AT MRS. JELLYBY'S.* [From "Bleak House." HERE is 'there,' Mr. Guppy?" said Richard, as we went down stairs. "No distance," said Mr. Guppy; "round in Thavies' Inn, you know." We all three laughed, and chatted about our inexperience, and the strangeness of London, until we turned up under an archway, to our destination: a narrow street of high houses, like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the door, with the inscription JELLYBY. "Don't be frightened !" said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the coach-window. "One of the young Jellybys been and got his head through the area railings !" "O poor child," said I, "let me out, if you please!" "Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up to something," said Mr. Guppy. I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened, and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after pacifying him), that he was a little boy with a naturally large head, I thought that, perhaps, where his head could go his body could follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and beadle, that he would immediately have been pushed into the area, if I had not held his pinafore, while Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down through the kitchen, to catch him when he should be released. At last he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner. Nobody had appeared belonging to the house, except a person in pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. I therefore supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home; and was quite surprised when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and going up to the back room on the first floor, before Ada and me, announced us as, By CHARLES DICKENS.] We "Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby! Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we could not help showing in our own faces, as the dear child's head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair-Richard afterwards said he counted seven, besides one for the landing-received us with perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman, of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if I am quoting Richard againthey could see nothing further than Africa! "I am very glad indeed," said Mrs. Jellyby, in an agreeable voice, "to have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr. Jarndyce; and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of indifference to me.' We expressed our acknowledgments, and sat down behind the door where there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair, but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped on to her chair when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up the back, and that the open space was railed across with a latticework of stay-lace-like a summer-house. The room, which was strewed with papers and nearly filled with a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy, but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled down stairs: I think into the back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him. But what principally struck us was a jaded, and unhealthy-looking, though by no means plain girl, at the writing-table, who sat biting the feather of her pen, and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was in such a state of ink. And, from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her, from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right place. "You find me, my dears," said Mrs. Jellyby, By permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall (Limited). proposed to the children that they should come in and be very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of little Red Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of the wolf. When we went down stairs we found a mug, with "A Present from Tunbridge Wells" on it, lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick; and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage, blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door with Mrs. Jellyby's room), and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that degree in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the windows open for half an hour; during which Mrs. Jellyby, with the same sweetness of temper, directed letters about Africa. Her being so employed was, I must say, a great relief to me; for Richard told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish, and that they had found the kettle on his dressing-table; and he made Ada laugh so, that they made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner. RE you sure that's the Flame over by the springing of a few rivets, which loosened a the shore?" biler-plate or two, and let out a thin spirting "Certing, manny ! I could tell her upon some niggers that hadn't sense enough to pipes acrost the Mazoura."* "And you will overhaul her?!" "Won't we, though! I tell ye, strannger, so sure as my name's Ben Blower, that last tar-bar'l I hove in the furnace has put jist the smart chance of go-ahead into us to cut off the Flame from yonder pint, or send our boat to kingdom come." 66 The dickens!" exclaimed a bystander who, intensely interested in the race, was leaning the while against the partitions of the boiler-room. "I've chosen a nice place to see the fun, near this powder-barrel." "Not so bad as if you were in it," coolly observed Ben, as the other walked rapidly away. "As if he were in it! in what? in the boiler?" Certingly. Don't folks sometimes go into bilers, manny?" "I should think there'd be other parts of the boat more comfortable." "That's right; poking fun at me at once't; but wait till we get through this brush with the old Flame, and I'll tell ye of a regular fixin scrape that a man may get into. It's true, too, every word of it, as sure as my name's Ben Blower." "You have seen the Flame then afore, strannger? Six year ago, when new upon the river, she was a raal out and outer, I tell ye. I was at that time a hand aboard of her. Yes, I belonged to her at the time of her great race with the Go-liar. You've heern, mahap, of the blow-up by which we lost it. They made a great fuss about it; but it was nothing but a mere fiz of hot water after all. Only The name "Missouri" is thus generally pronounced upon the western waters. get out of the way. Well, the Go-liar took off our passengers, and we ran into Smasher's Landing to repair damages, and bury them that were killed. Here we laid for a matter of thirty hours or so, and got things to rights on board for a bran new start. There was some carpenters' work yet to be done, but the captain said that that might be fixed off jist as well when we were under weighwe had worked hard-the weather was sour, and we needn't do anything more jist now-we might take that afternoon to ourselves, but the next morning he'd get up steam bright and airly, and we'd all come out new. There was no temperance society at Smasher's Landing, and I went ashore upon a lark with some of the hands." I omit the worthy Benjamin's adventures upon land, and, despairing of fully conveying his language in its original Doric force, will not hesitate to give the rest of his singular narrative in my own words, save where, in a few instances, I can recall his precise phraseology, which the reader will easily recognise. "The night was raw and sleety when I regained the deck of our boat. The officers, instead of leaving a watch above, had closed up everything, and shut themselves in the cabin. The fire-room only was open. The boards dashed from the outside by the explosion had not been yet replaced. The floor of the room was wet, and there was scarcely a corner which afforded a shelter from the driving storm. I was about leaving the room, resigned to sleep in the open air, and now bent only upon getting under the lee of some bulkhead that would protect me against the wind. In passing out I kept my arms stretched forward to feel my way in the dark, but my feet came in contact with a heavy iron lid; I stumbled, and, as I fell, struck 96 GLEANINGS FROM POPUL And when she proposed to finish the season Except that the waters were good for his gout. And spur up humanity into a canter To rush and relieve these sad cases instanter. by this touching description, Come forward to-morrow and head a subscription? Won't some kind philanthropist, seeing that And found a new charity just for the care Of these unhappy women with nothing to wear: Which, in view of the cash which would daily be Then hom claim'd, The Laying-out Hospital well might be named; Won't Stewart, or some of our dry-goods importers, Take a contract for clothing our wives and our daughters? Or, to furnish the cash to supply those distresses, And life's pathway strew with shawls, collars, and dresses, And oh, I' Time Fade and |