Page:Bleak House.djvu/349

 “My friends,” he resumes, after dabbing his fat head for some time—and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab—“to pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve, let us in a spirit of love enquire what is that Terewth to which I have alluded. For, my young friends,” suddenly addressing the 'prentices and Guster, to their consternation, “if I am told by the doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of that, before I dose myself with either or with both. Now, my young friends, what is this Terewth, then? Firstly (in a spirit of love), what is the common sort of Terewth—the working clothes—the every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?”

(“Ah—h!” from Mrs. Snagsby.)

“Is it suppression?”

(A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby.)

“Is it reservation?”

(A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby—very long and very tight.)

“No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names belongs to it. When this young Heathen now among us—who is now, my friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should have to wrestle, and to combat, and to struggle, and to conquer, for his sake—when this young hardened Heathen told us a story of a Cock, and of a Bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was that the Terewth? No. Or, if it was partly, was it wholly, and entirely? No, my friends, no!”

If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman's look, as it enters at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.

“Or, my juvenile friends,” says Chadband, descending to the level of their comprehension, with a very obtrusive demonstration, in his greasily meek smile, of coming a long way down stairs for the purpose, “if the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call untoe him the mistress of this house, and was to say, ‘Sarah, rejoice with me, for I have seen an elephant!’ would that be Terewth?”

Mrs. Snagsby in tears.

“Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and returning said ‘Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,’ would that be Terewth?”

Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly.

“Or put it, my juvenile friends,” says Chadband, stimulated by the sound, “that the unnatural parents of this slumbering Heathen—for parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt—after casting him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and poultry, would that be Terewth?”

Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms; not an unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though much exhausted; in