The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

wonderful specifics for everything, through which Tobias went with a crash. “There he is!” said Ben—“ale does it.” “Fire! murder! my glass case!” cried the chemist. “Oh, you monster!” “Ale does it. What do you mean, eh?” Big Ben backed a pace or two and went head and shoulders through a glass case of similar varieties that was against the wall. “Gracious bless the beasteses,” said Ben, “is your house made of glass? What do you mean by it, eh? A fellow can’t turn round here without going through something. You ought to be persecuted according to law, that you ought.” Now this learned chemist had in the glass case against which Big Ben had tumbled a skeleton, which, from the stunning and terrible look it had in his shop, brought him many customers, and it was against this remnant of humanity that Big Ben’s head met, after going through the glass as a preparatory step. By some means or another Ben caught his head under the skeleton’s ribs, and the consequence was that out he hooked him from the glass case, and the first intimation Ben had of anything unusual, consisted of seeing a pair of bony legs dangling down on each side of him. So unexpected a phenomenon gave Ben what he called a “blessed turn,” and out he bounced from the shop, carrying the skeleton for all the world like what is called pick-a-back, for the wires that supplied the place of cartilages held it erect, and so awful a sight surely was never seen in the streets of as Big Ben with a skeleton upon his back. People fled before—some turned in at shop doors; and an old lady with a large umbrella and a pair of gigantic pattens® went clean through a silversmith’s window. But we must leave Ben and the skeleton to get on as well as they can en route to the Tower, while we turn our attention to Tobias. “Are you a surgeon?” cried Colonel Jeffery. “A—a surgeon? No, I’m only a druggist; but is that any reason why a second Goliath should come into my shop and destroy everything?” Colonel Jeffery did not wait for anything more, but snatching Tobias from the remnants of the plate glass, he ran to the door with him, and handing him to the first person he saw there, he cried— “When I am mounted, give me the boy.” “Yes, sir.” He sprang upon his horse; Tobias was handed to him like a bale of goods, and laying him comfortably as he could upon the saddle before him, off set the colonel at a good round trot through Finsbury to his own house. Colonel Jeffery had no sort of intention that the chemist should be a sufferer, but in his hurry to be off with Tobias, and speedily get medical advice for him, he forgot to say so, and accordingly there stood the man of physic then fairly bewildered by the events of the last few moments, during which his stock in trade had been materially damaged and a valuable amount of glass broken, to say nothing of the singular and most unexpected abduction of his friend the skeleton. “Here’s a pretty day’s work!” he said. “Here’s a pretty day’s work! More mischief done than enough, and the worst of it is, my wife will hear of it, and then there will be a deal of peace in the house. Oh, dear—oh, dear—was there ever such an unfort—I knew it—” A good rap upon his head from a pair of bellows wielded by a little meagre-faced yeoman, that he was big enough to have swallowed, confirmed his words. While all this was going on, Colonel Jeffery had ridden fast, and passing through Finsbury and up the City-road, had reached his house in the fashionable—but now quite the reverse, as the man says in the play—district of Pentonville. “This is a prize,” thought the colonel, “worth the taking. It will go hard with me but I will extract from this boy all that he knows of Sweeney Todd, and we shall see how far that knowledge will go towards the confirmation of my suspicions regarding him.” He carried Tobias himself to a comfortable bed-room, and immediately sent for a medical practitioner of good repute in the neighbourhood, who happening fortunately to be at home, obeyed the summons immediately. He sent likewise for his friend the captain, whom he knew would be overjoyed to hear of what he would call the capture of Tobias Ragg. The medical man made his appearance first, as being much closer at hand, and the colonel led him to the apartment of the invalid boy, saying to him as he went— “T know nothing of what is the matter with this lad—I have been very anxious to see him on account of certain information that he possesses, and only found him this morning upon a door step in the street, in the state you see him.” “Ts he very ill?” “T am afraid he is.” The medical man followed the colonel to the room in which poor Tobias lay, and after gazing upon him for a few moments, and opening with his fingers the closed eyelids of Tobias, he shook his head. “T wish I knew,” he said, “what has produced this state. Can you not inform me, sir?” “Indeed I cannot, but I suspect that the boy’s imagination has been cruelly acted upon by a man, whom you will excuse me from naming just at present, but whom I sincerely hope to bring to justice shortly.” “The boy’s brain, no doubt, is in a bad condition. I do not take upon myself to say that, as an organ, it is diseased, but fractionally it is damaged. However, we must do the best we can to recover him from this condition of collapse in which he is.” “Can you form any opinion as to his probable recovery?” “Indeed I cannot, but he is young, and youth is a great thing. The best that can be done shall be done.” “T thank you. Spare nothing for the lad, and pay him every attention, as though he were a son or a brother of my own. I long to hear him speak, and to convince him that he is really among friends, who are not only willing to protect him, but have likewise the power to CORniclooo S CO)