But here he was interrupted by Mrs. Gamp, | who, divested of her bonnet and shawl, came sidling and bridling into the room; and, with some sharpness, demanded a conference outside the door with Mr. Pecksniffl',

"You may say whatever you wish to say here, Mrs. Gamp," said that gentleman, shaking his head with a melancholy expression "It is not much as I have to say, when people is a mourning for the dead and gone," said Mrs. Gamp; "but what I have to say is to the pint and purpose, and no offence intended, must be so considered. I have been at a many places in my time, gentlemen, and I hope I knows what my duties is, and how the same should be performed: in course, if I did not, it would be very strange, and very wrong in sich a gentleman as Mr. Mould, which has undertook the highest families in this land, and given every satisfaction, so to recommend me as he does. I have seen a deal of trouble my own self," said Mrs. Gamp, laying greater and greater stress upon her words, and I can feel for them as has their feelings tried: but I am not a Rooshan or a Prooshan, and consequently cannot suffer Spies to be set over me.'

Before it was possible that an answer could be returned, Mrs. Gamp, now growing redder in the face, went on to say:

"It is not a easy matter, gentlemen, to live when you are left a widder woman; particular when your feelings works upon you to that extent that you often find yourself a going out on terms which is a certain loss, and .never

can repay. But, in whatever way you earns your bread, you may have rules and regulations of your own, which cannot be broke through. Some people," said Mrs. Gamp, again entrenching herself behind her strong point, as if it were not assailable by human ingenuity," may be Rooshans, and some may be Prooshans; they are born so, and will please themselves. Them which is of other naturs thinks different."

"If I understand this good lady," said Mr. Pecksniff, turning to Jonas, Mr. Chuffey is troublesome to her. Shall I fetch him down?" "Do," said Jonas. "I was going to tell you he was up there, when she came in. I'd go myself and bring him down, only-only I'd rather you went, if you don't mind it."

Mr. Pecksniff promptly departed, followed by Mrs. Gamp, who, seeing that he took a bottle and glass from the cupboard, and carried it in his hand, was much softened,

"I am sure," she said, "that if it was n't for his own happiness, I should no more mind his being there, poor dear, than if he was a fly. But them as is n't used to these things, thinks so much of 'em afterwards, that it's a kindness to 'em not to let 'em have their wish. And even," said Mrs. Gamp, probably in reference to some flowers of speech she had already strewn on Mr. Chuffey, "even if one calls 'em names, it's only done to rouse 'em."

Whatever epithets she had bestowed upon the old clerk, they had not roused him. He sat beside the bed, in the chair he had occupied all the previous night, with his hands

VOL. I.

"I loved him," cried the old man, weeping, "He was good to me. We learnt Tare and Tret together, at school. I took him down once, six boys, in the arithmetic class. God forgive me! Had I the heart to take him down!" Come, Mr. Chuffey," said Pecksniff, “come with me. Summon up your fortitude, Mr. Chuffey."

"Yes, I will," returned the old clerk. "Yes. I'll sum up my forty-How many time's forty -Oh, Chuzzlewit and Son-Your own son, Mr. Chuzzlewit; your own son, Sir!"

He yielded to the hand that guided him, as he lapsed into this familiar expression, and submitted to be led away. Mrs. Gamp, with the bottle on one knee, and the glass on the other, sat upon a stool, shaking her head for a long time," until, in a moment of abstraction, she poured out a dram of spirits, and raised it to her lips. It was succeeded by a second, and by a third, and then her eyes - either in the sadness of her reflections upon life and death, or in her admiration of the liquor-were so turned up as to be quite invisible. But she shook her head still.

Poor Chuffey was conducted to his accustomed corner, and there he remained, silent and quiet, save at long intervals, when he would rise, and walk about the room, and wring his hands, or raise some strange and sudden cry, For a whole week they all three sat about the hearth and never stirred abroad. Mr. Pecksniff would have walked out in the evening time, but Jonas was so averse to his being absent for a minute, that he abandoned the idea, and so, from morning until night, they brooded together in the dark room, without relief or occupation.

The weight of that which was stretched out stiff and stark, in the awful chamber above stairs, so crushed and bore down Jonas, that he bent beneath the load. During the whole long seven days and nights, he was always oppressed and haunted by a dreadful sense of its presence in the house. Did the door move, he looked towards it with a livid face and starting eye, as if he fully believed that ghostly fingers clutched the handle. Did the fire flicker in a draught of air, he glanced over his shoulder,

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as almost dreading to behold some shrouded figure fanning and flapping at it with its fearful dress. The lightest noise disturbed him; and once, in the night, at the sound of a footstep over-head, he cried out that the dead man was walking-tramp, tramp, tramp-about his coffin.

He lay at night upon a mattress on the floor of the sitting-room; his own chamber having been assigned to Mrs. Gamp; and Mr. Pecksniff was similarly accommodated. The howling of a dog before the house, filled him with a terror he could not disguise. He avoided the reflection in the opposite windows of the light that burned above, as though it had been an angry eye. He often, in every night, rose up from his fitful sleep, and looked and longed for dawn; all directions and arrangements, even to the ordering of their daily meals, he abandoned to Mr. Pecksniff. That excellent gentleman, deeming that the mourner wanted comfort, and that high-feeding was likely to do him infinite service, availed himself of these opportunities to such good purpose that they kept quite a dainty table during this melancholy season; with sweetbreads, stewed kidneys, oysters, and other such light viands for supper every night; over which, and sundry jorums of hot punch, Mr. Pecksniff delivered such moral reflections and spiritual consolation as might have converted a Heathen-especially if he had had but an imperfect acquaintance with the English tongue.

Nor did Mr. Pecksniff alone indulge in the creature comforts during this sad time. Mrs. Gamp proved to be very choice in her eating, and repudiated hashed mutton with scorn. In her drinking too, she was very punctual and particular, requiring a pint of mild porter at lunch, a pint at dinner, half a pint as a species of stay or holdfast between dinner and tea, and a pint of the celebrated staggering ale, or Real Old Brighton Tipper, at supper; besides the bottle on the chimney-piece, and such casual invitations to refresh herself with wine as the good-breeding of her employers might prompt them to offer. In like manner, Mr. Mould's men found it necessary to drown their grief, like a young kitten in the morning of its existence; for which reason they generally fuddled themselves before they began to do anything, lest it should make head and get the better of them. In short, the whole of that strange week was a round of dismal joviality and grim enjoyment; and every one, except poor Chuffey, who came within the shadow of Anthony Chuzzlewit's grave, feasted like a Ghoule.

said, "everything that money could do, was done."

"And what can do more, Mrs. Gamp?" exclaimed the undertaker, as he emptied his glass, and smacked his lips.

"Nothing in the world, sir."

"Nothing in the world,” repeated Mr. Mould. "You are right, Mrs. Gamp. Why do people spend more money"-here he filled his glass again--"upon a death, Mrs. Gamp, than upon a birth? Come, that's in your way; you ought to know. How do you account for that now?" "Perhaps it is because an undertaker's charges comes dearer than a nurse's charges, sir," said Mrs. Gamp, tittering, and smoothing down her new black dress with her hands.

Ha, ha!" laughed Mould. "You have been breakfasting at somebody's expense this morning, Mrs. Gamp." But seeing, by the aid of a little shaving-glass which hung opposite, that he looked merry, he composed his features and became sorrowful.

"Many's the time that I've not breakfasted at my own expense along of your kind recommending, sir; and many's the time I hope to do the same in time to come," said Mrs. Gamp, with an apologetic curtsey.

"So be it." replied Mr. Mould, "please Providence. No, Mrs. Gamp; I'll tell you why it is. It's because the laying out of money with a well-conducted establishment, where the thing is performed upon the very best scale, binds the broken heart, and sheds balm upon the wounded spirit. Hearts want binding, and spirits want balming when people die: not | when people are born. Look at this gentleman to-day; look at him."

"An open-handed gentleman!" cried Mrs. Gamp, with enthusiasm.

"No, no," said the undertaker; "not an openhanded gentleman in general, by any means. There you mistake him: but an afflicted gentleman, an affectionate gentleman, who knows what it is in the power of money to do, in giving him relief, and in testifying his love and veneration for the departed. It can give him." said Mr. Mould, waving his watch-chain slowly round and round, so that he described one circle after every item; "it can give him four horses to each vehicle; it can give him velvet trappings; it can give him drivers in cloth cloaks and top-boots; it can give him the plumage of the ostrich, dyed black; it can give him any number of walking attendants, drest in the first style of funeral fashion, and carrying batons tipped with brass; it can give him a handsome tomb; it can give him a place in Westminster Abbey itself, if he choose to invest it in such a purchase. Oh! do not let us say that gold is dross, when it can buy such things as these, Mrs. Gamp.'

"But what a blessing, sir," said Mrs. Gamp, "that there are such as you, to sell or let 'em

"Ay, Mrs. Gamp, you are right," rejoined the undertaker. "We should be an honoured calling. We do good by stealth, and blush to have it mentioned in our little bills. How much consolation may 1- even "- cried Mr. Mould, have diffused among my fellow-creatures by

1

mured the doctor, in a tone of stately reproof, as he stepped up to the old man's side, "this is worse than weakness. This is bad, selfish, very wrong, Mr. Chuffey. You should take example from others, my good sir. You forget that you were not connected by ties of blood with our deceased friend; and that he had a very near and very dear relation, Mr. Chuffey." Ay, his own son!" cried the old man, clasping his hands with remarkable passion. "His own, own, only son!"

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"He's not right in his head, you know," said Jonas, turning pale. "You're not to mind anything he says. I should n't wonder if he was to talk some precious nonsense. But don't you mind him, any of you. I don't. My father left him to my charge; and whatever he says or does, that's enough. I'll take care of him." A hum of admiration rose from the mourners including Mr. Mould and his merry men) at this new instance of magnanimity and kindfeeling on the part of Jonas. But Chuffey put it to the test no farther. He said not a word more, and being left to himself for a little while, crept back again to the coach.

It has been said that Mr. Jonas turned pale when the behaviour of the old clerk attracted general attention; his discomposure, however, was but momentary, and he soon recovered. But these were not the only changes he had exhibited that day. The curious eyes of Mr. Pecksniff had observed that as soon as they left the house upon their mournful errand, he began to mend that as the ceremonies proceeded he gradually, by little and little, recovered his old condition, his old looks, his old bearing, his old agreeable characteristics of speech and manner, and became, in all respects, his old

pleasant self. And now that they were seated in the coach on their return home: and more when they got there, and found the windows open, the light and air admitted, and all traces of the late event removed: he felt so well convinced that Jonas was again the Jonas he had known a week ago, and not the Jonas of the intervening time, that he voluntarily gave up his recently-acquired power without one faint attempt to exercise it, and at once fell back into his former position of mild and deferential guest.

Mrs. Gamp went home to the bird-fancier's, and was knocked up again that very night for a birth of twins; Mr. Mould dined gaily in the bosom of his family, and passed the evening facetiously at his club; the hearse, after standing for a long time at the door of a roystering public-house, repaired to its stables with the feathers inside and twelve red-nosed undertakers on the roof, each holding on by a dingy peg, to which, in times of state, a waving plume was fitted; the various trappings of sorrow were carefully laid by in presses for the next hirer; the fiery steeds were quenched and quiet in their stalls; the doctor got merry with wine at a wedding. dinner, and forgot the middle of the story which had no end to it; the pageant of a few short hours ago was written nowhere half so legibly as in the undertaker's books.

Not in the churchyard? Not even there. The gates were closed; the night was dark and wet; and the rain fell silently, among the stag- | nant weeds and nettles. One new mound was there which had not been last night. Time, burrowing like a mole below the ground, had marked his track by throwing up another heap of earth. And that was all.

“Pecksniff,” said Jonas, taking off his hat, to see that the black crape band was all right; and finding that it was, putting it on again, complacently; "what do you mean to give your daughters when they marry?'

"My dear Mr. Jonas," cried the affectionate parent, with an ingenuous smile, "what a very singular inquiry!"

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Now, don't you mind whether it's a singular inquiry or a plural one," retorted Jonas, eyeing Mr. Pecksniff with no great favour, “but answer it, or let it alone. One or the other." "Hum! The question, my dear friend," said Mr. Pecksniff, laying his hand tenderly upon his kinsman's knee, "is involved with many considerations. What would I give them? Eh?" "Ah! what would you give 'em?" repeated Jonas.

"Why, that," said Mr. Pecksniff," "would naturally depend in a great measure upon the kind of husbands they might choose, my dear young friend."

wer. It seemed a deep one, but such is the wisdom of simplicity!

"My standard for the merits I would require in a son-in-law," said Mr. Pecksniff, after a short silence, "is a high one. Forgive me, my dear Mr. Jonas," he added, greatly moved, "if I say that you have spoiled me, and made it a fanciful one; an imaginative one; a prismatically tinged one, if I may be permitted to call it so.

"What do you mean by that?" growled Jonas, looking at him with increased disfavour. "Indeed, my dear friend." said Mr. Pecksniff, "you may well inquire. The heart is not al ways a royal mint, with patent machinery, to work its metal into current coin. Sometimes it throws it out in strange forms, not easily recognised as coin at all. But it is sterling gold. It has at least that merit. It is sterling gold."

"Is it?" grumbled Jonas, with a doubted shake of the head.

you will one day make to some deserving man, capable of appreciating a nature such as yours, I would forgetful of myself-bestow upon my daughters, portions reaching to the very utmost limit of my means."

ear

This was strong language, and it was nestly delivered. But who can wonder that such a man as Mr. Pecksniff, after all he had seen and heard of Mr. Jonas, should be strong and earnest upon such a theme; a theme that touched even the wordly lips of undertakers with the honey of eloquence!

Mr. Jonas was silent, and looked thoughtfully at the landscape. For they were seated on the outside of the coach, at the back, and were travelling down into the country. He accompanied Mr. Pecksniff home for a few day's change of air and scene after his recent trials. "Well," he said, at last, with captivating bluntness, 66 suppose you got one such son-inlaw as me, what then?"

Mr. Pecksniff regarded him at first with inexpressible surprise; then gradually breaking into a sort of dejected vivacity, said: "Then well I know whose husband he would

be!"

"Whose?" asked Jonas, drily.

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to wit, in the event of such a man as he proposing for his daughter's hand, he would endow her with a fortune of four thousand pounds.

"I should sadly pinch and cramp myself to do so," was his fatherly remark; "but that would be my duty, and my couscience would reward me. For myself, my conscience is my bank. I have a trifle invested there-a mere trifle Mr. Jonas but I prize it as a store of value, I assure you.” The good man's enemies would have divided upon this question into two parties. One would have asserted without scruple that if Mr. Pecksniff's conscience were his bank, and he kept a running account there, he must have overdrawn it beyond all mortal means of computation. The other would have contended that it was a mere fictitious form; a perfectly blank book; or one in which entries were only made with a peculiar kind of invisible ink to become legible at some indefinite time; and that he never troubled it at all.

"It would sadly pinch and cramp me, my dear friend," repeated Mr Pecksniff, "but Providence - perhaps I may be permitted to say a special Providence-has blessed my endeavours, and I could guarantee to make the sacrifice."

"Ecod! you've been prepared for that, a pretty long time, I should think," said Jonas. Many have sought to bear her from me,' said Mr. Pecksniff. "All have failed. 'I never will give my hand, papa,' those were her words, unless my heart is won.' She has not been quite so happy as she used to be, of late. I don't know why.'

Again Mr. Jonas looked at the landscape: then at the coachman: then at the luggage on the roof; finally, at Mr. Pecksniff.

"I suppose you'll have to part with the other one, some of these days?" he observed, as he caught that gentleman's eye.

"Probably," said the parent. "Years will tame down the wildness of my foolish bird, and then it will be caged: But Cherry, Mr. Jonas, Cherry

"Oh, ah!" interrupted Jonas. "Years have made her all right enough. Nobody doubts that. But you haven't answered what I asked you. Of course, you're not obliged to do it, you know, if you don't like. You're the best judge." There was a warning sulkiness in the manner of his speech, which admonished Mr. Pecksniff that his dear friend was not to be trifled with or fenced off, and that he must either return a straight-forward reply to his question, or plainly give him to understand that he declined to enlighten him upon the subject to which it referred. Mindful in this dilemma of the caution old Anthony had given him almost with his latest breath, he resolved to speak to the point, and so told Mr. Jonas-enlarging upon the communication as a proof of his great attachment and confidence that in the case he had put,

he had been walking up and down the narrow ways and bye-places, with a hook in one hand and a crook in the other, scraping all sorts of valuable odds and ends into his pouch. Now, there being a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow, it follows (so Mr. Pecksniff might have reasoned, perhaps), that there must also be a special Providence in the alighting of the stone, or stick, or other substance which is aimed at the sparrow. And Mr. Pecksniff's hook, or crook, having invariably knocked the sparrow on the head and brought him down, that gentleman may have been led to consider himself as specially licensed to bag sparrows, and as being specially seised and possessed of all the birds he had got together. That many undertakings, national as well as individual but especially the former-are held to be specially brought to a glorious and successful issue, which never could be so regarded on any other process of reasoning, must be clear to all men. Therefore the precedents would seem to show that Mr. Pecksniff had good argument for what he said, and might be permitted to say it, and did not say it presumptuously, vainly, or arrogantly, but in a spirit of high faith and great wisdom meriting all praise.

Mr. Jonas, not being much accustomed to perplex his mind with theories of this nature, expressed no opinion on the subject. Nor did he receive his companion's announcement with one solitary syllable, good, bad, or indifferent. He preserved this taciturnity for a quarter of an hour at least, and during the whole of that time appeared to be steadily engaged in subjecting some given amount to the operation of every known rule in figures; adding to it, taking from it, multiplying it, reducing it by long and short division; working it by the rule of three direct and inversed; exchange or barter;