I am apt--judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own experience-to
measure a young man's chance of what is termed practical success in life
by what may seem at first two very vulgar qualities; viz., his
inquisitiveness and his animal vivacity. A curiosity which springs
forward to examine everything new to his information; a nervous
activity, approaching to restlessness, which rarely allows bodily
fatigue to interfere with some object in view,--constitute, in my mind,
very profitable stock-in-hand to begin the world with.
Tired as I was, after I had performed my ablutions and refreshed myself
in the little coffee-room of the inn at which I put up, with the
pedestrian's best beverage, familiar and oft calumniated tea, I could
not resist the temptation of the broad, bustling street, which, lighted
with gas, shone on me through the dim windows of the coffee-room. I had
never before seen a large town, and the contrast of lamp-lit, busy night
in the streets, with sober, deserted night in the lanes and fields,
struck me forcibly.
I sauntered out, therefore, jostling and jostled, now gazing at the
windows, now hurried along the tide of life, till I found myself before
a cookshop, round which clustered a small knot of housewives, citizens,
and hungry-looking children. While contemplating this group, and
marvelling how it comes to pass that the staple business of earth's
majority is how, when, and where to eat, my ear was struck with "'In
Troy there lies the scene,' as the illustrious Will remarks."
Looking round, I perceived Mr. Peacock pointing his stick towards an
open doorway next to the cookshop, the hall beyond which was lighted
with gas, while painted in black letters on a pane of glass over the
door was the word "Billiards."
Suiting the action to the word, the speaker plunged at once into the
aperture, and vanished. The boy-companion was following more slowly,
when his eye caught mine. A slight blush came over his dark cheek; he
stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs, gazed on me hard and long
before he said: "Well met again, sir! You find it hard to amuse
yourself in this dull place; the nights are long out of London."
"Oh!" said I, ingenuously, "everything here amuses me,--the lights, the
shops, the crowd; but, then, to me everything is new."
The youth came from his lounging-place and moved on, as if inviting me
to walk; while he answered, rather with bitter sullenness than the
melancholy his words expressed,--
"One thing, at least, cannot be new to you,--it is an old truth with us
before we leave the nursery: 'Whatever is worth having must be bought;'
ergo, he who cannot buy, has nothing worth having."
"I don't think," said I, wisely, "that the things best worth having can
be bought at all. You see that poor dropsical jeweller standing before
his shop-door: his shop is the finest in the street, and I dare say he
would be very glad to give it to you or me in return for our good health
and strong legs. Oh, no! I think with my father: 'All that are worth
having are given to all,'--that is, Nature and labor."
"Your father says that; and you go by what your father says? Of course,
all fathers have preached that, and many other good doctrines, since
Adam preached to Cain; but I don't see that the fathers have found their
sons very credulous listeners."
"So much the worse for the sons," said I, bluntly. "Nature," continued
my new acquaintance, without attending to my ejaculation,--"Nature
indeed does give us much, and Nature also orders each of us how to use
her gifts. If Nature give you the propensity to drudge, you will
drudge; if she give me the ambition to rise, and the contempt for work,
I may rise,--but I certainly shall not work."
"Oh," said I, "you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are all
guided by the bumps on our foreheads?"
"And the blood in our veins, and our mothers' milk. We inherit other
things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father
tells you! Good boy!"
I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being taunted for goodness, I
never could understand; but certainly I felt humbled. However, I
answered sturdily: "If you had as good a father as I have, you would not
think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you."
"Ah! so he is a very good father, is he? He must have a great trust in
your sobriety and steadiness to let you wander about the world as he
does."
"I am going to join him in London."
"In London! Oh, does he live there?"
"He is going to live there for some time."
"Then perhaps we may meet. I too am going to town."
"Oh, we shall be sure to meet there!" said I, with frank gladness; for
my interest in the young man was not diminished by his conversation,
however much I disliked the sentiments it expressed.
The lad laughed, and his laugh was peculiar,--it was low, musical, but
hollow and artificial.
"Sure to meet! London is a large place: where shall you be found?"
I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel at which I
expected to find my father, although his deliberate inspection of my
knapsack must already have apprised him of that address. He listened
attentively, and repeated it twice over, as if to impress it on his
memory; and we both walked on in silence, till, turning up a small
passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a large churchyard,--a flagged
path stretched diagonally across it towards the market-place, on which
it bordered. In this churchyard, upon a gravestone, sat a young
Savoyard; his hurdy-gurdy, or whatever else his instrument might be
called, was on his lap; and he was gnawing his crust and feeding some
poor little white mice (standing on their hind legs on the hurdy-gurdy)
as merrily as if he had chosen the gayest resting-place in the world.
We both stopped. The Savoyard, seeing us, put his arch head on one
side, showed all his white teeth in that happy smile so peculiar to his
race, and in which poverty seems to beg so blithely, and gave the handle
of his instrument a turn. "Poor child!" said I.
"Aha, you pity him! but why? According to your rule, Mr. Caxton, he is
not so much to be pitied; the dropsical jeweller would give him as much
for his limbs and health as for ours! How is it--answer me, son of so
wise a father--that no one pities the dropsical jeweller, and all pity
the healthy Savoyard? It is, sir, because there is a stern truth which
is stronger than all Spartan lessons,--Poverty is the master-ill of the
world. Look round. Does poverty leave its signs over the graves? Look
at that large tomb fenced round; read that long inscription: 'Virtue'--
'best of husbands'--'affectionate father'--'inconsolable grief'-'sleeps
in the joyful hope,' etc. Do you suppose these stoneless mounds hide no
dust of what were men just as good? But no epitaph tells their virtues,
bespeaks their wifes' grief, or promises joyful hope to them!"
"Does it matter? Does God care for the epitaph and tombstone?"
"Datemi qualche cosa!" said the Savoyard, in his touching patois, still
smiling, and holding out his little hand; therein I dropped a small
coin. The boy evinced his gratitude by a new turn of the hurdy-gurdy.
"That is not labor," said my companion; "and had you found him at work,
you had given him nothing. I, too, have my instrument to play upon, and
my mice to see after. Adieu!"
He waved his hand, and strode irreverently over the graves back in the
direction we had come.
I stood before the fine tomb with its fine epitaph: the Savoyard looked
at me wistfully.