A Story Familiar Epistle from a Parent to a Child Aged
Two Years and Two Months in English by
Dickens
My child,
To recount with
what trouble I have brought you up--with what an anxious eye I have regarded
your progress,--how late and how often I have sat up at night working for
you,--and how many thousand letters I have received from, and written to your
various relations and friends, many of whom have been of a querulous and
irritable turn,--to dwell on the anxiety and tenderness with which I have (as
far as I possessed the power) inspected and chosen your food; rejecting the
indigestible and heavy matter which some injudicious but well-meaning old
ladies would have had you swallow, and retaining only those light and pleasant
articles which I deemed calculated to keep you free from all gross humours, and
to render you an agreeable child, and one who might be popular with society in
general,--to dilate on the steadiness with which I have prevented your annoying
any company by talking politics--always assuring you that you would thank me
for it yourself some day when you grew older,--to expatiate, in short, upon my
own assiduity as a parent, is beside my present purpose, though I cannot but contemplate
your fair appearance--your robust health, and unimpeded circulation (which I
take to be the great secret of your good looks) without the liveliest
satisfaction and delight.
It is a trite
observation, and one which, young as you are, I have no doubt you have often
heard repeated, that we have fallen upon strange times, and live in days of
constant shiftings and changes. I had a melancholy instance of this only a week
or two since. I was returning from Manchester to London by the Mail Train, when
I suddenly fell into another train--a mixed train--of reflection, occasioned by
the dejected and disconsolate demeanour of the Post- Office Guard. We were
stopping at some station where they take in water, when he dismounted slowly
from the little box in which he sits in ghastly mockery of his old condition
with pistol and blunderbuss beside him, ready to shoot the first highwayman (or
railwayman) who shall attempt to stop the horses, which now travel (when they
travel at all) INSIDE and in a portable stable invented for the purpose,--he
dismounted, I say, slowly and sadly, from his post, and looking mournfully
about him as if in dismal recollection of the old roadside public-house the
blazing fire--the glass of foaming ale--the buxom handmaid and admiring hangers-on
of tap-room and stable, all honoured by his notice; and, retiring a little
apart, stood leaning against a signal-post, surveying the engine with a look of
combined affliction and disgust which no words can describe. His scarlet coat
and golden lace were tarnished with ignoble smoke; flakes of soot had fallen on
his bright green shawl- -his pride in days of yore--the steam condensed in the
tunnel from which we had just emerged, shone upon his hat like rain. His eye
betokened that he was thinking of the coachman; and as it wandered to his own
seat and his own fast-fading garb, it was plain to see that he felt his office
and himself had alike no business there, and were nothing but an elaborate
practical joke.
As we whirled
away, I was led insensibly into an anticipation of those days to come, when
mail-coach guards shall no longer be judges of horse-flesh--when a mail-coach
guard shall never even have seen a horse--when stations shall have superseded
stables, and corn shall have given place to coke. 'In those dawning times,'
thought I, 'exhibition-rooms shall teem with portraits of Her Majesty's
favourite engine, with boilers after Nature by future Landseers. Some Amburgh,
yet unborn, shall break wild horses by his magic power; and in the dress of a mail-coach
guard exhibit his TRAINED ANIMALS in a mock mail-coach. Then, shall wondering
crowds observe how that, with the exception of his whip, it is all his eye; and
crowned heads shall see them fed on oats, and stand alone unmoved and
undismayed, while counters flee affrighted when the coursers neigh!'
Such, my child,
were the reflections from which I was only awakened then, as I am now, by the
necessity of attending to matters of present though minor importance. I offer
no apology to you for the digression, for it brings me very naturally to the
subject of change, which is the very subject of which I desire to treat.
In fact, my
child, you have changed hands. Henceforth I resign you to the guardianship and
protection of one of my most intimate and valued friends, Mr. Ainsworth, with
whom, and with you, my best wishes and warmest feelings will ever remain. I
reap no gain or profit by parting from you, nor will any conveyance of your
property be required, for, in this respect, you have always been literally 'Bentley's'
Miscellany, and never mine.
Unlike the
driver of the old Manchester mail, I regard this altered state of things with
feelings of unmingled pleasure and satisfaction.
Unlike the guard
of the new Manchester mail, YOUR guard is at home in his new place, and has
roystering highwaymen and gallant desperadoes ever within call. And if I might
compare you, my child, to an engine; (not a Tory engine, nor a Whig engine, but
a brisk and rapid locomotive;) your friends and patrons to passengers; and he
who now stands towards you in loco parentis as the skilful engineer and
supervisor of the whole, I would humbly crave leave to postpone the departure
of the train on its new and auspicious course for one brief instant, while,
with hat in hand, I approach side by side with the friend who travelled with me
on the old road, and presume to solicit favour and kindness in behalf of him
and his new charge, both for their sakes and that of the old coachman,
Gray.
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