t any time, I'll buy them of you; all safe with me; I
never 'peach, and scorns a trap; so now, dear, God bless you! and give
you good luck. Thank you for your pleasant company, and thank you for
the tanner."

CHAPTER XXXII

The Tanner--The Hotel--Drinking Claret--London Journal--New
Field--Commonplaceness--The Three Individuals--Botheration--Frank and
Ardent.

"'Tanner!" said I, musingly, as I left the bridge; "Tanner! what can the
man who cures raw skins by means of a preparation of oak bark and other
materials have to do with the name which these fakers, as they call
themselves, bestow on the smallest silver coin in these dominions?
Tanner! I can't trace the connection between the man of bark and the
silver coin, unless journeymen tanners are in the habit of working for
sixpence a day. But I have it," I continued, flourishing my hat over my
head, "tanner, in this instance, is not an English word." Is it not
surprising that the language of Mr. Petulengro and of Tawno Chikno is
continually coming to my assistance whenever I appear to be at a nonplus
with respect to the derivation of crabbed words? I have made out crabbed
words in AEschylus by means of the speech of Chikno and Petulengro, and
even in my Biblical researches I have derived no slight assistance from
it. It appears to be a kind of picklock, an open sesame, Tanner--Tawno!
the one is but a modification of the other; they were originally
identical, and have still much the same signification. Tanner, in the
language of the apple-woman, meaneth the smallest of English silver
coins; and Tawno, in the language of the Petulengres, though bestowed
upon the biggest of the Romans, according to strict interpretation,
signifieth a little child.

So I left the bridge, retracing my steps for a considerable way, as I
thought I had seen enough in the direction in which I had hitherto been
wandering; I should say that I scarcely walked less than thirty miles
about the big city on the day of my first arrival. Night came on, but
still I was walking about, my eyes wide open, and admiring everything
that presented itself to them. Everything was new to me, for everything
is different in London from what it is elsewhere--the people, their
language, the horses, the _tout ensemble_--even the stones of London are
different from others--at least it appeared to me that I had never walked
with the same ease and facility on the flagstones of a country town as on
thos