Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/585

489 I I

THE PICKWICK CLUB. 489

speaking, and motioning to Job not to follow him just yet, crept slowly away.

'* Curious scene this, is it not, Sam?" said Mr. Pickwick, looking good-humouredly round.

" Wery much so, Sir," replied Sam. " Vonders vill never cease," added Sam, speaking to himself. '' I'm wery much mistaken if that 'ere Jingle worn't a doin' somethin' in the vater-cart vay !"

The area formed by the wall in that part of the Fleet in which Mr. Pickwick stood, was just wide enough to make a good racket court, one side being formed, of course, by the wall itself, and the other by that portion of the prison which looked (or rather would have looked, but for the wall) towards St. Paul's Cathedral. Sauntering or sitting about, in every possible attitude of listless idleness, were a great num- ber of debtors, the major part of whom were waiting in prison until their day of **^ going up" before the Insolvent Court should arrive, while others had been remanded for various terms, which they were idling away as they best could. Some were shabby, some were smart, many dirty, a few clean ; but there they all lounged, and loitered, and slunk about, with as little spirit or purpose as the beasts in a menagerie.

Lolling from the windows which commanded a view of this prome- nade, were a number of persons ; some in noisy conversation with their acquaintance below; others playing at b^U with some adventurous throwers outside ; and others looking on at the racket-players, or watching the boys as they cried the game. Dirty slipshod women passed and re-passed on their way to the cooking-house in one corner of the yard ; cliildren screamed, and fought, and played together, in another ; the tumbling of the skittles, and the shouts of the players, mingled perpetually with these and a hundred other sounds; and all was noise and tumult — save in a little miserable shed a few yards off, where there lay, all quiet and ghastly, the body of the Chancery prisoner A'ho had died the night before, awaiting the mockery of an inquest. The body ! It is the lawyer's term for the restless whirling mass of cares and anxieties, affections, hopes, and griefs, that make up the living man. The law had his body, and there it lay, clothed in grave clothes, an awful witness to its tender mercy.

" Would you like to see a whistling-shop. Sir ? " enquired Job Trotter.

"■ What do you mean ? " was Mr. Pickwick's counter enquiry.

" A vistlin' shop. Sir," interposed Mr. Weller.

" What is that, Sam ? — A bird-fancier's.?" enquired Mr. Pickwick.

"Bless your heart, no. Sir," replied Job; "a whistling-shop, Sir, is where they sell spirits." Mr. Job Trotter briefly explained here, that all persons, being prohibited under heavy penalties from conveying spirits into debtors' prisons, and such commodities being highly prized by the ladies and gentlemen confined therein, it had occurred to some speculative turnkey to connive, for certain lucrative considerations, at two or three prisoners retailing the favourite article of gin, for their own profit and advantage.

prisons for debt," said Mr. Trotter.
 * This plan you see, Sir, has been gradually introduced into all the