 me here sometimes, to be told some
astonishing fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no
more than that I hope I believed them myself. In the evening I used to go back
to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr. Micawber; or play casino
with Mrs. Micawber, and hear reminiscences of her papa and mama. Whether Mr.
Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable to say. I never told them at Murdstone
and Grinby's.
    Mr. Micawber's affairs, although past their crisis, were very much involved
by reason of a certain Deed, of which I used to hear a great deal, and which I
suppose, now, to have been some former composition with his creditors, though I
was so far from being clear about it then, that I am conscious of having
confounded it with those demoniacal parchments which are held to have, once upon
a time, obtained to a great extent in Germany. At last this document appeared to
be got out of the way, somehow; at all events it ceased to be the rock ahead it
had been; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that her family had decided that Mr.
Micawber should apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors' Act, which
would set him free, she expected, in about six weeks.
    »And then,« said Mr. Micawber, who was present, »I have no doubt I shall,
please Heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly
new manner, if - in short, if anything turns up.«
    By way of going in for anything that might be on the cards, I call to mind
that Mr. Micawber, about this time, composed a petition to the House of Commons,
praying for an alteration in the law of imprisonment for debt. I set down this
remembrance here, because it is an instance to myself of the manner in which I
fitted my old books to my altered life, and made stories for myself, out of the
streets, and out of men and women; and how some main points in the character I
shall unconsciously develop, I suppose, in writing my life, were gradually
forming all this while.
    There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, as a gentleman, was a
great authority. Mr. Micawber had stated his idea of this petition to the club,
and the club had strongly approved of the same. Wherefore Mr. Micawber (who was
a thoroughly good-natured man,
