"The lady of the caravan looked on approvingly for some time and then said,
"'Have you nearly finished?'
"Wery nigh, mum,' and indeed after scraping the dish all round with his knife and carrying the choice brown morsels to his mouth, and after taking such a scientific pull at the stone bottle that, by degrees almost imperceptible to the sight, his head went farther and farther back until he lay nearly at his full length upon the ground, this gentleman declared himself quite disengaged, and came forth from his retreat.
"'I hope I haven't hurried you, George,' said his mistress, who appeared to have a great sympathy with his late pursuit.
"'If you have,' returned the fellow, wisely reserving himself for any favourable contingency, 'we must make it up next time, that's all.'"
Mrs. Gamp has a touch of sympathy in her exuberance. Contemplating going down to the country with the Dickens' company of actors, she tells us—
"Which Mrs. Harris's own words to me was these, 'Sairey Gamp,' she says, 'why not go to Margate? Srimps,' says that dear creetur, 'is to your liking. Sairey, why not go to Margate for a week, bring your constitution up with srimps, and come back to them loving arts as knows and wallies you, blooming? Sairey,' Mrs. Harris says, 'you are but poorly. Don't denige it, Mrs. Gamp, for books is in your looks. You must have rest. Your mind,' she says, 'is too strong for you; it gets you down and treads upon you, Sairey. It is useless to disguige the fact—the blade is a wearing out the sheets.' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'I could not undertake to say, and I will not deceive you ma'am, that I am not the woman I could wish to be. The time of worrit as I had with Mrs. Colliber, the baker's lady, which was so bad in her mind with her first, that she would not so much as look at bottled stout, and kept to gruel through the month, has agued me, Mrs. Harris. But, ma'am,' I says to her, 'talk not of Margate, for if I do go anywhere it is elsewheres, and not there.' 'Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris solemn, 'whence this mystery? If I have ever deceived the hardest-working, soberest, and best of women, mention it.' ... 'Mrs. Harris, then,' I says, 'I have heard as there is an expedition going down to Manjester and Liverpool a playacting, If I goes anywhere for change it is along with that.' Mrs. Harris clasps her hands, and drops into a chair, 'And have I lived to hear,' she says, 'of Sairey Gamp, as always kept herself respectable, in company with play-actors.' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'be not alarmed, not reg'lar play-actors—hammertoors.' 'Thank Evans!' says Mrs. Harris, and bustizes into a flood of tears,"
Dickens saw with Hood the power to be obtained by uniting pathos with humour. Such an intermixture at first appears inharmonious, but in reality produces sweet music. There is something corresponding to the course of external nature with its light and shade its sunshine and showers, in this melancholy chased away by mirth, and joy merging into sadness. Here, Dickens has held up the mirror, and shown a bright reflection of the outer world. Out of many choice specimens, we may select the following from the speech of the Cheap Jack—
"'Now, you country boobies,' says I, feeling as if my heart was a heavy weight at the end of a broken sash-line, 'I give you notice that I am going to charm the money out of your pockets, and to give you so much more than your money's worth that you'll only persuade yourselves to draw your Saturday-night's wages ever again afterwards, by the hopes of meeting me to lay 'em out with, which you never will; and why not? Because I've made my fortune by selling my goods on a large scale for seventy-five per cent less than I give for them, and I am consequently to be elevated to the House of Peers next week by the title of the Duke of Cheap, and Markis Jack-a-looral."
He puts up a lot and after recommending it with all his eloquence pretends to knock it down—