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LET us skip a number of years.
London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town- for
that day. It had a hundred thousand inhabitants- some think double
as many. The streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty,
especially in the part where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from
London Bridge. The houses were of wood, with the second story
projecting over the first, and the third sticking its elbows out
beyond the second. The higher the houses grew, the broader they
grew. They were skeletons of strong crisscross beams, with solid
material between, coated with plaster. The beams were painted red or
blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this gave the
houses a very picturesque look. The windows were small, glazed with
little diamond-shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges,
like doors.
The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little
pocket called Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed,
and rickety, but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families.
Canty's tribe occupied a room on the third floor. The mother and
father had a sort of bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother,
and his two sisters, Bet and Nan, were not restricted- they had all
the floor to themselves, and might sleep where they chose. There
were the remains of a blanket or two, and some bundles of ancient
and dirty straw, but these could not rightly be called beds, for
they were not organized; they were kicked into a general pile
mornings, and selections made from the mass at night, for service.
Bet and Nan were fifteen years old- twins. They were
good-hearted girls, unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant.
Their mother was like them. But the father and the grandmother were
a couple of fiends. They got drunk whenever they could; then they
fought each other or anybody else who came in the way; they cursed and
swore always, drunk or sober; John Canty was a thief, and his mother a
beggar. They made beggars of the children, but failed to make
thieves of them. Among, but not of, the dreadful rabble that inhabited
the house, was a good old priest whom the king had turned out of house
and home with a pension of a few farthings, and he used to get the
children aside and teach them right ways secretly. Father Andrew
also taught Tom a little Latin, and how to read and write; and would
have done the same for the girls, but they were afraid of the jeers of
their friends, who could not have endured such a queer
accomplishment in them.
All Offal Court was just such another hive as Canty's house.
Drunkenness, riot, and brawling were the order there, every night
and nearly all night long. Broken heads were as common as hunger in
that place. Yet little Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of
it, but did not know it. It was the sort of time that all the Offal
Court boys had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and
comfortable thing. When he came home empty-handed at night, he knew
his father would curse him and thrash him first, and that when he
was done the awful grandmother would do it all over again and
improve on it; and that away in the night his starving mother would
slip to him stealthily with any miserable scrap of crust she had
been able to save for him by going hungry herself, notwithstanding she
was often caught in that sort of treason and soundly beaten for it
by her husband.
No, Tom's life went along well enough, especially in summer. He
only begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against
mendicancy were stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a
good deal of his time listening to good Father Andrew's charming old
tales and legends about giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and
enchanted castles, and gorgeous kings and princes. His head grew to be
full of these wonderful things, and many a night as he lay in the dark
on his scant and offensive straw, tired, hungry, and smarting from a
thrashing, he unleashed his imagination and soon forgot his aches
and pains in delicious picturings to himself of the charmed life of
a petted prince in a regal palace. One desire came in time to haunt
him day and night; it was to see a real prince, with his own eyes.
He spoke of it once to some of his Offal Court comrades; but they
jeered him and scoffed him so unmercifully that he was glad to keep
his dream to himself after that.
He often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and
enlarge upon them. His dreamings and readings worked certain changes
in him by and by. His dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament
his shabby clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better
clad. He went on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it,
too; but instead of splashing around in the Thames solely for the
fun of it, he began to find an added value in it because of the
washings and cleansings it afforded.
Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in
Cheapside, and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of
London had a chance to see a military parade when some famous
unfortunate was carried prisoner to the Tower, by land or boat. One
summer's day he saw poor Anne Askew and three men burned at the
stake in Smithfield, and heard an ex-bishop preach a sermon to them
which did not interest him. Yes, Tom's life was varied and pleasant
enough, on the whole.
By and by Tom's reading and dreaming about princely life wrought
such a strong effect upon him that he began to act the prince,
unconsciously. His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and
courtly, to the vast admiration and amusement of his intimates. But
Tom's influence among these young people began to grow now, day by
day; and in time he came to be looked up to by them with a sort of
wondering awe, as a superior being. He seemed to know so much! and
he could do such marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and
wise! Tom's remarks and Tom's performances were reported by the boys
to their elders; and these, also, presently began to discuss Tom
Canty, and to regard him as a most gifted and extraordinary
creature. Full-grown people brought their perplexities to Tom for
solution, and were often astonished at the wit and wisdom of his
decisions. In fact, he was become a hero to all who knew him except
his own family- these only saw nothing in him.
Privately, after a while, Tom organized a royal court! He was
the prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries,
lords and ladies in waiting, and the royal family. Daily the mock
prince was received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by Tom from
his romantic readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom
were discussed in the royal council, and daily his mimic highness
issued decrees to his imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties.
After which he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings,
eat his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then
stretch himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty
grandeurs in his dreams.
And still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in
the flesh, grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at
last it absorbed all other desires, and became the one passion of
his life.
One January day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped
despondently up and down the region round about Mincing Lane and
Little East Cheap, hour after hour, barefooted and cold, looking in at
cook-shop windows and longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other
deadly inventions displayed there- for to him these were dainties
fit for the angels; that is, judging by the smell, they were- for it
had never been his good luck to own and eat one. There was a cold
drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was murky; it was a melancholy day. At
night Tom reached home so wet and tired and hungry that it was not
possible for his father and grandmother to observe his forlorn
condition and not be moved- after their fashion; wherefore they gave
him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed. For a long time his
pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on in the
building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to
far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jeweled
and gilded princelings who lived in vast palaces, and had servants
salaaming before them or flying to execute their orders. And then,
as usual, he dreamed that he was a princeling himself.
All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him;
he moved among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light,
breathing perfumes, drinking in delicious music, and answering the
reverent obeisances of the glittering throng as it parted to make
way for him, with here a smile, and there a nod of his princely head.
And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the
wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect- it had
intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold. Then
came bitterness, and heartbreak, and tears.
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