By and by, the feeble light grew stronger, and the houses with their signboards and inscriptions, stood… — Charles Dickens
By and by, the feeble light grew stronger, and the houses with their signboards and inscriptions, stood plainly out, in the dull grey morning. Heavy stage wagons crawled from the inn-yard opposite; and travelers peeped out; and as they rolled sluggishly away, cast many a backward look towards the jail. And now, the sun’s first beams came glancing into the street; and the night’s work, which, in its various stages and in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken a hundred shapes, wore its own proper form-—a scaffold, and a gibbet.
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The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world brother.
"I’m of as gen-teel a calling, brother, as any man in England—as light a business as any gentleman could desire." "Was you ‘prenticed to it?" asked Mr Tappertit. "No. Natural genius," said Mr Dennis. "No ‘prenticing. It come by natur’. Muster Gashford knows my calling. Look at that hand of mine—many and many a job that hand has done, with a neatness and dexterity, never known afore. When I look at that hand," said Mr Dennis, shaking it in the air, "and remember the helegant bits of work it has turned off, I feel quite molloncholy to think it should ever grow old and feeble. But sich is life!"
‘See the hangman when it comes home to him!’ cried Hugh again, as they bore him away—‘Ha ha ha! Courage, bold Barnaby, what care we? Your hand! They do well to put us out of the world, for if we got loose a second time, we wouldn’t let them off so easy, eh? Another shake! A man can die but once. If you wake in the night, sing that out lustily, and fall asleep again. Ha ha ha!’
