the platform. Low-spirited, Mr. Filer, with his hands in
his trousers-pockets. The red-faced gentleman who was always vaunting,
under the title of the "good old times," some undiscoverable past which
he perpetually lamented as his deceased Millennium. And finally--as
large as life, and as real--Alderman Cute. As in the original Christmas
book, so also in the Reading, the one flagrant improbability was the
consumption by Alderman Cute of the last lukewarm tid-bit of tripe left
by Trotty Veck down at the bottom of the basin--its consumption, indeed,
by any alderman, however prying or gluttonous. Barring that, the whole
of the first scene of the "Chimes" was alive with reality, and with a
curious diversity of human character. In the one that followed, and in
which Trotty conveyed a letter to Sir Joseph Rowley, the impersonation
of the obese hall-porter, later on identified as Tugby, was in every
way far beyond that of the pompous humanitarian member of parliament. A
hall-porter this proved to be whose voice, when he had found it--"which
it took him some time to do, for it was a long way off, and hidden under
a load of meat"--was, in truth, as the Author's lips expressed it, and
as his pen had long before described it in the book, "a fat whisper."
Afterwards when re-introduced, Tugby hardly, as it appeared to us,
came up to the original description. When the stout old lady, his
supposititious wife, formerly, or rather really, all through, Mrs.
Chickenstalker, says, in answer to his inquiries as to the weather,
one especially bitter winter's evening, "Blowing and sleeting hard, and
threatening snow. Dark, and very cold"--Tugby's almost apoplectic reply
was delicious, no doubt, in its suffocative delivery. "I'm glad to think
we had muffins for tea, my dear. It's a sort of night that's meant for
muffins. Likewise crumpets; also Sally Lunns." But, for all that,
we invariably missed the sequel--which, once missed, could hardly be
foregone contentedly. We recalled to mind, for example, such descriptive
particulars in the original story as that, in mentioning each successive
kind of eatable, Tugby did so "as if he were musingly summing up his
good actions," or that, after this, rubbing his fat legs and jerking
them at the knees to get the fire upon the yet unroasted parts, he
laughed as if somebody had tickled him! We bore distinctly enough
in remembrance, and longed then to have heard from the lips of the
Reader--in answer to the d