BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

CHAPTER XIX

Moving On

It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane.  The good  ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron- fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers  are laid up in ordinary.  The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of  ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse  their papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where.   The courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep.   Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales  might sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found  there, walk. 

The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, and Lincoln's Inn even  unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where  stranded proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on  lop-sided stools that will not recover their perpendicular until  the current of Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the  long vacation.  Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score,  messages and parcels are to be left at the Porter's Lodge by the  bushel.  A crop of grass would grow in the chinks of the stone  pavement outside Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters,  who have nothing to do beyond sitting in the shade there, with  their white aprons over their heads to keep the flies off, grub it  up and eat it thoughtfully.  There is only one judge in town.  Even he only comes twice a week  to sit in chambers.  If the country folks of those assize towns on  his circuit could see him now!  No full-bottomed wig, no red  petticoats, no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. 

Merely a  close-shaved gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea- bronze on the judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by  the solar rays from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell- fish shop as he comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer!  The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth.  How  England can get on through four long summer months without its bar --which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only  legitimate triumph in prosperity--is beside the question; assuredly  that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear.  The  learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the  unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by  the opposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is  doing infinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland. 

The  learned gentleman who does the withering business and who blights  all opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a  French watering-place.  The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint  on the smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks.   The very learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his  gingery complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has  become great in knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the  drowsy bench with legal "chaff," inexplicable to the uninitiated  and to most of the initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic  delight in aridity and dust, about Constantinople.  Other dispersed  fragments of the same great palladium are to be found on the canals  of Venice, at the second cataract of the Nile, in the baths of  Germany, and sprinkled on the sea-sand all over the English coast.   

Scarcely one is to be encountered in the deserted region of  Chancery Lane.  If such a lonely member of the bar do flit across  the waste and come upon a prowling suitor who is unable to leave  off haunting the scenes of his anxiety, they frighten one another  and retreat into opposite shades.  It is the hottest long vacation known for many years.  All the  young clerks are madly in love, and according to their various  degrees, pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate,  Ramsgate, or Gravesend.  All the middle-aged clerks think their  families too large.  All the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns  of Court and pant about staircases and other dry places seeking  water give short howls of aggravation.  All the blind men's dogs in  the streets draw their masters against pumps or trip them over  buckets.  A shop with a sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a  bowl of gold and silver fish in the window, is a sanctuary.  Temple  Bar gets so hot that it is, to the adjacent Strand and Fleet  Street, what a heater is in an urn, and keeps them simmering all  night.  There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be  cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in  dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those  retirements seem to blaze.  In Mr. Krook's court, it is so hot that  the people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the  pavement--Mr. Krook included, who there pursues his studies, with  his cat (who never is too hot) by his side. 

The Sol's Arms has  discontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little  Swills is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he  comes out in quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a  juvenile complexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the  feelings of the most fastidious mind.  Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil  of rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the  long vacation.  Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook's Court,  Cursitor Street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind  as a sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as  a law-stationer aforesaid.  He has more leisure for musing in  Staple Inn and in the Rolls Yard during the long vacation than at  other seasons, and he says to the two 'prentices, what a thing it  is in such hot weather to think that you live in an island with the  sea a-rolling and a-bowling right round you.  Guster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon  in the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby have it in  contemplation to receive company.  The expected guests are rather  select than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and no more.   From Mr. Chadband's being much given to describe himself, both  verbally and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken  by strangers for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is,  as he expresses it, "in the ministry."  Mr. Chadband is attached to  no particular denomination and is considered by his persecutors to  have nothing so very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects  as to render his volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent  on his conscience; but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of  the number. 

Mrs. Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward  by the vessel, Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that  Bark A 1 when she was something flushed by the hot weather. 

"My little woman," says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn,  "likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!" 

So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the  handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of  holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little  drawing-room for tea.  All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the  portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth,  the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision  made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin  slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows  of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to  be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast.  For  Chadband is rather a consuming vessel--the persecutors say a  gorging vessel--and can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife  and fork remarkably well.  Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when  they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his  hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, "At what time did you expect Mr. and  Mrs. Chadband, my love?"  "At six," says Mrs. Snagsby.  Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that "it's gone  that."  "Perhaps you'd like to begin without them," is Mrs. Snagsby's  reproachful remark. 

Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he  says, with his cough of mildness, "No, my dear, no.  I merely named  the time." 

"What's time," says Mrs. Snagsby, "to eternity?" 

"Very true, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby. 

"Only when a person lays  in victuals for tea, a person does it with a view--perhaps--more to  time.  And when a time is named for having tea, it's better to come  up to it."  "To come up to it!" Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. 

"Up to it!   As if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!"  "Not at all, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby.  Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes  rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular  ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that  Mr. and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court.  The bell at the  inner door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is  admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her  patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement.  Much  discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order)  by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as  to announce "Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay,  whatsername!" and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.  Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general  appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system.  Mrs.  Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. 

Mr. Chadband  moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught  to walk upright.  He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if  they were inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much  in a perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first  putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers  that he is going to edify them. 

"My friends," says Mr. Chadband, "peace be on this house!  On the  master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and  on the young men!  My friends, why do I wish for peace?  What is  peace?  Is it war?  No.  Is it strife?  No.  Is it lovely, and  gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful?  Oh,  yes!  Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon  yours."  In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr. Snagsby  thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well  received. 

"Now, my friends," proceeds Mr. Chadband, "since I am upon this  theme--"  Guster presents herself.  Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice  and without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful  distinctness, "Go away!" 

"Now, my friends," says Chadband, "since I am upon this theme, and  in my lowly path improving it--"  Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur "one thousing seven hundred  and eighty-two." 

The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, "Go  away!" 

"Now, my friends," says Mr. Chadband, "we will inquire in a spirit  of love--" 

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

Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to  be persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile,  says, "Let us hear the maiden!  Speak, maiden!" 

"One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir.   Which he wish to know what the shilling ware for," says Guster,  breathless. 

"For?" returns Mrs. Chadband. 

"For his fare!"  Guster replied that "he insistes on one and eightpence or on  summonsizzing the party."  Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are  proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets  the tumult by lifting up his hand. 

"My friends," says he, "I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday.   It is right that I should be chastened in some penalty.  I ought  not to murmur.  Rachael, pay the eightpence!"  While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby,  as who should say, "You hear this apostle!" and while Mr. Chadband  glows with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money.   It is Mr. Chadband's habit--it is the head and front of his  pretensions indeed--to keep this sort of debtor and creditor  account in the smallest items and to post it publicly on the most  trivial occasions. 

"My friends," says Chadband, "eightpence is not much; it might  justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half  a crown.  O let us be joyful, joyful!  O let us be joyful!"  With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in  verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair,  lifts up his admonitory hand.  "My friends," says he, "what is this which we now behold as being  spread before us?  Refreshment.  Do we need refreshment then, my  friends?  We do.  And why do we need refreshment, my friends?   

Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we  are but of the earth, because we are not of the air.  Can we fly,  my friends?  We cannot.  Why can we not fly, my friends?"  Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures  to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, "No wings." 

But  is immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.  "I say, my friends," pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and  obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, "why can we not fly?  Is it  because we are calculated to walk?  It is.  Could we walk, my  friends, without strength?  We could not.  What should we do  without strength, my friends?  Our legs would refuse to bear us,  our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we  should come to the ground.  Then from whence, my friends, in a  human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to  our limbs?  Is it," says Chadband, glancing over the table, "from  bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk  which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid  by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such  like?  It is.  Then let us partake of the good things which are set  before us!" 

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr.  Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another,  after this fashion.  But this can only be received as a proof of  their determination to persecute, since it must be within  everybody's experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely  received and much admired.  Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down  at Mr. Snagsby's table and lays about him prodigiously.  The  conversion of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already  mentioned appears to be a process so inseparable from the  constitution of this exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and  drink, he may be described as always becoming a kind of  considerable oil mills or other large factory for the production of  that article on a wholesale scale. 

On the present evening of the  long vacation, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, he does such a  powerful stroke of business that the warehouse appears to be quite  full when the works cease.  At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never  recovered her first failure, but has neglected no possible or  impossible means of bringing the establishment and herself into  contempt--among which may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly  performing clashing military music on Mr. Chadband's head with  plates, and afterwards crowning that gentleman with muffins--at  which period of the entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that  he is wanted. 

"And being wanted in the--not to put too fine a point upon it--in  the shop," says Mr. Snagsby, rising, "perhaps this good company  will excuse me for half a minute." 

Mr. Snagsby descends and finds the two 'prentices intently  contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the  arm. 

"Why, bless my heart," says Mr. Snagsby, "what's the matter!" 

"This boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to,  won't move on--" 

"I'm always a-moving on, sar, cries the boy, wiping away his grimy  tears with his arm. 

"I've always been a-moving and a-moving on,  ever since I was born.  Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor  I do move!" 

"He won't move on," says the constable calmly, with a slight  professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in  his stiff stock, "although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and  therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. 

He's as obstinate  a young gonoph as I know.  He WON'T move on." 

"Oh, my eye!  Where can I move to!" cries the boy, clutching quite  desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of  Mr. Snagsby's passage. 

"Don't you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of  you!" says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. 

"My  instructions are that you are to move on.  I have told you so five  hundred times." 

"But where?" cries the boy. 

"Well!  Really, constable, you know," says Mr. Snagsby wistfully,  and coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and  doubt, "really, that does seem a question.  Where, you know?" 

"My instructions don't go to that," replies the constable. 

"My  instructions are that this boy is to move on." 

Do you hear, Jo?  It is nothing to you or to any one else that the  great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few  years in this business to set you the example of moving on.  The  one grand recipe remains for you--the profound philosophical  prescription--the be-all and the end-all of your strange existence  upon earth.  Move on!  You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the  great lights can't at all agree about that.  Move on!  Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all  indeed, but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no  thoroughfare in any direction.  By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband  and Mrs. Snagsby, hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the  stairs.  Guster having never left the end of the passage, the whole  household are assembled. 

"The simple question is, sir," says the constable, "whether you  know this boy.  He says you do."  Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, "No he  don't!" 

"My little woman!" says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase.   

"My love, permit me!  Pray have a moment's patience, my dear.  I do  know something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can't say  that there's any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable." 

To  whom the law-stationer relates his Joful and woful experience,  suppressing the half-crown fact. 

"Well!" says the constable, "so far, it seems, he had grounds for  what he said.  When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said  you knew him.  Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he  was acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper,  and if I'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear.  The young man  don't seem inclined to keep his word, but--  Oh! Here IS the young  man!"  Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby and touches his hat with  the chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs. 

"I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this  row going on," says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer, "and as your  name was mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be  looked into." 

"It was very good-natured of you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I am  obliged to you."  And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience,  again suppressing the half-crown fact. 

"Now, I know where you live," says the constable, then, to Jo.   

"You live down in Tom-all-Alone's.  That's a nice innocent place to  live in, ain't it?" 

"I can't go and live in no nicer place, sir," replies Jo. 

"They  wouldn't have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice  innocent place fur to live.  Who ud go and let a nice innocent  lodging to such a reg'lar one as me!" 

"You are very poor, ain't you?" says the constable. 

"Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral," replies Jo. 

"I  leave you to judge now!  I shook these two half-crowns out of him,"  says the constable, producing them to the company, "in only putting  my hand upon him!" 

"They're wot's left, Mr. Snagsby," says Jo, "out of a sov-ring as  wos give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as  come to my crossin one night and asked to be showd this 'ere ouse  and the ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the  berrin-ground wot he's berrid in.  She ses to me she ses 'are you  the boy at the inkwhich?' she ses.  I ses 'yes' I ses.  She ses to  me she ses 'can you show me all them places?'  I ses 'yes I can' I  ses.  And she ses to me 'do it' and I dun it and she giv me a  sov'ring and hooked it.  And I an't had much of the sov'ring  neither," says Jo, with dirty tears, "fur I had to pay five bob,  down in Tom-all-Alone's, afore they'd square it fur to give me  change, and then a young man he thieved another five while I was  asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence and the landlord he  stood drains round with a lot more on it." 

"You don't expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the  sovereign, do you?" says the constable, eyeing him aside with  ineffable disdain. 

"I don't know as I do, sir," replies Jo.  "I don't expect nothink  at all, sir, much, but that's the true hist'ry on it." 

"You see what he is!" the constable observes to the audience.   

"Well, Mr. Snagsby, if I don't lock him up this time, will you  engage for his moving on?" 

"No!" cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs. 

"My little woman!" pleads her husband. 

"Constable, I have no doubt  he'll move on.  You know you really must do it," says Mr. Snagsby. 

"I'm everyways agreeable, sir," says the hapless Jo. 

"Do it, then," observes the constable. 

"You know what you have got  to do.  Do it!  And recollect you won't get off so easy next time.   Catch hold of your money.  Now, the sooner you're five mile off,  the better for all parties."  With this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun  as a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors  good afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook's Court perform slow  music for him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his  iron-bound hat in his hand for a little ventilation.  Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign  has awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. 

Mr.  Guppy, who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has  been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation,  takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular cross- examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by the  ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs and  drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of the  tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions.  Mr. Guppy  yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow  into the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as  a witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other  shape like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying  him according to the best models.  Nor is the examination unlike  many such model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing  and of its being lengthy, for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent,  and Mrs. Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive  disposition, but that it lifts her husband's establishment higher  up in the law. 

During the progress of this keen encounter, the  vessel Chadband, being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets  aground and waits to be floated off. 

"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. 

"Either this boy sticks to it like  cobbler's-wax or there is something out of the common here that  beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's." 

Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, "You don't say  so!" 

"For years!" replied Mrs. Chadband. 

"Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for years," Mrs. Snagsby  triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy.  "Mrs. Chadband--this  gentleman's wife--Reverend Mr. Chadband." 

"Oh, indeed!" says Mr. Guppy. 

"Before I married my present husband," says Mrs. Chadband. 

"Was you a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, transferring  his cross-examination. 

"No." 

"NOT a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy.  Mrs. Chadband shakes her head. 

"Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in  something, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to  model his conversation on forensic principles. 

"Not exactly that, either," replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the  joke with a hard-favoured smile. 

"Not exactly that, either!" repeats Mr. Guppy. 

"Very good.  Pray,  ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions  (we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and  Carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance?  Take  time, ma'am.  We shall come to it presently.  Man or woman, ma'am?" 

"Neither," says Mrs. Chadband as before. 

"Oh!  A child!" says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs.  Snagsby the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on  British jurymen. 

"Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to  tell us WHAT child." 

"You have got it at last, sir," says Mrs. Chadband with another  hard-favoured smile. 

"Well, sir, it was before your time, most  likely, judging from your appearance.  I was left in charge of a  child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs.  Kenge and Carboy." 

"Miss Summerson, ma'am!" cries Mr. Guppy, excited. 

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

"There was no Missing of the girl in my time.  It was Esther.   'Esther, do this!  Esther, do that!' and she was made to do it." 

"My dear ma'am," returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small  apartment, "the humble individual who now addresses you received  that young lady in London when she first came here from the  establishment to which you have alluded.  Allow me to have the  pleasure of taking you by the hand." 

Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed  signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his  pocket-handkerchief.  Mrs. Snagsby whispers "Hush!" 

"My friends," says Chadband, "we have partaken in moderation"  (which was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) "of  the comforts which have been provided for us.  May this house live  upon the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful  therein; may it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it  advance, may it proceed, may it press forward!  But, my friends,  have we partaken of any-hing else?  We have.  My friends, of what  else have we partaken?  Of spiritual profit?  Yes.  From whence  have we derived that spiritual profit?  My young friend, stand  forth!"  Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch  forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the  eloquent Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions. 

"My young friend," says Chadband, "you are to us a pearl, you are  to us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel.  And  why, my young friend?"  "I don't know," replies Jo.  "I don't know nothink." 

"My young friend," says Chadband, "it is because you know nothing  that you are to us a gem and jewel.  For what are you, my young  friend?  Are you a beast of the field?  No.  A bird of the air?   No.  A fish of the sea or river?  No.  You are a human boy, my  young friend.  A human boy.  O glorious to be a human boy!  And why  glorious, my young friend?  Because you are capable of receiving  the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable of profiting by this  discourse which I now deliver for your good, because you are not a  stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.        

O running stream of sparkling joy      

To be a soaring human boy!  

And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend?  No.   Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now?  Because you are  in a state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity,  because you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a  state of bondage.  My young friend, what is bondage?  Let us, in a  spirit of love, inquire."  At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have  been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his  face and gives a terrible yawn.  Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses  her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.  "My friends," says Mr. Chadband with his persecuted chin folding  itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, "it is right  that I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is  right that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be  corrected.  I stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride  of my three hours' improving.  The account is now favourably  balanced: my creditor has accepted a composition.  O let us be  joyful, joyful!  O let us be joyful!"  Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby.  "My friends," says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, "I  will not proceed with my young friend now.  Will you come to- morrow, my young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am  to be found to deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like  the thirsty swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that,  and upon the day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear  discourses?"  (This with a cow-like lightness.)  Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms,  gives a shuffling nod.  Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs.  Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house.  But  before he goes downstairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken  meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms.  So, Mr. Chadband--of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder  he should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable  nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave  off, having once the audacity to begin--retires into private life  until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade.  Jo  moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge,  where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his  repast.  And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the  great cross on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glittering above  a red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke.  From the boy's face one  might suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning  confusion of the great, confused city--so golden, so high up, so  far out of his reach.  There he sits, the sun going down, the river  running fast, the crowd flowing by him in two streams--everything  moving on to some purpose and to one end--until he is stirred up  and told to "move on" too.

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