deal too vaporous, and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal too
muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I have ships to
load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to hammer, and steam to
get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry, and fifty other
disagreeable things to do, and I can't be idle with you." Then I
go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the
pastrycook's shop at one moment, and next moment in savage
fastnesses of moor and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation,
and I say to those murky and black-dusty streets, "Will YOU come
and be idle with me?" To which they reply, "No, we can't, indeed,
for we haven't the spirits, and we are startled by the echo of your
feet on the sharp pavement, and we have so many goods in our shop-
windows which nobody wants, and we have so much to do for a limited
public which never comes to us to be done for, that we are
altogether out of sorts and can't enjoy ourselves with any one."
So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to
the Post-master, "Will YOU come and be idle with me?" To which he
rejoins, "No, I really can't, for I live, as you may see, in such a
very little Post-office, and pass my life behind such a very little
shutter, that my hand, when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant
crammed through the window of a dwarf's house at a fair, and I am a
mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small for him, and I
can't get out, and I can't get in, and I have no space to be idle
in, even if I would." So, the boy,' said Mr. Goodchild, concluding
the tale, 'comes back with the letters after all, and lives happy
never afterwards.'

But it may, not unreasonably, be asked--while Francis Goodchild was
wandering hither and thither, storing his mind with perpetual
observation of men and things, and sincerely believing himself to