Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/527

437 THE PICKWICK CLUB. 437


 * He must be a first-rater," said Sam.

"A, 1," replied Mr. Roker.

Nothing daunted, even by this intelligence, Mr. Pickwick smilingly- announced his determination to test the powers of the narcotic bedstead for that night ; and Mr. Roker, after informing him that he could retire to rest at whatever hour he thought proper without any further notice or formality, walked off, leaving him standing with Sam in the gallery.

It was getting dark ; that is to say, a few gas jets were kindled in this place, which was never light, by way of compliment to the evening, which had set in outside. As it was rather warm, some of the tenants of the numerous little rooms which opened into the gallery on either hand, had set their doors ajar. Mr. Pickwick peeped into them as he passed along, with great curiosity and interest. Here, four or five great hulking fellows, just visible through a cloud of tobacco-smoke, were engaged in noisy and riotous conversation over half-emptied pots of beer, or playing at all-fours with a very greasy pack of cards. In the adjoining room, some solitary tenant might be seen, poring, by the light of a feeble tallow candle, over a bundle of soiled and tattered papers, yellow with dust and dropping to pieces from age, writing, for the hundredth time, some lengthened statement of his grievances, for the perusal of some great man whose eyes it would never reach, or whose heart it would never touch. In a third, a man, with his wife and a whole crowd of children, might be seen making up a scanty bed on the ground, or upon a few chairs, for the younger ones to pass the night in. And in a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, and a seventh, the noise, and the beer, and the tobacco-smoke, and the cards, all came over again in greater force than before.

In the galleries themselves, and more especially on the staircases, there lingered a great number of people, who came th^re, some because their rooms were empty and lonesome ; others because their rooms were full and hot ; and the greater part because they were restless and uucomfortable, and not possessed of the secret of exactly knowing what to do with themselves. There were many classes of people here, from the labouring man in his fustian jacket, to the broken down spendthrift in his shawl dressing-gown, most appropriately out at elbows ; but there was the same air about them all — a kind of listless, jail-bird, careless swagger; a vagabondish who's-afraid sort of bearing, which is wholly in- describable in words ; but which any man can understand in one moment if he wishes, by just setting foot in the nearest debtors' prison, and look- ing at the very first group of people he sees there, with the same interest as Mr. Pickwick did.

" It strikes me, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, leaning over the iron-rail at the stair-head, " It strikes me, Sam, that imprisonment for debt is scarcely any punishment at all."

" Think not. Sir?" inquired Mr. Weller.

" You see how these fellows drink, and smoke, and roar," replied Mr. Pickwick. " It's quite impossible that they can mind it much." I, "Ah, that's just the wery thing, Sir," rejoined Sam, ^Hhey Aon't

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