vants
herself: yet, for my part, I confess I did not feel one minute's scruple
or mortification on the subject. If you love a person, is it not a
pleasure to feel obliged to him? And this, in consequence, I felt. I
was proud and happy at being able to think that my dear wife should be
able to labour and earn bread for me, now misfortune had put it out of my
power to support me and her. And now, instead of making any reflections
of my own upon prison discipline, I will recommend the reader to consult
that admirable chapter in the Life of Mr. Pickwick in which the same
theme is handled, and which shows how silly it is to deprive honest men
of the means of labour just at the moment when they most want it. What
could I do? There were one or two gents in the prison who could work
(literary gents,--one wrote his "Travels in Mesopotamia," and the other
his "Sketches at Almack's," in the place); but all the occupation I could
find was walking down Bridge Street, and then up Bridge Street, and
staring at Alderman Waithman's windows, and then at the black man who
swept the crossing. I never gave him anything; but I envied him his
trade and his broom, and the money that continually fell into his old
hat. But I was not allowed even to carry a broom.

Twice or thrice--for Lady Tiptoff did not wish her little boy often to
breathe the air of such a close place as Salisbury Square--my dear Mary
came in the thundering carriage to see me. They were merry meetings;
and--if the truth must be told--twice, when nobody was by, I jumped into
the carriage and had a drive with her; and when I had seen her home,
jumped into another hackney-coach and drove back. But this was only
twice; for the system was dangerous, and it might bring me into trouble,
and it cost three shillings from Grosvenor Square to Ludgate Hill.

Here, meanwhile, my good mother kept me company; and what should we read
of one day but the marriage of Mrs. Hoggarty and the Rev. Grimes Wapshot!
My mother, who never loved Mrs. H., now said that she should repent all
her life having allowed me to spend so much of my time with that odious
ungrateful woman; and added that she and I too were justly punished for
worshipping the mammon of unrighteousness and forgetting our natural
feelings for the sake of my aunt's paltry lucre. "Well, Amen!" said I.
"This is the end of all our fine schemes! My aunt's money and my aunt's
diamond were the causes of my ruin, and now they are c