eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by

your little children, were but newly released from the horror of

being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on

Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of

Abyssinia or Ashantee.

But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in

vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with

Tellson’s. Death is Nature’s remedy for all things, and why not

Legislation’s? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a

letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and

sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson’s door,

who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling

was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the

whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least

good in the way of preventionit might almost have been worth

remarking that the fact was exactly the reversebut, it cleared off

(as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left

nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson’s,

in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had

taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had b