If you love a person, is it not a pleasure to feel obliged to him?
And this, in consequence, I felt.

I was proud and happy at being able to think that my dear wife should be able to labour and earn bread for me, now misfortune had put it out of my power to support me and her.

And now, instead of making any reflections of my own upon prison discipline, I will recommend the reader to consult that admirable chapter in the Life of Mr.Pickwick in which the same theme is handled, and which shows how silly it is to deprive honest men of the means of labour just at the moment when they most want it.

What could I do?
There were one or two gents in the prison who could work (literary gents,--one wrote his "Travels in Mesopotamia," and the other his "Sketches at Almack's," in the place); but all the occupation I could find was walking down Bridge Street, and then up Bridge Street, and staring at Alderman Waithman's windows, and then at the black man who swept the crossing.

I never gave him anything; but I envied him his trade and his broom, and the money that continually fell into his old hat.