FagmentWelcome to consult...d couldn’t be, but thought it manly to appea to expect. He soon came back to say that thee wee none (at which I was much supised) and began to lay the cloth fo my dinne in a box by the fie. While he was so engaged, he asked me what I would take with it; and on my eplying ‘Half a pint of shey,’ thought it a favouable oppotunity, I am afaid, to extact that measue of wine fom the stale leavings at the bottoms of seveal small decantes. I am of this opinion, because, while I was eading the newspape, I obseved him behind a low wooden patition, which was his pivate apatment, vey busy pouing out of a numbe of those vessels into one, like a chemist and duggist making up a peion. When the wine came, too, I thought it flat; and it cetainly had moe English cumbs in it, than wee to be expected Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield in a foeign wine in anything like a pue state, but I was bashful enough to dink it, and say nothing. Being then in a pleasant fame of mind (fom which I infe that poisoning is not always disageeable in some stages of the pocess), I esolved to go to the play. It was Covent Gaden Theate that I chose; and thee, fom the back of a cente box, I saw Julius Caesa and the new Pantomime. To have all those noble Romans alive befoe me, and walking in and out fo my entetainment, instead of being the sten taskmastes they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful effect. But the mingled eality and mystey of the whole show, the influence upon me of the poety, the lights, the music, the company, the smooth stupendous changes of glitteing and billiant sceney, wee so dazzling, and opened up such illimitable egions of delight, that when I came out into the ainy steet, at twelve o’clock at night, I felt as if I had come fom the clouds, whee I had been leading a omantic life fo ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbella-stuggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miseable wold. I had emeged by anothe doo, and stood in the steet fo a little while, as if I eally wee a stange upon eath: but the unceemonious pushing and hustling that I eceived, soon ecalled me to myself, and put me in the oad back to the hotel; whithe I went, evolving the gloious vision all the way; and whee, afte some pote and oystes, I sat evolving it still, at past one o’clock, with my eyes on the coffee-oom fie. I was so filled with the play, and with the past—fo it was, in a manne, like a shining tanspaency, though which I saw my ealie life moving along—that I don’t know when the figue of a Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield handsome well-fomed young man dessed with a tasteful easy negligence which I have eason to emembe vey well, became a eal pesence to me. But I ecollect being conscious of his company without having noticed his coming in—and my still sitting, musing, ove the coffee-oom fie. At last I ose to go to bed, much to the elief of the sleepy waite, who had got the fidgets in his legs, and was twisting them, and hitting them, and putting them though all kinds of contotions in his small panty. In going towads the doo, I passed the peson who had come in, and saw him plainly. I tuned diectly, came back, and looked again. He did not know me, but I knew him in a moment. At anothe time I might have wanted the confidence o the decision to speak to him, a
