{"id":1414,"date":"2024-12-22T06:15:43","date_gmt":"2024-12-22T06:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=1414"},"modified":"2024-12-22T06:15:43","modified_gmt":"2024-12-22T06:15:43","slug":"the-holly-tree-by-charles-dickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=1414","title":{"rendered":"The Holly Tree by Charles Dickens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Holly Tree by <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/15-best-historical-fiction-books\">Charles Dickens<\/a> was published in 1855. A traveler finds himself snowed in at The Holly Tree and entertains himself by recording the stories he hears from his fellow tenants.<\/p>\n<p><em>This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Holly Tree by Charles Dickens<\/h2>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"__youtube_prefs__ epyt-facade no-lazyload\"><button class=\"epyt-facade-play\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">THE HOLLY-TREE\u2014THREE BRANCHES<\/h3>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">FIRST BRANCH\u2014MYSELF<\/h4>\n<p>I have kept one secret in the course of my life.\u00a0 I am a bashful man.\u00a0 Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever did suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man.\u00a0 This is the secret which I have never breathed until now.<\/p>\n<p>I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable places I have not been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon or received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solely because I am by original constitution and character a bashful man.\u00a0 But I will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object before me.<\/p>\n<p>That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in the Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for man and beast I was once snowed up.<\/p>\n<p>It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from Angela Leath, whom I was shortly to have married, on making the discovery that she preferred my bosom friend.\u00a0 From our school-days I had freely admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and, though I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to be natural, and tried to forgive them both.\u00a0 It was under these circumstances that I resolved to go to America\u2014on my way to the Devil.<\/p>\n<p>Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolving to write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing and forgiveness, which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the post when I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,\u2014I say, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling myself as I could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held dear, and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for ever, at five o\u2019clock in the morning.\u00a0 I had shaved by candle-light, of course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that general all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usually found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I came out of the Temple!\u00a0 The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north-east wind, as if the very gas were contorted with cold; the white-topped houses; the bleak, star-lighted sky; the market people and other early stragglers, trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitable light and warmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that were open for such customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (the wind had already beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my face like a steel whip.<\/p>\n<p>It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year.\u00a0 The Post-office packet for the United States was to depart from Liverpool, weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had the intervening time on my hands.\u00a0 I had taken this into consideration, and had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need not name) on the farther borders of Yorkshire.\u00a0 It was endeared to me by my having first seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy was gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave of it before my expatriation.\u00a0 I ought to explain, that, to avoid being sought out before my resolution should have been rendered irrevocable by being carried into full effect, I had written to Angela overnight, in my usual manner, lamenting that urgent business, of which she should know all particulars by-and-by\u2014took me unexpectedly away from her for a week or ten days.<\/p>\n<p>There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there were stage-coaches; which I occasionally find myself, in common with some other people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as a very serious penance then.\u00a0 I had secured the box-seat on the fastest of these, and my business in Fleet Street was to get into a cab with my portmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington, where I was to join this coach.\u00a0 But when one of our Temple watchmen, who carried my portmanteau into Fleet Street for me, told me about the huge blocks of ice that had for some days past been floating in the river, having closed up in the night, and made a walk from the Temple Gardens over to the Surrey shore, I began to ask myself the question, whether the box-seat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my unhappiness.\u00a0 I was heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so far gone as to wish to be frozen to death.<\/p>\n<p>When I got up to the Peacock,\u2014where I found everybody drinking hot purl, in self-preservation,\u2014I asked if there were an inside seat to spare.\u00a0 I then discovered that, inside or out, I was the only passenger.\u00a0 This gave me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of the weather, since that coach always loaded particularly well.\u00a0 However, I took a little purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the coach.\u00a0 When I was seated, they built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of making a rather ridiculous appearance, I began my journey.<\/p>\n<p>It was still dark when we left the Peacock.\u00a0 For a little while, pale, uncertain ghosts of houses and trees appeared and vanished, and then it was hard, black, frozen day.\u00a0 People were lighting their fires; smoke was mounting straight up high into the rarified air; and we were rattling for Highgate Archway over the hardest ground I have ever heard the ring of iron shoes on.\u00a0 As we got into the country, everything seemed to have grown old and gray.\u00a0 The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages and homesteads, the ricks in farmers\u2019 yards.\u00a0 Out-door work was abandoned, horse-troughs at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers lounged about, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires inside, and children (even turnpike people have children, and seem to like them) rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with their chubby arms, that their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary coach going by.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know when the snow begin to set in; but I know that we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the guard remark, \u201cThat the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard to-day.\u201d\u00a0 Then, indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick.<\/p>\n<p>The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller does.\u00a0 I was warm and valiant after eating and drinking,\u2014particularly after dinner; cold and depressed at all other times.\u00a0 I was always bewildered as to time and place, and always more or less out of my senses.\u00a0 The coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without a moment\u2019s intermission.\u00a0 They kept the time and tune with the greatest regularity, and rose into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, with a precision that worried me to death.\u00a0 While we changed horses, the guard and coachman went stumping up and down the road, printing off their shoes in the snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into themselves without being any the worse for it, that I began to confound them, as it darkened again, with two great white casks standing on end.\u00a0 Our horses tumbled down in solitary places, and we got them up,\u2014which was the pleasantest variety\u00a0<em>I<\/em>\u00a0had, for it warmed me.\u00a0 And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.\u00a0 All night long we went on in this manner.\u00a0 Thus we came round the clock, upon the Great North Road, to the performance of Auld Lang Syne by day again.\u00a0 And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.<\/p>\n<p>I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where we ought to have been; but I know that we were scores of miles behindhand, and that our case was growing worse every hour.\u00a0 The drift was becoming prodigiously deep; landmarks were getting snowed out; the road and the fields were all one; instead of having fences and hedge-rows to guide us, we went crunching on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that might sink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole hillside.\u00a0 Still the coachman and guard\u2014who kept together on the box, always in council, and looking well about them\u2014made out the track with astonishing sagacity.<\/p>\n<p>When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to my fancy, like a large drawing on a slate, with abundance of slate-pencil expended on the churches and houses where the snow lay thickest.\u00a0 When we came within a town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial-faces choked with snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place were overgrown with white moss.\u00a0 As to the coach, it was a mere snowball; similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town\u2019s end, turning our clogged wheels and encouraging our horses, were men and boys of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us was a snowy Sahara.\u00a0 One would have thought this enough: notwithstanding which, I pledge my word that it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.<\/p>\n<p>We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns and villages, but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of birds.\u00a0 At nine o\u2019clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking, with a glimmering and moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy state.\u00a0 I found that we were going to change.<\/p>\n<p>They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head became as white as King Lear\u2019s in a single minute, \u201cWhat Inn is this?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Holly-Tree, sir,\u201d said he.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUpon my word, I believe,\u201d said I, apologetically, to the guard and coachman, \u201cthat I must stop here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post-boy, and all the stable authorities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide-eyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he meant to go on.\u00a0 The coachman had already replied, \u201cYes, he\u2019d take her through it,\u201d\u2014meaning by Her the coach,\u2014\u201cif so be as George would stand by him.\u201d\u00a0 George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by him.\u00a0 So the helpers were already getting the horses out.<\/p>\n<p>My declaring myself beaten, after this parley, was not an announcement without preparation.\u00a0 Indeed, but for the way to the announcement being smoothed by the parley, I more than doubt whether, as an innately bashful man, I should have had the confidence to make it.\u00a0 As it was, it received the approval even of the guard and coachman.\u00a0 Therefore, with many confirmations of my inclining, and many remarks from one bystander to another, that the gentleman could go for\u2019ard by the mail to-morrow, whereas to-night he would only be froze, and where was the good of a gentleman being froze\u2014ah, let alone buried alive (which latter clause was added by a humorous helper as a joke at my expense, and was extremely well received), I saw my portmanteau got out stiff, like a frozen body; did the handsome thing by the guard and coachman; wished them good-night and a prosperous journey; and, a little ashamed of myself, after all, for leaving them to fight it out alone, followed the landlord, landlady, and waiter of the Holly-Tree up-stairs.<\/p>\n<p>I thought I had never seen such a large room as that into which they showed me.\u00a0 It had five windows, with dark red curtains that would have absorbed the light of a general illumination; and there were complications of drapery at the top of the curtains, that went wandering about the wall in a most extraordinary manner.\u00a0 I asked for a smaller room, and they told me there was no smaller room.<\/p>\n<p>They could screen me in, however, the landlord said.\u00a0 They brought a great old japanned screen, with natives (Japanese, I suppose) engaged in a variety of idiotic pursuits all over it; and left me roasting whole before an immense fire.<\/p>\n<p>My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off, up a great staircase at the end of a long gallery; and nobody knows what a misery this is to a bashful man who would rather not meet people on the stairs.\u00a0 It was the grimmest room I have ever had the nightmare in; and all the furniture, from the four posts of the bed to the two old silver candle-sticks, was tall, high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted.\u00a0 Below, in my sitting-room, if I looked round my screen, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to the colour of a new brick.\u00a0 The chimney-piece was very high, and there was a bad glass\u2014what I may call a wavy glass\u2014above it, which, when I stood up, just showed me my anterior phrenological developments,\u2014and these never look well, in any subject, cut short off at the eyebrow.\u00a0 If I stood with my back to the fire, a gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the screen insisted on being looked at; and, in its dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten curtains of the five windows went twisting and creeping about, like a nest of gigantic worms.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose that what I observe in myself must be observed by some other men of similar character in\u00a0<em>themselves<\/em>; therefore I am emboldened to mention, that, when I travel, I never arrive at a place but I immediately want to go away from it.\u00a0 Before I had finished my supper of broiled fowl and mulled port, I had impressed upon the waiter in detail my arrangements for departure in the morning.\u00a0 Breakfast and bill at eight.\u00a0 Fly at nine.\u00a0 Two horses, or, if needful, even four.<\/p>\n<p>Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week long.\u00a0 In cases of nightmare, I thought of Angela, and felt more depressed than ever by the reflection that I was on the shortest road to Gretna Green.\u00a0 What had\u00a0<em>I<\/em>\u00a0to do with Gretna Green?\u00a0 I was not going\u00a0<em>that<\/em>\u00a0way to the Devil, but by the American route, I remarked in my bitterness.<\/p>\n<p>In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed all night, and that I was snowed up.\u00a0 Nothing could get out of that spot on the moor, or could come at it, until the road had been cut out by labourers from the market-town.\u00a0 When they might cut their way to the Holly-Tree nobody could tell me.<\/p>\n<p>It was now Christmas-eve.\u00a0 I should have had a dismal Christmas-time of it anywhere, and consequently that did not so much matter; still, being snowed up was like dying of frost, a thing I had not bargained for.\u00a0 I felt very lonely.\u00a0 Yet I could no more have proposed to the landlord and landlady to admit me to their society (though I should have liked it\u2014very much) than I could have asked them to present me with a piece of plate.\u00a0 Here my great secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is to be observed.\u00a0 Like most bashful men, I judge of other people as if they were bashful too.\u00a0 Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proposal myself, I really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last degree disconcerting to them.<\/p>\n<p>Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first of all asked what books there were in the house.\u00a0 The waiter brought me a\u00a0<em>Book of Roads<\/em>, two or three old Newspapers, a little Song-Book, terminating in a collection of Toasts and Sentiments, a little Jest-Book, an odd volume of\u00a0<em>Peregrine Pickle<\/em>, and the\u00a0<em>Sentimental Journey<\/em>.\u00a0 I knew every word of the two last already, but I read them through again, then tried to hum all the songs (Auld Lang Syne was among them); went entirely through the jokes,\u2014in which I found a fund of melancholy adapted to my state of mind; proposed all the toasts, enunciated all the sentiments, and mastered the papers.\u00a0 The latter had nothing in them but stock advertisements, a meeting about a county rate, and a highway robbery.\u00a0 As I am a greedy reader, I could not make this supply hold out until night; it was exhausted by tea-time.\u00a0 Being then entirely cast upon my own resources, I got through an hour in considering what to do next.\u00a0 Ultimately, it came into my head (from which I was anxious by any means to exclude Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavour to recall my experience of Inns, and would try how long it lasted me.\u00a0 I stirred the fire, moved my chair a little to one side of the screen,\u2014not daring to go far, for I knew the wind was waiting to make a rush at me, I could hear it growling,\u2014and began.<\/p>\n<p>My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery; consequently I went back to the Nursery for a starting-point, and found myself at the knee of a sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, and a green gown, whose specially was a dismal narrative of a landlord by the roadside, whose visitors unaccountably disappeared for many years, until it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to convert them into pies.\u00a0 For the better devotion of himself to this branch of industry, he had constructed a secret door behind the head of the bed; and when the visitor (oppressed with pie) had fallen asleep, this wicked landlord would look softly in with a lamp in one hand and a knife in the other, would cut his throat, and would make him into pies; for which purpose he had coppers, underneath a trap-door, always boiling; and rolled out his pastry in the dead of the night.\u00a0 Yet even he was not insensible to the stings of conscience, for he never went to sleep without being heard to mutter, \u201cToo much pepper!\u201d which was eventually the cause of his being brought to justice.\u00a0 I had no sooner disposed of this criminal than there started up another of the same period, whose profession was originally house-breaking; in the pursuit of which art he had had his right ear chopped off one night, as he was burglariously getting in at a window, by a brave and lovely servant-maid (whom the aquiline-nosed woman, though not at all answering the description, always mysteriously implied to be herself).\u00a0 After several years, this brave and lovely servant-maid was married to the landlord of a country Inn; which landlord had this remarkable characteristic, that he always wore a silk nightcap, and never would on any consideration take it off.\u00a0 At last, one night, when he was fast asleep, the brave and lovely woman lifted up his silk nightcap on the right side, and found that he had no ear there; upon which she sagaciously perceived that he was the clipped housebreaker, who had married her with the intention of putting her to death.\u00a0 She immediately heated the poker and terminated his career, for which she was taken to King George upon his throne, and received the compliments of royalty on her great discretion and valour.\u00a0 This same narrator, who had a Ghoulish pleasure, I have long been persuaded, in terrifying me to the utmost confines of my reason, had another authentic anecdote within her own experience, founded, I now believe, upon\u00a0<em>Raymond and Agnes, or the Bleeding Nun<\/em>.\u00a0 She said it happened to her brother-in-law, who was immensely rich,\u2014which my father was not; and immensely tall,\u2014which my father was not.\u00a0 It was always a point with this Ghoul to present my clearest relations and friends to my youthful mind under circumstances of disparaging contrast.\u00a0 The brother-in-law was riding once through a forest on a magnificent horse (we had no magnificent horse at our house), attended by a favourite and valuable Newfoundland dog (we had no dog), when he found himself benighted, and came to an Inn.\u00a0 A dark woman opened the door, and he asked her if he could have a bed there.\u00a0 She answered yes, and put his horse in the stable, and took him into a room where there were two dark men.\u00a0 While he was at supper, a parrot in the room began to talk, saying, \u201cBlood, blood!\u00a0 Wipe up the blood!\u201d\u00a0 Upon which one of the dark men wrung the parrot\u2019s neck, and said he was fond of roasted parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the morning.\u00a0 After eating and drinking heartily, the immensely rich, tall brother-in-law went up to bed; but he was rather vexed, because they had shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never allowed dogs in the house.\u00a0 He sat very quiet for more than an hour, thinking and thinking, when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the door.\u00a0 He opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog!\u00a0 The dog came softly in, smelt about him, went straight to some straw in the corner which the dark men had said covered apples, tore the straw away, and disclosed two sheets steeped in blood.\u00a0 Just at that moment the candle went out, and the brother-in-law, looking through a chink in the door, saw the two dark men stealing up-stairs; one armed with a dagger that long (about five feet); the other carrying a chopper, a sack, and a spade.\u00a0 Having no remembrance of the close of this adventure, I suppose my faculties to have been always so frozen with terror at this stage of it, that the power of listening stagnated within me for some quarter of an hour.<\/p>\n<p>These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the Holly-Tree hearth, to the Roadside Inn, renowned in my time in a sixpenny book with a folding plate, representing in a central compartment of oval form the portrait of Jonathan Bradford, and in four corner compartments four incidents of the tragedy with which the name is associated,\u2014coloured with a hand at once so free and economical, that the bloom of Jonathan\u2019s complexion passed without any pause into the breeches of the ostler, and, smearing itself off into the next division, became rum in a bottle.\u00a0 Then I remembered how the landlord was found at the murdered traveller\u2019s bedside, with his own knife at his feet, and blood upon his hand; how he was hanged for the murder, notwithstanding his protestation that he had indeed come there to kill the traveller for his saddle-bags, but had been stricken motionless on finding him already slain; and how the ostler, years afterwards, owned the deed.\u00a0 By this time I had made myself quite uncomfortable.\u00a0 I stirred the fire, and stood with my back to it as long as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the screen, and at the wormy curtains creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in the ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.<\/p>\n<p>There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had pleasanter recollections about it than any of these.\u00a0 I took it next.\u00a0 It was the Inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go to see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped.\u00a0 It had an ecclesiastical sign,\u2014the Mitre,\u2014and a bar that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug.\u00a0 I loved the landlord\u2019s youngest daughter to distraction,\u2014but let that pass.\u00a0 It was in this Inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a black eye in a fight.\u00a0 And though she had been, that Holly-Tree night, for many a long year where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me yet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be continued to-morrow,\u201d said I, when I took my candle to go to bed.\u00a0 But my bed took it upon itself to continue the train of thought that night.\u00a0 It carried me away, like the enchanted carpet, to a distant place (though still in England), and there, alighting from a stage-coach at another Inn in the snow, as I had actually done some years before, I repeated in my sleep a curious experience I had really had there.\u00a0 More than a year before I made the journey in the course of which I put up at that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend by death.\u00a0 Every night since, at home or away from home, I had dreamed of that friend; sometimes as still living; sometimes as returning from the world of shadows to comfort me; always as being beautiful, placid, and happy, never in association with any approach to fear or distress.\u00a0 It was at a lonely Inn in a wide moorland place, that I halted to pass the night.\u00a0 When I had looked from my bedroom window over the waste of snow on which the moon was shining, I sat down by my fire to write a letter.\u00a0 I had always, until that hour, kept it within my own breast that I dreamed every night of the dear lost one.\u00a0 But in the letter that I wrote I recorded the circumstance, and added that I felt much interested in proving whether the subject of my dream would still be faithful to me, travel-tired, and in that remote place.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 I lost the beloved figure of my vision in parting with the secret.\u00a0 My sleep has never looked upon it since, in sixteen years, but once.\u00a0 I was in Italy, and awoke (or seemed to awake), the well-remembered voice distinctly in my ears, conversing with it.\u00a0 I entreated it, as it rose above my bed and soared up to the vaulted roof of the old room, to answer me a question I had asked touching the Future Life.\u00a0 My hands were still outstretched towards it as it vanished, when I heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the deep stillness of the night calling on all good Christians to pray for the souls of the dead; it being All Souls\u2019 Eve.<\/p>\n<p>To return to the Holly-Tree.\u00a0 When I awoke next day, it was freezing hard, and the lowering sky threatened more snow.\u00a0 My breakfast cleared away, I drew my chair into its former place, and, with the fire getting so much the better of the landscape that I sat in twilight, resumed my Inn remembrances.<\/p>\n<p>That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness.\u00a0 It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge.\u00a0 There was a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for many ages.\u00a0 He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them; likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then stood in the centre and said, \u201cI dare!\u201d would behold a tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead.\u00a0 He pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following: He was out upon the plain at the close of a late autumn day, when he dimly discerned, going on before him at a curious fitfully bounding pace, what he at first supposed to be a gig-umbrella that had been blown from some conveyance, but what he presently believed to be a lean dwarf man upon a little pony.\u00a0 Having followed this object for some distance without gaining on it, and having called to it many times without receiving any answer, he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at length coming up with it, he discovered it to be the last bustard in Great Britain, degenerated into a wingless state, and running along the ground.\u00a0 Resolved to capture him or perish in the attempt, he closed with the bustard; but the bustard, who had formed a counter-resolution that he should do neither, threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making off due west.\u00a0 This weird main, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker or an enthusiast or a robber; but I awoke one night to find him in the dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice.\u00a0 I paid my bill next day, and retired from the county with all possible precipitation.<\/p>\n<p>That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a little Inn in Switzerland, while I was staying there.\u00a0 It was a very homely place, in a village of one narrow zigzag street, among mountains, and you went in at the main door through the cow-house, and among the mules and the dogs and the fowls, before ascending a great bare staircase to the rooms; which were all of unpainted wood, without plastering or papering,\u2014like rough packing-cases.\u00a0 Outside there was nothing but the straggling street, a little toy church with a copper-coloured steeple, a pine forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides.\u00a0 A young man belonging to this Inn had disappeared eight weeks before (it was winter-time), and was supposed to have had some undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for a soldier.\u00a0 He had got up in the night, and dropped into the village street from the loft in which he slept with another man; and he had done it so quietly, that his companion and fellow-labourer had heard no movement when he was awakened in the morning, and they said, \u201cLouis, where is Henri?\u201d\u00a0 They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him up.\u00a0 Now, outside this Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every dwelling in the village, a stack of firewood; but the stack belonging to the Inn was higher than any of the rest, because the Inn was the richest house, and burnt the most fuel.\u00a0 It began to be noticed, while they were looking high and low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live stock of the Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of this wood-stack; and that he would stay there for hours and hours, crowing, until he appeared in danger of splitting himself.\u00a0 Five weeks went on,\u2014six weeks,\u2014and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his domestic affairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing the very eyes out of his head.\u00a0 By this time it was perceived that Louis had become inspired with a violent animosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one morning he was seen by a woman, who sat nursing her go\u00eetre at a little window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet of wood, with a great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on the wood-stack, and bring him down dead.\u00a0 Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her mind, stole round to the back of the wood-stack, and, being a good climber, as all those women are, climbed up, and soon was seen upon the summit, screaming, looking down the hollow within, and crying, \u201cSeize Louis, the murderer!\u00a0 Ring the church bell!\u00a0 Here is the body!\u201d\u00a0 I saw the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the Holly-Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village.\u00a0 A heavy animal,\u2014the dullest animal in the stables,\u2014with a stupid head, and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been, within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser out of his way.\u00a0 All of which he confessed next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn\u2019t be troubled any more, now that they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him.\u00a0 I saw him once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn.\u00a0 In that Canton the headsman still does his office with a sword; and I came upon this murderer sitting bound, to a chair, with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold in a little market-place.\u00a0 In that instant, a great sword (loaded with quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the world.\u00a0 My wonder was, not that he was so suddenly dispatched, but that any head was left unreaped, within a radius of fifty yards of that tremendous sickle.<\/p>\n<p>That was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful landlady and the honest landlord, where I lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and where one of the apartments has a zoological papering on the walls, not so accurately joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger\u2019s hind legs and tail, while the lion puts on a trunk and tusks, and the bear, moulting as it were, appears as to portions of himself like a leopard.\u00a0 I made several American friends at that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc Mount Blank,\u2014except one good-humoured gentleman, of a very sociable nature, who became on such intimate terms with it that he spoke of it familiarly as \u201cBlank;\u201d observing, at breakfast, \u201cBlank looks pretty tall this morning;\u201d or considerably doubting in the courtyard in the evening, whether there warn\u2019t some go-ahead naters in our country, sir, that would make out the top of Blank in a couple of hours from first start\u2014now!<\/p>\n<p>Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of England, where I was haunted by the ghost of a tremendous pie.\u00a0 It was a Yorkshire pie, like a fort,\u2014an abandoned fort with nothing in it; but the waiter had a fixed idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put the pie on the table.\u00a0 After some days I tried to hint, in several delicate ways, that I considered the pie done with; as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of glasses of wine into it; putting cheese-plates and spoons into it, as into a basket; putting wine-bottles into it, as into a cooler; but always in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned out again and brought up as before.\u00a0 At last, beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim of a spectral illusion, and whether my health and spirits might not sink under the horrors of an imaginary pie, I cut a triangle out of it, fully as large as the musical instrument of that name in a powerful orchestra.\u00a0 Human provision could not have foreseen the result\u2014but the waiter mended the pie.\u00a0 With some effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the triangle in again, and I paid my reckoning and fled.<\/p>\n<p>The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal.\u00a0 I made an overland expedition beyond the screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth window.\u00a0 Here I was driven back by stress of weather.\u00a0 Arrived at my winter-quarters once more, I made up the fire, and took another Inn.<\/p>\n<p>It was in the remotest part of Cornwall.\u00a0 A great annual Miners\u2019 Feast was being holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling companions presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing before it by torchlight.\u00a0 We had had a break-down in the dark, on a stony morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the unharnessed post-horses.\u00a0 If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the present lines, will take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein into the heart of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which that post-horse will tread on his conductor\u2019s toes.\u00a0 Over and above which, the post-horse, finding three hundred people whirling about him, will probably rear, and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his conductor\u2019s part.\u00a0 With such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners.\u00a0 It was full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-horse,\u2014though to get rid of that noble animal was something.\u00a0 While my fellow-travellers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so much of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith and the jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass and mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and punch.\u00a0 We joyfully accompanied him home to the strangest of clean houses, where we were well entertained to the satisfaction of all parties.\u00a0 But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our host was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames, altogether without bottoms of any sort; so that we passed the evening on perches.\u00a0 Nor was this the absurdest consequence; for when we unbent at supper, and any one of us gave way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his position, and instantly disappeared.\u00a0 I myself, doubled up into an attitude from which self-extrication was impossible, was taken out of my frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five times by the taper\u2019s light during the eggs and bacon.<\/p>\n<p>The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness.\u00a0 I began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was dug out.\u00a0 I might be a week here,\u2014weeks!<\/p>\n<p>There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn I once passed a night at in a picturesque old town on the Welsh border.\u00a0 In a large double-bedded room of this Inn there had been a suicide committed by poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept unconscious in the other.\u00a0 After that time, the suicide bed was never used, but the other constantly was; the disused bedstead remaining in the room empty, though as to all other respects in its old state.\u00a0 The story ran, that whosoever slept in this room, though never so entire a stranger, from never so far off, was invariably observed to come down in the morning with an impression that he smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned upon the subject of suicide; to which, whatever kind of man he might be, he was certain to make some reference if he conversed with any one.\u00a0 This went on for years, until it at length induced the landlord to take the disused bedstead down, and bodily burn it,\u2014bed, hangings, and all.\u00a0 The strange influence (this was the story) now changed to a fainter one, but never changed afterwards.\u00a0 The occupant of that room, with occasional but very rare exceptions, would come down in the morning, trying to recall a forgotten dream he had had in the night.\u00a0 The landlord, on his mentioning his perplexity, would suggest various commonplace subjects, not one of which, as he very well knew, was the true subject.\u00a0 But the moment the landlord suggested \u201cPoison,\u201d the traveller started, and cried, \u201cYes!\u201d\u00a0 He never failed to accept that suggestion, and he never recalled any more of the dream.<\/p>\n<p>This reminiscence brought the Welsh Inns in general before me; with the women in their round hats, and the harpers with their white beards (venerable, but humbugs, I am afraid), playing outside the door while I took my dinner.\u00a0 The transition was natural to the Highland Inns, with the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, the trout from the loch, the whisky, and perhaps (having the materials so temptingly at hand) the Athol brose.\u00a0 Once was I coming south from the Scottish Highlands in hot haste, hoping to change quickly at the station at the bottom of a certain wild historical glen, when these eyes did with mortification see the landlord come out with a telescope and sweep the whole prospect for the horses; which horses were away picking up their own living, and did not heave in sight under four hours.\u00a0 Having thought of the loch-trout, I was taken by quick association to the Anglers\u2019 Inns of England (I have assisted at innumerable feats of angling by lying in the bottom of the boat, whole summer days, doing nothing with the greatest perseverance; which I have generally found to be as effectual towards the taking of fish as the finest tackle and the utmost science), and to the pleasant white, clean, flower-pot-decorated bedrooms of those inns, overlooking the river, and the ferry, and the green ait, and the church-spire, and the country bridge; and to the pearless Emma with the bright eyes and the pretty smile, who waited, bless her! with a natural grace that would have converted Blue-Beard.\u00a0 Casting my eyes upon my Holly-Tree fire, I next discerned among the glowing coals the pictures of a score or more of those wonderful English posting-inns which we are all so sorry to have lost, which were so large and so comfortable, and which were such monuments of British submission to rapacity and extortion.\u00a0 He who would see these houses pining away, let him walk from Basingstoke, or even Windsor, to London, by way of Hounslow, and moralise on their perishing remains; the stables crumbling to dust; unsettled labourers and wanderers bivouacking in the outhouses; grass growing in the yards; the rooms, where erst so many hundred beds of down were made up, let off to Irish lodgers at eighteenpence a week; a little ill-looking beer-shop shrinking in the tap of former days, burning coach-house gates for firewood, having one of its two windows bunged up, as if it had received punishment in a fight with the Railroad; a low, bandy-legged, brick-making bulldog standing in the doorway.\u00a0 What could I next see in my fire so naturally as the new railway-house of these times near the dismal country station; with nothing particular on draught but cold air and damp, nothing worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no business doing beyond a conceited affectation of luggage in the hall?\u00a0 Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty apartment of four pieces up one hundred and seventy-five waxed stairs, the privilege of ringing the bell all day long without influencing anybody\u2019s mind or body but your own, and the not-too-much-for-dinner, considering the price.\u00a0 Next to the provincial Inns of France, with the great church-tower rising above the courtyard, the horse-bells jingling merrily up and down the street beyond, and the clocks of all descriptions in all the rooms, which are never right, unless taken at the precise minute when, by getting exactly twelve hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally become so.\u00a0 Away I went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy; where all the dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are always lying in your anteroom; where the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your face in summer, and the cold bites it blue in winter; where you get what you can, and forget what you can\u2019t: where I should again like to be boiling my tea in a pocket-handkerchief dumpling, for want of a teapot.\u00a0 So to the old palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in towns and cities of the same bright country; with their massive quadrangular staircases, whence you may look from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of heaven; with their stately banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories; with their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, and their glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no appearance of reality or possibility.\u00a0 So to the close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with their pale attendants, and their peculiar smell of never letting in the air.\u00a0 So to the immense fantastic Inns of Venice, with the cry of the gondolier below, as he skims the corner; the grip of the watery odours on one particular little bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never released while you stay there); and the great bell of St. Mark\u2019s Cathedral tolling midnight.\u00a0 Next I put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your going to bed, no matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for everybody else\u2019s getting up; and where, in the table-d\u2019h\u00f4te room at the end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the other end, all made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely dressed in jewels and dirt, and having nothing else upon them,\u00a0<em>will<\/em>\u00a0remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing about the river that flows, and the grape that grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine woman that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and ho drink drink my brother, and all the rest of it.\u00a0 I departed thence, as a matter of course, to other German Inns, where all the eatables are soddened down to the same flavour, and where the mind is disturbed by the apparition of hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at awfully unexpected periods of the repast.\u00a0 After a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming glass jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of America, with their four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day.\u00a0 Again I stood in the bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail.\u00a0 Again I listened to my friend the General,\u2014whom I had known for five minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life with two Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with three Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians,\u2014again, I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen\u2019s morning-room, sir; ladies\u2019 morning-room, sir; gentlemen\u2019s evening-room, sir; ladies\u2019 evening-room, sir; ladies\u2019 and gentlemen\u2019s evening reuniting-room, sir; music-room, sir; reading-room, sir; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir; and the entire planned and finited within twelve calendar months from the first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars, sir.\u00a0 Again I found, as to my individual way of thinking, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the establishment was, the less desirable it was.\u00a0 Nevertheless, again I drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all good-will, to my friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and great people.<\/p>\n<p>I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my mind; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject.\u00a0 What was I to do?\u00a0 What was to become of me?\u00a0 Into what extremity was I submissively to sink?\u00a0 Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by training it?\u00a0 Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future.\u00a0 I might be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow, that, on my way forth, I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous drapery.<\/p>\n<p>A desperate idea came into my head.\u00a0 Under any other circumstances I should have rejected it; but, in the strait at which I was, I held it fast.\u00a0 Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulness which withheld me from the landlord\u2019s table and the company I might find there, as to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair,\u2014and something in a liquid form,\u2014and talk to me?\u00a0 I could, I would, I did.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">SECOND BRANCH\u2014THE BOOTS<\/h2>\n<p>Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the question.\u00a0 Lord, he had been everywhere!\u00a0 And what had he been?\u00a0 Bless you, he had been everything you could mention a\u2019most!<\/p>\n<p>Seen a good deal?\u00a0 Why, of course he had.\u00a0 I should say so, he could assure me, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had come in his way.\u00a0 Why, it would be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he hadn\u2019t seen than what he had.\u00a0 Ah!\u00a0 A deal, it would.<\/p>\n<p>What was the curiousest thing he had seen?\u00a0 Well!\u00a0 He didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t momently name what was the curiousest thing he had seen\u2014unless it was a Unicorn, and he see\u00a0<em>him<\/em>\u00a0once at a Fair.\u00a0 But supposing a young gentleman not eight year old was to run away with a fine young woman of seven, might I think\u00a0<em>that<\/em>\u00a0a queer start?\u00a0 Certainly.\u00a0 Then that was a start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the shoes they run away in\u2014and they was so little that he couldn\u2019t get his hand into \u2019em.<\/p>\n<p>Master Harry Walmers\u2019 father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down away by Shooter\u2019s Hill there, six or seven miles from Lunnon.\u00a0 He was a gentleman of spirit, and good-looking, and held his head up when he walked, and had what you may call Fire about him.\u00a0 He wrote poetry, and he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, and he acted, and he done it all equally beautiful.\u00a0 He was uncommon proud of Master Harry as was his only child; but he didn\u2019t spoil him neither.\u00a0 He was a gentleman that had a will of his own and a eye of his own, and that would be minded.\u00a0 Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the fine bright boy, and was delighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy books, and was never tired of hearing him say my name is Norval, or hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the command over the child, and the child\u00a0<em>was<\/em>\u00a0a child, and it\u2019s to be wished more of \u2019em was!<\/p>\n<p>How did Boots happen to know all this?\u00a0 Why, through being under-gardener.\u00a0 Of course he couldn\u2019t be under-gardener, and be always about, in the summer-time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting acquainted with the ways of the family.\u00a0 Even supposing Master Harry hadn\u2019t come to him one morning early, and said, \u201cCobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you was asked?\u201d and then began cutting it in print all over the fence.<\/p>\n<p>He couldn\u2019t say he had taken particular notice of children before that; but really it was pretty to see them two mites a going about the place together, deep in love.\u00a0 And the courage of the boy!\u00a0 Bless your soul, he\u2019d have throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little sleeves, and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to meet one, and she had been frightened of him.\u00a0 One day he stops, along with her, where Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up, \u201cCobbs,\u201d he says, \u201cI like\u00a0<em>you<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cDo you, sir?\u00a0 I\u2019m proud to hear it.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYes, I do, Cobbs.\u00a0 Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t know, Master Harry, I am sure.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cBecause Norah likes you, Cobbs.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIndeed, sir?\u00a0 That\u2019s very gratifying.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cGratifying, Cobbs?\u00a0 It\u2019s better than millions of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cCertainly, sir.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re going away, ain\u2019t you, Cobbs?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYes, sir.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWould you like another situation, Cobbs?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWell, sir, I shouldn\u2019t object, if it was a good Inn.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThen, Cobbs,\u201d says he, \u201cyou shall be our Head Gardener when we are married.\u201d\u00a0 And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks away.<\/p>\n<p>Boots could assure me that it was better than a picter, and equal to a play, to see them babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a rambling about the garden, deep in love.\u00a0 Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they was birds, and kept up with \u2019em, singing to please \u2019em.\u00a0 Sometimes they would creep under the Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms round one another\u2019s necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading about the Prince and the Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and the king\u2019s fair daughter.\u00a0 Sometimes he would hear them planning about having a house in a forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely on milk and honey.\u00a0 Once he came upon them by the pond, and heard Master Harry say, \u201cAdorable Norah, kiss me, and say you love me to distraction, or I\u2019ll jump in head-foremost.\u201d\u00a0 And Boots made no question he would have done it if she hadn\u2019t complied.\u00a0 On the whole, Boots said it had a tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himself\u2014only he didn\u2019t exactly know who with.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCobbs,\u201d said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the flowers, \u201cI am going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my grandmamma\u2019s at York.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you indeed, sir?\u00a0 I hope you\u2019ll have a pleasant time.\u00a0 I am going into Yorkshire, myself, when I leave here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you going to your grandmamma\u2019s, Cobbs?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, sir.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t got such a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot as a grandmamma, Cobbs?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while, and then said, \u201cI shall be very glad indeed to go, Cobbs,\u2014Norah\u2019s going.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll be all right then, sir,\u201d says Cobbs, \u201cwith your beautiful sweetheart by your side.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCobbs,\u201d returned the boy, flushing, \u201cI never let anybody joke about it, when I can prevent them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a joke, sir,\u201d says Cobbs, with humility,\u2014\u201cwasn\u2019t so meant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you\u2019re going to live with us.\u2014Cobbs!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do you think my grandmamma gives me when I go down there?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI couldn\u2019t so much as make a guess, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhew!\u201d says Cobbs, \u201cthat\u2019s a spanking sum of money, Master Harry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that,\u2014couldn\u2019t a person, Cobbs?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe you, sir!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCobbs,\u201d said the boy, \u201cI\u2019ll tell you a secret.\u00a0 At Norah\u2019s house, they have been joking her about me, and pretending to laugh at our being engaged,\u2014pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuch, sir,\u201d says Cobbs, \u201cis the depravity of human natur.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with his glowing face towards the sunset, and then departed with, \u201cGood-night, Cobbs.\u00a0 I\u2019m going in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a-going to leave that place just at that present time, well, he couldn\u2019t rightly answer me.\u00a0 He did suppose he might have stayed there till now if he had been anyways inclined.\u00a0 But, you see, he was younger then, and he wanted change.\u00a0 That\u2019s what he wanted,\u2014change.\u00a0 Mr. Walmers, he said to him when he gave him notice of his intentions to leave, \u201cCobbs,\u201d he says, \u201chave you anythink to complain of?\u00a0 I make the inquiry because if I find that any of my people really has anythink to complain of, I wish to make it right if I can.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cNo, sir,\u201d says Cobbs; \u201cthanking you, sir, I find myself as well sitiwated here as I could hope to be anywheres.\u00a0 The truth is, sir, that I\u2019m a-going to seek my fortun\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cO, indeed, Cobbs!\u201d he says; \u201cI hope you may find it.\u201d\u00a0 And Boots could assure me\u2014which he did, touching his hair with his bootjack, as a salute in the way of his present calling\u2014that he hadn\u2019t found it yet.<\/p>\n<p>Well, sir!\u00a0 Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master Harry, he went down to the old lady\u2019s at York, which old lady would have given that child the teeth out of her head (if she had had any), she was so wrapped up in him.\u00a0 What does that Infant do,\u2014for Infant you may call him and be within the mark,\u2014but cut away from that old lady\u2019s with his Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna Green and be married!<\/p>\n<p>Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it several times since to better himself, but always come back through one thing or another), when, one summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of the coach gets them two children.\u00a0 The Guard says to our Governor, \u201cI don\u2019t quite make out these little passengers, but the young gentleman\u2019s words was, that they was to be brought here.\u201d\u00a0 The young gentleman gets out; hands his lady out; gives the Guard something for himself; says to our Governor, \u201cWe\u2019re to stop here to-night, please.\u00a0 Sitting-room and two bedrooms will be required.\u00a0 Chops and cherry-pudding for two!\u201d and tucks her, in her sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house much bolder than Brass.<\/p>\n<p>Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was, when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into the Angel,\u2014much more so, when he, who had seen them without their seeing him, give the Governor his views of the expedition they was upon.\u00a0 \u201cCobbs,\u201d says the Governor, \u201cif this is so, I must set off myself to York, and quiet their friends\u2019 minds.\u00a0 In which case you must keep your eye upon \u2019em, and humour \u2019em, till I come back.\u00a0 But before I take these measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to find from themselves whether your opinion is correct.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cSir, to you,\u201d says Cobbs, \u201cthat shall be done directly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So Boots goes up-stairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry on a e-normous sofa,\u2014immense at any time, but looking like the Great Bed of Ware, compared with him,\u2014a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with his pocket-hankecher.\u00a0 Their little legs was entirely off the ground, of course, and it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how small them children looked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s Cobbs!\u00a0 It\u2019s Cobbs!\u201d cries Master Harry, and comes running to him, and catching hold of his hand.\u00a0 Miss Norah comes running to him on t\u2019other side and catching hold of his t\u2019other hand, and they both jump for joy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see you a getting out, sir,\u201d says Cobbs.\u00a0 \u201cI thought it was you.\u00a0 I thought I couldn\u2019t be mistaken in your height and figure.\u00a0 What\u2019s the object of your journey, sir?\u2014Matrimonial?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green,\u201d returned the boy.\u00a0 \u201cWe have run away on purpose.\u00a0 Norah has been in rather low spirits, Cobbs; but she\u2019ll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you, sir, and thank you, miss,\u201d says Cobbs, \u201cfor your good opinion.\u00a0\u00a0<em>Did<\/em>\u00a0you bring any luggage with you, sir?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honour upon it, the lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of cold buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush,\u2014seemingly a doll\u2019s.\u00a0 The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of string, a knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up surprising small, a orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat may be the exact natur of your plans, sir?\u201d says Cobbs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo go on,\u201d replied the boy,\u2014which the courage of that boy was something wonderful!\u2014\u201cin the morning, and be married to-morrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust so, sir,\u201d says Cobbs.\u00a0 \u201cWould it meet your views, sir, if I was to accompany you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, \u201cOh, yes, yes, Cobbs!\u00a0 Yes!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, sir,\u201d says Cobbs.\u00a0 \u201cIf you will excuse my having the freedom to give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this.\u00a0 I\u2019m acquainted with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow, would take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself driving, if you approved,) to the end of your journey in a very short space of time.\u00a0 I am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-morrow, but even if you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be worth your while.\u00a0 As to the small account here, sir, in case you was to find yourself running at all short, that don\u2019t signify; because I\u2019m a part proprietor of this inn, and it could stand over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy again, and called him \u201cGood Cobbs!\u201d and \u201cDear Cobbs!\u201d and bent across him to kiss one another in the delight of their confiding hearts, he felt himself the meanest rascal for deceiving \u2019em that ever was born.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs there anything you want just at present, sir?\u201d says Cobbs, mortally ashamed of himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe should like some cakes after dinner,\u201d answered Master Harry, folding his arms, putting out one leg, and looking straight at him, \u201cand two apples,\u2014and jam.\u00a0 With dinner we should like to have toast-and-water.\u00a0 But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant wine at dessert.\u00a0 And so have I.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt shall be ordered at the bar, sir,\u201d says Cobbs; and away he went.<\/p>\n<p>Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as he had then, that he would far rather have had it out in half-a-dozen rounds with the Governor than have combined with him; and that he wished with all his heart there was any impossible place where those two babies could make an impossible marriage, and live impossibly happy ever afterwards.\u00a0 However, as it couldn\u2019t be, he went into the Governor\u2019s plans, and the Governor set off for York in half an hour.<\/p>\n<p>The way in which the women of that house\u2014without exception\u2014every one of \u2019em\u2014married\u00a0<em>and<\/em>\u00a0single\u2014took to that boy when they heard the story, Boots considers surprising.\u00a0 It was as much as he could do to keep \u2019em from dashing into the room and kissing him.\u00a0 They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through a pane of glass.\u00a0 They was seven deep at the keyhole.\u00a0 They was out of their minds about him and his bold spirit.<\/p>\n<p>In the evening, Boots went into the room to see how the runaway couple was getting on.\u00a0 The gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting the lady in his arms.\u00a0 She had tears upon her face, and was lying, very tired and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?\u201d says Cobbs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, she is tired, Cobbs; but she is not used to be away from home, and she has been in low spirits again.\u00a0 Cobbs, do you think you could bring a biffin, please?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI ask your pardon, sir,\u201d says Cobbs.\u00a0 \u201cWhat was it you\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs.\u00a0 She is very fond of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he brought it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a spoon, and took a little himself; the lady being heavy with sleep, and rather cross.\u00a0 \u201cWhat should you think, sir,\u201d says Cobbs, \u201cof a chamber candlestick?\u201d\u00a0 The gentleman approved; the chambermaid went first, up the great staircase; the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed, gallantly escorted by the gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her door, and retired to his own apartment, where Boots softly locked him up.<\/p>\n<p>Boots couldn\u2019t but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver he was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk-and-water, and toast and currant jelly, overnight) about the pony.\u00a0 It really was as much as he could do, he don\u2019t mind confessing to me, to look them two young things in the face, and think what a wicked old father of lies he had grown up to be.\u00a0 Howsomever, he went on a lying like a Trojan about the pony.\u00a0 He told \u2019em that it did so unfortunately happen that the pony was half clipped, you see, and that he couldn\u2019t be taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to his inside.\u00a0 But that he\u2019d be finished clipping in the course of the day, and that to-morrow morning at eight o\u2019clock the pheayton would be ready.\u00a0 Boots\u2019s view of the whole case, looking back on it in my room, is, that Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to give in.\u00a0 She hadn\u2019t had her hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn\u2019t seem quite up to brushing it herself, and its getting in her eyes put her out.\u00a0 But nothing put out Master Harry.\u00a0 He sat behind his breakfast-cup, a tearing away at the jelly, as if he had been his own father.<\/p>\n<p>After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed soldiers,\u2014at least, he knows that many such was found in the fire-place, all on horseback.\u00a0 In the course of the morning, Master Harry rang the bell,\u2014it was surprising how that there boy did carry on,\u2014and said, in a sprightly way, \u201cCobbs, is there any good walks in this neighbourhood?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, sir,\u201d says Cobbs.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s Love Lane.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet out with you, Cobbs!\u201d\u2014that was that there boy\u2019s expression,\u2014\u201cyou\u2019re joking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBegging your pardon, sir,\u201d says Cobbs, \u201cthere really is Love Lane.\u00a0 And a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNorah, dear,\u201d said Master Harry, \u201cthis is curious.\u00a0 We really ought to see Love Lane.\u00a0 Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go there with Cobbs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when that young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that they had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head-gardener, on accounts of his being so true a friend to \u2019em.\u00a0 Boots could have wished at the moment that the earth would have opened and swallowed him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a looking at him, and believing him.\u00a0 Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well as he could, and he took \u2019em down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and there Master Harry would have drowned himself in half a moment more, a getting out a water-lily for her,\u2014but nothing daunted that boy.\u00a0 Well, sir, they was tired out.\u00a0 All being so new and strange to \u2019em, they was tired as tired could be.\u00a0 And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the children in the wood, leastways meadows, and fell asleep.<\/p>\n<p>Boots don\u2019t know\u2014perhaps I do,\u2014but never mind, it don\u2019t signify either way\u2014why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself to see them two pretty babies a lying there in the clear still sunny day, not dreaming half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was awake.\u00a0 But, Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a chap you are, and how it\u2019s always either Yesterday with you, or else To-morrow, and never To-day, that\u2019s where it is!<\/p>\n<p>Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior\u2019s, temper was on the move.\u00a0 When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he \u201cteased her so;\u201d and when he says, \u201cNorah, my young May Moon, your Harry tease you?\u201d she tells him, \u201cYes; and I want to go home!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A biled fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers up a little; but Boots could have wished, he must privately own to me, to have seen her more sensible of the woice of love, and less abandoning of herself to currants.\u00a0 However, Master Harry, he kept up, and his noble heart was as fond as ever.\u00a0 Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about dusk, and began to cry.\u00a0 Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.<\/p>\n<p>About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise, along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly lady.\u00a0 Mr. Walmers looks amused and very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, \u201cWe are much indebted to you, ma\u2019am, for your kind care of our little children, which we can never sufficiently acknowledge.\u00a0 Pray, ma\u2019am, where is my boy?\u201d\u00a0 Our missis says, \u201cCobbs has the dear child in charge, sir.\u00a0 Cobbs, show Forty!\u201d\u00a0 Then he says to Cobbs, \u201cAh, Cobbs, I am glad to see\u00a0<em>you<\/em>!\u00a0 I understood you was here!\u201d\u00a0 And Cobbs says, \u201cYes, sir.\u00a0 Your most obedient, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps; but Boots assures me that his heart beat like a hammer, going up-stairs.\u00a0 \u201cI beg your pardon, sir,\u201d says he, while unlocking the door; \u201cI hope you are not angry with Master Harry.\u00a0 For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you credit and honour.\u201d\u00a0 And Boots signifies to me, that, if the fine boy\u2019s father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in which he then was, he thinks he should have \u201cfetched him a crack,\u201d and taken the consequences.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Walmers only says, \u201cNo, Cobbs.\u00a0 No, my good fellow.\u00a0 Thank you!\u201d\u00a0 And, the door being opened, goes in.<\/p>\n<p>Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to the bedside, bend gently down, and kiss the little sleeping face.\u00a0 Then he stands looking at it for a minute, looking wonderfully like it (they do say he ran away with Mrs. Walmers); and then he gently shakes the little shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHarry, my dear boy!\u00a0 Harry!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Master Harry starts up and looks at him.\u00a0 Looks at Cobbs too.\u00a0 Such is the honour of that mite, that he looks at Cobbs, to see whether he has brought him into trouble.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am not angry, my child.\u00a0 I only want you to dress yourself and come home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, pa.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Master Harry dresses himself quickly.\u00a0 His breast begins to swell when he has nearly finished, and it swells more and more as he stands, at last, a looking at his father: his father standing a looking at him, the quiet image of him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease may I\u201d\u2014the spirit of that little creatur, and the way he kept his rising tears down!\u2014\u201cplease, dear pa\u2014may I\u2014kiss Norah before I go?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou may, my child.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads the way with the candle, and they come to that other bedroom, where the elderly lady is seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, is fast asleep.\u00a0 There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he lays his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to him,\u2014a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the door, that one of them calls out, \u201cIt\u2019s a shame to part \u2019em!\u201d\u00a0 But this chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one.\u00a0 Not that there was any harm in that girl.\u00a0 Far from it.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Boots says, that\u2019s all about it.\u00a0 Mr. Walmers drove away in the chaise, having hold of Master Harry\u2019s hand.\u00a0 The elderly lady and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married a Captain long afterwards, and died in India), went off next day.\u00a0 In conclusion, Boots put it to me whether I hold with him in two opinions: firstly, that there are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as innocent of guile as those two children; secondly, that it would be a jolly good thing for a great many couples on their way to be married, if they could only be stopped in time, and brought back separately.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">THIRD BRANCH\u2014THE BILL<\/h2>\n<p>I had been snowed up a whole week.\u00a0 The time had hung so lightly on my hands, that I should have been in great doubt of the fact but for a piece of documentary evidence that lay upon my table.<\/p>\n<p>The road had been dug out of the snow on the previous day, and the document in question was my bill.\u00a0 It testified emphatically to my having eaten and drunk, and warmed myself, and slept among the sheltering branches of the Holly-Tree, seven days and nights.<\/p>\n<p>I had yesterday allowed the road twenty-four hours to improve itself, finding that I required that additional margin of time for the completion of my task.\u00a0 I had ordered my Bill to be upon the table, and a chaise to be at the door, \u201cat eight o\u2019clock to-morrow evening.\u201d\u00a0 It was eight o\u2019clock to-morrow evening when I buckled up my travelling writing-desk in its leather case, paid my Bill, and got on my warm coats and wrappers.\u00a0 Of course, no time now remained for my travelling on to add a frozen tear to the icicles which were doubtless hanging plentifully about the farmhouse where I had first seen Angela.\u00a0 What I had to do was to get across to Liverpool by the shortest open road, there to meet my heavy baggage and embark.\u00a0 It was quite enough to do, and I had not an hour too much time to do it in.<\/p>\n<p>I had taken leave of all my Holly-Tree friends\u2014almost, for the time being, of my bashfulness too\u2014and was standing for half a minute at the Inn door watching the ostler as he took another turn at the cord which tied my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw lamps coming down towards the Holly-Tree.\u00a0 The road was so padded with snow that no wheels were audible; but all of us who were standing at the Inn door saw lamps coming on, and at a lively rate too, between the walls of snow that had been heaped up on either side of the track.\u00a0 The chambermaid instantly divined how the case stood, and called to the ostler, \u201cTom, this is a Gretna job!\u201d\u00a0 The ostler, knowing that her sex instinctively scented a marriage, or anything in that direction, rushed up the yard bawling, \u201cNext four out!\u201d and in a moment the whole establishment was thrown into commotion.<\/p>\n<p>I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man who loved and was beloved; and therefore, instead of driving off at once, I remained at the Inn door when the fugitives drove up.\u00a0 A bright-eyed fellow, muffled in a mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost overthrew me.\u00a0 He turned to apologise, and, by heaven, it was Edwin!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCharley!\u201d said he, recoiling.\u00a0 \u201cGracious powers, what do you do here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEdwin,\u201d said I, recoiling, \u201cgracious powers, what do\u00a0<em>you<\/em>\u00a0do here?\u201d\u00a0 I struck my forehead as I said it, and an insupportable blaze of light seemed to shoot before my eyes.<\/p>\n<p>He hurried me into the little parlour (always kept with a slow fire in it and no poker), where posting company waited while their horses were putting to, and, shutting the door, said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCharley, forgive me!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEdwin!\u201d I returned.\u00a0 \u201cWas this well?\u00a0 When I loved her so dearly!\u00a0 When I had garnered up my heart so long!\u201d\u00a0 I could say no more.<\/p>\n<p>He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and made the cruel observation, that he had not thought I should have taken it so much to heart.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at him.\u00a0 I reproached him no more.\u00a0 But I looked at him.\u00a0 \u201cMy dear, dear Charley,\u201d said he, \u201cdon\u2019t think ill of me, I beseech you!\u00a0 I know you have a right to my utmost confidence, and, believe me, you have ever had it until now.\u00a0 I abhor secrecy.\u00a0 Its meanness is intolerable to me.\u00a0 But I and my dear girl have observed it for your sake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He and his dear girl!\u00a0 It steeled me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have observed it for my sake, sir?\u201d said I, wondering how his frank face could face it out so.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes!\u2014and Angela\u2019s,\u201d said he.<\/p>\n<p>I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, like a labouring, humming-top.\u00a0 \u201cExplain yourself,\u201d said I, holding on by one hand to an arm-chair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDear old darling Charley!\u201d returned Edwin, in his cordial manner, \u201cconsider!\u00a0 When you were going on so happily with Angela, why should I compromise you with the old gentleman by making you a party to our engagement, and (after he had declined my proposals) to our secret intention?\u00a0 Surely it was better that you should be able honourably to say, \u2018He never took counsel with me, never told me, never breathed a word of it.\u2019\u00a0 If Angela suspected it, and showed me all the favour and support she could\u2014God bless her for a precious creature and a priceless wife!\u2014I couldn\u2019t help that.\u00a0 Neither I nor Emmeline ever told her, any more than we told you.\u00a0 And for the same good reason, Charley; trust me, for the same good reason, and no other upon earth!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Emmeline was Angela\u2019s cousin.\u00a0 Lived with her.\u00a0 Had been brought up with her.\u00a0 Was her father\u2019s ward.\u00a0 Had property.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEmmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin!\u201d said I, embracing him with the greatest affection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy good fellow!\u201d said he, \u201cdo you suppose I should be going to Gretna Green without her?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I ran out with Edwin, I opened the chaise door, I took Emmeline in my arms, I folded her to my heart.\u00a0 She was wrapped in soft white fur, like the snowy landscape: but was warm, and young, and lovely.\u00a0 I put their leaders to with my own hands, I gave the boys a five-pound note apiece, I cheered them as they drove away, I drove the other way myself as hard as I could pelt.<\/p>\n<p>I never went to Liverpool, I never went to America, I went straight back to London, and I married Angela.\u00a0 I have never until this time, even to her, disclosed the secret of my character, and the mistrust and the mistaken journey into which it led me.\u00a0 When she, and they, and our eight children and their seven\u2014I mean Edwin and Emmeline\u2019s, whose oldest girl is old enough now to wear white for herself, and to look very like her mother in it\u2014come to read these pages, as of course they will, I shall hardly fail to be found out at last.\u00a0 Never mind!\u00a0 I can bear it.\u00a0 I began at the Holly-Tree, by idle accident, to associate the Christmas time of year with human interest, and with some inquiry into, and some care for, the lives of those by whom I find myself surrounded.\u00a0 I hope that I am none the worse for it, and that no one near me or afar off is the worse for it.\u00a0 And I say, May the green Holly-Tree flourish, striking its roots deep into our English ground, and having its germinating qualities carried by the birds of Heaven all over the world!<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Best Charles Dickens Books to Read<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3SRg0pW\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3SwoRvy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3OzZmse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/485pLFc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><br \/>\nClick on the image to get a copy<\/p>\n<p>If you enjoyed The Holly Tree by Charles Dickens, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/the-classic-christmas-short-story-quiz\">The Classic Christmas Short Story Quiz<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Narrated by Ruth Golding<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Holly Tree by Charles Dickens was published in 1855. A traveler finds himself snowed in at The Holly Tree and entertains himself by recording the stories he hears from his fellow tenants. This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. The Holly Tree by Charles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}