Martin Chuzzlewit
by Charles Dickens
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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At length the noise of wheels was faintly audible in the distance
and presently the coach came splashing through the mud and mire with
one miserable outside passenger crouching down among wet straw,
under a saturated umbrella; and the coachman, guard, and horses, in
a fellowship of dripping wretchedness. Immediately on its stopping,
Mr Pecksniff let down the window-glass and hailed Tom Pinch.

'Dear me, Mr Pinch! Is it possible that you are out upon this very
inclement morning?'

'Yes, sir,' cried Tom, advancing eagerly, 'Mr Chuzzlewit and I,
sir.'

'Oh!' said Mr Pecksniff, looking not so much at Martin as at the
spot on which he stood. 'Oh! Indeed. Do me the favour to see to
the trunks, if you please, Mr Pinch.'

Then Mr Pecksniff descended, and helped his daughters to alight; but
neighter he nor the young ladies took the slightest notice of Martin,
who had advanced to offer his assistance, but was repulsed by Mr
Pecksniff's standing immediately before his person, with his back
towards him. In the same manner, and in profound silence, Mr
Pecksniff handed his daughters into the gig; and following himself
and taking the reins, drove off home.

Lost in astonishment, Martin stood staring at the coach, and when
the coach had driven away, at Mr Pinch, and the luggage, until the
cart moved off too; when he said to Tom:

'Now will you have the goodness to tell me what THIS portends?'

'What?' asked Tom.

'This fellow's behaviour. Mr Pecksniff's, I mean. You saw it?'

'No. Indeed I did not,' cried Tom. 'I was busy with the trunks.'

'It is no matter,' said Martin. 'Come! Let us make haste back!'
And without another word started off at such a pace, that Tom
had some difficulty in keeping up with him.

He had no care where he went, but walked through little heaps of mud
and little pools of water with the utmost indifference; looking
straight before him, and sometimes laughing in a strange manner
within himself. Tom felt that anything he could say would only
render him the more obstinate, and therefore trusted to Mr
Pecksniff's manner when they reached the house, to remove the
mistaken impression under which he felt convinced so great a
favourite as the new pupil must unquestionably be labouring. But he
was not a little amazed himself, when they did reach it, and entered
the parlour where Mr Pecksniff was sitting alone before the fire,
drinking some hot tea, to find that instead of taking favourable
notice of his relative and keeping him, Mr Pinch, in the background,
he did exactly the reverse, and was so lavish in his attentions to
Tom, that Tom was thoroughly confounded.

'Take some tea, Mr Pinch--take some tea,' said Pecksniff, stirring
the fire. 'You must be very cold and damp. Pray take some tea, and
come into a warm place, Mr Pinch.'

Tom saw that Martin looked at Mr Pecksniff as though he could have
easily found it in his heart to give HIM an invitation to a very
warm place; but he was quite silent, and standing opposite that
gentleman at the table, regarded him attentively.

'Take a chair, Pinch,' said Pecksniff. 'Take a chair, if you
please. How have things gone on in our absence, Mr Pinch?'

'You--you will be very much pleased with the grammar-school, sir,'
said Tom. 'It's nearly finished.'

'If you will have the goodness, Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, waving
his hand and smiling, 'we will not discuss anything connected with
that question at present. What have YOU been doing, Thomas, humph?'

Mr Pinch looked from master to pupil, and from pupil to master, and
was so perplexed and dismayed that he wanted presence of mind to
answer the question. In this awkward interval, Mr Pecksniff (who
was perfectly conscious of Martin's gaze, though he had never once
glanced towards him) poked the fire very much, and when he couldn't
do that any more, drank tea assiduously.

'Now, Mr Pecksniff,' said Martin at last, in a very quiet voice, 'if
you have sufficiently refreshed and recovered yourself, I shall be
glad to hear what you mean by this treatment of me.'

'And what,' said Mr Pecksniff, turning his eyes on Tom Pinch, even
more placidly and gently than before, 'what have YOU been doing,
Thomas, humph?'

When he had repeated this inquiry, he looked round the walls of the
room as if he were curious to see whether any nails had been left
there by accident in former times.

Tom was almost at his wit's end what to say between the two, and had
already made a gesture as if he would call Mr Pecksniff's attention
to the gentleman who had last addressed him, when Martin saved him
further trouble, by doing so himself.

'Mr Pecksniff,' he said, softly rapping the table twice or thrice,
and moving a step or two nearer, so that he could have touched him
with his hand; 'you heard what I said just now. Do me the favour to
reply, if you please. I ask you'--he raised his voice a little
here--'what you mean by this?'

'I will talk to you, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff in a severe voice, as
he looked at him for the first time, 'presently.'

'You are very obliging,' returned Martin; 'presently will not do. I
must trouble you to talk to me at once.'

Mr Pecksniff made a feint of being deeply interested in his
pocketbook, but it shook in his hands; he trembled so.

'Now,' retorted Martin, rapping the table again. 'Now. Presently
will not do. Now!'

'Do you threaten me, sir?' cried Mr Pecksniff.

Martin looked at him, and made no answer; but a curious observer
might have detected an ominous twitching at his mouth, and perhaps
an involuntary attraction of his right hand in the direction of Mr
Pecksniff's cravat.

'I lament to be obliged to say, sir,' resumed Mr Pecksniff, 'that it
would be quite in keeping with your character if you did threaten
me. You have deceived me. You have imposed upon a nature which you
knew to be confiding and unsuspicious. You have obtained admission,
sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, rising, 'to this house, on perverted
statements and on false pretences.'

'Go on,' said Martin, with a scornful smile. 'I understand you now.
What more?'

'Thus much more, sir,' cried Mr Pecksniff, trembling from head to
foot, and trying to rub his hands, as though he were only cold.
'Thus much more, if you force me to publish your shame before a
third party, which I was unwilling and indisposed to do. This lowly
roof, sir, must not be contaminated by the presence of one who has
deceived, and cruelly deceived, an honourable, beloved, venerated,
and venerable gentleman; and who wisely suppressed that deceit from
me when he sought my protection and favour, knowing that, humble as
I am, I am an honest man, seeking to do my duty in this carnal
universe, and setting my face against all vice and treachery. I
weep for your depravity, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff; 'I mourn over your
corruption, I pity your voluntary withdrawal of yourself from the
flowery paths of purity and peace;' here he struck himself upon his
breast, or moral garden; 'but I cannot have a leper and a serpent
for an inmate. Go forth,' said Mr Pecksniff, stretching out his
hand: 'go forth, young man! Like all who know you, I renounce you!'

With what intention Martin made a stride forward at these words, it
is impossible to say. It is enough to know that Tom Pinch caught
him in his arms, and that, at the same moment, Mr Pecksniff stepped
back so hastily, that he missed his footing, tumbled over a chair,
and fell in a sitting posture on the ground; where he remained
without an effort to get up again, with his head in a corner,
perhaps considering it the safest place.

'Let me go, Pinch!' cried Martin, shaking him away. 'Why do you
hold me? Do you think a blow could make him a more abject creature
than he is? Do you think that if I spat upon him, I could degrade
him to a lower level than his own? Look at him. Look at him,
Pinch!'

Mr Pinch involuntarily did so. Mr Pecksniff sitting, as has been
already mentioned, on the carpet, with his head in an acute angle of
the wainscot, and all the damage and detriment of an uncomfortable
journey about him, was not exactly a model of all that is
prepossessing and dignified in man, certainly. Still he WAS
Pecksniff; it was impossible to deprive him of that unique and
paramount appeal to Tom. And he returned Tom's glance, as if he
would have said, 'Aye, Mr Pinch, look at me! Here I am! You know
what the Poet says about an honest man; and an honest man is one of
the few great works that can be seen for nothing! Look at me!'

'I tell you,' said Martin, 'that as he lies there, disgraced,
bought, used; a cloth for dirty hands, a mat for dirty feet, a
lying, fawning, servile hound, he is the very last and worst among
the vermin of the world. And mark me, Pinch! The day will come--he
knows it; see it written on his face, while I speak!--when even you
will find him out, and will know him as I do, and as he knows I do.
HE renounce ME! Cast your eyes on the Renouncer, Pinch, and be the
wiser for the recollection!'

He pointed at him as he spoke, with unutterable contempt, and
flinging his hat upon his head, walked from the room and from the
house. He went so rapidly that he was already clear of the village,
when he heard Tom Pinch calling breathlessly after him in the
distance.

'Well! what now?' he said, when Tom came up.

'Dear, dear!' cried Tom, 'are you going?'

'Going!' he echoed. 'Going!'

'I didn't so much mean that, as were you going now at once--in this
bad weather--on foot--without your clothes--with no money?' cried
Tom.

'Yes,' he answered sternly, 'I am.'

'And where?' cried Tom. 'Oh where will you go?'

'I don't know,' he said. 'Yes, I do. I'll go to America!'

'No, no,' cried Tom, in a kind of agony. 'Don't go there. Pray
don't. Think better of it. Don't be so dreadfully regardless of
yourself. Don't go to America!'

'My mind is made up,' he said. 'Your friend was right. I'll go to
America. God bless you, Pinch!'

'Take this!' cried Tom, pressing a book upon him in great agitation.
'I must make haste back, and can't say anything I would. Heaven be
with you. Look at the leaf I have turned down. Good-bye, good-bye!'

The simple fellow wrung him by the hand, with tears stealing down
his cheeks; and they parted hurriedly upon their separate ways.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF MARTIN AND HIS DESPARATE RESOLVE, AFTER HE
LEFT MR PECKSNIFF'S HOUSE; WHAT PERSONS HE ENCOUNTERED; WHAT
ANXIETIES HE SUFFERED; AND WHAT NEWS HE HEARD

Carrying Tom Pinch's book quite unconsciously under his arm, and not
even buttoning his coat as a protection against the heavy rain,
Martin went doggedly forward at the same quick pace, until he had
passed the finger-post, and was on the high road to London. He
slackened very little in his speed even then, but he began to think,
and look about him, and to disengage his senses from the coil of
angry passions which hitherto had held them prisoner.

It must be confessed that, at that moment, he had no very agreeable
employment either for his moral or his physical perceptions. The
day was dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, and sullen
clouds came driving up before it, from which the rain descended in a
thick, wet mist. It streamed from every twig and bramble in the
hedge; made little gullies in the path; ran down a hundred channels
in the road; and punched innumerable holes into the face of every
pond and gutter. It fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the
grass; and made a muddy kennel of every furrow in the ploughed
fields. No living creature was anywhere to be seen. The prospect
could hardly have been more desolate if animated nature had been
dissolved in water, and poured down upon the earth again in that
form.

The range of view within the solitary traveller was quite as
cheerless as the scene without. Friendless and penniless; incensed
to the last degree; deeply wounded in his pride and self-love; full
of independent schemes, and perfectly destitute of any means of
realizing them; his most vindictive enemy might have been satisfied
with the extent of his troubles. To add to his other miseries, he
was by this time sensible of being wet to the skin, and cold at his
very heart.

In this deplorable condition he remembered Mr Pinch's book; more
because it was rather troublesome to carry, than from any hope of
being comforted by that parting gift. He looked at the dingy
lettering on the back, and finding it to be an odd volume of the
'Bachelor of Salamanca,' in the French tongue, cursed Tom Pinch's
folly twenty times. He was on the point of throwing it away, in his
ill-humour and vexation, when he bethought himself that Tom had
referred him to a leaf, turned down; and opening it at that place,
that he might have additional cause of complaint against him for
supposing that any cold scrap of the Bachelor's wisdom could cheer
him in such circumstances, found!--

Well, well! not much, but Tom's all. The half-sovereign. He had
wrapped it hastily in a piece of paper, and pinned it to the leaf.
These words were scrawled in pencil on the inside: 'I don't want it
indeed. I should not know what to do with it if I had it.'

There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which men mount, as on bright
wings, towards Heaven. There are some truths, cold bitter taunting
truths, wherein your worldly scholars are very apt and punctual,
which bind men down to earth with leaden chains. Who would not
rather have to fan him, in his dying hour, the lightest feather of a
falsehood such as thine, than all the quills that have been plucked
from the sharp porcupine, reproachful truth, since time began!

Martin felt keenly for himself, and he felt this good deed of Tom's
keenly. After a few minutes it had the effect of raising his
spirits, and reminding him that he was not altogether destitute, as
he had left a fair stock of clothes behind him, and wore a gold
hunting-watch in his pocket. He found a curious gratification, too,
in thinking what a winning fellow he must be to have made such an
impression on Tom; and in reflecting how superior he was to Tom; and
how much more likely to make his way in the world. Animated by
these thoughts, and strengthened in his design of endeavouring to
push his fortune in another country, he resolved to get to London as
a rallying-point, in the best way he could; and to lose no time
about it.

He was ten good miles from the village made illustrious by being the
abiding-place of Mr Pecksniff, when he stopped to breakfast at a
little roadside alehouse; and resting upon a high-backed settle
before the fire, pulled off his coat, and hung it before the
cheerful blaze to dry. It was a very different place from the last
tavern in which he had regaled; boasting no greater extent of
accommodation than the brick-floored kitchen yielded; but the mind
so soon accommodates itself to the necessities of the body, that
this poor waggoner's house-of-call, which he would have despised
yesterday, became now quite a choice hotel; while his dish of eggs
and bacon, and his mug of beer, were not by any means the coarse
fare he had supposed, but fully bore out the inscription on the
window-shutter, which proclaimed those viands to be 'Good
entertainment for Travellers.'

He pushed away his empty plate; and with a second mug upon the
hearth before him, looked thoughtfully at the fire until his eyes
ached. Then he looked at the highly-coloured scripture pieces on
the walls, in little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and
saw how the Wise Men (with a strong family likeness among them)
worshipped in a pink manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in
red rags to a purple father, and already feasted his imagination on
a sea-green calf. Then he glanced through the window at the falling
rain, coming down aslant upon the sign-post over against the house,
and overflowing the horse-trough; and then he looked at the fire
again, and seemed to descry a double distant London, retreating
among the fragments of the burning wood.

He had repeated this process in just the same order, many times, as
if it were a matter of necessity, when the sound of wheels called
his attention to the window out of its regular turn; and there he
beheld a kind of light van drawn by four horses, and laden, as well
as he could see (for it was covered in), with corn and straw. The
driver, who was alone, stopped at the door to water his team, and
presently came stamping and shaking the wet off his hat and coat,
into the room where Martin sat.

He was a red-faced burly young fellow; smart in his way, and with a
good-humoured countenance. As he advanced towards the fire he
touched his shining forehead with the forefinger of his stiff
leather glove, by way of salutation; and said (rather unnecessarily)
that it was an uncommon wet day.

'Very wet,' said Martin.

'I don't know as ever I see a wetter.'

'I never felt one,' said Martin.

The driver glanced at Martin's soiled dress, and his damp shirt-
sleeves, and his coat hung up to dry; and said, after a pause, as he
warmed his hands:

'You have been caught in it, sir?'

'Yes,' was the short reply.

'Out riding, maybe?' said the driver

'I should have been, if I owned a horse; but I don't,' returned
Martin.

'That's bad,' said the driver.

'And may be worse,' said Martin.

Now the driver said 'That's bad,' not so much because Martin didn't
own a horse, as because he said he didn't with all the reckless
desperation of his mood and circumstances, and so left a great deal
to be inferred. Martin put his hands in his pockets and whistled
when he had retorted on the driver; thus giving him to understand
that he didn't care a pin for Fortune; that he was above pretending
to be her favourite when he was not; and that he snapped his fingers
at her, the driver, and everybody else.

The driver looked at him stealthily for a minute or so; and in the
pauses of his warming whistled too. At length he asked, as he
pointed his thumb towards the road.

'Up or down?'

'Which IS up?' said Martin.

'London, of course,' said the driver.

'Up then,' said Martin. He tossed his head in a careless manner
afterwards, as if he would have added, 'Now you know all about it.'
put his hands deeper into his pockets; changed his tune, and
whistled a little louder.

'I'm going up,' observed the driver; 'Hounslow, ten miles this side
London.'

'Are you?' cried Martin, stopping short and looking at him.

The driver sprinkled the fire with his wet hat until it hissed again
and answered, 'Aye, to be sure he was.'

'Why, then,' said Martin, 'I'll be plain with you. You may suppose
from my dress that I have money to spare. I have not. All I can
afford for coach-hire is a crown, for I have but two. If you can
take me for that, and my waistcoat, or this silk handkerchief, do.
If you can't, leave it alone.'

'Short and sweet,' remarked the driver.

'You want more?' said Martin. 'Then I haven't got more, and I can't
get it, so there's an end of that.'  Whereupon he began to whistle
again.

'I didn't say I wanted more, did I?' asked the driver, with
something like indignation.

'You didn't say my offer was enough,' rejoined Martin.

'Why, how could I, when you wouldn't let me? In regard to the
waistcoat, I wouldn't have a man's waistcoat, much less a
gentleman's waistcoat, on my mind, for no consideration; but the
silk handkerchief's another thing; and if you was satisfied when we
got to Hounslow, I shouldn't object to that as a gift.'

'Is it a bargain, then?' said Martin.

'Yes, it is,' returned the other.

'Then finish this beer,' said Martin, handing him the mug, and
pulling on his coat with great alacrity; 'and let us be off as soon
as you like.'

In two minutes more he had paid his bill, which amounted to a
shilling; was lying at full length on a truss of straw, high and dry
at the top of the van, with the tilt a little open in front for the
convenience of talking to his new friend; and was moving along in
the right direction with a most satisfactory and encouraging
briskness.

The driver's name, as he soon informed Martin, was William Simmons,
better known as Bill; and his spruce appearance was sufficiently
explained by his connection with a large stage-coaching establishment
at Hounslow, whither he was conveying his load from a farm belonging
to the concern in Wiltshire. He was frequently up and down the road
on such errands, he said, and to look after the sick and rest
horses, of which animals he had much to relate that occupied a long
time in the telling. He aspired to the dignity of the regular box,
and expected an appointment on the first vacancy. He was musical
besides, and had a little key-bugle in his pocket, on which,
whenever the conversation flagged, he played the first part of a
great many tunes, and regularly broke down in the second.

'Ah!' said Bill, with a sigh, as he drew the back of his hand across
his lips, and put this instrument in his pocket, after screwing off
the mouth-piece to drain it; 'Lummy Ned of the Light Salisbury, HE
was the one for musical talents. He WAS a guard. What you may call
a Guard'an Angel, was Ned.'

'Is he dead?' asked Martin.

'Dead!' replied the other, with a contemptuous emphasis. 'Not he.
You won't catch Ned a-dying easy. No, no. He knows better than
that.'

'You spoke of him in the past tense,' observed Martin, 'so I
supposed he was no more.

'He's no more in England,' said Bill, 'if that's what you mean. He
went to the U-nited States.'

'Did he?' asked Martin, with sudden interest. 'When?'

'Five year ago, or then about,' said Bill. 'He had set up in the
public line here, and couldn't meet his engagements, so he cut off
to Liverpool one day, without saying anything about it, and went and
shipped himself for the U-nited States.'

'Well?' said Martin.

'Well! as he landed there without a penny to bless himself with, of
course they wos very glad to see him in the U-nited States.'

'What do you mean?' asked Martin, with some scorn.

'What do I mean?' said Bill. 'Why, THAT. All men are alike in the
U-nited States, an't they? It makes no odds whether a man has a
thousand pound, or nothing, there. Particular in New York, I'm
told, where Ned landed.'

'New York, was it?' asked Martin, thoughtfully.

'Yes,' said Bill. 'New York. I know that, because he sent word
home that it brought Old York to his mind, quite vivid, in
consequence of being so exactly unlike it in every respect. I don't
understand what particular business Ned turned his mind to, when he
got there; but he wrote home that him and his friends was always a-
singing, Ale Columbia, and blowing up the President, so I suppose it
was something in the public line; or free-and-easy way again.
Anyhow, he made his fortune.'

'No!' cried Martin.

'Yes, he did,' said Bill. 'I know that, because he lost it all the
day after, in six-and-twenty banks as broke. He settled a lot of
the notes on his father, when it was ascertained that they was
really stopped and sent 'em over with a dutiful letter. I know
that, because they was shown down our yard for the old gentleman's
benefit, that he might treat himself with tobacco in the workus.'

'He was a foolish fellow not to take care of his money when he had
it,' said Martin, indignantly.

'There you're right,' said Bill, 'especially as it was all in paper,
and he might have took care of it so very easy, by folding it up in a
small parcel.'

Martin said nothing in reply, but soon afterwards fell asleep, and
remained so for an hour or more. When he awoke, finding it had
ceased to rain, he took his seat beside the driver, and asked him
several questions; as how long had the fortunate guard of the Light
Salisbury been in crossing the Atlantic; at what time of the year
had he sailed; what was the name of the ship in which he made the
voyage; how much had he paid for passage-money; did he suffer
greatly from sea-sickness? and so forth. But on these points of
detail his friend was possessed of little or no information; either
answering obviously at random or acknowledging that he had never
heard, or had forgotten; nor, although he returned to the charge
very often, could he obtain any useful intelligence on these
essential particulars.

They jogged on all day, and stopped so often--now to refresh, now to
change their team of horses, now to exchange or bring away a set of
harness, now on one point of business, and now upon another,
connected with the coaching on that line of road--that it was
midnight when they reached Hounslow. A little short of the stables
for which the van was bound, Martin got down, paid his crown, and
forced his silk handkerchief upon his honest friend, notwithstanding
the many protestations that he didn't wish to deprive him of it,
with which he tried to give the lie to his longing looks. That
done, they parted company; and when the van had driven into its own
yard and the gates were closed, Martin stood in the dark street,
with a pretty strong sense of being shut out, alone, upon the dreary
world, without the key of it.

But in this moment of despondency, and often afterwards, the
recollection of Mr Pecksniff operated as a cordial to him; awakening
in his breast an indignation that was very wholesome in nerving him
to obstinate endurance. Under the influence of this fiery dram he
started off for London without more ado. Arriving there in the
middle of the night, and not knowing where to find a tavern open, he
was fain to stroll about the streets and market-places until
morning.

He found himself, about an hour before dawn, in the humbler regions
of the Adelphi; and addressing himself to a man in a fur-cap, who was
taking down the shutters of an obscure public-house, informed him
that he was a stranger, and inquired if he could have a bed there.
It happened by good luck that he could. Though none of the
gaudiest, it was tolerably clean, and Martin felt very glad and
grateful when he crept into it, for warmth, rest, and forgetfulness.

It was quite late in the afternoon when he awoke; and by the time he
had washed and dressed, and broken his fast, it was growing dusk
again. This was all the better, for it was now a matter of absolute
necessity that he should part with his watch to some obliging pawn-
broker. He would have waited until after dark for this purpose,
though it had been the longest day in the year, and he had begun it
without a breakfast.

He passed more Golden Balls than all the jugglers in Europe have
juggled with, in the course of their united performances, before he
could determine in favour of any particular shop where those symbols
were displayed. In the end he came back to one of the first he had
seen, and entering by a side-door in a court, where the three balls,
with the legend 'Money Lent,' were repeated in a ghastly
transparency, passed into one of a series of little closets, or
private boxes, erected for the accommodation of the more bashful and
uninitiated customers. He bolted himself in; pulled out his watch;
and laid it on the counter.

'Upon my life and soul!' said a low voice in the next box to the
shopman who was in treaty with him, 'you must make it more; you must
make it a trifle more, you must indeed! You must dispense with one
half-quarter of an ounce in weighing out your pound of flesh, my
best of friends, and make it two-and-six.'

Martin drew back involuntarily, for he knew the voice at once.

'You're always full of your chaff,' said the shopman, rolling up the
article (which looked like a shirt) quite as a matter of course, and
nibbing his pen upon the counter.

'I shall never be full of my wheat,' said Mr Tigg, 'as long as I
come here. Ha, ha! Not bad! Make it two-and-six, my dear friend,
positively for this occasion only. Half-a-crown is a delightful
coin. Two-and-six. Going at two-and-six! For the last time at
two-and-six!'

'It'll never be the last time till it's quite worn out,' rejoined
the shopman. 'It's grown yellow in the service as it is.'

'Its master has grown yellow in the service, if you mean that, my
friend,' said Mr Tigg; 'in the patriotic service of an ungrateful
country. You are making it two-and-six, I think?'

'I'm making it,' returned the shopman, 'what it always has been--two
shillings. Same name as usual, I suppose?'

'Still the same name,' said Mr Tigg; 'my claim to the dormant
peerage not being yet established by the House of Lords.'

'The old address?'

'Not at all,' said Mr Tigg; 'I have removed my town establishment
from thirty-eight, Mayfair, to number fifteen-hundred-and-forty-two,
Park Lane.'

'Come, I'm not going to put down that, you know,' said the shopman
with a grin.

'You may put down what you please, my friend,' quoth Mr Tigg. 'The
fact is still the same. The apartments for the under-butler and the
fifth footman being of a most confounded low and vulgar kind at
thirty-eight, Mayfair, I have been compelled, in my regard for the
feelings which do them so much honour, to take on lease for seven,
fourteen, or twenty-one years, renewable at the option of the
tenant, the elegant and commodious family mansion, number fifteen-
hundred-and-forty-two Park Lane. Make it two-and-six, and come and
see me!'

The shopman was so highly entertained by this piece of humour that
Mr Tigg himself could not repress some little show of exultation.
It vented itself, in part, in a desire to see how the occupant of
the next box received his pleasantry; to ascertain which he glanced
round the partition, and immediately, by the gaslight, recognized
Martin.

'I wish I may die,' said Mr Tigg, stretching out his body so far
that his head was as much in Martin's little cell as Martin's own
head was, 'but this is one of the most tremendous meetings in
Ancient or Modern History! How are you? What is the news from the
agricultural districts? How are our friends the P.'s? Ha, ha!
David, pay particular attention to this gentleman immediately, as a
friend of mine, I beg.'

'Here! Please to give me the most you can for this,' said Martin,
handing the watch to the shopman. 'I want money sorely.'

'He wants money, sorely!' cried Mr Tigg with excessive sympathy.
'David, will you have the goodness to do your very utmost for my
friend, who wants money sorely. You will deal with my friend as if
he were myself. A gold hunting-watch, David, engine-turned, capped
and jewelled in four holes, escape movement, horizontal lever, and
warranted to perform correctly, upon my personal reputation, who
have observed it narrowly for many years, under the most trying
circumstances'--here he winked at Martin, that he might understand
this recommendation would have an immense effect upon the shopman;
'what do you say, David, to my friend? Be very particular to
deserve my custom and recommendation, David.'

'I can lend you three pounds on this, if you like' said the shopman
to Martin, confidentially. 'It is very old-fashioned. I couldn't
say more.'

'And devilish handsome, too,' cried Mr Tigg. 'Two-twelve-six for
the watch, and seven-and-six for personal regard. I am gratified;
it may be weakness, but I am. Three pounds will do. We take it.
The name of my friend is Smivey: Chicken Smivey, of Holborn, twenty-
six-and-a-half B: lodger.'  Here he winked at Martin again, to
apprise him that all the forms and ceremonies prescribed by law were
now complied with, and nothing remained but the receipt for the
money.

In point of fact, this proved to be the case, for Martin, who had no
resource but to take what was offered him, signified his
acquiescence by a nod of his head, and presently came out with the
cash in his pocket. He was joined in the entry by Mr Tigg, who
warmly congratulated him, as he took his arm and accompanied him
into the street, on the successful issue of the negotiation.

'As for my part in the same,' said Mr Tigg, 'don't mention it.
Don't compliment me, for I can't bear it!'

'I have no such intention, I assure you,' retorted Martin, releasing
his arm and stopping.

'You oblige me very much' said Mr Tigg. 'Thank you.'

'Now, sir,' observed Martin, biting his lip, 'this is a large town,
and we can easily find different ways in it. If you will show me
which is your way, I will take another.'

Mr Tigg was about to speak, but Martin interposed:

'I need scarcely tell you, after what you have just seen, that I
have nothing to bestow upon your friend Mr Slyme. And it is quite
as unnecessary for me to tell you that I don't desire the honour of
your company.'

'Stop' cried Mr Tigg, holding out his hand. 'Hold! There is a most
remarkably long-headed, flowing-bearded, and patriarchal proverb,
which observes that it is the duty of a man to be just before he is
generous. Be just now, and you can be generous presently. Do not
confuse me with the man Slyme. Do not distinguish the man Slyme as
a friend of mine, for he is no such thing. I have been compelled,
sir, to abandon the party whom you call Slyme. I have no knowledge
of the party whom you call Slyme. I am, sir,' said Mr Tigg,
striking himself upon the breast, 'a premium tulip, of a very
different growth and cultivation from the cabbage Slyme, sir.'

'It matters very little to me,' said Martin coolly, 'whether you
have set up as a vagabond on your own account, or are still trading
on behalf of Mr Slyme. I wish to hold no correspondence with you.
In the devil's name, man' said Martin, scarcely able, despite his
vexation, to repress a smile as Mr Tigg stood leaning his back
against the shutters of a shop window, adjusting his hair with great
composure, 'will you go one way or other?'

'You will allow me to remind you, sir,' said Mr Tigg, with sudden
dignity, 'that you--not I--that you--I say emphatically, YOU--have
reduced the proceedings of this evening to a cold and distant matter
of business, when I was disposed to place them on a friendly
footing. It being made a matter of business, sir, I beg to say that
I expect a trifle (which I shall bestow in charity) as commission
upon the pecuniary advance, in which I have rendered you my humble
services. After the terms in which you have addressed me, sir,'
concluded Mr Tigg, 'you will not insult me, if you please, by
offering more than half-a-crown.'

Martin drew that piece of money from his pocket, and tossed it
towards him. Mr Tigg caught it, looked at it to assure himself of
its goodness, spun it in the air after the manner of a pieman, and
buttoned it up. Finally, he raised his hat an inch or two from his
head with a military air, and, after pausing a moment with deep
gravity, as to decide in which direction he should go, and to what
Earl or Marquis among his friends he should give the preference in
his next call, stuck his hands in his skirt-pockets and swaggered
round the corner. Martin took the directly opposite course; and so,
to his great content, they parted company.

It was with a bitter sense of humiliation that he cursed, again and
again, the mischance of having encountered this man in the pawnbroker's
shop. The only comfort he had in the recollection was, Mr
Tigg's voluntary avowal of a separation between himself and Slyme,
that would at least prevent his circumstances (so Martin argued)
from being known to any member of his family, the bare possibility
of which filled him with shame and wounded pride. Abstractedly
there was greater reason, perhaps, for supposing any declaration of
Mr Tigg's to be false, than for attaching the least credence to it;
but remembering the terms on which the intimacy between that
gentleman and his bosom friend had subsisted, and the strong
probability of Mr Tigg's having established an independent business
of his own on Mr Slyme's connection, it had a reasonable appearance
of probability; at all events, Martin hoped so; and that went a long
way.

His first step, now that he had a supply of ready money for his
present necessities, was, to retain his bed at the public-house
until further notice, and to write a formal note to Tom Pinch (for
he knew Pecksniff would see it) requesting to have his clothes
forwarded to London by coach, with a direction to be left at the
office until called for. These measures taken, he passed the
interval before the box arrived--three days--in making inquiries
relative to American vessels, at the offices of various shipping-
agents in the city; and in lingering about the docks and wharves,
with the faint hope of stumbling upon some engagement for the
voyage, as clerk or supercargo, or custodian of something or
somebody, which would enable him to procure a free passage. But
finding, soon, that no such means of employment were likely to
present themselves, and dreading the consequences of delay, he drew
up a short advertisement, stating what he wanted, and inserted it in
the leading newspapers. Pending the receipt of the twenty or thirty
answers which he vaguely expected, he reduced his wardrobe to the
narrowest limits consistent with decent respectability, and carried
the overplus at different times to the pawnbroker's shop, for
conversion into money.

And it was strange, very strange, even to himself, to find how, by
quick though almost imperceptible degrees, he lost his delicacy and
self-respect, and gradually came to do that as a matter of course,
without the least compunction, which but a few short days before had
galled him to the quick. The first time he visited the
pawnbroker's, he felt on his way there as if every person whom he
passed suspected whither he was going; and on his way back again, as
if the whole human tide he stemmed, knew well where he had come
from. When did he care to think of their discernment now! In his
first wanderings up and down the weary streets, he counterfeited the
walk of one who had an object in his view; but soon there came upon
him the sauntering, slipshod gait of listless idleness, and the
lounging at street-corners, and plucking and biting of stray bits of
straw, and strolling up and down the same place, and looking into
the same shop-windows, with a miserable indifference, fifty times a
day. At first, he came out from his lodging with an uneasy sense of
being observed--even by those chance passers-by, on whom he had
never looked before, and hundreds to one would never see again--
issuing in the morning from a public-house; but now, in his comings-
out and goings-in he did not mind to lounge about the door, or to
stand sunning himself in careless thought beside the wooden stem,
studded from head to heel with pegs, on which the beer-pots dangled
like so many boughs upon a pewter-tree. And yet it took but five
weeks to reach the lowest round of this tall ladder!

Oh, moralists, who treat of happiness and self-respect, innate in
every sphere of life, and shedding light on every grain of dust in
God's highway, so smooth below your carriage-wheels, so rough
beneath the tread of naked feet, bethink yourselves in looking on
the swift descent of men who HAVE lived in their own esteem, that
there are scores of thousands breathing now, and breathing thick
with painful toil, who in that high respect have never lived at all,
nor had a chance of life! Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the
sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old,
and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their
bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the
mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and
uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant
spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright
torch as fast as it is kindled! And, oh! ye Pharisees of the
nineteen hundredth year of Christian Knowledge, who soundingly
appeal to human nature, see that it be human first. Take heed it
has not been transformed, during your slumber and the sleep of
generations, into the nature of the Beasts!

Five weeks! Of all the twenty or thirty answers, not one had come.
His money--even the additional stock he had raised from the disposal
of his spare clothes (and that was not much, for clothes, though
dear to buy, are cheap to pawn)--was fast diminishing. Yet what
could he do? At times an agony came over him in which he darted
forth again, though he was but newly home, and, returning to some
place where he had been already twenty times, made some new attempt
to gain his end, but always unsuccessfully. He was years and years
too old for a cabin-boy, and years upon years too inexperienced to
be accepted as a common seaman. His dress and manner, too,
militated fatally against any such proposal as the latter; and yet
he was reduced to making it; for even if he could have contemplated
the being set down in America totally without money, he had not
enough left now for a steerage passage and the poorest provisions
upon the voyage.

It is an illustration of a very common tendency in the mind of man,
that all this time he never once doubted, one may almost say the
certainty of doing great things in the New World, if he could only
get there. In proportion as he became more and more dejected by his
present circumstances, and the means of gaining America receded from
his grasp, the more he fretted himself with the conviction that that
was the only place in which he could hope to achieve any high end,
and worried his brain with the thought that men going there in the
meanwhile might anticipate him in the attainment of those objects
which were dearest to his heart. He often thought of John Westlock,
and besides looking out for him on all occasions, actually walked
about London for three days together for the express purpose of
meeting with him. But although he failed in this; and although he
would not have scrupled to borrow money of him; and although he
believed that John would have lent it; yet still he could not bring
his mind to write to Pinch and inquire where he was to be found.
For although, as we have seen, he was fond of Tom after his own
fashion, he could not endure the thought (feeling so superior to
Tom) of making him the stepping-stone to his fortune, or being
anything to him but a patron; and his pride so revolted from the
idea that it restrained him even now.

It might have yielded, however; and no doubt must have yielded soon,
but for a very strange and unlooked-for occurrence.

The five weeks had quite run out, and he was in a truly desperate
plight, when one evening, having just returned to his lodging, and
being in the act of lighting his candle at the gas jet in the bar
before stalking moodily upstairs to his own room, his landlord
called him by his name. Now as he had never told it to the man, but
had scrupulously kept it to himself, he was not a little startled by
this; and so plainly showed his agitation that the landlord, to
reassure him, said 'it was only a letter.'

'A letter!' cried Martin.

'For Mr Martin Chuzzlewit,' said the landlord, reading the
superscription of one he held in his hand. 'Noon. Chief office.
Paid.'

Martin took it from him, thanked him, and walked upstairs. It was
not sealed, but pasted close; the handwriting was quite unknown to
him. He opened it and found enclosed, without any name, address, or
other inscription or explanation of any kind whatever, a Bank of
England note for Twenty Pounds.

To say that he was perfectly stunned with astonishment and delight;
that he looked again and again at the note and the wrapper; that he
hurried below stairs to make quite certain that the note was a good
note; and then hurried up again to satisfy himself for the fiftieth
time that he had not overlooked some scrap of writing on the
wrapper; that he exhausted and bewildered himself with conjectures;
and could make nothing of it but that there the note was, and he was
suddenly enriched; would be only to relate so many matters of course
to no purpose. The final upshot of the business at that time was,
that he resolved to treat himself to a comfortable but frugal meal
in his own chamber; and having ordered a fire to be kindled, went
out to purchase it forthwith.

He bought some cold beef, and ham, and French bread, and butter, and
came back with his pockets pretty heavily laden. It was somewhat of
a damping circumstance to find the room full of smoke, which was
attributable to two causes; firstly, to the flue being naturally
vicious and a smoker; and secondly, to their having forgotten, in
lighting the fire, an odd sack or two and some trifles, which had
been put up the chimney to keep the rain out. They had already
remedied this oversight, however; and propped up the window-sash
with a bundle of firewood to keep it open; so that except in being
rather inflammatory to the eyes and choking to the lungs, the
apartment was quite comfortable.

Martin was in no vein to quarrel with it, if it had been in less
tolerable order, especially when a gleaming pint of porter was set
upon the table, and the servant-girl withdrew, bearing with her
particular instructions relative to the production of something hot
when he should ring the bell. The cold meat being wrapped in a
playbill, Martin laid the cloth by spreading that document on the
little round table with the print downwards, and arranging the
collation upon it. The foot of the bed, which was very close to the
fire, answered for a sideboard; and when he had completed these
preparations, he squeezed an old arm-chair into the warmest corner,
and sat down to enjoy himself.

He had begun to eat with great appetite, glancing round the room
meanwhile with a triumphant anticipation of quitting it for ever on
the morrow, when his attention was arrested by a stealthy footstep
on the stairs, and presently by a knock at his chamber door, which,
although it was a gentle knock enough, communicated such a start to
the bundle of firewood, that it instantly leaped out of window, and
plunged into the street.

'More coals, I suppose,' said Martin. 'Come in!'

'It an't a liberty, sir, though it seems so,' rejoined a man's
voice. 'Your servant, sir. Hope you're pretty well, sir.'

Martin stared at the face that was bowing in the doorway, perfectly
remembering the features and expression, but quite forgetting to
whom they belonged.

'Tapley, sir,' said his visitor. 'Him as formerly lived at the
Dragon, sir, and was forced to leave in consequence of a want of
jollity, sir.'

'To be sure!' cried Martin. 'Why, how did you come here?'

'Right through the passage, and up the stairs, sir,' said Mark.

'How did you find me out, I mean?' asked Martin.

'Why, sir,' said Mark, 'I've passed you once or twice in the street,
if I'm not mistaken; and when I was a-looking in at the beef-and-ham
shop just now, along with a hungry sweep, as was very much
calculated to make a man jolly, sir--I see you a-buying that.'

Martin reddened as he pointed to the table, and said, somewhat
hastily:

'Well! What then?'

'Why, then, sir,' said Mark, 'I made bold to foller; and as I told
'em downstairs that you expected me, I was let up.'

'Are you charged with any message, that you told them you were
expected?' inquired Martin.

'No, sir, I an't,' said Mark. 'That was what you may call a pious
fraud, sir, that was.'

Martin cast an angry look at him; but there was something in the
fellow's merry face, and in his manner--which with all its
cheerfulness was far from being obtrusive or familiar--that quite
disarmed him. He had lived a solitary life too, for many weeks, and
the voice was pleasant in his ear.

'Tapley,' he said, 'I'll deal openly with you. From all I can judge
and from all I have heard of you through Pinch, you are not a likely
kind of fellow to have been brought here by impertinent curiosity or
any other offensive motive. Sit down. I'm glad to see you.'

'Thankee, sir,' said Mark. 'I'd as lieve stand.'

"If you don't sit down,' retorted Martin, 'I'll not talk to you.'

'Very good, sir,' observed Mark. 'Your will's a law, sir. Down it
is;' and he sat down accordingly upon the bedstead.

'Help yourself,' said Martin, handing him the only knife.

'Thankee, sir,' rejoined Mark. 'After you've done.'

'If you don't take it now, you'll not have any,' said Martin.

'Very good, sir,' rejoined Mark. 'That being your desire--now it
is.'  With which reply he gravely helped himself and went on eating.
Martin having done the like for a short time in silence, said
abruptly:

'What are you doing in London?'

'Nothing at all, sir,' rejoined Mark.

'How's that?' asked Martin.

'I want a place,' said Mark.

'I'm sorry for you,' said Martin.

'--To attend upon a single gentleman,' resumed Mark. 'If from the
country the more desirable. Makeshifts would be preferred. Wages
no object.'

He said this so pointedly, that Martin stopped in his eating, and
said:

'If you mean me--'

'Yes, I do, sir,' interposed Mark.

'Then you may judge from my style of living here, of my means of
keeping a man-servant. Besides, I am going to America immediately.'

'Well, sir,' returned Mark, quite unmoved by this intelligence 'from
all that ever I heard about it, I should say America is a very
likely sort of place for me to be jolly in!'

Again Martin looked at him angrily; and again his anger melted away
in spite of himself.

'Lord bless you, sir,' said Mark, 'what is the use of us a-going
round and round, and hiding behind the corner, and dodging up and
down, when we can come straight to the point in six words? I've had
my eye upon you any time this fortnight. I see well enough there's
a screw loose in your affairs. I know'd well enough the first time
I see you down at the Dragon that it must be so, sooner or later.
Now, sir here am I, without a sitiwation; without any want of wages
for a year to come; for I saved up (I didn't mean to do it, but I
couldn't help it) at the Dragon--here am I with a liking for what's
wentersome, and a liking for you, and a wish to come out strong
under circumstances as would keep other men down; and will you take
me, or will you leave me?'

'How can I take you?' cried Martin.

'When I say take,' rejoined Mark, 'I mean will you let me go? and
when I say will you let me go, I mean will you let me go along with
you? for go I will, somehow or another. Now that you've said
America, I see clear at once, that that's the place for me to be
jolly in. Therefore, if I don't pay my own passage in the ship you
go in, sir, I'll pay my own passage in another. And mark my words,
if I go alone it shall be, to carry out the principle, in the
rottenest, craziest, leakingest tub of a wessel that a place can be
got in for love or money. So if I'm lost upon the way, sir,
there'll be a drowned man at your door--and always a-knocking double
knocks at it, too, or never trust me!'

'This is mere folly,' said Martin.

'Very good, sir,' returned Mark. 'I'm glad to hear it, because if
you don't mean to let me go, you'll be more comfortable, perhaps, on
account of thinking so. Therefore I contradict no gentleman. But
all I say is, that if I don't emigrate to America in that case, in
the beastliest old cockle-shell as goes out of port, I'm--'

'You don't mean what you say, I'm sure,' said Martin.

'Yes I do,' cried Mark.

'I tell you I know better,' rejoined Martin.

'Very good, sir,' said Mark, with the same air of perfect
satisfaction. 'Let it stand that way at present, sir, and wait and
see how it turns out. Why, love my heart alive! the only doubt I
have is, whether there's any credit in going with a gentleman like
you, that's as certain to make his way there as a gimlet is to go
through soft deal.'

This was touching Martin on his weak point, and having him at a
great advantage. He could not help thinking, either, what a brisk
fellow this Mark was, and how great a change he had wrought in the
atmosphere of the dismal little room already.

'Why, certainly, Mark,' he said, 'I have hopes of doing well there,
or I shouldn't go. I may have the qualifications for doing well,
perhaps.'

'Of course you have, sir,' returned Mark Tapley. 'Everybody knows
that.'

'You see,' said Martin, leaning his chin upon his hand, and looking
at the fire, 'ornamental architecture applied to domestic purposes,
can hardly fail to be in great request in that country; for men are
constantly changing their residences there, and moving further off;
and it's clear they must have houses to live in.'

'I should say, sir,' observed Mark, 'that that's a state of things
as opens one of the jolliest look-outs for domestic architecture
that ever I heerd tell on.'

Martin glanced at him hastily, not feeling quite free from a
suspicion that this remark implied a doubt of the successful issue
of his plans. But Mr Tapley was eating the boiled beef and bread
with such entire good faith and singleness of purpose expressed in
his visage that he could not but be satisfied. Another doubt arose
in his mind however, as this one disappeared. He produced the blank
cover in which the note had been enclosed, and fixing his eyes on
Mark as he put it in his hands, said:

'Now tell me the truth. Do you know anything about that?'

Mark turned it over and over; held it near his eyes; held it away
from him at arm's length; held it with the superscription upwards
and with the superscription downwards; and shook his head with such
a genuine expression of astonishment at being asked the question,
that Martin said, as he took it from him again:

'No, I see you don't. How should you! Though, indeed, your knowing
about it would not be more extraordinary than its being here. Come,
Tapley,' he added, after a moment's thought, 'I'll trust you with my
history, such as it is, and then you'll see more clearly what sort
of fortunes you would link yourself to, if you followed me.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Mark; 'but afore you enter upon it
will you take me if I choose to go? Will you turn off me--Mark
Tapley--formerly of the Blue Dragon, as can be well recommended by Mr
Pinch, and as wants a gentleman of your strength of mind to look up
to; or will you, in climbing the ladder as you're certain to get to
the top of, take me along with you at a respectful dutance? Now,
sir,' said Mark, 'it's of very little importance to you, I know.
there's the difficulty; but it's of very great importance to me, and
will you be so good as to consider of it?'

If this were meant as a second appeal to Martin's weak side, founded
on his observation of the effect of the first, Mr Tapley was a
skillful and shrewd observer. Whether an intentional or an
accidental shot, it hit the mark fully for Martin, relenting more
and more, said with a condescension which was inexpressibly
delicious to him, after his recent humiliation:

'We'll see about it, Tapley. You shall tell me in what disposition
you find yourself to-morrow.'

'Then, sir,' said Mark, rubbing his hands, 'the job's done. Go on,
sir, if you please. I'm all attention.'

Throwing himself back in his arm-chair, and looking at the fire, with
now and then a glance at Mark, who at such times nodded his head
sagely, to express his profound interest and attention. Martin ran
over the chief points in his history, to the same effect as he had
related them, weeks before, to Mr Pinch. But he adapted them,
according to the best of his judgment, to Mr Tapley's comprehension;
and with that view made as light of his love affair as he could, and
referred to it in very few words. But here he reckoned without his
host; for Mark's interest was keenest in this part of the business,
and prompted him to ask sundry questions in relation to it; for
which he apologised as one in some measure privileged to do so, from
having seen (as Martin explained to him) the young lady at the Blue
Dragon.

'And a young lady as any gentleman ought to feel more proud of being
in love with,' said Mark, energetically, 'don't draw breath.'

'Aye! You saw her when she was not happy,' said Martin, gazing at
the fire again. 'If you had seen her in the old times, indeed--'

'Why, she certainly was a little down-hearted, sir, and something
paler in her colour than I could have wished,' said Mark, 'but none
the worse in her looks for that. I think she seemed better, sir,
after she come to London.'

Martin withdrew his eyes from the fire; stared at Mark as if he
thought he had suddenly gone mad; and asked him what he meant.

'No offence intended, sir,' urged Mark. 'I don't mean to say she
was any the happier without you; but I thought she was a-looking
better, sir.'

'Do you mean to tell me she has been in London?' asked Martin,
rising hurriedly, and pushing back his chair.

'Of course I do,' said Mark, rising too, in great amazement from the
bedstead.

'Do you mean to tell me she is in London now?'

'Most likely, sir. I mean to say she was a week ago.'

'And you know where?'

'Yes!' cried Mark. 'What! Don't you?'

'My good fellow!' exclaimed Martin, clutching him by both arms, 'I
have never seen her since I left my grandfather's house.'

'Why, then!' cried Mark, giving the little table such a blow with
his clenched fist that the slices of beef and ham danced upon it,
while all his features seemed, with delight, to be going up into his
forehead, and never coming back again any more, 'if I an't your
nat'ral born servant, hired by Fate, there an't such a thing in
natur' as a Blue Dragon. What! when I was a-rambling up and down a
old churchyard in the City, getting myself into a jolly state,
didn't I see your grandfather a-toddling to and fro for pretty nigh
a mortal hour! Didn't I watch him into Todgers's commercial
boarding-house, and watch him out, and watch him home to his hotel,
and go and tell him as his was the service for my money, and I had
said so, afore I left the Dragon! Wasn't the young lady a-sitting
with him then, and didn't she fall a-laughing in a manner as was
beautiful to see! Didn't your grandfather say, "Come back again next
week," and didn't I go next week; and didn't he say that he
couldn't make up his mind to trust nobody no more; and therefore
wouldn't engage me, but at the same time stood something to drink as
was handsome! Why,' cried Mr Tapley, with a comical mixture of
delight and chagrin, 'where's the credit of a man's being jolly
under such circumstances! Who could help it, when things come about
like this!'

For some moments Martin stood gazing at him, as if he really doubted
the evidence of his senses, and could not believe that Mark stood
there, in the body, before him. At length he asked him whether, if
the young lady were still in London, he thought he could contrive to
deliver a letter to her secretly.

'Do I think I can?' cried Mark. 'THINK I can? Here, sit down, sir.
Write it out, sir!'

With that he cleared the table by the summary process of tilting
everything upon it into the fireplace; snatched some writing
materials from the mantel-shelf; set Martin's chair before them;
forced him down into it; dipped a pen into the ink; and put it in
his hand.

'Cut away, sir!' cried Mark. 'Make it strong, sir. Let it be wery
pinted, sir. Do I think so? I should think so. Go to work, sir!'

Martin required no further adjuration, but went to work at a great
rate; while Mr Tapley, installing himself without any more
formalities into the functions of his valet and general attendant,
divested himself of his coat, and went on to clear the fireplace
and arrange the room; talking to himself in a low voice the whole
time.

'Jolly sort of lodgings,' said Mark, rubbing his nose with the knob
at the end of the fire-shovel, and looking round the poor chamber;
'that's a comfort. The rain's come through the roof too. That an't
bad. A lively old bedstead, I'll be bound; popilated by lots of
wampires, no doubt. Come! my spirits is a-getting up again. An
uncommon ragged nightcap this. A very good sign. We shall do yet!
Here, Jane, my dear,' calling down the stairs, 'bring up that there
hot tumbler for my master as was a-mixing when I come in. That's
right, sir,' to Martin. 'Go at it as if you meant it, sir. Be very
tender, sir, if you please. You can't make it too strong, sir!'

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IN WHICH MARTIN BIDS ADIEU TO THE LADY OF HIS LOVE; AND HONOURS AN
OBSCURE INDIVIDUAL WHOSE FORTUNE HE INTENDS TO MAKE BY COMMENDING
HER TO HIS PROTECTION

The letter being duly signed, sealed, and delivered, was handed to
Mark Tapley, for immediate conveyance if possible. And he succeeded
so well in his embassy as to be enabled to return that same night,
just as the house was closing, with the welcome intelligence that he
had sent it upstairs to the young lady, enclosed in a small
manuscript of his own, purporting to contain his further petition to
be engaged in Mr Chuzzlewit's service; and that she had herself come
down and told him, in great haste and agitation, that she would meet
the gentleman at eight o'clock to-morrow morning in St. James's
Park. It was then agreed between the new master and the new man,
that Mark should be in waiting near the hotel in good time, to
escort the young lady to the place of appointment; and when they had
parted for the night with this understanding, Martin took up his pen
again; and before he went to bed wrote another letter, whereof more
will be seen presently.

He was up before daybreak, and came upon the Park with the morning,
which was clad in the least engaging of the three hundred and sixty-
five dresses in the wardrobe of the year. It was raw, damp, dark,
and dismal; the clouds were as muddy as the ground; and the short
perspective of every street and avenue was closed up by the mist as
by a filthy curtain.

'Fine weather indeed,' Martin bitterly soliloquised, 'to be
wandering up and down here in, like a thief! Fine weather indeed,
for a meeting of lovers in the open air, and in a public walk! I
need be departing, with all speed, for another country; for I have
come to a pretty pass in this!'

He might perhaps have gone on to reflect that of all mornings in the
year, it was not the best calculated for a young lady's coming forth
on such an errand, either. But he was stopped on the road to this
reflection, if his thoughts tended that way, by her appearance at a
short distance, on which he hurried forward to meet her. Her
squire, Mr Tapley, at the same time fell discreetly back, and
surveyed the fog above him with an appearance of attentive interest.

'My dear Martin,' said Mary.

'My dear Mary,' said Martin; and lovers are such a singular kind of
people that this is all they did say just then, though Martin took
her arm, and her hand too, and they paced up and down a short walk
that was least exposed to observation, half-a-dozen times.

'If you have changed at all, my love, since we parted,' said Martin
at length, as he looked upon her with a proud delight, 'it is only
to be more beautiful than ever!'

Had she been of the common metal of love-worn young ladies, she
would have denied this in her most interesting manner; and would
have told him that she knew she had become a perfect fright; or that
she had wasted away with weeping and anxiety; or that she was
dwindling gently into an early grave; or that her mental sufferings
were unspeakable; or would, either by tears or words, or a mixture
of both, have furnished him with some other information to that
effect, and made him as miserable as possible. But she had been
reared up in a sterner school than the minds of most young girls are
formed in; she had had her nature strengthened by the hands of hard
endurance and necessity; had come out from her young trials
constant, self-denying, earnest, and devoted; had acquired in her
maidenhood--whether happily in the end, for herself or him, is
foreign to our present purpose to inquire--something of that nobler
quality of gentle hearts which is developed often by the sorrows and
struggles of matronly years, but often by their lessons only.
Unspoiled, unpampered in her joys or griefs; with frank and full,
and deep affection for the object of her early love; she saw in him
one who for her sake was an outcast from his home and fortune, and
she had no more idea of bestowing that love upon him in other than
cheerful and sustaining words, full of high hope and grateful
trustfulness, than she had of being unworthy of it, in her lightest
thought or deed, for any base temptation that the world could offer.

'What change is there in YOU, Martin,' she replied; 'for that
concerns me nearest? You look more anxious and more thoughtful than
you used.'

'Why, as to that, my love,' said Martin as he drew her waist within
his arm, first looking round to see that there were no observers
near, and beholding Mr Tapley more intent than ever on the fog; 'it
would be strange if I did not; for my life--especially of late--has
been a hard one.'

'I know it must have been,' she answered. 'When have I forgotten to
think of it and you?'

'Not often, I hope,' said Martin. 'Not often, I am sure. Not
often, I have some right to expect, Mary; for I have undergone a
great deal of vexation and privation, and I naturally look for that
return, you know.'

'A very, very poor return,' she answered with a fainter smile. 'But
you have it, and will have it always. You have paid a dear price
for a poor heart, Martin; but it is at least your own, and a true
one.'

'Of course I feel quite certain of that,' said Martin, 'or I
shouldn't have put myself in my present position. And don't say a
poor heart, Mary, for I say a rich one. Now, I am about to break a
design to you, dearest, which will startle you at first, but which is
undertaken for your sake. I am going,' he added slowly, looking far
into the deep wonder of her bright dark eyes, 'abroad.'

'Abroad, Martin!'

'Only to America. See now. How you droop directly!'

'If I do, or, I hope I may say, if I did,' she answered, raising her
head after a short silence, and looking once more into his face, 'it
was for grief to think of what you are resolved to undergo for me.
I would not venture to dissuade you, Martin; but it is a long, long
distance; there is a wide ocean to be crossed; illness and want are
sad calamities in any place, but in a foreign country dreadful to
endure. Have you thought of all this?'

'Thought of it!' cried Martin, abating, in his fondness--and he WAS
very fond of her--hardly an iota of his usual impetuosity. 'What am
I to do? It's very well to say, "Have I thought of it?" my love; but
you should ask me in the same breath, have I thought of starving at
home; have I thought of doing porter's work for a living; have I
thought of holding horses in the streets to earn my roll of bread
from day to day? Come, come,' he added, in a gentler tone, 'do not
hang down your head, my dear, for I need the encouragement that your
sweet face alone can give me. Why, that's well! Now you are brave
again.'

'I am endeavouring to be,' she answered, smiling through her tears.

'Endeavouring to be anything that's good, and being it, is, with
you, all one. Don't I know that of old?' cried Martin, gayly.
'So! That's famous! Now I can tell you all my plans as cheerfully
as if you were my little wife already, Mary.'

She hung more closely on his arm, and looking upwards in his face,
bade him speak on.

'You see,' said Martin, playing with the little hand upon his wrist,
'that my attempts to advance myself at home have been baffled and
rendered abortive. I will not say by whom, Mary, for that would
give pain to us both. But so it is. Have you heard him speak of
late of any relative of mine or his, called Pecksniff? Only tell me
what I ask you, no more.'

'I have heard, to my surprise, that he is a better man than was
supposed.'

'I thought so,' interrupted Martin.

'And that it is likely we may come to know him, if not to visit and
reside with him and--I think--his daughters. He HAS daughters, has
he, love?'

'A pair of them,' Martin answered. 'A precious pair! Gems of the
first water!'

'Ah! You are jesting!'

'There is a sort of jesting which is very much in earnest, and
includes some pretty serious disgust,' said Martin. 'I jest in
reference to Mr Pecksniff (at whose house I have been living as his
assistant, and at whose hands I have received insult and injury), in
that vein. Whatever betides, or however closely you may be brought
into communication with this family, never forget that, Mary; and
never for an instant, whatever appearances may seem to contradict
me, lose sight of this assurance--Pecksniff is a scoundrel.'

'Indeed!'

'In thought, and in deed, and in everything else. A scoundrel from
the topmost hair of his head, to the nethermost atom of his heel.
Of his daughters I will only say that, to the best of my knowledge
and belief, they are dutiful young ladies, and take after their
father closely. This is a digression from the main point, and yet
it brings me to what I was going to say.'

He stopped to look into her eyes again, and seeing, in a hasty
glance over his shoulder, that there was no one near, and that Mark
was still intent upon the fog, not only looked at her lips, too, but
kissed them into the bargain.

'Now I am going to America, with great prospects of doing well, and
of returning home myself very soon; it may be to take you there for
a few years, but, at all events, to claim you for my wife; which,
after such trials, I should do with no fear of your still thinking
it a duty to cleave to him who will not suffer me to live (for this
is true), if he can help it, in my own land. How long I may be
absent is, of course, uncertain; but it shall not be very long.
Trust me for that.'

'In the meantime, dear Martin--'

'That's the very thing I am coming to. In the meantime you shall
hear, constantly, of all my goings-on. Thus.'

He paused to take from his pocket the letter he had written
overnight, and then resumed:

'In this fellow's employment, and living in this fellow's house (by
fellow, I mean Mr Pecksniff, of course), there is a certain person
of the name of Pinch. Don't forget; a poor, strange, simple oddity,
Mary; but thoroughly honest and sincere; full of zeal; and with a
cordial regard for me. Which I mean to return one of these days, by
setting him up in life in some way or other.'

'Your old kind nature, Martin!'

'Oh!' said Martin, 'that's not worth speaking of, my love. He's
very grateful and desirous to serve me; and I am more than repaid.
Now one night I told this Pinch my history, and all about myself and
you; in which he was not a little interested, I can tell you, for he
knows you! Aye, you may look surprised--and the longer the better for
it becomes you--but you have heard him play the organ in the church
of that village before now; and he has seen you listening to his
music; and has caught his inspiration from you, too!'

'Was HE the organist?' cried Mary. 'I thank him from my heart!'

'Yes, he was,' said Martin, 'and is, and gets nothing for it either.
There never was such a simple fellow! Quite an infant! But a very
good sort of creature, I assure you.'

'I am sure of that,' she said with great earnestness. 'He must be!'

'Oh, yes, no doubt at all about it,' rejoined Martin, in his usual
careless way. 'He is. Well! It has occurred to me--but stay. If I
read you what I have written and intend sending to him by post to-
night it will explain itself. "My dear Tom Pinch."  That's rather
familiar perhaps,' said Martin, suddenly remembering that he was
proud when they had last met, 'but I call him my dear Tom Pinch
because he likes it, and it pleases him.'

'Very right, and very kind,' said Mary.

'Exactly so!' cried Martin. 'It's as well to be kind whenever one
can; and, as I said before, he really is an excellent fellow. "My
dear Tom Pinch--I address this under cover to Mrs Lupin, at the
Blue Dragon, and have begged her in a short note to deliver it to
you without saying anything about it elsewhere; and to do the same
with all future letters she may receive from me. My reason for so
doing will be at once apparent to you"--I don't know that it will
be, by the bye,' said Martin, breaking off, 'for he's slow of
comprehension, poor fellow; but he'll find it out in time. My
reason simply is, that I don't want my letters to be read by other
people; and particularly by the scoundrel whom he thinks an angel.'

'Mr Pecksniff again?' asked Mary.

'The same,' said Martin '--will be at once apparent to you. I have
completed my arrangements for going to America; and you will be
surprised to hear that I am to be accompanied by Mark Tapley, upon
whom I have stumbled strangely in London, and who insists on putting
himself under my protection'--meaning, my love,' said Martin,
breaking off again, 'our friend in the rear, of course.'

She was delighted to hear this, and bestowed a kind glance upon
Mark, which he brought his eyes down from the fog to encounter and
received with immense satisfaction. She said in his hearing, too,
that he was a good soul and a merry creature, and would be faithful,
she was certain; commendations which Mr Tapley inwardly resolved to
deserve, from such lips, if he died for it.

'"Now, my dear Pinch,"' resumed Martin, proceeding with his letter;
'"I am going to repose great trust in you, knowing that I may do so
with perfect reliance on your honour and secrecy, and having nobody
else just now to trust in."'

'I don't think I would say that, Martin.'

'Wouldn't you? Well! I'll take that out. It's perfectly true,
though.'

'But it might seem ungracious, perhaps.'

'Oh, I don't mind Pinch,' said Martin. 'There's no occasion to
stand on any ceremony with HIM. However, I'll take it out, as you
wish it, and make the full stop at "secrecy."  Very well! "I shall
not only"--this is the letter again, you know.'

'I understand.'

'"I shall not only enclose my letters to the young lady of whom I
have told you, to your charge, to be forwarded as she may request;
but I most earnestly commit her, the young lady herself, to your
care and regard, in the event of your meeting in my absence. I have
reason to think that the probabilities of your encountering each
other--perhaps very frequently--are now neither remote nor few; and
although in our position you can do very little to lessen the
uneasiness of hers, I trust to you implicitly to do that much, and
so deserve the confidence I have reposed in you."  You see, my dear
Mary,' said Martin, 'it will be a great consolation to you to have
anybody, no matter how simple, with whom you can speak about ME; and
the very first time you talk to Pinch, you'll feel at once that
there is no more occasion for any embarrassment or hesitation in
talking to him, than if he were an old woman.'

'However that may be,' she returned, smiling, 'he is your friend,
and that is enough.'

'Oh, yes, he's my friend,' said Martin, 'certainly. In fact, I have
told him in so many words that we'll always take notice of him, and
protect him; and it's a good trait in his character that he's
grateful--very grateful indeed. You'll like him of all things, my
love, I know. You'll observe very much that's comical and old-
fashioned about Pinch, but you needn't mind laughing at him; for
he'll not care about it. He'll rather like it indeed!'

'I don't think I shall put that to the test, Martin.'

'You won't if you can help it, of course,' he said, 'but I think
you'll find him a little too much for your gravity. However, that's
neither here nor there, and it certainly is not the letter; which
ends thus: "Knowing that I need not impress the nature and extent of
that confidence upon you at any greater length, as it is already
sufficiently established in your mind, I will only say, in bidding
you farewell and looking forward to our next meeting, that I shall
charge myself from this time, through all changes for the better,
with your advancement and happiness, as if they were my own. You
may rely upon that. And always believe me, my dear Tom Pinch,
faithfully your friend, Martin Chuzzlewit. P.S.--I enclose the
amount which you so kindly"--Oh,' said Martin, checking himself, and
folding up the letter, 'that's nothing!'

At this crisis Mark Tapley interposed, with an apology for remarking
that the clock at the Horse Guards was striking.

'Which I shouldn't have said nothing about, sir,' added Mark, 'if
the young lady hadn't begged me to be particular in mentioning it.'

'I did,' said Mary. 'Thank you. You are quite right. In another
minute I shall be ready to return. We have time for a very few
words more, dear Martin, and although I had much to say, it must
remain unsaid until the happy time of our next meeting. Heaven send
it may come speedily and prosperously! But I have no fear of that.'

'Fear!' cried Martin. 'Why, who has? What are a few months? What
is a whole year? When I come gayly back, with a road through life
hewn out before me, then indeed, looking back upon this parting, it
may seem a dismal one. But now! I swear I wouldn't have it happen
under more favourable auspices, if I could; for then I should be
less inclined to go, and less impressed with the necessity.'

'Yes, yes. I feel that too. When do you go?'

'To-night. We leave for Liverpool to-night. A vessel sails from
that port, as I hear, in three days. In a month, or less, we shall
be there. Why, what's a month! How many months have flown by, since
our last parting!'

'Long to look back upon,' said Mary, echoing his cheerful tone, 'but
nothing in their course!'

'Nothing at all!' cried Martin. 'I shall have change of scene and
change of place; change of people, change of manners, change of
cares and hopes! Time will wear wings indeed! I can bear anything,
so that I have swift action, Mary.'

Was he thinking solely of her care for him, when he took so little
heed of her share in the separation; of her quiet monotonous
endurance, and her slow anxiety from day to day? Was there nothing
jarring and discordant even in his tone of courage, with this one
note 'self' for ever audible, however high the strain? Not in her
ears. It had been better otherwise, perhaps, but so it was. She
heard the same bold spirit which had flung away as dross all gain
and profit for her sake, making light of peril and privation that
she might be calm and happy; and she heard no more. That heart
where self has found no place and raised no throne, is slow to
recognize its ugly presence when it looks upon it. As one possessed
of an evil spirit was held in old time to be alone conscious of the
lurking demon in the breasts of other men, so kindred vices know
each other in their hiding-places every day, when Virtue is
incredulous and blind.

'The quarter's gone!' cried Mr Tapley, in a voice of admonition.

'I shall be ready to return immediately,' she said. 'One thing,
dear Martin, I am bound to tell you. You entreated me a few minutes
since only to answer what you asked me in reference to one theme,
but you should and must know (otherwise I could not be at ease) that
since that separation of which I was the unhappy occasion, he has
never once uttered your name; has never coupled it, or any faint
allusion to it, with passion or reproach; and has never abated in
his kindness to me.'

'I thank him for that last act,' said Martin, 'and for nothing else.
Though on consideration I may thank him for his other forbearance
also, inasmuch as I neither expect nor desire that he will mention
my name again. He may once, perhaps--to couple it with reproach--in
his will. Let him, if he please! By the time it reaches me, he will
be in his grave; a satire on his own anger, God help him!'

'Martin! If you would but sometimes, in some quiet hour; beside the
winter fire; in the summer air; when you hear gentle music, or think
of Death, or Home, or Childhood; if you would at such a season
resolve to think, but once a month, or even once a year, of him, or
any one who ever wronged you, you would forgive him in your heart, I
know!'

'If I believed that to be true, Mary,' he replied, 'I would resolve
at no such time to bear him in my mind; wishing to spare myself the
shame of such a weakness. I was not born to be the toy and puppet
of any man, far less his; to whose pleasure and caprice, in return
for any good he did me, my whole youth was sacrificed. It became
between us two a fair exchange--a barter--and no more; and there is
no such balance against me that I need throw in a mawkish
forgiveness to poise the scale. He has forbidden all mention of me
to you, I know,' he added hastily. 'Come! Has he not?'

'That was long ago,' she returned; 'immediately after your parting;
before you had left the house. He has never done so since.'

'He has never done so since because he has seen no occasion,' said
Martin; 'but that is of little consequence, one way or other. Let
all allusion to him between you and me be interdicted from this time
forth. And therefore, love'--he drew her quickly to him, for the
time of parting had now come--'in the first letter that you write to
me through the Post Office, addressed to New York; and in all the
others that you send through Pinch; remember he has no existence,
but has become to us as one who is dead. Now, God bless you! This
is a strange place for such a meeting and such a parting; but our
next meeting shall be in a better, and our next and last parting in
a worse.'

'One other question, Martin, I must ask. Have you provided money
for this journey?'

'Have I?' cried Martin; it might have been in his pride; it might
have been in his desire to set her mind at ease: 'Have I provided
money? Why, there's a question for an emigrant's wife! How could I
move on land or sea without it, love?'

'I mean, enough.'

'Enough! More than enough. Twenty times more than enough. A
pocket-full. Mark and I, for all essential ends, are quite as rich
as if we had the purse of Fortunatus in our baggage.'

'The half-hour's a-going!' cried Mr Tapley.

'Good-bye a hundred times!' cried Mary, in a trembling voice.

But how cold the comfort in Good-bye! Mark Tapley knew it perfectly.
Perhaps he knew it from his reading, perhaps from his experience,
perhaps from intuition. It is impossible to say; but however he
knew it, his knowledge instinctively suggested to him the wisest
course of proceeding that any man could have adopted under the
circumstances. He was taken with a violent fit of sneezing, and was
obliged to turn his head another way. In doing which, he, in a
manner fenced and screened the lovers into a corner by themselves.

There was a short pause, but Mark had an undefined sensation that it
was a satisfactory one in its way. Then Mary, with her veil
lowered, passed him with a quick step, and beckoned him to follow.
She stopped once more before they lost that corner; looked back; and
waved her hand to Martin. He made a start towards them at the
moment as if he had some other farewell words to say; but she only
hurried off the faster, and Mr Tapley followed as in duty bound.

When he rejoined Martin again in his own chamber, he found that
gentleman seated moodily before the dusty grate, with his two feet
on the fender, his two elbows on his knees, and his chin supported,
in a not very ornamental manner, on the palms of his hands.

'Well, Mark!'

'Well, sir,' said Mark, taking a long breath, 'I see the young lady
safe home, and I feel pretty comfortable after it. She sent a lot
of kind words, sir, and this,' handing him a ring, 'for a parting
keepsake.'

'Diamonds!' said Martin, kissing it--let us do him justice, it was
for her sake; not for theirs--and putting it on his little finger.
'Splendid diamonds! My grandfather is a singular character, Mark.
He must have given her this now.'

Mark Tapley knew as well that she had bought it, to the end that
that unconscious speaker might carry some article of sterling value
with him in his necessity; as he knew that it was day, and not
night. Though he had no more acquaintance of his own knowledge with
the history of the glittering trinket on Martin's outspread finger,
than Martin himself had, he was as certain that in its purchase she
had expended her whole stock of hoarded money, as if he had seen it
paid down coin by coin. Her lover's strange obtuseness in relation
to this little incident, promptly suggested to Mark's mind its real
cause and root; and from that moment he had a clear and perfect
insight into the one absorbing principle of Martin's character.

'She is worthy of the sacrifices I have made,' said Martin, folding
his arms, and looking at the ashes in the stove, as if in resumption
of some former thoughts. 'Well worthy of them. No riches'--here he
stroked his chin and mused--'could have compensated for the loss of
such a nature. Not to mention that in gaining her affection I have
followed the bent of my own wishes, and baulked the selfish schemes
of others who had no right to form them. She is quite worthy--more
than worthy--of the sacrifices I have made. Yes, she is. No doubt
of it.'

These ruminations might or might not have reached Mark Tapley; for
though they were by no means addressed to him, yet they were softly
uttered. In any case, he stood there, watching Martin with an
indescribable and most involved expression on his visage, until that
young man roused himself and looked towards him; when he turned
away, as being suddenly intent upon certain preparations for the
journey, and, without giving vent to any articulate sound, smiled
with surpassing ghastliness, and seemed by a twist of his features
and a motion of his lips, to release himself of this word:

'Jolly!'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE BURDEN WHEREOF, IS HAIL COLUMBIA!

A dark and dreary night; people nestling in their beds or circling
late about the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the
street corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration of
their own tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment
'One!'  The earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of
yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral
feathers, waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in
deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and
the cautious wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, it stops
to listen, and goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows, like
a savage on the trail.

Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly? If, like guilty spirits,
they repair to some dread conference with powers like themselves, in
what wild regions do the elements hold council, or where unbend in
terrible disport?

Here! Free from that cramped prison called the earth, and out upon
the waste of waters. Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling, all
night long. Hither come the sounding voices from the caverns on the
coast of that small island, sleeping, a thousand miles away, so
quietly in the midst of angry waves; and hither, to meet them, rush
the blasts from unknown desert places of the world. Here, in the
fury of their unchecked liberty, they storm and buffet with each
other, until the sea, lashed into passion like their own, leaps up,
in ravings mightier than theirs, and the whole scene is madness.

On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space roll the long
heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not; for
what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling
heap of rushing water. Pursuit, and flight, and mad return of wave
on wave, and savage struggle, ending in a spouting-up of foam that
whitens the black night; incessant change of place, and form, and
hue; constancy in nothing, but eternal strife; on, on, on, they
roll, and darker grows the night, and louder howls the wind, and
more clamorous and fierce become the million voices in the sea, when
the wild cry goes forth upon the storm 'A ship!'

Onward she comes, in gallant combat with the elements, her tall
masts trembling, and her timbers starting on the strain; onward she
comes, now high upon the curling billows, now low down in the
hollows of the sea, as hiding for the moment from its fury; and
every storm-voice in the air and water cries more loudly yet, 'A
ship!'

Still she comes striving on; and at her boldness and the spreading
cry, the angry waves rise up above each other's hoary heads to look;
and round about the vessel, far as the mariners on the decks can
pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down
and starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful
curiosity. High over her they break; and round her surge and roar;
and giving place to others, moaningly depart, and dash themselves to
fragments in their baffled anger. Still she comes onward bravely.
And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her all the
night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down
upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes,
with dim lights burning in her hull, and people there, asleep; as if
no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no
drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning
in the unfathomable depths below.

Among these sleeping voyagers were Martin and Mark Tapley, who,
rocked into a heavy drowsiness by the unaccustomed motion, were
as insensible to the foul air in which they lay, as to the uproar
without. It was broad day when the latter awoke with a dim idea
that he was dreaming of having gone to sleep in a four-post bedstead
which had turned bottom upwards in the course of the night. There
was more reason in this too, than in the roasting of eggs; for the
first objects Mr Tapley recognized when he opened his eyes were his
own heels--looking down to him, as he afterwards observed, from
a nearly perpendicular elevation.

'Well!' said Mark, getting himself into a sitting posture, after
various ineffectual struggles with the rolling of the ship. 'This
is the first time as ever I stood on my head all night.'

'You shouldn't go to sleep upon the ground with your head to leeward
then,' growled a man in one of the berths.

'With my head to WHERE?' asked Mark.

The man repeated his previous sentiment.

'No, I won't another time,' said Mark, 'when I know whereabouts on
the map that country is. In the meanwhile I can give you a better
piece of advice. Don't you nor any other friend of mine never go to
sleep with his head in a ship any more.'

The man gave a grunt of discontented acquiescence, turned over in
his berth, and drew his blanket over his head.

'--For,' said Mr Tapley, pursuing the theme by way of soliloquy in
a low tone of voice; 'the sea is as nonsensical a thing as any
going. It never knows what to do with itself. It hasn't got no
employment for its mind, and is always in a state of vacancy. Like
them Polar bears in the wild-beast shows as is constantly a-nodding
their heads from side to side, it never CAN be quiet. Which is
entirely owing to its uncommon stupidity.'

'Is that you, Mark?' asked a faint voice from another berth.

'It's as much of me as is left, sir, after a fortnight of this
work,' Mr Tapley replied, 'What with leading the life of a fly, ever
since I've been aboard--for I've been perpetually holding-on to
something or other in a upside-down position--what with that, sir,
and putting a very little into myself, and taking a good deal out of
myself, there an't too much of me to swear by. How do you find
yourself this morning, sir?'

'Very miserable,' said Martin, with a peevish groan. 'Ugh. This is
wretched, indeed!'

'Creditable,' muttered Mark, pressing one hand upon his aching head
and looking round him with a rueful grin. 'That's the great
comfort. It IS creditable to keep up one's spirits here. Virtue's
its own reward. So's jollity.'

Mark was so far right that unquestionably any man who retained his
cheerfulness among the steerage accommodations of that noble and
fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, 'THE SCREW,' was solely indebted
to his own resources, and shipped his good humour, like his
provisions, without any contribution or assistance from the owners.
A dark, low, stifling cabin, surrounded by berths all filled to
overflowing with men, women, and children, in various stages of
sickness and misery, is not the liveliest place of assembly at any
time; but when it is so crowded (as the steerage cabin of the
Screw was, every passage out), that mattresses and beds are heaped
upon the floor, to the extinction of everything like comfort,
cleanliness, and decency, it is liable to operate not only as a
pretty strong banner against amiability of temper, but as a positive
encourager of selfish and rough humours. Mark felt this, as he sat
looking about him; and his spirits rose proportionately.

There were English people, Irish people, Welsh people, and Scotch
people there; all with their little store of coarse food and shabby
clothes; and nearly all with their families of children. There were
children of all ages; from the baby at the breast, to the slattern-
girl who was as much a grown woman as her mother. Every kind of
domestic suffering that is bred in poverty, illness, banishment,
sorrow, and long travel in bad weather, was crammed into the little
space; and yet was there infinitely less of complaint and
querulousness, and infinitely more of mutual assistance and general
kindness to be found in that unwholesome ark, than in many brilliant
ballrooms.

Mark looked about him wistfully, and his face brightened as he
looked. Here an old grandmother was crooning over a sick child, and
rocking it to and fro, in arms hardly more wasted than its own young
limbs; here a poor woman with an infant in her lap, mended another
little creature's clothes, and quieted another who was creeping up
about her from their scanty bed upon the floor. Here were old men
awkwardly engaged in little household offices, wherein they would
have been ridiculous but for their good-will and kind purpose; and
here were swarthy fellows--giants in their way--doing such little
acts of tenderness for those about them, as might have belonged to
gentlest-hearted dwarfs. The very idiot in the corner who sat
mowing there, all day, had his faculty of imitation roused by what
he saw about him; and snapped his fingers to amuse a crying child.

'Now, then,' said Mark, nodding to a woman who was dressing her
three children at no great distance from him--and the grin upon his
face had by this time spread from ear to ear--'Hand over one of them
young 'uns according to custom.'

'I wish you'd get breakfast, Mark, instead of worrying with people
who don't belong to you,' observed Martin, petulantly.

'All right,' said Mark. 'SHE'll do that. It's a fair division of
labour, sir. I wash her boys, and she makes our tea. I never COULD
make tea, but any one can wash a boy.'

The woman, who was delicate and ill, felt and understood his
kindness, as well she might, for she had been covered every night
with his greatcoat, while he had for his own bed the bare boards
and a rug. But Martin, who seldom got up or looked about him, was
quite incensed by the folly of this speech, and expressed his
dissatisfaction by an impatient groan.

'So it is, certainly,' said Mark, brushing the child's hair as
coolly as if he had been born and bred a barber.

'What are you talking about, now?' asked Martin.

'What you said,' replied Mark; 'or what you meant, when you gave
that there dismal vent to your feelings. I quite go along with it,
sir. It IS very hard upon her.'

'What is?'

'Making the voyage by herself along with these young impediments
here, and going such a way at such a time of the year to join her
husband. If you don't want to be driven mad with yellow soap in
your eye, young man,' said Mr Tapley to the second urchin, who was
by this time under his hands at the basin, 'you'd better shut it.'

'Where does she join her husband?' asked Martin, yawning.

'Why, I'm very much afraid,' said Mr Tapley, in a low voice, 'that
she don't know. I hope she mayn't miss him. But she sent her last
letter by hand, and it don't seem to have been very clearly
understood between 'em without it, and if she don't see him a-waving
his pocket-handkerchief on the shore, like a pictur out of a song-
book, my opinion is, she'll break her heart.'

'Why, how, in Folly's name, does the woman come to be on board ship
on such a wild-goose venture!' cried Martin.

Mr Tapley glanced at him for a moment as he lay prostrate in his
berth, and then said, very quietly:

'Ah! How indeed! I can't think! He's been away from her for two
year; she's been very poor and lonely in her own country; and has
always been a-looking forward to meeting him. It's very strange she
should be here. Quite amazing! A little mad perhaps! There can't
be no other way of accounting for it.'

Martin was too far gone in the lassitude of sea-sickness to make any
reply to these words, or even to attend to them as they were spoken.
And the subject of their discourse returning at this crisis with
some hot tea, effectually put a stop to any resumption of the theme
by Mr Tapley; who, when the meal was over and he had adjusted
Martin's bed, went up on deck to wash the breakfast service, which
consisted of two half-pint tin mugs, and a shaving-pot of the same
metal.

It is due to Mark Tapley to state that he suffered at least as much
from sea-sickness as any man, woman, or child, on board; and that he
had a peculiar faculty of knocking himself about on the smallest
provocation, and losing his legs at every lurch of the ship. But
resolved, in his usual phrase, to 'come out strong' under
disadvantageous circumstances, he was the life and soul of the
steerage, and made no more of stopping in the middle of a facetious
conversation to go away and be excessively ill by himself, and
afterwards come back in the very best and gayest of tempers to
resume it, than if such a course of proceeding had been the
commonest in the world.

It cannot be said that as his illness wore off, his cheerfulness and
good nature increased, because they would hardly admit of
augmentation; but his usefulness among the weaker members of the
party was much enlarged; and at all times and seasons there he was
exerting it. If a gleam of sun shone out of the dark sky, down Mark
tumbled into the cabin, and presently up he came again with a woman
in his arms, or half-a-dozen children, or a man, or a bed, or a
saucepan, or a basket, or something animate or inanimate, that he
thought would be the better for the air. If an hour or two of fine
weather in the middle of the day tempted those who seldom or never
came on deck at other times to crawl into the long-boat, or lie down
upon the spare spars, and try to eat, there, in the centre of the
group, was Mr Tapley, handing about salt beef and biscuit, or
dispensing tastes of grog, or cutting up the children's provisions
with his pocketknife, for their greater ease and comfort, or reading
aloud from a venerable newspaper, or singing some roaring old song
to a select party, or writing the beginnings of letters to their
friends at home for people who couldn't write, or cracking jokes
with the crew, or nearly getting blown over the side, or emerging,
half-drowned, from a shower of spray, or lending a hand somewhere or
other; but always doing something for the general entertainment. At
night, when the cooking-fire was lighted on the deck, and the
driving sparks that flew among the rigging, and the clouds of sails,
seemed to menace the ship with certain annihilation by fire, in case
the elements of air and water failed to compass her destruction;
there, again, was Mr Tapley, with his coat off and his shirt-sleeves
turned up to his elbows, doing all kinds of culinary offices;
compounding the strangest dishes; recognized by every one as an
established authority; and helping all parties to achieve something
which, left to themselves, they never could have done, and never
would have dreamed of. In short, there never was a more popular
character than Mark Tapley became, on board that noble and fast-
sailing line-of-packet ship, the Screw; and he attained at last to
such a pitch of universal admiration, that he began to have grave
doubts within himself whether a man might reasonably claim any
credit for being jolly under such exciting circumstances.

'If this was going to last,' said Tapley, 'there'd be no great
difference as I can perceive, between the Screw and the Dragon. I
never am to get credit, I think. I begin to be afraid that the
Fates is determined to make the world easy to me.'

'Well, Mark,' said Martin, near whose berth he had ruminated to this
effect. 'When will this be over?'

'Another week, they say, sir,' returned Mark, 'will most likely
bring us into port. The ship's a-going along at present, as
sensible as a ship can, sir; though I don't mean to say as that's
any very high praise.'

'I don't think it is, indeed,' groaned Martin.

'You'd feel all the better for it, sir, if you was to turn out,'
observed Mark.

'And be seen by the ladies and gentlemen on the after-deck,'
returned Martin, with a scronful emphasis upon the words, 'mingling
with the beggarly crowd that are stowed away in this vile hole. I
should be greatly the better for that, no doubt.'

'I'm thankful that I can't say from my own experience what the
feelings of a gentleman may be,' said Mark, 'but I should have
thought, sir, as a gentleman would feel a deal more uncomfortable
down here than up in the fresh air, especially when the ladies and
gentlemen in the after-cabin know just as much about him as he does
about them, and are likely to trouble their heads about him in the
same proportion. I should have thought that, certainly.'

'I tell you, then,' rejoined Martin, 'you would have thought wrong,
and do think wrong.'

'Very likely, sir,' said Mark, with imperturbable good temper. 'I
often do.'

'As to lying here,' cried Martin, raising himself on his elbow, and
looking angrily at his follower. 'Do you suppose it's a pleasure to
lie here?'

'All the madhouses in the world,' said Mr Tapley, 'couldn't produce
such a maniac as the man must be who could think that.'

'Then why are you forever goading and urging me to get up?' asked
Martin, 'I lie here because I don't wish to be recognized, in the
better days to which I aspire, by any purse-proud citizen, as the
man who came over with him among the steerage passengers. I lie
here because I wish to conceal my circumstances and myself, and not
to arrive in a new world badged and ticketed as an utterly poverty-
stricken man. If I could have afforded a passage in the after-cabin
I should have held up my head with the rest. As I couldn't I hide
it. Do you understand that?'

'I am very sorry, sir,' said Mark. 'I didn't know you took it so
much to heart as this comes to.'

'Of course you didn't know,' returned his master. 'How should you
know, unless I told you? It's no trial to you, Mark, to make
yourself comfortable and to bustle about. It's as natural for you
to do so under the circumstances as it is for me not to do so. Why,
you don't suppose there is a living creature in this ship who can by
possibility have half so much to undergo on board of her as I have?
Do you?' he asked, sitting upright in his berth and looking at Mark,
with an expression of great earnestness not unmixed with wonder.

Mark twisted his face into a tight knot, and with his head very much
on one side, pondered upon this question as if he felt it an
extremely difficult one to answer. He was relieved from his
embarrassment by Martin himself, who said, as he stretched himself
upon his back again and resumed the book he had been reading:

'But what is the use of my putting such a case to you, when the very
essence of what I have been saying is, that you cannot by
possibility understand it! Make me a little brandy-and-water--cold
and very weak--and give me a biscuit, and tell your friend, who is a
nearer neighbour of ours than I could wish, to try and keep her
children a little quieter to-night than she did last night; that's a
good fellow.'

Mr Tapley set himself to obey these orders with great alacrity, and
pending their execution, it may be presumed his flagging spirits
revived; inasmuch as he several times observed, below his breath,
that in respect of its power of imparting a credit to jollity, the
Screw unquestionably had some decided advantages over the Dragon.
He also remarked that it was a high gratification to him to reflect
that he would carry its main excellence ashore with him, and have it
constantly beside him wherever he went; but what he meant by these
consolatory thoughts he did not explain.

And now a general excitement began to prevail on board; and various
predictions relative to the precise day, and even the precise hour
at which they would reach New York, were freely broached. There was
infinitely more crowding on deck and looking over the ship's side
than there had been before; and an epidemic broke out for packing up
things every morning, which required unpacking again every night.
Those who had any letters to deliver, or any friends to meet, or any
settled plans of going anywhere or doing anything, discussed their
prospects a hundred times a day; and as this class of passengers was
very small, and the number of those who had no prospects whatever
was very large, there were plenty of listeners and few talkers.
Those who had been ill all along, got well now, and those who had
been well, got better. An American gentleman in the after-cabin,
who had been wrapped up in fur and oilskin the whole passage,
unexpectedly appeared in a very shiny, tall, black hat, and
constantly overhauled a very little valise of pale leather, which
contained his clothes, linen, brushes, shaving apparatus, books,
trinkets, and other baggage. He likewise stuck his hands deep into
his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as
already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all
tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be
breathed by slaves. An English gentleman who was strongly suspected
of having run away from a bank, with something in his possession
belonging to its strong box besides the key, grew eloquent upon the
subject of the rights of man, and hummed the Marseillaise Hymn
constantly. In a word, one great sensation pervaded the whole ship,
and the soil of America lay close before them; so close at last,
that, upon a certain starlight night they took a pilot on board, and
within a few hours afterwards lay to until the morning, awaiting the
arrival of a steamboat in which the passengers were to be conveyed
ashore.

Off she came, soon after it was light next morning, and lying
alongside an hour or more--during which period her very firemen were
objects of hardly less interest and curiosity than if they had been
so many angels, good or bad--took all her living freight aboard.
Among them Mark, who still had his friend and her three children
under his close protection; and Martin, who had once more dressed
himself in his usual attire, but wore a soiled, old cloak above his
ordinary clothes, until such time as he should separate for ever
from his late companions.

The steamer--which, with its machinery on deck, looked, as it worked
its long slim legs, like some enormously magnified insect or
antediluvian monster--dashed at great speed up a beautiful bay; and
presently they saw some heights, and islands, and a long, flat,
straggling city.

'And this,' said Mr Tapley, looking far ahead, 'is the Land of
Liberty, is it? Very well. I'm agreeable. Any land will do for
me, after so much water!'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MARTIN DISEMBARKS FROM THAT NOBLE AND FAST-SAILING LINE-OF-PACKET
SHIP, 'THE SCREW', AT THE PORT OF NEW YORK, IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA. HE MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCES, AND DINES AT A BOARDING-
HOUSE. THE PARTICULARS OF THOSE TRANSACTIONS

Some trifling excitement prevailed upon the very brink and margin of
the land of liberty; for an alderman had been elected the day
before; and Party Feeling naturally running rather high on such an
exciting occasion, the friends of the disappointed candidate had
found it necessary to assert the great principles of Purity of
Election and Freedom of opinion by breaking a few legs and arms, and
furthermore pursuing one obnoxious gentleman through the streets
with the design of hitting his nose. These good-humoured little
outbursts of the popular fancy were not in themselves sufficiently
remarkable to create any great stir, after the lapse of a whole
night; but they found fresh life and notoriety in the breath of the
newsboys, who not only proclaimed them with shrill yells in all the
highways and byways of the town, upon the wharves and among the
shipping, but on the deck and down in the cabins of the steamboat;
which, before she touched the shore, was boarded and overrun by a
legion of those young citizens.

'Here's this morning's New York Sewer!' cried one. 'Here's this
morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's
the New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's
the New York Plunderer! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's
the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York papers! Here's
full particulars of the patriotic locofoco movement yesterday, in
which the whigs was so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case;
and the interesting Arkansas dooel with Bowie knives; and all the
Political, Commercial, and Fashionable News. Here they are! Here
they are! Here's the papers, here's the papers!'

'Here's the Sewer!' cried another. 'Here's the New York Sewer!
Here's some of the twelfth thousand of to-day's Sewer, with the best
accounts of the markets, and all the shipping news, and four whole
columns of country correspondence, and a full account of the Ball at
Mrs White's last night, where all the beauty and fashion of New York
was assembled; with the Sewer's own particulars of the private lives
of all the ladies that was there! Here's the Sewer! Here's some of
the twelfth thousand of the New York Sewer! Here's the Sewer's
exposure of the Wall Street Gang, and the Sewer's exposure of the
Washington Gang, and the Sewer's exclusive account of a flagrant act
of dishonesty committed by the Secretary of State when he was eight
years old; now communicated, at a great expense, by his own nurse.
Here's the Sewer! Here's the New York Sewer, in its twelfth
thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all
their names printed! Here's the Sewer's article upon the Judge that
tried him, day afore yesterday, for libel, and the Sewer's tribute
to the independent Jury that didn't convict him, and the Sewer's
account of what they might have expected if they had! Here's the
Sewer, here's the Sewer! Here's the wide-awake Sewer; always on the
lookout; the leading Journal of the United States, now in its
twelfth thousand, and still a-printing off:--Here's the New York
Sewer!'

'It is in such enlightened means,' said a voice almost in Martin's
ear, 'that the bubbling passions of my country find a vent.'

Martin turned involuntarily, and saw, standing close at his side, a
sallow gentleman, with sunken cheeks, black hair, small twinkling
eyes, and a singular expression hovering about that region of his
face, which was not a frown, nor a leer, and yet might have been
mistaken at the first glance for either. Indeed it would have been
difficult, on a much closer acquaintance, to describe it in any more
satisfactory terms than as a mixed expression of vulgar cunning and
conceit. This gentleman wore a rather broad-brimmed hat for the
greater wisdom of his appearance; and had his arms folded for the
greater impressiveness of his attitude. He was somewhat shabbily
dressed in a blue surtout reaching nearly to his ankles, short loose
trousers of the same colour, and a faded buff waistcoat, through
which a discoloured shirt-frill struggled to force itself into
notice, as asserting an equality of civil rights with the other
portions of his dress, and maintaining a declaration of Independence
on its own account. His feet, which were of unusually large
proportions, were leisurely crossed before him as he half leaned
against, half sat upon, the steamboat's bulwark; and his thick cane,
shod with a mighty ferule at one end and armed with a great metal
knob at the other, depended from a line-and-tassel on his wrist.
Thus attired, and thus composed into an aspect of great profundity,
the gentleman twitched up the right-hand corner of his mouth and his
right eye simultaneously, and said, once more:

'It is in such enlightened means that the bubbling passions of my
country find a vent.'

As he looked at Martin, and nobody else was by, Martin inclined his
head, and said:

'You allude to--?'

'To the Palladium of rational Liberty at home, sir, and the dread of
Foreign oppression abroad,' returned the gentleman, as he pointed
with his cane to an uncommonly dirty newsboy with one eye. 'To the
Envy of the world, sir, and the leaders of Human Civilization. Let
me ask you sir,' he added, bringing the ferule of his stick heavily
upon the deck with the air of a man who must not be equivocated
with, 'how do you like my Country?'

'I am hardly prepared to answer that question yet,' said Martin
'seeing that I have not been ashore.'

'Well, I should expect you were not prepared, sir,' said the
gentleman, 'to behold such signs of National Prosperity as those?'

He pointed to the vessels lying at the wharves; and then gave a
vague flourish with his stick, as if he would include the air and
water, generally, in this remark.

'Really,' said Martin, 'I don't know. Yes. I think I was.'

The gentleman glanced at him with a knowing look, and said he liked
his policy. It was natural, he said, and it pleased him as a
philosopher to observe the prejudices of human nature.

'You have brought, I see, sir,' he said, turning round towards
Martin, and resting his chin on the top of his stick, 'the usual
amount of misery and poverty and ignorance and crime, to be located
in the bosom of the great Republic. Well, sir! let 'em come on in
shiploads from the old country. When vessels are about to founder,
the rats are said to leave 'em. There is considerable of truth, I
find, in that remark.'

'The old ship will keep afloat a year or two longer yet, perhaps,'
said Martin with a smile, partly occasioned by what the gentleman
said, and partly by his manner of saying it, which was odd enough
for he emphasised all the small words and syllables in his
discourse, and left the others to take care of themselves; as if he
thought the larger parts of speech could be trusted alone, but the
little ones required to be constantly looked after.

'Hope is said by the poet, sir,' observed the gentleman, 'to be the
nurse of young Desire.'

Martin signified that he had heard of the cardinal virtue in
question serving occasionally in that domestic capacity.

'She will not rear her infant in the present instance, sir, you'll
find,' observed the gentleman.

'Time will show,' said Martin.

The gentleman nodded his head gravely; and said, 'What is your name,
sir?'

Martin told him.

'How old are you, sir?'

Martin told him.

'What is your profession, sir?'

Martin told him that also.

'What is your destination, sir?' inquired the gentleman.

'Really,' said Martin laughing, 'I can't satisfy you in that
particular, for I don't know it myself.'

'Yes?' said the gentleman.

'No,' said Martin.

The gentleman adjusted his cane under his left arm, and took a more
deliberate and complete survey of Martin than he had yet had leisure
to make. When he had completed his inspection, he put out his right
hand, shook Martin's hand, and said:

'My name is Colonel Diver, sir. I am the Editor of the New York
Rowdy Journal.'

Martin received the communication with that degree of respect which
an announcement so distinguished appeared to demand.

'The New York Rowdy Journal, sir,' resumed the colonel, 'is, as I
expect you know, the organ of our aristocracy in this city.'

'Oh! there IS an aristocracy here, then?' said Martin. 'Of what is
it composed?'

'Of intelligence, sir,' replied the colonel; 'of intelligence and
virtue. And of their necessary consequence in this republic--
dollars, sir.'

Martin was very glad to hear this, feeling well assured that if
intelligence and virtue led, as a matter of course, to the
acquisition of dollars, he would speedily become a great capitalist.
He was about to express the gratification such news afforded him,
when he was interrupted by the captain of the ship, who came up at
the moment to shake hands with the colonel; and who, seeing a
well-dressed stranger on the deck (for Martin had thrown aside his
cloak), shook hands with him also. This was an unspeakable relief
to Martin, who, in spite of the acknowledged supremacy of
Intelligence and virtue in that happy country, would have been
deeply mortified to appear before Colonel Diver in the poor
character of a steerage passenger.

'Well cap'en!' said the colonel.

'Well colonel,' cried the captain. 'You're looking most uncommon
bright, sir. I can hardly realise its being you, and that's a
fact.'

'A good passage, cap'en?' inquired the colonel, taking him aside,

'Well now! It was a pretty spanking run, sir,' said, or rather sung,
the captain, who was a genuine New Englander; 'con-siderin' the
weather.'

'Yes?' said the colonel.

'Well! It was, sir,' said the captain. 'I've just now sent a boy up
to your office with the passenger-list, colonel.'

'You haven't got another boy to spare, p'raps, cap'en?' said the
colonel, in a tone almost amounting to severity.

'I guess there air a dozen if you want 'em, colonel,' said the
captain.

'One moderate big 'un could convey a dozen champagne, perhaps,'
observed the colonel, musing, 'to my office. You said a spanking
run, I think?'

'Well, so I did,' was the reply.

'It's very nigh, you know,' observed the colonel. 'I'm glad it was
a spanking run, cap'en. Don't mind about quarts if you're short of
'em. The boy can as well bring four-and-twenty pints, and travel
twice as once.--A first-rate spanker, cap'en, was it? Yes?'

'A most e--tarnal spanker,' said the skipper.

'I admire at your good fortun, cap'en. You might loan me a
corkscrew at the same time, and half-a-dozen glasses if you liked.
However bad the elements combine against my country's noble
packet-ship, the Screw, sir,' said the colonel, turning to Martin,
and drawing a flourish on the surface of the deck with his cane,
'her passage either way is almost certain to eventuate a spanker!'

The captain, who had the Sewer below at that moment, lunching
expensively in one cabin, while the amiable Stabber was drinking
himself into a state of blind madness in another, took a cordial
leave of his friend the colonel, and hurried away to dispatch the
champagne; well knowing (as it afterwards appeared) that if he
failed to conciliate the editor of the Rowdy Journal, that potentate
would denounce him and his ship in large capitals before he was a
day older; and would probably assault the memory of his mother also,
who had not been dead more than twenty years. The colonel being
again left alone with Martin, checked him as he was moving away, and
offered in consideration of his being an Englishman, to show him the
town and to introduce him, if such were his desire, to a genteel
boarding-house. But before they entered on these proceedings (he
said), he would beseech the honour of his company at the office of
the Rowdy Journal, to partake of a bottle of champagne of his own
importation.

All this was so extremely kind and hospitable, that Martin, though
it was quite early in the morning, readily acquiesced. So,
instructing Mark, who was deeply engaged with his friend and her
three children, that when he had done assisting them, and had cleared
the baggage, he was to wait for further orders at the Rowdy Journal
Office, Martin accompanied his new friend on shore.

They made their way as they best could through the melancholy crowd
of emigrants upon the wharf, who, grouped about their beds and
boxes, with the bare ground below them and the bare sky above, might
have fallen from another planet, for anything they knew of the
country; and walked for some short distance along a busy street,
bounded on one side by the quays and shipping; and on the other by a
long row of staring red-brick storehouses and offices, ornamented
with more black boards and white letters, and more white boards and
black letters, than Martin had ever seen before, in fifty times the
space. Presently they turned up a narrow street, and presently into
other narrow streets, until at last they stopped before a house
whereon was painted in great characters, 'ROWDY JOURNAL.'

The colonel, who had walked the whole way with one hand in his
breast, his head occasionally wagging from side to side, and his hat
thrown back upon his ears, like a man who was oppressed to
inconvenience by a sense of his own greatness, led the way up a dark
and dirty flight of stairs into a room of similar character, all
littered and bestrewn with odds and ends of newspapers and other
crumpled fragments, both in proof and manuscript. Behind a mangy
old writing-table in this apartment sat a figure with a stump of a
pen in its mouth and a great pair of scissors in its right hand,
clipping and slicing at a file of Rowdy Journals; and it was such a
laughable figure that Martin had some difficulty in preserving his
gravity, though conscious of the close observation of Colonel Diver.

The individual who sat clipping and slicing as aforesaid at the
Rowdy Journals, was a small young gentleman of very juvenile
appearance, and unwholesomely pale in the face; partly, perhaps,
from intense thought, but partly, there is no doubt, from the
excessive use of tobacco, which he was at that moment chewing
vigorously. He wore his shirt-collar turned down over a black
ribbon; and his lank hair, a fragile crop, was not only smoothed and
parted back from his brow, that none of the Poetry of his aspect
might be lost, but had, here and there, been grubbed up by the
roots; which accounted for his loftiest developments being somewhat
pimply. He had that order of nose on which the envy of mankind has
bestowed the appellation 'snub,' and it was very much turned up at
the end, as with a lofty scorn. Upon the upper lip of this young
gentleman were tokens of a sandy down; so very, very smooth and
scant, that, though encouraged to the utmost, it looked more like a
recent trace of gingerbread than the fair promise of a moustache;
and this conjecture, his apparently tender age went far to
strengthen. He was intent upon his work. Every time he snapped the
great pair of scissors, he made a corresponding motion with his
jaws, which gave him a very terrible appearance.

Martin was not long in determining within himself that this must be
Colonel Diver's son; the hope of the family, and future mainspring
of the Rowdy Journal. Indeed he had begun to say that he presumed
this was the colonel's little boy, and that it was very pleasant to
see him playing at Editor in all the guilelessness of childhood,
when the colonel proudly interposed and said:

'My War Correspondent, sir--Mr Jefferson Brick!'

Martin could not help starting at this unexpected announcement, and
the consciousness of the irretrievable mistake he had nearly made.

Mr Brick seemed pleased with the sensation he produced upon the
stranger, and shook hands with him, with an air of patronage
designed to reassure him, and to let him blow that there was no
occasion to be frightened, for he (Brick) wouldn't hurt him.

'You have heard of Jefferson Brick, I see, sir,' quoth the colonel,
with a smile. 'England has heard of Jefferson Brick. Europe has
heard of Jefferson Brick. Let me see. When did you leave England,
sir?'

'Five weeks ago,' said Martin.

'Five weeks ago,' repeated the colonel, thoughtfully; as he took his
seat upon the table, and swung his legs. 'Now let me ask you, sir
which of Mr Brick's articles had become at that time the most
obnoxious to the British Parliament and the Court of Saint James's?'

'Upon my word,' said Martin, 'I--'

'I have reason to know, sir,' interrupted the colonel, 'that the
aristocratic circles of your country quail before the name of
Jefferson Brick. I should like to be informed, sir, from your lips,
which of his sentiments has struck the deadliest blow--'

'At the hundred heads of the Hydra of Corruption now grovelling in
the dust beneath the lance of Reason, and spouting up to the
universal arch above us, its sanguinary gore,' said Mr Brick,
putting on a little blue cloth cap with a glazed front, and quoting
his last article.

'The libation of freedom, Brick'--hinted the colonel.

'--Must sometimes be quaffed in blood, colonel,' cried Brick. And
when he said 'blood,' he gave the great pair of scissors a sharp
snap, as if THEY said blood too, and were quite of his opinion.

This done, they both looked at Martin, pausing for a reply.

'Upon my life,' said Martin, who had by this time quite recovered
his usual coolness, 'I can't give you any satisfactory information
about it; for the truth is that I--'

'Stop!' cried the colonel, glancing sternly at his war correspondent
and giving his head one shake after every sentence. 'That you never
heard of Jefferson Brick, sir. That you never read Jefferson Brick,
sir. That you never saw the Rowdy Journal, sir. That you never
knew, sir, of its mighty influence upon the cabinets of Europe.
Yes?'

'That's what I was about to observe, certainly,' said Martin.

'Keep cool, Jefferson,' said the colonel gravely. 'Don't bust! oh
you Europeans! After that, let's have a glass of wine!'  So saying,
he got down from the table, and produced, from a basket outside the
door, a bottle of champagne, and three glasses.

'Mr Jefferson Brick, sir,' said the colonel, filling Martin's glass
and his own, and pushing the bottle to that gentleman, 'will give us
a sentiment.'

'Well, sir!' cried the war correspondent, 'Since you have concluded
to call upon me, I will respond. I will give you, sir, The Rowdy
Journal and its brethren; the well of Truth, whose waters are black
from being composed of printers' ink, but are quite clear enough for
my country to behold the shadow of her Destiny reflected in.'

'Hear, hear!' cried the colonel, with great complacency. 'There are
flowery components, sir, in the language of my friend?'

'Very much so, indeed,' said Martin.

'There is to-day's Rowdy, sir,' observed the colonel, handing him a
paper. 'You'll find Jefferson Brick at his usual post in the van of
human civilization and moral purity.'

The colonel was by this time seated on the table again. Mr Brick
also took up a position on that same piece of furniture; and they
fell to drinking pretty hard. They often looked at Martin as he
read the paper, and then at each other. When he laid it down, which
was not until they had finished a second bottle, the colonel asked
him what he thought of it.

'Why, it's horribly personal,' said Martin.

The colonel seemed much flattered by this remark; and said he hoped
it was.

'We are independent here, sir,' said Mr Jefferson Brick. 'We do as
we like.'

'If I may judge from this specimen,' returned Martin, 'there must be
a few thousands here, rather the reverse of independent, who do as
they don't like.'

'Well! They yield to the popular mind of the Popular Instructor,
sir,' said the colonel. 'They rile up, sometimes; but in general we
have a hold upon our citizens, both in public and in private life,
which is as much one of the ennobling institutions of our happy
country as--'

'As nigger slavery itself,' suggested Mr Brick.

'En--tirely so,' remarked the colonel.

'Pray,' said Martin, after some hesitation, 'may I venture to ask,
with reference to a case I observe in this paper of yours, whether
the Popular Instructor often deals in--I am at a loss to express it
without giving you offence--in forgery? In forged letters, for
instance,' he pursued, for the colonel was perfectly calm and quite
at his ease, 'solemnly purporting to have been written at recent
periods by living men?'

'Well, sir!' replied the colonel. 'It does, now and then.'

'And the popular instructed--what do they do?' asked Martin.

'Buy 'em:' said the colonel.

Mr Jefferson Brick expectorated and laughed; the former copiously,
the latter approvingly.

'Buy 'em by hundreds of thousands,' resumed the colonel. 'We are a
smart people here, and can appreciate smartness.'

'Is smartness American for forgery?' asked Martin.

'Well!' said the colonel, 'I expect it's American for a good many
things that you call by other names. But you can't help yourself in
Europe. We can.'

'And do, sometimes,' thought Martin. 'You help yourselves with very
little ceremony, too!'

'At all events, whatever name we choose to employ,' said the
colonel, stooping down to roll the third empty bottle into a corner
after the other two, 'I suppose the art of forgery was not invented
here sir?'

'I suppose not,' replied Martin.

'Nor any other kind of smartness I reckon?'

'Invented! No, I presume not.'

'Well!' said the colonel; 'then we got it all from the old country,
and the old country's to blame for it, and not the new 'un. There's
an end of THAT. Now, if Mr Jefferson Brick and you will be so good
as to clear, I'll come out last, and lock the door.'

Rightly interpreting this as the signal for their departure, Martin
walked downstairs after the war correspondent, who preceded him
with great majesty. The colonel following, they left the Rowdy
Journal Office and walked forth into the streets; Martin feeling
doubtful whether he ought to kick the colonel for having presumed to
speak to him, or whether it came within the bounds of possibility
that he and his establishment could be among the boasted usages of
that regenerated land.

It was clear that Colonel Diver, in the security of his strong
position, and in his perfect understanding of the public sentiment,
cared very little what Martin or anybody else thought about him.
His high-spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his
thousands of readers could as rationally charge their delight in
filth upon him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the
responsibility of his beastly excess. Nothing would have delighted
the colonel more than to be told that no such man as he could walk
in high success the streets of any other country in the world; for
that would only have been a logical assurance to him of the correct
adaptation of his labours to the prevailing taste, and of his being
strictly and peculiarly a national feature of America.

They walked a mile or more along a handsome street which the colonel
said was called Broadway, and which Mr Jefferson Brick said 'whipped
the universe.'  Turning, at length, into one of the numerous streets
which branched from this main thoroughfare, they stopped before a
rather mean-looking house with jalousie blinds to every window; a
flight of steps before the green street-door; a shining white
ornament on the rails on either side like a petrified pineapple,
polished; a little oblong plate of the same material over the
knocker whereon the name of 'Pawkins' was engraved; and four
accidental pigs looking down the area.

The colonel knocked at this house with the air of a man who lived
there; and an Irish girl popped her head out of one of the top
windows to see who it was. Pending her journey downstairs, the
pigs were joined by two or three friends from the next street, in
company with whom they lay down sociably in the gutter.

'Is the major indoors?' inquired the colonel, as he entered.

'Is it the master, sir?' returned the girl, with a hesitation which
seemed to imply that they were rather flush of majors in that
establishment.

'The master!' said Colonel Diver, stopping short and looking round
at his war correspondent.

'Oh! The depressing institutions of that British empire, colonel!'
said Jefferson Brick. 'Master!'

'What's the matter with the word?' asked Martin.

'I should hope it was never heard in our country, sir; that's all,'
said Jefferson Brick; 'except when it is used by some degraded Help,
as new to the blessings of our form of government, as this Help is.
There are no masters here.'

'All "owners," are they?' said Martin.

Mr Jefferson Brick followed in the Rowdy Journal's footsteps without
returning any answer. Martin took the same course, thinking as he
went, that perhaps the free and independent citizens, who in their
moral elevation, owned the colonel for their master, might render
better homage to the goddess, Liberty, in nightly dreams upon the
oven of a Russian Serf.

The colonel led the way into a room at the back of the house upon
the ground-floor, light, and of fair dimensions, but exquisitely
uncomfortable; having nothing in it but the four cold white walls
and ceiling, a mean carpet, a dreary waste of dining-table reaching
from end to end, and a bewildering collection of cane-bottomed
chairs. In the further region of this banqueting-hall was a stove,
garnished on either side with a great brass spittoon, and shaped in
itself like three little iron barrels set up on end in a fender, and
joined together on the principle of the Siamese Twins. Before it,
swinging himself in a rocking-chair, lounged a large gentleman with
his hat on, who amused himself by spitting alternately into the
spittoon on the right hand of the stove, and the spittoon on the
left, and then working his way back again in the same order. A
negro lad in a soiled white jacket was busily engaged in placing on
the table two long rows of knives and forks, relieved at intervals
by jugs of water; and as he travelled down one side of this festive
board, he straightened with his dirty hands the dirtier cloth, which
was all askew, and had not been removed since breakfast. The
atmosphere of this room was rendered intensely hot and stifling by
the stove; but being further flavoured by a sickly gush of soup from
the kitchen, and by such remote suggestions of tobacco as lingered
within the brazen receptacles already mentioned, it became, to a
stranger's senses, almost insupportable.

The gentleman in the rocking-chair having his back towards them, and
being much engaged in his intellectual pastime, was not aware of
their approach until the colonel, walking up to the stove,
contributed his mite towards the support of the left-hand spittoon,
just as the major--for it was the major--bore down upon it. Major
Pawkins then reserved his fire, and looking upward, said, with a
peculiar air of quiet weariness, like a man who had been up all
night--an air which Martin had already observed both in the colonel
and Mr Jefferson Brick--

'Well, colonel!'

'Here is a gentleman from England, major,' the colonel replied, 'who
has concluded to locate himself here if the amount of compensation
suits him.'

'I am glad to see you, sir,' observed the major, shaking hands with
Martin, and not moving a muscle of his face. 'You are pretty
bright, I hope?'

'Never better,' said Martin.

'You are never likely to be,' returned the major. 'You will see the
sun shine HERE.'

'I think I remember to have seen it shine at home sometimes,' said
Martin, smiling.

'I think not,' replied the major. He said so with a stoical
indifference certainly, but still in a tone of firmness which
admitted of no further dispute on that point. When he had thus
settled the question, he put his hat a little on one side for the
greater convenience of scratching his head, and saluted Mr Jefferson
Brick with a lazy nod.

Major Pawkins (a gentleman of Pennsylvanian origin) was
distinguished by a very large skull, and a great mass of yellow
forehead; in deference to which commodities it was currently held in
bar-rooms and other such places of resort that the major was a man
of huge sagacity. He was further to be known by a heavy eye and a
dull slow manner; and for being a man of that kind who--mentally
speaking--requires a deal of room to turn himself in. But, in
trading on his stock of wisdom, he invariably proceeded on the
principle of putting all the goods he had (and more) into his
window; and that went a great way with his constituency of admirers.
It went a great way, perhaps, with Mr Jefferson Brick, who took
occasion to whisper in Martin's ear:

'One of the most remarkable men in our country, sir!'

It must not be supposed, however, that the perpetual exhibition in
the market-place of all his stock-in-trade for sale or hire, was the
major's sole claim to a very large share of sympathy and support.
He was a great politician; and the one article of his creed, in
reference to all public obligations involving the good faith and
integrity of his country, was, 'run a moist pen slick through
everything, and start fresh.'  This made him a patriot. In
commercial affairs he was a bold speculator. In plainer words he
had a most distinguished genius for swindling, and could start a
bank, or negotiate a loan, or form a land-jobbing company (entailing
ruin, pestilence, and death, on hundreds of families), with any
gifted creature in the Union. This made him an admirable man of
business. He could hang about a bar-room, discussing the affairs of
the nation, for twelve hours together; and in that time could hold
forth with more intolerable dulness, chew more tobacco, smoke more
tobacco, drink more rum-toddy, mint-julep, gin-sling, and cocktail,
than any private gentleman of his acquaintance. This made him an
orator and a man of the people. In a word, the major was a rising
character, and a popular character, and was in a fair way to be sent
by the popular party to the State House of New York, if not in the
end to Washington itself. But as a man's private prosperity does
not always keep pace with his patriotic devotion to public affairs;
and as fraudulent transactions have their downs as well as ups, the
major was occasionally under a cloud. Hence, just now Mrs Pawkins
kept a boarding-house, and Major Pawkins rather 'loafed' his time
away than otherwise.

'You have come to visit our country, sir, at a season of great
commercial depression,' said the major.

'At an alarming crisis,' said the colonel.

'At a period of unprecedented stagnation,' said Mr Jefferson Brick.

'I am sorry to hear that,' returned Martin. 'It's not likely to
last, I hope?'

Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly
well that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed,
it always IS depressed, and always IS stagnated, and always IS at an
alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body they are
ready to make oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or
night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries
on the habitable globe.

'It's not likely to last, I hope?' said Martin.

'Well!' returned the major, 'I expect we shall get along somehow,
and come right in the end.'

'We are an elastic country,' said the Rowdy Journal.

'We are a young lion,' said Mr Jefferson Brick.

'We have revivifying and vigorous principles within ourselves,'
observed the major. 'Shall we drink a bitter afore dinner,
colonel?'

The colonel assenting to this proposal with great alacrity, Major
Pawkins proposed an adjournment to a neighbouring bar-room, which,
as he observed, was 'only in the next block.'  He then referred
Martin to Mrs Pawkins for all particulars connected with the rate of
board and lodging, and informed him that he would have the pleasure
of seeing that lady at dinner, which would soon be ready, as the
dinner hour was two o'clock, and it only wanted a quarter now. This
reminded him that if the bitter were to be taken at all, there was
no time to lose; so he walked off without more ado, and left them to
follow if they thought proper.

When the major rose from his rocking-chair before the stove, and so
disturbed the hot air and balmy whiff of soup which fanned their
brows, the odour of stale tobacco became so decidedly prevalent as
to leave no doubt of its proceeding mainly from that gentleman's
attire. Indeed, as Martin walked behind him to the bar-room, he
could not help thinking that the great square major, in his
listlessness and langour, looked very much like a stale weed himself;
such as might be hoed out of the public garden, with great advantage
to the decent growth of that preserve, and tossed on some congenial
dunghill.

They encountered more weeds in the bar-room, some of whom (being
thirsty souls as well as dirty) were pretty stale in one sense, and
pretty fresh in another. Among them was a gentleman who, as Martin
gathered from the conversation that took place over the bitter,
started that afternoon for the Far West on a six months' business
tour, and who, as his outfit and equipment for this journey, had
just such another shiny hat and just such another little pale valise
as had composed the luggage of the gentleman who came from England
in the Screw.

They were walking back very leisurely; Martin arm-in-arm with Mr
Jefferson Brick, and the major and the colonel side-by-side before
them; when, as they came within a house or two of the major's
residence, they heard a bell ringing violently. The instant this
sound struck upon their ears, the colonel and the major darted off,
dashed up the steps and in at the street-door (which stood ajar)
like lunatics; while Mr Jefferson Brick, detaching his arm from
Martin's, made a precipitate dive in the same direction, and
vanished also.

'Good Heaven!' thought Martin. 'The premises are on fire! It was an
alarm bell!'

But there was no smoke to be seen, nor any flame, nor was there any
smell of fire. As Martin faltered on the pavement, three more
gentlemen, with horror and agitation depicted in their faces, came
plunging wildly round the street corner; jostled each other on the
steps; struggled for an instant; and rushed into the house, a
confused heap of arms and legs. Unable to bear it any longer,
Martin followed. Even in his rapid progress he was run down, thrust
aside, and passed, by two more gentlemen, stark mad, as it appeared,
with fierce excitement.

'Where is it?' cried Martin, breathlessly, to a negro whom he
encountered in the passage.

'In a eatin room, sa. Kernell, sa, him kep a seat 'side himself,
sa.'

'A seat!' cried Martin.

'For a dinnar, sa.'

Martin started at him for a moment, and burst into a hearty laugh;
to which the negro, out of his natural good humour and desire to
please, so heartily responded, that his teeth shone like a gleam of
light. 'You're the pleasantest fellow I have seen yet,' said Martin
clapping him on the back, 'and give me a better appetite than
bitters.'

With this sentiment he walked into the dining-room and slipped into
a chair next the colonel, which that gentleman (by this time nearly
through his dinner) had turned down in reserve for him, with its
back against the table.

It was a numerous company--eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these
some five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little
phalanx by themselves. All the knives and forks were working away
at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and
everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine
were expected to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and
it had become high time to assert the first law of nature. The
poultry, which may perhaps be considered to have formed the staple
of the entertainment--for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of
ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle--disappeared as
rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown
in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and
pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores
into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished,
whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his
eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before
the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic
individuals bolted their food in wedges; feeding, not themselves,
but broods of nightmares, who were continually standing at livery
within them. Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out
unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with
watchful eyes upon the pastry. What Mrs Pawkins felt each day at
dinner-time is hidden from all human knowledge. But she had one
comfort. It was very soon over.

When the colonel had finished his dinner, which event took place
while Martin, who had sent his plate for some turkey, was waiting to
begin, he asked him what he thought of the boarders, who were from
all parts of the Union, and whether he would like to know any
particulars concerning them.

'Pray,' said Martin, 'who is that sickly little girl opposite, with
the tight round eyes? I don't see anybody here, who looks like her
mother, or who seems to have charge of her.'

'Do you mean the matron in blue, sir?' asked the colonel, with
emphasis. 'That is Mrs Jefferson Brick, sir.'

'No, no,' said Martin, 'I mean the little girl, like a doll;
directly opposite.'

'Well, sir!' cried the colonel. 'THAT is Mrs Jefferson Brick.'

Martin glanced at the colonel's face, but he was quite serious.

'Bless my soul! I suppose there will be a young Brick then, one of
these days?' said Martin.

'There are two young Bricks already, sir,' returned the colonel.

The matron looked so uncommonly like a child herself, that Martin
could not help saying as much. 'Yes, sir,' returned the colonel,
'but some institutions develop human natur; others re--tard it.'

'Jefferson Brick,' he observed after a short silence, in
commendation of his correspondent, 'is one of the most remarkable
men in our country, sir!'

This had passed almost in a whisper, for the distinguished gentleman
alluded to sat on Martin's other hand.

'Pray, Mr Brick,' said Martin, turning to him, and asking a question
more for conversation's sake than from any feeling of interest in
its subject, 'who is that;' he was going to say 'young' but thought
it prudent to eschew the word--'that very short gentleman yonder,
with the red nose?'

'That is Pro--fessor Mullit, sir,' replied Jefferson.

'May I ask what he is professor of?' asked Martin.

'Of education, sir,' said Jefferson Brick.

'A sort of schoolmaster, possibly?' Martin ventured to observe.

'He is a man of fine moral elements, sir, and not commonly endowed,'
said the war correspondent. 'He felt it necessary, at the last
election for President, to repudiate and denounce his father, who
voted on the wrong interest. He has since written some powerful
pamphlets, under the signature of "Suturb," or Brutus reversed. He
is one of the most remarkable men in our country, sir.'

'There seem to be plenty of 'em,' thought Martin, 'at any rate.'

Pursuing his inquiries Martin found that there were no fewer than
four majors present, two colonels, one general, and a captain, so
that he could not help thinking how strongly officered the American
militia must be; and wondering very much whether the officers
commanded each other; or if they did not, where on earth the
privates came from. There seemed to be no man there without a
title; for those who had not attained to military honours were
either doctors, professors, or reverends. Three very hard and
disagreeable gentlemen were on missions from neighbouring States;
one on monetary affairs, one on political, one on sectarian. Among
the ladies, there were Mrs Pawkins, who was very straight, bony, and
silent; and a wiry-faced old damsel, who held strong sentiments
touching the rights of women, and had diffused the same in lectures;
but the rest were strangely devoid of individual traits of
character, insomuch that any one of them might have changed minds
with the other, and nobody would have found it out. These, by the
way, were the only members of the party who did not appear to be
among the most remarkable people in the country.

Several of the gentlemen got up, one by one, and walked off as they
swallowed their last morsel; pausing generally by the stove for a
minute or so to refresh themselves at the brass spittoons. A few
sedentary characters, however, remained at table full a quarter of
an hour, and did not rise until the ladies rose, when all stood up.

'Where are they going?' asked Martin, in the ear of Mr Jefferson
Brick.

'To their bedrooms, sir.'

'Is there no dessert, or other interval of conversation?' asked
Martin, who was disposed to enjoy himself after his long voyage.

'We are a busy people here, sir, and have no time for that,' was the
reply.

So the ladies passed out in single file; Mr Jefferson Brick and such
other married gentlemen as were left, acknowledging the departure of
their other halves by a nod; and there was an end of THEM. Martin
thought this an uncomfortable custom, but he kept his opinion to
himself for the present, being anxious to hear, and inform himself
by, the conversation of the busy gentlemen, who now lounged about the
stove as if a great weight had been taken off their minds by the
withdrawal of the other sex; and who made a plentiful use of the
spittoons and their toothpicks.

It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the greater
part of it may be summed up in one word. Dollars. All their cares,
hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be
melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that
fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick
and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures
gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up,
and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to
dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The
more of that worthless ballast, honour and fair-dealing, which any
man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Name and Good Intent,
the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one
huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an
idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as
from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What
is a flag to THEM!

One who rides at all hazards of limb and life in the chase of a fox,
will prefer to ride recklessly at most times. So it was with these
gentlemen. He was the greatest patriot, in their eyes, who brawled
the loudest, and who cared the least for decency. He was their
champion who, in the brutal fury of his own pursuit, could cast no
stigma upon them for the hot knavery of theirs. Thus, Martin learned
in the five minutes' straggling talk about the stove, that to carry
pistols into legislative assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other
such peaceful toys; to seize opponents by the throat, as dogs or
rats might do; to bluster, bully, and overbear by personal
assailment; were glowing deeds. Not thrusts and stabs at Freedom,
striking far deeper into her House of Life than any sultan's
scimitar could reach; but rare incense on her altars, having a
grateful scent in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward to the
seventh heaven of Fame.

Once or twice, when there was a pause, Martin asked such questions
as naturally occurred to him, being a stranger, about the national
poets, the theatre, literature, and the arts. But the information
which these gentlemen were in a condition to give him on such
topics, did not extend beyond the effusions of such master-spirits
of the time as Colonel Diver, Mr Jefferson Brick, and others;
renowned, as it appeared, for excellence in the achievement of a
peculiar style of broadside essay called 'a screamer.'

'We are a busy people, sir,' said one of the captains, who was from
the West, 'and have no time for reading mere notions. We don't mind
'em if they come to us in newspapers along with almighty strong
stuff of another sort, but darn your books.'

Here the general, who appeared to grow quite faint at the bare
thought of reading anything which was neither mercantile nor
political, and was not in a newspaper, inquired 'if any gentleman
would drink some?'  Most of the company, considering this a very
choice and seasonable idea, lounged out, one by one, to the bar-room
in the next block. Thence they probably went to their stores and
counting-houses; thence to the bar-room again, to talk once more of
dollars, and enlarge their minds with the perusal and discussion of
screamers; and thence each man to snore in the bosom of his own
family.

'Which would seem,' said Martin, pursuing the current of his own
thoughts, 'to be the principal recreation they enjoy in common.'
With that, he fell a-musing again on dollars, demagogues, and bar-
rooms; debating within himself whether busy people of this class
were really as busy as they claimed to be, or only had an inaptitude
for social and domestic pleasure.

It was a difficult question to solve; and the mere fact of its being
strongly presented to his mind by all that he had seen and heard,
was not encouraging. He sat down at the deserted board, and
becoming more and more despondent, as he thought of all the
uncertainties and difficulties of his precarious situation, sighed
heavily.

Now, there had been at the dinner-table a middle-aged man with a
dark eye and a sunburnt face, who had attracted Martin's attention
by having something very engaging and honest in the expression of
his features; but of whom he could learn nothing from either of his
neighbours, who seemed to consider him quite beneath their notice.
He had taken no part in the conversation round the stove, nor had he
gone forth with the rest; and now, when he heard Martin sigh for the
third or fourth time, he interposed with some casual remark, as if
he desired, without obtruding himself upon a stranger's notice, to
engage him in cheerful conversation if he could. His motive was so
obvious, and yet so delicately expressed, that Martin felt really
grateful to him, and showed him so in the manner of his reply.

'I will not ask you,' said this gentleman with a smile, as he rose
and moved towards him, 'how you like my country, for I can quite
anticipate your feeling on that point. But, as I am an American,
and consequently bound to begin with a question, I'll ask you how
you like the colonel?'

'You are so very frank,' returned Martin, 'that I have no hesitation
in saying I don't like him at all. Though I must add that I am
beholden to him for his civility in bringing me here--and arranging
for my stay, on pretty reasonable terms, by the way,' he added,
remembering that the colonel had whispered him to that effect,
before going out.

'Not much beholden,' said the stranger drily. 'The colonel
occasionally boards packet-ships, I have heard, to glean the latest
information for his journal; and he occasionally brings strangers to
board here, I believe, with a view to the little percentage which
attaches to those good offices; and which the hostess deducts from
his weekly bill. I don't offend you, I hope?' he added, seeing that
Martin reddened.

'My dear sir,' returned Martin, as they shook hands, 'how is that
possible! to tell you the truth, I--am--'

'Yes?' said the gentleman, sitting down beside him.

'I am rather at a loss, since I must speak plainly,' said Martin,
getting the better of his hesitation, 'to know how this colonel
escapes being beaten.'

'Well! He has been beaten once or twice,' remarked the gentleman
quietly. 'He is one of a class of men, in whom our own Franklin, so
long ago as ten years before the close of the last century, foresaw
our danger and disgrace. Perhaps you don't know that Franklin, in
very severe terms, published his opinion that those who were
slandered by such fellows as this colonel, having no sufficient
remedy in the administration of this country's laws or in the decent
and right-minded feeling of its people, were justified in retorting
on such public nuisances by means of a stout cudgel?'

'I was not aware of that,' said Martin, 'but I am very glad to know
it, and I think it worthy of his memory; especially'--here he
hesitated again.

'Go on,' said the other, smiling as if he knew what stuck in
Martin's throat.

'Especially,' pursued Martin, 'as I can already understand that it
may have required great courage, even in his time, to write freely
on any question which was not a party one in this very free
country.'

'Some courage, no doubt,' returned his new friend. 'Do you think it
would require any to do so, now?'

'Indeed I think it would; and not a little,' said Martin.

'You are right. So very right, that I believe no satirist could
breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among
us to-morrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of
our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born
and bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people, and not as
this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal
slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will
be a strange name in my ears, believe me. In some cases I could
name to you, where a native writer has ventured on the most harmless
and good-humoured illustrations of our vices or defects, it has been
found necessary to announce, that in a second edition the passage
has been expunged, or altered, or explained away, or patched into
praise.'

'And how has this been brought about?' asked Martin, in dismay.

'Think of what you have seen and heard to-day, beginning with the
colonel,' said his friend, 'and ask yourself. How THEY came about,
is another question. Heaven forbid that they should be samples of
the intelligence and virtue of America, but they come uppermost, and
in great numbers, and too often represent it. Will you walk?'

There was a cordial candour in his manner, and an engaging
confidence that it would not be abused; a manly bearing on his own
part, and a simple reliance on the manly faith of a stranger; which
Martin had never seen before. He linked his arm readily in that of
the American gentleman, and they walked out together.

It was perhaps to men like this, his new companion, that a traveller
of honoured name, who trod those shores now nearly forty years ago,
and woke upon that soil, as many have done since, to blots and
stains upon its high pretensions, which in the brightness of his
distant dreams were lost to view, appealed in these words--

    'Oh, but for such, Columbia's days were done;
     Rank without ripeness, quickened without sun,
     Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,
     Her fruits would fall before her spring were o'er!'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MARTIN ENLARGES HIS CIRCLE OF AQUAINTANCE; INCREASES HIS STOCK OF
WISDOM; AND HAS AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY OF COMPARING HIS OWN
EXPERIENCES WITH THOSE OF LUMMY NED OF THE LIGHT SALISBURY, AS
RELATED BY HIS FRIEND MR WILLIAM SIMMONS

It was characteristic of Martin, that all this while he had either
forgotten Mark Tapley as completely as if there had been no such
person in existence, or, if for a moment the figure of that
gentleman rose before his mental vision, had dismissed it as
something by no means of a pressing nature, which might be attended
to by-and-bye, and could wait his perfect leisure. But, being now
in the streets again, it occurred to him as just coming within the
bare limits of possibility that Mr Tapley might, in course of time,
grow tired of waiting on the threshold of the Rowdy Journal Office,
so he intimated to his new friend, that if they could conveniently
walk in that direction, he would be glad to get this piece of
business off his mind.

'And speaking of business,' said Martin, 'may I ask, in order that I
may not be behind-hand with questions either, whether your
occupation holds you to this city, or like myself, you are a visitor
here?'

'A visitor,' replied his friend. 'I was "raised" in the State of
Massachusetts, and reside there still. My home is in a quiet
country town. I am not often in these busy places; and my
inclination to visit them does not increase with our better
acquaintance, I assure you.'

'You have been abroad?' asked Martin,

'Oh yes.'

'And, like most people who travel, have become more than ever
attached to your home and native country,' said Martin, eyeing him
curiously.

'To my home--yes,' rejoined his friend. 'To my native country AS my
home--yes, also.'

'You imply some reservation,' said Martin.

'Well,' returned his new friend, 'if you ask me whether I came back
here with a greater relish for my country's faults; with a greater
fondness for those who claim (at the rate of so many dollars a day)
to be her friends; with a cooler indifference to the growth of
principles among us in respect of public matters and of private
dealings between man and man, the advocacy of which, beyond the foul
atmosphere of a criminal trial, would disgrace your own old Bailey
lawyers; why, then I answer plainly, No.'

'Oh!' said Martin; in so exactly the same key as his friend's No,
that it sounded like an echo.

'If you ask me,' his companion pursued, 'whether I came back here
better satisfied with a state of things which broadly divides
society into two classes--whereof one, the great mass, asserts a
spurious independence, most miserably dependent for its mean
existence on the disregard of humanizing conventionalities of manner
and social custom, so that the coarser a man is, the more distinctly
it shall appeal to his taste; while the other, disgusted with the
low standard thus set up and made adaptable to everything, takes
refuge among the graces and refinements it can bring to bear on
private life, and leaves the public weal to such fortune as may
betide it in the press and uproar of a general scramble--then again
I answer, No.'

And again Martin said 'Oh!' in the same odd way as before, being
anxious and disconcerted; not so much, to say the truth, on public
grounds, as with reference to the fading prospects of domestic
architecture.

'In a word,' resumed the other, 'I do not find and cannot believe
and therefore will not allow, that we are a model of wisdom, and an
example to the world, and the perfection of human reason, and a
great deal more to the same purpose, which you may hear any hour in
the day; simply because we began our political life with two
inestimable advantages.'

'What were they?' asked Martin.

'One, that our history commenced at so late a period as to escape
the ages of bloodshed and cruelty through which other nations have
passed; and so had all the light of their probation, and none of its
darkness. The other, that we have a vast territory, and not--as
yet--too many people on it. These facts considered, we have done
little enough, I think.'

'Education?' suggested Martin, faintly.

'Pretty well on that head,' said the other, shrugging his shoulders,
'still no mighty matter to boast of; for old countries, and despotic
countries too, have done as much, if not more, and made less noise
about it. We shine out brightly in comparison with England,
certainly; but hers is a very extreme case. You complimented me on
my frankness, you know,' he added, laughing.

'Oh! I am not at all astonished at your speaking thus openly when my
country is in question,' returned Martin. 'It is your plain-
speaking in reference to your own that surprises me.'

'You will not find it a scarce quality here, I assure you, saving
among the Colonel Divers, and Jefferson Bricks, and Major Pawkinses;
though the best of us are something like the man in Goldsmith's
comedy, who wouldn't suffer anybody but himself to abuse his master.
Come!' he added. 'Let us talk of something else. You have come
here on some design of improving your fortune, I dare say; and I
should grieve to put you out of heart. I am some years older than
you, besides; and may, on a few trivial points, advise you, perhaps.'

There was not the least curiosity or impertinence in the manner of
this offer, which was open-hearted, unaffected, and good-natured.
As it was next to impossible that he should not have his confidence
awakened by a deportment so prepossessing and kind, Martin plainly
stated what had brought him into those parts, and even made the very
difficult avowal that he was poor. He did not say how poor, it must
be admitted, rather throwing off the declaration with an air which
might have implied that he had money enough for six months, instead
of as many weeks; but poor he said he was, and grateful he said he
would be, for any counsel that his friend would give him.

It would not have been very difficult for any one to see; but it was
particularly easy for Martin, whose perceptions were sharpened by
his circumstances, to discern; that the stranger's face grew
infinitely longer as the domestic-architecture project was
developed. Nor, although he made a great effort to be as
encouraging as possible, could he prevent his head from shaking once
involuntarily, as if it said in the vulgar tongue, upon its own
account, 'No go!'  But he spoke in a cheerful tone, and said, that
although there was no such opening as Martin wished, in that city,
he would make it matter of immediate consideration and inquiry where
one was most likely to exist; and then he made Martin acquainted
with his name, which was Bevan; and with his profession, which was
physic, though he seldom or never practiced; and with other
circumstances connected with himself and family, which fully
occupied the time, until they reached the Rowdy Journal Office.

Mr Tapley appeared to be taking his ease on the landing of the first
floor; for sounds as of some gentleman established in that region
whistling 'Rule Britannia' with all his might and main, greeted
their ears before they reached the house. On ascending to the spot
from whence this music proceeded, they found him recumbent in the
midst of a fortification of luggage, apparently performing his
national anthem for the gratification of a grey-haired black man,
who sat on one of the outworks (a portmanteau), staring intently at
Mark, while Mark, with his head reclining on his hand, returned the
compliment in a thoughtful manner, and whistled all the time. He
seemed to have recently dined, for his knife, a casebottle, and
certain broken meats in a handkerchief, lay near at hand. He had
employed a portion of his leisure in the decoration of the Rowdy
Journal door, whereon his own initials now appeared in letters
nearly half a foot long, together with the day of the month in
smaller type; the whole surrounded by an ornamental border, and
looking very fresh and bold.

'I was a'most afraid you was lost, sir!' cried Mark, rising, and
stopping the tune at that point where Britons generally are supposed
to declare (when it is whistled) that they never, never, never--

'Nothing gone wrong, I hope, sir?'

'No, Mark. Where's your friend?'

'The mad woman, sir?' said Mr Tapley. 'Oh! she's all right, sir.'

'Did she find her husband?'

'Yes, sir. Leastways she's found his remains,' said Mark,
correcting himself.

'The man's not dead, I hope?'

'Not altogether dead, sir,' returned Mark; 'but he's had more fevers
and agues than is quite reconcilable with being alive. When she
didn't see him a-waiting for her, I thought she'd have died herself,
I did!'

'Was he not here, then?'

'HE wasn't here. There was a feeble old shadow come a-creeping down
at last, as much like his substance when she know'd him, as your
shadow when it's drawn out to its very finest and longest by the
sun, is like you. But it was his remains, there's no doubt about
that. She took on with joy, poor thing, as much as if it had been
all of him!'

'Had he bought land?' asked Mr Bevan.

'Ah! He'd bought land,' said Mark, shaking his head, 'and paid for
it too. Every sort of nateral advantage was connected with it, the
agents said; and there certainly was ONE, quite unlimited. No end
to the water!'

'It's a thing he couldn't have done without, I suppose,' observed
Martin, peevishly.

'Certainly not, sir. There it was, any way; always turned on, and
no water-rate. Independent of three or four slimy old rivers close
by, it varied on the farm from four to six foot deep in the dry
season. He couldn't say how deep it was in the rainy time, for he
never had anything long enough to sound it with.'

'Is this true?' asked Martin of his companion.

'Extremely probable,' he answered. 'Some Mississippi or Missouri
lot, I dare say.'

'However,' pursued Mark, 'he came from I-don't-know-where-and-all,
down to New York here, to meet his wife and children; and they
started off again in a steamboat this blessed afternoon, as happy
to be along with each other as if they were going to Heaven. I
should think they was, pretty straight, if I may judge from the poor
man's looks.'

'And may I ask,' said Martin, glancing, but not with any
displeasure, from Mark to the negro, 'who this gentleman is?
Another friend of yours?'

'Why sir,' returned Mark, taking him aside, and speaking
confidentially in his ear, 'he's a man of colour, sir!'

'Do you take me for a blind man,' asked Martin, somewhat
impatiently, 'that you think it necessary to tell me that, when his
face is the blackest that ever was seen?'

'No, no; when I say a man of colour,' returned Mark, 'I mean that
he's been one of them as there's picters of in the shops. A man and
a brother, you know, sir,' said Mr Tapley, favouring his master with
a significant indication of the figure so often represented in
tracts and cheap prints.

'A slave!' cried Martin, in a whisper.

'Ah!' said Mark in the same tone. 'Nothing else. A slave. Why,
when that there man was young--don't look at him while I'm a-telling
it--he was shot in the leg; gashed in the arm; scored in his live
limbs, like crimped fish; beaten out of shape; had his neck galled
with an iron collar, and wore iron rings upon his wrists and ankles.
The marks are on him to this day. When I was having my dinner just
now, he stripped off his coat, and took away my appetite.'

'Is THIS true?' asked Martin of his friend, who stood beside them.

'I have no reason to doubt it,' he answered, shaking his head 'It
very often is.'

'Bless you,' said Mark, 'I know it is, from hearing his whole story.
That master died; so did his second master from having his head cut
open with a hatchet by another slave, who, when he'd done it, went
and drowned himself; then he got a better one; in years and years
he saved up a little money, and bought his freedom, which he got
pretty cheap at last, on account of his strength being nearly gone,
and he being ill. Then he come here. And now he's a-saving up to
treat himself, afore he dies, to one small purchase--it's nothing to
speak of. Only his own daughter; that's all!' cried Mr Tapley,
becoming excited. 'Liberty for ever! Hurrah! Hail, Columbia!'

'Hush!' cried Martin, clapping his hand upon his mouth; 'and don't
be an idiot. What is he doing here?'

'Waiting to take our luggage off upon a truck,' said Mark. 'He'd
have come for it by-and-bye, but I engaged him for a very reasonable
charge (out of my own pocket) to sit along with me and make me
jolly; and I am jolly; and if I was rich enough to contract with him
to wait upon me once a day, to be looked at, I'd never be anything
else.'

The fact may cause a solemn impeachment of Mark's veracity, but it
must be admitted nevertheless, that there was that in his face and
manner at the moment, which militated strongly against this emphatic
declaration of his state of mind.

'Lord love you, sir,' he added, 'they're so fond of Liberty in this
part of the globe, that they buy her and sell her and carry her to
market with 'em. They've such a passion for Liberty, that they
can't help taking liberties with her. That's what it's owing to.'

'Very well,' said Martin, wishing to change the theme. 'Having come
to that conclusion, Mark, perhaps you'll attend to me. The place to
which the luggage is to go is printed on this card. Mrs Pawkins's
Boarding House.'

'Mrs Pawkins's boarding-house,' repeated Mark. 'Now, Cicero.'

'Is that his name?' asked Martin

'That's his name, sir,' rejoined Mark. And the negro grinning
assent from under a leathern portmanteau, than which his own face
was many shades deeper, hobbled downstairs with his portion of
their worldly goods; Mark Tapley having already gone before with his
share.

Martin and his friend followed them to the door below, and were
about to pursue their walk, when the latter stopped, and asked, with
some hesitation, whether that young man was to be trusted?

'Mark! oh certainly! with anything.'

'You don't understand me--I think he had better go with us. He is
an honest fellow, and speaks his mind so very plainly.'

'Why, the fact is,' said Martin, smiling, 'that being unaccustomed
to a free republic, he is used to do so.'

'I think he had better go with us,' returned the other. 'He may get
into some trouble otherwise. This is not a slave State; but I am
ashamed to say that a spirit of Tolerance is not so common anywhere
in these latitudes as the form. We are not remarkable for behaving
very temperately to each other when we differ; but to strangers!
no, I really think he had better go with us.'

Martin called to him immediately to be of their party; so Cicero and
the truck went one way, and they three went another.

They walked about the city for two or three hours; seeing it from
the best points of view, and pausing in the principal streets, and
before such public buildings as Mr Bevan pointed out. Night then
coming on apace, Martin proposed that they should adjourn to Mrs
Pawkins's establishment for coffee; but in this he was overruled by
his new acquaintance, who seemed to have set his heart on carrying
him, though it were only for an hour, to the house of a friend of
his who lived hard by. Feeling (however disinclined he was, being
weary) that it would be in bad taste, and not very gracious, to
object that he was unintroduced, when this open-hearted gentleman
was so ready to be his sponsor, Martin--for once in his life, at all
events--sacrificed his own will and pleasure to the wishes of
another, and consented with a fair grace. So travelling had done
him that much good, already.

Mr Bevan knocked at the door of a very neat house of moderate size,
from the parlour windows of which, lights were shining brightly into
the now dark street. It was quickly opened by a man with such a
thoroughly Irish face, that it seemed as if he ought, as a matter of
right and principle, to be in rags, and could have no sort of
business to be looking cheerfully at anybody out of a whole suit of
clothes.

Commending Mark to the care of this phenomenon--for such he may be
said to have been in Martin's eyes--Mr Bevan led the way into the
room which had shed its cheerfulness upon the street, to whose
occupants he introduced Mr Chuzzlewit as a gentleman from England,
whose acquaintance he had recently had the pleasure to make. They
gave him welcome in all courtesy and politeness; and in less than
five minutes' time he found himself sitting very much at his ease by
the fireside, and becoming vastly well acquainted with the whole
family.

There were two young ladies--one eighteen; the other twenty--both
very slender, but very pretty; their mother, who looked, as Martin
thought much older and more faded than she ought to have looked; and
their grandmother, a little sharp-eyed, quick old woman, who seemed
to have got past that stage, and to have come all right again.
Besides these, there were the young ladies' father, and the young
ladies' brother; the first engaged in mercantile affairs; the
second, a student at college; both, in a certain cordiality of
manner, like his own friend, and not unlike him in face. Which was
no great wonder, for it soon appeared that he was their near
relation. Martin could not help tracing the family pedigree from
the two young ladies, because they were foremost in his thoughts;
not only from being, as aforesaid, very pretty, but by reason of
their wearing miraculously small shoes, and the thinnest possible
silk stockings; the which their rocking-chairs developed to a
distracting extent.

There is no doubt that it was a monstrous comfortable circumstance
to be sitting in a snug, well-furnished room, warmed by a cheerful
fire, and full of various pleasant decorations, including four small
shoes, and the like amount of silk stockings, and--yes, why not?--the
feet and legs therein enshrined. And there is no doubt that Martin
was monstrous well-disposed to regard his position in that light,
after his recent experience of the Screw, and of Mrs Pawkins's
boarding-house. The consequence was that he made himself very
agreeable indeed; and by the time the tea and coffee arrived (with
sweet preserves, and cunning tea-cakes in its train), was in a
highly genial state, and much esteemed by the whole family.

Another delightful circumstance turned up before the first cup of
tea was drunk. The whole family had been in England. There was a
pleasant thing! But Martin was not quite so glad of this, when he
found that they knew all the great dukes, lords, viscounts,
marquesses, duchesses, knights, and baronets, quite affectionately,
and were beyond everything interested in the least particular
concerning them. However, when they asked, after the wearer of this
or that coronet, and said, 'Was he quite well?' Martin answered,
'Yes, oh yes. Never better;' and when they said, 'his lordship's
mother, the duchess, was she much changed?' Martin said, 'Oh dear
no, they would know her anywhere, if they saw her to-morrow;' and
so got on pretty well. In like manner when the young ladies
questioned him touching the Gold Fish in that Grecian fountain in
such and such a nobleman's conservatory, and whether there were as
many as there used to be, he gravely reported, after mature
consideration, that there must be at least twice as many; and as to
the exotics, 'Oh! well! it was of no use talking about THEM; they
must be seen to be believed;' which improved state of circumstances
reminded the family of the splendour of that brilliant festival
(comprehending the whole British Peerage and Court Calendar) to
which they were specially invited, and which indeed had been partly
given in their honour; and recollections of what Mr Norris the
father had said to the marquess, and of what Mrs Norris the mother
had said to the marchioness, and of what the marquess and
marchioness had both said, when they said that upon their words and
honours they wished Mr Norris the father and Mrs Norris the mother,
and the Misses Norris the daughters, and Mr Norris Junior, the son,
would only take up their permanent residence in England, and give
them the pleasure of their everlasting friendship, occupied a very
considerable time.

Martin thought it rather stange, and in some sort inconsistent, that
during the whole of these narrations, and in the very meridian of
their enjoyment thereof, both Mr Norris the father, and Mr Norris
Junior, the son (who corresponded, every post, with four members of
the English Peerage), enlarged upon the inestimable advantage of
having no such arbitrary distinctions in that enlightened land,
where there were no noblemen but nature's noblemen, and where all
society was based on one broad level of brotherly love and natural
equality. Indeed, Mr Norris the father gradually expanding into an
oration on this swelling theme, was becoming tedious, when Mr Bevan
diverted his thoughts by happening to make some causal inquiry
relative to the occupier of the next house; in reply to which, this
same Mr Norris the father observed, that 'that person entertained
religious opinions of which he couldn't approve; and therefore he
hadn't the honour of knowing the gentleman.'  Mrs Norris the mother
added another reason of her own, the same in effect, but varying in
words; to wit, that she believed the people were well enough in
their way, but they were not genteel.

Another little trait came out, which impressed itself on Martin
forcibly. Mr Bevan told them about Mark and the negro, and then it
appeared that all the Norrises were abolitionists. It was a great
relief to hear this, and Martin was so much encouraged on finding
himself in such company, that he expressed his sympathy with the
oppressed and wretched blacks. Now, one of the young ladies--the
prettiest and most delicate--was mightily amused at the earnestness
with which he spoke; and on his craving leave to ask her why, was
quite unable for a time to speak for laughing. As soon however as
she could, she told him that the negroes were such a funny people,
so excessively ludicrous in their manners and appearance, that it
was wholly impossible for those who knew them well, to associate any
serious ideas with such a very absurd part of the creation. Mr
Norris the father, and Mrs Norris the mother, and Miss Norris the
sister, and Mr Norris Junior the brother, and even Mrs Norris Senior
the grandmother, were all of this opinion, and laid it down as an
absolute matter of fact--as if there were nothing in suffering and
slavery, grim enough to cast a solemn air on any human animal;
though it were as ridiculous, physically, as the most grotesque of
apes, or morally, as the mildest Nimrod among tuft-hunting
republicans!

'In short,' said Mr Norris the father, settling the question
comfortably, 'there is a natural antipathy between the races.'

'Extending,' said Martin's friend, in a low voice, 'to the cruellest
of tortures, and the bargain and sale of unborn generations.'

Mr Norris the son said nothing, but he made a wry face, and dusted
his fingers as Hamlet might after getting rid of Yorick's skull;
just as though he had that moment touched a negro, and some of the
black had come off upon his hands.

In order that their talk might fall again into its former pleasant
channel, Martin dropped the subject, with a shrewd suspicion that it
would be a dangerous theme to revive under the best of
circumstances; and again addressed himself to the young ladies, who
were very gorgeously attired in very beautiful colours, and had
every article of dress on the same extensive scale as the little
shoes and the thin silk stockings. This suggested to him that they
were great proficients in the French fashions, which soon turned out
to be the case, for though their information appeared to be none of
the newest, it was very extensive; and the eldest sister in
particular, who was distinguished by a talent for metaphysics, the
laws of hydraulic pressure, and the rights of human kind, had a
novel way of combining these acquirements and bringing them to bear
on any subject from Millinery to the Millennium, both inclusive,
which was at once improving and remarkable; so much so, in short,
that it was usually observed to reduce foreigners to a state of
temporary insanity in five minutes.

Martin felt his reason going; and as a means of saving himself,
besought the other sister (seeing a piano in the room) to sing.
With this request she willingly complied; and a bravura concert,
solely sustained by the Misses Noriss, presently began. They sang
in all languages--except their own. German, French, Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss; but nothing native; nothing so low as
native. For, in this respect, languages are like many other
travellers--ordinary and commonplace enough at home, but 'specially
genteel abroad.

There is little doubt that in course of time the Misses Norris would
have come to Hebrew, if they had not been interrupted by an
announcement from the Irishman, who, flinging open the door, cried in
a loud voice--

'Jiniral Fladdock!'

'My!' cried the sisters, desisting suddenly. 'The general come
back!'

As they made the exclamation, the general, attired in full uniform
for a ball, came darting in with such precipitancy that, hitching
his boot in the carpet, and getting his sword between his legs, he
came down headlong, and presented a curious little bald place on the
crown of his head to the eyes of the astonished company. Nor was
this the worst of it; for being rather corpulent and very tight, the
general being down, could not get up again, but lay there writing
and doing such things with his boots, as there is no other instance
of in military history.

Of course there was an immediate rush to his assistance; and the
general was promptly raised. But his uniform was so fearfully and
wonderfully made, that he came up stiff and without a bend in him
like a dead Clown, and had no command whatever of himself until he
was put quite flat upon the soles of his feet, when he became
animated as by a miracle, and moving edgewise that he might go in a
narrower compass and be in less danger of fraying the gold lace on
his epaulettes by brushing them against anything, advanced with a
smiling visage to salute the lady of the house.

To be sure, it would have been impossible for the family to testify
purer delight and joy than at this unlooked-for appearance of
General Fladdock! The general was as warmly received as if New York
had been in a state of siege and no other general was to be got for
love or money. He shook hands with the Norrises three times all
round, and then reviewed them from a little distance as a brave
commander might, with his ample cloak drawn forward over the right
shoulder and thrown back upon the left side to reveal his manly
breast.

'And do I then,' cried the general, 'once again behold the choicest
spirits of my country!'

'Yes,' said Mr Norris the father. 'Here we are, general.'

Then all the Norrises pressed round the general, inquiring how and
where he had been since the date of his letter, and how he had
enjoyed himself in foreign parts, and particularly and above all, to
what extent he had become acquainted with the great dukes, lords,
viscounts, marquesses, duchesses, knights, and baronets, in whom the
people of those benighted countries had delight.

'Well, then, don't ask me,' said the general, holding up his hand.
'I was among 'em all the time, and have got public journals in my
trunk with my name printed'--he lowered his voice and was very
impressive here--'among the fashionable news. But, oh, the
conventionalities of that a-mazing Europe!'

'Ah!' cried Mr Norris the father, giving his head a melancholy
shake, and looking towards Martin as though he would say, 'I can't
deny it, sir. I would if I could.'

'The limited diffusion of a moral sense in that country!' exclaimed
the general. 'The absence of a moral dignity in man!'

'Ah!' sighed all the Norrises, quite overwhelmed with despondency.

'I couldn't have realised it,' pursued the general, 'without being
located on the spot. Norris, your imagination is the imagination of
a strong man, but YOU couldn't have realised it, without being
located on the spot!'

'Never,' said Mr Norris.

'The ex-clusiveness, the pride, the form, the ceremony,' exclaimed
the general, emphasizing the article more vigorously at every
repetition. 'The artificial barriers set up between man and man;
the division of the human race into court cards and plain cards, of
every denomination--into clubs, diamonds, spades--anything but
heart!'

'Ah!' cried the whole family. 'Too true, general!'

'But stay!' cried Mr Norris the father, taking him by the arm.
'Surely you crossed in the Screw, general?'

'Well! so I did,' was the reply.

'Possible!' cried the young ladies. 'Only think!'

The general seemed at a loss to understand why his having come home
in the Screw should occasion such a sensation, nor did he seem at
all clearer on the subject when Mr Norris, introducing him to
Martin, said:

'A fellow-passenger of yours, I think?'

'Of mine?' exclaimed the general; 'No!'

He had never seen Martin, but Martin had seen him, and recognized
him, now that they stood face to face, as the gentleman who had
stuck his hands in his pockets towards the end of the voyage, and
walked the deck with his nostrils dilated.

Everybody looked at Martin. There was no help for it. The truth
must out.

'I came over in the same ship as the general,' said Martin, 'but not
in the same cabin. It being necessary for me to observe strict
economy, I took my passage in the steerage.'

If the general had been carried up bodily to a loaded cannon, and
required to let it off that moment, he could not have been in a
state of greater consternation than when he heard these words. He,
Fladdock--Fladdock in full militia uniform, Fladdock the General,
Fladdock, the caressed of foreign noblemen--expected to know a
fellow who had come over in the steerage of line-of-packet ship, at
the cost of four pound ten! And meeting that fellow in the very
sanctuary of New York fashion, and nestling in the bosom of the New
York aristocracy! He almost laid his hand upon his sword.

A death-like stillness fell upon the Norisses. If this story should
get wind, their country relation had, by his imprudence, for ever
disgraced them. They were the bright particular stars of an exalted
New York sphere. There were other fashionable spheres above them,
and other fashionable spheres below, and none of the stars in any
one of these spheres had anything to say to the stars in any other
of these spheres. But, through all the spheres it would go forth
that the Norrises, deceived by gentlemanly manners and appearances,
had, falling from their high estate, 'received' a dollarless and
unknown man. O guardian eagle of the pure Republic, had they lived
for this!

'You will allow me,' said Martin, after a terrible silence, 'to take
my leave. I feel that I am the cause of at least as much
embarrassment here, as I have brought upon myself. But I am bound,
before I go, to exonerate this gentleman, who, in introducing me to
such society, was quite ignorant of my unworthiness, I assure you.'

With that he made his bow to the Norrises, and walked out like a man
of snow; very cool externally, but pretty hot within.

'Come, come,' said Mr Norris the father, looking with a pale face on
the assembled circle as Martin closed the door, 'the young man has
this night beheld a refinement of social manner, and an easy
magnificence of social decoration, to which he is a stranger in his
own country. Let us hope it may awake a moral sense within him.'

If that peculiarly transatlantic article, a moral sense--for, if
native statesmen, orators, and pamphleteers, are to be believed,
America quite monopolises the commodity--if that peculiarly
transatlantic article be supposed to include a benevolent love of
all mankind, certainly Martin's would have borne, just then, a deal
of waking. As he strode along the street, with Mark at his heels,
his immoral sense was in active operation; prompting him to the
utterance of some rather sanguinary remarks, which it was well for
his own credit that nobody overheard. He had so far cooled down,
however, that he had begun to laugh at the recollection of these
incidents, when he heard another step behind him, and turning round
encountered his friend Bevan, quite out of breath.

He drew his arm through Martin's, and entreating him to walk slowly,
was silent for some minutes. At length he said:

'I hope you exonerate me in another sense?'

'How do you mean?' asked Martin.

'I hope you acquit me of intending or foreseeing the termination of
our visit. But I scarcely need ask you that.'

'Scarcely indeed,' said Martin. 'I am the more beholden to you for
your kindness, when I find what kind of stuff the good citizens here
are made of.'

'I reckon,' his friend returned, 'that they are made of pretty much
the same stuff as other folks, if they would but own it, and not set
up on false pretences.'

'In good faith, that's true,' said Martin.

'I dare say,' resumed his friend, 'you might have such a scene as
that in an English comedy, and not detect any gross improbability or
anomaly in the matter of it?'

'Yes, indeed!'

'Doubtless it is more ridiculous here than anywhere else,' said his
companion; 'but our professions are to blame for that. So far as I
myself am concerned, I may add that I was perfectly aware from the
first that you came over in the steerage, for I had seen the list of
passengers, and knew it did not comprise your name.'

'I feel more obliged to you than before,' said Martin.

'Norris is a very good fellow in his way,' observed Mr Bevan.

'Is he?' said Martin drily.

'Oh yes! there are a hundred good points about him. If you or
anybody else addressed him as another order of being, and sued to
him IN FORMA PAUPERIS, he would be all kindness and consideration.'

'I needn't have travelled three thousand miles from home to find
such a character as THAT,' said Martin. Neither he nor his friend
said anything more on the way back; each appearing to find
sufficient occupation in his own thoughts.

The tea, or the supper, or whatever else they called the evening
meal, was over when they reached the Major's; but the cloth,
ornamented with a few additional smears and stains, was still upon
the table. At one end of the board Mrs Jefferson Brick and two
other ladies were drinking tea; out of the ordinary course,
evidently, for they were bonneted and shawled, and seemed to have
just come home. By the light of three flaring candles of different
lengths, in as many candlesticks of different patterns, the room
showed to almost as little advantage as in broad day.

These ladies were all three talking together in a very loud tone
when Martin and his friend entered; but seeing those gentlemen, they
stopped directly, and became excessively genteel, not to say frosty.
As they went on to exchange some few remarks in whispers, the very
water in the teapot might have fallen twenty degrees in temperature
beneath their chilling coldness.

'Have you been to meeting, Mrs Brick?' asked Martin's friend, with
something of a roguish twinkle in his eye.

'To lecture, sir.'

'I beg your pardon. I forgot. You don't go to meeting, I think?'

Here the lady on the right of Mrs Brick gave a pious cough as much
as to say 'I do!'--as, indeed, she did nearly every night in the
week.

'A good discourse, ma'am?' asked Mr Bevan, addressing this lady.

The lady raised her eyes in a pious manner, and answered 'Yes.'  She
had been much comforted by some good, strong, peppery doctrine,
which satisfactorily disposed of all her friends and acquaintances,
and quite settled their business. Her bonnet, too, had far outshone
every bonnet in the congregation; so she was tranquil on all
accounts.

'What course of lectures are you attending now, ma'am?' said
Martin's friend, turning again to Mrs Brick.

'The Philosophy of the Soul, on Wednesdays.'

'On Mondays?'

'The Philosophy of Crime.'

'On Fridays?'

'The Philosophy of Vegetables.'

'You have forgotten Thursdays; the Philosophy of Government, my
dear,' observed the third lady.

'No,' said Mrs Brick. 'That's Tuesdays.'

'So it is!' cried the lady. 'The Philosophy of Matter on Thursdays,
of course.'

'You see, Mr Chuzzlewit, our ladies are fully employed,' said Bevan.

'Indeed you have reason to say so,' answered Martin. 'Between these
very grave pursuits abroad, and family duties at home, their time
must be pretty well engrossed.'

Martin stopped here, for he saw that the ladies regarded him with no
very great favour, though what he had done to deserve the disdainful
expression which appeared in their faces he was at a loss to divine.
But on their going upstairs to their bedrooms--which they very
soon did--Mr Bevan informed him that domestic drudgery was far
beneath the exalted range of these Philosophers, and that the
chances were a hundred to one that not one of the three could
perform the easiest woman's work for herself, or make the simplest
article of dress for any of her children.

'Though whether they might not be better employed with such blunt
instruments as knitting-needles than with these edge-tools,' he
said, 'is another question; but I can answer for one thing--they
don't often cut themselves. Devotions and lectures are our balls
and concerts. They go to these places of resort, as an escape from
monotony; look at each other's clothes; and come home again.'

'When you say "home," do you mean a house like this?'

'Very often. But I see you are tired to death, and will wish you
good night. We will discuss your projects in the morning. You
cannot but feel already that it is useless staying here, with any
hope of advancing them. You will have to go further.'

'And to fare worse?' said Martin, pursuing the old adage.

'Well, I hope not. But sufficient for the day, you know--good
night'

They shook hands heartily and separated. As soon as Martin was left
alone, the excitement of novelty and change which had sustained him
through all the fatigues of the day, departed; and he felt so
thoroughly dejected and worn out, that he even lacked the energy to
crawl upstairs to bed.

In twelve or fifteen hours, how great a change had fallen on his
hopes and sanguine plans! New and strange as he was to the ground
on which he stood, and to the air he breathed, he could not--
recalling all that he had crowded into that one day--but entertain a
strong misgiving that his enterprise was doomed. Rash and ill-
considered as it had often looked on shipboard, but had never seemed
on shore, it wore a dismal aspect, now, that frightened him.
Whatever thoughts he called up to his aid, they came upon him in
depressing and discouraging shapes, and gave him no relief. Even
the diamonds on his finger sparkled with the brightness of tears,
and had no ray of hope in all their brilliant lustre.

He continued to sit in gloomy rumination by the stove, unmindful of
the boarders who dropped in one by one from their stores and
counting-houses, or the neighbouring bar-rooms, and, after taking
long pulls from a great white waterjug upon the sideboard, and
lingering with a kind of hideous fascination near the brass
spittoons, lounged heavily to bed; until at length Mark Tapley came
and shook him by the arm, supposing him asleep.

'Mark!' he cried, starting.

'All right, sir,' said that cheerful follower, snuffing with his
fingers the candle he bore. 'It ain't a very large bed, your'n,
sir; and a man as wasn't thirsty might drink, afore breakfast, all
the water you've got to wash in, and afterwards eat the towel. But
you'll sleep without rocking to-night, sir.'

'I feel as if the house were on the sea' said Martin, staggering
when he rose; 'and am utterly wretched.'

'I'm as jolly as a sandboy, myself, sir,' said Mark. 'But, Lord, I
have reason to be! I ought to have been born here; that's my
opinion. Take care how you go'--for they were now ascending the
stairs. 'You recollect the gentleman aboard the Screw as had the
very small trunk, sir?'

'The valise? Yes.'

'Well, sir, there's been a delivery of clean clothes from the wash
to-night, and they're put outside the bedroom doors here. If you
take notice as we go up, what a very few shirts there are, and what
a many fronts, you'll penetrate the mystery of his packing.'

But Martin was too weary and despondent to take heed of anything, so
had no interest in this discovery. Mr Tapley, nothing dashed by his
indifference, conducted him to the top of the house, and into the
bed-chamber prepared for his reception; which was a very little
narrow room, with half a window in it; a bedstead like a chest
without a lid; two chairs; a piece of carpet, such as shoes are
commonly tried upon at a ready-made establishment in England; a
little looking-glass nailed against the wall; and a washing-table,
with a jug and ewer, that might have been mistaken for a milk-pot and
slop-basin.

'I suppose they polish themselves with a dry cloth in this country,'
said Mark. 'They've certainly got a touch of the 'phoby, sir.'

'I wish you would pull off my boots for me,' said Martin, dropping
into one of the chairs 'I am quite knocked up--dead beat, Mark.'

'You won't say that to-morrow morning, sir,' returned Mr Tapley;
'nor even to-night, sir, when you've made a trial of this.'  With
which he produced a very large tumbler, piled up to the brim with
little blocks of clear transparent ice, through which one or two
thin slices of lemon, and a golden liquid of delicious appearance,
appealed from the still depths below, to the loving eye of the
spectator.

'What do you call this?' said Martin.

But Mr Tapley made no answer; merely plunging a reed into the
mixture--which caused a pleasant commotion among the pieces of ice--
and signifying by an expressive gesture that it was to be pumped up
through that agency by the enraptured drinker.

Martin took the glass with an astonished look; applied his lips to
the reed; and cast up his eyes once in ecstasy. He paused no more
until the goblet was drained to the last drop.

'There, sir!' said Mark, taking it from him with a triumphant face;
'if ever you should happen to be dead beat again, when I ain't in
the way, all you've got to do is to ask the nearest man to go and
fetch a cobbler.'

'To go and fetch a cobbler?' repeated Martin.

'This wonderful invention, sir,' said Mark, tenderly patting the
empty glass, 'is called a cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it
long; cobbler, when you name it short. Now you're equal to having
your boots took off, and are, in every particular worth mentioning,
another man.'

Having delivered himself of this solemn preface, he brought the
bootjack.

'Mind! I am not going to relapse, Mark,' said Martin; 'but, good
Heaven, if we should be left in some wild part of this country
without goods or money!'

'Well, sir!' replied the imperturbable Tapley; 'from what we've seen
already, I don't know whether, under those circumstances, we
shouldn't do better in the wild parts than in the tame ones.'

'Oh, Tom Pinch, Tom Pinch!' said Martin, in a thoughtful tone; 'what
would I give to be again beside you, and able to hear your voice,
though it were even in the old bedroom at Pecksniff's!'

'Oh, Dragon, Dragon!' echoed Mark, cheerfully, 'if there warn't any
water between you and me, and nothing faint-hearted-like in going
back, I don't know that I mightn't say the same. But here am I,
Dragon, in New York, America; and there are you in Wiltshire,
Europe; and there's a fortune to make, Dragon, and a beautiful young
lady to make it for; and whenever you go to see the Monument,
Dragon, you mustn't give in on the doorsteps, or you'll never get
up to the top!'

'Wisely said, Mark,' cried Martin. 'We must look forward.'

'In all the story-books as ever I read, sir, the people as looked
backward was turned into stones,' replied Mark; 'and my opinion
always was, that they brought it on themselves, and it served 'em
right. I wish you good night, sir, and pleasant dreams!'

'They must be of home, then,' said Martin, as he lay down in bed.

'So I say, too,' whispered Mark Tapley, when he was out of hearing
and in his own room; 'for if there don't come a time afore we're
well out of this, when there'll be a little more credit in keeping
up one's jollity, I'm a United Statesman!'

Leaving them to blend and mingle in their sleep the shadows of
objects afar off, as they take fantastic shapes upon the wall in the
dim light of thought without control, be it the part of this slight
chronicle--a dream within a dream--as rapidly to change the scene,
and cross the ocean to the English shore.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DOES BUSINESS WITH THE HOUSE OF ANTHONY CHUZZLEWIT AND SON, FROM
WHICH ONE OF THE PARTNERS RETIRES UNEXPECTEDLY

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man
habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which
he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a
space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been
an actor of importance, would seem to be the signal for instant
confusion. As if, in the gap he had left, the wedge of change were
driven to the head, rending what was a solid mass to fragments,
things cemented and held together by the usages of years, burst
asunder in as many weeks. The mine which Time has slowly dug
beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock
before, becomes but sand and dust.

Most men, at one time or other, have proved this in some degree. The
extent to which the natural laws of change asserted their supremacy
in that limited sphere of action which Martin had deserted, shall be
faithfully set down in these pages.

'What a cold spring it is!' whimpered old Anthony, drawing near the
evening fire, 'It was a warmer season, sure, when I was young!'

'You needn't go scorching your clothes into holes, whether it was or
not,' observed the amiable Jonas, raising his eyes from yesterday's
newspaper, 'Broadcloth ain't so cheap as that comes to.'

'A good lad!' cried the father, breathing on his cold hands, and
feebly chafing them against each other. 'A prudent lad! He never
delivered himself up to the vanities of dress. No, no!'

'I don't know but I would, though, mind you, if I could do it for
nothing,' said his son, as he resumed the paper.

'Ah!' chuckled the old man. 'IF, indeed!--But it's very cold.'

'Let the fire be!' cried Mr Jonas, stopping his honoured parent's
hand in the use of the poker. 'Do you mean to come to want in your
old age, that you take to wasting now?'

'There's not time for that, Jonas,' said the old man.

'Not time for what?' bawled his heir.

'For me to come to want. I wish there was!'

'You always were as selfish an old blade as need be,' said Jonas in
a voice too low for him to hear, and looking at him with an angry
frown. 'You act up to your character. You wouldn't mind coming to
want, wouldn't you! I dare say you wouldn't. And your own flesh and
blood might come to want too, might they, for anything you cared?
Oh you precious old flint!'

After this dutiful address he took his tea-cup in his hand--for that
meal was in progress, and the father and son and Chuffey were
partakers of it. Then, looking steadfastly at his father, and
stopping now and then to carry a spoonful of tea to his lips, he
proceeded in the same tone, thus:

'Want, indeed! You're a nice old man to be talking of want at this
time of day. Beginning to talk of want, are you? Well, I declare!
There isn't time? No, I should hope not. But you'd live to be a
couple of hundred if you could; and after all be discontented. I
know you!'

The old man sighed, and still sat cowering before the fire. Mr
Jonas shook his Britannia-metal teaspoon at him, and taking a
loftier position, went on to argue the point on high moral grounds.

'If you're in such a state of mind as that,' he grumbled, but in the
same subdued key, 'why don't you make over your property? Buy an
annuity cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and
everybody else that watches the speculation. But no, that wouldn't
suit YOU. That would be natural conduct to your own son, and you
like to be unnatural, and to keep him out of his rights. Why, I
should be ashamed of myself if I was you, and glad to hide my head
in the what you may call it.'

Possibly this general phrase supplied the place of grave, or tomb,
or sepulchre, or cemetery, or mausoleum, or other such word which
the filial tenderness of Mr Jonas made him delicate of pronouncing.
He pursued the theme no further; for Chuffey, somehow discovering,
from his old corner by the fireside, that Anthony was in the
attitude of a listener, and that Jonas appeared to be speaking,
suddenly cried out, like one inspired:

'He is your own son, Mr Chuzzlewit. Your own son, sir!'

Old Chuffey little suspected what depth of application these words
had, or that, in the bitter satire which they bore, they might have
sunk into the old man's very soul, could he have known what words
here hanging on his own son's lips, or what was passing in his
thoughts. But the voice diverted the current of Anthony's
reflections, and roused him.

'Yes, yes, Chuffey, Jonas is a chip of the old block. It is a very
old block, now, Chuffey,' said the old man, with a strange look of
discomposure.

'Precious old,' assented Jonas

'No, no, no,' said Chuffey. 'No, Mr Chuzzlewit. Not old at all,
sir.'

'Oh! He's worse than ever, you know!' cried Jonas, quite disgusted.
'Upon my soul, father, he's getting too bad. Hold your tongue, will
you?'

'He says you're wrong!' cried Anthony to the old clerk.

'Tut, tut!' was Chuffey's answer. 'I know better. I say HE'S
wrong. I say HE'S wrong. He's a boy. That's what he is. So are
you, Mr Chuzzlewit--a kind of boy. Ha! ha! ha! You're quite a boy
to many I have known; you're a boy to me; you're a boy to hundreds
of us. Don't mind him!'

With which extraordinary speech--for in the case of Chuffey this was
a burst of eloquence without a parallel--the poor old shadow drew
through his palsied arm his master's hand, and held it there, with
his own folded upon it, as if he would defend him.

'I grow deafer every day, Chuff,' said Anthony, with as much
softness of manner, or, to describe it more correctly, with as
little hardness as he was capable of expressing.

'No, no,' cried Chuffey. 'No, you don't. What if you did? I've
been deaf this twenty year.'

'I grow blinder, too,' said the old man, shaking his head.

'That's a good sign!' cried Chuffey. 'Ha! ha! The best sign in the
world! You saw too well before.'

He patted Anthony upon the hand as one might comfort a child, and
drawing the old man's arm still further through his own, shook his
trembling fingers towards the spot where Jonas sat, as though he
would wave him off. But, Anthony remaining quite still and silent,
he relaxed his hold by slow degrees and lapsed into his usual niche
in the corner; merely putting forth his hand at intervals and
touching his old employer gently on the coat, as with the design of
assuring himself that he was yet beside him.

Mr Jonas was so very much amazed by these proceedings that he could
do nothing but stare at the two old men, until Chuffey had fallen
into his usual state, and Anthony had sunk into a doze; when he gave
some vent to his emotions by going close up to the former personage,
and making as though he would, in vulgar parlance, 'punch his head.'

'They've been carrying on this game,' thought Jonas in a brown
study, 'for the last two or three weeks. I never saw my father take
so much notice of him as he has in that time. What! You're legacy
hunting, are you, Mister Chuff? Eh?'

But Chuffey was as little conscious of the thought as of the bodily
advance of Mr Jonas's clenched fist, which hovered fondly about his
ear. When he had scowled at him to his heart's content, Jonas took
the candle from the table, and walking into the glass office,
produced a bunch of keys from his pocket. With one of these he
opened a secret drawer in the desk; peeping stealthily out, as he
did so, to be certain that the two old men were still before the
fire.

'All as right as ever,' said Jonas, propping the lid of the desk
open with his forehead, and unfolding a paper. 'Here's the will,
Mister Chuff. Thirty pound a year for your maintenance, old boy,
and all the rest to his only son, Jonas. You needn't trouble
yourself to be too affectionate. You won't get anything by it.
What's that?'

It WAS startling, certainly. A face on the other side of the glass
partition looking curiously in; and not at him but at the paper in
his hand. For the eyes were attentively cast down upon the writing,
and were swiftly raised when he cried out. Then they met his own,
and were as the eyes of Mr Pecksniff.

Suffering the lid of the desk to fall with a loud noise, but not
forgetting even then to lock it, Jonas, pale and breathless, gazed
upon this phantom. It moved, opened the door, and walked in.

'What's the matter?' cried Jonas, falling back. 'Who is it? Where
do you come from? What do you want?'

'Matter!' cried the voice of Mr Pecksniff, as Pecksniff in the flesh
smiled amiably upon him. 'The matter, Mr Jonas!'

'What are you prying and peering about here for?' said Jonas,
angrily. 'What do you mean by coming up to town in this way, and
taking one unawares? It's precious odd a man can't read the--the
newspaper--in his own office without being startled out of his wits
by people coming in without notice. Why didn't you knock at the
door?'

'So I did, Mr Jonas,' answered Pecksniff, 'but no one heard me. I
was curious,' he added in his gentle way as he laid his hand upon
the young man's shoulder, 'to find out what part of the newspaper
interested you so much; but the glass was too dim and dirty.'

Jonas glanced in haste at the partition. Well. It wasn't very
clean. So far he spoke the truth.

'Was it poetry now?' said Mr Pecksniff, shaking the forefinger of
his right hand with an air of cheerful banter. 'Or was it politics?
Or was it the price of stock? The main chance, Mr Jonas, the main
chance, I suspect.'

'You ain't far from the truth,' answered Jonas, recovering himself
and snuffing the candle; 'but how the deuce do you come to be in
London again? Ecod! it's enough to make a man stare, to see a
fellow looking at him all of a sudden, who he thought was sixty or
seventy mile away.'

'So it is,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'No doubt of it, my dear Mr Jonas.
For while the human mind is constituted as it is--'

'Oh, bother the human mind,' interrupted Jonas with impatience 'what
have you come up for?'

'A little matter of business,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'which has arisen
quite unexpectedly.'

'Oh!' cried Jonas, 'is that all? Well. Here's father in the next
room. Hallo father, here's Pecksniff! He gets more addle-pated
every day he lives, I do believe,' muttered Jonas, shaking his
honoured parent roundly. 'Don't I tell you Pecksniff's here,
stupid-head?'

The combined effects of the shaking and this loving remonstrance
soon awoke the old man, who gave Mr Pecksniff a chuckling welcome
which was attributable in part to his being glad to see that
gentleman, and in part to his unfading delight in the recollection
of having called him a hypocrite. As Mr Pecksniff had not yet taken
tea (indeed he had, but an hour before, arrived in London) the
remains of the late collation, with a rasher of bacon, were served
up for his entertainment; and as Mr Jonas had a business appointment
in the next street, he stepped out to keep it; promising to return
before Mr Pecksniff could finish his repast.

'And now, my good sir,' said Mr Pecksniff to Anthony; 'now that we
are alone, pray tell me what I can do for you. I say alone, because
I believe that our dear friend Mr Chuffey is, metaphysically
speaking, a--shall I say a dummy?' asked Mr Pecksniff with his
sweetest smile, and his head very much on one side.

'He neither hears us,' replied Anthony, 'nor sees us.'

'Why, then,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'I will be bold to say, with the
utmost sympathy for his afflictions, and the greatest admiration of
those excellent qualities which do equal honour to his head and to
his heart, that he is what is playfully termed a dummy. You were
going to observe, my dear sir--?'

'I was not going to make any observation that I know of,' replied
the old man.

'I was,' said Mr Pecksniff, mildly.

'Oh! YOU were? What was it?'

'That I never,' said Mr Pecksniff, previously rising to see that the
door was shut, and arranging his chair when he came back, so that it
could not be opened in the least without his immediately becoming
aware of the circumstance; 'that I never in my life was so
astonished as by the receipt of your letter yesterday. That you
should do me the honour to wish to take counsel with me on any
matter, amazed me; but that you should desire to do so, to the
exclusion even of Mr Jonas, showed an amount of confidence in one to
whom you had done a verbal injury--merely a verbal injury, you were
anxious to repair--which gratified, which moved, which overcame me.'

He was always a glib speaker, but he delivered this short address
very glibly; having been at some pains to compose it outside the
coach.

Although he paused for a reply, and truly said that he was there at
Anthony's request, the old man sat gazing at him in profound silence
and with a perfectly blank face. Nor did he seem to have the least
desire or impulse to pursue the conversation, though Mr Pecksniff
looked towards the door, and pulled out his watch, and gave him many
other hints that their time was short, and Jonas, if he kept his
word, would soon return. But the strangest incident in all this
strange behaviour was, that of a sudden, in a moment, so swiftly
that it was impossible to trace how, or to observe any process of
change, his features fell into their old expression, and he cried,
striking his hand passionately upon the table as if no interval at
all had taken place:

'Will you hold your tongue, sir, and let me speak?'

Mr Pecksniff deferred to him with a submissive bow; and said within
himself, 'I knew his hand was changed, and that his writing
staggered. I said so yesterday. Ahem! Dear me!'

'Jonas is sweet upon your daughter, Pecksniff,' said the old man, in
his usual tone.

'We spoke of that, if you remember, sir, at Mrs Todgers's,' replied
the courteous architect.

'You needn't speak so loud,' retorted Anthony. 'I'm not so deaf as
that.'

Mr Pecksniff had certainly raised his voice pretty high; not so much
because he thought Anthony was deaf, as because he felt convinced
that his perceptive faculties were waxing dim; but this quick
resentment of his considerate behaviour greatly disconcerted him,
and, not knowing what tack to shape his course upon, he made another
inclination of the head, yet more submissive that the last.

'I have said,' repeated the old man, 'that Jonas is sweet upon your
daughter.'

'A charming girl, sir,' murmured Mr Pecksniff, seeing that he waited
for an answer. 'A dear girl, Mr Chuzzlewit, though I say it, who
should not.'

'You know better,' cried the old man, advancing his weazen face at
least a yard, and starting forward in his chair to do it. 'You
lie! What, you WILL be a hypocrite, will you?'

'My good sir,' Mr Pecksniff began.

'Don't call me a good sir,' retorted Anthony, 'and don't claim to be
one yourself. If your daughter was what you would have me believe,
she wouldn't do for Jonas. Being what she is, I think she will. He
might be deceived in a wife. She might run riot, contract debts,
and waste his substance. Now when I am dead--'

His face altered so horribly as he said the word, that Mr Pecksniff
really was fain to look another way.

'--It will be worse for me to know of such doings, than if I was
alive; for to be tormented for getting that together, which even
while I suffer for its acquisition, is flung into the very kennels of
the streets, would be insupportable torture. No,' said the old man,
hoarsely, 'let that be saved at least; let there be something
gained, and kept fast hold of, when so much is lost.'

'My dear Mr Chuzzlewit,' said Pecksniff, 'these are unwholesome
fancies; quite unnecessary, sir, quite uncalled for, I am sure. The
truth is, my dear sir, that you are not well!'

'Not dying though!' cried Anthony, with something like the snarl of
a wild animal. 'Not yet! There are years of life in me. Why, look
at him,' pointing to his feeble clerk. 'Death has no right to leave
him standing, and to mow me down!'

Mr Pecksniff was so much afraid of the old man, and so completely
taken aback by the state in which he found him, that he had not even
presence of mind enough to call up a scrap of morality from the
great storehouse within his own breast. Therefore he stammered out
that no doubt it was, in fairness and decency, Mr Chuffey's turn to
expire; and that from all he had heard of Mr Chuffey, and the little
he had the pleasure of knowing of that gentleman, personally, he
felt convinced in his own mind that he would see the propriety of
expiring with as little delay as possible.

'Come here!' said the old man, beckoning him to draw nearer. 'Jonas
will be my heir, Jonas will be rich, and a great catch for you. You
know that. Jonas is sweet upon your daughter.'

'I know that too,' thought Mr Pecksniff, 'for you have said it often
enough.'

'He might get more money than with her,' said the old man, 'but she
will help him to take care of what they have. She is not too young
or heedless, and comes of a good hard griping stock. But don't you
play too fine a game. She only holds him by a thread; and if you
draw it too tight (I know his temper) it'll snap. Bind him when
he's in the mood, Pecksniff; bind him. You're too deep. In your
way of leading him on, you'll leave him miles behind. Bah, you man
of oil, have I no eyes to see how you have angled with him from the
first?'

'Now I wonder,' thought Mr Pecksniff, looking at him with a wistful
face, 'whether this is all he has to say?'

Old Anthony rubbed his hands and muttered to himself; complained
again that he was cold; drew his chair before the fire; and, sitting
with his back to Mr Pecksniff, and his chin sunk down upon his
breast, was, in another minute, quite regardless or forgetful of his
presence.

Uncouth and unsatisfactory as this short interview had been, it had
furnished Mr Pecksniff with a hint which, supposing nothing further
were imparted to him, repaid the journey up and home again. For the
good gentleman had never (for want of an opportunity) dived into the
depths of Mr Jonas's nature; and any recipe for catching such a son-
in-law (much more one written on a leaf out of his own father's
book) was worth the having. In order that he might lose no chance
of improving so fair an opportunity by allowing Anthony to fall
asleep before he had finished all he had to say, Mr Pecksniff, in
the disposal of the refreshments on the table, a work to which he
now applied himself in earnest, resorted to many ingenious
contrivances for attracting his attention; such as coughing,
sneezing, clattering the teacups, sharpening the knives, dropping
the loaf, and so forth. But all in vain, for Mr Jonas returned, and
Anthony had said no more.

'What! My father asleep again?' he cried, as he hung up his hat, and
cast a look at him. 'Ah! and snoring. Only hear!'

'He snores very deep,' said Mr Pecksniff.

'Snores deep?' repeated Jonas. 'Yes; let him alone for that. He'll
snore for six, at any time.'

'Do you know, Mr Jonas,' said Pecksniff, 'that I think your father
is--don't let me alarm you--breaking?'

'Oh, is he though?' replied Jonas, with a shake of the head which
expressed the closeness of his dutiful observation. 'Ecod, you
don't know how tough he is. He ain't upon the move yet.'

'It struck me that he was changed, both in his appearance and
manner,' said Mr Pecksniff.

'That's all you know about it,' returned Jonas, seating himself with
a melancholy air. 'He never was better than he is now. How are
they all at home? How's Charity?'

'Blooming, Mr Jonas, blooming.'

'And the other one; how's she?'

'Volatile trifler!' said Mr Pecksniff, fondly musing. 'She is well,
she is well. Roving from parlour to bedroom, Mr Jonas, like a bee,
skimming from post to pillar, like the butterfly; dipping her young
beak into our currant wine, like the humming-bird! Ah! were she a
little less giddy than she is; and had she but the sterling
qualities of Cherry, my young friend!'

'Is she so very giddy, then?' asked Jonas.

'Well, well!' said Mr Pecksniff, with great feeling; 'let me not be
hard upon my child. Beside her sister Cherry she appears so. A
strange noise that, Mr Jonas!'

'Something wrong in the clock, I suppose,' said Jonas, glancing
towards it. 'So the other one ain't your favourite, ain't she?'

The fond father was about to reply, and had already summoned into
his face a look of most intense sensibility, when the sound he had
already noticed was repeated.

'Upon my word, Mr Jonas, that is a very extraordinary clock,' said
Pecksniff.

It would have been, if it had made the noise which startled them;
but another kind of time-piece was fast running down, and from that
the sound proceeded. A scream from Chuffey, rendered a hundred
times more loud and formidable by his silent habits, made the house
ring from roof to cellar; and, looking round, they saw Anthony
Chuzzlewit extended on the floor, with the old clerk upon his knees
beside him.

He had fallen from his chair in a fit, and lay there, battling for
each gasp of breath, with every shrivelled vein and sinew starting
in its place, as if it were bent on bearing witness to his age, and
sternly pleading with Nature against his recovery. It was frightful
to see how the principle of life, shut up within his withered frame,
fought like a strong devil, mad to be released, and rent its ancient
prison-house. A young man in the fullness of his vigour, struggling
with so much strength of desperation, would have been a dismal
sight; but an old, old, shrunken body, endowed with preternatural
might, and giving the lie in every motion of its every limb and
joint to its enfeebled aspect, was a hideous spectacle indeed.

They raised him up, and fetched a surgeon with all haste, who bled
the patient and applied some remedies; but the fits held him so long
that it was past midnight when they got him--quiet now, but quite
unconscious and exhausted--into bed.

'Don't go,' said Jonas, putting his ashy lips to Mr Pecksniff's ear
and whispered across the bed. 'It was a mercy you were present when
he was taken ill. Some one might have said it was my doing.'

'YOUR doing!' cried Mr Pecksniff.

'I don't know but they might,' he replied, wiping the moisture from
his white face. 'People say such things. How does he look now?'

Mr Pecksniff shook his head.

'I used to joke, you know,' said. Jonas: 'but I--I never wished him
dead. Do you think he's very bad?'

'The doctor said he was. You heard,' was Mr Pecksniff's answer.

'Ah! but he might say that to charge us more, in case of his getting
well' said Jonas. 'You mustn't go away, Pecksniff. Now it's come
to this, I wouldn't be without a witness for a thousand pound.'

Chuffey said not a word, and heard not a word. He had sat himself
down in a chair at the bedside, and there he remained, motionless;
except that he sometimes bent his head over the pillow, and seemed
to listen. He never changed in this. Though once in the dreary
night Mr Pecksniff, having dozed, awoke with a confused impression
that he had heard him praying, and strangely mingling figures--not
of speech, but arithmetic--with his broken prayers.

Jonas sat there, too, all night; not where his father could have
seen him, had his consciousness returned, but hiding, as it were,
behind him, and only reading how he looked, in Mr Pecksniff's eyes.
HE, the coarse upstart, who had ruled the house so long--that
craven cur, who was afraid to move, and shook so, that his very
shadow fluttered on the wall!

It was broad, bright, stirring day when, leaving the old clerk to
watch him, they went down to breakfast. People hurried up and down
the street; windows and doors were opened; thieves and beggars took
their usual posts; workmen bestirred themselves; tradesmen set forth
their shops; bailiffs and constables were on the watch; all kinds of
human creatures strove, in their several ways, as hard to live, as
the one sick old man who combated for every grain of sand in his
fast-emptying glass, as eagerly as if it were an empire.

'If anything happens Pecksniff,' said Jonas, 'you must promise me to
stop here till it's all over. You shall see that I do what's
right.'

'I know that you will do what's right, Mr Jonas,' said Pecksniff.

'Yes, yes, but I won't be doubted. No one shall have it in his
power to say a syllable against me,' he returned. 'I know how
people will talk. Just as if he wasn't old, or I had the secret of
keeping him alive!'

Mr Pecksniff promised that he would remain, if circumstances should
render it, in his esteemed friend's opinion, desirable; they were
finishing their meal in silence, when suddenly an apparition stood
before them, so ghastly to the view that Jonas shrieked aloud, and
both recoiled in horror.

Old Anthony, dressed in his usual clothes, was in the room--beside
the table. He leaned upon the shoulder of his solitary friend; and
on his livid face, and on his horny hands, and in his glassy eyes,
and traced by an eternal finger in the very drops of sweat upon his
brow, was one word--Death.

He spoke to them--in something of his own voice too, but sharpened
and made hollow, like a dead man's face. What he would have said,
God knows. He seemed to utter words, but they were such as man had
never heard. And this was the most fearful circumstance of all, to
see him standing there, gabbling in an unearthly tongue.

'He's better now,' said Chuffey. 'Better now. Let him sit in his
old chair, and he'll be well again. I told him not to mind. I said
so, yesterday.'

They put him in his easy-chair, and wheeled it near the window;
then, swinging open the door, exposed him to the free current of
morning air. But not all the air that is, nor all the winds that
ever blew 'twixt Heaven and Earth, could have brought new life to
him.

Plunge him to the throat in golden pieces now, and his heavy fingers
shall not close on one!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE READER IS BROUGHT INTO COMMUNICATION WITH SOME PROFESSIONAL
PERSONS, AND SHEDS A TEAR OVER THE FILAIL PIETY OF GOOD MR JONAS

Mr Pecksniff was in a hackney cabriolet, for Jonas Chuzzlewit had
said 'Spare no expense.'  Mankind is evil in its thoughts and in its
base constructions, and Jonas was resolved it should not have an
inch to stretch into an ell against him. It never should be charged
upon his father's son that he had grudged the money for his father's
funeral. Hence, until the obsequies should be concluded, Jonas had
taken for his motto 'Spend, and spare not!'

Mr Pecksniff had been to the undertaker, and was now upon his way to
another officer in the train of mourning--a female functionary, a
nurse, and watcher, and performer of nameless offices about the
persons of the dead--whom he had recommended. Her name, as Mr
Pecksniff gathered from a scrap of writing in his hand, was Gamp;
her residence in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn. So Mr Pecksniff,
in a hackney cab, was rattling over Holborn stones, in quest of Mrs
Gamp.

This lady lodged at a bird-fancier's, next door but one to the
celebrated mutton-pie shop, and directly opposite to the original
cat's-meat warehouse; the renown of which establishments was duly
heralded on their respective fronts. It was a little house, and
this was the more convenient; for Mrs Gamp being, in her highest
walk of art, a monthly nurse, or, as her sign-board boldly had it,
'Midwife,' and lodging in the first-floor front, was easily
assailable at night by pebbles, walking-sticks, and fragments of
tobacco-pipe; all much more efficacious than the street-door
knocker, which was so constructed as to wake the street with ease,
and even spread alarms of fire in Holborn, without making the
smallest impression on the premises to which it was addressed.

It chanced on this particular occasion, that Mrs Gamp had been up
all the previous night, in attendance upon a ceremony to which the
usage of gossips has given that name which expresses, in two
syllables, the curse pronounced on Adam. It chanced that Mrs Gamp
had not been regularly engaged, but had been called in at a crisis,
in consequence of her great repute, to assist another professional
lady with her advice; and thus it happened that, all points of
interest in the case being over, Mrs Gamp had come home again to the
bird-fancier's and gone to bed. So when Mr Pecksniff drove up in
the hackney cab, Mrs Gamp's curtains were drawn close, and Mrs Gamp
was fast asleep behind them.

If the bird-fancier had been at home, as he ought to have been,
there would have been no great harm in this; but he was out, and his
shop was closed. The shutters were down certainly; and in every
pane of glass there was at least one tiny bird in a tiny bird-cage,
twittering and hopping his little ballet of despair, and knocking
his head against the roof; while one unhappy goldfinch who lived
outside a red villa with his name on the door, drew the water for
his own drinking, and mutely appealed to some good man to drop a
farthing's-worth of poison in it. Still, the door was shut. Mr
Pecksniff tried the latch, and shook it, causing a cracked bell
inside to ring most mournfully; but no one came. The bird-fancier
was an easy shaver also, and a fashionable hair-dresser also, and
perhaps he had been sent for, express, from the court end of the
town, to trim a lord, or cut and curl a lady; but however that might
be, there, upon his own ground, he was not; nor was there any more
distinct trace of him to assist the imagination of an inquirer, than
a professional print or emblem of his calling (much favoured in the
trade), representing a hair-dresser of easy manners curling a lady
of distinguished fashion, in the presence of a patent upright grand
pianoforte.

Noting these circumstances, Mr Pecksniff, in the innocence of his
heart, applied himself to the knocker; but at the first double knock
every window in the street became alive with female heads; and
before he could repeat the performance whole troops of married
ladies (some about to trouble Mrs Gamp themselves very shortly) came
flocking round the steps, all crying out with one accord, and with
uncommon interest, 'Knock at the winder, sir, knock at the winder.
Lord bless you, don't lose no more time than you can help--knock at
the winder!'

Acting upon this suggestion, and borrowing the driver's whip for the
purpose, Mr Pecksniff soon made a commotion among the first floor
flower-pots, and roused Mrs Gamp, whose voice--to the great
satisfaction of the matrons--was heard to say, 'I'm coming.'

'He's as pale as a muffin,' said one lady, in allusion to Mr
Pecksniff.

'So he ought to be, if he's the feelings of a man,' observed
another.

A third lady (with her arms folded) said she wished he had chosen
any other time for fetching Mrs Gamp, but it always happened so with
HER.

It gave Mr Pecksniff much uneasiness to find, from these remarks,
that he was supposed to have come to Mrs Gamp upon an errand
touching--not the close of life, but the other end. Mrs Gamp
herself was under the same impression, for, throwing open the
window, she cried behind the curtains, as she hastily attired
herself--

'Is it Mrs Perkins?'

'No!' returned Mr Pecksniff, sharply. 'Nothing of the sort.'

'What, Mr Whilks!' cried Mrs Gamp. 'Don't say it's you, Mr Whilks,
and that poor creetur Mrs Whilks with not even a pincushion ready.
Don't say it's you, Mr Whilks!'

'It isn't Mr Whilks,' said Pecksniff. 'I don't know the man.
Nothing of the kind. A gentleman is dead; and some person being
wanted in the house, you have been recommended by Mr Mould the
undertaker.'

As she was by this time in a condition to appear, Mrs Gamp, who had
a face for all occasions, looked out of the window with her mourning
countenance, and said she would be down directly. But the matrons
took it very ill that Mr Pecksniff's mission was of so unimportant a
kind; and the lady with her arms folded rated him in good round
terms, signifying that she would be glad to know what he meant by
terrifying delicate females 'with his corpses;' and giving it as her
opinion that he was quite ugly enough to know better. The other
ladies were not at all behind-hand in expressing similar sentiments;
and the children, of whom some scores had now collected, hooted
and defied Mr Pecksniff quite savagely. So when Mrs Gamp appeared,
the unoffending gentleman was glad to hustle her with very little
ceremony into the cabriolet, and drive off, overwhelmed with
popular execration.

Mrs Gamp had a large bundle with her, a pair of pattens, and a
species of gig umbrella; the latter article in colour like a faded
leaf, except where a circular patch of a lively blue had been
dexterously let in at the top. She was much flurried by the haste
she had made, and laboured under the most erroneous views of
cabriolets, which she appeared to confound with mail-coaches or
stage-wagons, inasmuch as she was constantly endeavouring for the
first half mile to force her luggage through the little front
window, and clamouring to the driver to 'put it in the boot.'  When
she was disabused of this idea, her whole being resolved itself into
an absorbing anxiety about her pattens, with which she played
innumerable games at quoits on Mr Pecksniff's legs. It was not
until they were close upon the house of mourning that she had enough
composure to observe--

'And so the gentleman's dead, sir! Ah! The more's the pity.'
She didn't even know his name. 'But it's what we must all come to.
It's as certain as being born, except that we can't make our
calculations as exact. Ah! Poor dear!'

She was a fat old woman, this Mrs Gamp, with a husky voice and a
moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only
showing the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some
trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom
she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for
snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond. In these dilapidated
articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out
of mind, on such occasions as the present; for this at once
expressed a decent amount of veneration for the deceased, and
invited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit of weeds;
an appeal so frequently successful, that the very fetch and ghost of
Mrs Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up, any hour in the
day, in at least a dozen of the second-hand clothes shops about
Holborn. The face of Mrs Gamp--the nose in particular--was somewhat
red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society without
becoming conscious of a smell of spirits. Like most persons who
have attained to great eminence in their profession, she took to
hers very kindly; insomuch that, setting aside her natural
predilections as a woman, she went to a lying-in or a laying-out
with equal zest and relish.

'Ah!' repeated Mrs Gamp; for it was always a safe sentiment in cases
of mourning. 'Ah dear! When Gamp was summoned to his long home, and
I see him a-lying in Guy's Hospital with a penny-piece on each eye,
and his wooden leg under his left arm, I thought I should have
fainted away. But I bore up.'

If certain whispers current in the Kingsgate Street circles had any
truth in them, she had indeed borne up surprisingly; and had exerted
such uncommon fortitude as to dispose of Mr Gamp's remains for the
benefit of science. But it should be added, in fairness, that this
had happened twenty years before; and that Mr and Mrs Gamp had long
been separated on the ground of incompatibility of temper in their
drink.

'You have become indifferent since then, I suppose?' said Mr
Pecksniff. 'Use is second nature, Mrs Gamp.'

'You may well say second nater, sir,' returned that lady. 'One's
first ways is to find sich things a trial to the feelings, and so is
one's lasting custom. If it wasn't for the nerve a little sip of
liquor gives me (I never was able to do more than taste it), I never
could go through with what I sometimes has to do. "Mrs Harris," I
says, at the very last case as ever I acted in, which it was but a
young person, "Mrs Harris," I says, "leave the bottle on the
chimley-piece, and don't ask me to take none, but let me put my lips
to it when I am so dispoged, and then I will do what I'm engaged to
do, according to the best of my ability."  "Mrs Gamp," she says, in
answer, "if ever there was a sober creetur to be got at eighteen
pence a day for working people, and three and six for gentlefolks--
night watching,"' said Mrs Gamp with emphasis, '"being a extra
charge--you are that inwallable person."  "Mrs Harris," I says to
her, "don't name the charge, for if I could afford to lay all my
feller creeturs out for nothink, I would gladly do it, sich is the
love I bears 'em. But what I always says to them as has the
management of matters, Mrs Harris"'--here she kept her eye on Mr
Pecksniff--'"be they gents or be they ladies, is, don't ask me
whether I won't take none, or whether I will, but leave the bottle
on the chimley-piece, and let me put my lips to it when I am so
dispoged."'

The conclusion of this affecting narrative brought them to the
house. In the passage they encountered Mr Mould the undertaker; a
little elderly gentleman, bald, and in a suit of black; with a
notebook in his hand, a massive gold watch-chain dangling from his
fob, and a face in which a queer attempt at melancholy was at odds
with a smirk of satisfaction; so that he looked as a man might, who,
in the very act of smacking his lips over choice old wine, tried to
make believe it was physic.

'Well, Mrs Gamp, and how are YOU, Mrs Gamp?' said this gentleman, in
a voice as soft as his step.

'Pretty well, I thank you, sir,' dropping a curtsey.

'You'll be very particular here, Mrs Gamp. This is not a common
case, Mrs Gamp. Let everything be very nice and comfortable, Mrs
Gamp, if you please,' said the undertaker, shaking his head with a
solemn air.

'It shall be, sir,' she replied, curtseying again. 'You knows me of
old, sir, I hope.'

'I hope so, too, Mrs Gamp,' said the undertaker. 'and I think so
also.'  Mrs Gamp curtseyed again. 'This is one of the most
impressive cases, sir,' he continued, addressing Mr Pecksniff, 'that
I have seen in the whole course of my professional experience.'

'Indeed, Mr Mould!' cried that gentleman.

'Such affectionate regret, sir, I never saw. There is no
limitation, there is positively NO limitation'--opening his eyes
wide, and standing on tiptoe--'in point of expense! I have orders,
sir, to put on my whole establishment of mutes; and mutes come very
dear, Mr Pecksniff; not to mention their drink. To provide silver-
plated handles of the very best description, ornamented with angels'
heads from the most expensive dies. To be perfectly profuse in
feathers. In short, sir, to turn out something absolutely gorgeous.'

'My friend Mr Jonas is an excellent man,' said Mr Pecksniff.

'I have seen a good deal of what is filial in my time, sir,'
retorted Mould, 'and what is unfilial too. It is our lot. We come
into the knowledge of those secrets. But anything so filial as
this; anything so honourable to human nature; so calculated to
reconcile all of us to the world we live in; never yet came under my
observation. It only proves, sir, what was so forcibly observed by
the lamented theatrical poet--buried at Stratford--that there is
good in everything.'

'It is very pleasant to hear you say so, Mr Mould,' observed
Pecksniff.

'You are very kind, sir. And what a man Mr Chuzzlewit was, sir! Ah!
what a man he was. You may talk of your lord mayors,' said Mould,
waving his hand at the public in general, 'your sheriffs, your
common councilmen, your trumpery; but show me a man in this city who
is worthy to walk in the shoes of the departed Mr Chuzzlewit. No,
no,' cried Mould, with bitter sarcasm. 'Hang 'em up, hang 'em up;
sole 'em and heel 'em, and have 'em ready for his son against he's
old enough to wear 'em; but don't try 'em on yourselves, for they
won't fit you. We knew him,' said Mould, in the same biting vein,
as he pocketed his note-book; 'we knew him, and are not to be
caught with chaff. Mr Pecksniff, sir, good morning.'

Mr Pecksniff returned the compliment; and Mould, sensible of having
distinguished himself, was going away with a brisk smile, when he
fortunately remembered the occasion. Quickly becoming depressed
again, he sighed; looked into the crown of his hat, as if for
comfort; put it on without finding any; and slowly departed.

Mrs Gamp and Mr Pecksniff then ascended the staircase; and the
former, having been shown to the chamber in which all that remained
of Anthony Chuzzlewit lay covered up, with but one loving heart, and
that a halting one, to mourn it, left the latter free to enter the
darkened room below, and rejoin Mr Jonas, from whom he had now been
absent nearly two hours.

He found that example to bereaved sons, and pattern in the eyes of
all performers of funerals, musing over a fragment of writing-paper
on the desk, and scratching figures on it with a pen. The old man's
chair, and hat, and walking-stick, were removed from their
accustomed places, and put out of sight; the window-blinds as yellow
as November fogs, were drawn down close; Jonas himself was so
subdued, that he could scarcely be heard to speak, and only seen to
walk across the room.

'Pecksniff,' he said, in a whisper, 'you shall have the regulation
of it all, mind! You shall be able to tell anybody who talks about
it that everything was correctly and nicely done. There isn't any
one you'd like to ask to the funeral, is there?'

'No, Mr Jonas, I think not.'

'Because if there is, you know,' said Jonas, 'ask him. We don't
want to make a secret of it.'

'No,' repeated Mr Pecksniff, after a little reflection. 'I am not
the less obliged to you on that account, Mr Jonas, for your liberal
hospitality; but there really is no one.'

'Very well,' said Jonas; 'then you, and I, and Chuffey, and the
doctor, will be just a coachful. We'll have the doctor, Pecksniff,
because he knows what was the matter with him, and that it couldn't
be helped.'

'Where is our dear friend, Mr Chuffey?' asked Pecksniff, looking
round the chamber, and winking both his eyes at once--for he was
overcome by his feelings.

But here he was interrupted by Mrs Gamp, who, divested of her bonnet
and shawl, came sidling and bridling into the room; and with some
sharpness demanded a conference outside the door with Mr Pecksniff.

'You may say whatever you wish to say here, Mrs Gamp,' said that
gentleman, shaking his head with a melancholy expression.

'It is not much as I have to say when people is a-mourning for the
dead and gone,' said Mrs Gamp; 'but what I have to say is TO the
pint and purpose, and no offence intended, must be so considered. I
have been at a many places in my time, gentlemen, and I hope I knows
what my duties is, and how the same should be performed; in course,
if I did not, it would be very strange, and very wrong in sich a
gentleman as Mr Mould, which has undertook the highest families in
this land, and given every satisfaction, so to recommend me as he
does. I have seen a deal of trouble my own self,' said Mrs Gamp,
laying greater and greater stress upon her words, 'and I can feel
for them as has their feelings tried, but I am not a Rooshan or a
Prooshan, and consequently cannot suffer Spies to be set over me.'

Before it was possible that an answer could be returned, Mrs Gamp,
growing redder in the face, went on to say:

'It is not a easy matter, gentlemen, to live when you are left a
widder woman; particular when your feelings works upon you to that
extent that you often find yourself a-going out on terms which is a
certain loss, and never can repay. But in whatever way you earns
your bread, you may have rules and regulations of your own which
cannot be broke through. Some people,' said Mrs Gamp, again
entrenching herself behind her strong point, as if it were not
assailable by human ingenuity, 'may be Rooshans, and others may be
Prooshans; they are born so, and will please themselves. Them which
is of other naturs thinks different.'

'If I understand this good lady,' said Mr Pecksniff, turning to
Jonas, 'Mr Chuffey is troublesome to her. Shall I fetch him down?'

'Do,' said Jonas. 'I was going to tell you he was up there, when
she came in. I'd go myself and bring him down, only--only I'd
rather you went, if you don't mind.'

Mr Pecksniff promptly departed, followed by Mrs Gamp, who, seeing
that he took a bottle and glass from the cupboard, and carried it in
his hand, was much softened.

'I am sure,' she said, 'that if it wasn't for his own happiness, I
should no more mind him being there, poor dear, than if he was a
fly. But them as isn't used to these things, thinks so much of 'em
afterwards, that it's a kindness to 'em not to let 'em have their
wish. And even,' said Mrs Gamp, probably in reference to some
flowers of speech she had already strewn on Mr Chuffey, 'even if one
calls 'em names, it's only done to rouse 'em.'

Whatever epithets she had bestowed on the old clerk, they had not
roused HIM. He sat beside the bed, in the chair he had occupied all
the previous night, with his hands folded before him, and his head
bowed down; and neither looked up, on their entrance, nor gave any
sign of consciousness, until Mr Pecksniff took him by the arm, when
he meekly rose.

'Three score and ten,' said Chuffey, 'ought and carry seven. Some
men are so strong that they live to four score--four times ought's
an ought, four times two's an eight--eighty. Oh! why--why--why
didn't he live to four times ought's an ought, and four times two's
an eight, eighty?'

'Ah! what a wale of grief!' cried Mrs Gamp, possessing herself of
the bottle and glass.

'Why did he die before his poor old crazy servant?' said Chuffey,
clasping his hands and looking up in anguish. 'Take him from me,
and what remains?'

'Mr Jonas,' returned Pecksniff, 'Mr Jonas, my good friend.'

'I loved him,' cried the old man, weeping. 'He was good to me. We
learnt Tare and Tret together at school. I took him down once, six
boys in the arithmetic class. God forgive me! Had I the heart to
take him down!'

'Come, Mr Chuffey,' said Pecksniff. 'Come with me. Summon up your
fortitude, Mr Chuffey.'

'Yes, I will,' returned the old clerk. 'Yes. I'll sum up my forty
--How many times forty--Oh, Chuzzlewit and Son--Your own son Mr
Chuzzlewit; your own son, sir!'

He yielded to the hand that guided him, as he lapsed into this
familiar expression, and submitted to be led away. Mrs Gamp, with
the bottle on one knee, and the glass on the other, sat upon a
stool, shaking her head for a long time, until, in a moment of
abstraction, she poured out a dram of spirits, and raised it to her
lips. It was succeeded by a second, and by a third, and then her
eyes--either in the sadness of her reflections upon life and death,
or in her admiration of the liquor--were so turned up, as to be
quite invisible. But she shook her head still.

Poor Chuffey was conducted to his accustomed corner, and there he
remained, silent and quiet, save at long intervals, when he would
rise, and walk about the room, and wring his hands, or raise some
strange and sudden cry. For a whole week they all three sat about
the hearth and never stirred abroad. Mr Pecksniff would have walked
out in the evening time, but Mr Jonas was so averse to his being
absent for a minute, that he abandoned the idea, and so, from
morning until night, they brooded together in the dark room, without
relief or occupation.

The weight of that which was stretched out, stiff and stark, in the
awful chamber above-stairs, so crushed and bore down Jonas, that he
bent beneath the load. During the whole long seven days and nights,
he was always oppressed and haunted by a dreadful sense of its
presence in the house. Did the door move, he looked towards it with
a livid face and starting eye, as if he fully believed that ghostly
fingers clutched the handle. Did the fire fiicker in a draught of
air, he glanced over his shoulder, as almost dreading to behold some
shrouded figure fanning and flapping at it with its fearful dress.
The lightest noise disturbed him; and once, in the night, at the
sound of a footstep overhead, he cried out that the dead man was
walking--tramp, tramp, tramp--about his coffin.

He lay at night upon a mattress on the floor of the sitting-room;
his own chamber having been assigned to Mrs Gamp; and Mr Pecksniff
was similarly accommodated. The howling of a dog before the house,
filled him with a terror he could not disguise. He avoided the
reflection in the opposite windows of the light that burned above,
as though it had been an angry eye. He often, in every night, rose
up from his fitful sleep, and looked and longed for dawn; all
directions and arrangements, even to the ordering of their daily
meals, he abandoned to Mr Pecksniff. That excellent gentleman,
deeming that the mourner wanted comfort, and that high feeding was
likely to do him infinite service, availed himself of these
opportunities to such good purpose, that they kept quite a dainty
table during this melancholy season; with sweetbreads, stewed
kidneys, oysters, and other such light viands for supper every
night; over which, and sundry jorums of hot punch, Mr Pecksniff
delivered such moral reflections and spiritual consolation as might
have converted a Heathen--especially if he had had but an imperfect
acquaintance with the English tongue.

Nor did Mr Pecksniff alone indulge in the creature comforts during
this sad time. Mrs Gamp proved to be very choice in her eating, and
repudiated hashed mutton with scorn. In her drinking too, she was
very punctual and particular, requiring a pint of mild porter at
lunch, a pint at dinner, half-a-pint as a species of stay or
holdfast between dinner and tea, and a pint of the celebrated
staggering ale, or Real Old Brighton Tipper, at supper; besides the
bottle on the chimney-piece, and such casual invitations to refresh
herself with wine as the good breeding of her employers might prompt
them to offer. In like manner, Mr Mould's men found it necessary to
drown their grief, like a young kitten in the morning of its
existence, for which reason they generally fuddled themselves before
they began to do anything, lest it should make head and get the
better of them. In short, the whole of that strange week was a
round of dismal joviality and grim enjoyment; and every one, except
poor Chuffey, who came within the shadow of Anthony Chuzzlewit's
grave, feasted like a Ghoul.

At length the day of the funeral, pious and truthful ceremony that
it was, arrived. Mr Mould, with a glass of generous port between
his eye and the light, leaned against the desk in the little glass
office with his gold watch in his unoccupied hand, and conversed
with Mrs Gamp; two mutes were at the house-door, looking as mournful
as could be reasonably expected of men with such a thriving job in
hand; the whole of Mr Mould's establishment were on duty within the
house or without; feathers waved, horses snorted, silk and velvets
fluttered; in a word, as Mr Mould emphatically said, 'Everything
that money could do was done.'

'And what can do more, Mrs Gamp?' exclaimed the undertaker as he
emptied his glass and smacked his lips.

'Nothing in the world, sir.'

'Nothing in the world,' repeated Mr Mould. 'You are right,
Mrs.Gamp. Why do people spend more money'--here he filled his glass
again--'upon a death, Mrs Gamp, than upon a birth? Come, that's in
your way; you ought to know. How do you account for that now?'

'Perhaps it is because an undertaker's charges comes dearer than a
nurse's charges, sir,' said Mrs Gamp, tittering, and smoothing down
her new black dress with her hands.

'Ha, ha!' laughed Mr Mould. 'You have been breakfasting at
somebody's expense this morning, Mrs Gamp.'  But seeing, by the aid
of a little shaving-glass which hung opposite, that he looked merry,
he composed his features and became sorrowful.

'Many's the time that I've not breakfasted at my own expense along
of your recommending, sir; and many's the time I hope to do the
same in time to come,' said Mrs Gamp, with an apologetic curtsey.

'So be it,' replied Mr Mould, 'please Providence. No, Mrs Gamp;
I'll tell you why it is. It's because the laying out of money with
a well-conducted establishment, where the thing is performed upon the
very best scale, binds the broken heart, and sheds balm upon the
wounded spirit. Hearts want binding, and spirits want balming when
people die; not when people are born. Look at this gentleman to-
day; look at him.'

'An open-handed gentleman?' cried Mrs Gamp, with enthusiasm.

'No, no,' said the undertaker; 'not an open-handed gentleman in
general, by any means. There you mistake him; but an afflicted
gentleman, an affectionate gentleman, who knows what it is in the
power of money to do, in giving him relief, and in testifying his
love and veneration for the departed. It can give him,' said Mr
Mould, waving his watch-chain slowly round and round, so that he
described one circle after every item; 'it can give him four horses
to each vehicle; it can give him velvet trappings; it can give him
drivers in cloth cloaks and top-boots; it can give him the plumage
of the ostrich, dyed black; it can give him any number of walking
attendants, dressed in the first style of funeral fashion, and
carrying batons tipped with brass; it can give him a handsome tomb;
it can give him a place in Westminster Abbey itself, if he choose to
invest it in such a purchase. Oh! do not let us say that gold is
dross, when it can buy such things as these, Mrs Gamp.'

'But what a blessing, sir,' said Mrs Gamp, 'that there are such as
you, to sell or let 'em out on hire!'

'Aye, Mrs Gamp, you are right,' rejoined the undertaker. 'We should
be an honoured calling. We do good by stealth, and blush to have it
mentioned in our little bills. How much consolation may I--even I,'
cried Mr Mould, 'have diffused among my fellow-creatures by means of
my four long-tailed prancers, never harnessed under ten pund ten!'

Mrs Gamp had begun to make a suitable reply, when she was
interrupted by the appearance of one of Mr Mould's assistants--his
chief mourner in fact--an obese person, with his waistcoat in closer
connection with his legs than is quite reconcilable with the
established ideas of grace; with that cast of feature which is
figuratively called a bottle nose; and with a face covered all over
with pimples. He had been a tender plant once upon a time, but from
constant blowing in the fat atmosphere of funerals, had run to seed.

'Well, Tacker,' said Mr Mould, 'is all ready below?'

'A beautiful show, sir,' rejoined Tacker. 'The horses are prouder
and fresher than ever I see 'em; and toss their heads, they do, as
if they knowed how much their plumes cost. One, two, three, four,'
said Mr Tacker, heaping that number of black cloaks upon his left
arm.

'Is Tom there, with the cake and wine?' asked Mr Mould.

'Ready to come in at a moment's notice, sir,' said Tacker.

'Then,' rejoined Mr Mould, putting up his watch, and glancing at
himself in the little shaving-glass, that he might be sure his face
had the right expression on it; 'then I think we may proceed to
business. Give me the paper of gloves, Tacker. Ah, what a man he
was! Ah, Tacker, Tacker, what a man he was!'

Mr Tacker, who from his great experience in the performance of
funerals, would have made an excellent pantomime actor, winked at
Mrs Gamp without at all disturbing the gravity of his countenance,
and followed his master into the next room.

It was a great point with Mr Mould, and a part of his professional
tact, not to seem to know the doctor; though in reality they were
near neighbours, and very often, as in the present instance, worked
together. So he advanced to fit on his black kid gloves as if he
had never seen him in all his life; while the doctor, on his part,
looked as distant and unconscious as if he had heard and read of
undertakers, and had passed their shops, but had never before been
brought into communication with one.

'Gloves, eh?' said the doctor. 'Mr Pecksniff after you.'

'I couldn't think of it,' returned Mr Pecksniff.

'You are very good,' said the doctor, taking a pair. 'Well, sir, as
I was saying--I was called up to attend that case at about half-past
one o'clock. Cake and wine, eh? Which is port? Thank you.'

Mr Pecksniff took some also.

'At about half-past one o'clock in the morning, sir,' resumed the
doctor, 'I was called up to attend that case. At the first pull of
the night-bell I turned out, threw up the window, and put out my
head. Cloak, eh? Don't tie it too tight. That'll do.'

Mr Pecksniff having been likewise inducted into a similar garment,
the doctor resumed.

'And put out my head--hat, eh? My good friend, that is not mine.
Mr Pecksniff, I beg your pardon, but I think we have unintentionally
made an exchange. Thank you. Well, sir, I was going to tell you--'

'We are quite ready,' interrupted Mould in a low voice.

'Ready, eh?' said the doctor. 'Very good, Mr Pecksniff, I'll take
an opportunity of relating the rest in the coach. It's rather
curious. Ready, eh? No rain, I hope?'

'Quite fair, sir,' returned Mould.

'I was afraid the ground would have been wet,' said the doctor, 'for
my glass fell yesterday. We may congratulate ourselves upon our
good fortune.'  But seeing by this time that Mr Jonas and Chuffey
were going out at the door, he put a white pocket-handkerchief to
his face as if a violent burst of grief had suddenly come upon him,
and walked down side by side with Mr Pecksniff.

Mr Mould and his men had not exaggerated the grandeur of the
arrangements. They were splendid. The four hearse-horses,
especially, reared and pranced, and showed their highest action, as
if they knew a man was dead, and triumphed in it. 'They break us,
drive us, ride us; ill-treat, abuse, and maim us for their
pleasure--But they die; Hurrah, they die!'

So through the narrow streets and winding city ways, went Anthony
Chuzzlewit's funeral; Mr Jonas glancing stealthily out of the coach-
window now and then, to observe its effect upon the crowd; Mr Mould
as he walked along, listening with a sober pride to the exclamations
of the bystanders; the doctor whispering his story to Mr Pecksniff,
without appearing to come any nearer the end of it; and poor old
Chuffey sobbing unregarded in a corner. But he had greatly
scandalized Mr Mould at an early stage of the ceremony by carrying
his handkerchief in his hat in a perfectly informal manner, and
wiping his eyes with his knuckles. And as Mr Mould himself had said
already, his behaviour was indecent, and quite unworthy of such an
occasion; and he never ought to have been there.

There he was, however; and in the churchyard there he was, also,
conducting himself in a no less unbecoming manner, and leaning for
support on Tacker, who plainly told him that he was fit for nothing
better than a walking funeral. But Chuffey, Heaven help him! heard
no sound but the echoes, lingering in his own heart, of a voice for
ever silent.

'I loved him,' cried the old man, sinking down upon the grave when
all was done. 'He was very good to me. Oh, my dear old friend and
master!'

'Come, come, Mr Chuffey,' said the doctor, 'this won't do; it's a
clayey soil, Mr Chuffey. You mustn't, really.'

'If it had been the commonest thing we do, and Mr Chuffey had been a
Bearer, gentlemen,' said Mould, casting an imploring glance upon
them, as he helped to raise him, 'he couldn't have gone on worse
than this.'

'Be a man, Mr Chuffey,' said Pecksniff.

'Be a gentleman, Mr Chuffey,' said Mould.

'Upon my word, my good friend,' murmured the doctor, in a tone of
stately reproof, as he stepped up to the old man's side, 'this is
worse than weakness. This is bad, selfish, very wrong, Mr Chuffey.
You should take example from others, my good sir. You forget that
you were not connected by ties of blood with our deceased friend;
and that he had a very near and very dear relation, Mr Chuffey.'

'Aye, his own son!' cried the old man, clasping his hands with
remarkable passion. 'His own, own, only son!'

'He's not right in his head, you know,' said Jonas, turning pale.
'You're not to mind anything he says. I shouldn't wonder if he was
to talk some precious nonsense. But don't you mind him, any of you.
I don't. My father left him to my charge; and whatever he says or
does, that's enough. I'll take care of him.'

A hum of admiration rose from the mourners (including Mr Mould and
his merry men) at this new instance of magnanimity and kind feeling
on the part of Jonas. But Chuffey put it to the test no farther.
He said not a word more, and being left to himself for a little
while, crept back again to the coach.

It has been said that Mr Jonas turned pale when the behaviour of the
old clerk attracted general attention; his discomposure, however,
was but momentary, and he soon recovered. But these were not the
only changes he had exhibited that day. The curious eyes of Mr
Pecksniff had observed that as soon as they left the house upon
their mournful errand, he began to mend; that as the ceremonies
proceeded he gradually, by little and little, recovered his old
condition, his old looks, his old bearing, his old agreeable
characteristics of speech and manner, and became, in all respects,
his old pleasant self. And now that they were seated in the coach
on their return home; and more when they got there, and found the
windows open, the light and air admitted, and all traces of the late
event removed; he felt so well convinced that Jonas was again the
Jonas he had known a week ago, and not the Jonas of the intervening
time, that he voluntarily gave up his recently-acquired power
without one faint attempt to exercise it, and at once fell back into
his former position of mild and deferential guest.

Mrs Gamp went home to the bird-fancier's, and was knocked up again
that very night for a birth of twins; Mr Mould dined gayly in the
bosom of his family, and passed the evening facetiously at his club;
the hearse, after standing for a long time at the door of a
roistering public-house, repaired to its stables with the feathers
inside and twelve red-nosed undertakers on the roof, each holding on
by a dingy peg, to which, in times of state, a waving plume was
fitted; the various trappings of sorrow were carefully laid by in
presses for the next hirer; the fiery steeds were quenched and quiet
in their stalls; the doctor got merry with wine at a wedding-dinner,
and forgot the middle of the story which had no end to it; the
pageant of a few short hours ago was written nowhere half so legibly
as in the undertaker's books.

Not in the churchyard? Not even there. The gates were closed; the
night was dark and wet; the rain fell silently, among the stagnant
weeds and nettles. One new mound was there which had not been there
last night. Time, burrowing like a mole below the ground, had
marked his track by throwing up another heap of earth. And that was
all.

CHAPTER TWENTY

IS A CHAPTER OF LOVE

'Pecksniff,' said Jonas, taking off his hat, to see that the black
crape band was all right; and finding that it was, putting it on
again, complacently; 'what do you mean to give your daughters when
they marry?'

'My dear Mr Jonas,' cried the affectionate parent, with an ingenuous
smile, 'what a very singular inquiry!'

'Now, don't you mind whether it's a singular inquiry or a plural
one,' retorted Jonas, eyeing Mr Pecksniff with no great favour, 'but
answer it, or let it alone. One or the other.'

'Hum! The question, my dear friend,' said Mr Pecksniff, laying his
hand tenderly upon his kinsman's knee, 'is involved with many
considerations. What would I give them? Eh?'

'Ah! what would you give 'em?' repeated Jonas.

'Why, that, 'said Mr Pecksniff, 'would naturally depend in a great
measure upon the kind of husbands they might choose, my dear young
friend.'

Mr Jonas was evidently disconcerted, and at a loss how to proceed.
It was a good answer. It seemed a deep one, but such is the wisdom
of simplicity!'

'My standard for the merits I would require in a son-in-law,' said
Mr Pecksniff, after a short silence, 'is a high one. Forgive me, my
dear Mr Jonas,' he added, greatly moved, 'if I say that you have
spoiled me, and made it a fanciful one; an imaginative one; a
prismatically tinged one, if I may be permitted to call it so.'

'What do you mean by that?' growled Jonas, looking at him with
increased disfavour.

'Indeed, my dear friend,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'you may well inquire.
The heart is not always a royal mint, with patent machinery to work
its metal into current coin. Sometimes it throws it out in strange
forms, not easily recognized as coin at all. But it is sterling
gold. It has at least that merit. It is sterling gold.'

'Is it?' grumbled Jonas, with a doubtful shake of the head.

'Aye!' said Mr Pecksniff, warming with his subject 'it is. To be
plain with you, Mr Jonas, if I could find two such sons-in-law as
you will one day make to some deserving man, capable of appreciating
a nature such as yours, I would--forgetful of myself--bestow upon my
daughters portions reaching to the very utmost limit of my means.'

This was strong language, and it was earnestly delivered. But who
can wonder that such a man as Mr Pecksniff, after all he had seen
and heard of Mr Jonas, should be strong and earnest upon such a
theme; a theme that touched even the worldly lips of undertakers
with the honey of eloquence!

Mr Jonas was silent, and looked thoughtfully at the landscape. For
they were seated on the outside of the coach, at the back, and were
travelling down into the country. He accompanied Mr Pecksniff home
for a few days' change of air and scene after his recent trials.

'Well,' he said, at last, with captivating bluntness, 'suppose you
got one such son-in-law as me, what then?'

Mr Pecksniff regarded him at first with inexpressible surprise; then
gradually breaking into a sort of dejected vivacity, said:

'Then well I know whose husband he would be!'

'Whose?' asked Jonas, drily.

'My eldest girl's, Mr Jonas,' replied Pecksniff, with moistening
eyes. 'My dear Cherry's; my staff, my scrip, my treasure, Mr Jonas.
A hard struggle, but it is in the nature of things! I must one day
part with her to a husband. I know it, my dear friend. I am
prepared for it.'

'Ecod! you've been prepared for that a pretty long time, I should
think,' said Jonas.

'Many have sought to bear her from me,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'All
have failed. "I never will give my hand, papa"--those were her
words--"unless my heart is won."  She has not been quite so happy as
she used to be, of late. I don't know why.'

Again Mr Jonas looked at the landscape; then at the coachman; then
at the luggage on the roof; finally at Mr Pecksniff.

'I suppose you'll have to part with the other one, some of these
days?' he observed, as he caught that gentleman's eye.

'Probably,' said the parent. 'Years will tame down the wildness of
my foolish bird, and then it will be caged. But Cherry, Mr Jonas,
Cherry--'

'Oh, ah!' interrupted Jonas. 'Years have made her all right enough.
Nobody doubts that. But you haven't answered what I asked you. Of
course, you're not obliged to do it, you know, if you don't like.
You're the best judge.'

There was a warning sulkiness in the manner of this speech, which
admonished Mr Pecksniff that his dear friend was not to be trifled
with or fenced off, and that he must either return a straight-
forward reply to his question, or plainly give him to understand
that he declined to enlighten him upon the subject to which it
referred. Mindful in this dilemma of the caution old Anthony had
given him almost with his latest breath, he resolved to speak to the
point, and so told Mr Jonas (enlarging upon the communication as a
proof of his great attachment and confidence), that in the case he
had put; to wit, in the event of such a man as he proposing for his
daughter's hand, he would endow her with a fortune of four thousand
pounds.

'I should sadly pinch and cramp myself to do so,' was his fatherly
remark; 'but that would be my duty, and my conscience would reward
me. For myself, my conscience is my bank. I have a trifle invested
there--a mere trifle, Mr Jonas--but I prize it as a store of value,
I assure you.'

The good man's enemies would have divided upon this question into
two parties. One would have asserted without scruple that if Mr
Pecksniff's conscience were his bank, and he kept a running account
there, he must have overdrawn it beyond all mortal means of
computation. The other would have contended that it was a mere
fictitious form; a perfectly blank book; or one in which entries
were only made with a peculiar kind of invisible ink to become
legible at some indefinite time; and that he never troubled it at
all.

'It would sadly pinch and cramp me, my dear friend,' repeated Mr
Pecksniff, 'but Providence--perhaps I may be permitted to say a
special Providence--has blessed my endeavours, and I could guarantee
to make the sacrifice.'

A question of philosophy arises here, whether Mr Pecksniff had or
had not good reason to say that he was specially patronized and
encouraged in his undertakings. All his life long he had been
walking up and down the narrow ways and by-places, with a hook in
one hand and a crook in the other, scraping all sorts of valuable
odds and ends into his pouch. Now, there being a special Providence
in the fall of a sparrow, it follows (so Mr Pecksniff, and only
such admirable men, would have reasoned), that there must also
be a special Providence in the alighting of the stone or stick,
or other substance which is aimed at the sparrow. And Mr
Pecksniff's hook, or crook, having invariably knocked the sparrow
on the head and brought him down, that gentleman may have been
led to consider himself as specially licensed to bag sparrows,
and as being specially seized and possessed of all the birds he
had got together. That many undertakings, national as well as
individual--but especially the former--are held to be specially
brought to a glorious and successful issue, which never could be
so regarded on any other process of reasoning, must be clear to
all men. Therefore the precedents would seem to show that Mr
Pecksniff had (as things go) good argument for what he said and
might be permitted to say it, and did not say it presumptuously,
vainly, or arrogantly, but in a spirit of high faith and great
wisdom.

Mr Jonas, not being much accustomed to perplex his mind with
theories of this nature, expressed no opinion on the subject. Nor
did he receive his companion's announcement with one solitary
syllable, good, bad, or indifferent. He preserved this taciturnity
for a quarter of an hour at least, and during the whole of that time
appeared to be steadily engaged in subjecting some given amount to
the operation of every known rule in figures; adding to it, taking
from it, multiplying it, reducing it by long and short division;
working it by the rule-of-three direct and inversed; exchange or
barter; practice; simple interest; compound interest; and other
means of arithmetical calculation. The result of these labours
appeared to be satisfactory, for when he did break silence, it
was as one who had arrived at some specific result, and freed
himself from a state of distressing uncertainty.

'Come, old Pecksniff!'--Such was his jocose address, as he slapped
that gentleman on the back, at the end of the stage--'let's have
something!'

'With all my heart,' said Mr Pecksniff.

'Let's treat the driver,' cried Jonas.

'If you think it won't hurt the man, or render him discontented with
his station--certainly,' faltered Mr Pecksniff.

Jonas only laughed at this, and getting down from the coach-top with
great alacrity, cut a cumbersome kind of caper in the road. After
which, he went into the public-house, and there ordered spirituous
drink to such an extent, that Mr Pecksniff had some doubts of his
perfect sanity, until Jonas set them quite at rest by saying, when
the coach could wait no longer:

'I've been standing treat for a whole week and more, and letting you
have all the delicacies of the season. YOU shall pay for this
Pecksniff.'  It was not a joke either, as Mr Pecksniff at first
supposed; for he went off to the coach without further ceremony, and
left his respected victim to settle the bill.

But Mr Pecksniff was a man of meek endurance, and Mr Jonas was his
friend. Moreover, his regard for that gentleman was founded, as we
know, on pure esteem, and a knowledge of the excellence of his
character. He came out from the tavern with a smiling face, and
even went so far as to repeat the performance, on a less expensive
scale, at the next ale-house. There was a certain wildness in the
spirits of Mr Jonas (not usually a part of his character) which was
far from being subdued by these means, and, for the rest of the
journey, he was so very buoyant--it may be said, boisterous--that Mr
Pecksniff had some difficulty in keeping pace with him.

They were not expected--oh dear, no! Mr Pecksniff had proposed in
London to give the girls a surprise, and had said he wouldn't write
a word to prepare them on any account, in order that he and Mr Jonas
might take them unawares, and just see what they were doing, when
they thought their dear papa was miles and miles away. As a
consequence of this playful device, there was nobody to meet them at
the finger-post, but that was of small consequence, for they had
come down by the day coach, and Mr Pecksniff had only a carpetbag,
while Mr Jonas had only a portmanteau. They took the portmanteau
between them, put the bag upon it, and walked off up the lane
without delay; Mr Pecksniff already going on tiptoe as if, without
this precaution, his fond children, being then at a distance of a
couple of miles or so, would have some filial sense of his approach.

It was a lovely evening in the spring-time of the year; and in the
soft stillness of the twilight, all nature was very calm and
beautiful. The day had been fine and warm; but at the coming on of
night, the air grew cool, and in the mellowing distance smoke was
rising gently from the cottage chimneys. There were a thousand
pleasant scents diffused around, from young leaves and fresh buds;
the cuckoo had been singing all day long, and was but just now
hushed; the smell of earth newly-upturned, first breath of hope to
the first labourer after his garden withered, was fragrant in the
evening breeze. It was a time when most men cherish good resolves,
and sorrow for the wasted past; when most men, looking on the
shadows as they gather, think of that evening which must close on
all, and that to-morrow which has none beyond.

'Precious dull,' said Mr Jonas, looking about. 'It's enough to make
a man go melancholy mad.'

'We shall have lights and a fire soon,' observed Mr Pecksniff.

'We shall need 'em by the time we get there,' said Jonas. 'Why the
devil don't you talk? What are you thinking of?'

'To tell you the truth, Mr Jonas,' said Pecksniff with great
solemnity, 'my mind was running at that moment on our late dear
friend, your departed father.'

Mr Jonas immediately let his burden fall, and said, threatening him
with his hand:

'Drop that, Pecksniff!'

Mr Pecksniff not exactly knowing whether allusion was made to the
subject or the portmanteau, stared at his friend in unaffected
surprise.

'Drop it, I say!' cried Jonas, fiercely. 'Do you hear? Drop it,
now and for ever. You had better, I give you notice!'

'It was quite a mistake,' urged Mr Pecksniff, very much dismayed;
'though I admit it was foolish. I might have known it was a tender
string.'

'Don't talk to me about tender strings,' said Jonas, wiping his
forehead with the cuff of his coat. 'I'm not going to be crowed
over by you, because I don't like dead company.'

Mr Pecksniff had got out the words 'Crowed over, Mr Jonas!' when
that young man, with a dark expression in his countenance, cut him
short once more:

'Mind!' he said. 'I won't have it. I advise you not to revive the
subject, neither to me nor anybody else. You can take a hint, if
you choose as well as another man. There's enough said about it.
Come along!'

Taking up his part of the load again, when he had said these words,
he hurried on so fast that Mr Pecksniff, at the other end of the
portmanteau, found himself dragged forward, in a very inconvenient
and ungraceful manner, to the great detriment of what is called by
fancy gentlemen 'the bark' upon his shins, which were most
unmercifully bumped against the hard leather and the iron buckles.
In the course of a few minutes, however, Mr Jonas relaxed his speed,
and suffered his companion to come up with him, and to bring the
portmanteau into a tolerably straight position.

It was pretty clear that he regretted his late outbreak, and that he
mistrusted its effect on Mr Pecksniff; for as often as that
gentleman glanced towards Mr Jonas, he found Mr Jonas glancing at
him, which was a new source of embarrassment. It was but a short-
lived one, though, for Mr Jonas soon began to whistle, whereupon Mr
Pecksniff, taking his cue from his friend, began to hum a tune
melodiously.

'Pretty nearly there, ain't we?' said Jonas, when this had lasted
some time.

'Close, my dear friend,' said Mr Pecksniff.

'What'll they be doing, do you suppose?' asked Jonas.

'Impossible to say,' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'Giddy truants! They may
be away from home, perhaps. I was going to--he! he! he!--I was
going to propose,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'that we should enter by the
back way, and come upon them like a clap of thunder, Mr Jonas.'

It might not have been easy to decide in respect of which of their
manifold properties, Jonas, Mr Pecksniff, the carpet-bag, and the
portmanteau, could be likened to a clap of thunder. But Mr Jonas
giving his assent to this proposal, they stole round into the back
yard, and softly advanced towards the kitchen window, through which
the mingled light of fire and candle shone upon the darkening night.

Truly Mr Pecksniff is blessed in his children--in one of them, at
any rate. The prudent Cherry--staff and scrip, and treasure of her
doting father--there she sits, at a little table white as driven
snow, before the kitchen fire, making up accounts! See the neat
maiden, as with pen in hand, and calculating look addressed towards
the ceiling and bunch of keys within a little basket at her side,
she checks the housekeeping expenditure! From flat-iron, dish-cover,
and warming-pan; from pot and kettle, face of brass footman, and
black-leaded stove; bright glances of approbation wink and glow upon
her. The very onions dangling from the beam, mantle and shine like
cherubs' cheeks. Something of the influence of those vegetables
sinks into Mr Pecksniff's nature. He weeps.

It is but for a moment, and he hides it from the observation of his
friend--very carefully--by a somewhat elaborate use of his pocket-
handkerchief, in fact; for he would not have his weakness known.

'Pleasant,' he murmured, 'pleasant to a father's feelings! My dear
girl! Shall we let her know we are here, Mr Jonas?'

'Why, I suppose you don't mean to spend the evening in the stable,
or the coach-house,' he returned.

'That, indeed, is not such hospitality as I would show to YOU, my
friend,' cried Mr Pecksniff, pressing his hand. And then he took a
long breath, and tapping at the window, shouted with stentorian
blandness:

'Boh!'

Cherry dropped her pen and screamed. But innocence is ever bold, or
should be. As they opened the door, the valiant girl exclaimed in a
firm voice, and with a presence of mind which even in that trying
moment did not desert her, 'Who are you? What do you want? Speak!
or I will call my Pa.'

Mr Pecksniff held out his arms. She knew him instantly, and rushed
into his fond embrace.

'It was thoughtless of us, Mr Jonas, it was very thoughtless,' said
Pecksniff, smoothing his daugther's hair. 'My darling, do you see
that I am not alone!'

Not she. She had seen nothing but her father until now. She saw Mr
Jonas now, though; and blushed, and hung her head down, as she gave
him welcome.

But where was Merry? Mr Pecksniff didn't ask the question in
reproach, but in a vein of mildness touched with a gentle sorrow.
She was upstairs, reading on the parlour couch. Ah! Domestic
details had no charms for HER. 'But call her down,' said Mr
Pecksniff, with a placid resignation. 'Call her down, my love.'

She was called and came, all flushed and tumbled from reposing on
the sofa; but none the worse for that. No, not at all. Rather the
better, if anything.

'Oh my goodness me!' cried the arch girl, turning to her cousin when
she had kissed her father on both cheeks, and in her frolicsome
nature had bestowed a supernumerary salute upon the tip of his nose,
'YOU here, fright! Well, I'm very thankful that you won't trouble ME
much!'

'What! you're as lively as ever, are you?' said Jonas. 'Oh! You're
a wicked one!'

'There, go along!' retorted Merry, pushing him away. 'I'm sure I
don't know what I shall ever do, if I have to see much of you. Go
along, for gracious' sake!'

Mr Pecksniff striking in here, with a request that Mr Jonas would
immediately walk upstairs, he so far complied with the young lady's
adjuration as to go at once. But though he had the fair Cherry on
his arm, he could not help looking back at her sister, and
exchanging some further dialogue of the same bantering description,
as they all four ascended to the parlour; where--for the young
ladies happened, by good fortune, to be a little later than usual
that night--the tea-board was at that moment being set out.

Mr Pinch was not at home, so they had it all to themselves, and were
very snug and talkative, Jonas sitting between the two sisters, and
displaying his gallantry in that engaging manner which was peculiar
to him. It was a hard thing, Mr Pecksniff said, when tea was done,
and cleared away, to leave so pleasant a little party, but having
some important papers to examine in his own apartment, he must beg
them to excuse him for half an hour. With this apology he withdrew,
singing a careless strain as he went. He had not been gone five
minutes, when Merry, who had been sitting in the window, apart from
Jonas and her sister, burst into a half-smothered laugh, and skipped
towards the door.

'Hallo!' cried Jonas. 'Don't go.'

'Oh, I dare say!' rejoined Merry, looking back. 'You're very
anxious I should stay, fright, ain't you?'

'Yes, I am,' said Jonas. 'Upon my word I am. I want to speak to
you.'  But as she left the room notwithstanding, he ran out after
her, and brought her back, after a short struggle in the passage
which scandalized Miss Cherry very much.

'Upon my word, Merry,' urged that young lady, 'I wonder at you!
There are bounds even to absurdity, my dear.'

'Thank you, my sweet,' said Merry, pursing up her rosy Lips. 'Much
obliged to it for its advice. Oh! do leave me alone, you monster,
do!'  This entreaty was wrung from her by a new proceeding on the
part of Mr Jonas, who pulled her down, all breathless as she was,
into a seat beside him on the sofa, having at the same time Miss
Cherry upon the other side.

'Now,' said Jonas, clasping the waist of each; 'I have got both arms
full, haven't I?'

'One of them will be black and blue to-morrow, if you don't let me
go,' cried the playful Merry.

'Ah! I don't mind YOUR pinching,' grinned Jonas, 'a bit.'

'Pinch him for me, Cherry, pray,' said Mercy. 'I never did hate
anybody so much as I hate this creature, I declare!'

'No, no, don't say that,' urged Jonas, 'and don't pinch either,
because I want to be serious. I say--Cousin Charity--'

'Well! what?' she answered sharply.

'I want to have some sober talk,' said Jonas; 'I want to prevent any
mistakes, you know, and to put everything upon a pleasant
understanding. That's desirable and proper, ain't it?'

Neither of the sisters spoke a word. Mr Jonas paused and cleared
his throat, which was very dry.

'She'll not believe what I am going to say, will she, cousin?' said
Jonas, timidly squeezing Miss Charity.

'Really, Mr Jonas, I don't know, until I hear what it is. It's
quite impossible!'

'Why, you see,' said Jonas, 'her way always being to make game of
people, I know she'll laugh, or pretend to--I know that, beforehand.
But you can tell her I'm in earnest, cousin; can't you? You'll
confess you know, won't you? You'll be honourable, I'm sure,'
he added persuasively.

No answer. His throat seemed to grow hotter and hotter, and to be
more and more difficult of control.

'You see, Cousin Charity,' said Jonas, 'nobody but you can tell her
what pains I took to get into her company when you were both at the
boarding-house in the city, because nobody's so well aware of it, you
know. Nobody else can tell her how hard I tried to get to know you
better, in order that I might get to know her without seeming to
wish it; can they? I always asked you about her, and said where
had she gone, and when would she come, and how lively she was, and
all that; didn't I, cousin? I know you'll tell her so, if you
haven't told her so already, and--and--I dare say you have, because
I'm sure you're honourable, ain't you?'

Still not a word. The right arm of Mr Jonas--the elder sister sat
upon his right--may have been sensible of some tumultuous throbbing
which was not within itself; but nothing else apprised him that his
words had had the least effect.

'Even if you kept it to yourself, and haven't told her,' resumed
Jonas, 'it don't much matter, because you'll bear honest witness
now; won't you? We've been very good friends from the first;
haven't we? and of course we shall be quite friends in future, and
so I don't mind speaking before you a bit. Cousin Mercy, you've
heard what I've been saying. She'll confirm it, every word; she
must. Will you have me for your husband? Eh?'

As he released his hold of Charity, to put this question with better
effect, she started up and hurried away to her own room, marking her
progress as she went by such a train of passionate and incoherent
sound, as nothing but a slighted woman in her anger could produce.

'Let me go away. Let me go after her,' said Merry, pushing him off,
and giving him--to tell the truth--more than one sounding slap upon
his outstretched face.

'Not till you say yes. You haven't told me. Will you have me for
your husband?'

'No, I won't. I can't bear the sight of you. I have told you so a
hundred times. You are a fright. Besides, I always thought you
liked my sister best. We all thought so.'

'But that wasn't my fault,' said Jonas.

'Yes it was; you know it was.'

'Any trick is fair in love,' said Jonas. 'She may have thought I
liked her best, but you didn't.'

'I did!'

'No, you didn't. You never could have thought I liked her best,
when you were by.'

'There's no accounting for tastes,' said Merry; 'at least I didn't
mean to say that. I don't know what I mean. Let me go to her.'

'Say "Yes," and then I will.'

'If I ever brought myself to say so, it should only be that I might
hate and tease you all my life.'

'That's as good,' cried Jonas, 'as saying it right out. It's a
bargain, cousin. We're a pair, if ever there was one.'

This gallant speech was succeeded by a confused noise of kissing and
slapping; and then the fair but much dishevelled Merry broke away,
and followed in the footsteps of her sister.

Now whether Mr Pecksniff had been listening--which in one of his
character appears impossible; or divined almost by inspiration what
the matter was--which, in a man of his sagacity is far more
probable; or happened by sheer good fortune to find himself in
exactly the right place, at precisely the right time--which, under
the special guardianship in which he lived might very reasonably
happen; it is quite certain that at the moment when the sisters came
together in their own room, he appeared at the chamber door. And a
marvellous contrast it was--they so heated, noisy, and vehement; he
so calm, so self-possessed, so cool and full of peace, that not a
hair upon his head was stirred.

'Children!' said Mr Pecksniff, spreading out his hands in wonder,
but not before he had shut the door, and set his back against it.
'Girls! Daughters! What is this?'

'The wretch; the apostate; the false, mean, odious villain; has
before my very face proposed to Mercy!' was his eldest daughter's
answer.

'Who has proposed to Mercy!' asked Mr Pecksniff.

'HE has. That thing, Jonas, downstairs.'

'Jonas proposed to Mercy?' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Aye, aye! Indeed!'

'Have you nothing else to say?' cried Charity. 'Am I to be driven
mad, papa? He has proposed to Mercy, not to me.'

'Oh, fie! For shame!' said Mr Pecksniff, gravely. 'Oh, for shame!
Can the triumph of a sister move you to this terrible display, my
child? Oh, really this is very sad! I am sorry; I am surprised and
hurt to see you so. Mercy, my girl, bless you! See to her. Ah,
envy, envy, what a passion you are!'

Uttering this apostrophe in a tone full of grief and lamentation, Mr
Pecksniff left the room (taking care to shut the door behind him),
and walked downstairs into the parlour. There he found his
intended son-in-law, whom he seized by both hands.

'Jonas!' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'Jonas! the dearest wish of my heart
is now fulfilled!'

'Very well; I'm glad to hear it,' said Jonas. 'That'll do. I say!
As it ain't the one you're so fond of, you must come down with
another thousand, Pecksniff. You must make it up five. It's worth
that, to keep your treasure to yourself, you know. You get off very
cheap that way, and haven't a sacrifice to make.'

The grin with which he accompanied this, set off his other
attractions to such unspeakable advantage, that even Mr Pecksniff
lost his presence of mind for a moment, and looked at the young man
as if he were quite stupefied with wonder and admiration. But he
quickly regained his composure, and was in the very act of changing
the subject, when a hasty step was heard without, and Tom Pinch, in
a state of great excitement, came darting into the room.

On seeing a stranger there, apparently engaged with Mr Pecksniff in
private conversation, Tom was very much abashed, though he still
looked as if he had something of great importance to communicate,
which would be a sufficient apology for his intrusion.

'Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, 'this is hardly decent. You will excuse
my saying that I think your conduct scarcely decent, Mr Pinch.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' replied Tom, 'for not knocking at the
door.'

'Rather beg this gentleman's pardon, Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff. 'I
know you; he does not.--My young man, Mr Jonas.'

The son-in-law that was to be gave him a slight nod--not actively
disdainful or contemptuous, only passively; for he was in a good
humour.

'Could I speak a word with you, sir, if you please?' said Tom.
'It's rather pressing.'

'It should be very pressing to justify this strange behaviour, Mr
Pinch,' returned his master. 'Excuse me for one moment, my dear
friend. Now, sir, what is the reason of this rough intrusion?'

'I am very sorry, sir, I am sure,' said Tom, standing, cap in hand,
before his patron in the passage; 'and I know it must have a very
rude appearance--'

'It HAS a very rude appearance, Mr Pinch.'

'Yes, I feel that, sir; but the truth is, I was so surprised to see
them, and knew you would be too, that I ran home very fast indeed,
and really hadn't enough command over myself to know what I was
doing very well. I was in the church just now, sir, touching the
organ for my own amusement, when I happened to look round, and saw a
gentleman and lady standing in the aisle listening. They seemed to
be strangers, sir, as well as I could make out in the dusk; and I
thought I didn't know them; so presently I left off, and said, would
they walk up into the organ-loft, or take a seat? No, they said,
they wouldn't do that; but they thanked me for the music they had
heard. In fact,' observed Tom, blushing, 'they said, "Delicious
music!" at least, SHE did; and I am sure that was a greater pleasure
and honour to me than any compliment I could have had. I--I--beg
your pardon sir;' he was all in a tremble, and dropped his hat for
the second time 'but I--I'm rather flurried, and I fear I've
wandered from the point.'

'If you will come back to it, Thomas,' said Mr Pecksniff, with an
icy look, 'I shall feel obliged.'

'Yes, sir,' returned Tom, 'certainly. They had a posting carriage
at the porch, sir, and had stopped to hear the organ, they said.
And then they said--SHE said, I mean, "I believe you live with Mr
Pecksniff, sir?"  I said I had that honour, and I took the liberty,
sir,' added Tom, raising his eyes to his benefactor's face, 'of
saying, as I always will and must, with your permission, that I was
under great obligations to you, and never could express my sense of
them sufficiently.'

'That,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'was very, very wrong. Take your time,
Mr Pinch.'

'Thank you, sir,' cried Tom. 'On that they asked me--she asked, I
mean--"Wasn't there a bridle road to Mr Pecksniff's house?"'

Mr Pecksniff suddenly became full of interest.

'"Without going by the Dragon?"  When I said there was, and said how
happy I should be to show it 'em, they sent the carriage on by the
road, and came with me across the meadows. I left 'em at the
turnstile to run forward and tell you they were coming, and they'll
be here, sir, in--in less than a minute's time, I should say,' added
Tom, fetching his breath with difficulty.

'Now, who,' said Mr Pecksniff, pondering, 'who may these people be?'

'Bless my soul, sir!' cried Tom, 'I meant to mention that at first,
I thought I had. I knew them--her, I mean--directly. The gentleman
who was ill at the Dragon, sir, last winter; and the young lady who
attended him.'

Tom's teeth chattered in his head, and he positively staggered with
amazement, at witnessing the extraordinary effect produced on Mr
Pecksniff by these simple words. The dread of losing the old man's
favour almost as soon as they were reconciled, through the mere fact
of having Jonas in the house; the impossibility of dismissing Jonas,
or shutting him up, or tying him hand and foot and putting him in
the coal-cellar, without offending him beyond recall; the horrible
discordance prevailing in the establishment, and the impossibility
of reducing it to decent harmony with Charity in loud hysterics,
Mercy in the utmost disorder, Jonas in the parlour, and Martin
Chuzzlewit and his young charge upon the very doorsteps; the total
hopelessness of being able to disguise or feasibly explain this
state of rampant confusion; the sudden accumulation over his devoted
head of every complicated perplexity and entanglement for his
extrication from which he had trusted to time, good fortune, chance,
and his own plotting, so filled the entrapped architect with dismay,
that if Tom could have been a Gorgon staring at Mr Pecksniff, and Mr
Pecksniff could have been a Gorgon staring at Tom, they could not
have horrified each other half so much as in their own bewildered
persons.

'Dear, dear!' cried Tom, 'what have I done? I hoped it would be a
pleasant surprise, sir. I thought you would like to know.'

But at that moment a loud knocking was heard at the hall door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MORE AMERICAN EXPERIENCES, MARTIN TAKES A PARTNER, AND MAKES A
PURCHASE. SOME ACCOUNT OF EDEN, AS IT APPEARED ON PAPER. ALSO OF
THE BRITISH LION. ALSO OF THE KIND OF SYMPATHY PROFESSED AND
ENTERTAINED BY THE WATERTOAST ASSOCIATION OF UNITED SYMPATHISERS

The knocking at Mr Pecksniff's door, though loud enough, bore no
resemblance whatever to the noise of an American railway train at
full speed. It may be well to begin the present chapter with this
frank admission, lest the reader should imagine that the sounds now
deafening this history's ears have any connection with the knocker on
Mr Pecksniff's door, or with the great amount of agitation pretty
equally divided between that worthy man and Mr Pinch, of which its
strong performance was the cause.

Mr Pecksniff's house is more than a thousand leagues away; and again
this happy chronicle has Liberty and Moral Sensibility for its high
companions. Again it breathes the blessed air of Independence;
again it contemplates with pious awe that moral sense which renders
unto Ceasar nothing that is his; again inhales that sacred
atmosphere which was the life of him--oh noble patriot, with many
followers!--who dreamed of Freedom in a slave's embrace, and waking
sold her offspring and his own in public markets.

How the wheels clank and rattle, and the tram-road shakes, as the
train rushes on! And now the engine yells, as it were lashed and
tortured like a living labourer, and writhed in agony. A poor
fancy; for steel and iron are of infinitely greater account, in this
commonwealth, than flesh and blood. If the cunning work of man be
urged beyond its power of endurance, it has within it the elements
of its own revenge; whereas the wretched mechanism of the Divine
Hand is dangerous with no such property, but may be tampered with,
and crushed, and broken, at the driver's pleasure. Look at that
engine! It shall cost a man more dollars in the way of penalty and
fine, and satisfaction of the outraged law, to deface in wantonness
that senseless mass of metal, than to take the lives of twenty human
creatures! Thus the stars wink upon the bloody stripes; and Liberty
pulls down her cap upon her eyes, and owns Oppression in its vilest
aspect, for her sister.

The engine-driver of the train whose noise awoke us to the present
chapter was certainly troubled with no such reflections as these;
nor is it very probable that his mind was disturbed by any
reflections at all. He leaned with folded arms and crossed legs
against the side of the carriage, smoking; and, except when he
expressed, by a grunt as short as his pipe, his approval of some
particularly dexterous aim on the part of his colleague, the
fireman, who beguiled his leisure by throwing logs of wood from the
tender at the numerous stray cattle on the line, he preserved a
composure so immovable, and an indifference so complete, that if the
locomotive had been a sucking-pig, he could not have been more
perfectly indifferent to its doings. Notwithstanding the tranquil
state of this officer, and his unbroken peace of mind, the train was
proceeding with tolerable rapidity; and the rails being but poorly
laid, the jolts and bumps it met with in its progress were neither
slight nor few.

There were three great caravans or cars attached. The ladies' car,
the gentlemen's car, and the car for negroes; the latter painted
black, as an appropriate compliment to its company. Martin and Mark
Tapley were in the first, as it was the most comfortable; and, being
far from full, received other gentlemen who, like them, were
unblessed by the society of ladies of their own. They were seated
side by side, and were engaged in earnest conversation.

'And so, Mark,' said Martin, looking at him with an anxious
expression, 'and so you are glad we have left New York far behind
us, are you?'

'Yes, sir,' said Mark. 'I am. Precious glad.'

'Were you not "jolly" there?' asked Martin.

'On the contrairy, sir,' returned Mark. 'The jolliest week as ever
I spent in my life, was that there week at Pawkins's.'

'What do you think of our prospects?' inquired Martin, with an air
that plainly said he had avoided the question for some time.

'Uncommon bright, sir,' returned Mark. 'Impossible for a place to
have a better name, sir, than the Walley of Eden. No man couldn't
think of settling in a better place than the Walley of Eden. And
I'm told,' added Mark, after a pause, 'as there's lots of serpents
there, so we shall come out, quite complete and reg'lar.'

So far from dwelling upon this agreeable piece of information with
the least dismay, Mark's face grew radiant as he called it to mind;
so very radiant, that a stranger might have supposed he had all his
life been yearning for the society of serpents, and now hailed with
delight the approaching consummation of his fondest wishes.

'Who told you that?' asked Martin, sternly.

'A military officer,' said Mark.

'Confound you for a ridiculous fellow!' cried Martin, laughing
heartily in spite of himself. 'What military officer? You know
they spring up in every field.'

'As thick as scarecrows in England, sir,' interposed Mark, 'which is
a sort of milita themselves, being entirely coat and wescoat, with a
stick inside. Ha, ha!--Don't mind me, sir; it's my way sometimes. I
can't help being jolly. Why it was one of them inwading conquerors
at Pawkins's, as told me. "Am I rightly informed," he says--not
exactly through his nose, but as if he'd got a stoppage in it, very
high up--"that you're a-going to the Walley of Eden?"  "I heard some
talk on it," I told him. "Oh!" says he, "if you should ever happen
to go to bed there--you MAY, you know," he says, "in course of time
as civilisation progresses--don't forget to take a axe with you."  I
looks at him tolerable hard. "Fleas?" says I. "And more," says he.
"Wampires?" says I. "And more," says he. "Musquitoes, perhaps?"
says I. "And more," says he. "What more?" says I. "Snakes more,"
says he; "rattle-snakes. You're right to a certain extent,
stranger. There air some catawampous chawers in the small way too,
as graze upon a human pretty strong; but don't mind THEM--they're
company. It's snakes," he says, "as you'll object to; and whenever
you wake and see one in a upright poster on your bed," he says,
"like a corkscrew with the handle off a-sittin' on its bottom ring,
cut him down, for he means wenom."'

'Why didn't you tell me this before!' cried Martin, with an
expression of face which set off the cheerfulness of Mark's visage
to great advantage.

'I never thought on it, sir,' said Mark. 'It come in at one ear,
and went out at the other. But Lord love us, he was one of another
Company, I dare say, and only made up the story that we might go to
his Eden, and not the opposition one'

'There's some probability in that,' observed Martin. 'I can
honestly say that I hope so, with all my heart.'

'I've not a doubt about it, sir,' returned Mark, who, full of the
inspiriting influence of the anecodote upon himself, had for the
moment forgotten its probable effect upon his master; 'anyhow, we
must live, you know, sir.'

'Live!' cried Martin. 'Yes, it's easy to say live; but if we should
happen not to wake when rattlesnakes are making corkscrews of
themselves upon our beds, it may be not so easy to do it.'

'And that's a fact,' said a voice so close in his ear that it
tickled him. 'That's dreadful true.'

Martin looked round, and found that a gentleman, on the seat behind,
had thrust his head between himself and Mark, and sat with his chin
resting on the back rail of their little bench, entertaining himself
with their conversation. He was as languid and listless in his
looks as most of the gentlemen they had seen; his cheeks were so
hollow that he seemed to be always sucking them in; and the sun had
burnt him, not a wholesome red or brown, but dirty yellow. He had
bright dark eyes, which he kept half closed; only peeping out of the
corners, and even then with a glance that seemed to say, 'Now you
won't overreach me; you want to, but you won't.'  His arms rested
carelessly on his knees as he leant forward; in the palm of his left
hand, as English rustics have their slice of cheese, he had a cake
of tobacco; in his right a penknife. He struck into the dialogue
with as little reserve as if he had been specially called in, days
before, to hear the arguments on both sides, and favour them with
his opinion; and he no more contemplated or cared for the
possibility of their not desiring the honour of his acquaintance or
interference in their private affairs than if he had been a bear or
a buffalo.

'That,' he repeated, nodding condescendingly to Martin, as to an
outer barbarian and foreigner, 'is dreadful true. Darn all manner
of vermin.'

Martin could not help frowning for a moment, as if he were disposed
to insinuate that the gentleman had unconsciously 'darned' himself.
But remembering the wisdom of doing at Rome as Romans do, he smiled
with the pleasantest expression he could assume upon so short a
notice.

Their new friend said no more just then, being busily employed in
cutting a quid or plug from his cake of tobacco, and whistling
softly to himself the while. When he had shaped it to his liking,
he took out his old plug, and deposited the same on the back of the
seat between Mark and Martin, while he thrust the new one into the
hollow of his cheek, where it looked like a large walnut, or
tolerable pippin. Finding it quite satisfactory, he stuck the point
of his knife into the old plug, and holding it out for their
inspection, remarked with the air of a man who had not lived in
vain, that it was 'used up considerable.'  Then he tossed it away;
put his knife into one pocket and his tobacco into another; rested
his chin upon the rail as before; and approving of the pattern on
Martin's waistcoat, reached out his hand to feel the texture of that
garment.

'What do you call this now?' he asked.

'Upon my word' said Martin, 'I don't know what it's called.'

'It'll cost a dollar or more a yard, I reckon?'

'I really don't know.'

'In my country,' said the gentleman, 'we know the cost of our own
pro-duce.'

Martin not discussing the question, there was a pause.

'Well!' resumed their new friend, after staring at them intently
during the whole interval of silence; 'how's the unnat'ral old
parent by this time?'

Mr Tapley regarding this inquiry as only another version of the
impertinent English question, 'How's your mother?' would have
resented it instantly, but for Martin's prompt interposition.

'You mean the old country?' he said.

'Ah!' was the reply. 'How's she? Progressing back'ards, I expect,
as usual? Well! How's Queen Victoria?'

'In good health, I believe,' said Martin.

'Queen Victoria won't shake in her royal shoes at all, when she
hears to-morrow named,' observed the stranger, 'No.'

'Not that I am aware of. Why should she?'

'She won't be taken with a cold chill, when she realises what is
being done in these diggings,' said the stranger. 'No.'

'No,' said Martin. 'I think I could take my oath of that.'

The strange gentleman looked at him as if in pity for his ignorance
or prejudice, and said:

'Well, sir, I tell you this--there ain't a engine with its biler
bust, in God A'mighty's free U-nited States, so fixed, and nipped,
and frizzled to a most e-tarnal smash, as that young critter, in her
luxurious location in the Tower of London will be, when she reads
the next double-extra Watertoast Gazette.'

Several other gentlemen had left their seats and gathered round
during the foregoing dialogue. They were highly delighted with this
speech. One very lank gentleman, in a loose limp white cravat, long
white waistcoat, and a black great-coat, who seemed to be in
authority among them, felt called upon to acknowledge it.

'Hem! Mr La Fayette Kettle,' he said, taking off his hat.

There was a grave murmur of 'Hush!'

'Mr La Fayette Kettle! Sir!'

Mr Kettle bowed.

'In the name of this company, sir, and in the name of our common
country, and in the name of that righteous cause of holy sympathy in
which we are engaged, I thank you. I thank you, sir, in the name of
the Watertoast Sympathisers; and I thank you, sir, in the name of
the Watertoast Gazette; and I thank you, sir, in the name of the
star-spangled banner of the Great United States, for your eloquent
and categorical exposition. And if, sir,' said the speaker, poking
Martin with the handle of his umbrella to bespeak his attention, for
he was listening to a whisper from Mark; 'if, sir, in such a place,
and at such a time, I might venture to con-clude with a sentiment,
glancing--however slantin'dicularly--at the subject in hand, I
would say, sir, may the British Lion have his talons eradicated by
the noble bill of the American Eagle, and be taught to play upon the
Irish Harp and the Scotch Fiddle that music which is breathed in
every empty shell that lies upon the shores of green Co-lumbia!'

Here the lank gentleman sat down again, amidst a great sensation;
and every one looked very grave.

'General Choke,' said Mr La Fayette Kettle, 'you warm my heart; sir,
you warm my heart. But the British Lion is not unrepresented here,
sir; and I should be glad to hear his answer to those remarks.'

'Upon my word,' cried Martin, laughing, 'since you do me the honour
to consider me his representative, I have only to say that I never
heard of Queen Victoria reading the What's-his-name Gazette and that
I should scarcely think it probable.'

General Choke smiled upon the rest, and said, in patient and
benignant explanation:

'It is sent to her, sir. It is sent to her. Her mail.'

'But if it is addressed to the Tower of London, it would hardly come
to hand, I fear,' returned Martin; 'for she don't live there.'

'The Queen of England, gentlemen,' observed Mr Tapley, affecting the
greatest politeness, and regarding them with an immovable face,
'usually lives in the Mint to take care of the money. She HAS
lodgings, in virtue of her office, with the Lord Mayor at the
Mansion House; but don't often occupy them, in consequence of the
parlour chimney smoking.'

'Mark,' said Martin, 'I shall be very much obliged to you if you'll
have the goodness not to interfere with preposterous statements,
however jocose they may appear to you. I was merely remarking
gentlemen--though it's a point of very little import--that the
Queen of England does not happen to live in the Tower of London.'

'General!' cried Mr La Fayette Kettle. 'You hear?'

'General!' echoed several others. 'General!'

'Hush! Pray, silence!' said General Choke, holding up his hand, and
speaking with a patient and complacent benevolence that was quite
touching. 'I have always remarked it as a very extraordinary
circumstance, which I impute to the natur' of British Institutions
and their tendency to suppress that popular inquiry and information
which air so widely diffused even in the trackless forests of this
vast Continent of the Western Ocean; that the knowledge of
Britishers themselves on such points is not to be compared with that
possessed by our intelligent and locomotive citizens. This is
interesting, and confirms my observation. When you say, sir,' he
continued, addressing Martin, 'that your Queen does not reside in
the Tower of London, you fall into an error, not uncommon to your
countrymen, even when their abilities and moral elements air such as
to command respect. But, sir, you air wrong. She DOES live there--'

'When she is at the Court of Saint James's,' interposed Kettle.

'When she is at the Court of Saint James's, of course,' returned the
General, in the same benignant way; 'for if her location was in
Windsor Pavilion it couldn't be in London at the same time. Your
Tower of London, sir,' pursued the General, smiling with a mild
consciousness of his knowledge, 'is nat'rally your royal residence.
Being located in the immediate neighbourhood of your Parks, your
Drives, your Triumphant Arches, your Opera, and your Royal Almacks,
it nat'rally suggests itself as the place for holding a luxurious
and thoughtless court. And, consequently,' said the General,
'consequently, the court is held there.'

'Have you been in England?' asked Martin.

'In print I have, sir,' said the General, 'not otherwise. We air a
reading people here, sir. You will meet with much information among
us that will surprise you, sir.'

'I have not the least doubt of it,' returned Martin. But here he
was interrupted by Mr La Fayette Kettle, who whispered in his ear:

'You know General Choke?'

'No,' returned Martin, in the same tone.

'You know what he is considered?'

'One of the most remarkable men in the country?' said Martin, at a
venture.

'That's a fact,' rejoined Kettle. 'I was sure you must have heard
of him!'

'I think,' said Martin, addressing himself to the General again,
'that I have the pleasure of being the bearer of a letter of
introduction to you, sir. From Mr Bevan, of Massachusetts,' he
added, giving it to him.

The General took it and read it attentively; now and then stopping
to glance at the two strangers. When he had finished the note, he
came over to Martin, sat down by him, and shook hands.

'Well!' he said, 'and you think of settling in Eden?'

'Subject to your opinion, and the agent's advice,' replied Martin.
'I am told there is nothing to be done in the old towns.'

'I can introduce you to the agent, sir,' said the General. 'I know
him. In fact, I am a member of the Eden Land Corporation myself.'

This was serious news to Martin, for his friend had laid great
stress upon the General's having no connection, as he thought, with
any land company, and therefore being likely to give him
disinterested advice. The General explained that he had joined the
Corporation only a few weeks ago, and that no communication had
passed between himself and Mr Bevan since.

'We have very little to venture,' said Martin anxiously--'only a few
pounds--but it is our all. Now, do you think that for one of my
profession, this would be a speculation with any hope or chance in
it?'

'Well,' observed the General, gravely, 'if there wasn't any hope or
chance in the speculation, it wouldn't have engaged my dollars, I
opinionate.'

'I don't mean for the sellers,' said Martin. 'For the buyers--for
the buyers!'

'For the buyers, sir?' observed the General, in a most impressive
manner. 'Well! you come from an old country; from a country, sir,
that has piled up golden calves as high as Babel, and worshipped 'em
for ages. We are a new country, sir; man is in a more primeval
state here, sir; we have not the excuse of having lapsed in the
slow course of time into degenerate practices; we have no false
gods; man, sir, here, is man in all his dignity. We fought for that
or nothing. Here am I, sir,' said the General, setting up his
umbrella to represent himself, and a villanous-looking umbrella it
was; a very bad counter to stand for the sterling coin of his
benevolence, 'here am I with grey hairs sir, and a moral sense.
Would I, with my principles, invest capital in this speculation if I
didn't think it full of hopes and chances for my brother man?'

Martin tried to look convinced, but he thought of New York, and
found it difficult.

'What are the Great United States for, sir,' pursued the General 'if
not for the regeneration of man? But it is nat'ral in you to make
such an enquerry, for you come from England, and you do not know my
country.'

'Then you think,' said Martin, 'that allowing for the hardships we
are prepared to undergo, there is a reasonable--Heaven knows we
don't expect much--a reasonable opening in this place?'

'A reasonable opening in Eden, sir! But see the agent, see the
agent; see the maps and plans, sir; and conclude to go or stay,
according to the natur' of the settlement. Eden hadn't need to go
a-begging yet, sir,' remarked the General.

'It is an awful lovely place, sure-ly. And frightful wholesome,
likewise!' said Mr Kettle, who had made himself a party to this
conversation as a matter of course.

Martin felt that to dispute such testimony, for no better reason
than because he had his secret misgivings on the subject, would be
ungentlemanly and indecent. So he thanked the General for his
promise to put him in personal communication with the agent; and
'concluded' to see that officer next morning. He then begged the
General to inform him who the Watertoast Sympathisers were, of whom
he had spoken in addressing Mr La Fayette Kettle, and on what
grievances they bestowed their Sympathy. To which the General,
looking very serious, made answer, that he might fully enlighten
himself on those points to-morrow by attending a Great Meeting of
the Body, which would then be held at the town to which they were
travelling; 'over which, sir,' said the General, 'my fellow-citizens
have called on me to preside.'

They came to their journey's end late in the evening. Close to the
railway was an immense white edifice, like an ugly hospital, on
which was painted 'NATIONAL HOTEL.'  There was a wooden gallery or
verandah in front, in which it was rather startling, when the train
stopped, to behold a great many pairs of boots and shoes, and the
smoke of a great many cigars, but no other evidences of human
habitation. By slow degrees, however, some heads and shoulders
appeared, and connecting themselves with the boots and shoes, led to
the discovery that certain gentlemen boarders, who had a fancy for
putting their heels where the gentlemen boarders in other countries
usually put their heads, were enjoying themselves after their own
manner in the cool of the evening.

There was a great bar-room in this hotel, and a great public room in
which the general table was being set out for supper. There were
interminable whitewashed staircases, long whitewashed galleries
upstairs and downstairs, scores of little whitewashed bedrooms, and
a four-sided verandah to every story in the house, which formed a
large brick square with an uncomfortable courtyard in the centre,
where some clothes were drying. Here and there, some yawning
gentlemen lounged up and down with their hands in their pockets; but
within the house and without, wherever half a dozen people were
collected together, there, in their looks, dress, morals, manners,
habits, intellect, and conversation, were Mr Jefferson Brick,
Colonel Diver, Major Pawkins, General Choke, and Mr La Fayette
Kettle, over, and over, and over again. They did the same things;
said the same things; judged all subjects by, and reduced all
subjects to, the same standard. Observing how they lived, and how
they were always in the enchanting company of each other, Martin
even began to comprehend their being the social, cheerful, winning,
airy men they were.

At the sounding of a dismal gong, this pleasant company went
trooping down from all parts of the house to the public room; while
from the neighbouring stores other guests came flocking in, in
shoals; for half the town, married folks as well as single, resided
at the National Hotel. Tea, coffee, dried meats, tongue, ham,
pickles, cake, toast, preserves, and bread and butter, were
swallowed with the usual ravaging speed; and then, as before, the
company dropped off by degrees, and lounged away to the desk, the
counter, or the bar-room. The ladies had a smaller ordinary of
their own, to which their husbands and brothers were admitted if
they chose; and in all other respects they enjoyed themselves as at
Pawkins's.

'Now, Mark, my good fellow, said Martin, closing the door of his
little chamber, 'we must hold a solemn council, for our fate is
decided to-morrow morning. You are determined to invest these
savings of yours in the common stock, are you?'

'If I hadn't been determined to make that wentur, sir,' answered Mr
Tapley, 'I shouldn't have come.'

'How much is there here, did you say' asked Martin, holding up a
little bag.

'Thirty-seven pound ten and sixpence. The Savings' Bank said so at
least. I never counted it. But THEY know, bless you!' said Mark,
with a shake of the head expressive of his unbounded confidence in
the wisdom and arithmetic of those Institutions.

'The money we brought with us,' said Martin, 'is reduced to a few
shillings less than eight pounds.'

Mr Tapley smiled, and looked all manner of ways, that he might not
be supposed to attach any importance to this fact.

'Upon the ring--HER ring, Mark,' said Martin, looking ruefully at
his empty finger--

'Ah!' sighed Mr Tapley. 'Beg your pardon, sir.'

'--We raised, in English money, fourteen pounds. So, even with
that, your share of the stock is still very much the larger of the
two you see. Now, Mark,' said Martin, in his old way, just as he
might have spoken to Tom Pinch, 'I have thought of a means of making
this up to you--more than making it up to you, I hope--and very
materially elevating your prospects in life.'

'Oh! don't talk of that, you know, sir,' returned Mark. 'I don't
want no elevating, sir. I'm all right enough, sir, I am.'

'No, but hear me,' said Martin, 'because this is very important to
you, and a great satisfaction to me. Mark, you shall be a partner
in the business; an equal partner with myself. I will put in, as my
additional capital, my professional knowledge and ability; and half
the annual profits, as long as it is carried on, shall be yours.'

Poor Martin! For ever building castles in the air. For ever, in his
very selfishness, forgetful of all but his own teeming hopes and
sanguine plans. Swelling, at that instant, with the consciousness
of patronizing and most munificently rewarding Mark!

'I don't know, sir,' Mark rejoined, much more sadly than his custom
was, though from a very different cause than Martin supposed, 'what
I can say to this, in the way of thanking you. I'll stand by you,
sir, to the best of my ability, and to the last. That's all.'

'We quite understand each other, my good fellow,' said Martin rising
in self-approval and condescension. 'We are no longer master and
servant, but friends and partners; and are mutually gratified. If
we determine on Eden, the business shall be commenced as soon as we
get there. Under the name,' said Martin, who never hammered upon an
idea that wasn't red hot, 'under the name of Chuzzlewit and Tapley.'

'Lord love you, sir,' cried Mark, 'don't have my name in it. I
ain't acquainted with the business, sir. I must be Co., I must.
I've often thought,' he added, in a low voice, 'as I should like to
know a Co.; but I little thought as ever I should live to be one.'

'You shall have your own way, Mark.'

'Thank'ee, sir. If any country gentleman thereabouts, in the public
way, or otherwise, wanted such a thing as a skittle-ground made, I
could take that part of the bis'ness, sir.'

'Against any architect in the States,' said Martin. 'Get a couple
of sherry-cobblers, Mark, and we'll drink success to the firm.'

Either he forgot already (and often afterwards), that they were no
longer master and servant, or considered this kind of duty to be
among the legitimate functions of the Co. But Mark obeyed with his
usual alacrity; and before they parted for the night, it was agreed
between them that they should go together to the agent's in the
morning, but that Martin should decide the Eden question, on his own
sound judgment. And Mark made no merit, even to himself in his
jollity, of this concession; perfectly well knowing that the matter
would come to that in the end, any way.

The General was one of the party at the public table next day, and
after breakfast suggested that they should wait upon the agent
without loss of time. They, desiring nothing more, agreed; so off
they all four started for the office of the Eden Settlement, which
was almost within rifle-shot of the National Hotel.

It was a small place--something like a turnpike. But a great deal
of land may be got into a dice-box, and why may not a whole
territory be bargained for in a shed? It was but a temporary office
too; for the Edeners were 'going' to build a superb establishment
for the transaction of their business, and had already got so far as
to mark out the site. Which is a great way in America. The office-
door was wide open, and in the doorway was the agent; no doubt a
tremendous fellow to get through his work, for he seemed to have no
arrears, but was swinging backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair,
with one of his legs planted high up against the door-post, and the
other doubled up under him, as if he were hatching his foot.

He was a gaunt man in a huge straw hat, and a coat of green stuff.
The weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar
wide open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch
and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord
when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly
endeavouring to leap to his lips. If so, it never reached them.

Two grey eyes lurked deep within this agent's head, but one of them
had no sight in it, and stood stock still. With that side of his
face he seemed to listen to what the other side was doing. Thus
each profile had a distinct expression; and when the movable side
was most in action, the rigid one was in its coldest state of
watchfulness. It was like turning the man inside out, to pass to
that view of his features in his liveliest mood, and see how
calculating and intent they were.

Each long black hair upon his head hung down as straight as any
plummet line; but rumpled tufts were on the arches of his eyes, as
if the crow whose foot was deeply printed in the corners had pecked
and torn them in a savage recognition of his kindred nature as a
bird of prey.

Such was the man whom they now approached, and whom the General
saluted by the name of Scadder.

'Well, Gen'ral,' he returned, 'and how are you?'

'Ac-tive and spry, sir, in my country's service and the sympathetic
cause. Two gentlemen on business, Mr Scadder.'

He shook hands with each of them--nothing is done in America without
shaking hands--then went on rocking.

'I think I know what bis'ness you have brought these strangers here
upon, then, Gen'ral?'

'Well, sir. I expect you may.'

'You air a tongue-y person, Gen'ral. For you talk too much, and
that's fact,' said Scadder. 'You speak a-larming well in public,
but you didn't ought to go ahead so fast in private. Now!'

'If I can realise your meaning, ride me on a rail!' returned the
General, after pausing for consideration.

'You know we didn't wish to sell the lots off right away to any
loafer as might bid,' said Scadder; 'but had con-cluded to reserve
'em for Aristocrats of Natur'. Yes!'

'And they are here, sir!' cried the General with warmth. 'They
are here, sir!'

'If they air here,' returned the agent, in reproachful accents,
'that's enough. But you didn't ought to have your dander ris with
ME, Gen'ral.'

The General whispered Martin that Scadder was the honestest fellow
in the world, and that he wouldn't have given him offence
designedly, for ten thousand dollars.

'I do my duty; and I raise the dander of my feller critters, as I
wish to serve,' said Scadder in a low voice, looking down the road
and rocking still. 'They rile up rough, along of my objecting to
their selling Eden off too cheap. That's human natur'! Well!'

'Mr Scadder,' said the General, assuming his oratorical deportment.
'Sir! Here is my hand, and here my heart. I esteem you, sir, and
ask your pardon. These gentlemen air friends of mine, or I would
not have brought 'em here, sir, being well aware, sir, that the lots
at present go entirely too cheap. But these air friends, sir; these
air partick'ler friends.'

Mr Scadder was so satisfied by this explanation, that he shook the
General warmly by the hand, and got out of the rocking-chair to do
it. He then invited the General's particular friends to accompany
him into the office. As to the General, he observed, with his usual
benevolence, that being one of the company, he wouldn't interfere in
the transaction on any account; so he appropriated the rocking-chair
to himself, and looked at the prospect, like a good Samaritan
waiting for a traveller.

'Heyday!' cried Martin, as his eye rested on a great plan which
occupied one whole side of the office. Indeed, the office had
little else in it, but some geological and botanical specimens, one
or two rusty ledgers, a homely desk, and a stool. 'Heyday! what's
that?'

'That's Eden,' said Scadder, picking his teeth with a sort of young
bayonet that flew out of his knife when he touched a spring.

'Why, I had no idea it was a city.'

'Hadn't you? Oh, it's a city.'

A flourishing city, too! An architectural city! There were banks,
churches, cathedrals, market-places, factories, hotels, stores,
mansions, wharves; an exchange, a theatre; public buildings of all
kinds, down to the office of the Eden Stinger, a daily journal; all
faithfully depicted in the view before them.

'Dear me! It's really a most important place!' cried Martin turning
round.

'Oh! it's very important,' observed the agent.

'But, I am afraid,' said Martin, glancing again at the Public
Buildings, 'that there's nothing left for me to do.'

'Well! it ain't all built,' replied the agent. 'Not quite.'

This was a great relief.

'The market-place, now,' said Martin. 'Is that built?'

'That?' said the agent, sticking his toothpick into the weathercock
on the top. 'Let me see. No; that ain't built.'

'Rather a good job to begin with--eh, Mark?' whispered Martin
nudging him with his elbow.

Mark, who, with a very stolid countenance had been eyeing the plan
and the agent by turns, merely rejoined 'Uncommon!'

A dead silence ensued, Mr Scadder in some short recesses or
vacations of his toothpick, whistled a few bars of Yankee Doodle,
and blew the dust off the roof of the Theatre.

'I suppose,' said Martin, feigning to look more narrowly at the
plan, but showing by his tremulous voice how much depended, in his
mind, upon the answer; 'I suppose there are--several architects
there?'

'There ain't a single one,' said Scadder.

'Mark,' whispered Martin, pulling him by the sleeve, 'do you hear
that? But whose work is all this before us, then?' he asked aloud.

'The soil being very fruitful, public buildings grows spontaneous,
perhaps,' said Mark.

He was on the agent's dark side as he said it; but Scadder instantly
changed his place, and brought his active eye to bear upon him.

'Feel of my hands, young man,' he said.

'What for?' asked Mark, declining.

'Air they dirty, or air they clean, sir?' said Scadder, holding them
out.

In a physical point of view they were decidedly dirty. But it being
obvious that Mr Scadder offered them for examination in a figurative
sense, as emblems of his moral character, Martin hastened to
pronounce them pure as the driven snow.

'I entreat, Mark,' he said, with some irritation, 'that you will not
obtrude remarks of that nature, which, however harmless and
well-intentioned, are quite out of place, and cannot be expected to
be very agreeable to strangers. I am quite surprised.'

'The Co.'s a-putting his foot in it already,' thought Mark. 'He
must be a sleeping partner--fast asleep and snoring--Co. must; I
see.'

Mr Scadder said nothing, but he set his back against the plan, and
thrust his toothpick into the desk some twenty times; looking at
Mark all the while as if he were stabbing him in effigy.

'You haven't said whose work it is,' Martin ventured to observe at
length, in a tone of mild propitiation.

'Well, never mind whose work it is, or isn't,' said the agent
sulkily. 'No matter how it did eventuate. P'raps he cleared off,
handsome, with a heap of dollars; p'raps he wasn't worth a cent.
P'raps he was a loafin' rowdy; p'raps a ring-tailed roarer. Now!'

'All your doing, Mark!' said Martin.

'P'raps,' pursued the agent, 'them ain't plants of Eden's raising.
No! P'raps that desk and stool ain't made from Eden lumber. No!
P'raps no end of squatters ain't gone out there. No! P'raps there
ain't no such location in the territoary of the Great U-nited
States. Oh, no!'

'I hope you're satisfied with the success of your joke, Mark,' said
Martin.

But here, at a most opportune and happy time, the General
interposed, and called out to Scadder from the doorway to give his
friends the particulars of that little lot of fifty acres with the
house upon it; which, having belonged to the company formerly, had
lately lapsed again into their hands.

'You air a deal too open-handed, Gen'ral,' was the answer. 'It is a
lot as should be rose in price. It is.'

He grumblingly opened his books notwithstanding, and always keeping
his bright side towards Mark, no matter at what amount of
inconvenience to himself, displayed a certain leaf for their
perusal. Martin read it greedily, and then inquired:

'Now where upon the plan may this place be?'

'Upon the plan?' said Scadder.

'Yes.'

He turned towards it, and reflected for a short time, as if, having
been put upon his mettle, he was resolved to be particular to the
very minutest hair's breadth of a shade. At length, after wheeling
his toothpick slowly round and round in the air, as if it were a
carrier pigeon just thrown up, he suddenly made a dart at the
drawing, and pierced the very centre of the main wharf, through and
through.

'There!' he said, leaving his knife quivering in the wall; 'that's
where it is!'

Martin glanced with sparkling eyes upon his Co., and his Co. saw
that the thing was done.

The bargain was not concluded as easily as might have been expected
though, for Scadder was caustic and ill-humoured, and cast much
unnecessary opposition in the way; at one time requesting them to
think of it, and call again in a week or a fortnight; at another,
predicting that they wouldn't like it; at another, offering to
retract and let them off, and muttering strong imprecations upon the
folly of the General. But the whole of the astoundingly small sum
total of purchase-money--it was only one hundred and fifty dollars,
or something more than thirty pounds of the capital brought by Co.
into the architectural concern--was ultimately paid down; and
Martin's head was two inches nearer the roof of the little wooden
office, with the consciousness of being a landed proprietor in the
thriving city of Eden.

'If it shouldn't happen to fit,' said Scadder, as he gave Martin the
necessary credentials on recepit of his money, 'don't blame me.'

'No, no,' he replied merrily. 'We'll not blame you. General, are
you going?'

'I am at your service, sir; and I wish you,' said the General,
giving him his hand with grave cordiality, 'joy of your po-ssession.
You air now, sir, a denizen of the most powerful and highly-
civilised dominion that has ever graced the world; a do-minion, sir,
where man is bound to man in one vast bond of equal love and truth.
May you, sir, be worthy of your a-dopted country!'

Martin thanked him, and took leave of Mr Scadder; who had resumed
his post in the rocking-chair, immediately on the General's rising
from it, and was once more swinging away as if he had never been
disturbed. Mark looked back several times as they went down the
road towards the National Hotel, but now his blighted profile was
towards them, and nothing but attentive thoughtfulness was written
on it. Strangely different to the other side! He was not a man much
given to laughing, and never laughed outright; but every line in the
print of the crow's foot, and every little wiry vein in that
division of his head, was wrinkled up into a grin! The compound
figure of Death and the Lady at the top of the old ballad was not
divided with a greater nicety, and hadn't halves more monstrously
unlike each other, than the two profiles of Zephaniah Scadder.

The General posted along at a great rate, for the clock was on the
stroke of twelve; and at that hour precisely, the Great Meeting of
the Watertoast Sympathisers was to be holden in the public room of
the National Hotel. Being very curious to witness the
demonstration, and know what it was all about, Martin kept close to
the General; and, keeping closer than ever when they entered the
Hall, got by that means upon a little platform of tables at the
upper end; where an armchair was set for the General, and Mr La
Fayette Kettle, as secretary, was making a great display of some
foolscap documents. Screamers, no doubt.

'Well, sir!' he said, as he shook hands with Martin, 'here is a
spectacle calc'lated to make the British Lion put his tail between
his legs, and howl with anguish, I expect!'

Martin certainly thought it possible that the British Lion might
have been rather out of his element in that Ark; but he kept the
idea to himself. The General was then voted to the chair, on the
motion of a pallid lad of the Jefferson Brick school; who forthwith
set in for a high-spiced speech, with a good deal about hearths and
homes in it, and unriveting the chains of Tyranny.

Oh but it was a clincher for the British Lion, it was! The
indignation of the glowing young Columbian knew no bounds. If he
could only have been one of his own forefathers, he said, wouldn't
he have peppered that same Lion, and been to him as another Brute
Tamer with a wire whip, teaching him lessons not easily forgotten.
'Lion! (cried that young Columbian) where is he? Who is he? What
is he? Show him to me. Let me have him here. Here!' said the
young Columbian, in a wrestling attitude, 'upon this sacred altar.
Here!' cried the young Columbian, idealising the dining-table, 'upon
ancestral ashes, cemented with the glorious blood poured out like
water on our native plains of Chickabiddy Lick! Bring forth that
Lion!' said the young Columbian. 'Alone, I dare him! I taunt that
Lion. I tell that Lion, that Freedom's hand once twisted in his
mane, he rolls a corse before me, and the Eagles of the Great
Republic laugh ha, ha!'

When it was found that the Lion didn't come, but kept out of the
way; that the young Columbian stood there, with folded arms, alone
in his glory; and consequently that the Eagles were no doubt
laughing wildly on the mountain tops; such cheers arose as might
have shaken the hands upon the Horse-Guards' clock, and changed the
very mean time of the day in England's capital.

'Who is this?' Martin telegraphed to La Fayette.

The Secretary wrote something, very gravely, on a piece of paper,
twisted it up, and had it passed to him from hand to hand. It was
an improvement on the old sentiment: 'Perhaps as remarkable a man as
any in our country.'

This young Columbian was succeeded by another, to the full as
eloquent as he, who drew down storms of cheers. But both remarkable
youths, in their great excitement (for your true poetry can never
stoop to details), forgot to say with whom or what the Watertoasters
sympathized, and likewise why or wherefore they were sympathetic.
Thus Martin remained for a long time as completely in the dark as
ever; until at length a ray of light broke in upon him through the
medium of the Secretary, who, by reading the minutes of their past
proceedings, made the matter somewhat clearer. He then learned that
the Watertoast Association sympathized with a certain Public Man in
Ireland, who held a contest upon certain points with England; and
that they did so, because they didn't love England at all--not by
any means because they loved Ireland much; being indeed horribly
jealous and distrustful of its people always, and only tolerating
them because of their working hard, which made them very useful;
labour being held in greater indignity in the simple republic than
in any other country upon earth. This rendered Martin curious to
see what grounds of sympathy the Watertoast Association put forth;
nor was he long in suspense, for the General rose to read a letter
to the Public Man, which with his own hands he had written.

'Thus,' said the General, 'thus, my friends and fellow-citizens, it
runs:

'"SIR--I address you on behalf of the Watertoast Association of
United Sympathisers. It is founded, sir, in the great republic
of America! and now holds its breath, and swells the blue veins
in its forehead nigh to bursting, as it watches, sir, with feverish
intensity and sympathetic ardour, your noble efforts in the cause
of Freedom."'

At the name of Freedom, and at every repetition of that name, all
the Sympathisers roared aloud; cheering with nine times nine, and
nine times over.

'"In Freedom's name, sir--holy Freedom--I address you. In
Freedom's name, I send herewith a contribution to the funds of your
society. In Freedom's name, sir, I advert with indignation and
disgust to that accursed animal, with gore-stained whiskers, whose
rampant cruelty and fiery lust have ever been a scourge, a torment
to the world. The naked visitors to Crusoe's Island, sir; the
flying wives of Peter Wilkins; the fruit-smeared children of the
tangled bush; nay, even the men of large stature, anciently bred in
the mining districts of Cornwall; alike bear witness to its savage
nature. Where, sir, are the Cormorans, the Blunderbores, the Great
Feefofums, named in History? All, all, exterminated by its
destroying hand.

'"I allude, sir, to the British Lion.

'"Devoted, mind and body, heart and soul, to Freedom, sir--to
Freedom, blessed solace to the snail upon the cellar-door, the
oyster in his pearly bed, the still mite in his home of cheese, the
very winkle of your country in his shelly lair--in her unsullied
name, we offer you our sympathy. Oh, sir, in this our cherished and
our happy land, her fires burn bright and clear and smokeless; once
lighted up in yours, the lion shall be roasted whole.

'"I am, sir, in Freedom's name,

'"Your affectionate friend and faithful Sympathiser,

'"CYRUS CHOKE,

'"General, U.S.M."'

It happened that just as the General began to read this letter, the
railroad train arrived, bringing a new mail from England; and a
packet had been handed in to the Secretary, which during its perusal
and the frequent cheerings in homage to freedom, he had opened.
Now, its contents disturbed him very much, and the moment the
General sat down, he hurried to his side, and placed in his hand a
letter and several printed extracts from English newspapers; to
which, in a state of infinite excitement, he called his immediate
attention.

The General, being greatly heated by his own composition, was in a
fit state to receive any inflammable influence; but he had no sooner
possessed himself of the contents of these documents, than a change
came over his face, involving such a huge amount of choler and
passion, that the noisy concourse were silent in a moment, in very
wonder at the sight of him.

'My friends!' cried the General, rising; 'my friends and fellow
citizens, we have been mistaken in this man.'

'In what man?' was the cry.

'In this,' panted the General, holding up the letter he had read
aloud a few minutes before. 'I find that he has been, and is, the
advocate--consistent in it always too--of Nigger emancipation!'

If anything beneath the sky be real, those Sons of Freedom would
have pistolled, stabbed--in some way slain--that man by coward hands
and murderous violence, if he had stood among them at that time.
The most confiding of their own countrymen would not have wagered
then--no, nor would they ever peril--one dunghill straw, upon the
life of any man in such a strait. They tore the letter, cast the
fragments in the air, trod down the pieces as they fell; and yelled,
and groaned, and hissed, till they could cry no longer.

'I shall move,' said the General, when he could make himself heard,
'that the Watertoast Association of United Sympathisers be
immediately dissolved!'

Down with it! Away with it! Don't hear of it! Burn its records!
Pull the room down! Blot it out of human memory!

'But, my fellow-countrymen!' said the General, 'the contributions.
We have funds. What is to be done with the funds?'

It was hastily resolved that a piece of plate should be presented to
a certain constitutional Judge, who had laid down from the Bench the
noble principle that it was lawful for any white mob to murder any
black man; and that another piece of plate, of similar value should
be presented to a certain Patriot, who had declared from his high
place in the Legislature, that he and his friends would hang without
trial, any Abolitionist who might pay them a visit. For the
surplus, it was agreed that it should be devoted to aiding the
enforcement of those free and equal laws, which render it
incalculably more criminal and dangerous to teach a negro to read
and write than to roast him alive in a public city. These points
adjusted, the meeting broke up in great disorder, and there was an
end of the Watertoast Sympathy.

As Martin ascended to his bedroom, his eye was attracted by the
Republican banner, which had been hoisted from the house-top in
honour of the occasion, and was fluttering before a window which he
passed.

'Tut!' said Martin. 'You're a gay flag in the distance. But let a
man be near enough to get the light upon the other side and see
through you; and you are but sorry fustian!'

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

FROM WHICH IT WILL BE SEEN THAT MARTIN BECAME A LION OF HIS OWN
ACCOUNT. TOGETHER WITH THE REASON WHY

As soon as it was generally known in the National Hotel, that the
young Englishman, Mr Chuzzlewit, had purchased a 'lo-cation' in the
Valley of Eden, and intended to betake himself to that earthly
Paradise by the next steamboat, he became a popular character. Why
this should be, or how it had come to pass, Martin no more knew than
Mrs Gamp, of Kingsgate Street, High Holborn, did; but that he was
for the time being the lion, by popular election, of the Watertoast
community, and that his society was in rather inconvenient request
there could be no kind of doubt.

The first notification he received of this change in his position,
was the following epistle, written in a thin running hand--with
here and there a fat letter or two, to make the general effect more
striking--on a sheet of paper, ruled with blue lines.

'NATIONAL HOTEL,

'MONDAY MORNING.

'Dear Sir--'When I had the privillidge of being your fellow-traveller
in the cars, the day before yesterday, you offered some remarks
upon the subject of the tower of London, which (in common with my
fellow-citizens generally) I could wish to hear repeated to a public
audience.

'As secretary to the Young Men's Watertoast Association of this
town, I am requested to inform you that the Society will be proud to
hear you deliver a lecture upon the Tower of London, at their Hall
to-morrow evening, at seven o'clock; and as a large issue of
quarter-dollar tickets may be expected, your answer and consent by
bearer will be considered obliging.

'Dear Sir,

'Yours truly,

'LA FAYETTE KETTLE.

'The Honourable M. Chuzzlewit.

'P.S.--The Society would not be particular in limiting you to the
Tower of London. Permit me to suggest that any remarks upon the
Elements of Geology, or (if more convenient) upon the Writings of
your talented and witty countryman, the honourable Mr Miller, would
be well received.'

Very much aghast at this invitation, Martin wrote back, civilly
declining it; and had scarcely done so, when he received another
letter.

'No. 47, Bunker Hill Street,

'Monday Morning.

'(Private).

'Sir--I was raised in those interminable solitudes where our mighty
Mississippi (or Father of Waters) rolls his turbid flood.

'I am young, and ardent. For there is a poetry in wildness, and
every alligator basking in the slime is in himself an Epic, self-
contained. I aspirate for fame. It is my yearning and my thirst.

'Are you, sir, aware of any member of Congress in England, who would
undertake to pay my expenses to that country, and for six months
after my arrival?

'There is something within me which gives me the assurance that this
enlightened patronage would not be thrown away. In literature or
art; the bar, the pulpit, or the stage; in one or other, if not all,
I feel that I am certain to succeed.

'If too much engaged to write to any such yourself, please let me
have a list of three or four of those most likely to respond, and I
will address them through the Post Office. May I also ask you to
favour me with any critical observations that have ever presented
themselves to your reflective faculties, on "Cain, a Mystery," by
the Right Honourable Lord Byron?

'I am, Sir,

'Yours (forgive me if I add, soaringly),

'PUTNAM SMIF

'P.S.--Address your answer to America Junior, Messrs. Hancock &
Floby, Dry Goods Store, as above.'

Both of which letters, together with Martin's reply to each, were,
according to a laudable custom, much tending to the promotion of
gentlemanly feeling and social confidence, published in the next
number of the Watertoast Gazette.

He had scarcely got through this correspondence when Captain
Kedgick, the landlord, kindly came upstairs to see how he was
getting on. The Captain sat down upon the bed before he spoke; and
finding it rather hard, moved to the pillow.

'Well, sir!' said the Captain, putting his hat a little more on one
side, for it was rather tight in the crown: 'You're quite a public
man I calc'late.'

'So it seems,' retorted Martin, who was very tired.

'Our citizens, sir,' pursued the Captain, 'intend to pay their
respects to you. You will have to hold a sort of le-vee, sir, while
you're here.'

'Powers above!' cried Martin, 'I couldn't do that, my good fellow!'

'I reckon you MUST then,' said the Captain.

'Must is not a pleasant word, Captain,' urged Martin.

'Well! I didn't fix the mother language, and I can't unfix it,' said
the Captain coolly; 'else I'd make it pleasant. You must re-ceive.
That's all.'

'But why should I receive people who care as much for me as I care
for them?' asked Martin.

'Well! because I have had a muniment put up in the bar,' returned
the Captain.

'A what?' cried Martin.

'A muniment,' rejoined the Captain.

Martin looked despairingly at Mark, who informed him that the
Captain meant a written notice that Mr Chuzzlewit would receive the
Watertoasters that day, at and after two o'clock which was in effect
then hanging in the bar, as Mark, from ocular inspection of the
same, could testify.

'You wouldn't be unpop'lar, I know,' said the Captain, paring his
nails. 'Our citizens an't long of riling up, I tell you; and our
Gazette could flay you like a wild cat.'

Martin was going to be very wroth, but he thought better of it, and
said:

'In Heaven's name let them come, then.'

'Oh, THEY'll come,' returned the Captain. 'I have seen the big room
fixed a'purpose, with my eyes.'

'But will you,' said Martin, seeing that the Captain was about to
go; 'will you at least tell me this? What do they want to see me
for? what have I done? and how do they happen to have such a sudden
interest in me?'

Captain Kedgick put a thumb and three fingers to each side of the
brim of his hat; lifted it a little way off his head; put it on
again carefully; passed one hand all down his face, beginning at the
forehead and ending at the chin; looked at Martin; then at Mark;
then at Martin again; winked, and walked out.

'Upon my life, now!' said Martin, bringing his hand heavily upon the
table; 'such a perfectly unaccountable fellow as that, I never saw.
Mark, what do you say to this?'

'Why, sir,' returned his partner, 'my opinion is that we must have
got to the MOST remarkable man in the country at last. So I hope
there's an end to the breed, sir.'

Although this made Martin laugh, it couldn't keep off two o'clock.
Punctually, as the hour struck, Captain Kedgick returned to hand him
to the room of state; and he had no sooner got him safe there, than
he bawled down the staircase to his fellow-citizens below, that Mr
Chuzzlewit was 'receiving.'

Up they came with a rush. Up they came until the room was full,
and, through the open door, a dismal perspective of more to come,
was shown upon the stairs. One after another, one after another,
dozen after dozen, score after score, more, more, more, up they
came; all shaking hands with Martin. Such varieties of hands, the
thick, the thin, the short, the long, the fat, the lean, the coarse,
the fine; such differences of temperature, the hot, the cold, the
dry, the moist, the flabby; such diversities of grasp, the tight,
the loose, the short-lived, and the lingering! Still up, up, up,
more, more, more; and ever and anon the Captain's voice was heard
above the crowd--'There's more below! there's more below. Now,
gentlemen you that have been introduced to Mr Chuzzlewit, will you
clear gentlemen? Will you clear? Will you be so good as clear,
gentlemen, and make a little room for more?'

Regardless of the Captain's cries, they didn't clear at all, but
stood there, bolt upright and staring. Two gentlemen connected with
the Watertoast Gazette had come express to get the matter for an
article on Martin. They had agreed to divide the labour. One of
them took him below the waistcoat. One above. Each stood directly
in front of his subject with his head a little on one side, intent
on his department. If Martin put one boot before the other, the
lower gentleman was down upon him; he rubbed a pimple on his nose,
and the upper gentleman booked it. He opened his mouth to speak,
and the same gentleman was on one knee before him, looking in at his
teeth, with the nice scrutiny of a dentist. Amateurs in the
physiognomical and phrenological sciences roved about him with
watchful eyes and itching fingers, and sometimes one, more daring
than the rest, made a mad grasp at the back of his head, and
vanished in the crowd. They had him in all points of view: in
front, in profile, three-quarter face, and behind. Those who were
not professional or scientific, audibly exchanged opinions on his
looks. New lights shone in upon him, in respect of his nose.
Contradictory rumours were abroad on the subject of his hair. And
still the Captain's voice was heard--so stifled by the concourse,
that he seemed to speak from underneath a feather-bed--exclaiming--
'Gentlemen, you that have been introduced to Mr Chuzzlewit, WILL you
clear?'