'Bought him at a sale,' said Mr Boffin. 'Eight wollumes. Red and gold.
Purple ribbon in every wollume, to keep the place where you leave off.
Do you know him?'

'The book's name, sir?' inquired Silas.

'I thought you might have know'd him without it,' said Mr
Boffin slightly disappointed. 'His name is
Decline-And-Fall-Off-The-Rooshan-Empire.' (Mr Boffin went over these
stones slowly and with much caution.)

'Ay indeed!' said Mr Wegg, nodding his head with an air of friendly
recognition.

'You know him, Wegg?'

'I haven't been not to say right slap through him, very lately,' Mr Wegg
made answer, 'having been otherways employed, Mr Boffin. But know him?
Old familiar declining and falling off the Rooshan? Rather, sir! Ever
since I was not so high as your stick. Ever since my eldest brother left
our cottage to enlist into the army. On which occasion, as the ballad
that was made about it describes:

'Beside that cottage door, Mr Boffin,
A girl was on her knees;
She held aloft a snowy scarf, Sir,
Which (my eldest brother noticed) fluttered in the breeze.
She breathed a prayer for him, Mr Boffin;
A prayer he coold not hear.