Oldal 37 [37]
OCR
15 children, and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them; thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still, and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher. Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher, who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would most unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rampacious animal upon nothing at all, if he hadn’t died, just Scnvenik: tonalty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for the experimental philosophy of the female to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of her system; for just at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the smallest ible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got smothered by accident; im any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers which it had never known in this. Occasionally, when there was some more than usually interesting inquest upon a parish child who had been overlooked in turning up a bedstead, or inadvertently scalded to death when there happened to be a washing, (though the latter accident was very scarce,—anything approaching to a washing being of rare occurrence in the farm,) the jury would take it into their heads to ask troublesome questions, or the parishioners would rebelliously affix their signatures to a remonstrance: but these impertinences were speedily checked by the evidence of the surgeon, and the testimony of the beadle; the former of whom had always opened the body, and found nothing inside (which was very probable indeed), and the latter of whom invariably swore whatever the parish wanted, which was very self-devotional. Besides, the board made periodical pilgrimages to the farm, and always sent the beadle the day before, to say they were coming. The when they went; and what more would the people have? It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver T'wist’s eighth birth-day found him a pale, thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference. But nature or inheritance had implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver’s breast ; it had plenty of room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment; and perhaps to this circumstance may be attributed his having any eighth birth-day at all. Be this as it may, however it was his eighth birth-day; and he was keeping it in the coal-cellar with a select party of two other young gentlemen, who, after participating with him in a sound threshing, had been locked up therein, for atrociously presuming to be hungry, when Mrs. Mann, the good lady of the house, was unexpectedly startled by the apparition of Mr. Bumble the beadle, striving to undo the wicket of the garden-gate. “Goodness gracious! is that you, Mr. Bumble, sir?” said Mrs. Mann, thrusting her head out of the window in well-affected ecstacies of joy. (Susan, take Oliver and them two brats up stairs, and wash "em directly.)— My heart alive! Mr. Bumble, how glad I am to see you sure-ly !" Now Mr. Bumble was a fat man, and a choleric one; so, instead of responding to this open-hearted salutation in a kindred spirit, he gave the little wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it a kick, which could have emanated from ne leg but a beadle’s, “ Lor, only think,” said Mrs. Mann, running out,—for the three boys had been removed by this time,—* only think of that! That I should have forgotten that the gate was bolted on the inside, on account of them dear children! Walk in, sir; walk in, pray, Mr. Bumble; do, sir.” Although this invitation was accompanied with a curtsey that might have softened the heart of a churchwarden, it by no means mollified the beadle. 6 Do you think this respectful or proper conduct, Mrs. Mann,” inquired Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane, — "to keep the parish officers a-waiting at your garden gate, when they come here on porochial business connected with the porochial orphans? Are you aware, Mrs. Mann, that you are, as I may say, a porochial delegate, and a stipendiary ?” Pm sure, Mr. Bumble, that I was only
