Chatham patch

• The Expanse: Dragon Tooth Set of 3 Hard Cover - $125
• The Expanse #1 Soft cover (2021) - $17 (this is an existing comic also available on Amazon, but the pre-order is cheaper and it goes towards our goal)
• The Expanse: Dragon Tooth Set of 3 Soft Covers - $55
• Expanse, The: Dragon Tooth 1-12 BOOM! Deluxe Preorder Variants - $75
• Expanse, The: Dragon Tooth 1-12 PDF's in 3 Packs - $40
• Rocinante challenge coin replica - $15
• MCRN challenge coin replica - $15
• Laconia challenge coin replica - $15
• UN challenge coin replica - $15
• Transport Union challenge coin replica - $15
• Collected Coin Box (3/5 Coins incl. Transport Union, UN, & MCRN) - $50
• Navigational Star Map - Rolled - $25
• Embroidered Rocinante beanie hat - $20
• Patch Set of 3 (incl. UN, Martian, and OPA) - $15

Final Stretch Goal Extension Details!
Hello, Beltalowda and Inyalowda!
As promised, we’re back this week with details on how we are going to give fans additional time to unlock our final stellar Stretch Goal! As a reminder, the final Stretch Goal unlocks a limited edition print featuring the stunning THE EXPANSE: DRAGON TOOTH #1 art by Christian Ward, signed by three of the core members of THE EXPANSE streaming series – Steven Strait, Dominique Tipper, and Wes Chatham, for every physical pre-order of $100 or more for free. Additionally, Steven, Dominique, and Wes would also participate in a virtual “cast reading” of THE EXPANSE: DRAGON TOOTH later this year.
We’ve set up and launched our Pre-Order Store (https://the-expanse-dragon-tooth.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders) on BackerKit, where any THE EXPANSE fans can get in on the excitement. From now until 10am PST on Monday, March 20th, any and all additional pre-orders will count toward our total for the purposes of unlocking the final Stretch Goal. If we reach $1,450,000 by the deadline, we will unlock the final Stretch Goal!
Additionally, any fan who places a pre-order through BackerKit by March 20th at 10am PST will receive all of the unlocked Stretch Goals as if they had pre-ordered through the initial campaign – making this the perfect time to let any fellow fans of THE EXPANSE know they still have a chance to get in on the campaign!
You can find a countdown clock on our BackerKit Pre-Order Store and the total pre-order amount will continue to update in real time, so we can all track how close we are to reaching our goal.
If you’ve already pre-ordered through Kickstarter – thank you, you’ve done your part! Your pre-ordered items along with any unlocked Stretch Goals you are eligible for, will be visible when Surveys go out later this month. You will be able to order additional add-on items during the Survey, and we recommend waiting to order additional items until you receive your Survey to to ensure your order is combined We will do our best to combine any separate orders placed during this pre-order period with your original order, but cannot guarantee they will be combined. Until then, let your fellow fans of THE EXPANSE know the BackerKit Pre-Order Store is open and they can still help us reach our final Stretch Goal!
If you have any questions concerning your pre-order, please reach out to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) for the fastest response.
To na kang setóp da mesach!
Your friends at BOOM! Studios

• COVID-19

 !!!!!!!!!THE DEVIL’S TRAMPING GROUND!!!!!!!!! 

• Georgia
  • https://patch.com/georgia/atlanta/heres-how-atlantas-population-changed-2018
  • https://www.savannahnow.com/business/20180811/city-talk-savannah-population-growing-but-chatham-grows-faster
• North Carolina
  • https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/development/article230790609.html
  • https://datausa.io/profile/geo/wake-county-nc
• Kentucky
  • https://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2018/03/22/how-does-louisvilles-population-growth-stack-up.html

• Georgia
  • https://patch.com/georgia/atlanta/heres-how-atlantas-population-changed-2018
  • https://www.savannahnow.com/business/20180811/city-talk-savannah-population-growing-but-chatham-grows-faster
• North Carolina
  • https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/development/article230790609.html
  • https://datausa.io/profile/geo/wake-county-nc
• Kentucky
  • https://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2018/03/22/how-does-louisvilles-population-growth-stack-up.html

By Charles Dickens XI. Tramps. THE chance use of the word "Tramp" in myl ast paper brought that numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind's eye, that I had no sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me to take it up again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the sum- mer roads in all directions. Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back. Yonder by the high-road, glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf under he bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the highway, the tramp of the order savage, fast asleep. He lies on the broad of his back, with his face turned up to the sky, and one of his ragged arms loosely thrown across his face. His bundle (what can be the contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while to carry it about?) is thrown down beside him, and the walking woman with him sits with her legs in the ditch, and her back to the road. She wears her bonnet rakish- ly perched on the front of her head, to shade her face from the sun in walking, and she ties her skirts round her, in conventionally tight tramp fashion, with a sort of apron. You can seldom catch sight of her, rest- ing thus, without seeing her in a despondently defiant manner doing something to her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you through her fingers. She does not often go to sleep herself in the daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside her man. And his slumber- ous propensities would not seem to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries it much oftener and farther than he. When they are afoot, you will mostly find him slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily behind him with the burden. He is given to personally correcting her, too,——which phase of his character develops itself oftenest on benches outside of alehouse doors,——and she appears to become strongly attached to him for these reasons; it may usu- ally be noticed that when the poor creature has a bruised face she is the most affectionate. He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp, and has no object what- ever, in going anywhere. He will sometimes call him- self a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an imaginative flight. He generally represents himself, in a vague way, as looking out for a job of work; but he never did work, he never does, and he never, never will. It is a favourite fiction with him, however (as if he were the most industrious character on earth), that you never work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you looking at your flowers, you will overhear him growl, with a strong sense of contrast, "You are a lucky hidle devil, you are!" The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you possess, and never did anything to get it; but he is of a less audacious disposition. He will stop before your gate, and say to his female companion, with an air of constitutional humility and propitiation,—— to edify any one who may be within hearing behind a blind or bush,——"This is a sweet spot,——ain't it? A lovely spot! And I wonder if they'd give two poor footsore travellers like me and you a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib? We'd take it wery koind of 'em, wouldn't us?——very koind, upon my word, us would." He has a quick sense of a dog in the vicinity, and will extend his modestly injured propitia- tion to the dog chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate, "Ah! You are a foine breed o' dog, too, and you ain't kep for nothink! I'd take it wery koind o' your master if he'd elp a traveller and his woife, as envies no gentlefolk their good fortun, wi' a bit o' your broken wittles. He'd never know the want of it, nor more would you. Don't bark like that at poor persons as never done you no arm; the poor is down- trodden and broke enough without that; O DON'T!" He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving away, and always looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the road and down the road, before going on. Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the hard-working labourer at whose cottage door they prowl and beg have the ague never so badly, that these tramps are sure to be in good health. There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright summer day,——say, on a road with the sea- breeze making its dust lively, and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the slopes of Down. As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective, at the bot- tom of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that appears to be sitting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheer- ful and disengaged manner. As you approach nearer to it, you observe the figure to slide down from the gate, to desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to become tender of foot, to depress its head and elevate its shoulders, and to present all the characteristics of pro- found despondency. Arriving at the bottom of the hill, and coming close to the figure, you observe it to be the figure of a shabby young man. He is moving painfully forward, in the direction in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with his misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you are close upon him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of you, you discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a remarkably well-spoken young man. You know him to be well-behaved by his respectful manner of touching his hat; you know him to be well-spoken by his smooth manner of expressing himself. He says, in a flowing, confidential voice, and without punctuation, "I ask your pardon sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags though it as not always been so and by many unmerited sufferings it would be a great obligation sir to know the time. You give the well-spoken young man the time. The well-spoken young man, keeping well up with you, resumes: "I am aware sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further question on a gentleman walking for his entertainment but might I make so bold as ask the favour of the way to Dover sir and about the distance?" You inform the well-spoken young man that the way to Dover is straight on, and the distance some eighteen miles. The well-spoken young man be- comes greatly agitated. "In the condition to which I am reduced," says he, "I could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if my shoes were in a state to take me there or my feet were in a state to old out over the flinty road and were not on the bare ground of which any gentleman has the means to satisfy himself by looking sir I may take the liberty of speaking to you?" As the well-spoken young man keeps so well up with you that you can't prevent his taking the liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, with fluency: "Sir it is not begging that is my intention for I was brought up by the best of mothers and begging is not my trade I should not know sir how to follow it as a trade if such were my shameful wishes for the best of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes now reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway sir my business was the law- stationering and I was favourably known to the Solicitor- General and Attorney-General the majority of the Judges and the ole of the legal profession but through ill elth in my family and the treachery of a friend for whom I became security and he no other than my own wife's brother the brother of my own wife I was cast forth with my tender partner and three young children not to beg for I will sooner die of deprivation but to make my way to the seaport town of Dover where I have a relative in re- spect not only that will assist me but that would trust me with untold gold sir in appier times and hare this calam- ity fell upon me I made for my amusement when I little thought that I should ever need it excepting for my air this"——here the well-spoken young man put his hand into his breast——"this comb! Sir I implore you in the name of charity to purchase a tortoise-shell comb which is a genuine article at any price that your humanity may put upon it and may the blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating arts the return of a husband and a father from Dover upon the cold stone seats of London Bridge ever attend you sir may I take the liberty of speaking to you I implore you to buy this comb!" By this time, being a reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for the well-spoken young man, who will stop short, and express his disgust and his want of breath in a long expectoration, as you leave him behind. Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer day, at the corner of the next little town or vil- lage, you may find another kind of tramp, embodied in the persons of a most exemplary couple whose only im- providence appears to have been that they spent the last of their little All on soap. They are a man and woman, spotless to behold,——John Anderson, with the frost on his smock-frock instead of his "pow," at- tended by Mrs. Anderson. John is over-ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a curious, and, you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of girdle of white linen wound about his waist,——a girdle snowy as Mrs. Anderson's apron. This cleanliness was the expiring effort of the respectable couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Anderson but to get chalked upon his spade, in snow-white copy-book characters, HUNGRY! and to sit down here. Yes: one thing more remained to Mr. Anderson,——his character; Monarchs could not deprive him of his hard-earned character. Accordingly, as you come up with this spectacle of virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson rises, and with decent curtsey presents for your consideration a certificate from a Doctor of Di- vinity, the reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodgington, who informs his Christian friends, and all whom it may con- cern, that the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are persons to whom you cannot be too liberal. This be- nevolent pastor omitted no work of his hands to fit the good couple out, for with half an eye you can recognize his autograph on the spade. Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of whose stock in trade is a highly perplexed de- meanor. He is got up like a countryman, and you will often come upon the poor fellow, while he is endeavouring to decipher the inscription on a milestone,——quite a fruit- less endeavour, for he cannot read. He asks your pardon, he truly does (he is very slow of speech, this tramp, and he looks in a bewildered way all round the prospect while he talks to you); but all of us shold do as we wold be done by, and he'll take it kind if you'll put a power man in the right road fur to jine his eldest son as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this heere Orspit'l as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby's own hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man. He then pro- duces from under his dark frock (being always very slow and perplexed) a neat but worn old leathern purse, from which he takes a scrap of paper. On this scrap of paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The Grove, "Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but worthy man, to the Sussex County Hospital, near Brighton,"——a matter of some difficulty at the moment, seeing that the request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of Hertfordshire. The more you endeavor to indicate where Brighton is,—— when you have with the greatest difficulty remembered, ——the less the devoted father can be made to comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the prospect; where- by, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the faithful parent to begin by going to St. Alban's, and present him with half a crown. It does him good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him forward, since you find him drunk that same evening in the wheelwright's saw- pit under the shed where the felled trees are, opposite the sign of the Three Jolly Hedgers. But the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps is the tramp who pretends to have been a gentleman. "Educated," he writes from the village beer-shop in pale ink of a ferruginous complexion,——"educated at Trin. Coll. Cam.,——nursed in the lap of affluence,——once, in my small way, the patron of the Muses," &c., &c., &c.; surely a sympathetic mind will not withhold a trifle to help him on to the market town where he thinks of giving a Lecture to the fruges consumere nati on things in general? This shameful creature, lolling about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far from being black that they look as if they never can have been black, is more selfish and insolent than even the savage tramp. He would sponge on the poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when he had got it; he would interpose (if he could get anything for it) between the baby and the mother's breast. So much lower than the company he keeps for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges; where (to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweetbrier are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover from the taint of him in the air. The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six together, their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut from some roadside wood, are not eminently prepossess- ing, but are much less objectionable. There is a tramp- fellowship among them. They pick one another up at resting-stations, and go on in companies. They always go at a fast swing,——though they generally limp, too; and there is invariably one of the company who has much ado to keep up with the rest. They generally talk about horses, and any other means of locomotion than walking; or one of the company relates some recent ex- periences of the road,——which are always disputes and difficulties. As, for example: "So, as I'm a standing at the pump in the market, blest if there don't come up a Beadle, and he ses, 'Mustn't stand here,' he ses. 'Why not?' I ses. 'No beggars allowed in this town,' he ses. 'Who's a beggar?' I ses. 'You are,' he ses. 'Who ever see me beg? Did you?' I ses. 'Then you're a tramp,' he ses. 'I'd rather be that than a Beadle,' I ses." (The company express great approval.) "'Would you?' he ses to me. 'Yes, I would,' I ses to him. 'Well,' he ses, 'anyhow, get out of this town.' 'Why, blow your little town!' I ses, 'who wants to be in it? Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin' and stickin' itself in the the road to anywhere? Why don't you get a shovel and a barrier, and clear your town out o' peo- ple's way?'" (The company expressed the highest approval and laughing aloud, they all go down the hill.) Then there are the tramp handcraft men. Are they not all over England in this midsummer time? Where does the lark sing, the corn grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they are not among the lights and shadows, tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock- mending, knife-grinding? Surely a pleasant thing, if we were in that condition of life, to grind our way through Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. For the first six weeks or so we should see the sparks we ground off fiery bright against a background of green wheat and green leaves. A little later, and the ripe harvest would pale our sparks from red to yellow, until we got the dark newly turned land for a background again, and they were red once more. By that time we should have ground our way to the sea-cliffs and the whir of our wheel would be lost in the breaking of the waves. Our next variety in sparks would be derived from contrast with the gorgeous medley of colours in the autumn woods, and, by the time we had ground our way round to the healthy lands between Reigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous stroke of business all along, we should show like a little firework in the light frosty air, and be the next best thing to the blacksmith's forge. Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending tour. What judges we should be of rushes, and how know- ingly (with a sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, looking over at osier-beds! Among all the innumerable occupations that cannot possibly be transcended without the assistance of lookers- on, chair-mending may take a station in the first rank. When we sat down with our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began to mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us! When all the children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the general dealer, and the farmer who had been giving a small order at the little saddler's, and the groom from the great house, and the publican, and even the two skittle- players (and here note that, howsoever busy all the rest of village humankind may be, there will always be two people with leisure to play at skittles, wherever village skittles are), what encouragement would be on us to plait and weave! No one looks at us while we plait and weave these words. Clock-mending again. Except for the slight inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and the monotony of making the bell go when- ever we came to a human habitation, what a pleasant privilege to give a voice to the dumb cottage clock, and set it talking to the cottage family again! Likewise we foresee great interest in going round by the park plan- tations, under the overhanging boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants scuddling like mad across and across the checkered ground before us), and so over the park ladder, and through the wood, until we came to the Keeper's lodge. Then would the Keeper be discov- erable at his door, in a deep nest of leaves, smoking his pipe. Then, on our accosting him in the way of our trade, would he call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting "t' ould clock" in the kitchen. Then would Mrs. Keeper ask us into the lodge, and on due examination we should offer to make a good job of it for eighteen-pence; which offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling and clinking among the chubby, awe-struck little Keepers for an hour and more. So completely to the family's satisfac- tion would we achieve our work, that the Keeper would mention how that there was something wrong with the bell of the turret stable clock up at the Hall; and that, if we thought good of going up to the housekeeper on the chance of that job too, why, he would take us. Then should we go among the branching oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery known to the Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and there as we went along, until we came to the old Hall, solemn and grand. Under the Terrace Flower Garden, and round by the stables, would the Keeper take us in; and as we passed we should observe how spacious and stately the stables, and how fine the painting of the horses' names over their stalls, and how solitary all, the family being in London. Then should we find ourselves presented to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state, at needle-work in a bay window, looking out upon a mighty grim red- brick quadrangle, guarded by stone lions disrespectfully throwing somersaults over the escutcheons of the noble family. Then, our services accepted and we insinuated with a candle into the stable turret, we should find it to be a mere question of pendulum, but one that would hold us until dark. Then should we fall to work, with a general impression of Ghosts being about, and of pic- tures in-doors that of a certainty came out of their frames and "walked," if the family would only own it. Then should we work and work, until the day gradually turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned to dark. Our task at length accomplished, we should be taken into an enormous servants' hall, and there re- galed with beef and bread, and powerful ale. Then, paid freely, we should be at liberty to go, and should be told by a pointing helper to keep round over yonder by the blasted ash, and so straight through the woods, till we should see the town lights right before us. Then, feeling lonesome, should we desire, upon the whole, that the ash had not been blasted, or that the helper had had the manners not to mention it. However, we should keep on, all right, till suddenly the stable-bell would strike ten in the dole fullest way, quite chilling our blood, though we had so lately taught him how to acquit himself. Then, as we went on, should we recall old sto- ries, and dimly consider what it would be most advisable to do, in the event of a tall figure, all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up and saying, "I want you to come to a churchyard, and mend a church clock. Follow me!" Then should we make a burst to get clear of the trees, and should soon find ourselves in the open, with the town lights bright ahead of us. So should we lie that night at the ancient sign of the Crispin and the Cris- panus, and rise early next morning to be betimes on tramp again. Bricklayers often tramp in twos and threes, lying by night at their "lodges," which are scattered all over the country. Bricklaying is another of the occupations that can by no means be transacted in rural parts without the assistance of spectators,——of as many as can be con- vened. In thinly peopled spots, I have known brick- layers on the tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so sensible of the indispensability of lookers-on, that they themselves have set up in that capacity, and have been unable to subside into the acceptance of a proffered share in the job for two or three days together. Some- times the "navvy" on tramp, with an extra pair of half- boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and a can, will take a similar part in a job of excavation, and will look at it, without engaging in it, until all his money is gone. The current of my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer to want a little body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a pleasant part of the country; and I was at one time honored with the presence of as many as seven-and-twenty who were looking at six. Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in the summer-time, without storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one oasis of town or village to an- other, to sell a stock in trade apparently not worth a shil- ling when sold? Shrimps are a favourite commodity for this kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy character, coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy balls. The stock is carried on the head in a basket, and between the head and the basket are the trestles on which the stock is displayed at trading times. Fleet of foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly; with a certain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious balancing of baskets; and also with a long, Chinese sort of eye, which an overweight forehead would seem to have squeezed into that form. On the hot, dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, behold the tramping Soldier. And if you should happen never to have asked yourself whether his uni- form is suited to his work, perhaps the poor fellow's ap- pearance, as he comes distressfully towards you, with his absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his hand, and his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may suggest the personal inquiry, how you think you would like it. Much better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth is somewhat too thick for land serv- ice. But why the tramping merchant-mate should put on a black velvet waistcoat, for a chalky country, in the dog-days, is one of the great secrets of nature that will never be discovered. I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side by a wood, and having on one hand, be- tween the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild-flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with the distant river stealing stead- ily away to the ocean like a man's life. To gain the mile- stone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses would soon render illegible but for peer- ing travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may. So, all the tramps with carts or caravans——the Gypsy- tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap-Jack——find it impos- sible to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn the horse loose, when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the place! I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched the grass! What tramp children do I see here, attired in a handful of rags, making a gymna- sium of the shafts of the cart, making a feather-bed of the flints and brambles, making a toy of the hobbled old horse, who is not much more like a horse than any cheap toy would be? Here do I encounter the cart of mats and brooms and baskets,——with all thoughts of business given to the evening wind,——with the stew made and being served out,——with Cheap Jack and Dear Jill strik- ing soft music out of the plates that are rattled like war- like cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and mar- kets,——their minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the nightingales, as they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that, if I were to propose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost price. On this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper it) to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes eating meat-pie with the Giant; while, by the hedge- side, on the box of blankets which I knew contained the snakes, were set forth the cups and saucers and the tea- pot. It was an evening in August that I chanced upon this ravishing spectacle; and I noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined half concealed beneath the overhang- ing boughs, and seemed indifferent to Nature, the white hair of the gracious Lady streamed free in the breath of evening, and her pink eyes found pleasure in the land- scape. I heard only a single sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent of modest repartee. The ill-man- nered Giant——accursed be his evil race!——had interrupted the Lady in some remark; and, as I passed that enchant- ed corner of the wood, she gently reproved him, with the words, "Now, Cobby";——Cobby! so short a name! ——"ain't one fool enough to talk at a time?" Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though not so near it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at door can invade its woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no man possessed of a penny was ever known to pass in warm weather. Before its en- trance are certain pleasant trimmed lines; likewise a cool well, with so musical a bucket-handle that its fall upon the bucket-rim will make a horse prick up his ears and neigh, upon the droughty road, half a mile off. This is a house of great resort for haymaking tramps, and harvest tramps, insomuch that they sit within, drinking their mugs of beer; their relinquished scythes and reap- ing-hooks glare out of open windows, as if the whole establishment were a family war-coach of Ancient Brit- ons. Later in the season the whole country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm with hopping tramps. They come in families, men, women, and children, every fam- ily provided with a bundle of bedding, an iron pot, a number of babies, and too often with some poor sick creature quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose the smell of the fresh hop to be a remedy. Many of these hoppers are Irish, but many come from London. They crowd all the roads, and camp under all the hedges and on all the scraps of common land, and live among and upon the hops until they are all picked, and the hop-gardens, so beautiful through the summer, look as if they had been laid waste by an invading army. Then there is a vast exodus of tramps out of the coun- try; and if you ride or drive round any turn of any road, at more than a footpace, you will be bewildered to find that you have charged into the bosom of fifty families, and that there are splashing up all around you, in the ut- most prodigality of confusion, bundles of bedding, ba- bies, iron pots, and a good-humoured multitude of both sexes and all ages, equally divided between perspiration and intoxication. 

By Charles Dickens XVII. The Calais Night-mail. IT is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness,—— who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach,——who had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or any- where. Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I know where it is before- hand, I keep a lookout for it, I recognize its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I know——and I can bear——its worst behaviour. Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and discouraging hope? Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now every- where, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hope- less than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bow- sprit, and you think you are there——roll, roar, wash! Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commended to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a league or to to the right, with the packet shivering and splutter- ing and staring about for it! Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Bir- mingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends; but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when Night- Mail is starting. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches; and I ob- ject to its big outline seeming to insist upon the circum- stance, and as it were to come over me with it when I am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the War- den likewise for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough without the officious Warden's interference? As I wait on board the night packet for the South- eastern Train to come down with the Mail, Dover ap- pears to me to be illuminated for some intensely aggra- vating festivity in my personal dishonour. All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this slippery deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with deri- sion. The distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my mis- shapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third. A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion ren- dered more smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over which they had no control from drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become violently agitated,——rumble, hum, scream, roar, and establish an immense family washing- day at each paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as the doors of the post-office vans are opened; and instantly stooping figures with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles, descending, as it would seem, in ghostly procession to Davy Jones's Locker. The passengers come on board,——a few sha- dowy Frenchmen, with hat-boxes shaped like the stop- pers of gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy English- men prepared for the worst, and pretending not to ex- pect it. I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least possible delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in us; the the unwill- ing lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole ob- ject is to commit us to the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself has gone to bed before we are off! What is the moral support derived by some sea-going ameteurs from an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A fellow-creature near me——whom I know to be a fellow-creature be- cause of his umbrella; without which he might be a dark bit of cliff, pier, or bulkhead——clutches that instru- ment with a desperate grasp, that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is there any analogy, in certain consti- tutions, between keeping an umbrella up and keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown on board with a flop replies, "Stand by!" "Stand by, below." "Half a turn ahead!" "Half a turn ahead!" "Half speed!" "Half speed!" "Port!" "Port!" "Steady!" "Steady!" "Go on!" "Go on!" A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left, a floating deposition of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers,——those are the personal sensa- tions by which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms have scarcely established themselves comfort- ably, when two or three skating shadows that have been trying to walk or stand get flung together, and other two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them up. Then the South Foreland light begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes no good. It is at about this period that my destination of Calais knows no bounds. Inwardly, I resolve afresh that I never will forget that hated town. I have done so be- fore, many times; but that is past. Let me register a vow. Implacable animosity to Calais everm—— that was an awkward sea; and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a complaining roar. The wind blows stiffly from the Nor'east, the sea runs high, we ship a deal of water, the night is dark and old, and the shapeless passengers lie about in melan- choly bundles, as if they were sorted out for the laun- dress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot pre- tend that I am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general knocking about of nature; but the impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet, faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel languidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, because I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish melodies. "Rich and rare were the gems she wore," is the particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest expression. Now and then I raise my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don't mind it), and notice that I am a whirling shuttlecock between a fiery battledore of a light-house on the French coast and a fiery battledore of a light-house on the English coast; but I don't notice it particularly, ex- cept to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais. Then I go on again, "Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond,"——I am aware of another awkward shock from the sea, and an- other protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think he need be,——"Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O, her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond,"——another awkward one here, and the fellow-creature with the umbrella down and picked up——"Her spa-arkling ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the paddlebox very selfishly audible, bump, roar, wash, white wand." As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me become something else than what it is. The stokers open the furnace door below to feed the firs, and I am going again on the box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the forever-extinguished coach lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and public-boxes is their gleam on cottages and hay-stacks, and the monotonous noise of he engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the in- termittent funnel roar of protest at every violent roll becomes the regular blast of a high-pressure engine, and I recognize the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascend the Mississippi when the American Civil war was not, and only when its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so, become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris, where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the specialty of these waves as they come rushing on, I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire; but they are changed with something about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first went a seafaring and was near foun- dering (what a terrific sound that word head for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind. Still, through all this, I must ask her (who was she, I wonder!) for the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to stray, So lone and lovely through this bleak way, and are Erin's sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they love fellow- creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight, they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more; For though they love Stewards with a bull's eye bright, they'll trouble you for your ticket, sir,—— rough passage to-night! I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words from the steward, than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since been towed into so many cartoons had all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining. Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I will stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent stranger, pausing in a profound revery over the rim of a basin, asks me what kind of place Calais is. I tell him (Heaven forgive me!) a very agreeable place indeed,——rather hilly than otherwise. So strangely goes the time, and on the whole, so quickly,——though still I seem to have been on board a week,——that I am bumped, rolled, gurgled, washed, and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When blest forever is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy timbers,——covered with green hair, as if it were the mermaids' favourite combing-place,—— where one crawls to the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp; but we go steaming up the harbour to the Railway Station Quay. And, as we go, the sea washes in and out among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof we are proud); and the lamps shake in the wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come strug- gling against troubled water. And now, in the sudden relief and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of the dentist's hands. And now we all know for the first time how wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my heart of hearts! "Hôtel Dessin!" (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of that best of inns.) "Hôtel Meurice!" "Hôtel de France!"" "Hôtel de Calais!" "The Royal Hôtel, sir, Angaishe ouse!" "You going to Parry, sir?" "Your baggage, registair froo, sir?" Bless ye, my Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyes mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never see you get! Bless ye my Custom-House officers in green and gray; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to give my change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure of chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Dounaier, except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflow- ing of a breast devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the gangway, by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the names! May he be forever changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat surmounting his round, smiling, patient face! Let us embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours à tout amais for the whole of ever. Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of "an ancient and fish-like smell" about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais presented at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flit- ting persons with a monomania for changing money,—— though I never shall be able to understand, in my pres- ent state of existence, how they live by it; but I sup- pose I should if I understood the currency question,—— Calais en gros, and en détail, forgive one who has deeply wronged you. I was not fully aware of it on the other side, but I meant Dover. Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the travel- lers. Ascend, then, gentlemen the travellers, for Haze- broucke, Lille, Doual, Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative of the uncommercial interest, ascend with the rest. The train is light to- night, and I share my compartment with but two fellow- travellers; one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable thing that they don't keep "London time" on a French railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a young priest with a very small bird in a very small cage, who feeds the bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the network above his head, where he ad- vances twittering to his front wires, and seems to ad- dress me in an electioneering manner. The compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some person of distinction, as if he was shut up, like a stately species of rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have it all to ourselves. A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with the added storm of the train- progress through it, that when the Guard comes clam- bering round to mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a really horrible performance in an express train, though he holds on to the open window by his elbows in the most deliberate manner), he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him fast by the collar and feel it next to manslaughter to let him go. Still, when he is gone, the small, small bird remains at his front wires feebly twittering to me,——twittering and twittering, un- til, leaning back in my place, and looking at him in drowsy fascination, I find that he seems to jog my memory as we rush along. Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain, in their idle, thriftless way, through all this range of swamp and dike, as through many other odd places; and about here, as you very well know, are the queer old stone farm-houses, approached by drawbridges, and the windmills that you get at by boats. Here are the lands where the women hoe and dig, paddling canoewise from field to field; and here are the cabarets and other peasant-houses, where the stone dove-cotes in the littered yards are as strong as warders' towers in old castles. Here are the long monotonous miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built barges garishly painted, and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead, sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleas- ant sight to see. Scattered through this country are mighty works of VAUBAN, whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard of once upon a time, and many a blue-eyes Bebelle. Through these flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long grotesque files of young novices in enormous shovel- hats, whom you remember blackening the ground check- ered by the avenues of leafy trees. And now that Haze- broucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening when your dusty feet, strolling up from the station, tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants were circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobby-horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in the Fair was a Religious Richardson's——literally, on its own annonce- ment in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX. In which improving Temple the dramatic representation was of "all the interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the Tomb"; the principle female char- acter, without any reservation or exception, being at the moment of your arrival engaged in trimming the eternal Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next principal female character took the money, and the Young Saint John disported himself upside down on the platform. Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and has put his head under the wing. Therefore, in my different way, I follow the good exam- ple. 

By Charles Dickens XXI. The City of the Absent. WHEN I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent Garden into the City of London, after busi- ness hours there, on a Saturday, or——better yet——on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners. It is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should be made in summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt are at their idlest and dullest. A gentle fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my favourite retreats to decided ad- vantage. Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place. Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London,—— churchyards sometimes so entirely detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever look down into them from their smoky win- dows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, and grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a dry-salter's daughter and several common coun- cilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its de- parted leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place. The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand so awry that they can hardly be proof against any stress or weather. Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away, incrusted with toadstools. Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain from the en- compassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it lists upon the weedy earth. Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as I look in at the rails and medi- tate, I hear it working under an unknown hand with a creaking protest, as though the departed in the church- yard urged, "Let us lie here in peace; don't suck us up and drink us!" One of my best beloved churchyards I call the church- yard of Saint Ghastly Grim; touching what men in gen- eral call it, I have no information. It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is a small, small churchyard, with a ferocious, strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail. The gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes atop of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence there is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having once contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunder- storm at midnight. "Why not?" I said, in self-excuse. "I have been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?" I repaired to the Saint in a hackney-cab, and found the skulls most effective, hav- ing the air of a public execution, and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes. Having no other person to whom to impart my satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver. So far from being responsive, he surveyed me——he was natu- rally a bottle-nosed, red-faced man——with a blanched countenance. And as he drove me back, he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the little front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare originally from a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim, who might have flitted home again with- out paying. Sometimes the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a churchyard such as this; and when the Livery dine, you may hear them (if you are looking in through the iron rails, which you never are when I am) toasting their own Worshipful prosperity. Sometimes a wholesale house of business, requiring much room for stowage, will occupy one or two or even all three sides of the enclosing space, and the backs of bales of goods will lumber up the windows as if they were holding some crowded trade-meeting of themselves within. Some- times the commanding windows are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves below,——not so much, for they tell of what once upon a time was life un- doubtedly. Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard that I saw last summer on a Volunteering Saturday evening towards eight of the clock, when with astonishment I beheld an old, old man and an old, old woman in it, making hay,——yes, of all occupations in the world, making hay! It was a very confined patch of churchyard lying between Gracechurch Street and the Tower, capable of yielding say an apronful of hay. By what means the old, old man and woman had got into it, with an almost toothless hay-making rake, I could not fathom. No open window was within view; no window at all was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have enabled their old legs to descend from it; the rusty churchyard gate was locked, the mouldy church was locked. Gravely among the graves they made hay all alone by themselves. They looked like Time and his wife. There was but the one rake between them, and they both had hold of it in a pastorally loving manner, and there was hay on the old woman's black bonnet, as if the old man had recently been playful. The old man was quite an obsolete old man, in knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings, and the old woman wore mittens like unto his stockings in texture and in colour. They took no heed of me as I looked on unable to account for them. The old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man much too meek for a beadle. On an old tomb- stone in the foreground between me and them were two cherubim; but for those celestial embellishments being represented as having no possible use for knee-breeches, stockings or mittens, I should have compared them with the haymakers, and sought a likeness. I coughed and awoke the echoes; but the haymakers never looked at me. They used to rake with a measured action, drawing the scant crop towards them; and so I was fain to leave them under three yards and a half of dark- ening sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by themselves. Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted a Medium. In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimen- sions, I saw, that self-same summer, two comfortable charity children. They were making love,——tremendous proof of the vigour of that immortal article, for they were in the graceful uniform under which English Charity delights to hide herself,——and they were over- grown, and their legs (his legs, at least; for I am mod- estly incompetent to speak of hers) were as much in the wrong as mere passive weakness of charity can render legs. O, it was a leaden churchyard, but no doubt a golden ground to those young persons! I first saw them on a Saturday evening, and, perceiving from their occupa- tion that Saturday evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening sennight, and renewed the contem- plation of them. They came there to shake the bits of matting which were spread in the church aisles; and they afterwards rolled them up, he rolling his end, and she rolling hers, until they met, and, over the two once divided now united roles,——sweet emblem!——gave and received a chaste salute. It was so freshening to find one of my faded churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I returned a second time, and a third, and ultimately this befell: They had left the church door open, in their dusting and arranging. Walking in to look at the church, I became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her in the reading desk, of him looking down, of her looking up, exchanging tender discourse. Immediately both dived, and became as it were non-existent on this sphere. With an assumption of innocence I turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an obese form stood in the portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or, in default of Joseph, Celia. Taking that monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence of showing him whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence of Joseph and Celia, who presently came towards us in the churchyard, bending under dusty matting, a picture of thriving and uncon- scious industry. It would be superfluous to hint that I have ever since deemed this the proudest passage in my life. But such circumstances, or any token of vitality, are rare indeed in my City churchyards. A few sparrows occasion- ally try to raise a lively chirrup in their solitary tree,—— perhaps as taking a different view of worms from that entertained by humanity,——but they are flat and hoarse of voice, like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman, and all the rest of the Church-works when they are wound up for Sunday. Caged larks, thrushes or black- birds, hanging in neighbouring courts, pour forth their strains passionately, as scenting the tree, trying to break out, and see leaves again before they die; but their song is Willow, Willow——of a churchyard cast. So little light lives inside the churches of my churchyards, when the two are coexistent, that it is often only by an accident, and after long acquaintance, that I discover their having stained glass in some odd window. The westering sun slants into the churchyard by some unwonted entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old tombstone, and a win- dow that I thought was only dirty is for the moment all bejewelled. Then the light passes, and the colours die. Though even then, if there can be room enough for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of the Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming to look out with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the distant shore of country. Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the hour, have a tendency to sit on bits of coping-stone in these churchyards, leaning with both hand on their sticks, and asthmatically gasping. The more depressed class of beggars, too, bring hither broken meats, and munch. I am on nodding terms with a meditative turn- cock who lingers in one of them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather as he looks out of temper when he gives the fireplug a disparaging wrench with that large tuning-fork of his, which would wear out the shoulder of his coat but for a precautionary piece of in- laid leather. Fire-ladders, which I am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and the keys of which were lost in ancient times, moulder away in the larger church- yards, under eaves like wooden eyebrows; and so re- moved are those corners from the haunts of men and boys that once on a fifth of November I found a "Guy" trusted to take care of himself there, while his proprie- tors had gone to dinner. Of the expression of his face I cannot report, because it was turned to the wall; but his shrugged shoulders and his ten extended fingers ap- peared to denote that he had moralized in his little straw chair on the mystery of mortality until he gave it up as a bad job. You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are shades of transition in the neighbourhood. An antiquated news shop, or barber's shop, apparently bereft of customers in the early days of George the Third, would warn me to look out for one, if any discoveries in this respect were left for me to make. A very quiet court, in combination with an unaccountable dyer's and scourer's, would prepare me for a churchyard. An ex- ceedingly retiring public-house, with a bagtelle-board shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour shaped like an omnibus, and with a shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, would apprise me that I stood near consecrated ground. A "Dairy," exhibiting in its modest window one very little milk-can and three eggs, would suggest to me the certainty of finding the poultry hard by, pecking at my forefathers. I first inferred the vicinity of Saint Ghastly Grim from a certain air of extra repose and gloom per- vading a vast stack of warehouses. From the hush of these places it is congenial to pass into the hushed resorts of business. Down the lanes I like to see the carts and wagons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard Street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shoveling gold. When I draw money, it never seems so much money as when it is shovelled at me out of a bright copper shovel. I like to say, "In gold," and to see seven pounds musically pouring out of the shovel like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to me,——I italicize appearing,——"If you want more of yellow earth, we keep it in barrows at your service." To think of the banker's clerk with his left finger turning the crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has taken in a fat roll out of a drawer, is again to hear the rust- ling of that delicious south-cash wind. "How will you have it?" I once heard this unusual question asked at a Bank Counter of an elderly female habited in mourning and steeped in simplicity, who answered, open-eyed, crook-fingered, laughing with expectation, "Any- how!" Calling these things to mind as I stroll among the Banks, I wonder whether the other solitary man I pass has designs upon the Banks. For the interest and mystery of the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that his confederate may be at this moment taking im- pressions of the keys of the iron closets in wax, and that a delightful robbery may be in course of transaction. About College Hill, Mark Lane, and so on towards the Tower, and Dockyard, the deserted wine-merchants' cellars are fine subjects for consideration; but the de- serted money-cellars of the Bankers, and their plate-cel- lars, and their jewel-cellars,——what subterranean re- gions of the Wonderful amp are these! And again: possibly some shoeless boy in rags passed through this street yesterday, for whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the fulness of time, and to be surpassingly rich. Such reverses have been, since the days of Whittington, and were, long before. I want to know if the boy has any foreglittering of that glittering fortune now, when he threads these stones, hungry. Much as I also want to know whether the next man to be hanged at Newgate yonder had any suspicion upon him that he was moving steadily towards that fate when he talked so much about the last man who paid the same great debt at the same small Debtor's Door. Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade these scenes? The locomotive banker's clerk who carries a black portfolio chained to him by a chain of steel,——where is he? Does he go to bed with his chain on,——to church with his chain on,——or does he lay it by? And if he lays it by, what becomes of his portfolio when he is unchained for a holiday? The waste-paper baskets of these closed counting-houses would let me into many hints of business matters if I had the explora- tion of them: and what secrets of the heart should I discover on the "pads" of the young clerks,——the sheets of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed between their writing and their desks? Pads are taken into con- fidence on the tenderest occasions; and oftentimes when I have made a business visit, and have sent in my name from the outer-office, have I had it forced on my discur- sive notice, that the officiating young gentleman has over and over again inscribed AMELIA, in ink of various dates, on corners of his pad. Indeed, the pad may be regarded as the legitimate modern successor of the old forest-tree, whereon these young knights (having no at- tainable forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their mistresses. After all it is a more satisfactory process than carving, and can be oftener repeated. So these courts in their Sunday rest are courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they look. And here is Garraway's, bolted and shuttered hard and fast! It is possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in a hay-field; it is pos- sible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a clerk at church, without him; but imagination is unable to pur- sue the men who wait at Garraway's all the week for the men who never come. When they are forcibly put out of Garraway's on Saturday night,——which they must be, for they never would go out of their own accord,——where do they vanish until Monday morning? On the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected to find them hovering about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway's through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavouring to turn the lock of the door with false keys, picks, and screw-drivers. But the wonder is that they go clean away! And, now I think of it, the wonder is that every working-day pervader of these scenes goes clean away. The man who sells the dogs' collars and the little toy coal-scuttles feels under as great an obligation to go afar off as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith. There is an old monastery- crypt under Garraway's (I have been in it among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway's, taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in its public room all their lives, gives them cool house-room down there over Sundays; but the catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the rest of the missing. The characteristic of London City greatly helps its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being the Last Man. In my solitude, the ticket-porters being all gone with the rest, I venture to breathe to the quiet bricks and stones my confidential wonderment why a ticket-porter, who never does any work with his hands, is bound to wear a white apron; and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary, who never does any work with his hands either, is equally bound to wear a black one. 

By Charles Dickens XXII. An Old Stage-Coach Horse. BEFORE the waitress had shut the door, I had forgot- ten how many stage-coaches she said used to change horses in the town every day. But it was of little mo- ment; any high number would do as well as another. It had been a great stage coaching town in the great stage-coaching times, and the ruthless railways had killed and buried it. The sign of the house was the Dolphin's Head. Why only head, I don't know; for the Dolphin's effigy at full length, and upside down,——as a Dolphin is always bound to be artistically treated, though I suppose he is some- times right side upward in his natural condition,——graced the sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside the bow-window of my room, and was a shabby work. No visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches, but he showed no bright colours. He had once served another master; there was a newer streak of paint below him, displaying with inconsistent freshness the legend, BY J. MELLOWS. My door opened again, and J. Mellows's representative came back. I had asked her what I could have for din- ner, and she returned with the counter-question, what would I like? As the Dolphin stood possessed of nothing that I do like, I was fain to yield to the sugges- tion of a duck, which I don't like. J. Mellows's repre- sentative was a mournful young woman, with one eye susceptible of guidance, and one uncontrollable eye; which latter, seeming to wander in quest of stage- coaches, deepened the melancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped. The young woman had but shut the door on retiring again, when I bethought me of adding to my order the words, "with nice vegetables." Looking out at the door to give them emphatic utterance, I found her al- ready in a state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gal- lery, picking her teeth with a pin. At the Railway Station, seven miles off, I had been the subject of wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come here. And when I gave the direction, "To the Dolphin's Head," I had observed an ominous stare on the countenance of the strong young man in velveteen who was the platform servant of the Company. He had also called to my driver at parting, "All ri-ight! Don't hang yourself when you get there, Geo-orge!" in a sar- castic tone, for which I had entertained some transitory thoughts of reporting him to the General Manager. I had no business in the town,——I never have any busi- ness in any town,——but I had been caught by the fancy that I would come and look at it in its degeneracy. My purpose was fitly inaugurated by the Dolphin's Head, which everywhere expressed past coachfulness and present coachfulness. Coloured prints of coaches start- ing, arriving, changing horses, coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the snow, coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches on the King's birthday, coaches in all circumstances compatible with their triumph and victory, but never in the act of breaking down or over- turning, pervaded the house. Of these works of art, some, framed and not glazed, had holes in them; the varnish of others had become so brown and cracked that they looked like overdone pie-crust; the designs of oth- ers were almost obliterated by the flies of many summers. Broken glasses, damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and consignment of incurable cripples to places of refuge in dark corners, attested the desolation of the rest. The old room on the ground floor, where the passengers of the Highflyer used to dine, had nothing in it but a wretched show of twigs and flower-pots in the broad window, to hide the nakedness of the land, and a cor- ner little Mellows's perambulator, with even its parasol- head turned despondently to the wall. The other room, where post-horse company used to wait while relays were getting ready down the yard, still held its ground, but was as airless as I conceived a hearse to be; insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging high against the partition (with spots on him like port wine, though it is mysterious how port wine ever got squirted up there), had good reason for perking his nose and sniffling. The stopperless cruets on the spindleshanked sideboard were in a miserably dejected state, the anchovy sauce having turned blue some years ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it like a small model of a wooden leg) having turned solid. The old fraudulent candles, which were always being paid for and never used, were burnt out at last; but their tall stilts of candlesticks still lingered, and still outraged the human intellect by pretending to be silver. The mouldy old unreformed Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned up in the breast of his coat, and his back characteristically turned on bales of petitions from his constituents, was there too; and the poker, which never had been among the fire-irons, lest post-horse company should overstir the fire, was not there, as of old. Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin's Head, I found it sorely shrunken. When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled off half the bar, which was now a tobacco-shop with its entrance in the yard,—— the once glorious yard where the postboys, whip in hand and always buttoning their waistcoats at the last mo- ment, used to come running forth to mount and away. A "Scientific Shoeing-Smith and Veterinary Surgeon" had further encroached upon the yard; and a grimly sa- tirical Jobber, who announced himself as having to Let "A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart," had estab- lished his business, himself, and his family in a part of the extensive stables. Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin's Head, and now comprised a chapel, a wheel-wright's, and a Young Men's Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft); the whole forming a black lane. No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty, and stuck at N——Nil; while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to their ancestral traditions and the place had col- lected in a row on the roof-ridge of the only outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried to push the outside pigeon off. This I accepted as emblematic of the struggle for post and place in rail- way times. Sauntering forth from the town, by way of the covered and pillared entrance to the Dolphin's Yard, one redo- lent of soap and stable litter, now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street. It was a hot day, and the little sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn down, and the more enterprising tradesmen had caused their 'Pren- tices to trickle water on the pavement appertaining to their frontage. It looked as if they had been shedding tears for the stage-coaches, and drying their ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs. Such weakness would have been excusable; for business was——as one dejected pork-man, who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the com- pliment by keeping him, informed me——"bitter bad." Most of the harness-makers and corn-dealers were gone the way of the coaches; but it was a pleasant recogni- tion of the eternal procession of Children down that old original steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow, that those tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors of sweetmeats and cheap toys. The opposition house to the Dolphin, once famous as the New White Hart, had long collapsed. In a fit of abject depression, it had cast whitewash on its windows, and boarded up its front door, and reduced itself to a side entrance; but even that had proved a world too wide for the Literary Insti- tution which had been its last phase; for the Institu- tion had collapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its inscription on the White Hart's front, all had fallen off but these:—— L Y INS T ——suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to the neighbouring market-place, it seemed to have wholly re- linquished marketing to the dealer in crockery, whose pots and pans straggled half across it, and to the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms on the shafts of his cart, superciliously gazing around, his velveteen waistcoat evidently harbouring grave doubts whether it was worth his while to stay a night in such a place. The church-bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they by no means improved the case; for they said in a petulant way, and speaking with some difficulty in their irritation, "WHAT'S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!" Nor would they (I found on listening) ever vary their em- phasis, save in respect of growing more sharp and vexed, but invariably went on," WHAT'S-be-come-of-THE-coach- ES!"——always beginning the inquiry with an unpolite abruptness. Perhaps from their elevation they saw the railway, and it aggravated them. Coming upon a coachmaker's workshop, I began to look about me with a revived spirit, thinking that per- chance I might behold there some remains of the old times of the town's greatness. There was only one man at work,——a dry man, grizzled, and far advanced in years, but tall and upright, who, becoming aware of me looking on, straightened his back, pushed up his spectacles against his brown paper cap, and appeared in- clined to defy me. To whom I pacifically said:—— "Good day, sir!" "What?" said he. "Good day, sir." He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with me.——"Was you looking for anything?" he then asked, in a pointed manner. "I was wondering whether there happened to be any fragment of an old stage-coach here." "Is that all?" "That's all." "No, there ain't." "It was now my turn to say, "Oh!" and I said it. Not another word did the dry and grizzled man say, but bent to his work again. In the coach-making days, the coach-painters had tried their brushes on a post beside him; and quite a Calendar of departed glories was to be read upon it, in blue and yellow and red and green, some inches thick. Presently he looked up again. "You seem to have a deal of time on your hands," was his querulous remark. I admitted the fact. "I think it's a pity you was not brought up to some- thing," said he. I said I thought so too. Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his plane (for it was a plane he was at work with), and pushed up his spectacles again, and came to the door. "Would a po-shay do for you?" he asked. "I am not sure that I understand what you mean." "Would a po-shay," said the coachmaker, standing close before me, and folding his arms in the manner of a cross-examining counsel,——"would po-shay meet the views you have expressed? Yes, or no?" "Yes." "Then you keep straight along down there till you see one. You'll see one if you go fur enough." With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direc- tion I was to take, and went in and resumed his work against a background of leaves and grapes. For, al- though he was a soured man and a discontented, his workshop was that agreeable mixture of town and coun- try, street and garden, which is often to be seen in a small English town. I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beershop with the sign of The First and Last, and was out of the town on the old London road. I came to the Turnpike, and I found it, in its silent way, eloquent re- specting the change that had fallen on the road. The Turnpike-keeper, unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler. Not only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window of espial through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to behold the grand London coaches coming on at a gal- lop, exhibited for sale little barber's poles of sweet stuff in a sticky lantern. The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus expressed itself. "How goes turnpike business, master?" said I to him, as he sat in his little porch, repairing a shoe. "It don't go at all, master," said he to me. "It's stopped." "That's bad," said I. "Bad?" he repeated. And he pointed to one of his sunburnt, dusty children, who was climbing the turn- pike-gate, and said, extending his open right hand in remonstrance with Universal Nature. "Five on 'em!" "But how to improve Turnpike business?" said I. "There's a way, master, " said he, with the air of one who had thought deeply on the subject. "I should like to know it." "Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll on walkers. Lay another toll on everything as don't come through; lay a toll on them as stops at home." "Would the last remedy be fair?" "Fair? Them as stops at home could come through if they liked,——couldn't they?" "Say they could." "Toll 'em. If they don't come through, it's their look- out. Anyways,——toll 'em!" Finding it as impossible to argue with this finan- cial genius as if he had been Chancellor of the Ex- chequer, and consequently the right man in the right place, I passed on meekly. My mind now began to misgive me that the disap- pointed coachmaker had sent me on a wild goose-errand, and that there was no post-chaise in those parts. But coming within view of a certain allotment-gardens by the roadside, I retracted the suspicion, and confessed that I had done him an injustice. For there I saw, surely, the poorest superannuated post-chaise left on earth. It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and plumped down on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of vegetables. It was a post-chaise not even set straight upon the ground, but tilted over, as if it had been a long time in those decayed circumstances, and against which scarlet beans were trained. It was a post-chaise patched and mended with old tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that looked like them, and boarded up as to the windows, but having a KNOCKER on the off- side door. Whether it was a post-chaise used as a tool house, summer-house, or dwelling-house, I could not dis- cover, for there was nobody at home at the post-chaise when I knocked; but it was certainly used for some- thing, and locked up. In the wonder of this discovery, I walked round and round the post-chaise many times, and sat down by the post-chaise, waiting for further elucidation. None came. At last I made my way back to the old London road by the farther end of the allot- ment-gardens, and consequently at a point beyond that from which I had diverged. I had to scramble through a hedge and down a steep bank, and I nearly came down atop of a little square man who sat breaking stones by the roadside. He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me myste- riously through his dark goggles of wire:—— "Are you aware, sir, that you've been trespassing?" "I turned out of the way," said I, in explanation, "to look at that odd post-chaise. Do you happen to know anything about it?" "I know it was many a year upon the road," said he. "So I suppose. Do you know to whom it belongs?" The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of stones, as if her were considering whether he should answer the question or not. Then raising his barred eyes to my features as before, he said,—— "To me." Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a sufficiently awkward, "Indeed! Dear me!" Presently I added, "Do you——" I was going to say "live there," but it seemed so absurd a question that I substituted, "live near here?" The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we began to converse, then did as follows: he raised himself by poising his figure on his hammer, and took his coat, on which he had been seated, over his arm. He then backed to an easier part of the bank than that by which I had come down, keeping his dark goggles silently upon me all the time, and the shoul- dered his hammer, suddenly turned, ascended, and was gone. His face was so small, and his goggles were so large, that he left me wholly uninformed as to his countenance; but he left me a profound impression that the curved legs I had seen from behind as he vanished were the legs of an old post-boy. It was not until then that I noticed he had been working by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like a tombstone erected over the grave of the London road. My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to pursue the goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the Dolphin's Head. In the gateway I found J. Mellows, looking at nothing, apparently experiencing that it failed to raise his spirits. "I don't care for the town," said J. Mellows, when I complimented him on the sanitary advantages it may or may not possess; "I wish I had never seen the town!" "You don't belong to it, Mr. Mellows?" "Belong to it!" repeated Mellows. "If I didn't be- long to a better style of town than this, I'd take and drown myself in a pail." It then occurred to me that Mellows, having so little to do, was habitually thrown back on his internal resources,——by which I mean the Dolphin's cellar. "What we want," said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and making as if he emptied it of the last load of Dis- gust that had exuded from his brain before he put it on again for another load——"what we want is a branch. The Petition for the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room. Would you put your name to it? Every little helps." I found the document in question stretched flat on the coffee-room table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen, and I gave it the additional weight of my un- commercial signature. To the best of my belief, I bound myself to the modest statement that universal traffic, happiness, prosperity, and civilization, together with un- bounded national triumph in competition with the for- eigner, would infallibly flow from the Branch. Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows if he could grace my dinner with a pint of good wine. Mr. Mellows thus replied:—— "If I couldn't give you a pint of good wine, I'd——there! ——I'd take and drown myself in a pail. But I was de- ceived when I bought this business, and the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven't yet tasted my way quite through it with a view to sorting it. Therefore, if you order one kind and get another, change till it comes right. For what," said Mellows, unloading his hat as before,—— "what would you or any gentleman do, if you ordered one kind of wine and was required to drink another? Why, you'd (and naturally and properly, having the feel- ings of a gentleman),——you'd take and drown yourself in a pail!"