Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

Nicholas seeks to employ himself in a New Capacity, and being
unsuccessful, accepts an engagement as Tutor in a Private Family

The first care of Nicholas, next morning, was, to look after some
room in which, until better times dawned upon him, he could contrive
to exist, without trenching upon the hospitality of Newman Noggs,
who would have slept upon the stairs with pleasure, so that his
young friend was accommodated.

The vacant apartment to which the bill in the parlour window bore
reference, appeared, on inquiry, to be a small back-room on the
second floor, reclaimed from the leads, and overlooking a soot-
bespeckled prospect of tiles and chimney-pots. For the letting of
this portion of the house from week to week, on reasonable terms,
the parlour lodger was empowered to treat; he being deputed by the
landlord to dispose of the rooms as they became vacant, and to keep
a sharp look-out that the lodgers didn't run away. As a means of
securing the punctual discharge of which last service he was
permitted to live rent-free, lest he should at any time be tempted
to run away himself.

Of this chamber, Nicholas became the tenant; and having hired a few
common articles of furniture from a neighbouring broker, and paid
the first week's hire in advance, out of a small fund raised by the
conversion of some spare clothes into ready money, he sat himself
down to ruminate upon his prospects, which, like the prospect
outside his window, were sufficiently confined and dingy. As they
by no means improved on better acquaintance, and as familiarity
breeds contempt, he resolved to banish them from his thoughts by
dint of hard walking. So, taking up his hat, and leaving poor Smike
to arrange and rearrange the room with as much delight as if it had
been the costliest palace, he betook himself to the streets, and
mingled with the crowd which thronged them.

Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a
mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by
no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal
facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of
his cares. The unhappy state of his own affairs was the one idea
which occupied the brain of Nicholas, walk as fast as he would; and
when he tried to dislodge it by speculating on the situation and
prospects of the people who surrounded him, he caught himself, in a
few seconds, contrasting their condition with his own, and gliding
almost imperceptibly back into his old train of thought again.

Occupied in these reflections, as he was making his way along one of
the great public thoroughfares of London, he chanced to raise his
eyes to a blue board, whereon was