of company, »is the oldest
inhabitants. I wasn't here myself, above seven year before you. I shan't last
long. When I'm off the lock for good and all, you'll be the Father of the
Marshalsea.«
    The turnkey went off the lock of this world, next day. His words were
remembered and repeated; and tradition afterwards handed down from generation to
generation - a Marshalsea generation might be calculated as about three months -
that the shabby old debtor with the soft manner and the white hair, was the
Father of the Marshalsea.
    And he grew to be proud of the title. If any impostor had arisen to claim
it, he would have shed tears in resentment of the attempt to deprive him of his
rights. A disposition began to be perceived in him, to exaggerate the number of
years he had been there; it was generally understood that you must deduct a few
from his account; he was vain, the fleeting generations of debtors said.
    All new-comers were presented to him. He was punctilious in the exaction of
this ceremony. The wits would perform the office of introduction with
overcharged pomp and politeness, but they could not easily overstep his sense of
its gravity. He received them in his poor room (he disliked an introduction in
the mere yard, as informal - a thing that might happen to anybody), with a kind
of bowed-down beneficence. They were welcome to the Marshalsea, he would tell
them. Yes, he was the Father of the place. So the world was kind enough to call
him; and so he was, if more than twenty years of residence gave him a claim to
the title. It looked small at first, but there was very good company there -
among a mixture - necessarily a mixture - and very good air.
    It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his door at
night, enclosing half-a-crown, two half-crowns, now and then at long intervals
even half-a-sovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea. »With the compliments
of a collegian taking leave.« He received the gifts as tributes, from admirers,
to a public character. Sometimes these correspondents assumed facetious names,
as the Brick, Bellows, Old Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, the
Dogs-meat Man; but he considered this in bad taste, and was always a little hurt
by it.
    In the fulness of time, this correspondence showing signs of wearing out,
and seeming to require an effort on