crowd, and felt the depression of spirits and sinking of heart,

naturally consequent on the reflection that he was cooped and caged

up, without a prospect of liberation. As to the idea of releasing himself

by ministering to the sharpness of Dodson & Fogg, it never for an

instant entered his thoughts.

In this frame of mind he turned again into the coffee-room gallery, and

walked slowly to and fro. The place was intolerably dirty, and the

smell of tobacco smoke perfectly suffocating. There was a perpetual

slamming and banging of doors as the people went in and out; and the

noise of their voices and footsteps echoed and re-echoed through the

passages constantly. A young woman, with a child in her arms, who

seemed scarcely able to crawl, from emaciation and misery, was

walking up and down the passage in conversation with her husband,

who had no other place to see her in. As they passed Mr Pickwick, he

could hear the female sob bitterly; and once she burst into such a

passion of grief, that she was compelled to lean against the wall for

support, while the man took the child in his arms, and tried to soothe

her.

Mr Pickwick's heart was really too full to bear it, and he went upstairs

to bed.

Now, although the warder's room was a very uncomfortable one

(being, in every point of decoration and convenience, several hundred

degrees inferior to the common infirmary of a county jail), it had at

present the merit of being wholly deserted save by Mr Pickwick

himself. So, he sat down at the foot of his little iron bedstead, and

began to wonder how much a year the warder made out of the dirty

room. Having satisfied himself, by mathematical calculation, that the

apartment was about equal in annual value to the freehold of a small

street in the suburbs of London, he took to wondering what possible

temptation could have induced a dingy-looking fly that was crawling

over his pantaloons, to come into a close prison, when he had the

choice of so many airy situations - a course of meditation which led

him to the irresistible conclusion that the insect was insane. After

settling this point, he began to be conscious that he was getting

sleepy; whereupon he took his nightcap out of the pocket in which he

had had the precaution to stow it in the morning, and, leisurely

undressing himself, got into bed and fell asleep.

Bravo! Heel over toe - cut and shuffle - pay away at it, Zephyr! I'm

smothered if the opera house isn't your proper hemisphere. Keep it

up! Hooray!' These expressions, delivered in a most boisterous tone,

and accompanied with loud peals of laughter, roused Mr Pickwick

from one of those sound slumbers which, lasting in reality some half-

hour, seem to the sleeper to have been protracted for three weeks or a

month.

The Pickwick Papers