"Dickens, Charles - Sketches By Boz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the
aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the
boys. Suddenly, just at the commencement of the communion service,
when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence,
broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is
heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding
clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle. His involuntary
look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect
indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not
heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his
right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the
money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the
beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when
it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks,
administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight
of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at
intervals until the conclusion of the sermon.

Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish
beadle - a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that
has come under our observation, except when the services of that
particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required:
then indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the beadle as
fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own
personal observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the
engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being
obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the
pavement, the beadle, running - we do not exaggerate - running at
the side, until they arrive at some house, smelling strongly of
soot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable
gravity for half-an-hour. No attention being paid to these manual
applications, and the turn-cock having turned on the water, the
engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once
more at the work-house, and the beadle 'pulls up' the unfortunate
householder next day, for the amount of his legal reward. We never
saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once. It came up in
gallant style - three miles and a half an hour, at least; there was
a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went
the pumps - the people cheered - the beadle perspired profusely;
but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put
the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the
engine was filled with water; and that eighteen boys, and a man,
had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without
producing the slightest effect!

The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of
the workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as
everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man, in black, with a
thick gold watch-chain of considerable length, terminating in two
large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a