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54 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY
the man that gave the first hidea of Mount 'Ecla for the Surrey
Zoological Gardens."
" He must have been a wonderful enthusiast !" said Mr.
Brandon; "I fancy that most would prefer to sit at home, and
not numb their fingers in such a freezing storm as this !"
" Storm, sir !" replied Fitch majestically ; " I live in a storm,
sir! A true hartist is never so 'appy as when he can have the
advantage to gaze upon yonder tempestuous hocean in one of its
hangry moods."
"Ay, there comes the steamer," answered Mr. Brandon; "I
can fancy that there are a score of unhappy people on board who
are not artists, and would wish to behold your ocean quiet."
" They arc not poets, sir: the glorious hever-changing expression
of the great countenance of Nature is not seen by them. I
should consider myself unworthy of my hart, if I could not bear
a little privation of cold or 'eat for its sake. And besides, sir,
whatever their hardships may be, such a sight hamply repays me ;
for, although my private sorrows may be (has they are) tremendous,
I never can look abroad upon the green hearth and hawful sea,
without in a measure forgetting my personal woes and wrongs;
for what right has a poor creature like me to think of his affairs
in the presence of such a spectacle as this ? I can't, sir; I feel
ashamed of myself; I bow my 'ead and am quiet. When I set
myself to examining hart, sir (by which I mean nature), I don't
dare to think of anything else."
" You worship a very charming and consoling mistress," answered
Mr. Brandon, with a supercilious air, lighting and beginning to
smoke a cigar ; " your enthusiasm does you credit."
"If you have another," said Andrea Fitch, "I should like to
smoke one, for you seem to have a real feeling about hart, and I
was a-getting so deucedly cold here, that really there was scarcely
any bearing of it."
" The cold is very severe," replied Mr. Brandon.
"No, no, it's not the weather, sir!" said Mr. Fitch; "it's
here, sir, here " (pointing to the left side of his waistcoat).
" What ! you, too, have had sorrows ?"
" Sorrows, sir ! hagonies—hagonies, which I have never unfolded
to any mortal! I have hendured halmost hevery thing.
Poverty, sir, 'unger, hobloquy, 'opeless love ! but for my hart, sir,
I should be the most miserable wretch in the world !"
And herewith Mr. Fitch began to pour forth into Mr. Brandon's
ears the history of some of those sorrows under which he laboured,
and which he communicated to every single person who would
listen to him.