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CHAPTER XIII. The Tribulations of Morris: Part the Second
In a really polite age of literature I would have scorned to cast my eye
again on the contortions of Morris. But the study is in the spirit of
the day; it presents, besides, features of a high, almost a repulsive,
morality; and if it should prove the means of preventing any respectable
and inexperienced gentleman from plunging light-heartedly into crime,
even political crime, this work will not have been penned in vain.
He rose on the morrow of his night with Michael, rose from the leaden
slumber of distress, to find his hand tremulous, his eyes closed with
rheum, his throat parched, and his digestion obviously paralysed.
'
Lord knows it's not from eating!' Morris thought; and as he dressed
he reconsidered his position under several heads. Nothing will so well
depict the troubled seas in which he was now voyaging as a review
of these various anxieties. I have thrown them (for the reader's
convenience) into a certain order; but in the mind of one poor human
equal they whirled together like the dust of hurricanes. With the same
obliging preoccupation, I have put a name to each of his distresses;
and it will be observed with pity that every individual item would have
graced and commended the cover of a railway novel.
Anxiety the First: Where is the Body? or, The Mystery of Bent Pitman. It
was now manifestly plain that Bent Pitman (as was to be looked for from
his ominous appellation) belonged to the darker order of the criminal
class. An honest man would not have cashed the bill; a humane man would
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