or traveller's-rest
outside the window and look in at Charles Dump reciting, with just room
enough in the crowd to point his finger, as his way was.

He left a child, Mary Dump, who grew up to become lady's maid to Livia
Fakenham, daughter of Curtis, the beauty of Hampshire, equalled by
no one save her cousin Henrietta Fakenham, the daughter of Commodore
Baldwin; and they were two different kinds of beauties, not to be
compared, and different were their fortunes; for this lady was likened
to the sun going down on a cloudy noon, and that lady to the moon riding
through a stormy night. Livia was the young widow of Lord Duffield when
she accepted the Earl of Fleetwood, and was his third countess, and
again a widow at eight-and-twenty, and stepmother to young Croesus, the
Earl of Fleetwood of my story. Mary Dump testifies to her kindness of
heart to her dependents. If we are to speak of goodness, I am afraid
there are other witnesses.

I resent being warned that my time is short and that I have wasted much
of it over 'the attractive Charles.' What I have done I have done with a
purpose, and it must be a storyteller devoid of the rudiments of his art
who can complain of my dwelling on Charles Dump, for the world to have
a pause and pin its faith to him, which it would not do to a grander
person--that is, as a peg. Wonderful events, however true they are, must
be attached to something common and familiar, to make them credible.
Charles Dump, I say, is like a front-page picture to a history of those
old quiet yet exciting days in England, and when once you have seized
him the whole period is alive to you, as it was to me in the delicious
dulness I loved, that made us thirsty to hear of adventures and able to
enjoy to the utmost every thing occurring. The man is no more attractive
to me than a lump of clay. How could he be? But supposing I took up the
lump and told you that there where I found it, that lump of clay had
been rolled over and flung off by the left wheel of the prophet's
Chariot of Fire before it mounted aloft and disappeared in the heavens
above!--you would examine it and cherish it and have the scene present
with you, you may be sure; and magnificent descriptions would not be
one-half so persuasive. And that is what we call, in my profession, Art,
if you please.

So to continue: the Earl of Cressett fell from his coach-box in a fit,
and died of it, a fortnight after the flight of his wife; and the people
said