To prepare the mind for such
a heavy sleep, its growth must be stopped by rigour and cruelty in
childhood; there must be years of misery and suffering, lightened by no
ray of hope; the chords of the heart, which beat a quick response to the
voice of gentleness and affection, must have rusted and broken in their
secret places, and bear the lingering echo of no old word of love or
kindness. Gloomy, indeed, must have been the short day, and dull the
long, long twilight, preceding such a night of intellect as his.
There were voices which would have roused him, even then; but their
welcome tones could not penetrate there; and he crept to bed the same
listless, hopeless, blighted creature, that Nicholas had first found him
at the Yorkshire school.
CHAPTER 39
In which another old Friend encounters Smike, very opportunely and to
some Purpose
The night, fraught with so much bitterness to one poor soul, had given
place to a bright and cloudless summer morning, when a north-country
mail-coach traversed, with cheerful noise, the yet silent streets
of Islington, and, giving brisk note of its approach with the lively
winding of the guard's horn, clattered onward to its halting-place hard
by the Post Office.
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