your boots
took off, and are, in every particular worth mentioning, another man.'

Having delivered himself of this solemn preface, he brought the
bootjack.

'Mind! I am not going to relapse, Mark,' said Martin; 'but, good Heaven,
if we should be left in some wild part of this country without goods or
money!'

'Well, sir!' replied the imperturbable Tapley; 'from what we've seen
already, I don't know whether, under those circumstances, we shouldn't
do better in the wild parts than in the tame ones.'

'Oh, Tom Pinch, Tom Pinch!' said Martin, in a thoughtful tone; 'what
would I give to be again beside you, and able to hear your voice, though
it were even in the old bedroom at Pecksniff's!'

'Oh, Dragon, Dragon!' echoed Mark, cheerfully, 'if there warn't any
water between you and me, and nothing faint-hearted-like in going back,
I don't know that I mightn't say the same. But here am I, Dragon, in
New York, America; and there are you in Wiltshire, Europe; and there's a
fortune to make, Dragon, and a beautiful young lady to make it for; and
whenever you go to see the Monument, Dragon, you mustn't give in on the
doorsteps, or you'll never get up to the top!'

'Wisely said, Mark,' cried Martin. 'We must look forward.'

'In all the story-books as ever I read, sir, the people as looked
backward was turned into stones,' replied Mark; 'and my opinion always
was, that they brought it on themselves, and it served 'em right. I wish
you good night, sir, and pleasant dreams!'

'They must be of home, then,' said Martin, as he lay down in bed.

'So I say, too,' whispered Mark Tapley, when he was out of hearing and
in his own room; 'for if there don't come a time afore we're well out of
this, when there'll be a little more credit in keeping up one's jollity,
I'm a United Statesman!'

Leaving them to blend and mingle in their sleep the shadows of objects
afar off, as they take fantastic shapes upon the wall in the dim light
of thought without control, be it the part of this slight chronicle--a
dream within a dream--as rapidly to change the scene, and cross the
ocean to the English shore.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DOES BUSINESS WITH THE HOUSE OF ANTHONY CHUZZLEWIT AND SON, FROM WHICH
ONE OF THE PARTNERS RETIRES UNEXPECTEDLY

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to
a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels,
step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his depar