mistaken if that ere Jingle worn't a-doin' somethin' in the vater-cart vay!"

The area formed by the wall in that part of the Fleet in which Mr. Pickwick stood, was just wide enough to make a good racket court, one side being formed, of course, by the wall itself, and the other by that portion of the prison which looked (or rather would have looked, but for the wall) towards St. Paul's Cathedral. Sauntering or sitting about, in every possible attitude of listless idleness, were a great number of debtors, the major part of whom were waiting in prison until their day of "going up" before the Insolvent Court should arrive, while others had been remanded for various terms, which they were idling away as they best could. Some were shabby, some were smart, many dirty, a few clean; but there they all lounged, and loitered, and slunk about, with as little spirit or purpose as the beasts in a menagerie.

Lolling from the windows which commanded a view of this promenade, were a number of persons; some in noisy conversation with their acquaintance below, others playing at ball with some adventurous throwers outside; and others looking on at the racket-players, or watching the boys as they cried the game. Dirty slipshod women passed and re-passed on their way to the cooking-house in one corner of the yard; children screamed, and fought, and played together, in another; the tumbling of the skittles, and the shouts of the players, mingled perpetually with these and a hundred other sounds; and all was noise and tumult-save in a little miserable shed a few yards off, where there lay, all quiet and ghastly, the body of the Chancery prisoner who had died the night before, awaiting the mockery of an inquest. The body! It is the lawyer's term for the restless whirling mass of cares and anxieties, affections, hopes, and griefs, that make up the living man. The law had his body, and there it lay, clothed in grave-clothes, an awful witness to its tender mercy.

"Would you like to see a whistling-shop, Sir?" inquired Job Trotter.

"What do you mean?" was Mr. Pickwick's counter inquiry.

"A vistlin'-shop, Sir," interposed Mr. Weller.

"What is that, Sam?-a bird-fancier's?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.

"Bless your heart, no, Sir," replied Job; "a whistlingshop, Sir, is where they sell spirits." Mr. Job Trotter briefly explained here, that all persons, being prohibited

under heavy penalties from conveying spirits into debtors' prisons, and such commodities being highly prized by the ladies and gentlemen confined therein, it had occurred to some speculative turnkey to connive, for certain lucrative considerations, at two or three prisoners retailing the favourite article of gin, for their own profit and advantage. "This plan you see, Sir, has been gradually introduced into all the prisons for debt," said Mr. Trotter.

"And it has this wery great advantage," said Sam, "that the turnkeys takes wery good care to seize hold o' ev'rybody but them as pays 'em, that attempts the willainny, and ven it gets in the papers they're applauded for their wigilance; so it cuts two vays-frightens other people from the trade, and elewates their own characters." "Exactly so, Mr. Weller," observed Job.

"Well, but are these rooms never searched to ascertain whether any spirits are concealed in them?" said Mr. Pickwick.

66

Cert'nly they are, Sir," replied Sam; "but the turnkeys knows before-hand, and gives the vord to the vistlers, and you may vistle for it ven you go to look."

By this time, Job had tapped at a door, which was opened by a gentleman with an uncombed head, who bolted it after them when they had walked in, and grinned; upon which Job grinned, and Sam also: whereupon Mr. Pickwick, thinking it might be expected of him, kept on smiling till the end of the interview.

The gentleman with the uncombed head appeared quite satisfied with this mute announcement of their business; and producing a flat stone bottle, which might hold about a couple of quarts from beneath his bedstead, he filled out three glasses of gin, which Job Trotter and Sam disposed of in a most workmanlike manner.

66

Any more?" said the whistling gentleman.

"No more," replied Job Trotter.

Mr. Pickwick paid; the door was unbolted, and out they came; the uncombed gentleman bestowing a friendly nod upon Mr. Roker, who happened to be passing at the

moment.

From this spot Mr. Pickwick wandered along all the galleries, up and down all the staircases, and once again round the whole area of the yard. The great body of the prison population appeared to be Mivins and Smangle, and the parson, and the butcher, and the leg, over and over, and over again. There was the same squalor, the same turmoil and noise, the same general characteristics in every corner; in the best and the worst alike. The

whole place seemed restless and troubled; and the people were crowding and flitting to and fro, like the shadows in an uneasy dream.

"I have seen enough," said Mr. Pickwick, as he threw himself into a chair in his little apartment. "My head aches with these scenes, and my heart too. Henceforth I will be a prisoner in my own room."

And Mr. Pickwick steadfastly adhered to this determination. For three long months he remained shut up all day, only stealing out at night to breathe the air when the greater part of his fellow-prisoners were in bed or carousing in their rooms. His health was evidently beginning to suffer from the closeness of the confinement, but neither the often-repeated entreaties of Perker and his friends, nor the still more frequently repeated warnings and admonitions of Mr. Samuel Weller, could induce him to alter one jot of his inflexible resolution.

CHAPTER XLV

RECORDS A TOUCHING ACT OF DELICATE FEELING, NOT UNMIXED WITH PLEASANTRY, ACHIEVED AND PERFORMED BY MESSRS. DODSON AND FOGG.

IT

T was within a week of the close of the month of July, that a hackney cabriolet, number unrecorded, was seen to proceed at a rapid pace up Goswell-street; three people were squeezed into it besides the driver, who sat, of course, in his own particular little dickey at the side; over the apron were hung two shawls, belonging to all appearance to two small vixenish-looking ladies under the apron, between whom, compressed into a very small compass, there was stowed away a gentleman of heavy and subdued demeanour, who, whenever he ventured to make an observation, was snapped up short, by one of the vixenish ladies before-mentioned. Lastly, the two vixenish ladies and the heavy gentleman were giving the driver contradictory directions, all tending to the one point, that he should stop at Mrs. Bardell's door, which the heavy gentleman in direct opposition to, and defiance of, the vixenish ladies, contended was a green door and not a yellow one.

Stop at the house with the green door, driver," said the heavy gentleman.

"Oh! You perwerse creetur!" exclaimed one of the vixenish ladies. "" Drive to the 'ouse with the yellow door, cabmin."

Upon this the cabman, who in a sudden effort to pull up at the house with the green door, had pulled the horse up so high that he nearly pulled him backwards into the cabriolet, let the animal's fore legs down to the ground again, and paused.

"Now vere am I to pull up?" inquired the driver. "Settle it among yourselves. All I ask is, vere."

Here the contest was renewed with increased violence, and the horse being troubled with a fly on his nose, the cabman humanely employed his leisure in lashing him about the head, on the counter-irritation principle.

"Most wotes carries the day," said one of the vixenish ladies at length. "The 'ouse with the yellow door, cab

min."

But after the cabriolet had dashed up in splendid style to the house with the yellow door, "making," as one of the vixenish ladies triumphantly said, "acterrally more noise than if one had come in one's own carriage "—and after the driver had dismounted to assist the ladies in getting out, the small round head of Master Thomas Bardell was thrust out of the one pair window of a house with a red door a few numbers off.

'Aggrawatin' thing," said the vixenish lady last mentioned, darting a withering glance at the heavy gentleman.

"My dear, it's not my fault," said the gentleman.

"Don't talk to me, you creetur, don't," retorted the lady. "The house with the red door, cabmin. Oh! If ever a woman was troubled with a ruffinly creetur, that takes a pride and pleasure in disgracing his wife on every possible occasion afore strangers, I am that woman!"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Raddle," said the other little woman, who was no other than Mrs. Cluppins.

"What have I been a-doing of?" asked Mr. Raddle. "Don't talk to me, don't, you brute, for fear I should be perwoked to forgit my sect and strike you," said Mrs. Raddle.

While this dialogue was going on, the driver was most ignominiously leading the horse by the bridle up to the house with the red door, which Master Bardell had already opened. Here was a mean and low way of arriving at a friend's house!-no dashing up with all the fire and fury of the animal, no jumping down of the driver and loud knocking at the door, no opening the apron with a crash at the very last moment for fear of the ladies sitting in a draught, and then the man handing the shawls out after

wards as if he were a private coachman. The whole edge of the thing had been taken off-it was flatter than walking.

"Well, Tommy," said Mrs. Cluppins, "how's your poor, dear mother?"

"Oh, she's wery well," replied Master Bardell.

"She's

in the front parlour,-all ready. I'm ready too, I am." Here Master Bardell put his hands in his pockets, and jumped off and on the bottom step of the door.

"Is anybody else a-goin', Tommy?" said Mrs Cluppins, arranging her pelerine.

“Mrs. Sanders is going, she is," replied Tommy. "I'm a-goin' too, I am."

"Drat the boy," said little Mrs. Cluppins.

of nobody but himself. Here, Tommy, dear." "Well," said Master Bardell.

"He thinks

"Who else is a-goin', lovey?" said Mrs. Cluppins in an insinuating manner.

"Oh! Mrs. Rogers is a-goin'," replied Master Bardell, opening his eyes very wide as he delivered the intelli

gence.

"What! The lady as has taken the lodgings!" ejacu lated Mrs. Cluppins.

Master Bardell put his hands further down into his pockets, and nodded exactly thirty-five times, to imply that it was the lady lodger, and no order.

"Bless us!" said Mrs. Cluppins. "It's quite a party." "Ah, if you knew what was in the cupboard, you'd say so," replied Master Bardell.

"What is there, Tommy?" said Mrs. Cluppins, coaxingly. "You'll tell me, Tommy, I know."

"No, I won't," replied Master Bardell, shaking his head, and applying himself to the bottom step again. "Drat the child!" muttered Mrs. Cluppins.

What

a prowokin' little wretch it is! Come, Tommy, tell your dear Cluppy."

"Mother said I wasn't to," rejoined Master Bardell, "I'm a-goin' to have some, I am." Cheered by this prospect, the precocious boy applied himself to his infantile tread-mill with increased vigour.

The above examination of a child of tender years, took place while Mr. and Mrs. Raddle and the cab-driver were having an altercation concerning the fare, which terminating at this point in favour of the cabman, Mrs. Raddle came up tottering.

"Lauk, Mary Ann! what's the matter?" said Mrs. Cluppins.