elling terribly of rum," such as he who assailed little David, in
reply to his offer to sell the jacket, with, "Oh, what do you want? Oh,
my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you
want? Oh--goroo, goroo!" After losing his time, and being rated at and
frightened by this "dreadful old man to look at," who in every way tries
to avoid giving him the money asked for,--half-a-crown,--offering him in
exchange such useless things to a hungry boy as "a fishing-rod, a
fiddle, a cocked hat, and a flute," the poor lad is obliged to close
with the offer of a few pence, "with which [he says] I soon refreshed
myself completely; and, being in better spirits then, limped seven miles
upon my road."

The Convict Prison at Chatham is said to have been built on a piece of
ground which, in the middle of the last century, belonged to one Thomas
Clark, a singular character, who lived on the spot for many years by
himself in a small cottage, and who used every night, as he went home,
to sing or shout, "Tom's all alone! Tom's all alone!" This, according to
the opinion of some, may have given rise to the "Tom all alone's" of
_Bleak House_, more especially considering the fact that military
operations were frequently going on at Chatham, which Dickens would
notice in his early days. The circumstance is thus referred to in the
novel:--"Twice lately there has been a crash, and a crowd of dust, like
the springing of a mine, in Tom all alone's, and each time a house has
fallen."

Mr. George Robinson of Strood directs our attention to the fact that a
"child's caul," such as that described in the first chapter of _David
Copperfield_, which he was born with, and which was advertised "at the
low price of fifteen guineas," would be a likely object to be sought
after in a sea-faring town like Chatham, in Dickens's early days, when
the schoolmaster was less abroad than he is now.

In after years, memories of Chatham Dockyard appear in many of the
sketches in the _Uncommercial Traveller_ and other stories. "One man in
a Dockyard" describes it as having "a gravity upon its red brick offices
and houses, a staid pretence of having nothing to do, an avoidance of
display, which I never saw out of England." "Nurse's Stories" says that
"nails and copper are shipwrights' sweethearts, and shipwrights will run
away with them whenever they can." In _Great Expectations_ the refrain,
"Beat it out, beat it out--old Clem! with a clink for th