Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/530

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There is no disguising the fact that Mr. Pickwick felt very low- spirited and uncomfortable — not for lack of society, for the prison was very full, and a bottle of wine would at once have purchased the utmost good-fellowship of a few choice spirits, without any more formal ceremony of introduction ; but he was alone in the coarse vulgar crowd, and felt the depression of spirit and sinking of heart, naturally consequent upon the reflection that he was cooped and caged up without a prospect of liberation. As to the idea of releasing himself by ministering to the sharpness of Dodson & Fogg, it never for an instant entered his thoughts.

In this frame of mind he turned again into the coffee-room gallery, and walked slowly to and fro. The place was intolerably dirty, and the smell of tobacco smoke perfectly suifocating. There was a perpetual slamming and banging of doors as the people went in and out, and the noise of their voices and footsteps echoed and re-echoed through the passages constantly. A young woman, with a child in her arms, who seemed scarcely able to crawl, from emaciation and misery, was walking up and down the passage in conversation with her husband, who had no other place to see her in. As they passed Mr. Pickwick, he could hear the female sob bitterly ; and once she burst into such a passion of grief, that she was compelled to lean against the wall for support, while the man took the child in his arms, and tried to soothe her.

Mr. Pickwick's heart was really too full to bear it, and he went up stairs to bed.

Now, although the warden's room was a very uncomfortable one, teing, in every point of decoration and convenience, several hundred degrees inferior to the commonest infirmary of a county gaol, it had at present the merit of being wholly deserted, save by Mr. Pickwick himself. So, he sat down at the foot of his little iron bedstead, and began to wonder how much a year the warden made out of the dirty room. Having satisfied himself, by mathematical calculation, that the apartment was about equal in annual value to the freehold of a small street in the suburbs of London, he took to wondering what possible temptation could have induced a dingy -looking fly that was crawling over his pantaloons, to come into a close prison, when he had the choice of so many airy situations — a course of meditation which led him to the irresistible conclusion that the insect was insane. After settling this point, he began to be conscious that he was getting sleepy; where- upon he took his nightcap out of the pocket in which he had had the precaution to stow it in the morning, and, leisurely undressing himself, got into bed, and fell asleep.

" Bravo ! Heel over toe — cut and shuflSe — pay away at it, Zephyr! I'm smothered if the Opera House isn't your proper hemisphere. Keep it up. Hooray ! " These expressions, delivered in a most boisterous tone, and accompanied with loud peals of laughter, roused Mr. Pickwick from one of those sound slumbers which, lasting in reality some half hour, seem to the sleeper to have been protracted for about three weeks or a month.

The voice had no sooner ceased than the room was shaken with such

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