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The Personal History And Experience Of David Copperfield The Younger

CHAPTER 64 :  A LAST RETROSPECT

IN PRINT

 

Page 3

Or perhaps this IS the Desert of Sahara! For, though Julia has a stately house, and mighty company, and sumptuous dinners every day, I see no green growth near her; nothing that can ever come to fruit or flower. What Julia calls 'society', I see; among it Mr. Jack Maldon, from his Patent Place, sneering at the hand that gave it him, and speaking to me of the Doctor as 'so charmingly antique'. But when society is the name for such hollow gentlemen and ladies, Julia, and when its breeding is professed indifference to everything that can advance or can retard mankind, I think we must have lost ourselves in that same Desert of Sahara, and had better find the way out.

And lo, the Doctor, always our good friend, labouring at his Dictionary (somewhere about the letter D), and happy in his home and wife. Also the Old Soldier, on a considerably reduced footing, and by no means so influential as in days of yore!

Working at his chambers in the Temple, with a busy aspect, and his hair (where he is not bald) made more rebellious than ever by the constant friction of his lawyer's-wig, I come, in a later time, upon my dear old Traddles. His table is covered with thick piles of papers; and I say, as I look around me:

'If Sophy were your clerk, now, Traddles, she would have enough to do!'

'You may say that, my dear Copperfield! But those were capital days, too, in Holborn Court! Were they not?'

'When she told you you would be a judge? But it was not the town talk then!'

'At all events,' says Traddles, 'if I ever am one -' 'Why, you know you will be.'

'Well, my dear Copperfield, WHEN I am one, I shall tell the story, as I said I would.'

We walk away, arm in arm. I am going to have a family dinner with Traddles. It is Sophy's birthday; and, on our road, Traddles discourses to me of the good fortune he has enjoyed.

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