The Mysteries of London; or, Lights and Shadows of London Life — page 145: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a —— — the dangerous doctrines that he had been deluded by in his first attempt to become a political reformer. With the loan thus obtained, and which by the way he shortly after paid honestly back to the lender, Jacob Randall came to Londen and turned bird-fancier —a pursuit for which his taste and inclinations in early life had better qualified him than for any other. His daughter, now grown up almost to womanhood, Was an excellent housekeeper; his shop was well attended to, and for @ time he strove and made his humble dwelling a happy ‘home for both. But the unfortunate propensity for drink in which he had once indulged at last came back with greater force than ever, and then returned those evil passions that had slumbered during the interval of sober industry, and lured him again to seek the company of the idle and the dissolute. The small profits of the business he looked upon as insufficient, and he tried to raise various supplies through other sources; from whieh, as he was by no means he was not deterred by a conscious- ness of their illegality. Thus he had for some time worked a private still down in the vaults under Water- loo Road, in conjunction with the most desperate members of the fraternity that he had become leagued with; and it was only when a sudden discovery of the practices there carried on caused two of his com- panivns to be convicted, that he gave up the hazardous employment. Then he ventured upon a little private smuggling on his own account, and his visits to the various ships as they came into port enabled him, under the pretence of purchasing foreign birds, to drive ' @ profitable traffic with the sailors in contraband spirits and tobacco. And thus the business he was supposed to rely upon fell away and wes neglected. | All this had taken place without Mary having more than a suspicion of the nefarious pursuits in which her father was engaged. She knew that his nature had entirely changed, that he drank deeply, and that his manners, under the influence of the potations in which he so copiously indulged, were day by day becoming more brutalised; but it was not until she had over- heard the compact he had entered into with the miser Hawkins, that she was fully aware of the extent to which he had become depraved. Her entreaties hav- ing been nnavailing, and her attempt to reclaim him from his vicious courses having been savagely repulsed, she then saw that her only hope was in withdrawing herself from the contamination that surrounded the dwelling; and how, with a determination to escape, she had carried out that intention, the reader already knows. Rindall, after his daughter’s departure, plunged still deeper into the vurtex of dissipation. So long as the funds lasted which he had got from the miser’s hoard, he went on drinking; from the first hour of the morning till the last at night he poured the fiery draught down his throat to deaden the reproaches of his conscience and annihilate the terrors of reflection. At this time he met Gruffey, the man who had driven him from his home. and who had now, like himself, become an outcast, The credulous disciples, on whose subscriptions he had long continued to subsist, had either grown too poor or too well-informed to suffer the delusion to be continued longer with profit, and he was then looking out for fresh dupes and trying to orgasise a new fund. His meeting with Randall resalted in a revival of their former intimacy, and acting under the persuasion of Gruffey, the quondam SS LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF LONDON LIFE, the work that be might get, without meddling with 130 was being formed under the direction of the artful demagogue, and to the furtherance of this scheme the last coin he had was devoted, The inflammatory speeches of Gruffey, or “the Firebrand,” as he was occasionally designated, had not been suffered to escape the notice of the authori ties, and the mischievous tendency of the revolu- tionary principles he inculcated, and their effect upon the minds of the ignorant and the foolish, had been carefully estimated and considered, At every meet- ing he attended there were spies who eecretly watched his movement:, and every word he uttered was re- corded in the note-book of a reporter who had been specially retained for the purpose. Randall was also marked out as one of the disaffected, and to him this system of espionage was likewise extended. But the information required was easily obtained through other channels, Even among the ringleaders of the party there was not wanting one who was ready for a bribe to turn traitor on his companions, and it was only the very insignificance of the plot and the unimportance attached to those concerned in it that prevented its immediate suppression. Thus matters were allowed to proceed unimpeded, though not unno- ticed, till the period arrived when some more turbulent demonstration than ususl attracted the attention of government, and rendered n the adoption of more stringent measures for the protection of the public and the preservation of property. At a late hour one night, Randall was returning alone from a meeting where Gruffey had got himself elected treasurer. The crafty demagogue had been working more successfully then he had yet been abie to do upon the minds of his auditory, and the result of his eloquent appeal to their pockets had beea considerable collection of pence, which, in his new capacity, he was to take care of and appropriate to the objects of the society for which the subscription was raised. The refusal ef Gruffey to account for similar funds exacted in the same manner had made Randall long before suspicious of his integrity, and this last manoeuvre, the object of which he well knew, had so convinced him of the treachereus part he was playing, that he had left the false democrat in disgust, and had resolved henceforward to withdraw himself from the connection. Passing on through the street, musing over the events of his past life, and wishing that some chance of redeeming his lost character was open to him, he began to reflect on the happiness he had once enjoyed, and the contrast it afforded to the miserable ecndition of an outcast that’ now threatened the remainder ot his days. Drink and bad company had been bis ruin, and had warped his better principles; but there was still enough left of his eriginal nature te make him capa- ble of feeling bitterly the errors of which he had been guilty. He had thought little of the kind disposition and patient endurance of his daughter whilst she was with him; but now that he was alone, and the sooth. ing influence of her voice was absent from his ear, Randall not only earnestly deplored the cause that had driven her from his home, but he felt that had she been then near him he would have gladly relin- quished all for the sake of her, and that his reforma- tion would have been as permanent as he meant it to be sincere. He had scarcely missed her at first; whilst drowning his cares in liquor, he had passed the time succeeding her departure in a reckless whirl of intoxication; but now the whole of his money had gone, and, in his moments of sober refection, he bird-fancier consented to assist in @ conspiracy that | loved back upon the past; deeply did he repent of —-s CONNICLIOO <S) (E@)