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https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Hunted_Down_Part_I/1859-08-20-Hunted_Down_Part1.pdf
361ba009e87ebd1ae06c6581d1d3adb1
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Short Fiction
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short-stories
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Lydia Craig
Scripto
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<p><strong>This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections.</strong></p>
<p>Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in <em>The Monthly Magazine,</em> and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as <em>The Evening Chronicle</em>, <em>Bell’s Life in London, </em>and <em>Bentley's Miscellany</em> with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes.</p>
<p>Global fame arrived with the serial publication of <em>The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club</em> (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in <em>Sketches by Boz</em>, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on <em>Sketches by Boz</em>’ (44). <em>Sketches of Young Gentlemen</em> (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort <em>Sketches of Young Ladies</em> (1838), and <em>Sketches of Couples</em> (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’.</p>
<p>After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals <em>Household Words</em> and <em>All the Year Round</em>, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as <em>The Haunted House</em> (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as <em>The Perils of Certain English Prisoners</em> (1857) and <em>No Thoroughfare</em> (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as <em>The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, </em>and <em>Our Young Folks</em>.</p>
<p>Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the <em>Sketches </em>are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition.</p>
<p>Other anthologies, for instance <em>Selected Short Fiction</em> (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire <em>oeuvre </em>in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including <em>Dickens and the Short Story</em>. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and <em>Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author</em> (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by<em> The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz</em> (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include <em>Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836</em> (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and <em>Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers</em> (1994), edited by Michael Slater.</p>
<p>Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this <em>Dickens Search</em> collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results.<br /><br />While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as <em>British Newspaper Archive (BNA),</em> digital archives, and such open-access sites as<em> Hathi Trust, Internet Archive,</em> and <em>Google Books</em>; all items are linked to their original location on the internet.</p>
<p>Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked.</p>
1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in <em>Sketches by Boz.’</em> In <em>Some Keywords in Dickens</em>. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the <em>Morning Chronicle</em>”. <em>Dickens Quarterly </em>4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before <em>Sketches by Boz</em>: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. <em>Dickensian</em> (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's <em>Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual</em> 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. <em>Dickens Studies Annual</em> 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; <em>Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, </em>No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. <em>SEL: Studies in English Literature </em>48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of <em>Sketches by Boz’</em>. <em>Dickens Quarterly</em> 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. <em>Dickens Studies Annual</em> 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. <em>Dickens Studies Annual</em> 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. <em>The Dickensian</em> 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in <em>Sketches by Boz</em>.' <em>ELH</em> 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49.
Short Story
Publication Type
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Newspaper
Publication
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<em>The New York Ledger</em>
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18590820
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I. Most of us see some romances in life. In my capacity as Chief-Manager of a Life Assurance Office, I think I have within the last thirty years seen more romances than the generality of men: however unpromising the opportunity may, at first sight, seem. As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the means that I used to want, of considering what I have seen, at leisure. My experiences have a more remarkable aspect, so reviewed, than they had when they were in progress. I have come home from the Play now, and can recal the scenes of the Drama upon which the curtain has fallen, free from the glare, bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre. Let me recal one of these Romances of the real world. There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom obliges every human creature to present his or her own page with the individual character written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is little studied. It may require some natural aptitude, and it must require (for everything does), some patience and some pains. That, these are not usually given to it—that, numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace expressions of face as the whole list of characteristics, and neither seek nor know the refinements that are truest—that You, for instance, give a great deal of time and attention to the reading of music, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew if you please, and do not qualify yourself to read the face of the master or mistress looking over your shoulder teaching it to you—I assume to be five hundred times more probable than improbable. Perhaps, a little self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this; facial expression requires no study from you, you think; it comes by nature to you to know enough about it, and you are not to be taken in. I confess, for my part, that I have been taken in, over and over and over again. I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been taken in (of course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any other class of persons. How came I to be so deceived? Had I quite mis-read their faces? No. Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was, in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away. II. The partition which separated my own office from our general outer office in the City, was of thick plate-glass. I could see through it what passed in the outer office, without hearing a word. I had it put up, in place of a wall that had been there for years—ever since the house was built. It is no matter whether I did or did not make the change, in order that I might derive my first impression of strangers who came to us on business, from their faces alone, without being influenced by anything they said. Enough to mention that I turned my glass partition to that account, and that a Life Assurance Office is at all times exposed to be practiced upon by the most crafty and cruel of the human race. It was through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman whose story I am going to tell. He had come in, without my observing it, and had put his hat and umbrella on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take some papers from one of the clerks. He was about forty or so, dark, exceedingly well dressed in black—being in mourning—and the hand he extended with a polite air, had a particularly well-fitting, black kid glove upon it. His hair, which was elaborately brushed and oiled, was parted straight up the middle; and he presented this parting to the clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if he had said, in so many words: "You must take me, if you please, my friend, just as I show myself. Come straight up here, follow the gravel path, keep off the grass, I allow no trespassing." I conceived a very great aversion to that man, the moment I thus saw him. He had asked for some of our printed forms, and the clerk was giving them to him and explaining them. An obliged and agreeable smile was on his face, and his eyes met those of the clerk with a sprightly look. (I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.) I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of my looking at him. Immediately, he turned the parting in his hair toward the glass partition, as if he said to me with a sweet smile: "Straight up here, if you please. Off the grass!" In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his umbrella, and was gone. I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, "Who was that?" He had the gentleman’s card in his hand. "Mr. Julius Slinkton, Middle Temple." "A barrister, Mr. Adams?" "I think not, sir." "I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his having no Reverend here," said I. "Probably, from his appearance," Mr. Adams replied, "he is reading for orders." I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat, and dainty linen altogether. "What did he want, Mr. Adams?" "Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of reference." "Recommended here? Did he say?" "Yes, he said he was recommended here by a friend of yours. He noticed you, but said that as he had not the pleasure of your personal acquaintance he would not trouble you." "Did he know my name?" "Oh yes, sir! He said, 'There is Mr. Sampson, I see.'" "A well-spoken gentleman, apparently?" "Remarkably so, sir." "Insinuating manners, apparently?" "Very much so, indeed, sir." "Hah!" said I. "I want nothing at present, Mr. Adams." Within a fortnight of that day, I went to dine with a friend of mine, a merchant, a man of taste who buys pictures and books; and the first man I saw among the company was Mr. Julius Slinkton. There he was, standing before the fire, with good large eyes and an open expression of face; but still (I thought) requiring everybody to come at him by the prepared way he offered, and by no other. I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr. Sampson, and my friend did so. Mr. Slinkton was very happy to see me. Not too happy; there was no over-doing of the matter; happy in a thoroughly well-bred, perfectly unmeaning, way. "I thought you had met," our host observed. "No," said Mr. Slinkton. "I did look in at Mr. Sampson’s office, on your recommendation; but I really did not feel justified in troubling Mr. Sampson himself, on a point in the everyday routine of an ordinary clerk." I said I should have been glad to show him any attention on our friend’s introduction. "I am sure of that," said he, "and am much obliged. At another time, perhaps, I may be less delicate. Only, however, if I have real business; for I know, Mr. Sampson, how precious business time is, and what a vast number of impertinent people there are in the world." I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow. "You were thinking," said I, "of effecting a policy on your life." "Oh dear, no! I am afraid I am not so prudent as you pay me the compliment of supposing me to be, Mr. Sampson. I merely inquired for a friend. But, you know what friends are in such matters. Nothing may ever come of it. I have the greatest reluctance to trouble men of business with inquiries for friends, knowing the probabilities to be a thousand to one that the friends will never follow them up. People are so fickle, so selfish, so inconsiderate. Don’t you, in your business, find them so every day, Mr. Sampson?" I was going to give a qualified answer; but he turned his smooth, white parting on me with its "Straight up here, if you please!" and I answered, "Yes." "I hear, Mr. Sampson," he resumed, presently, for our friend had a new cook, and dinner was not so punctual as usual, "that your profession has recently suffered a great loss." "In money?" said I. He laughed at my ready association of loss with money, and replied, "No, in talent and vigour." Not at once following out his allusion, I considered for a moment. "Has it sustained a loss of that kind?" said I. "I was not aware of it." "Understand me, Mr. Sampson. I don’t imagine that you have retired. It is not so bad as that. But Mr. Meltham—" "Oh, to be sure!" said I. "Yes! Mr. Meltham, the young actuary of the 'Inestimable.'" "Just so," he returned in a consoling way. "He is a great loss. He was at once the most profound, the most original, and the most energetic man I have ever known connected with Life Assurance." I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem and admiration for Meltham, and my gentleman had indefinitely conveyed to me some suspicion that he wanted to sneer at him. He recalled me to my guard by presenting that trim pathway up his head, with its internal 'Not on the grass, if you please—the gravel.’" "You knew him, Mr. Slinkton?" "Only by reputation. To have known him as an acquaintance, or as a friend, is an honour I should have sought if he had remained in society, though I might never have had the good fortune to attain it, being a man of far inferior mark. He was scarcely above thirty, I suppose?" "About thirty." "Ah!" He sighed in his former consoling way. "What creatures we are! To break up, Mr. Sampson, and become incapable of business at that time of life!—Any reason assigned for the melancholy fact?" ("Humph!" thought I, as I looked at him. "But I WON’T go up the track, and I WILL go on the grass.") "What reason have you heard assigned, Mr. Slinkton?" I asked, point blank. "Most likely a false one. You know what Rumour is, Mr. Sampson. I never repeat what I hear; it is the only way of paring the nails and shaving the head of Rumour. But when you ask me what reason I have heard assigned for Mr. Meltham’s passing away from among men, it is another thing. I am not gratifying idle gossip then. I was told. Mr. Sampson, that Mr. Meltham had relinquished all his avocations and all his prospects, because he was, in fact, broken-hearted. A disappointed attachment I heard—though it hardly seems probable, in the case of a man so distinguished and so attractive." "Attractions and distinctions are no armour against death," said I. "Oh! she died? Pray pardon me. I did not hear that. That, indeed, makes it very, very sad. Poor Mr. Meltham! She died? Ah, dear me! Lamentable, lamentable!" I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I still suspected an unaccountable sneer under all this, until he said, as we were parted, like the other knots of talkers, by the announcement of dinner: "Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved on behalf of a man whom I have never known. I am not so disinterested as you may suppose. I have suffered, and recently too, from death myself. I have lost one of two charming nieces, who were my constant companions. She died young—barely three-and-twenty—and even her remaining sister is far from strong. The world is a grave!" He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached for the coldness of my manner. Coldness and distrust had been engendered in me, I knew, by my bad experiences; they were not natural to me; and I often thought how much I had lost in life, losing trustfulness, and how little I had gained, gaining hard caution. This state of mind being habitual to me, I troubled myself more about this conversation than I might have troubled myself about a greater matter. I listened to his talk at dinner, and observed how readily other men responded to it, and with what a graceful instinct he adapted his subjects to the knowledge and habits of those he talked with. As, in talking with me, he had easily started the subject I might be supposed to understand best, and to be the most interested in, so, in talking with others, he guided himself by the same rule. The company was of a varied character; but, he was not at fault, that I could discover, with any member of it. He knew just as much of each man’s pursuit as made him agreeable to that man in reference to it, and just as little as made it natural in him to seek modestly for information when the theme was broached. As he talked and talked—but really not too much, for the rest of us seemed to force it upon him—I became quite angry with myself. I took his face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it in detail. I could not say much against any of his features separately; I could say even less against them when they were put together. "Then is it not monstrous," I asked myself, "that because a man happens to part his hair straight up the middle of his head, I should permit myself to suspect, and even to detest him?" (I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense. An observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger, is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door.) I took my part in the conversation with him after a time, and we got on remarkably well. In the drawing-room I asked the host how long he had known Mr. Slinkton? He answered, not many months; he had met him at the house of a celebrated painter then present, who had known him well when he was travelling with his nieces in Italy for their health. His plans in life being broken by the death of one of them, he was reading, with the intention of going back to college as a matter of form, taking his degree, and going into orders. I could not but argue with myself that here was the true explanation of his interest in poor Meltham, and that I had been almost brutal in my distrust on that simple head. III. On the very next day but one, I was sitting behind my glass partition, as before, when he came into the outer office, as before. The moment I saw him again without hearing him, I hated him worse than ever. It was only for a moment that I had this opportunity; for he waved his tight fitting black glove the instant I looked at him, and came straight in. "Mr. Sampson, good day! I presume, you see, upon your kind permission to intrude upon you. I don’t keep my word in being justified by business, for my business here—if I may so abuse the word—is of the slightest nature." I asked, was it anything I could assist him in? "I thank you, no. I merely called to inquire outside, whether my dilatory friend had been so false to himself, as to be practical and sensible. But, of course, he has done nothing. I gave him your papers with my own hand, and he was hot upon the intention, but of course he has done nothing. Apart from the general human disinclination to do anything that ought to be done, I dare say there is a specialty about assuring one’s life? You find it like will-making. People are so superstitious, and take it for granted they will die soon afterwards." Up here, if you please. Straight up here, Mr. Sampson. Neither to the right nor to the left! I almost fancied I could hear him breathe the words, as he sat smiling at me, with that intolerable parting exactly opposite the bridge of my nose. "There is such a feeling sometimes, no doubt," I replied; "but I don’t think it obtains to any great extent." "Well!" said he, with a shrug and a smile, "I wish some good angel would influence my friend in the right direction. I rashly promised his mother and sister in Norfolk, to see it done, and he promised them that he would do it. But I suppose he never will." He spoke for a minute or two on indifferent topics, and went away. [TO BE CONTINUED IN OUR NEXT.] *This is the first and only story that MR. DICKENS has ever written for an American publication. It is but a short one, and will be comlpeted in two or three numbers of the LEDGER. We expect to have the pleasure of giving our readers a much longer one by-and-by.
Dublin Core
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Title
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'Hunted Down', Part I
Description
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Published in <em>The New York Ledger</em> vol. 14 (20 August <span>1859), p. 5.</span>
Creator
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Dickens, Charles
Type
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Short story
Identifier
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1859-08-20-Hunted_Down_Part1
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<em>The New York Public Library Digital Collections,</em> <a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-new-york-ledger?filters%5Bname%5D=Dickens%2C+Charles%2C+1812-1870&keywords=#/?tab=navigation">https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-new-york-ledger?filters%5Bname%5D=Dickens%2C+Charles%2C+1812-1870&keywords=#/?tab=navigation</a>.
Date
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1859-08-20
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Dickens, Charles. 'Hunted Down', Part I (20 August 1859). <em>Dickens Search.</em> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1859-08-20-Hunted_Down_Part1">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1859-08-20-Hunted_Down_Part1</a>.
Scripto
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A written representation of a document.
<p>I.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Most</span><span> </span>of us see some romances in life. In my capacity as Chief-Manager of a Life Assurance Office, I think I have within the last thirty years seen more romances than the generality of men: however unpromising the opportunity may, at first sight, seem.</p>
<p>As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the means that I used to want, of considering what I have seen, at leisure. My experiences have a more remarkable aspect, so reviewed, than they had when they were in progress. I have come home from the Play now, and can recal the scenes of the Drama upon which the curtain has fallen, free from the glare, bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre.</p>
<p>Let me recal one of these Romances of the real world.</p>
<p>There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom obliges every human creature to present his or her own page with the individual character written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is little studied. It may require some natural aptitude, and it must require (for everything does), some patience and some pains. That, these are not usually given to it—that, numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace expressions of face as the whole list of characteristics, and neither seek nor know the refinements that are truest—that You, for instance, give a great deal of time and attention to the reading of music, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew if you please, and do not qualify yourself to read the face of the master or mistress looking over your shoulder teaching it to you—I assume to be five hundred times more probable than improbable. Perhaps, a little self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this; facial expression requires no study from you, you think; it comes by nature to you to know enough about it, and you are not to be taken in.</p>
<p>I confess, for my part, that I<span> </span><i>have</i><span> </span>been taken in, over and over and over again. I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been taken in (of course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any other class of persons. How came I to be so deceived? Had I quite mis-read their faces?</p>
<p>No. Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was, in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away.</p>
<p>II.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span><span> </span>partition which separated my own office from our general outer office in the City, was of thick plate-glass. I could see through it what passed in the outer office, without hearing a word. I had it put up, in place of a wall that had been there for years—ever since the house was built. It is no matter whether I did or did not make the change, in order that I might derive my first impression of strangers who came to us on business, from their faces alone, without being influenced by anything they said. Enough to mention that I turned my glass partition to that account, and that a Life Assurance Office is at all times exposed to be practiced upon by the most crafty and cruel of the human race.</p>
<p>It was through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman whose story I am going to tell.</p>
<p>He had come in, without my observing it, and had put his hat and umbrella on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take some papers from one of the clerks. He was about forty or so, dark, exceedingly well dressed in black—being in mourning—and the hand he extended with a polite air, had a particularly well-fitting, black kid glove upon it. His hair, which was elaborately brushed and oiled, was parted straight up the middle; and he presented this parting to the clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if he had said, in so many words: "You must take me, if you please, my friend, just as I show myself. Come straight up here, follow the gravel path, keep off the grass, I allow no trespassing."</p>
<p>I conceived a very great aversion to that man, the moment I thus saw him.</p>
<p>He had asked for some of our printed forms, and the clerk was giving them to him and explaining them. An obliged and agreeable smile was on his face, and his eyes met those of the clerk with a sprightly look. (I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.)</p>
<p>I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of my looking at him. Immediately, he turned the parting in his hair toward the glass partition, as if he said to me with a sweet smile: "Straight up here, if you please. Off the grass!"</p>
<p>In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his umbrella, and was gone.</p>
<p>I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, "Who was that?"</p>
<p>He had the gentleman’s card in his hand. "Mr. Julius Slinkton, Middle Temple."</p>
<p>"A barrister, Mr. Adams?"</p>
<p>"I think not, sir."</p>
<p>"I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his having no Reverend here," said I.</p>
<p>"Probably, from his appearance," Mr. Adams replied, "he is reading for orders."</p>
<p>I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat, and dainty linen altogether.</p>
<p>"What did he want, Mr. Adams?"</p>
<p>"Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of reference."</p>
<p>"Recommended here? Did he say?"</p>
<p>"Yes, he said he was recommended here by a friend of yours. He noticed you, but said that as he had not the pleasure of your personal acquaintance he would not trouble you."</p>
<p>"Did he know my name?"</p>
<p>"Oh yes, sir! He said, 'There<span> </span><i>is</i><span> </span>Mr. Sampson, I see.'"</p>
<p>"A well-spoken gentleman, apparently?"</p>
<p>"Remarkably so, sir."</p>
<p>"Insinuating manners, apparently?"</p>
<p>"Very much so, indeed, sir."<br /><br />"Hah!" said I. "I want nothing at present, Mr. Adams."</p>
<p>Within a fortnight of that day, I went to dine with a friend of mine, a merchant, a man of taste who buys pictures and books; and the first man I saw among the company was Mr. Julius Slinkton. There he was, standing before the fire, with good large eyes and an open expression of face; but still (I thought) requiring everybody to come at him by the prepared way he offered, and by no other.</p>
<p>I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr. Sampson, and my friend did so. Mr. Slinkton was very happy to see me. Not too happy; there was no over-doing of the matter; happy in a thoroughly well-bred, perfectly unmeaning, way.</p>
<p>"I thought you had met," our host observed.</p>
<p>"No," said Mr. Slinkton. "I did look in at Mr. Sampson’s office, on your recommendation; but I really did not feel justified in troubling Mr. Sampson himself, on a point in the everyday routine of an ordinary clerk."</p>
<p>I said I should have been glad to show him any attention on our friend’s introduction.</p>
<p>"I am sure of that," said he, "and am much obliged. At another time, perhaps, I may be less delicate. Only, however, if I have real business; for I know, Mr. Sampson, how precious business time is, and what a vast number of impertinent people there are in the world."</p>
<p>I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow. "You were thinking," said I, "of effecting a policy on your life."</p>
<p>"Oh dear, no! I am afraid I am not so prudent as you pay me the compliment of supposing me to be, Mr. Sampson. I merely inquired for a friend. But, you know what friends are in such matters. Nothing may ever come of it. I have the greatest reluctance to trouble men of business with inquiries for friends, knowing the probabilities to be a thousand to one that the friends will never follow them up. People are so fickle, so selfish, so inconsiderate. Don’t you, in your business, find them so every day, Mr. Sampson?"</p>
<p>I was going to give a qualified answer; but he turned his smooth, white parting on me with its "Straight up here, if you please!" and I answered, "Yes."</p>
<p>"I hear, Mr. Sampson," he resumed, presently, for our friend had a new cook, and dinner was not so punctual as usual, "that your profession has recently suffered a great loss."</p>
<p>"In money?" said I.</p>
<p>He laughed at my ready association of loss with money, and replied, "No, in talent and vigour."</p>
<p>Not at once following out his allusion, I considered for a moment. "<i>Has</i><span> </span>it sustained a loss of that kind?" said I. "I was not aware of it."</p>
<p>"Understand me, Mr. Sampson. I don’t imagine that you have retired. It is not so bad as that. But Mr. Meltham—"</p>
<p>"Oh, to be sure!" said I. "Yes! Mr. Meltham, the young actuary of the 'Inestimable.'"</p>
<p>"Just so," he returned in a consoling way.</p>
<p>"He is a great loss. He was at once the most profound, the most original, and the most energetic man I have ever known connected with Life Assurance."</p>
<p>I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem and admiration for Meltham, and my gentleman had indefinitely conveyed to me some suspicion that he wanted to sneer at him. He recalled me to my guard by presenting that trim pathway up his head, with its internal 'Not on the grass, if you please—the gravel.’"</p>
<p>"You knew him, Mr. Slinkton?"</p>
<p>"Only by reputation. To have known him as an acquaintance, or as a friend, is an honour I should have sought if he had remained in society, though I might never have had the good fortune to attain it, being a man of far inferior mark. He was scarcely above thirty, I suppose?"</p>
<p>"About thirty."</p>
<p>"Ah!" He sighed in his former consoling way. "What creatures we are! To break up, Mr. Sampson, and become incapable of business at that time of life!—Any reason assigned for the melancholy fact?"</p>
<p>("Humph!" thought I, as I looked at him. "But I<span> </span><span class="GutSmall">WON’T</span><span> </span>go up the track, and I<span> </span><span class="GutSmall">WILL</span><span> </span>go on the grass.")</p>
<p>"What reason have you heard assigned, Mr. Slinkton?" I asked, point blank.</p>
<p>"Most likely a false one. You know what Rumour is, Mr. Sampson. I never repeat what I hear; it is the only way of paring the nails and shaving the head of Rumour. But when<span> </span><i>you</i><span> </span>ask me what reason I have heard assigned for Mr. Meltham’s passing away from among men, it is another thing. I am not gratifying idle gossip then. I was told. Mr. Sampson, that Mr. Meltham had relinquished all his avocations and all his prospects, because he was, in fact, broken-hearted. A disappointed attachment I heard—though it hardly seems probable, in the case of a man so distinguished and so attractive."</p>
<p>"Attractions and distinctions are no armour against death," said I.</p>
<p>"Oh! she died? Pray pardon me. I did not hear that. That, indeed, makes it very, very sad. Poor Mr. Meltham! She died? Ah, dear me! Lamentable, lamentable!"</p>
<p>I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I still suspected an unaccountable sneer under all this, until he said, as we were parted, like the other knots of talkers, by the announcement of dinner:</p>
<p>"Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved on behalf of a man whom I have never known. I am not so disinterested as you may suppose. I have suffered, and recently too, from death myself. I have lost one of two charming nieces, who were my constant companions. She died young—barely three-and-twenty—and even her remaining sister is far from strong. The world is a grave!"</p>
<p>He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached for the coldness of my manner. Coldness and distrust had been engendered in me, I knew, by my bad experiences; they were not natural to me; and I often thought how much I had lost in life, losing trustfulness, and how little I had gained, gaining hard caution. This state of mind being habitual to me, I troubled myself more about this conversation than I might have troubled myself about a greater matter. I listened to his talk at dinner, and observed how readily other men responded to it, and with what a graceful instinct he adapted his subjects to the knowledge and habits of those he talked with. As, in talking with me, he had easily started the subject I might be supposed to understand best, and to be the most interested in, so, in talking with others, he guided himself by the same rule. The company was of a varied character; but, he was not at fault, that I could discover, with any member of it. He knew just as much of each man’s pursuit as made him agreeable to that man in reference to it, and just as little as made it natural in him to seek modestly for information when the theme was broached.</p>
<p>As he talked and talked—but really not too much, for the rest of us seemed to force it upon him—I became quite angry with myself. I took his face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it in detail. I could not say much against any of his features separately; I could say even less against them when they were put together. "Then is it not monstrous," I asked myself, "that because a man happens to part his hair straight up the middle of his head, I should permit myself to suspect, and even to detest him?"</p>
<p>(I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense. An observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger, is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door.)</p>
<p>I took my part in the conversation with him after a time, and we got on remarkably well. In the drawing-room I asked the host how long he had known Mr. Slinkton? He answered, not many months; he had met him at the house of a celebrated painter then present, who had known him well when he was travelling with his nieces in Italy for their health. His plans in life being broken by the death of one of them, he was reading, with the intention of going back to college as a matter of form, taking his degree, and going into orders. I could not but argue with myself that here was the true explanation of his interest in poor Meltham, and that I had been almost brutal in my distrust on that simple head.</p>
<p>III.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">On</span><span> </span>the very next day but one, I was sitting behind my glass partition, as before, when he came into the outer office, as before. The moment I saw him again without hearing him, I hated him worse than ever.</p>
<p>It was only for a moment that I had this opportunity; for he waved his tight fitting black glove the instant I looked at him, and came straight in.</p>
<p>"Mr. Sampson, good day! I presume, you see, upon your kind permission to intrude upon you. I don’t keep my word in being justified by business, for my business here—if I may so abuse the word—is of the slightest nature."</p>
<p>I asked, was it anything I could assist him in?</p>
<p>"I thank you, no. I merely called to inquire outside, whether my dilatory friend had been so false to himself, as to be practical and sensible. But, of course, he has done nothing. I gave him your papers with my own hand, and he was hot upon the intention, but of course he has done nothing. Apart from the general human disinclination to do anything that ought to be done, I dare say there is a specialty about assuring one’s life? You find it like will-making. People are so superstitious, and take it for granted they will die soon afterwards."</p>
<p>Up here, if you please. Straight up here, Mr. Sampson. Neither to the right nor to the left! I almost fancied I could hear him breathe the words, as he sat smiling at me, with that intolerable parting exactly opposite the bridge of my nose.</p>
<p>"There is such a feeling sometimes, no doubt," I replied; "but I don’t think it obtains to any great extent."</p>
<p>"Well!" said he, with a shrug and a smile, "I wish some good angel would influence my friend in the right direction. I rashly promised his mother and sister in Norfolk, to see it done, and he promised them that he would do it. But I suppose he never will."<br /><br />He spoke for a minute or two on indifferent topics, and went away.<br /><br />[TO BE CONTINUED IN OUR NEXT.]<br /><br />*This is the first and only story that MR. DICKENS has ever written for an American publication. It is but a short one, and will be comlpeted in two or three numbers of the LEDGER. We expect to have the pleasure of giving our readers a much longer one by-and-by.</p>