Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/273

211 THE PICKWICK CLUB. 211

CHAPTER XXI.

IN WHICH THE OLD MAN LAUNCHES FORTH INTO HIS FAVOURITE THEME, AND RELATES A STORY ABOUT A QUEER CLIENT.

" Aha !" said the old man, a brief description of whose manner and appearance concluded the last chapter, " Aha ! who was talking about the Inns?"

" I was, Sir," replied Mr. Pickwick — " I was observing what sin- gular old places they are."

" You!" said the old man, contemptuously — ^' What do i/oti know of the time when young men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms, and read and read, hour after hour, and night after night, till their reason wandered beneath their midnight studies ; till their mental powers were exhausted ; till morning's light brought no freshness or health to them ; and they sank beneath the unnatural devotion of their youthful energies to their dry old books? Coming down to a later time, and a very different day, what do ^om know of the gradual sinking beneath consumption, or the quick wasting of fever — the grand results of *life' and dissipation — which men have undergone in those same rooms ? How many vain pleaders for mercy, do you think have turned away heart-sick from the lawyer's office, to find a resting-place in the Thames, or a refuge in the gaol ? They are no ordinary houses, those. There is not a pannel in the old wainscotting, but what, if it were endowed with the powers of speech and memory, could start from the wall, and tell its tale of horror — the romance of life. Sir, the romance of life. Common-place as they may seem now, I tell you they are strange old places, and I would rather hear many a legend with a terrific- sounding name, than the true history of one old set of chambers."

There was something so odd in the old man's sudden energy, ana the subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick was prepared with no observation in reply; and the old man checking his impetuosity, and resuming the leer, which had disappeared during his previous excite- ment, said —

"Look at them in another light : their most common-place and least romantic: what fine places of slow torture they are. "J'hink of the needy man who has spent his all, beggared himself, and pinched his friends, to enter the profession, which is destined never to yield a morsel of bread to him. The waiting — the hope — the disappointment— the fear— the misery — the poverty — the blight on his hopes, and end to his career — the suicide perhaps, or, better still, the shabby, slip-shod drunkard. Am I not right about them, eh?" And the old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in delight at having found another point of view in which to place his favourite subject.

Mr. Pickwick eyed the old man with great curiosity, and the remainder of the company smiled, and looked on in silence.

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