Thomas Cooper

“ It was done unto me according to my wicked prayer;—for, one midnight, about ten months after my dear Barachiah's death, as I sat up in bed, with the burning desire in my heart to see my husband once more, and giving full vent to my rebelliousness by the utterance of words which I remember with horror,—behold! he whom I had lost stood at the foot of my bed, but with such a piercing look of reproof as I never saw him wear when alive. ”

“ To tell, in one sentence, the history of numberless hours of mental revolution, Joe brooded over these theories and their consequences while engaged at his daily labour, and repeated his secret visits to the meeting-house, until his young and earnest mind was filled with the one pervading idea that the only true happiness for the human soul was to be found in some sudden and ecstatic change to be received by what his new teachers called "an act of faith in the atonement." ”

“ And, much more, if we know enough of the "queer fellow" to be aware that a true, warm, glowing, fraternal heart for his fellow-creatures beats in his bosom, notwithstanding a few outward traits of somewhat striking difference from the crowd, why, then, it becomes our bounden duty,—I will not say, never to smile at his peculiarities, for that sort of puritanism will not make us better men,—but to dwell upon his virtues and excellencies,—to extol them, yea, to enthrone them, whenever he is seen, or heard, or talked of, by those with whom we company. ”

“ Nicholas Nixon, "gentleman," had dwelt threescore years in the venerable city; that is to say, the whole of his life, and had kept decent state as a householder among the genteel people of the Minster-yard, for at least half of the term. Living "retired," on a yearly income, and passing each successive day of his existence in an almost unvaried routine of eating, washing, dressing, walking, and sleeping, one would have thought that all seasons of the year would have become equally agreeable or indifferent to him. ”

“ Ay, and let us be honest with ourselves, and confess, that though years or hard experience may have bettered our own natures,—for we are all too much like that kind of fruit which takes long days and many weathers to ripen it, so as to bring forth its most wholesome flavour,—let us be honest, I say, with ourselves, and confess, that we were as foolishly willing as others, in our youth, to laugh at what the varlet world calls oddness, and singularity, and eccentricity. ”

“ And how the scale has turned, since, in the greater share of boroughs, where the poor and labouring classes threw up their hats for joy at "municipal reform,"—and now mutter discontent at the pride of upstarts become insolent oppressors,—or openly curse, as in the poverty-stricken and hunger-bitten manufacturing districts, at the relentless and grinding tyrannies of the recreant middle-classes whom municipal honours have drawn off from their hot-blooded radicalism, and converted into cold, unfeeling, merciless wielders of magisterial or other local power. ”

“ The lad was, it is true, willing to go, he was so weary of the insipidity of his present idleness, and besides, he wanted to see London, and other parts of the country, never having yet quitted his native shire; but yet his common sense was a little suspicious, that this was not exactly the way to make him a gentleman. Still this suspicion on the part of Diggory was no impediment in the way of a trial—for the lad did not so much wish to be a gentleman as a man—and he thought a little knowledge of the world would not prevent his progress towards that better climax. ”

“ Labour, the honest dame declared, should not be thought of, in her house, the day that Joe was of age,—according to her reckoning by guess,—and free. And she bustled about, as old as she was, to place her best earthen jugs, filled with mead and ale, in goodly array, on the white and well-scoured table, that every visiter might drink the young freeman's health; and she hasted to prepare a large plumb-pudding, [202] and other homely eates, for dinner,—all the while holding up her head, and striving to look as blythe and merry as if she had been in her teens. ”

“ Setting up his back and tail, he passed under the head of the dog again and again, so coaxingly and soothingly, and uttered so kindly sympathetic a "purr," every time that he passed backward and forward, and the poor aged dog arched his neck, and hung his ears forward, and bent down to receive the soft rub of the cat's back under his chin, and looked so grateful, that Ingram stood still, and pondered curiously on this display of sympathy between brute creatures—a quality that he began to think scarce among human beings. ”

“ And now, here's this lad. I wished, often, that I had one o' my own;—but it was not God's will so to bless my poor Barachiah and me,—and how could I have loved a child of my own better than I do love this poor bairn? But I was thinking about what I must do for him before he leaves me,—for he's long talked o' seeing the world when he was out of his time;—and, I make no doubt, he'll want to be off to-morrow, as soon as noontide makes him free. ”

“ The very next month, Dig's father gave up the notion of making him into a gentleman,—for the bobbin-net speculation waned,—and there was an end to making an immense fortune in a twinkling. He embarked the little capital he had gained in the more staple manufacture of the town, took Diggory into the trade, and associating with plain, sensible men, and cultivating knowledge in his leisure hours, Diggory Lawson was happier every day, and was no longer "the lad who felt like a fish out of water." ”

“ Marry, come up! I say a witch, too!"—and then she shook poor Toby till his teeth chattered, and he would fain have uttered a loud alarm, but durst not speak, for the life of him.
The dame left him to recover his courage, and laughed heartily, in spite of some slight feeling of vexation, as she told the story to her customers during the day. A few hours served to bring a crowd round the tailor's dwelling, though none would enter it; and, till night-fall, Toby's ears were assailed with epithets which shook his nerves till he wished himself a thousand miles off, as he afterwards said to Joe. ”

“ Subdean, here we are, nearly at St. Botolph's bar, and not a single poor man has paid you a mark of respect, all the way we have walked! Take my word for it, sir,—forty years ago if I had been honoured to walk down the street with a cathedral dignitary, I should have seen every poor man that we met touch his hat to him! I ask you, sir, what is to come of such a state of things?" concluded Mr. Nicholas, in a very earnest and emphatic tone.
The churchman fairly burst into laughter; and had it been any other than a Minster grandee, Gentleman Nixon would have been highly irritated by his mirth. ”

“ Strutabout jumped up, and began to urge him to the table, for had they handed Dig a cup of tea with cake, as he sat in the recess by the window, he would have been in a woeful pucker, no doubt. [68] As it was, he was in trouble enough. Poor Diggory! he took his tea every day in a basin at home, and held up a book before it, devouring the contents of the volume far more eagerly than his food; and it was a cruel piece of ambition in his mother and father to thrust him upon "respectable" society so unthinkingly. ”

“ With the same impression, all young people imagine, if they can only struggle up to London, they shall make something out in the world. Alas! thousands reach this overgrown hive, merely to starve and die in it; and they are fortunate who can find their way back into the country without [52] falling victims to their own romance. Now, permit me to ask—and yet, your own account of the little rupture of good feeling between your former patron and yourself almost answers the question beforehand—did you bring with you any note of introduction or recommendation to any person in London? ”

“ The orphan saw his foster-mother no more alive. When, three years afterwards, he again entered that little village of Haxey, it was to attend the interment of Dame Deborah in the same churchyard to which she had conducted him to witness the burial of his mother. And what an altered man was Joe! A residence in the manufacturing districts had unveiled to him a world of misery—contention—competition—avarice—oppression—and suffering—and famine—that he had never supposed to exist! ”

“ Mr. Mortimer had been perplexed before,—but what could describe his perplexity, when he had spent a day each in Ramsgate and Margate? He was lectured rather than told,—by every company he joined,—on the absolute, the imperative necessity of regarding "the Isle of Thanet" in its proper light: [102] every body was neglecting it: no one attended to it: their interests were vanishing: property was becoming of no value: any petty village in Kent could have its puffs and its praises, while their towns—the two most respectable watering-places in all England—were forgotten! ”

“ But the circumstance of a pale, handsome young man, though rather seedily dressed, coming through that particular street every morning, for four mornings, at the same hour, and standing to look at that old dog and tom-cat, was an occurrence not likely to go unnoticed in London, where people notice every minute circumstance in a way that much surprised Ingram Wilson, when he first began to find it out, for he had calculated on a very different sort of feeling in that respect. ”

“ Yet so it is, the best of mankind, those, most veritably, "of whom the world was not worthy," have been, in their day, either the butt for the sneers of silliness, or the object of envy's relentless hate, or they have toiled and toiled, perhaps unto martyrdom, beneath the withering, blasting frown of pride and oppression. ”

“ He trusted he should be supported by the company, sitting there as he did: if the young gentleman was an improficient in the duties of the table, perhaps he might be allowed to say that they all knew what it was to be young at one time in their lives, and he did think—though he was the last man in the world to wish to give the slightest offence—that the gentleman to the right of the vice-president of that table had not acted so courteously as he might have done. ”

“ The irritable gentleman no sooner sat down than another arose, and another, and another, each demanding that he should apologise to the president for his want of courtesy, and the irritable gentleman yielded to apologise—though it was far more from eagerness to eat, than a return of good-nature.—Diggory was "assisted" in cutting up the fowl by one on his left, who began to be warmed with sympathy for the youth, now the sympathiser's stomach was allayed in some small degree by sundry hearty slices of mutton. ”

“ The dame had just knocked the ashes out of the head of her pipe, and was about to retire within her dwelling for the night, when her attention was strongly attracted by the conversation of a group which was suddenly formed but a few yards from her threshold. A pale, melancholy-looking woman, with a very little boy clinging to her blue linen apron, was met by a master chimney-sweep, followed by a couple of wretched-looking urchins bowed beneath enormous bags of soot. ”

“ All was soon over,—for the poor wanderer died almost instantaneously in Dame Deborah's arm-chair.
Reader, if thou hast a heart to love thy mother, I need not attempt to describe to thee how deep was the grief and horror felt by the orphan as he gazed upon his dead mother's face. And if thou hast not such a heart, I will not give thee an occasion to [159] slight a feeling so holy as a child's absorbed love for its loving mother. ”

“ Joe received the last answer with a smile,—but, on turning round, when Noah Wallhead touched his elbow, he could not forbear laughter. Noah showed Joe the hollow turnip, with its eyes and mouth, that had so marvellously affrighted the younger apprentice when lit up with a bit of candle,—a common trick among rustic youngsters. Toby, however, was not let into the secret, and took it very ill that Joe, especially, should laugh at what he considered a very alarming narrative. ”

“ Perhaps political party is more universal than any other bad influence without, in misguiding Englishmen into ill-natured, or contemptuous, or depreciatory judgments of their neighbours and fellow-townsmen. The last dozen or fifteen years, especially, have engendered a superabundance of this foul canker;—so many new rivalries have sprung up with the great changes in political and municipal institutions; and men, from the mightiest to the meanest, have been caught up, and whirled along, [11] in many instances so involuntarily, into the rush and torrent of change. ”

“ He looked at the Times, and the Herald, and the Chronicle every morning, in one coffee-house or other—walked to this place and that—or wrote letters of application, in answer to advertisements, but all was in vain: two months fled entirely, and he had not received a single hour's employ, or earned one farthing in London; and he was now reduced to his last sovereign!
Feeling the necessity of an instant resort to the strictest and most prudential economy, he quitted his lodgings, and found one, (a beggarly bed, a chair, and broken table, in a fifth floor,) at eighteen-pence a week. ”

“ Ned Wilcom never saw his father occupied with any other thought, act, employ, or pleasure, but what pertained to money-getting; nor ever heard his father pass an encomium on any human character in his life, save on such as succeeded in piling together large fortunes from small beginnings, or enriched themselves by outwitting their neighbours. ”

“ Ingram's new friend shook his head, but looked compassionately upon the lad, and told him nothing could be done without an introduction in London: it was what every one looked for who received an application, and what every body must be furnished with who made one.
The youth caught eagerly at the information, and said he could yet obtain a note of introduction—and he thought more than one—from the country:—such notes, too, as he thought must certainly be available in procuring him an engagement on some of the leading periodicals: or, perhaps, an offer for an independent work ”