Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

Spirit

Anybody may pass, any day, in the thronged thoroughfares of the
metropolis, some meagre, wrinkled, yellow old man (who might be
supposed to have dropped from the stars, if there were any star in
the Heavens dull enough to be suspected of casting off so feeble a
spark), creeping along with a scared air, as though bewildered and
a little frightened by the noise and bustle. This old man is
always a little old man. If he were ever a big old man, he has
shrunk into a little old man; if he were always a little old man,
he has dwindled into a less old man. His coat is a colour, and
cut, that never was the mode anywhere, at any period. Clearly, it
was not made for him, or for any individual mortal. Some wholesale
contractor measured Fate for five thousand coats of such quality,
and Fate has lent this old coat to this old man, as one of a long
unfinished line of many old men. It has always large dull metal
buttons, similar to no other buttons. This old man wears a hat, a
thumbed and napless and yet an obdurate hat, which has never
adapted itself to the shape of his poor head. His coarse shirt and
his coarse neckcloth have no more individuality than his coat and
hat; they have the same character of not being his--of not being
anybody's. Yet this old man wears these clothes with a certain
unaccustomed air of being dressed and elaborated for the public
ways; as though he passed the greater part of his time in a
nightcap and gown. And so, like the country mouse in the second
year of a famine, come to see the town mouse, and timidly threading
his way to the town-mouse's lodging through a city of cats, this
old man passes in the streets.

Sometimes, on holidays towards evening, he will be seen to walk
with a slightly increased infirmity, and his old eyes will glimmer
with a moist and marshy light. Then the little old man is drunk.
A very small measure will overset him; he may be bowled off his
unsteady legs with a half-pint pot. Some pitying acquaintance--
chance acquaintance very often--has warmed up his weakness with a
treat of beer, and the consequence will be the lapse of a longer
time than usual before he shall pass again. For the little old man
is going home to the Workhouse; and on his good behaviour they do
not let him out often (though methinks they might, considering the
few years he has before him to go out in, under the sun); and on
his bad behaviour they shut him up closer than ever in a grove of
two score and nineteen more old men, every one of whom smells of
all the others.

Mrs Plornish's father,--a poor little reedy piping old gentleman,
like a worn-out bird; who had been in what he called the music-
binding business, and met with great misfortunes,