Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day PeopleDickens, Charles
General
Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People
Dickens, Charles
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
a state of nervous agitation from which he does not perfectly recover,
until he finds himself once more in the Islington-road. Poor, harmless
creatures such men are; contented but not happy; broken-spirited and
humbled, they may feel no pain, but they never know pleasure.
Compare these men with another class of beings who, like them, have
neither friend nor companion, but whose position in society is the
result of their own choice. These are generally old fellows with white
heads and red faces, addicted to port wine and Hessian boots, who from
some cause, real or imaginary—generally the former, the excellent
reason being that they are rich, and their relations poor—grow
suspicious of everybody, and do the misanthropical in chambers, taking
great delight in thinking themselves unhappy, and making everybody they
come near, miserable. You may see such men as these, anywhere; you will
know them at coffee-houses by their discontented exclamations and the
luxury of their dinners; at theatres, by their always sitting in the
same place and looking with a jaundiced eye on all the young people
near them; at church, by the pomposity with which they enter, and the
loud tone in which they repeat the responses; at parties, by their
getting cross at whist and hating music. An old fellow of this kind
will have his chambers splendidly furnished, and collect books, plate,
and pictures about him in profusion; not so much for his own
gratification, as to be superior to those who have the desire, but not
the means, to compete with him. He belongs to two or three clubs, and
is envied, and flattered, and hated by the members of them all.
Sometimes he will be appealed to by a poor relation—a married nephew
perhaps—for some little assistance: and then he will declaim with
honest indignation on the improvidence of young married people, the
worthlessness of a wife, the insolence of having a family, the atrocity
of getting into debt with a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, and
other unpardonable crimes; winding up his exhortations with a
complacent review of his own conduct, and a delicate allusion to
parochial relief. He dies, some day after dinner, of apoplexy, having
bequeathed his property to a Public Society, and the Institution erects
a tablet to his memory, expressive of their admiration of his Christian
conduct in this world, and their comfortable conviction of his
happiness in the next.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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