Skimpole, lead only to Cursitor Street.


Coavins's, Cursitor Street, May 1.

My Dear Honeyman,--It is May-day, when even the chimney-sweeper,
developing the pleasant unconscious poetry of his nature, forgets
the flues, wreathes the flowers, and persuades himself that he is
Jack-in-the-Green. Jack who? Was he Jack Sprat, or the young
swain who mated with Jill! Who knows? The chimney-sweeper has all
I ask, all that the butterflies possess, all that Common-sense and
Business and Society deny to Harold Skimpole. He lives, he is
free, he is "in the green!" I am in Coavins's! In Cursitor Street
I cannot hear the streams warble, the birds chant, the music roll
through the stately fane, let us say, of Lady Whittlesea's.
Coavins's (as Coavins's man says) is "a 'ouse;" but how unlike, for
example, the hospitable home of our friend Jarndyce! I can sketch
Coavins's, but I cannot alter it: I can set it to music, on
Coavins's piano; but how melancholy are the jingling strains of
that dilapidated instrument! At Jarndyce's house, when I am there,
I am in possession of it: here Coavins's is in possession of me--
of the person of Harold Skimpole.

And why am I here? Why am I far from landscape, music,
conversation? Why, merely because I will follow neither Fame nor
Fortune nor Faith. They call to us in the market-place, but I will
not dance. Fame blows her trumpet, and offers her shilling (the
Queen's). Faith peals her bells, and asks for MY shilling.
Fortune rattles her banking-scales. They call, and the world joins
the waltz; but I will not march with them. "Go after glory,