prompt:
Chapter: We were now down in Westminster. We had turned back to follow her,
having encountered her coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey was
the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the leading
streets. She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of the two currents
of passengers setting towards and from the bridge, that, between this
and the advance she had of us when she struck off, we were in the narrow
water-side street by Millbank before we came up with her. At that moment
she crossed the road, as if to avoid the footsteps that she heard so
close behind; and, without looking back, passed on even more rapidly.

A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were
housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet. I touched my companion
without speaking, and we both forbore to cross after her, and both
followed on that opposite side of the way; keeping as quietly as we
could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.

There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying street,
a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete old
ferry-house. Its position is just at that point where the street ceases,
and the road begins to lie between a row of houses and the river. As
soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped as if she had come
to her destination; and presently went slowly along by the brink of the
river, looking intently at it.

All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house;
indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in
some way associated with the lost girl. But that one dark glimpse of the
river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared me for her going
no farther.

The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive, sad, and
solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither wharves nor
houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A
sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and
rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one
part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished,
rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron
monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles,
anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange
objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust,
underneath which--having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet
weather--they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves.
The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose
by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that
poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among
old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like
green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for
drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze
and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits
dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and
a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole
place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that
nightmare condition, out of the overflowings of the polluted stream.

As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to
corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the
river's brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely and
still, looking at the water.

There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these enabled
us to come within a few yards of her without being seen. I then signed
to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged from their shade to
speak to her. I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling;
for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she
stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking
at the lights crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread
within me.

I think she was talking to herself. I am sure, although absorbed in
gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and that she
was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered way, more
like the action of a sleep-walker than a waking person. I know, and
never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner which gave me
no assurance but that she would sink before my eyes, until I had her arm
within my grasp.

At the same moment I said 'Martha!'

She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such strength
that I doubt if I could have held her alone. But a stronger hand than
mine was laid upon her; and when she raised her frightened eyes and saw
whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped down between us.
We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones,
and there laid her down, crying and moaning. In a little while she sat
among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.

'Oh, the river!' she cried passionately. 'Oh, the river!'

'Hush, hush!' said I. 'Calm yourself.'

But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, 'Oh, the
river!' over and over again.

'I know it's like me!' she exclaimed. 'I know that I belong to it.
I know that it's the natural company of such as I am! It comes from
country places, where there was once no harm in it--and it creeps
through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable--and it goes away,
like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled--and I feel that
I must go with it!' I have never known what despair was, except in the
tone of those words.

'I can't keep away from it. I can't forget it. It haunts me day and
night. It's the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that's
fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!'

The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion,
as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his
niece's history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any
painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He
shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand--I touched it with my
own, for his appearance alarmed me--was deadly cold.

'She is in a state of frenzy,' I whispered to him. 'She will speak
differently in a little time.'

I don't know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with
his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to
her with his outstretched hand.

A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid
her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of
humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass, before we could
speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would
have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more
tranquil.

'Martha,' said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise--she seemed
to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was
weak, and leaned against a boat. 'Do you know who this is, who is with
me?'

She said faintly, 'Yes.'

'Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?'

She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in
a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without
appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against
her forehead.

'Are you composed enough,' said I, 'to speak on the subject which so
interested you--I hope Heaven may remember it!--that snowy night?'

Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to
me for not having driven her away from the door.

'I want to say nothing for myself,' she said, after a few moments. 'I
am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,' she had
shrunk away from him, 'if you don't feel too hard to me to do it, that
I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.' 'It has never been
attributed to you,' I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.

'It was you, if I don't deceive myself,' she said, in a broken voice,
'that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so
gentle to me; didn't shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me
such kind help! Was it you, sir?'

'It was,' said I.

'I should have been in the river long ago,' she said, glancing at it
with a terrible expression, 'if any wrong to her had been upon my mind.
I never could have kept out of it a single winter's night, if I had not
been free of any share in that!'

'The cause of her flight is too well understood,' I said. 'You are
innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,--we know.'

'Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better
heart!' exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; 'for she was
always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant
and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself,
knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes
life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever
from her!'

Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his
eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.

'And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some
belonging to our town,' cried Martha, 'the bitterest thought in all my
mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me,
and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died
to have brought back her good name!'

Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and
grief was terrible.

'To have died, would not have been much--what can I say?---I would
have lived!' she cried. 'I would have lived to be old, in the wretched
streets--and to wander about, avoided, in the dark--and to see the day
break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used
to shine into my room, and wake me once--I would have done even that, to
save her!'

Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them
up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture
constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as
though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and
drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.

'What shall I ever do!' she said, fighting thus with her despair. 'How
can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to
everyone I come near!' Suddenly she turned to my companion. 'Stamp upon
me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had
done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can't
believe--why should you?---a syllable that comes out of my lips. It
would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a
word. I don't complain. I don't say she and I are alike--I know there
is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and
wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and
love her. Oh, don't think that all the power I had of loving anything is
quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being
what I am, and having ever known her; but don't think that of me!'

He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild
distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.

'Martha,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid
as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen't know half the
change that's come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it
likely. Well!' he paused a moment, then went on. 'You doen't understand
how 'tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You
doen't understand what 'tis we has afore us. Listen now!'

His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him,
as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was
quite hushed and mute.

'If you heerd,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'owt of what passed between Mas'r
Davy and me, th' night when it snew so hard, you know as I have
been--wheer not--fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,' he repeated
steadily. 'Fur she's more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear
afore.'

She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.

'I have heerd her tell,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as you was early left
fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough
seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you'd had such
a friend, you'd have got into a way of being fond of him in course of
time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.'

As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her,
taking it up from the ground for that purpose.

'Whereby,' said he, 'I know, both as she would go to the wureld's
furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would
fly to the wureld's furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she
ain't no call to doubt my love, and doen't--and doen't,' he repeated,
with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, 'there's shame
steps in, and keeps betwixt us.'

I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself,
new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature
it presented.

'According to our reckoning,' he proceeded, 'Mas'r Davy's here, and
mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to
London. We believe--Mas'r Davy, me, and all of us--that you are as
innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You've
spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew
she was! I knew she always was, to all. You're thankful to her, and you
love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!'

She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were
doubtful of what he had said.

'Will you trust me?' she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.

'Full and free!' said Mr. Peggotty.

'To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have any
shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge, come to
you, and bring you to her?' she asked hurriedly.

We both replied together, 'Yes!'

She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote
herself to this task, fervently and faithfully. That she would never
waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it, while there
was any chance of hope. If she were not true to it, might the object
she now had in life, which bound her to something devoid of evil, in its
passing away from her, leave her more forlorn and more despairing, if
that were possible, than she had been upon the river's brink that night;
and then might all help, human and Divine, renounce her evermore!

She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said
this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the
gloomy water.

We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I recounted
at length. She listened with great attention, and with a face that often
changed, but had the same purpose in all its varying expressions. Her
eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed. It seemed
as if her spirit were quite altered, and she could not be too quiet.

She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if
occasion should arise. Under a dull lamp in the road, I wrote our two
addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore out and gave to
her, and which she put in her poor bosom. I asked her where she lived
herself. She said, after a pause, in no place long. It were better not
to know.

Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred
to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail upon her to
accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would
do so at another time. I represented to her that Mr. Peggotty could
not be called, for one in his condition, poor; and that the idea of her
engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources, shocked
us both. She continued steadfast. In this particular, his influence
upon her was equally powerless with mine. She gratefully thanked him but
remained inexorable.

'There may be work to be got,' she said. 'I'll try.'

'At least take some assistance,' I returned, 'until you have tried.'

'I could not do what I have promised, for money,' she replied. 'I could
not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away
your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away
the only certain thing that saves me from the river.'

'In the name of the great judge,' said I, 'before whom you and all of us
must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do
some good, if we will.'

She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she
answered:

'It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature
for repentance. I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold. If any good
should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever
come of my deeds yet. I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long
while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to
try for. I know no more, and I can say no more.'

Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting out
her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was some
healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road. She had been
ill, probably for a long time. I observed, upon that closer opportunity
of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes
expressed privation and endurance.

We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same
direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets. I
had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that I then put it to
Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the onset, like distrusting
her, to follow her any farther. He being of the same mind, and equally
reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours,
which was towards Highgate. He accompanied me a good part of the way;
and when we parted, with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort,
there was a new and thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss
to interpret.

It was midnight when I arrived at home. I had reached my own gate, and
was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul's, the sound
of which I thought had been borne towards me among the multitude of
striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see that the door of my
aunt's cottage was open, and that a faint light in the entry was shining
out across the road.

Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old alarms,
and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration in
the distance, I went to speak to her. It was with very great surprise
that I saw a man standing in her little garden.

He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of drinking. I
stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for the moon was up now,
though obscured; and I recognized the man whom I had once supposed to be
a delusion of Mr. Dick's, and had once encountered with my aunt in the
streets of the city.

He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry
appetite. He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it were
the first time he had seen it. After stooping to put the bottle on the
ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about; though with a
covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.

The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt came
out. She was agitated, and told some money into his hand. I heard it
chink.

'What's the use of this?' he demanded.

'I can spare no more,' returned my aunt.

'Then I can't go,' said he. 'Here! You may take it back!'

'You bad man,' returned my aunt, with great emotion; 'how can you use me
so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak I am! What have
I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but to abandon you to
your deserts?'

'And why don't you abandon me to my deserts?' said he.

'You ask me why!' returned my aunt. 'What a heart you must have!'

He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at
length he said:

'Is this all you mean to give me, then?'

'It is all I CAN give you,' said my aunt. 'You know I have had losses,
and am poorer than I used to be. I have told you so. Having got it, why
do you give me the pain of looking at you for another moment, and seeing
what you have become?'

'I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,' he said. 'I lead the
life of an owl.'

'You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,' said my aunt.
'You closed my heart against the whole world, years and years. You
treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly. Go, and repent of it.
Don't add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries you have done
me!'

'Aye!' he returned. 'It's all very fine--Well! I must do the best I can,
for the present, I suppose.'

In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt's indignant tears,
and came slouching out of the garden. Taking two or three quick steps,
as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and went in as he came
out. We eyed one another narrowly in passing, and with no favour.

'Aunt,' said I, hurriedly. 'This man alarming you again! Let me speak to
him. Who is he?'

'Child,' returned my aunt, taking my arm, 'come in, and don't speak to
me for ten minutes.'

We sat down in her little parlour. My aunt retired behind the round
green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of a chair, and
occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an hour. Then she
came out, and took a seat beside me.

'Trot,' said my aunt, calmly, 'it's my husband.'

'Your husband, aunt? I thought he had been dead!'

'Dead to me,' returned my aunt, 'but living.'

I sat in silent amazement.

'Betsey Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender passion,'
said my aunt, composedly, 'but the time was, Trot, when she believed in
that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there
was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given
him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her
heart. So she put all that sort of sentiment, once and for ever, in a
grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.'

'My dear, good aunt!'

'I left him,' my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the back of
mine, 'generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left
him generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected
a separation on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks
and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another
woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he
is now, you see. But he was a fine-looking man when I married him,' said
my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone; 'and
I believed him--I was a fool!--to be the soul of honour!'

She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.

'He is nothing to me now, Trot--less than nothing. But, sooner than have
him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled about in
this country), I give him more money than I can afford, at intervals
when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am
so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what
I once believed him to be, I wouldn't have even this shadow of my idle
fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman
was.'

My aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.

'There, my dear!' she said. 'Now you know the beginning, middle, and
end, and all about it. We won't mention the subject to one another any
more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is
my grumpy, frumpy story, and we'll keep it to ourselves, Trot!'

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: At the end of an alley near the Thames River, David sees Martha going into a run-down wooden building. The neighborhood is grimy, dark, and empty. David signals to Mr. Peggotty to stay where he is. Martha looks wild as she stands muttering to herself. David touches her arm and calls her name. Martha screams and babbles: she compares herself to the river, which starts clean but then flows into the dirty city. David and Mr. Peggotty wait for Martha to calm down. Finally, David asks if Martha recognizes him and Mr. Peggotty. She does. David wants to know if Martha can talk of Emily. Martha begs David to tell Mr. Peggotty that what happened to Emily wasn't her fault. If it had been her fault, she would have thrown herself into the Thames a long time ago. David assures Martha that they know Martha had nothing to do with Emily running away. Martha knows that she is corrupt, and that Emily was never anything but kind to Martha. It pains Martha to know that the people of the village might think Martha brought Emily down, she who owed Emily so much. Martha asks how she can go on as she is, a living disgrace. Mr. Peggotty addresses Martha directly, and tells her that he will never judge her. He assures Martha that Emily is dearer to him now than she was before. Still, Mr. Peggotty knows that Emily would never doubt his love for her. If Emily is hiding from Mr. Peggotty, it is because of shame. David and Mr. Peggotty both agree that Emily will probably wind up in London. Mr. Peggotty asks Martha to help them find Emily. Martha asks if Mr. Peggotty will trust her to bring Emily to him if she ever finds her? David and Mr. Peggotty both say they do trust her. Martha promises that she will do this task faithfully. David tells Martha everything they know so far about Emily's movements since she ran away. He writes down his and Mr. Peggotty's addresses so that she can get in touch if she hears any news. David tries to offer Martha some money, but she will absolutely not accept. Martha refuses the money because she worries that, if she accepts money, they will trust her less. She is honored to be trusted again for the first time in so long. Martha touches Mr. Peggotty briefly and then goes on her way. David arrives home at around midnight. He sees that his aunt's cottage is lit up, and he goes to see if anything is the matter. David is shocked to see a man standing in her yard. The man is eating and drinking as though he is starving. Miss Betsey comes out and presses some money into his hand. The man tells her it's not enough for him to go. Miss Betsey asks how he can be so cruel to her, when she can spare him nothing else? The man tells her that he has grown shabby and pathetic. Miss Betsey replies that he has taken most of her money and treated her cruelly. How can he be such a jerk now? The man goes off, looking annoyed. He and David pass each other, and David asks his aunt why this man has been bothering her. Miss Betsey brings David inside and tells him not to speak to her for a little while. After sitting quietly for a bit, Miss Betsey comes out and says that that man is her husband. He is not dead at all; he's just dead to Miss Betsey. David is totally amazed. Miss Betsey tells David that she loved that man completely, and that he stole her fortune and broke her heart. That's why she has buried all that kind of feeling forever. Apparently, she left him with a fair amount of money which he gambled away; he also married another woman and turned into a cheat. Now and again, he still turns up, and she pays him to go away. Miss Betsey says that now David knows her whole story, and she wants to keep it between them.


prompt:
Chapter: I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the
punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very
successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears,
notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of
my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has
always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any
good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the
faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this
reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise
I got, the more I tried to deserve.

It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials
it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions. They
express themselves, and I leave them to themselves. When I refer to
them, incidentally, it is only as a part of my progress.

Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and
accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence.
Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and
bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find
out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and
nothing else. I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, so
prosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered myself
reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night,
therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the
last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the
old drone in the newspapers, without any substantial variation (except,
perhaps, that there is more of it), all the livelong session.

I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a year
and a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up the
housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page.
The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook;
in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the
remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.

He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His whole
existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper
occasions,--as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in
the evening,--and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron
missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very
much attached to us, and wouldn't go. He was a tearful boy, and broke
into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion
was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother--no
anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a
sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands;
and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had
a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing
his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on
the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would
take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.

This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum,
was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew--and
he grew like scarlet beans--with painful apprehensions of the time when
he would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey.
I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myself
into the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when he
was an old man.

I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate's manner of
getting me out of my difficulty. He stole Dora's watch, which, like
everything else belonging to us, had no particular place of its own;
and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was always a
weak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between London and
Uxbridge outside the coach. He was taken to Bow Street, as well as
I remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey; when
four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn't play, were
found upon his person.

The surprise and its consequences would have been much less disagreeable
to me if he had not been penitent. But he was very penitent indeed, and
in a peculiar way--not in the lump, but by instalments. For example:
the day after that on which I was obliged to appear against him, he made
certain revelations touching a hamper in the cellar, which we believed
to be full of wine, but which had nothing in it except bottles and
corks. We supposed he had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knew
of the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained a
new twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early every
morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned
to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was
informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of
sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A
little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and
confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises,
on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be so
ashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any money
to hold his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his being
permitted to run away. It was an aggravating circumstance in the case
that he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making me amends
in every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations on my head.

At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the police
approaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life until
he was tried and ordered to be transported. Even then he couldn't be
quiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so much to see Dora
before he went away, that Dora went to visit him, and fainted when she
found herself inside the iron bars. In short, I had no peace of my life
until he was expatriated, and made (as I afterwards heard) a shepherd
of, 'up the country' somewhere; I have no geographical idea where.

All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented our
mistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora one
evening, in spite of my tenderness for her.

'My love,' said I, 'it is very painful to me to think that our want of
system and management, involves not only ourselves (which we have got
used to), but other people.'

'You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to be
cross!' said Dora.

'No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean.'

'I think I don't want to know,' said Dora.

'But I want you to know, my love. Put Jip down.'

Dora put his nose to mine, and said 'Boh!' to drive my seriousness away;
but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat looking at
me, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little expression of
countenance.

'The fact is, my dear,' I began, 'there is contagion in us. We infect
everyone about us.'

I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora's face had not
admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I was
going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy,
for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and made
my meaning plainer.

'It is not merely, my pet,' said I, 'that we lose money and comfort, and
even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we
incur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes into
our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the
fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out
ill because we don't turn out very well ourselves.'

'Oh, what an accusation,' exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; 'to say
that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!'

'My dearest,' I remonstrated, 'don't talk preposterous nonsense! Who has
made the least allusion to gold watches?'

'You did,' returned Dora. 'You know you did. You said I hadn't turned
out well, and compared me to him.'

'To whom?' I asked.

'To the page,' sobbed Dora. 'Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your
affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn't you tell me
your opinion of me before we were married? Why didn't you say,
you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a
transported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, my
goodness!'

'Now, Dora, my love,' I returned, gently trying to remove the
handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, 'this is not only very ridiculous
of you, but very wrong. In the first place, it's not true.'

'You always said he was a story-teller,' sobbed Dora. 'And now you say
the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!'

'My darling girl,' I retorted, 'I really must entreat you to be
reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora,
unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never
learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to
people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were
as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice--which we are
not--even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so--which we
don't--I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We
are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can't
help thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss,
and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that's all. Come
now. Don't be foolish!'

Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the handkerchief.
She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I was uneasy, why had
I ever been married? Why hadn't I said, even the day before we went to
church, that I knew I should be uneasy, and I would rather not? If I
couldn't bear her, why didn't I send her away to her aunts at Putney, or
to Julia Mills in India? Julia would be glad to see her, and would not
call her a transported page; Julia never had called her anything of the
sort. In short, Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by being
in that condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind of
effort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.

What other course was left to take? To 'form her mind'? This was a
common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and I
resolved to form Dora's mind.

I began immediately. When Dora was very childish, and I would
have infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave--and
disconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects which
occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her--and fatigued her
to the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as it were quite
casually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion--and she
started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers.
No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little
wife's mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive
perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest
apprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought
Shakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation went on very slowly.

I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and whenever
he came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the edification of
Dora at second hand. The amount of practical wisdom I bestowed upon
Traddles in this manner was immense, and of the best quality; but it
had no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make her
always nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I found
myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always
playing spider to Dora's fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her
infinite disturbance.

Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time
when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when I
should have 'formed her mind' to my entire satisfaction, I persevered,
even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had been
all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over with
determination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me that
perhaps Dora's mind was already formed.

On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandoned
my scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than in
action; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife, and to
try to change her into nothing else by any process. I was heartily tired
of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling under
restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collar
for Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.

Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me joyfully; but
there was a shadow between us, however slight, and I had made up my mind
that it should not be there. If there must be such a shadow anywhere, I
would keep it for the future in my own breast.

I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her ears;
and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as good company
lately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. Which I sincerely
felt, and which indeed it was.

'The truth is, Dora, my life,' I said; 'I have been trying to be wise.'

'And to make me wise too,' said Dora, timidly. 'Haven't you, Doady?'

I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and kissed
the parted lips.

'It's of not a bit of use,' said Dora, shaking her head, until the
ear-rings rang again. 'You know what a little thing I am, and what I
wanted you to call me from the first. If you can't do so, I am afraid
you'll never like me. Are you sure you don't think, sometimes, it would
have been better to have--'

'Done what, my dear?' For she made no effort to proceed.

'Nothing!' said Dora.

'Nothing?' I repeated.

She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her
favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a
profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see
it.

'Don't I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than to
have tried to form my little wife's mind?' said I, laughing at myself.
'Is that the question? Yes, indeed, I do.'

'Is that what you have been trying?' cried Dora. 'Oh what a shocking
boy!'

'But I shall never try any more,' said I. 'For I love her dearly as she
is.'

'Without a story--really?' inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.

'Why should I seek to change,' said I, 'what has been so precious to me
for so long! You never can show better than as your own natural self, my
sweet Dora; and we'll try no conceited experiments, but go back to our
old way, and be happy.'

'And be happy!' returned Dora. 'Yes! All day! And you won't mind things
going a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes?'

'No, no,' said I. 'We must do the best we can.'

'And you won't tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,' coaxed
Dora; 'will you? Because you know it's so dreadfully cross!'

'No, no,' said I.

'It's better for me to be stupid than uncomfortable, isn't it?' said
Dora.

'Better to be naturally Dora than anything else in the world.'

'In the world! Ah, Doady, it's a large place!'

She shook her head, turned her delighted bright eyes up to mine, kissed
me, broke into a merry laugh, and sprang away to put on Jip's new
collar.

So ended my last attempt to make any change in Dora. I had been unhappy
in trying it; I could not endure my own solitary wisdom; I could not
reconcile it with her former appeal to me as my child-wife. I resolved
to do what I could, in a quiet way, to improve our proceedings myself,
but I foresaw that my utmost would be very little, or I must degenerate
into the spider again, and be for ever lying in wait.

And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any more,
but was to rest wholly on my own heart? How did that fall?

The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were
changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like
a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife
dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated,
once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always something
wanting.

In fulfilment of the compact I have made with myself, to reflect my mind
on this paper, I again examine it, closely, and bring its secrets to the
light. What I missed, I still regarded--I always regarded--as something
that had been a dream of my youthful fancy; that was incapable of
realization; that I was now discovering to be so, with some natural
pain, as all men did. But that it would have been better for me if my
wife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I
had no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.

Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I felt
was general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular to me,
and might have been different: I balanced curiously, with no distinct
sense of their opposition to each other. When I thought of the airy
dreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I thought of the
better state preceding manhood that I had outgrown; and then the
contented days with Agnes, in the dear old house, arose before me, like
spectres of the dead, that might have some renewal in another world, but
never more could be reanimated here.

Sometimes, the speculation came into my thoughts, What might have
happened, or what would have happened, if Dora and I had never known
each other? But she was so incorporated with my existence, that it
was the idlest of all fancies, and would soon rise out of my reach and
sight, like gossamer floating in the air.

I always loved her. What I am describing, slumbered, and half awoke, and
slept again, in the innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence
of it in me; I know of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I
bore the weight of all our little cares, and all my projects; Dora held
the pens; and we both felt that our shares were adjusted as the case
required. She was truly fond of me, and proud of me; and when Agnes
wrote a few earnest words in her letters to Dora, of the pride and
interest with which my old friends heard of my growing reputation, and
read my book as if they heard me speaking its contents, Dora read them
out to me with tears of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a dear
old clever, famous boy.

'The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.' Those words of
Mrs. Strong's were constantly recurring to me, at this time; were almost
always present to my mind. I awoke with them, often, in the night; I
remember to have even read them, in dreams, inscribed upon the walls
of houses. For I knew, now, that my own heart was undisciplined when it
first loved Dora; and that if it had been disciplined, it never
could have felt, when we were married, what it had felt in its secret
experience.

'There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind and
purpose.' Those words I remembered too. I had endeavoured to adapt
Dora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt
myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear
on my own shoulders what I must, and be happy still. This was the
discipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I began to think.
It made my second year much happier than my first; and, what was better
still, made Dora's life all sunshine.

But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong. I had hoped that lighter
hands than mine would help to mould her character, and that a baby-smile
upon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. It was not to be.
The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its little prison,
and, unconscious of captivity, took wing.

'When I can run about again, as I used to do, aunt,' said Dora, 'I shall
make Jip race. He is getting quite slow and lazy.'

'I suspect, my dear,' said my aunt quietly working by her side, 'he has
a worse disorder than that. Age, Dora.'

'Do you think he is old?' said Dora, astonished. 'Oh, how strange it
seems that Jip should be old!'

'It's a complaint we are all liable to, Little One, as we get on in
life,' said my aunt, cheerfully; 'I don't feel more free from it than I
used to be, I assure you.'

'But Jip,' said Dora, looking at him with compassion, 'even little Jip!
Oh, poor fellow!'

'I dare say he'll last a long time yet, Blossom,' said my aunt, patting
Dora on the cheek, as she leaned out of her couch to look at Jip, who
responded by standing on his hind legs, and baulking himself in various
asthmatic attempts to scramble up by the head and shoulders. 'He must
have a piece of flannel in his house this winter, and I shouldn't wonder
if he came out quite fresh again, with the flowers in the spring. Bless
the little dog!' exclaimed my aunt, 'if he had as many lives as a cat,
and was on the point of losing 'em all, he'd bark at me with his last
breath, I believe!'

Dora had helped him up on the sofa; where he really was defying my aunt
to such a furious extent, that he couldn't keep straight, but barked
himself sideways. The more my aunt looked at him, the more he reproached
her; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for some inscrutable
reason he considered the glasses personal.

Dora made him lie down by her, with a good deal of persuasion; and when
he was quiet, drew one of his long ears through and through her hand,
repeating thoughtfully, 'Even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!'

'His lungs are good enough,' said my aunt, gaily, 'and his dislikes are
not at all feeble. He has a good many years before him, no doubt. But if
you want a dog to race with, Little Blossom, he has lived too well for
that, and I'll give you one.'

'Thank you, aunt,' said Dora, faintly. 'But don't, please!'

'No?' said my aunt, taking off her spectacles.

'I couldn't have any other dog but Jip,' said Dora. 'It would be so
unkind to Jip! Besides, I couldn't be such friends with any other dog
but Jip; because he wouldn't have known me before I was married,
and wouldn't have barked at Doady when he first came to our house. I
couldn't care for any other dog but Jip, I am afraid, aunt.'

'To be sure!' said my aunt, patting her cheek again. 'You are right.'

'You are not offended,' said Dora. 'Are you?'

'Why, what a sensitive pet it is!' cried my aunt, bending over her
affectionately. 'To think that I could be offended!'

'No, no, I didn't really think so,' returned Dora; 'but I am a little
tired, and it made me silly for a moment--I am always a silly little
thing, you know, but it made me more silly--to talk about Jip. He
has known me in all that has happened to me, haven't you, Jip? And I
couldn't bear to slight him, because he was a little altered--could I,
Jip?'

Jip nestled closer to his mistress, and lazily licked her hand.

'You are not so old, Jip, are you, that you'll leave your mistress yet?'
said Dora. 'We may keep one another company a little longer!'

My pretty Dora! When she came down to dinner on the ensuing Sunday, and
was so glad to see old Traddles (who always dined with us on Sunday), we
thought she would be 'running about as she used to do', in a few days.
But they said, wait a few days more; and then, wait a few days more; and
still she neither ran nor walked. She looked very pretty, and was very
merry; but the little feet that used to be so nimble when they danced
round Jip, were dull and motionless.

I began to carry her downstairs every morning, and upstairs every night.
She would clasp me round the neck and laugh, the while, as if I did it
for a wager. Jip would bark and caper round us, and go on before, and
look back on the landing, breathing short, to see that we were coming.
My aunt, the best and most cheerful of nurses, would trudge after us, a
moving mass of shawls and pillows. Mr. Dick would not have relinquished
his post of candle-bearer to anyone alive. Traddles would be often at
the bottom of the staircase, looking on, and taking charge of sportive
messages from Dora to the dearest girl in the world. We made quite a gay
procession of it, and my child-wife was the gayest there.

But, sometimes, when I took her up, and felt that she was lighter in
my arms, a dead blank feeling came upon me, as if I were approaching
to some frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. I avoided the
recognition of this feeling by any name, or by any communing with
myself; until one night, when it was very strong upon me, and my aunt
had left her with a parting cry of 'Good night, Little Blossom,' I sat
down at my desk alone, and tried to think, Oh what a fatal name it was,
and how the blossom withered in its bloom upon the tree!

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: David is working hard at a book. He doesn't plan to make many references to his fictional works; they speak for themselves. David has been married for about a year and a half , and they have given up their housekeeping lessons. Instead, they have an extremely awful page. David is worried that they'll never get rid of the boy. Fortunately, he gives them a way out: the boy steals Dora's watch and pawns it. The page keeps confessing, bit by bit, all of the things he has stolen. David feels completely embarrassed by what a victim he has become: he really can't keep order in his own house. Meanwhile, Dora goes to visit the boy in prison. But she's so freaked out by being in jail that she faints. David uses this as an opportunity to note that their poor household management has gotten so out of hand that it's now messing up other people. Dora scolds David for being cross. David tells her to put Jip down. He tells Dora sternly that they are wasting money by not being careful, and they're also spoiling all of their servants by giving them opportunities to turn bad. Dora thinks David is accusing her of stealing gold watches. David didn't mean this at all, but Dora sobs that David is comparing her to the thieving page boy. David asks Dora to be reasonable. But she can't: she wonders why David didn't send her to India instead of marrying her. David thinks the only thing there is left to do is to educate Dora's mind. So, when Dora is being childish, David turns serious. He tries to read Shakespeare to her, which makes her tired. Whenever Traddles comes by the house, David starts instructing him in practical wisdom in the hopes that it will trickle down to Dora by proxy - which it doesn't. Eventually, after several months, David notices that he's having no effect. It looks like Dora's mind is set. David decides that he's going to be satisfied with her from now on out, and he buys her some presents. Dora is very pleased with the gifts. David apologizes that they haven't been good company lately. Dora knows that David has been trying to make her wise. She tells David it's no use - she's his child-wife. Sometimes she thinks it would have been better if -- But Dora doesn't finish her sentence and won't explain. David tells Dora that he loves her as she is, and won't try to change her anymore. Dora is delighted and kisses David. This was David's last effort to try and change Dora. David feels a general unhappiness, which he can't pinpoint: he loves Dora, but something is missing. What David wants is a real life partner - something that he knows he could have had. David knows that Dora is truly proud and fond of him. But he also knows that, if his heart had been careful when he first met Dora, he would never have fallen for her. David is all too aware that he and Dora have wildly different minds and goals. Eventually, David comes to terms with the fact that he has to adapt himself to Dora, to make her life as good as he can. But he notices that Dora seems weaker in that second year of marriage than she was in the first. She becomes pregnant, but the baby does not live. After the pregnancy, Dora can't walk or run. Dora tells Miss Betsey that she wants to make Jip race: he is getting slow and lazy. Miss Betsey breaks the news to Dora that Jip is growing old. Dora starts to worry over Jip; even worse, she grows afraid of the future. She grows happy and cheerful again, but she still can't walk or run. David carries her downstairs in the morning and upstairs at night. Miss Betsey nurses Dora. Mr. Dick carries the candles up and down the stairs after her. But David starts to feel a kind of dread at how light Dora is getting in his arms.


prompt:
Chapter: I received one morning by the post, the following letter, dated
Canterbury, and addressed to me at Doctor's Commons; which I read with
some surprise:

'MY DEAR SIR,

'Circumstances beyond my individual control have, for a considerable
lapse of time, effected a severance of that intimacy which, in the
limited opportunities conceded to me in the midst of my professional
duties, of contemplating the scenes and events of the past, tinged by
the prismatic hues of memory, has ever afforded me, as it ever must
continue to afford, gratifying emotions of no common description. This
fact, my dear sir, combined with the distinguished elevation to which
your talents have raised you, deters me from presuming to aspire to
the liberty of addressing the companion of my youth, by the familiar
appellation of Copperfield! It is sufficient to know that the name to
which I do myself the honour to refer, will ever be treasured among
the muniments of our house (I allude to the archives connected with our
former lodgers, preserved by Mrs. Micawber), with sentiments of personal
esteem amounting to affection.

'It is not for one, situated, through his original errors and a
fortuitous combination of unpropitious events, as is the foundered Bark
(if he may be allowed to assume so maritime a denomination), who
now takes up the pen to address you--it is not, I repeat, for one
so circumstanced, to adopt the language of compliment, or of
congratulation. That he leaves to abler and to purer hands.

'If your more important avocations should admit of your ever tracing
these imperfect characters thus far--which may be, or may not be, as
circumstances arise--you will naturally inquire by what object am I
influenced, then, in inditing the present missive? Allow me to say that
I fully defer to the reasonable character of that inquiry, and proceed
to develop it; premising that it is not an object of a pecuniary nature.

'Without more directly referring to any latent ability that may
possibly exist on my part, of wielding the thunderbolt, or directing
the devouring and avenging flame in any quarter, I may be permitted
to observe, in passing, that my brightest visions are for ever
dispelled--that my peace is shattered and my power of enjoyment
destroyed--that my heart is no longer in the right place--and that I no
more walk erect before my fellow man. The canker is in the flower.
The cup is bitter to the brim. The worm is at his work, and will soon
dispose of his victim. The sooner the better. But I will not digress.
'Placed in a mental position of peculiar painfulness, beyond the
assuaging reach even of Mrs. Micawber's influence, though exercised in
the tripartite character of woman, wife, and mother, it is my intention
to fly from myself for a short period, and devote a respite of
eight-and-forty hours to revisiting some metropolitan scenes of past
enjoyment. Among other havens of domestic tranquillity and peace of
mind, my feet will naturally tend towards the King's Bench Prison. In
stating that I shall be (D. V.) on the outside of the south wall of
that place of incarceration on civil process, the day after tomorrow,
at seven in the evening, precisely, my object in this epistolary
communication is accomplished.

'I do not feel warranted in soliciting my former friend Mr. Copperfield,
or my former friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple, if that
gentleman is still existent and forthcoming, to condescend to meet me,
and renew (so far as may be) our past relations of the olden time. I
confine myself to throwing out the observation, that, at the hour and
place I have indicated, may be found such ruined vestiges as yet

               'Remain,
                    'Of
                         'A
                              'Fallen Tower,
                                   'WILKINS MICAWBER.

'P.S. It may be advisable to superadd to the above, the statement that
Mrs. Micawber is not in confidential possession of my intentions.'

I read the letter over several times. Making due allowance for Mr.
Micawber's lofty style of composition, and for the extraordinary relish
with which he sat down and wrote long letters on all possible and
impossible occasions, I still believed that something important lay
hidden at the bottom of this roundabout communication. I put it down,
to think about it; and took it up again, to read it once more; and
was still pursuing it, when Traddles found me in the height of my
perplexity.

'My dear fellow,' said I, 'I never was better pleased to see you. You
come to give me the benefit of your sober judgement at a most opportune
time. I have received a very singular letter, Traddles, from Mr.
Micawber.'

'No?' cried Traddles. 'You don't say so? And I have received one from
Mrs. Micawber!'

With that, Traddles, who was flushed with walking, and whose hair, under
the combined effects of exercise and excitement, stood on end as if he
saw a cheerful ghost, produced his letter and made an exchange with me.
I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber's letter, and returned the
elevation of eyebrows with which he said "'Wielding the thunderbolt,
or directing the devouring and avenging flame!" Bless me,
Copperfield!'--and then entered on the perusal of Mrs. Micawber's
epistle.

It ran thus:

'My best regards to Mr. Thomas Traddles, and if he should still remember
one who formerly had the happiness of being well acquainted with him,
may I beg a few moments of his leisure time? I assure Mr. T. T. that I
would not intrude upon his kindness, were I in any other position than
on the confines of distraction.

'Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber
(formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my
addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best
indulgence. Mr. T. can form no adequate idea of the change in Mr.
Micawber's conduct, of his wildness, of his violence. It has gradually
augmented, until it assumes the appearance of aberration of intellect.
Scarcely a day passes, I assure Mr. Traddles, on which some paroxysm
does not take place. Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings,
when I inform him that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber
assert that he has sold himself to the D. Mystery and secrecy have
long been his principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited
confidence. The slightest provocation, even being asked if there is
anything he would prefer for dinner, causes him to express a wish for a
separation. Last night, on being childishly solicited for twopence, to
buy 'lemon-stunners'--a local sweetmeat--he presented an oyster-knife at
the twins!

'I entreat Mr. Traddles to bear with me in entering into these details.
Without them, Mr. T. would indeed find it difficult to form the faintest
conception of my heart-rending situation.

'May I now venture to confide to Mr. T. the purport of my letter? Will
he now allow me to throw myself on his friendly consideration? Oh yes,
for I know his heart!

'The quick eye of affection is not easily blinded, when of the female
sex. Mr. Micawber is going to London. Though he studiously concealed his
hand, this morning before breakfast, in writing the direction-card which
he attached to the little brown valise of happier days, the eagle-glance
of matrimonial anxiety detected, d, o, n, distinctly traced. The
West-End destination of the coach, is the Golden Cross. Dare I fervently
implore Mr. T. to see my misguided husband, and to reason with him?
Dare I ask Mr. T. to endeavour to step in between Mr. Micawber and his
agonized family? Oh no, for that would be too much!

'If Mr. Copperfield should yet remember one unknown to fame, will Mr.
T. take charge of my unalterable regards and similar entreaties? In
any case, he will have the benevolence to consider this communication
strictly private, and on no account whatever to be alluded to, however
distantly, in the presence of Mr. Micawber. If Mr. T. should ever
reply to it (which I cannot but feel to be most improbable), a letter
addressed to M. E., Post Office, Canterbury, will be fraught with
less painful consequences than any addressed immediately to one, who
subscribes herself, in extreme distress,

'Mr. Thomas Traddles's respectful friend and suppliant,

                                   'EMMA MICAWBER.'

'What do you think of that letter?' said Traddles, casting his eyes upon
me, when I had read it twice.

'What do you think of the other?' said I. For he was still reading it
with knitted brows.

'I think that the two together, Copperfield,' replied Traddles,
'mean more than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their
correspondence--but I don't know what. They are both written in good
faith, I have no doubt, and without any collusion. Poor thing!' he was
now alluding to Mrs. Micawber's letter, and we were standing side by
side comparing the two; 'it will be a charity to write to her, at all
events, and tell her that we will not fail to see Mr. Micawber.'

I acceded to this the more readily, because I now reproached myself with
having treated her former letter rather lightly. It had set me thinking
a good deal at the time, as I have mentioned in its place; but my
absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the family, and my
hearing nothing more, had gradually ended in my dismissing the subject.
I had often thought of the Micawbers, but chiefly to wonder what
'pecuniary liabilities' they were establishing in Canterbury, and to
recall how shy Mr. Micawber was of me when he became clerk to Uriah
Heep.

However, I now wrote a comforting letter to Mrs. Micawber, in our
joint names, and we both signed it. As we walked into town to post it,
Traddles and I held a long conference, and launched into a number of
speculations, which I need not repeat. We took my aunt into our counsels
in the afternoon; but our only decided conclusion was, that we would be
very punctual in keeping Mr. Micawber's appointment.

Although we appeared at the stipulated place a quarter of an hour before
the time, we found Mr. Micawber already there. He was standing with his
arms folded, over against the wall, looking at the spikes on the top,
with a sentimental expression, as if they were the interlacing boughs of
trees that had shaded him in his youth.

When we accosted him, his manner was something more confused, and
something less genteel, than of yore. He had relinquished his legal suit
of black for the purposes of this excursion, and wore the old surtout
and tights, but not quite with the old air. He gradually picked up more
and more of it as we conversed with him; but, his very eye-glass seemed
to hang less easily, and his shirt-collar, though still of the old
formidable dimensions, rather drooped.

'Gentlemen!' said Mr. Micawber, after the first salutations, 'you are
friends in need, and friends indeed. Allow me to offer my inquiries with
reference to the physical welfare of Mrs. Copperfield in esse, and
Mrs. Traddles in posse,--presuming, that is to say, that my friend Mr.
Traddles is not yet united to the object of his affections, for weal and
for woe.'

We acknowledged his politeness, and made suitable replies. He then
directed our attention to the wall, and was beginning, 'I assure you,
gentlemen,' when I ventured to object to that ceremonious form of
address, and to beg that he would speak to us in the old way.

'My dear Copperfield,' he returned, pressing my hand, 'your cordiality
overpowers me. This reception of a shattered fragment of the Temple once
called Man--if I may be permitted so to express myself--bespeaks a heart
that is an honour to our common nature. I was about to observe that
I again behold the serene spot where some of the happiest hours of my
existence fleeted by.'

'Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber,' said I. 'I hope she is well?'

'Thank you,' returned Mr. Micawber, whose face clouded at this
reference, 'she is but so-so. And this,' said Mr. Micawber, nodding
his head sorrowfully, 'is the Bench! Where, for the first time in many
revolving years, the overwhelming pressure of pecuniary liabilities was
not proclaimed, from day to day, by importune voices declining to vacate
the passage; where there was no knocker on the door for any creditor
to appeal to; where personal service of process was not required, and
detainees were merely lodged at the gate! Gentlemen,' said Mr. Micawber,
'when the shadow of that iron-work on the summit of the brick structure
has been reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children
thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks. I
have been familiar with every stone in the place. If I betray weakness,
you will know how to excuse me.'

'We have all got on in life since then, Mr. Micawber,' said I.

'Mr. Copperfield,' returned Mr. Micawber, bitterly, 'when I was an
inmate of that retreat I could look my fellow-man in the face, and punch
his head if he offended me. My fellow-man and myself are no longer on
those glorious terms!'

Turning from the building in a downcast manner, Mr. Micawber accepted
my proffered arm on one side, and the proffered arm of Traddles on the
other, and walked away between us.

'There are some landmarks,' observed Mr. Micawber, looking fondly back
over his shoulder, 'on the road to the tomb, which, but for the impiety
of the aspiration, a man would wish never to have passed. Such is the
Bench in my chequered career.'

'Oh, you are in low spirits, Mr. Micawber,' said Traddles.

'I am, sir,' interposed Mr. Micawber.

'I hope,' said Traddles, 'it is not because you have conceived a dislike
to the law--for I am a lawyer myself, you know.'

Mr. Micawber answered not a word.

'How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber?' said I, after a silence.

'My dear Copperfield,' returned Mr. Micawber, bursting into a state of
much excitement, and turning pale, 'if you ask after my employer as
YOUR friend, I am sorry for it; if you ask after him as MY friend,
I sardonically smile at it. In whatever capacity you ask after my
employer, I beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply to this--that
whatever his state of health may be, his appearance is foxy: not to
say diabolical. You will allow me, as a private individual, to
decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me to the utmost verge of
desperation in my professional capacity.'

I expressed my regret for having innocently touched upon a theme
that roused him so much. 'May I ask,' said I, 'without any hazard of
repeating the mistake, how my old friends Mr. and Miss Wickfield are?'

'Miss Wickfield,' said Mr. Micawber, now turning red, 'is, as she always
is, a pattern, and a bright example. My dear Copperfield, she is the
only starry spot in a miserable existence. My respect for that young
lady, my admiration of her character, my devotion to her for her love
and truth, and goodness!--Take me,' said Mr. Micawber, 'down a turning,
for, upon my soul, in my present state of mind I am not equal to this!'

We wheeled him off into a narrow street, where he took out his
pocket-handkerchief, and stood with his back to a wall. If I looked as
gravely at him as Traddles did, he must have found our company by no
means inspiriting.

'It is my fate,' said Mr. Micawber, unfeignedly sobbing, but doing even
that, with a shadow of the old expression of doing something genteel;
'it is my fate, gentlemen, that the finer feelings of our nature have
become reproaches to me. My homage to Miss Wickfield, is a flight of
arrows in my bosom. You had better leave me, if you please, to walk the
earth as a vagabond. The worm will settle my business in double-quick
time.'

Without attending to this invocation, we stood by, until he put up his
pocket-handkerchief, pulled up his shirt-collar, and, to delude any
person in the neighbourhood who might have been observing him, hummed a
tune with his hat very much on one side. I then mentioned--not knowing
what might be lost if we lost sight of him yet--that it would give me
great pleasure to introduce him to my aunt, if he would ride out to
Highgate, where a bed was at his service.

'You shall make us a glass of your own punch, Mr. Micawber,' said
I, 'and forget whatever you have on your mind, in pleasanter
reminiscences.'

'Or, if confiding anything to friends will be more likely to relieve
you, you shall impart it to us, Mr. Micawber,' said Traddles, prudently.

'Gentlemen,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'do with me as you will! I am a
straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by
the elephants--I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.'

We walked on, arm-in-arm, again; found the coach in the act of starting;
and arrived at Highgate without encountering any difficulties by the
way. I was very uneasy and very uncertain in my mind what to say or do
for the best--so was Traddles, evidently. Mr. Micawber was for the most
part plunged into deep gloom. He occasionally made an attempt to smarten
himself, and hum the fag-end of a tune; but his relapses into profound
melancholy were only made the more impressive by the mockery of a hat
exceedingly on one side, and a shirt-collar pulled up to his eyes.

We went to my aunt's house rather than to mine, because of Dora's not
being well. My aunt presented herself on being sent for, and welcomed
Mr. Micawber with gracious cordiality. Mr. Micawber kissed her hand,
retired to the window, and pulling out his pocket-handkerchief, had a
mental wrestle with himself.

Mr. Dick was at home. He was by nature so exceedingly compassionate of
anyone who seemed to be ill at ease, and was so quick to find any such
person out, that he shook hands with Mr. Micawber, at least half-a-dozen
times in five minutes. To Mr. Micawber, in his trouble, this warmth, on
the part of a stranger, was so extremely touching, that he could
only say, on the occasion of each successive shake, 'My dear sir, you
overpower me!' Which gratified Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it
again with greater vigour than before.

'The friendliness of this gentleman,' said Mr. Micawber to my aunt, 'if
you will allow me, ma'am, to cull a figure of speech from the vocabulary
of our coarser national sports--floors me. To a man who is struggling
with a complicated burden of perplexity and disquiet, such a reception
is trying, I assure you.'

'My friend Mr. Dick,' replied my aunt proudly, 'is not a common man.'

'That I am convinced of,' said Mr. Micawber. 'My dear sir!' for Mr.
Dick was shaking hands with him again; 'I am deeply sensible of your
cordiality!'

'How do you find yourself?' said Mr. Dick, with an anxious look.

'Indifferent, my dear sir,' returned Mr. Micawber, sighing.

'You must keep up your spirits,' said Mr. Dick, 'and make yourself as
comfortable as possible.'

Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these friendly words, and by finding
Mr. Dick's hand again within his own. 'It has been my lot,' he observed,
'to meet, in the diversified panorama of human existence, with an
occasional oasis, but never with one so green, so gushing, as the
present!'

At another time I should have been amused by this; but I felt that
we were all constrained and uneasy, and I watched Mr. Micawber so
anxiously, in his vacillations between an evident disposition to reveal
something, and a counter-disposition to reveal nothing, that I was in a
perfect fever. Traddles, sitting on the edge of his chair, with his eyes
wide open, and his hair more emphatically erect than ever, stared by
turns at the ground and at Mr. Micawber, without so much as attempting
to put in a word. My aunt, though I saw that her shrewdest observation
was concentrated on her new guest, had more useful possession of her
wits than either of us; for she held him in conversation, and made it
necessary for him to talk, whether he liked it or not.

'You are a very old friend of my nephew's, Mr. Micawber,' said my aunt.
'I wish I had had the pleasure of seeing you before.'

'Madam,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'I wish I had had the honour of knowing
you at an earlier period. I was not always the wreck you at present
behold.'

'I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are well, sir,' said my aunt.

Mr. Micawber inclined his head. 'They are as well, ma'am,' he
desperately observed after a pause, 'as Aliens and Outcasts can ever
hope to be.'

'Lord bless you, sir!' exclaimed my aunt, in her abrupt way. 'What are
you talking about?'

'The subsistence of my family, ma'am,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'trembles
in the balance. My employer--'

Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off; and began to peel the lemons
that had been under my directions set before him, together with all the
other appliances he used in making punch.

'Your employer, you know,' said Mr. Dick, jogging his arm as a gentle
reminder.

'My good sir,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'you recall me, I am obliged to
you.' They shook hands again. 'My employer, ma'am--Mr. Heep--once did
me the favour to observe to me, that if I were not in the receipt of the
stipendiary emoluments appertaining to my engagement with him, I should
probably be a mountebank about the country, swallowing a sword-blade,
and eating the devouring element. For anything that I can perceive to
the contrary, it is still probable that my children may be reduced to
seek a livelihood by personal contortion, while Mrs. Micawber abets
their unnatural feats by playing the barrel-organ.'

Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive flourish of his knife,
signified that these performances might be expected to take place after
he was no more; then resumed his peeling with a desperate air.

My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round table that she usually kept
beside her, and eyed him attentively. Notwithstanding the aversion with
which I regarded the idea of entrapping him into any disclosure he was
not prepared to make voluntarily, I should have taken him up at this
point, but for the strange proceedings in which I saw him engaged;
whereof his putting the lemon-peel into the kettle, the sugar into the
snuffer-tray, the spirit into the empty jug, and confidently attempting
to pour boiling water out of a candlestick, were among the most
remarkable. I saw that a crisis was at hand, and it came. He clattered
all his means and implements together, rose from his chair, pulled out
his pocket-handkerchief, and burst into tears.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, behind his handkerchief,
'this is an occupation, of all others, requiring an untroubled mind, and
self-respect. I cannot perform it. It is out of the question.'

'Mr. Micawber,' said I, 'what is the matter? Pray speak out. You are
among friends.'

'Among friends, sir!' repeated Mr. Micawber; and all he had reserved
came breaking out of him. 'Good heavens, it is principally because I AM
among friends that my state of mind is what it is. What is the matter,
gentlemen? What is NOT the matter? Villainy is the matter; baseness is
the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name
of the whole atrocious mass is--HEEP!'

My aunt clapped her hands, and we all started up as if we were
possessed.

'The struggle is over!' said Mr. Micawber violently gesticulating with
his pocket-handkerchief, and fairly striking out from time to time with
both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. 'I will
lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything
that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal
scoundrel's service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family,
substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots
at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and
I'll do it. With an appetite!'

I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might
come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and wouldn't
hear a word.

'I'll put my hand in no man's hand,' said Mr. Micawber, gasping,
puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man
fighting with cold water, 'until I have--blown to
fragments--the--a--detestable--serpent--HEEP! I'll partake of no
one's hospitality, until I have--a--moved Mount Vesuvius--to
eruption--on--a--the abandoned rascal--HEEP! Refreshment--a--underneath
this roof--particularly punch--would--a--choke me--unless--I
had--previously--choked the eyes--out of the head--a--of--interminable
cheat, and liar--HEEP! I--a--I'll know nobody--and--a--say
nothing--and--a--live nowhere--until I have
crushed--to--a--undiscoverable atoms--the--transcendent and immortal
hypocrite and perjurer--HEEP!'

I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber's dying on the spot. The manner
in which he struggled through these inarticulate sentences, and,
whenever he found himself getting near the name of Heep, fought his way
on to it, dashed at it in a fainting state, and brought it out with a
vehemence little less than marvellous, was frightful; but now, when
he sank into a chair, steaming, and looked at us, with every possible
colour in his face that had no business there, and an endless procession
of lumps following one another in hot haste up his throat, whence they
seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the appearance of being in
the last extremity. I would have gone to his assistance, but he waved me
off, and wouldn't hear a word.

'No, Copperfield!--No communication--a--until--Miss
Wickfield--a--redress from wrongs inflicted by consummate
scoundrel--HEEP!' (I am quite convinced he could not have uttered three
words, but for the amazing energy with which this word inspired him when
he felt it coming.) 'Inviolable secret--a--from the whole world--a--no
exceptions--this day week--a--at breakfast-time--a--everybody
present--including aunt--a--and extremely friendly gentleman--to be at
the hotel at Canterbury--a--where--Mrs. Micawber and myself--Auld Lang
Syne in chorus--and--a--will expose intolerable ruffian--HEEP! No more
to say--a--or listen to persuasion--go immediately--not capable--a--bear
society--upon the track of devoted and doomed traitor--HEEP!'

With this last repetition of the magic word that had kept him going at
all, and in which he surpassed all his previous efforts, Mr. Micawber
rushed out of the house; leaving us in a state of excitement, hope, and
wonder, that reduced us to a condition little better than his own. But
even then his passion for writing letters was too strong to be resisted;
for while we were yet in the height of our excitement, hope, and wonder,
the following pastoral note was brought to me from a neighbouring
tavern, at which he had called to write it:--

          'Most secret and confidential.
'MY DEAR SIR,

'I beg to be allowed to convey, through you, my apologies to your
excellent aunt for my late excitement. An explosion of a smouldering
volcano long suppressed, was the result of an internal contest more
easily conceived than described.

'I trust I rendered tolerably intelligible my appointment for the
morning of this day week, at the house of public entertainment at
Canterbury, where Mrs. Micawber and myself had once the honour of
uniting our voices to yours, in the well-known strain of the Immortal
exciseman nurtured beyond the Tweed.

'The duty done, and act of reparation performed, which can alone enable
me to contemplate my fellow mortal, I shall be known no more. I shall
simply require to be deposited in that place of universal resort, where

     Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
     The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,

                    '--With the plain Inscription,

                         'WILKINS MICAWBER.'

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: David receives a letter at his law office that shocks him. The letter is from Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber writes that he has hit a run of bad luck, and that he wants to confide in his old friend. Mr. Micawber has decided that he must take a brief vacation from Canterbury because life has become awful. He hopes that both David and Mr. Traddles will meet him when he comes to London for two days. Mr. Micawber stresses that Mrs. Micawber is unaware of his plan to come to the city. David is sure that there is something important going on in the letter, though Mr. Micawber doesn't come out and say it. Traddles finds David because he has just received a letter from Mrs. Micawber. In it, Mrs. Micawber says that she is still unhappy about Mr. Micawber's secretiveness with his family. Apparently, Mr. Micawber is just growing more and more unhappy: he has said that he has sold his soul to the devil. Mrs. Micawber has figured out that Mr. Micawber is planning a secret trip to London. She asks Traddles and David to meet with Mr. Micawber and reason with him. Traddles thinks these letters are significant, but he can't think what's behind them. David writes a letter to Mrs. Micawber on behalf of both him and Traddles assuring her of their plan to meet Mr. Micawber. Traddles and David go to meet Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber is looking less genteel and dapper than before. He seems low-spirited. He starts talking very formally to Traddles and David, and David asks him to relax. Mr. Micawber is moved by David's affection. Micawber recalls those long-ago days when he was an inmate in debtors prison. At least then, he could look his fellow men in the face! David finally asks Mr. Micawber point-blank how Uriah Heep is. Mr. Micawber says that he's a devilish horrible person. David then asks how Mr. Wickfield and Agnes are. Mr. Micawber says that Agnes is a lovely girl of superior character. Thinking of her is painful to Mr. Micawber. David invites Mr. Micawber to come out to Highgate and meet Miss Betsey. There, Mr. Micawber can tell Traddles and David all about his troubles. They all set off to Miss Betsey's house because Dora is ill. Mr. Dick shakes Mr. Micawber's hand in a very friendly manner, which cheers up Mr. Micawber a tiny bit. Miss Betsey addresses Mr. Micawber directly: she asks after Mrs. Micawber and his family. They are all well for now, but Mr. Micawber is worried because he's about to lose his job. Mr. Micawber keeps talking around the problem, saying that all is ruined and that everything is the matter. And it all comes back to one Uriah Heep. Mr. Micawber has decided that he can no longer live this life; he wants to return to his family. Uriah Heep, Mr. Micawber shouts, is a complete scoundrel. Micawber works himself into such a state over Uriah Heep that he rushes out the door. Still, in the midst of all his passion, he finds the time to write a letter: Mr. Micawber apologizes to Miss Betsey for his excitement that night. He asks for another meeting in a week's time at a restaurant in Canterbury.