been running odd jobs, and that, for the last two months. Shall I send

him?'

'If you please,' rejoined Mr Pickwick. 'Stay; no. The poor side, you say?

I should like to see it. I'll go to him myself.'

The poor side of a debtor's prison is, as its name imports, that in

which the most miserable and abject class of debtors are confined. A

prisoner having declared upon the poor side, pays neither rent nor

chummage. His fees, upon entering and leaving the jail, are reduced

in amount, and he becomes entitled to a share of some small

quantities of food: to provide which, a few charitable persons have,

from time to time, left trifling legacies in their wills. Most of our

readers will remember, that, until within a very few years past, there

was a kind of iron cage in the wall of the Fleet Prison, within which

was posted some man of hungry looks, who, from time to time, rattled

a money-box, and exclaimed in a mournful voice, 'Pray, remember the

poor debtors; pray remember the poor debtors.' The receipts of this

box, when there were any, were divided among the poor prisoners;

and the men on the poor side relieved each other in this degrading

office.

Although this custom has been abolished, and the cage is now

boarded up, the miserable and destitute condition of these unhappy

persons remains the same. We no longer suffer them to appeal at the

prison gates to the charity and compassion of the passersby; but we

still leave unblotted the leaves of our statute book, for the reverence

and admiration of succeeding ages, the just and wholesome law which

declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the

penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This

is no fiction. Not a week passes over our head, but, in every one of our

prisons for debt, some of these men must inevitably expire in the slow

agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow-prisoners.

Turning these things in his mind, as he mounted the narrow staircase

at the foot of which Roker had left him, Mr Pickwick gradually worked

himself to the boiling-over point; and so excited was he with his

reflections on this subject, that he had burst into the room to which

he had been directed, before he had any distinct recollection, either of

the place in which he was, or of the object of his visit.

The general aspect of the room recalled him to himself at once; but he

had no sooner cast his eye on the figure of a man who was brooding

over the dusty fire, than, letting his hat fall on the floor, he stood

perfectly fixed and immovable with astonishment.

Yes; in tattered garments, and without a coat; his common calico

shirt, yellow and in rags; his hair hanging over his face; his features

The Pickwick Papers