“With a couple of sticks. When——”
“When you stops, you know,” cries Phil, putting down his cup and saucer, and hastily removing his plate from his knees, “and says to me, ‘What, comrade! You have been in the wars!’ I didn’t say much to you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you, delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was like a glass of something hot: ‘What accident have you met with? You have been badly hurt. What’s amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us about it!’ Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!” cries Phil, who has started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. “If a mark’s wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take aim at me. They can’t spoil my beauty. I’m all right. Come on! If they want a man to box at, let ’em box at me. Let ’em knock me well about the head. I don’t mind! if they want a light weight, to be throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let ’em throw me. They won’t hurt me. I have been throwed all sorts of styles all my life!”
Pip said in Great Expectations:
It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted, duty-doing man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it has touched one’s self in going by, and I know right well that any good that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe, and not of restless aspiring discontented me.
Dear, simple-hearted Joe Gargery! When every one else was abusing Pip at the great dinner party, he showed his sympathy for him by putting some more gravy on his plate.
In Our Mutual Friend Lizzie Hexam, sympathizing with her father so much that she would not learn to read because he was bitterly prejudiced against education, but sympathizing so much with her brother Charley that she had him educated secretly so that he might become a teacher, is an illustration of nearly perfect sympathy.
The happiness of the little “minders” at old Betty Higden’s is in sharp contrast to the misery of the boarders of the respectable (?) establishment of Mrs. Pipchin. In the one case was abject poverty and loving sympathy, in the other plenty and cruel selfishness. When Mr. and Mrs. Boffin were adopting Johnnie from Betty Higden’s care, the brave old woman said:
“If I could have kept the dear child without the dread that’s always upon me of his coming to that fate I have spoken of, I could never have parted with him, even to you. For I love him, I love him, I love him! I love my husband long dead and gone, in him; I love my children dead and gone, in him; I love my young and hopeful days dead and gone, in him. I couldn’t sell that love, and look you in your bright kind face. It’s a free gift.”
Betty was not a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.
Dickens spoke with great enthusiasm in his American Notes of the practical sympathy of Doctor Howe with all afflicted children, especially with blind children, closing his sketch of the wonderful work he had done with the sentence: “There are not many persons, I hope and believe, who after reading these passages can ever hear that name with indifference.” He noted that Laura Bridgman had a special desire for sympathy.