Mudfog and Other Sketches | Page 2

their dinner on church- days, and other great political questions;
and sometimes, long after silence has fallen on the town, and the distant

lights from the shops and houses have ceased to twinkle, like far-off
stars, to the sight of the boatmen on the river, the illumination in the
two unequal-sized windows of the town-hall, warns the inhabitants of
Mudfog that its little body of legislators, like a larger and better-known
body of the same genus, a great deal more noisy, and not a whit more
profound, are patriotically dozing away in company, far into the night,
for their country's good.
Among this knot of sage and learned men, no one was so eminently
distinguished, during many years, for the quiet modesty of his
appearance and demeanour, as Nicholas Tulrumble, the well-known
coal-dealer. However exciting the subject of discussion, however
animated the tone of the debate, or however warm the personalities
exchanged, (and even in Mudfog we get personal sometimes,) Nicholas
Tulrumble was always the same. To say truth, Nicholas, being an
industrious man, and always up betimes, was apt to fall asleep when a
debate began, and to remain asleep till it was over, when he would
wake up very much refreshed, and give his vote with the greatest
complacency. The fact was, that Nicholas Tulrumble, knowing that
everybody there had made up his mind beforehand, considered the
talking as just a long botheration about nothing at all; and to the present
hour it remains a question, whether, on this point at all events, Nicholas
Tulrumble was not pretty near right.
Time, which strews a man's head with silver, sometimes fills his
pockets with gold. As he gradually performed one good office for
Nicholas Tulrumble, he was obliging enough, not to omit the other.
Nicholas began life in a wooden tenement of four feet square, with a
capital of two and ninepence, and a stock in trade of three bushels and
a-half of coals, exclusive of the large lump which hung, by way of
sign-board, outside. Then he enlarged the shed, and kept a truck; then
he left the shed, and the truck too, and started a donkey and a Mrs.
Tulrumble; then he moved again and set up a cart; the cart was soon
afterwards exchanged for a waggon; and so he went on like his great
predecessor Whittington--only without a cat for a partner--increasing in
wealth and fame, until at last he gave up business altogether, and
retired with Mrs. Tulrumble and family to Mudfog Hall, which he had
himself erected, on something which he attempted to delude himself
into the belief was a hill, about a quarter of a mile distant from the town

of Mudfog.
About this time, it began to be murmured in Mudfog that Nicholas
Tulrumble was growing vain and haughty; that prosperity and success
had corrupted the simplicity of his manners, and tainted the natural
goodness of his heart; in short, that he was setting up for a public
character, and a great gentleman, and affected to look down upon his
old companions with compassion and contempt. Whether these reports
were at the time well-founded, or not, certain it is that Mrs. Tulrumble
very shortly afterwards started a four-wheel chaise, driven by a tall
postilion in a yellow cap,--that Mr. Tulrumble junior took to smoking
cigars, and calling the footman a 'feller,'--and that Mr. Tulrumble from
that time forth, was no more seen in his old seat in the chimney-corner
of the Lighterman's Arms at night. This looked bad; but, more than this,
it began to be observed that Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble attended the
corporation meetings more frequently than heretofore; and he no longer
went to sleep as he had done for so many years, but propped his eyelids
open with his two forefingers; that he read the newspapers by himself
at home; and that he was in the habit of indulging abroad in distant and
mysterious allusions to 'masses of people,' and 'the property of the
country,' and 'productive power,' and 'the monied interest:' all of which
denoted and proved that Nicholas Tulrumble was either mad, or worse;
and it puzzled the good people of Mudfog amazingly.
At length, about the middle of the month of October, Mr. Tulrumble
and family went up to London; the middle of October being, as Mrs.
Tulrumble informed her acquaintance in Mudfog, the very height of the
fashionable season.
Somehow or other, just about this time, despite the health- preserving
air of Mudfog, the Mayor died. It was a most extraordinary
circumstance; he had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five years. The
corporation didn't understand it at all; indeed it was with great
difficulty that one old gentleman, who was a great stickler for forms,
was dissuaded from proposing a vote of censure on such unaccountable
conduct. Strange