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"Anybody may pass, any day, in the thronged thorough fares of the metropolis,
some meagre, wrinkled, yellow old man (who might be supposed to have dropped
from the stars, if there were any star in the Heavens dull enough to be suspected of
casting off so feeble a spark), creeping along with a scared air, as though bewildered
and a little frightened by the noise and bustle. This old man is always a little old
man. If he were ever a big old man. he has shrunk into a little old man; if he were
always a little old man, he has dwindled into a less old man. His coat is of a colour,
and cut, that never was the mode anywhere, at any period. Clearly, it was not made
for him, or for any individual mortal. Some wholesale contractor measured Fate for
five thousand coats of such quality, and Fate has lent this old coat to this old man, as
one of a long unfinished line of many old men. It has always large dull metal
buttons, similar to no other buttons. This old man wears a hat, a thumbed and
napless and yet an obdurate hat, which has never adapted itself to the shape of his
poor head. His coarse shirt and his coarse neckcloth have no more individuality than
his coat and hat; they have the same character of not being hisof not being
anybody's. Yet this old man wears these clothes with a certain unaccustomed air of
being dressed and elaborated for the public ways; as though he passed the greater
part of his time in a nightcap and gown. And so, like the country mouse in the
second year of a famine, come to see the town mouse, and timidly threading his way
to the town-mouse's lodging through a city of cats, this old man passes in the streets.
Sometimes, on holidays towards evening, he will be seen to walk with a slightly
increased infirmity, and his old eyes will glimmer with a moist and marshy light.
Then the little old man is drunk. A very small measure will overset him; he may be
bowled off his unsteady legs with a half-pint pot. Some pitying acquaintance
chance acquaintance very oftenhas warmed up his weakness with a treat of beer,
and the consequence will be the lapse of a longer time than usual before he shall
pass again. For, the little old man is going home to the Workhouse; and on his good
behaviour they do not let him out often (though methinks they might, considering
the few years he has before him to go out in, under the sun); and on his bad
behaviour they shut him up closer than ever, in a grove of two score and nineteen
more old men, every one of whom smells of all the others.
Mrs Plornish's father,a poor little reedy piping old gentleman, like a worn-out
bird; who had been in what he called the music-binding business, and met with great
misfortunes, and who had seldom been able to make his way, or to see it or to pay it,
or to do anything at all with it but find it no thoroughfare,had retired of his own
accord to the Workhouse which was appointed by law to be the Good Samaritan of
his district (without the two pence, which was bad political economy), on the
settlement of that execution which had carried Mr Plornish to the Marshalsea
College. Previous to his son-in-law's difficulties coming to that head, Old Nandy (he
was always so called in his legal Retreat, but he was Old Mr Nandy among the
Bleeding Hearts) had sat in a corner of the Plornish fireside, and taken his bite and
sup out of the Plornish cupboard. He still hoped to resume that domestic position,
when Fortune should smile upon his son-in-law; in the meantime, while she
preserved an immovable countenance, he was and resolved to remain, one of these
little old men in a grove of little old men with a community of flavour."