have thought wrong, and do think wrong."

" Very likely, sir," said Mark, with imper-
turbable good temper. " I often do."

" As to lying here," cried Martin, raising
himself on his elbow, and looking angrily at his
follower. " Do you suppose it's a pleasure to
lie here?"

"All the madhouses in the world," said Mr.
Tapley, " couldn't produce such a maniac as the
man must be who could think that."

" Then why are you for ever goading and
urging me to get up?" asked Martin. "I lie
here because I don't wish to be recognised, in
the better days to which I aspire, by any purse-
proud citizen, as the man who came over with
him among the steerage passengers. I lie here,
because I wish to conceal my circumstances and
myself, and not to arrive in a new world badged
and ticketed as an utterly poverty-stricken man.
If I could have afforded a passage in the after-
cabin, I should have held up my head with the
rest. As I couldn't, I hide it. Do you under-
stand that ? "

" I am very sorry, sir," said Mark. " I didn't
know you took it so much to heart as this
comes to."

" Of course you didn't know," returned his
master. " How should you know, unless I told
you ? It's no trial to you, Mark, to make your-
self comfortable and to bustle about. It's as
natural for you to do. so under the circumstances
as it is for me not to do so. Why, you don't
suppose there is a living creature in this ship
who can by possibility have half so much to
undergo on board of her as / have ? Do you ?"
he asked, sitting upright in his berth, and look-
ing at Mark, with an expression of great earnest-
ness not unmixed with wonder.

Mark twisted his face into a tight knot, and
with his head very much on one side pondered
upon this question as if he felt it an extremely
difficult one to answer. He was relieved from
his embarrassment by Martin himself, who said,
as he stretched himself upon his back again and
resumed the book he had been reading :

" But what is the use of my putting such
case to you, when the very essence of what I
have been saying, is, that you cannot by pos-
sibility understand it ! Make me a little brandy-
and-water — cold and very weak — and give me a



LAND 110/



biscuit, and tell your friend, who is a nearer
neighbour of ours than I could wish, to try and
keep her children a little quieter to-night than
she did last night; that's a good fellow."

Mr. Tapley set himself to obey these orders
with great alacrity, and pending their execution,
it may be presumed his flagging spirits revived :
inasmuch as he several times observed, below
his breath, that in respect of its power of impart-
ing a credit to jollity, the Screw unquestionably
had some decided advantages over the Dragon.
He also remarked, that it was a high gratification
to him to reflect that he would carry its main
excellence ashore with him, and have it con-
stantly beside him wherever he went ; but what
he meant by these consolatory thoughts he did
not explain.

And now a general excitement began to
prevail on board ; and various predictions
relative to the precise day, and even the precise
hour at which they would reach New York,
were' freely broached. There was infinitely
more crowding on deck and looking over the
ship's side than there had been before; and an
epidemic broke out for packing up things every
morning, which required unpacking again every
night. Those who had any letters to deliver,
or any friends to meet, or any settled plans of
going anywhere or doing anything, discussed
their prospects a hundred times a day ; and as
this class of passengers was very small, and the
number of those who had no prospects whatever
was very large, there were plenty of listeners
and few talkers. Those who had been ill all
along, got well now, and those who had been
well got better. An American gentleman in
the after-cabin, who had been wrapped up in
fur and oilskin the whole passage, unexpectedly
appeared in a very shiny, tall, black hat, and
constantly overhauled a very little valise of pale
leather, which contained his clothes, linen,
brushes, shaving apparatus, books, trinkets, and
other baggage. He likewise stuck his hands
deep into his pockets, and walked the deck
with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the
air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants,
and can never (under any circumstances worth
mentioning) be breathed by slaves. An English
gentleman who was strongly suspected of having
run away from a bank, with something in his
possession belonging to its strong box besides
the key, grew eloquent upon the subject of the
rights of man, and hummed the Marseillaise
Hymn constantly. In a word, one great sensa-
tion pervaded the whole ship, and the soil of
America lay close before them : so close at
last, that, upon a certain starlight night, they



took a pilot on board, and within a few hours
afterwards lay to until the morning, awaiting
the arrival of a steamboat in which the pas-
sengers were to be conveyed ashore.

Off she came, soon after it was light next
morning, and, lying alongside an hour or more
— during which period her very firemen were
objects of hardly less interest and curiosity, than
if they had been so many angels, good or bad —
took all her living freight aboard. Among them,
Mark, who still had his friend and her three
children under his close protection ; and Martin,
who had once more dressed himself in his usual
attire, but wore a soiled, old cloak above his
ordinary clothes, until such time as he should
separate for ever from his late companions.

The steamer — which, with its machinery on
deck, looked, as it worked its long slim legs,
like some enormously magnified insect or ante-
diluvian monster — dashed at great speed up a
beautiful bay : and presently they saw some
heights, and islands, and along, flat, straggling city.

" And this," said Mr. Tapley, looking far
ahead, " is the Land of Liberty, is it ? Very
well. I'm agreeable. Any land will do for me,
after so much water ! "



CHAPTER XVI.

MARTIN DISEMBARKS FROM THAT NOBLE AND FAST-
SAILING LINE-OF-PACKET SHIP, THE SCREW, AT THE
PORT OF NEW YORK, IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA. HE MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCES, AND
DINES AT A BOARDING-HOUSE. THE PARTICULARS
OF THOSE TRANSACTIONS.

OME trifling excitement prevailed
upon the very brink and margin of
the land of liberty; for an alderman
had been elected the day before ;
and party feeling naturally running
rather high on such an exciting
occasion, the friends of the disappointed
candidate had found it necessary to as-
sert the great principles of Purity of Election
and Freedom of Opinion by breaking a few legs
and arms, and furthermore pursuing one ob-
noxious gentleman through the sireeis with the
design of slitting his nose. These gooa-ii^^cured
little outbursts of the popular fancy were not in
themselves sufficiently remarkable to create any
great stir, after the lapse of a whole night ; but
they found fresh life and notoriety in the breath
of the news-boys, who not only proclaimed them
with shrill yells in all the highways and byeways
of the town, upon the wharves and among the
shipping, but on the deck and down in the




132



MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.



cabins of the steam-boat; which, before she
touched the shore, was boarded and overrun by
a legion of those young citizens.

"Here's this morning's New York Sewer!"
cried one. " Here's this morning's New York
Stabber ! Here's the New York Family Spy !
Here's the New York Private Listener ! Here's
the New York Peeper ! Here's the New York
Plunderer ! Here's the New York Keyhole
Reporter ! Here's the New York Rowdy
Journal ! Here's all the New York papers !
Here's full particulars of the patriotic locofoco
movement yesterday, in which the whigs was
so chawed up ; and the last Alabama gouging
case ; and the interesting Arkansas dooel with
Bowie knifes ; and all the Political, Commercial,
and Fashionable News. Here they are ! Here
they are ! Here's the papers, here's the
papers ! "

" Here's the Sewer !" cried another. " Here's
the New York Sewer ! Here's some of the
twelfth thousand of to-day's Sewer, with the
best account of the markets, and all the shipping
news, and four whole columns of country corre-
spondence, and a full account of the Ball at
Mrs. White's last night, where all the beauty and
fashion of New York was assembled ; with the
Sewer's own particulars of the private lives of
all the ladies that was there ! Here's the Sewer !
Here's some of the twelfth thousand of the New
York Sewer ! Here's the Sewer's exposure of
the Wall Street Gang, and the Sewer's exposure
of the Washington Gang, and the Sewer's
exclusive account of a flagrant act of dishonesty
committed by the Secretary of State when he
was eight years old; now communicated, at a
great expense, by his own nurse. Here's the
Sewer ! Here's the New York Sewer, in its
twelfth thousand, with a whole column of New
Yorkers to be shown up, and all their names
printed ! Here's the Sewer's article upon the
Judge that tried him, day afore yesterday, for
libel, and the Sewer's tribute to the independent
jury that didn't convict him, and the Sewer's
account of what they might have expected if
they had ! Here's the Sewer, here's the Sewer !
Here's the wide-awake Sewer; always on the
look-out; the leading Journal of the United
States, now Jr. ^s twelfth thousand, and still a
printing off: — Here's the New York Sewer !"

" It is in such enlightened means," said a
voice almost in Martin's ear, " that the bubbling
passions of my country find a vent."

Martin turned involuntarily, and saw, standing
close at his side, a sallow gentleman, with
sunken cheeks, black hair, small twinkling eyes,
and a singular expression hovering about that J



region of his face, which was not a frown, nor a
leer, and yet might have been mistaken at the
first glance for either. Indeed it would have
been difficult, on a much closer acquaintance,
to describe it in any more satisfactory terms
than as a mixed expression of vulgar cunning
and conceit. This gentleman wore a rather
broad-brimmed hat for the greater wisdom of his
appearance ; and had his arms folded for the
greater impressiveness of his attitude. He was
somewhat shabbily dressed in a blue surtout
reaching nearly to his ankles, short loose
trousers of the same colour, and a faded buff
waistcoat, through which a discoloured shirt-frill
struggled to force itself into notice, as asserting
an equality of civil rights with the other portions
of his dress, and maintaining a declaration of
Independence on its own account. His feet,
which were of unusually large proportions, were
leisurely crossed before him as he half leaned
against, half sat upon, the steamboat's bulwark ;
and his thick cane, shod with a mighty ferule at
one end and armed with a great metal knob at
the other, depended from a line-and-tassel on
his wrist. Thus attired, and thus composed
into an aspect of great profundity, the gentleman
twitched up the right-hand corner of his mouth
and his right eye, simultaneously, and said, once
more :

"It is in such enlightened means, that the
bubbling passions of my country find a vent."

As he looked at Martin, and nobody else was
by, Martin inclined his head, and said :

" You allude to — "

"To the Palladium of rational Liberty at
home, sir, and the dread of Foreign oppression
abroad," returned the gentleman, as he pointed
with his cane to an uncommonly dirty news-boy
with one eye. " To the Envy of the world, sir,
and the leaders of Human Civilisation. Let me
ask you, sir," he added, bringing the ferule of
his stick heavily upon the deck with the air of a
man who must not be equivocated with, " how
do you like my Country ?"

" I am hardly prepared to answer that ques-
tion yet," said Martin, " seeing that I have not
been ashore."

" Well, I should expect you were not prepared,
sir," said the gentleman, " to behold such signs
of National Prosperity as those?"

He pointed to the vessels lying at the
wharves : and then gave a vague flourish with
his stick, as if he would include the air and
water, generally, in this remark.

" Really," said Martin, " I don't know. Yes.
I think I was."

The gentleman glanced at him with a knowing



CROSS-EXAMINED BY A NATIVE.



133



look, and said he liked his policy. It was
natural, he said, and it pleased him as a philo-
sopher to observe the prejudices of human
nature.

" You have brought, I see, sir," he said, turn-
ing round towards Martin, and resting his chin
on the top of his stick, " the usual amount of
misery and poverty, and ignorance and crime,
to be located in the bosom of the Great Re-
public. Well, sir ! let 'em come on in ship-loads
from the old country. When vessels are about
to founder, the rats are said to leave 'em. There
is considerable of truth, I find, in that remark."

"The old ship will keep afloat a year or two
longer yet, perhaps," said Martin with a smile,
partly occasioned by what the gentleman said,
and partly by his manner of saying it, which was
odd enough, for he emphasized all the small
words and syllables in his discourse, and left
the others to take care of themselves ; as if he
thought the larger parts of speech could be
trusted alone, but the little ones required to be
constantly looked after.

" Hope is said by the poet, sir," observed the
gentleman, " to be the nurse of Young Desire."

Martin signified that he had heard of the
cardinal virtue in question serving occasionally
in that domestic capacity.

" She will not rear her infant in the present
instance, sir, you'll find," observed the gentleman.

" Time will show," said Martin.

The gentleman nodded his head, gravely ; and
said, " What is your name, sir ? "

Martin told him

" How old are you, sir ? "

Martin told him.

"What is your profession, sir?"

Martin told him that, also.

" What is your destination, sir ? " inquired the
gentleman.

" Really," said Martin, laughing, " I can't
satisfy you in that particular, for I don't know it
myself."

" Yes?" said the gentleman.

" No," said Martin.

The gentleman adjusted his cane under his
left arm, and took a more deliberate and com-
plete survey of Martin than he had yet had
leisure to make. When he had completed his
inspection, he put out his right hand, shook
Martin's hand, and said :

" My name is Colonel Diver, sir. I am the
Editor of the New York Rowdy Journal."

Martin received the communication with that
degree of respect which an announcement so
distinguished appeared to demand.

" The New York Rowdy Journal, sir," re-



sumed the colonel, " is, as I expect you know,
the organ of our aristocracy in this city."

" Oh ! there is an aristocracy here, then ? "
said Martin. " Of what is it composed?"

" Of intelligence, sir," replied the colonel ; "of
intelligence and virtue. And of their necessary
consequence in this republic — dollars, sir."

Martin was very glad to hear this, feeling
well assured that if intelligence and virtue led,
as a matter of course, to the acquisition of dol-
lars, he would speedily become a great capitalist.
He was about to express the gratification such
news afforded him, when he was interrupted by
the captain of the ship, who came up at the
moment to shake hands with the colonel ; and
who, seeing a well-dressed stranger on the deck
(for Martin had thrown aside his cloak), shook
hands with him also. This was an unspeakable
relief to Martin, who, in spite of the acknow-
ledged supremacy of Intelligence and virtue in
that happy country, would have been deeply
mortified to appear before Colonel Diver in the
poor character of a steerage passenger.

" Well, cap'en ! " said the colonel.

" Well, colonel ! " cried the captain. " You're
looking most uncommon bright, sir. I can
hardly realise its being you, and that's a fact.''

" A good passage, cap'en ? " inquired the
colonel, taking him aside.

" Well now ! It was a pretty spanking run,
sir," said, or rather sung, the captain, who was
a genuine New Englander : " con-siderin the
weather."

"Yes?" said the colonel.

" Well ! It was, sir," said the captain. " I've
just now sent a boy up to your office with the
passenger-list, colonel."

" You haven't got another boy to spare,
p'raps, cap'en?" said the colonel, in a tone
almost amounting to severity.

" I guess there air a dozen if you want 'em,
colonel," said the captain.

" One moderate big 'un could convey a dozen
of champagne, perhaps," observed the colonel,
musing, " to my office. You said a spanking
run, I think?"

" Well ! so I did," was the reply.

" It's very nigh you know," observed the
colonel. " I'm glad it was a spanking run,
cap'en. Don't mind about quarts, if you're
short of 'em. The boy can as well bring four-
and-twenty pints, and travel twice as once. — A
first-rate spanker, cap'en, was it? Yes?"

" A most e — tarnal spanker," said the skipper.

" I. admire at your good fortun, cap'en. You
might loan me a corkscrew at the same time,
and half-a-dozen glasses if you liked. However



134



MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.



bad the elements combine against my country's
noble packet-ship the Screw, sir," said the
colonel, turning to Martin, and drawing a
flourish on the surface of the deck with his cane,
" her passage either way, is almost certain to
eventuate a spanker ! "

The captain, who had the Sewer below at that
moment, lunching expensively in one cabin,
while the amiable Stabber was drinking himself
into a state of blind madness in another, took a
cordial leave of his friend the colonel, and hur-
ried away to despatch the champagne : well
knowing (as it afterwards appeared) that if he
failed to conciliate the editor of the Rowdy
Journal, that potentate would denounce him
and his ship in large capitals before he was a
day older; and would probably assault the
memory of his mother also, who had not been
dead more than twenty years. The colonel
being again left alone with Martin, checked him
as he was moving away, and offered, in consider-
ation of his being an Englishman, to show him
the town, and to introduce him, if such were his
desire, to a genteel boarding-house. But before
they entered on these proceedings (he said), he
would beseech the honour of his company at the
office of the Rowdy Journal, to partake of a
bottle of champagne of his own importation.

All this was so extremely kind and hospitable,
that Martin, though it was quite early in the
morning, readily acquiesced. So, instructing
Mark, who was deeply engaged with his friend
and her three children, that when he had done
assisting them, and had cleared the baggage, he
was to wait for further orders at the Rowdy
Journal Office, Martin accompanied his new
friend on shore.

They r lade their way as they best could
through the melancholy crowd of emigrants
upon the wharf — who, grouped about their beds
and boxes, with the bare ground below them and
the bare sky above, might have fallen from
another planet, for anything they knew of the
country — and walked for some short distance
along a busy street, bounded on one side by the
quays and shipping ; and on the other by a long
row of staring red-brick storehouses and offices,
ornamented with more black boards and white
letters, and more white boards and black letters,
than Martin had ever seen before, in fifty times
the space. Presently they turned up a narrow
street, and presently into other narrow streets,
until at last they stopped before a house whereon
was painted in great characters, " Rowdy Jour-
nal."

The colonel, who had walked the whole way
with one hand in his breast, his head occasionally



wagging from side to side, and his hat thrown
back upon his ears — like a man who was
oppressed to inconvenience by a sense of his
own greatness — led the way up a dark and dirty
flight of stairs into a room of similar character,
all littered and bestrewn with odds and ends oi'
newspapers and other crumpled fragments, both
in proof and manuscript. Behind a mangy old
writing-table in this apartment, sat a figure with
a stump of a pen in his mouth and a great pair
of scissors in its right hand, clipping and slicing
at a file of Rowdy Journals ; and it was such a
laughable figure that Martin had some difficulty
in preserving his gravity, though conscious of
the close observation of Colonel Diver.

The individual who sat clipping and slicing as
aforesaid at the Rowdy Journals, was a small
young gentleman of very juvenile appearance,
and unwholesomely pale in the face; partly,
perhaps, from intense thought, but partly, there
is no doubt, from the excessive use of tobacco,
which he was at that moment chewing vigorously.
He wore his shirt-collar turned down over a
black ribbon; and his lank hair — a fragile crop —
was not only smoothed and parted back from
his brow, that none of the Poetry of his aspect
might be lost, but had, here and there, been
grubbed up by the roots : which accounted for
his loftiest developments being somewhat pimply.
He had that order of nose on which the envy of
mankind has bestowed the appellation " snub,"
and it was very much turned up at the end, as
with a lofty scorn. Upon the upper lip of this
young gentleman, were tokens of a sandy down —
so very, very smooth and scant, that, though
encouraged to the utmost, it looked more like a
recent trace of gingerbread, than the fair promise
of a moustache; and this conjecture, his appa-
rently tender age went far to strengthen. He
was intent upon his work. Every time he
snapped the great pair of scissors, he made a
corresponding motion with his jaws, which gave
him a very terrible appearance.

Martin was not long in determining within
himself that this must be Colonel Diver's son ;
the hope of the family, and future mainspring of
the Rowdy Journal. Indeed he had begun to
say that he presumed this was the colonel's
little boy, and that it was very pleasant to see
him playing at Editor in all the guilelessness of
childhood, when the colonel proudly interposed,
and said :

" My War Correspondent, sir — Mr. Jefferson
Brick!"

Martin could not help starting at this unex-
pected announcement, and the consciousness of
the irretrievable mistake he had nearly made.



THE POPULAR INSTRUCTOR.



*35



Mr. Brick seemed pleased with the sensation
he produced upon the stranger, and shook hands
with him, with an air of patronage designed to
reassure him, and to let him know that there
was no occasion to be frightened, for he (Brick)
wouldn't hurt him.

" You have heard of Jefferson Brick I see,
sir," quoth the colonel, with a smile. " England
has heard of Jefferson Brick. Europe has heard
of Jefferson Brick. Let me see. When did you
leave England, sir?"

" Five weeks ago," said Martin.
"Five weeks ago," repeated the colonel,
thoughtfully; as he took his seat upon the
table, and swung his legs. " Now let me ask
you, sir, which of Mr. Brick's articles had
become at that time the most obnoxious to the
British Parliament and the court of Saint
James's?"

" Upon my word," said Martin, " I "

" I have reason to know, sir," interrupted the
colonel, " that the aristocratic circles of your
country quail before the name of Jefferson Brick.
I should like to be informed, sir, from your lips,
which of his sentiments has struck the deadliest

blow "

"At the hundred heads of the Hydra of
Corruption now grovelling in the dust beneath
the lance of Reason, and spouting up to the
universal arch above us, its sanguinary gore,"
said Mr. Brick, putting on a little blue cloth
cap with a glazed front, and quoting his last
article.

" The libation of freedom, Brick," — hinted the
colonel.

" — Must sometimes be quaffed in blood,
colonel," cried Brick. And when he said
* blood,' he gave the great pair of scissors a
sharp snap, as if they said blood too, and were
quite of his opinion.

This done, they both looked at Martin, paus-
ing for a reply.

"Upon my life," said Martin, who had by
this time quite recovered his usual coolness,
" I can't give you any satisfactory information

about it ; for the truth is that I "

"Stop!" cried the colonel, glancing sternly
at his war correspondent, and giving his head
one shake after every sentence. " That you
never heard of Jefferson Brick, sir. That you
never read Jefferson Brick, sir. That you never
saw the Rowdy Journal, sir. That you never
knew, sir, of its mighty influence upon the
cabinets of Europe. Yes ?"

" That's what I was about to observe, cer-
tainly," said Martin.

" Keep cool, Jefferson," said the colonel



gravely. " Don't bust ! oh you Europeans 1