the clear blue sky, the water sparkled beneath his rays, and the trees

looked greener, and the flowers more gay, beneath its cheering

influence. The water rippled on with a pleasant sound, the trees

rustled in the light wind that murmured among their leaves, the birds

sang upon the boughs, and the lark carolled on high her welcome to

the morning. Yes, it was morning; the bright, balmy morning of

summer; the minutest leaf, the smallest blade of grass, was instinct

with life. The ant crept forth to her daily toil, the butterfly fluttered

and basked in the warm rays of the sun; myriads of insects spread

their transparent wings, and revelled in their brief but happy

existence. Man walked forth, elated with the scene; and all was

brightness and splendour.

‘YOU a miserable man!’ said the king of the goblins, in a more

contemptuous tone than before. And again the king of the goblins

gave his leg a flourish; again it descended on the shoulders of the

sexton; and again the attendant goblins imitated the example of their

chief.

Many a time the cloud went and came, and many a lesson it taught to

Gabriel Grub, who, although his shoulders smarted with pain from

the frequent applications of the goblins' feet thereunto, looked on with

an interest that nothing could diminish. He saw that men who worked

hard, and earned their scanty bread with lives of labour, were cheerful

and happy; and that to the most ignorant, the sweet face of Nature

was a never-failing source of cheerfulness and joy. He saw those who

had been delicately nurtured, and tenderly brought up, cheerful under

privations, and superior to suffering, that would have crushed many

of a rougher grain, because they bore within their own bosoms the

materials of happiness, contentment, and peace. He saw that women,

the tenderest and most fragile of all God's creatures, were the oftenest

superior to sorrow, adversity, and distress; and he saw that it was

because they bore, in their own hearts, an inexhaustible well-spring of

affection and devotion. Above all, he saw that men like himself, who

snarled at the mirth and cheerfulness of others, were the foulest

weeds on the fair surface of the earth; and setting all the good of the

world against the evil, he came to the conclusion that it was a very

decent and respectable sort of world after all. No sooner had he

formed it, than the cloud which had closed over the last picture,

seemed to settle on his senses, and lull him to repose. One by one, the

goblins faded from his sight; and, as the last one disappeared, he

sank to sleep.

The day had broken when Gabriel Grub awoke, and found himself

lying at full length on the flat gravestone in the churchyard, with the

wicker bottle lying empty by his side, and his coat, spade, and

lantern, all well whitened by the last night's frost, scattered on the

ground. The stone on which he had first seen the goblin seated, stood

The Pickwick Papers