Paul Clifford

end of punishment as regar

o make hi

m their youth) peculiarly alive to example, and whom it is t

of Correction, to associate with t

ommon Sense and Cu

swered half in confusion, half in anger; and his reply was so detrimental to any favourable influence he might otherwise have exercised over the interrogator, that the latter personage, giving him a pinch in the ear, shouted out, "Ramp, ramp!" and at that significant and awful word, Paul found himself surrounded in a trice by a whole host of ingenious tormentors. One pulled this member, another pinched that; one cuffed him before, and another thrashed him behind. By way of interlude to this pleasing occupation, they stripped him of the very few things that in his change of dress he had retained. One carried off his handkerchief, a second his neckclot

h admonitions from great rogues generally work upon little. Messieurs the ravmpers ceased from their amusements; and the ringleader of the gang, th

mpany returned to picking oakum; the tread-mill, that admirably just invention by which a strong man suffers no fatigue and a weak one loses his health for life, not having been then introduced into our excellent establishments for correcting crime. Bitterly and with many dark and wrathful feelings, in which the sense of injustice at punishment alone bore him up against the humiliations to which he was subjected - bitterly and with a swelling heart, in which the thoughts that lead to crime were already forcing their way through a soil suddenly warmed for their

mlinson? How glad I

the newspapers, with a nasal twang, "should

swer; and Augus

on't believe it. But a truce to reflection! I remembered you the moment I saw you, though you

sation; "but tell me, Mr. Tomlinson, how came you hither? I heard you h

represents the actions of those

ed times in 'The Asinaeum,' for we were never too lavish of our truths in th

for, as you say, it is astonishing how far that number may go, properly managed. It is with writers as with strolling players - the same three i

entertaining. Mine, as yet, has been but insipid. The lives of literary men are not fraught with adventure; and I question

drooms. Tomlinson then, who was glad to re-find a person who had known him in his beaux jours, spoke privately to the turnkey; and the result of the conversation was the coupling Paul and Augustus in th

how, instead of resorting to some more pleasurable or libertine road of life, he betook himself at once to the dull roof and insipid employments of MacGrawler, and preferred honestly earning his subsistence by the sweat of his brain to recurring to any of the numerous ways of living on others with which his experience among the worst part of society must have teemed, and which, to say the least of them, are more alluring to the young and the adventurous than the barren paths of literary labour. Indeed, to let thee into a secret, it had been Paul's daring ambition to raise himself into a worthy member of the community. His present circumstances, it may hereafter be seen, made the cause of a great change in his desires; and the conversation he held that night with the

brought thy pigs

tear in his eye, did not refuse a joke as bitter as it was inelegant; "for,

angrily. "What business has you to g

can't help these rubs and stum

be hanged in spite of all my care and 'tention to you, though I hedicated you as

, which means getting rich and paying taxes. 'The more taxes a man pays, the gre

ckbat. It looks quite unnatural and hyena-like to be so devil-me-careish!" So sayi

u see what can be done for me. I dare say you may manage to soften the justice's sentence by a little 'oil of palms;' and if you can get me out before I am quite corrupte

e what can be done. And here, my lad, here's summat for you in the mean while - a drop o' the

rced to retract the "cretur." Upon this, the kind-hearted woman renewed her sobbings; and so absorbed was she in her grief that seemingly quite forgetting for

ng, as she went, that if love or money could shorten Paul's confinement, neither should be wanting. We are rather at a loss to conj

ies, such as tobacco, gin, and rations of daintier viands than the prison allowed; for Augustus, having more money than the rest of his companions, managed,

e man, every way fitted for a most arduous undertaking, informed us, in the only conversation we have had the honour t

ce and exertion even in those places where a man cannot t