 Chapter 25 Scenes from Sketches by Boz. The Force of Habit is a trite phrase in everybody's mouth, and it is not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to others unconsciously afford in their own persons single examples of the power which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men, and of the little reflection they are apt to bestow on subjects with which every day's experience has rendered them familiar. If Bedlam could be suddenly removed like another Aladdin's palace, and set down on the space now occupied by Newgate, scarcely one man out of a hundred whose road to business every morning lies through Newgate Street, or the Old Bailey, would pass the building without bestowing a hasty glance on its small, grated windows, and a transient thought upon the condition of the unhappy beings immured in its dismal cells. And yet these same men, day by day and hour by hour, pass and repass this gloomy depository of the guilt and misery of London in one perpetual stream of life and bustle, utterly unmindful of the throng of wretched creatures pent up within it, nay, not even knowing, or if they do not heeding, the fact that as they pass one particular angle of the massive wall with a light laugh or a merry whistle, they stand within one yard of a fellow creature, bound and helpless, whose hours are numbered, from whom the last feeble way of hope has fled forever, and whose miserable career will shock-determinate in a violent and shameful death. Contact with death, even in its least terrible shape, is solemn and appalling, how much more awful it is to reflect on this near vicinity to the dying, to men in full health and bigger, in the flower of youth or the prime of life, with all their faculties and perceptions as acute and perfect as your own, but dying nevertheless, dying as surely, with the hand of death imprinted upon them as indelibly, as if mortal disease had wasted their frames to shadows, and corruption had already begun. It was with some such thoughts as these that we determined, not many weeks since, to visit the interior of Newgate, in an amateur capacity of course, and, having carried our intention into effect, we proceeded to lay its results before our readers in the hope, founded more upon the nature of the subject than on any presumptuous confidence in our own descriptive powers, that this paper may not be found wholly devoid of interest. We have only to premise that we do not intend to fatigue the reader with any statistical accounts of the prison. They will be found at length in numerous reports of numerous committees, and a variety of authorities of equal weight. We took no notes, made no memoranda, measured none of the yards, ascertained the exact number of inches in no particular room, are unable even to report of how many apartments the jail is composed. We saw the prison, and saw the prisoners, and what we did see, and what we thought, we will tell at once in our own way. Having delivered our credentials to the servant who answered our knock at the door of the Governor's house, we were ushered into the office, a little room on the right-hand side as you enter, with two windows looking into the old Bailey, fitted up like an ordinary attorney's office, or merchant's counting-house, with the usual fixtures, a wainscotted partition, a shelf or two, a desk, a couple of stools, a pair of clerks, an almanac, a clock, and a few maps. After a little delay, occasioned by sending into the interior of the prison for the officer whose duty it was to conduct us, that functionary arrived, a respectable-looking man of about two or three and fifty, in a broad brimmed hat, and a full suit of black, who, but for his keys, would have looked quite as much like a clergyman as a turnkey. We were disappointed. He had not even top boots on. Following our conductor by a door opposite to that at which we had entered, we arrived at a small room, without any other furniture than a little desk, with a book for visitors' autographs and a shelf, on which were a few boxes for papers, and casts of the heads and faces of the two notorious murderers, Bishop and Williams, the former in particular exhibiting a style of head and set of features, which might have afforded sufficient moral grounds for his instant execution at any time, even had there been no other evidence against him. Leaving this room also by an opposite door, we found ourselves in the lodge which opens on the Old Bailey, one side of which is plentifully garnished with a choice collection of heavy sets of irons, including those worn by the redoubtable Jack Shepard, genuine, and those said to have been graced by the sturdy limbs of the no less celebrated Dick Turpin, doubtful. From this lodge, a heavy oaken gate, bound with iron, studded with nails of the same material, and guarded by another turnkey, opens on a few steps, if we remember right, which terminate in a narrow and dismal stone passage, running parallel with the Old Bailey, and leading to the different yards through a number of torturous and intricate windings, guarded in their turn by huge gates and gratings, whose appearance is sufficient to dispel at once the slightest hope of escape that any newcomer may have entertained, and the very recollection of which, on eventually traversing the place again, involves one in a maze of confusion. It is necessary to explain here that the buildings in the prison, or in other words the different wards, form a square of which the four sides abut respectively on the Old Bailey, the Old College of Positions, now forming a part of Newgate Market, the Sessions House, and Newgate Street. The intermediate space is divided into several paved yards, in which the prisoners take such air and exercise as can be had in such a place. These yards, with the exception of that in which prisoners under sentence of death are confined, of which we shall presently give a more detailed description, run parallel with Newgate Street, and consequently from the Old Bailey, as it were, to Newgate Market. The women's side is in the right wing of the prison nearest the Sessions House. As we were introduced into this part of the building first, we will adopt the same order, and introduce our readers to it also. Turning to the right, then, down the passage to which we just now averted, omitting any mention of intervening gates, for if we noticed every gate that was unlocked for us to pass through, and locked again as soon as we had passed, we should require a gate at every comma. We came to a door composed of thick bars of wood, through which were discernable, passing to and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty women, the majority of whom, however, as soon as they were aware of the presence of strangers, retreated to their wards. One side of this yard is railed off at a considerable distance, and formed into a kind of iron cage, about five feet ten inches in height, roofed at the top, and defended in front by iron bars, from which the friends of the female prisoners communicate with them. In one corner of this singular-looking den was a yellow, haggard, decrepit old woman, in a tattered gown that had once been black, and the remains of an old straw bonnet, with faded ribbon of the same hue, in earnest conversation with a young girl, a prisoner, of course, of about two and twenty. It is impossible to imagine a more poverty-stricken object, or a creature so born down in soul and body, by excess of misery and destitution, as the old woman. The girl was a good-looking, robust female, with a profusion of hair streaming about in the wind, for she had no bonnet on, and a man's silk pocket handkerchief loosely thrown over a most ample pair of shoulders. The old woman was talking in that low, stifled tone of voice, which tells so forcibly of mental anguish, and every now and then burst into an irrepressible, sharp, abrupt cry of grief, the most distressing sound that ears can hear. The girl was perfectly unmoved. Hardened beyond all hope of redemption, she listened doggedly to her mother's entreaties, whatever they were. And beyond inquiring after gem, and eagerly catching at the few half-pence her miserable parent had brought her, took no more apparent interest in the conversation than the most unconcerned spectators. Heaven knows there were enough of them, in the persons of the other prisoners in the yard, who were no more concerned by what was passing before their eyes, and within their hearing, than if they were blind and deaf. Why should they be? Inside the prison and out, such scenes were too familiar to them to excite even a passing thought, unless of ridicule or contempt for feelings which they had long since forgotten. A little farther on, a squalid-looking woman in a slovenly, thick-bordered cap, with her arms muffled in a large red shawl, the fringed ends of which straggled nearly to the bottom of a dirty white apron, was communicating some instructions to her visitor, her daughter, evidently. The girl was thinly clad, and shaking with the cold. Some ordinary word of recognition passed between her and her mother when she appeared at the grating, but neither hope, condolence, regret nor affection was expressed on either side. The mother whispered her instructions, and the girl received them with her pinched-up, half-starved features twisted into an expression of careful cunning. It was some scheme for the woman's defence that she was disclosing, perhaps, and a sullen smile came over the girl's face for an instant, as if she were pleased, not so much at the probability of her mother's liberation, as at the chance of her getting off in spite of her prosecutors. The dialogue was soon concluded, and with the same careless indifference with which they had approached each other, the mother turned towards the inner end of the yard, and the girl to the gate at which she had entered. The girl belonged to a class, unhappily but too extensive, the very existence of which should make men's hearts bleed. Barely past her childhood it required but a glance to discover that she was one of those children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who have never known what childhood is, who have never been taught to love and caught a parent's smile, or to dread a parent's frown. The thousands nameless endearments of childhood, its gaility, and its innocence are alike unknown to them. They have entered at once upon the stern realities and miseries of life, and to their better nature it is almost hopeless to appeal in after times, by any of the references which will awaken, if it be only for a moment, some good feeling in ordinary bosoms, however corrupt they may have become. Talk to them of parental solitude, the happy days of childhood, and the merry games of infancy. Tell them of hunger and the streets, beggary and stripes, the gin shop, the station house, and the pawnbrokers, and they will understand you. Two or three women were standing at different parts of the grating, conversing with their friends, but a very large proportion of the prisoners appeared to have no friends at all, beyond such of their old companions as might happen to be within the walls. So, passing hastily down the yard, and pausing only for an instant to notice the little incidents we have just recorded, we were conducted up a clean and well-lighted flight of stone stairs to one of the wards. There are several in this part of the building, but a description of one is a description of the whole. It was a spacious, bare, whitewashed apartment, lighted, of course, by windows looking into the interior of the prison, but far more light and airy than one could reasonably expect to find in such a situation. There was a large fire with a deal-table before it, round which ten or a dozen women were seated on wooden forms at dinner. Along both sides of the room run a shelf. Below it, at regular intervals, a row of large hooks was fixed in the wall, on each of which was hung the sleeping mat of a prisoner, her rug and blanket being folded up, and placed on the shelf above. At night these mats are placed on the floor, each beneath the hook on which it hangs during the day, and the ward is thus made to answer the purposes both of a day-room and sleeping apartment. Over the fireplace was a large sheet of pasteboard, on which were displayed a variety of text from Scripture, which were also scutted about the room in scraps about the size and shape of the copy slips which are used in schools. On the table was a sufficient provision of a kind of stewed beef and brown bread, in pewter dishes, which are kept perfectly bright and displayed on shelves in great order and regularity when they are not in use. The women rose hastily on our entrance, and retired in a hurried manner to either side of the fireplace. They were all cleanly, many of them decently attired, and there was nothing peculiar either in their appearance or demeanour. One or two resumed the needle-work which they had probably laid aside at the commencement of their meal. Others gazed at the visitors with listless curiosity, and a few retired behind their companions to the very end of the room, as if desirous to avoid even the casual observation of the strangers. Some old Irish women, both in this and other wards, to whom the thing was no novelty, appeared perfectly indifferent to our presence, and remained standing close to the seats from which they had just risen. But the general feeling among the females seemed to be one of uneasiness during the period of our stay among them, which was very brief. Not a word was uttered during the time of our remaining, unless indeed by the wardswoman in reply to some question which we put to the turnkey who accompanied us. In every ward on the female side, a wardswoman is appointed to preserve order, and a similar regulation is adopted among the males. The wardsmen and wardswomen are all prisoners selected for good conduct. They alone are allowed the privilege of sleeping on bedsteads, a small stump of a bedstead being placed in every ward for that purpose. On both sides of the jail is a small receiving room to which prisoners are conducted on their first reception, and whence they cannot be removed until they have been examined by the surgeon of the prison. Retracing our steps to the dismal passage in which we found ourselves at first, and which, by the by, contains three or four dark cells for the accommodation of refractory prisoners, we were led through a narrow yard to the school, a portion of the prison set apart for boys under fourteen years of age. In a tolerable-sized room in which were writing materials and some copy books was the schoolmaster, with a couple of his pupils, the remainder having been fetched from an adjoining apartment. The whole were drawn up in line for our inspection. There were fourteen of them in all, some in shoes, some without, some in pinafores without jackets, others in jackets without pinafores, and one in scarce anything at all. The whole number, without an exception, we believe, had been committed for trial on charges of pocket-picking, and fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld. There was not one redeeming feature among them, not a glance of honesty, not a wink expressive of anything but the gallows and the hulks in the whole collection, as to anything like shame or contrition that was entirely out of the question. They were evidently quite gratified at being thought worth the trouble of looking at. Their idea appeared to be that we had come to see Newgate as a grand affair, and that they were an indispensable part of the show. And every boy, as he fell into the line, actually seemed as pleased and important as if he had done something excessively meritorious in getting there at all. We never looked upon a more disagreeable sight, because we never saw fourteen such hopeless creatures of neglect before. On either side of the schoolyard is a yard for men, in one of which, that towards Newgate Street, prisoners of the more respectable class are confined. Of the other we have little description to offer, as the different wards necessarily partake of the same character. They are provided, like the wards on the women's side, with mats and rugs, which are disposed of in the same manner during the day. The only very striking difference between their appearance and that of the wards inhabited by the females, is the utter absence of any employment. Huddled together on two opposite forms by the fireside, sit twenty men, perhaps, here, a boy in livery there, a man in a rough great coat and top boots farther on, a desperate-looking fellow in his shirt sleeves, with an old scotch cap on his shaggy head, near him again, a tall ruffian in a smoke frock, next to him a miserable being of distressed appearance, with his head resting on his hand, all alike in one respect, all idle and listless. When they do leave the fire, sauntering moodily about, lounging in the window or leaning against the wall, vacantly swinging their bodies to and fro, with the exception of a man reading an old newspaper in two or three instances, this was the case in every ward we entered. The only communication these men have with their friends is through two close iron gratings, with an intermediate space of about a yard in width between the two, so that nothing can be handed across, nor can the prisoner have any communication by touch with the person who visits him. The married men have a separate grating, at which to see their wives, but its construction is the same. The prison chapel is situated at the back of the governor's house, the latter having no windows looking into the interior of the prison. Whether the associations connected with the place, the knowledge that here a portion of the burial services, on some dreadful occasions, performed over the quick and not upon the dead, cast over it a still more gloomy and somber air than art has imparted to it, we know not, but its appearance is very striking. There is something in a silent and deserted place of worship, solemn and impressive at any time, and the very dissimilarity of this one, from any we have been accustomed to, only enhances the impression. The meanness of its appointments, the bare and scanty pulpit, with the paltry-painted pillar on either side, the women's gallery with its great heavy curtain, the men's with its unpainted benches and dingy front, the tottering little table at the altar, with the commandments on the wall above it, scarcely legible through lack of paint and dust and damp, so unlike the velvet and gilding, the marble and wood of a modern church, are strange and striking. There is one object too, which rivets the attention and fascinates the gaze, and from which we may turn horror-stricken in vain, for the recollection of it will haunt us, waking and sleeping for a long time afterwards. Immediately below the reading-desk on the floor of the chapel, and forming the most conspicuous object in its little area, is the condemned pew, a huge black pen in which the wretched people who are singled out for death are placed on the Sunday preceding their execution, in sight of all their fellow prisoners, from many of whom they may have been separated but a week before, to hear prayers for their own souls, to join in the responses of their own burial service, and to listen to an address, warning their recent companions to take example by their fate, and urging themselves while there is yet time, nearly four and twenty hours, to turn and flee from the wrath to come. Imagine what have been the feelings of the men whom that fearful pew has enclosed, and of whom, between the gallows and the knife, no mortal remnant may now remain. Think of the hopeless clinging to life to the last, and the wild despair, far exceeding in anguish the felon's death itself, by which they have heard the certainty of their speedy transmission to another world, with all their crimes upon their heads, rung into their ears by the officiating clergyman. At one time, and at no distant period either, the coffins of the men about to be executed were placed in that pew upon the seat by their side during the whole service. It may seem incredible, but it is true. Let us hope that the increased spirit of civilization and humanity which abolished this frightful and degrading custom may extend itself to other usages equally barbarous—usages which have not even the plea of utility in their defence, as every year's experience has shown them to be more and more inefficacious. Leaving the chapel and descending to the passage so frequently alluded to, and crossing the yard before noticed as being allotted to prisoners of a more respectable description than the generality of men confined here, the visitor arrives at a thick iron gate of great size and strength. Having been admitted through it by the turnkey on duty, he turns sharp round to the left, and pauses before another gate, and having passed this last barrier, he stands in the most terrible part of this gloomy building—the condemned ward. The press-yard, well known by name to newspaper readers, from its frequent mention in accounts of executions, is at the corner of the building, and next to the ordinary's house in Newgate Street, running from Newgate Street towards the centre of the prison parallel with Newgate Market. It is a long, narrow court of which the portion of the wall in Newgate Street forms one end, and the gate the other. At the upper end, on the left hand, that is, adjoining the wall in Newgate Street, is a cistern of water, and at the bottom a double grating, of which the gate itself forms a part, similar to that before described. Through these grates the prisoners are allowed to see their friends, a turnkey always remaining in the vacant space between during the whole interview. Immediately on the right as you enter is a building containing the press room, day room, and cells. The yard is on every side surrounded by lofty walls, guarded by chervaux de frise, and the whole is under the constant inspection of vigilant and experienced turnkeys. In the first apartment into which we were conducted, which was at the top of a staircase, and immediately over the press room, were five and twenty or thirty prisoners, all under sentence of death, awaiting the result of the recorder's report. Men of all ages and appearances, from a hardened old offender with swarthy face and grizzled beard of three days' growth, to a handsome boy, not fourteen years old, and of singularly youthful appearance even for that age, who had been condemned for burglary. There was nothing remarkable in the appearance of these prisoners. One or two decently dressed men were brooding with a dejected air over the fire. Several little groups of two or three had been engaged in conversation at the upper end of the room, or in the windows, and the remainder were crowded round a young man seated at a table, who appeared to be engaged in teaching the younger ones to write. The room was large, airy, and clean. There was very little anxiety or mental suffering depicted in the countenance of any of the men. They had all been sentenced to death. It is true, and the recorder's report had not yet been made. But we question whether there was a man among them, notwithstanding, who did not know that although he had undergone the ceremony, it never was intended that his life should be sacrificed. On the table lay a testament, but there were no tokens of its having been in recent use. In the press room below were three men, the nature of whose offence rendered it necessary to separate them, even from their companions in guilt. It was a long sombre room, with two windows sunk into the stone wall, and here the wretched men are pinioned on the morning of their execution, before moving towards the scaffold. The fate of one of these prisoners was uncertain, some mitigatory circumstances having come to light since his trial, which had been humanely represented in the proper quarter. The other two had nothing to expect from the mercy of the crown. Their doom was sealed. No plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world. The two short ones, the turnkey whispered, were dead men. The man to whom we have alluded as entertaining some hopes of escape was lounging at the greatest distance he could place between himself and his companions in the window nearest to the door. He was probably aware of our approach, and had assumed an air of courageous indifference. His face was purposely averted towards the window, and he stirred not an inch while we were present. The other two men were at the upper end of the room. One of them, who was imperfectly seen in the dim light, had his back towards us, and was stooping over the fire with his right arm on the mantelpiece, and his head sunk upon it. The other was leaning on the sill of the farthest window. The light fell upon him, and communicated to his pale, haggard face and disordered hair, an appearance which, at that distance, was ghastly. His cheek rested upon his hand, and, with his face little raised and his eyes wildly staring before him, he seemed to be unconsciously intent on counting the chinks in the opposite wall. We passed this room again afterwards. The first man was pacing up and down the court with a firm military step. He had been a soldier in the foot-guards, and a cloth-cap jointly thrown on one side of his head. He bowed respectfully to our conductor, and the salute was returned. The other two still remained in the positions we have described, and were as motionless as statues. A few paces up the yard, and forming a continuation of the building, in which are the two rooms we have just quitted, lie the condemned cells. The entrance is by a narrow and obscure staircase leading to a dark passage, in which a charcoal stove casts lurid tint over the objects in its immediate vicinity, and diffuses something like warmth around. From the left-hand side of this passage, the massive door of every cell on the story opens, and from it alone can they be approached. There are three of these passages, and three of these ranges of cells, one above the other, but in size, furniture, and appearance, they are all precisely alike. Prior to the recorder's report being made, all the prisoners under sentence of death are removed from the day-room at five o'clock in the afternoon, and locked up in these cells, where they are allowed a candle until ten o'clock, and here they remain until seven the next morning. When the warrant for a prisoner's execution arrives, he is removed to the cells and confined in one of them until he leaves it for the scaffold. He is at liberty to walk in the yard, but, both in his walks and in his cell, he is constantly attended by a turnkey who never leaves him on any pretense. We entered the first cell. It was a stone dungeon, eight feet long by six wide, with a bench at the upper end, under which were a common rug, a bible, and prayer-book. An iron candlestick was fixed into the wall at the side, and a small high window in the back admitted as much air and light as could struggle in between a double row of heavy-cost iron bars. It contained no other furniture of any description. Conceived the situation of a man, spending his last night on earth in this cell. Boyed up with some vague and undefined hope of reprieve, he knew not why. Indulging in some wild and visionary idea of escaping, he knew not how. All after all of the three preceding days allowed him for preparation, has fled with a speed which no man living would deem possible, for none but this dying man can know. He has wearied his friends with entreaties, exhausted the attendants with importunities, neglected in his feverish restlessness the timely warnings of his spiritual consola, and now that the illusion is at last dispelled, now that eternity is before him and guilt behind, now that his fears of death amount almost to madness, and an overwhelming sense of his helpless, hopeless state rushes upon him, he is lost and stupefied, and has neither thoughts to turn to, nor power to call upon the almighty being, from whom alone he can seek mercy and forgiveness, and before whom his repentance can alone avail. Ours have glided by, and still he sits upon the same stone bench with folded arms, he glists alike of the fast decreasing time before him, and the urgent entreaties of the good man at his side. The feeble light is wasting gradually, and the death-like stillness of the street without, broken only by the rumbling of some passing vehicle which echoes mournfully through the empty yards, warns him that the night is waning fast away. The deep bell of St. Paul strikes, one. He heard it, it has roused him, seven hours left. He paces the narrow limits of his cell with rapid strides, cold drops of terror starting on his forehead, and every muscle of his frame quivering with agony. Seven hours. He suffers himself to be led to his seat, mechanically takes the Bible which is placed in his hand, and tries to read and listen. No, his thoughts will wander. The book is torn and soiled by use, and like the book he read his lessons in at school just forty years ago. He has never bestowed a thought upon it, perhaps, since he left it as a child, and yet the place, the time, the room, nay, the very boys he played with, crowd as vividly before him as if they were scenes of yesterday, and some forgotten phrase, some childish word, rings in his ears like the echo of one uttered but a minute since. The voice of the clergyman recalls him to himself. He is reading from the sacred book its solemn promises of pardon for repentance, and its awful denunciation of obdurate men. He falls upon his knees and clasps his hands to pray. Hush! what sound was that? He starts upon his feet. It cannot be two yet. Hark! Two quarters have struck. The third. The fourth. It is. Six hours left. Tell him not of repentance. Six hours repentance for eight times six years of guilt and sin. He buries his face in his hands, and throws himself on the bench. Worn with watching and excitement, he sleeps, and the same unsettled state of mind pursues him in his dreams. An insupportable load is taken from his breast. He is walking with his wife in a pleasant field, with the bright sky above them, and a fresh and boundless prospect on every side. How different from the stone walls of Newgate! She is looking, not as she did when he saw her for the last time in that dreadful place, but as she used when he loved her, long, long ago, before misery and ill-treatment had altered her looks, and vice had changed his nature. And she is leaning upon his arm, and looking up into his face with tenderness and affection. And he does not strike her now, nor rudely shake her from him. And oh! how glad he is to tell her all he had forgotten in that last hurried interview, and to fall on his knees before her, and fervently beseech her pardon for all the unkindness and cruelty that wasted her form and broke her heart. The scene suddenly changes. He is on trial again. There are the judge and jury, and prosecutors, and witnesses, just as they were before. How full the court is! What a sea of heads! With the gallows, too, and a scaffold! And how all those people stare at him! Verdict! Guilty! No matter, he will escape. The night is dark and cold. The gates have been left open, and in an instant he is in the street, flying from the scene of his imprisonment like the wind. The streets are cleared, the open fields are gained, and the broad, wide country lies before him. Onward he dashes in the midst of darkness, over hedge and ditch, through mud and pool, bounding from spot to spot with a speed and lightness, astonishing even to himself. At length he pauses. He must be safe from pursuit now. He will stretch himself on that bank and sleep till sunrise. A period of unconsciousness succeeds. He wakes, cold, and wretched. The dull gray light of morning is stealing into the cell, and falls upon the form of the attendant Turnkey. Confused by his dreams, he starts from his uneasy bed in momentary uncertainty. It is but momentary. Every object in the narrow cell is too frightfully real to admit of doubt or mistake. He is the condemned felon again, guilty and despairing. And in two hours more, we'll be dead. End of Chapter 25 of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. Chapter 1 of Characters from Sketches by Boz. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Sketches by Boz. By Charles Dickens. Illustrations by George Crookshank. Chapter 1 of Characters. Thoughts About People. It is strange with how little notice, good, bad or indifferent, a man may live and die in London. He awakens no sympathy in the breast of any single person. His existence is a matter of interest to no one save himself. He cannot be said to be forgotten when he dies, for no one remembered him when he was alive. There is a numerous class of people in this great metropolis who seem not to possess a single friend, and whom nobody appears to care for. Urged by imperative necessity in the first instance, they have resorted to London in search of employment and the means of subsistence. It is hard, we know, to break the ties which bind us to our homes and friends, and harder still to efface the thousand recollections of happy days and old times, which have been slumbering in our bosoms for years, and only rush upon the mind to bring before it associations connected with the friends we have left, the scenes we have beheld too probably for the last time, and the hopes we once cherished but may entertain no more. These men, however, happily for themselves, have long forgotten such thoughts. Old country friends have died or emigrated, former correspondents have become lost like themselves in the crowd and turmoil of some busy city, and they have gradually settled down into mere passive creatures of habit and endurance. We were seated in the enclosure of St. James's Park the other day, when our attention was attracted by a man whom we immediately put down in our own mind as one of this class. He was a tall, thin, pale person, in a black coat, scanty-gray trousers, little pinched-up gaiters, and brine beaver-gloves. He had an umbrella in his hand, not for use for the day was fine, but evidently because he always carried one to the office in the morning. He walked up and down before the little patch of grass on which the chairs are placed for hire, not as if he were doing it for pleasure or recreation, but as if it were a matter of compulsion, just as he would walk to the office every morning from the back settlements of Islington. It was Monday. He had escaped for four and twenty hours from the thralldom of the desk, and was walking here for exercise and amusement, perhaps for the first time in his life. We were inclined to think he had never had a holiday before, and that he did not know what to do with himself. Children were playing on the grass. Groups of people were loitering about, chatting and laughing, but the man walked steadily up and down, unheeding and unheeded, his spare pale face, looking as if it were incapable of bearing the expression of curiosity or interest. There was something in the man's manner and appearance which told us we fancied his whole life, or rather his whole day, for a man of this sort has no variety of days. We thought we almost saw the dingy little back office into which he walks every morning, hanging his hat on the same peg, and placing his legs beneath the same desk, first taking off that black coat which lasts the year through, and putting on the one which did duty last year and which he keeps in his desk to save the other. There he sits till five o'clock, working on all day, as regularly as the dial over the mantelpiece, whose loud ticking his asmonotonous as his whole existence, only raising his head when someone enters the counting-house, or when, in the midst of some difficult calculation, he looks up at the ceiling, as if there were inspiration in the dusty skylight, with a green knot in the centre of every pane of glass. About five or half past he slowly dismounts from his accustomed stool, and again changing his coat proceeds to his usual dining-place, somewhere near Bucklesbury. The waiter recites the bill of fare in a rather confidential manner, for he is a regular customer, and after inquiring, what's in the best cut, and what was up last? He orders a small plate of roast beef with greens and a half a pint of porter. He has a small plate today, because greens are a penny more than potatoes, and he had two breads yesterday with the additional enormity of a cheese the day before. This important point settled, he hangs up his hat, he took it off the moment he sat down, and bespeaks the paper after the next gentleman. If he can get it while he is at dinner, he eats with much greater zest, balancing it against the water-bottle, and eating a bit of beef, and reading a line or two, ultimately. Exactly at five minutes before the hour is up, he produces a shilling, pays the reckoning, carefully deposits the change in his waist-cut pocket, first deducting a penny for the waiter, and returns to the office, from which, if it is not foreign post-night, he again sallies forth in about half an hour. He then walks home at his usual pace to his little back room at Islington, where he has his tea, perhaps solacing himself during the meal with the conversation of his landlady's little boy, whom he occasionally rewards with a penny for solving problems in simple addition. Sometimes there is a letter or two to take up to his employers in Russell Square, and then the wealthy man of business, hearing his voice, calls out from the dining parlour, "'Come in, Mr. Smith!' and Mr. Smith, putting his hat at the feet of one of the hall-chairs, walks timidly in, and, being condescendingly desired to sit down, carefully tucks his legs under his chair, and sits at a considerable distance from the table, while he drinks the glass of sherry, which is poured out for him by the eldest boy, and after drinking which he backs and slides out of the room in a state of nervous agitation, from which he does not perfectly recover, until he finds himself once more in the Islington Road. Poor, harmless creatures such men are, contented but not happy, broken-spirited and humbled, they may feel no pain, but they never no pleasure. Compare these men with another class of beings who, like them, have neither friend nor companion, but whose position in society is the result of their own choice. These are generally old fellows, with white heads and red faces, addicted to port wine and hessian boots, who from some cause, real or imaginary. Generally the former, the excellent reason being that they are rich and their relations poor, grow suspicious of everybody, and do the misanthropical in chambers, taking great delight in thinking themselves unhappy and making everybody they come near miserable. You may see such men as these anywhere. You will know them at coffee-houses by their discontented exclamations and the luxury of their dinners, at theatres by their always sitting in the same place and looking with a jaundiced eye on all the young people near them, at church by the pomposity with which they enter, and the loud tone in which they repeat the responses, at parties by their getting cross at wist and hating music. An old fellow of this kind will have his chambers splendidly furnished and collect books, plate and pictures, about him in profusion. Not so much for his own gratification has to be superior to those who have the desire but not the means to compete with him. He belongs to two or three clubs and is envied and flatter and hated by the members of them all. Sometimes he will be appealed to by a poor relation, a married nephew, perhaps, for some little assistance, and then he will declare him with honest indignation on the providence of young married people, the worthlessness of a wife, the insolence of having a family, the atrocity of getting into debt with a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, and other unpardonable crimes, winding up his exhortations with a complacent review of his own conduct and delicate allusion to parochial relief. He dies, someday after dinner, of apoplexy, having bequeathed his property to a public society, and the institution erects a tablet to his memory, expressive of the admonition of his Christian conduct in this world, and their comfortable conviction of his happiness in the next. But next to our very particular friends, Hackney Kochman, Cadman and Cadds, whom we admire in proportion to the extent of their cool, impudence, and perfect self-possession, there is no class of people who amuse us more than London apprentices. They are no longer an organised body, bound down by solemn compact to terrify his Majesty's subjects whenever it pleases them to take offence in their heads and saves in their hands. They are only bound now by indentures, and as to their valour, he is easily restrained by the wholesome dread of the new police, and a perspective view of a damp station-house terminating in a police office and a reprimand. They are still, however, a peculiar class, and not the less pleasant for being inoffensive. Can any one fail to have noticed them in the streets on Sunday? And were there ever such harmless efforts at the grand and magnificent as the young fellow's display? We walked down the strand a Sunday or two ago behind a little group, and they furnished food for our amusement the whole way. They had come out of some part of the city. It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, and they were on their way to the park. There were four of them, all arm in arm, with white kid gloves like so many bright grooms, light trousers of unprecedented patterns, and coats for which the English language has yet no name, and a kind of a cross between a great coat and a sore two, with the collar of the one, the skirts of the other, and pockets peculiar to themselves. Each of the gentlemen carried a thick stick with a large tassel at the top, which he occasionally twirled gracefully round, and the whole four, by way of looking easy and unconcerned, were walking with a paralytic swagger irresistibly ludicrous. One of the party had a watch, about the size and shape of a reasonable ribstone pippin, jammed into his waistcoat pocket, which he carefully compared with the clock set St. Clamence and the new church, the illuminated clock at Exeter Change, the clock of St. Martin's Church, and the clock of the Horse Guards. When they, at last, arrived at St. James's Park, the member of the party who had the best-made boots on, hired a second chair, expressly for his feet, and flung himself on this topony worth of silver luxury with an air which leveled all distinctions between brooks and snooks, crockfords, and bagnicky wells. We may smile at such people, but they can never excite our anger. They are usually on the best terms with themselves, and it follows almost as a matter, of course, in good humour with everyone about them. Besides, they are always the faint reflection of higher lights, and, if they do display a little occasional foolery in their own proper persons, it is surely more tolerable than precocious puppyism in the quadrant, whiskered dandyism in Regent Street and Palmao, or gallantry in its dotage anywhere. End of chapter one of Characters from Sketches by Boz. Chapter two of Characters from Sketches by Boz. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens. Illustrations by George Crookshank. Chapter two of Characters, A Christmas Dinner. Christmas time. That man must be a misanthroping deed in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused, in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be, that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope or happy prospect of the year before dimmed or passed away, that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straightened incomes, of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day in the year. Then do not select the merriers to the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire. Fill the glass and send round the song. And if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it off-hand and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it's no worse. Look on the merry faces of your children, if you have any, as they sit round the fire. One little seat may be empty, one slight form that gladdened the father's heart, and roused the mother's pride to look upon, may not be there. Dwell not upon the past. Think not that one short year ago, the fair child now resolving into dust, sat before you with the bloom of health upon its cheek, and the gaiety of infancy in its joyous eye. Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. Fill your glass again with a merry face and contented heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas shall be merry, and your new year a happy one. Who can be insensible to the outpourings of good feeling, and the honest interchange of affectionate attachment, which abound at this season of the year? A Christmas family party. We know nothing in nature more delightful. There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas. Petty jealousies and discords are forgotten. Social feelings are awakened in bosoms to which they have long been strangers. Father and son, or brother and sister, who have met and passed with averted gaze or a look of cold recognition for months before, proffer and return the cordial embrace, and bury their past animosities in their present happiness. Kindly hearts that have yearned towards each other, but have been withheld by false notions of pride and self-dignity, are again reunited, and all is kindness and benevolence. Would that Christmas lasted the whole year through, as it ought, and that the prejudices and passions which deform our better nature were never called into action among those to whom they should ever be strangers? The Christmas family party that we mean is not a mere assemblage of relations got up at a week or two's notice, originating this year, having no family precedent in the last, and not likely to be repeated in the next. No. It is an annual gathering of all the accessible members of the family, young or old, rich or poor, and all the children look forward to it for two months beforehand in a fever of anticipation. Formerly it was held at grandpa-pars, but grandpa-pars getting old, and grandmama getting old too, and rather infirm, they have given up housekeeping, and domesticated themselves with Uncle George. So the party always takes place at Uncle George's house, but grandmama sends in most of the good things, and grandpa-pars always will toddle down all the way to Newgate Market to buy the turkey, which he engages a porter to bring home behind him in triumph, always insisting on the man's being rewarded with a glass of spirits over and above his hire to drink a merry Christmas and a happy new year to Aunt George. As to grandmama, she is very secret and mysterious for two or three days beforehand, but not sufficiently so to prevent rumours getting afloat that she has purchased a beautiful new cap with pink ribbons for each of the servants, together with sundry books and pen knives and pencil cases for the younger branches. To say nothing of diver's secret additions to the order originally given by Aunt George at the pastry-cooks, such as another dozen of mince pies for the dinner, and a large plum cake for the children. On Christmas Eve grandmama is always in excellent spirits, and after employing all the children during the day in stoning the plums and all that, insists regularly every year on Uncle George coming down into the kitchen, taking off his coat, and stirring the pudding for half an hour or so, which Uncle George could humbly does to the vociferous delight of the children and servants. The evening concludes with a glorious game of blind man's buff, in an early stage of which grandpapa takes great care to be caught in order that he may have an opportunity of displaying his dexterity. On the following morning the old couple, with as many of the children as the pew will hold, go to church in great state, leaving Aunt George at home dusting decanters and filling casters, and Uncle George carrying bottles into the dining parlour and calling for corkscrews and getting into everybody's way. When the church party returned to lunch, grandpapa produces a small sprig of mistletoe from his pocket, and tempts the boys to kiss their little cousins under it, a proceeding which affords both the boys and the old gentleman unlimited satisfaction, but which rather outrages grandmama's ideas of decorum, until grandpapa says that when he was just thirteen years and three months old he kissed grandmama under a mistletoe too, on which the children clap their hands and laugh very heartily, as do Aunt George and Uncle George. And grandmama looks pleased, and says with a benevolent smile that grandpapa was an impudent young dog, on which the children laugh very heartily again, and grandpapa more heartily than any of them. But all these diversions are nothing to the subsequent excitement when grandmama in a high cap and slate-coloured silk gown, and grandpapa with a beautifully plaited shirt-frill and white neckerchief, seat themselves on one side of the drawing-room fire, with Uncle George's children and little cousins innumerable seated in the front, waiting the arrival of the expected visitors. Suddenly a hackney-coach is heard to stop, and Uncle George, who has been looking out of the window, exclaims, Here's Jane! on which the children rush to the door and help a skelter downstairs, and Uncle Robert and Aunt Jane and the dear little baby, and the nurse, and the whole party, are ushered upstairs amidst two mulchuous shouts of, Oh, my! from the children, and frequently repeated warnings not to hurt baby from the nurse. And grandpapa takes the child, and grandmama kisses her daughter, and the confusion of this first entry has scarcely subsided when some other aunts and uncles with more cousins arrive, and the grown-up cousins flirt with each other, and so do the little cousins, too, for that matter. And nothing is to be heard but a confused dine of talking, laughing, and merriment. A hesitating double-knock at the street door, heard during a momentary pause in the conversation, excites a general inquiry of, Who's that? And two or three children, who have been standing at the window, announce in a lone voice that it's poor Aunt Margaret. Upon which Aunt George leaves the room to welcome the newcomer, and grandmama draws herself up, rather stiff and stately. For Margaret married a poor man without her consent, and poverty not being a sufficiently weighty punishment for her offence, has been discarded by her friends, and debarred the society of her dearest relatives. But Christmas has come round, and the unkind feelings that have struggled against better dispositions during the year have melted away before its genial influence like half-formed ice beneath the morning sun. It is not difficult in a moment of angry feeling for a parent to denounce a disobedient child, but to banish her at a period of general good will and hilarity from the hearth round which she has sat on so many anniversaries of the same day, expanding by slow degrees from infancy to girlhood, and then bursting almost imperceptibly into a woman, is widely different. The air of conscious rectitude and cold forgiveness, which the old lady has assumed, sits ill upon her. And when the poor girl is led in by her sister, pale in looks and broken in hope, not from poverty for that she could bear, but from the consciousness of undeserved neglect and unmerited unkindness, it is easy to see how much of it is assumed. A momentary pause succeeds. The girl breaks suddenly from her sister and throws herself sobbing on her mother's neck. The father steps hastily forward and takes her husband's hand. Friends crowd round to offer their hearty congratulations, and happiness and harmony again prevail. As to the dinner, it's perfectly delightful. Nothing goes wrong, and everybody is in the very best of spirits, and disposed to please and be pleased. Grandpa Pa relates a circumstantial account of the purchase of the turkey, with a slight digression relative to the purchase of previous turkeys on former Christmas days, which Grandma Mar corroborates in the minutest particular. Uncle George tells stories and carves poultry and takes wine and jokes with the children at the side table, and winks at the cousins that are making love or being made love too, and exhilarates everybody with his good humour and hospitality. And when, at last, a stout servant staggers in with a gigantic pudding with a sprig of holly in the top, there is such a laughing and shouting and clapping of little chubby hands and kicking up of fat, dumpy legs as can only be equalled by the applause with which the astonishing feet of pouring lighted brandy into minced pies is received by the younger visitors. Then the dessert, and the wine, and the fun. Such beautiful speeches and such songs from Aunt Margaret's husband, who turns out to be such a nice man and so attentive to Grandma Mar. Even Grandpa Pa not only sings his annual song with unprecedented vigor, but on being honoured with a unanimous encore, according to annual custom, actually comes out with a new one, which nobody but Grandma Mar ever heard before, and a young scapegrace of a cousin, who has been in some disgrace with the old people for certain heinous sins of omission and commission, neglecting to call and persisting in drinking Burton ale, astonishes everybody into convulsions of laughter by volunteering the most extraordinary comic songs that ever were heard. And thus the evening passes in a strain of rational goodwill and cheerfulness. Doing more to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party in behalf of his neighbour, and to perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than half the homilies that have ever been written by half the divines that have ever lived. End of Chapter 2 of Characters from Sketches by Boz. Chapter 3 of Characters from Sketches by Boz. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens. Illustrations by George Crookshank. Chapter 3 of Characters. The New Year Next to Christmas Day, the most pleasant annual epoch in existence is the advent of the New Year. There are a lacrimose set of people who usher in the New Year with watching and fasting, as if they were bound to attend as chief mourners at the obsequies of the old one. Now, we cannot but think it a great deal more complimentary, both to the old year that has rolled away, and to the New Year that is just beginning to dawn upon us, to see the old fellow out, and the new one in, with gaiety and glee. There must have been some fewer currencies in the past year to which we can look back with a smile of cheerful recollection, if not with a feeling of heartfelt thankfulness. And we are bound by every rule of justice and equity to give the New Year credit for being a good one, until he proves himself unworthy the confidence we repose in him. This is our view of the matter, and entertaining it, notwithstanding our respect for the old year, one of the few remaining moments of whose existence passes away with every word we write, here we are, seated by our fireside on this last night of the old year, 1836, penning this article with as jovial a face as if nothing extraordinary had happened, or was about to happen, to disturb our good humour. Hackney coaches and carriages keep rattling up the street and down the street in rapid succession, conveying, doubtless, smartly dressed coach-falls to crowded parties. Loud and repeated double knocks at the house with green blinds opposite, announced to the whole neighbourhood that there's one large party in the street at all events. And we saw, through the window and through the fog too, till it grew so thick that we rung for candles and drew our curtains, pastry cooks men with green boxes on their heads, and wrought furniture warehouse carts with cane seats and French lamps, hurrying to the numerous houses where an annual festival is held in honour of the occasion. We can fancy one of these parties, we think, as well as if we were duly dress-coated and pumped and had just been announced at the drawing-room door. Take the house with the green blinds, for instance. We know it is a quadril party, because we saw some men taking up the front drawing-room carpet while we sat at breakfast this morning. And if further evidence be required, and we must tell the truth, we just now saw one of the young ladies doing another of the young lady's hair near one of the bedroom windows in an unusual style of splendour, which nothing else but a quadril party could possibly justify. The master of the house with the green blinds is in a public office. We know the fact by the cut of his coat, the tie of his neck-cloth, and the self-satisfaction of his gate. The very green blinds themselves have a Somerset house air about them. Hark! A cab! That's a junior clerk in the same office. A tidy sort of young man with a tendency to cold and corns, who comes in a pair of boots with black cloth fronts, and brings his shoes in his coat pocket, which shoes he is at this very moment putting on in the hall. Now he is announced by the man in the passage to another man in a blue coat, who is a disguised messenger from the office. The man on the first landing precedes him to the drawing-room door. Mr. Tappel, shouts the messenger. How are you, Tappel, says the master of the house, advancing from the fire, before which he has been talking politics and airing himself. My dear, this is Mr. Tappel. A courteous salute from the lady of the house. Tappel, my eldest daughter. Julia, my dear, Mr. Tappel. Tappel, my other daughters. My son, sir. Tappel rubs his hands very hard, and smiles as if it were all capital fun, and keeps constantly bowing and turning himself round till the whole family have been introduced, when he glides into a chair at the corner of the sofa, and opens a miscellaneous conversation with the young ladies upon the weather, and the theatres, and the old year, and the last new murder, and the balloon, and the ladies' sleeves, and the festivities of the season, and a great many other topics of small talk. More double knocks. What an extensive party! What an incessant hum of conversation, and general sipping of coffee. We see Tappel now in our mind's eye in the height of his glory. He has just handed that stout old lady's cup to the servant, and now he dives among the crowd of young men by the door to intercept the other servant, and secure the muffin plate for the old lady's daughter before he leaves the room. And now, as he passes the sofa on his way back, he bestows a glance of recognition and patronage upon the young ladies, as condescending and familiar as if he had known them from infancy. Charming person, Mr. Tappel, perfect lady's man, such a delightful companion, too. Laugh! Nobody ever understood Papa's jokes half so well as Mr. Tappel, who laughs himself into convulsions at every fresh burst of facetiousness. Most delightful partner, talks through the whole set. And although he does seem at first rather gay and frivolous, so romantic, and with so much feeling, quite a laugh. No great favourite with the young men, certainly, whose sneer at and effect to despise him. But everybody knows that's only envy, and they needn't give themselves the trouble to depreciate his merits at any rate, for Ma says he shall be asked to every future dinner-party if it's only to talk to people between the courses and distract their attention when there's any unexpected delay in the kitchen. At supper Mr. Tappel shows to still greater advantage than he has done throughout the evening. And when Pa requests to every one to fill their glasses for the purpose of drinking happiness throughout the year, Mr. Tappel is so droll, insisting on all the young ladies having their glasses filled, notwithstanding their repeated assurances that they never can, by any possibility, think of emptying them, and subsequently begging permission to say a few words on the sentiment which has just been uttered by Pa, when he makes one of the most brilliant and poetical speeches that can possibly be imagined about the old year and the new one. After the toast has been drunk, and when the ladies have retired, Mr. Tappel requests that every gentleman will do him the favour of filling his glass, for he has a toast to propose. On which all the gentleman cry, here, here, and pass the decanters accordingly. And Mr. Tappel, being informed by the master of the house that they are all charged, and waiting for his toast, rises and begs to remind the gentleman present how much they have been delighted by the dazzling array of elegance and beauty which the drawing-room has exhibited that night, and how their senses have been charmed and their hearts captivated by the bewitching concentration of female loveliness which that very room has so recently displayed. Loud cries of here! Much as he, Tappel, would be disposed to deplore the absence of the ladies on other grounds, he cannot but derive some consolation from the reflection that the very circumstance of their not being present enables him to propose a toast which he would have otherwise been prevented from giving. That toast, he begs to say, is the ladies. Great applause! The ladies among whom the fascinating daughters of their excellent host are alike conspicuous for their beauty, their accomplishments, and their elegance. He begs them to drain a bumper to the ladies and a happy new year to them. Prolonged at probation, above which the noise of the ladies dancing the Spanish dance among themselves overhead is distinctly audible. The applause consequent on this toast has scarcely subsided when a young gentleman in a pink under-waste coat sitting towards the bottom of the table is observed to grow very restless and fidgety, and to event strong indications of some latent desire to give vent to his feelings in a speech, which the wary Tappel at once perceiving determines to forestall by speaking himself. He therefore rises again with an air of solemn importance, and trusts he may be permitted to propose another toast. Unqualified at probation, and Mr. Tappel proceeds. He is sure they must all be deeply impressed with the hospitality he may say the splendour with which they have been that night received by their worthy host and hostess. Unbounded applause! Although this is the first occasion on which he has had the pleasure and delight of sitting at that board, he has known his friend Dobble long and intimately. He has been connected with him in business, he wishes everybody present knew Dobble as well as he does. A cough from the host. He, Tappel, can lay his hand upon his Tappel's heart and declare his confident belief that a better man, a better husband, a better father, a better brother, a better son, a better relation in any relation of life than Dobble never existed. Loud cries of hair! They have seen him to-night in the peaceful bosom of his family. They should see him in the morning in the trying duties of his office, calm in the perusal of the morning papers, uncompromising in the signature of his name, dignified in his replies to the inquiries of stranger applicants, deferential in his behaviour to his superiors, majestic in his deportment to the messengers. Cheers! When he bears this merited testimony to the excellent qualities of his friend Dobble, what can he say in approaching such a subject as Mrs. Dobble? Is it requisite for him to expatiate on the qualities of that amiable woman? No, he will spare his friend Dobble's feelings. He will spare the feelings of his friend, if he will allow him to have the honour of calling him so, Mr. Dobble Jr. Here, Mr. Dobble Jr., who has been previously distending his mouth to a considerable width by thrusting a particularly fine orange into that feature, suspends operations and assumes a proper appearance of intense melancholy. He will simply say, and he is quite certain it is a sentiment in which all who hear him will readily concur, that his friend Dobble is as superior to any man he ever knew, as Mrs. Dobble is far beyond any woman he ever saw, except her daughters. And he will conclude by proposing their worthy host and hostess, and may they live to enjoy many more new years. The toast is drunk with acclamation. Dobble returns thanks, and the whole party rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room. Young men who were too bashful to dance before supper find tongues and partners. The musicians exhibit unequivocal symptoms of having drunk the New Year in while the company were out, and dancing is kept up until far in the first morning of the New Year. We have scarcely written the last word of the previous sentence when the first stroke of twelve peals from the neighbouring churches. There certainly, we must confess it now, is something awful in the sound. Strictly speaking, it may not be more impressive now than at any other time, for the hours steal as swiftly on at other periods, and their flight is little heeded. But we measure man's life by years, and it is a solemn knell that warns us we have passed another of the landmarks which stands between us and the grave. Disguise it as we may. The reflection will force itself on our minds, that when the next bell announces the arrival of a New Year, we may be insensible alike of the timely warning we have so often neglected, and of all the warm feelings that glow within us now. End Chapter 3 of Characters from Sketches by Bosch. Chapter 4 of Characters from Sketches by Bosch This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Raven Notation. Sketches by Bosch by Charles Dickens. Illustrations by George Cruickshank Chapter 4 of Characters Miss Evans and the Eagle Mr. Samuel Wilkins was a carpenter, a journeyman carpenter of small dimensions, decidedly below the middle size, bordering, perhaps, upon the dwarfish. His face was round and shining, and his hair carefully twisted into the outer corner of each eye, till it formed a variety of that description of semi-cars, usually known as aggravators. His earnings were all sufficient for his once, varying from eighteen shillings to one pound five, weekly. His manner undeniable, his sabbath waistcoats dazzling. No wonder that, with these qualifications, Samuel Wilkins found favour in the eyes of the other sex. Many women had been captivated by far less substantial qualifications, but Samuel was proof against their blandishments, until at length, his eyes rested on those other being for whom, from that time forth, he felt fate had destined him. He came and conquered, proposed and was accepted, loved and was beloved. Mr. Wilkins kept company with Jemima Evans. Miss Evans, or Evans, to adopt the pronunciation most in vogue with her circle of acquaintance, had adopted in early life the useful pursuit of shoe binding, to which she had afterwards super-added the occupation of a straw-bonnet maker. Herself, her maternal parent, and two sisters formed a harmonious quartet in the most secluded portion of Camden Town, and here it was that Mr. Wilkins presented himself, one Monday afternoon, in his best attire, with his face more shining and his waistcoat more bright than either had ever appeared before. The family were just going to tea, and were so glad to see him, it was quite a little feast, two ounces of seven and sixpony green, and a quarter of a pound of the best fresh. And Mr. Wilkins had brought a pint of shrimps neatly folded up in a clean belcher, to give a zest to the meal, and propitiate Mrs. Evans. Jemima was cleaning herself upstairs, so Mr. Samuel Wilkins sat down and talked domestic economy with Mrs. Evans, whilst the two youngest Mrs. Evans's poked bits of lighted brown paper between the bars under the kettle, to make the water boil for tea. I was a thinking, said Mr. Samuel Wilkins during a pause in the conversation. I was a thinking of taking Jemima to the eagle to-night. Oh, my! exclaimed Mrs. Evans. Law, how nice! said the youngest Mrs. Evans. Well, I declare, added the youngest Mrs. Evans but one. Tell Jemima to put on her white Muslim tilly, screamed Mrs. Evans with motherly anxiety, and Anne came Jemima herself, soon afterwards, in a white Muslim gown carefully hooked and eyed, a little red shawl, plentifully pinned, a white straw bonnet trimmed with red ribbons, a small necklace, a large pair of bracelets, Denmark's sat-in shoes, and open-werped stockings, white cotton gloves on her fingers, and a cambrick-pocket handkerchief, carefully folded up in her hand, all quite genteel and ladylike. And away went Mrs. Jemima Evans and Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and a dress came, with a gilt knob at the top, to the admiration and envy of the street in general, and to the high gratification of Mrs. Evans, and the two youngest Mrs. Evanses in particular. They had no sooner turned into the pancreas road than who should Mrs. Jemima Evans stumble upon by the most fortunate accident in the world, but a young lady, as she knew, with her young man. And it is so strange how things do turn out sometimes, they were actually going to the eagle, too. So Mr. Samuel Wilkins was introduced to Ms. Jemima Evans's frame as a young man, and they all walked on together, talking and laughing and joking away like anything, and when they got as far as pens and bill, Ms. Evans's friends young man would have the ladies go into the crown to taste some shrub, which, after a great blushing and giggling, and hiding her faces in elaborate pocket handkerchiefs, they consented to do. Having tasted it once, they were easily prevailed upon to taste it again, and they sat out in the garden tasting shrub, and looking at the bosses alternately, till it was just the proper time to go to the eagle, and then they resumed their journey, and walked very fast, for fear they should lose the beginning of the concert in the rotunda. How evidently, said Ms. Jemima Evans, and Ms. Jemima Evans's friend, both at once, when they had passed the gate and were fairly inside the gardens. There were the walks, beautifully graveled and planted, and the refreshment boxes, painted and ornamented like so many snuff boxes, and the variegated lamps, shedding their rich light upon the company's heads, and the place for dancing, ready chalked for the company's feet, and a moorish band playing at one end of the gardens, and an opposition military band playing away at the other. Then the waiters were rushing to and fro with glasses of magus, and glasses of brandy and water, and bottles of ale, and bottles of stout, and ginger beer was going off in one place, and practicable jugs were going on in another, and people were crowding to the door of the rotunda, and in short the whole scene was, as Ms. Jemima Evans, inspired by the novelty, or the shrub, or both, observed one undazzling excitement. As to the concert room, never was anything half so splendid. There was an orchestra for the singers, all paint, gilding, and plate glass, and such an organ. Ms. Jemima's Evans's friend's young man whispered it had cost four hundred pound, which Mr. Samuel Wilkins said was not dear neither, an opinion in which the ladies perfectly coincided. The audience was seated on elevated benches round the room, and crowded into every part of it, and everybody was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible. Just before the concert commenced, Mr. Samuel Wilkins ordered two glasses of rum and water, warm with, and two slices of lemon, for himself and the other young man, together with a pint of sherry wine for the ladies, and some sweet caraway seed biscuits, and they would have been quite comfortable and happy, only a strange gentleman with large whiskers would stare at Ms. Jemima Evans, and another gentleman in a plaid waistcoat would wing at Ms. Jemima Evans's friend, on which Ms. Jemima Evans's friend's young man exhibited symptoms of boiling over, and began to mutter about people's imperance, and swells out of luck, and to intimate, in oblique terms, a vague intention of knocking somebody's head off, which he was only prevented from announcing more emphatically by both Ms. Jemima Evans and her friend threatening to faint away on the spot, if he said another word. The concert commenced, overture on the organ. How solemn exclaimed Ms. Jemima Evans, glancing, perhaps unconsciously, at the gentleman with the whiskers. Mr. Samuel Wilkins, who had been muttering apart for some time past, as if he were holding a confidential conversation with the guilt knob of the dress-cane, breathed hard-breathing vengeance, perhaps, but said nothing. The soldier tired, Ms. somebody in white sat in. Encore! cried Ms. Jemima Evans' friend. Encore! shouted the gentleman in the plaid waistcoat immediately, hammering the table with a stout bottle. Ms. Jemima Evans' friend's young man eyed the man behind the waistcoat from head to foot, and cast a look of interrogative contempt towards Mr. Samuel Wilkins. Comic song accompanied on the organ. Ms. Jemima Evans was convulsed with laughter, so was the man with the whiskers. Everything the ladies did, the plaid waistcoat, and whiskers did, by way of expressing unity of sentiment and congeniality of soul. And Ms. Jemima Evans, and Ms. Jemima Evans' friend, grew lively and talkative, as Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Ms. Jemima Evans' friend's young man grew morose and surly in inverse proportion. Now, if the matter had ended here, the little party might soon have recovered their former equanimity. But Mr. Samuel Wilkins and his friend began to throw looks of defiance upon the waistcoat and whiskers. And the waistcoat and whiskers, by way of intimating the slight degree in which they were affected by the looks of orcet, bestowed glances of increased admiration upon Ms. Jemima Evans' and friend. The concert and vaudeville concluded. They promenaded the gardens. The waistcoat and whiskers did the same, and made divers' remarks complementary to the ankles of Ms. Jemima Evans and friend in an audible tone. At length, not satisfied with these numerous atrocities, they actually came up and asked Ms. Jemima Evans and Ms. Jemima Evans' friend to dance, without taking no more notice of Mr. Samuel Wilkins and Ms. Jemima Evans' friend's young man than if there were nobody. What do you mean by that scoundrel, exclaimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins, grasping the guilt not dress came firmly in his right hand? What's the matter with you, you little humbug, replied the whiskers? How dare you insult me and my friend, inquired the friend's young man. You and your friend be hanged, responded their waistcoat. Take that, exclaimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins. The feral of the guilt-nobbed dress came was visible for an instant, and led the light of the very gated lamps shone brightly upon it as it whirled into the air, cane and all. Give it him, said the waistcoat. Ms. Jemima Evans' bow and the friend's young man lay gasping on the gravel, and the waistcoat and whiskers were seen no more. Ms. Jemima Evans and friend, being conscious that the effray was in most slight degree attributable to themselves, of course, went a hysterics forthwith, declared themselves the most injured of women, exclaimed in incoherent ravings, that they had been suspected, wrongfully suspected, oh, that they should ever have lived to see the day, and so forth, suffered a relapse every time they opened their eyes, and saw their unfortunate little admirers, and were carried to their respective abodes in a hackney-coach, and a state of insensibility compounded of shrub, sherry, and excitement. End of Chapter 4 of Characters from Sketches by Boss Chapter 5 of Characters from Sketches by Boss This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Raven Notation Sketches by Boss by Charles Dickens Illustrations by George Cruickshank Chapter 5 of Characters The Parlor or Eta We had been lounging one evening, down Oxford Street, Holborn, Cheepside, Coleman Street, Finsbury Square, and so on, with the intention of returning westward, by Pentonville and the New Road, when we began to feel rather thirsty, and disposed to rest for five or ten minutes. So, we turned back towards an old, quiet, decent public house, which we remembered to have passed but a moment before it was not far from the city road, for the purpose of solacing ourselves with a glass of ale. The house was none of your stuck-old, French-polished, illuminated palaces but a modest public house of the old school, with a little old bar and a little old landlord, who, with a wife and daughter of the same pattern, was comfortably seated in the bar aforesaid, a snug little room with a cheerful fire, protected by a large screen, from behind which the young lady emerged on our representing our inclination for a glass of ale. Won't you walk into the parlour, sir? said the young lady in seductive tones. You had better walk into the parlour, sir, said the little old landlord, throwing his chair back and looking round one side of the screen to survey our appearance. You had much better step into the parlour, sir, said the little old lady, popping out her head on the other side of the screen. We cast a slight glance around, as if to express our ignorance of the locality so much recommended. The little old landlord observed it, bustled out of the small door of the small bar, and forwith ushered us into the parlour itself. It was an ancient, dark-looking room, with oaken wainscotting, a sanded floor, and a high mantelpiece. The walls were ornamented with three or four old coloured prints in black frames, each print representing a naval engagement, with a couple of men of wool banging away at each other most vigorously, while another vessel or two were blowing up in the distance, and the foreground presented a miscellaneous collection of broken masts and blue legs sticking up out of the water. Depending from the ceiling in the centre of the room were a gas light and bell-pull. On each side were three or four long, narrow tables, behind which was a thickly planted row of those slippery, shiny-looking wooden chairs, peculiar to hosteries of this description. The monotonous appearance of the sanded walls was relieved by an occasional spittoon, and a triangular pile of those useful articles adorned the two upper corners of the apartment. At the furthest table, nearest the fire, with his face towards the door at the bottom of the room, sat a stoutish man of about forty, whose short, stiff, black hair curled closely round a broad, high forehead, and a face to which something besides water and exercise had communicated a rather inflamed appearance. He was smoking a cigar, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and had that confident, iracular air which marked him as the leading politician, general authority and universal anecdote-relator of the place. He had evidently just delivered himself of something very weighty, for the remainder of the company were puffing at their respective pipes and cigars in a kind of solemn abstraction, as if quite overwhelmed with the magnitude of the subject recently under discussion. On his right hand sat an elderly gentleman with a white head and broad-brinned brown hat. On his left, a sharp-nosed, light-haired man in a brown shirt-out reaching nearly to his heels, who took a whiff at his pipe and an admiring glance at the red-faced man, ultimately. Very extraordinary, said the light-haired man after a pause of five minutes. A murmur of a scent ran through the company. Not at all extraordinary. Not at all, said the red-faced man, awakening suddenly from his reverie, and turning upon the light-haired man the moment he had spoken. Why should it be extraordinary? Why is it extraordinary? Prove it to be extraordinary. Oh, if you come to that, said the light-haired man meekly. Come to that, ejaculated the man with the red face, but we must come to that. We stand in these times upon a calm elevation of intellectual attainment, and not in the dark recess of mental deprivation. Proof is what I require. Proof, and not ascitations, in these stirring times. Every gentleman that knows me knows what was the nature and effect of my observations when it was in the contemplation of the old street suburban representative discovery society to recommend a candidate for that place in Cornwall there. I forget the name of it. Mr. Snowbie, said Mr. Wilson, is a fit and proper person to represent the borough in Parliament. Prove it, says I. He is a friend to reform, says Mr. Wilson. Prove it, says I. The abolition of the national debt, the unflinching opponent of pensions, the uncompromising advocates of the negro, the reducer of syndicures, and the duration of parliaments, the extender of nothing but the suffragies of the people, says Mr. Wilson. Prove it, says I. His acts prove it, says he. Prove them, says I. And he could not prove them, said the red-faced man, looking round triumphantly, and the borough didn't have him. And if you carried this principle to the full extent, you'd have no debt, no pensions, no syndicures, no negroes, no nothing. And then, standing upon an elevation of intellectual attainment, and having reached the summits of popular prosperity, you might bid defiant to the nations of the earth, and erect yourselves in the proud confidence of wisdom and superiority. This is my argument. This always has been my argument. And if I was a member of the House of Commons tomorrow, I'd make them shake in their shoes with it. And the red-faced man, having struck the table very hard with his clenched fist, to add weight to the declaration, smoked away like a brewery. Well, said the sharp-nosed man, in a very slow and soft voice, addressing the company in general, I always do say, that of all the gentlemen I have the pleasure of meeting in this room, there is not one whose conversation I like to hear so much as Mr. Rogers, or who is such improving company. Improving company, said Mr. Rogers, for that it seemed was the name of the red-faced man. You may say I am improving company, for I have improved you all to some purpose, though as to say my conversation being as my friend Mr. Ellis here describes it, that is not for me to say anything about. You, gentlemen, are the best judges on that point, but this I will say, when I came into this parish and first used this room ten years ago, I don't believe there was one man in it who knew he was a slave, and now you all know it, and writhe under it, inscribe that upon my tomb, and I am satisfied. Why, as to inscribing it on your tomb, said a little greengrocer with a chubby face. Of course you can have anything chalked up, as you like to pay for, so far as it relates to yourself and your affairs, but when come to talk about slaves, and that they're abuse, you'd better keep it in the family, because I for one don't like to be called them names night after night. You are a slave, said the red-faced man, and the most pitiable of all slaves. Worry hard if I am, interrupted the greengrocer, for I got no good out of the twenty million that was paid for emancipation anyhow. A willing slave ejaculated the red-faced man, getting more red with eloquence and contradiction, resigning the dearest birthright of your children, neglecting the sacred call of liberty, who, standing imploringly before you, appeals to the warmest feelings of your heart, and points to your helpless infants, but in vain. Prove it, said the greengrocer. Prove it, sneered the man with the red face. What, bending beneath the yoke of an insolent and factuous allegacy, bowed down by the domination of cruel laws, groaning beneath tyranny and oppression on every hand, at every side, and in every corner. Prove it. The red-faced man abruptly broke off, sneered melodramatically, and buried his countenance and his indignation together in a court pot. Ah, to be sure, Mr. Rogers said a stout broker in a large waistcoat, who had kept his eyes fixed on this luminary all the time he was speaking. Ah, to be sure, said the broker with a sigh, that's the point. Of course, of course, said divers members of the company, who understood almost as much about the matter as the broker himself. You had better let him alone, Tommy, said the broker, by way of advice to the little greengrocer. He can tell what's o'clock by an eight day, without looking at the minute hand he can. Try it on, on some other suit. It won't do with him, Tommy. What is a man? continued the red-faced specimen of the species, jerking his hat indignantly from its peg on the wall. What is an Englishman? Is he to be trampled upon by every oppressor? Is he to be knocked down at everybody's bidding? What's freedom? Not a standing army. What's a standing army? Not freedom. What's general happiness? Not universal misery. Liberty ain't the window taxis it. The lords ain't the commons, are they? And the red-faced man, gradually bursting into a radiating sentence, in which such adjectives as dastardly, oppressive, violent and sanguinary, formed the most conspicuous words, knocked his hat indignantly over his eyes, left the room, and slammed the door after him. Wonderful man, said he of the sharp nose. Splendid speaker, added the broker. Great power, said everybody but the greengrocer. And as they said it, the whole party shook their heads mysteriously and one by one retired, leaving us alone in the old parlor. If we had followed the established precedent in all such instances, we should have fallen into a fit of musing without delay. The ancient appearance of the room, the old panelling of the wall, the chimney blackened with smoke and age, would have carried us back a hundred years at least, and we should have gone dreaming on until the pewter pot on the table, or the little beer chiller on the fire, had started into life, and addressed to us a long story of days gone by. But, by some means or other, we were not in a romantic humour, and although we tried very hard to invest the furniture with vitality, it remained perfectly unmoved, obstinate and solemn. Being thus reduced to the unpleasant necessity of musing about ordinary matters, our thoughts reverted to the red-faced man, and his oratorical display. A numerous race are these red-faced men. There is not a parlor, or clubroom, or benefit society, or humble party of any kind without its red-faced man. Weak patted dots they are, and a great deal of mischief they do to their cause, however good. So, just to hold a pattern one up, to know the others by, we took his likeness at once, and put him in here, and that is the reason why we have written this paper. End of Chapter 5 of Characters from Sketches by Boss Chapter 6 of Characters from Sketches by Boss This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Raven Notation Sketches by Boss by Charles Dickens Illustrations by George Cruickshank Chapter 6 of Characters The Hospital Patient In our rambles through the streets of London after evening has set in, we often pause beneath the windows of some public hospital, and picture to ourself the gloomy and mournful scenes that are passing within, the sudden moving of a taper as its feeble ray shoots from window to window until its light gradually disappears, as if it were carried further back into the room to the bedside of some suffering patient, is enough to awaken a whole crowd of reflections, the mere glimmering of the low-burning lamps, which, when all other habitations are wrapped in darkness and slumber, denote the chamber where so many forms are writhing with pain or wasting with disease, is sufficient to check the most boisterous merriment. Who can tell the anguish of those weary hours, when the only sound the sick man hears is the disjointed wanderings of some feverish slumberer near him, the low moan of pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-forgotten prayer of a dying man? Who, but they who have felt it, can imagine the sense of loneliness and desolation, which must be the portion of those who, in the hour of dangerous illness, are left to be tended by strangers? For what hounds, be they ever so gentle, can wipe the clammy brow, or smooth the restless bed, like those of mother, wife, or child? Impressed with these thoughts, we have turned away through the nearly deserted streets, and the sight of the few miserable creatures still hovering about them, has not tended to lessen the pain which such meditations awaken. The hospital is a refuge and resting place for hundreds, who, but for such institutions, must die in the streets and always. But what can be the feelings of some outcasts, when they are stretched on the bed of sickness, with scarcely a hope of recovery? The wretched woman who lingers about the pavement, hours after midnight, and the miserable shadow of a man, the ghastly remnant that want and drunkenness have left, which crouches beneath the window-ledge, to sleep where there is some shelter from the rain, have little to bind them to life, but what have they to look back upon in death? What are the unwanted comforts of a roof and a bed to them, when the recollections of a whole life of debasement stalk before them, when repentance seems a mockery, and sorrow comes too late? About a twelve month ago, as we were strolling through Convent Garden, we had been thinking about these things overnight, we were attracted by the very prepossessing appearance of a pickpocket, who, having declined to take the trouble of walking to the police office on the ground that he hadn't the slightest wish to go there at all, was being conveyed thither in a wheelbarrow to the huge delight of a crowd. Somehow, we never can resist joining a crowd, so we turned back with the mob, and entered the office in company with our friend the pickpocket, a couple of policemen, and as many dirty-faced spectators as could squeeze their way in. There was a powerful, ill-looking young fellow at the bar, who was undergoing an examination on the very common charge of having, on the previous night, ill-treated a woman, with whom he lived in some court hard by. Several witnesses bore testimony to acts of the grossest brutality, and a certificate was read from the house surgeon of a neighbouring hospital, describing the nature of the injuries the woman had received, and intimating that her recovery was extremely dreadful. Some question appeared to have been raised about the identity of the prisoner, for when it was agreed that the two magistrates should visit the hospital at eight o'clock that evening to take her deposition, it was settled that the man should be taken there also. He turned pale at this, and we saw him clench the bar very hard when the order was given, he was removed directly afterwards, and he spoke not a word. We felt an irrepressible curiosity to witness this interview, although it is hard to tell why, at this instant, for we knew it must be a painful one. It was no very difficult matter for us to gain permission, and we obtained it. The prisoner, and the officer who had him in custody, were already at the hospital when we reached it, and waiting the arrival of the magistrates in a small room below stairs. The man was handcuffed, and his hat was pulled forward over his eyes. It was easy to see, though, by the whiteness of his counterments, and the constant twitching of the muscles of his face, that he dreaded what was to come. After a short interval, the magistrates and clerk were barred in by the house surgeon, and a couple of young men who smelled very strong of tobacco smoke, they were introduced as dressers, and after one magistrate had complained bitterly of the cold, and the other of the absence of any news in the evening paper, it was announced that the patient was prepared, and we were conducted to the casualty ward in which she was lying. The dim light which burned in the spacious room increased, rather than diminished, the ghastly appearance of the hapless creatures in the beds, which were arranged in two long rows on either side. In one bed lay a child enveloped in bandages, with his body half consumed by fire. In another, a female, rendered hideous by some dreadful accident, was wildly beating her clenched fists on the covalet in pain. On a third, their lay stretched a young girl. Apparently in the heavy stupa often the immediate precursor of death, her face was stained with blood, and her breasts and arms were bound up in folds of linen. Two or three of the beds were empty, and their recent occupants were sitting beside them, but with faces so one, and eyes so bright and glassy, that it was fearful to meet their gaze. On every face was stamped the expression of anguish and suffering. The object of the visit was lying at the upper end of the room. She was a fine young woman of about two or three and twenty. Her long black hair, which had been hastily cut from near the wounds on her head, streamed over the pillow in jagged and matted locks. Her face bore deep marks of the ill usage she had received. Her hand was pressed upon her side, as if her chief pain were there. Her breathing was short and heavy, and it was plain to see that she was dying fast. She murmured a few words in reply to the magistrate's inquiry whether she was in great pain, and, having been raised on the pillow by the nurse, looked vacantly upon the strange countenances that surrounded her bed. The magistrate nodded to the officer, to bring the man forward. He did so, and stationed him at the bedside. The girl looked on with a wild and troubled expression of face, but her sight was dim, and she did not know him. Take off his hat, said the magistrate. The officer did as he was desired, and the man's features were disclosed. The girl started up with an energy quite pretty natural. The fire gleamed in her heavy eyes, and the blood rushed to her pale and sunken cheeks. It was a convulsive effort. She fell back upon her pillow, and covering her scarred and bruised face with her hands burst into tears. The man cast an anxious look towards her, but otherwise appeared wholly unmoved. After a brief pause, the nature of the errand was explained, and the oath tendered. Oh no, gentlemen! said the girl, raising herself once more and folding her hands together. No, gentlemen, for God's sake! I did it myself. It was nobody's fault. It was an accident. He didn't hurt me. He wouldn't for all the world. Jack, dear Jack, you know you wouldn't. Her sight was fast-failing her, and her hand groaked over the bedclothes in search of his. Brute as the man was, he was not prepared for this. He turned his face from the bed and sobbed. The girl's colour changed, and her breathing grew more difficult. She was evidently dying. We respect the feelings which prompt you to this, said the gentleman who had spoken first, but let me warn you not to persist in what you know to be untrue, until it is too late. It cannot save him. Jack murmured the girl, laying her hand upon his arm. They shall not persuade me to sway your life away. He didn't do it, gentlemen. He never hurt me. She grasped his arm tightly and added in a broken whisper. I hope God Almighty will forgive me all the wrong I have done, and the life I have led. God bless you, Jack. Some kind gentleman take my love to my poor old father. Five years ago, he said he wished I had died a child. Oh, I wish I had. I wish I had. The nurse bent over the girl for a few seconds, and then drew the sheet over her face. It covered a corpse. End of Chapter 6 of Characters from Sketches by Boz