England -- Fiction; Love stories; Male friendship -- Fiction; Quakers -- Fiction; Social classes -- Fiction
"I shall!" said Tribbledale with emphasis. "And I've made up my mind
how to do it too. They've caged up the Monument, and you're so looked
after on the Duke of York's, that there isn't a chance. But there's
nothing to prevent you from taking a header at the Whispering Gallery
of Saint Paul's. You'd be more talked of that way, and the vergers
would be sure to show the stains made on the stones below. 'It was
here young Tribbledale fell,--a clerk at Pogson and Littlebird's,
who dashed out his brains for love on the very day as Clara Demijohn
got herself married.' I'm of that disposition, Crocker, as I'd do
anything for love;--anything." Crocker was obliged to reply that he
trusted he might never be the cause of such a fatal attempt at glory;
but he went on to explain that in the pursuit of love a man could not
in any degree give way to friendship. Even though numberless lovers
might fall from the Whispering Gallery in a confused heap of mangled
bodies, he must still tread the path which was open to him. These
were his principles, and he could not abandon them even for the sake
of Tribbledale. "Nor would I have you," shouted Tribbledale, leaning
out over the door of the cab. "I would not delay you not for a
day, not for an hour. Were to-morrow to be your bridal morning it
would find me prepared. My only request to you is that a boy might
be called Daniel after me. You might tell her it was an uncle
or grandfather. She would never think that in her own child was
perpetuated a monument of poor Daniel Tribbledale." Crocker, as he
jumped out of the cab with a light step in front of the Paphian Hall,
promised that in this particular he would attend to the wishes of his
friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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