to bolt from. Thomas Idle observed, too, that
Mr. Goodchild, with a noble show of
disinterestedness, became every day more
ready to walk to Maryport and back, for
letters; and suspicions began to harbour in
the mind of Thomas, that his friend
deceived him, and that Maryport was a
preferable place.

Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a
day when they had looked at the sea and
eaten the shrimps, " My mind misgives me,
Goodchild, that you go to Maryport, like the
boy in the story-book, to ask it to be idle with
you."

"Judge, then," returned Francis, adopting
the style of the story-book, " with what
success. I go to a region which is a bit of
water-side Bristol, with a slice of Wapping, a
seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a garnish
of Portsmouth, and I say, ' Will you come and
be idle with me?' And it answers, 'No; for
I am a great deal too vaporous, and a great
deal too rusty, and a great deal too muddy,
and a great deal too dirty altogether;
and I have ships to load, and pitch and tar
to boil, and iron to hammer, and steam to get
up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry,
and fifty other disagreeable things to do, and
I can't be idle with you.' Then I go into jagged
up-hill and down-hill streets, where l am
in the pastrycook's shop at one moment, and
next moment in savage fastnesses of moor
and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation,
and I say to those murky and black-
dusky streets, ' Will you come and be idle
with me? ' To which they reply, ' No, we
can't, indeed, for we haven't the spirits, and
we are startled by the echo of your feet on
the sharp pavement, and we have so many
goods in our shop-windows which nobody
wants, and we have so much to do for a
limited public which never comes to us to be
done for, that we are altogether out of sorts
and can't enjoy ourselves with any one.' So
I go to the Post-office, and knock at the
shutter, and I say to the Post-master, ' Will
you come and be idle with me? ' To which he
rejoins, ' No, I really can't, for I live, as you
may see, in such a very little Post-office, and
pass my life behind such a very little shutter,
that my hand, when I put it out, is as the
hand of a giant crammed through the window
of a dwarf's house at a fair, and I am a
mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too
small for him, and I can't get out, and I can't
get in, and I have no space to be idle in, even
if I would.' So, the boy," said Mr. Goodchild,
concluding the tale, " comes back with the
letters after all, and lives happy never
afterwards."

But it may, not unreasonably, be asked—
while Francis Goodchild was wandering
hither and thither, storing his mind with
perpetual observation of men and things, and
sincerely believing himself to be the laziest
creature in existence all the time—how did
Thomas Idle, crippled and confined to the
house, contrive to get through the hours of
the day?

Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt
to get through the hours, but passively
allowed the hours to get through him. Where
other men in his situation would have read
books and improved their minds, Thomas
slept and rested his body. Where other
men would have pondered anxiously over
their future prospects, Thomas dreamed
lazily of his past life. The one solitary thing
he did, which most other people would have
done in his place, was to resolve on making
certain alterations and improvements in his
mode of existence, as soon as the effects of
the misfortune that had overtaken him had
all passed away. Remembering that the
current of his life had hitherto oozed along
in one smooth stream of laziness, occasionally
troubled on the surface by a slight passing
ripple of industry, his present ideas on the
subject of self-reform, inclined him—not as
the reader may be disposed to imagine, to
project schemes for a new existence of enterprise
and exertion—but, on the contrary, to
resolve that he would never, if he could
possibly help it, be active or industrious again,
throughout the whole of his future career.

It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his
mind sauntered towards this peculiar conclusion
on distinct and logically-producible
grounds. After reviewing, quite at his ease,
and with many needful intervals of repose,
the generally-placid spectacle of his past
existence, he arrived at the discovery that all
the great disasters which had tried his
patience and equanimity in early life, had been
caused by his having allowed himself to be
deluded into imitating some pernicious
example of activity and industry that had been
set him by others. The trials to which he
here alludes were three in number, and may
be thus reckoned up: First, the disaster of
being an unpopular and a thrashed boy at
school; secondly, the disaster of falling
seriously ill; thirdly, the disaster of becoming
acquainted with a great bore.

The first disaster occurred after Thomas
had been an idle and a popular boy at school,
for some happy years. One Christmas-time,
he was stimulated by the evil example of a
companion, whom he had always trusted and
liked, to be untrue to himself, and to try for
a prize at the ensuing half-yearly examination.
He did try, and he got a prize—how,
he did not distinctly know at the moment,
and cannot remember now. No sooner, however,
had the book—Moral Hints to the
Young on the Value of Time—been placed
in his hands, than the first troubles of his life
began. The idle boys deserted him, as a traitor
to their cause. The industrious boys avoided
him, as a dangerous interloper; one of their
number, who had always won the prize on
previous occasions, expressing just resentment
at the invasion of his privileges by
calling Thomas into the play-ground, and