sad.

Poor little, dirty, ignorant Tom! Little enough to climb up the sooty
chimney flues; so dirty that he knew not what cleanliness meant; so
ignorant that he "never had heard of God, or of Christ, except in words
which you never have heard," and his idea of happiness was to "sit in a
public house with a quart of beer and a long pipe," to play cards for
silver money, to "keep a white bull dog with one gray ear, and carry
her puppies in his pocket just like a man," to have apprentices and to
bully them, to knock them about and make them carry soot sacks while he
"rode before them on his donkey, with a pipe in his mouth and a flower
in his button hole, like a king at the head of his army!" "Yes, when his
master let him have a pull at the leavings of his beer, Tom was the
jolliest boy in the whole town."

To him who reads understandingly, there is pathos on nearly every page
of the first two chapters. Sometimes it is seen in hints and shown by
indirection but in other instances it is direct, positive, powerful.

Just read (page 231), how Tom learns that he is naught but a "little
black ape," an "ugly, black, ragged figure with bleared eyes and
grinning white teeth."

In his terrible race for life he "thought he heard church bells ringing
a long way off" and thought "where there is a church there will be
houses and people," and perhaps someone will give him a "bit and a sup."
So he follows the ringing in his ears till he comes to the top of the
great crag and sees "a mile off and a thousand feet down" the old dame
in her garden. We lose our own breath in following him down that awful
descent, find ourselves panting, and at last, suddenly, "b-e-a-t, beat!"
After the old dame has given him the old rug and bidden him sleep off
his weariness, comes the fever with the ringing of the church bells and
the persistent, agonizing thought, "I must be clean, I must be clean."
It is this that drives him out to the "clear, clear limestone water,
with every pebble at the bottom bright and clean" the cool, cool, cool
water for his weary feet.

Then when it is too late, just to add to the pathos of the sad little
tale, comes the Squire, conscious of the terrible mistake and ready to
put Tom in the way of cleanliness, knowledge and happiness; Tom, of whom
there remained only the husk and shell which made the Squire think the
poor sweep was drowned.

To close the chapter and the sad part of the story, the dame sings the
old, old song