Charles Dickens : The Uncommercial Traveller
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	THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

	by Charles Dickens




	I.

	HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS.

  Allow me to introduce myself---first
negatively.

  No landlord is my friend and
brother, no chambermaid loves me,
no waiter worships me, no boots admires
and envies me. No round of
beef or tongue or ham is expressly
cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially
made for me, no hotel advertisement is
personally addressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried
with great-coats and railway wrappers is
set apart for me, no house of public entertainment
in the United Kingdom greatly cares for
my opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go
upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a
low figure in the bill; when I come home from
my journeys, I never get any commission. I
know nothing about prices, and should have no
idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man
into ordering something he doesn't want. As a
town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a
vehicle externally like a young and volatile
pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in
which a number of flat boxes are baking in
layers. As a country traveller, I am rarely to be
found in a gig, and am never to be encountered
by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a
branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a
light Stonehenge of samples.

  And yet---proceeding now to introduce myself
positively---I am both a town traveller and
a country traveller, and am always on the road.
Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great
house of Human Interest Brothers, and have
rather a large connection in the fancy-goods
way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering
here and there from my rooms in Covent
Garden, London---now about the City streets,
now about the country by-roads---seeing many
little things, and some great things, which, because
they interest me, I think may interest
others.

  These are my 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 seashore
that morning,

  So settled and orderly was everything
seaward in the bright light of the sun
and under the transparent shadows of the clouds,
that it was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for
years past or to come, than it was that very day. 
The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the
Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat
alongside the Lighter, the regularly-turning
windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical
figures at work, all slowly and regularly heaving
up and down with the breathing of the sea, all
seemed as much a part of the nature of the place
as the tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and
had been for some two hours and a half; there
was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few
yards of my feet: as if the stump of a tree, with
earth enough about it to keep it from lying horizontally
on the water, had slipped a little from
the land; and as I stood upon the beach, and
observed it dimpling the light swell that was
coming in, I cast a stone over it.

  So orderly, so quiet, so regular---the rising
and falling of the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and
the boat---the turning of the windlass---the
coming in of the tide---that I myself seemed,
to my own thinking, anything but new to the
spot. Yet, I had never seen it in my life a
minute before, and had traversed two hundred
miles to get at it. That very morning I had
come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country
roads; looking back at snowy summits;
meeting courteous peasants, well to do, driving
fat pigs and cattle to market; noting the neat
and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual quantity
of clean white linen drying on the bushes; having
windy weather suggested by every cotter's little
rick, with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged
into overhanging compartments like the
back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a lift of
fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and
all), who was coming to his spell of duty there,
and had we not just now parted company? So
it was; but the journey seemed to glide down
into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble,
and for the moment nothing was so calmly and
monotonously real under the sun-light as the
gentle rising and falling of the water with its
freight, the regular turning of the windlass
aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction
so very near my feet.

  Oh, reader, haply turning this page by the
fireside at Home, and hearing the night wind
rumble in the chimney, that slight obstruction
was the uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the
Royal Charter, Australian trader and passenger
ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the
terrible morning of the twenty-sixth of this
October, broke into three parts, went down
with her treasure of at least five hundred
human lives, and has never stirred since!

  From which point, or from which, she drove
ashore, stern foremost; on which side, or on
which, she passed the little Island in the bay,
for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards
outside her; these are rendered bootless questions
by the darkness of that night and the
darkness of death, Here she went down.

  Even as I stood on the beach with the words
``Here she went down!'' in my ears, a diver, in
his grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the side
of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped
to the bottom. On the shore, by the water's
edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of
wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered
themselves, and where they had kept Christmas
day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction
of their frail chimney. Cast up among the
stones and boulders of the beach were great
spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron
twisted by the fury of the sea into the strangest
forms. The timber was already bleached, and
iron rusted; and even these objects did no
violence to the prevailing air the whole scene
wore, of having been exactly the same for years
and years.

  Yet, only two short months had gone since a
man, living on the nearest hill-top overlooking
the sea, being blown out of bed at about day-break
by the wind that had begun to strip his
roof off, and getting upon a ladder with his
nearest neighbour to construct some temporary
device for keeping his house over his head, saw
from the ladder's elevation, as he looked down
by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled
object close in with the land. And he and the
other, descending to the beach, and finding the
sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship,
had clambered up the stony ways, like staircases
without stairs, on which the wild village hangs
in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and
had given the alarm. And so, over the hill-slopes,
and past the water-fall, and down the
gullies where the land drains off into the ocean,
the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting
that part of Wales had come running to the
dismal sight---their clergyman among them. 
And as they stood in the leaden morning
stricken with pity, leaning hard against the
wind, their breath and vision often failing as the
sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever
forming and dissolving mountains of sea, and as
the wool which was a part of the vessel's cargo
blew in with the salt foam, and remained upon
the land when the foam melted, they saw the
ship's life-boat put off from one of the heaps of
wreck; and first there were three men in her,
and in a moment she capsized, and there were
but two; and again, she was struck by a vast
mass of water, and there was but one; and
again, she was thrown bottom upward, and that
one, with his arm struck through the broken
planks and waving as if for the help that could
never reach him, went down into the deep.

  It was the clergyman himself from whom I
heard this, while I stood on the shore, looking
in his kind wholesome face as it turned to the
spot where the boat had been. The divers were
down then, and busy. They were ``lifting'' to-day
the gold found yesterday---some five-and-twenty
thousand pounds. Of three hundred and
fifty thousand pounds' worth of gold, three hundred
thousand pounds' worth, in round numbers,
was at that time recovered. The great
bulk of the remainder was surely and steadily
coming up. Some loss of sovereigns there
would be, of course; indeed, at first, sovereigns
had drifted in with the sand, and been
scattered far and wide over the beach, like sea
shells; but most other golden treasure would
be found. As it was brought up, it went aboard
the Tug-steamer, where good account was taken
of it. So tremendous had the force of the sea
been when it broke the ship, that it had beaten
one great ingot of gold deep into a strong and
heavy piece of her solid iron-work; in which,
also, several loose sovereigns, that the ingot had
swept in before it, had been found, as firmly
embedded as though the iron had been liquid
when they were forced there. It had been remarked
of such bodies come ashore, too, as had
been seen by scientific men, that they had been
stunned to death, and not suffocated. Observation,
both of the internal change that had been
wrought in them, and of their external expression,
showed death to have been thus merciful
and easy. The report was brought, while I was
holding such discourse on the beach, that no
more bodies had come ashore since last night. 
It began to be very doubtful whether many more
would be thrown up until the north-east winds
of the early spring set in. Moreover, a great
number of the passengers, and particularly the
second-class women passengers, were known to
have been in the middle of the ship when she
parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would
have fallen upon them after yawning open, and
would keep them down. A diver made known,
even then, that he had come upon the body of
a man, and had sought to release it from a great
superincumbent weight; but that, finding he
could not do so without mutilating the remains,
he had left it where it was.

  It was the kind and wholesome face I have
made mention of, as being then beside me, that
I had proposed to myself to see when I left
home for Wales. I had heard of that clergyman,
as having buried many scores of the shipwrecked
people; of his having opened his
house and heart to their agonised friends; of
his having used a most sweet and patient
diligence for weeks and weeks in the performance
of the forlornest offices that Man can
render to his kind; of his having most tenderly
and thoroughly devoted himself to the dead,
and to those who were sorrowing for the dead. 
I had said to myself, ``In the Christmas season
of the year, I should like to see that man!''
And he had swung the gate of his little garden
in coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago.

  So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation,
as true practical Christianity ever is! I read
more of the New Testament in the fresh frank
face going up the village beside me, in five
minutes, than I have read in anathematizing
discourses (albeit put to press with enormous
flourishing of trumpets) in all my life. I heard
more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice
that had nothing to say about its owner, than
in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that
have ever blown conceit at me.

  We climbed towards the little church at a
cheery pace, among the loose stones, the deep
mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying water,
and other obstructions from which frost and
snow had lately thawed. It was a mistake (my
friend was glad to tell me on the way) to suppose
that the peasantry had shown any superstitious
avoidance of the drowned; on the whole, they
had done very well, and had assisted readily. 
Ten shillings had been paid for the bringing of
each body up to the church, but the way was
steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was
wrapped in a sheet) were necessary, and three
or four men, and, all things considered, it was
not a great price. The people were none
the richer for the wreck, for it was the season
of the herring shoal---and who could cast nets
for fish, and find dead men and women in the
draught?

  He had the church keys in his hand, and
opened the churchyard gate, and opened the
church-door; and we went in.

  It is a little church of great antiquity; there
is reason to believe that some church has
occupied the spot these thousand years or more. 
The pulpit was gone, and other things usually
belonging to the church were gone, owing to its
living congregation having deserted it for the
neighbouring schoolroom, and yielded it up to
the dead. The very Commandments had been
shouldered out of their places, in the bringing
in of the dead; the black wooden tables on
which they were painted were askew; and on
the stone pavement below them, and on the
stone pavement all over the church, were the
marks and stains where the drowned had been
laid down. The eye, with little or no aid from the
imagination, could yet see how the bodies had
been turned, and where the head had been, and
where the feet. Some faded traces of the wreck
of the Australian ship may be discernible on the
stone pavement of this little church, hundreds
of years hence, when the digging for gold in
Australia shall have long and long ceased out of
the land.

  Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay
here at one time, awaiting burial. Here with
weeping and wailing in every room of his house,
my companion worked alone for hours, solemnly
surrounded by eyes that could not see him, and
by lips that could not speak to him, patiently
examining the tattered clothing, cutting off
buttons, hair, marks from linen, anything that
might lead to subsequent identification, studying
faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked
toe, comparing letters sent to him with the ruin
about him. ``My dearest brother had bright
grey eyes and a pleasant smile,'' one sister
wrote. Oh, poor sister! well for you to be far
from here, and keep that as your last remembrance
of him!

  The ladies of the clergyman's family, his wife
and two sisters-in-law, came in among the bodies
often. It grew to be the business of their lives
to do so. Any new arrival of a bereaved woman
would stimulate their pity to compare the description
brought, with the dead realities. Sometimes
they would go back able to say, ``I have
found him,'' or ``I think she lies there.'' Perhaps
the mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that
lay in the church, would be led in blindfold. 
Conducted to the spot with many compassionate
words, and encouraged to look, she would say,
with a piercing cry, ``This is my boy!'' and
drop insensible on the insensible figure.

  He soon observed that, in some cases of
women, the identification of persons, though
complete, was quite at variance with the marks
upon the linen; this led him to notice that even
the marks upon the linen were sometimes inconsistent
with one another; and thus he came
to understand that they had dressed in great
haste and agitation, and that their clothes had
become mixed together. The identification of
men by their dress was rendered extremely
difficult, in consequence of a large proportion
of them being dressed alike---in clothes of one
kind, that is to say, supplied by slop-sellers and
outfitters, and not made by single garments, but
by hundreds. Many of the men were bringing
over parrots, and had receipts upon them for the
price of the birds; others had bills of exchange
in their pockets, or in belts. Some of these
documents, carefully unwrinkled and dried, were
little less fresh in appearance that day than the
present page will be, under ordinary circumstances,
after having been opened three or four
times.

  In that lonely place it had not been easy to
obtain even such common commodities in towns
as ordinary disinfectants. Pitch had been burnt
in the church, as the readiest thing at hand, and
the frying-pan in which it had bubbled over a
brazier of coals was still there, with its ashes. 
Hard by the Communion Table were some boots
that had been taken off the drowned and preserved---
a gold-digger's boot, cut down the leg
for its removal---a trodden-down man's ankle-boot
with a buff cloth top---and others-soaked
and sandy, weedy and salt.

  From the church we passed out into the
churchyard. Here there lay, at that time, one
hundred and forty-five bodies that had come
ashore from the wreck. He had buried them,
when not identified, in graves containing four
each. He had numbered each body in a register
describing it, and had placed a corresponding
number on each coffin, and over each grave,
Identified bodies he had buried singly, in private
graves, in another part of the churchyard. 
Several bodies had been exhumed from the
graves of four, as relatives had come from a distance
and seen his register; and, when recognised,
these have been reburied in private graves,
so that the mourners might erect separate headstones
over the remains. In all such cases he
had performed the funeral service a second time,
and the ladies of his house had attended. There
had been no offence in the poor ashes when
they were brought again to the light of day; the
beneficent Earth had already absorbed it. The
drowned were buried in their clothes. To supply
the great sudden demand for coffins, he had got
all the neighbouring people handy at tools to
work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise. 
The coffins were neatly formed; I had seen
two, waiting for occupants, under the lee of the
ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach, within
call of the tent where the Christmas Feast was
held. Similarly, one of the graves for four was
lying open and ready here, in the churchyard. 
So much of the scanty space was already devoted
to the wrecked people, that the villagers had
begun to express uneasy doubts whether they
themselves could lie in their own ground, with
their forefathers and descendants, by-and-by. 
The churchyard being but a step from the clergyman's
dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter;
the white surplice was hanging up near the door,
ready to be put on at any time, for a funeral
service.

  The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian
minister was as consolatory as the circumstances
out of which it shone were sad. I never
have seen anything more delightfully genuine
than the calm dismissal by himself and his household
of all they had undergone, as a simple duty
that was quietly done and ended. In speaking
of it, they spoke of it with great compassion for
the bereaved; but laid no stress upon their own
hard share in those weary weeks, except as it
had attached many people to them as friends,
and elicited many touching expressions of gratitude.
This clergyman's brother---himself the
Clergyman of two adjoining parishes, who had
buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard,
and who had done to them all that his
brother had done as to the larger number---must
be understood as included in the family. He
was there, with his neatly-arranged papers, and
made no more account of his trouble than anybody
else did. Down to yesterday's post outward,
my clergyman alone had written one
thousand and seventy-five letters to relatives and
friends of the lost people. In the absence of
self-assertion, it was only through my now and
then delicately putting a question as the occasion
arose, that I became informed of these
things. It was only when I had remarked again
and again, in the church, on the awful nature of
the scene of death he had been required so
closely to familiarise himself with for the soothing
of the living, that he had casually said, without
the least abatement of his cheerfulness,
``Indeed, it had rendered him unable for a time
to eat or drink more than a little coffee now and
then, and a piece of bread.''

  In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity,
in this serene avoidance of the least
attempt to ``improve'' an occasion which might
be supposed to have sunk of its own weight into
my heart, I seemed to have happily come, in a
few steps, from the churchyard with its open
grave, which was the type of Death, to the
Christian dwelling side by side with it, which
was the type of Resurrection. I never shall
think of the former without the latter. The two
will always rest side by side in my memory. If
I had lost anyone dear to me in this unfortunate
ship, if I had made a voyage from Australia
to look at the grave in the churchyard, I should
go away thankful to =God= that that house was so
close to it, and that its shadow by day and its
domestic lights by night fell upon the earth in
which its Master had so tenderly laid my dear
one's head.

  The references that naturally rose out of our
conversation to the descriptions sent down of
shipwrecked persons, and to the gratitude of relations
and friends, made me very anxious to see
some of those letters. I was presently seated
before a shipwreck of papers, all bordered with
black, and from them I made the following few
extracts.

  A mother writes

  =Reverend Sir=,---Amongst the many who
perished on your shore was numbered my beloved
son. I was only just recovering from a
severe illness, and this fearful affliction has
caused a relapse, so that I am unable at present
to go to identify the remains of the loved and
lost. My darling son would have been sixteen
on Christmas-day next. He was a most amiable
and obedient child, early taught the way of salvation.
We fondly hoped that as a British seaman
he might be an ornament to his profession,
but, ``it is well;'' I feel assured my dear boy is
now with the redeemed. Oh, he did not wish to
go this last voyage! On the fifteenth of October
I received a letter from him from Melbourne,
date August twelfth; he wrote in high spirits,
and in conclusion he says: ``Pray for a fair
breeze, mamma, and I'll not forget to whistle
for it! and, God permitting, I shall see you and
all my little pets again. Good-bye, dear mother
---good-bye, dearest parents. Good-bye, dear
brother.'' Oh, it was indeed an eternal farewell!
I do not apologise for thus writing you,
for oh! my heart is so very sorrowful.


  A husband writes

  =My dear kind Sir=,---Will you kindly inform
me whether there are any initials upon the ring
and guard you have in possession, found, as the
Standard says, last Tuesday? Believe me, my
dear sir, when I say that I cannot express my
deep gratitude in words sufficiently for your
kindness to me on that fearful and appalling
day. Will you tell me what I can do for you,
and will you write me a consoling letter to prevent
my mind from going astray?


  A widow writes:

  Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I
thought it best that my dear husband should be
buried where he lies, and, much as I should
have liked to have had it otherwise, I must
submit. I feel, from all I have heard of you,
that you will see it done decently and in order. 
Little does it signify to us, when the soul has
departed, where this poor body lies, but we who
are left behind would do all we can to show how
we loved them. This is denied me, but it is
God's hand that afflicts us, and I try to submit. 
Some day I may be able to visit the spot, and
see where he lies, and erect a simple stone to
his memory. Oh! it will be long, long before
I forget that dreadful night! Is there such a
thing in the vicinity, or any shop in Bangor, to
which I could send for a small picture of Moelfra
or Llanallgo Church, a spot now sacred to me?


  Another widow writes:

  I have received your letter this morning, and
do thank you most kindly for the interest you
have taken about my dear husband, as well for
the sentiments yours contains, evincing the
spirit of a Christian who can sympathise with
those who, like myself, are broken down with
grief.

  May God bless and sustain you, and all in
connection with you, in this trial! Time may
roll on, and bear all its sons away, but your
name as a disinterested person will, stand in
history, and, as successive years pass, many a
widow will think of your noble conduct, and the
tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the
tribute of a thankful heart, when other things,
are forgotten for ever.


  A father writes:

  I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently
express my gratitude to you for your kindness
to my son Richard, upon the melancholy occasion
of his visit to his dear brother's body, and
also for your ready attention in pronouncing our
beautiful burial service over my poor unfortunate
son's remains. God grant that your
prayers over him may reach the Mercy-Seat,
and that his soul may be received (through
Christ's intercession) into heaven!

  His dear mother begs me to convey to you
her heartfelt thanks.


  Those who were received at the clergyman's
house write thus after leaving it:

  =Dear and never-to-be-forgotten Friends=,
---I arrived here yesterday morning without accident,
and am about to proceed to my home by
railway.

  I am overpowered when I think of you and
your hospitable home. No words could speak
language suited to my heart. I refrain. God
reward you with the same measure you have
meted with!

  I enumerate no names, but embrace you all.


  =My beloved Friends=,---This is the first day
that I have been able to leave my bedroom
since I returned, which will explain the reason
of my not writing sooner.

  If I could only have had my last melancholy
hope realised in recovering the body of my
beloved and lamented son, I should have
returned home somewhat comforted, and I
think I could then have been comparatively
resigned.

  I fear now there is but little prospect, and I
mourn as one without hope.

  The only consolation to my distressed mind
is in having been so feelingly allowed by you to
leave the matter in your hands, by whom I well
know that everything will be done that can be,
according to arrangements made before I left
the scene of the awful catastrophe, as to
the identification of my dear son, and also his
interment.

  I feel most anxious to hear whether anything
fresh has transpired since I left you: will you
add another to the many deep obligations I am
under to you by writing to me? And should
the body of my dear and unfortunate son be
identified, let me hear from you immediately,
and I will come again.

  Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I
owe to you all for your benevolent aid, your
kindness, and your sympathy.


  =My dearly-beloved Friends=,---I arrived in
safety at my house yesterday, and a night's rest
has restored and tranquillised me. I must again
repeat that language has no words by which I
can express my sense of obligation to you. You
are enshrined in my heart of hearts.

  I have seen him! and can now realise my
misfortune more than I have hitherto been able
to do. Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink!
But I bow submissive. God _must_ have done
right. I do not want to feel less, but to acquiesce
more simply.


  There were some Jewish passengers on board
the Royal Charter, and the gratitude of the
Jewish people is feelingly expressed in the
following letter, bearing date from ``the office
of the Chief Rabbi:''

  =Reverend Sir=,---I cannot refrain from expressing
to you my heartfelt thanks on behalf
of those of my flock whose relatives have unfortunately
been among those who perished at the
late wreck of the Royal Charter. You have
indeed, like Boaz, ``not left off your kindness
to the living and the dead.''

  You have not alone acted kindly towards the
living by receiving them hospitably at your
house, and energetically assisting them in their
mournful duty, but also towards the dead, by
exerting yourself to have our co-religionists
buried in our ground, and according to our
rites. May our heavenly Father reward you
for your acts of humanity and true philanthropy!


  The ``Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool''
thus express themselves through their
secretary:

  =Reverend Sir=,---The wardens of this congregation
have learned with great pleasure that,
in addition to those indefatigable exertions, at
the scene of the late disaster to the Royal
Charter, which have received universal recognition,
you have very benevolently employed
your valuable efforts to assist such members of
our faith as have sought the bodies of lost
friends to give them burial in our consecrated
grounds, with the observances and rites prescribed
by the ordinances of our religion.

  The wardens desire me to take the earliest
available opportunity to offer to you, on behalf
of our community, the expression of their
warm acknowledgments and grateful thanks,
and their sincere wishes for your continued
welfare and prosperity.


  A Jewish gentleman writes:

  =Reverend and dear Sir=,---I take the opportunity
of thanking you right earnestly for the
promptness you displayed in answering my note
with full particulars concerning my much-lamented
brother, and I also herein beg to express
my sincere regard for the willingness you
displayed, and for the facility you afforded, for
getting the remains of my poor brother exhumed. 
It has been to us a most sorrowful and painful
event, but, when we meet with such friends as
yourself, it in a measure, somehow or other,
abates that mental anguish, and makes the
suffering so much easier to be borne. Considering
the circumstances connected with my
poor brother's fate, it does, indeed, appear a
hard one. He had been away, in all, seven
years; he returned four years ago to see his
family. He was then engaged to a very amiable
young lady. He had been very successful
abroad, and was now returning to fulfil his
sacred vow; he brought all his property with
him in gold uninsured. We heard from him
when the ship stopped at Queenstown, when he
was in the highest of hope, and in a few short
hours afterwards all was washed away.


  Mournful in the deepest degree, but too
sacred for quotation here, were the numerous
references to those miniatures of women, worn
round the necks of rough men (and found there
after death), those locks of hair, those scraps of
letters, those many many slight memorials of
hidden tenderness. One man cast up by the
sea bore about him, printed on a perforated
lace card, the following singular (and unavailing)
charm.

	A BLESSING.

  May the blessing of God await thee. May
the sun of glory shine around thy bed; and
may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness
be ever open to thee. May no sorrow distress
thy days; may no grief disturb thy nights. May
the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the
pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams;
and when length of years makes thee tired of
earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently
closes around thy last sleep of human existence,
may the Angel of God attend thy bed, and take
care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive
one rude blast to hasten on its extinction.


  A sailor had these devices on his right arm.
``Our Saviour on the Cross, the forehead of the
Crucifix and the vesture stained red; on the
lower part of the arm, a man and woman; on
one side of the Cross, the appearance of a half
moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun;
on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on
the left arm, a man and woman dancing, with
an effort to delineate the female's dress, under
which, initials.'' Another seaman ``had, on the
lower part of the right arm, the device of a
sailor and a female the man holding the Union
Jack with a streamer, the folds of which waved
over her head, and the end of it was held in her
hand. On the upper part of the arm, a device
of Our Lord on the Cross, with stars surrounding
the head of the Cross, and one large star on
the side in Indian ink. On the left arm, a flag,
a true lover's knot, a face, and initials.'' This
tattooing was found still plain, below the discoloured
outer surface of a mutilated arm, when
such surface was carefully scraped away with a
knife. It is not improbable that the perpetuation
of this marking custom among seamen may
be referred back to their desire to be identified,
if drowned and flung ashore.

  It was some time before I could sever myself
from the many interesting papers on the table,
and then I broke bread and drank wine with
the kind family before I left them. As I brought
the Coast-guard down, so I took the Postman
back with his leathern wallet, walking-stick,
bugle, and terrier dog. Many a heart-broken
letter had he brought to the Rectory House
within two months; many a benignantly painstaking
answer had he carried back.

  As I rode along, I thought of the many people,
inhabitants of this mother country, who would
make pilgrimages to the little churchyard in the
years to come; I thought of the many people in
Australia who would have an interest in such a
shipwreck, and would find their way here when
they visit the Old World; I thought of the
writers of all the wreck of letters I had left upon
the table; and I resolved to place this little
record where it stands. Convocations, Conferences,
Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will do a
great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven
send they may! but I doubt if they will ever do
their Master's service half so well, in all the time
they last, as the Heavens have seen it done in
this bleak spot upon the rugged coast of Wales.

  Had I lost the friend of my life in the wreck
of the Royal Charter; had I lost my betrothed,
the more than friend of my life; had I lost my
maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy,
had I lost my little child; I would kiss the
hands that worked so busily and gently in the
church, and say, ``None , better could have
touched the form, though it had lain at home.''
I could be sure of it, I could be thankful for it:
I could be content to leave the grave near the
house the good family pass in and out of every
day, undisturbed, in the little churchyard where
so many are so strangely brought together.

  Without the name of the clergyman to whom
---I hope, not without carrying comfort to some
heart at some time---I have referred, my reference
would be as nothing. He is the Reverend
Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, near
Moelfra, Anglesey. His brother is the Reverend
Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos, Alligwy.


	III.

	WAPPING WORKHOUSE.

  My day's no-business beckoning me to
the East-end of London, I had
turned my face to that point of the
metropolitan compass on leaving
Covent Garden, and had got past
the India House, thinking in my
idle manner of Tippoo Sahib and Charles
Lamb, and had got past my little Wooden
Midshipman, after affectionately patting him on
one leg of his knee-shorts for old acquaintance'
sake, and had got past Aldgate Pump, and had
got past the Saracen's Head (with an ignominious
rash of posting-bills disfiguring his swarthy countenance),
and had strolled up the empty yard of
his ancient neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or
Bull, who departed this life I don't know when,
and whose coaches are all gone I don't know
where; and I had come out again into the age
of railways, and I had got past Whitechapel
Church, and was---rather inappropriately for
an Uncommercial Traveller---in the Commercial
Road. Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant
mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying
the huge piles of building belonging to the sugar
refiners, the little masts and vanes in small back-gardens
in back-streets, the neighbouring canals
and docks, the India vans lumbering along their
stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers' shops
where hard-up Mates had pawned so many
sextants and quadrants, that I should have
bought a few cheap if I had the least notion
how to use them, I at last began to file off to
the right, towards Wapping.

  Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping
Old Stairs, or that I was going to look at the
locality, because I believe (for I don't) in the
constancy of the young woman who told her
seagoing lover, to such a beautiful old tune,
that she had ever continued the same since she
gave him the 'baccer-box marked with his name;
I am afraid he usually got the worst of those
transactions, and was frightfully taken in. No,
I was going to Wapping, because an Eastern
police magistrate had said, through the morning
papers, that there was no classification at the
Wapping Workhouse for women, and that it was
a disgrace and a shame, and divers other hard
names, and because I wished to see how the fact
really stood. For, that Eastern police magistrates
are not always the wisest men of the East
may be inferred from their course of procedure
respecting the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing
at St. George's in that quarter: which
is usually to discuss the matter at issue, in a
state of mind betokening the weakest perplexity,
with all parties, concerned and unconcerned,
and, for a final expedient, to consult the complainant
as to what he thinks ought to be done
with the defendant, and take the defendant's
opinion as to what he would recommend to be
done with himself.

  Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself
up as having lost my way, and, abandoning
myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish frame
of mind, relied on predestination to bring me
somehow or other to the place I wanted, if I
were ever to get there. When I had ceased for
an hour or so to take any trouble about the
matter, I found myself on a swing-bridge, looking
down at some dark locks in some dirty
water. Over against me stood a creature remotely
in the likeness of a young man, with a
puffed sallow face, and a figure all dirty and
shiny and slimy, who may have been the
youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames,
or the drowned man about whom there was a
placard on the granite post like a large thimble,
that stood between us.

  I asked this apparition what it called the
place? Unto which it replied, with a ghastly
grin and a sound like gurgling water in its
throat:

  ``Mr. Baker's trap.''

  As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me
on such occasions to be equal to the intellectual
pressure of the conversation, I deeply considered
the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the
apparition---then engaged in hugging and sucking
a horizontal iron bar at the top of the locks. 
Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was
the acting coroner of that neighbourhood.

  ``A common place for suicide,'' said I, looking
down at the locks.

  ``Sue?'' returned the ghost with a stare.
``Yes! And Poll. Likewise Emily. And
Nancy. And Jane;'' he sucked the iron
between each name; ``and all the bileing. 
Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run,
and headers down here, they doos. Always a
headerin' down here, they is. Like one o'clock.''

  ``And at about that hour of the morning, I
suppose?''

  ``Ah!'' said the apparition. ``_They_ ain'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 ain't no Bobby nor General
Cove fur to hear the splash.''

  According to my interpretation of these words,
I was myself a General Cove, or member of the
miscellaneous public. In which modest character
I remarked:

  ``They are often taken out, are they, and
restored?''

  ``I dunno about restored,'' said the apparition,
who, for some occult reason, very much
objected to that word; ``they're carried into the
werkiss, and put into a 'ot bath, and brought
round. But I dunno about restored,'' said the
apparition; ``blow _that!_''---and vanished.

  As it had shown a desire to become offensive,
I was not sorry to find myself alone, especially
as the ``werkiss'' it had indicated with a
twist of its matted head 'was close at hand. So
I left Mr. Baker's terrible trap (baited with a
scum that was like the soapy rinsing of sooty
chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse
gate, where I was wholly unexpected and
quite unknown.

  A very bright and nimble little matron, with a
bunch of keys in her hand, responded to my
request to see the House. I began to doubt
whether the police magistrate was quite right in
his facts, when I noticed her quick active little
figure and her intelligent eyes.

  The traveller (the matron intimated) should
see the worst first. He was welcome to see
everything. Such as it was, there it all was.

  This was the only preparation for our entering
``the Foul wards.'' They were in an old building
squeezed away in a corner of a paved yard,
quite detached from the more modern and spacious
main body of the workhouse. They were
in a building most monstrously behind the time
---a mere series of garrets or lofts, with every
inconvenient and objectionable circumstance in
their construction, and only accessible by steep
and narrow staircases, infamously ill adapted for
the passage up-stairs of the sick, or down-stairs
of the dead.

  Abed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads,
there (for a change, as I understood it)
on the floor, were women in every stage of distress
and disease. None but those who have
attentively observed such scenes can conceive
the extraordinary variety of expression still latent
under the general monotony and uniformity of
colour, attitude, and condition. The form a little
coiled up and turned away, as though it had
turned its back on this world for ever the uninterested
face, at once lead-coloured and yellow,
looking passively upward from the pillow; the
haggard mouth a little dropped, the hand outside
the coverlet, so dull and indifferent, so light,
and yet so heavy; these were on every pallet:
but when I stopped beside a bed, and said ever
so slight a word to the figure lying there, the
ghost of the old character came into the face,
and made the Foul ward as various as the fair
world. No one appeared to care to live, but no
one complained; all who could speak said that
as much was done for them as could be done
there, that the attendance was kind and patient,
that their suffering was very heavy, but they had
nothing to ask for. The wretched rooms were
as clean and sweet as it is possible for such
rooms to be; they would become a pest-house
in a single week, if they were ill kept.''

  I accompanied the brisk matron up another
barbarous staircase, into a better kind of loft,
devoted to the idiotic and imbecile. There was
at least Light in it, whereas the windows in the
former wards had been like sides of school-boys'
bird-cages. There was a strong grating over the
fire here, and holding a kind of state on either
side of the hearth, separated by the breadth of
this grating, were two old ladies in a condition
of feeble dignity, which was surely the very last
and lowest reduction of self-complacency to be
found in this wonderful humanity of ours. They
were evidently jealous of each other, and passed
their whole time (as some people do whose fires
are not grated) in mentally disparaging each
other, and contemptuously watching their neighbours.
One of these parodies on provincial
gentlewomen was extremely talkative, and expressed
a strong desire to attend the service on
Sundays, from which she represented herself to
have derived the greatest interest and consolation
when allowed that privilege. She gossiped
so well, and looked altogether so cheery and
harmless, that I began to think this a case for
the Eastern magistrate, until I found that, on
the last occasion of her attending chapel, she
had secreted a small stick, and had caused some
confusion in the responses by suddenly producing
it and belabouring the congregation.

  So, these two old ladies, separated by the
breadth of the grating---otherwise they would
fly at one another's caps---sat all day long,
suspecting one another, and contemplating a
world of fits. For everybody else in the room
had fits, except the wards-woman; an elderly,
able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip,
and an air of repressing and saving her strength,
as she stood with her hands folded before her,
and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for
catching or holding somebody. This civil personage
(in whom I regretted to identify a reduced
member of my honourable friend Mrs. Gamp's
family) said, ``They has 'em continiwal, sir. 
They drops without no more notice than if they
was coach horses dropped from the moon, sir. 
And, when one drops, another drops, and sometimes
there'll be as many as four or five on'em at
once, dear me, a rolling and a tearin', bless you!
This young woman, now, has 'em dreadful
bad.''

  She turned up this young woman's face with
her hand as she said it. This young woman
was seated on the floor, pondering in the foreground
of the afflicted. There was nothing
repellent either in her face or head. Many,
apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy and
hysteria were about her, but she was said to be
the worst here. When I had spoken to her a
little, she still sat with her face turned up, pondering,
and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone
in upon her.

  ---Whether this young woman, and the rest of
these so sorely troubled, as they sit or lie pondering
in their confused dull way, ever get mental
glimpses, among the motes in the sun-light, of
healthy people and healthy things? Whether
this young woman, brooding like this in the
summer season, ever thinks that somewhere
there are trees and flowers, even mountains and
the great sea? Whether, not to go so far, this
young woman ever has any dim revelation of
that young woman---that young woman who is
not here, and never will come here; who is
courted and caressed, and loved, and has a
husband, and bears children, and lives in a
home, and who never knows what it is to have
this lashing and tearing coming upon her? And
whether this young woman, God help her, gives
herself up then, and drops like a coach horse
from the moon?

  I hardly knew whether the voices of infant
children, penetrating into so hopeless a place,
made a sound that was pleasant or painful to
me. It was something to be reminded that the
weary world was not all aweary, and was ever
renewing itself; but, this young woman was a
child not long ago, and a child not long hence
might be such as she. Howbeit, the active step
and eye of the vigilant matron conducted me
past the two provincial gentlewomen (whose
dignity was ruffled by the children), and into
the adjacent nursery.

  There were many babies here, and more than
one handsome young mother. There were ugly
young mothers also, and sullen young mothers,
and callous young mothers. But, the babies
had not appropriated to themselves any bad expression
yet, and might have been, for anything
that appeared to the contrary, in their soft faces,
Princes Imperial and Princesses Royal. I had
the pleasure of giving a poetical commission to
the baker's man to make a cake with all dispatch,
and toss it into the oven for one red-headed
young pauper and myself, and felt much the
better for it. Without that refreshment I doubt
if I should have been in a condition for ``the
Refractories,'' towards whom my quick little
matron---for whose adaptation to her office I
had by this time conceived a genuine respect---
drew me next, and marshalled me the way that
I was going.

  The Refractories were picking oakum, in a
small room giving on a yard. They sat in line
on a form, with their backs to a window; before
them, a table, and their work. The oldest
Refractory was, say, twenty; youngest Refractory,
say, sixteen. I have never yet ascertained,
in the course of my uncommercial travels, why a
Refractory habit should affect the tonsils and
uvula; but I have always observed that Refractories
of both sexes and every grade, between a
Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one
voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain a
diseased ascendancy.

  ``Five pound, indeed! I hain't agoing fur to
pick five pound,'' said the Chief of the Refractories,
keeping time to herself with her head and
chin. ``More than enough to pick what we
picks now, in sich a place as this, and on wot we
gets here!''

  (This was in acknowledgment of a delicate
intimation that the amount of work was likely
to be increased. It certainly was not heavy
then, for one Refractory had already done her
day's task---it was barely two o'clock---and was
sitting behind it, with a head exactly matching
it.)

  ``A pretty 'Ouse this is, matron, ain't it?''
said Refractor Two, ``where a pleeseman's
called in if a gal says a word!''

  ``And wen you're sent to prison for nothink
or less!'' said the Chief, tugging at her oakum
as if it were the matron's hair. ``But any place
is better than this; that's one thing, and be
thankful!''

  A laugh of Refractories, led by Oakum Head
with folded arms---who originated nothing, but
who was in command of the skirmishers outside
the conversation.

  ``If any place is better than this,'' said my
brisk guide in the calmest manner, ``it is a pity
you left a good place when you had one.''

  ``Ho no, I didn't, matron!'' returned the
Chief with another pull at her oakum, and a
very expressive look at the enemy's forehead. 
``Don't say that, matron, cos it's lies!''

  Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers
again, skirmished, and retired.

  ``And _I_ warn't agoing,'' exclaimed Refractory
Two, ``though I was in one place for as long as
four year---_I_ warn't agoing fur to stop in a place
that warn't fit for me---there! And where the
family weren't 'spectable characters---there!
And where I, fort'nately or hunfort'nately, found
that the people weren't what they pretended to
make theirselves out to be---there! And where
it wasn't their faults, by chalks, if I warn't made
bad and ruinated. Hah!''

  During this speech Oakum Head had again
made a diversion with the skirmishers, and had
again withdrawn.

  The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to
remark that he supposed Chief Refractory and
Number Two 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 ain't 'ad in now,
and we took off agen. You can't open your lips
here without a pleeseman.''

  Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the
skirmishers followed suit.

  ``I'm sure I'd be thankful,'' protested the
Chief, looking sideways at the Uncommercial,
``if I could be got into a place, or got abroad. 
I'm sick and tired of this precious 'Ouse, I am,
with reason.''

  So would be, and so was, Number Two. So
would be, and so was, Oakum Head. So would
be, and so were, Skirmishers. 

  The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting
that he hardly thought it probable that any lady
or gentleman, in want of a likely young domestic
of retiring manners, would be tempted into the
engagement of either of the two leading Refractories,
on her presentation of herself as per
sample.

  ``It ain't no good being nothink else here,''
said the Chief.

  The Uncommercial though it might be worth
trying.

  ``Oh no, it ain't!'' said the Chief.

  ``Not a bit of good,'' said Number Two.

  ``And I'm sure I'd be very thankful to be got
into a place, or got abroad,'' said the Chief.

  ``And so should I,'' said Number Two.
``Truly thankful, I should.''

  Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an
entirely new idea, the mention of which profound
novelty might be naturally expected to
startle her unprepared hearers, that she would
be very thankful to be got into a place, or
got abroad. And, as if she had then said,
``Chorus, ladies!'' all the skirmishers struck up
to the same purpose. We left them, thereupon,
and began a long walk among the women who
were simply old and infirm; but whenever, in
the course of this same walk, I looked out of
any high window that commanded the yard, I
saw Oakum Head with all the other Refractories,
looking out at their low window for me, and
never failing to catch me, the moment I showed
my head.

  In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in
such fables of a golden time as youth, the prime
of life, or a hale old age. In ten minutes all the
lights of womankind seemed to have been blown
out, and nothing in that way to be left this
vault to brag of, but the flickering and expiring
snuffs.

  And what was very curious was, that these
dim old women had one company notion which
was the fashion of the place. Every old woman
who became aware of a visitor, and was not in
bed, hobbled over a form into her accustomed
seat, and became one of a line of dim old women
confronting another line of dim old women
across a narrow table. There was no obligation
whatever upon them to range themselves in this
way; it was their manner of ``receiving.'' As a
rule, they made no attempt to talk to one
another, or to look at the visitor, or to look at
anything, but sat silently working their mouths,
like a sort of poor old Cows. In some of these
wards, it was good to see a few green plants; in
others, an isolated Refractory acting as nurse,
who did well enough in that capacity when
separated from her compeers. Every one of
these wards, day-room, night-room, or both
combined, was scrupulously clean and fresh. I
have seen as many such places as most travellers
in my line, and I never saw one such better
kept.

  Among the bedridden there was great patience,
great reliance on the books under the pillow,
great faith in =God=. All cared for sympathy, but
none much cared to be encouraged with hope
of recovery; on the whole, I should say, it was
considered rather a distinction to have a complication
of disorders, and to be in a worse way
than the rest. From some of the windows the
river could be seen, with all its life and movement:
the day was bright, but I came upon no
one who was looking out.

  In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs
of distinction, like the President and Vice
of the good company, were two old women,
upwards of ninety years of age. The younger
of the two, just turned ninety, was deaf, but not
very, and could easily be made to hear. In her
early time she had nursed a child, who was now
another old woman, more infirm than herself,
inhabiting the very same chamber. She perfectly
understood this when the matron told it, and with
sundry nods and motions of her forefinger, pointed
out the woman in question. The elder of this
pair, ninety-three, seated before all illustrated
newspaper (but not reading it), was a bright-eyed
old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully preserved,
and amazingly conversational. She had
not long lost her husband, and had been in that
place little more than a year. At Boston, in the
State of Massachusetts, this poor creature would
have been individually addressed, would have
been tended in her own room, and would have
had her life gently assimilated to a comfortable
life out of doors. Would that be much to do in
England for a woman who has kept herself out
of a workhouse more than ninety rough long
years? When Britain first, at Heaven's command,
arose, with a great deal of allegorical
confusion, from out the azure main, did her
guardian angels positively forbid it in the Charter
which has been so much besung?

  The object of my journey was accomplished
when the nimble matron had no more to show
me. As I shook hands with her at the gate, I
told her that I thought justice had not used her
very well, and that the wise men of the East
were not infallible.

  Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my
journey home again, concerning those Foul
wards. They ought not to exist; no person of
common decency and humanity can see them,
and doubt it. But what is this Union to do?
The necessary alteration would cost several
thousands of pounds; it has already to support
three workhouses; its inhabitants work hard for
their bare lives, and are already rated for the
relief of the Poor to the utmost extent of
reasonable endurance. One poor parish in this
very Union is rated to the amount of =Five and
Sixpence= in the pound, at the very same time
when the rich parish of St. George's, Hanover
Square, is rated at about =Sevenpence= in the
pound, Paddington at about =Fourpence=, St.
James's, Westminster, at about =Tenpence=! It is
only through the equalisation of Poor Rates that
what is left undone in this wise can be done. 
Much more is left undone, or is ill done, than I
have space to suggest in these notes of a single
uncommercial journey; but, the wise men of the
East, before they can reasonably hold forth
about it, must look to the North and South and
West; let them also, any morning before taking
the seat of Solomon, look into the shops and
dwellings all around the Temple, and first ask
themselves, ``How much more can these poor
people---many of whom keep themselves with
difficulty enough out of the workhouse---bear?''

  I had yet other matter for reflection as I
journeyed home, inasmuch as, before I altogether
departed from the neighbourhood of Mr. Baker's
trap, I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse
of St. George's-in-the-East, and had found
it to be an establishment highly creditable to
those parts, and thoroughly well administered
by a most intelligent master. I remarked in it
an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate
vanity and folly can do. ``This was the Hall
where those old paupers, male and female,
whom I had just seen, met for the Church
service, was it?''---``Yes.''---``Did they sing the
Psalms to any instrument?''---``They would like
to very much; they would have an extraordinary
interest in doing so.''---``And could none be
got?''---``Well, a piano could even have been
got for nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions------''
Ah! better, far better, my Christian
friend in the beautiful garment, to have
left the singing boys alone, and left the multitude
to sing for themselves! You should
know better than I, but I think I have read that
they did so, once upon a time, and that ``when
they had sung an hymn,'' Some one (not in a
beautiful garment) went up 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 remembrance
instead of a thousand.

  ``I beg your pardon, sir,'' he had said, in a
confidential manner, on another occasion, taking
me aside; ``but I have seen better days.''

  ``I am very sorry to hear it.''

  ``Sir, I have a complaint to make against the
master.''

  ``I have no power here, I assure you. And
if I had---''

  ``But allow me, sir, to mention it, as between
yourself and a man who has seen better days,
sir. The master and myself are both masons,
sir, and I make him the sign continually; but,
because I am in this unfortunate position, sir, he
won't give me the 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 subdivided on the ground-floor into mouldy
dens of shops, where an orange and half-a-dozen
nuts, or a pomatum pot, one cake of fancy soap,
and a cigar box are offered for sale, and never
sold, were most ruefully contemplated that evening
by the statue of Shakspeare, with the raindrops
coursing one another down its innocent
Dose. Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices,
with nothing in them (not so much as an ink-stand)
but a model of a theatre before the
curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season,
tickets at reduced prices are kept on sale by
nomadic gentlemen in smeary hats too tall for
them, whom one occasionally seems to have
seen on race-courses, not wholly unconnected
with strips of cloth of various colours and a
rolling ball---those Bedouin establishments,
deserted by the tribe, and tenantless, except
when sheltering in one corner an irregular row
of ginger-beer bottles, which would have made
one shudder on such a night, but for its being
plain that they had nothing in them, shrunk from
the shrill cries of the news-boys at their Exchange
in the kennel of Catherine Street, like
guilty things upon a fearful summons. At the
pipe-shop, in Great Russell Street, the Death's-head
pipes were like theatrical memento mori,
admonishing beholders of the decline of the
playhouse as an Institution. I walked up Bow
Street, disposed to be angry with the shops
there, that were letting out theatrical secrets by
exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of
which diadems and robes of kings are made. I
noticed that some shops which had once been
in the dramatic line, and had struggled out of
it, were not getting on prosperously---like some
actors I have known, who took to business, and
failed to make it answer. In a word, those
streets looked so dull, and, considered as theatrical
streets, so broken and bankrupt, that the
=Found Dead= on the black board at the police-station
might have announced the decease of the
Drama, and the pools of water outside the fire-engine
maker's at the corner of Long Acre might
have been occasioned by his having brought out
the whole of his stock to play upon its last
smouldering ashes.

  And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a
time, the object of my journey was theatrical. 
And yet within half an hour I was in an immense
theatre, capable of holding nearly five thousand
people.

  What Theatre? Her Majesty's? Far better. 
Royal Italian Opera? Far better. Infinitely
superior to the latter for hearing in; infinitely
superior to both for seeing in. To every part
of this Theatre, spacious fire-proof ways of ingress
and egress. For every part of it, convenient
places of refreshment and retiring rooms. 
Everything to eat and drink carefully supervised
as to quality, and sold at an appointed price;
respectable female attendants ready for the commonest
women in the audience; a general air
of consideration, decorum, and supervision, most
commendable; an unquestionably humanising
influence in all the social arrangements of the
place.

  Surely a dear Theatre, then? Because there
were in London (not very long ago) Theatres
with entrance prices up to half-a-guinea a head,
whose arrangements were not half so civilised. 
Surely, therefore, a dear Theatre? Not very
dear. A gallery at threepence, another gallery
at fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls
at a shilling, and a few private boxes at
half-a-crown.

  My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go
into every nook of this great place, and among
every class of the audience assembled in it---
amounting that evening, as I calculated, to
about two thousand and odd hundreds. Magnificently
lighted by a firmament of sparkling
chandeliers, the building was ventilated to perfection.
My sense of smell, without being particularly
delicate, has been so offended in some
of the commoner places of public resort, that I
have often been obliged to leave them when I
have made an uncommercial journey expressly
to look on. The air of this Theatre was fresh,
cool, and wholesome. To help towards this
end, very sensible precautions had been used,
ingeniously combining the experience of hospitals
and railway stations. Asphalt pavements
substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls
of glazed brick and tile---even at the back of the
boxes---for plaster and paper, no benches stuffed,
and no carpeting or baize used; a cool material,
with a light glazed surface, being the covering of
the seats.

  These various contrivances are as well considered
in the place in question as if it were a
Fever Hospital; the result is, that it is sweet
and healthful. It has been constructed, from
the ground to the roof, with a careful reference
to sight and sound in every corner; the result
is, that its form is beautiful, and that the appearance
of the audience, as seen from the proscenium
---with every face in it commanding the stage,
and the whole so admirably raked and turned to
that centre, that a hand can scarcely move in
the great assemblage without the movement
being seen from thence---is highly remarkable
in its union of vastness and compactness. The
stage itself, and all its appurtenances of machinery,
cellarage, height, and breadth, are on a
scale more like the Scala at Milan, or the San
Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris,
than any notion a stranger would be likely to
form of the Britannia Theatre at Hoxton, a mile
north of St. Luke's Hospital in the Old Street
Road, London. The Forty Thieves might be
played here, and every thief ride his real horse,
and the disguised captain bring in his oil jars on
a train of real camels, and nobody be put out of
the way. This really extraordinary place is the
achievement of one man's enterprise, and was
erected on the ruins of an inconvenient old
building in less than five months, at a round
cost of five-and-twenty thousand pounds. To
dismiss this part of my subject, and still to
render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly
his due, I must add that his sense of the responsibility
upon him to make the best of his audience,
and to do his best for them, is a highly agreeable
sign of these times.

  As the spectators at this Theatre, for a reason
I will presently show, were the object of my
journey, I entered on the play of the night as
one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by
looking about me at my neighbours. We were
a motley assemblage of people, and we had a
good many boys and young men among us; we
had also many girls and young women. To
represent, however, that we did not include a
very great number and a very fair proportion of
family groups, would be to make a gross misstatement.
Such groups were to be seen in all
parts of the house; in the boxes and stalls, particularly,
they were composed of persons of very
decent appearance, who had many children with
them. Among our dresses there were most
kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much
fustian and corduroy that was neither sound nor
fragrant. The caps of our young men were
mostly of a limp character, and we who wore
them, slouched, high-shouldered, into our places
with our hands in our pockets, and occasionally
twisted our cravats about our necks like eels,
and occasionally tied them down our breasts
like links of sausages, and occasionally had a
screw in our hair over each cheek bone with a
slight Thief flavour in it. Besides prowlers and
idlers, we were mechanics, dock labourers, costermongers,
petty tradesmen, small clerks, milliners,
staymakers, shoe-binders, slop-workers, poor workers
in a hundred highways and by-ways. Many of
us---on the whole, the majority---were not at all
clean, and not at all choice in our lives or conversation.
But we had all come together in a
place where our convenience was well consulted,
and where we were well looked after, to enjoy
an evening's entertainment in common. We
were not going to lose any part of what we had
paid for through anybody's caprice, and as a
community we had a character to lose. So, we
were closely attentive, and kept excellent order;
and let the man or boy who did otherwise
instantly get out from this place, or we would
put him out with the greatest expedition.

  We began at half-past six with a pantomime---
with a pantomime so long, that, before it was
over, I felt as if I had been travelling for six
weeks---going to India, say, by the Overland
Mail. The Spirit of Liberty was the principal
personage in the Introduction, and the Four
Quarters of the World came out of the globe,
glittering, and discoursed with the Spirit, who
sang charmingly. We were delighted to understand
that there was no liberty anywhere but
among ourselves, and we highly applauded the
agreeable fact. In an allegorical way, which did
as well as any other way, we and the Spirit of
Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins,
and found them at war with a potentate who
called in to his aid their old arch enemy Rust,
and who would have got the better of them if the
Spirit of Liberty had not, in the nick of time,
transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon,
Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole
family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably
stout father and three spineless sons. We all
knew what was coming when the Spirit of
Liberty addressed the king with a big face,
and his Majesty backed to the side-scenes, and
began untying himself behind, with his big face
all on one side. Our excitement at that crisis
was great, and our delight unbounded. After
this era in our existence, we went through all
the incidents of a pantomime; it was not by any
means a savage pantomime, in the way of burning
or boiling people, or throwing them out of
window, or cutting them up; was often very
droll; was always liberally got up, and
presented. I noticed that the people who kept
the shops, and who represented the passengers
in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no conventionality
in them, but were unusually like the
real thing---from which I infer that you may take
that audience in (if you wish to) concerning
Knights and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or suchlike,
but they are not to be done as to anything
in the streets. I noticed, also, that when two
young men, dressed in exact imitation of the
eel-and-sausage-cravated portion of the audience,
were chased by policemen, and, finding themselves
in danger of being caught, dropped so
suddenly as to oblige the policeman 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 Melodrama.
Throughout the evening I was pleased
to observe Virtue quite as triumphant as she
usually is out of doors, and, indeed, I thought
rather more so. We all agreed (for the time)
that honesty was the best policy, and we were as
hard as iron upon Vice, and we wouldn't hear
of Villainy getting on in the world---no, not on
any consideration whatever.

  Between the pieces, we almost all of us went
out and refreshed. Many of us went the length
of drinking beer at the bar of the neighbouring
public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds
of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer at the
refreshment bars established for us in the
Theatre. The sandwich---as substantial as was
consistent with portability, and as cheap as,
possible---we hailed as one of our greatest institutions.
It forced its way among us at all stages
of the entertainment, and we were always delighted
to see it; its adaptability to the varying,
moods of our nature was surprising; we could
never weep so comfortably as when our tears
fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so
heartily as when we choked with sandwich;
Virtue never looked so beautiful, or Vice so deformed,
as when we paused, sandwich in hand,
to consider what would come of that resolution
of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence in
flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped
stockings. When the curtain fell for the night,
we still fell back upon sandwich, to help us
through the rain and mire, and home to bed.

  This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday
night. Being Saturday night, I had accomplished
but the half of my uncommercial journey;
for its object was to compare the play on Saturday
evening with the preaching in the same
Theatre on Sunday evening.

  Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on
the similarly damp and muddy Sunday evening,
I returned to this Theatre. I drove up to the
entrance (fearful of being late, or I should have
come on foot), and found myself in a large crowd
of people, who, I am happy to state, were put
into excellent spirits by my arrival. Having
nothing to look at but the mud and the closed
doors, they looked at me, and highly enjoyed
the comic spectacle. My modesty inducing me
to draw off, some hundreds of yards, into a dark
corner, they at once forgot me, and applied
themselves to their former occupation of looking
at the mud and looking in at the closed doors:
which, being of grated iron-work, allowed the
lighted passage within to be seen. They were
chiefly people of respectable appearance, odd
and impulsive as most crowds are, and making
a joke of being there as most crowds do.

  In the dark corner I might have sat a long
while, but that a very obliging passer-by informed
me that the Theatre was already full, and that
the people whom I saw in the street were all
shut out for want of room. After that, I lost no
time in worming myself into the building, and
creeping to a place in a proscenium box that had
been kept for me.

  There must have been full four thousand
people present. Carefully estimating the pit
alone, I could bring it out as holding little less
than fourteen hundred. Every part of the house
was well filled, and I had not found it easy to
make my way along the back of the boxes to
where I sat. The chandeliers in the ceiling
were lighted; there was no light on the stage;
the orchestra was empty. The green curtain
was down, and, packed pretty closely on chairs
on the small space of stage before it, were some
thirty gentlemen, and two or three ladies. In
the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit covered
with red baize, was the presiding minister. The
kind of rostrum he occupied will be very well
understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up fire-place
turned towards the audience, with a gentleman
in a black surtout standing in the stove, and
leaning forward over the mantel-piece.

  A portion of Scripture was being read when I
went in. It was followed by a discourse, to
which the congregation listened with most
exemplary attention and uninterrupted silence
and decorum. My own attention comprehended
both the auditory and the speaker, and shall
turn to both in this recalling of the scene,
exactly as it did at the time.

  ``A very difficult thing,'' I thought when the
discourse began, ``to speak appropriately to so
large an audience, and to speak with tact. 
Without it, better not to speak at all. Infinitely
better to read the New Testament well, and to
let _that_ speak. In this congregation there is
indubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any power
short of genius can touch it as one, and make it
answer as one.''

  I could not possibly say to myself, as the discourse
proceeded, that the minister was a good
speaker. I could not possibly say to myself
that he expressed an understanding of the general
mind and character of his audience. There was
a supposititious working-man introduced into the
homily, to make supposititious objections to our
Christian religion and be reasoned down, who
was not only a very disagreeable person, but
remarkably unlike life---very much more unlike
it than anything I had seen in the pantomime. 
The native independence of character this artisan
was supposed to possess was represented by a
suggestion of a dialect that I certainly never
heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a
coarse swing of voice and manner anything but
agreeable to his feelings, I should conceive, considered
in the light of a portrait, and as far away
from the fact as a Chinese Tartar. There was a
model pauper introduced in like manner, who
appeared to me to be the most intolerably
arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself
in absolute want and dire necessity of a
course of Stone Yard. For, how did this pauper
testify to his having received the gospel of
humility? A gentleman met him in the workhouse,
and said (which I myself really thought
good-natured of him), ``Ah, John! I am sorry
to see you here. I am sorry to see you so
poor.'' ``Poor, sir!'' replied that man, drawing
himself up; ``I am the son of a Prince! _My_
father is the King of Kings. _My_ father is the
Lord of Lords. _My_ father is the Ruler of all
the Princes of the Earth!'' &c. And this was
what all the preacher's fellow-sinners might come
to, if they would embrace this blessed book---
which I must say it did some violence to my
own feelings of reverence to see held out at
arm's length at frequent intervals, and soundingly
slapped, like a slow lot at a sale. Now, could I
help asking myself the question, whether the
mechanic before me, who must detect the
preacher as being wrong about the visible manner
of himself and the like of himself, and about
such a noisy lip-server as that pauper, might not,
most unhappily for the usefulness of the occasion,
doubt that preacher's being right about things
not visible to human senses?

  Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address
such an audience continually as ``fellow-sinners?''
Is it not enough to be fellow-creatures, born
yesterday, suffering and striving to-day, dying
to-morrow? By our common humanity, my
brothers and sisters, by our common capacities
for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter
and our common tears, by our common aspiration
to reach something better than ourselves,
by our common tendency to believe in something
good, and to invest whatever we love or
whatever we lose with some qualities that are
superior to our own failings and weaknesses as
we know them in our own poor hearts---by these,
Hear me!---Surely, it is enough to be fellow-creatures.
Surely, it includes the other designation,
and some touching meanings over and
above.

  Again. There was a personage introduced
into the discourse (not an absolute novelty, to
the best of my remembrance of my reading),
who had been personally known to the preacher,
and had been quite a Crichton in all the ways
of philosophy, but had been an infidel. Many
a time had the preacher talked with him on that
subject, and many a time had he failed to convince
that intelligent man. But he fell ill, and
died, and before he died he recorded his conversion---
in words which the preacher had taken
down, my fellow-sinners, and would read to you
from this piece of paper. I must confess that to
me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they
did not appear particularly edifying. I thought
their tone extremely selfish, and I thought they
had a spiritual vanity in them which was of the
before-mentioned refractory pauper's family.

  All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere,
but the slang and twang of the conventicle---
as bad in its way as that of the House of
Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it
---should be studiously avoided under such circumstances
as I describe. The avoidance was
not complete on this occasion. Nor was it quite
agreeable to see the preacher addressing his pet
``points'' to his backers on the stage, as if appealing
to those disciples to show him up, and
testify to the multitude that each of those points
was a clincher.

  But, in respect of the large Christianity of his
general tone; of his renunciation of all priestly
authority; of his earnest and reiterated assurance
to the people that the commonest among
them could work out their own salvation if they
would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully following
Our Saviour, and that they needed the
mediation of no erring man; in these particulars,
this gentleman deserved all praise. Nothing
could be better than the spirit, or the plain emphatic
words of his discourse in these respects. 
And it was a most significant and encouraging
circumstance that whenever he struck that chord,
or whenever he described anything which Christ
himself had done, the array of faces before him
was very much more earnest, and very much
more expressive of emotion, than at any other
time.

  And now I am brought to the fact, that the
lowest part of the audience of the previous night
_was not there._ There is no doubt about it. 
There was no such thing in that building, that
Sunday evening. I have been told, since, that
the lowest part of the audience of the Victoria
Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services.
I have been very glad to hear it, but, on
this occasion of which I write, the lowest part
of the usual audience of the Britannia Theatre
decidedly and unquestionably stayed away. 
When I first took my seat and looked at the
house, my surprise at the change in its occupants
was as great as my disappointment. To
the most respectable class of the previous evening
was added a great number of respectable
strangers attracted by curiosity, and drafts from
the regular congregations of various chapels. It
was impossible to fail in identifying the character
of these last, and they were very numerous. I
came out in a strong, slow tide of them setting
from the boxes. Indeed, while the discourse
was in progress, the respectable character of the
auditory was so manifest in their appearance,
that when the minister addressed a supposititious
``outcast,'' one really felt a little impatient of it,
as a figure of speech not justified by anything the
eye could discover.

  The time appointed for the conclusion of the
proceedings was eight o'clock. The address
having lasted until full that time, and it being the
custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher
intimated in a few sensible words that the clock
had struck the hour, and that those who desired
to go before the hymn was sung, could go now,
without giving offence. No one stirred. The
hymn was then sung, in good time and tune
and unison, and its effect was very striking. A
comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed the
throng, and in seven or eight minutes there was
nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud of
dust.

  That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are
good things, I do not doubt. Nor do I doubt
that they will work lower and lower down in the
social scale, if those who preside over them will
be very careful on two heads: firstly, not to disparage
the places in which they speak, or the
intelligence of their hearers; secondly, not to
set themselves in antagonism to the natural inborn
desire of the mass of mankind to recreate
themselves and to be amused.

  There is a third head, taking precedence of all
others, to which my remarks on the discourse I
heard have tended. In the New Testament there
is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable
by man, and there are the terse models
for all prayer and for all preaching. As to the
models, imitate them, Sunday preachers---else
why are they there, consider? As to the history,
tell it. Some people cannot read, some people
will not read, many people (this especially holds
among the young and ignorant) find it hard to
pursue the verse form in which the book is presented
to them, and imagine that those breaks
imply gaps and want of continuity. Help them
over that first stumbling-block by setting forth
the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting
it. You will never preach so well, you
will never move them so profoundly, you will
never send them away with half so much to
think of. Which is the better interest: Christ's
choice of twelve poor men to help in those
merciful wonders among the poor and rejected;
or the pious bullying of a whole Union-full of
paupers? What is your changed philosopher to
wretched me, peeping in at the door out of the
mud of the streets and of my life, when you
have the widow's son to tell me about, the ruler's
daughter, the other figure at the door when the
brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of
the two ran to the mourner, crying, ``The Master
is come, and calleth for thee?''---Let the preacher
who will thoroughly forget himself, and remember
no individuality but one, and no eloquence
but one, stand up before four thousand men and
women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday
night, recounting that narrative to them as
fellow-creatures, and he shall see a sight!


	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 what are we all about, when
poor Mercantile Jack is having his brains
slowly knocked out by pennyweights, aboard
the brig Beelzebub, or the bark Bowie-knife---
when he looks his last at that infernal craft, with
the first officer's iron boot-heel in his remaining
eye, or with his dying body towed overboard in
the ship's wake, while the cruel wounds in it do
``the multitudinous seas incarnadine?''

  Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if,
aboard the brig Beelzebub or the bark Bowie-knife,
the first officer did half the damage to
cotton that he does to men, there would presently
arise from both sides of the Atlantic so
vociferous an invocation of the sweet little
cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch
on the markets that pay, that such vigilant
cherub would, with a winged sword, have that
gallant officer's organ of destructiveness out of
his head in the space of a flash of lightning?

  If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable
of men, for I believe it with all my
soul.

  This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays
at Liverpool, keeping watch on poor Mercantile
Jack. Alas for me! I have long outgrown
the state of sweet little cherub; but there
I was, and there Mercantile Jack was, and very
busy he was, and very cold he was; the snow
yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and
the north-east winds snipping off the tops of the
little waves in the Mersey, and rolling them
into hail-stones to pelt him with. Mercantile
Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather: as he
mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack! He was
girded to ships' masts and funnels of steamers,
like a forester to a great oak, scraping and painting;
he was lying out on yards, furling sails that
tried to beat him off; he was dimly discernible
up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and
splicing; he was faintly audible down in holds,
stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding
round and round at capstans melodious, monotonous,
and drunk; he was of a diabolical aspect,
with coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing
decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt
open to the blast, though it was sharper than
the knife in his leathern girdle; he was looking
over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing
by at the shoot of the Cunard steamer, off
to-morrow, as the stocks-in-trade of several
butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers poured
down into the ice-house; he was coming aboard
of other vessels with his kit in a tarpaulin bag,
attended by plunderers to the very last moment
of his shore-going existence. As though his
senses, when released from the uproar of the
elements, were under obligation to be confused
by other turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels,
a clattering of hoofs, a clashing of iron, a jolting
of cotton and hides and casks and timber, an
incessant deafening disturbance on the quays,
that was the very madness of sound. And as,
in the midst of it, he stood swaying about, with
his hair blown all manner of wild ways, rather
crazedly taking leave of his plunderers, all the
rigging in the docks was shrill in the wind, and
every little steamer coming and going across the
Mersey was sharp in its blowing off, and every
buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down,
as if there was a general taunting chorus of
``Come along, Mercantile Jack! Ill lodged, ill
fed, ill used, hocussed, entrapped, anticipated,
cleaned out. Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack,
and be tempest-tossed till you are drowned!''

  The uncommercial transaction which had
brought me and Jack together was this:---I had
entered the Liverpool police force, that I might
have a look at the various unlawful traps which
are every night set for Jack. As my term of
service in that distinguished corps was short,
and as my personal bias in the capacity of one
of its members has ceased, no suspicion will
attach to my evidence that it is an admirable
force. Besides that it is composed, without
favour, of the best men that can be picked,
it is directed by an unusual intelligence. Its
organisation against Fires I take to be much
better than the metropolitan system, and in all
respects it tempers its remarkable vigilance
with a still more remarkable discretion.

  Jack had knocked off work in the docks some
hours, and I had taken, for purposes of identification,
a photograph likeness of a thief, in the
portrait-room at our head police-office (on the
whole, he seemed rather complimented by the
proceeding), and I had been on police parade,
and the small hand of the clock was moving on
to ten, when I took up my lantern to follow
Mr. Superintendent to the traps that were set
for Jack. In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as anybody
might, a tall, well-looking, well-setup man
of a soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a good
chest, and a resolute but not by any means ungentle,
face. He carried in his hand a plain
black walking-stick of hard wood: and whenever
and wherever, at any after-time of the night,
he struck it on the pavement with a ringing
sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the
darkness, and a policeman. To this remarkable
stick I refer an air of mystery and magic which
pervaded the whole of my perquisition among
the traps that were set for Jack.

  We began by diving into the obscurest streets
and lanes of the port. Suddenly pausing in a
flow of cheerful discourse before a dead wall,
apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent
struck upon the ground, and the wall
opened, and shot out, with military salute of
hand to temple, two policemen---not in the least
surprised themselves, not in the least surprising
Mr. Superintendent.

  ``All right, Sharpeye?''

  ``All right, sir.''

  ``All right, Trampfoot?''

  ``All right, sir.''

  ``Is Quickear there?''

  ``Here am I, sir.''

  ``Come with us.''

  ``Yes, sir.''

  So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent
and I went next, and Trampfoot and
Quickear marched as rear-guard. 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 property behind it---instantly insinuated
himself, to prevent its being shut.

  Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that
were set for Jack, But Jack did not happen to
be in any of them. They were all such miserable
places that really, Jack, if I were you, I
would give them a wider berth. In every trap
somebody was sitting over a fire waiting for Jack. 
Now, it was a crouching old woman, like the
picture of the Norwood Gipsy in the old six-penny
dream-books; now, it was a crimp of the
male sex, in a checked shirt and without a coat,
reading a newspaper; now, it was a man crimp
and a woman crimp, who always introduced
themselves as united in holy matrimony; now,
it was Jack's delight, his (un)lovely Nan; but
they were all waiting for Jack, and were all
frightfully disappointed to see us.

  ``Who have you got up-stairs here?'' says
Sharpeye generally. (In the Move-on tone.)

  ``Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!''
(Irish feminine reply.)

 ``What do you mean by nobody? Didn't I
hear a woman's step go up-stairs when my hand
was on the latch?''

  ``Ah! sure, thin, you're right, surr, I forgot
her. 'Tis on'y Betsy White, surr. Ah! you
know Betsy, surr. Come down, Betsy darlin',
and say the gintlemin.''

  Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the
steep staircase is in the room) with a forcible
expression in her protesting face of an intention
to compensate herself for the present trial by
grinding Jack finer than usual when he does
come. Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr. Superintendant,
and says, as if the subject of his remarks
were wax-work:

 ``One of the worst, sir, this house is. This
woman has been indicted three times. This
man's a regular bad one likewise. His real
name is Pegg. Gives himself out as Waterhouse.''

  ``Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me
back, thin, since I was in this house, bee the
good Lard!'' says the woman.

  Generally, the man says nothing at all, but
becomes exceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends
to read his paper with rapt attention. 
Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation,
with a look, to the prints and pictures that are
invariably numerous on the walls. Always
Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on
the door-step. In default of Sharpeye being
acquainted with the exact individuality of any
gentleman encountered, one of these two is sure
to proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff
spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows
himself to be Fogle; or that Canlon is Walker's
brother against whom there was not sufficient
evidence; or that the man who says he never
was at sea since he was a boy, came ashore
from a voyage last Thursday, or sails 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.

  The vocalisation was taking place in a long
low room up-stairs; at one end, an orchestra of
two performers, and a small platform; across
the room, a series of open pews for Jack, with
an aisle down the middle; at the other end, a
larger pew than the rest, entitled =Snug=, and reserved
for mates and similar good company. 
About the room, some amazing coffee-coloured
pictures varnished an inch deep, and some
stuffed creatures in cases, dotted among the
audience, in 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 aboard. A sharp and watchful
man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, with
tight lips, and a complete edition of Cocker's
arithmetic in each eye. Attended to his business
himself, he said. Always on the spot. 
When he heard of talent, trusted nobody's
account of it, but went off by rail to see it. If
true talent, engaged it. Pounds a week for
talent---four pound, five pound. Banjo Bones
was undoubted talent. Hear this instrument
that was going to play---it was real talent! In
truth, it was very good; a kind of piano-accordion,
played by a young girl of a delicate
prettiness of face, figure, and dress, that made
the audience look coarser. She sang to the instrument,
too; first, a song about village bells,
and how they chimed; then a song about how
I went to sea; winding up with an imitation of
the bagpipes, which Mercantile Jack seemed to
understand much the best. A good girl, said
Mr. Licensed Victualler. Kept herself select. 
Sat in Snug, not listening to the blandishments
of Mates. Lived with mother. Father dead. 
Once a merchant well to do, but over-speculated
himself. On delicate inquiry as to salary paid
for item of talent under consideration, Mr.
Victualler's pounds dropped suddenly to shillings---
still, it was a very comfortable thing for
a young person like that, you know; she only
went on six times a night, and was only required
to be there from six at night to twelve. What
was more conclusive was, Mr. Victualler's assurance
that he ``never allowed any language,
and never suffered any disturbance.'' Sharpeye
confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed
was the best proof of it that could have
been cited. So, I came to the conclusion that
poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid
he does) much worse than trust himself to Mr.
Victualler, and pass his evenings here.

  But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent---
said Trampfoot, receiving us in the street
again with military salute---for Dark Jack. True,
Trampfoot. Ring the wonderful stick, rub the
wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits of the
stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies.

  There was no disappointment in the matter
of Dark Jack; _he_ was producible. The Genii
set us down in the little first floor of a little
public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close
atmosphere, were Dark Jack, and Dark Jack's
delight, his _white_ unlovely Nan, sitting against
the wall all round the room. More than that:
Dark Jack's delight was the least unlovely Nan
both morally and physically, that
night.

  As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting
among the company, Quickear suggested, why
not strike up? ``Ah, la'ads!'' said a negro
sitting by the door, ``gib the jebblem a darnse. 
Tak' yah pardlers, jebblem, for 'um =quad=-rill.''

  This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a
dress half Greek and half English. As master
of the ceremonies, he called all the figures, and
occasionally addressed himself parenthetically---
after this manner. When he was very loud I
use capitals.

  ``Now den! Hoy! =One=. Right and left.
(Put a steam on, gib 'um powder.) =La=-dies'
chail. =Bal=-loon say. Lemonade! Two. =Ad=-warnse
and go back (gib 'ell a breakdown,
shake it out o' yerselbs, keep a movil). =Swing=-corners,
=Bal=-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!)
=Three=. =Gent= come for'ard with a lady and
go back, hoppersite come for'ard and do what
yer can. (Aeiohoy!) =Bal=-loon say, and leetle
lemonade (Dat hair nigger by 'um fire-place
'hind 'a time, shake it out o' yerselbs, gib 'ell a
breakdown.) Now den! Hoy! =Four=! Lemonade.
=Bal=-loon say, and swing. =Four= ladies
meets in 'um middle, =four= gents goes round'um
ladies, =four= gents passes out under 'um ladies'
arms, =swing=---and Lemonade till 'a moosic can't
play no more! (Hoy, Hoy!)''

  The male dancers were all blacks, and one
was an unusually powerful man of six feet three
or four. The sound of their flat feet on the
floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as
their faces were unlike white faces. They toed
and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double-shuffled,
covered the buckle, and beat
the time out, rarely, dancing with a great show
of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured
enjoyment that was very prepossessing. They
generally kept together, these poor fellows, said
Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a disadvantage
singly, and liable to slights in the
neighbouring streets. But, if I were Light Jack,
I should be very slow to interfere oppressively
with Dark Jack, for, whenever I have had to do
with him, I have found him a simple and gentle
fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked his
friendly permission to leave him restoration of
beer, in wishing him good night, and thus it fell
out that the last words I heard him say, as I
blundered down the worn stairs, were, ``Jebblem's
elth! Ladies drinks fust!''

  The night was now well on into the morning,
but for miles and hours we explored a strange
world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but
everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for
Jack. This exploration was among a labyrinth
of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries,
kept in wonderful order by the police, and in
much better order than by the corporation: the
want of gas-light in the most dangerous and infamous
of these places being quite unworthy of
so spirited a town. I need describe but two or
three of the houses in which Jack was waited
for as specimens of the rest. Many we attained
by noisome passages so profoundly dark, that
we felt our way with our hands. Not one of
the whole number we visited was without its
show of prints and ornamental crockery; the
quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves
and in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms,
indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an
extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate
so much of that bait in his traps.

  Among such garniture, in one front parlour in
the dead of the night, four women were sitting
by a fire. One of them had a male child in her
arms. On the stool among them was a swarthy
youth with a guitar, who had evidently stopped
playing when our footsteps were heard.

  ``Well! how do _you_ do?'' says Mr. Superintendent,
looking about him.

  ``Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are
going to treat us ladies, now you have come to
see us.''

  ``Order there!'' says Sharpeye.

  ``None of that!'' says Quickear.

  Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself,
``Meggisson's lot, this is. And a bad 'un!''

  ``Well!'' says Mr. Superintendent, laying his
hand on the shoulder of the swarthy youth,
``and who's this?''

  ``Antonio, sir.''

  ``And what does _he_ do here?''

  ``Come to give us a bit of music. No harm
in that, I suppose?''

  ``A young foreign sailor?''

  ``Yes. He's a Spaniard. You're a Spaniard,
ain't you, Antonio?''

  ``Me Spanish.''

  ``And he don't know a word you say, not he;
not if you was to talk to him till doomsday.''
(Triumphantly, as if it redounded to the credit
of the house.)

  ``Will he play something?''

  ``Oh yes, if you like! Play something,
Antonio. _You_ ain't ashamed to play something;
are you?''

  The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of
a tune, and three of the women keep time to it
with their heads, and the fourth with the child. 
If Antonio has brought any money in with him,
I am afraid he will never take it out, and it even
strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be in
a bad way. But, the look of the young man
and the tinkling of the instrument so change the
place in a moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote,
that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until he
leaves off.

  I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather
to my uncommercial confusion) that I occasioned
a difficulty in this establishment, by having taken
the child in my arms. For, on my offering, to
restore it to a ferocious joker not unstimulated
by rum, who claimed to be its mother, that unnatural
parent put her hands behind her, and
declined to accept it; backing into the fire-place,
and very shrilly declaring, regardless of
remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed
it to be Law, that whoever took a child from its
mother of his own will was bound to stick to it. 
The uncommercial sense of being in a rather
ridiculous position, with the poor little child
beginning to be frightened, was relieved by my
worthy friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot
who, laying hands on the article as it were a
bottle, passed it on to the nearest woman, and
bade her ``take hold of that.'' As we came out
the Bottle was passed to the ferocious joker,
and they all sat down as before, including
Antonio and the guitar. It was clear that there
was no such thing as a nightcap to this baby's
head, and that even he never went to bed, but
was always kept up---and would grow up, kept
up---waiting for Jack.

  Later still in the night we came (by the court
where the man was murdered, and by the other
court across the street, into which his body was
dragged) to another parlour in another Entry,
where several people were sitting round a fire in
just the same way. It was a dirty and offensive
place, with some ragged clothes drying in it;
but there was a high shelf over the entrance-door
(to be out of the reach of marauding hands,
possibly), with two large white loaves on it, and
a great piece of Cheshire cheese.

  ``Well!'' says Mr. Superintendent, with a
comprehensive look all round. ``How do _you_
do?''

  ``Not much to boast of, sir.'' From the
curtsying woman of the house. ``This is my
good man, sir.''

  ``You are not registered as a common Lodging
House?''

  ``No, sir.''

  Sharpeye (in the move-on tone) puts in the
pertinent inquiry, ``Then why ain't you?''

  ``Ain't got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,'' rejoin
the woman and my good man together,
``but our own family.''

  ``How many are you in family?''

  The woman takes time to count, under the
pretence of coughing, and adds, as one scant of
breath, ``Seven, sir.''

  But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who
knows all about it, says:

  ``Here's a young man here makes eight, who
ain't of your family?''

  ``No, Mr. Sharpeye, he's a weekly lodger.''

  ``What does he do for a living?''

  The young man here takes the reply upon
himself, and shortly answers, ``Ain't got nothing
to do.''

  The young man here is modestly brooding
behind a damp apron pendent from a clothes-line.
As I glance at him I become---but I don't
know why---vaguely reminded of Woolwich,
Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover. When we
get out, my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye,
addressing Mr. Superintendent, says:

  ``You noticed that young man, sir, in at
Darby's?''

  ``Yes. What is he?''

  ``Deserter, sir.''

  Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that, when we
have done with his services, he will step back
and take that young man. Which in course of
time he does; feeling at perfect ease about
finding him, and knowing for a moral certainty
that nobody in that region will be gone to bed.

  Later still in the night, we came to another
parlour up a step or two from the street, which
was very cleanly, neatly, even tastefully, kept,
and in which, set forth on a draped chest of
drawers masking the staircase, was such a profusion
of ornamental crockery, that it would
have furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a
fair. It backed up a stout old lady---=Hogarth=
drew her exact likeness more than once---and a
boy who was carefully writing a copy in a copy-book.

  ``Well, ma'am, how do _you_ do?''

  Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentleman,
sweetly. Charmingly, charmingly. And overjoyed
to see us!

  ``Why, this is a strange time for this boy to,
be writing his copy. In the middle of the
night!''

  ``So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your
welcome faces, and send ye prosperous, but he
has been to the Play with a young friend for his
diversion, and he combinates his improvement
with entertainment, by doing his school-writing
afterwards, God be good to ye!''

  The copy admonished human nature to subjugate
the fire of every fierce desire. One might
have thought it recommended stirring the fire,
the old lady so approved it. There she sat,
rosily beaming at the copy-book and the boy,
and invoking showers of blessings on our heads,
when we left her in the middle of the night,
waiting for Jack.

  Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous.
room with an earth floor, into which the refuse
scum of an alley trickled. The stench of this
habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty
of it diseased and dire. Yet here, again, was.
visitor or lodger---a man sitting before the fire,
like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently
not distasteful to the mistress's niece, who was
also before the fire. The mistress herself had
the misfortune of being in gaol.

  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
dust-heap on the ground. Adjured not to disturb
the child, she lets it drop again. Thus we
find at last that there is one child in the world
of Entries who goes to bed---if this be bed.

  Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they
going to work at those bags?

  How long? First Witch repeats. Going to
have supper presently. See the cups and saucers,
and the plates.

  ``Late? Ay! But we has to 'arn our supper
afore we eats it!'' Both the other witches
repeat this after First Witch, and take the Uncommercial
measurement with their eyes, as for
a charmed winding-sheet. Some grim discourse
ensues, referring to the mistress of the cave, who
will be released from gaol to-morrow. Witches
pronounce Trampfoot ``right there,'' when he
deems it a trying distance for the old lady to walk;
she shall be fetched by niece in a spring cart.

  As I took a parting look at First Witch in
turning away, the red marks round her eyes
seemed to have already grown larger, and she
hungrily and thirstily looked out beyond me into
the dark doorway, to see if Jack were there. 
For, Jack came even here, and the mistress had
got into gaol 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 Seamen's Homes (not
overdone with strictness), and improved dock
regulations, giving Jack greater benefit of fire
and candle aboard ship, through my mind's
wandering among the vermin I had seen. Afterwards
the same vermin ran all over my sleep. 
Evermore, when on a breezy day I see Poor
Mercantile Jack running into port with a fair
wind under all sail, I shall think of the unsleeping
host of devourers who never go to bed, and
are always in their set traps waiting for him.


	VI.

	REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS.

  In the late high winds I was blown to
a great many places---and, indeed,
wind or no wind, I generally have
extensive transactions on hand in
the article of Air---but I have not
been blown to any English place
lately, and I very seldom have blown
to any English place in my life, where
I could get anything good to eat and
drink in five minutes, or where, if I sought it,
I was received with a welcome.

  This is a curious thing to consider. But before
(stimulated by my own experiences and the
representations of many fellow-travellers of every
uncommercial and commercial degree) I consider
it further, I must utter a passing word of
wonder concerning high winds.

  I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow
so hard at Walworth. I cannot imagine what
Walworth has done to bring such windy punishment
upon itself, as I never fall to find recorded
in the newspapers when the wind has
blown at all hard. Brixton seems to have something
on its conscience; Peckham suffers more
than a virtuous Peckham might be supposed to
deserve; the howling neighbourhood of Deptford
figures largely in the accounts of the ingenious
gentlemen who are out in every wind
that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind
that blows no good; but, there can hardly be
any Walworth left by this time. It must surely
be blown away. I have read of more chimney-stacks
and house-copings coming down with
terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred
edifices being nearly (not quite) blown out to
sea from the same accursed locality, than I have
read of practised thieves with the appearance
and manners of gentlemen---a popular phenomenon
which never existed on earth out of
fiction and a police report. Again: I wonder
why people are always blown into the Surrey
Canal, and into no other piece of water! Why
do people get up early and go out in groups, to
be blown into the Surrey Canal? Do they say
to one another, ``Welcome death, so that we
get into the newspapers?'' Even that would be
an insufficient explanation, because even then
they might sometimes put themselves in the way
of being blown into the Regent's Canal, instead
of always saddling Surrey for the field. Some
nameless policeman, too, is constantly, on the,
slightest provocation, getting himself blown into
this same Surrey Canal. Will =Sir Richard
Mayne= see to it, and restrain that weak-minded
and feeble-bodied constable?

  To resume the consideration of the curious
question of Refreshment. I am a Briton, and,
as such, I am aware that I never will be a slave
---and yet I have latent suspicion that there
must be some slavery of wrong custom in this
matter.

  I travel by railroad. I start from home at
seven or eight in the morning, after breakfasting
hurriedly. What with skimming over the open
landscape, what with mining in the damp bowels
of the earth, what with banging, booming, and
shrieking the scores of miles away, I am hungry
when I arrive at the ``Refreshment'' station
where I am expected. Please to observe, expected.
I have said, I am hungry; perhaps I
might say, with greater point and force, that I
am to some extent exhausted, and that I need
---in the expressive French sense of the word---
to be restored. What is provided for my restoration?
The apartment that is to restore me
is a wind-trap, cunningly set to inveigle all the
draughts in that country-side, and to communicate
a special intensity and velocity to them as
they rotate in two hurricanes: one, about my
wretched head; one, about my wretched legs. 
The training of the young ladies behind the
counter who are to restore me, has been, from
their infancy, directed to the assumption of a
defiant dramatic show that I am _not_ expected. 
It is in vain for me to represent to them, by my
humble and conciliatory manners, that I wish to
be liberal. It is in vain for me to represent to
myself, for the encouragement of my sinking
soul, that the young ladies have a pecuniary
interest in my arrival. Neither my reason nor
my feelings can make head against the cold
glazed glare of eye with which I am assured that
I am not expected, and not wanted. The solitary
man among the bottles would sometimes take
pity on me, if he dared, but he is powerless
against the rights and mights of Woman. (Of
the page I make no account, for, he is a boy,
and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.)
Chilling fast, in the deadly tornadoes to which
my upper and lower extremities are exposed,
and subdued by the moral disadvantage at which
I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on the
refreshments that are to restore me. I find that
I must either scald my throat by insanely ladling
into it, against time and for no wager, brown hot
water stiffened with flour; or I must make myself
flaky and sick with Banbury cake; or, I
must stuff into my delicate organisation a currant
pincushion which I know will swell into immeasurable
dimensions when it has got there;
or, I must extort from an iron-bound quarry,
with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable
soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and grease,
called pork-pie. While thus forlornly occupied,
I find that the depressing banquet on the table
is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory
character, so like the banquet at the meanest
and shabbiest of evening parties, that I begin to
think I must have ``brought down'' to supper
the old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is
setting her teeth on edge with a cool orange at
my elbow---that the pastrycook, who has compounded
for the company on the lowest terms
per head, is a fraudulent bankrupt redeeming his
contract with the stale stock from his window---
that, for some unexplained reason, the family
giving the party have become my mortal foes,
and have given it on purpose to affront me. Or,
I fancy that I am ``breaking up'' again at the
evening conversazione at school, charged two-and-sixpence
in the half-year's bill or breaking
down again at that celebrated evening party
given at Mrs. Bogles's boarding-house when I was
a boarder there, on which occasion Mrs. Bogles
was taken in execution by a branch of the legal
profession who got in as the harp, and was
removed (with the keys and subscribed capital)
to a place of durance, half an hour prior to the
commencement of the festivities.

  Take another case.

  Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties,
came to London by railroad one morning last week,
accompanied by the amiable and fascinating Mrs.
Grazinglands. Mr. G. is a gentleman of a comfortable
property, and had a little business to
transact at the Bank of England, which required
the concurrence and signature of Mrs. G. Their
business disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands
viewed the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of
St. Paul's Cathedral. The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands
then gradually beginning to flag, Mr.
Grazinglands (who is the tenderest of husbands)
remarked with sympathy, ``Arabella, my dear, I
fear you are faint.'' Mrs. Grazinglands replied,
``Alexander, I am rather faint; but don't mind
me, I shall be better presently.'' Touched by
the feminine meekness of this answer, Mr.
Grazinglands looked in at a pastrycook's window,
hesitating as to the expediency of lunching at
that establishment. He beheld nothing to eat
but butter in various forms, slightly charged with
jam, and languidly frizzling over tepid water,
Two ancient turtle shells, on which was inscribed
the legend ``Soups,'' decorated a glass partition
within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a
ghastly mockery of a marriage breakfast spread
on a rickety table, warned the terrified traveller. 
An oblong box of stale and broken pastry at
reduced prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented
the doorway; and two high chairs, that looked
as if they were performing on stilts, embellished
the counter. Over the whole a young lady presided,
whose gloomy haughtiness, as she surveyed
the street, announced a deep-seated
grievance against society, and an implacable
determination to be avenged. From a beetle-haunted
kitchen below this institution, fumes
arose, suggestive of a class of soup which Mr.
Grazinglands knew, from painful experience,
enfeebles the mind, distends the stomach, forces
itself into the complexion, and tries to ooze out
at the eyes. As he decided against entering,
and turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands, becoming
perceptibly weaker, repeated, ``I'm rather faint,
Alexander, but don't mind me.'' Urged to new
efforts by these words of resignation, Mr. Grazinglands
looked in at a cold and floury baker's
shop, where utilitarian buns, unrelieved by a
currant, consorted with hard biscuits, a stone
filter of cold water, a hard pale clock, and a
hard little old woman with flaxen hair, of an
undeveloped farinaceous aspect, as if she had
been fed upon seeds. He might have entered
even here, but for the timely remembrance
coming upon him that Jairing's was but round
the corner.

  Now, Jairing's being an hotel for families and
gentlemen, in high repute among the midland
counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up a great
spirit when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she should
have a chop there. That lady likewise felt that
she was going to see Life. Arriving on that gay
and festive scene, they found the second waiter,
in a flabby undress, cleaning the windows of the
empty coffee-room; and the first waiter, denuded
of his white tie, making up his cruds behind
the Post-Office Directory. The latter (who took
them in hand) was greatly put out by their
patronage, and showed his mind to be troubled
by a sense of the pressing necessity of instantly
smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into the obscurest
corner of the building. This slighted lady (who
is the pride of her division of the county) was
immediately conveyed, by several dark passages,
and up and down several steps, into a penitential
apartment at the back of the house, where five
invalided old plate-warmers leaned up against
one another tinder 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 heel-taps
added, ``Second Waiter's.'' Secreted in this
dismal hold, objects of a mysterious distrust
and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his charming
partner waited twenty minutes for the smoke
(for it never came to a fire), twenty-five minutes
for the sherry, half an hour for the table-cloth,
forty minutes for the knives and forks, three-quarters
of an hour for the chops, and an hour
for the potatoes. On settling the little bill---
which was not much more than the day's pay
of a Lieutenant in the navy---Mr. Grazinglands
took heart to remonstrate against the general
quality and cost of his reception. To whom
the waiter replied, substantially, that Jairing's
made it a merit to have accepted him on any
terms: ``for,'' added the waiter (unmistakably
coughing 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
Doctor Johnson, Sir, you like to dine. You present
to your mind a picture of the refreshment-table
at that terminus. The conventional shabby
evening-party supper---accepted as the model for
all termini and all refreshment stations, because
it is the last repast known to this state of existence
of which any human creature would partake,
but in the direst extremity---sickens your
contemplation, and your words are these: ``I
cannot dine on stale sponge-cakes that turn to
sand in the mouth. I cannot dine on shining
brown patties, composed of unknown animals
within, and offering to my view the device of all
indigestible star-fish in leaden pie-crust without. 
I cannot dine on a sandwich that has long been
pining under an exhausted receiver. I cannot
dine on barley-sugar. I cannot dine on Toffee.''
You repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive,
agitated, in the coffee-room.

  It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is
very cold to you. Account for it how you may,
smooth it over how you will, you cannot deny
that he is cold to you. He is not glad to see
you, he does not want you, he would much rather
you hadn't come. He opposes to your flushed
condition an immovable composure. As if this
were not enough, another waiter, born, as it
would seem, expressly to look at you in this
passage of your life, stands at a little distance,
with his napkin under his arm and his hands
folded, looking at you with all his might. You
impress on your waiter that you have ten
minutes for dinner, and he proposes that you
shall begin with a bit of fish which will be ready
in twenty. That proposal declined, he suggests
---as a neat originality---``a weal or mutton
cutlet.'' You close with either cutlet, any cutlet,
anything. He goes, leisurely, behind a door,
and calls down some unseen shaft. A ventriloquial
dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect
that weal only is available on the spur of the
moment. You anxiously call out, ``Veal, then!''
Your waiter, having settled that point, returns to
array your table-cloth, with a table napkin folded
cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for something out of
window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a
green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler,
and a powerful field battery of fourteen casters
with nothing in them; or, at all events---which
is enough for your purpose---with nothing in
them that will come out. All this time the
other waiter looks at you---with an air of mental
comparison and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred
to him that you are rather like his
brother. Half your time gone, and nothing
come but the jug of ale and the bread, you implore
your waiter to ``see after that cutlet,
waiter; pray do!'' He cannot go at once, for
he is carrying in seventeen pounds of American
cheese for you to finish with, and a small Landed
Estate of celery and water-cresses. The other
waiter changes his leg, and takes a new view of
you---doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the
resemblance to his brother, and had begun to
think you more like his aunt or his grandmother. 
Again you beseech your waiter, with pathetic
indignation, to ``see after that cutlet!'' He
steps out to see after it, and by-and-by, when
you are going away without it, comes back with
it. Even then he will not take the sham silver
cover off without a pause for a flourish, and a
look at the musty cutlet as if he were surprised
to see it---which cannot possibly be the case,
he must have seen it so often before. A sort of
fur has been produced upon its surface by the
cook's art, and in a sham silver vessel, staggering
on two feet instead of three, is a cutaneous
kind of sauce, of brown pimples and pickled
cucumber. You order the bill, but your waiter
cannot bring your bill yet, because he is bringing,
instead, three flinty-hearted potatoes and
two grim heads of broccoli, like the occasional
ornaments on area railings, badly boiled. You
know that you will never come to this pass, any
more than to the cheese and the celery, and
you imperatively demand your bill; but, it takes
time to get, even when gone for, because your
waiter has to communicate with a lady who
lives behind a sash-window in a corner, and
who appears to have to refer to several Ledgers
before she can make it out---as if you had been
staying there a year. You become distracted to
get away, and the other waiter, once more changing
his leg, still looks at you---but suspiciously,
now, as if you had begun to remind him of the
party who took the great-coats last winter. 
Your bill at last brought and paid, at the rate
of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter reproachfully
reminds you that ``attendance is not
charged for a single meal,'' and you have to
search in all your pockets for sixpence more. 
He has a worse opinion of you than ever, when
you have given it to him, and lets you out into
the street with the air of one saying to himself,
as you cannot doubt he is, ``I hope we shall
never see _you_ here again!''

  Or, take any other of the numerous travelling
instances in which, with more time at your disposal,
you are, have been, or may be equally ill
served. Take the old-established Bull's Head,
with its old-established knife-boxes on its old-established
sideboards, its old-established flue
under its old-established four-post bedsteads in
its old-established airless rooms, its old-established
frouziness up-stairs and down-stairs, its
old-established cookery, and its old-established
principles of plunder. Count up your injuries,
in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in white
poultices, of apothecaries' powders in rice for
curry, of pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually
relying for an adventitious interest on forcemeat
balls. You have had experience of the old-established
Bull's Head stringy fowls, with lower
extremities like wooden legs, sticking up out of
the dish; of its cannibalic boiled mutton, gushing
horribly among its capers when carved; of
its little dishes of pastry---roofs of spermaceti
ointment, erected over half an apple or four
gooseberries. Well for you if you have yet forgotten
the old-established Bull's Head fruity
port; whose reputation was gained solely by
the old-established price the Bull's Head put
upon it, and by the old-established air with
which the Bull's Head set the glasses and
D'Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout to the
three-and-sixpenny wax candle, as if its old-established
colour hadn't come from the dyer's.

  Or, lastly, take, to finish with, two cases that
we all know every day.

  We all know the new hotel near the station,
where it is always gusty, going up the lane which
is always muddy, where we are sure to arrive at
night, and where we make the gas start awfully
when we open the front-door. We all know the
flooring of the passages and staircases that is too
new, and the walls that are too new, and the
house that is haunted by the ghost of mortar. 
We all know the doors that have cracked, and
the cracked shutters through which we get a
glimpse of the disconsolate moon. We all know
the new people who have come to keep the new
hotel, and who wish they had never come, and
who (inevitable result) wish _we_ had never come. 
We all know how much too scant and smooth
and bright the new furniture is, and how it has
never settled down, and cannot fit itself into
right places, and will get into wrong places. 
We all know how the gas, being lighted, shows
maps of Damp upon the walls. We all know
how the ghost of mortar passes into our sandwich,
stirs our negus, goes up to bed with us,
ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and prevents
the smoke from following. We all know
how a leg of our chair comes off at breakfast in
the morning, and how the dejected waiter attributes
the accident to a general greenness pervading
the establishment, and informs us, in
reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to
say he is an entire stranger in that part of the
country, and is going back to his own connection
on Saturday.

  We all know, on the other hand, the great station
hotel belonging to the company of proprietors,
which has suddenly sprung up in the back outskirts
of any place we like to name, and where we
look out of our palatial windows, at little back-yards
and gardens, old summer-houses, fowl-houses,
pigeon-traps, and pigsties. We all know
this hotel, in which we can get anything we
want, after its kind, for money; but where nobody
is glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or
minds (our bill paid) whether we come or go,
or how, or when, or why, or cares about us. 
We all know this hotel, where we have no individuality,
but put ourselves into the general
post, as it were, and are sorted and disposed of
according to our division. We all know that we
can get on very well indeed at such a place, but
still not perfectly well; and this may be because
the place is largely wholesale, and there is a
lingering personal retail interest within us that
asks to be satisfied.

  To sum up. My uncommercial travelling has
not yet brought me to the conclusion that we
are close to perfection in these matters. And
just as I do not believe that the end of the world
will ever be near at hand, so long as any of the
very tiresome and arrogant people who constantly
predict that catastrophe are left in it, so
I shall have small faith in the Hotel Millennium
while any of the uncomfortable superstitions I
have glanced at remain in existence.


	VII.

	TRAVELLING ABROAD.

  I got into the travelling chariot---it
was of German make, roomy, heavy,
and unvarnished---I got into the
travelling chariot, pulled up the
steps after me, shut myself in with
a smart bang of the door, and gave
the word ``Go on!''

  Immediately all that W. and S.W.
division of London began to slide away at a
pace so lively, that I was over the river, and past
the Old Kent Road, and out on Blackheath, and
even ascending Shooter's Hill, before I had time
to look about me in the carriage, like a collected
traveller.

  I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other
fitted storage for luggage in front, and other up
behind; I had a net for books overhead, great
pockets to all the windows, a leathern pouch or
two hung up for odds and ends, and a reading-lamp
fixed in the back of the chariot, in case I
should be benighted. I was amply provided in
all respects, and had no idea where I was going
(which was delightful), except that I was going
abroad.

  So smooth was the old high-road, and so fresh
were the horses, and so fast went I, that it was
midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and
the widening river was bearing the ships, white
sailed, or black smoked, out to sea, when I
noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.

  ``Holloa!'' said I to the very queer small
boy, ``where do you live?''

  ``At Chatham,'' says he.

  ``What do you do there?'' says I.

  ``I go to school,'' says he.

  I took him up in a moment, and we went on. 
Presently the very queer small boy says, ``This
is Gads-hill we are coming to, where Falstaff
went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.''

  ``You know something about Falstaff, eh?''
said I.

  ``All about him,'' said the very queer small
boy. ``I am old (I am nine), and I read all
sorts of books. But _do_ let us stop at the top of
the hill, and look at the house there, if you
please!''

  ``You admire that house,'' said I.

  ``Bless you, sir,'' said the very queer small boy,
``when I was not more than half as old as nine,
it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look
at it. And, now I am nine, I come by myself
to look at it. And ever since I can recollect,
my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often
said to me, `If you were to be very persevering,
and were to work hard, you might some day
come to live in it.' Though that's impossible!''
said the very queer small boy, drawing a low
breath, and now staring at the house out of window
with all his might.

  I was rather amazed to be told this by the
very queer small boy; for that house happens
to be _my_ house, and I have reason to believe
that what he said was true.

  Well! I made no halt there, and I soon
dropped the very queer small boy, and went on. 
Over the road where the old Romans used to
march, over the road where the old Canterbury
pilgrims used to go, over the road where the
travelling trains of the old imperious priests and
princes used to jingle on horseback between the
Continent and this Island through the mud and
water, over the road where Shakspeare hummed
to himself, ``Blow, blow, thou winter wind,'' as
he sat in the saddle at the gate of the inn yard
noticing the carriers; all among the cherry
orchards, apple orchards, corn-fields, and hop
gardens: so went I, by Canterbury to Dover. 
There the sea was tumbling in, with deep sounds,
after dark, and the revolving French light on
Gape Grinez was seen regularly bursting out and
becoming obscured, as if the head of a gigantic
light-keeper in an anxious state of mind were
interposed every half-minute, to look how it was
burning.

  Early in the morning I was on the deck of
the steam-packet, and we were aiming at the bar
in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar was
aiming at us in the usual intolerable manner,
and the bar got by far the best of it, and we got
by far the worst---all in the usual intolerable
manner.

  But, when I was clear of the Custom House
on the other side, and when I began to make
the dust fly on the thirsty French roads, and
when the twigsome trees by the wayside (which,
I suppose, never will grow leafy, for they never
did) guarded here and there a dusty soldier, or
field labourer, baking on a heap of broken
stones, sound asleep in a fiction of shade, I began
to recover my travelling spirits. Coming
upon the breaker of the broken stones, in a hard
hot shining hat, on which the sun played at a
distance as on a burning-glass, I felt that now,
indeed, I was in the dear old France of my
affection. I should have known it, without the
well-remembered bottle of rough ordinary wine,
the cold roast fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of
salt, on which I lunched with unspeakable satisfaction,
from one of the stuffed pockets of the
chariot.

  I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for,
when a bright face looked in at the window, I
started, and said:

  ``Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were
dead!''

  My cheerful servant laughed and answered:

  ``Me? Not at all, sir.''

  ``How glad I am to wake! What are we
doing, Louis?''

  ``We go to take relay of horses. Will you
walk up the hill?''

  ``Certainly.''

  Welcome the old French hill, with the old
French lunatic (not in the most distant degree
related to Sterne's Maria) living in a thatched
dog-kennel half-way up, and flying out with his
crutch and his big head and extended nightcap,
to be beforehand with the old men and women
exhibiting crippled children, and with the children
exhibiting old men and women, ugly and
blind, who always seemed by resurrectionary
process to be recalled out of the elements for
the sudden peopling of the solitude!

  ``It is well,'' said I, scattering among them
what small coin I had; ``here comes Louis,
and I am quite roused from my nap.''

  We journeyed on again, and I welcomed
every new assurance that France stood where I
had left it. There were the posting-houses,
with their archways, dirty stable-yards, and
clean postmasters' wives, bright women of business,
looking on at the putting-to of the horses;
there were the postillions 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 sheep-skins, looped on
over their uniforms by the postillions, like
bibbed aprons when it blew and rained; there
were their jack-books, and their cracking whips;
there were the cathedrals that I got out to see,
as under some cruel bondage, in no wise desiring
to see them; there were the little towns that
appeared to have no reason for being towns,
since most of their houses were to let, and
nobody could be induced to look at them, except
the people who couldn't let them, and had
nothing else to do but look at them all day. I
lay a night upon the road, and enjoyed delectable
cookery of potatoes, and some other sensible
things, adoption of which at home would
inevitably be shown to be fraught with ruin,
somehow or other, to that rickety national
blessing, the British farmer; and at last I was
rattled, like a single pill in a box, over leagues
of stones, until---madly cracking, plunging, and
flourishing two grey tails about---I made my
triumphal entry into Paris.

  At Paris I took an upper apartment for a few
days in one of the hotels of the Rue de Rivoli;
my front windows looking into the garden of
the Tuileries (where the principal difference between
the nursemaids and the flowers seemed
to be that the former were locomotive, and the
latter not): my back-windows looking at all the
other back-windows in the hotel, and deep
down into a paved yard, where my German
chariot had retired under a tight-fitting archway,
to all appearance for life, and where bells rang
all day without anybody's minding them but
certain chamberlains with feather brooms and
green baize caps, who here and there leaned
out of some high window placidly looking down,
and where neat waiters with trays on their left
shoulders passed and repassed from morning to
night.

  Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible
force into the Morgue. I never want to
go there, but am always pulled there. One
Christmas-day, when I would rather have been
anywhere else, I was attracted in, to see an old
grey man lying all alone on his cold bed, with
a tap of water turned on over his grey hair, and
running, drip, drip, drip, down his wretched
face until it got to the corner of his mouth,
where it took a turn, and made him look sly. 
One New Year's morning (by the same token,
the sun was shining outside, and there was a
mountebank balancing a feather on his nose,
within a yard of the gate), I was pulled in again
to look at a flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, with
a heart hanging on his breast---``from his
mother,'' was engraven on it---who had come
into the net across the river, with a bullet
wound in his fair forehead, and his hands cut
with a knife, but whence or how was a blank
mystery. This time I was forced into the same
dread place, to see a large dark man whose disfigurement
by water was in a frightful manner
comic, and whose expression was that of a prize-fighter
who had closed his eyelids under a heavy 
blow, but was going immediately to open them,
shake his head, and ``come up smiling.'' Oh,
what this large dark man cost me in that bright
city!

  It was very hot weather, and he was none the
better for that, and I was much the worse. Indeed,
a very neat and pleasant little woman,
with the key of her lodging on her forefinger,
who had been showing him to her little girl
while she and the child ate sweetmeats, observed
monsieur looking poorly as we came out together,
and asked monsieur, with her wondering
little eyebrows prettily raised, if there were anything
the matter? Faintly replying in the negative,
monsieur crossed the road to a wine-shop,
got some brandy, and resolved to freshen himself
with a dip in the great floating bath on the river,

  The bath was crowded, in the usual airy
manner, by a male population in striped drawers
of various gay colours, who walked up and
down arm-in-arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars,
sat at little tables, conversed politely with the
damsels who dispensed the towels, and every
now and then pitched themselves into the river
head foremost, and came out again to repeat
this social routine. I made haste to participate
in the water part of the entertainments, and was
in the full en joyment of a delightful bath, when
all in a moment I was seized with an unreasonable
idea that the large dark body was floating
straight at me.

  I was out of the river, and dressing instantly. 
In the shock I had taken some water into my
mouth, and it turned me sick, for I fancied that
the contamination of the creature was in it. I
had got back to my cool darkened room in the
hotel, and was lying on a sofa there, before I
began to reason with myself.

  Of course I knew perfectly well that the
large dark creature was stone dead, and that I
should no more come upon him out of the
place where I had seen him dead, than I should
come upon the cathedral of Notre-Dame in an
entirely new situation. What troubled me was
the picture of the creature: and that had so
curiously and strongly painted itself upon my
brain, that I could not get rid of it until it was
worn out.

  I noticed the peculiarities of this possession
while it was a real discomfort to me. That very
day, at dinner, some morsel on my plate looked
like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up
and go out. Later in the evening, I was walking
along the Rue St. 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, remained. A
specimen of our own national sport, the British
Boaxe, was announced to be given at the close
of the evening. In an evil hour, I determined
to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton. It
was a clumsy specimen (executed by two English
grooms out of place), but one of the combatants,
receiving a straight right-hander with
the glove between his eyes, did exactly what the
large dark creature in the Morgue had seemed
going to do---and finished me for that night.

  There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an
unusual fragrance in Paris) in the little ante-room
of my apartment at the hotel. The large
dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct
experience associated with my sense of smell,
because, when I came to the knowledge of him,
he lay behind a wall of thick plate glass, as good
as a wall of steel or marble for that matter. Yet
the whiff of the room never failed to reproduce
him. What was more curious was, the capriciousness
with which his portrait seemed to light
itself up in my mind elsewhere. I might be
walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the
shop-windows, and might be regaling myself
with one of the ready-made clothes shops that
are set out there. My eyes, wandering over
impossible-waisted dressing-gowns and luminous
waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the
shopman, or even the very dummy at the door,
and would suggest to me, ``Something like
him!''---and instantly I was sickened again.

  This would happen at the theatre, in the
same manner. Often it would happen in the
street, when I certainly was not looking for the
likeness, and when probably there was no likeness
there. It was not because the creature
was dead that I was so haunted, because I know
that I might have been (and I know it because
I have been) equally attended by the image of
a living aversion. This lasted about a week. 
The picture did not fade by degrees, in the
sense that it became a whit less forcible and
distinct, but in the sense that it obtruded itself
less and less frequently. The experience may
be worth considering by some who have the
care of children. It would be difficult to overstate
the intensity and accuracy of an intelligent
child's observation. At that impressible time of
life, it must sometimes produce a fixed impression.
If the fixed impression be of an object
terrible to the child, it will be (for want of
reasoning upon) inseparable from great fear. 
Force the child at such a time, be Spartan with
it, send it into the dark against its will, leave it
in a lonely bedroom against its will, and you
had better murder it.

  On a bright morning I rattled away from
Paris in the German chariot, and left the large
dark creature behind me for good. I ought to
confess, though, that I had been drawn back
to the Morgue, after he was put underground,
to look at his clothes, and that I found them
frightfully like him---particularly his boots. However,
I rattled away for Switzerland, looking
forward, and not backward, and so we parted
company.

  Welcome again the long long spell of France,
with the queer country inns, full of vases of
flowers and clocks, in the dull little towns, and
with the little population not at all dull on the
little Boulevard in the evening, under the little
trees! Welcome Monsieur the Cur<e'> walking
alone in the early morning a short way out of
the town, reading that eternal Breviary of yours,
which surely might be almost read without book
by this time! Welcome Monsieur the Cur<e'>,
later in the day, jolting through the highway
dust (as if you had already ascended to the
cloudy region), in a very big-headed cabriolet,
with the dried mud of a dozen winters on it. 
Welcome again Monsieur the Cur<e'>, as we exchange
salutations; you straightening your back
to look at the German chariot, while picking in
your little village garden a vegetable or two for
the day's soup; I looking out of the German
chariot window in that delicious travellers trance
which knows no cares, no yesterdays, no tomorrows,
nothing but the passing objects and
the passing scents and sounds! And so I came,
in due course of delight, to Strasbourg, where I
passed a wet Sunday evening at a window, while
an idle trifle of a vaudeville was played for me
at the opposite house.

  How such a large house came to have only
three people living in it was its own affair. 
There were at least a score of windows in its
high roof alone; how many in its grotesque
front, I soon gave up counting. The owner was
a shop-keeper, by name Straudenheim; by
trade---I couldn't make out what by trade, for
he had forborne to write that up, and his shop
was shut.

  At first, as I looked at Straudenheim's through
the steadily-falling rain, I set him up in business
in the goose-liver line. But, inspection of Straudenheim,
who became visible at a window on
the second floor, convinced me that there was
something more precious than liver in the case. 
He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked
usurious and rich. A large-lipped, pear-nosed
old man, with white hair and keen eyes, though
near-sighted. He was writing at a desk, was
Straudenheim, and ever and again left off writing,
put his pen in his mouth, and went through
actions with his right hand, like a man steadying
piles of cash. Five-franc pieces, Straudenheim,
or golden Napoleons? A jeweller, Straudenheim,
a dealer in money, a diamond merchant,
or what?

  Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first
floor, sat his housekeeper---far from young, but
of a comely presence, suggestive of a well-matured
foot and ankle. She was cheerily
dressed, had a fan in her hand, and wore large
gold ear-rings and a large gold cross. She
would have been out holiday-making (as I settled
it) but for the pestilent rain. Strasbourg
had given up holiday-making, for that once, as
a bad job, because the rain was jerking in gushes
out of the old roof-spouts, and running in a
brook down the middle of the street. The
housekeeper, her arms folded on her bosom and
her fan tapping her chin, was bright and smiling
at her open window, but otherwise Straudenheim's
house-front was very dreary. The housekeeper's
was the only open window in it;
Straudenheim kept himself close, though it was a
sultry evening when air is pleasant, and though
the rain had brought into the town that vague
refreshing smell of grass which rain does bring
in the summer-time.

  The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim's
shoulder inspired me with a misgiving
that somebody had come to murder that flourishing
merchant for the wealth with which I had
handsomely endowed him: the rather as it was
an excited man, lean and long of figure, and
evidently stealthy of foot. But, he conferred
with Straudenheim instead of doing him a mortal
injury, and then they both softly opened the
other window of that room---which was immediately
over the housekeeper's---and tried to
see her by looking down. And my opinion of
Straudenheim was much lowered when I saw
that eminent citizen spit out of window,
clearly with the hope of spitting on the housekeeper.

  The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself,
tossed her head, and laughed. Though unconscious
of Straudenheim, she was conscious of
somebody else---of me?---there was nobody else.

  After leaning so far out of window that I
confidently expected to see their heels tilt up,
Straudenheim and the lean man drew their heads
in and shut the window. Presently the house-door
secretly opened, and they slowly and spitefully
crept forth into the pouring rain. They
were coming over to me (I thought) to demand
satisfaction for my looking at the housekeeper,
when they plunged into a recess in the architecture
under my window, and dragged out the
puniest of little soldiers, begirt with the most
innocent of little swords. The tall glazed head-dress
of this warrior Straudenheim instantly
knocked off, and out of it fell two sugar-sticks,
and three or four large lumps of sugar.

  The warrior made no effort to recover his
property, or to pick up his shako, but looked
with an expression of attention at Straudenheim
when he kicked him five times, and also at the
lean man when _he_ kicked him five times, and
again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast
of his (the warrior's) little coat open, and shook
all his ten fingers in his face, as if they were ten
thousand. When these outrages had been committed,
Straudenheim and his man went into the
house again, and barred the door. A wonderful
circumstance was, that the housekeeper, who
saw it all (and who could have taken six such
warriors to her buxom bosom at once), only
fanned herself and laughed as she had laughed
before, and seemed to have no opinion about
it, one way or other.

  But, the chief effect of the drama was the
remarkable vengeance taken by the little warrior. 
Left alone in the rain, he picked up his shako;
put it on, all wet and dirty as it was; retired
into a court, of which Straudenheim's house
formed the corner; wheeled about; and, bringing
his two forefingers close to the top of his
nose, rubbed them over one another, crosswise,
in derision, defiance, and contempt of Straudenheim.
Although Straudenheim could not possibly
be supposed to be conscious of this strange
proceeding, it so inflated and comforted the
little warrior's soul, that twice he went away, and
twice came back into the court to repeat it, as
though it must goad his enemy to madness. Not
only that, but he afterwards came back with two
other small warriors, and they all three did it
together. Not only that---as I live to tell the
tale!---but just as it was falling quite dark, the
three came back, bringing with them a huge
bearded Sapper, whom they moved, by recital
of the original wrong, to go through the same
performance, with the same complete absence of
all possible knowledge of it on the part of
Straudenheim. And then they all went away
arm-in-arm, singing.

  I went away too, in the German chariot, at
sunrise, and rattled on, day after day, like one
in a sweet dream; with so many clear little bells
on the harness of the horses, that the nursery
rhyme about Banbury Cross, and the venerable
lady who rode in state there, was always in my
ears. And now I came to the land of wooden
houses, innocent cakes, thin butter soup, and
spotless little inn bedrooms with a family likeness
to Dairies. And now the Swiss marksmen
were for ever rifle-shooting at marks across
gorges, so exceedingly near my ear. that I felt
like a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and
went in highly-deserved danger of my tyrannical
life. The prizes at these shootings were watches,
smart handkerchiefs, hats, spoons, and (above
all) tea-trays; and at these contests I came upon
a more than usually accomplished and amiable
countryman of my own, who had shot himself
deaf in whole years of competition, and had
won so many tea-trays that he went about the
country with his carriage full of them, like a
glorified Cheap Jack.

  In the mountain country into which I had
now travelled, a yoke of oxen were sometimes
hooked on before the post-horses, and I went
lumbering up, up, up, through mist and rain,
with the roar of falling water for change of
music. Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear
away, and I would come down into picturesque
little towns with gleaming spires and odd towers;
and would stroll afoot into market-places in
steep winding streets, where a hundred women
in bodices sold eggs and honey, butter and
fruit, and suckled their children as they sat by
their clean baskets, and had such enormous
go<i^>tres (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 back-bone), and went up a
thousand rugged ways, and looked down at a
thousand woods of fir and pine, and would, on
the whole, have preferred my mule's keeping a
little nearer to the inside, and not usually travelling
with a hoof or two over the precipice---
though much consoled by explanation that this
was to be attributed to his great sagacity, by
reason of his carrying broad loads of wood at
other times, and not being clear but that I myself
belonged to that station of life, and required
as much room as they. He brought me safely,
in his own wise way, among the passes of the
Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates a
day; being now (like Don Quixote on the back
of the wooden horse) in the region of wind, now
in the region of fire, now in the region of unmelted
ice and snow. Here I passed over
trembling domes of ice, beneath which the cataract
was roaring; and here was received under
arches of icicles of unspeakable beauty; and
here the sweet air was so bracing and so light,
that at halting-times I rolled in the snow when
I saw my mule do it, thinking that he must
know best. At this part of the journey we
would come, at mid-day, into half an hour's
thaw: when the rough mountain inn would be
found on an island of deep mud in a sea of
snow, while the baiting strings of mules, and the
carts full of casks and bales, which had been in
an Arctic condition a mile off, would steam
again. By such ways and means, I would come
to the cluster of ch<a^>lets where I had to turn out
of the track to see the water-fall; 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 go<i^>tre,
would rouse the woman---guide within the hut,
who would stream out hastily, throwing her
child over one of her shoulders, and her go<i^>tre
over the other, as she came along. I slept at
religious houses, and bleak refuges of many
kinds, on this journey, and by the stove at night
heard stories of travellers who had perished
within call, in wreaths and drifts of snow. One
night the stove within, and the cold outside,
awakened childish associations long forgotten,
and I dreamed I was in Russia---the identical
serf out of a picture-book I had, before I could
read it for myself---and that I was going to be
knouted by a noble personage in a fur cap,
boots, and ear-rings, who, I think, must have
come out of some melodrama.

  Commend me to the beautiful waters among
these mountains! Though I was not of their
mind: they, being inveterately bent on getting
down into the level country, and I ardently
desiring to linger where I was. What desperate
leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged
into, what rocks they wore away, what echoes
they invoked! In one part where I went, they
were pressed into the service of carrying wood
down, to be burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in
Italy. But, their fierce savage nature was not
to be easily constrained, and they fought with
every limb of the wood; whirling it round and
round, stripping its bark away, dashing it against
pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and
roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it
back again from the bank with long stout poles. 
Alas! concurrent streams of time and water carried
_me_ down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely
clear day, to the Lausanne shore of the Lake of
Geneva, where I stood looking at the bright blue
water, the flushed white mountains opposite, and
the boats at my feet with their furled Mediterranean
sails, showing like enormous magnifications
of this goose-quill pen that is now in my hand.

  ---The sky became overcast without any notice;
a wind very like the March east wind of
England blew across me; and a voice said,
``How do you like it? Will it do?''

  I had merely shut myself, for half a minute,
in a German travelling chariot that stood for
sale in the Carriage Department of the London
Pantechnicon. I had a commission to buy it
for a friend who was going abroad; and the
look and manner of the chariot, as I tried
the cushions and the springs, brought all these
hints of travelling remembrance before me.

  ``It will do very well,'' said I rather sorrowfully,
as I got out at the other door, and shut
the carriage up.
 

	VIII.

	THE GREAT TASMANIA'S CARGO.

I travel constantly up and down
a certain line of railway that has a
terminus in London. It is the railway
for a large military dep<o^>t, and
for other large barracks. To the
best of my serious belief, I have
never been on that railway by daylight
without seeing some handcuffed deserters
in the train.

  It is in the nature of things that such an institution
as our English army should have many
bad and troublesome characters in it. But, this
is a reason for, and not against, its being made
as acceptable as possible to well-disposed men
of decent behaviour. Such men are assuredly
not tempted into the ranks by the beastly inversion
of natural laws, and the compulsion to live
in worse than swinish foulness. Accordingly,
when any such Circumlocutional embellishments
of the soldier's condition have of late been
brought to notice, we civilians, seated in outer
darkness cheerfully meditating on an Income
Tax, have considered the matter as being our
business, and have shown a tendency to declare
that we would rather not have it misregulated, if
such declaration may, without violence to the
Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are
put in authority over us.

  Any animated description of a modern battle,
any private soldier's letter published in the newspapers,
any page of the records of the Victoria
Cross, will show that in the ranks of the army
there exists, under all disadvantages, as fine a
sense of duty as is to be found in any station on
earth. Who doubts that, if we all did our duty
as faithfully as the soldier does his, this world
would be a better place? There may be greater
difficulties in our way than in the soldier's. Not
disputed. But, let us at least do our duty towards
_him._

  I had got back again to that rich and beautiful
port where I had looked after Mercantile
Jack, and I was walking up a hill there, on a
wild March morning. My conversation with my
official friend Pangloss, by whom I was accidentally
accompanied, took this direction as we
took the uphill direction, because the object of
my uncommercial journey was to see some discharged
soldiers who had recently come home
from India. There were men of =Havelock='s
among them; there were men who had been in
many of the great battles of the great Indian
campaign among them; and I was curious to
note what our discharged soldiers looked like
when they were done with.

  I was not the less interested (as I mentioned
to my official friend Pangloss) because these men
had claimed to be discharged, when their right
to be discharged was not admitted. They had
behaved with unblemished fidelity and bravery;
but, a change of circumstances had arisen,
which, as they considered, put an end to their
compact, and entitled them to enter on a new
one. Their demand had been blunderingly
resisted by the authorities in India; but, it is to
be presumed that the men were not far wrong,
inasmuch as the bungle had ended in their being
sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders
from home. (There was an immense waste of
money, of course.)

  Under these circumstances---thought I, as I
walked up the hill on which I accidentally
encountered my official friend---under these
circumstances of the men having successfully
opposed themselves to the Pagoda Department
of that great Circumlocution Office on which
the sun never sets and the light of reason never
rises, the Pagoda Department will have been
particularly careful of the national honour. It
will have shown these men, in the scrupulous
good faith, not to say the generosity, of its
dealing with them, that great national authorities
can have no small retaliations and revenges. It
will have made every provision for their health
on the passage home, and will have landed
them, restored from their campaigning fatigues
by a sea voyage, pure air, sound food, and good
medicines. And I pleased myself with dwelling
beforehand on the great accounts of their personal
treatment which these men would carry
into their various towns and villages, and on the
increasing popularity of the service that would
insensibly follow. I almost began to hope that
the hitherto never-failing deserters on my railroad
would by-and-by become a phenomenon.

  In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the
workhouse of Liverpool.---For the cultivation of
laurels in a sandy soil had brought the soldiers
in question to _that_ abode of Glory.

  Before going into their wards to visit them, I
inquired how they had made their triumphant
entry there? They had been brought through
the rain in carts, it seemed, from the landing-place
to the gate, and had then been carried
up-stairs on the backs of paupers. Their groans
and pains, during the performance of this glorious
pageant, had been so distressing as to bring
tears into the eyes of spectators but too well
accustomed to scenes of suffering. The men
were so dreadfully cold, that those who could
get near the fires were hard to be restrained
from thrusting their feet in among the blazing
coals. They were so horribly reduced, that
they were awful to look upon. Racked with
dysentery, and blackened with scurvy, one hundred
and forty wretched soldiers had been revived
with brandy, and laid in bed.

  My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended
from a learned doctor of that name,
who was once tutor to Candide, an ingenious
young gentleman of some celebrity. In his personal
character he is as humane and worthy a
gentleman as any I know; in his official capacity
he unfortunately preaches the doctrines of
his renowned ancestor, by demonstrating on all
occasions that we live in the best of all possible
official worlds.

  ``In the name of Humanity,'' said I, ``how
did the men fall into this deplorable state? Was
the ship well found in stores?''

  ``I am not here to asseverate that I know the
fact of my own knowledge,'' answered Pangloss,
``but I have grounds for asserting that the stores
were the best of all possible stores.''

  A medical officer laid before us a handful of
rotten biscuit, and a handful of split peas. The
biscuit was a honeycombed heap of maggots,
and the excrement of maggots. The peas were
even harder than this filth. A similar handful
had been experimentally boiled six hours, and
had shown no signs of softening. These were
the stores on which the soldiers had been
fed.

  ``The beef------'' I began, when Pangloss cut
me short.

  ``Was the best of all possible beef,'' said he.

  But, behold, there was laid before us certain
evidence given at the Coroner's Inquest, holden
on some of the men (who had obstinately died
of their treatment), and from that evidence it
appeared that the beef was the worst of possible
beef!

  ``Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and
take my stand,'' said Pangloss, ``by the pork,
which was the best of all possible pork.''

  ``But look at this food before our eyes, if one
may so misuse the word,'' said I. ``Would any
Inspector who did his duty pass such abomination?''

  ``It ought not to have been passed,'' Pangloss
admitted.

  ``Then the authorities out there------'' I began,
when Pangloss cut me short again.

  ``There would certainly seem to have been
something wrong somewhere,'' said he; ``but I
am prepared to prove that the authorities out
there are the best of all possible authorities.''

  I never heard of any impeached public authority
in my life who was not the best public
authority in existence.

  ``We are told of these unfortunate men being
laid low by scurvy,'' said I. ``Since lime-juice
has been regularly stored and served out in our
navy, surely that disease, which used to devastate
it, has almost disappeared? Was there
lime-juice aboard this transport?''

  My official friend was beginning, ``The best
of all possible------'' when an inconvenient
medical forefinger pointed out another passage
in the evidence, from which it appeared that the
lime-juice had been bad too. Not to mention
that the vinegar had been bad too, the vegetables
bad too, the cooking accommodation insufficient
(if there had been anything worth
mentioning to cook), the water supply exceedingly
inadequate, and the beer sour.

  ``Then the men,'' said Pangloss, a little irritated,
``were the worst of all possible men.''

  ``In what respect?'' I asked.

  ``Oh! Habitual drunkards,'' said Pangloss.

  But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger
pointed out another passage in the evidence,
showing that the dead men had been
examined after death, and that they, at least,
could not possibly have been habitual drunkards,
because the organs within them, which must
have shown traces of that habit, were perfectly
sound.

  ``And besides,'' said the three doctors present,
one and all, ``habitual drunkards brought
as low as these men have been, could not recover
under care and food, as the great majority
of these men are recovering. They would not
have strength of constitution to do it.''

  ``Reckless and improvident dogs, then,'' said
Pangloss. ``Always are---nine times out of ten.''

  I turned to the master of the workhouse, and
asked him whether the men had any money?

  ``Money?'' said he. ``I have in my iron
safe nearly four hundred pounds of theirs; the
agents have nearly a hundred pounds more;
and many of them have left money in Indian
banks besides.''

  ``Hah!'' said I to myself as we went up-stairs,
this is not the best of all possible stories, I
doubt!''

  We went into a large ward, containing some
twenty or five-and-twenty beds. We went into
several such wards, one after another. I find it
very difficult to indicate what a shocking sight
I saw in them, without frightening the reader
from the perusal of these lines, and defeating
my object of making it known.

  Oh, the sunken eyes that turned to me as I
walked between the rows of beds, or---worse
still---that glazedly looked at the white ceiling,
and saw nothing, and cared for nothing! Here
lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly covered
with a thin unwholesome skin, that not a bone
in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp
the arm, above the elbow, in my finger and
thumb. Here lay a man with the black scurvy
eating his legs away, his gums gone, and his
teeth all gaunt and bare. This bed was empty,
because gangrene had set in, and the patient
had died but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless
one, because its occupant was sinking fast,
and could only be roused to turn the poor
pinched mask of face upon the pillow with a
feeble moan. The awful thinness of the fallen
cheeks, the awful brightness of the deep set
eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the recumbent
human images lying in the shadow of
death with a kind of solemn twilight on them,
like the sixty who had died aboard the ship,
and were lying at the bottom of the sea, O
Pangloss, =God= forgive you!

  In one bed lay a man whose life had been
saved (as it was hoped) by deep incisions in the
feet and legs. While I was speaking to him, a
nurse came up to change the poultices which
this operation had rendered necessary, and I
had an instinctive feeling that it was not well
to turn away, merely to spare myself. He was
sorely wasted and keenly susceptible, but the
efforts he made to subdue any expression of
impatience or suffering were quite heroic. It
was easy to see, in the shrinking of the figure,
and the drawing of the bedclothes over the
head, how acute the endurance was, and it made
me shrink too, as if _I_ were in pain; but, when
the new bandages were on, and the poor feet were
composed again, he made an apology for himself
(though he had not uttered a word), and
said plaintively, ``I am so tender and weak, you
see, sir!'' Neither from him, nor from any one
sufferer of the whole ghastly number, did I hear
a complaint. Of thankfulness for present solicitude
and care, I heard much; of complaint,
not a word.

  I think I could have recognised, in the dismallest
skeleton there, the ghost of a soldier. 
Something of the old air was still latent in the
palest shadow of life I talked to. One emaciated
creature, in the strictest literality worn to the
bone, lay stretched on his back, looking so like
death that I asked one of the doctors if he were
not dying, or dead? A few kind words from
the doctor in his ear, and he opened his eyes,
and smiled---looked, in a moment, as if he would
have made a salute, if he could. ``We shall
pull him through, please God,'' said the doctor. 
``Plase God, surr, and thankye,'' said the patient. 
``You are much better to-day; are you not?''
said the doctor. ``Plase God, surr; 'tis the
slape I want, surr; 'tis my breathin' makes the
nights so long.'' ``He is a careful fellow this,
you must know,'' said the doctor cheerfully; ``it
was raining hard when they put him in the open
cart to bring him here, and he had the presence
of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of
his pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged. 
Probably it saved his life.'' The patient rattled
out the skeleton of a laugh, and said, proud of
the story, ``Deed, surr, an open cairt was a
comical means o' bringin' a dyin' man here, and
a clever way to kill him.'' You might have
sworn to him for a soldier when he said it.

  One thing had perplexed me very much in
going from bed to bed. A very significant and
cruel thing. I could find no young man but
one. He had attracted my notice by having
got up and dressed himself in his soldier's
jacket and trousers, with the intention of sitting
by the fire; but he had found himself too weak,
and had crept back to his bed, and laid himself
down on the outside of it. I could have pronounced
him, alone, to be a young man aged
by famine and sickness. As we were standing
by the Irish soldier's bed, I mentioned my perplexity
to the doctor. He took aboard with an
inscription on it from the head of the Irishman's
bed, and asked me what age I supposed
that man to be? I had observed him with
attention while talking to him, and answered,
confidently, ``Fifty.'' The doctor, with a pitying
glance at the patient, who had dropped into
a stupor again, put the board back, and said,
``Twenty-four.''

  All the arrangements of the wards were excellent.
They could not have been more humane,
sympathising, gentle, attentive, or wholesome. 
The owners of the ship, too, had done all they
could liberally. There were bright fires in every
room, and the convalescent men were sitting
round them, reading various papers and periodicals.
I took the liberty of inviting my official
friend Pangloss to look at those convalescent
men, and to tell me whether their faces and
bearing were or were not, generally, the faces
and bearing of steady, respectable soldiers?
The master of the workhouse, overhearing me,
said he had had a pretty large experience of
troops, and that better-conducted men than
these he had never had to do with. They were
always (he added) as we saw them. And of us
visitors (I add) they knew nothing whatever,
except that we were there.

  It was audacious in me, but I took another
liberty with Pangloss. Prefacing it with the
observation that, of course, I knew beforehand
that there was not the faintest desire, anywhere,
to hush up any part of this dreadful business,
and that the Inquest was the fairest of all possible
Inquests, I besought four things of Pangloss.
Firstly, to observe that the Inquest _was
not held in that place,_ but at some distance off. 
Secondly, to look round upon those helpless
spectres in their beds. Thirdly, to remember
that the witnesses produced from among them
before that Inquest could not have been selected
because they were the men who had the most
to tell it, but because they happened to be in a
state admitting of their safe removal. Fourthly,
to say whether the Coroner and jury could have
come there, to those pillows, and taken a little
evidence? My official friend declined to commit
himself to a reply.

  There was a sergeant, reading in one of the
fireside groups. As he was a man of very intelligent
countenance, and as I have a great
respect for non-commissioned officers as a class,
I sat down on the nearest bed, to have some
talk with him. (It was the bed of one of the
grisliest of the poor skeletons, and he died soon
afterwards.)

  ``I was glad to see, in the evidence of an
officer at the Inquest, sergeant, that he never
saw men behave better on board ship than these
men.''

  ``They did behave very well, sir.''

  ``I was glad to see, too, that every man had
a hammock.''

  The sergeant gravely shook his head. ``There
must be some mistake, sir. The men of my
own mess had no hammocks. There were not
hammocks enough on board, and the men of
the two next messes laid hold of hammocks for
themselves as soon as they got on board, and
squeezed my men out, as I may say.''

  ``Had the squeezed-out men none, then?''

  ``None, sir. As men died, their hammocks
were used by other men who wanted hammocks;
but many men had none at all.''

  ``Then you don't agree with the evidence on
that point?''

  ``Certainly not, sir. A man can't, when he
knows to the contrary.''

  ``Did any of the men sell their bedding for
drink?''

  ``There is some mistake on that point too,
sir. Men were under the impression---I knew
it for a fact at the time---that it was not allowed
to take blankets or bedding on board, and so
men who had things of that sort came to sell
them purposely.''

  ``Did any of the men sell their clothes for
drink?''

  ``They did, sir.'' (I believe there never was
a more truthful witness than the sergeant. He
had no inclination to make out a case.)

  ``Many?''

  ``Some, sir'' (considering the question). ``Soldier-like.
They had been long marching in the
rainy season, by bad roads---no roads at all, in
short---and, when they got to Calcutta, men
turned to and drank before taking a last look at
it. Soldier-like.''

  ``Do you see any men in this ward, for
example, who sold clothes for drink at that
time?''

  The sergeant's wan eye, happily just beginning
to rekindle with health, travelled round the place,
and came back to me. ``Certainly, sir.''

  ``The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season
must have been severe?''

  ``It was very severe, sir.''

  ``Yet, what with the rest and the sea air, I
should have thought that the men (even the men
who got drunk) would have soon begun to recover
on board ship?''

  ``So they might; but the bad food told upon
them, and, when we got into a cold latitude, it
began to tell more, and the men dropped.''

  ``The sick had a general disinclination for
food, I am told, sergeant?''

  ``Have you seen the food, sir?''

  ``Some of it.''

  ``Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?''

  If the sergeant, who was a man of a few
orderly words, had spoken the amount of this
volume, he could not have settled that question
better. I believe the sick could as soon have
eaten the ship as the ship's provisions.

  I took the additional liberty with my friend
Pangloss, when I had left the sergeant with good
wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he had ever
heard of biscuit getting drunk, and bartering its
nutritious qualities for putrefaction and vermin;
of peas becoming hardened in liquor; of hammocks
drinking themselves off the face of the
earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking
accommodation, water supply, and beer, all
taking to drinking together, and going to ruin?
``If not (I asked him), what did he say in defence
of the officers condemned by the Coroner's
jury, who, by signing the General Inspection
Report relative to the ship Great Tasmania,
chartered for these troops, had deliberately asserted
all that bad and poisonous dunghill refuse
to be good and wholesome food?'' My
official friend replied that it was a remarkable
fact, that whereas some officers were only positively
good, and other officers only comparatively
better, those particular officers were superlatively
the very best of all possible officers.

  My hand and my heart fail me in writing my
record of this journey. The spectacle of the
soldiers in the hospital beds of that Liverpool
workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be
it understood) was so shocking and so shameful,
that, as an Englishman, I blush to remember
it. It would have been simply unbearable
at the time, but for the consideration and
pity with which they were soothed in their
sufferings.

  No punishment that our inefficient laws provide
is worthy of the name, when set against the
guilt of this transaction. But, if the memory of
it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in
the inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those
who are responsible for it, their escape will be
infamous to the Government (no matter of what
party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous to
the nation that tamely suffers such intolerable
wrong to be done in its name.


	IX.

	CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES.

  If the confession that I have often
travelled from this Covent-Garden
lodging of mine on Sundays should
give offence to those who never
travel on Sundays, they will be satisfied
(I hope) by my adding that the
journeys in question were made to
churches.

  Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful
preachers. Time was when I was dragged
by the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear
too many. On summer evenings, when every
flower, and tree, and bird might have better
addressed my soft young heart, I have, in my
day, been caught in the palm of a female hand by
the crown, have been violently scrubbed from
the neck to the roots of the hair as a purification
for the Temple, and have then been carried
off, highly charged with saponaceous electricity,
to be steamed like a potato in the unventilated
breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler and his
congregation, until what small mind I had was
quite steamed out of me. In which pitiable,
plight I have been haled out of the place of
meeting, at the conclusion of the exercises, and
catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his
fifthly, his sixthly, and his seventhly, until I
have regarded that reverend person in the light
of a most dismal and oppressive Charade.
Time was when I was carried off to platform
assemblages at which no human child, whether
of wrath or grace, could possibly keep its eyes
open, and when I felt the fatal sleep stealing,
stealing over me, and when I gradually heard
the orator in possession spinning and humming
like a great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and
tumbled over, and I discovered, to my burning
shame and fear, that as to that last stage it was
not he, but I. I have sat under Boanerges when
he has specifically addressed himself to us---us,
the infants---and at this present writing I hear
his lumbering jocularity (which never amused
us, though we basely pretended that it did), and
I behold his big round face, and I look up the
inside of his outstretched coat-sleeve as if it
were a telescope with the stopper on, and I hate
him with an unwholesome hatred for two hours. 
Through such means did it come to pass that I
knew the powerful preacher from beginning to
end, all over and all through, while I was very
young, and that I left him behind at an early
period of life. Peace be with him! More
peace than he brought to me!

  Now, I have heard many preachers since that
time---not powerful; merely Christian, unaffected,
and reverential---and I have had many
such preachers on my roll of friends. But, it
was not to hear these, any more than the powerful
class, that I made my Sunday journeys. 
They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous
churches in the City of London. It came into
my head one day, here had I been cultivating a
familiarity with all the churches of Rome, and
I knew nothing of the insides of the old churches
of London! This befell on a Sunday morning. 
I began my expeditions that very same day, and
they lasted me a year.

  I never wanted to know the names of the
churches to which I went, and to this hour I
am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at
least nine-tenths of them. Indeed, saving that
I know the church of old Gower's tomb (he
lies in effigy with his head upon his books) to
be the church of St. Saviour's, Southwark; and
the Church of =Milton='s tomb to be the church
of Cripplegate; and the church on Cornhill
with the great golden keys to be the church of
St. Peter; I doubt if I could pass a competitive
examination in any of the names. No question
did I ever ask of living creature concerning
these churches, and no answer to any antiquarian
question on the subject that I ever put to books
shall harass the reader's soul. A full half of my
pleasure in them arose out of their mystery.
mysterious I found them; mysterious they shall
remain for me.

  Where shall I begin my round of hidden and
forgotten old churches in the City of London?

  It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday
morning, when I stroll down one of the
many narrow hilly streets in the City that tend
due south to the Thames. It is my first experiment,
and I have come to the region of Whittington
in an omnibus, and we have put down
a fierce-eyed spare old woman, whose slate-coloured
gown smells of herbs, and who walked
up Aldersgate Street to some chapel where she
comforts herself with brimstone doctrine, I warrant.
We have also put down a stouter and
sweeter old lady, with a pretty large Prayer-book
in an unfolded pocket-handkerchief, who
got out at a corner of a court near Stationers'
Hall, and who, I think, must go to church there
because she is the widow of some deceased old
Company's Beadle. The rest of our freight were
mere chance pleasure-seekers and rural walkers,
and went on to the Blackwall Railway. So
many bells are ringing, when I stand undecided
at a street corner, that every sheep in the ecclesiastical
fold might be a bell-wether. The discordance
is fearful. My state of indecision is
referable to, and about equally divisible among,
four great churches, which are all within sight
and sound, all within the space of a few square
yards.

  As I stand at the street corner, I don't see as
many as four people at once going to church,
though I see as many as four churches with their
steeples clamouring for people. I choose my
church, and go up the flight of steps to the great
entrance in the tower. A mouldy tower within,
and like a neglected wash-house. A rope comes
through the beamed roof, and a man in the
corner pulls it and clashes the bell---a whity-brown
man, whose clothes were once black---a
man with flue on him, and cobweb. He stares
at me, wondering how I come there, and I stare
at him, wondering how he comes there. Through
a screen of wood and glass I peep into the dim
church. About twenty people are discernible,
waiting to begin. Christening would seem to
have faded out of this church long ago, for the
font has the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and
its wooden cover (shaped like an old-fashioned
tureen cover) looks as if it wouldn't come off
upon requirement. I perceive the altar to be
rickety, and the Commandments damp. Entering
after this survey, I jostle the clergyman in
his canonicals, who is entering too from a dark
lane behind a pew of state with curtains, where
nobody sits. The pew is ornamented with four
blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I
suppose, before somebody else, but which there
is nobody now to hold or receive honour from. 
I open the door of a family pew, and shut myself
in; if I could occupy twenty family pews at
once, I might have them. The clerk, a brisk
young man (how does _he_ come here?), glances
at me knowingly, as who should say, ``You have
done it now; you must stop.'' Organ plays. 
Organ-loft is in a small gallery across the church;
gallery congregation, two girls. I wonder within
myself what will happen when we are required
to sing.

  There is a pale heap of books in the corner
of my pew, and while the organ, which is hoarse
and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can
hear more of the rusty working of the stops
than of any music, I look at the books, which
are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff.
They belonged, in 1754, to the Dowgate family;
and who were they? Jane Comport must have
married Young Dowgate, and come into the
family that way; Young Dowgate was courting
Jane Comport when he gave her her Prayer-book,
and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf;
if Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why
did she die and leave the book here? Perhaps
at the rickety altar, and before the damp Commandments,
she, Comport, had taken him, Dowgate,
in a flush of youthful hope and joy, and
perhaps it had not turned out in the long-run as
great a success as was expected?

  The opening of the service recalls my wandering
thoughts. I then find, to my astonishment,
that I have been, and still am, taking a
strong kind of invisible snuff up my nose, into
my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, sneeze,
and cough. The clerk sneezes; the clergyman
winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs
(and probably winks); all our little party wink,
sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be
made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth,
stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the
something else the decay of dead citizens in the
vaults below? As sure as Death it is! Not
only in the cold damp February day do we
cough and sneeze dead citizens all through the
service, but dead citizens have got into the very
bellows of the organ, and half choked the same. 
We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead
citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens
stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the
sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and,
when a gust of air comes, tumble down upon him.

  In this first experience I was so nauseated
by too much snuff, made of the Dowgate
family, the Comport branch, and other families
and branches, that I gave but little heed to our
dull manner of ambling through the service; to
the brisk clerk's manner of encouraging us to
try a note or two at psalm time; to the gallery
congregation's manner of enjoying a shrill duet,
without a notion of time or tune; to the whity-brown
man's manner of shutting the minister
into the pulpit, and being very particular with
the lock of the door, as if he were a dangerous
animal. But, I tried again next Sunday, and
soon accustomed myself to the dead citizens,
when I found that I could not possibly get on
without them among the City churches.

  Another Sunday.

  After being again rung for by conflicting
bells, like a leg of mutton or a laced hat a hundred
years ago, I make selection of a church
oddly put away in a corner among a number of
lanes---a smaller church than the last, and an
ugly: of about the date of Queen Anne. As a
congregation, we are fourteen strong; not
counting an exhausted charity school in a gallery,
which has dwindled away to four boys and
two girls. In the porch is a benefaction of
loaves of bread, which there would seem to be
nobody left in the exhausted congregation to
claim, and which I saw an exhausted beadle,
long faded out of uniform, eating with his eyes
for self and family when I passed in. There is
also an exhausted clerk in a brown wig, and
two or three exhausted doors and windows have
been bricked up, and the service books are
musty, and the pulpit cushions are threadbare,
and the whole of the church furniture is in a
very advanced stage of exhaustion. We are
three old women (habitual), two young lovers
(accidental), two tradesmen, one with a wife and
one alone, an aunt and nephew, again two girls
(these two girls dressed out for church, with
everything about them limp that should be stiff,
and _vice vers<a^>,_ 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, eke the bulbous
boots, of one acquainted with 'Twenty port and
comet vintages.

  We are so quiet in our dulness, that the three
sniggering boys, who have got away into a
corner by the altar railing, give us a start, like
crackers, whenever they laugh. And this reminds
me of my own village church, where,
during sermon-time on bright Sundays when
the birds are very musical indeed, farmers' boys
patter out over the stone pavement, and the
clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is
distinctly heard in the summer repose to pursue
and punch them in the churchyard, and is seen
to return with a meditative countenance, making
believe that nothing of the sort has happened. 
The aunt and nephew in this City church are
much disturbed by the sniggering boys. The
nephew is himself a boy, and the sniggerers
tempt him to secular thoughts of marbles and
string, by secretly offering such commodities to
his distant contemplation. This young St.
Anthony for awhile resists, but presently becomes
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
relative to poke him in the side with the corrugated
hooked handle of an ancient umbrella.
The nephew revenges himself for this by holding
his breath, and terrifying his kinswoman
with the dread belief that he has made up his
mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and
shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and
yet again swells and becomes discoloured, until
the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him
out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes
going before him like a prawn's. This causes
the sniggerers to regard flight as an eligible
move, and I know which of them will go out
first, because of the over-devout attention that
he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman. In
a little while, this hypocrite, with an elaborate
demonstration of hushing his footsteps, and with
a face generally expressive of having until now
forgotten a religious appointment elsewhere, is
gone. Number Two gets out in the same way,
but rather quicker. Number Three, getting
safely to the door, there turns reckless, and
banging it open, flies forth with a Whoop! that
vibrates to the top of the tower above us.

  The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence
and a muffled voice, may be scant of hearing as
well as of breath, but he only glances up as
having an idea that somebody has said Amen in
a wrong place, and continues his steady jog-trot,
like a farmer's wife going to market. He does
all he has to do in the same easy way, and gives
us a concise sermon, still like the jog-trot of the
farmer's wife on a level road. Its drowsy cadence
soon lulls the three old women asleep, and the
unmarried tradesman sits looking out at window,
and the married tradesman sits looking at his
wife's bonnet, and the lovers sit looking at one
another, so superlatively happy, that I mind
when I, turned of eighteen, went with my
Angelica to a City church on account of a
shower (by this special coincidence that it was
in Huggin Lane), and when I said to my
Angelica, ``Let the blessed event, Angelica,
occur at no altar but this and when my
Angelica consented that it should occur at no
other---which it certainly never did, for it never
occurred anywhere. And oh, Angelica! what
has become of you this present Sunday morning
when I can't attend to the sermon? and, more
difficult question than that, what has become of
Me as I was when I sat by your side?

  But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous
dive which surely is a little conventional
---like the strange rustlings and settlings and
clearings of throats and noses, which are never
dispensed with at certain points of the church
service, and are never held to be necessary under
any other circumstances. In a minute more it
is all over, and the organ expresses itself to be
as glad of it as it can be of anything in its
rheumatic state, and in another minute we are
all of us out of the church, and Whity-brown has
locked it up. Another minute, or little more,
and, in the neighbouring churchyard---not the
yard of that church, but of another---a churchyard
like a great shabby old mignonette box
with two trees in it, and one tomb---I meet
Whity-brown, in his private capacity, fetching a
pint of beer for his dinner from the public-house
in the corner, where the keys of the rotting fire-ladders
are kept, and were never asked for, and
where there is a ragged, white-seamed, out-at-elbowed
bagatelle board on the first floor.

  In one of these City churches, and only in
one, I found an individual who might have been
claimed as expressly a City personage. I remember
the church by the feature that the
clergyman couldn't get to his own desk without
going through the clerk's, or couldn't get to
the pulpit without going through the reading-desk---
I forget which, and it is no matter---and
by the presence of this personage among the
exceedingly sparse congregation. I doubt if we
were a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity
school to help us out. The personage was
dressed in black of square cut, and was stricken
in years, and wore a black velvet cap and cloth
shoes. He was of a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied
aspect. In his hand he conducted to
church a mysterious child: a child of the feminine
gender. The child had a beaver hat, with
a stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to
any bird of the air. The child was further
attired in a nankeen frock and spencer, brown
boxing gloves, and a veil. It had a blemish, in
the nature of currant jelly, on its chin; and was
a thirsty child. Insomuch that the personage
carried in his pocket a green bottle, from which,
when the first psalm was given out, the child
was openly refreshed. At all other times throughout
the service it was motionless, and stood on
the seat of the large pew, closely fitted into the
corner, like a rain-water pipe.

  The personage never opened his book, and
never looked at the clergyman. _He_ never sat
down either, but stood with his arms leaning on
the top of the pew, and his forehead sometimes
shaded with his right hand, always looking at
the church-door. It was a long church for a
church of its size, and he was at the upper end,
but he always looked at the door. That he was
an old book-keeper, or an old trader who had
kept his own books, and that he might be seen
at the Bank of England about Dividend times,
no doubt. That he had lived in the City all his
life, and was disdainful of other localities, no
doubt. Why he looked at the door I never
absolutely proved, but it is my belief that he
lived in expectation of the time when the citizens
would come back to live in the City, and
its ancient glories would be renewed. He appeared
to expect that this would occur on a
Sunday, and that the wanderers would first
appear in the deserted churches, penitent and
humbled. Hence, he looked at the door which
they never darkened. Whose child the child
was, whether the child of a disinherited daughter,
or some parish orphan whom the personage
had adopted, there was nothing to lead up to. 
It never played, or skipped, or smiled. Once the
idea occurred to me that it was an automaton,
and that the personage had made it; but, following
the strange couple out one Sunday, I
heard the personage say to it, ``Thirteen thousand
pounds;'' to which it added, in a weak
human voice, ``Seventeen and fourpence.'' Four
Sundays I followed them out, and this is all I
ever heard or saw them say. One Sunday I
followed them home. They lived behind a
pump, and the personage opened their abode
with an exceeding large key. The one solitary
inscription on their house related to a fire-plug. 
The house was partly undermined by a deserted
and closed gateway; its windows were blind
with dirt; and it stood with its face disconsolately
turned to a wall. Five great churches and
two small ones rang their Sunday bells between
this house and the church the couple frequented,
so they must have had some special reason for
going a quarter of a mile to it. The last time I
saw them was on this wise. I had been to
explore another church at a distance, and happened
to pass the church they frequented, at
about two of the afternoon, when that edifice
was closed. But, a little side-door, which I had
never observed before, stood open, and disclosed
certain cellarous steps. Methought, ``They are
airing the vaults to-day,'' when the personage
and the child silently arrived at the steps, and
silently descended. Of course I came to the
conclusion that the personage had at last despaired
of the looked-for return of the penitent
citizens, and that he and the child went down
to get themselves buried.

  In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon
one obscure church which had broken out in
the melodramatic style, and was got up with
various tawdry decorations, much after the manner
of the extinct London maypoles. These
attractions had induced several young priests or
deacons in black bibs for waistcoats, and several
young ladies interested in that noble order (the
proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen
young ladies to a deacon), to come into the
City as a new and odd excitement. It was
wonderful to see how these young people played
out their little play in the heart of the City, all
among themselves, without the deserted City's
knowing anything about it. It was as if you
should take an empty counting-house on a Sunday,
and act one of the old Mysteries there. 
They had impressed a small school (from what
neighbourhood I don't know) to assist in the
performances, and it was pleasant to notice
frantic garlands of inscription on the walls, especially
addressing those poor innocents in characters
impossible for them to decipher. There
was a remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum
in this congregation.

  But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead
citizens formed the uppermost scent, while, infused
into it, in a dreamy way not at all displeasing,
was the staple character of the neighbourhood.
In the churches about Mark Lane,
for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat; and
I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley
out of an aged hassock in one of them. From
Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts,
there was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes
of tea. One church near Mincing Lane
smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the
Monument the service had a flavour of damaged
oranges, which, a little further down towards
the river, tempered into herrings, and
gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of
fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of
the church in the Rake's Progress where the
hero is being married to the horrible old lady,
there was no speciality of atmosphere until the
organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from
some adjacent warehouse.

  Be the scent what it would, however, there
was no speciality in the people. There were
never enough of them to represent any calling
or neighbourhood. They had all gone elsewhere
overnight, and the few stragglers in the
many churches languished there inexpressibly.

  Among the uncommercial travels in which I
have engaged, this year of Sunday travel occupies
its own place, apart from all the rest. 
Whether I think of the church where the sails
of the oyster boats in the river almost flapped
against the windows, or of the church where the
railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed
by above the roof, I recall a curious experience. 
On summer Sundays, in the gentle rain or the
bright sunshine---either, deepening the idleness
of the idle City---I have sat, in that singular
silence which belongs to resting-places usually
astir, in scores of buildings at the heart of the
world's metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers
of people speaking the English tongue than
the ancient edifices of the Eternal City, or the
Pyramids of Egypt. The dark vestries and
registries into which I have peeped, and the
little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed
to my feet, have left impressions on my memory
as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way
received. In all those dusty registers that the
worms are eating, there is not a line but made
some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their
day. Still and dry now, still and dry! and the
old tree at the window, with no room for its
branches, has seen them all out. So with the
tomb of the old Master of the old Company, on
which it drips. His son restored it and died,
his daughter restored it and died, and then he
had been remembered long enough, and the tree
took possession of him, and his name cracked
out.

  There are few more striking indications of the
changes of manners and customs that two or
three hundred years have brought about than
these deserted churches. Many of them are
handsome and costly structures, several of them
were designed by Wren, many of them arose
from the ashes of the great fire, others of them
outlived the plague and the fire too, to die a
slow death in these later days. No one can be
sure of the coming time; but it is not too much
to say of it that it has no sign, in its outsetting
tides, of the reflux to these churches of their
congregations and uses. They remain, like the
tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them
and around them, Monuments of another age. 
They are worth a Sunday exploration, now and
then, for they yet echo, not unharmoniously, to
the time when the City of London really was
London - when the 'Prentices and Trained
Bands were of mark in the state when even
the Lord Mayor himself was a reality---not a
Fiction conventionally be-puffed on one day in
the year by illustrious friends, who no less conventionally
laugh at him on the remaining three
hundred and sixty-four days.



	X.

	SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS.

  So much of my travelling is done on
foot, that if I cherished betting propensities,
I should probably be found registered
in sporting newspapers under some such title
as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven-stone
mankind to competition in walking. My
last special feat was turning out of bed at
two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise,
and walking thirty miles into the country
to breakfast. The road was so lonely in the
night, that I fell asleep to the monotonous
sound of my own feet, doing their regular
four miles an hour. Mile after mile I walked
without the slightest sense of exertion, dozing
heavily and dreaming constantly. It was only
when I made a stumble like a drunken man, or
struck out into the road to avoid a horseman
close upon me on the path---who had no existence---
that I came to myself and looked about. 
The day broke mistily (it was autumn-time), and
I could not disembarrass myself of the idea that
I had to climb those heights and banks of
clouds, and that there was an Alpine Convent
somewhere behind the sun, where I was going
to breakfast. This sleepy notion was so much
stronger than such substantial objects as villages
and haystacks, that, after the sun was up and
bright, and when I was sufficiently awake to
have a sense of pleasure in the prospect, I still
occasionally caught myself looking about for
wooden arms to point the right track up the
mountain, and wondering there was no snow
yet. It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I
made immense quantities of verses on that pedestrian
occasion (of course I never make any
when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke
a certain language once pretty familiar to me,
but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse,
with fluency. Of both these phenomena I have
such frequent experience in the state between
sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue
with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for,
if I were, I should not be half so ready. The
readiness is not imaginary, because I often recall
long strings of the verses, and many turns of
the fluent speech, after I am broad awake.

  My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on
end to a definite goal at a round pace; one,
objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond. In
the latter state no gipsy on earth is a greater
vagabond than myself; it is so natural to me,
and strong with me, that I think I must be the
descendant, at no great distance, of some irreclaimable
tramp.

  One of the pleasantest things I have lately met
with, in a vagabond course of shy metropolitan
neighbourhoods and small shops, is the fancy of
a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits
representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain,
and Mr. John Heenan, of the United States
of America. These illustrious men are highly
coloured in fighting trim, and fighting attitude. 
To suggest the pastoral and meditative nature
of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented
on emerald sward, with primroses and
other modest flowers springing up under the
heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled
to the administration of his favourite
blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of
a village church. The humble homes of England,
with their domestic virtues and honeysuckle
porches, urge both heroes to go in and win;
and the lark and other singing birds are observable
in the upper air, ecstatically carolling their
thanks to Heaven for a fight. On the whole,
the associations entwined with the pugilistic
art by this artist are much in the manner of
Izaak Walton.

  But, it is with the lower animals of back-streets
and by-ways that my present purpose
rests. For human notes we may return to such
neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity
serve.

  Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my
mind more than the bad company birds keep. 
Foreign birds often get into good society but
British birds are inseparable from low associates.
There is a whole street of them in St. Giles's;
and I always find them in poor and immoral
neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house
and the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead
people into drinking, and even the man who
makes their cages usually gets into a chronic
state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they
will do things for people in short-skirted velveteen
coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved
waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be
persuaded by the respectable orders of society
to undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields,
once, I found a goldfinch drawing his own
water, and drawing as much of it as if he were
in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at
a bird shop, and offered, in writing, to barter
himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or
even kitchen-stuff. Surely a low thing and a
depraved taste in any finch! I bought that
goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and
hung upon a nail over against my table. He
lived outside a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed
(as I argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it
would have been impossible to account for his
perch sticking out of the garret window. From
the time of his appearance in my room, either he
left off being thirsty---which was not in the bond
---or he could not make up his mind to hear his
little bucket drop back into his well when he let
it go: a shock which in the best of times had
made him tremble. He drew no water but by
stealth, and under the cloak of night. After an
interval of futile and at length hopeless expectation,
the merchant who had educated him was
appealed to. The merchant was a bow-legged
character, with a flat and cushiony nose, like the
last new strawberry. He wore a fur cap, and
shorts, and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny. 
He sent word that he would ``look round.''
He looked round, appeared in the doorway of
the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at
the goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset
that bird; when it was appeased, he still drew
several unnecessary buckets of water; and finally
leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill,
as if he had been to the nearest wine vaults and
got drunk.

  Donkeys, again. I know shy neighbourhoods
where the donkey goes in at the street-door, and
appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined
the back-yard from over the palings, and have
been unable to make him out. Gentility, nobility,
Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in
vain to do what he does for the costermonger. 
Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an
infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers
on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a
nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Windsor,
and try what pace you can get out of him. 
Then, starve him, harness him anyhow to a
truck with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl
from Whitechapel to Bayswater. There appears
to be no particular private understanding between
birds and donkeys in a state of nature;
but, in the shy neighbourhood state, you shall
see them always in the same hands, and always
developing their very best energies for the very
worst company. I have known a donkey---by
sight; we were not on speaking terms---who
lived over on the Surrey side of London Bridge,
among the fastnesses of Jacob's Island and
Dockhead. It was the habit of that animal,
when his services were not in immediate requisition,
to go out alone, idling. I have met him
a mile from his place of residence, loitering
about the streets; and the expression of his
countenance at such times was most degraded. 
He was attached to the establishment of an
elderly lady who sold periwinkles, and he used
to stand on Saturday nights with a cartful of
those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up
his cars when a customer came to the cart, and
too evidently deriving satisfaction from the
knowledge that they got bad measure. His
mistress was sometimes overtaken by inebriety. 
The last time I ever saw him (about five years
ago) he was in circumstances of difficulty, caused
by this failing. Having been left alone with
the cart of periwinkles, and forgotten, he went
off idling. He prowled among his usual low
haunts for some time, gratifying his depraved
tastes, until, not taking the cart into his calculations,
he endeavoured to turn up a narrow alley,
and became greatly involved. He was taken
into custody by the police, and the Green Yard
of the district being near at hand, was backed
into that place of durance. At that crisis I encountered
him; the stubborn sense he evinced
of being---not to compromise the expression---a
blackguard, I never saw exceeded in the human
subject. A flaring candle in a paper shade,
stuck in among his periwinkles, showed him,
with his ragged harness broken and his cart
extensively shattered, twitching his mouth and
shaking his hanging head, a picture of disgrace
and obduracy. I have seen boys being taken
to station-houses, who were as like him as his
own brother.

  The dogs of shy neighbourhoods I observe to
avoid play, and to be conscious of poverty. 
They avoid work too, if they can, of course;
that is in the nature of all animals. I have the
pleasure to know a dog in a back-street in the
neighbourhood of Walworth, who has greatly
distinguished himself in the minor drama, and
who takes his portrait with him when he makes
an engagement, for the illustration of the play-bill.
His portrait (which is not at all like him)
represents him in the act of dragging to the
earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have
tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British
officer. The design is pure poetry, for there is
no such Indian in the piece, and no such incident.
He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed,
for whose honesty I would be bail to any
amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association
with dramatic fiction I cannot rate high. 
Indeed, he is too honest for the profession he
has entered. Being at a town in Yorkshire last
summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of
the night, I attended the performance. His
first scene was eminently successful; but, as it
occupied a second in its representation (and five
lines in the bill), it scarcely afforded ground for
a cool and deliberate judgment of his powers. 
He had merely to bark, run on, and jump
through an inn window after a comic fugitive. 
The next scene of importance to the fable was
a little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety;
forasmuch as while his master (a belated soldier
in a den of robbers on a tempestuous night) was
feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful
dog, and laying great stress on the fact that he
was thirty leagues away, the faithful dog was
barking furiously in the prompter's box, and
clearly choking himself against his collar. But
it was in his greatest scene of all that his honesty
got the better of him. He had to enter a dense
and trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer,
and there to fly at the murderer when he
found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his
victim bound ready for slaughter. It was a hot
night, and he came into the forest from an altogether
unexpected direction, in the sweetest
temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in the least
excited; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue
out; and there sat down, panting, and amiably
surveying the audience, with his tail beating on
the boards like a Dutch clock. Meanwhile, the
murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was
audibly calling to him ``=Co-o-ome= here!'' while
the victim, struggling with his bonds, assailed
him with the most injurious expressions. It
happened, through these means, that when he
was in course of time persuaded to trot up and
rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it
(for dramatic purposes) a little too obvious that
he worked out that awful retribution by licking
butter off his blood-stained hands.

  In a shy street, behind Long Acre, two honest
dogs live, who perform in Punch's shows. I
may venture to say that I am on terms of intimacy
with both, and that I never saw either
guilty of the falsehood of failing to look down
at the man inside the show during the whole
performance. The difficulty other dogs have in
satisfying their minds about these dogs appears
to be never overcome by time. The same dogs
must encounter them over and over again, as
they trudge along in their off-minutes behind the
legs of the show and beside the drum; but all
dogs seem to suspect their frills and jackets, and
to sniff at them as if they thought those articles
of personal adornment an eruption---a something
in the nature of mange, perhaps. From this
Covent Garden of mine I noticed a country dog,
only the other day, who had come up to Covent-Garden
Market under a cart, and had broken
his cord, an end of which he still trailed along
with him. He loitered about the corners of the
four streets commanded by my window; and
bad London dogs came up, and told him lies
that he didn't believe; and worse London dogs
came up, and made proposals to him to go and
steal in the market, which his principles rejected;
and the ways of the town confused him, and he
crept aside and lay down in a doorway. He
had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes
Punch with Toby. He was darting to Toby for,
consolation and advice, when he saw the frill,
and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled.
The show was pitched, Toby retired behind the
drapery, the audience formed, the drum and
pipes struck up. My country dog remained
immovable, intently staring at these strange appearances,
until Toby opened the drama by
appearing on his ledge, and to him entered
Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby's
mouth. At this spectacle the country dog threw
up his head, gave one terrible howl, and fled
due west.

  We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might
often talk more expressively of dogs keeping
men. I know a bulldog in a shy corner of
Hammersmith who keeps a man. He keeps
him up a yard, and makes him go to public-houses
and lay wagers on him, and obliges him
to lean against posts and look at him, and forces
him to neglect work for him, and keeps him
under rigid coercion. I once knew a fancy
terrier who kept a gentleman---a gentleman who
had been brought up at Oxford, too. The dog
kept the gentleman entirely for his glorification,
and the gentleman never talked about anything
but the terrier. This, however, was not in a
shy neighbourhood, and is a digression consequently.

  There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods
who keep boys. I have my eye on
a mongrel in Somers Town who keeps three
boys. He feigns that he can bring down sparrows,
and unburrow rats (he can do neither),
and he takes the boys out on sporting pretences
into all sorts of suburban fields. He has likewise
made them believe that he possesses some
mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and
they consider themselves incompletely equipped
for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and
a wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them,
and barking tremendously. There is a dog residing
in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a
blind man. He may be seen, most days, in
Oxford Street, haling the blind man away on
expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible
to, the man: wholly of the dog's conception
and execution. Contrariwise, when the
man has projects, the dog will sit down in a
crowded thoroughfare and meditate. I saw him
yesterday wearing the money-tray like an easy
collar, instead of offering it to the public, taking
the man against his will, on the invitation of a
disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at
Harrow---he was so intent on that direction. 
The north wall of Burlington-House Gardens,
between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy
spot for appointment among blind men at about
two or three o'clock in the afternoon. They sit
(very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there,
and compare notes. Their dogs may always be
observed, at the same time, openly disparaging
the men they keep to one another, and settling
where they shall respectively take their men
when they begin to move again. At a small
butcher's, in a shy neighbourhood (there is no
reason for suppressing the name; it is by Notting
Hill, and gives upon the district called the Potteries),
I know a shaggy black and white dog
who keeps a drover. He is a dog of an easy
disposition, and too frequently allows this drover
to get drunk. On these occasions, it is the dog's
custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping
his eye on a few sheep, and thinking. I have
seen him with six sheep, plainly casting up in
his mind how many he began with when he left
the market, and at what places he has left the
rest. I have seen him perplexed by not being
able to account to himself for certain particular
sheep. A light has gradually broken on him,
he has remembered at what butcher's he left
them, and in a burst of grave satisfaction has
caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself
much relieved. If I could at any time have
doubted the fact that it was he who kept the
drover, and not the drover who kept him, it
would have been abundantly proved by his way
of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when
the drover came out besmeared with red ochre
and beer, and gave him wrong directions, which
he calmly disregarded. He has taken the sheep
entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked,
with respectful firmness, ``That instruction would
place them under an omnibus; you had better
confine your attention to yourself---you will want
it all;'' and has driven his charge away, with an
intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of
business, that has left his lout of a man very,
very far behind.

  As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually
betray a slinking consciousness of being in poor
circumstances---for the most part manifested in
an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their
play, and a misgiving that somebody is going to
harness them to something, to pick up a living
---so the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a
strong tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not
only are they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating
on the surplus population around them,
and on the densely-crowded state of all the
avenues to cat's-meat; not only is there a moral
and politico-economical haggardness in them,
traceable to these reflections but they evince a
physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean,
and is wretchedly got up; their black turns
rusty, like old mourning; they wear very indifferent
fur; and take to the shabbiest cotton
velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of
recognition with several small streets of cats
about the Obelisk in St. George's Fields, and
also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell Green, and
also in the back-settlements of Drury Lane. In
appearance they are very like the women among
whom they live. They seem to turn out of their
unwholesome beds into the street without any
preparation. They leave their young families
to stagger about the gutters unassisted, while
they frouzily quarrel and swear and scratch and
spit at street corners. In particular, I remark
that when they are about to increase their
families (an event of frequent occurrence), the
resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain
dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and
general giving up of things. I cannot honestly
report that I have ever seen a feline matron of
this class washing her face when in an interesting
condition.

  Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial
travel among the lower animals of shy neighbourhoods
by dwelling at length upon the exasperated
moodiness of the tom-cats, and their
resemblance in many respects to a man and a
brother, I will come to a close with a word on
the fowls of the same localities.

  That anything born of an egg, and invested
with wings, should have got to the pass that it
hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar,
and calls _that_ going home, is a circumstance so
amazing as to leave one nothing more in this
connection to wonder at. Otherwise I might
wonder at the completeness with which these
fowls have become separated from all the birds
of the air---have taken to grovelling in bricks
and mortar and mud---have forgotten all about
live trees, and make roosting-places of shop-boards,
barrows, oyster tubs, bulk-heads, and
door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing concerning
them, and take them as they are. I accept as
products of Nature and things of course a reduced
Bantam family of my acquaintance in the
Hackney Road, who are incessantly at the pawnbroker's.
I cannot say that they enjoy themselves,
for they are of a melancholy temperament;
but what enjoyment they are capable
of, they derive from crowding together in the
pawnbroker's side-entry. Here they are always
to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were
newly come down in the world, and were afraid
of being identified. I know a low fellow, originally
of a good family from Dorking, who takes
his whole establishment of wives, in single file,
in at the door of the Jug Department of a disorderly
tavern near the Haymarket, man<oe>uvres
them among the company's legs, emerges with
them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his
life: seldom, in the season, going to bed before
two in the morning. Over Waterloo Bridge there
is a shabby old speckled couple (they belong to
the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, and
towel-horse making trade), who are always trying
to get in at the door of a chapel. Whether the
old lady, under a delusion reminding one of
Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of intrusting an egg
to that particular denomination, or merely understands
that she has no business in the building,
and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot
determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to
undermine the principal door; while her partner,
who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down,
encouraging her, and defying the Universe. 
But, the family I have been best acquainted
with, since the removal from this trying sphere
of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the
densest part of Bethnal Green. Their abstraction
from the objects among which they live, or
rather, their conviction that those objects have
all come into existence in express subservience
to fowls, has so enchanted me, that I have made
them the subject of many journeys at divers
hours. After careful observation of the two
lords and the ten ladies of whom this family
consists, I have come to the conclusion that
their opinions are represented by the leading
lord and leading lady: the latter, as I judge,
an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity of
feather and visibility of quill, that gives her the
appearance of a bundle of office pens. When
a railway goods van that would crush an elephant
comes round the corner, tearing over these fowls,
they emerge unharmed from under the horses,
perfectly satisfied that the whole rush was a
passing property in the air, which may have left
something to eat behind it. They look upon
old shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and
fragments of bonnets as a kind of meteoric discharge
for fowls to peck at. Pegtops and hoops
they account, I think, as a sort of hail; shuttle-cocks,
as rain, or dew. Gas-light comes quite
as natural to them as any other light; and I have
more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the
two lords, the early public-house at the corner
has superseded the sun. I have established it
as a certain fact that they always begin to crow
when the public-house shutters begin to be taken
down, and that they salute the potboy, the instant
he appears to perform that duty, as if he
were Ph<oe>bus in person.


	XI.

	TRAMPS.

  The chance use of the word ``Tramp,''
in my last paper, brought that numerous
fraternity so vividly before my
mind's eye, that I had no sooner
laid down my pen than a compulsion
was upon me to take it up again,
and make notes of the Tramps whom I
perceived on all the summer roads in all
directions.

  Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the
wayside, he sits with his legs in a dry ditch;
and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very
often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back. 
Yonder, by the high-road, glaring white in the
bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf
under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice
from the highway, the tramp of the order savage,
fast asleep. He lies on the broad of his back,
with his face turned up to the sky, and one of
his ragged arms loosely thrown across his face. 
His bundle (what can be the contents of that
mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while
to carry it about?) is thrown down beside him,
and the waking woman with him sits with her
legs in the ditch, and her back to the road. She
wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the front
of her head, to shade her face from the sun in
walking, and she ties her skirts round her in
conventionally tight tramp fashion with a sort of
apron. You can seldom catch sight of her,
resting thus, without seeing her in a despondently
defiant manner doing something to her hair
or her bonnet, and glancing at you between her
fingers. She does not often go to sleep herself
in the daytime, but will sit for any length of time
beside the man. And his slumberous propensities
would not seem to be referable to the
fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries it
much oftener and further than he. When they
are afoot, you will mostly find him slouching on
ahead in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily
behind with the burden. He is given to personally
correcting her, too---which phase of his
character develops itself oftenest on benches
outside alehouse doors---and she appears to become
strongly attached to him for these reasons;
it may usually be noticed that, when the
poor creature has a bruised face, she is the
most affectionate. He has no occupation whatever,
this order of tramp, and has no object
whatever in going anywhere. He will sometimes
call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer,
but only when he takes an 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 looking at your flowers, you
will overhear him growl, with a strong sense of
contrast, ``_You_ are a lucky hidle devil, _you_ are!''

  The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless
order, and has the same injured conviction on
him that you were born to whatever you possess,
and never did anything to get it; but he is of a
less audacious disposition. He will stop before
your gate, and say to his female companion,
with an air of constitutional humility and propitiation---
to edify any one who may be within
hearing behind a blind or a bush---``This is a
sweet spot, ain't it? A lovelly spot! And I
wonder if they'd give two poor footsore travellers
like me and you a drop of fresh water out
of such a pretty gen-teel crib? We'd take it
wery koind on 'em, wouldn't us? Wery koind,
upon my word, us would!'' He has a quick
sense of a dog in the vicinity, and will extend
his modestly-injured propitiation to the dog
chained up in your yard; remarking, as he
slinks at the yard-gate, ``Ah! You are a foine
breed o' dog, too, and _you_ ain't kep for nothink!
I'd take it wery koind o' your master if he'd elp
a traveller and his woife, as envies no gentlefolk
their good fortun, wi' a bit o' your broken wittles. 
He'd never know the want of it, nor more would
you. Don't bark like that at poor persons as
never done you no arm; the poor is down-trodden
and broke enough without that. Oh,
=don't=!'' He generally heaves a prodigious
sigh in moving away, and always looks up the
lane and down the lane, and up the road and
down the road, before going on.

  Both of these orders of tramp are of a very
robust habit; let the hard-working labourer, at
whose cottage door they prowl and beg, have
the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure
to be in good health.

  There is another kind of tramp whom you
encounter this bright summer day---say, on a
road with the sea breeze making its dust lively,
and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond
the slope of down. As you walk enjoyingly on,
you descry in the perspective, at the bottom of
a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that
appears to be sitting airily on a gate, whistling
in a cheerful and disengaged manner. As you
approach nearer to it, you observe the figure to
slide down from the gate, to desist from whistling,
to uncock its hat, to become tender of
foot, to depress its head and elevate its shoulders,
and to present all the characteristics of
profound despondency. Arriving at the bottom
of the hill, and coming close to the figure, you
observe it to be the figure of a shabby young
man. He is moving painfully forward, in the
direction in which you are going, and his mind
is so preoccupied with his misfortunes that he is
not aware of your approach until you are close
upon him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of
you, you discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved
young man, and a remarkably well-spoken
young man. You know him to be well
behaved by his respectful manner of touching
his hat: you know him to be well spoken by
his smooth manner of expressing himself. He
says, in a flowing confidential voice, and without
punctuation, ``I ask your pardon sir but if
you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed
upon the public Iway by one who is
almost reduced to rags though it as not always
been so and by no fault of his own but through
ill elth in his family and many unmerited sufferings
it would be a great obligation sir to know
the time.'' You give the well-spoken young
man the time. The well-spoken young man,
keeping well up with you, resumes: ``I am
aware sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further
question on a gentleman walking for his entertainment
but might I make so bold as ask the
favour of the way to Dover sir and about the
distance?'' You inform the well-spoken young
man that the way to Dover is straight on, and
the distance some eighteen miles. The well-spoken
young man becomes greatly agitated. 
``In the condition to which I am reduced,'' says
he, ``I could not ope to reach Dover before
dark even if my shoes were in a state to take
me there or my feet were in a state to old out over
the flinty road and were not on the bare ground
of which any gentleman has the means to satisfy
himself by looking Sir may I take the liberty of
speaking to you?'' As the well-spoken young
man keeps so well up with you that you can't
prevent his taking the liberty of speaking to
you, he goes on, with fluency: ``Sir it is not
begging that is my intention for I was brought
up by the best of mothers and begging is not
my trade I should not know sir how to follow it
as a trade if such were my shameful wishes for
the best of mothers long taught otherwise and
in the best of omes though now reduced to take
the present liberty on the Iway Sir my business
was the law-stationering and I was favourably
known to the Solicitor-General the Attorney-General
the majority of the judges and the ole
of the legal profession but through ill elth in
my family and the treachery of a friend for
whom I became security and he no other than
my own wife's brother the brother of my own
wife I was cast forth with my tender partner and
three young children not to beg for I will sooner
die of deprivation but to make my way to the
seaport town of Dover where I have a relative
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
tortoise-shell comb which is a genuine article at
any price that your humanity may put upon it
and may the blessings of a ouseless family
awaiting with beating arts the return of a husband
and a father from Dover upon the cold
stone seats of London Bridge ever attend you
Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to you I
implore you to buy this comb!'' By this time,
being a reasonably good walker, you will have
been too much for the well-spoken young man,
who will stop short, and express his disgust and
his want of breath in a long expectoration, as
you leave him behind.

  Towards the end of the same walk, on the
same bright summer day, at the corner of the
next little town or village, you may find another
kind of tramp, embodied in the persons of a
most exemplary couple, whose only improvidence
appears to have been that they spent the last of
their little All on soap. They are a man and
woman, spotless to behold---John Anderson,
with the frost on his short smock-frock instead
of his ``Pow,'' attended by Mrs. Anderson. John
is over-ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment,
and wears a curious, and, you would say, an
almost unnecessary demonstration of girdle of
white linen wound about his waist---a girdle
snowy as Mrs. Anderson's apron. This cleanliness
was the expiring effort of the respectable
couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Anderson
but to get chalked upon his spade, in
snow-white copy-book characters, =Hungry=! and
to sit down here. Yes; one thing more remained
to Mr. Anderson---his character; Monarchs
could not deprive him of his hard-earned
character. Accordingly, as you come up with
this spectacle of virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson
rises, and with a decent curtsy presents for
your consideration a certificate from a Doctor of
Divinity, the Reverend the Vicar of Upper
Dodgington, who informs his Christian friends
and all whom it may concern that the bearers,
John Anderson and lawful wife, are persons to
whom you cannot be too liberal. This benevolent
pastor omitted no work of his hands to fit
the good couple out, for with half an eye you
can recognise his autograph on the spade.

  Another class of tramp is a man, the most
valuable part of whose stock-in-trade is a highly-perplexed
demeanour. He is got up like a
countryman, and you will often come upon the
poor fellow while he is endeavouring to decipher
the inscription on a milestone---quite a fruitless
endeavour, for he cannot read. He asks your
pardon, he truly does (he is very slow of speech,
this tramp, and he looks in a bewildered way all
round the prospect while he talks to you), but
all of us shold do as we wold be done by, and
he'll take it kind if you'll put a power man in
the right road fur to jine his eldest son as has
broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this
heere Orspit'l as is wrote down by Squire
Pouncerby's own hand as wold not tell a lie fur
no man. He then produces from under his
dark frock (being always very slow and perplexed)
a neat but worn old leathern purse, from
which he takes a scrap of paper. On this scrap
of paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The
Grove, ``Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but
very worthy man, to the Sussex County Hospital,
near Brighton''---a matter of some difficulty at
the moment, seeing that the request comes suddenly
upon you in the depths of Hertfordshire. 
The more you endeavour to indicate where
Brighton is---when you have with the greatest
difficulty remembered---the less the devoted
father can be made to comprehend, and the more
obtusely he stares at the prospect whereby,
being reduced to extremity, you recommend the
faithful parent to begin by going to St. Albans,
and present him with half-a-crown. It does him
good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him forward,
since you find him lying drunk that same evening
in the wheelwright's saw-pit, under the shed
where the felled trees are; opposite the sign of
the Three Jolly Hedgers.

  But the most vicious, by far, of all the idle
tramps, is the tramp who pretends to have been
a gentleman. ``Educated,'' he writes from the
village beer-shop in pale ink of a ferruginous
complexion; ``educated at Trin. Coll. Cam.---
nursed in the lap of affluence---once in my small
way the pattron of the Muses,'' &c. &c. &c.---
surely a sympathetic mind will not withhold a
trifle to help him on to the market-town where
he thinks of giving a Lecture to the _fruges consumere
nati,_ on things in general? This shameful
creature, lolling about hedge tap-rooms in
his ragged clothes, now so far from being black
that they look as if they never can have been
black, is more selfish and insolent than even
the savage tramp. He would sponge on the
poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when
he had got it; he would interpose (if he could
get anything by it) between the baby and the
mother's breast. So much lower than the company
he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of
being higher, this pitiless rascal blights the
summer roads as he maunders on between the
luxuriant hedges: where (to my thinking) even
the wild convolvulus and rose and sweetbrier
are the worse for his going by, and need time to
recover from the taint of him in the air.

  The young fellows who trudge along barefoot,
five or six together, their boots slung over their
shoulders, their shabby bundles under their
arms, their sticks newly cut from some roadside
wood, are not eminently prepossessing, but are
much less objectionable. There is a tramp fellowship
among them. They pick one another
up at resting stations, and go on in companies. 
They always go at a fast swing---though they
generally limp too---and there is invariably one
of the company who has much ado to keep up
with the rest. They generally talk about horses,
and any other means of locomotion than
walking: or, one of the company relates some
recent experiences of the road---which are
always disputes and difficulties. As for example. 
``So, as I'm a standing at the pump in the
market, blest if there don't come up a Beadle,
and he ses, `Mustn't stand here,' he ses. `Why
not?' I ses. `No beggars allowed in this town,' he
ses. `Who's a beggar?' I ses. `You are,' he ses. 
`Whoever see _me_ beg? Did _you_?' I ses. `Then
you're a tramp,' he ses. `I'd rather be that than
a Beadle,' I ses.'' (The company expressed great
approval.) `` `Would you?' he ses to me. `Yes,
I would,' I ses to him. `Well,' he ses, `anyhow,
get out of this town.' `Why, blow your
little town!' I ses, `who wants to be in it?
Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin'
and stickin' itself in the road to anywhere? Why
don't you get a shovel and a barrer, and clear
your town out o' people's way?' '' (The company
expressing the highest approval, and laughing
aloud, the all go down the hill.)

  Then, there are the tramp handicraft men. 
Are they not all over England in this midsummer-time?
Where does the lark sing, the corn
grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they are
not among the lights and shadows, tinkering,
chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock-mending,
knife-grinding? Surely a pleasant thing, if
we were in that condition of life, to grind our
way through Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. For
the first six weeks or so, we should see the sparks
we ground off fiery bright against a background
of green wheat and green leaves. A little later,
and the ripe harvest would pale our sparks from
red to yellow, until we got the dark newly-turned
land for a background again, and they
were red once more. By that time we should
have ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the
whirr of our wheel would be lost in the breaking
of the waves. Our next variety in sparks would
be derived from contrast with the gorgeous medley
of colours in the autumn woods, and by the
time we had ground our way round to the heathy
lands between Reigate and Croydon, doing a
prosperous stroke of business all along, we should
show like a little firework in the light frosty air,
and be the next best thing to the blacksmith's
forge. Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending
tour. What judges we should be of
rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf and a
bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge
on bridges, looking over at osier-beds! Among
all the innumerable occupations that cannot
possibly be transacted without the assistance of
lookers-on, chair-mending may take a station in
the first rank. When we sat down with our
backs against the barn or the public-house, and
began to mend, what a sense of popularity would
grow upon us! When all the children came to
look at us, and the tailor, and the general dealer,
and the farmer who had been giving a small
order at the little saddler's, and the groom from
the great house, and the publican, and even the
two skittle-players (and here note that, howsoever
busy all the rest of village humankind 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 eighteen-pence; which
offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling and
clinking among the chubby awe-struck little
Keepers for an hour and more. So completely to
the family's satisfaction would we achieve our
work, that the Keeper would mention how that
there was something wrong with the bell of the
turret stable clock up at the Hall, and that, if
we thought good of going up to the housekeeper
on the chance of that job too, why he would take
us. Then should we go, among the branching
oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery
known to the Keeper, seeing the herd
glancing here and there as we went along, until
we came to the old Hall, solemn and grand. 
Under the Terrace Flower Garden, and round
by the stables, would the Keeper take us in,
and as we passed we should observe how spacious
and stately the stables, and how fine the
painting of the horses' names over their stalls,
and how solitary all: the family being in
London. Then should we find ourselves presented
to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed
state at needlework, in a bay-window looking
out upon a mighty grim red-brick quadrangle,
guarded by stone lions disrespectfully throwing
summersets over the escutcheons of the noble
family. Then, our services accepted, and we
insinuated with a candle into the stable turret,
we should find it to be a mere question of pendulum,
but one that would hold us until dark. 
Then should we fall to work, with a general impression
of Ghosts being about, and of pictures
indoors that of a certainty came out of their
frames and ``walked,'' if the family would only
own it. Then should we work and work, until
the day gradually turned to dusk, and even until
the dusk gradually turned to dark. Our task at
length accomplished, we should be taken into
an enormous servants' hall, and there regaled
with beef and bread, and powerful ale. Then,
paid freely, we should be at liberty to go, and
should be told by a pointing helper to keep
round over yinder by the blasted ash, and so
straight through the woods till we should see
the town lights right afore us. Then, feeling
lonesome, should we desire, upon the whole,
that the ash had not been blasted, or that the
helper had had the manners not to mention it. 
However, we should keep on all right, till suddenly
the stable bell would strike ten in the
dolefullest way, quite chilling our blood, though
we had so lately taught him how to acquit himself.
Then, as we went on, should we recall old
stories, and dimly consider what it would be
most advisable to do, in the event of a tall
figure all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up
and saying, ``I want you to come to a church-yard
and mend a church clock. Follow me!''
Then should we make a burst to get clear of
the trees, and should soon find ourselves in the
open, with the town lights bright ahead of us. 
So should we lie that night at the ancient sign
of the Crispin and Crispanus, and rise early
next morning to be betimes on tramp again.

  Bricklayers often tramp in twos and threes,
lying by night at their ``lodges,'' which are scattered
all over the country. Bricklaying is
another of the occupations that can by no
means be transacted in rural parts without the
assistance of spectators---of as many as can be
convened. In thinly-peopled spots I have
known bricklayers on tramp, coming up with
brick-layers at work, to be so sensible of the indispensability
of lookers-on, that they themselves
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 engaging in it, until all his money
is gone. The current of my uncommercial pursuits
caused me only last summer to want a little
body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a
pleasant part of the country; and I was at one
time honoured with the attendance of as many as
seven-and-twenty, who were looking at six.

  Who can be familiar with any rustic highway
in summer-time, without storing up knowledge
of the many tramps who go from one oasis of
town or village to another, to sell a stock-in-trade,
apparently not worth a shilling when
sold? Shrimps are a favourite commodity for
this kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a
soft and spongy character, coupled with Spanish
nuts and brandy-balls. The stock is carried on
the head in a basket, and between the head and
the basket are the trestles on which the stock is
displayed at trading times. Fleet of foot, but a
careworn class of tramp this, mostly; with a
certain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much
anxious balancing of baskets; and also with a
long Chinese sort of eye, which an overweighted
forehead would seem to have squeezed into that
form.

  On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns
and great rivers, behold the tramping Soldier. 
And if you should happen never to have asked
yourself whether his uniform is suited to his
work, perhaps the poor fellow's appearance, as
he comes distressfully towards you, with his
absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear
in his hand, and his legs well chafed by his
trousers of baize, may suggest the personal
inquiry, how you think _you_ would like it?
Much better the tramping Sailor, although
his cloth is somewhat too thick for land
service. But, why the tramping merchant-mate
should put on a black velvet waistcoat,
for a chalky country in the dog-days, is one
of the great secrets of nature that will never
be discovered.

  I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road,
bordered on either side by a wood, and having
on one hand, between the road dust and the
trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers
grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high
and airy, with a distant river steadily stealing
away to the ocean, like a man's life. To gain
the milestone here, which the moss, primroses,
violets, bluebells, and wild roses would soon
render illegible but for peering travellers pushing
them aside with their sticks, you must come up
a steep hill, come which way you may. So, all
the tramps with carts or caravans---the Gipsy
Tramp, the Show Tramp, the Cheap Jack---find
it impossible to resist the temptations of the
place, and all turn the horse loose when they
come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the place,
I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have
scorched its grass! What tramp children do I
see here, attired in a handful of rags, making a
gymnasium of the shafts of the cart, making a
feather bed of the flints and brambles, making
a toy of the hobbled old horse who is not much
more like a horse than any cheap toy would be!
Here do I encounter the cart of mats and
brooms and baskets---with all thoughts of business
given to the evening wind---with the stew
made and being served out---with Cheap Jack
and Dear Gill striking soft music out of the
plates that are rattled like warlike cymbals when
put up for auction at fairs and markets---their
minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody
of the nightingales, as they begin to sing in the
woods behind them, that if I were to propose to
deal, they would sell me anything at cost price. 
On this hallowed ground has it been my happy
privilege (let me whisper it) to behold the
White-haired Lady with the pink eyes eating
meat-pie with the Giant: while, by the hedge-side,
on the box of blankets which I knew contained
the snakes, were set forth the cups and
saucers and the teapot. It was on an evening
in August that I chanced upon this ravishing
spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas the Giant
reclined half concealed beneath the overhanging
boughs, and seemed indifferent to Nature, the
white hair of the gracious Lady streamed free
in the breath of evening, and her pink eyes
found pleasure in the landscape. I heard only
a single sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke
a talent for modest repartee. The ill-mannered
Giant---accursed be his evil race!---had interrupted
the lady in some remark, and, as I passed
that enchanted corner of the wood, she gently
reproved him with the words, ``Now, Cobby;''---
Cobby! so short a name!---``ain't one fool
enough to talk at a time?''

  Within appropriate distance of this magic
ground, though not so near it as that the song
trolled from tap or bench at door can invade its
woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no
man possessed of a penny was ever known to
pass in warm weather. Before its entrance are
certain pleasant trimmed limes; likewise a cool
well, with so musical a bucket handle, that its
fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse prick
up his ears and neigh upon the droughty road
half a mile off. This is, a house of great resort
for hay-making tramps and harvest tramps,
much that as they sit within, drinking their mugs
of beer, their relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks
glare out of the open windows, as if the
whole establishment were a family war-coach of
Ancient Britons. Later in the season, the whole
country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm
with hopping tramps. They come in families,
men, women, and children, every family provided
with a bundle of bedding, an iron pot, a
number of babies, and too often, with some
poor sick creature quite unfit for the rough
life, for whom they suppose the smell of the
fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy. Many of
these hoppers are Irish, but many come from
London. They crowd all the roads, and camp
under all the hedges and on all the scraps of
common-land, and live among and upon the
hops until they are all picked, and the hop
gardens, so beautiful through the summer, look
as if they had been laid waste by an invading
army. Then there is a vast exodus of tramps
out of the country; and, if you ride or drive
round any turn of any road at more than a foot-pace,
you will be bewildered to find that you
have charged into the bosom of fifty families,
and that there are splashing up all around you,
in the utmost prodigality of confusion, bundles
of bedding, babies, iron pots, and a good-humoured
multitude of both sexes and all ages,
equally divided between perspiration and intoxication.


	XII.

	DULLBOROUGH TOWN.

  It lately happened that I found myself rambling
about the scenes among which my
earliest days were passed: scenes from which I
departed when I was a child, and which I did
not revisit until I was a man. This is no uncommon
chance, but one that befalls some of us any
day. Perhaps it may not be quite uninteresting
to compare notes with the reader respecting an
experience so familiar, and a journey so uncommercial.

  I call my boyhood's home (and I feel like a
Tenor in an English Opera when I mention it)
Dullborough. Most of us come from Dullborough
who come from a country town.

  As I left Dullborough in the days when there
were no railroads in the land, I left it in a stage-coach.
Through all the years that have since
passed have I ever lost the smell of the damp
straw in which I was packed---like game---and
forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys,
Wood Street, Cheapside, London? There was
no other inside passenger, and I consumed my
sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it
rained hard all the way, and I thought life
sloppier than I had expected to find it.

  With this tender remembrance upon me, I was
cavalierly shunted back into Dullborough the
other day by train. My ticket had been previously
collected, like my taxes, and my shining
new portmanteau had had a great plaster stuck
upon it, and I had been defied by Act of
Parliament to offer an objection to anything
that was done to it, or me, under a penalty of
not less than forty shillings, or more than five
pounds, compoundable for a term of imprisonment.
When I had sent my disfigured property
on to the hotel, I began to look about me; and
the first discovery I made was, that the Station
had swallowed up the playing-field.

  It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn-trees,
the hedge, the turf, and all those buttercups
and daisies had given place to the stoniest
of jolting roads; while, beyond the Station, an
ugly dark monster of a tunnel kept its jaws
open, as if it had swallowed them, and were
ravenous for more destruction. The coach that
had carried me away was melodiously called
Timpson's Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged to
Timpson, at the coach-office up street; the locomotive
engine that had brought me back was
called severely No. 97, and belonged to S.E.R.,
and was spitting ashes and hot water over the
blighted ground.

  When I had been let out at the platform door,
like a prisoner whom his turnkey grudgingly
released, I looked in again, over the low wall,
at the scene of departed glories. Here, in the
hay-making time, had I been delivered from the
dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile (of
haycock), 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 salary, and that the army and navy ought
to be put down---horrors at which I trembled in
my bed, after supplicating that the Radicals
might be speedily taken and hanged. Here,
too, had we, the small boys of Boles's, had that
cricket match against the small boys of Coles's,
when Boles and Coles had actually met upon
the ground, and when, instead of instantly hitting
out at one another with the utmost fury as
we had all hoped and expected, those sneaks
had said respectively, ``I hope Mrs. Boles is
well'' and ``I hope Mrs. Coles and the baby are
doing charmingly.'' Could it be that, after all
this, and much more, the playing-field was a
Station, and No. 97 expectorated boiling water
and red-hot cinders on it, and the whole belonged
by Act of Parliament to S.E.R.?

  As it could be, and was, I left the place with
a heavy heart for a walk all over the town. And
first of Timpson's up street. When I departed
from Dullborough in the strawy arms of Timpson's
Blue-Eyed Maid, Timpson's was a moderate-sized
coach-office (in fact, a little coach-office),
with an oval transparency in the window,
which looked beautiful by night, representing
one of Timpson's coaches in the act of passing a
milestone on the London road with great velocity,
completely full inside and out, and all the
passengers dressed in the first style of fashion,
and enjoying themselves tremendously. I found
no such place as Timpson's now---no such
bricks and rafters, not to mention the name---no
such edifice on the teeming earth. Pickford had
come and knocked Timpson's down. Pickford
had not only knocked Timpson's down, but had
knocked two or three houses down on each side
of Timpson's, and then had knocked the whole
into one great establishment with a pair of big
gates, in and out of which his (Pickford's) waggons
are, in these days, always rattling, with
their drivers sitting up so high, that they look in
at the second-floor windows of the old-fashioned
houses in the High Street as they shake the town. 
I have not the honour of Pickford's acquaintance,
but I felt that he had done me an injury,
not to say committed an act of boyslaughter, in
running over my childhood in this rough manner;
and if ever I meet Pickford driving one of
his own monsters, and smoking a pipe the while
(which is the custom of his men), he shall know
by the expression of my eye, if it catches his,
that there is something wrong between us.

  Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to
come rushing into Dullborough, and deprive the
town of a public picture. He is not Napoleon
Bonaparte. When he took down the transparent
stage-coach, he ought to have given the
town a transparent van. With a gloomy conviction
that Pickford is wholly utilitarian and
unimaginative, I proceeded on my way.

  It is a mercy I have not a red and green
lamp and a night bell at my door, for in my very
young days I was taken to so many lyings-in,
that I wonder I escaped becoming a professional
martyr to them in after life. I suppose I had a
very sympathetic nurse, with a large circle of
married acquaintance. However that was, as I
continued my walk through Dullborough, I
found many houses to be solely associated in
my mind with this particular interest. At one
little greengrocer's shop, down certain steps
from the street, I remember to have waited on a
lady who had had four children (I am afraid to
write five, though I fully believe it was five) at a
birth. This meritorious woman held quite a
reception in her room on the morning when I
was introduced there, and the sight of the house
brought vividly to my mind how the four (five)
deceased young people lay, side by side, on a
clean cloth on a chest of drawers; reminding
me, by a homely association, which I suspect
their complexion to have assisted, of pigs' feet
as they are usually displayed at a neat tripe
shop. Hot caudle was handed round on the
occasion, and I further remembered, as I stood
contemplating the greengrocer's, that a subscription
was entered into among the company,
which became extremely alarming to my consciousness
of having pocket money on my person. 
This fact being known to my conductress, whoever
she was, I was earnestly exhorted to contribute,
but resolutely declined: therein disgusting
the company, who gave me to understand
that I must dismiss all expectations of
going to Heaven.

  How does it happen that, when all else is
changed wherever one goes, there yet seem, in
every place, to be some few people who never
alter? As the sight of the greengrocer's house
recalled these trivial incidents of long ago, the
identical greengrocer appeared on the steps,
with his hands in his pockets, and leaning his
shoulder against the door-post, as my childish
eyes had seen him many a time; indeed, there
was his old mark on the door-post yet, as if his
shadow had become a fixture there. It was he
himself; he might formerly have been an old-looking
young man, or he might now be a
young-looking old man, but there he was. In
walking along the street, I had as yet looked in
vain for a familiar face, or even a transmitted
face; here was the very greengrocer who had
been weighing and handling baskets on the
morning of the reception. As he brought with
him a dawning remembrance that he had had
no proprietary interest in those babies, I crossed
the road, and accosted him on the subject. He
was not in the least excited or gratified, or in
anyway roused, by the accuracy of my recollection,
but said, Yes, summut out of the common
---he didn't remember how many it was (as if
half-a-dozen babes either way made no difference)
---had happened to a Mrs. What's-her-name,
as once lodged there---but he didn't call
it to mind, particular. Nettled by this phlegmatic
conduct, I informed him that I had left
the town when I was a child. He slowly returned,
quite unsoftened, and not without a
sarcastic kind of complacency, _Had_ I? Ah!
And did I find it had got on tolerably well
without me? Such is the difference (I thought
when I had left him a few hundred yards behind,
and was by so much in a better temper)
between going away from a place and remaining
in it. I had no right, I reflected, to be angry
with the greengrocer for his want of interest; I
was nothing to him: whereas he was the town,
the cathedral, the bridge, the river, my childhood,
and a large slice of my life, to me.

  Of course the town had shrunk fearfully since
I was a child there. I had entertained the impression
that the High Street was at least as
wide as Regent Street, London, or the Italian
Boulevard at Paris. I found it little better than
a lane. There was a public clock in it, which I
had supposed to be the finest clock in the
world: whereas it now turned out to be as inexpressive,
moon-faced, and weak a clock as ever
I saw. It belonged to a Town-hall, where I
had seen an Indian (who I now suppose wasn't
an Indian) swallow a sword (which I now suppose
he didn't). The edifice had appeared to
me, in those days, so glorious a structure, that I
had set it up in my mind as the model on which
the Genie of the Lamp built the palace for
Aladdin. A mean little brick heap, like a demented
chapel, with a few yawning persons in
leather gaiters, and in the last extremity for
something to do, lounging at the door with their
hands in their pockets, and calling themselves a
Corn Exchange!

  The Theatre was in existence, I found, on
asking the fishmonger, who had a compact show
of stock in his window, consisting of a sole and
a quart of shrimps---and I resolved to comfort
my mind by going to look at it. Richard the
Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first
appeared to me there, and had made my heart
leap with terror by backing up against the stage
box in which I was posted, while struggling for
life against the virtuous Richmond. It was within
those walls that I had learnt, as from a page of
English history, how that wicked King slept in
war-time on a sofa much too short for him, and
how fearfully his conscience troubled his boots. 
There, too, had I first seen the funny countryman,
but countryman of noble principles, in a flowered
waistcoat, crunch up his little hat and throw it
on the ground, and pull off his coat, saying,
``Dom thee, squire, coom on with fistes,
then!'' At which the lovely young woman who
kept company with him (and who went out
gleaming in a narrow white muslin apron, with
five beautiful bars of five different-coloured
ribbons across it) was so frightened for his sake,
that she fainted away. Many wondrous secrets
of Nature had I come to the knowledge of in
that sanctuary: of which not the least terrific
were, that the witches in Macbeth bore an awful
resemblance to the Thanes and other proper
inhabitants of Scotland; and that the good King
Duncan couldn't rest in his grave, but was constantly,
coming out of it, and calling himself
somebody else. To the Theatre, therefore, I
repaired for consolation. But I found very
little, for it was in a bad and declining way. A
dealer in wine and bottled beer had already
squeezed his trade into the box office, and the
theatrical money was taken---when it came---in
a kind of meat-safe in the passage. The dealer
in wine and bottled beer must have insinuated
himself under the stage too; for he announced
that he had various descriptions of alcoholic
drinks ``in the wood,'' and there was no possible
stowage for the wood anywhere else. Evidently,
he was by degrees eating the establishment away
to the core and would soon have sole possession
of it. It was To Let, and hopelessly so, for its
old purposes; and there had been no entertainment
within its walls for a long time except a
Panorama; and even that had been announced
as ``pleasingly instructive,'' and I know too well
the fatal meaning and the leaden import of
those terrible expressions. No, there was no
comfort in the Theatre. It was mysteriously
gone, like my own youth. Unlike my own
youth, it might be coming back some day; but
there was little promise of it.

  As the town was placarded with references
to the Dullborough Mechanics' Institution, I
thought I would go and look at that establishment
next. There had been no such thing in
the town in my young day, and it occurred to
me that its extreme prosperity might have
brought adversity upon the Drama. I found
the Institution with some difficulty, and should
scarcely have known that I had found it if I had
judged from its external appearance only; but
this was attributable to its never having been
finished, and having no front: consequently, it
led a modest and retired existence up a stable-yard.
It was (as I learnt on inquiry) a most
flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit
to the town: two triumphs which I was glad to
understand were not at all impaired by the
seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged
to it, and that it was steeped in debt to the
chimney-pots. It had a large room, which was
approached by an infirm step-ladder: the builder
having declined to construct the intended staircase
without a present payment in cash, which
Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of
the Institution) seemed unaccountably bashful
about subscribing. The large room had cost---
or would, when paid for---five hundred pounds;
and it had more mortar in it, and more echoes,
than one might have expected to get for
the money. It was fitted up with a platform,
and the usual lecturing tools, including a large
black board of a menacing appearance. On referring
to lists of the courses of lectures that had
been given in this thriving Hall, I fancied I
detected a shyness in admitting that human
nature, when at leisure, has any desire whatever
to be relieved and diverted and a furtive sliding
in of any poor make-weight piece of amusement
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 costume
of the reign of George the Second. Likewise,
that they must be stunned by a weighty inquiry
whether there was internal evidence in Shakspeare's
works to prove that his uncle by the
mother's side lived for some years at Stoke Newington,
before they were brought-to by a Miscellaneous
Concert. But, indeed, the masking of
entertainment, and pretending it was something
else---as people mask bedsteads when they are
obliged to have them in sitting-rooms, and make
believe that they are bookcases, sofas, chests of
drawers, anything rather than bedsteads---was
manifest even in the pretence of dreariness that
the unfortunate entertainers themselves felt
obliged in decency to put forth when they came
here. One very agreeable professional singer,
who travelled with two professional ladies, knew
better than to introduce either of those Ladies to
sing the ballad ``Comin' through the Rye,'' without
prefacing it himself with some general remarks
on wheat and clover; and, even then, he
dared not for his life call the song a song, but
disguised it in the bill as an ``Illustration.'' In
the library also---fitted with shelves for three
thousand books, and containing upwards of one
hundred and seventy (presented copies mostly),
seething their edges in damp plaster---there was
such a painfully apologetic return of 62 offenders
who had read Travels, Popular Biography, and
mere Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the
hearts and souls of mere human creatures like
themselves; and such an elaborate parade of 2
bright examples who had had down Euclid after
the day's occupation and confinement; and 3
who had had down Metaphysics after ditto; and
1 who had had down Theology after ditto; and
4 who had worried Grammar, Political Economy,
Botany, and Logarithms all at once after ditto;
that I suspected the boasted class to be one
man, who had been hired to do it.

  Emerging from the Mechanics' Institution,
and continuing my walk about the town, I still
noticed everywhere the prevalence, to an extraordinary
degree, of this custom of putting the
natural demand for amusement out of sight, as
some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending
that it was swept away. And yet it was
ministered to, in a dull and abortive manner.
by all who made this feint. Looking in at what
is called in Dullborough ``the serious 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 anathematized
a poor little Circus. Similarly, in
the reading provided for the young people
enrolled in the Lasso of Love, and other excellent
unions, I found the writers generally under
a distressing sense that they must start (at all
events) like story-tellers, and delude the young
persons into the belief that they were going to
be interesting. As I looked in at this window
for twenty minutes by the clock, I am in a
position to offer a friendly remonstrance---not
bearing on this particular point---to the designers
and engravers of the pictures in those
publications. Have they considered the awful
consequences likely to flow from their representations
of Virtue? Have they asked themselves
the question, whether the terrific prospect of
acquiring that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness
of arm, feeble dislocation of leg,
crispiness of hair, and enormity of shirt collar,
which they represent as inseparable from Goodness,
may not tend to confirm sensitive waverers
in Evil? A most impressive example (if I had
believed it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor
may come to, when they mend their ways, was
presented to me in this same shop-window. 
When they were leaning (they were intimate
friends) against a post, drunk and reckless,
with surpassingly bad hats on, and their hair
over their foreheads, they were rather picturesque,
and looked as if they might be agreeable
men, if they would not be beasts. But, when
they had got over their bad propensities, and
when, as a consequence, their heads had swelled
alarmingly, their hair had got so curly that it
lifted their blown-out cheeks up, their coat-cuffs
were so long that they never could do any
work, and their eyes were so wide open that
they never could do any sleep, they presented
a spectacle calculated to plunge a timid nature
into the depths of Infamy.

  But, the clock that had so degenerated since
I saw it last, admonished me that I had stayed
here long enough; and I resumed my walk.

  I had not gone fifty paces along the street
when I was suddenly brought up by the sight of
a man who got out of a little phaeton at the
doctor's door, and went into the doctor's house. 
Immediately the air was filled with the scent of
trodden grass, and the perspective of years
opened, and at the end of it was a little likeness
of this man keeping a wicket, and I said, ``God
bless my soul! Joe Specks!''

  Through many changes and much work, I
had preserved a tenderness for the memory of
Joe, forasmuch as we had made the acquaintance
of Roderick Random together, and had
believed him to be no ruffian, but an ingenuous
and engaging hero. Scorning to ask the boy
left in the phaeton whether it was really Joe,
and scorning even to read the brass plate on the
door---so sure was I---I rang the bell, and
informed the servant-maid that a stranger
sought audience of Mr. Specks. Into a room,
half surgery, half study, I was shown to await
his coming, and I found it, by a series of elaborate
accidents, bestrewn with testimonies to Joe. 
Portrait of Mr. Specks, bust of Mr. Specks,
silver cup from grateful patient to Mr. Specks,
presentation sermon from local clergyman, dedication
poem from local poet, dinner card from
local nobleman, tract on balance of power from
local refugee, inscribed _Hommage de l'auteur <a`>
Specks._

  When my old school-fellow 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 that
fact, and inquired to what he was to attribute
the honour? I asked him, with another smile,
could he remember me at all? He had not (he
said) that pleasure. I was beginning, to have
but a poor opinion of Mr. Specks, when he said
reflectively, ``And yet there's a something too.''
Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his eyes that
looked well, and I asked him if he could inform
me, as a stranger who desired to know and had
not the means of reference at hand, what the
name of the young lady was who married Mr.
Random? Upon that, he said ``Narcissa,''
and, after staring for a moment, called me by
my name, shook me by the hand, and melted
into a roar of laughter. ``Why, of course, you'll
remember Lucy Green,'' he said after we had
talked a little. ``Of course,'' said I. ``Whom
do you think she married?'' said he. ``You?''
I hazarded, ``Me,'' said Specks, ``and you
shall see her.'' So I saw her, and she was fat,
and if all the hay in the world had been heaped
upon her, it could scarcely have altered her face
more than Time had altered it from my remembrance
of the face that had once looked down
upon me into the fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam.
But when her youngest child came in
after dinner (for I dined with them, and we had
no other company than Specks, junior, Barrister-at-law,
who went away as soon as the cloth was
removed, to look after the young lady to whom
he was going to be married next week), I saw
again, in that little daughter, the little face of
the hay-field, unchanged, and it quite touched
my foolish heart. We talked immensely, Specks
and Mrs. Specks, and I, and we spoke of our
old selves as though our old selves were dead
and gone, and indeed indeed they were---dead
and gone as the playing-field that had become a
wilderness of rusty iron, and the property of
S. E. R.

  Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough
with the rays of interest that I wanted, and
should otherwise have missed in it, and linked
its present to its past with a highly agreeable
chain. And in Specks's society I had new
occasion to observe what I had before noticed
in similar communications among other men. 
All the school-fellows and others of old, whom
I inquired about, had either done superlatively
well or superlatively ill---had either become uncertificated
bankrupts, or been felonious, and
got themselves transported; or had made great
hits in life, and done wonders. And this is so
commonly the case, that I never can imagine
what becomes of all the mediocre people of
people's youth---specially considering that we
find no lack of the species in our maturity. But,
I did not propound this difficulty to Specks,
for no pause in the conversation gave me an
occasion. Nor could I discover one single flaw
in the good doctor---when he reads this, he will
receive in a friendly spirit the pleasantly-meant
record---except that he had forgotten his Roderick
Random, and that he confounded Strap
with Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew
Random, howsoever intimate with Pickle.

  When I went alone to the Railway to catch
my train at night (Specks had meant to go with
me, but was inopportunely called out), I was in
a more charitable mood with Dullborough than
I had been all day; and yet in my heart I had
loved it all day too. Ah! who was I that I
should quarrel with the town for being changed
to me, when I myself had come back so changed
to it? All my early readings and early imaginations
dated from this place, and I took them
away so full of innocent construction and guileless
belief, and I brought them back so worn
and torn, so much the wiser and so much the
worse!


	XIII.

	NIGHT WALKS.

  Some years ago, a temporary inability
to sleep, referable to a distressing
impression, caused me to walk about
the streets all night for a series of
several nights. The disorder might
have taken a long time to conquer, if
it had been faintly experimented on in
bed; but, it was soon defeated by the
brisk treatment of getting up directly after lying
down, and going out, and coming home tired at
sunrise.

  In the course of those nights I finished my
education in a fair amateur experience of Houselessness.
My principal object being to get
through the night, the pursuit of it brought me
into sympathetic relations with people who have
no other object every night in the year.

  The month was March, and the weather
damp, cloudy, and cold. The sun not rising
before half-past five, the night perspective looked
sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was
about my time for confronting it.

  The restlessness of a great city, and the way
in which it tumbles and tosses before it can get
to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments
offered to the contemplation of us houseless
people. It lasted about two hours. We lost a
great deal of companionship when the late
public-houses turned their lamps out, and when
the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards
into the street; but stray vehicles and stray
people were left us after that. If we were very
lucky, a policeman's rattle sprang, and a fray
turned up; but, in general, surprisingly little of
this diversion was provided. Except in the Haymarket
which is the worst-kept part of London,
and about Kent Street in the Borough, and along
a portion of the line of the Old Kent Road, the
peace was seldom violently broken. But, it was
always the case that London, as if in imitation
of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring
fits and starts of restlessness. After all
seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen
would surely follow; and Houselessness even
observed that intoxicated people appeared to be
magnetically attracted towards each other; so
that we knew, when we saw one drunken object
staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
another drunken object would stagger up before
five minutes were out, to fraternise or fight with
it. When we made a divergence from the regular
species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced,
leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a
rarer specimen of a more decent appearance,
fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in
soiled mourning. As the street experience in
the night, so the street experience in the day;
the common folk who come unexpectedly into a
little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of
liquor.

  At length these flickering sparks would die
away, worn out---the last veritable sparks of
waking life trailed from some late pieman or
hot-potato man---and London would sink to rest. 
And then the yearning of the houseless mind
would be for any sign of company, any lighted
place, any movement, anything suggestive of
any one being up---nay, even so much as awake,
for the houseless eye looked out for lights in
windows.

  Walking the streets under the pattering rain,
Houselessness would walk and walk and walk,
seeing nothing but the interminable tangle of
streets, save at a corner, here and there, two
policemen in conversation, or the sergeant or
inspector looking after his men. Now and then
in the night---but rarely---Houselessness would
become aware of a furtive head peering out of a
doorway a few yards before him, and, coming
up with the head, would find a man standing
bolt upright to keep within the doorway's shadow,
and evidently intent upon no particular
service to society. Under a kind of fascination,
and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time,
Houselessness and this gentleman would eye
one another from head to foot, and so, without
exchange of speech, part, mutually suspicious. 
Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash
from pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the
houseless shadow would fall upon the stones
that pave the way to Waterloo Bridge; it being
in the houseless mind to have a halfpennyworth
of excuse for saying ``Good night'' to the toll-keeper,
and catching a glimpse of his fire. A
good fire, and a good great-coat and a good
woollen neck-shawl, were comfortable things to
see in conjunction with the toll-keeper; also his
brisk wakefulness was excellent company when
he rattled the change of halfpence down upon
that metal table of his, like a man who defied
the night, with all its sorrowful thoughts, and
didn't care for the coming of dawn. There was
need of encouragement on the threshold of the
bridge, for the bridge was dreary. The chopped-up
murdered man had not been lowered with a
rope over the parapet when those nights were;
he was alive, and slept then quietly enough most
likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where
he was to come. But the river had an awful
look, the buildings on the banks were muffled in
black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed 
to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres,
of suicides were holding them to show where
they went down. The wild moon and clouds
were as restless as an evil conscience in a
tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity
of London seemed to lie oppressively
upon the river.

  Between the bridge and the two great theatres
there was but the distance of a few hundred
paces, so the theatres came next. Grim and
black within at night, those great dry Wells,
and lonesome to imagine, with the rows of faces
faded out the lights extinguished, and the seats
all empty. One would think that nothing in
them knew itself at such a time but Yorick's
skull. In one of my night walks, as the church
steeples were shaken the March winds and rain
with the strokes of Four, I passed the outer
boundary of one of these great deserts, and
entered it. With a dim lantern in my hand, I
groped my well-known way to the stage, and
looked over the orchestra---which was like a
great grave dug for a time of pestilence---into
the void beyond. A dismal cavern of an immense
aspect, with the chandelier gone dead
like everything else, and nothing visible, through
mist and fog and space, but tiers of winding-sheets.
The ground at my feet, where, when
last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples
dancing among the vines, reckless of the burning
mountain which threatened to overwhelm them,
was now in possession of a strong serpent of
engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait for the
serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed
its forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman,
carrying a faint corpse-candle, haunted the distant
upper gallery and flitted away. Retiring
within the proscenium, and holding my light
above my head towards the rolled-up curtain---
green no more, but black as ebony---my sight
lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint indications
in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage.
Methought I felt much as a diver might
at the bottom of the sea.

  In those small hours when there was no movement
in the streets, it afforded matter for reflection
to take Newgate in the way, and, touching
its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their
sleep, and then to glance in at the lodge over
the spiked wicket, and see the fire and light of
the watching turnkeys on the white wall. Not
an inappropriate time, either, to linger by that
wicked little Debtors' Door---shutting tighter
than any other door one ever saw---which has
been Death's Door to so many. In the days of
the uttering of forged one-pound notes by people
tempted up from the country, how many hundreds
of wretched creatures of both sexes---many quite
innocent---swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent
world, with the tower of yonder Christian
church of St. Sepulchre monstrously before their
eyes! Is there any haunting of the Bank Parlour
by the remorseful souls of old directors, in
the nights of these later days, I wonder, or is it
as quiet as this degenerate Aceldama of an Old
Bailey?

  To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good
old times and bemoaning the present evil period,
would be an easy next step, so I would take it,
and would make my houseless circuit of the
Bank, and give a thought to the treasure within;
likewise to the guard of soldiers passing the
night there, and nodding over the fire. Next, I
went to Billingsgate, in some hope of market-people,
but it proving as yet too early, crossed
London Bridge, and got down by the water-side
on the Surrey shore, among the buildings of the
great brewery. There was plenty going on at
the brewery; and the reek, and the smell of
grains, and the rattling of the plump dray horses
at their mangers, were capital company. Quite
refreshed by having mingled with this good
society, I made a new start with a new heart,
setting the old King's Bench Prison before me
for my next object, and resolving, when I should
come to the wall, to think of poor Horace Kinch,
and the Dry Rot in men.

  A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men,
and difficult to detect the beginning of. It had
carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of the old
King's Bench Prison, and it had carried him out
with his feet foremost. He was a likely man to
look at, in the prime of life, well to do, as clever
as he needed to be, and popular among many
friends. He was suitably married, and had
healthy and pretty children. But, like some
fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships, he took
the Dry Rot. The first strong external revelation
of the Dry Rot in men is a tendency to lurk
and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible
reason; to be going anywhere when
met; to be about many places rather than at
any; to do nothing tangible, but to have an intention
of performing a variety of intangible
duties to-morrow, or the day after. When this
manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer
will usually connect it with a vague impression
once formed or received, that the
patient was living a little too hard. He will
scarcely have had leisure to turn it over in his
mind, and form the terrible suspicion ``Dry
Rot,'' when he will notice a change for the
worse in the patient's appearance: a certain
slovenliness and deterioration which is not
poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor ill-health,
but simply Dry Rot. To this succeeds
a smell as of strong waters in the morning; to
that, a looseness respecting money; to that, a
stronger smell as of strong waters at all times;
to that, a looseness respecting everything; to that,
a trembling of the limbs, somnolency, misery,
and crumbling to pieces. As it is in wood, so
it is in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound
usury quite incalculable. A plank is found infected
with it, and the whole structure is devoted. 
Thus it had been with the unhappy Horace
Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription. 
Those who knew him had not nigh done saying,
``So well off, so comfortably established, with
such hope before him---and yet, it is feared,
with a slight touch of Dry Rot!'' when lo! the
man was all Dry Rot and dust.

  From the dead wall associated on those
houseless nights with this too common story, I
chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital;
partly because it lay on my road round to Westminster;
partly because I had a night fancy in
my head which could be best pursued within
sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy was
this: Are not the sane and insane equal at night
as the sane lie a dreaming? Are not all of us
outside this hospital, who dream, more or less
in the condition of those inside it, every night
of our lives? Are we not nightly persuaded, as
they daily are, that we associate preposterously
with kings and queens, emperors and empresses,
and notabilities of all sorts? Do we not nightly
jumble events and personages, and times and
places, as these do daily? Are we not sometimes
troubled by our own sleeping inconsistencies,
and do we not vexedly try to account
for them or excuse them, just as these do sometimes
in respect of their waking delusions? Said
an afflicted man to me, when I was last in a
hospital like this, ``Sir, I can frequently fly.'' I
was half ashamed to reflect that so could I---by
night. Said a woman to me on the same occasion,
``Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine
with me, and her Majesty and I dine off peaches
and macaroni in our nightgowns, and his Royal
Highness the Prince Consort does us the honour
to make a third on horseback in a Field-Marshal's
uniform.'' Could I refrain from reddening
with consciousness when I remembered the
amazing royal parties I myself had given (at
night), the unaccountable viands I had put on
table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting
myself on those distinguished occasions? I
wonder that the great master who knew everything,
when he called Sleep the death of each
day's life, did not call Dreams the insanity of
each day's sanity.

  By this time I had left the hospital behind
me, and was again setting towards the river;
and in a short breathing space I was on Westminster
Bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with
the external walls of the British Parliament---the
perfection of a stupendous institution, I know,
and the admiration of all surrounding nations
and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps
a little the better, now and then, for being
pricked up to its work. Turning oft into Old
Palace Yard, the Courts of Law kept me company
for a quarter of an hour; hinting ill low
whispers what numbers of people they were
keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and
horrible they were rendering the small hours to
unfortunate suitors. Westminster Abbey was
fine gloomy society for another quarter of an
hour; suggesting a wonderful procession of its
dead among the dark arches and pillars, each
century more amazed by the century following
it than by all the centuries going before. And,
indeed, in those houseless night walks---which
even included cemeteries where watchmen went
round among the graves at stated times, and
moved the tell-tale handle of an index which
recorded that they had touched it at such an
hour---it was a solemn consideration what enormous
hosts of dead belong to one old great
city, and how, if they were raised while the living
slept, there would not be the space of a
pin's point in all the streets and ways for the
living to come out into. Not only that, but the
vast armies of dead would overflow the hills
and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch
away all round it, God knows how far.

  When a church clock strikes on houseless
ears in the dead of the night, it may be at first
mistaken for company, and hailed as such. But,
as the spreading circles of vibration, which you
may perceive at such a time with great clearness,
go opening out, for ever and ever afterwards
widening, perhaps (as the philosopher has
suggested) in eternal space, the mistake is rectified,
and the sense of loneliness is profounder. 
Once---it was after leaving the Abbey, and
turning my face north---I came to the great
steps of St. Martin's Church as the clock was
striking Three. Suddenly, a thing that in a
moment more I should have trodden upon without
seeing, rose up at my feet with a cry of
loneliness and houselessness, struck out of it by
the bell, the like of which I never heard. We
then stood face to face looking at one another,
frightened by one another. The creature was
like a beetle-browed hare-lipped youth of twenty,
and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it
held together with one of its hands. It shivered
from head to foot, and its teeth chattered, and
as it stared at me---persecutor, devil, ghost,
whatever it thought me---it made with its whining
mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a
worried dog. Intending to give this ugly object
money, I put out my hand to stay it---for it
recoiled as it whined and snapped---and laid my
hand upon its shoulder. Instantly, it twisted
out of its garment, like the young man in the
New Testament, and left me standing alone with
its rags in my hand.

  Covent-Garden Market, when it was market
morning, was wonderful company. The great
waggons of cabbages, with growers' men and
boys lying asleep under them, and with sharp
dogs from market-garden neighbourhoods looking
after the whole, were as good as a party. 
But one of the worst night sights I know in
London is to be found in the children who
prowl about this place; who sleep in the baskets,
fight for the offal, dart at any object they think
they can lay their thieving hands on, dive under
the carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and
are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the
pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their
naked feet. A painful and unnatural result
comes of the comparison one is forced to institute
between the growth of corruption as displayed
in the so much improved and cared-for
fruits of the earth, and the growth of corruption
as displayed in these all-uncared-for (except inasmuch
as ever-hunted) savages.

  There was early coffee to be got about Covent-Garden
Market, and that was more company---
warm company, too, which was better. Toast
of a very substantial quality was likewise procurable:
though the tousled-headed man who
made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee-room,
hadn't got his coat on yet, and was so
heavy with sleep that in every interval of toast
and coffee he went off anew behind the partition
into complicated cross-roads of choke and snore,
and lost his way directly. Into one of these
establishments (among the earliest) near Bow
Street there came one morning, as I sat over my
houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a
man in a high and long snuff-coloured coat, and
shoes, and, to the best of my belief, nothing else
but a hat, who took out of his hat a large cold
meat-pudding; a meat-pudding so large that it
was a very tight fit, and brought the lining of the
hat out with it. This mysterious man was known
by his pudding, for, on his entering, the man of
sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf,
and a large knife and fork and plate. Left to himself
in his box, he stood the pudding on the bare
table, and, instead of cutting it, stabbed it, 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
uncompromisingly answered. ``My mother,''
said the spectre, ``was a red-faced woman that
liked drink, and I looked at her hard when she
laid in her coffin, and I took the complexion.''
Somehow, the pudding seemed an unwholesome
pudding after that, and I put myself in its way
no more.

  When there was no market, or when I wanted
variety, a railway terminus, with the morning
mails coming in, was remunerative company. 
But, like most of the company to be had in this
world, it lasted only a very short time. The
station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters
would emerge from places of concealment, the
cabs and trucks would rattle to their places (the
Post-Office carts were already in theirs), and
finally, the bell would strike up, and the train
would come banging in. But there were few
passengers and little luggage, and everything
scuttled away with the greatest expedition. The
locomotive post-offices, with their great nets---as
if they had been dragging the country for bodies
---would fly open as to their doors, and would
disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted clerk, a
guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters;
the engine would blow and heave and perspire,
like an engine wiping its forehead, and saying
what a run it had had; and within ten minutes
the lamps were out, and I was houseless and
alone again.

  But now there were driven cattle on the high-road
near, wanting (as cattle always do) to turn
into the midst of stone walls, and squeeze themselves
through six inches' width of iron railing,
and getting their heads down (also as cattle
always do) for tossing-purchase at quite imaginary
dogs, and giving themselves and every devoted
creature associated with them a most
extraordinary amount of unnecessary trouble. 
Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow pale
with the knowledge that daylight was coming,
and straggling workpeople were already in the
streets, and, as waking life had become extinguished
with the last pieman's sparks, so it began
to be rekindled with the fires of the first street-corner
breakfast-sellers. And so by faster and
faster degrees, until the last degrees were very
fast, the day came, and I was tired and could
sleep. And it is not, as I used to think, going
home at such times, the least wonderful thing in
London, that, in the real desert region of the
night, the houseless wanderer is alone there. I
knew well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune
of all kinds, if I had chosen; but they
were put out of sight, and my houselessness
had many miles upon miles of streets in which
it could, and did, have its own solitary way.


	XIV.

	CHAMBERS.

  Having occasion to transact some business
with a solicitor who occupies a highly
suicidal set of chambers in Gray's Inn, I afterwards
took a turn in the large square of that
stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing, with congenial
surroundings, my experiences of Chambers.

  I began, as was natural, with the chambers I
had just left. They were an upper set on a
rotten staircase, with a mysterious bunk or bulkhead
on the landing outside them, of a rather
nautical and Screw-Collierlike appearance than
otherwise, and painted an intense black. Many
dusty years have passed since the appropriation
of this Davy Jones's locker to any purpose, and,
during the whole period within the memory of
living man, it has been hasped and padlocked. 
I cannot quite satisfy my mind whether it was
originally meant for the reception of coals, or
bodies, or as a place of temporary security for
the plunder ``looted'' by laundresses; but I
incline to the last opinion. It is about breast
high, and usually serves as a bulk for defendants
in reduced circumstances to lean against and
ponder at, when they come on the hopeful errand
of trying to make an arrangement without
money---under which auspicious circumstances
it mostly happens that the legal gentleman they
want to see is much engaged, and they pervade
the staircase for a considerable period. Against
this opposing bulk, in the absurdest manner, the
tomb-like outer door of the solicitor's chambers
(which is also of an intense black) stands in dark
ambush, half open, and half shut, all day. The
solicitor's apartments are three in number; consisting
of a slice, a cell, and a wedge. The slice
is assigned to the two clerks, the cell is occupied
by the principal, and the wedge is devoted to
stray papers, old game baskets from the country,
a washing-stand, and a model of a patent Ship's
Caboose which was exhibited in Chancery, at
the commencement of the present century, on an
application for an injunction to restrain infringement.
At about half-past nine on every weekday
morning, the younger of the two clerks (who,
I have reason to believe, leads the fashion at
Pentonville in the articles of pipes and shirts)
may be found knocking the dust out of his official
door-key on the bunk or locker before mentioned;
and so exceedingly subject to dust is
his key, and so very retentive of that superfluity,
that in exceptional summer weather, when a ray
of sun-light 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 smallpox.

  This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered,
when I have had restless occasion to
make inquiries or leave messages after office
hours) is under the charge of a lady named
Sweeney, in figure extremely like an old family
umbrella: whose dwelling confronts a dead wall
in a court off Gray's Inn Lane, and who is
usually fetched into the passage of that bower,
when wanted, from some neighbouring home of
industry, which has the curious property of imparting
an inflammatory appearance to her
visage. Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of
professed laundresses, and is the compiler of a
remarkable manuscript volume entitled ``Mrs.
Sweeney's Book,'' from which much curious statistical
information may be gathered respecting
the high prices and small uses of soda, soap,
sand, fire-wood, and other such articles. I have
created a legend in my mind---and consequently
I believe it with the utmost pertinacity---that
the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket porter under
the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, and that,
in consideration of his long and valuable services,
Mrs. Sweeney was appointed to her present post. 
For, though devoid of personal charms, I have
observed this lady to exercise a fascination over
the elderly 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 appearance of the dismembered
bust, torso, and limbs of a petrified bencher.

  Indeed, I look upon Gray's Inn generally as
one of the most depressing institutions in brick
and mortar known to the children of men. Can
anything be more dreary than its arid Square,
Sahara Desert of the law, with the ugly old tile-topped
tenements, the dirty windows, the bills
To Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed like
gravestones, the crazy gateway giving upon the
filthy Lane, the scowling iron-barred prison-like
passage into Verulam Buildings, the mouldy
red-nosed ticket porters with little coffin plates,
and why with aprons, the dry hard atomy-like
appearance of the whole dust-heap? When my
uncommercial travels tend to this dismal spot,
my comfort is its rickety state. Imagination
gloats over the fulness of time when the stair-cases
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 all upper window by
means of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to the
Holborn Union; when the last clerk shall have
engrossed the last parchment behind the last
splash on the last of the mud-stained windows,
which, all through the miry year, are pilloried
out of recognition in Gray's Inn Lane. Then
shall a squalid little trench, with rank grass and
a pump in it, lying between the coffee-house and
South Square, be wholly given up to cats and
rats and not, as now, have its empire divided
between those animals and a few briefless bipeds
---surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiving
spirits, seeing that they are wanted there by no
mortal---who glance down, with eyes better
glazed than their casements, from their dreary
and 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 frequented another set of chambers in
Gray's Inn Square. They were what is familiarly
called ``a top set'' and all the eatables
and drinkables introduced into them acquired a
flavour of Cock-loft. I have known an unopened
Strasbourg p<a^>t<e'>, fresh from Fortnum and
Mason's, to draw in this cock-loft tone through
its crockery dish, and become penetrated with
cock-loft to the core of its inmost truffle in three-quarters
of an hour. This, however, was not
the most curious feature of those chambers;
that consisted in the profound conviction entertained
by my esteemed friend Parkle (their
tenant) that they were clean. Whether it was an
inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted
to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never
could ascertain. But, I believe he would have
gone to the stake upon the question. Now,
they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest
impression of my figure on any article
of furniture by merely lounging upon it for a few
moments; and it used to be a private amusement
of mine to print myself off---if I may use
the expression---all over the rooms. It was the
first large circulation I had. At other times I
have accidentally shaken a window curtain while
in animated conversation with Parkle, and struggling
insects which were certainly red, and were
certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the
back of my hand. Yet Parkle lived in that top
set years, bound body and soul to the superstition
that they were clean. He used to say,
when congratulated upon them, ``Well, they are
not like chambers in one respect, you know;
they are clean.'' Concurrently, he had an idea
which he could never explain, that Mrs. Miggot
was in some way connected with the Church. 
When he was in particularly good spirits, he
used to believe that a deceased uncle of hers
had been a Dean; when he was poorly and low,
he believed that her brother had been a Curate. 
I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel woman)
were on confidential terms, but I never knew
her to commit herself to any distinct assertion
on the subject; she merely claimed a proprietorship
in the Church, by looking, when it was
mentioned, as if the reference awakened the
slumbering Past, and were personal. It may
have been his amiable confidence in Mrs. Miggot's
better days that inspired my friend with his
delusion respecting the chambers, but he never
wavered in his fidelity to it for a moment,
though he wallowed in dirt seven years.

  Two of the windows of these chambers looked
down into the garden; and we have sat up there
together many a summer evening, saying how
pleasant it was, and talking of many things. To
my intimacy with that top set, I am indebted
for three of my liveliest personal impressions of
the loneliness of life in chambers. They shall
follow here in order; first, second, and third.

  First. My Gray's Inn friend, on a time, hurt
one of his legs, and it became seriously inflamed. 
Not knowing of his indisposition I was on my
way to visit him as usual, one summer evening,
when I was much surprised by meeting a lively
leech in Field Court, Gray's Inn, seemingly on
his way to the West-end of London. As the
leech was alone, and was, of course, unable to
explain his position, even if he had been inclined
to do so (which he had not the appearance
of being), I passed him and went on.
Turning the corner of Gray's Inn Square, I was
beyond expression amazed by meeting another
leech---also entirely alone, and also proceeding
in a westerly direction, though with less decision
of purpose. Ruminating on this extraordinary
circumstance, and endeavouring to remember
whether I had ever read, in the Philosophical
Transactions or any work on Natural History,
of a migration of Leeches, I ascended to the top
set, past the dreary series of closed outer doors
of offices, and an empty set or two which intervened
between that lofty region and the surface. 
Entering my friend's rooms, I found him
stretched upon his back, like Prometheus
Bound, with a perfectly demented ticket porter
in attendance on him instead of the Vulture:
which helpless individual, who was feeble and
frightened, and had (my friend explained to me,
in great choler) been endeavouring for some
hours to apply leeches to his leg and as yet had
only got on two out of twenty. To this Unfortunate's
distraction between a damp cloth on
which he had placed the leeches to freshen
them, and the wrathful adjurations of my friend
to ``Stick 'em on, sir!'' I referred the phenomenon
I had encountered: the rather as two
fine specimens were at that moment going out
at the door, while a general insurrection of the
rest was in progress on the table. After awhile
our united efforts prevailed, and, when the
leeches came off and recovered their spirits,
we carefully tied them up in a decanter. But I
never heard more of them than they were
all gone next morning, and that the Out-of-door
young man of Bickle, Bush, and Bodger, on the
ground-floor, had been bitten and blooded by
some creature not identified. They never
``took'' on Mrs. Miggot, the laundress; but, I
have always preserved fresh the belief that she
unconsciously carried several about her, until
they gradually found openings in life.

  Second. On the same staircase with my
friend Parkle, and on the same floor, there
lived a man of law who pursued his business
elsewhere, and used those chambers as his place
of residence. For three or four years, Parkle
rather knew of him than knew him, but after
that---for Englishmen---short pause of consideration,
they began to speak. Parkle exchanged
words with him in his private character
only, and knew nothing of his business ways, or
means. He was a man a good deal about
town, but always alone. We used to remark
to one another that, although we often encountered
him in theatres, concert-rooms, and similar
public places, he was always alone. Yet he was
not a gloomy man, and was of a decidedly conversational
turn; insomuch that he would sometimes
of an evening lounge with a cigar in his
mouth, half in and half out of Parkle's rooms,
and discuss the topics of the day by the hour. 
He used to hint, on these occasions, that he had
four Faults to find with life; firstly, that it obliged
a man to be always winding up his watch;
secondly, that London was too small; thirdly,
that it therefore wanted variety; fourthly, that
there was too much dust in it. There was so
much dust in his own faded chambers, certainly,
that they reminded me of a sepulchre, furnished
in prophetic anticipation of the present time,
which had newly been brought to light, after
having remained buried a few thousand years. 
One dry hot autumn evening at twilight, this
man, being then five years turned of fifty, looked
in upon Parkle in his usual lounging way, with
his cigar in his mouth as usual, and said, ``I am
going out of town.'' As he never went out of town,
Parkle said, ``Oh, indeed! At last?'' ``Yes,''
says he, ``at last. For what is a man to do?
London is so small! If you go West, you come
to Hounslow. If you go East, you come to
Bow. If you go South, there's Brixton or Norwood.
If you go North, you can't get rid of
Barnet. Then, the monotony of all the streets,
streets, streets---and of all the roads, roads,
roads---and the dust, dust, dust!'' When he
had said this, he wished Parkle a good evening,
but came back again and said, with his watch in
his hand, ``Oh! I really cannot go on winding
up this watch over and over again; I wish you
would take care of it.'' So, Parkle laughed and
consented, and the man went out of town. The
man remained out of town so long, that his
letter-box became choked, and no more letters
could be got into it, and they began to be left at
the lodge and to accumulate there. At last the
head porter decided, on conference with the
steward, to use his master-key, and look into the
chambers, and give them the benefit of a whiff
of air. Then, it was found that he had hanged
himself to his bedstead, and had left this written
memorandum: ``I should prefer to be cut down
by my neighbour and friend (if he will allow me
to call him so), H. Parkle, Esq.'' This was an
end of Parkle's occupancy of chambers. He
went into lodgings immediately.

  Third. While Parkle lived in Gray's Inn,
and I myself was uncommercially preparing for
the Bar---which is done, as everybody knows,
by having a frayed old gown put on in a pantry
by an old woman in a chronic state of St.
Anthony's fire and dropsy, and, so decorated,
bolting a bad dinner in a party of four, whereof
each individual mistrusts the other three---I say,
while these things were, there was a certain
elderly gentleman who lived in a court of the
Temple, and was a great judge and lover of port
wine. Every day he dined at his club, and drank
his bottle or two of port wine, and every night
came home to the Temple, and went to bed in his
lonely chambers. This had gone on many years
without variation, when one night he had a fit on
coming home, and fell, and cut his head deep,
but partly recovered, and groped about in the
dark to find the door. When he was afterwards
discovered, dead, it was clearly established by
the marks of his hands about the room that he
must have done so. Now, this chanced on the
night of Christmas Eve, and over him lived a
young fellow who had sisters and young country
friends, and who gave them a little party that
night, in the course of which they played at
Blind-man'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 blind man 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 Blind-man's
Buff by himself to-night! They listened, and
they heard sounds of someone falling about and
stumbling against furniture, and they all laughed
at the conceit, and went on with their play,
more light-hearted and merry than ever. Thus,
those two so different games of life and death
were played out together, blindfolded, in the
two sets of chambers.

  Such are the occurrences which, coming to
my knowledge, imbued me long ago with a
strong sense of the loneliness of chambers. 
There was a fantastic illustration to much the
same purpose, implicitly believed by a strange
sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I
had not quite arrived at legal years of discretion,
though I was already in the uncommercial line.

  This was a man who, though not more than
thirty, had seen the world in divers irreconcilable
capacities---had been an officer in a South
American regiment among other odd things---
but had not achieved much in any way of life,
and was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied
chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn;
his name, however, was not up on the door, or
door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of a
friend who had died in the chambers, and had
given him the furniture. The story arose out of
the furniture, and was to this effect:---Let the
former holder of the chambers, whose name was
still upon the door and door-post, be Mr. Testator.

  Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons
Inn when he had but very scanty furniture for
his bedroom, and none for his sitting-room. He
had lived some wintry months in this condition,
and had found it very bare and cold. One
night, past midnight, when he sat writing, and
still had writing to do that must be done before
he went to bed, he found himself out of coals. 
He had coals down-stairs, but had never been to
his cellar; however, the cellar key was on his
mantel-shelf, and, if he went down and opened
the cellar it fitted, he might fairly assume the
coals in that cellar to be his. As to his laundress,
she lived among the coal-waggons and
Thames watermen---for there were Thames
watermen at that time---in some unknown rat-hole
by the river, down lanes and alleys on the
other side of the Strand. As to any other
person to meet him or obstruct him, Lyons Inn
was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody, betting,
brooding over bill discounting or renewing---
asleep or awake, minding its own affairs. Mr.
Testator took his coal-scuttle in one hand, his
candle and key in the other, and descended to
the dismallest underground dens of Lyons Inn,
where the late vehicles in the streets became
thunderous and all the water-pipes in the neighbourhood
seemed to have Macbeth's Amen
sticking in their throats, and to be trying to get
it out. After groping here and there among low
doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length
came to a door with a rusty padlock which his
key fitted. Getting the door open with much
trouble, and looking in, he found, no coals, but
a confused pile of furniture. Alarmed by this
intrusion on another man's property, he locked
the door again, found his own cellar, filled his
scuttle, and returned up-stairs.

  But the furniture he had seen ran on casters
across and across Mr. Testator's mind incessantly,
when, in the chill hour of five in the
morning, he got to bed. He particularly wanted
a table to write at, and a table expressly made
to be written at had been the piece of furniture
in the foreground of the heap. When his laundress
emerged from her burrow in the morning
to make his kettle boil, he artfully led up to the
subject of cellars and furniture; but the two
ideas had evidently no connection in her mind. 
When she left him, and he sat at his breakfast,
thinking about the furniture, he recalled the
rusty state of the padlock, and inferred that the
furniture must have been stored in the cellars
for a long time---was perhaps forgotten---owner
dead, perhaps? After thinking it over a few
days, in the course of which he could pump
nothing out of Lyons Inn about the furniture,
he became desperate, and resolved to borrow
that table. He did so that night. He had not
had the table long, when he determined to
borrow an easy-chair; he had not had that long,
when he made up his mind to borrow a book-case;
then, a couch; then, a carpet and rug. 
By that time, he felt he was ``in furniture stepped
in so far,'' as that it could be no worse to borrow
it all. Consequently, he borrowed it all, and
locked up the cellar for good. He had always
locked it after every visit. He had carried up
every separate article in the dead of the night,
and, at the best, had felt as wicked as a Resurrection
Man. Every article was blue and furry
when brought into his rooms, and he had had,
in a murderous and guilty sort of way, to polish
it up while London slept.

  Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers
two or three years, or more, and gradually lulled
himself into the, opinion that the furniture was
his own. This was his convenient state of mind
when, late one night, a step came up the stairs,
and a hand passed over his door, feeling for
his knocker, and then one deep and solemn
rap was rapped, that might have been a spring
in Mr. Testator's easy-chair to shoot him out
of it; so promptly was it attended with that
effect.

  With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went
to the door, and found there a very pale and
very tall man; a man who stooped; a man with
very high shoulders, a very narrow chest, and a
very red nose; a shabby-genteel man. He was
wrapped in a long 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 were playing bagpipes. He
said, ``I ask your pardon, but can you tell
me---'' and stopped; his eyes resting on some
object within the chambers.

  ``Can I tell you what?'' asked Mr. Testator,
noting his stoppage with quick alarm.

  ``I ask your pardon,'' said the stranger, ``but
---this is not the inquiry I was going to make---
_do_ I see in there any small article of property
belonging to _me?_''

  Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that
he was not aware---when the visitor slipped past
him into the chambers. There, in a goblin way
which froze Mr. Testator to the marrow, he examined,
first, the writing-table, and said, ``Mine;''
then, the easy-chair, and said, ``Mine;'' then,
the bookcase, and said, ``Mine;'' then, turned
up a corner of the carpet, and said, ``Mine!'' in
a word, inspected every item of furniture from
the cellar in succession, and said, ``Mine!''
Towards the end of this investigation, Mr.
Testator perceived that he was sodden with
liquor, and that the liquor was gin. He was not
unsteady with either in his speech or carriage;
but he was stiff with gin in both particulars.

  Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according
to his making out of the story) the
possible consequences of what he had done in
recklessness and hardihood flashed upon him in
their fulness for the first time. When they had
stood gazing at one another for a little while, he
tremulously began:

  ``Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation,
compensation, and restitution are your due. 
They shall be yours. Allow me to entreat that,
without temper, without even natural irritation
on your part, we may have a little---''

  ``Drop of something to drink,'' interposed the
stranger. ``I am agreeable.''

  Mr. Testator had intended to say, ``a little
quiet conversation,'' but with great relief of mind
adopted the amendment. He produced a decanter
of gin, and was bustling about for hot
water and sugar, when he found that his visitor
had already drunk half the decanter's contents. 
With hot water and sugar the visitor drank the
remainder before he had been an hour in the
chambers by, the chimes of the church of St.
Mary in the Strand; and during the process he
frequently whispered to himself, ``Mine!''

  The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering
what was to follow it, the visitor rose and said,
with increased stiffness, ``At what hour of the
morning, sir, will it be convenient?'' Mr.
Testator hazarded, ``At ten?'' ``Sir,'' said the
visitor, ``at ten, to the moment, I shall be here.''
He then contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat
at leisure, and said, ``God bless you! How is
your wife?'' Mr. Testator (who never had a
wife) replied, with much feeling, ``Deeply
anxious, poor soul, but otherwise well.'' The
visitor thereupon turned and went away, and
fell twice in going down-stairs. From that hour
he was never heard of. Whether he was a ghost,
or a spectral illusion of conscience, or a drunken
man who had no business there, or the drunken
rightful owner of the furniture, with a transitory
gleam of memory; whether he got safe home, or
had no 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 chambers,
but you cannot make the true kind of
loneliness. In dwelling-houses there have been
family festivals; children have grown in them,
girls have bloomed into women in them,
courtships and marriages have taken place in
them. True chambers never were young, childish,
maidenly; never had dolls in them, or rocking-horses,
or christenings, or betrothals, or little
coffins. Let Gray's Inn identify the child who
first touched hands and hearts with Robinson
Crusoe in an one of its many ``sets,'' and that
child's little statue, in white marble with a
golden inscription, shall be at its service, at my
cost and charge, as a drinking fountain for the
spirit to freshen its thirsty square. Let Lincoln's
produce, from all its houses, a twentieth, of the
procession derivable from any dwelling-house
one-twentieth of its age, of fair young brides
who married for love and hope, not settlements,
and all the Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward
be kept in nosegays for nothing, on application
to the writer hereof. It is not denied
that on the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of
the streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted
spot, or about Bedford Row, or James Street
of that ilk (a gruesome place), or anywhere
among the neighbourhoods that have done
flowering and have run to seed, you may find
chambers replete with the accommodations of
Solitude, Closeness, and Darkness, where you
may be as low-spirited as in the genuine article,
and might be as easily murdered, with the placid
reputation of having merely gone down to the
seaside. But, the many waters of life did run
musical in those dry channels once;---among the
Inns, never. The only popular legend known in
relation to any one of the dull family of Inns is
a dark Old Bailey whisper concerning Clement's,
and importing how the black creature who holds
the sun-dial there was a negro who slew his
master, and built the dismal pile out of the contents
of his strong-box---for which architectural
offence alone he ought to have been condemned
to live in it. But, what populace would waste
fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, Staple
Inn, Barnard's Inn, or any of the shabby crew?

  The genuine laundress, too, is an institution
not to be had in its entirety out of and away
from the genuine chambers. Again, it is not
denied that you may be robbed elsewhere. 
Elsewhere you may have---for money---dishonesty,
drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and profound
incapacity. But the veritable shining-red-faced
shameless laundress; the true Mrs.
Sweeney---in figure, colour, texture, and smell
like the old damp family umbrella; the tiptop
complicated abomination of stockings, spirits,
bonnet, limpness, looseness, and larceny; is
only to be drawn at the fountain-head. Mrs.
Sweeney is beyond the reach of individual art. 
It requires the united efforts of several men to
insure that great result, and it is only developed
in perfection under an Honourable Society and
in an Inn of Court.


	XV.

	NURSES' STORIES.

  There are not many places that I find it
more agreeable to revisit, when I am in
an idle mood, than some places to which I have
never been. For, my acquaintance with those
spots is of such long standing, and has ripened
into an intimacy of so affectionate a nature,
that I take a particular interest in assuring
myself that they are unchanged.

  I never was in Robinson Crusoe's Island,
yet I frequently return there. The colony he
established on it soon faded away, and it is uninhabited
by any descendants of the grave and
courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the
other mutineers, and has relapsed into its original
condition. Not a twig of its wicker houses
remains, its goats have long run wild again, its
screaming parrots would darken the sun with a 
cloud of many flaming colours if a gun were fired
there, no face is ever reflected in the waters of
the little creek which Friday swam across when
pursued by his two brother cannibals with sharpened
stomachs. After comparing notes with
other travellers who have similarly revisited the
Island and conscientiously inspected it, I have
satisfied myself that it contains no vestige of
Mr. Atkins's domesticity or theology, though his
track on the memorable evening of his landing
to set his captain ashore, when he was decoyed
about and round about until it was dark, and his
boat was stove, and his strength and spirits
failed him, is yet plainly to be traced. So is the
hill-top on which Robinson was struck dumb
with joy when the reinstated captain pointed to
the ship, riding within half a mile of the shore,
that was to bear him away, in the nine-and-twentieth
year of his seclusion in that lonely
place. So is the sandy beach on which the
memorable footstep was impressed, and where
the savages hauled up their canoes when they
came ashore for those dreadful public dinners,
which led to a dancing worse than speech-making.
So is the cave where the flaring eyes
of the old goat made such a goblin appearance
in the dark. So is the site of the hut where
Robinson lived with the dog and the parrot and
the cat and where he endured those first agonies
of solitude which---strange to say---never
involved any ghostly fancies; a circumstance so
very remarkable, that perhaps he left out something
in writing his record? Round hundreds
of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical
foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore; and
over them the tropical sky, saving in the short
rainy season, shines bright and cloudless.

  Neither was I ever belated among wolves, on
the borders of France and Spain; nor did I ever,
when night was closing in and the ground was
covered with snow, draw up my little company
among some felled trees which served as a
breastwork, and there fire a train of gunpowder
so dexterously that suddenly we had three or
four score blazing wolves illuminating the darkness
around us. Nevertheless, I occasionally go
back to that dismal region, and perform the feat
again; when, indeed, to smell the singeing and
the frying of the wolves afire, and to see them
setting one another alight as they rush and
tumble, and to behold them rolling in the snow
vainly attempting to put themselves out, and to
hear their howlings taken up by all the echoes
as well as by all the unseen wolves within the
woods, makes me tremble.

  I was never in the robbers' cave where Gil
Blas lived, but I often go back there, and find
the trap-door just as heavy to raise as it used to
be, while that wicked old disabled Black lies
everlastingly cursing in bed. I was never in
Don Quixote's study, where he read his books of
chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary
giants, and then refreshed himself with great
draughts of water, yet you couldn't move a book
in it without my knowledge, or with my consent. 
I was never (thank Heaven!) in company with
the little old woman who hobbled out of the
chest, and told the merchant Abudah to go in
search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I make
it my business to know that she is well preserved,
and as intolerable as ever. I was never at the
school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of
bed to steal the pears; not because he wanted
any, but because every other boy was afraid:
yet I have several times been back to this
Academy, to see him let down out of window
with a sheet. So with Damascus, and Bagdad,
and Brobdingnag (which has the curious fate of
being usually misspelt when written), and Lilliput,
and Laputa, and the Nile, and Abyssinia,
and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and many
hundreds of places---I was never at them, yet it
is an affair of my life to keep them intact, and I
am always going back to them.

  But, when I was in Dullborough one day,
revisiting the associations of my childhood, as
recorded in previous pages of these notes, my
experience in this wise was made quite inconsiderable
and of no account, by the quantity of
places and people---utterly impossible places and
people, but none the less alarmingly real---that
I found I had been introduced to by my nurse
before I was six years old, and used to be forced
to go back to at night without at all wanting to
go. If we all knew our own minds (in a more
enlarged sense than the popular acceptation of
that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses
responsible for most of the dark corners we are
forced to go back to against our wills.

  The first diabolical character who intruded
himself on my peaceful youth (as I called to
mind that day at Dullborough) was a certain
Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been
an 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 Murderer's mission
was matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal
appetite with tender brides. On his marriage
morning, he always caused both sides of the way
to church to be planted with curious flowers;
and when his bride said, ``Dear Captain Murderer,
I never saw flowers like these before:
what are they called?'' he answered, ``They are
called Garnish for house-lamb,'' and laughed at
his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner,
disquieting the minds of the noble bridal company,
with a very sharp show of teeth, then
displayed for the first time. He made love in a
coach and six, and married in a coach and
twelve, and all his horses were milk-white horses
with one red spot on the back, which he caused
to be hidden by the harness. For, the spot
_would_ come there, though every horse was milk-white
when Captain Murderer bought him. And
the spot was young bride's blood. (To this
terrific point I am indebted for my first personal
experience of a shudder and cold beads on the
forehead.) When Captain Murderer had made
an end of feasting and revelry, and had dismissed
the noble guests, and was alone with his wife on
the day month after their marriage, it was his
whimsical custom to produce a golden rolling-pin
and a silver pie-board. Now, there was
this special feature in the Captain's courtships,
that he always asked if the young lady could
make pie-crust; and, if she couldn't by nature or
education, she was taught. Well! When the
bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden
rolling-pin and silver pie-board, she remembered
this, and turned up her laced-silk sleeves to make
a pie. The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish
of immense capacity, and the Captain
brought out flour and butter and eggs and all
things needful, except the inside of the pie; of
materials for the staple of the pie itself, the
Captain brought out none. Then said the
lovely bride, ``Dear Captain Murderer, what
pie is this to be?'' He replied, ``A meat-pie.''
Then said the lovely bride, ``Dear Captain Murderer,
I see no meat.'' The Captain humorously
retorted, ``Look in the glass.'' She
looked in the glass, but still she saw no meat,
and then the Captain roared with laughter, and,
suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade
her roll out the crust. So she rolled out the
crust, dropping large tears upon it all the time
because he was so cross, and when she had lined
the dish with crust, and had cut the crust all
ready to fit the top, the Captain called out, ``_I_
see the meat in the glass!'' And the bride
looked up at the glass, just in time to see the
Captain cutting her head off; and he chopped
her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her,
and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's,
and ate it all, and picked the bones.

  Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering
exceedingly, until he came to choose a
bride from two twin sisters, and at first didn't
know which to choose. For, though one was.
fair, and the other dark, they were both equally
beautiful. But the fair twin loved him, and the
dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one. 
The dark twin would have prevented the marriage
if she could, but she couldn't; however, on
the night before it, much suspecting Captain
Murderer, she stole out and climbed his garden
wall, and looked in at his window through a
chink in the shutter, and saw him having his
teeth filed sharp. Next day she listened all
day, and heard him make his joke about the
house-lamb. And that day month he had the
paste rolled out, and cut the fair twin's head off,
and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her,
and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent
it to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the
bones.

  Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions.
much increased by the filing of the Captain's
teeth, and again by the house-lamb joke. Putting
all things together when he gave out that
her sister was dead, she divined the truth, and
determined to be revenged. So, she went up to
Captain Murderer's house, and knocked at the
knocker, and pulled at the bell, and, when the
Captain came to the door, said: ``Dear Captain
Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved
you, and was jealous of my sister.'' The Captain
took it as a compliment, and made a polite
answer, and the marriage was quickly arranged. 
On the night before it, the bride again climbed
to his window, and again saw him having his.
teeth filed sharp. At this sight she laughed
such a terrible laugh at the chink in the shutter,
that the Captain's blood curdled, and he said:
``I hope nothing has disagreed with me!'' At,
that, she laughed again, a still more terrible
laugh, and the shutter was opened and search
made, but she was nimbly gone, and there was
no one. Next day they went to church in a
coach and twelve, and were married. And that
day month she rolled the pie-crust out, and
Captain Murderer cut her head off, and chopped
her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her,
and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's,
and ate it all, and picked the bones.

  But, before she began to roll out the paste,
she had taken a deadly poison of a most awful
character, distilled from toads' eyes and spiders'
knees; and Captain Murderer had hardly picked
her last bone, when he began to swell, and to
turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to scream. 
And he went on swelling and turning bluer, and
being more all over spots and screaming, until
he reached from floor to ceiling, and from wall
to wall; and then, at one o'clock in the morning,
he blew up with a loud explosion. At the
sound of it, all the milk-white horses in the
stables broke their halters and went mad, and
then they galloped over everybody in Captain
Murderer's house (beginning with the family
blacksmith who had filed his teeth) until the
whole were dead, and then they galloped away.

  Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of
Captain Murderer in my early youth, and added
hundreds of times was there a mental compulsion
upon me, in bed, to peep in at his window
as the dark twin peeped, and to revisit his
horrible house, and look at him in his blue and
spotty and screaming stage, as he reached from
floor to ceiling, and from wall to wall. The
young woman who brought me acquainted with
Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of
my terrors, and used to begin, I remember---as
a sort of introductory overture---by clawing the
air with both hands, and uttering a long low
hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this
ceremony in combination with this infernal Captain,
that I sometimes used to plead, I thought
I was hardly strong enough and old enough to
hear the story again just yet. But, she never
spared me one word of it, and, indeed, 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 was reputed to prowl about
the world by night, sucking the breath of infancy,
and who was endowed with a special thirst (as I
was given to understand) for mine.

  This female bard---may she have been repaid
my debt of obligation to her in the matter of
nightmares and perspirations!---reappears in my
memory as the daughter of a shipwright. Her
name was Mercy, although she had none on me. 
There was something of a ship-building flavour
in the following story. As it always recurs to
me in a vague association with calomel pills, I
believe it to have been reserved for dull nights
when I was low with medicine.

  There was once a shipwright, and he wrought
in a Government Yard, and his name was Chips. 
And his father's name before him was Chips, and
_his_ father's name before _him_ was Chips, and they
were all Chipses. And Chips the father had
sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and
a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of
copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips
the grandfather had sold himself to the Devil for
an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and
half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak;
and Chips the great-grandfather had disposed of
himself in the same direction on the same terms;
and the bargain had run in the family for a long
long time. So, one day, when young Chips was
at work in the Dock Slip all alone, down in the
dark hold of an old Seventy-four that was baled
up for repairs, the Devil presented himself, and
remarked:

	``A Lemon has pips,
	And a Yard has ships,
	And _I_'ll have Chips!''

(I don't know why, but this fact of the Devil's
expressing himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying
to me.) Chips looked up when he heard
the words, and there he saw the Devil with
saucer eyes that squinted on a terrible great
scale, and that struck out sparks of blue fire continually.
And, whenever he winked his eyes,
showers of blue sparks came out, and his eyelashes
made a clattering like flints and steels
striking lights. And hanging over one of his
arms by the handle was an iron pot, and under
that arm was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and
under his other arm was half a ton of copper,
and sitting on one of his shoulders was a rat
that could speak. So, the Devil said again:

	``A Lemon has pips,
	And a Yard has ships,
	And _I_'ll have Chips!''

(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology
on the part of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me
of my senses for some moments.) So, Chips
answered never a word, but went on with his
work. ``What are you doing, Chips?'' said the
rat that could speak. ``I am putting in new
planks where you and your gang have eaten old
away,'' said Chips. ``But we'll eat them too,''
said the rat that could speak; ``and we'll let in
the water and drown the crew, and we'll eat
them too.'' Chips, being only a shipwright, and
not a Man-of-war's man, said, ``You are welcome
to it.'' But he couldn't keep his eyes off
the half a ton of copper, or the bushel of ten-penny
nails; for nails and copper are a shipwright's
sweethearts, and shipwrights will run
away with them whenever they can. So, the
Devil said, ``I see what you are looking at,
Chips. You had better strike the bargain. You
know the terms. Your father before you was
well acquainted with them, and so were your
grandfather and great-grandfather before him.''
Says Chips, ``I like the copper, and I like the
nails, and I don't mind the pot, but I don't like
the rat.'' Says the Devil fiercely, ``You can't
have the metal without him---and _he_'s a curiosity.
I'm going.'' Chips, afraid of losing the
half a ton of copper and the bushel of nails, then
said, ``Give us hold!'' So, he got the copper
and the nails and the pot and the rat that could
speak, and the Devil vanished. Chips sold the
copper, and he sold the nails, and he would
have sold the pot; but, whenever he offered it
for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers dropped
it, and would have nothing to say to the bargain. 
So, Chips resolved to kill the rat, and being at
work in the Yard one day with a great kettle of
hot pitch on one side of him, and the iron pot
with the rat in it on the other, he turned the
scalding pitch into the pot, and filled it full. 
Then, he kept his eye upon it till it cooled and
hardened, and then he let it stand for twenty
days, and then he heated the pitch again, and
turned it back into the kettle, and then he sank
the pot in water for twenty days more, and then
he got the smelters to put it in the furnace for
twenty days more, and then they gave it him
out, red-hot, and looking like red-hot glass instead
of iron---yet there was the rat in it, just
the same as ever! And the moment it caught
his eye, it said with a jeer:

	``A Lemon has pips,
	And a Yard has ships,
	And _I_'ll have Chips!''

(For this Refrain I had waited, since its last
appearance, with inexpressible horror, which now
culminated.) Chips now felt certain in his own
mind that the rat would stick to him; the rat,
answering his thought, said, ``I will---like pitch!''

  Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it
had spoken, and made off, Chips began to hope
that it wouldn't keep its word. But, a terrible
thing happened next day. For, when dinnertime
came, and the Dock bell rang to strike
work, he put his rule into the long pocket at the
side of his trousers, and there he found a rat---
not that rat, but another rat. And in his hat he
found another; and in his pocket-handkerchief
another; and in the sleeves of his coat, when he
pulled it on to go to dinner, two more. And
from that time he found himself so frightfully intimate
with all the rats in the Yard, that they
climbed up his legs when he was at work, and
sat on his tools while he used them. And they
could all speak to one another, and he understood
what they said. And they got into his
lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot,
and into his beer, and into his boots. And he
was going to be married to a corn-chandler's
daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he
had himself made for her, a rat jumped out of it;
and when he put his arm round her waist, a rat
clung about her; so the marriage was broken
off, though the banns were already twice put up
---which the parish clerk well remembers, for, as
he handed the book to the clergyman for the
second time of asking, a large fat rat ran over
the leaf. (By this time a special cascade of rats
was rolling down my back, and the whole of my
small listening person was overrun with them. 
At intervals ever since, I have been morbidly
afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand
should find a specimen or two of those vermin
in it.)

  You may believe that all this was very terrible
to Chips; but even all this was not the worst. 
He knew, besides, what the rats were doing,
wherever they were. So, sometimes he would
cry aloud, when he was at his club at night,
``Oh! Keep the rats out of the convicts' burying-ground!
Don't let them do that!'' Or,
``There's one of them at the cheese down-stairs!''
Or ``There's two of them smelling at
the baby in the garret!'' Or, other things of
that sort. At last he was voted mad, and lost
his work in the Yard, and could get no other
work. But, King George wanted men, so before
very long he got pressed for a sailor. And so
he was taken off in a boat one evening to his
ship, lying at Spithead, ready to sail. And so
the first thing he made out in her, as he got near
her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four,
where he had seen the Devil. She was called
the Argonaut, and they rowed right under the
bowsprit, where the figure-head of the Argonaut,
with a sheep-skin in his hand and a blue gown
on, was looking out to sea; and sitting staring
on his forehead was the rat who could speak,
and his exact words were these. ``Chips ahoy!
Old boy! We've pretty well eat them too, and
we'll drown the crew, and will eat them too!''
(Here I always became exceedingly faint, and
would have asked for water, but that I was
speechless.)

  The ship was bound for the Indies and,
if you don't know where that is, you ought to it,
and angels will never love you. (Here I felt
myself an outcast from a future state.) The
ship set sail that very night, and she sailed, and
sailed, and sailed. Chips's feelings were dreadful.
Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No
wonder. At last, one day, he asked leave to
speak to the Admiral. The Admiral giv' leave. 
Chips went down on his knees in the Great State
Cabin. ``Your Honour, unless your Honour,
without a moment's loss of time, makes sail for
the nearest shore, this is a doomed ship, and her
name is the Coffin!'' ``Young man, your words
are a madman's words.'' ``Your Honour, no;
they are nibbling us away.'' ``They?'' ``Your
Honour, them dreadful rats. Dust and hollowness
where solid oak ought to be! Rats nibbling
a grave for every man on board! Oh!
Does your Honour love your Lady and your
pretty children?'' ``Yes, my man, to be sure.''
``Then, for God's sake, make for the nearest
shore, for at this present moment the rats are all
stopping in their work, and are all looking
straight towards you with bare teeth, and are all
saying to one another that you shall never, never,
never, never see your Lady and your children
more.'' ``My poor fellow, you are a case for the
doctor. Sentry, take care of this man!''

  So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he
was this and that, for six whole days and nights. 
So, then he again asked leave to speak to the
Admiral. The Admiral giv' leave. He went
down on his knees in the Great State Cabin. 
``Now, Admiral, you must die! You took no
warning; you must die! The rats are never
wrong in their calculations, and they make out
that they'll be through at twelve to-night. So,
you must die!---With me and all the rest!''
And so at twelve o'clock there was a great leak
reported in the ship, and a torrent of water
rushed in, and nothing could stop it, and they
all went down, every living soul. And what
the rats---being water-rats---left of Chips at last
floated to shore, and sitting on him was an immense
overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when
the corpse touched the beach, and never came
up. And there was a deal of seaweed on the
remains. And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed,
and dry them, and burn them in the fire,
they will go off like in these thirteen words as
plain as plain can be:

	``A Lemon has pips,
	And a Yard has ships,
	And _I_'ll have Chips!''

  The same female bard---descended, possibly,
from those terrible old scalds who seem to have
existed for the express purpose of addling the
brains of mankind when they begin to investigate
languages---made a standing pretence which
greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number
of hideous places that I would by all means
have avoided. This pretence was, that all her
ghost stories had occurred to her own relations. 
Politeness towards a meritorious family, therefore,
forbade my doubting them, and they acquired
an air of authentication that impaired my
digestive powers for life. There was a narrative
concerning an unearthly animal foreboding death,
which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid
who ``went to fetch the beer'' for supper:
first (as I now recall it) assuming the likeness of
a black dog, and gradually rising on its hind-legs,
and swelling into the semblance of some
quadruped greatly surpassing a hippopotamus:
which apparition---not because I deemed it in
the least improbable, but because I felt it to be
really too large to bear---I feebly endeavoured to
explain away. But, on Mercy's retorting with
wounded dignity that the parlour-maid was her
own sister-in-law, I perceived there was no hope,
and resigned myself to this zoological phenomenon
as one of my many pursuers. There
was another narrative describing the apparition
of a young woman who came out of a glass
case, and haunted another young woman until
the other young woman questioned it, and
elicited that its bones (Lord! To think of its
being so particular about its bones!) were buried
under the glass case, whereas she required them
to be interred, with every Undertaking solemnity
up to twenty-four pound ten, in another particular
place. This narrative I considered I had
a personal interest in disproving, because we
had glass cases at home, and how, otherwise,
was I to be guaranteed from the intrusion of
young women requiring _me_ to bury them up to
twenty-four pound ten, when I had only two-pence
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 uninterrupted meditation
this autumn, I have taken a lodging
for six weeks in the most unfrequented
part of England---in a word,
in London.

  The retreat into which I have withdrawn
myself is Bond Street. From
this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the surrounding
wilderness, and traverse extensive tracts
of the Great Desert. The first solemn feeling
of isolation overcome, the first oppressive consciousness
of profound retirement conquered, I
enjoy that sense of freedom, and feel reviving
within me that latent wildness of the original
savage, which has been (upon the whole, somewhat
frequently) noticed by Travellers.

  My lodgings are at a hatter's---my own hatter's.
After exhibiting no articles in his window,
for some weeks, but seaside wide-awakes, shooting
caps, and a choice of rough waterproof head-gear
for the moors and mountains, he has put
upon the heads of his family as much of this
stock as they could carry, and has taken them
off to the Isle of Thanet. His young man alone
remains---and remains alone---in the shop. The
young man has let out the fire at which the
irons are heated, and saving his strong sense of
duty, I see no reason why he should take the
shutters down.

  Happily for himself and for his country, the
young man is a Volunteer; most happily for
himself, or I think he would become the prey of
a settled melancholy. For, to live surrounded
by human hats, and alienated from human heads,
to fit them on, is surely a great endurance. But,
the young man, sustained by practising his exercise,
and by constantly furbishing up his regulation
plume (it is unnecessary to observe that,
as a hatter, he is in a cock's-feather corps.), is
resigned, and uncomplaining. On a Saturday,
when he closes early and gets his Knickerbockers
on, he is even cheerful. I am gratefully
particular in this reference to him, because he is
my companion through many peaceful hours. 
My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind
his counter, enclosed like the clerk's desk at
church. I shut myself into this place of seclusion
after breakfast, and meditate. At such
times I observe the young man loading an
imaginary rifle with the greatest precision, and
maintaining a most galling and destructive fire
upon the national enemy. I thank him publicly
for his companionship and his patriotism.

  The simple character of my life, and the calm
nature of the scenes by which I am surrounded,
occasion me to rise early. I go forth in my
slippers, and promenade the pavement. It is
pastoral to feel the freshness of the air in the
uninhabited town, and to appreciate the shepherdess
character of the few milkwomen who
purvey so little milk that it would be worth nobody's
while to adulterate it, if anybody were
left to undertake the task. On the crowded
seashore, the great demand for milk, combined
with the strong local temptation of chalk, would
betray itself in the lowered quality of the
article. In Arcadian London I derive it from
the cow.

  The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis
altogether, and the primitive ways into which it
has fallen in this autumnal Golden Age, make it
entirely new to me. Within a few hundred
yards of my retreat is the house of a friend who
maintains a most sumptuous butler. I never,
until yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine 
black broadcloth. Until yesterday I never saw
him off duty, never saw him (he is the best of
butlers) with the appearance of having any mind
for anything but the glory of his master and his
master's friends. Yesterday morning, walking
in my slippers near the house of which he is the
prop and ornament---a house now a waste of
shutters---I encountered that butler, also in his
slippers, and in a shooting suit of one colour,
and in a low-crowned straw hat, smoking an
early cigar. He felt that we had formerly met
in another state of existence, and that we were
translated into a new sphere. Wisely and well,
he passed me without recognition. Under his
arm he carried the morning paper, and shortly
afterwards I saw him sitting on a rail in the
pleasant open landscape of Regent Street, perusing
it at his ease under the ripening sun.

  My landlord having taken his whole establishment
to be salted down, I am waited on by
an elderly woman labouring under a chronic
sniff, who, at the shadowy hour of half-past
nine o'clock of every evening, gives admittance
at the street-door to a meagre and mouldy old
man whom I have never yet seen detached from
a flat pint of beer in a pewter pot. The meagre
and mouldy old man is her husband, and the
pair have a dejected consciousness that they are
not justified in appearing on the surface of the
earth. They come out of some hole when London
empties itself, and go in again when it fills.
I saw them arrive on the evening when I myself
took possession, and they arrived with the flat
pint of beer, and their bed in a bundle. The
old man is a weak old man, and appeared to
me to get the bed down the kitchen stairs by
tumbling down with and upon it. They make
their bed in the lowest and remotest corner of
the basement, and they smell of bed, and have
no possession but bed: unless it be (which I
rather infer from an under-current of flavour in
them) cheese. I know their name, through the
chance of having called the wife's attention, at
half-past nine on the second evening of our
acquaintance, to the circumstance of there being
some one at the house-door; when she apologetically
explained, ``It's only Mr. Klem.''
What becomes of Mr. Klem all day, or when
he goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot
penetrate; but at half-past nine he never fails
to turn up on the door-step with the flat pint
of beer. And the pint of beer, flat as it is,
is so much more important than himself, that
it always seems to my fancy as if it had found
him drivelling in the street, and had humanely
brought him home. In making his way below,
Mr. Klem never goes down the middle of the
passage, like another Christian, but shuffles
against the wall, as if entreating me to take
notice that he is occupying as little space as
possible in the house; and, whenever I come
upon him face to face, he backs from me in
fascinated confusion. The most extraordinary
circumstance I have traced, in connection with
this aged couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem,
their daughter, apparently ten years older than
either of them, who has also a bed, and smells
of it, and carries it about the earth at dusk, and
hides it in deserted houses. I came into this
piece of knowledge through Mrs. Klem's beseeching
me to sanction the sheltering of Miss
Klem under that roof for a single night, ``between
her takin' care of the upper part in Pall
Mall which the family of his back, and a 'ouse
in Serjameses Street, which the family of leaves
towng ter-morrer.'' I gave my gracious consent
(having nothing that I know of to do with it).
and in the shadowy hours Miss Klem became
perceptible on the door-step, wrestling with a
bed in a bundle. Where she made it up for
the night I cannot positively state, but I think,
in a sink. I know that, with the instinct of a
reptile or an insect, she stowed it and herself
away in deep obscurity. In the Klem family I
have noticed another remarkable gift of nature,
and that is the power they possess of converting
everything into flue. Such broken victuals as
they take by stealth appear (whatever the nature
of the viands) invariably to generate flue; and
even the nightly pint of beer, instead of assimilating
naturally, strikes me as breaking out in
that form, equally on the shabby gown of
Mrs. Klem, and the threadbare coat of her
husband.

  Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name---as to
Mr. Klem he has no idea of anything---and
only knows me as her good gentleman. Thus,
if doubtful whether I am in my room or no,
Mrs. Klem taps at the door and says, ``Is my
good gentleman here?'' Or, if a messenger
desiring to see me were consistent with my
solitude, she would show him in with ``Here is
my good gentleman.'' I find this to be a generic
custom. For, I meant to have observed
before now, that in its Arcadian time all my
part of London is indistinctly pervaded by
the Klem species. They creep about with beds,
and go to bed in miles of deserted houses.
They hold no companionship, except that sometimes,
after dark, two of them will emerge from
opposite houses, and meet in the middle of
the road as on neutral ground, or will peep
from adjoining houses over an interposing barrier
of area railings, and compare a few reserved
mistrustful notes respecting their good
ladies or good gentlemen. This I have discovered
in the course of various solitary rambles
I have taken Northward from my retirement,
along the awful perspectives of Wimpole Street,
Harley Street, and similar frowning regions.
Their effect would be scarcely distinguishable
from that of the primeval forests, but for the
Klem stragglers; these may be dimly observed,
when the heavy shadows fall, flitting to and fro,
putting up the door-chain, taking in the pint of
beer, lowering like phantoms at the dark parlour
windows, or secretly consorting underground
with the dust-bin and the water cistern.

  In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with
peculiar pleasure, a primitive state of manners
to have superseded the baneful influences of
ultra-civilisation. Nothing can surpass the innocence
of the ladies' shoe-shops, the artificial-flower
repositories, and the head-dress dep<o^>ts.
They are in strange hands at this time of the
year---hands of unaccustomed persons, who are
imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the
goods, and contemplate them with unsophisticated
delight and wonder. The children of
these virtuous people exchange familiarities in
the Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two
tall beadles. Their youthful prattle blends in
an unwonted manner with the harmonious shade
of the scene, and the general effect is as of the
voices of birds in a grove. In this happy restoration
of the golden time, it has been my
privilege even to see the bigger beadle's wife.
She brought him his dinner in a basin, and he
ate it in his arm-chair, and afterwards fell asleep
like a satiated child. At Mr. Truefitt's, the
excellent hairdresser's, they are learning French
to beguile the time; and even the few solitaries
left on guard at Mr. Atkinson's, the perfumer's
round the corner (generally the most inexorable
gentleman in London, and the most scornful of
three-and-sixpence), condescend a little, as they
drowsily bide or recall their turn for chasing the
ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand. From
Messrs. Hunt and Roskell's, the jewellers, all
things are absent but the precious stones, and
the gold and silver, and the soldierly pensioner
at the door with his decorated breast. I might
stand night and day, for a month to come, in
Saville Row, with my tongue out, yet not find a
doctor to look at it for love or money. The
dentists' instruments are rusting in their drawers,
and their horrible cool parlours, where people
pretend to read the Every-Day Book, and not to
be afraid, are doing penance for their grimness
in white sheets. The light-weight of shrewd
appearance, with one eye always shut up,
as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all
seasons, who usually stands at the gateway of
the livery stables on very little legs under a very
large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster. Of such
undesigning aspect is his guileless yard now,
with its gravel and scarlet-beans, and the yellow
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 library. The hotels in
Brook Street have no one in them, and the
staffs of servants stare disconsolately for next
season out of all the windows. The very man
who goes about like an erect Turtle, between
two boards recommendatory of the Sixteen-Shilling
Trousers, is aware of himself as a hollow
mockery, and eats filberts while he leans his
hinder shell against a wall.

  Among these tranquillising objects it is my
delight to walk and meditate. Soothed by the
repose around me, I wander insensibly to considerable
distances, and guide myself back by
the stars. Thus, I enjoy the contrast of a few
still partially inhabited and busy spots, where all
the lights are not fled, where all the garlands are
not dead, whence all but I have not departed.
Then does it appear to me that in this age three
things are clamorously required of Man in the
miscellaneous thoroughfares of the metropolis.
Firstly, that he have his boots cleaned. Secondly,
that he eat a penny ice. Thirdly, that he get
himself photographed. Then do I speculate,
What have those seam-worn artists been who
stand at the photograph doors in Greek caps,
sample in hand, and mysteriously salute the
public---the female public with a pressing tenderness---
to come in and be ``took?'' What
did they do with their greasy blandishments before
the era of cheap photography? Of what
class were their previous victims, and how victimised?
And how did they get, and how did
they pay for, that large collection of likenesses,
all purporting to have been taken inside, with
the taking of none of which had that establishment
any more to do than with the taking of
Delhi?

  But, these are small oases, and I am soon
back again in metropolitan Arcadia. It is my
impression that much of its serene and peaceful
character is attributable to the absence of customary
Talk. How do I know but there may
be subtle influences in Talk, to vex the souls of
men who don't hear it? How do I know but
that Talk, five, ten, twenty miles off, may get
into the air and disagree with me? If I rise
from my bed, vaguely troubled and wearied and
sick of my life, in the session of Parliament, who
shall say that my noble friend, my right reverend
friend, my right honourable friend, my honourable
friend, my honourable and learned friend,
or my honourable and gallant friend, may not
be responsible for that effect upon my nervous
system? Too much Ozone in the air, I am informed
and fully believe (though I have no idea
what it is), would affect me in a marvellously
disagreeable way; why may not too much Talk?
I don't see or hear the Ozone; I don't see or
hear the Talk. And there is so much Talk; so
much too much; such loud cry, and such scant
supply of wool; such a deal of fleecing, and so
little fleece! Hence, in the Arcadian season, I
find it a delicious triumph to walk down to deserted
Westminster, and see the Courts shut up;
to walk a little further, and see the Two Houses
shut up; to stand in the Abbey Yard, like the
New Zealander of the grand English History
(concerning which unfortunate man a whole
rookery of mares' nests is generally being discovered),
and gloat upon the ruins of Talk.
Returning to my primitive solitude, and lying
down to sleep, my grateful heart expands with
the consciousness that there is no adjourned
Debate, no ministerial explanation, nobody to
give notice of intention to ask the noble Lord
at the head of her Majesty's Government five-and-twenty
bootless questions in one, no term-time
with legal argument, no Nisi Prius with
eloquent appeal to British jury; that the air
will to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow
remain untroubled by this superabundant generating
of Talk. In a minor degree it is a delicious
triumph to me to go into the club, and see
the carpets up, and the Bores and the other
dust dispersed to the four winds. Again, New
Zealander-like, I stand on the cold hearth, and
say in the solitude, ``Here I watched Bore A 1,
with voice always mysteriously low, and head
always mysteriously drooped, whispering political
secrets into the ears of Adam's confiding
children. Accursed be his memory for ever and
a day!''

  But, I have all this time been coming to the
point, that the happy nature of my retirement is
most sweetly expressed in its being the abode of
Love. It is, as it were, an inexpensive Agapemone:
nobody's speculation: everybody's profit.
The one great result of the resumption of primitive
habits, and (convertible terms) the not having
much to do, is, the abounding of Love.

  The Klem species are incapable of the softer
emotions; probably, in that low nomadic race,
the softer emotions have all degenerated into
flue. But, with this exception, all the sharers of
my retreat make love.

  I have mentioned Saville Row. We all know
the Doctor's servant. We all know what a respectable
man he is, what a hard dry man, what
a firm man, what a confidential man: how he
lets us into the waiting-room, like a man who
knows minutely what is the matter with us, but
from whom the rack should not wring the secret.
In the prosaic ``season,'' he has distinctly the
appearance of a man conscious of money in the
Savings Bank, and taking his stand on his respectability
with both feet. At that time it is as
impossible to associate him with relaxation, or
any human weakness, as it is to meet his eye
without feeling guilty of indisposition. In the
blest arcadian time, how changed! I have seen
him in a pepper-and-salt jacket---jacket---and
drab trousers, with his arm round the waist of a
bootmaker's housemaid, smiling in open day. I
have seen him at the pump by the Albany, unsolicitedly
pumping for two fair young creatures,
whose figures, as they bent over their cans, were
---if I may be allowed an original expression---a
model for a sculptor. I have seen him trying
the piano in the Doctor's drawing-room with his
forefinger, and have heard him humming tunes
in praise of lovely woman. I have seen him
seated on a fire-engine, and going (obviously in
search of excitement) to a fire. I saw him, one
moonlight evening, when the peace and purity
of our Arcadian west were at their height, polk
with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of gloves,
from the door-steps of his own residence, across
Saville Row, round by Clifford Street and Old
Burlington Street, back to Burlington Gardens.
Is this the Golden Age revived, or Iron London?

  The Dentist's servant. Is that man no mystery
to us, no type of invisible power? The
tremendous individual knows (who else does?)
what is done with the extracted teeth; he knows
what goes on in the little room where something
is always being washed or filed; he knows what
warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable
tumbler from which we rinse our wounded
mouth, with a gap in it that feels a foot wide;
he knows whether the thing we spit into is a
fixture communicating with the Thames, or could
be cleared away for a dance; he sees the horrible
parlour 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
passion would be uninfluenced if every one of
her teeth were false. They may be. He takes
them all on trust.

  In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion
there are little shops withdrawn from public
curiosity, and never two together, where servants'
perquisites are bought. The cook may dispose
of grease at these modest and convenient marts;
the butler, of bottles; the valet and lady's-maid,
of clothes; most servants, indeed, of most things
they may happen to lay hold of. I have been
told that in sterner times loving correspondence
otherwise interdicted, may be maintained by
letter through the agency of some of these
useful establishments. In the Arcadian autumn
no such device is necessary. Everybody loves,
and openly and blamelessly loves. My landlord's
young man loves the whole of one side of
the way of Old Bond Street, and is beloved
several doors up New Bond Street besides. I
never look out of window but I see kissing of
hands going on all around me. It is the morning
custom to glide from shop to shop, and exchange
tender sentiments; it is the evening
custom for couples to stand hand-in-hand at
house-doors, or roam, linked in that flowery
manner, through the unpeopled streets. There
is nothing else to do but love; and what there
is to do is done.

  In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity
obtains in the domestic habits of Arcadia. Its
few scattered people dine early, live moderately,
sup socially, and sleep soundly. It is rumoured
that the Beadles of the Arcade, from being the
mortal enemies of boys, have signed with tears
an address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed
to a ragged school. No wonder! For they
might turn their heavy maces into crooks, and
tend sheep in the Arcade, to the purling of the
water-carts as they give the thirsty streets much
more to drink than they can carry.

  A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity.
Charming picture, but it will fade. The iron age
will return; London will come back to town.
If I show my tongue then in Saville Row for
half a minute, I shall be prescribed for: the
Doctor's man and the Dentist's man will then
pretend that these days of unprofessional innocence
never existed. Where Mr. and Mrs. Klem
and their bed will be at that time, passes human
knowledge; but my hatter hermitage will then
know them no more, nor will it then know me.
The desk at which I have written these meditations
will retributively assist at the making out
of my account, and the wheels of gorgeous carriages
and the hoofs of high-stepping horses will
crush the silence out of Bond Street---will grind
Arcadia away, and give it to the elements in
granite powder.


	XVII.

	THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL.

  It is an unsettled question with me
whether I shall leave Calais something
handsome in my will, or whether
I shall leave it my malediction.
I hate it so much, and yet I
am always so very glad to see it, that I
am in a state of constant indecision on
this subject.

  When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it
was as a maundering young wretch in a clammy
perspiration and dripping saline particles, who
was conscious of no extremities but the one
great extremity, sea-sickness---who was a mere
bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere
in its stomach---who had been put into a
horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had
tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast,
or the Isle Man, or anywhere. Times have
changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and
rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep
a look-out for it, I recognise its landmarks when
I see any of them, I am acquainted with its
ways, and I know---and I can bear---its worst
behaviour.

  Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading
the eyesight and discouraging hope! Dodging
flat streak, now on this bow, now on that,
now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere!
In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into 
the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart
and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its
bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when
it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy
dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais,
which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The
pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think you
are there---roll, roar, wash!---Calais has retired
miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look
for it. It has a last dip and a slide in its character,
has Calais, to be especially commanded
to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that
garrison town, when it dives under the boat's
keel, and comes up a league or two to the right,
with the packet shivering and spluttering and
staring about for it!

  Not but what I have my animosities towards
Dover. I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency
with which it goes to bed. It
always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais)
with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle
than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham,
host and hostess of the Lord Warden
Hotel, are my much-esteemed friends, but they
are too conceited about the comforts of that
establishment when the Night Mail is starting.
I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't
want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright
windows at such an hour. I know the Warden
is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches,
and I object to its big outline seeming to insist
upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to come
over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck
of the boat. Beshrew the Warden, likewise, for
obstructing that corner, and making the wind so
angry as it rushes round. Shall I not know that
it blows quite soon enough, without that officious
Warden's interference?

  As I wait here on board the night packet, for
the South-Eastern Train to come down with the
Mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for
some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal
dishonour. All its noises smack of taunting
praises of the land, and dispraises of the
gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The
drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I
know they would rattle taunts against me for
having my unsteady footing on this slippery
deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade
twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with derision.
The distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my misshapen
wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third.

  A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come
gliding down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness
of motion rendered more smooth by the
heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises
against the pier, as if several hippopotami were
lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances
over which they had no control from
drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become
violently agitated---rumble, hum, scream, roar,
and establish an immense family washing-day at
each paddle-box. Bright patches break out in
the train as the doors of the post-office vans are
opened, and instantly stooping figures with sacks
upon their backs begin to be beheld among the
piles, descending, as it would seem, in ghostly
procession, to Davy Jones's Locker. The passengers
come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen,
with hat-boxes 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 bulk-head---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 ahead!'' ``Half a turn ahead!''
``Half speed!'' ``Half speed!'' ``Port!''
``Port!'' ``Steady!'' ``Steady!'' ``Go on!''
``Go on!''

  A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right
temple and out at my left, a floating deposit of
lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression
of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of
pincers,---these are the personal sensations by
which I know we are off, and by which I shall
continue to know it until I am on the soil of
France. My symptoms have scarcely established
themselves comfortably, when two or
three skating shadows, that have been trying to
walk or stand, get flung together, and other two
or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them
into corners, and cover them up. Then the
South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a
way that bodes no good.

  It is about this period that my detestation of
Calais knows no bounds. Inwardly I resolve
afresh that I never will forgive that hated town.
I have done so before, many times, but that is
past. Let me register a vow. Implacable animosity
to Calais everm------ That was an awkward
sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion,
for it gives a complaining roar.

  The wind blows stiffly from the Nor'-East, the
sea runs high, we ship a deal of water, the night
is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers
lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were
sorted out for the laundress; but, for my own
uncommercial part, I cannot pretend that I am
much inconvenienced by any of these things.
A general howling whistling flopping gurgling
and scooping, I am aware of, and a general
knocking about of Nature; but the impressions
I receive are very vague. In a sweet faint temper,
something like the smell of damaged oranges, I
think I should feel languidly benevolent if I had
time. I have not time, because I am under a
curious compulsion to occupy myself with the
Irish melodies. ``Rich and rare were the gems
she wore,'' is the particular melody to which I
find myself devoted. I sing it to myself in the
most charming manner, and with the greatest
expression. Now and then I raise my head (I
am sitting on the hardest of wet seats in the
most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don't
mind it), and notice that I am a whirling 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 O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond''---
I am particularly proud of my execution here,
when I become aware of another awkward shock
from the sea, and another protest from the funnel,
and a fellow-creature at the paddle-box more
audibly indisposed than I think he need be---
``Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But
O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond''---another
awkward one here, and the fellow-creature with
the umbrella down and picked up---``Her spa-a-rkling
ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady!
snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very
selfishly audible, bump roar wash white wand.''

  As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes
of my imperfect perceptions of what is
going on around me, so what is going on around
me becomes something else than what it is. The
stokers open the furnace doors below, to feed
the fires, and I am again on the box of the old
Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light
of the for-ever-extinguished coach lamps, and
the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes is
_their_ gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the
monotonous noise of the engines is the steady
jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent
funnel roar of protest at every violent
roll becomes the regular blast of a high-pressure
engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive
steamer in which I ascended the Mississippi
when the American civil war was not, and when
only its causes were. A fragment of mast on
which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope,
and a jerking block or so, become suggestive of
Franconi's Circus at Paris, where I shall be this
very night mayhap (for it must be morning now),
and they dance to the selfsame time and tune as
the trained steed Black Raven. What may be
the speciality of these waves as they come rushing
on, I cannot desert the pressing demands
made upon me by the gems she wore to inquire,
but they are charged with something about
Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth
Roads that he first went a seafaring, and
was near foundering (what a terrific sound that
word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first
gale of wind. Still, through all this, I must ask
her (who _was_ she I wonder?) for the fiftieth
time, and without ever stopping, Does she not
fear to stray, So lone and lovely through this
bleak way, And are Erin's sons so good or so
cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures
at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight
I feel not the least alarm, No son of Erin will
offer me harm, For though they love fellow-creature
with umbrella down again and golden
store, Sir Knight they what a tremendous one love
honour and virtue more: For though they love
Stewards with a bull's eye bright, they'll trouble
you for your ticket, sir---rough passage to-night!

  I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of
human weakness and inconsistency, but I no
sooner become conscious of those last words
from the steward than I begin to soften towards
Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wishing
that those Calais burghers who came out of
their town by a short cut into the History of
England, with those fatal ropes round their necks
by which they have since been towed into so
many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot,
I now begin to regard them as highly respectable
and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me, I
see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the
boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of
Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but
still ahead and shining. Sentiments of forgiveness
of Calais, not to say of attachment to Calais,
begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions
that I will stay there a day or two on my way
back. A faded and recumbent stranger, pausing
in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin,
asked me what kind of place Calais is? I tell
him (Heaven forgive me!) a very agreeable place
indeed---rather hilly than otherwise.

  So strangely goes the time, and, on the whole,
so quickly---though still I seem to have been on
board a week---that I am bumped rolled gurgled
washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before
her maiden smile has finally lighted her through
the Green Isle, When blest for ever is she who
relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide.
For we have not to land to-night down among
those slimy timbers---covered with green hair as
if it were the mermaids' favourite combing-place
---where one crawls to the surface of the jetty
like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up
the harbour to the Railway Station Quay. And
as we go, the sea washes in and out among piles
and planks, with dead heavy beats, and in quite
a furious manner (whereof we are proud), and
the lamps shake in the wind, and the bells of
Calais striking One seem to send their vibrations
struggling against troubled air, as we have
come struggling against troubled water. And
now, in the sudden relief and wiping of faces,
everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious
double tooth out, and to be this very
instant free of the Dentist's hands. And now
we all know, for the first time, how wet and cold
we are, and how salt we are; and now I love
Calais with my heart of hearts!

  ``H<o^>tel Dessin!'' (but in this one case it is
not a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the
eyes of the cheery representative of that best of
inns). ``H<o^>tel Meurice!'' ``H<o^>tel de France!''
``H<o^>tel de Calais!'' ``The Royal H<o^>tel, sir,
Angaishe ouse!'' ``You going to Parry, sir?''
``Your baggage, registair froo, sir?'' Bless ye,
my Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless
ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of a military
form, who are always here, day or night. fair
weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I
never see you get! Bless ye, my Custom-House
officers in green and grey; permit me to grasp
the welcome hands that descend into my travelling
bag, one on each side, and meet at the
bottom to give my change of linen a peculiar
shake up, as if it were a measure of chaff or
grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le
Douanier, except that, when I cease to breathe,
Calais will be found written on my heart. No
article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur
l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing
of a breast devoted to your charming town should
be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the 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 d<e'>tail,_ forgive one who has
deeply wronged you.---I was not fully aware of
it on the other side, but I meant Dover.

  Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the
travellers. Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers,
for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai, Bruxelles,
Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative
of the uncommercial interest, ascend
with the rest. The train is light to-night, and I
share my compartment with but two fellow-travellers;
one, a compatriot in an obsolete
cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable.
thing that they don't keep ``London time'' on 
a French railway, and who is made angry by
my modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris
time being more in their way; the other, a young
priest, with a very small bird in a very small
cage, who feeds the small bird with a quill, and
then puts him up in the network above his head,
where he advances twittering to his front wires,
and seems to address me in an electioneering
manner. The compatriot (who crossed in the
boat and whom I judge to be some person of
distinction, as he was shut up, like a stately
species of rabbit, in a private hutch on deck)
and the young priest (who joined us at Calais)
are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have it
all to ourselves.

  A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the
wires of the electric telegraph with a wild and
fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with the
added storm of the train-progress through it,
that when the Guard comes clambering round
to mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a
really horrible performance in an express train,
though he holds on to the open window by his
elbows in the most deliberate manner), he stands
in such a whirlwind that I grip him fast by the
collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let
him go. Still, when he is gone, the small small
bird remains at his front wires feebly twittering to
me---twittering and twittering, until, leaning back
in my place, and looking at him in drowsy fascination,
I find that he seems to jog my memory
as we rush along.

  Uncommercial travels (thus the small small 
bird) have lain in their idle thriftless way through
all this range of swamp and dyke, as through many
other odd places; and about here, as you very
well know, are the queer old stone farmhouses, 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 dovecotes.
in the littered yards are as strong as warders'
towers in old castles. Here are the long monotonous
miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built
barges garishly painted, and the towing girls,
sometimes harnessed by the forehead, sometimes
by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant
sight to see. Scattered through this country are
mighty works of =Vauban,= whom you know about,
and regiments of such corporals as you heard of
once upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle.
Through these flat districts, in the shining summer
days, walk those long grotesque files of young
novices in enormous shovel hats, whom you remember
blackening the ground chequered by
the avenues of leafy trees. And now that Hazebroucke
slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall
the summer evening when your dusty feet, strolling
up from the station, tended hap-hazard to a
Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants were
circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobby-horses
with the greatest gravity, and where the
principal show in the fair was a Religious Richardson's---
literally, on its own announcement in great
letters, =Theatre Religieux.= In which improving
Temple the dramatic representation was of
``all the interesting events in the life of our Lord,
from the Manger to the Tomb;'' the principal
female character, without any reservation or exception,
being, at the moment of your arrival,
engaged in trimming the external Moderators
(as it was growing dusk), while the next principal
female character took the money, and the Young
St. John disported himself upside down on the
platform.

  Looking up at this point to confirm the small
small bird in every particular he has mentioned,
I find he has ceased to twitter, and has put his
head under his wing. Therefore, in my different
way, I follow the good example.


	XVIII.

	SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY.

  I had parted from the small bird at
somewhere about four o'clock in the
morning, when he had got out at
Arras, and had been received by two
shovel hats in waiting at the station,
who presented an appropriately ornithological
and crow-like appearance.
My compatriot and I had gone on to
Paris; my compatriot enlightening me occasionally
with a long list of the enormous grievances
of French railway travelling: every one of
which, as I am a sinner, was perfectly new to
me, though I have as much experience of French
railways as most uncommercials. I had left
him at the terminus (through his conviction,
against all explanation and remonstrance, that
his baggage ticket was his passenger ticket),
insisting in a very high temper, to the functionary
on duty, that in his own personal identity he
was four packages weighing so many kilogrammes
---as if he had been Cassim Baba! I had bathed
and breakfasted, and was strolling on the bright
quays. The subject of my meditations was the
question whether it is positively in the essence
and nature of things, as a certain school of
Britons would seem to think it, that a Capital
must be ensnared and enslaved before it can be
made beautiful: when I lifted up my eyes, and
found that my feet, straying like my mind, had
brought me to Notre-Dame.

  That is to say, Notre-Dame was before
me, but there was a large open space between
us. A very little while gone, I had left that
space covered with buildings densely crowded;
and now it was cleared for some new wonder in
the way of public Street, Place, Garden, Fountain,
or all four. Only the obscene little Morgue,
slinking on the brink of the river, and soon to
come down, was left there, looking mortally
ashamed of itself, and supremely wicked. I
had but glanced at this old acquaintance, when
I beheld an airy procession coming round in
front of Notre-Dame, past the great hospital.
It had something of a Masaniello look, with
fluttering striped curtains in the midst of it, and
it came dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest
manner.

  I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life,
or a Christening, or some other domestic festivity
which I would see out, when I found, from
the talk of a quick rush of Blouses past me, that
it was a Body coming to the Morgue. Having
never before chanced upon this initiation, I constituted
myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into
the Morgue with the rest. It was a very muddy
day, and we took in a quantity of mire with us,
and the procession, coming in upon our heels,
brought a quantity more. The procession was
in the highest spirits, and consisted of idlers who
had come with the curtained litter from its starting-place,
and of all the reinforcements it had
picked up by the way. It set the litter down in
the midst of the Morgue, and then two Custodians
proclaimed aloud that we were all ``invited'' to
go out. This invitation was rendered the more
pressing, if not the more flattering, by our being
shoved out, and the folding gates being barred
upon us.

  Those who have never seen the Morgue may
see it perfectly, by presenting to themselves 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 linendraper's plate-glass
window reaching to the ground; within the
window, on two rows of inclined planes, what
the coach-house has to show; hanging above,
like irregular stalactites from the roof of a cave,
a quantity of clothes---the clothes of the dead-and-buried
shows of the coach-house.

  We had been excited in the highest degree by
seeing the Custodians pull off their coats and
tuck up their shirt-sleeves as the procession came
along. It looked so interestingly like business.
Shut out in the muddy street, we now became
quite ravenous to know all about it. Was it
river, pistol, knife, love, gambling, robbery,
hatred, how many stabs, how many bullets, fresh
or decomposed, suicide or murder? All wedged
together, and all staring at one another with our
heads thrust forward, we propounded these
inquiries, and a hundred more such. Imperceptibly
it came to be known that Monsieur the
tall and sallow mason yonder was acquainted
with the facts. Would Monsieur the tall and
sallow mason, surged at by a new wave of us,
have the goodness to impart? It was but a
poor old man, passing along the street under
one of the new buildings, on whom a stone had
fallen, and who had tumbled dead. His age?
Another wave surged up against the tall and
sallow mason, and our wave swept on and broke,
and he was any age from sixty-five to ninety.

  An old man was not much: moreover, we
could have wished he had been killed by human
agency---his own, or somebody else's: the latter
preferable---but our comfort was that he had
nothing about him to lead to his identification,
and that his people must seek him here. Perhaps
they were waiting dinner for him even now?
We liked that. Such of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs
took a slow, intense, protracted wipe
at our noses, and then crammed our handkerchiefs
into the breast of our blouses. Others of
us who had no handkerchiefs administered a
similar relief to our overwrought minds, by means
of prolonged smears or wipes of our mouths on
our sleeves. One man with a gloomy malformation
of brow---a homicidal worker in white-lead,
to judge from his blue tone of colour, and a
certain flavour of paralysis pervading him---got
his coat collar between his teeth, and bit at it
with an appetite. Several decent women arrived
upon the outskirts of the crowd, and prepared
to launch themselves into the dismal coach-house
when opportunity should come; among them, a
pretty young mother, pretending to bite the fore-finger
of her baby boy, kept it between her rosy
lips that it might be handy for guiding to point
at the show. Meantime, all faces were turned
towards the building, and we men waited with a
fixed and stern resolution: for the most part
with folded arms. Surely, it was the only public
French sight these uncommercial eyes had seen,
at which the expectant people did not form
_en queue._ But there was no such order of
arrangement here; nothing but a general determination
to make a rush for it, and a disposition
to object to some boys who had mounted on
the two stone posts by the hinges of the gates,
with the design of swooping in when the hinges
should turn.

  Now they turned, and we rushed! Great
pressure, and a scream or two from the front.
Then a laugh or two, some expressions of disappointment,
and a slackening of the pressure
and subsidence of the struggle.---Old man not
there.

  ``But what would you have?'' the Custodian
reasonably argues as he looks out at his little
door. ``Patience, patience! We make his
toilet, gentlemen. He will be exposed presently.
It is necessary to proceed according to rule.
His toilet 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 meanwhile with the
other curiosities. Fortunately the Museum is
not empty to-day.''

  Who would have thought of public fickleness
even at the Morgue? But there it was on that
occasion. Three lately popular articles, that
had been attracting greatly when the litter was
first descried coming dancing round the corner
by the great cathedral, were so completely deposed
now, that nobody save two little girls
(one showing them to a doll) would look at them.
Yet the chief of the three, the article in the front
row, had received jagged injury of the left
temple; and the other two in the back row, the
drowned two lying side by side with their heads
very slightly turned towards each other, seemed
to be comparing notes about it. Indeed, those
two of the back row were so furtive of appearance,
and so (in their puffed way) assassinatingly
knowing as to the one of the front, that it was
hard to think the three had never come together
in their lives, and were only chance companions
after death. Whether or no this was the general,
as it was the uncommercial, fancy, it is not to
be disputed that the group had drawn exceedingly
within ten minutes. Yet now the inconstant
public turned its back upon them, and
even leaned its elbows carelessly against the bar
outside the window, and shook off the mud
from its shoes, and also lent and borrowed fire
for pipes.

  Custodian re-enters from his door. ``Again
once, gentlemen, you are invited------'' No
further invitation necessary. Ready dash into
the street. Toilet finished. Old man coming
out.

  This time, the interest was grown too hot to
admit of toleration of the boys on the stone
posts. The homicidal white-lead worker made
a pounce upon one boy who was hoisting himself
up, and brought him to earth amidst general
commendation. Closely stowed as we were, we
yet formed into groups---groups of conversation,
without separation from the mass---to discuss
the old man. Rivals of the tall and sallow
mason sprang into being, and here, again, was
popular inconstancy. These rivals attracted
audiences, and were greedily listened to; and
whereas they had derived their information solely
from the tall and sallow one, officious members
of the crowd now sought to enlighten _him_ on
their authority. Changed by this social experience
into an iron-visaged and inveterate misanthrope,
the mason glared at mankind, and
evidently cherished in his breast the wish that
the whole of the present company could change
places with the deceased old man. And now
listeners became inattentive, and people made a
start forward at a slight sound, and an unholy
fire kindled in the public eye, and those next
the gates beat at them impatiently, as if they
were of the cannibal species and hungry.

  Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed.
Disorderly pressure for some time ensued before
the uncommercial unit got figured into the front
row of the sum. It was strange to see so much
heat and uproar seething about one poor spare
white-haired old man, quiet for evermore. He
was calm of feature and undisfigured, as he lay
on his back---having been struck upon the hinder
part of 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
itself upon the striving crowd on either side and
behind: wondering whether one might have
guessed, from the expression of those faces
merely, what kind of sight they were looking at.
The differences of expression were not many.
There was a little pity, but not much, and that
mostly with a selfish touch in it---as who would
say, ``Shall I, poor I, look like that when the
time comes?'' There was more of a secretly-brooding
contemplation and curiosity, as, ``That
man I don't like, and have the grudge against;
would such be his appearance, if some one---not
to mention names---by any chance gave him an
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 wax-work without a catalogue,
and not knowing what to make of it. But all
these expressions concurred in possessing the
one underlying expression of _looking at something
that could not return a look._ The uncommercial
notice had established this as very remarkable,
when a new pressure all at once coming up from
the street pinioned him ignominiously, and
hurried him into the arms (now sleeved again)
of the Custodian smoking at his door, and
answering questions, between puffs, with a certain
placid meritorious air of not being proud,
though high in office. And, mentioning pride,
it may be observed, by the way, that one could
not well help investing the original sole occupant
of the front row with an air depreciatory of the
legitimate attraction of the poor old man: while
the two in the second row seemed to exult at
his superseded popularity.

  Pacing presently round the garden of the
Tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, and presently
again in front of the H<o^>tel de Ville, I
called to mind a certain desolate open-air
Morgue that I happened to light upon in London,
one day in the hard winter of 1861, and
which seemed as strange to me, at the time of
seeing it, as if I had found it in China. Towards
that hour of a winter's afternoon when the lamp-lighters
are beginning to light the lamps in the
streets a little before they are wanted, because
the darkness thickens fast and soon, I was walking
in from the country on the northern side of
the Regent's Park---hard frozen and deserted---
when I saw an empty Hansom cab drive up to
the lodge at Gloucester Gate, and the driver
with great agitation call to the man there: who
quickly reached a long pole from a tree, and,
deftly collared by the driver, jumped to the step
of his little seat, and so the Hansom rattled out
at the gate, galloping over the iron-bound road.
I followed running, though not so fast but that
when I came to the right-hand Canal Bridge,
near the cross-path to Chalk Farm, the Hansom
was stationary, the horse was smoking hot, the
long pole was idle on the ground, and the driver
and the park-keeper were looking over the bridge
parapet. Looking over too, I saw, lying on the
towing-path, with her face turned up towards us,
a woman, dead a day or two, and under thirty,
as I guessed, poorly dressed in black. The feet
were lightly crossed at the ankles, and the dark
hair, all pushed back from the face, as though
that had been the last action of her desperate
hands, streamed over the ground. Dabbled all
about her were 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 wax-work exhibition
without a catalogue; the former looking over his
stock, with professional stiffness and coolness,
in the direction in which the bearers he had sent
for were expected. So dreadfully forlorn, so
dreadfully sad, so dreadfully mysterious, the
spectacle of our dear sister here departed! A
barge came up, breaking the floating ice and the
silence, and a woman steered it. The man with
the horse that towed it cared so little for the
body, that the stumbling hoofs had been among
the hair, and the tow-rope had caught and turned
the head, before our cry of horror took him
to the bridle. At which sound the steering
woman looked up at us on the bridge with contempt
unutterable, and then looking down at
the body with a similar expression---as if it were
made in another likeness from herself, had been
informed with other passions, had been lost by
other chances, had had another nature dragged
down to perdition---steered a spurning streak of
mud at it, and passed on.

  A better experience, but also of the Morgue
kind, in which chance happily made me useful
in a slight degree, arose to my remembrance as
I took my way by the Boulevard de Sebastopol
to the brighter scenes of Paris.

  The thing happened, say, five-and-twenty
years ago. I was a modest young uncommercial
then, and timid and inexperienced. Many
suns and winds have browned me in the line,
but those were my pale days. Having newly
taken the lease of a house in a certain distinguished
metropolitan parish---a house which
then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class
Family Mansion, involving awful responsibilities---
I became the prey of a Beadle. I think
the Beadle must have seen me going in or
coming out, and must have observed that I
tottered under the weight of my grandeur. Or
he may have been hiding under straw when I
bought my first horse (in the desirable stable-yard
attached to the first-class Family Mansion),
and when the vendor remarked to me, in an
original manner, on bringing him for approval,
taking his cloth off and smacking him, ``There,
sir! _There's_ a Orse!'' And when I said gallantly,
``How much do you want for him?'' and
when the vendor said, ``No more than sixty
guineas from you;'' and when I said smartly,
``Why not more than sixty from _me?_'' And
when he said crushingly, ``Because, upon my
soul and body, he'd be considered cheap at
seventy by one who understood the subject---
but you don't.''---I say, the Beadle may have
been in hiding under straw when this disgrace
befell me, or he may have noted that I was too
raw and young an Atlas to carry the first-class
Family Mansion in a knowing manner. Be this
as it may, the Beadle did what Melancholy did
to the youth in Gray's Elegy---he marked me for
his own. And the way in which the Beadle did
it was this: he summoned me as a juryman on
his Coroner's Inquests.

  In my first feverish alarm I repaired ``for
safety and for succour''---like those sagacious
Northern shepherds who, having had no previous
reason whatever to believe in young
Norval, very prudently did not originate the
hazardous idea of believing in him---to a deep
householder. This profound man informed me
that the Beadle counted on my buying him off;
on my bribing him not to summon me; and
that if I would attend an Inquest with a cheerful
countenance, and profess alacrity in that branch
of my country's service, the Beadle would be
disheartened, and would give up the game.
I roused my energies, and, the next time the
wily Beadle summoned me, I went. The Beadle
was the blankest Beadle I have ever looked on
when I answered to my name, and his discomfiture
gave me courage to go through
with it.

  We were empanelled to inquire concerning the
death of a very little mite of a child. It was the
old miserable story. Whether the mother had
committed the minor offence of concealing the
birth, or whether she had committed the major
offence of killing the child, was the question on
which we were wanted. We must commit her
on one of the two issues.

  The Inquest came off in the parish work-house,
and I have yet a lively impression that I
was unanimously received by my brother jury-men
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 horsehair chairs that I wondered what
race of Patagonians they were made for; and
further, that an undertaker gave me his card
when we were in the full moral freshness of
having just been sworn, as ``an inhabitant that
was newly come into the parish, and was likely
to have a young family.'' The case was then
stated to us by the Coroner, and then we went
down-stairs---led by the plotting Beadle---to
view the body. From that day to this, the poor
little figure, on which that sounding legal appellation
was bestowed, has lain in the same place,
and with the same surroundings, to my thinking.
In a kind of crypt devoted to the warehousing
of the parochial coffins, and in the midst of a
perfect Panorama of coffins of all sizes, it was
stretched on a box; the mother had put it in her
box---this box---almost as soon as it was born,
and it had been presently found there. It had
been opened, and neatly sewn up, and, regarded
from that point of view, it looked like a stuffed
creature. It rested on a clean white cloth,
with a surgical instrument or so at hand, and,
regarded from that point of view, it looked as if
the cloth were ``laid,'' and the Giant were
coming to dinner. There was nothing repellent
about the poor piece of innocence, and it demanded
a mere form of looking at. So, we
looked at an old pauper who was going about
among the coffins with a foot-rule, as if he were
a case of Self-Measurement; and we looked at
one another; and we said the place was well
whitewashed anyhow; and then our conversational
powers as a British jury flagged, and the
foreman said, ``All right, gentlemen? Back
again, Mr. Beadle!''

  The miserable young creature who had given
birth to this child within a very few days,
and who had cleaned the cold wet door-steps
immediately afterwards, was brought before us
when we resumed our horsehair chairs, and was
present during the proceedings. She had a
horsehair chair herself, being very weak and ill;
and I remember how she turned to the unsympathetic
nurse who attended her, and who might
have been the figure-head of a pauper ship, and
how she hid her face and sobs and tears upon
that wooden shoulder. I remember, too, how
hard her mistress was upon her (she was a servant-of-all-work),
and with what a cruel pertinacity
that piece of Virtue spun her thread of
evidence double, by intertwisting it with the
sternest thread of construction. Smitten hard
by the terrible low wail from the utterly friendless
orphan girl, which never ceased during the
whole inquiry, I took heart to ask this witness a
question or two, which hopefully admitted of an
answer that might give a favourable turn to the
case. She made the turn as little favourable as
it could be, but it did some good, and the
Coroner, who was nobly patient and humane
(he was the late Mr. Wakley), cast a look of
strong encouragement in my direction. Then
we had the doctor who had made the examination,
and the usual tests as to whether the child
was born alive; but he was a timid muddle-headed
doctor, and got confused and contradictory,
and wouldn't say this, and couldn't
answer for that, and the immaculate broker was
too much for him, and our side slid back again.
However, I tried again, and the Coroner backed
me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grateful
to him, as I do now to his memory; and we
got another favourable turn out of some other
witness, some member of the family with a
strong prepossession against the sinner; and I
think we had the doctor back again; and I
know that the Coroner summed up for our side,
and that I and my British brothers turned round
to discuss our verdict, and get ourselves into
great difficulties with our large chairs and the
broker. At that stage of the case I tried hard
again, being convinced that I had cause for it;
and at last we found for the minor offence of
only concealing the birth; and the poor desolate
creature, who had been taken out during our
deliberation, being brought in again to be told
of the verdict, then dropped upon her knees
before us, with protestations that we were right
---protestations among the most affecting that I
have ever heard in my life---and was carried
away insensible.

  (In private conversation after this was all
over, the Coroner showed me his reasons, as a
trained surgeon, for perceiving it to be impossible
that the child could, under the most favourable
circumstances, have drawn many breaths,
in the very doubtful case of its having ever
breathed at all; this, owing to the discovery of
some foreign matter in the windpipe, quite irreconcilable
with many moments of life.) 

  When the agonised girl had made those final
protestations, I had seen her face, and it was in
unison with her distracted 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 dismissed it in the most
efficient way I could think of. I caused some
extra care to be taken of her in the prison, and
counsel to be retained for her defence when she
was tried at the Old Bailey; and her sentence
was lenient, and her history and conduct proved
that it was right. In doing the little I did for
her, I remember to have had the kind help of
some gentle-hearted functionary to whom I addressed
myself---but what functionary I have
long forgotten---who I suppose was officially
present at the Inquest.

  I regard this as a very notable uncommercial
experience, because this good came of a Beadle.
And, to the best of my knowledge, information,
and belief, it is the only good that ever did come
of a Beadle since the first Beadle put on his
cocked-hat.


	XIX.

	BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS.

 It came into my mind that I would recall in
these notes a few of the many hostelries I
have rested at in the course of my journeys;
and, indeed, I had taken up my pen for the purpose,
when I was baffled by an accidental circumstance.
It was the having to leave off, to
wish the owner of a certain bright face that looked
in at my door ``many happy returns of the day.''
Thereupon a new thought came into my mind,
driving its predecessor out, and I began to recall
---instead of Inns---the birthdays that I have
put up at, on my way to this present sheet of
paper.

  I can very well remember being taken out to
visit some peach-faced creature in a blue sash,
and shoes to correspond, whose life I supposed
to consist entirely of birthdays. Upon seed-cake,
sweet wine, and shining presents, that
glorified young person seemed to me to be exclusively
reared. At so early a stage of my
travels did I assist at the anniversary of her
nativity (and become enamoured of her), that I
had not yet acquired the recondite knowledge
that a birthday is the common property of all
who are born, but supposed it to be a special
gift bestowed by the favouring Heavens on that
one distinguished infant. There was no other
company, and we sat in a shady bower---under
a table, as my better (or worse) knowledge leads
me to believe---and were regaled with saccharine
substances and liquids, until it was time to part.
A bitter powder was administered to me next
morning, and I was wretched. On the whole, a
pretty accurate foreshadowing of my more mature
experiences in such wise!

  Then came the time when, inseparable from
one's own birthday, was a certain sense of
merit, a consciousness of well-earned distinction.
When I regarded my birthday as a graceful
achievement of my own, a monument of my
perseverance, independence, and good sense,
redounding greatly to my honour. This was at
about the period when Olympia Squires became
involved in the anniversary. Olympia was most
beautiful (of course), and I loved her to that
degree, that I used to be obliged to get out of
my little bed in the night, expressly to exclaim
to Solitude, ``Oh, Olympia Squires!'' Visions
of Olympia, clothed entirely in sage-green, from
which I infer a defectively-educated taste on the
part of her respected parents, who were necessarily
unacquainted with the South Kensington
Museum, still arise before me. Truth is sacred,
and the visions are crowned by a shining white
beaver bonnet, impossibly suggestive of a little
feminine postboy. My memory presents a birthday
when Olympia and I were taken by an unfeeling
relative---some cruel uncle, or the like---
to a slow torture called an Orrery. The terrible
instrument was set up at the local Theatre, and
I had expressed a profane wish in the morning
that it was a Play: for which a serious aunt had
probed my conscience deep, and my pocket
deeper, by reclaiming a bestowed half-crown. It
was a venerable and a shabby Orrery, at least
one thousand stars and twenty-five comets behind
the age. Nevertheless, it was awful. When
the low-spirited gentleman with a wand said,
``Ladies and gentlemen'' (meaning particularly
Olympia and me), ``the lights are about to be
put out, but there is not the slightest cause for
alarm,'' it was very alarming. Then the planets
and stars began. Sometimes they wouldn't
come on, sometimes they wouldn't go off, sometimes
they had holes in them, and mostly they
didn't seem to be good likenesses. All this
time the gentleman with the wand was going on
in the dark (tapping away at the heavenly bodies
between-whiles, like a wearisome woodpecker)
about a sphere revolving on its own axis eight
hundred and ninety-seven thousand millions of
times---or miles---in two hundred and sixty-three
thousand five hundred and twenty-four
millions of something elses, until I thought, if
this was a birthday, it were better never to have
been born. Olympia, also, became much depressed,
and we both slumbered and woke cross,
and still the gentleman was going on in the dark
---whether up in the stars, or down on the stage,
it would have been hard to make out, if it had
been worth trying---ciphering away about planes
of orbits, to such an infamous extent that
Olympia, stung to madness, actually kicked me.
A pretty birthday spectacle, when the lights
were turned up again, and all the schools in the
town (including the National, who had come in
for nothing, and serve them right, for they were
always throwing stones) were discovered with
exhausted countenances, screwing their knuckles
into their eyes, or clutching their heads of hair.
A pretty birthday speech when Doctor Sleek of
the City Free bobbed up his powdered head in
the stage box, and said that before this assembly
dispersed he really must beg to express his
entire approval of a lecture as improving, as informing,
as devoid of anything that could call a
blush into the cheek of youth, as any it had ever
been his lot to hear delivered. A pretty birthday
altogether, when Astronomy couldn't leave
poor Small Olympia Squires and me alone, but
must put an end to our loves! For, we never
got over it; the threadbare Orrery outwore our
mutual tenderness; the man with the wand was
too much for the boy with the bow.

  When shall I disconnect the combined smells
of oranges, brown paper, and straw, from those
other birthdays at school, when the coming
hamper casts its shadow before, and when a
week of social harmony---shall I add of admiring
and affectionate popularity---led up to that Institution?
What noble sentiments were expressed
to me in the days before the hamper,
what vows of friendship were sworn to me, what
exceedingly old knives were given me, what
generous avowals of having been in the wrong
emanated from else obstinate spirits once enrolled
among my enemies! The birthday of the
potted game and guava jelly is still made special
to me by the noble conduct of Bully Globson.
Letters from home had mysteriously inquired
whether I should be much surprised and disappointed
if, among the treasures in the coming
hamper, I discovered potted game, and guava
jelly from the Western Indies. I had mentioned
those hints in confidence to a few friends, and
had promised to give away, as I now see reason
to believe, a handsome covey of partridges
potted, and about a hundredweight of guava
jelly. It was now that Globson, Bully no more,
sought me out in the playground. He was a
big fat boy, with a big fat head and a big fat fist,
and, at the beginning of that Half, had raised
such a bump on my forehead that I couldn't get
my hat of state on, to go to church. He said
that after an interval of cool reflection (four
months), he now felt this blow to have been an
error of judgment, and that he wished to apologise
for the same. Not only that, but, holding
down his big head between his two big hands
in order that I might reach it conveniently, he
requested me, as an act of justice which would
appease his awakened conscience, to raise a
retributive bump upon it, in the presence of
witnesses. This handsome proposal I modestly
declined, and he then embraced me, and we
walked away conversing. We conversed respecting
the West India Islands, and, in the pursuit
of knowledge, he asked me with much interest
whether, in the course of my reading, I had met
with any reliable description of the mode of
manufacturing guava jelly; or whether I had
ever happened to taste that conserve, which he
had been given to understand was of rare excellence.

  Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; and
then with the waning months came an ever-augmenting
sense of the dignity of twenty-one.
Heaven knows I had nothing to ``come into,''
save the bare birthday, and yet I esteemed it as
a great possession. I now and then paved the
way to my state of dignity by beginning a proposition
with the casual words, ``say that a man
of twenty-one,'' or by the incidental assumption
of a fact that could not sanely be disputed, as,
``for when a fellow comes to be a man of
twenty-one.'' I gave a party on the occasion.
She was there. It is unnecessary to name Her
more particularly; she was older than I, and
had pervaded every chink and crevice of my
mind for three or four years. I had held
volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her
mother on the subject of our union, and I had
written letters more in number than Horace
Walpole's, to that discreet woman, soliciting
her daughter's hand in marriage. I had never
had the remotest intention of sending any of
those letters; but to write them, and after a
few days tear them up, had been a sublime
occupation. Sometimes I had begun, ``Honoured
Madam. I think that a lady gifted with
those powers of observation which I know you
to possess, and endowed with those womanly
sympathies with the young and ardent which it
were more than heresy to doubt, can scarcely
have failed to discover that I love your adorable
daughter deeply, devotedly.'' In less buoyant
states of mind I had begun, ``Bear with me,
Dear Madam, bear with a daring wretch who is
about to make a surprising confession to you,
wholly unanticipated by yourself, and which he
beseeches you to commit to the flames as soon
as you have become aware to what a towering
height his mad ambition soars.'' At other times
---periods of profound mental depression, when
She had gone out to balls where I was not---the
draft took the affecting form of a paper to be
left on my table after my departure to the confines
of the globe. As thus: ``For Mrs. Onowenever,
these lines when the hand that traces
them shall be far away. I could not bear the
daily torture of hopelessly loving the dear one
whom I will not name. Broiling on the coast
of Africa, or congealing on the shores of Greenland,
I am far far better there than here.'' (In
this sentiment my cooler judgment perceives
that the family of the beloved object would
have most completely concurred.) ``If I ever
emerge from obscurity, and my name is ever
heralded by Fame, it will be for her dear sake.
If I ever amass Gold, it will be to pour it at her
feet. Should I, on the other hand, become the
prey of Ravens------'' I doubt if I ever quite
made up my mind what was to be done in that
affecting case; I tried ``then it is better so;''
but, not feeling convinced that it would be
better so, I vacillated between leaving all else
blank, which looked expressive and bleak, or
winding up with ``Farewell!''

  This fictitious correspondence of mine is to
blame for the foregoing digression. I was
about to pursue the statement that on my
twenty-first birthday I gave a party, and She
was there. It was a beautiful party. There
was not a single animate or inanimate object
connected with it (except the company and myself)
that I had ever seen before. Everything
was hired, and the mercenaries in attendance
were profound strangers to me. Behind a door,
in the crumby part of the night when wine-glasses
were to be found in unexpected spots, I
spoke to Her---spoke out to Her. What passed
I cannot, as a man of honour, reveal. She was
all angelical gentleness, but a word was mentioned
---a short and dreadful word of three letters,
beginning with a B---which, as I remarked
at the moment, ``scorched my brain.'' She went
away soon afterwards, and when the hollow
throng (though to be sure it was no fault of
theirs) dispersed, I issued forth with a dissipated
scorner, and, as I mentioned expressly to him,
``sought oblivion.'' It was found, with a dreadful
headache in it, but it didn't last; for, in the
shaming light of next day's noon, I raised my
heavy head in bed, looking back to the birthdays
behind me, and tracking the circle by
which I had got round, after all, to the bitter
powder and the wretchedness again.

  This reactionary powder (taken so largely by
the human race that I am inclined to regard it
as the Universal Medicine once sought for in
Laboratories) is capable of being made up in
another form for birthday use. Anybody's long-lost
brother will do ill to turn up on a birthday.
If I had a long-lost brother, I should know beforehand
that he would prove a tremendous fraternal
failure if he appointed to rush into my
arms on my birthday. The first Magic Lantern
I ever saw was secretly and elaborately planned
to be the great effect of a very juvenile birthday;
but it wouldn't act, and its images were
dim. My experience of adult birthday Magic
Lanterns may possibly have been unfortunate,
but has certainly been similar. I have an illustrative
birthday in my eye: a birthday of my
friend Flipfield, whose birthdays had long been
remarkable as social successes. There had been
nothing set or formal about them; Flipfield
having been accustomed merely to say, two or
three days before, ``Don't forget to come and
dine, old boy, according to custom.'' I don't
know what he said to the ladies he invited, but
I may safely assume it _not_ to have been ``old
girl.'' Those were delightful gatherings, and
were enjoyed by all participators. In an evil
hour, a long-lost brother of Flipfield's came to
light in foreign parts. Where he had been
hidden, or what he had been doing, I don't
know, for Flipfield vaguely informed me that he
had turned up ``on the banks of the Ganges''
---speaking of him as if he had been washed
ashore. The Long-lost was coming home, and
Flipfield made an unfortunate calculation, based
on the well-known regularity of the P. and O.
steamers, that matters might be so contrived as
that the Long-lost should appear in the nick of
time on his (Flipfield's) birthday. Delicacy
commanded that I should repress the gloomy
anticipations with which my soul became fraught
when I heard of this plan. The fatal day
arrived, and we assembled in force. Mrs.
Flipfield senior formed an interesting feature in
the group, with a blue-veined miniature of the
late Mr. Flipfield round her neck, in an oval,
resembling a tart from the pastrycook's: his
hair powdered, and the bright buttons on his
coat evidently very like. She was accompanied
by Miss Flipfield, the eldest of her numerous
family, who held her pocket-handkerchief to her
bosom in a majestic manner, and spoke to all of
us (none of us had ever seen her before) in pious
and condoning tones, of all the quarrels that
had taken place in the family from her infancy
---which must have been a long time ago---down
to that hour. The Long-lost did not appear.
Dinner, half an hour later than usual, was announced,
and still no Long-lost. We sat down
to table. The knife and fork of the Long-lost
made a vacuum in Nature, and, when the champagne
came round for the first time, Flipfield
gave him up for the day, and had them removed.
It was then that the Long-lost gained the height
of his popularity with the company; for my own
part, I felt convinced that I loved him dearly.
Flipfield's dinners are perfect, and he is the
easiest and best of entertainers. Dinner went
on brilliantly, and the more the Long-lost didn't
come, the more comfortable we grew, and the
more highly we thought of him. Flipfield's own
man (who has a regard for me) was in the act of
struggling with an ignorant stipendiary, to wrest
from him the wooden leg of a guinea-fowl which
he was pressing on my acceptance, and to substitute
a slice of the breast, when a ringing at
the door-bell suspended the strife. I looked
round me, and perceived the sudden pallor
which I knew my own visage revealed, reflected
on the faces of the company. Flipfield hurriedly
excused himself, went out, was absent for about
a minute or two, and then re-entered with the
Long-lost.

  I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had
brought Mont Blanc with him, or had come
attended by a retinue of eternal snows, he could
not have chilled the circle to the marrow in a
more efficient manner. Embodied failure sat
enthroned upon the Long-lost's brow, and pervaded
him to his Long-lost boots. In vain Mrs.
Flipfield senior, opening her arms, exclaimed,
``My Tom!'' and pressed his nose against the
counterfeit presentment of his other parent. In
vain Miss Flipfield, in the first transports of this
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 overcome by the
palpable, undisguisable, utter, and total breakdown
of the Long-lost. Nothing he could have
done would have set him right, with us but his
instant return to the Ganges. In the very same
moments it became established that the feeling
was reciprocal, and that the Long-lost detested
us. When a friend of the family (not myself,
upon my honour), wishing to set things going
again, asked him, while he partook of soup---
asked him with an amability of intention beyond
all praise, but with a weakness of execution
open to defeat---what kind of river he considered
the Ganges, the Long-lost, scowling at the friend
of the family over his spoon, as one of an abhorrent
race, replied, ``Why, a river of water, I
suppose,'' and spooned his soup into himself
with a malignancy of hand and eye that blighted
the amiable questioner. Not an opinion could
be elicited from the Long-lost in unison with the
sentiments of any individual present. He contradicted
Flipfield dead before he had eaten his
salmon. He had no idea---or affected to have
no idea---that it was his brother's birthday, and,
on the communication of that interesting fact to
him, merely wanted to make him out four years
older than he was. He was an antipathetical
being, with a peculiar power and gift of treading
on everybody's tenderest place. They talk in
America of a man's ``Platform.'' I should describe
the Platform of the Long-lost as a Platform
composed of other people's corns, on which
he had stumped his way, with all his might and
main, to his present position. It is needless to
add that Flipfield's great birthday went by the
board, and that he was a wreck when I pretended,
at parting, to wish him many happy
returns of it.

  There is another class of birthdays at which I
have so frequently assisted, that I may assume
such birthdays to be pretty well known to the
human race. My friend Mayday's birthday is
an example. The guests have no knowledge of
one another except on that one day in the year,
and are annually terrified for a week by the
prospect of meeting one another again. There
is a fiction among us that we have uncommon
reasons for being particularly lively and spirited
on the occasion, whereas deep despondency is
no phrase for the expression of our feelings.
But the wonderful feature of the case is, that we
are in tacit accordance to avoid the subject---to
keep it as far off as possible, as long as possible
---and to talk about anything else, rather than
the joyful event. I may even go so far as to
assert that there is a dumb compact among us
that we will pretend that it is =not= Mayday's
birthday. A mysterious and gloomy Being,
who is said to have gone to school with Mayday,
and who is so lank and lean that he seriously
impugns the Dietary of the establishment
at which they were jointly educated, always
leads us, as I may say, to the block, by laying
his grisly hand on a decanter, and begging us
to fill our glasses. The devices and pretences
that I have seen put in practice to defer the
fatal moment, and to interpose between this
man and his purpose, are innumerable. I have
known desperate guests, when they saw the
grisly hand approaching the decanter, wildly to
begin, without any antecedent whatsoever,
``That reminds me---'' and to plunge into
long stories. When at last the hand and the
decanter come together, a shudder, a palpable,
perceptible shudder, goes round the table. We
receive the reminder that it is Mayday's birthday,
as if it were the anniversary of some profound
disgrace he had undergone, and we sought
to comfort him. And when we have drunk
Mayday's health, and wished him many happy
returns, we are seized for some moments with a
ghastly blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if we
were in the first flushed reaction of having undergone
a surgical operation.

  Birthdays of this species have a public as well
as a private phase. My ``boyhood's home,''
Dullborough, presents a case in point. An Immortal
Somebody was wanted in Dullborough,
to dimple for a day the stagnant face of the
waters; he was rather wanted by Dullborough
generally, and much wanted by the principal
hotel-keeper. The County history was looked
up for a locally Immortal Somebody, but the
registered Dullborough worthies were all Nobodies.
In this state of things, it is hardly
necessary to record that Dullborough did what
every man does when he wants to write a book
or deliver a lecture, and is provided with all the
materials except a subject. It fell back upon
Shakspeare.

  No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakspeare's
birthday in Dullborough than the popularity
of the immortal bard became surprising.
You might have supposed the first edition of his
works to have been published last week, and
enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half
through them. (I doubt, by the way, whether
it had ever done half that, but 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 Shakspeare broke
out in the book-shop 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 Shakspeare ever stole deer? This
was indignantly decided by an overwhelming
majority in the negative; indeed, there was but
one vote on the Poaching side, and that was the
vote of the orator who had undertaken to advocate
it, and who became quite an obnoxious
character---particularly to the Dullborough
``roughs,'' who were about as well informed on
the matter as most other people. Distinguished
speakers were invited down, and very nearly
came (but not quite). Subscriptions were
opened, and committees sat, and it would have
been far from a popular measure, in the height
of the excitement, to have told Dullborough
that it wasn't Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet, after
all these preparations, when the great festivity
took place, and the portrait, elevated aloft, surveyed
the company as if it were in danger of
springing a mine of intellect and blowing itself
up, it did undoubtedly happen, according to the
inscrutable mysteries of things, that nobody
could be induced, not to say to touch upon
Shakspeare, but to come within a mile of him,
until the crack speaker of Dullborough rose to
propose the immortal memory. Which he did
with the perplexing and astonishing result that
before he had repeated the great name half-a-dozen
times, or had been upon his legs as
many minutes, he was assailed with a general
shout of ``Question.''


	XX.

	BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE.

  Behold me on my way to an Emigrant
Ship, on a hot morning early
in June. My road lies through that
part of London generally known to
the initiated as ``Down by the
Docks.'' Down by the Docks, is home
to a good many people---to too many,
if I may judge from the overflow of
local population in the streets---but my nose insinuates
that the number to whom it is Sweet
Home might be easily counted. Down by the
Docks, is a region I would choose as my point
of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant.
It would present my intention to me in such a
sensible light; it would show me so many things
to be run away from.

  Down by the Docks, they eat the largest
oysters, and scatter the roughest oyster shells,
known to the descendants of St. George and
the Dragon. Down by the Docks, they consume
the slimiest of shell-fish, which seem to
have been scraped off the copper bottoms of
ships. Down by the Docks, the vegetables at
greengrocers' doors acquire a saline and a scaly
look, as if they had been crossed with fish and
seaweed. Down by the Docks, they ``board
seamen'' at the eating-houses, the public-houses,
the slop-shops, the coffee-shops, the tally-shops,
all kinds of shops mentionable and unmentionable---
board them, as it were, in a piratical
sense, making them bleed terribly, and giving
no quarter. Down by the Docks, the seamen
roam in mid-street and mid-day, their pockets
inside out, and their heads no better. Down
by the Docks, the daughters of wave-ruling
Britannia also rove, clad in silken attire, with
uncovered tresses streaming in the breeze, bandana
kerchiefs floating from their shoulders, and
crinoline not wanting. Down by the Docks,
you may hear the Incomparable Joe Jackson
sing the Standard of England, with a hornpipe,
any night; or any day may see at the wax-work, for
a penny and no waiting, him as killed the policeman
at Acton, and suffered for it. Down by the
Docks, you may buy polonies, saveloys, and
sausage preparations various, if you are not particular
what they are made of besides seasoning.
Down by the Docks, the children of Israel
creep into any gloomy cribs and entries they
can hire, and hang slops there---pewter watches,
sou'-wester hats, waterproof overalls---``firtht-rate
articleth, Thjack.'' Down by the Docks, such
dealers, exhibiting on a frame a complete nautical
suit without the refinement of a waxen visage
in the hat, present the imaginary wearer as
drooping at the yard-arm, with his seafaring and
earthfaring troubles over. Down by the Docks,
the placards in the shops apostrophize the customer,
knowing him familiarly beforehand, as
``Look here, Jack!'' ``Here's your sort, my
lad!'' ``Try our sea-going mixed, at two-and-nine!''
``The right kit for the British tar!'' ``Ship
ahoy!'' ``Splice the main-brace, brother!''
``Come, cheer up, my lads! We've the best
liquors here, And you'll find something new
In our wonderful Beer!'' Down by the Docks,
the pawnbroker lends money on Union-Jack
pocket-handkerchiefs, on watches with little
ships pitching fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes,
nautical instruments in cases, and suchlike.
Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up
in business on the wretchedest scale---chiefly on
lint and plaster for the strapping of wounds---and
with no bright bottles, and with no little drawers.
Down by the Docks, the shabby undertaker's
shop will bury you for next to nothing, after the
Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing
at all; so you can hardly hope to make
cheaper end. Down by the Docks, anybody
drunk will quarrel with anybody drunk or sober,
and everybody else will have a hand in it, and
on the shortest notice you may revolve in a
whirlpool of red shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads
of hair, bare tattooed arms, Britannia's daughters,
malice, mud, maundering, and madness.
Down by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the
public-houses all day long, and, shrill above
their din and all the din, rises the screeching of innumerable
parrots brought from foreign parts,
who appear to be very much astonished by what
they find on these native shores of ours. Possibly
the parrots don't know, possibly they do,
that Down by the Docks is the road to the
Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the
savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys
carve cocoa-nut shells, and the grim blind idols
muse in their shady groves to exactly the same
purpose as the priests and chiefs. And possibly
the parrots don't know, possibly they do, that
the noble savage is a wearisome impostor
wherever he is, and has five hundred thousand
volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason, to
answer for.

  Shadwell Church! Pleasant whispers of there
being a fresher air down the river than down by
the Docks go pursuing one another, playfully,
in and out of the openings in its spire. Gigantic
in the basin just beyond the church, looms my
Emigrant Ship: her name, the Amazon. Her
figure-head is not _dis_figured as those beauteous
founders of the race of strong-minded women
are fabled to have been, for the convenience
of drawing the bow; but I sympathise with the
carver:

  ``A flattering carver who made it his care
    To carve busts as they ought to be---not as they were.''

My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the
wharf. Two great gangways made of spars and
planks connect her with the wharf; and up and
down these gangways, perpetually crowding to
and fro, and in and out, like ants, are the Emigrants
who are going to sail in my Emigrant
Ship. Some with cabbages, some with loaves of
bread, some with cheese and butter, some with
milk and beer, some with boxes, beds, and bundles,
some with babies---nearly all with children
---nearly all with bran-new tin cans for their
daily allowance of water, uncomfortably suggestive
of a tin flavour in the drink. To and fro,
up and down, aboard and ashore, swarming here
and there and everywhere, my Emigrants. And
still, as the Dock gate swings upon its hinges,
cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans appear,
bringing more of my Emigrants, with more cabbages,
more loaves, more cheese and butter,
more milk and beer, more boxes, beds, and
bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping
investments accumulated compound interest of
children.

  I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to
the great Cabin, and find it in the usual condition
of a cabin at that pass. Perspiring lands-men,
with loose papers, and with pens and inkstands,
pervade it; and the general appearance
of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon's funeral
had just come home from the cemetery, and the
disconsolate Mrs. Amazon's trustees found the
affairs in great disorder, and were looking high
and low for the will. I go out on the poop-deck
for air, and surveying the emigrants on the deck
below (indeed, they are crowded all about me,
up there too), find more pens and inkstands in
action, and more papers, and interminable complication
respecting accounts with individuals
for tin cans and what not. But nobody is in an
ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody
swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody
appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down
upon the deck, in every corner where it is possible
to find a few square feet to kneel, crouch,
or lie in, people, in every unsuitable attitude for
writing, are writing letters.

  Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this
day in June. And these people are so strikingly
different from all other people in like circumstances
whom I have ever seen, that I wonder
aloud, ``What _would_ a stranger suppose these
emigrants to be?''

  The vigilant bright face of the weather-browned
captain of the Amazon is at my shoulder, and
he says, ``What, indeed? The most of these
came aboard yesterday evening. They came
from various parts of England, in small parties
that had never seen one another before. Yet
they had not been a couple of hours on board,
when they established their own police, made
their own regulations, and set their own watches
at all the hatchways. Before nine o'clock, the
ship was as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.''

  I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing
going on with the most curious composure.
Perfectly abstracted in the midst of the
crowd; while great casks were swinging aloft,
and being lowered into the hold; while hot
agents were hurrying up and down, adjusting the
interminable accounts; while two hundred
strangers were searching everywhere for two
hundred other strangers, and were asking questions
about them of two hundred more; while
the children played up and down all the steps,
and in and out among all the people's legs, and
were beheld, to the general dismay, toppling
over all the dangerous places; the letter-writers
wrote on calmly. On the starboard side of the
ship a grizzled man dictated a long letter to
another grizzled man in an immense fur cap:
which letter was of so profound a quality, that
it became necessary for the amanuensis at intervals
to take off his fur cap in both his hands, for
the ventilation of his brain, and stare at him
who dictated, as a man of many mysteries who
was worth looking at. On the 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 deliberation of a
book-keeper. 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. Along-side
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 selfsame boat was filled
with a choir who sang glees and catches for a
long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her
part mechanically all the while, and wrote a
letter in the bottom of the boat while doing
so.

  ``A stranger would be puzzled to guess the
right name for these people, Mr. Uncommercial,''
says the captain.

  ``Indeed he would.''

  ``If you hadn't known, could you ever have
supposed---?''

  ``How could I? I should have said they
were, in their degree, the pick and flower of
England.''

  ``So should I,'' says the captain.

  ``How many are they?''

  ``Eight hundred in round numbers.''

  I went between-decks, where the families with
children swarmed in the dark, where unavoidable
confusion had been caused by the last
arrivals, and where the confusion was increased
by the little preparations for dinner that were
going on in each group. A few women, here
and there, had got lost, and were laughing at it,
and asking their way to their own people, or out
on deck again. A few of the poor children
were crying; but otherwise the universal cheerfulness
was amazing. ``We shall shake down
by to-morrow.'' ``We shall come all right in a
day or so.'' ``We shall have more light at sea.''
Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped
my way among chests and barrels and beams
and unstowed cargo and ring-bolts and emigrants,
down to the lower deck, and thence up
to the light of day again, and to my former
station.

  Surely, an extraordinary people in their power
of self-abstraction. All the former letter-writers
were still writing calmly, and many more letter-writers
had broken out in my absence. A boy
with a bag of books in his hand, and a slate
under his arm, emerged from below, concentrated
himself in my neighbourhood (espying a
convenient 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
perfect retirement. I think the most noticeable
characteristic in the eight hundred, as a mass,
was their exemption from hurry.

  Eight hundred what? ``Geese, villain?''
=Eight Hundred Mormons.= I, Uncommercial
Traveller for the firm of Human Interest
Brothers, had come aboard this Emigrant Ship
to see what Eight Hundred Latter-day Saints
were like, and I found them (to the rout and
overthrow of all my expectations) like what I
now describe with scrupulous exactness.

  The Mormon Agent who had been active in
getting them together, and in making the contract
with my friends the owners of the ship to
take them as far as New York on their way to
the Great Salt Lake, was pointed out to me. A
compactly-made handsome man in black, rather
short, with rich brown hair and beard, and clear
bright eyes. From his speech, I should set him
down as American. Probably a man who had
``knocked about the world'' pretty much. A
man with a frank open manner, and unshrinking
look; withal a man of great quickness. I believe
he was wholly ignorant of my uncommercial
individuality, and consequently of my immense
uncommercial importance.

  =Uncommercial.= These are a very fine set of
people you have brought together here.

  =Mormon Agent.= Yes, sir, they are a _very_ fine
set of people.

  =Uncommercial= (looking about). Indeed, I
think it would be difficult to find eight hundred
people together anywhere else, and find so much
beauty and so much strength and capacity for
work among them.

  =Mormon Agent= (not looking about, but looking
steadily at Uncommercial). I think so.---We
sent out about a thousand more, yes'day, from
Liverpool.

  =Uncommercial.= You are not going with these
emigrants?

  =Mormon Agent.= No, sir. I remain.

  =Uncommercial.= But you have been in the
Mormon Territory?

  =Mormon Agent.= Yes; I left Utah about
three years ago.

  =Uncommercial.= It is surprising to me that
these people are all so cheery, and make so
little of the immense distance before them.

  =Mormon Agent.= Well, you see; many of 'em
have friends out at Utah, and many of 'em look
forward to meeting friends on the way.

  =Uncommercial.= On the way?

  =Mormon Agent.= This way 'tis. This ship
lands 'em in New York City. Then they go on
by rail right away beyond St. Louis, to that part
of the Banks of the Missouri where they strike
the Plains. There, waggons from the settlement
meet 'em to bear 'em company on their journey
'cross---twelve hundred miles about. Industrious
people who come out to the settlement soon get
waggons of their own, and so the friends of some
of these will come down in their own waggons to
meet 'em. They look forward to that greatly.

  =Uncommercial.= On their long journey across
the Desert, do you arm them?

  =Mormon Agent.= Mostly you will find they
have arms of some kind or another already with
them. Such as had not arms we should arm
across the Plains, for the general protection and
defence.

  =Uncommercial.= Will these waggons bring
down any produce to the Missouri?

  =Mormon Agent.= Well, since the war broke
out, we've taken to growing cotton, and they'll
likely bring down cotton to be exchanged for
machinery. We want machinery. Also we have
taken to grow indigo, which is a fine commodity
for profit. It has been found that the climate on
the further side of the Great Salt Lake suits well
for raising indigo.

  =Uncommercial.= I am told that these people
now on board are principally from the South of
England?

  =Mormon Agent.= And from Wales. That's
true.

  =Uncommercial.= Do you get many Scotch?

  =Mormon Agent.= Not many.

  =Uncommercial.= Highlanders, for instance.

  =Mormon Agent.= No, not Highlanders. They
ain't interested enough in universal brotherhood
and peace and good-will.

  =Uncommercial.= The old fighting blood is
strong in them?

  =Mormon Agent.= Well, yes. And, besides,
they've no faith.

  =Uncommercial= (who has been burning to
get at the Prophet Joe Smith, and seems to discover
an opening). Faith in------?

  =Mormon Agent= (far too many for Uncommercial).
Well.---In anything!

  Similarly, on this same head, the Uncommercial
underwent discomfiture from a Wiltshire
labourer: a simple, fresh-coloured farm labourer
of eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside
him looking on at new arrivals, and with whom
he held this dialogue:

  =Uncommercial.= Would you mind my asking
you what part of the country you come from?

  =Wiltshire.= Not a bit. Theer! (exultingly)
I've worked all my life o' Salisbury Plain, right
under the shadder o' Stonehenge. You mightn't
think it, but I haive.

  =Uncommercial.= And a pleasant country too.

  =Wiltshire.= Ah! 'Tis a pleasant country.

  =Uncommercial.= Have you any family on
board?

  =Wiltshire.= Two children, boy and gal. I
am a widderer, _I_ am, and I'm going out alonger
my boy and gal. That's my gal, and she's a
fine gal o' sixteen (pointing out the girl who is
writing by the boat). I'll go and fetch my boy.
I'd like to show you my boy. (Here Wiltshire
disappears, and presently comes back with a big
shy boy of twelve, in a superabundance of boots,
who is not at all glad to be presented.) He is
a fine boy too, and a boy fur to work! (Boy
having undutifully bolted, Wiltshire drops him.)

  =Uncommercial.= It must cost you a great deal
of money to go so far, three strong.

  =Wiltshire.= A power of money. Theer!
Eight shillen a week, eight shillen a week, eight
shillen a week, put by out of the week's wages
for ever so long.

  =Uncommercial.= I wonder how you did it.

  =Wiltshire= (recognising in this a kindred
spirit). See theer now! _I_ wonder how I done
it! But what with a bit o' subscription heer,
and what with a bit o' help theer, it were done
at last, though I don't hardly know how. Then
it were unfort'net for us, you see, as we got kep'
in Bristol so long---nigh a fortnight, it were---
on accounts of a mistake wi' Brother Halliday.
Swaller'd up money, it did, when we might have
come straight on.

  =Uncommercial= (delicately approaching Joe
Smith). You are of the Mormon religion, of
course?

  =Wiltshire= (confidently). Oh yes, _I_'m a
Mormon! (Then reflectively.) I'm a Mormon.
(Then, looking round the ship, feigns to descry
a particular friend in an empty spot, and evades
the Uncommercial for evermore.)

  After a noontide pause for dinner, during
which my emigrants were nearly all between-decks,
and the Amazon looked deserted, a
general muster took place. The muster was for
the ceremony of passing the Government Inspector
and the Doctor. Those authorities held
their temporary state amidships, by a cask or
two; and, knowing that the whole eight hundred
emigrants must come face to face with them, I
took my station behind the two. They knew nothing
whatever of me, I believe, and my testimony
to the unpretending gentleness and good-nature
with which they discharged their duty may be
of the greater worth. There was not the slightest
flavour of the Circumlocution Office about their
proceedings.

  The emigrants were now all on deck. They
were densely crowded aft, and swarmed upon
the poop-deck like bees. Two or three Mormon
agents stood ready to hand them on to
the Inspector, and to hand them forward when
they had passed. By what successful means a
special aptitude for organisation had been infused
into these people, I am, of course, unable
to report. But I know that, even now, there
was no disorder, hurry, or difficulty.

  All being ready, the first group are handed
on. That member of the party who is intrusted
with the passenger ticket for the whole has been
warned by one of the agents to have it ready,
and here it is in his hand. In every instance
through the whole eight hundred, without an
exception, this paper is always ready.

  =Inspector= (reading the ticket). Jessie Jobson,
Sophronia Jobson, Jessie Jobson again,
Matilda Jobson, William Jobson, Jane Jobson,
Matilda Jobson again, Brigham Jobson, Leonardo
Jobson, and Orson Jobson. Are you
all here? (glancing at the party over his spectacles).

  =Jessie Jobson Number Two.= All here,
sir.

  This group is composed of an old grandfather
and grandmother, their married son and his wife,
and _their_ family of children. Orson Jobson is a
little child asleep in his mother's arms. The
Doctor, with a kind word or so, lifts up the
corner of the mother's shawl, looks at the child's
face, and touches the little clenched hand. If
we were all as well as Orson Jobson, doctoring
would be a poor profession.

  =Inspector.= Quite right, Jessie Jobson. Take
your ticket, Jessie, and pass on.

  And away they go. Mormon agent, skilful
and quiet, hands them on. Mormon agent,
skilful and quiet, hands next party up.

  =Inspector= (reading ticket again). Susannah
Cleverly and William Cleverly. Brother and
sister, eh?

  =Sister= (young woman of business, hustling
slow brother). Yes, sir.

  =Inspector.= Very good, Susannah Cleverly.
Take your ticket, Susannah, and take care of it.

  And away they go.

  =Inspector= (taking ticket again). Sampson
Dibble and Dorothy Dibble (surveying a very
old couple over his spectacles with some surprise).
Your husband quite blind, Mrs, Dibble?

  =Mrs. Dibble.= Yes, sir, he be stone blind.

  =Mr. Dibble= (addressing the mast). Yes, sir,
I be stone blind.

  =Inspector.= That's a bad job. Take your
ticket, Mrs. Dibble, and don't lose it, and pass
on.

  Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with
his forefinger, and away they go.

  =Inspector= (taking ticket again). Anastatia
Weedle.

  =Anastatia= (a pretty girl in a bright Garibaldi,
this morning elected by universal suffrage the
Beauty of the Ship). That is me, sir.

  =Inspector.= Going alone, Anastatia?

  =Anastatia= (shaking her curls). I am with
Mrs. Jobson, sir, but I've got separated for the
moment.

  =Inspector.= Oh! you are with the Jobsons?
Quite right. That'll do, Miss Weedle. Don't
lose your ticket.

  Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who
are waiting for here, and stoops and kisses Brigham
Jobson---who appears to be considered too 
young for the purpose by several Mormons
rising twenty, who are looking on. Before her
extensive skirts have departed from the casks a
decent widow stands there with four children,
and so the roll goes.

  The faces of some of the Welsh people, among
whom there were many old persons, were certainly
the least intelligent. Some of these
emigrants would have bungled sorely, but for
the directing hand that was always ready. The
intelligence here was unquestionably of a low
order, and the heads were of a poor type. 
Generally the case was the reverse. There were
many worn faces bearing traces of patient
poverty and hard work, and there was great
steadiness of purpose and much undemonstrative
self-respect among this class. A few young men
were going singly. Several girls were going two
or three together. These latter I found it very
difficult to refer back, in my mind, to their
relinquished homes and pursuits. Perhaps they
were more like country milliners, and pupil
teachers rather tawdrily dressed, than any other
classes of young women. I noticed, among
many little ornaments worn, more than one
photograph brooch of the Princess of Wales, and
also of the late Prince Consort. Some single
women of from thirty to forty, whom one might
suppose to be embroiderers, or straw-bonnet
makers, were obviously going out in quest of
husbands, as finer ladies go to India. That
they had any distinct notions of a plurality of
husbands or wives, I do not believe. To suppose
the family groups of whom the majority
of emigrants were composed, polygamically
possessed, would be to suppose an absurdity,
manifest to any one who saw fathers and
mothers.

  I should say (I had no means of ascertaining
the fact) that most familiar kinds of handicraft
trades were represented here. Farm labourers,
shepherds, and the like, had their full share of
representation, but I doubt if they preponderated.
It was interesting to see how the leading spirit
in the family circle never failed to show itself,
even in the simple process of answering to the
names as they were called, and checking off the
owners of the names. Sometimes it was the
father, much oftener the mother, sometimes a
quick little girl second or third in order of
seniority. It seemed to occur for the first time,
to some heavy fathers, what large families they
had; and their eyes rolled about, during the
calling of the list, as if they half misdoubted
some other family to have been smuggled into
their own. Among all the fine handsome
children, I observed but two with marks upon
their necks that were probably scrofulous. Out
of the whole number of emigrants, but one old
woman was temporarily set aside by the Doctor,
on suspicion of fever; but even she afterwards
obtained a clean bill of health.

  When all had ``passed,'' and the afternoon
began to wear on, a black box became visible
on deck, which box was in charge of certain personages
also in black, of whom only one had the
conventional air of an itinerant preacher. This
box contained a supply of hymn-books, neatly
printed and got up, published at Liverpool, and
also in London at the ``Latter-Day Saints' Book
Dep<o^>t, 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 gratitude in songs adapted to the New
and Everlasting Covenant. In accordance with
their wishes, we have selected the following
volume, which we hope will prove acceptable
until a greater variety can be added. With
sentiments of high consideration and esteem, we
subscribe ourselves your brethren in the New
and Everlasting Covenant, =Brigham Young,
Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor.='' From this
book---by no means explanatory to myself of
the New and Everlasting Covenant, and not at
all making my heart an understanding one on
the subject of that mystery---a hymn was sung,
which did not attract any great amount of attention,
and was supported by a rather select circle.
But the choir in the boat was very popular and
pleasant; and there was to have been a Band,
only the Comet was late in coming on board.
In the course of the afternoon a mother appeared
from shore, in search of her daughter, ``who had
run away with the Mormons.'' She received
every assistance from the Inspector, but her
daughter was not found to be on board. The
saints did not seem to me particularly interested
in finding her.

  Towards five o'clock the galley became full
of tea-kettles, and an agreeable fragrance of tea
pervaded the ship. There was no scrambling or
jostling for the hot water, no ill-humour, no
quarrelling. As the Amazon was to sail with
the next tide, and as it would not be high water
before two o'clock in the morning, I left her
with her tea in full action, and her idle Steam
Tug lying by, deputing steam and smoke for the
time being to the Tea-kettles.

  I afterwards learned that a Dispatch was sent
home by the Captain before he struck out into
the wide Atlantic, highly extolling the behaviour
of these emigrants, and the perfect order and
propriety of all their social arrangements. What
is in store for the poor people on the shores of
the Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they
are labouring under now, on what miserable
blindness their eyes may be opened then, I do
not pretend to say. But I went on board their
ship to bear testimony against them if they
deserved it, as I fully believed they would; to
my great astonishment, they did not deserve it;
and my predispositions and tendencies must not
affect me as an honest witness, I went over
the Amazon's side, feeling it impossible to deny
that, so far, some remarkable influence had produced
a remarkable result, which better-known
influences have often missed.<*>

* After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I
* happened to mention the experience it describes to Lord
* Houghton. That gentleman then showed me an article
* of his writing, in _The Edinburgh Review_ for January,
* 1862, which is highly remarkable for its philosophical
* and literary research, concerning these Latter-Day Saints.
* I find in it the following sentences:---``The Select Committee
* of the House of Commons on emigrant ships for
* 1854 summoned the Mormon agent and passenger-broker
* before it, and came to the conclusion that no ships under
* the provisions of the `Passengers Act' could be depended
* upon for comfort and security in the same degree as those
* under his administration. The Mormon ship is a Family
* under strong and accepted discipline, with every provision
* for comfort, decorum, and internal peace.''



	XXI.

	THE CITY OF THE ABSENT.

  When I think I deserve particularly
well of myself, and have earned
the right to enjoy a little treat, I
stroll from Covent Garden into
the City of London, after business
hours there, on a Saturday, or---
better yet---on a Sunday, and roam about
its deserted nooks and corners. It is
necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys
that they should be made in summer-time, for
then the retired spots that I love to haunt are
at their idlest and dullest. A gentle fall of rain
is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off
my favourite retreats to decided advantage.

  Among these, City Churchyards hold a high
place. Such strange churchyards hide in the
City of London: churchyards sometimes so entirely
detached from churches, always so pressed
upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so
forgotten, except by the few people who ever
look down into them from their smoky windows.
As I stand peeping in through the iron gates
and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like
bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones
are all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their
shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the
Lombardy Poplar or Plane Tree that was once
a drysalter's daughter and several common-councilmen,
has withered like those worthies,
and its departed leaves are dust beneath it.
Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place.
The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing
buildings stand so awry, that they can hardly be
proof against any stress of weather. Old crazy
stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they
overhang, dubiously calculating how far they
will have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what
was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots
away, incrusted with toadstools. Pipes and
spouts for carrying off the rain from the encompassing
gables, broken or feloniously cut for old
lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash
as it list upon the weedy earth, Sometimes
there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as
I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it
working under an unknown hand with a creaking
protest: as though the departed in the
churchyard urged, ``Let us lie here in peace;
don't suck us up and drink us!''

  One of my best-beloved churchyards I call the
churchyard of St. 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 gaol. This gate is ornamented
with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life,
wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the
mind of St. Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron
spikes atop 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 St.
Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated
it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt
drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight.
``Why not?'' I said in self-excuse. ``I
have been to see the Coliseum by the light of
the moon; is it worse to go to see St. Ghastly
Grim by the light of the lightning?'' I repaired
to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the
skulls most effective, having the air of a public
execution, and seeming, as the lightning flashed,
to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes.
Having no other person to whom to impart my
satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver.
So far from being responsive, he surveyed me---
he was naturally a bottle-nosed red-faced man
---with a blanched countenance. And, as he
drove me back, he ever and again glanced in
over his shoulder through the little front window
of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare
originally from a grave in the churchyard of St.
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 whole-sale
house of business, requiring much room for
stowage, will occupy one or two, or even all
three, sides of the enclosing space, and the
backs of bales of goods will lumber up the windows,
as if they were holding some crowded
trade-meeting of themselves within. Sometimes,
the commanding windows are all blank, and
show no more sign of life than the graves below
---not so much, for _they_ tell of what once upon
a time was life undoubtedly. Such was the surrounding
of one City churchyard that I saw last
summer, on a Volunteering Saturday evening
towards eight of the clock, when with astonishment
I beheld an old old man and an old old
woman in it, making hay. Yes, of all occupations
in this world, making hay! It was a very
confined patch of churchyard lying between
Gracechurch Street and the Tower, capable of
yielding, say, an apronful of hay. By what
means the old old man and woman had got into
it, with an almost toothless hay-making rake, I
could not fathom. No open window was within
view; no window at all was within view, sufficiently
near the ground to have enabled their
old legs to descend from it; the rusty churchyard
gate was locked, the mouldy church was
locked. Gravely among the graves they made
hay, all alone by themselves. They looked like
Time and his wife. There was but the one rake
between them, and they both had hold of it in
a pastorally-loving manner, and there was hay
on the old woman's black bonnet, as if the old
man had recently been playful. The old man
was quite an obsolete old man, in knee breeches
and coarse grey stockings, and the old woman
wore mittens like unto his stockings in texture
and in colour. They took no heed of me as I
looked on, unable to account for them. The old
woman was much too bright for a pew-opener,
the old man much too meek for a beadle. On
an old tombstone in the foreground, between
me and them, were two cherubim: but for those
celestial embellishments being represented as
having no possible use for knee breeches, stockings,
or mittens, I should have compared them
with the hay-makers, and sought a likeness. I
coughed and awoke the echoes, but the hay-makers
never looked at me. They used the
rake with a measured action, drawing the scanty
crop towards them; and so I was fain to leave
them under three yards and a half of darkening
sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all
alone by themselves. Perhaps they were Spectres,
and I wanted a medium.

  In another City churchyard, of similar
cramped dimensions, I saw, that selfsame summer,
two comfortable charity children. They
were making love---tremendous proof of the
vigour of that immortal article, for they were in
the graceful uniform under which English
Charity delights to hide herself---and they were
overgrown, and their legs (his legs, at least, for
I am modestly incompetent to speak of hers)
were as much in the wrong as mere passive
weakness of character can render legs. Oh, it
was a leaden churchyard, but no doubt a golden
ground to those young persons! I first saw
them on a Saturday evening, and, perceiving
from their occupation that Saturday evening was
their trysting-time, I returned that evening
se'nnight, and renewed the contemplation of
them. They came there to shake the bits of
matting which were spread in the church aisles.
and they afterwards rolled them up, he rolling
his end, she rolling hers, until they met, and
over the two once divided now united rolls---
sweet emblem!---gave and received a chaste
salute. It was so refreshing to find one of my
faded churchyards blooming into flower thus,
that I returned a second time, and a third, and
ultimately this befell:---They had left the church-door
open in their dusting and arranging. Walking
in to look at the church, I became aware, by
the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her in the
reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking
up, exchanging tender discourse. Immediately
both dived, and became as it were non-existent
on this sphere. With an assumption of
innocence I turned to leave the sacred edifice,
when an obese form stood in the portal, puffily
demanding Joseph, or, in default of Joseph,
Celia. Taking this monster by the sleeve, and
luring him forth on pretence of showing him
whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence
of Joseph and Celia, who presently came towards
us in the churchyard, bending under dusty
matting, a picture of thriving and unconscious
industry. It would be superfluous to hint that
I have ever since deemed this the proudest passage
in my life.

  But such instances, or any tokens of vitality,
are rare indeed in my City churchyards. A few
sparrows occasionally try to raise a lively chirrup
in their solitary tree-perhaps, as taking a different
view of worms from that entertained by
humanity---but they are flat and hoarse of voice,
like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergy-man,
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 coexistent, that it is
often only by an accident, and after long acquaintance,
that I discover their having stained
glass in some odd window. The westering sun
slants into the churchyard by some unwonted
entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old
tombstone, and a window that I thought was
only dirty is for the moment all bejewelled.
Then the light passes and the colours die.
Though even then, if there be room enough for
me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to
the top of the church tower, I see the rusty vane
new burnished, and seeming to look out with a
joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the distant
shore of country.

  Blinking old men, who are let out of workhouses
by the hour, have a tendency to sit on
bits of coping-stone in these churchyards, leaning
with both hands on their sticks, and asthmatically
gasping. The more depressed class of
beggars, too, bring hither broken meats, and
munch. I am on nodding terms with a meditative
turncock who lingers in one of them, and
whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather
as he looks out of temper when he gives the
fire-plug a disparaging wrench with that large
tuning-fork of his which would wear out the
shoulder of his coat, but for a precautionary
piece of inlaid leather. Fire-ladders, which I
am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and
the keys of which were lost in ancient times,
moulder away in the larger churchyards, under
eaves like wooden eyebrows; and so removed
are those corners from the haunts of men and
boys, that once, on a fifth of November, I found
a ``Guy'' trusted to take care of himself there,
while his proprietors had gone to dinner. Of
the expression of his face I cannot report, because
it was turned to the wall; but his shrugged
shoulders and his ten extended fingers appeared
to denote that he had moralised, in his little
straw chair, on the mystery of mortality until he
gave it up as a bad job.

  You do not come upon these churchyards
violently; there are shades of transition in the
neighbourhood. An antiquated news shop, or
barber's shop, apparently bereft of customers in
the earlier days of George the Third, would warn
me to look out for one, if any discoveries in this
respect were left for me to make. A very quiet
court, in combination with an unaccountable
dyer's and scourer's, would prepare me for a
churchyard. An exceedingly retiring public-house,
with a bagatelle board shadily visible in a
sawdusty parlour shaped like an omnibus, and with
a shelf of punchbowls 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 St. Ghastly Grim from a
certain air of extra repose and gloom pervading
a vast stack of warehouses.

  From the hush of these places it is congenial
to pass into the hushed resorts of business,
Down the lanes I like to see the carts and
waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes
idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the
alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard
Street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling
to think of the broad counters with a rim along
the edge, made for telling money out on, the
scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous
ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper
shovels for shovelling gold. When I draw
money, it never seems so much money as when
it is shovelled at me out of a bright copper
shovel. I like to say, ``In Gold,'' and to see
seven pounds musically pouring out of the
shovel, like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark
to me---I italicise _appearing_---``If you
want more of this yellow earth, we keep it in
barrows at your service.'' To think of the
banker's clerk with his deft finger turning the
crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has
taken in a fat roll out of a drawer, is again to
hear the rustling of that delicious south-cash
wind. ``How will you have it?'' I once heard
this usual question asked at a Bank Counter of
an elderly female, habited in mourning and
steeped in simplicity, who answered, open-eyed,
crook-fingered, laughing with expectation, ``Anyhow!''
Calling these things to mind as I stroll
among the Banks, I wonder whether the other
solitary Sunday man I pass has designs upon the
Banks. For the interest and mystery of the
matter, I almost hope he may have, and that
his confederate may be at this moment taking
impressions of the keys of the iron closets in
wax, and that a delightful robbery may be in
course of transaction. About College Hill,
Mark Lane, and so on towards the Tower, and
Dockward, the deserted wine merchants' cellars
are fine subjects for consideration; but the deserted
money-cellars of the Bankers, and their
plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what subterranean
regions of the Wonderful Lamp are
these! And again: possibly some shoeless boy
in rags passed through this street yesterday, for
whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the fulness
of time, and to be surpassing rich. Such reverses
have been since the days of Whittington;
and were long before. I want to know whether
the boy has any foreglittering of that glittering
fortune now, when he treads these stones hungry.
Much as I also want to know whether the next
man to be hanged at Newgate yonder had any
suspicion upon him that he was moving steadily
towards that fate, when he talked so much about
the last man who paid the same great debt at
the same small Debtors' Door.

  Where are all the people who on busy working-days
pervade these scenes? The locomotive
banker's clerk, who carries a black portfolio
chained to him by a chain of steel, where is he?
Does he go to bed with his chain on---to church
with his chain on---or does he lay it by? And
if he lays it by, what becomes of his portfolio,
when he is unchained for a holiday? The wastepaper
baskets of these closed counting-houses
would let me into many hints of business matters
if I had the exploration of them; and what
secrets of the heart should I discover on the
``pads'' of the young clerks---the sheets of cartridge-paper
and blotting-paper interposed between
their writing and their desks! Pads are
taken into confidence on the tenderest occasions,
and oftentimes when I have made a business
visit, and have sent in my name from the outer
office, have I had it forced on my discursive
notice that the officiating young gentleman has
over and over again inscribed =Amelia,= in ink of
various dates, on corners of his pad. Indeed,
the pad may be regarded as the legitimate
modern successor of the old forest tree: whereon
these young knights (having no attainable forest
nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their
mistresses. After all, it is a more satisfactory
process than carving, and can be oftener repeated.
So these courts in their Sunday rest
are courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to
bethink myself), dry as they look. And here is
Garraway's, bolted and shuttered hard and fast!
It is possible to imagine the man who cuts the
sandwiches, on his back in a hay-field; it is
possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a
clerk at church, without him; but imagination
is unable to pursue the men who wait at Garraway's
all the week for the men who never come.
When they are forcibly put out of Garraway's on
Saturday night---which they must be, for they
never would go out of their own accord---where
do they vanish until Monday morning? On
the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected
to find them hovering about these lanes,
like restless ghosts, and trying to peep into
Garraway's through chinks in the shutters, if not
endeavouring to turn the lock of the door with
false keys, picks, and screw-drivers. But the
wonder is, that they go clean away! And now
I think of it, the wonder is, that every working-day
pervader of these scenes goes clean away.
The man who sells the dogs' collars and the
little toy coal-scuttles feels under as great an
obligation to go afar off as Glyn and Co., or
Smith, Payne, and Smith. There is an old
monastery crypt under Garraway's (I have been
in it among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway's,
taking pity on the mouldy men who wait
in its public-room all their lives, gives them cool
house room down there over Sundays; but the
catacombs of Paris would not be large enough
to hold the rest of the missing. This characteristic
of London City greatly helps its being
the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of
business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation
in it of being the Last Man. In my solitude,
the ticket porters being all gone with the rest, I
venture to breathe to the quiet bricks and stones
my confidential wonderment why a ticket porter,
who never does any work with his hands, is
bound to wear a white apron, and why a great
Ecclesiastical Dignitary, who never does any
work with his hands either, is equally bound to
wear a black one.



	XXII.

	AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE.

  Before the waitress had shut the
door, I had forgotten how many
stage-coaches she said used to change
horses in the town every day. But
it was of little moment; any high
number would do as well as another.
It had been a great stage-coaching town
in the great stage-coaching times, and
the ruthless railways had killed and buried it.

  The sign of the house was the Dolphin's
Head. Why only head, I don't know; for the
Dolphin's effigy at full length, and upside down
---as a Dolphin is always bound to be when
artistically treated, though I suppose he is sometimes
right side upward in his natural condition
---graced the sign-board. The sign-board chafed
its rusty hooks outside the bow-window of my
room, and was a shabby work. No visitor could
have denied that the Dolphin was dying by
inches, but he showed no bright colours. He had
once served another master; there was a newer
streak of paint below him, displaying with inconsistent
freshness the legend, By J. =Mellows.=

  My door opened again, and J. Mellows's representative
came back. I had asked her what
I could have for dinner, and she now returned
with the counter-question, what would I like? 
As the Dolphin stood possessed of nothing that
I do like, I was fain to yield to the suggestion
of a duck, which I don't like. J. Mellows's representative
was a mournful young woman, with
one eye susceptible of guidance, and one uncontrollable
eye; which latter, seeming to wander
in quest of stage-coaches, deepened the melancholy
in which the Dolphin was steeped.

  This young woman had but shut the door on
retiring again, when I bethought me of adding
to my order the words, ``with nice vegetables.''
Looking out at the door to give them emphatic
utterance, I found her already in a state of pensive
catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking
her teeth with a pin.

  At the Railway Station, seven miles off, I had
been the subject of wonder when I ordered a fly
in which to come here. And when I gave the
direction, ``To the Dolphin's Head,'' I had
observed an ominous stare on the countenance
of the strong young man in velveteen, who was
the platform servant of the Company. He
had also called to my driver at parting, ``All
ri-ight! Don't hang yourself when you get there,
Geo-o-rge!'' in a sarcastic tone, for which I had
entertained some transitory thoughts of reporting
him to the General Manager.

  I had no business in the town---I never have
any business in any town---but I had been caught
by the fancy that I would come and look at it
in its degeneracy. My purpose was fitly inaugurated
by the Dolphin's Head, which everywhere
expressed past coachfulness and present
coachlessness. Coloured prints of coaches starting,
arriving, changing horses, coaches in the
sunshine, coaches in the snow, coaches in the
wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches on
the King's birthday, coaches in all circumstances
compatible with their triumph and victory, but
never in the act of breaking down or overturning,
pervaded the house. Of these works of art,
some, framed and not glazed, had holes in them;
the varnish of others had become so brown and
cracked, that they looked like overdone pie-crust;
the designs of others were almost obliterated
by the flies of many summers. Broken
glasses, damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and
consignment of incurable cripples to places of
refuge in dark corners, attested the desolation
of the rest. The old room on the ground-floor,
where the passengers of the Highflyer used to
dine, had nothing in it but a wretched show of
twigs and flower-pots in the broad window to
hide the nakedness of the land, and in a corner
little Mellows's perambulator, with even its parasol
head turned despondently to the wall. The
other room, where post-horse company used to
wait while relays were getting ready down the
yard, still held its ground, but was as airless as
I conceive a hearse to be: insomuch that Mr.
Pitt, hanging high against the partition (with
spots on him like port wine, though it is mysterious
how port wine ever got squirted up there),
had good reason for perking his nose and sniffing.
The stopperless cruets on the spindle-shanked
sideboard were in a miserably dejected state;
the anchovy sauce having turned blue some years
ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it
like a small model of a wooden leg) having
turned solid. The old fraudulent candles, which
were always being paid for and never used, were
burnt out at last; but their tall stilts of candle-sticks
still lingered, and still outraged the human
intellect by pretending to be silver. The mouldy
old unreformed Borough Member, with his right
hand buttoned up in the breast of his coat, and
his back characteristically turned on bales of
petitions from his constituents, was there too;
and the poker which never had been among the
fire-irons, lest post-horse company should over-stir
the fire, was _not_ there, as of old.

  Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin's Head,
I found it sorely shrunken. When J. Mellows
came into possession, he had walled off half the
bar, which was now a tobacco shop with its own
entrance in the yard---the once-glorious yard
where the postboys, whip in hand and always
buttoning their waistcoats at the last moment,
used to come running forth to mount and away.
A ``Scientific Shoeing Smith and Veterinary
Surgeon'' had further encroached upon the
yard; and a grimly satirical jobber, who announced
himself as having to Let ``A neat one-horse
fly, and a one-horse cart,'' had established
his business, himself, and his family, in a part of
the extensive stables. Another part was lopped
clean off from the Dolphin's Head, and now
comprised a chapel, a wheelwright's, and a
Young Men's Mutual Improvement and Discussion
Society (in a loft): the whole forming a
back-lane. No audacious hand had plucked
down the vane from the central cupola of the
stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck at N---
Nil: while the score or two of pigeons that remained
true to their ancestral traditions and the
place, had collected in a row on the roof-ridge of
the only outhouse retained by the Dolphin,
where all the inside pigeons tried to push the
outside pigeon off. This I accepted as emblematical
of the struggle for post and place in
railway times.

  Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the
covered and pillared entrance to the Dolphin's
Yard, once redolent of soup and stable litter,
now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street.
It was a hot day, and the little sun-blinds of the
shops were all drawn down, and the more enterprising
tradesmen had caused their 'prentices to
trickle water on the pavement appertaining to
their frontage. It looked as if they had been
shedding tears for the stage-coaches, and drying
their ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs. Such
weakness would have been excusable; for.
business was---as one dejected porkman, who
kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the 
compliment by keeping him, informed me---
``bitter bad.'' Most of the harness-makers and
corn-dealers were gone the way of the coaches,
but it was a pleasant recognition of the eternal
procession of Children down that old original
steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow, that
those tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors
of sweetmeats and cheap toys. The opposition
house to the Dolphin, once famous as the
New White Hart, had long collapsed. In a fit
of abject depression, it had cast whitewash on
its windows, and boarded up its front-door, and
reduced itself to a side-entrance; but even that
had proved a world too wide for the Literary
Institution which had been its last phase; for
the Institution had collapsed too, and of the
ambitious letters of its inscription on the White
Hart's front, all had fallen off but these:

     L            Y INS            T

---suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to
the neighbouring market-place, it seemed to
have wholly relinquished marketing to the dealer
in crockery whose pots and pans straggled half'
across it, and to the Cheap Jack who sat with
folded arms on the shafts of his cart, superciliously
gazing around; his velveteen waistcoat
evidently harbouring grave doubts whether it was
worth his while to stay a night in such a place.

  The church bells began to ring as I left this 
spot, but they by no means improved the case,
for they said, in a petulant way, and speaking
with some difficulty in their irritation, ``=What='s-be-come-of-=the=-coach-=es=?''
Nor would they (I
found on listening) ever vary their emphasis,
save in respect of growing more sharp and
vexed, but invariably went on, ``=What='s-be-come-of-=the=-coach-=es=?''
---always beginning the
inquiry with an unpolite abruptness. Perhaps
from their elevation they saw the railway, and it
aggravated them.

  Coming upon a coachmaker's workshop, I
began to look about me with a revived spirit,
thinking that perchance I might behold there
some remains of the old times of the town's
greatness. There was only one man at work---
a dry man, grizzled, and far advanced in years,
but tall and upright, who, becoming aware of
me looking on, straightened his back, pushed up
his spectacles against his brown-paper cap, and
appeared inclined to defy me. To whom I
pacifically said:

  ``Good day, sir!''

  ``What?'' said he.

  ``Good day, sir.''

  He seemed to consider about that, and not to
agree with me.---``Was you a looking for anything?''
he then asked in a pointed manner.

  ``I was wondering whether there happened
to be any fragment of an old stage-coach here.''

  ``Is that all?''

  ``That's all.''

  ``No, there ain't.''

  It was now my turn to say ``Oh!'' and I said
it. Not another word did the dry and grizzled
man say, but bent to his work again. In the
coachmaking days, the coach painters had tried
their brushes on a post beside him; and quite a
Calendar of departed glories was to be read upon
it, in blue and yellow and red and green, some
inches thick. Presently he looked up again.

  ``You seem to have a deal of time on your
hands,'' was his querulous remark.

  I admitted the fact.

  ``I think it's a pity you was not brought up
to something,'' said he.

  I said I thought so too.

  Appearing to be informed with an idea, he
laid down his plane (for it was a plane he was
at work with), pushed up his spectacles again,
and came to the door.

  ``Would a po-shay do for you?'' he asked.

  ``I am not sure that I understand what you
mean.''

  ``Would a po-shay,'' said the coachmaker,
standing close before me, and folding his arms
in the manner of a cross-examining counsel---
``would a po-shay meet the views you have
expressed? Yes, or no?''

  ``Yes.''

  ``Then you keep straight along down there
till you see one. _You_'ll see one if you go fur
enough.''

  With that he turned me by the shoulder in
the direction I was to take, and went in and
resumed his work against a background of leaves
and grapes. For, although he was a soured
man and a discontented, his workshop was that
agreeable mixture of town and country, street
and garden, which is often to be seen in a small
English town.

  I went the way he turned me, and I came to
the Beer-shop with the sign of The First and
Last, and was out of the town on the old London
Road. I came to the turnpike, and I
found it, in its silent way, eloquent respecting
the change that had fallen on the road. The
Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy; and
the Turnpike-keeper, unable to get a living out
of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler. Not
only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in
the very window of espial through which the
Toll-takers of old times used with awe to behold
the grand London coaches coming on at a
gallop, exhibited for sale little barbers' poles of
sweetstuff in a sticky lantern.

  The political economy of the master of the
turnpike thus expressed itself.

  ``How goes turnpike business, master?'' said
I to him, as he sat in his little porch, repairing
a shoe.

  ``It don't go at all, master,'' said he to me.
``It's stopped.''

  ``That's bad,'' said I.

  ``Bad?'' he repeated. And he pointed to
one of his sunburnt dusty children who was
climbing the turnpike-gate, and said, extending
his open right hand in remonstrance with Universal
Nature, ``Five on 'em!''

  ``But how to improve Turnpike business?''
said I.

  ``There's a way, master,'' said he, with the air
of one who had thought deeply on the subject.

  ``I should like to know it.''

  ``Lay a toll on everything as comes through;
lay a toll on walkers. Lay another toll on
everything as don't come through; lay a toll on
them as stops at home.''

  ``Would the last remedy be fair?''

  ``Fair? Them as stops at home could come
through if they liked; couldn't they?''

  ``Say they could.''

  ``Toll 'em. If they don't come through, it's
_their_ look-out. Anyways,---Toll 'em!''

  Finding it was as impossible to argue with
this financial genius as if he had been Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and consequently the
right man in the right place, I passed on
meekly.

  My mind now began to misgive me that the
disappointed 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
retracted the suspicion, and confessed that I had
done him an injustice. For, there I saw, surely,
the poorest superannuated post-chaise left on
earth.

  It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and
wheels, and plumped down on the clayey soil
among a ragged growth of vegetables. It was
a post-chaise not even set straight upon the
ground, but tilted over, as if it had fallen out of
a balloon. It was a post-chaise that had been
a long time in those decayed circumstances, and
against which scarlet-beans were trained. It
was a post-chaise patched and mended with old
tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that looked like
them, and boarded up as to the windows, but
having =a knocker= on the off-side door. Whether
it was a post-chaise used as tool-house, summer-house,
or dwelling-house, I could not discover,
for there was nobody at home at the post-chaise
when I knocked; but it was certainly used for
something, and locked up. In the wonder of this
discovery, I walked round and round the post-chaise
many times, and sat down by the post-chaise,
waiting for further elucidation. None
came. At last, I made my way back to the old
London Road by the further end of the allotment
gardens, and consequently at a point beyond that
from which I had diverged. I had to scramble
through a hedge and down a steep bank, and I
nearly came down atop of a little spare man who
sat breaking stones by the roadside.

  He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding
me mysteriously through his dark goggles of
wire:

  ``Are you aware, sir, that you've been trespassing?''

  ``I turned out of the way,'' said I in explanation,
``to look at that odd post-chaise. Do you
happen to know anything about it?''

  ``I know it was many a year upon the road,''
said he.

  ``So I supposed. Do you know to whom it
belongs?''

  The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles
over his heap of stones, as if he were considering
whether he should answer the question or not.
Then, raising his barred eyes to my features as
before, he said:

  ``To me.''

  Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received
it with a sufficiently awkward ``Indeed!
Dear me!'' Presently I added, ``Do you------''
I was going to say ``live there,'' but it seemed
so absurd a question, that I substituted ``live
near here?''

  The stone-breaker, who had not broken a
fragment since we began to converse, then did
as follows. He raised himself by poising his
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 uninformed as to his countenance; but
he left me a profound impression that the curved
legs I had seen from behind, as he vanished,
were the legs of an old postboy. It was not
until then that I noticed he had been working
by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like
a tombstone erected over the grave of the
London Road.

  My dinner hour being close at hand, I had
no leisure to pursue the goggles or the subject
then, but made my way back to the Dolphin's
Head. In the gateway I found J. Mellows,
looking at nothing, and apparently experiencing
that it failed to raise his spirits.

  ``_I_ don't care for the town,'' said J. Mellows
when I complimented him on the sanitary advantages
it may or may not possess; ``I wish I
had never seen the town!''

  ``You don't belong to it, Mr. Mellows?''

  ``Belong to it!'' repeated Mellows. ``If I
didn't belong to a better style of town than this,
I'd take and drown myself in a pail.'' It then
occurred to me that Mellows, having so little to
do, was habitually thrown back on his internal
resources---by which I mean the Dolphin's
cellar.

  ``What we want,'' said Mellows, pulling off
his hat, and making as if he emptied it of the
last load of Disgust that had exuded from his
brain, before he put it on again for another load;
``what we want is a Branch. The Petition for
the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room. Would
you put your name to it? Every little helps.''

  I found the document in question stretched
out flat on the coffee-room table by the aid of
certain weights from the kitchen, and I gave it
the additional weight of my uncommercial signature.
To the best of my belief, I bound myself
to the modest statement that universal traffic,
happiness, prosperity, and civilisation, together
with unbounded national triumph in competition
with the foreigner, would infallibly flow
from the Branch.

  Having achieved this constitutional feat, I
asked Mr. Mellows if he could grace my dinner
with a pint of good wine? Mr. Mellows thus
replied:

  ``If I couldn't give you a pint of good wine,
I'd---there!---I'd take and drown myself in a
pail. But I was deceived when I bought this
business, and the stock was higgledy-piggledy,
and I haven't yet tasted my way quite through
it with a view to sorting it. Therefore, if you
order one kind and get another, change till it
comes right. For what,'' said Mellows, unloading
his hat as before, ``what would you or
any gentleman do, if you ordered one kind of
wine, and was required to drink another? Why,
you'd (and naturally and properly, having the
feelings of a gentleman), you'd take and drown
yourself in a pail!''



	XXIII.

	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
absence of any duration in foreign
parts. London is shabby in contrast with
Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with Exeter,
with Liverpool, with a bright little town like
Bury St. Edmunds. London is shabby in
contrast with New York, with Boston, with
Philadelphia. In detail, one would say it can
rarely fail to be a disappointing piece of shabbiness
to a stranger from any of those places.
There is nothing shabbier than Drury Lane in
Rome itself. The meanness of Regent Street,
set against the great line of Boulevards in Paris,
is as striking as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar
Square, set against the gallant beauty of
the Place de la Concorde. London is shabby
by daylight, and shabbier by gas-light. No
Englishman knows what gas-light is until he sees
the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais Royal after
dark.

  The mass of London people are shabby. The
absence of distinctive dress has, no doubt, something
to do with it. The porters of the Vintners'
Company, the draymen, and the butchers, are
about the only people who wear distinctive
dresses; and even these do not wear them on
holidays. We have nothing which, for cheapness,
cleanliness, convenience, or picturesqueness,
can compare with the belted blouse. As
to our women;---next Easter or Whitsuntide,
look at the bonnets at the British Museum or
the National Gallery, and think of the pretty
white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the
Genoese mezzero.

  Probably there are not more second-hand
clothes sold in London than in Paris, and yet
the mass of the London population have a
second-hand look which is not to be detected on
the mass of the Parisian population. I think this
is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in
the least trouble himself about what is worn by
a Parisian idler, but dresses in the way of his
own class, and for his own comfort. In London,
on the contrary, the fashions descend; and you
never fully know how inconvenient or ridiculous
a fashion is until you see it in its last descent.
It was but the other day, on a race-course, that
I observed four people in a barouche deriving
great entertainment from the contemplation of
our people on foot. The four people on foot
were two young men and two young women;
the four people in the barouche were two young
men and two young women. The four young
women were dressed in exactly the same style;
the four young men were dressed in exactly the
same style. Yet the two couples on wheels were
as much amused by the two couples on foot as
if they were quite unconscious of having themselves
set those fashions, or of being at that very
moment engaged in the display of them.

  Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion
descends here in London---and consequently in
England---and thence shabbiness arises? Let
us think a little, and be just. The ``Black
Country'' round about Birmingham is a very
black country; but is it quite as black as it has
been lately painted? An appalling accident
happened at the People's Park, near Birmingham,
this last July, when it was crowded with
people from the Black Country---an appalling
accident consequent on a shamefully dangerous
exhibition. Did the shamefully dangerous exhibition
originate in the moral blackness of the
Black Country, and in the Black People's peculiar
love of the excitement attendant on great
personal hazard, which they looked on at, but
in which they did not participate? Light is
much wanted in the Black Country. Oh! we
are all agreed on that. But, we must not quite
forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the
shamefully dangerous fashion, either. We must
not quite forget the enterprising Directors of an
Institution vaunting mighty educational pretences,
who made the low sensation as strong
as they possibly could make it, by hanging the
Blondin rope as high as they possibly could
hang it. All this must not be eclipsed in the
Blackness of the Black Country. The reserved
seats high up by the rope, the cleared space
below it, so that no one should be smashed but
the performer, the pretence of slipping and falling
off, the baskets for the feet and the sack for
the head, the photographs everywhere, and the
virtuous indignation nowhere---all this must not
be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the
jet-black country.

  Whatsoever fashion is set in England is certain
to descend. This is a text for a perpetual
sermon on care in setting fashions. When you
find a fashion low down, look back for the time
(it will never be far off) when it was the fashion
high up. This is the text for a perpetual sermon
on social justice. From imitations of Ethiopian
Serenaders to imitations of Princes' coats and
waistcoats, you will find the original model in St.
James's Parish. When the Serenaders become
tiresome, trace them beyond the Black Country;
when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable,
refer them to their source in the Upper
Toady Regions.

  Gentlemen's clubs were once maintained for
purposes of savage party warfare; working-men's
clubs of the same day assumed the same character.
Gentlemen's clubs became places of quiet
inoffensive recreation; working-men's clubs began
to follow suit. If working-men have seemed
rather slow to appreciate advantages of combination
which have saved the pockets of gentlemen,
and enhanced their comforts, it is because
working-men could scarcely, for want of capital,
originate such combinations without help; and
because help has not been separable from that
great impertinence, Patronage. The instinctive
revolt of his spirit against patronage is a quality
much to be respected in the English working-man.
It is the base of the base of his best
qualities. Nor is it surprising that he should be
unduly suspicious of patronage, and sometimes
resentful of it even where it is not, seeing what
a flood of washy talk has been let loose on his
devoted head, or with what complacent condescension
the same devoted head has been
smoothed and patted. It is a proof to me of
his self-control that he never strikes out pugilistically,
right and left, when addressed as one of
``My friends,'' or ``My assembled friends;'' that
he does not become inappeasable, and run
a-muck like a Malay, whenever he sees a biped
in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to
him; that any pretence of improving his mind
does not instantly drive him out of his mind, and
cause him to toss his obliging patron like a mad
bull.

  For, how often have I heard the unfortunate
working-man lectured as if he were a little
charity child, humid as to his nasal development,
strictly literal as to his catechism, and
called by Providence to walk all his days in a
station in life represented on festive occasions
by a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun!
What pop-guns 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 pickaxes, his saws and chisels, his
paint pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and
engines, the horses that he drove at his work,
and the machines that drove him at his work,
were all toys in one little paper box, and he the
baby who played with them, he could not have
been discoursed to more impertinently and
absurdly than I have heard him discoursed to
times innumerable. Consequently, not being a
fool or a fawner, he has come to acknowledge
his patronage by virtually saying: ``Let me
alone. If you understand me no better than
_that,_ sir and madam, let me alone. You mean
very well, I dare say, but I don't like it, and
I won't come here again to have any more of it.''

  Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement
of the working-man must be so far done
by himself as that it is maintained by himself.
And there must be in it no touch of condescension,
no shadow of patronage. In the great
working districts this truth is studied and understood.
When the American civil war rendered
it necessary, first in Glasgow, and afterwards in
Manchester, that the working-people should be
shown how to avail themselves of the advantages
derivable from system, and from the combination
of numbers, in the purchase and the
cooking of their food, this truth was above all
things borne in mind. The quick consequence
was, that suspicion and reluctance were vanquished,
and that the effort resulted in an astonishing
and a complete success.

  Such thoughts passed through my mind on a
July morning of this summer, as I walked towards
Commercial Street (not Uncommercial
Street), Whitechapel. The Glasgow and Manchester
system had been lately set a-going there
by certain gentlemen who felt an interest in its
diffusion, and I had been attracted by the following
handbill printed on rose-coloured paper:


		SELF-SUPPORTING

		COOKING DEP<O^>T,

	    FOR THE WORKING CLASSES,

	Commercial Street, Whitechapel,

  Where Accommodation is provided for Dining
       comfortably 300 persons at a time.

        Open from 7 =A.M.= till 7 =P.M.=

                    PRICES.

     All Articles of the =Best Quality.=

    Cup of Tea or Coffee . . .  One Penny
    Bread and Butter . . . . .  One Penny
    Bread and Cheese . . . . .  One Penny
    Slice of Bread One halfpenny or One Penny
    Boiled Egg . . . . . . . .  One Penny
    Ginger Beer	 . . . . . . .  One Penny

       The above Articles always ready.

    Besides the above may be had, from
             12 to 3 o'clock,

  Bowl of Scotch Broth . . . .  One Penny
  Bowl of Soup . . . . . . . .  One Penny
  Plate of Potatoes  . . . . .  One Penny
  Plate of Minced Beef . . . .  Twopence
  Plate of Cold Beef . . . . .  Twopence
  Plate of Cold Ham  . . . . .  Twopence
  Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice One Penny

  As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly
upon the simplicity of the arrangements with
which a great number of persons can be served
at one time, the Upper Room of this Establishment
will be especially set apart for a

           PUBLIC DINNER EVERY DAY

           From 12 till 3 o'clock,

     _Consisting of the following Dishes:_

	Bowl of Broth, or Soup,
	Plate of Cold Beef or Ham,
	Plate of Potatoes,
	Plum Pudding, or Rice.

          FIXED CHARGE 4<1/2> _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 Dep<o^>t is
confidently expected in checking anything interfering
with the comfort, quiet, and regularity of
the establishment.

  Please do not destroy this Handbill, but hand
it to some other person whom it may interest.


  This Self-Supporting Cooking Dep<o^>t (not a
very good name, and one would rather give it an
English one) had hired a newly-built warehouse
that it found to let; therefore it was not established
in premises especially designed for the
purpose. But, at a small cost, they were exceedingly
well adapted to the purpose: being
light, well ventilated, clean, and cheerful. They
consisted of three large rooms. That on the
basement story was the kitchen; that on the
ground-floor was the general dining-room; that
on the floor above was the Upper Room referred
to in the handbill, where the Public Dinner
at fourpence-halfpenny a head was provided
every day. The cooking was done, with much
economy of space and fuel, by American cooking
stoves, and by young women not previously
brought up as cooks; the walls and pillars of
the two dining-rooms were agreeably brightened
with ornamental colours; the tables were capable
of accommodating six or eight persons each; the
attendants were all young women, becomingly
and neatly dressed, and dressed alike. I think
the whole staff was female, with the exception of
the steward or manager.

  My first inquiries were directed to the wages
of this staff; because, if any establishment claiming
to be self-supporting live upon the spoliation
of anybody or anything, or eke out a feeble
existence by poor mouths and beggarly resources
(as too many so-called Mechanics' Institutions
do), I make bold to express my uncommercial
opinion that it has no business to live, and had
better die. It was made clear to me, by the
account books, that every person employed was
properly paid. My next inquiries were directed
to the quality of the provisions purchased, and
to the terms on which they were bought. It was
made equally clear to me that the quality was
the very best, and that all bills were paid weekly.
My next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet
for the last two weeks---only the third and
fourth of the establishment's career. It was
made equally clear to me, that after everything
bought was paid for, and after each week was
charged with its full share of wages, rent and
taxes, depreciation of plant in use, and interest
on capital at the rate of four per cent. per annum,
the last week had yielded a profit of (in round
numbers) one pound ten; and the previous
week a profit of six pounds ten. By this time
I felt that I had a healthy appetite for the
dinners.

  It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession
of faces had already begun to appear at a
little window in the wall of the partitioned space
where I sat looking over the books. Within
this little window, like a pay-box at a theatre, a
neat and brisk young woman presided to take
money and issue tickets. Every one coming in
must take a ticket. Either the fourpence-halfpenny
ticket for the upper room (the most
popular ticket, I think), or a penny ticket for a
bowl of soup, or as many penny tickets as he or
she chose to buy. For three penny tickets one
had quite a wide range of choice. A plate of
cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a plate of cold
ham and potatoes; or a plate of hot minced
beef and potatoes; or a bowl of soup, bread and
cheese, and a plate of plum-pudding. Touching
what they should have, some customers, on
taking their seats, fell into a reverie---became
mildly distracted---postponed decision, and said,
in bewilderment, they would think of it. One
old man I noticed when I sat among the tables
in the lower room, who was startled by the bill
of fare, and sat contemplating it as if it were
something of a ghostly nature. The decision of
the boys was as rapid as their execution, and
always included pudding.

  There were several women among the diners,
and several clerks and shopmen. There were
carpenters and painters from the neighbouring
buildings under repair, and there were nautical
men, and there were, as one diner observed to
me, ``some of most sorts.'' Some were solitary,
some came two together, some dined in parties
of three or four, or six. The latter talked
together, but assuredly no one was louder than
at my club in Pall Mall. One young fellow
whistled in rather a shrill manner while he waited
for his dinner, but I was gratified to observe
that he did so in evident defiance of my uncommercial
individuality. Quite agreeing with him,
on consideration, that I had no business to be
there, unless I dined like the rest, I ``went in,''
as the phrase is, for fourpence-halfpenny.
The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet
had, like the lower room, a counter in it, on
which were ranged a great number of cold portions
ready for distribution. Behind this counter
the fragrant soup was steaming in deep cans,
and the best-cooked of potatoes were fished out
of similar receptacles. Nothing to eat was
touched with 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:
beginning with soup to-day, putting soup in the
middle to-morrow, putting soup at the end the
day after to-morrow, and ringing similar changes
on meat and pudding. The rapidity with which
every new-comer got served was remarkable;
and the dexterity with which the waitresses
(quite new to the art a month before) discharged
their duty was as agreeable to see, as the neat
smartness with which they wore their dress and
had dressed their hair.

  If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly
never ate better meat, potatoes, or pudding.
And the soup was an honest and stout soup,
with rice and barley in it, and ``little matters for
the teeth to touch,'' as had been observed to me
by my friend below-stairs already quoted. The
dinner service, too, was neither conspicuously
hideous for High Art nor for Low Art, but was
of a pleasant and pure appearance. Concerning
the viands and their cookery, one last remark.
I dined at my club in Pall Mall aforesaid, a few
days afterwards, for exactly twelve times the
money, and not half as well.

  The company thickened after one o'clock
struck, and changed pretty quickly. Although
experience of the place had been so recently
attainable, and although there was still considerable
curiosity out in the street and about
the entrance, the general tone was as good as
could be, and the customers fell easily into the
ways of the place. It was clear to me, however,
that they were there to have what they paid for,
and to be on an independent footing. To the
best of my judgment, they might be patronised
out of the building in a month. With judicious
visiting, and by dint of being questioned, read to,
and talked at, they might even be got rid of (for
the next quarter of a century) in half the time.

  This disinterested and wise movement is
fraught with so many wholesome changes in the
lives of the working-people, and with so much
good in the way of overcoming that suspicion
which our own unconscious impertinence has
engendered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise
details as yet; the rather because it is indisputable
that the managers of the Whitechapel
establishment most thoroughly feel that they are
upon their honour with the customers, as to
the minutest points of administration. But,
although the American stoves cannot roast, they
can surely boil one kind of meat as well as
another, and need not always circumscribe their
boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef.
The most enthusiastic admirer of those substantials
would probably not object to occasional
inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton:
or, especially in cold weather, to a little innocent
trifling with Irish stews, meat-pies, and toads-in-holes.
Another drawback on the Whitechapel
establishment is the absence of beer. Regarded
merely as a question of policy, it is very impolitic,
as having a tendency to send the working-man
to the public-house, where gin is reported to be
sold. But, there is a much higher ground on
which this absence of beer is objectionable. It
expresses distrust of the working-man. It is a
fragment of that old mantle of patronage in which
so many estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering
up and down the moral world, are sworn to
muffle him. Good beer is a good thing for him,
he says, and he likes it; the Dep<o^>t could give it
him good, and he now gets it bad. Why does
the Dep<o^>t not give it him good? Because he
would get drunk. Why does the Dep<o^>t not
let him have a pint with his dinner, which
would not make him drunk? Because he
might have had another pint, or another two
pints, before he came. Now, this distrust is an
affront, is exceedingly inconsistent with the confidence
the managers express in their handbills,
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 Dep<o^>t, 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 dep<o^>ts are
designed will distinguish between the two kinds
of enterprise.



	XXIV.

	CHATHAM DOCKYARD.

  Here 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,
a strong tidal river is the best of
running water for mine. I like to watch
the great ships standing out to sea or
coming home richly laden, the active little steam-tugs
confidently puffing with them to and from
the sea horizon, the fleet of barges that seem to
have plucked their brown and russet sails from
the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy old
colliers, light in ballast, floundering down before
the tide, the light screw barks and schooners
imperiously holding a straight course while the
others patiently tack and go about, the yachts
with their tiny hulls and great white sheets of
canvas, the little sailing-boats bobbing to and
fro on their errands of pleasure or business, and
---as it is the nature of little people to do---
making a prodigious fuss about their small affairs.
Watching these objects, I still am under no
obligation to think about them, or even so much
as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my
humour. As little am I obliged to hear the
plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet,
the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming
steam-ship paddles further away yet. These,
with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, and
the gaunt high-water marks and low-water marks
in the mud, and the broken causeway, and the
broken bank, and the broken stakes and piles
leaning forward as if they were vain of their
personal appearance, and looking for their reflection
in the water, will melt into any train of
fancy. Equally adaptable to any purpose, or to
none, are the posturing sheep and kine upon
the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around
me, the crows (well out of gun-shot) going home
from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that has
been out a fishing, and looks as melancholy, up
there in the sky, as if it hadn't agreed with him.
Everything within the range of the senses will,
by the aid of the running water, lend itself to
everything beyond that range, and work into a
drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but for
which there is no exact definition.

  One of these landing-places is near an old
fort (I can see the Nore Light from it with
my pocket-glass), from which fort mysteriously
emerges a boy, to whom I am much indebted
for additions to my scanty stock of knowledge.
He is a young boy, with an intelligent face
burnt to a dust colour by the summer sun, and
with crisp hair of the same hue. He is a boy in
whom I have perceived nothing incompatible
with habits of studious inquiry and meditation,
unless an evanescent black eye (I was delicate
of inquiring how occasioned) should be so considered.
To him am I indebted for ability to
identify a Custom-House boat at any distance,
and for acquaintance with all the forms and ceremonies
observed by a homeward-bound India-man
coming up the river, when the Custom-House
officers go aboard her. But for him, I
might never have heard of the ``dumb-ague,''
respecting which malady I am now learned.
Had I never sat at his feet, I might have finished
my mortal career, and never known that when
I see a white horse on a barge's sail, that barge
is a lime barge. For precious secrets in reference
to beer am I likewise beholden to him,
involving warning against the beer of a certain
establishment by reason of its having turned
sour through failure in point of demand: though
my young sage is not of opinion that similar
deterioration has befallen the ale. He has also
enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the
marshes, and has gently reproved my ignorance
in having supposed them to be impregnated with
salt. His manner of imparting information is
thoughtful, and appropriate to the scene. As
he reclines beside me, he pitches into the river
a little stone or piece of grit, and then delivers
himself oracularly, as though he spoke out of the
centre of the spreading circle that it makes in
the water. He never improves my mind without
observing this formula.

  With the wise boy---whom I know by no
other name than the Spirit of the Fort---I
recently consorted on a breezy day, when the
river leaped about us and was full of life. I had
seen the sheaved corn carrying in the golden
fields as I came down to the river; and the rosy
farmer, watching his labouring men in the saddle
on his cob, had told me how he had reaped his
two hundred and sixty acres of long-strawed corn
last week, and how a better week's work he had
never done in all his days. Peace and abundance
were on the country-side in beautiful forms
and beautiful colours, and the harvest seemed
even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped
sea in the yellow laden barges that mellowed
the distance.

  It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the
Fort, directing his remarks to a certain floating
iron battery lately lying in that reach of the
river, enriched my mind with his opinions on
naval architecture, and informed me that he
would like to be an engineer. I found him up
to everything that is done in the contracting
line by Messrs. Peto and Brassey---cunning in
the article of concrete---mellow in the matter of
iron---great on the subject of gunnery. When
he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he
left me not a leg to stand on, and I can never
sufficiently acknowledge his forbearance with me
in my disabled state. While he thus discoursed,
he several times directed his eyes to one distant
quarter of the landscape, and spoke with vague,
mysterious. awe of ``the Yard.'' Pondering his
lessons after we had parted, I bethought me that
the Yard was one of our large public Dockyards,
and that it lay hidden among the crops down in
the dip behind the windmills, as if it modestly
kept itself out of view in peaceful times, and
sought to trouble no man. Taken with this
modesty on the part of the Yard, I resolved to
improve the Yard's acquaintance.

  My good opinion of the Yard's retiring character
was not dashed by nearer approach. It
resounded with the noise of hammers beating
upon iron; and the great sheds or slips, under
which the mighty men-of-war are built, loomed
business-like when contemplated from the opposite
side of the river. For all that, however, the
Yard made no display, but kept itself snug
under hill-sides of corn-fields, hop gardens, and
orchards; its great chimneys smoking with a
quiet---almost a lazy---air, like giants smoking
tobacco; and the great Shears, moored off it,
looking meekly and inoffensively out of proportion,
like the Giraffe of the machinery creation.
The store of cannon on the neighbouring gun
wharf had an innocent toy-like appearance, and
the one red-coated sentry on duty over them was
a mere toy figure, with a clockwork movement.
As the hot sun-light sparkled on him, he might
have passed for the identical little man who had
the little gun, and whose bullets they were made
of lead, lead, lead.

  Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs,
where a drift of chips and weed had been trying
to land before me, and had not succeeded, but
had got into a corner instead, I found the very
street posts to be cannon, and the architectural
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 storehouses,
even there, which would hardly be lying like so
much hay on the white stones if the Yard were
as placid as it pretended.

  Ding, Clash, Dong, =Bang,= Boom, Rattle,
Clash, =Bang,= Clink, =Bang,= Dong, =Bang,= Clatter,
=bang bang= BANG! What on earth is this?
This is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron
armour-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are
working at her now; twelve hundred men working
on stages over her sides, over her bows, over
her stern, under her keel, between her decks,
down in her hold, within her and without, crawling
and creeping into the finest curves of her
lines wherever it is possible for men to twist.
Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers, calkers,
armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights; twelve
hundred dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers,
clinkers, bangers bangers bangers! Yet all this
stupendous uproar around the rising Achilles is
as nothing to the reverberations with which the
perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful
day when the full work is in hand for which
this is but note of preparation---the day when
the scuppers, that are now fitting like great dry
thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red. All these
busy figures between-decks, dimly seen bending
at their work in smoke and fire, are as nothing
to the figures that shall do work here of another
kind, in smoke and fire, that day. These steam-worked
engines alongside, helping the ship by
travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron
plates about, as though they were so many leaves
of trees, would be rent limb from limb if they
stood by here for a minute then. To think that
this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank
and oaken chest, can ever swim or roll! To
think that any force of wind and wave could
ever break her! To think that wherever I see
a glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of her
side from within---as I do now, there, and there,
and there!---and two watching men on a stage
without, with bared arms and sledge-hammers,
strike at it fiercely, and repeat their blows until
it is black and flat, I see a rivet being driven
home, of which there are many in every iron
plate, and thousands upon thousands in the
ship! To think that the difficulty I experience
in appreciating the ship's size, when I am on
board, arises from her being a series of iron tanks
and oaken chests, so that internally she is ever
finishing and ever beginning, and half of her
might be smashed, and yet the remaining half
suffice and be sound! Then, to go over the
side again, and down among the ooze and wet
to the bottom of the dock, in the depths of the
subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays that
hold her up, and to see the immense mass
bulging out against the upper light, and tapering
down towards me, is, with great pains and much
clambering, to arrive at an impossibility of realising
that this is a ship at all, and to become
possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous
immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre
(say, that at Verona), and almost filling
it! Yet what would even these things be, without
the tributary workshops and the mechanical
powers for piercing the iron plates---four inches
and a half thick---for rivets, shaping them under
hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of
the ship's lines, and paring them away, with
knives shaped like the beaks of strong and cruel
birds, to the nicest requirements of the design?
These machines of tremendous force, so easily
directed by one attentive face and presiding
hand, seem to me to have in them something of
the retiring character of the Yard. ``Obedient
monster, please to bite this mass of iron through
and through, at equal distances, where these
regular chalk-marks are, all round.'' Monster
looks at its work, and, lifting its ponderous head,
replies, ``I don't particularly want to do it; but
if it must be done------!'' The solid metal
wriggles out, hot from the monster's crunching
tooth, and it _is_ done. ``Dutiful monster, observe
this other mass of iron. It is required
to be pared away, according to this delicately
lessening and arbitrary line, which please to look
at.'' Monster (who has been in a reverie) brings
down its blunt head, and, much in the manner
of Doctor Johnson, closely looks along the line
---very closely, being somewhat near-sighted.
``I don't particularly want to do it; but if it
must be done------!'' Monster takes another
near-sighted look, takes aim, and the tortured
piece writhes off, and falls, a hot tight-twisted
snake, among the ashes. The making of the
rivets is merely a pretty round game, played by
a man and a boy, who put red-hot barley-sugar
in a Pope Joan board, and immediately rivets
fall out of window; but the tone of the great
machines is the tone of the great Yard and the
great country: ``We don't particularly want to
do it; but if it must be done------!''

  How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles
can ever be held by such comparatively little
anchors as those intended for her, and lying
near her here, is a mystery of seamanship which
I will refer to the wise boy. For my own part,
I should as soon have thought of tethering an
elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus
in the Zoological Gardens to my shirt-pin.
Yonder in the river, alongside a hulk, lie two of
this ship's hollow iron masts. _They_ are large
enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her
other appliances. I wonder why only her
anchors look small.

  I have no present time to think about it, for
I am going to see the workshops where they
make all the oars used in the British Navy. A
pretty large pile of building, I opine, and a
pretty long job! As to the building, I am soon
disappointed, because the work is all done in one
loft. And as to a long job---what is this? Two
rather large mangles, with a swarm of butterflies
hovering over them? What can there be in the
mangles that attracts butterflies?

  Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not
mangles, but intricate machines, set with knives
and saws and planes, which cut smooth and
straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut
such a depth, and now miss cutting altogether,
according to the predestined requirements of the
pieces of wood that are pushed on below them:
each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is
roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes
its final leave of far-off forests, and sails for
England. Likewise I discern that the butterflies
are not true butterflies, but wooden shavings,
which, being spurted up from the wood by the
violence of the machinery, and kept in rapid and
not equal movement by the impulse of its rotation
on the air, flutter and play, and rise and
fall, and conduct themselves as like butterflies
as heart could wish. Suddenly the noise and
motion cease, and the butterflies drop dead. An
oar has been made since I came in, wanting the
shaped handle. As quickly as I can follow it
with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried
to a turning lathe. A whirl and a Nick!
Handle made. Oar finished.

  The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this
machinery need no illustration, but happen to
have a pointed illustration to-day. A pair of
oars of unusual size chance to be wanted for a
special purpose, and they have to be made by
hand. Side by side with the subtle and facile
machine, and side by side with the fast-growing
pile of oars on the floor, a man shapes out these
special oars with an axe. Attended by no
butterflies, and chipping and dinting, by comparison
as leisurely as if he were a labouring
Pagan getting them ready against his decease at
threescore-and-ten, to take with him as a present
to Charon for his boat, the man (aged about
thirty) plies his task. The machine would make
a regulation oar while the man wipes his forehead.
The man might be buried in a mound
made of the strips of thin broad wooden ribbon
torn from the wood whirled into oars as the
minutes fall from the clock, before he had done
a forenoon's work with his axe.

  Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships
again---for my heart, as to the Yard, is where
the ships are---I notice certain unfinished
wooden walls left seasoning on the stocks,
pending the solution of the merits of the wood
and iron question, and having an air of biding
their time with surly confidence. The names of
these worthies are set up beside them, together
with their capacity in guns---a custom highly
conducive to ease and satisfaction in social
intercourse, if it could be adapted to mankind.
By a plank more gracefully pendulous than substantial,
I make bold to go aboard a transport
ship (iron screw) just sent in from the contractor's
yard to be inspected and passed. She
is a very  gratifying experience, in the simplicity
and humanity of her arrangements for troops,
in her provision for light and air and cleanliness,
and in her care for women and children.
It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I would
require a  handsome sum of money to go aboard
her, at midnight by the Dockyard bell, and stay
aboard alone till morning; for surely she must
be haunted by a crowd of ghosts of obstinate
old martinets, mournfully flapping their cherubic
epaulets over the changed times. Though still
we may learn, from the astounding ways and
means in our Yards now, more highly than ever
to respect the forefathers who got to sea, and
fought the sea, and held the sea, without them.
This remembrance putting me in the best of
tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her
copper, and generally dim and patched, I pull
off my hat to her. Which salutation a callow
and downy-faced young officer of Engineers,
going by, at the moment, perceiving, appropriates---
and to which he is most heartily welcome,
I am sure.

  Having been torn to pieces (in imagination)
by the steam circular saws, perpendicular saws,
horizontal saws, and saws of eccentric action, I
come to the sauntering part of my expedition,
and consequently to the core of my uncommercial
pursuits.

  Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the
Yard, I meet with tokens of its quiet and retiring
character. There is a gravity upon its
red brick offices and houses, a staid pretence of
having nothing worth mentioning to do, an
avoidance of display, which I never saw out of
England. The white stones of the pavement
present no other trace of Achilles and his twelve
hundred banging men (not one of whom strikes
an attitude) than a few occasional echoes. But
for a whisper in the air suggestive of sawdust
and shavings, the oar-making and the saws of
many movements might be miles away. Down
below here is the great reservoir of water where
timber is steeped in various temperatures, as a
part of its seasoning process. Above it, on a
tramroad supported by pillars, is a Chinese
Enchanter's Cat, which fishes the logs up, when
sufficiently steeped, and rolls smoothly away
with them to stack them. When I  was a child
(the Yard being then familiar to me), I used to
think that I should like to play, at Chinese Enchanter,
and to have that apparatus placed at
my disposal for the purpose by a beneficent
country. I still think that I should rather like
to try the effect of writing a book in it. Its retirement
is complete, and to go gliding to and
fro among the stacks of timber would be a convenient
kind of travelling in foreign countries---
among the forests of North America, the sodden
Honduras swamps, the dark pine woods, the
Norwegian frosts, and the tropical heats, rainy
seasons, and thunder-storms. The costly store
of timber is stacked and stowed away in  sequestered
places, with the pervading avoidance of
flourish or effect. It makes as little of itself as
possible, and calls to no one, ``Come and look
at me!'' And yet it is picked out from the
trees of the world; picked out for length, picked
out for breadth, picked out for straightness,
picked out for crookedness, chosen with an eye
to every need of ship and boat. Strangely-twisted
pieces lie about, 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 a Union.

  Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun
into a state of blissful indolence, wherein my
rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the process
as that I can see back to very early days
indeed, when my bad dreams---they were frightful,
though my more mature understanding has
never made out why---were of an interminable
sort of ropemaking, with long minute filaments
for strands, which, when they were spun home
together close to my eyes, occasioned screaming.
Next I walk among the quiet lofts of
stores---of sails, spars, rigging, ships' boats---determined
to believe that somebody in authority
wears a girdle, and bends beneath the weight of
a massive bunch of keys, and that, when such a
thing is wanted, he comes telling his keys like
Blue Beard, and opens such a door. Impassive
as the long lofts look, let the electric
battery send down the word, and the shutters
and doors shall fly open, and such a fleet of
armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall
burst forth as will charge the old Medway---
where the merry Stuart let the Dutch come,
while his not so merry sailors starved in the
streets---with something worth looking at to carry
to the sea. Thus I idle round to the Medway
again, where it is now flood tide; and I find the
river evincing a strong solicitude to force a way
into the dry dock where Achilles is waited on
by the twelve hundred bangers, with the intent
to bear the whole away before they are ready.

  To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon
it; for I make my way to the gates through a
little quiet grove of trees, shading the quaintest
of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled
shadow of a shipwright just passing away at the
further end might be the shadow of Russian
Peter himself. So, the doors of the great patent
safe at last close upon me, and I take boat
again: somehow, thinking, as the oars dip, of
braggart Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet
monsters of the Yard, with their ``We don't
particularly want to do it; but if it must be
done------!'' Scrunch.


	XXV.

	IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY.

  ``It is neither a bold nor a diversified
country,'' said I to myself, ``this country
which is three-quarters Flemish,
and a quarter French; yet it has its
attractions, too. Though great lines
of railway traverse it, the trains leave it
behind, and go puffing off to Paris and
the South, to Belgium and Germany, to
the Northern Sea-Coast of France, and to England,
and merely smoke it a little in passing.
Then I don't know it, and that is a good reason
for being here; and I can't pronounce half the
long queer names I see inscribed over the shops,
and that is another good reason for being here,
since I surely ought to learn how.'' In short, I
was ``here,'' and I wanted an excuse for not
going away from here, and I made it to my
satisfaction, and stayed here.

  What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur
P. Salcy is of no moment, though I own to
encountering that gentleman's name on a red
bill on the wall before I made up my mind.
Monsieur P. Salcy, ``par permission de M. le
Maire,'' had established his theatre in the white-washed
H<o^>tel de Ville, on the steps of which
illustrious edifice I stood. And Monsieur P.
Salcy, privileged director of such theatre, situate
in ``the first theatrical arrondissement of the department
of the North,'' invited French-Flemish
mankind to come and partake of the intellectual
banquet provided by his family of dramatic
artists, fifteen subjects in number. ``La Famille
P. =Salcy,= compos<e'>e d'artistes dramatiques, au
nombre de 15 sujets.''

  Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say
again, and withal an untidy country, but pleasant
enough to ride in, when the paved roads over the
flats and through the hollows are not too deep
in black mud. A country so sparely inhabited,
that I wonder where the peasants who till and
sow and reap the ground can possibly dwell,
and also by what invisible balloons they are
conveyed from their distant homes into the
fields at sunrise, and back again at sunset. The
occasional few poor cottages and farms in this
region surely cannot afford shelter to the numbers
necessary to the cultivation, albeit the work
is done so very deliberately, that on one long
harvest-day I have seen, in twelve miles, about
twice as many men and women (all told) reaping
and binding. Yet have I seen more cattle, more
sheep, more pigs, and all in better case, than
where there is purer French spoken, and also
better ricks---round swelling pegtop 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 drum-sticks becomes a
mockery when applied to them, and the crow of
the lord and master has been a mere dejected
case of croup. Carts have I seen, and other
agricultural instruments, unwieldy, dislocated,
monstrous. Poplar-trees by the thousand fringe
the fields and fringe the end of the flat landscape,
so that I feel, looking straight on before
me, as if, when I pass the extremest fringe on
the low horizon, I shall tumble over into space.
Little whitewashed black holes of chapels, with
barred doors and Flemish inscriptions, abound
at roadside corners, and often they are garnished
with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children's
swords; or, in their default, some hollow old
tree, with a saint roosting in it, is similarly decorated,
or a pole with a very diminutive saint
enshrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house.
Not that we are deficient in such decoration in
the town here, for, over at the church yonder,
outside the building, is a scenic representation
of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and
stones, and made out with painted canvas and
wooden figures: the whole surmounting the
dusty skull of some holy personage (perhaps),
shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if it
were originally put there to be cooked, and the
fire had long gone out. A windmilly country
this, though the windmills are so damp and
rickety, that they nearly knock themselves off
their legs at every turn of their sails, and creak
in loud complaint. A weaving country, too, for
in the wayside cottages the loom goes wearily---
rattle and click, rattle and click---and, looking
in, I see the poor weaving peasant, man or
woman, bending at the work, while the child,
working too, turns a little hand-wheel put upon
the ground to suit its height. An unconscionable
monster, the loom in a small dwelling asserting
himself ungenerously as the bread-winner, straddling
over the children's straw beds, cramping
the family in space and air, and making himself
generally objectionable and tyrannical. He is
tributary, too, to ugly mills and factories and
bleaching-grounds, rising out of the sluiced fields
in an abrupt bare way, disdaining, like himself, to
be ornamental or accommodating. Surrounded
by these things, here I stood on the steps of the
H<o^>tel de Ville, persuaded to remain by the P.
Salcy Family, fifteen dramatic subjects strong.

  There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion
being irresistible, and my sponge being
left behind at the last Hotel, I made the tour of
the little town to buy another. In the small
sunny shops---mercers, opticians, and druggist-grocers,
with here and there an emporium of
religious images---the gravest of old spectacled
Flemish husbands and wives sat contemplating
one another across bare counters, while the wasps,
who seemed to have taken military possession
of the town, and to have placed it under wasp-martial
law, executed warlike man<oe>uvres in the
windows. Other shops the wasps had entirely
to themselves, and nobody cared and nobody
came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon
the board of custom. What I sought was no
more to be found than if I had sought a nugget
of Californian gold: so I went, spongeless, to
pass the evening with the Family P. Salcy.

  The members of the Family P. Salcy were so
fat and so like one another---fathers, mothers,
sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts---that I think
the local audience were much confused about
the plot of the piece under representation, and
to the last expected that everybody must turn
out to be the long-lost relative of everybody else.
The theatre was established on the top story of
the H<o^>tel de Ville, and was approached by a
long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy situation,
one of the P. Salcy Family---a stout gentleman,
imperfectly repressed by a belt---took the money.
This occasioned the greatest excitement of the
evening; for, no sooner did the curtain rise on
the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the
person of the young lover (singing a very short
song with his eyebrows) apparently the very same
identical stout gentleman imperfectly repressed
by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the
paying-place to ascertain whether he could possibly
have put on that dress-coat, that clear complexion,
and those arched black vocal eyebrows,
in so short a space of time. It then became
manifest that this was another stout gentleman
imperfectly repressed by a belt: to whom, before
the spectators had recovered their presence of
mind, entered a third stout gentleman imperfectly
repressed by a belt, exactly like him.
These two ``subjects,'' making with the money-taker
three of the announced fifteen, fell into
conversation touching a charming young widow:
who, presently appearing, proved to be a stout
lady altogether irrepressible by any means---
quite a parallel case to the American Negro---
fourth of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the
fifth who presided over the check department.
In good time the whole of the fifteen subjects
were dramatically presented, and we had the
inevitable Ma M<e`>re, Ma M<e`>re! and also the
inevitable mal<e'>diction d'un p<e`>re, and likewise
the inevitable Marquis, and also the inevitable
provincial young man, weak-minded, but faithful,
who followed Julie to Paris, and cried and
laughed and choked all at once. The story was
wrought out with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel
in the beginning, a vicious set of diamonds
in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing (which
arrived by post) from Ma M<e`>re towards the end;
the whole resulting in a small sword in the body
of one of the stout gentlemen imperfectly repressed
by a belt, fifty thousand francs per
annum and a decoration to the other stout gentleman
imperfectly repressed by a belt, and an
assurance from everybody to the provincial young
man that if he were not supremely happy---which
he seemed to have no reason whatever for being
---he ought to be. This afforded him a final
opportunity of crying and laughing and choking
all at once, and sent the audience home sentimentally
delighted. Audience more attentive or
better behaved there could not possibly be,
though the places of second rank in the Theatre
of the Family P. Salcy were sixpence each in
English money, and the places of first rank a
shilling. How the fifteen subjects ever got so
fat upon it, the kind Heavens know.

  What gorgeous china figures of knights and
ladies, gilded till they gleamed again, I might
have bought at the Fair for the garniture of my
home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant,
and had had the money! What shining coffee-cups
and saucers I might have won at the
turntables, if I had had the luck! Ravishing
perfumery also, and sweetmeats, I might have
speculated in, or I might have fired for prizes at
a multitude of little dolls in niches, and might
have hit the doll of dolls, and won francs and
fame. Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I
might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my
compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the
water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance
clean through the ring, emptied a full bucket
over me; to fend off which the competitors wore
grotesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being French-Flemish
man or woman, boy or girl, I might
have circled all night on my hobby-horse in a
stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast,
interspersed with triumphal cars, going round
and round and round and round, we the goodly
company singing a ceaseless chorus to the music
of the barrel-organ, drum, and cymbals. On the
whole, not more monotonous than the Ring in
Hyde Park, London, and much merrier; for
when do the circling company sing chorus _there_
to the barrel-organ, when do the ladies embrace
their horses round the neck with both arms,
when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the
tails of their gallant steeds? On all these
revolving delights, and on their own especial
lamps and Chinese lanterns revolving with them,
the thoughtful weaver-face brightens, and the
H<o^>tel de Ville sheds an illuminated line of gas-light;
while above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined
and apparently afflicted with the prevailing
infirmities that have lighted on the
poultry, is in a very undecided state of policy,
and as a bird moulting. Flags flutter all around.
Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper of
the prison sits on the stone steps outside the
prison door, to have a look at the world that is
not locked up; while that agreeable retreat, the
wine-shop opposite to the prison in the prison
alley (its sign La Tranquillit<e'>, because of its
charming situation), resounds with the voices of
the shepherds and shepherdesses who resort
there this festive night. And it reminds me
that, only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd in
trouble, tending this way over the jagged stones
of a neighbouring street. A magnificent sight
it was to behold him in his blouse, a feeble little
jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two
immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which
the street was hardly wide enough, each carrying
a bundle of stolen property that would not have
held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre
that dwarfed the prisoner.

  ``Messieurs et mesdames, I present to you at
this Fair, as a mark of my confidence in the
people of this so-renowned town, and as an act
of homage to their good sense and fine taste, the
Ventriloquist, the Ventriloquist! Further, messieurs
et mesdames, I present to you the Face-Maker,
the Physiognomist, the great Changer of
Countenances, who transforms the features that
Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless
succession of surprising and extraordinary
visages, comprehending, messieurs et mesdames,
all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of
which the human face is capable, and all the
passions of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy,
Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair! Hi hi!
Ho ho! Lu Lu! Come in!'' To this effect, with
an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of
tambourine---bestowed with a will, as if it represented
the people who won't come in---holds
forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour; a
man in stately uniform, gloomy with the knowledge
he possesses of the inner secrets of the
booth. ``Come in, come in! Your opportunity
presents itself to-night; to-morrow it will
be gone for ever. To-morrow morning by the
Express Train the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist
and the Face-Maker! Algeria will
reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!
Yes! For the honour of their country, they
have accepted propositions of a magnitude incredible,
to appear in Algeria. See them for
the last time before their departure! We go to
commence on the instant. Hi hi! Ho ho!
Lu Lu! Come in! Take the money that now
ascends, madame; but, after that, no more, for
we commence! Come in!''

  Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy
speaker, and of madame, receiving sous in a
muslin bower, survey the crowd pretty sharply
after the ascending money has ascended, to
detect any lingering sous at the turning-point.
``Come in, come in! Is there any more money,
madame, on the point of ascending? If so, we
wait for it. If not, we commence!''  The
orator looks back over his shoulder to say it,
lashing the spectators with the conviction that
he beholds, through the folds of the drapery
into which he is about to plunge, the Ventriloquist
and the Face-Maker. Several sous
burst out of pockets and ascend. ``Come up,
then, messieurs!'' exclaims madame in a shrill
voice, and beckoning with a bejewelled finger.
``Come up! This presses. Monsieur has commanded
that they commence!'' Monsieur dives
into his Interior, and the last half-dozen of us
follow. His Interior is comparatively severe;
his Exterior also. A true Temple of Art needs
nothing but seats, drapery, a small table, with
two moderator lamps hanging over it, and an
ornamental looking-glass let into the wall.
Monsieur in uniform gets behind the table, and
surveys us with disdain, his forehead becoming
diabolically intellectual under the moderators.
``Messieurs et mesdames, I present to you the
Ventriloquist. He will commence with the
celebrated Experience of the bee in the window.
The bee, apparently the veritable bee of Nature,
will hover in the window and about the room.
will be with difficulty caught in the hand of
Monsieur the Ventriloquist---he will escape---he
will again hover---at length he will be recaptured
by Monsieur the Ventriloquist, and will be with
difficulty put into a bottle. Achieve then, Monsieur!''
Here the Proprietor is replaced behind
the table by the Ventriloquist, who is thin and
sallow, and of a weakly aspect. While the bee
is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart
on a stool, immersed in dark and remote thought.
The moment the bee is bottled, he stalks forward,
eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then
announces, sternly waving his hand: ``The
magnificent Experience of the child with the
hooping-cough!'' The child disposed of, he
starts up as before. ``The superb and extra-ordinary
Experience of the dialogue between
Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, and
his domestic, Jerome, in the cellar; concluding
with the songsters of the grove, and the Concert
of domestic Farmyard animals.'' All this done,
and well done, Monsieur the Ventriloquist withdraws,
and Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in,
as if his retiring-room were a mile long instead
of a yard. A corpulent little man in a large
white waistcoat, with a comic countenance, and
with a wig in his hand. Irreverent disposition
to laugh instantly checked by the tremendous
gravity of the Face-Maker, who intimates in his
bow that if we expect that sort of thing we are
mistaken. A very little shaving-glass with a leg
behind it is handed in, and placed on the table
before the Face-Maker. ``Messieurs et mesdames,
with no other assistance than this mirror
and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing
you a thousand characters.'' As a preparation,
the Face-Maker with both hands gouges himself,
and turns his mouth inside out. He then becomes
frightfully grave again, and says to the
Proprietor, ``I am ready!'' Proprietor stalks
forth from baleful reverie, and announces ``The
Young Conscript!'' Face-Maker claps his wig
on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and
appears above it as a conscript so very imbecile,
and squinting so extremely hard, that I should
think the State would never get any good of
him. Thunders of applause. Face-Maker dips
behind the looking-glass, brings his own hair
forward, is himself again, is awfully grave. ``A
distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St.
Germain.'' Face-Maker dips, rises, is supposed
to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless, slightly palsied,
supernaturally polite, evidently of noble birth.
``The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides
on the f<e^>te-day of his master.'' Face-Maker dips,
rises, wears the wig on one side, has become the
feeblest military bore in existence, and (it is
clear) would lie frightfully about his past achievements,
if he were not confined to pantomime.
``The Miser!'' Face-Maker dips, rises, clutches
a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to,
express that he lives in continual dread of thieves.
``The Genius of France!'' Face-Maker dips,
rises, wig pushed back and smoothed flat, little
cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put atop,
of it, Face-Maker's white waistcoat much advanced,
Face-Maker's left hand in bosom of
white waistcoat, Face-Maker's right hand behind,
his back. Thunders. This is the first of three
positions of the Genius of France. In the second
position, the Face-Maker takes snuff; in the
third, rolls up his 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 performance is,
that whatever he does to disguise himself has
the effect of rendering him rather more like
himself than he was at first.

  There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I
had the pleasure of recognising several fields of
glory with which I became well acquainted a
year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing
duty as Mexican victories. The change was
neatly effected by some extra smoking of the
Russians, and by permitting the camp followers
free range in the foreground to despoil the enemy
of their uniforms. As no British troops had
ever happened to be within sight when the artist
took his original sketches, it followed fortunately
that none were in the way now.

  The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting
the particular night of the week on which the 
ball took place, I decline to commit myself;
merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard
so very close to the railway, that it 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
recreation, the price of a double ticket for a
cavalier and lady being one-and-threepence in
English money, and even of that small sum five-pence
was reclaimable for ``consommation:''
which word I venture to translate into refreshments
of no greater strength, at the strongest,
than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and
lemon in it. It was a ball of great good-humour
and of great enjoyment, though very many of
the dancers must have been as poor as the
fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.

  In short, not having taken my own pet
national pint pot with me to this Fair, I was
very well satisfied with the measure of simple
enjoyment that it poured into the dull French-Flemish
country life. How dull that is, I had
an opportunity of considering when the Fair was
over---when the tricoloured flags were withdrawn
from the windows of the houses on the Place
where the Fair was held---when the windows
were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time
---when the H<o^>tel de Ville had cut off its gas
and put away its eagle---when the two paviors,
whom I take to form the entire paving population
of the town, were ramming down the stones
which had been pulled up for the erection of
decorative poles---when the gaoler 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 sun-light, 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 eye-browless.
I beheld four subjects of the Family
P. Salcy. Blue-bearded though they were, and
bereft of the youthful smoothness of cheek which
is imparted by what is termed in Albion a
``Whitechapel shave'' (and which is, in fact,
whiting judiciously applied to the jaws with the
palm of the hand), I recognised them. As I
stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of
a lowly cabaret the excellent Ma M<e`>re, Ma
M<e`>re, with the words, ``The soup is served;''
words which so elated the subject in the canvas
suit, that when they all ran in to partake, he
went last, dancing with his hands stuck angularly
into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after the
Pierrot manner. Glancing down the Yard, the
last I saw of him was, that he looked in through
a window (at the soup, no doubt) on one leg.

  Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed
from the town, little dreaming of an
addition to my good fortune. But more was in
reserve. I went by a train which was heavy with
third-class carriages, full of young fellows (well
guarded) who had drawn unlucky numbers in
the last conscription, and were on their way to a
famous French garrison town, where much of the
raw military material is worked up into soldiery.
At the station they had been sitting about, in their
threadbare homespun blue garments, with their
poor little bundles under their arms, covered
with dust and clay, and the various soils of
France; sad enough at heart, most of them, but
putting a good face upon it, and slapping their
breasts and singing choruses on the smallest
provocation; the gayer spirits shouldering half-loaves
of black bread speared upon their walking-sticks.
As we went along, they were audible at
every station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and
feigning the highest hilarity. After awhile, however,
they began to leave off singing, and to
laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled
with their laughter the barking of a dog. Now,
I had to alight short of their destination, and, as
that stoppage of the train was attended with a
quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing, and proclamation
of what Messieurs les Voyageurs were
to do, and were not to do, in order to reach
their respective destinations, I had ample leisure
to go forward on the platform to take a parting
look at my recruits, whose heads were all out at
window, and who were laughing like delighted
children. Then I perceived that a large poodle
with a pink nose, who had been their travelling
companion and the cause of their mirth, stood
on his hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme
verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the
train went off. This poodle wore a military
shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much on
one side over one eye), a little military coat, and
the regulation white gaiters. He was armed
with a little musket and a little sword-bayonet,
and he stood presenting arms in perfect attitude,
with his unobscured eye on his master or
superior officer, who stood by him. So admirable
was his discipline, that, when the train
moved, and he was greeted with the parting
cheers of the recruits, and also with a shower of
centimes, several of which struck his shako, and
had a tendency to discompose him, he remained
staunch on his post until the train was gone.
He then resigned his arms to his officer, took off
his shako by rubbing his paw over it, dropped
on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into the
absurdest relations with the overarching skies,
and ran about the platform in his white gaiters,
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 easily as he; revolving
which in my thoughts, and seeking in
my pockets some small money to bestow upon
him, I casually directed my eyes to the face of
his superior officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker!
Though it was not the way to Algeria,
but quite the reverse, the military poodle's
Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse,
with a small bundle dangling over his shoulder
at the end of an umbrella, and taking a pipe
from his breast to smoke as he and the poodle
went their mysterious way.


	XXVI.

	MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION.

  My voyages (in paper boats) among
savages often yield me matter for
reflection at home. It is curious
to trace the savage in the civilised
man, and to detect the hold of
some savage customs on conditions
of society rather boastful of being high
above them.

  I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North
American Indians never to be got rid of, out of
the North American country? He comes into
my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and
with the absurdest ``Medicine.'' I always find
it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply
impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam.
For his legal ``Medicine'' he sticks upon his
head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the
same with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks
a gibberish quite unknown to the men and
squaws of his tribe. For his religious ``Medicine''
he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black
aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut,
collarless coats with Medicine button-holes,
Medicine stockings and gaiters and shoes, and
tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal
hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am
quite free from him. On occasions when the
Medicine Men in general, together with a large
number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his
village, both male and female, are presented to
the principal Chief, his native ``Medicine'' is a
comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of
traders) and new things in antiquated shapes,
and pieces of red cloth (of which he is particularly
fond), and white and red and blue paint
for the face. The irrationality of this particular
Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from
which many of the squaws are borne out much
dilapidated. I need not observe how unlike this
is to a Drawing Room at St. James's Palace.

  The African magician I find it very difficult
to exclude from my Wigwam too. This creature
takes cases of death and mourning under his
supervision, and will frequently impoverish a
whole family by his preposterous enchantments.
He is a great eater and drinker, and always conceals
a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior.
His charms consist of an infinite quantity
of worthless scraps, for which he charges very
high. He impresses on the poor bereaved
natives, that the more of his followers they pay
to exhibit such scraps on their persons for an
hour or two (though they never saw the deceased
in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his
decease), the more honourably and piously they
grieve for the dead. The poor people submitting
themselves to this conjurer, an expensive
procession is formed, in which bits of sticks,
feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning
objects besmeared with black paint,
are carried in a certain ghastly order of which
no one understands the meaning, if it ever had
any, to the brink of the grave, and are then
brought back again.

  In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed
to have a soul, so that when a hatchet is irreparably
broken they say, ``His immortal part has
departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.''
This belief leads to the logical sequence
that, when a man is buried, some of his eating
and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike
implements, must be broken and buried with
him. Superstitious and wrong, but surely a
more respectable superstition than the hire of
antic scraps for a show that has no meaning
based on any sincere belief.

  Let me halt on my Uncommercial road to
throw a passing glance on some funeral solemnities
that I have seen where North American
Indians, African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders
are supposed not to be.

  Once I dwelt in an Italian city, where there
dwelt with me for awhile an Englishman of an
amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no discretion.
This friend discovered a desolate
stranger mourning over the unexpected death of
one very dear to him, in a solitary cottage among
the vineyards of an outlying village. The circumstances
of the bereavement were unusually
distressing; and the survivor, new to the peasants
and the country, sorely needed help, being alone
with the remains. With some difficulty, but
with the strong influence of a purpose at once
gentle, disinterested, and determined, my friend---
Mr. Kindheart---obtained access to the mourner,
and undertook to arrange the burial.

  There was a small Protestant cemetery near
the city walls, and, as Mr. Kindheart came
back to me, he turned into it and chose the
spot. He was always highly flushed when rendering
a service unaided, and I knew that to
make him happy I must keep aloof from his
ministration. But when at dinner he warmed
with the good action of the day, and conceived
the brilliant idea of comforting the mourner with
``an English funeral,'' I ventured to intimate
that I thought that institution, which was not
absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure
in Italian hands. However, Mr. Kindheart was
so enraptured with his conception, that he presently
wrote down into the town requesting the
attendance, with to-morrow's earliest light, of a
certain little upholsterer. This upholsterer was
famous for speaking the unintelligible local
dialect (his own) in a far more unintelligible
manner than any other man alive.

  When from my bath next morning I overheard
Mr. Kindheart and the upholsterer in
conference on the top of an echoing staircase;
and when I overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering
English Undertaking phrases into very choice
Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the unknown
tongues; and when I furthermore remembered
that the local funerals had no resemblance
to English funerals; I became in my secret
bosom apprehensive. But Mr. Kindheart informed
me at breakfast that measures had been
taken to insure a signal success.

  As the funeral was to take place at sunset,
and as I knew to which of the city gates it must
tend, I went out at that gate as the sun descended,
and walked along the dusty, dusty
road. I had not walked far when I encountered
this procession.

  1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense
grey horse.

  2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by
a coachman in bright red velvet knee breeches
and waistcoat. (This was the established local
idea of State.) Both coach doors kept open by
the coffin, which was on its side within, and
sticking out at each.

  3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom
the coach was intended, walking in the dust.

  4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the
irrigation of a garden, the unintelligible Upholsterer,
admiring.

  It matters little now. Coaches of all colours
are alike to poor Kindheart, and he rests far
North of the little cemetery with the cypress-trees,
by the city walls where the Mediterranean
is so beautiful.

  My first funeral, a fair representative funeral
after its kind, was that of the husband of a married
servant, once my nurse. She married for
money. Sally Flanders, after a year or two of
matrimony, became the relict of Flanders, a
small master builder; and either she or Flanders
had done me the honour to express a desire
that I should ``follow.'' I may have been seven
or eight years old;---young enough, certainly, to
feel rather alarmed by the expression, as not
knowing where the invitation was held to terminate,
and how far I was expected to follow
the deceased Flanders. Consent being given
by the heads of houses, I was jobbed up into
what was pronounced at home decent mourning
(comprehending somebody else's shirt, unless
my memory deceives me), and was admonished
that if, when the funeral was in action,
I put my hands in my pockets, or took my
eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was personally
lost, and my family disgraced. On the
eventful day, having tried to get myself into
a disastrous frame of mind, and having formed
a very poor opinion of myself because I couldn't
cry, I repaired to Sally's. Sally was an excellent
creature, and had been a good wife to old
Flanders, but the moment I saw her I knew
that she was not in her own real natural state.
She formed a sort of Coat-of-Arms, grouped
with a smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an orange,
a bottle of vinegar, Flanders's sister, her own
sister, Flanders's brother's wife, and two neighbouring
gossips---all in mourning, and all ready
to hold her whenever she fainted. At sight of
poor little me she became much agitated (agitating
me much more), and having exclaimed,
``Oh, here's dear Master Uncommercial!'' became,
hysterical, and swooned as if I had been
the death of her. An affecting scene followed,
during which I was handed about and poked at
her by various people, as if I were the bottle of
salts. Reviving a little, she embraced me, said,
``You knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial,
and he knew you!'' and fainted again:
which, as the rest of the Coat-of-Arms soothingly
said, ``done her credit.'' Now, I knew that she
needn't have fainted unless she liked, and that
she wouldn't have fainted unless it had been expected
of her, quite as well as I know it at this
day. It made me feel uncomfortable and hypocritical
besides. I was not sure but that it
might be manners in _me_ to faint next, and I
resolved to keep my eye on Flanders's uncle,
and, if I saw any signs of his going in that
direction, to go too, politely. But Flanders's
uncle (who was a weak little old retail grocer)
had only one idea, which was that we all wanted
tea; and he handed us cups of tea all round
incessantly, whether we refused or not. There
was a young nephew of Flanders's present, to
whom Flanders, it was rumoured, had left nineteen
guineas. He drank all the tea that was
offered him, this nephew---amounting, I should
say, to several quarts---and ate as much plum-cake
as he could possibly come by; but he
felt it to be decent mourning that he should
now and then stop in the midst of a lump of
cake, and appear to forget that his mouth was
full, in the contemplation of his uncle's memory.
I felt all this to be the fault of the undertaker,
who was handing us gloves on a tea-tray as if
they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks
(mine had to be pinned up all round, it was so
long for me), because I knew that he was
making game. So, when we got out into the
streets, and I constantly disarranged the procession
by tumbling on the people before me
because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and
tripping up the people behind me because my
cloak was so long, I felt that we were all making
game. I was truly sorry for Flanders, but I
knew that it was no reason why we should be
trying (the women with their heads in hoods
like coal-scuttles with the black side outward)
to keep step with a man in a scarf, carrying a
thing like a mourning spy-glass, which he was
going to open presently, and sweep the horizon
with. I knew that we should not all have been
speaking in one particular key-note struck by
the undertaker, if we had not been making game.
Even in our faces we were every one of us as
like the undertaker as if we had been his own
family, and I perceived that this could not have
happened unless we had been making game.
When we returned to Sally's, it was all of a
piece. The continued impossibility of getting
on without plum-cake; the ceremonious apparition
of a pair of decanters containing port and
sherry and cork; Sally's sister at the tea-table,
clinking the best crockery and shaking her head
mournfully every time she looked down into the
teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat-of-Arms
again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of
consolation administered to Sally when it was
considered right that she should ``come round
nicely:'' which were, that the deceased had had
``as com-for-ta-ble a fu-ne-ral as comfortable
could be!''

  Other funerals have I seen with grown-up
eyes, since that day, of which the burden has
been the same childish burden. Making game.
Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have
been outraged, and the funeral has been ``performed.''
The waste for which the funeral customs
of many tribes of savages are conspicuous
has attended these civilised obsequies; and
once, and twice, have I wished in my soul that,
if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker
bury the money, and let me bury the friend.

  In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies
are more sensibly regulated, because they are,
upon the whole, less expensively regulated. I
cannot say that I have ever been much edified by
the custom of tying a bib and apron on the front
of the house of mourning, or that I would myself
particularly care to be driven to my grave
in a nodding and bobbing car, like an infirm
four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature
in a cocked-hat. But it may be that I am constitutionally
insensible to the virtues of a cocked-hat.
In provincial France the solemnities are
sufficiently hideous, but are few and cheap.
The friends and townsmen of the departed, in
their own dresses, and not masquerading under
the auspices of the African Conjurer, surround
the hand-bier, and often carry it. It is not considered
indispensable to stifle the bearers, or
even to elevate the burden on their shoulders;
consequently, it is easily taken up, and easily
set down, and is carried through the streets
without the distressing floundering and shuffling
that we see at home. A dirty priest or two, and
a dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial
grace to the proceedings; and I regard with
personal animosity the bassoon, which is blown
at intervals by the big-legged priest (it is always
a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon),
when his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart
drawl. But there is far less of the Conjurer
and the Medicine Man in the business
than under like circumstances here. The grim
coaches that we reserve expressly for such shows
are non-existent; if the cemetery be far out of
the town, the coaches that are hired for other
purposes of life are hired for this purpose; and,
although the honest vehicles make no pretence
of being overcome, I have never noticed that
the people in them were the worse for it. In
Italy, the hooded Members of Confraternities
who attend on funerals are dismal and ugly to
look upon; but the services they render are at
least voluntarily rendered, and impoverish no
one, and cost nothing. Why should high civilisation
and low savagery ever come together on
the point of making them a wantonly wasteful
and contemptible set of forms?

  Once I lost a friend by death, who had been
troubled in his time by the Medicine Man and
the Conjurer, and upon whose limited resources
there were abundant claims. The Conjurer
assured me that I must positively ``follow,'' and
both he and the Medicine Man entertained no
doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and
must wear ``fittings.'' I objected to fittings, as
having nothing to do with my friendship; and I
objected to the black carriage, as being in more
senses than one a job. So, it came into my
mind to try what would happen if I quietly
walked, in my own way, from my own house to
my friend's burial-place, and stood beside his
open grave in my own dress and person, reverently
listening to the best of Services. It
satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I
had been disguised in a hired hat-band and
scarf both trailing to my very heels, and as if I
had cost the orphan children, in their greatest
need, ten guineas.

  Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous
absurdities attendant on ``A message from the
Lords'' in the House of Commons turn upon
the Medicine Man of the poor Indians? Has
he any ``Medicine,'' in that dried skin pouch of
his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters
in Chancery holding up their black petticoats,
and butting their ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker?
Yet there are authorities innumerable to tell me
---as there are authorities innumerable among
the Indians to tell them---that the nonsense is
indispensable, and that its abrogation would
involve most awful consequences. What would
any rational creature who had never heard of
judicial and forensic ``fittings,'' think of the
Court of Common Pleas on the first day of
Term? Or with what an awakened sense of
humour would =Livingstone's= account of a
similar scene be perused, if the fur and red cloth
and goats' hair and horsehair 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 Islands, already mentioned,
there are a set of personages called Mataboos---
or some such name---who are the masters of all
the public ceremonies, and who know the exact
place in which every chief must sit down when
a solemn public meeting takes place: a meeting
which bears a family resemblance to our own
Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main
part of the proceedings that every gentleman
present is required to drink something nasty.
These Mataboos are a privileged order, so important
is their avocation, and they make the
most of their high functions. A long way out
of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near the
British Islands was there no calling in of the
Mataboos the other day to settle an earth-convulsing
question of precedence; and was there
no weighty opinion delivered on the part of the
Mataboos which, being interpreted to that unlucky
tribe of blacks with the sense of the
ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole population
screaming with laughter?

  My sense of justice demands the admission,
however, that this is not quite a one-sided question.
If we submit ourselves meekly to the
Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not
exalted by it, the savages may retort upon us
that we act more unwisely than they in other
matters wherein we fail to imitate them. It is
a widely-diffused custom among savage tribes,
when they meet to discuss any affair of public
importance, to sit up all night making a horrible
noise, dancing, blowing shells, and (in cases
where they are familiar with fire-arms) flying out
into open places and letting off guns. It is
questionable whether our legislative assemblies
might not take a hint from this. A shell is not a
melodious wind instrument, and it is monotonous;
but it is as musical as, and not more monotonous
than, my Honourable friend's own trumpet, or the
trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister.
The uselessness of arguing with any supporter
of a Government or of an Opposition is well
known. Try dancing. It is a better exercise,
and has the unspeakable recommendation that
it couldn't be reported. The honourable and
savage member who has a loaded gun, and has
grown impatient of debate, plunges out of doors,
fires in the air, and returns calm and silent to
the Palaver. Let the honourable and civilised
member, similarly charged with a speech, dart
into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the
silence of night, let his speech off, and come
back harmless. It is not, at first sight, a very
rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe
across one's nose and both cheeks, and a broad
red stripe from the forehead to the chin, to
attach a few pounds of wood to one's under lip,
to stick fish bones in one's ears and a brass
curtain ring in one's nose, and to rub one's body
all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary to
entering on business. But this is a question of
taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uniform.
The manner of entering on the business
itself is another question. A council of six
hundred savage gentlemen entirely independent
of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring, smoking,
and occasionally grunting, seem to me,
according to the experience I have gathered in
my voyages and travels, somehow to do what
they come together for; whereas that is not at
all the general experience of a council of six
hundred civilised gentlemen very dependent on
tailors, and sitting on mechanical contrivances.
It is better that an assembly should do its utmost
to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should
direct its endeavours to enveloping the public in
smoke: and I would rather it buried half a
hundred hatchets than buried one subject demanding
attention.



	XXVII.

	TITBULL'S ALMSHOUSES.

  By the side of most railways out of
London one may see Almshouses
and Retreats (generally with a Wing
or a Centre wanting, and ambitious
of being much bigger than they are),
some of which are newly-founded institutions,
and some old establishments
transplanted. There is a tendency in
these pieces of architecture to shoot upward
unexpectedly, like Jack's bean-stalk, and to be
ornate in spires of Chapels and lanterns of Halls,
which might lead to the embellishment of the air
with many castles of questionable beauty but for
the restraining consideration of expense. However,
the managers, being always of a sanguine
temperament, comfort themselves with plans
and elevations of Loomings in the future, and
are influenced in the present by philanthropy
towards the railway passengers. For, the question
how prosperous and promising the buildings
can be made to look in their eyes, usually supersedes
the lesser question how they can be turned
to the best account for the inmates.

  Why none of the people who reside in these
places ever look out of window, or take an airing
in the piece of ground which is going to be a
garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have
added to my always-lengthening list of the wonders
of the world. I have got it into my mind
that they live in a state of chronic injury and
resentment, and, on that account, refuse to
decorate the building with a human interest.
As I have known legatees deeply injured by a
bequest of five hundred pounds because it was
not five thousand, and as I was once acquainted
with a pensioner on the Public, to the extent of
two hundred a year, who perpetually anathematized
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 rustic retreat for old men and women:
a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant English
county, behind a picturesque church, and among
rich old convent gardens. There were but some
dozen or so of houses, and we agreed that we
would talk with the inhabitants, as they sat in
their groined rooms between the light of their
fires and the light shining in at their latticed
windows, and would find out. They passed
their lives in considering themselves mulcted of
certain ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who
lived among them in the quadrangle. There
was no reason to suppose that any such ounces
of tea had ever been in existence, or that the
old steward so much as knew what was the
matter;---he passed _his_ life in considering himself
periodically defrauded of a birch-broam by
the beadle.

  But it is neither to old Almshouses in the
country, nor to new Almshouses by the railroad,
that these present uncommercial notes relate.
They refer back to journeys made among those
commonplace smoky-fronted London Almshouses,
with a little paved courtyard 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 Almshouses belong to a
Company or Society. Sometimes, they were
established by individuals, and are maintained
out of private funds bequeathed in perpetuity
long ago. My favourite among them is Titbull's,
which establishment is a picture of many. Of
Titbull I know no more than that he deceased
in 1723, that his Christian name was Sampson,
and his social designation Esquire, and that he
founded these Almshouses 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 Almshouses, and which stone
is ornamented atop with a piece of sculptured
drapery resembling the effigy of Titbull's bath-towel.

  Titbull's Almshouses are in the east of London,
in a great highway, in a poor, busy, and
thronged neighbourhood. Old iron and fried
fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled
pigs' feet and household furniture that looks as
if it were polished up with lip-salve, umbrellas
full of vocal literature and saucers full of shell-fish
in a green juice which I hope is natural to
them when their health is good, garnish the
paved sideways as you go to Titbull's. I take
the ground to have risen in those parts since
Titbull's time, and you drop into his domain by
three stone steps. So did I first drop into it,
very nearly striking my brows against Titbull's
pump, which stands with its back to the thoroughfare
just inside the gate, and has a conceited air
of reviewing Titbull's pensioners.

  ``And a worse one,'' said a virulent old man
with a pitcher, ``there isn't nowhere. A harder
one to work, nor grudginer one to yield, there
isn't nowhere!'' This old man wore a long
coat, such as we see Hogarth's chairmen represented
with, and it was of that peculiar green-pea
hue without the green, which seems to come
of poverty. It had also that peculiar smell of
cupboard which seems to come of poverty.

  ``The pump is rusty, perhaps,'' said I.
``Not _it,_'' said the old man, regarding it with
undiluted virulence in his watery eye. ``It never
were fit to be termed a pump. That's what's
the matter with _it._''

  ``Whose fault is that?'' said I.

  The old man, who had a working mouth
which seemed to be trying to masticate his
anger, and to find that it was too hard and
there was too much of it, replied, ``Them gentlemen.''

  ``What gentlemen?''

  ``Maybe you're one of em?'' said the old
man suspiciously.

  ``The trustees?''

  ``I wouldn't trust 'em myself,'' said the virulent
old man.

  ``If you mean the gentlemen who administer
this place, no, I am not one of them; nor have
I ever so much as heard of them.''

  ``I wish _I_ never heard of them,'' gasped the
old man: ``at my time of life---with the rheumatics
---drawing water---from that thing!'' Not
to be deluded into calling it a Pump, the old
man gave it another virulent look, took up his
pitcher, and carried it into a corner dwelling-house,
shutting the door after him.

  Looking around, and seeing that each little
house was a house of two little rooms; and seeing
that the little oblong courtyard in front was
like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that
no word was engraven on its flat dry stones;
and seeing that the currents of life and noise
ran to and fro outside, having no more to do
with the place than if it were a sort of low-water
mark on a lively beach; I say, seeing this and
nothing else, I was going out at the gate when
one of the doors opened.

  ``Was you looking for anything, sir?'' asked
a tiny, well-favoured woman.

  Really no; I couldn't say I was.

  ``Not wanting any one, sir?''

  ``No---at least, I---pray what is the name of
the elderly gentleman who lives in the corner
there?''

  The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the
door I indicated, and she and the pump and I
stood all three in a row, with our backs to the
thoroughfare.

  ``Oh! _His_ name is Mr. Battens,'' said the
tidy woman, dropping her voice.

  ``I have just been talking with him.''

  ``Indeed?'' said the tidy woman. ``Ho! I
wonder Mr. Battens talked!''

  ``Is he usually so silent?''

  ``Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here---that
is to say, the oldest of the old gentlemen---in
point of residence.''

  She had a way of passing her hands over and
under one another as she spoke, that was not
only tidy, but propitiatory; so I asked her if I
might look at her little sitting-room? She willingly
replied Yes, and we went into it together: she
leaving the door open, with an eye, as I understood,
to the social proprieties. The door at
once opening into the room without any intervening
entry, even scandal must have been
silenced by the precaution.

  It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and
with a mug of wallflower in the window. On the
chimney-piece were two peacock's feathers, a
carved ship, a few shells, and a black profile
with one eyelash; whether this portrait purported
to be male or female passed my comprehension,
until my hostess informed me that
it was her only son, and ``quite a speaking
one.''

  ``He is alive, I hope?''

  ``No, sir,'' said the widow, ``he were cast
away in China.'' This was said with a modest
sense of its reflecting a certain geographical distinction
on his mother.

  ``If the old gentlemen here are not given to
talking,'' said I, ``I hope the old ladies are?---
Not that you are one.''

  She shook her head. ``You see, they get so
cross.''

  ``How is that?''

  ``Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive
us of any little matters which ought to be
ours by rights, I cannot say for certain; but the
opinion of the old ones is they do. And Mr.
Battens he do even go so far as to doubt whether
credit is due to the Founder, For Mr. Battens
he do say, anyhow he got his name up by it,
and he done it cheap.''

  ``I am afraid the pump has soured Mr.
Battens.''

  ``It may be so,'' returned the tidy widow,
``but the handle does go very hard. Still, what
I say to myself is, the gentlemen _may_ not pocket
the difference between a good pump and a bad
one, and I would wish to think well of them.
And the dwellings,'' said my hostess, glancing
round her room; ``perhaps they were convenient
dwellings in the Founder's time, considered
_as_ his time, and therefore he should not
be blamed. But Mrs. Saggers is very hard upon
them.''

  ``Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?''

  ``The oldest but one. Mrs. Quinch being
the oldest, and have totally lost her head.''

  ``And you?''

  ``I am the youngest in residence, and consequently
am not looked up to. But, when Mrs.
Quinch makes a happy release, there will be one
below me. Nor is it to be expected that Mrs.
Saggers will prove herself immortal.''

  ``True. Nor Mr. Battens.''

  ``Regarding the old gentlemen,'' said my
widow slightingly, ``they count among themselves.
They do not count among us. Mr.
Battens is that exceptional that he have written
to the gentlemen many times, and have worked
the case against them. Therefore he have took
a higher ground. But we do not, as a rule,
greatly reckon the old gentlemen.''

  Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally
settled among the poor ladies that the
poor gentlemen, whatever their ages, were all
very old indeed, and in a state of dotage. I also
discovered that the juniors and newcomers preserved,
for a time, a waning disposition to believe
in Titbull and his trustees, but that, as they
gained social standing, they lost this faith, and
disparaged Titbull and all his works.

 Improving my acquaintance subsequently with
this respected lady, whose name was Mrs. Mitts,
and occasionally dropping in upon her with a
little offering of sound Family Hyson in my
pocket, I gradually became familiar with the
inner politics and ways of Titbull's Almshouses.
But I never could find out who the trustees
were, or where they were: it being one of the
fixed ideas of the place that those authorities
must be vaguely and mysteriously mentioned as
``the gentlemen'' only. The secretary of ``the
gentlemen'' was once pointed out to me, evidently
engaged in championing the obnoxious
pump against the attacks of the discontented
Mr. Battens; but I am not in a condition to
report further of him than that he had the
sprightly bearing of a lawyer's clerk. I had it
from Mrs. Mitts's lips, in a very confidential
moment, that Mr. Battens was once ``had up
before the gentlemen'' to stand or fall by his
accusations, and that an old shoe was thrown
after him on his departure from the building on
this dread errand;---not ineffectually, for, the
interview resulting in a plumber, was considered
to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens
with the wreath of victory.

  In Titbull's Almshouses the local society is
not regarded as good society. A gentleman or
lady receiving visitors from without, or going
out to tea, counts, as it were, accordingly; but
visitings or tea-drinkings interchanged among
Titbullians do not score. Such interchanges,
however, are rare, in consequence of internal
dissensions occasioned by Mrs. Saggers's pail:
which household article has split Titbull's into
almost as many parties as there are dwellings
in that precinct. The extremely complicated
nature of the conflicting articles of belief on the
subject prevents my stating them here with my
usual perspicuity, but I think they have all
branched off from the root-and-trunk question,
Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her pail outside
her dwelling? The question has been much
refined upon, but, roughly stated, may be stated
in those terms.

  There are two old men in Titbull's Almshouses
who, I have been given to understand,
knew each other in the world beyond its pump
and iron railings, when they were both ``in
trade.'' They make the best of their reverses,
and are looked upon with great contempt.
They are little, stooping, blear-eyed old men of
cheerful countenance, and they hobble up and
down the 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_ windows, on
the disdainful ground that their imbecility
almost amounts to irresponsibility, they are
allowed to take their walk in peace. They live
next door to one another, and take it by turns
to read the newspaper aloud (that is to say, the
newest newspaper they can get), and they play
cribbage at night. On warm and sunny days
they have been known to go so far as to bring
out two chairs, and sit by the iron railings, looking
forth, but this low conduct, being much
remarked upon throughout Titbull's, they were
deterred by an outraged public opinion from repeating
it. There is a rumour---but it may be
malicious---that they hold the memory of Titbull
in some weak sort of veneration, and that they
once set off together on a pilgrimage to the
parish churchyard to find his tomb. To this,
perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion
that they are spies of ``the gentlemen:'' to
which they were supposed to have given colour,
in my own presence, on the occasion of the
weak attempt at justification of the pump by the
gentlemen's clerk; when they emerged bare-headed
from the doors of their dwellings, as if
their dwellings and themselves constituted an
old-fashioned weather-glass of double action
with two figures of old ladies inside, and deferentially
bowed to him at intervals until he took
his departure. They are understood to be perfectly
friendless and relationless. Unquestionably
the two poor fellows make the very best of
their lives in Titbull's Almshouses, and unquestionably
they are (as before mentioned) the
subjects of unmitigated contempt there.

  On Saturday nights, when there is a greater
stir than usual outside, and when itinerant
vendors of miscellaneous wares even take their
stations and light up their smoky lamps before
the iron railings, Titbull's becomes flurried.
Mrs. Saggers has her celebrated palpitations of
the heart, for the most part, on Saturday nights.
But Titbull's is unfit to strive with the uproar of
the streets in any of its phases. It is religiously
believed at Titbull's that people push more than
they used, and likewise that the foremost object
of the population of England and Wales is to
get you down and trample on you. Even of
railroads they know, at Titbull's, little more than
the shriek (which Mrs. Saggers says goes through
her, and ought to be taken up by Government);
and the penny postage may even yet be unknown
there, for I have never seen a letter
delivered to any inhabitant. But there is a tall,
straight, sallow lady resident in Number Seven,
Titbull's, who never speaks to anybody, who is
surrounded by a superstitious halo of lost wealth,
who does her household work in housemaid's
gloves, and who is secretly much deferred to,
though openly cavilled at; and it has obscurely
leaked out that this old lady has a son, grandson,
nephew, or other relative, who is ``a Contractor,''
and who would think it nothing of a
job to knock down Titbull's, pack it off into
Cornwall, and knock it together again. An
immense sensation was made by a gipsy party
calling, in a spring van, to take this old lady up
to go for a day's pleasure into Epping Forest,
and notes were compared as to which of the
company was the son, grandson, nephew, or
other relative, the Contractor. A thick-set personage,
with a white hat and a cigar in his
mouth, was the favourite: though, as Titbull's
had no other reason to believe that the Contractor
was there at all than that this man was supposed
to eye the chimney-stacks as if he would
like to knock them down and cart them off, the
general mind was much unsettled in arriving at
a conclusion. As a way out of this difficulty, it
concentrated itself on the acknowledged Beauty
of the party, every stitch in whose dress was
verbally unripped by the old ladies then and
there, and whose ``goings-on'' with another and
a thinner personage in a white hat might have
suffused the pump (where they were principally
discussed) with blushes for months afterwards.
Herein Titbull's was to Titbull's true, for it has
a constitutional dislike of all strangers. As concerning
innovations and improvements, it is
always of opinion that what it doesn't want
itself, nobody ought to want. But I think I
have met with this opinion outside Titbull's.

  Of the humble treasures of furniture brought
into Titbull's by the inmates when they establish
themselves in that place of contemplation for
the rest of their days, by far the greater and
more valuable part belongs to the ladies. I
may claim the honour of having either crossed
the threshold, or looked in at the door, of every
one of the nine ladies, and I have noticed that
they are all particular in the article of bedsteads,
and maintain favourite and long-established bedsteads
and bedding as a regular part of their
rest. Generally an antiquated chest of drawers is
among their cherished possessions; a tea-tray
always is. I know of at least two rooms in
which a little tea-kettle of genuine burnished
copper vies with the cat in winking at the fire;
and one old lady has a tea-urn set forth in state
on the top of her chest of drawers, which urn is
used as her library, and contains four duodecimo
volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper
giving an account of the funeral of her
Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte. Among
the poor old gentlemen there are no such niceties.
Their furniture has the air of being contributed,
like some obsolete Literary Miscellany,
``by several hands;'' their few chairs never
match; old patchwork coverlets linger among
them; and they have an untidy habit of keeping
their wardrobes in hat-boxes. When I recall
one old gentleman who is rather choice in
his shoe-brushes and blacking bottle, I have
summed up the domestic elegancies of that side
of the building.

  On the occurrence of a death in Titbull's, it
is invariably agreed among the survivors---and
it is the only subject on which they do agree---
that the departed did something ``to bring it
on.'' Judging by Titbull's, I should say the
human race need never die if they took care.
But they don't take care, and they do die, and
when they die in Titbull's they are buried at the
cost of the Foundation. Some provision has
been made for the purpose, in virtue of which
(I record this on the strength of having seen
the funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring
undertaker dresses up four of the old men,
and four of the old women, hustles them into a
procession of four couples, and leads off with a
large black bow at the back of his hat, looking
over his shoulder at them airily, from time to
time, to see that no member of the party has
got lost, or has tumbled down; as if they were
a company of dim old dolls.

  Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare
occurrence in Titbull's. A story does obtain
there, how an old lady's son once drew a prize
of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the Lottery, and
presently drove to the gate in his own carriage,
with French Horns playing up behind, and
whisked his mother away, and left ten guineas
for a Feast. But I have been unable to substantiate
it by any evidence, and regard it as an
Almshouse Fairy Tale. It is curious that the
only proved case of resignation happened within
my knowledge.

  It happened on this wise. There is a sharp
competition among the ladies respecting the
gentility of their visitors, and I have so often
observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday
occasion, that I suppose the ladies to have besought
them to make all possible display when
they come. In these circumstances much excitement
was one day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts
receiving a visit from a Greenwich Pensioner.
He was a Pensioner of a bluff and warlike
appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he
was got up with unusual care; his coat buttons
were extremely bright, he wore his empty coat-sleeve
in a graceful festoon, and he had a walking-stick
in his hand that must have cost
money. When, with the head of his walking-stick,
he knocked at Mrs. Mitts's door---there
are no knockers in Titbull's---Mrs. Mitts was
overheard by a next-door neighbour to utter a
cry of surprise expressing much agitation; and
the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly
affirm that, when he was admitted into Mrs.
Mitts's room, she heard a smack. Heard a
smack which was not a blow.

  There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner,
when he took his departure, which imbued
all Titbull's with the conviction that he
was coming again. He was eagerly looked for,
and Mrs. Mitts was closely watched. In the
meantime, if anything could have placed the
unfortunate six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage
than that at which they chronically
stood, it would have been the apparition of this
Greenwich Pensioner. They were well shrunken
already, but they shrunk to nothing in comparison
with the Pensioner. Even the poor old gentlemen
themselves seemed conscious of their inferiority,
and to know submissively that they could
never hope to hold their own against the Pensioner,
with his warlike and maritime experience
in the past, and his tobacco money in the present:
his chequered career of blue water, black
gunpowder, and red bloodshed for England,
home, and beauty.

  Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner
reappeared. Again he knocked at Mrs. Mitts's
door with the handle of his stick, and again was
he admitted. But not again did he depart
alone; for Mrs. Mitts, in a bonnet identified as
having been re-embellished, went out walking
with him, and stayed out till the ten-o'clock
beer, Greenwich time.

  There was now a truce even as to the troubled
waters of Mrs. Saggers's pail nothing was spoken
of among the ladies but the conduct of Mrs.
Mitts, and its blighting influence on the reputation
of Titbull's. It was agreed that Mr.
Battens ``ought to take it up,'' and Mr.
Battens was communicated with on the subject.
That unsatisfactory individual replied ``that
didn't see his way yet,'' and it was unanimously
voted by the ladies that aggravation was in his
nature.

  How it came to pass, with some appearance
of inconsistency, that Mrs. Mitts was cut by all
the ladies and the Pensioner admired by all the
ladies, matters not. Before another week was
out, Titbull's was startled by another phenomenon.
At ten o'clock in the forenoon appeared
a cab, containing not only the Greenwich
Pensioner with one arm, but, to boot, a Chelsea
Pensioner with one leg. Both dismounting to
assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the Greenwich
Pensioner bore her company inside, and the
Chelsea Pensioner mounted the box by the
driver: his wooden leg sticking out after the
manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular homage to
his friend's sea-going career. Thus the equipage
drove away. No Mrs. Mitts returned that night.
What Mr. Battens might have done in the
matter of taking it up, goaded by the infuriated
state of public feeling next morning, was anticipated
by another phenomenon. A Truck,
propelled by the Greenwich Pensioner and the
Chelsea Pensioner, each placidly smoking a
pipe, and pushing his warrior breast against the
handle.

  The display on the part of the Greenwich
Pensioner of his ``marriage lines,'' and his announcement
that himself and friend had looked
in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pensioner, late
Mitts, by no means reconciled the ladies to the
conduct of their sister; on the contrary, it is
said that they appeared more than ever exasperated.
Nevertheless, my stray visits to Titbull's,
since the date of this occurrence, have
confirmed me in an impression that it was a
wholesome fillip. The nine ladies are smarter,
both in mind and dress, than they used to be,
though it must be admitted that they despise the
six gentlemen to the last extent. They have a
much greater interest in the external thoroughfare,
too, than they had when I first knew Titbull's.
And whenever I chance to be leaning
my back against the pump or the iron railings,
and to be talking to one of the junior ladies,
and to see that a flush has passed over her face,
I immediately know, without looking round,
that a Greenwich Pensioner has gone past.



	XXVIII.

	THE ITALIAN PRISONER.

  The rising of the Italian people from under
their unutterable wrongs, and the tardy
burst of day upon them after the long long
night of oppression that has darkened their
beautiful country, have naturally caused my
mind to dwell often, of late, on my own small
wanderings in Italy. Connected with them is
a curious little drama, in which the character I
myself sustained was so very subordinate that
I may relate its story without any fear of being
suspected of self-display. It is strictly a true
story.

  I am newly arrived, one summer evening, in
a certain small town on the Mediterranean. I
have had my dinner at the inn, and I and the
mosquitoes are coming out into the streets together.
It is far from Naples; but a bright
brown plump little woman-servant at the inn is
a Neapolitan, and is so vivaciously expert in
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 motions of polishing the shoes up, and laying
them at my feet. I smile at the brisk little
woman in perfect satisfaction with her briskness;
and the brisk little woman, amiably pleased
with me because I am pleased with her, claps
her hands and laughs delightfully. We are in
the inn yard. As the little woman's bright eyes
sparkle on the cigarette I am smoking, I make
bold to offer her one; she accepts it none the
less merrily, because I touch a most charming
little dimple in her fat cheek with its light paper
end. Glancing up at the many green lattices to
assure herself that the mistress is not looking on,
the little woman then puts her two little dimple
arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to light her
cigarette at mine. ``And now, dear little sir,''
says she, puffing out smoke in a most innocent
and cherubic manner, ``keep quite straight on,
take the first to the right, and probably you will
see him standing at his door.''

  I have a commission to ``him,'' and I have
been inquiring about him. I have carried the
commission about Italy several months. Before
I left England, there came to me one night a certain
generous and gentle English nobleman (he is
dead in these days when I relate the story, and
exiles have lost their best British friend), with
this request: ``Whenever you come to such a
town, will you seek out one Giovanni Carlavero,
who keeps a little wine-shop there, mention my
name to him suddenly, and observe how it
affects him?'' I accepted the trust, and am on
my way to discharge it.

  The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it
is a but unwholesome evening, with no cool sea
breeze. Mosquitoes and fire-flies are lively
enough, but most other creatures are faint. The
coquettish airs of pretty young women in the
tiniest and wickedest of dolls' straw hats, who
lean out at opened lattice blinds, are almost
the only airs stirring. Very ugly and haggard
old women with distaffs, and with a grey tow
upon them that looks as if they were spinning
out their own hair (I suppose they were once
pretty, too, but it is very difficult to believe so),
sit on the footway leaning against house walls.
Everybody who has come for water to the fountain
stays there, and seems incapable of any such
energetic idea as going home. Vespers are over,
though not so long but that I can smell the
heavy resinous incense as I pass the church.
No man seems to be at work save the copper-smith.
In an Italian town he is always at work,
and always thumping in the deadliest manner.

  I keep straight on, and come in due time to
the first on the right; a narrow dull street, where
I see a well-favoured man of good stature and
military bearing, in a great cloak, standing at
a door. Drawing nearer to this threshold, I see
it is the threshold of a small wine-shop; and I
can just make out, in the dim light, the inscription
that it is kept by Giovanni Carlavero.

  I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and
pass in, and draw a stool to a little table. The
lamp (just such another as they dig out of Pompeii)
is lighted, but the place is empty. The
figure in the cloak has followed me in, and
stands before me.

  ``The master?''

  ``At your service, sir.''

  ``Please to give me a glass of the wine of the
country.''

  He turns to a little counter to get it. As his
striking face is pale, and his action is evidently
that of an enfeebled man, I remark that I fear
he has been ill. It is not much, he courteously
and gravely answers, though bad while it lasts:
the fever.

  As he sets the wine on the little table, to his
manifest surprise I lay my hand on the back of
his, look him in the face, and say in a low voice:
``I am an Englishman, and you are acquainted
with a friend of mine. Do you recollect------?''
and I mentioned the name of my generous
countryman.

  Instantly he utters a loud cry, bursts into
tears, and falls on his knees at my feet, clasping
my legs in both his arms, and bowing his head
to the ground.

  Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose
overfraught heart is heaving as if it would burst
from his breast, and whose tears are wet upon
the dress I wear, was a galley-slave in the North
of Italy. He was a political offender, having
been concerned in the then last rising, and was
sentenced to imprisonment for life. That he
would have died in his chains is certain, but for
the circumstance that the Englishman happened
to visit his prison.

  It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and
a part of it was below the waters of the harbour.
The place of his confinement was an arched
underground and under-water gallery, with a
grill-gate at the entrance, through which it received
such light and air as it got. Its condition
was insufferably foul, and a stranger could
hardly breathe in it, or see in it with the aid of
a torch. At the upper end of this dungeon, and
consequently in the worst position, as being the
furthest removed from light and air, the Englishman
first beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead,
to which he was chained by a heavy chain. His
countenance impressed the Englishman as having
nothing in common with the faces of the malefactors
with whom he was associated, and he
talked with him, and learnt how he came to be
there.

  When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful
den into the light of day, he asked his conductor,
the governor of the gaol, why Giovanni
Carlavero was put into the worst place?

  ``Because he is particularly recommended,''
was the stringent answer.

  ``Recommended, that is to say, for death?''

  ``Excuse me; particularly recommended,''
was again the answer.

  ``He has a bad tumour in his neck, no doubt
occasioned by the hardship of his miserable life.
If he continues to be neglected, and he remains
where he is, it will kill him.''

  ``Excuse me, I can do nothing. He is particularly
recommended.''

  The Englishman was staying in that town, and
he went to his home there; but the figure of this
man chained to the bedstead made it no home,
and destroyed his rest and peace. He was an
Englishman of an extraordinarily tender heart,
and he could not bear the picture. He went
back to the prison grate; went back again and
again, and talked to the man and cheered him.
He used his utmost influence to get the man
unchained from the bedstead, were it only for
ever so short a time in the day, and permitted
to come to the grate. It took a long time, but
the Englishman's station, personal character, and
steadiness of purpose wore out opposition so far,
and that grace was at last accorded. Through
the bars, when he could thus get light upon the
tumour, the Englishman lanced it, and it did
well, and healed. His strong interest in the
prisoner had greatly increased by this time, and
he formed the desperate resolution that he would
exert his utmost self-devotion, and use his utmost
efforts, to get Carlavero pardoned.

  If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer,
if he had committed every non-political
crime in the Newgate Calendar and out of it,
nothing would have been easier than for a man
of any court or priestly influence to obtain his
release. As it was, nothing could have been
more difficult. Italian authorities, and English
authorities who had interest with them, alike
assured the Englishman that his object was
hopeless. He met with nothing but evasion,
refusal, and ridicule. His political prisoner
became a joke in the place. It was especially
observable that English Circumlocution, and
English Society on its travels, were as humorous
on the subject as Circumlocution and Society
may be on any subject without loss of caste.
But, the Englishman possessed (and proved it
well in his life) a courage very uncommon among
us: he had not the least fear of being considered
a bore in a good humane cause. So he went on
persistently trying, and trying, and trying to get
Giovanni Carlavero out. That prisoner had been
rigorously re-chained after the tumour operation,
and it was not likely that his miserable life
could last very long.

  One day, when all the town knew about the
Englishman and his political prisoner, there
came to the Englishman a certain sprightly
Italian Advocate of whom he had some knowledge;
and he made this strange proposal.
``Give me a hundred pounds to obtain Carlavero's
release. I think I can get him a pardon
with that money. But I cannot tell you what
I am going to do with the money, nor must you
ever ask me the question if I succeed, nor must
you ever ask me for an account of the money if
I fail.'' The Englishman decided to hazard the
hundred pounds. He did so, and heard not
another word of the matter. For half a year
and more the Advocate made no sign, and never
once ``took on'' in any way to have the subject
on his mind. The Englishman was then obliged
to change his residence to another and more
famous town in the North of Italy. He parted
from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful heart,
as from a doomed man for whom there was no
release but Death.

  The Englishman lived in his new place of
abode another half-year and more, and had no
tidings of the wretched prisoner. At length,
one day, he received from the Advocate a cool,
concise, mysterious note to this effect. ``If
you still wish to bestow that benefit upon the
man in whom you were once interested, send
me fifty pounds more, and I think it can be
insured.'' Now, the Englishman had long
settled in his mind that the Advocate was a
heartless sharper, who had played upon his
credulity and his interest in an unfortunate
sufferer. So, he sat down and wrote a dry
answer, giving the Advocate to understand that
he was wiser now than he had been formerly,
and that no more money was extractable from
his pocket.

  He lived outside the city gates, some mile or
two from the post-office, and was accustomed to
walk into the city with his letters, and post them
himself. On a lovely spring day, when the sky
was exquisitely blue, and the sea divinely beautiful,
he took his usual walk, carrying this letter
to the Advocate in his pocket. As he went
along, his gentle heart was much moved by the
loveliness of the prospect, and by the thought
of the slowly-dying prisoner chained to the bedstead,
for whom the universe had no delights.
As he drew nearer and nearer to the city, where
he was to post the letter, he became very uneasy
in his mind. He debated with himself, was it
remotely possible, after all, that this sum of fifty
pounds could restore the fellow-creature whom
he pitied so much, and for whom he had striven
so hard, to liberty? He was not a conventionally
rich Englishman---very far from that---
but, he had a spare fifty pounds at the banker's.
He resolved to risk it. Without doubt, God has
recompensed him for the resolution.

  He went to the banker's, and got a bill for
the amount, and enclosed it in a letter to the
Advocate that I wish I could have seen. He
simply told the Advocate that he was quite a
poor man, and that he was sensible it might be
a great weakness in him to part with so much
money on the faith of so vague a communication;
but, that there it was, and that he prayed
the Advocate to make good use of it. If he did
otherwise, no good could ever come of it, and
it would lie heavy on his soul one day.

  Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at
his breakfast, when he heard some suppressed
sounds of agitation on the staircase, and Giovanni
Carlavero leaped into the room and fell
upon his breast, a free man!

  Conscious of having wronged the Advocate
in his own thoughts, the Englishman wrote him
an earnest and grateful letter, avowing the fact,
and entreating him to confide by what means
and through what agency he had succeeded so
well. The Advocate returned for answer through
the post, ``There are many things, as you know,
in this Italy of ours, that are safest and best not
even spoken of---far less written of. We may
meet some day, and then I may tell you what
you want to know; not here, and now.'' But,
the two never did meet again. The Advocate
was dead when the Englishman gave me my
trust; and how the man had been set free remained
as great a mystery to the Englishman,
and to the man himself, as it was to me.

  But, I knew this:---Here was the man, this
sultry night, on his knees at my feet, because I
was the Englishman's friend; here were his tears
upon my dress; here were his sobs choking his
utterance; here were his kisses on my hands,
because they had touched the hands that had
worked out his release. He had no need to tell
me it would be happiness to him to die for his
benefactor; I doubt if I ever saw real, sterling,
fervent gratitude of soul before or since.

  He was much watched and suspected, he said,
and had had enough to do to keep himself out
is, and his not having prospered
in his worldly affairs, had led to his having failed
in his usual communications to the Englishman
for---as I now remember the period---some two
or three years, but his prospects were brighter,
and his wife, who had been very ill, had recovered,
and his fever had left him, and he had
bought a little vineyard, and would I carry to
his benefactor the first of its wine? Ay, that I
would (I told him with enthusiasm), and not a
drop of it should be spilled or lost!

  He had cautiously closed the door before
speaking of himself, and had talked with such
excess of emotion, and in a provincial Italian so
difficult to understand, that I had more than
once been obliged to stop him, and beg him to
have compassion on me, and be slower and
calmer. By degrees he became so, and tranquilly
walked back with me to the hotel. There,
I sat down before I went to bed, and wrote a
faithful account of him to the Englishman:
which I concluded by saying that I would bring
the wine home, against any difficulties, every
drop.

  Early next morning, when I came out at the
hotel door to pursue my journey, I found my
friend waiting with one of those immense bottles
in which the Italian peasants store their wine
---a bottle holding some half-dozen gallons---
bound round with basket-work for greater safety
on the journey. I see him now, in the bright
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 honourable way of travelling that was beyond
measure delightful.

  And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved
and highly-treasured Bottle began to
cost me, no man knows. It was my precious
charge through a long tour, and, for hundreds of
miles, I never had it off my mind by day or by
night. Over bad roads---and they were many---
I clung to it with affectionate desperation. Up
mountains, I looked in at it, and saw it helplessly
tilting over on its back, with terror. At
innumerable inn doors, when the weather was
bad, I was obliged to be put into my vehicle
before the Bottle could be got in, and was
obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before
human aid could come near me. The Imp of
the same name, except that his associations
were all evil and these associations were all
good, would have been a less troublesome travelling
companion. I might have served Mr.
Cruikshank as a subject for a new illustration of
the miseries of the Bottle. The National Temperance
Society might have made a powerful
Tract of me.

  The suspicions that attached to this innocent
Bottle greatly aggravated my difficulties. It was
like the apple-pie in the child's book. Parma
pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany
tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it,
Austria accused it, Soldiers suspected it, Jesuits
jobbed it. I composed a neat Oration, developing
my inoffensive intentions in connection with
this Bottle, and delivered it in an infinity of
guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and
on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart of a
complete system of fortifications. Fifty times a
day I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery
about the Bottle. Through the filthy
degradation of the abject and vile Roman
States, I had as much difficulty in working my
way with the Bottle as if it had bottled up a
complete system of heretical theology. In the
Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy,
a soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless
beggars of all four denominations incessantly
pounced on the Bottle, and made it a pretext
for extorting money from me. Quires---quires
do I say? Reams---of form illegibly printed
on whity-brown paper were filled up about the
Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamping
and sanding than I had ever seen before. In
consequence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it
was always irregular, and always latent with
dismal penalties of going back, or not going forward,
which were only to be abated by the
silver crossing of a base hand, poked shirtless
out of a uniformed sleeve. Under all discouragements,
however, I stuck to my Bottle,
and held firm to my resolution that every drop
of its contents should reach the Bottle's destination.

  The latter refinement cost me a separate heap
of troubles on its own separate account. What
cork-screws did I see the military power bring
out against that Bottle; what gimlets, spikes,
divining rods, gauges, and unknown tests and
instruments! At some places they persisted in
declaring that the wine must not be passed
without being opened and tasted; I pleading to
the contrary, used then to argue the question
seated on the Bottle, lest they should open it in
spite of me. In the southern parts of Italy
more violent shrieking, face-making, and gesticulating,
greater vehemence of speech and
countenance and action, went on about that
Bottle, than would attend fifty murders in a
northern latitude. It raised important functionaries
out of their beds in the dead of night.
I have known half-a-dozen military lanterns to
disperse themselves at all points of a great
sleeping Piazza, each lantern summoning some
official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat
instantly, and come and stop the Bottle. It
was characteristic that while this innocent Bottle
had such immense difficulty in getting from little
town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery cross
were traversing Italy from end to end.

  Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old
English gentleman all of the olden time. The
more the Bottle was interfered with, the
stauncher I became (if possible) in my first
determination that my countryman should have
it delivered to him intact, as the man whom
he had so nobly restored to life and liberty had
delivered it to me. If ever I had been obstinate
in my days---and I may have been, say,
once or twice---I was obstinate about the
Bottle. But, I made it a rule always to keep a
pocket-full of small coin at its service, and
never to be out of temper in its cause. Thus I
and the Bottle made our way. Once we had
a break-down; rather a bad break-down, on a
steep high place with the sea below us, on a
tempestuous evening when it blew great guns.
We were driving four wild horses abreast,
Southern fashion, and there was some little
difficulty in stopping them. I was outside, and
not thrown off; but no words can describe my
feelings when I saw the Bottle---travelling inside,
as usual---burst the door open, and roll obesely
out into the road. A blessed Bottle with a
charmed existence, he took no hurt, and we
repaired damage, and went on triumphant.

  A thousand representations were made to me
that the Bottle must be left at this place, or that,
and called for again. I never yielded to one of
them, and never parted from the Bottle, on any
pretence, consideration, threat, or entreaty. I
had no faith in any official receipt for the Bottle,
and nothing would induce me to accept one.
These unmanageable politics at last brought me
and the Bottle, still triumphant, to Genoa.
There I took a tender and reluctant leave of
him for a few weeks, and consigned him to a
trusty English captain, to be conveyed to the
Port of London by sea.

  While the Bottle was on his voyage to England,
I read the Shipping Intelligence as
anxiously as if I had been an underwriter.
There was some stormy weather after I myself
had got to England by way of Switzerland and
France, and my mind greatly misgave me that
the Bottle might be wrecked. At last, to my
great joy, I received notice of his safe arrival,
and immediately went down to St. Katherine's
Docks, and found him in a state of honourable
captivity in the Custom House.

  The wine was mere vinegar when I set it
down before the generous Englishman---probably
it had been something like vinegar when
I took it up from Giovanni Carlavero---but not
a drop of it was spilled or gone. And the Englishman
told me, with much emotion in his face
and voice, that he had never tasted wine that
seemed to him so sweet and sound. And long
afterwards the Bottle graced his table. And
the last time I saw him in this world that misses
him, he took me aside in a crowd to say, with
his amiable smile: ``We were talking of you
only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had
been there, for I had some Claret up in Carlavero's
Bottle.''


	XXIX.

	THE SHORT-TIMERS.

  Within so many yards of this Covent-Garden
lodging of mine, as
within so many yards of Westminster
Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral,
the Houses of Parliament, the Prisons,
the Courts of Justice, all the
Institutions that govern the land, I can
find---_must_ find, whether I will or no---in
the open streets, shameful instances of neglect
of children, intolerable toleration of the engenderment
of paupers, idlers, thieves, races of
wretched and destructive cripples both in body
and mind, a misery to themselves, a misery to
the community, a disgrace to civilisation, and
an outrage on Christianity. I know it to be a
fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any
of the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the
State would begin its work and duty at the beginning,
and would with the strong hand take
those children out of the streets while they are
yet children, and wisely train them, it would
make them a part of England's glory, not its
shame---of England's strength, not its weakness
---would raise good soldiers and sailors, and
good citizens, and many great men out of the
seeds of its criminal population. Yet I go on
bearing with the enormity as if it were nothing,
and I go on reading the Parliamentary Debates
as if they were something, and I concern myself
far more about one railway bridge across a
public thoroughfare than about a dozen generations
of scrofula, ignorance, wickedness, prostitution,
poverty, and felony. I can slip out at
my door in the small hours after any midnight,
and, in one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-Garden
Market, can behold a state of infancy
and youth as vile as if a Bourbon sat upon the
English throne; a great police force looking on
with authority to do no more than worry and
hunt the dreadful vermin into corners, and there
leave them. Within the length of a few streets
I can find a workhouse, mismanaged with that
dull short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest
opportunities as to the children it receives are
lost, and yet not a farthing saved to any one.
But the wheel goes round, and round, and
round; and because it goes round---so I am
told by the politest authorities---it goes well.

  Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun
week last past, as I floated down the Thames
among the bridges, looking---not inappropriately
---at the drags that were hanging up at certain
dirty stairs to hook the drowned out, and at the
numerous conveniences provided to facilitate
their tumbling in. My object in that uncommercial
journey called up another train of
thought, and it ran as follows:

  ``When I was at school, one of seventy boys,
I wonder by what secret understanding our attention
began to wander when we had pored over
our books for some hours. I wonder by what
ingenuity we brought on that confused state of
mind when sense became nonsense, when figures
wouldn't work, when dead languages wouldn't
construe, when live languages wouldn't be
spoken, when memory wouldn't come, when
dulness and vacancy wouldn't go. I cannot
remember that we ever conspired to be sleepy
after dinner, or that we ever particularly wanted
to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and hot
beating heads, or to find blank hopelessness
and obscurity this afternoon in what would become
perfectly clear and bright in the freshness
of to-morrow morning. We suffered for these
things, and they made us miserable enough.
Neither do I remember that we ever bound
ourselves, by any secret oath or other solemn
obligation, to find the seats getting too hard to
be sat upon after a certain time; or to have
intolerable twitches in our legs, rendering us
aggressive and malicious with those members;
or to be troubled with a similar uneasiness in
our elbows, attended with fistic consequences to
our neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead
in the chest, four pounds in the head, and
several active blue-bottles in each ear. Yet,
for certain, we suffered under those distresses,
and were always charged at for labouring under
them, as if we had brought them on of our own
deliberate act and deed. As to the mental
portion of them being my own fault in my own
case---I should like to ask any well-trained and
experienced teacher, not to say psychologist.
And as to the physical portion---I should like
to ask =Professor Owen.=''

  It happened that I had a small bundle of
papers with me, on what is called ``The Half-Time
System'' in schools. Referring to one of
those papers, I found that the indefatigable =Mr.
Chadwick= had been beforehand with me, and
had already asked Professor Owen: who had
handsomely replied that I was not to blame,
but that being troubled with a skeleton, and
having been constituted according to certain
natural laws, I and my skeleton were unfortunately
bound by those laws---even in school---
and had comported ourselves accordingly.
Much comforted by the good Professor's being
on my side, I read on to discover whether the
indefatigable Mr. Chadwick had taken up the
mental part of my afflictions. I found that
he had, and that he had gained on my behalf
=Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir David Wilkie, Sir
Walter Scott,= and the common sense of mankind.
For which I beg Mr. Chadwick, if this
should meet his eye, to accept my warm acknowledgments.

  Up to that time I had retained a misgiving
that the seventy unfortunates, of whom I was
one, must have been, without knowing it, leagued
together by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual
Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope about in
vaults with dark lanterns after a certain period
of continuous study. But now the misgiving
vanished, and I floated on with a quieted mind
to see the Half-Time System in action. For that
was the purpose of my journey, both by steamboat
on the Thames, and by very dirty railway
on the shore. To which last institution I beg
to recommend the legal use of coke as engine
fuel, rather than the illegal use of coal; the
recommendation is quite disinterested, for I was
most liberally supplied with small coal on the
journey, for which no charge was made. I had
not only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my
hat, and all my pockets, and my pocket-book,
and my watch.

  The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small
Coal Railway Company) delivered me close to
my destination, and I soon found the Half-Time
System established in spacious premises, and
freely placed at my convenience and disposal.
What would I see first of the Half-Time
System? I chose Military Drill. ``Attention!''
Instantly a hundred boys I stood forth
in the paved yard as one boy; bright, quick,
eager, steady, watchful for the look of command,
instant and ready for the word. Not
only was there complete precision---complete
accord to the eye and to the ear---but an alertness
in the doing of the thing which deprived it,
curiously, of its monotonous or mechanical character.
There was perfect uniformity, and yet
an individual spirit and emulation. No spectator
could doubt that the boys liked it. With
non-commissioned officers varying from a yard
to a yard and a half high, the result could not
possibly have been attained otherwise. They
marched, and counter-marched, and formed in
line and square, and company, and single file
and double file, and performed a variety of
evolutions; all most admirably. In respect of
an air of enjoyable understanding of what they
were about, which seems to be forbidden to
English soldiers, the boys might have been
small French troops. When they were dismissed,
and the broadsword exercise, limited to
a much smaller number, succeeded, the boys
who had no part in that new drill either looked
on attentively, or disported themselves in a
gymnasium hard by. The steadiness of the
broadsword boys on their short legs, and the
firmness with which they sustained the different
positions, was truly remarkable.

  The broadsword exercise over, suddenly
there was great excitement and a rush. Naval
Drill!

  In a corner of the ground stood a decked
mimic ship, with real masts, yards, and sails---
mainmast seventy feet high. At the word of
command from the Skipper of this ship---a
mahogany-faced Old Salt, with the indispensable
quid in his cheek, the true nautical roll,
and all wonderfully complete---the rigging was
covered with a swarm of boys: one, the first to
spring into the shrouds, outstripping all the
others, and resting on the truck of the main-topmast
in no time.

  And now we stood out to sea in a most
amazing manner; the Skipper himself, the
whole crew, the Uncommercial, and all hands
present, implicitly believing that there was not
a moment to lose, that the wind had that instant
chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we
were away on a voyage round the world. Get
all sail upon her! With a will, my lads! Lay
out upon the main-yard there! Look alive at
the weather earring! Cheery, my boys! Let
go the sheet now! Stand by at the braces,
you! With a will, aloft there! Belay, starboard
watch! Fifer! Come aft, fifer, and give
'em a tune! Forthwith springs up fifer, fife in
hand---smallest boy ever seen---big lump on
temple, having lately fallen down on a paving-stone---
gives 'em a tune with all his might and
main. 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 observed the Skipper
overboard, but forebore to mention it, as he
seemed in nowise disconcerted by the accident.
Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as
an amphibious creature, for he was so perpetually
plunging overboard to look up at the
hands aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of
the ocean than on deck. His pride in his crew
on those occasions was delightful, and the conventional
unintelligibility of his orders in the
ears of uncommercial landlubbers and loblolly
boys, though they were always intelligible to the
crew, was hardly less pleasant. But we couldn't
expect to go on in this way for ever; dirty
weather came on, and then worse weather, and
when we least expected it we got into tremendous
difficulties. Screw loose in the chart, perhaps---
something certainly wrong somewhere---
but here we were with breakers ahead, my lads,
driving head on, slap on a lee shore! The Skipper
broached this terrific announcement in such
great agitation, that the small fifer, not 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 ensued, the Skipper and the
crew proved worthy of one another. The Skipper
got dreadfully hoarse, but otherwise was
master of the situation. The man at the wheel
did wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were
turned up to wear ship; and I observed the
fifer, when we were at our greatest extremity, to
refer to some document in his waistcoat pocket,
which I conceived to be his will. I think she
struck. I was not myself conscious of any collision,
but I saw the Skipper so very often
washed overboard and back again, that I could
only impute it to the beating of the ship. I am
not enough of a seaman to describe the man<oe>uvres
by which we were saved, but they made
the Skipper very hot (French polishing his
mahogany face) and the crew very nimble, and
succeeded to a marvel; for, within a few minutes
of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her
off, and were all a-tauto---which I felt very
grateful for: not that I knew what it was, but
that I perceived that we had not been all a-tauto
lately. Land now appeared on our weatherbow,
and we shaped our course for it, having
the wind abeam, and frequently changing the
man at the helm, in order that every man might
have his spell. We worked into harbour under
prosperous circumstances, and furled our sails,
and squared our yards, and made all ship-shape
and handsome, and so our voyage ended.
When I complimented the Skipper, at parting,
on his exertions and those of his gallant crew,
he informed me that the latter were provided
for the worst, all hands being taught to swim
and dive; and he added that the able seaman
at the main-topmast truck, especially, could
dive as deep as he could go high.

  The next adventure that befell me, in my
visit to the Short-Timers, was the sudden apparition
of a military band. I had been inspecting
the hammocks of the crew of the good
ship, when I saw with astonishment that several
musical instruments, brazen and of great size,
appeared to have suddenly developed two legs
each, and to be trotting about a yard. And
my astonishment was heightened when I observed
a large drum, that had previously been
leaning helpless against a wall, taking up a stout
position on four legs. Approaching this drum
and looking over it, I found two boys behind it
(it was too much for one), and then I found that
each of the brazen instruments had brought out
a boy, and was going to discourse sweet sounds.
The boys---not omitting the fifer, now playing a
new instrument---were dressed in neat uniform,
and stood up in a circle at their music stands,
like any other Military Band. They played a
march or two, and then we had Cheer, Boys,
Cheer, and then we had Yankee Doodle, and
we finished, as in loyal duty bound, with God
Save the Queen. The band's proficiency was
perfectly wonderful, and it was not at all wonderful
that the whole body corporate of Short-Timers
listened with faces of the liveliest interest
and pleasure.

  What happened next among the Short-Timers?
As if the band had blown me into a great class-room
out of their brazen tubes, in a great class-room
I found myself now, with the whole choral
force of Short-Timers singing the praises of a
summer's day to the harmonium, and my small
but highly-respected friend the fifer blazing away
vocally, as if he had been saving up his wind for
the last twelvemonth; also the whole crew of
the good ship Nameless swarming up and down
the scale as if they had never swarmed up and
down the rigging. This done, we threw our
whole power into God bless the Prince of Wales,
and blessed his Royal Highness to such an extent
that, for my own uncommercial part, I gasped
again when it was over. The moment this was
done, we formed, with surpassing freshness, into
hollow squares, and fell to work at oral lessons,
as if we never did, and had never thought of
doing, anything else.

  Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals
into which the Uncommercial Traveller would
have been betrayed but for a discreet reticence,
coupled with an air of absolute wisdom on the
part of that artful personage. Take the square
of five, multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three,
deduct eight from it, add four dozen to it, give
me the result in pence, and tell me how many
eggs I could get for it at three farthings apiece.
The problem is hardly stated, when a dozen
small boys pour out answers. Some wide, some
very nearly right, some worked as far as they go
with such accuracy as at once to show what link
of the chain has been dropped in the hurry.
For the moment, none are quite right; but behold
a labouring spirit beating the buttons on its
corporeal waistcoat in a process of internal calculation,
and knitting an accidental bump on its
corporeal forehead in a concentration of mental
arithmetic! It is my honourable friend (if he
will allow me to call him so) the fifer. With
right arm eagerly extended in token of being inspired
with an answer, and with right leg foremost,
the fifer solves the mystery: then recalls
both arm and leg, and with bump in ambush
awaits the next poser. Take the square of
three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add
fifty to it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by
two, double it, give me the result in pence, and
say how many halfpence. Wise as the serpent
is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach
to that instrument, whose right arm instantly
appears, and quenches this arithmetical
fire. Tell me something about Great Britain,
tell me something about its principal productions,
tell me something about its ports, tell me
something about its seas and rivers, tell me something
about coal, iron, cotton, timber, tin, and
turpentine. The hollow square bristles with extended
right arms; but ever faithful to fact is
the fifer, ever wise as the serpent is the performer
on that instrument ever prominently
buoyant and brilliant are all members of the
band. I observe the player of the cymbals to
dash at a sounding answer now and then rather
than not cut in at all; but I take that to be in
the way of his instrument. All these questions,
and many such, are put on the spur of the moment,
and by one who has never examined
these boys. The Uncommercial, invited to add
another, falteringly demands how many birthdays
a man born on the twenty-ninth of February
will have had on completing his fiftieth year?
A general perception of trap and pitfall instantly
arises, and the fifer is seen to retire behind the
corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving
special necessity for collecting himself and communing
with his mind. Meanwhile, the wisdom
of the serpent suggests that the man will have
had only one birthday in all that time, for how
can any man have more than one, seeing that
he is born once and dies once? The blushing
Uncommercial stands corrected, and amends
the formula. Pondering ensues, two or three
wrong answers are offered, and Cymbals strikes
up ``six!'' but doesn't know why. Then, modestly
emerging from his Academic Grove of
corduroys, appears the fifer, right arm extended,
right leg foremost, bump irradiated. ``Twelve,
and two over!''

  The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar
examination and very creditably too. Would
have done better, perhaps, with a little more
geniality on the part of their pupil teacher; for
a cold eye, my young friend, and a hard abrupt
manner, are not by any means the powerful
engines that your innocence supposes them to
be. Both girls and boys wrote excellently, from
copy and dictation; both could cook; both
could mend their own clothes; both could clean
up everything about them in an orderly and
skilful way, the girls having womanly household
knowledge superadded. Order and method
began in the songs of the Infant School, which
I visited likewise, and they were even in their
dwarf degree to be found in the Nursery, where
the uncommercial walking-stick was carried off
with acclamations, and where ``the Doctor''---a
medical gentleman of two, who took his degree
on the night when he was found at an apothecary's
door---did the honours of the establishment
with great urbanity and gaiety.

  These have long been excellent schools; long
before the days of the Short-Time. I first saw
them twelve or fifteen years ago. But, since
the introduction of the Short-Time system, it
has been proved here that eighteen hours a
week of book-learning are more profitable than
thirty-six, and that the pupils are far quicker
and brighter than of yore. The good influences
of music on the whole body of children have
likewise been surprisingly proved. Obviously
another of the immense advantages of the Short-Time
system to the cause of good education is
the great diminution of its cost, and of the
period of time over which it extends. The last
is a most important consideration, as poor
parents are always impatient to profit by their
children's labour.

  It will be objected: Firstly, that this is all
very well, but special local advantages and special
selection of children must be necessary to
such success. Secondly, that this is all very well,
but must be very expensive. Thirdly, that this
is all very well, but we have no proof of the
results, sir, no proof.

  On the first head of local advantages and special
selection. Would Limehouse Hole be
picked out for the site of a Children's Paradise?
Or would the legitimate and illegitimate pauper 
children of the 'long-shore population of such a
river-side district be regarded as unusually
favourable specimens to work with? Yet these
schools are at Limehouse, and are the Pauper
Schools of the Stepney Pauper Union.

  On the second head of expense. Would six-pence
a week be considered a very large cost
for the education of each pupil, including all
salaries of teachers and rations of teachers?
But, supposing the cost were not sixpence a
week, not fivepence? It is =fourpence-halfpenny.=

  On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof.
Is there any proof in the facts that Pupil
Teachers more in number, and more highly
qualified, have been produced here under the
Short-Time system than under the Long-Time
system? That the Short-Timers, in a writing
competition, beat the Long-Timers of a first-class
National School? That the sailor boys are
in such demand for merchant ships, that whereas,
before they were trained, <L->10 premium used to
be given with each boy---too often to some
greedy brute of a drunken skipper, who disappeared
before the term of apprenticeship was
out, if the ill-used boy didn't---captains of the
best character now take these boys more than
willingly, with no premium at all? That they
are also much esteemed in the Royal Navy
which they prefer, ``because everything is so
neat and clean and orderly?'' Or, is there any
proof in Naval captains writing, ``Your little fellows
are all that I can desire?'' Or, is there
any proof in such testimony as this? ``The
owner of a vessel called at the school, and said
that as his ship was going down Channel on her
last voyage, with one of the boys from the
school on board, the pilot said, `It would be as
well if the royal were lowered; I wish it were
down.' Without waiting for any orders, and
unobserved by the pilot, the lad, whom they
had taken on board from the school, instantly
mounted the mast and lowered the royal, and,
at the next glance of the pilot to the masthead,
he perceived that the sail had been let down.
He exclaimed, `Who's done that job?' The
owner, who was on board, said, `That was the
little fellow whom I put on board two days ago.'
The pilot immediately said, `Why, where could
he have been brought up?' 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 can meet? Or, in ninety-eight
of them having gone into Regimental Bands in
three years? Or, in twelve of them being in
the band of one regiment? Or, in the colonel
of that regiment writing, ``We want six more
boys; they are excellent lads?'' Or, in one of
the boys having risen to be band corporal in
the same regiment? Or, in employers of all
kinds chorusing, ``Give us drilled boys, for they
are prompt, obedient, and punctual?'' Other
proofs I have myself beheld with these uncommercial
eyes, though I do not regard myself as
having a right to relate in what social positions
they have seen respected men and women who
were once pauper children of the Stepney
Union.

  Into what admirable soldiers others of these
boys have the capabilities for being turned, I
need not point out. Many of them are always
ambitious of military service; and once upon a
time, when an old boy came back to see the old
place, a cavalry soldier all complete, _with his
spurs on,_ such a yearning broke out to get into
cavalry regiments and wear those sublime appendages,
that it was one of the greatest excitements
ever known in the school. The girls
make excellent domestic servants, and at certain
periods come back, a score or two at a
time, to see the old building, and to take tea
with the old teachers, and to hear the old band,
and see the old ship with her masts towering up
above the neighbouring roofs and chimneys. As
to the physical health of these schools, it is so
exceptionally remarkable (simply because the
sanitary regulations are as good as the other
educational arrangements), that when =Mr.
Tufnell,= the Inspector, first stated it in a report,
he was supposed, in spite of his high character,
to have been betrayed into some extraordinary
mistake or exaggeration. In the moral
health of these schools---where corporal punishment
is unknown---Truthfulness stands high.
When the ship was first erected, the boys were
forbidden to go aloft until the nets, which are
now always there, were stretched as a precaution
against accidents. Certain boys, in their eagerness,
disobeyed the injunction, got out of window
in the early daylight, and climbed to the 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 promise
nothing; you see what a dreadful thing has
happened; you know what a grave offence it is
that has led to such a consequence; I cannot
say what will be done with the offenders; but,
boys, you have been trained here, above all
things, to respect the truth. I want the truth.
Who are the delinquents?'' Instantly, the
whole number of boys concerned separated from
the rest, and stood out.

  Now, the head and heart of that gentleman
(it is needless to say, a good head and a good
heart) have been deeply interested in these
schools for many years, and are so still; and
the establishment is very fortunate in a most
admirable master, and, moreover, the schools of
the Stepney Union cannot have got to be what
they are without the Stepney Board of Guardians
having been earnest and humane men, strongly
imbued with a sense of their responsibility. But
what one set of men can do in this wise, another
set of men can do; and this is a noble example
to all other Bodies and Unions, and a noble
example to the State. Followed, and enlarged
upon by its enforcement on bad parents, it
would clear London streets of the most terrible
objects they smite the sight with---myriads of
little children who awfully reverse Our Saviour's
words, and are not of the Kingdom of Heaven,
but of the Kingdom of Hell.

  Clear the public streets of such shame, and
the public conscience of such reproach? Ah!
Almost prophetic, surely, the child's jingle:

	``When will that be,
	  Say the bells of Step-ney?''



	XXX.

	A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST.

  I had been looking, yesternight,
through the famous ``Dance of
Death,'' and to-day the grim old
woodcuts arose in my mind with
the new significance of a ghastly
monotony not to be found in the
original. The weird skeleton rattled
along the streets before me, and struck
fiercely; but it was never at the pains of assuming
a disguise. It played on no dulcimer here,
was crowned with no flowers, waved no plume,
minced in no flowing robe or train, lifted no
wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted
no gold. It was simply a bare, gaunt, famished
skeleton, slaying his way along.

  The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward
of London, and giving on the impure river, were
the scene of this uncompromising dance of
death, upon a drizzling November day. A
squalid maze of streets, courts, and alleys of
miserable houses let out in single rooms. A
wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger. A mud
desert, chiefly inhabited by a tribe from whom
employment has departed, or to whom it comes
but fitfully and rarely. They are not skilled
mechanics in anywise. They are but labourers,
---dock labourers, water-side labourers, coal-porters,
ballast-heavers, such-like hewers of wood
and drawers of water. But they have come into
existence, and they propagate their wretched
race.

  One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton
seemed to play off here. It had stuck election
bills on the walls, which the wind and rain had
deteriorated into suitable rags. It had even
summed up the state of the poll, in chalk, on
the shutters of one ruined house. It adjured
the free and independent starvers to vote for
Thisman and vote for Thatman; not to plump,
as they valued the state of parties and the
national prosperity (both of great importance to
them, I think); but, by returning Thisman and
Thatman, each nought without the other, to
compound a glorious and immortal whole.
Surely the skeleton is nowhere more cruelly
ironical in the original monkish idea.

  Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes
of Thisman and Thatman, and of the public
blessing called Party, for staying the degeneracy,
physical and moral, of many thousands (who
shall say how many?) of the English race; for
devising employment useful to the community
for those who want but to work and live; for
equalising rates, cultivating waste lands, facilitating
emigration, and, above all things, saving
and utilising the on-coming generations, and
thereby changing ever-growing national weakness
into strength: pondering in my mind, I
say, these hopeful exertions, I turned down a
narrow street to look into a house or two.

  It was a dark street, with a dead wall on one
side. Nearly all the outer doors of the houses
stood open. I took the first entry, and knocked
at a parlour door. Might I come in? I might,
if I plased, sur.

  The woman of the room (Irish) had picked
up some long strips of wood, about some wharf
or barge; and they had just now been thrust
into the otherwise empty grate to make two iron
pots boil. There was some fish in one, and
there were some potatoes in the other. The
flare of the burning wood enabled me to see a
table, and a broken chair or so, and some old
cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece.
It was not until I had spoken with the
woman a few minutes that I saw a horrible
brown heap on the floor in a corner, which, but
for previous experience in this dismal wise, I
might not have suspected to be ``the bed.''
There was something thrown upon it; and I
asked what that was.

  `` 'Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur;
and 'tis very bad she is, and 'tis very bad she's
been this long time, and 'tis better she'll never
be, and 'tis slape she does all day, and 'tis wake
she does all night, and 'tis the lead, sur.''

  ``The what?''

  ``The lead, sur. Sure 'tis the lead-mills,
where the women gets took on at eighteen-pence
a day, sur, when they makes application early
enough, and is lucky and wanted; and 'tis lead-pisoned
she is, sur, and some of them gets lead-pisoned
soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned
later, and some, but not many, niver;
and 'tis all according to the constitooshun, sur,
and some constitooshuns is strong, and some is
weak; and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned,
bad as can be, sur; and her brain is coming out
at her ear, and it hurts her dreadful; and that's
what it is, and niver no more, and niver no less,
sur.''

  The sick young woman moaning here, the
speaker bent over her, took a bandage from her
head, and threw open a back-door to let in the
daylight upon it, from the smallest and most
miserable back-yard I ever saw.

  ``That's what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned;
and it cooms from her night and day,
the poor, sick craythur; and the pain of it is
dreadful; and God he knows that my husband
has walked the sthreets these four days, being a
laborer, and is walking them now, and is ready
to work, and no work for him, and no fire and
no food but the bit in the pot, and no more
than ten shillings in a fortnight; God be good
to us! and it is poor we are and dark it is and
could it is indeed.''

  Knowing that I could compensate myself
thereafter for my self-denial, if I saw fit, I had
resolved that I would give nothing in the course
of these visits. I did this to try the people. I
may state at once that my closest observation
could not detect any indication whatever of an
expectation that I would give money: they
were grateful to be talked to about their miserable
affairs, and sympathy was plainly a comfort
to them; but they neither asked for money in
any case, nor showed the least trace of surprise or
disappointment or resentment at my giving none.

  The woman's married daughter had by this
time come down, from her room on the floor
above, to join in the conversation. She herself
had been to the lead-mills very early that
morning to be ``took on,'' but had not succeeded.
She had four children; and her husband,
also a water-side labourer, and then out
seeking work, seemed in no better case as to
finding it than her father. She was English,
and by nature of a buxom figure and cheerful.
Both in her poor dress and in her mother's there
was an effort to keep up some appearance of
neatness. She knew all about the sufferings of
the unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead-poisoning,
and how the symptoms came on, and
how they grew,---having often seen them. The
very smell, when you stood inside the door of
the works, was enough to knock you down, she
said; yet she was going back again to get ``took
on.'' What could she do? Better be ulcerated
and paralysed for eighteen-pence a day, while it
lasted, than see the children starve.

  A dark and squalid cupboard in this room,
touching the back-door and all manner of
offence, had been for some time the sleeping-place
of the sick young woman. But the nights
being now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets
``gone to the leaving shop,'' she lay all
night where she lay all day, and was lying then.
The woman of the room, her husband, this most
miserable patient, and two others, lay on the
one brown heap together for warmth.

  ``God bless you, sir, and thank you!'' were
the parting words from these people,---gratefully
spoken too,---with which I left this place.

  Some streets away, I tapped at another parlour
door on another ground-floor. Looking
in, I found a man, his wife, and four children,
sitting at a washing-stool by way of table, at
their dinner of bread and infused tea-leaves.
There was a very scanty cinderous fire in the
grate by which they sat; and there was a tent
bedstead in the room, with a bed upon it and a
coverlet. The man did not rise when I went
in, nor during my stay, but civilly inclined his
head on my pulling off my hat, and, in answer
to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question
or two, said, ``Certainly.'' There being a
window at each end of this room, back and
front, it might have been ventilated; but it was
shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was
very sickening.

  The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose
and stood at her husband's elbow; and he
glanced up at her as if for help. It soon appeared
that he was rather deaf. He was a slow,
simple fellow of about thirty.

  ``What was he by trade?''

  ``Gentleman asks what are you by trade,
John?''

  ``I am a boiler-maker;'' looking about him
with an exceedingly perplexed air, as if for a
boiler that had unaccountably vanished.

  ``He ain't a mechanic, you understand, sir,''
the wife put in: ``he's only a labourer.''

  ``Are you in work?''

  He looked up at his wife again. ``Gentleman
says are you in work, John?''

  ``In work!'' cried this forlorn boilermaker,
staring aghast at his wife, and then working his
vision's way very slowly round to me: ``Lord,
no!''

  ``Ah, he ain't indeed!'' said the poor woman,
shaking her head, as she looked at the four
children in succession, and then at him.

  ``Work!'' said the boiler-maker, still seeking
that evaporated boiler, first in my countenance,
then in the air, and then in the features of his
second son at his knee: ``I wish I _was_ in work!
I haven't had more than a day's work to do this
three weeks.''

  ``How have you lived?''

  A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the
face of the would-be boiler-maker, 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 boiler-making had gone to, or
where he supposed it had gone to; but he
added some resigned information on that head,
coupled with an expression of his belief that it
was never coming back.

  The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very
remarkable. She did slop-work; made pea-jackets.
She produced the pea-jacket then in
hand, and spread it out upon the bed,---the only
piece of furniture in the room on which to spread
it. She showed how much of it she made, and
how much was afterwards finished off by the
machine. According to her calculation at the
moment, deducting what her trimming cost her,
she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence-halfpenny,
and she could make one in something
less than two days.

  But, you see, it come to her through two hands,
and of course it didn't come through the second
hand for nothing. Why did it come through
the second hand at all? Why, this way. The
second hand took the risk of the given-out work,
you see. If she had money enough to pay the
security deposit,---call it two pound,---she could
get the work from the first hand, and so the
second would not have to be deducted for.
But, having no money at all, the second hand
come in and took its profit, and so the whole
worked down to tenpence-halfpenny. Having
explained all this with great intelligence, even
with some little pride, and without a whine or
murmur, she folded her work again, sat down
by her husband's side at the washing-stool, and
resumed her dinner of dry bread. Mean as the
meal was, on the bare board, with its old gallipots
for cups, and what not other sordid makeshifts;
shabby as the woman was in dress, and
toning 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 boiler-maker's
bark. When I left the room, the boiler-maker's
eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if his
last hope of ever again seeing that vanished
boiler lay in her direction.

  These people had never applied for parish
relief but once; and that was when the husband
met with a disabling accident at his work.
Not many doors from here, I went into a
room on the first floor. The woman apologised
for its being in ``an untidy mess.'' The day
was Saturday, and she was boiling the children's
clothes in a saucepan on the hearth. There
was nothing else into which she could have put
them. There was no crockery, or tinware, or
tub, or bucket. There was an old gallipot or
two, and there was a broken bottle or so, and
there were some broken boxes for seats. The
last small scraping of coals left was raked together
in a corner of the floor. There were
some rags in an open cupboard, also on the
floor. In a corner of the room was a crazy old
French 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 on the floor, which looked
like broken tools and a piece of stove-pipe. A
child stood looking on. On the box nearest to
the fire sat two younger children; one a delicate
and pretty little creature, whom the other sometimes
kissed.

  This woman, like the last, was woefully shabby,
and was degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion.
But her figure, and the ghost of a
certain vivacity about her, and the spectre of a
dimple in her cheek, carried my memory strangely
back to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre,
London, when Mrs. Fitzwilliam was the friend
of Victorine.

  ``May I ask you what your husband is?''

  ``He's a coal-porter, sir,''---with a glance and
a sigh towards the bed.

  ``Is he out of work?''

  ``Oh yes, sir! and work's at all times very,
very scanty with him; and now he's laid
up.''

  ``It's my legs,'' said the man upon the bed.
``I'll unroll 'em.'' And immediately began.

  ``Have you any older children?''

  ``I have a daughter that does the needlework,
and I have a son that does what he can. She's
at her work now, and he's trying for work.''

  ``Do they live here?''

  ``They sleep here. They can't afford to pay
more rent, and so they come here at night.
The rent is very hard upon us. It's rose upon
us, too, now,---sixpence a week,---on account of
these new changes in the law about the rates.
We are a week behind; the landlord's been
shaking and rattling at that door frightfully; he
says he'll turn us out. I don't know what's to
come of it.''

  The man upon the bed ruefully interposed,
``Here's my legs. The skin's broke, besides
the swelling. I have had a many kicks, working,
one way and another.''

  He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured
and misshapen) for awhile, and then,
appearing to remember that they were not
popular with his family, rolled them up again, as
if they were something in the nature of maps or
plans that were not wanted to be referred to, lay
hopelessly down on his back once more with
his fantail hat over his face, and stirred not.

  ``Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in
that cupboard?''

  ``Yes,'' replied the woman.

  ``With the children?''

  ``Yes. We have to get together for warmth.
We have little to cover us.''

  ``Have you nothing by you to eat but the
piece of bread I see there?''

  ``Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf
for our breakfast, with water. I don't know
what's to come of it.''

  ``Have you no prospect of improvement?''

  ``If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he'll
bring it home. Then we shall have something
to eat to-night, and may be able to do something
towards the rent. If not, I don't know
what's to come of it.''

  ``This is a sad state of things.''

  ``Yes, sir; it's a hard, hard life. Take care
of the stairs as you go, sir,---they're broken,---
and good day, sir!''

  These people had a mortal dread of entering
the workhouse, and received no out-of-door
relief.

  In another room, in still another tenement, I
found a very decent woman with five children,---
the last a baby, and she herself a patient of the
parish doctor,---to whom, her husband being in
the hospital, the Union allowed, for the support
of herself and family, four shillings a week
and five loaves. I suppose when Thisman,
M.P., and Thatman, M.P., and the Public-blessing
Party, lay their heads together in
course of time, and come to an equalisation of
rating, she may go down to the dance of death
to the tune of sixpence more.

  I could enter no other houses for that one
while, for I could not bear the contemplation of
the children. Such heart as I had summoned
to sustain me against the miseries of the adults
failed me when I looked at the children. I saw
how young they were, how hungry, how serious
and still. I thought of them sick and dying in
those lairs. I think of them dead without
anguish; but to think of them so suffering and
so dying quite unmanned me.

  Down by the river's bank in Ratcliff, I was
turning upward by a side-street, therefore, to
regain the railway, when my eyes rested on the
inscription across the road, ``East London Children's
Hospital.'' I could scarcely have seen
an inscription better suited to my frame of
mind; and I went across, and went straight
in.

  I found the Children's Hospital established in
an old sail-loft or storehouse, of the roughest
nature, and on the simplest means. There were
trap-doors in the floors, where goods had been
hoisted up and down; heavy feet and heavy
weights had started every knot in the well-trodden
planking; inconvenient bulks and
beams and awkward staircases perplexed my
passage through the wards. But I found it
airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven-and-thirty
beds I saw but little beauty; for starvation in
the second or third generation takes a pinched
look: but I saw the sufferings both of infancy
and childhood tenderly assuaged; I heard the
little patients answering to pet playful names;
the light touch of a delicate lady laid bare the
wasted sticks of arms for me to pity; and the
claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined
themselves lovingly around her wedding-ring.

  One baby mite there was as pretty as any of
Raphael's angels. The tiny head was bandaged
for water on the brain; and it was suffering
with acute bronchitis too, and made from time
to time a plaintive, though not impatient or
complaining, little sound. The smooth curve
of the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its
condensation of infantine beauty, and the large
bright eyes were most lovely. It happened, as
I stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes
rested upon mine with that wistful expression of
wondering thoughtfulness which we all know
sometimes in very little children. They remained
fixed on mine, and never turned from.
me while I stood there. When the utterance
of that plaintive sound shook the little form,
the gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as
though the child implored me to tell the story
of the little hospital in which it was sheltered to
any gentle heart I could address. Laying my
world-worn hand upon the little unmarked
clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent
promise that I would do so.

  A gentleman and lady, a young husband and
wife, have bought and fitted up this building,
for its present noble use, and have quietly
settled themselves in it as its medical officers,
and directors. Both have had considerable
practical experience of medicine and surgery;
he as house surgeon of a great London Hospital;
she as a very earnest student, tested by
severe examination, and also as a nurse of the
sick poor during the prevalence of cholera.
With every qualification to lure them away,
with youth and accomplishments and tastes and
habits that can have no response in any breast
near them, close begirt by every repulsive circumstance
inseparable from such a neighbourhood,
there they dwell. They live in the hospital
itself, and their rooms are on its first floor.
Sitting at their dinner-table, they could hear the
cry of one of the children in pain. The lady's
piano, drawing materials, books, and other such
evidences of refinement, are as much a part of
the rough place as the iron bedsteads of the
little patients. They are put to shifts for room,
like passengers on board ship. The dispenser
of medicines (attracted to them not by self-interest,
but by their own magnetism and that
of their cause) sleeps in a recess in the dining-room,
and has his washing apparatus in the
sideboard.

  Their contented manner of making the best
of the things around them I found so pleasantly
inseparable from their usefulness! Their
pride in this partition that we put up ourselves,
or in that partition that we took down, or in
that other partition that we moved, or in the
stove that was given us for the waiting-room, or
in our nightly conversion of the little consulting-room
into a smoking-room! Their admiration
of the situation, if we could only get rid of its
one objectionable incident, the coal-yard at the
back! ``Our hospital carriage, presented by a
friend, and very useful.'' That was my presentation
to a perambulator, for which a coach-house
had been discovered in a corner down-stairs,
just large enough to hold it. Coloured prints,
in all stages of preparation for being added
to those already decorating the wards, were
plentiful; a charming wooden phenomenon of
a bird, with an impossible top-knot, who ducked
his head when you set a counter-weight going,
had been inaugurated as a public statue that
very morning; and trotting about among the
beds, on familiar terms with all the patients,
was a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles.
This comical dog (quite a tonic in himself) was
found characteristically starving at the door of
the institution, and was taken in and fed, and
has lived here ever since. An admirer of his
mental endowments has presented him with a
collar bearing the legend, ``Judge not Poodles
by external appearances.'' He was merrily
wagging his tail on a boy's pillow when he
made this modest appeal to me.

  When this hospital was first opened, in
January of the present year, the people could
not possibly conceive but that somebody paid
for the services rendered there; and were disposed
to claim them as a right, and to find fault
if out of temper. They soon came to understand
the case better, and have much increased
in gratitude. The mothers of the patients avail
themselves very freely of the visiting rules; the
fathers often on Sundays. There is an unreasonable
(but still, I think, touching and intelligible)
tendency in the parents to take a
child away to its wretched home, if on the point
of death. One boy who had been thus carried
off on a rainy night, when in a violent state of
inflammation, and who had been afterwards
brought back, had been recovered with exceeding
difficulty; but he was a jolly boy, with a
specially strong interest in his dinner, when I
saw him.

  Insufficient food and unwholesome living are
the main causes of disease among these small
patients. So nourishment, cleanliness, and ventilation
are the main remedies. Discharged
patients are looked after, and invited to come
and dine now and then; so are certain famishing
creatures who were never patients. Both
the lady and the gentleman are well acquainted,
not only with the histories of the patients and
their families, but with the characters and circumstances
of great numbers of their neighbours:
of these they keep a register. It is their
common experience that people, sinking down
by inches into deeper and deeper poverty, will
conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto the
very last extremity.

  The nurses of this hospital are all young---
ranging, say, from nineteen to four-and-twenty.
They have even within these narrow limits what
many well-endowed hospitals would not give
them, a comfortable room of their own in which
to take their meals. It is a beautiful truth, that
interest in the children, and sympathy with their
sorrows, bind these young women to their places
far more strongly than any other consideration
could. The best skilled of the nurses came
originally from a kindred neighbourhood, almost
as poor; and she knew how much the work
was needed. She is a fair dressmaker. The
hospital cannot pay her as many pounds in the
year as there are months in it; and one day the
lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her about
her improving her prospects, and following her
trade. No, she said: she could never be so
useful or so happy elsewhere any more: she
must stay among the children. And she stays.
One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing
a baby boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped
to speak to her charge---a common, bullet-headed,
frowning charge enough, laying hold of
his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring
very solemnly out of a blanket. The melting
of the pleasant face into delighted smiles, as
this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick,
and laughed at me, was almost worth my previous
pain.

  An affecting play was acted in Paris years
ago, called ``The Children's Doctor.'' As I
parted from my children's Doctor now in question,
I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose
buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face,
in the flow of his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in
the very turn of his moustache, the exact realisation
of the Paris artist's ideal as it was presented
on the stage. But no romancer that I
know of has had the boldness to prefigure the life
and home of this young husband and young wife
in the Children's Hospital in the East of London.

  I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney
railway station to the terminus at Fenchurch
Street. Any one who will reverse that route
may retrace my steps.


	XXXI.

	ABOARD SHIP.

  My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for
the firm of Human Interest Brothers
have not slackened since I last reported of them,
but have kept me continually on the move. I
remain in the same idle employment. I never
solicit an order, I never get any commission, I
am the rolling stone that gathers no moss,---
unless any should by chance be found among
these samples.

  Some half a year ago, I found myself in my
idlest, dreamiest, and least accountable condition
altogether, on board ship, in the harbour
of the city of New York, in the United States
of America. Of all the good ships afloat, mine
was the good steamship =Russia,= Capt. Cook,
Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. What more
could I wish for?

  I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous
passage. My salad days, when I was green of
visage and sea-sick, being gone with better
things (and no worse), no coming event cast its
shadow before.

  I might, but a few moments previously, have
imitated Sterne, and said, `` `And yet, methinks,
Eugenius,'---laying my forefinger wistfully on
his coat-sleeve, thus,---`and yet, methinks,
Eugenius, 'tis but sorry work to part with thee,
for what fresh fields, . . . my dear Eugenius,
. . . can be fresher than thou art, and in what
pastures new shall I find Eliza, or call her,
Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie?' ''---I say I might
have done this; but Eugenius was gone, and I
hadn't done it.

  I was resting on a sky-light on the hurricane
deck, watching the working of the ship very
slowly about, that she might head for England.
It was high noon on a most brilliant day in
April, and the beautiful bay was glorious and
glowing. Full many a time, on shore there, had
I seen the snow come down, down, down (itself
like down), until it lay deep in all the ways of
men, and particularly, as it seemed, in my way,
for I had not gone dry-shod many hours for
months. Within two or three days last past had
I watched the feathery fall setting in with the
ardour of a new idea, instead of dragging at
the skirts of a worn-out winter, and permitting
glimpses of a fresh young spring. But a bright
sun and a clear sky had melted the snow in
the great crucible of nature; and it had been
poured out again that morning over sea and land,
transformed into myriads of gold and silver
sparkles.

  The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something
of the old Mexican passion for flowers
may have gradually passed into North America,
where flowers are luxuriously grown and tastefully
combined in the richest profusion; but, be
that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers
had come on board, that the small officer's
cabin on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed over
into the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other
flowers that it couldn't hold made a garden of
the unoccupied tables in the passengers' saloon.
These delicious scents of the shore, mingling
with the fresh airs of the sea, made the atmosphere
a dreamy, an enchanting one. And so,
with the watch aloft setting all the sails, and
with the screw below revolving at a mighty rate,
and occasionally giving the ship an angry shake
for resisting, I fell into my idlest ways, and lost
myself.

  As, for instance, whether it was I lying there,
or some other entity even more mysterious, was
a matter I was far too lazy to look into. What
did it signify to me if it were I? or to the more
mysterious entity, if it were he? Equally as to
the remembrances that drowsily floated by me,
or by him, why ask when or where the things
happened? Was it not enough that they befell
at some time, somewhere?

  There was that assisting at the church service
on board another steamship, one Sunday, in a
stiff breeze. Perhaps on the passage out. No
matter. Pleasant to hear the ship's bells go as
like church-bells as they could; pleasant to see
the watch off duty mustered and come in: best
hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and faces,
smoothed heads. But then arose a set of circumstances
so rampantly comical, that no check
which the gravest intentions could put upon
them would hold them in hand. Thus the
scene. Some seventy passengers assembled at
the saloon tables. Prayer-books on tables.
Ship rolling heavily. Pause. No minister.
Rumour has related that a modest young clergyman
on board has responded to the captain's
request that he will officiate. Pause again, and
very heavy rolling.

  Closed double doors suddenly burst open,
and two strong stewards skate in, supporting
minister between them. General appearance as
of somebody picked up drunk and incapable,
and under conveyance to station-house. Stoppage,
pause, and particularly heavy rolling.
Stewards watch their opportunity, and balance
themselves, but cannot balance minister; who,
struggling with a drooping head and a backward
tendency, seems determined to return below,
while they are as determined that he shall be
got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon. Desk
portable, sliding away down a long table, and
aiming itself at the breasts of various members
of the congregation. Here the double doors,
which have been carefully closed by other
stewards, fly open again, and worldly passenger
tumbles in, seemingly with pale-ale designs:
who, seeking friend, says, ``Joe!'' Perceiving
incongruity, says, ``Hullo! Beg yer pardon!''
and tumbles out again. All this time the congregation
have been breaking up into sects,---
as the manner of congregations often is,---each
sect sliding away by itself, and all pounding the
weakest sect which slid first into the corner.
Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every
corner, and violent rolling. Stewards at length
make a dash; conduct minister to the mast in
the centre of the saloon, which he embraces
with both arms; skate out; and leave him in
that condition to arrange affairs with flock.

  There was another Sunday, when an officer
of the ship read the service. It was quiet and
impressive, until we fell upon the dangerous and
perfectly unnecessary experiment of striking up
a hymn. After it was given out, we all rose,
but everybody left it to somebody else to begin.
Silence resulting, the officer (no singer himself)
rather reproachfully gave us the first line again,
upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentleman,
remarkable throughout the passage for his cheerful
politeness, gave a little stamp with his boot
(as if he were leading off a country dance), and
blithely warbled us into a show of joining. At
the end of the first verse we became, through
these tactics, so much refreshed and encouraged,
that none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would
submit to be left out of the second verse; while,
as to the third, we lifted up our voices in a sacred
howl that left it doubtful whether we were the
more boastful of the sentiments we united in
professing, or of professing them with a most
discordant defiance of time and tune.

  ``Lord bless us!'' thought I, when the fresh
remembrance of these things made me laugh
heartily alone in the dead water-gurgling waste
of the night, what time I was wedged into my
berth by a wooden bar, or I must have rolled
out of it, ``what errand was I then upon, and to
what Abyssinian point had public events then
marched? No matter as to me. And as to
them, if the wonderful popular rage for a plaything
(utterly confounding in its inscrutable unreason)
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 circumstances.
Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, presides the
boatswain's mate, small tin can in hand. Enter
the crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up
brood of Giant Despair, in contradistinction to
the band of youthful angel Hope. Some in
boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls,
some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very
few in jackets, most with sou'-wester hats, all
with something rough and rugged round the
throat; all dripping saltwater where they stand;
all pelted by weather, besmeared with grease,
and blackened by the sooty rigging.

  Each man's knife in its sheath in his girdle,
loosened for dinner. As the first man, with a
knowingly-kindled eye, watches the filling of the
poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug,
to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses
the contents into himself, and passes the empty
chalice, and passes on, so the second man, with an
anticipatory wipe of his mouth on sleeve or handkerchief,
bides his turn, and drinks and hands and
passes on, in whom, and in each as his turn
approaches, beams a knowingly-kindled eye, a
brighter temper, and a suddenly-awakened tendency
to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I
even observe that the man in charge of the ship's
lamps, who, in right of his office, has a double
allowance of poisoned chalices, seems thereby
vastly degraded, even though he empties the
chalices into himself, one after the other, much
as if he were delivering their contents at some
absorbent establishment in which he had no personal
interest. But vastly comforted I note
them all to be, on deck presently, even to the
circulation of redder blood in their cold blue
knuckles; and when I look up at them lying
out on the yards, and holding on for life among
the beating sails, I cannot for _my_ life see the
justice of visiting on them---or on me---the
drunken crimes of any number of criminals
arraigned at the heaviest of assizes.

  Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed
my eyes, and recalled life on board of one of
those mail packets, as I lay, part of that day, in
the Bay of New York, O! The regular life
began---mine always did, for I never got to sleep
afterwards---with the rigging of the pump while
it was yet dark, and washing down of decks.
Any enormous giant at a prodigious hydropathic
establishment, conscientiously undergoing the
water cure in all its departments, and extremely
particular about cleaning his teeth, would make
those noises. Swash, splash, scrub, rub, tooth-brush,
bubble, swash, splash, bubble, tooth-brush,
splash, splash, bubble, rub. Then the
day would break, and, descending from my
berth by a graceful ladder composed of half-opened
drawers beneath it, I would reopen my
outer dead-light and my inner sliding window
(closed by a watchman during the water-cure),
and would look out at the long-rolling, lead-coloured,
white-topped waves over which the
dawn, on a cold winter morning, cast a level
lonely glance, and through which the ship fought
her melancholy way at a terrific rate. And
now, lying down again, awaiting the season for
broiled ham and tea, I would be compelled to
listen to the voice of conscience,---the screw.

  It might be, in some cases, no more than the
voice of stomach; but I called it in my fancy
by the higher name. Because it seemed to me
that we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring
to stifle the voice. Because it was under
everybody's pillow, everybody's plate, everybody's
camp-stool, everybody's book, everybody's
occupation. Because we pretended not
to hear it, especially at meal-times, evening
whist, and morning conversation on deck; but
it was always among us in an under monotone,
not to be drowned in pea-soup, not to be
shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by books,
not to be knitted into any pattern, not to be
walked away from. It was smoked in the
weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail;
it was conveyed on deck at noon with
limp ladies, who lay there in their wrappers
until the stars shone; it waited at table with
the stewards; nobody could put it out with the
lights. It was considered (as on shore) ill bred
to acknowledge the voice of conscience. It
was not polite to mention it. One squally day
an amiable gentleman in love gave much offence
to a surrounding circle, including the object of
his attachment, by saying of it, after it had
goaded him over two easy-chairs and a sky-light,
``Screw!''

  Sometimes it would appear subdued. In
fleeting moments, when bubbles of champagne
pervaded the nose, or when there was ``hot
pot'' in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we
had had regularly every day was described in
that official document by a new name,---under
such excitements, one would almost believe it
hushed. The ceremony of washing plates on
deck, performed after every meal by a circle as
of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a
prize, would keep it down. Hauling the reel,
taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four
hours' run, altering the ship's time by the meridian,
casting the waste food overboard, and attracting
the eager gulls that followed in our
wake,---these events would suppress it for
awhile. But, the instant any break or pause
took place in any such diversion, the voice
would be at it again, importuning us to the last
extent. A newly-married young pair, who
walked the deck affectionately some twenty
miles per day, would, in the full flush of their
exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and
stand trembling, but otherwise immovable, under
its reproaches.

  When this terrible monitor was most severe
with us was when the time approached for our
retiring to our dens for the night; when the
lighted candles in the saloon grew fewer and
fewer; when the deserted glasses with spoons in
them grew more and more numerous; when
waifs of toasted cheese, and strays of sardines
fried in batter, slid languidly to and fro in the
table-racks; when the man who always read had
shut up his book, and blown out his candle;
when the man who always talked had ceased
from troubling; when the man who was always
medically reported as going to have delirium
tremens had put it off till to-morrow; when the
man who every night devoted himself to a midnight
smoke on deck two hours in length, and
who every night was in bed within ten minutes
afterwards, was buttoning himself up in his third
coat for his hardy vigil: for then, as we fell off
one by one, and, entering our several hutches,
came into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water
and Windsor soap, the voice would shake us to
the centre. Woe to us when we sat down on
our sofa, watching the swinging candle for ever
trying and re-trying to stand upon his head! or
our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we
appeared in our gymnastic days by sustaining
itself horizontally from the wall, in emulation of
the lighter and more facile towels! Then would
the voice especially claim us for its prey, and
rend us all to pieces.

  Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind
rising, the voice grows angrier and deeper.
Under the mattress and under the pillow, under
the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the
ship and under the sea, seeming to rise from the
foundations under the earth with every scoop of
the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so?),
always the voice. Vain to deny its existence in
the night season; impossible to be hard of
hearing; screw, screw, screw! Sometimes it
lifts out of the water and revolves with a whirr,
like a ferocious firework,---except that it never
expends itself, but is always ready to go off
again; sometimes it seems to be in anguish and
shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified by
its last plunge, and has a fit, which causes it to
struggle, quiver, and for an instant stop. And
now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so
fiercely screwed through time and space, day and
night, fair weather and foul, _can_ roll.

  Did she ever take a roll before like that last?
Did she ever take a roll before like this worse
one that is coming now? Here is the partition
at my ear down in the deep on the lee side.
Are we ever coming up again together? I
think not; the partition and I are so long about
it that I really do believe we have overdone it
this time. Heavens, what a scoop! What a
deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long
scoop! Will it ever end, and can we bear the
heavy mass of water we have taken on board,
and which has let loose all the table furniture in
the officers' mess, and has beaten open the door
of the little passage between the purser and me,
and is swashing about even there and even
here? The purser snores reassuringly, and the
ship's bells striking, I hear the cheerful ``All's
well!'' of the watch musically given back the
length of the deck, as the lately-diving partition,
now high in air, tries (unsoftened by what we
have gone through together) to force me out of
bed and berth.

  ``All's well!'' Comforting to know, though
surely all might be better. Put aside the rolling
and the rush of water, and think of darting
through such darkness with such velocity.
Think of any other similar object coming in the
opposite direction!

  Whether there may be an attraction in two
such moving bodies out at sea, which may help
accident to bring them into collision? Thoughts,
too, arise (the voice never silent all the while,
but marvellously suggestive) of the gulf below;
of the strange unfruitful mountain ranges and
deep valleys over which we are passing; of
monstrous fish midway; of the ship's suddenly
altering her course on her own account,
and with a wild plunge settling down, and
making _that_ voyage with a crew of dead discoverers.
Now, too, one recalls an almost universal
tendency on the part of passengers to
stumble, at some time or other in the day, on
the topic of a certain large steamer making this
same run, which was lost at sea, and never heard
of more. Everybody has seemed under a spell,
compelling approach to the threshold of the
grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence
of never having been near it. The boatswain's
whistle sounds! A change in the wind,
hoarse orders issuing, and the watch very busy.
Sails come crashing home overhead, ropes (that
seem all knot) ditto; everyman engaged appears
to have twenty feet, with twenty times the average
amount of stamping power in each. Gradually
the noise slackens, the hoarse cries die
away, the boatswain's whistle softens into the
soothing and contented notes, which rather
reluctantly admit that the job is done for the
time, and the voice sets in again.

  Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill
and down, and swinging and swaying, until consciousness
revives of atmospherical Windsor
soap and bilge-water, and the voice announces
that the giant has come for the water cure,
again.

  Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay,
part of that day, in the Bay of New York, O!
Also as we passed clear of the Narrows, and got
out to sea; also in many an idle hour at sea in
sunny weather! At length the observations
and computations showed that we should make
the coast of Ireland to-night. So I stood watch
on deck all night to-night, to see how we made
the coast of Ireland.

  Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent.
Great way on the ship, and double
look-out kept. Vigilant captain on the bridge,
vigilant first officer looking over the port side,
vigilant second officer standing by the quarter-master
at the compass, vigilant third officer
posted at the stern-rail with a lantern. No
passengers on the quiet decks, but expectation
everywhere nevertheless. The two men at the
wheel very steady, very serious, and very
prompt to answer orders. An order issued
sharply now and then, and echoed back; otherwise
the night drags slowly, silently, and with
no change.

  All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in
the morning, a vague movement of relief from a
long strain expresses itself in all hands; the
third officer's lantern twinkles, 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 bluelight
burnt. All eyes watch the light again. At
last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it
and, even as that small streak in the darkness
dies away, we are telegraphed to Queenstown,
Liverpool, and London, and back again under
the ocean to America.

  Then up come the half-dozen passengers who
are going ashore at Queenstown, and up comes
the mail agent in charge of the bags, and up
come the men who are to carry the bags into
the mail tender that will come off for them out
of the harbour. Lamps and lanterns gleam here
and there about the decks, and impeding bulks
are knocked away with handspikes; and the
port-side bulwark, barren but a moment ago,
bursts into a crop of heads of seamen, stewards,
and engineers.

  The light begins to be gained upon, begins to
be alongside, begins to be left astern. More
rockets, and, between us and the land, steams
beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris,
for New York, outward bound. We observe
with complacency that the wind is dead against
her (it being _with_ us), and that she rolls and
pitches. (The sickest passenger on board is the
most delighted by this circumstance.) Time
rushes by as we rush on; and now we see the
light in Queenstown Harbour, and now the
lights of the mail tender coming out to us.
What vagaries the mail tender performs on the
way, in every point of the compass, especially
in those where she has no business, and why she
performs them, Heaven only knows! At length
she is seen plunging within a cable's length of
our port broadside, and is being roared at
through our speaking trumpets to do this thing,
and not to do that, and to stand by the other,
as if she were a very demented tender indeed.
Then, we slackening amidst a deafening roar
of steam, this much-abused tender is made
fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readiness
carry the bags aboard, and return for more,
bending under their burdens, and looking just
like the pasteboard figures of the miller and his
men in the theatre of our boyhood, and comporting
themselves almost as unsteadily. All the
while the unfortunate tender plunges high and
low, and is roared at. Then the Queenstown
passengers are put on board of her, with infinite
plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved
up on the sea to that surprising extent that she
looks within an ace of washing aboard of us,
high and dry. Roared at with contumely to the
last, this wretched tender is at length let go,
with a final plunge of great ignominy, and falls
spinning into our wake.

  The voice of conscience resumed its dominion
as the day climbed up the sky, and kept by all
of us passengers into port; kept by us as we
passed other lighthouses, and dangerous islands
off the coast, where some of the officers, with
whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in
sailing ships in fogs (and of which, by that token,
they seem to have quite an affectionate remembrance),
and past the Welsh coast, and past the
Cheshire coast, and past everything and everywhere
lying between our ship and her own
special dock in the Mersey. Off which, at last,
at nine of the clock, on a fair evening early in
May, we stopped, and the voice ceased. A
very curious sensation, not unlike having my
own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence;
and it was with a no less curious sensation that
I went over the side of the good Cunard ship
Russia (whom prosperity attend through all her
voyages!) and surveyed the outer hull of the
gracious monster that the voice had inhabited.
So, perhaps, shall we all, in the spirit, one day
survey the frame that held the busier voice from
which my vagrant fancy derived this similitude.


	XXXII.

	A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR.

  It fell out, on a day in this last autumn,
that I had to go down from London to a
place of seaside resort, on an hour's business,
accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch.
Let the place of seaside resort be, for the
nonce, called Namelesston.

  I had been loitering about Paris in very
hot weather, pleasantly breakfasting in the
open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or
the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air
in the Elysian Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar
and lemonade in the open air on the Italian
Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight.
Bullfinch---an excellent man of business
---had summoned me back across the Channel,
to transact this said hour's business at Namelesston;
and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and I
were in a railway carriage together on our way
to Namelesston, each with his return ticket in
his waistcoat pocket.

  Says Bullfinch, ``I have a proposal to make.
Let us dine at the Temeraire.''

  I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the
Temeraire? inasmuch as I had not been rated
on the books of the Temeraire for many years.

  Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility
of recommending the Temeraire, but, on the
whole, was rather sanguine about it. He
``seemed to remember,'' Bullfinch said, that he
had dined well there. A plain dinner, but good.
Certainly not like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch
obviously became the prey of want of confidence),
but of its kind very fair.

  I appeal to Bullfinch's intimate knowledge of
my wants and ways to decide whether I was
usually ready to be pleased with any dinner, or
---for the matter of that---with anything that was
fair of its kind, and really what it claimed to be.
Bullfinch doing me the honour to respond in the
affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an able
trencherman on board the Temeraire.

  ``Now, our plan shall be this,'' says Bullfinch
with his forefinger at his nose. ``As soon as we
get to Namelesston, we'll drive straight to the
Temeraire, and order a little dinner in an hour.
And, as we shall not have more than enough
time in which to dispose of it comfortably, what
do you say to giving the house the best opportunities
of serving it hot and quickly by dining
in the coffee-room?''

  What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch
(who is by nature of a hopeful constitution) then
began to babble of green geese. But I checked
him in that Falstaffian vein, urging considerations
of time and cookery.

  In due sequence of events we drove up to the
Temeraire, and alighted. A youth in livery received
us on the door-step. ``Looks well,''
said Bullfinch confidentially. And then aloud,
``Coffee-room!''

  The youth in livery (now perceived to be
mouldy) conducted us to the desired haven, and
was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the waiter at
once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an
hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for the
waiter, until, the waiter continuing to wait in
some unknown and invisible sphere of action,
we rang for the waiter; which ring produced the
waiter, who announced himself as not the waiter
who ought to wait upon us, and who didn't wait
a moment longer.

  So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door,
and melodiously pitching his voice into a bar
where two young ladies were keeping the books
of the Temeraire, apologetically explained that
we wished to order a little dinner in an hour,
and that we were debarred from the execution
of our inoffensive purpose by consignment to
solitude.

  Hereupon one of the young ladies rang a bell,
which reproduced---at the bar this time---the
waiter who was not the waiter who ought to wait
upon us; that, extraordinary man, whose life
seemed consumed in waiting upon people to
that he wouldn't wait upon them, repeated
his former protest with great indignation, and
retired.

  Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about
to say to me, ``This won't do,'' when the waiter
who ought to wait upon us left off keeping us
waiting at last. ``Waiter,'' said Bullfinch piteously,
``we have been a long time waiting.''
The waiter who ought to wait upon us laid the
blame upon the waiter who ought not to wait
upon us, and said it was all that waiter's fault.

  ``We wish,'' said Bullfinch, much depressed,
``to order a little dinner in an hour. What can
we have?''

  ``What would you like to have, gentlemen?''

  Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech
and action, and with a forlorn old fly-blown bill
of fare in his hand which the waiter had given
him, and which was a sort of general manuscript
index to any cookery-book you please, moved
the previous question.

  We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry,
and roast duck. Agreed. At this table, by this
window. Punctually in an hour.

  I had been feigning to look out of this window;
but I had been taking note of the crumbs on all
the tables, the dirty table-cloths, the stuffy, soupy,
airless atmosphere, the stale leavings everywhere
about, the deep gloom of the waiter who ought
to wait upon us, and the stomachache with which
a lonely traveller at a distant table in a corner
was too evidently afflicted. I now pointed out
to Bullfinch the alarming circumstance that this
traveller had _dined._ We hurriedly debated
whether, without infringement of good-breeding,
we could ask him to disclose if he had partaken
of mock turtle, sole, curry, or roast duck? We
decided that the thing could not be politely
done, and we had set our own stomachs on
a cast, and they must stand the hazard of the
die.

  I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be
true; I am much of the same mind as to the
subtler expressions of the hand; I hold physiognomy
to be infallible; though all these sciences
demand rare qualities in the student. But I also
hold that there is no more certain index to personal
character than the condition of a set of
casters is to the character of any hotel. Knowing,
and having often tested this theory of mine,
Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when,
laying aside any remaining veil of disguise, I
held up before him in succession the cloudy
oil and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the
dirty salt, the obscene dregs of soy, and the
anchovy sauce in a flannel waistcoat of decomposition.

  We went out to transact our business. So inspiriting
was the relief of passing into the clean
and windy streets of Namelesston from the
heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee-room of
the Temeraire, that hope began to revive within
us. We began to consider that perhaps the
lonely traveller had taken physic, or done something
injudicious to bring his complaint on.
Bullfinch remarked that he thought the waiter
who ought to wait upon us had brightened a
little when suggesting curry; and, although I
knew him to have been at that moment the
express image of despair, I allowed myself to
become elevated in spirits. As we walked by
the softly-lapping sea, all the notabilities of
Namelesston, who are for ever going up
and down with the changelessness of the tides,
passed to and fro in procession. Pretty girls
on horseback, and with detested riding-masters;
pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in hats,---
spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring at the
opposite or weaker sex. The Stock Exchange
was strongly represented, Jerusalem was strongly
represented, the bores of the prosier London
clubs were strongly represented. Fortune-hunters
of all denominations were there, from
hirsute insolvency in a curricle, to closely-buttoned
swindlery in doubtful boots, on the
sharp look-out for any likely young gentleman
disposed to play a game at billiards round the
Corner. Masters of languages, their lessons
finished for the day, were going to their homes
out of sight of the sea; mistresses of accomplishments,
carrying small portfolios, likewise
tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils,
two and two, went languidly along the beach,
surveying the face of the waters as if waiting for
some Ark to come and take them off. Spectres
of the George the Fourth days flitted unsteadily
among the crowd, bearing the outward semblance
of ancient dandies, of every one of whom it
might be said, not that he had one leg in the
grave, or both legs, but that he was steeped in
grave to the summit of his high shirt collar, and
had nothing real about him but his bones.
Alone stationary in the midst of all the movements,
the Namelesston boatmen leaned against
the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea,
or looked at the moored fishing-boats and at
nothing. Such is the unchanging manner of
life with this nursery of our hardy seamen; and
very dry nurses they are, and always wanting
something to drink. The only two nautical personages
detached from the railing were the two
fortunate possessors of the celebrated monstrous
unknown barking fish, just caught (frequently
just caught off Namelesston), who carried him
about in a hamper, and pressed the scientific to
look in at the lid.

  The sands of the hour had all run out when
we got back to the Temeraire. Says Bullfinch,
then, to the youth in livery, with boldness,
``Lavatory!''

  When we arrived at the family vault with a
sky-light, which the youth in livery presented as
the institution sought, we had already whisked
off our cravats and coats; but, finding ourselves
in the presence of an evil smell, and no linen
but two crumpled towels newly damp from the
countenances of two somebody elses, we put on
our cravats and coats again, and fled unwashed
to the coffee-room.

  There the waiter who ought to wait upon us
had set forth our knives and forks and glasses,
on the cloth whose dirty acquaintance we had
already had the pleasure of making, and which
we were pleased to recognise by the familiar
expression of its stains. And now there occurred
the truly surprising phenomenon, that the waiter
who ought not to wait upon us swooped down
upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and vanished
with the same.

  Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following
this unaccountable figure ``out at the portal,''
like the ghost in Hamlet, when the waiter who
ought to wait upon us jostled against it, carrying
a tureen.

  ``Waiter!'' said a severe diner, lately finished,
perusing his bill fiercely through his eye-glass.
The waiter put down our tureen on a remote
side-table, and went to see what was amiss in
this new direction.

  ``This is not right, you know, waiter. Look
here! Here's yesterday's sherry, one-and-eightpence,
and here we are again two shillings. And
what does sixpence mean?''

  So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the
waiter protested that he didn't know what anything
meant. He wiped the perspiration from
his clammy brow, and said it was impossible to
do it,---not particularising what,---and the kitchen
was so far off.

  ``Take the bill to the bar and get it altered,''
said Mr. Indignation Cocker, so to call him.
The waiter took it, looked intensely at it,
didn't seem to like the idea of taking it to the
bar, and submitted, as a new light upon the
case, that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence.

  ``I tell you again,'' said Mr. Indignation
Cocker, ``here's yesterday's sherry---can't you
see it?---one-and-eightpence, and here we are
again two shillings. What do you make of one-and-eightpence
and two shillings?''

  Totally unable to make anything of one-and-eightpence
and two shillings, the waiter went
out to try if anybody else could; merely casting
a helpless backward glance at Bullfinch in acknowledgment
of his pathetic entreaties for our
soup-tureen. After a pause, during which Mr.
Indignation Cocker read a newspaper and
coughed defiant coughs, Bullfinch arose to get
the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and
brought it,---dropping Mr. Indignation Cocker's
altered bill on Mr. Indignation Cocker's table
as he came along.

  ``It's quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,''
murmured the waiter; ``and the kitchen is so
far off.''

  ``Well, you don't keep the house; it's not
your fault, we suppose. Bring some sherry.''

  ``Waiter!'' from Mr. Indignation Cocker,
with a new and burning sense of injury upon
him.

  The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry,
stopped short, and came back to see what was
wrong now.

  ``Will you look here? This is worse than
before.---_Do_ you understand? Here's yesterday's
sherry, one-and-eightpence, and here we
are again two shillings. And what the devil
does ninepence mean?''

  This new portent utterly confounded the
waiter. He wrung his napkin, and mutely appealed
to the ceiling,

  ``Waiter, fetch that sherry,'' says Bullfinch in
open wrath and revolt.

  ``I want to know,'' persisted Mr. Indignation
Cocker, ``the meaning of ninepence. I want to
know the meaning of sherry one-and-eightpence
yesterday, and of here we are again two shillings.
Send somebody.''

  The distracted waiter got out of the room on
pretext of sending somebody, and by that means
got our wine. But, the instant he appeared with
our decanter, Mr. Indignation Cocker descended
on him again.

  ``Waiter!''

  ``You will now have the goodness to attend
to our dinner, waiter,'' said Bullfinch sternly.

  ``I am very sorry, but it's quite impossible to
do it, gentlemen,'' pleaded the waiter; ``and the
kitchen---''

  ``Waiter!'' said Mr. Indignation Cocker.

  ``---Is,'' resumed the waiter, ``so far off,
that---''

  ``Waiter!'' persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker,
``send somebody.''

  We were not without our fears that the waiter
rushed out to hang himself; and we were much
relieved by his fetching somebody,---in graceful,
flowing skirts, and with a waist,---who very soon
settled Mr. Indignation Cocker's business.

  ``Oh!'' said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly
quenched by this apparition; ``I wished
to ask about this bill of mine, because it appears
to me that there's a little mistake here. Let me
show you. Here's yesterday's sherry one-and-eightpence,
and here we are again two shillings.
And how do you explain ninepence?''

  However, it was explained, in tones too soft
to be overheard. Mr. Cocker was heard to say
nothing more than ``Ah-h-h! Indeed; thank
you! Yes,'' and shortly afterwards went out, a
milder man.

  The lonely traveller with the stomachache
had all this time suffered severely, drawing up a
leg now and then, and sipping hot brandy-and-water
with grated ginger in it. When we tasted
our (very) mock-turtle soup, and were instantly
seized with symptoms of some disorder simulating
apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge
of nose and brain with lukewarm dish-water
holding in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments,
and (say) seventy-five per cent. of miscellaneous
kitchen-stuff rolled into balls, we
were inclined to trace his disorder to that source.
On the other hand, there was a silent anguish
upon him too strongly resembling the results
established within ourselves by the sherry, to be
discarded from alarmed consideration. Again,
we observed him, with terror, to be much overcome
by our sole's being aired in a temporary
retreat close to him, while the waiter went out
(as we conceived) to see his friends. And, when
the curry made its appearance, he suddenly
retired in great disorder.

  In fine, for the uneatable part of this little
dinner (as contradistinguished from the undrinkable)
we paid only seven shillings and six-pence
each. And Bullfinch and I agreed unanimously
that no such ill-served, ill-appointed,
ill-cooked, nasty little dinner could be got for
the money anywhere else under the sun. With
that comfort to our backs, we turned them on
the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire,
and resolved (in the Scotch dialect) to gang nae
mair to the flabby Temeraire.


	XXXIII.

	MR. BARLOW.

  A great reader of good fiction at an
unusually early age, it seems to me
as though I had been born under
the superintendence of the estimable
but terrific gentleman whose name
stands at the head of my present
reflections. The instructive monomaniac,
Mr. Barlow, will be remembered
as the tutor of Master Harry Sandford and
Master Tommy Merton. He knew everything,
and didactically improved all sorts of occasions,
from the consumption of a plate of cherries to
the contemplation of a starlight night. What
youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displayed
in the history of Sandford and Merton, by the
example of a certain awful Master Mash. This
young wretch wore buckles and powder, conducted
himself with insupportable levity at the
theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single-handed
(in which I think him less reprehensible,
as remotely reflecting my own character), and
was a frightful instance of the enervating effects
of luxury upon the human race.

  Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow,
to go down to posterity as childhood's experience
of a bore! Immortal Mr. Barlow, boring his
way through the verdant freshness of ages!

  My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow
is one of many counts. I will proceed to set
forth a few of the injuries he has done me.

  In the first place, he never made or took a
joke. This insensibility on Mr. Barlow's part
not only cast its own gloom over my boyhood,
but blighted even the sixpenny jest books of the
time; for groaning under a moral spell constraining
me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I
could not choose but ask myself in a whisper,
when tickled by a printed jest, ``What would _he_
think of it? What would _he_ see in it?'' The
point of the jest immediately became a sting,
and stung my conscience. For my mind's eye
saw him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its
shelf some dreary Greek book, and translating
at full length what some dismal sage said (and,
touched up afterwards, perhaps, for publication),
when he banished some unlucky joker from
Athens.

  The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all
other portions of my young life but himself, the
adamantine inadaptability of the man to my
favourite fancies and amusements, is the thing
for which I hate him most. What right had he
to bore his way into my Arabian Nights? Yet
he did. He was always hinting doubts of the
veracity of 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
metropolitan pantomime, I remember, were
alloyed by Mr. Barlow. Click click, ting ting,
bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, bang! I
recall the chilling air that ran across my frame
and cooled my hot delight as the thought
occurred to me, ``This would never do for Mr.
Barlow!'' After the curtain drew up, dreadful
doubts of Mr. Barlow's considering the costumes
of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being
sufficiently opaque obtruded themselves on my
enjoyment. In the clown I perceived two persons;
one a fascinating unaccountable creature
of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits, though
feeble in intellect, with flashes of brilliancy; the
other a pupil for Mr. Barlow. I thought how
Mr. Barlow would secretly rise early in the
morning, and butter the pavement for _him,_ and,
when he had brought him down, would look
severely out of his study window, and ask _him_
how he enjoyed the fun.

  I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the
pokers in the house, and singe him with the
whole collection, to bring him better acquainted
with the properties of incandescent iron, on
which he (Barlow) would fully expatiate. I
pictured Mr. Barlow's instituting a comparison
between the clown's conduct at his studies,---
drinking up the ink, licking his copy-book, and
using his head for blotting-paper,---and that of
the already-mentioned young prig of prigs,
Harry, sitting at the Barlovian feet, sneakingly
pretending to be in a rapture of youthful knowledge.
I thought how soon Mr. Barlow would
smooth the clown's hair down, instead of letting
it stand erect in three tall tufts; and how, after
a couple of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he
would keep his legs close together when he
walked, and would take his hands out of his big
loose pockets, and wouldn't have a jump left in
him.

  That I am particularly ignorant what most
things in the universe are made of, and how
they are made, is another of my charges against
Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon me of developing
into a Harry, and with a further dread
upon me of being Barlowed if I made inquiries,
by bringing down upon myself a cold shower-bath
of explanations and experiments, I forbore
enlightenment in my youth, and became, as
they say in melodramas, ``the wreck you now
behold.'' That I consorted with idlers and
dunces is another of the melancholy facts for
which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible. That
pragmatical prig, Harry, became so detestable
in my sight, that, he being reported studious in
the South, I would have fled idle to the extremest
North. Better to learn misconduct
from a Master Mash than science and statistics
from a Sandford! So I took the path which,
but for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden.
Thought I, with a shudder, ``Mr. Barlow is a
bore, with an immense constructive power of
making bores. His prize specimen is a bore.
He seeks to make a bore of me. That knowledge
is power I am not prepared to gainsay;
but, with Mr. Barlow, knowledge is power to
bore.'' Therefore I took refuge in the caves of
ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since,
and which are still my private address.

  But the weightiest charge of all my charges
against Mr. Barlow is, that he still walks the
earth in various disguises, seeking to make a
Tommy of me, even in my maturity. Irrepressible,
instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills
my life with pitfalls, and lies hiding at the
bottom to burst out upon me when I least
expect him.

  A few of these dismal experiences of mine
shall suffice.

  Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely
in the moving-panorama trade, and having on
various occasions identified him in the dark
with a long wand in his hand, holding forth in
his old way (made more appalling in this connection
by his sometimes cracking a piece of
Mr. Carlyle's own Dead-Sea fruit in mistake for
a joke), I systematically shun pictorial entertainment
on rollers. Similarly, I should demand
responsible bail and guaranty against the appearance
of Mr. Barlow, before committing
myself to attendance at any assemblage of my
fellow-creatures where a bottle of water and a
note-book were conspicuous objects; for, in
either of those associations, I should expressly
expect him. But such is the designing nature
of the man, that he steals in where no reasoning
precaution or provision could expect him. As
in the following case:---

  Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country
town. In this country town the Mississippi
Momuses, nine in number, were announced to
appear in the Town-hall, for the general delectation,
this last Christmas week. Knowing Mr.
Barlow to be unconnected with the Mississippi,
though holding republican opinions, and deeming
myself secure, I took a stall. My object
was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses in
what the bills described as their ``National
ballads, plantation break-downs, nigger part
songs, choice conundrums, sparkling repartees, 
&c.'' I found the nine dressed alike, in the.
black coat and trousers, white waistcoat, very
large shirt-front, very large shirt collar, and very
large white tie and wristbands, which constitute
the dress of the mass of the African race, and
which has been observed by travellers to prevail
over a vast number of degrees of latitude. All
the nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had
very red lips. At the extremities of the curve
they formed, seated in their chairs, were the
performers on the tambourine and bones. The
centre Momus, a black of melancholy aspect
(who inspired me with a vague uneasiness for
which I could not then account), performed on
a Mississippi instrument closely resembling what
was once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy.
The Momuses on either side of him had each
another instrument peculiar to the Father of
Waters, which may be likened to a stringed
weather-glass held upside down. There were
likewise a little flute and a violin. All went
well for awhile, and we had had several sparkling
repartees exchanged between the performers
on the tambourine and bones, when the black
of melancholy aspect, turning to the latter, and
addressing him in a deep and improving voice
as ``Bones, sir,'' delivered certain grave remarks
to him concerning the juveniles present, and
the season of the year; whereon I perceived
that I was in the presence of Mr. Barlow,
corked!

  Another night---and this was in London---I
attended the representation of a little comedy.
As the characters were lifelike (and consequently
not improving), and as they went upon their
several ways and designs without personally
addressing themselves to me, I felt rather confident
of coming through it without being regarded
as Tommy, the more so as we were
clearly getting close to the end. But I deceived
myself. All of a sudden, and apropos of nothing,
everybody concerned came to a check and halt,
advanced to the foot-lights in a general rally to
take dead aim at me, and brought me down
with a moral homily, in which I detected the
dread hand of Barlow.

  Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of
this hunter, that, on the very next night after
that, I was again entrapped, where no vestige of
a spring could have been apprehended by the
timidest. It was a burlesque that I saw performed;
an uncompromising burlesque, where
everybody concerned, but especially the ladies,
carried on at a very considerable rate indeed.
Most prominent and active among the corps of
performers was what I took to be (and she
really gave me very fair opportunities of coming
to a right conclusion) a young lady of a pretty
figure. She was dressed as a picturesque
young gentleman, whose pantaloons had been
cut off in their infancy; and she had very neat
knees and very neat satin boots. Immediately
after singing a slang song and dancing a slang
dance, this engaging figure approached the fatal
lamps, and, bending over them, delivered in a
thrilling voice a random eulogium on, and
exhortation to pursue, the virtues. ``Great
Heaven!'' was my exclamation; ``Barlow!''

  There is still another aspect in which Mr.
Barlow perpetually insists on my sustaining the
character of Tommy, which is more unendurable
yet, on account of its extreme aggressiveness.
For the purposes of a review or newspaper, he
will get up an abstruse subject with 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 discharged it upon me,
Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was
always in possession of it, and made nothing of
it,---that he imbibed it with mother's milk,---
and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most
abjectly behindhand in not having done the
same. I ask, Why is Tommy to be always the
foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr.
Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself a
week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy
backsliding in me not to have at my fingers'
ends, to-day! And yet Mr. Barlow systematically
carries it over me with a high hand, and
will tauntingly ask me, in his articles, whether
it is possible that I am not aware that every
school-boy knows that the fourteenth turning on
the left in the steppes of Russia will conduct to
such and such a wandering tribe? with other
disparaging questions of like nature. So, when
Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to any journal as
a volunteer correspondent (which I frequently
find him doing), he will previously have gotten
somebody to tell him some tremendous technicality,
and will write in the coolest manner,
``Now, sir, I may assume that every reader of
your columns, possessing average information
and intelligence, knows as well as I do that''---
say that the draught from the touchhole of a
cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion
in the nicest fractions to the draught from the
muzzle; or some equally familiar little fact.
But, whatever it is, be certain that it always
tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the
depression of his enforced and enslaved pupil.

  Mr. Barlow's knowledge of my own pursuits
I find to be so profound, that my own knowledge
of them becomes as nothing. Mr. Barlow
(disguised and bearing a feigned name, but
detected by me) has occasionally taught me, in
a sonorous voice, from end to end of a long
dinner-table, trifles that I took the liberty of
teaching him five-and-twenty years ago. My
closing article of impeachment against Mr.
Barlow is, that he goes out to breakfast, goes
out to dinner, goes out everywhere, high and
low, and that he =will= preach to me, and that I
=can't= get rid of him. He makes of me a
Promethean Tommy, bound; and he is the
vulture that gorges itself upon the liver of my
uninstructed mind.


	XXXIV.

	ON AN AMATEUR BEAT.

  It is one of my fancies, that even
my idlest walk must always have its
appointed destination. I set myself
a task before I leave my lodging
in Covent Garden on a street expedition,
and should no more think of
altering my route by the way, or turning
back and leaving a part of it unachieved,
than I should think of fraudulently violating
an agreement entered into with somebody
else. The other day, finding myself under this
kind of obligation to proceed to Limehouse, I
started punctually at noon, in compliance with
the terms of the contract with myself to which
my good faith was pledged.

  On such an occasion it is my habit to regard
my walk as my beat, and myself as a higher
sort of police-constable doing duty on the same.
There is many a ruffian in the streets whom I
mentally collar and clear out of them, who would
see mighty little of London, I can tell him, if I
could deal with him physically.

  Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following
with my eyes three hulking garrotters on
their way home,---which home I could confidently
swear to be within so many yards of
Drury Lane, in such a narrow and restricted
direction (though they live in their lodging quite
as undisturbed as I in mine),---I went on duty
with a consideration which I respectfully offer
to the new Chief Commissioner,---in whom I
thoroughly confide as a tried and efficient public
servant. How often (thought I) have I been
forced to swallow, in police reports, the intolerable
stereotyped pill of nonsense, how that the
police-constable informed the worthy magistrate
how that the associates of the prisoner did, at
that present speaking, dwell in a street or court
which no man dared go down, and how that the
worthy magistrate had heard of the dark reputation
of such street or court, and how that our
readers would doubtless remember that it was
always the same street or court which was thus
edifyingly discoursed about, say, once a fortnight.

  Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent
round a circular to every division of police employed
in London, requiring instantly the names
in all districts of all such much-puffed streets or
courts which no man durst go down; and suppose
that in such circular he gave plain warning,
``If those places really exist, they are a proof
of police inefficiency which I mean to punish;
and if they do not exist, but are a conventional
fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit police
connivance with professional crime, which I also
mean to punish''---what then? Fictions or realities,
could they survive the touchstone of this
atom of common sense? To tell us in open
court, until it has become as trite a feature of
news as the great gooseberry, that a costly police
system, such as was never before heard of, has
left in London, in the days of steam and gas
and photographs of thieves and electric telegraphs,
the sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts!
Why, a parity of practice, in all departments,
would bring back the Plague in two summers,
and the Druids in a century!

  Walking faster under my share of this public
injury, I overturned a wretched little creature,
who, clutching at the rags of a pair of trousers
with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair with
the other, pattered with bare feet over the muddy
stones. I stopped to raise and succour this poor
weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but of both
sexes, were about me in a moment, begging,
tumbling, fighting, clamouring, yelling, shivering
in their nakedness and hunger. The piece
of money I had put into the claw of the child I
had 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 police-constable, before whom the dreadful
brood dispersed in various directions, he
making feints and darts in this direction and in
that, and catching nothing. When all were
frightened away he took off his hat, pulled out
a handkerchief from it, wiped his heated brow,
and restored the handkerchief and hat to their
places, with the air of a man who had discharged
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 inconsistent look. There
seemed to be some unlucky inconsistency in the
atmosphere that day; for, though the proportions
of St. Paul's Cathedral are very beautiful,
it had an air of being somewhat out of drawing
in my eyes. I felt as though the cross were
too high up, and perched upon the intervening
golden ball too far away.

  Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield
and Old Bailey,---fire and faggot, condemned
hold, public hanging, whipping through the city
at the cart-tail, pillory, branding-iron, and other
beautiful ancestral landmarks, which rude hands
have rooted up, without bringing the stars quite
down upon us as yet,---and went my way upon
my beat, noting how oddly characteristic neighbourhoods
are divided from one another hereabout,
as though by an invisible line across the
way. Here shall cease the bankers and the
money-changers; here shall begin the shipping
interest, and the nautical-instrument shops; here
shall follow a scarcely perceptible flavouring of
groceries and drugs; here shall come a strong
infusion of butchers; now, small hosiers shall
be in the ascendant; henceforth, everything
exposed for sale shall have its ticketed price
attached. All this as if specially ordered and
appointed.

  A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no
wider than sufficed to cross the kennel at the
bottom of the Canongate, which the debtors in
Holyrood sanctuary were wont to relieve their
minds by skipping over, as Scott relates, and
standing in delightful daring of catchpoles on
the free side,---a single stride, and everything is
entirely changed in grain and character. West
of the stride, a table, or a chest of drawers on
sale, shall be of mahogany and French-polished;
east of the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared
with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve.
West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be
compact and self-contained; east of the stride,
it shall be of a sprawling and splay-footed character,
as seeking to make more of itself for the
money. My beat lying round by Whitechapel
Church, and the adjacent sugar refineries,---great
buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance
of being nearly related to the dock warehouses
at Liverpool,---I turned off to my right,
and, passing round the awkward corner on my
left, came suddenly on an apparition familiar to
London streets afar off.

  What London peripatetic of these times has
not seen the woman who has fallen forward,
double, through some affection of the spine, and
whose head has of late taken a turn to one side,
so that it now droops over the back of one of
her arms at about the wrist? Who does not
know her staff, and her shawl, and her basket
as she gropes her way along, capable of seeing
nothing but the pavement, never begging, never
stopping, for ever going somewhere on no business?
How does she live, whence does she
come, whither does she go, and why? I mind
the time when her yellow arms were nought but
bone and parchment. Slight changes steal over
her; for there is a shadowy suggestion of human
skin over them now. The Strand may be taken
as the central point about which she revolves in
a half-mile orbit. And coming back, too! Having been
how much farther? She is a rare spectacle in
this neighbourhood. I receive intelligent information
to this effect from a dog,---a lop-sided
mongrel with a foolish tail, plodding along with
his tail up, and his ears pricked, and displaying
an amiable interest in, the ways of his fellow-men,
---if I may be allowed to use the expression.
After pausing at a pork shop, he is jogging eastward,
like myself, with a benevolent countenance
and a watery mouth, as though musing on the
many excellences of pork, when he beholds this
doubled-up bundle approaching. He is not so
much astonished at the bundle (though amazed
by that), as the circumstance that it has within
itself the means of locomotion. He stops, pricks
his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters
a short low growl, and glistens at the nose,---as
I conceive with terror. The bundle continuing
to approach, he barks, turns tail, and is about to
fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not
becoming in a dog, he turns, and once more
faces the advancing heap of clothes. After much
hesitation, it occurs to him that there may be a
face in it somewhere. Desperately resolving to
undertake the adventure, and pursue the inquiry,
he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes slowly
round it, and, coming at length upon the human
countenance down there where never human
countenance should be, he gives a yelp of
horror, and flies for the East India Docks.

  Being now in the Commercial-Road district
of my beat, and bethinking myself that Stepney
station is near, I quicken my pace that I may
turn out of the road at that point, and see how
my small eastern star is shining.

  The Children's Hospital, to which I gave that
name, is in full force. All its beds are occupied.
There is a new face on the bed where my pretty
baby lay, and that sweet little child is now at
rest for ever. Much kind sympathy has been
here since my former visit, and it is good to
see the walls profusely garnished with dolls. I
wonder what Poodles may think of them, as
they stretch out their arms above the beds, and
stare, and display their splendid dresses. Poodles
has a greater interest in the patients. I find him
making the rounds 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 known to a pretty little girl looking
wonderfully healthy, who had had a leg taken
off for cancer of the knee. A difficult operation,
Poodles intimates, wagging his tail on the counterpane,
but perfectly successful, as you see, dear
sir! The patient, patting Poodles, adds with a
smile, ``The leg was so much trouble to me,
that I am glad it's gone.'' I never saw anything
in doggery finer than the deportment of
Poodles, when another little girl opens her
mouth to show a peculiar enlargement of the
tongue. Poodles (at that time on a table, to be
on level with the occasion) looks at the tongue
(with his own sympathetically out) so very gravely
and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my
hand in my waistcoat pocket, and give him a
guinea, wrapped in paper.

  On my beat again, and close to Limehouse
Church, its termination, I found myself near to
certain ``Lead Mills.'' Struck by the name,
which was fresh in my memory, and finding, on
inquiry, that these same lead-mills were identified
with those same lead-mills of which I made
mention when I first visited the East London
Children's Hospital and its neighbourhood as
Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved to have a
look at them.

  Received by two very intelligent gentlemen,
brothers, and partners with their father in the
concern, and who testified every desire to show
their works to me freely, I went over the lead-mills.
The purport of such works is the conversion
of pig-lead into white-lead. This conversion
is brought about by the slow and gradual
effecting of certain successive chemical changes
in the lead itself. The processes are picturesque
and interesting,---the most so being the burying
of the lead, at a certain stage of preparation, in
pots, each pot containing a certain quantity of
acid besides, and all the pots being buried in
vast numbers, in layers, under tan, for some ten
weeks.

  Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and
on elevated perches, until I was uncertain
whether to liken myself to a bird or a brick-layer,
I became conscious of standing on nothing
particular, looking down into one of a series of
large cock-lofts, 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 cock-loft, each carrying on
the upward journey a pot of prepared lead and
acid, for deposition under the smoking tan.
When one layer of pots was completely filled, it
was carefully covered in with planks, and those
were carefully covered with tan again, and then
another layer of pots was begun above; sufficient
means of ventilation being preserved
through wooden tubes. Going down into the
cock-loft then filling, I found the heat of the tan
to be surprisingly great, and also the odour of
the lead and acid to be not absolutely exquisite,
though I believe not noxious at that stage. In
other cock-lofts, where the pots were being exhumed,
the heat of the steaming tan was much
greater, and the smell was penetrating and peculiar.
There were cock-lofts in all stages; full
and empty, half filled and half emptied; strong,
active women were clambering about them
busily; and the whole thing had rather the air
of the upper part of the house of some immensely
rich old Turk, whose faithful seraglio
were hiding his money because the sultan or the
pasha was coming.

  As is the case with most pulps or pigments,
so in the instance of this white-lead, processes
of stirring, separating, washing, grinding, rolling,
and pressing succeed. Some of these are unquestionably
inimical to health, the danger
arising from inhalation of particles of lead, or
from contact between the lead and the touch, or
both. Against these dangers I found good
respirators provided (simply made of flannel
and muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed,
and in some instances washed with scented
soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns.
Everywhere there was as much fresh air as windows,
well placed and opened, could possibly
admit. And it was explained that the precaution
of frequently changing the women employed
in the worst parts of the work (a precaution
originating in their own experience or apprehension
of its ill effects) was found salutary. They
had a mysterious and singular appearance, with
the mouth and nose covered, and the loose
gown on, and yet bore out the simile of the old
Turk and the seraglio all the better for the disguise.

  At last this vexed white-lead, having been
buried and resuscitated, and heated and cooled
and stirred, and separated and washed and
ground, and rolled and pressed, is subjected to
the action of intense fiery heat. A row of
women, dressed as above described; stood, let
us say, in a large stone bakehouse, passing on
the baking-dishes as they were given out by the
cooks, from hand to hand, into the ovens. The
oven, or stove, cold as yet, looked as high as an
ordinary house, and was full of men and women
on temporary footholds, briskly passing up and
stowing away the dishes. The door of another
oven, or stove, about to be cooled and emptied,
was opened from above, for the uncommercial
countenance to peer down into. The uncommercial
countenance withdrew itself with expedition
and a sense of suffocation from the dull-glowing
heat and the overpowering smell. On
the whole, perhaps the going into these stoves
to work, when they are freshly opened, may be
the worst part of the occupation.

  But I made it out to be indubitable that the
owners of these lead-mills honestly and sedulously
try to reduce the dangers of the occupation to
the lowest point.

  A washing-place is provided for the women (I
thought there might have been more towels), and
a room in which they hang their clothes, and
take their meals, and where they have a good
fire-range and fire, and a female attendant to
help them, and to watch that they do not neglect
the cleansing of their hands before touching
their food. An experienced medical attendant
is provided for them, and any premonitory
symptoms of lead-poisoning are carefully
treated. Their teapots and such things were
set out on tables, ready for their afternoon
meal, when I saw their room; and it had a
homely look. It is found that they bear the
work much better than men: some few of them
have been at it for years, and the great majority
of those I observed were strong and active. On
the other hand, it should be remembered that
most of them are very capricious and irregular
in their attendance.

  American inventiveness would seem to indicate
that before very long white-lead may be
made entirely by machinery. The sooner the
better. In the meantime, I parted from my two
frank conductors over the mills, by telling them
that they had nothing there to be concealed, and
nothing to be blamed for. As to the rest, the
philosophy of the matter of lead-poisoning and
workpeople seems to me to have been pretty
fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I
quoted in my former paper: ``Some of them
gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets
lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many,
niver; and 'tis all according to the constitooshun,
sur; and some constitooshuns is strong,
and some is weak.''

  Retracing my footsteps over my beat, I went
off duty.



	XXXV.

	A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

  One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely
eleven o'clock in the forenoon,
there suddenly rode into the field of
view commanded by the windows of
my lodging an equestrian phenomenon.
It was a fellow-creature on
horseback, dressed in the absurdest
manner. The fellow-creature wore high
boots; some other (and much larger) fellow-creature's
breeches, of a slack-baked doughy
colour and a baggy form; a blue shirt, whereof
the skirt, or tail, was puffily tucked into the
waistband of the said breeches; no coat; a red
shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military scarlet
hat, with a feathered ornament in front, which,
to the uninstructed human vision, had the appearance
of a moulting shuttlecock. I laid
down the newspaper with which I had been
occupied, and surveyed the fellow-man in question
with astonishment. Whether he had been
sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for a new
edition of ``Sartor Resartus;'' whether ``the
husk or shell of him,'' as the esteemed Herr
Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a
jockey, on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on
cheap porcelain, on a toy-shop, on Guy Fawkes,
on wax-work, on gold-digging, on Bedlam, or
on all,---were doubts that greatly exercised my
mind. Meanwhile, my fellow-man stumbled
and slided, excessively against his will, on the
slippery stones of my Covent-Garden street,
and elicited shrieks from several sympathetic
females, by convulsively restraining himself from
pitching over his horse's head. In the very
crisis of these evolutions, and, indeed, at the
trying moment when his charger's tail was in a
tobacconist's shop, and his head anywhere
about town, this cavalier was joined by two
similar portents, who likewise stumbling and
sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the
more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian
triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward,
waved their three right hands as commanding
unseen troops to `` Up, guards! and at
'em.'' Hereupon a brazen band burst forth,
which caused them to be instantly bolted with
to some remote spot of earth in the direction of
the Surrey Hills.

  Judging from these appearances that a procession
was under way, I threw up my window,
and, craning out, had the satisfaction of beholding
it advancing along the streets. It was a Teetotal
procession, as I learnt from its banners,
and was long enough to consume twenty minutes
in passing. There were a great number of children
in it, some of them so very young in their
mother's arms as to be in the act of practically
exemplifying their abstinence from fermented
liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating
drink, while the procession defiled. The display
was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as any
good-humoured holiday assemblage of clean,
cheerful, and well-conducted people should be.
It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts,
and abounded in flowers, as if those latter
trophies had come up in profusion under much
watering. The day being breezy, the insubordination
of the large banners was very reprehensible.
Each of these being borne aloft on
two poles, and stayed with some half-dozen
lines, was carried, as polite books in the last
century used to be written, by ``various hands,''
and the anxiety expressed in the upturned faces
of those officers,---something between the anxiety
attendant on the balancing art, and that inseparable
from the pastime of kite-flying, with a
touch of the angler's quality in landing his scaly
prey,---much impressed me. Suddenly, too, a
banner would shiver in the wind, and go about
in the most inconvenient manner. This always
happened oftenest with such gorgeous standards
as those representing a gentleman in black, corpulent
with tea and water, in the laudable act of
summarily reforming a family, feeble and pinched
with beer. The gentleman in black distended
by wind would then conduct himself with the
most unbecoming levity, while the beery family,
growing beerier, would frantically try to tear
themselves away from his ministration. Some
of the inscriptions accompanying the banners
were of a highly determined character, as, ``We
never, never will give up the temperance cause,''
with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive
to the profane mind of Mrs. Micawber's ``I
never will desert Mr. Micawber,'' and of Mr.
Micawber's retort, ``Really, my dear, I am not
aware that you were ever required by any
human being to do anything of the sort.''

  At intervals a gloom would fall on the passing
members of the procession, for which I was at
first unable to account. But this I discovered,
after a little observation, to be occasioned by
the coming on of the executioners,---the terrible
official beings who were to make the speeches
by-and-by,---who were distributed in open carriages
at various points of the cavalcade. A
dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, as from
many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling
on of the dreadful cars containing these
headsmen; and I noticed that the wretched
people who closely followed them, and who
were in a manner forced to contemplate their
folded arms, complacent countenances, and
threatening lips, were more overshadowed by
the cloud and damp than those in front. Indeed,
I perceived in some of these so moody an
implacability towards the magnates of the scaffold,
and so plain a desire to tear them limb
from limb, that I would respectfully suggest to
the managers the expediency of conveying the
executioners to the scene of their dismal labours
by unfrequented ways, and in closely-tilted carts,
next Whitsuntide.

  The procession was composed of a series of
smaller processions, which had come together,
each from its own metropolitan district. An
infusion of allegory became perceptible when
patriotic Peckham advanced. So I judged from
the circumstance of Peckham's unfurling a silken
banner that fanned heaven and earth with the
words, ``The Peckham Life-boat.'' No boat
being in attendance, though life, in the likeness
of ``a gallant, gallant crew,'' in nautical uniform,
followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the
fact that Peckham is described by geographers
as an inland settlement, with no larger or nearer
shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey
Canal, on which stormy station I had been
given to understand no life-boat exists. Thus I
deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to
the conclusion, that if patriotic Peckham
picked a peck of pickled poetry, this _was_ the
peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peckham
picked.

  I have observed that the aggregate procession
was, on the whole, pleasant to see. I made use
of that qualified expression with a direct meaning,
which I will now explain. It involves the
title of this paper, and a little fair trying of teetotalism
by its own tests. There were many
people on foot, and many people in vehicles of
various kinds. The former were pleasant to see,
and the latter were not pleasant to see; for the
reason that I never, on any occasion or under
any circumstances, have beheld heavier overloading
of horses than in this public show. Unless
the imposition of a great van laden with
from ten to twenty people on a single horse be
a moderate tasking of the poor creature, then
the temperate use of horses was immoderate
and cruel. From the smallest and lightest horse
to the largest and heaviest, there were many
instances in which the beast of burden was so
shamefully overladen, that the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have frequently
interposed in less gross cases.

  Now, I have always held that there may be,
and that there unquestionably is, such a thing
as use without abuse, and that therefore the total
abolitionists are irrational and wrong-headed.
But the procession completely converted me.
For so large a number of the people using
draught-horses in it were so clearly unable to
use them without abusing them, that I perceived
total abstinence from horse-flesh to be the only
remedy of which the case admitted. As it is all
one to teetotalers whether you take half a pint
of beer or half a gallon, so it was all one here
whether the beast of burden were a pony or a
cart-horse. Indeed, my case had the special
strength that the half-pint quadruped underwent
as much suffering as the half-gallon quadruped.
Moral: total abstinence from horse-flesh through
the whole length and breadth of the scale. This
pledge will be in course of administration to all
teetotal processionists, not pedestrians, at the
publishing office of ``All the Year Round,'' on
the 1st day of April, 1870.

  Observe a point for consideration. This procession
comprised many persons in their gigs,
broughams, tax-carts, barouches, chaises, and
what not, who were merciful to the dumb beasts
that drew them, and did not overcharge their
strength. What is to be done with those unoffending
persons? I will not run amuck, and
vilify and defame them, as teetotal tracts and
platforms would most assuredly do, if the question
were one of drinking instead of driving: I
merely ask, what is to be done with them? The
reply admits of no dispute whatever. Manifestly,
in strict accordance with teetotal doctrines, =they=
must come in too, and take the total abstinence
from horse-flesh pledge. It is not pretended
that those members of the procession misused
certain auxiliaries which in most countries and
all ages have been bestowed upon man for his
use, but it is undeniable that other members of
the procession did. Teetotal mathematics demonstrate
that the less includes the greater;
that the guilty include the innocent, the blind
the seeing, the deaf the hearing, the dumb the
speaking, the drunken the sober. If any of the
moderate users of draught-cattle in question
should deem that there is any gentle violence
done to their reason by these elements of logic,
they are invited to come out of the procession
next Whitsuntide, and look at it from my window.


	XXXVI.

	THE RUFFIAN.

  I entertain so strong an objection
to the euphonious softening of
Ruffian into Rough, which has lately
become popular, that I restore the
right word to the heading of this
paper; the rather as my object is to
dwell upon the fact that the Ruffian is
tolerated among us to an extent that
goes beyond all unruffianly endurance. I take
the liberty to believe that if the Ruffian besets
my life, a professional Ruffian at large in the
open streets of a great city, notoriously having
no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of
disquieting and despoiling me as I go peacefully
about my lawful business, interfering with no
one, then the Government under which I have
the great constitutional privilege, supreme honour
and happiness, and all the rest of it, to exist,
breaks down in the discharge of any Government's
most simple elementary duty.

  What did I read in the London daily papers
in the early days of this last September? That
the Police had ``=at length succeeded in capturing
Two of the notorious gang that
have so long 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 railway station
in it, extra the street lamps; full of shops; traversed
by two popular cross-thoroughfares of
considerable traffic; itself the main road to the
South of London and the admirable Police
have, after long infestment of this dark and
lonely spot by a gang of Ruffians, actually got
hold of two of them. Why, can it be doubted
that any man of fair London knowledge and
common resolution, armed with the powers of
the Law, could have captured the whole confederacy
in a week?

  It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by
the Magistracy and Police---to the conventional
preserving of them, as if they were Partridges---
that their number and audacity must be in great
part referred. Why is a notorious Thief and
Ruffian ever left at large? He never turns his
liberty to any account but violence and plunder,
he never did a day's work out of gaol, he never
will do a day's work out of gaol. As a proved
notorious Thief, he is always consignable to
prison for three months. When he comes out,
he is surely as notorious a Thief as he was when
he went in. Then send him back again. ``Just
Heaven!'' cries the Society for the protection of
remonstrant Ruffians. ``This is equivalent to a
sentence of perpetual imprisonment!'' Precisely
for that reason it has my advocacy. I demand
to have the Ruffian kept out of my way, and out
of the way of all decent people. I demand to
have the Ruffian employed, perforce, in hewing
wood and drawing water somewhere for the
general service, instead of hewing at her Majesty's
subjects, and drawing their watches out
of their pockets. If this be termed an unreasonable
demand, then the tax-gatherer's demand on
me must be far more unreasonable, and cannot
be otherwise than extortionate and unjust.

  It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and
Ruffian as one. I do so, because I know the
two characters to be one, in the vast majority of
cases, just as well as the Police know it. (As
to the Magistracy, with a few exceptions, they
know nothing about it but what the Police
choose to tell them.) There are disorderly
classes of men who are not thieves; as railway
navigators, brickmakers, wood-sawyers, costermongers.
These classes are often disorderly
and troublesome; but it is mostly among themselves,
and at any rate they have their industrious
avocations, they work early and late, and
work hard. The generic Ruffian---honourable
member for what is tenderly called the Rough
Element---is either a Thief, or the companion
of Thieves. When he infamously molests women
coming out of chapel on Sunday evenings
(for which I would have his back scarified often
and deep), it is not only for the gratification of
his pleasant instincts, but that there may be a
confusion raised by which either he or his friends
may profit, in the commission of highway robberies
or in picking pockets. When he gets a
police-constable down and kicks him helpless
for life, it is because that constable once did his
duty in bringing him to justice. When he
rushes into the bar of a public-house, and scoops
an eye out of one of the company there, or bites
his ear off, it is because the man he maims gave
evidence against him. When he and a line of
comrades extending across the footway---say of
that solitary mountain-spur of the Abruzzi, the
Waterloo Road---advance towards me ``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 experience; when I know that the
Ruffian never jostles a lady in the street, 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
hand are in his pockets. He puts them there
when they are idle, as naturally as in other
people pockets when they are busy, for he
knows that they are not roughened by work,
and that they tell a tale. Hence whenever he
takes one out to draw a sleeve across his nose---
which is often, for he has weak eyes, and a constitutional
cold in his head---he restores it to its
pocket immediately afterwards. Number Two
is a burly brute of five-and-thirty, in a tall stiff,
hat; is a composite, as to his clothes, of betting
man and fighting-man; is whiskered; has a
staring pin in his breast, along with his right
hand; has insolent and cruel eyes; large
shoulders; strong legs, booted and tipped for
kicking. Number Three is forty years of age;
is short, thick-set, strong, and bow-legged; wears
knee cords and white stockings, a very long-sleeved
waistcoat, a very large neckerchief
doubled or trebled round his throat, and a
crumpled white hat crowns his ghastly parchment
face. This fellow looks like an executed
postboy of other days, cut down from the gallows
too soon, and restored and preserved by express
diabolical agency. Numbers Five, Six, and
Seven are hulking, idle, slouching young men,
patched and shabby, too short in the sleeves and
too tight in the legs, slimly clothed, foul-spoken,
repulsive wretches inside and out. In all the
party there obtains a certain twitching character
of mouth and furtiveness of eye, that hint how
the coward is lurking under the bully. The
hint is quite correct, for they are a slinking,
sneaking set, far more prone to lie down on their
backs and kick out, when in difficulty, than to
make a stand for it. (This may account for the
street mud on the backs of Numbers Five, Six,
and Seven being much fresher than the stale
splashes on their legs.)

  These engaging gentry a Police-constable
stands contemplating. His station, with a Reserve
of assistance, is very near at hand. They
cannot pretend to any trade, not even to be 
porters or messengers. It would be idle if they
did, for he knows them, and they know that he
knows them, to be nothing but professed Thieves
and Ruffians. He knows where the 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
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 past September, ``have so 
long infested'' the awful solitudes of the Waterloo
Road, and out of which almost impregnable 
fastnesses the Police have at length dragged
Two, to the unspeakable admiration of all good
civilians.

  The consequences of this contemplative habit
on the part of the Executive---a habit to be
looked for in a hermit, but not in a Police
System---are familiar to us all. The Ruffian
becomes one of the established orders of the
body politic. Under the playful name of Rough
(as if he were merely a practical joker), his
movements and successes are recorded on public
occasions. Whether he mustered in large numbers
or small; whether he was in good spirits or
depressed; whether he turned his generous
exertions to very prosperous account, or Fortune
was against him, whether he was in a
sanguinary mood, or robbed with amiable horseplay
and a gracious consideration for life and
limb; all this is chronicled as if he were an
Institution. Is there any city in Europe, out of
England, in which these terms are held with the
pests of society? Or in which, at this day, such
violent robberies from the person are constantly
committed as in London?

  The Preparatory Schools of Ruffianism are
similarly borne with. The young Ruffians of
London---not Thieves yet, but training for scholarships
and fellowships in the Criminal-Court
Universities---molest quiet people and their
property, to an extent that is hardly credible.
The throwing of stones in the streets has become
a dangerous and destructive offence, which surely
could have got to no greater height, though we
had had no Police but our own riding whips and
walking-sticks---the Police to which I myself
appeal on these occasions. The throwing of
stones at the windows of railway carriages in
motion---an act of wanton wickedness with the
very Arch-Fiend's hand in it---had become a
crying evil, when the railway companies forced
it on Police notice. Constabular contemplation
had until then been the order of the day.

  Within these twelve months, there arose
among the young gentlemen of London aspiring
to Ruffianism, and cultivating that much-encouraged
social art, a facetious cry of ``I'll have
this!'' accompanied with a clutch at some
article of a passing lady's dress. I have known
a lady's veil to be thus humorously torn from
her face and carried off in the open streets at
noon; and I have had the honour of myself
giving chase, on Westminster Bridge, to another
young Ruffian, who, in full daylight early on a
summer evening, had nearly thrown a modest
young woman into a swoon of indignation and
confusion by his shameful manner of attacking
her with this cry as she harmlessly passed along
before me. =Mr. Carlyle,= some time since,
awakened a little pleasantry by writing of his
own experience of the Ruffian of the streets. I
have seen the Ruffian act in exact accordance
with Mr. Carlyle's description, innumerable
times, and I never saw him checked.

  The blaring use of the very worst language
possible, in our public thoroughfares---especially
in those set apart for recreation---is another disgrace
to us, and another result of constabular
contemplation, the like of which I have never
heard in any other country to which my uncommercial
travels have extended. Years ago, when
I had a near interest in certain children who
were sent with their nurses, for air and exercise,
into the Regent's Park, I found this evil to be
so abhorrent and horrible there, that I called
public attention to it, and also to its contemplative
reception by the Police. Looking afterwards
into the newest Police Act, and finding
that the offence was punishable under it, I resolved,
when striking occasion should arise, to
try my hand as prosecutor. The occasion arose
soon enough, and I ran the following gauntlet.
The utterer of the base coin in question was a
girl of seventeen or eighteen, who, with a suitable
attendance of blackguards, youths, and
boys, was flaunting along the streets, returning
from an Irish funeral, in a Progress interspersed
with singing and dancing. She had turned
round to me and expressed herself in the most
audible manner, to the great delight of that
select circle. I attended the party, on the opposite
side of the way, for a mile further, and
then encountered a Police-constable. The party
had made themselves merry at my expense until
now, but seeing me speak to the constable, its
male members instantly took to their heels,
leaving the girl alone. I asked the constable
did he know my name? Yes, he did. ``Take
that girl into custody, on my charge, for using
bad language in the streets.'' He had never
heard of such a charge. I had. Would he
take my word that he should get into no trouble?
Yes, sir, he would do that. So he took the
girl, and I went home for my Police Act.

  With this potent instrument in my pocket, I
literally as well as figuratively ``returned to the
charge,'' and presented myself at the police-station
of the district. There I found on duty
a very intelligent Inspector (they are all intelligent
men), who, likewise, had never heard of
such a charge. I showed him my clause, and
we went over it together twice or thrice. It
was plain, and I engaged to wait upon the
suburban Magistrate to-morrow morning at ten
o'clock.

  In the morning, I put my Police Act in my
pocket again, and waited on the suburban
Magistrate. I was not quite so courteously
received by him as I should have been by the
Lord Chancellor or the Lord Chief justice, but
that was a question of good-breeding on the
suburban Magistrate's part, and I had my clause
ready, with its leaf turned down. Which was
enough for _me._

  Conference took place between the Magistrate
and clerk respecting the charge. During conference
I was evidently regarded as a much more
objectionable person than the prisoner;---one
giving trouble by coming there voluntarily, which
the prisoner could not be accused of doing.
The prisoner had been got up, since I last had
the pleasure of seeing, her, with a great effect of
white apron and straw bonnet. She reminded
me of an elder sister of Red Riding Hood, and
I seemed to remind the sympathising Chimney
Sweep, by whom she was attended, of the Wolf.
The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial
Traveller, whether this charge could be
entertained. It was not known. Mr. Uncommercial
Traveller replied that he wished it were
better known, and that, if he could afford the
leisure, he would use his endeavours to make it
so. There was no question about it, however,
he contended. Here was the clause.

  The clause was handed in, and more conference
resulted. After which I was asked the
extraordinary question: ``Mr. Uncommercial,
do you really wish this girl to be sent to prison?''
To which I grimly answered, stating: ``If I
didn't, why should I take the trouble to come
here?'' Finally, I was sworn, and gave my
agreeable evidence in detail and White Riding
Hood was fined ten shillings, under the clause,
or sent to prison for so many days. ``Why,
Lord bless you, sir,'' said the Police-officer who
showed me out, with a great enjoyment of the
jest of her having been got up so effectively, and
caused so much hesitation: ``if she goes to
prison, that will be nothing new to _her._ She
comes from Charles Street, Drury Lane!''

  The Police, all things considered, are an excellent
force, and I have borne my small testimony
to their merits. Constabular contemplation
is the result of a bad system; a system which is
administered, not invented, by the man in constable's
uniform, employed at twenty shillings a
week. He has his orders, and would be marked
for discouragement if he overstepped them. That
the system is bad, there needs no lengthened
argument to prove, because the fact is self-evident.
If it were anything else, the results that
have attended it could not possibly have come
to pass. Who will say that, under a good
system, our streets could have got into their
present state?

  The objection to the whole Police System, as
concerning the Ruffian, may be stated, and its
failure exemplified, as follows. It is well known
that on all great occasions, when they come
together in numbers, the mass of the English
people are their own trustworthy Police. It is
well known that wheresoever there is collected
together any fair general representation of the
people, a respect for law and order, and a determination
to discountenance lawlessness and
disorder, may be relied upon. As to one another,
the people are a very good Police, and
yet are quite willing, in their good-nature, that
the stipendiary Police should have the credit of
the people's moderation. But we are all of us
powerless against the Ruffian, because we submit
to the law, and it is his only trade, by superior
force and by violence, to defy it. Moreover,
we are constantly admonished from high places
(like so many Sunday-school children out for a
holiday of buns and milk-and-water) that we are
not to take the law into our own hands, but are
to hand our defence over to it. It is clear that
the common enemy to be punished and exterminated
first of all is the Ruffian. It is clear
that he is, of all others, _the_ offender for whose
repressal we maintain a costly system of Police.
Him, therefore, we expressly present to the
Police to deal with, conscious that, on the whole,
we can, and do, deal reasonably well with one
another. Him the Police deal with so inefficiently
and absurdly that he flourishes and multiplies,
and, with all his evil deeds upon his head
as notoriously as his hat is, pervades the streets
with no more let or hindrance than ourselves.

---------------------------------------------------

Source
------

  This machine-readable edition of `The
Uncommercial Traveller' is based on the text of
the Household Edition of Charles Dickens Works,
illustrated by E. G. Dalziel and published by
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