(11) CHARLES DICKENS: DAVID COPPERFIELD: CHAPTER 11: I DON'T LIKE THE LIFE I BEGIN ON MY OWN ACCOUNT

I knew enough of the world now. I was not surprised much by anything.  But it was a surprise to me that I had been thrown away so easily at such an age.  A child of abilities and observations.  Nobody had made any sign in my behalf.  At ten years old I became a labouring hind of Murdstone and Grinby.

Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse was at waterside.  It was down in Blackfriars.  Modern improvements have altered the place; but it was the last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down to the river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat.  It was a crazy old house, with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the tide was in, and on the mud when tide was out, and overrun with myraid of rats.  Its panelled rooms, discoloured with dirt and smoke of years, its decaying floors and stairs, the squeaking and scuffing of old grey rats, down in the cellars, and the dirt and rottenness of the place, even after decades, still lingers in my mind.  They are all before me, just as they were in the evil hour when I went among them for the first time with my trembling hands in Mr Quinon's.

Murdstone and Grinby's trade was among a good many kinds of people, but an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits to certain packet ships.  I forget now where they chiefly went, but I think there were some among them that made voyages to both East and West Indies.  I came to know that great many empty bottles were the result of this traffic, and men and boys were employed to examine them against light and reject those that were flawed, and to rinse and wash them.  When the empty bottles run short, there were labels to be pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put on corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks.  All this work was my work, and the boys employed upon it I was one.

There were three or four of us, counting me.  My working place was established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr Quinon could see me, when he chose to stand upon the bottom rail of his stool in the counting house, and look at me through a window above the desk.  Hither on the first morning of my auspicious beginning of life on my own account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my business.  His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged apron and a paper cap.  He informed me that his father was a barge-man, and walked, in black velvet head dress, in the Lord Mayor's show. ( Lord Mayor's show is one of the best known annual events in London) He informed me that our principal associate was another boy, whom they in warehouse call Mealy Potatoes, because his complexion, which was pale or mealy.  Mealy's father was a waterman, and he acted as a fireman too, and was engaged as such in a large theatre, where Mealy's young sister did minor roles like that imps in pantomimes.

No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship; compare henceforth these every day associates with those of my happier childhood, Steerforth, Traddles and other boys, and my hope of growing to be a learnt and distinguished man.  The sense of utter disappointment crushed my bosom.  I was ashamed of my position.  The thought, that what I had learnt hitherto, and in which I delighted, and which raised my fancy and emulation, would pass away, little by little, never to be brought back, made me more miserable.  As often as Mick Walker went away, in the course of that afternoon, I mingled my tears with water in which I was washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there were a flaw in my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting.

The counting house clock was at half past twelve, and there was general preparation for going to dinner, Mr Quinon tapped at the window, and beckoned me to go in.  I went in, and found there a stout, middle aged person, in brown surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (a large one and very shining) than there was upon an egg, and with a very extensive face, which he turned upon me.  His clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing shirt-collar on.  He carried a jaunty sort of stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it, and a quizzing glass hung outside his coat - for ornament.  Afterwards, I found that he seldom looked through it, and couldn't see anything when he did.

'This,' said Mr Quinon, in allusion to me, 'is he.'

'This,' said the stranger, with a condescending roll in his voice and an incredible air of doing something genteel, which impressed me very much, 'is Master Copperfield, I hope I see you well, sir?'

I said I was very well and hoped he was.  I was sufficiently uneasy, Heaven knows, but it was not in my nature to complain much at that time of my life, so I said very well and hoped he was.

'I am,' said the stranger, 'Thank Heaven, quite well.  I have received a letter from Mr Murdstone, in which he mentions that he would desire me to receive into an apartment in the rear of my house, which is at present occupied- and is, in short, to be let as a- in short,' said the stranger with a smile and in a burst of confidence, 'as a bedroom- the young beginner, whom I have the pleasure to-' and the stranger waved his hand settled his chin in his shirt collar.

'This is Mr Micawber,' said Mr Quinon to me.

'Ahem,' said the stranger, 'that's my name.'

'Mr Micawber,' said Mr Quinon, 'is known to Mr Murdstone. He takes orders for us on commission, when he can get any.  He has been written to by Mr Murdstone, on the subject of your lodgings, and he will receive you as a lodger.'

'My address,' said Mr Micawber, 'is Windsor Terrace, City Road 1 - in short,' said Mr Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in another burst of confidence-'I live here.'

I made him a bow.

'Under the impression, said Mr Micawber, 'that your slow and long journey in this metropolis have not yet been extensive, and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating the mystery of modern Babylon in the direction of city road, in short,' said Mr Micawber, in another burst of confidence, 'that you might lose yourself- I shall be happy to call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.'

I thanked him with all my heart, for it was friendly in him to offer to take that trouble.

'At what hour?' asked Mr Micawber 

'At about eight,' said Mr Quinon 

 'At about eight,' repeated Mr Micawber,'I beg to wish you a good day, Mr Quinon.  I will intrude no longer.

So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under his arm; very upright, and humming a tune, when he was clear of the counting house.

Mr Quinon then formally engaged me to be as useful as I could, in the warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby, at a salary, I think, of six shillings a week.  I was not clear whether it was six or seven.  He paid me a week down ( from his own pocket) and I gave Mealy sixpence out of it to carry my trunk that night to Windsor Terrace, it being too heavy for my strength.  I paid sixpence for my dinner, which was a meat pie, and passed the hour, which was allowed for the meal, in walking about the street.

At the appointed time in the evening Mr Micawber reappeared.  I washed my face and hands, to do the greater honour to his gentility, and we walked to our house, as I suppose I must now call it, together; Mr Micawber impressed me the name of streets, and the shapes of corner houses, as we went along, that I might find my way back, easily in the morning.

Arrived at this house at Windsor Terrace, he presented me to Mrs Micawber, a thin faded lady not at all young.  The house was shabby like himself, but made all the show it could. Mrs Micawber was sitting in the parlour with a baby at her breast. The first floor was unfurnished and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours. The baby was one of twins; I may remark here that I hardly ever saw, through out my experience of the family, both the twins attached from Mrs Micawber at the same time.  One of them was always taking refreshment.

There were two other children: Master Micawber, aged four and Miss Micawber aged three.  These and a dark complexioned young woman with a habit of snorting, who was a servant to the family.  Before half an hour had expired she informed me that she was Orfling, an orphan, and came  from St. Lukes workhouse, in the neighborhood.  My room was at the top of the house, at the back, a close chamber, stencilled all over with an ornament wich my young imagination represented as blue muffin, and very scantly furnished.

'I never thought,' said Mrs Micawber, when she came up, twin and all, to show me the apartment, and sat down to take a breath, 'before, I was married, when I lived with papa and mama, that I should ever find it necessary to take a lodger, but Mr Micawber being in difficulties, all consideration of private feelings must give way.'

I said, 'Yes ma'am.'

'Mr Micawber's difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present,' said Mrs Micawber, 'and wheather it is possible to bring him through them, I don't know.  When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which I now employ it, but experience does it- as papa used to say.'

I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr Micawber had been an officer in marines, or whether I had imagined it.  I only know that I believe to this hour that he was in the Marines, once upon a time, without knowing why.  He was a sort of town traveller for a number of miscellaneous houses now, but, made little or nothing of it.

'If Micawber's creditors will not give him time' said Mrs Micawber 'they must take the consequences; and the sooner they bring it to an issue the better.  Blood cannot be obtained from a stone, neither can any thing on account be obtained at present (not to mention law expenses) from Mr Micawber.

I can never understand whether my precious self dependence, confused Mrs Micawber in reference to my age or she was so full of subject that she would have talked about it to the very twins if there had been nobody else to to communicate with, but it was the strain in which she began and she went on accordingly, all the time I knew her.

Poor Mrs Micawber! She said she had tried to exert herself, and so, I know she had.  The centre of street door, was perfectly covered with a great brass plate, on which was engraved,'Mrs Micawber's Boarding establishment for young ladies' : but I never found that any young lady had ever been to school there, or that any young lady ever came, or proposed to come or the least preparation was ever made to receive any young lady.  The only visitors I ever saw, or heard of, were creditors.  They used to come at all hours, and some of them were quite ferocious.  One dirty faced man, I think he was a boot maker, used to edge himself into the passage, as early as seven o'clock in the morning, and call up the stairs to Mr Micawber- 

'Come, you ain't out yet.  You know.  Pay us.  Will you? Don't hide. You know that's mean. I wouldn't be mean if I was you.  Pay us. Will you? You just pay us. Do you hear? Come!'

Receiving no answer to these taunts, he would mount in his wrath to the words.

'swindlers' and 'robbers'; and these being ineffectual too, would sometimes go to the extremity of crossing the street, and roaring up at the windows of the second floor, where he knew Micawber was.  At these times Micawber would be transported with grief and mortification even to the length of making motion at himself with a razor; but within half an hour afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with extraordinary pains, and go out humming a tune with greater air of gentility than ever.  Mrs Micawber was quite as elastic.  

I have known her to be thrown into fainting fits by king's taxes at three o'clock and to eat lamb chops, dreaded, and drink warm ale( paid for with two tea-spoons that had gone to pawn brokers) at four.  On one occasion an execution had just been put in, coming home through some chance as early as six o'clock, I saw her lying ( of course with a twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about her face; but I knew her more cheerful than she was, that the very same night, over a veal cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories about her papa and mama, and the company they used to keep.

In this house, and with his family, I passed my leisure time.  My own exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk I provided myself.  I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a particular shell of particular cupboard to make my supper on when I came back at night.  This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I know well, and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had to support myself on that money all the week.  

From Monday morning until Saturday night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!

I was so young and childish, and so little qualified- how can I be otherwise?- to undertake the whole charge of my own existence in going to Murdstone and Grinby's of a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half price at the pastry cook's door, and spent in that money, I should have kept for my dinner.  Then, I went without dinner, bought a roll or slice of pudding.  I remember two pudding shops, between which I was divided, according to my fancies.  One was in a court close to St Martin's church- at the back of the church- which was later removed.  The pudding at that shop was made of currants, and was rather a special pudding, real twopenny worth, not larger than a pennyworth of ordinary pudding.  A good shop for pudding was in Strand - somewhere in that part which had been rebuilt since.  It was a stout pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat raisins in it, stuck in whole at wide distances apart.  It came up hot at about my time every day, and many a day did I dine off it.  When I dined regularly and handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a four penny plate of red beef from a cook's shop; a plate of bread and cheese, and a glass of beer, from a miserable old public house opposite our business, called the Lion or Lion and something else that I had forgotten.  Once, I remember carrying my own bread, (which  I had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper, like a book, and going to a famous alamode beef house, near Drury Lane, and ordering a small plate of that delicacy to eat with it.  What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don't know, but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look.  I gave him a half penny for himself, and I wish he hadn't taken it.

We had half an hour for tea.  When I had money enough, I used to get half a pint of ready made coffee and a slice of bread and butter.  When I had none, I used to look at a vension shop in Fleet Street; or I have strolled, at sucha time, as far as Convent Market, and stared at pineapples, I was fond of wandering at Adelphi, because it was a mysterious place, with those dark arches.  I myself emerging one evening from some of these arches, on a little public house close to the river, with an open space before it, where some coal-heavers were dancing; to look at whom I sat down upon a bench.  I wonder what they thought of me.

I was a child, and so little, that when I frequented with the bar of a strange public house, for a glass of ale or porter to moisten what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me.  I remember one hot evenings I went into the bar of a public house and said to the landlord:

'What is your best-your very best- ale a glass?' for it was a special occassion.  I didn't know what. It might have been my birthday.

'Two pence half penny is the price Genuine Stunning ale.' 

'Then,' say I, producing the money, 'just draw me a glass of Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.'

The landlord looked at me over the bar, from head to foot, with a strange smile on his face, and instead of drawing the beer, looked round the screen and said something to his wife.  She came out from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me.  Here we stand all three, before me now,  the landlord in his shirt sleeve leaning against the bar window frame, his wife looking at the little half-door, and I, in some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition.  They asked me a good many questions; as what my name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed, and how I came there.  To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I invented, I am afraid appropriate answers.  They served me with ale, though I suspect it was not Genuine Stunning, and the landlord's wife, opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave me my money back, and gave me a kiss, that was half admiring and half compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scarcity of my resources or the difficulties of my life.  I know that if shilling were given me by Mr Quinon at any time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea.  I know that I worked, from morning until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child.  I know that I lounge about streets, with insufficient and unsatisfactory food.  I know that, but the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

And yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby's too.  Besides, Mr Quinon did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so anomalous, could, treat me as one upon a different footing from the rest I never said to a man or boy, how it was that I came to be there, or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there.  That I suffered in secret, and I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew but I.  How much I suffered, it is, as I have already said, utterly beyond my power to tell.  But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work.  I knew from the first, that if I could not do my work, as well as any of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt.  I soon became at least as expeditious and as skillful as either of the other boys.  Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and manner were different enough from theirs to place a space between us.  They and the men generally spoke of me as 'little agent', or 'yong Suffolker.'  A certain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers, and another named Tipp, who was a carman, and wore red jacket used to address me sometimes as 'David': but I thik it was mostly when we were very confidential, and when I had made any efforts to entertain them, over our work, with some results of the old readings; which were fast perishing out of my remembrance.  Mealy Potatoes up-rose once, and rebelled against my being so distinguished; but Mick Walker settled him in no time.

I found myself hopeless in this kind of existence, and abandoned any way of rescue.  But I could never reconcile to it, made me more miserable.  I bore it, and never revealed to even Peggotty, partly for the love of her and partly for shame.

Mr Micawber's difficulties were an addition to my distress.  In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and used to walk about, and busy with Mrs Micawber's calculations of ways and means, and heavy with the weight of Mr Micawber's debts.  On a Saturday night, which was my grand treat- partly because it was a great thing to walk home with six or seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the shop and thinking what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went home early- Mrs Micawber would make most heart rending confidence to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or coffee I had bought overnight, in a little shaving pot and sat at my  breakfast.  It was nothing at all unusual for Mr Micawber to sob violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night conversations, and sing about Jack's delight being his lovely Nan towards the end of it.  I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but jail, and go to bed making calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, 'in case anything turned up', which was his favourite expression.  And Mrs Micawber was just the same.

A curious equality of friendship sprung up between me and these people, notwithstanding ludicrous disparity in our years.  But I never allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept any invitation to eat and drink with them out of their stock ( knowing that they got on badly with their butcher and and had often not too much for themselves), until Mrs Micawber took me into her entire confidence.  This she did one evening as follows:

'Master Copperfield,' said Mrs Micawber, 'I make no stranger of you, and do not hesitate to say that Mr Micawber's difficulties are coming to a crisis.'

It made me very miserable to hear it, and I looked to Mrs Micawber's red eyes with utmost sympathy.

'With the exception of the heel of Dutch cheese- which is not adapted to the wants of a young family'- said Mrs Micawber, "there is really not a scrap of anything in the larder.  I was accustomed to speak of the larder when I lived with papa and mama, and I used the word almost unconsciously.  What I mean to express is, that there is nothing to eat in the house.'

'Dear me,' I said in a great concern. 

I had two or three shillings of week's money in my pocket- from which I presume that it must have been a Wednesday night when I held this conversation- and I hastily produced them, and with heartfelt emotion begged Mrs Micawber to accept of them as a loan.  But that lady, kissing me, and making me put them back in my pocket, replied that she couldn't think of it.

'No, my dear Master Copperfield,' she said, 'far be it from my thoughts!  But you have a discretion beyond your years, and can render me another kind of service, if you will; and a sevice I will thankfully accept of.' 

I begged Mrs Micawber to name it.

'I have parted with the plate myself,' said Mrs Micawber, 'six teas, two salts, and a pair of sugars at different times, I have borrowed money on, in secret, with my own hands.  But the twins are a great tie; and to me, with my recollections, of papa and mama, these transactions are very painful.  There are still a few trifles that we could part with.  Mr Micawber's feelings would never allow him to dispose of them; and Clicket- this was the girl from the workhouse- being of a vulgar mind, would take plain liberties if so much confidence was reposed in her.  Master Copperfield, if I might ask you-' 

I understood Mrs Micawber now, and begged her to make use of me to any extent.  I began to dispose of more portable articles that very evening; and went out on a similar expedition almost every morning, before I went to Murdstone and Grinby.

Mr Micawber had a few books on a little chest, which he called the library, and those went first.  I carried them one after another, to a book stall in the City Road- one part of which, near our house, was almost all book-stalls and bird shops then- and sold them for whatever they would bring.  The keeper of this book-stall, who lived in a little house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to be violently scolded by his wife every morning.  More than once, when I went there early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bed-stead, with a cut in his forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses overnight  ( l am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink) and he, with a shaking hand, endeavouring to find the needful shillings, in one or other pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off rating him.  Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to call again, but his wife had always got some- had taken his, while he was drunk- and scarcely completed the bargain on the stairs as we went down together.

At the pawn broker's shop, too I began to be very well-known.  The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, take a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or objective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business.  After all these occassions Mrs Micawber made a little treat, which was generally supper, and there was a peculiar relish in these meal which I well remember.

At last Mr Micawber's difficulties came to a crisis, and he was arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King's Bench prison, in the Borough.  He told me as he went out of the house that the God of the day had now gone down upon him- and I really thought his heart was broken and mine too.  But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a lively game at skittles, before noon.

On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see him.  I was to ask my way to such a place, and just short of that place, I should see such another place, and just short of that I should see a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on until I saw a turn-key.  All this I did, and when at last, I did see a turn-key( poor little fellow that I was), and thought how, when Roderick Random was in debtor's prison, there was a man with nothing on him but an old rug, the turn-key swam before my dimmed eyes and my beating heart.

Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went upto his room(top storey but one), and he cried very much.  He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate, and observe that, if a man had twenty pounds a year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds and nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable.  After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs Micawber, for the amount, and put away his pocket hand-kerchief, and cheered up.

We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the rusted grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coats; until another debtor, who shared the room with Mr Micawber, came in from the bakehouse with the loin of mutton, which was our joint stock repast.  Then I was sent upto 'Captain Hopkins', in the room overhead, with Mrs Micawber's compliments, and I was his young friend, and Captain Hopkins would lend me a knife and fork. 

Captian Hopkins lent me knife and fork, with his compliments to Mr Micawber.  There was a very dirty lady in his little room and two wan girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair.  I thought it was better to borrow Captain Hopkins's  fork than Captain Hopkins's comb.  The Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, with large whiskers and an old, old brown great-coat with no other coat below it.  I saw his bed rolled up in a corner, and what plates, dishes and pots he had on a shelf, and I divine (God knows how) that the two girls with shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins's children, the dirty lady was not married to Captain Hopkins.  My timid station on his threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes at most, but I came down again with all these knowledge, as surely as the knife and fork were in my hand.

There was something gypsy like and agreeable in the dinner after all.  I took back the knife and fork early in the afternoon, and went home to comfort Mrs Micawber with an account of my visit.  She fainted when she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot afterwards to console us while we talked it over.

I don't know how the household furniture came to be sold, for the family benefit, or who sold it, except that I did not.  Sold it was, however, and carried away in a van, except the bed, a few chairs, and the kitchen table.  With these possessions we encamped, as it were, in the two parlours of the emptied house, in Windsor Terrace, Mrs Micawber, the children, the Orfling, and myself; and lived in those rooms night and day.  I have no idea for how long, for it seemed to me for a long time.  At last Mrs Micawber resolved to move into the prison, where Mr Micawber had now secured a room to himself.  So I took the key of the house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were sent over to the King's Bench, except mine for which a little room was hired outside the wall in neighbourhood of that situation, very much to my satisfaction, since Micawbers and I had become so used to one another in our troubles to part.  The Orfling was likewise accommodated in an inexpensive lodging in the same neighborhood.  Mine was a back-garret with a sloping roof, commanding a pleasant prospect of a timber yard; and when I took possession of it, with the reflection that Mr Micawber's troubles had come to a crisis at last, I thought it quite a paradise.

All this time I was working in the Murdstone and Grinby's in the same way, and with same common companions, and with the sense of utmost degradation, as at first.  But I never, happily for me, no doubt, made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom I saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, and in prowling about the streets at meal times.  I led the same unhappy life, but lonely and in self reliance.  Two changes had taken place; I have grown more shabby, and I was relieved of Mr and Mrs Micawber's cares.  Some of their relatives and friends had engaged to help them at their present pass, and they lived comfortably in the prison.  I used to breakfast with them, by virtue of some arrangement, the details of which I do not remember now.  I was often up at six o'clock, and my favourite lounging place was London Bridge, where I used to sit in one of the stone recesses, watching the people going by, or look over the balustrades at the sun shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the Monument.  The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing fictions about wharf and Tower of which I can say no more than that I hope I believed them myself.  In the evening I used to go back to the prison and walk up and down the parade with Mr Micawber, or play casino with Mrs Micawber, and hear reminiscences of her papa and mama.  Whether Mr Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable to say.  I never told them at Murdstone and Grinby's.

Mr Micawber's affairs, although passed their crisis were very much involved by reason of a certain 'Deed', of which I used to hear a great deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former composition with his creditors, though I was far from being clear about it, that I am conscious of having confounded it with those demoniac parchment which were considered to have obtained from Germany. Later it was somehow cleared and Mrs Micawber informed that the family had decided to seek his release upon some clauses under the Insolvent Debtor's Act.  She expected his release in six weeks.  Mr Micawber was present when this information was passed.  He declared that he would begin a new life in a perfectly new manner.

About this time Mr Micawber had originated a petition to the House of Commons praying an alteration in the law of imprisonment for debt.  In this time I had been developing an idea of writing stories out of men materials I came into contact with.  There was a club in prison of which Mr Micawber was a member and over which as a gentleman he exercised great authority.  Micawber impressed upon other members of the necessity of the petition to House of Commons under the signature of all members.  I found him very happy in this work, and did it with great care which was absent in his own affairs.

The signatures of the members were obtained in a particular gathering on a particular day and at particular hours, and I was presented myself on the occassion after getting leave of absence from Murdstone and Grinby's.  Captain Hopkins was also present and coordinated the event, read the contents of the petition, word for word, in his loud voice.

Thus the petition was made and moved to the House of Commons.

 END OF THE CHAPTER