Feeder, B.A., Doctor Blimber's assistant, he was a kind
of human barrel-organ, with a little list of tunes at which he was
continually working, over and over again, without any variation. He
might have been fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, in early
life, if his destiny had been favourable; but it had not been; and he
had only one, with which, in a monotonous round, it was his occupation
to bewilder the young ideas of Doctor Blimber's young gentlemen. The
young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew no
rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives,
inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appeared
to them in their dreams. Under the forcing system, a young gentleman
usually took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the cares
of the world on his head in three months. He conceived bitter sentiments
against his parents or guardians in four; he was an old misanthrope, in
five; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth, in six; and at
the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, from
which he never afterwards departed, that all the fancies of the poets,
and lessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar,
and had no other meaning in the world.

But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor's hothouse, all the
time; and the Doctor's glory and reputation were great, when he took his
wintry growth home to his relations and friends.

Upon the Doctor's door-steps one day, Paul stood with a fluttering
heart, and with his small right hand in his father's. His other hand was
locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny pressure of that one; and
how loose and cold the other!

Mrs Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with her sable plumage and her
hooked beak, like a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath--for
Mr Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked fast--and she croaked
hoarsely as she waited for the opening of the door.

'Now, Paul,' said Mr Dombey, exultingly. 'This is the way indeed to be
Dombey and Son, and have money. You are almost a man already.'

'Almost,' returned the child.

Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and quaint yet
touching look, with which he accompanied the reply.

It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr Dombey's face;
but the door being opened, it was quickly gone.

'Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.

The