of a white woman with an infant, said to have been seen weeping
outside a savage hut far in the interior, who was whisperingly
associated with the remembrance of the missing ladies saved from
the wrecked vessel, and who was often sought but never found,
thoughts of another kind of travel came into my mind.
Thoughts of a voyager unexpectedly summoned from home, who
travelled a vast distance, and could never return. Thoughts of
this unhappy wayfarer in the depths of his sorrow, in the
bitterness of his anguish, in the helplessness of his self-
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
reproach, in the desperation of his desire to set right what he had
left wrong, and do what he had left undone.
For, there were many, many things he had neglected. Little matters
while he was at home and surrounded by them, but things of mighty
moment when he was at an immeasurable distance. There were many
many blessings that he had inadequately felt, there were many
trivial injuries that he had not forgiven, there was love that he
had but poorly returned, there was friendship that he had too
lightly prized: there were a million kind words that he might have
spoken, a million kind looks that he might have given, uncountable
slight easy deeds in which he might have been most truly great and
good. O for a day (he would exclaim), for but one day to make
amends! But the sun never shone upon that happy day, and out of
his remote captivity he never came.
Why does this traveller’s fate obscure, on New Year’s Eve, the
other histories of travellers with which my mind was filled but
now, and cast a solemn shadow over me! Must I one day make his
journey? Even so. Who shall say, that I may not then be tortured
by such late regrets: that I may not then look from my exile on my
empty place and undone work? I stand upon a sea-shore, where the
waves are years. They break and fall, and I may little heed them;
but, with every wave the sea is rising, and I know that it will
float me on this traveller’s voyage at last.
THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER
THE amount of money he annually diverts from wholesome and useful
purposes in the United Kingdom, would be a set-off against the
Window Tax. He is one of the most shameless frauds and impositions
of this time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasurable
harm he does to the deserving, – dirtying the stream of true
benevolence, and muddling the brains of foolish justices, with
inability to distinguish between the base coin of distress, and the
true currency we have always among us, – he is more worthy of
Norfolk Island than three-fourths of the worst characters who are
sent there. Under any rational system, he would have been sent
there long ago.
I, the writer of this paper, have been, for some time, a chosen
receiver of Begging Letters. For fourteen years, my house has been
made as regular a Receiving House for such communications as any
one of the great branch Post-Offices is for general correspondence.
I ought to know something of the Begging-Letter Writer. He has
besieged my door at all hours of the day and night; he has fought
my servant; he has lain in ambush for me, going out and coming in;
he has followed me out of town into the country; he has appeared at
provincial hotels, where I have been staying for only a few hours;
he has written to me from immense distances, when I have been out
of England. He has fallen sick; he has died and been buried; he
has come to life again, and again departed from this transitory
scene: he has been his own son, his own mother, his own baby, his
idiot brother, his uncle, his aunt, his aged grandfather. He has
wanted a greatcoat, to go to India in; a pound to set him up in
life for ever; a pair of boots to take him to the coast of China; a
hat to get him into a permanent situation under Government. He has