 Oliver in the dark, and locking
the door behind him.
    The noise of Charley's laughter, and the voice of Miss Betsy, who
opportunely arrived to throw water over her friend, and perform other feminine
offices for the promotion of her recovery, might have kept many people awake
under more happy circumstances than those in which Oliver was placed. But he was
sick and weary; and he soon fell sound asleep.
 

                                  Chapter XVII

Oliver's Destiny Continuing Unpropitious, Brings a Great Man to London to Injure
                                 His Reputation

It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the
tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and
white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed
down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious
squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms,
the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life
alike in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the
other; and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a
whistle is heard, and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the
castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body
of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces,
and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.
    Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem
at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-
and from mourning-weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling;
only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on, which makes a
vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to
violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented
before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and
preposterous.
    As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and place, are
not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by many considered as the
great art of authorship: an author's skill in his craft being, by such critics,
chiefly estimated with relation to the dilemmas in which he leaves his
characters at the end of every chapter: this brief introduction to the present
one may perhaps be deemed unnecessary. If so, let it be considered a delicate
intimation on the part of
