Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Thackeraythe house in May Fair, out of which poor Doctor Doddwas taken handcuffed. There was the paved hall overwhich he stepped. That little room at the side was, nodoubt, the study where he composed his elegant sermons.Two years since I had the good fortune to partakeof some admirable dinners in Tyburnia—magnificentdinners indeed; but rendered doubly interestingfrom the fact that the house was that occupied by thelate Mr. Sadleir. One night the late Mr. Sadleir took teain that dining-room, and, to the surprise of his butler,went out, having put into his pocket his own creamjug.The next morning, you know, he was found deadon Hampstead Heath, with the cream-jug lying by him,into which he had poured the poison by which he died.The idea of the ghost of the late gentleman flittingabout the room gave a strange interest to the banquet.Can you fancy him taking his tea alone in the diningroom?He empties that cream-jug and puts it in hispocket; and then he opens yonder door, through whichhe is never to pass again. Now he crosses the hall: andhark! the hall-door shuts upon him, and his steps dieaway. They are gone into the night. They traverse thesleeping city. They lead him into the fields, where thegray morning is beginning to glimmer. He pours somethingfrom a bottle into a little silver jug. It touches hislips, the lying lips. Do they quiver a prayer ere thatawful draught is swallowed? When the sun rises theyare dumb.I neither knew this unhappy man, nor his countryman—Laerteslet us call him—who is at present in exile,having been compelled to fly from remorseless creditors.Laertes fled to America, where he earned his breadby his pen. I own to having a kindly feeling towardsthis scapegrace, because, though an exile, he did notabuse the country whence he fled. I have heard that hewent away taking no spoil with him, penniless almost;and on his voyage he made acquaintance with a certainJew; and when he fell sick, at New York, this Jew befriendedhim, and gave him help and money out of hisown store, which was but small. Now, after they hadbeen awhile in the strange city, it happened that thepoor Jew spent all his little money, and he too fell ill,257