had been living for some time back.
The occupation he set himself was, to visit these with all discretion and speed,
and, in the event of finding anywhere that he had left a bill unpaid, and a box
or parcel behind, to pay such bill, and bring away such box or parcel.
    With no other attendant than Mother, Mr. Meagles went upon his pilgrimage,
and encountered a number of adventures. Not the least of his difficulties was,
that he never knew what was said to him, and that he pursued his inquiries among
people who never knew what he said to them. Still, with an unshaken confidence
that the English tongue was somehow the mother tongue of the whole world, only
the people were too stupid to know it, Mr. Meagles harangued innkeepers in the
most voluble manner, entered into loud explanations of the most complicated
sort, and utterly renounced replies in the native language of the respondents,
on the ground that they were all bosh. Sometimes interpreters were called in;
whom Mr. Meagles addressed in such idiomatic terms of speech, as instantly to
extinguish and shut up - which made the matter worse. On a balance of the
account, however, it may be doubted whether he lost much; for, although he found
no property, he found so many debts and various associations of discredit with
the proper name, which was the only word he made intelligible, that he was
almost everywhere overwhelmed with injurious accusations. On no fewer than four
occasions, the police were called in to receive denunciations of Mr. Meagles as
a Knight of Industry, a good-for-nothing, and a thief; all of which opprobrious
language he bore with the best temper (having no idea what it meant), and was in
the most ignominious manner escorted to steam-boats and public carriages, to be
got rid of, talking all the while, like a cheerful and fluent Briton as he was,
with Mother under his arm.
    But, in his own tongue, and in his own head, Mr. Meagles was a clear,
shrewd, persevering man. When he had worked round, as he called it, to Paris in
his pilgrimage, and had wholly failed in it so far, he was not disheartened.
»The nearer to England I follow him, you see, Mother,« argued Mr. Meagles, »the
nearer I am likely to come to the papers, whether they turn up or no. Because it
is only reasonable to conclude, that he would deposit them somewhere where they
would be safe from people over in England,