CHAPTER XIX

Moving On

It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good

ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed,

iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing

clippers are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of

ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their

papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where. The

courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep.

Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might

sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there,

walk.

The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants’ Inn, and Lincoln’s Inn even

unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where stranded

proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided

stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of

Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation.

Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and

parcels are to be left at the Porter’s Lodge by the bushel. A crop of

grass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement outside

Lincoln’s Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing to

do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over

their heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it

thoughtfully.

There is only one judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week to

sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his

circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats,

no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved

gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the

judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays

from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he

comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer!

The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How

England can get on through four long summer months without its

bar—which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only

legitimate triumph in prosperity—is beside the question; assuredly

that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The

learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the

unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the

opposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is doing

infinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland. The learned

gentleman who does the withering business and who blights all

opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a French

watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the

smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very

learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery

complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has become great in

knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy bench with

legal “chaff,” inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the

initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity

and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same

great palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at the

second cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, and sprinkled

on the sea-sand all over the English coast. Scarcely one is to be

encountered in the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such a lonely

member of the bar do flit across the waste, and come upon a prowling

suitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his anxiety,

they frighten one another and retreat into opposite shades.

It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young

clerks are madly in love, and according to their various degrees,

pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or

Gravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their families too large.

All the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of Court and pant about

staircases and other dry places seeking water give short howls of

aggravation. All the blind men’s dogs in the streets draw their

masters against pumps or trip them over buckets. A shop with a

sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and silver fish

in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot that it is, to

the adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, and

keeps them simmering all night.

There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be

cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in

dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those

retirements seem to blaze. In Mr. Krook’s court, it is so hot that

the people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the

pavement—Mr. Krook included, who there pursues his studies, with his

cat (who never is too hot) by his side. The Sol’s Arms has

discontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little Swills

is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he comes out

in quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a juvenile

complexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of

the most fastidious mind.

Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of

rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long

vacation. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook’s Court, Cursitor

Street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a

sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as a

law-stationer aforesaid. He has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn

and in the Rolls Yard during the long vacation than at other seasons,

and he says to the two ’prentices, what a thing it is in such hot

weather to think that you live in an island with the sea a-rolling

and a-bowling right round you.

Guster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon

in the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby have it in

contemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather

select than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and no more. From

Mr. Chadband’s being much given to describe himself, both verbally

and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken by strangers

for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is, as he expresses

it, “in the ministry.” Mr. Chadband is attached to no particular

denomination and is considered by his persecutors to have nothing so

very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render his

volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience;

but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of the number. Mrs.

Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel,

Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that Bark A 1, when she

was something flushed by the hot weather.

“My little woman,” says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn,

“likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!”

So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the

handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of

holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little

drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the

portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth,

the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision

made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin

slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows

of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be

brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For Chadband is

rather a consuming vessel—the persecutors say a gorging vessel—and

can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably

well.

Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when

they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his

hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, “At what time did you expect Mr. and Mrs.

Chadband, my love?”

“At six,” says Mrs. Snagsby.

Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that “it’s gone that.”

“Perhaps you’d like to begin without them,” is Mrs. Snagsby’s

reproachful remark.

Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he says,

with his cough of mildness, “No, my dear, no. I merely named the

time.”

“What’s time,” says Mrs. Snagsby, “to eternity?”

“Very true, my dear,” says Mr. Snagsby. “Only when a person lays in

victuals for tea, a person does it with a view—perhaps—more to

time. And when a time is named for having tea, it’s better to come up

to it.”

“To come up to it!” Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. “Up to it! As

if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!”

“Not at all, my dear,” says Mr. Snagsby.

Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes

rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular

ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr.

and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner

door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is

admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her

patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much

discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order)

by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to

announce “Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay,

whatsername!” and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.

Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general

appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs.

Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves

softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk

upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were

inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a

perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting

up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is

going to edify them.

“My friends,” says Mr. Chadband, “peace be on this house! On the

master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on

the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is

it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and

beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore,

my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours.”

In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr. Snagsby

thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well received.

“Now, my friends,” proceeds Mr. Chadband, “since I am upon this

theme—”

Guster presents herself. Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice and

without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful

distinctness, “Go away!”

“Now, my friends,” says Chadband, “since I am upon this theme, and in

my lowly path improving it—”

Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur “one thousing seven hundred

and eighty-two.” The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, “Go away!”

“Now, my friends,” says Mr. Chadband, “we will inquire in a spirit of

love—”

Still Guster reiterates “one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two.”

Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be

persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile,

says, “Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!”

“One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. Which

he wish to know what the shilling ware for,” says Guster, breathless.

“For?” returns Mrs. Chadband. “For his fare!”

Guster replied that “he insistes on one and eightpence or on

summonsizzing the party.” Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are

proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets the

tumult by lifting up his hand.

“My friends,” says he, “I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It

is right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought not to

murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!”

While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby, as

who should say, “You hear this apostle!” and while Mr. Chadband glows

with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money. It is Mr.

Chadband’s habit—it is the head and front of his pretensions

indeed—to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the

smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.

“My friends,” says Chadband, “eightpence is not much; it might justly

have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown.

O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!”

With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in

verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair,

lifts up his admonitory hand.

“My friends,” says he, “what is this which we now behold as being

spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my

friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because

we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of

the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We

cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?”

Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to

observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, “No wings.” But is

immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.

“I say, my friends,” pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and

obliterating Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion, “why can we not fly? Is it

because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends,

without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength,

my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double

up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground.

Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive

the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it,” says Chadband,

glancing over the table, “from bread in various forms, from butter

which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow,

from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from

sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good

things which are set before us!”

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr.

Chadband’s piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after

this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their

determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody’s

experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and

much admired.

Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at

Mr. Snagsby’s table and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion

of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned

appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this

exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be

described as always becoming a kind of considerable oil mills or

other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale

scale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook’s Court,

Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business that the

warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.

At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered

her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means

of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt—among which

may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing

military music on Mr. Chadband’s head with plates, and afterwards

crowning that gentleman with muffins—at which period of the

entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that he is wanted.

“And being wanted in the—not to put too fine a point upon it—in the

shop,” says Mr. Snagsby, rising, “perhaps this good company will

excuse me for half a minute.”

Mr. Snagsby descends and finds the two ’prentices intently

contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.

“Why, bless my heart,” says Mr. Snagsby, “what’s the matter!”

“This boy,” says the constable, “although he’s repeatedly told to,

won’t move on—”

“I’m always a-moving on, sar,” cries the boy, wiping away his grimy

tears with his arm. “I’ve always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever

since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor I do

move!”

“He won’t move on,” says the constable calmly, with a slight

professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his

stiff stock, “although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and

therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He’s as obstinate a

young gonoph as I know. He WON’T move on.”

“Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!” cries the boy, clutching quite

desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of

Mr. Snagsby’s passage.

“Don’t you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of

you!” says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. “My

instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five

hundred times.”

“But where?” cries the boy.

“Well! Really, constable, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby wistfully, and

coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt,

“really, that does seem a question. Where, you know?”

“My instructions don’t go to that,” replies the constable. “My

instructions are that this boy is to move on.”

Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the

great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years

in this business to set you the example of moving on. The one grand

recipe remains for you—the profound philosophical prescription—the

be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on!

You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can’t at

all agree about that. Move on!

Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all indeed,

but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any

direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Snagsby,

hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having

never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.

“The simple question is, sir,” says the constable, “whether you know

this boy. He says you do.”

Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, “No he don’t!”

“My lit-tle woman!” says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase. “My

love, permit me! Pray have a moment’s patience, my dear. I do know

something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can’t say that

there’s any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable.” To whom the

law-stationer relates his Joful and woeful experience, suppressing

the half-crown fact.

“Well!” says the constable, “so far, it seems, he had grounds for

what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you

knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was

acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if

I’d call and make the inquiry, he’d appear. The young man don’t seem

inclined to keep his word, but—Oh! Here IS the young man!”

Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby and touches his hat with the

chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.

“I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this row

going on,” says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer, “and as your name was

mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into.”

“It was very good-natured of you, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I am

obliged to you.” And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience, again

suppressing the half-crown fact.

“Now, I know where you live,” says the constable, then, to Jo. “You

live down in Tom-all-Alone’s. That’s a nice innocent place to live

in, ain’t it?”

“I can’t go and live in no nicer place, sir,” replies Jo. “They

wouldn’t have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice innocent

place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such

a reg’lar one as me!”

“You are very poor, ain’t you?” says the constable.

“Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin’ral,” replies Jo. “I leave

you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him,” says the

constable, producing them to the company, “in only putting my hand

upon him!”

“They’re wot’s left, Mr. Snagsby,” says Jo, “out of a sov-ring as wos

give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to

my crossin one night and asked to be showd this ’ere ouse and the

ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground

wot he’s berrid in. She ses to me she ses ‘are you the boy at the

inkwhich?’ she ses. I ses ‘yes’ I ses. She ses to me she ses ‘can you

show me all them places?’ I ses ‘yes I can’ I ses. And she ses to me

‘do it’ and I dun it and she giv me a sov’ring and hooked it. And I

an’t had much of the sov’ring neither,” says Jo, with dirty tears,

“fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-Alone’s, afore they’d

square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved

another five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence

and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it.”

“You don’t expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the

sovereign, do you?” says the constable, eyeing him aside with

ineffable disdain.

“I don’t know as I do, sir,” replies Jo. “I don’t expect nothink at

all, sir, much, but that’s the true hist’ry on it.”

“You see what he is!” the constable observes to the audience. “Well,

Mr. Snagsby, if I don’t lock him up this time, will you engage for

his moving on?”

“No!” cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs.

“My little woman!” pleads her husband. “Constable, I have no doubt

he’ll move on. You know you really must do it,” says Mr. Snagsby.

“I’m everyways agreeable, sir,” says the hapless Jo.

“Do it, then,” observes the constable. “You know what you have got to

do. Do it! And recollect you won’t get off so easy next time. Catch

hold of your money. Now, the sooner you’re five mile off, the better

for all parties.”

With this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun as

a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good

afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook’s Court perform slow music for

him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat

in his hand for a little ventilation.

Now, Jo’s improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has

awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr. Guppy,

who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has

been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation,

takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular

cross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by

the ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs

and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of

the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy

yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into

the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as a

witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape

like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him

according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such

model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing and of its

being lengthy, for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent, and Mrs.

Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition,

but that it lifts her husband’s establishment higher up in the law.

During the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband,

being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground and waits to be

floated off.

“Well!” says Mr. Guppy. “Either this boy sticks to it like

cobbler’s-wax or there is something out of the common here that beats

anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy’s.”

Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, “You don’t say

so!”

“For years!” replied Mrs. Chadband.

“Has known Kenge and Carboy’s office for years,” Mrs. Snagsby

triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. “Mrs. Chadband—this gentleman’s

wife—Reverend Mr. Chadband.”

“Oh, indeed!” says Mr. Guppy.

“Before I married my present husband,” says Mrs. Chadband.

“Was you a party in anything, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy, transferring

his cross-examination.

“No.”

“NOT a party in anything, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy.

Mrs. Chadband shakes her head.

“Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in

something, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to

model his conversation on forensic principles.

“Not exactly that, either,” replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the joke

with a hard-favoured smile.

“Not exactly that, either!” repeats Mr. Guppy. “Very good. Pray,

ma’am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions

(we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and

Carboy’s office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take

time, ma’am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma’am?”

“Neither,” says Mrs. Chadband as before.

“Oh! A child!” says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Snagsby

the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British

jurymen. “Now, ma’am, perhaps you’ll have the kindness to tell us

WHAT child.”

“You have got it at last, sir,” says Mrs. Chadband with another

hard-favoured smile. “Well, sir, it was before your time, most

likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child

named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and

Carboy.”

“Miss Summerson, ma’am!” cries Mr. Guppy, excited.

“I call her Esther Summerson,” says Mrs. Chadband with austerity.

“There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther.

‘Esther, do this! Esther, do that!’ and she was made to do it.”

“My dear ma’am,” returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small

apartment, “the humble individual who now addresses you received that

young lady in London when she first came here from the establishment

to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking

you by the hand.”

Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed

signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his

pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers “Hush!”

“My friends,” says Chadband, “we have partaken in moderation” (which

was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) “of the

comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon

the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may

it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it

proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of

anything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of

spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual

profit? My young friend, stand forth!”

Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch

forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent

Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions.

“My young friend,” says Chadband, “you are to us a pearl, you are to

us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my

young friend?”

“I don’t know,” replies Jo. “I don’t know nothink.”

“My young friend,” says Chadband, “it is because you know nothing

that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young

friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A

fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A

human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young

friend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom,

because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now

deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a

stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.

O running stream of sparkling joy

To be a soaring human boy!

And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No.

Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a

state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because

you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of

bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of

love, inquire.”

At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have

been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his

face and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses

her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.

“My friends,” says Mr. Chadband with his persecuted chin folding

itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, “it is right that

I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right

that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I

stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three

hours’ improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor

has accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be

joyful!”

Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby.

“My friends,” says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, “I will

not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my

young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to

deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty

swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the

day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?”

(This with a cow-like lightness.)

Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms,

gives a shuffling nod. Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs.

Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But

before he goes downstairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken

meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms.

So, Mr. Chadband—of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he

should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable

nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave

off, having once the audacity to begin—retires into private life

until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo

moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge,

where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his repast.

And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great

cross on the summit of St. Paul’s Cathedral, glittering above a

red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy’s face one might

suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion

of the great, confused city—so golden, so high up, so far out of his

reach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the

crowd flowing by him in two streams—everything moving on to some

purpose and to one end—until he is stirred up and told to “move on”

too.