Gower Woodseer; the mention of whom is a dejection to the venerable source of our story, was then in the act of emerging from the Eastward into the Southward of the line of Canterbury’s pilgrims when they set forth to worship, on his homeward course, after a walk of two days out of Dover.  He descended London’s borough, having exactly twopence halfpenny for refreshment; following a term of prudent starvation, at the end of the walk.  It is not a district seductive to the wayfarer’s appetite; as, for example, one may find the Jew’s fry of fish in oil, inspiriting the Shoreditch region, to be.  Nourishment is afforded, according to the laws of England’s genius in the arts of refection, at uninviting shops, to the necessitated stomach.  A penn’orth of crumb of bread, assisted on its laborious passage by a penn’orth of the rinsings of beer, left the natural philosopher a ha’penny for dessert at the stall of an applewoman, where he withstood an inclination toward the juicy fruit and chose nuts.  They extend a meal, as a grimace broadens the countenance, illusorily; but they help to cheat an emptiness in time, where it is nearly as offensive to our sensations as within us; and that prolonged occupation of the jaws goes a length to persuade us we are filling.  All the better when the substance is indigestible.  Tramps of the philosophical order, who are the practically sagacious, prefer tough grain for the teeth.  Woodseer’s munching of his nuts awakened to fond imagination the picture of his father’s dinner, seen one day and little envied:  a small slice of cold boiled mutton-flesh in a crescent of white fat, with a lump of dry bread beside the plate.

Thus he returned to the only home he had, not disheartened, and bearing scenes that outvied London’s print-shops for polychrome splendour, an exultation to recall.  His condition, moreover, threw his father’s life and work into colour:  the lean Whitechapel house of the minister among the poor; the joy in the saving of souls, if he could persuade himself that such good labour advanced:  and at the fall of light, the pastime task of bootmaking—­a desireable occupation for a thinker.  Thought flies best when the hands are easily busy.  Cobblers have excursive minds.  Their occasional rap at the pegs diversifies the stitchings and is often happily timed to settle an internal argument.  Seek in a village for information concerning the village or the state of mankind, you will be less disappointed at the cobbler’s than elsewhere, it has been said.

As Gower had anticipated, with lively feelings of pleasure, Mr. Woodseer was at the wonted corner of his back room, on the stool between two tallow candleflames, leather scented strongly, when the wanderer stood before him, in the image of a ball that has done with circling about a stable point.

‘Back?’ the minister sang out at once, and his wrinkles gleamed: 

Their hands grasped.

‘Hungry, sir, rather.’