e remodelled procession started,

with a chimney-sweep driving the hearseadvised by the regular

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, for

the purposeand with a pie-man, also attended by his cabinet

minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular

street character of the time, was impressed as an additional

ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand;

and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an

Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked.

Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and

infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its

way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before

it. Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in

the fields. It got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into

the burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of the

deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and highly to its own

satisfaction.

The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the

necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another

brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of

impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking

vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive