Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/544

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E-oker, looking- round with great satisfaction, and gaily chinking- the first week's hire in his closed list.

" Why, yes," said Mr. Pickwick, who had heen musing- deeply for some time. " Are there any people here who run on errands, and so forth?"

" Outside, do you mean?" inquired Mr. lloker.

" Yes ; I mean who are able to go outside. Not prisoners."

" Yes, there is," said Roker. '^ There's an unfortunate devil, who has got a friend on the poor side, that's glad to do anything- of that sort. He's been running odd jobs, and that, for the last two months. Shall I send him?"

" If you please," rejoined Mr. Pickwick. '' Stay ; — no. The poor side, you say. I should hke to see it ; — I'll go to him myself."

The poor side of a debtor's prison is, as its name imports, that in which the most miserable and abject class of debtors are confined. A prisoner having declared upon the poor side, pays neither rent nor chummage. His fees, upon entering- and leaving the gaol, are reduced in amount, and he becomes entitled to a share of some small quantities of food ; to provide which, a few charitable persons have, from time to time, left trifling legacies in their wills. Most of our readers will remember, that, until within a very few years past, there was a kind of iron cage in the wall of the Fleet Prison, within which was posted some man of hungry looks, who, from time to time, rattled a money- box, and exclaimed, in a mournful voice, " Pray, remember the poor debtors ; pray, remember the poor debtors." The receipts of this box, when there were any, were divided among the poor prisoners, and the men on the poor side relieved each other in this degrading office.

Although this custom has been abolished, and the cage is now boarded up, the miserable and destitute condition of these unhappy- persons remains the same. We no longer suffer them to appeal at the prison gates to the charity and compassion of the passers by ; but we still leave unblotted in the leaves of our statute book, for the reve- rence and admiration of succeeding ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction. Not a week passes over our heads but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some of these men must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow- prisoners.

Turning these things in his mind, as he mounted the narrow stair- case at the foot of which Roker had left him, Mr. Pickwick gradually worked himself to the boiling-over point; and so excited was he with his reflections on this subject, that he had burst into the room to which he had been directed, before he had any distinct recollection either of the place in which he was, or of the object of his visit.

The general aspect of the room recalled him to himself at once; but he had no sooner cast his eyes on the figure of a man who was brooding over the dusty fire, than, letting his hat fall on the floor, he stood per- fectly fixed and immoveable with astonishment.

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