Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/752

320 "Magsman," he says, and he seemed to myself to get wiser as he got hoarser. " Society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs. At the court of Saint James's they was all a-doin' my hold bisness—all a-goin' three times round the cairawan in the hold court-suits and properties. Elsewheres, they was most of 'em ringing their little bells out of make-believers. Everywheres the sarser was a-goin' round. Magsman, the sarser is the uniwersal institution!"

I perceived, you understand, that he was soured by his misfortunes, and I felt for Mr. Chops.

"As to fat ladies," says he, giving his 'ed a tremendious one agin the wall, "there's lots of them in society, and worse than the original. Hers was a outrage upon taste—simply a outrage upon taste—awakenin' contempt—carryin' its own punishment in the form of a Indian!" Here he giv' himself another tremendious one. "But theirs, Magsman, theirs is mercenary outrages. Lay in Cashmeer shawls, buy bracelets, strew 'em and a lot of 'andsome fans and things about your rooms, let it be known that you give away like water to all as come to admire, and the fat ladies that don't exhibit for so much down upon the drum will come from all pints of the compass to flock about you, whatever you are. They'll drill holes in your 'art, Magsman, like a cullender. And when you've no more left to give, they'll laugh at you to your face, and leave you to have your bones picked dry by wulturs, like the dead wild ass of the prairies that you deserve to be! "Here he giv' himself the most tremendious one of all, and dropped.

I thought he was gone. His 'ed was so heavy, and he knocked it so hard, and he fell so stony, and the sassagerial disturbance in him must have been so immense, that I thought he was gone. But he soon come round with care, and he sat up on the floor, and he said to me, with wisdom comin' out of his eyes, if ever it come:—

"Magsman! The most material difference between the two states of existence through which your unhappy friend has passed,"—he reached out his poor little hand, and his tears dropped down on the mustachio which it was credit to him to have done his best to grow, but it is not in mortals to command success—"the difference is this. When I was out of society, I was paid light