Some Roundabout Papers | Page 6

used to do. The dear voice
thrills in our hearts. The rapture of the meeting, the terrible, terrible
parting, again and again the tragedy is acted over. Yesterday, in the
street, I saw a pair of eyes so like two which used to brighten at my
coming once, that the whole past came back as I walked lonely, in the
rush of the Strand, and I was young again in the midst of joys and
sorrows, alike sweet and sad, alike sacred and fondly remembered.
If I tell a tale out of school, will any harm come to my old school-girl?
Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which was a source of great
pain and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes. She sewed it away in her old
stays somewhere, thinking here at least was a safe investment -- (vestis
-- a vest -- an investment, -- pardon me, thou poor old thing, but I
cannot help the pleasantry). And what do you think? Another
pensionnaire of the establishment cut the coin out of Goody's stays --

an old woman who went upon two crutches! Faugh, the old witch!
What? Violence amongst these toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble
ones? Robbery amongst the penniless? Dogs coming and snatching
Lazarus's crumbs out of his lap? Ah, how indignant Goody was as she
told the story! To that pond at Potsdam where the carps live for
hundreds of hundreds of years, with hunches of blue mould on their
back, I daresay the little Prince and Princess of Preussen-Britannien
come sometimes with crumbs and cakes to feed the mouldy ones.
Those eyes may have goggled from beneath the weeds at Napoleon's
jack-boots: they have seen Frederick's lean shanks reflected in their
pool; and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them, and now for a
crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob, squabble, gobble,
relapsing into their tranquillity when the ignoble struggle is over. Sans
souci, indeed! It is mighty well writing "Sans souci" over the gate; but
where is the gate through which Care has not slipped? She perches on
the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box: she whispers the porter
sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down
between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I daresay
she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes' meagre bolster, and
whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again! No, no;
they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself!
Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has
the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score
and ten years has it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry and
obscure? Peace and goodwill to thee, let us say at this Christmas season.
Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old pilgrim! And
of the bread which God's bounty gives us, I pray, brother reader, we
may not forget to set aside a part for those noble and silent poor, from
whose innocent hands war has torn the means of labour. Enough! As I
hope for beef at Christmas, I vow a note shall be sent to Saint Lazarus
Union House, in which Mr Roundabout requests the honour of Mrs
Twoshoes' company on Friday, 26th December.

DE JUVENTUTE

We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are
like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. The children will gather

round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell us, grandpapa, about the old
world." And we shall mumble our old stories; and we shall drop off one
by one; and there will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and
feeble. There will be but ten prae-railroadites left: then three -- then two
-- then one -- then 0! If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility (of
which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide or his face), I think he
would go down to the bottom of his tank, and never come up again.
Does he not see that he belongs to bygone ages, and that his great
hulking barrel of a body is out of place in these times? What has he in
common with the brisk young life surrounding him? In the watches of
the night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg,
when even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased
their chatter, he -- I mean the hippopotamus -- and the elephant, and the
long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and have a
colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which they
remember, where mighty monsters floundered through the ooze,
crocodiles basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of