Tom was not at all staunch; he did not stick up like one that believes and has confidence in what he says. “Tom,” says I, “t’other day a loaded cart was standing in the road half way up Gravelly Hill, with the wheels scotched, when a mischievous lad knocked the stones from under the wheels, and away went the loaded cart, over his foot, rattling down the hill, clearing every thing before it. The young urchin was half frightened out of his wits; he set the cart off easily enough, but not the whole neighbourhood could stop it. Now I take it, Tom, that the young rapscallion played just the same game as the Socialists are playing, with this difference, that the wheel of the cart only went over his toes, whereas the mischief that the Socialists are setting on foot will in the long run, go over their own necks.” Tom kept fumbling at his books, not knowing what to be at. He wanted somebody to back him. He believed his books just as much, and no more, than he would have believed any other tale of a tub, told him by a cleverer fellow than himself. “Tom,” says I, “when a man once turns his back upon God, there is no folly and no sin that he may not be led to commit. You have gone a long way, and I’m sorry for it; but I hardly think you are gone as far as your famous books will take you. Speak up now like a man, and tell me, have you been fooled into the belief that there is no hereafter?—no hell, and no heaven?” At this Tom looked like any thing but a conjurer. At length he said that if I would read more of his books I should understand them better than I did. “Read your books, Tom!” says I, “I should just as soon think of taking a dose of arsenic. A pretty deal rather had I walk barefoot through Boxley Bog, and many a better man than me has been stuck fast there,—a pretty deal rather had I do that, than turn Socialist. If I wanted to be worse than I am, to deprive myself of all hope, and to plunge myself into despair, I couldn’t do a better thing than read your trumpery; but as it is, I will have nothing to do with it. Tom,” says I, “you are no fool in driving a bargain: you would not be persuaded to exchange a quartern loaf for a handful of sawdust. Now Socialism takes away from a Christian man the Bible that comforts him, the sabbath that is his delight, the God that he worships, the Saviour that died for him, and the heaven that he hopes for: tell me, then, Tom, what does it give him in return?” If ever poor fellow was confounded, it was Tom Fletcher. Had he been sitting on a furze bush, he could hardly have been more fidgetty. He got out a few words, but they were very scarce and a long way apart; and as he could’nt well put ’em together, no wonder that I can’t. Well, I had only been firing at him, as it were, a pop, now and then, from a long way off, but now I was determined to bear upon him all at once.