IF!' exclaimed the old man, with a look of excessive contempt. 'I

suppose,' he added, turning to Lowten, 'he'll say next, that my story

about the queer client we had, when I was in an attorney's office, is

not true either - I shouldn't wonder.'

'I shan't venture to say anything at all about it, seeing that I never

heard the story,' observed the owner of the Mosaic decorations.

'I wish you would repeat it, Sir,' said Mr Pickwick.

Ah, do,' said Lowten, 'nobody has heard it but me, and I have nearly

forgotten it.'

The old man looked round the table, and leered more horribly than

ever, as if in triumph, at the attention which was depicted in every

face. Then rubbing his chin with his hand, and looking up to the

ceiling as if to recall the circumstances to his memory, he began as

follows: -

THE OLD MAN'S TALE ABOUT THE QUEER CLIENT

It matters little,' said the old man, 'where, or how, I picked up this

brief history. If I were to relate it in the order in which it reached me, I

should commence in the middle, and when I had arrived at the

conclusion, go back for a beginning. It is enough for me to say that

some of its circumstances passed before my own eyes; for the

remainder I know them to have happened, and there are some

persons yet living, who will remember them but too well.

'In the Borough High Street, near St. George's Church, and on the

same side of the way, stands, as most people know, the smallest of

our debtors' prisons, the Marshalsea. Although in later times it has

been a very different place from the sink of filth and dirt it once was,

even its improved condition holds out but little temptation to the

extravagant, or consolation to the improvident. The condemned felon

has as good a yard for air and exercise in Newgate, as the insolvent

debtor in the Marshalsea Prison. [Better. But this is past, in a better

age, and the prison exists no longer.]

'It may be my fancy, or it may be that I cannot separate the place from

the old recollections associated with it, but this part of London I

cannot bear. The street is broad, the shops are spacious, the noise of

passing vehicles, the footsteps of a perpetual stream of people - all the

busy sounds of traffic, resound in it from morn to midnight; but the

streets around are mean and close; poverty and debauchery lie

festering in the crowded alleys; want and misfortune are pent up in

the narrow prison; an air of gloom and dreariness seems, in my eyes

The Pickwick Papers