BANK

85

BANK OFFICIALS

highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.

In the tea-room, and hovering round the cardtables, were a vast number of queer old ladies and decrepid old gentlemen, discussing all the Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was small talk and scandal of the day, with a relish the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. and gusto which sufficiently bespoke the inten- After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinasity of the pleasure they derived from the occu-cy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into pation. Mingled with these groups, were three or four matchmaking mammas, appearing to be wholly absorbed by the conversation in which they were taking part, but failing not from time to time to cast an anxious sidelong glance upon their daughters, who, remembering the maternal injunction to make the best use of their youth, had already commenced incipient flirtations in the mislaying of scarves, putting on gloves, setting down cups, and so forth; slight matters ap. parently, but which may be turned to surprisingly good account by expert practitioners.

Lounging near the doors, and in remote corners, were various knots of silly young men, displaying various varieties of puppyism and stupidity; amusing all sensible people near them with their folly and conceit; and happily thinking themselves the objects of general admiration. A wise and merciful dispensation which no good man will quarrel with.

Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined your signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet Street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank notes had a musty odor, as if they were fast decomposing into rags And lastly, seated on some of the back again. Your plate was stowed away among benches, where they had already taken up their the neighboring cesspools, and evil communipositions for the evening, were divers unmarried cations corrupted its good polish in a day or ladies past their grand climacteric, who, not two. Your deeds got into extemporized strongdancing because there were no partners for rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretthem, and not playing cards lest they should be ted all the fat out of their parchments into the set down as irretrievably single, were in the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of famfavorable situation of being able to abuse every-ily papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, body without reflecting on themselves. In that always had a great dining-table in it and short, they could abuse everybody, because ev- never had a dinner, and where, even in the year erybody was there. It was a scene of gaiety, one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the glitter, and show; of richly-dressed people, first letters written to you by your old love, or handsome mirrors, chalked floors, girandoles, by your little children, were but newly released and wax-candles; and in all parts of the scene, from the horror of being ogled through the gliding from spot to spot in silent softness, bow-windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar ing obsequiously to this party, nodding famil- with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy iarly to that, and smiling complacently on all, of Abyssinia or Ashantee. was the sprucely-attired person of Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Esquire, Master of the Ceremonies. Pickwick Papers, Chap. 35.

BANK-An old-fashioned.

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Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavor and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the geneweight of the establishment.

TELLSON'S Bank by Temple Bar was on oldfashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its dark-ral ness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven!

Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been

Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 1. BANK OFFICIALS-Their individuality. He pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds were a sum. Halloa!" said Mr Stryver. "How do you do? I hope you are well!"

It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson's, that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them

BANKRUPTCY

36

"BARKIS IS WILLIN."

against the wall. The House itself, magnificently BAR-ROOM-The Maypole.
reading the paper quite in the far-off perspec-
tive, lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head
had been butted into its responsible waist-

The Inquest was over, the letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical ship had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates, and boats of all sizes; and on the

deep was nothing but ruin: nothing but burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns selfexploded tearing friends and neighbors to pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy spars and going down every minute, spent swimmers, floating dead, and sharks.

Little Dorrit, Chap. 26.

BANKRUPTCY-The world's idea of.

Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there was a List of Bankrupts published, headed by that

name.

All bars are snug places, but the Maypole's was the very snuggest, cosiest, and completest bar, that ever the wit of man devised. Such amazing bottles in old oaken pigeon-holes; such gleaming tankards dangling from pegs at about the same inclination as thirsty men would hold them to their lips; such sturdy little Dutch kegs ranged in rows on shelves; so many lemons hanging in separate nets, and forming the fragrant grove already mentioned in this chronicle, suggestive, with goodly loaves of snowy sugar stowed away hard by, of punch, idealized beyond all mortal knowledge; such closets, such presses, such drawers full of pipes, such places for putting things away in hollow window-seats, all crammed to the throat with eatables, drinkables, or savory condiments; lastly, and to crown all, as typical of the immense resources of the establishment, and its defiances to all visitors to cut and come again, such a stupendous cheese! Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 19.

BAR-ROOM-A mob in John Willit's.

Yes. Here was the bar-the bar that the

boldest never entered without special invitation
the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed
ground: here it was, crammed with men, clubs,
sticks, torches, pistols; filled with a deafening
noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; chang-
ed all at once into a bear-garden, a madhouse,
an infernal temple; men darting in and out,
ing the taps, drinking liquor out of China
by door and window, smashing the glass, turn-
Punchbowls, sitting astride of casks, smoking
private and personal pipes, cutting down the
sacred grove of lemons, hacking and hewing at
the celebrated cheese, breaking open inviolable
drawers, putting things in their pockets which
didn't belong to them, dividing his own money
before his own eyes, wantonly wasting, break-
ing, pulling down, and tearing up; nothing
above, below, overhead, in the bedrooms, in
quiet, nothing private; men everywhere
the kitchen, in the yard, in the stables-clam-
bering in at windows when there were doors
wide open; dropping out of windows when the
into chasms of passages: new faces and figures
stairs were handy; leaping over the banisters
presenting themselves every instant-some yell-

The world was very busy now, in sooth, and had a deal to say. It was an innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world in which there was no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were no conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of religion, patriotism, virtue, honor. There was no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived pretty handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects. There were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything, but money. The world was very angry indeed: and the people especially, who, in a worse world, might have been supposed to be bank-ng, some singing, some fighting, some breakrupt traders themselves in shows and pretences, were observed to be mightily indignant. Dombey and Son, Chap. 58.

BAR-ROOM - The Six Jolly Fellowship

Porters.

The bar of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters was a bar to soften the human breast. The available space in it was not much larger than a hackney-coach: but no one could have wished the bar bigger, that space was so girt in by corpulent little casks, and by cordial-bottles radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and by lemons in nets, and by biscuits in baskets, and by the polite beer-pulls that made low bows when customers were served with beer, and by the cheese in a snug corner, and by the landlady's own small table in a snugger corner near the fire, with the cloth everlastingly laid. Our Mutual Friend, Chap. 6.

the liquor they couldn't drink, some ringing the ing glass and crockery, some laying the dust with bells till they pulled them down, others beating them with pokers till they beat them into fragments: more men still-more, more, moreswarming on like insects: noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans, plunder, fear, and ruin!

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 54.

"BARKIS IS WILLIN."

He being of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational-I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant's.

"Did she make 'em, now?" said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward, in his slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on each knee.

"That Barkis was willing," I repeated inno-ty's; but I repeated in a whisper, "With the cently, "Is that all the message?"

As he lay in bed, face upward, and so covered, Mr. Toots-than whom there were few betwith that exception, that he seemed to be noth- ter fellows in the world, though there may have