The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 239: what you’re looking at

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

212 REYNOLDS’ WORKS to Christina. While walking to and fro in the street, he had beheld a posse of ragged-looking creatures emerge from a narrow, dirty court. These individuals consisted of a man dressed like a dilapidated journeyman carpenter, with a paper cap on his head, a woman having the appearance of the wife of an impoverished artisan, and a whole tribe of children whose rags and tatters scarcely covered their nakedness. At the first apparition of this wretched-looking party, Christian’s hand was thrust into his pocket to clutch the first coin which his fingers might happen to encounter, in order to transfer it to the poor family, when something which occurred at the moment made him drop the coin again in a sort of stupefied amazement. ‘Now, Bet,’’ said the man, ‘‘ mind you look like an honest woman for once in your life, and turn that gin- drinking air of yours into a precious dolefulness. And you brats, you, 1f you don’t put on as much misery as possible, I sha’n’t get enough to pay your parents for the hiring of you. Mind, Bet, the dodge is that we walked all the way from Liverpool and can’t get no work whatsomever.”’ These were the words which had produced a sudden re- vulsion of feeling on the part of Christian, and had so sud- denly made him drop the coin again to the bottom of his pocket. He at once saw that it was a gang of unprincipled impostors whom he had been about to relieve. They did not immediately catch sight of him, when they were issiung from the court, nor did they suspect that he overhead the injunctions given by the man, for no sooner was he perceived by them, than he was surrounded by the ragged horde of children, imploring alms in a whining tone, while their dirty little paws were stretched out toward him. At the same instant the man began to snivel forth a miserable tale, of how he was a carpenter out of work, how he and his dear wife and eight children, four of whom were small ones, had tramped all the way from Liverpool, never once sleeping in a bed and enduring every possible privation. Then the woman took up the strain, in a canting, whining, lugubrious tone, telling Christian how she had been brought up by kind parents, how she had been a good wife and a fond mother, how she had borne her husband thirteen children, of which five lay under the turf, and then she stopped short and ap- peared to cry bitterly. Christian had found himself so com- CORNICLIOOKS (EO)