The Close of Esther's Narrative

Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The
few words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned;
then I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not
without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope,
on his or hers.

They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never
left her. The little child who was to have done so much was born
before the turf was planted on its father's grave. It was a boy; and
I, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father's name.

The help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in
the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore
his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power
was mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand
and how its touch could heal my darling's heart and raised hope
within her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of
God.

They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country
garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married
then. I was the happiest of the happy.

It was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada when she
would come home.

"Both houses are your home, my dear," said he, "but the older Bleak
House claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do
it, come and take possession of your home."

Ada called him "her dearest cousin, John." But he said, no, it must
be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy's; and
he had an old association with the name. So she called him guardian,
and has called him guardian ever since. The children know him by no
other name. I say the children; I have two little daughters.

It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not at
all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so
it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the
morning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go
round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond
of her, and Charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to
do and was in great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I
might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill
did half an hour ago, since little Emma, Charley's sister, is exactly
what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley's brother, I am really
afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was
decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a
good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being
ashamed of it.

Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer
creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with
the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life.
Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and
lives full two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works
very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do
very little. Still, she is more than contented and does all she has
to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends his evenings at her new
house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one.
I have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was understood to suffer great
mortification from her daughter's ignoble marriage and pursuits, but
I hope she got over it in time. She has been disappointed in
Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the
king of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody--who survived the
climate--for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to
sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more
correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy's poor
little girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I
believe there never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in
her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to
soften the affliction of her child.

As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of
Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and doing
extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits
his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is
still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of
Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French
clock in his dressing-room--which is not his property.

With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house
by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we
inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see
us. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in
drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have their
way.

I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a
good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me
he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is
my husband's best and dearest friend, he is our children's darling,
he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel
towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him
and so easy with him that I almost wonder at myself. I have never
lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I ever, when he is
with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side,
Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman--all just the same as ever; and
I answer, "Yes, dear guardian!" just the same.

I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment
since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I
remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and
he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that
very day.

I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that
has been in her face--for it is not there now--seems to have purified
even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality.
Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that
she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel--it is difficult to
express--as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear
Esther in her prayers.

I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am
one.

We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we
have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the
people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear
his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night
but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and
soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from
the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often
gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not this
to be rich?

The people even praise me as the doctor's wife. The people even like
me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I
owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I
do everything I do in life for his sake.

A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and
my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was
sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch,
when Allan came home. So he said, "My precious little woman, what are
you doing here?" And I said, "The moon is shining so brightly, Allan,
and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here
thinking."

"What have you been thinking about, my dear?" said Allan then.

"How curious you are!" said I. "I am almost ashamed to tell you, but
I will. I have been thinking about my old looks--such as they were."

"And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?" said
Allan.

"I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you COULD
have loved me any better, even if I had retained them."

"'Such as they were'?" said Allan, laughing.

"Such as they were, of course."

"My dear Dame Durden," said Allan, drawing my arm through his, "do
you ever look in the glass?"

"You know I do; you see me do it."

"And don't you know that you are prettier than you ever were?"

"I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know
that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is
very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my
guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was
seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me--even
supposing--."

This chapter is like the part at the end of a movie where they freeze-frame each character and tell you what happens to them after the movie ends. So: Esther and Woodcourt live happily ever after . They have two daughters and she enjoys being the doctor's wife . They've built an addition to their house for Jarndyce to come and stay anytime. Caddy and Prince are happily married and run a big dancing school. They have a deaf daughter . Prince is now lame, so Caddy does all the teaching. Mr. Jellyby still comes by every evening. Mrs. Jellyby has abandoned Africa and is now working on getting women into Parliament. Ada has a son named Richard Jr. They live in the original Bleak House with Jarndyce as a father to her and grandfather to him.

For "full seven happy years," Esther has been the mistress of the new Bleak House. She and Allan have two daughters. Ada's child, Richard, was born very shortly after his father's death. The boy and his mother "throve" and, in doing so, made Esther "the happiest of the happy." Mr. Jarndyce tells Ada that both Bleak Houses are her home but that "the older . . . claims priority." For "full seven happy years," Esther has been the mistress of the new Bleak House. She and Allan have two daughters. Ada's child, Richard, was born very shortly after his father's death. The boy and his mother "throve" and, in doing so, made Esther "the happiest of the happy." Mr. Jarndyce tells Ada that both Bleak Houses are her home but that "the older . . . claims priority." Esther's maid, Charley Neckett, has married a miller; her younger sister Emma is now Esther's helper. Dissatisfied with the results of her efforts on behalf of Africa, Mrs. Jellyby has turned her energies in support of the right of women to sit in Parliament. Caddy is fresh and happy despite the fact that her husband, Prince, is lame and her child deaf and dumb. Peepy Jellyby "is in the Custom-House and doing extremely well." Old Mr. Turveydrop remains a Model of Deportment. Esther and Allan have built a "little Growlery" for Mr. Jarndyce's visits. Mr. Jarndyce is as helpful and happy as ever. Esther finds Ada "more beautiful than ever," and, according to Allan, Esther herself is prettier than ever before.

A last look at several minor characters ties up all remaining loose ends. Dickens' conclusion is written in such a way as to evoke poignantly the sense of time past linking up with time present; the final note is that of the continuity and strength of the goodness that dominates in the survivors and successors and makes the future propitious.

"The Close of Esther's Narrative" Esther says that she has been married for seven years now. She says that her story is nearly over and that she'll soon separate from the "unknown friend" she's been writing to. She says that Ada stays with her for many weeks with her baby boy and that the baby helped Ada to heal. Esther herself has two daughters. She tells us about other people in her life, including Charley, who is married; Charley's siblings, Emma, who is now her maid, and Tom, who's been apprenticed to the miller; and Caddy, who is successful and a good mother. Esther and Woodcourt added a Growlery to their house for Mr. Jarndyce, but she says that the wind is never in the east now. Esther says that Woodcourt is a successful doctor and that she's respected as a doctor's wife. Esther says that recently she looked in the mirror and told Woodcourt she couldn't imagine him loving her any more than he does, even if she were still beautiful. He says she is more beautiful than ever. She says she isn't sure of this, but that everyone around her is beautiful. She ends her story in the middle of a sentence, beginning to speculate on something that she never articulates

The Close of Esther's Narrative Esther ties up the loose ends. Esther has been the mistress of the new Bleak House for seven years, and she and Allan have two daughters. Ada and her baby, Richard, now live with Mr. Jarndyce. Charley Neckett marries a miller; Tom is apprenticed to the miller; Emma is Esther's new maid. Caddy Jellyby is now the main proprietor of the dance studio, since Prince is lame. Their baby is deaf and blind, but Caddy manages. Her mother is tired of Boorioboola-Gha and now champions the right of women to sit in Parliament. Mr. Jarndyce is loved by all, a guardian to Ada and her son, best friend of Woodcourt, Esther's father, "as if he were a superior being" . The local people love Woodcourt as their doctor, and they praise Esther. Allan thinks his wife is prettier than she ever was.

Commentary on Chapter LXVII Dickens has dragged the reader through some dark places, many deaths, and yet he ends with the feeling that though there is loss, there is continuity as well. He is the poet of family life, and the characters, though they may seem to meet by chance, tend to become deeply attached to one another and one another's families. Their fates intertwine, and the survivors carry on, for the most part, cheerfully. Dickens may satirize institutions, like the Court of Chancery, but the true strength of the country, he implies, is in the personal and caring relationships of ordinary citizens. As long as people are true and loyal to one another with the sort of unselfish love of a Mr. Jarndyce, the social fabric will hold, despite rotten institutions.


On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more
particularly in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby,
law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook's
Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in
all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls
of parchment; in paper--foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white,
whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens,
ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and
wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs,
diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands--glass
and leaden--pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small
office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever
since he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer.
On that occasion, Cook's Court was in a manner revolutionized by the
new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the
time-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For
smoke, which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer's
name and clung to his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite
quite overpowered the parent tree.

Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He is not expected there,
for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard
of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring
past him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. If he
ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in
Cook's Court until admonished to return by the crowing of the
sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street,
whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he
knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it--if
Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook's Court, which no
law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly,
and no one is the worse or wiser.

In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby's "time"
of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in the same
law-stationering premises a niece--a short, shrewd niece, something
too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like
a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The
Cook's Courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother of
this niece did, in her daughter's childhood, moved by too jealous a
solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her
up every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for
a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited
internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held,
had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever
of the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it
either never reached or never influenced the ears of young Snagsby,
who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man's
estate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook's
Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are one; and the
niece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ,
is unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it.

Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the
neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed
from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court very often. Mr.
Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet
tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining
head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He
tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook's
Court in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at
the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop with a heavy
flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with his two
'prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From
beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in
its grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in
the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions when these
reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the
'prentices, "I think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!"

This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpened
the wit of the Cook's Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the
name of Mrs. Snagsby, seeing that she might with great force and
expression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character.
It is, however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty
shillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with
clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to
have been christened Augusta) who, although she was farmed or
contracted for during her growing time by an amiable benefactor of
his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been
developed under the most favourable circumstances, "has fits," which
the parish can't account for.

Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten
years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits, and
is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint
that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink,
or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be
near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a
satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the 'prentices, who feel
that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the
breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can
always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who
thinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer's establishment
is, in Guster's eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. She believes
the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with
its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant
apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook's Court at one
end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Coavinses'
the sheriff's officer's backyard at the other she regards as a
prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil--and
plenty of it too--of Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby and of Mrs.
Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of
Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many
privations.

Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the
business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the
tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays,
licenses Mr. Snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges no
responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner,
insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the
neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and
even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually
call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the
wives') position and Mrs. Snagsby's, and their (the husbands')
behaviour and Mr. Snagsby's. Rumour, always flying bat-like about
Cook's Court and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, does say
that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr. Snagsby is
sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the
spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it. It is even observed that the
wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining
example in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with
greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more
than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of
correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby's
being in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk
in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the
sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a
Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were
old times once and that you'd find a stone coffin or two now under
that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his
imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and
Masters of the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of
the country out of telling the two 'prentices how he HAS heard say
that a brook "as clear as crystal" once ran right down the middle of
Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away
into the meadows--gets such a flavour of the country out of this that
he never wants to go there.

The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully
effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at his
shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim
westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crow
flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden into
Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr.
Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those
shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in
nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still
remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman
helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars,
flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache--as
would seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less. Here, among
his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr.
Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where
the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day,
quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody can open.

Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of
the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from
attention, able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned,
mahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables
with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the
holders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one,
environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where
he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks
that give a very insufficient light to his large room. The titles on
the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that
can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers
are about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring
to it. With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of
sealing-wax he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of
indecision is in his mind. Now the inkstand top is in the middle, now
the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That's not it. Mr.
Tulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin again.

Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory
staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and
he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office.
He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at
elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened
with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no
clerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped.
His clients want HIM; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be
drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious
instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made are made at the
stationers', expense being no consideration. The middle-aged man in
the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any
crossing-sweeper in Holborn.

The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top,
the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to
the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or
never. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on
his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the
middle-aged man out at elbows, "I shall be back presently." Very
rarely tells him anything more explicit.

Mr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came--not quite so straight, but
nearly--to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby's,
Law-Stationer's, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in
all its branches, &c., &c., &c.

It is somewhere about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, and a
balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hovers about
Snagsby's door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one
and supper at half-past nine. Mr. Snagsby was about to descend into
the subterranean regions to take tea when he looked out of his door
just now and saw the crow who was out late.

"Master at home?"

Guster is minding the shop, for the 'prentices take tea in the
kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker's two
daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two
second-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two
'prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely
awakening the unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won't
grow, and never would, and it is confidently thought, never will.

"Master at home?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.

Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad
to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and
veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture
of the law--a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.

Mr. Snagsby appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a
bit of bread and butter. Says, "Bless my soul, sir! Mr. Tulkinghorn!"

"I want half a word with you, Snagsby."

"Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn't you send your young man
round for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir." Snagsby has
brightened in a moment.

The confined room, strong of parchment-grease, is warehouse,
counting-house, and copying-office. Mr. Tulkinghorn sits, facing
round, on a stool at the desk.

"Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby."

"Yes, sir." Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas and coughs behind his hand,
modestly anticipating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is
accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save
words.

"You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately."

"Yes, sir, we did."

"There was one of them," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, carelessly
feeling--tight, unopenable oyster of the old school!--in the wrong
coat-pocket, "the handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather
like. As I happened to be passing, and thought I had it about me, I
looked in to ask you--but I haven't got it. No matter, any other time
will do. Ah! here it is! I looked in to ask you who copied this."

"Who copied this, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat
on the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a
twist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers. "We gave this out,
sir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that
time. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to
my book."

Mr. Snagsby takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of
the bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes
the affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down
a page of the book, "Jewby--Packer--Jarndyce."

"Jarndyce! Here we are, sir," says Mr. Snagsby. "To be sure! I might
have remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges
just over on the opposite side of the lane."

Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the
law-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.

"WHAT do you call him? Nemo?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo, sir. Here
it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night at eight
o'clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half after nine."

"Nemo!" repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo is Latin for no one."

"It must be English for some one, sir, I think," Mr. Snagsby submits
with his deferential cough. "It is a person's name. Here it is, you
see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o'clock;
brought in Thursday morning, half after nine."

The tail of Mr. Snagsby's eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs.
Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by
deserting his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs.
Snagsby, as who should say, "My dear, a customer!"

"Half after nine, sir," repeats Mr. Snagsby. "Our law-writers, who
live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but
it's the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a
written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the
King's Bench Office, and the Judges' Chambers, and so forth. You know
the kind of document, sir--wanting employ?"

Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of
Coavinses', the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in Coavinses'
windows. Coavinses' coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of
several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr.
Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance
over his shoulder at his little woman and to make apologetic motions
with his mouth to this effect: "Tul-king-horn--rich--in-flu-en-tial!"

"Have you given this man work before?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.

"Oh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours."

"Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he
lived?"

"Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a--" Mr. Snagsby makes
another bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were insurmountable
"--at a rag and bottle shop."

"Can you show me the place as I go back?"

"With the greatest pleasure, sir!"

Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his
black coat, takes his hat from its peg. "Oh! Here is my little
woman!" he says aloud. "My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one
of the lads to look after the shop while I step across the lane with
Mr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Snagsby, sir--I shan't be two minutes, my
love!"

Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps
at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office,
refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently
curious.

"You will find that the place is rough, sir," says Mr. Snagsby,
walking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow pavement to
the lawyer; "and the party is very rough. But they're a wild lot in
general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is that he never
wants sleep. He'll go at it right on end if you want him to, as long
as ever you like."

It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full
effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and
against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against
plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the
general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has
interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest
business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that
kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what
and collects about us nobody knows whence or how--we only knowing in
general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to
shovel it away--the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and
bottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise,
lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept,
as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.

"This is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer.

"This is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly.
"Thank you."

"Are you not going in, sir?"

"No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good
evening. Thank you!" Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat and returns to his
little woman and his tea.

But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes
a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and
enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so
in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by
a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed
candle in his hand.

"Pray is your lodger within?"

"Male or female, sir?" says Mr. Krook.

"Male. The person who does copying."

Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an
indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.

"Did you wish to see him, sir?"

"Yes."

"It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr. Krook with a grin. "Shall I
call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!"

"I'll go up to him, then," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.

"Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!" Mr. Krook, with his
cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after
Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Hi-hi!" he says when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly
disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat
expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him.

"Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know
what they say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two.

"What do they say of him?"

"They say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know
better--he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so
black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he'd as soon make that
bargain as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!"

Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door
on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and
accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.

The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if
he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease,
and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as
if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner
by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness
marked with a rain of ink. In another corner a ragged old portmanteau
on one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger
one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The
floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of
rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the
darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn
together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine
might be staring in--the banshee of the man upon the bed.

For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork,
lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just
within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and
trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral
darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of
its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of
winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his
whiskers and his beard--the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the
scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is,
foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes
those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the
general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco,
there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.

"Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick
against the door.

He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away,
but his eyes are surely open.

"Hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "Hallo! Hallo!"

As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes
out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters
staring down upon the bed.

A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room,
irresolute, makes him start and say, "What's that?"

"It's me," returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his
ear. "Can't you wake him?"

"No."

"What have you done with your candle?"

"It's gone out. Here it is."

Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and
tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his
endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his
lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from
the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason
that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs
outside.

The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up
with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. "Does the man
generally sleep like this?" inquired the lawyer in a low voice. "Hi!
I don't know," says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows.
"I know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself
very close."

Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the
great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes
upon the bed.

"God save us!" exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He is dead!" Krook drops
the heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over
the bedside.

They look at one another for a moment.

"Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's
poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?" says Krook, with
his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings.

Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, "Miss Flite! Flite!
Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!" Krook follows him with his
eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old
portmanteau and steal back again.

"Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!" So Mr. Krook addresses a
crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes
in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man
brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad
Scotch tongue.

"Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye," says the medical man, looking up at
them after a moment's examination. "He's just as dead as Phairy!"

Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has
been dead any time.

"Any time, sir?" says the medical gentleman. "It's probable he wull
have been dead aboot three hours."

"About that time, I should say," observes a dark young man on the
other side of the bed.

"Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?" inquires the
first.

The dark young man says yes.

"Then I'll just tak' my depairture," replies the other, "for I'm nae
gude here!" With which remark he finishes his brief attendance and
returns to finish his dinner.

The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face
and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his
pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.

"I knew this person by sight very well," says he. "He has purchased
opium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related
to him?" glancing round upon the three bystanders.

"I was his landlord," grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from
the surgeon's outstretched hand. "He told me once I was the nearest
relation he had."

"He has died," says the surgeon, "of an over-dose of opium, there is
no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough
here now," taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, "to kill a dozen
people."

"Do you think he did it on purpose?" asks Krook.

"Took the over-dose?"

"Yes!" Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible
interest.

"I can't say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit
of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?"

"I suppose he was. His room--don't look rich," says Krook, who might
have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around.
"But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to
name his circumstances to me."

"Did he owe you any rent?"

"Six weeks."

"He will never pay it!" says the young man, resuming his examination.
"It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to
judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy
release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare
say, good-looking." He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on
the bedstead's edge with his face towards that other face and his
hand upon the region of the heart. "I recollect once thinking there
was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall
in life. Was that so?" he continues, looking round.

Krook replies, "You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose
heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my
lodger for a year and a half and lived--or didn't live--by
law-writing, I know no more of him."

During this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old
portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all
appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the
bed--from the young surgeon's professional interest in death,
noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as
an individual; from the old man's unction; and the little crazy
woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his
rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this
while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention
nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might
the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case,
as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.

He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,
professional way.

"I looked in here," he observes, "just before you, with the
intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some
employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my
stationer--Snagsby of Cook's Court. Since no one here knows anything
about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!" to the
little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has
often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the
law-stationer. "Suppose you do!"

While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation
and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and
he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but
stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.

Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves.
"Dear me, dear me," he says; "and it has come to this, has it! Bless
my soul!"

"Can you give the person of the house any information about this
unfortunate creature, Snagsby?" inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He was in
arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know."

"Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind
his hand, "I really don't know what advice I could offer, except
sending for the beadle."

"I don't speak of advice," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I could
advise--"

"No one better, sir, I am sure," says Mr. Snagsby, with his
deferential cough.

"I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he
came from, or to anything concerning him."

"I assure you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with
his cough of general propitiation, "that I no more know where he came
from than I know--"

"Where he has gone to, perhaps," suggests the surgeon to help him
out.

A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook,
with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.

"As to his connexions, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "if a person was to
say to me, 'Snagsby, here's twenty thousand pound down, ready for you
in the Bank of England if you'll only name one of 'em,' I couldn't do
it, sir! About a year and a half ago--to the best of my belief, at
the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle
shop--"

"That was the time!" says Krook with a nod.

"About a year and a half ago," says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, "he
came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my
little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation)
in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to
understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to
put too fine a point upon it," a favourite apology for plain speaking
with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative
frankness, "hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to
strangers, particular--not to put too fine a point upon it--when they
want anything. But she was rather took by something about this
person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want
of attention, or by what other ladies' reasons, I leave you to judge;
and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My
little woman hasn't a good ear for names," proceeds Mr. Snagsby after
consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, "and she
considered Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which,
she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, 'Mr. Snagsby, you
haven't found Nimrod any work yet!' or 'Mr. Snagsby, why didn't you
give that eight and thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?' or
such like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our
place; and that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick
hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him
out, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have
it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which--" Mr. Snagsby
concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much
as to add, "I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he
were in a condition to do it."

"Hadn't you better see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, "whether he
had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and
you will be asked the question. You can read?"

"No, I can't," returns the old man with a sudden grin.

"Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "look over the room for him. He will
get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I'll wait
if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should
ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the
candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see whether there is
anything to help you."

"In the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says Snagsby.

Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have
seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though
there is very little else, heaven knows.

The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer
conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the
chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door.
The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches
tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his
long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied
in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same
place and attitude.

There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau;
there is a bundle of pawnbrokers' duplicates, those turnpike tickets
on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium,
on which are scrawled rough memoranda--as, took, such a day, so many
grains; took, such another day, so many more--begun some time ago, as
if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left
off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to
coroners' inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard
and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an
old letter or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon
examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence
are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby's suggestion is the practical
suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.

So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out
of the room. "Don't leave the cat there!" says the surgeon; "that
won't do!" Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him, and she
goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her
lips.

"Good night!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and
meditation.

By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its
inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the
army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr.
Krook's window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already
walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he
stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base
occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall
back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms
with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in
young Perkins' having "fetched" young Piper "a crack," renews her
friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the
corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge
of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges
confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance
of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable
in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and
bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what's
the matter. The general feeling seems to be that it's a blessing Mr.
Krook warn't made away with first, mingled with a little natural
disappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the
beadle arrives.

The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a
ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the
moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The
policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the
barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that
must be borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation
is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the
beadle is on the ground and has gone in.

By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation,
which has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be
in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the
coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is
immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing
whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that
Mrs. Green's son "was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better
than anybody," which son of Mrs. Green's appears, on inquiry, to be
at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months
out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the
Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours,
examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by
exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public.
Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and
undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with
having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that
effect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the
workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law
and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on
condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it--a
condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the
time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or
less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible
great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues
his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white
gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a
street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost
child and a murder.

Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting
about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror's name
is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle's own
name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served
and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Krook's to keep
a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently
arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in
the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which
earthly lodgings take for No one--and for Every one.

And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau;
and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through
five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that
any one can trace than a deserted infant.

Next day the court is all alive--is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins,
more than reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation
with that excellent woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor
room at the Sol's Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice
a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional
celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes
(according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally
round him and support first-rate talent. The Sol's Arms does a brisk
stroke of business all the morning. Even children so require
sustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has
established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says
his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering
between the door of Mr. Krook's establishment and the door of the
Sol's Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet
spirits and accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.

At the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are
waiting and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good
dry skittle-ground attached to the Sol's Arms. The coroner frequents
more public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer,
tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death
in its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the
landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the
piano and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of
several short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings
in endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the jury
as can crowd together at the table sit there. The rest get among the
spittoons and pipes or lean against the piano. Over the coroner's
head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which
rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be
hanged presently.

Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremony is in progress,
sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a
large shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who
modestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public,
but seems familiar with the room too. A whisper circulates that this
is Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he will get up
an imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the
Harmonic Meeting in the evening.

"Well, gentlemen--" the coroner begins.

"Silence there, will you!" says the beadle. Not to the coroner,
though it might appear so.

"Well, gentlemen," resumes the coroner. "You are impanelled here to
inquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given
before you as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will
give your verdict according to the--skittles; they must be stopped,
you know, beadle!--evidence, and not according to anything else. The
first thing to be done is to view the body."

"Make way there!" cries the beadle.

So they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a
straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr. Krook's back
second floor, from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and
precipitately. The beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very
neat about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has
provided a special little table near the coroner in the Harmonic
Meeting Room) should see all that is to be seen. For they are the
public chroniclers of such inquiries by the line; and he is not
superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print
what "Mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the district,"
said and did and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as familiarly
and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the hangman is, according
to the latest examples.

Little Swills is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return.
Mr. Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction
and seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer, a
bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury
learn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about
him. "A very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen," says the
coroner, "who, I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery
of the death was made, but he could only repeat the evidence you have
already heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the
law-stationer, and it is not necessary to trouble him. Is anybody in
attendance who knows anything more?"

Mrs. Piper pushed forward by Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Piper sworn.

Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs. Piper, what have
you got to say about this?

Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and
without punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs. Piper lives in the
court (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been
well beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one
before the half-baptizing of Alexander James Piper aged eighteen
months and four days old on accounts of not being expected to live
such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his gums) as the
plaintive--so Mrs. Piper insists on calling the deceased--was
reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the plaintive's air in
which that report originatinin. See the plaintive often and
considered as his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go
about some children being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins
may be brought forard for she is here and will do credit to her
husband and herself and family). Has seen the plaintive wexed and
worrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you
cannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be
Methoozellers which you was not yourself). On accounts of this and
his dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from
his pocket and split Johnny's head (which the child knows not fear
and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never
however see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far
from it. Has seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not
partial to children and never see him speak to neither child nor
grown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing
down the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here
would tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent).

Says the coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is
not here. Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of
the active and intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr.
Tulkinghorn.

Oh! Here's the boy, gentlemen!

Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! But stop
a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary
paces.

Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don't know that everybody
has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don't know that Jo is
short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don't find
no fault with it. Spell it? No. HE can't spell it. No father, no
mother, no friends. Never been to school. What's home? Knows a
broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to tell a lie. Don't recollect
who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. Can't
exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's dead if he tells a lie
to the gentlemen here, but believes it'll be something wery bad to
punish him, and serve him right--and so he'll tell the truth.

"This won't do, gentlemen!" says the coroner with a melancholy shake
of the head.

"Don't you think you can receive his evidence, sir?" asks an
attentive juryman.

"Out of the question," says the coroner. "You have heard the boy.
'Can't exactly say' won't do, you know. We can't take THAT in a court
of justice, gentlemen. It's terrible depravity. Put the boy aside."

Boy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially
of Little Swills, the comic vocalist.

Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness.

Very well, gentlemen! Here's a man unknown, proved to have been in
the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half,
found dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to
lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come
to that conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death,
you will find a verdict accordingly.

Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are
discharged. Good afternoon.

While the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give
private audience to the rejected witness in a corner.

That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he
recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes
hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night when
he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man
turned to look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and
found that he had not a friend in the world, said, "Neither have I.
Not one!" and gave him the price of a supper and a night's lodging.
That the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he
slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he
ever wished to die, and similar strange questions. That when the man
had no money, he would say in passing, "I am as poor as you to-day,
Jo," but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most
heartily believes) been glad to give him some.

"He was wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his
wretched sleeve. "Wen I see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, I
wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he
wos!"

As he shuffles downstairs, Mr. Snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a
half-crown in his hand. "If you ever see me coming past your crossing
with my little woman--I mean a lady--" says Mr. Snagsby with his
finger on his nose, "don't allude to it!"

For some little time the jurymen hang about the Sol's Arms
colloquially. In the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of
pipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the Sol's Arms; two stroll to
Hampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and
top up with oysters. Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being
asked what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his
strength lying in a slangular direction) as "a rummy start." The
landlord of the Sol's Arms, finding Little Swills so popular,
commends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a
song in character he don't know his equal and that that man's
character-wardrobe would fill a cart.

Thus, gradually the Sol's Arms melts into the shadowy night and then
flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving,
the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair, is faced
(red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them and
support first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little
Swills says, "Gentlemen, if you'll permit me, I'll attempt a short
description of a scene of real life that came off here to-day." Is
much applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes
in as the coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes
the inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment,
to the refrain: With his (the coroner's) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol
lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!

The jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally
round their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now
laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt
eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this
forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here by the
mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised
to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon
the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would
have seemed! Oh, if in brighter days the now-extinguished fire within
him ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is
she, while these ashes are above the ground!

It is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby's, in Cook's Court,
where Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself
allows--not to put too fine a point upon it--out of one fit into
twenty. The occasion of this seizure is that Guster has a tender
heart and a susceptible something that possibly might have been
imagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may,
now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Snagsby's
account of the inquiry at which he had assisted that at supper-time
she projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying Dutch
cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration, which she only came
out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of
fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically
availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Snagsby not
to give her warning "when she quite comes to," and also in appeals to
the whole establishment to lay her down on the stones and go to bed.
Hence, Mr. Snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in
Cursitor Street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the
subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most
patient of men, "I thought you was dead, I am sure!"

What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he
strains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men
crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what
cannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that
daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes.

Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers
as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr. Krook's and bears off
the body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard,
pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated
to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed,
while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official
back-stairs--would to heaven they HAD departed!--are very complacent
and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would
reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at, they
bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian burial.

With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little
tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate--with every villainy
of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of
death in action close on life--here they lower our dear brother down
a foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in
corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside, a shameful
testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this
boastful island together.

Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too
long by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the
windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at
least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so
sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its
witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to
every passerby, "Look here!"

With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to
the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and
looks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while.

It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and
makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, looks in
again a little while, and so departs.

Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who "can't
exactly say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's,
thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a
distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: "He wos wery
good to me, he wos!"

Not far from the Chancery Court stands a law stationery store, owned by Mr. Snagsby. Mild and timid, Snagsby is married to a shrill, vehement woman. Their one and only servant is Guster, a young woman often afflicted with "fits." One afternoon, Mr. Tulkinghorn visits the stationery shop and asks Snagsby to identify the handwriting of certain Jarndyce and Jarndyce affidavits. Snagsby tells Tulkinghorn that the handwriting is that of a Mr. Nemo , who lives above the rag-and-bottle shop of Mr. Krook. Tulkinghorn goes to Krook's place and finds Nemo dead, apparently of opium poisoning. Shortly thereafter, an inquest is held. From little Jo, the street crossing sweeper, Tulkinghorn learns that Nemo was a kind and considerate person. Nemo's death is ruled as accidental, and the obscure man is given a pauper's burial in a dismal, neglected churchyard.