Martin Chuzzlewit quotes

He was a most exemplary man; fuller of virtuous precept than a copy book.

Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there; but these were his enemies, the shadows cast by his brightness; that was all.

His very throat was moral. You saw a good deal of it.

fuller of virtuous precept than a copy book. Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there; but these were his enemies, the shadows cast by his brightness; that was all.

His very throat was moral.

You saw a good deal of it.

Pecksniff, on his cards of business, added, “and Land Surveyor.” In one sense, and only one, he may be said to have been a Land Surveyor on a pretty large scale, as an extensive prospect lay stretched out before the windows of his house.

Of his architectural doings, nothing was clearly known, except that he had never designed or built anything; but it was generally understood that his knowledge of the science was almost awful in its profundity.

Mr. Pecksniff’s professional engagements, indeed, were almost, if not entirely, confined to the reception of pupils; for the collection of rents, with which pursuit he occasionally varied and relieved his graver toils, can hardly be said to be a strictly architectural employment.

Mr. Pecksniff’s professional engagements, indeed, were almost, if not entirely, confined to the reception of pupils; for the collection of rents, with which pursuit he occasionally varied and relieved his graver toils, can hardly be said to be a strictly architectural employment.

His genius lay in ensnaring parents and guardians, and pocketing premiums.

A young gentleman’s premium being paid, and the young gentleman come to Mr. Pecksniff’s house, Mr. Pecksniff borrowed his case of mathematical instruments (if silver-mounted or otherwise valuable); entreated him, from that moment, to consider himself one of the family;

“Come, Mr. Pecksniff,” he said, with a smile, “don’t let there be any ill-blood between us, pray. I am sorry we have ever differed, and extremely sorry I have ever given you offence. Bear me no ill-will at parting, sir.”

“I bear,” answered Mr. Pecksniff, mildly, “no ill-will to any man on earth.”

“I told you he didn’t,” said Pinch, in an undertone; “I knew he didn’t! He always says he don’t.”

“Aye,” returned the old man, “the test of contact with me—with me. You have heard of him whose misery (the gratification of his own foolish wish) was, that he turned everything he touched into gold.

The curse of my existence, and the realisation of my own mad desire, is that by the golden standard which I bear about me, I am doomed to try the metal of all other men, and find it false and hollow.

”

So saying, Mr. Pecksniff waved his right hand with much solemnity, and once more inserting it in his waistcoat, departed. There was emotion in his manner, but his step was firm.

Subject to human weaknesses, he was upheld by conscience.

Martin lay for some time, with an expression on his face of silent wonder, not unmixed with rage; at length he muttered in a whisper:

sowing perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be nothing but love! Heaven help us, we have much to answer for! Oh self, self, self! Every man for himself, and no creature for me!”

Universal self! Was there nothing of its shadow in these reflections, and in the history of Martin Chuzzlewit, on his own showing?

But he wore a moustache—a shaggy moustache too; nothing in the meek and merciful way, but quite in the fierce and scornful style; the regular Satanic sort of thing—and he wore, besides, a vast quantity of unbrushed hair.

He was very dirty and very jaunty; very bold and very mean; very swaggering and very slinking; very much like a man who might have been something better, and unspeakably like a man who deserved to be something worse.

“You were eavesdropping at that door, you vagabond!” said this gentleman.

… lay about him with his club in every possible direction, but he can’t prevent the cats from making a most intolerable row on the roofs of the houses, or the dogs from being shot in the hot weather if they run about the streets unmuzzled.

Life’s a riddle; a most infernally hard riddle to guess, Mr. Pecksniff.

My own opinion is, that like that celebrated conundrum, ‘Why’s a man in jail like a man out of jail?’ there’s no answer to it. Upon my soul and body, it’s the queerest sort of thing altogether—but there’s no use in talking about it. Ha!

What words can paint the Pecksniffs in that trying hour?

Oh, none: for words have naughty company among them, and the Pecksniffs were all goodness.

But when the company arrived! That was the time. When Mr.

Last of all there were present Mr. Chevy Slyme and his friend Tigg.

And it is worthy of remark, that although each person present disliked the other, mainly because he or she did belong to the family, they one and all concurred in hating Mr. Tigg because he didn’t.

Such was the pleasant little family circle now assembled in Mr. Pecksniff’s best parlour, agreeably prepared to fall foul of Mr. Pecksniff or anybody else who might venture to say anything whatever upon any subject.

“At all events, if I was a cannibal,” said Mr. George Chuzzlewit, greatly stimulated by this retort, “

I think it would occur to me that a lady who had outlived three husbands, and suffered so very little from their loss, must be most uncommonly tough.

”

and he was forever so perfectly satisfied with his own speed, and so little disconcerted by opportunities of comparing himself with the fastest trotters, that the illusion was the more difficult of resistance.

He was a kind of animal who infused into the breasts of strangers a lively sense of hope, and possessed all those who knew him better with a grim despair.

In what respect, having these points of character, he might be fairly likened to his master, that good man’s slanderers only can explain. But it is a melancholy truth, and a deplorable instance of the uncharitableness of the world, that they made the comparison.

Pinch’s thoughts and wishes centred, one bright frosty morning; for with this gallant equipage he was about to drive to Salisbury alone, there to meet with the new pupil, and thence to bring him home in triumph.

Blessings on thy simple heart, Tom Pinch

, how proudly dost thou button up that scanty coat, called by a sad misnomer, for these many years, a “great” one;

The education of Mr. Jonas had been conducted from his cradle on the strictest principles of the main chance.

The very first word he learnt to spell was “gain,” and the second (when he got into two syllables), “money.”

But for two results, which were not clearly foreseen perhaps by his watchful parent in the beginning, his training may be said to have been unexceptionable.

M. Todgers’s Commercial Boardinghouse was a house of that sort which is likely to be dark at any time; but that morning it was especially dark.

There was an odd smell in the passage, as if the concentrated essence of all the dinners that had been cooked in the kitchen since the house was built, lingered at the top of the kitchen stairs to that hour

, and, like the Black Friar in Don Juan, “wouldn’t be driven away.” In particular, there was a sensation of cabbage; as if all the greens that had ever been boiled there, were evergreens, and flourished in immortal strength.

… passage, as if the concentrated essence of all the dinners that had been cooked in the kitchen since the house was built, lingered at the top of the kitchen stairs to that hour, and, like the Black Friar in Don Juan, “wouldn’t be driven away.”

In particular, there was a sensation of cabbage; as if all the greens that had ever been boiled there, were evergreens, and flourished in immortal strength.

The parlour was wainscoted, and communicated to strangers a magnetic and instinctive consciousness of rats and mice. The staircase was very gloomy and very broad, with balustrades so thick and heavy that they would have served for a bridge.

On which notice they immediately descended to the banquet-hall; some of the more facetious spirits in the rear taking down gentlemen as if they were ladies, in imitation of the fortunate possessors of the two Miss Pecksniffs.

Mr. Pecksniff said grace: a short and pious grace, involving a blessing on the appetites of those present, and committing all persons who had nothing to eat, to the care of Providence

; whose business (so said the grace, in effect) it clearly was, to look after them. This done, they fell to with less ceremony than appetite;

But Mr. Pecksniff came to town on business. Had he forgotten that? Was he always taking his pleasure with Todgers’s jovial brood, unmindful of the serious demands, whatever they might be, upon his calm consideration? No.

Time and tide will wait for no man, saith the adage. But all men have to wait for time and tide.

That tide which, taken at the flood, would lead Seth Pecksniff on to fortune, was marked down in the table, and about to flow. No idle Pecksniff lingered far inland, unmindful of the changes of the stream;

Eighteen shillings a week!

Just, most just, thy censure, upright Pecksniff!

Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star, or garter; sleeves of lawn, a great man’s smile, a seat in parliament, a tap upon the shoulder from a courtly sword;

Is anyone surprised at Mr. Jonas making such a reference to such a book for such a purpose?

Does anyone doubt the old saw, that the Devil (being a layman) quotes Scripture for his own ends?

If he will take the trouble to look about him, he may find a greater number of confirmations of the fact in the occurrences of any single day, than the steam-gun can discharge balls in a minute.

It was meanly laid out now for dinner; and in a chair before the fire sat Anthony himself, who rose to greet his son and his fair cousins as they entered.

An ancient proverb warns us that we should not expect to find old heads upon young shoulders; to which it may be added that we seldom meet with that unnatural combination, but we feel a strong desire to knock them off; merely from an inherent love we have of seeing things in their right places.

It is not improbable that many men, in no wise choleric by nature, felt this impulse rising up within them, when they first made the acquaintance of Mr. Jonas;

he was dressed in a decayed suit of black; with breeches garnished at the knees with rusty wisps of ribbon, the very paupers of shoestrings; on the lower portion of his spindle legs were dingy worsted stockings of the same colour.

He looked as if he had been put away and forgotten half a century before, and somebody had just found him in a lumber-closet.

Such as he was, he came slowly creeping on towards the table, until at last he crept into the vacant chair, from which, as his dim faculties became conscious of the presence of strangers, and those strangers ladies, he rose again, apparently intending to make …

But he sat down once more without having made it, and breathing on his shrivelled hands to warm them, remained with his poor blue nose immovable above his plate, looking at nothing, with eyes that saw nothing, and a face that meant nothing.

Take him in that state, and he was an embodiment of nothing. Nothing else.

“Our clerk,” said Mr. Jonas, as host and master of the ceremonies: “Old Chuffey.”

If the two Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus, “Go where glory waits thee!”

It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is sorrowful and hideous in sound.

The flute of the youngest gentleman was wild and fitful. It came and went in gusts, like the wind. For a long time together he seemed to have left off, and when it was quite settled by Mrs.

“Well!” cried Mr. Bailey, “wot if I am? There’s something gamey in it, young ladies, an’t there?

I’d sooner be hit with a cannonball than a rolling-pin

, and she’s always a-catching up something of that sort, and throwing it at me, when the gentlemans’ appetites is good. Wot,” said Mr. Bailey, stung by the recollection of his wrongs, “wot, if they do consume the per-vishuns. It an’t my fault, is it?”

… sharpen anybody’s wits and energies, unless it was when the horse bolted, and, crashing madly down a steep hill with a stone wall at the bottom, his desperate circumstances suggested to the only gentleman left inside, some novel and unheard-of mode of dropping out behind?

Better than the gig!

The air was cold, Tom; so it was, there was no denying it; but would it have been more genial in the gig? The blacksmith’s fire burned very bright, and leaped up high, as though it wanted men to warm;

Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter’s day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! it is the nature of their kind to be so.

The loveliest things in life, Tom, are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these!

Another mile, and then begins a fall of snow, making the crow, who skims away so close above the ground to shirk the wind, a blot of ink upon the landscape.

The half-sovereign. He had wrapped it hastily in a piece of paper, and pinned it to the leaf. These words were scrawled in pencil on the inside: “I don’t want it indeed. I should not know what to do with it if I had it.”

There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which men mount, as on bright wings, towards Heaven.

There are some truths, cold bitter taunting truths, wherein your worldly scholars are very apt and punctual, which bind men down to earth with leaden chains.

There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which men mount, as on bright wings, towards Heaven. There are some truths, cold bitter taunting truths, wherein your worldly scholars are very apt and punctual, which bind men down to earth with leaden chains.

Who would not rather have to fan him, in his dying hour, the lightest feather of a falsehood such as thine, than all the quills that have been plucked from the sharp porcupine, reproachful truth, since time began!

Martin felt keenly for himself, and he felt this good deed of Tom’s keenly.

She heard the same bold spirit which had flung away as dross all gain and profit for her sake, making light of peril and privation that she might be calm and happy; and she heard no more.

That heart where self has found no place and raised no throne, is slow to recognize its ugly presence when it looks upon it.

As one possessed of an evil spirit was held in old time to be alone conscious of the lurking demon in the breasts of other men, so kindred vices know each other in their hiding-places every day, when Virtue is incredulous and blind.

“Creditable,” muttered Mark, pressing one hand upon his aching head and looking round him with a rueful grin. “That’s the great comfort. It is creditable to keep up one’s spirits here.

Virtue’s its own reward. So’s jollity.

”

“All right,” said Mark. “She’ll do that. It’s a fair division of labour, sir. I wash her boys, and she makes our tea.

I never could make tea, but anyone can wash a boy.

”

“If this was going to last,” said Tapley, “there’d be no great difference as I can perceive, between the Screw and the Dragon. I never am to get credit, I think.

I begin to be afraid that the Fates is determined to make the world easy to me.

”

“

Is smartness American for forgery?

” asked Martin.

feeding, not themselves, but broods of nightmares, who were continually standing at livery within them. Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry.

What Mrs. Pawkins felt each day at dinnertime is hidden from all human knowledge. But she had one comfort. It was very soon over.

When the colonel had finished his dinner, which event took place while Martin, who had sent his plate for some turkey, was waiting to begin, he asked him what he thought of the boarders, who were from all parts of the Union, and whether he …

It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the greater part of it may be summed up in one word.

Dollars. All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars.

Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars.

“Lord love you, sir,” he added, “they’re so fond of Liberty in this part of the globe, that they buy her and sell her and carry her to market with ’em.

They’ve such a passion for Liberty, that they can’t help taking liberties with her.

That’s what it’s owing to.”

With this request she willingly complied; and a bravura concert, solely sustained by the Misses Noriss, presently began. They sang in all languages—except their own. German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss; but nothing native; nothing so low as native.

For, in this respect, languages are like many other travellers⁠—ordinary and commonplace enough at home, but specially genteel abroad.

There is little doubt that in course of time the Misses Norris would have come to Hebrew, if they had not been interrupted by an announcement from the Irishman, who flinging open the door, cried in a loud voice—

Does business with the house of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son, from which one of the partners retires unexpectedly.

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast.

If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance, would seem …

As if, in the gap he had left, the wedge of change were driven to the head, rending what was a solid mass to fragments, things cemented and held together by the usages of years, burst asunder in as many weeks.

The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before becomes but sand and dust.

Most men, at one time or other, have proved this in some degree. The extent to which the natural laws of change asserted their supremacy in that limited sphere of action which Martin had deserted, shall be faithfully set down in these pages.

then, setting open the door, exposed him to the free current of morning air. But not all the air that is, nor all the winds that ever blew ’twixt Heaven and Earth, could have brought new life to him.

Plunge him to the throat in golden pieces now, and his heavy fingers shall not close on one!

The face of Mrs. Gamp—the nose in particular—was somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits.

Like most persons who have attained to great eminence in their profession, she took to hers very kindly; insomuch that, setting aside her natural predilections as a woman, she went to a lying-in or a laying-out with equal zest and relish.

“Ah!” repeated Mrs. Gamp; for it was always a safe sentiment in cases of mourning. “Ah dear!

If certain whispers current in the Kingsgate Street circles had any truth in them, she had indeed borne up surprisingly; and had exerted such uncommon fortitude as to dispose of Mr. Gamp’s remains for the benefit of science.

But it should be added, in fairness, that this had happened twenty years before; and that Mr. and Mrs. Gamp had long been separated on the ground of incompatibility of temper in their drink.

“You have become indifferent since then, I suppose?” said Mr. Pecksniff. “Use is second nature, Mrs. Gamp.”

Not in the churchyard? Not even there. The gates were closed; the night was dark and wet; the rain fell silently, among the stagnant weeds and nettles. One new mound was there which had not been there last night.

Time, burrowing like a mole below the ground, had marked his track by throwing up another heap of earth. And that was all.

The weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar wide open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the notes are struck.

Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap to his lips. If so, it never reached them.

Two grey eyes lurked deep within this agent’s head, but one of them had no sight in it, and stood stock still. With that side of his face he seemed to listen to what the other side was doing.

“But, I am afraid,” said Martin, glancing again at the Public Buildings, “that there’s nothing left for me to do.”

“Well! it ain’t all built,” replied the agent. “Not quite.”

This was a great relief.

“Mark,” whispered Martin, pulling him by the sleeve, “do you hear that? But whose work is all this before us, then?” he asked aloud.

“The soil being very fruitful, public buildings grows spontaneous, perhaps,” said Mark.

He was on the agent’s dark side as he said it; but Scadder instantly changed his place, and brought his active eye to bear upon him.

“You haven’t said whose work it is,” Martin ventured to observe at length, in a tone of mild propitiation.

“Well, never mind whose work it is, or isn’t,” said the agent sulkily.

“No matter how it did eventuate. P’raps he cleared off, handsome, with a heap of dollars; p’raps he wasn’t worth a cent. P’raps he was a loafin’ rowdy; p’raps a ring-tailed roarer. Now!”

Mark looked back several times as they went down the road towards the National Hotel, but now his blighted profile was towards them, and nothing but attentive thoughtfulness was written on it.

Strangely different to the other side!

He was not a man much given to laughing, and never laughed outright; but every line in the print of the crow’s foot, and every little wiry vein in that division of his head, was wrinkled up into a grin!

As Martin ascended to his bedroom, his eye was attracted by the Republican banner, which had been hoisted from the housetop in honour of the occasion, and was fluttering before a window which he passed.

“Tut!” said Martin. “You’re a gay flag in the distance. But let a man be near enough to get the light upon the other side and see through you; and you are but sorry fustian!”

and, in short, was such a remarkable companion, that Martin quite settled it between himself and his conscience, that in any new settlement it would be absolutely necessary to have such a person knocked on the head for the general peace of society.

In the meantime Mark was busy

, from early in the morning until late at night, in getting on board the steamboat such provisions, tools and other necessaries, as they had been forewarned it would be wise to take.

Is in part professional; and furnishes the reader with some valuable hints in relation to the management of a sick chamber.

Mr. Mould was surrounded by his household gods.

He was enjoying the sweets of domestic repose, and gazing on them with a calm delight. The day being sultry, and the window open, the legs of Mr. Mould were on the window-seat, and his back reclined against the shutter.

Even their peachy cheeks were puffed out and distended, as though they ought of right to be performing on celestial trumpets.

The bodiless cherubs in the shop, who were depicted as constantly blowing those instruments forever and ever without any lungs, played, it is to be presumed, entirely by ear.

Mr. Mould looked lovingly at Mrs. Mould, who sat hard by, and was a helpmate to him in his punch as in all other things. Each seraph daughter, too, enjoyed her share of his regards, and smiled upon him in return. So bountiful were Mr.

The partner of his life, and daughters twain, were Mr. Mould’s companions.

Plump as any partridge was each Miss Mould, and Mrs. M. was plumper than the two together.

So round and chubby were their fair proportions, that they might have been the bodies once belonging to the angels’ faces in the shop below, grown up, with other heads attached to make them mortal.

Hatbands, to them, were but so many yards of silk or crape; the final robe but such a quantity of linen. The Misses Mould could idealise a player’s habit, or a court-lady’s petticoat, or even an act of parliament.

But they were not to be taken in by palls. They made them sometimes.

The premises of Mr. Mould were hard of hearing to the boisterous noises in the great main streets, and nestled in a quiet corner, where the City strife became a drowsy hum, that sometimes rose and sometimes fell and sometimes altogether ceased;

suggesting to a thoughtful mind a stoppage in Cheapside.

The light came sparkling in among the scarlet runners, as if the churchyard winked at Mr. Mould, and said, “We understand each other;”

and from the distant shop a pleasant sound arose of coffin-making with a low melodious hammer, rat, tat, tat, tat, alike promoting slumber and digestion.

Mrs. Gamp traversed the gallery in a great heat from having carried her large bundle up so many stairs, and tapped at the door which was immediately opened by Mrs. Prig, bonneted and shawled and all impatience to be gone.

Mrs. Prig was of the Gamp build, but not so fat; and her voice was deeper and more like a man’s. She had also a beard.

“I began to think you warn’t a-coming!” Mrs. Prig observed, in some displeasure.

“Oh!” she said aloud, “he’s quiet, but his wits is gone. It an’t no matter wot you say.”

“Anythin’ to tell afore you goes, my dear?” asked Mrs. Gamp

, setting her bundle down inside the door, and looking affectionately at her partner.

and stooping down, she pinned his wandering arms against his sides, to see how he would look if laid out as a dead man. Hideous as it might appear, her fingers itched to compose his limbs in that last marble attitude.

“Ah!” said Mrs. Gamp, walking away from the bed, “he’d make a lovely corpse.”

She now proceeded to unpack her bundle; lighted a candle with the aid of a firebox on the drawers; filled a small kettle, as a preliminary to refreshing herself with a cup of tea in the course of the night;

“Crape! Black crape! Good God! why do they wear it outside?”

“Would you have ’em carry black crape in their insides?” Mrs. Gamp retorted.

“Hold your noise, hold your noise.”

He walked along the tangible and real stones of Holborn Hill, an undersized boy; and yet he winked the winks, and thought the thoughts, and did the deeds, and said the sayings of an ancient man.

There was an old principle within him, and a young surface without.

He became an inexplicable creature: a breeched and booted Sphinx. There was no course open to the barber but to go distracted himself, or to take Bailey for granted; and he wisely chose the latter.

and yet he winked the winks, and thought the thoughts, and did the deeds, and said the sayings of an ancient man. There was an old principle within him, and a young surface without.

He became an inexplicable creature: a breeched and booted Sphinx.

There was no course open to the barber but to go distracted himself, or to take Bailey for granted; and he wisely chose the latter.

“He knows Mrs. Chuzzlewit,” said Paul aloud.

“There’s nothin’ he don’t know; that’s my opinion,” observed Mrs. Gamp. “All the wickedness of the world is Print to him.”

Mr. Bailey received this as a compliment, and said, adjusting his cravat, “reether so.”

“Would you be so good, my darling dovey of a dear young married lady,” Mrs. Gamp observed, in a low voice, “as put that somewheres where you can keep it in your mind? I’m well beknown to many ladies, and it’s my card.

Gamp is my name, and Gamp my nater.

Livin’ quite handy, I will make so bold as call in now and then, and make inquiry how your health and spirits is, my precious chick!”

He answered nothing was the matter; and turned from her. But in her fear and wonder, turning also, she saw him raise his trembling hands above his head, and heard him say:

“Oh! woe, woe, woe, upon this wicked house!”

“Oh! woe, woe, woe, upon this wicked house!”

It was her welcome⁠—Home.

Though turned and twisted upside down, and inside out, as great men have been sometimes known to be; though no longer Montague Tigg, but Tigg Montague; still it was Tigg; the same Satanic, gallant, military Tigg.

The brass was burnished, lacquered, newly stamped; yet it was the true Tigg metal notwithstanding.

Beside him sat a smiling gentleman, of less pretensions and of business looks, whom he addressed as David. Surely not the David of the—how shall it be phrased?—the triumvirate of golden balls? Not David, tapster at the Lombards’ Arms? Yes. The very man.

And yet he was not a giant. His coat was rather small than otherwise.

The whole charm was in his waistcoat.

Respectability, competence, property in Bengal or anywhere else, responsibility to any amount on the part of the company that employed him, were all expressed in that one garment.

Jonas assented, and said after a short silence, first spreading out his legs, and sticking one arm akimbo to show how perfectly at home he was,

“Don’t say, the truth,” interposed Tigg, with another grin. “It’s so like humbug.”

Greatly charmed by this, Jonas began again.

“Right! quite right!” retorted Tigg. “And hard it is upon the part of the law that it should be so confoundedly down upon us unfortunate victims; when it takes such amazing good interest for itself from all its clients.

But charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

Well! The law being hard upon us, we’re not exactly soft upon B;

“Why, you’re as bold as brass!” said Jonas, in the utmost admiration.

“A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange!”

cried the chairman, with a laugh that shook him from head to foot. “You’ll dine with me tomorrow?”

for he was born to be a secret. He was a short, dried-up, withered old man, who seemed to have secreted his very blood; for nobody would have given him credit for the possession of six ounces of it in his whole body.

How he lived was a secret; where he lived was a secret; and even what he was, was a secret.

In his musty old pocketbook he carried contradictory cards, in some of which he called himself a coal-merchant, in others a wine-merchant, in others a commission-agent, in others a collector, in others an accountant; as if he really didn’t know the secret himself.

No angry cries; no loud reproaches. Even her weeping and her sobs were stifled by her clinging round him. She only said, repeating it in agony of heart, how could he, could he, could he—and lost utterance in tears.

Oh woman, God beloved in old Jerusalem! The best among us need deal lightly with thy faults, if only for the punishment thy nature will endure, in bearing heavy evidence against us on the Day of Judgment!

It is undoubtedly a fact that in the attentive ears of Mr. Pecksniff, the proposition did not sound quite like the dismal knell of all his hopes.

But he was a man of great feeling and acute sensibility; and he squeezed his pocket-handkerchief against his eyes with both hands⁠—as such men always do, especially when they are observed.

“One of my birds,” Mr. Pecksniff said, “has left me for the stranger’s breast; the other would take wing to Todgers’s! Well, well, what am I? I don’t know what I am, exactly. Never mind!”

“I always desire it,” said the old man. “You know I always desire it. I wish to pay as I go, even when I buy of you. Not that I do not leave a balance to be settled one day, Pecksniff.”

The architect was too much overcome to speak. He tried to drop a tear upon his patron’s hand, but couldn’t find one in his dry distillery.

“May that day be very distant!” was his pious exclamation. “Ah, sir! If I could say how deep an interest I have in you and yours! I allude to our beautiful young friend.”

the colour of the long grass came and went, as if the light clouds made it timid as they floated through the distant air.

The birds, so many Pecksniff consciences, sang gaily upon every branch;

and Mr. Pecksniff paid his homage to the day by ruminating on his projects as he walked along.

Hearing notes behind her, not belonging to the songsters of the grove, she looked round. Mr. Pecksniff kissed his hand, and was at her side immediately.

“Communing with nature?” said Mr. Pecksniff. “So am I.”

She said the morning was so beautiful that she had walked further than she intended, and would return. Mr. Pecksniff said it was exactly his case, and he would return with her.

I did suppose that the sensation was buried in the silent tomb of a lady, only second to you in qualities of the mind and form; but I find I am mistaken.”

She tried to disengage her hand, but might as well have tried to free herself from the embrace of an affectionate boa-constrictor; if anything so wily may be brought into comparison with Pecksniff.

“Although I am a widower,” said Mr. Pecksniff, examining the rings upon her fingers, and tracing the course of one delicate blue vein with his fat thumb, “a widower with two daughters, still I am not encumbered, my love.

And now the full agitation and misery of the disclosure came rushing upon Tom indeed. The star of his whole life from boyhood had become, in a moment, putrid vapour.

It was not that Pecksniff, Tom’s Pecksniff, had ceased to exist, but that he never had existed.

In his death Tom would have had the comfort of remembering what he used to be, but in this discovery, he had the anguish of recollecting what he never was.

These were trifles in themselves, but they added to the strangeness of the place, and did not induce Tom to forget his new position.

Pecksniff had gone out of the world⁠—had never been in it⁠—and it was as much as Tom could do to say his prayers without him.

But he felt happier afterwards, and went to sleep, and dreamed about him as he Never Was.

Anthony’s. This ancient female had been engaged, in fulfillment of a vow, registered by Mrs. Todgers, that no more boys should darken the commercial doors; and she was chiefly remarkable for a total absence of all comprehension upon every subject whatever.

She was a perfect Tomb for messages and small parcels

; and when dispatched to the Post Office with letters, had been frequently seen endeavouring to insinuate them into casual chinks in private doors, under the delusion that any door with a hole in it would answer the purpose.

It was natural for him to reflect—he had months to do it in—upon his own escape, and Mark’s extremity. This led him to consider which of them could be the better spared, and why?

Then the curtain slowly rose a very little way; and Self, Self, Self, was shown below.

He asked himself, besides, when dreading Mark’s decease (as all men do and must, at such a time), whether he had done his duty by him, and had deserved and made a good response to his fidelity and zeal. No.

and so he felt and knew the failing of his life, and saw distinctly what an ugly spot it was.

Eden was a hard school to learn so hard a lesson in; but there were teachers in the swamp and thicket, and the pestilential air, who had a searching method of their own.

He made a solemn resolution that when his strength returned he would not dispute the point or resist the conviction, but would look upon it as an established fact, that selfishness was in his breast, and must be rooted out.

and there was not a jot of pride in this; nothing but humility and steadfastness; the best armour he could wear.

So low had Eden brought him down. So high had Eden raised him up.

After a long and lingering illness (in certain forlorn stages of which, when too far gone to speak, he had feebly written “jolly!” on a slate), Mark showed some symptoms of returning health. They came and went, and flickered for a time;

The earth, the air, the vegetation, and the water that they drank, all teemed with deadly properties. Their fellow-passenger had lost two children long before; and buried now her last. Such things are much too common to be widely known or cared for.

Smart citizens grow rich, and friendless victims smart and die, and are forgotten. That is all.

At last a boat came panting up the ugly river, and stopped at Eden. Mark was waiting at the wood hut when it came, and had a letter handed to him from on board. He bore it off to Martin.

“Why, I was a-thinking, sir,” returned Mark, “that if I was a painter and was called upon to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?”

“Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I suppose.”

“No,” said Mark. “That wouldn’t do for me, sir. I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its shortsightedness; like a Bantam, for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity;

… the Thousand-and-One Nights, who issues orders for the destruction of all the Porters in Baghdad because one of that unfortunate fraternity is supposed to have misconducted himself, than to any logical, not to say Christian system of conduct, known to the world in later times.

Tom had so long been used to steep the Pecksniff of his fancy in his tea, and spread him out upon his toast, and take him as a relish with his beer, that he made but a poor breakfast on the first morning after his expulsion.

Nor did he much improve his appetite for dinner by seriously considering his own affairs, and taking counsel thereon with his friend the organist’s assistant.

And really it might have confused a less modest man than Tom to find himself sitting next that coachman; for of all the swells that ever flourished a whip professionally, he might have been elected emperor.

He didn’t handle his gloves like another man, but put them on⁠—even when he was standing on the pavement, quite detached from the coach⁠—as if the four greys were, somehow or other, at the ends of the fingers.

It was the same with his hat. He did things with his hat, which nothing but an unlimited knowledge of horses and the wildest freedom of the road, could ever have made him perfect in.

as if the laws of gravity did not admit of such an event as its being knocked off or blown off, and nothing like an accident could befall it. The guard, too! Seventy breezy miles a day were written in his very whiskers.

His manners were a canter; his conversation a round trot.

He was a fast coach upon a downhill turnpike road; he was all pace. A wagon couldn’t have moved slowly, with that guard and his key-bugle on the top of it.

cried Tom, after regarding him in silence for some little time. “If you do not understand what I mean, I will tell you. If you do understand what I mean, I beg you not to repeat that mode of expressing yourself in answer to it.

My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.

”

“Distinctly not,” Tom answered. “If you imagine that the payment of an annual sum of money gives it to you, you immensely exaggerate its power and value.

Your money is the least part of your bargain in such a case. You may be punctual in that to half a second on the clock, and yet be Bankrupt.

I have nothing more to say,” said Tom, much flushed and flustered, now that it was over, “except to crave permission to stand in your garden until my sister is ready.”

He sat down and laughed.

“They don’t know what a many steps there is!” he said. “It’s worth twice the money to stop here. Oh, my eye!”

The Man in the Monument was a Cynic; a worldly man! Tom couldn’t ask his way of him. He was prepared to put no confidence in anything he said.

“They don’t know what a many steps there is!” he said. “It’s worth twice the money to stop here. Oh, my eye!”

The Man in the Monument was a Cynic; a worldly man!

Tom couldn’t ask his way of him. He was prepared to put no confidence in anything he said.

“I wonder you find any gratification in coming to see me. I can’t think what put it in your head. I never had much in seeing you. There was no love lost between us, Mr. Pinch, at any time, I think.”

Her bonnet lay beside her on the sofa, and she was very busy with the ribbons as she spoke. Much too busy to be conscious of the work her fingers did.

“We never quarrelled,” said Tom.—Tom was right in that, for one person can no more quarrel without an adversary, than one person can play at chess, or fight a duel. “I hoped you would be glad to shake hands with an old friend.

Todgers’s breast, up a great many steps, and in a corner easy to be overlooked, there was a secret door, with “Woman” written on the spring, which, at a touch from Mercy’s hand, had flown wide open, and admitted her for shelter.

When boardinghouse accounts are balanced with all other ledgers, and the books of the Recording Angel are made up forever, perhaps there may be seen an entry to thy credit, lean Mrs. Todgers, which shall make thee beautiful!

She was growing beautiful so rapidly in Tom’s eyes; for he saw that she was poor, and that this good had sprung up in her from among the sordid strivings of her life;

“I wish you wouldn’t be so fond of making notes, my excellent friend,” said Tigg Montague with a ghastly smile. “I wish you would consent to give me their purport by word of mouth.”

“I don’t like word of mouth,” said Mr. Nadgett gravely. “We never know who’s listening.”

Mr. Montague was going to retort, when Nadgett handed him the paper, and said, with quiet exultation in his tone, “We’ll begin at the beginning, and take that one first, if you please, sir.”

“The trouble shall be well rewarded, Mr. Nadgett.” Nadgett bowed. “There is a deeper impression of Somebody’s Hoof here, than I had expected, Mr. Nadgett. I may congratulate myself upon your being such a good hand at a secret.”

“Oh! nothing has an interest to me that’s not a secret,” replied Nadgett

, as he tied the string about his pocketbook, and put it up. “It always takes away any pleasure I may have had in this inquiry even to make it known to you.”

“No, no,” interrupted Tigg. “No. We’ll not do that.”

“A light sleeper ain’t a heavy one,” said Jonas in his sulky way; “don’t sleep much, and don’t sleep well, and don’t sleep sound.”

“And dreams,” said Tigg, “and cries out in an ugly manner; and when the candle burns down in the night, is in an agony; and all that sort of thing. I see!”

He beckoned to Jonas to bring his chair nearer; and looking slightly round, as if to remind him of the presence of Nadgett, whispered in his ear.

From red to white; from white to red again; from red to yellow; then to a cold, dull, awful, sweat-bedabbled blue.

In that short whisper, all these changes fell upon the face of Jonas Chuzzlewit;

And Tom was right. She was precisely that sort of person.

Nobody ought to have been able to resist her coaxing manner; and nobody had any business to try. Yet she never seemed to know it was her manner at all. That was the best of it.

Well! she washed up the breakfast cups, chatting away the whole time, and telling Tom all sorts of anecdotes about the brass-and-copper founder; put everything in its place;

simple to be so happy and loquacious trudging home with Ruth; simple to be so surprised to find that merry present of a cookery-book awaiting her in the parlour next morning, with the beefsteak-pudding-leaf turned down and blotted out. There! Let the record stand!

Thy quality of soul was simple, simple; quite contemptible, Tom Pinch!

“It’s enough to give you your death of cold,” observed the hostess.

“I don’t take my death easy,” returned the traveller; “or I should most likely have took it afore tonight. Your health, ma’am!”

Mrs. Lupin thanked him; but in the act of lifting the tankard to his mouth, he changed his mind, and put it down again.

“You do!” retorted Martin angrily. “I am much obliged to you. What do you take me for?”

“I take you for what you are, sir,” said Mark; “and, consequently, am quite sure that whatever you do will be right and sensible. The boot, sir.”

Martin darted an impatient look at him, without taking it, and walked rapidly up and down the kitchen several times, with one boot and a stocking on.

Somebody must have poisoned his mind, or influenced him in some extraordinary way. I cannot believe that such a noble-spoken gentleman would go and do wrong of his own accord!”

A noble-spoken gentleman! How many people are there in the world, who, for no better reason, uphold their Pecksniffs to the last, and abandon virtuous men, when Pecksniffs breathe upon them!

“As to Mr. Pinch,” pursued the landlady, “if ever there was a dear, good, pleasant, worthy soul alive, Pinch, and no other, is his name. But how do we know that old Mr.

Further continuation of the enterprise of Mr. Jonas and his friend.

It was a special quality, among the many admirable qualities possessed by Mr. Pecksniff, that the more he was found out, the more hypocrisy he practised.

Let him be discomfited in one quarter, and he refreshed and recompensed himself by carrying the war into another.

and it is a sphere which Cherry will adorn.”

“She need adorn some sphere or other,” observed the son-in-law, “for she ain’t very ornamental in general.”

“My girls are now provided for,” said Mr. Pecksniff. “They are now happily provided for, and I have not laboured in vain!”

if he were not a green spot in the barren waste of life, where was that Oasis to be bound?

Little did Mr. Pecksniff think on what a very green spot he planted one foot at that moment! Little did he foresee when he said, “All is but dust!” how very shortly he would come down with his own!

Inch by inch, in his grudging and ill-conditioned way; sustained to the life, for the hope of making Mr.

… offices, and made of no account among the heaps of family papers into which they had strayed, and of which, in their degeneracy, they formed a part, might have stirred and fluttered with a moment’s recollection of their ancient tenderness, as she went lightly by.

Anything might have happened that did not happen, and never will, for the love of Ruth.

Something happened, too, upon the afternoon of which the history treats. Not for her love. Oh no! quite by accident, and without the least reference to her at all.

… here was she, coming towards them, with both of them looking at her, conscious of blushing to a terrible extent, but trying to throw up her eyebrows carelessly, and pout her rosy lips, as if she were the coolest and most unconcerned of little women.

Merrily the fountain plashed and plashed, until the dimples, merging into one another, swelled into a general smile, that covered the whole surface of the basin.

“What an extraordinary meeting!” said Tom. “I should never have dreamed of seeing you two together here.”

Here Miss Pecksniff whispered in his ear. The suffering Moddle repeated:

“Oh, you silly man! I don’t mean them,” said Miss Pecksniff.

“I am speaking of the—”

All night!

It is a common fancy that nature seems to sleep by night. It is a false fancy, as who should know better than he?

The fishes slumbered in the cold, bright, glistening streams and rivers, perhaps; and the birds roosted on the branches of the trees; and in their stalls and pastures beasts were quiet; and human creatures slept.

There were life and motion, and a world astir, to divide the attention of Day. It was the eye of Night—of wakeful, watchful, silent, and attentive Night, with so much leisure for the observation of his wicked thoughts—that he dreaded most.

There is no glare in the night. Even Glory shows to small advantage in the night, upon a crowded battlefield. How then shows Glory’s blood-relation, bastard Murder!

Aye! He made no compromise, and held no secret with himself now. Murder. He had come to do it.

… directly,” returned the other, “that I cannot deny the having accustomed myself to regard you as one who, not in wantonness but in mere thoughtlessness of character, did not sufficiently consider his nature and did not quite treat it as it deserves to be treated.

It is much easier to slight than to appreciate Tom Pinch.

”

but Mrs. Prig’s impatience for the meal being greater at the moment than her impatience of contradiction, she replied, for the present, “Nobody, if you don’t, Sairah,” and prepared herself for tea.

For a quarrel can be taken up at any time, but a limited quantity of salmon cannot.

Her toilet was simple. She had merely to “chuck” her bonnet and shawl upon the bed; give her hair two pulls, one upon the right side and one upon the left, as if she were ringing a couple of bells; and all was done.

Mrs. Gamp looked at her with amazement, incredulity, and indignation; when Mrs. Prig, shutting her eye still closer, and folding her arms still tighter, uttered these memorable and tremendous words:

“I don’t believe there’s no sich a person!”

After the utterance of which expressions, she leaned forward, and snapped her fingers once, twice, thrice; each time nearer to the face of Mrs.

and you make it a sort of poetical justice that I should, by some impossible means or other, come, at last, to marry the person I love.

But there is a much higher justice than poetical justice, my dear, and it does not order events upon the same principle.

Accordingly, people who read about heroes in books, and choose to make heroes of themselves out of books, consider it a very fine thing to be discontented and gloomy, and misanthropical, and perhaps a little blasphemous, because they cannot have everything ordered for their individual …

Tom little thought how natural it was. Tom little knew that there was that in Ruth’s own heart, but newly set there, which had helped her to the reading of his mystery.

Ah, Tom! He didn’t understand the whispers of the Temple Fountain, though he passed it every day.

Who so lively and cheerful as busy Ruth next morning! Her early tap at Tom’s door, and her light foot outside, would have been music to him though she had not spoken. But she said it was the brightest morning ever seen;

“What is her name?” repeated Jonas.

“Her name,” said Mrs. Gamp, “is Harris.”

It was extraordinary how much effort it cost Mrs. Gamp to pronounce the name she was commonly so ready with. She made some three or four gasps before she could get it out;

And now he heard the voice of his accomplice stating to his face, with every circumstance of time and place and incident; and openly proclaiming, with no reserve, suppression, passion, or concealment; all the truth.

The truth, which nothing would keep down; which blood would not smother, and earth would not hide;

the truth, whose terrible inspiration seemed to change dotards into strong men; and on whose avenging wings, one whom he had supposed to be at the extremest corner of the earth came swooping down upon him.

still their very intensity and the tumult of their assemblage nerved him to the rapid and unyielding execution of his scheme. In every single circumstance, whether it were cruel, cowardly, or false, he saw the flowering of the same pregnant seed.

Self; grasping, eager, narrow-ranging, overreaching self; with its long train of suspicions, lusts, deceits, and all their growing consequences; was the root of the vile tree.

Mr. Pecksniff had so presented his character before the old man’s eyes, that he—the good, the tolerant, enduring Pecksniff—had become the incarnation of all selfishness and treachery;

As to him, sir, and his opinions, I know he’s a altered man. I know it. I know’d it long afore he spoke to you t’other day, and I must say it. Nobody don’t know half as much of him as I do. Nobody can’t.

There was always a deal of good in him, but a little of it got crusted over, somehow.

I can’t say who rolled the paste of that ’ere crust myself, but—”

“But it—well! I beg your pardon, but I think it may have been you, sir. Unintentional I think it may have been you.

I don’t believe that neither of you gave the other quite a fair chance.

There! Now I’ve got rid on it,” said Mr. Tapley in a fit of desperation: “I can’t go a-carryin’ it about in my own mind, bustin’ myself with it; yesterday was quite long enough. It’s out now. I can’t help it. I’m sorry for it.