dirt and braid, carries pine-apples in a covered basket. Tall,
grave, melancholy Frenchman, with black Vandyke beard, and hair
close-cropped, with expansive chest to waistcoat, and compressive
waist to coat: saturnine as to his pantaloons, calm as to his
feminine boots, precious as to his jewellery, smooth and white as
to his linen: dark-eyed, high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed – got up, one
thinks, like Lucifer or Mephistopheles, or Zamiel, transformed into
a highly genteel Parisian – has the green end of a pine-apple
sticking out of his neat valise.
Whew! If I were to be kept here long, under this forcing-frame, I
wonder what would become of me – whether I should be forced into a
giant, or should sprout or blow into some other phenomenon!
Compact Enchantress is not ruffled by the heat – she is always
composed, always compact. O look at her little ribbons, frills,
and edges, at her shawl, at her gloves, at her hair, at her
bracelets, at her bonnet, at everything about her! How is it
accomplished? What does she do to be so neat? How is it that
every trifle she wears belongs to her, and cannot choose but be a
part of her? And even Mystery, look at HER! A model. Mystery is
not young, not pretty, though still of an average candle-light
passability; but she does such miracles in her own behalf, that,
one of these days, when she dies, they’ll be amazed to find an old
woman in her bed, distantly like her. She was an actress once, I
shouldn’t wonder, and had a Mystery attendant on herself. Perhaps,
Compact Enchantress will live to be a Mystery, and to wait with a
shawl at the side-scenes, and to sit opposite to Mademoiselle in
railway carriages, and smile and talk subserviently, as Mystery
does now. That’s hard to believe!
Two Englishmen, and now our carriage is full. First Englishman, in
the monied interest – flushed, highly respectable – Stock Exchange,
perhaps – City, certainly. Faculties of second Englishman entirely
absorbed in hurry. Plunges into the carriage, blind. Calls out of
window concerning his luggage, deaf. Suffocates himself under
pillows of great-coats, for no reason, and in a demented manner.
Will receive no assurance from any porter whatsoever. Is stout and
hot, and wipes his head, and makes himself hotter by breathing so
hard. Is totally incredulous respecting assurance of Collected
Guard, that ‘there’s no hurry.’ No hurry! And a flight to Paris
in eleven hours!
It is all one to me in this drowsy corner, hurry or no hurry.
Until Don Diego shall send home my wings, my flight is with the
South-Eastern Company. I can fly with the South-Eastern, more
lazily, at all events, than in the upper air. I have but to sit
here thinking as idly as I please, and be whisked away. I am not
accountable to anybody for the idleness of my thoughts in such an
idle summer flight; my flight is provided for by the South-Eastern
and is no business of mine.
The bell! With all my heart. It does not require me to do so much
as even to flap my wings. Something snorts for me, something
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
shrieks for me, something proclaims to everything else that it had
better keep out of my way, – and away I go.
Ah! The fresh air is pleasant after the forcing-frame, though it
does blow over these interminable streets, and scatter the smoke of
this vast wilderness of chimneys. Here we are – no, I mean there
we were, for it has darted far into the rear – in Bermondsey where
the tanners live. Flash! The distant shipping in the Thames is
gone. Whirr! The little streets of new brick and red tile, with
here and there a flagstaff growing like a tall weed out of the
scarlet beans, and, everywhere, plenty of open sewer and ditch for
the promotion of the public health, have been fired off in a
volley. Whizz! Dust-heaps, market-gardens, and waste grounds.
Rattle! New Cross Station. Shock! There we were at Croydon.
Bur-r-r-r! The tunnel.
I wonder why it is that when I shut my eyes in a tunnel I begin to