A READING OF THE PICKWICKIANS.
A search disclosed treasure in the shape of sundry parts of the Pickwick Papers, not certainly the famous original parts in their green—shall we say their evergreen covers?—but sections devised for the simultaneous satisfying of a number of readers. These parts we carefully gathered together, when it was discovered that the immortal transactions began with the celebrated bachelor supper given by Mr. Bob Sawyer at his lodgings in Lant Street, in the Borough. Here, indeed, was matter to cause gastronomic agitation in starving men! Yet, need we, then, go supperless to bed? Shall we not also become Pickwickians, and, constituting ourselves members of the Club, drop in upon the party as not entirely unwelcome guests? And so I read until “lights out” sent us perforce to bed.
Recalling that it was my birthday, and by way of a gift to myself, I succeeded in persuading the Unteroffizier to purchase for me a sketch-book and pencils, with which I amused myself and comrades by a series of portrait studies of more or less veracity. One of these my fellows in misfortune was a sculptor who had exhibited at the R.A., and who now exhibited a photograph of one of his works—a statue of Sappho—which he carried in his pocket. We two decided to hang together—unless we were shot separately—as we had heard amazing reports of ateliers to be secured in certain Läger by humble followers of the arts graphic and plastic.
During all the days of our stay here, and precisely at four o’clock of the afternoon, a bell tolled solemnly from the church under whose shadow we lay. It was for the burial of German soldiers killed at Cambrai.
Early on a Sunday morning, while the stars still shivered in a frosty sky, we set out to entrain for Carlsruhe, very optimistically with one day’s rations in our pouches, and that a day’s rations which would have shown meagre as the hors-d’œuvre of an ordinary meal. We arrived at Carlsruhe on the evening of Tuesday, and in the interim would probably have succumbed to starvation for lack of food, if we had not been in a state of suspended animation owing to the cold.
A SCULPTOR.
Only one incident of that journey do I desire to recall. In the middle of the night I awoke shiveringly from a fitful sleep to find that the train had come to a stop in a large station. I glanced idly from the window, and an arc lamp lit up a great signboard, on which was painted in large ominous letters the one word—SEDAN.