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 ' — ^ 
 
 THE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 With Introductions, Arguments, etc. 
 VOLUME XII 
 
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 MvtfM ----.,- i..^ M0MH *--■-.. 
 
 A TALE OF TWO CITIES 
 
 UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
 LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES 
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE 
 
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 Boston MW*®ovk 
 
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 ARGUMENT. 
 
 The " Two Cities" are London and Paris. The "Tale" 
 is divided into three books, the action of the first beginning 
 in 1775. 
 
 Jarvis Lorry, an English gentleman and confidential 
 agent of the banking-house of Tellson and Company, goes 
 to Paris at the request of his firm to seek out a French 
 physician, Dr. Alexandre Manette, who had been secretly 
 imprisoned in the Bastille, during eighteen years, for 
 political reasons. Lorry is accompanied by Lucie Ma- 
 nette, daughter of the physician, who had believed her. 
 father dead. 
 
 At Paris they discover the old Doctor living in a soli- 
 tary, demented state, making shoes. They persuade him 
 to accompany them to London, where his mental condi- 
 tion slowly improves, though subject to occasional lapses. 
 
 The second book takes up the narrative five years 
 later— in 1780. V ': 
 
 Charles Darnay, a French gentleman earning a quiet 
 livelihood in London as a tutor, is tried at the Old Bailey 
 for treason, being charged with supplying the French 
 throne with information detrimental to England. Doctor 
 Manette and his daughter are present, the latter reluctantly 
 testifying to facts which threaten Darnay with conviction. 
 But he is saved by a question of identities arising, when 
 it is found that a bystander, Sydney Carton, resembles 
 him greatly. This- fact disturbs the prosecutor's chain 
 of evidence, and Darnay is acquitted. 
 
 Both Carton and Darnay become frequent callers at the 
 Manette home, as suitors for Lucie's hand. Carton, who 
 has led a reckless, dissipated life, has no assured means 
 of support and so does not press his suit. He reveals his 
 heart to Lucie, however, and begs her to remember that 
 he would make any sacrifice — even life itself — to render 
 her happy. 
 
 XXV 
 
xxvi ARGUMENT. 
 
 Darnay is the accepted suitor, and marries Lucie with 
 the approval of her father, their good friend Lorry, and 
 the devoted nurse, Miss Pross. 
 
 Meantime public affairs in France have become more and 
 more turbulent. The common people, borne down by the 
 cruel wrongs of centuries, are beginning to rise and plan 
 riot and murder. Charles Darnay's uncle, the Marquis 
 de St. Evremonde, is murdered in his bed; and the mob 
 later sets fire to his chateau, and threatens the life of Ga- 
 belle, his collector of rents and taxes. Darnay, though 
 his uncle's heir, has preferred to remain in England rather 
 than live off a people whom he feels to be oppressed. To 
 him Gabelle writes a letter praying protection. Although 
 the waves of revolution are rising, Darnay cannot resist 
 this appeal from his servant, but goes to France to his 
 relief, without telling even his wife. 
 
 The third book finds Darnay in the toils of the French 
 Revolution in 1792. Being an "aristocrat," he is seized 
 and imprisoned. His wife and her father hasten to Paris 
 to succour him. Lorry is also there at this time. Old 
 Doctor Manette finds favour with the mob by reason of 
 the fact that he was a former Bastille prisoner. 
 
 Darnay is brought before the improvised Tribunal 
 and through the popularity and pleading of the Doctor 
 is released. But the same day he is rearrested on another 
 charge, through the implacable animosity of the wife of 
 Defarge the wine-seller. 
 
 This time the Tribunal sentences the prisoner to death 
 by the guillotine within twenty-four hours. His case 
 is well-nigh hopeless, when Sydney Carton arrives on 
 the scene, and obtains entrance into the 'prison by threat- 
 ening to testify against a turnkey whom he recognises as a 
 spy. He drugs Darnay, exchanges clothes with him, 
 and effects the prisoner's escape by himself remaining in 
 his stead. The resemblance between the two men had 
 been previously of service, and is now strong enough to 
 prevent detection. 
 
 Darnay, Lucie, the Doctor, and their constant iriend 
 Lorry make their way to England and safety; while Car- 
 ton goes to the guillotine for the husband of the woman 
 he loves. He mounts the scaffold in the calmness of genu- 
 ine triumph — triumph in the prophetic knowledge that 
 all this woe and carnage must give place to a grander na- 
 
 
 
PREFACE. xxvii 
 
 tion and true liberty; triumph that his own hitherto 
 useless life has gone out in splendid service whose memory 
 will never die among the loved ones he has preserved to 
 peace and happiness. His thoughts are tinged only by 
 the glow of self-sacrifice. 
 
 " It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever 
 done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have 
 ever known." 
 
 J. Walker McSpadden: Synopses of Dickens's Novels. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 When I was acting, with my children and friends, in 
 Mr. Wilkie Collins' s drama of The Frozen Deep, T 
 first conceived the main idea of this story. A strong 
 desire was upon me then, to embody it in my own person; 
 and I traced out in my fancy, the state of mind of which 
 it would necessitate the presentation to an observant 
 spectator, with particular care and interest. 
 
 As the idea became familiar to me, it gradually shaped 
 itself into its present form. Throughout its execution, 
 it has had complete possession of me; I have so far verified 
 what is done and suffered in these pages, as that I have 
 certainly done and suffered it all myself. 
 
 Whenever any reference (however slight) is made here 
 to the condition of the French people before or during the 
 Revolution, it is truly made on the faith of the most 
 trustworthy witnesses. It has been one of my hopes to add 
 something to the popular and picturesque means of un- 
 derstanding that terrible time, though no one can hope to 
 add anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle's wonder- 
 ful book. 
 
CHARACTERS. 
 
 Sydney Carton, law student and idler. 
 
 Roger Cly, police spy. 
 
 Jeremiah Cruncher, porter for Tellson and Co. 
 
 Mrs. Cruncher, his wife. 
 
 "Young Jerry" Cruncher, his son. 
 
 Charles Darnay, adopted name of a French gentleman living in 
 
 England. 
 
 Mrs. Lucie Darnay, nee Manette, his wife. 
 
 Lucie Darnay, their daughter. 
 
 Ernest Defarge, French wine-seller. 
 
 Mme. Therese Defarge, his wife. 
 
 Theophile Gabelle, French tax-collector. 
 
 Gaspard, French assassin. 
 
 Jacques, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, French revolutionisi 
 
 Jarvis Lorry, agent of Tellson and Co. 
 
 Dr. Alexandre Manette, rescued French prisoner. 
 
 Lucie Manette, his daughter; later, Mrs. Darnay. 
 
 Miss Pross, her nurse. 
 
 Solomon Pross, alias John Barsad, her brother; police spy. 
 
 Marquis de St. Evremonde, uncle to Charles Darnay. 
 
 Mr. Stryver, a bullying lawyer. 
 
 Tellson and Company, bankers. 
 
 "The Vengeance," French revolutionist. 
 
 English: Coachman, guard, jailers, judge, lawyers. 
 
 French: Wood-sawyer, turnkeys, Tribunal, mob. 
 
 xxvm 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 BOOK THE FIRST— RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Period, . 1 
 
 II. The Mail, 4 
 
 III. The Night Shadows, 9 
 
 IV. The Preparation, 13 
 
 V. The Wine-shop, . . . ... . , 25 
 
 VI. The Shoemaker, .35 
 
 BOOK THE SECOND— THE GOLDEN THREAD 
 
 I. Five Years Later, .....,, 47 
 
 II. A Sight, 53 
 
 III. A Disappointment, . 59 
 
 IV. Congratulatory, . .72 
 
 V. The Jackal, 78 
 
 VI. Hundreds of People, 84 
 
 VII. Monseigneur in Town 96 
 
 VIII. Monseigneur in the Country, 104 
 
 IX. The Gorgon's Head, 110 
 
 X. Two Promises 121 
 
 XI. A Companion Picture, ....... 128 
 
 XII. The Fellow of Delicacy 132 
 
 XIII. The Fellow of no Delicacy, 139 
 
 XIV. The Honest Tradesman, 144 
 
 XV. Knitting, 154 
 
 XVI. Still Knitting, 165 
 
 XVII. One Night, . . 175 
 
 XVIII. Nine Days, .... . . , . .180 
 
 XIX. An Opinion, 186 
 
 XX. A Plea, 194 
 
 XXI. Echoing Footsteps, 197 
 
 xxix 
 
xxx> CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PA6B 
 
 XXII. The Sea still Rises, ....... 208 
 
 XXIII. Fire Rises, 214 
 
 XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock 221 
 
 BOOK THE THIRD— THE TRACK OP A STORM. 
 
 I. In Secret, . 233 
 
 II. The Grindstone, ....... 244 
 
 III. The Shadow, 251 
 
 IV. Calm in Storm 255 
 
 V. The Wood-sawyer, 261 
 
 VI. Triumph, 267 
 
 VII. A Knock at the Door, . 273 
 
 VIII. A Hand at Cards, .278 
 
 IX. The Game Made, ........ 291 
 
 X. The Substance of the Shadow, . . . .303 
 
 XI. Dusk 317 
 
 XII. Darkness, 321 
 
 XIII. Fifty-two, 329 
 
 XTV. The Knitting Done, 341 
 
 XV. The Footsteps die out For evei; . . . . .353 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 IN THEEE BOOKS. 
 
 BOOK THE FIRST-RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PERIOD. 
 
 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, 
 it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it 
 was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, 
 it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it 
 was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we 
 had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we 
 were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct 
 the other way — in short, the period was so far like the 
 present period., that some of its noisiest authorities insisted 
 on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative 
 degree of comparison only. 
 
 There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a 
 plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king 
 with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne 
 of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to 
 the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, th^t 
 things in general were settled for ever. 
 
 It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred 
 and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to 
 England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. South- 
 cett had .recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed 
 birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards 
 had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that 
 arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London 
 
2 * A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid 
 only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, 
 as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally 
 deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages 
 in the earthly order of events had lately come to the Eng- 
 lish Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects 
 in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more 
 important to the human race than any communications yet 
 received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood. 
 
 France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spir- 
 itual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with 
 exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and 
 spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, 
 she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achieve- 
 ments 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 honour 
 to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his 
 view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is 
 likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and 
 Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was 
 put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to 
 come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain 
 movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible 
 in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses 
 of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there 
 were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, 
 bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and 
 roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had al- 
 ready set apart to be his tumbrils of the Kevolution. Bvrt 
 that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceas- 
 ingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went 
 about with muffled tread : the rather, forasmuch as to en- 
 tertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be 
 atheistical and traitorous. 
 
 In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and 
 protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burg- 
 laries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in 
 the capital itself every night; families were publicly cau- 
 tioned not to go out of town without removing their furni- 
 ture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highway- 
 man in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, 
 being recognised and challenged by his fellow- tradesman 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 3 
 
 whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gah 
 lantly 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 ammunition : " after which 
 the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, 
 the Lord Mayor of Loudon, was made to stand and deliver 
 on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled 
 the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners 
 in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, ami 
 the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, 
 loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off 
 diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court 
 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 occurrences 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 
 housebreaker 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 murderer, and 
 to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had. robbed a farmer's 
 boy of sixpence. 
 
 All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass 
 in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven 
 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 Greatnesses, 
 and myriads of small creatures — the creatures of this 
 chronicle among the rest — along the roads that lay before 
 them. 
 
4 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE MAIL. 
 
 It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late 
 in November, before the first of the persons with whom 
 this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, 
 beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill. 
 He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as 
 the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the 
 least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, 
 but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and 
 the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times 
 already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach 
 across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back 
 to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, 
 however, in combination, had read that article of war which 
 forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argu- 
 ment, that some brute animals are endued with Reason; 
 and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty. 
 
 With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed 
 their way through the thick mud, floundering and stum- 
 bling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at 
 the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and 
 brought them to a stand, with a wary "Wo-ho! so-ho- 
 then ! " the hear leader violently shook his head and every- 
 thing upon it — like an unusually emphatic horse, denying 
 that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the 
 leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a ner- 
 vous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind. 
 
 There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had 
 roamed in its f orlornness 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 labouring horses steamed into it, as if 
 they had made it all. 
 
 Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 5 
 
 the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped 
 to the cheek-bones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. 
 Not one of the three could have said, from anything he 
 saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was 
 hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of 
 the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two com- 
 panions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being 
 confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road 
 might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the 
 latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could pro- 
 duce somebody in "the Captain's" pay, ranging from the 
 landlord to the lowest stable nondescript, it was the likeli- 
 est thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail 
 thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one 
 thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up 
 Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch be- 
 hind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a 
 hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunder- 
 buss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, de- 
 posited on a substratum of cutlass. 
 
 The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the 
 guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected 
 one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody 
 else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; 
 as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have 
 taken his oath on the Two Testaments that they were not 
 fit for the journey. 
 
 " Wo-ho ! " said the coachman. " So, then ! One more 
 pull and you're at the top and be damned to you, for I 
 nave had trouble enough to get you to it ! — Joe ! " 
 
 " Halloa ! " the guard replied. 
 
 " What o'clock do you make it, Joe? " 
 
 "Ten minutes, good, past eleven." 
 
 "My blood! " ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not 
 atop of Shooter's yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you ! " 
 
 The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most de- 
 cided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the 
 three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover 
 mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers 
 squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the 
 coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If 
 any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to 
 another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and dark- 
 
6 A TALE OF TWO CTTIE& 
 
 ness, he would have put himself iu a fair way of getting 
 shot instantly as a highwayman. 
 
 The last burst carried, the mail to the summit of the hill. 
 The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got 
 down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the 
 coach-door to let the passengers in. 
 
 " Tst ! Joe ! " cried the coachman in a warning voice, 
 looking down from his box. 
 
 " What do you say, Tom? " 
 
 They both listened. 
 
 "I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe." 
 
 "2 say a horse at a gallop, Tom," returned the guard, 
 leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his 
 place." " Gentlemen ! In the king's name, all of you ! " 
 
 With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, 
 and stood on the offensive. 
 
 The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach- 
 step, getting in; the two other passengers were close be- 
 hind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, 
 half in the coach and half out of it ; they remained in the 
 road below him. They all looked from the coachman to 
 the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and lis- 
 tened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked 
 back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and 
 looked back, without contradicting. 
 
 The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling 
 and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the 
 night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the 
 horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as 
 if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the pas- 
 sengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any 
 rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out 
 of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses 
 quickened by expectation. 
 
 The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously 
 up the hill. 
 
 " So-ho ! " the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. 
 " Yo there ! Stand ! I shall fire ! " 
 
 The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splash- 
 ing and floundering, a man's voice called from the mist f 
 "Is that the Dover mail? " 
 
 " Never you mind what it is ! " the guard retorted. 
 "What are you?" 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. ' 
 
 "Is that the Dover mail? " 
 
 " Why do you want to know? n 
 
 "I want a passenger, if it is." 
 
 " What passenger? " 
 
 "Mr. Jarvis Lorry." 
 
 Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was 
 his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other 
 passengers eyed him distrustfully. 
 
 "Keep where you are," the guard called to the voice in 
 the mist, " because, if I should make a mistake, it could 
 never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name 
 of Lorry answer straight." 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked the passenger, then, with 
 mildly quavering speech. " Who wants me? Is it Jerry? " 
 
 ("I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry," growled 
 the guard to himself. "He's hoarser than suits me, is 
 Jerry.") 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Lorry." 
 
 " What is the matter? " 
 
 "A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and 
 Co." 
 
 "I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting 
 down into the road — assisted from behind more swiftly 
 than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately 
 scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up 
 the window. "He may come close; there's . nothing 
 wrong." 
 
 "I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of 
 that," said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. "Hallo you! " 
 
 " Well ! And hallo you ! " said Jerry, more hoarsely 
 than before. 
 
 "Come on at a footpace! d'ye mind me? And if you've 
 got holsters to that saddle o' yourn, don't let me see your 
 hand go nigh' em. For I'm a devil at a quick mistake, 
 and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now 
 let's look at you." 
 
 The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the 
 eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the 
 passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his 
 eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded 
 paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and 
 rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse 
 to the hat of the man. 
 
8 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "Guard ! " said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business 
 confidence. 
 
 The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of 
 his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye 
 on the horseman, answered, curtly "Sir." 
 
 " There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's 
 Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am 
 going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may 
 read this? " 
 
 "If so be as you're quick, sir." 
 
 He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, 
 and read — first to himself and then aloud : " ' Wait at 
 Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. 
 Jerry, say that my answer was, recalled to life." 
 
 Jerry started in his saddle. "That's a Blazing strange 
 answer, too," said he, at his hoarsest. 
 
 " Take that message back, and they will know that I re- 
 ceived this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your 
 way. Good night." 
 
 With those words the passenger opened the coach-door 
 and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, 
 who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses 
 in their boots, and were now making a general pretence 
 of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than 
 to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of 
 action. 
 
 The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of 
 mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard 
 soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having 
 looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the 
 supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a 
 smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few 
 smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For 
 he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach- 
 lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occa- 
 sionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, 
 keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a 
 light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in 
 five minutes. 
 
 " Tom ! " softly over the coach roof. 
 
 "Hallo, Joe." 
 
 " Did you hear the message? " 
 
 "I did, Joe." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 9 
 
 " What did you make of it, Tom? " 
 
 "Nothing at all, Joe." 
 
 "That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused, "for I 
 made the same of it myself." 
 
 Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted 
 meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe 
 the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat- 
 brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gal- 
 lon. After standing with the bridle over his heavily- 
 splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer 
 within hearing and the night was quite still again, he 
 turned to walk down the hill. " After that there gallop 
 from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust your fore-legs till 
 I get you on the level," said this hoarse messenger, glanc- 
 ing at his mare. "'Recalled to life.' That's a Blazing 
 strange message. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry ! 
 I say, Jerry! You'd be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling 
 to life was to come into fashion, Jerry ! " 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 THE NIGHT SHADOWS. 
 
 A. wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human 
 creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mys- 
 tery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter 
 a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clus- 
 tered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in 
 every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beat- 
 ing heart in the hundreds 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 refer- 
 able 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 sub- 
 merged. It was appointed that the book should shut with 
 a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a 
 page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in 
 3 
 
10 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, 
 and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, 
 my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is 
 dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of 
 the secret that was always in that individuality, and which 
 I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the 
 burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a 
 sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in 
 their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them? 
 
 As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inherit- 
 ance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the same 
 possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the 
 richest merchant in London. So with the three passen- 
 gers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old 
 mail coach; they were mysteries to one another, as com- 
 plete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his 
 own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between 
 him and the next. 
 
 The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty 
 often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a 
 tendency to keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat 
 cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted very well 
 with that decoration, being of a surface black, with no 
 depth in the colour 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 ex- 
 pression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered 
 spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, 
 which descended nearly to the wearer's knees. When he 
 stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with his left 
 hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his right; 
 as soon as that was done, he muffled again. 
 
 " No, Jerry, no ! " said the messenger, harping on one 
 theme as he rode. " It wouldn't do for you, Jerry. Jerry, 
 you honest tradesman, it wouldn't suit your line of busi- 
 ness! Eecalled — ! Bust me if I don't think he'd been a 
 drinking ! " 
 
 His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he 
 was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his 
 head. Except on the 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 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. II 
 
 strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of 
 players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most 
 dangerous man in the world to go over. 
 
 While he trotted back with the message he was to de- 
 liver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tell- 
 son's Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater 
 authorities within, the shadows of the night took such 
 shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such 
 shapes to the mare as arose out of her private topics of un- 
 easiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at 
 every shadow on the road. 
 
 What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and 
 bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscru- 
 tables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the 
 night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes 
 and wandering thoughts suggested. 
 
 Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the 
 bank passenger — with an arm drawn through the leathern 
 strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding 
 against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, 
 whenever the coach got a special jolt — nodded in his place, 
 with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the 
 coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky 
 bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a 
 great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was 
 the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five 
 minutes than even Tellson's, with all its foreign and home 
 connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong- 
 rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valu- 
 able stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and 
 it was not a little that he knew about them), opened be- 
 fore him, and he went in among them with the great keys 
 and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and 
 strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them. 
 
 But, though the bank was almost always with him, and 
 though the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of 
 pain under an opiate) was always with him, there was an- 
 other current of impression that never ceased to run, all 
 through the night. He was on his way to dig some one 
 out of a grave. 
 
 Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed them- 
 selves before him was the true face of the^ buried person, 
 the shadows of the night did not indicate; but they were 
 
12 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 air the faces of a man of five-and-forty by years, and they 
 differed principally in the passions they expressed, and in 
 the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, 
 contempt, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, 
 succeeded one another; so did varieties of sunken cheek, 
 cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and figures. But the 
 face was in the main one face, and every head was prema- 
 turely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger in- 
 quired of this spectre : 
 
 " Buried how long? " 
 
 The answer was always the same: "Almost eighteen 
 years." 
 
 " You had abandoned all hope of being dug out? " 
 
 "Long ago." 
 
 " You know that you are recalled to life? " 
 
 "They tell me so." 
 
 "I hope you care to live? " 
 
 "I can't say." 
 
 " Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her? " 
 
 The answers to this question were various and contra- 
 dictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, "Wait! It 
 would kill me if I saw her too soon." Sometimes, it was 
 given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, " Take me 
 to her." Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and 
 then it was, " I don't know her. I don't understand." 
 
 After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his 
 fancy would dig, and dig, dig — now with a spade, now 
 with a great key, now with his hands — to dig this wretched 
 creature out. Got out at last, with earth hanging about his 
 face and hair, he would suddenly fall away to dust. The 
 passenger would then start to himself, and lower the win- 
 dow, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek. 
 
 Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and 
 rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and the 
 hedge at the roadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows 
 outside the coach would fall into the train of the night 
 shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, 
 the real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, 
 the real express sent after him, and the real message re- 
 turned, would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the 
 ghostly face would rise, and he would accost it again. 
 
 " Buried how long? " 
 
 "Almost eighteen years." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 13 
 
 "I hope you care to live? " 
 
 "I can't say." 
 
 Dig — dig — dig — until an impatient movement from one 
 of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the 
 window, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, 
 and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his 
 mind lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into 
 the bank and the grave. 
 
 "Buried how long? " 
 
 "Almost eighteen years." 
 
 " You had abandoned all hope of being dug out? " 
 
 "Long ago." 
 
 The words were still in his hearing as just spoken — dis- 
 tinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his 
 life — when the weary passenger started to the conscious- 
 ness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night 
 were gone. 
 
 He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising 
 sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough 
 upon it where it had been left last night when the horses 
 were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice- wood, in which 
 many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still re- 
 mained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and 
 wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, 
 and beautiful. 
 
 "Eighteen years!-" said the passenger, looking at the 
 sun. " Gracious Creator of day ! To be buried alive for 
 eighteen years ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PREPARATION. 
 
 When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course 
 of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George 
 Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did 
 it with some nourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from 
 London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an 
 adventurous traveller upon. 
 
 By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller 
 left to be congratulated : for the two others had been set 
 
14 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 down at their respective roadside destinations. The mil- 
 dewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, 
 its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a 
 larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking 
 himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy 
 wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a 
 larger sort of dog. 
 
 "There will be a packet to Calais, to-morrow, drawer?" 
 
 " Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets toler- 
 able fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in 
 the afternoon, sir. Bed, sir? " 
 
 "I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, 
 and a barber." 
 
 "And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if 
 you please. Show Concord! Gentleman's valise and hot 
 water to Concord. Pull off gentleman's boots in Concord. 
 (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to 
 Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord ! " 
 
 The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a 
 passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being 
 always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room 
 had the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal 
 George, that although but one kind of man was seen to 
 go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of 
 it. Consequently, another drawer, and two porters, and 
 several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by 
 accident at various points of the road between the Con- 
 cord and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, 
 formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well 
 worn, but very well kept, with large square cuffs and large 
 flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to his break- 
 fast. 
 
 The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, 
 than the gentleman in brown. His breakfast- table was 
 drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its light shining 
 on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still, that he might 
 have been sitting for his portrait. 
 
 Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on 
 each knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon un- 
 der his flapped waistcoat, as though it pitted its gravity 
 and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the 
 brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it, 
 for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 15 
 
 a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, 
 were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, 
 setting very close to his head : which wig, it is to be pre- 
 sumed, 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 stock- 
 ings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon 
 the neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted 
 in the sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed 
 and quieted, was still lighted up under the quaint wig by 
 a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost their 
 owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the com- 
 posed and reserved expression of Tellson's Bank. He had 
 a healthy colour 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 occu- 
 pied with the cares of other people; and perhaps sec- 
 ond-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off 
 and on. 
 
 Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for 
 his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival 
 of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, 
 as he moved his chair to it: 
 
 " I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who 
 may come here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr. 
 Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentleman from 
 Tellson's Bank. Please to let me know." 
 
 " Yes, sir. Tellson's Bank in London, sir? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain 
 your gentlemen in their travelling backwards and forwards 
 betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, 
 sir, in Tellson and Company's House." 
 
 " Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an 
 English one." 
 
 " Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling 
 yourself, I think, sir? " 
 
 " Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we — since X 
 — came last from France." . 
 
 " Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Be- 
 fore our people's time here, sir. The George was in other 
 hands at that time, sir." 
 
 "I believe so." 
 
16 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like 
 Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not 
 to speak of fifteen years ago? " 
 
 " You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, 
 yet not be far from the truth." 
 
 " Indeed, sir ! " 
 
 Bounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped 
 backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin 
 from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable 
 attitude, and stood surveying the guest while he ate and. 
 drank, as from an observatory or watch-tower. According 
 to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages. 
 
 When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out 
 for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town 
 of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head 
 into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was 
 a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, 
 and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was de- 
 struction. 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 flavour 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 stroll- 
 ing about by night, and looking seaward : particularly at 
 those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small 
 tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes un- 
 accountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable 
 that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamp- 
 lighter. 
 
 As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, 
 which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the 
 French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist 
 and vapour, Mr. Lorry's thoughts seemed to cloud too. 
 When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, 
 awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his 
 mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red 
 coals. 
 
 A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the 
 red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to 
 throw him out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a long 
 time, and had just poured out his last glassful of wine with 
 as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 17 
 
 found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who 
 has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels 
 came up the narrow street, and rumbled into the inn- 
 yard. 
 
 He set down his glass untouched. " This is Mam'selle ! " 
 said he. 
 
 In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce 
 that Miss Manette had arrived from London, and would be 
 happy to see the gentleman from Tellson's. 
 
 " So soon? » 
 
 Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, 
 and required none then, and was extremely anxious to see 
 the gentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it suited his 
 pleasure and convenience. 
 
 The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but 
 to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle 
 his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter 
 to Miss Manette' s apartment. It was a large, dark room, 
 furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and 
 loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and 
 oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle 
 of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if 
 they were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and 
 no light to speak of could be expected from them until they 
 were dug out. 
 
 The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. 
 Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, 
 supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some ad- 
 jacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he 
 saw standing to receive him by the table between them and 
 the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a rid- 
 ing-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its 
 ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, 
 pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes 
 that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead 
 with a singular capacity (remembering how young and 
 smooth it was), of lifting and knitting itself into an ex- 
 pression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or 
 alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it in- 
 cluded all the four expressions — as his eyes rested on these 
 things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a 
 child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across 
 that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted 
 
18 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed, away,, 
 like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass be- 
 hind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of 
 negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were offer- 
 ing black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of 
 the feminine gender — and he made his formal bow to Miss 
 Manette. 
 
 "Pray take a seat, sir." In a very clear and pleasant 
 young voice; a little foreign in its accent, but a very little 
 indeed. 
 
 "I kiss your hand, miss," said Mr. Lorry, with the man- 
 ners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, 
 and took his seat. 
 
 " I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, in- 
 forming me that some intelligence — or discovery — : — " 
 
 "The word is not material, miss; either word will do." 
 
 " — respecting the small property of my poor father, 
 whom I never saw — so long dead " 
 
 Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look 
 towards the hospital procession of negro cupids. As if 
 they had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets ! 
 
 " — rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there 
 to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as 
 to be despatched to Paris for the purpose." 
 
 "Myself." 
 
 "As I was prepared to hear, sir." 
 
 She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in 
 those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that she 
 felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made 
 her another bow. 
 
 " I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered 
 necessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as to 
 advise me, that I should go to Prance, and that as I am an 
 orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I should 
 esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself, 
 during the journey, under that worthy gentleman' s protec- 
 tion. The gentleman had left London, but I think a mes- 
 senger was sent after him to beg the favour of his waiting 
 for me here." 
 
 "I was happy," said Mr. Lorry, "to be entrusted with 
 the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it." 
 
 " Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. 
 It was told me by the Bank that the gentleman would ex- 
 
. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 19 
 
 plain to me the details of the business, and that I must 
 prepare myself to find them of a surprising nature. I have 
 done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a 
 strong and eager interest to know what they are." 
 
 " Naturally," said Mr. Lorry. " Yes— I " 
 
 After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen 
 wig at the ears, 
 
 "It is very difficult to begin." 
 
 He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. 
 The young forehead lifted itself into that singular ex' 
 pression — but it was pretty and characteristic, besides 
 being singular — and she raised her hand, as if with an 
 involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing 
 shadow. 
 
 "Are you quite a stranger to me, sir? " 
 
 " Am I not? " Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and ex- 
 tended them outwards with an argumentative smile. 
 
 Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine 
 nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was 
 possible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took 
 ner seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hith- 
 erto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, 
 and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on : 
 
 " In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better 
 than address you as a young English lady, Miss Manette? " 
 
 "If you please, sir." 
 
 " Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a busi- 
 ness charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, 
 don't heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine 
 — truly, I am not much else. I will, with your leave, re- 
 late to you, miss, the story of one of our customers." 
 
 " Story ! " 
 
 He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had re- 
 peated, when he added, in a hurry, "Yes, customers; in 
 the banking business we usually call our connection our 
 customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific gen- 
 tleman; a man of great acquirements — a Doctor." 
 
 "Not of Beauvais? " 
 
 " Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your 
 father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur 
 Manette, your father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. 
 I had the honour of knowing him there. Our relations 
 were business relations, but confidential I was at that 
 
20 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 time in our French House, and had been — oh! twenty 
 years." 
 
 " At that time — I may ask, at what time, sir? " 
 
 " I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married — an 
 English lady — and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, 
 like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and French 
 families, were entirely in Tellson's hands. In a similar 
 way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for 
 scores of our customers. These are mere business rela- 
 tions, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular 
 interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one 
 to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass 
 from one of our customers to another in the course of my 
 business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere 
 machine. To go on " 
 
 " But this is my father's story, sir; and I begin to think " 
 — the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon 
 him — " that when I was left an orphan through my moth- 
 er's surviving my father only two years, it was you who 
 brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you." 
 
 Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly 
 advanced to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to 
 his lips. He then conducted the young lady straightway 
 to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back with his 
 left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his chin, pull 
 his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking 
 down into her face while she sat looking up into his. 
 
 " Miss Manette, it was I. And you will see how truly I 
 spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and 
 that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are 
 mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never 
 seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson's 
 House since, and I have been busy with the other business 
 of Tellson's House since. Feelings! I have no time for 
 them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in 
 turning an immense pecuniary Mangle." 
 
 After this odd description of his daily routine of em- 
 ployment, Mr. Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon his head 
 with both hands (which was most unnecessary, for nothing 
 could be flatter than its shining surface was before), and 
 resumed his former attitude. 
 
 "So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story 
 of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 21 
 
 your father had not died when he did Don't be fright- 
 ened ! How you start ! " 
 
 She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with 
 both her hands. 
 
 "Pray," said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his 
 left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the sup- 
 plicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble : 
 "pray control your agitation — a matter of business. As I 
 was saying " 
 
 Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, 
 and began anew: 
 
 "As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; 
 if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had 
 been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to 
 what dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if 
 he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a 
 privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest 
 people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water 
 there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms 
 for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison 
 for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, 
 the queen, the court, for any tidings of him, and all quite 
 in vain; — then the history of your father would have been 
 the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of 
 Beauvais." 
 
 " I entreat you to tell me more, sir. " 
 
 " I will. I am going to. You can bear it? " 
 
 " I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me 
 in at this moment." 
 
 " You speak collectedly, and you — are collected. That's 
 good ! " (Though his manner was less satisfied than his 
 words.) "A matter of business. Eegard it as a matter 
 of business — business that must be done. Now if this 
 doctor's wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, 
 had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little 
 child was born " 
 
 "The little child was a daughter, sir." 
 
 "A daughter. A— a — matter of business — don't be dis- 
 tressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely 
 before her little child was born, that she came to the de- 
 termination of sparing the poor child the inheritance of 
 any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by 
 rearing her in the belief that her father was dead No, 
 
22 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 don't kneel! In Heaven's name why should you kneel to 
 me!" 
 
 "For the truth. dear, good, compassionate sir, for 
 the truth!" 
 
 " A — a matter of business. You confuse me, and how 
 can I transact business if I am confused? Let us be clear- 
 headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, 
 what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in 
 twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be 
 so much more at my ease about your state of mind." 
 
 Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so 
 still when he had very gently raised her, and the hands 
 that had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much more 
 steady than they had been, that she communicated some 
 reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry. 
 
 "That's right, that's right. Courage! Business! You 
 have business before you; useful business. Miss Manette, 
 your mother took this course with you. And when she 
 died — I believe broken-hearted — having never slackened 
 her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two 
 years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, 
 without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty 
 whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or 
 wasted there through many lingering years." 
 
 As he said the words he looked down, with an admir- 
 ing pity, on the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to 
 himself that it might have been already tinged with 
 grey. 
 
 " You know that your parents had no great possession, 
 and that what they had was secured to your mother and to 
 you. There has been no new discovery, of money, or of 
 any other property; but " 
 
 He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The ex- 
 pression in the forehead, which had so particularly at- 
 tracted his notice, and which was now immovable, had 
 deepened into one of pain and horror. 
 
 " But he has been — been found. He is alive. Greatly 
 changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; 
 though we will hope the best. Stilly alive. Your father 
 has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and 
 we are going there : I, to identify him if I can : you, to re- 
 store him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort." 
 
 A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 23 
 
 She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she 
 were saying it in a dream, 
 
 " I am going to see his Ghost ! It will be his Ghost — 
 not him ! " 
 
 Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. 
 " There, there, there ! See now, see now ! The best and 
 the worst are known to you, now. You are well on your 
 way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea 
 voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his 
 dear side." 
 
 She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, " I 
 have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never 
 haunted me ! " 
 
 "Only one thing more," said Mr. Lorry, laying stress 
 upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention : 
 "he has been found under another name; his own, long 
 forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than use- 
 less now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to 
 know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always 
 designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless 
 now to make any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. 
 Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, 
 and to remove him — for a while at all events — out of 
 France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even Tell- 
 son's, important as they are to French credit, avoid all 
 naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of 
 writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service al- 
 together. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all 
 comprehended in the one line, ' Eecalled to Life; ' which 
 may mean anything. But what is the matter! She doesn't 
 notice a word P Miss Manette ! " 
 
 Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her 
 chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her 
 eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expres- 
 sion looking as if it were carved or branded into her fore- 
 head. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared 
 to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he 
 called out loudly for assistance without moving. 
 
 A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. . 
 Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red 
 hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting 
 fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet 
 like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, 
 
24 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in ad. 
 vance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of 
 his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a 
 brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back 
 against the nearest wall. 
 
 (" I really think this must be a man! " was Mr. Lorry's 
 breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming 
 against the wall. ) 
 
 "Why, look at you all!" bawled this figure, addressing 
 the inn servants. " Why don't you go and fetch things, in- 
 stead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much 
 to look at, am I? Why don't you go and fetch things? 
 I'll let you know, if you don't bring smelling-salts, cold 
 water, and vinegar, quick, I will." 
 
 There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, 
 and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her 
 with great skill and gentleness : calling her " my precious ! " 
 and " my bird ! " and spreading her golden hair aside over 
 her shoulders with great pride and care. 
 
 " And you in brown ! " she said, indignantly turning to 
 Mr. Lorry; "couldn't you tell her what you had to tell 
 her, without frightening her to death? Look at her, with 
 her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call that 
 being a Banker? " 
 
 Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a ques- 
 tion so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at a dis- 
 tance, with much feebler sympathy and humility, while the 
 strong woman, having banished the inn servants under the 
 mysterious penalty of " letting them know " something not 
 mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her 
 charge by a regular series of gradations, and* coaxed her to 
 lay her drooping head upon her shoulder. 
 
 "I hope she will do well now," said Mr. Lorry. 
 
 "No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling 
 pretty ! " 
 
 "I hope," said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble 
 sympathy and humility, " that you accompany Miss Ma- 
 nette to France? " 
 
 " A likely thing, too ! " replied the strong woman, " If it 
 was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you 
 suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island? " 
 
 This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis 
 Lorry withdrew to consider it. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 25 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WINE-SHOP. 
 
 A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in 
 trie street. The accident bad happened in getting it out of 
 a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had 
 burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the 
 wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell. 
 
 All the people within reach had suspended their busi- 
 ness, 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, ex- 
 pressly 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 made small 
 mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, di- 
 rected by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and 
 there, to cub 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 champ- 
 ing the moister wine-dotted 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 be- 
 lieved in such a miraculous presence. 
 
 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 
 
26 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 of every one to join some other one, which led, especially 
 among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome em- 
 braces, 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 besmirched, his 
 head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than it 
 it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy 
 wine-lees — Blood. 
 
 The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled 
 on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red 
 upon many there. 
 
 And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a 
 momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, 
 the darkness of it was heavy — cold, dirt, sickness, igno- 
 rance, 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 under- 
 gone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and 
 certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people 
 young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every 
 doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every 
 vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 27 
 
 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 re- 
 peated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood 
 that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the 
 smokeless chimneys, 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; Hunger 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 nar- 
 row winding street, full of offence and stench, with other 
 narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and 
 nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all 
 visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked 
 ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some 
 wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. 
 Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were 
 not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with 
 what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the like- 
 ness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or in- 
 flicting. 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 their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, 
 and were gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was 
 represented in a nourishing condition, save tools and weap- 
 ons; but, the cutler's knives and axes were sharp and 
 bright, the smith's hammers were heavy, and the gun- 
 m'ker'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 
 
28 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the 
 street — when it ran at all: which was only after heavy 
 rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the 
 houses. Across the streets, at 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 tem- 
 pest. 
 
 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 im- 
 proving 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. 
 
 The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others 
 in its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine- 
 shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green 
 breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. 
 "It's not my affair," said he, with a final shrug of the 
 shoulders. " The people from the market did it. Let them 
 bring another." 
 
 There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing 
 up his joke, he called to him across the way : 
 
 " Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there? " 
 
 The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, 
 as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, 
 and completely failed, as is often the way with his tribe 
 too. 
 
 " What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital? " 
 said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliter- 
 ating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for the 
 purpose, and smeared over it. " Why do you write in the 
 public streets? Is there — tell me thou — is there no other 
 place to write such words in? " 
 
 In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (per* 
 haps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. 
 The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring up 
 ward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude, with 
 one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his hand, 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 29 
 
 and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolf- 
 ishly practical character, he looked, under those circum- 
 stances. 
 
 " Put it on, put it on," said the other. " Call wine, wine; 
 and finish there." With that advice, he wiped his soiled 
 hand upon the joker's dress, such as it was — quite deliber- 
 ately, as having dirtied the hand on his account; and then 
 recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop. 
 
 This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-look- 
 ing man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot tem- 
 perament,- for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no 
 coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt- 
 sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare 
 to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his 
 head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He 
 was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold 
 breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the 
 whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a 
 strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable 
 to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on 
 either side, for nothing would turn the man. 
 
 Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the 
 counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout 
 woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that sel- 
 dom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily 
 ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure 
 of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, 
 from which one might have predicated that she did not 
 often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckon- 
 ings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being sen- 
 sitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of 
 bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the con- 
 cealment of her large ear-rings. Her ■knitting was before 
 her, but she had laid it down to *pick her teeth with a 
 toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported 
 by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her 
 lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, 
 in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eye- 
 brows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, sug- 
 gested to her husband that he would do well to look round 
 the shop among the customers, for any new customer who 
 had dropped in while he stepped over the way. 
 
 The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, 
 
30 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young 
 lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were 
 there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three 
 standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of 
 wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice 
 that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady 
 " This is our man. " 
 
 " What the devil do you do in that galley there? " said 
 Monsieur Defarge to himself; "I don't know you." 
 
 But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell 
 into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were 
 drinking at the counter. 
 
 " How goes it, Jacques? " said one of these three to Mon- 
 sieur Defarge. "Is all the spilt wine swallowed? " 
 
 "Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge. , 
 
 When this interchange of Christian name was effected, 
 Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, 
 coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows 
 by the breadth of another line. 
 
 "It is not often," said the second of the three, address^ 
 ing Monsieur Defarge, " that many of these miserable beasts 
 know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and 
 death. Is it not so, Jacques? " 
 
 "It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned. 
 
 At this second, interchange of the Christian name, Ma- 
 dame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound com- 
 posure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her 
 eyebrows by the breadth of another line. 
 
 The last of the three now said his say, as he put down 
 his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips. 
 
 "Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that 
 such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard 
 lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques? " 
 
 " You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur 
 Defarge. 
 
 This third interchange of the Christian name was com- 
 pleted at the moment when Madame Defarge put her tooth- 
 pick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her 
 seat. 
 
 " Hold then ! True ! " muttered her husband . " Gentle- 
 men — my wife ! " 
 
 The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame 
 Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their 
 
A. TALE OF TWO CITIES. 31 
 
 homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. 
 Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, 
 took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and re- 
 pose of spirit, and became absorbed in it. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his right 
 eye observantly upon her, " good day. The chamber, fur- 
 nished bachelor-fashion, that you wished to see, and were 
 inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. 
 The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard 
 close to the left here," pointing with his hand, "near to the 
 window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, 
 one of you has already been there, and can show the way. 
 Gentlemen, adieu ! " 
 
 They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes 
 of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting 
 when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and 
 begged the favour of a word. 
 
 "Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly 
 stepped with him to the door. 
 
 Their conference was very short, but very decided. Al- 
 most at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and be- 
 came deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when 
 he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to 
 the young la.dj, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge 
 knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw 
 nothing. 
 
 Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the 
 wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway 
 to which he had directed his own company just before. It 
 opened from a stinking little black courtyard, and was the 
 general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited 
 by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved 
 entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge 
 bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and 
 put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not 
 at all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had 
 come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour 
 in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had be- 
 come a secret, angry, dangerous man. 
 
 "It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin 
 slowly." Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to 
 Mr. Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs. 
 
 " Is he alone? " the latter whispered. 
 
32 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " Alone ! God help him, who should be with him ! " said 
 the other, in the same low voice. 
 
 " Is he always alone, then? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Of his own desire? " 
 
 " Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him 
 after they found me and demanded to know if I would take 
 him, and, at my peril be discreet — as he was then, so he is 
 now." 
 
 "He is greatly changed? " 
 
 "Changed!" 
 
 The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall 
 with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct 
 answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry's 
 spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two coih- 
 panions ascended higher and higher. 
 
 Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and 
 more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; 
 but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and 
 unhardened senses. Every little habitation within the 
 great foul nest of one high building — that is to say, the 
 room or rooms within every door that opened on the gen- 
 eral staircase — left its own heap of refuse on its own land- 
 ing, besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. 
 The uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so 
 engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty 
 and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible 
 impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost 
 insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep 
 dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to 
 his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion's 
 agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis 
 Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was 
 made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good 
 airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all 
 spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the 
 rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of 
 the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, 
 nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers 
 of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or 
 wholesome aspirations. 
 
 At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they 
 stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper stair- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 33 
 
 case, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, 
 to be ascended, before the garret story was reached. The 
 keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in advance, 
 and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as 
 though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young 
 lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in 
 the pockets of the coat he carried over his shoulder, took 
 out a key. 
 
 " The door is locked then, my friend? " said Mr. Lorry, 
 surprised. 
 
 "Ay. Yes," was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge. 
 
 " You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentle- 
 man so retired? " 
 
 "I think it necessary to turn the key." Monsieur De- 
 farge whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Why ! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that 
 he would be frightened — rave — tear himself to pieces — die 
 — come to I know not what harm — if this door was left 
 open." 
 
 " Is it possible I " exclaimed Mr. Lorry. 
 
 " Is it possible ! " repeated Defarge, bitterly. " Yes. 
 And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and 
 when many other such things are possible, and not only 
 possible, but done — done, see you! — under that sky there, 
 every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on." 
 
 This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, 
 that not a word of it had reached the young lady's ears. 
 But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion, 
 and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and, above all, 
 such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent on 
 him to speak a word or two of reassurance. 
 
 " Courage, dear miss ! Courage ! Business ! The worst 
 will be over in a moment; it is but passing the room-door, 
 and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to 
 him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, be- 
 gin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side. 
 That's well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, busi- 
 ness ! " 
 
 They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was 
 short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an 
 abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three 
 men, whose heads were bent down close together at the 
 
34 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room 
 to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes 
 in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these 
 three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the 
 three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop. 
 
 "I forgot them in the surprise of your visit," explained 
 Monsieur Defarge. "Leave us, good boys; we have busi- 
 ness here." 
 
 The three glided by, and went silently down. 
 
 There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and 
 the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when 
 they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, 
 with a little anger : " 
 
 " Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette? " • 
 
 " I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen 
 few." 
 
 "Is that well?" 
 
 "Jthinkitis well." 
 
 "Who are the few? How do you choose them? " 
 
 " I choose them as real men, of my name — Jacques is 
 my name — to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; 
 you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you 
 please, a little moment." 
 
 With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he 
 stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. 
 Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon 
 the door — evidently with no other object than to make a 
 noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key 
 across it., three or four times, before he put it clumsily into 
 the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could. 
 
 The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he 
 looked into the room and said something. A faint voice 
 answered something. Little more than a single syllable 
 could have been spoken on either side. 
 
 Ho looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to 
 enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daugh- 
 ter's waist, and held her; for he felt that she was sinking. 
 
 "A — a — a — business, business! " he urged, with a moist- 
 ure that was not of business shining on his cheek. " Come 
 in, come in ! " 
 
 "I am afraid of it," she answered, shuddering. 
 
 "Of it? What?" 
 
 "I mean of him. Of my father." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 35 
 
 Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by trie 
 beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the 
 arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and 
 hurried her into the room. He sat her down just within 
 the door, and held her, clinging to him. 
 
 Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on 
 the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. 
 All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh 
 an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he 
 walked across the room with a measured tread to where the 
 window was. He stopped there, and faced round. 
 
 The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the 
 like, was dim and dark : for, the window of dormer shape, 
 was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it 
 for the hoisting up of stores from the street : unglazed, and 
 closing up the middle in two pieces,' like any other door of 
 French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this 
 door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very 
 little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted 
 through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming 
 in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly 
 formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring 
 nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was 
 being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the 
 door, and his face towards the window where the keeper 
 of the wine-shop stood looking at- him, a white-haired man 
 sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, mak- 
 ing shoes. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SHOEMAKER. 
 
 " Good day ! " said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at 
 the white head that bent low over the shoemaking. 
 
 It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice re- 
 sponded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance : 
 
 "Good day!" 
 , " You are still hard at work, I see? " 
 
 After a long silence, the head was lifted for another mo- 
 ment, and the voice replied, " Yes — I am working." This 
 
36 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, 
 before the face had dropped again. 
 
 The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. 
 It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though con- 
 finement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its 
 deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of sol- 
 itude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a 
 sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the 
 life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the 
 senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor 
 weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that iikwas 
 like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hope- 
 less and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied 
 out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have re- 
 membered home and friends in such a tone before lying 
 down to die. / 
 
 Some minutes of silent work had passed : and the hag- 
 gard eyes had looked up again : not with any interest or 
 curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, before- 
 hand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware 
 of had stood, was not yet empty. 
 
 "I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze 
 from the shoemaker, " to let in a little more light here. 
 You can bear a little more? " 
 
 The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant 
 air of listening, at the floor on one side of him ; then sim- 
 ilarly, at the floor on the other side of him; then, upward 
 at the speaker. 
 
 " What did you say? " 
 
 " You can bear a little more light? " 
 
 "I must bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest 
 shadow of a stress upon the second word. ) 
 
 The opened half-door was opened a little further, and 
 secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light 
 fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an un- 
 finished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few 
 common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet 
 and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, 
 but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright 
 eyes. The hollo wness and thinness of his face would have 
 caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and 
 his confused white hair, though they had been really other- 
 wise, but, they were naturally large, and looked unnatu- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 37 
 
 rally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, 
 and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and 
 his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his 
 poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct 
 light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of 
 parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say 
 which was which. 
 
 He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, 
 and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, 
 with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He 
 never looked at the figure before him, without first looking 
 down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had 
 lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never 
 spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and forget- 
 ting to speak. 
 
 " Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day? " 
 asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward. 
 
 " What did you say'? " 
 
 "Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day? " 
 
 "I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't 
 know." 
 
 But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent 
 over it again. 
 
 Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter 
 by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by 
 the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed 
 no surprise at seeing another .figure, but the unsteady fin- 
 gers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at 
 it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), 
 and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more 
 bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied 
 but an instant. 
 
 "You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge. 
 
 " What did you say? " 
 
 "Here is a visitor." 
 
 The shoemaker looked up as before, but without remov- 
 ing a hand from his work. 
 
 " Come ! " said Defarge. " Here is monsieur, who knows 
 a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show h^m that shoe 
 you are working at. Take it, monsieur." 
 
 Mr. Lorry took it in his hand. 
 
 " Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's 
 name." 
 
38 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoe- 
 maker replied : 
 
 " I forget what it was you asked me. What did you 
 say?" • 
 
 " I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for mon- 
 sieur's information? " 
 
 "It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. 
 It is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have 
 had a pattern in my hand." He glanced at the shoe with 
 some little passing touch of pride. . 
 
 "And the maker's name? " said Defarge. 
 
 Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles 
 of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the 
 knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and 
 then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in 
 regular changes, without a moment's intermission, 'the 
 task of recalling him from the vagrancy into which he al- 
 ways sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very 
 weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hope of 
 some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man. 
 
 "Did you ask me for my name? " 
 
 "Assuredly I did." 
 
 "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 "One Hundred and Five, North Tower." 
 
 With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he 
 bent to work again, until the silence was again broken. 
 
 " You are not a shoemaker by trade? " said Mr. Lorry, 
 looking steadfastly at him. 
 
 His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have 
 transferred the question to him : but as no help came from 
 that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they 
 had sought the ground. 
 
 "I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoe- 
 maker by trade. I — I learnt it here. I taught myself. I 
 asked leave to " 
 
 He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those meas- 
 ured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came 
 slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wan- 
 dered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, 
 in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting 
 to a subject of last night. 
 
 " I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 39 
 
 difficulty after a long while, and I have made shoes ever 
 since." 
 
 As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken 
 from him, Mr. Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his 
 face: 
 
 "Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me? " 
 
 The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fix- 
 edly at the questioner. 
 
 "Monsieur Manette;" Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon 
 Defarge's arm; "do you remember nothing of this man? 
 Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no old 
 business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your mind, 
 Monsieur Manette? " 
 
 As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by 
 turns, at Mr. Lorry and at Defarge, some long obliterated 
 marks of an actively intent intelligence in the middle of 
 the forehead, gradually forced themselves through the 
 black mist that had fallen on him. They were overclouded 
 again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had 
 been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated 
 on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall 
 to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood 
 looking at him, with hands which at first had been only 
 raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him 
 off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now ex- 
 tending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the 
 spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back 
 to life and hope — so exactly was the expression repeated 
 (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that 
 it looked as though it had passed like a moving light, from 
 him to her. 
 
 Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at 
 the two, less and less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy 
 abstraction sought the ground and looked about him in the 
 old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe 
 up, and resumed his work. 
 
 "Have you recognised him, monsieur?" asked Defarge 
 in a whisper. 
 
 " Yes ; for a moment. At first I thought it quite' hope- 
 less, but I have unquestionably seen, for a single moment, 
 the face that I once knew so well. Hush ! Let us draw 
 further back Hush ! " 
 
 She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to 
 
40 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in 
 his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out 
 its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour. 
 
 Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She 
 stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work. 
 
 It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change 
 the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It 
 lay on that side of him which was not the side on which 
 she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work 
 again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He 
 raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started 
 forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. 
 She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, 
 though they had. ^ 
 
 He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while 
 his lips began to form some words, though no sound pro- 
 ceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick 
 and laboured breathing, he was heard to say : 
 
 "What is this?" 
 
 With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two 
 hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped 
 them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there. 
 
 "You are not the gaoler's daughter? " 
 
 She sighed "No." 
 
 " Who are you? " 
 
 Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on 
 the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand 
 upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did 
 so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife 
 down softly, as he sat staring at her. 
 
 Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been 
 hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Ad- 
 vancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and 
 looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, 
 and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemak- 
 
 ing. 
 
 But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand 
 upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or 
 three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid 
 down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a 
 blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. 
 He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a 
 very little quantity of hair : not more than one or two long 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 41 
 
 golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off 
 upon his finger. 
 
 He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely 
 at it. "It is the same. How can it be! When was it! 
 How was it ! " 
 
 As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, 
 he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He 
 turned her full to the light, and looked at her. 
 
 " She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night 
 when I was summoned out — she had a fear of my going, 
 though I had none — and when I was brought to the North 
 Tower they found these upon my sleeve. ' You will leave 
 me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, 
 though they may in the spirit.' Those were the words I 
 said. I remember them very well." 
 
 He formed this speech with his lips many times before 
 he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for 
 it, they came to him coherently, though slowly. 
 
 " How was this? — Was it you ? " 
 
 Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon 
 her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly 
 still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, " I entreat 
 you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, 
 do not move ! " 
 
 "Hark!" he exclaimed. " Whose voice was that? " 
 
 His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went 
 up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died 
 out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, 
 and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in 
 his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook 
 his head. 
 
 "No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't 
 be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands 
 she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice 
 she ever heard. No, no. She was — and He was — before 
 the slow years of the North Tower— ages ago. What is 
 your name, my gentle angel? " 
 
 Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell 
 upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon 
 his breast. 
 
 "0, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and 
 who my mother was, and who my father, and how I never 
 knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot tell you at 
 5 
 
42 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I may tell 
 you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and 
 to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me ! my dear, my dear ! " 
 
 His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, 
 which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of 
 Freedom shining on him. 
 
 " If you hear in my voice — I don't know that it is so, 
 but I hope it is — if you hear in my voice any resemblance 
 to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for 
 it, weep for it ! If you touch, in touching my hair, any- 
 thing that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast 
 when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it ! 
 If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where 
 I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my 
 faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home 
 long desolate, while your poor heart pined away, weep for 
 it, weep for it'! " 
 
 She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on 
 her breast like a child. 
 
 " If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is 
 over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and 
 that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, 1 cause 
 you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our na- 
 tive France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it ! 
 And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my fa- 
 ther who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you 
 learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and im- 
 plore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all 
 day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of 
 my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep 
 for it ! Weep for her, then, and for me ! Good gentlemen, 
 thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his 
 sobs strike against my heart. 0, see ! Thank God for us, 
 thank God!" 
 
 He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her 
 breast : a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremen- 
 dous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that 
 the two beholders covered their faces. 
 
 When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, 
 and his heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded 
 to the calm that must follow all storms — emblem to hu- 
 manity, of the rest and silence into which the storm called 
 Life must hush at last — they came forward to raise the fa- 
 
A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 43 
 
 ther and daughter from the ground. He had gradually 
 dropped to the floor, and lay there in a lethargy, worn out. 
 She had nestled down with him, that his head might lie 
 upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained 
 him from the light. 
 
 "If, without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand 
 to Mr. Lorry as he stooped over them, after repealed blow- 
 ings of his nose, "all could be arranged for our leaving 
 Paris at once, so that, from the very door, he could be 
 taken away " 
 
 " But, consider. Is he fit for the journey? " asked Mr. 
 Lorry. 
 
 " More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, 
 so dreadful to him." 
 
 "It is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on 
 and hear. " More than that; Monsieur Manette is, for all 
 reasons, best out of France. Say, shall I hire a carriage 
 and post-horses? " 
 
 "That's business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the 
 shortest notice his methodical manners; "and if business 
 is to be done, I had better do it." 
 
 "Then be so kind," urged Miss Manette ; "as to leave us 
 here. You see how composed he has become, and you can- 
 not be afraid to leave him with me now. Why should you 
 be? If you will lock the door to secure us from interrup- 
 tion, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come 
 back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take 
 care of him until you return, and then we will remove him 
 straight." 
 
 Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to 
 this course, and in favour of one of them remaining. But, 
 as there were not only carriage and horses to be seen to, 
 but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day was 
 drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing 
 the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying 
 away to do it. 
 
 Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid he* 
 head down on the hard ground close at the father's side, 
 and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened, 
 and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the 
 chinks in the wall. 
 
 Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for 
 the journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling 
 
44 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee, 
 Monsieur Def arge put this provender, and the lamp he car- 
 ried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in 
 the garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused 
 the captive, and assisted him to his feet. 
 
 No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of 
 his mind, in the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether 
 he knew what had happened, whether he recollected what 
 they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, 
 were questions which no sagacity could have solved. -They 
 tried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so 
 very slow to answer, that they took fright at his bewilder- 
 ment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more„ 
 He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his 
 head in his hands, that had not been seen in him be- 
 fore; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his 
 daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she 
 spoke. 
 
 In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey 
 under coercion, he ate and drank what they gave him to eat 
 and drink, and put on the cloak and other wrappings, that 
 they gave him to wear. He readily responded to his 
 daughter's drawing her arm through his, and took — and 
 kept — her hand in both his own. 
 
 They began to descend; Monsieur Def arge going first 
 with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the little procession. 
 They had not traversed many steps of the long main stair- 
 case when he stopped, and stared at the roof and round at 
 the walls. 
 
 " You remember the place, my father? You remember 
 coming up here? " 
 
 " What did you say? " 
 
 But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured 
 an answer as if she had repeated it. 
 
 "Remember? No, I don't remember. It was so very 
 long ago. " 
 
 That he had no recollection whatever of his having been 
 brought from his prison to that house, was apparent to 
 them. They heard him mutter, " One Hundred and Five, 
 North Tower; " and when he looked about him, it evidently 
 was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encom- 
 passed him. On their reaching the courtyard he instinc- 
 tively altered his tread, as being in expectation of a draw- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 45 
 
 bridge; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw 
 the carriage waiting in the open street, he dropped his 
 daughter's hand and clasped his head again. 
 
 No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible 
 at any of the many windows; not even a chance passer-by 
 was in the street. An unnatural silence and desertion 
 reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and that was 
 Madame Defarge — who leaned against the door-post, knit- 
 ting, and saw nothing. 
 
 The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had 
 followed him, when Mr. Lorry's feet were arrested on the 
 step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and 
 the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called 
 to her husband that she would get them, and went, knit- 
 ting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She 
 quickly brought them down and handed them in; — and im- 
 mediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knit- 
 ting, and saw nothing. 
 
 Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word "To the 
 Barrier ! " The postilion cracked his whip, and they clat- 
 tered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps. 
 
 Under the over-swinging lamps — swinging ever brighter 
 in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse — and 
 by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, 
 and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with 
 lanterns, at the guard-house there. " Your papers, travel- 
 lers!" "See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said De- 
 farge, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, " these 
 are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. 
 
 They were consigned to me, with him, at the " He 
 
 dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the military 
 lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by 
 an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, 
 not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with 
 the white head. " It is well. Forward. ! " from the uni- 
 form. "Adieu!" from Defarge. And so, under a short 
 grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out un- 
 der the great grove of stars. 
 
 Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, 
 so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it- 
 is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, 
 as a point in space where anything is suffered or done : the 
 shadows of the night were broad and black. All through 
 
46 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more 
 whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry — sitting opposite 
 the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what 
 subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were 
 capable of restoration — the old inquiry : 
 " I hope you care to be recalled to life? " 
 And the old answer : — 
 
 "I can't say." 
 
 THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK. 
 
BOOK THE SECOND.-THE GOLDEN 
 THREAD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 
 
 Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned 
 place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and 
 eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very in- 
 commodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in 
 the moral attribute that the partners in the House were 
 proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its 
 ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even 
 boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired 
 by an express conviction that,-if it were less objectionable, 
 it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, 
 but an active weapon which they flashed at more con- 
 venient places of business: Tellson's (they said) wanted 
 no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted 
 no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks 
 Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven! 
 
 Any one of these partners would have disinherited his 
 son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's, In this re- 
 spect the House was much on a par with the Country; 
 which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting im- 
 provements in laws and customs that had long been highly 
 objectionable, but were only the more respectable. 
 
 Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the tri- 
 umphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open 
 a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, 
 you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your 
 senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, 
 where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the 
 wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the 
 
48 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 dingiest of windows, which were always tinder 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 odour, as if they were fast decomposing 
 into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the 
 neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted 
 its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into ex- 
 temporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, 
 and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the 
 banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family papers 
 went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a 
 great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, 
 even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, 
 the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your 
 little children, were but newly released from the horror of 
 being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on 
 Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy 
 of Abyssinia or Ashantee. 
 
 But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe 
 much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not 
 least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for 
 all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the 
 forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put 
 to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to 
 Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was 
 put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who 
 made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad 
 shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of 
 the note? in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. 
 Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention — it 
 might almost have been worth remarking that the facfc was 
 exactly the reverse — but, it cleared off (as to this world) 
 the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else 
 connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson's, in 
 its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 49 
 
 had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before 
 it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being pri- 
 vately disposed of, they would probably have excluded 
 what little light the ground floor had, in a rather signifi- 
 cant manner. 
 
 Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at 
 Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. 
 When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, 
 they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him 
 in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson 
 flavour and. blue-mould upon him. Then only was he per- 
 mitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, 
 and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight 
 of the establishment. 
 
 Outside Tellson's — never by any means in it, unless 
 called in — was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and 
 messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He 
 was never absent during business hours, unless upon an 
 errand, and then he was represented by his son : a grisly 
 urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People un- 
 derstood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd- 
 job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in 
 that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to 
 the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful 
 occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of dark- 
 ness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had 
 received the added appellation of Jerry. 
 
 The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hang- 
 ing-sword-alley, Whitefriars : the time, half -past seven of 
 the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seven- 
 teen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always 
 spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes : appar- 
 ently 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. ) 
 
 Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a savoury neigh- 
 bourhood, and were but two in number, even if a closet 
 with a single pane of glass in it might be counted as one. 
 But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the 
 windy March morning, the room in which he lay abed was 
 already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and 
 saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal 
 table, a very clean white cloth was spread. 
 ,6 
 
50 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, 
 like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, 
 by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose 
 above the surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must 
 tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he ex- 
 claimed, in a voice of dire exasperation : 
 
 "Bust me, if she ain't at it agin! " 
 
 A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose 
 from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepi- 
 dation to show that she was the person referred to. 
 
 " What ! " said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a 
 boot. " You're at it agin, are you? " 
 
 After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he 
 threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very 
 muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance con- 
 nected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic economy, that, where- 
 as he often came home after banking hours with clean 
 boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots 
 covered with clay. 
 
 "What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after 
 missing his mark — " what are you up to, Aggerawayter? " 
 
 "I was only saying my prayers." 
 
 "Saying your prayers! You're a nice woman! What 
 do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin 
 me?" 
 
 "I was not praying against you; I was praying for 
 you." 
 
 "You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the 
 liberty with. Here! your mother's a nice woman, young 
 Jerry, going a praying agin your father's prosperity. 
 You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You've 
 got a religious mother, you have, my boy : going and flop- 
 ping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter 
 may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child." 
 
 Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very 
 ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any 
 praying away of his personal board. 
 
 "And what do you suppose, you conceited female," said 
 Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, "that the 
 worth of your prayers may be? Name the price that you 
 put your prayers at ! " 
 
 "They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are 
 worth no more than that." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 51 
 
 "Worth no more than that," repeated Mr. Cruncher. 
 "They ain't worth much, then. Whether or no, I won't be 
 prayed agin, I tell you. I can't afford it. I'm not a go- 
 ing to be made unlucky by your sneaking. If you must go 
 flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and 
 child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I had had any but 
 a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a un- 
 nat'ral mother, I might have made some money last week 
 instead of being counterprayed and countermined and relig- 
 iously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust 
 me ! " said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been put- 
 ting on his clothes, "if I ain't, what with piety and one 
 blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into 
 as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met 
 with ! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I 
 clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, 
 and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. 
 For, I tell you," here he addressed his wife once more, " I 
 won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety as a 
 hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is 
 strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't 
 for the pain in 'em, which was me and which somebody 
 else, yet I'm none the better for it in pocket; and it's hry 
 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 
 
 ! » 
 
 Growling, in addition, such phrases as "Ah! yes! 
 You're religious, too. You wouldn't put yourself in oppo- 
 sition to the interests of your husband and child, would 
 you? Not you ! " and throwing off other sarcastic sparks 
 form the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. 
 Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his gen- 
 eral preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, 
 whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose 
 young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did, 
 kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly dis- 
 turbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his 
 sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed 
 cry of "You are going to flop, mother.— Halloa, father!" 
 and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in again 
 with an undutiful grin. 
 
 Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he 
 
5S» A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's say- 
 ing grace with particular animosity. 
 
 "Now, Aggeraway ter ! What are you up to? At it 
 again?" 
 
 His wife explained that she had merely "asked a bless- 
 ing." 
 
 "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 petitions. "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 ! " 
 
 Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all 
 night at a party which had taken anything but a convivial 
 turn, Jerry Cruncher worried his breakfast rather than ate 
 it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a men- 
 agerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed his ruffled 
 aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like an 
 exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued 
 forth to the occupation of the clay. 
 
 It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favour- 
 ite description of himself as "a honest tradesman." His 
 stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken- 
 backed chair cut down, which stool, young Jerry, walking 
 at his father's side, carried every morning to beneath the 
 banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: 
 where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that 
 could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold 
 and wet from the odd-job-man's feet,, it formed the en- 
 campment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher 
 was as well known to Fleet-street and the Temple, as the 
 Bar itself, — and was almost as ill-looking. 
 
 Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch 
 his. three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed 
 in to Tellson's, Jerry took up his station on this windy 
 March morning, with young Jerry standing by him, when 
 not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict 
 bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on pass- 
 ing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. 
 Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently 
 on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two 
 heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were, 
 bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. 
 The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circuim 
 
Messrs. Cruncher & Son. 
 
 — Tale of Two Cities, B. II., ch. i., p. 52. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 53 
 
 stance, that the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while 
 the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly 
 watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet-street. 
 
 The head of one of the regular indoor messengers at- 
 tached to Tellson's establishment was put through the 
 door, and the word was given : 
 
 " Porter wanted ! " 
 
 "Hooray, father! Here's an early job to begin with!" 
 
 Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry 
 seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary in- 
 terest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogi- 
 tated. 
 
 " Al-ways rusty ! His fingers is al-ways rusty ! " mut- 
 tered young Jerry. " Where does my father get all that 
 iron rust from? He don't get no iron rust here 1 " 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A SIGHT. 
 
 You know the Old Bailey, well, no doubt? " said one 
 of the oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger. 
 
 " Ye-es, sir," returned Jerry, in something of a dogged 
 manner. "I do know the Bailey." 
 
 "Just so. And you know Mr. Lorry." 
 
 " I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the 
 Bailey. Much better," said Jerry, not unlike a reluctant 
 witness at the establishment in question, "than I, as a 
 honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey." 
 
 "Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, 
 and show the door-keeper this note for Mr. Lorry. He 
 will then let you in." 
 
 " Into the court, sir? " 
 
 "Into the court." 
 
 Mr. Cruncher's eyes seemed to get a little closer to one 
 another, and to interchange the inquiry, " What do you 
 think of this? " 
 
 " Am I to wait in the court, sir? " he asked, as the re- 
 sult of that conference. 
 
 "I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the 
 
54 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 note to Mr. Lorry, and do you make any gesture that will 
 attract Mr. Lorry's attention, and show him where you 
 stand. Then what you have to do, is, to remain there un- 
 til he wants you." 
 
 " Is that all, sir? « 
 
 "That's all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. 
 This is to tell him you are there." 
 
 As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed 
 the note, Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in silence un- 
 til he came to the blotting-paper stage, remarked : 
 
 " I suppose they'll be trying Forgeries this morning? " 
 
 " Treason ! " 
 
 "That's quartering," said Jerry. "Barbarous!" 
 
 "It is the law," remarked the ancient clerk, turning his 
 surprised spectacles upon him. "It is the law." 
 
 "It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It's hard 
 enough to kill him, but it's wery hard to spile him, sir."' 
 
 "Not at all," returned the ancient clerk. "Speak well 
 of the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good 
 friend, and leave the law to take care of itself. I give you 
 that advice." 
 
 " It's the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice," 
 said Jerry. " I leave you to judge what a damp way of 
 earning a living mine is." 
 
 " Well, well," said the old clerk; "we all have our vari- 
 ous ways of gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp 
 ways, and some of us have dry ways. Here is the letter. 
 Go along." 
 
 Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with 
 less internal deference than he made an outward show of, 
 "You are a lean old one, too," made his bow, informed his 
 son, in passing, of his destination, and went his way. 
 
 They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street out- 
 side Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that 
 has since attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, 
 in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were prac- 
 tised, 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 hap- 
 pened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his 
 own doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died be- 
 fore him. For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 55 
 
 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 desirable to be good 
 use in the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, 
 a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which 
 no one could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping- 
 post, another dear old institution, very humanising and 
 softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transac- 
 tions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wis- 
 dom, systematically leading to the most frightful mer- 
 cenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven. 
 Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illus- 
 tration of the precept, that "Whatever is is right; " an 
 aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not in- 
 clude the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever 
 was, was wrong. 
 
 Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up 
 and down this hideous scene of action, with the skill of a 
 man accustomed to make his way quietly, the messenger 
 found out the door he sought, and handed in his letter 
 through a trap in it. For, people then paid to see the 
 play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in 
 Bedlam — only the former entertainment was much the 
 dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey doors were well 
 guarded — except, indeed, the social doors by which the 
 criminals got there, and those were always left wide open. 
 
 After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned 
 on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry 
 Cruncher to squeeze himself into court. 
 
 "What's on?" he asked, in a whisper, of the man he 
 found himself next to. 
 
 "Nothing yet." 
 
 " What's coming on? " 
 
 "The Treason case." 
 
 " The quartering one, eh? " 
 
 " Ah ! " returned the man, with a relish; " he'll be drawn 
 on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken 
 down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside 
 wall be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his 
 head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. 
 That's the sentence." 
 
56 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 '-If he's found Guilty, you mean to say? " Jerry added, 
 by way of proviso. 
 
 "Oh! they'll find him guilty," said the other. "Don't 
 you be afraid of that." 
 
 Mr. Cruncher's attention was here diverted to the door- 
 keeper, whom he saw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with 
 the note in his hand. Mr. Lorry sat at a table, among 
 the gentlemen in wigs : not far from a wigged gentleman, 
 the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of papers 
 before him : and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman 
 with his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when 
 Mr. Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to 
 be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After some 
 gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his 
 hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had 
 stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat 
 down again. 
 
 "What's he got to do with the case? " asked the man he 
 had spoken with. 
 
 "Blest if I know," said Jerry. 
 
 "What have you got to do with it, then, if a person may 
 inquire? " 
 
 "Blest if I know that either," said Jerry. 
 
 The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir 
 and settling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Pres- 
 ently, the dock became the central point of interest. Two 
 gaolers, who had been standing there, went out, and the 
 prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar. 
 
 Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman 
 who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human 
 breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or 
 a fire. Eager faces strained round pillars and corners, to 
 get a sight of him; spectators in back rows stood up, not 
 to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court, laid 
 their hands on the 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 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 67 
 
 the great windows behind him in an impure mist and 
 rain 
 
 The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young 
 man of about five-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, 
 with a sunburnt cheek and a dark eye. His condition was 
 that of a young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in 
 black, or very dark grey, 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 emo- 
 tion of the mind will express itself through any covering 
 of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered 
 came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul 
 to be stronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self- 
 possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet. 
 
 The sort of interest with which this man was stared and 
 breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity Had 
 he stood in peril of a less horrible sentence— had there 
 been a chance of any one of its savage details being spared 
 — by just so much would he have lost in his fascination. 
 The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully man- 
 gled, was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be 
 so butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. 
 Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon the inter- 
 est, according to their several arts and powers of self-de- 
 ceit, the interest was, at the root of it, Ogreish. 
 
 Silence in the court! Charles Darnay had yesterday 
 pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with 
 infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to 
 our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our 
 Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occa- 
 sions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the 
 French King, in his wars against our said serene, illus- 
 trious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming 
 and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illus- 
 trious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French 
 Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise 
 evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what 
 forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, 
 had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. 
 This much, Jerry, with his head becoming more and more 
 spiky as the law terms bristled it, made out with huge sat- 
 isfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the understanding 
 that the aforesaid, and over and over again aforesaid, 
 
58 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Charles Darnay, stood there before him upon his trial; that 
 the jury were swearing in; and that Mr. Attorney- General 
 was making ready to speak. 
 
 The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being 
 mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody 
 there, neither flinched from the situation, nor assumed any 
 theatrical air in it. He was quiet and attentive; watched 
 the opening proceedings with a grave interest; and stood 
 with his hands resting on the slab of wood before him, so 
 composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs 
 with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn 
 with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution 
 against gaol air and gaol fever. 
 
 Over the prisoner's head there was a mirror, to throw the 
 light down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the 
 wretched had been reflected in it, and had passed from its 
 surface and this earth's together. Haunted in a most 
 ghastly manner that abominable place would have been, if 
 the glass could ever have rendered back its reflections, as 
 the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some passing 
 thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been 
 reserved, may have struck the prisoner's mind. Be that 
 as it may, a change in his position making him conscious of 
 a bar of light across his face, he looked up ; and when he 
 saw the glass his face flushed, and his right hand pushed 
 the herbs away. 
 
 It happened, that the action turned his face to that side 
 of the court which was on his left. About on a level with 
 his eyes, there sat, in that corner of the Judge's bench, 
 two persons upon whom his look immediately rested; so 
 immediately, and so much to the changing of his aspect, 
 that all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to them. 
 
 The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of lit- 
 tle more than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently 
 her father; a man of a very remarkable appearance in re- 
 spect of the absolute whiteness of his hair, and a certain 
 indescribable intensity of face : not of an active kind, but 
 pondering and self-communing. When this expression was 
 upon him, he looked as if he were old; but when it was 
 stirred and broken up — as it was now, in a moment, on his 
 speaking to his daughter — he became a handsome man, 
 not past the prime of life. 
 
 His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 59 
 
 arm, as she sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. 
 She had drawn close to him, in her dread of the scene, and 
 tn her pity for the prisoner. Her forehead had been strik- 
 ingly expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion 
 that saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had 
 been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and naturally 
 shown, that starers who had had no pity for him were 
 touched by her; and the whisper went about, " Who are 
 they? " 
 
 Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observa- 
 tions, in his own manner, and who had been sucking the 
 rust off his fingers in his absorption, stretched his neck to 
 hear who they were. The crowd about him had pressed 
 and passed the inquiry on to the nearest attendant, and 
 from him it had been more slowly pressed and passed back; 
 at last it got to Jerry : 
 
 "Witnesses." 
 
 "For which side?" 
 
 "Against." 
 
 " Against what side? " 
 
 "The prisoner's." 
 
 The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direc- 
 tion, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked 
 steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. At- 
 torney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and 
 hammer the nails into the scaffold. 
 
 CHAPTEK IIL 
 
 A DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that 
 the prisoner before them, though young in years, was old 
 in the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of 
 his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy 
 was not a correspondence of to-day, or of yesterday, or 
 even of last year, or of the year before. That, it was cer- 
 tain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the 
 habit of passing and repassing between France and Eng- 
 land, on secret business of which he could give no honest 
 
60 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways 
 to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness 
 and guilt of his business might have remained undiscov- 
 ered. That Providence, however, had put it into the heart 
 of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to 
 ferret out the nature of the prisoner's schemes, and, struck 
 with horror, to disclose them to his Majesty's Chief Secre- 
 tary of State and most honourable Privy Council. That, 
 this patriot would be produced before them. That, his 
 position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, 
 he had been the prisoner's friend, but, at once in an aus- 
 picious and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved 
 to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in his 
 bosom, on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues 
 were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and Rome, to 
 public benefactors, this shining citizen would assuredly 
 have had one. That, as they were not so decreed, he prob- 
 ably would not have one. That, Virtue, as had been ob- 
 served by the poets (in many passages which he well knew 
 the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their 
 tongues; whereat the jury's countenances displayed a guilty 
 consciousness that they knew nothing about the passages), 
 was in a manner contagious; more especially the bright 
 virtue known as patriotism, or love of country. That, the 
 lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeachable wit- 
 ness for the Crown, to refer to whom however unworthily 
 was an honour, had communicated itself to the prisoner's 
 servant, and had engendered in him a holy determination 
 to examine his master's table-drawers and pockets, and 
 secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was 
 prepared to hear some disparagement attempted of this ad- 
 mirable servant; but that, in a general way, he preferred 
 him to his (Mr. Attorney-General's) brothers and sisters, 
 and honoured him more than his (Mr. Attorney-General's) 
 father and mother. That, he called with confidence on the 
 jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these 
 two witnesses, coupled with the documents of their dis- 
 covering that would be produced, would show the prisoner 
 to have been furnished with lists of his Majesty's forces, 
 and of their disposition and preparation, both by sea and 
 land, and would leave no doubt that he had habitually con- 
 veyed such information to a hostile power. That, these 
 lists could not be proved to be in the prisoner's hand writ- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 61 
 
 ing; but that it was all the same; that, indeed, it was 
 rather the better for the prosecution, as showing the pris- 
 oner to be artful ir> his precautions. That, the proof would 
 go back five years, and would show the prisoner already 
 engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks 
 before the date of the very first action fought between the 
 British troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, 
 the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and 
 being a responsible jury (as they knew they were), must 
 positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of 
 him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could 
 lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could 
 tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon 
 their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of 
 their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in 
 short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, 
 any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prison- 
 er's head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General 
 concluded by demanding of them, in the name of every- 
 thing he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the 
 faith of his solemn asservation that he already considered 
 the prisoner as good as dead and gone. 
 
 When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the 
 court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about 
 the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to be- 
 come. When toned down again, the unimpeachable patriot 
 appeared in the witness-box. 
 
 Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader's lead, 
 examined the patriot: John Barsad, gentleman, byname. 
 The story of his pure soul was exactly what Mr. Attorney- 
 General had described it to be — perhaps, if it had a fault, 
 a little too exactly. Having released his noble bosom of 
 its burden, he would have modestly withdrawn himself, 
 but that the wigged gentleman with the papers before him, 
 sitting not far from Mr. Lorry, begged to ask him a few 
 questions. The wigged gentleman sitting opposite, still 
 looking at the ceiling of the court. 
 
 Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the 
 base insinuation. What did he live upon? His property. 
 Where was his property? He didn't precisely remember 
 where it was. What was it? No business of anybody's. 
 Had he inherited it? Yes, he had. From whom? Dis- 
 tant relation Very distant? Bather. Ever been in prison? 
 
62 A TALE OF TWO CITIES'. 
 
 Certainly not. Never in a debtors' prison? Didn't see 
 what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors' prison? 
 — Come, once again. Never? Yes. How many times? 
 Two or three times. Not five or six? Perhaps. Of what 
 profession? Gentleman. Ever been kicked? Might have 
 been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked down-stairs? De- 
 cidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a stair- 
 case, and fell down-stairs of his own accord. Kicked on 
 that occasion for cheating at dice? Something to that 
 effect was said by the intoxicated liar who committed the 
 assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true? Posi- 
 tively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live 
 by play? Not more than other gentlemen do. Ever bor- 
 row money of the prisoner? Yes. Ever pay him? No. 
 Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a very 
 slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and 
 packets? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? 
 Certain. Knew no more about the lists? No. Had not 
 procured them himself, for instance? No. Expect to get 
 anything by this evidence? No. Not in regular govern- 
 ment pay and employment, to lay traps? Oh clear no. Or 
 to do anything? Oh dear no. Swear that? Over and 
 over again. No motives but motives of sheer patriotism? 
 None whatever. 
 
 The virtuous servant, Roger Cly, swore his way through 
 the case at a great rate. He had taken service with the 
 prisoner, in good faith and simplicity, four years ago. He 
 had asked the prisoner, aboard the Calais packet, if he 
 wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had engaged him. 
 He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow as 
 an act of charity — never thought of such a thing. He be- 
 gan to have suspicions of the prisoner, and to keep an eye 
 upon him, soon afterwads. In arranging his clothes, while 
 travelling, he had seen similar lists to these in the prison- 
 er's pockets, over and over again. He had taken these lists 
 from the drawer of the prisoner's desk. He had not put 
 them there first. He had seen the prisoner show these 
 identical lists to French gentlemen at Calais, and similar 
 lists to French gentlemen, both at Calais and Boulogne. 
 He loved his country, and couldn't bear it, and had given 
 information. He had never been suspected of stealing a 
 silver tea-pot; he had been maligned respecting a mustard- 
 pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one. He had 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. t>o 
 
 known the last witness seven or eight years; that was 
 merely a coincidence. He didn't call it a particularly curi- 
 ous coincidence; most coincidences were curious. Neither 
 did he call it a curious coincidence that true patriotism was 
 his only motive too. He was a true Briton, and hoped 
 there were many like him. 
 
 The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney- General 
 called Mr. Jarvis Lorry. 
 
 "Mr. Jarvis Lorry,, are you a clerk in Tellson's bank? " 
 
 "lam." 
 
 " On a certain Friday night in November one thousand 
 seven hundred and seventy-five, did business occasion you 
 to travel between London and Dover by the mail? " 
 
 "It did." 
 
 " Were there any other passengers in the mail? " 
 
 "Two." 
 
 "Did they alight on the road in the course of the 
 night? " 
 
 "They did." 
 
 "Mr. Lorry, look upon the prisoner. Was he one of 
 those two passengers? " 
 
 "I cannot undertake to say that he was." 
 
 "Does he resemble either of these two passengers?" 
 
 " Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, 
 and we were all so reserved, that I cannot undertake to say 
 even that." 
 
 " Mr. Lorry, look again upon the prisoner. Supposing 
 him wrapped up as those two passengers were, is there 
 anything in his bulk and stature to render it unlikely that 
 he was one of them? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one of 
 them? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " So at least you say he may have been one of them? " 
 
 " Yes. Except that I remember them both to have been 
 — like myself — timorous of highwaymen, and the prisoner 
 has not a timorous air." 
 
 " Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Lorry? " 
 
 "I certainly have seen that." 
 
 " Mr. Lorry, look once more upon the prisoner. Have 
 you seen him, to your certain knowledge, before? " 
 
 "I have." 
 
64 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "When? " 
 
 " I was returning from France a few days afterwards, 
 and, at Calais, the prisoner came on board the packet-ship 
 in which I returned, and made the voyage with me." 
 
 "At what hour did he come on board? " 
 
 "At a little after midnight." 
 
 " In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger 
 who came on board at that untimely hour? " 
 
 "He happened to be the only one." 
 
 " Never mind about ' happening, ' Mr. Lorry. He was 
 the only passenger who came on board in the dead of the 
 night? " 
 
 "He was." 
 
 "Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with any 
 companion? " 
 
 " With two companions. A gentleman and lady. They 
 are here." 
 
 "They are here. Had you any conversation with the 
 prisoner? " 
 
 " Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the pas- 
 sage long and rough, and I lay on a sofa, almost from 
 shore to shore." 
 
 " Miss Manette ! " 
 
 The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned be- 
 fore, and were now turned again, stood up where she had 
 sat. Her father rose with her, and kept her hand drawn 
 through his arm. 
 
 "Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner." 
 
 To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth 
 and beauty, was far more trying to the accused than to be 
 confronted with all the crowd. Standing, as it were, apart 
 with her on the edge of his grave, not all the staring curi- 
 osity that looked on, could, for the moment, nerve him to 
 remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled out 
 the herbs before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a 
 garden; and his efforts to control and steady his breathing 
 shook the lips from which the colour rushed to his heart. 
 The buzz of the great flies was loud again. 
 
 " Miss Manette, have you seen the prisoner before? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " On board of the packet-ship just now referred to, sir, 
 and on the same occasion." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 65 
 
 " You are the young lady just now referred to? " 
 
 " ! most unhappily, I am ! " 
 
 The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the 
 less musical voice of the Judge, as he said something 
 fiercely : " Answer the questions put to you, and make no 
 remark upon them." 
 
 " Miss Manette, had you any conversation with the pris- 
 oner on that passage across the Channel? " 
 
 ''Yes, sir." 
 
 "Recall it." 
 
 In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly be 
 gan: 
 
 " When the gentleman came on board " 
 
 " Do you mean the prisoner? " inquired the Judge, knit- 
 ting his brows. 
 
 " Yes, my Lord." 
 
 "Then say the prisoner." 
 
 " When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that my 
 father," turning her eyes lovingly to him as he stood beside 
 her, " was much fatigued and in a very weak state of health. 
 My father was so reduced that I was afraid to take him out 
 of the air, and I had made a bed for him on the deck near 
 the cabin steps, and I sat on the deck at his side to take 
 care of him. There were no other passengers that night, 
 but we four. The prisoner was so good as to beg permis- 
 sion to advise me how I could shelter my father from the 
 wind and weather, better than I had done. I had not 
 known how to do it well, not understanding how the wind 
 would set when we were out of the harbour. He did it for 
 me. He expressed great gentleness and kindness for my 
 father's state, and I am sure he felt it. That was the 
 manner of our beginning to speak together." 
 
 " Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come on 
 board alone? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "How many were with him?" 
 
 "Two French gentlemen." 
 
 " Had they conferred together? " 
 
 "They had conferred together until the last moment, 
 when it was necessary for the French gentlemen to be 
 landed in their boat." * 
 
 " Had any papers been handed about among them, sim- 
 ilar to these lists? " 
 
G6 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " Some papers had been handed about among them, but 
 I don't know what papers." 
 
 "Like these in shape and size? " 
 
 " Possibly, but indeed I don't know, although they stood 
 whispering very near to me : because they stood at the top 
 of the cabin steps to have the light of the lamp that was 
 hanging there; it was a dull lamp, and they spoke very 
 low, and I did not hear what they said, and saw only that 
 they looked at papers." 
 
 "Now, to the prisoner's conversation, Miss Manette." 
 
 " The prisoner was as open in his confidence with me — 
 which arose out of my helpless situation — as he was kind, 
 and good, and useful to my father. I hope," bursting into 
 tears, " I may not repay him by doing him harm to-day " 
 
 Buzzing from the blue-flies. 
 
 " Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly under- 
 stand that you give the evidence which it is your duty to 
 give — which you must give — and which you cannot escape 
 from giving — with great unwillingness, he is the only per- 
 son present in that condition. Please to go on." 
 
 " He told me that he was travelling on business of a del- 
 icate and difficult nature, which might get people into trou- 
 ble, and that he was therefore travelling under an assumed 
 name. He said that this business had, within a few days, 
 taken him to France, and might, at intervals, take him 
 backwards and forwards between France and England for 
 a long time to come." 
 
 "Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette? 
 Be particular." 
 
 " He tried to explain to me how that quarrel had arisen, 
 and he said that, so far as he could judge, it was a wrong 
 and foolish one on England's part. He added, in a jesting 
 way, that perhaps George Washington might gain almost 
 as great a name in history as George the Third. But there 
 was no harm in his way of saying this : it was said laugh- 
 ingly, and to beguile the time." 
 
 Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a 
 chief actor in a scene of great interest to whom many eyes 
 are directed, will be unconsciously imitated by the specta- 
 tors. Her forehead was painfully anxious and intent as 
 she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when she stopped 
 for the Judge to write it down, watched its effect upon the 
 counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 67 
 
 the same expression in all quarters of the court; insomuch, 
 that a great majority of the foreheads there, might have 
 been mirrors reflecting the witness, when the Judge looked 
 up from his notes to glare at that tremendous heresy about 
 George Washington. 
 
 Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that he 
 deemed it necessary, as a matter of precaution and form, 
 to call the young lady's father, Doctor Manette. Who was 
 called accordingly. 
 
 " Doctor Manette, look upon the prisoner. Have you 
 ever seen him before? " 
 
 "Once. When he called at my lodgings in London. 
 Some three years, or three years and a half ago." 
 
 " Can you identify him as your fellow-passenger on board 
 the packet, or speak to his conversation with your daugh- 
 ter? " 
 
 " Sir, I can do neither." 
 
 "Is there any particular and special reason for your 
 being unable to do either? " 
 
 He answered, in a low voice, "There is." 
 
 " Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long impris- 
 onment, without trial, or even accusation, in your native 
 country, Doctor Manette? " 
 
 He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, "A 
 long imprisonment." 
 
 " Were you newly released on the occasion in question? " 
 
 " They tell me so. " 
 
 " Have you no remembrance of the occasion? " 
 
 " None. My mind is a blank, from some time — I cannot 
 even say what time — when I employed myself, in my cap- 
 tivity, in making shoes, to the time when I found myself 
 living in London with my dear daughter here. She had 
 become familiar to me, when a gracious God restored my 
 faculties; but, I am quite unable even to say how she had 
 become familiar. I have no remembrance of the process." 
 
 Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and 
 daughter sat down together. 
 
 A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The ob- 
 ject in hand being to show that the prisoner went down, 
 with some fellow-plotter untracked, in the Dover mail on 
 that Friday night in November five years ago, and got out 
 of the mail in the night, as a blind, at a place where he did 
 not remain, but from which he travelled back some dozen 
 
68 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 miles or more, to a garrison and dockyard, and there col« 
 lected information; a witness was called to identify him 
 as having been at the precise time required, in the coffee- 
 room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dockyard town, wait- 
 ing for another person. The prisoner's counsel was cross- 
 examining this witness with no result, except that he had 
 never seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the 
 wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking at 
 the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a little 
 piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him. Open- 
 ing this piece of paper in the next pause, the counsel looked 
 with great attention and curiosity at the prisoner. 
 
 " You say again you are quite sure that it was the pris- 
 oner? " 
 
 The witness was quite sure. 
 
 " Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner? " 
 
 Not so like (the witness said) as that he could be mis- 
 taken. 
 
 "Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend 
 there," pointing to him who had tossed the paper over, 
 " and then look well upon the prisoner. How say you? 
 Are they very like each other? " 
 
 Allowing for my learned friend's appearance being care- 
 less and slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently 
 like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but every- 
 body present, when they were thus brought into compari- 
 son. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay 
 aside his wig, and giving no very gracious consent, the like- 
 ness became much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of 
 Mr. Stryver (the prisoner's counsel), whether they were 
 next to try Mr. Carton (name of my learned friend) for 
 treason? But, Mr. Stryver replied to my Lord, no; but he 
 would ask the witness to tell him whether what happened 
 once, might happen twice; whether he would have been so 
 confident if he had seen this illustration of his rashness 
 sooner, whether he would be so confident, having seen it; 
 and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this wit- 
 ness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case 
 to useless lumber 
 
 Mr. Cruncher had by this time taken quite a lunch of 
 rust off his fingers in his following of the evidence. He 
 had now to attend while Mr. Stryver fitted the prisoner's 
 case on the jury, like a compact suit of clothes; showing 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 69 
 
 them how the patriot, Barsad, was a hired spy and traitor, 
 an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one of the greatest 
 scoundrels upon earth since accursed Judas — which he cer- 
 tainly did look rather like. How the virtuous servant, Cly, 
 was his friend and partner, and was worthy to be; how the 
 watchful eyes of those forgers and false swearers had rested 
 on the prisoner as a victim, because some family affairs in 
 France, he being of French extraction, did require his mak- 
 ing those passages across the Channel — though what those 
 affairs were, a consideration for others who were near and 
 clear to him, forbade him, even for his life, to disclose. 
 How the evidence that had been warped and wrested from 
 the young lady, whose anguish in giving it they had wit- 
 nessed, came to nothing, involving the mere little innocent 
 gallantries and politenesses likely to pass between any young 
 gentleman and young lady so thrown together — with the 
 exception of that reference to George Washington, which 
 was altogether too extravagant and impossible to be re- 
 garded in any other light than as a monstrous joke. How 
 it would be a weakness in the government to break down in 
 this attempt to practise for popularity on the lowest na- 
 tional antipathies and fears, and therefore Mr. Attorney- 
 General had made the most of it; how, nevertheless, it 
 rested upon nothing, save that vile and infamous character 
 of evidence too often disfiguring such cases, and of which 
 the State Trials of this country were full. But, there my 
 Lord interposed (with as grave a face as if it had not been 
 true), saying that he could not sit upon that Bench and 
 suffer those allusions. 
 
 Mr. Stryver then called his few witnesses, and Mr. 
 Cruncher had next to attend while Mr. Attorney-General 
 turned the whole suit of clothes Mr. Stryver had fitted on 
 the jury, inside out; showing how Barsad and Cly were 
 even a hundred times better than he had thought them, 
 and the prisoner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my 
 Lord himself, turning the suit of clothes, now inside out, 
 now outside in, but on the whole decidedly trimming and 
 shaping them into grave-clothes for the prisoner. 
 
 And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great flies 
 swarmed again. 
 
 Mr. Carton, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling of 
 the court, changed neither his place nor his attitude, even 
 in this excitement. While his learned friend, Mr. Stryver, 
 
70 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 massing his papers before him, whispered with those who 
 sat near, and from time to time glanced anxiously at the 
 jury; while all the spectators moved more or less, and 
 grouped themselves anew; while even my Lord himself 
 arose from his seat, and slowly paced up and down his 
 platform, not unattended by a suspicion in the minds of 
 the audience that his state was feverish ; this one man sat 
 leaning back, with his torn gown half off him, his untidy 
 wig put on just as it had happened to light on his head 
 after its removal, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on 
 the ceiling as they had been all day. Something especially 
 reckless in his demeanour, not only gave him a disrepu- 
 table look, but so diminished the strong resemblance he 
 undoubtedly bore to the prisoner (which his momentary ear- 
 nestness, when they were compared together, had strength- 
 ened), that many of the lookers-on, taking note of him 
 now, said to one another they would hardly have thought 
 the two were so alike. Mr. Cruncher made the observation 
 to his next neighbour, and added, "I'd hold half a guinea 
 that he don't get no law-work to do. Don't look like the 
 sort of one to get any, do he? " 
 
 Yet, this Mr. Carton took in more of the details of the 
 scene than he appeared to take in; for now, when Miss 
 Manette's head dropped upon her father's breast, he was 
 the first to see it, and to say audibly : " Officer ! look to 
 that young lady. Help the gentleman to take her out. 
 Don't you see she will fall ! " 
 
 There was much commiseration for her as she was re- 
 moved, and much sympathy with her father. It had evi- 
 dently been a great distress to him, to have the days of his 
 imprisonment recalled. He had shown strong internal agi- 
 tation when he was questioned, and that pondering or 
 brooding look which made him old, had been upon him, 
 like a heavy cloud, ever since. As he passed out, the jury, 
 who had turned back and paused a moment, spoke, through 
 their foreman. 
 
 They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My Lord 
 (perhaps with George Washington on his mind) showed 
 some surprise that they were not agreed, but signified his 
 pleasure that they should retire under watch and ward, and 
 retired himself. The trial had lasted all day, and the 
 lamps in the court were now being lighted. It began to be 
 rumoured that the jury would be out a long while. The 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 71 
 
 Spectators dropped off to get refreshment, and the prisoner 
 withdrew to the back of the dock, and sat down. 
 
 Mr. Lorry, who had gone out when the yonng lady and 
 her father went out, now reappeared, and beckoned to Jerry : 
 who, in the slackened interest, could easily get near him. 
 
 " Jerry, if you wish to take something to eat, you can. 
 But, keep in the way. You will be sure to hear when the 
 jury come in. Don't be a moment behind them, for I 
 want you to take the verdict back to the bank. You are 
 the quickest messenger I know, and will get to Temple Bar 
 long before I can." 
 
 Jerry had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he 
 knuckled it in acknowledgment of this communication and a 
 shilling. Mr. Carton came up at the moment, and touched 
 Mr. Lorry on the arm. 
 
 "How is the young lady? " 
 
 "She is greatly distressed; but her father is comforting 
 her, and she feels the better for being out of court." 
 
 " I'll tell the prisoner so. It won't do for a respectable 
 bank gentleman like you, to be seen speaking to him pub- 
 licly, you know." 
 
 Mr. Lorry reddened as if he were conscious of having 
 debated the point in his mind, and Mr. Carton made his 
 way to the outside of the bar. The way out of court lay 
 in that direction, and Jerry followed him, all eyes, ears, 
 and spikes. 
 
 " Mr. Darnay ! " 
 
 The prisoner came forward directly. 
 
 " You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness, 
 Miss Manette. She will do very well. You have seen the 
 worst of her agitation." 
 
 " I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it. Could 
 you tell her so for me, with my fervent acknowledgments? " 
 
 " Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it." 
 
 Mr. Carton's manner was so careless as to be almost in- 
 solent. He stood, half turned from the prisoner, lounging 
 with his elbow against the bar. 
 
 " I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks." 
 
 " What," said Carton, still only half turned towards 
 him, " do you expect, Mr. Darnay? " 
 
 "The worst." 
 
 "It's the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But 
 I think their withdrawing is in your favour." 
 
72 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, 
 Jerry heard no more : but le'ft them — so like each other in 
 feature, so unlike each other in manner — standing side by 
 side, both reflected in the glass above them. 
 
 An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and- 
 rascal crowded passages below, even though assisted off 
 with mutton pies and ale. The hoarse messenger, uncom- 
 fortably seated on a form after taking that refection, had 
 dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur and a rapid tide 
 of people setting up the stairs that led to the court, carried 
 him along with them. 
 
 "Jerry! Jerry! " Mr. Lorry was already calling at the 
 door when he got there. 
 
 "Here, sir! It's a fight to get back again. Here I am, 
 sir!" 
 
 Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng. 
 " Quick ! Have you got it? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 Hastily written on the paper was the word "Acquitted." 
 
 "If you had sent the message, 'Recalled to Life,' 
 again," muttered Jerry, as he turned, "I should have 
 known what you meant, this time." 
 
 He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as think- 
 ing, anything else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey; 
 for, the crowd came pouring out with a vehemence that 
 nearly took him off his legs, and a loud buzz swept into 
 the street as if the baffled blue-flies were dispersing in 
 search of other carrion. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CONGRATULATORY. 
 
 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, when Doctor Manette, Lucie 
 Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the de- 
 fence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round 
 Mr. Charles Darnay — just released — congratulating him on 
 his escape from death. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 73 
 
 It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to 
 recognise in Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and up- 
 right of bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. 
 Yet, no one could have looked at him twice, without look- 
 ing again : even though the opportunity of observation had 
 not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave 
 voice, and to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, 
 without any apparent reason. While one external cause, 
 and that a reference to his long lingering agony, would al- 
 ways — as on the trial — evoke this condition from the depths 
 of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise of itself, and to 
 draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those unac- 
 quainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of 
 the actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, 
 when the substance was three hundred miles away. 
 
 Only his daughter had the power of charming this black 
 brooding from his mind. She was the golden thread that 
 united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present 
 beyond his misery : and the sound of her voice, the light of 
 her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial in- 
 fluence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, 
 for she could recall some occasions on which her power bad 
 failed; but they were few and slight, and she believed 
 them over. 
 
 Mr. Darnay had kissed her hand fervently and gratefully, 
 and had turned to Mr. Stryver, whom he warmly thanked. 
 Mr. Stryver, a man of little more than thirty, but looking 
 twenty years older than he was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and 
 free from any drawback of delicacy, had a pushing way of 
 shouldering himself (morally and physically) into com- 
 panies and conversations, that argued well for his shoul- 
 dering his way up in life. 
 
 He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squaring 
 himself at his late client to that degree that he squeezed 
 the innocent Mr. Lorry clean out of the group : " I am glad 
 to have brought you off with honour, Mr. Darnay. It was 
 an infamous prosecution, grossly infamous; but not the less 
 likely to succeed on that account." 
 
 " You have laid me under an obligation to you for life — 
 in two senses," said his late client, taking his hand. 
 
 " I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay; and my best 
 is as good as another man's, I believe." 
 
 It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, " Much 
 7 
 
74 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 better," Mr. Lorry said it; perhaps not quite disinterest- 
 edly, but with the interested object of squeezing himsel* 
 back again. 
 
 " You think so? " said Mr. Stryver. " Well ! you have 
 been present all day, and you ought to know. You are a 
 man of business, too." 
 
 "And as such," quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel 
 learned in the law had now shouldered back into the group, 
 just as he had previously shouldered him out of it — " as 
 such I will appeal to Doctor Manette, to break up this con- 
 ference and order us all to our homes. Miss Lucie looks 
 ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day, we are worn out." 
 
 "Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver; "I have 
 a night's work to do yet. Speak for yourself." 
 
 "I speak for myself," answered Mr. Lorry, "and for 
 
 Mr. Darnay, and for Miss Lucie, and Miss Lucie, do 
 
 you not think I may speak for us all? " He asked her the 
 question pointedly, and with a glance at her father. 
 
 His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious 
 look at Darnay : an intent look, deepening into a frown of 
 dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with fear. With 
 this strange expression on him his thoughts had wandered 
 away. 
 
 "My father," said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his. 
 
 He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her. 
 
 " Shall we go home, my father? " 
 
 With a long breath, he answered "Yes." 
 
 The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, under 
 the impression — which he himself had originated — that he 
 would not be released that night. The lights were nearly 
 all extinguished in the passages, the iron gates were being 
 closed with a jar and a rattle, and the dismal place was 
 deserted until to-morrow morning's interest of gallows, pil- 
 lory, whipping-post, and branding-iron, should repeople it. 
 Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Ma- 
 nette passed into the open air. A hackney-coach was 
 called, and the father and daughter departed in it. 
 
 Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder 
 his way back to the robing-room. Another person, who 
 had not joined the group, or interchanged a word with any 
 one of them, but who had been leaning against the wall 
 where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled out 
 after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 75 
 
 away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr. 
 Darnay stood upon the pavement. 
 
 "So, Mr. Lorry! Men of business may speak to Mr. 
 Darnay now? " 
 
 Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr. Carton's 
 part in the day's proceedings; nobody had known of it. 
 He was unrobed, and was none the better for it in appear- 
 ance. 
 
 " If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business 
 mind, when the business mind is divided between good- 
 natured impulse and business appearances, you would be 
 amused, Mr. Darnay." 
 
 Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, " You have men- 
 tioned that before, sir. We men of business, who serve a 
 House, are not our own masters. We have to think of the 
 House more than ourselves." 
 
 "I know, 1 know," rejoined Mr Carton, carelessly. 
 "Don't be nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as an- 
 other, I have no doubt: better, I dare say." 
 
 "And indeed, sir," pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him, 
 " I really don't know what you have to do with the matter. 
 If you'll excuse me, as very much your elder, for saying 
 so, I really don't know that it is your business." 
 
 "Business! Bless you, i" have no business," said Mr. 
 Carton. 
 
 " It is a pity you have not, sir." 
 
 "I think so, too." 
 
 "If you had," pursued Mr. Lorry, "perhaps you would 
 attend to it." 
 
 "Lord love you, no! — I shouldn't," said Mr. Carton. 
 
 " Well, sir ! " cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his 
 indifference, " business is a very good thing, and a very re- 
 spectable thing. And, sir, if business imposes its restraints 
 and its silences and impediments, Mr. Darnay as a young 
 gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance for 
 that circumstance. Mr. Darnay, good night, God bless 
 you, sir ! I hope you have been this day preserved for a 
 prosperous and happy life. — Chair there! " 
 
 Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the 
 barrister, Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was car- 
 ried off to Tellson's. Carton, who smelt of port wine, and 
 did not appear to be quite sober, laughed then, and turned 
 to Darnay : 
 
76 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " This is a strange chance that throws you and me to- 
 gether. This must be a strange night to you, stand- 
 ing alone here with your counterpart on these street 
 stones? " 
 
 "I hardly seem yet," returned Charles Darnay, "to be- 
 long to this world again." 
 
 " I don't wonder at it; it's not so long since you were 
 pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak 
 faintly." 
 
 " I begin to think I am faint." 
 
 "Then why the devil don't you dine? I dined, my- 
 self, while those numskulls were deliberating which world 
 you should belong to — this, or some other. Let me show 
 you the nearest tavern to dine well at." 
 
 Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down 
 Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into 
 a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where 
 Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a 
 good plain dinner and good wine : while Carton sat oppo- 
 site to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port 
 before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him. 
 
 "Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial 
 scheme again, Mr. Darnay?" 
 
 "I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; 
 but I am so far mended as to feel that." 
 
 " It must be an immense satisfaction ! " 
 
 He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again : which 
 was a large one. 
 
 " As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I 
 belong to it. It has no good in it for me — except wine 
 like this — nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that 
 particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike 
 in any particular, you and I." 
 
 Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his 
 being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be 
 like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to answer; 
 finally, answered not at all. 
 
 "Now your dinner is done," Carton presently said, 
 "why don't you call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don't you 
 give your toast? " 
 
 " What health? What toast? " 
 
 " Why, it's on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, 
 it must be, I'll swear it's there." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 77 
 
 " Miss Manette, then ! " 
 
 " Miss Manette, then ! " 
 
 Looking his companion full in the face while he drank 
 the toast, Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against 
 the wall, where it shivered to pieces; then, rang the bell, 
 and ordered in another. 
 
 " That's a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, 
 Mr. Darnay ! " he said, filling his new goblet. 
 
 A slight frown and a laconic " Yes," were the answer. 
 
 "That's a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for 
 by ! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one's 
 life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, 
 Mr. Darnay? " 
 
 Again Darnay answered not a word. 
 
 " She was mightily pleased to have your message, when 
 I gave it her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but 
 I suppose she was." 
 
 The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that 
 this disagreeable companion had, of his own free will, as- 
 sisted him in the strait of the day. He turned the dialogue 
 to that point, and thanked him for it. 
 
 "I neither want any thanks, nor merit any," was the 
 careless rejoinder. "It was nothing to do, in the first 
 place; and I don't know why I did it, in the second. Mr. 
 Darna} 7 , let me ask you a question." 
 
 " Willingly, and a small return for your good offices." 
 
 " Do you think I particularly like you? " 
 
 "Really, Mr. Carton," returned the other, oddly discon- 
 certed, '' I have not asked myself the question." 
 
 "But ask yourself the question now." 
 
 " You have acted as if you do; but I don't think you 
 do." 
 
 "J don't think I do," said Carton. "I begin to have a 
 very good opinion of your understanding." 
 
 "Nevertheless," pursued Darnay, rising to ring the bell, 
 " there is nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the 
 reckoning, and our parting without ill-blood on either side." 
 
 Carton rejoining, " Nothing in life ! " Darnay rang. " Do 
 you call the whole reckoning? " said Carton. On his an- 
 swering in the affirmative, "Then bring me another pint of 
 this same wine, drawer, and come and wake me at ten." 
 
 The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished 
 him good night. Without returning the wish, Carton rose 
 
7$ A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 too, with something of a threat of defiance in his manner, 
 and said, "A last word, Mr. Darnay: you think I am 
 drunk? " 
 
 "I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton." 
 
 "Think? You know I have been drinking." 
 
 " Since I must say so, I know it." 
 
 " Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disappointed 
 drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on 
 earth cares for me." 
 
 "Much to be regretted. You might have used your 
 talents better." 
 
 "May be so, Mr. Darnay; may be not. Don't let your 
 sober face elate you, however; you don't know what it may 
 come to. Good night ! " 
 
 When he was left alone, this strange being took up a 
 candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and sur- 
 veyed himself minutely in it. 
 
 "Do you particularly like the man?" he muttered, at 
 his own image; "why should you particularly like a man 
 who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you 
 know that. Ah, confound you ! What a change you have 
 made in yourself ! A good reason for taking to a man, that 
 he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what 
 you might have been ! Change places with him, and would 
 you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and 
 commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, 
 and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow." 
 
 He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it 
 all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his 
 hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in 
 the candle dripping down upon him. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE JACKAL. 
 
 Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. 
 So very great is the improvement Time has brought about 
 in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity 
 of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the 
 course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 79 
 
 as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridic- 
 ulous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was 
 certainly not behind any other learned profession in its 
 Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Stryver, al- 
 ready fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative 
 practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more 
 than in the drier parts of the legal race. 
 
 A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, 
 Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower 
 staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and 
 Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite, specially, 
 to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards the 
 visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's 
 Bench, the florid 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 flaring companions. 
 
 It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. 
 Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, 
 and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting the es- 
 sence from a heap of statements, which is among the most 
 striking and necessary of the advocate's accomplishments. 
 But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this. 
 The more business he got, the greater his power seemed 
 to grow of getting at its pith and marrow; and however 
 late at night he sat carousing with Sydney Carton, he al- 
 ways had his points at his fingers' ends in the morning. 
 
 Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was 
 Stryver' s great ally. What the two drank together, be- 
 tween Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a 
 king's ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, 
 but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring 
 at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and 
 even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the 
 night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at broad day, 
 going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like 
 a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among 
 such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney 
 Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good 
 jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in 
 that humble capacity. 
 
 "Ten o'clock, sir," said the man at the tavern, whom he 
 had charged to wake him — "ten o'clock, sir." 
 
80 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " What's the matter? " 
 
 ''Ten o'clock, sir." 
 
 " What do you mean? Ten o'clock at night? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you." 
 
 "Oh! I remember. Very well, very well." 
 
 After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the 
 man dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously 
 for five minutes, he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked 
 out. He turned into the Temple, and, having revived 
 himself by twice pacing the pavements of King's Bench- 
 walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver cham- 
 bers. 
 
 The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these confer- 
 ences, had gone home, and the Stryver principal opened 
 the door. He had his slippers on, and a loose bed-gown, 
 and his throat was bare for his greater ease . He had that 
 rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, which 
 may be 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. 
 
 " You are a little late, Memory," said Stryver. 
 
 " About the usual time ; it may be a quarter of an hour 
 later." 
 
 They went into a dingy room lined with books and lit- 
 tered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A ket- 
 tle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the wreck of 
 papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon it, and 
 brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons. 
 
 "You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney." 
 
 " Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the 
 day's client; or seeing him dine — it's all one! " 
 
 "That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to 
 bear upon the identification. How did you come by it? 
 When did it strike you? " 
 
 "I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I 
 thought I should have been much the same sort of fellow, 
 if I had had any luck." 
 
 Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch. 
 
 " You and your luck, Sydney ! Get to work, get to work." 
 
 Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into 
 an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug of cold 
 water, a basin, and a towel or two. Steeping the towels in 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 81 
 
 the water, and partially wringing them out, he folded them 
 on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat down at the 
 table, and said, " Now I am ready ! " 
 
 "Not much boiling down to be done to-night, Memory," 
 said Mr. Stryver, gaily, as he looked among his papers. 
 
 " How much? " 
 
 "Only two sets of them." 
 
 "Give me the worst first." 
 
 " There they are, Sydney. Fire away ! " 
 
 The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on 
 one side of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his 
 own paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, 
 with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both re- 
 sorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a 
 different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his 
 hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally 
 flirting with some lighter document; the jackal, with 
 knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his 
 eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his 
 glass — which often groped about, for a minute or more, be- 
 fore it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, 
 the matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found 
 it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels anew. 
 From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned 
 with such eccentricities of damp head-gear as no words can 
 describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anx- 
 ious gravity. 
 
 At length the jackal had got together a compact repast 
 for the lion and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion 
 took it with care and caution, made his selections from 
 it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both. 
 When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his 
 hands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. 
 The jackal then invigorated himself with a bumper for his 
 throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and applied 
 himself to the collection of a second meal; this was admin- 
 istered to the lion in the same manner, and was not dis- 
 posed of until the clocks struck three in the morning. 
 
 " And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of 
 punch," said Mr Stryver. 
 
 The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had 
 been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and 
 complied. 
 
82 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those 
 crown witnesses to-day. Every question told." 
 
 "I always am sound; am I not? " 
 
 " I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? 
 Put some punch to it and smooth it again." 
 
 With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied. 
 
 "The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said 
 Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in 
 the present and the past, " the old seesaw Sydney. Up 
 one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in 
 despondency ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " returned the other, sighing : " yes ! The same 
 Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises 
 for other boys, and seldom did my own," 
 
 " And why not? " 
 
 " God knows. It was my way, I suppose." 
 
 He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs 
 stretched out before him, looking at the fire. 
 
 "Carton," said his friend, squaring himself at him with 
 a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in 
 which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one deli- 
 cate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old 
 Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, " your way 
 is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy 
 and purpose. Look at me." 
 
 " Oh, botheration ! " returned Sydney, with a lighter and 
 more good-humoured laugh, "don't you be moral! " 
 
 "How have I done what I have done?" said Stryver; 
 " how do I do what I do? " 
 
 " Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But 
 it's not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, 
 about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always 
 in the front rank, and I was always behind." 
 
 " I had to get into the front rank ; I was not born there, 
 was I? " 
 
 " I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is 
 you were," said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and 
 they both laughed. 
 
 "Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since 
 Shrewsbury," pursued Carton, "you have fallen into your 
 rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were 
 fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking 
 up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 83 
 
 we didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, 
 and I was always — nowhere." 
 
 " And whose fault was that? " 
 
 " Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. 
 You were always driving and driving and shouldering and 
 passing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for 
 my life but in rust and repose. It's a gloomy thing, how- 
 ever, to talk about one's own past, with the day breaking. 
 Turn me in some other direction before I go." 
 
 "Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness," said 
 Stry ver, holding up his glass. " Are you turned in a pleas- 
 ant direction? " 
 
 Apparently not, for he became gloomy again. 
 
 "Pretty witness," he muttered, looking down into his 
 glass. " I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to- 
 night; who's your pretty witness? " 
 
 "The picturesque doctor's daughter, Miss Manette." 
 
 "She pretty?" 
 
 "Is she not?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole 
 Court!" 
 
 " Eot the admiration of the whole Court ! Who made 
 the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden- 
 haired doll ! " 
 
 "Do you know, Sydney," said Mr. Stry ver, looking at 
 him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across 
 his florid face : " do you know, I rather thought, at the 
 time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and 
 were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired 
 doll? " 
 
 " Quick to see what happened ! If a girl, doll or no doll, 
 swoons within a yard or two of a man's nose, he can see it 
 without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the 
 beauty. And now I'll have no more drink; I'll get to 
 bed." 
 
 When his host followed him out on the staircase with a 
 candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly 
 looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out 
 of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky over- 
 cast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless 
 desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and 
 round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had 
 
84 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had 
 begun to overwhelm the city. 
 
 Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this 
 man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw 
 for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage 
 of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In 
 the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from 
 which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in 
 which the 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 him- 
 self 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, incapa- 
 ble of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help 
 and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and 
 resigning himself to let it eat him away. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 
 
 The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet 
 street-corner not far from Soho-square. On tha afternoon 
 of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months 
 had rolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as. to 
 the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis 
 Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell 
 where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After 
 several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had 
 become the Doctor's friend, and the quiet street-corner was 
 the sunny part of his life. 
 
 On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards 
 Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. 
 Firstly, because, on fine Sundays, he often walked out, 
 before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie; secondly, be- 
 cause, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be 
 with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking 
 out of window, and generally getting through the day; 
 thirdly, because he happened to have his own little shrewd 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 85 
 
 doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Doctor's 
 household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving 
 them. 
 
 A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor 
 lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way 
 through it, and the front windows of the Doctor's lodgings 
 commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a con- 
 genial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings 
 then, north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees flourished, 
 and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the 
 now vanished fields. As a consequence, country airs cir- 
 culated in Soho with vigorous freedom, instead of languish- 
 ing into the parish like stray paupers without a settlement; 
 and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on 
 which the peaches ripened in their season. 
 
 The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in 
 the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, 
 the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so remote 
 but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. 
 It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for 
 echoes, and a very harbour from the raging streets. 
 
 There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an 
 anchorage, and there was. The Doctor occupied two floors 
 of a large still house, where several callings purported to 
 be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, 
 and which^was shunned by all of them at night. In a 
 building at the back, attainable by a court-yard where a 
 plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed 
 to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to 
 be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm 
 starting out of the wall of the front hall. — as if he had 
 beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion 
 of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely 
 lodger rumoured to live upstairs, or of a dim coach-trim- 
 ming maker asserted to have a counting-house below, was 
 ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray workman put- 
 ting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered 
 about there, or a distant clink was heard across the court- 
 yard, or a thump from the golden giant. These, however, 
 were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that 
 the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the 
 echoes in the corner before it, had their own way from 
 Sunday morning unto Saturday night. 
 
 . 
 
86 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old 
 reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his 
 story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his 
 vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, 
 brought him otherwise into moderate request, and he earned 
 as much as he wanted. 
 
 These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry's knowledge, 
 thoughts, and notice, when he rang the door-bell of the 
 tranquil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday afternoon. 
 
 " Doctor Manette at home? " 
 
 Expected home. 
 
 " Miss Lucie at home? " 
 
 Expected home. 
 
 "Miss Pross at home? " 
 
 Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for hand- 
 maid to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission 
 or denial of the fact. 
 
 "As I am at home myself," said Mr. Lorry, "I'll go up- 
 stairs." 
 
 Although the Doctor's daughter had known nothing of 
 the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately de- 
 rived from it that ability to make much of little means, 
 which is one of its most useful and most agreeable charac- 
 teristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so 
 many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and 
 fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of 
 everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the 
 least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and 
 contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, 
 clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in 
 themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as 
 Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and 
 tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar 
 expression which he knew so well by this time, whether 
 he approved? 
 
 There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by 
 which they communicated being put open that the air might 
 pass freely through them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly observ- 
 ant of that fanciful resemblance which he detected all 
 around him, walked from one to another. The first was 
 the best room, and in it were Lucie's birds, and flowers, 
 and books, and desk, and work-table, and box of water- 
 colours; the second was the Doctor's consulting-room, used 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. $7 
 
 also as the dining-room; the third, changingly speckled by 
 the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the Doctor's 
 bed-room, and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoe- 
 maker's bench and tray of tools, much as it had stood on 
 the fifth floor of the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the 
 suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris. 
 
 "I wonder," said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking 
 about, " that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings about 
 him ! " 
 
 " And why wonder at that? " was the abrupt inquiry that 
 made him start. 
 
 It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, 
 strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at 
 the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved. 
 
 " I should have thought " Mr. Lorry began. 
 
 "Pooh! You'd have thought!" said Miss Pross; and 
 Mr. Lorry left off. 
 
 "How do you do?" inquired that lady then — sharply, 
 and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice. 
 
 " I am pretty well, I thank you," answered Mr. Lorry, 
 with meekness; "how are you? " 
 
 "Nothing to boast of," said Miss Pross. 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 " Ah ! indeed ! " said Miss Pross. " I am very much put 
 out about my Ladybird." 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 "For gracious sake say something else besides 'indeed,' 
 or you'll fidget me to death," said Miss Pross: whose 
 character (dissociated from stature) was shortness. 
 
 "Really, then?" said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment. 
 
 "Really, is bad enough," returned Miss Pross, "but bet- 
 ter. Yes, I am very much put out." 
 
 "May I ask the cause? " 
 
 " I don't want dozens of people who are not at all worthy 
 of Ladybird, to come here looking after her," said Miss 
 Pross. 
 
 "Do dozens come for that purpose? " 
 
 "Hundreds," said Miss Pross. 
 
 It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other peo- 
 ple before her time and since) that whenever her original 
 proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he 
 could think of. 
 
 
88 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 . " I have lived with the darling — or the darling has lived 
 with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should 
 never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could 
 have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing — ■ 
 since she was ten years old. And it's really very hard," 
 said Miss Pross. 
 
 Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry 
 shook his head; using that important part of himself as a 
 sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything. 
 
 " All sorts of people who are not in the least degree 
 worthy of the pet, are always turning up," said Miss Pross. 
 " When you began it " 
 
 "/began it, Miss Pross?" 
 
 " Didn't you? Who brought her father to life? " 
 
 " Oh ! If that was beginning it " said Mr. Lorry. 
 
 "It wasn't ending it, I suppose? I say, when you be- 
 gan it, it was hard enough; not that I have any fault to 
 find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of 
 such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was 
 not to be expected that anybody should be, under any cir- 
 cumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to 
 have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him 
 (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird's affections 
 away from me." 
 
 Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he 
 also knew her by this time to be, beneath the surface of her 
 eccentricity, one of those unselfish 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 ex- 
 alted 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. 
 
 "There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of 
 Ladybird," said Miss Pross; "and that was my brother 
 Solomon, if he hadn't made a mistake in life." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 89 
 
 Here again: Mr. Lorry's inquiries into Miss Pross's per- 
 sonal history had established the fact that her brother Sol- 
 omon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of 
 everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and 
 had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no 
 touch of compunction. Miss Pross's fidelity of belief in 
 Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) 
 was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its 
 weight in his good opinion of her. 
 
 " As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both 
 people of business," he said, when they had got back to 
 the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly rela- 
 tions, " let me ask you — does the Doctor, in talking with 
 Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet? " 
 
 "Never." 
 
 " And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him? " 
 
 " Ah ! " returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. " But I 
 don't say he don't refer to it within himself." 
 
 " Do you believe that he thinks of it much? " 
 
 " I do," said Miss Pross. 
 
 " Do you imagine " Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss 
 
 Pross took him up short with : 
 
 "Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at 
 all." 
 
 " I stand corrected ; do you suppose — you go so far as to 
 suppose, sometimes? " 
 
 "Now and then," said Miss Pross. 
 
 "Do you suppose," Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing 
 twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, " that 
 Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserved 
 through all those years, relative to the cause of his being 
 so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor? " 
 
 " I don't suppose anything about it but what Ladybird 
 tells me." 
 
 "And that is ?" 
 
 "That she thinks he has." 
 
 "Now don't be angry at my asking all these questions; 
 because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a 
 woman of business." 
 
 "Dull?" Miss Pross inquired, with placidity. 
 
 Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry re- 
 plied, " No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business : — 
 Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably 
 
90 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, 
 should never touch upon that question? I will not say 
 with me, though he had business relations with me many 
 years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the 
 fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and 
 who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss 
 Pross, I don't approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, 
 but out of zealous interest." 
 
 "Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad's 
 the best, you'll tell me," said Miss Pross, softened by the 
 tone of the apology, "he is afraid of the whole subject." 
 
 "Afraid?" 
 
 "It's plain enough, I should think, why he may be. 
 It's a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of 
 himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, 
 or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of 
 not losing himself again. That alone wouldn't make the 
 subject pleasant, I should think." 
 
 It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked 
 for. "True," said he, "and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, 
 a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Pross, whether it is good 
 for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut 
 up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasi- 
 ness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present 
 confidence." 
 
 " Can't be helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. 
 " Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the worse. 
 Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it alone, like 
 or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the 
 night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up 
 and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird 
 has learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and 
 down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She hur- 
 ries to him, and they go on together, walking up and down, 
 walking up and down, until he is composed. But he never 
 says a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, 
 and she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In silence 
 they go walking up and down together, walking up and 
 down together, till her love and company have brought 
 him to himself." 
 
 Notwithstanding Miss Pross's denial of her own imagin- 
 ation, there w?*s a perception of the pain of being monoto- 
 nously haur>ted by one sad idea, in her repetition of the 
 
 i 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 91 
 
 phrase, walking up and down, which testified to her pos« 
 sessing such a thing. 
 
 The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for 
 echoes; it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread 
 of coming feet, that it seemed as though the very mention 
 of that weary pacing to and fro had set it going. 
 
 "Here they are!" said Miss Pross, rising to break up 
 the conference; "and now we shall have hundreds of peo- 
 ple pretty soon ! " 
 
 It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, 
 such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at 
 the open window, looking for the father and daughter 
 whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never ap- 
 proach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though 
 the steps had gone; but, echoes of other steps that never 
 came would be heard in their stead, and would die away 
 for good when they seemed close at hand. However, father 
 and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Pross was ready 
 at the street door to receive them. 
 
 Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, 
 and grim, taking off her darling's bonnet when she came 
 up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her handker- 
 chief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle 
 ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with as 
 much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own 
 hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. 
 Her darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing her and 
 thanking her, and protesting against her taking so much 
 trouble for her — which last she only dared to do playfully, 
 or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to her own 
 chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant sight too, 
 looking on at them, and telling Miss Pross how she spoilt 
 Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had as much spoiling 
 in them as Miss Pross had, and would have had more if it 
 were possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beam- 
 ing at all this in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor 
 stars for having lighted him in his declining years to a 
 Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the sights, 
 and Mr. Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss 
 Pross's prediction. 
 
 Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the 
 arrangements of the little household, Miss Pross took 
 charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself 
 
92 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 marvellously Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were 
 so well-cooked and so well served, and so neat in their con- 
 trivances, half English and half French, that nothing could 
 be better. Miss Pross's friendship being of the thoroughly 
 practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent 
 provinces, in search of impoverished French, who, tempted 
 by shillings and half-crowns, would impart culinary mys- 
 teries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of 
 Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the 
 woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded 
 her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella's Godmother : who 
 would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from 
 the garden, and change them into anything she pleased. 
 
 On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor's table, but 
 on other days persisted in taking her meals at unknown 
 periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own room on 
 the second floor — a blue chamber, to which no one but her 
 Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this occasion, Miss 
 Pross, responding to Ladybird's pleasant face and pleasant 
 efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly; so the dinner 
 was very pleasant, too. 
 
 It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie pro- 
 posed that the wine should be carried out under the plane- 
 tree, and they should sit there in the air. As everything 
 turned upon her, and revolved about her, they went out 
 under the plane-tree, and she carried the wine down for 
 the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She had installed her- 
 self, some time before, as Mr. Lorry's cup-bearer; and 
 while they sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his 
 glass replenished. Mysterious backs and ends of houses 
 peeped at them as they talked, and the plane-tree whis- 
 pered to them in its own way above their heads. 
 
 Still, the Hundreds of people did not present them- 
 selves. Mr. Darnay presented himself while they were 
 sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One. 
 
 Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. 
 But, Miss Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitching 
 in the head and body, and retired into the house. She was 
 not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called 
 it, in familiar conversation, "a fit of the jerks." 
 
 The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked specially 
 young. The resemblance between him and Lucie was very 
 strong at such times, and as they sat side by side, she lean- 
 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 93 
 
 ing on his shoulder, and he resting his arm on the back of 
 her chair, it was very agreeable to trace the likeness. 
 
 He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with 
 unusual vivacity. "Pray, Doctor Manette," said Mr. Dar- 
 nay, as they sat under the plane-tree — and he said it in the 
 natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which happened to be 
 the old buildings of London — " have you seen much of the 
 Tower? » 
 
 "Lucie and I have been there; but only casually. We 
 have seen enough of it, to know that it teems with interest; 
 little more," 
 
 " 1 have been there, as you remember," said Darnay, 
 with a smile, though reddening a little angrily, " in another 
 character, and not in a character that gives facilities for 
 seeing much of it. They told me a curious thing when 1 
 was there." 
 
 " What was that? " Lucie asked. 
 
 " In making some alterations, the workmen came upon 
 an old dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up 
 and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was covered 
 by inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners — dates, 
 names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in 
 an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have 
 gone to execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. 
 They were done with some very poor instrument, and hur- 
 riedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read 
 as D. I. C. ; but, on being more carefully examined, the 
 last letter was found to be G. There was no record or 
 legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruit- 
 less guesses were made what the name could have been. 
 At length, it was suggested that the letters were not in- 
 itials, but the complete word, Dig. The floor was exam- 
 ined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth 
 beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving, were 
 found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a 
 small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner 
 had written will never be read, but he had written some- 
 thing, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler." 
 
 "My father," exclaimed Lucie, "you are ill! " 
 
 He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. 
 His manner and his look quite terrified them all. 
 
 " No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of* rain 
 falling, and they made me start. We had better go in." 
 
94 A TALE OF T WO CITIES. 
 
 He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really 
 falling in large drops, and he showed the back of his hand 
 with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single word in 
 reference to the discovery that had been told of, and, as 
 they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry 
 either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it 
 turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look 
 that had been upon it when it turned towards him in the 
 passages of the Court House. 
 
 He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. 
 Lorry had doubts of his business eye. The arm of the 
 golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he Was, 
 when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was 
 not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be), 
 and that the rain had startled him. 
 
 Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit of 
 the jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. 
 Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two 
 
 The night was so very sultry, that although they sat 
 with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by 
 heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved 
 to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twi- 
 light. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; 
 Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long 
 and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into 
 the corner, caught them up to the ceiling and waved them 
 like spectral wings. 
 
 "The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few," 
 said Doctor Manette "It comes slowly." 
 
 "It comes surely," said Carton. 
 
 They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly 
 do; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for 
 Lightning, always do. 
 
 There was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding 
 away to get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful 
 corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps 
 coming and going, yet not a footstep was there. 
 
 " A multitude of people, and yet a solitude 1 " said Dar- 
 nay, when they had listened for a while. 
 
 "Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?" asked Lucie. 
 " Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I have 
 fancied — but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me 
 shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn — — " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 95 
 
 "Let us shudder too. We may know what it is." 
 
 " It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only im- 
 pressive as we originate them, I think; they are not to be 
 communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an 
 evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be 
 the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye 
 into our lives." 
 
 " There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, 
 if that be so," Sydney Carton struck in ? in his moody way. 
 
 The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them be- 
 came more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re- 
 echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under 
 the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some com- 
 ing, some going, some breaking off, some stopping alto- 
 gether; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight. 
 
 " Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, 
 Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us? " 
 
 "I don't know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish 
 fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself 
 to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them 
 the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, 
 and my father's." 
 
 " I take them into mine ! " said Carton. " I ask no ques- 
 tions and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd 
 
 bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them 
 
 by the Lightning." He added the last words, after there 
 had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in 
 the window. 
 
 " And I hear them ! " he added again, after a peal of 
 thunder. " Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious ! " 
 
 It was the rush and roar of rain that he typefied, and it 
 stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it. A mem- 
 orable storm of thunder and lightning broke with that 
 sweep of water, and there was not a moment's interval in 
 crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at mid- 
 night. 
 
 The great bell of Saint Paul's was striking One in the 
 cleared air, when Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry, high-booted 
 and bearing a lantern, set forth on his return-passage to 
 Clerkenwell. There were solitary patches of road on the 
 way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr. Lorry, mind- 
 ful of footpads, always retained Jerry for this service: 
 though it was usually performed a good two hours earlier. 
 
96 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry," 
 said Mr. Lorry, "to bring the dead out of their graves." 
 
 "I never see the night myself, master — not yet I don't 
 expect to — what would do that," answered Jerry. 
 
 "Good night, Mr. Carton," said the man of business. 
 " Good night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night 
 again, together ! " 
 
 Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with 
 its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN. 
 
 Monseigneuk, one of the great lords in power at the 
 Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in 
 Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary 
 of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of wor- 
 shippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was 
 about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a 
 great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen 
 minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; 
 but, his morning's chocolate could not so much as get into 
 the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong 
 men besides the Cook. 
 
 Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous 
 decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with 
 fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of 
 the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to con- 
 duct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur 's lips. One 
 lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; 
 a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little 
 instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the 
 favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), 
 poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Mon- 
 seigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the 
 chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring 
 Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his 
 escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by 
 only three men; he must have died of two. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 97 
 
 Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, 
 where the comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly 
 represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most 
 nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so im- 
 pressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand 
 Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome ar- 
 ticles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of 
 all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like 
 always is for all countries similarly favoured ! — always was 
 for England (by way of example), in the regretted days of 
 the merry Stuart who sold it. 
 
 Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public 
 business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way; 
 of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other 
 truly noble idea that it must all go his way — tend to his 
 own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and par- 
 ticular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that 
 the world was made for them. The text of his order (al- 
 tered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not 
 much) ran : " The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, 
 saith Monsigneur." 
 
 Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embar- 
 rassments crept into his affairs, both private and public; 
 and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself per- 
 force with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, be- 
 cause Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, 
 and must consequently let them out to somebody who 
 could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals 
 were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great lux- 
 ury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur 
 had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yet 
 time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment 
 she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very 
 rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-Gen- 
 eral, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple 
 on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer 
 rooms, much prostrated before by mankind — always ex- 
 cepting superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, 
 who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with 
 the loftiest contempt. 
 
 A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty 
 horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat 
 in his halls, six body- women waited on his wife. As one 
 
98 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where 
 he could, the Farmer-General — howsoever his matrimonial 
 relations conduced to social morality — was at least the 
 greatest reality among the personages who attended at the 
 hotel of Monseigneur that day. 
 
 For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and 
 adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and 
 skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound 
 business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows 
 in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, 
 either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost 
 equi-distant from the two extremes, could see them both), 
 they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable busi- 
 ness — if that could have been anybody's business, at the 
 house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of mili- 
 tary knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil 
 officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of 
 the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, 
 and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, 
 all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all 
 nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and there- 
 fore foisted on all public employments from which any- 
 thing was to be got; these were to be told off by the score 
 and the score. People not immediately connected with 
 Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with 
 anything that was real, or with lives passed in travelling 
 by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no less 
 abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty 
 remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled 
 upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Mon- 
 seigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of 
 remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched, 
 except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out 
 a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears 
 they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. 
 Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world 
 with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the 
 skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an 
 eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gath- 
 ering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen 
 of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time 
 — and has been since — to be known by its fruits of indiffer- 
 ence to every natural subject of human interest, were in the 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 9S» 
 
 most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Mon- 
 seigneur. Such homes had these various notabilities left 
 behind, them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies 
 among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur — forming a 
 goodly half of the polite company — would have found it 
 hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one soli- 
 tary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to 
 being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bring- 
 ing a troublesome creature into this world — which does not 
 go far towards the realisation of the name of mother — there 
 was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women 
 kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, 
 and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped 
 as at twenty. 
 
 The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature 
 in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room 
 were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a 
 few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in 
 general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of 
 setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become mem- 
 bers of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even 
 then considering within themselves whether they should 
 foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot — thereby 
 setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, 
 for Monseigneur' s guidance. Besides these Dervishes, 
 were other three who had rushed into another sect, which 
 mended matters with a jargon about "the Centre of 
 Truth : " holding that Man had got out of the Centre of 
 Truth — which did not need much demonstration — but had 
 not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be 
 kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to 
 be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of 
 spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with 
 spirits went on — and it did a world of good which never 
 became manifest. 
 
 But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand 
 hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day 
 of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, 
 everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such 
 frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such deli- 
 cate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such 
 gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the 
 sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever 
 
100 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding 
 wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly 
 moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; 
 and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and 
 brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that 
 fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away. 
 
 Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for 
 keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed 
 for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the 
 Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the 
 whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Jus- 
 tice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy 
 Ball descended to the Common Executioner : who, in pur- 
 suance of the charm, was required to officiate "frizzled, 
 powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk 
 stockings." At the gallows and the wheel — the axe was a 
 rarity — Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among 
 his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, 
 and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. 
 And who among the company at Monseigneur's reception 
 in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, 
 could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled 
 hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk 
 stockinged, would see the very stars out ! 
 
 Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens 
 and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of 
 Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what 
 submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, 
 what abject humiliation ! As to bowing down in body and 
 spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven — which 
 may have been one among other reasons why the worship- 
 pers of .Monseigneur never troubled it. 
 
 Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a 
 whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on 
 another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to 
 the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There, 
 Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due 
 course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the 
 chocolate sprites, and was seen no more. 
 
 The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite 
 a little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing 
 down-stairs. There was soon but one person left of all the 
 crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 101 
 
 box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his 
 way out. 
 
 "I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last 
 door on his way, and turning in the direction of the sanc- 
 tuary, " to the Devil ! " 
 
 With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he 
 had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked 
 down-stairs. 
 
 He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, 
 naughty 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 showed, resided. They persisted 
 in changing colour sometimes, and they would be occasion- 
 ally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsa- 
 tion; then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to 
 the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capac- 
 ity 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 of the 
 face made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable 
 one. 
 
 Its owner went down-stairs into the courtyard, got into 
 his carriage, and drove away. Not many people had 
 talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little 
 space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in 
 his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather 
 agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed be- 
 fore his horses, and often barely escaping from being run 
 down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, 
 and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check 
 into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint 
 had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city 
 and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without foot- 
 ways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endan- 
 gered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner, 
 But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, 
 and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches 
 were left to get out of their difficulties as they could. 
 
 With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandon- 
 ment of consideration not easy to be understood in these 
 
102 A TALE OF f WO CITIES. 
 
 days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round 
 corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutch- 
 ing each other and clutching children out of its way. At 
 last,- swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its 
 wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there Was a loud 
 cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and 
 plunged. 
 
 But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably 
 would not have stopped; carriages were often known to 
 drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? 
 But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and 
 there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles. 
 
 " What has gone wrong? " said Monsieur, calmly looking 
 out. 
 
 A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from 
 among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the base- 
 ment of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, 
 howling over it like a wild animal. 
 
 " Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis ! " said a ragged and 
 submissive man, "it is a child." 
 
 " Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his 
 child? " 
 
 "Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis- — it is a pity — yes." 
 
 The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, 
 where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. 
 As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and 
 came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis 
 clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt. 
 
 " Killed ! " shrieked the man, in wild desperation, ex- 
 tending both arms at their length above his head, and 
 staring at him. " Dead ! " 
 
 The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the 
 Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes 
 that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there 
 was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people 
 say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and 
 they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who 
 had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. 
 Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they 
 had been mere rats come out of their holes. 
 
 He took out his purse. 
 
 "It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people 
 cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 103 
 
 the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know 
 what injury you have done my horses. See ! Give him 
 that." 
 
 He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and 
 all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look 
 down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with 
 a most unearthly cry, " Dead ! " 
 
 He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for 
 whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable 
 creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and 
 pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping 
 over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. 
 They were as silent, however, as the men. 
 
 "I know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a 
 brave man, my Gaspard ! It is better for the poor little 
 plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment 
 without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily? " 
 
 "You are a philosopher, you there," said the Marquis, 
 smiling. " How do they call you? " 
 
 "They call me Defarge." 
 
 "Of what trade?" 
 
 "Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine." 
 
 "Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said 
 the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, " and spend 
 it as you will. The horses there; are they right? " 
 
 Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second 
 time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and 
 was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman 
 who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had 
 paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease 
 was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, 
 and ringing on its floor. 
 
 "Hold!" said Monsieur the Marquis. "Hold the 
 horses ! Who threw that? " 
 
 He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of .vine 
 had stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was 
 grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and 
 the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark 
 stout woman, knitting. 
 
 " You dogs ! " said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with 
 an unchanged f roiit, except as to the spots on his nose : " I 
 would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate 
 you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the 
 
104 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he 
 should be crushed under the wheels." 
 
 So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their 
 experience of what such a man could do to them, within 
 the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even 
 an eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the 
 woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked 
 the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to no- 
 tice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over 
 all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, 
 and gave the word " Go on ! " 
 
 He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by 
 in quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the 
 Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, 
 the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a 
 bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats had 
 crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained look- 
 ing on for hours ; soldiers and police often passing between 
 them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which 
 they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father 
 had long ago taken up his bundle and hidden himself away 
 with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while 
 it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the 
 running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball — • 
 when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, 
 still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water 
 of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into 
 evening, so much life in the city ran into death according 
 to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were 
 sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy 
 Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course. 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but 
 not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have 
 been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most 
 coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate 
 nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a pre- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 105 
 
 valent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating un- 
 willingly — a dejected disposition to give up, and wither 
 away. 
 
 Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which 
 might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses 
 and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the 
 countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment 
 of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occa- 
 sioned by an external circumstance beyond his control — the 
 setting sun. 
 
 The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling car- 
 riage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was 
 steeped in crimson. "It will die out," said Monsieur the 
 Marquis, glancing at his hands, "directly." 
 
 In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the mo- 
 ment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the 
 wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous 
 smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; 
 the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was 
 no glow left when the drag was taken off. 
 
 But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a 
 little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and 
 rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the 
 chase, and a crag with a fortress on it Used as a prison. 
 Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew 
 on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was com. 
 ing near home. 
 
 The village had its one poor street, with its poor brew- 
 ery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays 
 of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. 
 It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and 
 many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare 
 onions and the like for supper, while many were at the 
 fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small 
 yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive 
 signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax 
 for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, 
 tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be 
 paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little vil- 
 lage, until the wonder was, that there was any village left 
 unswallowed. 
 
 Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the 
 men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the 
 9 
 
106 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 prospect — Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, 
 down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and 
 Death in the dominant prison on the crag. 
 
 Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking 
 of his postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about 
 their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by 
 the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling 
 carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the 
 fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to 
 look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, with- 
 out knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn 
 face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of 
 Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive 
 the truth through the best part of a hundred years. 
 
 Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive 
 faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had 
 drooped before Monseigneur of the Court — only the differ- 
 ence was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not 
 to propitiate — when a grizzled mender of the roads joined 
 the group. 
 
 " Bring me hither that fellow ! " said the Marquis to the 
 courier. 
 
 The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fel- 
 lows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the 
 people at the Paris fountain. 
 
 "I passed you on the road? " 
 
 "Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being 
 passed on the road." 
 
 " Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both? " 
 
 "Monseigneur, it is true." 
 
 "What did you look at, so fixedly? " 
 
 "Monseigneur, I looked at the man." 
 
 He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap 
 pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look 
 under the carriage. 
 
 "What man, pig? And why look there? " 
 
 "Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the 
 shoe — the drag." 
 
 " Who? " demanded the traveller. 
 
 "Monseigneur, the man." 
 
 " May the Devil carry away these idiots ! How do you 
 call the man? You know all the men of this part of the 
 country. Who was he? " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 107 
 
 " Your clemency, Monseigneur ! He was not of this part 
 of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw 
 him." 
 
 " Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated? " 
 
 " With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of 
 it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over — like this ! " 
 
 He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned 
 back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head 
 hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his 
 cap, and made a bow. 
 
 "What was he like?" 
 
 " Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All cov- 
 ered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre ! " 
 
 The picture produced an immense sensation in the little 
 crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other 
 eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to ob- 
 serve whether he had any spectre on his conscience. 
 
 "Truly, you did well," said the Marquis, felicitously 
 sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, " to see a 
 thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great 
 mouth of yours. Bah ! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle ! " 
 
 Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other 
 taxing functionary united; he had come out with great ob- 
 sequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held 
 the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official man- 
 ner. 
 
 " Bah ! Go aside ! " said Monsieur Gabelle. 
 
 " Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your 
 village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, 
 Gabelle." 
 
 " Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your 
 orders." 
 
 "Did he run away, fellow? — where is that Accursed? " 
 
 The accursed was already under the carriage with some 
 half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with 
 his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends 
 promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to 
 Monsieur the Marquis. 
 
 " Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the 
 drag? " 
 
 " Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, 
 head first, as a person plunges into the river." 
 
 " See to it, Gabelle. Goon!" 
 
108 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 . The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still 
 among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so sud- 
 denly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; 
 they had very little else to save, or they might not have 
 been so fortunate. 
 
 The burst with which the carriage started out of the vil- 
 lage and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the 
 steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot 
 pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many 
 sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a 
 thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the 
 Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their 
 whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was 
 audible, trotting on ahead into the dim distance. 
 
 At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial- 
 ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour 
 on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperi- 
 enced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the 
 life — his own life, maybe — for it was dreadfully spare and 
 thin. 
 
 To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had 
 long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman 
 was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came 
 up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the car- 
 riage-door. 
 
 "It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition." 
 
 With an exclamation of impatience, but with his un- 
 changeable face, Monseigneur looked out. 
 
 " How, then ! What is it? Always petitions ! " 
 
 " Monseigneur. For the love of the great God ! My hus- 
 band, the forester." 
 
 " What of your husband, the forester? Always the same 
 with you people. He cannot pay something? " 
 
 "He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead." 
 
 " Well ! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you? " 
 
 "Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a 
 little heap of poor grass." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor 
 grass? " 
 
 "Again, well?" 
 
 She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner 
 was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her vein- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 109 
 
 ous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid 
 one of them on the carriage-door — tenderly, caressingly, as 
 if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to 
 feel the appealing touch. 
 
 " Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my peti- 
 tion ! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so 
 many more will die of want." 
 
 "Again, well? Can I feed them? " 
 
 "Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. 
 My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my 
 husband's name, may be placed over him to show where he 
 lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it 
 will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I 
 shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Mon- 
 seigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is 
 no much want. Monseigneur ! Monseigneur ! " 
 
 The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage 
 had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened 
 the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again 
 escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league 
 or two of distance that remained between him and his 
 chateau. 
 
 The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around 
 him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, 
 ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; 
 to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap 
 without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man 
 like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, 
 as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, 
 and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as 
 the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed 
 to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extin- 
 guished. 
 
 The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many 
 overhanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that 
 time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a 
 flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his 
 chateau was opened to him. 
 
 "Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from 
 England? " 
 
 "Monseigneur, not yet." 
 
110 A TALE OF TWO CITIES, 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 THE GORGON'S HEAD. 
 
 It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of ]VIon- 
 sieur the Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before it, 
 and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting iu a stone terrace 
 before the principal door. A stony business altogether, 
 with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone 
 flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in 
 all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, 
 when it was finished, two centuries ago. 
 
 Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Mar- 
 quis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently 
 disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an 
 owl in the roof of the great pile of stable building away 
 among the trees. All else was so quiet, that the flambeau 
 carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the 
 great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, 
 instead of being in the open night-air. Other sound than 
 the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a foun- 
 tain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark 
 nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and 
 then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again. 
 
 The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the 
 Marquis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, 
 swords, and knives of the chase; grimmer with certain 
 heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which .many a 
 peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight 
 when his lord was angry. 
 
 Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made 
 fast for the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau- 
 bearer going on before, went up the staircase to a door in a 
 corridor. This thrown open, admitted him to his own pri- 
 vate apartment of three rooms : his bed-chamber and two 
 others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, 
 great dogs upon the hearths for the burning of wood in 
 winter time, and all luxuries befitting the state of a mar- 
 quis in a luxurious age and country. The fashion of the 
 last Louis but one, of the line that was never to break — the 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Ill 
 
 fourteenth Louis — was conspicuous in their rich furniture; 
 but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustra- 
 tions of old pages in the history of France. 
 
 A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the 
 rooms; a round room, in one of the chateau's four extin- 
 guisher-topped towers. A small lofty room, with its win- 
 dow wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so 
 that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal 
 lines of black, alternating with their broad lines of stone 
 colour. 
 
 "My nephew," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper 
 preparation; "they said he was not arrived." 
 
 Nor was he; but, he had been expected with Mon- 
 seigneur. 
 
 "Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; never- 
 theless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quar- 
 ter of an hour." 
 
 In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat 
 down alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair 
 was opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup, 
 and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he 
 put it down. 
 
 "What is that?" he' calmly asked, looking with atten* 
 tion at the horizontal lines of black and stone colour. 
 
 " Monseigneur? That? " 
 
 "Outside the blinds. Open the blinds." 
 
 It was done 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night 
 are all that are here." 
 
 The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had 
 looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood with that 
 blank behind him, looking round for instructions. 
 
 " Good," said the imperturbable master. " Close them 
 again." 
 
 That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his 
 supper. He was half way through it, when he again 
 stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of 
 wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of 
 the chateau. 
 
 " Ask who is arrived? " 
 
 It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some 
 few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon.. 
 
112 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 He had diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly 
 as to come up with Monseigneur on the road. He had 
 heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being be- 
 fore him. 
 
 He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper 
 awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed to 
 come to it. In a little while he came. He had been known 
 in England as Charles Darn ay. 
 
 Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they 
 did not shake hands. 
 
 " You left Paris yesterday, sir? " he said to Monseigneur, 
 as he took his seat at table. 
 
 " Yesterday. And you? " 
 
 "I come direct." 
 
 "From London?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, 
 with a smile. 
 
 "On the contrary; I come direct." 
 
 " Pardon me ! I mean, not a long time on the journey; 
 a long time intending the journey." 
 
 " I have been detained by " — the nephew stopped a mo- 
 ment in his answer — "various business." 
 
 "Without doubt," said the polished uncle. 
 
 So long as a servant was present, no other words passed 
 between them. When coffee had been served and they 
 were alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and 
 meeting the eyes- of the face that was like a fine mask, 
 opened a conversation. 
 
 " I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the 
 object that took me away. It carried me into great and 
 unexpected peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had 
 carried me to death I hope it would have sustained me." 
 
 "Not to death," said the uncle; "it is not necessary to 
 say, to death." 
 
 " I doubt, sir," returned the nephew, " whether, if it had 
 carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have 
 cared to stop me there." 
 
 The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of 
 the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as 
 to that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, 
 which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it 
 was uot reassuring* 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 113 
 
 "Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, "for anything I 
 know, you may have expressly worked to give a more sus- 
 picious appearance to the suspicious circumstances that sur- 
 rounded me." 
 
 "No, no, no," said the uncle, pleasantly. 
 
 " But, however that may be, " resumed the nephew, glanc- 
 ing at him with deep distrust, " I know that your diplo- 
 macy would stop me by any means, and would know no 
 scruple as to means." 
 
 "My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine 
 pulsation in the two marks. " Do me the favour to recall 
 that I told you so, long ago." 
 
 "I recall it." 
 
 "Thank you," said the Marquis — very sweetly indeed. 
 
 His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a 
 musical instrument. 
 
 "In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, "I believe it to be 
 at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has 
 kept me out of a prison in France here." 
 
 " I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping 
 his coffee. "Dare I ask you to explain? " 
 
 "I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the 
 Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for 
 years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to some 
 fortress indefinitely." 
 
 "It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness. 
 " For the honour of the family, I could even resolve to in- 
 commode you to that extent. Pray excuse me ! " 
 
 " I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the 
 day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed 
 the nephew. 
 
 "I would not say happily, my friend," returned the 
 uncle, with refined politeness; "I would not be sure of 
 that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by 
 the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to 
 far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. 
 But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you 
 say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correc- 
 tion, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, 
 these slight favours that might so incommode you, are only 
 to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are 
 sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) 
 to so few ! It used not to be so, but France in all such 
 10 
 
114 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors 
 held the right of life and death over the surrounding vul- 
 gar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken 
 out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one 
 fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for 
 professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter 
 — his daughter? We have lost many privileges; a new 
 philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our 
 station in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say 
 would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very 
 bad, very bad ! " 
 
 The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and 
 shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could be- 
 comingly be of a country still containing himself, that great 
 means of regeneration. 
 
 " We have so asserted our station, both in the old time 
 and in the modern time also," said the nephew, gloomily, 
 " that I believe our name to be more detested than any 
 name in France." 
 
 "Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Detestation of the 
 high is the involuntary homage of the low." 
 
 "There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, 
 " a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, 
 which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark 
 deference of fear and slavery." 
 
 "A compliment," said the Marquis, "to the grandeur of 
 the family, merited by the manner in which the family has 
 sustained its grandeur. Hah ! " And he took another 
 gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs. 
 
 But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, 
 covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, 
 the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger 
 concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than 
 was comportable with its wearer's assumption of indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 "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." 
 
 That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If 
 a picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years 
 hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few 
 years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 115 
 
 might have been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, 
 fire-charred, plunder-wrecked ruins. As for the roof he 
 vaunted, he might have found that shutting out the sky in 
 a new way — to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies 
 into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hun- 
 dred thousand muskets. 
 
 " Meanwhile," said the Marquis, "I will preserve the 
 honour and repose of the family, if you will not. But you 
 must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for 
 the night? " 
 
 " A moment more." 
 
 "An hour, if you please." 
 
 "Sir," said the nephew, "we have done wrong, and are 
 reaping the fruits of wrong." 
 
 " We have done wrong? " repeated the Marquis, with an 
 inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, 
 then to himself. 
 
 " Our family ; our honourable family, whose honour is of 
 so much account to both of us, in such different ways. 
 Even in my father's time, we did a world of wrong, injur- 
 ing every human creature who came between us and our 
 pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my fa- 
 ther's time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my 
 father's twin brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, 
 from himself? " 
 
 " Death has done that ! " said the Marquis. 
 
 "And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a 
 system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but pow- 
 erless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear 
 mother's lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother's 
 eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress; and 
 tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain." 
 
 "Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis, 
 touching him on the breast with his forefinger — they were 
 now standing by the hearth — " you will for ever seek them 
 in vain, be assured." 
 
 Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, 
 was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he 
 stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in 
 his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as 
 though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with 
 which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, 
 and said, 
 
116 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 ."My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under 
 which I have lived." 
 
 When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of 
 snuff, and put his box in his pocket. 
 
 "Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after 
 ringing a small bell on the table, " and accept your natural 
 destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see." 
 
 "This property and France are lost to me," said the 
 nephew, sadly; "I renounce them." 
 
 "Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but 
 is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is 
 it yet? " 
 
 " I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. 
 If it passed to me from you, to-morrow " 
 
 " Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable." 
 
 " — or twenty years hence " 
 
 "You do me too much honour," said the Marquis; 
 "still, I prefer that supposition." 
 
 " — I would abandon it, and live otherwise and else- 
 where. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilder- 
 ness of misery and ruin ! " 
 
 " Hah ! " said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious 
 room. 
 
 "To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its 
 integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crum- 
 bling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, 
 mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering." 
 
 " Hah ! " said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied man- 
 ner. 
 
 " If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands 
 better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possi- 
 ble) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miser- 
 able people who cannot leave it and who have been long 
 wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another gen- 
 eration, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse 
 on it, and on all this land." 
 
 "And you?" said the uncle. "Forgive my curiosity; 
 do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to 
 live?" 
 
 " I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even 
 with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day- 
 work." 
 
 " In England, for example? " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. ll? 
 
 " Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this 
 country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, 
 for I bear it in no other." 
 
 The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed- 
 chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the 
 door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, 
 and listened for the retreating step of his valet. 
 
 " England is very attractive to you, seeing how indiffer- 
 ently you have prospered there," he observed then, turning 
 his calm face to his nephew with a smile. 
 
 " I have already said, that for my prospering there, I 
 am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, 
 it is my Refuge." 
 
 " They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge 
 of many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge 
 there? A Doctor? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "With a daughter?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Yes," said the Marquis. "You are fatigued. Good 
 night!" 
 
 As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there 
 was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air 
 of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears 
 of his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight 
 lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, 
 and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that 
 looked handsomely diabolic. 
 
 " Yes," repeated the Marquis. " A Doctor with a daugh- 
 ter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy ! You are 
 fatigued. Good night ! " 
 
 It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any 
 stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of 
 his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to 
 the door. 
 
 " Good night ! " said the uncle. " I look to the pleasure 
 of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose ! Light 
 Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there! — And burn 
 Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will," he added to 
 himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned 
 his valet to his own "bedroom. 
 
 The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked 
 to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself 
 
118 A TALE OF TWO CJT1E$, 
 
 gently for sleep, that hot still night. Bustling about the 
 room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on the floor, 
 he moved like a refined tiger : — looked like some enchanted 
 marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose 
 periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, 
 or just coming on. 
 
 He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, 
 looking again at the scraps of the day's journey that came 
 unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, 
 the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the 
 crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at the 
 fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap point- 
 ing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain sug- 
 gested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the 
 step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his 
 arms up, crying, " Dead ! " 
 
 "I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, "and may 
 go to bed." 
 
 So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, 
 he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard 
 the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed 
 himself to sleep. 
 
 The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the 
 black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, 
 the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs 
 barked, and the owl made a noise with very little resem- 
 blance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl 
 by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creat- 
 ures hardly ever to say what is set down for them. 
 
 For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, 
 lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead dark- 
 ness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own 
 hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial- 
 place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass 
 were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the 
 Cross might have come down, for anything that could be 
 seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast 
 asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved 
 usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and 
 the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and 
 were fed and freed. 
 
 The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, 
 and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and un- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 119 
 
 heard— both melting away, like the minutes that were fall- 
 ing from the spring of Time — through three dark hours. 
 Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the 
 light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were 
 opened. 
 
 Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops 
 of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In 
 the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn 
 to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the 
 birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of 
 the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Mar- 
 quis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its 
 might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare 
 amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, 
 looked awe-stricken. 
 
 Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the 
 village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were un- 
 barred, and people came forth shivering — chilled, as yet, 
 by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened 
 toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the 
 fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig 
 and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live 
 stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could' 
 be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, 
 a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, the 
 led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot. 
 
 The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but 
 woke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears 
 and knives of the chase had been reddened as of old; then, 
 had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, 
 doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their 
 stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and 
 freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and 
 rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their 
 chains, and reared impatient to be loosed. 
 
 All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, 
 and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of 
 the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down 
 the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the 
 booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor 
 the quick saddling of horses and riding away? 
 
 What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mendei 
 of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the vil- 
 
120 A TALE OF TWO CITTES. 
 
 lage, with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a 
 bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a 
 heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it 
 to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance 
 seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the 
 sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high 
 in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain. 
 
 All the people of the village were at the fountain, stand- 
 ing about in^heir depressed manner, and whispering low, 
 but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and sur- 
 prise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered to 
 anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, 
 or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly re- 
 paying their trouble, which they had picked up in their in- 
 terrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and 
 some of those of the posting-house, and all the taxing au- 
 thorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on 
 the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that 
 was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of 
 roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty par- 
 ticular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with 
 his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what por- 
 tended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a 
 servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said 
 Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, 
 like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora? 
 
 It portended that there was one stone face too many, up 
 at the chateau. 
 
 The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the 
 night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone 
 face for which it had waited through about two hundred 
 years. 
 
 It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It 
 was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and 
 petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure 
 attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of 
 paper, on which was scrawled : 
 
 "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 121 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 TWO PROMISES. 
 
 More months, to the number of twelve, had come and 
 gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England 
 as a higher teacher of the French language who was con- 
 versant with French literature. In this age, he would have 
 been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read 
 with young men who could find any leisure and interest for 
 the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and 
 he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy. 
 He could write of them, besides, in sound English, and 
 render them into sound English. Such masters were not 
 at that time easily found; Princes that had been, and 
 Kings that were to be, were not yet of the Teacher class, 
 and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson's ledgers 
 to turn cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whose attain- 
 ments made the student's way unusually pleasant and pro- 
 fitable, and as an elegant translator who brought some- 
 thing to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young 
 Mr. Darnay soon became known and encouraged. He was 
 well acquainted, moreover, with the circumstances of his 
 country, and those were of ever-growing interest. So, with 
 great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered. 
 
 In London, he had expected neither to walk on pave- 
 ments of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had 
 any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. 
 He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it, and 
 made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted. 
 
 A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, 
 where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated 
 smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European lan- 
 guages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the 
 Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed in London. 
 
 Now, from the days when it was always summer in 
 Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen lati- 
 tudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way — 
 Charles Darnay 's way — the way of the love of a woman. 
 
 He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his dan- 
 
122 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 ger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the 
 sound of her compassionate voice; he had never seen a face 
 so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted with 
 his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for 
 him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject; 
 the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond 
 the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads — the 
 solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist 
 of a dream — had been done a year, and he had never yet, 
 by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the 
 state of his heart. 
 
 That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It 
 was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London 
 from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet corner 
 in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of opening his 
 mind to Doctor Manette. It was the close of the summer 
 day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss Pross. 
 
 He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a win- 
 dow. The energy which had at once supported him under 
 his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness, had been 
 gradually restored to him. He was now a very energetic 
 man indeed, with great firmness of purpose, strength of 
 resolution, and vigour of action. In his recovered energy 
 he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at 
 first been in the exercise of his other recovered faculties; 
 but, this had never been frequently observable, and had 
 grown more and more rare. 
 
 He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of 
 fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, 
 now entered Charles Darnay, at sight of whom he laid aside 
 his book and held out his hand. 
 
 " Charles Darnay ! I rejoice to see you. We have been 
 counting on your return these three or four days past. Mr. 
 Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and 
 both made you out to be more than due." 
 
 "I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter," 
 he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very 
 warmly as to the Doctor. " Miss Manette " 
 
 " Is well," said the Doctor, as he stopped short, " and 
 your return will delight us all. She has gone out on some 
 household matters, but will soon be home. 
 
 " Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took the 
 opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak, to you. " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 123 
 
 There was a blank silence. 
 
 " Yes? " said the Doctor, with evident constraint 
 "Bring your chair here, and speak on." 
 
 He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the 
 speaking on less easy. 
 
 " I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being so 
 intimate here," so he at length began, "for some year and 
 a half, that I hope the topic on which I am about to touch 
 may not " 
 
 He was stayed by the Doctor's putting out his hand to 
 stop him. When he had kept it so a little while, he said, 
 drawing it back : 
 
 "Is Lucie the topic?" 
 
 "She is." 
 
 " It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is 
 very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of 
 yours, Charles Darnay." 
 
 "It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and 
 deep love, Doctor Manette ! " he said deferentially. 
 
 There was another blank silence before her father re- 
 joined : 
 
 "I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it." 
 
 His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, 
 too, that, it originated in an unwillingness to approach the 
 subject, that Charles Darnay hesitated. 
 
 " Shall I go on, sir? " 
 
 Another blank. 
 
 "Yes, go on." 
 
 " You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot 
 know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, with- 
 out knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and 
 anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Doctor 
 Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterest- 
 edly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I 
 love her. You have loved yourself; let your old love speak 
 for me ! " 
 
 The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes 
 bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched out 
 his hand again, hurriedly, and cried : 
 
 "Not that, sir! Let that be! I adjure you, do not re- 
 call that!" 
 
 His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in 
 Charles Darnay 's ears long after he had ceased. He mo- 
 
124 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 tioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed to be 
 an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so received it, 
 and remained silent. 
 
 "I ask your pardon," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, 
 after some moments. "I do not doubt your loving Lucie; 
 you may be satisfied of it. " 
 
 He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at 
 him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, 
 and his white hair overshadowed his face : 
 
 " Have you spoken to Lucie? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Nor written? " 
 
 "Never." 
 
 " It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your 
 self-denial is to be referred to your consideration for her 
 father. Her father thanks you." 
 
 He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it. 
 
 "I know," said Darnay, respectfully, "how can I fail to 
 know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from 
 day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there is an 
 affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the cir- 
 cumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have 
 few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and 
 child. I know, Doctor Manette — how can I fail to know — 
 that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter 
 who has become a woman, there is, in her heart, towards 
 you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know 
 that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now 
 devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her 
 present years and character, united to the trustfulness and 
 attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her. 
 I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her 
 from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be in- 
 vested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than 
 that in which you are always with her. I know that when 
 she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, 
 all in one, are round your neck. I know that in loving you 
 she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and 
 loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves 
 you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed res- 
 toration. I have known this, night and day, since I have 
 known you in your home." 
 
 Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 125 
 
 breathing was a little quickened; but lie repressed all other 
 signs of agitation. 
 
 " Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always see- 
 ing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I have 
 forborne, and forborne, as long as it was in the nature of 
 man to do it. I have felt, and do even now feel, that to 
 bring my love — even mine — between you, is to touch your 
 history with something not quite so good as itself. But I 
 love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her ! " 
 
 "I believe it," answered her father, mournfully. "I 
 have thought so before now. I believe it." 
 
 "But, do not believe," said Darnay, upon whose ear the 
 mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, " that if 
 my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as 
 to make her my wife, I must at any time put any separa- 
 tion between her and you, I could or would breathe a word 
 of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to be 
 hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any 
 such possibility, even at a remote distance of years, har- 
 boured in my thoughts, and hidden in my heart — if it ever 
 had been there — if it ever could be there — I could not now 
 touch this honoured hand." 
 
 He laid his own upon it as he spoke. 
 
 " No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary e»x«, 
 from France; like you, driven from it by its distractions, 
 oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live away 
 from it by my own exertions, and. trusting in a happier fu- 
 ture; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your 
 life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. 
 Not to divide with Lucie her privilege as your child, com- 
 panion, and friend; but to come in aid of it, and bind her 
 closer to you, if such a thing can be." 
 
 His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answer- 
 ing the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father 
 rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked up 
 for the first time since the beginning of the conference. A 
 struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle with that oc- 
 casional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt and 
 dread. 
 
 " You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Dar- 
 nay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all 
 my heart — or nearly so. Have you any reason to believe 
 that Lucie loves you? " 
 
126 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "None. As yet, none." 
 
 " Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you 
 may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge? " 
 
 " Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do 
 it for weeks; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that 
 hopefulness to-morrow." 
 
 " Do you seek any guidance from me? " 
 
 " I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that 
 you might have it in your power, if you should deem it 
 right, to give me some." 
 
 " Do you seek any promise from me? " 
 
 "I do seek that." 
 
 " What is it? " 
 
 " I well understand that, without you, I could have no 
 hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Manette held 
 me at this moment in her innocent heart — do not think I 
 have the presumption to assume so much — I could retain 
 no place in it against her love for her father." 
 
 " If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is 
 involved in it? " 
 
 " I understand equally well, that a word from her father 
 in any suitor's favour, would outweigh herself and all the 
 world. For which reason, Doctor Manette," said Darnay, 
 modestly but firmly, " I would not ask that word, to save 
 my life." 
 
 " I am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out 
 of close love, as well as out of wide division; in the former 
 case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to pene- 
 trate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one respect, such a 
 mystery to me; I can make no guess at the state of her 
 heart." 
 
 " May I ask, sir, if you think she is " As he hesi- 
 tated, her father supplied the rest. 
 
 " Is sought by any other suitor? " 
 
 " It is what I meant to say." 
 
 Her father considered a little before he answered : 
 
 " You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver 
 is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by 
 one of these." 
 
 "Or both," said Darnay. 
 
 "I had not thought of both; I should not think either, 
 likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is." 
 
 " It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 127 
 
 time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have ventured 
 to lay before you, you will bear testimony to what I have 
 said, and to your belief in it. I hope you may be able to 
 think so well of me, as to urge no influence against me. I 
 say nothing more of my stake in this; this is what I ask. 
 The condition on which I ask it, and which you have an 
 undoubted right to require, I will observe immediately." 
 
 "I give the promise," said the Doctor, "without any 
 condition. I believe your object to be, purely and truth- 
 fully, as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to 
 perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties between me and my 
 other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that 
 you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to 
 you. If there were — Charles Darnay, if there were " 
 
 The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their 
 hands were joined as the Doctor spoke : 
 
 " — any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, any- 
 thing whatsoever, new or old, against the man she really 
 loved— the direct responsibility thereof not lying on his 
 head — they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is 
 everything to me; more to me than suffering, more to me 
 than wrong, more to me Well! This is idle talk." 
 
 So strange was the way in which he faded into silence, 
 and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, 
 that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that 
 slowly released and dropped it. 
 
 "You said something to me," said Doctor Manette, 
 breaking into a smile. " What was it you said to me? " 
 
 He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered 
 having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind re- 
 verted to that, he answered : 
 
 " Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full 
 confidence on my part. My present name, though but 
 slightly changed from my mother's, is not, as you will re- 
 member, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and 
 why I am in England." 
 
 " Stop ! " said the Doctor of Beauvais. 
 
 " I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confi- 
 dence, and have no secret from you " 
 
 " Stop ! " 
 
 For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at his 
 ears; for another instant, even had his two hands laid on 
 Darnay' s lips. 
 
128 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should 
 prosper, if Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on 
 your marriage morning. Do you promise? " 
 
 "Willingly." 
 
 " Give me your hand'. She will be home directly, and it 
 is better she should not see us together to-night. Go! 
 God bless you ! " 
 
 It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was 
 an hour later and darker when Lucie came home; she hur- 
 ried into the room alone — for Miss Pross had gone straight 
 up-stairs — and was surprised to find his reading-chair 
 empty. 
 
 " My father ! " she called to him. Father dear ! " 
 
 Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low ham- 
 mering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the 
 intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came run- 
 ning back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood all 
 chilled, " What shall I do ! What shall I do ! " 
 
 Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back, 
 and tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The 
 noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently 
 came out to her, and they walked up and down together 
 for a long time. 
 
 She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep 
 that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of shoemaking 
 tools, and his old unfinished work, were all as usual. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A COMPANION PICTUKE. 
 
 "Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that selfsame night, or 
 morning, to his jackal; "mix another bowl of punch; I 
 have something to say to you." 
 
 Sydney had been working double tides that night, and 
 the night before, and the night before that, and a good 
 many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among 
 Mr. Stryver' s papers before the setting in of the long va- 
 cation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver ar- 
 rears were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 129 
 
 of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric 
 and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again. 
 
 Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so 
 much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet- to wel- 
 ling to pull him through the night; a correspondingly ex- 
 tra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he 
 was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his tur- 
 ban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped 
 it at intervals for the last six hours. 
 
 " Are you mixing that other bowl of punch? " said 
 Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband, glanc- 
 ing round from the sofa where he lay on his back. 
 
 "lam." 
 
 " Now, look here ! I am going to tell you something that 
 will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you 
 think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. 
 I intend to marry." 
 
 "Do you?" 
 
 " Yes. And not for money. What do you say now? " 
 
 "I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she? " 
 
 "Guess." 
 
 "Do I know her?" 
 
 "Guess." 
 
 " I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, 
 with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you 
 want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner." 
 
 "Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver, coming slowly 
 into a sitting posture. " Sydney, I rather despair of mak- 
 ing myself intelligible to you, because you are such an in- 
 sensible dog." 
 
 " And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, 
 "are such a sensitive and poetical spirit." 
 
 " Come ! " rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, " though 
 I don't prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance 
 (for I hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of fel- 
 low than you." 
 
 " You are a luckier, if you mean that. " 
 
 " I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more 
 
 more " 
 
 " Say gallantry, while you are about it," suggested Car- 
 ton. 
 
 "Well! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a 
 man," said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he 
 
130 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 made the punch, "who cares more to be agreeable, who 
 takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to 
 be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you, do." 
 
 " Go on," said Sydney Carton. 
 
 "No; but before I go on," said Stryver, shaking his 
 head in his bullying way, " I'll have this out with you. 
 You've been at Doctor Manette's house as much as I have, 
 or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your 
 moroseness there ! Your manners have been of that silent 
 and sullen and hang-dog kind, that, upon my life and soul, 
 I have been ashamed of you, Sydney ! " 
 
 " It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice 
 at the bar, to be ashamed of anything," returned Sydney; 
 "you ought to be much obliged to me." 
 
 " You shall not get off in that way," rejoined Stryver, 
 shouldering the rejoinder at him; "no, Sydney, it's my 
 duty to tell you — and I tell you to your face to do you 
 good — that you are a de-vilish ill-conditioned fellow in that 
 sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow." 
 
 Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and 
 laughed. 
 
 " Look at me ! " said Stryver, squaring himself; " I have 
 less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being 
 more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it? " 
 
 " I never saw you do it yet," muttered Carton. 
 
 "I do it because it's politic; I do it on principle. And 
 look at me! I get on." 
 
 "You don't get on with your account of your matri- 
 monial intentions," answered Carton, with a careless air; 
 "I wish you would keep to that. As to me — will you 
 never understand that I am incorrigible? " 
 
 He asked the question with some appearance of scorn. 
 
 " You have no business to be, incorrigible," was his 
 friend's answer, delivered in no very soothing tone. 
 
 I have no business to be, at all, that I know of," said 
 Sydney Carton. " Who is the lady? " 
 
 "Now, don't let my announcement of the name make 
 you uncomfortable, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, preparing 
 him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was 
 about to make, "because I know you don't mean half you 
 say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. 
 I make this little preface, because you once mentioned the 
 young lady to me in slighting terms." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 131 
 
 "I did?" 
 
 "Certainly; and in these chambers." 
 
 Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his 
 complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his 
 complacent friend. 
 
 "You made mention of the young lady as a golden- 
 haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had 
 been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in 
 that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little re- 
 sentful of your employing such a designation; but you are 
 not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no 
 more annoyed when I think of the expression, than. I 
 should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, 
 who had no eye for pictures : or of a piece of music of 
 mine, who had no ear for music." 
 
 Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank 
 it by bumpers, looking at his friend. ... 
 
 "Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver. 
 " I don't care about fortune : she is a charming creature, 
 and I have made up my mind to please myself : on the 
 whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will 
 have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly 
 rising man, and a man of some distinction : it is a piece of 
 good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. 
 Are you astonished? " 
 
 Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, " Why should 
 I be astonished? " 
 
 " You approve? " 
 
 Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should 
 I not approve? " 
 
 " Well ! " said his friend Stryver, " you take it more 
 easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on 
 my behalf than I thought you would be; though, to be 
 sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient 
 chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I 
 have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a 
 change from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man 
 to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he 
 doesn't, he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette 
 will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. 
 So I have made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, 
 I want to say a word to you about your prospects. You are 
 in a bad way, you know; you really are in a bad way., 
 
132 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 You don't know the value of money, you live hard, you'll 
 knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really 
 ought to think about a nurse." 
 
 The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made 
 him look twice as big as he was, and four times as 
 offensive. 
 
 "Now, let me recommend you," pursued Stryver, "to 
 look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my 
 different way; look it in the face, you, in your different 
 way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. 
 Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's society, 
 nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out some re- 
 spectable woman with a little property — somebody in the 
 landlady way, or lodging-letting way — and marry her, 
 against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing for you. 
 Now think of it, Sydney." 
 
 "I'll think of it." said Sydney. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE FELLOW OF DELICACY. 
 
 Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnan- 
 imous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor's daughter, 
 resolved to make her happiness known to her before he 
 left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental de- 
 bating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would 
 be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they 
 could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give 
 her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in 
 the little Christmas vacation between it and Hilary. 
 
 As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about 
 it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with 
 the jury on substantial worldly grounds — the only grounds 
 ever worth taking into account — it was a plain case, and 
 had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the plain- 
 tiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the counsel for 
 the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even 
 turn to consider. After trying it, Stryver, G. J., was sat- 
 isfied that no plainer case could be. 
 
A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 133 
 
 Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation 
 with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall 
 Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that unaccountably 
 failing too, it behoved him to present himself in Soho, and 
 there declare his noble mind. 
 
 Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his 
 way from the Temple, while the bloom of the Long Vaca- 
 tion's infancy was still upon it. Anybody who had seen 
 him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet on Saint 
 Dunstan's side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown 
 way along the pavement, to the jostlement of all weaker 
 people, might have seen how safe and strong he was. 
 
 His way taking him past Tellson's, and he both banking 
 at Tellson's and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend 
 of the Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver 's mind to enter 
 the bank, and reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the 
 Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the door with the weak 
 rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past 
 the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the 
 musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled 
 for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as 
 if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the 
 clouds were a sum. 
 
 " Halloa ! " said Mr. Stryver. " How do you do? I 
 hope you are well ! " 
 
 It was Stryver' s grand peculiarity that he always seemed 
 too big for any place, or space. He was so much too big 
 for Tellson's, that old clerks in distant corners looked up 
 with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them 
 against the wall. The House itself, magnificently reading 
 the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered dis- 
 pleased, as if the Stryver head had been butted into its re- 
 sponsible waistcoat. 
 
 The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the 
 voice he would recommend under the circumstances, " How 
 do you do, Mr. Stryver? How do you do, sir? " and shook 
 hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking 
 hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson's who 
 shook hands with a customer when the House pervaded the 
 air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as one who shook 
 for Tellson and Co. 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver? " asked Mr. 
 Lorry, in his business character. 
 
134 A TALE OI TWO CITIES. 
 
 "Why, no, thank you; this is a private visit to your- 
 self, Mr. Lorry; I have come for a private word." 
 
 " Oh indeed ! " said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, 
 while his eye strayed to the House afar off. 
 
 "I am going," said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confi- 
 dentially on the desk : whereupon, although it was a large 
 double one, there appeared to be not half desk enough for 
 him: "I am going to make an offer of myself in mar- 
 riage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Manette, Mr. 
 Lorry." 
 
 " Oh dear me ! " cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and 
 looking at his visitor dubiously. 
 
 " Oh dear me, sir? " repeated Stryver, drawing back. 
 "Oh dear you, sir? What may your meaning be, Mr. 
 Lorry?" 
 
 "My meaning," answered the man of business, "is, of 
 course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the 
 greatest credit, and — in short, my meaning is everything 
 you could desire. But — really, you know, Mr. Stryver 
 
 " Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in 
 
 the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against his 
 will to add, internally, " you know there really is so much 
 too much of you ! " 
 
 " Well ! " said Stryver, slapping the desk with his con- 
 tentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long 
 breath, " if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I'll be hanged ! " 
 
 Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means 
 towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen. 
 
 " D — n it all, sir ! " said Stryver, staring at him, " am I 
 not eligible? " 
 
 "Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you're eligible!" said 
 Mr. Lorry. "If you say eligible, you are eligible." 
 
 "Am I not prosperous? " asked Stryver. 
 
 "Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous," 
 said Mr. Lorry. 
 
 " And advancing? " 
 
 "If you come to advancing you know," said Mr. Lorry, 
 delighted to be able to make another admission, "nobody 
 can doubt that." 
 
 "Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry? " de- 
 manded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen. 
 
 "Well! I Were you going there now?" asked Mr. 
 
 Lorry. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 135 
 
 " Straight ! " said Stry ver, with a plump of his fist on 
 the desk. 
 
 "Then I think I wouldn't, if I was you." 
 
 "Why?" said Stry ver. "Now, I'll put you in a cor- 
 ner," forensically shaking a forefinger at him. " You are a 
 man of business and bound to have a reason. State your 
 reason. Why wouldn't you go? " 
 
 "Because," said Mr. Lorry, "I wouldn't go on such an 
 object without having some cause to believe that I should 
 succeed." 
 
 "D — n me!" cried Stry ver, "but this beats everything." 
 
 Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at 
 the angry Stryver. 
 
 "Here's a man of business — man of years — a man of ex- 
 perience — in a Bank," said Stryver; "and having summed 
 up three leading reasons for complete success, he says 
 there's no reason at all! Says it with his head on! " Mr. 
 Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have 
 been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his 
 head off. 
 
 " When I speak of success, I speak of success with the 
 young lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to 
 make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that 
 will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, 
 my good sir," said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver 
 arm, "the young lady. The young lady goes before all." 
 
 "Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver, 
 squaring his elbows, "that it is your deliberate opinion 
 that the young lady at present in question is a mincing 
 Fool?" 
 
 "Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver," said 
 Mr. Lorry, reddening, "that I will hear no disrespectful 
 word of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew 
 any man — which I hope I do not — • whose taste was so 
 coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could 
 not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that 
 .young lady at this desk, not even Tellson's should prevent 
 my giving him a piece of my mind." 
 
 The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had 
 put Mr. Stryver' s blood-vessels into a dangerous state when 
 it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical 
 as their courses could usually be, were in no better state 
 now it was his turn. 
 
136 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "That is what I mean to tell you, sir," said Mr. Lorry. 
 "Pray let there be no mistake about it." 
 • Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, 
 and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, 
 which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the 
 awkward silence by saying : 
 
 " This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You delib- 
 erately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself— 
 myself, Stryver of the King's Bench bar? " 
 
 " Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver? " 
 
 "Yes, I do." 
 
 "Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it 
 correctly." 
 
 "And all I can say of it is," laughed Stryver with a 
 vexed laugh, " that this — ha, ha ! — beats everything .past, 
 present, and to come." 
 
 "Now understand me," pursued Mr. Lorry. "As a man 
 of business, I am not justified in saying anything about 
 this matter, for, as a man of business, I know nothing of 
 it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried Miss Manette 
 in his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and 
 of her father too, and who has a great affection for them 
 both, I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, 
 recollect. Now, you think I may not be right? " 
 
 " Not I ! " said Stryver, whistling. " I can't undertake 
 to find third parties in common sense; I can only find it 
 for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters;, you sup- 
 pose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It's new to me, 
 but you are right, I dare say." 
 
 " What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise 
 for myself. And understand me, sir," said Mr. Lorry, 
 quickly flushing again, "I will not — not even at Tellson's 
 — have it chaxacterised for me by any gentleman breath- 
 ing." 
 
 " There ! I beg your pardon ! " said Stryver. 
 
 " Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about 
 to say : — it might be painful to you to find yourself mis- 
 taken, it might be painful to Doctor Manette to have the 
 task of being explicit with you, it might be very painful to 
 Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. 
 You know the terms upon which I have the honour and 
 happiness to stand with the family. If you please, com- 
 mitting you in no way, representing you in no way, I will 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 137 
 
 undertake to correct iny advice by the exercise of a little 
 new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear 
 upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you 
 can but test its soundness for yourself; if, on the other 
 hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be 
 what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. 
 What do you say? " 
 
 " How long would you keep me in town? " 
 
 " Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go 
 to Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers after- 
 wards." 
 
 "Then I say yes," said Stryver: "I won't go up there 
 now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to; I say yes, 
 and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, 
 causing such a concussion of air on his passage through, 
 that to stand up against it bowing behind the two counters, 
 required the utmost remaining strength of the two ancient 
 clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were always 
 seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly 
 believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to 
 keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed an- 
 other customer in. 
 
 The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker 
 would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion 
 on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unpre- 
 pared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he 
 got; it down. "And now," said Mr. Stryver, shaking his 
 forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was 
 down, "my way out of this, is, to put you all in the 
 wrong." 
 
 It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in 
 which he found great relief. " You shall not put me in the 
 wrong, young lady," said Mr. Stryver; "I'll do that for 
 you." 
 
 Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late 
 as ten o'clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and 
 papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing 
 less on his mind than the subject of the morning. He even 
 showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was alto- 
 gether in an absent and preoccupied state. 
 
 " Well ! " said that good-natured emissary, after a full 
 11 
 
138 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 half -hour of bootless attempts to bring him round to the 
 question. " I have been to Soho. " 
 
 " To Soho? " repeated Mr. Stry ver, coldly. " Oh, to be 
 sure ! What am I thinking of ! " 
 
 "And I have no doubt," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was 
 right in the conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, 
 and I reiterate my advice." 
 
 "I assure you," returned Mr. Stry ver, in the friendliest 
 way, " that I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for 
 it on the poor father's account. I know this must always 
 be a sore subject with the family; let us say no more about 
 it." 
 
 "I don't understand you," said Mr. Lorry. 
 
 "I dare say not," rejoined Stryver, nodding his head in 
 a smoothing and final way; "no matter, no matter." 
 
 "But it does matter," Mr. Lorry urged. 
 
 "No it doesn't; I assure you it doesn't. Having sup- 
 posed that there was sense where there is no sense, and a 
 laudable ambition where there is not a laudable ambition, 
 I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is done. Young 
 women have committed similar follies often before, and 
 have repented them in poverty and obscurity often before. 
 In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped, 
 because it would nave been a bad thing for me in a worldly 
 point of view; in a selfish aspect I am glad that the thing 
 has dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for 
 me in a worldly point of view — it is hardly necessary to say 
 I could have gained nothing by it. There is no harm at 
 all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and, be- 
 tween ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection, 
 that I ever should have committed myself to that extent. 
 Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing vanities and 
 giddinesses of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to 
 do it, or you will always be disappointed. Now, pray say 
 no more about it. I tell you, I regret it on account of 
 others, but I am satisfied on my own account. And I am 
 really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound 
 you, and for giving me your advice; you know the young 
 lady better than I do; you were right, it never would have 
 done." 
 
 Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite 
 stupidly at Mr. Stryver shouldering him towards the door, 
 with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance, 
 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 139 
 
 and good- will, on his erring head. " Make the best of it, 
 my dear sir," said Stryver; "say no more about it; thank 
 you again for allowing me to sound you; good-night! " 
 
 Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where 
 he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, winking 
 at his ceiling. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE FELLOW OF NO DELICACY. 
 
 If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly 
 never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been 
 there often, during a whole year, and had always been the 
 same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared 
 to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, 
 which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was 
 very rarely pierced by the light within him. 
 
 And yet he did care something for the streets that en- 
 vironed that house, and for the senseless stones that made 
 their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and unhappily 
 wandered there, when wine had brought no transitory glad- 
 ness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary 
 figure lingering there, and still lingering there when the 
 first beams of the sun brought into strong relief, removed 
 beauties of architecture in spires of churches and lofty 
 buildings, as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of 
 better things, else forgotten and unattainable, into his 
 mind. Of late, the neglected bed in the Temple Court had 
 known him more scantily than ever; and often when he 
 had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, 
 he had got up again, and haunted that neighbourhood. 
 
 On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying 
 to his jackal that "he had thought better of that marrying 
 matter") had carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and 
 when the sight and scent of flowers in the City streets had 
 some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health for 
 the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney's feet 
 still trod those stones. From being irresolute and purpose- 
 less, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the 
 working out of that intention, they took him to the Doc- 
 tor's door. 
 
140 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work, 
 alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him, 
 and received him with some little embarrassment as he 
 seated himself near her table. But, looking up at his face 
 in the interchange of the first few common-places, she ob- 
 served a change in it. 
 
 " I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton ! " 
 
 "No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not con- 
 ducive to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such 
 profligates? " 
 
 "Is it not — forgive me; I have begun the question on 
 my lips — a pity to live no better life? " 
 
 " God knows it is a shame ! " 
 
 " Then why not change it? " 
 
 Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and sad- 
 dened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were 
 tears in his voice too, as he answered : 
 
 " It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I 
 am. I shall sink lower, and be worse." 
 
 He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes 
 with his hand. The table trembled in the silence that fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 She had never seen him softened, and was much dis- 
 tressed. He knew her to be so, without looking at her, 
 and said : 
 
 "Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down before 
 the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you 
 hear me? " 
 
 "If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would 
 make you happier, it would make me very glad ! " 
 
 " God bless you for your sweet compassion ! " 
 
 He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke 
 steadily. 
 
 " Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from any- 
 thing I say. I am like one who died young. All my life 
 might have been." 
 
 " No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it 
 might still be; I am sure that you might be much, much 
 worthier of yourself. " 
 
 " Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know better 
 — although in the mystery of my own wretched heart I 
 know better — I shall never forget it ! " 
 
 She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 141 
 
 a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike 
 any other that could have been holden. 
 
 "If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could 
 have returned the love of the man you see before you — 
 self-flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse 
 as you know him to be — he would have been conscious this 
 day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would 
 bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, 
 blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know 
 very well that you can have no tenderness for me; I ask 
 for none; I am even thankful that it cannot be." 
 
 " Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I 
 not recall you — forgive me again! — to a better course? 
 Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a 
 confidence," she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and 
 in earnest tears, " I know you would say this to no one 
 else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. 
 Carton? " 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear 
 me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me 
 is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last 
 dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so 
 degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and 
 of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old 
 shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew 
 you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought 
 would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers 
 from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were 
 silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving 
 afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, 
 and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a 
 dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where 
 he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it." 
 
 " Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think again ! 
 Try again ! " 
 
 "No, Miss Manette; all through it, I Imve known my- 
 self to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the 
 weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know 
 with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes 
 that I am, into fire — a fire, however, inseparable in its na- 
 ture from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, 
 doing no service, idly burning away." 
 
142 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made 
 you more unhappy than you were before you knew me " 
 
 "Don't say that, Miss Manette, for you would have re- 
 claimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause 
 of my becoming worse." 
 
 " Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at 
 all events, attributable to some influence of mine — this is 
 what I mean, if I can make it plain — can I use no influence 
 to serve you? Have I no power for good, with you, at 
 all? " 
 
 " The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Ma- 
 nette, I have come here to realise. Let me carry through 
 the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I 
 opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that 
 there was something left in me at this time which. you 
 could deplore and pity." 
 
 " Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, 
 most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better 
 things, Mr. Carton!" 
 
 " Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I 
 have proved myself, and I know better. I distress you; I 
 draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe, when I re- 
 call this day, that the last confidence of my life was re- 
 posed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies 
 there alone, and will be shared by no one? " 
 
 "If that will be a consolation to you, yes." 
 
 " Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you? " 
 
 "Mr. Carton," she answered, after an agitated pause, 
 "the secret is yours, not mine; and I nromise to respect 
 it." 
 
 "Thank you. And again, God bless you." 
 
 He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door. 
 
 "Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever 
 resuming this conversation hj so much as a passing word. 
 I will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could 
 not be surer than it is henceforth. In the hour of my 
 death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance — and 
 shall thank and bless you for it — that my last avowal of 
 myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, 
 and miseries were gently carried in your heart May it 
 otherwise be light and happy ! " 
 
 He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, 
 and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away, 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. . 143 
 
 and how much he every day kept down and perverted, that 
 Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood look- 
 ing back at her. 
 
 " Be comforted ! " he said, " I am not worth such feel- 
 ing, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low 
 companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will 
 render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch 
 who creeps along the streets. Be comforted ! But, within 
 myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, 
 though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore 
 seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you, is, 
 ihat you will believe this of me." 
 
 "I will, Mr. Carton." 
 
 "My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will 
 relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have 
 nothing in unison, and between whom and you there is an 
 impassable space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it 
 rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I 
 would do anything. If my career were of that better kind 
 that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, 
 I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear 
 to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, 
 as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will 
 come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties 
 will be formed about you — ties that will bind you yet more 
 tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn — the dear- 
 est ties that will ever grace and gladden you. Miss 
 Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face 
 looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty 
 springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that 
 there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you 
 love beside you ! " 
 
 He said, " Farewell ! " said a last " God bless you ! " and 
 left her. 
 
144 . A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 
 
 To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his 
 stool in Fleet Street with his grisly urchin beside him, a 
 vast number and variety of objects in movement were every 
 day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet 
 Street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed 
 and deafened by two immense processions, one ever 
 tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending 
 eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains 
 beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes 
 down! 
 
 With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching 
 the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for sev- 
 eral centuries been on duty watching one stream — saving 
 that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. 
 Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, 
 since a small part of his income was derived from the pilot- 
 age of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the 
 middle term of life) from Tellson's side of the tides to the 
 opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in every 
 separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so 
 interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have 
 the honour of drinking her very good health. And it was 
 from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of 
 this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as 
 just now observed. 
 
 Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, 
 and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on 
 a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as 
 little as possible, and looked about him. 
 
 It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when 
 crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his 
 affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a 
 strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must 
 have been " flopping " in some pointed manner, when an un- 
 usual concourse pouring down Fleet Street westward, at- 
 tracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher 
 
A TAXE OF TWO CITIES. 145 
 
 made out that some kind of funeral was coming along, and 
 that there was popular objection to this funeral, which en- 
 gendered uproar. 
 
 " Young Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his off- 
 spring, "it's a buryin'." 
 
 " Hooroar, father ! " cried Young Jerry. 
 
 The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with 
 mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry 
 so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the 
 young gentleman on the ear. 
 
 " What d'ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What 
 do you want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip? 
 This boy is a getting too many for me ! " said Mr. Cruncher, 
 surveying him. "Him and his hooroars! Don't let me 
 hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. 
 D'ye hear? " 
 
 "I warn't doing no harm," Young Jerry protested, rub- 
 bing his cheek. 
 
 "Drop it, then," said Mr. Cruncher; "I won't have none 
 of your no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look 
 at the crowd." 
 
 His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were 
 bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourn- 
 ing coach, in which mourning coach there was only one 
 mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were con- 
 sidered essential to the dignity of the position. The posi- 
 tion appeared by no means to please him, however, with an 
 increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, 
 making grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning and call- 
 ing out : " Yah ! Spies ! Tst ! Yaha ! Spies ! " with many 
 compliments, too numerous and forcible to repeat. 
 
 Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for 
 Mr. Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and be- 
 came excited, when a funeral passed Tellson's. Naturally, 
 therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance ex- 
 cited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran 
 against him : 
 
 " What is it, brother? What's it about? " 
 "1 don't know," said the man. "Spies! Yaha! Tst! 
 Spies ! " 
 
 He asked another man. " Who is it? " 
 
 "/ don't know," returned the man, clapping his hands 
 to his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising 
 13 
 
146 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 heat and with the greatest ardour, " Spies ! Yaha ! Tst, 
 tst! Spi-ies!" 
 
 At length, a person better informed on the merits of the 
 case, tumbled against him, and from this person he learned 
 that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly. 
 
 " Was He a spy? " asked Mr. Cruncher. 
 
 "Old Bailey spy," returned his informant. "Yaha! 
 Tst ! Yah ! Old Bailey Spi-i-ies ! " 
 
 " Why, to be sure ! " exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial 
 at which he had assisted. " I've seen him. Dead, is he? " 
 
 "Dead as mutton," returned the other, "and can't be 
 too dead. Have 'em out, there ! Spies ! Pull 'em out, 
 there ! Spies ! " 
 
 The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of 
 any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and 
 loudly repeating the suggestion to have 'em out, and to 
 pull 'em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they 
 came to a stop. On the crowd's opening the coach doors, 
 the one mourner scuffled out of himself and was in their 
 hands for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such 
 good use of his time, that in another moment he was scour- 
 ing away up a bye-street, after shedding his cloak, hat, 
 long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and other sym- 
 bolical tears. 
 
 These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and 
 wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly 
 shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped 
 at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had 
 already got the length of opening the hearse to take the 
 coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its 
 being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. 
 Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, 
 too, was received with acclamation, and the coach was im- 
 mediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out, while as 
 many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any 
 exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of 
 these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly 
 concealed his spiky head from the observation of Tellson's, 
 in the further corner of the mourning coach. 
 
 The officiating undertakers made some protest against 
 these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being 
 alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the effi- 
 "mcy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 147 
 
 the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. 
 The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep 
 driving the hearse — advised by the regular driver, who was 
 perched beside him, under close inspection, for the purpose 
 — and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet minis- 
 ter, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular 
 street character of the time, was impressed as an additional 
 ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the 
 Strand; and his bear, who was black and very mangy , 
 gave quite an Undertaking air to that part of the proces- 
 sion in whioh he walked. 
 
 Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, 
 and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession 
 went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops 
 shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church 
 of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there in 
 course of time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; 
 finally, accomplished the interment of the deceased Roger 
 Cly in its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction. 
 
 The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under 
 the necessity of providing some other entertainment for it- 
 self, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same) con- 
 ceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old 
 Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was 
 given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never 
 been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation 
 of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and mal- 
 treated. The transition to the sport of window- breaking, 
 and thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy 
 and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry 
 summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-rail- 
 ings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, 
 a rumour got about that the Guards were coming. Before 
 this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and per- 
 haps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and 
 this was the usual progress of a mob. 
 
 Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but 
 had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and con- 
 dole with the undertakers. The place had a soothing in- 
 fluence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighbouring 
 public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings and 
 maturely considering the spot. 
 
 "Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in 
 
148 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 his usual way, " you see that there Cly that day, and you 
 see with your own eyes that he was a young 'un and a 
 straight made 'un." 
 
 Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little 
 longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear, be- 
 fore the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson's. 
 Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his 
 liver, or whether his general health had been previously at 
 all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention 
 to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that 
 he made a short call upon his medical adviser — a distin- 
 guished surgeon — on his way back. 
 
 Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, 
 and reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the 
 ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr. 
 Cruncher and his son went home to tea. 
 
 " Now, I tell you where it is ! " said Mr. Cruncher to his 
 wife, on entering. "If, as a honest tradesman, my wen- 
 turs goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure that you've 
 been praying again me, and I shall work you for it just 
 the same as if I seen you do it." 
 
 The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head. 
 
 " Why, you're at it afore my face ! " said Mr. Cruncher, 
 with signs of angry apprehension. 
 
 "I am saying nothing." 
 
 "Well, then; don't meditate nothing. You might as 
 well flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one 
 way as another. Drop it altogether." - 
 
 "Yes, Jerry." 
 
 "Yes, Jerry," repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to 
 tea. "Ah! It is yes, Jerry. That's about it. You may 
 say yes, Jerry." 
 
 Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky 
 corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfre- 
 quently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction. 
 
 "You and your yes, Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, taking a 
 bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it 
 down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. " Ah ! 
 I think so. I believe you." 
 
 " You are going out to-night? " asked his decent wife, 
 when he took another bite. 
 
 "Yes, lam." 
 
 " May I go with you, father? " asked his son, briskly. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 149 
 
 "No, you mayn't. I'm a going — as your mother knows 
 — a fishing. That's where I'm a going to. Going a fish- 
 ing." 
 
 "Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don't it, father?" 
 
 "Never you mind." 
 
 " Shall you bring any fish home, father? " 
 
 " If I don't, you'll have short commons, to-morrow," 
 returned that gentleman, snaking his head; "that's ques- 
 tions enough for you; I ain't a going out, till you've been 
 long abed." 
 
 He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening 
 to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and 
 sullenly holding her in conversation that she might be pre- 
 vented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. 
 With this view, he urged his son to hold her in conversa- 
 tion also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by 
 dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against 
 her, rather than he would leave her for a moment to her 
 own reflections. The devoutest person could have rendered 
 no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than 
 he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed 
 unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story. 
 
 " And mind you ! " said Mr. Cruncher. " No games to- 
 morrow! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in provid- 
 ing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it, 
 and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am 
 able to provide a little beer, none of your declaring on 
 water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome 
 will be a ugly customer to you, if you don't. 2'm youi 
 Rome, you know." 
 
 Then he began grumbling again : 
 
 " With your flying into the face of your own wittles and 
 drink! I don't know how scarce you mayn't make the 
 wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your 
 unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he is your'n, ain't 
 he? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a 
 mother, and not know that a mother's first duty is to blow 
 her boy out? " 
 
 This touched young Jerry on a tender place; who ad- 
 jured his mother to perform her first duty, and, whatever 
 else she did or neglected, above all things to lay especial 
 stress on the discharge of that maternal function so affec- 
 tingly and delicately indicated by his other parent. 
 
150 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, 
 until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid 
 under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher be- 
 guiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, 
 and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one 
 o'clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up 
 form his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a 
 locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of 
 convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle 
 of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in 
 skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. 
 Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out. 
 
 Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing 
 when he went to bed, was not long after his father. Un- 
 der cover of the darkness he followed out of the room, fol- 
 lowed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed 
 out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning 
 his getting into the house again, for it was full of lodgers, 
 and the door stood ajar all night. 
 
 Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and 
 mystery of his father's honest calling, Young Jerry, keep- 
 ing as close to house fronts, walls, and doorways, as his 
 eyes were close to one another, held his honoured parent in 
 view. The honoured parent steering Northward, had not 
 gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak 
 Walton, and the two trudged on together. 
 
 Within half an hour from the first starting, they were 
 beyond the winking lamps, and the more than winking 
 watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road. Another 
 fisherman was picked up here — and that so silently, that if 
 Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have sup- 
 posed the second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of 
 a sudden, split himself into two. 
 
 The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the 
 three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon 
 the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by 
 an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three 
 turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which the 
 wall — there, risen to some eight or ten feet high — formed 
 one side. Crunching down in a corner, peeping up the 
 lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form 
 of his honoured parent, pretty well defined against a wa- 
 tery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He 
 
 i 
 
A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 151 
 
 was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and 
 then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground 
 within the gate, and lay there a little — listening perhaps. 
 Then, they moved away on their hands and knees. 
 
 It was now Young Jerry's turn to approach the gate : 
 which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again 
 in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three 
 fishermen creeping through some rank grass ! and all the 
 gravestones in the churchyard — it was a large churchyard 
 that they were in — looking on like ghosts in white, while 
 the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a mon- 
 strous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped 
 and stood upright. And then they began to fish. 
 
 They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the hon- 
 oured parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like 
 a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they 
 worked hard, until the awful striking of the church clock 
 so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his hair 
 as stiff as his father's. 
 
 But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these 
 matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but 
 lured him back again. They were still fishing persever- 
 ingly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; 
 but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a 
 screwing and complaining sound down below, and their 
 bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow de- 
 grees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came 
 to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would 
 be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent 
 about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new 
 to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped un- 
 til he had run a mile or more. 
 
 He would not have stopped then, for anything less nec- 
 essary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he 
 ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had 
 a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after 
 him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt up- 
 right, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtak- 
 ing him and hopping on at his side — perhaps taking his 
 arm — it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and 
 ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole 
 night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway 
 to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of 
 
152 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 them like a dropsical boy's-Kite without tail and wings. 
 It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders 
 against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it 
 were. laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay 
 cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was 
 incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that 
 when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being 
 half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but 
 followed him up-stairs with a bump on every stair, scram- 
 bled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and 
 heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep. 
 
 From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet 
 was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the 
 presence of his father in the family room. Something had 
 gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, 
 from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by 
 the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the 
 head-board of the bed. 
 
 "I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did." 
 
 " Jerry, Jerry, Jerry ! " his wife implored. 
 
 "You oppose yourself to the profit of the business," said 
 Jerry, " and me and my partners suffer. You was to hon- 
 our and obey; why the devil don't you? " 
 
 "I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman pro- 
 tested, with tears. 
 
 " Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's busi- 
 ness? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour his busi- 
 ness? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on the 
 wital subject of his business? " 
 
 " You hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry." 
 
 "It's enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher, "to be 
 the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your 
 female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or 
 when he didn't. A honouring and obeying wife would let 
 his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious wom- 
 an? If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious 
 one ! You have no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed 
 of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it 
 must be knocked into you." 
 
 The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, 
 and terminated in the honest tradesman's kicking off his 
 clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. 
 After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 153 
 
 his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay 
 down too, and fell asleep again. 
 
 There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of any- 
 thing else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of 
 temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for 
 the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe 
 any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and 
 washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pur- 
 sue his ostensible calling. 
 
 Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at 
 his father's side along sunny and crowded Fleet Street, was 
 a very different Young Jerry from him of the previous 
 night, running home through darkness and solitude from 
 his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, 
 and his qualms were gone with the night — in which par- 
 ticulars it is not improbable that he had compeers in Fleet 
 Street and the City of London, that fine morning. 
 
 " Father," said Young Jerry, as they walked along : tak- 
 ing care to keep at arm's length and to have the stool well 
 between them : " what's a Resurrection-Man? " 
 
 Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he 
 answered, " How should I know? " 
 
 "I thought you knowed everything, father," said the 
 artless boy. 
 
 "Hem! Well," returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, 
 and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, "he's a 
 tradesman." 
 
 " What's his goods, father? " asked the brisk Young 
 Jerry. 
 
 "His goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over 
 in his mind, "is a branch of Scientific goods." 
 
 "Persons' bodies, ain't it, father?" asked the lively boy. 
 
 "I believe it is something of that sort," said Mr. 
 Cruncher. 
 
 " Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man 
 when I'm quite growed up ! " 
 
 Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubi- 
 ous and moral way. " It depends upon how you dewelop 
 your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents, and 
 never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and 
 there's no telling at the present time what you may not 
 come to be fit for. " As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, 
 went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the 
 
 12 6 
 
154 A TALE OF TWO CITIES 
 
 shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself : " Jerry, 
 you honest tradesman, there's hopes wot that boy will yet 
 be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his 
 mother ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 KNITTING. 
 
 Thebe had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine- 
 shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o'clock in the 
 morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows 
 had descried other faces within, bending over measures of 
 wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best 
 of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin 
 wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or 
 a souring, for its influence on the mood of those who drank 
 it was to make them gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian 
 flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge ; 
 but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden 
 in the dregs of it. 
 
 This had been the third morning in succession, on which 
 there had been early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur 
 Defarge. It had begun on Monday, and here was Wednes- 
 day come. There had been more of early brooding than 
 drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and 
 slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door, 
 who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to 
 save their souls. These were to the full as interested in 
 the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole 
 barrels of wine;, and they glided from seat to seat, and 
 from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, 
 with greedy looks. 
 
 Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the mas- 
 ter of the wine-shop was not visible. He was not missed; 
 for, nobody who crossed the threshold looked for him, no- 
 body asked for him, nobody wondered to see only Madame 
 Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of wine, 
 with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much 
 defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the 
 small coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets they 
 had come. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 155 
 
 A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, 
 were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the 
 wine-shop, as they looked in at every place, high and low, 
 from the king's palace to the criminal's gaol. Games at 
 cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built tow- 
 ers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with 
 spilt drops of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out the 
 pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and saw and 
 heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off. 
 
 Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until 
 mid-day. It was high noontide, when two dusty men 
 passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps : 
 of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge : the other a mender 
 of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two en- 
 tered the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of 
 fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they 
 came along, which stirred and flickered in flames of faces at 
 most doors and windows. Yet, no one had followed them, 
 and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, 
 though the eyes of every man there were turned upon them. 
 
 " Good day, gentlemen ! " said Monsieur Defarge. 
 
 It may have been a signal for loosening the general 
 tongue. It elicited an answering chorus of " Good day! " 
 
 "It is bad weather, gentlemen," said Defarge, shaking 
 his head. 
 
 Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then 
 all cast down their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, 
 who got up and went out. 
 
 "My wife," said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame 
 Defarge : " I have travelled certain leagues with this good 
 mender of roads, called Jacques. I met him — by accident 
 — a day and half's journey out of Paris. He is a good 
 child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to 
 drink, my wife ! " 
 
 A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge 
 set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques, who 
 doffed his blue cap to the company, and drank. In the 
 breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread; he 
 ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking 
 near Madame Defarge 's counter. A third man got up and 
 went out. 
 
 Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine — -but, 
 Toe took less than was given to the stranger, as being himself 
 
156 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 a; man to whom it was no rarity — and stood waiting until the 
 countryman had made his breakfast. He looked at no one 
 present, and no one now looked at him; not even Madame 
 Defarge, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work. 
 
 "Have you finished your repast, friend?" he asked, in 
 due season. 
 
 "Yes, thank you." 
 
 " Come, then ! You shall see the apartment that I told 
 you you could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel." 
 
 Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street 
 into a courtyard, out of the courtyard up a steep staircase, 
 out of the staircase into a garret, — formerly the garret 
 where a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping for- 
 ward and very busy, making shoes. 
 
 No white-haired man was there now; but, the three men 
 were there who had gone out of the wine-shop singly. 
 And between them and the white-haired man afar off, was 
 the one small link, that they had once looked in at him 
 through the chinks in the wall. 
 
 Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a sub- 
 dued voice : 
 
 "Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is 
 the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques 
 Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five ! " 
 
 The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his 
 swarthy forehead with it, and said, " Where shall I com- 
 mence, monsieur? " 
 
 "Commence," was Monsieur Defarge's not unreasonable 
 reply, "at the commencement." 
 
 "I saw him then, messieurs," began the mender of roads, 
 " a year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage 
 of the Marquis, hanging by the chain. Behold the manner 
 of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to 
 bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, 
 he hanging by the chain — like this." 
 
 Again the mender of roads went through the whole per- 
 formance; in which he ought to have been perfect by that 
 time, seeing that it had been the infallible resource and in- 
 dispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year. 
 
 Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen 
 the man before? 
 
 "Never," answered the mender of roads, recovering his 
 perpendicular. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 157 
 
 Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised 
 him then? 
 
 "By his tall figure," said the mender of roads, softly, 
 and with his finger at his nose. " When Monsieur the Mar- 
 quis demands that evening, 'Say, what is he like? ' I make 
 response, ' Tall as a spectre.' " 
 
 "You should have said, short as a dwarf," returned 
 Jacques Two. 
 
 " But what did I know? The deed was not then accom- 
 plished, neither did he confide in me. Observe! Under 
 those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony. 
 Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger, stand- 
 ing near our little fountain, and says, 'Tome! Bring that 
 rascal! ' My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing." 
 
 "He is right there, Jacques," murmured Defarge, to 
 him who had interrupted. " Go on ! " 
 
 " Good ! " said the mender of roads, with an air of mys- 
 tery. " The tall man is lost, and he is sought — how many 
 months? Nine, ten, eleven? " 
 
 "No matter, the number," said Defarge. "He is well 
 hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on ! " 
 
 " I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is 
 again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to de- 
 scend to my cottage down in the village below, where it is 
 already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming over 
 the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man 
 with his arms bound — tied to his sides — like this ! " 
 
 With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a 
 man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that 
 were knotted behind him. 
 
 " I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see 
 the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, 
 that, where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at 
 first, as they approach, I see no more than that they are six 
 soldiers with a tall man bound, and that they are almost 
 black to my sight — except on the side of the sun going to 
 bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see 
 that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the op- 
 posite side of the road, and are on the hill above it, and 
 are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are 
 covered with dust, and that the dust moves with them as 
 they come, tramp, tramp ! But when they advance quite 
 near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises me. 
 
158 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Ah, but lie would be well content to precipitate himself 
 over the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he 
 and I first encountered, close to the same spot ! " 
 
 He described it as if he were there, and it was evident 
 that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in 
 his life. 
 
 " I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall 
 man; he does not show the soldiers that he recognises me; 
 we do it, and we know it, with our eyes. - Come on ! ' says 
 the chief of that company, pointing to the village, ' bring 
 him fast to his tomb ! ' and they bring him faster. I fol- 
 low. His arms are swelled because of being bound so 
 tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is 
 lame. Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they 
 drive him with their guns — like this ! " 
 
 He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward 
 by the butt-ends of muskets. 
 
 " As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, 
 he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is 
 bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; 
 thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the vil- 
 lage; all the village runs to look; they take him past the 
 mill, and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison 
 gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him — 
 like this ! " 
 
 He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it 
 with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his un- 
 willingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Defarge 
 said, "Go on, Jacques." 
 
 "All the village," pursued the mender of roads, on tip- 
 toe and in a low voice, "withdraws; all the village whis- 
 pers by the fountain; all the village sleeps; all the village 
 dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars of 
 the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it except 
 to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, 
 eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by 
 the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him, high 
 up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty 
 as last night, looking through. He has no hand free, to 
 wave to me; I dare not call to him; he regards me like a 
 dead man." 
 
 Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. 
 The looks of all of them were dark, repressed, and re- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 159 
 
 vengeful, as they listened to the countryman's story; the 
 manner of all of them, while it was secret, was authori- 
 tative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques 
 One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his 
 chin resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road- 
 mender; Jacques Three, equally intent, on one knee behind 
 them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the net- 
 work of fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Defarge 
 standing between them and the narrator, whom he had 
 stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from 
 him to them, and from them to him. 
 
 "Go on, Jacques," said Defarge. 
 
 " He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The 
 village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it al- 
 ways looks up, from a distance, at the prison on the crag; 
 and in the evening, when the work of the day is achieved 
 and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are 
 turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned 
 towards the posting-house, now, they are turned towards 
 the prison. They whisper at the fountain, that although 
 condemned to death he will not be executed; they say that 
 petitions have been presented in Paris, showing that he 
 was enraged and made mad by the death of his child; they 
 say that a petition has been presented to the King himself. 
 What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps 
 no." 
 
 "Listen then, Jacques," Number One of that name 
 sternly interposed. "Know that a petition was presented 
 to the King and Queen. All here, yourself excepted, saw 
 the King take it, in his carriage in the street, sitting beside 
 the Queen. It is Defarge whom you see here, who, at the 
 hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the 
 petition in his hand." 
 
 " And once again listen, Jacques ! " said the kneeling 
 Number Three : his fingers ever wandering over and over 
 those fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air, as if he 
 hungered for something — that was neither food nor drink; 
 "the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and 
 struck him blows. You hear? " 
 
 "I hear, messieurs." 
 
 "Go on then," said Defarge. 
 
 "Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the foun- 
 tain," resumed the countryman, " that he is brought down 
 
160 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 into our country to be executed on the spot, and that he 
 will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that 
 because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur 
 was the father of his tenants — serfs — what you will — he 
 will be executed as a parricide. One old man says at the 
 fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife, will 
 be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds which will 
 be made in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be 
 poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sul- 
 phur; finally, that he will be torn limb from limb by four 
 strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually 
 done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the 
 late King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies? 
 I am not a scholar." 
 
 "Listen ouce again then, Jacques! " said the man with 
 the restless hand and the craving air. " The name of that 
 prisoner was Damiens, and it was all done in open day, in 
 the open streets of this city of Paris; and nothing was 
 more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than 
 the crowd of ladies of, quality and fashion, who were full 
 of eager attention to the last — to the last, Jacques, pro- 
 longed until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an 
 arm, and still breathed. ! And it was done — why, how old 
 are you? " 
 
 "Thirty-five," said the mender of roads, who looked 
 sixty. 
 
 "It was done when you were more than ten years old; 
 you might have seen it." 
 
 " Enough ! " said Def arge, with grim impatience. " Long 
 live the Devil ! Goon." 
 
 "Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they 
 speak of nothing else; even the fountain appears to fall to 
 that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the vil- 
 lage is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the 
 prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. 
 Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; 
 in the morning, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows 
 forty feet high, poisoning the water. " 
 
 The mender of roads looked through rather than at the 
 low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows some- 
 where in the sky. 
 
 "All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads 
 the cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At mid- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 161 
 
 day, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the 
 prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many sol- 
 diers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is a 
 gag — tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost 
 as if he laughed." He suggested it, by creasing his face 
 with his two thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his 
 ears. "On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade 
 upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there 
 forty feet high — and is left hanging, poisoning the water." 
 
 They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to 
 wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh 
 while he recalled the spectacle. 
 
 "It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and 
 the children draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, 
 under that shadow! Under it, have I said? When I left 
 the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed, 
 and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck across 
 the church, across the mill, across the prison — seemed to 
 strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests 
 upon it ! " 
 
 The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked 
 at the other three, and his finger quivered with the 
 craving that was on him. 
 
 "That's all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been 
 warned to do), and I walked on, that night and half next 
 day, until I met (as I was warned I should) this comrade. 
 With him, I came on, now riding and now walking, through 
 the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here 
 you see me ! " 
 
 After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, " Good ! 
 You have acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait 
 for us a little, outside the door? " 
 
 "Very willingly," said the mender of roads. Whom 
 Defarge escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving 
 seated there, returned. 
 
 The three had risen, and their heads were together when 
 he came back to the garret. 
 
 "How say you, Jacques?" demanded Number One. 
 "To be registered? " 
 
 " To be registered, as doomed to destruction," returned 
 Defarge. 
 
 " Magnificent ! " croaked the man with the craving. 
 
 "The chateau, and all the race? " inquired the first. 
 
162 A TALE OF TWO CITIES 
 
 " The chateau and all the race," returned Defarge. " Ex- 
 termination." 
 
 The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, " Mag- 
 nificent ! " and began gnawing another finger. 
 
 "Are you sure," asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, "that 
 no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping 
 the register? Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond 
 ourselves can decipher it; 'but shall we always be able to 
 decipher it — or, I ought to say, will she? " 
 
 "Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, "if 
 madame my wife undertook to keep the register in her 
 memory alone, she would not lose a word of it — not a syl- 
 lable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own sym- 
 bols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide 
 in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest 
 poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than 
 to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted 
 register of Madame Defarge." 
 
 There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and 
 then the man who hungered, asked : " Is this rustic to be 
 sent back soon? I hope so. He is very simple; is he not 
 a little dangerous? " 
 
 "He knows nothing," said Defarge; "at least nothing 
 more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the 
 same height. I charge myself with him; let him remain 
 with me; I will take care of him, and set him on his road. 
 He wishes to see the fine world — the King, the Queen, and 
 Court; let him see them on Sunday." 
 
 " What? " exclaimed the hungry man, staring. " Is it 
 a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility? " 
 
 "Jacques," said Defarge; "judiciously show a eat milk, 
 if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog 
 his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one 
 day." 
 
 Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being 
 found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to 
 lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. 
 He needed no persuasion, and was soon asleep. 
 
 Worse quarters than Defarge' s wine-shop, could easily 
 have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that de- 
 gree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which 
 he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and 
 agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her counter, so ex- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 163 
 
 pressly unconscious of him, and so particularly determined 
 not to perceive that his being there had any connection 
 with anything below the surface, that he shook in his 
 wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he 
 contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee 
 what that lady might pretend next; and he felt assured 
 that if she should take it into, her brightly ornamented 
 head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and 
 afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through 
 with it until the play was played out. 
 
 Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was 
 not enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame 
 was to accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It 
 was additionally disconcerting to have madame knitting 
 all the way there, in a public conveyance; it was addition- 
 ally disconcerting yet, to have madame in the crowd in the 
 afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the crowd 
 waited to see the carriage of the King and Queen. 
 
 "You work hard, madame," said a man near her. 
 
 "Yes," answered Madame Defarge; "I have a good deal 
 to do." 
 
 " What do you make, madame? " 
 
 "Many things." 
 
 " For instance " 
 
 "For instance," returned Madame Defarge, composedly, 
 "shrouds." 
 
 The man moved a little further away, as soon as he 
 could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his 
 blue cap : feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he 
 needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was fortunate 
 in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the large-faced 
 King and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, 
 attended by the shining Bull's Eye of their Court, a glit- 
 tering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords; and in 
 jewels and silks and powder and splendour and elegantly 
 spurning figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both 
 sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so much to his 
 temporary intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, 
 Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything ! 
 as if he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. 
 Then, there were gardens, courtyards, terraces, fountains, 
 green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull's Eye, more 
 lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he abso- 
 
164 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 lutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this 
 scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of 
 shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and 
 throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain 
 him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and 
 tearing them to pieces. 
 
 " Bravo ! " said Defarge, clapping him on the back when 
 it was over, like a patron; "you are a good boy ! " 
 
 The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and 
 was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late dem- 
 onstrations; but no. 
 
 " You are the fellow we want," said Defarge, in his ear; 
 " you make these fools believe that it will last for ever. 
 Then, they are the more insolent, and it is the nearer 
 ended." 
 
 "Hey!" cried the mender of roads, reflectively; "that's 
 true." 
 
 " These fools know nothing. While they despise your 
 breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a 
 hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses or 
 dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it 
 deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot deceive them 
 too much." 
 
 Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and 
 nodded in confirmation. 
 
 "As to you," said she, "you would shout and shed tears 
 for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say ! Would 
 you not? " 
 
 "Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment." 
 
 " If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set 
 upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for 
 your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and 
 gayest. Say ! Would you not? " 
 
 "Truly yes, madame." 
 
 " Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable 
 to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their 
 feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the 
 birds of the finest feathers; would you not? " 
 
 "It is true, madame." 
 
 " You have seen both dolls and birds to-day, said Mad- 
 ame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place 
 where they had last been apparent; " now, go home ! " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 165 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 STILL KNITTING. 
 
 Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned 
 amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in 
 a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the 
 dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, 
 slowly tending towards that point of the compass where 
 the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, 
 listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had 
 the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the 
 fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their 
 quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, 
 strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and ter- 
 race staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy 
 that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour 
 just lived in the village — had a faint and bare existence 
 there, as its people had — that when the knife struck home, 
 the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger 
 and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled 
 up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and 
 bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would 
 henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great 
 window of the bedchamber where the murder was done, 
 two fine dints were pointed out in the scupltured nose, 
 which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen 
 of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three 
 ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried 
 peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger 
 would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all 
 started away among the moss and leaves, like the more for- 
 tunate hares who could find a living there. 
 
 Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red 
 stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village 
 well — thousands of acres of land — a whole province of 
 France — all France itself — lay under the night sky, con- 
 centrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole 
 world, with all its greatnesses aud littlenesses, lie in a twin- 
 kling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray 
 
166 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, 
 sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of 
 this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and 
 virtue, of every responsible creature on it. 
 
 The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under 
 the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris 
 whereunto their journey naturally tended. There was the 
 usual stoppage at the barrier guard-house, and the usual 
 lanterns came glancing forth for the usual examination and 
 inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted; knowing one or two 
 of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The w latter he 
 was intimate with, and affectionately embraced. 
 
 When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in 
 his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near 
 the Saint's boundaries, were picking their way on foot 
 through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame 
 Defarge spoke to her husband : 
 
 "Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police 
 tell thee?" 
 
 " Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is an- 
 other spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be 
 many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one." 
 
 " Eh well ! " said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows 
 with a cool business air. " It is necessary to register him. 
 How do they call that man? " 
 
 "He is English." 
 
 " So much the better. His name? " 
 
 "Barsad," said Defarge, making it French by pronuncia- 
 tion. But, he had been so careful to get it accurately, that 
 he then spelt it with perfect correctness. 
 
 " Barsad," repeated madame. " Good. Christian name? " 
 
 "John." 
 
 "John Barsad," repeated madame, after murmuring it 
 once to herself. " Good. His appearance; is it known? " 
 
 "Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; 
 black hair; complexion dark; generally, rather handsome 
 visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow; nose aqui- 
 line, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards 
 the left cheek; expression, therefore, sinister." 
 
 " Eh my faith. It is a portrait ! " said madame, laugh- 
 ing. "He shall be registered to-morrow." 
 
 They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for 
 it was midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 167 
 
 took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys that 
 had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, 
 went through the entries in the book, made other entries 
 df her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, 
 and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the 
 contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and be- 
 gan knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of 
 separate knots, for safe keeping through the night. All 
 this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up 
 and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering; 
 in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his do- 
 mestic affairs, he walked up and down through life. 
 
 The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and sur- 
 rounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. 
 Monsieur Defarge's olfactory sense was by no means deli- 
 cate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it 
 ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and 
 aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he 
 put down his smoked-out pipe. 
 
 " You are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as 
 she knotted the money. " There are only the usual odours. " 
 
 "I am a little tired," her husband acknowledged. 
 
 "You are a little depressed, too," said madame, whose 
 quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but 
 they had had a ray or two for him. " Oh, the men, the 
 men ! " 
 
 " But my dear ! " began Defarge. 
 
 "But my dear!" repeated madame, nodding firmly; 
 " but my dear ! You are faint of heart to-night, my dear ! " 
 
 " Well, then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung 
 out of his breast, "it is a long time." 
 
 "It is a long time," repeated his wife; "and when is it 
 not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long 
 time; it is the rule." 
 
 " It does not take a long time to strike a man with Light- 
 ning," said Defarge. 
 
 "How long," demanded madame, composedly, "does it 
 take to make and store the 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? " 
 
168 A TALE OF TWO CITIES 
 
 "A long time, I suppose," said Defarge. 
 
 "But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to 
 pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always 
 preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your 
 consolation. Keep it." 
 
 She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a 
 foe. 
 
 "I tell thee," said madame, extending her right hand, 
 for emphasis, " that although it is a long time on the road, 
 it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, 
 and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look 
 around and consider the lives of all the world that we 
 know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, 
 consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie 
 addresses itself with more and more of certainty every 
 hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you." 
 
 "My brave wife," returned Defarge, standing before her 
 with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his 
 back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, 
 " I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, 
 and it is possible — you know well, my wife, it is possible 
 — that it may not come, during our lives." 
 
 "Eh well! How then?" demanded madame, tying an- 
 other knot, as if there were another enenijr strangled. 
 
 " Well ! " said Defarge, with a half complaining and half 
 apologetic shrug. " We shall not see the triumph." 
 
 " We shall have helped it," returned madame, with her 
 extended hand in strong action. "Nothing that we do, is 
 done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall 
 see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly 
 not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still 
 I would " 
 
 Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible 
 knot indeed. 
 
 " Hold ! " cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt 
 charged with cowardice; "I too, my dear, will stop at 
 nothing." 
 
 " Yes ! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need 
 to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. 
 Sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let 
 loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the 
 tiger and the devil chained — not shown — yet always 
 'ready." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 169 
 
 Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice 
 by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if 
 she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy 
 handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and ob- 
 serving that it was time to go to bed. 
 
 Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual 
 place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose 
 lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the 
 flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied 
 air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drink- 
 ing, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was 
 very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their in- 
 quisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutin- 
 ous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. 
 Their decease made no impression on the other flies out 
 promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as 
 if they themselves were elephants, or something as far re- 
 moved), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider 
 how heedless flies are ! — perhaps they thought as much at 
 Court that sunny summer day. 
 
 A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame 
 Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down 
 her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, 
 before she looked at the figure. 
 
 It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up 
 the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually 
 to drop out of the wine- shop. 
 
 " Good day, madame," said the new-comer. 
 
 "Good day, monsieur." 
 
 She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed 
 her knitting : " Hah ! Good day, age about forty, height 
 about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome 
 visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin, long and sallow 
 face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar in- 
 clination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister 
 expression ! Good day, one and all ! " 
 
 "Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old 
 cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame." 
 
 Madame complied with a polite air. 
 
 " Marvellous cognac this, madame ! " 
 
 It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, 
 and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to 
 know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flal- 
 13 
 
170 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 tered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her 
 fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of 
 observing the place in general. . 
 
 "You knit with great skill, madame." 
 
 " I am accustomed to it." 
 
 " A pretty pattern too ! " 
 
 " You think so ? " said madame, looking at him with a 
 smile. 
 
 "Decidedly. May one ask what it is for? " 
 
 "Pastime," said madame, still looking at him with a 
 smile, while her fingers moved nimbly. 
 
 "Not for use?" 
 
 "That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I 
 
 do well," said madame, drawing a breath and nodding 
 
 her head with a stern kind of coquetry, " I'll use it ! " 
 
 It was remarkable ; but, the taste of Saint Antoine 
 seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress 
 of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately, 
 and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight 
 of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking 
 about as if for some friend who was not there, and went 
 away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor 
 entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. 
 The spy had kept his eyes open, but had been able to de- 
 tect no sign. They had lounged away in a poverty-stricken, 
 purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and unim- 
 peachable. 
 
 "John," thought madame, checking off her work as her 
 fingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. " Stay 
 long enough, and I shall knit ' Barsad ' before you go." 
 
 " You have a husband, madame ? " 
 
 "I have." 
 
 " Children ? " 
 
 ?! No children." 
 
 " Business seems bad ? " 
 
 " Business is very bad ; the people are so poor." 
 
 " Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people ! So oppressed, 
 too — as you say." 
 
 "As you say," madame retorted, correcting him, and 
 deftly knitting an extra something into his name that boded 
 him no good. 
 
 "Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you 
 naturally think so. Of course." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 171 
 
 " 1 think? " returned madame, in a high voice. " I and 
 my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop 
 open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to 
 live. That is the subject we think of, and it gives us, 
 from morning to night, enough to think about, without em- 
 barrassing our heads concerning others. / think for others? 
 No, no." 
 
 The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could 
 find or make, did not allow his baffled state to express it- 
 self in his sinister face; but, stood with an air of gossiping 
 gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge's little 
 counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac. 
 
 " A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. 
 Ah ! the poor Gaspard ! " With a sigh of great compas- 
 sion. 
 
 "My faith!" returned madame, coolly and lightly, "if 
 people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for 
 it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was; 
 he has paid the price." 
 
 "I believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a 
 tone that invited confidence, and expressing an injured rev- 
 olutionary susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face : 
 "I believe there is much compassion and anger in this- 
 neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow? Between our- 
 selves." 
 
 "Is there?" asked madame, vacantly. 
 
 " Is there not? " 
 
 " — Here is my husband ! " said Madame Def arge. 
 
 As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the 
 spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an 
 engaging smile, " Good day, Jacques ! " Del arge stopped 
 short, and stared at him. 
 
 "Good day, Jacques! " the spy repeated; with not quite 
 so much confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the 
 stare. 
 
 "You deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper 
 of the wine-shop. " You mistake me for another. That 
 is not my name. I am Ernest Def arge." 
 
 " It is all the same," said the spy, airily, but discomfited 
 too : " good day ! " 
 
 " Good day ! " answered Defarge, drily. 
 
 " I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleas 
 ure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there 
 
172 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 is— and no wonder ! — much sympathy and anger in Saint 
 Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard." 
 
 "No one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his 
 head. " I know nothing of it." 
 
 Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and 
 stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair, look- 
 ing over that barrier at the person to whom they were both 
 opposed, and whom either of them would have shot with 
 the greatest satisfaction. 
 
 The spy, well used to his business, did not change his 
 unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, 
 took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of 
 cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to 
 her knitting again, and hummed a little song over it. 
 
 "You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say* 
 better than I do? " observed Defarge. 
 
 " Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so pro- 
 foundly interested in its miserable inhabitants." 
 
 "Hah! " muttered Defarge. 
 
 " The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, 
 recalls to me," pursued the spy, "that I have the honour 
 of cherishing some interesting associations with your 
 -name." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Defarge, with much indifference. 
 
 " Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, 
 his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was 
 delivered to you. You see I am informed of the circum- 
 stances? " 
 
 " Such is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had 
 it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's 
 elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to 
 answer, but always with brevity. 
 
 "It was to you," said the spy, "that his daughter came; 
 and it was from your care that his daughter took him, ac- 
 companied by a neat brown monsieur; how is he called? — • 
 in a little wig — Lorry — of the bank of Tellson and Com- 
 pany — over to England." 
 
 " Such is the fact," repeated Defarge. 
 
 " Very interesting remembrances I " said the spy. " I 
 have known Doctor Manette and his daughter, in Eng- 
 land." 
 
 " Yes? " said Defarge. 
 
 *' You don't hear much about them now? " said the spy. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 173 
 
 "No," said Defarge. 
 
 "In effect," madanie struck in, looking up from her 
 work and her little song, " we never hear about them. We 
 received the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps another 
 letter, or perhaps two; but, since then, they have gradu- 
 ally taken their road in life — we, ours — and we have held 
 no correspondence." 
 
 "Perfectly so, madame," replied the spy. "She is go- 
 ing to be married." 
 
 " Going? " echoed madame. " She was pretty enough 
 to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it 
 seems to me." 
 
 "Oh! You know I am English." 
 
 "I perceive your tongue is," returned madame; "and 
 what the tongue is, I suppose the man is." 
 
 He did not take the identification as a compliment; but 
 he made the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. 
 After sipping his cognac to the end, he added : 
 
 " Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to 
 an Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by 
 birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard ! It 
 was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going to 
 marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom 
 Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in 
 other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown 
 in England, he is no Marquis there; he is Mr. Charles 
 Darnay. D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's family." 
 
 Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence 
 had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he 
 would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a 
 light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and 
 his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been 
 no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his 
 mind. 
 
 Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might 
 prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him 
 to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and 
 took his leave : taking occasion to say, in a genteel man- 
 ner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the 
 pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again. 
 For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer pres- 
 ence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained ex- 
 actly as he had left them, lest he should come back. 
 
174 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 "Can it be true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking 
 down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the 
 back of her chair : " what he has said of Ma'amselle Ma- 
 nette?" 
 
 "As he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eye- 
 brows a little, "it is probably false. But it may be true." 
 
 " If it is " Defarge began, and stopped. 
 
 " If it is? " repeated his wife. 
 
 " — And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph 
 — I hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out 
 of France." 
 
 "Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with 
 her usual composure, " will take him where he is to go, and 
 will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I 
 know." 
 
 "But it is very strange — now, at least, is it not very 
 strange " — said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to 
 induce her to admit it, " that, after all our sympathy for 
 Monsieur her father, and herself, her husband's name 
 should be proscribed under your hand at this moment, by 
 the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us? " 
 
 " Stranger things than that will happen when it does 
 come," answered madame. "I have them both here, of a 
 certainty; and they are both here for their merits; that is 
 enough." 
 
 She rolled up her knitting when she had said those 
 words, and presently took the rose out of the handkerchief 
 that was wound about her head. Either Saint Antoine had 
 an instinctive sense that the objectionable decoration was 
 gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its disappear- 
 ance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very 
 shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual 
 aspect. 
 
 In the evening, at which season of all others Saint An- 
 toine 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 
 form group to group : a Missionary— there were many like 
 her — such as the world will do well never to breed again. 
 All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; 
 but, the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for 
 eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 175 
 
 the digestive apparatus : 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 Courtyard, as the women sat knititng, knit- 
 ting. 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, Freedom and 
 Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat 
 knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing 
 in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit 
 knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ONE NIGHT. 
 
 Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the 
 quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the 
 Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. 
 Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great 
 London, than on that night when it found them still seated 
 under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its 
 leaves. 
 
 Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved 
 this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under 
 the plane-tree. 
 
 " You are happy, my dear father? " 
 
 "Quite, my child " 
 
176 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 They had said little, though they had been there a long 
 time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she 
 had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she 
 read to him. She had employed herself in both ways, at 
 his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this 
 time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make 
 it so. 
 
 "And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am 
 deeply happy in the love that Heaven has so blessed — my 
 love for Charles, and Charles's love for me. But, if my 
 life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if my mar- 
 riage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by 
 the length of a few of these streets, I should be more un- 
 happy and self -reproachful now than I can tell you. Even 
 as it is " 
 
 Even as it was, she could not command her voice. 
 
 In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and 
 laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is 
 always sad, as the light of the sun itself is — as the light 
 called human life is — at its coming and its going. 
 
 " Dearest dear ! Can you tell me, this last time, that you 
 feel quite, quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no 
 new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us? 1 
 know it well, but do you know it 9 In your own heart, do 
 you feel quite certain? " 
 
 Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of convic- 
 tion he could scarcely have assumed, "Quite sure, my 
 darling! More than that," he added, as he tenderly kissed 
 her : " my future is far brighter, Lucie, seen through your 
 marriage, than it could have been — nay, than it ever was — 
 without it." 
 
 " If I could hope that, my father ! " 
 
 "Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how nat- 
 ural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. 
 You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxi- 
 ety t have felt that your life should not be wasted " 
 
 She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in 
 his, and repeated the word. 
 
 " — wasted, my child — should not be wasted, struck aside 
 from the natural order of things — for my sake. Your un- 
 selfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind 
 has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my 
 happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete? " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 177 
 
 u If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have 
 been quite happy with you." 
 
 He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would 
 have been unhappy without Charles, having seen him; and 
 replied : 
 
 "My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had 
 not been Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it 
 had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then 
 the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow be- 
 yond myself, and would have fallen on you." 
 
 It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever 
 hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave 
 her a strange and new sensation while his words were in 
 her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards. 
 
 " See ! " said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand 
 towards the moon. " I have looked at her from my prison- 
 window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked 
 at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her 
 shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head 
 against my prison- walls. I have looked at her, in a state 
 so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but 
 the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at 
 the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which 
 I could intersect them." He added in his inward and 
 pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was 
 twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was 
 difficult in squeeze in." 
 
 The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to 
 that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was 
 nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He 
 only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felic- 
 ity with the dire endurance that was over. 
 
 " I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times 
 upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. 
 Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or 
 the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it was a 
 son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a 
 time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance 
 was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never 
 know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the 
 possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own 
 will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow 
 to be a woman." 
 14 
 
178 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his 
 hand. 
 
 , " I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly 
 forgetful of nie— rather, altogether ignorant of me, and un- 
 conscious of me. I have cast up .the years of her age, year 
 after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew 
 nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the 
 remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my 
 place was a blank " 
 
 " My father ! Even to hear that you had such thoughts 
 of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if 
 I had been that child." 
 
 " You, Lucie? It is out of the consolation and restora- 
 tion you have brought to me, that these remembrances 
 arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night. 
 --What did I say just now? '? 
 
 3 She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you-." 
 
 " So ! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness 
 and the silence have touched me in a different way — have 
 affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of 
 peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations 
 could — I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, 
 and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. 
 I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now 
 see you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood 
 between the little grated window and the door. But, you 
 understand that that was not the child I am speaking of? " 
 
 "The figure was not; the — the — image; the fancy? " 
 
 " No. That was another thing. It stood before my dis- 
 turbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom 
 that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. 
 Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she 
 was like her mother. The other had that likeness too — as 
 you have — but was not the same. Can you follow me, 
 Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a 
 solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinc- 
 tions." 
 
 His collected and calm manner could not prevent her 
 blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his 
 old condition. 
 
 " In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in 
 the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me 
 that the home of her married life was full of her loving re- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 179 
 
 inembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her 
 room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, 
 cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all." 
 
 " I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, 
 but in my love that was I." 
 
 , "And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of 
 Beauvais, " and they had heard of me, and had been taught 
 to pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they 
 kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, 
 and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me ; I im- 
 agined, that she always brought me back after showing me 
 such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I 
 fell upon my knees, and blessed her." 
 
 " I am that child, I hope, my father. my dear, my 
 dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow? " 
 
 " Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I 
 have to-night for loving you better than words can tell, and 
 "thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when 
 they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I 
 have known with you, and that we have before us." 
 
 He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, 
 and humbly thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on 
 him. By-and-bye, they went into the house. 
 
 There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; 
 there was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss 
 Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place 
 of residence; they had been able to extend it, by taking to 
 themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the 
 apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing 
 more. 
 
 Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. 
 They were only three at table, and Miss Pross made the 
 third. He regretted that Charles was not there; was more 
 than half disposed to object to the loving little plot that 
 kept him away; and drank to him affectionately. 
 
 So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and 
 they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of 
 the morning, Lucie came down-stairs again, and stole into 
 his room; not free from unshaped fears, beforehand. 
 
 All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; 
 and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the un- 
 troubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. 
 She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, 
 
180 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his; then, leaned 
 over him, and looked at him. 
 
 Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity 
 had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a deter- 
 mination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even 
 in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, 
 and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to 
 be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night. 
 
 She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up 
 a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love 
 aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she 
 withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and 
 went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the 
 leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as 
 her lips had moved in praying for him. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 NINE DAYS. 
 
 The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were 
 ready outside the closed door of the Doctor's room, where 
 he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready 
 to go uo church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss 
 Pross — to whom the event, through a gradual process of 
 reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of 
 absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that 
 her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom. 
 
 "And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently 
 admire the bride, and who had been moving round her to 
 take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; "and so it 
 was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the 
 Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I 
 thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the 
 obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Charles ! " 
 
 " You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss 
 Pross, " and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense ! " 
 
 "Beally? Well; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. 
 Lorry. 
 
 "I am not crying," said Miss Pross; ''you are," , 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 181 
 
 " I, my Pross? " (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be 
 pleasant with her, on occasion.) 
 
 " You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don't won- 
 der at it. Such a present of plate as you have made 'em, 
 is enough to bring tears into anybody's eyes. There's not 
 a fork or a spoon in the collection," said Miss Pross, "that 
 I didn't cry over, last night after the box came, till I 
 couldn't see it." 
 
 "I am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, "though, upon 
 my honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling 
 articles of remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me ! 
 This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he 
 has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there might 
 have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years 
 almost ! " 
 
 " Not at all ! " From Miss Pross. 
 
 " You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry? w 
 asked the gentleman of that name. 
 
 "Pooh! " rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in 
 your cradle." 
 
 "Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his 
 little wig, "that seems probable, too." 
 
 "And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss 
 Pross, "before you were put in your cradle." 
 
 "Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very un- 
 handsomely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a 
 voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough ! Now, my 
 dear Lucie," drawing his arm soothingly round her waist, 
 " I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and 
 I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose 
 the final opportunity of saying something to you that you 
 wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in 
 hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be 
 taken every conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, 
 while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tell- 
 son's shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before 
 him. And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join 
 you and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight's 
 trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to you 
 in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear 
 Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear 
 girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Some- 
 body comes to claim his own." 
 
182 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at 
 the well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then 
 laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig, 
 with a genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such 
 things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam. 
 
 The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out 
 with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale — which had 
 not been the case when they went in together — that no 
 vestige of colour was to be seen in his face. But, in the 
 composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to 
 the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy 
 indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately 
 passed over him, like a cold wind. 
 
 He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down- 
 stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour 
 of the day. The rest followed in another carriage, and 
 soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange eyes 
 looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily 
 married. 
 
 Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles 
 of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very 
 bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride's hand, which 
 were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. 
 Lorry's pockets. They returned home to breakfast, and 
 all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had 
 mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris 
 garret, were mingled with them again in the morning sun- 
 light, on the threshold of the door at parting. 
 
 It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But 
 her father cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging 
 himself from her enfolding arms, "Take her, Charles! 
 She is yours ! " 
 
 And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise win- 
 dow, and she was gone. 
 
 The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, 
 and the preparations having been very simple and few, the 
 Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. 
 It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the 
 cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to 
 have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted 
 there, had struck him a poisoned blow. 
 
 He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion 
 might have been expected in him when the occasion for 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 183 
 
 repression was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look 
 that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent manner 
 of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his 
 own room when they gotup-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded 
 of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride. 
 
 " I think," he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious 
 consideration, " I think we had best not speak to him just 
 now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson's; so 
 I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we 
 will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and 
 all will be well." 
 
 It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson's, than 
 to look out of Tellson's. He was detained two hours. 
 When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, 
 having asked no question of the servant; going thus into 
 the Doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of 
 knocking. 
 
 " Good God ! " he said, with a start. " What's that? " 
 
 Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. " O me, 
 O me! All is lost!" cried she, wringing her hands. 
 "What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn't know me, 
 and is making shoes ! " 
 
 Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went 
 himself into the Doctor's room. The bench was turned 
 towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the 
 shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent 
 down, and he was very busy. 
 
 " Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette ! " 
 
 The Doctor looked at him for a moment — half inquir- 
 ingly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to — and 
 bent over his work again. 
 
 He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was 
 open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; 
 and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come 
 back to him. He worked hard — impatiently — as if in 
 some sense of having been interrupted. 
 
 Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed 
 that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took 
 up another that was lying by him, and asked what it 
 was? 
 
 "A young lady's walking shoe," he muttered, without 
 looking up, "It ought to have been finished long ago. 
 Let it be," 
 
184 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 " But, Doctor Manette. Look at me ! " 
 
 He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, 
 without pausing in his work. 
 
 " You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This 
 is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend ! " 
 
 Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked 
 up, for an instant at a time, when he was requested to do 
 so; but, no persuasion would extract a word from him. 
 He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and 
 words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless 
 wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry 
 could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively looked up 
 without being asked. In that, there seemed a faint ex- 
 pression of curiosity or perplexity — as though he were try- 
 ing to reconcile some doubts in his mind. 
 
 Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, 
 as important above all others; the first, that this must be 
 kept secret from Lucie; the second, that it must be kept 
 secret from all who knew him. In conjunction with Miss 
 Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter precau- 
 tion, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and re- 
 quired a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind de- 
 ception to be practised on his daughter, Miss Pross was to 
 write, describing his having been called away profession- 
 ally, and referring to an imaginary letter of two or three 
 hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been ad- 
 dressed to her by the same post. 
 
 These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. 
 Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that 
 should happen soon, he kept another course in reserve; 
 which was, to have a certain opinion that he thought the 
 best, on the Doctor's case. 
 
 In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third 
 course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry re- 
 solved to watch him attentively, with as little appearance 
 as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements 
 to absent himself from Tellson's for the first time in his 
 life, and took his post by the window in the same room. 
 
 He was not long in discovering that it was worse than 
 useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became 
 worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day, and 
 resolved merely to keep himself always before him, as a 
 silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 185 
 
 or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near 
 the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as 
 many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that 
 it was a free place. 
 
 Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and 
 drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark 
 to see — worked on, half an hour after Mr. Lorry could not 
 have seen, for his life, to read or write. When he put his 
 tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Lorry rose and 
 said to him : 
 
 " Will you go out? " 
 
 He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the 
 old manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in 
 the old low voice : 
 
 "Out?" 
 
 "Yes; for a walk with me. Why not? " 
 
 He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word 
 more. But, Mr. Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned for- 
 ward on his bench in the dusk, with his elbows on his 
 knees and his head in his hands, that he was in some misty 
 way asking himself, " Why not? " The sagacity of the 
 man of business perceived an advantage here, and deter- 
 mined to hold it. 
 
 Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, 
 and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. 
 He paced up and down for a long time before he lay down; 
 but, when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. 
 In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to 
 his bench and to work. 
 
 On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully 
 by his name, and spoke to him on topics that had been of 
 late familiar to them. He returned no reply, but it was 
 evident that he heard what was said, and that he thought 
 about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry 
 to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times during 
 the day; at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and 
 of her father then present, precisely in the usual manner, 
 and as if there were nothing amiss. This was done with- 
 out any demonstrative accompaniment, not long enough, or 
 often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Lorry's 
 friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and 
 that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of incon- 
 sistencies surrounding him. 
 
186. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked hirn as be- 
 fore : 
 
 "Dear Doctor, will you go out? " 
 
 As before, he repeated, " Out? " 
 
 " Yes; for a walk with me. Why not? " 
 
 This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could 
 extract no answer from him, and, after remaining absent 
 for an hour, returned. In the meanwhile, the Doctor had 
 removed to the seat in the window, and had sat there look- 
 ing down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Lorry's return, he 
 slipped away to his bench. 
 
 The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry's hope 
 darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet 
 heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and 
 went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven 
 days, eight days, nine days. 
 
 With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always 
 growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through 
 this anxious time. The secret was well kept, and Lucie 
 was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to ob- 
 serve that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out 
 at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had 
 never been sd intent on his work, and that his hands had 
 never been so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the 
 ninth evening. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 AN OPINION. 
 
 Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at 
 his post, On the tenth morning of his suspense, he was 
 startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a 
 heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark 
 night. 
 
 He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, 
 when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep. 
 For, going to the door of the Doctor's room and looking in, 
 he perceived that the shoemaker's bench and tools were 
 put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat reading at 
 the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 187 
 
 face (which Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still 
 very pale, was calmly studious and attentive. 
 
 Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, 
 Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments 
 whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed 
 dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his friend 
 before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and em- 
 ployed as usual; and was there any sign within their range, 
 that the change of which he had so strong an impression 
 had actually happened? 
 
 It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and aston- 
 ishment, the answer being obvious. If the impression were 
 not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, 
 how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there? How came he to have 
 fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Doctor Manette's 
 consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside 
 the Doctor's bedroom door in the early morning? 
 
 Within a few minutes, Miss Pross stood whispering at 
 his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her 
 talk would of necessity have resolved it; but he was by 
 that time clear-headed, and had none. He advised that 
 they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast- 
 hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing un- 
 usual had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary 
 state of mind, Mr. Lorry would then cautiously proceed to 
 seek direction and guidance from the opinion he had been, 
 in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain. 
 
 Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the 
 scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance of 
 time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry presented 
 himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual white linen, and 
 with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was summoned in the 
 usual way, and came to breakfast. 
 
 So far as it was possible to comprehend him without 
 overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches which 
 Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he at first sup- 
 posed that his daughter's marriage had taken place yester- 
 day. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to the 
 day of the week, and the day of the month, set him think- 
 ing and counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all 
 other respects, however, he was so composedly himself, 
 that Mr. Lorry determined to have the aid he sought. And 
 that aid was his own. 
 
188 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared 
 away, and he and the Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry 
 said, feelingly: 
 
 " My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion, 
 in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply 
 interested; that is to say, it is very curious to me; perhaps, 
 to your better information it may be less so." 
 
 Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his late 
 work, the Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. 
 He had already glanced at his hands more than once. 
 
 " Doctor Manette," said Mr. Lorry, touching him affec- 
 tionately on the arm, " the case is the case of a particu- 
 larly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind to it, and 
 advise me well for his sake — and above all, for his daugh- 
 ter's — his daughter's, my dear Manette." 
 
 "If I understand," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, 
 " some mental shock ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 "Be explicit," said the Doctor. " Spare no detail." 
 
 Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and 
 proceeded. 
 
 " My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a pro- 
 longed shock, of great acuteness and severity to the affec- 
 tions, the feelings, the — the — as you express it — the mind. 
 The mind. It is the case of a shock under which the 
 sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how long, be- 
 cause I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, and 
 there are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of 
 a shock from which the sufferer recovered, by a process 
 that he cannot trace himself — as I once heard him publicly 
 relate in a striking manner. It is the case of a shock from 
 which he has recovered, so completely, as to be a highly 
 intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and 
 great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh ad- 
 ditions to his stock of knowledge, which was already very 
 large. But, unfortunately, there has been," he paused and 
 took a deep breath — "a slight relapse." 
 
 The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, " Of how long dura- 
 tion?" 
 
 "Nine days and nights." 
 
 "How did it show itself? I infer," glancing at his 
 hands again, " in the resumption of some old pursuit con- 
 nected with the shock? " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 189 
 
 "That is the fact." 
 
 "Now, did you ever see him," asked the Doctor, dis- 
 tinctly and collectedly, though in the same low voice, " en- 
 gaged in that pursuit originally? " 
 
 "Once." 
 
 " And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most re- 
 spects — or in all respects — as he was then? " 
 
 "I think in all respects." 
 
 " You spoke of his daughter. . Does his daughter know 
 of the relapse? " 
 
 " No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always 
 be kept from her. It is known only to 1113'self, and to one 
 other who may be trusted." 
 
 The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, "That was 
 very kind. That was very thoughtful? " Mr. Lorry 
 grasped his hand in return, and neither of the two spoke 
 for a little while. 
 
 "Now, my dear Manette," said Mr. Lorry, at length, in 
 his most considerate and most affectionate way, " I am a 
 mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such intricate 
 and difficult matters. I do not possess the kind of infor- 
 mation necessaiy; I do not possess the kind of intelligence; 
 I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom 
 I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, 
 how does this relapse come about? Is there danger of 
 another? Could a repetition of it be prevented? How 
 should a repetition of it be treated? How does it come 
 about at all? What can I do for my friend? No man 
 ever can have been more desirous in his heart to serve a 
 friend, than I am to serve mine, if I knew how. But I 
 don't know how to originate, in such a case. If your saga- 
 city, knowledge, and experience, could put me on the right 
 track, I might be able to do so much; unenlightened and 
 undirected, I can do so little. Pray discuss it with me; 
 pray enable me to see it a little more clearly, and teach 
 me how to be a little more useful." 
 
 Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest words 
 were spoken, and Mr. Lorry did not press him. 
 
 "I think it probable," said the Doctor, breaking silence 
 with an effort, " that the relapse you have described, my 
 dear friend, was not quite unforeseen by its subject." 
 
 " Was it dreaded by him? " Mr. Lorry ventured to ask. 
 
 "Very much." He said it with an involuntary shudder. 
 
190 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on 
 the sufferer's mind, and how difficult — how almost impos- 
 sible — it is, for him to force himself to utter a word upon 
 the topic that oppresses him." 
 
 "Would he," asked Mr. Lorry "be sensibly relieved if 
 he could prevail upon himself to impart that secret brood- 
 ing to any one when it is on him? " 
 
 " I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to im- 
 possible. I even believe it — in some cases — to be quite 
 impossible." 
 
 " Now," said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on the 
 Doctor's arm again, after a short silence on both sides, "to 
 what would you refer this attack? " 
 
 "I believe," returned Doctor Manette "that there had 
 been a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of 
 thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the 
 malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing 
 nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that 
 there had long been a dread lurking in his mind that those 
 associations would be recalled — say, under certain circum- 
 stances — say, on a particular occasion. He tried to prepare 
 himself in vain; perhaps the effort to prepare himself 
 made him less able to bear it." 
 
 " Would he remember what took place in the relapse? " 
 asked Mr. Lorry, with natural hesitation. 
 
 The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook his 
 head, and answered, in a low voice, "Not at all." 
 
 "Now, as to the future," hinted Mr. Lorry. 
 
 "As to the future," said the Doctor, recovering firm- 
 ness, " I should have great hope. As it pleased Heaven 
 in its mercy to restore him so soon, I should have great 
 hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complica- 
 ted something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen 
 and contended against, and recovering after the cloud had 
 burst and passed, I should hope that the worst was over." 
 
 "Well, well! That's good comfort. I am thankful!" 
 said Mr. Lorry. 
 
 " I am thankful ! " repeated the Doctor, bending his head 
 with reverence. 
 
 "There are two other points," said Mr. Lorry, "on which 
 I am anxious to be instructed. I may go on? " 
 
 "You cannot do your friend a better service." The Doc- 
 tor gave him his hand. 
 
A TALE OF TWO ClflM 191 
 
 "To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and un- 
 usually energetic; he applies himself with great ardour to 
 the acquisition of professional knowledge, to the conduct- 
 ing of experiments, to many things. Now, does he do too 
 much? " 
 
 " I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to 
 be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, 
 in part, natural to it; in part, the result of affliction. 
 The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it 
 would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. 
 He may have observed himself, and made the discovery. 
 
 " You are sure that he is not under too great a strain? " 
 
 " I think I am quite sure of it. " 
 
 "My dear Manette, if he were overworked now " 
 
 "My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There 
 has been a violent stress in one direction, and it needs a 
 counterweight. " 
 
 "Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming 
 for a moment, that he was overworked; it would show it- 
 self in some renewal of this disorder? " 
 
 "I do not think so. I do not think," said Doctor Ma- 
 nette with the firmness of self-conviction, " that anything 
 but the one train of association would renew it. I think 
 that, henceforth, nothing but some extraordinary jarring of 
 that chord could renew it. After what has happened, and 
 after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any such 
 violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I al- 
 most believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are 
 exhausted." 
 
 He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how 
 slight a thing would overset the delicate organisation of 
 the mind, and yet with the confidence of a man who had 
 slowly won his assurance out of personal endurance and 
 distress. It was not for his friend to abate that confidence. 
 He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than 
 he really was, and approached his second and last point 
 He felt it to be the most difficult of all; but, remembering 
 his old Sunday morning conversation with Miss Pross, and 
 remembering what he had seen in the last nine days, he 
 knew that he must face it. 
 
 "The occupation resumed under the influence of this 
 passing affliction so happily recovered from," said Mr. 
 Lorry, clearing his throat, "we will call — Blacksmith's 
 
192 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 work, Blacksmith's work. We will say, to put a case and 
 for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his 
 bad time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he 
 was unexpectedly found at his forge again. Is it not a 
 pity that he should keep it by him? " 
 
 The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat 
 his foot nervously on the ground. 
 
 "He has always kept it by him," said Mr. Lorry, with 
 an anxious look at his friend. " Now, would it not be bet- 
 ter that he should let it go? " 
 
 Still, the Doctor, -with shaded forehead, beat his foot 
 nervously on the ground. 
 
 " You do not find it easy to advise me? " said Mr. Lorry. 
 " I quite understand it to be a nice question. And yet I 
 think " And there he shook his head, and stopped. 
 
 " You see," said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an 
 uneasy pause, " it is very hard to explain, consistently, the 
 innermost workings of this poor man's mind. He once 
 yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so 
 welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his pain so 
 much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for the 
 perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became 
 more practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity 
 of the mental torture; that he has never been able to bear 
 the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even 
 now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he 
 has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of 
 confidence, the idea that he might need that old emploj 7 - 
 ment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, 
 like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost 
 child." 
 
 He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to 
 Mr. Lorry's face. 
 
 "But may not — mind! I ask for information, as a plod- 
 ding man of business who only deals with such material 
 objects as guineas, shillings, and bank-notes — may not the 
 retention of the thing involve the retention of the idea? If 
 the thing were gone, my dear Manette, might not the fear 
 go with it? In short, is it not a concession to the misgiv- 
 ing, to keep the forge? " 
 
 There was another silence. 
 
 "You see, too," said the Doctor, tremulously, "it is such 
 an old companion." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 193 
 
 "I would not keep it," said Mr. Lorry, shaking his 
 head; for he gained in firmness as he saw the Doctor dis- 
 quieted. " I would recommend him to sacrifice it. I only- 
 want your authority. I am sure it does no good. Come ! 
 Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his 
 daughter's sake, my dear Manette!" 
 
 Very strange to see what a struggle there was within 
 him ! 
 
 "In her name, then, let it be done; I sanction it. But, 
 I would not take it away while he was present. Let it be 
 removed when he is not there; let him miss his old com- 
 panion after an absence." 
 
 Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the conference 
 was ended. They passed the day in the country, and the 
 Doctor was quite restored. On the three following days 
 he remained perfectly well, and on the fourteenth day he 
 went away to join Lucie and her husband. The precau- 
 tion that had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. 
 Lorry had previously explained to him, and he had writ- 
 ten to Lucie in accordance with it, and she had no suspi- 
 cions. 
 
 On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. 
 Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and 
 hammer, attended by Miss Pross carrying a light. There, 
 with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, 
 Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemakers' bench to pieces, while 
 Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a 
 murder — for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no 
 unsuitable figure. The burning of the body (previously re- 
 duced to pieces convenient for the purpose) was com- 
 menced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools, 
 shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked 
 do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that 
 Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the, commis- 
 sion of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost 
 felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible 
 crime. 
 
194 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A PLEA. 
 
 When the newly-married pair came home, the first per- 
 son who appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sydney- 
 Carton. • They had not been at home many hours, when he 
 presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or in 
 looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of 
 fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of 
 Charles Darnay. 
 
 He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into 
 a window, and of speaking to him when no one overheard. 
 
 "Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might be 
 friends." 
 
 "We are already friends, I hope." 
 
 "You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; 
 but, I don't mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I 
 say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, 
 either." 
 
 Charles Darnay — as was natural — asked him, in all good- 
 humour and good-fellowship, what he did mean? 
 
 "Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find that 
 easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to 
 yours. However, let me try. You remember a certain 
 famous occasion when I was more drunk than — than 
 usual? " 
 
 " I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced 
 me to confess that you had been drinking." 
 
 "I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is 
 heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope it 
 may be taken into account one day, when all days are at an 
 end for me ! Don't be alarmed; I am not going to preach." 
 
 " I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is any- 
 thing but alarming to me." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as 
 if he waved that away. " On the drunken occasion in ques- 
 tion (one of a large number, as you know), I was insuffer- 
 able about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you 
 would forget it." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 195 
 
 "I forgot it long ago." 
 
 "Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion 
 is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I 
 have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not 
 help me to forget it." 
 
 "If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg 
 your forgiveness for it. I had no other object than to turn 
 a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to trouble you 
 too much, aside. I declare to you, on the faith of a gentle- 
 man, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good 
 Heaven, what was there to dismiss ! Have I had nothing 
 more important to remember, in the great service you ren- 
 dered me that day? " 
 
 "As to the great service," said Carton, "I am bound to 
 avow to you, when you speak of it in that way, that it was 
 mere professional claptrap, I don't know that I cared what 
 became of you, when I rendered it. — Mind ! I say when I 
 rendered it; I am speaking of the past." 
 
 "You make light of the obligation," returned Darnay, 
 "but I will not quarrel with your light answer." 
 
 "Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone 
 aside from my purpose; I was speaking about our being 
 friends. Now, you know me; you know I am incapable 
 of all the higher and better nights of men. If you doubt 
 it, ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so." 
 
 " I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his." 
 
 " Well ! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, 
 who has never done any good, and never will." 
 
 "I don't know that you ' never will.' " 
 
 " But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well ! 
 If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a 
 fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and going at 
 odd times, I should ask that I might be permitted to come 
 and go as a privileged person here; that I might be re- 
 garded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for 
 the resemblance I detected between you and me, an unor- 
 namental) piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, 
 and taken no notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the per- 
 mission. It is a hundred to one if I should avail myself of 
 it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I dare say, to 
 know that I had it. " 
 
 " Will you try? " 
 
 " That is another way of saying that I am placed on the 
 
196 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 footing I have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may 
 use that freedom with your name?" 
 
 "I think so, Carton, by this time." 
 
 They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. 
 Within a minute afterwards, he was, to all outward ap- 
 pearance, as unsubstantial as ever. 
 
 When he was gone, and in the course of an evening 
 passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, 
 Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversation in 
 general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem 
 of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in 
 short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but 
 as anybody might who saw him as he showed himself. 
 
 He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of 
 his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in 
 their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the 
 old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked. 
 
 " We are thoughtful to-night ! " said Darnay, drawing his 
 arm about her. 
 
 "Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, 
 and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; 
 " we are rather thoughtf ul to-night, for we have something 
 on our mind to-night." 
 
 " What is it, my Lucie? " 
 
 " Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I 
 beg you not to ask it? " 
 
 "Will I promise? What will I not promise to my 
 Love?" 
 
 What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden 
 hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart 
 that beat for him ! 
 
 " I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more con- 
 sideration and respect than you expressed for him to-night." 
 
 " Indeed, my own? Why so? " 
 
 " That is what you are not to ask me. But I think — I 
 know — he does." 
 
 " If you know it, it is enough. What would you have 
 me do, my Life? " 
 
 "I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him 
 always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. 
 I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, 
 very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. 
 My dear, I have seen it bleeding. " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 197 
 
 "It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, 
 quite astounded, " that I should have done him any wrong. 
 I never thought this of him." 
 
 "My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; 
 there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or 
 fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capa- 
 ble of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous 
 things." 
 
 She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this 
 lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she 
 was for hours. 
 
 " And, my dearest Love ! " she urged, clinging nearer 
 to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her 
 eyes to his, " remember how strong we are in our happi- 
 ness, and how weak he is in his misery ! " 
 
 The supplication touched him home. "I will always re- 
 member it, dear Heart ! I will remember it as long as I 
 live." 
 
 He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to 
 his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer 
 then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her inno- 
 cent disclosure, and could have seen the drops of pity 
 kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so lov- 
 ing of that husband, he might have cried to the night — 
 and the words would not have parted from his lips for the 
 first time — 
 
 " God bless her for her sweet compassion ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. 
 
 A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, 
 that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding 
 the golden thread which bound her husband, and her 
 father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, 
 in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the 
 tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing foot- 
 steps of years. 
 .. At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly 
 
198 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from 
 her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For, there was 
 something coming in the echoes, something light, afar off, 
 and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much. 
 Fluttering hopes and doubts — hopes, of a love as yet un- 
 known to her : doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to en- 
 joy that new delight — divided her breast. Among the 
 echoes then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at 
 her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who 
 would be left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so 
 much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like waves. 
 
 That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. 
 Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of 
 her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling words. Let 
 greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at 
 the cradle side could always hear those coming. They 
 came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh, 
 and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble 
 she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, 
 as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to 
 her. 
 
 Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them 
 all together, weaving the service of her happy influence 
 through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predom- 
 inate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years none but 
 friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's step was 
 strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and 
 equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening 
 the echoes, as an urtruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting 
 and pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden ! 
 
 Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, 
 they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, 
 like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the worn face 
 Of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant smile, " Dear 
 papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and 
 to leave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go! " 
 those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young 
 mother's cheek, as the spirit departed from her embrace 
 that had been entrusted to it. Suffer them and forbid them 
 not. They see my Father's face. Father, blessed 
 words ! 
 
 Thus, the rustling of an Angel's wings got blended with 
 the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 199 
 
 had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds 
 that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with 
 them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushed 
 murmur — like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon 
 a sandy shore — as the little Lucie, comically studious at 
 the task of the morning, or dressing a doll at her mother's 
 footstool, chattered in the tongues of the Two Cities that 
 were blended in her life. 
 
 The echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney 
 Carton. Some half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed 
 his privilege of coming in uninvited, and would sit among 
 them through the evening, as he had once done often. He 
 never came there heated with wine. And one other thing 
 regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been 
 whispered by all true echoes for ages and ages. 
 
 No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew 
 her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when she 
 was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange 
 sympathy with him — an instinctive delicacy of pity for 
 him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a 
 case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Car- 
 ton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her 
 chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. 
 The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. 
 " Poor Carton ! Kiss him for me ! " 
 
 Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like 
 some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and 
 dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed 
 astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough 
 plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped 
 life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much 
 easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of 
 desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he 
 no more thought of emerging from his state of lion's jackal, 
 than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to 
 be a lion. Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow 
 with property and three boys, who had nothing particu- 
 larly shining about them but the straight hair of their 
 dumpling heads. 
 
 These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding pat 
 ronage of the most offensive quality from every pore, had 
 walked before him like three sheep to the quiet corner in 
 Soho, and had offered as pupils to Lucie's husband: deli- 
 
200 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 cately saying " Halloa ! here are three lumps of bread-and- 
 cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay ! " The 
 polite rejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had 
 quite, bloated Mr. Stryver with indignation, which he after- 
 wards turned to account in the training of the young gen- 
 tlemen, by directing them to beware of the pride of Beg- 
 gars, like that tutor- fellow. He was also in the habit of 
 declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on 
 the arts Mrs. Darnay had once pat in practice to "catch" 
 him, and on the diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, 
 madam, which had rendered him "not to be caught." 
 Some of his King's Bench familiars, who were occasionally 
 parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for 
 the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he 
 believed it himself — which is surely such an incorrigible 
 aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any 
 such offender's being carried off to some suitably retired 
 spot, and there hanged out of the way. 
 
 These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes 
 pensive, sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the 
 echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. 
 How near to her heart the echoes of her child's tread came, 
 and those of her own dear father's, always active and self- 
 possessed, and those of her dear husband's, need not be 
 told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, 
 directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that 
 it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. 
 Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her 
 ears, of the many times her father had told her that he 
 found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) 
 than single, and of the many times her husband had said 
 to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love 
 for him or her help to him, and asked her " What is the 
 magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all 
 of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming 
 to be hurried, or to have too much to do? " 
 
 But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rum- 
 bled menacingly in the corner all through this space of 
 time. And it was now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, 
 that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great 
 storm in France with a dreadful sea rising. 
 
 On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred 
 and eighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in late, from Tellson's, 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 201 
 
 and sat himself down by Lucie and her husband in the dark 
 window. It was a hot, wild night, and they were all three 
 reminded of the old Sunday night when they had looked 
 at the lightning from the same place. 
 
 "I began to think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown 
 wig back, " that I should have to pass the night at Tell- 
 son's. We have been so full of business all day, that we 
 have not known what to do first, or which way to turn. 
 There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we have actually 
 a run of confidence upon us ! Our customers over there, 
 seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast 
 enough. There is positively a mania among some of them 
 for sending it to England." 
 
 "That has a bad look," said Darnay. 
 
 " A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay? Yes, but we 
 don't know what reason there is in it. People are so un- 
 reasonable! Some of us at Tellson's are getting old, and 
 we really can't be troubled out of the ordinary course with- 
 out due occasion." 
 
 " Still," said Darnay, "you know how gloomy and threat- 
 ening the sky is." 
 
 "I know that, to be sure," assented Mr. Lorry, trying to 
 persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured, and 
 that he grurnbled, "but I am determined to be peevish 
 after my long day's botheration. Where is Manette? " 
 
 "Here he is," said the Doctor, entering the dark room 
 at the moment. 
 
 "I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries and 
 forebodings by which I have been surrounded all day long, 
 have made me nervous without reason. You are not going 
 out, I hope? " 
 
 "No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you 
 like," said the Doctor. 
 
 " I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I 
 am not fit to be pitted against you to-night. Is the tea- 
 board still there, Lucie? I can't see." 
 
 "Of course, it has been kept for you." 
 
 "Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in 
 bed?" 
 
 "And sleeping soundly." 
 
 "That's right; all safe and well! I don't know why 
 anything should be otherwise than safe and well here, 
 thank God; but I have been so put out all day, and I am 
 15 
 
202 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 not as young as I was ! My tea, my dear ! Thank ye. 
 Now, come and take your place in the circle, and let us sit 
 quiet, and hear the echoes about which you have your 
 theory." 
 
 "Not a theory; it was a fancy." 
 
 "A fancy, then, my wise pet," said Mr. Lorry, patting 
 her hand. "They are very numerous and very loud, 
 though, are they not? Only hear them ! " 
 
 Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their 
 way into anybody's life, footsteps not easily made clean 
 again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint An- 
 toine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London 
 window. 
 
 Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass 
 of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of 
 light above the billowy heads, where steel blades and bay- 
 onets shone in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the 
 throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms strug- 
 gled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter 
 wind : all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon 
 or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the 
 depths below, no matter how far off. 
 
 Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they 
 began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and 
 jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like 
 a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; 
 but, muskets were being distributed — so were cartridges, 
 powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, 
 pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could dis- 
 cover or devise. People who could lay hold of nothing 
 else, set themselves with bleeding hands to force stones 
 and bricks out of their places in walls. Every pulse and 
 heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain and at 
 high-fever heat. Every living creature there held life as 
 of no account, and was demented with a passionate readi- 
 ness to sacrifice it. 
 
 As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, 
 all this raging circled round Defarge's wine-shop, and every 
 human drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked 
 towards the vortex where Defarge himself, already be- 
 grimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued 
 arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, dis- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 203 
 
 armed one to arm another, laboured and strove in the 
 thickest of the uproar. 
 
 "Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried Defarge; "and 
 do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves 
 at the head of as many of these patriots as you can. 
 Where is my wife? " 
 
 "Eh, well ! Here you see me ! " said madame, composed 
 as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame's resolute right 
 hand was occupied with an axe, in place of the usual softer 
 implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel 
 knife. 
 
 " Where do you go, my wife? " 
 
 "I go," said madame, "with you at present. You shall 
 see me at the head of women, by-and-bye." 
 
 "Come, then!" cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. 
 " Patriots and friends, we are ready ! The Bastille ! " 
 
 With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France 
 had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, 
 wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to 
 that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea 
 raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack begun. 
 
 Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, 
 eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. 
 Through the fire and through the smoke — in the fire and 
 in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, 
 and on the instant he became a cannonier — Defarge of the 
 wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours. 
 
 Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight 
 great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One draw- 
 bridge down ! " Work, comrades all, work ! Work, Jacques 
 One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two 
 Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the 
 name of all the Angels or the Devils — which you prefer — 
 work ! " Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at his gun, 
 which had long grown hot. 
 
 "To me, women!" cried madame his wife. "What! 
 We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken ! " 
 And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women vari- 
 ously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and revenge. 
 
 Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still the deep 
 ditch, the single drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and 
 the eight great towers. Slight displacements of the raging 
 sea made by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, 
 
204 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 blazing, torches smoking waggon-loads of wet straw, hard 
 work at neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks, 
 volleys, execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash 
 and rattle, and the furious sounding of the living sea; but, 
 still the deep ditch, and the single drawbridge, and the 
 massive stone walls, and the eight great towers, and still 
 Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hot by 
 the service of Four fierce hours. 
 
 A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley — 
 this dimly perceptible through the raging storm, nothing 
 audible in it — suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider 
 and higher, and swept Defarge of the wine- shop over the 
 lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone outer walls, in 
 among the eight great towers surrendered ! 
 
 So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, 
 that even to draw his breath or turn his head was as im- 
 practicable as if he had been struggling in the surf at the 
 South Sea, until he was landed in the outer courtyard of 
 the Bastille. There, against an angle of a wall, he made 
 a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly 
 at his side; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her 
 women, was visible in the inner distance, and her knife 
 was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, 
 deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, 
 yet furious dumb- show. 
 
 " The Prisoners ! " 
 
 " The Eecords ! " 
 
 " The secret cells ! " 
 
 " The instruments of torture ! " 
 
 "The Prisoners!" 
 
 Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherences, "The 
 Prisoners ! " was the cry most taken up by the sea that 
 rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as 
 of time and space. When the foremost billows rolled past, 
 bearing the prison officers with them, and threatening them 
 all with instant death if any secret nook remained undis- 
 closed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of 
 these men — a man with a grey head, who had a lighted 
 torch in his hand — separated him from the rest, and got 
 him between himself and the wall. 
 
 " Show me the North Tower ! " said Defarge. " Quick ! " 
 
 "I will faithfully," replied the man, "if you will come 
 with me. But there is no one there." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 205 
 
 " What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North 
 Tower? " asked Defarge. " Quick ! '* 
 
 " The meaning, monsieur? * 
 
 "Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do 
 you mean that I shall strike you dead? " 
 
 " Kill him ! " croaked Jacques Three, who had come 
 close up. 
 
 " Monsieur, it is a cell." 
 
 " Show it me ! " 
 
 "Pass this way, then." 
 
 Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evi- 
 dently disappointed by the dialogue taking a turn that did 
 not seem to promise bloodshed, held by Defarge' s arm as 
 he held by the turnkey's. Their three heads had been 
 close together during this brief discourse, and it had been 
 as much as they could do to hear one another, even then . 
 so tremendous was the noise of the living ocean, in its ir- 
 ruption into the Fortress, and its inundation of the courts 
 and passages and staircases. All around outside, too, it 
 beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which, occa- 
 sionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped 
 into the air like spray. 
 
 Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never 
 shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down 
 cavernous flights of steps, and again up steep rugged 
 ascents of stone and brick, more like dry waterfalls than 
 staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques Three, linked 
 hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. 
 Here and there, especially at first, the inundation started 
 on them and swept by; but when they had done descend- 
 ing, and were winding and climbing up a tower, they were 
 alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of walls 
 and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was 
 only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise 
 out of which they had come had almost destroyed their 
 sense of hearing. 
 
 The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clash- 
 ing lock, swung the door slowly open, and said, as they all 
 bent their heads and passed in : 
 
 " One hundred and five, North Tower ! " 
 
 There was a small-heavily-grated, unglazed window high 
 in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky 
 could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There 
 
206 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 was a small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet 
 within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-ashes on 
 the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. 
 There were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring 
 in one of them. 
 
 " Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may 
 see them," said Defarge to the turnkey. 
 
 The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely 
 with his eyes. 
 
 " Stop ! — Look here, Jacques ! " 
 
 " A. M. ! " croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily. 
 
 "Alexandre Manette," said Defarge in his ear, follow- 
 ing the letters with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained 
 with gunpowder. "And here he wrote ' a poor physician.' 
 And it was he, without doubt, who scratched a calendar on 
 this stone. What is that in your hand? A crowbar? Give 
 it me ! " 
 
 He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. 
 He made a sudden exchange of the two instruments, and 
 turning on the worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to 
 pieces in a few blows. 
 
 " Hold the light higher ! " he said, wrathfully, to the 
 turnkey. "Look among those fragments with care, 
 Jacques. And see! Here is my knife," throwing it to 
 him ; " rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold the 
 light higher, you ! " 
 
 With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon 
 the hearth, and, peering up the chimney, struck and prised 
 at its sides with the crowbar, and worked at the iron grat- 
 ing across it. In a few minutes, some mortar and dust 
 came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid; 
 and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in 
 the chimney into which his weapon had slipped or wrought 
 itself, he groped with a cautious touch. 
 
 "Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, 
 Jacques? " 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 " Let us collect them together, in the middle of the celh 
 So ! Light them, you ! " 
 
 The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and 
 hot. Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door, 
 they left it burning, and retraced their way to the court- 
 yard; seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 207 
 
 came down, until they were in the raging flood once 
 more. 
 
 They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge 
 himself. Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its wine- 
 shop keeper foremost in the guard upon the governor who 
 had defended the Bastile and shot the people. Otherwise, 
 the governor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville 
 for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, 
 and the people's blood (suddenly of some value, after 
 many years of worthlessness) be unavenged. 
 
 In the howling universe of passion and contention that 
 seemed to encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in 
 his grey coat and red decoration, there was but one quite 
 steady figure, and that was a woman's. " See, there is my 
 husband ! " she cried, pointing him out. " See Defarge ! " 
 She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and re- 
 mained 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 Hotel de Ville where 
 the governor's body lay — down on the sole of the shoe of 
 Madame Defarge where she had trodden on the body to 
 steady it for mutilation. " Lower the lamp yonder ! " cried 
 Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of 
 death; " here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!" 
 The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on. 
 
 The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destruct- 
 ive 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 vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suf- 
 ering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them. 
 
 But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious 
 
208 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 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 re- 
 joiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces 
 there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose droop- 
 ing eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Im- 
 passive faces, yet with a suspended — not an abolished — ex- 
 pression on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as hav- 
 ing yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and bear wit- 
 ness 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 thousand seven 
 hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy 
 of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far out of her life ! 
 For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the 
 years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge' s 
 wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once 
 stained red. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE SEA STILL RISES. 
 
 Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant 
 week, in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter 
 bread to such extent as he could, with the relish of fra- 
 ternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge 
 sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. 
 Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great 
 brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, 
 extremely chary of trusting themselves to the saint's mer- 
 cies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously 
 elastic swing with them. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 209 
 
 Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morn- 
 ing light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the 
 street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, 
 squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of 
 power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest night- 
 cap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked sig- 
 nificance in it : "I know how hard it has grown for me, the 
 wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know 
 how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to des- 
 troy life in you?" Every lean bare arm, that had been 
 without work before, had this work always ready for it 
 now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting 
 women were vicious, with the experience that they could 
 tear. There was a chauge in the appearance of St. An- 
 toine; the image had been hammering into this for hun- 
 dreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told might- 
 ily on the expression. 
 
 Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed 
 approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint An- 
 toine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. 
 The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the 
 mother of two children withal, this lieutenant nad already 
 earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance. 
 
 " Hark ! " said The Vengeance. " Listen, then ! Who 
 comes?". 
 
 As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound 
 of Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been 
 suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing 
 along. 
 
 " It is Defarge," said madame. " Silence, patriots ! " 
 
 Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, 
 and looked around him ! " Listen, everywhere ! " said mad- 
 ame again. " Listen to him!" Defarge stood, panting, 
 against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, 
 formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop 
 had sprung to their feet. 
 
 " Say then, my husband. What is it? " 
 
 " News from the other world ! " 
 
 "How, then?" cried madame, contemptuously. "The 
 other world? " 
 
 " Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the 
 famished people that they might eat grass, and who died, 
 and went to Hell? " 
 16 
 
210 ' A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " Everybody ! " from all throats. 
 
 " The news is of him. He is among us ! " 
 
 " Among us ! " from the universal throat again. " And 
 dead? " 
 
 " Not dead ! He feared us so much — and with reason — 
 that he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had 
 a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him alive, 
 hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have 
 seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a 
 prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say 
 all ! Had he reason? " 
 
 Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and 
 ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have known it 
 in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering 
 cry. 
 
 A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and 
 his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The Venge- 
 ance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she 
 moved it at her feet behind the counter. 
 
 " Patriots ! " said Defarge, in a determined voice, " are 
 we ready? " 
 
 Instantly Madame Defarge' s knife was in her girdle; 
 the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer 
 had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering 
 terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like 
 all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to 
 house, rousing the women. 
 
 The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with 
 which they looked from windows, caught up what arms 
 they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the 
 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 stream- 
 ing hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness 
 with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, 
 my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant 
 Foulon taken, my daughter ! Then, a score of others ran 
 into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their 
 hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the 
 starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told 
 my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread 
 to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 211 
 
 grass, when these breasts were dry with want ! mother 
 of God, this Foulon ! 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! Hus- 
 bands, 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 passion- 
 ate swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to 
 them from being trampled under foot. 
 
 Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! 
 This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be 
 loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, 
 insults, and wrongs ! Armed men and women nocked out 
 of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs 
 after them with such a force of suction, that within a 
 quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in 
 Saint Antoine's bosom but a few old crones and the wailing 
 children. 
 
 No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Ex- 
 amination where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and 
 overflowing into the adjacent open space and streets. The 
 Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques 
 Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance 
 from him in the Hall. 
 
 " See ! " cried madame, pointing with her knife. " See 
 the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done 
 to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That 
 was well done. Let him eat it now ! " Madame put 
 her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a 
 play. 
 
 The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, ex- 
 plaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, 
 and those again explaining to others, and those to others, 
 the neighbouring streets resounded with the clapping of 
 hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, 
 and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame 
 Defarge' s frequent expressions of impatience were taken 
 up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more 
 readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful 
 
212 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to 
 look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, 
 and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd out- 
 side the building. 
 
 At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly 
 ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old 
 prisoner's head. The favour was too much to bear; in an 
 instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had stood sur- 
 prisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had 
 got him ! 
 
 It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the 
 crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, 
 and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace — 
 Madame Defarge 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 foremast on the steps of the 
 building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on 
 his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the 
 bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face 
 by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, 
 yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy ; now full 
 of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space 
 about him as the people drew one another back that they 
 might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest 
 of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where 
 one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge 
 let him go — as a cat might have done to a mouse — and 
 silently and composedly looked at him while they made 
 ready, and while he besought her : the women 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, with 
 grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance 
 at the sight of. 
 
 Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint 
 
1,1— I 
 
 
 'O 13 
 
 tuc-d 
 bis 
 

 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 213 
 
 Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that 
 it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the 
 son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people's ene- 
 mies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard 
 five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote 
 his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him — would 
 have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon 
 company — set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the 
 three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the 
 streets. 
 
 Not before dark night did the men and women come 
 back to the children, wailing and breadless. Then, the 
 miserable bakers' shops were beset by long files of them, 
 patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while they waited 
 with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by 
 embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and 
 achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings 
 of ragged people shortened and frayed away; and then 
 poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender 
 fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked 
 in common, afterwards supping at their doors. 
 
 Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of 
 meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, hu- 
 man fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty 
 viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of 
 them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share 
 in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre 
 children; and loveTS, with such a world around them and 
 before them, loved and hoped. 
 
 It was almost morning, when Defarge's wine-shop 
 parted with its last knot of customers, and Monsieur De- 
 farge said to madame his wife, in husky tones, while fast- 
 ening the door : 
 
 " At last it is come, my dear ! " 
 "Eh well!" returned madame. "Almost." 
 Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept : even The Venge- 
 ance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at 
 rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that 
 blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as 
 custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and 
 had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, 
 or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of 
 the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom. 
 
214 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 FIRE RISES. 
 
 There was a change on the village where the fountain 
 fell, and where the mender of roads went forth daily to 
 hammer out of the stones on the highway such morsels of 
 bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant 
 soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on 
 the crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were sol- 
 diers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard 
 the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would 
 do — beyond this : that it would probably not be what he 
 was ordered. 
 
 Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but 
 desolation. Eveiw green leaf, every blade of grass and 
 blade of grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the miser- 
 able people. Everything was bowed down, dejected, op- 
 pressed, and broken. Habitations, fences, domesticated 
 animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them 
 — all worn out. 
 
 Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentleman) 
 was a national blessing, gave a chivalrous tone to things, 
 was a polite example of luxurious and shining life, and a 
 great deal more to equal purpose; nevertheless, Mon- 
 seigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things 
 to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for 
 Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed 
 out ! There must be something short-sighted in the eternal 
 arrangements, surely! Thus it was, however; and the 
 last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, 
 and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often 
 that its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned 
 with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from 
 a phenomenon so low and unaccountable. 
 
 But, this was not the change on the village, and on many 
 a village like it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur 
 had squeezed it and wrung it, and had seldom graced it 
 with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase — 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 215 
 
 now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting 
 the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edify- 
 ing spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The 
 change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low 
 caste, rather than in the disappearance of the high caste, 
 chiselled, and otherwise beautified and beautifying features 
 of Monseigneur. 
 
 For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, 
 solitary, in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect 
 that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the 
 most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had 
 for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it — 
 in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labour, 
 and viewed the prospect, he would see some rough figure 
 approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity 
 in those parts, but was now a frequent presence. As it 
 advanced, the mender of roads would discern without sur- 
 prise, that it was a shaggy-haired man, of almost barbarian 
 aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the 
 eyes of a mender of roads, grim, rough, swart, steeped in 
 the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the marshy 
 moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the thorns 
 and leaves and moss of many byways through woods. 
 
 Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the 
 July weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank, 
 taking such shelter as he could get from a shower of 
 hail. 
 
 The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hol- 
 low, at the mill, and at the prison on the crag. When he 
 had identified these objects in what benighted mind he 
 had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible : 
 
 " How goes it, Jacques? " 
 
 "All well, Jacques." 
 
 "Touch then!" 
 
 They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap 
 of stones. 
 
 "No dinner?" 
 
 "Nothing but supper now," said the mender of roads, 
 with a hungry face. 
 
 " It is the fashion," growled the man. " I meet no dinner 
 anywhere." 
 
 He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with 
 flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: 
 
216 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 then, suddenly held it from him and dropped something 
 into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed and 
 went out in a puff of smoke. 
 
 u Touch then." It was the turn of the mender of roads 
 to say it this time, after observing these operations. They 
 again joined hands. 
 
 " To-night? " said the mender of roads. 
 
 " To-night," said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "Here." 
 
 He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones 
 looking silently at one another, with the hail driving in be- 
 tween them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky 
 began to clear over the village. 
 
 " Show me!" said the traveller then, moving to the brow 
 of the hill. 
 
 " See ! " returned the mender of roads, with extended 
 finger. "You go down here, and straight through the 
 street, and past the fountain " 
 
 "To the Devil with all that! " interrupted the other, roll- 
 ing his eye over the landscape. "I go through no streets 
 and past no fountains. Well?" 
 
 " Well ! About two leagues beyond the summit of that 
 hill above the village." 
 
 " Good. When do you cease to work? " 
 
 "At sunset." 
 
 " Will you wake me, before departing? I have walked 
 two nights without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and 
 I shall sleep like a child. Will you wake me? " 
 
 "Surely." 
 
 The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, 
 slipped off his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his 
 back on the heap of stones. He was fast asleep directly. 
 
 As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the hail- 
 clouds, rolling away, revealed bright bars and streaks of 
 sky which were responded to by silver gleams upon the 
 landscape, the little man (who wore a red cap now, in 
 place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the figure on 
 the heap of stones. His eyes were so often turned towards 
 it, that he used his tools mechanically, and, one would 
 have said, to very poor account. The bronze face, the 
 shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen red cap, 
 the rough medley dress of home-spun stuff and hairy skins 
 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 217 
 
 of beasts, the powerful frame attenuated by spare living, 
 and the sullen and desperate compression of the lips in 
 sleep, inspired the mender of roads with awe. The trav- 
 eller had travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his 
 ankles chafed and bleeding; his great shoes, stuffed with 
 leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the many 
 long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes, as he 
 himself was into sores. Stooping down beside him, the 
 road-mender tried to get a peep at secret weapons in his 
 breast or where not; but, in vain, for he slept with his arms 
 crossed upon him, and set as resolutely as his lips. Forti- 
 fied towns with their stockades, guard-houses, gates, 
 trenches, and drawbridges, seemed to the mender of roads, 
 to be so much air as against this figure. And when he 
 lifted his eyes from it to the horizon and looked around, 
 he saw in his small fancy similar figures, stopped by no 
 obstacle, tending to centres all over France. 
 
 The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and in- 
 tervals of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, 
 to the pattering lumps of dull ice on his body and the dia- 
 monds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was 
 low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then, the 
 mender of roads having got his tools together and all things 
 ready to go down into the village, roused him. 
 
 " Good ! " said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. " Two 
 leagues beyond the summit of the hill? " 
 
 "About." 
 
 " About. Good!" 
 
 The mender of roads went home, with the dust going on 
 before him according to the set of the wind, and was soon 
 at the fountain, squeezing himself in among the lean kine 
 brought there to drink, and appearing even to whisper to 
 them in his whispering to all the village. When the vil- 
 lage had taken its poor supper, it did not creep to bed, as 
 it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained 
 there. A curious contagion of whispering was upon it, 
 and also, when it gathered together at the fountain in the 
 dark, another curious contagion of looking expectantly at 
 the sky in one direction only. Monsieur Gabelle, chief 
 functionary of the place, became uneasy ; went out on his 
 house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced 
 down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces bj r 
 the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who 
 
 i a— 8 
 
218 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to 
 ring the tocsin by-and-bye. 
 
 The night deepened. The trees environing the old cha- 
 teau, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a rising 
 wind, as though they threatened the pile of building 
 massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two terrace flights 
 of s.teps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, 
 like a swift messenger rousing those within; uneasy rushes 
 of wind went through the hall, among the old spears and 
 knives, and passed lamenting up the stairs, and shook the 
 curtains of the bed where the last Marquis had slept. 
 East, West, North, and South, through the woods, four 
 heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the high grass and 
 cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to come to- 
 gether in the courtyard. Four lights broke out there, and 
 moved away in different directions, and all was black again. 
 
 But, not for long. Presently, the chateau began to make 
 itself strangely visible by some light of its own, as though 
 it were growing luminous. Then, a flickering streak played 
 behind the architecture of the front, picking out transparent 
 places, and showing where balustrades, arches, and win- 
 dows were. Then it soared higher, and grew broader and 
 brighter. Soon, from a score of the great windows, flames 
 burst forth, and the stone faces awakened, stared out of 
 fire. 
 
 A faint murmur arose about the house from the few peo- 
 ple who were left there, and there was a saddling of a 
 norse and riding away. There was spurring and splash- 
 ing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn in the 
 space by the village fountain, and the horse in a foam stood 
 at Monsieur Gabelle's door. "Help, Gabelle! Help, ev- 
 ery one ! " The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if 
 that were any) there was none. The mender of roads, and 
 two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded 
 arms at the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the 
 sky. "It must be forty feet high," said they, grimly; and 
 never moved. 
 
 The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, 
 clattered away through the village, and galloped up the 
 stony steep, to the prison on the crag. At the gate, a 
 group of officers were looking at the fire; removed from 
 them, a group of soldiers. "Help, gentlemen-officers! 
 The chateau is on fire; valuable objects may be saved from 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 219 
 
 the flames by timely aid ! Help, help ! " The officers 
 looked towards the soldiers who looked at the fire; gave 
 no orders; and answered, with shrugs and biting of lips, 
 "It must burn." 
 
 As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the 
 street, the village was illuminating. The mender of roads, 
 and the two hundred and fifty particular friends, inspired 
 as one man and woman by the idea of lighting up, had 
 darted into their houses, and were putting candles in every 
 dull little pane of glass. The general scarcity of every- 
 thing, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather per- 
 emptory manner of Monsieur Gabelle; and in a moment of 
 reluctance and hesitation on that functionary's part, the 
 mender of roads, once so submissive to authority, had re- 
 marked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and 
 that post-horses would roast. 
 
 The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the 
 roaring and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind, 
 driving straight from the infernal regions, seemed to be 
 blowing the edifice away. With the rising and falling of 
 the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in tor- 
 ment. When great masses of stone and timber fell, the 
 face with the two dints in the nose became obscured : anon 
 struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of 
 the cruel Marquis, burning at the stake and contending 
 with the fire. 
 
 The chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by 
 the fire, scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired 
 by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a 
 new forest of smoke. Molten lead and iron boiled in the 
 marble basin of the fountain; the water ran dry; the ex- 
 tinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before the 
 heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame. 
 Great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like 
 crystallisation; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped 
 into the furnace; four fierce figures trudged away, East, 
 West, North, and South, along the night-enshrouded roads, 
 guided by the beacon they had lighted, towards their next 
 destination. The illuminated village had seized hold of 
 the tocsin, and, abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy. 
 
 Not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, 
 fire, and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur 
 Gabelle had to do with the collection of rent and taxes — ■ 
 
220 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 though it was but a small instalment of taxes, and no rent 
 at all, that Gabelle had got in those latter days — became 
 impatient for an interview with him, and, surrounding his 
 house, summoned him to come forth for personal confer- 
 ence. Whereupon, Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his 
 door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result 
 of that conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew him- 
 self to his house-top behind his stack of chimneys; this 
 time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small 
 Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself 
 head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two 
 below. 
 
 Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there, 
 with the distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beat- 
 ing at his door, combined with the joy-ringing, for music; 
 not to mention his having an ill-omened lamp slung across 
 the road before his posting-house gate, which the village 
 showed a lively inclination to displace in his favour. A 
 trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the 
 brink of the black ocean, ready to take that plunge into it 
 upon which Monsieur Gabelle had resolved! But, the 
 friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of 
 the village guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and 
 Monsieur Gabelle came down bringing his life with him 
 for that while. 
 
 Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, 
 there were other functionaries less fortunate, that night 
 and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging 
 across once-peaceful streets, where they had been born and 
 bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople less 
 fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon 
 whom the functionaries and soldiery turned with success, 
 and whom they strung up in their turn. But, the fierce 
 figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and 
 South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire 
 burned. The altitude of the gallows that would turn to 
 water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of 
 mathematics, was able to calculate successfully, 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 221 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK. 
 
 In such risings of fire and risings of sea — the firm earth 
 shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no 
 ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the 
 terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore — three 
 years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays 
 of little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into 
 the peaceful tissue of the life of her home. 
 
 Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened 
 to the echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them 
 when they heard the thronging feet. For, the footsteps 
 had become to their minds as the footsteps of a people, 
 tumultuous under a red flag and with their country de- 
 clared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible en- 
 chantment long persisted in. 
 
 Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from 
 the phenomenon of his not being appreciated : of his being 
 so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable danger 
 of receiving his dismissal from it, and this life together. 
 Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with infinite 
 pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could 
 ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled; so, Mon- 
 seigneur, after boldly reading the Lord's Prayer back- 
 wards for a great number of years, and performing many 
 other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner 
 beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels. 
 
 The shining Bull's Eye of the Court was gone, or it 
 would have been the mark for a hurricane of national bul- 
 lets. It had never been a good eye to see with — had long 
 had the mote in it of Lucifer's pride, Sardanapalus's luxury, 
 and a mole's blindness — but it had dropped out and was 
 gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its 
 outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimu- 
 lation, was all gone together. Royalty was gone; had been 
 besieged in its Palace and "suspended," when the last tid- 
 ings came over. 
 
 The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and 
 
222 a TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur was by this time 
 scattered far and wide. 
 
 As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering- 
 place of Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson's Bank. 
 Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies 
 most resorted, and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted 
 the spot where his guineas used to be. Moreover, it was 
 the spot to which such French intelligence as was most to 
 be relied upon, came quickest. Again: Tellson's was a 
 munificent house, and extended great liberality to old cus- 
 tomers who had fallen from their high estate. Again: 
 those nobles who had seen the coming storm in time, and 
 anticipating plunder or confiscation, had made provident 
 remittances to Tellson's, were always to be heard of there 
 by their needy brethren. To which it must be added that 
 every new-comer from France reported himself and his tid- 
 ings at Tellson's, almost as a matter of course. For such 
 variety of reasons, Tellson's was at that time, as to French 
 intelligence, a kind of High Exchange; and this was so 
 well known to the public, and the inquiries made there 
 were in consequence so numerous, that Tellson's sometimes 
 wrote the latest news out in a line or so and posted it in the 
 Bank windows, for all who ran through Temple Bar to read. 
 
 On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his 
 desk, and Charles Darnay stood leaning on it, talking with 
 him in a low voice. The penitential den once set apart for 
 interviews with the House, was now the news-Exchange, 
 and was filled to overflowing. It was within half an hour 
 or so of the time of closing. 
 
 "But, although you are the youngest man that ever 
 lived," said Charles Darnay, rather hesitating, "I must 
 still suggest to you " 
 
 "I understand. That I am too old? " said Mr. Lorry. 
 
 "Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of 
 travelling, a disorganised country, a city that may not be 
 even safe for you." 
 
 "My dear Charles," said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful con- 
 fidence, " you touch some of the reasons for my going : not 
 for my staying away. It is safe enough for me; nobody 
 will care to interfere with an old fellow of hard upon four- 
 score when there are so many people there much better 
 worth interfering with. As to its being a disorganised 
 City, if it were not a disorganised city there would be no 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 223 
 
 occasion to send somebody from our House here to our 
 House there, who knows the city and the business, of old, 
 and is in Tellson's confidence. As to the uncertain travel- 
 ling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were 
 not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for 
 the sake of Tellson's, after all these years, who ought to 
 be?" 
 
 "I wish I were going myself," said Charles Darnay, 
 somewhat restlessly, and like one thinking aloud. 
 
 "Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and ad- 
 vise ! " exclaimed Mr. Lorry. " You wish you were going 
 yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You are a wise 
 counsellor." 
 
 "My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman 
 born, that the thought (which I did not mean to utter here, 
 however) has passed through my mind often. One cannot 
 help thinking, having had some sympathy for the miser- 
 able people,, and having abandoned something to them," 
 he spoke here in his former thoughtful manner, " that one 
 might be listened to, and might have the power to persuade 
 to some restraint. Only last night, after you had left us, 
 when I was talking to Lucie " 
 
 " When you were talking to Lucie," Mr. Lorry repeated. 
 "Yes. I wonder you are not ashamed to mention the 
 name of Lucie ! Wishing you were going to France at this 
 time of day ! " 
 
 " However, I am not going/' said Charles Darnay, with 
 a smile. "It is more to the purpose that you say you 
 are." 
 
 " And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear 
 Charles," Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and 
 lowered his voice, " you can have no conception of the diffi- 
 culty with which our business is transacted, and of the peril 
 in which our books and papers over yonder are involved. 
 The Lord above knows what the compromising conse- 
 quences would be to numbers of people, if some of our 
 documents were seized or destroyed; and they might be, 
 at any time, you know, for who can say that Paris is not 
 set afire to-day, or sacked to-morrow ! Now, a judicious 
 selection from these with the least possible delay, and the 
 burying of them, or otherwise getting of them out of harm's 
 way, is within the power (without loss of precious time) 
 of scarcely any one but myself, if any one. And shall I 
 
224 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 hang back, when Tellson's knows this and says this — Tell- 
 son's, whose bread I have eaten these sixty years — because 
 I am a little stiff about the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, 
 to half a dozen old codgers here ! " 
 
 " How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit, 
 Mr. Lorry." 
 
 "Tut! Nonsense, sir! — And, my dear Charles," said 
 Mr. Lorry, glancing at the House again, "you are to re- 
 member, that getting things out of Paris at this present 
 time, no matter what things, is next to an impossibility. 
 Papers and precious matters were this very day brought to 
 us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not business-like 
 to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers you 
 can imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on 
 by a single hair as he passed the Barriers. At another 
 time, our parcels would come and go, as easily as in busi- 
 ness-like Old England; but now, everything is stopped." 
 
 " And do you really go to-night? " 
 
 " I really go to-night, for the case has become too press- 
 ing to admit of delay." 
 
 "And do you take no one with you? " 
 
 " All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I 
 will have nothing to say to any of them. I intend to take 
 Jerry. Jerry has been my body-guard on Sunday nights 
 for a long time past, and I am used to him. Nobody will 
 suspect Jerry of being anything but an English bull-dog, or 
 of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who 
 touches his master." 
 
 " I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry 
 and youthfulness." 
 
 " I must say again, nonsense, nonsense ! When I have 
 executed this little commission, I shall, perhaps, accept 
 Tellson's proposal to retire and live at my ease. Time 
 enough, then, to think about growing old." 
 
 This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry's usual desk, 
 with Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, 
 boastful of what he would do to avenge himself on the 
 rascal-people before long. It was too much the way of 
 Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was 
 much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to 
 talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the only har- 
 vest ever known under the skies that had not been sown— 
 as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done t 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 225 
 
 that had led to it — as if observers of the wretched millions 
 in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that 
 should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevi- 
 tably coming, years before, and had not in plain words re- 
 corded . what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with 
 the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the restoration of 
 a state of things that had utterly exhausted itself, and 
 worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to 
 be endured without some remonstrance by any sane man 
 who knew the truth. And it was such vapouring all about 
 his ears, like a troublesome confusion of blood in his own 
 head, added to a latent uneasiness in his mind, which had 
 already made Charles Darnay restless, and which still kept 
 him so. 
 
 Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King's Bench 
 Bar, far on his way to state promotion, and therefore, loud 
 on the theme : broaching to Monseigneur, his devices for 
 blowing the people up and exterminating them from the 
 face of the earth, and doing without them : and for accom- 
 plishing many similar objects akin in their nature to the 
 abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the 
 race. Him, Darnay heard with a particular feeling of ob- 
 jection; and Darnay stood divided between going away that 
 he might hear no more, and remaining to interpose his word, 
 when the thing that was to be, went on to shape itself out. 
 
 The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled 
 and unopened letter before him, asked if he had yet dis- 
 covered any traces of the person to whom it was addressed? 
 The House laid the letter down so close to Darnay that he 
 saw the direction — the more quickly because it was his own 
 right name. The address, turned into English, ran: 
 
 "Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis 
 St. Evremonde, of France. Confided to the cares of 
 Messrs. Tellson and Co., Bankers, London, England." 
 
 On the marriage morning, Doctor Manette had made it 
 his one urgent and express request to Charles Darnay, that 
 the secret of this name should be — unless he, the Doctor, 
 dissolved the obligation — kept inviolate between them. 
 Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own wife had no 
 suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry could have none. 
 
 "No," said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; "I have 
 referred it, I think, to everybody now here, and no one can 
 tell me where this gentleman is to be found." 
 
226 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing 
 the Bank, there was a general set of the current of talkers 
 past Mr. Lorry's desk. He held the letter out inquir- 
 ingly; and Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of this 
 plotting and indignant refugee; and Monseigneur looked 
 at it in the person of that plotting and indignant refugee; 
 and This, That, and The Other, all had something dis- 
 paraging to say, in French or in English, concerning the 
 Marquis who was not to be found. 
 
 "Nephew, I believe — but in any case degenerate suc- 
 cessor — of the polished Marquis who was murdered," said 
 one. "Happy to say, I never knew him." 
 
 "A craven who abandoned his post," said another — this 
 Monseigneur had been got out of Paris, legs uppermost 
 and half suffocated, in a load of hay — " some years ago." 
 
 "Infected with the new doctrines," said a third, eyeing 
 the direction through his glass in passing; "set himself in 
 opposition to the last Marquis, abandoned the estates when 
 he inherited them, and left them to the ruffian herd. They 
 will recompense him now, I hope, as he deserves." 
 
 "Hey?" cried the blatant Stryver. "Did he though? 
 Is that the sort of fellow? Let us look at his infamous 
 name. D — n the fellow ! " 
 
 Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched 
 Mr. Stryver on the shoulder, and said : 
 
 " I know the fellow. " 
 
 " Do you, by Jupiter? " said Stryver. " I am sorry for it." 
 
 " Why? " 
 
 "Why, Mr. Darnay? D'ye hear what he did? Don't 
 ask, why, in these times." 
 
 "But I do ask why?" 
 
 " Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. 
 I am sorry to hear you putting any such extraordinary 
 questions. Here is a fellow, who, infected by the most 
 pestilent and blasphemous code of devilry that ever was 
 known, abandoned his property to the vilest scum of the 
 earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask me 
 why I am sorry that a man who instructs youth knows him? 
 Well, but I'll answer you. I am sorry because I believe 
 there is contamination in such a scoundrel. That's why." 
 
 Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty 
 checked himself, and said : " You may not understand the 
 gentleman." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 227 
 
 " I understand how to put you in a corner, Mr. Darnay, " 
 said Bully Stryver, "and I'll do it. If this fellow is a 
 gentleman, I don't understand him. You may tell him so, 
 with my compliments. You may also tell him, from me, 
 that after abandoning his worldy goods and position to this 
 butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of them. 
 But, no, gentlemen," said Stryver, looking all round, and 
 snapping his fingers, " I know something of human nature, 
 and I tell you that you'll never find a fellow like this fel- 
 low, trusting himself to the mercies of such precious pro- 
 teges. No, gentlemen; he'll always show 'em a clean pair 
 of heels very early in the scuffle, and sneak away." 
 
 With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. 
 Stryver shouldered himself into Fleet-street, amidst the 
 general approbation of his hearers. Mr. Lorry and Charles 
 Darnay were left alone at the desk, in the general depart- 
 ure from the Bank. 
 
 " Will you take charge of the letter? " said Mr. Lorry. 
 "You know where to deliver it? " 
 
 "I do." 
 
 " Will you undertake to explain, that we suppose it to 
 have been addressed here, on the chance of our knowing 
 where to forward it, and that it has been here some time? " 
 
 " I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here? " 
 
 "From here, at eight." 
 
 "I will come back, to see you off." 
 
 Very ill at ease with himself, and with Stryver and most 
 other men, Darnay made the best of his way into the quiet 
 of the Temple, opened the letter, and read it. These were 
 its contents : 
 
 " Prison of the Abbaye, Paris. 
 " June 21, 1792. 
 "Monsieur heretofore the Marquis. 
 
 " After having long been in danger of my life at the 
 hands of the village, I have been seized, with great vio- 
 lence and indignity, and brought a long journey on foot to 
 Paris. On the road I have suffered a great deal. Nor is 
 that all; my house has been destroyed — razed to the 
 ground. 
 
 " The crime for which I am imprisoned, Monsieur here- 
 tofore the Marquis, and for which I shall be summoned 
 before the tribunal, and shall lose my life (without your so 
 
228 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 generous help), is, they tell me, treason against the maj- 
 esty of the people, in that I have acted against them for 
 an emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have acted 
 for them, and not against, according to your commands. 
 It is in vain I represent that, before the sequestration of 
 emigrant property, I had remitted the imposts they had 
 ceased to pay; that I had collected no rent; that I had 
 had recourse to no process. The only response is, that I 
 have acted for an emigrant, and where is that emigrant? 
 
 "Ah! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, 
 where is that emigrant? I cry in my sleep where is he? 
 I demand of Heaven, will he not come to deliver me? No 
 answer. Ah Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I send my 
 desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach 
 your ears through the great bank of Tilson known at Paris ! 
 
 "Tor the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the 
 honour of your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur 
 heretofore the Marquis, to succour and release me. My 
 fault is, that I have been true to you. Oh Monsieur here- 
 tofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true to me ! 
 
 " From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour 
 tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur 
 heretofore the Marquis, the assurance of my dolorous and 
 unhappy service. " Your afflicted, 
 
 "Gabelle." 
 
 The latent uneasiness in Darnay's mind was roused to 
 vigorous life by this letter. The peril of an old servant 
 and a good one, whose only crime was fidelity to himself 
 and his family, stared him so reproachfully in the face, 
 that, as he walked to and fro in the Temple considering 
 what to do, he almost hid his face from the passers-by. 
 
 He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed which 
 had culminated the bad deeds and bad reputation of the 
 old family house, in his resentful suspicions of his uncle, 
 and in the aversion with which his conscience regarded the 
 crumbling fabric that he was supposed to uphold, he had 
 acted imperfectly. He knew very well, that in his love 
 for Lucie, his renunciation of his social place, though by 
 no means new to his own mind, had been hurried and in- 
 complete. He knew that he ought to have systematically 
 worked it out and supervised it, and that he had meant to 
 do it, and that it had never been done. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 229 
 
 The happiness of his own chosen' English home, the ne- 
 cessity of being always actively employed, the swift 
 changes and troubles of the time which had followed on 
 one another so fast, that the events of this week annihil- 
 ated the immature plans of last week, and the events of 
 the week following made all new again; he knew very 
 well, that to the force of these circumstances he had 
 yielded : — not without disquiet, but still without continu- 
 ous and accumulating resistance. That he had watched 
 the times for a time of action, and that they had shifted 
 and struggled until the time had gone by, and the nobility 
 were trooping from France by every highway and byway, 
 and their property was in course of confiscation and de- 
 struction, and their very names were blotting out, was as 
 well known to himself as it could be to any new authority 
 in France that might impeach him for it. 
 
 But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no 
 man; he was so far from having harshly exacted payment 
 of his dues, that he had relinquished them of his own will, 
 thrown himself on a world with no favour in it, won his 
 own private place there, and earned his own bread. Mon- 
 sieur Gabelle had held the impoverished and involved 
 estate on writter instructions, to spare the people, to give 
 them what little there was to give — such fuel as the heavy 
 creditors would let them have in the winter, and such prod- 
 uce as could be saved from the same grip in the summer — 
 and no doubt he had put the fact in plea and proof, for his 
 own safety, so that it could not but appear now." 
 
 This favoured the desperate resolution Charles Darnay 
 had begun to make, that he would go to Paris. 
 
 Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and 
 streams had driven him within the influence of the Load- 
 stone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and he must 
 go. Everything that arose before his mind drifted him on, 
 faster and faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible 
 attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that bad aims 
 were being worked out in his own unhappy land by bad in- 
 struments, and that he who could not fail to know that he 
 was better than they, was not there, trying to do some- 
 thing to stay bloodshed, and assert the claims of mercy 
 and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled, and half 
 reproaching him, he had been brought to the pointed com- 
 parison of himself with the brave old gentleman in whom 
 
230 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 duty was so strong; upon that comparison (injurious to 
 himself) had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur, 
 Which had stung him bitterly, and those of Stryver, which 
 above all were coarse and galling, for old reasons. Upon 
 those, had followed Gabelle's letter: the appeal of an in- 
 nocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his justice, honour, 
 and good name. 
 
 His resolution was made. He must go to Paris. 
 
 Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he 
 must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he 
 saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had 
 done what he had done, even although he had left it in- 
 complete, presented it before him in an aspect that would 
 be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting 
 himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing 
 good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many 
 good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in 
 the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revo- 
 lution that was running so fearfully wild. 
 
 As he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he 
 considered that neither Lucie nor her father must know of 
 it Until he was gone. Lucie should be spared the pain of 
 separation; and her father, always reluctant to turn his 
 thoughts towards the dangerous ground of old, should come 
 to the knowledge of the step, as a step taken, and not in 
 the balance of suspense and doubt. .How much of the in- 
 completeness of his situation was referable to her father, 
 through the painful anxiety to avoid reviving old associa- 
 tions of France in his mind, he did not discuss with him- 
 self. But, that circumstance too, had had its influence in 
 his course. 
 
 He walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until it 
 was time to return to Tellson's and take leave of Mr. Lorry. 
 As soon as he arrived in Paris he would present himself to 
 this old friend, but he must say nothing of his intention now. 
 
 A carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank door, 
 and Jerry was booted and equipped. 
 
 "I have delivered that letter," said Charles Darnay to 
 Mr. Lorry. " I would not consent to your being charged 
 with any written answer, but perhaps you will take a 
 verbal one?" 
 
 "That I will, and readily," said Mr. Lorry, "if it is not 
 dangerous. " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 231 
 
 "Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye." 
 
 "What is his name?" said Mr. Lorry, with his open 
 pocket-book in his hand. 
 
 "Gabelle." 
 
 " Gabelle. And what is the message to the unfortunate 
 Gabelle in prison? " 
 
 " Simply, 'that he has received the letter, and will 
 come.' H 
 
 "Any time mentioned?" 
 
 "He will start upon his journey to-morrow night." 
 
 "Any person mentioned? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 He helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of 
 coats and cloaks, and went out with him from the warm 
 atmosphere of the old Bank, into the misty air of Fleet- 
 street. "My love to Lucie, and to little Lucie," said Mr. 
 Lorry at parting, " and take precious care of them till I 
 come back." Charles Darnay shook his head and doubt- 
 fully smiled, as the carriage rolled away. 
 
 That night — it was the fourteenth of August — he sat up 
 late, and wrote two fervent letters; one was to Lucie, ex- 
 plaining the strong obligation he was under to go to Paris, 
 and showing her, at length, the reasons that he had, for 
 feeling confident that he could become involved in no per- 
 sonal danger there; the other was to the Doctor, confiding 
 Lucie and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the 
 same topics with the strongest assurances. To both, he 
 wrote that he would despatch letters in proof of his safety, 
 immediately after his arrival. 
 
 It was a hard day, that day of being among them, with 
 the first reservation of their joint lives on his mind. It 
 was a hard matter to preserve the innocent deceit of which 
 they were profoundly unsuspicious. But, an affectionate 
 glance at his wife, so happy and busy, made him resolute 
 not to tell her what impended (he had been half moved to 
 do it, so strange it was to him to act in anything without 
 her quiet aid), and the day passed quickly. Early in the 
 evening he embraced her, and her scarcely less dear name- 
 sake, pretending that he would return by-and-bye (an im- 
 aginary engagement took him out, and he had secreted a 
 valise of clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy 
 mist of the heavy streets, with a heavier heart. 
 
 The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now, 
 
A TAlE of two cities. 
 
 and all the tides and winds were setting straight and 
 strong towards it. He left his two letters with a trusty- 
 porter, to be delivered half an hour before midnight, and 
 no sooner; took horse for Dover; and began his journey. 
 " For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the 
 honour of your noble name ! " was the poor prisoner's cry 
 with which he strengthened his sinking heart, as he left 
 all that was dear on earth behind him, and floated away 
 for the Loadstone Rock. 
 
 THE END OF THE SECOND BOOK. 
 
BOOK THE THIRD. -THE TRACK OF A 
 STORM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN SECRET. 
 
 The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared 
 towards Paris from England in the autnmn of the year, one 
 thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough 
 of bad roads, had equipages, and bad horses, he would 
 have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and un- 
 fortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all 
 his glory; but, the changed times were fraught with other 
 obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing- 
 house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national 
 muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped 
 all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected 
 their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, 
 turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and 
 laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy 
 deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, 
 of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death. 
 
 A very few French leagues of his journey were accom- 
 plished, when Charles Darnay began to perceive that for 
 him along these country roads there was no hope of return 
 until he should have been declared a good citizen at Paris. 
 Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey's 
 end. Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common 
 barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it 
 to be another iron door in the series that was barred be- 
 tween him and England. The universal watchfulness so 
 encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net, or 
 were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could 
 not have felt his freedom more completely gone. 
 17 
 
234 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 • This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the 
 highway twenty times in a stage, but retarded his progress 
 twenty times in a day, by riding after him and taking him 
 back, riding before him and stopping him by anticipation, 
 riding with him and keeping him in charge. He had been 
 days upon his journey in France alone, when he went to 
 bed tired out, in a little town on the high road, still a long 
 way from Paris. 
 
 Nothing but the production of the afflicted Gabelle's let- 
 ter from his prison of the Abbaye would have got him on 
 so far. His difficulty at the guard-house in this small 
 place had been such, that he felt his journey to have come 
 to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little surprised as a 
 man could be, to find himself awakened at the small inn to 
 which he had been remitted until morning, in the middle 
 of the night. 
 
 Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed 
 patriots in rough red caps and with pipes in their mouths, 
 who sat down on the bed. 
 
 "Emigrant," said the functionary, "1 am going to send 
 you on to Paris, under an escort." 
 
 "Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, 
 though I could dispense with the escort." 
 
 " Silence ! " growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet 
 with the butt-end of his musket. " Peace, aristocrat ! " 
 
 " It is as the good patriot says," observed the timid func- 
 tionary. " You are an aristocrat, and must have an escort 
 — and must pay for it." 
 
 " I have no choice," said Charles Darnay. 
 
 " Choice ! Listen to him ! " cried the same scowling red- 
 cap. " As if it was not a favour to be protected from the 
 lamp-iron ! " 
 
 "It is always as the good patriot says," observed the 
 functionary. "Rise and dress yourself, emigrant." 
 
 Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard- 
 house, where other patriots in rough red caps were smok- 
 ing, drinking, and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid 
 a heavy price for his escort, and hence he started with it 
 on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning. 
 
 The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and 
 tricoloured cockades, armed with national muskets and 
 sabres, who rode one on either side of him. 
 
 The escorted governed his own horse, but a. loose line 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 235 
 
 was attached to his bridle, the end of which one of the pa- 
 triots kept girded round his wrist. In this state they set 
 forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces : clattering 
 at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement, 
 and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they tra- 
 versed without change, except of horses and pace, all 
 the mire-deep leagues that lay between them and the 
 capital. 
 
 They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after 
 daybreak, and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort 
 were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted straw round 
 their bare legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to 
 keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of 
 being so attended, and apart from such considerations of 
 present danger as arose from one of the patriots being 
 chronically drunk, and carrying his musket very recklessly, 
 Charles Darnay did not allow the restraint that was laid 
 upon him to awaken any serious fears in his breast; for, 
 he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to 
 the merits of an individual case that was not yet stated, 
 and of representations, confirmable by the prisoner in the 
 Abbaye, that were not yet made. 
 
 But when they came to the town of Beauvais — which 
 they did at eventide, when the streets were filled with 
 people — he could not conceal from himself that the aspect 
 of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd gathered 
 to see him dismount at the posting-yard, and many voices 
 called out loudly, " Down with the emigrant ! " 
 
 He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his 
 saddle, and, resuming it as his safest place, said : 
 
 "Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in 
 France, of my own will? " 
 
 " You are a cursed emigrant, " cried a farrier, making at 
 him in a furious manner through the press, hammer in 
 hand ; " and you are a cursed aristocrat ! " 
 
 The postmaster interposed himself between this man and 
 the rider's bridle (at which he was evidently making), and 
 soothingly said, "Let him be; let him be! He will be 
 judged at Paris." 
 
 " Judged ! " repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. 
 "Ay! and condemned as a traitor." At this the crowd 
 roared approval. 
 
 Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse's 
 
236 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 head to the yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in 
 his saddle looking on, with the line round his wrist), Dar- 
 nay said, as soon as he could make his voice heard : 
 
 "Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. 
 I am not a traitor." 
 
 " He lies ! " cried the smith. " He is a traitor since the 
 decree. His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed life 
 is not his own ! " 
 
 At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of 
 the crowd, which another instant would have brought upon 
 him, the postmaster turned his horse into the yard, the 
 escort rode in close upon his horse's flanks, and the post- 
 master shut and barred the crazy double gates. The far- 
 rier struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the 
 crowd groaned; but, no more was done. 
 
 " What is this decree that the smith spoke of? " Darnay 
 asked the postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood 
 beside him in the yard. 
 
 "Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants." 
 
 " When passed? " 
 
 "On the fourteenth." 
 
 "The day I left England ! " 
 
 " Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there 
 will be others — if there are not already — banishing all 
 emigrants, and condemning all to death who return. That 
 is what he meant when he said your life was not your 
 own." 
 
 " But there are no such decrees yet? " 
 
 " What do I know ! " said the postmaster, shrugging his 
 shoulders; "there may be, or there will be. It is all the 
 same. What would you have? " 
 
 They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of 
 the night, and then rode forward again when all the town 
 was asleep. Among the many wild changes observable on 
 familiar things which made this wild ride unreal, not the 
 least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and 
 lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a 
 cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all 
 glittering with lights, and would find the people, in a 
 ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling hand in 
 hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up 
 together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there 
 was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of it, 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 237 
 
 and they passed on once more into solitude and loneliness : 
 jingling through the untimely cold and wet, among impov- 
 erished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth that 
 year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, 
 and by the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp 
 reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the watch 
 on all the roads. 
 
 Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. 
 The barrier was closed and strongly guarded when they 
 rode up to it. 
 
 " Where are the papers of this prisoner? " demanded a 
 resolute-looking man in authority, who was summoned out 
 by the guard. 
 
 Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Dar- 
 nay requested the speaker to take notice that he was a free 
 traveller and French citizen, in charge of an escort which 
 the disturbed state of the country had imposed upon him, 
 and which he had paid for. 
 
 "Where," repeated the same personage, without taking 
 any heed of him whatever, " are the papers of this pris- 
 oner? " 
 
 The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced 
 them. Casting his eyes over Gabelle's letter, the same 
 personage in authority showed some disorder and surprise, 
 and looked at Darnay with a close attention. 
 
 He left escort and escorted without saying a word, how- 
 ever, and went into the guard-room; meanwhile, they sat 
 upon their horses outside the gate. Looking about him 
 while in this state of suspense, Charles Darnay observed 
 that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and 
 patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that 
 while ingress into the city for peasants' carts bringing in 
 supplies, and for similar traffic and traffickers, was easy 
 enough, egress, even for the homeliest people, was very 
 difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not to 
 mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting 
 to issue forth; but, the previous identification was so strict, 
 that they filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some 
 of these people knew their turn for examination to be so 
 far off, that they lay down on the ground to sleep or 
 smoke, while others talked together, or loitered about. 
 The red cap and tricolour cockade were universal, both 
 among men and women. 
 
23$ A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking 
 note of these things, Darnay found himself confronted by 
 the same man in authority, who directed the guard to open 
 the barrier. Then he delivered to the escort, drunk and 
 sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him to dis- 
 mount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired 
 horse, turned and rode away without entering the city. 
 
 He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smell- 
 ing of common wine and tobacco, where certain soldiers 
 and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and sober, and in 
 various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunk- 
 enness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The 
 light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil- 
 lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in 
 a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were 
 lying open on a desk, and an officer of a coarse, dark 
 aspect, presided over these. 
 
 "Citizen Defarge,"' said he to Darnay's conductor, as he 
 took a slip of paper to write on. " Is this the emigrant 
 Evrernonde? " 
 
 "This is the man." 
 
 " Your age, Evremonde? " 
 
 "Thirty-seven." 
 
 " Married, Evremonde? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Where married? " 
 
 "In England." 
 
 "Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evremonde? " 
 
 "In England." 
 
 K Without doubt. You are consigned, Evremonde, to the 
 prison of La Force." 
 
 " Just Heaven ! " exclaimed Darnay. " Under what law, 
 and for what offence? " 
 
 The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 f 'We have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, 
 since you were here." He said it with a hard smile, and 
 went on writing. 
 
 "I entreat you to observe that I have come here volun- 
 tarily, in response to that written appeal of a fellow-coun- 
 tryman which lies before you. I demand no more than 
 the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that my 
 right?" 
 
A TALE m TWO CITIES. 239 
 
 "Emigrants have no rights, Evremonde," was the stolid 
 reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over 
 to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it 
 to Defarge, with the words "In secret." 
 
 Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he 
 must accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard 
 of two armed patriots attended them. 
 
 "Is it you," said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went 
 down the guard-house steps and turned into Paris, " who 
 married the daughter of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner 
 in the Bastille that is no more? " 
 
 " Yes," replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise. 
 
 " My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the 
 Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me." 
 
 " My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? 
 Yes!" 
 
 The word " wife " seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder 
 to Defarge, to say with sudden impatience, " In the name 
 of that sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine, 
 why did you come to France? " 
 
 " You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not 
 believe it is the truth? " 
 
 "A bad truth for you," said Defarge, speaking with 
 knitted brows, and looking straight before him. 
 
 " Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, 
 so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely 
 lost. Will you render me a little help? " 
 
 "None.". Defarge spoke, always looking straight before 
 him. 
 
 "Will you answer me a single question? " 
 
 "Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what 
 it is." 
 
 " In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I 
 have some free communication with the world outside? " 
 
 "You will see." 
 
 " I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without 
 any means of presenting my case? " 
 
 "You will see. But, what then? Other people have 
 been similarly buried in worse prisons, before now." 
 
 "But never by me, Citizen Defarge." 
 
 Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked 
 on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into 
 this silence, the fainter hope there was— or so Darnay 
 
240 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 thought — of his softening in any slight degree. He, there- 
 fore, made haste to say : 
 
 " It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citi- 
 zen, even better than I, of how much importance), that I 
 should be able to communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson's 
 Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris, the sim- 
 ple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into 
 the prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done 
 for me? " 
 
 "I will do," Defarge doggedly rejoined, "nothing for 
 you. My duty is to my country and the People. I am 
 the sworn servant of both, against you. I will do nothing 
 for you." 
 
 Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, 
 and his pride was touched besides. As they walked on in 
 silence, he could not but see how used the people were to 
 the spectacle of prisoners passing along the streets. The 
 very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned 
 their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an 
 aristocrat; otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be 
 going to prison, was no more remarkable than that a la- 
 bourer in working clothes should be going to work. In 
 one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they 
 passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was address- 
 ing an excited audience on the crimes against the people, 
 of the king and the royal family. The few words that he 
 caught from this man's lips, first made it known to Charles 
 Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the foreign 
 ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road (ex- 
 cept at Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The 
 escort and the universal watchfulness had completely iso- 
 lated him. 
 
 That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those 
 which had developed themselves when he left England, 
 he of course knew now. That perils had thickened about 
 him fast, and might thicken faster and faster yet, he of 
 course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that 
 he might not have made this journey, if he could have 
 foreseen the events of a few days. And yet his misgivings 
 were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later 
 time, they would appear. Troubled as the future was, it 
 was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was 
 ignorant hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. - V±k 
 
 long, which, within a few rounds of the clock, was to set 
 a great mark of blood upon the blessed garnering time of 
 harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had been 
 a hundred thousand years away. The " sharp female 
 newly-born, and called La Guillotine," was hardly known 
 to him, or to the generality of people, by name. The 
 frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were probably 
 unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How 
 could they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a 
 gentle mind? 
 
 Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in 
 cruel separation from his wife and child, he foreshadowed 
 the likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond this, he 
 dreaded uothing distinctly. With this on his mind, which 
 was enough to carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he 
 arrived at the prison of La Force. 
 
 A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to 
 whom Defarge presented "The Emigrant Evremonde." 
 
 " What the Devil ! How many more of them ! " ex- 
 claimed the man with the bloated face. 
 
 Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, 
 and withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots. 
 
 "What the Devil, I say again!" exclaimed the gaoler, 
 left with his wife. " How many more ! " 
 
 The gaoler's wife, being provided with no answer to the 
 question, merely replied, "One must have patience, my 
 dear ! " Three turnkeys who entered responsive to a bell 
 she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added, " For the 
 love of Liberty; " which sounded in that place like an in- 
 appropriate conclusion. 
 
 The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and 
 filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Ex- 
 traordinary how soon the noisome flavour of imprisoned 
 sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that are ill cared 
 for! 
 
 "In secret, 'joo," grumbled the gaoler, looking at the 
 written paper. " As if I was not already full to bursting ! " 
 
 He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and 
 Charles Darnay awaited his further pleasure for half an 
 hour : sometimes, pacing to and fro in the strong arched 
 room: sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in either case 
 detained to be imprinted on the memory of the chief and 
 his subordinates. 
 18 
 
242 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " Come ! " said the chief, at length taking up his keys, 
 "come with me, emigrant." 
 
 Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge ac- 
 companied him by corridor and staircase, many doors clang- 
 ing 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 embroidering; the men 
 were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or lin- 
 gering up and down the room. 
 
 In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful 
 crime and disgrace, the new comer recoiled from this com- 
 pany. But the crowning unreality of his long unreal ride, 
 was, their all at once rising to receive him, with every re- 
 finement 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 com- 
 pany of the dead. 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 
 changed by the death they had died in coming there. 
 
 It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his 
 side, and the other gaolers moving about, who would have 
 been well enough as to appearance in the ordinary exercise 
 of their functions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted 
 with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters who were 
 there-^with the apparitions of the coquette, the young 
 beauty, and the mature woman delicately bred — -that the 
 inversion of all experience 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! 
 
 "In the name of the assembled companions in misfor- 
 tune," said a gentleman of courtly appearance and address, 
 coming forward, "I have the honour of giving you welcome 
 to La Force, and of condoling with you on the calamity 
 that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 243 
 
 happily ! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it is 
 not so here, to ask your name and condition? " 
 
 Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required 
 information, in words as suitable as he could find. 
 
 "But I hope," said the gentleman, following the chief 
 gaoler with his eyes, who moved across the room, " that you 
 are not in secret? " 
 
 " I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I 
 have heard them say so." 
 
 " Ah, what a pity ! We so much regret it ! But take 
 courage; several members of our society have been in se- 
 cret, at first, and it has lasted but a short time." Then he 
 added, raising his voice, " I grieve to inform the society — 
 in secret." 
 
 There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay 
 crossed the room to a grated door where the gaoler awaited 
 him, and many voices — among which, the soft and compas- 
 sionate voices of women were conspicuous — gave him good 
 wishes and encouragement. He turned at the grated door, 
 to render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaol- 
 er's hand; and the apparitions vanished from his sight for 
 ever. 
 
 The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. 
 When they had ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half 
 an hour already counted them), the gaoler opened a low 
 black door, and they passed into a solitary cell. It struck 
 cold and damp, but was not dark. 
 
 "Yours," said the gaoler. 
 
 " Why am I confined alone? n 
 
 "How do I know!" 
 
 "I can buy pen, ink, and paper? " 
 
 " Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can 
 ask then. At present, you may buy your food, and nothing 
 moue." 
 
 There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mat- 
 tress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of these 
 objects, and of the four walls, before going out, a wander- 
 ing fancy wandered through the mind of the prisoner lean- 
 ing against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler was 
 so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to 
 look like a man who had been drowned and filled with wa- 
 ter. When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same 
 wandering way, "Now am I left, as if I were dead." 
 
244 A TALE OF TWO CITIES 
 
 Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned 
 from it with a sick feeling, and thought, "And here in 
 these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body 
 after death." 
 
 " Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a 
 half, five paces by four and a half." The prisoner walked 
 to and fro in his cell, counting its .measurement, and the 
 roar of the city arose like muffled drums with a wild swell 
 of voices added to them. " He made shoes, he made shoes, 
 he made shoes." The prisoner counted the measurement 
 again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from 
 that latter repetition. "The ghosts that vanished when 
 the wicket closed. ' There was one among them, the ap- 
 pearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in 
 the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining 
 upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us 
 ride on again, for God's sake, through the illuminated vil- 
 lages with the people all awake ! * * * * He made shoes, 
 he made shoes, he made shoes. • * * * * Five paces by 
 four and a half." "With such scraps tossing and rolling up- 
 ward from the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked 
 faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and 
 the roar of the city changed to this extent — that it still 
 rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices 
 that he knew, in the swell that rose above them. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GRINDSTONE. 
 
 Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quar- 
 ter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house, approached 
 by a courtyard and shut off from the street by a high wall 
 and a strong gate. The house belonged to a great noble- 
 man who had lived in it until he made a flight from the 
 troubles, in his own cook's dress, and got across the borders. 
 A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still 
 in his metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, 
 the preparation of whose chocolate for whose lips had once 
 occupied three strong men besides the cook in question. 
 
 Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 245 
 
 themselves from the sin of having drawn his high wages, 
 by being more than ready and willing to cut his throat on 
 the altar of the dawning Republic one and indivisible of 
 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur's 
 house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated. 
 For, all things moved so fast, and decree followed decree 
 with that fierce precipitation, that now upon the third 
 night of the autumn month of September, patriot emis- 
 saries of the law were in possession of Monseigneur's house, 
 and had marked it with the tricolour, and were drinking 
 brandy in its state apartments. 
 
 A place of business in London like Tellson's place of 
 business in Paris, would soon have driven the House out of 
 its mind and into the Gazette. For, what would staid 
 British responsibility and respectability have said to orange- 
 trees in boxes in a Bank courtyard, and even to a Cupid 
 over the counter? Yet such things were. Tellson's had 
 whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the 
 ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) 
 at money from morning to night. Bankruptcy must inevit- 
 ably have come of this young Pagan, in Lombard- street, 
 London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the 
 immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, 
 and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on 
 the slightest provocation. Yet, a French Tellson's could 
 get on with these things exceedingly well, and, as long as 
 the times held together, no man had taken fright at them, 
 and drawn out his money. 
 
 What money would be drawn out of Tellson's henceforth, 
 and what would lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate 
 and jewels would tarnish in Tellson's hiding-places, while 
 the depositors rusted in prisons, and when they should 
 have violently perished; how many accounts with Tellson's 
 never to be balanced in this world, must be carried over 
 into the next; no man could have said, that night, any 
 more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could, though he thought heav- 
 ily of these questions. He sat by a newly-lighted wood 
 fire (the blighted and unfruitful year was prematurely 
 cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a 
 deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any 
 object in the room distortedly reflect— a shade of horror. 
 
 He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the 
 House of which he had grown to be a part, like strong 
 
246 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 root-ivy. It chanced that they derived a kind of security 
 from the patriotic occupation of the main building, but the 
 true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about that. 
 All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he 
 did his duty. On the opposite side of the courtyard, under 
 a colonnade, was extensive standing for carriages — where, 
 indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood. Against 
 two of the pillars were fastened two great flaring flam- 
 beaux, and in the light of these, standing out in the opeo 
 air, was a large grindstone : a roughly mounted thing which 
 appeared to have hurriedly been brought there from some 
 neighbouring smithy, or other workshop. Rising and look- 
 ing out of window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry 
 shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire. He had 
 opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind 
 outside it, and he had closed both again, and he shivered 
 through his frame. 
 
 From the streets beyond the high wall and a strong gate, 
 there came the usual night hum of the city, with now and 
 then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if 
 some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going up 
 to Heaven. 
 
 "Thank God," said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, 
 "that no one near and dear to me is in this dreadful 
 town to-night. May He have mercy on all who are in 
 danger ! " 
 
 Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and 
 he thought, " They have come back ! " and sat listening. 
 But, there was no loud irruption into the courtyard, as he 
 had expected, and he heard the gate clash again, and all 
 was quiet. 
 
 The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired 
 that vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great 
 change would naturally awaken^ with such feelings roused. 
 It was well guarded, and he got up to go among the trusty 
 people who were watching it, when his door suddenly 
 opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell 
 back in amazement. 
 
 Lucie and her father ! Lucie with her arms stretched 
 out to him, and with that old look of earnestness so con- 
 centrated and intensified, that it seemed as though it had 
 been stamped upon her face expressly to give force and 
 power to it in this one passage of her life. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 247 
 
 " What is this? " cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused. 
 " What is the matter? Lucie ! Manette ! What has hap- 
 pened? What has brought you here? What is it? " 
 
 With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wild- 
 ness, she panted out in his arms, imploringly, " my dear 
 friend ! My husband ! " 
 
 " Your husband, Lucie? " 
 
 "Charles." 
 
 " What of Charles? " 
 
 "Here." 
 
 "Here, in Paris?" 
 
 " Has been here some days — three or four — I don't know 
 how many — I can't collect my thoughts. An errand of 
 generosity brought him here unknown to us; he was stopped 
 at the barrier, and sent to prison." 
 
 The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the 
 same moment, the bell of the great gate rang again, and a 
 loud noise of feet and voices came pouring into the court- 
 yard. 
 
 " What is that noise? " said the Doctor, turning towards 
 the window. 
 
 "Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry. "Don't look out! 
 Manette, for your life, don't touch the blind! " 
 
 The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of 
 the window, and said, Avith a cool, bold smile : 
 
 " My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I 
 have been a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in Paris 
 — in Paris? In France — who, knowing me to have been a 
 prisoner in the Bastille, would touch me, except to over- 
 whelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph. My 
 old pain has given me a power that has brought us through 
 the barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and 
 brought us here. I knew it would be so; I knew I could 
 help Charles out of all danger; I told Lucie so. — What is 
 that noise? " His hand was again upon the window. 
 
 "Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate. 
 " No, Lucie, my dear, nor you ! " He got his arm round 
 her, and held her. "Don't be so terrified, my love. I 
 solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm having hap- 
 pened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being 
 in this fatal place. What prison is he in? " 
 
 " La Force ! 
 
 "La Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave 
 
248 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 and serviceable in your life — and you were always both — 
 you will compose yourself now, to do exactly as I bid you; 
 for more depends upon it than you can think, or I can say. 
 There is no help for you in any action on your part to- 
 night; you cannot possibly stir out. I say this, because 
 what I must bid you to do for Charles's sake, is the hardest 
 thing to do of all. You must instantly be obedient, still, 
 and quiet. You must let me put you in a room at the 
 back here. You must leave your father and me alone for 
 two minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world 
 you must not delay." 
 
 " I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you 
 know I can do nothing else than this. I know you are true. " 
 
 The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, 
 and turned the key; then, came hurrying back to the Doc- 
 tor, and opened the window and partly opened the blind, 
 and put his hand upon the Doctor's arm, and looked out 
 with him into the courtyard. 
 
 Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not 
 enough in number, or near enough, to fill the courtyard : 
 not more than forty or fifty in all. The people in posses- 
 sion of the house had let them in at the gate, and they had 
 rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been 
 set up there for their purpose, as in a convenient and re- 
 tired spot. 
 
 But, such awful workers, and such awful work ! 
 
 The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it 
 madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair 
 flapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone brought 
 their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the 
 visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous dis- 
 guise. False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck 
 upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody 
 and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and 
 glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep. As 
 these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now 
 flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over 
 their necks, some women held wine to their mouths that 
 they might drink; and what with dropping blood, and 
 what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of 
 sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere 
 seemed gore and fire. The eye could not detect one creat- 
 ure in the group free from the smear of blood. Shoulder- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 249 
 
 ing one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were 
 men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their 
 limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain 
 upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of 
 women's lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing 
 those trifles through and through. Hatchets, knives, bay- 
 onets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red 
 with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists 
 of those who carried them, with strips of linen and frag- 
 ments of dress : ligatures various in kind, but all deep of 
 the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these weap- 
 ons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away 
 into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied 
 eyes; — eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have 
 given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed 
 gun. 
 
 All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drown- 
 ing man, or of any human creature at any very great pass, 
 could see a world if it were there. They drew back from 
 the window, and the Docter looked for explanation in his 
 friend's ashy face. 
 
 "They are," Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing 
 fearfully round at the locked room, " murdering the pris- 
 oners. If you are sure of what you say; if you really have 
 the power you think you have — as I believe you have — 
 make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La 
 Force. It may be too late, I don't know, but let it not be 
 a minute later ! " 
 
 Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded 
 out of the room, and was in the courtyard when Mr. Lorry 
 regained the blind. 
 
 His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the 
 impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the weapon? 
 aside like water, carried him in an instant to the heart of 
 the concourse at the stone. For a few moments there was 
 a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible 
 sound of his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw him, surrounded 
 by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long, all 
 linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried 
 out with cries of — " Live the Bastille prisoner ! Help for 
 the Bastille prisoner's kindred in La Force! Room for the 
 Bastille prisoner in front there ! Save the prisoner Evre- 
 monde at La Force ! " and a thousand answering shouts. 
 12 — 9 
 
250 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed 
 the window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told 
 her that her father was assisted by the people, and gone in 
 search of her husband. He found her child and Miss 
 Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be sur- 
 prised b\ their appearance until a long time afterwards, 
 when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night knew. 
 
 Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor 
 at his feet, clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had laid the 
 child down on his own bed, and her head had gradually 
 fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge. the long, 
 long night, with the moans of the poor wife ! And O the 
 long, long night, with no return of her father and no tid- 
 ings! 
 
 Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate 
 sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the grind- 
 stone whirled and spluttered. " What is it? " cried Lucie, 
 affrighted. "Hush! The soldiers' swords are sharpened 
 there," said Mr. Lorry. "The place is national property 
 now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love." 
 
 Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble 
 and fitful. Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and 
 he softly detached himself from the clasping hand, and 
 cautiously looked out again. A man, so besmeared that he 
 might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back to 
 consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pave- 
 ment by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him 
 with a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried 
 in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, 
 and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the 
 door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty 
 cushions. 
 
 The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry 
 looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard. 
 But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm 
 morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had neves 
 given, and would never take away. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 251 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SHADOW. 
 
 One of the first considerations which arose in the busi- 
 ness mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came round, 
 was this: — that he had no right to imperil Tellson's by 
 sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank 
 roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have 
 hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment's 
 demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and 
 as to that business charge he was a strict man of business. 
 
 At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought 
 of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with 
 its master in reference to the safest dwelling-place in the 
 distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration 
 that suggested liim, repudiated him; he lived in the most 
 violent Quarter, and . doubtless was influential there, and 
 deep in its dangerous workings. 
 
 Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every 
 minute's delay tending to compromise Tellson's, Mr. Lorry 
 advised with Lucie. She said that her father had spoken 
 of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near 
 the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to 
 this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with 
 Charles, and he were to be released, he could not hope to 
 leave the city, Mr. Lorry went out in quest of such a lodg- 
 ing, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by- 
 street where the closed blinds in all the other windows of 
 a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted 
 homes. 
 
 To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, 
 and Miss Pross : giving them what comfort he could, and 
 much more than he had himself. He left Jerry with them, 
 as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable 
 knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations. 
 A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon 
 them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with him. 
 
 It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the 
 Bank closed. He was again alone in his room of the 
 
252 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 previous night, considering "what to do next, when he heard 
 a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in 
 his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him, 
 addressed him by his name. 
 
 "Your servant," said Mr. Lorry. "Do you know me?" 
 He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, 
 from forty-five to fifty years of age. For answer he re- 
 peated, without any change of emphasis, the words : 
 "Do you know me? " 
 "I have seen you somewhere." 
 "Perhaps at my wine-shop? " 
 
 Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: "You 
 come from Doctor Manette? " 
 
 " Yes. I come from Doctor Manette." 
 " And what says he? What does he send me? " 
 Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of 
 paper. It bore the words in the Doctor's writing: 
 
 " Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. 
 I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note 
 from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife." 
 
 It was dated from La Force, within an hour. 
 
 " Will you accompany me," said Mr. Lorry, joyfully re- 
 lieved after reading this note aloud, " to where his wife re- 
 sides? " 
 
 "Yes," returned Defarge. 
 
 Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved 
 and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his 
 hat and they went down into the courtyard. There, they 
 found two women; one, knitting. 
 
 "Madame Defarge, surely!" said Mr. Lorry, who had 
 left her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen years 
 ago. 
 
 "It is she," observed her husband. 
 
 "Does Madame go with us?" inquired Mr. Lorry, see- 
 ing that she moved as they moved. 
 
 " Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and 
 know the persons. It is for their safety." 
 
 Beginning to be struck by Defarge 's manner, Mr. Lorry 
 looked dubiously at him, and led the way. Both the 
 women followed; the second woman being The Venge- 
 ance. 
 
 They passed through the intervening streets as quickly 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 253 
 
 as they might, ascended the staircase of the new domicile, 
 were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping, alone. 
 She was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr. Lorry 
 gave her of her husband, and clasped the hand that deliv- 
 ered his note — little thinking what it had been doing near 
 him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done 
 to him. 
 
 " Deakest, — Take courage. I am well, and your father 
 has influence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss 
 our child for me." 
 
 That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to 
 her who received it, that she turned from Defarge to his 
 wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It was a 
 passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand 
 made no response — dropped cold and heavy, and took to 
 its knitting again. 
 
 There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a 
 check. She stopped in the act of putting the note in her 
 bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked terrified 
 at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted eye- 
 brows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare. 
 
 "My dear," said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; 
 "there are frequent risings in the streets; and, although it 
 is not likely they will ever trouble you, Madame Defarge 
 wishes to see those whom she has the power to protect at 
 such times, to the end that she may know them — that she 
 may identify them. I believe," said Mr. Lorry, rather 
 halting in his reassuring words, as the stony manner of all 
 the three impressed itself upon him more and more, " I 
 state the case, Citizen Defarge? " 
 
 Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other 
 answer than a gruff sound of acquiescence. 
 
 "You had better, Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, doing all he 
 could to propitiate, by tone and manner, "have the dear 
 child here, and our good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, 
 is an English lady, and knows no French." 
 
 The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she 
 was more than a match for any foreigner, was not to be 
 shaken by distress and danger, appeared with folded arms, 
 and observed in English to The Vengeance, whom her eyes 
 first encountered, " Well, I am sure, Boldface ! I hope you 
 are pretty well ! " She also bestowed a British cough on 
 
254 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Madame Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed 
 of her. 
 
 "Is that his child? " said Madame Defarge, stopping in 
 her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting- 
 needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate. 
 
 "Yes, madame," answered Mr. Lorry; "this is our poor 
 prisoner's darling daughter, and only child." 
 
 The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party 
 seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that 
 her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, 
 and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Ma- 
 dame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall, threaten- 
 ing and dark, on both the mother and the child. 
 
 "It is enough, my husband," said Madame Defarge. "I 
 have seen them. We may go." 
 
 But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it 
 — not visible and presented, but indistinct and withheld — 
 to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her appealing hand 
 on Madame Defarge' s dress: 
 
 " You will be good to my poor husband. You will do 
 him no harm. You will help me to see him if you can? " 
 
 "Your husband is not my business here," returned Mad- 
 ame Defarge, looking down at her with perfect composure. 
 " It is the daughter of your father who is my business 
 here." 
 
 " For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For 
 my child's sake! She will put her hands together and 
 pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than 
 of these others." 
 
 Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked 
 at her husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting 
 his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a 
 sterner expression. 
 
 " What is it that your husband says in that little let- 
 ter? " asked Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. 
 "Influence; he says something touching influence? " 
 
 "That my father," said Lucie, hurriedly taking the pa- 
 per from her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her ques- 
 tioner and not on it, "has much influence around him." 
 
 " Surely it will release him ! " said Madame- Defarge. 
 "Let it do so." 
 
 "As a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most earnestly, 
 " I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any 
 
A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 255 
 
 power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but 
 to use it in his behalf. sister-woman, think of me. As 
 a wife and mother ! " 
 
 Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, 
 and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance : 
 
 " The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since 
 we were as little as this child, and much less, have not 
 been greatly considered? We have known their husbands 
 and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often 
 enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister- women 
 suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, naked- 
 ness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neg- 
 lect of all kinds? " 
 
 "We have seen nothing else," returned The Vengeance, 
 • "We have borne this a long time," said Madame De- 
 farge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. " Judge you ! 
 Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would 
 be much to us now? " 
 
 She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance 
 followed. Defarge went last, and closed the door. 
 
 "Courage, my dear Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, as he raised 
 her. " Courage, courage ! So far all goes well with us — 
 much, much better than it has of late gone with many poor 
 souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart." 
 
 " I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman 
 seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes." 
 
 "Tut, tut!" said Mr. Lorry; "what is this despondency 
 in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed ! No sub- 
 stance in it, Lucie." 
 
 But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was 
 dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it 
 troubled him greatly. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CALM IN STORM. 
 
 Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of 
 the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had hap- 
 pened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the 
 knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that 
 
256 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 not until long afterwards, when France and she were far 
 apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless pris- 
 oners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the 
 populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by 
 this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been 
 tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been 
 an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had 
 been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the 
 crowd and murdered. 
 
 To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunc- 
 tion of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the 
 crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the 
 prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a 
 self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners 
 were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly or- 
 dered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or 
 (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, pre- 
 sented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced 
 himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen 
 years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, 
 oue of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and iden- 
 tified him, and that this man was Defarge. 
 
 That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers 
 on the table, that his son-in-law was among the living pris- 
 oners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal — of whom 
 some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty 
 with murder and some clean, some sober and some not — for 
 his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings 
 lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the over- 
 thrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles 
 Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. 
 That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, 
 when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained 
 check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few 
 words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as Pres- 
 ident had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner 
 must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held 
 inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, 
 the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison 
 again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so strongly 
 pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that 
 his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, deliv- 
 ered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 257 
 
 gate had often drowned the proceedings, that he had ob- 
 tained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of 
 Blood until the danger was over. 
 
 The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food 
 and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy- 
 over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him 
 scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were 
 cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had 
 been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mis- 
 taken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being 
 besought to go to him and dress the wound, the Doctor had 
 passed out at the same gate, and had found him in the 
 arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the 
 bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as mons- 
 trous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped 
 the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest 
 solicitude — had made a litter for him and escorted him 
 carefully from the spot — had then caught up their weapons 
 and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the 
 Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned 
 away in the midst of it. 
 
 As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he 
 watched the face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, 
 a misgiving arose within him that such dread experiences 
 would revive the old danger. But, he had never seen his 
 friend in his present aspect : he had never at all known 
 him in his present character. For the first time the Doc- 
 tor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. 
 For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had 
 slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door 
 of his daughter's husband, and deliver him ; " It all tended 
 to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. 
 As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, 
 I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of her- 
 self to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!" Thus, 
 Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled 
 eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing 
 of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been 
 stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set go- 
 ing again with an energy which had lain dormant during 
 the cessation of its usefulness, he believed. 
 
 Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to con- 
 tend with, would have yielded before his persevering pur- 
 
258 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 pose. While lie kept himself in his place, as a physician, 
 whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and 
 free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his personal in- 
 fluence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician 
 of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could 
 now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined 
 alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners; 
 he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to 
 her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself 
 sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), 
 but she was not permitted to write to him : for, among the 
 many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest 
 of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made 
 friends or permanent connections abroad. 
 
 This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no 
 doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a 
 new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged 
 the pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but he ob- 
 served it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that 
 time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds 
 of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, 
 deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, 
 and he knew himself to be invested through that old trial 
 with forces to which they both looked for Charles's ulti- 
 mate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by 
 the change, that he took the lead and direction, and re- 
 quired them as the weak, to trust to him as the strong. 
 The preceding relative positions of himself and Lucie were 
 reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection 
 could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in 
 rendering some service to her who had rendered so much 
 to him. "All curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his 
 amiably shrewd way, "but all natural and right; so, take 
 the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn't be in 
 better hands." 
 
 But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased try- 
 ing, to get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get 
 him brought to trial, the public current of the time set toe 
 strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was 
 tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Eepublic of Liberty, 
 Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or 
 death against the world in arms; the black flag waved 
 night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 259 
 
 hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the ty- 
 rants 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 mud, under the bright sky of the South and 
 under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the 
 vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped 
 grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks 
 of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What 
 private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the 
 Year One of Liberty — the deluge rising from below, not 
 falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, 
 not opened ! 
 
 There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of re- 
 lenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and 
 nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and 
 the evening and morning were the first day, other count of 
 time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging 
 fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, 
 breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the execu- 
 tioner 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 grey. 
 
 And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction 
 which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it 
 flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, 
 and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all 
 over the land; 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 estab- 
 lished 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 foundations of the world — 
 the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. « 
 
 It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure 
 for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning 
 grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it 
 was the National Razor which shaved close : who kissed 
 La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed 
 
260 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the 
 human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were 
 worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and 
 it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was 
 denied. 
 
 It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it 
 most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, 
 like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together 
 again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the elo- 
 quent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful 
 and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty- 
 one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one 
 morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong 
 man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief function- 
 ary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than 
 his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of 
 God's own Temple every day. 
 
 Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, 
 the Doctor walked with a steady head: confident in his 
 power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that 
 he would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet the current 
 of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the 
 time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one 
 year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady 
 and confident. So much more wicked and distracted had 
 the Revolution grown in that December month, that the 
 rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the 
 violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in 
 lines and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the 
 Doctor walked among the terrors with a steady head. No 
 man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man 
 in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in 
 hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins 
 and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his 
 skill, the appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive 
 removed him from all other men. He was not suspected 
 or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed 
 been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a 
 Spirit moving among mortals. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 261 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE WOOD-SAWYER. 
 
 One year and three months. During all that time Lucie 
 was never sure, from hour to hour, but the Guillotine 
 would strike off her husband's head next day. Every day, 
 through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, 
 filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, 
 brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart 
 men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine 
 for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the 
 dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her 
 through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, 
 equality, fraternity, or death; — the last, much the easiest 
 to bestow, Guillotine ! 
 
 If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling 
 wheels of the time, had stunned the Doctor's daughter into 
 awaiting the result in idle despair, it would but have been 
 with her as it was with many. But, from the hour when 
 she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in 
 the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her du- 
 ties. She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all 
 the quietly loyal and good will always be. 
 
 As soon as they were established in their new residence, 
 and her father had entered on the routine of his avocations, 
 she arranged the little household as exactly as if her hus- 
 band had been there. Everything had its appointed place 
 and its appointed time. Little Lucie she taught, as regu- 
 larly, as if they had all been united in their English home. 
 The slight devices with which she cheated herself into the 
 show of a belief that they would soon be reunited — the lit- 
 tle preparations for his speedy return, the setting aside of 
 his chair and his books — these, and the solemn prayer at 
 night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many un- 
 happy souls in prison and the shadow of death — were al- 
 most the only outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind. 
 
 She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark 
 dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child 
 
262 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 wore, were as neat and as well attended to as the brighter 
 clothes of happy days. She lost her colour, and the old 
 and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, 
 thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. 
 Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, she would burst 
 into the grief she had repressed all day, and would say 
 that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He al- 
 ways resolutely answered: "Nothing can happen to him 
 without my knowledge, and I know that I can save him, 
 Lucie." 
 
 They had not made the round of their changed life many 
 weeks, when her father said to her, on coming home one 
 evening : 
 
 " My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to 
 which Charles can sometimes gain access at three in the 
 afternoon. When he can get to it — which depends on 
 many uncertainties and incidents — he might see you in the 
 street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can 
 show you. But you will not be able to see him, my poor 
 child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe for you to 
 make a sign of recognition." 
 
 " show me the place, my father, and I will go there 
 every day." 
 
 From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two 
 hours. As the clock struck two, she was there, and at 
 four she turned resignedly away. When it was not too wet 
 or inclement for her child to be with her, they went to- 
 gether; at other times she was alone; but, she never missed 
 a single day. 
 
 It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding 
 street. The hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for 
 burning, was the only house at that end; all else was wall. 
 On the third day of her being there, he noticed her. 
 
 "Good day, citizeness." 
 
 "Good day, citizen." 
 
 This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It 
 had been established voluntarily some time ago, among 
 the more thorough patriots; but, was now law for every- 
 body. 
 
 "Walking here again, citizeness?" 
 
 " You see me, citizen ! " 
 
 The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redund- 
 ancy of gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 263 
 
 glance at the prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his 
 ten fingers before his face to represent bars, peeped through 
 them jocosely. 
 
 "But it's not my business," said he. And went on saw- 
 ing his wood. 
 
 Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her 
 the moment she appeared. 
 
 " What? Walking here again, citizeness? " 
 
 " Yes, citizen." 
 
 "Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little 
 citizeness? " 
 
 " Do I say yes, mamma? " whispered little Lucie, draw- 
 ing close to her. 
 
 "Yes, dearest." 
 
 " Yes, citizen." 
 
 "Ah! But it's not my business. My work is my busi- 
 ness. See my saw ! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, 
 la-, la; La, la, la! And off his head comes! " 
 
 The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket. 
 
 " I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. 
 See here again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off her 
 head comes! Now, a child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! 
 And off its head comes. All the family ! " 
 
 Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his 
 basket, but it was impossible to be there while the wood- 
 sawyer was at work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, 
 to secure his good will, she always spoke to him first, and 
 often gave him drink-money, which he readily received. 
 
 He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she 
 had quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and 
 grates, and in lifting her heart up to her husband, she 
 would come to herself to find him looking at her, with his 
 knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work. " But 
 it's not my business ! " he would generally say at those 
 times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again. 
 
 In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the 
 bitter winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in 
 the rains of autumn, and again in the snow and frost of 
 winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at this place; 
 and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall. 
 Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it 
 might be once in five or six times : it might be twice or 
 thrice running : it might be, not for a week or a fortnight 
 
264 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 together. It was enough that he could and did see her 
 when the chances served, and on that possibility she would 
 have waited out the day, seven days a week. 
 
 These occupations brought her round to the December 
 month, wherein her father walked among the terrors with 
 a steady head. On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived 
 at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild rejoicing, 
 and a festival. She had seen the houses, as she came 
 along, decorated with little pikes, and with little red caps 
 stuck upon them ; also, with tricoloured ribbons; also, with 
 the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were the fa- 
 vourite), Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, 
 Fraternity, or Death ! 
 
 The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, 
 that its whole surface furnished very indifferent space for 
 this legend. He had got somebody to scrawl it up for him, 
 however, who had squeezed Death in with most inappro- 
 priate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike and 
 cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had sta- 
 tioned his saw inscribed as his " Little Sainte Guillotine " 
 —for the great sharp female was by that time popularly 
 canonised. His shop was shut and he was not there, which 
 was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone. 
 
 But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a trou- 
 bled movement and a shouting coming along, which filled 
 her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng of 
 people came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, 
 in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand 
 with The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five 
 hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand 
 demons. There was no other music than their own sing- 
 ing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping 
 a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. 
 Men and women danced together, women danced together, 
 men danced together, as hazard had brought them together. 
 At first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and 
 coarse woollen rags; but, as they filled the place, and 
 stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly apparition of a 
 dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They 
 advanced, retreated, struck atone another's hands, clutched 
 at one another's heads, spun round alone, caught one an- 
 other and spun round in pairs, until many of them 
 dropped. While those were down, the rest linked hand in 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 265 
 
 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 distracted, 
 the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, 
 were types of the disjointed time. 
 
 This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie 
 frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-saw- 
 yer's house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as 
 white and soft, as if it had never been. 
 
 " my father ! " for he stood before her when she lifted 
 up the eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand; 
 "such a cruel, bad sight." 
 
 " I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. 
 Don't be frightened ! Not one of them would harm you." 
 
 " I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I 
 think of my husband, and the mercies of these people " 
 
 " We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left 
 him climbing to the window, and I came to tell you. 
 There is no one here to see. You may kiss your hand 
 towards that highest shelving roof. " 
 
 " I do so, father, and I send my Soul with it ! " 
 
 " You cannot see him, my poor dear? " 
 
 "No, father," said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she 
 kissed her hand, "no." 
 
 A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. " I salute 
 you, citizeness," from the Doctor. "I salute you, citizen." 
 This in passing. Nothing more. Madame Defarge gone, 
 like a shadow over the white road. 
 
 " Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an 
 air of cheerfulness and courage, for his sake. That was 
 19 
 
266 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 well done; " they had left the spot; "it shall not be in 
 vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow." 
 
 " For to-morrow ! " 
 
 "There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but 
 there are precautions to be taken, that could not be taken 
 until he was actually summoned before the Tribunal. He 
 has not received the notice yet, but I know that he will 
 presently be summoned for to-morrow, and removed to the 
 Conciergerie; I have timely information. You are not 
 afraid? " 
 
 She could scarcely answer, "I trust in you." 
 
 " Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my 
 darling; he shall be restored to you within a few hours; I 
 have encompassed him with every protection. I must see 
 Lorry." 
 
 He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels 
 within hearing. They both knew too well what it meant. 
 One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring away with 
 their dread loads over the hushing snow. 
 
 " I must see Lorry," the Doctor repeated, turning her 
 another way. 
 
 The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had 
 never left it. He and his books were in frequent requisi- 
 tion as to property confiscated and made national. What 
 he could save for the owners, he saved. No better man 
 living to hold fast by what Tellson's had in keeping, and 
 to hold his peace. 
 
 A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the 
 Seine, denoted the approach of darkness. It was almost 
 dark when they arrived at the Bank. The stately resi- 
 dence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and deserted. 
 Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the let- 
 ters: National Property. Republic One and Indivisible. 
 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death ! 
 
 Who could that be with Mr. Lorry — the owner of the 
 riding-coat upon the chair — who must not be seen? From 
 whom newly arrived, did he come out, agitated and sur- 
 prised, to take his favourite in his arms? To whom did he 
 appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his 
 voice and turning his head towards the door of the room 
 from which he had issued, he said : " Removed to the Con- 
 ciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow? " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 267 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TRIUMPH. 
 
 The dread Tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, 
 and determined Jury, sat every day. Their lists went 
 forth every evening, and were read out by the gaolers of 
 the various prisons to their prisoners. The standard gaoler- 
 joke was, " Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you 
 inside there ! " 
 
 " Charles Evremonde, called Darnay ! " 
 
 So at last began the Evening Paper at La Eorce. 
 
 When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a 
 spot reserved for those who were announced as being thus 
 fatally recorded. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, had 
 reason to know the usage; he had seen hundreds pass away 
 so. 
 
 His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, 
 glanced over them to assure himself that he had taken his 
 place, and went through the list, making a similar short 
 pause at each name. There were twenty-three names, but 
 only twenty were responded to; for one of the prisoners so 
 summoned had died in gaol and been forgotten, and two 
 had already been guillotined and forgotten. The list was 
 read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen the 
 associated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one 
 of those had perished in the massacre; every human creat- 
 ure he had since cared for and parted with, had died on the 
 scaffold. 
 
 There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but 
 the parting was soon over. It was the incident of every 
 day, and the society of La Force were engaged in the prep- 
 aration of some games of forfeits and a little concert, for 
 that evening. They crowded to the grates and shed tears 
 there; but, twenty places in the projected entertainments 
 had to be refilled, and the time was, at best, short to the 
 lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would 
 be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there 
 through the night. The prisoners were far from insensible 
 
268 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 or unfeeling; their ways arose out of the condition of the 
 time. Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species 
 of fervour 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 infec- 
 tion of the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons of pes- 
 tilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the dis- 
 ease — a terrible passing inclination to die of it. And all 
 of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only need- 
 ing circumstances to evoke them. 
 
 The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; 
 the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. 
 Next day, fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before 
 Charles Darnay's name was called. All the fifteen were 
 condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an hour 
 and a half. 
 
 "Charles Evremonde, called Darnay," was at length ar- 
 raigned. 
 
 His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the 
 rough red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress 
 otherwise prevailing. Looking at the Jury and the tur- 
 bulent audience, he might have thought that the usual order 
 of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the 
 honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and worst populace of 
 a city, never without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, 
 were the directing spirits of the scene : noisily commenting, 
 applauding, disapproving, anticipating, and precipitating 
 the result, without a check. Of the men, the greater part 
 were armed in various ways; of the women, some wore 
 knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked 
 on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare 
 piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was 
 in a front row, by the side of a man whom he had never 
 seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly 
 remembered as Defarge. He noticed that she once or twice 
 whispered in his ear, and that she seemed to be his wife; 
 but, what he most noticed in the two figures was, that al- 
 though they were posted as close to himself as they could 
 be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to be 
 waiting for something with a dogged determination, and 
 they looked at the Jury, but at nothing else. Under the 
 President sat Doctor Manette, in his usual quiet dress. 
 As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr. Lorry were 
 
A TALE OF TWO* CITIES. 269 
 
 the only men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who 
 wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse 
 garb of the Carmagnole. 
 
 Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, was accused by the 
 public prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to 
 the Republic, under the decree which banished all emi- 
 grants on pain of Death. It was nothing that the decree 
 bore date since his return to France. There he was, and 
 there was the decree; he had been taken in France, and his 
 head was demanded. 
 
 " Take off his head ! " cried the audience. " An enemy 
 to the Republic ! " 
 
 The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and 
 asked the prisoner whether it was not true that he had 
 lived many years in England? 
 
 Undoubtedly it was. 
 
 Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call him- 
 self? 
 
 Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit 
 of the law. 
 
 Why not? the President desired to know. 
 
 Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was 
 distasteful to him, and a station that was distasteful to 
 him, and had left his country — he submitted before the 
 word emigrant in the present acceptation by the Tribunal 
 was in use — to live by his own industry in England, rather 
 than on the industry of the overladen people of France. 
 
 What proof had he of this? 
 
 He handed in the names of two witnesses; Theophile 
 Gabelle, and Alexandre Manette. 
 
 But he had married in England? the President reminded 
 him. 
 
 True, but not an English woman. 
 
 A citizeness of France? 
 
 Yes. By birth. 
 
 Her name and family? 
 
 " Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Manette, the 
 good physician who sits there." 
 
 This answer had a happy effect upon the audience. Cries 
 in exaltation of the well-known good physician rent the 
 hall. So capriciously were the people moved, that tears 
 immediately rolled down several ferocious countenances 
 which had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, 
 
270 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 as if with impatience to pluck him out into the streets and 
 kill him. 
 
 On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles Dar- 
 nay had set his foot according to Doctor Manette's reiter- 
 ated instructions. The same cautious counsel directed every 
 step that lay before him, and had prepared every inch of 
 his road. 
 
 The President asked, why had he returned to France 
 when he did, and not sooner? 
 
 He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because 
 he had no means of living in France, save those he had re- 
 signed; whereas, in England, he lived by giving instruc- 
 tion in the French language and literature. He had re- 
 turned when he did, on the pressing and written entreaty 
 of a French citizen, who represented that his life was en- 
 dangered by his absence. He had come back, to save a 
 citizen's life, and to bear his testimony, at whatever per- 
 sonal hazard, to the truth. Was that criminal in the eyes 
 of fhe Republic? 
 
 The populace cried enthusiastically, " No ! " and the 
 President rang his bell to quiet them. Which it did not, 
 for they continued to cry " No ! " until they left off, of 
 their own will. 
 
 The President required the name of that citizen? The 
 accused explained that the citizen was his first witness. 
 He also referred with confidence to the citizen's letter, 
 which had been taken from him at the Barrier, but which 
 he did not doubt would be found among the papers then 
 before the President. 
 
 The Doctor had taken care that it should be there — had 
 assured him that it would be there — and at this stage of 
 the proceedings it was produced and read. Citizen Gabelle 
 was called to confirm it, and did so. Citizen Gabelle 
 hinted, with infinite delicacy and politeness, that in the 
 pressure of business imposed on the Tribunal by the multi- 
 tude of enemies of the Republic with which it had to deal, 
 he had been slightly overlooked in his prison of the Ab- 
 baye — in fact, had rather passed out of the Tribunal's pa- 
 triotic remembrance — until three days ago; when he had 
 been summoned before it, and had been set at liberty on 
 the Jury's declaring themselves satisfied that the accusa- 
 tion against him was answered, as to himself, by the sur- 
 render of the citizen Evremonde, called Darnay. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 271. 
 
 Doctor Manette was next questioned. His high personal 
 popularity, and the clearness of his answers, made a great 
 impression; but, as he proceeded, as he showed that the 
 Accused was his first friend on his release from his long 
 imprisonment; that, the accused had remained in England, 
 always faithful and devoted to his daughter and himself in 
 their exile; that, so far from being in favour with the 
 Aristocrat government there, he had actually been tried for 
 his life by it, as the foe of England and friend of the 
 United States — as he brought these circumstances into 
 view, with the greatest discretion and with the straightfor- 
 ward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and the pop- 
 ulace became one. At last, when he appealed by name to 
 Monsieur Lorry, an English gentleman then and there pres- 
 ent, who, like himself, had been a witness on that English 
 trial and could corroborate his account of it, the Jury de- 
 clared that they had heard enough, and that they were 
 ready with their votes if the President were content to re- 
 ceive them. 
 
 At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and individu- 
 ally), the populace set up a shout of applause. All the 
 voices were in the prisoner's favour, and the President de- 
 clared him free. 
 
 Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with 
 which the populace sometimes gratified their fickleness, or 
 their better impulses towards generosity and mercy, or 
 which they regarded as some set-off against their swollen 
 account of cruel rage. No man can decide now to which 
 of these motives such extraordinary scenes were referable; 
 it is probable, to a blending of all the three, with the second 
 predominating. No sooner was the acquittal pronounced, 
 than tears were shed as freely as blood at another time, 
 and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the pris- 
 oner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that 
 after his long and unwholesome confinement he was in 
 danger of fainting from exhaustion; none the less because 
 he knew very well, that the very same people, carried by 
 another current, would have rushed at him with the very 
 same intensity, to rend' him to pieces and strew him over 
 the streets. 
 
 His removal, to make way for other accused persons who 
 were to be tried, rescued him from these caresses for the 
 moment. Five were to be tried together, next, as enemies 
 
272 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 of the "Republic, forasmuch as they had not assisted it by 
 word or deed. So quick was the Tribunal to compensate 
 itself and the nation for a chance lost, that these five came 
 down to him before he left the place, condemned to die 
 within twenty- four hours. The first of them told him so, 
 with the customary prison sign of Death — a raised finger — 
 and they all added in words, "Long live the Republic ! " 
 
 The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen 
 their proceedings, for when he and Doctor Manette emerged 
 from the gate, there was a great crowd about it, in which 
 there seemed to be every face he had seen in Court — except 
 two, for which he looked in vain. On his coming out, the 
 concourse made at him anew, weeping, embracing, and 
 shouting, all by turns and all together, until the very tide 
 of the river on the bank of which the mad scene was acted, 
 seemed to run mad, like the people on the shore. 
 
 They put him into a great chair they had among them, 
 and which they had taken either out of the Court itself, or 
 one of its rooms or passages. Over the chair they had 
 thrown a red flag, and to the back of it they had bound a 
 pike with a red cap on its top. In this car of triumph, not 
 even the Doctor's entreaties could prevent his being carried 
 to his home on men's shoulders, with a confused sea of 
 red caps heaving about him, and casting up to sight from 
 the stormy deep such wrecks of faces, that he more than 
 once misdoubted his mind being in confusion, and that he 
 was in the tumbril on his way to the Guillotine. 
 
 In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met 
 and pointing him out, they carried him on. Reddening the 
 snowy streets with the prevailing Republican colour, in 
 winding and tramping through them, as they had reddened 
 them below the snow with a deeper dye, they carried him 
 thus into the courtyard of the building where he lived. 
 Her father had gone on before, to prepare her, and when 
 her husband stood upon his feet, she dropped insensible in 
 his arms. 
 
 As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful 
 head between his face and the brawling crowd, so that his 
 tears and her lips might come together unseen, a few of 
 the people fell to dancing. Instantly, all the rest fell to 
 dancing, and the courtyard overflowed with the Carmag- 
 nole - Then, they elevated into the vacant chair a young 
 woman from the crowd to be carried as the Goddess of 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 273 
 
 Liberty, and then swelling and overflowing out into the 
 adjacent streets, and along the river's bank, and over the 
 bridge, the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and 
 whirled them away. 
 
 After grasping the Doctor's hand, as he stood victorious 
 and proud before him; after grasping the hand of Mr. 
 Lorry, who came panting in breathless from his struggle 
 against the waterspout of the Carmagnole; after kissing 
 little Lucie, who was lifted up to clasp her arms round his 
 neck; and after embracing the ever zealous and faithful 
 Pross who lifted her; he took his wife in his arms, and 
 carried her up to their rooms. * 
 
 "Lucie! My own! I am safe." 
 
 "0 dearest Charles, let me thank God for this on my 
 knees as I have prayed to Him." 
 
 They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts. 
 When she was again in his arms, he said to her : 
 
 " And now speak to your father, dearest. No other man 
 in all this France could have done what he has done for 
 me." 
 
 She laid her head upon her father's breast, as she had 
 laid his poor head on her own breast, long, long ago. He 
 was happy in the return he had made her, he was recom- 
 pensed for his suffering, he was proud of his strength. 
 "You must not be weak, my darling," he remonstrated; 
 "don't tremble so. I have saved him." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A KNOCK AT THE DOOR 
 
 "I have saved him." It was not another of the dreams 
 in which he had often come back; he was really here. 
 And yet his wife trembled, and a vague but heavy fear 
 was upon her. 
 
 All the air round was so thick and dark, the people were 
 so passionately revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so 
 constantly put to death on vague suspicion and black malice, 
 it was so impossible to forget that many as blameless as her 
 husband and as dear to others as he was to her, every day 
 shared the fate from which he had been clutched, that her 
 20 
 
274 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 heart could not be as lightened of its load as she felt it 
 ought to be. The shadows of the wintry afternoon were 
 beginning to fall, and even now the dreadful carts were 
 rolling through the streets. Her miad pursued them, look- 
 ing for him among the Condemned; and then she clung 
 closer to his real presence and trembled more. 
 
 Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate su- 
 periority to this woman's weakness, which was wonderful 
 to see. No garret, no shoemaking, no One Hundred and 
 Five, North Tower, now ! He had accomplished the task he 
 had set himself, his promise was redeemed, he had saved 
 Charles. Let them all lean upon him. 
 
 Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind : not only 
 because that was the safest way of life, involving the least 
 offence to the people, but because they were not rich, and 
 Charles, throughout his imprisonment, had had to pay 
 heavily for his bad food, and for his guard, and towards 
 the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this account 
 and partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant; 
 the citizen and citizeness who acted as porters at the court- 
 yard gate, rendered them occasional service; and Jerry 
 (almost wholly transferred to them by Mr. Lorry) had be- 
 come their daily retainer, and had his bed there every 
 night. 
 
 It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible 
 of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on the 
 door or doorpost of every house, the name of every inmate 
 must be legibly inscribed in letters of a certain size, at a 
 certain convenient height from the ground. Mr. Jerry 
 Cruncher's name, therefore, duly embellished the doorpost 
 down below; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the 
 owner of that name himself appeared, from overlooking a 
 painter whom Doctor Manette.had employed to add to the 
 list the name of Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. 
 
 In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the 
 time, all the usual harmless ways of life were changed. In 
 the Doctor's little household, as in very many others, the 
 articles of daily consumption that were wanted were pur- 
 chased every evening, in small quantities and at various 
 small shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give as 
 little occasion as possible for talk and envy, was the gen- 
 eral desire. 
 
 For some months past, Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 275 
 
 had discharged the office of purveyors; the former carrying 
 the money; the latter, the basket. Every afternoon at 
 about the time when the public lamps were lighted, they 
 fared forth on this duty, and made and brought home such 
 purchases as were needful. Although Miss Pross, through 
 her long association with a French family, might have 
 known as much of their language as of her own, if she had 
 had a mind, she had no mind in that direction; conse- 
 quently she knew no more of that " nonsense " (as she was 
 pleased to call it) than Mr. Cruncher did. So her manner 
 of marketing was to plump a noun-substantive at the head 
 of a shopkeeper without any introduction in the nature of 
 an article, and, if it happened not to be 'the name of the 
 thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold of 
 it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded. She 
 always made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a state- 
 ment of its just price, one finger less than the merchant 
 held up, whatever his number might be. 
 
 "Now, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose eyes were 
 red with felicity; "if you are ready, I am." 
 
 Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Pross's service. 
 He had worn all his rust off long ago, but nothing would 
 file his spiky head down. 
 
 "There's all manner of things wanted," said Miss Pross, 
 " and we shall have a precious time of it. We want wine, 
 among the rest. Nice toasts these Redheads will be drink- 
 ing, wherever we buy it." 
 
 " It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss, I 
 should think," retorted Jerry, "whether they drink your 
 health or the Old Un's." 
 
 "Who's he? " said Miss Pross. 
 
 Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself 
 as meaning "Old Nick's." 
 
 "Ha! " said Miss Pross, "it doesn't need an interpreter 
 to explain the meaning of these creatures. They have but 
 one, and it's Midnight Murder, and Mischief." 
 
 " Hush, dear ! Pray, pray, be cautious ! " cried Lucie. 
 
 "Yes, yes, yes, I'll be cautious," said Miss Pross; "but 
 I may say among ourselves, that I do hope there will be 
 no oniony and tobaccoey smotherings in the form of em- 
 bracings all round, going on in the streets. Now, Lady- 
 bird, never you stir from that fire till I come back ! Take 
 care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don't 
 
276 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 move your pretty head from his shoulder as you have it 
 now, till you see me again ! May I ask a question, Doctor 
 Manette, before I go? " 
 
 " I think you may take that liberty," the Doctor answered, 
 smiling. 
 
 "For gracious sake, don't talk about Liberty; we have 
 quite enough of that," said Miss Pross. 
 
 "Hush, dear! Again?" Lucie remonstrated. 
 
 "Well, my sweet," said Miss Pross, nodding her head 
 emphatically, " the short and the long of it is, that I am 
 a subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the 
 Third; " Miss Pross curtseyed at the name; "and as such, 
 my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knav- 
 ish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the King ! " 
 
 Mr. Cruncher, in an access of loyalty, growlingly re- 
 peated the words after Miss Pross, like somebody at 
 church. 
 
 " I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, 
 though I wish you had never taken that cold in your 
 voice," said Miss Pross, approvingly. "But the question, 
 Doctor Manette. Is there" — it was the good creature's 
 way to affect to make light of anything that was a great 
 anxiety with them all, and to come at it in this chance 
 manner — " is there any prospect yet, of our getting out of 
 this place?" 
 
 " I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles yet." 
 
 " Heigh-ho- hum ! " said Miss Pross, cheerfully repress- 
 ing a sigh as she glanced at her darling's golden hair in the 
 light of the fire, " then we must have patience and wait : 
 that's all. We must hold up our heads and fight low, as 
 my brother Solomon used to say. Now, Mr. Cruncher! — 
 Don't you move, Ladybird! " 
 
 They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her 
 father, and the child, by a bright fire. Mr. Lorry was ex- 
 pected back presently from the Banking House. Miss 
 Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside in a cor- 
 ner, that they might enjoy the fire-light undisturbed. Lit- 
 tle Lucie sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped 
 through his arm : and he, in a tone not rising much above 
 a whisper, began to tell her a story of a great and powerful 
 Fairy who had opened a prison-wall and let out a captive 
 who had once done the Fairy a service. All was subdued 
 and quiet, and Lucie was more at ease than she had been. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 277 
 
 "What is that? " she cried, all at once. 
 
 " My dear ! " said her father, stopping in his story, and 
 laying his hand on hers, " command yourself. What a dis- 
 ordered state you are in ! The least thing — nothing — star- 
 tles you! You, your father's daughter! " 
 
 "I thought, my father," said Lucie, excusing herself, 
 with a pale face and in a faltering voice, " that I heard 
 strange feet upon the stairs." 
 
 "My love, the staircase is as still as Death." 
 
 As he said. the word a blow was struck upon the door. 
 
 "Oh father, father. What can this be! Hide Charles. 
 Save him ! " 
 
 "My child," said the Doctor, rising, and laying his hand 
 upon her shoulder, " I have saved him. What weakness is 
 this, my dear! Let me go to the door." 
 
 He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two interven- 
 ing outer rooms, and opened it. A rude clattering of feet 
 over the floor, and four rough men in red caps, armed with 
 sabres and pistols, entered the room. 
 
 "The Citizen Evremonde, called Darnay," said the first. 
 
 " Who seeks him? " answered Darnay. 
 
 " I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evremonde; 
 I saw you before the Tribunal to-day. You are again the 
 prisoner of the Republic." 
 
 The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife 
 and child clinging to him. 
 
 " Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner? " 
 
 " It is enough that you return straight to the Concier- 
 gerie, and will know to-morrow. You are summoned for 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Doctor Manette, whom this visitation had so turned into 
 stone, that he stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he 
 were a statue made to hold it, moved after these words 
 were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting the 
 speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose front of 
 his red woollen shirt, said : 
 
 " You know him, you have said. Do you know me? " 
 
 "Yes, I know you, Citizen Doctor." 
 
 "We all know you, Citizen Doctor," said the other three. 
 
 He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, 
 in a lower voice, after a pause : 
 
 " Will you answer his question to me then? How does 
 this happen? " 
 
278 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "Citizen Doctor," said the first, reluctantly, "he has 
 been denounced to the Section of Saint Antoine. This citi- 
 zen," pointing out the second who had entered, "is from 
 Saint Antoine." 
 
 The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and added : 
 
 "He is accused by Saint Antoine." 
 
 " Of what? " asked the Doctor. 
 
 "Citizen Doctor," said the first, with his former reluct- 
 ance, " ask no more. If the Republic demands sacrifices 
 from you, without doubt you as a good patriot will be 
 happy to make them. The Republic goes before all. The 
 People is supreme. Evremonde, we are pressed." 
 
 "One word," the Doctor entreated. "Will you tell me 
 who denounced him? " 
 
 "It is against rule," answered the first; "but you can 
 ask Him of Saint Antoine here." 
 
 The Doctor turned his eyes upon that man. Who moved 
 uneasily on his feet, rubbed his beard a little, and at 
 length said : 
 
 " Well ! Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced 
 — and gravely — by the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. 
 And by one other." 
 
 " What other? " 
 
 " Do you ask, Citizen Doctor? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then," said he of Saint Antoine, with a strange look, 
 " you will be answered to-morrow. Now, I am dumb ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A HAND AT CARDS. 
 
 Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss 
 Pross threaded her way along the narrow streets and 
 crossed the river by the bridge of the Pont-Neuf, reckon- 
 ing in her mind the number of indispensable purchases she 
 had to make. Mr. Cruncher, with the basket, walked at 
 her side. They both looked to the right and to the left 
 into most of the shops they passed, had a wary eye for all 
 gregarious assemblages of people, and turned out of their 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 279 
 
 road to avoid any very excited group of talkers. It was a 
 raw evening, and the misty river, blurred to the eye with 
 blazing lights and to the ear with harsh noises, showed 
 where the barges were stationed in which the smiths 
 worked, making guns for the Army of the Republic. Woe 
 to the man who played tricks with that Army, or got un- 
 deserved promotion in it ! Better for him that his beard 
 had never grown, for the National Razor shaved him close. 
 
 Having purchased a few small articles of grocery, and a 
 measure of oil for the lamp, Miss Pross bethought herself 
 of the wine they wanted. After peeping into several wine- 
 shops, she stopped at the sign of the The Good Republican 
 Brutus of Antiquity, not far from the National Palace, 
 once (and twice) the Tuileries, where the aspect of things 
 rather took her fancy. It had a quieter look than any 
 other place of the same description they had passed, and, 
 though red with patriotic caps, was not so red as the rest. 
 Sounding Mr. Cruncher, and finding him of her opinion, 
 Miss Pross resorted to The Good Republican Brutus of An- 
 tiquity, attended by her cavalier. 
 
 Slightly observant of the smoky lights; of the people, 
 pipe in mouth, playing with limp cards and yellow dom- 
 inoes; of the one bare-breasted, bare-armed, soot-begrimed 
 workman reading a journal aloud, and of the others listen- 
 ing to him; of the weapons worn, or laid aside to be re- 
 sumed; of the two or three customers fallen forward asleep, 
 who in the popular high-shouldered shaggy black spencer 
 looked, in that attitude, like slumbering bears or dogs; the 
 two outlandish customers approached the counter, and 
 showed what they wanted. 
 
 As their wine was measuring out, a man parted from an- 
 other man, in a corner, and rose to depart. In going, he 
 had to face Miss Pross. No sooner did he face her, than 
 Miss Pross uttered a scream, and clapped her hands. 
 
 In a moment, the whole company were on their feet. 
 That somebody was assassinated by somebody vindicating 
 a difference of opinion was the likeliest occurrence. Every- 
 body looked to see somebody fall, but only saw a man and 
 a woman standing staring at each other; the man with all 
 the outward aspect of a Frenchman and a thorough Repub- 
 lican; the woman, evidently English. 
 
 What was said in this disappointing anti-climax, by the 
 disciples of the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, ex- 
 
280 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 cept that it was something very voluble and loud, would 
 have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean to Miss Pross 
 and her protector, though they had been all ears. But, 
 they had no ears for anything in their surprise. For, it 
 must be recorded, that not only was Miss Pross lost in 
 amazement and agitation, but, Mr. Cruncher — though it 
 seemed on his own separate and individual account — was 
 in a state of the greatest wonder. 
 
 "What is the matter?" said the man who had caused 
 Miss Pross to scream; speaking in a vexed, abrupt voice 
 (though in a low tone), and in English. 
 
 " Oh, Solomon, dear Solomon ! " cried Miss Pross, clap- 
 ping her hands again. " After not setting eyes upon you 
 or hearing of you for so long a time, do I find you here ! " 
 
 " Don't call me Solomon. Do you want to be the death 
 of me? " asked the man, in a furtive, frightened way. 
 
 " Brother, brother ! " cried Miss Pross, bursting into tears. 
 " Have I ever been so hard with you that you ask me such 
 a cruel question? " 
 
 "Then hold your meddlesome tongue," said Solomon, 
 " and come out, if you want to speak to me. Pay for your 
 wine, and come out. Who's this man? " 
 
 Miss Pross, shaking her loving and dejected head at her 
 by no means affectionate brother, said through her tears, 
 "Mr. Cruncher." 
 
 "Let him come out too," said Solomon. "Does he think 
 me a ghost? " 
 
 Apparently, Mr. Cruncher did, to judge from his looks. 
 He said not a word, however, and Miss Pross, exploring 
 the depths of her reticule through her tears with great 
 difficulty paid for her wine. As she did so, Solomon turned 
 to the followers of the Good Republican Brutus of An- 
 tiquity, and offered a few words of explanation in the 
 French language, which caused them all to relapse into 
 their former places and pursuits. 
 
 "Now," said Solomon, stopping at the dark street corner, 
 " what do you want? " 
 
 " How dreadfully unkind in a brother nothing has ever 
 turned my love away from!" cried Miss Pross, "to give 
 me such a greeting, and show me no affection." 
 
 "There. Con-found it! There," said Solomon, mak- 
 ing a dab at Miss Pross's lips with his own. "Now are 
 you content? " 
 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 281 
 
 Miss Pross only shook her head and wept in silence. 
 
 "If yon expect me to be surprised," said her brother 
 Solomon, "lam not surprised; I knew you were here; I 
 know of most people who are here. If you really don't 
 want to endanger my existence — which I half believe you 
 do — go your ways as soon as possible, and let me go mine. 
 I am busy. I am an official." 
 
 "My English brother Solomon," mourned Miss Pross, 
 casting up her tear- fraught eyes, " that had the makings in 
 him of one of the best and greatest of men in his native 
 country, an official among foreigners, and such foreigners ! 
 I would almost sooner have seen the dear boy lying in 
 his " 
 
 " I said so ! " cried her brother, interrupting. " I knew 
 it. You want to be the death of me. I shall be rendered 
 Suspected, by my own sister. Just as I am getting on ! " 
 
 " The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid ! " cried Miss 
 Pross. "Far rather would I never see you again, dear 
 Solomon, though I have ever loved you truly, and ever 
 shall. Say but one affectionate word to me, and tell me 
 there is nothing angry or estranged between us, and I will 
 detain you no longer." 
 
 Good Miss Pross ! As if the estangement between them 
 had come of any culpability of hers. As if Mr. Lorry had 
 not known it for a fact, years ago, in the quiet corner in 
 Soho, that this precious brother had spent her money and 
 left her! 
 
 He was saying the affectionate word, however, with a 
 far more grudging condescension and patronage than he 
 could have shown if their relative merits and positions had 
 been reversed (which is invariably the case, all the world 
 over), when Mr. Cruncher, touching him on the shoulder, 
 hoarsely and unexpectedly interposed with the following 
 singular question : 
 
 " I say ! Might I ask the favour? As to whether your 
 name is John Solomon, or Solomon John? " 
 
 The official turned towards him with sudden distrust. 
 He had not previously uttered a word. 
 
 "Come!" said Mr. Cruncher. "Speak out, you know." 
 (Which, by the way, was more than he could do himself.) 
 " John Solomon, or Solomon John? She calls you Solo- 
 mon, and she must know, being your sister. And 1 know 
 you're John, you know. Which of the two goes first? 
 
282 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 And regarding that name of Pross, likewise. That warn't 
 your name over the water." 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know all I mean, for I can't call to mind 
 what your name was, over the water." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables." 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 "Yes. T'other one's was one syllable. I know you. 
 You was a spy- witness at the Bailey. What, in the name 
 of the Father of Lies, own father to yourself, was you 
 called at that time? " 
 
 "Barsad," said another voice, striking in. 
 
 "That's the name for a thousand pound! " cried Jerry. 
 
 The speaker who struck in, was Sydney Carton. He had 
 his hands behind him under the skirts of his riding-coat, 
 and he stood at Mr. Cruncher's elbow as negligently as he 
 might have stood at the Old Bailey itself. 
 
 "Don't be alarmed, my dear Miss Pross. I arrived at 
 Mr. Lorry's, to his surprise, yesterday evening; we agreed 
 that I would not present myself elsewhere until all was 
 well, or unless I could be useful; I present myself here, to 
 beg a little talk with your brother. I wish you had a bet- 
 ter employed brother than Mr. Barsad. I wish for your 
 sake Mr. Barsad was not a Sheep of the Prisons." 
 
 Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under the 
 gaolers. The spy, who was pale, turned paler, and asked 
 him how he dared 
 
 "I'll tell you," said Sydney. "I lighted on you, Mr. 
 Barsad, coming out of the prison of the Conciergerie while 
 I was contemplating the walls, an hour or more ago. You 
 have a face to be remembered, and I remember faces well. 
 Made curious by seeing you in that connection, and having 
 a reason, to which you are no stranger, for associating you 
 with the misfortunes of a friend now very unfortunate, I 
 walked in your direction. I walked into the wine-shop 
 here, close after you, and sat near you. I had no difficulty 
 in deducing from your unreserved conversation, and the 
 rumour openly going about among your admirers, the na- 
 ture of your calling. And gradually, what I had done at 
 random, seemed to shape itself into a purpose, Mr. Bar- 
 sad." 
 
 "What purpose? " the spy asked. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 283 
 
 "It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous, to 
 explain in the street. Could you favour me, in confidence, 
 with some minutes of your company — at the office of Tell- 
 son's Bank, for instance? " 
 
 " Under a threat? " 
 
 "Oh! Did I say that? " 
 
 "Then, why should I go there?" 
 
 "Eeally, Mr. Barsad, I can't say, if you can't." 
 
 "Do you mean that you won't say, sir? " the spy irreso- 
 lutely asked. 
 
 " You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I won't." 
 
 Carton's negligent recklessness of manner came power- 
 fully in aid of his quickness and skill, in such a business 
 as he had in his secret mind, and with such a man as he 
 had to do with. His practised eye saw it, and made the 
 most of it. 
 
 "Now, I told you so," said the spy, casting a reproach- 
 ful look at his sister; "if any trouble comes of this, it's 
 your doing." 
 
 " Come, come, Mr. Barsad ! " exclaimed Sydney. "Don't 
 be ungrateful. But for my great respect for your sister, I 
 might not have led up so pleasantly to a little proposal 
 that I wish to make for our mutual satisfaction. Do you 
 go with me to the Bank? " 
 
 "I'll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I'll go with 
 you." 
 
 " I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the 
 corner of her own street. Let me take your arm, Miss 
 Pross. This is not a good city, at this time, for you to be 
 out in, unprotected; and as your escort knows Mr. Barsacl, 
 I will invite him to Mr. Lorry's with us. Are we ready? 
 Come then ! " 
 
 Miss Pross recalled soon afterwards, and to the end of 
 her life remembered, that as she pressed her hands on 
 Sydney's arm and looked up in his face, imploring him to 
 do no hurt to Solomon, there was a braced purpose in the 
 arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes, which not only 
 contradicted his light manner, but changed and raised the 
 man. She was too much occupied then with fears for the 
 brother who so little deserved her affection, and with Syd- 
 ney's friendly reassurances, adequately to heed what she 
 observed. 
 
 They left her at her corner of the street, and Carton led 
 
284 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 . the way to Mr. Lorry's, which was within a few minutes' 
 walk. John Barsad, or Solomon Pross, walked at his 
 side. 
 
 Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting 
 before a cheery little log or two of fire — perhaps looking 
 into their blaze for the picture of that younger elderly gen- 
 tleman from Tellson's, who had looked into the red coals 
 at the Royal George at Dover, now a good many years ago. 
 He turned his head as they entered, and showed the sur- 
 prise with which he saw a stranger. 
 
 "MissPross's brother, sir," said Sydney. "Mr. Bar- 
 sad." 
 
 " Barsad? " repeated the old gentleman, " Barsad? I 
 have an association with the name — and with the face." 
 
 "I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad," 
 observed Carton, coolly. "Pray sit down." 
 
 As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. 
 Lorry wanted, by saying to him with a frown, " Witness at 
 that trial." Mr. Lorry immediately remembered, and re- 
 garded his new visitor with an undisguised look of abhor- 
 rence. 
 
 " Mr. Barsad has been recognised by Miss Pross as the 
 affectionate brother you have heard of," said Sydney, "and 
 has acknowledged the relationship. I pass to worse news. 
 Darnay has been arrested again." 
 
 Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, 
 " What do you tell me ! I left him safe and free within 
 these two hours, and am about to return to him ! " 
 
 "Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Bar- 
 sad? " 
 
 " Just now, if at all." 
 
 "Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir," said 
 Sydney, "and I have it from Mr. Barsad's communication 
 to a friend and brother Sheep over a bottle of wine, that 
 the arrest has taken place. He left the messengers at the 
 gate, and saw them admitted by the porter. There is no 
 earthly doubt that he is retaken." 
 
 Mr. Lorry's business eye read in the speaker's face that 
 it was loss of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, 
 but sensible that something might depend on his presence 
 of mind, he commanded himself, and was silently atten- 
 tive. 
 
 "Now, I trust," said Sydney to him, "that the name 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 285 
 
 ; and influence of Doctor Manette may stand liiin in as good 
 | stead to-morrow — you said he would be before the Tribunal 
 ; again to-morrow, Mr. Barsad? " 
 
 " Yes; I believe so." 
 
 " — In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may 
 not be so. I own to you, I am shaken, Mr. Lorry, by Doc- 
 tor Manette' s not having had the power to prevent this 
 . arrest." 
 
 " He may not. have known of it beforehand," said Mr. 
 Lorry. 
 
 " But that very circumstance would be alarming, when 
 we remember how identified he is with his son-in-law." 
 
 "That's true," Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his trou- 
 bled hand at his chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton. 
 
 "In short," said Sydney, "this is a desperate time, when 
 desperate games are played for desperate stakes. Let the 
 Doctor play the winning game; I will play the losing one. 
 No man's life here is worth purchase. Any one carried home 
 by the people to-day, may be condemned to-morrow. Now, 
 the stake I have resolved to play for, in case of the worst, 
 is a friend in the Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose 
 to myself to win, is Mr. Barsad." 
 
 "You need have good cards, sir," said the spy. 
 
 "I'll run them over. I'll see what I hold, — Mr. Lorry, 
 you know what a brute I am; I wish you'd give me a little 
 brandy." 
 
 It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful — ■ 
 drank off another glassful — pushed the bottle thoughtfully 
 away. 
 
 "Mr. Barsad," he went on, in the tone of one who 
 really was looking over a hand at cards : " Sheep of the 
 prisons, emissary of Republican committees, now turnkey, 
 now prisoner, always spy and secret informer, so much the 
 more valuable here for being English that an Englishman 
 is less open to suspicion of subornation in those characters 
 than a Frenchman, represents himself to his employers 
 under a false name. That's a very good card. Mr. Bar- 
 sad, now in the employ of the republican French govern- 
 ment, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic Eng- 
 lish government, the enemy of France and freedom. That's 
 an excellent card. Inference clear as day in this region of 
 suspicion, that Mr. Barsad, still in the pay of the aristo- 
 cratic English government, is the spy of Pitt, the treacher- 
 
286 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 ous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom, the English 
 traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so 
 difficult to find. That's a card not to be beaten. Have you 
 followed my hand, Mr. Barsad? " 
 
 "Not to understand your play," returned the spy, some- 
 what uneasily. 
 
 "I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the 
 nearest Section Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. 
 Barsad, and see what you have. Don't hurry." 
 
 He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of 
 brandy, and drank it off. He saw that the spy was fear- 
 ful of his drinking himself into a fit state for the imme- 
 diate denunciation of him. Seeing it, he poured out and 
 drank another glassful. 
 
 "Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take 
 time." 
 
 It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad 
 saw losing cards in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing of. 
 Thrown out of his honourable employment in England, 
 through too much unsuccessful hard swearing there — not 
 because he was not wanted there; our English reasons for 
 vaunting our superiority to secrecy and spies are of very 
 modern date — he knew that he had crossed the Channel, 
 and accepted service in France : first, as a tempter and an 
 eavesdropper among his own countrymen there : gradually, 
 as a tempter and an eavesdropper among the natives. He 
 knew that under the overthrown government he had been a 
 spy upon Saint Antoine and Defarge's wine-shop; had re- 
 ceived from the watchful police such heads .of information 
 concerning Doctor Manette's imprisonment, release, and 
 history, as should serve him for an introduction to familiar 
 conversation with the Defarges; and tried them on Madame 
 Defarge, and had broken down with them signally. He 
 always remembered with fear and trembling, that that ter- 
 rible woman had knitted when he talked with her, and had 
 looked ominously at him as her fingers moved. He had 
 since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over , and 
 over again produce her knitted registers, and denounce 
 people whose lives the guillotine then surely swallowed up. 
 He knew, as every one employed as he was did, that he was 
 never safe; that flight was impossible; that he was tied 
 fast under the shadow of the axe; and that in spite of his 
 utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 287 
 
 reigning terror, a word might bring it down upon him. 
 Once denounced, and on such grave grounds as had just 
 now been suggested to his mind, he foresaw that the dread- 
 ful woman of whose unrelenting character he had seen 
 many proofs, would produce against him that fatal register, 
 and would quash his last chance of life. Besides that all 
 secret men are men soon terrified, here were surely cards 
 enough of one black suit, to justify the holder in growing 
 rather livid as he turned them over. 
 
 "You scarcely seem to like your hand," said Sydney, 
 with the greatest composure. "Do you play? " 
 
 "I think, sir," said the spy, in the meanest manner, as 
 he turned to Mr. Lorry, " I may appeal to a gentleman of 
 your years and benevolence, to put it to this other gentle- 
 man, so much your junior, whether he can under any cir- 
 cumstances reconcile it to his station to play that Ace of 
 which he has spoken. I admit that 1 am a spy, and that 
 it is considered a discreditable station — though it must be 
 filled by somebody; but this gentleman is no spy, and why 
 should he so demean himself as to make himself one? " 
 
 "I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad," said Carton, taking the 
 answer on himself, and looking at his watch, " without any 
 scruple, in a very few minutes." 
 
 "I should have hoped, gentlemen both," said the spy, 
 always striving to hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion, 
 " that your respect for my sister " 
 
 " I could not better testify my respect for your sister 
 than by finally relieving her of her brother," said Sydney 
 Carton. 
 
 " You think not, sir? " 
 
 "I have thoroughly made up my mind about it." 
 
 The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance 
 with his ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his 
 usual demeanour, received such a check from the inscruta- 
 bility of Carton, — who was a mystery to wiser and honester 
 men than he, — that it faltered here and failed him. While 
 he was at a loss, Carton said, resuming his former air of 
 contemplating cards : 
 
 " And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong im- 
 pression that I have another good card here, not yet 
 enumerated. That friend and fellow-Sheep, who spoke 
 of himself as pasturing in the country prisons; who was 
 he?" 
 
288 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "French. You don't know him," said the spy, quickly. 
 
 " French, eh? " repeated Carton, musing, and not ap- 
 pearing to notice him at all, though he echoed his word. 
 "Well; he may be." 
 
 "Is, I assure you," said the spy; "though it's not im- 
 portant. " 
 
 "Though it's not important," repeated Carton, in the 
 same mechanical way — "though, it's not important — —No, 
 it's not important. No. Yet I know the face." 
 
 "I think not. I am sure not. It can't be," said the 
 
 spy- 
 
 " It can't — be," muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively, 
 and filling his glass (which fortunately was a small one) 
 again. "Can't* — be. Spoke good French. Yet like a 
 foreigner, I thought? " 
 
 "Provincial," said the spy. 
 
 " No. Foreign ! " cried Carton, striking his open hand 
 on the table, as a light broke clearly on his mind. " Cly ! 
 Disguised, but the same man. We had that man before us 
 at the Old Bailey." 
 
 "Now, there you are hasty, sir," said Barsad, with a 
 smile that gave his aquiline nose an extra inclination to 
 one side; "there you really give me an advantage over you. 
 Cly (who I will unreservedly admit, at this distance of 
 time, was a partner of mine) has been dead several years. 
 I attended him in his last illness. He was buried in Lon- 
 don, at the church of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His un- 
 popularity with the blackguard multitude at the moment 
 prevented my following his remains, but I helped to lay 
 him in his coffin." 
 
 Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a 
 most remarkable goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to 
 its source, he discovered it to be caused by a sudden ex- 
 traordinary rising and stiffening of all the risen and stiff 
 hair on Mr. Cruncher's head. 
 
 "Let us be reasonable," said the spy, "and let us be 
 fair. To show you how mistaken you are, and what an 
 unfounded assumption yours is, I will lay before you a cer- 
 tificate of Cly's burial, which I happened to have carried 
 in my pocket-book," with a hurried hand he produced and 
 opened it, "ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look 
 at it! You may take it in your hand; it's no forgery." 
 
 Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to 
 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 289 
 
 elongate, and Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped forward. 
 His hair could not have been more violently on end, if it 
 had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the crum- 
 pled horn in the house that Jack built. 
 
 Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side, and 
 touched him on the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff. 
 
 "That there Eoger Cly, master," said Mr. Cruncher, 
 with a taciturn and iron-bound visage. " So you put him in 
 his coffin?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 " Who took him out of it? " 
 
 Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered, " What 
 do you mean? " 
 
 "I mean," said Mr. Cruncher, "that he warn't never in 
 it. No! Not he! I'll have my head took off, if he was 
 ever in it." 
 
 The spy looked round at the- two gentlemen; they both 
 looked in unspeakable astonishment at Jerry. 
 
 "I tell you," said Jerry, "that you buried paving-stones 
 and earth in that there coffin. Don't go and tell me that 
 you buried Cly. It was a take in. Me and two more 
 knows it." 
 
 " How do you know it? " 
 
 " What's that to you? Ecod!" growled Mr. Cruncher, 
 "it's you I have got a old grudge again, is it, with your 
 shameful impositions upon tradesmen! I'd catch hold of 
 your throat and choke you for half a guinea." 
 
 Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in 
 amazement at this turn of the business, here requested Mr. 
 Cruncher to moderate and explain himself. 
 
 "At another time, sir," he returned, evasively, "the 
 present time is ill-con wenient for explainin'. What I stand 
 to, is, that he knows well wot that there Cly was never in 
 that there coffin. Let him say he was, in so much as a 
 word of one syllable, and I'll either catch hold of his throat 
 and choke him for half a guinea; " Mr. Cruncher dwelt 
 upon this as quite a liberal offer; " or I'll out and announce 
 him." 
 
 "Humph! I see one thing," said Carton. "I hold an- 
 other card, Mr. Barsad. Impossible, here in raging Paris, 
 with Suspicion filling the air, for you to outlive denuncia- 
 tion, when you are in communication with another aristo- 
 cratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself, who, more- 
 
 
290 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 over, has the mystery about him of having feigned death 
 and come to life again ! A plot in the prisons, of the for- 
 eigner against the Republic. A strong card — a certain 
 Guillotine card ! Do you play? " 
 
 "No! " returned the spy. "I throw up. I confess that 
 we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob, that I only 
 got away from England at the risk of being ducked to 
 death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that he 
 never would have got away at all but for that sham. 
 Though how this man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of 
 wonders to me." 
 
 "Never you trouble your head about this man," retorted 
 the contentious Mr. Cruncher; "you'll have trouble enough 
 with giving your attention to that gentleman. And look 
 here ! Once more ! " — Mr. Cruncher could not be restrained 
 from making rather an ostentatious parade of his liberality 
 — "I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a 
 guinea." 
 
 The Sheep of the prison turned from him to Sydney Car- 
 ton, and said, with more decision, " It has come to a point. 
 I go on duty soon, and can't overstay my time. You told 
 me you had a proposal; what is it? Now, it is of no use 
 asking too much of me. Ask me to do anything in my 
 office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I had 
 better trust my life to the chances of a refusal than the 
 chances of consent. In short, I should make that choice. 
 You talk of desperation. We are all desperate here. Re- 
 member ! I may denounce you if I think proper, and I cau 
 swear my way through stone walls, and so can others. 
 Now, what do you want with me? " 
 
 "Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Concier- 
 gerie? " 
 
 " I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an 
 escape possible," said the spy, firmly. 
 
 " Why need you tell me what I have not asked? You 
 are a turnkey at the Conciergerie? " 
 
 "I am sometimes." 
 
 "You can be when you choose? " 
 
 " I can pass in and out when I choose. " 
 
 Sydney Carton filled another glass with brandy, poured 
 it slowly out upon the hearth, and watched it as it dropped. 
 It being all spent, he said, rising : 
 
 " So far, we have spoken before these two, because it was 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 291 
 
 as well that the merits of the cards should not rest solely 
 between you and me. Come into the dark room here, and 
 let us have one final word alone." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE GAME MADE. 
 
 While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were 
 in the adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a 
 sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable 
 doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman's manner of 
 receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed 
 the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of 
 those limbs, and were trying them all; he examined his 
 finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention; 
 and whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught his, he was taken 
 with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow 
 of a hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be 
 an infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character. 
 
 "Jerry," said Mr. Lorry. "Come here." 
 
 Mr. Cruncher came forward sideways, with one of his 
 shoulders in advance of him. 
 
 " What have you been, besides a messenger? " 
 
 After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look 
 at his patron, Mr. Cruncher conceived the luminous idea 
 of replying, " Agricultooral character." 
 
 "My mind misgives me much," said Mr. Lorry, angrily 
 shaking a forefinger at him, " that you have used the re- 
 spectable and great house of Tellson's as a blind, and that 
 you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous de- 
 scription. If you have, don't expect me to befriend you 
 when you get back to England. If you have, don't expect 
 me to keep your secret. Tellson's shall not be imposed 
 upon." 
 
 "I hope, sir," pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, "that 
 a gentleman like yourself wot I've had the honour of odd 
 jobbing till I'm grey at it, would think twice about harm- 
 ing of me, even if it wos so — I don't say it is, but even if 
 it wos. And which it is to be took into account that if it 
 wos, it wouldn't, even then, be all o' one side. There'd 
 
292 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 be two sides to it. There might be medical doctors at the 
 present hour, a picking up their guineas where a honest 
 tradesman don't pick up his fardens — fardens! no, nor yet 
 his half fardens — half fardens! no, nor yet his quarter — a 
 banking away like smoke at Tellson's, and a cocking their 
 medical eyes at that tradesman on the sly, a going in and 
 going out to their own carriages — ah ! equally like smoke, 
 if not more so. Well, that 'ud be imposing, too, on Tell- 
 son's. For you cannot sarse the goose and not the gander. 
 And here's Mrs. Cruncher, or leastways wos in the Old 
 England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given, a 
 floppin' again the business to that degree as is ruinating 
 — stark ruinating ! Whereas them medical doctors' wives 
 don't flop — catch 'em at it! Or, if they flop, their flop- 
 pings goes in favour of more patients, and how can you 
 rightly have one without the t'other? Then, wot with un- 
 dertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sex- 
 tons, and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and 
 all in it), a man wouldn't get much by it, even if it wos so. 
 And wot little a man did get, would never prosper with 
 him, Mr. Lorry. He'd never have no good of it; he'd 
 want all along to be out of the line, if he could see his 
 way out, being once in — even if it wos so." 
 
 " Ugh ! " cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, nevertheless. 
 "I am shocked at the sight of you." 
 
 "Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir," pursued 
 Mr. Cruncher, "even if it wos so, which I don't say it 
 is " 
 
 "Don't prevaricate," said Mr. Lorry. 
 
 "No, I will not, sir," returned Mr. Cruncher, as if 
 nothing were further from his thoughts or practice — 
 " which I don't say it is — wot I would humbly offer to you, 
 sir, would be this. Upon that there stool, at that there 
 Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and growed 
 up to be a man, wot will errand you, message you, general- 
 light-job you, till your heels is where your head is, if such 
 should be your wishes. If it wos so, which I still don't 
 say it is (for I will not prewaricate to you, sir), let that 
 there boy keep his father's place, and take care of his 
 mother; don't blow upon that boy's father — do not do it, 
 sir — and let that father go into the line of the reg'lar dig- 
 gin', and make amends for what he would have un-dug — 
 if it wos so — by diggin' of 'em in with a will, and with 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 293 
 
 conwictions respectin' the futur' keepin' of 'em safe. 
 That, Mr. Lorry," said Mr. Cruncher, wiping his forehead 
 with his arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at 
 the peroration of his discourse, " is wot I would respect- 
 fully offer to you, sir. A man don't see all this here a 
 goin' on dreadful round him, in the way of Subjects with- 
 out heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to bring the price 
 down to porterage and hardly that, without havin' his seri- 
 ous thoughts of things. And these here would be mine, if 
 it wos so, entreatin' of you fur to bear in mind that wot I 
 said just now, I up and said in the good cause when I 
 might have kep' it back." 
 
 "That at least is true," said Mr. Lorry. " Say no more 
 now. It may be that I shall yet stand your friend, if you 
 deserve it, and repent in action — not in words. I want no 
 more words." 
 
 Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton 
 and the spy returned from the dark room. " Adieu, Mr. 
 Barsad," said the former; "our arrangement thus made, 
 you have nothing to fear from me." 
 
 He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. 
 Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what 
 he had done? 
 
 " Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have 
 ensured access to him, once." 
 
 Mr. Lorry's countenance fell. 
 
 "It is all I could do," said Carton. "To propose too 
 much, would be to put this man's head under the axe, and, 
 as he himself said, nothing worse could happen to him if 
 he were denounced. It was obviously the weakness of the 
 position. There is no help for it." 
 
 "But access to him," said Mr. Lorry, "if it should go ill 
 before the Tribunal, will not save him." 
 
 " I never said it would." 
 
 Mr. Lorry's eyes gradually sought the fire; his sym- 
 pathy with his darling, and the heavy disappointment of 
 this second arrest, gradually weakened them; he was an 
 old man now, overborne with anxiety of late, and his tears 
 fell. 
 
 "You are a good man and a true friend," said Carton, 
 in an altered voice. " Forgive me if I notice that you are 
 affected. I could not see my father weep, and sit by, care- 
 less. And I could not respect your sorrow more, if you 
 
 
294: A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 were my father. You are free from that misfortune, how- 
 ever." 
 
 Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual 
 manner, there was a true feeling and respect both in his 
 tone and in his touch, that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen 
 the better side of him, was wholly unprepared for. He 
 gave him his hand, and Carton gently pressed it. 
 
 "To return to poor Darnay," said Carton. "Don't tell 
 Her of this interview, or this arrangement. It would not 
 enable Her to go to see him. She might think it was con- 
 trived, in case of the worst, to convey to him the means of 
 anticipating the sentence." 
 
 Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly 
 at Carton to see if it were in his mind. It seemed to be; 
 he returned the look, and evidently understood it. 
 
 "She might think a thousand things," Carton said, "and 
 any of them would only add to her trouble. Don't speak 
 of me to her. As I said to you when I first came, I had 
 better not see her. I can put my hand out, to do any little 
 helpful work for her that my hand can find to do, without 
 that. You are going to her, I hope? She must be very 
 desolate to-night." 
 
 "I am going now, directly." 
 
 " I am glad of that. She has such a strong attachment 
 to you and reliance on you. How does she look?" 
 
 "Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh — almost like a 
 sob. It attracted Mr. Lorry's eyes to Carton's face, which 
 was turned to the fire. A light, or a shade (the old gen- 
 tleman could not have said which), passed from it as 
 swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-side on a wild 
 bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back one of the 
 little flaming logs, which was tumbling forward. He wore 
 the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in vogue, and the 
 light of the fire touching their light surfaces made him 
 look very pale, with his long brown hair, all un trimmed, 
 hanging loose about him. His indifference to fire was suf- 
 ficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance from 
 Mr. Lorry; his boot was still upon the hot embers of the 
 flaming log, when it had broken under the weight of his foot. 
 
 "I forgot it," he said. 
 
 Mr. Lorry's eyes were again attracted to his face. Tak- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 ing note of the wasted air which clouded the naturally 
 handsome features, and having the expression of prisoners' 
 faces fresh in his mind, he was strongly reminded of that 
 expression. 
 
 "And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?" 
 said Carton, turning to him. 
 
 " Yes. As I was telling you last night when Lucie came 
 in so unexpectedly, I have at length done all that I can do 
 here. I hoped to have left them in perfect safety, and 
 then to have quitted Paris. I have my Leave to Pass. I 
 was ready to go." 
 
 They were both silent. 
 
 " Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir? " said Car- 
 ton, wistfully. 
 
 •'I am in my seventy-eighth year." 
 
 "You have been useful all your life; steadily and con- 
 stantly occupied; trusted, respected, and looked up to?" 
 
 " I have been a man of business, ever since I have been 
 a man. Indeed, I may say that I was a man of business 
 when a boy." 
 
 " See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many 
 people will miss you when you leave it empty ! " 
 
 "A solitary old bachelor," answered Mr. Lorry, shaking 
 his head. " There is nobody to weep for me. 
 
 " How can you say that? Wouldn't She weep for you? 
 Wouldn't her child? " 
 
 "Yes, yes, thank God. I didn't quite mean what I 
 said. " 
 
 " It is a thing to thank God for; is it not? " 
 
 "Surely, surely." 
 
 " If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, 
 to-night, * I have secured to myself the love and attachment, 
 the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won 
 myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good 
 or serviceable to be remembered by ! ' your seventy -eight 
 years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they 
 not?" 
 
 "You say truly, Mr. Carton; I think they would be." 
 
 Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a 
 silence of a few moments, said : 
 
 " I should like to ask you : — Does your childhood seem 
 far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother's knee, 
 seem days of very long ago? " 
 
296 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered s 
 
 "Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. 
 For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the 
 circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be 
 one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. 
 My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had 
 long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so 
 old!), and by many associations of the days when what we 
 call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were 
 not confirmed in me." 
 
 " I understand the feeling ! " exclaimed Carton, with a 
 bright flush. " And you are the better for it? " 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising to 
 help him on with his outer coat; "but you," said Mr. 
 Lorry, reverting to the theme, " you are young. " 
 
 " Yes," said Carton. "I am not old, but my young way 
 was never the way to age. Enough of me." 
 
 "And of me, I am sure," said Mr. Lorry. Are you go- 
 ing out? " 
 
 "I'll walk with you to her gate. You know my vaga- 
 bond and restless habits. If I should prowl about the 
 streets a long time, don't be uneasy; I shall reappear in 
 the morning. You go to the Court to-morrow? " 
 
 "Yes, unhappily." 
 
 " I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My 
 Spy will find a place for me. Take my arm, sir." 
 
 Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down-stairs and out in 
 the streets. A few minutes brought them to Mr. Lorry's 
 destination. Carton left him there; but lingered at a little 
 distance, and turned back to the gate again when it was 
 shut, and touched it. He had heard of her going to the 
 prison every day. " She came out here, he said, looking 
 about him, "turned this way, must have trod on these 
 stones often. Let me follow in her steps." 
 
 It was ten o'clock at night when he stood before the 
 prison of La Force, where she had stood hundreds of times. 
 A little wood-sawyer, having closed his shop, was smoking 
 his pipe at his shop-door. 
 
 "Good night, citizen," said Sydney Carton, pausing in 
 going by; for, the man eyed him inquisitively. 
 
 "Good night, citizen." 
 
 " How goes the Republic? " 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 297 
 
 "You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to- 
 day. We shall mount to a hundred soon. Samson and his 
 men complain sometimes, of being exhausted. Ha, ha, ha! 
 He is so droll, that Samson. Such a Barber ! " 
 
 " Do you often go to see him " 
 
 "Shave? Always. Everyday. What a barber! You 
 have seen him at work? " 
 
 "Never." 
 
 " Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure 
 this to yourself, citizen; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, 
 in less than two pipes ! Less than two pipes. Word of 
 honour ! " 
 
 As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was 
 smoking, to explain how he timed the executioner, Carton 
 was so sensible of a rising desire to strike the life out of 
 him, that he turned away. 
 
 "But you are not English," said the wood-sawyer, 
 "though you wear English dress? " 
 
 " Yes," said Carton, pausing again, and answering over 
 his shoulder. 
 
 " You speak like a Frenchman." 
 
 "I am an old student here." 
 
 "Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman." 
 
 "Good night, citizen." 
 
 "But go and see that droll dog," the little man per- 
 sisted, calling after him. " And take a pipe with you! " 
 
 Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped 
 in the middle of the street under a glimmering lamp, and 
 wrote with his pencil on a scrap of paper. Then, travers- 
 ing with the decided step of one who remembered the way 
 well, several dark and dirty streets — much dirtier than 
 usual, for the best public thoroughfares remained un- 
 cleansed in those times of terror — he stopped at a chemist's 
 shop, which the owner was closing with his own hands. A 
 small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, up-hill thor- 
 oughfare, by a small, dim, crooked man. 
 
 Giving this citizen, too, good night r as he confronted him 
 at his counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him. 
 " Whew ! " the chemist whistled softly, as he read it. 
 "Hi! hi! hi!" 
 
 Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said : 
 
 " For you, citizen? " 
 
 "Forme." 
 21 
 
298 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "You will be careful to keep thern separate, citizen? 
 You know the consequences of mixing thern? " 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 Certain small packets were made and given to him. He 
 put them, one by one, in the breast of his inner coat, 
 counted out the money for them, and deliberately left the 
 shop. "There is nothing more to do," said he, glancing 
 upward at the moon, "until to-morrow. I can't sleep." 
 
 It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he 
 said these words aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor 
 was it more expressive of negligence than defiance. It was 
 the settled manner of a tired man, who had wandered and 
 struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into his 
 road and saw its end. 
 
 Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest 
 competitors as a youth of great promise, he had followed 
 his father to the grave. His mother had died, years be- 
 fore. These solemn words, which had been read at his fa- 
 ther's grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark 
 streets, among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the 
 clouds sailing on high above him. " I am the resurrection 
 ami the life, saith the Lord : he that believe th in me, 
 though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever 
 liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." 
 
 In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with nat- 
 ural sorrow rising in him for the sixty-three who had been 
 that day put to death, and for to-morrow's victims then 
 awaiting their doom in the prisons, and still of to-morrow's 
 and to-morrow's, the chain of association that brought the 
 words home, like a rusty old ship's anchor from the deep, 
 might have been easily found. He did not seek it, but 
 repeated them and went on. 
 
 With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where the 
 people were going to rest, forgetful through a few calm 
 hours of the horrors surrounding them; in the towers of 
 the churches, where no prayers were said, for the popular 
 revulsion had even travelled that length of self-destruction 
 from years of priestly impostors, plunderers, and profligates; 
 in the distant burial-places, reserved, as they wrote upon 
 the gates, for Eternal Sleep; in the abounding gaols; and 
 in the streets along which the sixties rolled to a death 
 which had become so common and material, that no sor- 
 rowful story of a haunting Spirit ever arose among the peo- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 299 
 
 pie out of all the working of the Guillotine; with a solemn 
 interest in the whole life and death of the city settling 
 down to its short nightly pause in fury; Sydney Carton 
 crossed the Seine again for the lighter streets. 
 
 Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were 
 liable to be suspected, and gentility hid its head in red 
 nightcaps, and put on heavy shoes, and trudged. But, the 
 theatres were all well filled, and the people poured cheer- 
 fully out as he passed, and went chatting home. At one 
 of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with a mother, 
 looking for a way across the street through the mud. He 
 carried the child over, and before the timid arm was loosed 
 from his neck asked her for a kiss. 
 
 " I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord : he 
 that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
 live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never 
 die." 
 
 Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, 
 the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the 
 air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes repeated 
 them to himself as he walked; but, he heard them always. 
 
 The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge 
 listening to the water as it splashed the river- walls of the 
 Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses 
 and cathedral shone bright- in the light of the moon, the 
 day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. 
 Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale 
 and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation 
 were delivered over to Death's dominion. 
 
 But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those 
 words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his 
 heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, 
 with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to 
 span the air between him and the sun, while the river 
 sparkled under it. 
 
 The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like 
 a congenial friend, in the morning stillness. He walked 
 by the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and 
 warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he awoke 
 and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, 
 watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until 
 the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea. — "Like 
 me!" 
 
300 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a 
 dead leaf, then glided into his view, floated by him, and 
 died away. As its silent track in the water disappeared, 
 the prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a merci- 
 ful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors, 
 ended in the words, "I am the resurrection and the life." 
 
 Mr. Lorry was already out when he got back, and it was 
 easy to surmise where the good old man was gone. Sydney 
 Carton drank nothing but a little coffee, ate some bread, 
 and, having washed and changed to refresh himself, went 
 out to the place of trial. 
 
 The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep 
 — whom many fell away from in dread — pressed him into 
 an obscure corner among the crowd. Mr. Lorry was there, 
 and Doctor Manette was there. She was there, sitting 
 beside her father. 
 
 When her husband was brought in, she turned a look 
 upon him, so sustaining, so encouraging, so full of admir- 
 ing love and pitying tenderness, yet so courageous for his 
 sake, that it called the healthy blood into his face, bright- 
 ened his glance, and animated his heart. If there had been 
 any eyes to notice the influence of her look, on Sydney 
 Carton, it would have been seen to be the same influence 
 exactly. 
 
 Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order 
 of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable 
 hearing. There could have been no such Revolution, if all 
 laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so mons- 
 trously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the Revolu- 
 tion was to scatter them all to the winds. 
 
 Every eye was turned to the jury. The same deter- 
 mined patriots and good republicans as yesterday and the 
 day before, and to-morrow and the day after. Eager and 
 prominent among them, one man with a craving face, and 
 his fingers perpetually hovering about his lips, whose ap- 
 pearance gave great satisfaction to the spectators. A life- 
 thirsting, cannibal-looking, bloody-minded juryman, the 
 Jacques Three of St. Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury 
 of dogs empannelled to try the deer. 
 
 Every eye then turned to the five judges and the public 
 prosecutor. No favourable leaning in that quarter to-day. 
 A fell, uncompromising, murderous business-meaning there. 
 Every eye then sought some other eye in the crowd, and 
 
0; ^ 
 
 o 
 
 C ' 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 301 
 
 gleamed at it approvingly; and heads nodded at one an- 
 other, before bending forward with a strained attention. 
 
 Charles Evreuionde, called Darnay. Released yester- 
 day. Reaccused and retaken yesterday. Indictment de- 
 livered to him last night. Suspected and Denounced 
 enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of 
 tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had used 
 their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the 
 people. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, in right of 
 such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law. 
 
 To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public 
 Prosecutor. 
 
 The President asked, was the Accused openly denounced 
 or secretly? 
 
 "Openly, President." 
 
 " By whom? " 
 
 " Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine- vendor of St. An- 
 toine." 
 
 "Good." 
 
 "Therese Defarge, his wife." •" 
 
 "Good." 
 
 "Alexandre Manette, physician." 
 
 A great uproar took place in the court, and in the midst 
 of it, Doctor Manette was seen, pale and trembling, stand- 
 ing where he had been seated. 
 
 " President, I indignantly protest to you that this is a 
 forgery and a fraud. You know the accused to be the hus- 
 band of my daughter. My daughter, and those dear to 
 her, are far dearer to me than my life. Who and where is 
 the false conspirator who says that I denounce the husband 
 of my child ! " 
 
 " Citizen Manette, be tranquil. To fail in submission to 
 the authority of the Tribunal would be to put yourself out 
 of Law. As to what is dearer to you than life, nothing 
 can be so dear to a good citizen as the Republic." 
 
 Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke. The President 
 rang his bell, and with warmth resumed. 
 
 " If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of 
 your child herself, you would have no duty but to sacrifice 
 her. Listen to what is to follow. In the meanwhile, be 
 silent ! " 
 
 Frantic acclamations were again raised. Doctor Manette 
 sat down, with his eyes looking around, and his lips tre»- 
 
302 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Ming; his daughter drew closer to him. The craving man 
 on the jury rubbed his hands together, and restored the 
 usual hand to his mouth. 
 
 Defarge was produced, when the court was quiet enough 
 to admit of his being heard, and rapidly expounded the 
 story of the imprisonment, and of his having been a mere 
 boy in the Doctor's service, and of the release, and of the 
 state of the prisoner when released and delivered to him. 
 This short examination followed, for the court was quick 
 with its work. 
 
 (i You did good service at the taking of the Bastille, citi- 
 zen?" 
 
 "I believe so." 
 
 Here, an excited woman screeched from the crowd: 
 " You were one of the best patriots there. Why not say so? 
 You were a cannonier that day there, and you were among 
 the first to enter the accursed fortress when it fell. Pa- 
 triots, I speak the truth ! " 
 
 It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm commenda- 
 tions of the audience, thus assisted the proceedings. The 
 President rang his bell; but, The Vengeance, warming 
 with encouragement, shrieked, -'I defy that bell! " wherein 
 she was likewise much commended, 
 
 " Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within 
 the Bastille, citizen." 
 
 "I knew," said Defarge, looking down at his wife, who 
 stood at the bottom of the steps on which he was raised, 
 looking steadily up at him; "I knew that this prisoner, of 
 whom I speak, had been confined in a cell known as One 
 Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it from, himself. 
 He knew himself by no other name than One Hundred and 
 Five, North Tower, when he made shoes under my care. 
 As I serve my gun that day, I resolve, when the place 
 shall fall, to examine that cell. It falls. I mount to the 
 cell, with a fellow-citizen who is one of the Jury, directed 
 by a gaoler. I examine.it, very closely. In a hole in the 
 chimney, where a stone has been worked out and replaced, 
 I find a written paper. This is that written paper. I have 
 made it my business to examine some specimens of the 
 writing of Doctor Manette. This is the writing- of Doctor 
 Manette. I confide this paper, in the writing of Doctor 
 Manette, to the hands of the President." 
 
 "Let it be read." 
 
A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 303 
 
 f In a dead silence and stillness — the prisoner under trial 
 >oking lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from 
 }.m to look with solicitude at her father, Doctor Manette 
 eeping his eyes fixed on the reader, Madame Defarge 
 gver taking hers from the prisoner, Defarge never taking 
 is from his feasting wife, and all the other eyes there in- 
 mt upon the Doctor, who saw none of them — the paper 
 as read, as follows. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SUBSTANCE OP THE SHADOW 
 
 I " I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native 
 E Beauyais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this 
 .elancholy paper in my doleful cell in the Bastille, during 
 le last month of the year, 1767. I write it at stolen in- 
 prvals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in the 
 all of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously 
 .ade a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand 
 iay find it there, when I and my sorrows are dust. 
 
 " These words are formed by the rusty iron point with 
 hich I write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and char- 
 oal from the chimney, mixed with blood, in the last 
 aonth of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope has quite 
 eparted from my breast. I know from terrible warnings 
 i have noted in myself that my reason will not long remain 
 nimpaired, but I solemnly declare that I am at this time 
 ti the possession of my right mind — that my memory is 
 ttact and circumstantial— and that I write the truth as I 
 aall answer for these my last recorded words, whether 
 ley be ever read by men or not, at the Eternal Judgment- 
 sat. 
 
 " One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of De- 
 smber (I think the twenty-second of the month) in the 
 ear 1757, I was walking on a retired part of the quay by 
 ae Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air, at an hour's 
 istance from my place of residence in the Street of the 
 ■chool of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind 
 ie, driven very fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage 
 
304 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 pass, apprehensive that it might otherwise run me down, a 
 head was put out at the window, and a voice called to the 
 driver to stop. 
 
 " The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein 
 in his horses, and the same voice called to me by my name. 
 I answered. The carriage was then so far in advance of 
 me that two gentlemen had time to open the door and 
 alight before I came up with it. I observed that they were 
 both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to conceal them- 
 selves. As they stood side by side near the carriage door, 
 I also observed that they both looked of about my own age, 
 or rather younger, and that they were greatly alike, in stat- 
 ure, manner, voice, and (as far as I could see) face too. 
 
 " ' You are Doctor Manette? ' said one. 
 
 "'lam.' 
 
 " ' Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other; 
 ' the young physician, originally an expert surgeon, who 
 within the last year or two has made a rising reputation in 
 Paris?' 
 
 " ' Gentlemen,' I returned, ' I am that Doctor Manette of 
 whom you speak so graciously. ' 
 
 " ' We have been to your residence,' said the first, ' and 
 not being so fortunate as to find you there, and being in- 
 formed that you were probably walking in this direction, 
 we followed, in the hope of overtaking you. Will you 
 please to enter the carriage? ' 
 
 "The manner of both was imperious, and they both 
 moved, as these words were spoken, so as to place me be- 
 tween themselves and the carriage door. They were armed. 
 I was not. 
 
 " ' Gentlemen,' said I, ' pardon me; but I usually inquire 
 who does me the honour to seek my assistance, and what 
 is the nature of the case to which I am summoned.' 
 
 " The reply to this was made by him who had spoken 
 second. ' Doctor, your clients are people of condition. As 
 to the nature of the case, our confidence in your skill as- 
 sures us that you will ascertain it for yourself better than 
 we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to enter the 
 carriage? ' 
 
 " I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in si- 
 lence. They both entered after me — the last springing in, 
 after putting up the steps. The carriage turned about, and 
 drove on at its former speed. 
 
A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 305 
 
 "I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I 
 have no doubt that it is, word for word, the same. I de- 
 scribe everything exactly as it took place, constraining my 
 mind not to wander from the task. Where I make the 
 broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and 
 put my paper in its hiding-place. * * * * 
 
 " The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North 
 Barrier, and emerged upon the country road. At two- 
 thirds of a league from the Barrier — I did not estimate the 
 distance at that time, but afterwards when I traversed it — 
 it struck out of the main avenue, and presently stopped at 
 a solitary house. We all three alighted, and walked, by 
 a damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected foun- 
 tain had overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not 
 opened immediately, in answer to the ringing of the bell, 
 and one of my two conductors struck the man who opened 
 it, with his heavy riding glove, across the face. 
 
 " There was nothing in this action to attract my particu- 
 lar attention, for I had seen common people struck more 
 commonly than dogs. But, the other of the two, being 
 angry likewise, struck the man in like manner with his 
 arm ; the look and bearing of the brothers were then so ex- 
 actly alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin 
 brothers. 
 
 " From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which 
 we found locked, and which one of the brothers had opened 
 to admit us, and had relocked), I had heard cries proceed- 
 ing from an upper chamber. I was conducted to this 
 chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we ascended 
 the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the 
 brain, lying on a bed. 
 
 "The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; 
 assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair was torn and 
 ragged, and her arms were bound to her sides with sashes 
 and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were all 
 portions of a gentleman's dress. On one of them, which 
 was -a fringed scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the 
 armorial bearings of a Noble, and the letter E. 
 
 " I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation 
 of the patient; for, in her restless strivings she had turned 
 over on her face on the edge of the bed, had drawn the end 
 of the scarf into her mouth, and was in danger of suffoca- 
 tion. My first act was to put out my hand to relieve her 
 22 
 
306 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 breathing; and in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery 
 in the corner caught my sight. 
 
 " I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her 
 breast to calm her and keep her down, and looked into her 
 face. Her eyes were dilated and wild, and she constantly 
 uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the words, ' My hus- 
 band, my father, and my brother ! ' and then counted up to 
 twelve, and said, ' Hush ! ' For an instant, and no more, 
 she would pause to listen, and then the piercing shrieks 
 would begin again, and she would repeat the cry ' My hus- 
 band, my father, and my brother ! ' and would count up to 
 twelve, and say, ' Hush ! ' There was no variation in the 
 order, or the manner. There was no cessation, but the 
 regular moment's pause, in the utterance of these sounds. 
 
 " ' How long,' I asked, ' has this lasted? ' 
 
 " To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder 
 and the younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised 
 the most authority. It was the elder who replied, ' Since 
 about this hour last night. ' 
 
 " ' She has a husband, a father, and a brother? ' 
 
 "' A brother.' 
 
 '" - I do not address her brother? ' 
 
 " He answered with great contempt, ' No. ' 
 
 " ' She has some recent association with the number 
 twelve? ' 
 
 ■'The younger brother impatiently rejoined, ' With twelve 
 o'clock?' 
 
 " ' See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon 
 her breast, 'how useless I am, as you have brought me ! If 
 I had known what I was coming to see, I could have come 
 provided. As it is, time must be lost. There are no medi- 
 cines to be obtained, in this lonely place.' 
 
 "The elder brother looked to the younger, who said 
 haughtily, ' There is a case of medicines here; ' and brought 
 it from a closet, and put it on the table. * * # * 
 
 " I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the 
 stoppers to my lips. If I had wanted to use anything save 
 narcotic medicines that were poisons in themselves, I would 
 not have administered any of those. 
 
 " ' Do you doubt them? ' asked the younger brother. 
 
 " ' You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, 
 and said no more. 
 
 " I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 307 
 
 after many efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I 
 intended to repeat it after a while, and as it was necessary 
 to watch its influence, I then sat down by the side of the 
 bed. There was a timid and suppressed woman in attend- 
 ance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had retreated into 
 a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently 
 furnished — evidently, recently occupied and temporarily 
 used. Some thick old hangings had been nailed up before 
 the windows, to deaden the sound of the shrieks. They 
 continued to be uttered in their regular succession, with the 
 cry, ' My husband, my father, and my brother! ' the count- 
 ing up to twelve, and • Hush ! ' The frenzy was so violent, 
 that I had not unfastened the bandages restraining the 
 arms; but I had looked to them, to see that they were not 
 painful. The only spark of encouragement in the case, 
 was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast had this much 
 soothing influence, that for minutes at a time it tranquil- 
 lised the figure. It had no effect upon the cries; no pen- 
 dulum could be more regular. 
 
 " For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), 
 I had sat by the side of the bed for half an hour, with the 
 two brothers looking on, before the elder said : 
 
 " ' There is another patient.' 
 
 "I was startled, and asked, ' Is it a pressing case? ' 
 
 " ' You had better see,' he carelessly answered; and took 
 up a light. * * * * 
 
 "The other patient lay in a back room across a second 
 staircase, which was a species of loft over a stable. There 
 was a low plastered ceiling to a part of it; the rest was 
 open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and there were beams 
 across. Hay and straw were stored in that portion of the 
 place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand. 
 I had to pass through that part, to get at the other. My 
 memory is circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with 
 these details, and I see them all, in this my cell in the 
 Bastille, near the close of the tenth year of my captivity, 
 as I saw them all that night. 
 
 " On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown un- 
 der his head, lay a handsome peasant boy — a boy of not 
 more than seventeen at the , most. He lay on his back, 
 with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his breast, 
 and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not 
 see where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over 
 
308 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 him; but, I could see that he was dying of a wound from 
 a sharp point. 
 
 "-' I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. ' Let me ex- 
 amine it.' 
 
 " ' I do not want it examined,' he answered; ' let it be.' 
 
 " It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me 
 move his hand away. The wound was a sword-thrust, re- 
 ceived from twenty to twenty-four hours before, but no 
 skill could have saved him if it had been looked to without 
 delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to 
 the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this hand- 
 some boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a 
 wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all as if he were a 
 fellow-creature. 
 
 " ' How has this been done, monsieur? ' said I. 
 
 " ' A crazed young common dog ! A serf ! Forced my 
 brother to draw upon him, and has fallen by my brother's 
 sword — like a gentleman.' 
 
 " There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred human- 
 ity, in this answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge 
 that it was inconvenient to have that different order of 
 creature dying there, and that it would have been better if 
 he had died in the usual obscure routine of his vermin kind. 
 He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about 
 the boy, or about his fate. 
 
 "The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had 
 spoken, and they now slowly moved to me. 
 
 "'Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we 
 common dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, 
 outrage us, beat us, kill us; but we have a little pride left, 
 sometimes. She have you seen her, Doctor? ' 
 
 " The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though 
 subdued by the distance. He referred to them, as if she 
 were lying in our presence. 
 
 " I said, ' I have seen her. ' 
 
 " ' She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shame- 
 ful rights, these Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our 
 sisters, many years, but we have had good girls among us. 
 I know it, and have heard my father say so. She was a 
 good girl. She was betrothed to a good young man, too : 
 a tenant of his. We were all tenants of his — that man's 
 who stands there. The other is his brother, the worst of a 
 bad race,' 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 309 
 
 " It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gath- 
 ered bodily force to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a 
 dreadful emphasis. 
 
 " ' We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as 
 all we common dogs are by those superior Beings — taxed 
 by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without 
 pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed 
 scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbid- 
 den for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, 
 pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we chanced 
 to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door barred 
 and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it 
 and take it from us — I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, 
 and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a 
 dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that 
 what we should most pray for, was, that our women might 
 be barren and our miserable race die out ! ' 
 
 " I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, 
 bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed that it must be 
 latent in the people somewhere; but, I had never seen it 
 break out, until I saw it in the dying boy. 
 
 " ' Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ail- 
 ing at that time, poor fellow, and she married her lover, 
 that she might tend and comfort him in our cottage — our 
 dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had not been mar- 
 ried many weeks, when that man's brother saw her and 
 admired her, and asked that man to lend her to him — for 
 what are husbands among us ! He was willing enough, but 
 my sister was good and virtuous, and hated his brother 
 with a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two then, 
 to persuade her husband to use his influence with her, to 
 make her willing? ' 
 
 "The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly 
 turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all 
 he said was true. The two opposing kinds of pride con- 
 fronting one another, I can see, even in this Bastille; the 
 gentleman's, all negligent indifference; the peasant's, all 
 trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge. 
 
 " ' You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of 
 these Nobles to harness us common dogs to carts, and drive 
 us. They so harnessed him and drove him. You know 
 that it is among their Rights to keep us in their grounds 
 all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble sleep 
 
310 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the unwhole- 
 some mists at night, and ordered him back into his harness 
 in the day. But he was not persuaded. No ! Taken out 
 of harness one day at noon, to feed — if he could find food 
 — he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the 
 bell, and died on her bosom.' 
 
 " Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his 
 determination to tell all his wrong. He forced back the 
 gathering shadows of death, as he forced his clenched right 
 hand to remain clenched, and to cover his wound. 
 
 " ' Then, with that man's permission and even with his 
 aid, his brother took her away; in spite of what I know she 
 must have told his brother — and what that is, will not be 
 long unknown to you, Doctor, if it is now — his brother took 
 her away — for his pleasure and diversion, for a little while. 
 I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the tidings 
 home, our father's heart burst; he never spoke one of the 
 words that filled it, I took my young sister (for I have 
 another) to a place beyond the reach of this man, and 
 where, at least, she will never be his vassal. Then, I 
 tracked the brother here, and last night climbed in — a 
 common dog, but sword in hand. — Where is the loft win- 
 dow? It was somewhere here? ' 
 
 "The room was darkening to his sight; the world was 
 narrowing around him. I glanced about me, and saw that 
 the hay and straw were trampled over the floor, as if there 
 had been a struggle. 
 
 " ' She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near 
 us till he was dead. He came in and first tossed me some 
 pieces of money; then struck at me with a whip. But I, 
 though a common dog, so struck at him as to make him 
 draw. Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the 
 sword that he stained with my common blood; he drew to 
 defend himself — thrust at me with all his skill for his life. ' 
 
 "My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on 
 the fragments of a broken sword, lying among the hay. 
 That weapon was a gentleman's. In another place, lay an 
 old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's. 
 
 " ' Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he? ' 
 
 " ' He is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and think- 
 ing that he referred to the brother. 
 
 " ' He ! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me. 
 Where is the man who was here? Turn my face to him.' 
 
 il 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 311 
 
 "I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. Bnt, 
 invested for the moment with extraordinay power, he raised 
 himself completely : obliging me to rise too, or I could not 
 have still supported him. 
 
 "'Marquis,' said the boy, turned to him with his eyes 
 opened wide, and his right hand raised, ' in the days when 
 all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and 
 yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them. I 
 mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that I do it. 
 In the days when all these things are to be answered for, 
 I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to an- 
 swer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon 
 him; as a sign that I do it.' 
 
 " Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and 
 with his forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for 
 an instant with the finger yet raised, and as it dropped, he 
 dropped with it, and I laid him down dead. * * * * 
 
 " When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I 
 found her raving in precisely the same order of continuity. 
 I knew that this might last for many hours, and that it 
 would probably end in the silence of the grave. 
 
 " I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at 
 the side of the bed until the night was far advanced. She 
 never abated the piercing quality of her shrieks, never 
 stumbled in the distinctness or the order of her words. 
 They were always ! My husband, my father, and my 
 brother! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 
 nine, ten, eleven, twelve- Hush ! ' 
 
 " This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first 
 saw her. I had come and gone twice, and was again sit- 
 ting by her, when she began to falter. I did what little 
 could be done to assist that opportunity, and by-and-bye 
 she sank into a lethargy, and iay like the dead. 
 
 " It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after 
 a long and fearful storm. I released her arms, and called 
 the woman to assist me to compose her figure and the dress 
 she had torn. It was then that I knew her condition to be 
 that of one in whom the first expectations of being a mother 
 have arisen; and it was then that I lost the little hope I 
 had had of her. 
 
 " ' Is she dead? ' asked the Marquis, whom I will still 
 describe as the elder brother, coming booted into the room 
 from his horse. 
 
812 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " ' Not dead,' said I; * but like to die.' 
 
 " ' What strength there is in these common bodies ! ' he 
 said, looking down at her with some curiosity. 
 
 "'There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, 'in 
 sorrow and despair.' 
 
 " He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at 
 them. He moved a chair with his foot near to mine, or- 
 dered the woman away, and said in a subdued voice, 
 
 " ' Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these 
 hinds, I recommended that your aid should be invited. 
 Your reputation is high, and, as a young man with your 
 fortune to make, you are probably mindful of your interest. 
 The things that you see here, are things to be seen, and not 
 spoken of.' 
 
 " I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided an- 
 swering. 
 
 " ' Do you honour me with your attention, Doctor? ' 
 
 "'Monsieur,' said I, 'in my profession, the communica- 
 tions of patients are always received in confidence. ' I was 
 guarded in my answer, for I was troubled in my mind with 
 what I had heard and seen. 
 
 " Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully 
 tried the pulse and the heart. There was life, and no 
 more. Looking round as I resumed my seat, I found both 
 the brothers intent upon me. * * * * 
 
 " I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I 
 am so fearful of being detected and consigned to an under- 
 ground cell and total darkness, that I must abridge this 
 narrative. There is no confusion or failure in my memory; 
 it can recall, and could detail, every word that was ever 
 spoken between me and those brothers. 
 
 " She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could 
 understand some few syllables that she said to me, by 
 placing my ear close to her lips. She asked me where she 
 was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. It was in 
 vain that I asked her for her family name. She faintly 
 shook her head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the 
 boy had done. 
 
 " I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until 
 I had told the brothers she was sinking fast, and could not 
 live another day. Until then, though no one was ever pre- 
 sented to her consciousness save the woman and myself, 
 one or other of them had always jealously sat behind the 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 313 
 
 curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But 
 when it came to that, they seemed careless what communi- 
 cation I might hold with her; as if — the thought passed 
 through my mind — I were dying too. 
 
 " I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the 
 younger brother's (as I call him) having crossed swords 
 with a peasant, and that peasant a boy. The only consid- 
 eration that appeared to affect the mind of either of them 
 was the consideration that this was highly degrading to 
 the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the 
 younger brother's eyes, their expression reminded me that 
 he disliked me deeply, for knowing what I knew from the 
 boy. He was smoother and more polite to me than the 
 elder; but I saw this. I also saw that I was an incum- 
 brance in the mind of the elder, too. 
 
 " My patient died, two hours before midnight — at a time, 
 by my watch, answering almost to the minute when I had 
 first seen her. I was alone with her, when her forlorn 
 young head drooped gently on one side, and all her earthly 
 wrongs and sorrows ended. 
 
 "The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, im- 
 patient to ride away. I had heard them, alone at the bed- 
 side, striking their boots with their riding- whips, and loi- 
 tering up and down. 
 
 " ' At last she is dead? ' said the elder, when I went 
 in. 
 
 " ' She is dead,' said I. 
 
 " ' I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words as he 
 turned round. 
 
 " He had before offered me money, which I had post- 
 poned taking. He now gave me a rouleau of gold. I took 
 it from his hand, but laid it on the table. I had considered 
 the question, and had resolved to accept nothing. 
 
 " ' Pray excuse me,' said I. ' Under the circumstances, 
 no.' 
 
 " They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I 
 bent mine to them, and we parted without another word 
 on either side. * * * * 
 
 "I am weary,, weary, weary — worn down by misery. I 
 cannot read what I have written with this gaunt hand. 
 
 " Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at 
 my door in a little box, with my name on the outside. 
 From the first, I had anxiously considered what I ought to 
 
314 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 do. I decided, that day, to write privately to trie Minister, 
 stating the nature of the two cases to which I had been 
 summoned, and the place to which I had gone : in effect, 
 stating all the circumstances. I knew what Court influence 
 was, and what the immunities of the Nobles were, and I 
 expected that the matter would never be heard of; but, I 
 wished to relieve my own mind. I had kept the matter a 
 profound secret, even from my wife; and this, too, I re- 
 solved to state in my letter, I had no apprehension what- 
 ever of my real danger; but I was conscious that there 
 might be danger for others, if others were compromised by 
 possessing the knowledge that I possessed. 
 
 " I was much engaged that day, and could not complete 
 my letter that night. I rose long before my usual time 
 next morning to finish it. It was the last day of the year. 
 The letter was lying before me just completed, when I 
 was told that a lady waited, who wished to see me. * * * * 
 
 " I am growing more and more unequal to the task I 
 have set myself. It is so cold, so dark, my senses are so 
 benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so dreadful. 
 
 " The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not 
 marked for long life. She was in great agitation. She 
 presented herself to me as the wife of the Marquis St. 
 Evremonde. I connected the title by which the boy had 
 addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroid- 
 ered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the 
 conclusion that I had seen that nobleman very lately. 
 
 "My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the 
 words of our conversation. I suspect that I am watched 
 more closely than I was, and I know not at what times I 
 may be watched. She had in part suspected, and in part 
 discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her hus- 
 band's share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not 
 know that the girl was dead.. Her hope had been, she said 
 in great distress, to show her, in secret, a woman's sym- 
 pathy. Her hope had been to avert the wrath of Heaven 
 from a House that had long been hateful to the suffering 
 many. 
 
 ' " She had reasons for believing that there was a young 
 sister living, and her greatest desire was, to help that sis- 
 ter. I could tell her nothing but that there was such a 
 sister; beyond tb at, I knew nothing. Her inducement to 
 come to me, relying on my confidence, had been the hope 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 315 
 
 that I could tell her the name and place of abode. Where- 
 as, to this wretched hour I am ignorant of both. * * * * 
 
 " These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from 
 me, with a warning, yesterday. I must finish my record 
 to-day. 
 
 " She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in 
 her marriage. How could she be ! The brother distrusted 
 and disliked her, and his influence was all opposed to her; 
 she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her husband too. 
 When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a 
 pretty boy from two to three years old, in her carriage. 
 
 " ' For his sake, Doctor, ' she said, pointing to him in 
 tears, ' I would do all I can to make what poor amends I 
 can. He will never prosper in his inheritance otherwise. 
 I have a presentiment that if no other innocent atonement 
 is made for this, it will one day be required of him. What 
 I have left to call my own — it is little beyond the worth of 
 a few jewels — I will make it the first charge of his life to 
 bestow, with the compassion and lamenting of his dead 
 mother, on this injured family, if the sister can be discov- 
 ered. ' 
 
 " She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, ' It is for 
 thine own dear sake. Thou wilt be faithful, little Charles? * 
 The child answered her bravely, ' Yes ! ' I kissed her 
 hand, and she took him in her arms, and went away caress- 
 ing him. I never saw her more. 
 
 "As she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith 
 that I knew it, I added no mention of it to my letter. I 
 sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of my own hands, 
 delivered it myself that day. 
 
 "That night, the last night of the year, towards nine 
 o'clock, a man in a black dress rang at my gate, demanded 
 to see me, and softly followed my servant, Ernest Defarge, 
 a youth, up-stairs. When my servant came into the room 
 where I sat with my wife — my wife, beloved of my 
 heart ! My fair young English wife ! — we saw the man, 
 who was supposed to be at the gate, standing silent behind 
 him. 
 
 "An urgent case in the Eue St. Honore, he said. It 
 would not detain me, he had a coach in waiting. 
 
 " It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. Whea 
 I was clear of the house, a black muffler was drawn tightly 
 over my mouth from behind, and my arms were pinioned 
 
 
316 A TALE OP TWO CTTIE& 
 
 The two brothers crossed the road from a dark corner, 
 and identified me with a single, gesture. The Marquis 
 took from his pocket the letter I had written, showed it 
 me, burnt it in the light of a lantern that was held, and 
 extinguished the ashes with his foot. Not a word was 
 spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my living 
 grave. 
 
 " If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of 
 either of the brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant 
 me any tidings of my dearest wife — so much as to let me 
 know by a word whether alive or dead — I might have 
 thought that He had not quite abandoned them. But, now 
 I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, 
 and that they have no part in His mercies. And them and 
 their descendants, to the last of their race, I, Alexandre 
 Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 
 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when 
 all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them 
 to Heaven and to earth." 
 
 A terrible sound arose when the reading of this docu- 
 ment was done. A sound of craving and eagerness that 
 had nothing articulate in it but blood. The narrative 
 called up the most revengeful passions of the time, and 
 there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped 
 before it. 
 
 Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that audi- 
 tory, to show how the Defarges had not made the paper 
 public, with the other captured Bastille memorials borne in 
 procession, and had kept it, biding their time. Little need 
 to show that this detested family name had long been an- 
 athematised by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the 
 fatal register. The man never trod ground whose virtues 
 and services would have sustained him in that place that 
 day, against such denunciation. 
 
 And all the worse for the doomed man, that the de- 
 nouncer was a well-known citizen, his own attached friend, 
 the father of his wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of 
 the populace was, for imitations of the questionable public 
 virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and self-immolations 
 on the people's altar. Therefore when the President said 
 (else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the 
 good physician of the Republic would deserve better still 
 of the Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of Aris- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 317 
 
 tocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy in 
 making his daughter a widow and her child an orphan, 
 there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch 
 of human sympathy. 
 
 " Much influence around him, has that Doctor? " mur- 
 mured Madame Defarge, smiling to The Vengeance. " Save 
 him now, my Doctor, save him ! " 
 
 At every juryman's vote, there was a roar. Another 
 and another. Boar and roar. 
 
 Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aris- 
 tocrat, an enemy of the Eepublic, a notorious oppressor of 
 the People. Back to the Conciergerie, and Death within 
 four-and-twenty hours ! 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 DUSK. 
 
 The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to 
 die, fell under the sentence, as if she had been mortally 
 stricken. But, she uttered no sound; and so strong was 
 the voice within her, representing that it was she of all the 
 world who must uphold him in his misery and not aug- 
 ment it, that it quickly raised her, even from that shock. 
 
 The Judges having to take part in a public demonstra- 
 tion out of doors, the tribunal adjourned. The quick noise 
 and movement of the court's emptying itself by many pas- 
 sages had not ceased, when Lucie stood stretching out her 
 arms towards her husband, with nothing in her face but 
 love and consolation. 
 
 " If I might touch him ! If I might embrace him once ! 
 0, good citizens, if you would have so much compassion 
 for us ! " 
 
 There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the four 
 men who had taken him last night, and Barsad. The peo- 
 ple had all poured out to the show in the streets. Barsad 
 proposed to the rest, "Let her embrace him then; it is but 
 a moment." It was silently acquiesced in, and they passed 
 her over the seats in the hall to a raised place, where he, 
 by leaning over the dock, could fold her in his arms. 
 
 "Farewell, dear darling of my soul. My parting bless- 
 
318 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 ing on my love. We shall meet again, where the weary 
 are at rest ! " 
 
 They were her husband's words, as he held her to his 
 bosom. 
 
 "I can bear it, dear Charles. I am supported from 
 above: don't suffer for me. A parting blessing for our 
 child." 
 
 " I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say fare- 
 well to her by you." 
 
 "My husband. No! A moment!" He was tearing 
 himself apart from her. " We shall not be separated long. 
 I feel that this will break my heart by-and-bye; but I will 
 do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God will 
 raise up friends for her, as He did for me." 
 
 Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on 
 his knees to both of them, but that Darnay put out a hand 
 and seized him, crying : 
 
 " No, no ! What have you done, what have you done, 
 that you should kneel to us ! We know now, what a strug- 
 gle you made of old. We know now, what you underwent 
 when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. 
 We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, 
 and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with all 
 our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with 
 you ! " 
 
 Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through 
 his white hair, and wring them with a shriek of anguish. 
 
 "It could not be otherwise," said the prisoner. "All 
 things have worked together as they have fallen out. It 
 was the always- vain endeavour to discharge my poor moth- 
 er's trust that first brought my fatal presence near you. 
 Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not 
 in nature to so unhappy a beginning. Be comforted, and 
 forgive me. Heaven bless you! " 
 
 As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood 
 looking after him with her hands touching one another in 
 the attitude of prayer, and with a radiant look upon her 
 face, in which there was even a comforting smile. As he 
 went out at the prisoners' door, she turned, laid her head 
 lovingly on her father's breast, tried to speak to him, and 
 fell at his feet, -ir 
 
 Then, issuing from the obscure corner from winch he had 
 never moved, Sydney Carton came and took her up. Only 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 319 
 
 her father and Mr. Lorry were with her. His arm trembled 
 as it raised her, and supported her head. Yet, there was 
 an air about him that was not all of pity — that had a flush 
 of pride in it. 
 
 " Shall I take her to a coach? I shall never feel her 
 weight. " 
 
 He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her tenderly 
 down in a coach. Her father and their old friend got into 
 it, and he took his seat beside the driver. 
 
 When they arrived at the gateway where he had paused 
 in the dark not many hours before, to picture to himself 
 on which of the rough stones of the street her feet had 
 trodden, he lifted her again, and carried her up the stair- 
 case to their rooms. There, he laid her down on a couch, 
 where her child and Miss Pross wept over her. 
 
 "Don't recall her to herself," he said, softly, to the lat- 
 ter, "she is better so. Don't revive her to consciousness, 
 while she only faints." 
 
 "Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton!" cried little Lucie, 
 springing up and throwing her arms passionately round him, 
 in a burst of grief. " Now that you have come, I think 
 you will do something to help mamma, something to save 
 papa ! 0, look at her, dear Carton ! Can you, of all the 
 people who love her, bear to see her so? " 
 
 He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek 
 against his face. He put her gently from him, and looked 
 at her unconscious mother. 
 
 "Before I go," he said, and paused — "I may kiss her?" 
 
 It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down 
 and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some 
 words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them 
 afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a 
 handsome old lady, that she heard him say, " A life you 
 love." 
 
 When he had gone out into the next room, he turned 
 suddenly on Mr. Lorry and her father, who were follow- 
 ing, and said to the latter : 
 
 " You had great influence but yesterday, Doctor Manette; 
 let it at least be tried. These judges, and all the men in 
 power, are very friendly to you, and very recognisant of 
 your services; are they not? " 
 
 "Nothing connected with Charles was concealed from 
 me. I had the strongest assurances that I should save 
 
320 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 him; and I did." He returned the answer in great trou- 
 ble, and very slowly. 
 
 « Try them again. The hours between this and to-mor- 
 row afternoon are few and short, but try." 
 
 " I intend to try. I will not rest a moment. " 
 
 "That's well. I have known such energy as yours do 
 great things before now — though never," he added, with a 
 smile and a sigh together, " such great things as this. But 
 try ! Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is 
 worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it 
 were not." 
 
 "I will go," said Doctor Manette, "to the Prosecutor 
 and the President straight, and I will go to others whom it 
 
 is better not to name. I will write too, and But stay ! 
 
 There is a celebration in the streets, and no one will be ac- 
 cessible until dark." 
 
 "That's true. Well! It is a forlorn hope at the best, 
 and not much the forlorner for being delayed till dark. I 
 should like to know how you speed; though, mind! I ex- 
 pect nothing ! When are you likely to have seen these 
 dread powers, Doctor Manette? " 
 
 "Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an 
 hour or two from this." 
 
 " It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the 
 hour or two. If I go to Mr. Lorry's at nine, shall I hear 
 what you have done, either from our friend or from your- 
 self? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " May you prosper ! " 
 
 Mr. Lorry followed Sydney to the outer door, and, 
 touching him on the shoulder as he was going away, caused 
 him to turn. 
 
 "I have no hope," said Mr. Lorry, in a low and sorrow- 
 ful whisper. 
 
 "Nor have I." 
 
 " If any one of these men, or all of these men, were dis- 
 posed to spare him — which is a large supposition; for what 
 is his life, or any man's to them! — I doubt if they durst 
 spare him after the demonstration in the court." 
 
 "And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that 
 sound." 
 
 Mr. Lorry leaned his arm upon the door-post, and bowed 
 his face upon it. 
 
A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 321 
 
 "Don't despond," said Carton, very gently; "don't 
 grieve. I encouraged Doctor Manette in this idea, because 
 I felt that it might one day be consolatory to her. Other- 
 wise, she might think ' his life was wantonly thrown away 
 or wasted,' and that might trouble her." 
 
 "Yes, yes, yes," returned Mr. Lorry, drying his eyes, 
 "you are right. But he will perish; there is no real 
 hope." 
 
 "Yes. He will perish : there is no real hope," echoed 
 Carton. And walked with a settled step, down-stairs. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 DARKNESS. 
 
 Sydney Cakton paused in the street, not quite decided 
 where to go. "At Tellson's banking-house at nine," he 
 said, with a musing face. " Shall I do well, in the mean 
 time, to show myself? I think so. It is best that these 
 people should know there is such a man as I here; it is a 
 sound precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. 
 But care, care, care! Let me think it out! " 
 
 Checking his steps which had begun to tend towards an 
 object, he took a turn or two in the already darkening 
 street, and traced the thought in his mind to its possible 
 consequences. His first impression was confirmed. " It is 
 best," he said, finally resolved, "that these people should 
 know there is such a man as I here." And he turned his 
 face towards Saint Antoine. 
 
 Defarge had described himself, that day, as the keeper 
 of a wine-shop in the Saint Antoine suburb. It was not 
 difficult for one who knew the city well, to find his house 
 without asking any question. Having ascertained its situ- 
 ation, Carton came out of those closer streets again, and 
 dined at a place of refreshment and fell sound asleep after 
 dinner. For the first time in many years, he had no strong 
 drink. Since last night he had taken nothing but a little 
 light thin wine, and last night he had dropped the brandy 
 slowly down on Mr. Lorry's hearth like a man who had 
 done with it. 
 
 It was as late as seven o'clock when he awoke refreshed, 
 
322 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 and went out into the streets again. As lie passed along 
 towards Saint Antoine, he stopped at a shop- window where 
 there was a mirror, and slightly altered the disordered ar- 
 rangement of his loose cravat, and his coat-collar, and his 
 wild hair. This done, he went on direct to Defarge's, and 
 went in. 
 
 There happened to be no customer in the shop but 
 Jacques Three, of the restless fingers and the croaking 
 voice. This man, whom he had seen upon the Jury, stood 
 drinking at the little counter, in conversation with the 
 Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the 
 conversation, like a regular member of the establishment. 
 
 As Carton walked in, took his seat and asked (in very 
 indifferent "French) for a small measure of wine, Madame 
 Defarge cast a careless glance at him, and then a keener, 
 and then a keener, and then advanced to him herself, and 
 asked him what it was he had ordered, 
 
 He repeated what he had already said. / 
 
 "English?" asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively rais- 
 ing her dark eyebrows. 
 
 After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single 
 French word were slow to express itself to him, he an- 
 swered, in his former strong foreign accent. " Yes, mad- 
 ame, yes. I am English ! " 
 
 Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the 
 wine, and, as he took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to 
 pore over it puzzling out its meaning, he heard her say, " I 
 swear to you, like Evremonde ! " 
 
 Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good 
 Evening. 
 
 " How? " 
 
 "Good evening." 
 
 "Oh! Good evening, citizen," filling his glass. "Ah! 
 and good wine. I drink to the Republic." 
 
 Defarge went back to the counter, and said, " Certainly, 
 a little like." Madame sternly retorted, " I tell you a good 
 deal like." Jacques Three pacifically remarked, "He is so 
 much in your mind, see you, madame." The amiable Venge- 
 ance added, with a laugh " Yes, my faith ! And you are 
 looking forward with so much pleasure to seeing him once 
 more to-morrow ! " 
 
 Carton followed the lines and words of his paper, with 
 a slow forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed face- 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 323 
 
 They were all leaning their arms on the counter close to- 
 gether, speaking low. After a silence of a few moments, 
 during which they all looked towards him without disturb- 
 ing his outward attention from the Jacobin editor, they 
 resumed their conversation. 
 
 "It is true what madame says," observed Jacques Three. 
 "Why stop? There is great force in that. Why stop? " 
 
 "Well, well," reasoned Defarge, "but one must stop 
 somewhere. After all, the question is still where? " 
 
 "At extermination," said madame. 
 
 " Magnificent ! " croaked Jacques Three. The Venge- 
 ance, also, highly approved. 
 
 "Extermination is good doctrine, my wife," said De- 
 farge, rather troubled; "in general, I say nothing against 
 it. But this Doctor has suffered much; you have seen him 
 to-day; you have observed his face when the paper was 
 read." 
 
 " I have observed his face ! " repeated madame, con- 
 temptuously and angrily. "Yes. I have observed his 
 face. I have observed his face to be not the face of a true 
 friend of the Republic. Let him take care of his face ! " 
 
 " And you have observed, my wife," said Defarge, in a 
 deprecatory manner, " the anguish of his daughter, which 
 must be a dreadful anguish to him ! " 
 
 "I have observed his daughter," repeated madame; 
 "yes, I have observed his daughter, more times than one. 
 I have observed her to-day, and I have observed her other 
 days. I have observed her in the court, and I have ob- 
 served her in the street by the prison. Let me but lift my 
 
 finger !" She seemed to raise it (the listener's eyes 
 
 were always on his paper), and to let it fall with a rattle 
 on the ledge before her, as if the axe had dropped. 
 
 "The citizeness is superb! " croaked the Juryman. 
 
 " She is an Angel ! " said The Vengeance, and embraced 
 her. 
 
 "As to thee," pursued madame, implacably, addressing 
 her husband, " if it depended on thee — which, happily, it 
 does not — thou wouldst rescue this man even now." 
 
 "No!" protested Defarge. "Not if to lift this glass 
 would do it ! But I would leave the matter there. I say, 
 stop there." 
 
 "See you then, Jacques," said Madame Defarge, wrath- 
 fully; "and see you, too, my little Vengeance; see you 
 
324 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 both ! Listen ! For other crimes as tyrants and oppres- 
 sors, I have this race a long time on my register, doomed to 
 destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that 
 so." 
 
 "It is so," assented Defarge, without being asked. 
 
 " In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille 
 falls, he finds this paper of to-day, and he brings it home, 
 and in the middle of the night when this place is clear and 
 shut, we read it, here on this spot, by the light of this 
 lamp. Ask him, is that so." 
 
 "It is so," assented Defarge. 
 
 "That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, 
 and the lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in 
 above those shutters and between those iron bars, that 
 I have now a secret to communicate. Ask him, is that 
 so." 
 
 "It is so," assented Defarge again. 
 
 " I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom 
 with these two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, 
 ' Defarge, I was brought up among the fishermen of the 
 sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured by the two 
 Evremonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is 
 my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally wounded 
 boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my 
 sister's husband, that unborn child was their child, that 
 brother was my brother, that father was my father, those 
 dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those 
 things descends to me! ' Ask him, is that so." 
 
 "It is so," assented Defarge once more. 
 
 "Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned mad- 
 ame; "but don't tell me." 
 
 Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the 
 deadly nature of her wrath — the listener could feel how 
 white she was, without seeing her — and both highly com- 
 mended it. Defarge, a weak minority, interposed a few 
 words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the 
 Marquis; but only elicited from his own wife a repetition 
 of her last reply. " Tell the Wind and the Fire where to 
 stop; not me!" 
 
 Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The 
 English customer paid for what he had had, perplexedly 
 counted his change, and asked, as a stranger, to be directed 
 towards the National Palace. Madame Defarge took him 
 
A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 325 
 
 to the door, and put her arm on his, in pointing out the 
 road. The English customer was not without his reflections 
 then, that it might be a good deed to seize that arm, lift it, 
 and strike under it sharp and deep. 
 
 But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in 
 the shadow of the prison wall. At the appointed hour, he 
 emerged from it to present himself in Mr. Lorry's room 
 again, where he found the old gentleman walking to and 
 fro in restless anxiety. He said he had been with Lucie 
 until just now, and had only left her for a few minutes, 
 to come and keep his appointment. Her father had not 
 been seen, since he quitted the banking-house towards 
 four o'clock. She had some faint hopes that his me- 
 diation might save Charles, but they were very slight. 
 He had been more than five hours gone : where could he 
 be? 
 
 Mr. Lorry waited until ten; but, Doctor Manette not re- 
 turning, and he being unwilling to leave Lucie any longer, 
 it was arranged that he should go back to her, and come to 
 the banking-house again at midnight. In the meanwhile, 
 Carton would wait alone by the fire for the Doctor. 
 
 He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but 
 Doctor Manette did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, 
 and found no tidings of him, and brought none. Where 
 could he be? 
 
 They were discussing this question, and were almost 
 building up some weak structure of hope on his prolonged 
 absence, when they heard him on the stairs. The instant 
 he entered the room, it was plain that all was lost. 
 
 Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he 
 had been all that time traversing the streets, was never 
 known. As he stood staring at them, they asked him no 
 question, for his face told them everything. 
 
 " I cannot find it," said he, " and I must have it. Where 
 is it? " 
 
 His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with a 
 helpless look straying all around, he took his coat off, and 
 let it drop on the floor. 
 
 " Where is my bench? I have been looking eyerywhere 
 for my bench, and I can't find it. What have they done 
 with my work? Time presses : I must finish those shoes." 
 
 They looked at one another, and their hearts died within 
 them. 
 
326 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 " Come, come ! " said he, in a whimpering miserable 
 way; " let me get to work. Give me my work." 
 
 Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet 
 upon the ground, like a distracted child. 
 
 "Don't torture a poor forlorn wretch," he implored them, 
 with a dreadful cry; "but give me my work! What is to 
 become of us, if those shoes are not done to-night? " 
 
 Lost, utterly lost! 
 
 It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try 
 to restore him, — that— as if by agreement — they each put 
 a hand upon his shoulder, and soothed him to sit down be- 
 fore the fire, with a promise that he should have his work 
 presently. He sank into the chair, and brooded over the 
 embers, and shed tears. As if all that had happened since 
 the garret time were a momentary fancy, or a dream, Mr. 
 Lorry saw him shrink into the exact figure that Defarge 
 had had in keeping. 
 
 Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, 
 by this spectacle of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such 
 emotions. His lonely daughter, bereft of her final hope 
 and reliance, appealed to them both too strongly. Again, 
 as if by agreement, they looked at one another with one 
 meaning in their faces. Carton was the first to speak: 
 
 "The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he 
 had better be taken to her. But, before you go, will you, 
 for a moment, steadily attend to me? Don't ask me why 
 I make the stipulations I am going to make, and exact the 
 promise I am going to exact; I have a reason — a good one." 
 
 "I do not doubt it," answered Mr. Lorry. " Say on." 
 
 The figure in the chair between them, was all the time 
 monotonously rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They 
 spoke in such a tone as they would have used if they had 
 been watching by a sick-bed in the night. 
 
 Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost en- 
 tangling his feet. As he did so, a small case in which the 
 Doctor was accustomed to carry the lists of his day's du- 
 ties, fell lightly on the floor. Carton took it up, and there 
 was a folded paper in it. " We should look at this ! he 
 said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. He opened it, and 
 exclaimed, " Thank God ! " 
 
 "What is it?" asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly. 
 
 "A moment! Let me speak of it in its place. First," 
 he put his hand in his coat, and took another paper from 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 327 
 
 it, " that is the certificate which enables me to pass out of 
 this city. Look at it. You see — Sydney Carton, an Eng- 
 lishman? " 
 
 Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest 
 face. 
 
 " Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to- 
 morrow, you remember, and I had better not take it into 
 the prison." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
 "I don't know; I prefer not to do so. Now, take this 
 paper that Doctor Manette has carried about him. It is a 
 similar certificate, enabling him and his daughter and her 
 child, at any time, to pass the barrier and the frontier! 
 You see? " 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 " Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precau- 
 tion against evil yesterday. When is it dated? But no 
 matter; don't stay to look; put it up carefully with mine 
 and your own. Now, observe! I never doubted until 
 within this hour or two, that he had, or Could have such a 
 paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soon re- 
 called, and, I have reason to think, will be." 
 
 " They are not in danger? " 
 
 " They are in great danger. They are in danger of de- 
 nunciation by Madame Defarge. I know it from her own 
 lips. I have overheard words of that woman's, to-night, 
 which have presented their danger to me in strong colours. 
 I have lost no time, and since then, I have seen the spy. 
 He confirms me. He knows that a wood-sawyer, living 
 by the prison- wall, is under the control of the Defarges, 
 and has been rehearsed by Madame Defarge as to his hav- 
 ing seen Her" — he never mentioned Lucie's name — "mak- 
 ing signs and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee 
 that the pretence will be the common one, a prison plot, 
 and that it will involve her life — and perhaps her child's 
 — and perhaps her father's — for both have been seen with 
 her at that place. Don't look so horrified. You will save 
 them all." 
 
 " Heaven grant I may, Carton ! But how? " 
 
 " I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you, 
 and it could depend on no better man. This new denun- 
 ciation will certainly not take place until after to-morrow; 
 probably not until two or three days afterwards; more 
 
328 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 probably a week afterwards. You know it is a capital 
 crime, to mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of the 
 Guillotine. She and her father would unquestionably be 
 guilty of this crime, and this woman (the inveteracy of 
 whose pursuit cannot be described) would wait to add that 
 strength to her case, and make herself doubly sure. You 
 follow me? " 
 
 " So attentively, and with so much confidence in what 
 you say, that for the moment I lose sight," touching the 
 back of the Doctor's chair, "even of this distress." 
 
 " You have money, and can buy the means of travelling 
 to the sea-coast as quickly as the journey can be made. 
 Your preparations have been completed for some days, to 
 return to England. Early to-morrow have your horses 
 ready, so that they may be in starting trim at two o'clock 
 in the afternoon." 
 
 " It shall be done ! " 
 
 His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry 
 caught the flame, and was as quick as youth. 
 
 " You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon 
 no better man? Tell her, to-night, what you know of her 
 danger as involving her child and her father. Dwell upon 
 that, for she would lay her own fair head beside her hus- 
 band's cheerfully." He faltered for an instant; then went 
 on as before. " For the sake of her child and her father, 
 press upon her the necessity of leaving Paris, with them 
 and you, at that hour. Tell her that it was her husband's 
 last arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than 
 she dare believe, or hope. You think that her father, even 
 in this sad state, will submit himself to her; do you not? " 
 
 "I am sure of it." 
 
 " I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these ar- 
 rangements made in the courtyard here, even to the tak- 
 ing of your own seat in the carriage. The moment I come 
 to you, take me in, and drive away." 
 
 "I understand that I wait for you under all circum- 
 stances? " 
 
 " You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, 
 you know, and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing 
 but to have my place occupied, and then for England ! " 
 
 "Why, then," said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so 
 firm and steady hand, " it does not all depend on one old 
 man, but I shall have a young and ardent man at my side." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 329 
 
 "By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me sol- 
 emnly that nothing will influence you to alter the course on 
 which we now stand pledged to one another." 
 
 "Nothing, Carton." 
 
 " Eemember these words to-morrow : change the course, 
 or delay in it — for any reason — and no life can possibly be 
 saved, and many lives must inevitably be sacrificed." 
 
 " I will remember them. I hope to do my part faith- 
 fully." 
 
 "And I hope to do mine. Now, good bye ! " 
 
 Though he Said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and 
 though he even put the old man's hand to his lips, he did 
 not part from him then. He helped him so far to arouse 
 the rocking figure before the dying embers, as to get a 
 cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it forth to find 
 where the bench and work were hidden that it still moan- 
 ingly besought to have. He walked on the other side of it 
 and protected it to the courtyard of the house where the 
 afflicted heart — so happy in the memorable time when he 
 had revealed his own desolate heart to it — outwatched the 
 awful night. He entered the courtyard and remained 
 there for a few moments alone, looking up at the light 
 in the window of her room. Before he went away, he 
 breathed a blessing towards it, and a Farewell. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 FIFTY-TWO. 
 
 In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of 
 the day awaited their fate. They were in number as the 
 weeks of the year. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon 
 on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea. 
 Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants were 
 appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled 
 yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-mor- 
 row was already set apart. 
 
 Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer- 
 general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to 
 the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and obscurity 
 could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the 
 23 
 
330 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all de- 
 grees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable 
 suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, 
 smote equally without distinction. 
 
 Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself 
 with no flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tri- 
 bunal. In every line of the narrative he had heard, he had 
 heard his condemnation. He had fully comprehended that 
 no personal influence could possibly save him, that he was 
 virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could 
 avail him nothing. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his be- 
 loved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to what 
 it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it was 
 very, very hard, to loosen; by gradual efforts and degrees 
 unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and 
 when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it 
 yielded, this was closed agaiu. There was a hurry, too, in 
 all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his 
 heart, that contended against resignation. If, for a mo- 
 ment, he did feel resigned, then his wife and child who 
 had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a 
 selfish thing. 
 
 But, all this was at first. Before long, the considera- 
 tion that there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, 
 and that numbers went the same road wrongfully, and trod 
 it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate him. Next fol- 
 lowed the thought that much of the future peace of mind 
 enjoyable by the dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude. 
 So, by degrees he calmed into the better state, when he 
 could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort 
 down. 
 
 Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemna- 
 tion, he had travelled thus far. on his last way. Being al- 
 lowed to purchase the means of writing, and a light, he sat 
 down to write until such time as the prison lamps should 
 be extinguished. 
 
 He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had 
 known nothing of her father's imprisonment, until he had 
 heard of it from herself, and that he had been as ignorant 
 as she of his father's and uncle's responsibility for that 
 misery, until the paper had been read. He had already 
 explained to her that his concealment from herself of the 
 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 331 
 
 name he had relinquished, was the one condition — fully in- 
 telligible now — that her father had attached to their be- 
 trothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on 
 the morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her 
 father's sake, never to seek to know whether her father 
 had become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had 
 had it recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by 
 the story of the Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear 
 old plane-tree in the garden. If he had preserved any 
 definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt that he 
 had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had 
 found no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which 
 the populace had discovered there, and which had been de- 
 scribed to all the world. He besought her — though he 
 added that he knew it was needless — to console her father, 
 by impressing him through every tender means she could 
 think of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which 
 he could justly reproach himself, but had uniformly for- 
 gotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her preserva- 
 tion of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her 
 overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear 
 child, he adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to 
 comfort her father. 
 
 To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, 
 he told her father that he expressly confided his wife and 
 child to his care. And he told him this, very strongly, 
 with the hope of rousing him from any despondency or 
 dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be 
 tending. 
 
 To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained 
 his worldly affairs. That done, with many added sen- 
 tences of grateful friendship and warm attachment, all was 
 done. He never thought of Carton. His mind was so full 
 of the others, that he never once thought of him. 
 
 He had time to finish these letters before the lights were 
 put out. When he lay down on his straw bed, he thought 
 he had done with this world. 
 
 But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed it- 
 self in shining forms. Free and happy, back in the old 
 house in Soho (though it had nothing in it like the real 
 house) , unaccountably released and light of heart, he was 
 with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream, and 
 he had never gone away. A pause of forgetfulness, and 
 
332 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 then he had even suffered, and had come back to her, dead 
 and at peace, and yet there was no difference in him. An- 
 other pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the sombre 
 morning, unconscious where he was or what had happened, 
 until it flashed upon his mind, "this is the day of my 
 death!" 
 
 Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when 
 the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while he was 
 composed, and hoped that he could meet the end with quiet 
 heroism, a new action began in his waking thoughts, which 
 was very difficult to master. 
 
 He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate 
 his life. How high it was from the ground, how many 
 steps it had, where he would be stood, how he would be 
 touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, 
 which way his face would be turned, whether he would be 
 the first, or might be the last: these and many similar 
 questions, in nowise directed by his will, obtruded them- 
 selves over and over again, countless times. Neither were 
 they connected with fear: he was conscious of no fear. 
 Rather, they originated in a strange besetting desire to 
 know what to do when the time came; a desire gigantically 
 disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it re- 
 ferred; a wondering that was more like the wondering of 
 some other spirit within his, than his own. 
 
 The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the 
 clocks struck the numbers he would never hear again. 
 Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever, eleven gone for ever, 
 twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard contest with 
 that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed 
 him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down, 
 softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the 
 strife was over. He could walk up and down, free from 
 distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them. 
 
 Twelve gone for ever. 
 
 He had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and 
 he knew he would be summoned some time earlier, in- 
 asmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and slowly through 
 the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep Two before 
 his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the 
 interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen 
 others. 
 
 Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 333 
 
 his breast, a very different man from the prisoner, who 
 had walked to and fro at La Force, he heard One struck 
 away from him, without surprise. The hour had measured 
 like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heaven for 
 his recovered self-possession, he thought, "There is but 
 another now," and turned to walk again. 
 
 Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door. He 
 stopped. 
 
 The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the 
 door was opened, or as it opened, a man said in a low voice, 
 in English : " He has never seen me here ; I have kept out 
 of his way. Go you in alone; I wait near. Lose no 
 time ! " 
 
 The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood 
 before him face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the 
 light of a smile on his features, and a cautionary finger on 
 his lip, Sydney Carton. 
 
 There was something so bright and remarkable in his 
 look, that, for the first moment, the prisoner misdoubted 
 him to be an apparition of his own imagining. But, he 
 spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner's hand, 
 and it was his real grasp. 
 
 " Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see 
 me? " he said. 
 
 " I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe 
 it now. You are not " — the apprehension came suddenly 
 into his mind — "a prisoner? " 
 
 "No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one 
 of the keepers here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. 
 I come from her — your wife, dear Darnay." 
 
 The prisoner wrung his hand. 
 
 "I bring you a request from her." 
 
 " What is it? " 
 
 "A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, ad- 
 dressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice so 
 dear to you, that you well remember." 
 
 The prisoner turned his face partly aside. 
 
 " You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what 
 it means; I have no time to tell you. You must comply 
 with it — take off those boots you wear, and draw on these 
 of mine." 
 
 There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind 
 the prisoner. Carton, pressing forward, had already, with 
 
334 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 the speed of lightning, got him down into it, and stood 
 over him, barefoot. 
 
 "Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to 
 them; put your will to them. Quick! " 
 
 "Carton, there is no escaping from this place; it never 
 can be done. You will only die with me. It is mad- 
 ness." 
 
 "It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but do 
 I? When I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me it is 
 madness and remain here. Change that cravat for this of 
 mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do it, let me 
 take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair 
 like this of mine ! " 
 
 With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of 
 will and action, that appeared quite supernatural, he forced 
 all these changes upon him. The prisoner was like a young 
 child in his hands. 
 
 "Carton! Dear. Carton! It is madness. It cannot be 
 accomplished, it never can be done, it has been attempted, 
 and has always failed. I implore you not to add your 
 death to the bitterness of mine." 
 
 "Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door? 
 When I ask that, refuse. There are pen and ink and paper 
 on this table. Is your hand steady enough to write? " 
 
 "It was when you came in." 
 
 " Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate. Quick, 
 , friend, quick ! " 
 
 Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Darnay sat 
 down at the table. Carton, with his right hand in his 
 breast, stood close beside him. 
 
 "Write exactly as I speak." 
 
 " To whom do I address it? " 
 
 "To no one." Carton still had his hand in his breast." 
 
 "Do I date it?" 
 
 "No. 
 
 The prisoner looked up, at each question. Carton, 
 standing over him with his hand in his breast, looked 
 down. 
 
 "'If you remember,'" said Carton, dictating, "'the 
 words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily 
 comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, 
 I know. It is not in your nature to forget them.' " 
 
 He was drawing his hand from his breast; the prisoner 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 335 
 
 chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the 
 hand stopped, closing upon something. 
 
 " Have you written ' forget them ' ? " Carton asked. 
 
 " I have. Is that a weapon in your hand? " 
 
 "No; I am not armed." 
 
 " What is it in your hand? " 
 
 "You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a 
 few words more." He dictated again. "'I am thankful 
 that the time has come, when I can prove them. That I 
 do so is no subject for regret or grief.' " As he said these 
 words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly 
 and softly moved down close to the writer's face. 
 
 The pen dropped from Darnay's fingers on the table, and 
 he looked about him vacantly. 
 
 " What vapour is that? " he asked. 
 
 " Vapour? " 
 
 " Something that crossed me? " 
 
 "I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. 
 Take up the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry ! " 
 
 As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disor- 
 dered, the prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. 
 As he looked at Carton with clouded eyes and with an al- 
 tered manner of breathing, Carton — his hand again in his 
 breast — looked steadily at him. 
 
 " Hurry, hurry ! " 
 
 The prisoner bent over the paper, once more. 
 
 " ' If it had been otherwise; ' " Carton's hand was again 
 watchfully and softly stealing down; " ' I never should 
 have used the longer opportunity. If it had been other- 
 wise; ' " the hand was at the prisoner's face; " ' I should 
 but have had so much the more to answer for. If it had 
 
 been otherwise -' " Carton looked at the pen and saw 
 
 it was trailing off into unintelligible signs. 
 
 Carton's hand moved back to his breast no more. The 
 prisoner sprang up with a reproachful look, but Carton's 
 hand was close and firm at his nostrils, and Carton's left 
 arm caught him round the waist. Foi a few seconds he 
 faintly struggled with the man who had come to lay down 
 his life for him; but, within a minute or so, he was 
 stretched insensible on the ground. 
 
 Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his 
 heart was, Carton dressed himself in the clothes the pris- 
 oner had laid aside, combed back his hair, and tied it with 
 
336 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then, he softly called, 
 " Enter there ! Come in ! " and the Spy presented himself. 
 
 " You see? " said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on 
 one knee beside the insensible figure, putting the paper in 
 the breast : " is your hazard very great? " 
 
 "Mr. Carton," the Spy answered, with a timid snap 
 of his fingers, "my hazard is not that, in the thick of 
 business here, if you are true to the whole of your bar- 
 gain." 
 
 "Don't fear me. I will be true to the death." 
 
 " You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is to 
 be right. Being made right by you in that dress, I shall 
 have no fear." 
 
 " Have no fear ! I shall soon be out of the way of harm- 
 ing you, and the rest will soon be far from here, please 
 God! Now, get assistance and take me to the coach." 
 
 " You? " said the Spy nervously. 
 
 " Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go out 
 at the gate by which you brought me in? " 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 " I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I 
 am fainter now you take me out. The parting interview 
 has overpowered me. Such a thing has happened here, 
 often, and too often. Your life is in your own hands. 
 Quick ! Call assistance ! " 
 
 " You swear not to betray me? " said the trembling Spy, 
 as he paused for a last moment. 
 
 " Man, man ! " returned Carton, stamping his foot; 
 " have I sworn by no solemn vow already, to go through 
 with this, that you waste the precious moments now? Take 
 him yourself to the courtyard you know of, place him your- 
 self in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell 
 him yourself to give him no restorative but air, and to re- 
 member my words of last night, and his promise of last 
 night, and drive away ! " 
 
 The Spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the 
 table, resting his forehead on his hands. The Spy leturned 
 immediately, with two men. 
 
 "How, then?" said one of them, contemplating the 
 fallen figure. "So afflicted lo find that his friend has 
 drawn a prize in the lottery of Sainte Guillotine? " 
 
 "A good patriot," said the other, "could hardly have 
 been more afflicted ii the Aristocrat had drawn a blank." 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 337 
 
 They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter 
 they had brought to the door, and bent to carry it away. 
 
 "The time is short, Evrernonde," said the Spy, in a 
 warning voice. 
 
 "I know it well," answered Carton. "Be careful of my 
 friend, I entreat you, and leave me." 
 
 "Come, then, my children," said Barsad. "Lift him, 
 and come away ! " 
 
 The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Straining 
 his powers of listening to the utmost, he listened for any 
 sound that night denote suspicion or alarm. There was 
 none. Keys turned, doors clashed, footsteps passed along 
 distant passages : no cry was raised, or hurry made, that 
 seemed unusual. Breathing more freely in a little while, 
 he sat down at the table, and listened again until the clock 
 struck Two. 
 
 Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their 
 meaning, then began to be audible. Several doors were 
 opened in succession, and finally his own. A gaoler, with 
 a list in his hand, looked in, merely saying, " Follow me, 
 Evrernonde ! " and he followed into a large dark room, at a 
 distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the 
 shadows within, and what with the shadows without, he 
 could but dimly discern the others who were brought there 
 to have their arms bound. Some were standing; some 
 seated. Some were lamenting, and in restless motion; but, 
 these were few. The great majority were silent and still, 
 looking fixedly at the ground. 
 
 As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of 
 the fifty-two were brought in after him, one man stopped 
 in passing, to embrace him, as having a knowledge of him. 
 It thrilled him with a great dread of discovery; but the 
 man went on. A very few moments after that, a young 
 woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in 
 which there was no vestige of colour, and large widely 
 opened patient eyes, rose from the seat where he had ob- 
 served her sitting, and came to speak to him. 
 
 "Citizen Evrernonde," she said, touching him with her 
 cold hand. " I am a poor little seamstress, who was with 
 you in La Force." 
 
 He murmured for answer : " True. I forget what you 
 were accused of? " 
 
 " Plots. Though the just Heaven knows that I am in- 
 24 
 
338 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 nocent of any. Is it likely? Who would think of plotting 
 with a poor little weak creature like me? " 
 
 The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched 
 him, that tears started from his eyes. 
 
 " I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have 
 done nothing. I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic 
 which is to do so much good to us poor, will profit by my 
 death; but I do not know how that can be, Citizen Evre- 
 monde. Such a poor weak little creature ! " 
 
 As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm 
 and soften to, it warmed and softened to this pitiable 
 girl. 
 
 " I heard you were released, Citizen Evremonde. I hoped 
 it was true? " 
 
 " It was. But, I was again taken and condemned." 
 
 " If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you 
 let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little 
 and weak, and it will give me more courage." 
 
 As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sud- 
 den doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed 
 the work-worn, hunger- worn young fingers, and touched 
 his lips. 
 
 " Are you dying for him? " she whispered. 
 
 " And his wife and child. Hush! Yes." 
 
 " you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger? " 
 
 "Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last." 
 
 The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are 
 falling, in that same hour of the early afternoon, on the 
 Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going out of 
 Paris drives up to be examined. 
 
 " Who goes here? Whom have we within? Papers ! " 
 
 The papers are handed out, and read. 
 
 "Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which is. 
 he? " 
 
 This is he; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring, wan- 
 dering old man pointed out. 
 
 " Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind? 
 The Be volution-fever will have been too much for him? " 
 
 Greatly too much for him. 
 
 "Hah! Many suffer with it. Lucie. His daughter 
 French. Which is she? » 
 
 This is she. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 339 
 
 "Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of Evremonde; 
 is it not? " 
 
 It is. 
 
 "Hah! Evremonde has an assignation elsewhere. Lucie, 
 her child. English. This is she? " 
 
 She and no other. 
 
 "Kiss me, child of Evremonde. Now, thou hast kissed 
 a good Republican; something new in thy family; remem- 
 ber it ! Sydney Carton. Advocate. English. Which is 
 he?" 
 
 He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He, too, is 
 pointed out. 
 
 " Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon? " 
 
 It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is rep- 
 resented that he is not in strong health, and has separated 
 sadly from a friend who is under the displeasure of the 
 Republic. 
 
 " Is that all? It is not a great deal, that ! Many are 
 under the displeasure of the Republic, and must look out 
 at the little window. Jarvis Lorry. Banker. English. 
 Which is he? " 
 
 "I am he. Necessarily, being the last." 
 
 It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous 
 questions. It is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands 
 with his hand on the coach door, replying to a group of 
 officials. They leisurely walk round the carriage and leis- 
 urely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it car- 
 ries on the roof; the country-people hanging about, press 
 nearer to the coach doors and greedily stare in; a little 
 child, carried by its mother, has its short arm held out for 
 it, that it may touch the wife of an aristocrat who has gone 
 to the Guillotine. 
 
 " Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned." 
 
 " One can depart, citizen? " 
 
 "One can depart. Forward, my postilions! A good 
 journey ! " 
 
 "I salute you, citizens. — And the first danger passed!" 
 
 These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he clasps 
 his hands, and looks upward. There is terror in the car- 
 riage, there is weeping, there is the heavy breathing of the 
 insensible traveller. 
 
 " Are we not going too slowly? Can they not be induced 
 to go faster? " asks Lucie, clinging to the old man. 
 
340 A TALE OP TWO CITIES. 
 
 " It would seem like flight, my darling. I must not urge 
 them too much; it would rouse suspicion." 
 
 " Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued ! " 
 
 " The road is clear, my dearest. So far, we are not pur- 
 sued." 
 
 Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, 
 ruinous buildings, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open 
 country, avenues of leafless trees. The hard uneven pave- 
 ment is under us, the soft deep mud is on either side. 
 Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the 
 stones that clatter us and shake us; sometimes, we stick in 
 ruts and sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then 
 so great, that in our wild alarm and hurry we are for getting 
 out and running — hiding — doing anything but stopping. 
 
 Out of the open country, in again among ruinous build- 
 ings, solitary farms, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, 
 cottages in twos and threes, avenues of leafless trees. 
 Have these men deceived us, and taken us back by another 
 road? Is not this the same place twice over? Thank 
 Heaven, no. A village. Look back, look back, and see if 
 we are pursued ! Hush ! the posting-house. 
 
 Leisurely, our four horses are taken out; leisurely, the 
 coach stands in the little street, bereft of horses, and with 
 no likelihood upon it of ever moving again; leisurely, the 
 new horses come into visible existence, one by one; leis- 
 urely, the new postilions follow, sucking and plaiting the 
 lashes of their whips; leisurely, the old postilions count 
 their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatis- 
 fied results. All the time, our overfraught hearts are 
 beating at a rate that would far outstrip the fastest gallop 
 of the fastest horses ever foaled. 
 
 At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the 
 old are left behind. We are through the village, up the 
 hill, and down the hill, and on the low watery grounds. 
 Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with animated 
 gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their 
 haunches. We are pursued? 
 
 " Ho ! Within the carriage there. Speak then ! " 
 
 " What is it? " asks Mr. Lorry, looking out at window. 
 
 "How many did they say? " 
 
 " I do not understand you." 
 
 " — At the last post. How many to the Guillotine to- 
 day?" 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 341 
 
 "Fifty-two." 
 
 " I said so ! A brave number ! My fellow-citizen here 
 would have it forty-two; ten more heads are worth having. 
 The Guillotine goes handsomely. I love it. Hi forward. 
 Whoop ! " 
 
 The night comes on dark. He moves more; he is begin- 
 ning to revive, and to speak intelligibly; he thinks they 
 are still together; he asks him, by his name, what he has 
 in his hand. pity us, kind Heaven, and help us ! Look 
 out, look out, and see if we are pursued. 
 
 The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying 
 after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole 
 wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued 
 by nothing else. 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE KNITTING DONE. 
 
 In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two 
 awaited their fate Madame Defarge held darkly ominous 
 council with The Vengeance and Jacques Three of the 
 Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame 
 Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the 
 wood-sawyer, erst a mender of roads. The sawyer him- 
 self did not participate in the conference, but abided at a 
 little distance, like an outer satellite who was not to speak 
 until required, or to offer an opinion until invited. 
 
 "But our Defarge," said Jacques Three, "is undoubtedly 
 a good Eepublican? Eh? " 
 
 "There is no better," the voluble Vengeance protested in 
 her shrill notes, "in France." 
 
 " Peace, little Vengeance," said Madame Defarge, laying 
 her hand with a slight frown on her lieutenant's lips, 
 " hear me speak. My husband, fellow-citizen, is a good 
 Republican and a bold man; he has deserved well of the 
 Republic, and possesses its confidence. But my husband 
 has his weaknesses, and he is so weak as to relent towards 
 this Doctor." 
 
 "It is a great pity," croaked Jacques Three, dubiously 
 shaking his head, with his cruel fingers at his hungry 
 
342 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 mouth.; "it is not quite like a good citizen; it is a thing to 
 regret. " 
 
 "See you," said madame, "I care nothing for this Doc- 
 tor, I. He may wear his head or lose it, for any interest I 
 have in him; it is all one to me. But, the Evremonde 
 people are to be exterminated, and the wife and child must 
 follow the husband and father." 
 
 " She has a fine head for it," croaked Jacques Three. "I 
 have seen blue eyes and golden hair there, and they looked 
 charming when Samson held them up." Ogre that he was, 
 he spoke like an epicure. 
 
 Madame Def arge cast down her eyes, and reflected a little. 
 
 "The child also," observed Jacques Three, with a medi- 
 tative enjoyment of his words, "has golden hair and blue 
 eyes. And. we seldom have a child there. It is a pretty 
 sight!" m 
 
 " In a word," said Madame Defarge, coming out of her 
 short abstraction, " I cannot trust my husband in this mat- 
 ter. Not only do I feel, since last night, that I dare not 
 confide to him the details of my projects; but also I feel 
 that if I delay, there is danger of his giving warning, and 
 then they might escape." 
 
 "That must never be," croaked Jacques Three; "no one 
 must escape. We have not half enough as it is. We 
 ought to have six score a day." 
 
 "In a word," Madame Defarge went on, "my husband 
 has not my reason for pursuing this family to annihilation, 
 and I have not his reason for regarding this Doctor with 
 any sensibility. I must act for myself, therefore. Come 
 hither, little citizen." 
 
 The wood-sawyer, who held her in the respect, and him- 
 self in the submission, of mortal fear, advanced with his 
 hand to his red cap. 
 
 "Touching those signals, little citizen," said Madame 
 Defarge, sternly, "that she made to the prisoners; you are 
 ready to bear witness to them this very day? " 
 
 " Ay, ay, why not ! " cried the sawyer. " Every day, in 
 all weathers, from two to four, always signalling, some- 
 times with the little one, sometimes without. I know 
 what t know. I have seen with my eyes." 
 
 He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in 
 incidental imitation of some few of the great diversity of 
 signals that he had never seen. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 343 
 
 " Clearly plots," said Jacques Three. " Transparently ! " 
 
 " There is no doubt of the Jury? " inquired Madame De- 
 farge, letting her eyes turn to him with a gloomy smile. 
 
 " Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I an- 
 swer for my fellow- Jurymen." 
 
 "Now, let me see," said Madame Defarge, pondering 
 again. " Yet once more ! Can I spare this Doctor to my 
 husband? I have no feeling either way. Can I spare 
 him?" 
 
 "He would count as one head," observed Jacques Three, 
 in a low voice. " We really have not heads enough; it 
 would be a pity, I think." 
 
 " He was signalling with her when I saw her, " argued 
 Madame Defarge ; " I cannot speak of one without the 
 other; and I must not be silent, and trust the case wholly 
 to him, this little citizen here. For, I am not a bad wit- 
 ness." 
 
 The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each other 
 in their fervent protestations that she was the most admir- 
 able and marvellous of witnesses. The little citizen, not 
 to be outdone, declared her to be a celestial witness. 
 
 "He must take his chance," said Madame Defarge. 
 "No, I cannot spare him! You are engaged at three 
 o'clock; you are going to see the batch of to-day executed. 
 —You? " 
 
 The question was addressed to the wocd-sawyer, who 
 hurriedly replied in the affirmative : seizing the occasion to 
 add that he was the most ardent of Republicans, and that 
 he would be in effect the most desolate of Republicans, if 
 anything prevented him from enjoying the pleasure of 
 smoking his afternoon pipe in the contemplation of the droll 
 national barber. He was so very demonstrative herein, 
 that he might have been suspected (perhaps was, by the 
 dark eyes that looked contemptuously at him out of Madame 
 Defarge 's head) of having his small individual fears for 
 his own personal safety, every hour in the day. 
 
 "I," said madame, "am equally engaged at the same 
 place. After it is over — say at eight to-night — come you 
 to me, in Saint Antoine, and we will give information 
 against these people at my Section." 
 
 The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered 
 to attend the citizeness. The citizeness looking at him, he 
 became embarrassed, evaded her glance as a small dog 
 
344 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 would have done, retreated among his wood, and hid his 
 confusion over the handle of his saw. 
 
 Madame Defarge beckoned the Juryman and The Venge- 
 ance a little nearer to the door, and there expounded her 
 further views to them thus : 
 
 " She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his 
 death. She will be mourning and grieving. She will be 
 in a state of mind to impeach the justice of the Republic. 
 She will be full of sympathy with its enemies. I will go 
 to her." 
 
 " What an admirable woman; what an adorable woman ! " 
 exclaimed Jacques Three, rapturously. "Ah, my cher- 
 ished!" cried The Vengeance; and embraced her. 
 
 "Take you my knitting," said Madame Defarge, placing 
 it in her lieutenant's hands, "and have it ready for me in 
 my usual seat. Keep me my usual chair. Go you there, 
 straight, for there will probably be a greater concourse 
 than usual, to-day." 
 
 "I willingly obey the orders of my Chief," said The 
 Vengeance with alacrity, and kissing her cheek. "You 
 will not be late? " 
 
 "I shall be there before the commencement." 
 
 " And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are there, 
 my soul," said The Vengeance, calling after her, for she 
 had already turned into the street, " before the tumbrils 
 arrive ! " 
 
 Madame Defarge slightly waved her hand, to imply that 
 she heard, and might be relied upon to arrive in good time, 
 and so went through the mud, and round the corner of the 
 prison wall. The Vengeance and the Juryman, looking 
 after her as she walked away, were highly appreciative of 
 her fine figure, and her superb moral endowments. 
 
 There were many women at that time, upon whom the 
 time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand; but, there was not 
 one among them more to be dreaded than this ruthless 
 woman, now taking her way along the streets. Of a strong 
 and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of 
 great determination, of that kind of beauty which not only 
 seems to impart to its possessor firmness and animosity, 
 but to strike into others an instinctive recognition of those 
 qualities; the troubled time would have heaved her up, un- 
 der any circumstances. But, imbued from her childhood 
 with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 345 
 
 a class, opportunity had developed her into a tigress. She 
 was absolutely without pity. If she had ever had the vir- 
 tue in her, it had quite gone out of her. 
 
 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 
 punishment, because they were her natural enemies 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 en- 
 gaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had 
 been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she have gone 
 to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change 
 places with the man who sent her there. 
 
 Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough 
 robe. Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in 
 a certain weird way, and her dark hair looked rich under 
 her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her bosom, was a 
 loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharpened 
 dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the confident 
 tread of such a character, and with the supple freedom 
 of a woman who had habitually walked in her girlhood, 
 bare-foot and bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame 
 Defarge took her way along the streets. 
 
 Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that 
 very moment waiting for the completion of its load, had 
 been planned out last night, the difficulty of taking Miss 
 Pross in it had much engaged Mr. Lorry's attention. It 
 was not merely desirable to avoid overloading the coach, 
 but it was of the highest importance that the time occupied 
 in examining it and its passengers, should be reduced to 
 the utmost; since their escape might depend on the saving 
 of only a few seconds here and there. Finally, he had 
 proposed, after anxious consideration, that Miss Pross and 
 Jerry, who were at liberty to leave the city, should leave 
 it at three o'clock in the lightest- wheeled conveyance 
 known to that period. Unencumbered with luggage, they 
 would soon overtake the coach, and, passing it and preced- 
 ing it on the road, would order its horses in advance, and 
 greatly facilitate its progress during the precious hours of 
 the night, when delay was the most to be dreaded. 
 
346 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real 
 service in that pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed it 
 with joy. She and Jerry had beheld the coach start, had 
 known who it was that Solomon brought, had passed some 
 ten minutes in tortures of suspense, and were now conclud- 
 ing their arrangements to follow the coach, even as Mad- 
 ame Defarge, taking her way through the streets, now 
 drew nearer and nearer to the else-deserted lodging in 
 which they held their consultation. 
 
 "Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss 
 Pross, whose agitation was so great that she could hardly 
 speak, or stand, or move, or live; "what do you think of 
 our not starting from this courtyard? Another carriage 
 having already gone from here to-day, it might awaken 
 suspicion." 
 
 "My opinion, miss," returned Mr. Cruncher, "is as 
 you're right. Likewise wot I'll stand by you, right or 
 wrong." 
 
 " I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious 
 creatures," said Miss Pross, wildly crying, "that I am in- 
 capable of forming any plan. Are you capable of forming 
 any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher? " 
 
 "Eespectin' a future spear o' life, miss," returned Mr. 
 Cruncher, " I hope so. Eespectin' any present use o' this 
 here blessed old head o' mine, I think not. Would you do 
 me the favour, miss, to take notice o' two promises and 
 wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here crisis? " 
 
 " Oh, for gracious sake ! " cried Miss Pross, still wildly 
 crying, " record them at once, and get them out of the way, 
 like an excellent man." 
 
 "First," said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, 
 and who spoke with an ashy and solemn visage, " them 
 poor things well out o' this, never no more will I dp it, 
 never no more ! " 
 
 "I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher," returned Miss Pross, 
 " that you never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg 
 you not to think it necessary to mention more particularly 
 what it is." 
 
 "No, miss," returned Jerry, "it shall not be named to 
 you. Second : them poor things well out o' this, and never 
 no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, 
 never no more ! " 
 
 " Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be," said 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 347 
 
 Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, 
 " I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have 
 it entirely under her own superintendence. — my poor 
 darlings ! " 
 
 "I go so far as to say, miss, moreover," proceeded Mr. 
 Cruncher, with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as 
 from a pulpit — "and let my words be took down and took 
 to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself — that wot my opinions 
 respectin' flopping has undergone a change, and that wot 
 I only hope with all my heart as Mrs. Cruncher may be a 
 flopping at the present time." 
 
 "There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man," 
 cried the distracted Miss Pross, " and I hope she finds it 
 answering her expectations." 
 
 "Forbid it," procedeed Mr. Cruncher, with additional 
 solemnity, additional slowness, and additional tendency to 
 hold forth and hold out, " as anything wot I have ever said 
 or done should be wisited on my earnest wishes for them 
 poor creeturs now! Forbid it as we shouldn't all flop (if 
 it was anyways conwenient) to get 'em out o' this here dis- 
 mal risk ! Forbid it, miss ! Wot I say, for — bid it ! " 
 This was Mr. Cruncher's conclusion after a protracted but 
 vain endeavour to find a better one. 
 
 And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the 
 streets, came nearer and nearer. 
 
 "If we ever get back to our native land," said Miss 
 Pross, "you may rely upon my telling Mrs. Cruncher as 
 much as I may be able to remember and understand of 
 what you have so impressively said; and at all events you 
 may be sure that I shall bear witness to your being thor- 
 oughly in earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray let us 
 think ! My esteemed Mr. Cruncher, let us think ! " 
 
 Still, Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the 
 streets, came nearer and nearer. 
 
 "If you were to go before," said Miss Pross, "and stop 
 the vehicle and horses from coming here, and were to wait 
 somewhere for me; wouldn't that be best? " 
 
 Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best. 
 
 " Where could you wait for me? " asked Miss Pross. 
 
 Mr. Cruncher was so bewildered that he could think of 
 no locality but Temple Bar. Alas ! Temple Bar was hun- 
 dreds of miles away, and Madame Defarge was drawing 
 very near indeed. 
 
348 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "By the cathedral door," said Miss Pross. "Would it 
 be much out of the way, to take me in, near the great 
 cathedral door between the two towers? " 
 
 "No, miss," answered Mr. Cruncher. 
 
 " Then, like the best of men, " said Miss Pross, " go to 
 the posting-house straight, and make that change." 
 
 "I am doubtful," said Mr. Cruncher, hesitating and 
 shaking his head, " about leaving of you, you see. We 
 don't know what may happen." 
 
 "Heaven knows we don't," returned Miss Pross, "but 
 have no fear for me. Take me at the cathedral, at Three 
 o'Clock, or as near it as you can, and I am sure it will be 
 better than our going from here. I feel certain of it. 
 There ! Bless you, Mr. Cruncher ! Think — not of me, but 
 of the lives that may depend on both of us ! " . 
 
 This exordium, and Miss Pross's two hands in quite 
 agonised entreaty clasping his, decided Mr. Cruncher. 
 With an encouraging nod or two, he immediately went out 
 to alter the arrangements, and left her by herself to follow 
 as she had proposed. 
 
 The having originated a precaution which was already in 
 course of execution, was a great relief to Miss Pross. The 
 necessity of composing her appearance so that it should at- 
 tract no special notice in the • streets, was another relief. 
 She looked at her watch, and it was twenty minutes past 
 two. She had no time to lose, but must get ready at once. 
 
 Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness 
 of the deserted rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping 
 from behind every open door in them, Miss Pross got a 
 basin of cold water and began laving her eyes, which were 
 swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, 
 she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute 
 at a time by the dripping water, but constantly paused and 
 looked round to see that there was no one watching her. 
 In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried out, for she 
 saw a figure standing in the room. 
 
 The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed 
 to the feet of Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, 
 and through much staining blood, those feet had come to 
 meet that water. 
 
 Madame Defarge looked coldly at her, and said, "The 
 wife of Evremonde; where is she?" 
 
 It flashed upon Miss Pross's mind that the doors were 
 

 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 349 
 
 all standing open, and would suggest the flight. Her first 
 act was to shut them. There were four in the room, and 
 she shut them all. She then placed herself before the door 
 of the chamber which Lucie had occupied. 
 
 Madame Defarge's dark eyes followed her through this 
 rapid movement, and rested on her when it was finished. 
 Miss Pross had nothing beautiful about her; years had not 
 tamed the wildness, or softened the grimness, of her ap- 
 pearance; but, she too was a determined woman in her dif- 
 ferent way, and she measured Madame Defarge with her 
 eyes, every inch. 
 
 " You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Luci- 
 fer," said Miss Pross, in her breathing. " Nevertheless, you 
 shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman." 
 
 Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with 
 something of Miss Pross's own perception that they two 
 were at bay. She saw a tight, hard, wiry woman before 
 her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the same figure a woman 
 with a strong hand, in the years gone by. She knew full 
 well that Miss Pross was the family's devoted friend; Miss 
 Pross knew full well that Madame Defarge was the family's 
 malevolent enemy. 
 
 "On my way yonder," said Madame Defarge, with a 
 slight movement of her hand towards the fatal spot, 
 " where they reserve my chair and my knitting for me, I 
 am come to make my compliments to her in passing. I 
 wish to see her." 
 
 "I know that your intentions are evil," said Miss Pross, 
 "and you may depend upon it, I'll hold my own against 
 them." 
 
 Each spoke in her own language ; neither understood the 
 other's words; both were very watchful, and intent to de- 
 duce from look and manner, what the unintelligible Avoids 
 meant. 
 
 " It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me 
 at this moment," said Madame Defarge. "Good patriots 
 will know what that means. Let me see her. Go tell her 
 that I wish to see her. Do you hear? " 
 
 "If those eyes of yours. were bed- winches," returned 
 Miss Pross, " and I was an English four-poster, they 
 shouldn't loose a splinter of me. No, you wicked foreign 
 woman; I am your match." 
 
 Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic 
 
350 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 remarks in detail; but, she so far understood them as to 
 perceive that she was set at naught. 
 
 " Woman imbecile and pig-like ! " said Madame Defarge, 
 frowning. " I take no answer from you. I demand to see 
 her. Either tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out 
 of the way of the door and let me go to her ! " This, with 
 an angry explanatory wave of her right arm. 
 
 "I little thought," said Miss Pross, "that I should ever 
 want to understand your nonsensical language ; but I would 
 give all I have, except the clothes I wear, to know whether 
 you suspect the truth, or any part of it." 
 
 Neither of them for a single moment released the other's 
 eyes. Madame Defarge had not moved from the spot 
 where she stood when Miss Pross first became aware of 
 her; but, she now advanced one step. 
 
 "I am a Briton," said Miss Pross, "I am desperate. I 
 don't care an English Twopence for myself. I know that 
 the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there is for 
 my Ladybird. I'll not leave a handful of that dark hair 
 upon your head, if you lay a finger on me ! " 
 
 Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash 
 of her eyes between every rapid sentence, and every rapid 
 sentence a whole breath. Thus Miss Pross, who had never 
 struck a blow in her life. 
 
 But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it 
 brought the irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a 
 courage that Madame Defarge so little comprehended as 
 to mistake for weakness. " Ha, ha ! " she laughed, " you 
 poor wretch ! What are you worth ! I address myself to 
 that Doctor." Then she raised her voice and called out, 
 "Citizen Doctor! Wife of Evremonde! Child of Evre- 
 monde ! Any person but this miserable fool, answer the 
 Citizeness Defarge ! " 
 
 Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent dis- 
 closure in the expression of Miss Pross's face, perhaps a 
 sudden misgiving apart from either suggestion, whispered 
 to Madame Defarge that they were gone. Three of the 
 doors she opened swiftly, and looked in. 
 
 "Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried 
 packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground. There 
 is no one in that room behind you! Let me look." 
 
 " Never ! " said Miss Pross, who understood the request 
 as perfectly as Madame Defarge understood the answet. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 351 
 
 " If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be 
 pursued and brought back," said Madame Defarge to her- 
 self. 
 
 "As long as you don't know whether they are in that 
 room or not, you are uncertain what to do," said Miss 
 Pross to herself; "and you shall not know that, if I can 
 prevent your knowing it; and know that, or not know that, 
 you shall not leave here while I can hold you." 
 
 " I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has 
 stopped me, I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you 
 from that door," said Madame Defarge. 
 
 " We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary 
 courtyard, we are not likely to be heard, and I pray for 
 bodily strength to keep you here, while every minute you 
 are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to my dar- 
 ling," said Miss Pross. 
 
 Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the, 
 instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist in both 
 her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain for Madame 
 Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross, with the 
 vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than 
 hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor 
 in the struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame 
 Defarge buffeted and tore her face; but Miss Pross, with 
 her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her 
 with more than the hold of a drowning woman. 
 
 Soon, Madame Defarge's hands ceased to strike, and felt 
 at her encircled waist. "It is under my arm," said Miss 
 Pross, in smothered tones, "you shall not draw it. I am 
 stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I hold you till 
 one or other of us faints or dies ! " 
 
 Madame Defarge's hands were at her bosom. Miss 
 Pross looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out 
 a flash and a crash, and stood alone — blinded with smoke. 
 
 All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving 
 an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of 
 the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground. 
 
 In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Pross 
 passed the body as far from it as she could, and ran down 
 the stairs to call for fruitless help. Happily, she be- 
 thought herself of the consequences of what she did, in 
 time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to go 
 in at the door again; but, she did go in, and even went 
 
352 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 near it, to get the bonnet and other things that she must 
 wear. These she put on, out on the staircase, first shutting 
 and locking the door and taking away the key. She then 
 sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe and to 
 cry, and then got up and hurried away. 
 
 By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she 
 could hardly have gone along the streets without being 
 stopped. By good fortune, too, she was naturally so pe- 
 culiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement like any 
 other woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks 
 of griping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was 
 torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) 
 was clutched and dragged a hundred ways. 
 
 In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the 
 river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before 
 her escort, and waiting there, she thought, what if the key 
 were already taken in a net, what if it were identified, what 
 if the door were opened and the remains discovered, what 
 if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and charged 
 with murder! In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, 
 the escort appeared, took her in, and took her away. 
 
 "Is there any noise in the streets? " she asked him. 
 
 "The usual noises," Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked 
 surprised by the question and by her aspect. 
 
 " I don't hear you," said Miss Pross. " What do you say? " 
 
 It was in vain' for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said ; 
 Miss Pross could not hear him. " So I'll nod my head/' 
 thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, "at all events she'll see 
 that." And she did. 
 
 " Is there any noise in the streets now? " asked Miss 
 Pross again, presently. 
 
 Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head. 
 
 "I don't hear it." 
 
 " Gone deaf in an hour? " said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, 
 with his mind much disturbed; " wot's come to her? " 
 
 "I feel," said Miss Pross, "as if there had been a flash 
 and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should 
 ever hear in this life." 
 
 " Blest if she ain't in a queer condition ! " said Mr. 
 Cruncher, more and more disturbed. " Wot can she have 
 been a takin', to keep her courage up? Hark ! There's the 
 roll of them dreadful carts! You can hear that, miss? " 
 
 " I can hear," said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 353 
 
 her, "nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great 
 crash, and then a great stillness, and that stillness seems 
 to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be broken any more 
 as long as my life lasts." 
 
 "If she don't hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now 
 very nigh their journey's end," said Mr. Cruncher, glan- 
 cing over his shoulder, "it's my opinion that indeed she 
 never will hear anything else in this world." 
 
 And indeed she never did. 
 
 CHAPTER XV- 
 
 THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOREVER. 
 
 Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow 
 and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guil- 
 lotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined 
 since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one 
 realisation, 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 pro- 
 duced 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 over again, and it will surely yield 
 the same fruit according to its kind. 
 
 Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back 
 again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, 
 and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute mon- 
 archs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flar- 
 ing Jezebels, the churches that are not my father's house 
 but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peas- 
 ants! No; the great magician who majestically works out 
 the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his trans- 
 formations. " 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 conjuration, then resume thy 
 former aspect ! " Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils 
 roll along. 
 
354 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they 
 seem to plough up a long crooked furrow among the popu- 
 lace in the streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side 
 and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward. So used 
 are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, 
 that in many windows there are no people, and in some 
 the occupation of the hands is not so much as suspended, 
 while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and 
 there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he 
 points his finger, with something of the complacency of a 
 curator or authorised exponent, to 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. 
 
 There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of 
 the tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of 
 them, and they are asked some question. It would seem 
 to be always the same question, for, it is always followed 
 by a press of people towards the third cart. The horsemen 
 abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it 
 with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know 
 which is he; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his 
 head bent down, to converse with a mere girl who sits on 
 the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has no curi- 
 osity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to 
 the girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, 
 cries are raised against him. If they move him at all, it is 
 only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more 
 loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, 
 his arms being bound. 
 
 On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the 
 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 355 
 
 tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks in 
 to the first of them : not there. He looks into the second : 
 not there. He already asks himself, "Has he sacrificed 
 me? " when his face clears, as he looks into the third. 
 
 " Which is Evremonde? " says a man behind him. 
 
 " That. At the back there." 
 
 " With his hand in the girl's? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The man cries, " Down, Evremonde ! To the Guillotine 
 all aristocrats ! Down, Evremonde ! " 
 
 "Hush, hush!" the Spy entreats him, timidly. 
 
 " And why not, citizen? " 
 
 " He is going to pay the forfeit : it will be paid in five 
 minutes more. Let him be at peace." 
 
 But the man continuing to exclaim, " Down Evremonde ! " 
 the face of Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him. 
 Evremonde then sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, 
 and goes his way. 
 
 The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow 
 ploughed among the populace is turning 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 knit- 
 ting. On one of the foremost chairs, stands The Venge- 
 ance, looking about for her friend. 
 
 " Therese ! " she cries, in her shrill tones. " Who has 
 seen her? Therese Defarge ! " 
 
 " She never missed before," says a knitting- woman of the 
 sisterhood. 
 
 "No; nor will she miss now," cries The Vengeance, 
 petulantly. "Therese." 
 
 "Louder," the woman recommends. 
 
 Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she 
 will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a 
 little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her. 
 Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering 
 somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done 
 dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills 
 they will go far enough to find her ! 
 
 " Bad Fortune ! " cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot 
 in the chair, " and here are the tumbrils ! And Evremonde 
 
356 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 will be despatched in a wink, and she not here ! See hei 
 knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. 
 I ery with vexation and disappointment ! " 
 
 As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, 
 the tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The ministers 
 of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready. Crash ! — A head 
 is held up, and the knitting-women who scarcely lifted 
 their eyes 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 falter- 
 ing or pausing in their work, count Two. 
 
 The supposed Evremonde descends, and the seamstress 
 is lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished her 
 patient hand in getting out, but still holds it as he prom- 
 ised. 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. 
 
 " But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so com- 
 posed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; 
 nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him 
 who was put to death, that we might have hope and 
 comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by 
 Heaven." 
 
 "Or you to me," says Sydney Carton. "Keep your eyes 
 upon me, dear child, and mind no other object." 
 
 " I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind 
 nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid." 
 
 " They will be rapid. Fear not ! " 
 
 The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, 
 but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice 
 to voice, hand to hand, 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. 
 
 " Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one 
 last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me — 
 just a little." 
 
 "Tell me what it is." 
 
 " I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like 
 myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger 
 than I, and she lives in a farmer's house in the south 
 country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my 
 
The third tumbril. 
 — tale of Tvo Cities B. III., eh. xv., p. 356. 
 
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 357 
 
 /ate — for I cannot write — and if I could, how should I tell 
 her! It is better as it is." 
 
 "Yes, yes; better as it is." 
 
 "What I have been thinking as we came along, and 
 what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind 
 strong face which gives me so much support, is this: — 
 If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they 
 come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she 
 may live a long time: she may even live to be old." 
 
 "What then, my gentle sister?" 
 
 "Do you think:" the uncomplaining eyes in which 
 there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips 
 part a little more and tremble: "that it will seem long to 
 me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust 
 both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?" 
 
 "It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and 
 no trouble there." 
 
 "You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I 
 to kiss you now? Is the moment come?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless 
 each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he re- 
 leases 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 whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
 never die." 
 
 The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many 
 faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts 
 of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one 
 great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three. 
 
 They said of him, about the city that night, that it was 
 the peacefulest man's face ever beheld there. Many 
 added that he looked sublime and prophetic. 
 
 One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe — 
 a woman — had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not 
 long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that 
 were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, 
 and they were prophetic, they would have been these: 
 
358 A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 
 
 "I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the 
 Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors 
 who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing 
 by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out 
 of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant 
 people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be 
 truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long 
 long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the 
 previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradu- 
 ally making expiation for itself and wearing out. 
 
 "I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, 
 useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I 
 shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, 
 who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but 
 otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing 
 office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their 
 friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, 
 and passing tranquilly to his reward. 
 
 "I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in 
 the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see 
 her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of 
 this daj'". I see her and her husband, their course done, 
 lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know 
 that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the 
 other's soul, than I was in the souls of both. 
 
 v I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore 
 my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life 
 which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that 
 my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I 
 see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, 
 foremost of just judges and honoured men; bringing a 
 boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden 
 hair, to this place — then fair to look upon, with not a 
 trace of this day's disfigurement — and I hear him tell the 
 child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice. 
 
 "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have 
 ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I 
 have ever known." 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO 
 IDLE APPRENTICES 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO 
 IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred 
 and fifty-seven, wherein these presents bear date, two idle 
 apprentices, exhausted by the long, hot summer, and the 
 long, hot work it had brought with it, ran away from their 
 employer. They were bound to a highly meritorious lady 
 (named Literature), of fair credit and repute, though, it 
 must be acknowledged, not quite so highly esteemed in the 
 City as she might be. This is the more remarkable, as 
 there is nothing against the respectable lady in that quar- 
 ter, but quite the contrary; her family having rendered 
 eminent service to many famous citizens of London. It 
 may be sufficient to name Sir William Walworth, lord 
 Mayor under King Eichard II., at the time of Wat Tyler's 
 insurrection, and Sir Richard Whittington: which latter 
 distinguished man and magistrate was doubtless indebted 
 to the lady's family for the gift of his celebrated cat. 
 There is also strong reason to suppose that they rang the 
 Highgate bells for him with their own hands. 
 
 The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty 
 to the mistress from whom they had received many favours, 
 were actuated by the low idea of making a perfectly idle 
 trip, in any direction. They had no intention of going any- 
 where in particular; they wanted to see nothing, they 
 wanted to know nothing, they wanted to learn nothing, 
 they wanted to do nothing. They wanted only to be idle. 
 They took to themselves (after Hogarth), the names of 
 Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild; but there 
 was not a moral pin to choose between them, and they were 
 both idle in the last degree. 
 
 Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this 
 1 
 
2 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 difference of character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, 
 and would take upon himself any amount of pains and la- 
 bour to assure himself that he was idle; in short, had no 
 better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry 
 Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the un- 
 mixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born- 
 and-bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised what he 
 would have preached if he had not been too idle to preach; 
 a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness. 
 
 The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few 
 hours of their escape, walking down into the North of Eng- 
 land, that is to say, Thomas was lying in a meadow, look- 
 ing at the railway trains as they passed over a distant via-_ 
 duct — which was his idea of walking down into the North; 
 while Francis was walking a mile due South against time 
 — which was his idea of walking down into the North. In 
 the meantime the day waned, and the mile-stones remained 
 unconquered. 
 
 "Tom," said Goodchild, "the sun is getting low. Up, 
 and let us go forward ! " 
 
 " Nay," quoth Thomas Idle, " I have not done with Annie 
 Laurie yet." And he proceeded with that idle but popular 
 ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young person of 
 that name he would " lay him doon and dee " — equivalent, 
 in prose, to lay him down and die. 
 
 "What an ass that fellow was ! " cried Goodchild, with 
 the bitter emphasis of contempt. 
 
 " Which fellow? " asked Thomas Idle. 
 
 "The fellow in your song. Lay him doon and dee! 
 Finely he'd show off before the girl by doing that. A 
 sniveller! Why couldn't he get up, and punch somebody's 
 head!" 
 
 " Whose? " asked Thomas Idle. 
 
 "Anybody's. Everybody's would be better than no- 
 body's! If I fell into that state of mind about a girl, do 
 you think I'd lay me doon and dee? No, sir," proceeded 
 Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the Scottish 
 accent, " I'd get me oop and peetch into somebody. 
 Wouldn't you? '? . 
 
 "I wouldn't have anything to do with her," yawned 
 Thomas Idle. " Why should I take the trouble? " 
 
 "It's no trouble, "Tom, to fall in love," said Goodchild, 
 shaking his head. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 3 
 
 "It's trouble enough to fall out of it, once you're in it," 
 retorted Tom. " So I keep out of it altogether. It would 
 be better for you, if you did the same." 
 
 Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, 
 and not unfrequently with several objects at once, made no 
 reply. He heaved a sigh of the kind which is termed by 
 the lower orders "abellowser," and then, heaving Mr. Idle 
 on his feet (who was not half so heavy as the sigh), urged 
 him northward. 
 
 These two had sent their personal baggage on by train : 
 only retaining each a knapsack. Idle now applied himself 
 to constantly regretting the train, to tracking it through 
 the intricacies of Bradshaw's Guide, and finding out where 
 it is now — and where now — and where now — and to asking 
 what was the use of walking, when you could ride at such 
 a pace as that. Was it to see the country? If that was 
 the object, look at it out of the carriage-windows. There 
 was a great deal more of it to be seen there than here. 
 Besides, who wanted to see the country? Nobody. And 
 again, whoever did walk? Nobody. Fellows set off to 
 walk, but they never did it. They came back and said they 
 did, but they didn't. Then why should he walk? He 
 wouldn't walk. He swore it by this milestone! 
 
 It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated 
 into the North. Submitting to the powerful chain of argu- 
 ment, Goodchild proposed a return to the Metropolis, and a 
 falling back upon Euston Square Terminus. Thomas as- 
 sented with alacrity, and so they walked down into the 
 North by the next morning's express, and carried their 
 knapsacks in the luggage-van. 
 
 It was like all other expresses, as every express is and 
 must be. It bore through the harvest country a smell like 
 a large washing-day, and a sharp issue of steam as from a 
 huge brazen tea-urn. The greatest power in nature and art 
 combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in the sight 
 of people looking up from fields and roads, as smoothly and 
 unreally as a light miniature plaything. Now, the engine 
 shrieked in hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed desir- 
 able that the men who had her in charge should hold her 
 feet, slap her hands, and bring her to; now, burrowed into 
 tunnels with a stubborn and undemonstrative energy so con- 
 fusing that the train seemed to be flying back into leagues 
 of darkness. Here, were station after station, swallowed up 
 
4 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 by the express without stopping; here, stations where it 
 fired itself in like a volley of cannon-balls, swooped away 
 four country-people with nosegays, and three men of busi- 
 ness with portmanteaus, and fired itself off again, bang, 
 bang, bang ! At long intervals were uncomfortable refresh- 
 ment-rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of 
 Beauty towards Beast, the public (but to whom she never re- 
 lented, as Beauty did in the story, towards the other Beast), 
 and where sensitive stomachs were fed, with a contemptuous 
 sharpness occasioning indigestion. Here, again, were sta- 
 tions with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden 
 razors set aloft on great posts, shaving the air. In these 
 fields, the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used to the 
 thundering meteor, and didn't mind; in those, they were 
 all set scampering together, and a herd of pigs scoured 
 after them. The pastoral country darkened, became coaly, 
 became smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse, im- 
 proved again, grew rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, 
 a stream, a chain of hills, a gorge, a moor, a cathedral 
 town, a fortified place, a -waste. Now, miserable black 
 dwellings, a black canal, and sick black towers of chim- 
 neys; now, a trim garden, where the flowers were bright 
 and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars all a-blaze; 
 now, the water meadows with their fairy rings; now, the 
 mangy patch of unlet building ground outside the stagnant 
 town, with the larger ring where the Circus was last week. 
 The temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people 
 changed, faces got sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got 
 shrewder and harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce 
 guard in the London uniform and silver lace, had not yet 
 rumpled his shirt collar, delivered half the despatches in 
 his shiny little pouch, or read his newspaper. 
 
 Garlisle ! Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle. It 
 looked congenially and delightfully idle. Something in 
 the way of public amusement had happened last month, 
 and something else was going to happen before Christmas; 
 and, in the meantime there was a lecture on India for those 
 who liked it — which Idle and Goodchild did not. Like- 
 wise, by those who liked them, there were impressions to 
 be bought of all the vapid prints, going and gone, and of 
 nearly all the vapid books. For those who wanted to put 
 anything in missionary boxes, here were the boxes. For 
 those who wanted the Beverend Mr. Podgers (artist's 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 5 
 
 proofs, thirty shillings), here was Mr. Podgers to any 
 amount. Not less gracious and abundant, Mr. Codgers 
 also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly 
 tooth and nail. . Here, were guide-books to the neighbour- 
 ing antiquities, and eke the Lake country, in several dry 
 and husky sorts; here, many physically and morally im- 
 possible heads of both sexes, for young ladies to copy, in 
 the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large 
 impression of Mr. Spurgeon, solid as to the flesh, not to 
 say even something gross. The working young men of 
 Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands in their pockets, 
 across the pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared 
 (much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else 
 to do. The working and growing young women of Car- 
 lisle, from the age of twelve upwards, promenaded the 
 streets in the cool of the evening, and rallied the said 
 young men. Sometimes the young men rallied the young 
 women, as in the case of a group gathered round an ac- 
 cordion-player, from among whom a young man advanced 
 behind a young woman for whom he appeared to have a 
 tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and play- 
 ful, by giving her (he wore clogs) a kick. 
 
 On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and be- 
 came (to the Two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and re- 
 proachfully busy. There were its cattle market, its sheep 
 market, and its pig market down by the river, with raw- 
 boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland 
 dresses beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among 
 the animals, and flavouring the air with fumes of whiskey. 
 There was its corn market down the main street, with hum 
 of chaffering over open sacks. There was its general mar- 
 ket in the street too, with heather brooms on which the 
 purple flower still flourished, and heather baskets primitive 
 and fresh to behold. With women trying on clogs and 
 caps at open stalls, and " Bible stalls " adjoining. With 
 "Doctor Mantle's Dispensary for the cure of all Human 
 Maladies and no charge for advice," and with Doctor Man- 
 tle's "Laboratory of Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Sci- 
 ence " — both healing institutions established on one pair of 
 trestles, one board, and one sun-blind. With the renowned 
 phrenologist from London, begging to be favoured (at six- 
 pence each) with the company of clients of both sexes, to 
 whom, on examination of their heads, he would make rev- 
 
6 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 eiations "enabling him or her to know themselves." 
 Through all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting- 
 serjeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread of War in 
 the peaceful skein. Likewise on the walls were printed 
 hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to 
 hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas the 
 standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, 
 " growing lads of five feet eleven " need not absolutely de- 
 spair of being accepted. 
 
 Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried 
 majesty of Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode 
 away from Carlisle at eight o'clock one forenoon, bound 
 for the village of Heske, Newmarket, some fourteen miles 
 distant. Goodchild (who had already begun to doubt 
 whether he was idle : as his way always is when he has 
 nothing to do), had read of a certain black old Cumberland 
 hill or mountain, called Carrock, or Carrock Fell; and had 
 arrived at the conclusion that it would be the culminating 
 triumph of Idleness to ascend the same. Thomas Idle, 
 dwelling on the pains inseparable from that achievement, 
 had expressed the strongest doubts of the expediency, and 
 even of the sanity, of the enterprise; but Goodchild had 
 carried his point, and they rode away. 
 
 Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and 
 twisting to the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted 
 himself a great deal more than his merits deserve; but that 
 is rather the way of the Lake country), dodging the ap- 
 prentices in a picturesque and pleasant manner. Good, 
 weather-proof, warm, pleasant houses, well white-limed, 
 scantily dotting the road. Clean children coming out to 
 look, carrying other clean children as big as themselves. 
 Harvest still lying out and much rained upon ; here and 
 there, harvest still unreaped. Well-cultivated gardens at- 
 tached to the cottages, with plenty of produce forced out 
 of their hard soil. Lonely nooks, and wild; but people 
 can be born, and married, and buried in such nooks, and 
 can live and love, and be loved, there as elsewhere, thank 
 God ! (Mr. Goodchild' s remark. ) By-and-bye, the village. 
 Black, coarse-stoned, rough- windowed houses; some with 
 outer staircases, like Swiss houses; a sinuous and stony gut- 
 ter winding up hill and round the corner, by way of street. 
 All the children running out directly. Women pausing in 
 washing, to peep from doorways and very little windows. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 7 
 
 Such were the observations of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, 
 as their conveyance stopped at the village shoemaker's. 
 Old Carrock gloomed down upon it all in a very ill-tempered 
 state; and rain was beginning. 
 
 The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do 
 with Carrock. No visitors went up Carrock. No visitors 
 came there at all. Aa' the world ganged awa' yon. The 
 driver appealed to the Innkeeper. The Innkeeper had two 
 men working in the fields, and one of them should be called 
 in, to go up Carrock as guide. Messrs. Idle and Good- 
 child, highly approving, entered the Innkeeper's house, to 
 drink whiskey and eat oatcake. 
 
 The Innkeeper was not idle enough — was not idle at all, 
 which was a great fault in him — but was a fine specimen 
 of a north-country man, or any kind of man. He had a 
 ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an immense 
 hand, a cheery out-speaking voice, and a straight, bright, 
 broad look. He had a drawing-room, too, up-stairs, which 
 was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells. (This was Mr. 
 Francis Goodchild's opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle 
 did not concur. ) 
 
 The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and re- 
 crossed by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a cen- 
 tre, in a corner, that it looked like a broken star-fish. 
 The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good 
 mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fire-side, and a 
 couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the 
 wild country behind the house. What it most developed 
 was, an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick- 
 nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number. 
 They were not very various, consisting in great part of 
 waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated, ap- 
 pealing on one leg to the parental affections from under lit- 
 tle cupping glasses; but, Uncle Tom was there, in crock- 
 ery, receiving theological instructions from Miss Eva, who 
 grew out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough 
 state of profile propagandism. Engravings of Mr. Hunt's 
 country boy, before and after his pie, were on the wall, di- 
 vided by a highly-coloured nautical piece, the subject of 
 which had all her colours (and more) flying, and was mak- 
 ing great way through a sea of a regular pattern, like a 
 lady's collar. A benevolent, elderly gentleman of the last 
 century, with a powdered head, kept guard, in oil and var- 
 
8 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 nish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table; 
 in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife- 
 box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling 
 wires, exactly like David's harp packed for travelling. 
 Everything became a nicknack in this curious room. The 
 copper tea-kettle, burnished up to the highest point of 
 glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the greatest 
 possible distance from the fire-place, and said : " By your 
 leave, not a kittle, but a bijou." The Staffordshire- ware 
 butter-dish with the cover on got upon a little round occa- 
 sional table in a window, with a worked top, and an- 
 nounced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed there, 
 as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to 
 be chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the 
 visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged 
 old village on the Cumberland Fells. The very footstool 
 could not keep the floor, but got upon a sofa, and there- 
 from proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and liver- 
 coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose. 
 Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel 
 was the least successful assumption in the collection : being 
 perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake 
 in sitting down on the part of some corpulent member of 
 the family. 
 
 There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, 
 books on the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the 
 corner. Fielding was there, and Smollett was there, and 
 Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed volumes; and 
 there were tales of those who go down to the sea in ships, 
 for windy nights; and there was really a choice of good 
 books for rainy days or fine. It was so very pleasant to 
 see these things in such a lonesome by-place — so very 
 agreeable to find these evidences of a taste, however home- 
 ly, that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness 
 of the house — so fanciful to imagine what a wonder such a 
 room must be to the little children born in the gloomy village 
 — what grand impressions of it those of them who became 
 wanderers over the earth would carry away; and how, at 
 distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die, 
 cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to 
 men was once in the Heske-Newmarket Inn, in rare old 
 Cumberland — it was such a charmingly lazy pursuit to en- 
 tertain these rambling thoughts over the choice oatcake and 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 9 
 
 the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never 
 asked themselves how it came to pass that the men in the 
 fields were never heard of more, how the stalwart landlord 
 replaced them without explanation, how his dog-cart came 
 to be waiting at the door, and how everything was arranged 
 without the least arrangement for climbing to old Carrock's 
 shoulders, and standing on his head. 
 
 Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Ap- 
 prentices drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, 
 drowsy, penetrating rain; got into the landlord's light dog- 
 cart, and rattled off through the village for the foot of Car- 
 rock. The journe}'' at the outset was not remarkable. The 
 Cumberland road went up and down like all other roads; 
 the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and 
 barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry 
 stared after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in 
 sight, like the rest of their race. The approach to the foot 
 of the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of 
 most other mountains all over the world. The cultivation 
 gradually ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road 
 became gradually rougher, and the sides of the mountain 
 looked gradually more and more lofty, and more and more 
 difficult to get up. The dog-cart was left at a lonely farm- 
 house. The landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, as- 
 suming in an instant the character of the most cheerful and 
 adventurous of guides, led the way to the ascent. Mr. 
 Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of the mountain, and, 
 feeling apparently that he was now going to be very lazy 
 indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under the 
 influence of the contentment within and the moisture with- 
 out. Only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas Idle did Despond- 
 ency now hold her gloomy state. He kept it a secret; but 
 he would have given a very handsome sum, when the ascent 
 began, to have been back again at the inn. The sides of 
 Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was 
 hidden in mist. The rain was falling faster and faster. 
 The knees of Mr. Idle — always weak on walking excursions 
 — shivered and shook with fear and damp. The wet was 
 already penetrating through the young man's outer coat to 
 a brand-new shooting-jacket, for which he had reluctantly 
 paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town; he had 
 no stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet 
 of clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him 
 
10 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 an arm, nobody to push him gently behind, nobody to pull 
 him up tenderly in front, nobody to speak to who really felt 
 the difficulties of the ascent, the dampness of the rain, the 
 denseness of the mist, and the unutterable folly of climb- 
 ing, undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there 
 is level ground within reach to walk on. instead. Was it 
 for this that Thomas had left London? London, where 
 there are nice short walks in level public gardens, with 
 benches of repose set up at convenient distances for weary 
 travellers — London, where rugged stone is humanely 
 pounded into little lumps for the road, and intelligently 
 shaped into smooth slabs for the pavement ! No ! it was 
 not for the laborious ascent of the crags of Carrock that 
 Idle had left his native city, and travelled to Cumberland. 
 Never did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had 
 committed a very grave error in judgment than when he 
 found himself standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep 
 mountain, and knew that the responsibility rested on his 
 weak shoulders of actually getting to the top of it. 
 
 The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild 
 followed, the mournful Idle brought up the rear. From 
 time to time, the two foremost members of the expedition 
 changed places in the order of march; but the rearguard 
 never altered his position. Up the mountain or down the 
 mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through 
 the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was al- 
 ways the last, and was always the man who had to be 
 looked after and waited for. At first the ascent was de- 
 lusively easy, the sides of the mountain sloped gradually, 
 and the material of which they were composed was a soft 
 spongy turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon. After 
 a hundred yards or so, however, the verdant scene and the 
 easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began. Not noble, 
 massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regu- 
 larity in their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat 
 tops to sit upon, but little, irritating, comfortless rocks, 
 littered about anyhow by Nature; treacherous, dishearten- 
 ing rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small sizes, 
 bruisers of tender toes and trippers-up of wavering feet. 
 When these impediments were passed, heather and slough 
 followed. Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly 
 mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned 
 round to look at the view below them. The scene of the 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 11 
 
 moorland and the fields was like a feeble water-colour 
 drawing half sponged out. The mist was darkening, the 
 rain was thickening, the trees were dotted about like spots 
 of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped out the 
 fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely 
 farm-house where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spec- 
 tral in the grey light like the last human dwelling at the 
 end of the habitable world. Was this a sight worth climb- 
 ing to see? Surely— surely not ! 
 
 Up agaim — for the top of Carrock is not reached yet. 
 The landlord, just as good-tempered and obliging as he 
 was at the bottom of the mountain. Mr. Goodchild brighter 
 in the eyes and rosier in the face than ever; full of cheer- 
 ful remarks and apt quotations; and walking with a spring- 
 iness of step wonderful to behold. Mr. Idle, farther and 
 farther in the rear, with the water squeaking in the toes of 
 his boots, with his two-guinea shooting- jacket clinging 
 damply to his aching sides, with his overcoat so full of 
 rain, and standing out so pyramidically stiff, in conse- 
 quence, from his shoulders downwards, that he felt as if 
 he was walking in a gigantic extinguisher — the despairing 
 spirit within him representing but too aptly the candle that 
 had just been put out. Up and up and up again, till a 
 ridge is reached and the outer edge of the mist on the sum- 
 mit of Carrock is darkly and drizzlingly near. Is this the 
 top? No, nothing like the top. It is an aggravating pe- 
 culiarity of all mountains, that, although they have only 
 one top when they are seen (as they ought always to be 
 seen) from below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption 
 of false tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-ad- 
 vised to go out of his way for the purpose of ascending 
 them. Carrock is but a trumpery little mountain of fifteen 
 hundred feet, and it presumes to have false tops, and even 
 precipices, as if it were Mont Blanc. No matter; Good- 
 child enjoys it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid of 
 being left behind by himself, must follow. ' On entering 
 the edge of the mist, the landlord stops, and says he hopes 
 that it will not get any thicker. It is twenty years since 
 he last ascended Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the 
 mist increases, that the party may be lost on the mountain. 
 Goodchild hears this dreadful intimation, and is not in the 
 least impressed by it. He marches for the top that is 
 never to be found, as if he was the Wandering Jew, bound 
 
12 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 to go on for ever, in defiance of everything. The landlord 
 faithfully accompanies him. The two, to the dim eye of 
 Idle, far below, look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair 
 of friendly giants, mounting the steps of some invisible 
 castle together. Up and up, and then down a little, and 
 then up, and then along a strip of level ground, and then 
 up again. The wind, a wind unknown in the happy val- 
 ley, blows keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetra- 
 ble; a dreary little cairn of stones appears. The landlord 
 adds one to the heap, first walking all round the cairn as if 
 he were about to perform an incantation, then dropping the 
 stone on to the top of the heap with the gesture of a ma- 
 gician adding an ingredient to a cauldron in full bubble. 
 Goodchild sits down by the cairn as if it was his study- 
 table at home; Idle, drenched and panting, stands up with 
 his back to the wind, ascertains distinctly that this is the 
 top at last, looks round with all the little curiosity that is 
 left in him, and gets, in return, a magnificent view of — 
 Nothing! 
 
 The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the 
 exploring party is a little injured by the nature of the di- 
 rect conclusion to which the sight of it points — the said 
 conclusion being that the mountain mist has actually gath- 
 ered round them, as the landlord feared it would. It now 
 becomes imperatively necessary to settle the exact situation 
 of the farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart has 
 been left, before the travellers attempt to descend. While 
 the landlord is endeavouring to make this discovery in his 
 own way, Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under his wet 
 coat, draws out a little red morocco-case, opens it, and dis- 
 plays to the view of his companions a neat pocket-com- 
 pass. The north is found, the point at which the farm- 
 house is situated is settled, and the descent begins. After 
 a little downward walking, Idle (behind as usual) sees his 
 fellow-travellers turn aside sharply — tries to follow them — ■ 
 loses them in the mist — is shouted after, waited for, recov- 
 ered — and then finds that a halt has been ordered, partly 
 on his account, partly for the purpose of again consulting 
 the compass. 
 
 The point in debate is settled as before between Good- 
 child and the landlord, and the expedition moves on, not 
 down the mountain, but marching straight forward round 
 the slope of it. The difficulty of following this new route 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 13 
 
 is acutely felt by Thomas Idle. He finds the hardship of 
 walking at all greatly increased by the fatigue of moving 
 his feet straight forward along the side of a slope, when 
 their natural tendency, at every step, is to turn off at a 
 right angle, and go straight down the declivity. Let the 
 reader imagine himself to be walking along the roof of a 
 barn, instead of rip or down it, and he will have an exact 
 idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the travellers had 
 now involved themselves. In ten minutes more Idle was 
 lost in the distance again, was shouted for, waited for, re- 
 covered as before; found Goodchild repeating his observa- 
 tion of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against the 
 sideway route that his companions persisted in following. 
 It appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when 
 three men want to get to the bottom of a mountain, their 
 business is to walk down it; and he put this view of the 
 case, not only with emphasis, but even with some irritabil- 
 ity. He was answered from the scientific eminence of the 
 compass on which his companions were mounted, that there 
 was a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, 
 called The Black Arches, into which the travellers were 
 sure to march in the mist, if they risked continuing the 
 descent from the place where they had now halted. Idle 
 received this answer with the silent respect which was due 
 to the commanders of the expedition, and followed along 
 the roof of the barn, or rather the side of the mountain, re- 
 flecting upon the assurance which he received on starting 
 again, that the object of the party was only to gain " a 
 certain point," and, this haven attained, to continue the 
 descent afterwards until the foot of Carrock was reached. 
 Though quite unexceptionable as an abstract form of ex- 
 pression, the phrase " a certain point " has the disadvantage 
 of sounding rather vaguely when it is pronounced on 
 unknown ground, under a canopy of mist much thicker 
 than a London fog. Nevertheless, after the compass, 
 this phrase was all the clue the party had to hold by, 
 and Idle clung to the extreme end of it as hopefully as he 
 could. 
 
 More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts 
 of points reached except the "certain point; " third loss of 
 Idle, third shouts for him, third recovery of him, third 
 consultation of compass. Mr. Goodchild draws it tenderly 
 from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a stone. 
 
J.4, THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 Something falls on the turf — it is the glass. Something 
 else drops immediately after — it is the needle. The com- 
 pass is broken, and the exploring party is lost ! 
 
 It is the practice of the English portion of the human 
 race to receive all great disasters in dead silence. Mr. 
 Goodchild restored the useless compass to his pocket with- 
 out saying a word, Mr. Idle looked at the landlord, and 
 the landlord looked at Mr. Idle. There was nothing for it 
 now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chapter of 
 chances. Accordingly, the lost travellers moved forward, 
 still walking round the slope of the mountain, still desper- 
 ately resolved to avoid the Black Arches, and to succeed in 
 reaching the " certain point. " 
 
 A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a 
 ravine, at the bottom of which there flowed a muddy little 
 stream. Here another halt was called, and auother con- 
 sultation took place. The landlord, still clinging perti- 
 naciously to the idea of reaching the "point," voted for 
 crossing the ravine, and going on round the slope of the 
 mountain. Mr. Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow- 
 traveller, took another view of the case, and backed Mr. 
 Idle's proposal to descend Carrock at once, at any hazard 
 — the rather as the running stream was a sure guide to 
 follow from the mountain to the valley. Accordingly, the 
 party descended to the rugged and stony banks of the 
 stream; and here again Thomas lost ground sadly, and fell 
 far behind his travelling companions. Not much more 
 than six weeks had elapsed since he had sprained one of 
 his ankles, and he began to feel this same ankle getting 
 rather weak when he found himself among the stones that 
 were strewn about the running water. Goodchild and the 
 landlord were getting farther and farther ahead of him. 
 He saw them cross the stream and disappear round a pro- 
 jection on its banks. He heard them shout the moment 
 after as a signal that they had halted and were waiting for 
 him. Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed 
 the stream where they had crossed it, and was within one 
 step of the opposite ban'k, when his foot slipped on a wet 
 stone, his weak ankle gave a twist outwards, a hot, rend- 
 ing, tearing pain ran through it at the same moment, and 
 down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices, crippled 
 in an instant. 
 
 The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 15 
 
 danger. There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was 
 the mist as thick as ever, there was the landlord as com- 
 pletely lost as the strangers whom he was conducting, 
 and there was the compass broken in Goodchild's pocket. 
 To leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground was 
 plainly impossible; and to get him to walk with a badly 
 sprained ankle seemed equally out of the question. How- 
 ever, Goodchild (brought back by his cry for help) bandaged 
 the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief, and assisted by the 
 landlord, raised the crippled Apprentice to his legs, offered 
 him a shoulder to lean on, and exhorted him for the sake 
 of the whole party to try if he could walk. Thomas, as- 
 sisted by the shoulder on one side, and a stick on the 
 other, did try, with what pain and difficulty those only can 
 imagine who have sprained an ankle and have had to tread 
 on it afterwards. At a pace adapted to the feeble hobbling 
 of a newly lamed man, the lost party moved on, perfectly 
 ignorant whether they were on the right side of the moun- 
 tain or the wrong, and equally uncertain how long Idle 
 would be able to contend with the pain in his ankle, before 
 he gave in altogether and fell down again, unable to stir 
 another step. 
 
 Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas 
 weighed heavily and more heavily on the march of the ex- 
 pedition, the lost travellers followed the windings of the 
 stream, till they came to a faintly marked cart-track, 
 branching off nearly at right angles, to the left. After a 
 little consultation it was resolved to follow this dim vestige 
 of a road in the hope that it might lead to some farm or 
 cottage, at which Idle could be left in safety. It was now 
 getting on towards the afternoon, and it was fast becoming 
 more than doubtful whether the party, delayed in their 
 progress as they now were, might not be overtaken by the 
 darkness before the right route was found, and be con- 
 demned to pass the night on the mountain, without bit or 
 drop to comfort them, in their wet clothes. 
 
 The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was 
 washed out altogether by another little stream, dark, tur- 
 bulent, and rapid. The landlord suggested, judging by the 
 colour of the water, that it must be flowing from one of the 
 lead mines in the neighbourhood of Carrock; and the trav- 
 ellers accordingly kept by the stream for a little while, in 
 the hope of possibly wandering towards help in that way. 
 12 — 13 
 
16 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 After walking forward about two hundred yards, they came 
 upon a mine indeed, but a mine exhausted and abandoned; 
 a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing but the wreck of its 
 works and buildings left to speak for it. Here, there were 
 a few sheep feeding. The landlord looked at them ear- 
 nestly, thought he recognised the marks on them — then 
 thought he did not — finally gave up'the sheep in despair — 
 and walked on just as ignorant of the whereabouts of the 
 party as ever. 
 
 The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphori- 
 cally in the dark, had now been continued for three-quarters 
 of an hour from the time when the crippled Apprentice had 
 met with his accident. Mr. Idle, with all the will to con- 
 quer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble on, found the 
 power rapidly failing him, and felt that another ten min- 
 utes at most would find him at the end of his last physical 
 resources. He had just made up his mind on this point, 
 and was about to communicate the dismal result of his re- 
 flections to his companions, when the mist suddenly bright- 
 ened, and begun to lift straight ahead. In another minute, 
 the landlord, who was in advance, proclaimed that he saw 
 a tree. Before long, other trees appeared — then a cottage 
 — then a house beyond the cottage, and a familiar line of 
 road rising behind it. Last of all, Carrock itself loomed 
 darkly into view, far away to the right hand. The party 
 had not only got down the mountain without knowing how, 
 but had wandered away from it in the mist, without know- 
 ing why — away, far down on the very moor by which they 
 had approached the base of Carrock that morning. 
 
 The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier dis- 
 covery that the travellers had groped their way, though by 
 a very roundabout direction, to within a mile or so of the 
 part of the valley in which the farm-house was situated, 
 restored Mr. Idle's sinking spirits and reanimated his fail- 
 ing strength. While the landlord ran off to get the dog- 
 cart, Thomas was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage 
 which had been the first building seen when the darkness 
 brightened, and was propped up against the garden wall, 
 like an artist's lay figure waiting to be forwarded, until 
 the dog-cart should arrive from the farm-house below. In 
 due time — and a very long time it seemed to Mr. Idle — the 
 rattle of wheels was heard, and the crippled Apprentice 
 was lifted into the seat. As the dog-cart was driven back 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. IV 
 
 to the inn, the landlord related an anecdote which he had 
 just heard at the farm-house, of an unhappy man who had 
 been lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock; 
 who had passed the night there alone; who had been found 
 the next morning, "scared and starved;" and who never 
 went out afterwards, except on his way to the grave. Mr. 
 Idle heard this sad story, and derived at least one useful 
 impression from it. Bad as the pain in his ankle was, he 
 contrived to bear it patiently, for he felt grateful that 
 a worse accident had not befallen him in the wilds of 
 Carrock. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle and his ankle on 
 the hanging seat behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild and the 
 Innkeeper in front, and the rain in spouts and splashes 
 everywhere, made the best of its way back to the little inn; 
 the broken moor country looking like miles upon miles of 
 Pre- Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enormous jorum of 
 antediluvian toast-and- water. The trees dripped; the 
 eaves of the scattered cottages dripped; the barren stone 
 walls dividing the land, dripped; the yelping dogs dripped; 
 carts and waggons under ill-roofed penthouses, dripped; 
 melancholy cocks and hens perching on their shafts, or 
 seeking shelter underneath them, dripped; Mr. Goodchild 
 dripped; Thomas Idle dripped; the Innkeeper dripped; 
 the mare dripped; the vast curtains of mist and cloud 
 passed before the shadowy forms of the hills, streamed 
 water as they were drawn across the landscape. Down 
 such steep pitches that the mare seemed to be trotting on 
 her head, and up such steep pitches that she seemed to 
 have a supplementary leg in her tail, the dog-cart jolted 
 and tilted back to the village. It was too wet for the 
 women to look out, it was too wet even for the children to 
 look out; all the doors and windows were closed, and the 
 only sign of life or motion was in the rain-punctured pud- 
 dles. 
 
 Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle's ankle, and whiskey 
 without oil to Francis Goodchild' s stomach, produced an 
 agreeable change in the systems of both; soothing Mr, 
 2 
 
18 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 Idle's pain, which was sharp before, and sweetening Mr. 
 Goodchild's temper, which was sweet before. Portman- 
 teaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr. Good- 
 child, through having no change of outer garments but 
 broadcloth and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent por- 
 tent in the Innkeeper's house, a shining frontispiece to the 
 fashions for the month, and a frightful anomaly in the 
 Cumberland village. 
 
 Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the con- 
 scious Goodchild quenched it as much as possible, in the 
 shadow of Thomas Idle's ankle, and in a corner of the lit- 
 tle covered carriage that started with them for Wigton — a 
 most desirable carriage for any country, except for its hav- 
 ing a flat roof and no sides; which caused the plumps of 
 rain accumulating on the roof to play vigorous games of 
 bagatelle into the interior all the way, and to score im- 
 mensely. It was comfortable to see how the people com- 
 ing back in open carts from Wigton market made no more 
 of the rain than if it were sunshine; how the Wigton po- 
 liceman taking a country walk of half-a-dozen miles (ap- 
 parently for pleasure), in resplendent uniform, accepted 
 saturation as his normal state; how clerks and schoolmas- 
 ters in black loitered along the road without umbrellas, 
 getting varnished at every step; hoAV the Cumberland girls, 
 coming out to look after the Cumberland cows, shook the 
 rain from their eyelashes and laughed it away; and how 
 the rain continued to fall upon all, as it only does fall in 
 hill countries. 
 
 Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smok- 
 ing with rain all down the street. Mr. Thomas Idle, melo- 
 dramatically carried to the inn's first-floor, and laid upon 
 three chairs (he should have had the sofa, if there had 
 been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the window to take an 
 observation of Wigton, and report what he saw to his dis- 
 abled companion. 
 
 "Brother Francis, brother Francis," cried Thomas Idle. 
 " What do you see from the turret ? " 
 
 "I see," said Brother Francis, "what I hope and believe 
 to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes. I 
 see the houses with their roofs of dull black, their stained 
 fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows, looking as if they 
 were all in mourning. As every little puff of wind comes 
 down the street, I see a perfect train of rain let off along 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 19 
 
 the wooden stalls in the market-place and exploded against 
 me. I see a very big gas lamp in the centre which I know, 
 by a secret instinct, will not be lighted to-night. I see a 
 pump, with a trivet underneath its spout whereon to stand 
 the vessels that are brought to be filled with water. I see 
 a man come to pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water 
 follows, and he strolls empty away." 
 . "Brother Francis, brother Francis," cried Thomas Idle, 
 "what more do you see from the turret, besides the man 
 and the pump, and the trivet and the houses all in mourn- 
 ing and the rain? " 
 
 "I see," said Brother Francis, "one,, two, three, four, 
 five, linen-drapers' shops in front of me. I see a linen- 
 draper's shop next door to the right — and there are five 
 more linen-drapers' shops down the corner to the left. 
 Eleven homicidal linen-drapers' shops within a short stone's 
 throw, each with its hands at the throats of all the rest ! 
 Over the small first-floor of one of these linen-drapers' 
 shops appears the wonderful inscription, Bank." 
 
 "Brother Francis, brother Francis," cried Thomas Idle, 
 " what more do you see from the turret, besides the eleven 
 homicidal linen-drapers' shops, and the wonderful inscrip- 
 tion, ' Bank ' on the small first-floor, and the man and the 
 pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and 
 the rain? " 
 
 "I see," said Brother Francis, "the depository for Chris- 
 tian Knowledge, and through the dark vapour I think I 
 again make out Mr. Spurgeon looming heavily. Her Maj- 
 esty the Queen, God bless her, printed in colours, I am 
 sure I see. I see the Illustrated London News of several 
 years ago, and I see a sweetmeat shop — which the propri- 
 etor calls a 'Salt Warehouse ' — with one small female child 
 in a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, oblivious of rain. 
 And I see a watchmaker's with only three great pale 
 watches of a dull metal hanging in his window, each in a 
 separate pane." 
 
 "Brother Francis, brother Francis," cried Thomas Idle, 
 " what more do you see of Wigton, besides these objects, 
 and the man and the pump and the trivet and the houses 
 all in mourning and the rain? " 
 
 "I see nothing more," said Brother Francis, "and there 
 is nothing more to see, except the curlpaper bill of the 
 theatre, which was opened and shut last week (the mam 
 
20 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 ager's family played all the parts), and the short, square, 
 chinky omnibus that goes to the railway, and leads too rat- 
 tling a life over the stones to hold together long. yes ! 
 Now, I see two men with their hands in their pockets and 
 their backs towards me." 
 
 "Brother Francis, brother Francis," cried Thomas Idle, 
 " what do you make out from the turret, of the expression 
 of the two men with their hands in their pockets and their 
 backs towards you? " 
 
 "They are mysterious men," said Brother Francis, "with 
 inscrutable backs. They keep their backs towards me with 
 persistency. If one turns an inch in any direction, the 
 other turns an inch in the same direction, and no more. 
 They turn very stiffly, on a very little pivot, in the middle 
 of the market-place. Their appearance is partly of a min- 
 ing, partly of a ploughing, partly of a stable, character. 
 They are looking at nothing — very hard. Their backs are 
 slouched, and their legs are curved with much standing 
 about. Their pockets are loose and dog's-eared, on account 
 of their hands being always in them. They stand to be 
 rained upon, without any movement of impatience or dis- 
 satisfaction, and they keep so close together that an elbow 
 of each jostles an elbow of the other, but they never speak. 
 They spit at times, but speak not. I see it growing darker 
 and darker, and still I see them, sole visible population of 
 the place, standing to be rained upon with their backs tow- 
 ards me, and looking at nothing very hard." 
 
 "Brother Francis, brother Francis," cried Thomas Idle, 
 " before you draw down the blind of the turret and come in 
 to have your head scorched by the hot gas, see if you can, 
 and impart to me, something of the expression of those two 
 amazing men." 
 
 "The murky shadows," said Francis Goodchild, "are 
 gathering fast; and the wings of evening, and the wings 
 of coal, are folding over Wigton. Still, they look at noth- 
 ing very hard, with their backs towards me. Ah ! Now, 
 they turn, and I see " 
 
 "Brother Francis, brother Francis," cried Thomas Idle, 
 " tell me quickly what you see of the two men of Wigton ! " 
 
 "I see," said Francis Goodchild, "that they have no ex- 
 pression at all. And now the town goes to sleep, undaz- 
 zled by the large unlighted lamp in the market-place; and 
 let no man wake it." 
 
THE LAZY TOCR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 21 
 
 At the close of the next day's journey, Mr. Thomas 
 Idle's ankle became much swollen and inflamed. There 
 are reasons which will presently explain themselves for not 
 publicly indicating the exact direction in which that jour- 
 ney lay, or the place in which it ended. It was a long 
 day's shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads, and a 
 long day's getting out and going on before the horses, and 
 fagging up hills, and scouring down hills, on the part of 
 Mr. Goodchild, who in the fatigues of such labours con- 
 gratulated himself on attaining a high point of idleness. 
 It was at a little town, still in Cumberland, that they 
 halted for the night — a very little town, with the purple 
 and brown moor close upon its one street; a curious little 
 ancient market-cross set up in the midst of it; and the 
 town itself looking much as if it were a collection of great 
 stones piled on end by the Druids long ago, which a few 
 recluse people had since hollowed out for habitations. 
 
 "Is there a doctor here?" asked Mr. Goodchild, on his 
 knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn : stopping 
 in his examination of Mr. Idle's ankle, with the aid of a 
 candle. 
 
 " Ey, my word ! " said the landlady, glancing doubtfully 
 at the ankle for herself; "there's Doctor Speddie." 
 
 " Is he a good Doctor? " 
 
 "Ey!" said the landlady, "I ca' him so. A' cooms 
 efther nae doctor that I ken. Mair nor which, a's just the 
 doctor heer." 
 
 "Do you think he is at home? " 
 
 Her reply was, "Gang awa', Jock, and bring him." 
 
 Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stir- 
 ring up some bay salt in a basin of water for the laving of 
 this unfortunate ankle, had greatly enjoyed himself for the 
 last ten minutes in splashing the carpet, set off promptly. 
 A very few minutes had elapsed when he showed the Doc- 
 tor in, by tumbling against the door before him and burst- 
 ing it open with his head. 
 
 "Gently, Jock, gently," said the Doctor as he advanced 
 with a quiet step. " Gentlemen, a good evening. I am 
 sorry that my presence is required here. A slight accident, 
 I hope? A slip and a fall? Yes, yes, yes. Carrock, in- 
 deed? Hah! Does that pain you, sir? No doubt, it does. 
 It is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that has 
 been badly strained. Time and rest, sir! They are often 
 
22 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. . 
 
 •the recipe in greater cases," with a slight sigh, "and often 
 the recipe in small. I can send a lotion to relieve you, but 
 we must leave the cure to time and rest." 
 
 This he said, holding Idle's foot on his knee between his 
 two hands, as lie sat over against him. He had touched it 
 tenderly and skilfully in explanation of what he said, and, 
 when his careful examination was completed, softly re- 
 turned it to its former horizontal position on a chair. 
 
 He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, 
 but afterwards fluently. He was a tall, thin, large-boned, 
 old gentleman, with an appearance at first sight of being 
 hard-featured; but, at a second glance, the mild expression 
 of his face and some particular touches of sweetness and 
 patience about his mouth corrected this impression and as- 
 signed his long professional rides, by day and night, in the 
 bleak hill- weather, as the true cause of that appearance. 
 He stooped very little, though past seventy and very grey. 
 His dress was more like that of a clergyman than a coun- 
 try doctor, being a plain black suit, and a plain white 
 neck-kerchief tied behind like a band. His black was the 
 worse for wear, and there were darns in his coat, and his 
 linen was a little frayed at the hems and edges. He might 
 have been poor — it was likely enough in that out-of-the- 
 way spot — or he might have been a little self- forgetful and 
 eccentric. Any one could have seen directly, that he had 
 neither wife nor child at home. He had a scholarly air 
 with him, and that kind of considerate humanity towards 
 others which claimed a gentle consideration for himself. 
 Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he was ex- 
 amining the limb, and as he laid it down. Mr. Goodchild 
 wishes to add that he considers it a very good likeness. 
 
 It came out in the course of a little conversation, that 
 Doctor Speddie was acquainted with some friends of 
 Thomas Idle's, and had, when a young man, passed some 
 years in Thomas Idle's birthplace on the other side of Eng- 
 land. Certain idle labours, the fruit of Mr. Goodchild's 
 apprenticeship, also happened to be well known to him. 
 The lazy travellers were thus placed on a more intimate 
 footing with the Doctor than the casual circumstances of 
 the meeting would of themselves have established; and 
 when Doctor Speddie rose to go home, remarking that he 
 Avould send his assistant with the lotion, Francis Goodchild 
 said that was unnecessary, for, by the Doctor's leave, he 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 23 
 
 would accompany him, and bring it back. (Having done 
 nothing to fatigue himself for a full quarter of an hour, 
 Francis began to fear that he was not in a state of idle- 
 ness.) 
 
 Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of 
 Francis Goodchild, " as it would give him the pleasure of 
 enjoying a few more minutes of Mr. Goodchild' s society 
 than he could otherwise have hoped for," and they went 
 out together into the village street. The rain had nearly 
 ceased, the clouds had broken before a cool wind from 
 the north-east, and stars were shining from the peaceful 
 heights beyond them. 
 
 Doctor Speddie' s house was the last house in the place. 
 Beyond it, lay the moor, all dark and lonesome. The 
 wind moaned ill a low, dull, shivering manner round the 
 little garden, like a houseless creature that knew the win- 
 ter was coming. It was exceedingly wild and solitary. 
 "Roses," said the Doctor, when Goodchild touched some 
 wet leaves overhanging the stone porch; " but they get cut 
 to pieces." 
 
 The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and 
 led the way into a low but pretty ample hall with rooms 
 on either side. The door of one of these stood open, and 
 the Doctor entered it, with a word of welcome to his guest. 
 It, too, was a low room, half surgery and half parlour, 
 with shelves of books and bottles against the walls, which 
 were of a very dark hue. There was a fire in the grate, 
 the night being damp and chill. Leaning against the chim- 
 ney-piece looking down into it, stood the Doctor's Assist- 
 ant. 
 
 A man of a most remarkable appearance. Much older 
 than Mr. Goodchild had expected, for he was at least two- 
 and- fifty; but, that was nothing. What was startling in 
 him was his remarkable paleness. His large black eyes, 
 his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey hair, his 
 wasted hands, and even the attenuation of his figure, were 
 at first forgotten in his extraordinary pallor. There was 
 no vestige of colour in the man. When he turned his face, 
 Francis Goodchild started as if a stone figure had looked 
 round at him. 
 
 "Mr. Lorn," said the Doctor. "Mr. Goodchild." 
 
 The Assistant, in a distraught way — as if he had forgot- 
 ten something — as if he had forgotten everything, even to 
 
24 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 his own name and himself — acknowledged the visitor's 
 presence, and stepped further back into the shadow of the 
 wall behind him. But, he was so pale that his face stood 
 out in relief against the dark wall, and really could not be 
 hidden so. 
 
 "Mr. Goodchild's friend has met with an accident, 
 Lorn," said Doctor Speddie. " We want the lotion for a 
 bad sprain." 
 A pause. 
 
 " My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to- 
 night. The lotion for a bad sprain." 
 
 "Ah! yes! Directly." 
 
 He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his 
 white face and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among 
 the bottles. But, though he stood there, compounding the 
 lotion with his back towards them, Goodchild could not, 
 for many moments, withdraw his gaze from the man. 
 When he at length did so, he found the Doctor observing 
 him, with some trouble in his face. "He is absent," ex- 
 plained the Doctor, in a low voice. "Always absent. 
 Very absent." 
 
 " Is he ill? " 
 
 "No, not ill." 
 
 "Unhappy?" 
 
 "I have my suspicions that he was," assented the Doc- 
 tor, "once." 
 
 Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor 
 accompanied these words with a benignant and protecting 
 glance at their subject, in which there was much of the ex- 
 pression with which an attached father might have looked 
 at a heavily afflicted son. Yet, that they were not 
 father and son must have been plain to most eyes. The 
 Assistant, on the other hand, turning presently to ask 
 the Doctor some question, looked at him with a wan 
 smile as if he were his whole reliance and sustainment in 
 life. 
 
 It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to 
 lead the mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, 
 away from what was before him. Let Mr. Goodchild do 
 what he would to follow the Doctor, his eyes and thoughts 
 reverted to the Assistant. The Doctor soon perceived it, 
 and, after falling silent, and musing in a little perplexity, 
 said : 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 25 
 
 "Lorn!" 
 
 "My dear Doctor." 
 
 " Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion? You 
 will show the best way of applying it, far better than Mr. 
 Goodchild can." 
 
 "With pleasure." 
 
 The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to 
 the door. 
 
 " Lorn ! " said the Doctor, calling after him. 
 
 He returned. 
 
 "Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come 
 home. Don't hurry. Excuse my calling you back." 
 
 "It is not," said the Assistant, with his former smile, 
 "the first time you have called me back, dear Doctor." 
 With those words he went away. 
 
 "Mr. Goodchild," said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice, 
 and with his former troubled expression of face, " I have 
 seen that your attention has been concentrated on my 
 friend." 
 
 " He fascinates me. I must apologise to you, but he has 
 quite bewildered and mastered me." 
 
 "I find that a lonely existence and a long secret," said 
 the Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Good- 
 child's, "become in the course of time very heavy. I will 
 tell you something. You may make what use you will of 
 it, under fictitious names. I know I may trust you. I am 
 the more inclined to confidence to-night, through having 
 been unexpectedly led back, by the current of our conversa- 
 tion at the Inn, to scenes in my early life. Will you please 
 to draw a little nearer? " / 
 
 Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went 
 on thus : speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, 
 that the wind, though it was far from high, occasionally 
 got the better of him. 
 
 When this present nineteenth century was younger by a 
 good many years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, 
 named Arthur Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of 
 Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-week, or, in 
 other words, in the middle of the month of September. 
 He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, 
 and open-mouthed young gentlemen, who possess the gift 
 of familiarity in its highest perfection, and who scramble 
 
26 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 carelessly along the journey of life making friends, as the 
 phrase is, wherever they go. His father was a rich manu- 
 facturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of 
 the midland counties to make all the born squires in his 
 neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him. Arthur was his 
 only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and the 
 great business after his father's death; well supplied with 
 money, and not too rigidly looked after, during his father's 
 lifetime. Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said 
 that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youth- 
 ful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed 
 to be violently indignant when he found that his son took 
 after him. This may be true or not. I myself only knew 
 the elder Mr. Holliday when he was getting on in years; 
 and then he was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman as 
 ever I met with. 
 
 Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes 
 to Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his hare- 
 brained way, that he would go to the races. He did not 
 reach the town till towards the close of the evening, and he 
 went at once to see about his dinner and bed at the princi- 
 pal hotel. Dinner they were ready enough to give him; 
 but as for a bed, they laughed when he mentioned it. In 
 the race-week at Doncaster, it is no uncommon thing for 
 visitors who have not bespoken apartments, to pass the 
 night in their carriages at the inn doors. As for the lower 
 sort of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that 
 full time, sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a cov- 
 ered place to creep under. Rich as he was, Arthur's 
 chance of getting a night's lodging (seeing that he had not 
 written beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful. 
 He tried the second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of 
 the inferior inns after that; and was met everywhere by 
 the same form of answer. No accommodation for the night 
 of any sort was left. All the bright golden sovereigns in 
 his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the 
 race-week. 
 
 To a young fellow of Arthur's temperament, the novelty 
 of being turned away into the street, like a penniless vaga- 
 bond, at every house where he asked for a lodging, pre- 
 sented itself in the light of a new and highly amusing 
 piece of experience. He went on, with his carpet-bag in 
 his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertain-- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 27 
 
 ment for travellers that he could find in Doncaster, nntil 
 he wandered into the outskirts of the town. By this time, 
 the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon was 
 rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the 
 clouds were gathering heavily, and there was every pros- 
 pect that it was soon going to rain. 
 
 The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on 
 young Holliday's good spirits. He began to contemplate 
 the houseless situation in which he was placed, from the 
 serious rather than the humorous point of view; and he 
 looked about him, for another public-house to inquire at, 
 with something very like downright anxiety in his mind on 
 the subject of a lodging for the night. The suburban part 
 of the town towards which he had now strayed was hardly 
 lighted at all, and he could see nothing of the houses as he 
 passed them, except that they got progressively smaller 
 and dirtier, the farther he went. Down the winding road 
 before him shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one 
 faint, lonely light that struggled ineffectually with the 
 foggy darkness all round him. He resolved to go on as 
 far as this lamp, and then, if it showed him nothing in the 
 shape of an Inn, to return to the central part of the town 
 and to try if he could not at least secure a chair to sit down 
 on, through the night, at one of the principal Hotels. 
 
 As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking 
 close under it, found that it lighted the entrance to a nar- 
 row court, on the wall of which was painted a long hand in 
 faded flesh-colour, pointing with a lean fore-finger, to this 
 inscription : — 
 
 THE TWO BOBINS. 
 
 Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see 
 what The Two Eobins could do for him. Four or five men 
 were standing together round the door of the house which 
 was at the bottom of the court, facing the entrance from 
 the street. The men were all listening to one other man, 
 better dressed than the rest, who was telling his audience 
 something, in a low voice, in which they were apparently 
 very much interested. 
 
 On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a 
 stranger with a knapsack in his hand, who was evidently 
 leaving the house. 
 
 "No," said the traveller with the knapsack, turning 
 
28 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 round and addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-look- 
 ing, bald-headed man, with a dirty white apron on, who 
 had followed him down the passage. " No, Mr. Landlord, I 
 am not easily scared by trifles; but, I don't mind confess- 
 ing that I can't quite stand that." 
 
 It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these 
 words, that the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price 
 for a bed at The Two Robins; and that he was unable or 
 unwilling to pay it. The moment his back was turned, 
 Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own well-filled pock- 
 ets, addressed himself in a great hurry, for fear any other 
 benighted traveller should slip in and forestall him, to the 
 sly-looking landlord with the dirty apron and the bald 
 head. 
 
 "If you have got a bed to let," he said, "and if that 
 gentleman who has just gone out won't pay your price for 
 it, I will." 
 
 The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur. 
 
 "Will you, sir?" he asked, in a meditative, doubtful 
 way. 
 
 "Name your price," said young Hollidaj^, thinking that 
 the landlord's hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust 
 of him. "Name your price, and I'll give you the money 
 at once if you like." 
 
 "Are you game for five shillings?" inquired the land- 
 lord, rubbing his stubbly double chin, and looking up 
 thoughtfully at the ceiling above him. 
 
 Arthur nearly laughed in the man's face; but thinkiDg 
 it prudent to control himself, offered the five shillings as 
 seriously as he could. The sly landlord held out his hand, 
 then suddenly drew it back again, 
 
 " You're acting all fair and above-board by me," he said : 
 " and, before I take your money, I'll do the same by you. 
 Look here, this is how it stands. You can have a bed all 
 to yourself for five shillings; but you can't have more than 
 a half-share of the room it stands in. Do you see what I 
 mean, young gentleman? " 
 
 "Of course I do," returned Arthur, a little irritably. 
 " You mean that it is a double-bedded room, and that one 
 of the beds is occupied? " 
 
 The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double 
 chin harder than ever. Arthur hesitated, and mechanically 
 moved back a step or two towards the door. The idea of 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 29 
 
 sleeping in the same room with a total stranger, did not 
 present an attractive prospect to him. He felt more than 
 half-inclined to drop his five shillings into his pocket, and 
 to go out into the street once more. 
 
 "Is it yes, or no? " asked the landlord. "Settle it as 
 quick as you can, because there's lots of people wanting a 
 bed at Doncaster to-night, besides you." 
 
 Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain fall- 
 ing heavily in the street outside. He thought he would 
 ask a question or two before he ' rashly decided on leaving 
 the shelter of The Two Robins. 
 
 " What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed? " 
 he inquired. "Is he a gentleman? I mean, is he a quiet, 
 well-behaved person? " 
 
 " The quietest man I ever came across," said the land- 
 lord, rubbing his fat hands stealthily one over the other 
 "As sober as a judge, and as regular as clock-work in his 
 habits. It hasn't struck nine, not ten minutes ago, and 
 he's in his bed already. I don't know whether that comes 
 up to your notion of a quiet man : it goes a long way ahead 
 of mine, I can tell you." 
 
 " Is he asleep, do you think? " asked Arthur. 
 
 "I know he's asleep," returned the landlord. "And 
 what's more, he's gone off so fast, that I'll warrant you 
 don't wake him. This way, sir," said the landlord, speak- 
 ing over young Holliday's shoulder, as if he was address- 
 ing some new guest who was approaching the house. 
 
 "Here you are," said Arthur, determined to be before- 
 hand with the stranger, whoever he might be. "I'll take 
 the bed." And he handed the five shillings to the land- 
 lord, who nodded, dropped the money carelessly into his 
 waistcoat-pocket, and lighted the candle. 
 
 "Come up and see the room," said the host of The Two 
 Robins, leading the way to the staircase quite briskly, con- 
 sidering how fat he was. 
 
 They mounted to the second-floor of the house. The 
 landlord half opened a door, fronting the landing, then 
 stopped, and turned round to Arthur. 
 
 "It's a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on 
 yours," he said. " You give me five shillings, I give you 
 in return a clean, comfortable bed; and I warrant, before- 
 hand, that you won't be interfered with, or annoyed in any 
 way, by the man who sleeps in the same room as you." 
 
'80 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 Saying those words, he looked hard, for a moment, in young 
 Holliday's face, and then led the way into the room. 
 
 It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it 
 would be. The two beds stood parallel with each other — 
 a space of about six feet intervening between them. They 
 were both of the same medium size, and both had the same 
 plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary, all round 
 them. The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window. 
 The curtains were all drawn round this, except the half 
 curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed farthest from 
 the window. Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man 
 raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as 
 if he was lying flat on his back. He took the candle, and 
 advanced softly to draw the curtain — stopped half way, 
 and listened for a moment— then turned to the landlord. 
 
 "He's a very quiet sleeper," said Arthur. 
 
 " Yes," said the landlord, " very quiet." 
 
 Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked 
 in at the man cautiously. 
 
 " How pale he is ! " said Arthur. 
 
 " Yes," returned the landlord, "pale enough, isn't he?" 
 
 Arthur looked closer at the man. The bed-clothes were 
 drawn up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the 
 region of his chest. Surprised and vaguely startled, as he 
 noticed this, Arthur stooped down closer over the stranger; 
 looked at his ashy, parted lips; listened breathlessly for an 
 instant; looked again at the strangely still face, and the 
 motionless lips and chest; and turned round suddenly on 
 the landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the moment 
 as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed. 
 
 "Come here," he whispered, under his breath. "Come 
 here, for God's sake ! The man's not asleep — he is dead ! " 
 
 " You have found that out sooner than I thought you 
 would," said the landlord composedly. "Yes, he's dead, 
 sure enough. He died at five o'clock to-day." 
 
 "How did he die? Who is he?" asked Arthur, stag- 
 gered, for a moment, by the audacious coolness of the an- 
 swer. 
 
 "As to who is he," rejoined the landlord, "I know no 
 more about him than you do. There are his books and let- 
 ters and things, all sealed up in that brown-paper parcel, 
 for the Coroner's inquest to open to-morrow or next day. 
 He's been here a week, paying his way fairly enough, and 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 31 
 
 stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if he was ailing. 
 My girl brought him up his tea at five to-day; and as he 
 was pouring of it out, he fell down in a faint, or a fit, or a 
 compound of both, for anything I know. We could not 
 bring him to — and I said he was dead. And the doctor 
 couldn't bring him to — and the doctor said he was dead. 
 And there he is. And the Coroner's inquest's coming as 
 soon as it can. And that's as much as I know about it." 
 
 Arthur held the candle close to the man's lips. The 
 flame still burnt straight up, as steadily as before. There 
 was a moment of silence; and the rain pattered drearily 
 through it against the panes of the window. 
 
 " If you haven't got nothing more to say to me," continued 
 the landlord, "I suppose I may go. You don't expect 
 your five shillings back, do you? There's the bed I prom- 
 ised you, clean and comfortable. There's the man I war- 
 ranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world for ever. If 
 you're frightened to stop alone with him, that's not my 
 look-out. I've kept my part of the bargain, and I mean to 
 keep the money. I'm not Yorkshire, myself, young gen- 
 tleman; but I've lived long enough in these parts to have 
 my wits sharpened; and I shouldn't wonder if you found 
 out the way to brighten up yours, next time you come 
 amongst us." With these words, the landlord turned 
 towards the door, and laughed to himself softly, in high 
 satisfaction at his own sharpness. 
 
 Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time 
 sufficiently recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick 
 that had been played on him, and at the insolent manner 
 in which the landlord exulted in it. 
 
 "Don't laugh," he said sharply, "till you are quite sure 
 you have got the laugh against me. You shan't have 
 the five shillings for nothing, my man. I'll keep the 
 bed." 
 
 " Will you? " said the landlord. " Then I wish you a 
 good night's rest." With that brief farewell, he went out, 
 and shut the door after him. 
 
 A good night's rest ! The words had hardly been spoken, 
 the door had hardly been closed, before Arthur half re- 
 pented the hasty words that had just escaped him. Though 
 not naturally over-sensitive, and not wanting in courage of 
 the moral as well as the physical sort, the presence of the 
 dead man had an instantaneously chilling effect on his 
 
32 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 mind when he found himself alone in the room — alone, and 
 bound by his own rash words to stay there till the next 
 morning. An older man would have thought nothing of 
 those words, and would have acted, without reference to 
 them, as his calmer sense suggested. But Arthur was too 
 young to treat the ridicule, even of his inferiors, with con- 
 tempt — too young not to fear the momentary humiliation 
 of falsifying his own foolish boast, more than he feared the 
 trial of watching out the long night in the same chamber 
 with the dead. 
 
 "It is but a few hours," he thought to himself, "and I 
 can get away the first thing in the morning." 
 
 He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea 
 passed through his mind, and the sharp angular eminence 
 made in the clothes by the dead man's upturned feet again 
 caught his eye. He advanced and drew the curbains, pur- 
 posely abstaining, as he did so, from looking at the face of 
 the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the outset by 
 fastening some ghastly impression of it on his mind. He 
 drew the curtain very gently, and sighed involuntarily as 
 he closed it. " Poor fellow," he said, almost as sadly as' if 
 he had known the man. " Ah, poor fellow ! " 
 
 He went next to the window. The night was black, and 
 he could see nothing from it. The rain still pattered heav- 
 ily against the glass. He inferred, from hearing it, that 
 the window was at the back of the house; remembering 
 that the front was sheltered from the weather by the court 
 and the buildings over it. 
 
 While he was still standing at the window — for even the 
 dreary rain was a relief, because of the sound it made; a 
 relief, also, because it moved, and had some faint sugges- 
 tion, in consequence, of life and companionship in it — while 
 he was standing at the window, and looking vacantly into 
 the black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock 
 strike ten. Only ten ! How was he to pass the time till 
 the house was astir the next morning? 
 
 Under any other circumstances, he would have gone 
 down to the public-house parlour, would have called for 
 his grog, and would have laughed and talked with the com- 
 pany assembled as familiarly as if he had known them all 
 his life. But the very thought of whiling away the time 
 in this manner was distasteful to him. The new situation 
 in which he was placed seemed to have altered him to him- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 33 
 
 self already. Thus far, his life had been the common, 
 trifling, prosaic, surface-life of a prosperous young man, 
 with no troubles to conquer, and no trials to face. He had 
 lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom he treas- 
 ured. Till this night, what share he had of the immortal 
 inheritance that is divided amongst us all, Had lain dormant 
 within him. Till this night, Death and he had not once 
 met, even in thought. 
 
 He took a few turns up and down the room — then 
 stopped. The noise made by his boots on the poorly car- 
 peted floor, jarred on his ear. He hesitated a little, and 
 ended by taking the boots off, and walking backwards and 
 forwards noiselessly. All desire to sleep or to rest had 
 left him. The bare thought of lying down on the unoccu- 
 pied bed instantly drew the picture on his mind of a dread- 
 ful mimicry of the position of the dead man. Who was he? 
 What was the story of his past life? Poor he must have 
 been, or he would not have stopped at such a place as The 
 Two Robins Inn — and weakened, probably, by long illness, 
 or he could hardly have died in the manner in which the 
 landlord had described. Poor, ill, lonely, — dead in a 
 strange place; dead, with nobody but a stranger to pity 
 him. A sad story : truly, on the mere face of it, a very 
 sad story. 
 
 While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he 
 had stopped insensibly at the window, close to which stood 
 the foot of the bed with the closed curtains. At first he 
 looked at it absently; then he became conscious that his 
 eyes were fixed on it; and then, a perverse desire took pos- 
 session of him to do the very thing which he had resolved 
 not to do, up to this time — to look at the dead man. 
 
 He stretched out his hand towards the curtains; but 
 checked himself in the very act of undrawing them, turned 
 his back sharply on the bed, and walked towards the chim- 
 ney-piece, to see what things were placed on it, and to try 
 if he could keep the dead man out of his mind in that way. 
 
 There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, 
 with some mildewed remains of ink in the bottle. There 
 were two coarse china ornaments of the commonest kindj 
 and there was a square of embossed card, dirty and fly- 
 blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, 
 in all sorts of zig-zag directions, and in variously coloured 
 inks. He took the card, and went away, to read it, to the 
 3 
 
34 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 table on which the candle was placed; sitting down, with 
 his back resolutely turned to the curtained bed. 
 
 He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one 
 corner of the card — then turned it round impatiently to 
 look at another. Before he could begin reading the riddles 
 printed here, the sound of the church-clock stopped him. 
 Eleven. He had got through an hour of the time, in the 
 room with the dead man. 
 
 Once more he looked at the card. It was not easy to 
 make out the letters printed on it, in consequence of the 
 dimness of the light which the landlord had left him — a 
 common tallow candle, furnished with a pair of heavy old- 
 fashioned steel snuffers. Up to this time, his mind had 
 been too much occupied to think of the light. He had left 
 the wick of the candle unsnuffed, till it had risen higher - 
 than the flame, and had burnt into an odd penthouse shape 
 at the top, from which morsels of the charred cotton fell 
 off, from time to time, in little flakes. He took up the 
 snuffers now, and trimmed the wick. The light brightened 
 directly, and the room became less dismal. 
 
 Again he turned to the riddles; reading them doggedly 
 and resolutely, now in one corner of the card, now in an- 
 other. All his efforts, however, could not fix his attention 
 on them. He pursued his occupation mechanically, deriv- 
 ing no sort of impression from what he was reading. It 
 was as if a shadow from the curtained bed had got between 
 his mind and the gaily printed letters — a shadow that 
 nothing could dispel. At last, he gave up the struggle, and 
 threw the card from him impatiently, and took to walking 
 softly up and down the room again. 
 
 The dead man, the dead man, the hidden dead man on 
 the bed ! There was the one persistent idea still haunting 
 him. Hidden? Was it only the body being there, or was 
 it the body being there, concealed, that was preying on his 
 mind? He stopped at the window, with that doubt in 
 him; once more listening to the pattering rain, once more 
 looking out into the black darkness. 
 
 Still the dead man ! The darkness forced his mind back 
 upon itself, and set his memory at work, reviving, with a 
 painfully vivid distinctness the momentary impression it 
 had received from the first sight of the corpse. Before 
 long the face seemed to be hovering out in the middle of 
 the darkness, confronting him through the window, with 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 35 
 
 the paleness whiter, with the dreadful dull line of light 
 between the imperfectly closed eyelids broader than he had 
 seen it — with the parted lips slowly dropping farther and 
 farther away from each other — with the features grow- 
 ing larger and moving closer, till they seemed to fill the 
 window and to silence the rain, and to shut out the 
 night. 
 
 The sound of a voice, shouting below-stairs, woke him 
 suddenly from the dream of his own distempered fancy. 
 He recognised it as the voice of the landlord. " Shut up at 
 twelve, Ben," he heard it say. "I'm off to bed." 
 
 He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his fore- 
 head, reasoned with himself for a little while, and resolved 
 to shake his mind free of the ghastly counterfeit which still 
 clung to it, by forcing himself to confront, if it was only 
 for a moment, the solemn reality. Without allowing him- 
 self an instant to hesitate, he parted the curtains at the 
 foot of the bed, and looked through. 
 
 There was a sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful 
 mystery of stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow. No 
 stir, no change there ! He only looked at it for a moment 
 before he closed the curtains again — but that moment 
 steadied him, calmed him, restored him — mind and body 
 — to himself. 
 
 He returned to his old occupation of walking up and 
 down the room; persevering in it, this time, till the clock 
 struck again. Twelve. 
 
 As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was suc- 
 ceeded by the confused noise, down-stairs, of the drinkers 
 in the tap-room leaving the house. The next sound, after 
 an interval of silence, was caused by the barring of the 
 door, and the closing of the shutters, at the back of the 
 Inn. Then the silence followed again, and was disturbed 
 no more. 
 
 He was alone now — absolutely, utterly, alone with the 
 dead man, till the next morning. 
 
 The wick of the candle wanted trimming again. He took 
 up the snuffers — but paused suddenly on the very point of 
 using them, and looked attentively at the candle — then 
 back, over his shoulder, at the curtained bed — then again 
 at the candle. It had been lighted, for the first time, to 
 show him the way up-stairs, and three parts of it, at least, 
 were already consumed. In another hour it would be burnt 
 
36 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 out. In another hour — unless he called at once to the man 
 who had shut up the Inn, for a fresh candle — he would be 
 left in the dark. 
 
 Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had en- 
 tered the room, his unreasonable dread of encountering rid- 
 icule, and of exposing his courage to suspicion, had not al- 
 together lost its influence over him, even yet. He lingered 
 irresolutely by the table, waiting till he could prevail on 
 himself to open the door, and call, from the landing, to the 
 man who had shut up the Inn. In his present hesitating 
 frame of mind, it was a kind of relief to gain a few mo- 
 ments only by engaging in the trifling occupation of snuffing 
 the candle. His hand trembled a little, and the snuffers 
 were heavy and awkward to use. When he closed them on 
 the wick, he closed them a hair's breadth too low. In an 
 instant the candle was out, and the room was plunged in 
 pitch darkness. 
 
 The one impression which the absence of light immedi- 
 ately produced on his mind, was distrust of the curtained 
 bed — distrust which shaped itself into no distinct idea, but 
 which was powerful enough, in its very vagueness, to bind 
 him down to his chair, to make his heart beat fast, and to 
 set him listening intently. No sound stirred in the room 
 but the familiar sound of the rain against the window, 
 louder and sharper now than he had heard it yet. 
 
 Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed 
 him, and kept him to his chair. He had put his carpet-bag 
 on the table, when he first entered the room; and he now 
 took the key from his pocket, reached out his hand softly, 
 opened the bag, and groped in it for his travelling writing- 
 case, in which he knew that there was a small store of 
 matches. When he had got one of the matches, he waited 
 before he struck it on the coarse wooden table, and listened 
 intently again, without knowing why. Still there was no 
 sound in the room but the steady, ceaseless, rattling sound 
 of the rain. 
 
 He lighted the candle again, without another moment of 
 delay; and, on the instant of its burning up, the first ob- 
 ject in the room that his eyes sought for was the curtained 
 bed. 
 
 Just before the light had been put out, he had looked iu 
 that direction, and had seen no change, no disarrangement: 
 of any sort, in the folds of the closely drawn curtains 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 37 
 
 When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging over 
 the side of it, a long white hand. 
 
 It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the 
 bed, where the curtain at the head and the curtain at the 
 foot met. Nothing more was visible. The clinging cur- 
 tains hid everything but the long white hand. 
 
 He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call out; 
 feeling nothing, knowing nothing, every faculty he pos- 
 sessed gathered up and lost in the one seeing faculty. 
 How long that first panic held him he never could tell 
 afterwards. It might have been only for a moment; it 
 might have been for many minutes together. How he got 
 to the bed — whether he ran to it headlong, or whether he 
 approached it slowly — how he wrought himself up to un- 
 close the curtains and look in, he never has remembered, 
 and never will remember to his dying day. It is enough 
 that he did go to the bed, and that he did look inside the 
 curtains. 
 
 The man had moved. One of his arms was outside the 
 clothes; his face was turned a little on the pillow; his eye- 
 lids were wide open. Changed as to position, and as to 
 one of the features, the face was, otherwise, fearfully and 
 wonderfully unaltered. The dead paleness and the dead 
 quiet were on it still. 
 
 One glance showed Arthur this — one glance, before he 
 flew breathlessly to the door, and alarmed the house. 
 
 The man whom the landlord called "Ben," was the first 
 to appear on the stairs. In three words, Arthur told him 
 what had happened, and sent him for the nearest doctor. 
 
 I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a med- 
 ical friend of mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking care of 
 his patients for him, during his absence in London; and I, 
 for the time being, was the nearest doctor. They had sent 
 for me from the Inn, when the stranger was taken ill in the 
 afternoon; but I was not at home, and medical assistance 
 was sought for elsewhere. When the man from The Two 
 Robins rang the night-bell, I was just thinking of going to 
 bed. Naturally enough, I did not believe a word of his 
 story about "a dead man who had come to life again." 
 However, I put on my hat, armed myself with one or two 
 bottles of restorative medicine, and ran to the Inn, expect- 
 ing to find nothing more remarkable, when I got there, 
 than a patient in a fit. 
 
38 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the lit- 
 eral truth was almost, if not quite, equalled by my aston- 
 ishment at finding myself face to face with Arthur Holli- 
 day as soon as I entered the bedroom. It was no time then 
 for giving or seeking explanations. We just shook hands 
 amazedly; and then I ordered everybody but Arthur out of 
 the room, and hurried to the man on the bed. 
 
 The kitchen fire had not been long out. There was 
 plenty of hot water in the boiler, and plenty of flannel to 
 be had. With these, with my medicines, and with such 
 help as Arthur could render under my direction, I dragged 
 the man, literally, out of the jaws of death. In less than 
 an hour from the time when I had been called in, he was 
 alive and talking in the bed on which he had been laid out 
 to wait for the Coroner's inquest. 
 
 You will naturally ask me, what had been the matter 
 with him; and I might treat you, in reply, to a long 
 theory, plentifully sprinkled with, what the children call, 
 hard words. I prefer telling you that, in this case, cause 
 and effect could not be satisfactorily joined together by any 
 theory whatever. There are mysteries in life, and the con- 
 dition of it, which human science has not fathomed yet; 
 and I candidly confess to you, that, in bringing that man 
 back to existence, I was, morally speaking, groping hap- 
 hazard in the dark. I know (from the testimony of the 
 doctor who attended him in the afternoon) that the vital 
 machinery, so far as its action is appreciable by our senses, 
 had, in this case, unquestionably stopped; and I am equally 
 certain (seeing that I recovered him) that the vital princi- 
 ple was not extinct. When I add, that he had suffered 
 from a long and complicated illness, and that his whole 
 nervous system was utterly deranged, I have told you all I 
 really know of the physical condition of my dead-alive pa- 
 tient at The Two Eobins Inn. 
 
 When he "came to," as the phrase goes, he was a star- 
 tling object to look at, with his colourless face, his sunken 
 cheeks, his wild black eyes, and his long black hair. The 
 first. question he asked me about himself, when he could 
 speak, made me suspect that I had been called in to a man 
 in my own profession. I mentioned to him my surmise; 
 and he told me that I was right. 
 
 He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been 
 attached to a hospital. That he had lately returned to 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 39 
 
 England, on his way to Edinburgh, to continue -his studies; 
 that he had been taken ill on the journey; and that he had 
 stopped to rest and recover himself at Doncaster. He did 
 not add a word about his name, or who he was : and, of 
 course, I did not question him on the subject. All I in ■ 
 quired, when he ceased speaking, was what branch of the 
 profession he intended to follow. 
 
 "Any branch," he said, bitterly, "which will put bread 
 into the mouth of a poor man." 
 
 At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in 
 silent curiosity, burst out impetuously in his usual good- 
 humoured way : — 
 
 " My dear fellow ! " (everybody was " my dear fellow " 
 with Arthur) "now you have come to life again, don't be- 
 gin by being downhearted about your prospects. I'll an- 
 swer for it, I can help you to some capital thing in the 
 medical line — or, if I can't, I know my father can." 
 
 The medical student looked at him steadily. 
 
 "Thank you," he said, coldly. Then added, "May I 
 ask who your father is? " 
 
 "He's well enough known all about this part of the 
 country," replied Arthur. "He is a great manufacturer, 
 and his name is Holliday." 
 
 My hand was on the man's wrist during this brief con- 
 versation. The instant the name of Holliday was pro- 
 nounced I felt the pulse under my fingers flutter, stop, go 
 on suddenly with a bound, and beat afterwards, for a min- 
 ute or two, at the fever rate. 
 
 "How did you come here? " asked the stranger, quickly, 
 excitably, passionately almost. 
 
 Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time 
 of his first taking the bed at the Inn. 
 
 "I am indebted to Mr. Holliday 's son then for the help 
 that has saved my life," said the medical student, speak- 
 ing to himself, with a singular sarcasm in his voice. 
 " Come here ! " 
 
 He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony, right 
 hand. 
 
 " With all my heart," said Arthur, taking the hand cor- 
 dially. "I may confess it now," he continued, laughing. 
 " Upon my honour, you almost frightened me out of my 
 wits." 
 
 The stranger did not seem to listen. His wild black 
 
40 THE LAZY TOUR OP TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 eyes were fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur's 
 face, and his long bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur's 
 hand. Young Holliday, on his side, returned the gaze, 
 amazed and puzzled by the medical student's odd language 
 and manners. The two faces were close together; I looked 
 at them; and, to my amazement, I was suddenly impressed 
 by the sense of a likeness between them — not in features, 
 or complexion, but solely in expression. It must have been 
 a strong likeness, or I should certainly not have found it 
 out, for I am naturally slow at detecting resemblances be- 
 tween faces. 
 
 "You have saved my life," said the strange man, still 
 looking hard in Arthur's face, still holding tightly by his 
 hand. " If you had been my own brother, you could not 
 have done more for me than that." 
 
 He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three 
 words "my own brother," and a change passed over his 
 face as he pronounced them, — a change that no language 
 of mine is competent to describe. 
 
 "I hope I have not done being of service to you yet," 
 said Arthur. " I'll speak to my father, as soon as I get 
 home." 
 
 "You seem to be fond and proud of your father," said 
 the medical student. " I suppose, in return, he is fond and 
 proud of you?" 
 
 " Of course, he is ! " answered Arthur, laughing. " Is 
 there anything wonderful in that? Isn't your father 
 fond " 
 
 The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday' s hand, 
 and turned his face away. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Arthur. "I hope I have not 
 unintentionally pained you. I hope you have not lost your 
 father." 
 
 "I can't well lose what I have never had," retorted the 
 medical student, with a harsh, mocking laugh. 
 
 " What you have never had ! " 
 
 The strange man suddenly caught Arthur's hand again, 
 suddenly looked once more hard in his face. 
 
 "Yes," he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh. 
 " You have brought a poor devil back into the world, who 
 has no business there. Do I astonish you? Well ! I have 
 a fancy of my own for telling you what men in my situa- 
 tion generally keep a secret. I have no name and no father.. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 4} 
 
 The merciful law of Society tells me I am Nobody's Son! 
 Ask your father if he will be my father too, and help me 
 on in life with the family name." 
 
 Arthur looked at me, more puzzled than ever. I signed 
 to him to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on 
 the man's wrist. No ! In spite of the extraordinary speech 
 that he had just made, he was not, as I had been disposed 
 to suspect, beginning to get light-headed. His pulse, by 
 this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and his 
 skin was moist and cool. Not a symptom of fever or agi- 
 tation about him. 
 
 Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to 
 me, and began talking of the extraordinary nature of his 
 case, and asking my advice about the future course of med- 
 ical treatment to which he ought to subject himself. I said 
 the matter required careful thinking over, and suggested 
 that I should submit certain prescriptions to him the next 
 morning. He told me to write them at once, as he would, 
 most likely, be leaving Doncaster, in the morning, before 
 I was up. It was quite useless to represent to him the 
 folly and danger of such a proceeding as this. He heard 
 me politely and patiently, but held to his resolution, with- 
 out offering any reasons or any explanations, and repeated 
 to me, that if I wished to give him a chance of seeing my 
 prescription, I must write it at once. Hearing this, Arthur 
 volunteered the loan of a travelling writing-case, which, he 
 said, he had with him; and, bringing it to the bed, shook 
 the note-paper out of the pocket of the case forthwith 
 in his usual careless way. With the paper, there fell 
 out on the counterpane of the bed a small packet of stick- 
 ing-plaster, and a little water-colour drawing of a land- 
 scape. 
 
 The medical student took up the drawing and looked at 
 it. His eye fell on some initials neatly written, in cypher, 
 in one corner. He started and trembled; his pale face 
 grew whiter than ever; his wild black eyes turned on 
 Arthur, and looked through and through him. 
 
 "A pretty drawing," he said in a remarkably quiet tone 
 of voice. 
 
 "Ah! and done by such a pretty girl," said Arthur. 
 "Oh, such a pretty girl! I wish it was not a landscape — 
 I wish it was a portrait of her ! " 
 
 " You admire her very much? " 
 
42 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. _ 
 
 . Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand foi 
 answer. 
 
 " Love at first sight ! " he said, putting the drawing away 
 again. " But the course of it doesn't run smooth. It's 
 the old story. She's monopolised as usual. Trammelled 
 by a rash engagement to some poor man who is never likely 
 to get money enough to marry her. It was lucky I heard 
 of it in time, or I should certainly have risked a declara- 
 tion when she gave me that drawing. Here, doctor ! Here 
 is pen, ink, and paper all ready for you." 
 
 "When she gave you that drawing? Gave it. Gave it." 
 He repeated the words slowly to himself, and suddenly 
 closed his eyes. A momentary distortion passed across his 
 face, and I saw one of his hands clutch up the bed-clothes 
 and squeeze them hard. 1 thought he was going to be ill 
 again, and begged that there might be no more talking. 
 He opened his eyes when I spoke, fixed them once more 
 searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and distinctly, 
 " You like her, and she likes you. The poor man may die 
 out of your way. Who can tell that she may not give you 
 herself as well as her drawing, after all? " 
 
 Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me, 
 and said in a whisper, "Now for the prescription." From 
 that time, though he spoke to Arthur again, he never looked 
 at him more. 
 
 When I had written the prescription, he examined it, 
 approved of it, and then astonished us both by abruptly 
 wishing us good night. I offered to sit up with him, and 
 he shook his head. Arthur offered to sit up with him, and 
 he said, shortly, with his face turned away, "No." I in- 
 sisted on having somebody left to watch him. He gave 
 way when he found I was determined, and said he would 
 accept the services of the waiter at the Inn. 
 
 "Thank you, both," he said, as we rose to go. "I have 
 one last favour to ask — not of you, doctor, for I leave you 
 to exercise your professional discretion — but of Mr. Holli- 
 day." His eyes, while he spoke, still rested steadily on 
 me, and never once turned towards Arthur. " I beg that 
 Mr. Holliday will not mention to any one — least of all to 
 his father — the events that have occurred, and the words 
 that have passed, in this room. I entreat him to bury 
 me in his memory, as, but for him, I might have been 
 buried in my grave. I cannot give my reasons for niak- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 43 
 
 ing this strange request. I can only implore him to grant 
 it." 
 
 His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face 
 on the pillow. Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the 
 required pledge. I took young Holliday away with me, 
 immediately afterwards, to the house of my friend; deter- 
 mining to go back to the Inn, and to see the medical stu- 
 dent again before he had left in the morning. 
 
 I returned to the Inn at eight o'clock, purposely abstain- 
 ing from waking Arthur, who was sleeping off the past 
 night's excitement on one of my friend's sofas. A suspi- 
 cion had occurred to me as soon as I was alone in my bed- 
 room, which made me resolve that Holliday and the 
 stranger whose life he had saved should not meet again, if 
 I could prevent it. I have already alluded to certain re- 
 ports, or scandals, which I knew of, relating to the early 
 life of Arthur's father. While I was thinking, in my bed, 
 of what had passed at the Inn — of the change in the stu- 
 dent's pulse when he heard the name of Holliday; of the 
 resemblance of expression that I had discovered between 
 his face and Arthur's; of the emphasis he had laid on those 
 three words, "my own brother; " and of his incomprehen- 
 sible acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy — while I was 
 thinking of these things, the reports I have mentioned sud- 
 denly flew into my mind, and linked themselves fast to the 
 chain of my previous reflections. Something within me 
 whispered, " It is best that those two young men should 
 not meet again." I felt it before I slept; I felt it when I 
 woke; and I went, as I told you, alone to the Inn the next 
 morning. 
 
 I had missed my only opportunity "of seeing my nameless 
 patient again. He had been gone nearly an hour when I 
 inquired for him. 
 
 I have now told you everything that I know for certain, 
 in relation to the man whom I brought back to life in the 
 double-bedded room of the Inn at Doncaster. What I have 
 next to add is matter for inference and surmise, and is not, 
 strictly speaking, matter of fact. 
 
 I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned 
 out to be strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it 
 as more than probable that Arthur Holliday would marry 
 the young lady who had given him the water-colour drawing 
 
44 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 of the landscape. That marriage took place a little more 
 than a year after the events occurred which I have just 
 been relating. The young couple came to live in the neigh- 
 bourhood in which I was then established in practice. I 
 was present at the wedding, and was rather surprised to 
 find that Arthur was singularly reserved with me, both be- 
 fore and after his marriage, on the subject of the young 
 lady's prior engagement. He only referred to it once, 
 when we were alone, merely telling me, on that occasion, 
 that his wife had done all that honour and duty required 
 of her in the matter, and that the engagement had been 
 broken off with the full approval of her parents. I never 
 heard more from him than this. For three years he and 
 his wife lived together happily. At the expiration of that 
 time, the symptoms of a serious illness first declared them- 
 selves in Mrs. Arthur Holliday. It turned out to be a 
 long, lingering, hopeless malady. I attended her through- 
 out. We had been great friends when she was well, and 
 we became more attached to each other than ever when she 
 was ill. I had many long and interesting conversations 
 with her in the intervals when she suffered least. The re- 
 sult of one of these conversations I may briefly relate, leav- 
 ing you to draw any inferences from it that you please. 
 
 The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly before 
 her death. I called one evening, as usual, and found her 
 alone, with a look in her eyes which told me that she had 
 been crying. She only informed me at first, that she had 
 been depressed in spirits; but, by little and little, she be- 
 came more communicative, and confessed to me that she 
 had been looking over some old letters, which had been ad- 
 dressed to her, before she had seen Arthur, by a man to 
 whom she had been engaged to be married. I asked her 
 how the engagement came to be broken off. She replied 
 that it had not been broken off, but that it had died out in 
 a very mysterious way. The person to whom she was en- 
 gaged — her first love, she called him — was very poor, and 
 there was no immediate prospect of their being married. 
 He followed my profession, and went abroad to study. 
 They had corresponded regularly, until the time when, as 
 she believed, he had returned to England. From that 
 period she heard no more of him. He was of a fretful, 
 sensitive temperament; and she feared that she might have 
 inadvertently done or said something that offended him. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF T"VVO IDLE APPRENTICES. 45 
 
 However that might be, he had never written to her again; 
 and, after waiting a year, she had married Arthur. I asked 
 when the first estrangement had begun, and found that the 
 time at which she ceased to hear anything of her first lover 
 exactly corresponded with the time at which I had been 
 called in to my mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn. 
 
 A fortnight after that conversation, she died. In course 
 of time, Arthur married again. Of late years, he has 
 lived principally in London, and I have seen little or 
 nothing of him. 
 
 I have many years to pass over before I can approach to 
 anything like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative. 
 And even when that later period is reached, the little that 
 I have to say will not occupy your attention for more than 
 a few minutes. Between six and seven years ago, the gen- 
 tleman to whom I introduced you in this room, came to 
 me, with good professional recommendations, to fill the po- 
 sition of my assistant. We met, not like strangers, but 
 like friends — the only difference between us being, that I 
 was very much surprised to see him, and that he did not 
 appear to be at all surprised to see me. If he was my son, 
 or my brother, I believe he could not be fonder of me than 
 he is; but he has never volunteered any confidence since 
 he has been here, on the subject of his past life. I saw 
 something that was familiar to me in his face when we first 
 met; and yet it was also something that suggested the idea 
 of change. I had a notion once that my patient at the Lin 
 might be a natural son of Mr. Holliday's; I had another 
 idea that he might also have been the man who was en- 
 gaged to Arthur's first wife; and I have a third idea, still 
 clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man in England 
 who could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both those 
 doubtful points. His hair is not black, now, and his eyes 
 are dimmer than the piercing eyes that I remember, but, 
 for all that, he is very like the nameless medical student 
 of my young days — very like him. And, sometimes, when 
 I come home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake 
 him, he looks, in coming to, wonderfully like the stranger 
 at Doncaster, as he raised himself in the bed on that mem- 
 orable night ! 
 
 The Doctor paused. Mr. Goodchild who had been fol- 
 lowing every word that fell from his lips, up to this time, 
 
46 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 leaned forward eagerly to ask a question. Before he could 
 say a word, the latch of the door was raised, without any 
 warning sound of footsteps in the passage outside. A long, 
 white, bony hand appeared through the opening, gently 
 pushing the door, which was prevented from working freely 
 on its hinges by a fold in the carpet under it. 
 
 " That hand ! Look at that hand, Doctor ! " said Mr. 
 Goodchild, touching him. 
 
 At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr, Good- 
 child, and whispered to him, significantly : 
 
 "Hush! he has come back." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Cumberland Doctor's mention of Doncaster Races, 
 inspired Mr. Francis Goodchild with the idea of going down 
 to Doncaster to see the races. Doncaster being a good way 
 off, and quite out of the way of the Idle Apprentices (if 
 anything could be out of their way, who had no way), it 
 necessarily followed that Francis perceived Doncaster in the 
 race- week to be, of all possible idlenesses, the particular 
 idleness that would completely satisfy him. 
 
 Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natural 
 and voluntary power of his disposition, was not of this mind; 
 objecting that a man compelled to lie on his back on a 
 floor, a sofa, a table, a line of chairs, or anything he could 
 get to lie upon, was not in racing condition, and that he 
 desired nothing better than to lie where he was, enjoying 
 himself in looking at the flies on the ceiling. But, Francis 
 Goodchild, who had been walking round his companion in 
 a circuit of twelve miles for two days, and had begun to 
 doubt whether it was reserved for him ever to be idle in his 
 life, not only overpowered this objection, but even con- 
 verted Thomas Idle to a scheme he formed (another idle 
 inspiration), of conveying the said Thomas to the sea- 
 coast, and putting his injured leg under a stream of salt- 
 water. 
 
 Plunging into this happy conception headforemost, Mr. 
 Goodchild immediately referred to the county-map, and 
 ardently discovered that the most delicious piece of sea- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 47 
 
 coast to be found within the limits of England, Ireland, 
 Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands, 
 all summed up together, was Allonby on the coast of Cum- 
 berland. There was the coast of Scotland opposite to 
 Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild with enthusiasm; there was 
 a fine Scottish mountain on that Scottish coast; there were 
 Scottish lights to be seen shining across the glorious Chan- 
 nel, and at Allonby itself there was every idle luxury (no 
 doubt), that a watering-place could offer to the heart of 
 idle man. Moreover, said Mr. Goodchild, with his finger 
 on the map, this exquisite retreat was approached by a 
 coach-road, from a railway- station called Aspatria — a 
 name, in a manner, suggestive of the departed glories of 
 Greece, associated with one of the most engaging and most 
 famous of Greek women. On this point, Mr. Goodchild 
 continued at intervals to breathe a vein of classic fancy and 
 eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it ap- 
 peared that the honest English pronunciation of that Cum- 
 berland country shortened Aspatria into "Spatter." After 
 this supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild said no more 
 about it. 
 
 By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, hoisted, 
 pushed, poked, and packed, into and out of carriages, into 
 and out of beds, into and out of tavern resting-places, until 
 he was brought at length within sniff of the sea. And now, 
 behold the apprentices gallantly riding into Allonby in a 
 one-horse fly, bent upon staying in that peaceful marine 
 valley until the turbulent Doncaster time shall come round 
 upon the wheel, in its turn among what are in sporting 
 registers called the " Fixtures " for the month. 
 
 "Do you see Allonby? " asked Thomas Idle. 
 
 " I don't see it yet," said Francis looking out of window. 
 
 "It must be there," said Thomas Idle. 
 
 "I don't see it," returned Francis. 
 
 "It must be there," repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully. 
 
 " Lord bless me ! " exclaimed Francis, drawing in his 
 head, " I suppose this is it ! " 
 
 "A watering-place," retorted Thomas Idle, with the par- 
 donable sharpness of an invalid, "can't be five gentlemen 
 in straw-hats, on a form on one side of a door, and four 
 ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another side of a 
 door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, 
 and a boy's legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy's body 
 12 — 14 
 
48 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES- 
 
 I suppose on the other side of the parapet), and a donkey 
 running away. What are you talking about? " 
 
 "Allonby, gentlemen," said the most comfortable of 
 landladies, as she opened one door of the carriage; 
 "Allonby, gentlemen," said the most attentive of land- 
 lords, as he opened the other. 
 
 Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and 
 descended from the vehicle. Thomas, now just able to 
 grope his way along, in a doubled-up condition, with the 
 aid of two thick sticks, was no bad embodiment of Com- 
 modore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant Admirals 
 of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout, thick- 
 sticks, tempers, wards, and nephews. With this distin- 
 guished naval appearance upon him, Thomas made a crab- 
 like progress up a clean little bulk-headed staircase, into a 
 clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly deposited 
 himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him, look- 
 ing exceedingly grim. 
 
 "Francis," said Thomas Idle, "what do you think of 
 this place? " 
 
 "I think," returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way, 
 "it is everything we expected." 
 
 "Hah! " said Thomas Idle. 
 
 "There is the sea," cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out of 
 window; "and here," pointing to the lunch on the table, 
 
 "are shrimps. Let us " here Mr. Goodchild looked 
 
 out of window, as if in search of something, and looked in 
 again, — "let us eat 'em." 
 
 The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Good- 
 child went out to survey the watering-place. As Chorus 
 of the Drama, without whom Thomas could make nothing 
 of the scenery, he by-and-bye returned, to have the follow- 
 ing report screwed out of him. 
 
 In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen. 
 
 "But," Thomas Idle asked, "where is it?" 
 
 "It's what you may call generally up and down the 
 beach, here and there," said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist 
 of his hand. 
 
 "Proceed," said Thomas Idle. 
 
 It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examina- 
 tion, what you might call a primitive place. Large? No, 
 it was not large. Who ever expected it would be large? 
 Shape? What a question to ask ! No shape. What sort 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 49 
 
 of a street? Why, no street. Shops? Yes, of course 
 (quite indignant). How many? Who ever went into a 
 place to count the shops? Ever so many. Six? Perhaps. 
 A library? Why, of course (indignant again). Good col- 
 lection of books? Most likely— couldn't say — had seen 
 nothing in it but a pair of scales. Any reading-room? Of 
 course, there was a reading-room. Where? Where! why, 
 over there. Where was over there? Why, there/ Let 
 Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste-ground above 
 high water-mark, where the rank grass and loose stones 
 were most in a litter; and he would see a sort of a long 
 ruinous brick loft, next door to a ruinous brick outhouse, 
 which loft had a ladder outside, to get up by. That was 
 the reading-room, and if Mr. Idle didn't like the idea of a 
 weaver's shuttle throbbing under a reading-room, that was 
 his look-out. He was not to dictate, Mr. Goodchild sup- 
 posed (indignant again), to the company. 
 
 "By the bye," Thomas Idle observed; "the company?" 
 Well ! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice com- 
 pany. Where were they? Why, there they were. Mr. 
 Idle could see the tops of their hats, he supposed. What? 
 Those nine straw-hats again, five gentlemen's and four 
 ladies'? Yes, to be sure. Mr. Goodchild hoped the com- 
 pany were not to be expected to wear helmets, to please 
 Mr. Idle. 
 
 Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, Mr. 
 Goodchild voluntarily reported that if you wanted to be 
 primitive, you could be primitive here, and that if you 
 wanted to be idle, you could be idle here. In the course of 
 some days, he added, that there were three fishing-boats, 
 but no rigging, and that there were plenty of fishermen 
 who never fished. That they got their living entirely by 
 looking at the ocean. What nourishment they looked out 
 of it to support their strength, he couldn't say; but, he 
 supposed it was some sort of Iodine. The place was full 
 of their children, who were always upside down on the 
 public buildings (two small bridges over the brook), and 
 always hurting themselves or one another, so that their 
 wailings made more continual noise in the air than could 
 have been got in a busy place. The houses people lodged 
 in, were nowhere in particular, and were in capital ac- 
 cordance with the beach; being all more or less cracked 
 and damaged as its shells were, and all empty — as its shells 
 4 
 
50 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 were. Among them, was an edifice of destitute appearance, 
 with a number of wall-eyed windows in it, looking desper- 
 ately out to Scotland as if for help, which said it was a 
 Bazaar (and it ought to know)^ and where you might buy 
 anything you wanted — supposing what you wanted, was a 
 little camp-stool or a child's wheelbarrow. The brook 
 crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea, and the 
 donkey was always running away, and when he got into 
 the brook he was pelted out with stones, which never hit 
 him, and which always hit some of the children who were 
 upside down on the public buildings, and made their lam- 
 entations louder. This donkey was the public excitement 
 of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public ex- 
 pense. 
 
 The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, 
 on separate days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild 
 severally wound up, by looking out of window, looking in 
 again, and saying, " But there is the sea, and here are the 
 shrimps — let us eat 'em." 
 
 There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat 
 beach, with its pools of water and its dry patches, changed 
 into long bars of silver and gold in various states of bur- 
 nishing, and there were fine views — on fine days — of the 
 Scottish coast. But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby 
 thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of place 
 which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to have 
 his highly sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt from. 
 Thomas Idle observed, too, that Mr. Goodchild, with a 
 noble show of disinterestedness, became every day more 
 ready to walk to Mary port and back, for letters; and sus- 
 picions began to harbour in the mind of Thomas, that his 
 friend deceived him, and that Maryport was a preferable 
 place. 
 
 Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they 
 had looked at the sea and eaten the shrimps, " My mind 
 misgives me, Goodchild, that you go to Maryport, like the 
 boy in the story-book, to ask it to be idle with you." 
 
 "Judge, then," returned Francis, adopting the style of 
 the story-book, "with what success. I go to a region 
 which is a bit of water-side Bristol, with a slice of Wap- 
 ping, a seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a garnish of 
 Portsmouth, and I say, ' Will you come and be idle with 
 me? ' And it answers, ' No; for I am a great deal too va- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 51 
 
 porous, and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal too 
 muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I have 
 ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to ham- 
 mer, and steam to get up, and smoke to make, and stone to 
 quarry, and fifty other disagreeable things to do, and I 
 can't be idle with you.' Then I go into jagged up-hill 
 and down-hill streets, where I am in the pastrycook's shop 
 at one moment, and next moment in savage fastnesses of 
 moor and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation, and I 
 say to those murky and black-dusky streets, ' Will you 
 come and be idle with me? ' To which they reply, ' No, 
 we can't, indeed, for we haven't the spirits, and we are 
 startled by the echo of your feet on the sharp pavement, 
 and we have so many goods in our shop-windows which no- 
 body wants, and we have so much to do for a limited public 
 which never comes to us to be done for, that we are alto- 
 gether out of sorts and can't enjoy ourselves with any one.' 
 So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I 
 say to the Post-master, ' Will you come and be idle with 
 me? ' To which he rejoins, ' No, I really can't, for I live, 
 as you may see, in such a very little Post-office, and pass 
 my life behind such a very little shutter, that my hand, 
 when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant crammed 
 through the window of a dwarf's house at a fair, and I am 
 a mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small for 
 him, and I can't get out, and I can't get in, and I have 
 no space to be idle in, even if I would.' So, the boy," 
 said Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale, "comes back 
 with the letters after all, and lives happy never after- 
 wards." 
 
 But it may, not unreasonably, be asked — while Francis 
 Goodchild was wandering hither and thither, storing his 
 mind with perpetual observation of men and things, and 
 sincerely believing himself to be the laziest creature in ex- 
 istence all the time — how did Thomas Idle, crippled and 
 confined to the house, contrive to get through the hours of 
 the day? 
 
 Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get 
 through the hours, but passively allowed the hours to get 
 through him. Where other men in his situation would 
 have read books and improved their minds, Thomas slept 
 and rested his body. Where other men would have pon- 
 dered anxiously over their future prospects, Thomas 
 
52 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 dreamed lazily of his past life. The one solitary thing he 
 did, which most other people would have done in his place, 
 was to resolve on making certain alterations and improve- 
 ments in his mode of existence, as soon as the effects of the 
 misfortune that had overtaken him had all passed away. 
 Remembering that the current of his life had hitherta 
 oozed along in one smooth stream of laziness, occasionally 
 troubled on the surface by a slight passing ripple of indus- 
 try, his present ideas on the subject of self -reform, inclined 
 him — not as the reader may be disposed to imagine, to pro- 
 ject schemes for a new existence of enterprise and exertion 
 — but, on the contrary, to resolve that he would never, if he 
 could possibly help it, be active or industrious " again, 
 throughout the whole of his future career. 
 
 It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered 
 towards this peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically 
 producible grounds. After reviewing, quite at his ease, 
 and with many needful intervals of repose, the generally 
 placid spectacle of his past existence, he arrived at the dis- 
 covery that all the great disasters which had tried his pa- 
 tience and equanimity in early life, had been caused by his 
 having allowed himself to be deluded into imitating some 
 pernicious example of activity and industry that had been 
 set him by others. The trials to which he here alludes 
 were three in number, and may be thus reckoned up : First, 
 the disaster of being an unpopular and a thrashed boy at 
 school; secondly, the disaster of falling seriously ill; 
 thirdly, the disaster of becoming acquainted with a great 
 bore. 
 
 The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an idle 
 and a popular boy at school, for some happy years. One 
 Christmas-time, he was stimulated by the evil example of 
 a companion, whom he had always trusted and liked, to be 
 untrue to himself, and to try for a prize at the ensuing 
 half-yearly examination. He did try, and he got a prize — 
 how, he did not distinctly know at the moment, and cannot 
 remember now. No sooner, however, had the book — Moral 
 Hints to the Young on the Value of Time — been placed in 
 his hands, than the first troubles of his life began. The 
 idle boys deserted him, as a traitor to their cause. The 
 industrious boys avoided him, as a dangerous interloper; 
 one of their number, who had always won the prize on 
 previous occasions, expressing just resentment at the inva- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 55 
 
 sion of his privileges by calling Thomas into the play- 
 ground, and then and there administering to him the first 
 sound and genuine thrashing that he had ever received in 
 his life. Unpopular from that moment, as a beaten boy, 
 who belonged to no side and was rejected by all parties, 
 young Idle soon lost caste with his masters, as he had 
 previously lost caste with his school- fellows. He had for- 
 feited the comfortable reputation of being the one lazy 
 member of the youthful community whom it was quite 
 hopeless to punish. Never again did he hear the head- 
 master say reproachfully to an industrious boy who had 
 committed a fault, " I might have expected this in Thomas 
 Idle, but it is inexcusable, sir, in you, who know better." 
 Never more, after winning that fatal prize, did he escape 
 the retributive imposition, or the avenging birch. From 
 that time, the masters made him work, and the boys would 
 not let him play. From that time his social position stead- 
 ily declined, and his life at school became a perpetual bur- 
 den to him. 
 
 So, again, with the second disaster. While Thomas was 
 lazy, he was a model of health. His first attempt at active 
 exertion and his first suffering from severe illness are con- 
 nected together by the intimate relations of cause and 
 effect. Shortly after leaving school, he accompanied a party 
 of friends to a cricket-field, in his natural and appropriate 
 character of spectator only. On the ground it was discov- 
 ered that the players fell short of the required number, and 
 facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in making up the 
 complement. At a certain appointed time, he was roused 
 from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, and placed before 
 three wickets with a bat in his hand. Opposite to him, be- 
 hind three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, 
 filling the situation (as he was informed) of bowler. No 
 words can describe Mr. Iclle's horror and amazement, when 
 he saw this young man — on ordinary occasions, the meekest 
 and mildest of human beings — suddenly contract his eye- 
 brows, compress his lips, assume the aspect of an infuri- 
 ated savage, run back a few steps, then run forward, and, 
 without the slightest previous provocation, hurl a detest- 
 ably hard ball with all his might straight at Thomas's legs. 
 Stimulated to preternatural activity of body and sharpness 
 of eye by the instinct of self-preservation, Mr. Idle con- 
 trived, by jumping deftly aside at the right moment, and 
 
54 THE LAZY TOUR OP TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 by using his bat (ridiculously narrow as it was for the pur- 
 pose) as a shield, to preserve his life and limbs from the 
 dastardly attack that had been made on both, to leave the 
 full force of the deadly missile to strike his wicket instead 
 of his leg; and to end the innings, so far as his side was 
 concerned, by being immediately bowled out. Grateful for 
 his escape he was about to return to the dry ditch, when he 
 was peremptorily stopped, and told that the other side was 
 " going in," and that he was expected to " field." His con- 
 ception of the whole art and mystery of "fielding," may be 
 summed up in the three words of serious advice which he 
 privately administered to himself on that trying occasion — 
 avoid the ball. Fortified by this sound and salutary prin- 
 ciple, he took his own course, impervious alike to ridicule 
 and abuse. Whenever the ball came near him, he thought 
 of his shins, and got out of the way immediately. " Catch 
 it ! " " Stop it ! " " Pitch it up ! " were cries that passed 
 by him like the idle wind that he regarded not. He ducked 
 under it, he jumped over it, he whisked himself away from 
 it on either side. Never once, through the whole innings 
 did he and the ball come together on anything approaching 
 to intimate terms. The unnatural activity of body which 
 was necessarily called forth for the accomplishment of this 
 result threw Thomas Idle, for the first time in his life, into 
 a .perspiration. The perspiration, in consequence of his 
 want of practice in the management of that particular re- 
 sult of bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevi- 
 table chill succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by 
 a fever. For the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found 
 himself confined to his bed for many weeks together, wasted 
 and worn by a long illness, of which his own disastrous 
 muscular exertion had been the sole first cause. 
 
 The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to re- 
 proach himself bitterly for the mistake of having attempted 
 to be industrious, was connected with his choice of a call- 
 ing in life. Having no interest in the Church, he appro- 
 priately selected the next best profession for a lazy man in 
 England — the "Bar. Although the Benchers of the Inns of 
 Court have lately abandoned their good old principles, and 
 oblige their students to make some show of studying, in 
 Mr. Idle's time no such innovation as this existed. Young 
 men who aspired to the honourable title of barrister were, 
 very properly, not asked to learn anything of the law, but 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 55 
 
 were merely required to eat a certain number of dinners at 
 the table of their Hall, and to pay a certain sum of money; 
 and were called to the Bar as soon as they could prove that 
 they had sufficiently complied with these extremely sensi- 
 ble regulations. Never did Thomas move more harmoni- 
 ously in concert with his elders and betters than when he 
 was qualifying himself for admission among the barristers 
 of his native country. Never did he feel more deeply what 
 real laziness was in all the serene majesty of its nature, 
 than on the memorable day when he was called to the bar, 
 after having carefully abstained from opening his law-books 
 during his period of probation, except to fall asleep over 
 them. How he could ever again have become industrious, 
 even for the shortest period, after that great reward con- 
 ferred upon his idleness, quite passes his comprehension. 
 The kind benchers did everything they could to show him 
 the folly of exerting himself. They wrote out his proba- 
 tionary exercise for him, and never expected him even to 
 take the trouble of reading it through when it was written. 
 They invited him, with seven other choice spirits as lazy 
 as himself, to come and be called to the bar, while they 
 were sitting over their wine and fruit after dinner. They 
 put his oaths of allegiance, and his dreadful official denun- 
 ciations of the Pope and the Pretender so gently into his 
 mouth, that he hardly knew how the words got there. 
 They wheeled all their chairs softly round from the table, , 
 and sat surveying the young barristers with their backs to 
 their bottles, rather than stand up, or adjourn to hear the 
 exercises read. And when Mr. Idle and the seven unla- 
 bouring neophytes, ranged in order, as a class, with their 
 backs considerately placed against a screen, had begun, in 
 rotation, to read the exercises which they had not written, 
 even then, each P>encher, true to the great lazy principle of 
 the whole proceeding, stopped each neophyte before he had 
 stammered through his first line, and bowed to him, and 
 told him politely that he was a barrister from that moment. 
 This was all the ceremony. It was followed by a social 
 supper, and by the presentation, in accordance with ancient 
 custom, of a pound of sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira, 
 offered in the way of needful refreshment, by each grateful 
 neophyte to each beneficent Bencher. It may seem incon- 
 ceivable that Thomas should ever have forgotten the great 
 do-nothing principle instilled by such a ceremony as this; 
 
56 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 but it is, nevertheless, true, that certain designing students 
 of industrious habits found him out, took advantage of his 
 easy humour, persuaded him that it was discreditable to be 
 a barrister and to know nothing whatever about the law, 
 and lured him, by the force of their own evil example, into 
 a conveyancer's chambers, to make up for lost time, and to 
 qualify himself for practice at the Bar. After a fortnight 
 of self-delusion, the curtain fell from his eyes; he resumed 
 his natural character, and shut up his books. But the retri- 
 bution which had hitherto always followed his little casual 
 errors of industry followed them still. He could get away 
 from the conveyancer's chambers, but he could not get 
 away from one of the pupils, who had taken a fancy to 
 him, — a tall, serious, raw-boned, hard-working, disputa- 
 tious pupil, with ideas of his own about reforming the Law 
 of Real Property, who has been the scourge of Mr. Idle's 
 existence ever since the fatal day when he fell into the 
 mistake of attempting to study the law. Before that time 
 his friends were all sociable idlers like himself. Since 
 that time the burden of bearing with a hard-working young 
 man has become part of his lot in life. Go where he will 
 now, he can never feel certain that the raw-boned pupil is 
 not affectionately waiting for him round a corner, to tell 
 him a little more about the Law of Real Property. Suffer 
 as he may under the infliction, he can never complain, for 
 he must always remember, with unavailing regret, that he 
 has his own thoughtless industry to thank for first expos- 
 ing him to the great social calamity of knowing a bore. 
 
 These events of his past life, with the significant results 
 that they brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas 
 Idle's memory, while he lies alone on the sofa at Allonby 
 and elsewhere, dreaming away the time which his fellow- 
 apprentice gets through so actively out of doors. Remem- 
 bering the lesson of laziness which his past disasters teach, 
 and bearing in mind also the fact that he is crippled in one 
 leg because he exerted himself to go up a mountain, when 
 he ought to have known that his proper course of conduct 
 was to stop at the bottom of it, he holds now, and will for 
 the future firmly continue to hold, by his new resolution 
 never to be industrious again, on any pretence whatever, 
 for the rest of his life. The physical results of his acci- 
 dent have been related in a previous chapter. The moral 
 results now stand on record; and, with the enumeration of 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 57 
 
 these, that part of the present narrative which is occu- 
 pied by the Episode of The Sprained Ankle may now per- 
 haps be considered, in all its aspects, as finished and com- 
 plete. 
 
 " How do you propose that we get through this present 
 afternoon and evening? " demanded Thomas Idle, after 
 two or three hours of the foregoing reflections at Allonby. 
 
 Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of window, looked in 
 again, and said, as he had so often said before, " There is 
 the sea, and here are the shrimps; — let us eat 'em! " 
 
 But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act of 
 bolting: not with the irresolution of his previous efforts 
 which had been wanting in sustained force of character, but 
 with real vigour of purpose : shaking the dust off his mane 
 and hind-feet at Allonby, and tearing away from it, as if 
 he had nobly made up his mind that he never would be 
 taken alive. At sight of this inspiring spectacle, which 
 was visible from his sofa, Thomas Idle stretched his neck 
 and dwelt upon it rapturously. 
 
 "Francis Goodchild," he then said, turning to his com- 
 panion with a solemn air, " this is a delightful little Inn, 
 excellently kept by the most comfortable of landladies 
 
 and the most attentive of landlords, but the donkey's 
 
 right ! " 
 
 The words, "There is the sea, and here are the ," 
 
 again trembled on the lips of Goodchild, unaccompanied 
 however by any sound. 
 
 " Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus," said Thomas 
 Idle, " pay the bill, and order a fly out, with instructions 
 to the driver to follow the donkey ! " 
 
 Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement to 
 disclose the real state of his feelings, and who had been 
 pining beneath his weary secret, now burst into tears, and 
 confessed that he thought another day in the place would 
 be the death of him. 
 
 So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until 
 the night was far advanced. Whether he was recaptured 
 by the town-council, or is bolting at this hour through the 
 United Kingdom, they know not. They hope he may still 
 be bolting; if so, their best wishes are with him. 
 
 It entered Mr. Idle's head, on the borders of Cumber- 
 land, that there could be no idler place to stay at, except 
 by snatches of a few minutes each, than a railway station^ 
 
58 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 "An intermediate station on a line — a junction — anything 
 of that sort," Thomas suggested. Mr. Goodchild approved 
 of the idea as eccentric, and they journeyed on and on, un- 
 til they came to such a station where there was an Inn. 
 
 "Here," said Thomas, "we may be luxuriously lazy, 
 other people will travel for us, as it were, and we shall 
 laugh at their folly." 
 
 It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors be- 
 fore mentioned shaved the air very often, and where the 
 sharp electric-telegraph bell was in a very restless condi- 
 tion. All manner of cross-lines of rails came zig-zagging 
 into it, like a Congress of iron vipers; and, a little way out 
 of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box was constantly 
 going through the motions of drawing immense quantities 
 of beer at a public-house bar. In one direction, confused 
 perspectives of embankments and arches were to be seen 
 from the platform; in the other, the rails soon disentangled 
 themselves into two tracks, and shot away under a bridge, 
 and curved round a corner. Sidings were there, in which 
 empty luggage-vans and cattle-boxes often butted against 
 each other as if they couldn't agree; and warehouses were 
 there, in which great quantities of goods seemed to have 
 taken the veil (of the consistency of tarpaulin), and to 
 have retired from the world without any hope of getting 
 back to it. Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the 
 hungry and thirsty Iron Locomotives where their coke and 
 water were ready, and of good quality, for they were dan- 
 gerous to play tricks with; the other, for the hungry and 
 thirsty human Locomotives, who might take what they 
 could get, and whose chief consolation was provided in the 
 form of three terrific urns or vases of white metal, contain- 
 ing nothing, each forming a breast- work for a defiant and 
 apparently much-injured woman. 
 
 Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. 
 Francis Goodchild resolved to enjoy it. But, its contrasts 
 were very violent, and there was also an infection in it. 
 
 First, as to its contrasts. They were only two, but they 
 were Lethargy and Madness. The Station was either 
 totally unconscious, or wildly raving. By day, in its un- 
 conscious state, it looked as if no life could come to it, — as 
 if it were all rust, dust, and ashes — as if the last train for 
 ever had gone without issuing any Return-Tickets — as if 
 the last Engine had uttered its last shriek and burst. One 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 59 
 
 awkward shave of the air from the wooden razor, and 
 everything changed. Tight office-doors flew open, panels 
 yielded, books, newspapers, travelling-caps and wrappers 
 broke out of brick walls, money chinked, conveyances op- 
 pressed by nightmares of luggage came careering into the 
 yard, porters started up from secret places, ditto the much- 
 injured women, the shining bell, who lived in a little tray 
 on stilts by himself, flew into a man's hand and clamoured 
 violently. The pointsman aloft in the signal-box made 
 the motions of drawing, with some difficulty, hogsheads of 
 beer. Down Train ! More beer. Up Train ! More beer. 
 Cross Junction Train ! More beer. Cattle Train ! More 
 beer. Goods Train! Simmering, whistling, trembling, 
 rumbling, thundering. Trains on the whole confusion of 
 intersecting rails, crossing one another, bumping one an- 
 other, hissing one another, backing to go forward, tearing 
 into distance to come close. People frantic. Exiles seek- 
 ing restoration to their native carriages, and banished to 
 remoter climes. More beer and more bell. Then, in a 
 minute, the Station relapsed into stupor as the stoker of 
 the Cattle Train, the last to depart, went gliding out of it, 
 wiping the long nose of his oil-can with a dirty pocket- 
 handkerchief. 
 
 By night, in its unconscious state, the station was not 
 so much as visible. Something in the air, like an enter- 
 prising chemist's established in business on one of the 
 boughs of Jack's beanstalk, was all that could be discerned 
 of it under the stars. In a moment it would break out, 
 a constellation of gas. In another moment, twenty rival 
 chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, came into existence. 
 Then, the Furies would be seen, waving their lurid torches 
 up and down the confused perspectives of embankments and 
 arches — would be heard, too, wailing and shrieking. Then, 
 the Station would be full of palpitating trains, as in the 
 day; with the heightening difference that they were not so 
 clearly seen as in the day, whereas the station walls, start- 
 ing forward under the gas, like a hippopotamus's eyes, 
 dazzled the human locomotives with the sauce-bottle, the 
 cheap music, the bedstead, the distorted range of buildings 
 where the patent safes are made, the gentleman in the rain 
 with the registered umbrella, the lady returning from the 
 ball with the registered respirator, and all their other em- 
 bellishments. And now, the human locomotives, creased 
 
60 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 as to their countenances and purblind as to their eyes, 
 would swarm forth in a heap, addressing themselves to the 
 mysterious urns and the much-injured women; while the 
 iron locomotives, dripping fire and water, shed their steam 
 about plentifully, making the dull oxen in their cages, with 
 heads depressed, and foam hanging from their mouths as 
 their red looks glanced fearfully at the surrounding terrors, 
 seem as though they had been drinking at half-frozen wa- 
 ters and were hung with icicles. Through the same steam 
 would be caught glimpses of their fellow-travellers, the 
 sheep, getting their white kid faces together, away from 
 the bars, and stuffing the interstices with trembling wool. 
 Also, down among the wheels, of the man with the sledge- 
 hammer, ringing the axles of the fast night- train; against 
 whom the oxen have a misgiving that he is the man with 
 the pole-axe who is to come by-and-bye, and so the nearest 
 of them try to get back, and get a purchase for a thrust at 
 him through the bars. Suddenly, the bell would ring, the 
 steam would stop with one hiss and a yell, the chemists on 
 the beanstalks would be busy, the avenging Furies would 
 bestir themselves, the fast night- train would melt from 
 eye and ear, the other trains going their ways more slowly 
 would be heard faintly rattling in the distance like old- 
 fashioned watches running down, the sauce-bottle and 
 cheap music retired from view, even the bedstead went to 
 bed, and there was no such visible thing as the Station to 
 vex the cool wind in its blowing, or perhaps the autumn 
 lightning, as it found out the iron rails. 
 
 The infection of the Station was this : — When it was in 
 its raving state, the Apprentices found it impossible to be 
 there, without labouring under the delusion that they were 
 in a hurry. To Mr. Goodchild, whose ideas of idleness 
 were so imperfect, this was no unpleasant hallucination, 
 and accordingly that gentleman went through great exer- 
 tions in yielding to it, and running up and down the plat- 
 form, jostling everybody, under the impression that he had 
 a highly important mission somewhere, and had not a mo- 
 ment to lose. But, to Thomas Idle, this contagion was so 
 very unacceptable an incident of the situation, that he 
 struck on the fourth day, and requested to be moved. 
 
 "This place fills me with a dreadful sensation," said 
 Thomas, " of having something to do. Kemove me, Fran= 
 cis." 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 61 
 
 " Where would you like to go next? " was the question 
 of the ever-engaging Goodchild. 
 
 "I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster, 
 established in a fine old house : an Inn where they give 
 you Bride-cake every day after dinner," said Thomas Idle. 
 " Let us eat Bride-cake without the trouble of being mar- 
 ried, or of knowing anybody in that ridiculous dilemma." 
 
 Mr. Goodchild, with a lover's sigh, assented. They de- 
 parted from the Station in a violent hurry (for which, it is 
 unnecessary to observe, there was not the least occasion), 
 and were delivered at the fine old house at Lancaster, on 
 the same night. 
 
 It is Mr. Goodchild' s opinion, that if a visitor on his ar- 
 rival at Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole 
 which would push the opposite side of the street some 
 yards farther off, it would be better for all parties. Pro- 
 testing against being required to live in a trench, and 
 obliged to speculate all day upon what the people can pos- 
 sibly be doing within a mysterious opposite window, which 
 is a shop- window to look at, but not a shop- window in re- 
 spect of its offering nothing for sale and declining to give 
 any account whatever of itself, Mr. Goodchild concedes 
 Lancaster to be a pleasant place. A place dropped in the 
 midst of a charming landscape, a place with a fine ancient 
 fragment of castle, a place of lovely walks, a place possess- 
 ing staid old houses richly fitted with old Honduras ma- 
 hogany, which has grown so dark with time that it seems 
 to have got something of a restrospective mirror-quality 
 into itself, and to show the visitor, in the depth of its 
 grain, through all its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves 
 who groaned long ago under old Lancaster merchants. 
 And Mr. Goodchild adds that the stones of Lancaster do 
 sometimes whisper, even yet, of rich men passed away — 
 upon whose great prosperity some of these old doorways 
 frowned sullen in the brightest weather — that their slave- 
 gain turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard's money 
 turned to leaves, and that no good ever came of it, even 
 unto the third and fourth generations, until it was wasted 
 and gone. 
 
 It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday procession 
 of the Lancaster elders to Church — all in black, and look- 
 ing fearfully like a funeral without the Body — under the 
 escort of Three Beadles. 
 
62 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. . 
 
 "Think," said Francis, as lie stood at the Inn window, 
 admiring, " of being taken to the sacred edifice by three 
 Beadles ! I have, in my early time, been taken out of it 
 by one Beadle; but, to be taken into it by three, O Thomas, 
 is a distinction I shall never enjoy ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 When Mr. Goodchild had looked out of the Lancaster 
 Inn window for two hours on end, with great perseverance, 
 he began to. entertain a misgiving that he was growing in- 
 dustrious. He therefore set himself next, to explore the 
 country from the tops of all the steep hills in the neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell 
 Thomas Idle what he had seen. Thomas, on his back read- 
 ing, listened with great composure, and asked him whether 
 he really had gone up those hills, and bothered himself 
 with those views, and walked all those miles? 
 
 "Because I want to know," added Thomas, "what you 
 would say of it, if you were obliged to do it? " 
 
 "It would be different, then," said Francis. "It would 
 be work, then; now, it's play." 
 
 "Play!" replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating the 
 reply. " Play ! Here is a man goes systematically tearing 
 himself to pieces, and putting himself through an inces- 
 sant course of training as if he were alwaj's under articles 
 to fight a match for the champion's belt, and he calls it 
 Play ! Play ! " exclaimed Thomas Idle, scornfully contem- 
 plating his one boot in the air. "You can't play. You 
 don't know what it is. You make work of everything." 
 
 The bright Goodchild amiably smiled. 
 
 " So you do," said Thomas. " I mean it. To me you are 
 an absolutely terrible fellow. You do nothing like another 
 man. Where another fellow would fall into a footbath of 
 action or emotion, you fall into a mine. Where any other 
 fellow would be a painted butterfly, you are a fiery dragon. 
 Where another man would stake a sixpence, you stake your 
 existence. If you were to go up in a balloon, you would 
 make for Heaven; and if you were to dive into the depths 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 63 
 
 of the earth, nothing short of the other place would con- 
 tent you. What a fellow you are, Francis ! " 
 
 The cheerful Goodchild laughed. 
 
 "It's all very well to laugh, but I wonder you don't feel 
 it to be serious," said Idle. "A man who can do nothing 
 by halves appears to me to be a fearful man." 
 
 "Tom, Tom," returned Goodchild, "if I can do nothing 
 by halves, and be nothing by halves, it's pretty clear that 
 you must take me as a whole, and make the best of me." 
 
 With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild 
 clapped Mr. Idle on the shoulder in a final manner, and 
 they sat down to dinner. 
 
 "By the bye," said Goodchild, "I have been over a 
 lunatic asylum too, since I have been out." 
 
 "He has been," exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting up his 
 eyes, " over a lunatic asylum ! Not content with being as 
 great an Ass as Captain Barclay in the pedestrian way, he 
 makes a Lunacy Commissioner of himself — for nothing ! " 
 
 "An immense place," said Goodchild, " admirable offices, 
 very good arrangements, very good attendants; altogether 
 a remarkable place." 
 
 "And what did you see there? " asked Mr. Idle, adapt- 
 ing Hamlet's advice to the occasion, and assuming the vir- 
 tue of interest, though he had it not. 
 
 "The usual thing," said Francis Goodchild, with a sigh. 
 "Long groves of blighted men-and- women-trees; 'inter- 
 minable avenues of hopeless faces; numbers, without the 
 slightest power of really combining for any earthly purpose; 
 a society of human creatures who have nothing in common 
 but that they have all lost the power of being humanly so- 
 cial with one another." 
 
 "Take a glass of wine with me," said Thomas Idle, 
 "and let us be social." 
 
 "In one gallery, Tom," pursued Francis Goodchild, 
 " which looked to me about the length of the Long Walk 
 at Windsor, more or less " 
 
 "Probably less," observed Thomas Idle. 
 
 " In one gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients 
 (for they were all out) , there was a poor little dark-chinned, 
 meagre man, with a perplexed brow and a pensive face, 
 stooping low over the matting on the floor, and picking out 
 with his thumb and forefinger the course of its fibres. The 
 afternoon sun was slanting in at the large end- window, and 
 
64 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 there were cross patches of light and shade all down the 
 vista, made by the nnseen windows and the open doors of 
 the little sleeping cells on either side. In about the centre 
 of the perspective, under an arch, regardless of the pleas- 
 ant weather, regardless of the solitude, regardless of ap- 
 proaching footsteps was the poor little dark-chinned, 
 meagre man, poring over the matting. ' What are you 
 doing there? ' said my conductor, when we came to him. 
 He looked up, and pointed to the matting. ' I wouldn't 
 do that, I think,' said my conductor, kindly; 'if I were 
 you, I would go and read, or I would lie down if I felt 
 tired; but I wouldn't do that.' The patient considered a 
 moment, and vacantly answered, ' No, sir, I won't; I'll — 
 I'll go and read,' and so he lamely snuffled away into one 
 of the little rooms. I turned my head before we had gone 
 many paces. He had already come out again, and was 
 again poring over the matting, and tracking out its fibres 
 with his thumb and forefinger. I stopped to look at him, 
 and it came into my mind, that probably the course of 
 those fibres as they plaited in and out, over and under, was 
 the only course of things in the whole wide. world that it 
 was left to him to understand — that his darkening intel- 
 lect had narrowed down to the small cleft of light which 
 showed him, ' This piece was twisted this way, went in 
 here, passed under, came out there, was carried on away 
 here to the right where I now put my finger on it, and in 
 this progress of events, the thing was made and came to 
 be here.' Then, I wondered whether he looked into the 
 matting, next, to see if it could show him anything of the 
 process through which he came to be there, so strangely 
 poring over it. Then, I thought how all of us, God help 
 us ! in our different ways are poring over our bits of mat- 
 ting, blindly enough, and what .confusions and mysteries 
 we make in the pattern. I had a sadder fellow-feeling 
 with the little dark-chinned, meagre man, by that time, 
 and I came away." 
 
 Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, 
 and bride-cake, Mr. Goodchild followed in the same direc- 
 tion. The bride-cake was as bilious and indigestible as if 
 a real Bride had cut it, and the dinner it completed was an 
 admirable performance. 
 
 The house was a genuine old house of a very quaint de- 
 scription, teeming with old carvings, and beams, and panels, 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 65 
 
 arid having an excellent old staircase, with a gallery or up- 
 per staircase, cut off from it by a curious fence-work of old 
 oak, or of the old Honduras Mahogany wood. It was, and 
 is, and will be, for many a long year to come, 'a remarkably 
 picturesque house; and a certain grave mystery lurking in 
 the depth of the old mahogany panels, as if they were so 
 many deep pools of dark water — such, indeed, as they had 
 been much among when they were trees — gave it a very 
 mysterious character after nightfall. 
 
 When Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle had first alighted at 
 the door, and stepped into the sombre handsome old hall, 
 they had been received by half-a-dozen noiseless old men 
 in black, all dressed exactly alike, who glided up the stairs 
 with the obliging landlord and waiter — but without appear- 
 ing to get into their way, or to mind whether they did or 
 no — and who had filed off to the right and left on the old 
 staircase, as the guests entered their sitting-room. It was 
 then broad, bright day. But, Mr. Goodchild had said, 
 when their door was shut, " Who on earth are those old 
 men? " And afterwards, both on going out and coming in, 
 he had noticed that there were no old men to be seen. 
 
 Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men, re- 
 appeared since. The two friends had passed a night in the 
 house, but had seen nothing more of the old men. Mr. 
 Goodchild, in rambling about it, had looked along passages, 
 and glanced in at doorways, but had encountered no old 
 men; neither did it appear that any old men were, by any 
 member of the establishment, missed or expected. 
 
 Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their at- 
 tention. It was, that the door of their sitting-room was 
 never left untouched for a quarter of an hour. It was 
 opened with hesitation, opened with confidence, opened a 
 little way, opened a good way, — always clapped-to again 
 without a word of explanation. They were reading, they 
 were writing, they were eating, they were drinking, they 
 were talking, they were dozing; the door was always 
 opened at an unexpected moment, and they looked towards 
 it, and it was clapped-to again, and nobody was to be seen. 
 When this had happened fifty times or so, Mr. Goodchild 
 had said to his companion, jestingly : " I begin to think, 
 Tom, there was something wrong with those six old men." 
 
 Night had come again, and they had been writing for 
 two or three hours : writing, in short, a portion of the lazy 
 5 
 
66 THE LAZY TOUK OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 notes from which these lazy sheets are taken. They had 
 left off writing, and glasses were on the table between 
 them. The house was closed and quiet. Around the head 
 of Thomas Idle, as he lay upon his sofa, hovered light 
 wreaths of fragrant smoke. The temples of Francis Good- 
 child, as he leaned back in his chair, with his two hands 
 clasped behind his head, and his legs crossed, were sim- 
 ilarly decorated. 
 
 They had been discussing several idle subjects of specu- 
 lation, not omitting the strange old men, and were still so 
 occupied, when Mr. Goodchild abruptly changed his atti- 
 tude to wind up his watch. They were just becoming 
 drowsy enough to be stopped in their talk by any such 
 slight check. Thomas Idle, who was speaking at the mo- 
 ment, paused and said, " How goes it? " 
 
 "One," said Goodchild. 
 
 As if he had ordered One old man, and the order were 
 promptly executed (truly, all orders were so, in that excel- 
 lent hotel), the door opened, and One old man stood there. 
 
 He did not come in, but stood with the door in his hand. 
 
 "One of the six, Tom, at last!" said Mr. Goodchild, in 
 a surprised whisper. — " Sir, your pleasure? " 
 
 " Sir, your pleasure? " said the One old man. 
 
 "I didn't ring." 
 
 "The bell did," said the One old man. 
 
 He said Bell, in a deep strong way, that would have 
 expressed the church Bell. 
 
 "I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you, yester- 
 day?" said Goodchild. 
 
 " I cannot undertake to say for certain," was the grim 
 reply of the One old man. 
 
 " I think you saw me. Did you not? " 
 
 "Saw you?" said the old man. "0 yes, I saw you. 
 But, I see many who never see me." 
 
 A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man. A cadaverous 
 old man of measured speech. An old man who seemed as 
 unable to wink, as if his eyelids had been nailed to his fore- 
 head. An old man whose eyes— two spots of fire— had no 
 more motion than if they had been connected with the back 
 of his skull by screws driven through it, and riveted and 
 bolted outside, among his grey hair. 
 
 The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild's sensa- 
 tions, that he shivered. He remarked lightly, and half 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 67 
 
 apologetically, "I think somebody is walking over my 
 grave." 
 
 "No," said the weird old man, "there is no one there." 
 
 Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his 
 head enwreathed in smoke. 
 
 "No one there?" said Goodchild. 
 
 "There is no one at your grave, I assure you," said the 
 old man. 
 
 He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down. 
 He did not bend himself to sit, as other people do, but 
 seemed to sink bolt upright, as if in water, until the chair 
 stopped him. 
 
 " My friend, Mr. Idle," said Goodchild, extremely anxious 
 to introduce a third person into the conversation. 
 
 "I am," said the old man, without looking at him, "at 
 Mr. Idle's service." 
 
 "If you are an old inhabitant of this place," Francis 
 Goodchild resumed : 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were 
 in doubt upon, this morning. They hang condemned crim- 
 inals at the Castle, I believe? " 
 
 "/believe so," said the old man. 
 
 " Are their faces turned towards that noble prospect? " 
 
 "Your face is turned," replied the old man, "to the 
 Castle wall. When you are tied up, you see its stones ex- 
 panding and contracting violently, and a similar expansion 
 and contraction seem to take place in your own head and 
 breast. Then, there is a rush of fire and an earthquake, 
 and the Castle springs into the air, and you tumble down a 
 precipice." 
 
 His cravat appeared to trouble him. He put his hand 
 to his throat, and moved his neck from side to side. He 
 was an old man of a swollen character of face, and his nose 
 was immovably hitched up on one side, as if by a little 
 hook inserted in that nostril. Mr. Goodchild felt exceed- 
 ingly uncomfortable, and began to think the night was hot, 
 and not cold. 
 
 "A strong description, sir," he observed. 
 
 "A strong sensation," the old man rejoined. 
 
 Again, Mr. Goodchild looked to Mr. Thomas Idle; but 
 Thomas lay on his back with his face attentively turned 
 towards the One old man, and made no sign. At this time 
 
68 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 Mr. Goodchild believed that he saw threads of fire stretch 
 from the old man's eyes to his own, and there attach them- 
 selves. (Mr. Goodchild writes the present account of his 
 experience, and, with the utmost solemnity, protests that 
 he had the strongest sensation upon him of being forced to 
 look at the old man along those two fiery films, from that 
 moment. ) 
 
 " I must tell it to you," said the old man, with a ghastly 
 and a stony stare. 
 
 " What? " asked Francis Goodchild. 
 
 " You know where it took place. Yonder ! " 
 
 Whether he pointed to the room above, or to the room 
 below, or to any room in that old house, or to a room in 
 some other old house in that old town, Mr. Goodchild was 
 not, nor is, nor ever can be, sure. He was confused by the 
 circumstance that the right forefinger of the One old man 
 seemed to dip itself in one of the threads of fire, light it- 
 self, and make a fiery start in the air, as it pointed some- 
 where. Having pointed somewhere, it went out. 
 
 "You know she was a Bride," said the old man. 
 
 "I know they still send up Bride-cake," Mr. Goodchild 
 faltered. "This is a very oppressive air." 
 
 " She was a Bride," said the old man. " She was a fair, 
 flaxen-haired, large-eyed girl, who had no character, no 
 purpose. A weak, credulous, incapable, helpless nothing. 
 Not like her mother. No, no. It was her father whose 
 character she reflected. 
 
 " Her mother had taken care to secure everything to her- 
 self, for her own life, when the father of this girl (a child 
 at that time) died — of sheer helplessness; no other disorder 
 — and then He renewed the acquaintance that had once 
 subsisted between the mother and Him. He had been put 
 aside for the flaxen- haired, large-eyed man (or nonentity) 
 with Money. He could overlook that for Money. He 
 wanted compensation in Money. 
 
 " So, he returned to the side of that woman the mother, 
 made love to her again, danced attendance on her, and sub- 
 mitted himself to her whims. She wreaked upon him ev- 
 ery whim she had, or could invent. He bore it. And the 
 more he bore, the more he wanted compensation in Money, 
 and the more he was resolved to have it. 
 
 " But, lo ! Before he got it, she -cheated him. In one 
 of her imperious states, she froze, and never thawed again. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 69 
 
 She put her hands to her head one night, uttered a cry, 
 stiffened, lay in that attitude certain hours, and died. 
 And he had got no compensation from her in Money, yet. 
 Blight and Murrain on her ! Not a penny. 
 
 " He had hated her throughout that second pursuit, and 
 had longed for retaliation on her. He now counterfeited 
 her signature to an instrument, leaving all she had to leave, 
 to her daughter — ten years old then — to whom the property 
 passed absolutely, and appointing himself the daughter's 
 Guardian. When He slid it under the pillow of the bed on 
 which she lay, He bent down in the deaf ear of Death, and 
 whispered : ' Mistress Pride, I have determined a long time 
 that, dead or alive, you must "make me compensation in 
 Money.' 
 
 " So, now there were only two left. Which two were, 
 He, and the fair flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daughter, 
 who afterwards became the Bride. 
 
 " He put her to school. In a secret, dark, oppressive, 
 ancient house, he put her to school with a watchful and 
 unscrupulous woman. ' My worthy lady,' he said, 'here 
 is a mind to be formed ; will you help me to form it? ' 
 She accepted the trust. For which she, too, wanted com- 
 pensation in Money, and had it. 
 
 " The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the con- 
 viction, that there was no escape from him. She was 
 taught, from the first, to regard him as her future husband 
 — the man who must marry her — the destiny that over- 
 shadowed her — the appointed certainty that could never be 
 evaded. The poor fool was soft white wax in their hands, 
 and took the impression that they put upon her. It hard- 
 ened with time. It became a part of herself. Inseparable 
 from herself, and only to be torn away from her, by tear- 
 ing life away from her. 
 
 " Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its 
 gloomy garden. He was jealous of the very light and air 
 getting to her, and they kept her close. He stopped the 
 wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong- 
 stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the house- 
 front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit-trees 
 in the red- walled garden, the weeds to over- run its green 
 and yellow walks. He surrounded her with images of sor- 
 row and desolation. He caused her to be filled with fears 
 of the place and of the stories that were told of it, and then 
 
70 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 on pretext of correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, 
 or made to shrink about it in the dark. When her mind 
 was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then, he would 
 come out of one of the hiding-places from which he over- 
 looked her, and present himself as her sole resource. 
 
 " Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment 
 her life presented to her of power to coerce and power to 
 relieve, power to bind and power to loose, the ascendency 
 over her weakness was secured. She was twenty-one years 
 and twenty-one days old, when he brought her home to the 
 gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive 
 Bride of three weeks. 
 
 " He had dismissed the governess by that time — what he 
 had left to do, he could best do alone — and they came back, 
 upon a rainy night, to the scene of her long preparation. 
 She turned to him upon the threshold, as the rain was 
 dripping from the porch, and said : 
 
 " ' sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me ! * 
 " ' Well ! ' he answered. - And if it were? ' 
 " ' sir ! ' she returned to him, ' look kindly on me, and 
 be merciful to me ! I beg your pardon. I will do anything 
 you wish, if you will only forgive me ! ' 
 
 "That had become the poor fool's constant song: ' I beg 
 your pardon, ' and ' Forgive me ! ' 
 
 " She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but con- 
 tempt for her. But, she had long been in the way, and he 
 had long been weary, and the work was near its end, and 
 had to be worked out. 
 
 " ' You fool,' he said. • Go up the stairs ! ' 
 " She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, ' I will do any- 
 thing you wish ! ' When he came into the Bride' s Cham- 
 ber, having been a little retarded by the heavy fastenings 
 of the great door (for they were alone in the house, and he 
 had arranged that the people who attended on them should 
 come and go in the day), he found her withdrawn to the 
 furthest corner, and there standing pressed against the 
 panelling as if she would have shrunk through it: her 
 flaxen hair all wild about her face, and her large eyes star- 
 ing at him in vague terror. 
 
 " ' What are you afraid of? Come and sit down by me.' 
 " ' I will do anything you wish. I beg your pardon, sir. 
 Forgive me ! ' Her monotonous tune as usual. 
 
 " ' Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 71 
 
 morrow, in your own hand. You may as well be seen by 
 others, busily engaged upon it. When you have written 
 it all fairly, and corrected all mistakes, call in any two 
 people there may be about the house, and sign your name to 
 it before them. Then, put it in your bosom to keep it safe, 
 and when I sit here again to-morrow night, give it to me.' 
 
 " ' I will do it all, with the greatest care. I will do any- 
 thing you wish.' 
 
 " • Don't shake and tremble, then.' 
 
 " * I will try my utmost not to do it — if you will only 
 forgive me ! ' 
 
 " Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she 
 had been told. He often passed in and out of the room, to 
 observe her, and always saw her slowly and laboriously 
 writing : repeating to herself the words she copied, in ap- 
 pearance quite mechanically, and without caring or en- 
 deavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her task. 
 He saw her follow the directions she had received, in all 
 particulars; and at night, when they were alone again in 
 the same Bride's Chamber, and he drew his chair to the 
 hearth, she timidly approached him from her distant seat, 
 took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into his hand. 
 
 " It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of 
 her death. He put her before him, face to face, that he 
 might look at her steadily; and he asked her, in so many 
 plain words, neither fewer nor more, did she know that? 
 
 "There were spots of ink upon the bosom" of her white 
 dress, and they made her face look whiter and her eyes 
 look larger as she nodded her head. There were spots of 
 ink upon the hand with which she stood before him, ner- 
 vously plaiting and folding her white skirts. 
 
 " He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more 
 closely and steadily, in the face. ' Now, die ! I have 
 done with you.' 
 
 " She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry. 
 
 " ' I am not going to kill you. I will not endanger my 
 life for yours. Die! ' 
 
 " He sat before her in the gloomy Bride's Chamber, day 
 after day, night after night, looking the word at her when 
 he did not utter it. As often as her large unmeaniug eyes 
 were raised from the hands in which she rocked her head, 
 to the stern figure, sitting with crossed arms and knitted 
 forehead, in the chair, they read in it, ■ Die ! ' When she 
 
72 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 dropped asleep in exhaustion, she was called back to shud- 
 dering consciousness, by the whisper, ' Die ! ' When she 
 fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned, she was an- 
 swered, ' Die ! ' When she had out- watched and out-suf- 
 fered the long night, and the rising sun flamed into the 
 sombre room, she heard it hailed with, ' Another day and 
 not dead?— Die ! ' 
 
 " Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all man- 
 kind, and engaged alone in such a struggle without any 
 respite, it came to this — that either he must die, or she. 
 He knew it very well, and concentrated his strength 
 against her feebleness. Hours upon hours he held her by 
 the arm when her arm was black where he held it, and 
 bade her Die ! 
 
 " It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise. He 
 computed the time to be half -past four; but, his forgotten 
 watch had run down, and he could not be sure. She had 
 broken away from him in the night, with loud and sudden 
 cries — the first of that kind to which she had given vent — 
 and he had had to put his hands over her mouth. Since 
 then, she had been quiet in the corner of the panelling 
 where she had sunk down; and he had left her, and had 
 gone back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to 
 his chair. 
 
 " Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in the 
 leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the 
 floor towards him — a white wreck of hair, and dress, and 
 wild eyes, pushing itself on by an irresolute and bending 
 hand. 
 
 " ' 0, forgive me ! I will do anything. O, sir, pray tell 
 me I may live ! ' 
 
 " ' Die ! ' 
 
 " ' Are you so resolved? Is there no hope for me? ' 
 
 " ' Die ! ' 
 
 " Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and 
 fear; wonder and fear changed to reproach; reproach to 
 blank nothing. It was done. He was not at first so sure 
 it was done, but that the morning sun was hanging jewels 
 in her hair— he saw the diamond, emerald, and ruby, glit- 
 tering among it in little points, as he stood looking down 
 at her — when he lifted her and laid her on her bed. 
 
 " She was soon J aid in the ground. And now they were 
 all gone, and he had compensated himself well. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 73 
 
 " He had a mind to travel. Not that he meant to waste 
 his Money, for he was a pinching man and liked his Money 
 dearly (like nothing else, indeed), but, that he had grown 
 tired of the desolate house and wished to turn his back 
 upon it and have done with it. But, the house was worth 
 Money, and Money must not be thrown away. He deter- 
 mined to sell it before he went. That it might look the 
 less wretched and bring a better price, he hired some la- 
 bourers to work in the overgrown garden; to cut out the 
 dead wood, trim the ivy that drooped in heavy masses over 
 the windows and gables, and clear the walks in which the 
 weeds were growing mid-leg high. 
 
 "He worked, himself, along with them. He worked 
 later than they did, and, one evening at dusk, was left 
 working alone, with his bill-hook in his hand. One au- 
 tumn evening, when the Bride was five weeks dead. 
 
 " ' It grows too dark to work longer,' he said to himself, 
 ' I must give over for the night. ' 
 
 " He detested the house, and was loath to enter it. He 
 looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb, and 
 felt that it was an accursed house. Near to the porch, and 
 near to where he stood, was a tree whose branches waved 
 before the old bay-window of the Bride's Chamber, where 
 it had been done. The tree swung suddenly, and made 
 him start. It swung again, although the night was still. 
 Looking up into it, he saw a figure among the branches. 
 
 "It was the figure of a young man. The face looked 
 down, as his looked up; the branches cracked and swayed; 
 the figure rapidly descended, and slid upon its feet before 
 him. A slender youth of about her age, with long light 
 brown hair. 
 
 " ' What thief are you? ' he said, seizing the youth by 
 the collar. 
 
 "The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a 
 blow with his arm across the face and throat. They 
 closed, but the young man got from him and stepped back, 
 crying, with great eagerness and horror, ' Don't touch 
 me ! 1 would as lieve be touched by the Devil ! ' 
 
 " He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking 
 at the young man. For, the young man's look was the 
 counterpart of her last look, and he had not expected ever 
 to see that again. 
 
 " ' I am no thief. Even if I were, I would not have a 
 
74 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 coin of your wealth, if it would buy me the Indies. You 
 murderer ! ' 
 
 "'What!' 
 
 "'1 climbed it,' said the young man, pointing up into 
 the tree, ' for the first time, nigh four years ago. I climbed 
 it, to look at her. I saw her. I spoke to her. I have 
 climbed it, many a time, to watch and listen for her. I 
 was a boy, hidden among its leaves, when from that bay- 
 window she gave me this ! ' 
 
 " He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning 
 ribbon. 
 
 " ' Her life,' said the young man, ' was a life of mourn- 
 ing. She gave me this, as a token of it, and a sign that 
 she was dead to every one but you. If I had been older, 
 if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved her from you. 
 But, she was fast in the web when I first climbed the tree, 
 and what could I do then to break it ! ' 
 
 " In saying these words, he burst into a fit of sobbing 
 and crying ; weakly at first, then passionately. 
 
 " I Murderer ! I climbed the tree on the night when you 
 brought her back. I heard her, from the tree, speak of the 
 Death-watch at the door. I was three times in the tree 
 while you were shut up with her, slowly killing her. I 
 saw her, from the tree, lie dead upon her bed. I have 
 watched you, from the tree, for proofs and traces of your 
 guilt. The manner of it, is a mystery to me yet, but I 
 will pursue you until you have rendered up your life to 
 the hangman. You shall never, until then, be rid of me. 
 I loved her! I can know no relenting towards you. 
 Murderer, I loved her ! ' 
 
 " The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered 
 away in his descent from the tree. He moved towards the 
 gate. He had to pass — Him — to get to it. There was 
 breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and the 
 youth's abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature of 
 his face and limb of his body, and very hard to bear, had 
 verge enough to keep itself at a distance in. He (by which 
 I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot, since he 
 had stood still to look at the boy. He faced round, now, 
 to follow him with his eyes. As the back of the bare light 
 brown head was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch 
 from his hand to it. He knew, before he threw the bill- 
 hook, where it had alighted — I say, had alighted, and not, 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 75 
 
 would alight; for, to his clear perception the thing was 
 done before he did it. It cleft the head, and it remained 
 there, and the boy lay on his face. 
 
 " He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the tree. 
 As soon as it was light in the morning, he worked at turn- 
 ing up all the ground near the tree, and hacking and hew- 
 ing at the neighbouring bushes and undergrowth. When 
 the labourers came, there was nothing suspicious, and 
 nothing suspected. 
 
 " But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions, 
 and destroyed the triumph of the scheme he had so long 
 concerted, and so successfully worked out. He had got 
 rid of the Bride, and had acquired her fortune without en- 
 dangering his life; but now, for a death by which he had 
 gained nothing, he had evermore to live with a rope around 
 his neck. 
 
 " Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and 
 horror, which he could not endure. Being afraid to sell it 
 or to quit it, lest discovery should be made, he was forced 
 to live in it. He hired two old people, man and wife, foi 
 his servants; and dwelt in it, and dreaded it. His great 
 difficulty, for a long time, was the garden. Whether he 
 should keep it trim, whether he should suffer it to fall into 
 its former state of neglect, what would be the least likely 
 way of attracting attention to it? " 
 
 " He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in 
 his evening leisure, and of then calling the old serving-man 
 to help him; but, of never letting him work there alone. 
 And he made himself an arbour over against the tree, 
 where he could sit and see that it was safe. 
 
 " As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his mind 
 perceived dangers that were always changing. In the 
 leafy time, he perceived that the upper boughs were grow- 
 ing into the form of the young man — that they made the 
 shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch swinging 
 in the wind. In the time of the falling leaves, he per- 
 ceived that they came down from the tree, forming tell-tale 
 letters on the path, or that they had a tendency to heap 
 themselves into a churchyard-mound above the grave. In 
 the winter, when the tree was bare, he perceived that the 
 boughs swung at him the ghost of the blow the young man 
 had given, and that they threatened him openly. In the 
 spring, when the sap was mounting in the trunk, he asked 
 
76 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 himself, were the dried-up particles of blood mounting 
 with it : to make out more obviously this year than last, 
 the leaf-screened figure of the young man, swinging in the 
 wind? 
 
 " However, he turned his Money over and over, 
 and still ovex. He was in the dark trade, the gold-dust 
 trade, and mest secret trades that yielded great returns. 
 In ten years, he had turned his Money over, so many 
 times, that the traders and shippers who had dealings with 
 him, absolutely did not lie — for once — when they declared 
 that he had increased his fortune, Twelve Hundred Per 
 Cent. 
 
 " He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when 
 people could be lost easily. He had heard who the youth 
 was, from hearing of the search that was made after him; 
 but, it died away, and the youth was forgotten. 
 
 " The annual round of changes in the tree had been re- 
 peated ten times since the night of the burial at its foot, 
 when there was a great thunder-storm over this place. It 
 broke at midnight, and raged until morning. The first in- 
 telligence he heard from his old serving-man that morning, 
 was, that the tree had been struck by Lightning. 
 
 " It had been driven down the stem, in a very surprising 
 manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts : one rest- 
 ing against the house, and one against a portion of the old 
 red garden-wall in which its fall had made a gap. The 
 fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth, and 
 there stopped. There was great curiosity to see the tree, 
 and, with most of his former fears revived, he sat in his 
 arbour — grown quite an old man — watching the people who 
 came to see it. 
 
 " They quickly began to come, in such dangerous num- 
 bers, that he closed his garden-gate and refused to admit 
 any more. But, there were certain men of science who 
 travelled from a distance to examine the tree, and, in an 
 evil hour, he let them in— Blight and Murrain on them, 
 let them in ! 
 
 "They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and 
 closely examine it, and the earth about it. Never, while 
 he lived! They offered money for it. They! Men of 
 science, whom he could have bought by the gross, with a 
 scratch of his pen! He showed them the garden-gate 
 again ? and locked and barred it. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 77 
 
 "But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do, 
 and they bribed the old serving-man — a thankless wretch 
 who regularly complained when he received his wages, of 
 being underpaid — and they stole into the garden by night 
 with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and fell to at the 
 tree. He was lying in a turret-room on the other side of 
 the house (the Bride's Chamber had been unoccupied ever 
 since), but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels, and got 
 up. 
 
 " He came to an upper window on that side, whence he 
 could see their lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in 
 a heap which he had himself disturbed and put back, when 
 it was last turned to the air. It was found ! They had 
 that minute lighted on it. They were all bending over it. 
 One of them said, 'The skull is fractured;' and another, 
 ' See here the bones;' and another, ' See here the clothes;' 
 and then the first struck in again, and said, ' A rusty bill- 
 hook!' 
 
 " He became sensible, next day, that he was already put 
 under a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere with- 
 out being followed. Before a week was out, he was taken 
 and laid in hold. The circumstances were gradually pieced 
 together against him, with a desperate malignity, and an 
 appalling ingenuity. But, see the justice of men, and how 
 it was extended to him ! He was further accused of hav- 
 ing poisoned that girl in the Bride's Chamber. He, who 
 had carefully and expressly avoided imperilling a hair of 
 his head for her, and who had seen her die of her own in- 
 capacity ! 
 
 "There was doubt for which of the two murders he 
 should be first tried; but, the real one was chosen, and he 
 was found Guilty, and cast for Death. Bloodthirsty 
 wretches! They would have made him Guilty of any- 
 thing, so set they were upon having his life. 
 
 " His money could do nothing to save him, and he was 
 hanged. Jam He, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle 
 with my face to the wall, a hundred years ago ! " 
 
 At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to 
 rise and cry out. But, the two fiery lines extending from 
 the old man's eyes to his own, kept him down, and he 
 could not utter a sound. His sense of hearing, however, 
 was acute, and he could hear the clock strike Two. No 
 
73 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than he saw be- 
 fore him Two old men ! 
 
 Two. 
 
 The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films 
 of fire : each, exactly like the other : each, addressing him 
 at precisely one and the same instant : each, gnashing the 
 same teeth in the same head, with the same twitched nos- 
 tril above them, and the same suffused expression around 
 it. Two old men. Differing in nothing, equally distinct 
 to the sight, the copy no fainter than the original, the sec- 
 ond as real as the first. 
 
 "At what time," said the Two old men, "did you ar- 
 rive at the door below? " 
 
 "At Six." 
 
 "And there were Six old men upon the stairs! " 
 
 Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his 
 brow, or tried to do it, the Two old men proceeded in one 
 voice, and in the singular number : 
 
 " I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skele- 
 ton put together and rehung on an iron hook, when it be- 
 gan to be whispered that the Bride's Chamber was haunted. 
 It ivas haunted, and I was there. 
 
 " We were there. She and I were there. I, in the chair 
 upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself 
 towards me on the floor. But, I was the speaker no more, 
 and the one word that she said to me from midnight until 
 dawn was, ' Live ! ' 
 
 " The youth was there, likewise. In the tree outside the 
 window- Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree 
 bent and gave. He has, ever since, been there, peeping 
 in at me in my torment; revealing to me by snatches, in 
 the pale lights and slaty shadows where he comes and goes, 
 bare-headed — a bill-hook, standing edgewise in his hair. 
 
 "In the Bride's Chamber, every night from midnight 
 until dawn — one month in the year excepted, as I am going 
 to tell you — he hides in the tree, and i she comes towards 
 me on the floor; always approaching: never coming nearer; 
 always visible as if by moonlight, whether the moon shines 
 or no; always saying, from midnight until dawn, her one 
 word, ' Live ! J 
 
 " But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this 
 life — this present month of thirty days — the Bride's Cham- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 79 
 
 ber is empty and quiet. Not so my old dungeon. Not so 
 the rooms where I was restless and afraid, ten years. Both 
 are fitfully haunted then. At One in the morning, I am 
 what you saw me when the clock struck that hour — One 
 old man. At Two in the morning, I am Two old men. 
 At Three, I am Three. By Twelve at noon, I am Twelve 
 old men, One for every hundred per cent, of old gain. 
 Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power 
 of suffering and agony. From that hour until Twelve at 
 night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and fearful forebod- 
 ing, wait for the coming of the executioner. At Twelve at 
 night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside 
 Lancaster Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall ! 
 
 "When the Bride's Chamber was first haunted, it was 
 known to me that this punishment would never cease, until 
 I could make its nature, and my story, known to two liv- 
 ing men together. I waited for the coming of two living 
 men together into the Bride's Chamber, years upon years. 
 It was infused into my knowledge (of the means I am ig- 
 norant) that if two living men, with their eyes open, could 
 be in the Bride's Chamber at One in the morning, they 
 would see me sitting in my chair. 
 
 " At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually 
 troubled, brought two men to try the adventure. I was 
 scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight (I came there 
 as if the Lightning blasted me into being), when I heard 
 them ascending the stairs. Next, I saw them enter. One 
 of them was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime of life, 
 some five and forty years of age; the other, a dozen years 
 younger. They brought provisions with them in a basket, 
 and bottles. A, young woman accompanied them, with 
 wood and coals for the lighting of the fire. When she had 
 lighted it, the bold, gay, active man accompanied her along 
 the gallery outside the room, to see her safely down the 
 staircase, and came back laughing. 
 
 " He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the 
 contents of the basket on the table before the fire — little 
 recking of me, in my appointed station on the hearth, close 
 to him — and filled the glasses, and ate and drank. His 
 companion did the same, and was as cheerful and confident 
 as he : though he was the leader. When they had supped, 
 they laid pistols on the table, turned to the fire, and began 
 to smoke their pipes of foreign make. 
 
80 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. - 
 
 " They had travelled together, and had been much to- 
 gether, and had an abundance of subjects in common. In 
 the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger man 
 made a reference to the leader's being always ready for any 
 adventure; that one, or any other. He replied in these 
 words : 
 
 " ' Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else, I 
 am afraid of myself.' 
 
 "His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked 
 him, in what sense? How? 
 
 " ' Why, thus,' he returned. ' Here is a Ghost to be dis- 
 proved. Well ! I cannot answer for what my fancy might 
 do if I were alone here, or what tricks my senses might 
 play with me if they had me to themselves. But, in com- 
 pany with another man, and especially with you, Dick, I 
 would consent to outface all the Ghosts that were ever told 
 of in the universe.' 
 
 " ' I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much 
 importance to-night,' said the other. 
 
 " ' Of so much,' rejoined the leader, more seriously than 
 he had spoken yet, ' that I would, for the reason I have 
 given, on no account have undertaken to pass the night 
 here alone.' 
 
 " It was within a few minutes of One. The head of the 
 younger man had drooped when he made his last remark, 
 and it drooped lower now. 
 
 " ' Keep awake, Dick ! ' said the leader, gaily. ' The 
 small hours are the worst. ' 
 
 " He tried, but his head drooped again. 
 
 " ' Dick ! ' urged the leader. ' Keep awake ! ' 
 
 " f I can't,' he indistinctly muttered. ' I don't know 
 what strange influence is stealing over me. I can't.' 
 
 " His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, 
 and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it 
 was on the stroke of One, and I felt that the second 
 watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon 
 me that I must send him to sleep. 
 
 " ' Get up and walk, Dick ! ' cried the leader. ' Try ! ' 
 
 "It was in vain to go behind the slumberer's chair and 
 shake him. One o'clock sounded, and I was present to the 
 elder man, and he stood transfixed before me. 
 
 " To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, with- 
 out hope of benefit. To him alone, I was an awful, phan- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 81 
 
 tom making a quite useless confession. I foresee it will 
 ever be the same. The two living men together will never 
 come to release me. When I appear, the senses of one of 
 the two will be locked in sleep; he will neither see nor hear 
 me; my communication will ever be made to a solitary lis- 
 tener, and will ever be unserviceable. Woe ! Woe ! Woe ! " 
 As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their 
 hands, it shot into Mr. Goodchild' s mind that he was in 
 the terrible situation of being virtually alone with the spec- 
 tre, and that Mr. Idle's immovability was explained by his 
 having been charmed asleep at One o'clock. In the terror 
 of this sudden discovery which produced an indescribable 
 dread, he struggled so hard to get free from the four fiery 
 threads, that he snapped them, after he had pulled them 
 out to a great width. Being then out of bonds, he caught 
 up Mr. Idle from the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him. 
 
 "What are you about, Francis?" demanded Mr. Idle. 
 " My bedroom is not down here. What the deuce are you 
 carrying me at all for? I can walk with a stick now. I 
 don't want to be carried. Put me down." 
 
 Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked 
 about him wildly. 
 
 " What are you doing? Idiotically plunging at your own 
 sex, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt? " asked 
 Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant state. 
 
 " The One old man ! " cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly, 
 — "and the Two old men! " 
 
 Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than "The One old 
 woman, I think you mean," as he began hobbling his way 
 back up the staircase, with the assistance of its broad bal- 
 ustrade. 
 
 "I assure you, Tom," began Mr. Goodchild, attending at 
 his side, " that since you fell asleep " 
 
 " Come, I like that ! " said Thomas Idle, " I haven't 
 closed an eye ! " 
 
 With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the dis- 
 graceful action of going to sleep out of bed, which is the 
 lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this declaration. 
 The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled Mr. Goodchild, 
 on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate it with 
 honourable resentment. The settlement of the question of 
 The One old man and The Two old men was thus presently 
 6 
 
82 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 complicated, and soon made quite impracticable. Mr. Idle 
 said it was all Bride-cake, and fragments, newly arranged, 
 of things seen and thought about in the day. Mr. Good- 
 child said how could that be, when he .hadn't been asleep, 
 and what right could Mr. Idle have to say so, who had been 
 asleep? Mr. Idle said he had never been asleep, and never 
 did go to sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild, as a general rule, 
 was always asleep. They consequently parted for the rest 
 of the night, at their bedroom doors, a little ruffled. Mr. 
 Goodchild's last words were, that he had had, in that real 
 and tangible old sitting-room of that real and tangible old 
 Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle denied its existence?), every 
 sensation and experience, the present record of which is 
 now within a line or two of completion; and that he would 
 write it out and print it every word. Mr. Idle returned 
 that he might if he liked — and he did like, and has now 
 done it. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Two of the many passengers by a certain late Sunday 
 evening train, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Good- 
 child, yielded up their tickets at a little rotten platform 
 (converted into artificial touch- wood by smoke and ashes), 
 deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire. A mys- 
 terious bosom it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday 
 night, dashed through in the train to the music of the 
 whirling wheels, the panting of the engine, and the part- 
 singing of hundreds of third-class excursionists, whose vocal 
 efforts " bobbed arayound " from sacred to profane, from 
 hymns, to our transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and 
 Mairy Anne, in a remarkable way. There seemed to have 
 been some large vocal gathering near to every lonely sta- 
 tion on the line. No town was visible, no village was 
 visible, no light was visible; but, a multitude got out sing- 
 ing, and a multitude got in singing, and the second multi- 
 tude took up the hymns, and adopted our transatlantic sis- 
 ters, and sang of their own egregious wickedness, and of 
 their bobbing arayound, and -of how the ship it was ready 
 and the wind it was fair, and they were bayound for the 
 sea, Mairy Anne, until they in their turn became a getting- 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 83 
 
 out multitude, and were replaced by another getting-in 
 multitude, who did the same. And at every station, the 
 getting-in multitude, with an artistic reference to the com- 
 pleteness of their chorus, incessantly cried, as with one 
 voice while scuffling into the carriages, " We mm aa' gang 
 toogither ! " 
 
 The singing and the multitudes had trailed off as the lonely 
 places were left and the great towns were neared, and the 
 way had lain as silently as a train's way ever can, over the 
 vague black streets of the great gulfs of towns, and among 
 their branchless woods of vague black chimneys. These 
 towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as though they had one 
 and all been on fire and were just put out — a dreary and 
 quenched panorama, many miles long. 
 
 Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds; of which en- 
 terprising and important commercial centre it may be ob- 
 served with delicacy, that you must either like it very 
 much or not at all. Next day, the first of the Eace-Week, 
 they took train to Doncaster. 
 
 And instantly the character, both of travellers and of 
 luggage, entirely changed, and no other business than race- 
 business any longer existed on the face of the earth. The 
 talk was all of horses and "John Scott." Guards whis- 
 pered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses and 
 John Scott. Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats 
 fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large bones of 
 their legs developed under tight trousers, so that they 
 should look as much as possible like horses' legs, paced up 
 and down by twos at junction-stations, speaking low and 
 moodily of horses and John Scott. The young clergyman 
 in the black strait-waistcoat, who occupied the middle seat 
 of the carriage, expounded in his peculiar pulpit-accent to 
 the young and lovely Reverend Mrs. Crinoline, who occu- 
 pied the opposite middle-seat, a few passages of rumour 
 relative to " Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth- 
 cott." A bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch 
 cheese, in a fustian stable-suit, attending on a horse-box 
 and going about the platforms with a halter hanging round 
 his neck like a Calais burgher of the ancient period much 
 degenerated, was courted by the best society, by reason of 
 what he had to hint, when not engaged in eating straw, 
 concerning "t'harses and Joon Scott." The engine-driver 
 himself, as he applied one eye to his large stationary 
 
84 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 double-eye-glass on the engine, seemed to keep the other 
 open, sideways, upon horses and John Scott. 
 
 Breaks and barriers at Doncaster station to keep the 
 crowd off; temporary wooden avenues of ingress and egress, 
 to help the crowd on. Forty extra porters sent down for 
 this present blessed Race- Week, and all of them making 
 up their betting-books in the lamp-room or somewhere else, 
 and none of them to come and touch the luggage. Travel- 
 lers disgorged into an open space, a howling wilderness of 
 idle men. All work but race- work at a stand-still; all 
 men at a stand-still. " Ey my word ! Deant ask noon o' 
 us to help wi' t' luggage. Bock your opinion loike a mon. 
 Coom! Dang it, coom, t'harses and Joon Scott! " In the 
 midst of the idle men, all the fly horses and omnibus horses 
 of Doncaster and parts adjacent, rampant, rearing, back- 
 ing, plunging, shying — apparently the result of their hear- 
 ing of nothing but their own order and John Scott. 
 
 Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race- 
 Week. Poses Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up 
 the Stable- Yard at seven and nine each evening, for the 
 Race- Week. Grand Alliance Circus in the held beyond the 
 bridge, for the Race- Week. Grand Exhibition of Aztec 
 Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horrified 
 cheap, for the Race-Week. Lodgings, grand and not grand, 
 but all at grand prices, ranging from ten pounds to twenty, 
 for the Grand Race- Week ! 
 
 Rendered giddy enough by these things, Messieurs Idle 
 and Goodchild repaired to the quarters they had secured 
 beforehand, and Mr. Goodchild looked down from the win- 
 dow into the surging street. 
 
 "By heaven, Tom!" cried he, after contemplating it, "I 
 am in the Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all mad 
 people under the charge of a body of designing keepers ! " 
 
 All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild never di- 
 vested himself of this idea. Every day he looked out of 
 window, with something of the dread of Lemuel Gulliver 
 looking down at men after he returned home from the 
 horse-country; and every day he saw the Lunatics, horse- 
 mad, betting-mad, drunken-mad, vice-mad, and the de- 
 signing Keepers always after them. The idea pervaded, 
 like the second colour in shot-silk, the whole of Mr. Good- 
 child's impressions. They were much as follows: 
 
 Monday, mid-day. Races not to begin until to-morrow, 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 85 
 
 but all the mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of 
 the one main street of pretty and pleasant Doncaster, 
 crowding the road, particularly crowding the outside of the 
 Betting Rooms, whooping and shouting loudly after all 
 passing vehicles. Frightened lunatic horses occasionally 
 running away, with infinite clatter. All degrees of men, 
 from peers to paupers, betting incessantly. Keepers very 
 watchful, and taking all good chances. An awful family 
 likeness among the Keepers, to Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thur- 
 tell. With some knowledge of expression and some ac- 
 quaintance with heads (thus writes Mr. Goodchild), I never 
 have seen anywhere, so many repetitions of one class of 
 countenance and one character of head (both evil) as in 
 this street at this time. Cunning, covetousness, secrecy, 
 cold calculation, hard callousness, and dire insensibility, are 
 the uniform Keeper characteristics. Mr. Palmer passes 
 me five times in five minutes, and, as I go down the 
 street, the back of Mr. Thurtell's skull is always going on 
 before me. 
 
 Monday evening. Town lighted up; more Lunatics out 
 than ever ; a complete choke and stoppage of the thorough- 
 fare outside the Betting Rooms. Keepers, having dined, 
 pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply snap at the mon- 
 eyed Lunatics. Some Keepers flushed with drink, and some 
 not, but all close and calculating. A vague echoing roar 
 of "t'harses" and "t'races" always rising in the air, until 
 midnight, at about which period it dies away in occasional 
 drunken songs and straggling yells. But, all night, some 
 unmannerly drinking-house in the neighbourhood opens 
 its mouth at intervals and spits out a man too drunk to be 
 retained: who thereupon makes what uproarious protest 
 may be left in him, and either falls asleep where he tum- 
 bles, or is carried off in custody. 
 
 Tuesday morning, at daybreak. A sudden rising, as it 
 were out of the earth, of all the obscene creatures, who sell 
 "correct cards of the races." They may have been coiled 
 in corners, or sleeping on door-steps, and, having all passed 
 the night under the same set of circumstances, may all 
 want to circulate their blood at the same time; but, how- 
 ever that may be, they spring into existence all at once and 
 together, as though a new Cadmus had sown a race-horse's 
 teeth. There is nobody up, to buy the cards; but, the 
 cards are madly cried. There is no patronage to quarrel 
 
86 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 for; but, they madly quarrel and fight. Conspicuous 
 among these hyaenas, as breakfast-time discloses, is a fear- 
 ful creature in the general semblance of a man : shaken off 
 his next-to-no legs by drink and devilry, bare-headed and 
 bare-footed, with a great shock of hair like a horrible 
 broom, and nothing on him but a ragged pair of trousers 
 and a pink glazed-calico coat — made on him — so very tight 
 that it is as evident that he could never take it off, as that 
 he never does. This hideous apparition, inconceivably 
 drunk, has a terrible power of making a gong-like imitation 
 of the braying of an ass: which feat requires that he 
 should lay his right jaw in his begrimed right paw, double 
 himself up, and shake his bray out of himself, with much 
 staggering on his next-to-no legs, and much twirling of his 
 horrible broom, as if it were a mop. From the present 
 minute, when he comes in sight holding up his cards to the 
 windows, and hoarsely proposing purchase to My Lord, 
 Your Excellency, Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your 
 Honourable Worship — from the present minute until the 
 Grand Race- Week is finished, at all hours of the morning, 
 evening, day, and night, shall the town reverberate, at 
 capricious intervals, to the brays of this frightful animal 
 the Gong-Donkey. 
 
 Kb very great racing to-day, so no very great amount of 
 vehicles: though there is a good sprinkling, too: from 
 farmers' carts and gigs, to carriages with post-horses and 
 to fours-in-hand, mostly coming by the road from York, 
 and passing on straight through the main street to the 
 Course. A walk in the wrong direction may be a better 
 thing for Mr. Goodchild to-day than the Course, so he 
 walks in the wrong direction. Everybody gone to the races. 
 Only children in the street. Grand Alliance Circus de- 
 serted; not one Star- Rider left; omnibus which forms the 
 Pay-Place, having on separate panels Pay here for the 
 Boxes, Pay here for the Pit, Pay here for the Gallery, 
 hove down in a corner and locked up ; nobody near the tent 
 but the man on his knees on the grass, who is making the 
 paper balloons for the Star young gentlemen to jump 
 through to-night. A pleasant road, pleasantly wooded. 
 No labourers working in the fields; all gone "t'races." 
 The few late wenders of their way "t'races," who are yet 
 left driving on the road, stare in amazement at the recluse 
 who is not going "t'races." Roadside innkeeper has gone 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 87 
 
 " t'races." Turnpike-man has gone " t'races." His thrifty 
 wife, washing clothes at the toll-house door, is going 
 " t'races" to-morrow. Perhaps there may be no one left to 
 take the toll to-morrow; who knows? Though assuredly 
 that would be neither turnpike-like, nor Yorkshire-like. 
 The very wind and dust seem to be hurrying "t'races," as 
 they briskly pass the only wayfarer on the road. In the 
 distance, the Railway Engine, waiting at the town-end, 
 shrieks despairingly. Nothing but the difficulty of getting 
 off the Line, restrains that Engine from going " t'races," 
 too, it is very clear. 
 
 At night, more Lunatics out than last night — and more 
 Keepers. The latter very active at the .Betting Rooms, the 
 street in front of which is now impassable. Mr. Palmer as 
 before. Mr. Thurtell as before. Roar and uproar as be- 
 fore. Gradual subsidence as before. Unmannerly drink- 
 ing-house expectorates as before. Drunken negro-melo- 
 dists, Gong-donkey, and correct cards, in the night. 
 
 On Wednesday morning, the morning of the great St. 
 Leger, it becomes apparent that there has been a great in- 
 flux since yesterday, both of Lunatics and Keepers. The 
 families of the tradesmen over the way are no longer within 
 human ken; their places know them no more; ten, fifteen, 
 and twenty guinea-lodgers fill them. At the pastry-cook's 
 second-floor window, a Keeper is brushing Mr. Thurtell's 
 hair — thinking it his own. In the wax-chandler's attic, 
 another Keeper is putting on Mr. Palmer's braces. In the 
 gunsmith's nursery, a Lunatic is shaving himself. In the 
 serious stationer's best sitting-room, three Lunatics are 
 taking a combination-breakfast, praising the (cook's) devil, 
 and drinking neat brandy in an atmosphere of last mid- 
 night's cigars. No family sanctuary is free from our An- 
 gelic messengers — we put up at the Angel — who in the 
 guise of extra waiters for the grand Race- Week, rattle in 
 and out of the most secret chambers of everybody's house, 
 with dishes and tin covers, decanters, soda-water bottles, 
 and glasses. An hoar later. Down the street and up the 
 street, as far as eyes can see and a good deal farther, there 
 is a dense crowd; outside the Betting Rooms it is like a 
 great struggle at a theatre door — in the days of theatres; 
 or at the vestibule of the Spurgeon temple — in the days of 
 Spurgeon. An hour later. Fusing into this crowd, and 
 somehow getting through it, are all kinds of conveyances, 
 
88 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 and all kinds of foot-passengers; carts, with brick- makers 
 and brick-makeresses jolting up and down on planks; 
 drags, with the needful grooms behind, sitting cross-armed 
 in the needful manner, and slanting themselves backward 
 from the soles of their boots at the needful angle; post- 
 boys, in the shining hats and smart jackets of the olden 
 time, when stokers were not; beautiful Yorkshire horses, 
 gallantly driven by their own breeders and masters. 
 Under every pole, and every shaft, and every horse, and 
 every wheel as it would seem, the Gong-donkey — metalli- 
 cally braying, when not struggling for life, or whipped out 
 of the way. 
 
 By one o'clock, all this stir has gone out of the streets, 
 and there is no one left in them but Francis Goodchild. 
 Francis Goodchild will not be left in them long; for, he 
 too is on his way "f races." 
 
 A most beautiful sight, Francis Goodchild finds " t'races " 
 to be, when he has left fair Doncaster behind him, and 
 comes out on the free course, with its agreeable prospect, 
 its quaint Red House oddly changing and turning as 
 Francis turns, its green grass, and fresh heath. A free 
 course and an easy one, where Francis can roll smoothly 
 where he will, and can choose between the start, or the 
 coming-in, or the turn behind the brow of the hill, or any 
 out-of-the-way point where he lists to see the throbbing 
 horses straining every nerve, and making the sympathetic 
 earth throb as they come by. Francis much delights to be, 
 not in the Grand Stand, but where he can see it, rising 
 against the sky with its vast tiers of little white dots of 
 faces, and its last high rows and corners of people, looking 
 like pins stuck into an enormous pin-cushion — not quite so 
 symmetrically as his orderly eye could wish, when people 
 chauge or go away. When the race is nearly run out, it is 
 as good as the race to him to see the flutter among the pins, 
 and the change in them from dark to light, as hats are 
 taken off and waved. Not less full of interest, the loud 
 anticipation of the winner's name, the swelling, and the 
 final, roar; then, the quick dropping of all the pins out of 
 their places, the revelation of the shape of the bare pin- 
 cushion, and the closing-in of the whole host of Lunatics 
 and Keepers, in the rear of the three horses with bright- 
 coloured riders, who have not yet quite subdued their gal- 
 lop though the contest is over. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 89 
 
 Mr. Goodehild would appear to have been by no means 
 free from lunacy himself at "t'races," though not of the 
 prevalent kind. He is suspected by Mr. Idle to have fallen 
 into a dreadful state concerning a pair of little lilac gloves 
 and a little bonnet that he saw there. Mr. Idle asserts, 
 that he did afterwards repeat at the Angel, with an ap- 
 pearance of being lunatically seized, some rhapsody to the 
 following effect: "0 little lilac gloves! And O winning 
 little bonnet, making in conjunction with her golden hair 
 quite a Glory in the sunlight round the pretty head, why 
 anything in the world but you and me ! Why may not this 
 day's running — of horses, to all the rest : of precious sands 
 of life to me — be prolonged through an everlasting au- 
 tumn-sunshine, without a sunset! Slave of the Lamp, or 
 Ring, strike me yonder gallant equestrian Clerk of the 
 Course, in the scarlet coat, motionless on the green grass 
 for ages! Friendly Devil on Two Sticks, for ten times ten 
 thousand years, keep Blink-Bonny jibbing at the post, and 
 let us have no start! Arab drums, powerful of old to sum- 
 mon Genii in the desert, sound of yourselves and raise a 
 troop for me in the desert of my heart, which shall so en- 
 chant this dusty barouche (with a conspicuous excise-plate, 
 resembling the Collector's door-plate at a turnpike), that I, 
 within it, loving the little lilac gloves, the winning little 
 bonnet, and the dear unknown- wearer with the golden hair, 
 may wait by her side for ever, to see a Great St. Leger that 
 shall never be run ! " 
 
 Thursday morning. After a tremendous night of crowd- 
 ing, shouting, drinking-house expectoration, Gong-donkey, 
 and correct cards. Symptoms of yesterday's gains in the 
 way of drink, and of yesterday's losses in the way of money, 
 abundant. Money-losses very great. As usual, nobody 
 seems to have won; but, large losses and many losers are 
 unquestionable facts. Both Lunatics and Keepers, in gen- 
 eral very low. Several of both kinds look in at the chem- 
 ist's while Mr. Goodehild is making a purchase there, to 
 be "picked up." One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed, faded, 
 and disordered, enters hurriedly and cries savagely, 
 "Hond us a gloss of sal volatile in wather, or soom 
 dommed thing o' thot sart ! " Faces at the Betting Rooms 
 very long, and a tendency to bite nails observable. Keep- 
 ers likewise given this morning to standing about solitary, 
 yrith their hands in their pockets, looking down at their 
 
90 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 boots as they fit them into cracks of the pavement, and 
 then looking up whistling and walking away. Grand Al- 
 liance Circus out, in procession; buxom lady-member of 
 Grand Alliance, in crimson riding-habit, fresher to look at, 
 even in her paint under the day sky, than the cheeks of 
 Lunatics or Keepers. Spanish Cavalier appears to have 
 lost yesterday, and jingles his bossed bridle with disgust, 
 as if he were paying. Eeaction also apparent at the Guild- 
 hall opposite, whence certain pickpockets come out hand- 
 cuffed together, with that peculiar walk which is never 
 seen under any other circumstances — a walk expressive of 
 going to jail, game, but still of jail being in bad taste and 
 arbitrary, and how would you, like it if it was you instead 
 of me, as it ought to be ! Mid-day. Town filled as yes- 
 terday, but not so full ; and emptied as yesterday, but not 
 so empty. In the evening, Angel ordinary where every 
 Lunatic and Keeper has his modest daily meal of turtle, 
 venison, and wine, not so crowded as yesterday, and not 
 so noisy. At night, the theatre. More abstracted faces in 
 it, than one ever sees at public assemblies; such faces 
 wearing an expression which strongly reminds Mr. Good- 
 child of the boys at school who were "going up next," with 
 their arithmetic or mathematics. These boys are, no 
 doubt, going up to-morrow with their sums and figures. 
 Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell in the boxes 0. P. Mr. 
 Thurtell and Mr. Palmer in the boxes P. S. The firm of 
 Thurtell, Palmer, and Thurtell, in the boxes Centre. A 
 most odious tendency observable in these distinguished 
 gentlemen to put vile constructions on sufficiently innocent 
 phrases in the play, and then to applaud them in a Satyr- 
 like manner. Behind Mr. Good child, with a party of other 
 Lunatics and one Keeper, the express incarnation of the 
 thing called a "gent." A gentleman born; a gent manu- 
 factured. A something with a scarf round its neck, and a 
 slipshod speech issuing from behind the scarf; more de- 
 praved, more foolish, more ignorant, more unable to believe 
 in any noble or good thing of any kind, than the stupidest 
 Bosjesman. The thing is but a boy in years, and is addled 
 with drink. To do its company justice, even its company 
 is ashamed of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on the 
 representation, and inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning 
 ardour to fling it into the pit. Its remarks are so horrible, 
 that Mr. Goodchild, for the moment, even doubts whether 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 91 
 
 that is a wholesome Art, which sets women apart on a 
 high floor before such a thing as this, though as good as its 
 own sisters, or its own mother — whom Heaven forgive for 
 bringing it into the world ! But, the consideration that a 
 low nature must make a low world of its own to live in, 
 whatever the real materials, or it could no more exist than 
 any of us could without the sense of touch, brings Mr. 
 Goodchild to reason: the rather, because the thing soon 
 drops its downy chin upon its scarf, and slobbers itself 
 asleep. 
 
 Friday morning. Early fights. Gong-donkey, and cor- 
 rect cards. Again, a great set towards the races, though 
 not so great a set as on Wednesday. Much packing going 
 on too, up-stairs at the gunsmith's, the wax-chandler's, and 
 the serious stationer's; for there will be a heavy drift of 
 Lunatics and Keepers to London by the afternoon train. 
 The course as pretty as ever; the great pin-cushion as like 
 a pin-cushion, but not nearly so full of pins; whole rows 
 of pins wanting. On the great event of the day, both Lu- 
 natics and Keepers become inspired with rage; and there is 
 a violent scuffling, and a rushing at the losing jockey, and 
 an emergence of the said jockey from a swaying and mena- 
 cing crowd, protected by friends, and looking the worse for 
 wear; which is a rough proceeding, though animating to 
 see from a pleasant distance. After the great event, rills 
 begin to flow from the pin-cushion towards the railroad; 
 the rills swell into rivers; the rivers soon unite into a lake. 
 The lake floats Mr. Goodchild into Doncaster, past the 
 Itinerant personage in black, by the way-side telling him 
 from the vantage ground of a legibly printed placard on a 
 pole that for all these things the Lord will bring him to 
 judgment. No turtle and venison ordinary this evening; 
 that is all over. No Betting at the rooms; nothing there 
 but the plants in pots, which have, all the week, been 
 stood about the entry to give it an innocent appearance, 
 and which have sorely sickened by this time. 
 
 Saturday. Mr. Idle wishes to know at breakfast, what 
 were those dreadful groanings in his bedroom doorway in 
 the night? Mr. Goodchild answers, Nightmare. Mr. 
 Idle repels the calumny, and calls the waiter. The Angel 
 is very sorry — had intended to explain; but you see, gen- 
 tlemen, there was a gentleman dined down-stairs with two 
 more, and he had lost a deal of money, and he would drink 
 
92 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 a deal of wine, and in the night he "took the horrors," and 
 got up; and as his friends could do nothing with him he 
 laid. himself down and groaned at Mr. Idle's door. "And 
 he did groan there," Mr. Idle says; "and you will please 
 to imagine me inside, 'taking the horrors' too! " 
 
 So far, the picture of Doncaster on the occasion of its 
 great sporting anniversary, offers probably a general repre- 
 sentation of the social condition of the town, in the past as 
 well as in the present time. The sole local phenomenon of 
 the current year, which may be considered as entirely un- 
 precedented in its way, and which certainly claims, on that 
 account, some slight share of notice, consists, in the actual 
 existence of one remarkable individual, who is sojourning 
 in Doncaster, and who, neither directly nor indirectly, has 
 anything at all to do, in any capacity whatever, with the 
 racing amusements of the week. Ranging throughout the 
 entire crowd that fills the town, and including the inhab- 
 itants as well as the visitors, nobody is to be found alto- 
 gether disconnected with the business of the day, except- 
 ing this one unparalleled man. He does not bet on the 
 races, like the sporting men. He does not assist the races, 
 like the jockeys, starters, judges, and grooms. He does 
 not look on at the races, like Mr. Goodchild and his fellow- 
 spectators. He does not profit by the races, like the hotel- 
 keepers and the tradespeople. He does not minister to the 
 necessities of the races, like the booth-keepers, the pos- 
 tilions, the waiters, and the hawkers of Lists. He does 
 not assist the attractions of the races, like the actors at the 
 theatre, the riders at the circus, or the posturers at the 
 Poses Plastiques. Absolutely and literally, he is the only 
 individual in Doncaster who stands by the brink of the 
 full-flowing race-stream, and is not swept away by it in 
 common with all the rest of his species. Who is this mod- 
 ern hermit, this recluse of the St. Leger-Week, this in- 
 scrutably ungregarious being, who lives apart from the 
 amusements and activities of his fellow-creatures?. Surely, 
 there is little difficulty in guessing that clearest and easiest 
 of all riddles. Who could he be, but Mr. Thomas Idle? 
 
 Thomas had suffered himself to be taken to Doncaster, 
 just as he would have suffered himself to be taken to any 
 other place in the habitable globe which would guarantee 
 him the temporary possession of a comfortable sofa to rest 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 93 
 
 his ankle on. Once established at the hotel, with his leg 
 on one cushion and his back against another, he formally 
 declined taking the slightest interest in any circumstance 
 whatever connected with the races, or with the people who 
 were assembled to see them. Francis Goodchild, anxious 
 that the hours should pass by his crippled travelling-com- 
 panion as lightly as possible, suggested that his sofa should 
 be moved to the window, and that he should amuse him- 
 self by looking out at the moving panorama of humanity, 
 which the view from it of the principal street presented. 
 Thomas, however, steadily declined profiting by the sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 "The farther I am from the window," he said, "the bet- 
 ter, brother Francis, I shall be pleased. I have nothing in 
 common with the one prevalent idea of all those people 
 who are passing in the street. Why should I care to look 
 at them?" 
 
 " I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent 
 idea of a great many of them, either," answered Good- 
 child, thinking of the sporting gentlemen whom he had 
 met in the course of his wanderings about Doncaster. 
 "But, surely, among all the people who are walking by 
 the house, at this very moment, you may find " 
 
 "Not one living creature," interposed Thomas, "who is 
 not, in one way or another, interested in horses, and who 
 is not, in a greater or less degree, an admirer of them. 
 Now, I hold opinions in reference to these particular mem- 
 bers of the quadruped creation, which may lay claim (as 
 I believe) to the disastrous distinction of being unpar- 
 taken by any other human being, civilised or savage, over 
 the whole surface of the earth. Taking the horse as an 
 animal in the abstract, Francis, I cordially despise him 
 from every point of view." 
 
 "Thomas," said Goodchild, "confinement to the house 
 has begun to affect your biliary secretions. I shall go to 
 the chemist's and get you some physic." 
 
 "I object," continued Thomas, quietly possessing him- 
 self of his friend's hat, which stood on a table near him, 
 — " I object, first, to the personal appearance of the horse. 
 I protest against the conventional idea of beauty, as at- 
 tached to that animal. 1 think his nose too long, his fore- 
 head too low, and his legs (except in the case of the cart- 
 horse) ridiculously thin by comparison with the size of his 
 
94 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE.APPRENTICES. 
 
 body. Again, considering how big an animal he is, I ob- 
 ject to the contemptible delicacy of his constitution. Is he 
 not the sickliest creature in creation? Does any child catch 
 cold as easily as a horse? Does he not sprain his fetlock, 
 for all his appearance of superior strength, as easily as I 
 sprained my ankle ! Furthermore, to take him from an- 
 other point of view, what a helpless wretch he is ! ISTo fine 
 lady requires more constant waiting- on than a horse. 
 Other animals can make their own toilette : he must have 
 a groom. You will tell me that this is because we want to 
 make his coat artificially glossy. Glossy! Come home 
 with me, and see my cat, — my clever cat, who can groom 
 herself ! Look at your own dog ! see how the intelligent 
 creature curry-combs himself with his own honest teeth ! 
 Then, again, what a fool the horse is, what a poor, nervous 
 fool ! He will start at a piece of white paper in the road 
 as if it was a lion. His one idea, when he hears a noise 
 that he is not accustomed to, is to run away from it. What 
 do you say to those two common instances of the sense and 
 courage of this absurdly overpraised animal? I might 
 multiply them to two hundred, if I chose to exert my mind 
 and waste my breath, which I never do. I prefer coming 
 at once to my last charge against the horse, which is the 
 most serious of all, because it affects his moral character. 
 I accuse him boldly, in his capacity of servant to man, of 
 slyness and treachery. I brand him publicly, no matter 
 how mild he may look about the eyes, or how sleek he may 
 be about the coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever he 
 can get the chance, of the confidence reposed in him. 
 What do you mean by laughing and shaking your head at 
 me?" 
 
 " Oh, Thomas, Thomas ! " said Goodchild. " You had 
 better give me my hat; you had better let me get you that 
 physic." 
 
 " I will let you get anything you like, including a com- 
 posing draught for yourself," said Thomas, irritably allud- 
 ing to his fellow-apprentice's inexhaustible activity, "if 
 you will only sit quiet for five minutes longer, and hear 
 me out. I say again the horse is a betrayer of the confi- 
 dence reposed in him; and that opinion, let me add, is 
 drawn from my own personal experience, and is not based 
 on any fanciful theory whatever. You shall have two in- 
 stances, two overwhelming instances. Let me start the 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 95 
 
 first of these by asking, what is the distinguishing quality 
 which the Shetland Pony has arrogated to himself, and is 
 still perpetually trumpeting through the world by means 
 of popular report and books on Natural History? I see 
 the answer in your face : it is the quality of being Sure- 
 Footed. He professes to have other virtues, such as hard- 
 iness and strength, whichyou may discover on trial; but the 
 one thing which he insists on your believing, when you get 
 on his back, is that he may be safely depended on not to 
 tumble down with you. Very good. Some years ago, I 
 was in Shetland with a party of friends. They insisted on 
 taking me with them to the top of a precipice that over- 
 hung the sea. It was a great distance off, but they all de- 
 termined to walk to it except me. I was wiser then than 
 I was with you at Carrock, and I determined to be carried 
 to the precipice. There was no carriage road in the island, 
 and nobody offered (in consequence, as I suppose, of the 
 imperfectly-civilised state of the country) to bring me a 
 sedan-chair, which is naturally what I should have liked 
 best. A Shetland pony was produced instead. I remem- 
 bered my Natural History, I recalled popular report, and 
 I got on the little beast's back, as any other man would 
 have done in my position, placing implicit confidence in the 
 sureness of his feet. And how did he repay that confi- 
 dence? Brother Francis, carry your mind on from morning 
 to noon. Picture to yourself a howling wilderness of grass 
 and bog, bounded by low stony hills. Pick out one particu- 
 lar spot in that imaginary scene, and sketch me in it, with 
 outstretched arms, curved back, and heels in the air, 
 plunging headforemost into a black patch of water and 
 mud. Place just behind me the legs, the body, and the 
 head of a sure-footed Shetland pony, all stretched fiat on 
 the ground, and you will have produced an accurate repre- . 
 sentation of a very lamentable fact. And the moral device, 
 Francis, of this picture will be to testify that when gen- 
 tlemen put confidence in the legs of Shetland ponies, they 
 will find to their cost that they are leaning on nothing but 
 broken reeds. There is my first instance — and what have 
 you got to say to that? " 
 
 " Nothing, but that I want my hat," answered Goodchild, 
 starting up and walking restlessly about the room. 
 
 "You shall have it in a minute," rejoined Thomas. 
 " My second instance" — (Goodchild groaned, and sat down 
 
96 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 again then) — "My second instance is more appropriate to 
 the present time and place, for it refers to a race-horse. 
 Two years ago an excellent friend of mine, who was desir- 
 ous of prevailing on me to take regular exercise, and who 
 was well enough acquainted with the weakness of my legs 
 to expect no very active compliance with his wishes on 
 their part, offered to make me a present of one of his 
 horses. Hearing that the animal in question had started 
 in life on the turf, I declined accepting the gift with many 
 thanks; adding, by way of explanation, that I looked on a 
 race-horse as a kind of embodied hurricane, upon which no 
 sane man of my character and habits could be expected to 
 seat himself. My friend replied that, however appropriate 
 my metaphor might be as applied to race-horses in general, 
 it was singularly unsuitable as applied to the particular 
 horse which he proposed to give me. From a foal upwards 
 this remarkable animal had been the idlest and most slug- 
 gish of his race. Whatever capacities for speed he might 
 possess he had kept so strictly to himself, that no amount 
 of training had ever brought them out. He had been found 
 hopelessly slow as a racer, and hopelessly lazy as a hunter, 
 and was fit for nothing but a quiet, easy life of it with an 
 old gentleman or an invalid. When I heard this account 
 of the horse, I don't mind confessing that my heart warmed 
 to him. Visions of Thomas Idle ambling serenely on the 
 back of a steed as lazy as himself, presenting to a restless 
 world the soothing and composite spectacle of a kind of 
 sluggardly Centaur, too peaceable in his habits to alarm 
 anybody, swam attractively before my eyes. I went to 
 look at the horse in the stable. Nice fellow ! he was fast 
 asleep with a kitten on his back. I saw him taken out for 
 an airing by the groom. If he had had trousers on his legs 
 .1 should not have known them from my own, so deliber- 
 ately were they lifted up, so gently were they put down, so 
 slowly did they get over the ground. From that moment I 
 gratefully accepted my friend's offer. I went home; the 
 horse followed me — by a slow train. Oh, Francis, how de- 
 voutly I believed in that horse! how carefully I looked 
 after all his little comforts ! I had never gone the length 
 of hiring a man-servant to wait on myself; but I went to 
 the expense of hiring one to wait upon him. If I thought 
 a little of myself when I bought the softest saddle that 
 could be had for money, I thought also of my horse. 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OP TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 97 
 
 When the man at the shop afterwards offered me spurs 
 and a whip, I turned from him with horror. When I 
 sallied out for my first ride, I went purposely unarmed 
 with the means of hurrying my steed. He proceeded at 
 his own pace every step of the way; and when he stopped, 
 at last, and blew out both his sides with a heavy sigh, and 
 turned his sleepy head and looked behind him, I took him 
 home again, as I might take home an artless child who said 
 to me, 'If you please, sir, I am tired.' For a week this 
 complete harmony between me and my horse lasted undis- 
 turbed. At the end of that time, when he had made quite 
 sure of my friendly confidence in his laziness, when he had 
 thoroughly acquainted himself with all the little weak- 
 nesses of my seat (and their name is Legion), the smoul- 
 dering treachery and ingratitude of the equine nature 
 blazed out in an instant. Without the slightest provoca- 
 tion from me, with nothing passing him at the time but a 
 pony-chaise driven by an old lady, he started in one in- 
 stant from a state of sluggish depression to a state of fran- 
 tic high spirits. He kicked, he plunged, he shied, he 
 pranced, he capered fearfully. I sat on him as long as I 
 could, and when I could sit no longer, I fell off. No, 
 Francis ! this is not a circumstance to be laughed at, but to 
 be wept over. What would be said of a Man who had re- 
 quited my kindness in that way? Range over all the rest 
 of the animal creation, and where will you find me an in- 
 stance of treachery so black as this? The cow that kicks 
 down the milking-pail may have some reason for it; she 
 may think herself taxed too heavily to contribute to the 
 dilution of human tea and the greasing of human bread. 
 The tiger who springs out on me unawares has the excuse 
 of being hungry at the time, to say nothing of the further 
 justification of being a total stranger to me. The very flea 
 who surprises me in my sleep may defend his act of assas' 
 sination on the ground that I, in my turn, am always ready 
 to murder him when I am awake. I defy the whole body 
 of Natural Historians to move me, logically, off the ground 
 that I have taken in regard to the horse. Receive back 
 your hat, brother Francis, and go to the chemist's, if you 
 please; for I have now done. Ask me to take anything 
 you like, except an interest in the Doncaster races. Ask 
 me to look at anything you like, except an assemblage of 
 people all animated by feelings of a friendly and admiring 
 7 
 
98 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 nature towards the horse. You are a remarkably well-in- 
 formed man, and you have heard of hermits. Look upon 
 me as a member of that ancient fraternity, and you will 
 sensibly add to the many obligations which Thomas Idle 
 is proud to owe to Francis Goodchild. " 
 
 Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking, dispu- 
 tatious Thomas waved one hand languidly, laid his head 
 back on the sofa-pillow, and calmly closed his eyes. 
 
 At a later period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travelling 
 companion boldly from the impregnable fortress of common 
 sense. But Thomas, though tamed in body by drastic dis- 
 cipline, was still as mentally unapproachable as ever on 
 the subject of his favourite delusion. 
 
 The view from the window after Saturday's breakfast is 
 altogether changed. The tradesmen's families have all 
 come back again. The serious stationer's young woman of 
 all work is shaking a duster out of the window of the com- 
 bination breakfast-room; a child is playing with a doll, 
 where Mr. Thurtell's hair was brushed; a sanitary. scrub- 
 bing is in progress on the spot where Mr. Palmer's braces 
 were put on. No signs of the Eaces are in the streets, but 
 the tramps and the tumble-down carts and trucks laden 
 with drinking-forms and tables and remnants of booths, 
 that are making their way out of the town as fast as they 
 can. The Angel, which has been cleared for action all the 
 week, already begins restoring every neat and comfortable 
 article of furniture to its own neat and comfortable place. 
 The Angel's daughters (pleasanter angels Mr. Idle and 
 Mr. Goodchild never saw, nor more quietly expert in their 
 business, nor more superior to the common vice of being 
 above it), have a little time to rest, and to air their cheer- 
 ful faces among the flowers in the yard. It is market-day. 
 The market looks unusually natural, comfortable, and 
 wholesome; the market-people too. The town seems quite 
 restored, when, hark ! a metallic bray — The Gong-donkey ! 
 
 The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest, 
 but is here, under the window. How much more incon- 
 ceivably drunk now, how much more begrimed of paw, how 
 much more tight of calico hide, how much more stained 
 and daubed and dirty and dunghilly, from his horrible 
 broom to his tender toes, who shall say ! He cannot even 
 shake the bray out of himself now, without laying his 
 
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 99 
 
 cheek so near to the mud of the street, that he pitches over 
 after delivering it. Now, prone in the mud, and now back- 
 ing himself up against shop- windows, the owners of which 
 come out in terror to remove him; now, in the drinking- 
 shop, and now in the tobacconist's, where he goes to buy 
 tobacco, and makes his way into the parlour, and where he 
 gets a cigar, which in half-a-minute he forgets to smoke; 
 now dancing, now dozing, now cursing, and now compli- 
 menting My Lord, the Colonel, the Noble Captain, and 
 Your Honourable Worship, the Gong-donkey kicks up his 
 heels, occasionally braying, until suddenly, he beholds 
 the dearest friend he has in the world coming down the 
 street. 
 
 The dearest friend the Gong-donkey has in the world, is 
 a sort of Jackal, in a dull mangy black hide, of such small 
 pieces that it looks as if it were made of blacking bottles 
 turned inside out and cobbled together. The dearest friend 
 in the world (inconceivably drunk too) advances at the 
 Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh, in a series of 
 humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he 
 comes. The Gong-donkey regarding him with attention 
 and with the warmest affection, suddenly perceives that 
 he is the greatest enemy he has in the world, and hits him 
 hard in the countenance. The astonished Jackal closes 
 with the Donkey, and they roll over and over in the mud, 
 pummelling one another. A Police Inspector, supernatu- 
 rally endowed with patience, who has long been looking on 
 from the Guildhall-steps, says, to a myrmidon, "Lock 'em 
 up ! Bring 'em in ! " 
 
 Appropriate finish to the Grand Race- Week. The Gong- 
 donkey, captive and last trace of it, conveyed into limbo, 
 where they cannot do better than keep him until next 
 Race-Week. The Jackal is wanted too, and is much 
 looked for, over the way and up and down. But, having 
 had the good- fortune to be undermost at the time of the 
 capture, he has vanished into air. 
 
 On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Goodchild walks out and 
 looks at the Course. It is quite deserted; heaps of broken 
 crockery and bottles are raised to its memory; and correct 
 cards and other fragments of paper are blowing about it, 
 as the regulation little paper-books, carried by the French 
 soldiers in their breasts, were seen, soon after the battle 
 was fought, blowing idly about the plains of Waterloo. 
 
100 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 Where will these present idle leaves be blown by the 
 idle winds, and where will the last of them be one day lost 
 and forgotten? An idle question, and an idle thought; 
 and with it Mr. Idle fitly makes his bow, and Mr. Good- 
 child his, and thus ends the Lazy Tour of Two Idle Ap- 
 prentices. 
 
NOTES ON THE LAZY TOUR OF 
 TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 
 
 To the first and second of the five chapters of "The 
 Lazy Tour" Dickens contributed a considerable part; 
 to the third, all except the reflections of Mr. Idle; and 
 the whole of the fourth part. All the rest was by Wilkie 
 Collins. This is according to Forster, but it must be 
 admitted that portions of the fifth chapter, describing 
 Doncaster and the races, are very Dickensian. Concern- 
 ing the tour of the two novelists, some whimsical ex- 
 periences are narrated in Dickens's correspondence of 
 that date, but are not recorded in the published account. 
 
 The notion of the proposed trip was thus broached by 
 Dickens in a letter to Wilkie Collins, dated August 29th, 
 1857: 
 
 "My dear Collins — Partly in the grim despair and 
 restlessness of this subsidence from excitement,* and 
 partly for the sake of "Household Words." I want to cast 
 about whether you and I can go anywhere — take any 
 tour — see anything — whereon we could write something 
 together. Have you any idea tending to any place in the 
 world? Will you rattle your head and see if there is 
 any pebble in it which we could wander away and play 
 at marbles with? We want something for • Household 
 Words,' and I -want to escape from myself. For, when I 
 do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens 
 to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable — 
 indescribable — my misery amazing. I shall be in town on 
 Monday. Shall we talk then? Shall we talk at Gadshill? 
 What shall we do? As I close this T am on my way back 
 by train. " Ever faithfully, 
 
 "CD." 
 
 * Caused by readings and theatrical performances in the Provinces 
 in aid of the Douglas Jerrold fund. 
 
 101 
 
102 NOTES ON THE LAZY TOUR. 
 
 The first intimation Forster received of the trip was 
 about the same time in the following letter: 
 
 " I have arranged with Collins that he and I will start 
 next Monday on a ten or twelve days' expedition to out- 
 of-the-way places, to do (in inns and coast corners) a little 
 tour in search of an article and in avoidance of railroads. 
 I must get a good name for it, and I propose it in five 
 articles, one for the beginning of every number in the 
 October part." 
 
 Portions of "The Lazy Tour" were reprinted for the 
 proprietor of the inn where the two novelists stayed. 
 It appeared as a pamphlet of seven pages (in an illustrated 
 wrapper), entitled "Sly's, King's Arms Hotel, Lancaster," 
 and contained engravings of the entrance-hall and ancient 
 staircase in the hotel. In the prefatory Note the reader 
 is reminded of " the remarkable story of the Bridal Cham- 
 ber," which constitutes the fourth chapter of "The Lazy 
 Tour," and which forms the subject of these extracts. 
 Until a few years ago there existed at the King's Arms, 
 Lancaster, a famous bed of black oak in the room known 
 as the "Bridal Chamber," connected with which there is 
 a romantic legend. Doubtless, Dickens had heard of this, 
 and, when resuscitating it for " Household Words," threw 
 around it a halo of his wondrous fancy. It is said that a 
 piece of bride-cake is still served out to each guest after 
 dinner at the inn (now a modern building), in memory of 
 the legendary bride. 
 
 In 1890 Chapman and Hall reprinted "The Lazy Tour 
 of Two Idle Apprentices" for the first time (one volume, 
 demy octavo), in conjunction with " No Thoroughfare " 
 and "The Perils of Certain English Prisoners," illustrated 
 by Arthur Layard. 
 
 THE END 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 THE OVERTURE. 
 
 Day of the month and year, November the thirtieth, one 
 thousand eight hundred and thirty-five. London Time by 
 the great clock of Saint Paul's, ten at night. All the lesser 
 London churches strain their metallic throats. Some, flip- 
 pantly begin before the heavy bell of the great cathedral; 
 some, tardily begin three, four, half a dozen, strokes behind 
 it; all are insufficiently near accord, to leave a resonance 
 in the air, as if the winged father who devours his children, 
 had made a sounding sweep with his gigantic scythe in fly- 
 ing over the city. 
 
 "What is this clock lower than most of the rest, and nearer 
 to the ear, that lags so far behind to-night as to strike into 
 the vibration alone? This is the clock of the Hospital for 
 Foundling Children. Time was, when the Foundlings were 
 received without question in a cradle at the gate. Time is, 
 when inquiries are made respecting them, and they are 
 taken as by favour from the mothers who relinquish all 
 natural knowledge of them and claim to them for evermore. 
 
 The moon is at the full, and the night is fair with light 
 clouds. The day has been otherwise than fair, for slush 
 and mud, thickened with the droppings of heavy fog, lie 
 black in the streets. The veiled lady who flutters up and 
 down near the postern-gate of the Hospital for Foundling 
 Children has need to be well shod to-night. 
 
 She flutters to and fro, avoiding the stand of hackney- 
 coaches, and often pausing in the shadow of the western 
 end of the great quadrangle Avail, with her face turned tow- 
 ards the gate. As above her there is the purity of the 
 moonlit sky, and below her there are the defilements of the 
 pavement, so may she, haply, be divided in her mind be- 
 tween two vistas of reflection or experience? As her foot- 
 prints crossing and recrossing one another have made a 
 labyrinth in the mire, so may her track in life have in- 
 volved itself in an intricate and unravellable tangle? 
 
 The postern-gate of the Hospital for Foundling Children 
 opens, and a young woman comes out. The lady stands 
 
2 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 aside, observes closely, sees that the gate is quietly closed 
 again from within, and follows the young woman. 
 
 Two or three streets have been traversed in silence before 
 she, following close behind the object of her attention, 
 stretches out her hand and touches her. Then the young 
 woman stops and looks round, startled. 
 
 " You touched me last night, and, when I turned my 
 head, you would not speak. Why do you follow me like a 
 silent ghost? " 
 
 " It was not," returned the lady, in a low voice, "that I 
 would not speak, but that I could not when I tried." 
 
 "What do you want of me? I have never done you any 
 harm? " 
 
 "Never." 
 
 " Do I know you? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then what can you want of me? " 
 
 " Here are two guineas in this paper. Take my poor lit- 
 tle present, and I will tell you. " 
 
 Into the young woman's face, which is honest and comely, 
 comes a flush as she replies : " There is neither grown per- 
 son nor child in all the large establishment that I belong to 
 who hasn't a good word for Sally. I am Sally. Could I 
 be so well thought of, if I was to be bought? " 
 
 "I do not mean to buy you; I mean only to reward you 
 very slightly." 
 
 Sally firmly, but not urgently, closes and puts back the 
 offering hand. " If there is anything that I can do for you, 
 ma'am, that I will not do for its own sake, you are much 
 mistaken in me if you think that I will do it for money. 
 What is it you want? " 
 
 " You are one of the nurses or attendants at the Hospi- 
 tal; I saw you leave to-night and last night." 
 
 "Yes, I am. I am Sally." 
 
 " There is a pleasant patience in your face which makes 
 me believe that very young children would take readily to 
 you." 
 
 " God bless 'em ! So they do." 
 
 The lady lifts her veil, and shows a face no older than 
 the nurse's. A face far more refined and capable than 
 hers, but wild and worn with sorrow. 
 
 " I am the miserable mother of a baby lately received 
 under your care. I have a prayer to make to you." 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 3 
 
 Instinctively respecting the confidence which has drawn 
 aside the veil, Sally — whose ways are all ways of simplicity 
 and spontaneity — replaces it, and begins to cry. 
 
 "You will listen to my prayer? " the lady urges. "You 
 will not be deaf to the agonised entreaty of such a broken 
 suppliant as I am? " 
 
 " Oh, dear, dear, dear ! " cries Sally. " What shall I 
 say, or can I say ! Don't talk of prayers. Prayers are to 
 be put up to the Good Father of All, and not to nurses and 
 such. And there ! I am only to hold my place for half a 
 year longer, till another young woman can be trained up to 
 it. I am going to be married. I shouldn't have been out 
 last night, and I shouldn't have been out to-night, but that 
 my Dick (he is the young man I am going to be married to) 
 lies ill, and I help his mother and sister to watch him. 
 Don't take on so, don't take on so ! " 
 
 " good Sally, dear Sally," moans the lady, catching at 
 her dress entreatingly. " As you are hopeful and I am 
 hopeless; as a fair way in life is before you, which can 
 never, never, be before me; as you can aspire to become a 
 respected wife, and as you can aspire to become a proud 
 mother; as you are a living, loving woman, and must die; 
 for God's sake hear my distracted petition! " 
 
 "Deary, deary, deary me ! " cries Sally, her desperation 
 culminating in the pronoun, " what am I ever to do? And 
 there ! See how you turn my own words back upon me. I 
 tell you I am going to be married, on purpose to make it 
 clearer to you that I am going to leave, and therefore 
 couldn't help you if I would, Poor Thing, and you make it 
 seem to my own self as if I was cruel in going to be mar- 
 ried and not helping you. It ain't kind. Now, is it kind, 
 Poor Thing? " 
 
 " Sally ! Hear me, my dear. My entreaty is for no help 
 in the future. It applies to what is past. It is only to be 
 told in two words." 
 
 "There! This is worse and worse," cries Sally, "sup- 
 posing that I understand what two words you mean." 
 
 " You do understand. What are the names they have 
 given my poor baby? I ask no more than that. I have 
 read of the customs of the' place. He has been christened 
 in the chapel, and registered by some surname in the book. 
 He was received last Monday evening. What have they 
 called him? " 
 
4 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 Down upon her knees in the foul mud of the bye- way 
 into which they have strayed — an empty street without a 
 thoroughfare, giving on the dark gardens of the Hospital — 
 the lady would drop in her passionate entreaty, but that 
 Sally prevents her. 
 
 "Don't! Don't! You make me feel as if I was setting 
 myself up to be good. Let me look in your pretty face 
 again. Put your two hands in mine. Now, promise. 
 You will never ask me anything more than the two words? " 
 
 " Never ! Never ! " 
 
 " You will never put them to a bad use, if I say them! " 
 
 " Never ! Never ! " 
 
 "Walter Wilding." 
 
 The lady lays her face upon the nurse's breast, draws 
 her close in her embrace with both arms, murmurs a bless- 
 ing and the words, " Kiss him for me ! " and is gone. 
 
 Day of the month and year, the first Sunday in October, 
 one thousand eight hundred and forty-seven. London 
 Time by the great clock of Saint Paul's, half-past one in 
 the afternoon. The clock of the Hospital for Foundling 
 Children is well up with the Cathedral to-day. Service in 
 the chapel is over, and the Foundling Children are at dinner. 
 
 There are numerous lookers-on at the dinner, as the cus- 
 tom is. There are two or three governors, whole families 
 from the congregation, smaller groups of both sexes, indi- 
 vidual stragglers of various degrees. The bright autumnal 
 sun strikes freshly into the wards; and the heavy- framed 
 windows through which it shines, and the panelled walls 
 on which it strikes, are such windows and such walls as 
 pervade Hogarth's pictures. The girls' refectory (includ- 
 ing that of the younger children) is the principal attraction. 
 Neat attendants silently glide about the orderly and silent 
 tables; the lookers-on move or stop as the fancy takes them; 
 comments in whispers on face such a number from such a 
 window are not unfrequent; many of the faces are of a 
 character to fix attention. Some of the visitors from the 
 outside public are accustomed visitors. They have estab- 
 lished a speaking acquaintance with the occupants of par- 
 ticular seats at the tables, and halt at those points to bend 
 down and say a word or two. It is no disparagement to 
 their kindness that those points are generally points where 
 personal attractions are. The monotony of long spacious 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 5 
 
 rooms and the double lines of faces is agreeably relieved by 
 these incidents, although so slight. 
 
 A veiled lady, who has no companion, goes among the 
 company. It would seem that curiosity and opportunity 
 have never brought her there before. She has the air of 
 being a little troubled by the sight, and, as she goes the 
 length of -the tables, it is with a hesitating step and an un- 
 easy manner. At length she comes to the refectory of the 
 boys. They are so much less popular than the girls that it 
 is bare of visitors Avhen she looks in at the doorway. 
 
 But just within the doorway, chances to stand, inspect- 
 ing, an elderly female attendant : some order of matron or 
 housekeeper. To whom the lady addresses natural ques- 
 tions: As, how many boys? At what age are they usually 
 put out in life? Do they often take a fancy to the sea? 
 So, lower and lower in tone until the lady puts the ques- 
 tion : "• Which is Walter Wilding? " 
 
 Attendant's head shaken. Against the rules. 
 
 " You know which is Walter Wilding? " 
 
 So keenly does the attendant feel the closeness with 
 which the lady's eyes examine her face, that she keeps her 
 own eyes fast upon the floor, lest by wandering in the right 
 direction they should betray her. 
 
 "I know which is Walter Wilding, but it is not my place, 
 ma'am, to tell names to visitors." 
 
 "But you can show me without telling me." 
 
 The lady's hand moves quietly to the attendant's hand. 
 
 Pause and silence. 
 
 "I am going to pass round the tables," says the lady's 
 interlocutor, without seeming to address her. " Follow me 
 with your eyes. The boy that I stop and speak to, will not 
 matter to you. But the boy that I touch, Avill be Walter 
 Wilding. Say nothing more to me, and move a little away." 
 
 Quickly acting on the hint, the lady passes on into the 
 room, and looks about her. After a few moments, the at- 
 tendant, in a staid official way, walks down outside the line 
 of tables commencing on her left hand. She goes the whole 
 length of the line, turns, and comes back on the inside. 
 Very slightly glancing in the lady's direction, she stoops, 
 bends fonvard, and speaks. The 'boy whom she addresses, 
 lifts his head and replies. Good humonredly and easily, as 
 she listens to Avhat he says, she lays her hand upon the 
 shoulder of the next boy on his right. That the action 
 
6 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 may be well noted, she keeps her hand on the shoulder 
 while speaking in return, and pats it twice or thrice before 
 moving away. She completes her tour of the tables, touch- 
 ing no one else, and passes out by a door at the opposite end 
 of the long room. 
 
 Dinner is done, and the lady, too, walks down outside 
 the line of tables commencing on her left hand, goes the 
 whole length of the line, turns, and comes back on the in- 
 side. Other people have strolled in, fortunately for her, 
 and stand sprinkled about. She lifts her veil, and, stop- 
 ping at the touched boy, asks how old he is? 
 
 "I am twelve, ma'am," he answers, with his bright eyes 
 fixed on hers. 
 
 " Are you well and happy? " 
 
 "Yes, ma'am." 
 
 "May you take these sweetmeats from my hand? " 
 
 "If you please to give them to me." 
 
 In stooping low for the purpose, the lady touches the 
 boy's face with her forehead and with her hair. Then, 
 lowering her veil again, she passes on, and passes out with- 
 out looking back. 
 
 ACT I. 
 
 THE CURTAIN RISES. 
 
 In a courtyard in the City of London, which was No 
 Thoroughfare either for vehicles or foot-passengers; a 
 eourtyard diverging from a steep, a slippery, and a winding 
 street connecting Tower-street with the Middlesex shore of 
 the Thames; stood the place of business of Wilding and 
 Co. Wine Merchants. Probably, as a jocose acknowledg- 
 ment of the obstructive character of this main approach, 
 the point nearest to its base at which one could take the 
 river (if so inodorously minded) bore the appellation Break- 
 Neck-Stairs. The courtyard itself had likewise been de- 
 scriptively entitled in old time, Cripple Corner. 
 
 Years before the year one thousand eight hundred and 
 sixty-one, people had left off taking boat at Break-Neck- 
 Stairs, and watermen had ceased to ply there. The slimy 
 little causeway had dropped into the river by a slow proc- 
 ess of suicide, and two or three stumps of piles and a rusty 
 iron mooring-ring were all that remained of the departed 
 Break-Neck glories. Sometimes, indeed, a laden coal 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 7 
 
 barge would bump itself into the place, and certain labori- 
 ous heavers, seemingly mud-engendered, would arise, de- 
 liver the cargo in the neighbourhood, shove off, and vanish; 
 but at most times the only commerce of Break-Neck- Stairs 
 arose out of the conveyance of casks and bottles, both full 
 and empty, both to and from the cellars of Wilding and 
 Co. Wine Merchants. Even that commerce was but occa- 
 sional, and through three-fourths of its rising tides the 
 dirty indecorous drab of a river would come solitarily ooz- 
 ing and lapping at the rusty ring, as if it had heard of the 
 Doge and the Adriatic, and wanted to be married to the 
 great conserver of its filthiness, the Right Honourable the 
 Lord Mayor. 
 
 Some two hundred and fifty yards on the right, up the 
 opposite hill (approaching it trom the low ground of Break- 
 Neck- Stairs) was Cripple Corner. There was a pump in 
 Cripple Corner, there was a tree in Cripple Corner. All 
 Cripple Corner belonged to Wilding and Co. Wine Mer- 
 chants. Their cellars burrowed under it, their mansion 
 towered over it. It really had been a mansion in the days 
 when merchants inhabited the City, and had a ceremonious 
 shelter to the doorway without visible support, like the 
 sounding-board over an old pulpit. It had also a number 
 of long narrow strips of window, so disposed in its grave 
 brick front as to render it symmetrically ugly. It had 
 also, on its roof, a cupola with a bell in it. 
 
 " When a man at five-and-twenty can put his hat on, and 
 can say ' this hat covers the owner of this property and of 
 the business which is transacted on this property, ' I con- 
 sider, Mr. Bintrey, that, without being boastful, he may be 
 allowed to be deeply thankful. I don't know how it may 
 appear to you, but so it appears to me." 
 
 Thus Mr. Walter Wilding to his man of law, in his own 
 counting-house; taking his hat down from its peg to suit 
 the action to the word, and hanging it up again when he 
 had done so, not to overstep the modesty of nature. 
 
 An innocent, open-speaking, unused-looking man, Mr. 
 Walter Wilding, with a remarkably pink and white com- 
 plexion, and a figure much too bulky for so young a man, 
 though of a good stature. With crispy curling brown hair, 
 and amiable bright blue eyes. An extremely communica- 
 tive man : a man with whom loquacity was the irrestrainable 
 outpouring of contentment and gratitude. Mr. Bintrey, on 
 
 12 — 16 
 
8 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 the other hand, a cauticms man with twinkling beads of 
 eyes in a large overhanging bald head, who inwardly but 
 intensely enjoyed the comicality of openness of speech, or 
 hand, or heart. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Bintrey. "Yes. Ha, ha!" 
 
 A decanter, two wine-glasses, and a plate of biscuits, 
 stood on the desk. 
 
 " You like this forty-five year old port wine? " said Mr. 
 Wilding. 
 
 " Like it? " repeated Mr. Bintrey. " Rather, sir ! " 
 
 " It's from the best corner of our best forty-five year old 
 bin," said Mr. Wilding. 
 
 "Thank you, sir," said Mr. Bintrey. "It's most excel- 
 lent." 
 
 He laughed again, as he held up his glass and ogled 
 it, at the highly ludicrous idea of giving away such 
 wine. 
 
 "And now," said Wilding, with a childish enjoyment in 
 the discussion of affairs, " I think we have got everything 
 straight, Mr. Bintrey." 
 
 "Everything straight," said Bintrey. 
 
 " A partner secured " 
 
 "Partner secured," said Bintrey. 
 
 " A housekeeper advertised for " 
 
 "Housekeeper advertised for," said Bintrey, "' apply 
 personally at Cripple Corner, Great Tower-street, from ten 
 to twelve ' — to-morrow, by the bye." 
 
 "My late dear mother's affairs wound up " 
 
 "Wound up," said Bintrey. 
 
 "And all charges paid." 
 
 "And all charges paid," said Bintrey, with a chuckle: 
 probably occasioned by the droll circumstance that they had 
 been paid without a haggle. 
 
 "The mention of my late dear mother," Mr. Wilding 
 continued, his eyes filling with tears and his pocket-hand- 
 kerchief drying them, " unmans me still, Mr. Bintrey. 
 You know how I loved her; you (her lawyer) know how 
 she loved me. The utmost love of mother and child was 
 cherished between us, and we never experienced one mo- 
 ment's division or unhappiness from the time when she 
 took me under her care. Thirteen years in all ! Thirteen 
 years under my late dear mother's care, Mr. Bintrey, and 
 eight of them her confidentially acknowledged son ! You 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 9 
 
 know the story, Mr. Bintrey, who but you, sir ! " Mr. 
 Wilding sobbed and dried his eyes, without attempt at con- 
 cealment, during these remarks. 
 
 Mr. Bintrey enjoyed his comical port, and said, after 
 rolling it in his mouth: "I know the story." 
 
 "My late dear mother, Mr. Bintrey," pursued the wine- 
 merchant, "had been deeply deceived, and had cruelly 
 suffered. But on that subject my late dear mother's lips 
 were for ever sealed. By whom deceived, or under what 
 circumstances, Heaven only knows. My late dear mother 
 never betrayed her betrayer." 
 
 "She had made up her mind," said Mr. Bintrey, again 
 turning his wine on his palate, " and she could hold her 
 peace." An amused twinkle in his eyes pretty plainly 
 added — " A devilish deal better than you ever will ! " 
 
 "'Honour,'" said Mr. Wilding, sobbing as he quoted 
 from the Commandments, " ' thy father and thy mother, 
 that thy days may be long in the land.' When I was in 
 the Foundling, Mr. Bintrey, I was at such a loss how to 
 do it, that I apprehended my days would be short in the 
 land. But I afterwards came to honour my mother deeply, 
 profoundly. And I honour and revere her memory. For 
 seven happy years, Mr. Bintrey," pursued Wilding, still 
 with the same innocent catching in his breath, and the 
 same unabashed tears, " did my excellent mother article me 
 to my predecessors in this business, Pebbleson Nephew. 
 Her affectionate forethought likewise apprenticed me to the 
 Vintners' Company, and made me in time a Free Vintner, 
 and — and — everything else that the best of mothers could 
 desire. When I came of age, she bestowed her inherited 
 share in this business upon me; it was her money that 
 afterwards bought out Pebbleson Nephew, and painted in 
 Wilding and Co. ; it was she who left me everything she 
 possessed, but the mourning ring you wear. And yet, Mr. 
 Bintrey," with a fresh burst of honest affection, "she is 
 no more. It is a little over half a year since she came into 
 the Corner to read on that door-post with her own eyes, 
 Wilding akd Co. Wine Merchants. And yet she is no 
 more ! " 
 
 "Sad. But the common lot, Mr. Wilding," observed 
 Bintrey. " At some time or other Ave must all be no more." 
 He placed the forty-five year old port wine in the universal 
 condition, with a relishing sigh. 
 
10 NO THOROUGHFARE, 
 
 "So now, Mr. Bintrey," pursued Wilding, putting away 
 his pocket-handkerchief, and smoothing his eyelids with 
 his fingers, " now that I can no longer show my love and 
 honour for the dear parent to whom my heart was myste- 
 riously turned by Nature when she first spoke to me, a 
 strange lady, I sitting at our Sunday dinner-table in the 
 Foundling, I can at least show that I am not ashamed of 
 having been a Foundling, and that I, who never knew a 
 father of my own, wish to be a father to all in my employ- 
 ment. Therefore," continued Wilding, becoming enthusi- 
 astic in his loquacity, "therefore, I want a thoroughly 
 good housekeeper to undertake this dwelling-house of 
 Wilding and Co. Wine Merchants, Cripple Corner, so that 
 I may restore in it some of the old relations betwixt em- 
 ployer and employed ! So that I may live in it on the spot 
 where my money is made ! So that I may daily sit at the 
 head of the table at which the people in my employment 
 eat together, and may eat of the same roast and boiled, and 
 drink of the same beer ! So that the people in my employ- 
 ment may lodge under the same roof with me ! So that we 
 
 may one and all 1 beg your pardon, Mr. Bintrey, but 
 
 that old singing in my head has suddenly come on, and I 
 shall feel obliged if you will lead me to the pump." 
 
 Alarmed by the excessive pinkness of his client, Mr. 
 Bintrey lost not a moment in leading him forth into the 
 courtyard. It was easily done, for the counting-house in 
 which they talked together opened on to it, at one side of 
 the dwelling-house. There, the attorney pumped with a 
 will, obedient to a sign from the client, and the client 
 laved his head and face with both hands, and took a hearty 
 drink. After these remedies, he declared himself much 
 better. 
 
 "Don't let your good feelings excite you," said Bintrey, 
 as they returned to the counting-house, and Mr. Wilding 
 dried himself on a jack-towel behind an inner door. 
 
 "No, no. I won't," he returned, looking out of the 
 towel. "I won't. I have not been confused, have I? " 
 
 "Not at all. Perfectly clear." 
 
 "Where did I leave off, Mr. Bintrey?" 
 
 "Well, you left off — but I wouldn't excite myself, if 1 
 was you, by taking it up again just yet." 
 
 " I'll take care. I'll take care. The singing in my head 
 came on at where, Mr. Bintrey? " 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 11 
 
 "At roast, and boiled, and beer," answered the lawyer, 
 prompting — "lodging under the same roof — and one and 
 all " 
 
 " Ah ! And one and all singing in the head together * 
 
 " D6 you know I really would not let my good feelings 
 excite me, if I was you," hinted the lawyer again, anx- 
 iously. "Try some more pump." 
 
 "No occasion, no occasion. All right, Mr. Bintrey. 
 And one and all forming a kind of family ! You see, Mr. 
 Bintrey, I was not used in my childhood to that sort of 
 individual existence which most individuals have led, more 
 or less, in their childhood. After that time I became ab- 
 sorbed in my late dear mother. Having lost her, I find 
 that I am more fit for being one of a body than one by my- 
 self one. To be that, and at the same time to do my duty 
 to those dependent on me, and attach them to me, has a 
 patriarchal and pleasant air about it. I don't know how it 
 may appear to yon, Mr. Bintrey, but so it appears to me." 
 
 "It is not I who am all-important in the case, but you," 
 returned Bintrey. " Consequently, how it may appear to 
 me, is of very small importance." 
 
 "It appears tome," said Mr. Wilding, in a glow, "hope- 
 ful, useful, de-lightf ul ! " 
 
 "Do you know," hinted the lawyer again, "I really 
 would not ex " 
 
 "I am not going to. Then there's Handel. " 
 
 "There's who? " asked Bintrey. 
 
 "Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arnt 
 Greene, Mendelssohn. I know the choruses to those an- 
 thems by heart. Foundling Chapel Collection. Why 
 shouldn't we learn them together! " 
 
 " Who learn them together? " asked the lawyer, rather 
 shortly. 
 
 "Employer and employed." 
 
 "Ay, ay!" returned Bintrey, mollified; as if he had 
 half expected the answer to be, Lawyer and client. 
 "That's another thing." 
 
 "Not another thing, Mr. Bintrey! The same thing. A 
 part of the bond among us. We will form a Choir in some 
 quiet church near the Corner here, and, having sung to- 
 gether of a Sunday with a relish, we will come home and 
 take an early dinner together with a relish. The object 
 that 1 have at heart now, is to get this system well in ac- 
 
12 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 fcion "without delay, so that my new partner may find it 
 founded when he enters on his partnership." 
 
 "All good be with it!" exclaimed Bui trey, rising. 
 " May it prosper ! Is Joey Ladle to take a share in Han- 
 del, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, 
 and Mendelssohn? " 
 
 " I hope so. " 
 
 "I wish them all well out of it," returned Bintrey, with 
 much heartiness. " Good-bye, sir." 
 
 They shook hands and parted. Then (first knocking 
 with his knuckles for leave) entered to Mr. Wilding, from 
 a door of communication between his private counting-house 
 and that in which his clerks sat, the Head Cellarman of 
 the cellars of Wilding and Co. Wine Merchants, and erst 
 Head Cellarman of the cellars of Pebbleson Nephew. The 
 Joey Ladle in question. A slow and ponderous man, of 
 the drayman order of human architecture, dressed in a cor- 
 rugated suit and bibbed apron, apparently a composite of 
 door-mat and rhinoceros-hide. 
 
 " Bespecting this same boarding and lodging, Young 
 Master Wilding," said he. 
 
 " Yes, Joey? " 
 
 " Speaking for myself, Young Master Wilding — and I 
 never did speak and I never do speak for no one else — 
 /don't want no boarding nor yet no lodging. But if you 
 wish to board me and to lodge me, take me. I can peck 
 as well as most men. Where I peck, ain't so high a object 
 with me as What I peck. Nor even so high a object with 
 me as How Much I peck. Is all to live in the house, 
 Young Master Wilding? The two other cellarmen, the 
 three porters, the two 'prentices, and the odd men? " 
 
 "Yes. I hope Ave shall all be an united family, Joey." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Joey. " I hope they may be." 
 
 "They? Bather say we, Joey." 
 
 Joey Ladle shook his head. " Don't look to me to make 
 we on it, Young Master Wilding, not at my time of life 
 and under the circumstances which has formed my dispo- 
 sition. I have said to Pebbleson Nephew many a time, 
 when they have said to me, ' Put a livelier face upon it, 
 Joey ' — I have said to them, ' Gentlemen, it is all wery 
 well for you that has been accustomed to take your wine 
 into your systems by the conwivial channel of your throt- 
 tles, to put a lively face upon it; but,' I says, ' I have been 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. . 13 
 
 accustomed to take my wine in at the pores of the skin, and, 
 took that away, it acts different. It acts depressing. It's 
 one thing, gentlemen,' I says to Pebbleson Nephew, 'to 
 charge your glasses in a dining-room with a Hip Hurrah 
 and a Jolly Companions Every One, and it's another thing 
 to be charged yourself, through the pores, in a low dark 
 cellar and a mouldy atmosphere. It makes all the differ- 
 ence betwixt bubbles and wapours,' I tells Pebbleson 
 Nephew. And so it do. I've been a cellarman my life 
 through, with my mind fully given to the business. 
 What's the consequence? I'm as muddled a man as lives 
 — you won't find a muddleder man than me — nor yet you 
 won't find my equal in molloncolly. Sing of Filling the 
 bumper fair, Every drop you sprinkle, O'er the brow of 
 care, Smooths away a wrinkle? Yes. P'raps so. But 
 try filling yourself through the pores, underground, when 
 you don't want to it ! " 
 
 " I am sorry to hear this, Joey. I had even thought 
 that you might join a singing-class in the house." 
 
 "Me, sir? No, no, Young Master Wilding, you won't 
 catch Joey Ladle muddling the Armony. A pecking- 
 machine, sir, is all that I am capable of proving myself, 
 out of my cellars; but that you're welcome to, if you think 
 it's worth your while to keep such a thing on your prem- 
 ises." 
 
 "I do, Joey." 
 
 " Say no more, sir. The Business's word is my law. 
 And you're a going to take Young Master George Vendale 
 partner into the old Business? " 
 
 "I am, Joey." 
 
 " More changes, you see ! But don't change the name of 
 the Firm again. Don't do it, Young Master Wilding. It 
 was bad luck enough to make it Yourself and Co. Better 
 by far have left it Pebbleson Nephew that good luck always 
 stuck to. You should never change luck when it's good, 
 sir." 
 
 "At all events, I have no intention of changing the 
 name of the House again, Joey." 
 
 " Glad to hear it, and wish you good day, Young Master 
 Wilding. But you had better by half," muttered Joey 
 Ladle, inaudibly, as he closed the door and shook his 
 head, "have let the name alone from the first. You had 
 better by half have followed the luck instead of crossing it." 
 
14 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 ENTER THE HOUSEKEEPER. 
 
 The wine-merchant sat in his dining-room next morning, 
 to receive the personal applicants for the vacant post in his 
 establishment. It was an old-fashioned wainscoted room; 
 the panels ornamented with festoons of flowers carved in 
 wood; with an oaken floor, a well-worn Turkey carpet, and 
 dark mahogany furniture, all of which had seen service and 
 polish under Pebbleson Nephew. The great sideboard had 
 assisted at many business-dinners given by Pebbleson 
 Nephew to their connection, on the principle of throwing 
 sprats overboard to catch whales; and Pebbleson Nephew's 
 comprehensive three-sided plate-warmer, made to fit the 
 whole front of the large fire-place, kept watch beneath it 
 over a sarcophagus- shaped cellaret that had in its time held 
 many a dozen of Pebbleson Nephew's wine. But the little 
 rubicund old bachelor with a pigtail, whose portrait was 
 over the sideboard (and who could easily be identified as 
 decidedly Pebbleson and decidedly not Nephew), had re- 
 tired into another sarcophagus, and the plate- warmer had 
 grown as cold as he. So, the golden and black griffins 
 that supported the candelabra, with black balls in their 
 mouths at the end of gilded chains, looked as if in their old 
 age they had lost all heart for playing at ball, and were 
 dolefully exhibiting their chains in the missionary line of 
 inquiry, whether they had not earned emancipation by this 
 time, and were not griffins and brothers? 
 
 Such a Columbus of a morning was the summer morning, 
 that it discovered Cripple Corner. The light and warmth 
 pierced in at the open windows, and irradiated the picture 
 of a lady hanging over the chimney-piece, the only other 
 decoration of the walls. 
 
 "My mother at five-and-twenty," said Mr. Wilding to 
 himself, as his eyes enthusiastically followed the light to 
 the portrait's face, "I hang up here, in order that visitors 
 may admire my mother in the bloom of her youth and 
 beauty. My mother at fifty I hang in the seclusion of my 
 own chamber, as a remembrance sacred to me. Oh! It's 
 you, Jarvis!" 
 
 These latter words he addressed to a clerk who had 
 tapped at the door, and now looked in. 
 
 "Yes, sir. I merely wish to mention that it's gone ten, 
 
fto Thoroughfare. is 
 
 sir, and that there are several females in the Counting- 
 House." 
 
 " Dear me ! " said the wine-merchant, deepening in the 
 pink of his complexion and whitening in the white, " are 
 there several? So many as several? I had better begin 
 before there are more. I'll see them one by one, Jarvis, 
 in the order of their arrival." 
 
 Hastily entrenching himself in his easy-chair at the table 
 behind a great inkstand, having first placed a chair on the 
 other side of the table opposite his own seat, Mr. Wilding 
 entered on his task with considerable trepidation. 
 
 He ran the gauntlet that must be run on any such occa- 
 sion. There were the usual species of profoundly unsym- 
 pathetic women, and the usual species of much too sympa- 
 thetic women. There were the buccaneering widows who 
 came to seize him, and who griped umbrellas under their 
 arms, as if each umbrella were he, and each griper had got 
 him. There were towering maiden ladies who had seen 
 better days, and who came armed with clerical testimonials 
 to their theology, as if he were Saint Peter with his keys. 
 There were geutle maiden ladies who came to marry him. 
 There were professional housekeepers, like non-commis- 
 sioned officers, who put him through his domestic exercise, 
 instead of submitting themselves to catechism. There 
 were languid invalids to whom salary was not so much an 
 object as the comforts of a private hospital. There were 
 sensitive creatures who burst into tears on being addressed, 
 and had to be restored with glasses of cold water. There 
 were some respondents who came two together, a highly 
 promising one and a wholly unpromising one : of whom the 
 promising one answered all questions charmingly, until it 
 would at last appear that she was not a candidate at all, 
 but only the friend of the unpromising one, who had glow- 
 ered in absolute silence and apparent injury. 
 
 At last, when the good wine-merchant's simple heart was 
 failing him, there entered an applicant quite different from 
 all the rest. A woman, perhaps fifty, but looking younger, 
 with a face remarkable for placid cheerfulness, and a man- 
 ner no less remarkable for its quiet expression of equability 
 of temper. Nothing in her dress could have been changed 
 to her advantage. Nothing in the noiseless self-possession 
 of her manner could have been changed to her advantage. 
 Nothing could have been in better unison with both, than 
 
16 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 her voice when she answered the question : " What name 
 shall I have the pleasure of noting down?" with the 
 words, "My name is Sarah Goldstraw. Mrs. Goldstraw. 
 My husband has been dead many years, and we had no 
 family." 
 
 Half a dozen questions had scarcely extracted as much 
 to the purpose from any one else. The voice dwelt so 
 agreeably on Mr. Wilding's ear as he made his note, that 
 he was rather long about it. When he looked up again, 
 Mrs. Goldstraw' s glance had naturally gone round the 
 room, and now returned to him from the chimney-piece. 
 Its expression was one of frank readiness to be questioned, 
 and to answer straight. 
 
 " You will excuse my asking you a few questions? " said 
 the modest wine- merchant. 
 
 "Oh, surely, sir. Or I should have no business here." 
 
 " Have you filled the station of housekeeper before? " 
 
 "Only once. I have lived with the same widow lady for 
 twelve years. Ever since I lost my husband. She was an 
 invalid, and is lately dead : which is the occasion of my 
 now wearing black." 
 
 " I do not doubt that she has left you the best creden- 
 tials? " said Mr. Wilding. 
 
 " I hope I may say, the very best. I thought it would 
 save trouble, sir, if I wrote down the name and address of 
 her representatives, and brought it with me." Laying a 
 card on the table. 
 
 "You singularly remind me, Mrs. Goldstraw," said 
 Wilding, taking the card beside him, "of a manner and 
 tone of voice that I was once acquainted with. Not of an 
 individual — I feel sure of that, though I cannot recall what 
 it is I have in my mind — but of a general bearing. I ought 
 to add, it was a kind and pleasant one." 
 
 She smiled, as she rejoined : " At least, I am very glad 
 of that, sir." 
 
 "Yes," said the wine-merchant, thoughtfully repeating 
 his last phrase, with a momentary glance at his future 
 housekeeper, " it was a kind and pleasant one. But that 
 is the most I can make of it. Memory is sometimes like a 
 half-forgotten dream. I don't know how it may appear to 
 you, Mrs. Goldstraw, but so it appears to me." 
 
 Probably it appeared to Mrs. Goldstraw in a similar 
 light, for she quietly assented to the proposition; Mr. 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. ]7 
 
 Wilding then offered to pnt himself at once in communica- 
 tion with the gentlemen named upon the card : a firm of 
 proctors in Doctors' Commons. To this, Mrs. Goldstraw 
 thankfully assented. Doctors' Commons not being far off, 
 Mr. Wilding suggested the feasibility of Mrs. Goldstraw's 
 looking in again, say in three hours' time. Mrs. Gold- 
 straw readily undertook to do so. In fine, the result of 
 Mr. Wilding's inquiries being eminently satisfactory, Mrs. 
 Goldstraw was that afternoon engaged (on her own per- 
 fectly fair terms) to come to-morrow and set up her rest 
 as housekeeper in Cripple Corner. 
 
 THE HOUSEKEEPER SPEAKS. 
 
 On the next day Mrs. Goldstraw arrived, to enter on her 
 domestic duties. 
 
 Having settled herself in her own room, without trou- 
 bling the servants, and without wasting time, the new house- 
 keeper announced herself as waiting to be favoured with 
 any instructions which her master might wish to give her. 
 The wine-merchant received Mrs. Goldstraw in the dining- 
 room, in which he had seen her on the previous day; and, 
 the usual preliminary civilities having passed on either 
 side, the two sat down to take counsel together on the 
 affairs of the house. 
 
 "About the meals, sir?" said Mrs. Goldstraw. "Have 
 I a large, or a small, number to provide for? " 
 
 "If I can carry out a certain old-fashioned plan of mine," 
 replied Mr. Wilding, "you will have a large number to 
 provide for. I am a lonely single man, Mrs. Goldstraw; 
 and I hope to live with all the persons in my employment 
 as if they were members of my family. Until that time 
 comes, you will only have me, and the new partner whom 
 I expect immediately, to provide for. What my partner's 
 habits may be, I cannot yet say. But I may describe my- 
 self as a man of regular hours, with an invariable appetite 
 that you may depend upon to an ounce. " 
 
 "About breakfast, sir?" asked Mrs. Goldstraw. "Is 
 there anything particular ■? " 
 
 She hesitated, and left the sentence unfinished. Her 
 eyes turned slowly away from her master, and looked tow- 
 ards the chimney-piece. If she had been a less excellent 
 and experienced housekeeper, Mr. Wilding might have 
 % 
 
18 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 fancied that her attention was beginning to wander at the 
 
 very outset of the interview. 
 
 "Eight o'clock is my breakfast-hour," he resumed. "It 
 is on-e of my virtues to be never tired of broiled bacon, and 
 it is one of my vices to be habitually suspicious of the fresh- 
 ness of eggs." Mrs. Goldstraw looked back at him, still a 
 little divided between her master's chimney-piece and her 
 master. "I take tea," Mr. Wilding went on; "and I am 
 perhaps rather nervous and fidgety about drinking it, within 
 a certain time after it is made. If my tea stands too 
 long " 
 
 He hesitated, on his side, and left the sentence unfin- 
 ished. If he had not been engaged in discussing a subject 
 of such paramount interest to himself as his breakfast, Mrs. 
 Goldstraw might have fancied that his attention was begin- 
 ning to wander at the very outset of the interview. 
 
 " If your tea stands too long, sir ? " said the house- 
 keeper, politely taking up her master's lost thread. 
 
 " If my tea stands too long," repeated the wine-merchant, 
 mechanically, his mind getting further and further away 
 from his breakfast, and his eyes fixing themselves more 
 and more inquiringly on his housekeeper's face. "If my 
 tea Dear, dear me, Mrs. Goldstraw ! what is the man- 
 ner and tone of voice that you remind me of? It strikes 
 me even more strongly to-day, than it did when I saw you 
 yesterday. What can it be? " 
 
 "What can it be? " repeated Mrs. Goldstraw. 
 
 She said the words, evidently thinking while she spoke 
 them of something else. The wine-merchant, still looking 
 at her inquiringly, observed that her eyes wandered towards 
 the chimney-piece once more. They fixed on the portrait 
 of his mother, which hung there, and looked at it with that 
 slight contraction of the brow which accompanies a scarcely 
 conscious effort of memory. Mr. Wilding remarked : 
 
 "My late dear mother, when she was five-and- twenty." 
 
 Mrs. Goldstraw thanked him with a movement of the 
 head for being at the pains to explain the picture, and said, 
 with a cleared brow, that it was the portrait of a very beau- 
 tiful lady. 
 
 Mr. Wilding, falling back into his former perplexity, 
 tried once more to recover that lost recollection, associated 
 so closely, and yet so undiscoverably, with his new house- 
 keeper's voice and manner. 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 19 
 
 " Excuse my asking you a question which has nothing to 
 do with me or my breakfast," he said. "May I inquire if 
 you have ever occupied any other situation than the situ- 
 ation of housekeeper? " 
 
 " Oh yes, sir. I began life as one of the nurses at the 
 Foundling." 
 
 "Why, that's it!" cried the wine-merchant, pushing 
 back his chair. " By Heaven ! Their manner is the man- 
 ner you remind me of ! " 
 
 In an astonished look at him, Mrs. Goldstraw changed 
 colour, checked herself, turned her eyes upon the ground, 
 and sat still and silent. 
 
 " What is the matter? " asked Mr. Wilding. 
 
 " Do I understand that you were in the Foundling, sir? " 
 
 "Certainly. I am not ashamed to own it." 
 
 " Under the name you now bear? " 
 
 "Under the name of Walter Wilding." 
 
 "And the lady ?" Mrs. Goldstraw stopped short, 
 
 with a look at the portrait which was now unmistakably a 
 look of alarm. 
 
 " You mean my mother, " interrupted Mr. Wilding. 
 
 "Your — mother," repeated the housekeeper, a little con- 
 strainedly, "removed you from the Foundling? At what 
 age, sir? " 
 
 "At between eleven and twelve years old. It's quite a 
 romantic adventure, Mrs. Goldstraw." 
 
 He told the story of the lady having spoken to him, while 
 he sat at dinner with the other boys in the Foundling, and 
 of all that had followed, in his innocently communicative 
 way. "My poor mother could never have discovered me," 
 he added, "if she had not met with one of the matrons 
 who pitied her. The matron consented to touch the boy 
 whose name was ' Walter Wilding ' as she went round the 
 dinner-tables — and so my mother discovered me again, 
 after having parted from me as an infant at the Foundling 
 doors." 
 
 At those words Mrs. Goldstraw' s hand, resting on the 
 table, dropped helplessly into her lap. She sat, looking at 
 her new master, with a face that had turned deadly pale, 
 and with eyes that expressed an unutterable dismay. 
 
 "What does this mean?" asked the wine-merchant. 
 "Stop!" he cried. "Is there something else in the past 
 time which I ought to associate with you? I remember, 
 
20 XO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 my mother telling me of another person at the Foundling, 
 to whose kindness she owed a debt of gratitude. When 
 she first parted with me, as an infant, one of the nurses in- 
 formed her of the name that had been given to me in the 
 institution. You were that nurse? " 
 
 " God forgive me, sir — I was that nurse ! " 
 
 " God forgive you? " 
 
 " We had better get back, sir (if I may make so bold as 
 to say so), to my duties in the house," said Mrs. Gold- 
 straw. " Your breakfast-hour is eight. Do you lunch, or 
 dine, in the middle of the day? " 
 
 The excessive pinkness which Mr. Bintrey had noticed 
 in his client's face began to appear there once more. Mr. 
 Wilding put his hand to his head, and mastered some mo- 
 mentary confusion in that quarter, before he spoke again. 
 
 "Mrs. Goldstraw," he said, "you are concealing some- 
 thing from me ! " 
 
 The housekeeper obstinately repeated, " Please to favour 
 me, sir, by saying whether you lunch, or dine, in the mid- 
 dle of the day? " 
 
 "I don't know what I do in the middle of the day. I 
 can't enter into my household affairs, Mrs. Goldstraw, till 
 I know why you regret an act of kindness to my mother, 
 which she always spoke of gratefully to the end of her life. 
 You are not doing me a service by your silence. You are 
 agitating me, you are alarming me, you are bringing on the 
 singing in my head." 
 
 His hand went up to his head again, and the pink in his 
 face deepened by a shade or two. 
 
 "Its hard, sir, on just entering your service," said the 
 housekeeper, " to say what may cost me the loss of your 
 good will. Please to remember, end how it may, that I 
 only speak because you have insisted on my speaking, and 
 because I see that I am alarming you by my silence. When 
 I told the poor lady, whose portrait you have got there, the 
 name by which her infant was christened in the Foundling, 
 I allowed myself to forget my duty, and dreadful conse- 
 quences, I am afraid, have followed from it. I'll tell you 
 the truth, as plainly as I can. A few months from the 
 time when I had informed the lady of her baby's name, 
 there came to our institution in the country another lady (a 
 stranger), whose object was to adopt one of our children. 
 She brought the needful permission with her, and after 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 21 
 
 fooking at a great many of the children, without being able 
 to make up her mind, she took a sudden fancy to one of the 
 babies — a boy — under my care. Try, pray try, to compose 
 yourself, sir ! It's no use disguising it any longer. The 
 child the stranger took away was the child of that lady 
 whose portrait hangs there ! " 
 
 Mr. Wilding started to his feet. " Impossible ! " he cried 
 out, vehemently. "What are you talking about? What 
 absurd story are you telling me now? There's her por- 
 trait ! Haven't I told you so already? The portrait of my 
 mother ! " 
 
 " When that unhappy lady removed you from the Found- 
 ling in after years," said Mrs. Goldstraw, gently, "she was 
 the victim, and you were the victim, sir, of a dreadful mis- 
 take." 
 
 He dropped back into his chair. " The room goes round 
 with me," he said. "My head! my head!" The house- 
 keeper rose in alarm, and opened the windows. Before she 
 could get to the door to call for help, a sudden burst of tears 
 relieved the oppression which had at first almost appeared 
 to threaten his life. He signed entreatingly to Mrs. Gold- 
 straw not to leave him. She waited until the paroxysm of 
 weeping had worn itself out. He raised his head as he re- 
 covered himself, and looked at her with the angry unrea- 
 soning suspicion of a weak man. 
 
 "Mistake?" he said, wildly repeating her last words. 
 " How do I know you are not mistaken yourself? " 
 
 " There is no hope that I am mistaken, sir. I will tell 
 you why, when you are better fit to hear it." 
 
 " Now ! now ! " 
 
 The tone in which he spoke warned Mrs. Goldstraw that 
 it would be cruel kindness to let him comfort himself a mo- 
 ment longer with the vain hope that she might be wrong. 
 A few words more would end it — and those few words she 
 determined to speak. 
 
 " I have told you," she said, " that the child of the lady 
 whose portrait hangs there, was adopted in its infancy, and 
 taken away by a stranger. I am as certain of what I say 
 as that I am now sitting here, obliged to distress you, sir, 
 sorely against my will. Please to carry your mind on, 
 now, to about three months after that time. I was then at 
 the Foundling, in London, waiting to take some children 
 fco our institution in the co\mtry. There was a question 
 
22 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 that day about naming an infant — a boy — who had just 
 been received. We generally named them out of the Di- 
 rectory. On this occasion, one of the gentlemen who man- 
 aged the Hospital happened to be looking over the Regis- 
 ter. He noticed that the name of the baby who had been 
 adopted ('Walter Wilding') was scratched out — for the 
 reason, of course, that the child had been removed for good 
 from our care. ' Here's a name to let,' he said. ■ Give it 
 to the new foundling who has been received to-day. ' The 
 name was given, and the child was christened. You, sir, 
 were that child." 
 
 The wine-merchant's head dropped on his breast. "I 
 was that child ! " he said to himself, trying helplessly to fix 
 the idea in his mind. " I was that child ! " 
 
 " Not very long after you had been received into the In- 
 stitution, sir," pursued Mrs. Goldstraw, "I left my situ- 
 ation there, to be married. If you will remember that, 
 and if you can give your mind to it, you will see for your- 
 self how the mistake happened. Between eleven and 
 twelve years passed before the lady, whom you have be- 
 lieved to be your mother, returned to the Foundling, to 
 find her son, and to remove him to her own home. The 
 lady only knew that her infant had been called ' Walter 
 Wilding. ' The matron who took pity on her, could but 
 point out the only ' Walter Wilding ' known in the Institu- 
 tion. I, who might have set the matter right, was far 
 away from the Foundling and all that belonged to it. 
 There was nothing — there was really nothing that could 
 prevent this terrible mistake from taking place. I feel for 
 you — I do indeed, sir ! You must think — and with reason 
 — that it was in an evil hour that I came here (innocently 
 enough, I'm sure), to apply for your housekeeper's place. 
 I feel as if I was to blame — I feel as if I ought to have had 
 more self-command. If I had only been able to keep my 
 face from showing you, what that portrait and what your 
 own words put into my mind — you need never, to your 
 dying day, have known what you know now." 
 
 Mr. Wilding looked up suddenly. The inbred honesty 
 of the man rose in protest against the housekeeper's last 
 words. His mind seemed to steady itself, for the moment, 
 under the shock that had fallen on it. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you would have concealed thia 
 from me if you could? " he exclaimed. 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 23 
 
 "I hope I should always tell the truth, sir, if I was 
 asked," said Mrs. Goldstraw. "And I know it is better 
 for me that I should not have a secret of this sort weighing 
 on my mind. But is it better for you ? What use can it 
 serve now ? " 
 
 " What use? Why, good Lord ! if your story is true " 
 
 " Should I have told it, sir, as I am now situated, if it 
 had not been true? " 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said the wine-merchant. "You 
 must make allowance for me. This dreadful discovery is 
 something I can't realise even yet. We loved each other 
 so dearly — I felt so fondly that I was her son. She died, 
 Mrs. Goldstraw, in my arms — she died blessing me as only 
 a mother could have blessed me. And now, after all these 
 years, to be told she was not my mother ! me, me ! I 
 don't know what I am saying!" he cried, as the impulse 
 of self-control under which he had spoken a moment since, 
 flickered, and died out. " It was not this dreadful grief — 
 it was something else that I had it in my mind to speak of. 
 Yes, yes. You surprised me — you wounded me just now. 
 You talked as if you would have hidden this from me, if 
 you could. Don't talk in that way again. It would have 
 been a crime to have hidden it. You mean well, I know. 
 I don't want to distress you — you are a kind-hearted woman. 
 But you don't remember what my position is. She left me 
 all that I possess, in the firm persuasion that I was her son. 
 I am not her son. I have taken the place, I have innocently 
 got the inheritance of another man. He must be found ! 
 How do I know he is not at this moment in misery, with- 
 out bread to eat? He must be found ! My only hope of 
 bearing up against the shock that has fallen on me, is the 
 hope of doing something which she would have approved. 
 You must know more, Mrs. Goldstraw, than you have told 
 me yet. Who was the stranger who adopted the child? 
 You must have heard the lady's name? " 
 
 " I never heard it, sir. I have never seen her, or heard 
 of her, since." 
 
 "Did she say nothing when she took the child away? 
 Search your memory. She must have said something." 
 
 "Only one thing, sir, that I can remember. It was a 
 miserably bad season, that year; and many of the children 
 were suffering from it. When she took the baby away, the 
 lady said to me, laughing, ' Don't be alarmed about his 
 
24 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 health. He will be brought up in a better climate than 
 this — I am going to take him to Switzerland.' " 
 
 " To Switzerland? What part of Switzerland? " 
 
 "She didn't say, sir." 
 
 "Only that faint clue!" said Mr. Wilding. "And a 
 quarter of a century has passed since the child was taken 
 away ! What am I to do? " 
 
 " I hope you won't take offence at my freedom, sir," said 
 Mrs. Goldstraw; "bat why should you distress yourself 
 about what is to be done? He may not be alive now, for 
 anything you know. And, if he is alive, it's not likely he 
 can be in any distress. The lady who adopted him was 
 a bred and born lady — it was easy to see that. And she 
 must have satisfied them at the Foundling that she could 
 provide for the child, or they would never have let her take 
 him away. If I was in your place, sir — please to excuse 
 my saying so — I should comfort myself with remembering 
 that I had loved that poor lady whose portrait you have got 
 there — truly loved her as my mother, and that she had 
 truly loved me as her son. All she gave to you, she gave 
 for the sake of that love. It never altered while she lived; 
 and it won't alter, I'm sure, as long as you live. How can you 
 have a better right, sir, to keep what you have got than that?" 
 
 Mr. Wilding's immovable honesty saw the fallacy in his 
 housekeeper's point of view at a glance. 
 
 "You don't understand me," he said. "It's because I 
 loved her that I feel it a duty — a sacred duty — to do justice 
 to her son. If he is a living man, I must find him: for my 
 own sake, as well as for his. I shall break down under this 
 dreadful trial, unless I employ myself — actively, instantly 
 employ myself — in doing what my conscience tells me ought 
 to be done. I must speak to my lawyer; I must set my 
 lawyer at work before I sleep to-night." He approached a 
 tube in the wall of the room, and called down through it to 
 the office below. "Leave me for a little, Mrs. Goldstraw," 
 he resumed; "I shall be more composed, I shall be better 
 able to speak to you later in the day. We shall get on 
 well — I hope we shall get on well together — in spite of 
 what has happened. It isn't your fault; I know it isn't 
 your fault. There! there! shake hands; and — and do the 
 best you can in the house — I can't talk about it now." 
 
 The door opened as Mrs. Goldstraw advanced towards it; 
 and Mr. Jarvis appeared. 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 25 
 
 " Send for Mr. Bintrey," said the wine-merchant. " Say 
 I want to see him directly." 
 
 The clerk unconsciously suspended the execiition of the 
 order, by announcing " Mr. Vendale," and showing in the 
 new partner in the firm of Wilding and Co. 
 
 " Pray excuse me for one moment, George Vendale," said 
 Wilding. " I have a word to say to Jarvis. Send for Mr. 
 Bintrey," he repeated — "send at once." 
 
 Mr. Jarvis laid a letter on the table before he left the 
 room. 
 
 "From our correspondents at Keuchatel, I think, sir. 
 The letter has got the Swiss postmark." 
 
 NEW CHARACTERS ON THE SCENE. 
 
 The words, "The Swiss Postmark," following so soon 
 upon the housekeeper's reference to Switzerland, wrought 
 Mr. Wilding's agitation to such a remarkable height, that 
 his new partner could not decently make a pretence of let- 
 ting it pass unnoticed. 
 
 "Wilding," he asked hurriedly, and yet stopping short 
 and glancing around as if for some visible cause of his state 
 of mind : " what is the matter? " 
 
 "My good George Vendale," returned the wine-merchant, 
 giving his hand with an appealing look, rather as if he 
 wanted help to get over some obstacle, than as if he gave 
 it in welcome or salutation : " my good George Vendale, so 
 much is the matter, that I shall never be myself again. It 
 is impossible that I can ever be myself again. For, in fact, 
 I am not myself." 
 
 The new partner, a brown-cheeked handsome fellow, of 
 about his own age, with a quick determined eye and an im- 
 pulsive manner, retorted with natural astonishment : " Not 
 yourself? " 
 
 "Not what I supposed myself to be," said Wilding. 
 
 " What, in the name of wonder, did you suppose yourself 
 to be that you are not? " was the rejoinder, delivered with 
 a cheerful frankness, inviting confidence from a more reti- 
 cent man. " I may ask without impertinence, now that we 
 are partners." 
 
 " There again ! " cried Wilding, leaning back in his chair, 
 with a lost look at the other. " Partners ! I had no right 
 to come into this business. It was never meant for me. 
 
26 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 My mother never meant it should be mine. I mean, his 
 mother meant it should be his — if I mean anything — or if 
 I am anybody." 
 
 "Come, come," urged his partner, after a moment's 
 pause, and taking possession of him with that calm confi- 
 dence which inspires a strong nature when it honestly de- 
 sires to aid a weak one. " Whatever has gone wrong, has 
 goue wrong through no fault of yours, I am very sure. I 
 was not in this counting-house with you under the old re- 
 gime, for three years, to doubt you, Wilding. We were 
 not younger men than we are, together, for that. Let me 
 begin our partnership by being a serviceable partner, and 
 setting right whatever is wrong. Has that letter anything 
 to do with it? " 
 
 " Hah ! " said Wilding, with his hand to his temple. 
 "There again! My head! I was forgetting the coinci- 
 dence. The Swiss postmark." 
 
 " At a second glance I see that the letter is unopened, so 
 it is not very likely to have much to do with the matter," 
 said Vendale, with comforting composure. "Is it for you, 
 or for us? " 
 
 "For us," said Wilding. 
 
 " Suppose I open it and read it aloud, to get it out of our 
 way? " 
 
 "Thank you, thank you." 
 
 " The letter is only from our champagne-making friends, 
 the House at NeucMtel. ' Bear Sir. We are in receipt of 
 yours of the 28th ult., informing us that you have taken 
 your Mr. Vendale into partnership, whereon we beg you to 
 receive the assurance of our felicitations. Permit us to 
 embrace the occasion of specially commending to you, M. 
 Jules Obenreizer. ' Impossible ! " 
 
 Wilding looked up in quick apprehension, and cried, 
 "Eh?" 
 
 "Impossible sort of name," returned his partner, slightly 
 — "Obenreizer. ' — Of specially commending to you M. 
 Jules Obenreizer, of Soho-square, London (north side), 
 henceforth fully accredited as our agent, and whq has al- 
 ready had the honour of making the acquaintance of your 
 Mr. Vendale, in his (said M. Obenreizer's) native country, 
 Switzerland.' To be sure: pooh pooh, what have I been 
 thinking of! I remember now; 'when travelling with his 
 niece.'" 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 27 
 
 " With his ? " Vendale had so slurred the last word, 
 
 that Wilding had not heard it. 
 
 "When travelling with his Niece. Obenreizer' s Niece," 
 said Vendale, in a somewhat superfluously lucid manner. 
 "Niece of Obenreizer. (I met them in my first Swiss 
 tour, travelled a little with them, and lost them for two 
 years; met them again, my Swiss tour before last, and 
 have lost them ever since.) Obenreizer. Niece of Oben- 
 reizer. To be sure! Possible sort of name, after all! 
 ' M. Obenreizer is in possession of our absolute confidence, 
 and we do not doubt you will esteem his merits.' Duly 
 signed by the House, 'Defresnier et C Se .' Very well. I 
 undertake to see M. Obenreizer presently, and clear him 
 out of the way. That clears the Swiss postmark out of the 
 way. So now, my dear Wilding, tell me what I can clear 
 out of your way, and I'll find a way to clear it." 
 
 More than ready and grateful to be thus taken charge of, 
 the honest wine-merchant wrung his partner's hand, and, 
 beginning his tale by pathetically declaring himself an 
 Impostor, told it. 
 
 " It was on this matter, no doubt, that you were sending 
 for Bintrey, when I came in? " said his partner, after re- 
 flecting. 
 
 "It was." 
 
 "He has experience and a shrewd head; I shall be anx- 
 ious to know his opinion. It is bold and hazardous in me 
 to give you mine bef -;c I know his, but I am not good at 
 holding back. Plainly, then, I do not see these circum- 
 stances as you see them. I do not see your position as you 
 see it. As to your being an Impostor, my dear Wilding, 
 that is simply absurd, because no man can be that without 
 being a consenting party to an imposition. Clearly you 
 never were so. As to your enrichment by the lady who 
 believed you to be her son, and whom you were forced to 
 believe, on her own showing, to be your mother, consider 
 whether that did not arise out of the personal relations be- 
 tween you. You gradually became much attached to her; 
 she gradually became much attached to you. It was on 
 you, personally you, as I see the case, that she conferred 
 these worldly advantages; it was from her, personally her, 
 that you took them." 
 
 " She supposed me," objected Wilding, shaking his head, 
 "to have a natural claim upon her, which I had not." 
 
28 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 " I must admit that, " replied his partner, " to be true. 
 But if she had made the discovery that you have made, six 
 months before she died, do you think it would have can- 
 celled the years you were together, and the tenderness that 
 each of you had conceived for the other, each on increasing 
 knowledge of the other? " 
 
 "What I think," said Wilding, simply but stoutly hold- 
 ing to the bare fact, " can no more change the truth than it 
 can bring down the sky. The truth is that I stand pos- 
 sessed of what was meant for another man." 
 
 "He may be dead," said Vendale. 
 
 "He may be alive," said Wilding. "And if he is alive, 
 have I not — innocentty, I grant you innocently — robbed him 
 of enough? Have I not robbed him of all the happy time 
 that I enjoyed in his stead? Have I not robbed him of the 
 exquisite delight that filled my soul when that dear lady," 
 stretching his hand towards the picture, " told me she was 
 my mother? Have I not robbed him of all the care she 
 lavished on me? Have I not even robbed him of all the 
 devotion and duty that I so proudly gave to her? There- 
 fore it is that I ask myself, George Vendale, and I ask you, 
 where is he? What has become of him? " 
 
 "Who can tell!" 
 
 " I must try to find out who Can tell. I must institute 
 inquiries. I must never desist from prosecuting inquiries. 
 I will live upon the interest of my share — I ought to say 
 his share — in this business, and will lay up the rest for 
 him. When I find him, I may perhaps throw myself upon 
 his generosity; but I will yield up all to him. I will, I 
 swear. As I loved and honoured her," said Wilding, rev- 
 erently kissing his hand towards the picture, and then cov- 
 ering his eyes with it. " As I loved and honoured her, and 
 have a world of reasons to be grateful to her ! " And so 
 broke down again. 
 
 His partner rose from the chair he had occupied, and 
 stood beside him with a hand softly laid upon his shoulder. 
 " Walter, I knew you before to-day to be an upright man, 
 with a pure conscience and a fine heart. It is very fortu- 
 nate for me that I have the privilege to travel on in life so 
 near to so trustworthy a man. I am thankful for it. Use 
 me as your right hand, and rely upon me to the death. 
 Don't think the worse of me if I protest to you that my 
 uppermost feeling at present is a confused, you may call it 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 29 
 
 an unreasonable, one. I feel far more pity for the lady and 
 for you, because you did not stand in your supposed rela- 
 tions, than I can feel for the unknown man (if he ever 
 became a man), because he was unconsciously displaced. 
 You have done well in sending for Mr. Bintrey. What I 
 think will be a part of his advice, I know is the whole of 
 mine. Do not move a step in this serious matter precipi- 
 tately. The secret must be kept among us with great 
 strictness, for to part with it lightly would be to invite 
 fraudulent claims, to encourage a host of knaves, to let 
 loose a flood of perjury and plotting. I have no more to 
 say now, Walter, than to remind you that you sold me a 
 share in your business, expressly to save yourself from 
 more work than your present health is fit for, and that I 
 bought it expressly to do work, and mean to do it." 
 
 With these words, and a parting grip of his partner's 
 shoulder that gave them the best emphasis they could have 
 had, George Vendale betook himself presently to the count- 
 ing-house, and presently afterwards to the address of M. 
 Jules Obenreizer. 
 
 As he turned into Soho-square, and directed his steps 
 towards its north side, a deepened colour shot across his 
 sun-browned face, which Wilding, if he had been a better 
 observer, or had been less occupied with his own trouble, 
 might have noticed when his partner read aloud a certain 
 passage in their Swiss correspondent's letter, which he had 
 not read so distinctly as the rest. 
 
 A curious colony of mountaineers has long been enclosed 
 within that small flat London district of Soho. Swiss 
 watch-makers, Swiss silver-chasers, Swiss jewellers, Swiss 
 importers of Swiss musical boxes and Swiss toys of various 
 kinds, draAV close together there. Swiss professors of 
 music, painting, and languages; Swiss artificers in steady 
 work; Swiss couriers, and other Swiss servants chronically 
 out of place ; industrious Swiss laundresses and clear-starch- 
 ers; mysteriously existing Swiss of both sexes; Swiss 
 creditable and Swiss discreditable; Swiss to be trusted by 
 all means, and Swiss to be trusted by no means; these di- 
 verse Swiss particles are attracted to a centre in the district 
 of Soho. Shabby SAviss eating-houses, coffee-houses, and 
 lodging-houses, Swiss drinks and dishes, Swiss service for 
 Sundays, and Swiss schools for week-days, are all to be 
 found there. Even the native-born English taverns drive a 
 
oO NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 sort of broken-English trade; announcing in their windows 
 Swiss whets and drams, and sheltering in their bars Swiss 
 skirmishes of love and animosity on most nights in the year. 
 
 When the new partner in Wilding and Co. rang the bell 
 of a door bearing the blunt inscription Obenreizer on a 
 brass plate — the inner door of a substantial house, whose 
 ground story was devoted to the sale of Swiss clocks — he 
 passed at once into domestic Switzerland. A white-tiled 
 stove for winter-time filled the fireplace of the room into 
 which he was shown, the room's bare floor was laid to- 
 gether in a neat pattern of several ordinary woods, the 
 room had a prevalent air of surface bareness and much 
 scrubbing; and the little square of flowery carpet by the 
 sofa, and the velvet chimney-board with its capacious clock 
 and vases of artificial flowers, contended with that tone, as 
 if, in bringing out the whole effect, a Parisian had adapted 
 a dairy to domestic purposes. 
 
 Mimic water was dropping off a mill-wheel under the 
 clock. The visitor had not stood before it, following il 
 with his eyes, a minute, when M. Obenreizer, at his elbow, 
 startled him by saying, in very good English, very slightly 
 clipped : " How do you do? So glad ! " 
 
 * I beg your pardon. I didn't hear you come in." 
 
 "Not at all! Sit, please." 
 
 Releasing his visitor's two arms, which he had lightly 
 pinioned at the elbows by way of embrace, M. Obenreizei 
 also sat, remarking, with a smile : " You are well? So 
 glad ! " and touching his elbows again. 
 
 "I don't know," said Vendale, after exchange of saluta- 
 tions, " whether you may yet have heard of me from your 
 house at Neuchatel? " 
 
 "Ah, yes!" 
 
 " In connection with Wilding and Co. ? " 
 
 " Ah, surely ! " 
 
 "Is it not odd that I should come to you, in London 
 here, as one of the Firm of Wilding and Co., to pay the 
 Firm's respects?" 
 
 "Not at all! What did I always observe when we were 
 on the mountains? We call them vast; but the world is so 
 little. So little is the world, that one cannot keep away 
 from persons. There are so few persons in the world, that 
 they continually cross and recross. So very little is the 
 world, that one cannot get rid of a person. Not, " touching 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 31 
 
 his elbows again, with an ingratiatory smile, "that one 
 would desire to get rid of you." 
 "I hope not, M. Obenreizer." 
 
 ' Please call me, in your country, Mr. I call myself so, 
 for I love your country. If I could be English ! But I am 
 born. And you? Though descended from so fine a fam- 
 ily, you have had the condescension to come into trade? 
 Stop though. Wines? Is it trade in England or profes- 
 sion? Not fine art?" 
 
 "Mr. Obenreizer," returned Vendale, somewhat out of 
 countenance, " I was but a silly young fellow, just of age, 
 when I first had the pleasure of travelling with you, and 
 when you and I and Mademoiselle your niece — who is 
 well? " 
 "Thank you. Who is well." 
 
 " — Shared some slight glacier dangers together. If, 
 with a boy's vanity, I rather vaunted my family, I hope I 
 did so as a kind of introduction of myself. It was very 
 weak, and in very bad taste; but perhaps you know our 
 English proverb, - Live and learn. ' " 
 
 " You make too much of it," returned the Swiss. "And 
 what the devil! After all, yours was a fine family." 
 
 George Vendale's laugh betrayed a little vexation as he 
 rejoined: "Well! I was strongly attached to my parents, 
 and when we first travelled together, Mr. Obenreizer, I was 
 in the first flush of coming into what my father and mother 
 left me. So I hope it may have been, after all, more 
 youthful openness of speech and heart than boastfulness." 
 " All openness of speech and heart ! No boastfulness ! " 
 cried Obenreizer. "You tax yourself too heavily. You 
 tax yourself, my faith ! as if you was your Government 
 taxing you! Besides, it commenced with me. I remem- 
 ber, that evening in the boat upon the lake, floating among 
 the reflections of the mountains and valleys, the crags and 
 pine woods, which were my earliest remembrance, I drew 
 a word-picture of my sordid childhood. Of our poor hut, 
 by the waterfall which my mother showed to travellers; of 
 the cowshed where I slept with the cow; of my idiot half- 
 brother always sitting at the door, or limping down the 
 Pass to beg; of my half-sister always spinning, and resting 
 her enormous goitre on a great stone; of my being a fam- 
 ished naked little wretch of two or three years, when they 
 were men and women with hard hands to beat me, I. the 
 
32 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 only child of my father's second marriage — if it even was 
 a marriage. What more natural than for you to compare 
 notes with me, and say, 'We are as one by age; at that 
 same time I sat upon my mother's lap in my father's 
 carriage, rolling through the rich English streets, all lux- 
 ury surrounding me, all squalid poverty kept far from me. 
 Such is my earliest remembrance as opposed to yours ! ' " 
 
 Mr. Obenreizer was a black-haired young man of a dark 
 complexion, through whose swarthy skin no red glow ever 
 shone. When colour would have come into another cheek, 
 a hardly discernible beat would come into his, as if the 
 machinery for bringing up the ardent blood were there, but 
 the machinery were dry. He was robustly made, well pro- 
 portioned, and had handsome features. Many would have 
 perceived that some surface change in him would have set 
 them more at their ease with him, without being able to 
 define what change. If his lips could have been made 
 much thicker, and his neck much thinner, they would have 
 found their want supplied. 
 
 But the great Obenreizer peculiarity was, that a certain 
 nameless film would come over his eyes — apparently by the 
 action of his own will — which would impenetrably veil, not 
 only from those tellers of tales, but from his face at large, 
 every expression save one of attention. It by no means 
 followed that his attention should be wholly given to the 
 person with whom he spoke, or even wholly bestowed on 
 present sounds and objects. Rather, it was a comprehen- 
 sive watchfulness of everything he had in his own mind, 
 and everything that he knew to be, or suspected to be, in 
 the minds of other men. 
 
 At this stage of the conversation, Mr. Obenreizer' s film 
 came over him. 
 
 "The object of my present visit," said Vendale, "is, I 
 need hardly say, to assure you of the friendliness of Wild- 
 ing and Co., and of the goodness of your credit with us, 
 and of our desire to be of service to you. We hope shortly 
 to offer you our hospitality. Things are not quite in train 
 with us yet, for my partner, Mr. Wilding, is reorganising 
 the domestic part of our establishment, and is interrupted 
 by some private affairs. You don't know Mr. Wilding, I 
 believe? " 
 
 Mr. Obenreizer did not. 
 
 " You must come together soon. He will be glad to have 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 33 
 
 made your acquaintance, and I think I may predict that 
 you will be glad to have made his. You have not been 
 long established in London, I suppose, Mr. Obenreizer? " 
 
 " It is only now that I have undertaken this agency." 
 
 "Mademoiselle your niece — is — not married? " 
 
 "Not married." 
 
 George Vendale glanced about him, as if for any tokens 
 of her. 
 
 " She has been in London? n 
 
 " She is in London." 
 
 "When, and where, might I have the honour of recalling 
 myself to her remembrance? " 
 
 Mr. Obenreizer, discarding his film and touching his visi- 
 tor's elbows as before, said lightly: "Come up-stairs." 
 
 Fluttered enough by the suddenness with which the in- 
 terview he had sought was coming upon him after all, 
 George Vendale followed up-stairs. In a room over the 
 chamber he had just quitted — a room also Swiss-appointed 
 ■ — a young lady sat near one of three windows, working at 
 an embroidery- frame; and an older lady sat with her face 
 turned close to another white-tiled stove (though it was 
 summer, and the stove was not lighted), cleaning gloves. 
 The young lady wore an unusual quantity of fair bright 
 hair, very prettily braided about a rather rounder white 
 forehead than the average English type, and so her face 
 might have been a shade — or say a light — rounder than the 
 average English face, and her figure slightly rounder than 
 the figure of the average English girl at nineteen. A re- 
 markable indication of freedom and grace of limb, in her 
 quiet attitude, and a wonderful purity and freshness of 
 colour in her dimpled face and bright grey eyes, seemed 
 fraught with mountain air. Switzerland, too, though the 
 general fashion of her dress was English, peeped out of the 
 fanciful bodice she wore, and lurked in the curious clocked 
 red stocking, and in its little silver-buckled shoe. As to 
 the elder lady, sitting with her feet apart upon the lower 
 brass ledge of the stove, supporting a lapful of gloves 
 while she cleaned one stretched on her left hand, she was a 
 true Swiss impersonation of another kind; from the breadth 
 of her cushion-like back, and the ponderosity of her re- 
 spectable legs (if the word be admissible), to the black vel- 
 vet band tied tightly round her throat for the repression of 
 a rising tendency to goitre; or, higher still, to her great 
 3 
 
34 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 copper-coloured gold earrings; or, higher still, to her head- 
 dress of black gauze stretched on wire. 
 
 "Miss Marguerite," said Obenreizer to the young lady, 
 " do you recollect this gentleman? " 
 
 "I think," she answered, rising from her seat, surprised 
 and a little confused: "it is Mr. Vendale?" - 
 
 "I think it is," said Obenreizer, dryly. "Permit me, 
 Mr. Vendale. Madame Dor." 
 
 The elder lady by the stove, with the glove stretched on 
 her left hand, like a glover's sign, half got up, half looked 
 over her broad shoulder, and wholly plumped down again 
 and rubbed away. 
 
 "Madame Dor," said Obenreizer, smiling, "is so kind as 
 to keep me free from stain or tear. Madame Dor humours 
 my weakness for being always neat, and devotes her time 
 to removing every one of my specks and spots." 
 
 Madame Dor, with the stretched glove in the air, and 
 her eyes closely scrutinising its palm, discovered a tough 
 spot in Mr. Obenreizer at that moment, and rubbed hard at 
 him. George Vendale took his seat by the embroidery- 
 frame (having first taken the fair right hand that his en- 
 trance had checked), and glanced at the gold cross that 
 dipped into the bodice, with something of the devotion of a 
 pilgrim who had reached his shrine at last. Obenreizer 
 stood in the middle of the room with his thumbs in his 
 waistcoat-pockets, and became filmy. 
 
 " He was saying down-stairs, Miss Obenreizer," observed 
 Vendale, " that the world is so small a place, that people 
 cannot escape one another. I have found it much too large 
 for me since I saw you last." 
 
 " Have you travelled so far, then? " she inquired. 
 
 " Not so far, for I have only gone back to Switzerland 
 each year; but I could have wished — and indeed I have 
 wished very often — that the little world did not afford such 
 opportunities for long escapes as it does. If it had been 
 less, I might have found my fellow-travellers sooner, you 
 know." 
 
 The pretty Marguerite coloured, and very slightly 
 glanced in the direction of Madame Dor. 
 
 " You find us at length, Mr. Vendale. Perhaps you may 
 lose us again." 
 
 " I trust not. The curious coincidence that has enabled 
 me to find you, encourages me to hope not." 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 35 
 
 "What is that coincidence, sir, if you please?" A 
 dainty little native touch in this turn of speech, and in its 
 tone, made it perfectly captivating, thought George Ven- 
 dale, when again he noticed an instantaneous glance tow- 
 ards Madame Dor. A caution seemed to be conveyed in 
 it, rapid flash though it was; so he quietly took heed of 
 Madame Dor from that time forth. 
 
 " It is that I happen to have become a partner in a house 
 of business in London, to which Mr. Obenreizer happens 
 this very day to be expressly recommended : and that, too, 
 by another house of business in Switzerland, in which (as 
 it turns out) we both have a commercial interest. He has 
 not told you? " 
 
 "Ah!" cried Obenreizer, striking in, filmless. "No. 
 I had not told Miss Marguerite. The world is so small 
 and so monotonous that a surprise is worth having in such 
 a little jog-trot place. It is as he tells you, Miss Marguer- 
 ite. He, of so fine a family, and so proudly bred, has con- 
 descended to trade. To trade! Like us poor peasants 
 who have risen from ditches ! " 
 
 A cloud crept over the fair brow, and she cast down her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Why, it is good for trade ! " pursued Obenreizer, en- 
 thusiastically. " It ennobles trade ! It is the misfortune 
 of trade, it is its vulgarity, that any low people — for ex- 
 ample, we poor peasants — may take to it, and climb by it. 
 See you, my dear Vendale ! " He spoke with great energy. 
 "The father of Miss Marguerite, my eldest half-brother, 
 more than two times your age or mine, if living now, 
 wandered without shoes, almost without rags, from that 
 wretched Pass — wandered — wandered — got to be fed with 
 the mules and dogs at an Inn in the main valley far away 
 — got to be Boy there — got to be Ostler — got to be Waiter 
 — got to be Cook — got to be Landlord. As Landlord, he 
 took me (could he take the idiot beggar his brother, or the 
 spinning monstrosity his sister?) to put as pupil to the fa- 
 mous watchmaker, his neighbour and friend. His wife 
 dies when Miss Marguerite is born. What is his will, and 
 what are his words, to me, when he dies, she being between 
 girl and woman? • All for Marguerite, except so much by 
 the year for you. You are young, but I make her your 
 ward, for you were of the obscurest and the poorest peas- 
 antry, and so was I, and so was her mother; we were ab- 
 
36 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 ject peasants all, and yon will remember it.' The thing is 
 equally true of most of my countrymen, now in trade in this 
 your London quarter of Soho. Peasants once; low-born 
 drudging Swiss peasants. Then how good and great for 
 trade : " here, from having been warm, he became playfully 
 jubilant, and touched the young wine-merchant's elbows 
 again with his light embrace : " to be exalted by gentlemen ! " 
 
 "I do not think so," said Marguerite, with a flushed 
 cheek, and a look away from the visitor, that was almost 
 defiant. "I think it is as much exalted by us peasants." 
 
 "Fie, fie, Miss Marguerite," said Obenreizer. "You 
 speak in proud England." 
 
 "I speak in proud earnest," she answered, quietly re- 
 suming her work, "and I am not English, but a Swiss 
 peasant's daughter." 
 
 There was a dismissal of the subject in her words, which 
 Vendale could not contend against. He only said in an 
 earnest manner, "I most heartily agree with you, Miss 
 Obenreizer, and I have already said so, as Mr. Obenreizer 
 will bear witness," which he by no means did, "in this 
 house." 
 
 Now, Vendale's eyes were quick eyes, and sharply watch- 
 ing Madame Dor by times, noted something in the broad 
 back view of that lady. There was considerable panto- 
 mimic expression in her glove-cleaning. It had been very 
 softly done when he spoke with Marguerite, or it had alto- 
 gether stopped, like the action of a listener. When Oben- 
 reizer' s peasant-speech came to an end, she rubbed most 
 vigorously, as if applauding it. And once or twice, as the 
 glove (which she always held before her, a little about her 
 face) turned in the air, or as this finger went down, or that 
 went up, he even fancied that it made some telegraphic com- 
 munication to Obenreizer : whose back was certainly never 
 turned upon it, though he did not seem at- all to heed it. 
 
 Vendale observed, too, that in Marguerite's dismissal of 
 the subject twice forced upon him to his misrepresentation, 
 there was an indignant treatment of her guardian which she 
 tried to check : as though she Avould have flamed out against 
 him, but for the influence of fear. He also observed — 
 though this was not much — that he never advanced within 
 the distance of her at which he first placed himself: as 
 though there were limits fixed between them. Neither had 
 he ever spoken of her without the prefix "Miss," though 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 37 
 
 whenever he uttered it, it was with the faintest trace of an 
 air of mockery. And now it occurred to Vendale for the 
 first time that something curious in the man which he had 
 never before been able to define, was definable as a certain 
 subtle essence of mockery that eluded touch or analysis. 
 He felt convinced that Marguerite was in some sort a pris- 
 oner as to her free will — though she held her own against 
 those two combined, by the force of her character, which 
 was nevertheless inadequate to her release. To feel con- 
 vinced of this, was not to feel less disposed to love her 
 than he had always been. In a word, he was desperately 
 in love with her, and thoroughly determined to pursue the 
 opportunity which had opened at last. 
 
 For the present, he merely touched upon the pleasure 
 that Wilding and Co. would soon have in entreating Miss 
 Obenreizer to honour their establishment with her presence 
 — a curious old place, though a bachelor house withal — and 
 so did not protract his visit beyond such a visit's ordinary 
 length. Going down-stairs, conducted by his host, he 
 found the Obenreizer counting-house at the back of the en- 
 trance-hall, and several shabby men in outlandish garments, 
 hanging about, whom Obenreizer put aside that he might 
 pass, with a few words in patois. 
 
 "Countrymen," he explained, as he attended Vendale to 
 the door. "Poor compatriots. Grateful and attached, 
 like dogs ! Good-bye. To meet again. So glad ! " 
 
 Two more light touches on his elbows dismissed him into 
 the street. 
 
 Sweet Marguerite at her frame, and Madame Dor's broad 
 back at her telegraph, floated before him to Cripple Corner. 
 On his arrival there, Wilding was closeted with Bintrey. 
 The cellar doors happening to be open, Vendale lighted a 
 candle in a cleft stick, and went doAvn for a cellarous stroll. 
 Graceful Marguerite floated before him faithfully, but Ma- 
 dame Dor's broad back remained outside. 
 
 The vaults were very spacious, and very old. There had 
 been a stone crypt down there, when bygones were not by- 
 gones; some said, part of a monkish refectory; some said, 
 of a chapel; some said, of a Pagan temple. It was all 
 one now. Let who would, make what he liked of a, crum- 
 bled pillar and a broken arch or so. Old time had made 
 what he liked of it, and was quite indifferent to contradic- 
 tion. 
 
38 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 The close air, the musty smell, and the thunderous rum- 
 bling in the streets above, as being out of the routine of or- 
 dinary life, went well enough with the picture of pretty 
 Marguerite holding her own against those two. So Ven- 
 dale went on until, at a turning in the vaults, he saw a 
 light like the light he carried. 
 
 " Oh ! You are here, are you, Joey? " 
 
 "Oughtn't it rather to go, 'Oh! You're here, are you, 
 Master George? ' For it's my business to be here. But it 
 ain't yourn." 
 
 "Don't grumble, Joey." 
 
 "Oh! 7 don't grumble," returned the Cellarman. "If 
 anything grumbles, it's what I've took in through the 
 pores; it ain't me. Have a care as something in you don't 
 begin a- grumbling, Master George. Stop here long enough 
 for the wapours to work, and they'll be at it." 
 
 His present occupation consisted of poking his head into 
 the bins, making measurements and mental calculations, 
 and entering them in a rhinoceros-hide-looking note-book, 
 like a piece of himself. 
 
 "They'll be at it," he resumed, laying the wooden rod 
 that he measured with, across two casks, entering his last 
 calculation, and straightening his back, " trust 'em ! And so 
 you've regularly come into the business, Master George? " 
 
 "Regularly. I hope you don't object, Joey?" 
 
 " I don't, bless you. But Wapours objects that you're 
 too young. You're both on you too young." 
 
 "We shall get over that objection day by day, Joey." 
 
 "Ay, Master George; but I shall day by day get over 
 the objection that I'm too old, and so I shan't be capable 
 of seeing much improvement in you." 
 
 The retort so tickled Joey Ladle that he grunted forth a 
 laugh and delivered it again, grunting forth another laugh 
 after the second edition of "improvement in you." 
 
 "But what's no laughing matter, Master George," he re- 
 sumed, straightening his back once more, "is, that Young 
 Master Wilding has gone and changed the luck. Mark my 
 words. He has changed the luck, and he'll find it out. I 
 ain't been down here all my life for nothing ! i" know, by 
 what /notices down here, when it's a going to rain, when 
 it's a going to hold up, when it's a going to blow, when it's 
 a going to be calm. 1 know, by what I notices down here, 
 when the luck's changed, quite as well" 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 39 
 
 "Has this growth on the roof anything to do with your 
 divination ! " asked Vendale, holding his light towards a 
 gloomy ragged growth of dark fungus, pendent from the 
 arches with a very disagreeable and repellent effect. " We 
 are famous for this growth in this vault, aren't we? " 
 
 " We are, Master George," replied Joey Ladle, moving 
 a step or two away, "and if you'll be advised by me, you'll 
 let it alone." 
 
 Taking up the rod just now laid across the two casks, 
 and faintly moving the languid fungus with it, Vendale 
 asked, " Ay, indeed? Why so? " 
 
 " Why, not so much because it rises from the casks of 
 wine, and may leave you to judge what sort of stuff a Cel- 
 larman takes into himself when he walks in the same all 
 the days of his life, nor yet so much because at a stage of 
 its growth it's maggots, and you'll fetch 'em down upon 
 you," returned Joey Ladle, still keeping away, "as for an- 
 other reason, Master George." 
 
 " What other reason? " 
 
 "(I wouldn't keep on touchin' it, if I was you, sir.) 
 I'll tell you if you'll come out of the place. First, take a 
 look at its colour, Master George." 
 
 "I am doing so." 
 
 "Done, sir. Now, come out of the place." 
 
 He moved away with his light, and Vendale followed 
 with his. When "Vendale came up with him, and they were 
 going back together, Vendale, eying him as they walked 
 through the arches, said : " Well, Joey? The colour." 
 
 " Is it like clotted blood, Master George? " 
 
 "Like enough, perhaps." 
 
 " More than enough, I think," muttered Joey Ladle, shak- 
 ing his head solemnly. 
 
 "Well, say it is like; say it is exactly like. What 
 then? " 
 
 " Master George, they do say " 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "How should I know who?" rejoined the' Cellarman, 
 apparently much exasperated by the unreasonable nature of 
 the question. " Them ! Them as says pretty well every- 
 thing, you know. How should I know who They are, if 
 you don't? " 
 
 "True. Goon." 
 
 " They do say that the man that gets by any accident a 
 
40 "NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 piece of that dark growth right upon his breast, will, for 
 sure and certain, die by Murder." 
 
 As Vendale laughingly stopped to meet the Cellarman's 
 eyes, which he had fastened on his light while dreamily 
 saying those words, he suddenly became conscious of being 
 struck upon his own breast by a heavy hand. Instantly 
 following with his eyes the action of the hand that struck 
 him — which was his companion's — he saw that it had 
 beaten off his breast a web or clot of the fungus, even then 
 floating to the ground. 
 
 For a moment he turned upon the Cellarman almost as 
 scared a look as the Cellarman turned upon him. But in 
 another moment they had reached the daylight at the foot 
 of the cellar-steps, and before he cheerfully sprang up 
 them, he blew out his candle and the superstition together. 
 
 EXIT WILDING. 
 
 On the morning of the next day, Wilding went out alone, 
 after leaving a message with his clerk. " If Mr. Vendale 
 should ask for me," he said, " or if Mr. Bin trey should call, 
 tell them I am gone to the Foundling." All that his part- 
 ner had said to him, all that his lawyer, following on the 
 same side, could urge, had left him persisting unshaken in 
 his own point of view. To find the lost man, whose place 
 he had usurped, was now the paramount interest of his life, 
 and to inquire at the Foundling was plainly to take the first 
 step in the direction of discovery. To the Foundling, ac- 
 cordingly, the wine-merchant now went. 
 
 The once familiar aspect of the building was altered to 
 him, as the look of the portrait over the chimney-piece was 
 altered to him. His one dearest association with the place 
 which had sheltered his childhood had been broken away 
 from it for ever. A strange reluctance possessed him, 
 when he stated his business at the door. His heart ached 
 as he sat alone in the waiting-room while the Treasurer of 
 the institution was being sent for to see him. When the 
 interview began, it was only by a painful effort that he 
 could compose himself sufficiently to mention the nature of 
 his errand. 
 
 The Treasurer listened with a face which promised all 
 needful attention, and promised nothing more. 
 
 "We are obliged to be cautious," he said, when it came 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 41 
 
 to his turn to speak, " about all inquiries which are made 
 by strangers." 
 
 "You can hardly consider me a stranger," answered 
 Wilding, simply. " I was one of your poor lost children 
 here, in the bygone time." 
 
 The Treasurer politely rejoined that this circumstance 
 inspired him with a special interest in his visitor. But he 
 pressed, nevertheless, for that visitor's motive in making 
 his inquiry. Without further preface, Wilding told him 
 his motive, suppressing nothing. 
 
 The Treasurer rose, and led the way into the room in 
 which the registers of the institution were kept. " All the 
 information which our books can give is heartily at your 
 service," he said. "After the time that has elapsed, I am 
 afraid it is the only information we have to offer you." 
 
 The books were consulted, and the entry was found, ex- 
 pressed as follows : 
 
 "3d March, 1836. Adopted, and removed from the 
 Foundling Hospital, a male infant, named Walter Wilding. 
 Name and condition of the person adopting the child — Mrs. 
 Jane Ann Miller, widow. Address — Lime-Tree Lodge, 
 Groom bridge Wells. References — the Reverend John 
 Harker, Groombridge Wells; and Messrs. Giles, Jeremie, 
 and Giles, bankers, Lombard-street." 
 
 " Is that all? " asked the wine-merchant. " Had you no 
 after-communication with Mrs. Miller? " 
 
 " None — : or some reference to it must have appeared in 
 this book." 
 
 " May I take a copy of the entry? " 
 
 "Certainly! You are a little agitated. Let me make 
 the copy for you." 
 
 "My only chance, I suppose," said Wilding, looking 
 sadly at the copy, "is to inquire at Mrs. Miller's residence, 
 and to try if her references can help me? " 
 
 "That is the only chance I see at present," answered the 
 Treasurer. " I heartily wish I could have been of some 
 further assistance to you." 
 
 With those farewell words to comfort him, Wilding set 
 forth on the journey of investigation which began from the 
 Foundling doors. The first stage to make for, was plainly 
 the house of business of the bankers in Lombard-street. 
 Two of the partners in the firm were inaccessible to chance- 
 visitors when he asked for them. The third, after raising 
 
42 NO THOROUGHFARE, 
 
 certain inevitable difficulties, consented to let a clerk ex- 
 amine the Ledger marked with the initial letter "M." 
 The account of Mrs. Miller, widow, of Groombridge Wells, 
 was found. Two long lines, in faded ink, were drawn 
 across it; and at the bottom of the page there appeared this 
 note: " Account closed, September 30th, 1837." 
 
 So the first stage of the journey was reached — and so it 
 ended in No Thoroughfare ! After sending a note to Crip- 
 ple Corner to inform his partner that his absence might be 
 prolonged for some hours, Wilding took his place in the 
 train, and started for the second stage on the journey — 
 Mrs. Miller's residence at Groombridge Wells. 
 
 Mothers and children travelled with him; mothers and 
 children met each other at the station; mothers and chil- 
 dren were in the shops when he entered them to inquire for 
 Lime-Tree Lodge. Everywhere, the nearest and dearest of 
 human relations showed itself happily in the happy light 
 of day. Everywhere, he was reminded of the treasured 
 delusion from which he had been awakened so cruelly — of 
 the lost memory which had passed from him like a reflec- 
 tion from a glass. 
 
 Inquiring here, inquiring there, he could hear of no such 
 place as Lime-Tree Lodge. Passing a house-agent's office, 
 he went in wearily, and put the question for the last time. 
 The house-agent pointed across the street to a dreary man- 
 sion of many windows, which might have been a manu- 
 factory, but which was an hotel. "That's where Lime- 
 Tree Lodge stood, sir," said the man, "ten years ago." 
 
 The second stage reached, and No Thoroughfare again! 
 
 But one chance was left. The clerical reference, Mr. 
 Harker, still remained to be found. Customers coming in 
 at the moment to occupy the house-agent's attention, Wild- 
 ing went down the street, and, entering a bookseller's shop, 
 asked if he could be informed of the Reverend John Har- 
 ker's present address. 
 
 The bookseller looked unaffectedly shocked and aston- 
 ished, and made no answer. 
 
 Wilding repeated his question. 
 
 The bookseller took up from his counter a prim little 
 volume in a binding of sober grey. He handed it to his 
 visitor, open at the title-page. Wilding read : 
 
 " The martyrdom of the Reverend John Harker in New 
 Zealand. Related by a former member of his flock." 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 43 
 
 Wilding put the book down on the counter. " I beg your 
 pardon," he said, thinking a little, perhaps, of his own 
 present martyrdom while he spoke. The silent bookseller 
 acknowledged the apology by a bow. Wilding went out. 
 
 Third and last stage, and No Thoroughfare for the third 
 and last time. 
 
 There was nothing more to be done; there was abso- 
 lutely no choice but to go back to London, defeated at all 
 points. From time to time on the return journey, the 
 wine-merchant looked at his copy of the entry in the 
 Foundling Register. There is one among the many forms 
 of despair — perhaps the most pitiable of all — which per- 
 sists in disguising itself as Hope. Wilding checked him- 
 self in the act of throwing the useless morsel of paper out 
 of the carriage window. "It may lead to something yet," 
 he thought. " While I live, I won't part with it. When. 
 I die, my executors shall find it sealed up with my will." 
 
 Now, the mention of his will set the good wine-merchant 
 on a new track of thought, without diverting his mind from 
 its engrossing subject. He must make his will immedi- 
 ately. 
 
 The application of the phrase, No Thoroughfare, to the 
 case had originated with Mr. Bintrey. In their first long 
 conference following the discovery, that sagacious personage 
 had a hundred times repeated, with an obstructive shake of 
 the head, "No Thoroughfare, sir, No Thoroughfare. My 
 belief is that there is no way out of this at this time of 
 day, and my advice is, make yourself comfortable where you 
 are." 
 
 In the course of the protracted consultation, a magnum of 
 the forty-five year old port wine had been produced for the 
 wetting of Mr. Bintrey' s legal whistle; but the more clearly 
 he saw his way through the wine, the more emphatically he 
 did not see his way through the case; repeating as often as 
 he set his glass down empty, " Mr. Wilding, No Thorough- 
 fare. Best and be thankful." 
 
 It is certain that the honest wine-merchant's anxiety to 
 make a will originated in profound conscientiousness; 
 though it is possible (and quite consistent with his recti- 
 tude) that he may unconsciously have derived some feeling 
 of relief from the prospect of delegating his own difficulty 
 to two other men who were to come after him. Be that as 
 it may, he pursued his new track of thought with great 
 
44 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 ardour, and lost no time in begging George Vendale and 
 Mr. Bin trey to meet him in Cripple Corner and share his 
 confidence. 
 
 "Being all three assembled with closed doors," said Mr. 
 Bintrey, addressing the new partner on the occasion, " I 
 wish to observe, before onr friend (and my client) entrusts 
 us with his further views, that I have endorsed what I un- 
 derstand from him to have been your advice, Mr. Vendale, 
 and what would be the advice of every sensible man. I 
 have told him that he positively must keep his secret. I 
 have spoken with Mrs. Goldstraw, both in his presence 
 and in his absence; and if anybody is to be trusted (which 
 is a very large IF), I think she is to be trusted to that ex- 
 tent. I have pointed out to our friend (and my client), 
 that to set on foot random inquiries would not only be to 
 raise the Devil, in the likeness of all the swindlers in the 
 kingdom, but would also be to waste the estate. Now, you 
 see, Mr. Vendale, our friend (and my client) does not de- 
 sire to waste the estate, but, on the contrary, desires to 
 husband it for what he considers — but I can't say I do — 
 the rightful owner, if such rightful owner should ever be 
 found. I am very much mistaken if he ever will be, but 
 never mind that. Mr. Wilding and I are, at least, agreed 
 that the estate is not to be wasted. Now, I have yielded 
 to Mr. Wilding's desire to keep an advertisement at inter- 
 vals flowing through the newspapers, cautiously inviting 
 any person who may know anything about that adopted in- 
 fant, taken from the Foundling Hospital, to come to my 
 office; and I have pledged myself that such advertisement 
 shall regularly appear. I have gathered from our friend 
 (and my client) that I meet you here to-day to take his in- 
 structions, not to give him advice. I am prepared to receive 
 his instructions, and to respect his wishes; but you will 
 please observe that this does not imply my approval of 
 either as a matter of professional opinion." 
 
 Thus Mr. Bintrey; talking quite as much at Wilding as 
 to Vendale. And yet, in spite of his care for his client, he 
 was so amused by his client's Quixotic conduct, as to eye 
 him from time to time with twinkling eyes, ii? the light of 
 a highly comical curiosity. 
 
 "Nothing," observed Wilding, "can be clearer. I only 
 wish my head were as clear as yours, Mr. Bintrey." 
 
 "If you feel that singing in it coming on," hinted the 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 45 
 
 lawyer, with an alarmed glance, "put it off. — I mean the 
 interview." 
 
 "Not at all, I thank you," said Wilding. " What was 1 
 going to " 
 
 "Don't excite yourself, Mr. Wilding," urged the lawyer. 
 
 " No; I wasn't going to," said the wine-merchant. " Mr. 
 Bintrey and George Vendale, would you have any hesita- 
 tion or objection to become my joint trustees and executors, 
 or can you at once consent? " 
 
 "/consent," replied George Vendale, readily. 
 
 " 1 consent," said Bintrey, not so readily. 
 
 " Thank you both. Mr. Bintrey, my instructions for my 
 last will and testament are short and plain. Perhaps you 
 will now have the goodness to take them down. I leave 
 the whole of my real and personal estate, without any ex- 
 ception or reservation whatsoever, to you two, my joint 
 trustees and executors, in trust to pay over the whole to 
 the true Walter Wilding, if he shall be found and identi- 
 fied within two years after the day of my death. Failing 
 that, in trust to you two to pay over the whole as a bene- 
 faction and legacy to the Foundling Hospital." 
 
 "Those are all your instructions, are they, Mr. Wild- 
 ing?" demanded Bintrey, after a blank silence, during 
 which nobody had looked at anybody. 
 
 "The whole." 
 
 " And as to those instructions, you have absolutely made 
 up your mind, Mr. Wilding? " 
 
 "Absolutely, decidedly, finally." 
 
 "It only remains," said the lawyer, with one shrug of 
 his shoulders, " to get them into technical and binding 
 form, and to execute and attest. Now, does that press? Is 
 there any hurry about it? You are not going to die yet, 
 sir." 
 
 "Mr. Bintrey," answered Wilding, gravely, "when I 
 am going to die is within other knowledge than yours or 
 mine. I shall be glad to have this matter off my mind, if 
 you please." 
 
 "We are lawyer and client again," rejoined Bintrey, 
 who, for the nonce, had become almost sympathetic. " If 
 this day week — here, at the same hour — will suit Mr. Ven- 
 dale and yourself, I will enter in my Diary that I attend 
 you accordingly." 
 
 The appointment was made, and in due sequence kept. 
 
46 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 The will was formally signed, sealed, delivered, and wit- 
 nessed, and was carried off by Mr. Bintrey for safe storage 
 among the papers of his clients, ranged in their respective 
 iron boxes, with their respective owners' names outside, xm 
 iron tiers in his consulting-room, as if that legal sanctuary 
 were a condensed Family Vault of Clients. 
 
 With more heart than he had lately had for former sub- 
 jects of interest, Wilding then set about completing his 
 patriarchal establishment, being much assisted not only by 
 Mrs. Goldstraw but by Vendale too : who, perhaps, had in 
 his mind the giving of an Obenreizer dinner as soon as pos- 
 sible. Anyhow, the establishment being reported in sound 
 working order, the Obenreizers, Guardian and Ward, were 
 asked to dinner, and Madame Dor was included in the in- 
 vitation. If Vendale had been over head and ears in love 
 before — a phrase not to be taken as implying the faintest 
 doubt about it — this dinner plunged him down in love ten 
 thousand fathoms deep. Yet, for the life of him, he could 
 not get one word alone with charming Marguerite. So 
 surely as a blessed moment seemed to come, Obenreizer, in 
 his filmy state, would stand at Vendale' s elbow, or the 
 broad back of Madame Dor would appear before his eyes. 
 That speechless matron was never seen in a front view, 
 from the moment of her arrival to that of her departure — 
 except at dinner. And from the instant of her retirement 
 to the drawing-room, after a hearty participation in that 
 meal, she turned her face to the wall again. 
 
 Yet, through four or five delightful though distracting 
 hours, Marguerite was to be seen, Marguerite was to be 
 heard, Marguerite was to be occasionally touched. When 
 they made the round of the old dark cellars, Vendale led 
 her by the hand; when she sang to hirn in the lighted room 
 at night, Vendale, standing by her, held her relinquished 
 gloves, and would have bartered against them every drop 
 of the forty-five year old, though it had been forty-five 
 times forty-five years old, and its net price forty-five times 
 forty-five pounds per dozen. And still, when she was 
 gone, and a great gap of an extinguisher was clapped on 
 Cripple Corner, he tormented himself by wondering, Did 
 she think that he admired her! Did she think that he 
 adored her ! Did she suspect that she had won him, heart 
 and soul! Did she care to think at all about it! And so, 
 Did she and Didn't she, up and down the gamut, and above 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 47 
 
 the line and below the line, dear, dear ! Poor restless heart 
 of humanity ! To think that the men who were mummies 
 thousands of years ago, did the same, and ever found the 
 secret how to be quiet after it ! 
 
 "What do you think, George," Wilding asked him next 
 day, "of Mr. Obenreizer? (I won't ask you what you 
 think of Miss Obenreizer.)" 
 
 "I don't know," said Vendale, "and I never did know, 
 what to think of him." 
 
 "He is well informed and clever," said Wilding. 
 
 "Certainly clever." 
 
 "A good musician." (He had played very well, and 
 sung very well, overnight.) 
 
 "Unquestionably a good musician." 
 
 "And talks well." 
 
 "Yes," said George Vendale, ruminating, "and talks 
 well. Do you know, Wilding, it oddly occurs to me, as I 
 think about him, that he doesn't keep silence well!" 
 
 "How do you mean? He is not obtrusively talkative." 
 
 "No, and I don't mean that. But when he is silent, you 
 can hardly help vaguely, though perhaps most unjustly, 
 mistrusting him. Take people whom you know and like. 
 Take any one you know and like." 
 
 "Soon done, my good fellow," said Wilding. "I take 
 you." 
 
 "I didn't bargain for that, or foresee it," returned Ven- 
 dale, laughing. "However, take me. Reflect for a mo- 
 ment. Is your approving knowledge of my interesting face 
 mainly founded (however various the momentary expres- 
 sions it may include) on my face when I am silent? " 
 
 " I think it is," said Wilding. 
 
 " I think so too. Now, you see, when Obenreizer speaks 
 — in other words, when he is allowed to explain himself 
 away — he comes out right enough; but when he has not 
 the opportunity of explaining himself away, he comes out 
 rather wrong. Therefore it is, that I say he does not keep 
 silence well. And passing hastily in review such faces as 
 I know, and don't trust, I am inclined to think, now I give 
 my mind to it, that none of them keep silence well." 
 
 This proposition in Physiognomy being new to Wilding, 
 he was at first slow to admit it, until asking himself the 
 question whether Mrs. Goldstraw kept silence well, and re- 
 membering that her face in repose decidedly invited trust- 
 
48 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 fulness, he was as glad as men usually are to believe wlaat 
 they desire to believe. 
 
 But, as he was very slow to regain his spirits or his 
 health, his partner, as another means of setting him up — 
 and perhaps also with contingent Obenreizer views — re- 
 minded him of those musical schemes of his in connection 
 with his family, and how a singing-class was to be formed 
 in the house, and a Choir in a neighbouring church. The 
 class was established speedily, and two or three of the peo- 
 ple having already some musical knowledge, and singing 
 tolerably, the Choir soon followed. The latter was led 
 and chiefly taught, by Wilding himself : who had hopes of 
 converting his dependents into so many Foundlings, in re- 
 spect of their capacity to sing sacred choruses. 
 
 Now, the Obenreizers being skilled musicians it was eas- 
 ily brought to pass that they should be asked to join these 
 musical unions. Guardian and Ward consenting, or Guar- 
 dian consenting for both, it was necessarily brought to pass 
 that Vend ale's life became a life of absolute thraldom 
 and enchantment. For, in the mouldy Christopher- Wren 
 church on Sundays, with its dearly beloved brethren assem- 
 bled and met together, five-and-twenty strong, was not that 
 Her voice that shot like light into the darkest places, thrill- 
 ing the walls and pillars as though they were pieces of his 
 heart! What time, too, Madame Dor in a corner of the 
 high pew, turning her back upon everybody and every- 
 thing, could not fail to be Bitualistically right at some mo- 
 ment of the service; like the man whom the doctors recom- 
 mended to get drunk once a month, and who, that he might 
 not overlook it, got drunk every day. 
 
 But, even those seraphic Sundays were surpassed by the 
 Wednesday concerts established for the patriarchal family. 
 At those concerts she would sit down to the piano and sing 
 them, in her own tongue, songs of her own land, songs call- 
 ing from the mountain-tops to Vendale, " Bise above the 
 grovelling level country; come far away from the crowd; 
 pursue me as I mount higher, higher, higher, melting into 
 the azure distance; rise to my supremest height of all, and 
 love me here ! " Then would the pretty bodice, the clocked 
 stocking, and the silver-buckled shoe be, like the broad 
 forehead and the bright eyes, fraught with the spring of a 
 very chamois, until the strain was over. 
 
 Not even over Vendale himself did these songs of hers 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 49 
 
 cast a more potent spell than over Joey Ladle in his differ- 
 ent way. Steadily refusing to muddle the harmony by tak- 
 ing any share in it, and evincing the supremest contempt 
 for scales and such like rudiments of music — which, in- 
 deed, seldom captivate mere listeners — Joey did at first 
 give up the whole business for a bad job, and the whole of 
 the performers for a set of howling Dervishes. But, de- 
 scrying traces of unmuddled harmony in a part-song one 
 day, he gave his two under-cellarmen faint hopes of get- 
 ting on towards something in course of time. An anthem 
 of Handel's led to further encouragement from him: 
 though he objected that that great musician must have 
 been down in some of them foreign cellars pretty much, for 
 to go and say the same thing so many times over; which, 
 took it in how you might, he considered a certain sign of 
 your having took it in somehow. On a third occasion, the 
 public appearance of Mr. Jarvis with a flute, and of an odd 
 man with a violin, and the performance of a duet by the 
 two, did so astonish him that, solely of his own impulse 
 and motion, he became inspired with the words, " Ann 
 Koar ! " repeatedly pronouncing them as if calling in a 
 familiar manner for some lady who had distinguished her- 
 self in the orchestra. But this was his final testimony to 
 the merits of his mates, for, the instrumental duet being 
 performed at the first Wednesday concert, and being pres- 
 ently followed by the voice of Marguerite Obenreizer, he 
 sat with his mouth wide open, entranced, until she had fin- 
 ished; when, rising in his place with much solemnity, and 
 prefacing what he was about to say with a bow that spe- 
 cially included Mr. Wilding in it, he delivered himself of 
 the gratifying sentiment: "Arter that, ye may all on ye 
 get to bed ! " And ever afterwards declined to render hom- 
 age in any other words to the musical powers of the family. 
 
 Thus began a separate personal acquaintance between 
 Marguerite Obenreizer and Joey Ladle. She laughed so 
 heartily at his compliment, and yet was so abashed by it, 
 that Joey made bold to say to her, after the concert was 
 over, he hoped he wasn't so muddled in his head as to have 
 took a liberty? She made him a gracious reply, and Joey 
 ducked in return. 
 
 "You'll change the luck time about, Miss," said Joey, 
 ducking again. "It's such as you in the place that can 
 bring round the luck of the place." 
 4 
 
50 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 " Can I? Sound the luck? " she answered, in her pretty 
 English, and with a pretty wonder. " I fear I do not un- 
 derstand. I am so stupid." 
 
 "Young Master Wilding, Miss," Joey explained confi- 
 dentially, though not much to her enlightenment, " changed 
 the luck, afore he took in young Master George. So I say, 
 and so they'll find. Lord ! Only come into the place and 
 sing over the luck a few times, Miss, and it won't be able 
 to help itself ! " 
 
 With this, and with a whole brood of ducks, Joey backed 
 out of the presence. But Joey being a privileged person, 
 and even an involuntary conquest being pleasant to youth 
 and beauty, Marguerite merrily looked out for him next 
 time. 
 
 "Where is my Mr. Joey, please? " she asked of Vendale. 
 
 So Joey was produced and shaken hands with, and that 
 became an Institution. 
 
 Another Institution arose in thiswise. Joey was a little 
 hard of hearing. He himself said it was " Wapours," and 
 perhaps it might have been; but whatever the cause of the 
 effect, there the effect was, upon him. On this first occa- 
 sion he had been seen to sidle along the wall, with his left 
 hand to his left ear, until he had sidled himself into a seat 
 pretty near the singer, in which place and position he had 
 remained, until addressing to his friends the amateurs the 
 compliment before mentioned. It was observed on the fol- 
 lowing Wednesday that Joey's action as a Pecking Machine 
 was impaired at dinner, and it was rumoured about the 
 table that this was explainable by his high-strung expecta- 
 tions of Miss Obenreizer's singing, and his fears of not get- 
 ting a place where he could hear every note and syllable. 
 The rumour reaching Wilding's ears, he in his good nature 
 called Joey to the front at night before Marguerite began. 
 Thus the Institution came into being that on succeeding 
 nights, Marguerite, running her hands over the keys before 
 singing, always said to Vendale, " Where is my Mr. Joey, 
 please? " and that Vendale always brought him forth, and 
 stationed him near by. That he should then, when all 
 eyes were upon him, express in his face the utmost con- 
 tempt for the exertions of his friends and confidence in 
 Marguerite alone, whom he would stand contemplating, not 
 unlike the rhinoceros out of the spelling-book, tamed and 
 on his hind legs, was a part of the Institution. Also that 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 51 
 
 when he remained after the singing in his most ecstatic 
 state, some bold spirit from the back should say, " What 
 do you think of it, Joey? " and he should be goaded to re- 
 ply, as having that instant conceived the retort, "Arter 
 that ye may all on ye get to bed ! •■ These were other parts 
 of the Institution. 
 
 But the simple pleasures and small jests of Cripple Cor- 
 ner were .not destined to have a long life. Underlying 
 them from the first was a serious matter, which every mem- 
 ber of the patriarchal family knew of, but which, by tacit 
 agreement, all forbore to speak of. Mr. Wilding's health 
 was in a bad way. 
 
 He might have overcome the shock he had sustained in 
 the one great affection of his life, or he might have over- 
 come his consciousness of being in the enjoyment of an- 
 other man's property; but the two together were too much 
 for him. A man haunted by twin ghosts, he became 
 deeply depressed. The inseparable spectres sat at the 
 board with him, ate from his platter, drank from his cup, 
 and stood by his bedside at night. When he recalled his 
 supposed mother's love, he felt as though he had stolen it. 
 When he rallied a little under the respect and attachment 
 of his dependents, he felt as though he were even fraudu- 
 lent in making them happy, for that should have been the 
 unknown man's duty and gratification. 
 
 Gradually, under the pressure of his brooding mind, his 
 body stooped, his step lost its elasticity, his eyes were sel- 
 dom lifted from the ground. He knew he could not help 
 the deplorable mistake that had been made, but he knew 
 he could not mend it; for the days and weeks went by, and 
 no one claimed his name or his possessions. And now there 
 began to creep over him a cloudy consciousness of often re- 
 curring confusion in his head. He would unaccountably 
 lose, sometimes whole hours, sometimes a whole day and 
 night. Once, his remembrance stopped as he sat at the 
 head of the dinner-table, and was blank until daybreak. 
 Another time, it stopped as he was beating time to their 
 singing, and went on again when he and his partner were 
 walking in the courtyard by the light of the moon, half the 
 night later. He asked Vendale (always full of consider- 
 ation, work, and help) how this was? Vendale only re- 
 plied, "You have not been quite well; that's all." He 
 looked for explanation into the faces of his people. But 
 
52 ISO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 they would put it off with, " Glad to see you looking so 
 much better, sir; " or "Hope you're doing nicely now, sir;" 
 in which was no information at all. 
 
 At length, when the partnership was but five months old, 
 Walter Wilding took to his bed, and his housekeeper be- 
 came his nurse. 
 
 " Lying here, perhaps you will not mind ray calling you 
 Sally, Mrs. Goldstraw? " said the poor wine-merchant. 
 
 " It sounds more natural to me, sir, than any other name, 
 and I like it better." 
 
 " Thank you, Sally. I think, Sally, I must of late have 
 been subject to fits. Is that so, Sally? Don't mind telling 
 me now." 
 
 "It has happened, sir." 
 
 " Ah ! That is the explanation ! " he quietly remarked. 
 "Mr. Obenreizer, Sally, talks of the world being so small 
 that it is not strange how often the same people come to- 
 gether, and come together, at various places, and in various 
 stages of life. But it does seem strange, Sally, that I 
 should, as I may say, come round to the Foundling to die." 
 
 He extended his hand to her, and she gently took it. 
 
 "You are not going to die, dear Mr. Wilding." 
 
 " So Mr. Bintrey said, but I think he was wrong. The 
 old child-feeling is coming back upon me, Sally. The old 
 hush and rest, as I used to fall asleep." 
 
 After an interval he said, in a placid voice, " Please kiss 
 me, Nurse," and, it was evident, believed himself to be 
 lying in the old Dormitory. 
 
 As she had been used to bend over the fatherless and 
 motherless children, Sally bent over the fatherless and 
 motherless man, and put her lips to his forehead, murmur- 
 ing: 
 
 " God bless you ! " 
 
 " God bless you ! " he replied, in the same tone. 
 
 After another interval, he opened his eyes in his own 
 character, and said: "Don't move me, Sally, because of 
 what I am going to say; I lie quite easily. I think my 
 time is come. I don't know how it may appear to you, 
 Sally, but——" 
 
 Insensibility fell upon him for a few minutes ; he emerged 
 from it once more. 
 
 " — I don't know how it may appear to you, Sally, but 
 so it appears to ine." 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 53 
 
 When he had thus conscientiously finished his favourite 
 sentence, his time came, and he died. 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 VENDALE MAKES LOVE. 
 
 The summer and the autumn had passed. Christmas 
 and the New Year were at hand. 
 
 As executors honestly bent on performing their duty 
 towards the dead, Vendale and Bin trey had held more than 
 one anxious consultation on the subject of Wilding's will. 
 The lawyer had declared, from the first, that it was simply 
 impossible to take any useful action in the matter at all. 
 The only obvious inquiries to make, in relation to the lost 
 man, had been made already by Wilding himself; with 
 this result, that time and death together had not left a 
 trace of him discoverable. To advertise for the claimant 
 to the property, it would be necessary to mention particu- 
 lars — a course of proceeding which would invite half the 
 impostors in England to present themselves in the charac- 
 ter of the true Walter Wilding. " If we find a chance of 
 tracing the lost man, we will take it. If we don't, let us 
 meet for another consultation on the first anniversary of 
 Wilding's death." So Bintrey advised. And so, with the 
 most earnest desire to fulfil his dead friend's wishes, Ven- 
 dale was fain to let the matter rest for the present. 
 
 Turning from his interest in the past to his interest in 
 the future, Vendale still found himself confronting a 
 doubtful prospect. Months on months had passed since 
 his first visit to Soho-square — and through all that time, 
 the one language in which he had told Marguerite that he 
 loved her was the language of the eyes, assisted, at conve- 
 nient opportunities, by the language of the hand. 
 
 What was the obstacle in his way? The one immovable 
 obstacle which had been in his way from the first. No 
 matter how fairly the opportunities looked, Vendale's 
 efforts to speak with Marguerite alone, ended invariably in 
 one and the same result. Under the most accidental cir- 
 cumstances, in the most innocent manner possible, Oben- 
 reizer was always in the way. 
 
 With the last days of the old year came an unexpected 
 chance of spending an evening with Marguerite, which 
 Vendale resolved should be a chance of speaking privately 
 
54 NO THOROUGHFARE 
 
 to her as well. A cordial note from Obenreizer invited 
 him, on New Year's Day, to a little family dinner in Soho- 
 square. "We shall be only four," the note said. "We 
 shall be only two," Vendale determined, "before the even- 
 ing is out ! " 
 
 New Year's Day among the English, is associated with 
 the giving and receiving of dinners, and with nothing 
 more. New Year's Day, among the foreigners, is the 
 grand opportunity of the year for the giving and receiving 
 of presents. It is occasionally possible to acclimatise a 
 foreign custom. In this instance Vendale felt no hesita- 
 tion about making the attempt. His one difficulty was to 
 decide what his New Year's gift to Marguerite should be. 
 The defensive pride of the peasant's daughter— morbidly 
 sensitive to the inequality between her social position and 
 his — would be secretly roused against him if he ventured 
 on a rich offering. A gift, which a poor man's purse might 
 purchase, was the one gift that could be trusted to find its 
 way to her heart, for the giver's sake. Stoutly resisting 
 temptation, in the form of diamonds and rubies, Vendale 
 bought a brooch of the filigree- work of Genoa — the sim- 
 plest and most unpretending ornament that he could find 
 in the jeweler's shop. 
 
 He slipped his gift into Marguerite's hand as she held it 
 out to welcome him on the day of the dinner. 
 
 " This is your first New Year's Day in England," he said. 
 "Will you let me help to make it like a New Year's Day 
 at home? " 
 
 She thanked him, a little constrainedly, as she looked at 
 the jeweller's box, uncertain what it might contain. Open- 
 ing the box, and discovering the studiously simple form 
 under which Vendale' s little keepsake offered itself to her, 
 she penetrated his motive on the spot. Her face turned on 
 him brightly, with a look which said, "I own you have 
 pleased and nattered me." Never had she been so charm- 
 ing, in Vendale's eyes, as she was at that moment. Her 
 winter dress — a petticoat of dark silk, with a bodice of 
 black velvet rising to her neck, and enclosing it softly in a 
 little circle of swansdown — heightened, by all the force of 
 contrast, the dazzling fairness of her hair and her complex- 
 ion. It was only when she turned aside from him to the 
 glass, and, taking out the brooch that she wore, put his 
 New Year's gift in its place, that Vendale's attention wan- 
 
NO THOROUGHFAKE. 55 
 
 dered far enough, away from her to discover the presence of 
 other persons in the room. He now became conscious that 
 the hands of Obenreizer were affectionately in possession of 
 his elbows. He now heard the voice of Obenreizer thank- 
 ing him for his attention to Marguerite, with the faintest 
 possible ring of mockery in its tone. ("Such a simple 
 present, dear sir ! and showing such nice tact ! " ) He now 
 discovered, for the first time, that there was one other 
 guest, and but one, besides himself, whom Obenreizer pre- 
 sented as a compatriot and friend. The friend's face was 
 mouldy, and the friend's figure was fat. His age was sug- 
 gestive of the autumnal period of human life. In the course 
 of the evening he developed two extraordinary capacities. 
 One was a capacity for silence; the other was a capacity 
 for emptying bottles. 
 
 Madame Dor was not in the room. Neither was there 
 any visible place reserved for her when they sat down to 
 table. Obenreizer explained that it was "the good Dor's 
 simple habit to dine always in the middle of the day. She 
 would make her excuses later in the evening." Vendale 
 wondered whether the good Dor had, on this occasion, va- 
 ried her domestic employment from cleaning Obenreizer' s 
 gloves to cooking Obenreizer' s dinner. This at least was 
 certain — the dishes served were, one and all, as achieve- 
 ments in cookery, high above the reach of the rude element- 
 ary art of England. The dinner was unobtrusively per- 
 fect. As for the wine, the eyes of the speechless friend 
 rolled over it, as in solemn ecstasy. Sometimes he said 
 "Good!" when a bottle came in full; and sometimes he 
 said " Ah ! " when a bottle went out empty — and there his 
 contributions to the gaiety of the evening ended. 
 
 Silence is occasionally infectious. Oppressed by private 
 anxieties of their own, Marguerite and Vendale appeared to 
 feel the influence of the speechless friend. The whole re- 
 sponsibility of keeping the talk going rested on Obenreizer's 
 shoulders, and manfully did Obenreizer sustain it. He 
 opened his heart in the character of an enlightened for- 
 eigner, and sang the praises of England. When other top- 
 ics ran dry, he returned to this inexhaustible source, and 
 always set the stream running again as copiously as ever. 
 Obenreizer would have given an arm, an eye, or a leg to 
 have been born an Englishman. Out of England there was 
 no such institution as a home, no such thing as a fire-side, 
 
56 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 no such object as a beautiful woman. His dear Miss Mar- 
 guerite would excuse him, if he accounted for her attrac- 
 tions on the theory that English blood must have mixed at 
 some former time with their obscure and unknown ances- 
 try. Survey this English nation, and behold a tall, clean, 
 plump, and solid people! Look at their cities! What 
 magnificence in their public buildings ! What admirable 
 order and propriety in their streets ! Admire their laws, 
 combining the eternal principle of justice with the other 
 eternal principle of pounds, shillings, and pence; and ap- 
 plying the product to all civil injuries, from an injury to a 
 man's honour, to an injury to a man's nose! You have 
 ruined my daughter — pounds, shillings, and pence ! You 
 have knocked me down with a blow in my face — pounds, 
 shillings, and pence ! Where was the material prosperity 
 of such a country as that to stop? Obenreizer, projecting 
 himself into the future, failed to see the end of it. Oben- 
 reizer' s enthusiasm entreated permission to exhale itself, 
 English fashion, in a toast. Here is our modest little din- 
 ner over, here is our frugal dessert on the table, and here 
 is the admirer of England conforming to national customs, 
 and making a speech ! A toast to your white cliffs of Al- 
 bion, Mr. Vendale ! to your national virtues, your charming 
 climate, and your fascinating women ! to your Hearths, to 
 your Homes, to your Habeas Corpus, and to all your other 
 institutions ! In one word — to England ! Heep-heep-heep ! 
 hooray ! 
 
 Obenreizer' s voice had barely chanted the last note of the 
 English cheer, the speechless friend had barely drained 
 the last drop out of his glass, when the festive proceedings 
 were interrupted by a modest tap at the door. A woman- 
 servant came in, and approached her master with a little 
 note in her hand. Obenreizer opened the note with a 
 frown; and, after reading it with an expression of genuine 
 annoyance, passed it on to his compatriot and friend. 
 Vendale' s spirits rose as he watched these proceedings. 
 Had he found an ally in the annoying little note? Was 
 the long-looked-for chance actually coming at last? 
 
 " I am afraid there is no help for it? " said Obenreizer, 
 addressing his fellow-countryman. " I am afraid we must 
 go." 
 
 The speechless friend handed back the letter, shrugged 
 his heavy shoulders, and poured himself out a last glass of 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 57 
 
 wine. His fat fingers lingered fondly round the neck of 
 the bottle. They pressed it with a little amatory squeeze 
 at parting. His globular eyes looked dimly, as through an 
 intervening haze, at Vendale and Marguerite. His heavy 
 articulation laboured, and brought forth a whole sentence 
 at a birth. " I think," he said, " I should have liked a lit- 
 tle more wine." His breath failed him after that effort; 
 he gasped, and walked to the door. 
 
 Obenreizer addressed himself to Vendale with an appear- 
 ance of the deepest distress. 
 
 "I am so shocked, so confused, so distressed," he began. 
 "A misfortune has happened to one of my compatriots. 
 He is alone, he is ignorant of your language — I and my 
 good friend, here, have no choice but to go and help him. 
 What can I say in my excuse? How can I describe my 
 affliction at depriving myself in this way of the honour of 
 your company? " 
 
 He paused, evidently expecting to see Vendale take up 
 his hat and retire. Discerning his opportunity at last, 
 Vendale determined to do nothing of the kind. He met 
 Obenreizer dexterously, with Obenreizer' s own weapons. 
 
 " Pray don't distress yourself," he said. " I'll wait here 
 with the greatest pleasure till you come back." 
 
 Marguerite blushed deeply, and turned away to her em- 
 broidery-frame in a corner by the window. The film 
 showed itself in Obenreizer's eyes, and the smile came 
 something sourly to Obenreizer's lips. To have told Ven- 
 dale that there was no reasonable prospect of his coming 
 back in good time would have been to risk offending a man 
 whose favourable opinion was of solid commercial impor- 
 tance to him. Accepting his defeat with the best possible 
 grace, he declared himself to be equally honoured and de- 
 lighted by Vendale' s proposal. "So frank, so friendly, so 
 English ! " He bustled about, apparently looking for some- 
 thing he wanted, disappeared for a moment through the 
 folding-doors communicating with the next room, came 
 back with his hat and coat, and protesting that he would 
 return at the earliest possible moment, embraced Vendale's 
 elbows, and vanished from the scene in company with the 
 speechless friend. 
 
 Vendale turned to the corner by the window, in which 
 Marguerite had placed herself with her work. There, as 
 If she had dropped from the ceiling, or come up through 
 
58 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 the floor — there, in the old attitude, with her face to the 
 stove — sat an Obstacle that had not been foreseen, in the 
 person of Madame Dor ! She half got up, half looked over 
 her broad shoulder at Vendale, and plumped down again. 
 Was she at work? Yes. Cleaning Obenreizer's gloves, as 
 before? No; darning Obenreizer's stockings. 
 
 The case was now desperate. Two serious considerations 
 presented themselves to Vendale. Was it possible to put 
 Madame Dor into the stove? The stove wouldn't hold her. 
 Was it possible to treat Madame Dor, not as a living wom- 
 an but as an article of furniture? Could the mind be 
 brought to contemplate this respectable matron purely in 
 the light of a chest of drawers, with a black gauze head- 
 dress accidentally left on the top of it? Yes, the mind 
 could be brought to do that. With a comparatively trifling 
 effort, Vendale' s mind did it. As he took his place on the 
 old-fashioned window-seat, close by Marguerite and her 
 embroidery, a slight movement appeared in the chest of 
 drawers, but no remark issued from it. Let it be remem- 
 bered that solid furniture is not easy to move, and that it 
 has this advantage in consequence — there is no fear of up- 
 setting it. 
 
 Unusually silent and unusually constrained — with the 
 bright colour fast fading from her face, with a feverish 
 energy possessing her fingers — the pretty Marguerite bent 
 over her embroidery, and worked as if her life depended on 
 it. Hardly less agitated .himself, Vendale felt the impor- 
 tance of leading her very gently to the avowal which he 
 was eager to make — to the other sweeter avowal still, 
 which he was longing to hear. A woman's love is never 
 to be taken by storm; it yields insensibly to a system of 
 gradual approach. It ventures by the roundabout way, 
 and listens to the low voice. Vendale led her memory 
 back to their past meetings when they were travelling to- 
 gether in Switzerland. They revived the impressions, they 
 recalled the events, of the happy bygone time. Little by 
 little, Marguerite's constraint vanished. She smiled, she 
 was interested, she looked at Vendale, she grew idle 
 with her needle, she made false stitches in her work. 
 Their voices sank lower and lower; their faces bent 
 nearer and nearer to each other as they spoke. And Ma- 
 dame Dor? Madame Dor behaved like an angel. She 
 never looked round; she never said a word; she went on 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 59 
 
 with Obenreizer's stockings, Pulling each stocking up 
 tight over her left arm, and holding that arm aloft from 
 time to time, to catch the light on her work, there were 
 moments, delicate and indescribable moments, when Ma- 
 dame Dor appeared to be sitting upside down, and con- 
 templating one of her own respectable legs elevated in the 
 air. As the minutes wore on, these elevations followed 
 each other at longer and longer intervals. Now and again, 
 the black gauze head-dress nodded, dropped forward, re- 
 covered itself. A little heap of stockings slid softly from 
 Madame Dor's lap, and remained unnoticed on the floor. 
 A prodigious ball of worsted followed the stockings, and 
 rolled lazily under the table. The black gauze head-dress 
 nodded, dropped forward, recovered itself, nodded again, 
 dropped forward again, and recovered itself no more. A 
 composite sound, partly as of the purring of an immense 
 cat, partly as of the planing of a soft board, rose over the 
 hushed voices of the lovers, and hummed at regular inter- 
 vals through the room. Nature and. Madame Dor had com- 
 bined together in Vendale's interests. The best of women 
 was asleep. 
 
 Marguerite rose to stop — not the snoring — let us say, the 
 audible repose of Madame Dor. Vendale laid his hand on 
 her arm, and pressed her back gently into her chair. 
 
 "Don't disturb her," he whispered "I have been wait- 
 ing to tell you a secret. Let me tell it now." 
 
 Marguerite resumed her seat. She tried to resume her 
 needle. It was useless; her eyes failed her; her hand 
 failed her; she could find nothing. 
 
 "We have been talking," said Vendale, "of the happy 
 time when we first met, and first travelled together. I 
 have a confession to make. I have been concealing some- 
 thing. When we spoke of my first visit to Switzerland, I 
 told you of all the impressions I had brought back with me 
 to England — except one. Can you guess what that one 
 is?" 
 
 Her eyes looked steadfastly at the embroidery, and her 
 face turned a little away from him. Signs of disturbance 
 began to appear in her neat velvet bodice, round the region 
 of the brooch. She made no reply. Vendale pressed the 
 question without mercy. 
 
 " Can you guess what the one Swiss impression is, which 
 I have not told you yet? " 
 
fiO NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 Her face turned back towards him, and a faint smile 
 trembled on her lips. 
 
 " An impression of the mountains, perhaps? " she said, 
 slily. 
 
 "No; a much more precious impression than that." 
 
 "Of the lakes?" 
 
 " jSTo. The lakes have not grown dearer and dearer in 
 remembrance to me every day. The lakes are not associ- 
 ated with my happiness in the present, and my hopes in 
 the future. Marguerite ! all that makes life worth having 
 hangs, for me, on a word from your lips. Marguerite ! I 
 love you ! " 
 
 Her head dropped, as he took her hand. He drew her to 
 him, and looked at her. The tears escaped from her down- 
 cast eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Vendale," she said, sadly, "it would have been 
 kinder to have kept your secret. Have you forgotten the 
 distance between us? It can never, never, be ! " 
 
 " There can be but one distance between us, Marguerite 
 — a distance of your making. My love, my darling, there 
 is no higher rank in goodness, there is no higher rank in 
 beauty, than yours! Come! whisper the one little word 
 which tells me you will be my wife ! " 
 
 She sighed bitterly. " Think of your family," she mur- 
 mured; " and think of mine ! " 
 
 Vendale drew her a little nearer to him. 
 
 "If you dwell on such an obstacle as that," he said, "I 
 shall think but one thought — I shall think I have offended 
 you." 
 
 She started, and looked up. " Oh, no ! " she exclaimed, 
 innocently. The instant the words passed her lips, she 
 saw the construction that might be placed on them. Her 
 confession had escaped her in spite of herself. A lovely 
 flush of colour overspread her face. She made a moment- 
 ary effort to disengage herself from her lover's embrace. 
 She looked up at him entreatingly. She tried to speak. 
 The words died on her lips in the kiss that Vendale pressed 
 on them. "Let me go, Mr. Vendale!" she said, faintly. 
 
 "Call me George." 
 
 She laid her head on his bosom. All her heart went out 
 to him at last. " George ! " she whispered. 
 
 " Say you love me ! " 
 
 Her arms twined themselves gently round his neck. Her 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 61 
 
 lips, timidly touching his cheek, murmured the delicious 
 words — " I love you ! " 
 
 In the moment of silence that followed, the sound of the 
 opening and closing of the house-door came clear to them 
 through the wintry stillness of the street. 
 
 Marguerite started to her feet. 
 
 " Let me go ! " she said. " He has come back ! " 
 
 She hurried from the room, and touched Madame Dor's 
 shoulder in passing. Madame Dor woke up with a loud 
 snort, looked first over one shoulder and then over the 
 other, peered down into her lap, and discovered neither 
 stockings, worsted, nor darning-needle in it. At the same 
 moment, footsteps became audible ascending the stairs. 
 v Mon Dieu ! " said Madame Dor, addressing herself to the 
 stove, and trembling violently. Vendale picked up the 
 stockings and the ball, and huddled them all back in a heap 
 over her shoulder. " Mon Dieu ! " said Madame Dor, for 
 the second time, as the avalanche of worsted poured into 
 her capacious lap. 
 
 The door opened, and Obenreizer came in. His first 
 glance round the room showed him that Marguerite was ab- 
 sent. 
 
 "What!" he exclaimed, "my niece is aAvay? My niece 
 is not here to entertain you in my absence? This is un- 
 pardonable. I shall bring her back instantly." 
 
 Vendale stopped him. 
 
 "I beg you will not disturb Miss Obenreizer," he said. 
 " You have returned, I see, without your friend? " 
 
 " My friend remains, and consoles our afflicted compa- 
 triot. A heart-rending scene, Mr. Vendale! The house- 
 hold gods at the pawnbroker's — the family immersed in 
 tears. We all embraced in silence. My admirable friend 
 alone possessed his composure. He sent out, on the spot, 
 for a bottle of wine." 
 
 "Can I say a word to you in private, Mr. Obenreizer? " 
 
 "Assuredly." He turned to Madame Dor. "My good 
 creature, you are sinking for want of repose. Mr. Vendale 
 will excuse you." 
 
 Madame Dor rose, and set forth sideways on her journey 
 from the stove to bed. She dropped a stocking. Vendale 
 picked it up for her, and opened one of the folding-doors. 
 She advanced a step, and dropped three more stockings. 
 Vendale, stooping to recover them as before, Obenreizer in- 
 
62 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 terfered with profuse apologies, and with a warning look at 
 Madame Dor. Madame Dor acknowledged the look by 
 dropping the whole of the stockings in a heap, and then 
 shuffling away panic-stricken from the scene of disaster. 
 Obenreizer swept up the complete collection fiercely in both 
 hands. " Go ! " he cried, giving his prodigious handful a 
 preparatory swing in the air. Madame Dor said, "Mon 
 Dieu," and vanished into the next room, pursued by a 
 shower of stockings. 
 
 "What must you think, Mr. Vendale," said Obenreizer, 
 closing the door, " of this deplorable intrusion of domestic 
 details? For myself, I blush at it. We are beginning the 
 New Year as badly as possible; everything has gone wrong 
 to-night. Be seated, pray — and say, what may I offer 
 you? Shall we pay our best respects to another of your 
 noble English institutions? It is my study to be, what 
 you call, jolly. I propose a grog." 
 
 Vendale declined the grog with all needful respect for 
 that noble institution. 
 
 "I wish to speak to you on a subject in which I am 
 deeply interested," he said. "You must have observed, 
 Mr. Obenreizer, that I have, from the first, felt no ordi- 
 nary admiration for your charming niece? " 
 
 " You are very good. In my niece's name, I thank you." 
 
 " Perhaps you may have noticed, latterly, that my ad- 
 miration for Miss Obenreizer has grown into a tenderer and 
 deeper feeling ? " 
 
 " Shall we say friendship, Mr. Vendale? " 
 
 " Say love — and we shall be nearer to the truth." 
 
 Obenreizer started out of his chair. The faintly discern- 
 ible beat, which was his nearest approach to a change of 
 colour, showed itself suddenly in his cheeks. 
 
 "You are Miss Obenreizer's guardian," pursued Vendale. 
 " I ask you to confer upon me the greatest of all favours — 
 I ask you to give me her hand in marriage." 
 
 Obenreizer dropped back into his chair. " Mr. Vendale," 
 he said, "you petrify me." 
 
 "I will wait," rejoined Vendale, "until you have recov- 
 ered yourself." 
 
 " One word before I recover myself. You have said noth- 
 ing about this to my niece? " 
 
 " I have opened my whole heart to your niece. And I 
 have reason to hope " 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 63 
 
 "What!" interposed Obenreizer. "You have made a 
 proposal to my niece, without first asking for my authority 
 to pay your addresses to her? " He struck his hand on the 
 table, and lost his hold over himself for the first time in 
 Vendale's experience of him. "Sir!" he exclaimed, in- 
 dignantly, "what sort of conduct is this? As a man of 
 honour, speaking to a man of honour, how can you justify 
 it?" 
 
 "I can only justify it as one of our English institutions," 
 said Vendale, quietly. " You admire our English institu- 
 tions. I can't honestly tell you, Mr. Obenreizer, that I 
 regret what I have done. I can only assure you that I 
 have not acted in the matter with any intentional disre- 
 spect towards yourself. This said, may I ask you to tell 
 me plainly what objection you see to favouring my suit? " 
 
 "I see this immense objection," answered Obenreizer, 
 " that my niece and you are not on a social equality to- 
 gether. My niece is the daughter of a poor peasant; and 
 you are the son of a gentleman. You do us an honour," he 
 added, lowering himself again gradually to his customary 
 polite level, " which deserves, and has, our most grateful 
 acknowledgments. But the inequality is too glaring; the 
 sacrifice is too great. You English are a proud people, 
 Mr. Vendale. I have observed enough of this country to 
 see that such a marriage as you propose would be a scandal 
 here. Not a hand would be held out to your peasant- wife; 
 and all your best friends would desert you." 
 
 "One moment," said Vendale, interposing on his side. 
 " I may claim, without any great arrogance, to know more 
 of my country-people in general, and of my own friends in 
 particular, than you do. In the estimation of everybody 
 whose opinion is worth having, my wife herself would be 
 the one sufficient justification of my marriage. If I did 
 not feel certain — observe, I say certain — that I am offering 
 her a position which she can accept without so much as the 
 shadow of a humiliation — I would never (cost me what it 
 might) have asked her to be my wife. Is there any other 
 obstacle that you see? Have you any personal objection 
 tome?" 
 
 Obenreizer spread out both his hands in courteous pro- 
 test. " Personal objection ! " he exclaimed. " Dear sir, 
 the bare question is painful to me." 
 
 "We are both men of business," pursued Vendale, "and 
 
64 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 you naturally expect me to satisfy you that I have the 
 means of supporting a wife. I can explain my pecuniary 
 position in two words. I inherit from my parents a for- 
 tune of twenty thousand pounds. In half of that sum I 
 have only a life-interest, to which, if I die, leaving a 
 widow, my widow succeeds. If I die, leaving children, 
 the money itself is divided among them, as they come of 
 age. The other half of my fortune is at my own disposal, 
 and is invested in the wine-business. I see my way to 
 greatly improving that business. As it stands at present, 
 I cannot state my return from my capital embarked at 
 more than twelve hundred a year. Add the yearly value 
 of my life-interest — and the total reaches a present annual 
 income of fifteen hundred pounds. I have the fairest pros- 
 pect of soon making it more. In the mean time, do you 
 object to me on pecuniary grounds? " 
 
 Driven back to his last entrenchment, Obenreizer rose, 
 and took a turn backwards and forwards in the room. For 
 the moment, he was plainly at a loss what to say or do 
 next. 
 
 "Before I answer that last question," he said, after a 
 little close consideration with himself, " I beg leave to re- 
 vert for a moment to Miss Marguerite. You said some- 
 thing just now which seemed to imply that she returns the 
 sentiment with which you are pleased to regard her? " 
 
 "I have the inestimable happiness," said Vendale, "of 
 knowing that she loves me." 
 
 Obenreizer stood silent for a moment, with the film over 
 his eyes, and the faintly perceptible beat becoming visible 
 again in his cheeks. 
 
 " If you will excuse me for a few minutes," he said, with 
 ceremonious politeness, " I should like to have the oppor- 
 tunity of speaking to my niece." With those words, he 
 bowed, and quitted the room. 
 
 Left by himself, Vendale's thoughts (as a necessary re- 
 sult of the interview, thus far) turned instinctively to the 
 consideration of Obenreizer' s motives. He had put ob- 
 stacles in the way of the courtship; he was now putting 
 obstacles in the way of the marriage — a marriage offering 
 advantages which even his ingenuity could not dispute. 
 On the face of it, his conduct was incomprehensible. 
 What did it mean? 
 
 Seeking, under the surface, for the answer to that quea 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 60 
 
 tion — and remembering that Obenreizer was a man of about 
 his own age; also, that Marguerite was, strictly speaking, 
 his half-niece only — Vendale asked himself, with a lover's 
 ready jealousy, whether he had a rival to fear, as well as a 
 guardian to conciliate. The thought just crossed his mind, 
 and no more. The sense of Marguerite's kiss still lingering 
 on his cheek reminded him gently that even the jealousy of 
 a moment was now a treason to her. 
 
 On reflection, it seemed most likely that a personal mo- 
 tive of another kind might suggest the true explanation of 
 Obenreizer's conduct. Marguerite's grace and beauty were 
 precious ornaments in that little household. They gave it a 
 special social attraction and a special social importance. 
 They armed Obenreizer with a certain influence in reserve, 
 which he could always depend upon to make his house at- 
 tractive, and which he might always bring more or less to 
 bear on the forwarding of his own private ends. Was he 
 the sort of man to resign such advantages as were here im- 
 plied, without obtaining the fullest possible compensation 
 for the loss? A connection by marriage with Vendale 
 offered him solid advantages, beyond all doubt. But there 
 were hundreds of men in London with far greater power 
 and far wider influence than Vendale possessed. Was it 
 possible that this man's ambition secretly looked higher 
 than the highest prospects that could be offered to him by 
 the alliance now proposed for his niece? As the question 
 passed through Vendaie's mind, the man himself reap- 
 peared to answer it, or not to answer it, as the event might 
 prove. 
 
 A marked change was visible in Obenreizer when he re- 
 sumed his place. His manner was less assured, and there 
 were plain traces about his mouth of recent agitation which 
 had not been successfully composed. Had he said some- 
 thing, referring either to Vendale or to himself, which had 
 roused Marguerite's spirit, and which had placed him, for 
 the first time, face to face with a resolute assertion of his 
 niece's will? It might or might not be. This only was 
 certain — he looked like a man who had met with a repulse. 
 
 " I have spoken to my niece," he began. "I find, Mr. 
 Vendale, that even your influence has not entirely blinded 
 her to the social objections to your proposal." 
 
 "May I ask," returned Vendale, "if that is the only re- 
 sult of your interview with Miss Obenreizer? " 
 5 
 
66 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 A momentary flash leapt out through the Obenreizer film. 
 
 "You are master of the situation," he answered, in a 
 tone, of sardonic submission. " If you insist on my admit- 
 ting it, I do admit it in those words. My niece's will and 
 mine used to be one, Mr. Vendale. You have come be- 
 tween us, and her will is now yours. In my country, we , 
 know when we are beaten, and we submit with our best 
 grace. I submit, with my best grace, on certain condi- 
 tions. Let us revert to the statement of your pecuniary 
 position. I have an objection to you, my dear sir — a most 
 amazing, a most audacious objection, from a man in my 
 position to a man in yours." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " You have honoured me by making a proposal for my 
 niece's hand. For the present (with best thanks and re- 
 spects), I beg to decline it." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because you are not rich enough." 
 
 The objection, as the speaker had foreseen, took Vendale 
 completely by surprise. For the moment he was speechless. 
 
 "Your income is fifteen hundred a year," pursued Oben- 
 reizer. "In my miserable country I should fall on my 
 knees before your income, and say, ' What a princely for- 
 tune ! ' In wealthy England, I sit as I am, and say, ' A 
 modest independence, dear sir; nothing more. Enough, 
 perhaps, for a wife in your own rank of life, who had no 
 social prejudices to conquer. Not more than half enough 
 for a wife who is a meanly born foreigner, and who has all 
 your social prejudices against her.' Sir! if my niece is 
 ever to marry you, she will have what you call uphill work 
 of it in taking her place at starting. Yes, yes; this is not 
 your view, but it remains, immovably remains, my view 
 for all that. For my niece's sake, I claim that this uphill 
 work shall be made as smooth as possible. Whatever ma- 
 terial advantages she can have to help her, ought, in com- 
 mon justice, to be hers. Now, tell me, Mr. Vendale, on 
 your fifteen hundred a year can your wife have a house in a 
 fashionable quarter, a footman to open her door, a butler to 
 wait at her table, and a carriage and horses to drive about 
 in? I see the answer in your face — your face says, No. 
 Very good. Tell me one more thing, and I have done. 
 Take the mass of your educated, accomplished, and lovely 
 countrywomen, is it, or is it not, the fact that a lady who 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 67 
 
 has a house in a fashionable quarter, a footman to open her 
 door, a butler to wait at her table, and a carriage and horses 
 to drive about in, is a lady who has gained four steps, in 
 female estimation, at starting? Yes? or No? " 
 
 " Come to the point," said Vendale. " You view this 
 question as a question of terms. What are your terms? " 
 
 " The lowest terms, dear sir, on which you can provide 
 your wife with those four steps at starting. Double your 
 present income — the most rigid economy cannot do it in 
 England on. less. You said just now that you expected 
 greatly to increase the value of your business. To work — 
 and increase it ! I am a good devil after all ! On the day 
 when you satisfy me, by plain proofs, that your income has 
 risen to three thousand a year, ask me for my niece's hand, 
 and it is yours." 
 
 " May I inquire if you have mentioned this arrangement 
 to Miss Obenreizer? " 
 
 " Certainly. She has a last little morsel of regard still 
 left for me, Mr. Vendale, which is not yours yet; and she 
 accepts my terms. In other words, she submits to be 
 guided by her guardian's regard for her welfare, and by 
 her guardian's superior knowledge of the world." He 
 threw himself back in his chair, in firm reliance on his 
 . position, and in full possession of his excellent temper. 
 
 Any open assertion of his own interests, in the situation 
 in which Vendale was now placed, seemed to be (for the 
 present at least) hopeless. He found himself literally left 
 with no ground to stand on. Whether Obenreizer's objec- 
 tions were the genuine product of Obenreizer's own view of 
 the case, or whether he was simply delaying the marriage 
 in the hope of ultimately breaking it off altogether — in 
 either of these events, any present resistance od Vendale' s 
 part would be equally useless. There was no help for it 
 but to yield, making the best terms that he could on his 
 own side. 
 
 "I protest against the conditions you impose on me," he 
 began. 
 
 "Naturally," said Obenreizer; "I dare say I should pro- 
 test, myself, in your place." 
 
 "Say, however," pursued Vendale, "that I accept your 
 terms. In that case, I must be permitted to make two 
 stipulations on my part. In the first place, I shall expect 
 to be allowed to see your niece." 
 
68 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 "Aha! to see my niece? and to make her in as great a 
 hurry to be married as you are yourself? Suppose I say, 
 No? you would see her perhaps without my permission? " 
 
 " Decidedly!" 
 
 "How delightfully frank! How exquisitely English! 
 You shall see her, Mr. Vendale, on certain days, which we 
 will appoint together. What next? " 
 
 " Your objection to my income," proceeded Vendale, " has 
 taken me completely by surprise. I wish to be assured 
 against any repetition of that surprise. Your present 
 views of my qualification for marriage require me to have 
 an income of three thousand a year. Can I be certain, in 
 the future, as your experience of England enlarges, that 
 your estimate will rise no higher? " 
 
 "In plain English," said Obenreizer, "you doubt my 
 word?" 
 
 " Do you purpose to take m y word for it when I inform 
 you that I have doubled my iucome? " asked Vendale. " If 
 my memory does not deceive me, you stipulated, a minute 
 since, for plain proofs?" 
 
 " Well played, Mr. Vendale ! You combine the foreign 
 quickness with the English soliditj^. Accept my best con- 
 gratulations. Accept, also, my written guarantee." 
 
 He rose; seated himself at a writing-desk at a side-table, 
 wrote a few lines, and presented them to Vendale with a. 
 low bow. The engagement was perfectly explicit, and was 
 signed and dated with scrupulous care. 
 
 "Are you satisfied with your guarantee? " 
 
 "I am satisfied." 
 
 " Charmed to hear it, I am sure. We have had our little 
 skirmish — we have really been wonderfully clever on both 
 sides. For the present our affairs are settled. I bear no 
 malice. You bear no malice. Come, Mr. Vendale, a good 
 English shake hands." 
 
 Vendale gave his hand, a little bewildered by Obenrei- 
 zer's sudden transitions from one humour to another. 
 
 "When may I expect to see Miss Obenreizer again? " he 
 asked, as he rose to go. 
 
 "Honour me with a visit to-morrow," said Obenreizer, 
 " and we will settle it then. Do have a grog before you 
 go ! No? Well ! well ! we will reserve the grog till you 
 have your three thousand a year, and are ready to be mar- 
 ried. Aha! When will that b«? " 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 69 
 
 " I made an estimate, some months since, of the capac- 
 ities of my business," said Vendale. "If that estimate is 
 correct, I shall double my present income " 
 
 " And be married ! " added Obenreizer. 
 
 "And be married," repeated Vendale, "within a year 
 from this time. Good night." 
 
 VENDALE MAKES MISCHIEF. 
 
 When Vendale entered his office the next morning, the 
 dull commercial routine at Cripple Corner met him with a 
 new face. Marguerite had an interest in it now! The 
 whole machinery which Wilding's death had set in motion, 
 to realise the value of the business — the balancing of ledg- 
 ers, the estimating of debts, the taking of stock, and the 
 rest of it — was now transformed into machinery which indi- 
 cated the chances for and against a speedy marriage. 
 After looking over results, as presented by his accountant, 
 and checking additions and subtractions, as rendered by 
 the clerks, Vendale turned his attention to the stock-taking 
 department next, and sent a message to the cellars, desir- 
 ing to see the report. 
 
 The Cellarman's appearance, the moment he put his head 
 in at the door of his master's private room, suggested that 
 something very extraordinary must have happened that 
 morning. There was an approach to alacrity in Joey 
 Ladle's movements ! There was something which actually 
 simulated cheerfulness in Joey Ladle's face! 
 
 "What's the matter?" asked Vendale. "Anything 
 wrong? " 
 
 "I should wish to mention one thing," answered Joey. 
 " Young Mr. Vendale, I have never set myself up for a 
 prophet." 
 
 "Who ever said you did? " 
 
 " No prophet, as far as I've heard tell of that profession," 
 proceeded Joey, "ever lived principally underground. No 
 prophet, whatever else he might take in at the pores, ever 
 took in wine from morning to night, for a number of years 
 together. When I said to young Master Wilding, respect- 
 ing his changing the name of the firm, that one of these 
 days he might find he'd changed the luck of the firm — did 
 I put myself forward as a prophet? No, I didn't. Has 
 what I said to him come true? Yes, it has. In the time 
 
70 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 of Pebbleson Nephew, Young Mr. Vendale, no such thing 
 was ever known as a mistake made in a consignment deliv- 
 ered at these doors. There's a mistake been made now. 
 Please to remark that it happened before Miss Margaret 
 came here. For which reason it don't go against what I've 
 said respecting Miss Margaret singing round the luck. 
 Read that, sir," concluded Joey, pointing attention to a 
 special passage in the report, with a forefinger which ap- 
 peared to be in process of taking in through the pores noth- 
 ing more remarkable than dirt. " It's foreign to my nature 
 to crow over the house I serve, but T feel it a kind of a sol- 
 emn duty to ask you to read that." 
 
 Vendale read as follows: "Note, respecting the Swiss 
 champagne „ An irregularity has been discovered in the 
 last consignment .-eceived from the firm of Defresnier and 
 Co." Vendale stopped, and referred to a memorandum- 
 book by his side. "That was in Mr. Wilding's time," he 
 said. ,; The vintage was a particularly good one, and he 
 took the whole of it. The Swiss champagne has done very 
 well, hasn't it?" 
 
 "j don't say it's done badly," answered the Cellarman. 
 " It may have got sick in our customers' bins, or it may 
 have bust in our customers' hands. But I don't say it's 
 done badly wi h us. 7 ' 
 
 Vendale re umed the reading of the note : " We find the 
 number of the cases to be quite correct by the books. But 
 six of them, whi h present a slight difference from the rest 
 in the branl, have been opened, and have been found to 
 contain a red wine instead of champagne. The similarity 
 in the brands, we suppose, caused a mistake to be made in 
 sending the consignment from Neuchatel. The error has 
 not been found to extend beyond six cases." 
 
 " Is that all ! " exclaimed Vendale, tossing the note away 
 from him. 
 
 Joey Ladle's eye followed the flying morsel of paper 
 drearily. 
 
 " I'm glad to see you take it easy, sir," he said. " What- 
 ever happens, it will be always a comfort to you to remem- 
 ber that you took it easy at first. Sometimes one mistake 
 leads to another. A man drops a bit of orange-peel on the 
 pavement by mistake, and another man treads on it hj mis- 
 take, and there's a job at the hospital, and a party crippled 
 for life. I'm glad you take it easy, sir. In Pebbleson 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 71 
 
 Nephew's time we shouldn't have taken it easy till we had 
 seen the end of it. Without desiring to crow over the 
 house, Young Mr. Vendale, I wish you well through it. 
 No offence, sir," said the Cellarman, opening the door to 
 go out, and looking in again ominously before he shut it. 
 "I'm muddled and molloncolly, I grant you. But I'm an 
 old servant of Pebbleson Nephew, and I wish you well 
 through them six cases of red wine." 
 
 Left by himself, Venaale laughed, and took up his pen. 
 "I may as well send a line to Defresnier and Company," 
 he thought, "before I forget it." He wrote at once in 
 these terms : 
 
 "Dear Sirs. We are taking stock, and a trifling mistake 
 has been discovered in the last consignment of champagne 
 sept by your house to ours. Six of the cases contain red 
 wine — which we hereby return to you. The matter can 
 easily be set right, either by your sending us six cases of 
 the champagne, if they can be produced, or, if not, by your 
 crediting us with the value of six cases on the amount last 
 paid (five hundred pounds) by our firm to yours. Your 
 faithful servants, Wilding and Co." 
 
 This letter despatched to the post, the subject dropped 
 at once out of Vendale 's mind. He had other and far more 
 interesting matters to think of. Later in the day he paid 
 the visit to Obenreizer which had been agreed on between 
 them. Certain evenings in the week were set apart which 
 he was privileged to spend with Marguerite — always, how- 
 ever, in the presence of a third person. On this stipulation 
 Obenreizer politely but positively insisted. The one con- 
 cession he made was to give Vendale his choice of who the 
 third person should be. Confiding in past experience, his 
 choice fell unhesitatingly upon the excellent woman who 
 mended Obenreizer' s stockings. On hearing of the respon- 
 sibility entrusted to her, Madame Dor's intellectual nature 
 burst suddenly into a new stage of development. She 
 waited till Obenreizer' s eye was off her — and then she 
 looked at Vendale and dimly winked. 
 
 The time passed — the happy evenings with Marguerite 
 came and went. It was the tenth morning since Vendale 
 had written to the Swiss firm, when the answer appeared 
 on his desk, with the other letters of the day : 
 
72 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 '■• Dear Sirs. We beg to offer our excuses for the little 
 mistake which has happened. At the same time, we regret 
 to add that the statement of our error, with which you have 
 favoured us, has led to a very unexpected discovery. The 
 affair is a most serious one for you and for us. The par- 
 ticulars are as follows : 
 
 " Having no more champagne of the vintage last sent to 
 you, we made arrangements to credit your firm Avith the 
 value of the six cases, as suggested by yourself. On tak- 
 ing this step, certain forms observed in our mode of doing 
 business necessitated a reference to our bankers' book, as 
 well as to our ledger. The result is a moral certainty that 
 no such remittance as you mention can have reached our 
 house, and a literal certainty that no such remittance has 
 been paid to our account at the bank. 
 
 " It is needless, at this stage of the proceedings, t to 
 trouble you with details. The money has unquestionably 
 been stolen in the course of its transit from you to us. Cer- 
 tain peculiarities which we observe, relating to the manner 
 in which the fraud has been perpetrated, lead us to con- 
 clude that the thief may have calculated on being able to 
 pay the missing sum to our bankers, before an inevitable 
 discovery followed the annual striking of our balance. 
 This would not have happened, in the usual course, for an- 
 other three months. During that period, but for your let- 
 ter, we might have remained perfectly unconscious of the 
 robbery that has been committed. 
 
 " We mention this last circumstance, as it may help to 
 show you that we have to do, in this case, with no ordinary 
 thief. Thus far we have not even a suspicion of who that 
 thief is. But we believe you will assist us in making some 
 advance towards discovery, by examining the receipt 
 (forged, of course) which has no doubt purported to come 
 to you from our house. Be pleased to look and see whether 
 it is a receipt entirety in manuscript, or whether it is a num- 
 bered and printed form which merely requires the filling in 
 of the amount. The settlement of this apparently trivial 
 question is, we assure you, a matter of vital importance. 
 Anxiously awaiting your reply, we remain, with high es- 
 teem and consideration, 
 
 "Defresnier & C IE ." 
 
 Vendale laid the letter on his desk, and waited a moment 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 73 
 
 to steady his mind under the shock that had fallen on it. 
 At the time of all others when it was most important to 
 him to increase the value of his business, that business was 
 threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds. He thought 
 of Marguerite, as he took the key from his pocket and opened 
 the iron chamber in the wall in which the books and papers 
 of the firm were kept. 
 
 He was still in the chamber, searching for the forged 
 receipt, when he was startled by a voice speaking close be- 
 hind him. 
 
 "A thousand pardons," said the voice; "lam afraid 1 
 disturb you." 
 
 He turned, and found himself face to face with Margue- 
 rite's guardian. 
 
 "I have called," pursued Obenreizer, "to know if I can 
 be of any use. Business of my own takes me away for 
 some days to Manchester and Liverpool. Can I combine 
 any business of yours with it? I am entirely at your dis- 
 posal, in the character of commercial traveller for the firm 
 of Wilding and Co." 
 
 "Excuse me for one moment," said Vendale; "I will 
 speak to you directly." He turned round again, and con- 
 tinued his search among the papers. " You come at a time 
 when friendly offers are more than usually precious to me," 
 he resumed. " I have had very bad news this morning 
 from Neuchatel." 
 
 " Bad news ! " exclaimed Obenreizer. " From Defresnier 
 and Company? " 
 
 " Yes. A remittance we sent to them has been stolen. 
 I am threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds. 
 What's that? " 
 
 Turning sharply, and looking into the room for the sec- 
 ond time, Vendale discovered his envelope-case overthrown 
 on the floor, and Obenreizer on his knees picking up the 
 contents 
 
 " All my awkwardness ! " said Obenreizer. " This dread- 
 ful news of yours startled me; I stepped back- " He 
 
 became too deeply interested in collecting the scattered en- 
 velopes to finish the sentence. 
 
 "Don't trouble yourself," said Vendale. "The clerk 
 will pick the things up." 
 
 "This dreadful news!" repeated Obenreizer, persisting 
 in collecting the envelopes. " This dreadful news ! " 
 
74 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 "If you will read the letter," said Vendale, "you will 
 find I have exaggerated nothing. There it is, open on my 
 desk." 
 
 He resumed his search, and in a moment more discovered 
 the forged receipt. It was on the numbered and printed 
 form, described by the Swiss firm. Vendale made a mem- 
 orandum of the number and the date. Having replaced 
 the receipt and locked up the iron chamber, he had leisure 
 to notice Obenreizer, reading the letter in the recess of a 
 window at the far end of the room. 
 
 "Come to the fire," said Vendale. "You look perished 
 with the cold out there. I will ring for some more coals." 
 
 Obenreizer rose, and came slowly back to the desk. 
 " Marguerite will be as sorry to hear of this as I am," he 
 said, kindly. " What do you mean to do? " 
 
 " I am in the hands of Defresnier and Company," an- 
 swered Vendale. " In my total ignorance of the circum- 
 stances, I can only do what they recommend. The receipt 
 which I have just found, turns out to be the numbered and 
 printed form. They seem to attach some special impor- 
 tance to its discovery. You have had experience, when 
 you were in the Swiss house, of their way of doing busi- 
 ness. Can you guess what object they have in view? " 
 
 Obenreizer offered a suggestion. 
 
 " Suppose I examine the receipt? " he said. 
 
 " Are you ill? " asked Vendale, startled by the change in 
 his face, which now showed itself plainly for the first time. 
 " Pray go to the fire. You seem to be shivering — I hope 
 you are not going to be ill? " 
 
 " Not I ! " said Obenreizer. " Perhaps I have caught 
 cold. Your English climate might have spared an admirer 
 of your English institutions. Let me look at the receipt." 
 
 Vendale opened the iron chamber. Obenreizer took a 
 chair, and drew it close to the fire. He held both hands 
 over the flames. "Let me look at the receipt," he re- 
 peated, eagerly, as Vendale reappeared with the paper in 
 his hand. At the same moment a porter entered the room 
 with a fresh supply of coals. Vendale told him to make a 
 good fire. The man obeyed the order with a disastrous 
 alacrity. As he stepped forward and raised the scuttle, 
 his foot caught in a fold of the rug, and he discharged his 
 entire cargo of coals into the grate. The result was an in- 
 stant smothering of the flame, and the production of a 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 75 
 
 stream of yellow smoke, without a visible morsel of fire 
 to account for it. 
 
 " Imbecile ! " whispered Obenreizer to himself, with a 
 look at the man which the man remembered for many a 
 long day afterwards. 
 
 " Will you come into the clerks' room? " asked Vendale. 
 "They have a stove there." 
 
 "No, no. No matter." 
 
 Vendale handed him the receipt. Obenreizer' s interest 
 in examining it appeared to have been quenched as sud- 
 denly and as effectually as the fire itself. He just glanced 
 over the document, and said, "No; I don't understand it! 
 I am sorry to be of no use." 
 
 "I will write to Neuchatel by to-night's post," said Ven- 
 dale, putting away the receipt for the second time. " We 
 must wait, and see what comes of it." 
 
 "By to-night's post," repeated Obenreizer. "Let me 
 see. You will get the answer in eight or nine days' time. 
 I shall be back before that. If I can be of any service, as 
 commercial traveller, perhaps you will let me know between 
 this and then. You will send me written instructions? 
 My best thanks. I shall be most anxious for your answer 
 from Neuchatel. Who knows? It may be a mistake, my 
 dear friend, after all. Courage ! courage ! courage ! " He 
 had entered the room with no appearance of being pressed 
 for time. He now snatched up his hat, and took his leave 
 with the air of a man who had not another moment to 
 lose. 
 
 Left by himself, Vendale took a turn thoughtfully in the 
 room. 
 
 His previous impression of Obenreizer was shaken by 
 what he had heard and seen at the interview which had 
 just taken place. He was disposed, for the first time, to 
 doubt whether, in this case, he had not been a little hasty 
 and hard in his judgment on another man. Obenreizer's 
 surprise and regret, on hearing the news from Neuchatel, 
 bore the plainest marks of being honestly felt — not politely 
 assumed for the occasion. With troubles of his own to en- 
 counter, suffering, to all appearance, from the first insidious 
 attack of a serious illness, he had looked and spoken like 
 a man who really deplored the disaster that had fallen on 
 his friend. Hitherto, Vendale had tried vainly to alter his 
 first opinion of Marguerite's guardian, for Marguerite's 
 
76 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 sake. All the generous instincts in his nature now com- 
 bined together and shook the evidence which had seemed 
 unanswerable up to this time. " Who knows? " he 
 thought, "I may have read that man's face wrongly, after 
 all." 
 
 The time passed — the happy evenings with Marguerite 
 came and went. It was again the tenth morning since 
 Vendale had written to the Swiss firm; and again the an- 
 swer appeared on his desk with the other letters of the 
 day. 
 
 "Dear Sir. My senior partner, M. Defresnier, has been 
 called away, by urgent business, to Milan. In his absence 
 (and with his full concurrence and authority), I now write 
 you again on the subject of the missing five hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 " Your discovery that the forged receipt is executed upon 
 one of our numbered and printed forms has caused inex- 
 pressible surprise and distress to my partner and to myself. 
 At the time when your remittance was stolen, but three 
 keys were in existence opening the strong box in which our 
 receipt- forms are invariably kept. My partner had one 
 key; I had the other. The third Avas in the possession 
 of a gentleman who, at that period, occupied a position of 
 trust in our house. We should as soon have thought of 
 suspecting one of ourselves as of suspecting this person. 
 Suspicion now points at him, nevertheless. I cannot pre- 
 vail on myself to inform you who the person is, so long as 
 there is the shadow of a chance that he may come inno- 
 cently out of the inquiry which must now be instituted. 
 Forgive my silence; the motive of it is good. 
 
 "The form our investigation must now take is simple 
 enough. The handwriting on your receipt must be com- 
 pared, by competent persons whom we have at our dis- 
 posal, with certain specimens of handwriting in our pos- 
 session. I cannot send you the specimens, for business 
 reasons, which, when you hear them, you are sure to ap- 
 prove. I must beg you to send me the receipt to Neu- 
 cMtel — and, in making this request, I must accompany it 
 by a word of necessary warning. 
 
 "If the person, at whom suspicion now points, really 
 proves to be the person who has committed this forgery 
 and theft, I have reason to fear that circumstances may 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 7? 
 
 have already put him on his guard. The only evidence 
 against him is the evidence in your hands, and he will 
 move heaven and earth to obtain and destroy it. I 
 strongly urge you not to trust the receipt to the post. 
 Send it to me, without loss of time, by a private hand, and 
 choose nobody for your messenger but a person long estab- 
 lished in your own employment, accustomed to travelling, 
 capable of speaking French; a man of courage, a man of 
 honesty, and, above all things, a man who can be trusted 
 to let no stranger scrape acquaintance with him on the 
 route. Tell no one — absolutely no one — but your messen- 
 ger of the turn this matter has now taken. The safe 
 transit of the receipt may depend on your interpreting 
 literally the advice which I give you at the end of this 
 letter. 
 
 " I have only to add that every possible saving of time is 
 now of the last importance. More than one of our receipt- 
 forms is missing — and it is impossible to say what new 
 frauds may not be committed, if we fail to lay our hands 
 on the thief. 
 
 " Your faithful servant, 
 
 " Holland, 
 "(Signing for Defresnier & C ie )." 
 
 Who was the suspected man? In Vendale's position, it 
 seemed useless to inquire. 
 
 Who was to be sent to JSTeuchatel with the receipt? Men 
 of courage and men of honesty were to be had at Cripple 
 Corner for the asking. But where was the man who was 
 accustomed to foreign travelling, who could speak the 
 French language, and who could be really relied on to let 
 no stranger scrape acquaintance with him on his route? 
 There was but one man at hand who combined all those 
 requisites in his own person, and that man was Vendale 
 himself. 
 
 It was a sacrifice to leave his business; it was a greater 
 sacrifice to leave Marguerite. But a matter of five hundred 
 pounds was involved in the pending inquiry; and a literal 
 interpretation of M. Holland's advice was insisted on in 
 terms which there was no trifling with. The more Vendale 
 thought of it, the more plainly the necessity faced him, and 
 said, " Go!" 
 
 As he locked up the letter with the receipt, the associ- 
 
78 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 ation of ideas reminded him of Obenreizer. A guess at the 
 identity of the suspected man looked more possible now. 
 Obenreizer might know. 
 
 The thought had barely passed through his mind, when 
 the door opened, and Obenreizer entered the room. 
 
 " They told me at Soho-square you were expected back 
 last night," said Vendale, greeting him. "Have you done 
 well in the country? Are you better? " 
 
 A thousand thanks. Obenreizer had done admirably 
 well; Obenreizer was infinitely better. And now, what 
 news? Any letter from Neuchatel? 
 
 "A very strange letter," answered Vendale. "The mat- 
 ter has taken a new turn, and the letter insists — without 
 excepting anybody — on my keeping our next proceedings a 
 profound secret." 
 
 "Without excepting anybody?" repeated Obenreizer. 
 As he said the words, he walked away again, thought- 
 fully, to the window at the other end of the room, looked 
 out for a moment, and suddenly came back to Vendale. 
 " Surely they must have forgotten? " he resumed, " or they 
 would have excepted me ? " 
 
 "It is Monsieur Holland who writes," said Vendale. 
 "And, as you say, he must certainly have forgotten. 
 That view of the matter quite escaped me. I was just 
 wishing I had you to consult, when you came into the 
 room. And here I am tied by a formal prohibition, which 
 cannot possibly have been intended to include you. How 
 very annoying ! " 
 
 Obenreizer's filmy eyes fixed on Vendale attentively. 
 
 "Perhaps it is more than annoying! " he said. "I came 
 this morning not only to hear the news, but to offer myself 
 as messenger, negotiator — what you will. Would you be- 
 lieve it? I have letters which oblige me to go to Switzer- 
 land immediately. Messages, documents, anything — I 
 could have taken them all to Defresnier and Holland for 
 you." 
 
 "You are the very man I wanted," returned Vendale. 
 " I had decided, most unwillingly, on going to Neuchatel 
 myself, not five minutes since, because I could find no one 
 here capable of taking my place. Let me look at the letter 
 again." 
 
 He opened the strong room to get at the letter. Oben- 
 reizer, after first glancing round him to make quite sure 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 79 
 
 that they were alone, followed a step or two and waited, 
 measuring Vendale with his eye. Vendale was the tallest 
 man, and unmistakably the strongest man also of the two. 
 Obenreizer turned away, and warmed himself at the fire. 
 
 Meanwhile, Vendale read the last paragraph in the letter 
 for the third time. There was the plain warning — there 
 was the closing sentence, which insisted on a literal inter- 
 pretation of it. The hand, which was leading Vendale in 
 the dark, led him on that condition only. A large sum 
 was at stake. : a terrible suspicion remained to be verified. 
 If he acted on his own responsibility, and if anything hap- 
 pened to defeat the object in view, who would be blamed? 
 As a man of business, Vendale had but one course to fol- 
 low. He locked the letter up again. 
 
 "It is most annoying," he said to Obenreizer — "it is a 
 piece of forgetfulness on Monsieur Holland's part which 
 puts me to serious inconvenience, and places me in an ab- 
 surdly false position towards you. What am I to do? I 
 am acting in a very serious matter, and acting entirely in 
 the dark. I have no choice but to be guided, not by the 
 spirit, but by the letter of my instructions. You under- 
 stand me, I am sure? You know, if I had not been fet- 
 tered in this way, how gladly I should have accepted your 
 services? " 
 
 " Say no more ! " returned Obenreizer. " In your place 
 I should have done the same. My good friend, I take no 
 offence. I thank you for your compliment. We shall be 
 travelling companions, at any rate," added Obenreizer. 
 - You go, as I go, at once? " 
 
 " At once. I must speak to Marguerite first, of course ! n 
 
 "Surely! surely! Speak to her this evening. Come, 
 and pick me up on the way to the station. We go to- 
 gether by the mail train to-night? " 
 
 "By the mail train to-night." 
 
 It was later than Vendale had anticipated when he drove 
 up to the house in Soho-square. Business difficulties, occa- 
 sioned by his sudden departure, had presented themselves 
 by dozens. A cruelly large share of the time which he had 
 hoped to devote to Marguerite had been claimed by duties 
 at his office which it was impossible to neglect. 
 
 To his surprise and delight, she was alone in the draw- 
 ing-room when he entered it. 
 
 "We have only a few minutes, George," she said. "But 
 
80 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 Madame Dor has been good to me — and we can have those 
 few minutes alone." She threw her arms round his neck, 
 and whispered eagerly, " Have you done anything to offend 
 Mr. Obenreizer? " 
 
 " I ! V exclaimed Yendale, in amazement. 
 
 " Hush ! " she said, " I want to whisper it. You know 
 the little photograph I have got of you. This afternoon it 
 happened to be on the chimney-piece. He took it up and 
 looked at it — and I saw his face in the glass. I know you 
 have offended him ! He is merciless; he is revengeful, he 
 is as secret as the grave. Don't go with him, George — 
 don't go with him ! " 
 
 "My own love," returned Vendale, "you are letting your 
 fancy frighten you ! Obenreizer and I were never better 
 friends than we are at this moment." 
 
 Before a word more could be said, the sudden movement 
 of some ponderous body shook the floor of the next room. 
 The shock was followed by the appearance of Madame Dor. 
 " Obenreizer ! " exclaimed this excellent person in a whis- 
 per, and plumped down instantly in her regular place by 
 the stove. 
 
 Obenreizer came in with a courier's bag strapped over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Are you ready? " he asked, addressing Vendale. " Can 
 I take anything for you? You have no travelling-bag. I 
 have got one. Here is the compartment for papers, open 
 at your service." 
 
 "Thank you," said Vendale. "I have only one paper of 
 importance with me; and that paper I am bound to take 
 charge of myself. Here it is," he added, touching the 
 breast-pocket of his coat, " and here it must remain till we 
 get to Neuchatel." 
 
 As he said those words, Marguerite's hand caught his, 
 and pressed it significantly. She was looking towards 
 Obenreizer. Before Vendale could look, in his turn, Oben- 
 reizer had wheeled round, and was taking leave of Madame 
 Dor. 
 
 " Adieu, my charming niece ! " he said, turning to Mar- 
 guerite next. " En route, my friend, for Neuch&tel ! " He 
 tapped Vendale lightly over the breast-pocket of his coat, 
 and led the way to the door. 
 
 Vendale's last look was for Marguerite. Marguerite's 
 last words to him were, "Don't go! " 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 81 
 
 ACT III. 
 
 IN THE VALLEY 
 
 It was about the middle of the month of February when 
 Vendale and Obenreizer set forth on their expedition. The 
 winter being a hard one, the time was bad for travellers. 
 So bad was it that these two travellers, coming to Stras- 
 bourg, found its great inns almost empty. And even the 
 few people they did encounter in that city, who had started 
 from England or from Paris on business journeys towards 
 the interior of Switzerland, were turning back. 
 
 Many of the railroads in Switzerland that tourists pass 
 easily enough now, were almost or quite impracticable 
 then. Some were not begun; more were not completed. 
 On such as were open, there were still large gaps of old 
 road where communication in the winter season was often 
 stopped; on others, there were weak points where the new 
 work was not safe, either under conditions of severe frost, 
 or of rapid thaw. The running of trains on this last class 
 was not to be counted on in the worst time of the year, was 
 contingent upon weather, or was wholly abandoned through 
 the months considered the most dangerous. 
 
 At Strasbourg there were more travellers' stories afloat, 
 respecting the difficulties of the way further on, than there 
 were travellers to relate them. Many of these tales were 
 as wild as usual; but the more modestly marvellous did 
 derive some colour from the circumstance that people were 
 indisputably turning back. However, as the road to Basle 
 was open, Vendale's resolution to push on was in no wise 
 disturbed. Obenreizer's resolution was necessarily Ven- 
 dale's, seeing that he stood at bay thus desperately: — He 
 must be ruined, or must destroy the evidence that Ven- 
 dale carried about him, even if he destroyed Vendale with it. 
 
 The state of mind of each of these two fellow-travellers 
 towards the other was this. Obenreizer, encircled by im- 
 pending ruin through Vendale's quickness of action, and 
 seeing the circle narrowed every hour by Vendale's energy, 
 hated him with the animosity of a fierce cunning lower ani- 
 mal. He had always had instinctive movements in his 
 breast against him; perhaps, because of that old sore of 
 gentleman and peasant; perhaps, because of the openness 
 6 
 
82 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 of his nature; perhaps, because of his better looks; per- 
 haps, because of his success with Marguerite; perhaps, on 
 all those grounds, the two last not the least. And now he 
 saw in him, besides, the hunter who was tracking him 
 down. Vendale, on the other hand, always contending 
 generously against his first vague mistrust, now felt bound 
 to contend against it more than ever : reminding himself, 
 "He is Marguerite's guardian. We are on perfectly 
 friendly terms; he is my companion of his own proposal, 
 and can have no interested motive in sharing this undesir- 
 able journey." To which pleas in behalf of Obenreizer, 
 chance added one consideration more, when they came to 
 Basle, after a journey of more than twice the average dura- 
 tion. 
 
 They had had a late dinner, and were alone in an inn 
 room there, overhanging the Rhine: at that place rapid 
 and deep, swollen and loud. Vendale lounged upon a 
 couch, and Obenreizer walked to and fro : now, stopping at 
 the window, looking at the crooked reflections of the town 
 lights in the dark water (and perad venture thinking, " If I 
 could fling him into it! "); now, resuming his walk with his 
 eyes upon the floor. 
 
 " Where shall I rob him, if I can? Where shall I mur- 
 der him, if I must? " So, as he paced the room, ran the 
 river, ran the river, ran the river. 
 
 The burden seemed to him at last, to be growing so plain 
 that he stopped; thinking it as well to suggest another bur- 
 den to his companion. 
 
 " The Rhine sounds to-night," he said with a smile, " like 
 the old waterfall at home. That waterfall which my mother 
 showed to travellers (I told you of it once). The sound of 
 it changed with the weather, as does the sound of all fall- 
 ing waters and flowing waters. When I was pupil of the 
 watch-maker, I remembered it as sometimes saying to me 
 for whole days, ' Who are you, my little wretch? Who 
 are you, my little wretch? ' I remembered it as saying, 
 other times, when its sound was hollow, and storm was 
 coming up the Pass : ' Boom, boom, boom. Beat him, beat 
 him, beat him.' Like my mother enraged — if she was my 
 mother." 
 
 " If she was? " said Vendale, gradually changing his at- 
 titude to a sitting one. "If she was? Why do you say 
 ' if ' ? " 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 83 
 
 "What do I know?" replied the other negligently, 
 throwing up his hands and letting them fall as they would. 
 "What would you have? I arn so obscurely born, that 
 how can I say? I was very young, and all the rest of the 
 family were men and women, and my so-called parents 
 were old. Anything is possible of a case like that? " 
 
 "Did you ever doubt ? " 
 
 "I told you once, I doubt the marriage of those two," he 
 replied, throwing up his hands again, as if he were throw- 
 ing the unprofitable subject away. "But here I am in 
 Creation. / come of no fine family. What does it mat- 
 ter? " 
 
 "At least you are Swiss," said Yendale, after following 
 him with his eyes to and fro. 
 
 "How do I know?" he retorted abruptly, and stopping 
 to look back over his shoulder. " I say to you, at least 
 you are English. How do you know? " 
 
 " By what I have been told from infancy." 
 
 "Ah! I know of myself that way." 
 
 "And," added Vendale, pursuing the thought that he 
 eould not drive back, "by my earliest recollections." 
 
 " I also. I know of myself that way — if that way satis- 
 fies." 
 
 " Does it not satisfy you? " 
 
 " It must. There is nothing like ' it must ' in this little 
 world. It must. Two short words those, but stronger 
 than long proof or reasoning." 
 
 " You and poor Wilding were born in the same year. 
 You were nearly of an age," said Vendale, again thought- 
 fully looking after him as he resumed his pacing up and 
 down. 
 
 "Yes. Very nearly." 
 
 Could Obenreizer be the missing man? In the unknown 
 association of things, was there a subtler meaning than he 
 himself thought, in that theory so often on his lips about 
 the smallness of the world? Had the Swiss letter present- 
 ing him, followed so close on Mrs. Goldstraw's revelation 
 concerning the infant who had been taken away to Switzer 
 land, because he was that infant grown a man? In a world 
 where so many depths lie unsounded, it might be. The 
 chances, or the laws — call them either — that had wrought 
 out the revival of Vendale's own acquaintance with Oben- 
 reizer, and had ripened it into intimacy, and had brought 
 
84 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 them here together this present winter night, were hardly 
 less curious; while read by such a light, they were seen to 
 cohere towards the furtherance of a continuous and an in- 
 telligible purpose. 
 
 Vendale's awakened thoughts ran high while his eyes 
 musingly followed Obenreizer pacing up and down the 
 room, the river ever running to the tune : " Where shall I 
 rob him, if I can? Where shall I murder him, if I must? " 
 The secret of his dead friend was in no hazard from Ven- 
 dale's lips; but just as his friend had died of its weight, so 
 did he in his lighter succession feel the burden of the trust, 
 and the obligation to follow any clue, however obscure. 
 He rapidly asked himself, would he like this man to be the 
 real Wilding? No. Argue down his mistrust as he 
 might, he was unwilling to put such a substitute in the 
 place of his late guileless, outspoken, childlike partner. 
 He rapidly asked himself, would he like this man to be 
 rich? No. He had more power than enough over Mar- 
 guerite as it was, and wealth might invest him with more. 
 Would he like this man to be Marguerite's guardian, and 
 yet proved to stand in no degree of relationship towards 
 her, however disconnected and distant? No. But these 
 were not considerations to come between him and fidelity 
 to the dead. Let him see to it that they passed him with 
 no other notice than the knowledge that they had passed 
 him, and left him bent on the discharge of a solemn duty. 
 And he did see to it, so soon that he followed his compan- 
 ion with ungrudging eyes, while he still paced the room; 
 that companion, whom he supposed to be moodily reflecting 
 on his own birth, and not on another man's — least of all 
 what man's — violent Death. 
 
 The road in advance from Basle to Neuchatel was better 
 than had been represented. The latest weather had done 
 it good. Drivers, both of horses and mules, had come in 
 that evening after dark, and had reported nothing more 
 difficult to be overcome than trials of patience, harness, 
 wheels, axles, and whipcord. A bargain was soon struck 
 for a carriage and horses, to take them on in the morning, 
 and to start before daylight. 
 
 " Do you lock your door at night when travelling? n asked 
 Obenreizer, standing warming his hands by the wood fire in 
 Vendale's chamber, before going to his own. 
 
 "Not I. I sleep too soundly." 
 
HO THOROUGHFARE. 85 
 
 " You are so sound a sleeper? " he retorted, with an ad- 
 miring look. " What a blessing! " 
 
 "Anything but a blessing to the rest of the house," re- 
 joined Vendale, " if I had to be knocked up in the morning 
 from the outside of my bedroom door." 
 
 "I, too," said Obenreizer, "leave open my room. But 
 let me advise you, as a Swiss, who knows : always, when 
 you travel in my country, put your papers — and, of course, 
 your money — under your pillow. Always the same place." 
 
 "You are not complimentary to your countrymen," 
 laughed Vendale. 
 
 "My countrymen," said Obenreizer, with that light touch 
 of his friend's elbows by way of Good Night and benedic- 
 tion, "I suppose, are like the majority of men. And the 
 majority of men will take what they can get. Adieu! At 
 four in the morning." 
 
 "Adieu! At four." 
 
 Left to himself, Vendale raked the logs together, 
 sprinkled over them the white wood-ashes lying on the 
 hearth, and sat down to compose his thoughts. But they 
 still ran high on their latest theme, and the running of the 
 river tended to agitate rather than to quiet them. As he 
 sat thinking, what little disposition he had had to sleep 
 departed. He felt it hopeless to lie down yet, and sat 
 dressed by the fire. Marguerite, Wilding, Obenreizer, the 
 business he was then upon, and a thousand hopes and 
 doubts that had nothing to do with it, occupied his mind 
 at once. Everything seemed to have power over him, but 
 slumber. The departed disposition to sleep kept far away. 
 
 He had sat for a long time thinking, on the hearth, when 
 his candle burned down, and its light went out. It was of 
 little moment; there was light enough in the fire. He 
 changed his attitude, and, leaning his arm on the chair- 
 back, and his chin upon that hand, sat thinking still. 
 
 But he sat between the fire and the bed, and, as the fire 
 flickered in the play of air from the fast-flowing river, his 
 enlarged shadow fluttered on the white wall by the bedside. 
 His attitude gave it an air, half of mourning, and half of 
 bending over the bed imploring. His eyes were observant 
 of it, when he became troubled by the disagreeable fancy 
 that it was like Wilding's shadow, and not his own. 
 
 A slight change of place would cause it to disappear. 
 He made the change, and the apparition of his disturbed 
 
86 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 fancy vanished He now sat in the shade of a little nook 
 beside the fire, and the door of the room was before him. 
 
 It had a long cumbrous iron latch. He saw the latch 
 slowly and softly rise. The door opened a very little, and 
 came to again : as though only the air had moved it. But 
 he saw that the latch was out of the hasp. 
 
 The door opened again very slowly, until it opened wide 
 enough to admit some one. It afterwards remained still 
 for a while, as though cautiously held open on the other 
 side. The figure of a man then entered, with its face 
 turned towards the bed, and stood quiet just within the 
 door. Until it said, in a low half- whisper, at the same 
 time taking one step forward : " Vendale ! " 
 
 " What now? " he answered, springing from his seat; 
 "who is it?" 
 
 It was Obenreizer, and he uttered a cry of surprise as 
 Vendale came upon him from that unexpected direction. 
 "Not in bed?" he said, catching him by both shoulders 
 with an instinctive tendency to a struggle, "Then some- 
 thing is wrong ! " 
 
 " What do you mean? " said Vendale, releasing himself. 
 
 " First tell me; you are not ill? " 
 
 "111? No." 
 
 " I have had a bad dream about you. How is it that I 
 see you up and dressed? " 
 
 " My good fellow, I may as well ask you how is it that I 
 see you up and undressed? " 
 
 " I have told you why. I have had a bad dream about 
 you. I tried to rest after it, but it was impossible. I could 
 not make up my mind to stay where I was, without know- 
 ing you were safe; and yet I could not make up my mind 
 to come in here. I have been minutes hesitating at the 
 door. It is so easy to laugh at a dream that you have not 
 dreamed. Where is your candle? " 
 
 "Burnt out." 
 
 " I have a whole one in my room. Shall I fetch it? " 
 
 "Do so." 
 
 His room was very near, and he was absent for but a few 
 seconds. Coming back with the candle in his hand, he 
 kneeled down on the hearth and lighted it. As he blew 
 with his breath a charred billet into flame for the purpose, 
 Vendale, looking down at him, saw that his lips were white 
 and not easy of control. 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 87 
 
 "Yes!" said Obenreizer, setting the lighted candle on 
 the table, " it was a bad dream. Only look at rne ! " 
 
 His feet were bare; his red-flannel shirt was thrown back 
 at the throat, and its sleeves were rolled above the elbows; 
 his only other garment, a pair of under pantaloons or 
 drawers, reaching to the ankles, fitted him close and tight. 
 A certain lithe and savage appearance was on his figure, 
 and his eyes were very bright. 
 
 " If there had been a wrestle with a robber, as I dreamed," 
 said Obenreizer, "you see, I was stripped for it." 
 
 "And armed, too," said Vendale, glancing at his girdle. 
 
 "A traveller's dagger, that I always carry on the road," 
 he answered carelessly, half drawing it from its sheath 
 with his left hand, and putting it back again. " Do you 
 carry no such thing? " 
 
 "Nothing of the kind." 
 
 "No pistols? " said Obenreizer, glancing at the table, and 
 from it to the untouched pillow. 
 
 "Nothing of the sort." 
 
 " You Englishmen are so confident ! You wish to sleep? " 
 
 "I have wished to sleep this long time, but I can't doit." 
 
 " I neither, after the bad dream. My fire has gone the 
 way of your candle. May I come and sit by yours? Two 
 o'clock ! It will so soon be four, that it is not worth the 
 trouble to go to bed again." 
 
 "I shall not take the trouble to go to bed at all, now," 
 said Vendale; "sit here and keep me company, and wel- 
 come." 
 
 Going back to his room to arrange his dress, Obenreizer 
 soon returned in a loose cloak and slippers, and they sat 
 down on opposite sides of the hearth. In the interval, 
 Vendale had replenished the fire from the wood-basket in 
 his room, and Obenreizer had put upon the table a flask and 
 cup from his. 
 
 "Common cabaret brandy, I am afraid," he said, pouring 
 out; "bought upon the road, and not like yours from Crip- 
 ple Corner. But yours is exhausted; so much the worse. 
 A cold night, a cold time of night, a cold country, and a 
 cold house. This may be better than nothing; try it." 
 
 Vendale took the cup, and did so 
 
 " How do you find it? " 
 
 "It has a coarse after-flavour," said Vendale, giving back 
 the cup with a slight shudder, "and I don't like it." 
 
88 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 "You are right," said Obenreizer, tasting, and smacking 
 his lips; it has a coarse after-flavour, and 1 don't like it. 
 Booh ! it burns, though ! " He had flung what remained in 
 the cup, upon the fire. 
 
 Each of them leaned an elbow on the table, reclining his 
 head upon his hand, and sat looking at the flaring logs. 
 Obenreizer remained watchful and still; but Vendale, after 
 certain nervous twitches and starts, in one of which he rose 
 to his feet and looked wildly about him, fell into the 
 strangest confusion of dreams. He carried his papers in a 
 leather case or pocket-book, in an inner breast-pocket of 
 his buttoned travelling coat; and whatever he dreamed of, 
 in the lethargy that got possession of him, something .im- 
 portunate in these papers called him out of that dream, 
 though he could not wake from it. He was belated on the 
 steppes of Russia (some shadowy person gave that name to 
 the place) with Marguerite; and yet the sensation of a 
 hand at his breast, softly feeling the outline of the pocket- 
 book as he lay. asleep before the fire, was present to him. 
 He was shipwrecked in an open boat at sea, and having lost 
 his clothes, had no other covering than an old sail; and yet 
 a creeping hand, tracing outside all the other pockets of the 
 dress he actually wore, for papers, and finding none answer 
 its touch, warned him to rouse himself. He was in the an- 
 cient vault at Cripple Corner, to which was transferred the 
 very bed substantial and present in the very room at Basle ; 
 and Wilding (not dead, as he had supp sed, and yet he did 
 not wonder much) shook him, and whispered, "Look at that 
 man! Don't you see he has risen, an' 1 is turning the pil- 
 low? Why should he turn the td'IIow if not to seek those 
 papers that are in your breast; Ywake!" And yet he 
 slept, and wandered off into oHier dreams. 
 
 Watchful and still, with his ebow on the table and his 
 head upon that hand, his companion t length said : " Ven- 
 dale ! We are called. Past four ! " Then, opening his 
 eyes, he saw, turned sideways on him, the filmy face of 
 Obenreizer. 
 
 "You have* been in a heavy sleep," he said. "The fa- 
 tigue of constant travelling and the cold ! " 
 
 "I am broad awake now," cried Vendale, springing up, 
 but with an unsteady footing. "Haven't you slept at 
 all? " 
 
 " I may have dozed, but I seem to have been patiently 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE.- 89 
 
 looking at the fire. Whether or no, we must wash, and 
 breakfast, and turn out. Past four, Vendale: past four!" 
 
 It was said in a tone to rouse him, for already he was 
 half asleep again. In his preparation for the day, too, and 
 at his breakfast, he was often virtually asleep while in me- 
 chanical action. It was not until the cold dark day was 
 closing in, that he had any distincter impressions of the 
 ride than jingling bells, bitter weather, slipping horses, 
 frowning hill-sides, bleak woods, and a stoppage at some 
 wayside house of entertainment, where they had passed 
 through a cowhouse to reach the travellers' room above. 
 He had been conscious o f little more, except of Obenreizer 
 sitting thoughtful at his side all day, and eyeing him much. 
 
 But when he shook off his stupor, Obenreizer was not at 
 his side. The carriage was stopping to bait at another 
 wayside house; and a line of long narrow carts, laden with 
 casks of wine, and drawn by horses with a quantity of blue 
 collar and head-gear, were baiting too. These came from 
 the direction in which the travellers were going, and Oben- 
 reizer (not thoughtful now, but cheerful and alert) was 
 talking with the foremost driver. As Vendale stretched 
 his limbs, circulated his blood, and cleared off the lees of 
 his lethargy, with a sharp run to and fro in the bracing air, 
 the line of carts moved on : the drivers all saluting Oben- 
 reizer as they passed him. 
 
 "Who are those? " asked Vendale. 
 
 "They are our carriers — Defresnier and Company's," 
 replied Obenreizer. " Those are our casks of wine." He 
 was singing to himself, and lighting a cigar. 
 
 "I have been drearily dull company to-day," said Ven- 
 dale, "I don't know what has been the matter with me." 
 
 " You had no sleep last night; and a kind of brain-con- 
 gestion frequently comes, at first, of such cold," said Oben- 
 reizer. "I have seen it often. After all, we shall have 
 our journey for nothing, it seems." 
 
 " How for nothing? " 
 
 "The House is at Milan. You knoAv, we are a Wine 
 House at Neuchatel, and a Silk House at Milan? Well, 
 Silk happening to press of a sudden, more than Wine, De- 
 fresnier was summoned to Milan. Holland, the other part- 
 ner, has been taken ill since his departure, and the doctors 
 will allow him to see no one. A letter awaits you at Neu- 
 chatel to tell you so. I have it from our chief carrier 
 
90 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 whom you saw me talking with. He was surprised to see 
 me, and said he had that word for you if he met you 
 What do you do? Go back?" 
 
 " Go on," said Vendale. 
 
 " On? " 
 
 "On? Yes. Across the Alps, and down to Milan." 
 
 Obenreizer stopped in his smoking to look at Vendale, 
 and then smoked heavily, looked up the road, looked down 
 the road, looked down at the stones in the road at his feet. 
 
 "I have a very serious matter in charge," said Vendale, 
 " more of these missing forms may be turned to as bad ac» 
 count, or worse; I am urged to lose no time in helping the 
 House to take the thief; and nothing shall turn me back." 
 
 "No?" cried Obenreizer, taking out his cigar to smile, 
 and giving his hand to his fellow-traveller. " Then noth- 
 ing shall turn me back. Ho, driver! Despatch. Quick 
 there ! Let us push on ! " 
 
 They travelled through the night. There had been snow, 
 and there was a partial thaw, and they mostly travelled at 
 a foot-pace, and always with many stoppages to breathe the 
 splashed and floundering horses. After an hour's broad 
 daylight, they drew rein at the inn-door at NeucMtel, hav- 
 ing been some eight-and-twenty hours in conquering some 
 eighty English miles. 
 
 When they had hurriedly refreshed and changed, they 
 went together to the house of business of Defresnier and 
 Company. There they found the letter which the wine- 
 carrier had described, enclosing the tests and comparisons 
 of hand- writing essential to the discovery of the Forger. 
 Vendale's determination to press forward, without resting, 
 being already taken, the only question to delay them was 
 by what Pass could they cross the Alps? Eespecting the 
 state of the two Passes of the St. Gotthard and the Sim- 
 plon, the guides and mule-drivers differed greatly; and 
 both Passes were still far enough off, to prevent the travel- 
 lers from having the benefit of any recent experience of 
 either. Besides which, they well knew that a fall of snow 
 might altogether change the described conditions in a single 
 hour, even if they were correctly stated. But, on the 
 whole, the Simplon appearing to be the hopefuller route, 
 Vendale decided to take it. Obenreizer bore little or no 
 part in the discussion, and scarcely spoke. 
 
 To Geneva, to Lausanne, along the level margin of the 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 91 
 
 lake to Vevay, so into the winding valley between the spurs 
 of the mountains, and into the valley of the Rhone. The 
 sound of the carriage- wheels, as they rattled on, through 
 the day, through the night, became as the wheels of a great 
 clock, recording the hours. No change of weather varied 
 the journey, after it had hardened into a sullen frost. In 
 a sombre-yellow sky, they saw the Alpine ranges; and they 
 saw enough of snow on nearer and much lower hill-tops 
 and hill-sides, to sully, by contrast, the purity of lake, tor- 
 rent, and waterfall, and make the villages look discoloured 
 and dirty. But no snow fell, nor was there any snow-drift 
 on the road. The stalking along the valley of more or less 
 of white mist, changing on their hair and dress into icicles, 
 was the only variety between them and the gloomy sky. 
 And still by day, and still by night, the wheels. And still 
 they rolled, in the hearing of one of them, to the burden, 
 altered from the burden of the Rhine : " The time is gone 
 for robbing him alive, and I must murder him." 
 
 They came, at length, to the poor little town of Brieg, 
 at the foot of the Simplon. They came there after dark, 
 but yet could see how dwarfed men's work and men be- 
 came with the immense mountains towering over them. 
 Here they must lie for the night; and here was warmth of 
 fire, and lamp, and dinner, and wine, and after-conference 
 resounding, with guides and drivers. No human creature 
 had come across the Pass for four days. The snow above 
 the snow-line was too soft for wheeled carriage, and not 
 hard enough for sledge. There was snow in the sky. 
 There had been snow in the sky for days past, and the mar- 
 vel was that it had not fallen, and the certainty was that it 
 must fall. No vehicle could cross. The journey might be 
 tried on mules, or it might be tried on foot; but the best 
 guides must be paid danger-price in either case, and that, 
 too, whether they succeeded in taking the two travellers 
 across, or turned for safety and brought them back. 
 
 In this discussion, Obenreizer bore no part whatever. 
 He sat silently smoking by the fire until the room was 
 cleared and Vendale referred to him. 
 
 "Bah! I am weary of these poor devils and their trade," 
 he said, in reply. "Always the same story. It is the 
 story of their trade to-day, as it was the story of their 
 trade when I was a ragged boy. What do you and I want? 
 We want a knapsack each, and a mountain- staff each. We 
 
92 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 want no guide; we should guide him; he would not guide 
 us. We leave our portmanteaus here, and we cross togeth- 
 er. We have been on the mountains together before now, 
 and I am mountain-born, and I know this Pass — Pass ! — 
 rather High Koad ! — by heart. We will leave these poor 
 devils, in pity, to trade with others; but they must not de- 
 lay us to make a pretence of earning money. Which is all 
 they mean." 
 
 Vendale, glad to be quit of the dispute, and to cut the 
 knot: active, adventurous, bent on getting forward, and 
 therefore very susceptible to the last hint: readily as- 
 sented. Within two hours, they had purchased what they 
 wanted for the expedition, had packed their knapsacks, 
 and lay down to sleep. 
 
 At break of day, they found half the town collected in 
 the narrow street to see them depart. The people talked 
 together in groups; the guides and drivers whispered apart, 
 and looked up at the sky; no one wished them a good jour- 
 ney. 
 
 As they began the ascent, a gleam of sun shone from the 
 otherwise unaltered sky, and for a moment turned the tin 
 spires of the town to silver. 
 
 " A good omen ! " said Vendale (though it died out while 
 he spoke). "Perhaps our example will open the Pass on 
 this side." 
 
 "No; we shall not be followed," returned Obenreizer, 
 looking up at the sky and back at the valley. " We shall be 
 alone up yonder " 
 
 ON THE MOUNTAIN". 
 
 The road was fair enough for stout walkers, and the air 
 grew lighter and easier to breathe as the two ascended. 
 But the settled gloom remained as it had remained for days 
 back. Nature seemed to have come to a pause. The sense 
 of hearing, no less than the sense of sight, was troubled by 
 having to wait so long for the change, whatever it might be, 
 that impended. The silence was as palpable and heavy as 
 the lowering clouds — or rather cloud, for there seemed to 
 be but one in all the sky, and that one covering the whole 
 of it. 
 
 Although the light was thus dismally shrouded, the pros- 
 pect was not obscured Down in the valley of the Rhone 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 93 
 
 behind them, the stream could be traced through all its 
 many windings, oppressively sombre and solemn in its one 
 leaden hue, a colourless waste. Far and high above them, 
 glaciers and suspended avalanches overhung the spots where 
 they must pass by-and-bye; deep and dark below them on 
 their right, were awful precipice and roaring torrent; tre- 
 mendous mountains arose in every vista. The gigantic 
 landscape, uncheered by a touch of changing light or a soli- 
 tary ray of sun, was yet terribly distinct in its ferocity. 
 The hearts of two lonely men might shrink a little, if they 
 had to win their way for miles and hours among a legion of 
 silent and motionless men — mere men like themselves — all 
 looking at them with fixed and frowning front. But how 
 much more, when the legion is of Nature's mightiest works, 
 and the frown may turn to fury in an instant ! 
 
 As they ascended, the road became gradually more rugged 
 and difficult. But the spirits of Vendale rose as they 
 mounted higher, leaving so much more of the road behind 
 them conquered. Obenreizer spoke little, and held on with 
 a determined purpose. Both, in respect of agility and en- 
 durance, were well qualified for the expedition. Whatever 
 the born mountaineer read in the weather-tokens, that was 
 illegible to the other, he kept to himself. 
 
 " Shall we get across to-day? " asked Vendale. 
 
 "No," replied the other. "You see how much deeper 
 the snow lies here than it lay half a league lower. The 
 higher we mount, the deeper the snow will lie. Walking 
 is half wading even now. And the days are so short ! If 
 we get as high as the fifth Refuge, and lie to-night at the 
 Hospice, we shall do well." 
 
 "Is. there no danger of the weather rising in the night," 
 asked Vendale, anxiously, " and snowing us up? " 
 
 "There is danger enough about us," said Obenreizer, 
 with a cautious glance onward and upward, " to render si- 
 lence our best policy. You have heard of the Bridge of the 
 Ganther? " 
 
 "I have crossed it once." 
 
 " In the summer? " 
 
 "Yes; in the travelling season." 
 
 "Yes; but it is another thing at this season;" with a 
 sneer, as though he were out of temper. " This is not a 
 time of year, or a state of things, on an Alpine Pass, that 
 you gentlemen holiday- travellers know much about." 
 
94 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 "You are my Guide," said Vend ale, good-humouredly. 
 "I trust to you." 
 
 "lam your Guide," said Obenreizer, "and I will guide 
 you to your journey's end. There is the Bridge before 
 us." 
 
 They had made a turn into a desolate and dismal ravine, 
 where the snow lay deep below them, deep above them, 
 deep on every side. While speaking, Obenreizer stood 
 pointing at the Bridge, and observing Vendale's face with 
 a very singular expression on his own. 
 
 " If I, as Guide, had sent you over there, in advance, and 
 encouraged you to give a shout or two, you might have 
 brought down upon yourself tons and tons and tons of 
 snow, that would not only have struck you dead, but buried 
 you deep, at a blow." 
 
 "No doubt," said Vendale. 
 
 "No doubt. But that is not what I have to do, as 
 Guide. So pass silently. Or, going as we go, our indis- 
 cretion might else crush and bury me. Let us go on ! " 
 
 There was a great accumulation of snow on the Bridge; 
 and such enormous accumulations of snow overhung them 
 from projecting masses of rock, that they might have been 
 making their way through a stormy sky of white clouds. 
 Using his staff skilfully, sounding as he went, and looking 
 upward, with bent shoulders, as it were to resist the mere 
 idea of a fall from above, Obenreizer softly led. Vendale 
 closely followed. They were yet in the midst of their dan- 
 gerous way, when there came a mighty rush, followed by a 
 sound as of thunder. Obenreizer clapped his hand on 
 Vendale's mouth and pointed to the track behind them. 
 Its aspect had been wholly changed in a moment. An ava- 
 lanche had swept over it, and plunged into the torrent at 
 the bottom of the gulf below. 
 
 Their appearance at the solitary Inn not far beyond this 
 terrible Bridge, elicited many expressions of astonishment 
 from the people shut up in the house. "We stay but to 
 rest," said Obenreizer, shaking the snow from his dress at 
 the fire. "This gentleman has very pressing occasion to 
 get across; — tell them, Vendale." 
 
 "Assuredly, I have very pressing occasion, I must 
 cross." 
 
 " You hear, all of you. My friend has very pressing oc- 
 casion to get across, and we want no advice and no help. 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 95 
 
 I am as good a guide, my fellow-countrymen, as any of 
 you. Now, give us to eat and drink." 
 
 In exactly the same way, and in nearly the same words, 
 when it was coming on dark and they had struggled through 
 the greatly increased difficulties of the road, and had at 
 last reached their destination for the night, Obenreizer said 
 to the astonished people of the Hospice, gathering about 
 them at the fire, while they were yet in the act of getting 
 their wet shoes off, and shaking the snow from their 
 clothes : 
 
 " It is well to understand one another, friends all. This 
 gentleman " 
 
 — "Has," said Vendale, readily taking him up with a 
 smile, " very pressing occasion to get across. Must cross." 
 
 " You hear? — has very pressing occasion to get across, 
 must cross. We want no advice and no help. I am moun- 
 tain-born, and act as Guide. Do not worry us by talking 
 about it, but let us have supper, and wine, and bed." 
 
 All through the intense cold of the night, the same aw- 
 ful stillness. Again at sunrise, no sunny tinge to gild or 
 redden the snow. The same interminable waste of deathly 
 white; the same immovable air; the same monotonous 
 gloom in the sky. 
 
 " Travellers ! " a friendly voice called to them from the 
 door, after they were afoot, knapsack on back and staff in 
 hand, as yesterday: "recollect! There are five places of 
 shelter, near together, on the dangerous road before you; 
 and there is the wooden cross, and there is the next Hos- 
 pice. Do not stray from the track. If the Tourmente 
 comes on, take shelter instantly ! " 
 
 " The trade of these poor devils ! " said Obenreizer to his 
 friend, with a contemptuous backward wave of his hand 
 towards the voice "How they stick to their trade! You 
 Englishmen say we Swiss are mercenary. Truly, it does 
 look like it " 
 
 They had divided between the two knapsacks, such re- 
 freshments as they had been able to obtain that morning, 
 and as they deemed it prudent to take. Obenreizer carried 
 the wine as his share of the burden; Vendale, the bread 
 and meat and cheese, and the flask of brandy. 
 
 They had for some time laboured upward and onward 
 through the snow — which was now above their knees in the 
 track, and of unknown depth elsewhere — and they were 
 
96 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 still labouring upward and onward through the most fright- 
 ful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow began to 
 fall. - At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and stead- 
 ily. After a little while the fall grew much denser, and 
 suddenly it began without apparent cause to whirl itself 
 into spiral shapes. Instantly ensuing upon this last 
 change, an icy blast came roaring at them, and every sound 
 and force imprisoned until now was let loose. 
 
 One of the dismal galleries through which the road is car- 
 ried at that perilous point, a cave eked out by arches of 
 great strength, was near at hand. They struggled into it, 
 and the storm raged wildly. The noise of the wind, the 
 noise of the water, the thundering down of displaced masses 
 of rock and snow, the awful voices with which not only 
 that gorge but every gorge in the whole monstrous range 
 seemed to be suddenly endowed, the darkness as of night, 
 the violent revolving of the snow which beat and broke it 
 into spray and blinded them, the madness of everything 
 around insatiate for destruction, the rapid substitution of 
 furious violence for unnatural calm, and hosts of appalling 
 sounds for silence : these were things, on the edge of a deep 
 abyss, to chill the blood, though the fierce wind, made ac- 
 tually solid by ice and snow, had failed to chill it. 
 
 Obenreizer, walking to and fro in the gallery without 
 ceasing, signed to Vendale to help him unbuckle his knap- 
 sack. They could see each other, but could not have heard 
 each other speak. Vendale complying, Obenreizer pro- 
 duced his bottle of wine, and poured some out, motioning 
 Vendale to take that for warmth's sake, and not brandy. 
 Vendale again complying, Obenreizer seemed to drink after 
 him, and the two walked backwards and forwards side by 
 side; both well knowing that to rest or sleep would be to die. 
 
 The snow came driving heavily into the gallery by the 
 upper end at which they would pass out of. it, if they ever 
 passed out; for greater dangers lay on the road behind 
 them than before. The snow soon began to choke the arch. 
 An hour more, and it lay so high as to block out half of 
 the returning daylight But it froze hard now, as it fell, 
 and could be clambered through or over The violence of 
 the mountain storm was gradually yielding to a steady 
 snowfall. The wind still raged at intervals, but not in- 
 cessantly; and when it paused, the snow fell in heav^ 
 flakes, 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 97 
 
 They might have been two hours in their frightful prison, 
 when Obenreizer, now crunching into the mound, now creep- 
 ing over it with his head bowed down and his body touch- 
 ing the top of the arch, made his way out. Vendale fol- 
 lowed close upon him, but followed without clear motive or 
 calculation. For the lethargy of Basle was creeping over 
 him again, and mastering his senses. 
 
 How far he had followed out of the gallery, or with what 
 obstacles he had since contended, he knew not. He be- 
 came roused to the knowledge that Obenreizer had set upon 
 him, and that they were struggling desperately in the snow. 
 He became roused to the remembrance of what his assailant 
 carried in a girdle. He felt for it, drew it, struck at him, 
 struggled again, struck at him again, cast him off, and stood 
 face to face with him. 
 
 " I promised to guide you to your journey's end," said 
 Obenreizer, " and I have kept my promise. The journey of 
 your life ends here. Nothing can prolong it. You are 
 sleeping as you ptand." 
 
 " You are a villain. What have you done to me? " 
 
 " You are a fool. I have drugged you. You are doubly 
 a fool, for I drugged you once before upon the journey, to 
 try you. You are trebly a fool, for I am the thief and 
 forger, and in a few moments I shall take those proofs 
 against the thief and forger from your insensible body." 
 
 The entrapped man tried to throw off the lethargy, but 
 its fatal hold upon him was so sure that, even while he 
 heard those words, he stupidly wondered which of them 
 had been wounded, and whose blood it was that he saw 
 sprinkled on the snow. 
 
 "What have I done to you," he asked, heavily and thick- 
 ly, " that you should be — so base — a murderer? " 
 
 "Done to me? You would have destroyed me, but that 
 you have come to your journey's end. Your cursed activ- 
 ity interposed between me, and the time I had counted on 
 in which I might have replaced the money. Done to me? 
 You have come in my way — not once, not twice, but again 
 and again and again. Did I try to shake you off in the 
 beginning, or no? You were not to be shaken off- There- 
 fore you die here." 
 
 Vendale tried to think coherently, tried to speak cohe- 
 rently, tried to pick up the iron-shod staff he had let fall; 
 failing to touch it, tried to stagger on without its aid. All 
 7 
 
98 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 in vain, all in vain ! He stumbled, and fell heavily for. 
 ward on the brink of the deep chasm. 
 
 Stupefied, dozing, unable to stand upon his feet, a veil 
 before his eyes, his sense of hearing deadened, he made 
 such a vigorous rally that, supporting himself on his hands, 
 he saw his enemy standing calmly over him, and heard him 
 speak. 
 
 "You call me murderer," said Obenreizer., with a grim 
 laugh. "The name matters very little. But at least I 
 have set my life against yours, for I am surrounded by 
 dangers, and may never make my way out of this place. 
 The Tourmente is rising again. The snow is now on the 
 whirl. I must have the papers now. Every moment has 
 my life in it." 
 
 " Stop ! " cried Vendale, in a terrible voice, staggering up 
 with a last flash of fire breaking out of him, and clutching 
 the thievish hands at his breast, in both of his. " Stop ! 
 Stand away from me ! God bless my Marguerite ! Hap- 
 pily she will never know how I died. Stand off from me, 
 and let me look at your murderous face. Let it remind 
 me — of something — left to say." 
 
 The sight of him fighting so hard for his senses, and the 
 doubt whether he might not for the instant be possessed by 
 the strength of a dozen men, kept his opponent still. 
 Wildly glaring at him, Vendale faltered out the broken 
 words : 
 
 "It shall not be — the trust — of the dead — betrayed 
 by me — reputed parents — misinherited fortune — see to 
 It!" 
 
 As his head dropped on his breast, and he stumbled on 
 the brink of the chasm as before, the thievish hands went 
 once more, quick and busy, to his breast. He made a con- 
 vulsive attempt to cry " No ! " desperately rolled himself 
 over into the gulf; and sank away from his enemy's touch, 
 like a phantom in a dreadful dream. 
 
 The mountain storm raged again, and passed again. 
 The awful mountain- voices died away, the moon rose, and 
 the soft and silent snow fell. 
 
 Two men and two large dogs came out at the door of the 
 Hospice. The men looked carefully around them, and up 
 at the sky. The dogs rolled in the snow, and took it into 
 their mouths, and cast it up with their paws. 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 99 
 
 One of the men said to the other : " We may venture 
 now. We may find them in one of the five Befuges." 
 Each fastened on his back, a basket; each took in his hand, 
 a strong spiked pole; each girded under his arms, a looped 
 end of a stout rope, so that they were tied together. 
 
 Suddenly the dogs desisted from their gambols in the 
 snow, stood looking down the ascent, put their noses up, 
 put their noses down, became greatly excited, and broke 
 into a deep loud bay together. 
 
 The two men looked in the faces of the two dogs. The 
 two dogs looked, with at least equal intelligence, in the 
 faces of the two men. 
 
 " Au secours, then ! Help ! To the rescue ! " cried the 
 two men. The two dogs, with a glad, deep, generous bark, 
 bounded away. 
 
 " Two more mad ones ! " said the men, stricken motion- 
 less, and looking away into the moonlight. " Is it possible 
 in such weather ! And one of them a woman ! " 
 
 Each of the dogs had the corner of a woman's dress in 
 its mouth and drew her along. She fondled their heads as 
 she came up, and she came up through the snow with an 
 accustomed tread. Not so the large man with her, who 
 was spent and winded. 
 
 " Dear guides, dear friends of travellers ! I am of your 
 country. We seek two gentlemen crossing the Pass, who 
 should have reached the Hospice this evening." 
 
 "They have reached it, ma'amselle." 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! thank Heaven ! " 
 
 "But, unhappily, they have gone on again. We are set- 
 ting forth to seek them even now. We had to wait until 
 the Tourmente passed. It has been fearful up here." 
 
 "Dear guides, dear friends of travellers! Let me go 
 with you. Let me go with you, for the love of God ! One 
 of those gentlemen is to be my husband. I love him, oh, 
 so dearly. so dearly ! You see I am not faint, you see 
 I am not tired. I am born a peasant girl. I will show 
 you that I know well how to fasten myself to your ropes. 
 I will do it with my own hands. I will swear to be brave 
 and good. But let me go with you, let me gc with you ! 
 If any mischance should have befallen him, my love would 
 find him, when nothing else could. On my knees, dear 
 friends of travellers ! By the love your dear mothers had 
 for your fathers ! " 
 
100 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 The good rough fellows were moved. " After all, ' they 
 murmured" to one another, " she speaks but the truth. She 
 knows the ways of the mountains. See how marvellously 
 she has come here! But as to Monsieur there, ma'am- 
 selle?" 
 
 "Dear Mr. Joey," said Marguerite, addressing him in 
 his own tongue, " you will remain at the house, and wait 
 for me; will you not? " 
 
 "If I know'd which o' you two recommended it," 
 growled Joey Ladle, eyeing the two men with great indig- 
 nation, "I'd fight you for sixpence, and give you half-a- 
 croAvn towards your expenses No, Miss. I'll stick by 
 you as long as there's any sticking left in me, and I'll die 
 for you when I can't do better." 
 
 The state of the moon rendering it highly important that 
 no time should be lost, and the dogs showing signs of great 
 uneasiness, the two men quickly took their resolution. The 
 rope that yoked them together was exchanged for a longer 
 one; the party were secured, Marguerite second, and the 
 Cellarman last; and they set out for the Refuges. The 
 actual distance of those places was nothing; the whole five 
 and the next Hospice to boot, being within two miles; but 
 the ghastly way was whitened out and sheeted over. 
 
 They made no miss in reaching the Gallery where the 
 two had taken shelter. The second storm of wind and 
 snow had so wildly swept over it since, that their tracks 
 were gone. But the dogs went to and fro with their noses 
 down, and were confident. The party stopping, however, 
 at the further arch, where the second storm had been espe- 
 cially furious, and where the drift was deep, the dogs be- 
 came troubled, and went about and about, in quest of a lost 
 purpose. 
 
 The great abyss being known to lie on the right, they 
 wandered too much to the left, and had to regain the way 
 with infinite labour through a deep field of snow. The 
 leader of the line had stopped it, and was taking note of 
 the landmarks, when one of the dogs fell to tearing up the 
 snow a little before them. Advancing and stooping to 
 look at it, thinking that some one might be overwhelmed 
 there, they saw that it was stained, and that the stain was 
 red. 
 
 The other dog was now seen to look over the brink of the 
 gulf, with his fore legs straightened out, lest he should fall 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 101 
 
 into it, and to tremble in every limb. Then the dog who 
 had found the stained snow joined him, and then they ran 
 to and fro, distressed and whining. Finally, they both 
 stopped on the brink together, and setting up their heads, 
 howled dolefully. 
 
 "There is some one lying below," said Marguerite. 
 
 "I think so," said the foremost man. "Stand well in- 
 ward, the two last, and let us look over." 
 
 The last man kindled two torches from his basket, and 
 handed them forward. The leader taking one, and Mar- 
 guerite the other, they looked down: now shading the 
 torches, now moving them to the right or left, now raising 
 them, now depressing them, as moonlight far below con- 
 tended with black shadows. A piercing cry from Margue- 
 rite broke a long silence. 
 
 " My God ! On a projecting point, where a wall of ice 
 stretches forward over the torrent, I see a human form ! " 
 
 "Where, ma'amselle, where?" 
 
 " See, there ! On the shelf of ice below the dogs ! " 
 
 The leader, with a sickened aspect, drew inward, and 
 they were all silent. But they were not all inactive, for 
 Marguerite, with swift and skilful fingers, had detached 
 both herself and him from the rope in a few seconds. 
 
 "Show me the baskets. These two are the only 
 ropes? " 
 
 "The only ropes here, ma'amselle; but at the Hos- 
 pice " 
 
 " If he is alive — I know it is my lover — he will be dead 
 before you can return. Dear Guides ! Blessed friends of 
 travellers ! Look at me ! Watch my hands. If they fal- 
 ter or go wrong, make me your prisoner by force. If they 
 are steady and go right, help me to save him ! " 
 
 She girded herself with a cord under the breast and arms, 
 she formed it into a kind of jacket, she drew it into knots, 
 she laid its end side by side with the end of the other 
 cord, she twisted and twined the two together, she knotted 
 them together, she set her foot upon the knots, she strained 
 them, she held them for the two men to strain at. 
 
 " She is inspired," they said to one another. 
 
 "By the Almighty's mercy!" she exclaimed. "You 
 both know that I am by far the lightest here. Give me 
 the brandy and the wine, and lower me down to him. 
 Then go for assistance and a stronger rope. You see that 
 
102 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 when it is lowered to me — look at this about me now — I 
 can make it fast and safe to his body. Alive or dead, I 
 will. bring him up, or die with him. I love him passion- 
 ately. Can I say more? " 
 
 They turned to her companion, but he was lying sense- 
 less on the snow. 
 
 "Lower me down to him," she said, taking two little 
 kegs they had brought, and hanging them about her, " or I 
 will dash myself to pieces ! I am a peasant, and I know 
 no giddiness or fear; and this is nothing to me, and I pas- 
 sionately love him. Lower me down ! " 
 
 "Ma'amselle, ma'amselle, he must be dying or dead." 
 
 "Dying or dead, my husband's head shall lie upon my 
 breast, or I will dash myself to pieces." 
 
 They yielded, overborne. With such precautions as 
 their skill and the circumstances admitted, they let her slip 
 from the summit, guiding herself down the precipitous icy 
 wall with her hand, and they lowered down, and lowered 
 down, and lowered down, until the cry came up : " Enough ! " 
 
 " Is it really he, and is he dead? " they called down, 
 looking over. 
 
 The cry came up : " He is insensible; but his heart beats. 
 It beats against mine." 
 
 "How does he lie? " 
 
 The cry came up : " Upon a ledge of ice. It has thawed 
 beneath him, and it will thaw beneath me. Hasten. If 
 we die, I am content." 
 
 One of the two men hurried off with the dogs at such 
 topmost speed as he could make; the other set up the 
 lighted torches in the snow, and applied himself to recov- 
 ering the Englishman. Much snow-chafing and some 
 brandy got him on his legs, but delirious and quite uncon- 
 scious where he was. 
 
 The watch remaine.d upon the brink, and his cry went 
 down continually: "Courage! They will soon be here. 
 How goes it? " And the cry came up : " His heart still 
 beats against mine. I warm him in my arms. I have cast 
 off the rope, for the ice melts under us, and the rope would 
 separate me from him; but I am not afraid." 
 
 The moon went down behind the mountain tops, and all 
 tne abyss lay in darkness. The cry went down: "How 
 goes it? " The cry came up : " We are sinking lower, but 
 his heart still beats against mine." 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 103 
 
 At length, the eager barking of the dogs, and a flare of 
 light upon the snow, proclaimed that help was coming on. 
 Twenty or thirty men, lamps, torches, litters, ropes, blank- 
 ets, wood to kindle a great fire, restoratives and stimulants, 
 came in fast. The dogs ran from one man to another, and 
 from this thiug to that, and ran to the edge of the abyss, 
 dumbly entreating Speed, speed, speed! 
 
 The cry went down: "Thanks to God, all is ready. 
 How goes it? " 
 
 The cry Came up: "We are sinking still, and we are 
 deadly cold. His heart no longer beats against mine. Let 
 no one come down to add to our weight. Lower the -rope 
 only." 
 
 The fire was kindled high, a great glare of torches lighted 
 the sides of the precipice, lamps were lowered, a strong 
 rope was lowered. She could be seen passing it round him, 
 and making it secure. 
 
 The cry came up into a deathly silence : " Raise ! Softly ! " 
 They could see her diminished figure shrink, as he was 
 swung into the air. 
 
 They gave no shout when some of them laid him on a 
 litter, and others lowered another strong rope. The cry 
 again came up into a deathly silence : " Raise ! Softly ! " 
 But when they caught her at the brink, then they shouted, 
 then they wept, then they gave thanks to Heaven, then 
 they kissed her feet, then they kissed her dress, then the 
 dogs caressed her, licked her icy hands, and with their 
 honest faces warmed her frozen bosom ! 
 
 She broke from them all, and sank over him on his litter, 
 with both her loving hands upon the heart that stood still. 
 
 ACT IV. 
 
 THE CLOCK-LOCK. 
 
 The pleasant scene was jSTeuchatel; the pleasant month 
 was April; the pleasant place was a notary's office; the 
 pleasant person in it was the notary : a rosy, hearty, hand- 
 some old man, chief notary of Neuchatel, known far and 
 wide in the canton as Maitre Voigt. Professionally and 
 personally, the notary was a popular citizen. His innumer- 
 able kindnesses and his innumerable oddities had for years 
 made him one of the recognised public characters of the 
 pleasant Swiss town. His long brown frock-coat and his 
 
104 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 black skull-cap were among the institutions of the place; 
 and he carried a snuff-box which, in point of size, was pop- 
 ularly believed to be without a parallel in Europe. 
 
 There was another person in the notary's office, not so 
 pleasant as the notary. This was Obenreizer. 
 
 An oddly pastoral kind of office it was, and one that 
 would never have answered in England. It stood in a neat 
 back-yard, fenced off from a pretty flower-garden. Goats 
 browsed in the doorway, and a cow was within half a dozen 
 feet of keeping company with the clerk. Maitre Voigt's 
 room was a bright and varnished little room, with panelled 
 walls, like a toy-chamber. According to the seasons of the 
 year, roses, sunflowers, hollyhocks, peeped in at the win- 
 dows. Maitre Voigt's bees hummed through the office all 
 the summer, in at this window and out at that, taking it 
 frequently in their day's work, as if honey were to be made 
 from Maitre Voigt's sweet disposition. A large musical 
 box on the chimney-piece often trilled away at the Over- 
 ture to Era Diavolo, or a Selection from William Tell, with 
 a chirruping liveliness that had to be stopped by force on 
 the entrance of a client, and irrepressibly broke out again 
 the moment his back was turned. 
 
 " Courage, courage, my good fellow ! " said Maitre Voigt, 
 patting Obenreizer on the knee, in a fatherly and comfort- 
 ing way. " You will begin a new life to-morrow morning 
 in my office here." 
 
 Obenreizer — dressed in mourning, and subdued in man- 
 ner — lifted his hand, with a white handkerchief in it, to 
 the region of his heart. "The gratitude is here," he said. 
 "But the words to express it are not here." 
 
 "Ta-ta-ta! Don't talk to me about gratitude!" said 
 Maitre Voigt. " I hate to see a man oppressed. I see you 
 oppressed, and I hold out my hand to you by instinct. Be- 
 sides, I am not too old yet, to remember my young days. 
 Your father sent me my first client. (It was on a question 
 of half an acre of vineyard that seldom bore any grapes.) 
 Do I owe nothing to your father's son? I owe him a debt 
 of friendly obligation, and I pay it to you. That's rather 
 neatly expressed, I think," added Maitre Voigt, in high 
 good humour with himself. " Permit me to reward my own 
 merit with a pinch of snuff ! " 
 
 Obenreizer dropped his eyes to the ground, as though he 
 were not even worthy to see the notary take snuff. 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 105 
 
 "Do me one last favour, sir," he said, when he raised 
 his eyes. "Do not act on impulse. Thus far, you have 
 only a general knowledge of my position. Hear the case 
 for and against me, in its details, before you take me into 
 your office. Let my claim on your benevolence be recog- 
 nised by your sound reason as well as by your excellent 
 heart. In that case, I may hold up my head against the 
 bitterest of my enemies, and build myself a new reputation 
 on the ruins of the character I have lost." 
 
 "As you will," said Maitre Voigt. "You speak well, 
 my son. You will be a fine lawyer one of these days." 
 
 "The details are not many," pursued Obenreizer. "My 
 troubles begin with the accidental death of my late travel- 
 ling companion, my lost dear friend, Mr. Vendale." 
 
 " Mr. Vendale," repeated the notary. " Just so. I have 
 heard and read of the name, several times within these two 
 months. The name of the unfortunate English gentleman 
 who was killed on the Simplon. When you got that scar 
 upon your cheek and neck." 
 
 " — From my own knife," said Obenreizer, touching what 
 must have been an ugly gash at the time of its infliction. 
 
 "From your own knife," assented the notary, "and in 
 trying to save him. Good, good, good. That was very 
 good. Vendale. Yes. I have several times, lately, 
 thought it droll that I should once have had a client of that 
 name." 
 
 " But tlie world, sir," returned Obenreizer, " is so small ! " 
 Nevertheless he made a mental note that the notary had 
 once had a client of that name. 
 
 "As I was saying, sir, the death of that dear travelling 
 comrade begins my troubles. What follows? I save my- 
 self. I go down to Milan. I am received with coldness 
 by Defresnier and Company. Shortly afterwards, I am 
 discharged by Defresnier and Company. Why? They 
 give no reason why. I ask, do they assail my honour? 
 No answer. I ask, what is the imputation against me? 
 No answer. I ask, where are their proofs against me? No 
 answer. I ask, what am I to think? The reply is, 'M. 
 Obenreizer is free to think what he will. What M. Oben- 
 reizer thinks, is of no importance to Defresnier and Com- 
 pany.' And that is all." 
 
 "Perfectly. That is all," assented the notary, taking a 
 large pinch of snuff. 
 
106 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 "But is that enough, sir? " 
 
 "That is not enough," said Maitre Voigt. "The House 
 of Defresnier are my fellow-townsmen — much respected, 
 much esteemed — but the House of Defresnier must not si- 
 lently destroy a man's character. You can rebut assertion. 
 But how can you rebut silence? " 
 
 " Your sense of justice, my dear patron, " answered Oben- 
 reizer, "states in a word the cruelty of the case. Does it 
 stop there? No. For, what follows upon that? " 
 
 "True, my poor boy," said the notary, with a comfort- 
 ing nod or two; "your ward rebels upon that." 
 
 "Rebels is too soft a word," retorted Obenreizer. "My 
 ward revolts from me with horror. My ward defies me. 
 My ward withdraws herself from my authority, and takes 
 shelter (Madame Dor with her) in the house of that Eng- 
 lish lawyer, Mr. Bintrey, who replies to your summons to 
 her to submit herself to my authority, that she will not do 
 so." 
 
 " — And who afterwards writes," said the notary, mojivvg 
 his large snuff-box to look among the papers underneath it 
 for the letter, " that he is coming to confer with me. " 
 
 " Indeed? " replied Obenreizer, rather checked. "Well, 
 sir. Have I no legal rights? " 
 
 "Assuredly, my poor boy," returned the notary. "All 
 but felons have their legal rights." 
 
 " And who calls me felon? " said Obenreizer, fiercely. 
 
 "No one. Be calm under your wrongs. If the House 
 of Defresnier would call you felon, indeed, we should know 
 how to deal with them." 
 
 While saying these words, he had handed Bintrey 's very 
 short letter to Obenreizer, who now read it and gave it back 
 
 "In saying," observed Obenreizer with recovered com- 
 posure, " that he is coming to confer with you, this English 
 lawyer means that he is coming to deny my authority over 
 my ward." 
 
 " You think so? " 
 
 " I am sure of it. I know him. He is obstinate and 
 contentious. You will tell me, my dear sir, whether my 
 authority is unassailable, until my ward is of age? " 
 
 "Absolutely unassailable." 
 
 " I will enforce it. I will make her submit herself to it. 
 For," said Obenreizer, changing his angry tone to one of 
 grateful submission, "I owe it to you, sir; to you, who 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 107 
 
 have so confidingly taken an injured man under your pro- 
 tection, and into your employment." 
 
 "Make your mind easy," said Maitre Voigt. "No more 
 of this now, and no thanks ! Be here to-morrow morning, 
 before the other clerk comes — between seven and eight. 
 You will find me in this room; and I will myself initiate 
 you in your work. Go away ! go away ! I have letters to 
 write. I won't hear a word more." 
 
 Dismissed with this generous abruptness, and satisfied 
 with the favourable impression he had left on the old man's 
 mind, Obenreizer was at leisure to revert to the mental note 
 he had made that Maitre Voigt once had a client whose 
 name was Vendale. 
 
 "I ought to know England well enough by this time; " 
 so his meditations ran, as he sat on a bench in the yard; 
 " and it is not a name I ever encountered there, except — " 
 he looked involuntarily over his shoulder — " as his name. 
 Is the world so small that I cannot get away from him, 
 even now when he is dead? He confessed at the last that 
 he had betrayed the trust of the dead, and misinherited a 
 fortune. And I was to see to it. And I was to stand off, 
 that my face might remind him of it. Why my face, unless 
 it concerned me ? I am sure of his words, for they have 
 been in my ears ever since. Can there be anything bear- 
 ing on them, in the keeping of this old idiot? Anything 
 to repair my fortunes, and blacken his memory? He dwelt 
 upon my earliest remembrances, that night at Basle. Why, 
 unless he had a purpose in it? " 
 
 Maitre Voigt' s two largest he-goats were butting at him 
 to butt him out of the place, as if for that disrespectful 
 mention of their master. So he got up and left the place. 
 But he walked alone for a long time *on the border of the 
 lake, with his head drooped in deep thought. 
 
 Between seven and eight next morning, he presented 
 himself at the office. He found the notary ready for him, 
 at work on some papers which had come in on the previous 
 evening. In a few clear words, Maitre Voigt explained 
 the routine of the office, and the duties Obenreizer would 
 be expected to perform. It still wanted five minutes to 
 eight when the preliminary instructions were declared to 
 be complete. 
 
 "I will show you over the house and the offices," said 
 Maitre Voigt, " but I must put away these papers first. 
 
10,8 KO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 They come from the municipal authorities and they must 
 be taken special care of." 
 
 Obenreizer saw his chance here of finding out the reposi- 
 tory in which his employer's private papers were kept. 
 
 "Can't I save you the trouble, sir?" he asked. "Can't 
 I put those documents away under your directions? " 
 
 Maitre Voigt laughed softly to himself; closed the port- 
 folio in which the papers had been sent to him; handed it 
 to Obenreizer. 
 
 " Suppose you try," he said. " All my papers of impor- 
 tance are kept yonder." 
 
 He pointed to a heavy oaken door, thickly studded with 
 nails, at the lower end of the room. Approaching the 
 door, with the portfolio, Obenreizer discovered, to his 
 astonishment, that there were no means whatever of open- 
 ing it from the outside. There was no handle, no bolt, no 
 key, and- (climax of passive obstruction!) no keyhole. 
 
 "There is a second door to this room? " said Obenreizer, 
 appealing to the notary. 
 
 "No," said Maitre Voigt. "Guess again." 
 
 " There is a window? " 
 
 "Nothing of the sort. The window has been bricked 
 up. The only way in, is the way by that door. Do you 
 give it up? " cried Maitre Voigt in high triumph. Listen, 
 my good fellow, and tell me if yon. hear nothing inside? " 
 
 Obenreizer listened for a moment, and started back from 
 the door. 
 
 " I know ! " he exclaimed. " I heard of this when I was 
 apprenticed here at the watch-maker's. Perrin Brothers 
 have finished their famous clock-lock at last — and you have 
 got it? " 
 
 "Bravo!" said M,aitre Voigt "The clock-lock it is! 
 There, my son! There you have one more of what the 
 good people of this town call 'Daddy Voigt' s follies.' 
 With all my heart ! Let those laugh who win. No thief 
 can steal my keys. No burglar can pick my lock. No 
 power on earth, short of a battering-ram or a barrel of 
 gunpowder, can move that door, till my little sentinel in- 
 side — my worthy friend who goes 'Tick, Tick,' as I tell 
 him — says, ' Open ! ' The big door obeys the little Tick, 
 Tick, and the little Tick, Tick, obeys me. That!" cried 
 Daddy Voigt, snapping his fingers, " for all the thieves in 
 Christendom ! " 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 109 
 
 "May I see it in action?" asked Obenreizer. "Pardon 
 my curiosity, dear sir ! You know that I was once a toler- 
 able worker in the clock trade." 
 
 "Certainly you shall see it in action," said Maitre Voigt. 
 "What is the time now? One minute to eight. Watch, 
 and in one minute you will see the door open of itself." 
 
 In one minute, smoothly and slowly and silently, as if 
 invisible hands had set it free, the heavy door opened in- 
 ward, and disclosed a dark chamber beyond. On three 
 sides, shelves filled the walls, from floor to ceiling. Ar- 
 ranged on the shelves, were rows upon rows of boxes made 
 in the pretty inlaid woodwork of Switzerland, and bearing 
 inscribed on their fronts (for the most part in fanciful 
 coloured letters) the names of the notary's clients. 
 
 Maitre Voigt lighted a taper, and led the way into the 
 room. 
 
 " You shall see the clock," he said, proudly. " 1 possess 
 the greatest curiosity in Europe. It is only a privileged 
 few whose eyes can look at it. I give the privilege to 
 your good father's son — you shall be one of the favoured 
 few who enter the room with me. See! here it is, on the 
 right-hand wall at the side of the door." 
 
 "An ordinary clock," exclaimed Obenreizer. "No! Not 
 an ordinary clock. It has only one hand." 
 
 " Aha ! " said Maitre Voigt. " Not an ordinary clock, 
 my friend. No, no. That one hand goes round the dial. 
 As I put it, so it regulates the hour at which the door shall 
 open. See ! The hand points to eight. At eight the door 
 opened, as you saw for yourself." 
 
 "Does it open more than once in the four-and-twenty 
 hours? " asked Obenreizer. 
 
 "More than once?" repeated the notary, with great 
 scorn. "You don't know my good friend, Tick, Tick! 
 He will open the door as often as I ask him. All he wants, 
 is his directions, and he gets them here. Look below the 
 dial. Here is a half-circle of steel let into the wall, and 
 here is a hand (called the regulator) that travels round it, 
 just as my hand chooses. Notice, if you please, that there 
 are figures to guide me on the half-circle of steel. Figure 
 I. means : Open once in the four-and-twenty hours. Figure 
 II means: Open twice; and so on to the end. I set the 
 regulator every morning, after I have read my letters, and 
 when I know what my day's work is to be. Would you 
 
110 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 like to see me set it now? What is to-day? Wednesday. 
 Good! This is the day of our rifle-club; there is little 
 business to do; I grant a half -holiday. No work here to- 
 day, after three o'clock. Let us first put away this port- 
 folio of municipal papers. There! No need to trouble 
 Tick, Tick to open the door until eight to-morrow. Good ! 
 I leave the dial-hand at eight; I put back the regulator to 
 'I.?; I close the door; and closed the door remains, past 
 all opening by anybody, till to-morrow morning at eight." 
 
 Obenreizer's quickness instantly saw the means by which 
 he might make the clock-lock betray its master's confidence, 
 and place its master's papers at his disposal. 
 
 " Stop, sir ! " he cried, at the moment when the notary 
 was closing the door. "Don't I see something moving 
 among the boxes — on the floor there? " 
 
 (Maitre Voigt turned his back for a moment to look. In 
 that moment, Obenreizer's ready hand put the regulator on 
 from the figure " I." to the figure " II." Unless the notary 
 looked again at the half-circle of steel, the door would 
 open at eight that evening, as well as at eight next morn- 
 ing, and nobody but Obenreizer would know it. ) 
 
 " There is nothing ! " said Maitre Voigt. " Your trou- 
 bles have shaken your nerves, my son. Some shadow 
 thrown by my taper; or some poor little beetle, who lives 
 among the old lawyer's secrets, running away from the 
 light. Hark ! I hear your fellow-clerk in the office. To 
 work ! to work ! and build to-day the first step that leads 
 to your new fortunes ! " 
 
 He good humouredly pushed Obenreizer out before him; 
 extinguished the taper, with a last fond glance at his clock 
 which passed harmlessly over the regulator beneath; and 
 closed the oaken door. 
 
 At three the office was shut up. The notary and every- 
 body in the notary's employment, with one exception, went 
 to see the rifle-shooting. Obenreizer had pleaded that he 
 was not in spirits for a public festival. Nobody knew 
 what had become of him. It was believed that he had 
 slipped away for a solitary walk. 
 
 The house and offices had been closed but a few minutes, 
 when the door of a shining wardrobe, in the notary's shin- 
 ing room, opened, and Obenreizer stepped out. He walked 
 to a window, unclosed the shutters, satisfied himself that 
 he could escape unseen by way of the garden, turned back 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. Ill 
 
 into the room, and took his place in the notary's easy-chair. 
 He was locked, up in the house, and there were five hours 
 to wait before eight o'clock came. 
 
 He wore his way through the five hours: sometimes 
 reading the books and newspapers that lay on the table : 
 sometimes thinking : sometimes walking to and fro. Sun- 
 set came on. He closed the window-shutters before he 
 kindled a light. The candle lighted, and the time draw- 
 ing nearer and nearer, he sat, watch in hand, with his eyes 
 on the oaken door. 
 
 At eight, smoothly and softly and silently the door 
 opened. 
 
 One after another, he read the names on the outer rows 
 of boxes. No such name as Vendale ! He removed the 
 outer row, and looked at the row behind. These were 
 older boxes, and shabbier boxes. The four first that he ex- 
 amined were inscribed with French and German names. 
 The fifth bore a name which was almost illegible. He 
 brought it out into the room, and examined it closely. 
 There, covered thickly with time-stains and dust, was the 
 name: "Vendale." 
 
 The key hung to the box by a string. He unlocked the 
 box, took out four loose papers that were in it, spread them 
 open on the table, and began to read them. He had not 
 so occupied a minute, when his face fell from its expression 
 of eagerness and avidity, to one of haggard astonishment 
 and disappointment. But, after a little consideration, he 
 copied the papers. He then replaced the papers, replaced 
 the box, closed the door, extinguished the candle, and stole 
 away. 
 
 As his murderous and thievish footfall passed out of the 
 garden, the steps of the notary and some one accompany- 
 ing him stopped at the front door of the house. The lamps 
 were lighted in the little street, and the notary had his 
 door-key in his hand. 
 
 "Pray do not pass my house, Mr. Bintrey," he said. 
 " Do me the honour to come in. It is one of our town half- 
 holidays — our Tir — but my people will be back directly. 
 It is droll that you should ask your way to the Hotel of 
 me. Let us eat and drink before you go there." 
 
 "Thank you; not to-night," said Bintrey. "Shall I 
 come to you at ten to-morrow? " 
 
 " I shall be enchanted, sir, to take so early an opportu* 
 
112 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 nity of redressing the wrongs of my injured client/' re- 
 turned the good notary. 
 
 "Yes," retorted Bin trey ; " your injured client is all very 
 well — but — a word in your ear." 
 
 He whispered to the notary, and walked off. When the 
 notary's housekeeper came home, she found him standing 
 at his door motionless, with the key still in his hand, and 
 the door unopened. 
 
 obenreizer' s victory. 
 
 The scene shifts again — to the foot of the Simplon, on 
 the Swiss side. 
 
 In one of the dreary rooms of the dreary little Inn at 
 Brieg, Mr. Bin trey and Maitre Voigt sat together at a pro- 
 fessional council of two. Mr. Bintrey was searching in his 
 despatch-box. Maitre Voigt was looking towards a closed 
 door, painted brown to imitate mahogany, and communi- 
 cating with an inner room. 
 
 "Isn't it time he was here? " asked the notary, shifting 
 his position, and glancing at a second door at the other end 
 of the room, painted yellow to imitate deal. 
 
 "He is here," answered Bintrey, after listening for a 
 moment. 
 
 The yellow door was opened by a waiter, and Obenreizer 
 walked in. 
 
 After greeting Maitre Voigt with a cordiality which ap- 
 peared to cause the notary no little embarrassment, Oben- 
 reizer bowed with grave and distant politeness to Bintrey. 
 "For what reason have I been brought from Neuchatel 
 to the foot of the mountain? " he inquired, taking the seat 
 which the English lawyer had indicated to him. 
 
 " You shall be quite satisfied on that head before our in- 
 terview is over," returned Bintrey. "For the present, per- 
 mit me to suggest proceeding at once to business. There 
 has been a correspondence, Mr. Obenreizer, between you 
 and your niece. I am here to represent your niece." 
 
 "In other words, you, a lawyer are here to represent 
 an infraction of the law." 
 
 " Admirably put I " said Bintrey. " If all the people I 
 have to deal with were only like you, what an easy profes- 
 sion mine would be ! I am here to represent an infraction 
 of the law — that is your point of view. I am here to make 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 113 
 
 a ^compromise between you and your niece — that is my 
 point of view." 
 
 "There must be two parties to a compromise," rejoined 
 Obenreizer. " I decline, in this case, to be one of them. 
 The law gives me authority to control my niece's actions, 
 until she comes of age. She is not yet of age; and I claim 
 my authority." 
 
 At this point Maitre Voigt attempted to speak. Bintrey 
 silenced him with a compassionate indulgence of tone and 
 manner, as if he was silencing a favourite child. 
 
 "No, my worthy friend, not a word. Don't excite your- 
 self unnecessarily; leave it to me." He turned, and ad- 
 dressed himself again to Obenreizer. " I can think of noth- 
 ing comparable to you, Mr. Obenreizer, but granite — and 
 even that wears out in course of time. In the interests of 
 peace and quietness — for the sake of your own dignity — 
 relax a little. If you will only delegate your authority to 
 another person whom I know of, that person may be trusted 
 never to lose sight of your niece, night or day ! " 
 
 "You are wasting your time and mine," returned Oben- 
 reizer. " If my niece is not rendered up to my authority 
 within one week from this day, I invoke the law. If you 
 resist the law, I take her by force." 
 
 He rose to his feet as he said the last word. Maitre 
 Voigt looked round again towards the brown door which 
 led into the inner room. 
 
 "Have some pity on the poor girl," pleaded Bintrey. 
 " Remember how lately she lost her lover by a dreadful 
 death ! Will nothing move you? " 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 Bintrey, in his turn, rose to his feet, and looked at 
 Maitre Voigt. Maitre Voigt's hand, resting on the table, 
 began to tremble. Maitre Voigt's eyes remained fixed, as 
 if by irresistible fascination, on the brown door. Oben- 
 reizer, suspiciously observing him, looked that way, too. 
 
 " There is somebody listening in there ! " he exclaimed, 
 with a sharp backward glance at Bintrey. 
 
 "There are two people listening," answered Bintrey. 
 
 "Who are they?" 
 
 "You shall see." 
 
 With that answer, he raised his voice and spoke the next 
 words — the two common words which are on everybody's 
 lips, at every hour of the day : " Come in ! " 
 8 
 
114 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 The brown door opened. Supported on Marguerite's 
 arm — his sunburnt colour gone, his right arm bandaged and 
 slung over his breast — Vendale stood before the murderer, 
 a man risen from the dead. 
 
 In the moment of silence that followed, the singing of a 
 caged bird in the courtyard outside was the one sound stir- 
 ring in the room. Maitre Voigt touched Bintrey, and 
 pointed to Obenreizer. " Look at him ! " said the notary, 
 in a whisper. 
 
 The shock had paralysed every movement in the villain's 
 body, but the movement of the blood. His face was like 
 the face of a corpse. The one vestige of colour left in it 
 was a livid purple streak which marked the course of the 
 scar, where his victim had wounded him on the cheek and 
 neck. Speechless, breathless, motionless alike in eye and 
 limb, it seemed as if, at the sight of Vendale, the death to 
 which he had doomed Vendale had struck him where he 
 stood. 
 
 "Somebody ought to speak to him," said Maitre Voigt. 
 "Shall I?" 
 
 Even at that moment, Bintrey persisted in silencing the 
 notary, and in keeping the lead in the proceedings to him- 
 self. Checking Maitre Voigt by a gesture, he dismissed 
 Marguerite and Vendale in these words : — " The object of 
 your appearance here is answered," he said. "If you will 
 withdraw for the present, it may help Mr. Obenreizer to 
 recover himself." 
 
 It did help him. As the two passed through the door, 
 and closed it behind them, he drew a deep breath of relief. 
 He looked round him for the chair from which he had 
 risen, and dropped into it. 
 
 " Give him time ! " pleaded Maitre Voigt. 
 
 "No," said Bintrey. "I don't know what use he may 
 make of it, if I do." He turned once more to Obenreizer, 
 and went on. "I owe it to myself," he said — "I don't 
 admit, mind, that I owe it to you — to account for my ap- 
 pearance in these proceedings, and to state what has been 
 done under my advice, and on my sole responsibility. Can 
 you listen to me? " 
 
 "I can listen to you." 
 
 " Becall the time when you started for Switzerland with 
 Mr. Vendale," Bintrey began. " You had not left England 
 four-and- twenty hours, before your niece committed an act 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 115 
 
 of imprudence which not even your penetration could fore- 
 see. She followed her promised husband or his journey, 
 without asking anybody's advice or permission, and with- 
 out any better companion to protect her than a Cellarman 
 in Mr. Vendale's employment." 
 
 " Why did she follow me on the journey? and how came 
 the Cellarman to be the person who accompanied her? " 
 
 "She followed you on the journey," answered Bintrey, 
 " because she suspected there had been some serious colli- 
 sion between you and Mr. Vendale, which had been kept 
 secret from her; and because she rightly believed you to be 
 capable of serving your interests, or of satisfying your 
 enmity, at the price of a crime. As for the Cellarman, he 
 was one, among the other people in Mr. Vendale's estab- 
 lishment, to whom she had applied (the moment your back 
 was turned) to know if anything had happened between 
 their master and you. The Cellarman alone had something 
 to tell her. A senseless superstition, and a common ac- 
 cident which had happened to his master, in his master's 
 cellar, had connected Mr. Vendale in this man's mind with 
 the idea of danger by murder. Your niece surprised him 
 into a confession, which aggravated tenfold the terrors that 
 possessed her. Aroused to a sense of the mischief he had 
 done, the man, of his own accord, made the one atonement 
 in his power. ! If my master is in danger, Miss,' he said, 
 - it's my duty to follow him, too; and it's more than my 
 duty to take care of yozi.' The two set forth together — 
 and, for once, a superstition has had its use. It decided 
 your niece on taking the journey; and it led the way to 
 saving a man's life's. Do you understand me, so far? " 
 
 "I understand you, so far." 
 
 "My first knowledge of the crime that you had com- 
 mitted," pursued Bintrey, "came to me in the form of a 
 letter from your niece. All you need know is that her 
 love and her courage recovered the body of your victim, 
 and aided the after-efforts which brought him back to life. 
 While he lay helpless at Brieg, under her care, she wrote 
 to me to come out to him. Before starting, I informed 
 Madame Dor that I knew Miss Obenreizer to be safe, and 
 knew where she was. Madame Dor informed me, in return, 
 that a letter had come for your niece, which she knew to 
 be in your handwriting. I took possession of it, and 
 arranged for the forwarding of any other letters which 
 
116 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 might follow. Arrived at Brieg, I found Mr. Vendale out 
 of danger, and at once devoted myself to hastening the day 
 of reckoning with you. Defresnier and Company turned 
 you off on suspicion; acting on information privately sup- 
 plied by me. Having stripped you of your false character, 
 the next thing to do was to strip you of your authority over 
 your niece. To reach this end, I not only had no scruple 
 in digging the pitfall under your feet in the dark — I felt a 
 certain professional pleasure in fighting you with your own 
 weapons. By my advice, the truth has been carefully con- 
 cealed from you, up to this day. By my advice, the trap 
 into which you have walked was set for you (you know 
 why, now, as well as I do) in this place. There was but 
 one certain way of shaking the devilish self-control which 
 has hitherto made you a formidable man. That way has 
 been tried, and (look at me as you may) that way has suc- 
 ceeded. The last thing that remains to be done," con- 
 cluded Bintrey, producing two little slips of manuscript 
 from his despatch-box, " is to set your niece free. You 
 have attempted murder, and you have committed forgery 
 and theft. We have the evidence ready against you in 
 both cases. If you are convicted as a felon, you know as 
 well as I do what becomes of your authority over your 
 niece. Personally, I should have preferred taking that 
 way out of it. But considerations are pressed on me which 
 I am not able to resist, and this interview must end, as I 
 have told you already, in a compromise. Sign those lines, 
 resigning all authority over Miss Obenreizer, and pledging 
 yourself never to be seen in England or in Switzerland 
 again; and I will sign an indemnity which secures you 
 against further proceedings on our part." 
 
 Obenreizer took the pen, in silence, and signed his niece's 
 release. In receiving the indemnity in return, he rose, but 
 made no movement to leave the room. He stood looking 
 at Maitre Voigt with a strange smile gathering at his lips, 
 and a strange light flashing in his filmy eyes. 
 
 " What are you waiting for? " asked Bintrey. 
 
 Obenreizer pointed to the brown door. "Call them 
 back," he answered. "I have something to say in their 
 presence before I go." 
 
 "Say it in my presence," retorted Bintrey. "I decline 
 to call them back." 
 
 Obenreizer turned to Maitre Voigt. " Do you remember 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 117 
 
 telling me that you once had an English client named Ven- 
 dale? " he asked. 
 
 " Well," answered the notary. " And what of that? " 
 
 "Maitre Voigt, your clock-lock has betrayed you." 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " I have read the letters and certificates in your client's 
 box. I have taken copies of them. I have got the copies 
 here. Is there, or is there not, a reason for calling them 
 back? " 
 
 For a moment the notary looked to and fro, between 
 Obenreizer and Bintrey, in helpless astonishment. Becov- 
 ering himself, he drew his brother-lawyer aside, and hur- 
 riedly spoke a few words close at his ear. The face of 
 Bintrey — after first faithfully reflecting the astonishment 
 on the face of Maitre Voigt— suddenly altered its expres- 
 sion. He sprang, with the activity of a young man, to the 
 door of the inner room, entered it, remained inside for a 
 minute, and returned followed by Marguerite and Vendale. 
 "Now, Mr. Obenreizer," said Bintrey, "the last move in 
 the game is yours. Play it." 
 
 "Before I resign my position as that young lady's guar- 
 dian," said Obenreizer, "I have a secret to reveal in which 
 she is interested. In making my disclosure, I am not 
 claiming her attention for a narrative which she, or any 
 other person present, is expected to take on trust. I am 
 possessed of written proofs, copies of originals, the authen- 
 ticity of which Maitre Voigt himself can attest. Bear that 
 in mind, and permit me to refer you, at starting, to a date 
 long past — the month of February, in the year one thou- 
 sand eight hundred and thirty-six." 
 
 "Mark the date, Mr. Vendale," said Bintrey. 
 
 "My first proof," said Obenreizer, taking a paper from 
 his pocket-book. " Copy of a letter, written by an Eng- 
 lish lady (married) to her sister, a widow. The name of 
 the person writing the letter I shall keep suppressed until 
 I have done. The name of the person to whom the letter 
 is written I am willing to reveal. It is addressed to ' Mrs. 
 Jane Ann Miller, of Groomsbridge Wells, England.' " 
 
 Vendale started, and opened his lips to speak. Bintrey 
 instantly stopped him, as he had stopped Maitre Voigt. 
 "No," said the pertinacious lawyer. "Leave it to me." 
 
 Obenreizer went on. 
 
 " It is needless to trouble you with the first half of the 
 
118 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 letter," he said. "I can give the substance of it in two 
 words. The writer's position at the time is this. She has 
 been long living in Switzerland with her husband — obliged 
 to live there for the sake of her husband's health. They 
 are about to move to a new residence on the Lake of Neu- 
 chatel in a week, and they will be ready to receive Mrs. 
 Miller as visitor in a fortnight from that time. This said, 
 the writer next enters into an important domestic detail. 
 She has been childless for years — she and her husband 
 have now no hope of children; they are lonely; they want 
 an interest in life; they have decided on adopting a child. 
 Here the important part of the letter begins; and here, 
 therefore, I read it to you word for word." He folded back 
 the first page of the letter and read as follows : 
 
 ti # * * will you help us, my dear sister, to realise 
 our new project? As English people, we wish to adopt an 
 English child. This may be done, I believe, at the Found- 
 ling : my husband' s lawyers in London will tell you how. 
 I leave the choice to you, with only these conditions at- 
 tached to it — that the child is to be an infant under a year 
 old, and is to be a boy. Will you pardon the trouble I am 
 giving you, for my sake; and will you bring our adopted 
 child to us, with your own children, when you come to 
 Neuchatel? 
 
 " I must add a word to my husband's wishes in this 
 matter. He is resolved to spare the child whom we make 
 our own, any future mortification and loss of self-respect 
 which might be caused by a discovery of his true origin. 
 He will bear my husband's name, and he will be brought 
 up in the belief that he is really our son. His inheritance 
 of what we have to leave will be secured to him — not only 
 according to the laws of England in such cases, but according 
 to the laws of Switzerland also; for we have lived so long 
 in this country that there is a doubt whether we may not 
 be considered as ' domiciled ' in Switzerland. The one pre- 
 caution left to take is to prevent any after-discovery at the 
 Foundling. Now, our name is a very uncommon one; and 
 if we appear on the Register of the Institution, as the per- 
 sons adopting the child, there is just a chance that some- 
 thing might result from it. Your name, my dear, is the 
 name of thousands of other people; and if you will consent 
 to appear on the Register, there need be no fear of any dis- 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 119 
 
 coveries in that quarter. We are moving, by the doctor's 
 orders, to a part of Switzerland in which our circumstances 
 are quite unknown; and you, as I understand, are about to 
 engage a new nurse for the journey when you come to see 
 us. Under these circumstances, the child may appear as 
 my child, brought back to me under my sister's care. The 
 only servant we take with us from our old home is my own 
 maid, who can be safely trusted. As for the lawyers in 
 England and in Switzerland, it is their profession to keep 
 secrets — and we may feel quite easy in that direction. So 
 there you have our harmless little conspiracy ! Write by 
 return of post, my love, and tell me you will join it." 
 
 " Do you still conceal the name of the writer of that let- 
 ter? " asked Vendale. 
 
 "I keep the name of the writer till the last," answered 
 Obenreizer, " and I proceed to my second proof— a mere slip 
 of paper, this time, as you see. Memorandum given to 
 the Swiss lawyer, who drew the documents referred to in 
 the letter I have just read, expressed as follows : — 'Adopted 
 from the Foundling Hospital of England, 3rd March, 1836, 
 a male infant, called, in the Institution, Walter Wilding. 
 Person appearing on the register, as adopting the child, 
 Mrs. Jane Ann Miller, widow, acting in this matter for her 
 married sister, domiciled in Switzerland. ' Patience ! " re- 
 sumed Obenreizer, as Vendale, breaking loose from Bin- 
 trey, started to his feet. " I shall not keep the name con- 
 cealed much longer. Two more little slips of paper, and I 
 have done. Third proof! Certificate of Doctor Ganz, still 
 living in practice at Neuchatel, dated July, 1838. The 
 doctor certifies (you shall read it for yourselves directly), 
 first, that he attended the adopted child in its infant mala- 
 dies; second, that, three months before the date of the cer- 
 tificate, the gentleman adopting the child as his son died; 
 third, that on the date of the certificate, his widow and her 
 maid, taking the adopted child with them, left Neuchatel on 
 their return to England. One more link now added to this, 
 and my chain of evidence is complete. The maid remained 
 with her mistress till her mistress's death, only a few years 
 since. The maid can swear to the identity of the adopted in- 
 fant, from his childhood to his youth — from his youth to his 
 manhood, as he is now. There is her address in England 
 — and there, Mr. Vendale, is the fourth, and final proof ! " 
 
120 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 " Why do you address yourself to me ? " said Vendale, 
 as Obenreizer threw the written address on the table . 
 
 Obenreizer turned on him, in a sudden frenzy of tri- 
 umph. 
 
 " Because you are the man ! If my niece marries you, 
 she marries a bastard, brought up by public charity. If 
 my niece marries you, she marries an impostor, without 
 name or lineage, disguised imthe character of a gentleman 
 of rank and family." 
 
 " Bravo ! " cried Bintrey. " Admirably put, Mr. Oben- 
 reizer ! It only wants one word more to complete it. She 
 marries — thanks entirely to your exertions — a man who in- 
 herits a handsome fortune, and a man whose origin will 
 make him prouder than ever of his peasant- wife. George 
 Vendale, as brother-executors, let us congratulate each 
 other! Our dear dead friend's last wish on earth is accom- 
 plished. We have found the lost Walter Wilding. As 
 Mr. Obenreizer said just now — you are the man ! " 
 
 The words passed by Vendale unheeded. For the mo- 
 ment he was conscious of but one sensation; he heard but 
 one voice. Marguerite's hand was clasping his. Margue- 
 rite's voice was whispering to him: "I never loved you, 
 George, as I love you now ! " 
 
 THE CURTAIJST FALLS, 
 
 May-Day. There is merry-making in Cripple Corner, 
 the chimneys smoke, the patriarchal dining-hall is hung 
 with garlands, and Mrs. Goldstraw, the respected house- 
 keeper, is very busy. For, on this bright morning the 
 young master of Cripple Corner is married to its young 
 mistress, far away : to wit, in the little town of Brieg, in 
 Switzerland, lying at the foot of the Simplon Pass where 
 she saved his life. 
 
 The bells ring gaily in the little town of Brieg, and flags 
 are stretched across the street, and rifle shots are heard, 
 and sounding music from- brass instruments. Streamer- 
 decorated casks of wine have been rolled out under a gay 
 awning in the public way before the Inn, and there will be 
 free feasting and revelry. What with bells and banners, 
 draperies hanging from windows, explosion of gunpowder, 
 and reverberation of brass music, the little town of Brieg is 
 all in a flutter, like the hearts of its simple people. 
 
XO THOROUGHFARE. 121 
 
 It was a stormy night last night, and the mountains are 
 covered with snow. But the sun is bright to-day, the 
 sweet air is fresh, the tin spires of the little town of Brieg 
 are burnished silver, and the Alps are ranges of far-off 
 white cloud in a deep blue sky. 
 
 The primitive people of the little town of Brieg have 
 built a greenwood arch across the street, under which the 
 newly married pair shall pass in triumph from the church. 
 It is inscribed, on that side, "Honour and Love to Mar- 
 guerite Vendale ! " for the people are proud of her to 
 enthusiasm. This greeting of the bride under her new 
 name is affectionately meant as a surprise, and therefore 
 the arrangement has been made that she, unconscious why, 
 shall be taken to the church by a tortuous back way. A 
 little scheme not difficult to carry into execution in the 
 crooked little town of Brieg. 
 
 So, all things are in readiness, and they are to go and 
 come on foot. Assembled in the Inn's best chamber, fes- 
 tively adorned, are the bride and bridegroom, the Neucha- 
 tel notary, the London lawyer, Madame Dor, and a certain 
 large mysterious Englishman, popularly known as Monsieur 
 Zhoe-Ladelle. And behold Madame Dor, arrayed in a 
 spotless pair of gloves of her own, with no hand in the air, 
 but both hands clasped round the neck of the bride; to em- 
 brace whom Madame Dor has turned her broad back on the 
 company, consistent to the last. 
 
 " Forgive me, my beautiful, " pleads Madame Dor, " for 
 that I ever was his she-cat ! " 
 
 " She-cat, Madame Dor? " 
 
 "Engaged to sit watching my so charming mouse," are 
 the explanatory words of Madame Dor, delivered with a 
 penitential sob. 
 
 " Why, you were our best friend ! George, dearest, tell 
 Madame Dor. Was she not our best friend? " 
 
 "Undoubtedly, darling. What should we have done 
 without her? " 
 
 "You are both so generous," cries Madame Dor, accept- 
 ing consolation, and immediately relapsing. " But I com- 
 menced as a she-cat." 
 
 " Ah ! But like the cat in the fairy-story, good Madame 
 Dor," says Vendale, saluting her cheek, "you were a true 
 woman. And, being a true woman, the sympathy of your 
 heart was with true love." 
 
122 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 "I don't wish to deprive Madame Dor of her share in 
 the embraces that are going on," Mr. Bintrey puts in, 
 watch in hand, "and I don't presume to offer any objection 
 to your having got yourselves mixed together, in the corner 
 there, like the three Graces. I merely remark that I think 
 it's time we were moving. What are your sentiments on 
 that subject, Mr. Ladle? " 
 
 "Clear, sir," replies Joey, with a gracious grin. "I'm 
 clearer altogether, sir, for having lived so many weeks 
 upon the surface. I never was half so long upon the sur- 
 face afore, and it's done me a power of good. At Cripple 
 Corner, I was too much below it. Atop of the Simpleton, 
 I was a deal too high above it. I've found the medium 
 here, sir. And if ever I take it in convivial, in all the 
 rest of my days, I mean to do it this day, to the toast of 
 'Bless 'em both.'" 
 
 " I, too ! " says Bintrey. " And now, Monsieur Voigt, 
 let you and me be two men of Marseilles, and allons, mar- 
 chons, arm-in-arm ! " 
 
 They go down to the door, where others are waiting for 
 them, and they go quietly to the church, and the happy 
 marriage takes place. While the ceremony is yet in prog- 
 ress, the notary is called out. When it is finished, he 
 has returned, is standing behind Vendale, and touches him 
 on the shoulder. 
 
 " Go to the side door, one moment, Monsieur Vendale. 
 Alone. Leave Madame to me." 
 
 At the side door of the church, are the same two men 
 from the Hospice. They are snow-stained and travel- worn. 
 They wish him joy, and then each lays his broad hand 
 upon Vendale 's breast, and one says in a low voice, while 
 the other steadfastly regards him : 
 
 "It is here, monsieur. Your litter. The very same." 
 
 "My litter is here? Why? " 
 
 "Hush! For the sake of Madame. Your companion of 
 that day " 
 
 " What of him? " 
 
 The man looks at his comrade, and his comrade takes 
 him up. Each keeps his hand laid earnestly on Vendale's 
 breast. 
 
 " He had been living at the first Refuge, monsieur, for 
 some days. The weather was now good, now bad. " 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
NO THOROUGHFARE. 123 
 
 " He arrived at our Hospice the day before yesterday, 
 and, having refreshed himself with sleep on the floor be- 
 fore the fire, wrapped in his cloak, was resolute to go on, 
 before dark, to the next Hospice. He had a great fear of 
 that part of the way, and thought it would be worse to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 " He went on alone. He had passed the gallery, when 
 an avalanche — like that which fell behind you near the 
 Bridge of the Ganther ? " 
 
 " Killed him? » 
 
 " We dug him out, suffocated and broken all to pieces ! 
 But, monsieur, as to Madame. We have brought him here 
 on the litter to be buried. We must ascend the street out- 
 side. Madame must not see. It would be an accursed 
 thing to bring the litter through the arch across the street, 
 until Madame has passed through. As you descend, we 
 who accompany the litter will set it down on the stones of 
 the street the second to the right, and will stand before it. 
 But do not let Madame turn her head towards the street 
 the second to the right. There is no time to lose. Madame 
 will be alarmed by your absence. Adieu ! " 
 
 Vendale returns to his bride, and draws her hand through 
 his unmanned arm. A pretty procession awaits them at 
 the main door of the church. They take their station in 
 it, and descend the street amidst the ringing of the bells, 
 the firing of the guns, the waving of the flags, the playing 
 of the music, the shouts, the smiles, and tears, of the ex- 
 cited town. Heads are uncovered as she passes, hands are 
 kissed to her, all the people bless her. "Heaven's bene- 
 diction on the dear girl ! See where she goes in her youth 
 and beauty; she who so nobly saved his life! " 
 
 Near the corner of the street the second to the right, he 
 speaks to her, and calls her attention to the windows on 
 the opposite side. The corner well passed, he says: "Do 
 not look round, my darling, for a reason that I have," and 
 turns his head. Then, looking back along the street, he 
 sees the litter and its bearers passing up alone under the 
 arch, as he and she and their marriage train go down towards 
 the shining valley. 
 
NOTES ON NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 This, the last of Dickens's Christmas stories, is in the 
 present edition placed for convenience in a volume apart 
 from that series. It has been surmised that Dickens took 
 the title of this story from the notice-boards which were 
 put up at points where private roads or foot-paths abut on 
 public roads away from Cobham Park, not far from his 
 Gadshill residence. The story, which consists of an Over- 
 ture and Four Acts, was composed by Dickens and Wilkie 
 Collins, each contributing an equal part. Dickens was 
 responsible for the Overture, portions of the First and 
 Fourth Acts, and the whole of Act III. 
 
 During Dickens's absence in America (1867-68), Wilkie 
 Collins transformed "No Thoroughfare" into a play for 
 Fechter, with a view to which it had been originally 
 planned; it was first published in 1867, and is very scarce 
 in this form. In an unpublished letter to the late Fred 
 Chapman (of Chapman and Hall), dated May 11th, 1873, 
 Collins recalled (as far as he was able) the exact nature 
 of his collaboration with Dickens, and thus wrote: 
 
 " It is impossible for me to indicate correctly my share 
 in the Acts jointly written (I. and IV.) — we purposely 
 wrote so as to make discoveries of this difficult, if not im- 
 possible. I inserted passages in his chapters and he in- 
 serted passages in mine. I can only tell you that we as 
 nearly as possible halved the work. We put the story 
 together in the Swiss chalet at Gadshill and we finished 
 the Fourth Act side by side at two desks in his bedroom 
 at Gadshill. 
 
 " As everything connected with his writing is part of the 
 literary history of England, I may add that the Scenes 
 and Acts of the dramatic version of this story were ar- 
 ranged by Dickens and Fechter, while I was engaged in 
 
 125 
 
126 NOTES ON NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 completing a work of my own. The 'scenario' was then 
 placed in my hands, and the Drama was entirely written 
 by me." 
 
 The drama is divided into five Acts, and the incidents 
 are presented somewhat differently from the original tale. 
 It was produced at the Adelphi Theatre during Dickens's 
 absence in the United States, being first performed on 
 Boxing Night of 1867, with Fechter as Obenreizer, Ben- 
 jamin Webster as Joey Ladle, and Miss Carlotta Leclercq 
 as Marguerite. 
 
 It seems that, when engaged upon this romance, the 
 authors departed from the usual custom of English 
 writers, inasmuch as they framed the plot and created the 
 charpenterie of the work with the undisguised object of 
 making it a stage play, after having first published it in the 
 form of a novel. The popularity of " No Thoroughfare " at 
 the Adelphi, and subsequently in Paris and America, was 
 beyond all question. Dickens, however, did not at first 
 feel assured of its success, being " reduced to the confines 
 of despair by its length," and if he could have rehearsed it 
 he would "have taken the best part of an hour out of it." 
 He therefore experienced considerable delight in receiving 
 intimations from England of its very favourable reception, 
 both by the public and the press, thanks, for the most part, 
 to Fechter's superb acting. 
 
 Much to Dickens's annoyance, the "pirates" were busy 
 with the play in America within ten days of the arrival 
 there of the Christmas Number of "All the Year Round," 
 and mangled versions were given everywhere, threats of 
 injunctions notwithstanding. As a matter of fact, it was 
 doubtful whether Dickens could have prevented this whole- 
 sale infringement of his rights, for, as he wrote to Fechter, 
 " Why should they pay for the piece as you act it, when 
 they have no actors, and when all they want is my name, 
 and they can get that for nothing?" 
 
 "No Thoroughfare" was translated into French for 
 representation at the Paris Vaudeville Theatre, when it 
 appeared as "L'Abime." Dickens went to the French 
 capital for the express purpose of superintending the 
 
NOTES ON NO THOROUGHFARE. 127 
 
 rehearsals, and assisting at the first performances, whence 
 he returned highly pleased with its success in this form. 
 The play was printed by a New York publisher, 1868 
 (pp. 40), with the following title: 
 
 "No Thoroughfare. A Drama. In five Acts and a 
 Prologue. By Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. As 
 first performed at the New Royal Adelphi Theatre, Lon- 
 don, December 26th, 1867. New York: Robert M. de 
 Witt, Publisher, No. 33, Rose Street." 
 
 In January, 1868, an unauthorised version, entitled 
 "Identity; or, No Thoroughfare," by Louis Lequel, was 
 performed at Conway's Park Theatre, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 THE END. 
 
THE 
 UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTBR PAGE 
 
 I. His General Line of Business, 1 
 
 II. The Shipwreck, 2 
 
 III. Wapping Workhouse, 16 
 
 IV. Two Views of a Cheap Theatre, .... 27 
 V. Poor Mercantile Jack 37 
 
 VI. Refreshments for Travellers, ..... 49 
 
 VII. Travelling Abroad, 58 
 
 VIII. The Great Tasmania's Cargo, 70 
 
 IX. City of London Churches, 79 
 
 X. Shy Neighbourhoods, 90 
 
 XL Tramps, 100 
 
 XII. Dullborough Town, 112 
 
 XIII. Night Walks 122 
 
 XIV. Chambers, 131 
 
 XV Nurse's Stories, 143 
 
 XVI. Arcadian London, 154 
 
 XVII. The Italian Prisoner, 164 
 
 XVIII. The Calais Night-Mail 174 
 
 XIX. Some Recollections of Mortality, .... 182 
 XX. Birthday Celebrations, ...... 192 
 
 XXI. The Short-Timers, 202 
 
 XXII. Bound for the Great Salt Lake, . . . .213 
 
 XXIII. The City of the Absent, 226 
 
 XXIV. An Old Stage-Coaching House, . . . .234 
 XXV. The Boiled Beef of New England, . . . .242 
 
 XXVI. Chatham Dockyard 252 
 
 XXVII. In the French-Flemish Country, . . . .261 
 
 XXVIII. Medicine Men of Civilisation, 272 
 
 XXIX. Titbull's Aims-Houses, 281 
 
 XXX. The Ruffian, . 292 
 
 2 xi 
 
xn CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAOS 
 
 XXXI. Aboard Ship, . . ... . . .800 
 
 XXXII. A Small Star in the East, 310 
 
 XXXIII. A Little Dinner in an Hour, . . . „ .321 
 
 XXXIV. Mr. Barlow, 328 
 
 XXXV. On an Amateur Beat, 334 
 
 XXXVI. A Fly-Leaf in a Life 342 
 
 XXXVII. A Plea for Total Abstinence 346 
 
THE 
 
 UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 I. 
 
 HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS. 
 
 Allow me to introduce myself — first negatively. 
 
 No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid 
 loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and en- 
 vies 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 greatcoats and railway wrappers is 
 set apart for me, no house of public entertainment in the 
 United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy 
 or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually 
 rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from 
 my journeys, I never get any commission. I know nothing 
 about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, 
 how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn't 
 want. As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving 
 a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte 
 van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat 
 boxes are baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am 
 rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered 
 by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch 
 station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge 
 of samples. 
 
 And yet — proceeding now, to introduce myself positively 
 — I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and 
 am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel 
 for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have 
 rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Liter- 
 
2 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from 
 my rooms in Covent-garden, London — now about the city 
 streets: now, about the country by-roads — seeing many 
 little things, and some great things, which, because they 
 interest me, I think may interest others. 
 
 These are my brief credentials as the Uncommercial 
 Traveller. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE SHIPWRECK. 
 
 Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under 
 quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine 
 had but another day to live, and truly its end was Peace 
 on that sea-shore that morning. 
 
 So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the 
 bright light of the sun and under the transparent shadows 
 of the clouds, that it was hard to imagine the bay other- 
 wise, for years past or to come, than it was that very day. 
 The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the Lighter 
 lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the 
 Lighter, the regularly- turning windlass aboard the Lighter, 
 the methodical figures at work, all slowly and regularly 
 heaving up and down with the breathing of the sea, all 
 seemed as much a part of the nature of the place as the 
 tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and had been for 
 some two hours and a half; there was a slight obstruction 
 in the sea within a few yards of my feet : as if the stump 
 of a tree, with earth enough about it to keep it from lying 
 horizontally on the water, had slipped a little from the 
 land — and as I stood upon the beach and observed it dim- 
 pling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone 
 over it. 
 
 So orderly, so quiet, so regular — the rising and falling 
 of the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat — the turn- 
 ing of the windlass — the coming in of the tide — that I 
 myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything but new to 
 the spot. Yet, I had never seen it in my life, a minute 
 before, and had traversed two hundred miles to get at it. 
 That very morning I had come bowling down, and strug- 
 gling up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy sum- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 3 
 
 mits; meeting courteous peasants well to do, driving fat 
 pigs and cattle to market: noting the neat and thrifty 
 dwellings, with their unusual quantity of cleaii white linen, 
 drying on the bushes; having windy weather suggested by 
 every cotter's little rick, with its thatched straw-ridged 
 and extra straw-ridged into overlapping compartments like 
 the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a lift of four- 
 teen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was 
 coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now 
 parted company? So it was; but the journey seemed to 
 glide down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, 
 and for the moment nothing was so calmly and monoto- 
 nously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and 
 falling of the water with its freight, the regular turning 
 of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruc- 
 tion so very near my feet. 
 
 O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at 
 Home, and hearing the night wind rumble in the chimney, 
 that slight obstruction was the uppermost fragment of the 
 Wreck of the Royal Charter, Australian trader and pas- 
 senger ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the ter- 
 rible morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke 
 into three parts, went down with her treasure of at least 
 five hundred human lives, and has never stirred since ! 
 
 From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, 
 stern foremost; on which side, or on which, she passed the 
 little Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be aground 
 certain yards outside her; these are rendered bootless 
 questions by the darkness of that night and the darkness 
 of death. Here she went down. 
 
 Even as I stood on the beach with the words " Here she 
 went down ! " in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, 
 dipped heavily over the side of the boat alongside the 
 Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by the 
 water's edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of 
 wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered them- 
 selves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum 
 and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney. 
 Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach, were 
 great spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted 
 by the fury of the sea into the strangest forms. The tim- 
 ber was already bleached and iron rusted, and even these 
 objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole 
 
4 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years and 
 years. 
 
 Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, liv- 
 ing on the nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown 
 out of bed at about daybreak by the wind that had begun 
 to strip his roof off, and getting upon a ladder with his 
 nearest neighbour to construct some temporary device for 
 keeping his house over his head, saw from the ladder's 
 elevation as he looked down by chance towards the shore, 
 some dark troubled object close in with the land. And he 
 and the other, descending to the beach, and finding the sea 
 mercilessly beating over a great broken ship, had clam- 
 bered up the stony waj^s, like staircases without stairs, on 
 which the wild village hangs in little clusters, as fruit 
 hangs on boughs, and had given the alarm. And so, over 
 the hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, and down the gul- 
 lies where the land drains off into the ocean, the scattered 
 quarry men and fishermen inhabiting that part of Wales 
 had come running to the dismal sight — their clergyman 
 among them. And as they stood in the leaden morning, 
 stricken with pity, leaning hard. against the wind, their 
 breath and vision often failing as the sleet and spray 
 rushed at them from the ever forming and dissolving 
 mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part of the 
 vessel's cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained 
 upon the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship's 
 life-boat put off from one of the heaps of wreck; and first, 
 there Avere three men in her, and in a moment she capsized, 
 and there were but two; and again, she was struck by a 
 vast mass of water, and there was but one; and again, she 
 was thrown bottom upward, and that one, with his arm 
 struck through the broken planks and waving as if for the 
 help that could never reach him, went down into the 
 deep. 
 
 It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, 
 while I stood on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome 
 face as it turned to the spot where the boat had been. The 
 divers were down then, and busy. They were " lifting " to- 
 day the gold found yesterday — some five-and-twenty thou- 
 sand pounds. Of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds' 
 worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds' worth, in 
 round numbers, was at that time recovered. The great 
 bulk of the remainder was surely and steadily coming up. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 5 
 
 Some loss of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, 
 at first sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been 
 scattered far and wide over the beach, like sea-shells; but 
 most other golden treasure would be found. As it was 
 brought up, it went aboard the Tug-steamer, where good 
 account Avas taken of it. So tremendous had the force of 
 the sea been when it broke the ship, that it had beaten one 
 great ingot of gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece of 
 her solid iron- work: in which, also, several loose sov- 
 ereigns that the ingot had swept in before it, had been 
 found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been 
 liquid when they were forced there. It had been remarked 
 of such bodies come ashore, too, as had been seen by sci- 
 entific men, that they had been stunned to death, and not 
 suffocated. Observation, both of the internal change that 
 had been wrought in them, and of their external expres- 
 sion, showed death to have been thus merciful and easy. 
 The report was brought, while I was holding such discourse 
 on the beach, that no more bodies had come ashore since 
 last night. It began to be very doubtful whether many 
 more would be thrown up, until the northeast winds of the 
 early spring set in. Moreover, a great number of the pas- 
 sengers, and particularly the second-class women-passen- 
 gers, were known to have been in the middle of the ship 
 when she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would 
 have fallen upon them after yawning open, and would keep 
 them down. A diver made known, even then, that he had 
 come upon the body of a man, and had sought to release it 
 from a great superincumbent weight; but that, finding he 
 could not do so without mutilating the remains, he had left 
 it where it was. 
 
 It was the kind and wholesome face I have made men- 
 tion of as being then beside me, that I had purposed to 
 myself to see, when I left home for Wales. I had heard 
 of that clergyman, as having buried many scores of the ship- 
 wrecked people; of his having opened his house and heart 
 to their agonised friends; of his having used a most sweet 
 and patient diligence for weeks and Aveeks, in the perform- 
 ance of the forlornest offices that Man can render to his 
 kind; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly devoted 
 himself to the dead, and to those Avho were sorrowing for 
 the dead. I had said to myself, " In the Christmas season 
 of the year, I should like to see that man." And he had 
 
6 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 swung the gate of his little garden in coming out to meet me, 
 not half an hour ago. 
 
 So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true 
 practical Christianity ever is! I read more of the New 
 Testament in the fresh frank face going up the village be- 
 side me, in five minutes, than I have read in anathematis- 
 ing discourses (albeit put to press with enormous flourish- 
 ing of trumpets), in all my life. I heard more of the 
 Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say 
 about its owner, than in all the would-be celestial pairs of 
 bellows that have ever blown conceit at me. 
 
 We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, 
 among the loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse 
 grass, the outlying water, and other obstructions from 
 which frost and snow had lately thawed. It was a mistake 
 (my friend Was glad to tell me, on the way) to suppose 
 that the peasantry had shown any superstitious avoidance 
 of the drowned; on the whole, they had done very well, 
 and had assisted readily. Ten shillings had been paid for 
 the bringing of each body up to the church, but the way 
 was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was wrapped 
 in a sheet) were necessary, and three or four men, and, all 
 things considered, it was not a great price. The people 
 were none the richer for the wreck, for it was the season 
 of the herring-shoal — and who could cast nets for fish, and 
 find dead men and women in the draught? 
 
 He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the 
 churchyard gate, and opened the church door; and we 
 went in. 
 
 It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to 
 believe that some church has occupied the spot, these thou- 
 sand years or more. The pulpit was gone, and other things 
 usually belonging to the church were gone, owing to its liv- 
 ing congregation having deserted it for the neighbouring 
 school-room, and yielded it up to the dead. The very 
 Commandments had been shouldered out of their places, in 
 the bringing in of the dead; the black wooden tables on 
 which they were painted, were askew, and on the stone 
 pavement below them, and on the stone pavement all over 
 the church, were the marks and stains where the drowned 
 had been laid down. The eye, with little or no aid from 
 the imagination, could yet see how the bodies had been 
 turned, and where the head had been and where the feet. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 7 
 
 Some faded traces of the wreck of the Australian ship may 
 be discernible on the stone pavement of this little church, 
 hundreds of years hence, when the digging for gold in Aus- 
 tralia shall have long and long ceased out of the land. 
 
 Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one 
 time, awaiting burial. Here, with weeping and wailing in 
 every room of this house, my companion worked alone for 
 hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that could not see him, 
 and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently examin- 
 ing the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons, hair, marks 
 from linen, anything that might lead to subsequent iden- 
 tification, studying faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger, 
 a crooked toe, comparing letters sent to him with the ruin 
 about him. " My dearest brother had bright grey eyes and 
 a pleasant smile," one sister wrote. poor sister! well 
 for you to be far from here, and keep that as your last re- 
 membrance of him ! 
 
 The ladies of the clergyman's family, his wife and two 
 sisters-in-law, came in among the bodies often. It grew to 
 be the business of their lives to do so. Any new arrival 
 of a bereaved woman would stimulate their pity to com- 
 pare the description brought, with the dread realities. 
 Sometimes, they would go back able to say, " I have found 
 him," or, "I think she lies there." Perhaps, the mourner, 
 unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the church, would 
 be led in blindfold. Conducted to the spot with many com- 
 passionate words, and encouraged to look, she would say, 
 with a piercing cry, " This is my boy ! " and drop insensible 
 on the insensible figure. 
 
 He soon observed that in some cases of women, the iden- 
 tification of persons, though complete, was quite at vari- 
 ance with the marks upon the linen; this led him to notice 
 that even the marks upon the linen were sometimes incon- 
 sistent with one another; and thus he came to understand 
 that they had dressed in great haste and agitation, and 
 that their clothes had become mixed together. The iden- 
 tification of men by their dress, was rendered extremely 
 difficult, in consequence of a large proportion of them being 
 dressed alike — in clothes of one kind, that is to say, sup- 
 plied by slop-sellers and outfitters, and not made by single 
 garments but by hundreds. Many of the men were bring- 
 ing over parrots, and had receipts upon them for the price 
 of the birds; others had bills of exchange in their pockets, 
 
8 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 or in belts. Some of these documents, carefully unwrin. 
 kled and dried, were little less fresh in appearance that 
 day, than the present page will be under ordinary circum- 
 stances, after having been opened three or four times. 
 
 In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even 
 such common commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfect- 
 ants. Pitch had been burnt in the church, as the readiest 
 thing at hand, and the frying-pan in which it had bubbled 
 over a brazier of coals was still there, with its ashes. Hard 
 by the Communion-Table, were some boots that had been 
 taken off the drowned and preserved — a gold-digger's boot, 
 cut doAvn the leg for its removal — a trodden-down man's 
 ankle-boot with a buff cloth top — and others — soaked and 
 sandy, weedy and salt. 
 
 From the church, we passed out into the churchyard. 
 Here, there lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five 
 bodies, that had come ashore from the wreck. He had 
 buried them, when not identified, in graves containing four 
 each. He had numbered each body in a register describ- 
 ing it, and had placed a corresponding number on each 
 coffin, and over each grave. Identified bodies he had 
 buried singly, in private graves, in another part of the 
 churchyard. Several bodies had been exhumed from graves 
 of four, as relatives had come from a distance and seen his 
 register; and, when recognised, these have been reburied 
 in private graves, so that the mourners might erect sepa- 
 rate headstones over the remains. In all such cases he had 
 performed the funeral service a second time, and the ladies 
 of his house had attended. There had been no offence in 
 the poor ashes when they were brought again to the light 
 of day; the beneficent Earth had already absorbed it. 
 The droAvned were buried in their clothes. To supply the 
 great sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the neigh- 
 bouring people handy at tools, to work the livelong day, 
 and Sunday likewise. The coffins were neatly formed; — I 
 had seen two, waiting for occupants, under the lee of the 
 ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach, within call of the 
 tent where the Christmas Feast was held. Similarly, one 
 of the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in 
 the churchyard. So much of the scanty space was already 
 devoted to the wrecked people, that the villagers had be- 
 gun to express uneasy doubts whether they themselves 
 could lie in their own ground, with their forefathers and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 9 
 
 descendants, by-and-bye. The churchyard being but a step 
 from the clergyman's dwelling-house, we crossed to the 
 latter; the white surplice was hanging up near the door 
 ready to be put on at any time, for a funeral service. 
 
 The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister, 
 was as consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it 
 shone were sad. I never have seen anything more delight- 
 fully genuine than the calm dismissal by himself and his 
 household of all they had undergone, as a simple duty that 
 was quietly done and ended. In speaking of it, they spoke 
 of it with great compassion for the bereaved; but laid no 
 stress upon their own hard share in those weary weeks, ex- 
 cept as it had attached many people to them as friends, and 
 elicited many touching expressions of gratitude. This 
 clergyman's brother — himself the clergyman of two adjoin- 
 ing parishes, who had buried thirty-four of the bodies in 
 his own churchyard, and who had done to them ail that his 
 brother had done as to the larger number — must be under- 
 stood as included in the family. He was there, with his 
 neatly arranged papers, and made no more account of his 
 trouble than anybody else did. Down to yesterday's post 
 outward, my clergyman alone had written one thousand 
 and seventy-five letters to relatives and friends of the lost 
 people. In the absence of self-assertion, it was only 
 through my now and then delicately putting a question as 
 the occasion arose, that I became informed of these things. 
 It was only when I had remarked again and again, in the 
 church, on the awful nature of the scene of death he had 
 been required so closely to familiarise himself with for the 
 soothing of the living, that he had casually said, without 
 the least abatement of his cheerfulness, " indeed, it had 
 rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more than a 
 little coffee now and then, and a piece of bread." 
 
 In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in 
 this serene avoidance of the least attempt to " improve " an 
 occasion which might be supposed to have sunk of its own 
 weight into my heart, I seemed to have happily come, in a 
 few steps, from the churchyard with its open grave, which 
 was the t} r pe of Death, to the Christian dwelling side by 
 side with it, which was the type of Resurrection. I never 
 shall think of the former, without the latter. The two 
 will always rest side by side in my memory. If I had lost 
 any one dear to me in this unfortunate ship, if I had made 
 
10 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 a voyage from Australia to look at the grave in the church- 
 yard, I should go away, thankful to God that that house 
 was so close to it, and that its shadow by day and its do- 
 mestic lights by night fell upon the earth in which its Mas- 
 ter had so tenderly laid my dear one's head. 
 
 The references that naturally arose out of our conversa- 
 tion, to the descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, 
 and to the gratitude of relations and friends, made me very 
 anxious to see some of those letters. I was presently 
 seated before a shipwreck of papers, all bordered with 
 black, and from them I made the following few extracts. 
 
 A mother writes : 
 
 Reverend Sir. Amongst the many who perished on 
 your shore was numbered my beloved son. I was only just 
 recovering from a severe illness, and this fearful affliction 
 has caused a relapse, so that I am unable at present to go 
 to identify the remains of the loved and lost. My darling 
 son would have been sixteen on Christmas-day next. He 
 was a most amiable and obedient child, early taught the 
 way of salvation. We fondly hoped that as a British sea- 
 man he might be an ornament to his profession, but, " it is 
 well;" I feel assured my dear boy is now with the re- 
 deemed. Oh, he did not wish to go this last voyage ! On 
 the fifteenth of October, I received a letter from him from 
 Melbourne, date August twelfth; he wrote in high spirits, 
 and in conclusion he says: "Pray for a fair breeze, dear 
 mamma, and I'll not forget to whistle for it! and, God 
 permitting, I shall see you and all my little pets again. 
 Good bye, dear mother — good bye, dearest parents. Good 
 bye, dear brother." Oh, it was indeed an eternal farewell. 
 I do not apologise for thus writing you, for oh, my heart is 
 so very sorrowful. 
 
 A husband writes : 
 
 My dear kind Sir. Will you kindly inform me whether 
 there are any initials upon the ring and guard you have in 
 possession, found, as the Standard says, last Tuesday? 
 Believe me, my dear sir, when I say that I cannot express 
 my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for your kindness 
 to me on that fearful and appalling day. Will you tell 
 me what I can do for you, and will you write me a consol- 
 ing letter to prevent my mind from going astray? 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 11 
 
 A widow writes : 
 
 Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought 
 it best that my dear husband should be buried where he 
 lies, and, much as I should have liked to have had it other- 
 wise, I must submit. I feel, from all I have heard of you, 
 that you will see it done decently and in order. Little 
 does it signify to us, when the soul has departed, where 
 this poor body lies, but we who are left behind would do 
 all we can to show how we loved them. This is denied 
 me, but it is God's hand that afflicts us, and I try to sub- 
 mit. Some day I may be able to visit the spot, and see 
 where he lies, and erect a simple stone to his memory. 
 Oh! it will be long, long before I forget that dreadful 
 night ! Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or any shop 
 in Bangor, to which I could send for a small picture of 
 Moelfra or Llanallgo church, a spot now sacred to me? 
 
 Another widow writes : 
 
 I have received your letter this morning, and do thank 
 you most kindly for the interest you have taken about my 
 dear husband, as well for the sentiments yours contains, 
 evincing the spirit of a Christian who can sympathise with 
 those who, like myself, are broken down with grief. 
 
 May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection 
 with you, in this great trial. Time may roll on and bear 
 all its sons away, but your name as a disinterested person 
 will stand in history, and, as successive years pass, many 
 a widow will think of your' noble conduct, and the tears of 
 gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a thank- 
 ful heart, when other things are forgotten for ever. 
 
 A father writes : 
 
 I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my 
 gratitude to you for your kindness to my son Richard upon 
 the melancholy occasion of his visit to his dgar brother's 
 body, and also for your ready attention in pronouncing our 
 beautiful burial service over my poor unfortunate son's re- 
 mains. God grant that your prayers over him may reach 
 the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received (through 
 Christ's intercession) into heaven ! 
 
 His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt 
 thanks. 
 
12 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Those who were received at the clergyman's house, write 
 thus, after leaving it : 
 
 Dear and never-to-be-forgotten Friends. I arrived 
 here yesterday morning without accident, and am about to 
 proceed to my home by railway. 
 
 I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospi- 
 table home. No words could speak language suited to my 
 heart. I refrain. God reward you with the same meas- 
 ure you have meted with ! 
 
 I enumerate no names, but embrace you all. 
 
 My beloved Friends. This is the first day that I 
 have been able to leave my bedroom since I returned, which 
 will explain the reason of my not writing sooner. 
 
 If I could only have had my last melancholy hope real- 
 ised in recovering the body of my beloved and lamented 
 son, I should have returned home somewhat comforted, 
 and I think I could then have been comparatively resigned. 
 
 I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as 
 one without hope. 
 
 The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having 
 been so feelingly allowed by you to leave the matter in 
 your hands, by whom I well know that everything will be 
 done that can be, according to arrangements made before I 
 left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to the iden- 
 tification of my dear son, and also his interment. 
 
 I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has 
 transpired since I left you; will you add another to the 
 many deep obligations I am under to you by writing to me? 
 And should the body of my dear and unfortunate son be 
 identified, let me hear from you immediately, and I will 
 come again. 
 
 Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you 
 all for your benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 My dearly beloved Friends. I arrived in safety at 
 my house yesterday, and a night's rest has restored and 
 tranquillised me. I must again repeat, that language has 
 no words by which I can express my sense of obligation to 
 you. You are enshrined in my heart of hearts. 
 
 I have seen him ! and can now realise my misfortune 
 more than I have hitherto been able to do. Oh, the bitter- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 13 
 
 aess of the cup I drink! But I bow submissive. God must 
 have done right. I do not want to feel less, but to ac- 
 quiesce more simply. 
 
 There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal 
 Charter, and the gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly 
 expressed in the following letter bearing date from " the 
 office of the Chief Rabbi : " 
 
 Reverend Sir. I cannot refrain from expressing to you 
 my heartfelt thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose 
 relatives have unfortunately been among those who per- 
 ished at the late wreck of the Royal Charter. You have, 
 indeed, like Boaz, "not left off your kindness to the living 
 and the dead." 
 
 You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by 
 receiving them hospitably at your house, and energetically 
 assisting them in their mournful duty, but also towards the 
 dead, by exerting yourself to have our co-religionists buried 
 in our ground, and according to our rites. May our heav- 
 enly Father reward you for your acts of humanity and true 
 philanthropy ! 
 
 The " Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool" thus ex- 
 press themselves through their secretary : 
 
 Reverend Sir. The wardens of this congregation have 
 learned with great pleasure that, in addition to those in- 
 defatigable exertions, at the scene of the late disaster to 
 the Royal Charter, which have received universal recogni- 
 tion, you have very benevolently employed your valuable 
 efforts to assist such members of our faith as have sought 
 the bodies of lost friends to give them burial in our conse- 
 crated grounds, with the observances and rites prescribed 
 by the ordinances of our religion. 
 
 The wardens desire me to take the earliest available op- 
 portunity to offer to you, on behalf of our community, the 
 expression of their warm acknowledgments and grateful 
 thanks, and their sincere wishes for your continued welfare 
 and prosperity. 
 
 A Jewish gentleman writes : 
 
 Reverend and dear Sir. I take the opportunity of 
 thanking you right earnestly for the promptness you dis- 
 played in answering my note with full particulars concern- 
 
14 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ing my much lamented brother, and I also herein beg to 
 express my sincere regard for the willingness you displayed 
 and for the facility you afforded for getting the remains of 
 my poor brother exhumed. It has been to us a most sor- 
 rowful and painful event, but when we meet with such 
 friends as yourself, it in a measure, somehow or other, 
 abates that mental anguish, and makes the suffering so 
 much easier to be borne. Considering the circumstances 
 connected with my poor brother's fate, it does, indeed, ap- 
 pear a hard one. He had been away in all seven years; 
 he returned four years ago to see his family. He was then 
 engaged to a very amiable young lady. He had been very 
 successful abroad, and was now returning to fulfil his sa- 
 cred vow; he brought all his property with him in gold 
 uninsured. We heard from him when the ship stopped at 
 Queenstown, when he was in the highest of hope, and in a 
 few short hours afterwards all was washed away. 
 
 Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quo- 
 tation here, were the numerous references to those minia- 
 tures of women worn round the necks of rough men (and 
 found there after death), those locks of hair, those scraps 
 of letters, those many many slight memorials of hidden 
 tenderness. One man cast up by the sea bore about him, 
 printed on a perforated lace card, the following singular 
 (and unavailing) charm : 
 
 A BLESSING. 
 
 May the blessing of God await thee. May the sun of 
 glory shine around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, 
 honour, and happiness be ever open to thee. May no sor- 
 row distress thy days; may no grief disturb thy nights. 
 May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the pleasures 
 of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of 
 years makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of 
 death gently closes around thy last sleep of human exist- 
 ence, may the Angel of God attend thy bed, and take care 
 that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive one rude 
 blast to hasten on its extinction. 
 
 A sailor had these devices on his right arm. " Our Sa- 
 viour on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the 
 vesture stained red; on the lower part of the arm, a man 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 15 
 
 and woman; on one side of the Cross, the appearance of a 
 half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun; on the 
 top of the Cross, the letters I. H. S. ; on the left arm, a 
 man and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the 
 female's dress; under which, initials." Another seaman 
 " had, on the lower part of the right arm, the device of a 
 sailor and a female; the man holding the Union Jack with 
 a streamer, the folds of which waved over her head, and 
 the end of it was held in her hand. On the upper part of 
 the arm, a device of Our Lord on the -Cross, with stars sur- 
 rounding the head of the Cross, and one large star on the 
 side in Indian ink. On the left arm, a flag, a true lover's 
 knot, a face, and initials." This tattooing was found still 
 plain, below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated 
 arm, when such surface was carefully scraped away with a 
 knife. It is not improbable that the perpetuation of this 
 marking custom among seamen, may be referred back to 
 their desire to be identified, if drowned and flung ashore. 
 
 It was some time before I could sever myself from the 
 many interesting papers on the table, and then I broke 
 bread and drank wine with the kind family before I left 
 them. As I brought the Coast-guard down, so I took the 
 Postman back, with his leathern wallet, walking stick, 
 bugle, and terrier dog. Many a heart-broken letter had he 
 brought to the Rectory House within two months; many a 
 benignantly painstaking answer had he carried back. 
 
 As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhab- 
 itants of this mother country, who would make pilgrimages 
 to the little churchyard in the years to come; I thought of 
 the many people in Australia, who would have an interest 
 in such a shipwreck, and would find their way here when 
 they visit the Old World; I thought of the writers of all 
 the wreck of letters I had left upon the table; and I re- 
 solved to place this little record where it stands. Convo- 
 cations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will 
 do a great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven send 
 they may ! but I doubt if they will ever do their Master's 
 service half so well, in all the time they last, as the Heav- 
 ens have seen it done in this bleak spot upon the rugged 
 coast cf Wales. 
 
 Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the 
 Royal Charter; had I lost my betrothed, the more than 
 friend of my life; had I lost my maiden daughter, had I 
 
16 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 lost my hopeful boy, had I lost my little child; I would 
 kiss the hands that worked so busily and gently in the 
 church, and say, "None better could have touched the 
 form, though it had lain at home." I could be sure of it, 
 I could be thankful for it : I could be content to leave the 
 grave near the house the good family pass in and out of 
 every day, undisturbed, in the little churchyard where so 
 many are so strangely brought together. 
 
 Without the name of the clergyman to whom — I hope, 
 not without carrying comfort to some heart at some time — 
 I have referred, my reference would be as nothing. He 
 is the Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, near 
 Moelfra, Anglesey. His brother is the Reverend Hugh 
 Robert Hughes, of Penrhos, Alligwy. 
 
 III. 
 
 WAPPING WORKHOUSE. 
 
 My day's no-business beckoning me to the East end of 
 London, I had turned my face to that point of the metro- 
 politan compass on leaving Covent-garden, and had got 
 past the Indian House, thinking in my idle manner of Tip- 
 poo- Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little 
 wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on 
 one leg of his knee-shorts for old acquaintance' sake, and 
 had got past Aldgate Pump, and had got past the Saracen's 
 Head (with an ignominious rash of posting bills disfiguring 
 his swarthy countenance), and had strolled up the empty 
 yard of his ancient neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or 
 Bull, who departed this life I don't know when, and whose 
 coaches are all gone I don't know where; and I had come 
 out again into the age of railways, and I had got past 
 Whitechapel Church, and was — rather inappropriately for 
 an Uncommercial Traveller — in the Commercial Road. 
 Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant mud of that thor- 
 oughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles of building 
 belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts and vanes 
 in small back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring 
 canals and docks, the India vans lumbering along their 
 stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers' shops where hard-up 
 
... A creature remotely in the likeness of a young man, with a puffed 
 sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have been 
 the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames. 
 
 — Uncommercial Traveller, " Wapping Workhouse," ch. iii., p. 17. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 17 
 
 Mates had pawned so many sextants and quadrants, that I 
 should have bought a few cheap if I had the least notion 
 how to use them, I at last began to file off to the right, 
 towards Wapping. 
 
 Not that I intended. to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, 
 or that I was going to look at the locality, because I be- 
 lieve (for I don't) in the constancy of the young woman 
 who told her sea-going lover, to such a beautiful old tune, 
 that she had ever continued the same, since she gave him 
 the 'baccer-box marked with his name; I am afraid he 
 usually got the worst of those transactions, and was fright- 
 fully taken in. No, I was going to Wapping, because an 
 Eastern police magistrate had said, through the morning 
 papers, that there was no classification at the Wapping 
 workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a 
 shame, and divers other hard names, and because I wished 
 to see how the fact really stood. For, that Eastern police 
 magistates are not always the wisest men of the East, may 
 be inferred from their course of procedure respecting the 
 fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. George's in 
 that quarter : which is usuall} 7 , to discuss the matter at 
 issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplex- 
 ity, with all parties concerned and unconcerned, and, for a 
 final expedient, to consult the complainant as to what he 
 thinks ought to be done with the defendant, and take the 
 defendant's opinion as to what he would recommend to be 
 done with himself. 
 
 Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as 
 having lost my way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow 
 streets in a Turkish frame of mind, relied on predestina- 
 tion to bring me somehow or other to the place I wanted if 
 I were ever to get there. When I had ceased for an hour 
 or so to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself 
 on a swing-bridge looking down at some dark locks in some 
 dirty water. Over against me, stood a creature remotely 
 in the likeness of a young man, with a puffed sallow face, 
 and a figure all dirty and shiny and slim}^, who may have 
 been the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or 
 the drowned man about whom there was a placard on the 
 granite post like a large thimble, that stood between us. 
 
 I asked this apparition what it called the place? Unto 
 which, it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like 
 gurgling water in its throat'. 
 
18 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 "Mr. Baker's trap." 
 
 As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such 
 occasions to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the con- 
 versation, I deeply considered the meaning of this speech, 
 while I eyed the apparition — then engaged in hugging and 
 sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the locks. In- 
 spiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting 
 coroner of that neighbourhood. 
 
 "A common place for suicide," said I, looking down at 
 the locks. 
 
 " Sue? " returned the ghost, with a stare. " Yes ! And 
 Poll. Likewise Emily. And Nancy. And Jane; " he 
 sucked the iron between each name; "and all the bileing. 
 Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and headers 
 down here, they doos. Always a headerin' down here, 
 they is. Like one o'clock." 
 
 "And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose? " 
 
 "Ah!" said the apparition. " They an't partickler. 
 Two 'ull do for them. Three. All times o' night. On'y 
 mind you ! " Here the apparition rested his profile on the 
 bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic manner. " There must be 
 somebody comin'. They don't go a headerin' down here, 
 wen there an't no Bobby nor gen'ral Cove, fur to hear the 
 splash." 
 
 According to my interpretation of these words, I was 
 myself a General Cove, or member of the miscellaneous 
 public. In which modest character I remarked : 
 
 " They are often taken out, are they, and restored? " 
 
 "I dunno about restored," said the apparition, who, for 
 some occult reason, very much objected to that word; 
 "they're carried into the werkiss and put into a 'ot bath, 
 and brought round. But I dunno about restored," said the 
 apparition; "blow that!" — and vanished. 
 
 As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not 
 sorry to find myself alone, especially as the " werkiss " it 
 had indicated with a twist of its matted head, was close at 
 hand. So I left Mr. Baker's terrible trap (baited with a 
 scum that was like the soapy rinsing of sooty chimneys), 
 and made bold to ring at the workhouse gate, where I was 
 wholly unexpected and quite unknown. 
 
 A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of 
 keys in her hand, responded to my request to see the 
 House. I began to doubt whether the police magistrate 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 19 
 
 was quite right in his facts, when I noticed her quick active 
 little figure and her intelligent eyes. 
 
 The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the 
 worst first. He was welcome to see everything. Such as 
 it was, there it all was. 
 
 This was the only preparation for our entering "the 
 Foul wards." They were in an old building squeezed 
 away in a corner of a paved yard, quite detached from the 
 more modern and spacious main body of the workhouse. 
 They were in a building most monstrously behind the time 
 — a mere series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient 
 and objectionable circumstance in their construction, and 
 only accessible by steep and narrow staircases, infamously 
 ill-adapted for the passage up-stairs of the sick or down- 
 stairs of the dead. 
 
 A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there 
 (for a change, as I understood it) on the floor, were women 
 in every stage of distress and disease. None but those 
 who have attentively observed such scenes, can conceive 
 the extraordinary variety of expression still latent under 
 the general monotony and uniformity of colour, attitude, 
 and condition. The form a little coiled up and turned 
 away, as though it had turned its back on this world for 
 ever; the uninterested face at once lead-coloured and yel- 
 low, looking passively upward from the pillow; the hag- 
 gard mouth a little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, 
 so dull and indifferent, so light, and yet so heavy; these 
 were on every pallet; but when I stopped beside a bed, and 
 said ever so slight a word to the figure lying there, the 
 ghost of the old character came into the face, and made the 
 Foul ward as various as the fair world. No one appeared 
 to care to live, but no one complained; all who could speak, 
 said that as much was done for them as could be done 
 there, that the attendance was kind and patient, that their 
 suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to ask for. 
 The wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is pos- 
 sible for such rooms to be; they would become a pest-house 
 in a single week, if they were ill-kept. 
 
 I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous 
 staircase, into a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic 
 and imbecile. There was at least Light in it, whereas the 
 windows in the former wards had been like sides of school- 
 boys' bird-cages. There was a strong grating over the fire 
 
20 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 here, and, holding a kind of state on either side of the 
 hearth, separated by the breadth of this grating, were two 
 ladies in a condition of feeble dignity, which was surely the 
 very last and lowest reduction of self-complacency, to be 
 found in this wonderful humanity of ours. They were 
 evidently jealous of each other, and passed their whole 
 time (as some people do, whose fires are not grated) in 
 mentally disparaging each other, and contemptuously 
 watching their neighbours. One of these parodies on pro- 
 vincial gentlewomen was extremely talkative, and ex- 
 pressed a strong desire to attend the service on Sundays, 
 from which she represented herself to have derived the 
 greatest interest and consolation when allowed that priv- 
 ilege. She gossiped so well, and looked altogether so 
 cheery and harmless, that I began to think this a case for 
 the Eastern magistrate, until I found that on the last oc- 
 casion of her attending chapel she had secreted a small 
 stick, and had caused some confusion in the responses by 
 suddenly producing it and belabouring the congregation. 
 
 So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the 
 grating — otherwise they would fly at one another's caps — 
 sat all day long, suspecting one another, and contemplating 
 a world of fits. For, everybody else in the room had fits, 
 except the wards- woman; an elderly, able-bodied pau- 
 peress, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing and 
 saving her strength, as she stood with her hands folded be- 
 fore her, and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for 
 catching or holding somebody. This civil personage (in 
 whom I regretted to identify a reduced member of my 
 honourable friend Mrs. Gamp's family) said, "They has 
 'em continiwal, sir. They drops without no more notice 
 than if they was coach-horses dropped from the moon, sir. 
 And when one drops, another drops, and sometimes there'll 
 be as many as four or five on 'em at once, dear me, a roll- 
 ing and a tearin', bless you! — this young woman, now, has 
 'em dreadful bad." 
 
 She turned up this young woman's face with her hand 
 as she said it. This young woman was seated on the floor, 
 pondering in the foreground of the afflicted. There was 
 nothing repellent either in her face or head. Many, ap- 
 parently worse, varieties of epilepsy and hysteria were 
 about her, but she was said to be the worst here. When I 
 had spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face turned 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 21 
 
 up, pondering, and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone in 
 upon her. 
 
 — Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so 
 sorely troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their con- 
 fused dull way, ever get mental glimpses among the motes 
 in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy things? 
 Whether this young woman, brooding like this in the sum- 
 mer season, ever thinks that somewhere there are trees and 
 flowers, even mountains and the great sea? Whether, not 
 to go so far, this young woman ever has any dim revelation 
 of that young woman — that young woman who is not here 
 and never will come here; who is courted, and caressed, 
 and loved, and has a husband, and bears children, and lives 
 in a home, and who never knows what it is to have this 
 lashing and tearing coming upon her ? And whether this 
 young woman, God help her, gives herself up then and 
 drops like a coach-horse from the moon? 
 
 I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, 
 penetrating into so hopeless a place, made a sound that was 
 pleasant or painful to me. It was something to be re- 
 minded that the weary world was not all aweary, and was 
 ever renewing itself; but, this young woman was a child 
 not long ago, and a child not long hence might be such as 
 she. Howbeit, the active step and eye of the vigilant 
 matron conducted me past the two provincial gentlewomen 
 (whose dignity was ruffled by the children), and into the 
 adjacent nursery. 
 
 There were many babies here, and more than one hand- 
 some young mother. There were ugly young mothers also, 
 and sullen young mothers, and callous young mothers. 
 But, the babies had not appropriated to themselves any bad 
 expression yet, and might have been, for anything that ap- 
 peared to the contrary in their soft faces, Princes Imperial, 
 and Princesses Royal. I had the pleasure of giving a 
 poetical commission to the baker's man to make a cake 
 with all despatch and toss it into the oven for one red- 
 headed young pauper and myself, and felt much the better 
 for it. Without that refreshment, I doubt if I should 
 have been in a condition for "the Refractories, " towards 
 whom my quick little matron — for whose adaptation to her 
 office I had by this time conceived a genuine respect — drew 
 me next, and marshalled me the way that I was going. 
 
 The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room 
 
22 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 giving on a yard. They sat in line on a form, with theii 
 backs to a window; before them, a table, and their work. 
 The oldest Refractory was, say twenty; youngest Refrac- 
 tory, say sixteen. I have never yet ascertained in the course 
 of my uncommercial travels, why a Refractory habit should 
 affect the tonsils and uvula; but, I have always observed 
 that Refractories of both sexes and every grade, between 
 a Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one voice, in 
 which the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased ascendency. 
 
 "Five pound indeed! I hain't a going fur to pick five 
 pound," said the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time to 
 herself with her head and chin. " More than enough to 
 pick what we picks now, in sich a place as this, and on wot 
 we gets here ! " 
 
 (This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation 
 that the amount of work was likely to be increased. It 
 certainly was not heavy then, for one Refractory had al- 
 ready done her day's task — it was barely two o'clock — and 
 was sitting behind it, with a head exactly matching it.) 
 
 "A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain't it?" said Refrac- 
 tory Two, " where a pleeseman's called in, if a gal says a 
 word ! " 
 
 " And wen you're sent to prison for nothink or less ! " 
 said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the ma* 
 tron's hair. " But any place is better than this ; that's one 
 thing, and be thankful ! " 
 
 A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded 
 arms — who originated nothing, but who was in command 
 of the skirmishers outside the conversation. 
 
 "If any place is better than this," said my brisk guide, 
 in the calmest manner, " it is a pity you left a good place 
 when you had one." 
 
 "Ho, no, I didn't, matron," returned the Chief, with 
 another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look at 
 the enemy's forehead. "Don't say that, matron, cos it's 
 lies!" 
 
 Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skir- 
 mished, and retired. 
 
 "And i" warn't a going," exclaimed Refractory Two, 
 " though I was in one place for as long as four year — 1 
 warn't a going fur to stop in a place that warn't fit for me 
 — there ! And where the family warn't 'spectable char- 
 acters — there ! And where I fort'nately or hunfort'nately, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 23 
 
 found that the people warn't what they pretended to make 
 theirselves out to be — there! And wher& it wasn't their 
 faults, by chalks, if I warn't made bad and ruinated — 
 Hah!" 
 
 During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a di- 
 version with the skirmishers, and had again withdrawn. 
 
 The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he 
 supposed Chief Refractory and Number One, to be the two 
 young women who had been taken before the magistrate? 
 
 " Yes ! " said the Chief, " we har ! and the wonder is, 
 that a pleeseman an't 'ad in now, and we took off agen. 
 You can't open your lips here, without a pleeseman." 
 
 Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmish- 
 ers followed suit. 
 
 "I'm sure I'd be thankful," protested the Chief, looking 
 sideways at the Uncommercial, " if I could be got into a 
 place, or got abroad. I'm sick and tired of this precious 
 Ouse, I am, with reason." 
 
 So would be, and so was, Number Two. So would be, 
 and so was, Oakum Head. So would be, and so were, 
 Skirmishers. 
 
 The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he 
 hardly thought it probable that any lady or gentleman in 
 want of a likely young domestic of retiring manners, would 
 be tempted into the engagement of either of the two lead- 
 ing Refractories, on her own presentation of herself as per 
 sample. 
 
 "It ain't no good being nothink else here," said the 
 Chief. 
 
 The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying. 
 
 " Oh no it ain't," said the Chief. 
 
 "Not a bit of good," said Number Two. 
 
 "And I'm sure I'd be very thankful to be got into a 
 place, or got abroad," said the Chief. 
 
 "And so should I," said Number Two. "Truly thank- 
 ful, I should." 
 
 Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely 
 new idea, the mention of which profound novelty might be 
 naturally expected to startle her unprepared hearers, that 
 she would be very thankful to be got into a place, or got 
 abroad. And, as if she had then said, "Chorus, ladies! " 
 all the skirmishers struck up to the same purpose. We 
 left them, thereupon, and began a long walk among the 
 
24 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 women who were simply old and infirm; but whenever, in 
 the course of this same walk, I looked out of any high win- 
 dow that commanded the yard, I saw Oakum Head and all 
 the other Refractories looking out at their low window for 
 me, and never failing to catch me, the moment I showed 
 my head. 
 
 In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of 
 a golden time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age. 
 In ten minutes, all the lights of womankind seemed to have 
 been bloAvn out, and nothing in that way to be left this 
 vault to brag of, but the flickering and expiring snuffs. 
 
 And what was very curious, was, that these dim old 
 women had one company notion which was the fashion of 
 the place. Every old woman who became aware of a vis- 
 itor and was not in bed hobbled over a form into her accus- 
 tomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old women 
 confronting another line of dim old women across a narrow 
 table. There was no obligation whatever upon them to 
 range themselves in this way; it was their manner of "re- 
 ceiving." As a rule, they made no attempt to talk to one 
 another, or to look at the visitor, or to look at anything, 
 but sat silently working their mouths, like a sort of poor 
 old Cows. In some of these wards, it was good to see a 
 few green plants; in others, an isolated Refractory acting 
 as nurse, who did well enough in that capacity, when sepa- 
 rated from her compeers; every one of these wards, day 
 room, night room, or both combined, was scrupulously 
 clean and fresh. I have seen as many such places as most 
 travellers in my line, and I never saw one such, better kept. 
 
 Among the bedridden there was great patience, great re- 
 liance on the books under the pillow, great faith in God. 
 All cared for sympathy, but none much cared to be encour- 
 aged with hope of recovery; on the whole, I should say, it 
 was considered rather a distinction to have a complication 
 of disorders, and to be in a worse way than the rest. From 
 some of the windows, the river could be seen with all its 
 life and movement; the day was bright, but I came upon 
 no one who was looking out. 
 
 In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of 
 distinction, like the President and Vice of the good com- 
 pany, were two old women, upwards of ninety years of age. 
 The younger of the two, just turned ninety, was deaf, but 
 not very, and could easily be made to hear. In her early 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 25 
 
 time she had nursed a child, who was now another old 
 woman, more infirm than herself, inhabiting the very same 
 chamber. She perfectly understood this when the matron 
 told it, and, with sundry nods and motions of her forefin- 
 ger, pointed out the woman in question. The elder of this 
 pair, ninety-three, seated before an illustrated newspaper 
 (but not reading it), was a bright-eyed old soul, really not 
 deaf, wonderfully preserved, and amazingly conversational. 
 She had not long lost her husband, and had been in that 
 place little more than a year. At Boston, in the State of 
 Massachusetts, this poor creature would have been individ- 
 ually addressed, would have been tended in her own room, 
 and would have had her life gently assimilated to a com- 
 fortable life out of doors. Would that be much to do in 
 England for a woman who has kept herself out of a work- 
 house more than ninety rough long years? When Britain 
 first, at Heaven's command, arose, with a great deal of al- 
 legorical confusion, from out the azure main, did her guar- 
 dian angels positively forbid it in the Charter which has 
 been so much besung? 
 
 The object of my journey was accomplished when the 
 nimble matron had no more to show me. As I shook hands 
 with her at the gate, I told her that I thought Justice had 
 not used her very well, and that the wise men of the East 
 were not infallible. 
 
 Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey 
 home again, concerning those Foul wards. They ought not 
 to exist; no person of common decency and humanity can 
 see them and doubt it. But what is this Union to do? 
 The necessary alteration would cost several thousands of 
 pounds; it has already to support three workhouses; its 
 inhabitants work hard for their bare lives, and are already 
 rated for the relief of the Poor to the utmost extent of 
 reasonable endurance. One poor parish in this very Union 
 is rated to the amount of Five axd sixpence in the pound, 
 at the very same time when the rich parish of Saint 
 George's, Hanover-square, is rated at about Sevexpence 
 in the pound, Paddington at about Fourpexce, Saint 
 James's, Westminster, at about Texpexce! It is only 
 through the equalisation of Poor Pates that what is left un- 
 done in this wise, can be done. Much more is left undone, 
 or is ill-done, than I have space to suggest in these notes of 
 a single uncommercial journey; but, the wise men of the 
 
26 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 East, before they can reasonably bold forth about it, must 
 look to the North and South and West; let thern also, any 
 morning before taking the seat of Solomon, look into the 
 shops and dwellings all around the Temple, and first ask 
 themselves "how much more can these poor people — many 
 of whom keep themselves with difficulty enough out of the 
 workhouse — bear? " 
 
 I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, 
 inasmuch as, before I altogether departed from the neigh- 
 bourhood of Mr. Baker's trap, I had knocked at the gates 
 of the workhouse of St. George 's-in-the-East, and had 
 found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those 
 parts, and thoroughly well administered by a most intelli- 
 gent master. I remarked in it, an instance of the collat- 
 eral harm that obstinate vanity and folly can do. " This 
 was the Hall where those old paupers, male and female, 
 whom I had just seen, met for the Church service, was it ? " 
 — " Yes." — " Did they sing the Psalms to any instrument ? " 
 — "They would like to, very much; they would have an 
 extraordinary interest in doing so." — "And could none be 
 got? " — " Well, a piano could even have been got for 
 nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions— — " Ah ! bet- 
 ter, far better, my Christian friend in the beautiful gar- 
 ment, to have let the singing boys alone, and left the mul- 
 titude to sing for themselves! You should know better 
 than I, but I think I have read that they did so, once upon 
 a time, and that "when they had sung an hymn," Some 
 one (not in a beautiful garment) went up unto the Mount 
 of Olives. 
 
 It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, 
 in the streets of a city where every stone seemed to call to 
 me, as I walked along, " Turn this way, man, and see what 
 waits to be done ! " So I decoyed myself into another train 
 of thought to ease my heart. But, I don't know that I did 
 it, for I was so full of paupers, that it was, after all, only 
 a change to a single pauper, who took possession of my re- 
 membrance instead of a thousand. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir," he had said, in a confidential 
 manner, on another occasion, taking me aside; "but I have 
 seen better days." 
 
 "I am very sorry to hear it." 
 
 " Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master." 
 
 " I have no power here, I assure you. And if I had ** 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 27 
 
 " But allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself 
 and a man who has seen better days, sir. The master and 
 myself are both masons, sir, and I make him the sign con- 
 tinually; but, because I am in this unfortunate position, 
 sir, he won't give me the countersign!" 
 
 IV. 
 
 TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. 
 
 As I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came 
 out into the streets at six on a drizzling Saturday evening 
 in the last past month of January, all that neighbourhood 
 of Covent-garden looked very desolate. It is so essentially a 
 neighbourhood which has seen better days, that bad weather 
 affects it sooner than another place which has not come 
 down in the world. In its present reduced condition it 
 bears a thaw almost worse than any place I know. It gets 
 so dreadfully low-spirited when damp breaks forth. Those 
 wonderful houses about Drury-lane Theatre, which in the 
 palmy days of theatres were prosperous and long-settled 
 places of business, and which now change hands every 
 week, but never change their character of being divided 
 and sub-divided on the ground floor into mouldy dens of 
 shops where an orange and half-a-dozen nuts, or a poma- 
 tum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, are 
 offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully contem- 
 plated that evening, by the statue of Shakespeare, with the 
 rain-drops coursing one another down its innocent nose. 
 Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, with nothing in them 
 (not so much as an inkstand) but a model of a theatre be- 
 fore the curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season, tickets 
 at reduced prices are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen 
 in smeary hats too tall for them, whom one occasionally 
 seems to have seen on race-courses, not wholly unconnected 
 with strips of cloth of. various colours and a rolling ball — 
 those Bedouin establishments, deserted by the tribe, and 
 tenantless, except when sheltering in one corner an irregu- 
 lar row of ginger-beer-bottles, which would have made one 
 shudder on such a night, but for its being plain that they 
 had nothing in them, shrunk from the shrill cries of the 
 
28 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 newsboys at their Exchange in the kennel of Catherine- 
 street, like guilty things upon a fearful summons. At the 
 pipe-shop in Great Russell-street, the Death's-head pipes 
 were like theatrical memento mori, admonishing beholders 
 of the decline of the playhouse as an Institution. I walked 
 up Bow-street, disposed to be angry with the shops there, 
 that were letting out theatrical secrets by exhibiting to 
 work-a-day humanity the stuff of which diadems and robes 
 of kings are made. I noticed that some shops which had 
 once been in the dramatic line, and had struggled out of it, 
 were not getting on prosperously — like some actors I have 
 known, who took to business and failed to make it answer. 
 In a word, those streets looked so dull, and, considered as 
 theatrical streets, so broken and bankrupt, that the Found 
 Dead on the black board at the police station might have 
 announced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of wa- 
 ter outside the fire-engine makers at the corner of Long-acre 
 might have been occasioned by his having brought out the 
 whole of his stock to play upon its last smouldering ashes 
 
 And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the 
 object of my journey was theatrical. And yet within half 
 an hour I was in an immense theatre, capable of holding 
 nearly five thousand people. 
 
 What Theatre? Her Majesty's? Far better. Eoyal 
 Italian Opera? Far better. Infinitely superior to the lat- 
 ter for hearing in; infinitely superior to both, for seeing in. 
 To every part of this Theatre, spacious fire-proof ways of 
 ingress and egress. For every part of it, convenient places 
 of refreshment and retiring rooms. Everything to eat and 
 drink carefully supervised as to quality, and sold at an 
 appointed price; respectable female attendants ready for 
 the commonest women in the audience; a general air of 
 consideration, decorum, 'and supervision, most commend- 
 able; an unquestionably humanising influence in all the so- 
 cial arrangements of the place. 
 
 Surely a dear Theatre, then? Because there were in 
 London (not very long ago) Theatres with entrance-prices 
 up to half-a-guinea a head, whose arrangements were not 
 half so civilised. Surely, therefore, a dear Theatre? Not 
 very dear. A gallery at threepence, another gallery al 
 fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls at a shill- 
 ing, and a few private- boxes at half-a-crown. 
 
 My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into everj 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 29 
 
 nook of this great place, and among every class of the audi- 
 ence assembled in it — amounting that evening, as I cal- 
 culated, to about two thousand and odd hundreds. Mag- 
 nificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, 
 the building was ventilated to perfection. My sense of 
 smell, without being particularly delicate, has been so 
 offended in some of the commoner places of public resort, 
 that I have often been obliged to leave them when I have 
 made an uncommercial journey expressly to look on. The 
 air of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and wholesome. To 
 help towards this end, very sensible precautions had been 
 used, ingeniously combining the experience of hospitals 
 and railway stations. Asphalt pavements substituted for 
 wooden floors, honest bare walls of glazed brick and tile — 
 even at the back of the boxes — for plaster and paper, no 
 benches stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used; a cool ma- 
 terial with a light glazed surface, being the covering of the 
 seats. 
 
 These various contrivances are as well considered in the 
 place in question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result 
 is, that it is sweet and healthful. It has been constructed 
 from the ground to the roof, with a careful reference to 
 sight and sound in every corner; the result is, that its form 
 is beautiful, and that the appearance of the audience, as 
 seen from the proscenium — with every face in it command- 
 ing the stage, and the whole so admirably raked and turned 
 to that centre, that a hand can scarcely move in the great 
 assemblage without the movement being seen from thence 
 — is highly remarkable in its union of vastness with com- 
 pactness. The stage itself, and all its appurtenances of 
 machinery, cellarage height and breadth, are on a scale 
 more like the Scala at Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, 
 or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any notion a stranger 
 would be likely to form of the Britannia Theatre at Hox- 
 ton, a mile north of St. Luke's Hospital in the Old-street- 
 road, London. The Forty Thieves might be played here, 
 and every thief ride his real horse, and the disguised cap- 
 tain bring in his oil jars on a train of real camels, and no- 
 body be put out of the way. This really extraordinary 
 place is the achievement of one man's enterprise, and was 
 erected on the ruins of an inconvenient old building in less 
 than five months, at a round cost of five-and-twenty thou- 
 sand pounds. To dismiss this part of my subject, and 
 
30 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 still to render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his 
 due, I must add that his sense of the responsibility upon 
 him to make the best of his audience, and to do his best 
 for them, is a highly agreeable sign of these times. 
 
 As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will pres- 
 ently show, were the object of my journey, I entered on 
 the play of the night as one of the two thousand and odd 
 hundreds, by looking about me at my neighbours. We 
 were a motley assemblage of people, and we had a good 
 many boys and young men among us; we had also many 
 girls and young women. To represent, however, that we 
 did not include a very great number, and a very fair pro- 
 portion of family groups, would be to make a gross misstate- 
 ment. Such groups were to be seen in all parts of the 
 house; in the boxes and stalls particularly, they were com- 
 posed of persons of very decent appearance, who had many 
 children with them. Among our dresses there were most 
 kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and 
 corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant. The caps of 
 our young men were mostly of a limp character, and we 
 who wore them, slouched, high-shouldered, into our places 
 with our hands in our pockets, and occasionally twisted our 
 cravats about our necks like eels, and occasionally tied 
 them down our breasts like links of sausages, and occasion- 
 ally had a screw in our hair over each cheek-bone with a 
 slight Thief-flavour in it. Besides prowlers and idlers, 
 we were mechanics, dock-labourers, costermongers, petty 
 tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe-bind- 
 ers, slop workers, poor workers in a hundred highways and 
 byways. Many of us — on the whole, the majority — were 
 not at all clean, and not at all choice in our lives or con- 
 versation. But we had all come together in a place where 
 our convenience was well consulted, and where we were 
 well looked after, to enjoy an evening's entertainment in 
 common. We were not going to lose any part of what we 
 had paid for through anybody's caprice, and as a commu- 
 nity we had a character to lose. So, we were closely atten- 
 tive, and kept excellent order; and let the man or boy who 
 did otherwise instantly get out from this place, or we would 
 put him out with the greatest expedition. 
 
 We began at half-past six with a pantomime — with a 
 pantomime so long, that before it was over I felt as if I 
 had been travelling for six weeks — going to India, say, by 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 31 
 
 the Overland Mail. The Spirit of Liberty was the prin- 
 cipal personage in the Introduction, and the Four Quarters 
 of the World came out of the globe, glittering, and dis- 
 coursed with the Spirit, who sang charmingly. We were 
 delighted to understand that there was no liberty any- 
 where but among ourselves, and we highly applauded the 
 agreeable fact. In an allegorical way, which did as well 
 as any other way, we and the Spirit of Liberty got into a 
 kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with 
 a potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy 
 Rust, and who would have got the better of them if the 
 Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed 
 the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, 
 Harlequina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a 
 remarkably stout father and three spineless sons. We all 
 knew what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty ad-> 
 dressed the king with a big face, and His Majesty backed 
 to the side-scenes and began untying himself behind, with 
 his big face all on one side. Our excitement at that crisis 
 was great, and our delight unbounded. After this era in 
 our existence, we went through all the incidents of a pan- 
 tomime; it was not by any means a savage pantomime, in 
 the way of burning or boiling people, or throwing them 
 out of window, or cutting them up; was often very droll; 
 was always liberally got up, and cleverly presented. I no- 
 ticed that the people who kept the shops, and who repre- 
 sented the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, 
 had no conventionality in them, but were unusually like 
 the real thing — from which I infer that you may take that 
 audience in (if you wish to) concerning Knights and Ladies, 
 Fairies, Angels, or such like, but they are not to be done as 
 to anything in the streets. I noticed, also, that when two 
 young men, dressed in exact imitation of the eel-and-sau- 
 sage-cravated portion of the audience, were chased by po- 
 licemen, and, finding themselves in danger of being caught, 
 dropped so suddenly as to oblige the policemen to tumble 
 over them, there was great rejoicing among the caps — as 
 though it were a delicate reference to something they had 
 heard of before. 
 
 The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama. 
 Throughout the evening I was pleased to observe Virtue 
 quite as triumphant as she usually is out of doors, and in- 
 deed I thought rather more so. We all agreed (for the 
 4 
 
32 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 time) that honesty was the best policy, and we were as 
 hard as iron upon Vice, and we wouldn't hear of Villainy 
 getting on in the world — no, not on any consideration what- 
 ever. 
 
 Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and 
 refreshed. Many of us went the length of drinking beer 
 at the bar of the neighbouring public-house, some of us 
 drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer 
 at the refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre. 
 The sandwich — as substantial as was consistent with porta- 
 bility, 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 na- 
 ture was surprising; we could never weep so comfortably 
 as when our tears fell on our sandwich; we could never 
 laugh so heartily as when we choked with sandwich; Vir- 
 tue never looked so beautiful or Vice so deformed as when 
 we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would come 
 of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever 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. 
 
 This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night. Being 
 Saturday night, I had accomplished but the half of my 
 uncommercial journey; for, its object was to compare the 
 play on Saturday evening with the preaching in the same 
 Theatre on Sunday evening. 
 
 Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the sim- 
 ilarly damp and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this 
 Theatre. I drove up to the entrance (fearful of being late, 
 or I should have come on foot), and found myself in a large 
 crowd of people who, I am happy to state, were put into 
 excellent spirits by my arrival. Having nothing to look at 
 but the mud and the closed doors, they looked at me, and 
 highly enjoyed the comic spectacle. My modesty inducing 
 me to draw off, some hundreds of yards, into a dark cor- 
 ner, they at once forgot me, and applied themselves to 
 their former occupation of looking at the mud and looking 
 in at the closed doors : which, being of grated ironwork, 
 allowed the lighted passage within to be seen. They were 
 chiefly people- of respectable appearance, odd and impulsive 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 33 
 
 as most crowds are, and making a joke of being there as 
 most crowds do. 
 
 In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but 
 that a very obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre 
 was already full, and that the people whom I saw in the 
 street were all shut out for want of room. After that, I lost 
 no time in worming myself into the building, and creeping 
 to a place in a Proscenium box that had been kept for me. 
 
 There must have been full four thousand people pres- 
 ent. Carefully estimating the pit alone, I could bring it 
 out as holding little less than fourteen hundred. Every 
 part of the house was well filled, and I had not found it 
 easy to make my way along the back of the boxes to where 
 I sat. The chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted; there 
 was no light on the stage; the orchestra was empty. The 
 green curtain was down, and, packed pretty closely on 
 chairs on the small space of stage before it, were some 
 thirty gentlemen, and two or three ladies. In the centre 
 of these, in a desk or pulpit covered with red baize, was 
 the presiding minister. The kind of rostrum he occupied 
 will be very well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up- 
 fireplace turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in 
 a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning forward 
 over the mantelpiece. 
 
 A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in. 
 It was followed by a discourse, to which the congregation 
 listened with most exemplary attention and uninterrupted 
 silence and decorum. My own attention comprehended 
 both the auditory and the speaker, and shall turn to both 
 in this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at the time. 
 
 "A very difficult thing," I thought, when the discourse 
 began, "to speak appropriately to so large an audience, 
 and to speak with- tact. Without it, better not to speak 
 at all. Infinitely better, to read the New Testament well, 
 and to let that speak. In this congregation there is in- 
 dubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any power short of 
 genius can touch it as one, and make it answer as one." 
 
 I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse pro- 
 ceeded, that the minister was a good speaker. I could not 
 possibly say to myself that he expressed an understanding of 
 the general mind and character of his audience. There was 
 a supposititious working-man introduced into the homily, 
 to make supposititious objections to our Christian religion 
 
34 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 and be reasoned down, who was not only a very disagree- 
 able person, but remarkably unlike life — very muck more 
 unlike it than anything I had seen in the pantomime. The 
 native independence of character this artisan was supposed 
 to possess, was represented by a suggestion of a dialect 
 that I certainly never heard in my uncommercial travels, 
 and with a coarse swing of voice and manner anything but 
 agreeable to his feelings I should conceive, considered in 
 the light of a portrait, and as far away from the fact as a 
 Chinese Tartar. There was a model pauper introduced in 
 like manner, who appeared to me to be the most intoler- 
 ably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself in 
 absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard. 
 For, how did this pauper testify to his having received the 
 gospel of humility? A gentleman met him in the work- 
 house, and said (which I myself really thought good-na- 
 tured of him), " Ah, John? I am sorry to see you here. 
 I am sorry to see you so poor." "Poor, sir!" replied that 
 man, drawing himself up, " I am the son of a Prince ! My 
 father is the King of Kings. My father is the Lord of 
 Lords. My father is the ruler of all the Princes of the 
 Earth ! " &c. And this was what all the preacher's fellow- 
 sinners might come to, if they would embrace this blessed 
 book — which I must say it did some violence to my own 
 feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm's length at 
 frequent intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at 
 a sale. Now, could I help asking myself the question, 
 whether the mechanic before me, who must detect the 
 preacher as being wrong about the visible manner of him- 
 self and the like of himself, and about such a noisy lip- 
 server as that pauper, might not, most unhappily for the 
 usefulness of the occasion, doubt that preacher's being 
 right about things not visible to human senses? 
 
 Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such an 
 audience continually as " fellow-sinners "? Is it not enough 
 to be fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striv- 
 ing to-day, dying to-morrow? By our common humanity, 
 my brothers and sisters, by our common capacities for pain 
 and pleasure, by our common laughter and our common 
 tears, by our common aspiration to reach something better 
 than ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in some- 
 thing good, and to invest whatever we love or whatever 
 we lose with some qualities that are superior to our own 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 35 
 
 failings and weaknesses as we know them in our own poor 
 hearts — by these, Hear me! — Surely, it is enough to be 
 fellow-creatures. Surely, it includes the other designation, 
 and some touching meanings over and above. 
 
 Again. There was a personage introduced into the dis- 
 course (not an absolute novelty, to the best of my remem- 
 brance of my reading), who had been personally known to 
 the preacher, and had been quite a Crichton in all the ways 
 of philosophy, but had been an infidel. Many a time had 
 the preacher talked with him on that subject, and many a 
 time had he failed to convince that intelligent man. But 
 he fell ill, and died, and before he died he recorded his 
 conversion — in words which the preacher had taken down, 
 my fellow-sinners, and would read to you from this piece 
 of paper. I must confess that to me, as one of an unin- . 
 structed audience, they did not appear particularly edify- 
 ing. I thought their tone extremely selfish, and I thought 
 they had a spiritual vanity in them which was of the be- 
 fore-mentioned refractory pauper's family. 
 
 All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but 
 the slang and twang of the conventicle — as bad in its way 
 as that of the House of Commons, and nothing worse can 
 be said of it — should be studiously avoided under such cir- 
 cumstances as I describe. The avoidance was not complete 
 on this occasion. Nor was it quite agreeable to see the 
 preacher addressing his pet " points " to his backers on the 
 stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show him up, 
 and testify to the multitude that each of those points was 
 a clincher. 
 
 But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general 
 tone; of his renunciation of all priestly authority; of his 
 earnest and reiterated assurance to the people that the com- 
 monest among them could work out their own salvation if 
 they would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully following 
 Our Saviour, and that they needed the mediation of no 
 erring man; in these particulars, this gentleman deserved 
 all praise. Nothing could be better than the spirit, or the 
 plain emphatic words of his discourse in these respects. 
 And it was a most significant and encouraging circumstance 
 that whenever he struck that chord, or whenever he de- 
 Bcribed anything which Christ himself had done, the array 
 of faces before him was very much more earnest, and very 
 much more expressive of emotion, than at any other time. 
 
36 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part 
 of the audience of the previous night, was not there. There 
 is no doubt about it. There was no such thing in that 
 building, that Sunday evening. I have been told since, 
 that the lowest part of the audience of the Victoria Theatre 
 has been attracted to its Sunday services. I have been 
 very glad to hear it, but on this occasion of which I write, 
 the lowest part of the usual audience of the Britannia 
 Theatre, decidedly and unquestionably stayed away. When 
 I first took my seat and looked at the house, my surprise 
 at the change in its occupants was as great as my disap- 
 pointment. To the most respectable class of the previous 
 evening, was added a great number of respectable strangers 
 attracted by curiosity, and drafts from the regular congre- 
 gations of various chapels. It was impossible to fail in 
 identifying the character of these last, and they were very 
 numerous. I came out in a strong, slow tide of them set- 
 ting from the boxes. Indeed, while the discourse was in 
 progress, the respectable character of the auditory was so 
 manifest in their appearance, that when the minister ad- 
 dressed a supposititious "outcast," one really felt a little 
 impatient of it, as a figure of speech not justified by any- 
 thing the eye could discover. 
 
 The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings 
 was eight o'clock. The address having lasted until full 
 that time, and it being the custom to conclude with a 
 hymn, the preacher intimated in a few seusible words that 
 the clock had struck the hour, and that those who desired 
 to go before the hymn was sung, could go now, without 
 giving offence. No one stirred. The hymn was then sung, 
 in good time and tune and unison, and its effect was very 
 striking. A comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed 
 the throng, and in seven or eight minutes there was nothing- 
 left in the Theatre but a light cloud of dust. 
 
 That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, 
 I do not doubt. Nor do I doubt that they will work lower 
 and lower down in the social scale, if those who preside 
 over them will be very careful on two heads : firstly, not 
 to disparage the places in which they speak, or the intel- 
 ligence of their hearers; secondly, not to set themselves in 
 antagonism to the natiiral inborn desire of the mass of man- 
 kind to recreate themselves and to be amused. 
 
 There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 37 
 
 which my remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. 
 In the New Testament there is the most beautiful and af- 
 fecting history conceivable by man, and there are the terse 
 models for all prayer and for all preaching. As to the mod- 
 els, imitate them, Sunday preachers — else why are they 
 there, consider? As to the history, tell it. Some people 
 cannot read, some people will not read, many people (this 
 especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard 
 to pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented to 
 them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want 
 of continuity. Help them over that first stumbling-block, 
 by setting forth the history in narrative, with no fear of 
 exhausting it. You will never preach so well, you will 
 never move them so profoundly, you will never send them 
 away with half so much to think of. Which is the bet- 
 ter interest: Christ's choice of twelve poor men to help in 
 those merciful wonders among the poor and rejected; or 
 the pious bullying of a whole Union-full of paupers? What 
 is your changed philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at 
 the door out of the mud of the streets and of my life, when 
 you have the widow's son to tell me about, the ruler's 
 daughter, the other figure at the door when the brother of 
 the two sisters was dead, and one of the two ran to the 
 mourner, crying, " The Master is come and calleth for 
 thee "?. — Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget him- 
 self and remember no individuality but one, and no elo- 
 quence but one, stand up before four thousand men and 
 women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday night, re- 
 counting that narrative to them as fellow-creatures, and he 
 shall see a sight ! 
 
 V. 
 
 POOR MERCANTILE JACK. 
 
 Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and 
 keeps watch on the life of poor Jack, commissioned to take 
 charge of Mercantile Jack, as well as Jack of the national 
 navy? If not, who is? What is the cherub about, and 
 Avhat are we all about, when poor Mercantile Jack is hav- 
 ing his brains slowly knocked out by pennyweights, aboard 
 the brig Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife — when he 
 
38 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 looks his last at that infernal craft, with the first officer's 
 iron boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying body 
 towed overboard in the ship's wake, while the cruel wounds 
 in it do "the multitudinous seas incarnadine"? 
 
 Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the 
 brig Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer 
 did half the damage to cotton that he does to men, there 
 would presently arise from both sides of the Atlantic so 
 vociferous an invocation of the sweet little cherub who sits 
 calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets that pay, 
 that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged sword, 
 have that gallant officer's organ of destructiveness out of 
 his head in the space of a flash of lightning? 
 
 If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable 
 of men, for I believe it with all my soul. 
 
 This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at 
 Liverpool, keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas 
 for me! I have long outgrown the state of sweet little 
 cherub; but there I was, and there Mercantile Jack was, 
 and very busy he was, and very cold he was : the snow yet 
 lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the north-east 
 winds snipping off the tops of the little waves in the Mer- 
 sey, and rolling them into hailstones to pelt him with. 
 Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather : as he 
 mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack. He was girded to 
 ships' masts and funnels of steamers, like a forester to a 
 great oak, scraping and painting ; he was lying out on 
 yards, furling sails that tried to beat him off; he was dimly 
 discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and 
 splicing; he was faintly audible down in holds, stowing 
 and unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round at 
 capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was of a 
 diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Antipodes; he was 
 washing decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt 
 open to the blast, though it was sharper than the knife in 
 his leathern girdle; he was looking over bulwarks, all 
 eyes and hair; he was standing by at the shoot of the 
 Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of 
 several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down 
 into the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, 
 with his kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to 
 the very last moment of his shore-going existence. As 
 though his senses when released from the uproar of the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 39 
 
 elements, were under obligation to be confused by otlier 
 turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of 
 hoofs, a clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and 
 casks and timber, an incessant deafening disturbance on the 
 quays, that was the very madness of sound. And as, in the 
 midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his hair blown 
 all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of 
 his plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was shrill in the 
 wind, and every little steamer coming and going across the 
 Mersey was sharp in its blowing off, and every buoy in the 
 river bobbed spitefully up and down, as if there were a 
 general taunting chorus of " Come along, Mercantile Jack ! 
 Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped, anticipa- 
 ted, cleaned out. Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack, and 
 be tempest-tossed till you are drowned ! " 
 
 The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and 
 Jack together, was this : — I had entered the Liverpool po- 
 lice-force, that I might have a look at the various unlaw- 
 ful traps which are every night set for Jack. As my term 
 of service in that distinguished corps was short, and as my 
 personal bias in the capacity of one of its members has 
 ceased, no suspicion will attach to my evidence that it is 
 an admirable force. Besides that it is composed, without 
 favour, of the best men that can be picked, it is directed 
 by an unusual intelligence. Its organisation against Fires, 
 I take to be much better than the metropolitan system, and 
 in all respects it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a 
 still more remarkable discretion. 
 
 Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and 
 I had taken, for purposes of identification, a photograph- 
 likeness of a thief, in the portrait-room at our head police 
 office (on the whole, he seemed rather complimented by 
 the proceeding), and I had been on police parade, and the 
 small hand of the clock was moving on to ten, when I took 
 up my lantern to follow Mr. Superintendent to the traps 
 that were set for Jack. In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as 
 anybody might, a tall well-looking well set-up man of a 
 soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest, and a 
 resolute but not by any means ungentle face. He carried 
 in his hand a plain black walking-stick of hard wood; and 
 whenever and wherever, at any after-time of the night, he 
 struck it on the pavement with a ringing sound, it instantly 
 produced a whistle out of the darkness, and a policeman. 
 
40 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of mystery and 
 magic which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among 
 the traps that were set for Jack. 
 
 We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes 
 of the port. Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful dis- 
 course, before a dead wall, apparently some ten miles long, 
 Mr. Superintendent struck upon the ground, and the Avail 
 opened and shot out, with military salute of hand to tem- 
 ple, two policemen — not in the least surprised themselves, 
 not in the least surprising Mr. Superintendent. 
 
 "All right, Sharpeye?" 
 
 "All right, sir." 
 
 " All right, Trampf oot? " 
 
 "All right, sir." 
 
 "Is Quickear there?" 
 
 "Here am I, sir." 
 
 "Come with us." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 So Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I 
 went next, and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear- 
 guard. Sharpeye, I soon had occasion to remark, had a 
 skilful and quite professional way of opening doors — 
 touched latches delicately, as if they were keys of musical 
 instruments- — opened every door he touched, as if he were 
 perfectly confident that there was stolen propert} 7 behind it 
 — instantly insinuated himself, to prevent its being shut. 
 
 Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for 
 Jack, but Jack did not happen to be in any of them. They 
 were all such miserable places that really, Jack, if I were 
 you, I would give them a wider berth. In every trap, 
 somebody was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack. Now, 
 it was a crouching old woman, like the picture of the Nor- 
 wood Gipsy in the old sixpenny dream-books; now, it was 
 a crimp of the male sex, in a checked shirt and without a 
 coat, reading a newspaper; now, it was a man crimp and a 
 woman crimp, who always introduced themselves as united 
 in holy matrimony; now, it was Jack's delight, his (un- 
 lovely Nan; but they were all waiting for Jack, and were 
 all frightfully disappointed to see us. 
 
 "Who have you got up-stairs here?" says Sharpeye, 
 generally. (In the Move-on tone.) 
 
 "Nobody, suit; sure not a blessed sowl! " (Irish femi- 
 nine reply.) 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 41 
 
 " Wliat do you mean by nobody? Didn't I hear a wom- 
 an's step go np-stairs when my hand was on the latch? " 
 
 "Ah! sure thin you're right, suit, 1 forgot her! 'Tis 
 on'y Betsy White, suit. Ah! you know Betsy, suit. 
 Come down, Betsy darlin', and say the gintlemin." 
 
 Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep stair- 
 case is in the room) with a forcible expression in her pro- 
 testing face, of an intention to compensate herself for the 
 present trial by grinding Jack finer than usual when he 
 does come ; Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr. Superintend- 
 ent, and says, as if the subjects of his remarks were wax- 
 work : 
 
 " One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman has 
 been indicted three times. This man's a regular bad one 
 likewise. His real name is Pegg. Gives himself out as 
 Waterhouse." 
 
 " Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, 
 since I was in this house, bee the good Lard ! " says the 
 woman . 
 
 Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes ex- 
 ceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper 
 with rapt attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs our ob- 
 servation with a look, to the prints and pictures that are 
 invariably numerous on the walls. Always, Trampfoot and 
 Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep. In default of 
 Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact individuality of 
 any gentleman encountered, one of these two is sure to 
 proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff spectre, that Jack- 
 son is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fogle; or that 
 Canlon is Walker's brother, against whom there was not 
 sufficient evidence; or that the man who says he never was 
 at sea since he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage last 
 Thursday, or sails to-morrow morning. "And that is a 
 bad class of man, you see," says Mr. Superintendent, when 
 he got out into the dark again, " and very difficult to deal 
 with, who, when he has made this place too hot to hold 
 him, enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and 
 is out of knowledge for months, and then turns up again 
 worse than ever." 
 
 When we had gone into many such houses, and had come 
 out (always leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for 
 Jack), we started off to a singing-house where Jack was 
 expected to muster strong. 
 
42 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up- 
 stairs; at one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a 
 small platform; across the room, a series of open pews for 
 Jack, with an aisle down the middle; at the other end a 
 larger pew than the rest, entitled Snug, and reserved for 
 mates and similar good company. About the room, some 
 amazing coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep, 
 and some stuffed creatures in cases; dotted among the audi- 
 ence, in Snug and out of Snug, the "Professionals; " among 
 them, the celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo Bones, 
 looking very hideous with his blackened face and limp 
 sugar-loaf hat; beside him, sipping rum-and- water, Mrs. 
 Banjo Bones, in her natural colours — a little heightened. 
 
 It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered 
 not a good night for Jack. At any rate, Jack did not show 
 in very great force even here, though the house was one to 
 which he much resorts, and where a good deal of money 
 is taken. There was British Jack, a little maudlin and 
 sleepy, lolling over his empty glass, as if he were trying to 
 read his fortune at the bottom; there was Loafing Jack of 
 the Stars and Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with 
 his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing 
 soft about him but his cabbage-leaf hat; there was Spanish 
 Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in his ears, and a 
 knife not far from his hand, if you got into trouble with 
 him; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack of Sweden, and 
 Jack the Finn, looming through the smoke of their pipes, 
 and turning faces that looked as if they were carved out of 
 dark wood, towards the young lady dancing the hornpipe: 
 who found the platform so exceedingly small for it, that I 
 had a nervous expectation of seeing her, in the backward 
 steps, disappear through the window. Still, if all hands 
 had been got together, they would not have more than 
 half- filled the room. Observe, however, said Mr. Licensed 
 Victualler, the host, that it was Friday night, and, besides, 
 it was getting on for twelve, and Jack had gone abroad. 
 A sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the 
 host, with tight lips and a complete edition of Cocker's 
 arithmetic in each eye. Attended to his business himself, 
 he said. Always on the spot. When he heard of talent, 
 trusted nobody's account of it, but went off by rail to see 
 it. If true talent, engaged it. Pounds a week for talent — 
 four pound — five pound. Banjo Bones was undoubted 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 43 
 
 talent. Hear this instrument that was going to play — it 
 was real talent! In truth it was very good; a kind of 
 piano-accordion, played by a young girl of a delicate pret- 
 tiness of face, figure, and dress, that made the audience 
 look coarser. She sang to the instrument, too; first, a song 
 about village bells, and how they chimed; then a song 
 about how I went to sea; winding up with an imitation of 
 the bagpipes, which Mercantile Jack seemed to understand 
 much the best. A good girl, said Mr. Licensed Victual- 
 ler. Kept herself select. Sat in Snug, not listening to 
 the blandishments of Mates. Lived with mother. Father 
 dead. Once a merchant well to do, but over-speculated 
 himself. On delicate inquiry as to salary paid for item of 
 talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler's pounds dropped 
 suddenly to shillings — still it was a very comfortable thing 
 for a young person like that, you know; she only went on 
 six times a night, and was only required to be there from 
 six at night to twelve. What was more conclusive was, 
 Mr. Victualler's assurance that he " never allowed any lan- 
 guage, and never suffered any disturbance." Sharpeye 
 confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed was 
 the best proof of it that could have been cited. So, I came 
 to the conclusion that poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I 
 am afraid he does) much worse than trust himself to Mr. 
 Victualler, and pass his evenings here. 
 
 But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent — said 
 Trampfoot, receiving us in the street again with military 
 salute — for Dark Jack. True, Trampfoot. Ring the won- 
 derful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and cause the 
 spirits of the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies. 
 
 There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark 
 Jack; he was producible. The Genii set us down in the 
 little first floor of a little public-house, and there, in a 
 stirringly close atmosphere, were Dark Jack, and Dark 
 Jack's delight, his white unlovely Nan, sitting against the 
 wall all round the room. More than that: Dark Jack's de- 
 light was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and physi- 
 cally, that I saw that night. 
 
 As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the 
 company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? " Ah, 
 la'ads ! " said a negro sitting by the door, " gib the jebblem 
 a darnse. Tak' yah pardlers, jebblem, for 'um QUAD-rill." 
 
 This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half 
 
44 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Greek and half English. As master of the ceremonies, he 
 called all the figures, and occasionally addressed himself 
 parenthetically — after this manner. When he was very 
 loud, I use capitals. 
 
 "Now den! Hoy! One. Right and left. (Put a 
 steam on, gib 'um powder.) LA-dies' chail. Bal-Iooii 
 say. Lemonade ! Two. AD-warnse and go back (gib 'ell 
 a breakdown, shake it out o' yerselbs, keep a movil). 
 Swixo-corners, Bal-Iooii say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!) 
 Three. Gent come for'ard with a lady and go back, hop- 
 persite come for'ard and do what yer can. (Aeiohoy!) 
 Bal-Ioou say, and leetle lemonade (Dat hair nigger by 'um 
 fireplace 'hind a' time, shake it out o' yerselbs, gib 'ell a 
 breakdown). Now den! Hoy! Four! Lemonade. B.al- 
 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 
 moosic can't play no more ! (Hoy, Hoy !) " 
 
 The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an un- 
 usually powerful man of six feet three or four. The sound 
 of their flat feet on the floor was as unlike the sound of 
 white feet as their faces were unlike white faces. They 
 toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double- 
 shuffied, covered the buckle, and beat the time out, rarely, 
 dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a childish 
 good-humoured enjoyment that was very prepossessing. 
 They generally kept together, these poor fellows, said Mr. 
 Superintendent, because they were at a disadvantage singly, 
 and liable to slights in the neighbouring streets. But, if I 
 were Light Jack, I should be very slow to interfere op- 
 pressively with Dark Jack, for, whenever I have had to do 
 with him I have found him a simple and a gentle fellow. 
 Bearing this in mind, I asked his friendly permission to 
 leave him restoration of beer, in wishing him good night, 
 and thus it fell out that the last words I heard him say as 
 I blundered down the worn stairs, were, " Jebblem's elth! 
 Ladies drinks fust ! " 
 
 The night was now well on into the morning, but, for 
 miles and hours we explored a strange world, where no- 
 body ever goes to bed, but everybody is eternally sitting 
 up, waiting for Jack. This exploration was among a laby- 
 rinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, 
 kept in Avonderful order by the police, and in much better 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 45 
 
 order than by the corporation : the want of gaslight in the 
 most dangerous and infamous of these places being quite 
 unworthy of so spirited a town. I need describe but two 
 or three of the houses in which Jack was waited for as 
 specimens of the rest. Many we attained by noisome pas- 
 sages so profoundly dark that we felt our way with our 
 hands. Not one of the whole number we visited, wns 
 without its show of prints and ornamented crockery; the 
 quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves and in little 
 cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mer- 
 cantile Jack must have an extraordinary fondness for 
 crockery, to necessitate so much of that bait in his traps. 
 
 Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead 
 of the night, four women were sitting by a tire. One 
 of them had a male child in her arms. On a stool 
 among them was a swarthy youth with a guitar, who 
 had evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were 
 heard. 
 
 " Well! how do yott do? " says Mr. Superintendent, look- 
 ing about him. 
 
 " Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to 
 treat us ladies, now you have come to see us." 
 
 " Order there ! " says Sharpeye. 
 
 " None of that ! " says Quickear. 
 
 Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, " Meg- 
 gisson's lot this is. And a bad 'un! " 
 
 " Well ! " says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on 
 the shoulder of the swarthy youth, "and who's this?" 
 
 "Antonio, sir." 
 
 "And what does he do here? " 
 
 " Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, I 
 suppose? " 
 
 " A young foreign sailor? " 
 
 "Yes. He's a Spaniard. You're a Spaniard, ain't you, 
 Antonio? " 
 
 "Me Spanish." 
 
 " And he don't know a word you say, not he; not if you 
 was to talk to him till doomsday." (Triumphantly, as if 
 it redounded to the credit of the house.) 
 
 " Will he play something? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. You 
 ain't ashamed to play something; are you? " 
 
 The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, 
 
46 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 and three of the women keep time to it with their heads, 
 and the fourth with the child. If Antonio has brought any 
 money in with him, I am afraid he will never take it out, 
 and it even strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be 
 in a bad way. But, the look of the young man and the 
 tinkling of the instrument so change the place in a moment 
 to a leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder where his mule 
 is stabled, until he leaves off. 
 
 I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my un- 
 commercial confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this 
 establishment, by having taken the child in my arms. For, 
 on my offering to restore it to a ferocious joker not unstim- 
 ulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother, that unnat- 
 ural parent put her hands behind her, and declined to ac- 
 cept it; backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declar- 
 ing, regardless of remonstrance from her friends, that she 
 knowed it to be Law, that whoever took a child from its 
 mother of his own will, was bound to stick to it. The un- 
 commercial sense of being in a rather ridiculous position 
 with the poor little child beginning to be frightened, 
 was relieved by my worthy friend and fellow-constable, 
 Trampfoot; who, laying hands on the article as if it were 
 a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest womau, and bade 
 her "take hold of that." As we came out the Bottle 
 was passed to the ferocious joker, and they all sat down 
 as before, including Antonio and the guitar. It was 
 clear that there was no such thing as a nightcap to this 
 baby's head, and that even he never went to bed, but was 
 always kept up — and would grow up, kept up — waiting 
 for Jack. 
 
 Later still in the night, we came (by the court "where 
 the man was murdered," and by the other court across the 
 street, into which his body was dragged) to another parlour 
 in another Entry, where several people were sitting round 
 a fire in just the same way. It was a dirty and offensive 
 place, with some ragged clothes drying in it; but there was 
 a high shelf over the entrance-door (to be out of the reach 
 of marauding hands, possibly) with two large white loaves 
 on it, and a great piece of Cheshire cheese. 
 
 "Well!" says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehen- 
 sive look all round. " How do you do? " 
 
 "Not much to boast of, sir." From the curtseying 
 woman of the house. "This is my good man, sir." 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 47 
 
 " You are not registered as a common Lodging House? " 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent in- 
 quiry, "Then why ain't you? " 
 
 "Ain't got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye," rejoins the 
 woman and my good man together, "but our own family." 
 
 " How many are you in family? " 
 
 The woman takes time to count, under pretence of cough- 
 ing, and adds, as one scant of breath, "Seven, sir." 
 
 But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all 
 about it, says : 
 
 "Here's a young man here makes eight, who ain't of 
 your family? " 
 
 "No, Mr. Sharpeye, he's a weekly lodger." 
 
 " What does he do for a living? " 
 
 The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and 
 shortly answers, "Ain't got nothing to do." 
 
 The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a 
 damp apron pendent from a clothes-line. As I glance at 
 him I become — but I don't know why — vaguely reminded 
 of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover. When 
 we get out, my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye ad- 
 dressing Mr. Superintendent, says : 
 
 " You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby's? " 
 
 "Yes. What is he?" 
 
 "Deserter, sir." 
 
 Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done 
 with his services, he will step back and take that young 
 man. Which in course of time he does : feeling at perfect 
 ease about finding him, and knowing for a moral certainty 
 that nobody in that region will be gone to bed. 
 
 Later still in the night, we came to another parlour up a 
 step or two from the street, which was very cleanly, neatly, 
 even tastefully, kept, and in which, set forth on a draped 
 chest of drawers masking the staircase, was such a profu- 
 sion of ornamental crockery, that it would have furnished 
 forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair. It backed up a stout 
 old lady — Hogarth drew her exact likeness more than 
 once — and a boy who was carefully writing a copy in a 
 copy-book. 
 
 " Well, ma'am, how do you do? * 
 
 Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly. 
 Charmingly, charmingly. And overjoyed to see us I 
 
48 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 " Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing 
 his copy. In the middle of the night! " 
 
 " So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome 
 faces and send ye prosperous, but he has been to the Play 
 with a young friend for his diversion, and he combinates 
 his improvement with entertainment, by doing his school- 
 writing afterwards, God be good to ye ! " 
 
 The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the 
 fire of every fierce desire. One might have thought it rec- 
 ommended stirring the fire, the old lady so approved it. 
 There she sat, rosily beaming at the copy-book and the 
 boy, and invoking showers of blessings on our heads, when 
 we left her in the middle of the night, waiting for Jack. 
 
 Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room 
 with an earth floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley 
 trickled. The stench of this habitation was abominable; 
 the seeming poverty of it, diseased and dire. Yet, here 
 again, was visitor or lodger — a man sitting before the fire, 
 like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently not dis- 
 tasteful to the mistress's niece, who was also before the 
 fire. The mistress herself had the misfortune of being in 
 jail. 
 
 Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were 
 at needlework at a table in this room. Says Trampfoot to 
 First Witch, "What are you making?" Says she, 
 "Money-bags." 
 
 " What are you making? " retorts Trampfoot, a little off 
 his balance. 
 
 " Bags to hold your money," says the witch, shaking 
 her head, and setting her teeth; "you as has got it." 
 
 She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a 
 heap of such bags. Witch Two laughs at us. Witch Three 
 scowls at us. Witch sisterhood all, stitch, stitch. First 
 Witch has a 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 odour of devilry. 
 
 Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has 
 got behind the table, down by the side of her, there? 
 Witches Two and Three croak angrily, " Show him the 
 child ! " 
 
 She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dustheap 
 on the ground. Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 49 
 
 it drop again. Thus we find at last that there is one child 
 in the world of Entries who goes to bed— -if this be bed. 
 
 Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to 
 work at those bags? 
 
 How long? First Witch repeats. Going to have supper 
 presently. See the cups and saucers, and the plates. 
 
 "Late? Ay! But we has to 'am our supper afore we 
 eats it ! " Both the other witches repeat this after First 
 Witch, and take the Uncommercial measurement with their 
 eyes, as for a charmed winding-sheet. Some grim discourse 
 ensues, referring to the mistress of the cave, who will be 
 released from jail to-morrow. Witches pronounce Tramp- 
 foot "right there," when he deems it a trying distance for 
 the old lady to walk; she shall be fetched by niece in a 
 spring-cart. 
 
 As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning away, 
 the red marks round her eyes seemed to have already grown 
 larger, and she hungrily and thirstily looked out beyond 
 me into the dark doorway, to see if Jack were there. For, 
 Jack came even here, and the mistress had got into jail 
 through deluding Jack. 
 
 When I at last ended this night of travel and got to bed, 
 I failed to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Sea- 
 men's Homes (not overdone with strictness), and improved 
 dock regulations giving Jack greater benefit of fire and 
 candle aboard ship, through my mind's wandering among 
 the vermin I had seen. Afterwards the same vermin ran 
 all over my sleep. Evermore, when on a breezy day I see 
 Poor Mercantile Jack running into port with a fair wind 
 under all sail, I shall think of the unsleeping host of de- 
 vourers who never go to bed, and are always in their set 
 traps waiting for him. 
 
 VI. 
 
 REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS. 
 
 In the late high winds I was blown to a great many 
 places — and indeed, wind or no wind, I generally have ex- 
 tensive transactions on hand in the article of Air — but I 
 have not been blown to any English place lately, and I 
 
50 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 very seldom have blown to any English place in my life, 
 where I could get anything good to eat and drink in five 
 minutes, or where, if I sought it, I was received with a 
 welcome. 
 
 This is a curious thing to consider. But before (stimu- 
 lated by my own experiences and the representations of 
 many fellow-travellers of every uncommercial and com- 
 mercial degree) I consider it further, I must utter a pass- 
 ing word of wonder concerning high winds. 
 
 I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard at 
 Walworth. I cannot imagine what Walworth has done, to 
 bring such windy punishment upon itself, as I never fail 
 to find recorded in the newspapers when the wind has 
 blown at all hard. Brixton seems to have something on its 
 conscience; Peckham suffers more than a virtuous Peckham 
 might be supposed to deserve; the howling neighbourhood 
 of Deptford figures largely in the accounts of the ingenious 
 gentlemen who are out in every wind that blows, and to 
 whom it is an ill high wind that blows no good ; but, there 
 can hardly be any Walworth left by this time. It must 
 surely be blown away. I have read of more chimney- 
 stacks and house-copings coming down with terrific smashes 
 at Walworth, and of more sacred edifices being nearly (not 
 quite) blown out to sea from the same accursed locality, 
 than I have read of practised thieves with the appearance 
 and manners of gentlemen — a popular phenomenon which 
 never existed on earth out of fiction and a police report. 
 Again : I wonder why people are always blown into the 
 Surrey Canal, and into no other piece of water ! Why do 
 people get up early and go out in groups, to be blown into 
 the Surrey Canal? Do they say to one another, " Welcome 
 death, so that we get into the newspapers? " Even that 
 would be an insufficient explanation, because even then 
 they might sometimes put themselves in the way of being 
 blown into the Regent's Canal, instead of always saddling 
 Surrey for the field. Some nameless policeman, too, is 
 constantly, on the slightest provocation, getting himself 
 blown into this same Surrey Canal. Will Sir Richard 
 Mayne see to it, and restrain that weak-minded and feeble- 
 bodied constable? 
 
 To resume the consideration of the curious question of 
 Refreshment. I am a Briton, and, as such, I am aware 
 that I never will be a slave — and yet I have latent suspi- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 51 
 
 cion that there must be some slavery of wrong custom in 
 this matter. . 
 
 I travel by railroad. I start from home at seven or eight 
 in the morning, after breakfasting hurriedly. What with 
 skimming over the open landscape, what with mining in 
 the damp bowels of the earth, what with banging booming 
 and shrieking the scores of miles away, I am hungry when 
 I arrive at the "Refreshment" station where I am ex- 
 pected. Please to observe, expected. I have said, I am 
 hungry; perhaps I might say, with greater point and force, 
 that I am to some extent exhausted, and that I need — in 
 the expressive French sense of the word — to be restored. 
 What is provided for my restoration? The apartment that 
 is to restore me is a wind-trap, cunningly set to inveigle all 
 the draughts in that country-side, and to communicate a 
 special intensity and velocity to them as they rotate in two 
 hurricanes : one, about my wretched head : one, about my 
 wretched legs. The training of the young ladies behind 
 the counter who are to restore me, has been from their in- 
 fancy directed to the assumption of a defiant dramatic show 
 that I am not expected. It is in vain for me to represent 
 to them by my humble and conciliatory manners, that I 
 wish to be liberal. It is in vain for me to represent to my- 
 self, for the encouragement of my sinking soul, that the 
 young ladies have a pecuniary interest in my arrival. Nei- 
 ther my reason nor my feelings can make head against the 
 cold glazed glare of eye with which I am assured that I am 
 not expected, and not wanted. The solitary man among 
 the bottles would sometimes take pity on me, if he dared, 
 but he is powerless against the rights and mights of 
 Woman. (Of the page I make no account, for, he is a boy, 
 and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.) Chilling 
 fast, in the deadly tornadoes to which my upper and lower 
 extremities are exposed, and subdued by the moral disad- 
 vantage at which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on 
 the refreshments that are to restore me. I find that I must 
 either scald my throat by insanely ladling into it, against 
 time and for no wager, brown hot water stiffened with 
 flour; or, I must make myself flaky and sick with Banbury 
 cake; or, I must stuff into my delicate organisation, a cur- 
 rant pincushion which I know will swell into immeasurable 
 dimensions when it has got there; or, I must extort from 
 an iron-bound quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming 
 
52 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 an inhospitable soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and 
 grease_, called pork-pie. While thus forlornly occupied, I 
 find that the depressing banquet on the table is, in every 
 phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory character, so like the 
 banquet at the meanest and shabbiest of evening parties, 
 that I begin to think I must have " brought down " to sup- 
 per, the old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is setting 
 her teeth on edge with a cool orange at my elbow — that the 
 pastrycook who has compounded for the company on the 
 lowest terms per head, is a fraudulent bankrupt, redeem- 
 ing 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 occa- 
 sion Mrs. Bogles was taken in execution by a branch of the 
 legal profession who got in as the harp, and was removed 
 (with the keys and subscribed capital) to a place of durance, 
 half an hour prior to the commencement of the festivities. 
 
 Take another case. 
 
 Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to 
 London by railroad one morning last week, accompanied 
 by the amiable and fascinating Mrs. Grazinglands. Mr. 
 G. is a gentleman of a comfortable property, and had a 
 little business to transact at the Bank of England, which 
 required the concurrence and signature of Mrs. G. Their 
 business disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands viewed 
 the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of St. Paul's Cathe- 
 dral. The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands then gradually be- 
 ginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who is the tenderest of 
 husbands) remarked with sympathy, " Arabella, my dear, 
 I fear you are faint." Mrs. Grazinglands replied, "Alex- 
 ander, I am rather faint; but don't mind me, I shall be 
 better presently." Touched by the feminine meekness of 
 this answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a pastrycook's 
 window, hesitating as to the expediency of lunching at that 
 establishment. He beheld nothing to eat, but butter in 
 various forms, slightly charged with jam, and languidly 
 frizzling over tepid water. Two ancient turtle-shells, on 
 which was inscribed the legend, " Sours," decorated a 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 53 
 
 glass partition within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which 
 a ghastly mockery of a marriage-breakfast spread on a 
 rickety table, warned the terrified traveller. An oblong 
 box of stale and broken pastry at reduced prices, mounted 
 on a stool, ornamented the doorway; and two high chairs 
 that looked as if they -were performing on stilts, embel- 
 lished 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 determination to be avenged. From a beetle- 
 haunted kitchen below this institution, fumes arose, sug- 
 gestive of a class of soup which Mr. Grazinglands knew, 
 from painful experience, enfeebles the mind, distends the 
 stomach, forces itself into the complexion, and tries to 
 ooze out at the eyes. As he decided against entering, 
 and turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming perceptibly 
 weaker, repeated, " I am rather faint, Alexander, but don't 
 mind me." Urged to new efforts by these words of resig- 
 nation, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a cold and floury 
 baker's shop, where utilitarian buns unrelieved by a cur- 
 rant, consorted with hard biscuits, a stone filter of cold 
 water, a hard pale clock, and a hard little old woman with 
 flaxen hair, of an undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if she 
 had been fed upon seeds. He might have entered even 
 here, but for the timely remembrance coming upon him 
 that Jairing' s was but round the corner. 
 
 Now, Jairing' s being an hotel for families and gentle- 
 men, in high repute among the midland counties, Mr. 
 Grazinglands plucked up a great spirit when he told Mrs. 
 Grazinglands she should have a chop there. That lady, 
 likewise felt that she was going to see Life. Arriving on 
 that gay and festive scene, they found the second waiter, in 
 a flabby undress, cleaning the windows of the empty coffee- 
 room ; and the first waiter, denuded of his white tie, mak- 
 ing up his cruets behind the Post-Office Directory. The 
 latter (who took them in hand) was greatly put out by 
 their patronage, and showed his mind to be troubled by a 
 sense of the pressing necessity of instantly smuggling Mrs. 
 Grazinglands into the obscurest corner of the building. 
 This slighted lady (who is the pride of her division of the 
 county) was immediately conveyed, by several dark pas- 
 sages, and up and down several steps, into a penitential 
 apartment at the back of the house, Avhere five invalided 
 
54 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 old plate-warmers leaned up against one another under a 
 discarded old melancholy sideboard, and where the wintry 
 leaves of all the dining-tables in the house lay thick. 
 Also, a sofa, of incomprehensible form regarded from any 
 sofane point of view, murmured "Bed;" while an air of 
 mingled fluffiness and heeltaps, added, " Second Waiter's." 
 Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of a mysterious dis- 
 trust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his charming 
 partner waited twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never 
 came to a fire), twenty-five minutes for the sherry, half an 
 hour for the tablecloth, forty minutes for the knives and 
 forks, three-quarters of an hour for the chops, and an hour 
 for the potatoes. On settling the little bill — which was not 
 much more than the day's pay of a Lieutenant in the navy 
 — Mr. Grazinglands took heart to remonstrate against the 
 general quality and cost of his reception. To whom the 
 waiter replied, substantially, that Jairing's made it a merit 
 to have accepted him on any terms: "for," added the 
 waiter (unmistakably coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the 
 pride of her division of the county), " when indiwiduals is 
 not staying in the 'Ouse, their favours is not as. a rule 
 looked upon as making it worth Mr. Jairing's while; nor 
 is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing wishes." 
 Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing's 
 hotel for Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the greatest 
 depression, scorned by the bar; and did not recover their 
 self-respect for several days. 
 
 Or take another case. Take your own case. 
 
 You are going off by railway, from any Terminus. You 
 have twenty minutes for dinner, before you go. You want 
 your dinner, and like Dr. Johnson, Sir, you like to dine. 
 You present to your mind, a picture of the refreshment- 
 table at that terminus. The conventional shabby evening- 
 party supper — accepted as the model for all termini and all 
 refreshment stations, because it is the last repast known 
 to this state of existence of which any human creature 
 would partake, but in the direst extremity — sickens your 
 contemplation, and your words are these : " I cannot dine 
 on stale sponge-cakes that turn to sand in the mouth. I 
 cannot dine on shining brown patties, composed of un- 
 known animals within, and offering to my view the device 
 of an indigestible star-fish in leaden pie-crust without. I 
 cannot dine on a sandwich that has long been pining under 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 55 
 
 an exhausted receiver. I cannot dine on barley-sugar. I 
 cannot dine on Toffee." You repair to the nearest hotel, 
 and arrive, agitated, in the coffee-room. 
 
 It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold 
 to you. Account for it how you may, smooth it over how 
 you will, you cannot deny that he is cold to you. He is 
 not glad to see you, he does not want you, he would much 
 rather you hadn't come. He opposes to your flushed con- 
 dition, an immovable composure. As if this were not 
 enough, another waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to 
 look at you in this passage of your life, stands at a little 
 distance, with his napkin under his arm and his hands 
 folded, looking at you with all his might. You impress on 
 your waiter that you have ten minutes for dinner, and he 
 proposes that you shall begin with a bit of fish which will 
 be ready in twenty. That proposal declined, he suggests — ■ 
 as a neat originality- — ■" a weal or mutton cutlet." You close 
 with either cutlet, any cutlet, anything. He goes, leisure- 
 ly, behind a door and calls down some unseen shaft. A 
 ventriloquial dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect 
 that weal only, is available on the spur of the moment. 
 You anxiously call out, " Veal, then ! " Your waiter hav- 
 ing settled that point, returns to array your tablecloth, 
 with a table napkin folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for 
 something out of window engages his eye), a white wine- 
 glass, a green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, 
 and a powerful field battery of fourteen castors with 
 nothing in them; or at all events — which is enough for 
 your purpose — with nothing in them that will come out. 
 All this time, the other waiter looks at you — with an air of 
 mental comparison and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred 
 to him that you are rather like his brother. Half your 
 time gone, and nothing come but the jug of ale and the 
 bread, you implore your Avaiter to " See after that cutlet, 
 waiter; pray do!" He cannot go at once, for he is carry- 
 ing in seventeen pounds of American cheese for you to 
 finish with, and a small Landed Estate of celery and water- 
 cresses. The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a 
 new view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected 
 the resemblance to his brother, and had begun to think 
 you more like his aunt or his grandmother. Again you be- 
 seech your waiter with pathetic indignation, to " see after 
 that cutlet ! " He steps out to see after it, and by-and- 
 5 
 
56 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 bye, when you are going away without it, comes buck with 
 it. Even then, he will not take the sham silver-cover off, 
 without a pause for a flourish, and a look at the musty cut- 
 let as if he were surprised to see it — which cannot possibly 
 be the case, he must have seen it so often before. A sort 
 of fur has been produced upon its surface by the cook's 
 art, and in a sham silver vessel staggering on two feet in- 
 stead of three, is a cutaneous kind of sauce, of brown pim- 
 ples and pickled cucumber. You order the bill, but your 
 waiter cannot bring your bill yet, because he is bringing, 
 instead, three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head of 
 brocoli, like the occasional ornaments on area railings, badly 
 boiled. You know that you will never come to this pass, 
 any more than to the cheese and celery, and you impera- 
 tively demand your bill; but, it takes time to get, even 
 when gone for, because your waiter has to communicate 
 with a lady who lives behind a sash-window in a corner, 
 and who appears to have to refer to several Ledgers before 
 she can make it out — as if you had been staying there a 
 year. You become distracted to get away, and the other 
 waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at you — 
 but suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him 
 of the party who took the great-coats last winter. Your 
 bill at last brought and paid, at the rate of sixpence a 
 mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds you that " at- 
 tendance is not charged for a single meal," and you have 
 to search in all your pockets for sixpence more. He has 
 a worse opinion of you than ever, when you have given it 
 to him, and lets you out into the street with the air of 
 one saying to himself, as you cannot doubt he is, " I hope 
 we shall never see you here again ! " 
 
 Or, take any other of the numerous travelling instances 
 in which, with more time at your disposal, you are, have 
 been, or may be, equally ill served. Take the old-estab- 
 lished Bull's Head with its old-established knife-boxes on 
 its old-established sideboards, its old-established flue under 
 its old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established 
 airless rooms, its old-established frouziness up-stairs and 
 down-stairs, its old-established cooker}', and its old-estab- 
 lished 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 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 57 
 
 on forcemeat balls. You have had experience of the old- 
 established Bull's Plead stringy fowls, with lower extremi- 
 ties 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 sper- 
 maceti ointment,* erected over half an apple or four goose- 
 berries. Well for you if you have yet forgotten the old- 
 established Bull's Head fruity port: whose reputation was 
 gained solely by the old-established price the Bull's Head 
 put upon it, and by the old-established air with which the 
 Bull's Head set the glasses and D'Oyleys on, and held that 
 Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its 
 old-established colour hadn't come from the dyer's. 
 
 Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know, 
 every day. 
 
 We all know the new hotel near the station, where it is 
 always gusty, going up the lane which is always muddy, 
 where we are sure to arrive at night, and where we make 
 the gas start awfully when we open the front door. We 
 all know the flooring of the passages and staircases that is 
 too new, and the walls that are too new, and the house 
 that is haunted by the ghost of mortar. We all know the 
 doors that have cracked, and the cracked shutters through 
 which we get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon. We all 
 know the new people, who have come to keep the new 
 hotel, and who wish they had never come, and who (in- 
 evitable result) wish tve had never come. We all know 
 how much too scant and smooth and bright the new furni- 
 ture 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 pre- 
 vents the smoke from following. We all know how a leg 
 of our chair comes off at breakfast in the morning, and how 
 the dejected waiter attributes the accident to a general 
 greenness pervading the establishment, and informs us, in 
 reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to say he is an 
 entire stranger in that part of the country, and is going 
 back to his own connection on Saturday. 
 
 We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel 
 belonging to the company of proprietors, which has sud- 
 
58 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 denly 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, foAvl- 
 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 u£, or sorry to see 
 us, or minds (our bill paid) whether we come or go, or 
 how, or when, or why, or cares about us. We all know 
 this hotel, where we have no individuality, but put our- 
 selves into the general post, as it were, and are sorted and 
 disposed of according to our division. We all know that 
 we can get on very well indeed at such a place, but still 
 not perfectly well; and this may be, because the place is 
 largely wholesale, and there is a lingering personal retail 
 interest within us that asks to be satisfied. 
 
 To sum up. My uncommercial travelling has not yet 
 brought me to the conclusion that we are close to perfec- 
 tion 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 con- 
 stantly predict that catastrophe are left in it, so, I shall 
 have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while any of the 
 uncomfortable superstitions I have glanced at remain in 
 existence. 
 
 VII. 
 
 TRAVELLING ABROAD. 
 
 I got into the travelling chariot — it was of German 
 make, roomy, heavy, and unvarnished — I got into the 
 travelling chariot, pulled up the steps after me, shut my- 
 self in with a smart bang of the door, and gave the word, 
 "Goon!" 
 
 Immediately, all that W. and S. W. division of London 
 began to slide away at a pace so lively, that I was over the 
 river, and past the Old Kent Eoad, and out on Blackheath, 
 and even ascending Shooter's Hill, before I had had time 
 to look about me in the carriage, like a collected traveller. 
 
 I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted stor- 
 age for luggage in front, and other up behind; I had a net 
 for books overhead, great pockets to all the windows, a 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 59 
 
 leathern pouch or two hung up for odds and ends, and a 
 reading lamp fixed in the back of the chariot, in case I 
 should be benighted. I was amply provided in all respects, 
 and had no idea where I was going (which was delightful), 
 except that I was going abroad. 
 
 So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the 
 horses, and so fast went I, that it was midway between 
 Gravesend and Rochester, and the widening river was 
 bearing the ships, white-sailed or black- smoked, out to sea, 
 when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy. 
 
 " Holloa ! " said I, to the very queer small boy, " where 
 do you live? " 
 
 "At Chatham," says he. 
 
 " What do you do there? " says I. 
 
 "I go to school," says he. 
 
 I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, 
 the very queer small boy says, " This is Gads-hill we are 
 coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, 
 and ran away." 
 
 " You know something about Falstaff, eh? " said I. 
 
 " All about him," said the very queer small boy. " I am 
 old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do let 
 us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, 
 if you please ! " 
 
 " You admire that house? " said I. 
 
 "Bless you, sir," said the very queer small boy, "when 
 I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a 
 treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now, I am 
 nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can 
 recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said 
 to me, ' If you were to be very persevering and were to 
 work hard, you might some day come to live in it.' 
 Though that's impossible!" said the very queer small boy, 
 drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of 
 window with all his might. 
 
 I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer 
 small boy; for that house happens to be my house, and I 
 have reason to believe that what he said was true. 
 
 Well ! I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the very 
 queer small boy and went on. Over the road where the 
 old Bomans 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 
 
60 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 to jingle* on horseback between the continent and this 
 Island through the mud and water, over the road where 
 Shakespeare hummed to himself, " Blow, blow, thou win- 
 ter 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. There, the sea was tumbling in, 
 with deep sounds, after dark, and the revolving French 
 light on Cape Grinez was seen regularly bursting out and 
 becoming obscured, as if the head of a gigantic light-keeper 
 in an anxious state of mind were interposed every half 
 minute, to look how it was burning. 
 
 Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam- 
 packet, and we were aiming at the bar in the usual intoler- 
 able manner, and the bar was aiming at us in the usual in- 
 tolerable manner, and the bar got by far the best of it, and 
 we got by far the worst — all in the usual intolerable man- 
 ner. 
 
 But, when I was clear of the Custom House on the other 
 side, and when I began to make the dust fly on the thirsty 
 French roads, and Avhen the twigsome trees by the wayside 
 (which, I suppose, never will grow leafy, for they never 
 did) guarded here and there a dusty soldier, or field la- 
 bourer, baking on a heap of broken stones, sound asleep in 
 a fiction of shade, I began to recover my travelling spirits. 
 Coming upon the breaker of the broken stones, in a hard 
 hot shining hat, on which the sun played at a distance as 
 on a burning-glass, I felt that now, indeed, I was in the 
 dear old France of my affections. I should have known it, 
 without the well-remembered bottle of rough ordinary wine, 
 the cold roast fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of salt, on 
 which I lunched with unspeakable satisfaction, from one 
 of the stuffed pockets of the chariot. 
 
 I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a bright 
 face looked in at the windoAv, I started, and said : 
 
 "Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead!" 
 
 My cheerful servant laughed, and answered: 
 
 "Me? Not at all, sir." 
 
 " How glad I am to wake ! What are we doing, Louis? " 
 
 " We go to take relay of horses. Will you walk up the 
 hill? " 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 Welcome the old French hill, with the old French luna- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 61 
 
 tic (not in the most distant degree lelated to Sterne's 
 Maria) living in a thatched dog-kennel half way up, and 
 flying out with his crutch and his big head and extended 
 nightcap, to be beforehand with the old men and women 
 exhibiting crippled children, and with the children exhib- 
 iting old men and women, ugly and blind, who always 
 seemed by resurrectionary process to be recalled out of the 
 elements for the sudden peopling of the solitude ! 
 
 "It is well," said I, scattering among them what small 
 coin I had; " here comes Louis, and I am quite roused from 
 my nap." 
 
 We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new as- 
 surance that France stood where I had left it. There were 
 the posting-houses, with their archways, dirty stable-yards, 
 and clean post-masters' wives, bright women of business, 
 looking on at the putting- to of the horses; there were the 
 postilions counting what money they got, into their hats, 
 and never making enough of it; there were the standard 
 population of grey horses of Flanders descent, invariably 
 biting one another when they got a chance; there were the 
 fleecy sheepskins, looped on over their uniforms by the 
 postilions, like bibbed aprons when it blew and rained; 
 there were their jack- boots, and their cracking whips; 
 there were the cathedrals that I got out to see, as under 
 some cruel bondage, in no wise desiring to see them; there 
 were the little towns that appeared to have no reason for 
 being towns, since most of their houses were to let and no- 
 body could be induced to look at them, except the people 
 who couldn't let them and had nothing else to do but look 
 at fchem all day. I lay a night upon the road and enjoyed 
 delectable cookery of potatoes, and some other sensible 
 things, adoption of which at home would inevitably be 
 shown to be fraught with ruin, somehow or other, to that 
 rickety national blessing, the British farmer; and at last 
 I was rattled, like a single pill in a box, over leagues of 
 stones, until — madly cracking, plunging, and flourishing 
 two grey tails about — I made my triumphal entry into Paris. 
 
 At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days in 
 one of the hotels of the Kue de Rivoli; my front windows 
 looking into the garden of the Tuileries (where the prin- 
 cipal difference between the nursemaids and the flowers 
 seemed to be that the former were locomotive and the lat- 
 ter not) : my back windows looking at all the other back 
 
62 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 windows in the hotel, and deep down into a paved yard, 
 where my German chariot had retired under a tight-fitting 
 archway, to all appearance for life, and where bells rang all 
 day without anybody's minding them but certain chamber- 
 lains with feather brooms and green baize caps, who here 
 and there leaned out of some high window placidly looking 
 down, and where neat waiters with trays on their left 
 shoulders passed and repassed from morning to night. 
 
 Whenever I am in Paris, I am dragged by invisible force 
 into the Morgue. I never want to go there, but am always 
 pulled there. One Christmas Day, when I would rather 
 have been anywhere else, I was attracted in, to see an old 
 grey man lying all alone on his cold bed, with a tap of 
 water turned on over his grey hair, and running, drip, drip, 
 drip, down his wretched face until it got to the corner of 
 his mouth, where it took a turn, and made him look sly. 
 One New Year's Morning (by the same token, the sun was 
 shining outside, and there was a mountebank balancing a 
 feather on his nose, within a yard of the gate), I was 
 pulled in again to look at a flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, 
 with a heart hanging on his breast — "from his mother," 
 was engraven on it — who had come into the net across the 
 river, with a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his 
 hands cut with a knife, but whence or how was a blank 
 mystery. This time, I was forced into the same dread 
 place, to see a large dark man whose disfigurement by 
 water was in a frightful manner, comic, and whose expres- 
 sion was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids 
 under a heavy blow, but was going immediately to open 
 them, shake his head, and "come up smiling." Oh what 
 this large dark man cost me in that bright city ! 
 
 It was very hot weather, and he was none the better for 
 that, and I was much the worse. Indeed, a very neat and 
 pleasant little woman with the key of her lodging on her 
 forefinger, who had been showing him to her little girl 
 while she and the child ate sweetmeats, observed monsieur 
 looking poorly as we came out together, and asked mon- 
 sieur, with her wondering little eyebrows prettily raised, 
 if there were anything the matter? Faintly replying in the 
 negative, monsieur crossed the road to a wine-shop, got 
 some brandy, and resolved to freshen himself with a dip 
 in the great floating bath on the river. 
 
 The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 63 
 
 male population in striped drawers of various gay colours, 
 who walked up and down arm in arm, drank coffee, smoked 
 cigars, sat at little tables, conversed politely with the dam- 
 sels who dispensed the towels, and every now and then 
 pitched themselves into the river head foremost, and came 
 out again to repeat this social routine. I made haste to 
 participate in the water part of the entertainments, and 
 was in the full enjoyment of a delightful bath, when all in 
 a moment I was seized with an unreasonable idea that the 
 large dark body was floating straight at me. 
 
 I was out of the river, and dressing instantly. In the 
 shock I had taken some water into my mouth, and it turned 
 me sick, for I fancied that the contamination of the crea- 
 ture was in it. I had got back to my cool darkened room 
 in the hotel, and was lying on a sofa there, before I began 
 to reason with myself. 
 
 Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark 
 creature was stone dead, and that I should no more come 
 upon him out of the place where I had seen him dead, than 
 I should come upon the cathedral of Notre-Dame in an 
 entirely new situation. What troubled me was the picture 
 of the creature; and that had so curiously and strongly 
 painted itself upon my brain, that I could not get rid of it 
 until it was worn out. 
 
 I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was 
 a real discomfort to me. That very day, at dinner, some 
 morsel on my plate looked like a piece of him, and I was 
 glad to get up and go out. Later in the evening, I was 
 walking along the Rue St. Honor e, when I saw a bill at a 
 public room there, announcing small-sword exercise, broad- 
 sword exercise, wrestling, and other such feats. I went 
 in, and some of the sword-play being very skilful, re- 
 mained. A specimen of our own national sport, The Brit- 
 ish Boaxe, was announced to be given at the close of the 
 evening. In an evil hour, I determined to wait for this 
 Boaxe, as became a Briton. It was a clumsy specimen (ex- 
 ecuted by two English grooms out of place), but one of the 
 combatants, receiving a straight right-hander with the 
 glove between his eyes, did exactly what the large dark 
 creature in the Morgue had seemed going to do — and fin- 
 ished me for that night. 
 
 There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual 
 fragrance in Paris) in the little ante-room of my apartment 
 6 
 
64 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 be- 
 hind a wall of thick plate-glass as good as a wall of steel or 
 marble for that matter. Yet the whiff of the room never 
 failed to reproduce him. What was more curious, was the 
 capriciousness with which his portrait seemed to light it- 
 self lip 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, " Some- 
 thing like him! " — and instantly I was sickened again. 
 
 This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner. 
 Often it would happen in the street, when I certainly was 
 not looking for the likeness, and when probably there was 
 no likeness there. It was not because the creature was 
 dead that I was so haunted, because I know that I might 
 have been (and I know it because I have been) equally 
 attended by the image of a living aversion. This lasted 
 about a week. The picture did not fade by degrees, in the 
 sense that it became a whit less forcible and distinct, but 
 in the sense that it obtruded itself less and less frequently. 
 The experience may be worth considering by some who 
 have the care of children. It would be difficult to over- 
 state the intensity and accuracy of an intelligent child's ob- 
 servation. At that impressible time of life, it must some- 
 times produce a fixed impression. If the fixed impression 
 be of an object terrible to the child, it will be (for want of 
 reasoning upon) inseparable from great fear. Force the 
 child at such a time, be Spartan with it, send it into the 
 dark against its will, leave it in a lonely bedroom against 
 its will, and you had better murder it. 
 
 On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the 
 German chariot, and left the large dark creature behind 
 me for good. I ought to confess, though, that I had been 
 drawn back to the Morgue, after he was put underground, 
 to look at his clothes, and that I found them frightfully 
 like him — particularly his boots. However, I rattled away 
 for Switzerland, looking forward and not backward, and so 
 we parted company. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 65 
 
 Welcome again, the long long spell of France, with the 
 queer country inns, full of vases of flowers and clocks, in 
 the dull little towns, and with the little population not at 
 all dull on the little Boulevard in the evening, under the 
 little trees! Welcome Monsieur the Cure walking alone 
 in the early morning a short way out of the town, read- 
 ing that eternal Breviary of yours, which surely might be 
 almost read, without book, by this time ! Welcome Mon- 
 sieur the Cure, later in the day, jolting through the high- 
 way dust (as if you had already ascended to the cloudy 
 region), in a. very big-headed cabriolet, with the dried mud 
 of a dozen winters on it. Welcome again Monsieur the 
 Cure, as we exchange salutations; you, straightening your 
 back to look at the German chariot, while picking in your 
 little village garden a vegetable or two for the day's soup : 
 I, looking out of the German chariot window in that de- 
 licious traveller's trance which knows no cares, no yester- 
 days, no to-morrows, nothing but the passing objects and 
 tne passing scents and sounds ! And so I came, in due 
 course of delight, to Strasbourg, where I passed a wet Sun- 
 day evening at a window, while an idle trifle of a vaude- 
 ville was played for me at the opposite house. 
 
 How such a large house came to have only three people 
 living in it, was its own affair. There were at least a score 
 of windows in its high roof alone; how many in its gro- 
 tesque front, I soon gave up counting. The owner was a 
 shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim; by trade — I couldn't 
 make out what by trade, for he had forborne to write that 
 up, and his shop was shut. 
 
 At first, as I looked at Straudenheim 's, through the 
 steadily falling rain, I set him up in business in the goose- 
 liver line. But, inspection of Straudenheim, who became 
 visible at a window on the second floor, convinced me that 
 there was something more precious than liver in the case. 
 He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked usurious and 
 rich. A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white hair, 
 and keen eyes, though near-sighted. He was writing at a 
 desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and again left off writ- 
 ing, put his pen in his mouth, and went through actions 
 with his right hand, like a man steadying piles of cash. 
 Five-franc pieces, Straudenheim, or golden jSTapoleons? A 
 jeweller, Straudenheim, a dealer in money, a diamond mer- 
 chant, or what? 
 
66 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Below Straudenheini, at a window on the first floor, sat 
 his housekeeper — far from young, but of a comely pres- 
 ence, suggestive of a well-matured foot and ankle. She 
 was cheerily dressed, had a fan in her hand, and wore 
 large gold earrings and a large gold cross. She would have 
 been out holiday-making (as I settled it) but for the pesti- 
 lent rain. Strasbourg had given up holiday-making for 
 that once, as a bad job, because the rain was jerking in 
 gushes out of the old roof-spouts, and running in a brook 
 down the middle of the street. The housekeeper, her arms 
 folded on her bosom and her fan tapping her chin, was 
 bright and smiling at her open window, but otherwise 
 Straudenheim' s house front was very dreary. The house- 
 keeper's was the only open window in it; Straudenheim 
 kept himself close, though it was a sultry evening when 
 air is pleasant, and though the rain had brought into the 
 town that vague refreshing smell of grass which rain does 
 bring in the summer-time. 
 
 The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim 's shoul- 
 der, inspired me with a misgiving that somebody had come 
 to murder that flourishing merchant for the wealth with 
 which I had handsomely endowed him : the rather, as it 
 was an excited man, lean and long of figure, and evidently 
 stealthy of foot. But, he conferred with Straudenheim in- 
 stead of doing him a mortal injury, and then they both 
 softly opened the other window of that room — which was 
 immediately over the housekeeper's — and tried to see her 
 by looking down. And my opinion of Straudenheim was 
 much lowered when I saw that eminent citizen spit out of 
 window, clearly with the hope of spitting on the house- 
 keeper. 
 
 The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her 
 head, and laughed. Though unconscious of Straudenheim, 
 she was conscious of somebody else — of me? — there was 
 nobody else. 
 
 After leaning so far out of the window, that I confidently 
 expected to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the 
 lean man drew their heads in and shut the window. Pres- 
 ently, the house door secretly opened, and they slowly and 
 spitefully crept forth into the pouring rain. They were 
 coming over to me (I thought) to demand satisfaction for 
 my looking at the housekeeper, when they plunged into a 
 recess in the architecture under my window and dragged 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 67 
 
 out the puniest of little soldiers, begirt with the most in- 
 nocent of little swords. The tall glazed head-dress of this 
 warrior, Straudenheim instantly knocked off, and out of it 
 fell'two sugar-sticks, and three or four large lumps of sugar. 
 
 The warrior made no effort to recover his property or to 
 pick up his shako, but looked with an expression of atten- 
 tion at Straudenheim when he kicked him five times, and 
 also at the lean man when he kicked him five times, and 
 again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast of his (the 
 warrior's) little coat open, and shook all his ten fingers in 
 his face, as if they were ten thousand. When these out- 
 rages had been committed, Straudenheim and his man went 
 into the house again and barred the door. A wonderful 
 circumstance was, that the housekeeper who saw it all (and 
 who could have taken six such warriors to her buxom bosom 
 at once), only fanned herself and laughed as she had 
 laughed before, and seemed to have no opinion about it, 
 one way or other. 
 
 But, the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable 
 vengeance taken by the little warrior. Left alone in the 
 rain, he picked up his shako; put it on, all wet and dirty 
 as it was; retired into a court, of which Straudenheim's 
 house formed the corner; wheeled about; and bringing his 
 two forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed them 
 over one another, crosswise, in derision, defiance, and con- 
 tempt of Straudenheim. Although Straudenheim could not 
 possibly be supposed to be conscious of this strange pro- 
 ceeding, it so inflated and comforted the little warrior's 
 soul, that twice he went away, and twice came back into 
 the court to repeat it, as though it must goad his enemy to 
 madness. Not only that, but he afterwards came back 
 with two other small warriors, and they all three did it to- 
 gether. Not only that — as I live to tell the tale ! — but just 
 as it was falling quite dark, the three came back, bringing 
 with them a huge bearded Sapper, whom they moved, by 
 recital of the original wrong, to go through the same per- 
 formance, with the same complete absence of all possible 
 knowledge of it on the part of Straudenheim. And then 
 they all went away, arm in arm, singing. 
 
 I went away too, in the German chariot at sunrise, and 
 rattled on, day after day, like one in a sweet dream; with 
 so many clear little bells on the harness of the horses, that 
 the nursery rhyme about Banbury Gross and the venerable 
 
68 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 lady who rode in state there, was always in my ears. And 
 now I came to the land of wooden houses, innocent cakes, 
 thin butter soup, and spotless little inn bedrooms with a 
 family likeness to Dairies. And now the Swiss marksmen 
 were for ever rifle-shooting at marks across gorges, so ex- 
 ceedingly near my ear, that I felt like a new Gesler in a 
 Canton of Tells, and went in highly-deserved danger of 
 my tyrannical life. The prizes at these shootings, were 
 watches, smart handkerchiefs, hats, spoons, and (above all) 
 tea-trays; and at these contests I came upon a more than 
 usually accomplished and amiable countryman of my own, 
 who had shot himself deaf in whole years of competition, 
 and had won so many tea-trays that he went about the 
 country with his carriage full of them, like a glorified 
 Cheap-Jack. 
 
 In the mountain-country into which I had now travelled, 
 a yoke of oxen were sometimes hooked on before the post- 
 horses, and I went lumbering up, up, up, through mist and 
 rain, with the roar of falling water for change of music. 
 Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear away, and I would 
 come down into picturesque little towns with gleaming 
 spires and odd towers; and would stroll afoot into market- 
 places in steep winding streets, where a hundred women in 
 bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter and fruit, and suckled 
 their children as they sat by their clean baskets, and had 
 such enormous goitres (or glandular swellings in the throat) 
 that it became a science to know where the nurse ended and 
 the child began. About this time, I deserted my German 
 chariot for the back of a mule (in colour and consistency so 
 very like a dusty old hair trunk I once had at school, that 
 I half-expected to see my initials in brass-headed nails on 
 his backbone), and went up a thousand rugged ways, and 
 looked down at a thousand Avoods of fir and pine, and would 
 on the whole have preferred my mule's keeping a little 
 nearer to the inside, and not usually travelling with a hoof 
 or two over the precipice — though much consoled by ex- 
 planation that this was to be attributed to his great sagac- 
 ity, by reason of his carrying broad loads of wood at other 
 times, and not being clear but that I myself belonged to 
 that station of life, and required as much room as they. 
 He brought me safely, in his own wise way, among the 
 passes of the Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates a 
 day; being now (like Don Quixote on the back of the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 69 
 
 wooden horse) in the region of wind, now in the region of 
 fire, now in the region of unmelting ice and snow. Here, 
 I passed over trembling domes of ice, beneath which the 
 cataract was roaring; and here was received under arches 
 of icicles, of unspeakable beauty; and here the sweet aii 
 was so bracing and so light, that at halting-times I rolled 
 in the snow when I saw my mule do it, thinking that he 
 must know best. At this part of the journey we would 
 come, at midday, into half an hour's thaw : when the rough 
 mountain inn would be found on an island of deep mud in 
 a sea of snow, while the baiting strings of mules, and the 
 carts full of casks and bales, which had been in an Arctic 
 condition a mile off, would steam again. By such ways 
 and means, I would come to the cluster of chalets where I 
 had to turn out of the track to see the waterfall; and then, 
 uttering a howl like a young giant, on espying a traveller 
 — in other words, something to eat — coming up the steep, 
 the idiot lying on the wood-pile who sunned himself and 
 nursed his goitre, Avould rouse the woman-guide within the 
 hut, who would stream out hastily, throwing her child over 
 one of her shoulders and her goitre over the other, as she 
 came along. I slept at religious houses, and bleak refuges 
 of many kinds, on this journey, and by the stove at night 
 heard stories of travellers who had perished within call, in 
 Avreaths and drifts of snow. One night the stove within, 
 and the cold outside, awakened childish associations long 
 forgotten, and I dreamed I was in Russia — the identical 
 serf out of a picture-book I had, before I could read it for 
 myself — and that I was going to be knouted by a noble 
 personage in a fur cap, boots, and earrings, who, I think, 
 must have come out of some melodrama. 
 
 Commend me to the beautiful waters among these moun- 
 tains! Though I was not of their mind: they, being in- 
 veterately bent on getting down into the level country, and 
 T ardently desiring to linger where I was. What desperate 
 leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged into, what 
 rocks they wore away, what echoes they invoked ! In one 
 part where I went, they were pressed into the service of 
 carrying wood down, to be burnt next winter, as costly 
 fuel, in Italy. But, their fierce savage nature was not to 
 be easily constrained, and they fought with every limb of 
 the wood; whirling it round and round, stripping its bark 
 aAvay, dashing it against pointed corners, driving it out of 
 
70 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the course, and roaring and flying at the peasants who 
 steered it back again from the bank with long stout poles. 
 Alas! concurrent streams of time and water carried me 
 down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely clear day, to the 
 Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood look- 
 ing at the bright blue water, the flushed white mountains 
 opposite, and the boats at my feet with their furled Medi- 
 terranean sails, showing like enormous magnifications of 
 this goose-quill pen that is now in my hand. 
 
 — The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind 
 very like the March east wind of England, blew across me; 
 and a voice said, " How do you like it? Will it do? " 
 
 I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a Ger- 
 man travelling chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage 
 Department of the London Pantechnicon. I had a commis- 
 sion to buy it, for a friend who was going abroad; and the 
 look and manner of the chariot, as I tried the cushions and 
 the springs, brought all these hints of travelling remem- 
 brance before me. 
 
 "It will do very well," said I, rather sorrowfully, as I 
 got out at the other door, and shut the carriage up. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE GREAT TASMANIA'S CARGO. 
 
 I travel constantly, up and down a certain line of rail- 
 way that has a terminus in London. It is the railway for 
 a large military depot, and for other large barracks. To 
 the best of my serious belief, I have never been on that 
 railway by daylight, without seeing some handcuffed de- 
 serters in the train. 
 
 It is in the nature of things that such an institution as 
 our English army should have many bad and troublesome 
 characters in it. But, this is a reason for, and not against, 
 its being made as acceptable as possible to well-disposed 
 men of decent behaviour. Such men are assuredly not 
 tempted into the ranks, by the beastly inversion of natural 
 laws, and the compulsion to live in worse than swinish 
 foulness. Accordingly, when any such Circumlocutional 
 embellishments of the soldier's condition have of late been 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 71 
 
 brought to notice, we civilians, seated in outer darkness 
 cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax, have considered 
 the matter as being our business, and have shown a tend- 
 ency to declare that we would rather not have it misregu- 
 lated, if such declaration may, without violence to the 
 Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are put in au- 
 thority over us. 
 
 Any animated description of a modern battle, any pri- 
 vate' soldier's letter published in the newspapers, any page 
 of the records of the Victoria Cross, will show that in the 
 ranks of the arm}' - , there exists under all disadvantages as 
 tine a sense of duty as is to be found in any station on 
 earth. Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faith- 
 fully as the soldier does his, this world would be a better 
 place? There may be greater difficulties in our way than 
 in the soldier's. Not disputed. But, let us at least do 
 our duty towards him. 
 
 I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port 
 where I had looked after Mercantile Jack, and I was walk- 
 ing up a hill there, on a wild March morning. My con- 
 versation with my official friend Pangloss, by whom I was 
 accidentally accompanied, took this direction as we took 
 the up-hill direction, because the object of my uncommer- 
 cial journey was to see some discharged soldiers who had 
 recently come home from India. There were men of 
 Havelock's among them; there were men who had been 
 in many of the great battles of the great Indian campaign, 
 among them; and I was curious to note what our dis- 
 charged soldiers looked like, when they were done with. 
 
 I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my offi- 
 cial friend Pangloss) because these men had claimed to be 
 discharged, when their right to be discharged was not ad- 
 mitted. They had behaved with unblemished fidelity and 
 bravery; but, a change of circumstances had arisen, which, 
 as they considered, put an end to their compact and enti- 
 tled them to enter on a new one. Their demand had been 
 blunderingly resisted by the authorities in India; but, it 
 is to be presumed that the men were not far wrong, inas- 
 much as the bungle had ended in their being sent home 
 discharged, in pursuance of orders from home. (There 
 was an immense waste of money, of course. ) 
 
 Under these circumstances — thought I, as I walked up 
 the hill, on which I accidentally encountered my official 
 
72 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 friend — under these circumstances of the men having suc- 
 cessfully opposed themselves to the Pagoda Department of 
 that great Circumlocution Office on which the sun never 
 sets and the light of reason never rises, the Pagoda Depart- 
 ment will have been particularly careful of the national 
 honour. It will have shown these men, in the scrupulous 
 good faith, not to say the generosity, of its dealing with 
 them, that great national authorities can have no small re- 
 taliations and revenges. It will have made every provision 
 for their health on the passage home, and will have landed 
 them, restored from their campaigning fatigues by a sea- 
 voyage, pure air, sound food, and good medicines. And I 
 pleased myself with dwelling beforehand, on the great ac- 
 counts of their personal treatment which these men would 
 carry into their various towns and villages, and on the in- 
 creasing popularity of the service that would insensibly fol- 
 low. I almost began to hope that the hitherto-never-fail- 
 ing deserters on my railroad would by-and-bye become a 
 phenomenon. 
 
 In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the workhouse 
 of Liverpool. — For, the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil, 
 had brought the soldiers in question to that abode of Glory. 
 
 Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired 
 how they had made their triumphant entry there? They 
 had been brought through the rain in carts, it seemed, from 
 the landing-place to the gate, and had then been earned 
 up-stairs on the backs of paupers. Their groans and pains 
 during the performance of this glorious pageant, had been 
 so distressing, as to bring tears into the eyes of spectators 
 but too well accustomed to scenes of suffering. The men 
 were so dreadfully cold, that those who could get near the 
 fires were hard to be restrained from thrusting their feet in 
 among the blazing coals. They were so horribly reduced, 
 that they were awful to look upon. Racked with dysen- 
 tery and blackened with scurvy, one hundred and forty 
 wretched soldiers had been revived with brandy and laid in 
 bed. 
 
 My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from a 
 learned doctor of that name, who was once tutor to Can- 
 dide, an ingenious young gentleman of some celebrity. In 
 his personal character, he is as humane and worthy a gen- 
 tleman as any I know; in his official capacity, he unfortu- 
 nately preaches the doctrines of his renowned ancestor, by 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 73 
 
 demonstrating on all occasions that we live in the best of 
 all possible official worlds. 
 
 "In the name of Humanity," said I, "how did the men 
 fall into this deplorable state? Was the ship well found 
 in stores? " 
 
 " I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my 
 own knowledge," answered Pangloss, " but I have grounds 
 for asserting that the stores were the best of all possible 
 stores." 
 
 A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten bis- 
 cuit, and a handful of split peas. The biscuit was a honey- 
 combed heap of maggots, and the excrement of maggots. 
 The peas were even harder than this filth. A similar hand- 
 ful had been experimentally boiled six hours, and had 
 shown no signs of softening. These were the stores on 
 which the soldiers had been fed. 
 
 " The beef " I began, when Pangloss cut me short. 
 
 " Was the best of all possible beef," said he. 
 
 But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence 
 given at the Coroner's Inquest, holden on some of the men 
 (who had obstinately died of their treatment), and from 
 that evidence it appeared that the beef was the worst of 
 possible beef! 
 
 "Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my 
 stand," said Pangloss, "by the pork, which was the best 
 of all possible pork." 
 
 " But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so 
 misuse the word," said I. " Would any Inspector who did 
 his duty, pass such abomination? " 
 
 "It ought not to have been passed," Pangloss admitted. 
 
 "Then the authorities out there " I began, when 
 
 Pangloss cut me short again. 
 
 "There would certainly seem to have been something 
 wrong somewhere," said he; "but I am prepared to prove 
 that the authorities out there, are the best of all possible 
 authorities." 
 
 I never heard of any impeached public authority in my 
 life, who was not the best public authority in existence. 
 
 " We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low 
 by scurvy," said I. "Since lime-juice has been regularly 
 stored and served out in our navy, surely that disease, 
 which used to devastate it, has almost disappeared? Was 
 there lime-juice aboard this transport? " 
 
74 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 My official friend was beginning " the best of all possible 
 -" when an inconvenient medical forefinger pointed out 
 
 another passage in the evidence, from which it appeared 
 that the lime-juice had been bad too. Not to mention that 
 the vinegar had been bad too, the vegetables bad too, the 
 cooking accommodation insufficient (if there had been any- 
 thing worth mentioning to cook), the water supply exceed- 
 ingly inadequate, and the beer sour. 
 
 "Then the men," said Pangloss, a little irritated, "were 
 the worst of all possible men." 
 
 " In what respect? " I asked. 
 
 "Oh! Habitual drunkards," said Pangloss. 
 
 But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger 
 pointed out another passage in the evidence, showing that 
 the dead men had been examined after death, and that 
 they, at least, could not possibly have been habitual drunk- 
 ards, because the organs within them which must have 
 shown traces of that habit, were perfectly sound. 
 
 "And besides," said the three doctors present, one. and 
 all, " habitual drunkards brought as low as these men have 
 been, could not recover under care and food, as the great 
 majority of these men are recovering. They would not have 
 strength of constitution to do it." 
 
 "Reckless and improvident dogs, then," said Pangloss. 
 "Always are — nine times out of ten." 
 
 I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him 
 whether the men had any money? 
 
 "Money?" said he. "I have in my iron safe, nearly 
 four hundred pounds of theirs; the agents have nearly a 
 hundred pounds more; and many of them have left money 
 in Indian banks besides." 
 
 " Hah ! " said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, " this is 
 not the best of all possible stories, I doubt! " 
 
 We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or 
 five-and-twenty beds. We went into several such wards, 
 one after another. I find it very difficult to indicate what 
 a shocking sight I saw in them, without frightening the 
 reader from the perusal of these lines, and defeating my 
 object of making it known. 
 
 O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between 
 the rows of beds, or — worse still — that glazedly looked at 
 the white ceiling, and saw nothing and cared for nothing ! 
 Here, lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly covered with 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 75 
 
 a thin unwholesome skin, that not a bone in the anatomy 
 was clothed, and I could clasp the arm above the elbow, in 
 my finger and thumb. Here, lay a man with the black 
 scurvy eating his legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth 
 all gaunt and bare. This bed was empty, because gangrene 
 had set in, and the patient had died but yesterday. That 
 bed was a hopeless one, because its occupant was sinking 
 fast, and could only be roused to turn the poor pinched 
 mask of face upon the pillow, with a feeble moan. The 
 awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful brightness 
 of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, 
 the recumbent human images lying in the shadow of death 
 with a kind of solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who 
 had died aboard the ship and were lying at the bottom of 
 the sea, Pangloss, God forgive you! 
 
 In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it 
 was hoped) by deep incisions in the feet and legs. While 
 I was speaking to him, a nurse came up to change the 
 poultices which this operation had rendered necessary, and 
 I had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to turn 
 away, merely to spare myself. He was sorely wasted and 
 keenly susceptible, but the efforts he made to subdue any 
 expression of impatience or suffering, were quite heroic. 
 It was easy to see, in the shrinking of the figure, and the 
 drawing of the bed-clothes over the head,, how acute the 
 endurance was, and it made me shrink too, as if 1 were in 
 pain; but, when the new bandages were on, and the poor 
 feet were composed again, he made an apology for himself 
 (though he had not uttered a word), and said plaintively, 
 "I am so tender and weak, you see, sir!" Neither from 
 him nor from any one sufferer of the whole ghastly num- 
 ber, did I hear a complaint. Of thankfulness for present 
 solicitude and care, I heard much; of complaint, not a 
 word. 
 
 I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skeleton 
 there, the ghost of a soldier. Something of the old air 
 was still latent in the palest shadow of life I talked to. 
 One emaciated creature, in the strictest literality worn to 
 the bone, lay stretched on his back, looking so like death 
 that I asked one of the doctors if he were not dying, or 
 dead? A few kind words from the doctor, in his ear, and 
 he opened his eyes, and smiled — looked, in a moment, as 
 if he would have made a salute, if he could. " We shall 
 
76 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 pull him through, please God," said the Doctor. "Plase 
 God, surr, aud thankye," said the patient. "You are 
 much better to-day; are you not?" said the Doctor. 
 "Plase God, suit; 'tis the slape I want, surr; 'tis my 
 breathin' makes the nights so long." " He is a careful fel- 
 low this, you must know," said the Doctor, cheerfully; " it 
 was raining hard when they put him in the open cart to 
 bring him here, and he had the presence of mind to ask to 
 have a sovereign taken out of his pocket that he had there, 
 and a cab engaged. Probably it saved his life." The pa- 
 tient rattled out the skeleton of a laugh, and said, proud of 
 the story, " 'Deed, surr, an open cairt was a comical means 
 o' bringin' a dyin' man here, and a clever way to kill him." 
 You might have sworn to him for a soldier when he said it. 
 
 One thing had perplexed me very much in going from 
 bed to bed. A very significant and cruel thing. I could 
 find no young man but one. He had attracted my notice, 
 by having got up and dressed himself in his soldier's jacket 
 and trousers, with the intention of sitting by the fire; but 
 he had found himself too weak, and had crept back to his 
 bed and laid himself down on the outside of it. I could 
 have pronounced him, alone, to be a young man aged by 
 famine and sickness. As we were standing by the Irish 
 soldier's bed, I mentioned my perplexity to the Doctor. 
 He took a board with an inscription on it from the head of 
 the Irishman's bed, and asked me what age I supposed 
 that man to be? I had observed him with attention while 
 talking to him, and answered, confidently, "Fifty." The 
 Doctor, with a pitying glance at the patient, who had 
 dropped into a stupor again, put the board back, and said, 
 "Twenty-four." 
 
 All the arrangements of the wards were excellent. They 
 could not have been more humane, sympathising, gentle, 
 attentive, or wholesome. The owners of the ship, too, had 
 done all they could, liberally. There were bright fires in 
 every room, and the convalescent men Avere sitting round 
 them, reading various papers and periodicals. I took the 
 liberty of inviting my official friend Pangloss to look at 
 those convalescent men, and to tell me whether their faces 
 and bearing were or were not, generally, the faces and 
 bearing of steady respectable soldiers? The master of the 
 workhouse, overhearing me, said he had had a pretty large 
 experience of troops, and that better conducted men than 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 77 
 
 these, lie had never had to do with. They were always 
 (he added) as we saw them. And of us visitors (I add) 
 they knew nothing whatever, except that we were there. 
 
 It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty 
 with Pangloss. Prefacing it with the observation that, of 
 course, I knew beforehand that there was not the faintest 
 desire, anywhere, to hush up any part of this dreadful 
 business, and that the Inquest was the fairest of all pos- 
 sible Inquests, I besought four things of Pangloss. First- 
 ly, to observe that the Inquest was not held in that place, 
 but at some distance off. Secondly, to look round upon 
 those helpless spectres in their beds. Thirdly, to remem- 
 ber that the witnesses produced from among them before 
 that Inquest, could not have been selected because they 
 were the men who had the most to tell it, but because they 
 happened to be in a state admitting of their safe removal. 
 Fourthly, to say whether the coroner and Jury could have 
 come there, to those pillows, and taken a little evidence? 
 My official friend declined to commit himself to a reply. 
 
 There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside 
 groups. As he was a man of very intelligent countenance, 
 and as I have a great respect for non-commissioned officers 
 as a class, I sat down on the nearest bed, to have some 
 talk with him. (It was the bed of one of the grisliest of 
 the poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.) 
 
 " I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the 
 Inquest, sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on 
 board ship than these men." 
 
 "They did behave very well, sir." 
 
 " I was glad to see, too, that every man had a hammock." 
 
 The sergeant gravely shook his head. " There must be 
 some mistake, sir. The men of my own mess had no ham- 
 mocks. There were not hammocks enough on board, and 
 the men of the two next messes laid hold of hammocks for 
 themselves as soon as they got on board, and squeezed my 
 men out, as I may say." 
 
 " Had the squeezed-out men none then? " 
 
 "None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used 
 by other men, who wanted hammocks; but many men had 
 none at all." 
 
 " Then you don't agree with the evidence on that point? " 
 
 " Certainly not, sir. A man can't, when he knows to the 
 contrary." 
 
78 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 " Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink? " 
 
 " There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men were 
 under the impression — I knew it for a fact at the time 
 — that it was not allowed to take blankets or bedding on 
 board, and so men who had things of that sort came to sell 
 them purposely." 
 
 " Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?" 
 
 "They did, sir." (I believe there never was a more 
 truthful witness than the sergeant. He had no inclination 
 to make out a case.) 
 
 "Many?" 
 
 "Some, sir" (considering the question). "Soldier-like. 
 They had been long marching in the rainy season, by bad 
 roads — no roads at all, in short — and when they got to Cal- 
 cutta, men turned to and drank, before taking a last look 
 at it. Soldier-like." 
 
 " Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who 
 sold clothes for drink at that time? " 
 
 The sergeant's wan eye, happily just beginning to rekin- 
 dle with health, travelled round the place and came back 
 tome. "Certainly, sir." 
 
 " The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have 
 been severe? " 
 
 " It was very severe, sir. " 
 
 " Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have 
 thought that the men (even the men who got drunk) would 
 have soon begun to recover on board ship? " 
 
 " So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and 
 when we got into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and 
 the men dropped." 
 
 "The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am 
 told, sergeant? " 
 
 " Have you seen the food, sir? " 
 
 " Some of it." 
 
 " Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir ? " 
 
 If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, 
 had spoken the amount of this volume, he could not have 
 settled that question better. I believe the sick could as 
 soon have eaten the ship, as the ship's provisions. 
 
 I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, 
 when I had left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking 
 Pangloss whether he had ever heard of biscuit getting 
 drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities for putrefac- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 79 
 
 tion and vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liqnor; of 
 hammocks drinking themselves off the face of the earth; 
 of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking accommodation, 
 water supply, and beer, all taking to drinking together and 
 going to ruin? "If not (I asked him), what did he say in 
 defence of the officers condemned by the Coroner's Jury, 
 who, by signing the General Inspection report relative to 
 the ship Great Tasmania, chartered for these troops, had 
 deliberately asserted all that bad and poisonous dunghill 
 ref use, to be good and wholesome food? " My official friend 
 replied that it was a remarkable fact, that whereas some 
 officers were only positively good, and other officers only 
 comparatively better, those particular officers were super- 
 latively the very best of all possible officers. 
 
 My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of 
 this journey. The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital- 
 beds of that Liverpool workhouse (a very good workhouse, 
 indeed, be it understood), was so shocking and so shame- 
 ful, that' as an Englishman I blush to remember it. It 
 would have been simply unbearable at the time, but for the 
 consideration and pity with which they were soothed in 
 their sufferings. 
 
 No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is 
 worthy of the name when set against the guilt of this'trans- 
 action. But, if the memory of it die out unavenged, and 
 if it do not result in the inexorable dismissal and disgrace 
 of those who are responsible for it, their escape will be in- 
 famous to the Government (no matter of what party) that 
 so neglects its duty, and infamous to the nation that tamely 
 suffers such intolerable wrong to be done in its name. 
 
 IX. 
 
 CITY OP LONDON CHURCHES. 
 
 If the confession that I have often travelled from this 
 Covent Garden lodging of mine on Sundays, should give 
 offence to those who never travel on Sundays, they will be 
 satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the journeys in ques- 
 tion were made to churches. 
 
 Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers. 
 
80 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Time was, when I was dragged by the hair of my head, as 
 one may say, to hear too many. On summer evenings, 
 when every flower, and tree, and bird, might have better 
 addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day been 
 caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown, have 
 been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the 
 hair as a purification for the Temple, and have then been 
 carried off highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to 
 be steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath of the 
 powerful Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, until what 
 small mind I had, was quite steamed out of me. In which 
 pitiable plight I have been haled out of the place of meet- 
 ing, at the conclusion of the exercises, and catechised re- 
 specting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly, and his 
 seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend person in 
 the light of a most dismal and oppressive Charade. Time 
 was, when I was carried off to platform assemblages at 
 which no human child, whether of wrath or grace, could 
 possibly keep its eyes open, and when I felt the fatal sleep 
 stealing, stealing over me, and when I gradually heard the 
 orator in possession, spinning and humming like a great 
 top, until he rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, and I 
 discovered to my burning shame and fear, that as to that 
 last stage it was not he, but I. I have sat under Boanerges 
 when he has specifically addressed himself to us — us, the 
 infants — and at this present writing I hear his lumbering 
 jocularity (which never amused us, though we basely pre- 
 tended that it did), and I behold his big round face, and I 
 look up the inside of his outstretched coat-sleeve as if it 
 were a telescope with the stopper on, and I hate him with 
 an unwholesome hatred for two hours. Through such 
 means did it come to pass that I knew the powerful 
 preacher from beginning to end, all over and all through, 
 while I was very young, and that I left him behind at an 
 early period of life. Peace be with him ! More peace than 
 he brought to me ! 
 
 Now, I have heard many preachers since that time — not 
 powerful; merely Christian, unaffected, and reverential — 
 and I have had many such preachers on my roll of friends. 
 But, it was not to hear these, any more than the powerful 
 class, that I made my Sunday journeys. They were jour- 
 neys of curiosity to the numerous churches in the City of 
 London. It came into my head one day, here had I been 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 81 
 
 cultivating a familiarity with all the churches of Rome, 
 and I knew nothing of the insides of the old churches of 
 London ! This befell on a Sunday morning. I began my 
 expeditions- that very same day, and they lasted me a year. 
 
 I never wanted to know the names of the churches to 
 which I went, and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant 
 in that particular of at least nine-tenths of them. Indeed, 
 saving that I know the church of old Gower's tomb (he 
 lies in effigy Avith his head upon his books) to be the church 
 of Saint Saviour's, South wark; and the church of Milton's 
 tomb to be the church of Cripplegate; and the church on 
 Cornhill with the great golden keys to be the church of 
 Saint Peter; I doubt if I could pass a competitive exami- 
 nation in any of the names. Xo question did I ever ask of 
 living creature concerning these churches, and no answer to 
 any antiquarian question on the subject that I ever put to 
 books, shall harass the reader's soul. A full half of my 
 pleasure in them arose out of their mystery; mysterious I 
 found them; mysterious they shall remain for me. 
 
 Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten 
 old churches in the City of London? 
 
 It is twenty minuutes short of eleven on a Sunday morn- 
 ing, when I stroll down one of the many narrow hilly 
 streets in the City that tend due south to the Thames. It 
 is my first experiment, and I have come to the region of 
 Whittington in an omnibus, and we have put down a fierce- 
 eyed spare old woman, whose slate-coloured gown smells 
 of herbs, and who walked up Aldersgate-street to some 
 chapel where she comforts herself with brimstone doctrine, 
 I warrant. We have also put down a stouter and sweeter 
 old lady, with a pretty large prayer-book in an unfolded 
 pocket-handkerchief, who got out at a corner of a court 
 near Stationers' Hall, and who I think must go to church 
 there, because she is the widow of some deceased old Com- 
 pany's Beadle. The rest of our freight were mere chance 
 pleasure-seekers and rural walkers, and went on to the 
 Blackwall railway. So many bells are ringing, when I 
 stand undecided at a street corner, that every sheep in the 
 ecclesiastical fold might be a bell-wether. The discordance 
 is fearful. My state of indecision is referable to, and about 
 equally divisible among, four great churches, which are all 
 within sight and sound, all within the space of a few 
 square yards. 
 
82 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 As I stand at the street corner, I don't see as many as 
 four people at once going to church, though I see as many 
 as four churches with their steeples clamouring for people. 
 I choose my church, and go up the flight of steps to the 
 great entrance in the tower. A mouldy tower within, and 
 like a neglected washhouse. A rope comes through the 
 beamed roof, and a man in the corner pulls it and clashes 
 the bell — a whity-brown man, whose clothes were once 
 black — a man with flue on him, and cobweb. He stares at 
 me, wondering how I come there, and I stare at him, won- 
 dering how he comes there. Through a screen of wood and 
 glass, I peep into the dim church. About twenty people 
 are discernible, waiting to begin. Christening would seem 
 to have faded out of this church long ago, for the font has 
 the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover 
 (shaped like an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it 
 wouldn't come off, upon requirement. I perceive the altar 
 to be rickety and the Commandments damp. Entering 
 after this survey, I jostle the clergyman in his canonicals, 
 who is entering too from a dark lane behind a pew of state 
 with curtains, where nobody sits. The pew is ornamented 
 with four blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I 
 suppose, before somebody else, but which there is nobody 
 now to hold or receive honour from. I open the door of a 
 family pew, and shut myself in; if I could occupy twenty 
 family pews at once I might have them. The clerk, a 
 brisk young man (how does h,e come here?), glances at me 
 knowingly, as who should say, "You have done it now; 
 you must stop." Organ plays. Organ-loft is in a small 
 gallery across the church; gallery congregation, two girls. 
 I wonder within myself what will happen when we are re- 
 quired to sing. 
 
 There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, 
 and while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in 
 such fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working of 
 the stops than of any music, I look at the books, which are 
 mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged in 
 1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were they? Jane 
 Comport must have married Young Dowgate, and come 
 into the family that way; Young Dowgate was courting 
 Jane Comport when he gave her her prayer-book, and re- 
 corded the presentation in the fly-leaf; if Jane were fond 
 of Young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the book 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 83 
 
 here? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the damp 
 Commandments, she, Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, 
 in a flush of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not 
 turned out in the long run as great a success as was ex- 
 pected? 
 
 The opening of the service recalls my wandering 
 thoughts. I then find, to my astonishment, that I have 
 been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible snuff, 
 up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, 
 sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes; the clergyman 
 winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and prob- 
 ably 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 some- 
 thing else, the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below? 
 As sure as Death it is ! Not only in the cold damp Febru- 
 ary day, do we cough and sneeze dead citizens, all through 
 the service, but dead citizens have got into the very bellows 
 of the organ, and half choked the same. We stamp our 
 feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds. 
 Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on 
 the sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and, when 
 a gust of air comes, tumble down upon him. 
 
 In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much 
 snuff, made of the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, 
 and other families and branches, that I gave but little 
 heed to our dull manner of ambling through the service; to 
 the brisk clerk's manner of encouraging us to try a note 
 or two at psalm time; to the gallery-congregation's manner 
 of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; 
 to the whity-brown man's manner of shutting the minister 
 into the pulpit, and being very particular with the lock of 
 the door, as if he were a dangerous animal. But, I tried 
 again next Sunday, and soon accustomed myself to the 
 dead citizens when I found that I could not possibly get on 
 without them among the City churches. 
 
 Another Sunday. 
 
 After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg 
 of mutton or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make se- 
 lection of a church oddly put away in a corner among a 
 number of lanes — a smaller church than the last, and an 
 ugly : of about the date of Queen Anne. As a congrega- 
 tion, we are fourteen strong: not counting an exhausted 
 
84 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 charity school in a gallery, which has dwindled away to 
 four boys, and two girls. In the porch, is a benefaction of 
 loaves of bread, which there would seem to be nobody left 
 in the exhausted congregation to claim, and which I saw 
 an exhausted beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating 
 with his eyes for self and family when I passed in. There 
 is also an exhausted clerk in a brown wig, and two or three 
 exhausted doors and windows have been bricked up, and 
 the service books are musty, and the pulpit cushions are 
 threadbare, and the whole of the church furniture is in a 
 very advanced stage of exhaustion. We are three old 
 women (habitual), two young lovers (accidental), two 
 tradesmen, one with a wife and one alone, an aunt and 
 nephew, again two girls (these two girls dressed out for 
 church with everything about them limp that should be 
 stiff, and vice versa, are an invariable experience), and 
 three sniggering boys. The clergyman is, perhaps, the 
 chaplain of a civic company; he has the moist and vinous 
 look, and eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with 
 'Twenty port, and comet vintages. 
 
 We are so quiet in our dulness that the three sniggering 
 boys, who have got away into a corner by the altar-railing, 
 give us a start, like crackers, whenever they laugh. And 
 this reminds me of my own village church where, during 
 sermon-time on bright Sundays when the birds are very 
 musical indeed, farmers' boys patter out over the stone 
 pavement, and the clerk steps out from his desk after 
 them, and is distinctly heard in the summer repose to pur- 
 sue and punch them in the churchyard, and is seen to return 
 with a meditative countenance, making believe that nothing 
 of the sort has happened. The aunt and nephew in this 
 City church are much disturbed by the sniggering boys. 
 The nephew is himself a boy, and the sniggerers tempt him 
 to secular thoughts of marbles and string, by secretly offer- 
 ing such commodities to his distant contemplation. This 
 young Saint Anthony for a while resists, but presently be- 
 comes a backslider, and in dumb show defies the sniggerers 
 to "heave" a marble or two in his direction. Herein he is 
 detected by the aunt (a rigorous reduced gentlewoman who 
 has the charge of offices), and I perceive that worthy rela- 
 tive to poke him in the side, with the corrugated hooked 
 handle of ah ancient umbrella. The nephew revenges 
 himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying his 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 85 
 
 kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up his 
 mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and shakes, he 
 swells and becomes discoloured, and yet again swells and 
 becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it no longer, 
 but leads him out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes 
 going before him like a prawn's. This causes the snigger- 
 ers to regard flight as an eligible move, and I know which 
 of them will go out first, because of the over-devout atten- 
 tion that he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman. In a 
 little while, this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstra- 
 tion of hushing his footsteps, and with a face generally ex- 
 pressive of having until now forgotten a religious appoint- 
 ment elsewhere, is gone. Number two gets out in the same 
 way, but rather quicker. Number three getting safely to 
 the door, there turns reckless, and banging it open, flies 
 forth with a Whoop ! that vibrates to the top of the tower 
 above us. 
 
 The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a 
 muffled voice, may be scant of hearing as well as of breath, 
 but he only glances up, as having an idea that somebody 
 has said Amen in a wrong place, and continues his steady 
 jog-trot, like a farmer's wife going to market. He does all 
 he has to do, in the same easy way, and gives us a concise 
 sermon, still like the jog-trot of the farmer's wife on a 
 level road. Its drowsy cadence soon lulls the three old 
 women asleep, and the unmarried tradesman sits looking 
 out at window, and the married tradesman sits looking at 
 his wife's bonnet, and the lovers sit looking at one another, 
 so superlatively happy, that I mind when Ij turned of 
 eighteen, went with my Angelica to a City church on ac- 
 count of a shower (by this special coincidence that it was 
 in Huggin-lane), and when I said my Angelica, "Let the 
 blessed event, Angelica, occur at no altar but this ! " and 
 when my Angelica consented that it should occur at no 
 other — which it certainly never did, for it never occurred 
 anywhere. And 0, Angelica, what has become of you, 
 this present Sunday morning when I can't attend to the 
 sermon; and, more difficult question than that, what has 
 become of Me as I was when I sat by your side ! 
 
 But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive 
 which surely is a little conventional — like the strange 
 rustlings and settlings and clearings of throats and noses, 
 which are never dispensed with, at certain points of the 
 
86 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Church service, and are never held to be necessary unclei 
 any other circumstances. In a minute more it is all over, 
 and the organ expresses itself to be as glad of it as it can be 
 of anything in its rheumatic state, and in another minute 
 we are all of us out of the church, and Whity-brown has 
 locked it up. Another minute or little more, and, in the 
 neighbouring churchyard — not the yard of that church, but 
 of another — a churchyard like a great shabby old mignon- 
 ette box, with two trees in it and one tomb — I meet Whity- 
 bfown, in his private capacity, fetching a pint of beer for 
 his dinner from the public-house in the corner, where the 
 keys of the rotting fire-ladders are kept and were never 
 asked for, and where there is a ragged, white-seamed, out- 
 at-elbowed bagatelle board on the first floor. 
 
 In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found 
 an individual who might have been claimed as expressly a 
 City personage. I remember the church, by the feature 
 that the clergyman couldn't get to his own desk without 
 going through the clerk's, or couldn't get to the pulpit 
 without going through the reading-desk — I forget which, 
 and it is no matter — and by the presence of this personage 
 among the exceedingly sparse congregation. I doubt if we 
 were a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity school to 
 help us out. The personage was dressed in black of square 
 cut, and was stricken in years, and wore a black velvet cap, 
 and cloth shoes. He was of a staid, wealthy, and dissat- 
 isfied aspect. In his hand, he conducted to church a mys- 
 terious child : a child of the feminine gender. The child 
 had a beaver hat, with a stiff drab plume that surely never 
 belonged to any bird of the air. The child was further 
 attired in a nankeen frock and spencer, brown boxing- 
 gloves, and a veil. It had a blemish, in the nature of cmv 
 rant jelly, on its chin; and was a thirsty child. Insomuch 
 that the personage carried in his pocket a green bottle, 
 from which, when the first psalm was given out, the child 
 was openly refreshed. At all other times throughout the 
 service it was motionless, and stood on the seat of the 
 large pew, closely fitted into the corner, like a rain-water 
 pipe. 
 
 The personage never opened his book, and never looked 
 at the clergyman. He never sat down either, but stood 
 with his arms leaning on the top of the pew, and his fore- 
 head sometimes shaded with his right hand, always look- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 87 
 
 ing at the church door. It was a long church for a church 
 of its size, and he was at the upper end, but he always 
 looked at the door. That he was an old bookkeeper, or an 
 old trader who had kept his own books, and that he might 
 be seen at the Bank of England about Dividend times, no 
 doubt. That he had lived in the City all his life and was 
 disdainful of other localities, no doubt. Why he looked 
 at the door, I never absolutely proved, but it is my belief 
 that he lived in expectation of the time when the citizens 
 would come back to live in the City, and its ancient glories 
 would be renewed. He appeared to expect that this would 
 occur on a Sunday, and that the wanderers would first ap- 
 pear, in the deserted churches, penitent and humbled. 
 Hence, he looked at the door which they never darkened. 
 Whose child the child was, whether the child of a disin- 
 herited daughter, or some parish orphan whom the person- 
 age had adopted, there was nothing to lead up to. It never 
 played, or skipped, or smiled. Once, the idea occurred to 
 me that it was an automaton, and that the personage had 
 made it; but following the strange couple out one Sunday, 
 I heard the personage say to it, "Thirteen thousand 
 pounds; " to which it added in a weak human voice, " Sev- 
 enteen and fourpence." Four Sundays I followed them 
 out, and this is all I ever heard or saw them say. One 
 Sunday, I followed them home. They lived behind a 
 pump, and the personage opened their abode with an ex- 
 ceeding large key. The one solitary inscription on their 
 house related to a fire-plug. The house was partly under- 
 mined by a deserted and closed gateway; its windows were 
 blind with dirt; and it stood with its face disconsolately 
 turned to a wall. Five great churches and two small ones 
 rang their Sunday bells between this house and the church 
 the couple frequented, so they must have had some special 
 reason for going a quarter of a mile to it. The last time I 
 saw them, was on this wise. I had been to explore an- 
 other church at a distance, and happened to pass the church 
 they frequented, at about two of the afternoon when that 
 edifice was closed. But, a little side-door, which I had 
 never observed before, stood open, and disclosed certain 
 cellarous steps. Methought "They are airing the vaults 
 to-day," when the personage and the child silently arrived 
 at the steps, and silently descended. Of course, I came to 
 the conclusion that the personage had at last despaired of 
 7 
 
88 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the looked-for return of the penitent citizens, and that he 
 and the child went down to get themselves buried. 
 
 In the course of rny pilgrimages I came upon one obscure 
 church which had broken out in the melodramatic style, 
 and was got up with various tawdry decorations, much 
 after the manner of the extinct London may-poles. These 
 attractions had induced several young priests or deacons 
 in black bibs for waistcoats, and several young ladies in- 
 terested in that holy order (the proportion being, as I esti- 
 mated, seventeen young ladies to a deacon), to come into 
 the City as a new and odd excitement. It was wonderful 
 to see how these young people played out their little play 
 in the heart of the City, all among themselves, without the 
 deserted City's knowing anything about it. It was as if 
 you should take an empty counting-house on a Sunday, and 
 act one of the old Mysteries there. They had impressed a 
 small school (from what neighbourhood I don't know) to 
 assist in the performances, and it was pleasant to notice 
 frantic garlands of inscription on the walls, especially ad- 
 dressing those poor innocents in characters impossible for 
 them to decipher. There was a remarkably agreeable smell 
 of pomatum in this congregation. 
 
 But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens 
 formed the uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a 
 dreamy way not at all displeasing, was the staple character 
 of the neighbourhood. In the churches about Mark-lane, 
 for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I acci- 
 dentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged 
 hassock in one of them. From Hood-lane to Tower-street, 
 and thereabouts, there was often a subtle flavour of wine : 
 sometimes, of tea. One church near Mincing-lane smelt 
 like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument the service 
 had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further 
 down towards the river, tempered into herrings, and grad- 
 ually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one 
 church, the exact counterpart of the church in the Rake's 
 Progress where the hero is being married to the horrible old 
 lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ 
 shook a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent 
 warehouse. 
 
 Be the scent what it would, however, there was no spe- 
 ciality in the people. There were never enough of them to 
 represent any calling or neighbourhood. They had all gone 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 89 
 
 elsewhere over- night, and the few stragglers in the many 
 churches languished there inexpressively. 
 
 Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have en- 
 gaged, this year of Sunday travel occupies its own place, 
 apart from all the rest. Whether I think of the church 
 where the sails of the oyster-boats in the river almost 
 flapped against the windows, or of the church where the 
 railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above 
 the roof, I recall a curious experience. On summer Sun- 
 days, in the gentle rain or the bright sunshine — either, 
 deepening the idleness of the idle City — I have sat, in that 
 singular silence which belongs to resting-places usually 
 astir, in scores of buildings at the heart of the world's 
 metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers of people 
 speaking the English tongue, than the ancient edifices of 
 the Eternal City, or the Pyramids of Egypt. The dark 
 vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the 
 little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, 
 have left impressions on my memory as distinct and quaint 
 as any it has in that way received. In all those dusty reg- 
 isters that the worms are eating, there is not a line but 
 made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day. 
 Still and dry now, still and dry ! and the old tree at the 
 window with no room for its branches, has seen them all 
 out. So with the tomb of the old Master of the old Com- 
 pany, on which it drips. His son restored it and died, his 
 daughter restored it and died, and then he had been re- 
 membered long enough, and the tree took possession of 
 him, and his name cracked out. 
 
 There are few more striking indications of the changes 
 of manners and customs that two or three hundred years 
 have brought about, than these deserted churches. Many 
 of them are handsome and costly structures, several of them 
 were designed by Wrex, many of them arose from the 
 ashes of the great fire, others of them outlived the plague 
 and the fire too, to die a slow death in these later days. 
 No one can be sure of the coming time; but it is not too 
 much to say of it that it has no sign in its outsetting tides, 
 of the reflux to these churches of their congregations and 
 uses. They remain like the tombs of the old citizens who 
 lie beneath them and around them, Monuments of another 
 age. They are worth a Sunday-exploration, now and then, 
 for they yet echo, not unharmoniously, to the time when 
 
90 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the City of London really was London; when the 'Pren- 
 tices and Trained Bands were of mark in the state; when 
 even the Lord Mayor himself was a Eeality — not a Fiction 
 conventionally be-puffed on one day in the year by illus- 
 trious friends, who no less conventionally laugh at him on 
 the remaining three hundred and sixty-four days. 
 
 X. 
 
 SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS. 
 
 So much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I cher- 
 ished betting propensities, I should probably be found regis- 
 tered in sporting newspapers under some such title as the 
 Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven stone mankind to 
 eompetition in walking. My last special feat was turning 
 out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and other- 
 wise, and walking thirty miles into the country to break- 
 fast. The road was so lonely in the night, that I fell 
 asleep to the monotonous sound of my own feet, doing their 
 regular four miles an hour. Mile after mile I walked, 
 without the slightest sense of exertion, dozing heavily and 
 dreaming constantly. It was only when I made a stumble 
 like a drunken man, or struck out into the road to avoid a 
 horseman close upon me on the path — who had no exist- 
 ence — that I came to myself and looked about. The day 
 broke mistily (it was autumn time), and I could not disem- 
 barrass myself of the idea that I had to climb those heights 
 and banks of cloud, and that there was an Alpine Convent 
 somewhere behind the sun, where I was going to breakfast. 
 This sleepy notion was so much stronger than such sub- 
 stantial objects as villages and haystacks, that, after the 
 sun was up and bright, and when I was sufficiently awake 
 to have a sense of pleasure in the prospect, I still occasion- 
 ally caught myself looking about for wooden arms to point 
 the right track up the mountain, and wondering there was 
 no snow yet. It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I made 
 immense quantities of verses on that pedestrian occasion 
 (of course I never make any when I am in my right 
 senses), and that I spoke a certain language once pretty 
 familiar to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from dis- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 91 
 
 use, with fluency. Of both these phenomena I have such 
 frequent experience in the state between sleeping and wak- 
 ing, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know I can- 
 not be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready. 
 The readiness is not imaginary, because I often recall long 
 strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, 
 after I am broad awake. 
 
 My walking is of two kinds : one, straight on end to a 
 definite goal at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and 
 purely vagabond. In the latter state, no gipsy on earth is 
 a greater vagabond than myself; it is so natural to me, and 
 strong with me, that I think I must be the descendant, at 
 no great distance, of some irreclaimable tramp. 
 
 One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in 
 a vagabond course of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and 
 small shops, is the fancy of a humble artist, as exemplified 
 in two portraits representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, of Great 
 Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United States of 
 America. These illustrious men are highly coloured in 
 fighting trim, and fighting attitude. To suggest the pas- 
 toral and meditative nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. 
 Heenan is represented on emerald sward, with primroses 
 and other modest flowers springing up under the heels of 
 his half -boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the admin- 
 istration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the si- 
 lent eloquence of a village church. The humble homes 
 of England, with their domestic virtues and honeysuckle 
 porches, urge both heroes to go in and win; and the lark 
 and other singing birds are observable in the upper air, 
 ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight. 
 On the whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic 
 art by this artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton. 
 
 But, it is with the lower animals of back streets and by- 
 ways that my present purpose rests. For human notes we 
 may return to such neighbourhoods when leisure and oppor- 
 tunity serve. 
 
 Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more, 
 than the bad company birds keep. Foreign birds often get 
 into good society, but British birds are inseparable from low 
 associates. There is a whole street of them in St. Giles's; 
 and I always find them in poor and immoral neighbour- 
 hoods, convenient to the public-house and the pawnbroker's. 
 They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man 
 
92 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 who makes then- 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 under- 
 take. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a gold- 
 finch 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 mone}- . He was sent home, and 
 hung upon a nail over against my table. He lived outside 
 a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to 
 be a dyer's ; otherwise it would have been impossible to 
 account for his perch sticking out of the garret window. 
 From the time of his appearance in my room, either he 
 left off being thirsty — which was not in the bond — or he 
 could not make up his mind to hear his little bucket drop 
 back into his well when he let it go : a shock which in the 
 best of times had made him tremble. He drew no water 
 but by stealth and under the cloak of night. After an 
 interval of futile and at length hopeless expectation, the 
 merchant who had educated him was appealed to. The 
 merchant was a bow-legged character, with a flat and cush- 
 iony nose, like the last new strawberry. He wore a fur 
 cap, and shorts, and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny. 
 He sent word that he would "look round." He looked 
 round, appeared in the doorway of the room, and slightly 
 cocked up his evil eye at the goldfinch. Instantly a raging 
 thirst beset that bird; when it was appeased, he still drew 
 several unnecessary buckets of water; and finally, leaped 
 about his perch and sharpened his bill, as if he had been 
 to the nearest wine vaults and got drunk. 
 
 Donkeys again. I know shy neighbourhoods where the 
 Donkey goes in at the street door, and appears to live up- 
 stairs, for I have examined the back-yard from over the 
 palings, and have been unable to make him out. Gentility, 
 nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to 
 do what he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats 
 at the highest price, put an infant prince and princess in a 
 pair of panniers on his back, adjust his delicate trappings 
 to a nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Windsor, and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 93 
 
 try what pace you can get out of him. Then, starve him, 
 harness him anyhow to a truck with a fiat tray on it, and 
 see him bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater. There ap- 
 pears to be no particular private understanding between 
 birds and donkeys, in a state of nature; but in the shy 
 neighbourhood state, you shall see them always in the 
 same hands and always developing their very best energies 
 for the very worst company. I have known a donkey — by 
 sight; we were not on speaking terms — who lived over on 
 the Surrey side of London-bridge, among the fastnesses of 
 Jacob's Island and Dockhead. It was the habit of that ani- 
 mal, when his services were not in immediate requisition, 
 to go out alone, idling. I have met him a mile from his 
 place of residence, loitering about the streets; and the ex- 
 pression of his countenance at such times was most de- 
 graded. He was attached to the establishment of an el- 
 derly lady who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand on 
 Saturday nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside a 
 gin-shop, pricking up his ears when a customer came to 
 the cart, and too evidently deriving satisfaction from the 
 knowledge that they got bad measure. His mistress was 
 sometimes overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever 
 saw him (about five years ago) he was in circumstances of 
 difficulty, caused by this failing. Having been left alone 
 with the cart of periwinkles, and forgotten, he went off 
 idling. He prowled among his usual low haunts for some 
 time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not taking the 
 cart into his calculations, lie endeavoured to turn up a 
 narrow alley, and became greatly involved. He was taken 
 into custody by the police, and, the Green Yard of the 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 expres- 
 sion — a blackguard, I never saw exceeded in the human 
 subject. A flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck in among 
 his periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged harness 
 broken and his cart extensively shattered, twitching his 
 mouth and shaking his hanging head, a picture of disgrace 
 and obduracy. I have seen boys being taken to station- 
 houses, who were as like him as his own brother. 
 
 The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, I observe to avoid 
 play, and to be conscious of poverty. They avoid work, 
 too, if they can, of course; that is in the nature of all 
 
94 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 animals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a back 
 street in the neighbourhood of Walworth, who has greatly 
 distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes 
 his portrait with him when he makes an engagement, for 
 the illustration of the play-bill. His portrait (which is not 
 at all like him) represents him in the act of dragging to 
 the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have toma- 
 hawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer. The 
 design is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the 
 piece, and no such incident. He is a dog of the New- 
 foundland breed, for whose honesty I would be bail to any 
 amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association 
 with dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high. Indeed, he is 
 too honest for the profession he has entered. Being at a 
 town in Yorkshire last summer, and seeing him posted in 
 the bill of the night, I attended the performance. His 
 first scene was eminently successful; but, as it occupied a 
 second in its representation (and five lines in the bill), it 
 scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment 
 of his powers. He had merely to bark, run on, and jump 
 through an inn window, after a comic fugitive. The next 
 scene of importance to the fable was a little marred in its 
 interest by his over-anxiety; forasmuch as while his mas- 
 ter (a belated soldier in a den of robbers on a tempestuous 
 night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful 
 dog, and laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty 
 leagues away, the faithful dog was barking furiously in the 
 prompter's box, and clearly choking himself against his 
 collar. But it was in his greatest scene of all, that his 
 honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a dense 
 and trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there 
 to fly at the murderer when he found him resting at the 
 foot of a tree, with his victim bound ready for slaughter. 
 It was a hot night, and he came into the forest from an al- 
 together unexpected direction, in the sweetest temper, at a 
 very deliberate trot, not in the least excited; trotted to the 
 footlights with his tongue out; and there sat down, pant- 
 ing, and amiably surveying the audience, with his tail 
 beating on the boards, like a Dutch clock. Meanwhile the 
 murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was audibly call- 
 ing to him "Co-o-ome here! " while the victim, struggling 
 with his bonds, assailed him with the most injurious ex- 
 pressions. It happened through these means, that when 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 95 
 
 he was in course of time persuaded to trot up and rend the 
 murderer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic pur- 
 poses) a little too obvious that he worked out that awful 
 retribution by licking butter off his blood-stained hands. 
 
 In a shy street, behind Long-acre two honest dogs live, 
 who perform in Punch's shows. I may venture to say that 
 I am on terms of intimacy with both, and that I never 
 saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to look down 
 at the man inside the show, during the whole performance. 
 The difficulty other clogs have in satisfying their minds 
 about these dogs, appears to be never overcome by time. 
 The same dogs must encounter them over and over again, 
 as they trudge along in their off-minutes behind the legs of 
 the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect 
 their frills and jackets, and to sniff at them as if they 
 thought those articles of personal adornment, an eruption 
 — a something in the nature of mange, perhaps. From this 
 Covent-garden window of mine I noticed a country dog, 
 only the other day, who had come up to Covent-garden 
 Market under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end of 
 which he still trailed along with him. He loitered about 
 the corners of the four streets commanded by my window; 
 and bad London dogs came up, and told him lies that he 
 didn't believe; and worse London dogs came up, and made 
 proposals to him to go and steal in the market, which his 
 principles rejected; and the ways of the town confused 
 him, and he crept aside and lay clown in a doorway. He 
 had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch 
 with Toby. He was darting to Toby for consolation and 
 advice, when he saw the frill, and stopped, in the middle 
 of the street, appalled. The show was pitched, Toby re- 
 tired behind the drapery, the audience formed, the drum 
 and pipes struck up. My country clog remained immovable, 
 intently staring at these strange appearances, until Toby 
 opened the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him 
 entered Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby's mouth. 
 At this spectacle, the country dog threw up his head, gave 
 one terrible howl, and fled due west. 
 
 We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk 
 more expressively of dogs keeping men. I know a bull- 
 dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith who keeps a man. 
 He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public- 
 houses and \&.y wagers on him, and obliges him to lean 
 8 
 
9G THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 against posts and look at him, and forces him to neglect 
 work for him, and keeps him under rigid coercion. I once 
 knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman — a gentleman 
 who had been brought up at Oxford, too. The dog kept 
 the gentleman entirely for his glorification, and the gentle- 
 man never talked about anything but the terrier. This, 
 however, was not in a shy neighbourhood, and is a digres- 
 sion consequently. 
 
 There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, who 
 keep boys. I have my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown 
 who keeps three boys. He feigns that he can bring down 
 sparrows, and un burrow rats (he can do neither), and he 
 takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all sorts of 
 suburban fields. He has likewise made them believe that 
 he possesses some mysterious knowledge of the art of fish- 
 ing, and they consider themselves incompletely equipped 
 for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and a wide- 
 mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking tre- 
 mendously. There is a dog residing in the Borough of 
 Southwark avIio keeps a blind man. He may be seen, most 
 days, in Oxford-street, haling the blind man away on ex- 
 peditions wholly uncontemplated by and unintelligible to, 
 the man: wholly of the dog's conception and execution. 
 Contrariwise, when the man has projects, the dog will sit 
 down in a crowded thoroughfare and meditate. I saw him 
 yesterday, wearing the money-tray like an easy collar, in- 
 stead of offering it to the public, taking the man against 
 his will, on the invitation of a disreputable cur, apparently 
 to visit a dog at Harrow — he was so intent on that direc- 
 tion. The north wall of Burlington House Gardens, be- 
 tween the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy spot for ap- 
 pointments among blind men at about two or three o'clock 
 in the afternoon. They sit (very uncomfortably) on a 
 sloping stone there, and compare notes. Their dogs may 
 always be observed at the same time, openly disparaging 
 the men they keep, to one another, and settling where they 
 shall respectively take their men when they begin to move 
 again. At a small butcher's, in a shy neighbourhood 
 (there is no reason for suppressing the name; it is by Xot- 
 ting-hill, and gives upon the district called the Potteries), 
 I know a shaggy black and white dog who keeps a drover. 
 He is a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently al- 
 lows this drover to get drunk. On these occasions, it is the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 97 
 
 dog's custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping his 
 eye on a few sheep, and thinking. I have seen him with 
 six sheep, plainly casting up in his mind how many he be- 
 gan with when he left the market, and at what places he 
 lias left the rest. I have seen him perplexed by not being 
 able to account to himself for certain particular sheep. A 
 light has gradually broken on him, he has remembered at 
 what butcher's he left them, and in a burst of grave satis- 
 faction has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself 
 much relieved. If I could at any time have doubted the 
 fact that it was he who kept the drover, and not the drover 
 who kept him, it would have been abundantly proved by his 
 way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when the 
 drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and 
 gave him wrong directions, which he calmly disregarded. 
 He has taken the sheep entirely into his own hands, has 
 merely remarked with respectful firmness, " That instruc- 
 tion would place them under an omnibus; you had better 
 confine your attention to yourself — you will want it all; " 
 and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of 
 ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left 
 his lout of a man very, very far behind. 
 
 As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a 
 slinking consciousness of being in poor circumstances — for 
 the most part manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an awk- 
 wardness in their play, and a misgiving that somebody is 
 going to harness them to something, to pick up a living — 
 so the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tend- 
 ency to relapse into barbarism. Not only are they made 
 selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the surplus population 
 around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the 
 avenues to cat's meat; not only is there a moral and polit- 
 ico-economical haggardness in them, traceable to these re- 
 flections; 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 Avith several 
 small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in Saint George's 
 Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerken well-green, and 
 also in the back settlements of Drmy-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, 
 
98 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 without any preparation. They leave their young families 
 to stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily 
 quarrel and swear and scratch and spit, at street corners. 
 In particular, I remark that when they are about to in- 
 crease their families (an event of frequent recurrence) the 
 resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain dusty dowdi- 
 ness, 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 in- 
 teresting condition. 
 
 Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among 
 the lower animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at 
 length upon the exasperated moodiness of the tom-cats, and 
 their resemblance in many respects to a man and a brother, 
 I will come to a close with a word on the fowls of the same 
 localities. 
 
 That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, 
 should have got to the pass that it hops contentedly down 
 a ladder into a cellar, and calls that going home, is a cir- 
 cumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in this 
 connection to wonder at. Otherwise I might wonder at the 
 completeness with which these fowls have become sepa- 
 rated from all the birds of the air — have taken to grovelling 
 in bricks and mortar and mud — have forgotten all about live 
 trees, and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, 
 oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at 
 nothing concerning them, and take them as they are. I 
 accept as products of Nature and things of course, a re- 
 duced Bantam family of my acquaintance in the Hackney- 
 road, who are incessantly at the pawnbroker's. I cannot 
 say that they enjoy themselves, for they are of a melan- 
 choly temperament; but what enjoyment they are capable 
 of, they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker's 
 side-entry. Here, they are always to be found in a feeble 
 flutter, as if they were newly come down in the world, and 
 were afraid of being identified. I know a low fellow, origi- 
 nally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole 
 establishment of wives, in single file, in at the door of the 
 Jug Department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymar- 
 ket, manoeuvres them among the company's legs, emerges 
 with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life : 
 seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in the. morn- 
 ing. Over Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 99 
 
 couple (they belong to the wooden French-bedstead, wash- 
 ing-stand, and towel-horsemaking trade), who are always 
 trying to get in at the door of a chapel. Whether the old 
 lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. Southcott, 
 has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular denom- 
 ination, or merely understands that she has no business in 
 the building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I can- 
 not determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to un- 
 dermine the principal door: while her partner, who is in- 
 firm upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her 
 and defying the Universe. But, the family I have been 
 best acquainted with, since the removal from this trying 
 sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the 
 densest part of Bethnal-green. Their abstraction from the 
 objects among which they live, or rather their conviction 
 that those objects have all come into existence in express 
 subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me, that I have 
 made them the subject of man}' journeys at divers hours. 
 After careful observation of the two lords and the ten la- 
 dies of whom this family consists, I have come to the con- 
 clusion that their opinions are represented by the leading 
 lord and leading lady : the latter, as I judge, an aged per- 
 sonage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of 
 quill, that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office 
 pens. When a railway goods van that would crush an 
 elephant comes round the corner, tearing over these fowls, 
 they emerge unharmed from under the horses, perfectly 
 satisfied that the whole rush was a passing property in the 
 air, which may have left something to eat behind it. They 
 look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and 
 fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge, for 
 fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account, I 
 think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew. 
 Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; 
 and I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the 
 two lords, the early public-house at the corner has super- 
 seded the sun. I have established it as a certain fact, that 
 they always begin to crow when the public-house shutters 
 begin to be taken down, and that they salute the potboy, 
 the instant he appears to perform that duty, as if he were 
 Phoebus in person. 
 
100 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XL 
 
 TRAMPS. 
 
 The chance use of the word " Tramp " in my last paper, 
 brought that numerous fraternity so vividly before my 
 mind's eye, that I had no sooner laid down my pen than a 
 compulsion was upon me to take it up again, and make 
 notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the summer 
 roads in all directions. 
 
 Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he 
 sits with his legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to 
 sleep (which is very often indeed), he goes to sleep on 
 his back. Yonder, by the high road, glaring white in 
 the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf under the 
 bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the highway, 
 the tramp of the order savage, fast asleep. He lies on the 
 broad of his back, with his face turned up to the sky, and 
 one of his ragged arms loosely thrown across his face. His 
 bundle (what can be the contents of that mysterious bundle, 
 to make it worth his while to carry it about?) is thrown 
 down beside him, and the waking woman with him sits 
 with her legs in the ditch, and her back to the road. She 
 wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the front of her head, 
 to shade her face from the sun in walking, and she ties her 
 skirts round her in conventionally tight tramp-fashion 
 with a sort of apron. You can seldom catch sight of her, 
 resting thus, without seeing her in a despondently defiant 
 manner doing something to her hair or her bonnet, and 
 glancing at you between her fingers. She does not often 
 go to sleep herself in the daytime, but will sit for any 
 length of time beside the man. And his slumberous pro- 
 pensities would not seem to be referable to the fatigue of 
 carrying the bundle, for she carries it much oftener and 
 further than he. When they are afoot, you will mostly 
 find him slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she 
 lags heavily behind with the burden. He is given to per- 
 sonally correcting her, too — which phase of his character 
 develops itself oftenest, on benches outside alehouse doors 
 — and she appears to become strongly attached to him for 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 101 
 
 these reasons; it may usually be noticed that when the poor 
 creature has a bruised face, she is the most affectionate. 
 He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp, and 
 has no* object whatever in going anywhere. He will some- 
 times call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when 
 he takes an imaginative flight. He generally represents 
 himself, in a vague way, as looking out for a job of work; 
 but he never did work, he never does, and he never will. 
 It is a favourite fiction with him, however (as if he were 
 the most industrious character on earth), that you never 
 work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you look- 
 ing at your flowers, you will overhear him growl with a 
 strong sense of contrast, " You are a lucky hidle devil, you 
 are!" 
 
 The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and 
 has the same injured conviction on him that yow. were born 
 to whatever you possess, and never did anything to get it: 
 but he is of a less audacious disposition. He will stop be- 
 fore your gate, and say to his female companion with an 
 air of constitutional humility and propitiation — to edify 
 any one who may be within hearing behind a blind or a 
 bush — "This is a sweet spot, ain't it? A lovelly spot! 
 Audi wonder if they'd give two poor footsore travellers 
 like me and you, a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty 
 gen-teel crib? We'd take it wery koind on 'eifl, wouldn't 
 us? Wery koind, upon my word, us would?" He has a 
 quick sense of a dog in the vicinity, and will extend his 
 modestly-injured propitiation to the dog chained up in your 
 yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate, " Ah! You 
 are a foine breed o' dog, too, and you ain't kep for nothink! 
 I'd take it wery koind o' your master if he'd elp a traveller 
 and his woife as envies no gentlefolk their good fortun, wP 
 a bit o' your broken Avittles. He'd never know the want 
 of it, nor more would you. Don't bark like that, at poor 
 persons as never done you no arm; the poor is downtrod- 
 den and broke enough without that; dost't! " He gen- 
 erally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving away, and always 
 looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the road and 
 down the road, before going on. 
 
 Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; 
 let the hard-Avorking labourer at whose cottage-door they 
 prowl and beg, have the ague never so badly, these tramps 
 are sure to be in good health. 
 
102 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter 
 this bright summer day — say, on a road with the sea-breeze 
 making its dust lively, and sails of ships in the blue dis- 
 tance beyond the slope of Down. As you walk enjoyingly 
 on, you descry in the perspective at the bottom of a steep 
 hill up which your way lies, a figure that appears to be sit- 
 ting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and disengaged 
 manner. As you approach nearer to it, you observe the 
 figure to slide down from the gate, to desist from whistling, 
 to uncock its hat, to become tender of foot, to depress its 
 head and elevate its shoulders, and to present all the char- 
 acteristics of profound despondency. Arriving at the bot- 
 tom of the hill and coming close to the figure, you observe 
 it to be the figure of a shabby young man. He is moving 
 painfully forward, in the direction in which you are going, 
 and his mind is so preoccupied with his misfortunes that 
 he is not aware of your approach until you are close upon 
 him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of you, you dis- 
 cover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and 
 a remarkably well-spoken young man. You know him to 
 be well-behaved, by his respectful manner of touching his 
 hat: you know him to be well-spoken, by his smooth man- 
 ner of expressing himself. He says in a flowing confiden- 
 tial voice, and without punctuation, "I ask your pardon sir 
 but if you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed 
 upon the public Tway by one who is almost reduced to rags 
 though it as not always been so and by no fault of his own 
 but through ill elth in his family and many unmerited suf- 
 ferings it would be a great obligation sir to know the time." 
 You give the well-spoken young man the time. The well- 
 spoken young man, keeping well up with you, resumes : 
 " I am aware sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further 
 question on a gentleman walking for his entertainment but 
 might I make so bold as ask the favour of the way to Dover 
 sir and about the distance? " You inform the well-spoken 
 young man that the way to Dover is straight on, and the 
 distance some eighteen miles. The well-spoken young man 
 becomes greatly agitated. " In the condition to which I 
 am reduced," says he, "I could not ope to reach Dover 
 before dark even if my shoes were in a state to take me 
 there or my feet were in a state to old out over the flinty 
 road and were not on the bare ground of which any gentle- 
 man has the means to satisfy himself by looking Sir may 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 103 
 
 I take the liberty of speaking to you? " As the well-spoken 
 young man keeps so well up with you that you can't pre- 
 vent his taking the liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, 
 with fluency : " Sir it is not begging that is my intention 
 for I was brought up by the best of mothers and begging 
 is not my trade I should not know sir how to follow it as 
 atrade if such were my shameful wishes for the best of 
 mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes 
 though now reduced to take the present liberty on the 
 Iway Sir, my business was the law-stationering and I was 
 favourably known to the Solicitor-General the Attorney- 
 General the majority of the Judges and the ole of the legal 
 profession but through ill elth in my family and the treach- 
 ery of a friend for whom I became security and he no other 
 than my own wife's brother the brother of my own wife I 
 was cast forth with my tender partner and three young chil- 
 dren not to beg for I will sooner die of deprivation but to 
 make my way to the seaport town of Dover where I have a 
 relative i in respect not only that will assist me but that 
 would trust me with untold gold Sir in appier times and 
 hare this calamity fell upon me I made for my amusement 
 when I little thought that I should ever need it excepting 
 for my air this " — here the well-spoken young man put his 
 hand into his breast — " this comb ! Sir I implore you in 
 the name of charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb which 
 is a genuine article at any price that your humanity may 
 put upon it and may the blessings of a ouseless family 
 awaiting with beating arts the return of a husband and a 
 father from Dover upon the cold stone seats of London- 
 bridge ever attend you Sir may I take the liberty of speak- 
 ing to you I implore you to buy this comb ! " By this time, 
 being a reasonably good walker, you will have been too 
 much for the well-spoken young man, who will stop short 
 and express his disgust and his want of breath, in a long 
 expectoration, as you leave him behind. 
 
 Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright 
 summer day, at the corner of the next little town or vil- 
 lage, you may find another kind of tramp, embodied in the 
 persons of a most exemplary couple whose only improvi- 
 dence appears to have been, that the} 7 spent the last of 
 their little All on soap. They are a man and woman, spot- 
 less to behold — John Anderson, with the frost on his short 
 smock-frock instead of his "pow," attended by Mrs. An- 
 
104 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 derson. John is over-osteiitatioiis of the frost upon his 
 raiment, and wears a curious and, you would say, an al- 
 most unnecessary demonstration of girdle of white linen 
 wound about his waist — a girdle, snowy as Mrs. Anderson's 
 apron. This cleanliness was the expiring effort of the re- 
 spectable couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Ander- 
 son but to get chalked upon his spade in snow-white copy- 
 book characters, hungry! and to sit down here. Yes; one 
 thing more remained to Mr. Anderson — his character; 
 Monarchs could not deprive him of his hard-earned char- 
 acter. Accordingly, as you come up with this spectacle of 
 virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson rises, and with a decent 
 curtsey presents for your consideration a certificate from a 
 Doctor of Divinity, the reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodg- 
 ington, Avho informs his Christian friends and all whom it 
 may concern that the bearers, John Anderson and lawful 
 wife, are persons to whom you cannot be too liberal. This 
 benevolent pastor omitted no work of his hands to fit the 
 good couple out, for with half an eye you can recognise his 
 autograph on the spade. 
 
 Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part 
 of whose stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed demeanour. 
 He is got up like a countryman, and you will often come 
 upon the poor fellow, while he is endeavouring to decipher 
 the inscription on a milestone — quite a fruitless endeavour, 
 for he cannot read. He asks your pardon, he truly does 
 (he is very slow of speech, this tramp, and he looks in a 
 bewildered way all round the prospect while he talks to 
 you), but all of us shold do as we wold be done by, and 
 he'll take it kind, if you'll put a power man in the right 
 road fur to jine his eldest son as has broke his leg bad in 
 the masoning, and is in this heere Orspit'l as is wrote down 
 by Squire Pouncerby's own hand as wold not tell a lie fur 
 no man. He then produces from under his dark frock 
 (being always very slow and perplexed) a neat but worn 
 old leathern purse, from which he takes a scrap of paper. 
 On this scrap of paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of 
 The Grove, " Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but very 
 worthy man, to the Sussex County Hospital, near Brigh- 
 ton " — a matter of some difficulty at the moment, seeing 
 that the request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of 
 Hertfordshire. The more you endeavour to indicate where 
 Brighton is — when you have with the greatest difficulty 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 105 
 
 remembered — the less the devoted father can be made to 
 comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the pros- 
 pect; whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend 
 the faithful parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and 
 present him with half-a-crown. It does him good, no 
 doubt, but scarcely helps him forward, since you find him 
 lying drunk that same evening in the wheelwright's sawpit 
 under the shed where the felled trees are, opposite the 
 sign of the Three Jolly Hedgers. 
 
 But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is 
 the tramp who pretends to have been a gentleman. " Edu- 
 cated," he writes, from the village beer-shop in pale ink of 
 a ferruginous complexion; "educated at Trin. Coll. Cam. 
 — nursed in the lap of affluence — once in my small way the 
 pattron of the Muses," &c. &c. &c. — surely a sympathetic 
 mind will not withhold a trifle, to help him on to the mar- 
 ket-town where he thinks of giving a Lecture to the fruges 
 consumere nati, on things in general? This shameful creat- 
 ure lolling about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, 
 now so far from being black that they look as if they never 
 can have been black, is more selfish and insolent than even 
 the savage tramp. He would sponge on the poorest boy 
 for a farthing, and spurn him when he had got it; he 
 would interpose (if he could get anything by it) between 
 the baby and the mother's breast. So much lower than the 
 company he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being 
 higher, this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he 
 maunders on between the luxuriant hedges : where (to my 
 thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweet- 
 briar, are the worse for his going by, and need time to re- 
 cover from the taint of him in the air. 
 
 The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six 
 together, their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby 
 bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut from some 
 roadside wood, are not eminently prepossessing, but are 
 much less objectionable. There is a tramp-fellowship 
 among them. They pick one another up at resting sta- 
 tions, and go on in companies. They always go at a fast 
 swing — though they generally limp too — and there is in- 
 variably one of the company who has much ado to keep up 
 with the rest. They generally talk about horses, and any 
 other means of locomotion than walking: or, one of the 
 company relates some recent experiences of the road — 
 
106 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 which are always disputes and difficulties. As for example. 
 " So as I'm a standing at the pump in the market, blest if 
 there don't come up a Beadle, and he ses, ' Mustn't stand 
 here,' he ses. ' Why not? ' I ses. ' No beggars allowed in 
 this town,' he ses. ' Who's a beggar? ' I ses. ' You are,' 
 he ses. ' Who ever see me beg? Did you ? ' I ses. ' Then 
 you're a tramp,' he ses. ' I'd rather be that than a Bea- 
 dle,' I ses." (The company express great approval.) 
 "'Would you,' he ses to me. 'Yes I would,' I ses to 
 him. 'Well,' he ses, 'anyhow, get out of this town.' 
 ' Why, blow your little town ! ' I ses, ' who wants to be 
 in it? Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin' 
 and stickin' itself in the road to anywhere? Why don't 
 you get a shovel and a barrer, and clear your town out 
 o' people's way? ' " (The company expressing the high- 
 est approval and laughing aloud, they all go down the 
 hill.) 
 
 Then, there are the tramp handicraft men. Are they 
 not all over England, in this Midsummer time? Where 
 does the lark sing, the corn grow, the mill turn, the river 
 run, and they are not among the lights and shadows, tink- 
 ering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock-mending, 
 knife-grinding? Surely, a pleasant thing, if we were in 
 that condition of life, to grind our way through Kent, Sus- 
 sex, and Surrey. For the worst six weeks or so, we should 
 see the sparks we ground off, fiery bright against a back- 
 ground of green wheat and green leaves. A little later, 
 and the ripe harvest would pale our sparks from red to yel- 
 low, until we got the dark newly-turned land for a back- 
 ground again, and they were red once more. By that time, 
 we should have ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the 
 whirr of our wheel would be lost in the breaking of the 
 waves. Our next variety in sparks would be derived from 
 contrast with the gorgeous medley of colours in the au- 
 tumn woods, and, by the time we had ground our way 
 round to the healthy lands between Beigate and Croydon, 
 doing a prosperous stroke of business all along, we should 
 show like a little firework in the light frosty air, and be 
 the next best thing to the blacksmith's forge. Very agree- 
 able, too, to go on a chair-mending tour. What judges we 
 should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf and 
 a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on 
 bridges, looking over at osier-beds. Among all the innu- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 107 
 
 merable occupations that cannot possibly be transacted 
 without the assistance of lookers on, chair-mending may 
 take a station in the first rank. When we sat down with 
 our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began 
 to mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us. 
 When all the children came to look at us, and the tailor, 
 and the general dealer, and the farmer who had been giv- 
 ing a small order at the little saddler's, and the groom 
 from the great house, and the publican, and even the two 
 skittle-players (and here note that, howsoever busy all the 
 rest of village human-kind may be, there will always be 
 two people with leisure to play at skittles, wherever village 
 skittles are), what encouragement would be on us to plait 
 and weave ! No one looks at us while we plait and weave 
 these words. Clock-mending again. Except for the slight 
 inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and the 
 monotony of making the bell go, whenever we came to a 
 human habitation, what a pleasant privilege to give a voice 
 to the dumb cottage-clock, and set it talking to the cottage 
 family again. Likewise we foresee great interest in going 
 round by the park plantations, under the overhanging 
 boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, scudding 
 like mad across and across the chequered ground before 
 us), and so over the park ladder, and through the wood, 
 until we came to the Keeper's lodge. Then, would the 
 Keeper be discoverable at his door, in a deep nest of leaves, 
 smoking his pipe. Then, on our accosting him in the way 
 of our trade, would he call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting 
 "t'ould clock" in the kitchen. Then, would Mrs. Keeper 
 ask us into the lodge, and on due examination we should 
 offer to make a good job of it for eighteenpence; which 
 offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling and clinking 
 among the chubby awe-struck little Keepers for an hour 
 and more. So completely to the family's satisfaction 
 would we achieve our work, that the Keeper would men- 
 tion how that there was something wrong with the bell of 
 the turret stable-clock up at the Hall, and that if we 
 thought good of going up to the housekeeper on the chance 
 of that job too, why he would take us. Then, should we 
 go, among the branching oaks and the deep fern, by silent 
 ways of mystery known to the Keeper, seeing the herd 
 glancing here and there as we went along, until we came 
 to the old Hall, solemn and grand. Under the Terrace 
 
108 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
 Flower Garden, and round by the stables, Avould the Keeper 
 take ns in, and as we passed ve should observe how spa- 
 cious and stately the stables, and how fine the painting of 
 the horses' names over their stalls, and how solitary all: 
 the family being in London. Then, should we find our- 
 selves presented to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed 
 state, at needlework, in a bay-window looking out upon a 
 mighty grim red-brick quadrangle, guarded by stone lions 
 disrespectfully throwing somersaults over the escutcheons 
 of the noble family. Then, our services accepted and we 
 insinuated with a candle into the stable-turret, we should 
 find it to be a mere question of pendulum, but one that 
 would hold us until dark. Then, should we fall to work, 
 with a general impression of Ghosts being about, and of 
 pictures indoors that of a certainty came out of their 
 frames and "walked," if the family would only own it. 
 Then, should we work and work, until the day gradually 
 turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned 
 to dark. Our task at length accomplished, we should be 
 taken into an enormous servants' hall, and there regaled 
 with beef and bread, and powerful ale. Then, paid freely, 
 we should be at liberty to go, and should be told by a point- 
 ing helper to keep round over yinder by the blasted ash, 
 and so straight through the woods, till we should see the 
 town-lights right afore us. Then, feeling lonesome, should 
 Ave desire upon the whole, that the ash had not been 
 blasted, or that the helper had had the manners not to 
 mention it. However, we should keep on, all right, till 
 suddenly the stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest 
 way, quite chilling our blood, though Ave had so lately 
 taught him Iioav to acquit himself. Then, as Ave went on, 
 should Ave recall old stories, and dimly consider what it 
 Avould be most advisable to do, in the event of a tall figure, 
 all in Avhite, with saucer eyes, coming up and saying, "I 
 want you to come to a churchyard and mend a church clock. 
 FoIIoav me ! " Then, should Ave make a burst to get clear 
 of the trees, and should soon find ourselves in the open, 
 Avith the toAvn-lights bright ahead of us. So should Ave 
 lie that night at the ancient sign of the Crispin and Cris- 
 panus, and rise early next morning to be betimes on tramp 
 again . 
 
 Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by 
 night at their "lodges," which are scattered all over the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 109 
 
 country. Bricklaying is another of the occupations that 
 can by no means be transacted in rural parts, without the 
 assistance of spectators — of as many as can be convened. 
 h\ thinly-peopled spots, I have known bricklayers on 
 tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so sensi- 
 ble of the indispensability of lookers-on, that they them- 
 selves have set up in that capacity, and have been unable 
 to subside into the acceptance of a proffered share in the 
 job, for two or three days together. Sometimes, the 
 "navvy," on tramp, with an extra pair of half -boots over 
 his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and a can, will take a similar 
 part in a job of excavation, and will look at it without en- 
 gaging in it, until all his money is gone. The current of 
 my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer to 
 want a little body of workmen for a certain spell of work 
 in a pleasant part of the country; and I was at one time- 
 honoured with the attendance of as many as seven-and- 
 twenty, who were looking at six. 
 
 Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in sum- 
 mer-time, without storing up knowledge of the many tramps 
 who go from one oasis of town or village to another, to sell 
 a stock in trade, apparently not worth a shilling when sold? 
 Shrimps are a favourite commodity for this kind of specu- 
 lation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy character, 
 coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy balls. The stock is 
 carried on the head in a basket, and, between the head and 
 the basket, are the trestles on which the stock is displayed 
 at trading times. Fleet of foot, but a careworn class of 
 tramp this, mostly; with a certain stiffness of neck, occa- 
 sioned by much anxious balancing of baskets; and also with 
 a long Chinese sort of eye, which an overweighted forehead 
 would seem to have squeezed into that form. 
 
 On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great 
 rivers, behold the tramping Soldier. And if you should 
 happen never to have asked yourself whether his uniform 
 is suited to his work, perhaps the poor fellow's appear- 
 ance as he comes distressfully towards you, with his ab- 
 surdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his hand, 
 and his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may sug- 
 gest the personal inquiry, how you think you would like it. 
 Much better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth is 
 somewhat too thick for land service. But, why the tramp- 
 ing merchant-mate should put on a black velvet waist- 
 
110 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 coat, for a chalky country in the dog-days, is one of the 
 great secrets of nature that will never be discovered. 
 
 I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered 
 on either side by a wood, and having on one hand, be- 
 tween the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of 
 grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and 
 it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily 
 away to the ocean, like a man's life. To gain the mile- 
 stone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, 
 and wild roses, would soon render illegible but for peering 
 travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must 
 come up a steep hill, come which way you may. So, all 
 the tramps with carts or caravans — the Gipsy-tramp, the 
 Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack — find it impossible to resist 
 the temptations of the place, and all turn the horse loose 
 when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the place, 
 I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched 
 its grass ! What tramp children do I see here, attired in a 
 handful of rags, making a gymnasium of the shafts of the 
 cart, making a feather-bed of the flints and brambles, mak- 
 ing a toy of the hobbled old horse who is not much more 
 like a horse than any cheap toy would be ! Here, do I en- 
 counter the cart of mats and brooms and baskets — with all 
 thoughts of business given to the evening wind — with the 
 stew made and being served out — with Cheap Jack and 
 Dear Jill striking soft music out of the plates that are rat- 
 tled like warlike cymbals when put up for auction at fairs 
 and markets — their minds so influenced (no doubt) by the 
 melody of the nightingales as they begin to sing in the 
 woods behind them, that if I were to propose to deal, they 
 would sell me anything at cost price. On this hallowed 
 ground has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper it), 
 to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes, eat- 
 ing meat-pie with the Giant : while, by the hedgeside, on 
 the box of blankets which I knew contained the snakes, 
 were set forth the cups and saucers and the teapot. It was 
 on an evening in August, that I chanced upon this ravish- 
 ing spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas the Giant re- 
 clined half concealed beneath the overhanging boughs and 
 seemed indifferent to Nature, the white hair of the gracious 
 Lady streamed free in the breath of evening, and her pink 
 eyes found pleasure in the landscape. I heard only a sin- 
 gle sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent foi 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. HI 
 
 modest repartee. The ill-mannered Giant — accursed be 
 his evil race ! — had interrupted the Lady in some remark, 
 and, as I passed that enchanted corner of the wood, she 
 gently reproved him, with the words, "Now, Cobby; " — 
 Cobby ! so short a name ! — " ain't one fool enough to talk 
 at a time? " 
 
 Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though 
 not so near it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at 
 door, can invade its woodland silence, is a little hostelry 
 which no man possessed of a penny was ever known to pass 
 in warm weather. Before its entrance, are certain pleasant 
 trimmed limes; likewise, a cool well, with so musical a 
 bucket-handle that its fall upon the bucket rim will make 
 a horse prick up his ears and neigh, upon the droughty 
 road half a mile off. This is a house of great resort for 
 haymaking tramps and harvest tramps, insomuch that they 
 sit within, drinking their mugs of beer, their relinquished 
 scythes and reaping-hooks glare out of the open windows, 
 as if the whole establishment were a family war-coach of 
 Ancient Britons. Later in the season, the whole country- 
 side, for miles and miles, will swarm with hopping tramps. 
 They come in families, men, women, and children, every 
 family provided with a bundle of bedding, an iron pot, a 
 number of babies, and too often with some poor sick creat- 
 ure quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose 
 the smell of the fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy. 
 Many of these hoppers are Irish, but many come from Lon- 
 don. They crowd all the roads, and camp under all the 
 hedges and on all the scraps of common-land, and live 
 among and upon the hops until they are all picked and the 
 hop gardens, so beautiful through the summer, look as if 
 they had been laid waste by an invading army. Then, 
 there is a vast exodus of tramps out of the county; and if 
 you ride or drive round any turn of any road, at more than 
 a foot pace, you will be bewildered to find that you have 
 charged into the bosom of fifty families, and that there are 
 splashing up all around you, in the utmost prodigality of 
 confusion, bundles of bedding, babies, iron pots, and a 
 good-humoured multitude of both sexes and all ages, equally 
 divided between perspiration and intoxication. 
 
112 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XII. 
 
 DTJLLBOROUGH TOWN. 
 
 It lately happened that I found myself rambling about 
 the scenes among which my earliest days were passed; 
 scenes from which I departed when I was a child, and 
 which I did not revisit until I was a man. This is no un- 
 common chance, but one that befalls some of us any day; 
 perhaps it may not be quite uninteresting to compare notes 
 with the reader respecting an experience so familiar and a 
 journey so uncommercial. 
 
 I call my boyhood's home (and I feel like a Tenor in an 
 English Opera when I mention it) Dullborough. Most of 
 us come from Dullborough who come from a country town. 
 
 As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no 
 railroads in the land, I left it in a stage-coach. Through 
 all the years that have since passed, have I ever lost the 
 smell of the damp straw in which I was packed — like game 
 — and forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys, Wood- 
 street, Cheapside, London? There was no other inside 
 passenger, and I consumed my sandAviches in solitude and 
 dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought 
 life sloppier than I had expected to find it. 
 
 With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cavalierly 
 shunted back into Dullborough the other day, by train. 
 My ticket had been previously collected, like my taxes, and 
 my shining new portmanteau had had a great plaster stuck 
 upon it, and I had been defied by Act of Parliament to 
 offer an objection to anything that was done to it, or me, 
 under a penalty of not less than forty shillings or more 
 than five pounds, compoundable for a term of imprison- 
 ment. When I had sent my disfigured property on to the 
 hotel, I began to look about me; and the first discovery I 
 made, was, that the Station had swallowed up the playing- 
 field. 
 
 It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the 
 hedge, the turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had 
 given place to the stoniest of jolting roads: while, beyond 
 the Station, an ugly dark monster of a tunnel kept its jaws 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 113 
 
 open, as if it had swallowed them and were ravenous for 
 more destruction. The coach that had carried me away, 
 was melodiously called Timpson's Blue-Eyed Maid, and 
 belonged to Timpson, at the coach-office up-street; the lo- 
 comotive engine that had brought me bach, was called se- 
 verely No. 97, and belonged to S.E.R., and was spitting 
 ashes and hot- water over the blighted ground. 
 
 When I had been let out of the platform-door, like a pris- 
 oner whom his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in 
 again over the low wall, at the scene of departed glories. 
 Here, in the haymaking time, had I been delivered from 
 the dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile (of hay- 
 cock), by my countrymen, the victorious British (boy next 
 door and his two cousins), and had been recognised with 
 ecstasy by my affianced one (Miss Green), who had come 
 all the way from England (second house in the terrace) 
 to ransom me, and marry me. Here, had I first heard in 
 confidence, from one whose father was greatly connected, 
 being under Government, of the existence of a terrible 
 banditti, called "The Radicals," whose principles were, 
 that the Prince Regent wore stays, and that nobody had a 
 right to any salaiy, and that the army and navy ought to 
 be put down — horrors, at which I trembled in my bed, after 
 supplicating that the Radicals might be speedily taken and 
 hanged. Here, too, had we, the small boys of Boles's, had 
 that cricket match against the small boys of Coles's, when 
 Boles and Coles had actually met upon the ground, and 
 when, instead of instantly hitting out at one another with 
 the utmost fury, as we had all hoped and expected, those 
 sneaks had said respectively, "I hope Mrs. Boles is well," 
 and " I hope Mrs. Coles and the baby are doing charm- 
 ingly." Could it be that, after all this, and much more, 
 the Playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expectorated 
 boiling- water and redhot cinders on it, and the whole be- 
 longed by Act of Parliament to S.E.R.? 
 
 As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy 
 heart for a walk all over the town. And first of Timpson's 
 up-street. When I departed from Dullborough in the 
 strawy arms of Timpson's Blue-Eyed Maid, Timpson's was 
 a moderate-sized coach-office (in fact, a little coach-office), 
 with an oval transparency in the window, which looked 
 beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson's coaches 
 in the act of passing a milestone on the London road with 
 
114 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 great velocity, completely full inside and out, and all the 
 passengers dressed in the first style of fashion, and enjoy- 
 ing themselves tremendously. I found no such place as 
 Timpson's now— no such bricks and rafters, not to mention 
 the name — no such edifice on the teeming earth. Pickford 
 had come and knocked Timpson's down. Pickford had not 
 only knocked Timpson's down, but had knocked two or 
 three houses down on each side of Timpson's, and then had 
 knocked the whole into one great establishment with a pair 
 of big gates, in and out of which, his ( Pickford' s) wag- 
 gons are, in these days, always rattling, with their drivers 
 sitting up so high, that they look in at the second-floor 
 windows of the old-fashioned houses in the High-street as 
 they shake the town. I have not the honour of Pickford's 
 acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me an injury, 
 not to say committed an act of boy slaughter, in running 
 over my childhood in this rough manner; and if ever I 
 meet Pickford driving one of his own monsters, and smok- 
 ing a pipe the while (which is the custom of his men), he 
 shall know by the expression of my eye, if it catches his, 
 that there is something wrong between us. 
 
 Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to come rush- 
 ing into Dullborough and deprive the town of a public pic- 
 ture. He is not Napoleon Bonaparte. When he took down 
 the transparent stage-coach, he ought to have given the 
 town a transparent van. With a gloomy conviction that 
 Pickford is wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I pro- 
 ceeded on my way. 
 
 It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a 
 night-bell at my door, for in my very young days I was 
 taken to so many lyings-in that I wonder I escaped becom- 
 ing a professional martyr to them in after-life. I suppose 
 I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large circle of mar- 
 ried acquaintance. However that was, as I continued my 
 walk through Dullborough, I found many houses to be 
 solely associated in my mind with this particular interest. 
 At one little greengrocer's shop, down certain steps from 
 the street, I remember to have waited on a \a.dy who had 
 had four children (I am afraid to write five, though I' 
 fully believe it was five) at a birth. This meritorious 
 woman held quite a reception in her room on the morning 
 when I was introduced there, and the sight of the house 
 brought vividly to my mind how the four (five) deceased 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 115 
 
 young people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth on a chest 
 of drawers; reminding me by a homely association, which 
 I suspect their complexion to have assisted, of pigs' feet 
 as they are usually displayed at a neat tripe-shop. Hot 
 caudle was handed round on the occasion, and I further re- 
 membered as I stood contemplating the greengrocer's, that 
 a subscription was entered into among the company, which 
 became extremely alarming to my consciousness of having 
 pocket-money on my person. This fact being known to my 
 conductress, whoever she was, I was earnestly exhorted to 
 contribute^ but resolutely declined : therein disgusting the 
 company, who gave me to understand that I must dismiss 
 all expectations of going to Heaven. 
 
 How does it happen that when all else is change wherever 
 one goes, there yet seem, in every place, to be some few 
 people who never alter? As the sight of the greengrocer's 
 house recalled these trivial incidents of long ago, the iden- 
 tical greengrocer appeared on the steps, with his hands in 
 his pockets, and leaning his shoulder against the door-post, 
 as my childish eyes had seen him many a time; indeed, 
 there was his old mark on the door-post yet, as if his 
 shadow had become a fixture there. It was he himself; he 
 might formerly have been an old-looking young man, or he 
 might now be a young-looking old man, but there he was. 
 In walking along the street, I had as yet looked in vain for 
 a familiar face, or even a transmitted face; here was the 
 very greengrocer who had been weighing and handling 
 baskets on the morning of the reception. As he brought 
 with him a dawning remembrance that he had had no pro- 
 prietary interest in those babies, I crossed the road, and 
 accosted him on the subject. He was not in the least ex- 
 cited or gratified, or in any way roused, by the accuracy of 
 my recollections, but said, Yes, summut out of the common 
 — he didn't remember how many it was (as if half-a-dozen 
 babes either way made no difference) — had happened to a 
 Mrs. What's-her-name, as once lodged there — but he didn't 
 call it to mind, particular. Nettled by this phlegmatic 
 conduct, I informed him that I had left the town when I 
 was a child. He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and 
 not without a sarcastic kind of complacency, Had I? Ah! 
 And did I find it had got on tolerably well without me? 
 Such is the difference (I thought, when I had left him a 
 few hundred yards behind, and was by so much in a better 
 
116 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 temper) between going away from a place and remaining m 
 it. I had no right, I reflected, to be angry with the green- 
 grocer for his want of interest, I was nothing to him: 
 whereas he was the town, the cathedral, the bridge, the 
 river, my childhood, and a large slice of my life, to me. 
 
 Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a 
 child there. I had entertained the impression that the 
 High-street was at least as wide as Regent-street, London, 
 or the Italian Boulevard at Paris. I found it little better 
 than a lane. There was a public clock in it, which I had 
 supposed to be the finest clock in the world : whereas it 
 now turned out to be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and 
 weak a clock as ever I saw. It belonged to a Town Hall, 
 where I had seen an Indian (who I now suppose wasn't an 
 Indian) swallow a sword (which I now suppose he didn't). 
 The edifice had appeared to me in those days so glorious a 
 structure, that I had set it up in my mind as the model on 
 which the Genie of the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin. 
 A mean little brick heap, like a demented chapel, with a 
 few yawning persons in leather gaiters, and in the last ex- 
 tremity for something to do, lounging at the door with 
 their hands in their pockets, and calling themselves a Corn 
 Exchange ! 
 
 The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the 
 fishmonger, who had a compact show of stock in his win- 
 dow, consisting of a sole and a quart of shrimps — and I re- 
 solved to comfort my mind by going to look at it. Richard 
 the Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first appeared 
 to me there, and had made my heart leap with terror by 
 backing up against the stage-box in which I was posted, 
 while struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond. It 
 was within those walls that I had learnt as from a page of 
 English history, how that wicked King slept in war-time 
 on a sofa much too short for him, and how fearfully his 
 conscience troubled his boots. There, too, had I first seen 
 the funny countryman, but countryman of noble principles, 
 in a flowered waistcoat, crunch up his little hat and throw 
 it on the ground, and pull off his coat, saying, " Dom thee, 
 squire, coom on with thy fistes then ! " At which the lovely 
 young woman who kept company with him (and who went 
 out gleaning, in a narrow white muslin apron with five 
 beautiful bars of five different coloured ribbons across it) 
 was so frightened for his sake, that she fainted away. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 117 
 
 Many wondrous secrets of Nature had 1 come to the knowl- 
 edge of in that sanctuary : of which not the least terrific 
 were, that the witches in Macbeth bore an awful resem- 
 blance to the Thanes and other proper inhabitants of Scot- 
 land; and that the good King Duncan couldn't rest in his 
 grave, but was constantly coming out of it and calling him- 
 self somebody else. To the Theatre, therefore, I repaired 
 for consolation. But I found very little, for it was in a 
 bad and declining way. A dealer in wine and bottled beer 
 had already squeezed his trade into the box-office, and the 
 theatrical money was taken — when it came — in a kind of 
 meat-safe in the passage. The dealer in wine and bottled 
 beer must have insinuated himself under the stage too; for 
 he announced that he had various descriptions of alcoholic 
 drinks "in the wood," and there was no possible stowage 
 for the wood anywhere else. Evidently, he was by degrees 
 eating the establishment away to the core, and would soon 
 have sole possession of it. It was To Let, and hopelessly 
 so, for its old purposes; and there had been no entertain- 
 ment within its walls for a long time except a Panorama; 
 and even that had been announced as " pleasingly instruc- 
 tive," and I know too well the fatal meaning and the leaden 
 import of those terrible expressions. No, there was no 
 comfort in the Theatre. It was mysteriously gone, like 
 my own youth. Unlike my own youth, it might be coming 
 back some day; but there was little promise of it. 
 
 As the town was placarded with references to the Dull- 
 borough Mechanics' Institution, I thought I would go and 
 look at that establishment next. There had been no such 
 thing in the town, in my young day, and it occurred to me 
 that its extreme prosperity might have brought adversity 
 upon the Drama. I found the Institution with some diffi- 
 culty, and should scarcely have known that I had found it 
 if I had judged from its external appearance only; but this 
 was attributable to its never having been finished, and hav- 
 ing no front : consequently, it led a modest and retired ex- 
 istence up a stable-yard. It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) 
 a most flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to 
 the town : two triumphs which I was glad to understand 
 were not at all impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no 
 mechanics belonged to it, and that it was steeped in debt 
 to the chimney-pots. It had a large room, which was 
 approached by an infirm step-ladder: the builder having 
 
118 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 declined to construct the intended staircase, without a 
 present payment in cash, which Dullborough (though pro- 
 foundly appreciative of the Institution) seemed unaccount- 
 ably bashful about subscribing. The large room had cost 
 — or would, when paid for — five hundred pounds ; and it 
 had more mortar in it and more echoes, than one might 
 have expected to get for the money. It was fitted up with 
 a platform, and the usual lecturing tools, including a large 
 black board of a menacing appearance. On referring to 
 lists of the courses of lectures that had been given in this 
 thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting 
 that human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever 
 to be relieved and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any 
 poor make- weight piece of amusement, shamefacedly and 
 edgewise. Thus, I observed that it was necessary for the 
 members to be knocked on the head with Gas, Air, Water, 
 Food, the Solar System, the Geological periods, Criticism 
 on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and Arrow- 
 Headed Inscriptions, before they might be tickled by those 
 unaccountable choristers, the negro singers in the court cos- 
 tume of the reign of George the Second. Likewise, that 
 they must be stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there 
 was internal evidence in Shakespeare's works, to prove 
 that his uncle by the mother's side lived for some years at 
 Stoke Newington, before they were brought-to by a Mis- 
 cellaneous Concert. But, indeed the masking of entertain- 
 ment, and pretending it was something else — as people 
 mask bedsteads when they are obliged to have them in 
 sitting-rooms, and make believe that they are book-cases, 
 sofas, chests of drawers, anything rather than bedsteads — 
 was manifest even in the pretence of dreariness that the 
 unfortunate entertainers themselves felt obliged in decency 
 to put forth when they came here. One very agreeable pro- 
 fessional singer who travelled with two professional ladies, 
 knew better than to introduce either of those ladies to sing 
 the ballad " Comin' through the Rye " without prefacing it 
 himself, with some general remarks on wheat and clover; 
 and even then, he dared not for his life call the song a song, 
 but disguised it in the bill as an "Illustration." In the 
 library, also — fitted with shelves for three thousand books, 
 and containing upwards of one hundred and seventy (pre- 
 sented copies mostly), seething their edges in damp plaster 
 — there was such a painfully apologetic return of 62 offen- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 119 
 
 ders who had read Travels, Popular Biograph}^ and mere 
 Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the hearts and souls 
 of mere human creatures like themselves; and such an 
 elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who had had down 
 Euclid after the day's occupation and confinement; and 3 
 who had had down Metaphysics after ditto; and 1 who had 
 had down Theology after ditto; and 4 who had worried 
 Grammar, Political Economy, Botany, and Logarithms all 
 at once after ditto; that I suspected the boasted class to be 
 one man, who had been hired to do it. 
 
 Emerging from the Mechanics' Institution and continuing 
 my walk about the town, I still noticed everywhere the 
 prevalence, to an extraordinary degree, of this custom of 
 putting the natural demand for amusement out of sight, as 
 some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending that it 
 was swept away. And yet it was ministered to, in a dull 
 and abortive manner, by all who made this feint. Look- 
 ing in at what is called in Dullborough "the serious book- 
 seller's," where, in my childhood, I had studied the faces 
 of numbers of gentlemen depicted in rostrums with a gas- 
 light on each side of them, and casting my eyes over the 
 open pages of certain printed discourses there, I found a 
 vast deal of aiming at jocosity and dramatic effect, even in 
 them — yes, verily, even on the part of one very wrathful 
 expounder who bitterly anathematised a poor little Circus. 
 Similarly, in the reading provided for the young people en- 
 rolled in the Lasso of Love, and other excellent unions, I 
 found the writers generally under a distressing sense that 
 they must start (at all events) like story-tellers, and de- 
 lude the young persons into the belief that they were going 
 to be interesting. As I looked in at this window for twenty 
 minutes by the clock, I am in a position to offer a friendly 
 remonstrance — not bearing on this particular point— to the 
 designers and engravers of the pictures in those publica- 
 tions. Have they considered the awful consequence likely 
 to flow from their representations of Virtue? Have they 
 asked themselves the question, whether the terrific pros- 
 pect of acquiring that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldi- 
 ness of arm, feeble dislocation of leg, crispiness of hair, 
 and enormity of shirt-collar, which they represent as in- 
 separable from Goodness, may not tend to confirm sensitive 
 waverers, in Evil? A most impressive example (if I had 
 believed it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, 
 9 
 
120 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 when they mend their ways, was presented to me in this 
 same shop- window. When they were leaning (they were 
 intimate friends) against a post, drunk and reckless, with 
 surpassingly bad hats on, and their hair over their fore- 
 heads, they were rather picturesque, and looked as if they 
 might be agreeable men, if they would not be beasts. But, 
 when they had got over their bad propensities, and when, 
 as a consequence, their heads had swelled alarmingly, their 
 hair had got so curly that it lifted their blown-out cheeks 
 up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they never could do 
 any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they never 
 could do any sleep, they presented a spectacle calculated to 
 plunge a timid nature into the depths of Infamy. 
 
 But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it 
 last, admonished me that I had stayed here long enough; 
 and I resumed my walk. 
 
 I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was 
 suddenly brought up by the sight of a man who got out of 
 a little phaeton at the doctor' s door, and went into the doc- 
 tor's house. Immediately, the air was filled Avith the scent 
 of trodden grass, and the perspective of years opened, and 
 at the end of it was a little likeness of this man keeping a 
 wicket, and I said, " God bless my soul ! Joe Specks ! " 
 
 Through many changes and much work, I had preserved 
 a tenderness for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had 
 made the acquaintance of Roderick Random together, and 
 had believed him to be no ruffian, but an ingenuous and 
 engaging hero. Scorning to ask the boy left in the phae- 
 ton whether it was really Joe, and scorning even to read 
 the brass plate on the door — so sure was I — I rang the bell 
 and informed the servant maid that a stranger sought audi- 
 ence of Mr. Specks. Into a room, half surgery, half studj^, 
 I was shown to await his coming, and I found it, by a 
 series of elaborate accidents, bestrewn with testimonies to 
 Joe. Portrait of Mr. Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver 
 cup from grateful patient to Mr. Specks, presentation ser- 
 mon from local clergyman, dedication poem from local 
 poet, dinner-card from local nobleman, tract on balance of 
 power from local refugee, inscribed Hommage de Hauteur a 
 Specks. 
 
 When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him 
 with a smile that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at 
 a loss to perceive any reason for smiling in connection with 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 121 
 
 that fact, and inquired to what was he to attribute the 
 honour? I asked him, with another smile, could he re- 
 member me at all? He had not (he said) that pleasure. 
 I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of Mr. Specks, 
 when he said reflectively, "And yet there's a something 
 too." Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his eyes that 
 looked well, and I asked him if he could inform me, as a 
 stranger who desired to know and had not the means of 
 reference at hand, what the name of the young lady was, 
 who married Mr. Random? Upon that, he said "Nar- 
 cissa," and, after staring for a moment, called me by my 
 name, shook me by the hand, and melted into a roar of 
 laughter. "Why, of course, you'll remember Lucy Green," 
 he said, after we had talked a little. " Of course," said I. 
 " Whom do you think she married? " said he. " You? " I 
 hazarded. "Me," said Specks, "and you shall see her." 
 So I saw her, and she was fat, and if all the hay in the 
 world had been heaped upon her, it could scarcely have al- 
 tered her face more than Time had altered it from my re- 
 membrance of the face that had once looked down upon me 
 into the fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam. But when 
 her youngest child came in after dinner (for I dined with 
 them, and we had no other company than Specks, Junior, 
 Barrister-at-law, who went away as soon as the cloth Avas 
 removed, to look after the young lady to whom he was go- 
 ing to be married next week), I saw again, in that little 
 daughter, the little face of the hayfield, unchanged, and it 
 quite touched my foolish heart. We talked immensely, 
 Specks and Mrs. Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old 
 selves as though our old selves were dead and gone, and 
 indeed indeed they were — dead and gone as the playing- 
 field that had become a wilderness of rusty iron, and the 
 property of S.E.R. 
 
 Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays 
 of interest that I wanted and should otherwise have missed 
 in it, and linked its present to its past, with a highly 
 agreeable chain. And in Speck's society I had new occa- 
 sion to observe what I had before noticed in similar com- 
 munications among other men. All the schoolfellows and 
 others of old, whom I inquired about, had either done su- 
 perlatively well or superlatively ill — had either become un- 
 certificated bankrupts, or been felonious and got themselves 
 transported ; or had made great hits in life, and done won- 
 
122 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ders. And this is so commonly the case, that I never can 
 imagine what becomes of all the mediocre people of peo- 
 ple's youth — especially considering that we find no lack of 
 the species in our maturity. But, I did not propound this 
 difficulty to Specks, for no pause in the conversation gave 
 me an occasion. Nor, could I discover one single flaw in 
 the good doctor — when he reads this, he will receive in a 
 friendly spirit the pleasantly meant record — except that he 
 had forgotten his Roderick Random, and that he con- 
 founded Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway ; who never knew 
 Random, howsoever intimate with Pickle. 
 
 When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at 
 night (Specks had meant to go with me, but was inoppor- 
 tunely called out), I was in a more charitable mood with 
 Dullborough than I had been all da}^ and yet in my heart 
 I had loved it all day too. Ah ! who was I that I should 
 quarrel with the town for being changed to me, when I 
 myself had come back, so changed, to it ! All my early 
 readings and early imaginations dated from this place, and 
 I took them away so full of innocent construction and guile- 
 less belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so 
 much the wiser and so much the worse ! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 NIGHT WALKS. 
 
 Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, refer- 
 able to a distressing impression, caused me to walk about 
 the streets all night, for a series of several nights. The 
 disorder might have taken a long time to conquer, if it had 
 been faintly experimented on in bed; but, it was soon de- 
 feated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly after 
 lying down, and going out, and coming home tired at sun- 
 rise. 
 
 In the course of those nights, I finished my education in 
 a fair amateur experience of houselessness. My principal 
 object being to get through the night, the pursuit of it 
 brought me into sympathetic relations with people who 
 have no other object every night in the year. 
 
 The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 123 
 
 and cold. The sun not rising before half-past five, the 
 night perspective looked sufficiently long at half-past 
 twelve : which was about niy time for confronting it. 
 
 The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which 
 it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one 
 of the first entertainments offered to the contemplation of 
 us houseless people. It lasted about two hours. We lost 
 a great deal of companionship when the late public-houses 
 turned their lamps out, and when the potman thrust the 
 last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles 
 and stray people were left us, after that. If we were very 
 lucky, a policeman's rattle sprang and a fray turned up; 
 but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was 
 provided. Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst 
 kept part of London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, 
 and along a portion of the line of the Old Kent-road, the 
 peace was seldom violently broken. But, it was always the 
 case that London, as if in imitation of individual citizens 
 belonging to it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness. 
 After all seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen 
 would surely follow; and Houselessness even observed that 
 intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically attracted 
 towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one 
 drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, 
 that another drunken object would stagger up before five 
 minutes were out, to fraternise or fight with it. When we 
 made a divergence from the regular species of drunkard, 
 the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and 
 encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent appearance, 
 fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in soiled mourning. 
 As the street experience in the night, so the street experience 
 in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly into 
 a little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor. 
 
 At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn 
 out — the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from 
 some late pieman or hot-potato man — and London would 
 sink to rest. And then the yearning of the houseless mind 
 would be for any sign of company, any lighted place, any 
 movement, anything suggestive of any one being up — nay, 
 even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked out 
 for lights in windows. 
 
 Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houseless- 
 ness would walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but 
 
124 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the interminable tangle of streets, save at a corner, here 
 and there, two policemen in conversation, or the sergeant 
 or inspector looking after his men. Now and then in the 
 night — but rarely — Houselessness would become aware of 
 a furtive head peering out of a doorway a few yards before 
 him, and, coming up with the head, would find a man 
 standing bolt upright to keep within the doorway's shadow, 
 and evidently intent upon no particular service to society. 
 Under a kind of fascination, and in a ghostly silence suit- 
 able to the time, Houselessness and this gentleman would 
 eye one another from head to foot, and so, without ex- 
 change of speech, part, mutually suspicious. Drip, drip, 
 drip, from ledge and coping, splash from pipes and water- 
 spouts, and by-and-bye the houseless shadow would fall 
 upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it 
 being in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of 
 excuse for saying "Good-night" to the toll-keeper, and 
 catching a glimpse of his fire. A good fire and a good 
 great-coat and a good woollen neck-shawl, were comfort- 
 able things to see in conjunction with the toll-keeper; also 
 his brisk wakefulness was excellent company when he rat- 
 tled the change of halfpence down upon that metal table 
 of his, like a man who defied the night, with all its sor- 
 rowful thoughts, and didn't care for the coming of dawn. 
 There was need of encouragement on the threshold of the 
 bridge, for the bridge was dreary. The chopped-up mur- 
 dered man, had not been lowered with a rope over the par- 
 apet when those nights were; he was alive, and slept then 
 quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream 
 of where he was to come. But the river had an awful look, 
 the buildings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, 
 and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the 
 water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to 
 show where they went down. The wild moon and clouds 
 were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and 
 the very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie 
 oppressively upon the river. 
 
 Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there 
 was but the distance of a few hundred paces, so the thea- 
 tres came next. Grim and black within, at night, those 
 great dry Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the rows 
 of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and the seats 
 all empty. One would think that nothing in them knew 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 125 
 
 itself at such a time but Yorick's skull . In one of my night 
 walks, as the church steeples were shaking the March winds 
 and rain with the strokes of Four, I passed the outer 
 boundary of one of these great deserts, and entered it. 
 With a dim lantern in my hand, I groped my well-known 
 way to the stage and looked over the orchestra — which was 
 like a great grave dug for a time of pestilence — into the 
 void beyond. A dismal cavern of an immense aspect, with 
 the chandelier gone dead like everything else, and nothing 
 visible through mist and fog and space, but tiers of wind- 
 ing-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 threat- 
 ened to overwhelm them, was now in possession of a strong 
 serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait for the 
 serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed its forked 
 tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse 
 candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away. 
 Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my light above 
 my head towards the rolled-up curtain — green no more, but 
 black as ebony — my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, 
 showing faint indications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and 
 cordage. Methought I felt much as a diver might, at the 
 bottom of the sea. 
 
 In those small hours when there was no movement in the 
 streets, it afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in 
 the way, and, touching its rough stone, to think of the 
 prisoners in their sleep, and then to glance in at the lodge 
 over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and light of the 
 watching turnkeys, on the white Avail. Not an inappropri- 
 ate time either, to linger by that wicked little Debtors' 
 Door — shutting tighter than any other door one ever saw — 
 which has been Death's Door to so many. In the days of 
 the uttering of forged one-pound notes by people tempted 
 up from the country, how many hundreds of wretched 
 creatures of both sexes — many quite innocent — swung out 
 of a pitiless and inconsistent world, with the tower of yon- 
 der Christian church of Saint Sepulchre monstrously before 
 their eyes ! Is there any haunting of the Bank Parlour, 
 by the remorseful souls of old directors, in the nights of 
 these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this degen- 
 erate Aceldama of an Old Bailey? 
 
 To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times 
 
126 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 and bemoaning the present evil period, would be an easy 
 next step, so I would take it, and would make my house- 
 less circuit of the Bank, and give a thought to the treasure 
 within; likeAvise to the guard of soldiers passing the night 
 there, and nodding over the fire. Next, I went to Billings- 
 gate, in some hope of market-people, but it proving as yet 
 too early, crossed London-bridge and got down by the 
 water-side on the Surrey shore among the buildings of the 
 great brewery. There was plenty going on at the brewery; 
 and the reek, and the smell of grains, and the rattling of 
 the plump dray horses at their mangers, were capital com- 
 pany. Quite refreshed by having mingled with this good 
 society, I made a new start with a new heart, setting the 
 old King's Bench prison before me for my next object, and 
 resolving, when I should come to the wall, to think of poor 
 Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men. 
 
 A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult 
 to detect the beginning of. It had carried Horace Kinch 
 inside the wall of the old King's Bench prison, and it had 
 carried him out with his feet foremost. He was a likely 
 man to look at, in the prime of life, well to do, as clever 
 as he needed to be, and popular among many friends. 
 He was suitably married, and had healthy and pretty chil- 
 dren. But, like some fair-looking houses or fair-looking 
 ships, he took the Dry Rot. The first strong external rev- 
 elation of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and 
 lounge; to be at street-corners without intelligible reason; 
 to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places 
 rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have an 
 intention of performing a variety of intangible duties to- 
 morrow or the day after. When this manifestation of the 
 disease is observed, the observer will usually connect it 
 with a vague impression once formed or received, that the 
 patient was living a little too hard. He will scarcely have 
 had leisure to turn it over in his mind and form the terri- 
 ble suspicion "Dry Rot," when he will notice a change for 
 the worse in the patient's appearance: a certain slovenli- 
 ness and deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor 
 intoxication, nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this, 
 succeeds a smell as of strong waters, in the morning; to 
 that, a looseness respecting money; to that a stronger 
 smell as of strong waters, at all times; to that, a looseness 
 respecting everything; to that, a trembling of the limbs, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 127 
 
 somnolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces. As it is in 
 wood, so it is in men. Dry Bot advances at a compound 
 usury quite incalculable. A plank is found infected with 
 it, and the whole structure is devoted. Thus it had been 
 with the unhappy Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small 
 subscription. Those who knew him had not nigh done say- 
 ing, " So well off, so comfortably established, with such 
 hope before him — and yet, it is feared, with a slight touch 
 of Dry Eot!" when lo! the man was all Dry Rot and 
 dust. 
 
 From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights 
 with this too common story, I chose next to wander by 
 Bethlehem Hospital; partly, because it lay on my road 
 round to Westminster; partly, because I had a night fancy 
 in my head which could be best pursued within sight of its 
 walls and dome. And the fancy was this : Are not the 
 sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lie a dream- 
 ing? Are not all of us outside this hospital, who dream, 
 more or less in the condition of those inside it, every night 
 of our lives? Are we not nightly persuaded, as they daily 
 are, that we associate preposterously with kings and queens, 
 emperors and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts? Do 
 we not nightly jumble events and personages and times and 
 places, as these do daily? Are we not sometimes troubled 
 by our own sleeping inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly 
 try to account for them or excuse them, just as these do 
 sometimes in respect of their waking delusions? Said an 
 afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like this, 
 " Sir, I can frequently fly." I was half ashamed to reflect 
 that so could I — by night. Said a woman to me on the 
 same occasion, " Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine 
 with me, and her Majesty and I dine off peaches and mac- 
 caroni in our night-gowns, and his Boyal Highness the 
 Prince Consort does us the honour to make a third on horse- 
 back in a Field-Marshal's uniform." Could I refrain from 
 reddening with consciousness when I remembered the amaz- 
 ing royal parties 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 occa- 
 sions? I wonder that the great master who knew every- 
 thing, when he called Sleep the death of each day's life, 
 did not call Dreams the insanity of each day's sanity. 
 
 By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was 
 10 
 
128 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 again setting towards the river; and in a short breathing 
 space I was on Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless 
 eyes with the external walls of the British Parliament — the 
 perfection of a stupendous institution, I know, and the ad- 
 miration of all surrounding nations and succeeding ages, 
 I do not doubt, but perhaps a little the better now and 
 then for being pricked up to its work. Turning off into 
 Old Palace-yard the Courts of Law kept me company for a 
 quarter of an hourj hinting in low whispers what numbers 
 of people they were keeping awake, and how intensely 
 wretched and horrible they were rendering the small hours 
 to unfortunate suitors. Westminster Abbey was fine 
 gloomy society for another quarter of an hour; suggesting 
 a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark arches 
 and pillars, each century more amazed by the century fol- 
 lowing it than by all the centuries going before. And in- 
 deed in those houseless nightwalks — which even included 
 cemeteries where watchmen went round among the graves 
 at stated times, and moved the telltale handle of an index 
 which recorded that they had touched it at such an hour — 
 it was a solemn consideration what enormous hosts of dead 
 belong to one old great city, and how, if they were raised 
 while the living slept, there would not be the space of a 
 pin's point in all the streets and ways for the living to 
 come out into. Not only that, but the vast armies of dead 
 would overflow the hills and valleys beyond the city, and 
 would stretch away all round it, God knows how far. 
 
 When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the 
 dead of the night, it may be at first mistaken for company 
 and hailed as such. But, as the spreading circles of vibra- 
 tion, which you may perceive at such a time with great 
 clearness, go opening out, for ever and ever afterwards 
 widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested) in 
 eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of 
 loneliness is profounder. Once — it was after leaving the 
 Abbey and turning my face north — I came to the great 
 steps of St. Martin's church as the clock was striking 
 Three. Suddenly, a thing that in a moment more I should 
 have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at my feet with 
 a cry of loneliness and houselessness, struck out of it by the 
 bell, the like of Avhich I never heard. We then stood face 
 to face looking at one another, frightened by one another. 
 The creature was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth of 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 129 
 
 twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held 
 together with one of its hands. It shivered from head to 
 foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at me — perse- 
 cutor, devil, ghost, whatever it thought me — it made with 
 its whining mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a wor- 
 ried dog. Intending to give this ugly object, money, I put 
 out my hand to stay it — for it recoiled as it whined and 
 snapped — and laid my hand upon its shoulder. Instantly, 
 it twisted out of its garment, like the young man in the 
 New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in 
 my hand. 
 
 Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, 
 was wonderful company. The great waggons of cabbages, 
 Avith growers, men and boys lying asleep under them, and 
 with sharp dogs from market-garden neighbourhoods look- 
 ing after the whole, were as good as a party. But one of 
 the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found in 
 the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the 
 baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any object they think 
 they can lay their thieving hands on, dive under the carts 
 and barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually 
 making a blunt pattering on the pavement of the Piazza 
 with the rain of their naked feet. A painful and unnat- 
 ural result comes of the comparison one is forced to insti- 
 tute between the growth of corruption as displayed in the 
 so much improved and cared for fruits of the earth, and 
 the growth of corruption as displayed in these all uncared 
 for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages. 
 
 There Avas early coffee to be got about Covent-garden 
 Market, and that was more company — warm company, too, 
 which was better. Toast of a very substantial quality, was 
 likewise procurable ; though the towzled-headed man who 
 made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee-room, hadn't 
 got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with sleep that in 
 every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew behind 
 the partition into complicated cross-roads of choke and 
 snore, and lost his way directly. Into one of these estab- 
 lishments (among the earliest) near Bow-street, there 
 came one morning as I sat over my houseless cup, ponder- 
 ing where to go next, a man in a high and long snuff-col- 
 oured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of my belief, nothing 
 else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large cold meat 
 pudding; a meat pudding so large that it was a very tight 
 
130 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it. This 
 mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his 
 entering, the man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a 
 small loaf, and a large knife and fork and plate. Left to 
 himself in his box, he stood the pudding on the bare table, 
 and, instead of cutting it, stabbed it, over-hand, with the 
 knife, like a mortal enemy; then took the knife out, wiped 
 it on his sleeve, tore the pudding asunder with his fingers, 
 and ate it all up. The remembrance of this man with the 
 pudding remains with me as the remembrance of the most 
 spectral person my houselessness encountered. Twice only 
 was I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in 
 (as I should say, just out of bed, and presently going back 
 to bed), take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the 
 dagger, and eat his pudding all up. He was a man whose 
 figure promised cadaverousness, but who had an excessively 
 red face, though shaped like a horse's. On the second 
 occasion of my seeing him, he said, huskily to the man of 
 sleep, "Am I red to-night?" "You are," he uncompro- 
 misingly answered. "My mother," said the spectre, "was 
 a red-faced woman that liked drink, and I looked at her 
 hard when she laid in her coffin, and I took the com- 
 plexion." Somehow, the pudding seemed an unwholesome 
 pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no more. 
 
 When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a 
 railway terminus with the morning mails coming in, was 
 remunerative company. But like most of the company to 
 be had in this world, it lasted only a very short time. 
 The station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters would 
 emerge from places of concealment, the cabs and trucks 
 would rattle to their places (the post-office carts were al- 
 ready, in theirs), and, finally, the bell would strike up, and 
 the train would come banging in. But there were few pas- 
 sengers and little luggage, and everything scuttled away 
 with the greatest expedition. The locomotive post-offices, 
 with their great nets — as if they had been dragging the 
 country for bodies — would fly open as to their doors, and 
 would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted clerk, a 
 guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters; the engine 
 would blow and heave and perspire, like an engine wiping 
 its forehead and saying what a run it had had; and within 
 ten minutes the lamps were out, and I was houseless and 
 alone again. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 131 
 
 But now, there were driven cattle on the high road near, 
 wanting (as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of 
 stone walls, and squeeze themselves through six inches' 
 width of iron railing, and getting their heads down (also 
 as cattle always do) for tossing-purchase at quite imaginary 
 dogs*, and giving themselves and every devoted creature as- 
 sociated with them a most extraordinary amount of unnec- 
 essary trouble. Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow 
 pale with the knowledge that daylight was coming, and 
 straggling workpeople were already in the streets, and, as 
 waking life had become extinguished with the last pie- 
 man's sparks, so it began to be rekindled with the fires of 
 the first street corner breakfast-sellers. And so by faster 
 and faster degrees, until the last degrees were very fast, 
 the day came, and I was tired and could sleep. And it is 
 not, as I used to think, going home at such times, the least 
 wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert region 
 of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there. I 
 knew well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all 
 kinds, if I had chosen; but they were put out of sight, and 
 my houselessness had many miles upon miles of streets in 
 which it could, and did, have its own solitary way. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 CHAMBERS. 
 
 Having occasion to transact some business with a solici- 
 tor who occupies a highly suicidal set of chambers in 
 Gray's Inn, I afterwards took a turn in the large square of 
 that stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing, with congenial 
 surroundings, my experiences of Chambers. 
 
 I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just 
 left. They were an upper set on a rotten staircase, with a 
 mysterious bunk or bulkhead on the landing outside them, 
 of a rather nautical and Screw Gollier-like appearance than 
 otherwise, and painted an intense black. Many dusty 
 years have passed since the appropriation of this Davy 
 Jones's locker to any purpose, and during the whole period 
 within the memory of living man, it has been hasped and 
 
132 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 padlocked. I cannot quite satisfy my mind whether it was 
 originally meant for the reception of coals, or bodies, or as 
 a place of temporary security for the plunder " looted ", by 
 laundresses; but I incline to the last opinion. It is about 
 breast high, and usually serves as a bulk for defendants in 
 reduced circumstances to lean against and ponder at, when 
 they come on the hopeful errand of trying to make an ar- 
 rangement without money — under which auspicious circum- 
 stances it mostly happens that the legal gentleman they 
 want to see, is much engaged, and they pervade the stair- 
 case for a considerable period. Against this opposing bulk, 
 in the absurdest manner, the tomb-like outer door of the 
 solicitor's chambers (which is also of an intense black) 
 stands in dark ambush, half open, and half shut, all day. 
 The solicitor's apartments are three in number; consisting 
 of a slice, a cell, and a wedge. The slice is assigned to the 
 two clerks, the cell is occupied by the principal, and the 
 wedge is devoted to stray papers, old game baskets from 
 the country, a washing-stand, and a model of a patent 
 Ship's Caboose which was exhibited in Chancery at the 
 commencement of the present century on an application for 
 an injunction to restrain infringement. At about half-past 
 nine on every week-day morning, the younger of the two 
 clerks (who, I have reason to believe, leads the fashion at 
 Pentonville in the articles of pipes and shirts) may be 
 found knocking the dust out of his official door-key on the 
 bunk or locker before mentioned; and so exceedingly sub- 
 ject to dust is his key, and so very retentive of that super- 
 fluity, that in exceptional summer weather when a ray of 
 sunlight has fallen on the locker in my presence, I have 
 noticed its inexpressive countenance to be deeply marked 
 by a kind of Bramah erysipelas or small-pox. 
 
 This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, 
 when I have had restless occasion to make inquiries or 
 leave messages, after office hours) is under the charge of a 
 lady named Sweeney, in figure extremely like an old fam- 
 ily-umbrella : whose dwelling confronts a dead wall in a 
 court off Gray's Inn-lane, and who is usually fetched into 
 the passage of that bower, 'when wanted, from some neigh- 
 bouring home of industry, which has the curious property 
 of imparting an inflammatory appearance to her visage. 
 Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of professed laundresses, 
 and is the compiler of a remarkable manuscript volume en- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 133 
 
 titled "Mrs. Sweeney's Book," from which much curious 
 statistical information may be gathered respecting the high 
 prices and small uses of soda, soap, sand, firewood, and 
 other such articles. I have created a legend in my mind — 
 and consequently I believe it with the utmost pertinacity 
 — that the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter under the 
 Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, and that, in considera- 
 tion of his long and valuable services, Mrs. Sweeney was 
 appointed to her preseDt post. For, though devoid of per- 
 sonal charms, I have observed this lady to exercise a fas- 
 cination over the elderly ticket-porter mind (particularly 
 under the gateway, and in corners and entries), which I 
 can only refer to her being one of the fraternity, yet not 
 competing with it. All that need be said concerning this 
 set of chambers, is said, when I have added that it is in a 
 large double house in Gray's Inn-square, very much out of 
 repair, and that the outer portal is ornamented in a hideous 
 manner with certain stone remains, which have the appear- 
 ance of the dismembered bust, torso, and limbs of a petri- 
 fied bencher. 
 
 Indeed, I look upon Gray's Inn generally as one of the 
 most depressing institutions in brick and mortar, known to 
 the children of men. Can anything be more dreary than 
 its arid Square, Saharah Desert of the law, with the ugly 
 old tiled-topped tenements, the dirty windows, the bills To 
 Let To Let, the door-posts inscribed like gravestones, the 
 crazy gateway giving upon the filthy Lane, the scowling 
 iron-barred prison-like passage into Verulam-buildings, the 
 mouldy red-nosed ticket-porters with little coffin plates and 
 why with aprons, the dry hard atomy-like appearance of the 
 whole dust-heap? When my uncommercial travels tend to 
 this dismal spot, my comfort is its rickety state. Imagina- 
 tion gloats over the fulness of time when the staircases 
 shall have quite tumbled down — they are daily wearing 
 into an ill-savoured powder, but have not quite tumbled 
 down yet — when the last old prolix bencher all of the olden 
 time, shall have been got out of an upper window by means 
 of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn Union; 
 when the last clerk shall have engrossed the last parch- 
 ment behind the last splash on the last of the mud-stained 
 windows, which, all through the miry year, are pilloried 
 out of recognition in Gray's Inn-lane. Then, shall a 
 squalid little trench, with rank grass and a pump in it, ly- 
 
134 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ing between the coffee-house and South-square, be wholly 
 given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have its empire 
 divided between those animals and a few briefless bipeds — 
 surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiving spirits, see- 
 ing that they are wanted there by no mortal — who glance 
 down, with eyes better glazed than their casements, from 
 their dreary and lack-lustre rooms. Then shall the way 
 Nor' Westward, now lying under a short grim colonnade 
 where in summer time pounce flies from law stationering 
 windows into the eyes of laymen, be choked with rubbish 
 and happily become impassable. Then shall the gardens 
 where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery of black, 
 run rank, and pilgrims go to Gorhambury to see Bacon's 
 effigy as he sat, and not come here (which in truth they 
 seldom do) to see where he walked. Then, in a word, 
 shall the old-established vendor of periodicals sit alone in 
 his little crib of a shop behind the Holborn Gate, like that 
 lumbering Marius among the ruins of Carthage, who has 
 sat heavy on a thousand million of similes. 
 
 At one period of my uncommercial career I much fre- 
 quented another set of chambers in Gray's Inn-square. 
 They were what is familiarly called "a top set," and all 
 the eatables and drinkables introduced into them acquired 
 a flavour of Cockloft. I have known an unopened Stras- 
 bourg pate fresh from Fortnum and Mason's, to draw in 
 this cockloft tone through its crockery dish, and become 
 penetrated with cockloft to the core of its inmost truffle 
 in three-quarters of an hour. This, however, was not the 
 most curious feature of those chambers; that, consisted in 
 the profound conviction entertained by my esteemed friend 
 Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean. Whether it 
 was an inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted to 
 him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain. 
 But, I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the 
 question. Now, they were so dirty that I could take off 
 the distinctest impression of my figure on any article of 
 furniture by merely lounging upon it for a few moments; 
 and it used to be a private amusement of mine to print my- 
 self off — if I may use the expression — all over the rooms. 
 It was the first large circulation I had. At other times I 
 have accidentally shaken a window curtain while in ani- 
 mated conversation with Parkle,' and struggling insects 
 which were certainly red, and were certainly not ladybirds, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 135 
 
 have dropped on the back of my hand. Yet Parkle lived 
 in that top set years, bound body and soul to the supersti- 
 tion that they were clean. He used to say, when congrat- 
 ulated upon them, " Well, they are not like chambers in 
 one respect, you know; they are clean." Concurrently, he 
 had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs. Mig- 
 got was in some way connected with the Church. When 
 he was in particularly good spirits, he used to believe that 
 a deceased uncle of hers had been a Dean; when he was 
 poorly and low, he believed that her brother had been a 
 Curate. I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel woman) 
 were on confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit 
 herself to any distinct assertion on the subject; she merely 
 claimed a proprietorship in the Church, by looking when it 
 was mentioned, as if the reference awakened the slumber- 
 ing Past, and were personal. It may have been his amia- 
 ble confidence in Mrs. Miggot' s better days that inspired 
 my friend with his delusion respecting the chambers, but 
 he never wavered in his fidelity to it for a moment, though 
 he wallowed in dirt seven years. 
 
 Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into 
 the garden; and we have sat up there together many a 
 summer evening, saying how pleasant it was, and talking 
 of many things. To my intimacy with that top set, I am 
 indebted for three of my liveliest personal impressions of 
 the loneliness of life in chambers. They shall follow here, 
 in order; first, second, and third. 
 
 First. My Gray's Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of his 
 legs, and it became seriously inflamed. Not knowing of 
 his indisposition, I was on my way to visit him as usual, 
 one summer evening, when I was much surprised by meet- 
 ing a lively leech in Field-court, Gray's Inn, seemingly on 
 his way to the West End of London. As the leech was 
 alone, and was of course unable to explain his position, 
 even if he had been inclined to do so (which he had not 
 the appearance of being), I passed him and went on. 
 Turning the corner of Gray's Inn-square, I was beyond 
 expression amazed by meeting another leech — also entirely 
 alone, and also proceeding in a westerly direction, though 
 with less decision of purpose. Ruminating on this ex- 
 traordinary circumstance, and endeavouring to remember 
 whether I had ever read, in the Philosophical Transactions 
 or any work on Natural History, of a migration of Leeches, 
 
136 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 I ascended to the top set, past the dreary series of closed 
 outer doors of offices and an empty set or two, which inter- 
 vened between that lofty region and the surface. Entering 
 my friend's rooms, I found him stretched upon his back, 
 like Prometheus Bound, with a perfectly demented ticket- 
 porter in attendance on him instead of the Vulture : which 
 helpless individual, who was feeble and frightened, and 
 had (my friend explained to me, in great choler) been en- 
 deavouring for some hours to apply leeches to his leg, and 
 as yet had only got on two out of twenty. To this Unfor- 
 tunate's distraction between a damp cloth on which he had 
 placed the leeches to freshen them, and the wrathful ad- 
 jurations of my friend to " Stick 'em on, sir ! " I referred 
 the phenomenon I had encountered : the rather as two fine 
 specimens were at that moment going out at the door, 
 Avhile a general insurrection of the rest was in progress on 
 the table. After a. while our united efforts prevailed, and, 
 when the leeches came off and had recovered their spirits, 
 we carefully tied them up in a decanter. But I never heard 
 more of them than that they were all gone next morning, 
 and that the Out-of-door young man of Bickle Bush and 
 Bodger, on the ground floor, had been bitten and blooded 
 by some creature not identified. They never "took" on 
 Mrs. Miggot, the laundress; but, I have always preserved 
 fresh, the belief that she unconsciously carried several 
 about her, until they gradually found openings in life. 
 
 Second. On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, 
 and on the same floor, there lived a man of law who pur- 
 sued his business elsewhere, and used those chambers as 
 his place of residence. For three or four years, Parkle 
 rarther knew of him than knew him, but after that — for 
 Englishmen — short pause of consideration, they began to 
 speak. Parkle exchanged words with him in his private 
 character only, and knew nothing of his business ways, or 
 means. He was a man a good deal about town, but always 
 alone. We used to remark to one another, that although 
 we often encountered him in theatres, concert-rooms, and 
 similar public places, he was always alone. Yet he was 
 not a gloomy man, and was of a decidedly conversational 
 turn; insomuch that he would sometimes of an evening 
 lounge with a cigar in his mouth, half in and half out of 
 Parkle' s rooms, and discuss the topics of the day. by the 
 hour. He used to hint on these occasions that he had foui 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 137 
 
 faults to find with life; firstly, that it obliged a man to be 
 always winding up his watch; secondly, that London was 
 too small; thirdly, that it therefore wanted variety; fourth- 
 ly that there was too much dust in it. There was so much 
 dust in his own faded chambers, certainly, that they re- 
 minded me of a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic anticipa- 
 tion of the present time, which had newly been brought to 
 light, after having remained buried a few thousand years. 
 One dry hot autumn evening at twilight, this man, being 
 then five years turned of fifty, looked in upon Parkle in his 
 usual lounging way, with his cigar in his mouth as usual, 
 and said, "lam going out of town." As he never went 
 out of town, Parkle said, " Oh indeed ! At last? " " Yes," 
 says he, " at last. For what is a man to do? London is so 
 small ! If you go West, you come to Hounslow. If you 
 go East, you come to Bow. If you go South, there's Brix- 
 ton or Norwood. If you go North, you can't get rid of 
 Barnet. Then, the monotony of all the streets, streets, 
 streets — and of all the roads, roads, roads — and the dust, 
 dust, dust ! " When he had said this, he wished Parkle a 
 good evening, but came back again and said, with his watch 
 in his hand, "Oh, I really cannot go' on winding up this 
 watch over and over again; I wish you would take care of 
 it." So, Parkle laughed and consented, and the man went 
 out of town. The man remained out of town so long, that 
 his letter-box became choked, and no more letters could 
 be got into it, and they began to be left at the lodge and to 
 accumulate there. At last the head-porter decided, on con- 
 ference with the steward, to use his master-key and look 
 into the chambers, and give them the benefit of a whiff of 
 air. Then, it was found that he had hanged himself to his 
 bedstead, and had left this written memorandum: "I 
 should prefer to be cut down by my neighbour and friend 
 (if he will allow me to call him so), H. Parkle, Esq." 
 This was an end of Parkle's occupancy of chambers. He 
 went into lodgings immediately. 
 
 Third. While Parkle lived in Gray's Inn, and I myself 
 was uncommercially preparing for the Bar — which is done, 
 as everybody knows, by having a frayed old gown put on 
 in a pantry by an old woman in a chronic state of Saint 
 Anthony's fire and dropsy, and, so decorated, bolting a bad 
 dinner in a party of four, whereof each individual mistrusts 
 the other three — I say, while these things were, there was 
 
138 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 a certain elderly gentleman who lived in a court of the 
 Temple, and was a great judge and lover of port wine. 
 Every day he dined at his club and drank his bottle or two 
 of port wine, and every night came home to the Temple 
 and went to bed in his lonely chambers. This had gone on 
 many years without variation, when one night he had a fit 
 on coming home, and fell and cut his head deep, but partly 
 recovered and groped about in the dark to find the door. 
 When he was afterwards discovered, dead, it was clearly 
 established by the marks of his hands about the room that 
 he must have done so. Now, this chanced on the night of 
 Christmas Eve, and over him lived a young fellow who had 
 sisters and young country-friends, and who gave them a 
 little party that night, in the course of which they played 
 at Blindman's Buff. They played that game, for their 
 greater sport, by the light of the fire only; and once, when 
 they were all quietly rustling and stealing about, and the 
 blindman was trying to pick out the prettiest sister (for 
 which I am far from blaming him), somebody cried, Hark! 
 The man below must be playing Blindman's Buff by him- 
 self to-night ! They listened, and they heard sounds of 
 some one falling about and stumbling against furniture, 
 and they all laughed at the conceit, and went on with their 
 play, more lighthearted and merry than ever. Thus, those 
 two so different games of life and death were played out 
 together, blindfolded, in the two sets of chambers. 
 
 Such are the occurrences, which, coming to my knowl- 
 edge, imbued me long ago with a strong sense of the loneli- 
 ness of chambers. There was a fantastic illustration to 
 much the same purpose implicitly believed by a strange sort 
 of man now dead, whom I knew when I had not quite ar- 
 rived at legal years of discretion, though I was already in 
 the uncommercial line. 
 
 This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had 
 seen the world in divers irreconcilable capacities — had been 
 an officer in a South American regiment among other odd 
 things — but had not achieved much in any way of life, and 
 was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied chambers of the 
 dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was not 
 up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the 
 name of a friend who had died in the chambers, and had 
 given him the furniture. The story arose out of the furni- 
 ture, and was to this effect : — Let the former holder of the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 139 
 
 chambers, whose name was still upon "the door and door- 
 post, be Mr. Testator. 
 
 Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when 
 he had but very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none 
 for his sitting room. He had lived some wintry months in 
 this condition, and had found it very bare and cold. One 
 night, past midnight, when he sat writing and still had 
 writing to do that must be done before he went to bed, he 
 found himself out of coals. He had coals down-stairs, but 
 had never been to his cellar; however, the cellar-key was 
 on his mantelshelf, and if he went down and opened the 
 cellar it fitted, he might fairly assume the coals in that 
 cellar to be his. As to his laundress, she lived among 
 the coal-waggons and Thames watermen — for there were 
 Thames watermen at that time — in some unknown rat-hole 
 by the river, down lanes and alleys on the other side of the 
 Strand. As to any other person to meet him or obstruct 
 him, Lyons Inn was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody, 
 betting, brooding over bill-discounting or renewing — asleep 
 or awake, minding its own affairs. Mr. Testator took his 
 coal-scuttle in one hand, his candle and key in the other, 
 and descended to the dismalest underground dens of Lj^ons 
 Inn, where the late vehicles in the streets became thunder- 
 ous, and all the water-pipes in the neighbourhood seemed 
 to have Macbeth's Amen sticking in their throats, and to 
 be trying to get it out. After groping here and there 
 among low doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length 
 came to a door with a rusty padlock which his key fitted. 
 Getting the door open with much trouble, and looking 
 in, he found, no coals, but a confused pile of furniture. 
 Alarmed by this intrusion on another man's property, he 
 locked the door again, found his own cellar, filled his scut- 
 tle, and returned up-stairs. 
 
 But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors across and 
 across Mr. Testator's mind incessantly, when, in the chill 
 hour of five in the morning, he got to bed. He particularly 
 wanted a table to write at, and a table expressly made to 
 be written at, had been the piece of furniture in the fore- 
 ground of the heap. When his laundress emerged from her 
 burrow in the morning to make his kettle boil, he artfully 
 led up to the subject of cellars and furniture; but the two 
 ideas had evidently no connection in her mind. When 
 she left him, and he sat at his breakfast, thinking about 
 
140 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
 the furniture, he recalled the rusty state of the padlock, 
 and inferred that the furniture must have been stored in 
 the cellars for a long time — was perhaps forgotten — owner 
 dead, perhaps? After thinking it over, a few days, in the 
 course of which he could pump nothing out of Lyons Inn 
 about the furniture, he became desperate, and resolved to 
 borrow that table. He did so, that night. He had not had 
 the table long, when he determined to borrow an easy- 
 chair; he had not had that long, when he made up his 
 mind to borrow a bookcase; then, a couch; then, a carpet 
 and rug. By that time, he felt he was "in furniture 
 stepped in so far," as that it could be no worse to borrow 
 it all. Consequently, he borrowed it all, and locked up 
 the cellar for good. He had always locked it, after every 
 visit. He had carried up every separate article in the dead 
 of the night, and, at the best, had felt as wicked as a Res- 
 urrection Man. Every article was blue and furry when 
 brought into his rooms, and he had had, in a murderous 
 and guilty sort of way, to polish it up while London slept. 
 
 Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or 
 three years, or more, and gradually lulled himself into the 
 opinion that the furniture was his own. This was his con- 
 venient state of mind when, late one night, a step came up 
 the stairs, and a hand passed over his door feeling for his 
 knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap was rapped 
 that might have been a spring in Mr. Testator's easy-chair 
 to shoot him out of it; so promptly was it attended with 
 that effect. 
 
 With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the 
 door, and found there, a very pale and very tall man; a 
 man who stooped; a man with very high shoulders, a very 
 narrow chest, and a very red nose; a shabby-genteel man. 
 He was wrapped in a long threadbare black coat, fastened 
 up the front with more pins than buttons, and under his 
 arm he squeezed an umbrella without a handle, as if he 
 Avere playing bagpipes. He said, "I ask your pardon, but 
 
 can you tell me " and stopped; his eyes resting on some 
 
 object within the chambers. 
 
 " Can I tell you what? " asked Mr. Testator, noting his 
 stoppage with quick alarm. 
 
 "I ask your pardon," said the stranger, "but — this is 
 not the inquiry I was going to make — do I see in there, any 
 small article of property belonging to me?" 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 141 
 
 Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was not 
 aware — when the visitor slipped past him, into the cham- 
 bers. There, in a goblin way which froze Mr. Testator to 
 the marrow, he examined, first, the writing-table, and said, 
 "Mine;" then, the easy-chair, and said, "Mine;" then, 
 the bookcase, and said, "Mine; " then, turned up a corner 
 of the carpet, and said, " Mine ! " in a word, inspected 
 every item of furniture from the cellar, in succession, and 
 said, "Mine!" Towards the end of this investigation, 
 Mr. Testator perceived that he was sodden with liquor, and 
 that the liquor was gin. He was not unsteady with gin, 
 either in his speech or carriage; but he was stiff with gin 
 in both particulars. 
 
 Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to 
 his making out of the story) the possible consequences of 
 what lie had done in recklessness and hardihood, flashed 
 upon him in their fulness for the first time. When they 
 had stood gazing at one another for a little w r hile, he trem- 
 ulously began : 
 
 " Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, com- 
 pensation, and restitution, are your due. They shall be 
 yours. Allow me to entreat that, without temper, with- 
 out even natural irritation on your part, we may have a 
 little " 
 
 "Drop of something to drink," interposed the stranger. 
 "I am agreeable." 
 
 Mr. Testator had intended to say, "a little quiet con- 
 versation," but with great relief of mind adopted the 
 amendment. He produced a decanter of gin, and was bus- 
 tling about for hot water and sugar, when he found that 
 his visitor had already drunk half of the decanter's con- 
 tents. With hot water and sugar the visitor drank the re- 
 mainder before he had been an hour in the chambers by 
 the chimes of the church of St. Mary in the Strand; and 
 during the process he frequently whispered to himself, 
 "Mine!" 
 
 The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to 
 follow it, the visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness, 
 " At what hour of the morning, sir, will it be convenient? " 
 Mr. Testator hazarded, "At ten?" "Sir," said the visi- 
 tor, "at ten, to the moment, I shall be here." He then 
 contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said, 
 " God bless you ! How is your wife? " Mr Testator (who 
 
142 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 never had a wife) replied with much feeling, "Deeply anx- 
 ious, poor soul, but otherwise well." The visitor there- 
 upon turned and went away, and fell twice in going down- 
 stairs. From that hour he was never heard of. Whether 
 he was a ghost, or a spectral illusion of conscience, or a 
 drunken man who had no business there, or the drunken 
 rightful owner of the furniture, with a transitory gleam of 
 memory; whether he got safe home, or had no home to get 
 to; whether he died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor 
 ever afterwards; he never was heard of more. This was 
 the story, received with the furniture and held to be as 
 substantial, by its second possessor in an upper set of 
 chambers in grim Lyons Inn. 
 
 It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they 
 must have been built for chambers, to have the right kind 
 of loneliness. You may make a great dwelling-house very 
 lonely, by isolating suites of rooms and calling them cham- 
 bers, but you cannot make the true kind of loneliness. In 
 dwelling-houses, there have been family festivals; children 
 have grown in them, girls have bloomed into women in 
 them, courtships and marriages have taken place in them. 
 True chambers never were young, childish, maidenly; 
 never had dolls in them, or rocking-horseS, or christenings, 
 or betrothals, or little coffins. Let Gray's Inn identify the 
 child who first touched hands and hearts with Robinson 
 Crusoe, in any one of its many "sets," and that child's lit- 
 tle statue, in white marble with a golden inscription, shall 
 be at its service, at my cost and charge, as a drinking foun- 
 tain for the spirit, to freshen its thirsty square. Let Lin- 
 coln's produce from all its houses, a twentieth of the pro- 
 cession derivable from any dwelling-house one-twentieth of 
 its age, of fair young brides who married for love and hope, 
 not settlements, and all the Vice-Chancellors shall thence- 
 forward be kept in nosegays for nothing, on application to 
 the Avriter hereof. It is not denied that on the terrace of 
 the Adelphi, or in any of the streets of that subterranean- 
 stable-haunted spot, or about Bedford-row, or James-street 
 of that ilk (a grewsome place), or anywhere among the 
 neighbourhoods that have done flowering and have run to 
 seed, you may find Chambers replete with the accommoda- 
 tions of Solitude, Closeness, and Darkness, Avhere you may 
 be as low-spirited as in the genuine article, and might be 
 as easily murdered, with the placid reputation of having 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 143 
 
 merely gone down to the sea-side. But, the many waters 
 of life did run musical in those dry channels once; — among 
 the Inns, never. The only popular legend known in rela- 
 tion to any one of the dull family of Inns, is a dark Old 
 Bailey whisper concerning Clement's, and importing how 
 the black creature who holds the sun-dial there, was a 
 negro who slew his master and built the dismal pile out of 
 the contents of his strong box — for which architectural 
 offence alone he ought to have been condemned to live in 
 it. But, what populace would waste fancy upon such a 
 place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn, or any 
 of the shabby crew? 
 
 The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had 
 in its entirety out of and away from the genuine Cham- 
 bers. Again, it is not denied that you may be robbed else- 
 where. Elsewhere you may have — for money — dishonesty, 
 drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and profound incapacity. But 
 the veritable shining-red-faced shameless laundress; the 
 true Mrs. Sweeney — in figure, colour, texture, and smell, 
 like the old damp family umbrella; the tip-top complicated 
 abomination of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, 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 ensure 
 that great result, and it is only developed in perfection 
 under an Honourable Society and in an Inn of Court. 
 
 XV. 
 
 NURSE'S STORIES. 
 
 There are not many places that I find it more agreeable 
 to revisit when I am in an idle mood, t'han 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 par- 
 ticular interest in assuring myself that they are unchanged. 
 
 I never was in Robinson Crusoe's Island, yet I fre- 
 quently return there. The colony he established on it soon 
 faded away, and it is uninhabited by any descendants of 
 
144 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the grave and courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and 
 the other mutineers, and has relapsed into its original con- 
 dition. 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 naming colours if a 
 gun were fired there, no face is ever reflected in the waters 
 of the little creek which Friday swam across when pursued 
 by his two brother cannibals with sharpened stomachs. 
 After comparing notes with other travellers who have 
 similarly revisited the Island and conscientiously inspected 
 it, I have satisfied myself that it contains no vestige of Mr. 
 Atkins's domesticity or theology, though his track on the 
 memorable evening of his landing to set his captain ashore, 
 when he was decoyed about and round about until it was 
 dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength and spirits 
 failed him, is yet plainly to be traced. So is the hill-top on 
 which Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the rein- 
 stated captain pointed to the ship, riding within half a 
 mile of the shore, that was to bear him away, in the nine- 
 and-twentieth year of his seclusion in that lonely place. 
 So is the sandy beach on which the memorable footstep was 
 impressed, and where the savages hauled up their canoes 
 when they came ashore for those dreadful public dinners, 
 which led to a dancing worse than speech-making. So is 
 the cave where the flaring eyes of the old goat made such a 
 goblin appearance in the dark. So is the site of the hut 
 where Robinson lived with the dog and the parrot and the 
 cat, and where he endured those first agonies of solitude, 
 which — strange to say — never involved any ghostly fancies; 
 a circumstance so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out 
 something in writing his record? Round hundreds of such 
 objects, hidden in the dense tropical foliage, the tropical 
 sea breaks evermore; and over them the tropical sky, sav- 
 ing in the short rainy season, shines bright and cloudless. 
 
 Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders 
 of France and Spain; nor, did I ever, when night was clos- 
 ing in and the ground was covered with snow, draw up my 
 little company among some felled trees which served as a 
 breastwork, and there fire a train of gunpowder so dexter- 
 ously that suddenly we had three or four score blazing 
 wolves illuminating the darkness around us. Neverthe- 
 less, I occasionally go back to that dismal region and per- 
 form the feat again; when indeed to smell the singeing and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 145 
 
 the frying of the wolves afire, and to see them setting one 
 another alight as they rush and. tumble, and to behold them 
 rolling in the snow vainly attempting to put themselves 
 out, and to hear their howlings taken up by all the echoes 
 as well as by all the unseen wolves within the woods, 
 makes me tremble. 
 
 I was never in the robbers' cave, where Gil Bias 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 dis- 
 abled Black lies everlastingly cursing in bed. I was never 
 in Don Quixote's study, where he read his books of chivalry 
 until he rose and hacked at imaginary giants and then 
 refreshed himself with great draughts of water, yet you 
 couldn't move a book in it without my knowledge, or with 
 my consent. I was never (thank Heaven) in company with 
 the little old woman who hobbled out of the chest and told 
 the merchant Abudah to go in search of the Talisman of 
 Oromanes, yet I make it my business to know that she is 
 well preserved and as intolerable as ever. I was never at 
 the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of bed to 
 steal the pears : not because he wanted any, but because 
 every other boy was afraid : yet I have several times been 
 back to this Academy, to see him let down out of window 
 with a sheet. So with Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brob- 
 ingnag (which has the curious fate of being usually mis- 
 spelt when written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and the 
 Nile, and Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North Pole, 
 and many hundreds of places — I was never at them, yet it 
 is an affair of my life to keep them intact, and I am always 
 going back to them. 
 
 But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the 
 associations of my childhood as recorded in previous pages 
 of these notes, my experience in this wise was made quite 
 inconsiderable and of no account, by the quantity of places 
 and people — utterly impossible places and people, but none 
 the less alarmingly real — that I found I had been intro- 
 duced to by my nurse before I was six years old, and used 
 to be forced to go back to at night without at all wan ting- 
 to go. If we all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged 
 sense than the popular acceptation of that phrase), I sus- 
 pect we should find our nurses responsible for most of 
 the dark corners we are forced to go back to, against our 
 wills. 
 
146 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 The first diabolical character who intruded himself on 
 my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dull- 
 borough), was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch 
 must have been an offshoot of the Blue Beard family, but I 
 had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. His 
 warning name would seem to have awakened no general 
 prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best 
 society and possessed immense wealth. Captain Murder- 
 er's mission was matrimony, and the gratification of a can- 
 nibal appetite with tender brides. On his marriage morn- 
 ing, he always caused both sides of the way to church to 
 be planted with curious flowers; and when his bride said, 
 " Dear Captain Murderer, I never saw flowers like these 
 before: what are they called?" he answered, "They are 
 called Garnish for house-lamb," and laughed at his fero- 
 cious practical joke in a horrid manner, disquieting the 
 minds of the noble bridal company, with a very sharp show 
 of teeth, then displayed for the first time. He made love 
 in a coach and six, and married in a coach and twelve, and 
 all his horses were milk-white horses with one red spot on 
 the back which he caused to be hidden by the harness. 
 For, the spot would come there, though every horse was 
 milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him. And the 
 spot was young bride's blood. (To this terrific point I am 
 indebted for my first personal experience of a shudder and 
 cold beads on the forehead.) When Captain Murderer had 
 made an end of feasting and revelry, and had dismissed 
 the noble guests, and was alone with his wife on the day 
 month after their marriage, it was his whimsical custom 
 to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board. 
 Now, there was this special feature in the Captain's court- 
 ships, that he always asked if the young lady could make 
 pie-crust; and if she couldn't by nature or education, she 
 was taught. Well. When the bride saw Captain Mur- 
 derer produce the golden rolling-pin and silver pie-board, 
 she remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk sleeves 
 to make a pie. The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish 
 of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour and 
 butter and eggs and all things needful, except the inside 
 of the pie; of materials for the staple of the pie itself, the 
 Captain brought out none. Then said the lovely bride, 
 "Dear Captain Murderer, what pie is this to be? " He re- 
 plied, "A meat pie." Then said the lovely bride, "Dear 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 147 
 
 Captain Murderer, I see no meat." The Captain humor- 
 ously retorted, "Look in the glass." She looked in the 
 glass, but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain 
 roared with laughter, and suddenly frowning and drawing 
 his sword, bade her roll out the crust. So she rolled out 
 the crust, dropping large tears upon it all the time because 
 he was so cross, and when she had lined the dish with crust 
 and had cut the crust all ready to fit the top, the Captain 
 called out, " i" see the meat in the glass ! " And the bride 
 looked up at the glass, just in time to see the Captain cut- 
 ting her head off; and he chopped her in pieces, and pep- 
 pered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent 
 it to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones. 
 
 Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering ex- 
 ceedingly, until he came to choose a bride from two twin 
 sisters, and at first didn't know which to choose. For, 
 though one was fair and the other dark, they were both 
 equally beautiful. But the fair twin loved him, and the 
 dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one. The dark 
 twin would have prevented the marriage if she could, but 
 she couldn't; however, on the night before it, much sus- 
 pecting Captain Murderer, she stole out and climbed his 
 garden wall, and looked in at his window through a chink 
 in the shutter, and saw him having his teeth filed sharp. 
 Next day she listened all day, and heard him make his 
 joke about the house-lamb. And that day month, he had 
 the paste rolled out, and cut the fair twin's head off, and 
 chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, 
 and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and ate 
 it all, and picked the bones. 
 
 Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much in- 
 creased by the filing of the Captain's teeth, and again by 
 the house-lamb joke. Putting all things together when he 
 gave out that her sister was dead, she divined the truth, 
 and determined to be revenged. So, she went up to Cap- 
 tain Murderer's house, and knocked at the knocker and 
 pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the door, 
 said : " Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I al- 
 ways loved you and was jealous of my sister." The Cap- 
 tain took it as a compliment, and made a polite answer, 
 and the marriage was quickly arranged. On the night be- 
 fore it, the bride again climbed to his window, and again 
 saw him having his teeth filed sharp. At this sight she 
 
148 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. - 
 
 laughed such a terrible laugh at the chink in the shutter, 
 that the Captain's blood curdled, and he said: "I hope 
 nothing has disagreed with me!" At that, she laughed 
 again, a still more terrible laugh, and the shutter was 
 opened and search made, but she was nimbly gone, and 
 there was no one. Next day they went to church in a 
 coach and twelve, and were married. And that day 
 month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain Murderer 
 cut her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered 
 her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to 
 the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones. 
 
 But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken 
 a deadly poison of a most awful character, distilled from 
 toads' eyes and spiders' knees; and Captain Murderer had 
 hardly picked her last bone, when he began to swell, and 
 to turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to scream. And 
 lie went on swelling and turning bluer, and being more all 
 over spots and screaming, until he reached from floor to ceil- 
 ing and from wall to wall; and then, at one o'clock in the 
 morning, he blew up with a loud explosion. At the sound 
 of it, all the milk-white horses in the stables broke their 
 halters and went mad, and then they galloped over every- 
 body in Captain Murderer's house (beginning with the 
 family blacksmith who had filed his teeth) until the whole 
 were dead, and then they galloped away. 
 
 Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Mur- 
 derer, in my early youth, and added hundreds of times was 
 there a mental compulsion upon me in bed, to peep in at 
 his window as the dark twin peeped, and to revisit his 
 horrible house, and look at him in his blue and spotty and 
 screaming stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and 
 from wall to wall. The young woman who brought me ac- 
 quainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment 
 of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember — as a sort of 
 introductory overture — by claAving the air with both hands, 
 and uttering a long low hollow groan. So acutely did I 
 suffer from this ceremony in combination with this infernal 
 Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was 
 hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story 
 again just yet. But, she never spared me one word of it, 
 and indeed commended the awful chalice to my lips as the 
 only preservative known to science against "The Black 
 Cat " — a weird and glaring-eyed supernatural Tom, who 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 149 
 
 was reputed to prowl about the world by night, sucking the 
 breath of infancy, and who was endowed with a special 
 thirst (as I was given to understand) for mine. 
 
 This female bard — may she have been repaid my debt of 
 obligation to her in the matter of nightmares and perspira- 
 tion! — reappears in my memory as the daughter of a ship- 
 wright. Her name was Mercy, though she had none on 
 me. There was something of a shipbuilding flavour in the 
 following story. As it always recurs to me in a vague as- 
 sociation with calomel pills, I believe it to have been re- 
 served for dull nights when I was low with medicine. 
 
 There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Gov- 
 ernment Yard, and his name was Chips. And his father's 
 name before him was Chips, and his father's name before 
 him was Chips, and they were all Chipses. And Chips the 
 father had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a 
 bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat 
 that could speak; and Chips the grandfather had sold him- 
 self to the l3evil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny 
 nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; 
 and Chips the great-grandfather had disposed of himself 
 in the same direction on the same terms; and the bargain 
 had run in the family for a long long time. So, one day, 
 when young Chips was at work in the Dock Slip all alone, 
 down in the dark hold of an old Seventy-four that was 
 haled up for repairs, the Devil presented himself, and re- 
 marked : 
 
 " A Lemon has pips, 
 And a Yard has ships, 
 And Til have Chips!" 
 
 (I don't know why, but this fact of the Devil's expressing 
 himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.) Chips 
 looked up when he heard the words, and there he saw the 
 Devil with saucer eyes that squinted on a terrible great 
 scale, and that struck out sparks of blue fire continually. 
 And whenever he winked his eyes, showers of blue sparks 
 came out, and his eyelashes made a clattering like flints 
 and steels striking lights. And hanging over one of his 
 arms by the handle was an iron pot, and under that arm 
 was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and under his other arm 
 was half a ton of copper, and sitting on one of his shoul- 
 ders was a rat that could speak. So, the Devil said 
 again : 
 
150 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 "A Lemon has pips, 
 And a Yard has ships, 
 And I'll have Chips!" 
 
 (The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the 
 part of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for 
 some moments.) So, Chips answered never a word, but 
 went on with his work. " What are you doing, Chips? " 
 said the rat that could speak. "I am putting in new. 
 planks where you and your gang have eaten old away," 
 said Chips. "But we'll eat them too," said the rat that 
 could speak; "and we'll let in the water and drown the 
 crew, and we'll eat them too." Chips, being only a ship- 
 wright, and not a Man-of-war's man, said, " You are wel- 
 come to it." But he couldn't keep his eyes off the half a 
 ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails; for nails and 
 copper are a shipwright's sweethearts, and shipwrights will 
 run away with them whenever they can. So, the Devil 
 said, " I see what you are looking at, Chips. You had bet- 
 ter strike the bargain. You know the terms. Your father 
 before you was well acquainted with them, and so were 
 your grandfather and great-grandfather before him." Says 
 Chips, "I like the copper, and I like the nails, and I don't 
 mind the pot, but I don't like the rat." Says the Devil, 
 fiercely, " You can't have the metal without him — and he's 
 a curiosity. I'm going." Chips, afraid of losing the half 
 a ton of copper and the bushel of nails, then said, "Give 
 us hold ! " So, he got the copper and the nails and the pot 
 and the rat that could speak, and the Devil vanished. 
 Chips sold the copper, and he sold the nails, and he would 
 have sold the pot; but whenever he offered it for sale, the 
 rat was in it, and the dealers dropped it, and would have 
 nothing to say to the bargain. So, Chips resolved to kill 
 the rat, and, being at work in the Yard one day with a 
 great kettle of hot pitch on one side of him and the iron 
 pot with the rat in it on the other, he turned the scalding 
 pitch into the pot, and filled it full. Then, he kept his 
 eye upon it till it cooled and hardened, and then he let it 
 stand for twenty days, and then he heated the pitch again 
 and turned it back into the kettle, and then he sank the 
 pot in water for twenty days more, and then he got the 
 smelters to put it in the furnace for twenty days more, and 
 then they gave it him out, red hot, and looking like red- 
 hot glass instead of iron — yet there was the rat in it, just 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 151 
 
 the same as ever ! And the moment it caught his eye, it 
 said with a jeer : 
 
 " A Lemon has pips, 
 
 And a Yard has ships, 
 
 And i'll have Chips ! " 
 
 (For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, 
 with inexpressible horror, which now culminated.) Chips 
 now felt certain in his own mind that the rat would stick 
 to him; the. rat, answering his thought, said, "I will — like 
 pitch!" 
 
 Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had 
 spoken, and made off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn't 
 keep its word. But, a terrible thing happened next day. 
 For, when dinner-time came, and the Dock-bell rang to 
 strike work, he put his rule into the long pocket at the side 
 of his trousers, and there he found a rat — not that rat, but 
 another rat. And in his hat, he found another; and in his 
 pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his 
 coat, when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more. And 
 from that time he found himself so frightfully intimate 
 with all the rats in the Yard, that they climbed up his legs 
 when he was at work, and sat on his tools while he used 
 them. And they could all speak to one another, and he 
 understood what they said. And they got into his lodging, 
 and into his bed, and into his teapot, and into his beer, 
 and into his boots. And he was going to be married to a 
 corn-chandler's daughter; and when he gave her a work- 
 box he had himself made for her, a rat jumped out of it; 
 and when he put his arm round her waist, a rat clung about 
 her; so the marriage was broken off, though the banns 
 were already twice put up — which the parish clerk well re- 
 members, for, as he handed the book to the clergyman for 
 the second time of asking, a large fat rat ran over the leaf. 
 (By this time a special cascade of rats was rolling down 
 my back, and the whole of my small listening person was 
 overrun with them. At intervals ever since, I have been 
 morbidly afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand 
 should find a specimen or two of those vermin in it.) 
 
 You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; 
 but even all this was not the worst. He knew besides, 
 what the rats were doing, wherever they were. So, some- 
 times he would cry aloud, when he was at his club at night, 
 "Oh! Keep the rats out of the convicts' burying ground! 
 11 
 
152 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Don't let them do that! " Or, "There's one of them at the 
 cheese down-stairs!" Or, "There's two of them smelling 
 at the baby in the garret ! " Or, other things of that sort. 
 At last, he was voted mad, and lost his work in the Yard, 
 and conld get no other work. But, King George wanted 
 men, so before very long he got pressed for a sailor. And 
 so he was taken off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying 
 at Spithead, ready to sail. And so the first thing he made 
 out in her as he got near her, was the figure-head of the old 
 Seventy-four, where he had seen the Devil. She was called 
 the Argonaut, and they rowed right under the bowsprit 
 where the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a sheepskin in 
 his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea; and 
 sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak, 
 and his exact words were these : " Chips ahoy ! Old boy ! 
 We've pretty well eat them too, and we'll drown the crew, 
 and will eat them too!" (Here I always became exceed- 
 ingly faint, and would have asked for water, but that I was 
 speechless.) 
 
 The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don't 
 know where that is, you ought to it, and angels will never 
 love you. (Here I felt myself an outcast from a future 
 state.) The ship set sail that very night, and she sailed, 
 arid sailed, and sailed. Chips's feelings Avere dreadful. 
 Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No wonder. At last, 
 one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral. The 
 Admiral giv' leave. Chips went down on his knees in the 
 Great State Cabin. " Your Honour, unless your Honour, 
 without a moment's loss of time makes sail for the nearest 
 shore, this is a doomed ship, and her name is the Coffin ! " 
 "Young man, your words are a madman's words." " Your 
 Honour, no; they are nibbling us away." "They?" 
 " Your honour, them dreadful rats. Dust and hollowness 
 where solid oak ought to be ! Rats nibbling a grave for 
 every man on board ! Oh ! Does your Honour love your 
 Lady and your pretty children? " " Yes, my man, to be 
 sure." " Then, for God's sake, make for the nearest shore, 
 for at this present moment the rats are all stopping in their 
 work, and are all looking straight towards you with bare 
 teeth, and are all saying to one another that you shall 
 never, never, never, never, see your Lady and your children 
 more." "My poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor. 
 Sentry, take care of this man! " 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 153 
 
 So, lie was bled and he was blistered, and he was this 
 and that, for six whole days and nights. So, then he 
 again asked leave to speak to the Admiral. The Admiral 
 giv' leave. He went down on his knees in the Great State 
 Cabin. "Now, Admiral, you must die! You took no 
 warning; you must die ! The rats are never wrong in their 
 calculations, and they make out that they'll be through, at 
 twelve to-night. So, you must die ! — With me and all the 
 rest!" And so at twelve o'clock there was a great leak 
 reported in the ship, and a torrent of water rushed in and 
 nothing could stop it, and they all went down, every living 
 soul. And what the rats — being water-rats — left of Chips, 
 at last floated to shore, and sitting on him was an immense 
 overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when the corpse touched 
 the beach and never came up. And there was a deal of 
 seaweed on the remains. And if you get thirteen bits of 
 seaweed, and dry them and burn them in the fire, they 
 will go off like in these thirteen words as plain as plain 
 can be : 
 
 " A Lemon has pips, 
 
 And a Yard has ships, 
 
 And Tve got Chips! " 
 
 The same female bard — descended, possibly, from those 
 terrible old Scalds who seem to have existed for the ex- 
 press purpose of addling the brains of mankind when they 
 begin to investigate languages — made a standing pretence 
 which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number of 
 hideous places that I would by all means have avoided. 
 This pretence was, that all her ghost stories had occurred 
 to her own relations. Politeness towards a meritorious 
 family, therefore, forbade my doubting them, and they ac- 
 quired an air of authentication that impaired my digestive 
 powers for life. There was a narrative concerning an un- 
 earthly animal foreboding death, which appeared in the 
 open street to a parlour-maid who " went to fetch the beer " 
 for supper : first (as I now recall it) assuming the likeness 
 of a black dog, and gradually rising on its hind-legs and 
 swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly sur- 
 passing a hippopotamus : which apparition — not because I 
 deemed it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to 
 be really too large to bear — I feebly endeavoured to explain 
 away. But, on Mercy's retorting with wounded dignity 
 that the parlour-maid was her own sister-in-law, I per- 
 
iB4 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ceived there was no hope, and resigned myself to this zo- 
 ological phenomenon as one of my many pursuers. There 
 was another narrative describing the apparition of a young 
 woman who came out of a glass-case and haunted another 
 young woman until the other young woman questioned it and 
 elicited that its bones (Lord! To think of its being so par- 
 ticular about its bones !) were buried under the glass-case, 
 whereas she required them to be interred, with every Un- 
 dertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound ten, in another 
 particular place. This narrative I considered I had a per- 
 sonal interest in disproving, because we had glass-cases at 
 home, and hoAv, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from 
 the intrusion of young women requiring me to bury them 
 up to twenty-four pound ten, when I had only twopence a 
 week? But my remorseless nurse cut the ground from 
 under my tender feet, by informing me that She was the 
 other young woman; and I couldn't say "I don't believe 
 you; " it was not possible. 
 
 Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was 
 forced to make, against my will, when I was very young 
 and unreasoning. And really, as to the latter part of 
 them, it is not so very long ago — now I come to think of it 
 — that I was asked to undertake them once again, with a 
 steady countenance. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ARCADIAN LONDON. 
 
 Being in a humour for complete solitude and uninter- 
 rupted meditation this autumn, I have taken a lodging for 
 six weeks in the most unfrequented part of England — in a 
 word, in London. 
 
 The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself, is Bond- 
 street. From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the 
 surrounding wilderness, and traverse extensive tracts of 
 the Great Desert. The first solemn feeling of isolation 
 overcome, the first oppressive consciousness of profound re- 
 tirement conquered, 1 enjoy that sense of freedom, and feel 
 reviving within me that latent wildness of the original 
 savage, which has been (upon the whole somewhat fre- 
 quently) noticed by Travellers. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 155 
 
 My lodgings are at a hatter's — my own hatter's. After 
 exhibiting no articles in his window for some weeks, but 
 sea-side wide-awakes, shooting-caps, and a choice of rough 
 waterproof head-gear for the moors and mountains, he has 
 put upon the heads of his family as much of this stock 
 as they could carry, and has taken them off to the Isle 
 of Thanet. His young man alone remains — and remains 
 alone — in the shop. The young man has let out the fire at 
 which the irons are heated, and, saving his strong sense of 
 duty, I see no reason why he should take the shutters 
 down. 
 
 Happily for himself and for his country, the young man 
 is a Volunteer; most happily for himself, or I think he 
 would become the prey of a settled melancholy. For, to 
 live surrounded by human hats, and alienated from human 
 heads to fit them on, is surely a great endurance. But, the 
 young man, sustained by practising his exercise, and by 
 constantly furbishing up his regulation plume (it is unnec- 
 essary to observe that, as a hatter, he is in a cock's-feather 
 corps), is resigned, and uncomplaining. On a Saturday, 
 when he closes early and gets his Knickerbockers on, he is 
 even cheerful. I am gratefully particular in this reference 
 to him, because he is my companion through many peace- 
 ful hours. My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind 
 bis counter, enclosed like the clerk's desk at Church. I 
 shut myself into this place of seclusion, after breakfast, 
 and meditate. At such times, I observe the young man 
 loading an imaginary rifle with the greatest precision, and 
 maintaining a most galling and destructive fire upon the 
 national enemy. I thank him publicly for his companion- 
 ship and his patriotism. 
 
 The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of 
 the scenes by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise 
 early. I go forth in my slippers, and promenade the pave- 
 ment. It is pastoral to feel the freshness of the air in the 
 uninhabited town, and to appreciate the shepherdess char- 
 acter of the few milkwomen who purvey so little milk that it 
 would be worth nobody's while to adulterate it, if anybody 
 were left to undertake the task. On the crowded sea- 
 shore, the great demand for milk, combined with the strong 
 local temptation of chalk, would betray itself in the lowered 
 quality of the article. In Arcadian London I derive it 
 from the cow. 
 
156 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, 
 and the primitive ways into which it has fallen in this au- 
 tumnal Golden Age, make it entirely new to me. Within 
 a few hundred yards of my retreat, is the house of a friend 
 who maintains a most sumptuous butler. I never, until 
 yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine black broad- 
 cloth. Until yesterday, I never saw him off duty, never 
 saw him (he is the best of butlers) with the appearance of 
 having any mind for anything but the glory of his master 
 and his master's friends. Yesterday morning, walking in 
 my slippers near the house of which he is the prop and or- 
 nament — a house now a waste of shutters — I encountered 
 that butler, also in his slippers, and in a shooting suit of 
 one colour, and in a low-crowned straw-hat, smoking an 
 early cigar. He felt that we had formerly met in another 
 state of existence, and that we were translated into a new 
 sphere. Wisely and well, he passed me without recogni- 
 tion. Under his arm he carried the morning paper, and 
 shortly afterwards I saw him sitting on a rail in the pleas- 
 ant open landscape of Regent-street, perusing it at his ease 
 under the ripening sun. 
 
 My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be 
 salted down, I am waited on by an elderly woman labour- 
 ing under a chronic sniff, who, at the shadowy hour of half- 
 past nine o'clock of every evening, gives admittance at the 
 street door to a meagre and mouldy old man whom I have 
 never yet seen detached from a flat pint of beer in a pew- 
 ter pot. The meagre and mouldy old man is her husband, 
 and the pair have a dejected consciousness that they are not 
 justified in appearing on the surface of the earth. They 
 come out of some hole when London empties itself, and go 
 in again when it fills. I saw them arrive on the evening 
 when I myself took possession, and they arrived with the 
 flat pint of beer, and their bed in a bundle. The old man 
 is a weak old man, and appeared to me to get the bed down 
 the kitchen stairs by tumbling down with and upon it. 
 They make their bed in the lowest and remotest corner of 
 the basement, and they smell of bed, and have no posses- 
 sion but bed: unless it be (which I rather infer from an 
 under-current of flavour in them) cheese. I know their 
 name, through the chance of having called the wife's atten- 
 tion, at half-past nine on the second evening of our ac- 
 quaintance, to the circumstance of there being some one at 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 157 
 
 the house door; when she apologetically explained, "It's 
 only Mr. Klein." What becomes of Mr. Klem all day, or 
 when he goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot penetrate; 
 but at half-past nine he never fails to turn up on the door- 
 step with the flat pint of beer. And the pint of beer, flat 
 as it is, is so much more important than himself, that it 
 always seems to my fancy as if it had found him drivelling 
 in the street and had humanely brought him home. In 
 making his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the 
 middle of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles 
 against the wall as if entreating me to take notice that he 
 is occupying as little space as possible in the house; and 
 whenever I come upon him face to face, he backs from me 
 in fascinated confusion. The most extraordinary circum- 
 stance I have traced in connection with this aged couple, 
 is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter, apparently 
 ten years older then either of them, who has also a bed and 
 smells of it, and carries it about the earth at dusk and 
 hides it in deserted houses. I came into this piece of 
 knowledge through Mrs. Klem's beseeching me to sanction 
 the sheltering of Miss Klem under that roof for a single 
 night, "between her takin' care of the upper part in Pall 
 Mall which the family of his back, and a 'ouse in Ser- 
 jameses-street, which the family of leaves towng ter-mor- 
 rer." I gave my gracious consent (having nothing that I 
 know of to do with it), and in the shadowy hours Miss 
 Klem became perceptible on the door-step, wrestling with 
 a bed in a bundle. Where she made it up for the night I 
 cannot positively state, but, I think, in a sink. I know 
 that with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she stowed 
 it and herself away in deep obscurity. In the Klem family, 
 I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and that 
 is a power they possess of converting everything into flue. 
 .Such broken victuals as they take by stealth, appear (what- 
 ever the nature of the viands) invariably to generate flue; 
 and even the nightly pint of beer, instead of assimilating 
 naturally, strikes me as breaking out in that form, equally 
 on the shabby goAvn of Mrs. Klem, and the threadbare coat 
 of her husband. 
 
 Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name — as to Mr. Klem he 
 has no idea of anything — and only knows me as her good 
 gentleman. Thus, if doubtful Avhether I am in my room 
 or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door and says, " Is my good 
 
158 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 gentleman here? " Or, if a messenger desiring to see me 
 were consistent with my solitude, she would show him in 
 with "Here is my good gentleman." I find this to be a 
 generic custom. For, I meant to have observed before now, 
 that in its Arcadian time all my part of London is indis- 
 tinctly pervaded by the Klem species. They creep about 
 with beds, and go to bed in miles of deserted houses. They 
 hold no companionship except that sometimes, after dark, 
 two of them will emerge from opposite houses, and meet in 
 the middle of the road as on neutral ground, or will peep 
 from adjoining houses over an interposing barrier of area 
 railings, and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes re- 
 specting their good ladies or good gentlemen. This I have 
 discovered in the course of various solitary rambles I have 
 taken Northward from my retirement, along the awful per- 
 spectives of Wimpole-street, Harley-street, and similar 
 frowning regions. Their effect Would be scarcely distin- 
 guishable from that of the primeval forests, but for the 
 Klem stragglers; these may be dimly observedj when the 
 heavy shadows fait, flitting to and fro, putting up the door- 
 chain, taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phantoms 
 at the dark parlour windows, or secretly consorting under- 
 ground with the dust-bin and the water-cistern. 
 
 In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar pleas- 
 ure, a primitive state of manners to have superseded the 
 baneful influences of ultra civilisation. Nothing can sur- 
 pass the innocence of the ladies' shoe-shops, the artificial- 
 flower repositories, and the head-dress depots. They are 
 in strange hands at this time of year — hands of unaccus- 
 tomed persons, who are imperfectly acquainted with the 
 prices of the goods, and contemplate them with unsophisti- 
 cated delight and wonder. The children of these virtuous 
 people exchange familiarities in the Arcade, and temper 
 the asperity of the two tall beadles. Their youthful prattle 
 blends in an unwonted manner with the harmonious shade 
 of the scene, and the general effect is, as of the voices of 
 birds in a grove. In this happy restoration of the golden 
 time, it has been my privilege even to see the bigger bea- 
 dle's wife. She brought him his dinner in a basin, and he 
 ate it in his arm-chair, and afterwards fell asleep like a 
 satiated child. At Mr. Truefitt's, the excellent hairdress- 
 er's, they are learning French to beguile the time; and 
 even the few solitaries left on guard at Mr. Atkinson's, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 159 
 
 the perfumer's round tlie corner (generally the most inex- 
 orable gentleman in London, and the most scornful of three- 
 and-sixpence), condescend a little, as they drowsily bide 
 or recall their turn for chasing the ebbing Neptune on the 
 ribbed sea-sand. From Messrs. Hunt and Boskell's, the 
 jewellers', all things are absent but the precious stones, 
 and the gold and silver, and the soldierly pensioner at the 
 door with his decorated breast. I might stand night and 
 day for a month to come, in Saville-row, with my tongue 
 out, yet not find a doctor to look at it for love or money. 
 The dentists' instruments are rusting in their drawers, and 
 their horrible cool parlours, where people pretend to read 
 the Every-Day Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance 
 for their grimness in white sheets. The light-weight of 
 shrewd appearance, with one eye always shut up, as if he 
 were eating a sharp gooseberry in all seasons, who usually 
 stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on very little 
 legs under a very large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster. 
 Of such undesigning aspect is his guileless yard now, with 
 its gravel and scarlet beans, and the yellow Brake housed 
 under a glass roof in a corner, that I almost believe I could 
 not be taken in there, if I tried. In the places of business 
 of the great tailors, the cheval-glasses are dim and dusty 
 for lack of being looked into. Ranges of brown paper 
 coat and waistcoat bodies look as funereal as if they were 
 the hatchments of the customers with whose names they 
 are inscribed; the measuring tapes hang idle on the wall; 
 the order-taker, left on the hopeless chance of some one 
 looking in, yawns in the last extremity over the book of 
 patterns, as if he were trying to read that entertaining li- 
 brary. The hotels in Brook-street have no one in them, 
 and the staffs of servants stare disconsolately for next sea- 
 son out of all the windows. The very man who goes about 
 like an erect Turtle, between two boards recommendatory 
 of the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is aware of himself as a 
 hollow mockery, and eats filberts while he leans his hinder 
 shell against a wall. 
 
 Among these tranquillising objects, it is my delight to 
 walk and meditate. Soothed by the repose around me, 
 I wander insensibly to considerable distances, and guide 
 myself back by the stars. Thus, I enjoy the contrast of a 
 few still partially inhabited and busy spots where all the 
 lights are not fled, where all the garlands are not dead, 
 12 
 
160 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 whence all but I have not departed. Then, does it appear 
 to me that in this age three things are clamorously required 
 of Man in the miscellaneous thoroughfares of the metropo- 
 lis. Firstly, that he have his boots cleaned. Secondly, 
 that he eat a penny ice. Thirdly, that he get himself pho- 
 tographed. 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 photogra- 
 phy? Of what class were their previous victims, and how 
 victimised? And how did they get, and how did they pay 
 for, that large collection of likenesses, all purporting to 
 have been taken inside, with the taking of none of which 
 had that establishment any more to do than with the tak- 
 ing of Delhi? 
 
 But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in 
 metropolitan Arcadia. It is my impression that much of 
 its serene and peaceful character is attributable to the ab- 
 sence of customary Talk. How do I know but there may 
 be subtle influences in Talk, to vex the souls of men who 
 don't hear it? How do I know but that Talk, five, ten, 
 twenty miles off, may get into the air and disagree with 
 me? If I rise from my bed, vaguely troubled and wearied 
 and sick of my life, in the session of Parliament, who shall 
 say that my noble friend, my right reverend friend, my 
 right honourable friend, my honourable friend, my hon- 
 ourable and learned friend, or my honourable and gallant 
 friend, may not be responsible for that effect upon my 
 nervous system? Too much Ozone in the air, I am in- 
 formed and fully believe (though I have no idea what it 
 is), Avould affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way; 
 why may not too much Talk? I don't see or hear the 
 Ozone; I don't see or hear the Talk. And there is so 
 much Talk; so much too much; such loud cry, and such 
 scant supply of wool; such a deal of fleecing, and so little 
 fleece ! Hence, in the Arcadian season, I find it a delicious 
 triumph to walk down to deserted Westminster, and see 
 the Courts shut up; to walk a little further and see the 
 Two Houses shut up; to stand in the Abbey Yard, like the 
 New Zealander of the grand English History (concerning 
 which unfortunate man, a whole rookery of mares' nests is 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 161 
 
 generally being discovered), and gloat upon the ruins of 
 Talk. Returning to my primitive solitude and lying down 
 to sleep, my grateful heart expands with a consciousness 
 that there is no adjourned Debate, no ministerial explana- 
 tion, nobody to give notice of intention to ask the noble 
 Lord at the head of her Majesty's Government five-and- 
 twenty bootless questions in one, no term time with legal 
 argument, no Nisi Prius with eloquent appeal to British 
 Jury; that the air will to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to- 
 morrow, remain untroubled by this superabundant 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 Zealander-like, I stand on the cold hearth, and 
 say in the solitude, "Here I watched Bore A 1, with voice 
 always mysteriously low and head always mysteriously 
 drooped, whispering political secrets into the ears of 
 Adam's confiding children. Accursed be his memory for 
 ever and a day ! " 
 
 But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that 
 the happy nature of my retirement is most sweetly ex- 
 pressed in its being the abode of Love. It is, as it were, 
 an inexpensive Agapemone: nobody's speculation: every- 
 body's profit. The one great result of the resumption of 
 primitive habits, and (convertible terms) the not having 
 much to do, is, the abounding of Love. 
 
 The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions; 
 probably, in that Ioav nomadic race, the softer emotions 
 have all degenerated into flue. But, with this exception, 
 all the sharers of my retreat make love. 
 
 I have mentioned Saville-row. We all know the Doc- 
 tor's servant. We all know what a respectable man he is, 
 what a hard dry man, what a firm man, what a confiden- 
 tial man : how he lets us into the waiting-room, like a man 
 who knows minutely what is the matter with us, but from 
 whom the rack should not wring the secret. In the pro- 
 saic "season," he has distinctly the appearance of a man 
 conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his 
 stand on his* respectability with both feet. At that time it 
 is as impossible to associate him with relaxation, or any 
 human weakness, as it is to meet his eye without feeling 
 guilty of indisposition. In the blest Arcadian time, how 
 changed ! I have seen him, in a pepper-and-salt jacket — 
 
162 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 jacket — and drab trousers, with his arm round the waist of 
 a bootmaker's housemaid, smiling in open day. I have 
 seen him at the pump by the Albany, unsolicitedly pump- 
 ing for two fair young creatures, whose figures as they bent 
 over their cans, were — if I may be allowed an original ex- 
 pression — a model for the sculptor. I have seen him try- 
 ing the piano in the Doctor's drawing-room with his fore- 
 finger, and have heard him humming tunes in praise of 
 lovely woman. I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, 
 and going (obviously in search of excitement) to a fire. I 
 saw him, one moonlight evening when the peace and purity 
 of our Arcadian west were at their height, polk with the 
 lovely daughter of a cleaner of gloves, from the door-steps 
 of his own residence, across Saville-row, round by Clifford- 
 street and Old Burlington-street, back to Burlington-gar- 
 dens. Is this the Golden Age revived, or Iron London? 
 
 The Dentist's servant. Is that man no mystery to us, 
 no type of invisible power? The tremendous individual 
 knows (who else does?) what is done with the extracted 
 teeth; he knows what goes on in the little room where 
 something is always being washed or filed; he knows what 
 warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable tumbler 
 from which we rinse our wounded mouth, with a gap in it 
 that feels a foot wide; he knows whether the thing we spit 
 into is a fixture communicating with the Thames, or could 
 be cleared away for a dance; he sees the horrible parlour 
 when there are no patients in it, and he could reveal, if he 
 would, what becomes of the Every-Day Book then. The 
 conviction of my coward conscience when I see that man in 
 a professional light, is, that he knows all the statistics of 
 my teeth and gums; my double teeth, my single teeth, my 
 stopped teeth, and my sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am 
 fearless of him as of a harmless, powerless creature in a 
 Scotch cap, who adores a young lady in a voluminous 
 crinoline, at a neighbouring billiard-room, and whose pas- 
 sion would be uninfluenced if every one of her teeth were 
 false. They may be. He takes them all on trust. 
 
 In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there 
 are little shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and never 
 two together, where servants' perquisites are bought. The 
 cook may dispose of grease at these modest and convenient 
 marts; the butler, of bottles; the valet and lady's maid, 
 of clothes; most servants, indeed, of most things they may 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 163 
 
 happen to lay hold of. I have been told that in sterner 
 times loving correspondence, otherwise interdicted, may be 
 maintained by letter through the agency of some of these 
 useful establishments. In the Arcadian autumn, no such 
 device is necessary. Everybody loves, and openly, and- 
 blamelessly loves. My landlord's young man loves the 
 whole of one side of the way of Old Bond-street, and is be- 
 loved several doors up New Bond-street besides. I never 
 look out of' window but I see kissing of hands going on all 
 around me. It is the morning custom to glide from shop 
 to shop and exchange tender sentiments; it is the evening 
 custom for couples to stand hand in hand at house doors, 
 or roam, linked in that flowery manner, through the unpeo- 
 pled streets. There is nothing else to do but love; and 
 what there is to do, is done. 
 
 In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains 
 in the domestic habits of Arcadia. Its few scattered 
 people dine early, live moderately, sup socially, and sleep 
 soundly. It is rumoured that the Beadles of the Arcade, 
 from being the mortal enemies of boys, have signed with 
 tears an address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to a 
 ragged school. No wonder ! For, they might turn their 
 heavy maces into crooks and tend sheep in the Arcade, to 
 the purling of the water-carts as they give the thirsty 
 streets much more to drink than they can carry. 
 
 A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity. Charm- 
 ing picture, but it will fade. The iron age will return, 
 London will come back to town, if I show my tongue then 
 in Saville-row for half a minute I shall be prescribed for, 
 the Doctor's man and the Dentist's man will then pretend 
 that these days of unprofessional innocence never existed. 
 Where Mr. and Mrs. Klem and their bed will be at that 
 time, passes human knowledge; but my hatter hermitage 
 will then know them no more, nor will it then know me. 
 The desk at which I have written these meditations will 
 retributively assist at the making out of my account, and 
 the wheels of gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of high- 
 stepping horses will crush the silence out of Bond-street — 
 will grind Arcadia away, and give it to the elements in 
 granite powder. 
 
 12 — 25 
 
1.64 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE ITALIAN PRISONER. 
 
 The rising of the Italian people from under their unut- 
 terable wrongs, and the tardy burst of day upon them after 
 the long long night of oppression that has darkened their 
 beautiful country, have naturally caused my mind to dwell 
 often of late on my own small wanderings in Italy. Con- 
 nected with them, is a curious little drama, in which the 
 character I myself sustained was so very subordinate that 
 I may relate its story without any fear of being suspected 
 of self-display. It is strictly a true story. 
 
 I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain 
 small town on the Mediterranean. I have had my dinner 
 at the inn, and I and the mosquitoes are coming out into 
 the streets together. It is far from Naples; but a bright 
 brown plump little woman-servant at the inn, is a Neapoli- 
 tan, and is so vivaciously expert in pantomimic action, that 
 in the single moment of answering my request to have a 
 pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, she plies 
 imaginary brushes, and goes completely through the mo- 
 tions of polishing the shoes up, and laying them at my 
 feet. I smile at the brisk little woman in perfect satisfac- 
 tion with her briskness; and the brisk little woman, amia- 
 bly pleased with me because I am pleased with her, claps 
 her hands and laughs delightfully. We are in the inn 
 yard. As the little woman's bright eyes sparkle on the 
 cigarette I am smoking I make bold to offer her one; she 
 accepts it none the less merrily, because I touch a most 
 charming little dimple in her fat cheek, with its light pa- 
 per end. Glancing up at the many green lattices to assure 
 herself that the mistress is not looking on, the little woman 
 then puts her two little dimpled arms a-kimbo, and stands 
 on tiptoe to light her cigarette at mine. "And now, dear 
 little sir," says she, puffing out smoke in a most innocent 
 and cherubic manner, "keep quite straight on, take the 
 first to the right, and probably you will see him standing 
 at his door." 
 
 I have a commission to "him," and I have been inquir- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 165 
 
 ing about him. I have carried the commission about Italy 
 several months. Before I left England, there came to me 
 one night a certain generous and gentle English nobleman 
 (he is dead in these days when I relate the story, and ex- 
 iles have lost their best British friend), with this request: 
 " Whenever you come to such a town, will you seek out one 
 Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps a little wine-shop there, 
 mention my name to him suddenly, and observe how it 
 affects him? " I accepted the trust, and am on my way to 
 discharge it. 
 
 The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot un- 
 wholesome evening with no cool sea-breeze. Mosquitoes 
 and fire-flies are lively enough, but most other creatures are 
 faint. The coquettish airs of pretty young women in the 
 tiniest and wickedest of dolls' straw-hats, who lean out at 
 open lattice blinds, are almost the only airs stirring. Very 
 ugly and haggard old women with distaffs, and with a grey 
 tow upon them that looks as if the} 7, were spinning out their 
 own hair (I suppose they were once pretty, too, but it is 
 very difficult to believe so), sit on the footway leaning 
 against house walls. Everybody who has come for water 
 to the fountain, stays there, and seems incapable of any 
 such energetic idea as going home. Vespers are over, 
 though not so long but that I can smell the heavy resinous 
 incense as I pass the church. No man seems to be at work, 
 save the coppersmith. In an Italian town he is always at 
 work, and always thumping in the deadliest manner. 
 
 I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first on 
 the right: a narrow dull street, where I see a well-favoured 
 man of good stature and military bearing, in a great cloak, 
 standing at a door. Drawing nearer to this threshold, I 
 see it is the threshold of a small wine-shop; and I can just 
 make out, in the dim light, the inscription that it is kept 
 by Giovanni Carlavero. 
 
 I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, 
 and draw a stool to a little table. The lamp (just such 
 auother as they dig out of Pompeii) is lighted, but the 
 place is empty. The figure in the cloak has followed me 
 in, and stands before me. 
 
 " The master? " 
 
 " At your service, sir. " 
 
 "Please to give me a glass of the wine of the country." 
 
 He turns to a little counter, to get it. As his striking 
 
166 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 face is pale, and his action is evidently that of an enfeebled 
 man, [ remark that I fear he has been ill. It is not much, 
 he courteously and gravely answers, though bad while it 
 lasts : the fever. 
 
 As he sets the wine on the little table, to his manifest 
 surprise I lay my hand on the back of his, look him in the 
 face, and say in a low voice : " I am an Englishman, and 
 you are acquainted with a friend of mine. Do you recol- 
 lect ? " and I mentioned the name of my generous 
 
 countryman. 
 
 Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and 
 falls on his knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both his 
 arms and bowing his head to the ground. 
 
 Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over- fraught 
 heart is heaving as if it -would burst from his breast, and 
 whose tears are wet upon the dress I wear, was a galley- 
 slave in the North of Italy. He was a political offender, 
 having been concerned in the then last rising, and was sen- 
 tenced to imprisonment for life. That he would have died 
 in his chains, is certain, but for the circumstance that the 
 Englishman happened to visit his prison. 
 
 It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of 
 it was below the waters of the harbour. The place of his 
 confinement was an arched under-ground and under- water 
 gallery, with a grill-gate at the entrance, through which it 
 received such light and air as it got. Its condition was in- 
 sufferably foul, and a stranger could hardly breathe in it, 
 or see in it with the aid of a torch. At the upper end of 
 this dungeon, and consequently in the worst position, as 
 being the furthest removed from light and air, the Eng- 
 lishman first beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead to 
 which he was chained by a heavy chain. His countenance 
 impressed the Englishman as having nothing in common 
 with the faces of the malefactors with whom he was asso- 
 ciated, and he talked with him, and learnt how he came to 
 be there. 
 
 When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den 
 into the light of day, he asked his conductor, the governor 
 of the jail, why Giovanni Carlavero was put into the worst 
 place? 
 
 "Because he is particularly recommended," was the 
 stringent answer. 
 
 " Recommended, that is to say, for death? " 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 167 
 
 "Excuse me; particularly recommended," was again the 
 answer. 
 
 " He has a bad tumour in his neck, no doubt occasioned 
 by the hardship of his miserable life. If he continues to 
 be neglected, and he remains where he is, it. will kill him." 
 
 '•' Excuse me, I can do nothing. He is particularly rec- 
 ommended." 
 
 The Englishman was staying in that town, and he went 
 to his home there; but the figure of this man chained to 
 the bedstead made it no home, and destroyed his rest and 
 peace. He was an Englishman of an extraordinarily ten- 
 der heart, and he could not bear the picture. He went 
 back to the prison grate; went back again and again, and 
 talked to the man and cheered him. He used his utmost 
 influence to get the man unchained from the bedstead, were 
 it only for ever so short a time in the day, and permitted 
 to come to the grate. It took a long time, but the Eng- 
 lishman's station, personal character, and steadiness of 
 purpose, wore out opposition so far, and that grace was at 
 last accorded. Through the bars, when he could, thus get 
 light upon the tumour, the Englishman lanced it, and it 
 did well, and healed. His strong interest in the prisoner 
 had greatly increased by this time, and he formed the des- 
 perate resolution that he would exert his utmost self- 
 devotion and use his utmost efforts, to get Carlavero par- 
 doned. 
 
 If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if he 
 had committed every non-political crime in the Newgate 
 Calendar and out of it, nothing would have been easier than 
 for a man of any court or priestly influence to obtain his 
 release. As it was, nothing could have been more difficult. 
 Italian authorities, and English authorities who had interest 
 with them, alike assured the Englishman that his object was 
 hopeless. He met with nothing but evasion, refusal, and 
 ridicule. His political prisoner became a joke in the place. 
 It was especially observable that English Circumlocution, 
 and English Society on its travels, were as humorous on 
 the subject as Circumlocution and Society may be on any 
 subject without loss of caste. But, the Englishman pos- 
 sessed (and proved it well in his life) a courage very un- 
 common among us : he had not the least fear of being con- 
 sidered a bore, in a good humane cause. So he went on 
 persistently trying, and trying, and trying, to get Giovanni 
 
168 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Garlavero out. That prisoner had been rigorously re- 
 chained, after the tumour operation, and it was not likely 
 that his miserable life could last very long. 
 
 One day, when all the town knew about the Englishman 
 and his political prisoner, there came to the Englishman, a 
 certain sprightly Italian Advocate of whom he had some 
 knowledge; and he made this strange proposal. "Give 
 me a hundred pounds to obtain Carlavero's release. I 
 think I can get him a pardon, with that money. But I 
 cannot tell you what I am going to do with the money, nor 
 must you ever ask me the question if I succeed, nor must 
 you ever ask me for an account of the money if I fail." 
 The Englishman decided to hazard the hundred pounds. 
 He did so, and heard not another word of the matter. For 
 half a year and more, the Advocate made no sign, and 
 never once " took on " in any way, to have the subject on 
 his mind. The Englishman was then obliged to change his 
 residence to another and more famous town in the North of 
 Italy. He parted from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful 
 heart, as from a doomed man for whom there was no re- 
 lease but Death. 
 
 The Englishman lived in his new place of abode another 
 half-year and more, and had no tidings of the wretched 
 prisoner. At length, one day, he received from the Advo- 
 cate a cool concise mysterious note, to this effect. " If you 
 still wish to bestow that benefit upon the man in whom 
 you were once interested, send me fifty pounds more, and I 
 think it can be ensured." Now, the Englishman had long 
 settled in his mind that the Advocate was a heartless 
 sharper, who had preyed upon his credulity and his inter- 
 est in an unfortunate sufferer. So, he sat down and wrote 
 a dry answer, giving the Advocate to understand that he 
 was wiser now than he had been formerty, and that no 
 more money was extractable from his pocket. 
 
 He lived outside the. city gates, some mile or two from 
 the post-office, and was accustomed to walk into the city 
 with his letters and post them himself. On a lovely spring 
 day, when the sky was exquisitely blue, and the sea Di- 
 vinely beautiful, he took his usual walk, carrying this let- 
 ter to the Advocate in his pocket. As he went along, his 
 gentle heart was much moved by the loveliness of the pros- 
 pect, and by the thought of the slowly-dying prisoner 
 chained to the bedstead, for whom the universe had no de- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 169 
 
 lights. As he drew nearer and nearer to the city where he 
 was to post the letter, he became very uneasy in his mind. 
 He debated with himself, was it remotely possible, after 
 all, that this sum of fifty pounds could restore the fellow- 
 creature whom he pitied so much and for whom he had 
 striven so hard, to liberty? He was not a conventionally 
 rich Englishman — very far from that — but, he had a spare 
 fifty pounds at the banker's. He resolved to, risk it. 
 •Without doubt, God has recompensed him for the resolu- 
 tion. 
 
 He went to the banker's, and got a bill for the amount, 
 and enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I 
 could have seen. He simply told the Advocate that he 
 was quite a poor man, and that he was sensible it might be 
 a great weakness in him to part with so much money on 
 the faith of so vague a communication; but, that there it 
 was, and that he prayed the Advocate to make a good use 
 of it. If he did otherwise no good could ever come of it, 
 and it would lie heavy on his soul one day. 
 
 Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his break- 
 fast, when he heard some suppressed sounds of agitation 
 on the staircase, and Giovanni Carlavero leaped into the 
 room and fell upon his breast, a free man ! 
 
 Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own 
 thoughts, the Englishman wrote him an earnest and grate- 
 ful letter, avowing the fact, and entreating him to confide 
 by what means and through what agency he had succeeded 
 so well. The Advocate returned for answer through the 
 post. " There are many things, as you know, in this Italy 
 of ours, that are safest and best not even spoken of — far 
 less written of. We may meet some day, and then I may 
 tell you what you want to know; not here, and now." 
 But, the two never did meet again. The Advocate was 
 dead when the Englishman gave me my trust; and how the 
 man had been set free, remained as great a mystery to the 
 Englishman, and to the man himself, as it was to me. 
 
 But, I knew this : — here was the man, this sultry night, 
 on his knees at my feet, because I was the Englishman's 
 friend; here were his 'tears upon my dress; here were his 
 sobs choking his utterance; here were his kisses on my 
 hands, because they had touched the hands that had worked 
 out his release. He had no need to tell me it would be 
 happiness to him to die for his benefactor; I doubt if I 
 
170 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ever saw real, sterling, fervent gratitude of soul, before 01 
 since. 
 
 He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had 
 had enough to do to keep himself out of trouble. This, 
 and his not having prospered in his worldly affairs, had led 
 to his having failed in his usual communications to the 
 Englishman for — as I now remember the period — some two 
 or three .years. But, his prospects were brighter, and his 
 wife who had been very ill had recovered, and his fever 
 had left him, and he had bought a little vineyard, and 
 would I carry to his benefactor the first of its wine? Ay, 
 that I would (I told him with enthusiasm), and not a drop 
 of it should be spilled or lost ! 
 
 He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of 
 himself, and had talked with such excess of emotion, and 
 in a provincial Italian so difficult to understand, that I had 
 more than once been obliged to stop him, and beg him to 
 have compassion on me and be slower and calmer. By de- 
 grees he became so, and tranquilly walked back with me 
 to the hotel. There, I sat down before I went to bed and 
 wrote a faithful account of him to the Englishman : which 
 I concluded by saying that I would bring the wine home, 
 against any difficulties, every drop. 
 
 Early next morning, when I came out at the hotel door 
 to pursue my journey, I found my friend waiting with one 
 of those immense bottles in which the Italian peasants store 
 their wine — a bottle holding some half-dozen gallons — 
 bound round with basket-work for greater safety on the 
 journey. I see him now, in the bright sunlight, tears of 
 gratitude in his eyes, proudly inviting my attention to this 
 corpulent bottle. (At the street-corner hard by, two high- 
 flavoured able-bodied monks — pretending to talk together, 
 but keeping their four evil eyes upon us.) 
 
 How the bottle had been got there, did not appear; but 
 the difficulty of getting it into the ramshackle vetturino 
 carriage in which I was departing, was so great, and it 
 took up so much room when it was got in, that I elected to 
 sit outside. The last I saw of Giovanni Carlavero was his 
 running through the town by the' side of the jingling 
 wheels, clasping my hand as I stretched it down from the 
 box, charging me with a thousand last loving and dutiful 
 messages to his dear patron, and finally looking in at the 
 bottle as it reposed inside, with an admiration of its hon- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 171 
 
 ourable way of travelling that was beyond measure de- 
 lightful. 
 
 And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved and 
 highly-treasured Bottle began to cost me, no man knows. 
 It was my precious charge through a long tour, and, for 
 hundreds of miles, I never had it off my mind by day or by 
 night. Over bad roads — and they were many — I clung to 
 it with affectionate desperation. Up mountains, I looked 
 in at it and saw it helplessly tilting over on its back, with 
 terror. At innumerable inn doors when the weather was 
 bad, I was obliged to be put into my vehicle before the Bot- 
 tle could be got in, and was obliged to have the Bottle lifted 
 out before human aid could come near me. The Imp of 
 the same name, except that his associations were all evil 
 and these associations were all good, would have been 
 a less troublesome travelling companion. I might have 
 served Mr. Cruikshank as a subject for a new illustration 
 of the miseries of the Bottle. The National Temperance 
 Society might have made a powerful Tract of me. 
 
 The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle, 
 greatly aggravated my difficulties. It was like the apple- 
 pie in the child's book. Parma pouted at it, Modena 
 mocked it, Tuscany tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Borne 
 refused it, Austria accused it, Soldiers suspected it, Jesuits 
 jobbed it. I composed a neat Oration, developing my in- 
 offensive intentions in connection with this Bottle, and de- 
 livered 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 Bot- 
 tle. Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile 
 Boman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way 
 with the Bottle, as if it had bottled up a complete system 
 of heretical theology. In the Neapolitan country, where 
 everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, 
 the shameless beggars of all four denominations incessantly 
 pounced on the Bottle and made it a pretext for extorting 
 money from me. Quires — quires do I say? Beams — of 
 forms illegibly printed on whity-brown paper were filled 
 up about the Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamp- 
 ing and sanding than I had ever seen before. In conse- 
 quence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it was always 
 irregular, and always latent with dismal penalties of going 
 
•172 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 back or not going forward, which were only to be abated 
 by -the silver crossing of a base hand, poked shirtless out 
 of a ragged uniform sleeve. Under all discouragements, 
 however, I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my reso- 
 lution that every drop of its contents should reach the Bot- 
 tle's destination. 
 
 The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles 
 on its own separate account. What corkscrews did I see 
 the military power bring out against that Bottle; what 
 gimlets, spikes, divining rods, gauges, and unknown tests 
 and instruments! At some places, the}*- persisted in de- 
 claring that the wine must not be passed, without being 
 opened and tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then 
 to argue the question seated on the Bottle lest they should 
 open it in spite of me. In the southern parts of Italy more 
 violent shrieking, face-making, and gesticulating, greater 
 vehemence of speech and countenance and action, went on 
 about that Bottle, than would attend fifty murders in a 
 northern latitude. It raised important functionaries out of 
 their beds, in the dead of night. I have known half-a- 
 dozen military lanterns to disperse themselves at all points 
 of a great sleeping Piazza, each lantern summoning some 
 official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat instantly, 
 and come and stop the Bottle. It was characteristic that 
 while this innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in 
 getting from little town to town, Signor Mazzini and the 
 fiery cross were traversing Italy from end to end. 
 
 Still, I -stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English 
 gentleman all of the olden time. The more the Bottle Avas 
 interfered with, the stauncher I became (if possible) in my 
 first determination that my countryman should have it de- 
 livered to him intact, as the man whom he had so nobly re- 
 stored to life and liberty had delivered it to me. If ever I 
 had been obstinate in my days — and I may have been, say, 
 once or twice — I was obstinate about the Bottle. But, I 
 made it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin 
 at its service, and never to be out of temper in its cause. 
 Thus, I and the Bottle made our way. Once we had a 
 break-down; rather a bad break-down, on a steep high 
 place with the sea below us, on a tempestuous evening 
 when it blew great guns. We were driving four wild 
 horses abreast, Southern fashion, and there was some little 
 difficulty in stopping them. I was outside, and not thrown 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 173 
 
 off; but no words can describe my feelings when 1 saw the 
 Bottle — travelling inside, as usual — burst the door open, 
 and roll obesely out into the road. A blessed Bottle with 
 a charmed existence, he took no hurt, and we repaired dam- 
 age, and went on triumphant. 
 
 A thousand representations were made to me that the 
 Bottle must be left at this place, or that, and called for 
 again. I never yielded to one of them, and never parted 
 from the Bottle, on any pretence, consideration, threat, or 
 entreaty. I had no faith in any official receipt for the Bot- 
 tle, and nothing would induce me to accept one. These 
 unmanageable politics at last brought me and the Bottle, 
 still triumphant, to Genoa. There, I took a tender and re- 
 luctant leave of him for a few weeks, and consigned him 
 to a trusty English captain, to be conveyed to the Port of 
 London by sea. 
 
 While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, J read 
 the Shipping Intelligence as anxiously as if 1 had been an 
 underwriter. There was some stormy weather after I my- 
 self had got to England by way of Switzerland and France, 
 and my mind greatly misgave me that the Bottle might be 
 wrecked. At last to my great joy, I received notice of his 
 safe arrival, and immediately went down to Saint Katha- 
 rine's Docks, and found him in a state of honourable cap- 
 tivity in the Custom House. 
 
 The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before 
 the generous Englishman — probably it had been something 
 like vinegar when I took it up from Giovanni Carlavero — 
 but not a drop of it was spilled or gone. And the English- 
 man told me, with much emotion in his face and voice, that 
 he had never tasted wine that seemed to him so sweet and 
 sound. And long afterwards, the Bottle graced his table. 
 And the last time I saw him in this world that misses him, 
 he took me aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile : 
 " We were talking of you only to-day at dinner, and I 
 wished you had been there, for I had some Claret up in 
 Carlavero' s Bottle." 
 
1V4 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE CALAIS NIGHT-MAIL. 
 
 It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave 
 Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall 
 leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am 
 always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of con- 
 stant indecision on this subject. 
 
 When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a 
 maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and 
 dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremi- 
 ties but the one great extremity, sea-sickness — who was a 
 mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in 
 its stomach — who had been put into a horrible swing in 
 Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the 
 French coast, or the Isle 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 
 recognise its landmarks when I see any of them, I am ac- 
 quainted with its ways, and I know — and I can bear — its 
 worst behaviour. 
 
 Malignant Calais ! Low-lying alligator, evading the eye- 
 sight and discouraging hope ! Dodging flat streak, now on 
 this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, 
 now nowhere ! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth 
 into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and 
 stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites 
 emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer quite 
 conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of fall- 
 ing off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisi- 
 bility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think 
 you are there — roll, roar, wash ! — Calais has retired miles 
 inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a 
 last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be espe- 
 cially commended to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be 
 that garrison-town, when it dives under the boat's keel, 
 and comes up a league or tAvo to the right, with the packet 
 shivering and spluttering and staring about for it ! 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 175 
 
 Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I 
 particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with 
 which it goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am 
 going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and 
 candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, 
 host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much 
 esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the com- 
 forts of that establishment when the Night Mail is start- 
 ing. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't 
 want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows 
 at such an hour. I know the Warden is a stationary edi- 
 fice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big out- 
 line seeming to insist upon that circumstance, and, as it 
 were, to come over me with it, when I am reeling on the 
 deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise, for ob- 
 structing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it 
 rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon 
 enough, without the officious Warden's interference? 
 
 As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South 
 Eastern Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears 
 to me to be illuminated for some intensely aggravating fes- 
 tivity in my personal dishonour. All its noises smack of 
 taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy 
 sea, and of me for going on it. The drums upon the 
 heights have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle 
 taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this 
 slippery deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade 
 twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with derision. The 
 distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrap- 
 pers, as if I were Bichard the Third. 
 
 A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down 
 the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered 
 more smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes 
 noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lap- 
 ping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over which 
 they had no control from drinking peaceably. We, the 
 boat, become violently agitated — rumble, hum, scream, 
 roar, and establish an immense family washing-day at each 
 paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as the 
 doors of the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stoop- 
 ing figures with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld 
 among the piles, descending as it would seem in ghostly 
 procession to Davy Jones's Locker. The passengers come 
 
176 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with hatboxes shaped 
 like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy 
 Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy 
 Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending not to 
 expect it. I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind 
 the miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts; that the 
 attendants on us are as scant in number as may serve to 
 get rid of us with the least possible delay; that there are 
 no night-loungers interested in us; that the unwilling 
 lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is to 
 commit us to the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red 
 eyes glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train 
 itself has gone to bed before we are off ! 
 
 What is the moral support derived by some sea-going 
 amateurs from an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers 
 across the Channel always put up that article, and hold it 
 up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A fellow-creature 
 near me — whom I only know to be a fellow-creature, because 
 of his umbrella : without which he might be a dark bit of 
 cliff, pier, or bulkhead — clutches that instrument with a 
 desperate grasp, that will not relax until he lands at Calais. 
 Is there any analogy, in certain constitutions, between 
 keeping an umbrella up, and keeping the spirits up? A. 
 hawser thrown on board with a flop replies " Stand by ! " 
 "Stand by, below." "Half a turn a head!" "Half a 
 turn a head ! " " Half speed ! " " Half speed ! " " Port ! " 
 "Port!" "Steady!" "Steady!" "Goon!" "Goon!" 
 
 A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and 
 out at my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my 
 throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose in a 
 blunt pair of pincers, — these are the personal sensations by 
 which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to 
 know it until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms 
 have scarcely established themselves confortably, 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 tarpauling 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. Impla- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 177 
 
 cable animosity to Calais everm that was an awkward 
 
 sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a 
 complaining roar. 
 
 The wind blows stiffly from the Nor'-East, the sea runs 
 high, we ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, 
 and the shapeless passengers lie about in melancholy bun- 
 dles, as if they were sorted out for the laundress; but for 
 my own uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I am 
 much inconvenienced by any of these things. A general 
 howling whistling flopping gurgling and scooping, I am 
 aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the 
 impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet faint 
 temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges, I 
 think I should feel languidly -benevolent if I had time. I 
 have not time, because I am under a curious compulsion to 
 occupy myself with the Irish melodies. " Rich and rare 
 were the gems she wore, " is the particular melody to which 
 I find myself devoted. I sing it to myself in the most 
 charming manner and with the greatest expression. Noav 
 and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on the hardest of 
 wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but 
 I don't mind it,) and notice that I am a whirling shuttle- 
 cock between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the 
 French coast and a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the 
 English coast; but I don't notice it particularly, except to 
 feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais. Then I go on 
 again, " Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And 
 a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But her 
 beauty was f a-a-a-a-r beyond " — I am particularly proud of 
 my execution here, when I become aware of another awk- 
 ward shock from the sea, and another protest from the fun- 
 nel, and a fellow- creature at the paddle-box more audibly 
 indisposed than I think he need be — " Her sparkling gems, 
 or snow-white wand, But her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r 
 beyond " — another awkward one here, and the fellow- 
 creature with the umbrella down and picked up, "Her 
 spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or her Port ! port ! steady ! steady ! 
 snoAv- white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very selfishly 
 audible, bump roar wash white wand." 
 
 As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my 
 imperfect perceptions of what is going on around me, so 
 what is going on around me becomes something else than 
 what it is. The stokers open the furnace doors below, to 
 
178 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old Exeter 
 Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for ever 
 extinguished coach-larnps, and the gleam on the hatches 
 and paddle-boxes is their gleam on cottages and haystacks, 
 and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jin- 
 gle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel 
 roar of protest at every violent roll, becomes the regular 
 blast of a high pressure engine, and I recognise the ex- 
 ceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascended the Mis- 
 sissippi when the American civil Avar was not, and when 
 only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the 
 light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block 
 or so, become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris where 
 I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning 
 now), and they dance to the self-same time and tune as the 
 trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the speciality 
 of these waves as they come rushing on, I cannot desert 
 the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she wore, 
 to inquire, but they are charged with something about 
 Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads 
 that he first went a sea faring and was near foundering 
 (what a terrific sound that word had for me when I was a 
 boy!) in his first gale of wind. Still, through all this, I 
 must ask her (who teas she I wonder!) for the fiftieth time, 
 and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to stray, So 
 lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin's 
 sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more 
 fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight I 
 feel not the least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, 
 Eor though they love fellow-creature with umbrella down 
 again and golden store, Sir Knight they what a tremendous 
 one love honour and virtue more : For though they love 
 Stewards with a bull's eye bright, they'll trouble you for 
 your ticket, sir — rough passage to-night ! 
 
 I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weak- 
 ness and inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of 
 those last words from the steward than I begin to soften 
 towards Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wish- 
 ing that those Calais burghers who came out of their town 
 by a short cut into the History of England, with those 
 fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since 
 been towed into so many cartoons, had all been hanged on 
 the spot, I now begin to regard them as highly respectable 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 179 
 
 and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me, I see the 
 light of Cape Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits 
 to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour undeniably at 
 its old tricks, but still ahead and shining. Sentiments of 
 forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to Calais, 
 begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I 
 will stay there a clay or two on my way back. A faded 
 and recumbent stranger pausing in a profound reverie over 
 the rim of a basin, asks me what kind of place Calais is? 
 I tell him (Heaven forgive me!) a very agreeable place in- 
 deed — rather hilly than otherwise. 
 
 So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly 
 — though still I seem to have been on board a week — that 
 I am bumped rolled gurgled washed and pitched into Calais 
 Harbour before her maiden smile has finally lighted her 
 through the Green Isle, When blest for ever is she who re- 
 lied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we 
 have not to land to-night down among those slimy timbers 
 ■ — covered with green hair as if it were the mermaids' fa- 
 vourite combing-place — where one crawls to the surface of 
 the. jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up 
 the harbour to the Eailway Station Quay. And as we go, 
 the sea washes in and out among piles and planks, with 
 dead heavy beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof 
 we are proud), and the lamps shake in the wind, and the 
 bells of Calais striking One seem to send their vibrations 
 struggling against troubled air, as we have come struggling 
 against troubled water. And now, in the sudden relief 
 and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have 
 had a prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very 
 instant free of the Dentist's hands. And now we all 
 know for the first time how wet and cold we are, and 
 how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my heart of 
 hearts ! 
 
 " Hotel Dessin ! " (but in this one case it is not a vocal 
 cry; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery rep- 
 resentative of that best of inns). " Hotel Meurice ! " " Ho- 
 tel de France ! " " Hotel de Calais ! " " The Royal Hotel, 
 Sir, Angaishe ouse ! " " You going to Parry, Sir? " 
 " Your baggage, registair froo, Sir? " Bless ye, my Tout- 
 ers, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry- 
 eyed mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always 
 here, day or night, fair feather or foul, seeking inscrutable 
 
180 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 jobs which I never see you get! Bless ye, my Custom 
 House officers in green and grey; permit me to grasp the 
 welcome hands that descend into my travelling-bag, one on 
 each side, and meet at the bottom to give my change of 
 linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure of chaff 
 or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Doua- 
 nier, except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be 
 found written on my heart. No article liable to local duty 
 have I with me, Monsieur l'Officer de 1' Octroi, unless the 
 overflowing of a breast devoted to your charming town 
 should be in that wise chargeable. Ah ! see at the gang- 
 way by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother and 
 friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the 
 names! May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned 
 black surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall 
 black hat, surmounting his round smiling patient face! 
 Let us embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours a tout 
 jamais — for the whole of ever. 
 
 Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais 
 down and dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of 
 "an ancient and fish-like smell" about it, and Calais blown 
 and sea- washed pure; Calais represented at the Buffet by 
 savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and 
 Calais represented everywhere by flitting persons with a 
 monomania for changing money — though I never shall be 
 able to understand in my present state of existence how 
 they live by it, but I suppose I should, if I understood the 
 currency question — Calais en gros, and Calais en detail, for- 
 give one who has deeply wronged you. — I was not fully 
 aware of it on the other side, but I meant Dover. 
 
 Ding, ding ! To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers 
 Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, 
 Lille, Douai, Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris ! I, hum- 
 ble representative of the uncommercial interest, ascend 
 with the rest. The train is light to-night, and I share my 
 compartment with but two fellow-travellers; one, a compa- 
 triot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccount- 
 able thing that they don't keep "London time" on a 
 French railway, and who is made angry by my modestly 
 suggesting the possibility of Paris time being more in their 
 way; the other, a young priest, with a very small bird in 
 a very small cage, who feeds the small bird with a quill, 
 and then puts him up in the network above his head, where 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 181 
 
 he advances twittering, to his front wires, and seems to ad- 
 dress me in an electioneering manner. The compatriot 
 (who crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some 
 person of distinction, as he was shut up, like a stately 
 species of rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the young 
 priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then 
 the bird and I have it all to ourselves. 
 
 A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of 
 the electric telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night 
 so very stormy, with the added storm of the train-progress 
 through it, that when the Guard comes clambering round 
 to mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a really 
 horrible performance in an express train, though he holds 
 on to the open window by his elbows in the most deliberate 
 manner), he stands in such a whirlwind that 1 grip him fast 
 by the collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let him 
 go. Still, when he is gone, the small small bird remains 
 at his front wires feebly twittering to me — twittering and 
 twittering, until, leaning back in my place and looking at 
 him in drowsy fascination, I find that he seems to jog my 
 memory as we rush along. 
 
 Uncommercial travels (thus the small bird) have lain in 
 their idle thriftless way through all this range of swamp 
 and dyke, as through many other odd places; and about 
 here, as you very well know, are the queer old stone farm- 
 houses, approached by drawbridges, and the windmills 
 that you get at by boats. Here, are the lands where the 
 women hoe and dig, paddling canoe- wise from field to field, 
 and here are the cabarets and other peasant-houses where 
 the stone dove-cotes in the littered yards are as strong as 
 warders' towers in old castles. Here, are the long monoto- 
 nous miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built barges 
 garishly painted, and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed 
 by the forehead, sometimes by the girdle and the shoul- 
 ders, not a pleasant sight to see. Scattered through this 
 country are mighty works of Vauban, whom you know 
 about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard of once 
 upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle. Through 
 these flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those 
 long grotesque files of young novices in enormous shovel 
 hats, whom you remember blackening the ground checkered 
 by the avenues of leafy trees. And now that Hazebroucke 
 slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer even- 
 
182 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ing when your dusty feet strolling up from the station 
 tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabi- 
 tants were circling round and round a barrel-organ on 
 hobby-horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the 
 principal show in the Fair was a Keligious Richardson's — 
 literally, on its own announcement in great letters, Thea- 
 tre Religieux. In which improving Temple, the dra- 
 matic representation was of "all the interesting events in 
 the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the Tomb; " the 
 principal female character, without any reservation or ex- 
 ception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in 
 trimming the external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), 
 while the next principal female character took the money, 
 and the Young Saint John disported himself upside down 
 on the platform. 
 
 Looking up at this point to confirm the small small bird 
 in every particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased 
 to twitter, and has put his head under his wing. There- 
 fore, in my different way I follow the good example. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY. 
 
 I had parted from the small bird at somewhere about 
 four o'clock in the morning, when he had got out at Arras, 
 and had been received by two shovel hats in waiting at the 
 station, who presented an appropriately ornithological and 
 crow-like appearance. My compatriot and I had gone on 
 to Paris; my compatriot enlightening me occasionally with 
 a long list of the enormous grievances of French railway 
 travelling : every one of which, as I am a sinner, was per- 
 fectly new to me, though I have as much experience of 
 French railways as most uncommercials. I had left him 
 at the terminus (through his conviction, against all expla- 
 nation and remonstrance, that his baggage-ticket was his 
 passenger- ticket), insisting in a very high temper to the 
 functionary on duty, that in his own personal identity he 
 was four packages weighing so many kilogrammes — as if 
 he had been Cassim Baba ! I had bathed and breakfasted, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 183 
 
 and was strolling on the bright quays. The subject of my 
 meditations was the question whether it is positively in the 
 essence and nature of things, as a certain school of Britons 
 would seem to think it, that a Capital must be ensnared 
 and enslaved before it can be made beautiful : when I lifted 
 up my eyes and found that my feet, straying like my mind, 
 had brought me to ISTotre-Dame. 
 
 That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there 
 was a large open space between us. A very little while 
 gone, I had left that space covered with buildings densely 
 crowded; and now it was cleared for some new wonder in 
 the way of public Street, Place, Garden, Fountain, or all 
 four. Only the obscene little Morgue, slinking on the brink 
 of the river and soon to come down, was left there, looking 
 mortally ashamed of itself, and supremely wicked. I had 
 but glanced at this old acquaintance, when I beheld an airy 
 procession coming round in front of Notre-Dame, past the 
 great hospital. It had something of a Masaniello look, with 
 fluttering striped curtains in the midst of it, and it came 
 dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest manner. 
 
 I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a 
 Christening, or some other domestic festivity which I would 
 see out, when I found, from the talk of a quick rush of 
 Blouses past me, that it was a Body coming to the Morgue. 
 Having never before chanced upon this initiation, I consti- 
 tuted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into the Morgue 
 with the rest. It was a very muddy day, and we took in 
 a quantity of mire with us, and the procession coming in 
 upon our heels brought a quantity more. The procession 
 was in the highest spirits, and consisted of idlers who had 
 come with the curtained litter from its starting-place, and 
 of all the reinforcements it had picked up by the way. It 
 set the litter down in the midst of the Morgue, and then 
 two Custodians proclaimed aloud that we were all "in- 
 vited" to go out. This invitation was rendered the more 
 pressing, if not the more flattering, by our being shoved 
 out, and the folding-gates being barred upon us. 
 
 Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it per- 
 fectly, by presenting to themselves an indifferently paved 
 coach-house accessible from the street by a pair of folding- 
 gates; on the left of the coach-house, occupying its width, 
 any large London tailor's or linen-draper's plateglass 
 window reaching to the ground; within the window, on 
 13 
 
1S4 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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. 
 
 We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the 
 Custodians pull off their coats and tuck up their shirt- 
 sleeves, as the procession came along. It looked so inter- 
 estingly like business. Shut out in the muddy street, we 
 now became quite ravenous to know all about it. Was it 
 river, pistol, knife, love, gambling, robbery, hatred, how 
 many stabs, how many bullets, fresh or decomposed, sui- 
 cide or murder? All wedged together, and all staring at 
 one another with our heads thrust forward, we propounded 
 these inquiries and a hundred more such. Imperceptibly, 
 it came to be known that Monsieur the tall and sallow ma- 
 son yonder, was acquainted with the facts. Would Mon- 
 sieur the tall and sallow mason, surged at by a new wave 
 of us, have the goodness to impart? It was but a poor old 
 man, passing along the street under one of the new build- 
 ings, on whom a stone had fallen, and who had tumbled 
 dead. His age? Another wave surged up against the tall 
 and sallow mason, and our wave swept on and broke, and 
 he was any age from sixty-five to ninety. 
 
 An old man was not much: moreover, we could have 
 wished he had been killed by human agency — his own, or 
 somebody else's: the latter, preferable — but our comfort 
 was, that he had nothing about him to lead to his identifi- 
 cation, and that his people must seek him here. Perhaps 
 they were waiting dinner for him even now? We liked that. 
 Such of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow intense 
 protracted wipe at our noses, and then crammed our hand- 
 kerchiefs into the breast of our blouses. Others of us who 
 had no handkerchiefs administered a similar relief to our 
 overwrought minds, by means of prolonged smears or wipes 
 of our mouths on our sleeves. One man with a gloomy 
 malformation of brow — a homicidal worker in white-lead, 
 to judge from his blue tone of colour, and a certain flavour 
 of paralysis pervading him — got his coat-collar between his 
 teeth, and bit at it with an appetite. Several decent 
 women arrived upon the outskirts of the crowd, and pre- 
 pared to launch themselves into the dismal coach-house 
 when opportunity should come; among them, a pretty 
 young mother, pretending to bite the forefinger of her baby- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 185 
 
 boy, kept it between her rosy lips that it might be handy for 
 guiding to point at the show. Meantime, all faces were 
 turned towards the building, and we men waited with a 
 fixed and stern resolution : — for the most part with folded 
 arms. Surely, it was the only public French sight these 
 uncommercial eyes had seen, at which the expectant people 
 did not form en queue. But there was no such order of 
 arrangement here; nothing but a general determination to 
 make a rush for it, and a disposition to object to some boys 
 who had mounted on the two stone posts by the hinges of 
 the gates, with the design of swooping in when the hinges 
 should turn. 
 
 Now, they turned, and we rushed ! Great pressure, and 
 a scream or two from the front. Then a laugh or two, 
 some expressions of disappointment, and a slackening of 
 the pressure and subsidence of the struggle. — Old man not 
 there. 
 
 " But what would you have? " the Custodian reasonably 
 argues, as he looks out at his little door. " Patience, pa- 
 tience ! We make his toilette, gentlemen. He will be ex- 
 posed presently. It is necessary to proceed according to 
 rule. His toilette is not made all at a blow. He will be 
 exposed in good time, gentlemen, in good time." And so 
 retires, smoking, with a wave of his sleeveless arm towards 
 the window, importing, " Entertain yourselves in the mean- 
 while with the other curiosities. Fortunately the Museum 
 is not empty to-day." 
 
 Who would have thought of public fickleness even at the 
 Morgue? Bat there it was, on that occasion. Three lately 
 popular articles that had been attracting greatly when the 
 litter was first descried coming dancing round the corner 
 by the great cathedral, were so completely deposed now, 
 that nobody save two little girls (one showing them to a 
 doll) would look at them. Yet the chief of the three, the 
 article in the front row, had received jagged injury of 
 the left temple; and the other two in the back row, the 
 drowned two lying side by side, with their heads very 
 slightly turned towards each other, seemed to be compar- 
 ing notes about it. Indeed, those two of the back row 
 were so furtive of appearance, and so (in their puffed way) 
 assassinatingly knowing as to the one of the front, that it 
 was hard to think the three had never come together in 
 >heir lives, and were only chance companions after death. 
 
186 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Whether or no this was the general, as it was the uncom- 
 mercial, fancy, it is not to be disputed that the group had 
 drawn exceedingly within ten minutes. Yet now, the in- 
 constant public turned its back upon them, and even leaned 
 its elbows carelessly against the bar outside the window 
 and shook off the mud from its shoes, and also lent and 
 borrowed fire for pipes. 
 
 Custodian re-enters from his door, " Again once, gentle- 
 men, you are invited " No further invitation neces- 
 sary. Ready dash into the street. Toilette finished. Old 
 man coming out. 
 
 This time, the interest was grown too hot to admit of 
 toleration of the boys on the stone posts. The homicidal 
 white-lead worker made a pounce upon one boy who was 
 hoisting himself up, and brought him to earth amidst gen- 
 eral commendation. Closely stowed as we were, we yet 
 formed into groups — groups of conversation, without sepa- 
 ration from the mass — to discuss the old man. Rivals of 
 the tall and sallow mason sprang into being, and here again 
 was popular inconstancy. These rivals attracted audi- 
 ences, and were greedily listened to; and whereas they had 
 derived their information solely from the tall and sallow 
 one, officious members of the crowd now sought to enlighten 
 him on their authority. Changed by this social experience 
 into an iron-visaged and inveterate misanthrope, the mason 
 glared at mankind, and evidently cherished in his breast 
 the wish that the whole of the present company could 
 change places with the deceased old man. And now lis- 
 teners became inattentive, and people made a start forward 
 at a slight sound, and an unholy fire kindled in the public 
 eye, and those next the gates beat at them impatiently, as 
 if they were of the cannibal species and hungry. 
 
 Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed. Disorderly 
 pressure for some time ensued before the uncommercial unit 
 got figured into the front row of the sum. It was strange 
 to see so much heat and uproar seething about one poor 
 spare white-haired old man, quiet for evermore. He was 
 calm of feature and undisfigured, as he lay on his back — 
 having been struck upon the hinder part of the head, and 
 thrown forward — and something like a tear or two had 
 started from the closed eyes, and lay wet upon the face. 
 The uncommercial interest, sated at a glance, directed it- 
 self upon the striving crowd on either side and behind: 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 187 
 
 wondering whether one might have guessed, from the ex- 
 pression of those faces merely, what kind of sight they 
 were looking at. The differences of expression were not 
 many. There was a little pity, but not much, and that 
 mostly with a selfish touch in it — as who would say, " Shall 
 I, poor I, look like that, when the time comes ! " There 
 was more of a secretly brooding contemplation and curi- 
 osity, as "That man I don't like, and have the grudge 
 against; would such be his appearance, if some one — not 
 to mention names — by any chance gave him an ugly 
 knock? " There was a wolfish stare at the object, in which 
 the homicidal white-lead worker shone conspicuous. And 
 there was a much more general, purposeless, vacant staring 
 at it — like looking at waxwork, without a -catalogue, and 
 not knowing what to make of it. But all these expres- 
 sions concurred in possessing the one underlying expression 
 of looking at something that could not return a look. The 
 uncommercial notice had established this as very remark- 
 able, Avhen a new pressure all at once coming up from the 
 street pinioned him ignominiously, and hurried him into 
 the arms (now sleeved again) of the Custodian smoking at 
 his door, and answering questions, between-puffs, with a 
 certain placid meritorious air of not being proud, though 
 high in office. And mentioning pride, it may be observed, 
 by the way, that one could not well help investing the 
 original sole occupant of the front row with an air deprecia- 
 tory of the legitimate attraction of the poor old man : while 
 the two in the second row seemed to exult at his superseded 
 popularity. 
 
 Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. 
 Jacques de la Boucherie, and presently again in front of 
 the Hotel de Ville, I called to mind a certain desolate open- 
 air Morgue that I happened to light upon in London, one 
 day in the hard winter of 1861, and which seemed as 
 strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I had found it 
 in China. Towards that hour of a winter's afternoon when 
 the lamplighters are beginning to light the lamps in the 
 streets a little before they are wanted, because the dark- 
 ness thickens fast and soon, I was walking in from the 
 country on the northern side of the Regent's Park — -hard 
 frozen and deserted — when I saw an empty Hansom cab 
 drive up to the lodge at Gloucester-gate, and the driver 
 with great agitation call to the man there: who quickly 
 
1SS THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 reached a long pole from a tree, and, deftly collared by 
 the driver, jumped to the step of his little seat, and so the 
 Hansom rattled out at the gate, galloping over the iron- 
 bound road. I followed running, though not so fast but 
 that when I came to the right-hand Canal Bridge, near the 
 cross-path to Chalk Farm, the Hansom was stationary, 
 the horse was smoking hot, the long pole was idle on the 
 ground, and the driver and the park-keeper were looking 
 over the bridge parapet. Looking over too, I saw, lying 
 on the towing-path with her face turned up towards us, a 
 woman, dead a day or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, 
 poorly dressed in black. The feet were lightly crossed at 
 the ankles, and the dark hair, all pushed back from the 
 face, as though that had been the last action of her des- 
 perate hands, streamed over the ground. Dabbled all 
 about her, was the water and the broken ice that had 
 dropped from her dress, and had splashed as she was got 
 out. The policeman who had just got her out, and the 
 passing costermonger who had helped him, were standing 
 near the body; the latter with that stare at it which I have 
 likened to being at a waxwork exhibition without a cata- 
 logue; the former, looking over his stock, with profes- 
 sional stiffness and coolness, in the direction in which the 
 bearers he had sent for were expected. So dreadfully for- 
 lorn, so dreadfully sad, so dreadfully mysterious, this spec- 
 tacle of our dear sister here departed ! A barge came up, 
 breaking the floating ice and the silence, and a woman 
 steered it. The man with the horse that towed it, cared 
 so little for the body, that the stumbling hoofs had been 
 among the hair, and the tow-rope had caught and turned 
 the head, before our cry of horror took him to the bridle. 
 At which sound the steering woman looked up at us on the 
 bridge, with contempt unutterable, and then looking down 
 at the body with a similar expression — as if it were made 
 in another likeness from herself, had been informed with 
 other passions, had been lost by other chances, had had 
 another nature dragged down to perdition — steered a spurn- 
 ing streak of mud at it, and passed on. 
 
 A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in 
 which chance happily made me useful in a slight degree, 
 arose to my remembrance as I took my way by the Boule- 
 vard de Sebastopol to the brightest scenes of Paris. 
 • The thing happened, say five-and-twenty years ago. I 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 189 
 
 was a modest young uncommercial then, and timid and in- 
 experienced. Many suns and winds have browned me in 
 the line, but those were my pale days. Having newly 
 taken the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metro- 
 politan parish — a house which then appeared to me to be a 
 frightfully first-class Family Mansion, involving awful re- 
 sponsibilities — I became the prey of a Beadle". I think the 
 Beadle must have seen me going in or coming out, and 
 must have observed that I tottered under the weight of my 
 grandeur. Or he may have been in hiding under straw 
 when I bought my first horse (in the desirable stable-yard 
 attached to the first-class Family Mansion), and when the 
 vendor remarked to me, in an original manner, on bringing 
 him for approval, taking his cloth off and smacking him, 
 " There Sir ! There's a Orse ! " And when I said gal- 
 lantly, "How much do you want for him? " and when the 
 vendor said, "jSTo more than sixty guineas, from you," and 
 when I said smartly, "Why not more than sixty from 
 me ? " And when he said crushingly, " Because upon my 
 soul and body he'd be considered cheap at seventy, by one 
 who understood the subject — but you don't." — I say, the 
 Beadle may have been in hiding under straw, when this dis- 
 grace befell me, or he may have noted that I was too raw 
 and young an Atlas to carry the first-class Family Mansion 
 in a knowing manner. Be this as it may, the Beadle did. 
 what Melancholy did to the you th in Gray's Elegy — he 
 marked me for his own. And the way in which the Beadle 
 did it, was this : he summoned me as a Juryman on his 
 Coroner's Inquests. 
 
 In my first feverish alarm I repaired " for safety and for 
 succour" — like those sagacious Northern shepherds who, 
 having had no previous reason whatever to believe in young 
 Norval, very prudently did not originate the hazardous idea 
 of believing in him — to a deep householder. This pro- 
 found man informed me that the Beadle counted oumy 
 buying him off; on my bribing him not to summon me; 
 and that if I would attend an Inquest with a cheerful 
 countenance, and profess alacrity in that branch of my 
 country's service, the Beadle would be disheartened, and 
 would give up the game. 
 
 I roused my energies, and the next time the wily 
 Beadle summoned me, I went. The Beadle was the blank- 
 est Beadle I have ever looked on when I answered to my 
 
190 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 name; and his discomfiture gave me courage to go through 
 with it. 
 
 We were "impannelled to inquire concerning the death of 
 a very little mite of a child. It was the old miserable 
 story. Whether the mother had committed the minor 
 offence of concealing the birth, or whether she had com- 
 mitted the major offence of killing the child, was the ques- 
 tion on which we were wanted. We must commit her on 
 one of the two issues. 
 
 The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I 
 have yet a lively impression that I was unanimously re- 
 ceived by my brother Jurymen as a brother of the utmost 
 conceivable insignificance. Also, that before we began, a 
 broker who had lately cheated me fearfully in the matter 
 of a pair of card-tables, was for the utmost rigour of the 
 law. I remember that we sat in a sort of board-room, on 
 such very large square horse-hair chairs that I wondered 
 what race of Patagonians they were made for; and further, 
 that an undertaker gave me his card when we were in the 
 full moral freshness of having just been sworn, as " an in- 
 habitant that was newly come into the parish, and was 
 likely to have a young family." The case was then stated 
 to us by the Coroner, and then we went down-stairs — led 
 by the plotting Beadle — to view the body. From that day 
 to this, the poor little figure, on which that sounding legal 
 appellation was bestowed, has lain in the same place and 
 with the same surroundings, to my thinking. In a kind of 
 crypt devoted to the warehousing of the parochial coffins, 
 and in the midst of a perfect Panorama of coffins of all 
 sizes, it was stretched on a box; the mother had put it in 
 her box — this box — almost as soon as it. was born, and it 
 had been presently found there. It had been opened, and 
 neatly sewn up, and regarded from that point of view, it 
 looked like a stuffed creature. It rested on a clean Avhite 
 cloth, with a surgical instrument or so at hand, and re- 
 garded from that point of view, it looked as if the cloth 
 were "laid," and the Giant were coming to dinner. There 
 was nothing repellant about the poor piece of innocence, 
 and it demanded a mere form of looking at. So, we looked 
 at an old pauper who was going about among the coffins 
 with a foot rule, as if he were a case of Self-Measurement; 
 and we looked at one another; and we said the place was 
 well whitewashed anyhow; and then our conversational 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 191 
 
 powers as a British Jury flagged, and the foreman said, 
 "All right, gentlemen? Back again, Mr. Beadle!" 
 
 The miserable young creature who had given birth to this 
 child within a very few days, and who had cleaned the cold 
 wet door-steps immediately afterwards, was brought before 
 us when we resumed our horse-hair chairs, and was present 
 during the proceedings. She had a horse-hair chair" her- 
 self, being very weak and ill; and I remember how she 
 turned to the unsympathetic nurse who attended her, and 
 who might have been the figure-head of a pauper-ship, and 
 how she hid her face and sobs and tears upon that wooden 
 shoulder. I remember, too, how hard her mistress was 
 upon her (she was a servant-of -all- work), and with what a 
 cruel pertinacity that piece of Virtue spun her thread of 
 evidence double, by intertwisting it with the sternest thread 
 of construction. Smitten hard by the terrible low wail 
 from the utterly friendless orphan girl, which never ceased 
 during the whole inquiry, I took heart to ask this witness 
 a question or two, which hopefully admitted of an answer 
 that might give a favourable turn to the case. She made 
 the turn as little favourable as it could be, but it did some 
 good, and the Coroner, who was nobly patient and humane 
 (he was the late Mr. YVakley), cast a look of strong encour- 
 agement in my direction. Then, Ave had the doctor who 
 had made the examination, and the usual tests as to 
 whether the child was born alive; but he was a timid 
 muddle-headed doctor, and got confused and contradictory, 
 and wouldn't say this, and couldn't answer for that, and 
 the immaculate broker was too much for him, and our side 
 slid back again. However, I tried again, and the Coroner 
 backed me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grateful 
 to him as I do now to his memory; and we got another 
 favourable turn, out of some other witness, some member of 
 the family with a. strong prepossession against the sinner; 
 and I think we had the doctor back again; and I know that 
 the Coroner summed up for our side, and that I and my 
 British brothers turned round to discuss our verdict, and 
 get ourselves into great difficulties with our large chairs 
 and the broker. At that stage of the case I tried hard 
 again, being convinced that I had cause for it; and at last 
 we found for the minor offence of only concealing the birth ; 
 and the poor desolate creature, who had been taken out 
 during our deliberation, being brought in again to be told 
 14 
 
192 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 of the verdict, then dropped upon her knees before us, with 
 protestations that we were right — protestations among the 
 most affecting that I have ever heard in my life — and was 
 carried away insensible. 
 
 (In private conversation after this was all over, the Cor- 
 oner showed me his reasons as a trained surgeon, for per- 
 ceiving it to be impossible that the child could, under the 
 most favourable circumstances, have drawn many breaths, 
 in the very doubtful case of its having ever breathed at all; 
 this, owing to the discovery of some foreign matter in the 
 windpipe, quite irreconcilable with many moments of life.) 
 
 When the agonised girl had made those final protesta- 
 tions, I had seen her face, and it was in unison with her 
 distracted heart-broken voice, and it was very moving. It 
 certainly did not impress me by any beauty that it had, 
 and if I ever see it again in another world I shall only 
 know it by the help of some new sense or intelligence. But 
 it came to me in my sleep that night, and I selfishly dis- 
 missed it in the most efficient way I could think of. I 
 caused some extra care to be taken of her in the prison, 
 and counsel to be retained for her defence when she was 
 tried at the Old Bailey; and her sentence was lenient, and 
 her history and conduct proved that it was right. In doing 
 the little I did for her, I remember to have had the kind 
 help of some gentle-hearted functionary to whom I ad- 
 dressed myself — but what functionary I have long forgot- 
 ten — who I suppose was officially present at the Inquest 
 
 I regard this as a very notable uncommercial experience, 
 because this good came of a Beadle. And to the best of 
 my knowledge, information, and belief, it is the only good 
 that ever did come of a Beadle since the first Beadle put 
 on his cocked-hat. 
 
 XX. 
 
 BIRTH-DAY CELEBRATIONS. 
 
 It came into my mind that I would recall in these notes 
 a few of the many hostelries I have rested at in the course 
 of my journeys; and, indeed, I had taken up my pen for 
 the purpose, when I was baffled by an accidental circum- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 193 
 
 stance. It was the having to leave off, to wish the owner 
 of a certain bright face that looked in at my door, " many 
 happy returns of the day." Thereupon a new thought 
 came into my mind, driving its predecessor out, and I be- 
 gan to recall — instead of Inns — the birthdays that I have 
 put up at, on my way to this present sheet of paper. 
 
 I can very well remember being taken out to visit some 
 peach-faced creature in a blue sash, and shoes to corre- 
 spond, whose life I supposed to consist entirely of birth- 
 days. Upon seed-cake, sweet wine, and shining presents, 
 that glorified young person seemed to me to be exclusively 
 reared. At so early a stage of my travels did I assist at 
 the anniversary of her nativity (and become enamoured of 
 her), that I had not yet acquired the recondite knowledge 
 that a birthday is the common property of all who are born, 
 but supposed it to be a special gift bestowed by the favour- 
 ing Heavens on that one distinguished infant. There was 
 no other company, and we sat in a shady bower — under a 
 table, as my better (or worse) knowledge leads me to be- 
 lieve — and were regaled with saccharine substances and 
 liquids, until it was time to part. A bitter powder was 
 administered to me next morning, and I was wretched. 
 On the whole, a pretty accurate foreshadowing of my more 
 mature experiences in such wise ! 
 
 Then came the time when, inseparable from one's own 
 birthday, was a certain sense of merit, a consciousness of 
 well-earned distinction. When I regarded my birthday as 
 a graceful achievement of my own, a monument of my 
 perseverance, independence, and good sense, redounding 
 greatly to my honour. This was at about the period when 
 Olympia Squires became involved in the anniversary. 
 Olympia was most beautiful (of course), and I loved her to 
 that degree, that I used to be obliged to get out of my lit- 
 tle bed in the night, expressly to exclaim to Solitude, "0, 
 Olympia Squires ! " Visions of Olympia, clothed entirely 
 in sage-green, from which I infer a defectively educated 
 taste on the part of her respected parents, who were neces- 
 sarily unacquainted with the South Kensington Museum, 
 still arise before me. Truth is sacred, and the visions are 
 crowned by a shining white beaver bonnet ; impossibly sug- 
 gestive of a little feminine postboy. My memory presents 
 a birthday when Olympia and I were taken by an unfeeling 
 relative — some cruel uucle, or the like — to a slow torture 
 
194 THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 called an Orrery. The terrible instrument was set up at 
 the local Theatre, and I had expressed a profane wish in 
 the morning that it was a Play : for which a serious aunt 
 had probed my conscience deep, and my pocket deeper, by 
 reclaiming a bestowed half-crown. It was a venerable and 
 a shabby Orrery, at least one thousand stars and twenty- 
 five comets behind the age. Nevertheless, it was awful. 
 When the low-spirited gentleman with a wand said, " La- 
 dies and gentlemen " (meaning particularly Olympia and 
 me), " the lights are about to be put out, but there is not 
 the slightest cause for alarm," it was very alarming. Then 
 the planets and stars began. Sometimes they wouldn't 
 come on, sometimes they wouldn't go off, sometimes they 
 had holes in them, and mostly they didn't seem to be good 
 likenesses. All this time the gentleman with the wand 
 was going on in the dark (tapping away at the heavenly 
 bodies between whiles, like a wearisome woodpecker), 
 about a sphere revolving on its own axis eight hundred and 
 ninety-seven thousand millions of times — or miles — in two 
 hundred and sixty-three thousand five hundred and twenty- 
 four millions of something elses, until I thought if this was 
 a birthday it were better never to have been born. Olym- 
 pia, also, became much depressed, and we both slumbered 
 and woke cross, and still the gentleman was going on in the 
 dark — whether up in the stars, or down on the stage, it 
 would have been hard to make out, if it had been worth try- 
 ing — cyphering away about planes of orbits, to such an in- 
 famous extent that Olympia, stung to madness, actually 
 kicked me. A pretty birthday spectacle, when the lights 
 were turned up again, and all the schools in the town (in- 
 cluding the National, who had come in for nothing, and 
 serve them right, for they were always throwing stones) 
 were discovered with exhausted countenances, screwing 
 their knuckles into their eyes, or clutching their heads of 
 hair. A pretty birthday speech when Dr. Sleek of the 
 City-Free bobbed up his powdered head in the stage-box, 
 and said that before this assembly dispersed he really must 
 beg to express his entire approval of a lecture as improv- 
 ing, as informing, as devoid of anything that could call a 
 blush into the cheek of youth, as any it had ever been his 
 lot to hear delivered. A pretty birthday altogether, when 
 Astronomy couldn't leave poor Small Olympia Squires and 
 me alone, but must put an end to our loves i For, we never 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 195 
 
 got over it; the threadbare Orrery outwore our mutual ten- 
 derness; the man with the wand was too much for the boy 
 with the bow. 
 
 When shall I disconnect the combined smells of oranges, 
 brown paper, and straw, from those other birthdays at 
 school, when the coming hamper casts its shadow before, 
 and when a week of social harmony — shall I add of admir- 
 ing and affectionate popularity — led up to that Institution? 
 What noble sentiments were expressed to me in the days 
 before the hamper, what vows of friendship were sworn to 
 me, what exceedingly old knives were given me, what gen- 
 erous avowals of having been in the wrong emanated from 
 else obstinate spirits once enrolled among my enemies! 
 The birthday of the potted game and guava jelly, is still 
 made special to me by the noble conduct of Bully Globson. 
 Letters from home had mysteriously inquired whether I 
 should be much surprised and disappointed if among the 
 treasures in the coming hamper I discovered potted game, 
 and guava jelly from the Western Indies. I had men- 
 tioned those hints in confidence to a few friends, and had 
 promised to give away, as I now see reason to believe, a 
 handsome covey of partridges potted, and about a hundred 
 weight of guava jelly. It was now that Globson, Bully no 
 more, sought me out in the playground. He was a big fat 
 boy, with a big fat head and a big fat nsc, and at the be- 
 ginning of that Half had raised such a bump on my fore- 
 head that I couldn't get my hat of state on, to go to church. 
 He said that after an interval of cool reflection (four 
 months) he now felt this blow to have been an error of 
 judgment, and that he wished to apologise for the same. 
 Not only that, but holding down his big head between his 
 two big hands in order that I might reach it conveniently, 
 he requested me, as an act of justice which would appease 
 his awakened conscience, to raise a retributive bump upon 
 it, in the presence of witnesses. This handsome proposal 
 I modestly declined, and he then embraced me, and Ave 
 walked away conversing. We conversed respecting the 
 West India islands, and, in the pursuit of knowledge he 
 asked me with much interest whether in the course of my 
 reading I had met with any reliable description of the 
 mode of manufacturing guava jelly; or whether I had ever 
 happened to taste that conserve, which he had been giveri 
 to understand was of rare excellence. 
 
 12 26 
 
196 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; and then with 
 the wandering months came an ever augmenting sense of 
 the dignity of twenty one. Heaven knows I had nothing 
 to "come into," save the bare birthday, and yet I esteemed 
 it as a great possession. I now and then paved the way to 
 my state of dignity, by beginning a proposition with the 
 casual words, "say that a man of twenty-one," or by the 
 incidental assumption of a fact that could not sanely be 
 disputed, as, "for when a fellow comes to be a man of 
 twenty-one." I gave a party on the occasion. She was 
 there. It is unnecessary to name Her, more particularly; 
 She was older than I, and had pervaded every chink and 
 crevice of my mind for three or four years. I had held 
 volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her mother on 
 the subject of our union, and I had written letters more in 
 number than Horace Walpole's, to that discreet woman, 
 soliciting her daughter's hand in marriage. I had never 
 had the remotest intention of sending any of those letters; 
 but to write them, and after a few days tear them up, had 
 been a sublime occupation. Sometimes, I had begun 
 " Honoured Madam. I think that a lady gifted with those 
 powers of observation which I know you to possess, and 
 endowed with those womanly sympathies with the young 
 and ardent Avhich it were more than heresy to doubt, can 
 scarcely have failed to discover that I love your adorable 
 daughter, deeply, devotedly." In less buoyant states of 
 mind I had begun, " Bear with me, Dear Madam, bear with 
 a daring wretch who is about to make a surprising confes- 
 sion to you, wholly unanticipated by yourself, and which 
 he beseeches you to commit to the names as soon as you 
 have become aware to what a towering height his mad am- 
 bition soars." At other times — periods of profound mental 
 depression, when She had gone out to balls where I was 
 not — the draft took the affecting form of a paper to be left 
 on my table after my departure to the confines of the globe. 
 As thus: "For Mrs. Onowenever, these lines when the 
 hand that traces them shall be far away. I could not bear 
 the daily torture of hopelessly loving the dear one whom I 
 will not name. Broiling on the coast of Africa, or congeal- 
 ing on the shores of Greenland, I am far far better there 
 than here." (In this sentiment my cooler judgment per- 
 ceives that the family of the beloved object would have 
 most completely concurred.) "If I ever emerge from ob- 
 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 197 
 
 scurity, and my name is ever heralded by Fame, it will be 
 for her dear sake. If I ever amass Gold, it will be to pour 
 it at her feet. Should I on the other hand become the prey 
 
 of Ravens " I doubt if I ever quite made up my 
 
 mind what was to be done in that affecting case; I tried 
 "then it is better so;" but not feeling convinced that it 
 would be better so, I vacillated between leaving all else 
 blank, which looked expressive and bleak, or winding up 
 with " Farewell ! " 
 
 This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for 
 the foregoing digression. I was about to pursue the state- 
 ment that on my twenty-first birthday I gave a party, and 
 She was there. It was a beautiful party. There was not 
 a single animate or inanimate object connected with it (ex- 
 cept the company and myself) that I had ever seen before. 
 Everything was hired, and the mercenaries in attendance 
 were profound strangers to me. Behind a door, in the 
 crumby part of the night when wine-glasses were to be 
 found in unexpected spots, I spoke to Her — spoke out to 
 Her. What passed, I cannot as a man of honour reveal. 
 She was all angelical gentleness, but a word was mentioned 
 — a short and dreadful word of three letters, beginning 
 with a B — which, as I remarked at the moment, " scorched 
 my brain." She went away soon afterwards, and when the 
 hollow throng (though to be sure it was no fault of theirs) 
 dispersed, I issued forth, with a dissipated scorner, and, as 
 I mentioned expressly to him, "sought oblivion." It was 
 found, with a dreadful headache in it, but it didn't last; 
 for, in the shaming light of next day's noon, I raised my 
 heavy head in bed, looking back to the birthdays behind 
 me, and tracking the circle by which I had got round, after 
 all, to the bitter powder and the wretchedness again. 
 
 This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the human 
 race that I am inclined to regard it as the Universal Medi- 
 cine once sought for in Laboratories) is capable of being 
 made up in another form for birthday use. # Anybody's 
 long-lost brother will do ill to turn up on a birthday. If I 
 had a long-lost brother I should know beforehand that he 
 would prove a tremendous fraternal failure if he appointed 
 to rush into my arms on my birthday. The first Magic 
 Lantern I ever saw, was secretly and elaborately planned 
 to be the great effect of a very juvenile birthday; but it 
 wouldn't act, and its images were dim. My experience 
 
198 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 of adult birthday Magic Lanterns may possibly have been 
 unfortunate, but has certainly been similar. I have an 
 illustrative birthday in my eye : a birthday of my friend 
 Flipfield, whose birthdays had long been remarkable as 
 social successes. There had been nothing set or formal 
 about them; Flipfield having been accustomed merely to 
 say, two or three days before, "Don't forget to come and 
 dine, old boy, according to custom; " — I don't know what 
 he said to the ladies he invited, but I may safely assume 
 it not to have been "old girl." Those were delightful 
 gatherings, and were enjoyed by all participators. In an 
 evil hour, a long-lost brother of Flipfield' s came to light in 
 foreign parts. Where he had been hidden, or what he had 
 been doing, I don't know, for Flipfield vaguely informed 
 me that he had turned up " on the banks of the Ganges " 
 — speaking of him as if he had been washed ashore. The 
 Long-lost was coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortu- 
 nate calculation, based on the well-known regularity of the 
 P. and 0. Steamers, that matters might be so contrived as 
 that the Long-lost should appear in the nick of time on his 
 (Flipfield's) birthday. Delicacy commanded that I should 
 repress the gloomy anticipations with which my soul be- 
 came fraught when I heard of this plan. The fatal day 
 arrived, and we assembled in force. Mrs. Flipfield senior 
 formed an interesting feature in the group, with a blue- 
 veined miniature of the late Mr. Flipfield round her neck, 
 in an oval, resembling a tart from the pastrycook's: his 
 hair powdered, and the bright buttons on his coat, evi- 
 dently very like. She was accompanied by Miss Flipfield, 
 the eldest of her numerous famil}-, who held her pocket- 
 handkerchief to her bosom in a majestic manner, and spoke 
 to all of us (none of us had ever seen her before), in pious 
 and condoning tones, of all the quarrels that had taken 
 place in the family, from her infancy — which must have 
 been a long time ago — down to that hour. The Long-lost 
 did not appear. Dinner, half an hour later than usual, 
 was announced, and still no Long-lost. We sat down to 
 table. The knife and fork of the Long-lost made a vacuum 
 in Nature, and when the champagne came round for the 
 first time, Flipfield gave him up for the day, and had them 
 removed. It was then that the Long-lost gained the height 
 of his popularity with the company; for my own part, I 
 felt convinced that I loved him dearly. Flipfield's dinners 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 199 
 
 are perfect, and he is the easiest and best of entertainers 
 Dinner went on brilliantly, and the more the Long-lost 
 didn't come, the more comfortable we grew, and the more 
 highly we thought of him. Flipfield' s own man (who has 
 a regard for me) was in the act of struggling with an igno- 
 rant stipendiary, to wrest from him the wooden leg of a 
 Guinea-fowl which he was pressing on my acceptance, and 
 to substitute a slice of the breast, when a ringing at the 
 door-bell suspended the strife. I looked round me, and 
 perceived the sudden pallor which I knew my own visage 
 revealed, reflected in the faces of the company. Flipfield 
 hurriedly excused himself, went out, was absent for about 
 a minute or two, and then re-entered with the Long-lost. 
 
 I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought 
 Mont Blanc with him, or had come attended by a retinue 
 of eternal snows, he could not have chilled the circle to 
 the marrow in a more efficient manner. Embodied Failure 
 sat enthroned upon the Long-lost' s brow, and pervaded him 
 to his Long-lost boots. In vain Mrs. Flipfield senior, 
 opening her arms, exclaimed, " My Tom ! " and pressed his 
 nose against the counterfeit presentment of his other par- 
 ent. In vain Miss Flipfield, in the first transports of this 
 reunion, showed him a dint upon her maidenly cheek, and 
 asked him if he remembered when he did that with the 
 bellows? We, the bystanders, were overcome, but over- 
 come by the palpable, undisguisable, utter, and total break- 
 down of the Long-lost. Nothing he could have done would 
 have set him right with us but his instant return to the 
 Ganges. In the very same moments it became established 
 that the feeling was reciprocal, and that the Long-lost de- 
 tested us. When a friend of the family (not myself, upon 
 my honour), wishing to set things going again, asked him, 
 while he partook of soup — asked him with an amiability of 
 intention beyond all praise, but with a weakness of execu- 
 tion open to defeat — what kind of river he considered the 
 Ganges, the Long-lost, scowling at the friend of the family 
 over his spoon, as one of an abhorrent race, replied, "Why 
 a river of water, I suppose," and spooned his soup into 
 himself with a malignancy of hand and eye that blighted 
 the amiable questioner. Not an opinion could be elicited 
 from the Long-lost, in unison with the sentiments of any 
 individual present. He contradicted Flipfield dead, before 
 he had eaten his salmon. He had no idea— or affected to 
 
200 TjlIE uncommercial traveller. 
 
 have no idea — that it was his brother's birthday, and on 
 the communication of that interesting fact to him, merely 
 wanted to make him out four years older than he was. He 
 was an antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and gift 
 of treading on everybody's tenderest place. They talk in 
 America of a man's "Platform." I should describe the 
 Platform of the Long-lost as a Platform composed of other 
 people's corns, on which he had stumped his way, with all 
 his might and main, to his present position. It is need- 
 less to add that Flipfield's great birthday went by the 
 board, and that he was a wreck when I pretended at part- 
 ing to wish him many happy returns of it. 
 
 There is another class of birthdays at which I have so 
 frequently assisted, that I may assume such birthdays to 
 be pretty well known to the human race. My friend May- 
 day's birthday is an example. The guests have no knowl- 
 edge of one another except on that one day in the year, 
 and are annually terrified for a week by the prospect of 
 meeting one another again. There is a fiction among us 
 that we have uncommon reasons for being particularly lively 
 and spirited on the occasion, whereas deep despondency is 
 no phrase for the expression of our feelings. But the won- 
 derful feature of the case is, that we are in tacit accordance 
 to avoid the subject — to keep it as far off as possible, as 
 long as possible — and to talk about anything else, rather 
 than the joyful event. I may even go so far as to assert 
 that there is a dumb compact among us that we will pretend 
 that it is not Mayday's birthday. A mysterious and 
 gloomy Being, who is said to have gone to school with 
 Mayday, and who is so lank and lean that he seriously im- 
 pugns the Dietary of the establishment at which they were 
 jointly educated, always leads us, as I may say, to the 
 block, by laying his grisly hand on a decanter and begging 
 us to fill our glasses. The devices and pretences that I 
 have seen put in practice to defer the fatal moment, and to 
 interpose between this man and his purpose, are innumera- 
 ble. I have known desperate guests, when they saw the 
 grisly hand approaching the decanter, wildly to begin, 
 without any antecedent whatsoever, "That reminds me 
 
 " and to plunge into long stories. When at last the 
 
 hand and the decanter come together, a shudder, a palpable 
 perceptible shudder, goes round the table. We receive the 
 reminder that it is Mayday's birthday, as if it were the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 201 
 
 anniversary of some profound disgrace he had undergone, 
 and we sought to comfort him. And when we have drunk 
 Mayday's health, and wished him many happy returns, we 
 are seized for some moments with a ghastly blitheness, an 
 unnatural levity, as if we were in the first flushed reaction 
 of having undergone a surgical operation. 
 
 Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a pri- 
 vate phase. My "boyhood's home," Dullborough, pre- 
 sents a case in point. An Immortal Somebody was wanted 
 in Dullborough, to dimple for a day the stagnant face of 
 the waters; he was rather wanted by Dullborough gener- 
 ally, and much wanted by the principal hotel-keeper. The 
 County history was looked up for a locally Immortal Some- 
 body, but the registered Dullborough worthies were all 
 Nobodies. In this state of things, it is hardly necessary 
 to record that Dullborough did what every man does when 
 he wants to write a book or deliver a lecture, and is pro- 
 vided with all the materials except a subject. It fell back 
 upon Shakespeare. 
 
 No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare's 
 birthday in Dullborough, than the popularity of the im- 
 mortal bard became surprising. You might have supposed 
 the first edition of his works to have been published last 
 week, and enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half 
 through them. (I doubt, by the way, whether it had ever 
 done half that, but this is a private opinion.) A young 
 gentleman with a sonnet, the retention of which for two 
 years had enfeebled his mind and undermined his knees, 
 got the sonnet into the Dullborough Warden, and gained 
 flesh. Portraits of Shakespeare broke out in the bookshop 
 windows, and our principal artist painted a large original 
 portrait in oils for the decoration of the dining-room. It 
 was not in the least like any of the other portraits, and 
 was exceedingly admired, the head being much swollen. 
 At the Institution, the Debating Society discussed the new 
 question, Was there sufficient ground for supposing that 
 the Immortal Shakespeare ever stole deer? This was in- 
 dignantly decided by an overwhelming majority in the 
 negative; indeed, there was but one vote on the Poaching 
 side, and that was the vote of the orator who had under- 
 taken to advocate it, and who became quite an obnoxious 
 character — particularly to the Dullborough "roughs," who 
 were about as well informed on the matter as most other 
 
202 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 people. Distinguished speakers were invited down, and 
 very nearly came (but not quite). Subscriptions were 
 opened, and committees sat, and it would have been far 
 from a popular measure in the height of the excitement, to 
 have told Dullborough that it wasn't Stratford-upon-Avon. 
 Yet, after all these preparations, when the great festivity 
 took place, and the portrait, elevated aloft, surveyed the 
 company as if it were in danger of springing a mine of in- 
 tellect and blowing itself up, it did undoubtedly happen, 
 according to the inscrutable mysteries of things, that no- 
 body could be induced, not to say to touch upon Shake- 
 speare, but to come within a mile of him, until the crack 
 speaker of Dullborough rose to propose the immortal mem- 
 ory. Which he did with the perplexing and astonishing 
 result that before he had repeated the great name half-a- 
 dozen times, or had been upon- his legs as many minutes, 
 he was assailed with a general shout of "Question." 
 
 XXL 
 
 THE SHORT-TIMERS. 
 
 " Within so many yards of this Covent-garden lodging 
 of mine, as within so many yards of Westminster Abbey, 
 Saint Paul's Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, the 
 Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all the Institutions that 
 govern the land, I can find — must find, whether I will or 
 no — in the open streets, shameful instances of neglect of 
 children, intolerable toleration of the engenderment of 
 paupers, idlers, thieves, races of wretched and destructive 
 cripples both in body and mind, a misery to themselves, a 
 misery to the community, a disgrace to civilisation, and an 
 outrage on Christianity. I know it to be a fact as easy of 
 demonstration as any sum in any of the elementary rules 
 of arithmetic, that if the State would begin its work and 
 duty at the beginning, and would with the strong hand take 
 those children out of the streets, while they are yet chil- 
 dren, and wisely train them, it would make them a part of 
 England's glory, not its shame — of England's strength, not 
 its weakness — would raise good soldiers and sailors, and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 203 
 
 good citizens, and many great men, out of the seeds of its 
 criminal population. Yet I go on bearing with the enormity 
 as if it were nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamen- 
 tary Debates as if they were something, and I concern 
 myself far more about one railway-bridge across a public 
 thoroughfare., than about a dozen generations of scrofula, 
 ignorance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty, and felony. I 
 can slip out at my door, in the small hours after any mid- 
 night, and, in one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-garden 
 Market, can behold a state of infancy and youth, as vile as 
 if a Bourbon sat upon the English throne; a great police 
 force looking on with authority to do no more than worry 
 and hunt the dreadful vermin into corners, and there leave 
 them. Within the length of a few streets I can find a 
 workhouse, mismanaged with that dull short-sighted obsti- 
 nacy that its greatest opportunities as to the children it re- 
 ceives are lost, and yet not a farthing saved to any one. 
 But the wheel goes round, and round, and round; and be- 
 cause it goes round — so I am told by the politest authori- 
 ties — it goes well." 
 
 Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, 
 as I floated down the Thames among the bridges, looking 
 — not inappropriately — at the drags that were hanging up 
 at certain dirty stairs to hook the drowned out, and at the 
 numerous conveniences provided to facilitate their tumbling 
 in. My object in that uncommercial journey called up 
 another train of thought, and it ran as follows : 
 
 " When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder 
 by what secret understanding our attention began to wan- 
 der when we had pored over our books for some hours. I 
 wonder by what ingenuity we brought on that confused 
 state of mind when sense became nonsense, when figures 
 wouldn't work, when dead languages wouldn't construe, 
 when live languages wouldn't be spoken, when memory 
 wouldn't come, when dulness and vacancy wouldn't go. I 
 cannot remember that we ever conspired to be sleepy after 
 dinner, or that we ever particularly wanted to be stupid, 
 and to have flushed faces and hot beating heads, or to find 
 blank hopelessness and obscurity this afternoon in what 
 would become perfectly clear and bright in the freshness 
 of to-morrow morning. We suffered for these things, and 
 they made us miserable enough. Neither do I remember 
 that we ever bound ourselves by any secret oath or other 
 
204 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 solemn obligation, to find the seats getting too hard to be 
 sat upon after a certain time; or to have intolerable 
 twitches in our legs, rendering us aggressive and malicious 
 with those members; or to be troubled with a similar un- 
 easiness in our elbows, attended with fistic consequences 
 to our neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead in the 
 chest, four pounds in the head, and several active blue- 
 bottles in each ear. Yet, for certain, we suffered under 
 those distresses, and were always charged at for labouring 
 under them, as if we had brought them on, of our own de- 
 liberate act and deed. As to the mental portion of them 
 being my own fault in my own case — I should like to ask 
 any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say psy- 
 chologist. And as to the physical portion — I should like 
 to ask Professor Owex." 
 
 It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with 
 me, on what is called " The Half-Time System " in schools. 
 Referring to one of those papers I found that the indefati- 
 gable Mr. Chad wick had been beforehand with me, and 
 had already asked Professor Owen: who had handsomely 
 replied that I was not to blame, but that, being troubled 
 with a skeleton, and having been constituted according to 
 certain natural laws, I and my skeleton were unfortunately 
 bound by those laws — even in school — and had comported 
 ourselves accordingly. Much comforted by the good Pro- 
 fessor's being on my side, I read on to discover whether 
 the indefatigable Mr. Chadwick had taken up the mental 
 part of my afflictions. I found that he had, and that he 
 had gained on my behalf, Sir Bexjamix Brodie, Sir 
 David Wilkie, Sir Walter Scott, and the common 
 sense of mankind. For which I beg Mr. Chadwick, if this 
 should meet his eye, to accept my warm acknowledgments. 
 
 Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the 
 seventy unfortunates of whom I was one, must have been, 
 without knowing it, leagued together by the spirit of evil 
 in a sort of perpetual Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope about in 
 vaults with dark lanterns after a certain period of continu- 
 ous study. But now the misgiving vanished, and I floated 
 on with a quieted mind to see the Half-Time System in 
 action. For that was the purpose of my journey, both by 
 steamboat on the Thames, and by very dirty railway on 
 the shore. To which last institution, I beg to recommend 
 the legal use of coke as engine-fuel, rather than the illegal 
 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 205 
 
 ase of coal; the recommendation is quite disinterested, for 
 I was most liberally supplied with small coal on the jour- 
 ney, for which no charge was made. I had not only my 
 eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my hat, and all my pockets, 
 and my pocket-book, and my watch. 
 
 The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Rail- 
 way Company) delivered me close to my destination, and 
 I soon found the Half-Time System established in spacious 
 premises, and freely placed at my convenience and dis- 
 posal. 
 
 What would I see first of the Half-Time System? I 
 chose Military Drill. " Atten — tion ! " Instantly a hun- 
 dred boys stood forth in the paved yard as one boy; bright, 
 quick, eager, steady, watchful for the look of command, 
 instant and ready for the word. Not only was there com- 
 plete precision — complete accord to the eye and to the ear 
 — but an alertness in the doing of the thing which deprived 
 it, curiously, of its monotonous or mechanical character. 
 There was perfect uniformity, and yet an individual spirit 
 and emulation. M"o spectator could doubt that the bo} T s 
 liked it. With non-commissioned officers varying from a 
 yard to a yard and a half high, the result could not possi- 
 bly have been attained otherwise. They marched, and 
 counter-marched, and formed in line and square, and com- 
 pany, and single file and double file, and performed a va- 
 riety of evolutions; all most admirably. In respect of an 
 air of enjoyable understanding of what they were about, 
 which seems to be forbidden to English soldiers, the boys 
 might have been small French troops. When they were 
 dismissed and the broadsword exercise, limited to a much 
 smaller number, succeeded, the boys who had no part in 
 that new drill, either looked on attentively, or disported 
 themselves in a gymnasium hard by. The steadiness of 
 the broadsword boys on their short legs, and the firmness 
 with which they sustained the different positions, was truly 
 remarkable. 
 
 The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great 
 excitement and a rush. Naval Drill ! 
 
 In the corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, 
 with real masts, yards, and sails — mainmast seventy feet 
 high. At the word of command from the Skipper of this 
 ship — a mahogany-faced Old Salt, with the indispensable 
 quid in his cheek, the true nautical roll, and all wonder- 
 
206 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 fully complete — the rigging was covered with a swarm of 
 boys : one, the first to spring into the shrouds, outstripping 
 all the others, and resting on the truck of the main-topmast 
 in no time. 
 
 And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing man- 
 ner; the Skipper himself, the Avhole crew, the Uncommer- 
 cial, and all hands present, implicitly believing that there 
 was not a moment to lose, that the wind had that instant 
 chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we were away 
 on a voyage round the world. Get all sail upon her ! With 
 a will, my lads! Lay out upon the main-yard there! 
 Look alive at the weather earring ! Cheery, my boys ! Let 
 go the sheet, now ! Stand by at the braces, you ! With a 
 will, aloft there ! Belay, starboard watch ! Fifer ! Come 
 aft, fifer, and give 'em a tune! Forthwith, springs up 
 fifer, fife in hand — smallest boy ever seen — big lump on 
 temple, having lately fallen down on a paving-stone — gives 
 'em a tune with all his might and main. Hooroar, fifer! 
 With a will, my lads ! Tip 'em a livelier one, fifer ! Fifer 
 tips 'em a livelier one, and excitement increases. Shake 
 'em out, my lads! Well done! There you have her! 
 Pretty, pretty ! Every rag upon her she can carry, wind 
 right astarn, and ship cutting through the water fifteen 
 knots an hour ! 
 
 At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the 
 alarm "A man overboard!" (on the gravel), but he was 
 immediately recovered, none the worse. Presently, I ob- 
 served the Skipper overboard, but forebore to mention it, 
 as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the accident. In- 
 deed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an amphibious 
 creature, for he was so perpetually plunging overboard to 
 look up at the hands aloft, that he was oftener in the 
 bosom of the ocean than on deck. His pride in his crew 
 on those occasions was delightful, and the conventional 
 unintelligibility of his orders in the ears of uncommercial 
 landlubbers and loblolly boys, though they were always in- 
 telligible to the crew, was hardly less pleasant. But we 
 couldn't expect to go on in this way for ever; dirty weather 
 came on, and then worse weather, and when we least ex- 
 pected it we got into tremendous difficulties. Screw loose 
 in the chart perhaps — something certainly wrong some- 
 where — but here we were with breakers ahead, my lads, 
 driving head on, slap on a lee shore! The Skipper 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 207 
 
 broached this terrific announcement in such great agitation, 
 that the small fifer, not fifing now, but standing looking on 
 near the wheel with his fife under his arm, seemed for the 
 moment quite unboyed, though he speedily recovered his 
 presence of mind. In the trying circumstances that en- 
 sued, the Skipper and the crew proved worthy of one 
 another. The Skipper got dreadfully hoarse, but other- 
 wise was master of the situation. The man at the wheel 
 did wonders; all hands, (except the fifer) were turned up 
 to wear ship; and I observed the fifer, when we were at 
 our greatest extremity, to refer to some document in his 
 waistcoat-pocket, which I conceived to be his will. I think 
 she struck. I was not myself conscious of any collision, 
 but I saw the Skipper so very often washed overboard and 
 back again, that I could only impute it to the beating of 
 the ship. I am not enough of a seaman to describe the 
 manoeuvres by which we were saved, but they made the 
 Skipper very hot (French polishing his mahogany face) and 
 the crew very nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for, 
 within a few minutes of the first alarm, we had wore ship 
 and got her off, and were all a-tauto — which I felt very 
 grateful for : not that I knew what it was, but that I per- 
 ceived that we had not been all a-tauto latety. Land now 
 appeared on our weather-bow, and we shaped our course for 
 it, having the wind abeam, and frequently changing the 
 man at the helm, in order that every man might have 
 his spell. We worked into harbour under prosperous cir- 
 cumstances, and furled our sails, and squared our yards, 
 and made all ship-shape and handsome, and so our voj-age 
 ended. When I complimented the Skipper at parting on 
 his exertions and those of his gallant crew, he informed 
 me that the latter were provided for the worse, all hands 
 being taught to swim and dive; and he added that the able 
 seaman at the main-topmast truck especially, could dive 
 as deep as he could go high. 
 
 The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the 
 Short-Timers, was the sudden apparition of a military 
 band. I had been inspecting the hammocks of the good 
 ship, when I saw with astonishment that several musical 
 instruments, brazen and of great size, appeared to have 
 suddenly developed two legs each, and to be trotting about 
 a yard. And my astonishment was heightened when I ob- 
 served a large drum, that had previously been leaning help- 
 
208 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 less against a wall, taking up a stout position on four legs. 
 Approaching this drum and looking over it, I found two 
 boys behind it (it was too much for one), and then I found 
 that each of the brazen instruments had brought out a boy, 
 and was going to discourse sweet sounds. The boys — not 
 omitting the fifer, now playing a new instrument — were 
 dressed in neat uniform, and stood up in a circle at their 
 music-stands, like any other Military Band. They played 
 a march or two, and then we had Cheer boys, Cheer, and 
 then we had Yankee Doodle, and we finished, as in loyal 
 duty bound, with God Save the Queen. The band's profi- 
 ciency was perfectly wonderful, and it was not at all won- 
 derful that the whole body corporate of Short-Timers lis- 
 tened with faces of the liveliest interest and pleasure. 
 
 What happened next among the Short-Timers? As if 
 the band had blown me into a great class-room out of their 
 brazen tubes, in a great class-room I found myself now, 
 with the whole choral force of Short-Timers singing the 
 praises of a summer's day to the harmonium, and my small 
 but highly-respected friend the fifer blazing away vocally, 
 as if he had been saving up his wind for the last twelve- 
 month; also the whole crew of the good ship Nameless 
 swarming up and down the scale as if they had never 
 swarmed up and down the rigging. This done, we threw 
 our whole power into God bless the Prince of Wales, and 
 blessed his Royal Highness to such an extent that, for my 
 own Uncommercial part, I gasped again when it was over. 
 The moment this was done, we formed, with surpassing 
 freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to work at oral les- 
 sons, as if we never did, and had never thought of doing, 
 anything else. 
 
 Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which 
 the Uncommercial Traveller would have been betrayed but 
 for a discreet reticence, coupled with an air of absolute 
 wisdom on the part of that artful personage. Take the 
 square of five, multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three, 
 deduct eight from it, add four dozen to it, give me the re- 
 sult in pence, and tell me how many eggs I could get for 
 it at three farthings apiece. The problem is hardly stated, 
 when a dozen small boys pour out answers. Some wide, 
 some very nearly right, some worked as far as they go with 
 such accuracy, as at once to show what link of the chain 
 has been dropped in the hurry. For the moment, none are 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 209 
 
 quite right; but behold a labouring spirit beating the but- 
 tons on its corporeal waistcoat, in a process of internal cal- 
 culation, and knitting an accidental bump on its corporeal 
 forehead in a concentration of mental arithmetic ! It is 
 my honourable friend (if he will allow me to call him so) 
 the fifer. With right arm eagerly extended in token of 
 being inspired with an answer, and with right leg foremost, 
 the fifer solves the mystery : then recalls both arm and leg, 
 and with bump in ambush awaits the next poser. Take 
 the square of three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, 
 add fifty to it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two, 
 double it, give me the result in pence, and say how many 
 half-pence. Wise as a serpent is the four feet of per- 
 former on the nearest approach to that instrument, whose 
 right arm instantly appears, and quenches this arithmetical 
 fire. Tell me something about Great Britain, tell me some- 
 thing about its principal productions, tell me something 
 about its ports, tell me something about its seas and rivers, 
 tell me something about coal, iron, cotton, timber, tin, and 
 turpentine. The hollow square bristles with extended right 
 arms; but ever faithful to fact is the fifer, ever wise as the 
 serpent is the performer on that instrument, ever promi- 
 nently buoyant and brilliant are all members of the band. 
 I observe the player of the cymbals to dash at a sounding 
 answer now and then rather than not cut in at all; but I 
 take that to be in the way of his instrument. All these 
 questions, and many such, are put on the spur of the mo- 
 ment, and by one who has never examined these boys. 
 The Uncommercial, invited to add another, falteringly de- 
 mands how many birthdays a man born the twenty -ninth 
 of February will have had on completing his fiftieth year? 
 A general perception of trap and pitfall instantly arises, and 
 the fifer is seen to retire behind the corduroys of his next 
 neighbours, as perceiving special necessity for collecting 
 himself and communing with his mind. Meanwhile, the 
 wisdom of the serpent suggests that the man will have had 
 only one birthday in all that time, for how can any man 
 have more than one, seeing that he is born once and dies 
 once? The blushing Uncommercial stands corrected, and 
 amends the formula. Pondering ensues, two or three 
 wrong answers are offered, and Cymbals strikes up " Six ! " 
 but doesn't know why. Then modestly emerging from his 
 Academic Grove of corduroys appears the fifer, right arm 
 
210 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 extended, right leg foremost, bump irradiated. " Twelve, 
 and two over ! " 
 
 The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, 
 and very creditably too. Would have done better perhaps, 
 with a little more geniality on the part of their pupil- 
 teacher; for a cold eye, my young friend, and a hard 
 abrupt manner, are not by any means the powerful engines 
 that your innocence supposes them to be. Both girls and 
 boys wrote excellently, from copy and dictation; both 
 could cook; both could mend their own clothes; both could 
 clean up everything about them in an orderly and skilful 
 way, the girls having womanly household knowledge super- 
 added. Order and method began in the songs of the In- 
 fant School which I visited likewise, and they were even 
 in their dwarf degree to be found in the Nursery, where 
 the Uncommercial walking-stick was carried off with accla- 
 mations, and where " the Doctor " — a medical gentleman of 
 two, who took his degree on the night when he was found 
 at an apothecary's door — did the honours of the establish- 
 ment with great urbanity and gaiety. 
 
 These have long been excellent schools; long before the 
 days of the Short-Time. I first saw them, twelve or fif- 
 teen years ago. But since the introduction of the Short- 
 Time system it has been proved here that eighteen hours a 
 week of book-learning are more profitable than thirty-six, 
 and that the pupils are far quicker and brighter than of 
 yore. The good influences of music on the whole body of 
 children have likewise been surprisingly proved. Obviously 
 another of the immense advantages of the Short-Time 
 system to the cause of good education is the great diminu- 
 tion of its cost, and of the period of time over which it ex- 
 tends. The last is a most important consideration, as poor 
 parents are always impatient to profit by their children's 
 labour. 
 
 It will be objected : Firstly, that this is all very well, 
 but special local advantages and special selection of chil- 
 dren must be necessary to such success. Secondly, that 
 this is all very well, but must be very expensive. Thirdly, 
 that this is all very well, but we have no proof of the re- 
 sults, sir, no proof. 
 
 On the first head of local advantages and special selec- 
 tion. Would Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site 
 of a Children's Paradise? Or would the legitimate and 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER. 211 
 
 illegitimate pauper children of the long-shore population 
 of such a riverside district, be regarded as unusually fa- 
 vourable specimens to work with? Yet these schools are 
 at Limehouse, and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney 
 Pauper Union. 
 
 On the second head of expense. Would sixpence a week 
 be considered a very large cost for the education of each 
 pupil, including all salaries of teachers and rations of teach- 
 ers? But supposing the cost were not sixpence a week, 
 not fivepence? It is fourpence-halfpenny. 
 
 On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof. Is there 
 any proof in the facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, 
 and more highly qualified, have been produced here under 
 the Short-Time system than under the Long-Time system? 
 That the Short-Timers, in a writing competition, beat the 
 Long-Timers of a first-class National School? That the 
 sailor-boys are in such demand for merchant ships, that 
 whereas, before they were trained, 10Z. premium used to 
 be given with each boy — too often to some greedy brute of 
 a drunken skipper, who disappeared before the term of ap- 
 prenticeship was out, if the ill-used boy didn't — captains 
 of the best character now take these boys more than will- 
 iugly, with no premium at all? That they are also much 
 esteemed in the Royal Navy, which they prefer, " because 
 everything is so neat and clean and orderly "? Or, is there 
 any proof in Naval captains writing, " Your little fellows 
 are all that I can desire "? Or, is there any proof in such 
 testimony as this : " The owner of a vessel called at the 
 school, and said that as his ship was going down Channel 
 on her last voyage, with one of the boys from the school 
 on board, the pilot said, 'It would be as well if the royal 
 were lowered; I wish it were down.' Without waiting for 
 any orders, and unobserved by the pilot, the lad, whom 
 they had taken on board from the school, instantly mounted 
 the mast and lowered the royal, and at the next glance of 
 the pilot to the masthead, he perceived that the sail had 
 been let down. He exclaimed, 'Who's done that job?' 
 The owner, who was on board, said, 'That was the little 
 fellow whom I put on board two days ago.' The pilot im- 
 mediately said, ' Why, where could he have been brought 
 up? ' That boy had never seen the sea or been on a real 
 ship before" ? Or, is there any proof in these boys being 
 in greater demand for Regimental Bands than the Union 
 
212 -THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 can meet? Or, in ninety-eight of tliem having gone into 
 Regimental Bands in three years? Or, in twelve of them 
 being in the band of one regiment? Or, in the colonel of 
 that regiment writing, "We want six more boys; they are 
 excellent lads "? Or, in one of the boys having risen to 
 be band-corporal in the same regiment? Or, in employers 
 of all kinds chorusing, " Give us drilled boys, for they are 
 prompt, obedient, and punctual"? Other proofs I have 
 myself beheld with these Uncommercial eyes, though I do 
 not regard myself as having a right to relate in what social 
 positions they have seen respected men and women who 
 were once pauper children of the Stepney Union. 
 
 Into what admirable soldiers other of these boys have 
 the capabilities for being turned, I need not point out. 
 Many of them are always ambitious of military service; 
 and once upon a time when an old boy came back to see 
 the old place, a cavalry soldier all complete, with his spurs 
 on, such a yearning broke out to get into cavalry regiments 
 and wear those sublime appendages, that it was one of the 
 greatest excitements ever known in the school. The girls 
 make excellent domestic servants, and at certain periods 
 come back, a score or two at a time, to see the old build- 
 ing, and to take tea with the old teachers, and to hear the 
 old band, and to see the old ship with her masts towering 
 up above the neighbouring roofs and chimneys. As to the 
 physical health of these schools, it is so exceptionally re- 
 markable (simply because the sanitary regulations are aa 
 good as the other educational arrangements), that when 
 Mr. Tufnell, the Inspector, first stated it in a report, he 
 was supposed, in spite of his high character, to have been 
 betrayed into some extraordinary mistake or exaggeration. 
 In the moral health of these schools, — where corporal pun- 
 ishment is unknown — Truthfulness stands high. When 
 the ship was first erected, the boys were forbidden to go 
 aloft, until the nets, which are now always there, were 
 stretched as a precaution against accidents. Certain boys, 
 in their eagerness, disobeyed the injunction, got out of 
 window in the early daylight, and climbed to the mast- 
 head. One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed. There 
 was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, 
 and the chairman of the Board addressed them. " I prom- 
 ise nothing; you see what a dreadful thing has happened; 
 you know what a grave offence it is that has led to such a 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 213 
 
 consequence; I cannot say what will be done with the 
 offenders; but, boys, you have been trained here, above 
 all things, to respect the truth. I want the truth. Who 
 are the delinquents? " Instantly, the whole number of 
 boys concerned, separated from the rest, and stood out. 
 
 Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is need- 
 less to say, a good head and a good heart) have been deeply 
 interested in these schools for many years, and are so still; 
 and the establishment is very fortunate in a most admira- 
 ble master, and moreover the schools of the Stepney Union 
 cannot have got to be what they are, without the Stepney 
 Board of Guardians having been earnest and humane men, 
 strongly imbued with a sense of their responsibility. But 
 what one set of men can do in this wise, another set of 
 men can do; and this is a noble example to all other Bodies 
 and Unions, and a noble example to the State. Followed, 
 and enlarged upon by its enforcement on bad parents, it 
 would clear London streets of the most terrible objects they 
 smite the sight with — myriads of little children who aw- 
 fully reverse Our Saviour's words, and are not of the King- 
 dom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell. 
 
 Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public 
 conscience of such reproach? . Ah! Almost prophetic, 
 surely, the child's jingle: 
 
 When will that he, 
 
 Say the hells of Step-neyf 
 
 XXII. 
 
 BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 
 
 Behold me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot 
 morning early in June. My road lies through that part of 
 London generally known to the initiated as " Down by the 
 Docks." Down by the Docks, is home to a good many 
 people — to too many, if I may judge from the overflow of 
 local population in the streets — but my nose insinuates 
 that the number to whom it is Sweet Home might be easily 
 counted. Down by the Docks, is a region I would choose 
 
214 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 as my point of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emi- 
 grant. It would present my intention to me in suck a sen- 
 sible light; it would show me so many things to be run 
 away from. 
 
 Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and 
 scatter the roughest oyster shells, known to the descend- 
 ants of Saint George and the Dragon. Down by the Docks, 
 they consume the slimiest of shell-fish, Avhich seem to have 
 been scraped off the copper bottoms of ships. Down by the 
 Docks, the vegetables at green-grocers' doors acquire a 
 saline and a scaly look, as if they had been crossed with 
 fish and seaweed. Down by the Docks, they " board sea- 
 men" at the eating-houses, the public-houses, the slop- 
 shops, the coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of shops 
 mentionable and unmentionable — board them, as it were, 
 in the piratical sense, making them bleed terribly, and giv- 
 ing no quarter. Down by the Docks, the seamen roam in 
 mid-street and mid-day, their pockets inside-out, and their 
 heads no better. Down by the Docks, the daughters of 
 wave-ruling Britannia also rove, clad in silken attire, with 
 uncovered tresses streaming in the breeze, bandanna ker- 
 chiefs floating from their shoulders, and crinoline not want- 
 ing. 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 Avaxwork, for a 
 penny and no waiting, him as killed the policeman at Ac- 
 ton and suffered for it. Down by the Docks, you may 
 buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, 
 if you are not particular what they are made of besides sea- 
 soning. Down by the Docks, the children of Israel creep 
 into any gloomy cribs and entries they can hire, and hang 
 slops there — pewter watches, sou'-wester hats, waterproof 
 overalls — "firtht rate articleth, Thjack." Down by the 
 Docks, such dealers exhibiting on a frame a complete nau- 
 tical suit without the refinement of a waxen- visage in the 
 hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard- 
 arm, with his seafaring and earthfaring troubles over. 
 Down by the Docks, the placards in the shops apostrophise 
 the customer, knowing him familiarly beforehand, as, 
 " Look here, Jack ! " " Here's your sort, my lad ! " " Try 
 our sea-going mixed, at two and nine ! " " The right kit 
 for the British tar ! " " Ship ahoy ! " " Splice the main- 
 brace, brother ! " "Come, cheer up, my lads. We've the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 215 
 
 best liquors here, And you'll rind something new In our 
 wonderful Beer ! " Down by the Docks, the pawnbroker 
 lends money on Union-Jack pocket-handkerchiefs, on 
 watches with little ships pitching fore and aft on the dial, 
 on telescopes, nautical instruments in cases, and such-like. 
 Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business on 
 the wretchedest scale — chiefly on lint and plaster for the 
 strapping of wounds— and with no bright bottles, and with 
 no little drawers. Down by the Docks, the shabby under- 
 taker's shop will bury you for next to nothing, after the 
 Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing at all : so 
 you can hardly hope to make a cheaper end. Down by the 
 Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel with anybody drunk or 
 sober, and everybody else will have a hand in it, and on 
 the shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of red 
 shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed 
 arms, Britannia's daughters, malice, mud, maundering, and 
 madness. Down by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the 
 public-houses all day long, and, shrill above their din and 
 all the din, rises the screeching of innumerable parrots 
 brought from foreign parts, who appear to be very much 
 astonished by what they find on these native shores of ours. 
 Possibly the parrots don't know, possibly they do, that 
 Down by the Docks is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with 
 its lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flowers, and 
 the savage boys carve cocoanut shells, and the grim blind 
 idols muse in their shady groves to exactly the same pur- 
 pose as the priests and chiefs. And possibly the parrots 
 don't know, possibly they do, that the noble savage is a 
 wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has five hundred 
 thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason, to 
 answer for. 
 
 Shadwell church! Pleasant whispers of there being a 
 fresher air down the river than down by the Docks, go pur- 
 suing one another, playfully, in and out of the openings in 
 its spire. Gigantic in the basin just beyond the church, 
 looms my Emigrant Ship : her name, the Amazon. Her 
 figure-head is not disfigured as those beauteous founders of 
 the race of strong-minded women are fabled to have been, 
 for the convenience of drawing the bow; but I sympathise 
 with the carver : 
 
 A flattering carver who made it his care 
 To carve busts as they ought to be — not as they were. 
 15 
 
216 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 Emi- 
 grants who are going to sail in my Emigrant Ship. Some 
 with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some with cheese 
 and butter, some with milk and beer, some with boxes beds 
 and bundles, some with babies — nearly all with children — 
 nearly all with bran-new tin cans for their daily allowance 
 of water, uncomfortably suggestive of a tin flavour in the 
 drink. To and fro, up and down, aboard and ashore, 
 swarming here and there and everywhere, my Emigrants. 
 And still as the Dock-Gate swings upon its hinges, cabs 
 apy>ear, 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 invest- 
 ments accumulated compound interest of children. 
 
 I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to the great 
 cabin, and find it in the usual condition of a Cabin at that 
 pass. Perspiring landsmen, with loose papers, and with 
 pens and inkstands, pervade it; and the general appear- 
 ance of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon's funeral had 
 just come home from the cemetery, and the disconsolate 
 Mrs. Amazon's trustees found the affairs in great disorder, 
 and were looking high and low for the will. I go out on 
 the poop-deck, for air, and surveying the emigrants on the 
 deck below (indeed they are crowded all about me, up there 
 too), find more pens and inkstands in action, and more pa- 
 pers, and interminable complication respecting accounts 
 with individuals for tin cans and what not. But nobody 
 is in an ill-temper, nobod} r is the worse for drink, nobody 
 swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears de- 
 pressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck in 
 every corner where it is possible to find a few square feet 
 to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable atti- 
 tude for writing, are writing letters. 
 
 Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June. 
 And these people are so strikingly different from all other 
 people in like circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I 
 wonder aloud, " What would a stranger suppose these emi- 
 grants to be ! " 
 
 The vigilant bright face of the weather-browned captain 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 217 
 
 of the Amazon is at my shoulder, and he says, " What, in- 
 deed ! The most of these came aboard yesterday evening. 
 They came from various parts of England in small parties 
 that had never seen one another before. Yet they had not 
 been a couple of hours on board, when they established 
 their own police, made their own regulations, and set 
 their own watches at all the hatchways. Before nine 
 o'clock, the ship was as orderly and as quiet as a man-of- 
 war. " 
 
 I looked about me again, and saw the letter- writing going 
 on with the most curious composure. Perfectly abstracted 
 in the midst of the crowd; while great casks were swing- 
 ing aloft, and being lowered into the hold; while hot agents 
 were hurrying up and down, adjusting the interminable ac- 
 counts; while two hundred strangers were searching every- 
 where for two hundred other strangers, and were asking 
 questions about them of two hundred more; while the 
 children played up and down all the steps, and in and out 
 among all the people's legs, and were beheld, to the gen- 
 eral dismay, toppling over all the dangerous places; the 
 letter- writers wrote on calmly. On the starboard side of 
 the ship, a grizzled man dictated a long letter to another 
 grizzled man in an immense fur cap : which letter was of 
 so profound a quality, that it became necessary for the 
 amanuensis at intervals to take off his fur cap in both his 
 hands, for the ventilation of his brain, and stare at him 
 who dictated, as a man of many mysteries who was worth 
 looking at. On the 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, writing with the delibera- 
 tion of a bookkeeper. Down upon her breast on the planks 
 of the deck at this woman's feet, with her head diving in 
 under a beam of the bulwarks on that side, as an eligible 
 place of refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat and pretty 
 girl wrote for a good hour (she fainted at last), only rising 
 to the surface occasionally for a dip of ink. Alongside the 
 boat, close to me on the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh 
 well-grown country girl, was writing another letter on the 
 bare deck. Later in the day, when this self-same boat was 
 filled with a choir who sang glees and catches for a long 
 time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically 
 all the while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat 
 while doing so. 
 
218 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 " A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name 
 for these people, Mr. Uncommercial," says the captain. 
 
 "Indeed he would." 
 
 "If you hadn't known, could you ever have sup- 
 posed ? " 
 
 " Haw could I ! I should have said they were in their 
 degree, the pick and flower of England." 
 
 "So should I," says the captain. 
 
 " How many are they? " 
 
 "Eight hundred in round numbers." 
 
 I went between-decks, where the families with children 
 swarmed in the dark, where unavoidable confusion had 
 been caused by the last arrivals, and where the confusion 
 was increased by the little preparations for dinner that were 
 going on in each group. A few women here and there, 
 had got lost, and were laughing at it, and asking their 
 way to their own people, or out on deck again. A few 
 of the poor children were crying; but otherwise the uni- 
 versal cheerfulness was amazing. "We shall shake down 
 by to-morrow." " We shall come all right in a day or so." 
 "We shall have more light at sea." Such phrases I 
 heard everywhere, as I groped my way among chests and 
 barrels and beams and un stowed cargo and ring-bolts and 
 Emigrants, clown to the lower-deck, and thence up to the 
 light of day again, and to my former station. 
 
 Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self- 
 abstraction ! All the former letter- writers were still writ- 
 ing calmly, and many more letter- writers had broken out 
 in my absence. A boy with a bag of books in his hand and 
 a slate under his arm, emerged from below, concentrated 
 himself in my neighbourhood (espying a convenient sky- 
 light for his purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he 
 were stone deaf. A father and mother and several young 
 children, on the main deck below me, had formed a family 
 circle close to the foot of the crowded restless gangway, 
 where the children made a nest for themselves in a coil of 
 rope, and the father and mother, she suckling the youngest, 
 discussed family affairs as peaceably as if they were in per- 
 fect retirement. I think the most noticeable characteristic 
 in the eight hundred as a mass, was their exemption from 
 hurry. 
 
 Eight hundred what? " Geese, villain? " Eight hun- 
 dred Mormons. I, Uncommercial Traveller for the firm 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 219 
 
 of Human Interest Brothers, had come aboard this Emi- 
 grant Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-Day Saints 
 were like, and I found them (to the rout and overthrow of 
 all my expectations) like what I now describe with scrupu- 
 lous exactness. 
 
 The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them 
 together, and in. making the contract with my friends the 
 owners of the ship to take them as far as New York on 
 their way to the Great Salt Lake, was pointed out to me. 
 A compactly-made handsome man in black, rather short, 
 with rich-brown hair and beard, and clear bright eyes. 
 From his speech, I should set him down as American. 
 Probably, a man who had "knocked about the world" 
 pretty much. A man with a frank open manner, and un- 
 shrinking look; withal a man of great quickness. I be- 
 lieve he was wholly ignorant of my Uncommercial indi- 
 viduality, and consequently of my immense Uncommercial 
 importance. 
 
 Uncommercial. These are a very fine set of people 
 you have brought together here. 
 
 Mormon Agent. Yes, sir, they are a very fine set of 
 people. 
 
 Uncommercial (looking about). Indeed, I think it 
 would be difficult to find Eight hundred people together 
 anywhere else, and find so much beauty and so much 
 strength and capacity for work among them. 
 
 Mormon Agent (not looking about, but looking steadily 
 at Uncommercial). I think so. — We sent out about a 
 thousand more, yes'day, from Liverpool. 
 
 Uncommercial. You are not going with these emi- 
 grants? 
 
 Mormon Agent. No, sir. I remain. 
 
 Uncommercial. But you have been in the Mormon 
 Territory? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Yes; I left Utah about three years 
 ago. 
 
 Uncommercial. It is surprising to me that these peo- 
 ple are all so cheery, and make so little of the immense 
 distance before them. 
 
 Mormon Agent. Well, you see; many of 'em have 
 friends out at Utah, and many of 'em look forward to meet- 
 ing friends on the way. 
 
 Uncommercial. On the way/ 
 
220 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Mormon Agent. This way 'tis. This ship lands 'em 
 in New York City. Then they go on by rail right away 
 beyond St. Louis, to that part of the Banks of the Missouri 
 where they strike the Plains. There, waggons from the 
 settlement meet 'em to bear 'em company on their journey 
 'cross — twelve hundred miles about. Industrious people 
 who come out to the settlement soon get waggons of their 
 own, and so the friends of some of these will come down 
 in their own waggons to meet 'em. They look forward to 
 that, greatly. 
 
 Uncommercial. On their long journey across the Des- 
 ert, do you arm them? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Mostly you would find they have arms 
 of some kind or another already with them. Such as had 
 not arms we should arm across the Plains, for the general 
 protection and defence. 
 
 Uncommercial. Will these waggons bring down any 
 produce to the Missouri? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Well, since the war broke out, we've 
 taken to growing cotton, and they'll likely bring down cot- 
 ton to be exchanged for machinery. We want machinery. 
 Also we have taken to growing indigo, which is a fine com- 
 modity for profit. It has been found that the climate on 
 the further side of the Great Salt Lake suits well for rais- 
 ing indigo. 
 
 Uncommercial. I am told that these people now on 
 board are principally from the South of England? 
 
 Mormon Agent. And from Wales. That's true. 
 
 Uncommercial. Do you get many Scotch? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Not many. 
 
 Uncommercial. Highlanders, for instance? 
 
 Mormon Agent. No, not Highlanders. They ain't in- 
 terested enough in universal brotherhood and peace and 
 good will. 
 
 Uncommercial. The old fighting blood is strong in 
 them? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Well, yes. And besides; they've no 
 faith. 
 
 Uncommercial (who has been burning to get at the 
 Prophet Joe Smith, and seems to discover an opening). 
 Faith in ! 
 
 Mormon Agent (far too many for Uncommercial) 
 Well. — In anything! 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 221 
 
 Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial under- 
 went discomfiture from a "Wiltshire labourer: a simple 
 fresh-coloured farm labourer, of eight-and- thirty, who at 
 one time stood beside him, looking on at new arrivals, and 
 with whom he held this dialogue : 
 
 Uncommercial. Would you mind my asking you what 
 part of the country you come from? 
 
 Wiltshire. Not a bit. Theer! (exultingly) I've 
 worked all my life o' Salisbury Plain, right under the 
 shadder o' Stonehenge. You mightn't think it, but I haive. 
 
 Uncommercial. And a pleasant country too. 
 
 Wiltshire. Ah! "lis a pleasant country. 
 
 Uncommercial. Have you any family on board? 
 
 Wiltshire. Two children, boy and gal. I am a wid- 
 derer, I am, and I'm going out alonger my boy and gal. 
 That's my gal, and she's a fine gal o' sixteen (pointing out 
 the girl who is writing by the boat). I'll go and fetch my 
 boy. I'd like to show you my boy. (Here Wiltshire dis- 
 appears, and presently comes back with a big shy boy of 
 twelve, in a superabundance of boots, who is not at all glad 
 to be presented.) He is a fine boy too, and a boy fur to 
 work! (Boy having undutifully bolted, Wiltshire drops 
 him.) 
 
 Uncommercial. It must cost you a great deal of money 
 to go so far, three strong. 
 
 Wiltshire. A power of money. Theer! Eight shil- 
 len a week, eight shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put 
 by out of the week's wages for ever so long. 
 
 Uncommercial. I wonder how you did it. 
 
 Wiltshire (recognising in this a kindred spirit). See 
 theer now! I wonder how I done it! But what with a 
 bit o' subscription heer, and what with a bit o' help theer, 
 it were done at last, though I don't hardly know how. 
 Then it were unfort'net for us, you see, as we got kep' in 
 Bristol so long — -nigh a fortnight, it were — on accounts of 
 a mistake Avi' Brother Halliday. Swaller'd up money, it 
 did, when we might have come straight on. 
 
 Uncommercial (delicately approaching Joe Smith). 
 You are of the Mormon religion, of course? 
 
 Wiltshire (confidently). yes, I'm a Mormon. 
 (Then reflectively.) I'm a Mormon. (Then, looking 
 round the ship, feigns to descry a particular friend in an 
 empty spot, and evades the Uncommercial for evermore.) 
 
222 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emi- 
 grants were nearly all between-decks, and the Amazon 
 looked deserted, a general muster took place. The muster 
 was for the ceremony of passing the Government Inspector 
 and the Doctor. Those authorities held their temporary 
 state amidships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that the 
 whole Eight hundred emigrants must come face to face 
 with them, I took my station behind the two. They knew 
 nothing whatever of me, I believe, and my testimony to 
 the unpretending gentleness and good nature with which 
 they discharged their duty, may be of the greater worth. 
 There was not the slightest flavour of the Circumlocution 
 Office about their proceedings. 
 
 The emigrants were now all on deck. They were densely 
 crowded aft, and swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees. 
 Two or three Mormon agents stood ready to hand them on 
 to the Inspector, and to hand them forward when they had 
 passed. By what successful means, a special aptitude for 
 organisation had been infused into these people, I am, of 
 course, unable to report. But I know that, even now, there 
 was no disorder, hurry, or difficulty. 
 
 All being ready, the first group are handed on. That 
 member of the party who is entrusted with the passenger- 
 ticket for the whole, has been warned by one of the agents 
 to have it ready, and here it is in his hand. In every in- 
 stance through the whole eight hundred, without an excep- 
 tion, this paper is always ready. 
 
 Inspector (reading the ticket). Jessie Jobson, So- 
 phronia Jobson, Jessie Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, Will- 
 iam Jobson, Jane Jobson, Matilda Jobson again, Brigham 
 Jobson, Leonardo Jobson, and Orson Jobson. Are you 
 all here? (glancing at the party, over his spectacles). 
 
 Jessie Jobson Number Two. All hei-e, sir. 
 
 This group is composed of an old grandfather and grand- 
 mother, their married son and his wife, and their family 
 of children. Orson Jobson is a little child asleep in his 
 mother's arms. The Doctor, with a kind word or so, lifts 
 up the corner of the mother's shawl, looks at the child's face, 
 and touches the little clenched hand. If we were all as well 
 as Orson Jobson, doctoring would be a poor profession. 
 
 Inspector. Quite right, Jessie Jobson. Take your 
 ticket, Jessie, and pass on. 
 
 And away they go. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 223 
 
 hands them on. Mormon agent, skilful and qniet, hands 
 next party up. 
 
 Inspector (reading ticket again). Susannah Cleverly 
 and William Cleverly. Brother and sister, eh? 
 
 Sister (young woman of business, hustling slow brother). 
 Yes, sir. 
 
 Inspector. Very good, Susannah Cleverly. Take your 
 ticket, Susannah, and take care of it. 
 
 And. away they go. 
 
 Inspector (taking ticket again), Sampson Dibble and 
 Dorothy Dibble (surveying a very old couple over his spec- 
 tacles, with some surprise). Your husband quite blind, 
 Mrs. Dibble? 
 
 Mrs. Dibble. Yes, sir, he be stone-blind. 
 
 Mr. Dibble (addressing the mast). Yes, sir, I be stone- 
 blind. 
 
 Inspector. That's a bad job. Take your ticket, Mrs. 
 Dibble, and don't lose it, and pass on. 
 
 Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his fore- 
 finger, and away they go. 
 
 Inspector (taking ticket again). Anastatia Weedle. 
 
 An ast ati a (a pretty girl, in a bright Garibaldi, this 
 morning elected by universal suffrage the Beauty of the 
 Ship). That is me, sir. 
 
 Inspector. Going alone, Anastatia? 
 
 Anastatia (shaking her curls). I am with Mrs. Job- 
 son, sir, but I've got separated for the moment. 
 
 Inspector. Oh! You are with the Jobsons? Quite 
 right. That'll do, Miss Weedle. Don't lose your ticket. 
 
 Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting 
 for her, and stoops and kisses Brigham Jobson — who ap- 
 pears to be considered too young for the purpose, by several 
 Mormons rising twenty, who are looking on. Before her 
 extensive skirts have departed from the casks, a decent 
 widow stands there with four children, and so the roll goes. 
 
 The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom 
 there were many old persons, were certainly the least intel- 
 ligent. Some of these emigrants would have bungled . 
 sorely, but for the directing hand that was always ready. 
 The intelligence here was unquestionably of a low order, 
 and the heads were of a poor type. Generally the case 
 was the reverse. There were many worn faces bearing 
 traces of patient poverty and hard work, and there was 
 1G 
 
224 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 great steadiness of purpose and much undeinonstative self- 
 respect among this class. A few young men were going 
 singly. Several girls were going, two or three together. 
 These latter I found it very difficult to refer back, in my 
 mind, to their relinquished homes and pursuits. Perhaps 
 they were move like country milliners, and pupil teachers 
 rather tawdrily dressed, than any other classes of young 
 women. I noticed, among many little ornaments worn, 
 more than one photograph-brooch of the Princess of Wales, 
 and also of the late Prince Consort. Some single women 
 of from thirty to forty, whom one might suppose to be em- 
 broiderers, or straw-bonnet-makers, were obviously going 
 out in quest of husbands, as finer ladies go to India. That 
 they had any distinct notions of a plurality of husbands or 
 wives, I do not believe. To suppose the family groups of 
 whom the majority of emigrants were composed, polygami- 
 cally possessed, would be. to suppose an absurdity, mani- 
 fest to any one who saw the fathers and mothers. 
 
 I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) 
 that most familiar kinds of handicraft trades were repre- 
 sented here. Farm-labourers, shepherds, and the like, had 
 their fall share of representation, but I doubt if they pre- 
 ponderated. It was interesting to see how the leading 
 spirit in the family circle never failed to show itself, even 
 in the simple process of answering to the names as they 
 were called, and checking off the owners of the names. 
 Sometimes it was the father, much oftener the mother, 
 sometimes a quick little girl second or third in order of 
 seniority. It seemed to occur for the first time to some 
 heavy fathers, what large families they had; and their 
 eyes rolled about, during the calling of the list, as if they 
 half-misdoubted some other family to have been smuggled 
 into their own. Among all the fine handsome children, I 
 observed but two with marks upon their necks that were 
 probably scrofulous. Out of the whole number of emi- 
 grants, but one old woman was temporarily set aside by 
 the doctor, on suspicion of fever; but even she afterwards 
 obtained a clean bill of health. 
 
 When all had "passed," and the afternoon began to 
 wear on, a black box became visible on deck, which box 
 was in charge of certain personages also in black, of whom 
 only one had the conventional air of an itinerant preacher. 
 This box contained a supply of hymn-books, neatly printed 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TP^AVELLER. 225 
 
 and got up, published at Liverpool, and also in London at 
 the "Latter-Day Saints' Book Depot, 30, Florence-street." 
 Some copies were handsomely bound; the plainer were the 
 more in request, and many were bought. The title ran : 
 " Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Church of 
 Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." The Preface, dated 
 Manchester, 1840, ran thus •. — " The Saints in this country 
 have been very desirous for a Hymn Book adapted to their 
 faith and worship, that they might sing the truth with an 
 understanding heart, and express their praise joy and grati- 
 tude in songs adapted to the New and Everlasting Cove- 
 nant. In accordance with their wishes, we have selected 
 the following volume, which we hope will prove acceptable 
 until a greater variety can be added. With sentiments of 
 high consideration and esteem, we subscribe ourselves your 
 brethren in the New and Everlasting Covenant, Brigham 
 Youxg, Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor." From this 
 book— by no means explanatory to myself of the New and 
 Everlasting Covenant, and not at all making my heart an 
 understanding one on the subject of that mystery — a hymn 
 was sung, which did not attract any great amount of atten- 
 tion, and was supported by a rather select circle. But the 
 choir in the boat was very popular and pleasant; and there 
 was to have been a Band, only the Cornet was late in com- 
 ing on board. In the course of the afternoon, a mother 
 appeared from shore, in search of her daughter, " who had 
 run away with the Mormons." She received every assist- 
 ance from the Inspector, but her daughter was not found 
 to be on board. The saints did not seem to me, particu- 
 larly interested in finding her. 
 
 Towards five o'clock, the galley became full of tea- 
 kettles, and an agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the 
 ship. There was no scrambling or jostling for the hot 
 water, no ill humour, no cpiarrelling. As the Amazon was 
 to sail with the next tide, and as it would not be high 
 water before two o'clock in the morning, I left her with 
 her tea in full action, and her idle Steam Tug lying by, 
 deputing steam and smoke for the time being to the Tea- 
 kettles. 
 
 I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by 
 the captain before he struck out into the wide Atlantic, 
 highly extolling the behaviour of these Emigrants, and the 
 perfect order and propriety of all their social arrangements. 
 
226 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 What is in store for the poor people on the shores of the 
 Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they are labouring 
 under now, on what miserable blindness their eyes may be 
 opened then, I do not pretend to say. But I went on board 
 their ship to bear testimony against them if they deserved 
 it, as I fully believed they would; to my great astonish- 
 ment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions and 
 tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness. I 
 went over the Amazon's side, feeling it impossible to deny 
 that, so far, some remarkable influence had produced a re- 
 markable result, which better known influences have often 
 missed. 1 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 THE CITY OP THE ABSENT. 
 
 When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and 
 have earned the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from 
 Covent-garden into the City of London, after business- 
 hours there, on a Saturday, or — -better yet — on a Sunday, 
 and roam about its deserted nooks and corners, It is neces- 
 sary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they 
 should be made in summer-time, for then the retired spots 
 that I love to haunt, are at their idlest and dullest. A 
 gentle fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist 
 sets off my favourite retreats to decided advantage. 
 
 Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place. Such 
 strange churchyards hide in the City of London; church- 
 yards sometimes so entirely detached from churches, always 
 so pressed upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so 
 
 1 After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I happened to 
 mention the experience it describes to Lord Houghton. That gen- 
 tleman then showed me an article of his writing, in The Edinburgh 
 Review for January, 1862, which is highly remarkable for its philo- 
 sophical and literary research concerning these Latter- Day Saints. I 
 find in it the following sentences : — " The Select Committee of the 
 House of Commons on emigrant ships for 1854 summoned the Mor- 
 mon agent and passenger-broker before it, and came to the conclu- 
 sion that no ships under the provisions of the ' Passengers Act ' could 
 be depended upon for comfort and security in the same degree as 
 those under his administration. The Mormon ship is a Family un- 
 der strong and accepted discipline, with every provision for comfort, 
 decorum, and internal peace." 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 227 
 
 forgotten, except by the few people who ever look down 
 into them from their smoky windows. As I stand peeping 
 in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty 
 metal off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tomb- 
 stones are all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape 
 in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar 
 or Plane-Tree that was once a dry Salter's daughter and 
 several common-councilmen, has withered like those wor- 
 thies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it. Con- 
 tagion of slow ruin overhangs the place. The discoloured 
 tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand so awry, that 
 they can hardly be proof against any stress of weather. 
 Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they 
 overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to 
 fall. In an angle of the walls, what was once the tool- 
 house of the grave-digger rots away, encrusted with toad- 
 stools. Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain from the 
 encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old lead 
 long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list, upon 
 the weedy earth. Sometimes there is a rusty pump some- 
 where near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I 
 hear it working under an unknown hand with a creaking 
 protest : as though the departed in the churchyard urged, 
 "Let us lie here in peace; don't suck us up and drink us! " 
 One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the church- 
 yard of Saint Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general 
 call it, I have no information. It lies at the heart of the 
 City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is 
 a small small churchyard, with a ferocious strong spiked 
 iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls 
 and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but 
 it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that 
 to stick iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they 
 were impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the 
 skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with 
 iron spears. Hence, there is attraction of repulsion for 
 me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contem- 
 plated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn 
 towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight. " Why not? " I 
 said, in self-excuse. " I have been to see the Colosseum 
 by the light of the moon; is it worse to go to see Saint 
 Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning? " I repaired 
 to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls most 
 
228 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 effective, having the air of a public execution, and seem, 
 ing, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the 
 pain of the spikes. Having no other person to whom to 
 impart my satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver. 
 So far from being responsive, he surveyed me — he was 
 naturally a bottled-nosed red-faced man — with a blanched 
 countenance. And as he drove me back, he ever and again 
 glanced in over his shoulder through the little front win- 
 dow of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare origi- 
 nally from a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim, 
 who might have flitted home again without paying. 
 
 Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives 
 upon a churchyard such as this, and, when the Livery dine, 
 you may hear them (if you are looking in through the iron 
 rails, which you never are when I am) toasting their own 
 Worshipful prosperity. Sometimes, a wholesale house of 
 business, requiring much room for stowage, will occupy 
 one or two or even all three sides of the enclosing space, 
 and the backs of bales of goods will lumber up the windows, 
 as if they were holding some crowded trade-meeting of 
 themselves within. Sometimes, the commanding windows 
 are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the 
 graves below — not so much, for they tell of what once upon 
 a time was life undoubtedly. Such was the surrounding 
 of one City churchyard that I saw last summer, on a Vol- 
 unteering Saturday evening towards eight of the clock, 
 when with astonishment I beheld an old old man and an 
 old old woman in it, making hay. Yes, of all occupations 
 in this world, making hay ! It was a very confined patch 
 of churchyard lying between Gracechurch-street and the 
 Tower, capable of yielding, say an apronful of hay. By 
 what means the old old man and woman had got into it, 
 with an almost toothless hay-making rake, I could not 
 fathom. No open window was within view; no window 
 at all was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have 
 enabled their old legs to descend from it; the rusty church- 
 yard-gate was locked, the mouldy church was locked. 
 Gravely among the graves, they made hay, all alone by 
 themselves. They looked like Time and his wife. There 
 was but the one rake between them, and they both had hold 
 of it in a pastorally-loving manner, and there was hay on the 
 old woman's black bonnet, as if the old map had recently 
 been playful. The old man was quite an obsolete old man, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. . 22$) 
 
 in knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings, and the old 
 woman wore mittens like unto his stockings in texture and 
 in colour. They took no heed of me as I looked on, unable 
 to account for them. The old woman was much too bright 
 for a pew-opener, the old man much too meek for a beadle. 
 On an old tombstone in the foreground between me and 
 them, were two cherubim; but for those celestial embel- 
 lishments being represented as having no possible use for 
 knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have com- 
 pared them with the hay- makers, and sought a likeness. I 
 coughed and awoke the echoes, but the hay-makers never 
 looked at me. They used the rake with a measured action, 
 drawing the scanty crop towards them; and so I was fain 
 to leave them under three yards and a half of darkening 
 sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by 
 themselves. Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted a 
 Medium . 
 
 In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimen- 
 sions, I saw, that self-same summer, two comfortable 
 charity children. They were making love — tremendous 
 proof of the vigour of that immortal article, for they were 
 in the graceful uniform under which English Charity de- 
 lights to hide herself — and they were overgrown, and their 
 legs (his legs at least, for I am modestly incompetent to 
 speak of hers) were as much in the wrong as mere passive 
 weakness of character can render legs. it was a leaden 
 churchyard, but no doubt a .golden ground to those young 
 persons! I first saw them on a Saturday evening, and, 
 perceiving from their occupation that Saturday evening 
 was their trys ting- time, I returned that evening se'nnight, 
 and renewed the contemplation of them. They came there 
 to shake the bits of matting which were spread in the 
 church aisles, and they afterwards rolled them up, he roll- 
 ing his end, she rolling hers, until they met, and over the 
 two once divided now united rolls — sweet emblem ! — gave 
 and received a chaste salute. It was so refreshing to find 
 one of my faded churchyards blooming into flower thus, 
 that I returned a second time, and a third, and ultimately 
 this befell: — They had left the church door open, in their 
 dusting and arranging. Walking in to look at the church, 
 I became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of 
 her in the reading-desk, of him looking down, of her look- 
 ing up, exchanging tender discourse. Immediately both 
 
230 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 dived, and became as it were non-existent on this sphere. 
 "With an assumption of innocence I turned to leave the 
 sacred edifice, when an obese form 'stood in the portal, 
 puffily demanding Joseph, or in default of Joseph, Celia. 
 Taking this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on 
 pretence of showing him whom he sought, I gave time for 
 the emergence of Joseph and Celia, who presently came 
 towards us in the churchyard, bending under dusty mat- 
 ting, a picture of thriving and unconscious industry. It 
 would be superfluous to hint that I have ever since deemed 
 this the proudest passage in my life. 
 
 But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare in- 
 deed in my City churchyards. A few sparrows occasion- 
 ally try to raise a lively chirrup in their solitary tree — per- 
 haps, as taking a different view of worms from that enter- 
 tained by humanity — but they are flat and hoarse of voice, 
 like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman, and all 
 the rest of the Church-works when they are wound up for 
 Sunday. Caged larks, thrushes, or blackbirds, hanging in 
 neighbouring courts, pour forth their strains passionately, 
 as scenting the tree, trying to break out, and see leaves 
 again before they die, but their song is Willow, Willow — of 
 a churchyard cast. So little light lives inside the churches 
 of my churchyards, when the two are co-existent, that it is 
 often only by an accident and after long acquaintance that 
 I discover their having stained glass in some odd window. 
 The westering sun slants into the churchyard by some un- 
 wonted entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old tomb- 
 stone, and a window that I thought was only dirty, is for 
 the moment all bejewelled. Then the light passes and the 
 colours die. Though even then, if there be room enough 
 for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top 
 of the Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, 
 and seeming to look out with a joyful flash over the sea of 
 smoke at the distant shore of country. 
 
 Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the 
 hour, have a tendency to sit on bits of coping stone in 
 these churchyards, leaning with both hands on their sticks 
 and asthmatically gasping. The more depressed class of 
 beggars too, bring hither broken meats, and munch. I am 
 on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers 
 in one of them, and whom I suspect of a turn for 'poetry; 
 the rather, as he looks out of temper when he gives the 
 

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 231 
 
 fire-plug a disparaging wrench with that large tuning-fork 
 of his which would wear out the shoulder of his coat, but 
 for a precautionary piece of inlaid leather. Fire-ladders, 
 which I am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and the 
 keys of which were lost in ancient times, moulder away in 
 the larger churchyards, under eaves like wooden eyebrows; 
 and so removed are those corners from the haunts of men 
 and boys, that once on a fifth of November I found a 
 " Guy " trusted to take care of himself there, while his pro- 
 prietors had gone to dinner. Of the expression of his face 
 I cannot report, because it was turned to the wall; but his 
 shrugged shoulders and his ten extended fingers, appeared 
 to denote that he had moralised in his little straw chair 
 on the mystery of mortality until he gave it up as a bad 
 job. 
 
 You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there 
 are shades of transition in the neighbourhood. An anti- 
 quated news shop, or barber's shop, apparently bereft of 
 customers in the earlier days of George the Third, would 
 warn me to look out for one, if any discoveries in this 
 respect were left for me to make. A very quiet court, in 
 combination with an unaccountable dyer's and scourer's, 
 would prepare me for a churchyard. An exceedingly 
 retiring public-house, with a bagatelle-board shadily visible 
 in a sawdusty parlour shaped like an omnibus, and with a 
 shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, would apprise me that I 
 stood near consecrated ground. A " Dairy," exhibiting in 
 its modest window one very little milk-can and three eggs, 
 would suggest to me the certainty of finding the poultry 
 hard by, pecking at my forefathers. I first inferred the 
 vicinity of Saint Ghastly Grim, from a certain air of extra 
 repose and gloom pervading a vast stack of warehouses 
 
 From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass 
 into the hushed resorts of business. Down the lanes I like 
 to see the carts and waggons huddled together in repose, 
 the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the 
 alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, 
 it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad 
 counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money 
 out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the pon- 
 derous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels 
 for shovelling gold. When I draw money, it never seems 
 so much money as when it is shovelled at me out of a 
 
232 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 bright copper shovel. I like to say, " In gold," and to see 
 seven pounds musically pouring out of the shovel, like 
 seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to me — I italicise 
 appearing — "if you want more of this yellow earth, we 
 keep it in barrows at your service." To think of the 
 banker's clerk with his deft finger turning the crisp edges 
 of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has taken in a fat roll out 
 of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of that delicious 
 south-cash wind. " How will you have it? " I once heard 
 this usual question asked at a Bank Counter of an elderly 
 female, habited in mourning and steeped in simplicity, who 
 answered, open-eyed, crook-fingered, laughing with expec- 
 tation, " Anyhow ! " Calling these things to mind as I 
 stroll among the Banks, I wonder whether the other solitary 
 Sunday man I pass, has designs upon the Banks. For the 
 interest and mystery of the matter, I almost hope he may 
 have, and that his confederate may be at this moment tak- 
 ing impressions of the keys of the iron closets in wax, and 
 that a delightful robbery may be in course of transaction. 
 About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on towards the 
 Tower, and Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants' cel- 
 lars are fine subjects for consideration; but the deserted 
 money-cellars of the Bankers, and their plate cellars, and 
 their jewel-cellars, what subterranean regions of the Won- 
 derful Lamp are these ! And again : possibly some shoe- 
 less boy in rags, passed through this street yesterday, for 
 whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the fulness of time, 
 and to be surpassing rich. Such reverses have been, since 
 the days of Whittington; and were, long before. I want 
 to know whether the boy has any foreglittering of that 
 glittering fortune now, when he treads these stones, hun- 
 gry. Much as I also want to know whether the next man 
 to be hanged at Newgate yonder, had any suspicion upon 
 him that he was moving steadily towards that fate, when 
 he talked so much about the last man who paid the same 
 great debt at the same small Debtors' Door. 
 
 Where are all the people who on busy working-days per- 
 vade these scenes? The locomotive banker's clerk,, who 
 carries a black portfolio chained to him by a chain of steel , 
 where is he? Does he go to bed with his chain on — to 
 church with his chain on — or does he lay it by? And if he 
 lays it by, what becomes of his portfolio when he is un- 
 chained for a holiday? The wastepaper baskets of these 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 233 
 
 closed counting-houses would let me into many hints of 
 business matters if I had the exploration of them; and 
 what secrets of the heart should I discover on the " pads " 
 of the young clerks — the sheets of cartridge-paper and 
 blotting-paper interposed between their writing and their 
 desks ! Pads are taken into confidence on the tenderest 
 occasions, and oftentimes when I have made a business 
 visit, and have sent in my name from the outer office, have 
 I had it forced on my discursive notice that the officiating 
 young gentleman has over and over again inscribed Amelia, 
 in ink of various dates, on corners of his pad. Indeed, the 
 pad may be regarded as the legitimate modern successor of 
 the old forest-tree : whereon these young knights (having 
 no attainable forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names 
 of their mistresses. After all, it is a more satisfactory 
 process than carving, and can be oftener repeated. So 
 these courts in their Sunday rest are courts of Love Om- 
 nipotent (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 sand- 
 wiches, 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 Avho wait at 
 Garraway's all the week for the men who never come. 
 When they are forcibly put out of Garraway's on Saturday 
 night — which they must be, for they never would go out of 
 their own accord — where do they vanish until Monday 
 morning? On the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I 
 expected to find them hovering about these lanes, like rest- 
 less ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway's through 
 chinks in the shutters, if not endeavouring to turn the lock 
 of the door with false keys, picks, and screw-drivers. But 
 the wonder is, that they go clean away ! And now I think 
 of it, the wonder is, that every working-day pervader of 
 these scenes goes clean away. The man who sells the 
 dogs' collars and the little toy coal-scuttles, feels under as 
 great an obligation to go afar off, as Glyn and Co., or 
 Smith, Payne, and Smith. There is an old monastery- 
 crypt under Garraway's (I have been in it among the port 
 wine), and perhaps Garraway's, taking pity on the mouldy 
 men who wait in its public-room all their lives, gives them 
 cool house-room down there over Sundays; but the cata- 
 combs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the rest 
 
234 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
 of the missing. This characteristic of London City greatly 
 helps its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of 
 business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of 
 being the Last Man. In my solitude, the ticket-porters 
 being all gone with the rest, I venture to breathe to the 
 quiet bricks and stones my confidential wonderment why a 
 ticket-porter, who never does any work with his hands, is 
 bound to wear a white apron, and why a great Ecclesiasti- 
 cal Dignitary, who never does any work with his hands 
 either, is equally bound to wear a black one. 
 
 XXI-V. 
 
 AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE. 
 
 Before the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten 
 how many stage-coaches she said used to change horses in 
 the town every day. But it was of little moment; any 
 high number would do as well as another. It had been a 
 great stage-coaching town in the great stage-coaching times, 
 and the ruthless railways had killed and buried it. 
 
 The sign of the house was the Dolphin's Head. Why 
 only head, I don't know; for the Dolphin's effigy at full 
 length, and upside down — as a Dolphin is always bound to 
 be when artistically treated, though I suppose he is some- 
 times right side upward in his natural condition — graced 
 the sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks out- 
 side the bow- window of my room, and was a shabby work. 
 No visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying 
 by inches, but he showed no bright colours. He had once 
 served another master; there was a newer streak of paint 
 below him, displaying with inconsistent freshness the 
 legend, By J Mellows 
 
 My door opened again, and J. Mellows's representative 
 came back. I had asked her what I could have for dinner, 
 and she now returned with the counter question, what 
 would I like? As the Dolphin stood possessed of nothing 
 that I do like, I was fain to yield to the suggestion of a 
 duck, which I don't like. J. Mellows's representative 
 was a mournful young woman, with one eye susceptible of 
 guidance, and one uncontrollable eye j which latter, seem- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 235 
 
 ing to wander in quest of stage-coaches, deepened the mel- 
 ancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped. 
 
 This young woman had but shut the door on retiring 
 again when I bethought me of adding to my order, the 
 words, "with nice vegetables." Looking out at the door 
 to give them emphatic utterance, I found her already in a 
 state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking 
 her teeth with a pin. 
 
 At the Railway Station seven miles off, I had been the 
 subject of wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come 
 here. And when I gave the direction "To the Dolphin's 
 Head," I had observed an ominous stare on the countenance 
 of the strong young man in velveteen, who was the plat- 
 form servant of the Company. He had also called to my 
 driver at parting, " All ri-ight! Don't hang yourself when 
 you get there, Geo-o-rge ! " in a sarcastic tone, for which I 
 had entertained some transitory thoughts of reporting him 
 to the General Manager. 
 
 I had no business in the town — I never have any busi- 
 ness in any town — but I had been caught by the fancy that 
 I would come and look at it in its degeneracy. My pur- 
 pose was fitly inaugurated by the Dolphin's Head, which 
 everywhere expressed past coachfulness and present coach- 
 lessness. Coloured prints of coaches, starting, arriving, 
 changing horses, coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the 
 snow, coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, 
 coaches on the King's birthday, coaches in all circumstances 
 compatible with their triumph and victory, but never in the 
 act of breaking down or overturning, pervaded the house. 
 Of these works of art, some, framed and not glazed, had 
 holes in them; the varnish of others had become so brown 
 and cracked, that they looked like overdone pie-crust; the 
 designs of others were almost obliterated by the flies of 
 many summers. Broken glasses, damaged frames, lop- 
 sided hanging, and consignment of incurable cripples to 
 places of refuge in dark corners, attested the desolation of 
 the rest. The old room on the ground floor where the pas- 
 sengers of the Highflyer used to dine, had nothing in it but 
 a wretched show of twigs and flower-pots in the broad win- 
 dow to hide the nakedness of the land, and in a corner little 
 Mellows 's perambulator, with even its parasol-head turned 
 despondently to the wall. The other room, where post- 
 horse company used to wait while relays were getting ready 
 
236 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 down the yard, still held its ground, but was as airless as 
 I conceive a hearse to be : insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging 
 high against the partition (with spots on him like port 
 wine, though it is mysterious ^how port wine ever got 
 squirted up there), had good reason for perking his nose 
 and sniffing. The stopperless cruets on the spindle-shanked 
 sideboard were in a miserably dejected state : the anchovy 
 sauce having turned blue some years ago, and the cayenne 
 pepper (with a scoop in it like a small model of a wooden 
 leg) having turned solid. The old fraudulent candles 
 which were always being paid for and never used, were 
 burnt out at last; but their tall stilts of candlesticks still 
 lingered, and still outraged the human intellect by pretend- 
 ing to be silver. The mouldy old unreformed Borough 
 Member, with his right hand buttoned up in the breast of 
 his coat, and his back characteristically turned on bales of 
 petitions from his constituents, was there too; and the poker 
 which never had been among the fire-irons, lest post-horse 
 company should overstir the fire, was not there, as of old. 
 
 Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin's Head, I found 
 it sorely shrunken. When J. Mellows came into posses- 
 sion, he had walled off half the bar, which was now a 
 tobacco-shop with its own entrance in the yard — the once 
 glorious yard where the post-boys, whip in hand and always 
 buttoning their waistcoats at the last moment, used to come 
 running forth to mount and away. A " Scientific Shoeing- 
 Smith and Veterinary Surgeon," had further encroached 
 upon the yard; and a grimly satirical Jobber, who an- 
 nounced himself as having to Let "A neat one-horse fly, 
 and a one-horse cart," had established his business, him- 
 self, and his family, in a part of the extensive stables. 
 Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin's Head, 
 and now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright's, and a Young 
 Men's Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a 
 loft) : the whole forming a back lane. No audacious hand 
 had plucked down the vane from the central cupola of 
 the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck at N — Nil : 
 while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to 
 their ancestral traditions and the place, had collected in a 
 row on the roof-ridge of the only out-house retained by the 
 Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried to push the out- 
 side pigeon off. This I accepted as emblematical of the 
 struggle for post and place in railway times. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 237 
 
 Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered 
 and pillared entrance to the Dolphin's Yard, once redolent 
 of soup and stable-litter, now redolent of musty disuse, I 
 paced the street. It was a hot day, and the little sun- 
 blinds of the shops were all drawn down, and the more 
 enterprising tradesmen had caused their 'Prentices to 
 trickle water on the pavement appertaining to their front- 
 age. It looked as if they had been shedding tears for the 
 stage-coaches, and drying their ineffectual pocket-hand- 
 kerchiefs. Such weakness would have been excusable; for 
 business was — as one dejected porkman who kept a shop 
 which refused to reciprocate the compliment by keeping 
 him, informed me — "bitter bad." Most of the harness- 
 makers and corn-dealers were gone the way of the coaches, 
 but it was a pleasant recognition of the eternal procession 
 of Children down that old original steep Incline, the Valley 
 of the Shadow, that those tradesmen were mostly succeeded 
 by vendors of sweetmeats and cheap toys. The opposition 
 house to the Dolphin, once famous as the New White Hart, 
 had long collapsed. In a fit of abject depression, it had 
 cast whitewash on its windows, and boarded up its front 
 door, and reduced itself to a side entrance; but even that 
 had proved a world too wide for the Literary Institution 
 which had been its last phase; for the Institution had col- 
 lapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its inscription 
 on the White Hart's front, all had fallen off but these : 
 
 L Y INS T 
 
 — suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to the neigh- 
 bouring market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished 
 marketing, to the dealer in crockery whose pots and pans 
 straggled half across it, and to the Cheap Jack who sat 
 with folded arms on the shafts of his cart, superciliously 
 gazing around; his velveteen waistcoat, evidently harbour- 
 ing grave doubts whether it was worth his while to stay a 
 night in such a place. 
 
 The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but 
 they by no means improved the case, for they said, in a 
 petulant way, and speaking witli some difficulty in their 
 irritation, " WHAT's-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES? " Nor 
 would they (I found on listening) ever vary their empha- 
 sis, save in respect of growing more sharp and vexed, but 
 invariably went on, " WHAT's-be-come-of-THE-coach-Es! " 
 
238 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 — always beginning the inquiry with an unpolite abrupt 
 ness. Perhaps from their elevation they saw the railway, 
 and it aggravated them. 
 
 Coming upon a coachmaker's workshop, I began to look 
 about me with a revived spirit, thinking that perchance I 
 might behold there some remains of the old times of the 
 town's greatness. There was only one man at work — a 
 dry man, grizzled, and far advanced in years, but tall and 
 upright, who, becoming aware of me looking on, straight- 
 ened his back, pushed up his spectacles against his brown 
 paper cap, and appeared inclined to defy me. To whom I 
 pacifically said : 
 
 "Good day, sir! " 
 
 " What? " said he. 
 
 "Good day, sir." 
 
 He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with 
 me. — " Was you a looking for anything? " he then asked, 
 in a pointed manner. 
 
 " I was wondering whether there happened to be any 
 fragment of an old stage-coach here." 
 
 " Is that all? " 
 
 "That's all." 
 
 "No, there ain't." 
 
 It was now my turn to say " Oh ! " and I said it. Not 
 another word did the dry and grizzled man say, but bent 
 to his work again. In the coach-making days, the coach- 
 painters had tried their brushes on a post beside him; and 
 quite a Calendar of departed glories was to be read upon 
 it, in blue and yellow and red and green, some inches thick. 
 Presently he looked up again. 
 
 " You seem to have a deal of time on your hands," was 
 his querulous remark. 
 
 I admitted the fact. 
 
 "I think it's a pity you was not brought up to some- 
 thing," said he. 
 
 I said I thought so too. 
 
 Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down 
 his plane (for it was a plane he was at work with), pushed 
 up his spectacles again, and came to the door. 
 
 " Would a po-shay do for you? " he asked. 
 
 "I am not sure that I understand what you mean." 
 
 "Would a po-shay," said the coachmaker, standing close 
 before me, and folding his arms in the manner of a cross- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 239 
 
 examining counsel — " would a po-shay meet the views you 
 have expressed? Yes, or no? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 • "Then you keep straight along down there till you see 
 one. You'U see one if you go fur enough." 
 
 With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direction 
 I was to take, and went in and resumed his work against a 
 background of leaves and grapes. For, although he was a 
 soured man and a discontented, his workshop was that 
 agreeable mixture of town and country, street and garden, 
 which is often to be seen in a small English town. 
 
 I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the 
 Beer-shop with the sign of The First and Last, and was 
 out of the town on the old London road. I came to the 
 Turnpike, and I found it, in its silent way, eloquent re- 
 specting the change that had fallen on the road. The 
 Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy ; and the Turn- 
 pike-keeper, unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied 
 the trade of a cobbler. Not only that, but his wife sold 
 ginger-beer, and, in the very window of espial through 
 which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to behold 
 the grand London coaches coming on at a gallop, exhib- 
 ited for sale little barber' s-poles of sweetstuff in a sticky 
 lantern. 
 
 The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus 
 expressed itself. 
 
 " How goes turnpike business, master? " said I to him, 
 as he sat in his little porch, repairing a shoe. 
 
 "It don't go at all, master," said he to me. "It's 
 stopped." 
 
 "That's bad," said I. 
 
 "Bad? " he repeated. And he pointed to one of his sun- 
 burnt dusty children who was climbing the turnpike-gate, 
 and said, extending his open right hand in remonstrance 
 with Universal Nature, " Five on 'em ! " 
 
 " But how to improve Turnpike business? " said I. 
 
 "There's a way, master," said he, with the air of one 
 who had thought deeply on the subject. 
 
 "I should like to know it." 
 
 "Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll 
 on walkers. Lay another toll on everything as don't come 
 through; lay a toll on them as stops at home." 
 
 " Would the last remedy be fair? " 
 
240 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 " Fair? Them as stops at home, could come through if 
 they liked; couldn't they?" 
 
 " Say they could." 
 
 "Toll 'em. If they don't come through, it's their look 
 out. Anyways, — Toll 'em ! " 
 
 Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial 
 genius as if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
 consequently the right; man in the right place, I passed on 
 meekly. 
 
 My mind now began to misgive me that the disappointed 
 coachmaker had sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that 
 there was no post-chaise in those parts. But coming within 
 view of certain allotment-gardens by the roadside, I re- 
 tracted the suspicion, and confessed that I had done him 
 an injustice. For, there I saw, surely, the poorest super- 
 annuated post-chaise left on earth. 
 
 It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, 
 and plumped down on the clayey soil among a ragged 
 growth of vegetables. It was a post-chaise not even set 
 straight upon the ground, but tilted over, as if it had fallen 
 out of a balloon. It was a post-chaise that had been a 
 long time in those decayed circumstances, and against 
 which scarlet beans were trained. It was a post-chaise 
 patched and mended with old teatrays, or with scraps of 
 iron that looked like them, and boarded up as to the win- 
 dows, but having a knocker on the off-side door. Whether 
 it was a post-chaise used as tool-house, summer-house, or 
 dwelling-house, I could not discover, for there was nobody 
 at home at the post-chaise when I knocked; but it was cer- 
 tainly used for something, and locked up. In the wonder 
 of this discovery, I walked round and round the post-chaise 
 many times, and sat down by the post-chaise, waiting for 
 further elucidation. None came. At last, I made my way 
 back to the old London road by the further end of the allot- 
 ment-gardens, and consequently at a point beyond that from 
 which I had diverged. I had to scramble through a hedge 
 and down a steep bank, and I nearly came down a-top of 
 a little, spare man who sat breaking stones by the road- 
 side. 
 
 He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteri- 
 ously through his dark goggles of wire : 
 
 " Are you aware, sir, that you've been trespassing? " 
 
 "I turned out of the way," said I, in explanation, "to 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 24.1 
 
 look at that odd post-chaise. Do you happen to know any- 
 thing about it? " 
 
 "I know it was many a year upon the road," said he. 
 
 " So I supposed. Do you know to whom it belongs? " 
 
 The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his 
 heap of stones, as if he were considering whether he should 
 answer the question or not. Then, raising his barred eyes 
 to my features as before, he said : 
 
 "Tome." 
 
 Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with 
 a sufficiently awkward " Indeed ! Dear me ! " Presently I 
 
 added, "Do you " I was going to say "live there," 
 
 but it seemed so absurd a question, that I substituted " live 
 near here? " 
 
 The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since 
 we began to converse, then did as follows. He raised him- 
 self by poising his figure on his hammer, and took his coat, 
 on which he had been seated, over his arm. He then 
 backed to an easier part of the bank than that by which I 
 had come down, keeping his dark goggles silently upon me 
 all the time, and then shouldered his hammer, suddenly 
 turned, ascended, and was gone. His face was so small, 
 and his goggles were so large, that he left me wholly unin- 
 formed as to his countenance; but he left me a profound 
 impression that the curved legs I had seen from behind as 
 he vanished, were the legs of an old postboy. It was not 
 until then that I noticed he had been working by a grass- 
 grown milestone, which looked like a tombstone erected 
 over the grave of the London road. 
 
 My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to 
 pursue the goggles or the subject then, but made my way 
 back to the Dolphin's Head. In the gateway I found J. 
 Mellows, looking at nothing, and apparently experiencing 
 that it failed to raise his spirits. 
 
 "J don't care for the town," said J. Mellows, when I 
 complimented him on the sanitary advantages it may or 
 may not possess; " I wish I had never seen the town ! " 
 
 " You don't belong to it, Mr. Mellows? " 
 
 "Belong to it! " repeated Mellows. "If I didn't belong 
 to a better style of town than this, I'd take and drown my- 
 self in a pail." It then occurred to me that Mellows, hav- 
 ing so little to do, was habitually thrown back on his inter- 
 nal resources — by which I mean the Dolphin's cellar. 
 
242 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 " What we want," said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and 
 making as if he emptied it of the last load of Disgust that 
 had exuded from his brain, before he put it on again for 
 another load; "what we want, is a Branch. The Petition 
 for the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room. Would you put 
 your name to it? Every little helps." 
 
 I found the document in question stretched out flat on 
 the coffee-room table by the aid of certain weights from the 
 kitchen, and I gave it the additional weight of my uncom- 
 mercial signature. To the best of my belief, I bound my- 
 self to the modest statement that universal traffic, happi- 
 ness, prosperity, "and civilisation, together with unbounded 
 national triumph in competition with the foreigner, would 
 infallibly flow from the Branch. 
 
 Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. 
 Mellows if he could grace my dinner with a pint of good 
 wine? Mr. Mellows thus replied: 
 
 "If I couldn't give you a pint of good wine, I'd — there! 
 — I'd take and drown myself in a pail. But I was de- 
 ceived when I bought this business, and the stock was 
 higgledy-piggledy, and I haven't yet tasted my way quite 
 through it with a view to sorting it. Therefore, if you 
 order one kind and get another, change till it comes right. 
 For what," said Mellows, unloading his hat as before, 
 " what would you or any gentleman do, if you ordered one 
 kind of wine and was required to drink another? Why, 
 you'd (and naturally and properly, having the feelings of 
 a gentleman), you'd take and drown yourself in a pail! " 
 
 XXV. 
 
 THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with 
 Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan, Geneva — almost any 
 important town on the continent of Europe — I find very 
 striking after an absence of any duration in foreign parts. 
 London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh, with Aber- 
 deen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright little 
 town like Bury St. Edmunds. London is shabby in con- 
 trast with New York, with Boston, with Philadelphia. Ic 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 243 
 
 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 Boulevarts in Paris, is as striking as the 
 abortive ugliness of Trafalgar-square, set against the gal- 
 lant beauty of the Place de la Concorde. London is shabby 
 by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight. No Englishman 
 knows what gaslight is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli 
 and the Palais Royal after dark. 
 
 The mass of London people are shabby. The absence 
 of distinctive dress has, no doubt, something to do with it. 
 The porters of the Vintners' Company, the draymen, and 
 the butchers, are about the only people who wear distinc- 
 tive dresses; and even these do not wear them on holidays. 
 We have nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness, con-' 
 venience, or picturesqueness, can compare with the belted 
 blouse. As to our women; — next Easter or Whitsuntide, 
 look at the bonnets at the British Museum or the National 
 Gallery, and think of the pretty white Erench cap, the 
 Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero. 
 
 Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in 
 London than in Paris, and yet the mass of the London 
 population have a second-hand look which is not to be de- 
 tected on the mass of the Parisian population. I think 
 this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the 
 least trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian 
 idler, but dresses in the way of his own class, and for his 
 own comfort. In London, on the contrary, the fashions 
 descend; and you never fully know how inconvenient or 
 ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last descent. 
 It was but the other day, on a race-course, that I observed 
 four people in a barouche deriving great entertainment 
 from the contemplation of four people on foot. The four 
 people on foot were two young men and two young women ; 
 the four people in the barouche were two young men and 
 two young women. The four young women were dressed 
 in exactly the same style; the four young men were dressed 
 in exactly the same style. Yet the two couples on wheels 
 were as much amused by the two couples on foot, as if 
 they were quite unconscious of having themselves set those 
 fashions, or of being at that very moment engaged in the 
 display of them. 
 
244 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends 
 here in London — and consequently in England— and thence 
 shabbiness arises? Let us think a little, and be just. The 
 " Black Country " round about Birmingham, is a very black 
 country; but is it quite as black as it has been lately 
 painted? An appalling accident happened at the People's 
 Park near Birmingham, this last July, when it was crowded 
 with people from the Black Country — an appalling accident 
 consequent on a shamefully dangerous exhibition Did the 
 shamefully dangerous exhibition originate in the moral 
 blackness of the Black Country, and in the Black People's 
 peculiar love of the excitement attendant on great personal 
 hazard, which they looked on at, but in which they did not 
 participate? Light is much wanted in the Black Country. 
 we are all agreed on that. But, we must not quite for- 
 get the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully dan- 
 gerous fashion, either. We must not quite forget the 
 enterprising Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty 
 educational pretences, who made the low sensation as strong 
 as they possibly could make it, by hanging the Blondin 
 rope as high as they possibly could hang it. All this must 
 not be eclipsed in the Blackness of the Black Country. 
 The reserved seats high up by the rope, the cleared space 
 below it, so that no one should be smashed but the per- 
 former, the pretence of slipping and falling off, the baskets 
 for the feet and the sack for the head, the photographs 
 everywhere, and the virtuous indignation nowhere — all this 
 must not be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the 
 jet-black country. 
 
 Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to de- 
 scend. This is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in 
 setting fashions. When you find a fashion low down, look 
 back for the time (it will never be far off) when it was the 
 fashion high up. This is the text for a perpetual sermon 
 on social justice. From imitations of Ethiopian Serenaders, 
 to imitations of Prince's coats and waistcoats, you will 
 find the original model in St. James's Parish. When the 
 Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond the Black 
 Country; when the coats and waistcoats become insupport- 
 able, refer them to their source in the Upper Toady Regions. 
 
 Gentlemen's clubs were once maintained for purposes of 
 savage party warfare; working men's clubs of the same 
 day assumed the same character. Gentlemen's clubs be* 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 245 
 
 came places of quiet inoffensive recreation; working men's 
 clubs began to follow suit. If working men have seemed 
 rather slow to appreciate advantages of combination which 
 have saved the pockets of gentlemen, and enhanced their 
 comforts, it is because working men could scarcely, for 
 want of capital, originate such combinations without help; 
 and because help has not been separable from that great 
 impertinence, Patronage. The instinctive revolt of his 
 spirit against patronage, is a quality much to be respected 
 in the English working man. It is the base of the base of 
 his best qualities. Nor is it surprising that he should be 
 unduly suspicious of patronage, and sometimes resentful of 
 it even where it is not, seeing what a flood of washy talk 
 has been let loose on his devoted head, or with what com- 
 placent 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 as- 
 sembled friends; " that he does not become inappeasable, 
 and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees a biped in 
 broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that any 
 pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive 
 him out of his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging 
 patron like a mad bull. 
 
 For, how often have I heard the unfortunate working 
 man lectured, as if he were a little charity-child, humid 
 as to his nasal development, strictly literal as to his Cate- 
 chism, and called by Providence to walk all his days in a 
 station in life represented on festive occasions by a mug of 
 warm milk-and-water and a bun ! What popguns of jokes 
 have these ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine 
 sentiments, what impotent conclusions, what spelling-book 
 moralities, what adaptations of the orator's insufferable 
 tediousness to the assumed level of his understanding ! If 
 his sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes, his saws 
 and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, fur- 
 naces, 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 imperti- 
 nently and absurdly than I have heard him discoursed to 
 times innumerable. Consequently, not being a fool or a 
 fawner, he has come to acknowledge his patronage by virtu- 
 
246 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ally 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 corns 
 here again to have any more of it." 
 
 Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of 
 the working man must be so far done by himself as that it 
 is maintained by himself. And there must be in it no 
 touch of condescension, no shadow of patronage. In the 
 great working districts, this truth is studied and under- 
 stood. When the American civil war rendered it necessary, 
 first in Glasgow, and afterwards in Manchester, that the 
 working people should be shown how to avail themselves 
 of the advantages derivable from system, and from the 
 combination of numbers, in the purchase and the cooking 
 of their food, this truth was above all things borne in mind. 
 The quick consequence was, that suspicion and reluctance 
 were vanquished, and that the effort resulted in an aston- 
 ishing and a complete success. 
 
 Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morn- 
 ing of this summer, as I walked towards Commercial-street 
 (not Uncommercial-street), Whitechapel. The Glasgow 
 and Manchester system had been lately set a going there, 
 by certain gentlemen who felt an interest in its diffusion, 
 and I had been attracted by the following hand-bill printed 
 on rose-coloured paper : 
 
 SELF-SUPPORTING 
 
 COOKING DEPOT 
 
 FOR THE WORKING CLASSES, 
 
 Commercial-street, Whitechapel, 
 
 Where Accommodation is provided for Dining comfortably 30( 
 
 Persons at a time. 
 
 Open from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. 
 
 PRICES. 
 
 All Articles of the Best Quality. 
 
 Cup of Tea or Coffee, . . , . . One Penny 
 
 Bread and Butter, One Penny 
 
 Bread and Cheese, One Penny 
 
 Slice of Bread, . . One half-penny or One Penny 
 
 Boiled Egg, One Penny 
 
 Ginger Beer, One Penny 
 
 The above Articles always ready. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 247 
 
 Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3 o'clock, 
 Bowl of Scotch Broth, One Penny 
 
 Bowl of Soup, 
 
 Plate of Potatoes, 
 
 Plate of Minced Beef, 
 
 Plate of Cold Beef, 
 
 Plate of Cold Ham, 
 
 Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice, 
 
 One Penny 
 One Penny 
 Twopence 
 Twopence 
 Twopence 
 One Penny 
 
 As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the 
 simplicity of the arrangements with which a great number 
 of persons can be served at one time, the Upper Room of 
 this Establishment will be especially set apart for a 
 
 Public DINNER every Day 
 
 Prom 12 till 3 o'clock. 
 
 Consisting of the following Dishes : 
 
 Bowl of Broth, or Soup, 
 Plate of Cold Beef or Ham, 
 Plate of Potatoes, 
 Plum Pudding, or Rice, 
 
 FIXED CHARGE Q d. 
 
 THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED. 
 
 N.B. — This Establishment is conducted on the strictest 
 business principles, with the full intention of making it 
 self-supporting, so that every one may frequent it with a 
 feeling of perfect independence. 
 
 The assistance of all frequenting the Depot is confidently 
 expected in checking anything interfering with the com- 
 fort, quiet, and regularity of the establishment. 
 
 Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to 
 some other person whom it may interest. 
 
 This Self- Supporting Cooking Depot (not a very good 
 name, and one would rather give it an English one) had 
 hired a newly-built warehouse that it found to let; there- 
 fore it was not established in premises specially designed 
 for the purpose. But, at a small cost they were exceed- 
 ingly well adapted to the purpose : being light, well venti- 
 lated, clean, and cheerful. They consisted of three large 
 rooms. That on the basement story was the kitchen; that 
 on the ground floor was the general dining-room; that on 
 the floor above was the Upper Room referred to in the 
 hand-bill, where the Public Dinner at fourpence-halfpenny 
 17 
 
248 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 a head was provided every day. The cooking was done, 
 with much economy of space and fuel, by American cooking- 
 stoves, and by young women not previously brought up as 
 cooks; the walls and pillars of the two dining-rooms were 
 agreeably brightened with ornamental colours; the tables 
 were capable of accommodating six or eight persons each ; 
 the attendants were all young women, becomingly and 
 neatly dressed, and dressed alike. I think the whole staff 
 was female, with the exception of the steward or manager. 
 
 My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this 
 staff; because, if an y establishment claiming to be self- 
 supporting, live upon the spoliation of anybody or any- 
 thing, or eke out a feeble existence by poor mouths and 
 beggarly resources (as too many so-called Mechanics' Insti- 
 tutions do), I make bold to express my Uncommercial 
 opinion that it has no business to live, and had better die. 
 It was made clear to me by the account books, that every 
 person employed was properly paid. My next inquiries 
 were directed to the quality of the provisions purchased, 
 and to the terms on which they were bought. It was made 
 equally clear to me that the quality was the very best, and 
 that all bills were paid weekly. My next inquiries were 
 directed to the balance-sheet for the last two weeks — only 
 the third and fourth of the establishment's career. It was 
 made equally clear to me, that after everything bought 
 was paid for, and after each week was charged with its full 
 share of wa.ges, rent and taxes, depreciation of plant in 
 use, and interest on capital at the rate of four per cent per 
 annum, the last week had yielded a profit of (in round 
 numbers) one pound ten; and the previous week a profit of 
 six pounds ten. By this time I felt that I had a healthy 
 appetite for the dinners. 
 
 It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces 
 had already begun to appear at a little window in the wall 
 of the partitioned space where I sat looking over the books. 
 Within this little window, like a pay-box at a theatre, a 
 neat and brisk young woman presided to take money and 
 issue tickets. Every one coming in must take a ticket. 
 Either the fourpence-halfpenny ticket for the upper room 
 (the most popular ticket, I think), or a penny ticket for a 
 bowl of soup, or as many penny tickets as he or she chose 
 to buy. For three penny tickets one had quite a wide 
 range of choice, A plate of cold boiled beef and potatoes; 
 
TBM -UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 249 
 
 or a plate of cold ham and potatoes; or a plate of hot 
 minced beef and potatoes; or a bowl of soup, bread and 
 cheese, and a plate of plum-pudding. Touching what they 
 should have, some customers on taking their seats fell into 
 a reverie — became mildly distracted — postponed decision, 
 and said in bewilderment, they would think of it. One old 
 man I noticed when I sat among the tables in the lower 
 room, who was startled by the bill of fare, and sat contem- 
 plating it as if it were something of a ghostly nature. The 
 decision of the boys was as rapid as their execution, and 
 always included pudding. 
 
 There were several women among the diners, and several 
 clerks and shopmen. There were carpenters and painters 
 from the neighbouring buildings under repair, and there 
 were nautical men, and there were, as one diner observed 
 to me, "some of most sorts." Some were solitary, some 
 came two together, some dined in parties of three or four, 
 or six. The latter talked together, but assuredly no one 
 was louder than at my club in Pali-Mall. One young fel- 
 low whistled in rather a shrill manner while he waited for 
 his dinner, but I was gratified to observe that he did so in 
 evident defiance of my Uncommercial individuality. Quite 
 agreeing with him, on consideration, that I had no business 
 to be there, unless I dined like the rest, I "went in," as 
 the phrase is, for fourpence-halfpenny. 
 
 The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like 
 the lower room, a counter in it, on which were ranged a 
 great number of cold portions ready for distribution. Be- 
 hind this counter, the fragrant soup was steaming in deep 
 cans, and the best-cooked of potatoes were fished out of 
 similar receptacles. Nothing to eat was touched with the 
 hand. Every waitress had her own tables to attend to. 
 As soon as she saw a new customer seat himself at one of 
 her tables, she took from the counter all his dinner — his 
 soup, potatoes, meat, and pudding — piled it up dexterously 
 in her two hands, set it before him, and took his ticket. 
 This serving of the whole dinner at once, had been found 
 greatly to simplify the business of attendance, and was 
 also popular with the customers : who were thus enabled 
 to vary the meal by varying the routine of dishes : begin- 
 ning with soup to-day, putting soup in the middle to- 
 morrow, putting soup at the end the day after to-morrow, 
 and ringing similar changes on meat and pudding. The 
 
250 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 rapidity with which every new comer got served, was re~ 
 markable; and the dexterity with which the waitresses 
 (quite new to the art a month before) discharged their 
 duty, was as agreeable to see, as the neat smartness 
 with which they wore their dress and had dressed their 
 hair. 
 
 If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate 
 better meat, potatoes, or pudding. And the soup was an 
 honest and stout soup, with rice and barley in it, and " lit- 
 tle matters for the teeth to touch," as had been observed to 
 me by my friend below stairs already quoted. The dinner- 
 service, too, was neither conspicuously hideous for High 
 Art nor for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and pure ap- 
 pearance. Concerning the viands and their cookery, one 
 last remark. I dined at my club in Pall- Mall aforesaid, a 
 few days afterwards, for exactly twelve times the money, 
 and not half as well. 
 
 The company thickened after one o'clock struck, and 
 changed pretty quickly. Although experience of the place 
 had been so recently attainable, and although there was 
 still considerable curiosity out in the street and about the 
 entrance, the general tone was as good as could be, and the 
 customers fell easily into the ways of the place. It was 
 clear to me, however, that they were there to have what 
 they paid for, and to be on an independent footing. To 
 the best of my judgment, they might be patronised out of 
 the building in a month. With judicious visiting, and by 
 dint of being questioned, read to, and talked at, they might 
 even be got rid of (for the next quarter of a century) in 
 half the time. 
 
 This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so 
 many wholesome changes in the lives of the working people, 
 and with so much good in the way of overcoming that 
 suspicion which our own unconscious impertinence has en- 
 gendered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise details as 
 yet; the rather, because it is indisputable that the mana- 
 gers of the Whitechapel establishment most thoroughly feel 
 that they are upon their honour with the customers, as to 
 the minutest points of administration. But, although the 
 American stoves cannot roast, they can surely boil one kind 
 of meat as well as another, and need not always circum- 
 scribe their boiling talents within the limits of ham and 
 beef. The most enthusiastic admirer of those substantiate, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 251 
 
 would probably not object to occasional inconstancy in re- 
 spect of pork and mutton : or, especially in cold weather, 
 to a little innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat pies, and 
 toads in holes. Another drawback on the Whitechapel 
 establishment, is the absence of beer. Regarded merely 
 as a question of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a 
 tendency to send the working men to the public-house, 
 where gin is reported to be sold. But, there is a much 
 higher ground on which this absence of beer is objection- 
 able. It expresses distrust of the working man. It is a 
 fragment of that old mantle of patronage in which so many 
 estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering up and down the 
 moral world, are sworn to muffle him. Good beer is a 
 good thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Depot could 
 give it him good, and he now gets it bad. Why does the 
 Depot not give it him good? Because he would get drunk. 
 Why does the Depot not let him have a pint with his din- 
 ner, which would not make him drunk? Because he might 
 have had another pint, or another two pints, before he 
 came. Now, this distrust is an affront, is exceedingly 
 inconsistent with the confidence the managers express in 
 their hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short upon the 
 straight highway. It is unjust and unreasonable, also. It 
 is unjust, because it punishes the sober man for the vice of 
 the drunken man. It is unreasonable, because any one at 
 all experienced in such things knows that the drunken 
 workman does not get drunk where he goes to eat and 
 drink, but where he goes to drink — expressly to drink. To 
 suppose that the working man cannot state this question to 
 himself quite as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that 
 he is a baby, and is again to tell him in the old wearisome 
 condescending patronising way that he must be goody- 
 poody, and do as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a manny- 
 panny or a voter-poter, but fold his handy-pandys, and be 
 a childy-pildy. 
 
 I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self- 
 Supporting Cooking Depot, that every article sold in it, 
 even at the prices I have quoted, yields a certain small 
 profit ! Individual speculators are of course already in the 
 field, and are of course already appropriating the name. 
 The classes for whose benefit the real depots are designed, 
 will distinguish between the two kinds of enterprise. 
 
252 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 CHATHAM DOCKYARD. 
 
 There are some small out-of-the-way landing-places on 
 the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my 
 summer idling. Running water is favourable to day- 
 dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of running 
 water for mine. I like to watch the great ships standing 
 out to sea or coining home richly laden, the active little 
 steam-tugs confidently puffing with them to and from the 
 sea-horizon, the fleet of barges that seem to have plucked 
 their brown and russet sails from the ripe trees in the land- 
 scape, the heavy old colliers, light in ballast, floundering 
 down before the tide, the light screw barks and schooners 
 imperiously holding a straight course while the others pa- 
 tiently tack and go about, the yachts with their tiny hulls 
 and great white sheets of canvas, the little sailing-boats 
 bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure or business, 
 and — as it is the nature of little people to do — making a 
 prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these 
 objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, 
 or even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits 
 my humour. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and 
 flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking wind- 
 lass afar off, or the humming steam-ship paddles further 
 away yet. These, with the creaking little jetty on which 
 I sit, and the gaunt high- water marks and low-water marks 
 in the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken bank, 
 and the broken stakes and piles leaning forward as if they 
 were vain of their personal appearance and looking for their 
 reflection in the water, will melt into any train of fancy. 
 Equally adaptable to any purpose or to none, are the pas- 
 turing sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that 
 wheel and dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) 
 going home from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that has 
 been out a fishing and looks as melancholy, up there in the 
 sky, as if it hadn't agreed with him. Everything within 
 the range of the senses will, by the aid of the running 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 253 
 
 water, lend itself' to everything beyond that range, and 
 work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but 
 for which there is no exact definition. 
 
 One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can 
 see the Nore Light from it with my pocket- glass), from 
 which fort mysteriously emerges a boy, to whom I am 
 much indebted for additions to my scanty stock of knowl- 
 edge. He is a young boy, with an intelligent face burnt 
 to a dust colour by the summer sun, and with crisp hair of 
 the same hue. He is a boy in whom I have perceived 
 nothing incompatible with habits of studious inquiry and 
 meditation, unless an evanescent black eye (I was delicate 
 of inquiring how occasioned) should be so considered. To 
 him am I indebted for ability to identify a Custom-house 
 boat at any distance, and for acquaintance with all the 
 forms and ceremonies observed by a homeward bound In- 
 diaman coming up the river, when the Custom-house officers 
 go aboard her. But for him, I might never have heard of 
 "the dumb-ague," respecting which malady I am now 
 learned. Had I never sat at his feet, I might have finished 
 my mortal career and never known that when I see a white 
 horse on a barge's sail, that barge is a lime barge. For 
 precious secrets in reference to beer, am I likewise beholden 
 to him, involving warning against the beer of a certain 
 establishment, by reason of its having turned. sour through 
 failure in point of demand; though my young sage is not 
 of opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale. 
 He has also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the 
 marshes, and has gently reproved my ignorance in having 
 supposed them to be impregnated with salt. His manner 
 of imparting information, is thoughtful, and appropriate to 
 the scene. As he reclines beside me, he pitches into the 
 river, a little stone or piece of grit, and then delivers him- 
 self oracularly, as though he spoke out of the centre of the 
 spreading circle that it makes in the water. He never im- 
 proves my milid without observing this formula. 
 
 With the wise boy — whom I know by no other name 
 than the Spirit of the Fort — I recently consorted on a 
 breezy day when the river leaped about us and was full of 
 life. I had seen the sheaved corn carrying in the golden 
 fields as I came down to the river; and the rosy farmer, 
 watching his labouring-men in the saddle on his cob, had 
 told me how he had reaped his two hundred and sixty acres 
 
254 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 of long-strawed corn last week, and how a better week's 
 work he had never done in all his days. Peace and abun- 
 dance were on the country-side in beautiful forms and 
 beautiful colours, and the harvest seemed even to be sail- 
 ing out to grace the never-reaped sea in the yellow-laden 
 barges that mellowed the distance. 
 
 It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, direct- 
 ing his remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately 
 lying in that reach of the river, enriched my mind with his 
 opinions on naval architecture, and informed me that he 
 would like to be an engineer. I found him up to every- 
 thing that is done in the contracting line by Messrs. Peto 
 and Brassey — cunning in the article of concrete — mellow 
 in the matter of iron — great on the subject of gunnery. 
 When he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left 
 me not a leg to stand on, and I can never sufficiently 
 acknowledge his forbearance with me in my disabled state. 
 While he thus discoursed, he several times directed his 
 eyes to one distant quarter of the landscape, and spoke 
 with vague mysterious awe of "the Yard." Pondering his 
 lessons after we had parted, I bethought me that the Yard 
 was one of our large public Dockyards, and that it lay hid- 
 den among the crops down in the dip behind the windmills, 
 as if it modestly kept itself out of view in peaceful times, 
 and sought to trouble no man. Taken with this modesty 
 on the part of the Yard, I resolved to improve the Yard's 
 acquaintance. 
 
 My good opinion of the Yard's retiring character was not 
 dashed by nearer approach. It resounded with the noise 
 of hammers beating upon iron; and the great sheds or slips 
 under which the mighty men-of-war are built, loomed busi- 
 ness-like when contemplated from the opposite side of the 
 river. For all that, however, the Yard made no display, 
 but kept itself snug under hill- sides of corn-fields, hop- 
 gardens, and orchards; its great chimneys smoking with 
 a quiet — almost a lazy — air, like giants smoking tobacco; 
 and the great Shears moored off it, looking meekly and in- 
 offensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe of the machin- 
 ery creation. The store of cannon on the neighbouring 
 gun- wharf, had an innocent toy-like appearance, and the 
 one red-coated sentry on duty over them was a mere toy 
 figure, with a clock-work movement. As the hot sunlight 
 sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 255 
 
 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 architect- 
 ural ornaments to be shells. And so I came to the Yard, 
 which was shut up tight and strong with great folded gates, 
 like an enormous patent safe. These gates devouring me, 
 I became digested into the Yard; and it had, at first, a 
 clean-swept holiday air, as if it had given over work until 
 next war-time. Though indeed a quantity of hemp for 
 rope was tumbling out of store-houses, even there, which 
 would hardly be lying like so much hay on the white stones 
 if the Yard were as placid as it pretended. 
 
 Ding, Clash, Dong, Bang, Boom, Battle, Clash, Bang, 
 Clink, Bang, Dong, Bang, Clatter, bang, bang, BANG! 
 What on earth is this ! This is, or soon will be, the Achil- 
 les, iron armour-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are 
 working at her now ; twelve hundred men working on stages 
 over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her 
 keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within her and 
 without, crawling and creeping into the finest curves of 
 her lines wherever it is possible for men to twist. Twelve 
 hundred hammerers, measurers, caulkers, armourers, forg- 
 ers, smiths, shipwrights; twelve hundred dingers, dashers, 
 dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers bangers! Yet 
 all this stupendous uproar around the rising Achilles is as 
 nothing to the reverberations with which the perfected 
 Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day when the full 
 work is in hand for which this is but note of preparation — 
 the day when the scuppers that are now fitting like great 
 dry thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red. All these busy 
 figures between decks, dimly seen bending at their work in 
 smoke and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall do 
 work here of another kind in smoke and fire, that day. 
 These steam-worked engines alongside, helping the ship 
 by travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron plates 
 about, as though they were so many leaves of trees, would 
 be rent limb from limb if they stood by her for a minute 
 then. To think that this Achilles, monstrous compound of 
 iron tank and oaken chest, can ever swim or roll ! To think 
 that any force of wind and wave could ever break her ! To 
 18 
 
256 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 ill 
 every iron plate, and thousands upon thousands in the ship ! 
 To think that the difficulty I experience in appreciating the 
 ship's size when I am on board, arises from her being a 
 series of iron tanks and oaken chests, so that internally she 
 is ever finishing and ever beginning, and half of her might 
 be smashed, and yet the remaining half suffice and be 
 sound. Then, to go over the side again and down among 
 the ooze and wet to the bottom of the dock, in the depths 
 of the subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays that hold 
 her up, and to see the immense mass bulging out against 
 the upper light, and tapering down towards me, is, with 
 great pains and much clambering, to arrive at an impossi- 
 bility of realising that this is a ship at all, and to become 
 possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous immovable 
 edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Ve- 
 rona), and almost filling it! Yet what would even these 
 things be, without the tributary workshops and the me- 
 chanical powers for piercing the iron plates — four inches 
 and a half thick — for rivets, shaping them under hydraulic 
 pressure to the finest tapering turns of the ship's lines, 
 and paring them away, with knives shaped like the beaks 
 of strong and cruel birds, to the nicest requirements of the 
 design! These machines of tremendous force, so easily 
 directed by one attentive face and presiding hand, seem to 
 me to have in them something of the retiring character of 
 the Yard. " Obedient monster, please to bite this mass of 
 iron through and through, at equal distances, where these 
 regular chalk-marks are, all round." Monster looks at its 
 work, and lifting its ponderous head, replies, "I don't par- 
 ticularly want to do it; but if it must be done ! " The 
 
 solid metal wriggles out, hot from the monster's crunch- 
 ing tooth, and it is done. " Dutiful monster, observe this 
 other mass of iron. It is required to be pared away, ac- 
 cording to this delicately lessening and arbitrary line, which 
 please to look at." Monster (who has been in a reverie) 
 brings down its blunt head, and, much in the manner of 
 Doctor Johnson, closely looks along the line — very closely, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 25? 
 
 being somewhat near-sighted. "I don't particularly want 
 
 to do it; but if it must be done !" Monster takes 
 
 another near-sighted look, takes aim, and the tortured piece 
 writhes off, and falls, a hot tight-twisted snake, among 
 the ashes. The making of the rivets is merely a pretty 
 round game, played by a man and a boy, who put red-hot 
 barley sugar in a Pope Joan board, and immediately rivets 
 fall out of window; but the tone of the great machines is 
 the tone of the great Yard and the great country : " We don't 
 particularly want to do it; but if it must be done ! " 
 
 How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever be 
 held by such comparatively little anchors as those intended 
 for her and lying near her here, is a mystery of seamanship 
 which I will refer to the wise boy. For my own part, I 
 should as soon have thought of tethering an elephant to a 
 tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the Zoological Gar- 
 dens to my shirt-pin. Yonder in the river, alongside a 
 hulk, lie two of this ship's hollow iron masts. They are 
 large enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her other 
 appliances. I wonder why only her anchors look small. 
 
 I have no present time to think about it, for I am going 
 to see the workshops where they make all the oars used in 
 the British Navy. A pretty large pile of building, I opine, 
 and a pretty long job! As to the building, I am soon dis- 
 appointed, because the work is all done in one loft. And 
 as to a long job— what is this? Tavo rather large mangles 
 with a swarm of butterflies hovering over them? What 
 can there be in the mangles that attracts butterflies? 
 
 Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, 
 but intricate machines, set with knives and saws and planes, 
 which cut smooth and straight here, and slantwise there, 
 and now cut such a depth, and now miss cutting altogether, 
 according to the predestined requirements of the pieces of 
 wood that are pushed on below them : each of which pieces 
 is to be an oar, and is roughly adapted to that purpose be- 
 fore it takes its final leave of far-off forests, and sails for 
 England. Likewise I discern that the butterflies are not 
 true butterflies, but wooden shavings, which, being spirted 
 up from the wood by the violence of the machinery, and 
 kept in rapid and not equal movement by the impulse of 
 its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and rise and fall, 
 and conduct themselves as like butterflies as heart could 
 wish. Suddenly the noise and motion cease, and the but- 
 
258 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 terflies 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 turn- 
 ing lathe. A whirl and a Nick! Handle made. Oar 
 finished. 
 
 The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery 
 need no illustration, but happen to have a pointed illus- 
 tration to-day. A pair of oars of unusual size chance to 
 be wanted for a special purpose, and they have to be 
 made by hand. Side by side with the subtle and facile 
 machine, and side by side with the fast-growing pile of 
 oars on the floor, a man shapes out these special oars with 
 an axe. Attended by no butterflies, and chipping and 
 dinting, by comparison as leisurely as if he were a labour- 
 ing Pagan getting them ready against his decease at three- 
 score and ten, to take with him as a present to Charon for 
 his boat, the man (aged about thirty) plies his task. The 
 machine would make a regulation oar while the man wipes 
 his forehead. The man might be buried in a mound made 
 of the strips of thin broad wooden ribbon torn from the 
 wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall from the clock, 
 before he had done a forenoon's work with his axe. 
 
 Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships again — 
 for my heart, as to the Yard, is where the ships are — I no- 
 tice certain unfinished wooden walls left seasoning on the 
 stocks, pending the solution of the merits of the wood and 
 iron question, and having an air of biding their time with 
 surly confidence. The names of these worthies are set up 
 beside them, together with their capacity in guns — a cus- 
 tom highly conducive to ease and satisfaction in social in- 
 tercourse, if it could be adapted to mankind. By a plank 
 more gracefully pendulous than substantial, I make bold 
 to go aboard a transport ship (iron screw) just sent in from 
 the contractor's yard to be inspected and passed. She is 
 a very gratifying experience, in the simplicity and hu- 
 manity of her arrangements for troops, in her provision for 
 light and air and cleanliness, and in her care for women 
 and children. It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I 
 would require a handsome sum of money to go aboard her, 
 at midnight by the Dockyard bell, and stay aboard alone 
 till morning; for surely she must be haunted by a crowd of 
 ghosts of obstinate old martinets, mournfully flapping their 
 cherubic epaulettes over the changed times. Though still 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 259 
 
 we may learn from the astounding ways and means in our 
 Yards now, more highly than ever to respect the forefathers 
 who got to sea, and fought the sea, and held the sea, with- 
 out them. This remembrance putting me in the best of 
 tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, and 
 generally dim and patched, I pull off my hat to her. 
 Which salutation a callow and downy-faced young officer 
 of Engineers, going by at the moment, perceiving, appro- 
 priates — and to which he is most heartily welcome, I am 
 sure. 
 
 Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam 
 circular saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and 
 saws of eccentric action, I come to the sauntering part of 
 my expedition, and consequently to the core of my Uncom- 
 mercial pursuits. 
 
 Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet 
 with tokens of its quiet and retiring character. There is a 
 gravity upon its red brick offices and houses, a staid pre- 
 tence of having nothing worth mentioning to do, an avoid- 
 ance of display, which I never saw out of England. The 
 white stones of the pavement present no other trace of 
 Achilles and his twelve hundred banging men (not one of 
 whom strikes an attitude) than a few occasional echoes. 
 But for a whisper in the air suggestive of sawdust and 
 shavings, the oar-making and the saws of many movements 
 might be miles away. Down below here, is the great reser- 
 voir of water where timber is steeped in various tempera- 
 tures, as a part of its seasoning process. Above it, on a 
 tramroad supported by pillars, is a Chinese Enchanter's 
 Car, which fishes the logs up, when sufficiently steeped, 
 and rolls smoothly away with them to stack them. When 
 I was a child (the Yard being then familiar to me) I used 
 to think that I should like to play at Chinese Enchanter, 
 and to have that apparatus placed at my disposal for the 
 purpose by a beneficent country. I still think that I should 
 rather like to try the effect of writing a book in it. Its re- 
 tirement is complete, and to go gliding to and fro among 
 the stacks of timber would be a convenient kind of travel- 
 ling 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 
 
 12 2% 
 
260 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 pervading avoidance of flourish or effect. It makes as lit- 
 tle of itself as possible, and calls to no one " Come and look 
 at me ! " And yet it is picked out from the trees of the 
 world; picked out for length, picked out for breadth, 
 picked out for straightness, picked out for crookedness, 
 chosen with an eye to every need of ship and boat. 
 Strangely twisted pieces lie about, precious in the sight of 
 shipwrights. Sauntering through these groves, I come 
 upon an open glade where workmen are examining some 
 timber recently delivered. Quite a pastoral scene, with a 
 background of river and windmill ! and no more like War 
 than the American States are at present like an Union. 
 
 Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a 
 state of blissful indolence, wherein my rope of life seems 
 to be so untwisted by the process as that I can see back to 
 very early days indeed, when my bad dreams — they were 
 frightful, though my more mature understanding has never 
 made out why — were of an interminable sort of ropemak- 
 ing, with long minute filaments for strands, which, when 
 they were spun home together close to my eyes, occasioned 
 screaming. Next, I walk among the quiet lofts of stores 
 — of sails, spars, rigging, ships' boats— determined to be- 
 lieve that somebody in authority wears a girdle and bends 
 beneath the weight of a massive bunch of keys, and that, 
 when such a thing is wanted, he comes telling his keys 
 like Blue Beard, and opens such a door. Impassive as the 
 long lofts look, let the electric battery send down the word, 
 and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and such a fleet 
 of armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall burst 
 forth as will charge the old Medway — where the merry 
 Stuart let the Dutch come, while his not so merry sailors 
 starved in the streets — with something worth looking at to 
 <3arry to the sea. Thus I idle round to the Medway again, 
 where it is now flood tide; and I find the river evincing a 
 strong solicitude to force a way into the dry dock where 
 Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred bangers, with 
 intent to bear the whole away before they are ready. 
 
 To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it; for I 
 make my way to the gates through a little quiet grove of 
 trees, shading the quaintest of Dutch landing-places, where 
 the leaf-speckled shadow of a shipwright just passing away 
 at the further end might be the shadow of Russian Peter 
 himself. So, the doors of the great patent safe at last 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 261 
 
 close upon me, and I take boat again : somehow, thinking 
 as the oars dip, of braggart Pistol and his brood, and of 
 tne quiet monsters of the Yard, with their "We don't 
 
 particularly want to doit; but if it must be done 1" 
 
 Scrunch. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY. 
 
 "It is neither a bold nor a diversified country," said I 
 to myself, "this country which is three-quarters Flemish, 
 and a quarter French; yet it has its attractions too. 
 Though great lines of railway traverse it, the trains leave 
 it behind, and go puffing off to Paris and the South, to Bel- 
 gium and Germany, to the Northern Sea-Coast of France., 
 and to England, and merely smoke it a little in passing. 
 Then I don't know it, and that is a good reason for being 
 here; and I can't pronounce half the long queer names I 
 see inscribed over the shops, and that is another good 
 reason for being here, since I surely ought to learn how." 
 In short, I was " here," and I wanted an excuse for not 
 going away from here, and I made it to my satisfaction, 
 and stayed here. 
 
 What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. 
 Salcy, is of no moment, though I own to encountering that 
 gentleman's name on a red bill on the wall, before I made 
 up my mind. Monsieur P. Salcy, "par permission de M. 
 le Maire," had established his theatre in the whitewashed 
 HoteLde Ville, on the steps of which illustrious edifice I 
 stood. And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged director of such 
 theatre, situate in "the first theatrical arrondissement of 
 the department of the North," invited French-Flemish 
 mankind to come and partake of the intellectual banquet 
 provided by his family of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects 
 in number. "La Famille P. Salcy, composee d'artistes 
 dramatiques, au nombre de 15 sujets." 
 
 Neither a bold nor a diversified country, 1 say again, and 
 withal an untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, 
 when the paved roads over the flats and through the hol- 
 lows, are not too deep in black mud. A country so sparely 
 inhabited, that I wonder where the peasants who till and 
 
262 .THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 sow and reap the ground, can possibly dwell, and also by 
 what invisible balloons they are conveyed from their dis- 
 tant homes into the fields at sunrise and back again at sun- 
 set. The occasional few poor cottages and farms in this 
 region, surely cannot afford shelter to the numbers neces- 
 sary to the cultivation, albeit the work is done so very de- 
 liberately, that on one long harvest day I have seen, in 
 twelve miles, about twice as many men and women (all 
 told) reaping and binding. Yet have I seen more cattle, 
 more sheep, more pigs, and all in better case, than where 
 there is purer French spoken, and also better ricks — 'round 
 swelling peg-top ricks, well thatched: not a shapeless 
 brown heap, like the toast of a Giant's toast-and- water, 
 pinned to the earth with one of the skewers out of his 
 kitchen. A good custom they have about here, likewise, 
 of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of farm or cottage, so 
 that it overhangs three or four feet, carrying off the wet, 
 and making a good drying place wherein to hang up herbs, 
 or implements, or what not. A better custom than the 
 popular one of keeping the refuse-heap and puddle close 
 before the house door : which, although I paint my dwelling 
 never so brightly blue (and it cannot be too blue for me, 
 hereabouts), will bring fever inside my door. Wonderful 
 poultry of the French-Flemish country, why take the trouble 
 to be poultry? Why not stop short at eggs in the rising 
 generation, and die out and have done with it? Parents 
 of chickens have I seen this day, followed by their wretched 
 young families, scratching nothing out of the mud with an 
 air — tottering about on legs so scraggy and weak, that the 
 valiant word drumsticks becomes a mockery when applied 
 to them, and the crow of the lord and master has been a 
 mere dejected case of croup. Carts have I seen, and other 
 agricultural instruments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous. 
 Poplar-trees by the thousand fringe the fields and fringe 
 the end of the flat landscape, so that I feel, looking straight 
 on before me, as if, when I pass the extremest fringe on 
 the low horizon, I shall stumble over into space. Little 
 white-washed black holes of chapels, with barred doors 
 and Flemish inscriptions, abound at roadside corners, and 
 often they are garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, 
 like children's swords; or, in their default, some hollow 
 old tree with a saint roosting in it, is similarly decorated, 
 or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined aloft in a 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 263 
 
 sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that we are deficient in 
 such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church 
 yonder, outside the building, is a scenic representation of 
 the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and stones, and 
 made out with painted canvas and wooden figures: the 
 whole surmounting the dusty skull of some holy personage 
 (perhaps), shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if it 
 were originally put there to be cooked, and the fire had 
 long gone out. A windmilly country this, though the 
 windmills are so damp and rickety, that they nearly knock 
 themselves off their legs at every turn of their sails, and 
 creak in loud complaint. A weaving country, too, for in 
 the wayside cottages the loom goes wearily — rattle and 
 click, rattle and click— and, looking in, I see the poor 
 weaving peasant, man or woman, bending at the work, 
 while the child, working too, turns a little handwheel put 
 upon the ground to suit its height. An unconscionable 
 monster, the loom in a small dwelling, asserting himself 
 ungenerously as the bread-winner, straddling over the chil- 
 dren's straw beds, cramping the family in space and air, 
 and making himself generally objectionable and tyrannical. 
 He is tributary, too, to ugly mills and factories and 
 bleaching-grounds, rising out of the sluiced fields in an 
 abrupt bare way, disdaining, like himself, to be ornamental 
 or accommodating. Surrounded by these things, here I stood 
 on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, persuaded to remain by 
 the P. Salcy Family, fifteen dramatic subjects strong. 
 
 There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion being 
 irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last 
 Hotel, I made the tour of the little town to buy another. 
 In the small sunny shops — mercers, opticians, and druggist- 
 grocers, with here and there an emporium of religious 
 images — the gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands 
 and wives sat contemplating one another across bare count- 
 ers, while the wasps, who seemed to have taken military 
 possession of the town, and to have placed it under wasp- 
 martial law, executed warlike manoeuvres in the windows. 
 Other shops the wasps had entirely to themselves, and no- 
 body cared and nobody came when I beat with a five-franc 
 piece upon the board of custom. What I sought was no 
 more to be found than if I had sought a nugget of Califor- 
 nian gold : so I went, spongeless, to pass the evening with 
 the Family P. Salcy. 
 
264 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so 
 like. one another — fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, 
 and aunts — that I think the local audience were much con- 
 fused about the plot of the piece under representation, 
 and to the last expected that everybody must turn out to 
 be the long-lost relative of everybody else. The Theatre 
 was established on the top story of the Hotel de Ville, and 
 was approached by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an 
 airy situation, one of the P. Salcy Family — a stout gentle- 
 man imperfectly repressed by a belt — took the money. 
 This occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening; 
 for, no sooner did the curtain rise on the introductory 
 Vaudeville, and reveal in the person of the young lover 
 (singing a very short song with his eyebrows) apparently 
 the very same identical stout gentleman imperfectly re- 
 pressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the paying- 
 place, to ascertain whether he could possibly have put on 
 that dress-coat, that clear complexion, and those arched 
 black vocal eyebrows, in so short a space of time. It then 
 became manifest that this was another stout gentleman im- 
 perfectly repressed by a belt: to whom, before the specta- 
 tors had recovered their presence of mind, entered a third 
 stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, exactly 
 like him. These two "subjects," making with the money- 
 taker three of the announced fifteen, fell into conversation 
 touching a charming young widow : who, presently appear- 
 ing, proved to be a stout lady altogether irrepressible by any 
 means — quite a parallel case to the American Negro — fourth 
 of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth who presided 
 over the check department. In good time the whole of the 
 fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, and we had 
 the inevitable Ma Mere, Ma Mere ! and also the inevitable 
 malediction d'un pere, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, 
 and also the inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded 
 but faithful, who followed Julie to Paris, and cried and 
 laughed and choked all at once. The story was wrought out 
 with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel in the beginning, 
 a vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic 
 blessing (which arrived by post) from Ma Mere towards 
 the end; the whole resulting in a small sword in the body 
 of one of the stout gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a 
 belt, fifty thousand francs per annum and a decoration to 
 the other stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 265 
 
 and an assurance from everybody to the provincial young 
 man that if he were not supremely happy — which he seemed 
 to have no reason whatever for being — he ought to be. 
 This afforded him a final opportunity of crying and laugh- 
 ing and choking all at once, and sent the audience home 
 sentimentally delighted. Audience more attentive or bet- 
 ter behaved there could not possibly be, though the places 
 of second rank in the Theatre of the Family P. Salcy were 
 sixpence each in English money, and the places of first rank 
 a shilling. How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat upon 
 it, the kind Heavens know. 
 
 What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded 
 till they gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for 
 the garniture of my home, if I had been a French-Flemish 
 peasant, and had had the money! What shining coffee- 
 cups and saucers I might have won at the turntables, if I 
 had had the luck! Ravishing perfumery also, and sweet- 
 meats, I might have speculated in, or I might have fired 
 for prizes at a multitude of little dolls in niches, and might 
 have hit the doll of dolls, and won francs and fame. Or, 
 being a French-Flemish youth, I might have been drawn 
 in a hand-cart by my compeers, to tilt for municipal re- 
 wards at the water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance 
 clean through the ring, emptied a full bucket over me; to 
 fend off which, the competitors wore grotesque old scare- 
 crow hats. Or, being French- Flemish man or woman, boy 
 or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby-horse 
 in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, inter- 
 spersed with triumphal cars, going round and round and 
 round and round, we the goodly company singing a cease- 
 less chorus to the music of the barrel-organ, drum, and 
 cymbals. On the whole, not more monotonous than the 
 Ring in Hyde Park, London, and much merrier; for when 
 do the circling company sing chorus, there, to the barreb 
 organ, when do the ladies embrace their horses round the 
 neck with both arms, when do the gentlemen fan the ladies 
 with the tails of their gallant steeds? On all these revolv- 
 ing delights, and on their own especial lamps and Chinese 
 lanterns revolving with them, the thoughtful weaver-face 
 brightens, and the Hotel de Ville sheds an illuminated line 
 of gaslight: while above it, the Eagle of France, gas- 
 outlined and apparently afflicted with the prevailing infirmi- 
 ties that have lighted on the poultry, is in a very undecided 
 
^66 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 state of policy, and as a bird moulting. Flags flutter all 
 around. Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper of 
 the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to 
 have a look at the world that is not locked up; while that 
 agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the prison in 
 the prison-alley (its sign La Tranquillite, because of its 
 charming situation), resounds with the voices of the shep- 
 herds and shepherdesses who resort there this festive night. 
 And it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw a shep- 
 herd in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones 
 of a neighbouring street. A magnificent sight it was, to 
 behold him in his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, 
 swept along by the wind of two immense gendarmes, in 
 cocked-hats for which the street was hardly wide enough, 
 each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not 
 have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that 
 dwarfed the prisoner. 
 
 " Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, 
 as a mark of my confidence in the people of this so- 
 renowned town, and as an act of homage to their good 
 sense and fine taste, the Ventriloquist, the Ventriloquist! 
 Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Face- 
 Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of Counte- 
 nances, who transforms the features that Heaven has be- 
 stowed upon him into an endless succession of surprising 
 and extraordinary visages, comprehending,, Messieurs et 
 Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of 
 which the human face is capable, and all the passions of 
 the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Eevenge, Hatred, 
 Avarice, Despair ! Hi hi, Ho ho, Lu lu, Come in ! " To 
 this effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind 
 of tambourine — bestowed with a will, as if it represented 
 the people who won't come in — holds forth a man of lofty 
 dnd severe demeanour; a man in stately uniform, gloomy 
 with the knowledge he possesses of the inner secrets of the 
 booth. ■ Come in, come in ! Your opportunity presents 
 itself to-night; to-morrow it will be gone for ever. To- 
 morrow morning by the Express Train the railroad will 
 reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker! Algeria 
 will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face- Maker! Yes! 
 For the honour of their country they have accepted propo- 
 sitions of a magnitude incredible, to appear in Algeria. 
 See them for the last time before their departure ! We go 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 267 
 
 to commence on the instant. Hi hi! Ho ho! Lu lu! 
 Come in! Take the money that now ascends, Madame; 
 but after that, no more, for we commence ! Come in ! " 
 
 Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and 
 of Madame receiving sous in a muslin bower, survey the 
 crowd pretty sharply after the ascending money has as- 
 cended, to detect any lingering sous at the turning-point. 
 " Come in, come in ! Is there any more money, Madame, 
 on the point of ascending? If so, we wait for it. If not, 
 we commence ! " The orator looks back over his shoulder 
 to say it, lashing the spectators with the conviction that 
 he beholds through the folds of the drapery into which he 
 is about to plunge, the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker. 
 Several sous burst out of pockets, and ascend. " Come up, 
 then, Messieurs ! " exclaims Madame in a shrill voice, and 
 beckoning with a bejewelled finger. "Come up! This 
 presses. Monsieur has commanded that they commence ! " 
 Monsieur dives into his Interior, and the last half-dozen of 
 us follow. His Interior is comparatively severe; his Ex- 
 tent <■ also. A true Temple of Art needs nothing but seats, 
 drapery, a small table with two moderator lamps hanging 
 over it, and an ornamental looking-glass let into the wall. 
 Monsieur in uniform gets behind the table and surveys us 
 with disdain, his forehead becoming diabolically intellect- 
 ual under the moderators. "Messieurs et Mesdames, I 
 present to you the Ventriloquist. He will commence with 
 the celebrated Experience of the bee in the window. The 
 bee, apparently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in 
 the window, and about the room. He will be with diffi- 
 culty caught in the hand of Monsieur the Ventriloquist — 
 he will escape — he will again hover — at length he will be 
 recaptured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist, and will be with 
 difficulty put into a bottle. Achieve then, Monsieur!" 
 Here the proprietor is replaced behind the table by the 
 Ventriloquist, who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly 
 aspect. While the bee is in progress, Monsieur the Pro- 
 prietor sits apart on a stool, immersed in dark and remote 
 thought. The moment the bee is bottled, he stalks forward, 
 eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then announces, 
 sternly waving his hand : " The magnificent Experience 
 of the child with the whooping-cough!" The child dis- 
 posed of, he starts up as. before. " The superb and extraor- 
 dinary Experience of the dialogue between Monsieur Ta- 
 
268 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 tambour in his dining-room, and his domestic, Jerome, in 
 the cellar; concluding with the songsters of the grove, and 
 the Concert of domestic Farm-yard animals." All this 
 done, and well done, Monsieur the Ventriloquist with- 
 draws, and Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, as if his 
 retiring-room were a mile long instead of a yard. A cor- 
 pulent little man in a large white waistcoat, with a comic 
 countenance, and with a wig in his hand. Irreverent dis- 
 position to laugh, instantly checked by the tremendous 
 gravity of the Face-Maker, who intimates in his bow that 
 if we expect that sort of thing we are mistaken. A very 
 little shaving- glass with a leg behind it is handed in, and 
 placed on the table before the Face-Maker. "Messieurs 
 et Mesdames, with no other assistance than this mirror and 
 this wig, I shall have the honour of shoAving you a thou- 
 sand characters." As a preparation, the Face-Maker with 
 both hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out. 
 He then becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the 
 Proprietor, "lam read}M" Proprietor stalks forth from 
 baleful reverie, and announces " The Young Conscript ! " 
 Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the 
 glass, and appears above it as a conscript so very imbecile, 
 and squinting so extremely hard, that I should think the 
 State would never get any good of him. Thunders of ap- 
 plause. Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass, brings 
 his own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave. 
 " A distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain." 
 Face-Maker dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, 
 toothless, slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently 
 of noble birth. " The oldest member of the Corps of In- 
 valides on the fete-day of his master." Face-Maker dips, 
 rises, wears the wig on one side, has become the feeblest 
 military bore in existence, and (it is clear) would lie fright- 
 fully about his past achievements, if he were not confined 
 to pantomime. " The Miser ! " Face-Maker dips, rises, 
 clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to ex- 
 press that he lives in continual dread of thieves. " The 
 Genius of France ! " Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed 
 back and smoothed flat, little cocked-hat (artfully con- 
 cealed till now) put a-top of it, Face-Maker's white waist- 
 coat much advanced, Face-Maker's left hand in bosom of 
 white waistcoat, Face-Maker's right hand behind his back. 
 Thunders. This is the first of three positions of the Genius 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 269 
 
 of France. In the second position, the Face-Maker takes 
 snuff; in the third, rolls up his right hand, and surveys 
 illimitable armies through that pocket-glass. The Face- 
 Maker then, by putting out his tongue, and wearing the 
 wig nohow in particular, becomes the Village Idiot. The 
 most remarkable feature in the whole of his ingenious per- 
 formance, is, that whatever he does to disguise himself, 
 has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself 
 than he was at first. 
 
 There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleas- 
 ure of recognising several fields of glory with which I be- 
 came well acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, 
 now doing duty as Mexican victories. The change was 
 neatly effected by some extra smoking of the Russians, and 
 by permitting the camp followers free range in the fore- 
 ground to despoil the enemy of their uniforms. As no 
 British troops had ever happened to be within sight when 
 the artist took his original sketches, it followed fortunately 
 that none were in the way now. 
 
 The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting the par- 
 ticular night of the week on which the ball took place, I 
 decline to commit myself; merely mentioning that it was 
 held in a stable-yard so very close to the railway, that it is 
 a mercy the locomotive did not set fire to it. (In Scotland, 
 I suppose it would have done so.) There, in a tent prettily 
 decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy flags, 
 the people danced all night. It was not an expensive rec- 
 reation, the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady 
 being one and threepence in English money, and even of 
 that small sum fivepence was reclaimable for " consomma- 
 tion ; " which word I venture to translate into refreshments 
 of no greater strength, at the strongest, than ordinary wine 
 made hot, with sugar and lemon in it. It was a ball of 
 great good, humour and of great enjoyment, though very 
 many of the dancers must have been as poor as the fifteen 
 subjects of the P. Salcy Family. 
 
 In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot 
 with me to this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the 
 measure of simple enjoyment that it poured into the dull 
 French-Flemish country life. How dull that is, I had an 
 opportunity of considering when the Fair was over — when 
 the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the windows of 
 the houses on the Place where the Fair was held — when 
 
270 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the windows were close shut, apparently until next Fair- 
 time — when the Hotel de Ville had cut off its gas and put 
 away its eagle — when the two paviours, whom I take to 
 form the entire paving population of the town, were ram- 
 ming down the stones which had been pulled up for the 
 erection of decorative poles — when the jailer had slammed 
 his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his charges. 
 But then, as I paced the ring which marked the track of 
 the departed hobby-horses on the market-place, pondering in 
 my mind how long some hobby-horses do leave their tracks 
 in public ways, and how difficult they are to erase, my 
 eyes were greeted with a goodly sight. I beheld four male 
 personages thoughtfully pacing the Place together, in the 
 sunlight, evidently not belonging to the town, and having 
 upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not belonging 
 to any town. One was clad in a suit of white canvas, 
 another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military 
 frock, the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it 
 had been made out of old umbrellas. All wore dust- 
 coloured shoes. My heart beat high; for, in those four 
 male personages, although complexionless and eyebrow less, 
 I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy. Blue- 
 bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful 
 smoothness of cheek which is imparted by what is termed 
 in Albion a "White-chapel shave" (and which is, in fact, 
 whitening, judiciously applied to the jaws with the palm 
 of the hand), I recognised them. As I stood admiring, 
 there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret, the excel- 
 lent Ma Mere, Ma Mere, with the words, "The soup is 
 served; " words which so elated the subject in the canvas 
 suit, that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, 
 dancing with his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of 
 his canvas trousers, after the Pierrot manner. Glancing 
 down the Yard, the last I saw of him was, that he looked 
 in through a window (at the soup, no doubt) on one leg. 
 
 Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from 
 the town, little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune. 
 But more was in reserve. I went by a train which was 
 heavy with third-class carriages, full of young fellows 
 (well guarded) who had drawn unlucky numbers in the last 
 conscription, and were on their way to a famous French 
 garrison town where much of the raw military material is 
 worked up into soldiery. At the station they had been sit- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 271 
 
 ting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, 
 with their poor little bundles under their arms, covered 
 with dust and clay, and the various soils of France; sad 
 enotigh at heart, most of them, but putting a good face 
 upon it, and slapping their breasts and singing choruses on 
 the smallest provocation; the gayer spirits shouldering half 
 loaves of black bread speared upon their walking-sticks. As 
 we went along, they were audible at every station, chorus- 
 ing wildly out of tune, and feigning the highest hilarity. 
 After a while, however, they began to leave off singing, 
 and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled 
 with their laughter the barking of a dog. Now, I had to 
 alight short of their destination, and, as that stoppage of 
 the train was attended with a quantity of horn blowing, 
 bell ringing, and proclamation of what Messieurs les Voy- 
 ageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to reach 
 their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go for- 
 ward on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits, 
 whose heads were all out at window, and who were laugh- 
 ing like delighted children. Then I perceived that a large 
 poodle with a pink nose, who had been their travelling 
 companion and the cause of their mirth, stood on his hind- 
 legs presenting arms on the extreme verge of the platform, 
 ready to salute them as the train went off. This poodle 
 wore a military shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much 
 on one side over one eye), a little military coat, and the 
 regulation white gaiters. He was armed with a little mus- 
 ket and a little sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting 
 arms in perfect attitude, with his unobscured eye on his 
 master or superior officer, who stood by him. So admira- 
 ble was his discipline, that, when the train moved, and he 
 was greeted with the parting cheers of the recruits, and 
 also with a shower of centimes, several of which struck his 
 shako, and had a tendency to discompose him, he remained 
 staunch on his post, until the train was gone. He then 
 resigned his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rub- 
 bing his paw over it, dropped on four legs, bringing his 
 uniform coat into the absurdest relations with the overarch- 
 ing skies, and ran about the platform in his white gaiters, 
 wagging his tail to an exceeding great extent. It struck 
 me that there was more waggery than this in the poodle, 
 and that he knew that the recruits would neither get 
 through their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as 
 
272 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 easily as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking 
 in ray pockets some small money to bestow upon him, I 
 casually directed my eyes to the face of his superior officer, 
 and in him beheld the Face-Maker ! Though it was not 
 the way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military poo- 
 dle's Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with a 
 small bundle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an 
 umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as 
 he and the poodle went their mysterious way. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION. 
 
 My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield 
 me matter for reflection at home. It is curious to trace the 
 savage in the civilised man, and to detect the hold of some 
 savage customs on conditions of society rather boastful of 
 being high above them. 
 
 I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American 
 Indians never to be got rid of, out of the North American 
 country? He comes into my Wigwam on all manner of 
 occasions, and with the absurdest "Medicine." I always 
 find it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply im- 
 possible, to keep him out of my Wigwam. For his legal 
 " Medicine " he sticks upon his head the hair of quadru- 
 peds, and plasters the same with fat, and dirty white pow- 
 der, and talks a gibberish quite unknown to the men and 
 squaws of his tribe. For his religious " Medicine " he puts 
 on puffy white sleeves, little black aprons, large black 
 waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless coats with Medicine 
 button-holes, Medicine stockings and gaiters and shoes, 
 and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal hat. 
 In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him. On 
 occasions Avhen the Medicine Men in general, together with 
 a large number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his vil- 
 lage, 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 anti- 
 quated shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of which he is par- 
 ticularly fond), and white and red and blue paint for the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 273 
 
 face The irrationality of this particular Medicine cul- 
 minates in a mock battle-rush, from which many of the 
 squaws are borne out, much dilapidated. I need not ob- 
 serve how unlike this is to a Drawing Boom at St. James's 
 Palace. 
 
 The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude 
 from my Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of death 
 and mourning under his supervision, and will frequently 
 impoverish a whole family by his preposterous enchant- 
 ments. He is a great eater and drinker, and always con- 
 ceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior. His 
 charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, 
 for which he charges very high. He impresses on the 
 poor bereaved natives, that the more of his followers they 
 pay to exhibit such scraps on their persons for an hour or 
 two (though they never saw the deceased in their lives, 
 and are put in high spirits by his decease), the more hon- 
 ourably and piously they grieve for the dead. The poor 
 people, submitting themselves to this conjuror, an expen- 
 sive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers 
 of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects be- 
 smeared with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly 
 order of which no one understands the meaning, if it ever 
 had any, to the brink of the grave, and are then brought 
 back again. 
 
 In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a 
 soul, so that when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they 
 say, "His immortal part has departed; he is gone to the 
 happy hunting-plains." This belief leads to the logical 
 sequence that when a man is buried, some of his eating 
 and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements, 
 must be broken and buried with him. Superstitious and 
 wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition than 
 the hire of antic scraps for a show that has no meaning 
 based on any sincere belief. 
 
 Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a pass- 
 ing glance on some funeral solemnities that I have seen 
 where North American Indians, African Magicians, and 
 Tonga Islanders, are supposed not to be. 
 
 Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with 
 me for a while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great 
 enthusiasm, and no discretion. This friend discovered a 
 desolate stranger, mourning over the unexpected death of 
 
274 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 one very dear to him, in a solitary cottage among the vine- 
 yards of an outlying village. The circumstances of the 
 bereavement were unusually distressing; and the survivor, 
 new to the peasants and the country, sorely needed help, 
 being alone with the remains. With some difficulty, but 
 with the strong influence of a purpose at once gentle, disin- 
 terested, and determined, my friend — Mr. Kindheart — ob- 
 tained access to the mourner, and undertook to arrange the 
 burial. 
 
 There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city 
 walls, and as Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned 
 into it and chose the spot. He was always highly flushed 
 when rendering a service unaided, and I knew that to make 
 him happy I must keep aloof from his ministration. But 
 when at dinner he warmed with the good action of the day, 
 and conceived the brilliant idea of comforting the mourner 
 with "an English funeral," I ventured to intimate that I 
 thought that institution, which was not absolutely sublime 
 at home, might prove a failure in Italian hands. However, 
 Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception, that 
 he presently wrote down into the town requesting the at- 
 tendance with to-morrow's earliest light of a certain little 
 upholsterer. This upholsterer was famous for speaking 
 the unintelligible local dialect (his own) in a far more un- 
 intelligible manner than any other man alive. 
 
 When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kind- 
 heart and the upholsterer in conference on the top of an 
 echoing staircase; and when I overheard Mr. Kindheart 
 rendering English Undertaking phrases into very choice 
 Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the unknown 
 Tongues; and when I furthermore remembered that the 
 local funerals had no resemblance to English funerals; I 
 became in my secret bosom apprehensive. But Mr. Kind- 
 heart informed me at breakfast that measures had been 
 taken to ensure a signal success. 
 
 As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I 
 knew to which of the city gates it must tend, I went out at 
 that gate as the sun descended, and walked along the 
 dusty, dusty road. I had not walked far, when I encoun- 
 tered this procession : 
 
 1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey 
 horse. 
 
 2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coach- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 275 
 
 man in bright red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat. 
 (This was the established local idea of State.) Both coach 
 doors kept open by the coffin, which was on its side within, 
 and sticking out at each. 
 
 3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach 
 was intended, walking in the dust. 
 
 4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation 
 of a garden,. the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring. 
 
 It matters little now. Coaches of all colours are alike to 
 poor Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little ceme- 
 tery with the cypress-trees, by the city walls where the 
 Mediterranean is so beautiful. 
 
 My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its 
 kind, was that of the husband of a married servant, once 
 my nurse. She married for money. Sally Flanders, after 
 a year or two of matrimony, became the relict of Flanders, 
 a small master builder; and either she or Flanders had 
 done me the honour to express a desire that I should " fol- 
 low." I may have been seven or eight years old; — young 
 enough, certainly, to feel rather alarmed by the expression, 
 as not knowing where the invitation was held to terminate, 
 and how far I was expected to follow the deceased Flan- 
 ders. Consent being given by the heads of houses, I was 
 jobbed up into what was pronounced at home decent mourn- 
 ing (comprehending somebody else's shirt, unless my mem- 
 ory deceives me), and was admonished that if, when the 
 funeral was in action, I put my hands in my pockets, or 
 took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was per- 
 sonally lost, and my family disgraced. On the eventful 
 day, having tried to get myself into a disastrous frame of 
 mind, and having formed a very poor opinion of myself be- 
 cause I couldn't cry, I repaired to Sally's. Sally was an 
 excellent creature, and had been a good wife to old Flan- 
 ders, but the moment I saw her I knew that she was not in 
 her own real natural state. She formed a sort of Coat of 
 Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an 
 orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders' s sister, her own sister, 
 Flanders' s brother's wife, and two neighbouring gossips — 
 all in mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever she 
 fainted. At sight of poor little me she became much agi- 
 tated (agitating me much more), and having exclaimed, a O 
 here's dear Master Uncommercial ! " became hysterical, and 
 swooned as if I had been the death of her. An affecting 
 
276 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 scene followed, during which I was handed about and 
 poked at her by various people, as if I were the bottle of 
 salts. Reviving a little, she embraced me, said, "You 
 knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial, and he knew 
 you ! " and fainted again : which, as the rest of the Coat 
 of Arms soothingly said, "done her credit." Now, I knew 
 that she needn't have fainted unless she liked, and that 
 she wouldn't have fainted unless it had been expected of 
 her, quite as well as I know it at this day. It made me 
 feel uncomfortable and hypocritical besides. I was not 
 sure but that it might be manners in me to faint next, and 
 I resolved to keep my eye on Flanders's uncle, and if I saw 
 any signs of his going in that direction, to go too, politely. 
 But Flanders's uncle (who was a weak little old retail 
 grocer) had only one idea, which was that we all wanted 
 tea; and he handed us cups of tea all round, incessantty, 
 whether we refused or not. There was a young nephew of 
 Flanders's present, to whom Flanders, it was rumoured, 
 had left nineteen guineas. He drank all the tea that was 
 offered him, this nephew — amounting, I should say, to 
 several quarts — and ate as much plum-cake as he could 
 possibly come by; but he felt it to be decent mourning that 
 he should now and then stop in the midst of a lump of 
 cake, and appear to forget that his mouth was full, in the 
 contemplation of his uncle's memory. I felt all this to be 
 the fault of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on 
 a tea-tray as if they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks 
 (mine had to be pinned up all round, it was so long for 
 me), because I knew that he was making game. So, when 
 we got out into the streets, and I constantly disarranged the 
 procession by tumbling on the people before me because 
 my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and tripping up the peo- 
 ple behind me because my cloak was so long, I felt that 
 we were all making game. I was truly sorry for Flanders, 
 but I knew that it was no reason why we should be trying 
 (the women with their heads in hoods like coal-scuttles 
 with the black side outward) to keep step with a man in a 
 scarf, carrying a thing like a mourning spy-glass, which he 
 was going to open presently and sweep the horizon with. 
 I knew that we should not all have been speaking in one 
 particular key-note struck by the undertaker, if Ave had not 
 been making game. Even in our faces we were every one 
 of us as like the undertaker as if we had been his own f am- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 277 
 
 ily, and I perceived that this could not have happened unless 
 we had been making game. When we returned to Sally's, 
 it was all of a piece. The continued impossibility of get- 
 ting on without plum-cake; the ceremonious apparition of 
 a pair of decanters containing port and sherry and cork; 
 Sally's sister at the tea-table, clinking the best crockery 
 and shaking her head mournfully every time she looked 
 down into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of 
 Anns again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of con- 
 solation administered to Sally when it was considered right 
 that she should " come round nicely : " which were, that 
 the deceased had had "as com-for-ta-ble a fu-ne-ral as 
 comfortable could be ! " 
 
 Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since 
 that day, of which the burden has been the same childish 
 burden. Making game. Real affliction, real grief and 
 solemnity, have been outraged, and the funeral has been 
 "performed." The waste for which the funeral customs 
 of many tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended 
 these- civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I 
 wished in my soul that if the waste must be, they would 
 let the undertaker bury the money, and let me bury the 
 friend. 
 
 In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more 
 sensibly regulated, because they are upon the whole less 
 expensively regulated. I cannot say that I have ever been 
 much edified by the custom of t} r ing a bib and apron on 
 the front of the house of mourning, or that I would myself 
 particularly care to be driven to my grave in a nodding 
 and bobbing car, like an infirm four-post bedstead, by an 
 inky fellow-creature in a cocked-hat. But it may be that 
 I am constitutionally insensible to the virtues of a cocked- 
 hat. In provincial France, the solemnities are sufficiently, 
 hideous, but are few and cheap. The friends and towns- 
 men of the departed, in their own dresses and not mas- 
 querading 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. A dirty priest or two, and a dirtier 
 acolyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to the pro- 
 
278 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the bas- 
 soon, which is blown at intervals by the big legged priest 
 (it is always a big legged priest who blows the bassoon), 
 when his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. 
 But there is far less of the Conjuror and the Medicine Man 
 in the business than under like circumstances here. The 
 grim coaches that we reserve expressly for such shows, are 
 non-existent; if the cemetery be far out of the town, the 
 coaches that are hired for other purposes of life are hired 
 for this purpose; and although the honest vehicles make 
 no pretence of being overcome, I have never noticed that 
 the people in them were the worse for it. In Italy, the 
 hooded Members of Confraternities who attend on funerals, 
 are dismal and ugly to look upon; but the services they 
 render are at least voluntarily rendered, and impoverish no 
 one, and cost nothing. Why should high civilisation and 
 low savagery ever come together on the point of making 
 them a wantonly wasteful and contemptible set of forms? 
 
 Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in 
 his time by the Medicine Man and the Conjuror, and upon 
 whose limited resources there were abundant claims. The 
 Conjuror assured me that I must positively "follow," and 
 both he and the Medicine Man entertained no doubt that I 
 must go in a black carriage, and must wear "fittings." I 
 objected to fittings as having nothing to do with my friend- 
 ship, and I objected to the black carriage as being in more 
 senses than one a job. So, it came into my mind to try 
 what Avould happen if I quietly walked, in my own way, 
 from my own house to my friend's burial-place, and stood 
 beside his open grave in my own dress and person, rever- 
 ently listening to the best of Services. It satisfied my 
 mind, I found, quite as well as if I had been disguised in 
 a hired hatband and scarf both trailing to my very heels, 
 and as if I had cost the orphan children, in their greatest 
 need, ten guineas. 
 
 Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities 
 attendant on " A message from the Lords " in the House 
 of Commons, turn upon the Medicine Man of the poor In- 
 dians? Has he any "Medicine" in that dried skin pouch 
 of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters in Chan- 
 cery holding up their black petticoats and butting their 
 ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker? Yet there are authorities 
 innumerable to tell me — as there are authorities innumera- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 279 
 
 ble among the Indians to tell them — that the nonsense is 
 indispensable, and that its abrogation would involve most 
 awful consequences. What would any rational creature 
 who had never heard of judicial and forensic " fittings," 
 think of the Court of Common Pleas on the first day of 
 Term? Or with what an awakened sense of humour would 
 Livingstone's account of a similar scene be perused, if 
 the fur and red cloth and goats' hair and horse hair and 
 powdered chalk and black patches on the top of the head, 
 were all at Tala Mungongo instead of Westminster? That 
 model missionary and good brave man found at least one 
 tribe of blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, 
 insomuch that although an amiable and docile people, they 
 never could see the Missionaries dispose of their legs in the 
 attitude of kneeling, or hear them begin a hymn in chorus, 
 without bursting into roars of irrepressible laughter. It 
 is much to be hoped that no member of this facetious tribe 
 may ever find his way to England and get committed for 
 contempt of Court. 
 
 In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set 
 of personages called Mataboos — or some such name — who 
 are the masters of all the public ceremonies, and who know 
 the exact place in which every chief must sit down when a 
 solemn public meeting takes place : a meeting which bears 
 a family resemblance to our own Public Dinner, in respect 
 of its being a main part of the proceedings that every gen- 
 tleman present is required to drink something nasty. 
 These Mataboos are a privileged order, so important is their 
 avocation, and they make the most of their high functions. 
 A long way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near 
 the British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos 
 the other day to settle an earth-convulsing question of pre- 
 cedence; and was there no weighty opinion delivered on 
 the part of the Mataboos which, being interpreted to that 
 unlucky tribe of blacks with the sense of the ridiculous, 
 would infallibly set the whole population screaming with 
 laughter? 
 
 My sense of justice demands the admission, however, 
 that this is not quite a one-sided question. If we submit 
 ourselves meekly to the Medicine Man and the Conjuror, 
 and are not exalted by it, the savages may retort upon us 
 that we act more unwisely than they in other matters 
 wherein we fail to imitate them. It is a widely diffused 
 19 
 
280 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 custom among savage tribes, when they meet to discuss 
 any affair of public importance, to sit up all night making 
 a horrible noise, dancing, blowing shells, and (in cases 
 where they are familiar with fire-arms) flying out into open 
 places and letting off guns. It is questionable whether our 
 legislative assemblies might not take a hint from this. A 
 shell is not a melodious wind-instrument, and it is monoto- 
 nous; but it is as musical as, and not more monotonous 
 than, my Honourable friend's own trumpet, or the trumpet 
 that he blows so hard for the Minister. The uselessness 
 of arguing with any supporter of a Government or of an 
 Opposition, is well known. Try dancing. It is a better 
 exercise, and has the unspeakable recommendation that it 
 couldn't be reported. The honourable and savage member 
 who has a loaded gun, and has grown impatient of debate, 
 plunges out of doors, fires in the air, and returns calm and 
 silent to the Palaver. Let the honourable and civilised 
 member similarly charged with a speech, dart into the 
 cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the silence of night, let 
 his speech off, and come back harmless. It is not at first 
 sight a very rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe 
 across one's nose and both cheeks, and a broad red stripe 
 from the forehead to the chin, to attach a few pounds of 
 wood to one's under lip, to stick fish-bones in one's ears 
 and a brass curtain-ring in one's nose, and to rub one's 
 body all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary to entering 
 on business. But this is a question of taste and ceremony, 
 and so is the Windsor Uniform. The manner of entering 
 on the business itself is another question. A council of six 
 hundred savage gentlemen entirely independent of tailors, 
 sitting on their hams in a ring, smoking, and occasionally 
 grunting, seem to me, according to the experience I have 
 gathered in my voyages and travels, somehow to do what 
 they come together for; whereas that is not at all the gen- 
 eral experience of a council of six hundred civilised gentle- 
 men very dependent on tailors and sitting on mechanical 
 contrivances. It is better that an Assembly should do its 
 utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should direct 
 its endeavours to enveloping the public in smoke; and I 
 would rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried 
 one subject demanding attention. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 281 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 TITBULL'S ALMS-HOUSES. 
 
 By the side of most railways out of London, one may see 
 Aims-Houses and Retreats (generally with a Wing or a 
 Centre wanting, and ambitious of being much bigger than 
 they are), some of which are newly-founded Institutions, 
 and some old establishments transplanted. There is a ten- 
 dency in these pieces of architecture to shoot upward unex- 
 pectedly, like Jack's bean-stalk, and to be ornate in spires 
 of Chapels and lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the 
 embellishment of the air with many castles of questionable 
 beauty but for the restraining consideration of expense. 
 However, the managers, being always of a sanguine tem- 
 perament, comfort themselves with plans and elevations of 
 Loomings in the future, and are influenced in the present 
 by philanthropy towards the railway passengers. For, the 
 question how prosperous and promising the buildings can 
 be made to look in their eyes, usually supersedes the lesser 
 question how they can be turned to the best account for the 
 inmates. 
 
 Why none of the people who reside in these places ever 
 look out of window, or take an airing in the piece of ground 
 which is going to be a garden by-and-bye, is one of the 
 wonders I have added to my always-lengthening list of the 
 wonders of the world. I have got it into my mind that 
 they live in a state of chronic injury and resentment, and 
 on that account refuse to decorate the building with a 
 human interest. As I have known legatees deeply injured 
 by a bequest of five hundred pounds because it was not five 
 thousand., and as I was once acquainted with a pensioner 
 on the Public to the extent of two hundred a year, who 
 perpetually anathematised his Country because he was not 
 in the receipt of four, having no claim whatever to six- 
 pence : so perhaps it usually happens, within certain limits, 
 that to get a little help is to get a notion of being defrauded 
 of more. "How do they pass their lives in this beautiful 
 and peaceful place ! " was the subject of my speculation 
 with a visitor who once accompanied me to a charming 
 
282 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 rustic retreat for old men and women: a quaint ancient 
 foundation in a pleasant English county, behind a pictu- 
 resque church and among rich old convent gardens. There 
 were but some dozen or so of houses, and we agreed that 
 we would talk with the inhabitants, as they sat in their 
 groined rooms between the light of their fires and the light 
 shining in at their latticed windows, and would find out. 
 They passed their lives in considering themselves mulcted 
 of certain ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who lived 
 among them in the quadrangle. There was no reason to 
 suppose that any such ounces of tea had ever been in exist- 
 ence, or that the old steward so much as knew what was 
 the matter; — he passed Ms life in considering himself 
 periodically defrauded of a birch-broom by the beadle. 
 
 But it is neither to old Aims-Houses in the country, 
 nor to new Aims-Houses by the railroad, that these pres- 
 ent Uncommercial notes relate. They refer back to jour- 
 neys made among those common-place smoky-fronted Lon- 
 don Aims-Houses, with a little paved court-yard in front 
 enclosed by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it 
 were, by bricks and mortar; which were once in a suburb, 
 but are now in the densely populated town; gaps in the 
 busy life around them, parentheses in the close and blotted 
 texts of the streets. 
 
 Sometimes, these Aims-Houses belong to a Company or 
 Society. Sometimes, they were established by individuals, 
 and are maintained out of private funds bequeathed in 
 perpetuity long ago. My favourite among them is Tit- 
 bull's, which establishment is a picture of many. Of Tit- 
 bull I know no more than that he deceased in 1723, that 
 his Christian name was Sampson, and his social designa- 
 tion Esquire, and that he founded these Aims-Houses as 
 Dwellings for Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men by his 
 Will and Testament. I should not know even this much, 
 but for its being inscribed on a grim stone very difficult to 
 read, let into the front of the centre house of Titbull's 
 Aims-Houses, and which stone is ornamented a-top with a 
 piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of Tit- 
 bull's bath-towel. 
 
 Titbull's Aims-Houses are in the east of London, in a 
 great highway, in a poor busy and thronged neighbourhood. 
 Old iron and fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, 
 boiled pigs'-feet and household furniture that looks as if 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 283 
 
 it were polished up with lip-salve, umbrellas full of vocal 
 literature aud saucers full of shell-fish in a green juice 
 which I hope is natural to them when their health is good, 
 garnish the paved sideways as you go to Titbull's. I take 
 the ground to have risen in those parts since Titbull's time, 
 and you drop into his domain by three stone steps. So did 
 I first drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against 
 Titbull's pump, which stands with its back to the thorough- 
 fare just inside the gate, and has a conceited air of review- 
 ing Titbull's pensioners. 
 
 "And a worse one," said a virulent old man with a 
 pitcher, "there isn't nowhere. A harder one to work, nor 
 a grudginer one to yield, there isn't nowhere ! " This old 
 man wore a long coat, such as we see Hogarth's Chairmen 
 represented with, and it was of that peculiar green-pea hue 
 without the green, which seems to come of poverty. It 
 had also that peculiar smell of cupboard which seems to 
 come of poverty. 
 
 "The pump is rusty, perhaps," said I. 
 
 "Not it" said the old man, regarding it with undiluted 
 virulence in his watery eye. " It never were fit to be 
 termed a pump. That's what's the matter with it." 
 
 " Whose fault is that ? " said I. 
 
 The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed 
 to be trying to masticate his anger and to find that it was 
 too hard and there was too much of it, replied, "Them 
 gentlemen." 
 
 " What gentlemen? " 
 
 "Maybe you're one of 'em?" said the old man, suspi-' 
 ciously. 
 
 " The trustees? " 
 
 " I wouldn't trust 'em myself," said the virulent old man. 
 
 " If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, 
 no, I am not one of them; nor have I ever so much as 
 heard of them." 
 
 "I wish 1 never heard of them," gasped the old man: 
 " at my time of life — with the rheumatics — drawing water 
 — from that thing!" Not to be deluded into calling it a 
 Pump, the old man gave it another virulent look, took up 
 his pitcher, and carried it into a corner dwelling-house, 
 shutting the door after him. 
 
 Looking around and seeing that each little house was a 
 house of two little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong 
 
284 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 court-yard in front was like a graveyard for the inhabi- 
 tants, saving that no word was engraven on its fiat dry 
 stones; and seeing that the currents of life and noise ran 
 to and fro outside, having no more to do with the place 
 than if it were a sort of low- water mark on a lively beach; 
 I say, seeing this and nothing else, I was going out at the 
 gate when one of the doors opened. 
 
 " "Was you looking for anything, sir? " asked a tidy well- 
 favoured woman. 
 
 Realty, no; I couldn't say I was. 
 
 "Not wanting any one, sir? " 
 
 " No — at least I — pray what is the name of the elderly 
 gentleman who lives in the corner there? " 
 
 The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I in- 
 dicated, and she and the pump and I stood all three in a 
 row with our backs to the thoroughfare. 
 
 "Oh! His name is Mr. Battens," said the tidy woman, 
 dropping her voice. 
 
 " I have just been talking with him." 
 
 " Indeed? " said the tidy woman. " Ho ! I wonder Mr. 
 Battens talked ! " 
 
 " Is he usually so silent? " 
 
 " Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here — that is to say, 
 the oldest of the old gentlemen — in point of residence." 
 
 She had a way of passing her hands over and under one 
 another as she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitia- 
 tory; so I asked her if I might look at her little sitting- 
 room? She willingly replied Yes, and we went into it 
 together : she leaving the door open, with an eye as I un- 
 derstood to the social proprieties. The door opening at once 
 into the room without any intervening entry, even scandal 
 must have been silenced by the precaution. 
 
 It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a 
 mug of wallflower in the window. On the chimney-piece 
 were two peacock's feathers, a carved ship, a few shells, 
 and a black profile with one eyelash; whether this portrait 
 purported to be male or female passed my comprehension, 
 until my hostess informed me that it was her only son, and 
 " quite a speaking one." 
 
 " He is alive, I hope? " 
 
 " No, sir," said the widow, " he were cast away in China. " 
 This was said with a modest sense of its reflecting a certain 
 geographical distinction on his mother. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 285 
 
 "If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking," 
 said I, " I hope the old ladies are? — not that yon are one." 
 
 She shook her head. " Yon see they get so cross." 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 " Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of 
 any little matters which ought to be ours by rights, I can- 
 not say for certain; but the opinion of the old ones is they 
 do. And Mr. Battens he do even go so far as to doubt 
 whether credit is due to the Founder. For Mr. Battens he 
 do say, anyhow he got his name up by it and he done it 
 cheap." 
 
 "I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens." 
 
 "It may be so," returned the tidy widow, "but the 
 handle does go very hard. Still, what I say to myself is, 
 the gentleman may not pocket the difference between a 
 good pump and a bad one, and I would wish to think well 
 of them. And the dwellings," said my hostess, glancing 
 round her room; "perhaps they were convenient dwellings 
 in the Founder's time, considered as his time, and there- 
 fore he should not be blamed. But Mrs. Saggers is very 
 hard upon them." 
 
 "Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?" 
 
 " The oldest but one. Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and 
 have totally lost her head." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am 
 not looked up to. But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy 
 release, there will be one below me. Nor is it to be ex- 
 pected that Mrs. Saggers will prove herself immortal." 
 
 "True. Nor Mr. Battens." 
 
 "Regarding the old gentlemen," said my widow slight- 
 ingly, " they count among themselves. They do not count 
 among us. Mr. Battens is that exceptional that he have 
 written to the gentlemen many times and have worked 
 the case against them. Therefore he have took a higher 
 ground. But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon the old 
 gentlemen." 
 
 Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally set- 
 tled among the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, what- 
 ever their ages, were all very old indeed, and in a state of 
 dotage. I also discovered that the juniors and new comers 
 preserved, for a time, a waning disposition to believe in 
 Titbull and his trustees, but that as they gained social 
 
286 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 standing they lost this faith, and disparaged Titbull and 
 all his works. 
 
 Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this re- 
 spected lady, whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally 
 dropping in upon her with a little offering of sound Family 
 Hyson in my pocket, I gradually became familiar with the 
 inner politics and ways of Titbull's Aims-Houses. But I 
 never could find out who the trustees were, or where they 
 were : it being one of the fixed ideas of the place that those 
 authorities must be vaguely and mysteriously mentioned as 
 " the gentlemen " only. The secretary of " the gentlemen " 
 was once pointed out to me, evidently engaged in cham- 
 pioning the obnoxious pump against the attacks of the dis- 
 contented Mr. Battens; but I am not in a condition to re- 
 port further of him than that he had the sprightly bearing 
 of a lawyer's clerk. I had it from Mrs. Mitts's lips in a 
 very confidential moment, that Mr. Battens was once " had 
 up before the gentlemen " to stand or fall by his accusations, 
 and that an old shoe was thrown after him on his depart- 
 ure from the building on this dread errand; — not ineffectu- 
 ally, for, the interview resulting in a plumber, was con- 
 sidered to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens with 
 the wreath of victory. 
 
 In Titbull's Aims-Houses, the local society is not re- 
 garded as good society. A gentleman or lady receiving vis- 
 itors from without, or going out to tea, counts, as it were, 
 accordingly; but visitings or tea-drinkings interchanged 
 among Titbullians do not score. Such interchanges, how- 
 ever, are rare, in consequence of internal dissensions occa- 
 sioned by Mrs. Saggers's pail: which household article 
 has split Titbull's into almost as many parties as there are 
 dwellings in that precinct. The extremely complicated 
 nature of the conflicting articles of belief on the subject 
 prevents my stating them here with my usual perspicuity, 
 but I think they have all branched off from the root-and- 
 trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her 
 pail outside her dwelling? The question has been much 
 refined upon, but roughly stated may be stated in those 
 terms. 
 
 There are two old men in Titbull's Aims-Houses who, I 
 have been given to understand, knew each other in the 
 world beyond its pump and iron railings, when they were 
 both "in trade." They make the best of their reverses, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 2S7 
 
 and are looked upon with great contempt. They are little 
 stooping blear-eyed old men of cheerful countenance, and 
 they hobble up and doAvn the courtyard wagging their chins 
 and talking together quite gaily. This has given offence, 
 and has, moreover, raised the question whether they are 
 justified in passing any other windows than their own. 
 Mr. Battens, however, permitting them to pass his win- 
 dows, on the disdainful ground that their imbecility almost 
 amounts to irresponsibility, they are allowed to take their 
 walk in peace. They live next door to one another, and 
 take it by turns to read the newspaper aloud (that is to 
 say, the newest newspaper they can get), and they play 
 cribbage at night. On warm and sunny days they have 
 been known to go so far as to bring out two chairs and sit 
 by the iron railings, looking forth, but this low conduct, 
 being much remarked upon throughout Titbull's, they were 
 deterred by an outraged public opinion from repeating it. 
 There is a rumour — but it may be malicious — that they 
 hold the memory of Titbull in some weak sort of venera- 
 tion, and that they once set off together on a pilgrimage to 
 the parish churchyard to find his tomb. To this, perhaps, 
 might be traced a general suspicion that they are spies of 
 " the gentlemen : " to which they were supposed to have 
 given colour in my own presence on the occasion of the 
 weak attempt at justification of the pump by the gentle- 
 men's clerk; when they emerged bare-headed from the 
 doors of their dwellings, as if their dwellings and them- 
 selves constituted an old-fashioned weather-glass of double 
 action with two figures of old ladies inside, and deferen- 
 tially bowed to him at intervals until he took his departure. 
 They are understood to be perfectly friendless and rela- 
 tionless. Unquestionably the two poor fellows make the 
 very best of their lives in Titbull's Aims-Houses, and un- 
 questionably they are (as before mentioned) the subjects 
 of unmitigated contempt there. 
 
 On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than 
 usual outside, and when itinerant vendors of miscellaneous 
 wares even take their stations and light up their smoky 
 lamps before the iron railings, Titbull's becomes flurried. 
 Mrs. Saggers has her celebrated palpitations of the heart, 
 for the most part on Saturday nights. But Titbull's is 
 unfit to strive with the uproar of the streets in any of its 
 phases. It is religiously believed at Titbull's that people 
 20 
 
288 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 push more than they used, and likewise that the foremost 
 object of the population of England and Wales is to get 
 you down and trample on you. Even of railroads they 
 know, at Titbull's, little more than the shriek (which Mrs. 
 Saggers says goes through her, and ought to be taken up 
 by Government) ; and the penny postage may even yet be 
 unknown there, for I have never seen a letter delivered to 
 any inhabitant. But there is a tall straight sallow lady 
 resident in Number Seven, Titbull's, who never speaks to 
 anybody, who is surrounded by a superstitious halo of lost 
 Avealth, who does her household work in housemaid's 
 gloves, and who is secretly much deferred to, though openly 
 cavilled at; and it has obscurely leaked out that this old 
 lady has a son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, who is 
 "a Contractor," and who would think it nothing of a job 
 to knock down Titbull's, pack it off into Cornwall, and 
 knock it together again. An immense sensation was made 
 by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van, to take this old 
 lady up to go for a day's pleasure into Epping Forest, and 
 notes were compared as to which of the company was the 
 son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, the Contractor. 
 A thick-set personage with a white hat and a cigar in his 
 mouth, was the favourite : though as Titbull's had no other 
 reason to believe that the Contractor was there at all, than 
 that this man was supposed to eye the chimney stacks as 
 if he would like to knock them down and cart them off, 
 the general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a con- 
 clusion. As a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated 
 itself on the acknowledged Beauty of party, every stitch in 
 Avhose dress was verbally unripped by the old ladies then 
 and there, and whose "goings on" with another and a 
 thinner personage in a white hat might have suffused the 
 pump (where they were principally discussed) with blushes, 
 for months afterwards. Herein Titbull's was to Titbull's 
 true, for it has a constitutional dislike of all strangers. As 
 concerning innovations and improvements, it is always of 
 opinion that what it does not want itself, nobody ought to 
 want. But I think I have met with this opinion outside 
 Titbull's. 
 
 Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Tit- 
 bull's by the inmates when they establish themselves in 
 that place of contemplation for the rest of their days, by 
 far the greater and more valuable part belongs to the ladies. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 289 
 
 I may claim the honour of having either crossed the thresh- 
 old, or looked in at the door, of every one of the nine 
 ladies, and I have noticed that they are all particular in 
 the article of bedsteads, and maintain favourite and long- 
 established bedsteads and bedding as a regular part of their 
 rest. Generally an antiquated chest of drawers is among 
 their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always is. I know 
 of at least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle of genuine 
 burnished copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire; 
 and one old lady has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top 
 of her chest of drawers, which urn is used as her library, 
 and contains four duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered 
 newspaper giving an account of the funeral of Her Royal 
 Highness the Princess Charlotte. Among the poor old 
 gentlemen there are no such niceties. Their furniture has 
 the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary 
 Miscellany, "by several hands;" their few chairs never 
 match; old patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they 
 have an untidy habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat- 
 boxes. When I recall one old gentleman who is rather choice 
 in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have summed up 
 the domestic elegances of that side of the building. 
 
 On the occurrence of a death in Titbull's, it is invariably 
 agreed among the survivors — and it is the only subject on 
 which they do agree — that the departed did something 
 "to bring it on." Judging by Titbull's, I should say the 
 human race need never die, if they took care. But they 
 don't take care, and they do die, and when they die in Tit- 
 bull's they are buried at the cost of the Foundation. Some 
 provision has been made for the purpose, in virtue of which 
 (I record this on the strength of having seen the funeral of 
 Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker dresses up 
 four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles 
 them into a procession of four couples, and leads off with 
 a large black bow at the back of his hat, looking over his 
 shoulder at them airily from time to time to see that no 
 member of the party has got lost, or has tumbled down; 
 as if they were a company of dim old dolls. 
 
 "Resignation of a dwelling is of Very rare occurrence in 
 Titbull's. A story does obtain there, how an old lady's 
 son once drew a prize of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the 
 Lottery, and presently drove to the gate in his own car- 
 riage, with French Horns playing up behind, and whisked 
 
290 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast. But I 
 have been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and 
 regard it as an Aims-House Fairy Tale. It is curious that 
 the only proved case of resignation happened within my 
 knowledge. 
 
 It happened on this wise. There is a sharp competition 
 among the ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, 
 and I have so often observed visitors to be dressed as for a 
 holiday occasion, that I suppose the ladies to have be- 
 sought them to make all possible display when they come. 
 In these circumstances much excitement was one day occa- 
 sioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a visit from a Greenwich 
 Pensioner. He was a Pensioner of a bluff and warlike 
 appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he was got up 
 with unusual care; his coat-buttons were extremely bright, 
 he wore his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon, and he 
 had a walking-stick in his hand that must have cost money. 
 When, with the head of his walking-stick, he knocked 
 at Mrs. Mitts's door — there are no knockers in Titbull's — 
 Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next-door neighbour to utter 
 a cry of surprise expressing much agitation; and the same 
 neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm that when he 
 was admitted into Mrs. Mitts's room, she heard a smack. 
 Heard a smack which was not a blow. 
 
 There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when 
 he took his departure, which imbued all Titbull's with the 
 conviction that he was coming again. He was eagerly 
 looked for, and Mrs. Mitts was closely watched. In the 
 meantime, if anything could have piaced the unfortunate 
 six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage than that at 
 which they chronically stood, it would have been the ap- 
 parition of this Greenwich Pensioner. They were well 
 shrunken already, but they shrunk to nothing in compari- 
 son with the Pensioner. Even the poor old gentlemen 
 themselves seemed conscious of their inferiority, and to 
 know submissively that they could never hope to hold their 
 own against the Pensioner with his warlike and maritime 
 experience in the past, and his tobacco money in the pres- 
 ent: his chequered career of blue water, black gunpowder, 
 and red bloodshed for England home and beauty. 
 
 Before three weeks were out the Pensioner reappeared. 
 Again he knocked at Mrs. Mitts's door with the handle 
 of his stick, and again was he admitted. But not again 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 291 
 
 did he depart alone; for Mrs. Mitts, in a bonnet identi- 
 fied as having been re-embellished, went ont walking with 
 him, and stayed ont till the ten o'clock beer, Greenwich 
 time. 
 
 There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters 
 of Mrs. Saggers's pail; nothing was spoken of among the 
 ladies but the conduct of Mrs. Mitts and its blighting in- 
 fluence on the reputation of Titbull's. It was agreed that 
 Mr. Battens "ought to take it up," and Mr. Battens was 
 communicated with on the subject. That unsatisfactory 
 individual replied "that he didn't see his way yet," and it 
 was unanimously voted by the ladies that aggravation was 
 in his nature. 
 
 How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsist- 
 ency, that Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the 
 Pensioner admired by all the ladies, matters not. Before 
 another week was out, Titbull's was startled by another 
 phenomenon. At ten o'clock in the forenoon appeared a 
 cab, containing not only the Greenwich Pensioner with one 
 arm, but, to boot, a Chelsea Pensioner with one leg. Both 
 dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the Green- 
 wich Pensioner bore her company inside, and the Chelsea 
 Pensioner mounted the box by the driver : his wooden leg 
 sticking out after the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular 
 homage to his friend's seagoing career. Thus the equi- 
 page drove away. No Mrs. Mitts returned that night. 
 
 What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of tak- 
 ing it up, goaded by the infuriated state of public feeling 
 next morning, was anticipated by another phenomenon. 
 A Truck, propelled by the Greenwich Pensioner and the 
 Chelsea Pensioner, each placidly smoking a pipe, and push- 
 ing his warrior breast against the handle. 
 
 The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of 
 his "marriage-lines," and his announcement that himself 
 and friend had looked in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pen- 
 sioner, late Mitts, by no means reconciled the ladies to 
 the conduct of their sister; on the contrary, it is said that 
 they appeared more than ever exasperated. Nevertheless, 
 my stray visits to Titbull's since the date of this occur- 
 rence, have confirmed me in an impression that it was a 
 wholesome fillip. The nine ladies are smarter, both in 
 mind and dress, than they used to be, though it must be 
 admitted that they despise the six gentlemen to the last 
 
292 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 extent. Tliey have a much greater interest in the exter- 
 nal thoroughfare too, than they had when I first knew Tit- 
 bull's. And whenever I chance to be leaning my back 
 against the pump or the iron railings, and to be talking to 
 one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush has passed 
 over her face, I immediately know without looking round 
 that a Greenwich Pensioner has gone past. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 THE RUFFIAN. 
 
 I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious 
 softening of Eufflan into "Rough, which has lately become 
 popular, that I restore the right word to the heading of 
 this paper; the rather, as my object is to dwell upon the 
 fact that the Ruffian is tolerated among us to an extent that 
 goes beyond all un ruffianly endurance. I take the liberty 
 to believe that if the Ruffian besets my life, a professional 
 Ruffian at large in the open streets of a great city, notori- 
 ously having no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of 
 disquieting and despoiling me as I go peacefully about my 
 lawful business, interfering with no one, then the Govern- 
 ment under which I have the great constitutional privilege, 
 supreme honour and happiness, and all the rest of it, to 
 exist, breaks down in the discharge of any Government's 
 most simple elementary dut}^. 
 
 What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early 
 days of this last September? That the Police had "At 
 
 LENGTH SUCCEEDED IN CAPTURING TWO OP THE NOTORIOUS 
 GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INFESTED THE WATERLOO RoAD." 
 
 Is it possible? What a wonderful Police ! Here is a straight, 
 broad, public thoroughfare of immense resort; half a mile 
 long; gas-lighted by night; with a great gas-lighted rail- 
 way station in it, extra the street lamps; full of shops; 
 traversed by two popular cross thoroughfares of considera- 
 ble traffic; itself the main road to the South of London; 
 and the admirable Police have, after long infestment of 
 this dark and lonely spot by a gang of Ruffians, actually 
 got hold of two of them. W T hy,; can it be doubted that 
 any man of fair London knowledge and common resolution, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 293 
 
 armed with the powers of the Law, could have captured 
 the whole confederacy in a week? 
 
 It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the Magis- 
 tracy and Police — to the conventional preserving of them, 
 as if they were Partridges — that their number and audacity 
 must be in great part referred. Why is a notorious Thief 
 and Ruffian ever left at large? He never turns his liberty 
 to any account but violence and plunder, he never did a 
 day's work out of gaol, he never will do a day's work out 
 of gaol. As a proved notorious Thief he is always con- 
 signable to prison for three months. When he comes out, 
 he is surely as notorious a Thief as he was when he went 
 in. Then send him back again. " Just Heaven ! " cries 
 the Society for the protection of remonstrant Ruffians. 
 "This is equivalent to a sentence of perpetual imprison- 
 ment ! " Precisely for that reason it has my advocacy. I 
 demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way, and out 
 of the way of all decent people. I demand to have the 
 Ruffian employed, perforce, in hewing wood and drawing 
 water somewhere for the general service, instead of hewing 
 at her Majesty's subjects and drawing their watches out of 
 their pockets. If this be termed an unreasonable demand, 
 then the tax-gatherer's demand on me must be far more 
 unreasonable, and cannot be otherwise than extortionate 
 and unjust. 
 
 It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian as 
 one. I do so, because I know the two characters to be 
 one, in the vast majority of cases, just as well as the Po- 
 lice know it. (As to the Magistracy, with a few excep- 
 tions, they know nothing about it but what the Police 
 choose to tell them.) There are disorderly classes of men 
 who are not thieves; as railway-navigators, brickmakers, 
 wood-sawyers, costermongevs. These classes are often dis- 
 orderly and troublesome; but it is mostly among them- 
 selves, and at any rate they have their industrious avoca- 
 tions, they work early and late, and work hard. The 
 generic Ruffian — honourable member for what is tenderly 
 called the Rough Element — is either a Thief, or the com- 
 panion of Thieves. When he infamously molests women 
 coming out of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which I 
 would have his back scarified often and deep) it is not 
 only for the gratification of his pleasant instincts, but that 
 there may be a confusion raised hy which either he or his 
 
294 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 friends may profit, in the commission of highway robberies 
 or in picking pockets. When he gets a police-constable 
 down and kicks him helpless for life, it is because that 
 constable once did his duty in bringing him to justice. 
 When he rushes into the bar of a public-house and scoops 
 an eye out of one of the company there, or bites his 
 ear off, it is because the man he maims gave evidence 
 against him. When he and a line of comrades extend- 
 ing across the footway — say of that solitary mountain- 
 spur of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road — advance towards 
 me " sky-larking " among themselves, my purse or shirt- 
 pin is in predestined peril from his playfulness. Always 
 a Ruffian, always a Thief. Always a Thief, always a 
 Ruffian. 
 
 Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, 
 know them daily on the evidence of my senses and experi- 
 ence; when I know that the Ruffian never jostles a lady 
 in the streets, or knocks a hat off, but in order that the 
 Thief may profit, is it surprising that I should require from 
 those who are paid to know these things, prevention of 
 them? 
 
 Look at this group at a street corner. Number one is a 
 shirking fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and 
 ill- savoured suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some 
 indiscernible groundwork for the deposition of grease, his 
 neckerchief like an eel, his complexion like dirty dough, 
 his mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows to hide 
 the prison cut of his hair. His hands are in his pockets. 
 He puts them there when they are idle, as naturally as in 
 other people's pockets when they are busy, for he knows 
 that they are not roughened by work, and that they tell a 
 tale. Hence, whenever he takes one out to draw a sleeve 
 across his nose — -which is often, for he has weak eyes and 
 a constitutional cold in his head — he restores it to its pocket 
 immediately afterwards. Number two is a burly brute of 
 five-and- thirty, in a tall stiff hat; is a composite as to his 
 clothes of betting-man and fighting-man; is whiskered; 
 has a staring pin in his breast, along with his right hand; 
 has insolent and cruel eyes; large shoulders; strong legs, 
 booted and tipped for kicking. Number three is forty 
 years of age; is short, thick-set, strong, and bow-legged; 
 wears knee cords and white stockings, a very long-sleeved 
 waistcoat, a very large neckerchief doubled or trebled round 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 295 
 
 his throat, and a crumpled- white hat crowns his ghastly- 
 parchment face. This fellow looks like an executed post- 
 boy of other days, cut down from the gallows too soon, 
 and restored and preserved by express diabolical agency. 
 Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking, idle, slouching 
 young men, patched and shabby, too short in the sleeves 
 and too tight in the legs, slimily clothed, foul-spoken, re- 
 pulsive wretches inside and out. In all the party there 
 obtains a certain twitching character of mouth and furtive- 
 ness of eye, that hint how the coward is lurking under the 
 bully. The hint is quite correct, for they are a slinking 
 sneaking set, far more prone to lie down on their backs 
 and kick out, when in difficulty, than to make a stand for 
 it. (This may account for the street mud on the backs of 
 Numbers five, six, and seven, being much fresher than the 
 stale splashes on their legs.) 
 
 These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands contem- 
 plating. His Station, with a Reserve of assistance, is very 
 near at hand. They cannot pretend to any trade, not even 
 to be porters or messengers. It would be idle if they did, 
 for he knows them, and they know that he knows them, to 
 be nothing but professed Thieves and Ruffians. He knows 
 where they resort, knows by what slang names they call 
 one another, knows how often they have been in prison, 
 and how long, and for what. All this is known at his 
 Station, too, and is (or ought to be) known at Scotland 
 Yard, too. But does he know, or does his Station know, 
 or does Scotland Yard know, or does anybody know, why 
 these fellows should be here at liberty, when, as reputed 
 Thieves to whom a whole Division of Police could swear, 
 they might all be under lock and key at hard labour? 
 Not he; truly he would be a wise man if he did! He only 
 knows that these are members of the "notorious gang," 
 which, according to the newspaper Police-office reports of 
 this last past September, " have so long infested " the aw- 
 ful solitudes of the Waterloo Road, and out of which 
 almost impregnable fastnesses the Police have at length 
 dragged Two, to the unspeakable admiration of all good 
 civilians. 
 
 The consequences of this contemplative habit on the part 
 of the Executive — a habit to be looked for in a hermit, 
 but not in a Police System — are familiar to us all. The 
 Ruffian becomes one of the established orders of the body 
 
296 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
 politic. Under the playful name of Rough (as if he were 
 merely a practical joker) his movements and successes are 
 recorded on public occasions. Whether he mustered in 
 large numbers, or small; whether he was in good spirits, 
 or depressed; whether he turned his generous exertions to 
 very prosperous account, or Fortune was against him; 
 whether he was in a sanguinary mood, or robbed with amia- 
 ble horse-play and a gracious consideration for life and 
 limb; all this is chronicled as if he were an Institution. 
 Is there any city in Europe, out of England, in which these 
 terms are held with the pests of Society? Or in which, at 
 this day, such violent robberies from the person are con- 
 stantly committed as in London? 
 
 The Preparatory Schools of Ruffianism are similarly borne 
 with. The young Ruffians of London — not Thieves yet, but 
 training for scholarships and fellowships in the Criminal 
 Court Universities — molest quiet people and their property, 
 to an extent that is hardly credible. The throwing of stones 
 in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive offence, 
 which surely could have got to no greater height though 
 Ave had had no Police but our own riding- whips and walk- 
 ing-sticks — the Police to which I myself appeal on these 
 occasions. The throwing of stones at the windows of rail- 
 way carriages in motion — an act of wanton wickedness 
 with the very Arch-Fiend's hand in it — had become a cry- 
 ing evil, when the railway companies forced it on Police 
 notice. Constabular contemplation had until then been the 
 order of the day. 
 
 Within these twelve months, there arose among the 
 young .gentlemen of London aspiring to Ruffianism, and 
 cultivating that much-encouraged social art, a facetious 
 cry of "I'll have this! " accompanied with a clutch at some 
 article of a passing lady's dress. I have known a lady's 
 veil to be thus humorously torn from her face and carried 
 off in the open streets at noon, and I have had the honour 
 of myself giving chase, on Westminster Bridge, to another 
 young Ruffian, who, in full daylight early on a summer 
 evening, had nearly thrown a modest young woman into a 
 swoon of indignation and confusion, by his shameful man- 
 ner of attacking her with this cry as she harmlessly passed 
 along before me. Mr. Carlyle, some time since, awak- 
 ened a little pleasantry by writing of his own experience of 
 the Ruffian of the streets. I have seen the Ruffian act in 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 297 
 
 exact accordance with Mr. Carlyle's description, innumera- 
 ble times, and I never saw him checked. 
 
 The glaring use of the very worst language possible, in 
 our public thoroughfares — especially in those set apart for 
 recreation — is another disgrace to us, and another result of 
 constabular contemplation, the like of which I have never 
 heard in any other country to which my uncommercial 
 travels have extended. Years ago, when I had a near in- 
 terest in certain children who were sent with their nurses, 
 for air and exercise, into the Regent's Park, I found this 
 evil to be so abhorrent and horrible there, that I called 
 public attention to it, and also to its contemplative recep- 
 tion by the Police. Looking afterwards into the newest 
 Police Act, and finding that the offence was punishable 
 under it, I resolved, when striking occasion should arise, 
 to try my hand as prosecutor. The occasion arose soon 
 enough, and I ran the following gauntlet. 
 
 The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of 
 seventeen or eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of 
 blackguards, youths, and boys, was flaunting along the 
 streets, returning from an Irish funeral, in a Progress 
 interpersed with singing and dancing. She had turned 
 round to me and expressed herself in the most audible man- 
 ner, to the great delight of that select circle. I attended 
 the party, on the opposite side of the way, for a mile 
 further, and then encountered a Police-constable. The 
 party had made themselves merry at my expense until 
 now, but seeing me speak to the constable, its male mem- 
 bers instantly took to their heels, leaving the girl alone. 
 I asked the constable did he know my name? Yes, he 
 did. "Take that girl into custody, on my charge, for 
 using bad language in the streets." He had never heard 
 of such a charge. I had. Would he take my word that 
 he should get into no trouble? Yes, sir, he would do 
 that. So he took the girl, and I went home for my Police 
 Act. 
 
 With this potent instrument in my pocket, I literally 
 as well as figuratively "returned to the charge," and pre- 
 sented myself at the Police Station of the district. There, 
 I found on duty a very intelligent Inspector (they are all 
 intelligent men), who, likewise, had never heard of such a 
 charge. I showed him my clause, and we went over it 
 together twice or thrice. It was plain, and I engaged to 
 
298 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
 wait upon the suburban Magistrate to-morrow morning at 
 ten o'clock. 
 
 In the morning I put my Police Act in my pocket again, 
 and waited on the suburban Magistrate. I was not quite 
 so courteously received by him as I should have been by 
 The Lord Chancellor or The Lord Chief Justice, but that 
 was a question of good breeding on the suburban Magis- 
 trate's part, and I had my clause ready with its leaf turned 
 down. Which was enough for me. 
 
 Conference took place between the Magistrate and clerk 
 respecting the charge. During conference I was evidently 
 regarded as a much more objectionable person than the 
 prisoner; — one giving trouble by coming there voluntarily, 
 which the prisoner could not be accused of doing. The 
 prisoner had been got up, since I last had the pleasure of 
 seeing her, with a great effect of white apron and straw 
 bonnet. She reminded me of an elder sister of Eed Riding 
 Hood, and I seemed to remind the sympathising Chimney 
 Sweep by whom she was attended, of the Wolf. 
 
 The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial Trav- 
 eller, whether this charge could be entertained. It was 
 not known. Mr. Uncommercial Traveller replied that he 
 wished it were better known, and that, if he could afford 
 the leisure, he would use his endeavours to make it so. 
 There was no question about it, however, he contended. 
 Here was the clause. 
 
 The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted. 
 After which I was asked the extraordinary question : " Mr. 
 Uncommercial, do you really wish this girl to be sent to 
 prison?" To which I grimly answered, staring: "If I 
 didn't, why should I take the trouble to come here? " 
 Finally, I was sworn, and gave my agreeable evidence in 
 detail, and White Riding Hood was fined ten shillings, 
 under the clause, or sent to prison for so many days. 
 " Why, Lord bless you, sir," said the Police-officer, who 
 showed me out, with a great enjoyment of the jest of her 
 having been got up so effectively, and caused so much hesi- 
 tation : " If she goes to prison, that will be nothing new 
 to her. She comes from Charles Street, Drury Lane ! " 
 
 The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, 
 and I have borne my small testimony to their merits. Con- 
 stabular contemplation is the result of a bad system; a sys- 
 tem which is administered, not invented, by the man in con- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 299 
 
 stable's uniform, employed at twenty shillings a week. He 
 has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement if 
 he overstepped them. That the system is bad, there needs 
 no lengthened argument to prove, because the fact is self- 
 evident. If it were anything else, the results that have at- 
 tended it could not possibly have come to pass. Who will 
 say that under a good system, our streets could have got 
 into their present state? 
 
 The objection to the whole Police system, as concerning 
 the Ruffian, may be stated, and its failure exemplified, as 
 follows. It is well known that on all great occasions, 
 when they come together in numbers, the mass of the Eng- 
 lish people are their own trustworthy Police, It is well 
 known that wheresoever there is collected together any fair 
 general representation of the people, a respect for law and 
 order, and a determination to discountenance lawlessness 
 and disorder, may be relied upon. As to one another, the 
 people are a very good Police, and yet are quite willing in 
 their good-nature that the stipendiary Police should have 
 the credit of the people's moderation. But we are all of 
 us powerless against the Ruffian, because we submit to the 
 law, and it is his only trade, by superior force and by vio- 
 lence, to defy it. Moreover, we are constantly admonished 
 from high places (like so many Sunday-school children out 
 -for a holiday of buns and milk-and-water) that we are not 
 to take the law into our own hands, but are to hand our 
 defence over to it. It is clear that the common enemy to 
 be punished and exterminated first of all is the Ruffian. 
 It is clear that he is, of all others, the offender for whose 
 repressal we maintain a costly system of Police. Him, 
 therefore, we expressly present to the Police to deal with, 
 conscious that, on the whole, we can, and do, deal reason- 
 ably well with one another. Him the Police deal with so 
 inefficiently and absurdly that he flourishes, and multiplies, 
 and, with all his evil deeds upon his head as notoriously 
 as his hat is, pervades the streets with no more let or hin- 
 drance than ourselves. 
 
300 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 ABOARD SHIP. 
 
 My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of 
 Human- Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last 
 reported of them, but have kept me continually on the 
 move. I remain in the same idle employment. I never 
 solicit an order, I never get any commission, I am the 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 condition altogether, on 
 board ship, in the harbour of the city of New York, in the 
 United States of America. Of all the good ships afloat, 
 mine was the good steamship "Kussia," Capt. Cook, 
 Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. What more could I 
 wish for? 
 
 I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage. My 
 salad-days, when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being 
 gone with better things (and no worse), no coming event 
 cast its shadow before. 
 
 I might but a few moments previously have imitated 
 Sterne, and said, " 'And yet, methinks, Eugenius,' — laying 
 my forefinger wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus, — 'and yet, 
 methinks, Eugenius, 'tis but sorry work to part with thee, 
 for what fresh fields, . . . my dear Eugenius, . . . can be 
 fresher than thou art, and in what pastures new shall I 
 find Eliza, or call her, Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie? ' " — 
 I say I might have done this; but Eugenius was gone, and 
 I hadn't done it. 
 
 I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watch- 
 ing the working of the ship very slowly about, that she 
 might head for England. It was high-noon on a most brill- 
 iant day in April, and the beautiful bay was glorious and 
 glowing. Full many a time, on shore there, had I seen 
 the snow come down, down, down (itself like down), until 
 it lay deep in all the Avays of men, and particularly, as it 
 seemed, in my way, for I had not gone dry-shod many 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 301 
 
 hours for months. Within two or three days last past had 
 I watched the feathery fall setting in with the ardour of a 
 new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts of a worn-out 
 winter, and permitting glimpses of a fresh young spring. 
 But a bright sun and a clear sky had melted the snow in 
 the great crucible of nature; and it had been poured out 
 again that morning over sea and land, transformed into 
 myriads of gold and silver sparkles. 
 
 The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something of the 
 old Mexican passion for flowers may have gradually passed 
 into North America, where flowers are luxuriously grown, 
 and tastefully combined in the richest profusion; but, be 
 that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers had come 
 on board, that the small officer's cabin on deck, which I 
 tenanted, bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers, and 
 banks of other flowers that it couldn't hold made a garden 
 of the unoccupied tables in the passengers' saloon. These 
 delicious scents of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs 
 of the sea, made the atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting 
 one. And so, with the watch aloft setting all the sails, 
 and with the screw below revolving at a mighty rate, and 
 occasionally giving the ship an angry shake for resisting, I 
 fell into my idlest ways, and lost myself. 
 
 As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some 
 other entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was far 
 too lazy to look into. What did it signify to me if it 
 were I? or to the more mysterious entity, if it were he? 
 Equally as to the remembrances that drowsily floated by 
 me, or by him, why ask when or where the things hap- 
 pened? Was it not enough that they befell at some time, 
 somewhere? 
 
 There was that assisting at the church service on board 
 another steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps 
 on the passage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear the 
 ship's bells go as like church-bells as they could; pleasant 
 to see the watch off duty mustered and come in : best hats, 
 best Guernseys, washed hands and faces, smoothed heads. 
 But then arose a set of circumstances so rampantly comi- 
 cal, that no check which the gravest intentions could put 
 upon them would hold them in hand. Thus the scene. 
 Some seventy passengers assembled at the saloon tables. 
 Prayer-books on tables. Ship rolling heavily. Pause. No 
 minister. Rumour has related that a modest young clergy- 
 
302 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 man on board has responded to the captain's request that 
 he will officiate. Pause again, and very heavy rolling. 
 
 Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong 
 stewards skate in, supporting minister between them. 
 General appearance as of somebody picked up drunk and 
 incapable, and under conveyance to station-house. Stop- 
 page, pause, and particularly heavy rolling. Stewards 
 watch their opportunity, and balance themselves, but can- 
 not balance minister; who, struggling with a drooping head 
 and a backward tendency, seems determined to return be- 
 low, while they are as determined that he shall be got to 
 the reading-desk in mid-saloon. Desk portable, sliding 
 away down a long table, and aiming itself at the breasts of 
 various members of the congregation. Here the double 
 doors, which have been carefully closed by other stewards, 
 fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, seemingly 
 with pale-ale designs: who, seeking friend, says "Joe!" 
 Perceiving incongruity, says, " Hullo ! Beg yer pardon ! " 
 and tumbles out again. All this time the congregation 
 have been breaking up into sects, — as the manner of con- 
 gregations often is, — each sect sliding away by itself, and 
 all pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the 
 corner. Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every 
 corner, and violent rolling. Stewards at length make a 
 dash; conduct minister to the mast in the centre of the 
 saloon, which he embraces with both arms; skate out; and 
 leave him in that condition to arrange affairs with flock. 
 
 There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship 
 read the service. It was quiet and impressive, until we 
 fell upon the dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experi- 
 ment of striking up a hymn. After it was given out, we 
 all rose, but everybody left it to somebody else to begin; 
 Silence resulting, the officer (no singer himself) rather re- 
 proachfully gave us the first line again, upon which a rosy 
 pippin of an old gentleman, remarkable throughout the 
 passage for his cheerful politeness, gave a little stamp with 
 his boot (as if he were leading off a country dance), and 
 blithely warbled us into a show of joining. At the end of 
 the first verse we became, through these tactics, so much 
 refreshed and encouraged, that none of us, howsoever un- 
 melodious, would submit to be left out of the second verse; 
 while as to the third we lifted up our voices in a sacred 
 howl that left it doubtful whether we were the more boast- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 303 
 
 fill of the sentiments we united in professing, or of profess- 
 ing them with a most discordant defiance of time and tune. 
 
 " Lord bless us ! " thought I, when a fresh remembrance 
 of these things made me laugh heartily alone in the dead 
 water-gurgling waste of the night, what time I was wedged 
 into my berth by a wooden bar, or I must have rolled out 
 of it, "what errand was I then upon, and to what Abys- 
 sinian point had public events then marched? No matter 
 as to me. And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage 
 for a plaything (utterly confounding in its inscrutable un- 
 reason) had not then lighted on a poor young savage boy, 
 and a poor old screw of a horse, and hauled the first off by 
 the hair of his princely head to 'inspect ' British volunteers, 
 and hauled the second off by the hair of his equine tail to 
 the Crystal Palace, why so much the better for all of us 
 outside Bedlam ! " 
 
 So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking 
 myself would I like to show the grog distribution in " the 
 fiddle " at noon to the Grand United Amalgamated Total 
 Abstinence Society? Yes, I think I should. I think it 
 would do them good to smell the rum, under the circum- 
 stances. Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, presides the 
 boatswain's mate, small tin can in hand. Enter the crew, 
 the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of Giant Despair, 
 in contradistinction to the band of youthful angel Hope. 
 Some in boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin over- 
 alls, some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very few in jack- 
 ets, most with sou'wester hats, all with something rough 
 and rugged round the throat; all, dripping salt water 
 where they stand; all pelted by weather, besmeared with 
 grease, and blackened by the sooty rigging. 
 
 Each man's knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for 
 dinner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, 
 watches the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very 
 small tin mug, to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, 
 tosses the contents into himself, and passes the empty 
 chalice and passes on, so the second man with an anticipa.- 
 tory wipe of his mouth or sleeve or handkerchief, bides his 
 turn, and drinks and hands and passes on, in whom, and 
 in each as his turn approaches, beams a knowingly kindled 
 eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenly awakened tendency 
 to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I even observe 
 that the man in charge of the ship's lamps, who in right 
 
304 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 of his office has a double allowance of poisoned chalices, 
 seems thereby vastly degraded, even though he empties the 
 chalices into himself, one after the other, much as if he 
 were delivering their contents at some absorbent establish- 
 ment in which he had no personal interest. But vastly 
 comforted, I note them all to be, on deck presently, even to 
 the circulation of redder blood in their cold blue knuckles; 
 and when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and 
 holding on for life among the beating sails, I cannot for 
 my life see the justice of visiting on them — or on me — 
 the drunken crimes of any number of criminals arraigned 
 at the heaviest of assizes. 
 
 Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, 
 and recalled life on board of one of those mail-packets, as 
 I lay, part of that day, in the Bay of New York, ! The 
 regular life began — mine always did, for I never got to 
 sleep afterwards — with the rigging of the pump while it 
 was yet dark, and washing down of decks. Any enormous 
 giant at a prodigious hydropathic establishment, conscien- 
 tiously undergoing the water-cure in all its departments, 
 and extremely particular about cleaning his teeth, would 
 make those noises. Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, 
 bubble, swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash, splash, 
 bubble, rub. Then the day would break, and, descending 
 from my berth by a graceful ladder composed of half- 
 opened drawers beneath it, I would reopen my outer dead- 
 light and my inner sliding window (closed by a watchman 
 during the water-cure), and would look out at the long- 
 rolling, lead-coloured, white-topped waves over which the 
 dawn, on a cold winter morning, cast a level, lonely glance, 
 and through which the ship fought her melancholy way at 
 a terrific rate. And now, lying down again, awaiting the 
 season for broiled ham and tea, I would be compelled to 
 listen to the voice of conscience, — the screw. 
 
 It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of 
 stomach; but I called it in my fancy by the higher name. 
 Because it seemed to me that we were all of us, all day 
 long, endeavouring to stifle the voice. Because it was 
 under everybody's pillow, everybody's plate, everybody's 
 camp-stool, everybody ' s book, everybody' s occupation. Be- 
 cause 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 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 305 
 
 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 weedi- 
 est cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail; it was con- 
 veyed on deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in 
 their wrappers until the stars shone; it waited at table 
 with the stewards; nobody could put it out with the lights. 
 It was considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the 
 voice of conscience. It was not polite to mention it. One 
 squally day an amiable gentleman in love gave much 
 offence to a surrounding circle, including the object of his 
 attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded him over 
 two easy-chairs and a skylight, " Screw ! " 
 
 Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting mo- 
 ments, 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 excite- 
 ments, one would almost believe it hushed. The ceremony 
 of washing plates on deck, performed after every meal by 
 a circle as of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a 
 prize, would keep it down. Hauling the reel, taking the 
 sun at noon, posting the twenty-four hours' run, altering 
 the ship's time by the meridian, casting the waste food 
 overboard, and attracting the eager gulls that followed in 
 our wake, — these events would suppress it for a while. 
 But the instant any break or pause took place in any such 
 diversion, the voice would be at it again, importuning us 
 to the last extent. A newly married young pair, who 
 walked the deck affectionately some twenty miles per day, 
 would, in the full flush of their exercise, suddenly become 
 stricken by it, and stand trembling, but otherwise immova- 
 ble, under its reproaches. 
 
 When this terrible monitor was most severe with as was 
 when the time approached for our retiring to our dens for 
 the night; when the lighted candles in the saloon grew 
 fewer and fewer; when the deserted glasses with spoons in 
 them grew more and more numerous; when waifs of toasted 
 cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter slid languidly 
 to and fro in the table-racks; when the man avIio alwa3 r s 
 read had shut up his book, and blown out his candle; when 
 the man who always talked had ceased from troubling; 
 when the man who was always medically reported as going 
 
306 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 to have delirium tremens had put it off till to-morrow; 
 when the man who every night devoted himself to a mid- 
 night smoke on deck two hours in length, and who every 
 night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards, was but- 
 toning himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil : for 
 then, as we fell off one by one, and, entering our several 
 hutches, came into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water 
 and Windsor soap, the voice would shake us to the centre. 
 Woe to us when we sat down on our sofa, watching the 
 swinging candle for ever trying and retrying to stand upon 
 his head ! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we ap- 
 peared in our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizon- 
 tally from the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more 
 facile towels ! Then would the voice especially claim us 
 for its prey, and rend us all to pieces. 
 
 Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the 
 voice grows angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and 
 under the pillow, under the sofa and under the washing- 
 stand, under the ship and under the sea, seeming to rise 
 from the foundations under the earth with every scoop of 
 the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so?), always the 
 voice. Vain to deny its existence in the night season; im- 
 possible to be hard of hearing; screw, screw, screw ! Some- 
 times it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a whirr, 
 like a ferocious firework, — except that it never expends 
 itself, but is always ready to go off again; sometimes it 
 seems to be in anguish, and shivers; sometimes it seems to 
 be terrified by its last plunge, and has a fit which causes 
 it to struggle, quiver, and for an instant stop. And now 
 the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so fiercely screwed 
 through time and space, day and night, fair weather and 
 foul, can roll. 
 
 Did she ever take a roll before like that last? Did she 
 ever take a roll before like this worse one that is coming 
 now? Here is the partition at my ear down in the deep 
 on the leeside. 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. Heav- 
 ens, what a scoop! What a deep scoop, what a hollow 
 scoop, what a long scoop ! Will it ever end, and can we 
 bear the heavy mass of water we have taken on board, and 
 which has let loose all the table furniture in the officers' 
 mess, and has beaten open the door of the little passage 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 307 
 
 between the purser and me, and is swashing about, even 
 there and even here? The purser snores reassuringly, 
 and the ship's bells striking, I hear the cheerful "All's 
 well ! " of the watch musically given back the length of the 
 deck, as the lately diving partition, now high in air, tries 
 (unsoftened by what we have gone through together) to 
 force me out of bed and berth. 
 
 "All's well! " Comforting to know, though surely all 
 might be better. Put aside the rolling and the rush of 
 water, and think of darting through such darkness with 
 such velocity. Think of any other similar object coming 
 in the opposite direction ! 
 
 Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving 
 bodies out at sea, which may help accident to bring them 
 into collision? Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent 
 all the while, but marvellously suggestive) of the gulf be- 
 low; of the strange unfruitful mountain ranges and deep 
 valleys over which we are passing; of monstrous fish mid- 
 way; of the ship's suddenly altering her course on her own 
 account, and with a wild plunge settling down, and making 
 that voyage with a crew of dead discoverers. Now, too, 
 one recalls an almost universal tendency on the part of pas- 
 sengers to stumble, at some time or other in the day, on 
 the topic of a certain large steamer making this same run, 
 which was lost at sea, and never heard of more. Every- 
 body has seemed under a spell, compelling approach to the 
 threshold of the grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture, and 
 pretence of never having been near it. The boatswain's 
 whistle sounds ! A change in the wind, hoarse orders issu- 
 ing, and the watch very busy. Sails come crashing home 
 overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto; every man en- 
 gaged appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times the 
 average amount of stamping power in each. Gradually 
 the noise slackens, the hoarse cries die away, the boat- 
 swain's whistle softens into the soothing and contented 
 notes, which rather reluctantly admit that the job is done 
 for the time, and the voice sets in again. 
 
 Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, 
 and swinging and swaying, until consciousness revives of 
 atmospherical Windsor soap and bilge- water, and the voice 
 announces that the giant has come for the water-cure again. 
 
 Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of 
 that day, in the Bay of New York, ! Also as we passed 
 
308 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 clear of the Narrows, and got out to sea; also in many an 
 idle hour. at sea in sunny weather! At length the observa- 
 tions and computations showed that we should make the 
 coast of Ireland to-night. So I stood watch on deck all 
 night to-night, to see how we made the coast of Ireland. 
 
 Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent. 
 Great way on the ship, and double look-out kept. Vigi- 
 lant captain on the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over 
 the port side, vigilant second officer standing by the quarter- 
 master at the compass, vigilant third officer posted at the 
 stern rail with a lantern. No passengers on the quiet 
 decks, but expectation everywhere nevertheless. The two 
 men at the wheel very steady, very serious, and very 
 prompt to answer orders. An order issued sharply now 
 and then, and echoed back; otherwise the night drags 
 slowly, silently, with no change. 
 
 All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morn- 
 ing, a vague movement of relief from a long strain ex- 
 presses itself in all hands; the third officer's lantern twin- 
 kles, and he fires a rocket, and another rocket. A sullen 
 solitary light is pointed out to me in the black sky yonder. 
 A change is expected in the light, but none takes place. 
 "Give them two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant." Two more, 
 and a blue-light burnt. All eyes watch the light again. 
 At last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it; and, 
 even as that small streak in the darkness dies away, we 
 are telegraphed to Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and 
 back again under the ocean to America. 
 
 Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going 
 ashore at Queenstown, and up comes the mail-agent in 
 charge of the bags, and up come the men who are to carry 
 the bags into the mail-tender that will come off for them 
 out of the harbour. Lamps and lanterns gleam here and 
 there about the decks, and impeding bulks are knocked 
 away with handspikes; and the port-side bulwark, barren 
 but a moment ago, bursts into a crop of heads of seamen, 
 stewards, and engineers. 
 
 The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be along- 
 side, begins to be left astern. More rockets, and, between 
 us and the land, steams beautifully the Inman steamship 
 City of Paris, for New York, outward bound. We observe 
 with complacency that the wind is dead against her (it 
 being with us), and that she rolls and pitches. (The sick- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 309 
 
 est passenger on board is the most delighted by this circum- 
 stance.) Time rushes by as we rush on; and now we see 
 the light in Queenstown Harbour, and now the lights of 
 the mail-tender coming out to us. What vagaries the mail- 
 tender performs on the way, in every point of the compass, 
 especially in those where she has no business, and why she 
 performs them, Heaven only knows! At length she is 
 seen plunging within a cable's length of our port broadside, 
 and is being roared at through our speaking-trumpets to do 
 this thing, and not to do that, and to stand by the other, 
 as if she were a very demented - tender indeed. Then, we 
 slackening amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much- 
 abused tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and the men 
 in readiness carry the bags aboard, and return for more, 
 bending under their burdens, and looking just like the 
 pasteboard figures of the miller and his men in the theatre 
 of our boyhood, and comporting themselves almost as un- 
 steadily. All the while the unfortunate tender plunges 
 high and low, and is roared at. Then the Queenstown 
 passengers are put on board of her, with infinite plunging 
 and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up on the sea to 
 that surprising extent that she looks within an ace of 
 washing aboard of us, high and dry. Roared at with con- 
 tumely to the last, this wretched tender is at length let go, 
 with a final plunge of great ignominy, and falls spinning 
 into our wake. 
 
 The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the day 
 climbed up the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into 
 port; kept by us as we passed other lighthouses, and dan- 
 gerous islands off the coast, where some of the officers, 
 with whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in sailing- 
 ships in fogs (and of which by that token they seemed to 
 have quite an affectionate remembrance), and past the 
 Welsh coast, and past the Cheshire coast, and past every- 
 thing and everywhere lying between our ship and her own 
 special dock in the Mersey. Off which, at last, at nine of 
 the clock, on a fair evening early in May, we stopped, and 
 the voice ceased. A • very curious sensation, not unlike 
 having my own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence; 
 and it was with a no less curious sensation that I went over 
 the side of the good Cunard ship " Russia " (whom pros- 
 perity attend through all her voyages!) and surveyed the 
 outer hull of the gracious monster that the voice had in- 
 
310 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 habited. So, perhaps, shall we all, in the spirit, one day 
 survey the frame that held the busier voice from which my 
 vagrant fancy derived this similitude. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 
 
 I had been looking, yesternight, through the famous 
 "Dance of Death," and to-day the grim old woodcuts arose 
 in my mind with the new significance of a ghastly monotony 
 not to be found in the original. The weird skeleton rattled 
 along the streets before me and struck fiercely ; but it was 
 never at the pains of assuming a disguise. It played on 
 no dulcimer here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no 
 plume, minced in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine- 
 cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted no gold. It was 
 simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton, slaying his way 
 along. 
 
 The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward of Lon- 
 don, and giving on the impure river, were the scene of this 
 uncompromising dance of death, upon a drizzling Novem- 
 ber day. A squalid maze of streets, courts, and alleys of 
 miserable houses let out in single rooms. A wilderness of 
 dirt, rags, and hunger. A mud-desert, chiefly inhabited by 
 a tribe from whom employment has departed, or to whom 
 it comes but fitfully and rarely. They are not skilled me- 
 chanics in any wise. They are but labourers, — dock-labour- 
 ers, water- side labourers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, such 
 like hewers of wood and drawers of water. But they have 
 come into existence, and they propagate their wretched 
 race. 
 
 One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed 
 to play off here. It had stuck election-bills on the walls, 
 which the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable 
 rags. It had even summed up the state of the poll, in 
 chalk, on the shutters of one ruined house. It adjured the 
 free and independent starvers to vote for Thisman and vote 
 for Thatman; not to plump, as they valued the state of 
 parties and the national prosperity (both of great impor- 
 tance to them, I think); but, by returning Thisman and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 311 
 
 Thatman, each naught without the other, to compound a 
 glorious and immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is no- 
 where more cruelly ironical in the original monkish idea ! 
 
 Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of This- 
 man and Thatman, and of the public blessing called Party, 
 for staying the degeneracy, physical and moral, of many 
 thousands (who shall say how many?) of the English race; 
 for devising employment useful to the community for those 
 who want but to work and live; for equalising rates, culti- 
 vating waste lands, facilitating emigration, and, above all 
 things, saving and utilising the oncoming generations, and 
 thereby changing ever-growing national weakness into 
 strength: pondering in my mind, I say, these hopeful ex- 
 ertions, I turned down a narrow street to look into a house 
 or two. 
 
 It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side. 
 Nearly all the outer doors of the houses stood open. I 
 took the first entry, and knocked at a parlour-door. Might 
 I come in? I might, if I plased, sur. 
 
 The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long 
 strips of wood, about some wharf or barge; and they had 
 just now been thrust into the otherwise empty grate to 
 make two iron pots boil. There was some fish in one, and 
 there were some potatoes in the other. The flare of the 
 burning wood enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair 
 or so, and some old cheap crockery ornaments about the 
 chimney-piece. It was not until I had spoken with the 
 woman a few minutes, that I saw a horrible brown heap on 
 the floor in a corner, which, but for previous experience in 
 this dismal wise, I might not have suspected to be "the 
 bed." There was something thrown upon it; and I asked 
 what that was. 
 
 "'Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and 'tis 
 very bad she is, and 'tis very bad she's been this long time, 
 and 'tis better she'll never be, and 'tis slape she does all 
 day, and 'tis wake she does all night, and 'tis the lead, 
 sur." 
 
 "The what?" 
 
 "The lead, sur. Sure 'tis the lead-mills, where the 
 women gets took on at eighteen-pence a day, sur, when 
 they makes application early enough, and is lucky and 
 wanted; and 'tis lead-pisoned she is, sur, and some of 
 them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead- 
 21 
 
312 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and 'tis all 
 according to the constitooshun, sur, and some constitoo- 
 shuns is strong, and some is weak; and her constitooshun 
 is lead-pisoned, bad as can be, sur; and her brain is coming 
 out at her ear, and it hurts her dreadful; and that's what 
 it is, and niver no more, and niver no less, sur." 
 
 The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent 
 over her, took a bandage from her head, and threw open a 
 back door to let in the daylight upon it, from the smallest 
 and most miserable backyard I ever saw. 
 
 "That's what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned; 
 and it cooms from her night and day, the poor, sick cray- 
 thur; and the pain of it is dreadful; and God he knows 
 that my husband has walked the sthreets these four days, 
 being a labourer, and is walking them now, and is ready to 
 work, and no work for him, and no fire and no food but 
 the bit in the pot, and no more than ten shillings in a fort- 
 night; God be good to us! and it is poor we are, and dark 
 it is and could it is indeed." 
 
 Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for 
 nry self-denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would 
 give nothing in the course of these visits. I did this to 
 try the people. I may state at once that my closest obser- 
 vation could not detect any indication whatever of an ex- 
 pectation that I would give money : they were grateful to 
 be talked to about their miserable affairs, and sympathy 
 was plainly a comfort to them; but they neither asked for 
 money in any case, nor showed the least trace of surprise 
 or disappointment or resentment at my giving none. 
 
 The woman's married daughter had by this time come 
 down from her room on the floor above, to join in the con- 
 versation. She herself had been to the lead- mills • very 
 early that morning to be " took on," but had not succeeded. 
 She had four children; and her husband, also a water-side 
 labourer, and then out seeking work, seemed in no better 
 case as to finding it than her father. She was English, and 
 by nature of a buxom figure and cheerful. Both in her 
 poor dress and in her mother's there was an effort to keep 
 up some appearance of neatness. She knew all about the 
 sufferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all about the 
 lead-poisoning, and how the symptoms came on, and how 
 they grew, — having often seen them. The very smell 
 when you stood inside the door of the works was enough 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 313 
 
 to knock you down, she said : yet she was going back again 
 to get "took on." What could she do? Better be ulcer- 
 ated and paralysed for eighteen-pence a day, while it lasted, 
 than see the children starve. 
 
 A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the 
 back door and all manner of offence, had been for some 
 time the sleeping place of the sick young woman. But the 
 nights being now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets 
 "gone to the leaving shop," she lay all night where she 
 lay all day, and was lying then. The woman of the room, 
 her husband, this most miserable patient, and two others, 
 lay on the one brown heap together for warmth. 
 
 " God bless you, sir, and thank you ! " were the parting 
 words from these people, — gratefully spoken too, — with 
 which I left this place. 
 
 Some streets away, I tapped at another parlour-door on 
 another ground-floor. Looking in, I found a man, his 
 wife, and four children, sitting at a washing-stool by way 
 of table, at their dinner of bread and infused tea-leaves. 
 There was a very scanty cinderous fire in the grate by 
 which they sat; and there was a tent bedstead in the room 
 with a bed upon it and a coverlet The man did not rise 
 when I went in, nor during my stay, but civilly inclined 
 his head on my pulling off my hat, and, in answer to my 
 inquiry whether I might ask him a question or two, said, 
 "Certainly." There being a window at each end of this 
 room, back and front, it might have been ventilated; but it 
 was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was very 
 sickening. 
 
 The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at 
 her husband's elbow; and he glanced up at her as if for 
 help. It soon appeared that he was rather deaf. He was 
 a slow, simple fellow of about thirty. 
 
 " What was he by trade? " 
 
 "Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John? " 
 
 "I am a boilermaker; " looking about him with an ex- 
 ceedingly perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unac- 
 countably vanished. 
 
 "He ain't a mechanic, you understand, sir," the wife 
 put in: "he's only a labourer." 
 
 " Are you in work? " 
 
 He looked up at his wife again. " Gentleman says are 
 you in work, John? " 
 
314 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 "In work!" cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring 
 aghast at his wife, and then working his vision's way very 
 slowly round to me : " Lord, no ! " 
 
 "Ah, he ain't indeed!" said the poor woman, shaking 
 her head, as she looked at the four children in succession, 
 and then at him. 
 
 " Work ! " said the boilermaker, still seeking that evapo- 
 rated boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and 
 then in the features of his second son at his knee : " I wish 
 I was in work! I haven't had more than a day's work to 
 do this three weeks." 
 
 " How have you lived? " 
 
 A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the 
 would-be boilermaker, as he stretched out the short sleeve 
 of his threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her 
 out, "On the work of the wife." 
 
 I forget where boilermaking had gone to, or where he 
 supposed it had gone to; but he added some resigned in- 
 formation on that head, coupled with an expression of his 
 belief that it was never coming back. 
 
 The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable. 
 She did slop-work; made pea-jackets. She produced the 
 pea-jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon the bed, — 
 the only piece of furniture in the room on which to spread 
 it. She showed how much of it she made, and how much 
 was afterwards finished off by the machine. According to 
 her calculation at the moment, deducting what her trimming 
 cost her, she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence half- 
 penny, and she could make one in something less than 
 two days. 
 
 But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of 
 course it didn't come through the second hand for nothing. 
 Why did it come through the second hand at all? Why, 
 this way. The second hand took the risk of the given-out 
 work, you see. If she had money enough to pay the secur- 
 ity deposit, — call it two pound, — she could get the work 
 from the first hand, and so the second would not have to 
 be deducted for. But, having no money at all, the second 
 hand come in and took its profit, and so the whole worked 
 down to tenpence half-penny. Having explained all this 
 with great intelligence, even with some little pride, and 
 without a whine or murmur, she folded her work again, sat 
 down by her husband's side at the washing- stool, and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 315 
 
 resumed her dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal was, 
 on the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what 
 not other sordid make-shifts; shabby as the woman was in 
 dress, and toning down towards the Bosjesman colour, with 
 want of nutriment and washing, — there was positively a 
 dignity in her, as the family anchor just holding the poor 
 shipwrecked boilermaker's bark. When I left the room, 
 the boilermaker's eyes were slowly turned towards her, as 
 if his last hope of ever again seeing that vanished boiler 
 lay in her direction. 
 
 These people had never applied for parish relief but 
 once; and that was when the husband met with a disabling 
 accident at his work. 
 
 Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the 
 first floor. The woman apologised for its being in " an un- 
 tidy mess." The day was Saturday, and she was boiling 
 the children's clothes in a saucepan on the hearth. There 
 was nothing else into which she could have put them. 
 There was no crockery, or tinware, or tub, or bucket. 
 There was an old gallipot or two, and there was a broken 
 bottle or so, and there were some broken boxes for seats. 
 The last small scraping of coals left was raked together in 
 a corner of the floor. There were some rags in an open 
 cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner of the room was 
 a crazy old French bedstead, with a man lying on his back 
 upon it in a ragged pilot jacket, and rough oil-skin fantail 
 hat. The room was perfectly black. It was difficult to 
 believe, at first, that it was not purposely coloured black, 
 the walls were so begrimed. 
 
 As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children's 
 clothes, — she had not even a piece of soap to wash them 
 with, — and apologising for her occupation, I could take in all 
 these things without appearing to notice them, and could 
 even correct my inventory. I had missed, at the first glance, 
 some half a pound of bread in the otherwise empty safe, 
 an old red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of the 
 door by which I had entered, and certain fragments of rusty 
 iron scattered the floor, which looked like broken tools and 
 a piece of stove-pipe. A child stood looking on. On the 
 box nearest to the fire sat two younger children; one a deli- 
 cate and pretty little creature, whom the other sometimes 
 kissed. 
 
 This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was 
 
316 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion. But her figure, 
 and the ghost of a certain vivacity about her, and the spec- 
 tre of a dimple in her cheek, carried my memory strangely 
 back to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre, London, when 
 Mrs. Fitzwilliam was the friend of Victorine. 
 
 " May I ask you what your husband is? " 
 
 "He's a coal-porter, sir," — with a glance and a sigh 
 towards the bed. 
 
 " Is he out of work? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir! and work's at all times very, very scanty 
 with him; and now he's laid up." 
 
 "It's my legs," said the man upon the bed. "I'll un- 
 roll 'em." And immediately began. 
 
 " Have you any older children? " 
 
 "I have a daughter that does the needle- work, and I 
 have a son that does what he can. She's at her work now, 
 and he's trying for work." 
 
 "Do they live here?" 
 
 "They sleep here. They can't afford to pay more rent, 
 and so they come here at night. The rent is very hard 
 upon us. It's rose upon us too, now, — sixpence a week, — 
 on account of these new changes in the law, about the 
 rates. We are a week behind; the landlord's been shak- 
 ing and rattling at that door frightfully; he says he'll turn 
 us out. I don't know what's to come of it." 
 
 The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, "Here's my 
 legs. The skin's broke, besides the swelling. I have had 
 a many kicks, working, one way and another." 
 
 He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured and 
 misshapen) for a while, and then appearing to remember 
 that they were not popular with his family, roiled them up 
 again, as if they were something in the nature of maps or 
 plans that were not wanted to be referred to, lay helplessly 
 down on his back once more with his fantail hat over his 
 face, and stirred not. 
 
 "Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cup- 
 board? " 
 
 "Yes," replied the woman. 
 
 " With the children? " 
 
 " Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We have 
 little to cover us." 
 
 " Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread 
 I see there? " 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 317 
 
 "Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our 
 breakfast, with water. I don't know what's to come of 
 it." 
 
 " Have you no prospect of improvement? " 
 
 "If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he'll bring it 
 home. Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and 
 may be able to do something towards the rent. If not, I 
 don't know what's to come of it." 
 
 "This is a sad state of things." 
 
 " Yes, sir; it's a hard, hard life. Take care of the stairs 
 as you go, sir, — they're broken, — and good day, sir! " 
 
 These people had a mortal dread of entering the work- 
 house, and received no out-of-door relief. 
 
 In another room, in still another tenement, I found a 
 very decent woman with five children, — the last a baby, 
 and she herself a patient of the parish doctor, — to whom, 
 her husband being in the hospital, the Union allowed for 
 the support of herself and family, four shillings a week 
 and five loaves. I suppose when Thisman, M.P., and 
 Thatman, M.P., and the Public-blessing Party, lay their 
 heads together in course of time, and come to an equalisa- 
 tion of rating, she may go down to the dance of death to 
 the tune of sixpence more. 
 
 I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I 
 could not bear the contemplation of the children. Such 
 heart as I had summoned to sustain me against the mis- 
 eries of the adults failed me when Hooked at the children. 
 I saw how young they were, how hungry, how serious and 
 still. I thought of them, sick and dying in those lairs. I 
 think of them dead without anguish; but to think of them 
 so suffering and so dying quite unmanned me. 
 
 Down by the river's bank in Ratcliff, I was turning up- 
 ward by a side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, 
 when my eyes rested on the inscription across the road, 
 "East London Children's Hospital." I could scarcely 
 have seen an inscription better suited to my frame of mind; 
 and I went across and went straight in. 
 
 I found the children's hospital established in an old sail- 
 loft or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the sim- 
 plest means. There were trap-doors in the floors, where 
 goods had been hoisted up and down; heavy feet and heavy 
 weights had started every knot in the well-trodden plank- 
 ing : inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward staircases 
 
318 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 perplexed my passage through the wards. But I found it 
 airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven and thirty beds I saw 
 but little beauty; for starvation in the second or third gen- 
 eration takes a pinched look : but I saw the sufferings both 
 of infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged; I heard the lit- 
 tle patients answering to pet playful names, the light touch 
 of a delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arm for 
 me to pity; and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, 
 twined themselves lovingly around her wedding-ring. 
 
 One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael's 
 angels. The tiny head was bandaged for water on the 
 brain; and it was suffering with acute bronchitis too, and 
 made from time to time a plaintive, though not impatient 
 or complaining, little sound. The smooth curve of the 
 cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its condensation of 
 infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes were most 
 lovely. It happened as I topped at the foot of the bed, 
 that these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expres- 
 sion of wondering thoughtfulness which we all know 
 sometimes in very little children They remained fixed on 
 mine, and never turned from me while I stood there. When 
 the utterance of that plaintive sound shook the little form, 
 the gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as though the 
 child implored me to tell the story of the little hospital in 
 which it was sheltered to any gentle heart I could address. 
 Laying my world-worn hand upon the little unmarked 
 clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I 
 would do so. 
 
 A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have 
 bought and fitted up this building for its present noble use, 
 and have quietly settled themselves in it as its medical 
 officers and directors. Both have had considerable prac- 
 tical experience of medicine and surgery; he as house- 
 surgeon of a great London hospital; she as a very earnest 
 student, tested by severe examination, and also as a nurse 
 of the sick poor during the prevalence of cholera. 
 
 With every qualification to lure them away, with youth 
 and accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have 
 no response in any breast near them, close begirt by every 
 repulsive circumstance inseparable from such a neighbour- 
 hood, there they dwell. They live in the hospital itself, 
 and their rooms are on its first floor. Sitting at their 
 dinner-table, they could hear the cry of one of the children 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 319 
 
 in pain. The lady's piano, drawing-materials, books, and 
 other such evidences of refinement are as much a part of 
 the rough place as the iron bedsteads of the little patients. 
 They re put to shifts for room, like passengers on Board 
 ship. The dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not 
 by self-interest, but by their own magnetism and that of 
 their cause) sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and has 
 his washing apparatus in the sideboard. 
 
 Their contented manner of making the best of the things 
 around them, I found so -pleasantly inseparable from their 
 usefulness ! Their pride in this partition that we put up 
 ourselves, or in that partition that we took down, or in 
 that other partition that we moved, or in the stove that 
 was given us for the waiting-room, or in our nightly con- 
 version of the little consulting- room into a smoking-room ! 
 Their admiration of the situation, if we could only get rid 
 of its one objectionable incident, the coal-yard at the back! 
 "Our hospital carriage, presented by a friend, and very 
 useful." That was my presentation to a perambulator, 
 for which a coach-house had been discovered, in a corner 
 down-stairs, just large enough to hold it. Coloured prints, 
 in all stages of preparation for being added to those already 
 decorating the wards, were plentiful; a charming wooden 
 phenomenon of a bird, with an impossible topknot, who 
 ducked his head when you set a counter weight going, had 
 been inaugurated as a public statue that very morning; 
 and trotting about among the beds, on familiar terms with 
 all the patients, was a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles. 
 This comical dog (quite a tonic in himself) was found char- 
 acteristically starving at the door of the institution, and 
 was taken in and fed, and has lived here ever since. An 
 admirer of his mental endowments has presented him with 
 a collar bearing the legend, " Judge not Poodles by exter- 
 nal appearances." He was merrily wagging his tail on 
 a boy's pillow when he made this modest appeal to me. 
 
 When this hospital was first opened, in January of the 
 present year, the people could not possibly conceive but 
 that somebody paid for the services rendered there; aud 
 were disposed to claim them as a right, and to find fault if 
 out of temper. They soon came to understand the case 
 better, and have much increased in gratitude. The mothers 
 of the patients avail themselves very freely of the visiting 
 rules; the fathers often on Sundays. There is an unrea- 
 22 
 
320 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 sonable (but still, I think, touching and intelligible) ten- 
 dency in the parents to take a child away to its Avretched 
 home, if on the point of death. One boy who had been 
 thus carried off on a rainy night, when in a violent state of 
 inflammation, and who had been afterwards brought back, 
 had been recovered with exceeding difficulty; but he was a 
 jolly boy, with a specially strong interest in his dinner, 
 when I saw him. 
 
 Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main 
 causes of disease among these small patients. So nourish- 
 ment, cleanliness, and ventilation are the main remedies. 
 Discharged patients are looked after, and invited to come 
 and dine now and then; so are certain famishing creatures 
 who were never patients. Both the lady and the gentle- 
 man are well acquainted, not only with the histories of the 
 patients and their families, but with the characters and 
 circumstances of great numbers of their neighbours: of 
 these they keep a r gister. It is their common experience, 
 that people, sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper 
 poverty, will conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto 
 the very last extremity. 
 
 The nurses of thL hospital are all young, — ranging, say, 
 from nineteen to f our and twenty. They have even within 
 these narrow limits, what many well-endowed hospitals 
 would not give them, a comfortable room of their own in 
 which to take their meals. It is a beautiful truth, that in- 
 terest in the children and sympathy with their sorrows 
 bind these young women to their places far more^strongly 
 than any other consideration could. The best skilled of 
 the nurses came originally from a kindred neighbourhood, 
 almost as poor; and she knew how much the work was 
 needed. She is a fair dressmaker. The hospital cannot 
 pay her as many pounds in the year as there are months in 
 it; and one day the lady regarded it as a duty to speak to 
 her about her improving her prospects and following her 
 trade. "ISTo," she said: she could never be so useful or 
 so happy elsewhere any more; she must stay among the 
 children. And she stays. One of the nurses, as I passed 
 her, was washing a baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, 
 I stopped to speak to her charge, — a common, bullet- 
 headed, frowning charge enough, laying hold of his own 
 nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very solemnly out 
 of a blanket. The melting of the pleasant face into de- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 321 
 
 lighted smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected 
 kick, and laughed at me, was almost worth my previous 
 pain. 
 
 An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called 
 "The Children's Doctor." As I parted from my children's 
 doctor, now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in 
 his loose-buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in 
 the flow of his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn 
 of his moustache, the exact realisation of the Paris artist's 
 ideal as it was presented on the stage. But no romancer 
 that I know of has had the boldness to prefigure the life 
 and home of this young husband and j 7 oung wife in the 
 Children's Hospital in the east of London. 
 
 I came away from Eatcliff by the Stepney railway sta- 
 tion to the terminus at Penchurch Street. Any one who 
 will reverse that route may retrace my steps. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 
 
 It fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had to go 
 down from London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour's 
 business, accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch. 
 Let the place of seaside resort be, for the nonce, called 
 Namelesston. 
 
 I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, 
 pleasantly breakfasting in the open air in the garden of 
 the Palais Royal or the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the 
 open air in the Elysian Pields, pleasantly taking my cigar 
 and lemonade in the open air on the Italian Boulevard 
 towards the small hours after midnight. Bullfinch — an 
 excellent man of business — had summoned me back across 
 the Channel, to transact this said hour's business at Name- 
 lesston; and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in 
 a railway carriage together on our way to Namelesston, 
 each with his return-ticket in his waistcoat-pocket. 
 
 Says Bullfinch, "I have a proposal to make. Let us 
 dine at the Temeraire." 
 
 I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? in- 
 
322 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 asumch as I had not been rated on the b©oks of the Teme- 
 raire for many years. 
 
 Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recom- 
 mending the Temeraire, but on the whole was rather san- 
 guine about it. He "seemed to remember," Bullfinch 
 said, that he had dined well there. A plain dinner, but 
 good. Certainly not like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch 
 obviously became the prey of want of confidence), but of 
 its kind very fair. 
 
 I appeal to Bullfinch's intimate knowledge of my wants 
 and ways to decide whether I was usually ready to be 
 pleased with any dinner, or — for the matter of that — with 
 anything that was fair of its kind and really what it 
 claimed to be. Bullfinch doing me the honour to respond 
 in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an able 
 trencherman on board the Temeraire. 
 
 "Now, our plan shall be this," says Bullfinch, with his 
 forefinger at his nose. " As soon as we get to Nameless- 
 ton, we'll drive straight to the Temeraire, and order a lit- 
 tle dinner in an hour. And as we shall not have more 
 than enough time in which to dispose of it comfortably, 
 what do you say to giving the house the best opportunities 
 of serving it hot and quickly by dining in the coffee- 
 room? " 
 
 What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is 
 by nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble 
 of green geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian 
 vein, urging considerations of time and cookery. 
 
 In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, 
 and alighted. A youth in livery received us on the door- 
 step. "Looks well," said Bullfinch confidentially. And 
 then aloud, " Coffee-room ! " 
 
 The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) con- 
 ducted us to the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bull- 
 finch to send the waiter at once, as we wished to order a 
 little dinner in an hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for 
 the waiter, until, the waiter continuing to wait in some 
 unknown and invisible sphere of action, we rang for the 
 waiter; which ring produced the waiter, who announced 
 himself as not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and 
 who didn't wait a moment longer. 
 
 So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodi- 
 ously pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 323 
 
 were keeping the books of the Teuieraire, apologetically ex- 
 plained, that we wished to order a little dinner in an hour, 
 and that we were debarred from the execution of our in- 
 offensive purpose by consignment to solitude. 
 
 Hereupon one of the young ladies rang a bell, which re- 
 produced — at the bar this time — the waiter who was not 
 the waiter who ought to wait upon us; that extraordinary 
 man, whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people 
 to say that he wouldn't wait upon them, repeated his 
 former protest with great indignation, and retired. 
 
 Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say 
 to me, "This won't do," when the waiter who ought to 
 wait upon us left off keeping us waiting at last. " Waiter," 
 said Bullfinch piteously, " we have been a long time wait- 
 ing." The waiter who ought to wait upon us laid the 
 blame upon the waiter who ought not to wait upon us, and 
 said it was aQ that waiter's fault. 
 
 "We wish," said Bullfinch, much depressed, "to order 
 a little dinner in an hour. What can we have? " 
 
 " What would you like to have, gentlemen? " 
 
 Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and 
 action, and with a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his 
 hand which the waiter had given him, and which was a 
 sort of general manuscript index to any cookery-book you 
 please, moved the previous question. 
 
 We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast 
 duck. Agreed. At this table by this window. Punctu- 
 ally in an hour. 
 
 I had been feigning to look out of this window; but I 
 had been taking note of the crumbs on all the tables, the 
 dirty table-cloths, the stuffy, soupy, airless atmosphere, 
 the stale leavings everywhere about, the deep gloom of the 
 waiter who ought to wait upon us, and the stomach-ache 
 with which a lonely traveller at a distant table in a corner 
 was too evidently afflicted. I now pointed out to Bullfinch 
 the alarming circumstance that this traveller had dined. 
 We hurriedly debated whether, without infringement of 
 good breeding, we could ask him to disclose if he had par- 
 taken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or roast duck? We de- 
 cided that the thing could not be politely done, and we had 
 set our own stomachs on a cast, and they must stand the 
 hazard of the die. 
 
 I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true; I 
 
324 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 am much of the same mind as to the subtler expressions of 
 the hand; I hold physiognomy to be infallible; though all 
 these sciences demand rare qualities in the student. But 
 I also hold that there is no more certain index to personal 
 character than the condition of a set of casters is to the 
 character of any hotel. Knowing, and having often tested 
 this theory of mine, Bullfinch resigned himself to the 
 worst, when, laying aside any remaining veil of disguise, 
 I held up before him in succession the cloudy oil and furry 
 vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the dirty salt, the obscene 
 dregs of soy, and the anchovy sauce in a flannel waistcoat 
 of decomposition. 
 
 We went out to transact our business. So inspiriting 
 was the relief of passing into the clean and windy streets 
 of Namelesston from the heavy and vapid closeness of the 
 coffee-room of the Temeraire, that hope began to revive 
 within us. We began to consider that perhaps the lonely 
 traveller had taken physic, or done something injudicious 
 to bring his complaint on. Bullfinch remarked that he 
 thought the waiter who ought to wait upon us had bright- 
 ened a little when suggesting curry; and although I knew 
 him to have been at that moment the express image of de- 
 spair, I allowed myself to become elevated in spirits. As 
 we walked by the softly-lapping sea, all the notabilities of 
 Namelesston, who are for ever going up and down with the 
 changelessness of the tides, passed to and fro in procession. 
 Pretty girls on horseback, and with detested riding-masters; 
 pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in hats, — spectacled, 
 strong-minded, and glaring at the opposite or weaker sex. 
 The Stock Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem 
 was strongly represented, the bores of the prosier London 
 clubs were strongly represented. Fortune-hunters of all 
 denominations were there, from hirsute insolvency, in a 
 curricle, to closely-buttoned swindlery in doubtful boots, on 
 the sharp look-out for any likely young gentleman disposed 
 to play a game at billiards round the corner. Masters of 
 languages, their lessons finished for the day, were going to 
 their homes out of sight of the sea'; mistresses of accom- 
 plishments, carrying small portfolios, likewise tripped 
 homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils, two and two, went 
 languidly along the beach, surveying the face of the waters 
 as if waiting for some Ark to come and take them off. 
 Spectres of the George the Fourth days flitted unsteadily 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 325 
 
 among the crowd, bearing the outward semblance of ancient 
 dandies, of every one of whom it might be said, not that 
 he had one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that he was 
 steeped in grave to the summit of his high shirt-collar, and 
 had nothing real about him but his bones. Alone station- 
 ary iii the midst of all the movements, the Namelesston 
 boatmen leaned against the railings and yawned, and looked 
 out to sea, or looked at the moored fishing-boats and at 
 nothing. Such is the unchanging manner of life with this 
 nursery of our hardy seamen; and very dry nurses they 
 are, and always wanting something to drink. The only 
 two nautical personages detached from the railing were the 
 two fortunate possessors of the celebrated monstrous un- 
 known barking-fish, just caught (frequently just caught off 
 Namelesston), who carried him about in a hamper, and 
 pressed the scientific to look in at the lid. 
 
 The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back 
 to the Temeraire. Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in 
 livery, with boldness, " Lavatory ! " 
 
 When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, 
 which the youth in livery presented as the institution 
 sought, we had already whisked off our cravats and coats; 
 but finding ourselves in the presence of an evil smell, and 
 no linen but two crumpled towels newly damp from the 
 countenances of two somebody elses, we put on our cravats 
 and coats again, and fled unwashed to the coffee-room. 
 
 There the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth 
 our knives and forks and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty 
 acquaintance we had already had the pleasure of making, 
 and which we were pleased to recognise by the familiar ex- 
 pression of its stains. And now there occurred the truly 
 surprising phenomenon, that the waiter who ought not to 
 wait upon us swooped doAvn upon us, clutched our loaf of 
 bread, and vanished with the same. 
 
 Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this unac- 
 countable figure "out at the portal," like the ghost in Ham- 
 let, when the waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled 
 against it, carrying a tureen. 
 
 " Waiter ! " said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing 
 his bill fiercely through his eye-glass. 
 
 The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, 
 and went to see what was amiss in this new direction. 
 
 " This is not right, vou know, waiter. Look here ! here's 
 
326 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
 yesterday's sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are 
 again, two shillings. And what does sixpence mean? " 
 
 So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter 
 protested that he didn't know what anything meant. He 
 wiped the perspiration from his clammy brow, and said it 
 was impossible to do it, — not particularising what, — and 
 the kitchen was so far off. 
 
 "Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered," said Mr. 
 Indignation Cocker, so to call him. 
 
 The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn't seem to 
 like the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a hew 
 light upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence. 
 
 " I tell you again," said Mr. Indignation Cocker, " here's 
 yesterday's sherry — can't you see it? — one and eightpence, 
 and here we are again, two shillings. What do you make 
 of one and eightpence and two shillings? " 
 
 Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence 
 and two shillings, the waiter went out to try if anybody else 
 could; merely casting a helpless backward glance at Bull- 
 finch, in acknowledgment of his pathetic entreaties for our 
 soup tureen. After a pause, during which- Mr. Indignation 
 Cocker read a newspaper and coughed defiant coughs, Bull- 
 finch arose to get the tureen, when the waiter reappeared 
 and brought it, — dropping Mr. Indignation Cocker's altered 
 bill on Mr. Indignation Cocker's table as he came along.' 
 
 "It's quite impossible to do it, gentlemen," murmured 
 the waiter; "and the kitchen is so far off." 
 
 "Well, you don't keep the house; it's not your fault, we 
 suppose. Bring some sherry." 
 
 "Waiter!" from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new 
 and burning sense of injury upon him. 
 
 The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped 
 short, and came back to see what was wrong now. 
 
 " Will you look here? This is worse than before. Do 
 you understand? Here's yesterday's sherry, one and eight- 
 pence, and here we are again two shillings. And what the 
 devil does ninepence mean? " 
 
 This new portent utterly confounded the waiter. He 
 wrung his napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling. 
 
 "Waiter, fetch that sherry," says Bullfinch, in open 
 wrath and revolt. 
 
 "I want to know," persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, 
 " the meaning of ninepence. I want to know the meaning 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 327 
 
 of sherry one and eightpence yesterday, and of here we are 
 again two shillings. Send somebody." 
 
 The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of 
 sending somebody, and by that means got our wine. But 
 the instant he appeared with our decanter, Mr. Indigna- 
 tion Cocker descended on him again. 
 
 "Waiter!" 
 
 " You will now have the goodness to attend to our din- 
 ner, waiter," said Bullfinch, sternly. 
 
 " I am very sorry, but it's quite impossible to do it, gen- 
 tlemen," pleaded the waiter; "and the kitchen " 
 
 " Waiter ! " said Mr. Indignation Cocker. 
 
 " — Is," resumed the waiter, "so far off, that " 
 
 " Waiter ! " persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, " send 
 somebody." 
 
 We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out 
 to hang himself; and we were much relieved by his fetch- 
 ing somebody, — in graceful, flowing skirts and with a waist, 
 — who very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker's business. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly 
 quenched by this apparition; "I wished to ask about this 
 bill of mine, because it appears to me that there's a little 
 mistake here. Let me show you. Here's yesterday's 
 sherry one and eightpence, and here we are again two shil- 
 lings. And how do you explain ninepence? " 
 
 However it was explained, in tones too soft to be over- 
 heard. Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than 
 "Ah-h-h-! Indeed; thank you! Yes," and shortly after- 
 wards went out, a milder man. 
 
 The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this 
 time suffered severely, drawing up a leg now and then, and 
 sipping hot brandy-and-water with grated ginger in it. 
 When we tasted our (very) mock-turtle soup, and were in- 
 stantly seized with symptoms of some disorder simulating 
 apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge of nose and 
 brain with lukewarm dish-water holding in solution sour 
 flour, poisonous condiments, and (say) seventy-five per 
 cent, of miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into balls, We 
 were inclined to trace his disorder to that source. On the 
 other hand, there was a silent anguish upon him too 
 strongly resembling the results established within ourselves 
 by the sherry, to be discarded from alarmed consideration. 
 Again, we observed him, with terror, to be much overcome 
 
328 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 by our sole's being aired in a temporary retreat close to 
 him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived) to see 
 his friends. And when the curry made its appearance he 
 suddenly retired in great disorder. 
 
 In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as 
 contradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only 
 seven shillings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch and I 
 agreed unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed, 
 ill-cooked, nasty little dinner could be got for the money 
 anwyhere else under the sun. With that comfort to our 
 backs, we turned them on the dear old Temeraire, the 
 charging Temeraire, and resolved (in the Scotch dialect) 
 to gang nae mair to the flabby Temeraire. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 MR BARLOW. 
 
 A great reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, 
 it seems to me as though I had beeu born under the super- 
 intendence of the estimable but terrific gentleman whose 
 name stands at the head of my present reflections. The 
 instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered 
 as the tutor of Master Harry Sandford and Master Tommy 
 Merton. He knew everything, and didactically improved 
 all sorts of occasions, from the consumption of a plate of 
 cherries to the contemplation of a starlight night. What 
 youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displayed in the 
 history of Sandford and Merton, by the example of a cer- 
 tain awful Master Mash. This young wretch wore buckles 
 and powder, conducted himself with insupportable levity 
 at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single- 
 handed (in which I think him less reprehensible, as re- 
 motely reflecting my own character) , and was a frightful 
 instance of the enervating effects of luxury upon the human 
 race. 
 
 Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down 
 to posterity as childhood's experience of a bore ! Immortal 
 Mr. Barlow, boring his way through the verdant freshness 
 of ages ! 
 
 My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 329 
 
 many counts. I will proceed to set forth a few of the in- 
 juries he has done me. 
 
 In the first place, he never made or took a joke. This 
 insensibility on Mr. Barlow's part not only cast its own 
 gloom over my boyhood, but blighted even the sixpenny 
 jest-books of the time; for, groaning under a moral spell 
 constraining me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I could 
 not choose but ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a 
 printed jest, " What would he think of it? What would 
 he see in it? " The point of the jest immediately became 
 a sting, and stung my conscience. For my mind's eye saw 
 him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some 
 dreary Greek book, and translating at full length what 
 some dismal sage said (and touched up afterwards, per- 
 haps, for publication), when he banished some unlucky 
 joker from Athens. 
 
 The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other por- 
 tions of my young life but himself, the adamantine inadapt- 
 ability 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 he did. 
 He was always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sinbad 
 the Sailor. If he could have got hold of the Wonderful 
 Lamp, I knew he would have trimmed it and lighted it, 
 and delivered a lecture over it on the qualities of sperm-oil, 
 with a glance at the whale fisheries. He would so soon 
 have found out — on mechanical principles — the peg in the 
 neck of the Enchanted Horse, and would have turned it 
 the right way in so workmanlike a manner, that the horse 
 could never have got any height into the air, and the story 
 couldn't have been. He would have proved, by map and 
 compass, that there was no such kingdom as the delightful 
 kingdom of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary. He would 
 have caused that hypocritical young prig Harry to make an 
 experiment, — with the aid of a temporary building in the 
 garden and a dummy, — demonstrating that you couldn't let 
 a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney with a cord, 
 and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the sultan's 
 purveyor. 
 
 The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropoli- 
 tan pantomime, I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow. 
 Click click, ting ting, bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, 
 bang ! I recall the chilling air that ran across my frame 
 
330 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 and cooled my hot delight, as the thought occurred to me, 
 " This would never do for Mr. Barlow ! " After the curtain 
 drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow's considering the 
 custumes of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently 
 opaque, obtruded themselves on my enjoyment. In the 
 clown I perceived two persons; one a fascinating unac- 
 countable creature of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits 
 though feeble in intellect, with flashes of brilliancy; the 
 other a pupil for Mr. Barlow. I thought how Mr. Barlow 
 would secretly rise early in the morning, and butter the 
 pavement for him, and, when he had brought him down, 
 would look severely out of his study window and ask him 
 how he enjoyed the fun. 
 
 I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the 
 house, and singe him with the whole collection, to bring 
 him better acquainted with the properties of incandescent 
 iron, on which he (Barlow) would fully expatiate. I pict- 
 ured Mr. Barlow's instituting a comparison between the 
 clown's conduct at his studies, — drinking up the ink, lick- 
 ing his copy-book, and using his head for blotting-paper, — 
 and that of the already mentioned young prig of prigs, 
 Harry, sitting at the Barlovian feet, sneakingly pretending 
 to be in a rapture of youthful knowledge. I thought how 
 soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown's hair down, 
 instead of letting it stand erect in three tall tufts; and 
 how, after a couple of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he 
 would keep his legs close together when he walked, and 
 would take his hands out of his big loose pockets, and 
 wouldn't have a jump left in him. 
 
 That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the 
 universe are made of, and how they are made, is another 
 of my charges against Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon 
 me of developing into a Harry, and with a further dread 
 upon me of being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by bring- 
 ing down upon myself a cold shower-bath of explanations 
 and experiments, I forebore enlightenment in my youth, 
 and became, as they say in melodramas, " the wreck you 
 now behold." That I consorted with idlers and dunces is 
 another of the melancholy facts for which I hold Mr. Bar- 
 low responsible. That pragmatical prig, Harry, became 
 so detestable in my sight, that, he being reported studious 
 in the South, I would have fled idle to the extremest North. 
 Better to learn misconduct from a Master Mash than sci- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 331 
 
 ence and statistics from a Sandf ord ! So I took the path, 
 which, but for Mr. BarloAv, I might never have trodden. 
 Thought I, with a shudder, "Mr. Barlow is a bore, with 
 an immense constructive power of making bores. His 
 prize specimen is a bore. He seeks to make a bore of me. 
 That knowledge is power I am not prepared to gainsay; 
 but, with Mr. Barlow, knowledge is power to bore." 
 Therefore I took refuge in the caves of ignorance, wherein 
 I have resided ever since, and which are still my private 
 address. 
 
 But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. 
 Barlow is, that he still walks the earth in various disguises, 
 seeking to make a Tommy of me, even in my maturity. 
 Irrepressible, instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my 
 life with pitfalls, and lies hiding at the bottom to burst 
 out upon me when I least expect him. 
 
 A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice. 
 
 Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the 
 moving panorama trade, and having on various occasions 
 identified him in the dark with a long wand in his hand, 
 holding forth in his old way (made more appalling in this 
 connection by his sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Car- 
 lyle's own Dead-Sea fruit in mistake for a joke), I system- 
 atically shun pictorial entertainment on rollers. Similarly, 
 I should demand responsible bail and guaranty against the 
 appearance of Mr. Barlow, before committing myself to at- 
 tendance at any assemblage of my fellow-creatures where 
 a bottle of water and a note-book were conspicuous ob- 
 jects; for in either of those associations, I should expressly 
 expect him. But such is the designing nature of the man, 
 that he steals in where no reasoning precaution or previ- 
 sion could expect him. As in the following case : — 
 
 Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town. In 
 this country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in num- 
 ber, were announced to appear in the town-hall, for the 
 general delectation, this last Christmas week. Knowing 
 Mr. Barlow to be unconnected with the Mississippi, though 
 holding republican opinions, and deeming myself secure, I 
 took a stall. My object was to hear and see the Mississippi 
 Momuses. in what the bills described as their "National 
 ballads, plantation break-downs, nigger part-songs, choice 
 conundrums, sparkling repartees, &c." I found the nine 
 dressed alike, in the black coat and trousers, white waist- 
 
332 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 » 
 
 coat, very large shirt-front, very large shirt-collar, and very 
 large white tie and wristbands, which constitute the dress 
 of the mass of the African race, and which has been ob- 
 served by travellers to prevail over a vast number of de- 
 grees of latitude. All the nine rolled their eyes exceed- 
 ingly, and had very red lips. At the extremities of the 
 curve they formed, seated in their chairs, were the per- 
 formers on the tambourine and bones. The centre Momus, 
 a black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me with a 
 vague uneasiness for which I could not then account), per- 
 formed on a Mississippi instrument closely resembling 
 what was once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy. The 
 Momuses on either side of him had each another instrument 
 peculiar to the Father of Waters, which may be likened to 
 a stringed weather-glass held upside down. There were 
 likewise a little flute and a violin. All went well for a 
 while, and we had had several sparkling repartees ex- 
 changed between the performers on the tambourine and 
 bones, when the black of melancholy aspect, turning to the 
 latter, and addressing him in a deep and improving Voice 
 as "Bones, sir," delivered certain grave remarks to him 
 concerning the juveniles present, and the season of the 
 year; whereon I perceived that I was in the presence of 
 Mr. Barlow — corked! 
 
 Another night — and this was in London — I attended the 
 representation of a little comedy. As the characters were 
 lifelike (and consequently not improving), and as they went 
 upon their several ways and designs without personally 
 addressing themselves to me, I felt rather confident of com- 
 ing through it without being regarded as Tommy, the more 
 so, as we were clearly getting close to the end. But I de- 
 ceived myself. All of a sudden, apropos of nothing, every- 
 body concerned came to a check and halt, advanced to the 
 footlights in a general rally to take dead aim at me, and 
 brought me down with a moral homily, in which I detected 
 the dread hand of Barlow. 
 
 Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, 
 that on the very next night after that, I was again en- 
 trapped, where no vestige of a spring could have been ap- 
 prehended by the timidest. It was a burlesque that I saw 
 performed; an uncompromising burlesque, where every- 
 body concerned, but especially the ladies, carried on at a 
 very considerable rate indeed. Most prominent and active 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 333 
 
 among the corps of performers was what I took to be (and 
 she really gave me very fair opportunities of coming to a 
 right conclusion) a young lady of a pretty figure. She was 
 dressed as a picturesque young gentleman, whose panta- 
 loons had been cut off in their infancy; and she had very 
 neat knees and very neat satin boots. Immediately after 
 singing a slang song and dancing a slang dance, this engag- 
 ing figure approached the fatal lamps, and, bending over 
 them, delivered in a thrilling voice a random eulogium on, 
 and exhortation to pursue, the virtues. " Great Heaven ! " 
 was my exclamation; "Barlow!" 
 
 There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow per- 
 petually insists on my sustaining the character of Tommy, 
 which is more unendurable yet, on account of its extreme 
 aggressiveness. For the purposes of a review or newspa- 
 per, he will get up an abstruse subject with infinite pains, 
 will Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of midnight oil, 
 and indeed of everything else, save cramming himself to 
 the eyes. 
 
 But mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, 
 he is not contented with having rammed it home, and dis- 
 charged it upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pretends 
 that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing 
 of it, — that he imbibed it with mother's milk, — and that 
 I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in 
 not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be 
 always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. 
 Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, 
 it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not 
 to have at my fingers' ends to-day ! And yet Mr. Barlow 
 systematically carries it over me with a high hand, and 
 will tauntingly ask me, in his articles, whether it is pos- 
 sible that I am not aware that every school-boy knows that 
 the fourteenth turning on the left in the steppes of Russia 
 will conduct to such and such a wandering tribe? with 
 other disparaging questions of like nature. So, when Mr. 
 Barlow addresses a letter to any journal as a volunteer cor- 
 respondent (which I frequently find him doing), he will 
 previously have gotten somebody to tell him some tremen- 
 dous technicality, and will write in the coolest manner, 
 "Now, sir, I may assume that every reader of your col- 
 umns, possessing average information and intelligence, 
 knows as well as I do that " — say that the draught from 
 
334 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the touch-hole of a cannon of such a calibre bears such a 
 proportion in the nicest fractions to the draught from the 
 muzzle; or some equally familiar little fact. But what- 
 ever it is, be certain that it always tends to the exaltation 
 of Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced and en- 
 slaved pupil. 
 
 Mr. Barlow's knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be 
 so profound, that my own knowledge of them becomes as 
 nothing. Mr. Barlow (disguised and bearing a feigned 
 name, but detected by me) has occasionally taught me, in 
 a sonorous voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, 
 trifles that I took the liberty of teaching him five-and- 
 twenty years ago. My closing article of impeachment 
 against Mr. Barlow is, that he goes out to breakfast, goes 
 out to dinner, goes out everywhere, high and low, and that 
 he will preach to me, and that I can't get rid of him. 
 He makes of me a Promethean Tommy, bound; and he is 
 the vulture that gorges itself upon the liver of my unin- 
 structed mind. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 
 
 It is one of my fancies, that even my idlest walk must 
 always have its appointed destination. I set myself a task 
 before I leave my lodging in Covent-garden on a street ex- 
 pedition, and should no more think of altering my route by 
 the way, or turning back and leaving a part of it un- 
 achieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating an 
 agreement entered into with somebody else. The other 
 day, finding myself under this kind of obligation to pro- 
 ceed to Limehouse, I started punctually at noon, in com- 
 pliance with the terms of the contract with myself to which 
 my good faith was pledged. 
 
 On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk 
 as my beat, and myself as a higher sort of police-constable 
 doing duty on the same. There is many a ruffian in the 
 streets whom I mentally collar and clear out of them, who 
 would see mighty little of London, I can tell him, if I 
 could deal with him physically. 
 
 Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following with my 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 335 
 
 eyes three hulking garroters on their way home, — which 
 home I could confidently swear to be within so many yards 
 of Drury Lane, in such a narrow and restricted direction 
 (though they live in their lodging quite as undisturbed as I 
 in mine), — I went on duty with a consideration which I re- 
 spectfully offer to the new Chief Commissioner, — in whom 
 I thoroughly confide as a tried and efficient public servant. 
 How often (thought I) have I been forced to swallow, in 
 police-reports, the intolerable stereotyped pill of nonsense, 
 how that the police-constable informed the worthy magis- 
 trate how that the associates of the prisoner did, at that 
 present speaking, dwell in a street or court which no man 
 dared go down, and how that the worthy magistrate had 
 heard of the dark reputation of such street or court, and 
 how that our readers would doubtless remember that it was 
 always the same street or court which was thus edifyingly 
 discoursed about, say once a fortnight. 
 
 Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a 
 circular to every division of police employed in London, re- 
 quiring instantly the names in all districts of all such much- 
 puffed streets or courts which no man durst go down; and 
 suppose that in such circular he gave plain warning, " If 
 those places really exist, they are a proof of police ineffi- 
 ciency which I mean to punish; and if they do not exist, 
 but are a conventional fiction, then they are a proof of lazy 
 tacit police connivance with professional crime, which I 
 also mean to punish " — what then? Fictions or realities, 
 could they survive the touchstone of this atom of common 
 sense? To tell us in open court, until it has become as 
 trite a feature of news as the great gooseberry, that a costly 
 police-system such as was never before heard of, has left 
 in London, in the days of steam and gas and photographs 
 of thieves and electric telegraphs, the sanctuaries and stews 
 of the Stuarts ! Why, a parity of practice, in all depart- 
 ments, would bring back the Plague in two summers, and 
 the Druids in a century ! 
 
 Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I 
 overturned a wretched little creature, who, clutching at the 
 rags of a pair of trousers with one of its claws, and at its 
 ragged hair with the other, pattered with bare feet over the 
 muddy stones. I stopped to raise and succour this poor 
 weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but of both sexes, were 
 about me in a moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clam- 
 
336 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ouring, yelling, shivering in their nakedness and hunger. 
 The piece of money I had put into the claw of the child I 
 had overturned was clawed out of it, and was again clawed 
 out of that wolfish gripe, and again out of that, and soon I 
 had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle in the 
 mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might 
 be. In raising the child, I had drawn it aside out of the 
 main thoroughfare, and this took place among some wooden 
 hoardings and barriers and ruins of demolished buildings, 
 hard by Temple Bar. 
 
 Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine po- 
 lice constable, before whom the dreadful brood dispersed in 
 various directions, he making feints and darts in this direc- 
 tion and in that, and catching nothing. When all were 
 frightened away, he took off his hat, pulled out a handker- 
 chief from it, wiped his heated brow, and restored the 
 handkerchief and hat to their places, with the air of a man 
 who had discharged a great moral duty, — as indeed he had, 
 in doing what was set down for him. I looked at him, and 
 I looked about at the disorderly traces in the mud, and I 
 thought of the drops of rain and the footprints of an extinct 
 creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that geologists have 
 identified on the face of a clift; and this speculation came 
 over me : If this mud could petrify at this moment, and 
 could lie concealed here for ten thousand years, I wonder 
 whether the race of men then to be our successors on the 
 earth could, from these or any marks, by the utmost force 
 of the human intellect, unassisted by tradition, deduce such 
 an astounding inference as the existence of a polished state 
 of society that bore with the public savagery of neglected 
 children in the streets of its capital city, and was proud of 
 its power by sea and land, and never used its power to 
 seize and save them ! 
 
 After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced 
 up it towards Newgate, I found that the prison had an in- 
 consistent look. There seemed to be some unlucky incon- 
 sistency in the atmosphere that day ; for though the propor- 
 tions of St. Paul's Cathedral are very beautiful, it had an 
 air of being somewhat out of drawing, in my eyes. I felt 
 as though the cross were too high up, and perched upon the 
 intervening golden ball too far away. 
 
 Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old 
 Bailey, — fire and fagot, condemned hold, public hanging, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 337 
 
 whipping through the city at the cart-tail, pillory, brand- 
 ing-iron, and other beautiful ancestral landmarks, which 
 rude hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars quite 
 down upon us as yet, — and went my way upon my beat, 
 noting how oddly characteristic neighbourhoods are divided 
 from one another, hereabout, as though by an invisible line 
 across the way. Here shall cease the bankers and the 
 money-changers; here shall begin the shipping interest and 
 the nautical-instrument shops; here shall follow a scarcely 
 perceptible flavouring of groceries and drugs; here shall 
 come a strong infusion of butchers; now, small hosiers 
 shall be in the ascendant; henceforth, everything exposed 
 for sale shall have its ticketed price attached. All this as 
 if specially ordered and appointed. 
 
 A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than 
 sufficed to cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon- 
 gate, which the debtors in Holyrood sanctuary were wont 
 to relieve their minds by skipping over, as Scott relates, 
 and standing in delightful daring of catchpoles on the free 
 side, — a single stride, and everything is entirely changed 
 in grain and character. West of the stride, a table, or a 
 chest of drawers on sale, shall be of mahogany and French- 
 polished; east of the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared 
 with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve. West of the 
 stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-con- 
 tained; east of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and 
 splay-footed character, as seeking to make more of itself 
 for the money. My beat lying round by Whitechapel 
 Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries, --great buildings, 
 tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being nearly re- 
 lated to the dock- warehouses at Liverpool, — I turned off to 
 my right, and, passing round the awkward corner on my 
 left, came suddenly on an apparition familiar to London 
 streets afar off. 
 
 What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the 
 woman who has fallen forward, double, through some affec- 
 tion of the spine, and whose head has of late taken a turn 
 to one side, so that it now droops over the back of one of 
 her arms at about the wrist? Who does not know her staff, 
 and her shawl, and her basket, as she gropes her way 
 along, capable of seeing nothing but the pavement, never 
 begging, never stopping, for ever going somewhere on no 
 business? How does she live, whence does she come, 
 
338 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 whither does she go, and why? I mind the time when hei 
 yellow arms were naught but bone and parchment. Slight 
 changes steal over her; for there is a shadowy suggestion 
 of human skin on them now. The Strand may be taken as 
 the central point about which she revolves in a half-mile 
 orbit. How comes she so far east as this? And coming 
 back too ! Having been how much farther? She is a rare 
 spectacle in this neighbourhood. I receive intelligent in- 
 formation to this effect from a dog — a lop-sided mongrel 
 with a foolish tail, plodding along with his tail up, and his 
 ears pricked, 'and displaying an amiable interest in the 
 ways of his fellow-men, — if I may be allowed the expres- 
 sion. After pausing at a pork-shop, he is jogging east- 
 ward like myself, with a benevolent countenance and a wa- 
 tery mouth, as though musing on the many excellences of 
 pork, when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching. 
 He is not so much astonished at the bundle (though amazed 
 by that), as the circumstance that it has within itself the 
 means of locomotion. He stops, pricks his ears higher, 
 makes a slight point, stares, utters a short, low growl, and 
 glistens at the nose, — as I conceive with terror. The bun- 
 dle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail, and is 
 about to fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not 
 becoming in a dog, he turns, and once more faces the ad- 
 vancing heap of clothes. After much hesitation, it occurs 
 to him that there may be a face in it somewhere. Des- 
 perately resolving to undertake the adventure, and pursue 
 the inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes slowly 
 round it, and coming at length upon the human counte* 
 nance down there where never human countenance should 
 be, gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the East India 
 Docks. 
 
 Being now in the Commercial Road district of my beat, 
 and bethinking myself that Stepney Station is near, I 
 quicken my pace that I may turn out of the road at that 
 point, and see how my small eastern star is shining. 
 
 The Children's Hospital, to which I gave that name, is 
 in full force. All its beds are occupied. There is a new 
 face on the bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet 
 little child is now at rest for ever. Much kind sympathy 
 has been here since my former visit, and it is good to see 
 the walls profusely garnished with dolls. I wonder what 
 Poodles may think of them, as they stretch out their arms 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 339 
 
 above the beds, and stare, and display their splendid 
 dresses. Poodles has a greater interest in the patients. I 
 find him making the round of the beds, like a house-surgeon, 
 attended by another dog, — a friend, — who appears to trot 
 about with him in the character of his pupil dresser. 
 Poodles is anxious to make me known to a pretty little girl 
 looking wonderfully healthy, who had had a leg taken off 
 for cancer of the knee. A difficult operation, Poodles inti- 
 mates, wagging his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly 
 successful, as you see, dear sir! The patient, patting 
 Poodles, adds with a smile, " The leg was so much trouble 
 to me, that I am glad it's gone." I never saw anything in 
 doggery finer than the deportment of Poodles, when another 
 little girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar enlargement 
 of the tongue. Poodles (at that time on a table, to be on 
 a level with the occasion) looks at the tongue (with his 
 own sympathetically out) so very gravely and knowingly, 
 that I feel inclined to put my hand in my waistcoat-pocket, 
 and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper. 
 
 On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its 
 termination, I found myself near to certain "Lead-Mills." 
 Struck by the name, which was fresh in my memory, and, 
 finding on inquiry, that these same lead-mills were identi- 
 fied with those same lead-mills of which I made mention 
 when I first visited the East London Children's Hospital 
 and its neighbourhood as Uncommercial Traveller, I re- 
 solved to have a look at them. 
 
 Eeceived by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, 
 and partners with their father in the concern, and who tes- 
 tified every desire to show their works to me freely, I went 
 over the lead-mills. The purport of such works is the 
 conversion of pig-lead into white-lead. This conversion is 
 brought about by the slow and gradual effecting of certain 
 successive chemical changes in the lead itself. The proc- 
 esses are picturesque and interesting, — the most so, being 
 the burying of the lead, at a certain stage of preparation, 
 in pots, each pot containing a certain quantity of acid be- 
 sides, and all the pots being buried in vast numbers, in 
 layers, under tan, for some ten weeks. 
 
 Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated 
 perches, until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to 
 a bird or a bricklayer, I became conscious of standing on 
 nothing particular, looking down into one of a series of 
 
340 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 
 
 large cocklofts, with the outer day peeping in through the 
 chinks in the tiled roof above. A number of women were 
 ascending to, and descending from, this cockloft, each car- 
 rying on the upward journey a pot of prepared lead and 
 acid, for deposition under the smoking tan. When one 
 layer of pots was completely filled, it was carefully covered 
 in with planks, and those were carefully covered with tan 
 again, and then another layer of pots was begun above; 
 sufficient means, of ventilation being preserved through 
 wooden tubes. Going down into the cockloft then filling, 
 I found the heat of the tan to be surprisingly great, and 
 also the odour of the lead and acid to be not absolutely ex- 
 quisite, though I believe not noxious at that stage. In 
 other cocklofts, where the pots were being exhumed, the 
 heat of the steaming tan was much greater, and the smell 
 was penetrating and peculiar. There were cocklofts in all 
 stages; full and empty, half filled and half emptied; 
 strong, active women were clambering about them busily; 
 and the whole thing had rather the air of the upper part of 
 the house of some immensely rich old Turk, whose faithful 
 seraglio were hiding his money because the sultan or the 
 pasha was coming. 
 
 As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the in- 
 stance of this white-lead, processes of stirring, separating, 
 washing, grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed. Some 
 of these are unquestionably inimical to health, the danger 
 arising from inhalation of particles of lead, or from contact 
 between the lead and the touch, or both. Against these 
 dangers, I found good respirators provided (simply made 
 of flannel and muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed, 
 and in some instances washed with scented soap), and 
 gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns. Everywhere, there was 
 as much fresh air as windows, well placed and opened, could 
 possibly admit. And it was explained that the precaution 
 of frequently changing the women employed in the worst 
 parts of the work (a precaution originating in their own 
 experience or apprehension of its ill effects) was found sal- 
 utary. They had a mysterious and singular appearance, 
 with the mouth and nose covered, and the loose gown on, 
 and yet bore out the simile of the old Turk and the seraglio 
 all the better for the disguise. 
 
 At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and 
 resuscitated, and heated and cooled and stirred, and sepa- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 341 
 
 rated and washed and ground, and rolled and pressed, is 
 subjected to the action of intense fiery heat. A row of 
 women, dressed as above described, stood, let us say, in a 
 large stone bakehouse, passing on the baking-dishes as 
 they were given out by the cooks, from hand to hand, into 
 the ovens. The oven, or stove, cold as yet, looked as high 
 as an ordinary house, and was full of men and women on 
 temporary footholds, briskly passing up and stowing away 
 the dishes. The door of another oven, or stove, about to 
 be cooled and emptied, was opened from above, for the un- 
 commercial countenance to peer down into. The uncom- 
 mercial countenance withdrew itself, with expedition and 
 a sense of suffocation, from the dull-glowing heat and the 
 overpowering smell. On the whole, perhaps the going 
 into these stoves to work, when they are freshly opened, 
 may be the worst part of the occupation. 
 
 But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of 
 these lead- mills honestly and sedulously try to reduce the 
 dangers of the occupation to the lowest point. 
 
 A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought 
 there might have been more towels), and a room in which 
 they hang their clothes, and take their meals, and where 
 they have a good fire-range and fire, and a female attend- 
 ant to help them, and to watch that they do not neglect 
 the cleansing of their hands before touching their food. An 
 experienced medical attendant is provided for them, and 
 any premonitory symptoms of lead-poisoning are carefully 
 treated. Their teapots and such things were set out on 
 tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I saw their 
 room; and it had a homely look. It is found that they 
 bear the work much better than men : some few of them 
 have been at it for years, and the great majority of those I 
 observed were strong and active. On the other hand, it 
 should be remembered that most of them are very capri- 
 cious and irregular in their attendance. 
 
 American inventiveness would seem to indicate that 
 before very long white-lead may be made entirely by 
 machinery. The sooner, the better. In the meantime, I 
 parted from my two frank conductors over the mills, by 
 telling them that they had nothing there to be concealed, 
 and nothing to be blamed for. As to the rest, the phi- 
 losophy of the matter of lead-poisoning and workpeople 
 seems to me to have been pretty fairly summed up by the 
 
342 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Irishwoman whom I quoted in my former paper : " Some oi 
 them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead- 
 pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and 'tis alL 
 according to the constitooshun, sur; and some constitoo- 
 shuns is strong and some is weak." 
 
 Retracing my footsteps over my beat, I went off duty. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE. 
 
 Once upon a time (do matter when), I was engaged in a 
 pursuit (no matter what), which could be transacted by 
 myself alone; in which I could have no help; which im- 
 posed a constant strain on the attention, memory, observa- 
 tion, and physical powers; and which involved an almost 
 fabulous amount of change of place and rapid railway trav- 
 elling. I had followed this pursuit through an exception- 
 ally trying winter in an always trying climate, and had re- 
 sumed it in England after but a brief repose. Thus it came 
 to be prolonged until, at length — and, as it seemed, all of 
 a sudden — it so wore me out that I could not rely, with my 
 usual cheerful confidence, upon myself to achieve the con- 
 stantly recurring task, and began to feel (for the first time 
 in my life) giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, uncertain of voice 
 and sight and tread and touch, and dull of spirit. The 
 medical advice I sought within a few hours, was given in 
 two words: "Instant rest." Being accustomed to observe 
 myself as curiously as if I were another man, and knowing 
 the advice to meet my only need, I insta.ntly halted in the 
 pursuit of which I speak, and rested. 
 
 My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in 
 the book of my life, in which nothing should be written 
 from without for a brief season of a few weeks. But some 
 very singular experiences recorded themselves on this same 
 fly-leaf, and I am going to relate them literally, I repeat 
 the word : literally : 
 
 My first odd experience was of the remarkable coinci- 
 dence between my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. 
 Merdle's as I find it recorded in a work of fiction called 
 Little Dorrit. To be sure, Mr. Merdle was a swindler, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 343 
 
 forger, and thief, and my calling had been of a less harm- 
 ful (and less remunerative) nature; but it was all one for 
 that. 
 
 Here is Mr. Merdle's ease: 
 
 " At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were 
 known, and of several bran-new maladies invented with the 
 speed of Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He 
 had concealed a dropsy from infancy, he had inherited a 
 large estate of water on the chest from his grandfather, he 
 had had an operation performed upon him every morning 
 of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the 
 explosion of important veins in his body after the manner 
 of fireworks, he had had something tbe 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 H own to breakfast entirely uninformed 
 on the whole subject, believed before they had done break- 
 fast, that they privately and personally knew Physician to 
 have said to Mr. Merdle, 'You must expect to go out, some 
 day, like the snuff of a candle; ' and that they knew Mr. 
 Merdle to have said to Physician, 'A man can die but once.' 
 By about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the 
 matter with the brain, became the favourite theory against 
 the field; and by twelve the something had been distinctly 
 ascertained to be ' Pressure.' 
 
 "Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, 
 and seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might 
 have lasted all day but for Bar's having taken the real 
 state of the case into Court at half-past nine. Pressure, 
 however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, 
 became a greater favourite than ever. There was a general 
 moralising upon Pressure, in every street. All the people 
 who had tried to make money and had not been able to do 
 it, said, There you were ! You no sooner began to devote 
 yourself to the pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure. 
 The idle people improved the occasion in a similar manner. 
 See, said they, what you brought yourself to by work, 
 work, work! You persisted in working, you overdid it, 
 Pressure came on, and you were done for ! This consider- 
 ation 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 
 23 
 
344 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 would never forget the warning as long as they lived, and 
 that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off 
 Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their friends, for 
 many years." 
 
 Just my case — if I had only known it — when I was 
 quietly basking in the sunshine in my Kentish meadow ! 
 
 But while I so rested, thankfully recovering every hour, 
 I had experiences more odd than this. I had experiences 
 of spiritual conceit, for which, as giving me a new warning 
 against that curse of mankind, I shall always feel grateful 
 to the supposition that I was too far gone to protest against 
 playing sick lion to any stray donkey with an itching hoof. 
 All sorts of people* seemed to become vicariously religious 
 at my expense. I received the most uncompromising warn- 
 ing that I was a Heathen; on the conclusive authority of a 
 field preacher, who, like the most of his ignorant and vain 
 and daring class, could not construct a tolerable sentence 
 in his native tongue or pen a fair letter. This inspired in- 
 dividual called me to order roundly, and knew in the freest 
 and easiest way where I was going to, and what would be- 
 come of me if I failed to fashion myself on his bright ex- 
 ample, and was on terms of blasphemous confidence with 
 the Heavenly Host. He was in the secrets of my heart, 
 and in the lowest soundings of my soul — he ! — and could 
 read the depths of my nature better than his A. B.C., and 
 could turn me inside out, like his own clammy glove. But 
 what is far more extraordinary than this — for such dirty 
 water as this could alone be drawn from such a shallow and 
 muddy source — I found from the information of a beneficed 
 clergyman, of whom I never heard and whom I never saw, 
 that I had not, as I rather supposed I had, lived a life of 
 some reading, contemplation, and inquiry; that I had not 
 studied, as I rather supposed I had, to inculcate some 
 Christian lessons in books; that I had never tried, as I 
 rather supposed I had, to turn a child or two tenderly 
 towards the knowledge and love of our Saviour; that I had 
 never had, as I rather supposed I had had, departed 
 friends, or stood beside open graves; but that I had lived a 
 life of "uninterrupted prosperity," and that I needed this 
 "check, overmuch," and that the way to turn it to account 
 was to read these sermons and these poems, enclosed, and 
 written and issued by my correspondent ! I beg it may be 
 understood that I relate facts of my own uncommercial ex- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 345 
 
 perience, and no vain imaginings. The documents in proof 
 lie near my hand. 
 
 Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining 
 character, was the wonderful persistency with which kind 
 sympathisers assumed that I had injuriously coupled with 
 the so suddenly relinquished pursuit, those personal habits 
 of mine most obviously incompatible with it, and most 
 plainly impossible of being maintained, along with it. As, 
 all that exercise, all that cold bathing, all that wind and 
 weather, all that uphill training — all that everything else, 
 say, which is usually carried about by express trains in a 
 portmanteau and hat-box, and partaken of under a flaming 
 row of gaslights in the company of two thousand people. 
 This assuming of a whole case against all fact and likeli- 
 hood, struck me as particularly droll, and was an oddity of 
 which I certainly had had no adequate experience in life 
 until I turned that curious fly-leaf. 
 
 My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out 
 on the fly-leaf, very piously indeed. They were glad, at 
 such a serious crisis, to afford me another opportunity of 
 sending that Post-office order. I needn't make it a pound, 
 as previously insisted on; ten shillings might ease my mind, 
 And Heaven forbid that they should refuse, at such an in- 
 significant figure, to take a weight off the memory of an 
 erring fellow-creature ! One gentleman, of an artistic turn 
 (and copiously illustrating the books of the Mendicity So- 
 ciety) thought it might soothe my conscience in the tender 
 respect of gifts misused, if I would immediately cash up 
 in aid of his lowly talent for original design — as a speci- 
 men of which he enclosed me a work of art which I recog- 
 nised as a tracing from a woodcut originally published in 
 the late Mrs. Trollope's book on America, forty or fifty 
 years ago. The number of people who were prepared to 
 live long years after me, untiring benefactors to their 
 species, for fifty pounds apiece down, was astonishing. 
 Also, of those who wanted bank notes for stiff penitential 
 amounts, to give away — not to keep, on any account. 
 
 Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated rec- 
 ommendations of themselves into the fly-leaf that was to 
 have been so blank. It was specially observable that every 
 prescriber, whether in a moral or physical direction, knew 
 me thoroughly — knew me from head to heel, in and out, 
 through and through, upside down. I was a glass piece of 
 
346 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 general property, and everybody was on the most surpris- 
 ingly intimate terms with me. A few public institutions 
 had complimentary perceptions of corners in my mind, of 
 which, after considerable self-examination, I have not dis- 
 covered any indication. Neat little printed forms were ad- 
 dressed to those corners, beginning with the words " I give 
 and bequeath." 
 
 Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the 
 most honest, the most modest, and the least vain-glorious 
 of all the records upon this strange fly-leaf, was a letter 
 from the self-deceived discoverer of the recondite secret? 
 "How to live four or five hundred years." Doubtless it 
 will seem so, yet the statement is not exaggerative by any 
 means, but is made in my serious and sincere conviction. 
 With this, and with a laugh at the rest that shall not be 
 cynical, I turn the Fly-leaf, and go on again. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 
 
 One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock 
 in the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view 
 commanded by the windows of my lodging an equestrian 
 phenomenon. It was a fellow-creature on horseback, 
 dressed in the absurdest manner. The fellow-creature 
 wore high boots; some other (and much larger) fellow- 
 creature's breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a 
 baggy form; a blue shirt, whereof the skirt, or tail, was 
 pnffily tucked into the waist- band of the said breeches; no 
 coat; a red shoulder-belt; and a demi- semi-military scarlet 
 hat, with a feathered ornament in front, which, to the un- 
 instructed human vision, had the appearance of a moulting 
 shuttlecock. I laid down the newspaper with which I had 
 been occupied, and surveyed the fellow-man in question 
 with astonishment. Whether he had been sitting to any 
 painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of " Sartor Re- 
 sartus; " whether "the husk or shell of him," as the 
 esteemed -Herr Teuf elsdroch might put it, were founded on 
 a jockey, on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap por- 
 celain, on a toy shop, on Guy Fawkes, on waxwork, on 
 
 i 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 347 
 
 gold-digging, on Bedlam, or on all, — were doubts that 
 greatly exercised my mind. Meanwhile, my fellow-man 
 stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on the 
 slippery stones of my Covent-garden street, and elicited 
 shrieks from several sympathetic females, by convulsively 
 restraining himself from pitching over his horse's head. 
 In the very crisis of these evolutions, and indeed at the 
 trying moment when his charger's tail was in a tobacconist's 
 shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was 
 joined by two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling 
 and sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the more dis- 
 tressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate effected a 
 halt, and, looking northward, waved their three right hands 
 as commanding unseen troops, to "Up, guards! and at 
 'em." Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused 
 them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of 
 earth in the direction of the Surrey Hills. 
 
 Judging from these appearances that a procession was 
 under way, I threw up my window, and, craning out, had 
 the satisfaction of beholding it advancing along the streets. 
 It was a Teetotal procession, as I learnt from its banners, 
 and was long enough to consume twenty minutes in pass- 
 ing. There were a great number of children in it, some of 
 them so very young in their mothers' arms as to be in the 
 act of practically exemplifying their abstinence from fer- 
 mented liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, 
 while the procession defiled. The display was, on the 
 whole, pleasant to see, as any good-humoured holiday 
 assemblage of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people 
 should be. It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoul- 
 der-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if those latter tro- 
 phies had come up in profusion under much watering. The 
 day being breezy, the insubordination of the large banners 
 was very reprehensible. Each of these being borne aloft 
 on two poles and stayed with some half-dozen lines, was 
 carried, as polite books in the last century used to be writ- 
 ten, by " various hands," and the anxiety expressed in the 
 upturned faces of ^those officers, — something between the 
 anxiety attendant on the balancing art, and that insepa- 
 rable from the pastime of kite-flying, with a touch of the 
 angler's quality in landing his scaly prey, — much impressed 
 me. Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the wind, 
 and go about in the most inconvenient manner. This «JU 
 
348 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ways happened oftenest with such gorgeous standards as 
 those representing a gentleman in black, corpulent with tea 
 and water, in the laudable act of summarily reforming a 
 family, feeble and pinched with beer. The gentleman in 
 black distended by wind would then conduct himself with 
 the most unbecoming levity, while the beery family, grow- 
 ing beerier, would frantically try to tear themselves away 
 from his ministration. Some of the inscriptions accom- 
 panying the banners were of a highly determined character, 
 as " We never, never will give up the temperance cause," 
 with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive to the pro- 
 fane mind of Mrs. Micawber's "I never will desert Mr. 
 Micawber," and of Mr. Micawber's retort, "Keally, my 
 dear, I am not aware that you were ever required by any 
 human being to do anything of the sort." 
 
 At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing members 
 of the procession, for which I was at first unable to ac- 
 count. But this I discovered, after a little observation, 
 to be occasioned by the coming on of the executioners, — the 
 terrible official beings who were to make the speeches bj- 
 and-bye, — who were distributed in open carriages at vari- 
 ous points of the cavalcade. A dark cloud and a sensation 
 of dampness, as from many wet blankets, invariably pre- 
 ceded the rolling on of the dreadful cars containing these 
 headsmen; and I noticed that the wretched people who 
 closely followed them, and who were in a manner forced to 
 contemplate their folded arms, complacent countenances, 
 and threatening lips, were more overshadowed by the cloud 
 and damp than those in front. Indeed, I perceived in 
 some of these so moody an implacability towards the mag- 
 nates of the scaffold, and so plain a desire to tear them 
 limb from limb, that I would respectfully suggest to the 
 managers the expediency of conveying the executioners to 
 the scene of their dismal labours by unfrequented ways, and 
 in closely-tilted carts next Whitsuntide. 
 
 The procession was composed of a series of smaller pro- 
 cessions, which had come together, each from its own 
 metropolitan district. An infusion of allegory became per- 
 ceptible when patriotic Peckham advanced. So I judged, 
 from the circumstance of Peckham's unfurling a silken 
 banner that fanned heaven -and earth with the words, " The 
 Peckham Lifeboat." No boat being in attendance, though 
 life, in the likeness of " a gallant, gallant crew," in nauti- 
 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 349 
 
 cal uniform, followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the 
 fact that Peckham is described by geographers as an inland 
 settlement, with no larger or nearer shore-line than the 
 towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which stormy station 
 I had been given to understand no lifeboat exists. Thus I 
 deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to the conclusion, 
 that if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of pickled poetry, 
 this was the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peck- 
 ham picked. 
 
 I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the 
 whole pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified ex- 
 pression Avith a direct meaning, which I will now explain. 
 It involves the title of this paper, and a little fair trying 
 of teetotalism by its own tests. There were many people 
 on foot, and many people in vehicles of various kinds. 
 The former were pleasant to see, and the latter were not 
 pleasant to see; for the reason that I never, on any occa- 
 sion or under any circumstances, have beheld heavier over- 
 loading of horses than in this public show. Unless the 
 imposition of a great van laden with from ten to twenty 
 people on a single horse be a moderate tasking of the poor 
 creature, then the temperate use of horses was immoderate 
 and cruel. From the smallest and lightest horse to the 
 largest and heaviest, there were many instances in which 
 the beast of burden was so shamefully overladen, that the 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have fre- 
 quently interposed in less gross cases. 
 
 Now, I have always held that there may be, and that 
 there unquestionably is, such a thing as use without abuse, 
 and that therefore the total abolitionists are irrational and 
 wrong-headed. But the procession completely converted 
 me. For so large a number of the people using draught- 
 aorses in it were so clearly unable to use them without 
 ibusing them, that I perceived total abstinence from horse- 
 iesh to be the only remedy of which the case admitted. 
 b.s it is all one to teetotalers Avhether you take half a pint 
 )f beer or half a gallon, so it was all one here whether the 
 least of burden were a pony or a cart-horse. Indeed, my 
 iase had the special strength that the half-pint quadruped 
 mderwent as much suffering as the half-gallon quadru- 
 ped. Moral : total abstinence from horse-flesh through the 
 vhole length and breadth of the scale. This pledge will be 
 n course of administration to all teetotal processionists, 
 
350 the UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 not pedestrians, at the publishing office of "All the Year 
 Round," ou the 1st day of April, 1870 
 
 Observe a point for consideration. This procession com 
 prised many persons in their gigs, broughams tas c?2~ 
 Crouches chaises, and what nof, who SSSSSifitoS 
 
 sons?* V I w 8 t0 be d0 1 Ue With those ^offending per- 
 sons/ 1 will not run amuck and vilify and defame th f , m 
 as teetotal tracts and platforms would ^ SSdSdS 
 
 me reiver ^VT tf *"*•• inste ^ * driving I 
 merely ask what is to be done with them ! The reply ad- 
 
 ance 3 $£?£gSl VT^ ******* * stricSol 
 Sff'2?*? teetotal doctrines, they must come in too and 
 take the total abstinence from horseflesh pledge Si's 
 pretended that those members of the procession misuse 
 certain auxiliaries which in most countries and a age 
 
 3m fw h T° Wed Up ° n lnan fo1 ' his »». but it h unde 
 niable that other members of the procession did. Teetotal 
 mathematics demonstrate that the less includes the greater • 
 E f£ Fie f ^ 11 include the innocent, the blind theSg 
 
 the sober the T 5 eann «» «{° dU,n 1 b the ■*•"■» ^e drunken 
 the sober. If any of the moderate users of draught-cattle 
 in question should deem that there is any gen Sf violence 
 done to their reason by these elements of logic, they are 
 
 \«2 >■ -w° me ° Ut ° f the P rocessi ™ next Whitsuntide, and 
 Iook at it from my window.