rned
it for him. 'You and me,' said the turnkey, one snowy winter's night
when the lodge, with a bright fire in it, was pretty full of company,
'is the oldest inhabitants. I wasn't here myself above seven year before
you. I shan't last long. When I'm off the lock for good and all, you'll
be the Father of the Marshalsea.'

The turnkey went off the lock of this world next day. His words were
remembered and repeated; and tradition afterwards handed down from
generation to generation--a Marshalsea generation might be calculated as
about three months--that the shabby old debtor with the soft manner and
the white hair, was the Father of the Marshalsea.

And he grew to be proud of the title. If any impostor had arisen to
claim it, he would have shed tears in resentment of the attempt to
deprive him of his rights. A disposition began to be perceived in him
to exaggerate the number of years he had been there; it was generally
understood that you must deduct a few from his account; he was vain, the
fleeting generations of debtors said.

All new-comers were presented to him. He was punctilious in the exaction
of this ceremony. The wits would perform the office of introduction with
overcharged pomp and politeness, but they could not easily overstep his
sense of its gravity. He received them in his poor room (he disliked an
introduction in the mere yard, as informal--a thing that might happen
to anybody), with a kind of bowed-down beneficence. They were welcome to
the Marshalsea, he would tell them. Yes, he was the Father of the place.
So the world was kind enough to call him; and so he was, if more than
twenty years of residence gave him a claim to the title. It looked
small at first, but there was very good company there--among a
mixture--necessarily a mixture--and very good air.

It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his
door at night, enclosing half-a-crown, two half-crowns, now and then at
long intervals even half-a-sovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea.
'With the compliments of a collegian taking leave.' He received the
gifts as tributes, from admirers, to a public character. Sometimes
these correspondents assumed facetious names, as the Brick, Bellows, Old
Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, the Dogs-meat Man; but he
considered this in bad taste, and was always a little hurt by it.

In the fulness of time, this correspondence showing signs of wearing
out, and seeming to requir