Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/746

314 believed to be the drawing-room winder. And when I say sarser, I mean a chaney sarser in which he made a collection for himself at the end of every entertainment. His cue for that, he took from me: "Ladies and gentlemen, the little man will now walk three times round the cairawan, and retire behind the curtain." When he said anything important, in private life, he mostly wound it up with this form of words, and they was generally the last thing he said to me at night afore he went to bed.

He had what I consider a fine mind—a poetic mind. His ideas respectin' his property never come upon him so strong as when he sat upon a barrel-organ and had the handle turned. After the wibiation had run through him a little time, he would screech out: "Toby, I feel my property coming—grind away! I'm counting my guineas by thousands, Toby—grind away! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun! I feel the mint a jingling in me, Toby, and I'm swelling out into the Bank of England!" Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind. Not that he was partial to any other music but a barrel-organ; on the contrary, hated it.

He had a kind of a everlasting grudge agin the public; which is a thing you may notice in many phenomenons that get their living out of it. What riled him most in the nater of his occupation was that it kep' him out of society. He was continiually sayin': " Toby, my ambition is to go into society. The curse of my position toward the public is that it keeps me hout of society. This don't signify to a low beast of a Indian; he ain't formed for society. This don't signify to a spotted baby; he ain't formed for society—I am."

Nobody never could make out what Chops done with his money. He had a good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as the day come round, besides having the run of his teeth—and he was a woodpecker to eat—but all dwarfs are. The sarser was a little income, bringing him in so many half-pence that he'd carry 'em, for a week together, tied up in a pocket-handkerchief. And yet he never had money. And it couldn't be the fat lady from Norfolk, as was once supposed; because it stands to reason that when you have a animosity toward a Indian which makes you grind your teeth at him to