image; “why should you particularly like a man who resembles

you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound

you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for

taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away

from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and

would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and

commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have

it out in plain words! You hate the fellow!”

He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a

few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling

over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

down upon him.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter XI

THE JACKAL

T

hose were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So

very great is the improvement Time has brought about in

such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of

wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a

night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect

gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration.

The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any

other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither

was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering h