CHAPTER XXXIII.
FURTHER PROCEEDINGS IN EDEN, AND A PROCEEDING OUT OF IT. MARTIN MAKES A DISCOVERY OF SOME IMPORTANCE.
From Mr. Moddle to Eden is an easy and natural transition. Mr. Moddle, living in the atmosphere of Miss Pecksniff's love, dwelt (if he had but known it) in a terrestrial Paradise. The thriving city of Eden was also a terrestrial Paradise, upon the showing of its proprietors. The beautiful Miss Pecksniff might have been poetically described as a something too good for man in his fallen and degraded state. That was exactly the character of the thriving city of Eden, as poetically heightened by Zephaniah Scadder, General Choke, and other worthies: part and parcel of the talons of that great American Eagle, which is always airing itself sky-high in purest æther, and never, no never, never, tumbles down, with draggled wings, into the mud.
When Mark Tapley, leaving Martin in the architectural and surveying offices, had effectually strengthened and encouraged his own spirits by the contemplation of their joint misfortunes, he proceeded, with new cheerfulness, in search of help: congratulating himself, as he went along, on the enviable position to which he had at last attained.
"I used to think, sometimes," said Mr. Tapley, "as a desolate island would suit me, but I should only have had myself to provide for there, and being naterally a easy man to manage, there wouldn't have been much credit in that. Now here I 've got my partner to take care on, and he's something like the sort of man for the purpose. I want a man as is always a sliding off his legs when he ought to be on 'em. I want a man as is so low down in the school of life, that he's always a making figures of one in his copy-book, and can't get no further. I want a man as is his own great coat and cloak, and is always a wrapping himself up in himself. And I have got him too," said Mr. Tapley, after a moment's silence. "What a happiness!"
He paused to look round, uncertain to which of the log-houses he should repair.
"I don't know which to take," he observed; "that's the truth. They 're equally prepossessing outside, and equally commodious, no doubt, within; being fitted up with every convenience that a Alligator, in a state of natur', could possibly require. Let me see! The citizen as turned out last night lives under water, in the right hand dog-kennel at the corner. I don't want to trouble him if I can help it, poor man, for he is a melancholy object: a reg'lar Settler in every respect. There's a house with a winder, but I'm afraid of their being proud. I don't know whether a door ain't too aristocratic; but here goes for the first one!"
He went up to the nearest cabin, and knocked with his hand. Being desired to enter, he complied.
