kind. Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruits, confectionaries, jellies,
neguses, barley-sugar temples, trifles, crackers—eat all you can and
pocket what you like—all at Old Cheeseman’s expense. After that,
speeches, whole holiday, double and treble sets of all manners of things
for all manners of games, donkeys, pony-chaises and drive yourself,
dinner for all the masters at the Seven Bells (twenty pounds a-head our
fellows estimated it at), an annual holiday and feast fixed for that day
every year, and another on Old Cheeseman’s birthday—Reverend bound down
before the fellows to allow it, so that he could never back out—all at
Old Cheeseman’s expense.
And didn’t our fellows go down in a body and cheer outside the Seven
Bells? O no!
But there’s something else besides. Don’t look at the next story-teller,
for there’s more yet. Next day, it was resolved that the Society should
make it up with Jane, and then be dissolved. What do you think of Jane
being gone, though! “What? Gone for ever?” said our fellows, with long
faces. “Yes, to be sure,” was all the answer they could get. None of
the people about the house would say anything more. At length, the first
boy took upon himself to ask the Reverend whether our old friend Jane was
really gone? The Reverend (he has got a daughter at home—turn-up nose,
and red) replied severely, “Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is gone.” The idea of
calling Jane, Miss Pitt! Some said she had been sent away in disgrace
for taking money from Old Cheeseman; others said she had gone into Old
Cheeseman’s service at a rise of ten pounds a year. All that our fellows
knew, was, she was gone.
It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon, an open
carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds, with a lady
and gentleman in it, who looked at the game a long time and stood up to
see it played. Nobody thought much about them, until the same little
snivelling chap came in, against all rules, from the post where he was
Scout, and said, “It’s Jane!” Both Elevens forgot the game directly, and
ran crowding round the carriage. It _was_ Jane! In such a bonnet! And
if you’ll believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman.
It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard at it in
the playground, to see a carriage at the low part of the wall where it
joins the high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up in it, looking
over. The gentleman was always Old Cheeseman, and the lady was always
Jane.
The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way. There had been a
good many changes among our fellows then, and it had turned out that Bob
Tarter’s father wasn’t worth Millions! He wasn’t worth anything. Bob
had gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had purchased his discharge.
But that’s not the carriage. The carriage stopped, and all our fellows
stopped as soon as it was seen.
“So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!” said the lady,
laughing, as our fellows swarmed up the wall to shake hands with her.
“Are you never going to do it?”
“Never! never! never!” on all sides.
I didn’t understand what she meant then, but of course I do now. I was
very much pleased with her face though, and with her good way, and I
couldn’t help looking at her—and at him too—with all our fellows
clustering so joyfully about them.
They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so I thought I might as well
swarm up the wall myself, and shake hands with them as the rest did. I
was quite as glad to see them as the rest were, and was quite as familiar
with them in a moment.
“Only a fortnight now,” said Old Cheeseman, “to the holidays. Who stops?
Anybody?”
A good many fingers pointed at me, and a good many voices cried “He
does!” For it was the year when you were all away; and rather low I was
about it, I can tell you.
“Oh!” said Old Cheeseman. “But it’s solitary here in the holiday time.
He had better come to us.”
So I went to their delightful house, and was as happy as I could possibly
be. They understand how to conduct themselves towards boys, _they_ do.
When they take a boy to the play, for instance, they _do_ take him. They
don’t go in after it’s begun, or come out before it’s over. They know
how to bring a boy up, too. Look at their own! Though he is very little
as yet, what a capital boy he is! Why, my next favourite to Mrs.
Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman, is young Cheeseman.
So, now I have told you all I know about Old Cheeseman. And it’s not
much after all, I am afraid. Is it?
NOBODY’S STORY
HE lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad and deep, which was always
silently rolling on to a vast undiscovered ocean. It had rolled on, ever
since the world began. It had changed its course sometimes, and turned
into new channels, leaving its old ways dry and barren; but it had ever
been upon the flow, and ever was to flow until Time should be no more.
Against its strong, unfathomable stream, nothing made head. No living
creature, no flower, no leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate
existence, ever strayed back from the undiscovered ocean. The tide of
the river set resistlessly towards it; and the tide never stopped, any
more than the earth stops in its circling round the sun.
He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live. He had no
hope of ever being rich enough to live a month without hard work, but he
was quite content, GOD knows, to labour with a cheerful will. He was one
of an immense family, all of whose sons and daughters gained their daily
bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising up betimes until their
lying down at night. Beyond this destiny he had no prospect, and he
sought none.
There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, in the
neighbourhood where he dwelt; but he had nothing to do with that. Such
clash and uproar came from the Bigwig family, at the unaccountable
proceedings of which race, he marvelled much. They set up the strangest
statues, in iron, marble, bronze, and brass, before his door; and
darkened his house with the legs and tails of uncouth images of horses.
He wondered what it all meant, smiled in a rough good-humoured way he
had, and kept at his hard work.
The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people thereabouts, and
all the noisiest) had undertaken to save him the trouble of thinking for
himself, and to manage him and his affairs. “Why truly,” said he, “I
have little time upon my hands; and if you will be so good as to take
care of me, in return for the money I pay over”—for the Bigwig family
were not above his money—“I shall be relieved and much obliged,
considering that you know best.” Hence the drumming, trumpeting, and
speech-making, and the ugly images of horses which he was expected to
fall down and worship.
“I don’t understand all this,” said he, rubbing his furrowed brow
confusedly. “But it _has_ a meaning, maybe, if I could find it out.”
“It means,” returned the Bigwig family, suspecting something of what he
said, “honour and glory in the highest, to the highest merit.”
“Oh!” said he. And he was glad to hear that.
But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, bronze, and brass,
he failed to find a rather meritorious countryman of his, once the son of
a Warwickshire wool-dealer, or any single countryman whomsoever of that
kind. He could find none of the men whose knowledge had rescued him and
his children from terrific and disfiguring disease, whose boldness had
raised his forefathers from the condition of serfs, whose wise fancy had
opened a new and high existence to the humblest, whose skill had filled
the working man’s world with accumulated wonders. Whereas, he did find
others whom he knew no good of, and even others whom he knew much ill of.
“Humph!” said he. “I don’t quite understand it.”
So, he went home, and sat down by his fireside to get it out of his mind.
Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened streets; but
it was a precious place to him. The hands of his wife were hardened with
toil, and she was old before her time; but she was dear to him. His
children, stunted in their growth, bore traces of unwholesome nurture;
but they had beauty in his sight. Above all other things, it was an
earnest desire of this man’s soul that his children should be taught.
“If I am sometimes misled,” said he, “for want of knowledge, at least let
them know better, and avoid my mistakes. If it is hard to me to reap the
harvest of pleasure and instruction that is stored in books, let it be
easier to them.”
But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels concerning
what it was lawful to teach to this man’s children. Some of the family
insisted on such a thing being primary and indispensable above all other
things; and others of the family insisted on such another thing being
primary and indispensable above all other things; and the Bigwig family,
rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered
charges, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one another
in courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged
pummelings, and fell together by the ears in unintelligible animosity.
Meanwhile, this man, in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw
the demon Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself. He saw
his daughter perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge; he saw his son go
moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime; he saw
the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies so changing
into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather wished them idiots.
“I don’t understand this any the better,” said he; “but I think it cannot
be right. Nay, by the clouded Heaven above me, I protest against this as
my wrong!”
Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was usually short-lived, and
his nature kind), he looked about him on his Sundays and holidays, and he
saw how much monotony and weariness there was, and thence how drunkenness
arose with all its train of ruin. Then he appealed to the Bigwig family,
and said, “We are a labouring people, and I have a glimmering suspicion
in me that labouring people of whatever condition were made—by a higher
intelligence than yours, as I poorly understand it—to be in need of
mental refreshment and recreation. See what we fall into, when we rest
without it. Come! Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give me an
escape!”
But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar absolutely
deafening. When some few voices were faintly heard, proposing to show
him the wonders of the world, the greatness of creation, the mighty
changes of time, the workings of nature and the beauties of art—to show
him these things, that is to say, at any period of his life when he could
look upon them—there arose among the Bigwigs such roaring and raving,
such pulpiting and petitioning, such maundering and memorialising, such
name-calling and dirt-throwing, such a shrill wind of parliamentary
questioning and feeble replying—where “I dare not” waited on “I
would”—that the poor fellow stood aghast, staring wildly around.
“Have I provoked all this,” said he, with his hands to his affrighted
ears, “by what was meant to be an innocent request, plainly arising out
of my familiar experience, and the common knowledge of all men who choose
to open their eyes? I don’t understand, and I am not understood. What
is to come of such a state of things!”
He was bending over his work, often asking himself the question, when the
news began to spread that a pestilence had appeared among the labourers,
and was slaying them by thousands. Going forth to look about him, he
soon found this to be true. The dying and the dead were mingled in the
close and tainted houses among which his life was passed. New poison was
distilled into the always murky, always sickening air. The robust and
the weak, old age and infancy, the father and the mother, all were
stricken down alike.
What means of flight had he? He remained there, where he was, and saw
those who were dearest to him die. A kind preacher came to him, and
would have said some prayers to soften his heart in his gloom, but he
replied:
“O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to
residence in this foetid place, where every sense bestowed upon me for my
delight becomes a torment, and where every minute of my numbered days is
new mire added to the heap under which I lie oppressed! But, give me my
first glimpse of Heaven, through a little of its light and air; give me
pure water; help me to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and heavy
life, in which our spirits sink, and we become the indifferent and
callous creatures you too often see us; gently and kindly take the bodies
of those who die among us, out of the small room where we grow to be so
familiar with the awful change that even its sanctity is lost to us; and,
Teacher, then I will hear—none know better than you, how willingly—of Him
whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had compassion for all
human sorrow!”
He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his Master came and stood
near to him dressed in black. He, also, had suffered heavily. His young
wife, his beautiful and good young wife, was dead; so, too, his only
child.
“Master, ’tis hard to bear—I know it—but be comforted. I would give you
comfort, if I could.”
The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said he, “O you labouring
men! The calamity began among you. If you had but lived more healthily
and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft mourner that I am
this day.”
“Master,” returned the other, shaking his head, “I have begun to
understand a little that most calamities will come from us, as this one
did, and that none will stop at our poor doors, until we are united with
that great squabbling family yonder, to do the things that are right. We
cannot live healthily and decently, unless they who undertook to manage
us provide the means. We cannot be instructed unless they will teach us;
we cannot be rationally amused, unless they will amuse us; we cannot but
have some false gods of our own, while they set up so many of theirs in
all the public places. The evil consequences of imperfect instruction,
the evil consequences of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of
unnatural restraint and the denial of humanising enjoyments, will all
come from us, and none of them will stop with us. They will spread far
and wide. They always do; they always have done—just like the
pestilence. I understand so much, I think, at last.”
But the Master said again, “O you labouring men! How seldom do we ever
hear of you, except in connection with some trouble!”
“Master,” he replied, “I am Nobody, and little likely to be heard of (nor
yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps), except when there is some
trouble. But it never begins with me, and it never can end with me. As
sure as Death, it comes down to me, and it goes up from me.”
There was so much reason in what he said, that the Bigwig family, getting
wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the late desolation,
resolved to unite with him to do the things that were right—at all
events, so far as the said things were associated with the direct
prevention, humanly speaking, of another pestilence. But, as their fear
wore off, which it soon began to do, they resumed their falling out among
themselves, and did nothing. Consequently the scourge appeared again—low
down as before—and spread avengingly upward as before, and carried off
vast numbers of the brawlers. But not a man among them ever admitted, if
in the least degree he ever perceived, that he had anything to do with
it.
So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way; and this, in the main,
is the whole of Nobody’s story.
Had he no name, you ask? Perhaps it was Legion. It matters little what
his name was. Let us call him Legion.
If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of Waterloo, you
will have seen, in some quiet little church, a monument erected by
faithful companions in arms to the memory of Colonel A, Major B, Captains
C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I and J, seven
non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and thirty rank and file, who
fell in the discharge of their duty on the memorable day. The story of
Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the earth. They bear their
share of the battle; they have their part in the victory; they fall; they
leave no name but in the mass. The march of the proudest of us, leads to
the dusty way by which they go. O! Let us think of them this year at
the Christmas fire, and not forget them when it is burnt out.