Charles Dickens

“ Traveller, summing up in a quietly and comfortably settled manner, "you are a nuisance, and this keimel is a nuisance, and the audience that you cannot possibly dispense with is a nuisance, and the nuisance is not merely a local nuisance, because it is a general nuisance to know that there can be such a nuisance left in civilization so very long after its time,"
"Will you go away? I have a gun in here," said the hermit. ”

“ Traveller, beginning to smoke "the unreasoning hardihood of it is something wonderful—even in a man with the dirt upon him an inch or two thick— behind bars—in a blanket and skewer!"
The hermit looked at him irresolutely, and retired to his soot and cinders and lay down, and got up again and came to the bars, and again looked at him irresolutely, and finally said with sharpness: "I don't like tobacco."
"I don't like dirt," rejoined Mr. Traveller; "tobacco is an excellent disinfectant. ”

“ He was lying on a bank of soot and cinders, on the floor, in front of a rusty fireplace. There was nothing else in the dark little kitchen, or scullery, or whatever his den had been originally used as, but a table with a litter of old bottles on it. A rat made a clatter among these bottles, jumped down, and ran over the real live hermit on his way to his hole, or the man in his hole would not have been so easily discernible. Tickled in the face by the rat's tail, the owner of Tom Tiddler's Ground opened his eyes, saw Mr. Traveller, started up, and sprang to the window. ”

“ Mopes is dirty, it cannot be denied," said the landlord.
"Intolerably conceited."
"Mr. Mopes is vain of the life he leads, some do say," replied the landlord, as another concession.
"A slothful, unsavory, nasty reversal of the laws of human nature," said the traveller; "and for the sake of God's working world and its wholesomeness, both moral and physical, I would put the thing on the tread-mill (if I had my way) wherever I found it; whether on a pillar, or in a hole; whether on Tom Tiddler's ground, or the Pope of Rome's ground, or a Hindoo fakirs ground. or any other ground." ”

“ The traveller was partaking of chops and tea in the present humble parlor, and the landlord's shot was fired obliquely at him.
"And you call him a hermit?" said the traveller.
"They call him such," returned the landlord, evading personal responsibility; "he is in general so considered."
"What is a hermit?" asked the traveller.
"What is it?" repeated the landlord, drawing his hand across his chin. ”

“ What is a man in your obscene state of dilapidation but a nuisance? Then, as you very well know, you cannot do without an audience, and your audience is a nuisance. You attract all the disreputable vagabonds and prowlers within ten miles round, by exhibiting yourself to them in that objectionable blanket, and by throwing copper money among them, and giving them drink out of those very dirty jars and bottles that I see in there (their stomachs need be strong!) ”

“ Traveller, quietly smoking.
"There is little wisdom in knowing that every man must be up and doing, and that all mankind are made dependent on one another."
"You have companions outside," said the hermit. "I am not to be imposed upon by your assumed confidence in the people who may enter." ”

“ He faintly indicated with his chin a little mean ruin of a wooden gate at the side of the house.
"Have you seen Tom?"
"No, and I ain't partickler to see him. I can see a dirty man anywhere."
"He does not live in the house, then?" said Mr. Traveller, casting his eyes upon the house anew.
"The man said," returned the tinker, rather irritably,—"him as was here just now—'this what you're a-lyingon, mate, is Tom Tiddler's Ground. And if you want to see Tom,' he says, 'you must go in at that gate.' The man come out at that gate himself, and he ought to know."
"Certainly," said Mr. Traveller. ”

“ This is a little too much. You are not going to call yourself clean? Look at your legs. And as to these being your premises, they are in far too disgraceful a condition to claim any privilege of ownership, or anything else. ”