Luís’s Reviews > Martin Chuzzlewit > Status Update

Throwing down his hatchet, he sped away immediately, but stopped when he had gone a little distance, and looked back: then hurried on again.

Tom's teeth chattered in his head, and he positively staggered with amazement at witnessing the extraordinary effect produced on Mr. Pecksniff by these simple words. The dread of losing the old man's favor almost as soon as they were reconciled, through the mere fact of having Jonas in the house; (...)

Leaving them to blend and mingle in their sleep, the shadows of objects afar off, as they take fantastic shapes upon the wall in the dim light of thought without control, be it the part of this slight chronicle - a dream within a dream - as rapidly to change the scene, and cross the ocean to the English shore.

The steamer - which, with its machinery on deck, looked, as it worked its long, slim legs, like some enormously magnified insect or antediluvian monster - dashed at great speed up a beautiful bay; and presently they saw some heights, and islands, and a long, flat, straggling city.

He pointed at him as he spoke, with unutterable contempt, and flinging his hat upon his head, walked from the room and from the house. He went so rapidly that he was already clear of the village when he heard Tom Pinch calling breathlessly after him in the distance.

Eighteen shillings a week! Just, most just, thy censure, upright Pecksniff! Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star, or garter; sleeves of lawn, a great man's smile, a seat in Parliament, a tap upon the shoulder from a courtly sword; a place, a party, or a thriving lie, or eighteen thousand pounds, or even eighteen hundred; - but to worship the golden calf for eighteen shillings a week! oh pitiful, pitiful!

When he had completed his arrangements,they locked Mr. Pecksniff in, and left the key on the outside; charging the young page to listen attentively for symptoms of an apoplectic nature, with which the the patient might be troubled, and, in case of any such presenting themselves, to summon them without delay: to which Mr. Bailey modestly replied that he hoped he knowed wot o'clock it was in general, (...)

Whether Mr. Pecksniff's business in London was as strictly professional as he had given his new pupil to understand.we shall see. to adopt that worthy man's phraseology, "all in good time."

(...) It was some time before Mr. Pecksniff dreamed at all, or even sought his pillow, as he sat for full two hours before the fire in his own chamber, looking at the coals and thinking deeply. But he, too, slept and dreamed at last. Thus in the quiet hours of the night, one house shuts in as many incoherent and incongruous fancies as a madman's head.

Universal self! Was there nothing of its shadow in these reflections, and in the history of Martin Chuzzlewit, on his own showing?