
days and patient hours remembered, and to die
in peace. Trotty might have read a poor man's
allegory in the fading year; but he was past
that, now.
And only he? Or has the like appeal been
ever made, by seventy years at once upon an
English laborer's head, and made in vain?
The streets were full of motion, and the shops
were decked out gaily. The New Year, like an
Infant Heir to the whole world, was waited for,
with welcomes, presents, and rejoicings. There
were books and toys for the New Year, glitter-
ing trinkets for the New Year, dresses for the
New Year, schemes of fortune for the New
Year; new inventions to beguile it. Its life
was parcelled out in almanacks and pocket-
books; the coming of its moons, and stars, and
tides, was known beforehand to the moment;
all the workings of its seasons in their days and
nights, were calculated with as much precision
as Mr. Filer could work sums in men and
women.
The New Year, the New Year. Everywhere
the New Year! The Old Year was already
looked upon as dead; and its effects were sell-
ing cheap, like some drowned mariner's aboard.
ship. Its patterns were Last Year's, and going
at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its
YES
treasures were mere dirt, beside the riches of
its unborn successor !—Chimes, 2d Quarter.
YES-Its expression.
I was much impressed by the extremely com-
fortable and satisfied manner in which Mr.
Waterbrook delivered himself of this little
word "Yes," every now and then. There was
wonderful expression in it. It completely con-
veyed the idea of a man who had been born,
not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling
ladder, and had gone on mounting all the
heights of life one after another, until now he
looked from the top of the fortifications, with
the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the
people down in the trenches.
David Copperfield, Chap. 25.
YOUTH-Depraved.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre,
ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in
their humility. Where graceful youth should
have filled their features out, and touched them
with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand,
like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them,
and pulled them into shreds. Where angels
might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and
glared out menacing. No change, no degrada-
tion, no perversion of humanity, in any grade,
through all the mysteries of wonderful creation,
has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Christmas Carol, Stave 3.
YOUTH-The depravity of.
543
This," said the Phantom, pointing to the
boy, "is the last, completest illustration of a hu-
man creature, utterly bereft of such remembran- |
ces as you have yielded up. No softening mem-
ory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters here,
because this wretched mortal from his birth has
been abandoned to a worse condition than the
beasts, and has, within his knowledge, no one
contrast, no humanizing touch, to make a grain
of such a memory spring up in his hardened
breast. All within this desolate creature is bar-
ren wilderness. All within the man bereft of
YOUTH
what you have resigned, is the same barren wil
derness. Woe to such a man! Woe, tenfold,
to the nation that shall count its monsters such
as this, lying here by hundreds and by thou-
sands!"
Redlaw shrunk, appalled, from what he
heard.
There is not," said the Phantom,
one of
these-not one-but sows a harvest that man-
kind MUST reap. From every seed of evil in
this boy, a field of ruin is grown that shall be
gathered in and garnered up, and sown again in
many places in the world, until regions are over-
spread with wickedness enough to raise the wa-
ters of another Deluge. Open and unpunished
murder in a city's streets would be less guilty
in its daily toleration, than one such spectacle
as this."
*
*
*
*
*
"There is not a father," said the Phantom,
"by whose side in his daily or his nightly walk,
these creatures pass; there is not a mother
among all the ranks of loving mothers in this
land; there is no one risen from the state of
childhood, but shall be responsible in his or her
degree for this enormity. There is not a coun-
try throughout the earth on which it would not
bring a curse. There is no religion upon earth
that it would not deny; there is no people upon
earth it would not put to shame."
The chemist clasped his hands, and looked,
with trembling fear and pity, from the sleeping
boy to the Phantom, standing above him with
its finger pointing down.
Behold, I say," pursued the Spectre, "the
perfect type of what it was your choice to be.
Your influence is powerless here, because from
this child's bosom you can banish nothing. His
thoughts have been in 'terrible companionship'
with yours, because you have gone down to his
unnatural level. He is the growth of man's in-
difference; you are the growth of man's pre-
sumption. The beneficent design of heaven is,
in each case, overthrown, and from the two poles
of the immaterial world you come together."
Haunted Man, Chap. 3.
INDEX.
A.
ABBEY-Nell in the old, 5.
ABILITY—Misdirected, 5.
ABSENCE OF MIND, 300.
ACTOR-(See Drama), 157.
Feeling a part, 7.
His reading of Hamlet, 6.
His expressions unconsciously
imitated, 178.
The dying, 6.
For the starved business,
283.
ACTORS-A gathering of, 7.
ACQUAINTANCE-The art of extend-
ing, 7.
A charity to Mr. Toots, 7.
ADAPTABILITY, 7.
ADDRESSES-Public, 7.
ADJECTIVES-Bark's
use of pro-
pro-
fane, 7.
ADMIRER-Quale as an indiscrimi-
nate, 8.
ADORNMENT-Of a home, 220, 224.
ADVENTUROUS PEOPLE-(See Adapta-
bility), 7.
ADVERTISING Sawyer's mode of,
358.
As a means of revenge, 8.
A building "billed," 8.
Show-bills, 9.
ADVERTISEMENT—A walking, 9.
ADVERTISEMENTS-Alphabetical an-
swers to, 9.
Peculiarities of, 8.
ADVICE-Of Mrs. Bagnet, on con-
duct, 9.
Of Mr. Micawber, on procras-
tination and money, 9.
Pickwick's, on love-making,
278.
Of Joe, on lies, 270.
Of Wemmick, on portable pro-
perty, 200.
Of Toodle, 225.
As to boy, 52.
Of Squeers, on appetites, 22.
To clergymen, 109.
To the melancholy, 272.
On children (See Cuttle), 93.
Of Mrs. Crupp, on love, 130.
Of Bucket, 249.
AFFECTION-For home, 222.
Home the place of, 224.
Unrequited, 275.
(See Love).
The expression of, 9.
The subtlety of, 9.
Of the idiot, 10.
AFFECTIONS-Wounded, 10
The natural, 10.
Of childhood, 10.
AFFECTATION AND RESERVE, 397.
Of innocence, 249.
AFFLICTIONS-Their power, 218.
AFFLICTION-The agony of, 10.
Assuaged by memory, 10.
Comfort in, 11.
AFFRONT-Mr. Pickwick's, 11.
AGE-A youthful old, 11.
The duties of old, 11.
Revered by the poor, 11.
The influence of dress on, 159.
AGES-Like drops in the ocean, 30.
AGGRAVATION-Blood, liquid, 49.
AGNES, 294.
The true woman, 532.
Influence of, 534.
Grave of, 212.
ALARM-BELL-Voice of the, 44.
ALIBI-The elder Weller's idea of
an, 11.
ALLEN-Ben, and Bob Sawyer, 61.
ALPHABET—Of the stars, 453.
Like a bramble bush, 170.
Joe and Pip's study of the, 170.
Learning the, 11.
Reminiscences of its study, 12.
ALPS-Among the, 12.
Of testimony (See Ancestry),
16.
AMATEUR ARTIST, 24.
AMENS! — Like
Macbeth's (See
Church), 103.
AMERICA-Liberty in, 269.
Justice in, 254.
A provincialism of, 197.
Canal boat in, 56.
AMERICANS-(See Chollop), 64.
Their characteristics, 12.
Their devotion to dollars, 13.
AMERICAN EAGLE-The, 13.
FLAG, 197.
HABITS-Salivatory phenom-
ena, 13.
In Washington, 13.
Publicists in, 14.
Women, fashionable, 14.
The social observances in, 14.
Mark Tapley's opinion of, 15.
Landlord, 257.
Dinner, an, 147.
Magistrate, an, 283.
Congressman, 268.
Transcendentalists, 486.
Universities, 495.
Trees, 491.
Habits, 481, 482.
Religion and lectures, 395.
Shakers, 434.
Speculator, 451.
Reception, 392.
Press, 372.
Prison, 376.
Railroad journey, 389, 390.
Steamboat, 453.
AMUSEMENT-The philosophy of (See
"Circus "), 104.
(See New York), 331.
ANATOMY-Venus on, 15.
ANATOMICAL SUBJECT-Wegg
APARTMENT-A dirty, 19.
Dusty, 19.
APARTMENT-Mark Tapley's idea of
a jolly, 19.
And gloomy furniture, 19.
A cosy, 19.
Its grandeur in decay, 19.
A gloomy (See dining-room).
147.
(See Library), 269.
And furniture, 19.
The hangings of an, 20.
The ghostly air of an, 20.
A mouldy, 20.
To let-its advantages, 20.
A snug, 20.
Of a suicide, 21.
Associations of empty, 21.
The Growlery of Jarndyce, 21.
Mr. Fips' office, 21.
A model bedroom, 21.
A solitary, 22.
The loneliness of Law Inns,
22.
(See Inn), 249.
A grim, 17.
An old and abandoned, 18.
An old (See Furniture), 204.
APARTMENTS-Of Mr. Tartar, 17.
APPEARANCE-Personal (See Expres-
sion Face Features-
Characters
etc.).
>>>
-
<
- Eyes Hair,
APPETITE—and love, 276.
(See Favor), 191.
The advice of Squeers, 22.
APOLOGY For drunkenness
Swiveller), 460.
(See
APPRENTICESHIP-Of Oliver Twist,
22.
APRON-Of Ruth, 237.
ARCHITECT-His designs, 22.
ARCHITECTURE—Monotony in, 234.
ARGUMENT—"A gift of nature," 22.
ARISTOCRACY-A sign of, 23.
Of blood, 49.
ARISTOCRAT-Monseigneur, the, 71.
ARISTOCRATIC PRIVILEGE-Gout, an,
210.
ARITHMETIC, 23.
Windy, 72.
as | AROMA, 23.
an, 15.
ANCESTORS-Remote and doubtful,
16.
ANCESTRY—A satire on the pride
of, 15.
Its personal importance, 16.
ANCIENT BANK, 35.
ANGELS-Communion with the (See
Dead), 134.
(See Flowers, etc.), 197.
ANGELS' EYES-stars, 453.
ANGER, 300.
(See Rage), 386.
ANIMALS, 299.
(See Dogs, Donkeys, Cats,
etc.), 155, 156.
Their weather instincts, 16,
ANNIVERSARY, 294.
ANNIVERSARIES-Of ghosts, 209.
ANNO DOMINI, 17.
ANNOUNCEMENT-Of a baby, 32.
ANTIQUARIAN DISCOVERY, 360.
CONTROVERSY, 361.
APARTMENT-A spacious, 18.
A small, 18.
Of Dick Swiveller, 18.
An ancient, 18.
•
ART-Of carving, 59.
Miss La Creevy's difficulties
of, 23.
Family pictures, 23.
A top-heavy portrait, 23.
Of the butcher, 55.
Of letter-writing (See Valen.
tine), 496.
Italian pictures, 24.
Family pictures, 24.
Pictures in Italian Churches,
24,
ART AND NATURE-A criticism, 23.
ARTIST-(See Art), 23.
An Amateur, 24.
ASHES-Of a Home, 25.
ASPERITY (See Face, a frosty), 182 •
(See Austerity), 27.
The expression of, 25.
ASSOCIATION-The influence of, 25
ASSOCIATIONS-Of evening, 173.
Of Christmas, 95.
Of Sunday bells, 43.
Of a battle-field, 38.
Of childhood, 91.
Of holidays, 219.
ASTHMA—Of Mr. Omer, 55.
ASTHMA
ASTHMA—The want of breath, 25.
ASYLUM—A lunatic, 281.
ATTACHMENT-(See Affection), 9.
ATTACHMENT-Personal, Lowten's
opinion of, 200.
AUCTION SALE-Of Dombey's furni-
ture, 25.
AUGUST-Nature in, 26.
Scenery in, 468.
AUNT (See Mr. F.'s), 83.
AUSTERITY—In religion, 27, 94, 395.
Of Mr. Murdstone, 71.
Of Mrs. Clennam, 25.
Of Mrs. General, 60.
Of Dombey, 27, 493.
Its chilling influence, 26.
In politeness, 27.
The selfishness of, 27.
Its influence on youth, 27.
AUSTRALIA-Micawber off for, 303.
AUTHOR - His loss of imaginary
friends, 27.
Mr. Dick, the mad, 27.
548
BANQUET-A fashionable, 149, 150.
BANTAM-Angelo Cyrus, 61.
BAR-ROOM-The Six Jolly Fellowship
Porters, 36.
The May-pole, 36.
A mob in John Willet's, 36.
BARGAIN-Life a (Gradgrind), 270.
BARKIS-His dress, 158.
"BARKIS IS WILLIN'," 36.
BARKIS—“It's true as taxes is," 37.
Death of, 37.
BARK-His adjectives, 7.
BOYTHORN
BIRD-The raven of Barnaby Rudge,
48.
BIRTH-Of a baby, 31, 49.
BIRTHDAY-Mrs. Bagnet's, 148.
"BITZER," 62.
BLACKPOOL-Stephen,
of, 184.
description
In solitude, 449.
Lectures Bounderby, 537.
Life a muddle to, 271.
The law a muddle to, 261.
The death of, 137.
BARNABY RUDGE-In the country, BLACKSMITH-(See Evening), 174.
119.
BARNABY'S DREAM, 313.
BARNACLE-A buttoned-up man, 56.
BARNACLES-For office, 341, 342, 343. |
BASHFULNESS-Of Mr. Toots, 37.
BATTLE-FIELD-An old, 38.
The world a, 538.
BAY-(See City; the approach to New
York), 105.
BEADLE (See Officials), 342.
MAD-Mr. Dick's diffusion of BEARD, 312.
facts, 28.
A conceited, 116.
Pott's method of work, 173.
AUTHORESS - Mrs.
American, 28.
Hominy,
AUTUMN-Sunset in, 174.
At Chesney Wold, 235.
Scenery, 28.
Wind at twilight, 29.
Nature in, 29.
The voices of, 29.
AVARICE—The miser, 29.
Fledgeby, the young mi-
ser, 30.
And cunning, 30.
And heartlessness, 30.
AWAKE-Lying, 30.
AWE, 30.
B.
BABY-A sick, 93.
Its martyrdom,30.
Description of a, 31.
His welcome of pins, 31.
Talk, 31.
The birth of a,
31.
Cutting teeth, 31.
A patient, 32.
Announcement of a, 32.
Dot's, 32.
A Moloch of a, 32.
BACHELORS-In society, 33.
Crusty, 33.
A miserable creature, 33.
Major Bagstock, 33.
an
BACHELOR-A bad habit to be an old,
216.
(See Sparsit), 450.
(See Durdles), 66.
Mr. Minns, the, 70.
(See Tottle), 78.
BAD HUMOR-And religion, 395.
BAGNET, Mr.-Description of, 61.
Mrs., 534, 535.
Her advice, on conduct, 9.
Birth-day dinner of Mrs., 148.
BAGSTOCK—Major, his features, 181.
As a bachelor, 33.
At dinner, 147.
His laughter, 259.
His opinion of stamina, 136.
As a traveller, 489.
The sayings of Major, 34.
BAILEY-AN Old, 53.
BAILEY-His whiskers, 523.
BALCONIES-An Italian street, 34.
BALLOONIST-A, 34.
BALL-A fancy dress, 34.
Spangles by daylight, 34.
A fashionable, 34.
"BALMY "-Dick Swiveller's, 444.
BANKER-Mr. Lowry, the, 70.
BANK-An old-fashioned, 35.
CLERKS-(See House), 232.
OFFICIALS Their individual-
ity, 35.
BANKRUPTCY, 36.
The world's idea of, 36.
A normal condition, 144.
Court of, 121.
BEAUTY-A grinning skull beneath,
39.
(See Woman), 532.
BEAU-A superannuated, 63.
BED—“An out-an-outer,” 39.
BEDROOM-Pickwick in the wrong,
39.
A model (See apartment), 21.
BEDSTEAD-A despotic monster, 41.
BEDSTEADS-The characteristics of,
41.
BEEF AND MUTTON-Nothing solar
about them, 167.
BEES-Models of industry, 41.
Their example a humbug, 41.
BEGGARS-In Italian churches, 41.
Italian, 42.
In the name of philanthropy,
356.
Of society, 42.
BEGGING-LETTER WRITERS, 43.
BLEAK HOUSE-Description of, 234.
BLESSING-Mrs. Cruncher's, 211.
Children, as a, 91.
BLIMBER—The school of Dr., 417
The reading of Dr., 392.
Cornelia, 418.
Mrs., dress of, 158.
Doctor, 62.
BLIND-The faces of the, 49.
BLINDNESS-Degrees of, 48.
BLOCKHEAD (See Drummle), 66.
BLOOD VS. LIQUID AGGRAVATION, 49.
The Aristocracy of, 49.
BLUSH-A, 49.
BLUSHES, 181.
BLUSTER, 48.
BLUNTNESS VS. SINCERITY, 48.
BOARDING-HOUSE
KEEPERS- An
swers to advertisement, 9.
BOARDING-HOUSE-Mrs. Todgers' 49,
BOARDING-HOUSE KEEPER-Mrs. Tod
gers, 50.
(See Billickin), 239.
Trials of a, 213.
BOB CRATCHIT'S CHRISTMAS DINNER,
98.
BOB SAWYER'S OPINION, 298.
BODY-"A dem'd, moist, unpleas
ant," 287.
BOFFIN-Mr. and Mrs., 188, 352.
BOHEMIANS-The gypsies of gentil-
ity, 50.
BELLS Associations of Sunday, 43. BOISTEROUSNESS-Of Boythorn, 284.
Grown worldly, 44.
The voice of alarm, 44.
Vibrations of the, 44.
Church, the, 45.
At midnight, 45.
School, 421.
Books, 291.
The readers of, 50.
Of reference, 50.
The lost, of earth, 50.
The last stroke of the year, 45. BOOK-KEEPER-Of morals (See Good
The Chimes, 45.
The fairies of the, 45.
BELLA WILFER-(See Needlework),
328.
BENEDICTION—An interrupted, 209.
BENEVOLENCE-Of the poor, 87.
Its expression, 178.
King Lear an exemplification
of, 46.
BEREAVEMENT (See Affliction), 10.
BERTH-In a canal boat, 56.
BETTY HIGDEN-Her devotion, 88.
BETSEY PRIG-And Sairey Gamp,
410.
BETSEY TROTWOOD-Her impertur-
bability, 181.
Her opinions (See Expression
of Dress), 178.
And Mrs. Crupp, 46.
And Uriah Heep, 46.
"Janet, Donkeys!" 46.
BIBLE-The, 47.
BIBLE STUDIES-Of Rob the Grind-
er, 167.
BILL-A, 47.
BILLS-A house covered with adver-
tising, 8.
(See Advertising), 9.
BILL-Weeping on a wet wall, 232.
BILL OF FARE (See Eating), 166.
"BILER"-The vagrant boy, 52.
BILLICKIN-Mrs., the housekeeper,
239.
BIPEDS AND QUADRUPEDS, 47.
BIRD-Of Tim Linkinwater (See City
Square), 107.
BIRDS-The unhappiness of caged,
47.
The traits of, 47.
(See "Christmas at Sea"), 97.
BIRDS AND ANGELS-Jenny Wren (See
Flowers, etc.), 197.
BIRD-CAGE-Heart like a, 219.
and Evil), 210.
BOOK-KEEPING-Moral, 243.
BOOK-KEEPERS-and Old Ledgers,
60.
BOLDNESS, 50.
BOOTS-Tight; and love, 276.
Tight, 50.
Irreparable, 50.
(See Old Clothes), 344.
At the inn, 511.
Pickwick's gaiters, 360.
BORES, 51.
-
BORE—A practical, 51.
"BORN AGAIN"-Mrs. Weller, 512.
BOTANICAL BLOTCHES (See Cup-
board), 130.
BOTANY-BAY EASE, 145.
BOTTLES, 51.
Journey of a, 529.
BOUNDERBY Mr., 62.
His dress, 158.
Josiah, his education, 169
A local magnate, 283.
And Childers, 246.
The household of (See Spar
sit), 450.

BOWER, 51.
Boy-Advice as to his lodgings, 52
The Spartan, 52.
At Mugby, 52.
A street, 52.
A vagrant, 52.
A depraved, 52.
"Jo" the outcast, 52.
Bailey an "old," 53.
David Copperfield's servant
238.
(See "Fat Boy"), 190, 191.
Discipline in church, 396.
His reading, 391.
His fight, 193.
His toilette, 482.
BOYTHORN-Mr., 62.
BOYTHORN
BOYTHORN-His opinion of Courts,
128.
His opinion of Corporations,
etc., 118.
Mr., his laughter, 259.
A vigorous manhood, 284.
“Boz”—The original, 54.
BRASS-Sally, 83.
Sampson, 62.
Sampson (See Compliments),
115.
His opinion of hearts, 219.
His office, 264.
Sally (See Swiveller), 460.
BREAD AND BUTTER-Eating, 166, 54.
BREATH-Asthma, the want, 25, 55.
BREAKFAST-Conversation at, 205.
BREWERS AND BAKERS, 207.
BROADWAY PIG, 362.
BROKER-Pancks' opinion of a, 54.
In second-hand furniture, 54.
BROKER'S SHOP, 54.
BROWDIE-John, the laughter of,259.
BRUISES-Of Mr. Squeers, 55.
BUCKET-The detective, 146.
Mr., the advice of, 249.
BUDS "Children of the flowers," 92.
BULLY-Of humility, 62.
BUMBLE-His opinion of juries, 254.
"The law's a bachelor," 261.
BUNSBY-Capt., 62, 295.
(See Features), 192.
BURDEN-Of cares, 59.
BUSINESS MANAGER-Capt. Cuttle as
a, 55.
Mr. Carker, the, 55.
BUSINESS-The motto of Pancks, 55.
Attachment to (See Horses
and Dogs), 228.
The routine of, 216,
(See Contentment), 117.
BUTCHER-Artistically considered,
55.
BUTTONED-UP MEN-Their impor-
tance, 56.
BUTTONS Of Sloppy, 74.
(See Dress of Sloppy), 159.
BUTLER-A Stately (See Dinner), 151.
BUZFUZ-Serjeant, 122, 125.
C.
CABIN (See Canal boat), 56.
CABS AND DRIVERS-Description of,
56.
CALAIS-Approach to, 432.
CALLERS-Cards like theatrical
snow, 58.
CALTON-Mr., 63.
CANAL BOAT-An American, 56.
CANDLE-Lighting a, 57.
(See Chambermaid), 87.
CANDIDATES-For office, 171.
CAPTAIN CUTTLE-His home, 223.
Dress of, 157.
Despondency of, 227.
Simplicity of, 61.
As a business man, 55.
His love of Walter, 134.
The expression of, 181, 182.
His habit of thought, 215.
On shipwreck, 437.
His reverence for science, 57.
His observations and charac-
teristics, 57.
And Mrs. MacStinger, 58.
And Mr. Toots, 58.
The reading of, 392.
CAPITAL AND TALENT, 305.
CARDS-A game for love, 58.
Of callers. 58.
CARES-Second-hand, 59.
The oppressiveness of, 59.
CARKER, JR.-Description of, 241.
647
CAT-Carker like a, 63, 192.
Mrs. Pipchin and Paul, 59.
CHRISTMAS
CHESS-The law a game of, 260.
CHESNEY WOLD-Autumn at, 235.
Animals at, 16.
CATS AND DOGS (See Dogs), 155.
CATACOMBS OF ROME-The graves of CHESTERFIELD—AS
martyrs, 59.
"CATECHISM"-"Overhaul
(See Walk), 504.
CATHEDRAL-(See Rome), 407.
At sunset, 472.
a man of the
world, 88.
the "
CHEVY SLYME, 74.
CAUSE AND EFFECT-In life, 272.
CELLARS-And old ledgers, 60.
CENTURIES-The awe of contempla-
tion, 30.
CEREMONY-A frosty, 60.
CHADBAND-Rev. Mr., and Jo, 109.
CHAIR-Tom Smart's vision, 60.
"CHARLEY "-(See Orphans), 350.
The writing of, 541.
CHAMBERMAID, 87.
CHANCE REVELATIONS OF THOUGHT,
218.
CHANCERY-The Court of, 126, 127.
CHANGES OF TIME, 481.
CHANGE-The results of, 87.
CHARACTERS-General
of, 80.
description
A haunted man, 80.
A family party at Pecksniff's,
81.
Miscellaneous, 81.
Female, 82.
(See Coachman), 113.
(See Cabs and Drivers), 56.
(See Dinner, fashionable),149.
(See Boy), 52.
(See Landlord), 256.
(See Gentility, shabby), 207.
(See Inventor), 253.
(See Authoress), 28.
(See Court), 120.
(See Face, a frosty), 182.
(See Betsey Trotwood), 46.
(See Facts), 186.
(See Mrs. Rouncewell), 233.
(See Factory-town), 184.
(See Face of a proud, etc.), 182.
(See Eyes, inexpressive), 178.
(See Carker, Jr.), 241.
(See Silas Wegg), 239, 240.
(See Mantalini), 285.
(See Admirer-Quale), 8.
(See "Actors, a gathering
of"), 7.
(See Ball), 34.
(See Court, description of Doc-
tors' Commons), 120.
At a public dinner, 151.
And dress (See Dres3), 157.
(See Sally Brass), 204.
(See Americans in Washing-
ton), 13.
(See Serjeant Snubbin), ?06
And characteristics (See Capt.
Cuttle), 57.
And characteristics, 6¹.
CHARACTER—Simplicity
Cuttle, 61.
of Capt.
Purity of Tom Pinch, 219
A vigorous (See Laugıı ol' Boy-
thorn), 259.
Illustrated by home swround-
ings, 223.
Indecision of, 246.
CHARACTERISTICS—Of American, 12
Personal, 192.
CHARITY—Acquaintance, a chahy
to, 7.
Induced by Christmas ? ❤g *j*.
tions, 97.
Of the poor, 87.
Held by main force 87.
Speculators in, 87.
The romance of, 87.
CHARITABLE MISSIONS, 310.
CHEEK-An unsympathetic, 87.
The business manager, 55, 192. | CHEER-An English, 88.
SR.-Description of, 63.
(See Content), 117.
The hypocrite, 243.
Flight of, 308.
CHEERFULNESS-Kit's religion, 88.
Kit's philosophy of, 88.
CHEERLESS APARTMENT, 269.
CARPET-SHAKING-The pleasures of, CHEERYBLE BROTHERS, 63.
59.
CARVING-The art of, 59.
CASTE, 446.
CASTOR-OIL—A conversational ape-
rient, 13.
CHEMIST-The, 88.
CHERUB, 295.
Up aloft (See sailor), 408.
The conventional (See Wil-
fer), 79.
|
CHICK, 294.
CHICKENSTALKER-Mr. and Mrs. at
home, 221.
CHILD-A matured, 88.
Sickness of Johnny Harmon,
88.
Death of Johnny Harmon, 89.
A fashionable, 90.
Of a female philanthropist, 90.
And father-a contrast, 90.
Grave of a, 212.
(See Baby), 30.
Its idea of an austere father.
191.
Its first experience in church,
102.
C.ALDHOOD-Of Florence, 209.
Its affection, 10.
The power of observatior
in, 90.
The fortitude of, 90.
The early experience of, 91.
In a city, 91.
Sad remembrances of, 91.
The dreams of, 91.
Neglected, 91.
CHILDISHNESS-A misnomer, 91.
CHILDREN—The blessing of, 91.
Injustice to, 91.
Keeping and losing, 92.
A lawyer's view of, 92.
The sympathy of, 92,
At church, 92.
At Christmas, 97.
Of nature, 92.
Neglected, their footprints,
92.
Who are doted upon, 92.
Their legs calendars of dis
tress, 93.
The love of, 93.
In the hospital, 93.
Capt. Cuttle's advice, 93.
Their martyrdom, 93.
The gauntlet of their diseases,
93.
In love, 93.
The death of, 144.
A hater of (Tackleton), 94.
(See Orphans), 350.
(See Spiritual growth), 452.
Their
(Pipchin'■
education
education
system), 167.
On Sunday, 470.
At seaside, 431.
Their education, 167.
The Pardiggle, 356.
Of Toodle, 225.
(See Nurse), 337, 338, 339.
(See Race-course), 385.
CHILLIP-Dr., His style of shaking
hands, 217.
Description of, 298.
46
CHIMES (See Bells), 45.
CHIMNEYS-(See City Neighbor
hood), 107.
A
CHIMNEY-SWEEPING (See Appren
ticeship), 22.
CHIN-A desert of, 62.
A double, 94.
CHIRRUP-Mrs., as a carver, 59.
Mr. and Mrs., 274.
CHIVERY, JOHN-Description of, 64
His heart, 218.
Disappointment of, 280.
In love, 278.
Reticence of, 399.
CHULLOP-Mr., 64.
COKING COUGH, 118.
H.ISTIAN—A conventional, 94.
A professing, 94.
A rigid, 94.
A boiling-over oid," 54.
CH ISTIANITY-Austere 27.
CHRIS MAS-Associations of, 95
Day, 96.
its lessɔat 9º.
Seruggek opinion ɔû”
Scenes
↑
t
CHRISTMAS
CHRISTMAS-A charitable time, 97.
Eve, 97.
At sea, 97.
The recollections of, 98.
Carol, 98.
Dinner, Bob Cratchit's, 98.
Of Scrooge, 99.
(See Time), 481.
Fire-(See Sparks), 450.
CHUCKLE (See Dance), 131.
An internal, dangerous, 259.
CHUFFEY-Description of, 64.
CHURCH, 102, 311.
Pictures in, 24.
Child at, 92.
548
CLERGYMEN—(See Stiggins), 75.
Advice to, 109.
The true, 109.
Rev. Mr. Chadband, 109.
Exhortations of Chadband,
109.
The fashionable, 110.
CLIENT-(ee Lawyer), 266, 267.
CLOCK-Its expression, 111.
What it said, 111.
CLOTHES-(See Dress), 157-8-9.
The ghosts of, 208.
Second-hand, 189.
Second-hand (See Fashions),
189.
And preacher—A child's first CLOTHING-(See Old Clothes), 344.
experience of, 102.
A hideous, 102.
An apology to heaven, 102.
In Italy, 102.
A wedding in, 102.
Tower-The bells, 45.
Pew, 355.
Bells, 45.
Windows, 103.
CHURCHES-As Monuments, 101.
Old, 103.
A Sunday experience among,
101.
Beggars in Italian, 41.
CHURCHYARD—A, 103.
(See Tombstones), 483.
Flowers on graves, 135.
Little Nell in an old, 103.
In London, 103.
CHUZZLEWIT & SON-(See Old Firm),
347.
Jonas-His Education, 170.
His bad passions, 30.
Anthony-Death of, 141.
CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE, 340, 341.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, 173.
CIRCUS-The philosophy of the, 104.
People-Mr. Sleary on, 104.
The performers, 104.
CITY-An old and drowsy, 104.
A quiet nook in London, 105.
Crowd-Its expressions, 105.
Of Philadelphia, 105.
The approach to New York,
105.
Travellers to the, 105.
(See Genoa), 206.
(See Lyons), 282.
Childhood in a, 91.
Dust in the, 165, 174.
Gardens, 205.
Houses, 233, 236.
Trees, 491. .
Graveyard, 211, 213.
Its crowd-A human stew,
130.
Idlers, 245.
A housetop view in a, 237.
Evening in the, 174.
Approach to a, 106.
London in old times, 106.
Square The office of the
Cheerybles, 106.
Neighborhood-A, 107.
CLEANLINESS-A compromise with,
115.
And dirt (See Compromise),
115.
Of Mrs. Tibbs, 238.
Uncomfortable, 108.
CLEMENCY NEWCOME-Description
of, 82.
the writing of, 541.
CLENNAM-Mrs., her religion, 27.
CLERK-A lawyer's, 108.
An indignant, 108.
His office, 108.
The faithful old, 108.
An old, 64.
Smallweed, a lawyer's, 261.
Newman Noggs, 72.
Mr. Grewgious as a model,
193.
""
(See City Square "), 106.
CLERKS-At lunch, 262.
Of lawyers, 266, 267.
Offices of merchants', 108.
CLERGYMEN-Weller's opinion of,
244.
CLOSET (See Cupboard), 130.
CLOUDS (See Evening in Autumn),
174.
(See Execution), 175.
COACH-Riding in a, 111.
Experience in a Virginia, 111.
The early morning, 112.
An old style, 112.
Travelling-the miseries of,
113.
COACHES-The ghosts of mail, 112.
Associations of decayed, 112.
Weller's opinion of, 113.
Their autobiography, 113.
Men like (See Pecksniff), 284.
COACHMAN A representative of
pomp, 113.
Tom Pinch's journey with a,
113.
A labelled, 216.
His love of his occupation,
228.
COIN-Of the heart, 219.
COKETOWN-A triumph of fact, 183.
COLD-Mrs. Nickleby's cure for a,
114.
COLDNESS, 25.
And indifference, 247.
COLISEUM-Rome, 407.
COLLECTOR-Pancks, the, 114, 257.
COLOR-Of Sound (See Night), 334.
COMFORT-IN affliction, 11.
"COMING OUT STRONG”—(See Mark
Tapley), 288,
COMMON SENSE-Mr. Skimpole's idea
of, 114.
COMPLAGENCY-(See Content), 117.
COMPLIMENTS-Diffusive, 197.
Of a lawyer, 115.
COMPOSITION-Cramming for a, 173.
COMPROMISE-With cleanliness, 115.
CONCEIT-(See Bounderby), 62.
Mr. Podsnap as a type of, 115.
The grandeur of Podsnap-
pery, 115.
Spiritual, the experience of
Dickens, 115.
Self, 116.
CONCENTRATION—Of mind (See Ex-
pression), 178.
CONDENSATION-Of
lovers, 281.
language, by
CONDUCT-Mrs. Bagnet's advice on,
9.
CONFUSION-Sometimes agreeable,
116.
CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES,
116.
CONGRESSMAN-In America, 72, 268.
CONSERVATISM-(See Todgers), 328.
CONSCIENCE-Mr. Pecksniff's bank,
117.
A troubled, 117, 215.
A convenient garment, 117.
CONSOLATION-In disappointment,
275.
CONSTANCY-Secret of success, 467.
CONSUMPTION-(See also Fever, Sick-
ness, etc.), 116.
CONTENT-The still small voice of,
227.
The tranquillity of, 117.
The generosity of, 117.
CONTENTMENT, 117, 270.
The vision of Gabriel Grub,
117.
CONTENTIONS-Of life, 270.
CONTRASTS-In life, 117.
CONTRITION—Of Mr. Toots, 117.
CRISPARKLE
CONVERSATION-Castor Oil as a sub
ject of, 13.
(See Baby Talk), 31.
CONVENTIONALITIES
Social, 188.
In religion and politics, 132.
CONVENTIONALISM-In Christianity,
94.
CONVENTIONAL PHRASES, 118.
CONVICT-His early experiences,117.
Trial of a, 123.
(See Execution).
COOKING, 118.
The melodious sounds of, 118.
The misfortunes of (See Din.
ner), 148.
Description of, 99.
(See "Pudding "'), 381.
"COPELAND'S" POTTERY, 364.
COPPERFIELD-David, at school, 417.
His first love, 277.
Drunk, 163.
CORNS--Treading on people's, 118.
CORPORATION—(See Life Assurance),
271.
Public boards, etc., 118.
CORPSE-(See Dead-house), 134.
(See Death of Quilp), 138.
CORRESPONDENCE-(See Letter, and
Writing), 269, 541.
COSTS-Legal (See Court), 128.
COUGH-Of inexpressible grandeur,
178.
A choking, 118.
An expressive, 118.
A monosyllabic, 119.
COUNTRY--The, 119.
House and garden in the,
235.
Village, scenes in a, 187.
Mrs. Skewton's Arcadia, 119.
Scenery, journey of little Nell,
119.
Scenery, 119, 424.
Excursions
of Barnaby
Rudge, 119.
Gentleman, an English, 119.
COURT-Trial in Old Bailey, 120.
A Doctor of civil law, 120.
Doctors' Commons, 120, 121.
And lawyers, 121.
The insolvent, 121.
Examination of Sam Weller,
122.
Trial of the convict, 125.
Pickwick in Court, 124.
The Judge and Witness, 124.
The Juryman, 124.
The Judge, 124.
Buzfuz's appeal for damages,
125.
Trial in, 125.
Jaggers, the lawyer, in, 265.
COURT OF CHANCERY-The, 127.
The Lord Chancellor in, 126.
(Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce), 126,
127.
Its bedevilments, 127.
Its wiglomeration, 128.
The end of Jarndyce vs. Jarn.
dyce, 128.
Boythorn's opinion of the,
128.
COURTS-Like powder-mills, 129.
COURTSHIP (See Love, etc.).
Cow-(See Facts), 185.
CRABBEDNESS-Of Tackleton, 76, 94
(See Bachelor), 33.
CRAMMING (See Public Man), 381.
CREAKLE-The teacher, 64, 422.
CREDULITY—Of the world, 193.
CRICKET-Music of the, 221, 254,
255.
CRIME (See Revolution), 399.
Successful (See Success), 467,
And filth in London, 129.
A kind of disorder, 129.
The fascination of, 129.
CRIMINAL (See Execution), 178.
On trial (See Court), 123.
CRIMINALS-Their struggle with
crime, 129.
CRISPARKLE-The cupboard of Mrs.
130.
Mr., his eyes, 178.
Mr., 356, 357.
CRITICISM
CRITICISM-On art (See Art), 23.
CROSSING THE CHANNEL, 454.
CROWD-The escort of a, 200.
Its expression and solitude,
105.
A, 130.
A passing, 130.
CRUELTY-Of women (See Drivers),
532.
In school, 420.
Its effect on the mind, 251.
Face a stamped receipt for,
179.
CRUNCHER-Jerry, 130.
Mrs., her
meat, 211.
549
DEATH-Of a mother, 143.
Of youth (Paul Dombey), 143.
Of Marley, 144.
Of the young (Thoughts of
Little Nell), 144.
And sleep (See Childishness),
91.
(See Home, after a funeral),
220.
In prison, 379.
Of the schoolboy, 420.
Of Ham, 438.
In a duel, 164.
Condemned to, 378.
blessing before
Of Gaffer, 160.
CRUPP-Mrs. and Betsey Trotwood,
46.
"Spazzums " of Mrs., 130.
Mrs., her advice on love, 130.
CUNNING-The simplicity of, 30.
CUPBOARD-Mrs. Crisparkle's, 130.
CURE-For a cold, 114.
CURIOSITY SHOP, 441.
CURIOUS MAN-A, 64.
On the river, 404.
Of Barkis, 37.
Of little Johnny Harmon, 89.
Of the drunkard, 161.
Of an actor, 6.
Fearless of, 133.
Nell's thoughts of (See
bey"), 5.
“Ab-
DOMBEY
DICK-Mr.; the mad author, 27.
Mr.; his kite, 256.
Mr. (See Affection), 9.
DICKENS-The home of, 220.
Origin of Boz, 54.
His spiritual experiences, 115
His love of David Copperfield,
133.
His opinion of work and suc.
cess, 216.
In Venice, 498.
DICK SWIVELLER'S OPINION, 76, 299.
Swiveller on charities, 310.
(See also Swiveller.)
DIET-Schoolboy, 419, 421.
DIFFICULTIES-Micawber's, 302.
DIGESTION—The process of wind-
ing up, 147.
DIGNITY (See Pride), 372.
Of servant, 396.
Its relations to dress, 158.
An expression of, 147.
Like an eight-day clock, 147.
A sentence of (See Court), 124. DILEMMA-Capt. Cuttle in a, 215.
DEBAUCH, 205.
CURSE-An imprecation of the eyes, DEBT-Chevy Slyme in, 206.
173.
CURSES, 131.
CYNICS, 131.
D.
DAMP-"A demd, moist, unpleas-
ant body," 287.
Maps of (See Hotels), 231.
DANCE-A negro, 131.
House, a sailor's, 409.
A country, 132.
A Christmas, 132.
A solemn, 132.
A trial to the feelings, 132.
DANDYISM-In religion and politics,
132.
DANTE—“ An old file,” 133.
Sparkler's idea of, 133.
DARING DEATH, 133.
DARTLE-Rosa, description of, 84.
DAUGHTER-Affection of a, 535.
DAVID COPPERFIELD, 133.
DAWN-Description of, 133.
(See Morning.)
DAYBREAK, 317..
DEAF AND DUMB-Their responsi-
bility, 133.
DEAD-The memory of, 134.
The influence of the, 134.
Memory of the, 134.
The memory of Lady Ded-
lock, 134.
Flowers above the (Little Nell),
135.
(See Grave and Graveyard.)
Of a city, 135.
DEAD-HOUSE-In Paris, 134.
The ghosts of the Morgue, 134.
DEATH-Thoughts of, 136.
Scenes before the funeral, 136.
scenes after funeral, 136.
A levelling upstart, 136.
Of a remorseful woman, 136.
And stamina (Bagstock), 136.
Of the good, 137.
The approach of, 137.
Thoughts on the approach of,
137.
The discovery of its approach,
137.
The inequality of, 137.
Not to be frightened by, 137.
Its expressions, 137.
Of Stephen Blackpool, 137.
In the street. 138.
Of Quilp, 138.
Prisoner for, 379.
(See Dick Swiveller), 541.
(See Micawber), 304.
Mantalini in, 286.
(See Bill), 47.
Skimpole's idea of, 144.
DEBTORS-Paying debts a disease,
144.
DECAY-Of manhood (Dry Rot), 164.
Grandeur in, 19.
DECEPTION-Of Caleb Plummer, 174,
278.
DEDLOCK-Lady, her ennui, 190.
The face of, 182.
Sir Leicester, a gentleman,
207.
Paralyzed, 353.
The memory of Lady, 134.
DEFARGE-Madame, the tigress, 531.
Madame, 84.
(See Revolution), 400.
DEGRADATION-By drunkenness, 160,
DEJECTION, 145.
DEMONSTRATION-The power of (See
Inventor), 253.
DENNIS-The executioner, 65.
DEPORTMENT - Prim (See Formal
People), 198.
Of Turveydrop, 78.
Turveydrop on, 144.
Botany Bay ease,
"' 145.
DEPOT-(See Railroad), 390.
DEPRAVITY-(See Boy), 52.
Natural, 145.
Of youth, 543.
Its written lessons, 145.
DEPRESSION-Of spirits, 145.
DESCRIPTION-Of cabs and drivers,
56.
Of a foundry, 199.
Of bottles (See Bar), 51.
Of a baby, 31.
Personal
(See Characters,
Expression, Face, Features,
Eyes, Hair, etc.)
DESIGNS-Of an architect, 22.
DESPAIR, 310.
DESPONDENCY Of Capt. Cuttle,
227.
DESTINY, 145.
The high-roads and by-roads
of, 145.
DETECTIVE-Nadgett, the, 71.
Mr. Bucket, the, 146.
DETERMINATION, 146.
DEVIL-When he is dangerous,
146.
Of Mrs. Weller (Mr. Weller's DEVOTION-(See Love, Affection), 9.
letter), 139.
Of the rich man; pressure,
139.
Of the prisoner, 139.
Of Little Nell, 140.
Of the young, 140.
By starvation, 141.
In old age, 141.
Weller's philosophy on, 141.
Of "Jo." 141.
Its oblivion, 143.
Of Little Dorrit, 146.
Of Tom Pinch, 146.
DEW-The tears of the dawn (See
Dawn), 133.
DIAGRAMS-Like fireworks, 22.
DIAMONDS, 147.
DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND-(See Sold),
448.
DICE-BOX-Of destiny, 145.
DICK-Mr., 301.
Mr.; his one idea, 245.
DINGWALL-Mr., 65.
DINING-TABLE-A Dead Sea of ma
hogany, 147.
Room-A gloomy, 147.
DINNER-(See Pomposity), 366.
Fashionable, 447.
(See Waiters), 502, 503.
A Christmas, 98.
(See Lunch), 262.
See Restaurant), 397–8.
At sea, 427.
Of Guppy (See Eating), 167.
An austere, 26.
Bagstock at, 147.
Bagstock after, 147.
And dinner-time, 147.
Toby Veck's, 147.
Dick Swiveller's observations
on 148.
Mrs. Bagnet's birthday, 148.
A fashionable-its guests, 149.
After, 150.
Party-a fashionable, 150.
In State, 151.
An unsocial, 151.
Description of public, 151.
With a philanthropist (Mrs.
Jellyby), 152.
Pickwick after wine, 152.
A fashionable, 153.
At a restaurant, 153.
11
"The musty smell of ten
thousand (See Dining-
room), 147.
Pip's misfortunes at, 152.
DIOGENES, 154.
DIRT In apartments, 19, 115.
DISAPPEARANCE A mysterious
153.
DISAPPOINTMENT (See Tears), 476,
227.
DISEASE (See Consumption), 116.
Paying debts a, 144.
Of children, 93.
DISMAL JEMMY, 65.
DISPLAY-Value of public, 154.
DISSECTING, 298.
DISTINCTIONS-In gentility, 207.
In life. 272.
DISTRUST-Not just, 272.
DосKS-Liverpool, 408.
Docks-Down by the, 154.
DOCTOR OF CIVIL LAW, 120.
DOCTORS' COMMONS, 120.
Dodson and FOGG-(Lawyers), 267.
DOG-And Joe (See Outcast), 350.
His fidelity, 154.
A Christian, 155.
A pug, 155.
The gambols of Boxer, 155.
DOGS AND CATS, 155.
DOGGISH MAN-(See Gashford), 67.
DOLLARS-Americans, their devo
tion to, 13.
DOLLY VARDEN, 83.
DOMBEY AND SON. 314.
DOMBEY-The unsociable library of,
269.
His home, 220.
Remorse of, 396.
Bankrupt. 36.
Auction sale of his furniture, 25
DOMBEY
DOMBEY-His austerity, 27.
Mr., as a grandfather, 211.
His expression, 181.
His pride, 294.
His egotism, 170.
Paul, death of, 143.
Mrs., death of, 143.
Dignity (See Pride), 372.
And his child, 90.
DOMESTIC TYRANNY, 493.
DONKEY-His obstinacy, 156.
DONKEYS-156.
Blooded, 156.
Janet, 46.
And post-boys, 370.
DOORS-(See Door-knockers), 156.
DOOR-KNOCKERS
-
The physiog-
nomy of, 156.
DOTHEBOYS' HALL-(See Letter
from), 269, 419.
DOT-Her embrace, 172.
(See Pipe-filling), 363.
(See Pipe), 363.
DOT'S BABY, 32.
DOVER, 429.
DOWAGER-The rustle of her dress,
159.
DOYCE-The inventor, 66, 252, 253.
DR. CHILLIP, 298.
DRAGON, 289.
DRAMA Curdle's opinion of the,
157.
DREAMS- Of the sane and insane,
157.
Of childhood, 91.
Among the poor, 444.
(See Sleep), 443.
(See Grief), 214.
DRESS-Individuality of, 157.
Of Miss Tox, 157.
Party toilette, 157.
The power of, 158.
Its relations to dignity, 158.
Of Barkis, 158.
Of an artificial woman, 159.
The rustle of, 159.
Its influence on age, 159.
159.
An antediluvian pocket-hand-
kerchief, 159.
Buttoned-up men, 56.
(See Little Dorrit's uncle),
65.
Of Cheeryble Bros., 63.
Of Bunsby, 62.
(See Toilette), 483.
(See Characters, etc.), 61.
(See Chuffey), 64.
Fancy (See Ball), 34.
Of ecclesiastics and ticket-
porters (See Contrasts), 117.
Of Ruth, 237, 238.
Of Mr. Bounderby, 158.
A seedy, 158.
Of Joe, 158.
Pip and Joe in uncomfortable,
158.
Of Mr. Sloppy, 159.
Of Mrs. Wilfer, 159.
Of Dr. Marigold, 159.
A bad fit, 159.
DRINK-(See Sherry Cobbler), 435.
Oxford night-caps (See Night-
caps), 336.
Toast, 410.
324.
DRINKING (See Sairey Gamp), 412.
Without moderation, 164.
DRINKING AGE- Its expressions,
179.
DRIVERS AND CABS, 56.
DROWNED-And resuscitated, 159.
Gaffer, 160.
(See Drunkard), 161.
DROWNING (See Death of Quilp), 138.
298.
DRUMMLE-Bentley, 66.
DRUNKARD-His descent, 160.
The death of, 161.
The Pickwickians,
DRUNKENNESS
162.
Of Dick Swiveller, 162.
Of Mr. Pecksniff, 162.
Of David Copperfield, 163.
The effects of, 164.
Apology for, 460.
55C
DRY ROT-In men, the, 164.
DUALITY OF THOUGHT (See Ideas),
245.
な
​DUEL-Description of a, 164.
DUMPS-Nicodemus, 33.
DURDLES-Description of, 66.
DUST-In apartments, 19.
In churches (See Church),102.
Of dead citizens (Churches),
101.
In London, 165.
DUSTY-Evening in London, a, 174.
DUTY-The test of a great soul, 165.
To society, 165.
The world's idea of, 165.
DUTIES—Of old age, 11.
DWARF (See Quilp.)
E.
EAGLE The French, 165.
The American, 13.
EARLY RISING, 165.
EARTHQUAKE, 398.
EARTH-Revolution of the, 495.
EATING-In America (See Dinner),
147.
(See Lunch), 262.
The process of winding up
(See Digestion), 147.
(See Gourmand), 210.
Grace before, 211.
A pauper overfed, 166.
A bill of fare, 166.
Bread and butter (Joe and
Pip), 166.
And growth, Guppy's lunch,
167.
Its "mellering " influence,
167.
Beef and mutton, 167.
ECCENTRICITY OF TRADES, 486.
ECCLESIASTICAL DIGNITARIES, 117.
ECONOMY IN WORDS, 536.
EDITOR-Pott, the, 72.
(See Popularity), 369.
EDUCATION-Early (See Alphabet),11.
(See Youth), 543.
(See Universities), 495.
Of facts, 185.
Of children, 167.
Mrs. Pipchin's system, 167.
A victim of, 167.
Early, 168.
The forcing process in Dr.
Blimber's school, 168.
In England, 168.
Practical, 169.
(See "Facts.")
The Gradgrind School of, 169.
The misfortune of, 169.
Josiah Bounderby's practical,
169.
A perverted, 170.
Early, the alphabet, 170.
From A to Z, 170.
EFFERVESCENCE-Of rage, 386.
EGOTISM-Of pride, 373.
Self-importance, and
igno-
rance (See Country Gentle-
man), 119.
(See Conceit), 115.
170.
ELECTION-Mr. Weller at an, 170.
A public, the devotion of
party, 170.
A spirited, 171
Candidates, 171.
ELEMENTS-Of love, 280.
ELOQUENCE-Of Rev. Mr. Chad-
band, 109.
EMBARRASSMENT-Enjoyment of,
265.
EMBRACE-An earnest, 172.
Like a path of virtue, 172.
A definition of, 172.
EMIGRANTS, 303, 304.
Departure of, 435.
Ship. 171.
On shipboard, 172.
EMPTY ROOMS, 21.
ENCYCLOPEDIAS-An eye to look,
179.
ENEMIES-Of the human race (See
Depravity), 145.
ENERGY, 172.
FACE
ENGINE-Job Trotter & portable
182.
ENGLAND-Its fashions, 189.
Education in, 168.
ENGLISHMEN-As travellers, 173.
Their cheer, 88.
ENGLISH LABOR-Its evils, 256.
Country gentleman, 119.
ENJOYMENT-The influence of (See
Dance), 132.
ENNUI-(See Fashion), 190.
ENTHUSIASM, 172.
EPIDEMICS-Moral, 173.
EPISTOLARY LABOR-(See Letter
writing), 269.
EPITHET-Definition of un, 173.
ESSAY-Pott's mode of preparation,
173.
ETERNITY, 173.
The ocean of, 30.
(See River), 403.
EVENING-The influences of a sum
mer, 173.
A summer Sunday, 173.
In the city, 174.
In London, a dusty, 174.
In the spring-time, 174.
An autumn, 174.
On the river, 403.
Shadows, 434.
EVIDENCE--Of a witness, 173.
Circumstantial, 173.
EXAGGERATION-Of Caleb Plum
mer, 174.
EXAMPLE-Of bees, 41.
EXCITEMENT-Mental, 177.
EXCLUSIVENESS-Fashionable, 188.
EXECUTION-The gallows, 175.
of Fagin, 176.
(See Guillotine), 214.
EXECUTIONER-Dennis, the, 65.
EXPECTORATION-In America, 177.
EXPRESSION-A triumphant, 177.
A fierce, 177.
Of feature (Joe), 177.
An unhappy, 178.
A weighty, 178.
A convivial, 178.
After sleep, 178.
The imitation of, 178.
Of dress, 178.
Of benevolence, 178.
A concentrated, 178.
"Faint with dignity," 147.
Of Mrs. Varden, 180.
(See Eyes, Faces, Features
Characters.)
"Like an eight-day clock,"
147.
Of diamonds, 147.
(See Faces of the Blind), 49.
In coughing. 118.
In death, 137.
Of asperity, 25.
Of the hand, 217.
Of a crowd, 105.
Admonitory, of a clock, 111.
EXTREMES-In life, 240.
EYE-Its expression, 179.
Of Mr. Murdstone, 71.
(See Bunsby), 62.
Its devilish expression, 179.
A learned, 179.
An expressive, 179.
EYES-An imprecation on the, 173
Of Mrs. Varden, 180.
Out of town, 180.
178.
Sinister, 178.
Solemn, 178.
Of Mr. Crisparkle, 178.
Inexpressive. 178.
Inquisitive, 178.
Of Ruth, 178.
Bright, 179.
EYE-GLASS-(See Official), 343.
F.
FACE-Like the knave of clubs,
180.
An Irish, 180.
Like a capital 0, 181.
No guide to thoughts, 180.
Like a physiognomical punch
181.
FACE
FACE-An unsympathetic, 87.
A pretty, 39.
Of Mr. Grewgious, 182.
Of Job Trotter, 182.
Of a hypocrite, 182.
A frosty, 182.
Of a scornful woman, 182.
Shadowed by a memory, 182.
Of Marley, in the fire-place,
196.
Its expression after death,
137.
A cool slate, 87.
Like door-knocker (See Cal-
ton), 63.
Not a letter of recommenda-
tion, 180.
FACES-Of the blind, 49.
Their expression, 179.
A nosegay of, 191.
FACTS-Gradgrind, the man of, 185.
Gradgrind's lessons of, 185.
The man of, 185.
A disgust of, 185.
The Gradgrind philosophers,
185.
Gradgrind on, 186.
versus Fancies, 186.
551
GARDEN
FATHER-And Child-A contrast, FORMAL PEOPLE, 198.
90.
Child's idea of a, 191.
And children, 191.
(See Baby, Dot's), 32.
FAT BOY-And Sam Weller, 516.
Joe as a spy, 190.
Joe in love, 191.
Joe, the, 190.
FAVOR-The pleasure of a, 191.
FEAR-A means of obedience, 191.
FEATURES--(See Expression), 177,
178.
And manners, an excess of,
192.
Their expression in death,137
(See Characters.)
(See Baby), 32.
And personal characteristics,
192.
(See Eyes), 178.
FEELINGS-Of Mr. Toots, 193.
Sam Weller on the, 192.
Of public men, 192.
Of Mr. Pecksniff, 192.
FOOTMEN'S "SWARRY," 515.
FOOTMAN-(See House), 231.
FORTITUDE-Of Little Nell, 90.
FORTUNE HUNTERS, 198.
FOUNDRY-Description of, 199.
(See Fire, Little Nell, etc.),
199.
FOUNTAIN-The waters of, 199.
Ruth at the, 279.
FOWLS (See City Neighborhood),
107.
Carving, 59.
Their peculiarities, 199.
FRAGRANCE~(See Aroma), 23.
FRATERNAL RAILING-An embrace,
172.
FRANKNESS, 218.
FRANCE-The reign of the guillotine,
215.
Scenes in Flemish, 199.
FRENCH-Eagle, the, 165.
Gentleman, a, 208.
And English fashions, 189.
Language, the, 199.
FELONY—A kind of disorder (See FRIENDS The escort of a crowd of,
Crime), 129.
FEMALE CHARACTERS, 82.
Mr. Dick's dissemination of, FEVER-Its hallucinations, 193.
256.
Mr. Dick's diffusion of, 28.
(See School), 423.
(See Education, the Gradgrind,
etc.), 169.
FACTORY-Iron Works, 184.
FACTORIES-The hands, 184.
FACTORY-TOWN-A triumph of fact,
183.
Its peculiarities, 183.
The workingmen, 184.
484.
FAGIN-The execution of, 176.
FAINTING- Mrs. Varden's family
tactics, 186.
Of Miss Miggs, 187.
The freemasonry of, 187.
FAIR-A village, 187.
The Greenwich, 187.
FAIRIES-Of the bells, 45.
FAITH-Its triumphs, 59.
FALLEN WOMEN, 534.
FALSEHOOD-And truth, 491.
(See Lies), 270.
FAME-(See Nobody), 336.
FAMILY-Of the Chuzzlewits, 15, 16.
A reunion (Toodle's), 225.
Tactics, Mrs. Varden's, 186.
Party, 81.
Portraits, 23.
Trials (See Husbands), 243.
FANCY-Of animals, 16.
FANCIES-Night (See Night), 335.
Half awake, 30.
versus Facts, 186.
FANG-His face liable for damages,
180.
FAREWELL - Mr. Merdle's style of,
268.
FARMER, 201.
FASCINATION-Queer (See Swiveller),
460.
Of crime, 129.
FASHION-The eunui of, 190.
The world of, 189.
(See Rouge), 408.
In England, 189.
FASHIONS-Of the age (See Dandy-
ism), 132.
Like human beings, 189.
Second-hand clothes, 189.
FASHIONABLE EXCLUSIVENESS, 188.
People-The Veneerings, 188.
People-How they are man-
aged, 189.
Women, 14, 534.
Woman-Her dress, 159.
Clergymen, 110.
Party, a, 188.
Society, 188.
Conventionalities, 188.
Calls, 188.
Funeral, a, 203.
Footmen and Sam Weller,
515.
Ball, 34.
The wanderings of, 137.
Its ravings, 6.
FICTION-Of the law, 260.
Characters in, 193.
FIDELITY--And Order-Of
Grewgious, 193.
Of Tim Linkinwater, 108.
Of Diogenes (Dog), 154.
FIGHT-A Schoolboy's, 193.
Mr.
200.
The value of dead, 134.
Not too many, 200.
FRIENDSHIP-Lowten's opinion of,
200.
Between opposite characters,
200.
A Pecksniffian, 200.
The Damons and Pythiases of
modern life, 200.
FRIENDLY SERVICE Wemmick'e
A
opinion of a, 200.
Between Dick Swiveller and FRIENDLESS MEN, 201.
Quilp, 193.
Pip's, 194.
In bar-room, 36.
FIGURES-A kind of
FIGURES-A kind of ciphering
measles, 23.
FIGURE-Of Mrs. Kenwigs, 193.
FILIAL DUTY (See Weller), 512.
FINANCIER (See Tigg), 77.
FIPS-Mr., his office, 21.
FIRMNESS (See Determination),
146.
FIRE, 194.
And mob, 194.
Its red eyes, 195.
And breeze, 195.
A bright, 196.
Little Nell at the forge, 196.
Sikes, the murderer, at a, 196.
FIREPLACE—An ancient, 196.
FIST-Of John Browdie, 181.
FIVE POINTS, N. Y., 329.
"FIXING" A provincialism of
America, 197.
FLAG-The American, 197.
FLAMWELL-Mr. (A social pretend-
er), 66.
FLATTERER, 197.
FLEDGEBY-The miser, 30.
Whiskers of, 523.
FLEET MARKET, 290. -
FLINTWITCH Jeremiah, descrip-
tion of, 67.
FLIRTS-(See Dolly Varden), 83.
FLIRTATION-(See Weller), 512.
FLORENCE-Her filial love, 275.
Her girlhood, 209.
In her desolate home, 224.
A wanderer, 226.
"The golden water," 136.
535.
FLOWERS—Of hope, 228.
Floating on the river, 227.
Above the dead, 135.
Birds and Angels, 197.
FLUCTUATIONS-In life, 270.
FLUTE-PLAYER-Mr. Mell, the, 197.
FLUTE-MUSIC-Dick Swiveller's sol-
ace, 197.
FOG-A sea of, 198.
And whiskers, 181.
FOGG-Mr., the lawyer, 67.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 259.
FORGE-Little Nell at the, 196.
The village, 174.
FORGIVENESS, 198.
Pecksniffian, 198.
FRIVOLITY (See Hearts, light), 219.
FROGS The music of, 201.
FROST-The, 201.
FUNERAL-Mr. Mould's philosophy
of a, 201.
Of Anthony Chuzzlewit, 202.
Its pretentious solemnities,
202.
A fashionable, 203.
An unostentatious, 203.
Of Mrs. Joe Gargery, 203.
Of Little Nell, 204.
Before the, 136.
Home after a, 220.
After the, 136, 202.
The request of Dickens, 201.
FURNITURE (See Bed), 39, 41.
(See Chair), 60.
Of a lawyer's office, 262.
(See Dining-room), 147.
Of a table, 223.
In a desolate home, 225.
(See Apartments), 17, 18, 19,
20.
Auction sale of, 25.
Broker in second-hand, 54.
(See Home, Apartments, etc.).
Old-fashioned, 204.
Covered, 204.
The home of a usurer, 204.
FUTURE-The river a type of the,
FUSSY
205.
PEOPLE (Mr. and Mrs.
Merrywinkle), 244.
G.
GABRIEL GRUB-His vision, 117.
GADSHILL-The home of Dickens,
220.
GAFFER-His death, 160.
GAIETY-Of Mark Tapley, 288, 289.
Forced, 205.
GALLOWS-An execution, 175.
GALLANTRY-Pecksniffian, 205.
GALVANIC-Don't be, 46.
GAME-Of cards for love, 58.
GAMES-Christmas, 95.
GAMBLERS (See Race-course), 385.
The frenzied, 205.
GAMP-Sairey (See Nurse), 338.
410.
Her observation on hearts
219.
GARDEN, 205.
An old, 205.
GARDENS
GARDENS-In London, 205.
Vauxhall, 497.
GARDENING-In London, 392.
GARGERY—Mrs. Joe (See "Cleanli-
ness "), 108.
Mrs. Joe, the funeral of, 203.
Mrs. Joe, 84.
Joe, 67.
GASHFORD, 67.
GENEALOGY, 355.
GENERAL-Mrs., ceremony of, 60.
Mrs., description of, 85.
GENIUS-In debt, 206.
The weakness of, 206.
GENTILITY—The distinctions of, 207.
Shabby, 207.
New South Wales, 145.
“A
GENTLEMAN-" A werry good imita-
tion," 207.
An English, 207.
A French, 208.
The grace of a true, 208.
The true, 208.
GENOA, 206.
GEORGE-Mr., the trooper, 67.
GHOST-Of the dead (See Dead-
house), 134.
And the senses, 208.
Of dead businesses, 442.
Of clothes, 208.
A privilege of the upper
classes, 209.
Their anniversaries, 209.
An argument with a, 208.
Of Marley, his appearance,
180.
Of Marley, 208.
GIANTS-Used up, 209.
GIFT-Argument a gift, 22.
"GIFT OF GAB "-(See Speech), 452.
GIRLS Traddles' idea of, 209.
GIRLHOOD-Of Florence, 209.
GLOVES-Bounderby's opinion of,
158.
GOBLER-Mr., the hypochondriac,
245.
GOD SAVE THE KING-Miss Pross's,
352.
552
GRAVE—Of Smike, 212.
GRAVE-DIGGER, 212.
GRAVE-DIGGERS (See Old Age), 343.
289.
GRAVEYARD ~(See Churchyard), 103,
213.
GRAVESTONES - Pip's
them, 213.
Pip's family, 213.
reading of
GRAVY-The human passion for, 213.
GREATNESS Nothing little to the
really great, 165.
Modest, 313.
GREENWICH FAIR-A spring rash,
187.
GREWGIOUS-Mr., 68.
His fidelity and order, 193.
Face of, 182.
GRIDE-Arthur, the usurer, 68.
GRIDIRON-A gridiron is a, 213.
GRIEF-A burden, 214.
(See Affliction), 10.
GROVES-John Chivery among the
linen, 279.
GROWLERY-Of Jarndyce, 21.
GUILLOTINE-The, 214.
Execution by the, 214.
The reign of the, 215.
GUILT The pain of, 215.
GUPPY-The woe of, 181.
HOMINY

HEAD-A soft, better than a soft
heart, 219.
Of hair, 216.
HEADSTONE-Bradley, the teacher,
422.
HEAT-(See Sun), 471.
HEART (See Love), 277.
Its innocence and guilt, 250.
An oppressed (Toots), 275.
Of John Chivery, 279.
Its secrets (See Death), the
approach of, 137.
In the right place, 218.
Innocent, 218.
Open, 218.
Loving, 218.
A pure (Tom Pinch), 218.
The chance revelations of the,
218.
Afflictions, 218.
The coin of the, 219.
An empty, 219.
Like a bird-cage, 219.
The silent influence of the,
219.
The necessity for shutters,
219.
Light, 219.
Mere mechanisms, 219.
And heads, 219.
GUESTS AT DINNER-Description of, HEARTLESSNESS, 30, 219.
149, 151.
GUSHER-The face of, 181.
GUSTER, 85.
GYPSIES-(See Race-course), 385.
H.
HEAVEN-The real, 219.
HEEP-Uriah, 68.
Humility of, 241.
The hand of, 217.
And Betsey Trotwood, 46.
Asleep, 444.
300.
HABEAS CORPUS-Sam Weller on, HEXAM-Charley, at school, 416.
266.
HABIT-Force of, 379.
Of reflection, 215.
Its influence, 216.
And duty, 216.
HABITS-American (See Americans),
13.
Of work and life, Dickens',
216.
GOLD-The influence of riches, 210. HACKMAN-A labelled, 216.
GOOD-The death of the, 137.
And evil (See Honor), 226, 210.
Deeds, their influence (See
Dead, the influence of the),
134.
Humor, philosophy of, 88.
(See Cheeryble), 63.
Religion of, 88.
Its contagiousness, 259.
GOOD-NIGHT—An interrupted bless-
ing, 209.
GOOD PURPOSES-Perverted, 210.
GOODNESS-Its propagation, 210.
Of heart (See Cheeryble), 63.
(See Clergyman; the true), 109.
GORDON-Lord, 68.
GOSSIP (See News), 330.
210.
GOUT-A patrician disorder, 210.
Mr. Weller's remedy for, 210.
An aristocratic privilege, 210.
GOURMAND-A, 210.
Gowan—Mrs., her house, 232.
An amateur artist, 24.
GRACE-Before dinner, 152.
Before meat, 211.
GRADGRIND—The man of facts, 185
His school of philosophy180.
His philosophy of life, 270-
The house of, 236.
Description of, 186.
His taste, 474.
(See Opportunities), 348.
His school of education, 169;
GRAMMAR-For the laity, 211.
(See Addresses), 7.
GRANDFATHER-The, 211.
GRATITUDE—A mother's, 211.
GRAVE-The, 211.
Of the dead pauper, 211.
Of the martyrs, 59.
(See Funeral, after the), 202.
Of Mr. Merdle, 211.
Flowers on, 135.
A child's, 212.
Of the erring, 212.
HAIR-A head of, 216.
Unruly, 216.
Of Bitzer, 62.
Of Bunsby, 62.
(See Dress of Joe), 158.
Of Pancks, like a porcupine,
179.
Arts auxiliary, 312.
"Aggerawaters”(See Wilkins),
80.
HALO-Of diabolism, 179.
HALLUCINATIONS OF MIND, 193.
HAM-A simoon of, 23.
His death, 438.
HAMLET-A journeyman, in conver-
sation, 179.
An actor's reading and dress,6.
HAND-Merdle's style of shaking,
217.
Its gentleness, 217.
Its character, 217.
A resolute, 217.
Dr. Chillip's style of shaking,
217.
A ghostly, 217.
Of sympathy, 217.
A cold and clammy, 27.
Shaking, peculiar, 36.
Shaking (See Salutation), 413.
HANDKERCHIEF-An ante- diluvian
159.
HAPPINESS-Overflowing (See Con-
tent), 117.
Of Mark Tapley, 288, 289.
At Christmas, 95, 99.
Of the unfortunate, 217.
The power of trifles, 217.
True, 218.
HARRIS-Mrs. and Sairey Gamp,
411-12.
HASTE-The advantages of seeming,
218.
HAT-Sam Weller's apology for his,
218.
The pursuit of a, 218.
HAUNTED Man—A, 80.
HICCOUGH-Of a passing fairy, 23.
HIGH TIDE, 480.*
HOLIDAYS, 421.
The happy associations of,
219.
In school, 415.
(See Races), 384.
HOLINESS-Sometimes a matter of
dress, 158.
HOMAGE-To woman, 219.
HOME-Of Miss Tox, 222.
Of Mrs. Pipchin, 222.
The love of, 222.
The comforts of (Gabriel Var-
den), 223.
Of confusion and wretched.
ness, 223.
A rosary of regrets, 223.
Of Capt. Cuttle, 223.
The representative of charac-
ter, 223.
In the suburbs, 224.
Disappointment in a, 224.
Adornment of a, 224.
The place of affection, 224.
An abandoned, 224.
A desolate, 224.
A fashionable, 225.
A family reunion at Toodle's,
225.
Of Miss Tox, 226.
Its peace and consolation,
226.
Of Dickens-Gadshill, 220.
Of Dombey, 220.
After a funeral, 220.
Of a tourist, 220.
The music of crickets at,
221.
Of Mrs. Chickenstalker, 221.
221.
Of a female philanthropist
221.
A solitary, 221.
Of the toy maker, 486.
Of Sol Gills, 410.
An unhappy, 271.
Its ruins, 25.
Prison the only, 379.
Memories of, 91.
Again, 432.
Of the poor, 367.
HOMELESSNESS, 226.
HOMELINESS-(See Fang), 180.
HOMINY-Mrs., an American author.
ess, 28.
HONEST EYES
HONEST EYES, 179.
HONEST MAN—An, 227.
The luxury of, 227.
HONOR-The true path of, 226.
The word of, 227.
HONEYTHUNDER, 355.
HOOK-Capt. Cuttle's, 325.
HOPE In misfortune, 310.
Disappointed, 227.
A subtle essence, 228.
HOPES-Disappointed, 227.
Of Capt. Cuttle, 227.
Unrealized, 228.
HORSE-Tenacity of life in a, 228.
A fast, 228.
The carrier's, 228.
Mr. Pecksniff's, 228.
Theatrical, 366.
HORSE-FLESH—Judges of, 254.
HORSES-And women, 532.
And dogs, 228.
HORSEBACK-Winkle on, 228.
HOSPITAL-The patients in a, 229.
Associations of a, 229.
A female, 230.
Maggy's experience in a, 230.
The sick in, 230.
(See Poor), 367.
Children in the, 93.
Death in the, 89.
HOTEL-Physiognomy of a, 359.
(See Inn), 247.
A fashionable, 230.
Characteristics of, 231.
HOUSE-Of a Barnacle, 231.
A sombre, 231.
An old, 232.
A tenement, 232.
And surroundings (of Mrs.
Gowan), 232.
A gloomy, 232.
In a fashionable locality, 233.
A debilitated, 233.
Illuminated by love, 233.
A fierce-looking, 233.
An ancient, renovated, 233.
An old-fashioned, 233.
A stiff-looking, 233.
Of a Southern planter, 233.
A monotonous pattern, 234.
Of Caleb Plummer, 234.
A shy-looking, 234.
Description of Bleak House,
etc., 234.
A sombre-looking, 235.
A dissipated-looking, 235.
A dull, fashionable, 235.
In winter, 235.
And garden, 235.
Mr. Gradgrind's, 236.
Of Mr. Dombey, 220.
(See Boarding-house), 49.
A solitary, 221.
(See Inn), 247.
After a death, 220.
Putting its hair in papers (See
Furniture), 204.
Covered with advertisements,
8.
HOUSES-Old, 236.
A neighborhood, 236.
In St. Louis, 236.
Isolated in a city, 236.
Involved in law, 236.
(See City Neighborhood), 107.
HOUSEKEEPER-Ruth as a, 237, 238.
Servants a curse to the, 238.
Neatness of Mrs. Tibbs, 238.
Mrs. Sweeney, 238.
Of Dedlock Hall, 239,
Mrs. Billickin, 239.
(See Cleanliness), 108.
(See Kitchen), 256.
Boarding, 50.
A China shepherdess (See
Cupboard), 130.
HOUSEKEEPING, 434.
After marriage, 293.
HOUSEWIFE-The carving, 59.
HOUSE-AGENT-Casby, the, 236.
HOUSE-TOP-Scenes from Todgers',
237.
HOUSEHOLD-A loom in the, 274.
HOUSE-FRONT-Like an old beau,
236.
558
HOWLER-Rev. Melchisedeck, 295.
HUBBLE-Mrs., Description of, 85.
HUCKSTER-The stall of Silas Wegg,
239.
Mr. Wegg, 240.
HUMAN ILLS The world full of wisi-
tations, 210.
HUMAN HELP-And God's forgive-
ness, 240.
HUMANITY—Its extremes, 240.
HUMBUGS-Official, 240.
Social, Miss Mowcher's opin-
ion, 240.
HUMILITY-A bully of, 62.
(See Uriah Heep), 68.
Of Uriah Heep, 241.
Description of Carker, Junr.,
241.
HUNGER-In an English workhouse,
242.
Before the French revolution,
242.
(See Restaurant), 397–8.
HUNGRY JURYMEN, 254.
HURRY-The advantage of a seem-
ing, 218.
HUSBANDS--A tea-party opinion of,
243.
Mrs. Jiniwin's treatment of,
243.
HUSBAND-A surly, 243.
Pott, the subjugated, 243.
HYPOCRITE-Moral bookkeeping of,
243.
Carker, the, 243.
Quilp's description of a, 244.
Pecksniff, as a, 244.
Weller's opinion of a, 244.
And Misanthropy, 309.
His face, 182.
(See Clergyman), 109.
HYPOCRISY, 244.
And conceit, 244.
HYPOCHONDRIAC, 244.
(Mr. Gobler), 245.
IDEAS, 480.
I.
Like money, to be shaken,
167.
A flow of, 245.
"JO"
INFLUENCE—Of woman, 280.
Of association, 25.
The mellering influence of
eating, 167.
Silent, 219.
Kind, 247.
INJUSTICE-To children, 91.
(See Innocent Offenders), 250
To the Jews, 254.
INN-(See Landlord), 256.
Hotel, Tavern, etc. (See Bar
room), 36.
(See Hotel).
An English, 247.
The Maypole, 247.
A roadside, 247.
Memories of an old, 248.
Scenes in an, 248.
An unwholesome, 249.
An ancient apartment in an,
249.
Room in an, 249.
A wayside, 249.
INNS-Of Europe, 247.
INNOCENCE-The affectation of ad-
vice, etc., 249.
And guilt, 250.
INNOCENT OFFENDERS
justice to, 250.
Public in-
Hasty judgment of the, 250.
INNOVATION Opposed (See Tod-
gers's), 328.
(See Railroad), 386.
INQUISITIVENESS, 64, 250.
Of lawyers, 267.
INQUISITIVE WOMEN, 535.
Eyes, 178.
INQUISITION-The tortures of the,
250.
INSANITY-In dreams, 157.
INSOLVENCY-Court of, 121.
INSTITUTIONS-Banking, 35.
INSTINCTS-Of animals, 16.
And prejudices of woman,
534.
(See Affections), 10.
INSULT-TO Pickwick, 11.
INSURANCE COMPANY—A Life, 271.
INTELLECT-And Blindness, 48.
Blighted by cruelty, 251.
INTEREST AND CONVENIENCE, 247.
INTERVIEWING, 311.
Mr. Willet's cooking process. INVALID (See Hospital;
245.
Penned up, 245.
The association, 245.
IDIOT-Barnaby Rudge, 73.
His affection, 10.
In prison (See Night), 334.
IDLE LIFE-An, 245.
IDLERS-City, 245.
IGNORANCE AND
WEALTH-(See
Country Gentleman), 119.
IMAGINATION-And Love, 280.
A starved, 246.
IMITATION-Of expression, 178.
IMMORTALITY-(See Postboys), 370.
IMPARTIALITY OF THE SEA, 428.
IMPERTINENCE-Rebuked, 246.
IMPERTURBABILITY
nance, 180.
—
Of counte-
IMPROVEMENT (See Railroad), 386–
388.
"IMPOGICIAN"-Sairey Gamp will
not suffer, 413.
IMPOSITIONS-Life to be protected
from, 273.
IMPOSTORS—Social, 246.
IMPRESSIONS-Of people; first, 246.
IMPUDENCE AND CREDULITY, 246.
INCOMPREHENSIBILITY The com-
pound interest of, 246.
INCOME, 304.
INDECISION-Of character, 246.
Sparkler's, 246.
INDIAN-The noble, a delusion, 413.
INDIVIDUALITY—(See Lawyer), 266.
(See Bank Officials), 35.
INDIGESTION - Love and religion,
395.
INDIFFERENCE, 247.
INDUSTRY-Bees as models of, 41.
INFANTS (See Baby), 30, 31.
INFLUENCE-Of the dead, 131.
Of events on life, 272.
Fever).
Philosophy of an, 251.
Sick;
Tim Linkinwater's friend,
252.
Reveries of, 252.
INVENTOR-(See Doyce), 66.
Character of Daniel Doyce,
253.
Encouragement of, 253.
INVENTION AND DISCOVERY-The
mental property in, 252.
IRON WORKS (See Forge), and Fac
tory, 184.
IRVING-Washington, 30.
ITALY-Its lessous to the world
252.
ITALIAN-Buildings and streets, 34.
Churches, beggars in, 41.
Beggars, 42.
IVY GREEN-The, 253.
J.
JACK-The sailor, 408.
JAGGERS-Mr., the lawyer, 68, 265.
At home, 265.
JARLEY'S WAXWORKS, 506.
JARNDYCE v. JARNDYCE, 126–7–8.
His growlery, 21.
(See Courts).
JINGLE-Description of, 69.
JEALOUSY-Of Mantalini, 285.
Of Mrs. Snagsby, 74, 75, 253.
JELLYBY-Mrs., 355.
The home of Mrs., 221, 223.
Mrs., dinner with, 152.
On missions, 311.
"The husband of Mrs.," 355.
JEMMY-Dismal, 65.
JEWELRY, 291.
JEWS-Injustice to the, 254.
“Jo”—The outcast, 350, 351.
"JO"
"Jo"-His ignorance, 350.
The death of, 141.
The outcast, 52.
And Rev. Mr. Chadband, 109.
(See Graveyard), 213.
JOBLING, 299.
His seedy attire, 158.
JOE-The fat boy, expression of,
177.
The fat boy, 190, 191.
JOE GARGERY-Mrs., on a Rampage,
391.
The writing of, 541.
The gentleness of his hand,
217.
And Pip, 67.
His opinion of an inn, 249.
His dress, 158.
Study of the alphabet, 170.
JOKES-Upon public men, 254.
JOKER-Tibbs as a, 77.
JOLLY, 289.
JOLLITY—Of Mark Tapley, 288, 289.
JONAS CHUZZLEWIT, 299.
JORKINS-The silent partner, 69.
JOURNEY-(See Ride).
JUDGE (See Court), 124.
The Lord Chancellor, 126.
And witness in Court, 124.
Of horseflesh, 254.
JURIES-Bumble's opinion of, 254.
JURYMAN-His examination, 124.
Hungry, 254.
JURY, 254.
JUSTICE-A picture of, 283.
In America, 254.
K.
KENWIGS—Mr., on jokes, 254.
Mr. and Mrs. (See Baby), 31.
Mrs., as a dazzler, 193.
KETTLE-An aggravating, 254.
And cricket, 254.
Boiling a, 255.
The song of the, 255.
KINDRED VICES, 499.
KINDNESS (See Influences), 247.
KING LEAR-An example of benevo-
lence, 46.
Kiss-A cold, 256.
KISSES-Lips and, 255.
KISSING Mark Tapley's foreign
manner, 255.
KIT LEARNING TO WRITE, 541.
KITE-Mr. Dick and his facts, 256.
KITCHEN-Of Clemency Newcome,
256.
KITTERBELL-Charles, his expres-
sion, 178.
Description of, 69.
Mrs., description of, 86.
KNITTING, 256.
KROOK, 69.
L.
LA CREEVY-Miss, on a cross-grain-
ed man, 283.
Miss, her art, 23.
LAUGH-259.
554
An enjoyable, 259.
A sorrowful, 259.
An internal chuckle, 259.
The contagion of a, 259.
A hoarse, dramatic, 8.
LONDON
LEGS (See Drunkenness of Peck.
sniff), 162.
LEGACIES-Hankering after, 268.
LEGISLATORS-American, 268.
LESSONS-Of Christmas, 96.
Of depravity, 145.
LAUGHTER-Kit's philosophy of, 88. LETTER-(See Valentine). 496.
And good humor, 259.
John Browdie's, 259.
Of Major Bagstock, 259.
LAUNDRESSES, 260.
LAURA BRIDGMAN-The mute, 49.
LAW-The majesty of, 260.
An excuse for, 260.
The fictions of, 260.
The hardship of the, 260.
Houses involved in, 236.
Boythorn's opinion of, 128.
A suit in (See Courts), 126–7.
Betsey Trotwood's opinion of,
129.
303, 306.
Offices-The loneliness of, 22.
Stationer, Snagsby, the, 260.
A game of chess, 260.
A joke, 260.
A married man's opinion of
the, 261.
A muddle, to Stephen Black-
pool, 261.
LAWYER-Snitchey, the, 74.
(See Court, Insolvent), 121.
(See Courts and Lawyers),
121.
In Court, 120, 121, 122, 124,
125, 127.
His compliments, 115.
(See Sampson Brass), 62.
Mr. Jaggers, 68–9.
Spenlow, the, 75.
His view of children, 92.
Vholes, the, 79.
Stryver, the, 76.
An imperturbable (See Tulk-
inghorn), 180.
Mr. Fogg, 67.
328.
Offices at night, 262.
Without brains, 262.
His office, 262.
Inns of, 262.
The old, 262.
Tulkinghorn, the, 263.
The office of Sampson Brass,
264.
The office of Vholes, 264.
Sally Brass as a, 264.
Jaggers in court, 265.
Jaggers at home, 265.
Office of Jaggers, 265.
His enjoyment of embarrass-
ments, 265.
His office, clerks, etc., 266.
His individuality, 266.
And client, 266.
Appearance of Serjeant Snub-
bin, 266.
Always inquisitive, 267.
And client-Dodson
Fogg, 267.
LABOR (See Working People), 536, LAWYERS
537.
The curse on Adam, 49.
Clerical, 341.
The evils of English, 256.
LAMP, 256.
(See Light at Night), 270.
LANDLORD-A New England, 256.
John Willet, the, 257.
Pancks and the, 257.
(See Inn), 257.
Revenge of Pancks, 257.
LANGUAGES—An acquaintance with,
259.
The difficulties of a foreign,
259.
Of lovers; its condensation,
281.
A dismal, 199.
LANDSCAPE-(See Scenery), 28.
LANTERN-A queer (See Science),
426.
LAST WORD, 536.
LAUGH-Of Mr. Willet, 180.
The melodramatic, 259.
and
Their own prescrip-
tions, 267.
Like undertakers, 267.
Their distrustful nature, 267.
Clerks and offices, 267.
Office of Snitchey & Craggs,
268.
269.
Clerk of, 261, 108.
Clerks at lunch, 262.
LAW-TERMS-Sam Weller on, 266.
LEAVES-Autumn, 174.
A gust of tears, 29.
LEAVE-TAKING, 268.
LECTURES, 395.
LEDGERS-Old, 60.
LEGS-Simon Tappertit's, 269.
Of Tilly Slowboy, 269.
269, 293.
Calendars of distress, 93.
Like a roll of flannel, 269.
Crooked, 383.
(See Shakspeare), 434.
Effect of love on Toots', 275.
Just come, 268.
From Fanny Squeers, 269.
LETTER-WRITING-Peggotty's, 269.
Of Mr. Weller, on the death
of Mrs. W.. 139.
LETTER-WRITER-The begging, 43.
LEXICON-A dropsical, 50.
LIBERTY IN AMERICA, 269.
LIBRARY-An unsocial, 269.
LIES, 270.
In a parenthesis, 67.
LIFE-A cheerful view of. 251.
The plug of (See Lillyvick),
69.
Its declining years, 272.
Its stations, 272.
The influence of events, 272.
A bargain across a counter,
270.
A burden to Sim. Tappertit,
270.
A chequered, 270.
A contented, 270.
An embodied conundrum,
270.
A game, 270.
A muddle, to Stephen Black-
pool, 271.
A wasted, 271.
And death, the inequalities
of, 137.
Its unrewards (See Popular-
ity), 336, 369.
Its mysteries (See Suicide),
467.
Unrewards (See Nobody), 336.
Assurance Company, office of
a, 271.
The melancholy side of, 272.
The revenges of, 272.
The river of, 272.
Social distinctions of, 272.
Transitions of, 272.
To be protected from impost-
tions, 273.
Pancks' philosophy of, 273.
Tigg's idea of, 273.
LIGHT-At night, 270.
(See Candle), 57.
LIGHTHOUSE, 270.
LIGHTS-The street, 270.
LIKENESS-A, 273.
LILLYVICK-Mr., 69.
LINKINWATER-Tim, his age, 11.
His friend, 252.
LIONS-Biped and quadruped, 47.
LIPS AND KISSES, 255.
LIRRIPER-Mr., description of, 69.
Mrs., opinion of Paris, 353.
LITERATURE—Mr. Britton's opinion
of. 273.
(See Reforms), 391.
LITTLE DORRIT-Her devotion, 146.
Uncle of, 65.
Description of, 84.
LITTLE NELL-And the old school
master, 134.
Night thoughts of, 336.
In the churchyard, 135.
(See Churchyard), 103.
(See Abbey), 5.
Her fortitude, 90.
(See Night), 333.
Thoughts on death, 144.
The love for, 277.
On the road, 483.
At the forge, 196, 199.
Death of, 140.
Funeral of, 204.
LITTLE PEOPLE, 274.
The qualities of, 274.
LITTIMER-Pattern of respectabili
ty, 396.
LOBLEY-The sailor, 70.
LOCKSMITH, 538.
LODGER-Capt. Cuttle as a, 58.
LOGIC-(See Opinion), 348.
LONELINESS (See Bell), 45.
LONDON, 274.
Streets of, 316.
LONDON
LONDON-Dust in, 165.
The poor of, 129.
Recreations in, 393.
A solitude, 449.
Suburb of, 466.
On Sunday, 469, 470.
In summer, 467.
At night (See Night), 334.
Streets, 457-8-9.
A fog in, 198.
A dusty evening in, 174.
Tom Pinch's ride to, 113.
Shabbiness in, 274.
In old times, 106.
LOOM-The household, 274.
LORD GORDON, 68.
LORD'S PRAYER-Jo's repetition of
the, 142.
Loss-Of children, 92.
Of a wife, 524.
LOST-Search for the, 274.
LOVE-The disappointment of Dick
Swiveller, 279.
The disappointment of John
Chivery, 280.
The elements of its growth,
280.
The period of, 280.
A school-mistress in, 274.
A smouldering fire, 275.
Alienated, 275.
The consolation of disappoint-
ed, 275.
Unrequited, of Toots, 275.
Oppressiveness of, 276.
An outcast from a parent's,
276.
And appetite, 276.
And tight boots, 276.
Cymon Tuggs in, 276.
First, of David Copperfield,
277.
For Little Nell, 277.
Its sorcery, 278.
Making; Pickwick's advice,
278.
John Chivery in, 278.
Of Ruth and John Westlock,
279.
Of the Carrier for Dot, 218.
Joe, the fat boy, in, 191.
At school, 421.
(See Needlework), 328.
Among children, 93.
Of children, 93.
Pecksniffan, 205.
Music the solace of, 197.
Its expression (See Eyes of
Ruth), 178.
The advice of Mrs. Crupp,
130.
(See Affection), 9.
Of home, 222.
An embrace of, 172.
Selfishness of, 434.
Language of (See Vegetables),
498.
LOVERS-Their power of condensa-
tion, 281.
LOVELINESS IN WOMAN-The influ-
ence of, 280.
LOWRY-Mr., the banker, 70.
LUNATIC-(See Madman), 281.
Asylum-An American, 281.
His courtship of Mrs. Nickle-
by, 281.
(See Author), 27, 28.
LUNCH-Of Guppy, 167.
(See Clerks at), 262.
LYONS, 282.
M.
MACHINERY-Oar-making, 282.
MACSTINGER—Mrs., 295, 318.
Mrs., and Capt. Cuttle, 58.
MACCHOAKUMCHILD-The teacher,
MADMAN-The raving of a, 282.
(See Lunatic).
MAGISTRATE-An American, 283.
Office of a, 283.
A pompous, 265.
A police, 283.
Grummer, the, 260.
555
MODERATION
MAGNATE — Bounderby as a local, MEPHISTOPHELES - Bagstock &r
Maggy, 86.
283.
A local, 65.
Her hospital experiences, 230.
Her idea of a theatre, 478.
Mrs. Snagsby's,
85.
Tilly Slowboy, 85.
MAID "Guster,
MAN-An emaciated, 283.
A surly, 283.
Mr. Pecksniff's views of, 284.
Of the world-Chesterfield as
a, 88.
MANHOOD-Its decay (See Dry Rot),
164.
Modest, 289.
A vigorous (Boythorn), 284.
A boisterous, 284.
A useful and gentle, 284.
MANKIND The vision of Gabriel
Grub, 117.
MANAGER-Cuttle as a business, 55.
MANNER (See Asperity, Austerity,
etc.), 27.
(See Bluster), 48.
MANTALINI-Mr. (See Rage), 386.
His characteristics, 285, 286,
287.
MANUFACTURE-Oar making (See
also Factory), 282.
MANUFACTURING TOWN, 183.
MAPS-Bursting from walls, 232.
MARK TAPLEY, 289.
His opinion of the sea, 428.
Kissing his country, 255.
His idea of jolly rooms, 19.
Wants misfortune, 288.
His opinion of Pecksniff, 288.
Cannot do himself justice,
288.
No credit in being jolly, 288.
MARKET (Fleet), 290.
French, 290.
Covent Garden, 290.
Salisbury, 290.
Day, 290.
MARIGOLD-Dr., 192.
His dress, 159.
MARCHIONESS-And Dick Swiveller,
464, 465.
The, at cribbage, 461.
MARRIAGE (See Valentine), 496.
Of Walter and Florence, 102.
Uncongenial, 493.
Elder Weller on, 521.
292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297.
(See Weller), 513.
MARLEY-His face, 180.
Death of, 144.
MARSEILLAISE-The, 296.
MARSHALSEA, 310.
MARTYRDOM-Of children, 30, 93.
MARTIN-Miss, description of, 86.
MATRIMONY (See Old Boys), 343,
296.
292, 296.
MEAGLES-The home of, 220.
Mrs., her face, 180.
MEANNESS-(See Facts), 185.
MEASLES-Figures a kind of ci-
phering, 23.
MEAT-To be humored, not drove,
55.
MECHANISM-The heart a, 219.
MEDICINE (See Physician), 357,
358, 359.
292, 298.
MEETING-At Mrs. Weller's, 475.
MEEK-Mr., his protest, 30.
MELL-The teacher, 417.
Mr., the flute player, 197.
MELANCHOLY, 145.
Its cure. 272.
MELODRAMATIC LAUGH, 259.
MEMORIES-Of an old inn, 248.
Flowing to eternal seas, 227.
Of childhood, 91.
Sad (See Remorse), 396.
(See Christmas), 98.
Of a battle-field, 38.
And reveries of the sick, 252.
Its influence on the face, 182.
Of the dead, 134.
Influence on grief, 10.
|
overfed, 147.
MERCHANT -- A
conceited
Conceit), 115.
(See
MERDLE His style of shaking
hands, 217.
Mrs.. her grammar, 211.
His dinner in state, 153.
Mr., death of, 139.
Fall of (See Rich Ma), 402.
293.
MERRIMENT (See Laughter), 259.
MERRY PEOPLE, 299.
METEORIC PHENOMENA, 426.
MICAWBER-At punch, 382.
Speech of, 300.
His difficulties, 302, 304, 306.
Description of, 70.
299, 300, 301, 302, 303.
Mrs., 302, 303, 304, 305, 306,
307.
Advice of on money, etc., I
MICROSCOPE-Eyes of a telescope
and, 178.
MRS. MIFF, 86.
MIGGS, 86.
306, 307, 313.
Miss, and Simon Tappertit,
187.
Her expression, 181.
MILESTONES, 307.
MILITARY REVIEW, 307.
Glory, 448.
MILLS (See Factory-Town), 183,
184.
MIND-Blighted by cruelty, 251.
(See Ideas), 245.
Confused by drunkenness,
164. (See also Drunken-
ness.)
Confusion of, 246.
While half asleep, 30.
A starved imagination, 246.
A burdened, 214.
A disordered, 193.
Effect of poetry on, 364.
A waning, 91.
An active (Mrs. Snagsby), 250.
The wanderings of the, 137.
An excited, 177.
MINNS Mr. Augustus (bachelor), 70.
MINIATURE -In another's eyes, 179.
MINT-The heart a royal, 219.
MINT JULEPS-And sherry cobblers,
234.
MIRTH-Natural and forced, 205.
MIRROR-Its reflection, 150, 309.
(See Apartment), 20.
MISANTHROPES, 309.
(See Cynics), 131.
MISER-Scrooge, the, 73.
Grandfather Smallweed, 74.
(See Arthur Gride), 68.
His avarice, 29, 30.
(See Furniture, the home of,
etc.), 204.
MISERY-Of solitude, 449.
MISSION-(See Reformers), 394.
(See Charity), 87.
MISSIONS OF LIFE, 310, 311.
MISSIONARIES-Weller's opinion of,
214.
MISSIONARY, 310.
MISFORTUNE, 310.
MISFORTUNES-Of a bachelor, 3
Wisitations, 240.
Of children, 91, 93.
Coveted by Mark Tapley, 288
MISSISSIPPI SUNSET, 472.
River, 105.
MISTAKES OF SCIENCE, 426.
MISTAKE-Pickwick in wrong bed
room, 39.
MIST (See Fog), 198.
Мов, 311.
Shout with largest, 311.
Revolutionary, 311.
(See Revolution), 400, 401.
İn John Willet's bar, 36.
And fire, 194.
MODDLE-Mr., 310.
MODEL-Plummer's idea of a, 81.
Hair and art, 312.
Artists', 312.
MODERATION-In drinking, 164.
MODEST GREATNESS
MODEST GREATNESS, 313.
MODESTY—And blushes, 49.
Of Toots, 37.
Of self-respect, 396.
Miss Tox's (See Nursery), 339.
289, 313.
MONEY-And its uses, 313.
Barnaby's dream of, 313.
A child's idea of, 313.
Lender, 314.
Micawber's advice on, 9.
And ignorance (See Wealth),
506, 507.
Ruined by a legacy, 378.
And time, 481.
(See Rich Man), 401, 402.
And wit, 530.
(See Society), 448.
MONSTROSITY—Wegg as a, 15.
MONTAGUE TIGG-Description of,
77.
MONSEIGNEUR-Description of, 77.
MOON-At Sea (See Night), 334.
MORALITY-Of Pecksniff, 354.
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY-(See Deaf
and Dumb), 133.
MORAL EPIDEMICS, 173.
MORGUE-In Paris, 134.
MURNING, 314, 315, 316, 317.
Early Rising, 165.
(See Execution), 175.
Ride, 112, 402.
MOTHER, 317.
556
N.
NADGETT (The secret man), 71.
NAME-A sign, 325.
An unchristian, 325.
Betsey Trotwood's objection,
325.
A morsel of grammar, 325.
An undesirable, 326.
A good, 326.
(See Wilfer), 79.
NAPOLEONIC FACES, 326.
NATIVE-Bagstock's; his dress, 159.
NATURE-Not responsible for hu-
man errors, 326.
Squeers' opinion, 326.
Child's love of, 326.
(See Niagara), 332.
Description of, 38.
In August, 26.
In autumn, 29.
Children of, 92.
The voices of, 29.
NAVY YARD, 326, 327.
NEATNESS-Of Mrs. Tibbs, 238.
(See Kitchen), 256.
Of Mr. Tartar, 17.
NECESSITY AND LAWYERS, 328.
NEEDLEWORK-Love as a teacher
of, 328.
NEGLECT-In childhood, 91, 92.
Of opportunities (See Death),
137.
Her domestic care (See Cup- NEGRO-Dance, 131, 409.
board), 130.
Her gratitude, 211.
The little (See Orphans), 350.
The death of à, 143.
MOTHER S-Pride, 317.
Love, 318.
Virtues visited, 318.
MOTIVES (See Interest and Con-
venience), 247.
MOULD-The undertaker, 201, 494.
Mr., philosophy of, 201.
MOUNTAIN-(See Alps), 12.
Water, 318.
MOURNING GARB, 318.
MOUTH-Its expression (See Mrs.
General), 179.
A post office (See Wemmick),
779.
(See Papa), 353.
"MOVIN ON, SIR," (See Boy), 52.
MOWCHER-Miss, on rouge, 408.
Miss, on social humbugs, 240.
Miss, description of, 86.
MRS.-Markleham, 86.
General, 85, 179.
F's aunt, 83.
MUDDLE-The law a, 261.
Life a, 271.
MUGBY-BOY at, 52.
MURDSTONE-Miss, description of,
82.
Mr., description of, 71.
Religion of, 395.
MURDER (See Révolution), 399.
MURDERER--Death of, 318.
Discovered, 320.
Fears of, 321.
Fascinations of, 321.
Purpose of, 321.
Phantoms of, 322.
Philosophy of, 322.
MUSIC--Snore, 323.
Serenade, 323.
Sampson Brass's, 323.
Sympathy of, 323.
Overture, 324.
Definition of, 324.
Its associations, 324.
Power of, 324.
Of crickets, 221.
Of the water; a Sunday tune,
205.
Of the kettle and cricket, 254,
255.
(See Song), 450.
(See Ship), 435.
The street singer, 460.
(See Organ), 349, 350.
MUSICIAN-Mr. Mell, 197.
MUTES (See Blind), 49.
MYSTERY, 324, 325.
And Love, 280.
Coachman, 111.
NEIGHBORHOOD, 290.
A city, 237.
Repulsive, 457.
Of houses, 232, 236.
In the suburbs, 224.
An ancient, 328, 330.
Five Points, New York, 329.
An irregular, 329.
A foul, 329.
"Its influences," 329.
NELL-Night thoughts of, 336.
(See Night), 333.
(See Little Nell.)
At school, 418.
Her country journey, 119.
"NEVER MIND," 330.
NEWGATE, 374.
NEWMAN NOGGS-His face, 180.
(See Clerk), 108.
NEWCOME, CLEMENCY-Her kitch-
en, 256.
NEWSPAPER-(See Advertisements),
8,9.
A diminutive reader of, 330.
A smeared, 330.
NEWS-Its rapid circulation, 330.
NEWSBOY-Adolphus Tetterby, 330.
NEW YORK-Streets of, 329, 331.
The approach to, 105.
Five Points, 329.
NEW SOUTH
WALES GENTILITY,
145.
NEW YEAR, 542.
NIAGARA, 331.
NICKLEBY--Ralph, the usurer, 495,
496.
Mrs., and the lunatic, 281.
Mrs., on night-caps, 336.
NIGHT-A light at, 270.
And morning (See Dawn), 133.
Bells at, 45.
School at, 416.
Storm at, 455.
Birds of prey, 427.
332, 333, 334.
Walks, 335.
Fancies, 335.
Thoughts, 336.
Caps, 336.
NIPPER-Miss; her sayings, 472.
NOAKES-Percy, Esq., 71.
NOBILITY, 336.
NOBODY-Story of, 336.
NOGGS-Newman, 72.
NOSES-In art, 336.
337.
NOSE-Mixed or composite, 336.
(See Features), 192.
An interrogative, 178.
As if touched by the finger of
the devil, 179.
OLD
NO NAME-(See Nobody), 336.
"NO THOROUGHFARE "-(See Dick
Swiveller), 541.
NOTE-When found, make a, 58.
NURSE-(See Sairey Gamp), 84.
The Marchioness, (See Swir
eller), 462.
Mrs. Pipchin, the, 337.
Characteristics of, 337.
A gentle, 337.
Mrs. Squeers as a, 338.
Sairey Gamp as a, 338.
Mercenary, 338.
And child, 339.
NURSERY-Miss Tox in a, 339.
Child in a, 339.
OAR-MAKING, 282.
OATH-(See Profanity), 380.
Of Mr. Peggotty, 339.
OATHS-And words, 536.
OBITUARY-Of John Chivery, 280.
By Joe, 364.
OBLIVION-Of death, 143.
OBSERVATION-In children, 90.
OBSTINACY-Of donkeys, 156.
OBSCURITY—Of ancestry, 16.
OBSTRUCTIONS-In life and travel,
339.
OCCUPATIONS-Humanizing, 339.
OFFENDER-An innocent, 250.
OFFICE-Reminiscences of a law,
266.
Candidates for, 171.
Of Mr. Fips, 21.
Of Sampson Brass, 264.
Of Jaggers, 265.
Of Snitchey & Craggs, 268.
Of the Cheeryble Brothers,
106.
A lawyer's, by candlelight,
339.
A smeary, 339.
An intelligence, 339.
A business, 340.
The circumlocution, 340.
Defence of the circumlocu
tion, 340.
Trials of the circumlocution,
341.
Aspirants for (The Barnacles),
341.
Holders (The Barnacles), 342.
Of lawyers, 262, 264, 267.
Of clerks, 108.
The loneliness of law, 22.
OFFICIAL (See Magistrates), 283.
(See Dingwall), 65.
Bank, 35.
Humbugs, 240.
(Alderman Cute), 342,
The village, 342.
The beadle, 342.
The nursery of, 342.
Barnacle at home, 342.
Barnacle, the public, 343.
OHIO RIVER-Scenery, 404.
| OLD AGE-The duties of, 11.
A youthful, 11.
In a poor-house, 230.
343.
The vanity of, 343.
OLD BAILEY-The, 120, 375.
OLD-BOYS, 343.
Coaches, 112.
Clerk (See Chuffey), 64.
Clothes (See Shop), 344, 441.
Couple, 345.
Edifices (See Churches), 103.
Fashioned bank, 35.
Firm. 347.
Houses (See House and
Home),
Ledgers, the smell of, 60.
Lady, 346.
Maid, 346, 347.
Man, death of an, 141.
Man, the conventional, 345,
346.
Memories (See Sea), 429.
People, Swiveller's opinion
of, 346.
People, obstinacy of, 346.
Times, 346.
OLD-Wine, 529.
OLD
Woman, 531, 533.
Women, a type of good, 348.
OLIVER TWIST-Apprenticeship of,
22.
Among the coffins, 495.
OMER-Mr., his philosophy of old
age, 11.
Mr., his want of breath, 25.
Mr., his short breath, 55.
Mr., his cheerful philosophy,
251.
OMNIBUS, 348.
OPERATIVES (See Factories), 184.
OPINION-Or the world, 539.
A unanimity of, 348.
How changed, 348.
A self-important (See Expres-
sion), 178.
OPPORTUNITIES-Lost, 348.
Neglected, 216.
OPPRESSIVENESS-Of cares, 59.
ORACLE-The village, 348.
The medical, 358.
ORATORY—Of Rev. Mr. Chadband,
109.
ORATOR-A windy, 349.
A British, 349.
ORGAN-Tom Pinch at the, 349.
Its melody, 350.
ORGANIST, 350.
ORNAMENTS—Of a home, 220, 224.
ORPHANS, 350.
Dress of Oliver Twist, 158.
OUTCAST-Jo, 350, 351.
Betty Higden, 351.
An, 352.
From a parent's love, 273.
Jo, the, 52.
(See Homelessness), 226.
(See Night), 333.
OVERFED-A pauper, 166.
OYSTERS-And poverty, 371.
(See New York), 331.
P.
PAIN-TO a sleeper (See Guilt), 215.
PAINTERS (See Art), 23.
557
PAUL'S REVERIE, 324.
PAUPER-An overfed, 166.
The dead, 211.
PEACE-At home, 226.
PECKSNIFF-As a hypocrite, 244.
Mark Tapley's opinion of, 288.
As a moral man, 354.
Drunk, 162.
Making love, 205.
His forgiveness, 198.
His views of man, 284.
The horse, 228.
His feelings, 192.
Throat of, 354.
Miss Cherry, face of, 182.
Conscience of, 117.
And his daughters, 354.
Family party, 81.
PECKSNIFFIAN-Morality, 354.
Traits, 354.
Tears, 477.
POOR
PICKWICK-360.
Insult to, 11.
After wine, 152.
Inebriated, 382.
On trial, 125.
In court, 124.
And the lawyers, 267.
At whist, 523.
At Bath, 506,
And the driver, 228.
Advice on love-making, 278.
In the wrong bedroom, 39.
PICKWICKIANS'-Sense, 360.
Drunk, 162.
Before a magistrate, 260.
PICTURES-In the sunset, 472.
(See Art), 23, 24.
Of depravity, 145.
PIE-A weal (See Eating), 167.
PIG-An American, 362.
PIGS, 362.
PEDIGREE-Influence of time upon, PIKE-KEEPERS, 309.
355.
PEGGOTTY, 82.
Mr., his face, 181.
Oath of, 339.
"Barkis is willin," 37.
Her letter writing, 269.
PEECHER-Miss, the schoolmistress,
274.
PELL-Solomon (See Court, Insol-
vent), 122.
PENITENCE-Extra superfine (writ-
ing), 355.
PEOPLE-First impressions of, 246.
Like languages, 259.
Little, 274.
PERSONAL DESCRIPTIONS-(See Char-
acters), 31.
(See Features), 192.
PETS-Children as, 92.
At school, 417.
PETRIFACTION - A widow glaring,
179.
PEW, 355.
PEW-OPENER, 294.
Mrs. Miff, the, 86.
PHANTOM-(See Chair), 60.
PHANTOMS-Of the bells, 45.
PAINT-Miss Mowcher's opinion of, PHILADELPHIA-Description of, 105.
408.
PANIC-Intoxication of, 353.
PANCKS-The collector, 114.
His business motto, 55.
His opinion of a broker, 54.
72, 310.
Like a porcupine, 179.
His
philosophy
duties, 273.
On reference, 394.
of life's
And the Patriarch, 257.
PANTRY-(See Cupboard), 130.
PAPA-AS a mode of address, 353.
Potatoes, poultry, prunes,
prism, 179.
PARALYSIS-Sir L. Dedlock, 353.
PARDIGGLE—Mrs., 356.
PARDIGGLE'S MISSION, 311.
aud
PARIS-Mrs. Lirriper's opinion of,
353.
The ghosts of the Morgue,
134.
PARLIAMENT—The
heap, 353.
national dust-
A member of, 353.
PARTNER-The silent, 69.
Scrooge as a business, 144.
PARTING AND MEETING, 352.
PARTY-Devotion to, 170.
On the river, 405.
A fashionable, 188.
A social, 352.
PASSIONS-Influence of bad, 354.
PASTIME-Of the aristocracy, 23.
PATIENCE AND GENTLENESS, 146,
PATIENT-In a hospital, 229.
Baby, 32.
PATRIOTISM—-(See Revolution', 400.
Of Miss Pross, 352.
Of the Barnacles, 341.
PATRONS AND PATRONESSES-Boffin's
opinion of, 352
PAUL-At School, 415.
His idea of money, 313.
On the sea-shore, 128.
Eastern Penitentiary, 376.
PHILANTHROPY Gunpowderous,
355.
As a platform manœuvre, 356.
Beggars in name of, 356.
PHILANTHROPISTS (See Reformers).
(See Charity), 87.
Mrs. Crisparkle, 355.
At dinner, 152.
Mrs. Jellyby at home, 221.
The child of a, 90.
Mrs. Jellyby, 355.
Honeythunder, 355.
Traits of, 355.
Mrs. Pardiggle, 356.
PILLOW-(See Nurse), 338.
PINCH-Tom, 72, 289, 290, 291.
Tom, the purity of his natura
218.
Tom, his expression, 181.
Tom, his ride, 402.
Tom, at the organ, 349, 350.
PIONEER-Western, 362.
PIPE, 445, 446.
Pictures in the smoke, 363.
PIPE FILLING-A fine art, 363.
PIP-His family gravestones, 213.
His misfortunes at dinner,
152.
PIP AND JOE-Dress of, 158.
(See Eating), 166.
PIP-His fight, 194.
PIPCHIN-Mrs., and the cat, 59.
Mrs., her educational system,
167.
Mrs., the home of, 222.
Mrs. (See Nurse), 337.
PIPKIN-Nathaniel, 72.
PLAGIARISM-Dramatic, 363.
PLANTER-The home of a Southern,
233.
PLATE-MAKING, 361.
PLATFORM Of other
people's
corns (See Corns), 118.
PLEASURES OF CHRISTMAS, 95.
PLUMMER-Caleb, his exaggeration,
174.
Caleb, his loving deception,
278.
Caleb, the home of, 234.
POCKET-Mrs. Sarah, 180.
PODSNAP--(See Dinner-party), 150.
Miss, the fashionable, 90.
Their exclusiveness, 188.
(See Conceit), 115.
POETICAL OBITUARY-By Joe, 364.
POETRY-Weggs' opinion of, 364.
Of charity, 87.
Phrenological formation of, POISON, 297.
POGRAM-Elijah, 14, 72.
357.
PHILOSOPHER-Puzzled, 426.
PHILOSOPHY -- Of
Pancks', 273.
life's
Squeers on, 357.
Of Sam Weller, 514.
Of Dick Swiveller, 463.
Of an invalid, 251.
duties,
PHOTOGRAPHS-(See Lirriper), 69.
PHRASES-Like fireworks (See Con-
ventional), 118.
PHYSICIAN-(See Poor), 369.
(See Chillip, Dr.), 217.
Bob Sawyer, 357, 358.
The oracular, 358.
A fashionable, 359.
The, 359.
A blessing, 359.
PHYSIOGNOMY-Of a hotel, 359.
Of door-knockers, 156.
PIANIST
- (See Fashionable Party),
188.
PICKWICK-Policy of, 311.
His antiquarian discovery,
360.
Sam Weller's opinion of, 360.
The antiquarian controversy,
361.
In a rage, 361.
POLICE-(See Detective), 146.
English detective, 365.
Magistrate, 283.
Office, 365.
POLISH AND DEPORTMENT, 144,
POLITENESS-Austerity in, 27.
POLITICIAN-Pot-house (See Ora
cle), 348.
Pot-house (See Orator), 349.
(See Office), 341, 342, 343, 365,
366.
POLITICS--Weller at an election,
170, 171.
In America, 116.
POLITICAL ECONOMY-Toots on, 366.
PоMP-Represented by a coach-
man, 113.
POMPOSITY-Sapsea a type of, 366.
Its influence, 366.
PONY-A theatrical, 366.
POOR-Their characteristics, 366.
Plea of the, 367.
Homes of the, 367.
Hospital scenes among the,
361.
And unfortunate, voice of
366.
Parish, 368.
To be cultivated, 368.
POOR
POOR-Patients, 369.
Public duty to the, 368.
Tenderness of the, 369.
Kindness to each other, 369.
Their reverence for old age,
11.
Charity of the, 87.
Their love of home, 222.
Men, and poor women,
difference, 207.
the
Of London (See Crime and
Filth), 129.
Relations, 395.
POPULARITY-(Slurk, the editor),
369.
(See Ride), 402.
PORTER-Toby Veck, the, 369.
A solemn, 370.
PORTRAITS (See Art), 23, 24.
POSITIVENESS -Mrs.Pratchett's,370
POST BOYS-And donkeys, 370.
POTT-Submissiveness of Mr., 206.
Mr., the editor, 72.
His mode of writing an essay,
173.
His domestic afflictions, 243.
POTATO The charm of peeling (See
dinner, Dick Swiveller's),
148.
(See cooking), 118.
POTOMAC RIVER, 453.
POTTERY, 364.
POULTRY-(See Eagle), 165.
POVERTY (See Poor), 366, 367, 368,
369, 370.
Its straits, 207.
(See Five Points), 329.
371.
And oysters, 371.
POWER-Its attraction for low na-
tures, 371.
And will, 371.
Insolence of newly acquired,
371.
Petty (See Official), 342.
Of sublime intelligence, 466.
PRACTICAL--Man (See Utilitarian),
also 372.
Men (See
(See Gradgrind
Bounderby).
Bore, 51.
PRAIRIE-Scenery, 425.
"Of wild words,” 536.
PRAYER-Cruncher on, 371.
At sea, 436.
Of Jo, 142.
and
PRATCHETT - Mrs. (See Chamber-
maid), 87.
PREACHER-His exhortations, 109.
PREACHING V. PRACTICE-(See Law-
yers), 267.
PRECEPTS-Of married ladies, 372.
PRECOCIOUSNESS - Of Smallweed,
261.
PREDICAMENT, 372.
PRESERVING THE UNITIES, 495.
PRESS-American, 372.
(See Popularity) 369.
PRESSURE-A cause of death, 139.
PRETENDERS-Social, 188.
PRIDE, 372, 373.
The expression of, 182.
Come to grief, 373.
PRIM PEOPLE-(See Formal), 198.
PRIMER-Or introduction to the art
of coughing, 119.
PRINCIPLE Skimpole's opinion
of, 374.
A man of (Weller), 374.
PRISON, 310.
Barnaby in (See Night), 334.
Prisonous, a street boy, 52.
374, 375, 376, 377.
Newgate, 374.
Sunrise in, 374.
French, 375.
Old Bailey, 375.
Discipline, 375.
Solitary confinement in Amer-
ican, 376.
PRISONER-Before execution, 377.
Old, 378.
Dead, 379.
Friendless, 379.
Sampson Brass, 379.
558
REVENGE
PRISONER-For debt (Weller's sto- RAGE-Of Pickwick, 361.
ry), 379.
Trial of a, 123.
Death of the, 139.
(See Court) 120.
PRIVILEGES—(Coach), 297,
PRIZE-FIGHT (See Fight), 194.
PROCRASTINATION-Micawber's ad-
vice on, 9.
PRODIGIES-Children as, 92.
PRODGIT-Mrs. (See Baby), 31.
PROFANITY-Bark's adjectives, 7.
(See Oath), 339.
380.
Of old Lobbs, 380.
PROFESSING CHRISTIANS, 94.
PROFESSIONAL ENTHUSIASM, 380.
PROOFS--Smeared, 381.
PROPERTY-Portable, Wemmick's
advice, 200.
PROSPERITY--Effect of (Mark Tap-
ley), 381.
PROTECTION-From crime and im-
position, 273.
PROTEST-Of Mr. Meek, 30.
PROVERB-A flowing-bearded and
patriarchal, 381.
PROVINCIALISMS-Of America, 197.
"PRUNES AND PRISM"-(See Papa),
353.
PSYCHOLOGY-Of visions, 499.
RAGE-Its effervescence, 386.
A madhouse style of manner
386.
Of Mr. Smallweed, 386.
RAILROAD-Construction of the, 386.
A finished, 387.
The course of, 388.
Rush of the engine, 388.
On a, 388.
Preparations for a, 389.
Train, 389.
Arrival of the train, 389.
Journey, in America, 389.
Cars, in America, 390.
Its responsibility, 390.
Depot, 390.
RAIN-In the city, 390.
After a, 390.
A drizzly, 390.
RAMPAGE-Mrs. Joe on a, 391.
READING-A boy's, 391.
Wopsle's manner of, 391.
Words delicious to taste, 391.
Mr. Wegg's difficulty in, 391.
Dr. Bliniber's style of, 392.
Capt. Cuttle's style of, 392.
On gin and water, 392.
READERS-Of books, 50.
REAL AND MIMIC LIFE-Its distinc
tions, 272.
PUBLIC MEN-Self-importance of, REBUKE-Of impertinence, 246.
381.
Duties of secretary, 381.
Their feelings, 192.
Must expect sneers, 254.
In America, 14.
PUBLIC-Writers, 542.
Display-The value of, 154.
House (See Inn), 247.
Inns and Bars).
(See
House, a dissipated-looking,
235.
Dinners, 151.
Injustice to innocent offend-
ers, 250.
of (See
Christmas Dinner), 99.
A successful, 381.
PUGILIST--A moral, 82.
PUDDING Description
"Chicken," 381.
PULPIT SLANG, 443.
PUMBLECHOOK, 72.
PUNCH-Micawber's, 382.
Bob Sawyer's, 382.
Its results, 382.
Feeling, the groundwork of,
382.
The aroma of a, 23.
PUNISHMENT-At school, 416, 417,
422.
PUPPY-LOVE-(See School Days),420.
PURITAN-(See Gordon), 68.
PURSUIT-Of the lost, 274.
PURSE-An empty, 383.
QUACK, 292.
Q.
QUADRILLE-A trial to the feelings
(See Dancing), 132.
A negro, 131.
RECEPTION-A cool, 301.
An American, 392.
RECREATION Gardening in Lon-
don, 393.
In London, 393.
RED TAPE, 340, 341, 393.
RED-FACED MEN, 394.
REFEREE-Weller on a, 141.
REFERENCE-Book of, 50.
REFERENCES, 394.
REFINEMENT—An evidence of, 394.
REFLECTION Capt. Cuttle's habit
of, 215.
REFORMERS (See Child of Philan-
thropist), 90.
A party of female, 394.
REFORMS-Public, influence of lit
erature on, 394.
REFRIGERATOR The noble (See
Austerity), 26.
RELATIONS-Poor, 395.
RELICS-Of Rome, 407.
RELIGION-Austerity in, 27.
Practical versus professed, 256.
And lectures in New Eng-
land, 395.
A vent for bad humor, 395.
Austerity in, 395.
Indigestion, and love, 395.
Austere, of the Murdstones,
395.
True and false, 396.
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES
Charles Dickens, 115.
REMINISCENCES-Of school, 420.
Of a convict, 117.
REMORSE-Of Mr. Dombey, 396.
REPARATION
ΟΙ
Religious, of Mrs.
Clennam, 396.
QUAKERLY INFLUENCE (See City REPINING-Useless tears, 396.
of Philadelphia), 105.
QUALE-As an admirer, 8.
QUARREL, 296.
(See Gamp), 410.
(See "Never Mind "), 330.
QUARRELSOME WOMEN, 530.
QUILP. 73.
His expression, 181.
His description of a hypo-
crite. 244.
His fight with Dick Swiveller,
193.
At home 384.
His domestic system, 884.
Mrs., and Mrs. Jiniwin, 243.
Death of, 138.
Post-mortem examination of,
383.
R.
RACE-COURSE-Scenes upon a, 385.
RACES Going to the, 384.
RESEMBLANCE-Family, 23.
RESERVE AND AFFECTATION, 397.
RESENTMENT-Mr. Buffle and the
Major, 397.
g
RESPECT, SELF- The modesty of,
396.
RESPECTABILITY—A pattern of (Lit-
timer), 396.
REST-Tranquillity of, 397.
RESTAURANT-Dinner in a, 153.
(See Lunch), 262.
(See Waiters), 502.
(See Inn), 247.
Question of refreshment, 397.
A, 398.
A French, 398.
RESTLESSNESS (See Conscience).
117.
RETRIBUTION, 398.
RETICENCE-Of Mr. Chivery, 399.
Of Mrs. General, 399.
REVENGE Advertising a means of
8.
1
REVENGE
REVENGE, 310.
REVERENCE-For science, 57.
REVEREND SHEPHERD Stiggins,
the, 75.
REVERIES And memories of the
sick, 252.
REVIEW, 307.
REVOLUTION-Hunger
French, 242.
before the
Before the French, 399.
Scenes in the French, 400.
Mobs of the French, 401.
Knitting women of
French, 401.
RHEUMATISM-versus Gout, 210.
versus Tombatism, 401.
the
RICH MAN-His importance, 401.
World's tribute to the, 402.
His fall, 402.
And poor, 402.
RIDE-Tom Pinch's (See Coachman),
113.
Tom Pinch's morning, 402.
In winter, 530.
RIDING-And walking, 504.
RIDERHOOD-Rogue, drowned, 159.
RISING Early, 165.
RIVER-Of life, 272.
Scenes upon (See City, ap-
proach to New York), 105.
Compared to death, 143.
At night (See Night), 334.
Its treatment of the dead, 138.
Scenery, the Ohio, 404.
Mississippi, on the, 405.
At evening, 403.
A portal of eternity, 403.
A midnight funeral, 404.
Its foreknowledge of the sea,
404.
Scene, on the Thames, 403.
Side (Docks, down by the), 154.
Thief, 404.
And ferry-boat, their moral,
403.
A dreary neighborhood by
the, 405.
A water party, 405.
Sports, a rowing match, 406.
Sports, water excursions, 406.
ROAST PIG-(See Weather), 510.
ROB THE GRINDER - A victim of
education, 167.
ROCHESTER BRIDGE, 424.
ROKESMITH-Mrs. John (See Needle-
work), 328.
Mrs. John
Her announce-
ment of a baby, 32.
ROMANCE-Of charity, 87.
Days of (See Old Times), 346.
ROME-Its catacombs and graves, 59.
ROOFS
Its past and present, 406.
Its relics, 407.
The Coliseum, 407.
St. Peter's, 407.
Its ruins, 408.
- Oppressed by chimneys,
106.
ROOMS (See Apartments), 17.
Of Mr. Tartar, 17.
ROSA DARTLE, 533.
"ROSY AND BALMY "-The, 280.
ROUGE-Miss Mowcher on, 408.
ROUNCEWELL Mrs. the house-
keeper of Dedlock Hall, 239.
ROUTINE-Of daily life, 216.
RUDGE-Barnaby, 73.
His raven, 48.
His devotion, 10.
559
8.
SACREDNESS OF TRUTH, 491.
SAILOR—“ Poor mercantile Jack,"
408.
Mr. Lobley, the, 70.
Description of Sol Gills,
410.
Home of Sol Gills, 410.
SAILORS—Their characteristics, 409.
Dance-house, a, 409.
Their associations (Docks),
154.
SAIREY GAMP-And Betsey Prig,
410.
And Mrs. Harris, 411.
Her observations, 411.
On drinking, 412.
On human anticipations, 412.
On steamboats, 412.
Will not suffer "impogician,"
413.
(See Nurse), 338.
84.
And Mr. Mould, 201.
SALE-Auction, Dombey, 25.
SALUTATION—A hearty, 413.
The conventional, 413.
SALLY BRASS-Description of, 264.
(See also Brass), 83.
SAMPSON BRASS CONVICTED, 379.
SANDWICH—A boy between two
boards, 9.
A Mugby Station, 413.
And entertainment, 413.
SARCASM-Its expression, 413.
SATIRE-On pride of ancestry, 15.
SAWBONES, 514.
SAWYER-Bob, 298.
Experience of, 357, 358.
Punch of, 382.
SAVAGE - The noble, a delusion,
413.
SAYINGS-Of Capt. Cuttle, 57.
SCADDER (See Speculator), 451.
SCENES-Christmas, 95, 96.
SCENERY-(See Alps), 12.
Of a battle-field, 38.
A western swamp, 424.
(See August), 26.
Autumn, 28, 29.
Country, 119, 424.
From Rochester bridge, 424.
Landscape, 425.
Of an American prairie,
425.
On the Mississippi, 425.
06
And weather, 426.
SCHOLAR-The new, 415.
A poor, 415.
Cairo, 425.
SHAKSPEARE
SCHOOL-ROOM-And master (See
Facts), 186.
First memories of, 185.
The old master and scholar,
418.
SCHOOL-DAYS, 416.
A retrospect, 420.
SCHOOL-BOY-Death of the, 420.
Squeers on the diet of, 421.
SCHOOL-BOOKS—The, 421.
SCIENCE-The mistakes of, 426.
"Where is it to stop?" 34.
Cuttle's reverence for, 57.
SCIENTIST (See Chemist), 88.
SCOUNDRELS-Night birds of prey,
427.
SCROOGE-(See Death of Marley), 144.
His opinion of ghosts, 208.
In foul neighborhood, 329.
His Christmas dinner, 99.
SEA-Storm at, '427.
An excursion party at, 427.
Impartiality of the, 428.
Mark Tapley's opinion of the,
428.
"On the bar,” 428.
The, 428.
Breakers, 428.
Voice of the waves, 428.
And love, 428.
Its associations, 429.
In a storm, 429.
At night (See Night), 334.
Captain, his face, 429.
Scenery, 429.
Shore, at the, 429.
Sickness, misery of, 429.
Sickness, 430.
SEAPORT (Dover), 429.
SEASIDE-A scene at the, 430.
Children at the, 431.
The, 432.
Views; approach to Calais,
432.
Views; landing at Calais, 432.
Voyage, the end of a, 432.
SECLUSION - Mrs. Skewton's Arca-
dia, 119.
SECOND-HAND CARES-Like clothes,
70.
59.
Furniture, 54.
SECRETS, 433.
The bearer of, 71.
A lawyer the depositary of,
263.
Depositaries of, 433.
Of humanity, 433.
Possessor of (Snagsby), 433.
SECRETARY, PRIVATE His duties,
381.
Sissy Jupe's
Jupe's ignorance of SEEDINESS-The genius of (See Insol-
facts, 415.
A, 415.
vent Court), 121.
SEGAR, 445, 446.
SCHOOL Of facts (See Facts, Grad- SELF-DECEIT, 433.
grind), 185.
The Gradgrind, 169.
Dr. Blimber's, 168.
A holiday in, 415.
A jumble of a, 416.
David Copperfield at, 417.
Of Dr. Blimber, 417.
First hours in, 417.
The village, 418.
Of Squeers (Dotheboys' Hall),
419.
Influence of cruelty in, 420.
Vacation, 421.
Of facts, 423.
Mrs., her expression of ter- SCHOOLMASTER-Squeers, the, 75.
ror, 182.
RUGG-Mr. and Mrs., 73.
RUINS (See “Abbey”), 5.
Of a home, 224, 225.
Of Rome, 408.
Tourists among (Mrs. Gene-
ral), 408.
Of old grave-yards, 103.
RUMOR-Popular, 408.
RUTH-The influence of her pres-
ence, 280.
And John Westlock, the love
of, 279.
The eyes of, 178.
As a housekeeper, 237.
The good, 415.
Dr. Blimber, 62.
In England (See Education),
168.
Love, as a teacher, 421.
The old, 421.
The kind, 421.
Bradley Headstone, the, 422.
Creakle, the, 422.
Mr. McChoakumchild, 422.
423.
And mistress, 423.
SELFISHNESS, 433.
In love, 434.
(See Heart, an empty), 219.
SELF-IMPORTant Men, 56.
SELF-IMPORTANCE-(See Egotism).
SENTIMENTS-Hollow, 94.
SENTINEL-Sam Weller as a, 434.
SEPARATIONS-In life, 434.
SERJEANT SNUBBIN, 266.
SERMONS-Subjects for, 466.
SERVANT, 293.
(See Waiters), 501.
(See Footman, Butler, Waiter,
etc.), 238.
(See Ottice), 339.
Tilly Slowboy as a, 85.
Steerforth's, 396.
Bagstock's (See Valet), 497.
Miseries of housekeeping, 434.
SEXTON-And Little Nell, 135.
(See Grave-digger), 212.
SHABBINESS - of London people
274.
SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE, 207, 446.
(See Tigg), 77.
SHADOWS-Of memory, 182.
Evening, 434.
SCHOOLMISTRESS-Miss Peecher in SHAKERS-American, 434.
love, 423.
In love, 274.
SHAKSPEARE-Mr. Wolf's idea of
434.
SHAM
SHAM-(See Skimpole), 442.
SHERRY-COBBLER An American,
435.
SHIP-A hymn on board, 435.
At sea, 435.
Cabin of a, 435.
An emigrant, 171, 172.
First breakfast on, 205.
580
SLEEVE-Like a cloth sausage, 159.
SLOPPY-Description of, 73.
Dress of, 159.
His story of Johnny Harmon,
88.
SLUGGISHNESS-(See Drummle), 66.
SLYME-Dilapidated, 446.
Chevy, 74.
Departure of an emigrant, 435. SMALLWEED-Mr. (See Rage), 386.
In a storm, 436.
Prayer on board, 436.
Preparations for departure,
436.
Scenes on board, 437.
State-room of a, 437.
Voice of the screw, 437.
Steam, 441.
Mark Tapley's jollity on, 439.
Night scenes on, 440.
Scenes on, 440.
SHIPBUILDING, 326.
SHIPS Their associations, 437.
The rigging of, 437.
SHIPWRECK-Capt. Cuttle's descrip-
tion of a, 437.
(Death of Ham), 438.
SHERIFF (See Court), 120.
SHOP-A curiosity, 441.
An old clo', 441.
Tetterby's, 441.
SHOPS-Of brokers, 54.
SHORTHAND, 539, 540.
SHOWS--Giants and dwarfs, 209.
SHREWDNESS, 441.
SICK--(In hospitals), 229, 230.
(See Invalid), 252.
SICK ROOM-Reflections on a, 145.
SICKNESS-Its hallucinations, 193.
Of Johnny Harmon, 88.
Of Dick Swiveller, 461.
Of a child, 89.
The suspense of, 441.
SIGH, 442.
SIGN-A tobacco, 442.
The ghost of dead businesses,
"
442.
'An out'ard sign," (Capt.
Cuttle), 57.
Of a walking-stick shop, 273.
SIKES-His dog (See Dog, a Chris-
tian), 155.
SILENCE-(See Reticence), 399.
SILENT SYMPATHY,
474.
SIMON TAPPERTIT--His figure and
dress, 76.
SIMPLICITY-Pickwick's, 357, 358.
Of Captain Cuttle, 61.
SINCERITY, 442.
SINCERITY vs. BLUNTNESS, 48.
SINGING, 289.
SINISTER EYES; 178.
SINGLE MEN, 33.
SKETTLES, SIR BARNET-His art of
acquaintance, 7.
SKEWTON, MRS.--Her opinion of
death, 136.
Her Arcadia, 119.
Death of, 136.
SKIMPOLE, HAROLD-His character,
442.
His philosophy of common
sense, 114.
Opinion of bees, 41.
His idea of debt, 144.
On trouble, 491.
On principle, 374.
SLAMMER-Dr., description of, 73.
SLANDER (See Press), 372.
(See New York), 331.
Of the unfortunate, 443.
SLANG-Of the pulpit, 443.
SLEEP (See Fat boy).
-
Of Pickwick after dinner, 152.
Swiveller on, 463.
443, 444.
After wine, 444.
A refreshing (Sam Weller on),
444.
Dick Swiveller's "balmy,'
444
Of Uriah Heep, 444.
Snoring of Mr. Willet, 444.
And dreams among the poor,
444.
In a stage coach, 445.
Description of, 74.
Precociousness of, 261.
SMELL " A simoon of ham," 23.
SMIKE-At Squeers', 419.
Grave of, 212.
SMILE A crowd of welcomes in
every, 179.
(See Sampson Brass), 62.
SMILES-Description of, 445.
SMOKE, 445.
SMOKING, 446.
Board and lodging, 446.
The content of, 446.
SNAGSBY-The law stationer, 260.
Description of Mr. and Mrs.,
74.
Mrs., jealousy of, 253.
Her inquisitiveness, 250, 253.
SNITCHEY AND CRAGGS The law-
yers, 74, 261, 268.
SNORING-(See Sleep), 444.
SNOW, 508.
SNOWSTORM, 509.
SOCIAL-Distinctions, 272, 446.
Humbugs, 240.
Pretender (See Flamwell), 66.
Tastes and habits, 475.
Wit, a, 80.
Ice of Podsnappery, 188.
Impostors, 246.
Pretenders, 188.
Company, a, 80.
Gradations (See Life), 272.
SOCIALLY DILAPIDATED
Slyme, 446.
SOCIETY, 293.
-
The duty to, 165.
The passports to, 246.
The beggars of, 42.
Fashionable, 188.
Bachelors in, 33.
The gypsies of, 50.
Man, 71.
Chevy
In England (See Revolution),
399.
Of girls, delightful but not
professional, 209.
Its vices, 446.
At dinner, 447.
Fashionable, 447.
Mr. Merdle, the rich man,
448.
STREET
SPARSIT-Mrs., 450.
SPARTAN Box, 52.
SPASHS-Inquisitiveness, a cure
for, 250.
"SPAZZUMS"-Of Mrs. Crupp, 130.
SPECIALITY-Sparkler's idea of a,
451.
SPECULATORS-Scadder, the Ameri
can, 451.
Mr.
Lammle's friends
Change, 452.
In charity, 87.
SPECULATIONS-In shares, 455.
SPEECH-A morsel of, 452.
The gift of gab,” 452.
Micawber's, 300.
Public (See Addresses), 7.
on
SPENLOW, THE LAWYER-Descrip
tion of, 75.
SPINSTER - Bagstock's opinion of
Miss Tox. 452.
Influence of young men on,
452.
SPIRITUAL GROWTH-Of dead chil-
dren, 452.
SPITE, 452.
SPITTING-In America, 13.
SPONGE-(See Skimpole), 442.
SPORTS-On the river, 406.
SPORTSMAN-Winkle as a, 452.
SPRING, 452.
Time, 453.
Time; an evening in, 174.
SQUEERS-His expression, 181.
Description of, 75.
His opinion of "wisitations,"
240.
On philosophy, 357.
His advice on appetites, 22.
His bruises, 55.
Menagerie of, 419.
Fanny; a letter from, 269.
Mrs. (See Nurse), 338.
SQUOD-Phil.; description of, 75.
STAGE-Adapted to the, 453.
Coach, 445.
STARCHED PEOPLE, 453.
STARS-Children of the, 92.
Their alphabet yet unknown
453.
The eyes of angels, 453.
(See Night), 332, 333.
STARVATION-Death by, 141.
STATIONER—The law, 260.
STATIONS-In life, 272.
STATISTICS, 292.
STEAMBOAT—An American, 453.
Night scenes on the Potora
453.
Mrs. Gamp's opinion of, 419
In the harbor, 454.
Fashionable young ladies, 448. STEAMER-Crossing the Channel.45k.
Rich man of, 448.
SOCIETIES-Learned, 361.
SOFA-BEDSTEAD, 41.
SOLD-By friends and society, 448.
SOLDIERS-Military glory, 448.
Military review, 307.
A swarm of, 449.
The corporal, 449.
SOLITUDE-Of a city crowd, 105.
(See Crupp), 130.
(See Night), 333.
Blessings of, 449.
Misery of, 449,
SOLITARY MEN-(See Friendless),201.
SOL GILLS, 410.
SOLEMN EYE—A, 178.
SOLEMNITY--In dancing, 132.
SONG Of the kettle, 255.
An unearthly, 450.
"Table beer of acoustics,"
450.
SORROW-A teacher, 450.
SOUNDS-And scenes of a city, 105,
106.
SOULLESSNESS-(See Heart, an emp-
ty), 219.
SOWERBERRY—The undertaker, de-
scription of, 75.
SPANGLES-By daylight, 34.
| SPARKS-In a Christmas fire, 450.
STEAM-ENGINE-A thinking, 465.
STEAMSHIP, 441.
STEERFORTH-(See Grace of a gentle.
man), 208.
His respectable sorvant, 396.
STENOGRAPHY, 539, 540
STIFLER-Dick Swivelor oxperien-
ces a, 279.
STIGGINS And Sam Weller, 517, 518.
Description of the Reverend
Shepherd, 73.
Weller's opinion of, 244.
On the coach, 520.
As a borrower, 520.
STILTSTALKING-Lord (See Austeri
ty), 26.
STOCKS AND BONDS
shares, 455
The result of
STOMACH Influenced by tight
boots, 50.
The rattling, 357, 358.
STONE-CUTTER-Durdles, the, 66.
"STOP THIEF," 479.
STORM-Approach of a, 455.
455, 456.
At night, 455.
At sea, 427, 429, 436, 456.
Thunder, 457.
Its influence on human pas-
sions, 457.
SPARKLER-His idea of Dante, 133, | STRATEGY Of Mr. Weller, 591.
289.
STREET-A dull, 457.
STREET
STREET-A gloomy, 457.
A London, 457.
A quiet, 458.
Houses in a, 233.
Of perishing blind houses,
236.
An Italian, 34.
Lights, 270.
(See Obstructions), 339.
Death in the, 138.
Boy, 52.
Pig, New York, 362.
Crowd and mud, 458.
In London, 316, 458.
STREETS — London, at night (See
Night), 334.
Scenes, London, 458.
In London (morning), 459.
(The Dials), 459.
66
Singer, the, 460.
Crooked (See Neighborhood),
328, 329.
A repulsive neighborhood,
457.
(See New York), 331.
STRONG-Dr., the schoolmaster, 76.
STUDY-Of the alphabet, 11, 12.
(See "Education"
"School"), 168.
and
STRYVER-A type of misdirected
ability, 5.
(See Bank), 35, 76.
His florid face, 179.
561
SWIVELLER-Dick,description of, 76.
Dick, music his solace, 197.
Observations on dinner, 148.
His melodramatic laugh, 259.
Rooms of, 18, 20.
As a correspondent, 541.
Drunk, 162.
The disappointment of, 279.
His fight with Quilp, 193.
Dick, and Sally Brass, 460.
Dick, his apology for drunk-
enness, 460.
His sweetheart, 461.
Sickness of Dick, 461.
The Marchioness as his nurse,
462.
Observations of Dick, 463.
Dick soliloquises on his des-
tiny, 463.
On extra sleep, 463.
Dick and the Marchioness,
464, 465.
On charitable missions, 310.
Opinion of, 299.
SYMPATHY, 474.
Silent, 474.
Influence of, 474.
Of children, 92.
(See Affliction), 10.
The hand of, 217.
True, 218.
ST. LOUIS-The houses of, 236.
TABLE, 296.
ST. PETER's-Rome, 407.
SUBJECTS-For dissection, 298.
For sermons, 466.
T.
The furniture of a, 223.
Beer, of acoustics (See Song),
450.
SUBLIME INTELLIGENCE—The power | TACKLETON, 76.
of, 466.
SUBPOENA - Sam Weller receives,
466.
SUBURB—A London, 466.
Of a city, 224.
SUCCESS-A crime, 467.
Constancy the secret of, 467.
SUICIDE-Of Jonas, 320.
Excuse for, 467.
Apartment of a, 21.
(See Mantalini), 297.
SUIT AT LAW, 126.
SUMMER-An evening in, 173.
Nature in August, 26.
A factory town in, 183.
Quiet, in London, 467.
468.
August scenery, 468.
A legal vacation, 468.
Scenery, and sentiment, 469.
Vacation, of Courts, 469.
Weather, 469.
SUN, 470.
A punctual servant, 470.
In the city, 471.
The child-hater, 94.
Opinion of woman, 532.
TALENT AND CAPITAL, 305.
TANGLE-Mr., 127.
TAPLEY-Mark, wants misfortune,
288.
His opinion of Americans, 15.
289.
Aboard ship, 439.
As a verb, 498.
(See Mark Tapley.)
TAPPERTIT-Simon, 76.
Life a burden to, 270.
His legs, 269.
TARTAR-Mr., apartments of, 17.
TAR-WATER, 298.
TASTE-Viewed from Gradgrind's
standpoint, 474.
And habits, social, 475.
Versus fact, 186.
(See Life, Pancks' philosophy),
273.
TAVERN-(See Weather), 507.
Room in a, 21.
(See Inn), 247.
Its influence on Bagstock, 471. TAXES-True as, 37.
The summer's, 471.
SUNSHINE, 471.
In church windows, 103.
SUNRISE-Its associations, 471.
In prison, 374.
SUNSET-An autumn, 174.
A summer, 472.
In a cathedral, 472.
472.
Its effect on pictures, 472.
On the Mississippi, 472.
SUNDAYS—In London, 469.
In childhood, 470.
Evening, in London, 470.
(See Religion), 396.
Bells, associations of, 43.
Summer, 173.
Tranquillity of (See Content),
117.
SURFACE-Of beauty, 39.
SURGEON-Dr. Slammer, 73.
SURGERY EXTRAORDINARY, 357, 358.
SURLINESS (Miss La Creevy), 283.
SURPRISES, 383, 474.
SUSAN NIPPER-Her sayings, 472.
SUSPICIONS-And inquisitiveness,
253.
Of lawyers, 267.
A maxim of life, 474.
JUSQUEHANNA-Crossing the, 474.
SWAMP SCENERY, 424.
TEA-A termagant at, 476.
Drinking, a pastoral, at Mrs.
Weller's, 475.
Drinking, a serious, 476.
Drinker, Mr. Venus as a, 476.
TEACHER IN LOVE, 423.
TEARS, 476.
Sam Weller's opinion of, 476.
Of disappointment, 476.
Pecksniffian, 477.
The mist of, 477.
Hydraulic, 477.
A remedy, 477.
Not the only proofs of dis-
tress, 477.
Of Job Trotter, 182, 477, 514.
Valuable, 477.
Of Miggs, 477.
And prismatic colors, 61.
Useless, 396.
Drop, a, 477.
TEETH-Cutting, 31.
(See Features), 192.
The attraction of, 477.
Chattering, 477.
TELEGRAPH WIRES, 478.
TELLSON'S BANK, 35.
TEMPER-Of Pickwick, 11.
Mrs. Joe Gargery's, 478.
The thermometer of Mrs.
Varden's, 478.
TOMBSTONES
TEMPER-And devotion, 478.
TEMPTATION-A teacher, 478.
TENDERNESS-(See Baby. Dot's), 32,
Of Tim Linkinwater, 252.
TENEMENT HOUSE, 232.
TEN-PINS (See New York), 331.
TERROR-A look of, 182.
TETTERBY, 296
Baby of, 31. 32.
Adolphus (Newsboy), 330.
THAMES-At night (See Night), 331.
THANKS From the heart's mint
211.
THEATRE-Maggy's idea of a, 478.
Deserted, 478.
An old. 479.
First impression of a, 479.
(See Shakspeare), 434.
(See Stage), 453.
THEFT-An emporium of, 479.
THEODOSIUS BUTLER
conceit, 116.
THIEF-Stop," 479.
Literary, 363.
The river, 404.
THIN MAN, 383.
A type of
THIS AND THAT—Success of a com-
bination, 479.
THOUGHT-Its chance revelations,
219.
245, 480.
Capt. Cuttle in, 215.
Depressing, 479.
A jumble of, 479.
A haunting topic of, 480.
THROAT-A thoroughfare, 209.
THRONG-A city, 130.
THUNDER STORM, 457.
TIBES-Mr. and Mrs., 77.
Mrs., as a housekeeper, 238.
TIDE-Barkis went out with the, 37,
High, 480.
TIGG-Montague, 77.
His idea of life, 273.
The financier, 77.
Comments on debt, 206.
TILLY SLOWBOY-Her legs a calen
dar, 269.
85.
TIME-During love, 280.
Its changes, 87, 481.
The river of, 272.
292, 481.
Its progress. 481.
Is money, 481.
A slippery animal, 481.
Factory of, 481.
And the havoc of suffering,
481.
A gentle parent, 481.
TIMBER-YARD, 481.
TIM LINKINWATER-(See "Clerk "),
108.
(See "City Square"), 106.
TOBACCO-CHEWING In America
177, 481.
TOBACCO-Its use in America, 482.
(See Pipe), 363.
Sign, 442, 445, 446.
TOBY VECK-The porter, 369.
His dinner, 147.
And the bells, 45.
TODGERS, MRS.-Her
house, 49, 50.
boarding
Scene from her housetop
237.
Serenade at, 323.
On gravy, 213.
(See Ancient Neighborhood)
328.
TOILETTE-A boy's, 482.
Of Miss Tippíns, 483.
(See Dress), 157.
TOLERATION, 483.
To LET-Apartments, 20.
TOLL. 310.
TOM-ALL-ALONE'S, 329.
(See Outcast), 350.
}
TOM PINCH-His ride with the
coachman, 113.
His patience, 146.
TOM SMART'S VISION, 60.
TOMB-The silent (See Favor), 191.
Toots on the silent, 117.
TOMBSTONES-A petrified grove of,
66.
TOMBSTONES
TOMBSTONES, 483.
TOMBATISM-(See Rheumatism), 401.
TONGUE-Of Sampson Brass (See
Compliments), 115.
TOODLE-A family reunion, 225.
Mr. 78.
TOOTS-His unrequited love, 275,
276.
On the world, 539.
Mrs., a mother, 318.
Opinion of woman, 531.
A constant visitor, 500.
And Miss Florence, 191.
And Captain Cuttle, 58.
Mr., 78.
Opinion of his wife, 524.
His contrition, 117.
His feelings, 193.
Bashfulness of, 37.
Acquaintance a charity to, 7.
TORTURES-Of the Inquisition, 250.
TOTTLE, WATKINS-A bachelor, 78.
TOURISTS-English, 483.
TOWN-A factory, 183, 484.
Approach to a manufacturing,
485.
A lazy, 485.
And country scenery-Jour-
ney of Little Nell, 483.
Pickwick's description of a,
485.
Tox-Miss, her dress, 157.
The home of, 222, 226.
Toys-Christmas, 95.
TOY-MAKER-His home, 486.
TOZER-(See Education), 169.
TRADES-Eccentricity of, 486.
TRAGEDIAN-"Feeling a part," 7.
TRAITS-Of birds, 47.
TRAINING-Of children, 91.
TRADDLES-His hair, 216.
At school, 416.
TRANSCENDENTALISM
486.
TRAVEL The attractions of high-
way, 487.
(See Tourists), 483.
|
562
TUPMAN-(See Pickwick), 360.
"TURNING UP,” 302.
TURVEYDROP-The prince of deport-
ment, 78.
On deportment, 144.
TWEMLOW-(See Fashionable Peo-
ple), 188.
TWILIGHT, 491, 492.
Wind at, 29.
In summer, 491.
Seasons, shadows, and
sociations, 492.
A winter, 492.
WEALTH
VICES-Of Piacenza, 499.
VICTUALS- Quarrelling with one's
499.
VIGOR-Personal (See Mr. George),
67.
Of character (See Laugh), 259.
VILLAGE-The poor, 499.
Fair, a, 187.
VIRGINIA EXPERIENCES IN A Coach,
111.
88- VIRTUES-And vices, of weak men,
Evening scenes, 492.
TWIST-Oliver, the hunger of, 242.
TYRANNY-Domestic, 493.
U.
UMBRELLA-(See Omnibus), 348.
UNCLE-Little Dorrit's, 65, 66.
UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 490.
UNCONGENIALITY—In marriage, 493.
UNDERTAKER—The, 493.
Mr. Mould, the, 494.
at home, 494.
Experiences of an, 494.
Shop of the, 495.
Sowerberry, the, 75.
Lawyers like, 267.
289.
His philosophy, 201.
(See Funeral of Mrs. Joe Gar-
gery; Mould, etc.).
UNFORTUNATE-Happiness of the,
217.
UNHAPPINESS-Of caged birds, 47.
UNITIES-Dramatic, 495.
UNSOCIAL-Dinner, an, 151.
Travellers, 489.
UPS AND DOWNS-Philosophy of Plor-
nish, 495.
In America, USURER-(See Arthur Gride), 68.
Newman Noggs' opinion of
Ralph Nickleby, 495.
Ralph Nickleby, the, 496.
Avarice of, 29.
(See Obstructions), 339.
(See Omnibus), 348.
(See Sairey Gamp), 412.
(See Restaurant), 397.
(See Steamer), 454.
Scenes of, 487.
Associations of, 488.
Experiences of, 488.
Preparations for, 488.
TRAVELLER-The home of, 220.
Bagstock as a, 489.
The uncommercial, 490.
TRAVELLERS-Unsociable, 489.
Englishmen, as, 173.
Citywards, 105.
TRAVELLING-By twilight, 489.
In imagination, 489.
The miseries of coach, 113.
TREADMILL Brass condemned to
the, 379.
TREES, 490.
Dead American, 491.
In a city, 491.
Of Java, a shelter for lies, 179.
(See Court), 120,
TRIAL IN COURT
125.
Of a convict, 123.
TRIFLES―The power of, 217.
TRIUMPH—Of faith, 59.
In argument, a, 177.
TROTTER-Job, his tears, 477.
Job, the face of, 182.
TROTWOOD-Betsey, and Mrs. Crupp,
46.
294, 296.
TROUBLES-Of workingmen, 537.
Skimpole on taking, 491.
TRUMPET NOTES-Not always true,
491.
TRUTH-Its sacredness, 491.
491.
Not always welcome, 491.
And falsehood, 491.
TUGGS-Cymon, in love, 276.
TUGGSES—The, 78.
TULKINGHORN-His face and man-
ner, 180.
The lawyer, 263.
The home of Arthur Gride,
204.
UTILITARIAN (See Practical Men).
(See Opportunities), 348.
UNWELCOME TRUTH, 491.
VACATION, 421.
V.
Legal, 468, 469.
VAGABOND-A, 78.
(See Vagrant), 78.
"Not of the mean sort,” 496.
VAGRANT (See Jingle), 69.
(See Dismal Jemmy), 65.
"Jo," 52.
(See Vagabond), 78.
Boy, 52.
VAGRANTS-(See Refinement), 394.
VAGRANCY-In childhood, 91.
VALENTINE-Sam Weller's, 496.
VALET-Bagstock's native, 497.
VANITY-Human (Sec Old Age), 343.
VARDEN-Mrs., as a Christian, 94.
Mrs., 525.
Gabriel, the home of, 223.
Workshop of, 538.
Mrs., her family tactics, 186.
VAUXHALL GARDENS, 497.
VECK-Toby, in storm, 509..
VEGETABLES-Language of love, 498.
Courtship of Mrs. Nickleby,
281.
VENEERINGS -The (See Dinner-
party), 150.
The, 188.
VENICE-A dream of, 498.
VENUS-On anatomy, 15.
As a tea-drinker, 476.
VERB-Mark Tapley as a, 498.
VERONA, 499.
"VESKITS "-For heathen, 310.
VEXATION-A cheap commodity, 499.
VHOLES-The lawyer, 79, 264.
VICE-Its influence on youth, 52.
Virtue in excess, 499.
VICES-Of Society, 446.
Kindred, 499.
499.
In excess (See Vice), 499.
Snagsby as an enemy to, 110.
VISITS-Fashionable, 188.
VISITORS-The cards of, 58.
Constant (Toots), 500.
VISION-Of Tom Smart, 60.
Psychological experiences of
499.
VOICE-Of the bells, 45.
Hard and dry (See Face), 182.
Of the alarm-bell, 44.
(See Laugh of Boythorn), 259.
The still, small, of the heart
227.
Of Bagnet, 61.
Of the waves, 428.
Of a clock, 111.
Its expressions, 500.
Little Dorrit's blessing, 500.
A faint, 500.
A disagreeable, 500.
And eyes, of Mrs. Pardiggle,
500.
A bass, 500.
A buttoned-up, 500.
Not of Toby, 500.
Sam Weller's signals, 500.
Like a hurricane, 500.
501.
A muffled, 501.
A sharp, 501.
Of an old friend, 501.
Oppressed, 501.
VOLUBILITY—
115.
(See
Compliments.
Of Mrs. Hominy, 28.
W.
WAKEFULNESS, 30.
WAITER-Traits of the, 501.
Habits of the, 502.
His misfortunes, 503.
Wrongs of a, 503.
A dignified, 503.
The chief butler, 503.
The model, 503.
Characteristics of, 503.
WAITING-Misery of, 503.
WALK-An egotistic, 504.
A fast, 504.
A dignified, 504.
WALKING-Better than riding, 504.
WALLS-Maps bursting from, 232.
WANDERING JEW-Of Joe Millerism,
77.
WASHINGTON, 505.
Americans in, 13.
WASHINGTON IRVING-At the White
House, 505.
WATCH, 291.
A model, 505.
Of Sol Gills, 505.
Of Captain Cuttle, 505.
Like an anchor, 505.
WATER, 298, 506.
Making a Sunday tune, 205.
Expression of (See Fountain),
199.
In the mountains, 318.
Pipes, 505.
WATERBROOK, MR. AND MRS.—And
company, $0.
WATERING-PLACE
Bath, 506.
Pickwick
al
WAVES-The mystery of the, 136.
The mystery of the (See Death
of Yonth), 143.
WAXWORK-Mrs. Jarley's, 506.
WEAKNESS-Human, 506.
"WEAL PIE "-(See Weller). 514.
WEALTH-Ignorant men of, 506.
Its influence, 210.
WEALTH
WEALTH-Conceit, intolerance, and
ignorance of Podsnap, 507.
World's tribute to, 507.
The rich man, 507.
Without station, 507.
WEATHER-Stormy; The Maypole,
507.
The snow, 508.
Wintry, 508.
Frosty, 508.
A November fog, 508.
Coid, 509.
Beautiful, 509.
Toby Veck in stormy, 509.
A snow storm, 509.
Dismal, 509.
Suggestive of roast pig, 510.
Rainy, 510.
Foggy, 510.
Misty, 510.
Mournful, 510.
And muffins (Mr. Tugby's
opinion), 510.
WEDDING-Regrets of a, 510.
Christening, and Funeral,
Pleasant Riderhood's views
of a, 510.
294.
WEEDS-Mrs. Heep's, 524.
WEGG Silas, description of, 239,
240.
As an anatomical subject, 15.
Reading, 391.
His insolence, 371.
WELL-(See Grave-digger), 212.
WELLER Sam, personal appear-
ance of, 511.
As boots, 511.
Engaged by Pickwick, 512.
Recognizes the old 'un, 512.
And the new birth of Mrs. W.,
512.
Sam, his observations, 512.
As a dutiful son, 512.
On the marriage of his father,
513.
Sam, receives subpoena, 466.
Sam, and Job Trotter, 513.
A flow of ideas, 245.
And the laundress, 260.
Mrs., death of, 139.
296, 297.
Samuel as a witness, 122.
Sam (Wery good imitation,
etc.), 207.
Sam on law terms, 266.
Advice to his father, 520.
Sam in prison, 519.
Sam, his valentine, 496.
His idea of an alibi, 11.
His philosophy of death, 141.
On legacies, 268.
Described, 511.
In prison for debt, 518.
563
WELLER-Mr., and the gentle Shep-
herd, 520..
The elder drives Mr. Stiggins,
520.
The elder on married life, 521.
at dinner, 521.
His opinions of widows, 521.
The elder, in a quandary, 521.
Personal appearance of the
elder, 522.
Sam in mischief, 426.
At an election, 170.
Sam, his story, 153.
Sam, apologises for his hat,
218.
Sam and Job Trotter, 182.
Mr., on judges of human na-
ture, 254.
His remedy for the gout, 210.
Sam, "an out an outer,” 39.
His opinion of coaches, 113.
Sam, on feelings, 192.
Sam, on flannel and straight
veskits, 310.
WEMMICK—Mr., 79.
His embrace of Miss Skiffins,
172,
His opinion of a friendly act,
200.
266.
WESTERN PIONEER, 362.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY-The dead of,
135.
WHISKERS-Peachy cheek of Fledge-
by, 523.
A rainbow in, 181.
Shaving of Mr. Bailey's, 523.
WHISPER-A double-barrelled, 523.
WHISPERING-Effect of, 523.
WHIST-Pickwick at, 523.
524.
WHITE HOUSE-At Washington, 505.
WICKAM (See Nurse), 337.
WIDOW-Weller's opinion on, 521.
296.
WIDTH
Medusa-like glaring petrifac-
tion, 179.
A cure for the gout, 210.
Her weeds (Mrs. Heep), 524.
Opinion of Weller the elder,
524.
AND WISDOM
maxim, 524.
Weller's
WIFE-Toots' opinion of his, 524.
Of Mr. Pott, 206.
Duties to a husband, 524.
A solemn, 524.
A bad-tempered, 525.
(Mrs. Varden), 525.
Of Snagsby, 250.
Weller's loss of his, 141.
An unhappy, 524.
Loss of a, 524.
WIG-Life in a (See Innocent), 250.
Sam, his opinion of tears, 476. WIGLOMERATION OF LAW, 128.
Sam at home, 517.
On clerical shepherds, 244.
Sam, on principle, 374.
Sam, on oysters, 371.
Sam, on post-boys and don-
keys, 370.
Sam, the sentinel, 434.
On widows, 524.
Sam, and Job Trotter, 513.
(Tears), 514.
As a philosopher, 514.
Sam's opinion of "weal pie,"
514.
Sam, and the Sawbones, 514.
On social proprieties, 515.
Among the fashionable foot-
men, 515.
Sam at a footman's "swarry,"
515.
Sam and the fat boy, 516.
His compliments, 517.
At home, 517.
Sam, and his mother-in-law,
517.
Sam and Rev. Mr. Stiggins,
518.
Imprisoned for debt, 518.
Sam and his father, 520.
Father and son, 520.
Mrs., and Mr. Stiggins, 520.
WILL-A contested (See Courts),
126-7.
(See Funeral, the request of,
etc.), 201.
Won't and can't, 525.
Depositary of human pas-
sions, 525.
Making of a, 525.
Mr. Boffin's "tight," 526.
Of Charles Dickens, 201.
WILFER-Mrs., her dress, 159.
Reginald, the conventional
cherub, 79.
Mrs., the frosty, 530.
WILKINS-Samuel, 80.
WILLET-John, the landlord, 257.
The oozing of his ideas, 245.
Argument a gift, etc., 22.
Mr., his face and laugh, 180.
WILLIAM-Mr. and Mrs., 80.
WIND-Change of, 356.
Leaves, clouds, autumn, 174.
Charged with aroma, 23.
At twilight, 29.
And fire (See Fire), 195.
A winter, 526.
And snow, 526.
The east, of Mr. Jarndyce,
526.
A gale of, 526.
|
WOMEN
WIND-Whistling of the, 527.
Storm, at night, 527.
A solemn sound, 527.
An easterly in London, 527.
A penetrating, 527.
An angry, 527.
The west, 528.
Around a church, 528.
WINDOWs-Of the heart, and shut-
ters, 219.
WINE (See Sleep), 444.
Not wine, but salmon (Son
Drunkenness), 162.
Pickwick after, 152.
Aroma of, 23.
The broken cask, 528.
Journey of a bottle of, 529.
Old, 529.
its expres
WINK-(See "Eye;
sion), 179.
530.
A slow, 530.
WINKING-A vent, 61.
WINKLE-On horseback, 228.
As a sportsman, 452.
In Court, 124.
WINTER-(See Frost), 201.
Day, a, 530.
A ride in, 530.
WISDOM-Age of (See Revolution),
399.
WIT-And money, 530.
A social, 80.
WITNESS-Winkle as a, 124.
Evidence of, 173.
Examination of Sam Weller,
122.
WOLF-His opinion of Shakspeare,
434.
WOMAN - Deal lightly with her
faults, 530.
Her perceptions, 530.
Her influence, 280.
A stately, 530.
The frosty Mrs. Wilfer, 530.
A quarrelsome, 530,
Madame Defarge, the tigress,
531.
An angelic, 531.
An old bundle of clothes, 531.
A handsome, 531.
A brave and tender, 531.
Toots' opinion of, 531.
An old, 531.
Influence of a true, 532.
A betrothed, 532.
Tackleton's opinion of, 532.
A delicate, 532.
An enraged, 532.
A merciful (See Todgers), 50.
A true (See Devotion of Little
Dorrit), 146.
A lucifer (See Spinster), 452.
A forcible (See Grammar), 211.
An ugly old, 192.
A knitting, 256.
Dress of an artificial, 159.
As a lawyer (See Sally Brass),
264.
A little, 274.
A wicked, 210.
A she devil, 533.
An unselfish, Miss Pross, 533.
An edge tool (Rosa Dartle),
533.
A sharp (Rosa Dartle), 533.
An artificial, 533.
Of fashion, paralyzed, 534.
Of fashion, 534.
Sympathy for a fallen, 534.
Instincts and prejudices of
534.
Influence of a good, 534.
Her revenge on dress, 534.
Character of Mrs. Bagnet, 531
Mrs. Bagnet as a true, 535.
Her devotion, 535.
Her better nature, 535.
Her art at home, 535.
WOMEN-Fainting, 532,
As drivers, 532.
Pretty, 532.
Wolf-like, 533.
Elderly, 533.
Rights of, 531.
WOMEN
564
WOMEN-(See Betsey Trotwood), 46. | WORLD-The material and moral,538
(See Female Characters), 83.
Like adverbs (See Dingwall),
65.
Outcast, 351,
American, 14.
Opinion of husbands, 243.
Inmates of a hospital, 230.
Reformers, 394.
The knitting (See Revolution),
401.
(See "Florence”), 275.
(See Dolly Varden), 83.
The world's homage to, 219.
Inquisitive, 535.
WOPSLE'S READING, 391.
WORD-Of honor, 227.
The last a new injury, 536.
WORDS, 536.
And high sounding phrases,
536.
Versus oaths, 536.
Parade of, 536.
To be economized, 536.
In earnest, 536.
Their influence, 536.
WORKINGMEN—Of England, 184, 537.
Troubles of, 537.
WORKING PEOPLE, 536.
WORKSHOP-Gabriel Varden's, 538.
WORLD-The, 538.
A battlefield, 538.
Its hollowness, 539.
Opinion of the, 539.
Toots' idea of the, 539.
Its idea of bankruptcy, 36.
Of fashion; its management,
189.
The social, 190.
Its credulity and incredulity,
193.
Its travellers (See Destiny),
145.
Its idea of duty, 165.
WOUNDS-Of affection, 10.
WREN, JENNY - Her memory of
flowers and angels, 197.
The funeral of "the poor
boy," 203.
WRITE-Kit learning to, 541.
WRITER-Public, 542.
The begging letter, 43.
A smeary, 540.
WRITING-Short-hand, 539, 540.
Attempts of ignorance, 540.
An ecstasy of pen and ink,
540.
Efforts of Sam Weller, 540.
"Wery large" (See Death of
Jo), 141.
541.
Dick Swiveller as a corre-
spondent, 541.
YOUTH
WRITING-Of Joe Gargery, 541.
Preparations for, 541.
Of a beginner, 541.
A letter, 541.
WRITING-DESK-A spattered, 541.
Y.
YARD-Timber, 481.
YAWN-An unfinished, 542.
YEAR-The last stroke of the bell
45.
New, 542.
The old and new, 542.
YEARS-Death of, 542.
The declining of life, 272.
YES-Its expression, 543.
YOUNG-The death of the, 140,
144.
YOUTH-Its early experience in
church, 102.
And age, a contrast, 90.
The death of Paul Dombey,
143.
Depraved, 543.
Depravity of, 543.
(See Girlhood).
(See Boy), 52.
(See Child, etc.), 88, 91.
A precocious, 261.
The influence of austerity
upon, 27.
ne

MAY
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DATE DUE

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DEC 3 @ 1991
NOV 1 7 1982
TO
MAY 1 1989
MAR, 2.81999
APR 15
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