a man who asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the way to Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don’t blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. Even the noise it makes a long way ahead, confuses me."
Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand.
"Therefore, Wally—therefore it is that I am anxious you should be early in the busy world, and on the world’s track. I am only the ghost of this business—its substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its ghost will be laid. As it is clearly no inheritance for you then, I have thought it best to use for your advantage, almost the only fragment of the old connexion that stands by me, through long habit. Some people suppose me to be wealthy. I wish for your sake they were right. But whatever I leave behind me, or whatever I can give you, you in such a House as Dombey’s are in the road to use well and make the most of. Be diligent, try to like it, my dear boy, work for a steady independence, and be happy!"
"I’ll do everything I can, Uncle, to deserve your affection. Indeed I will," said the boy, earnestly.
"I know it," said Solomon. "I am sure of it," and he applied himself to a second glass of the old Madeira, with increased relish. "As to the Sea," he pursued, "that’s well enough in fiction, Wally, but it won’t do in fact: it won’t do at all. It’s natural enough that you should think about it, associating it with all these familiar things; but it won’t do, it won’t do."
Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of stealthy enjoyment, as he talked of the sea, though; and looked on the seafaring objects about him with inexpressible complacency.
"Think of this wine for instance," said old Sol, "which has been to the East Indies and back, I’m not able to say how often, and has been once round the world. Think of the pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, and rolling seas:"
"The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds," said the boy.
"To be sure," said Solomon,—"that this wine has passed through. Think what a straining and creaking of timbers and masts: what a whistling and howling of the gale through ropes and rigging:"
"What a clambering aloft of men, vying with each other who shall lie out first upon the yards to furl the icy sails, while the ship rolls and pitches, like mad!" cried his nephew.
"Exactly so," said Solomon: "has gone on, over the old cask that held this wine. Why, when the Charming Sally went down in the—"
"In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night; five-and-twenty minutes past twelve when the captain’s watch stopped in his pocket; he lying dead against the main-mast—on the fourteenth of February, seventeen forty-nine!" cried Walter, with great animation.
"Ay, to be sure!" cried old Sol, "quite right! Then, there were five
