📔 Past and Present

When the poor man’s integuments, no longer nourished from within, become dead skin, mere adscititious leather and callosity, wearing thicker and thicker, uglier and uglier; […] — yes then, you may say, his usefulness once more is quite obstructed; […] it is time that he take to bed, and prepare for departure, which cannot now be distant!

And Quack and Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are upper-side and under of the self-same substance; convertible personages: turn up your dupe into the proper fostering element, and he himself can become a quack; […]

Why, Plugson, even thy own host is all in mutiny: Cotton is conquered; but the ‘bare backs’ — are worse covered than ever!

And yet these grim old walls are not a dilettantism and dubiety; they are an earnest fact. It was a most real and serious purpose they were built for!