contempt for mankind!'

Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major would
deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of his
head, and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the
younger members of the club surmised he had invested money in his friend
Dombey's House, and lost it; though the older soldiers and deeper dogs,
who knew Joe better, wouldn't hear of such a thing. The unfortunate
Native, expressing no opinion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in his
moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed by the Major every hour
in the day, and riddled through and through, but in his sensitiveness to
bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept continually on the stretch. For
six entire weeks after the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner lived in
a rainy season of boot-jacks and brushes.

Mrs Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible reverse. The
first was that she could not understand it. The second, that her brother
had not made an effort. The third, that if she had been invited to
dinner on the day of that first party, it never would have happened; and
that she had said so, at the time.

Nobody's opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made it
heavier. It was understood that the affairs of the House were to
be wound up as they best could be; that Mr Dombey freely resigned
everything he had, and asked for no favour from anyone. That any
resumption of the business was out of the question, as he would listen
to no friendly negotiation having that compromise in view; that he had
relinquished every post of trust or distinction he had held, as a man
respected among merchants; that he was dying, according to some; that he
was going melancholy mad, according to others; that he was a broken man,
according to all.

The clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of condolence
among themselves, which was enlivened by comic singing, and went off
admirably. Some took places abroad, and some engaged in other Houses at
home; some looked up relations in the country, for whom they suddenly
remembered they had a particular affection; and some advertised for
employment in the newspapers. Mr Perch alone remained of all the late
establishment, sitting on his bracket looking at the accountants, or
starting off it, to propitiate the head accountant, who was to get
him into the Fire Office. The Counting House soon got to be dirty and
neglected. The principal slipper a