It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his

door at night, enclosing half-a-crown, two half-crowns, now and then at

long intervals even half-a-sovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea.

'With the compliments of a collegian taking leave.' He received the

gifts as tributes, from admirers, to a public character. Sometimes

these correspondents assumed facetious names, as the Brick, Bellows, Old

Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, the Dogs-meat Man; but he

considered this in bad taste, and was always a little hurt by it.

In the fulness of time, this correspondence showing signs of wearing

out, and seeming to require an effort on the part of the correspondents

to which in the hurried circumstances of departure many of them might

not be equal, he established the custom of attending collegians of

a certain standing, to the gate, and taking leave of them there. The

collegian under treatment, after shaking hands, would occasionally

stop to wrap up something in a bit of paper, and would come back again

calling 'Hi!' He would look round surprised.'Me?' he would say, with a smile. By

this time the collegian would be up with him, and he would paternally

add,'What have you forgotten? What can I do for you?'

'I forgot to leave this,' the collegian would usually return, 'for the

Father of the Marshalsea.'

'My good sir,' he would rejoin, 'he is infinitely obliged to you.' But,

to the last, the irresolute hand of old would remain in the pocket into

which he had slipped the money during two or three turns about the yard,

lest the transaction should be too conspicuous to the general body of

collegians. One afternoon he had been doing the honours of the place to a rather

large party of collegians, who happened to be going out, when, as he was

coming back, he encountered one from the poor side who had been taken in

execution for a small sum a week before, had 'settled' in the course of

that afternoon, and was going out too. The man was a mere Plasterer in

his working dress; had his wife with him, and a bundle; and was in high

spirits.

God bless you, sir,' he said in passing. 'And you,' benignantly returned the Father of the Marshalsea. They were pretty far divided, going their several ways,

'It ain't much,' said the Plasterer, putting a little pile of halfpence

in his hand, 'but it's well meant.'

The Father of the Marshalsea had never been offered tribute in copper

yet. His children often had, and with his perfect acquiescence it had

gone into the common purse to buy meat that he had eaten, and drink that

he had drunk; but fustian splashed with white lime, bestowing halfpence

on him, front to front, was new.




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