{"id":"01KG8AKFKTYSTRFP35ZWJVVMAV","cid":"bafkreigtviflff2pglig675gxqsas5dhd3gk6e3eej2nsqvo73wo7iwpp4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7176,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:05.594Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","start_line":7120,"text":"CHAPTER XXVI.\r\nFORTY-FIVE YEARS.\r\n\r\n\r\nFor the most part, what befell Israel during his forty years wanderings\r\nin the London deserts, surpassed the forty years in the natural\r\nwilderness of the outcast Hebrews under Moses.\r\n\r\nIn that London fog, went before him the ever-present cloud by day, but\r\nno pillar of fire by the night, except the cold column of the monument,\r\ntwo hundred feet beneath the mocking gilt flames on whose top, at the\r\nstone base, the shiverer, of midnight, often laid down.\r\n\r\nBut these experiences, both from their intensity and his solitude, were\r\nnecessarily squalid. Best not enlarge upon them. For just as extreme\r\nsuffering, without hope, is intolerable to the victim, so, to others,\r\nis its depiction without some corresponding delusive mitigation. The\r\ngloomiest and truthfulest dramatist seldom chooses for his theme the\r\ncalamities, however extraordinary, of inferior and private persons;\r\nleast of all, the pauper’s; admonished by the fact, that to the craped\r\npalace of the king lying in state, thousands of starers shall throng;\r\nbut few feel enticed to the shanty, where, like a pealed knuckle-bone,\r\ngrins the unupholstered corpse of the beggar.\r\n\r\nWhy at one given stone in the flagging does man after man cross yonder\r\nstreet? What plebeian Lear or Oedipus, what Israel Potter, cowers there\r\nby the corner they shun? From this turning point, then, we too cross\r\nover and skim events to the end; omitting the particulars of the\r\nstarveling’s wrangling with rats for prizes in the sewers; or his\r\ncrawling into an abandoned doorless house in St. Giles’, where his\r\nhosts were three dead men, one pendant; into another of an alley nigh\r\nHoundsditch, where the crazy hovel, in phosphoric rottenness, fell\r\nsparkling on him one pitchy midnight, and he received that injury,\r\nwhich, excluding activity for no small part of the future, was an added\r\ncause of his prolongation of exile, besides not leaving his faculties\r\nunaffected by the concussion of one of the rafters on his brain.\r\n\r\nBut these were some of the incidents not belonging to the beginning of\r\nhis career. On the contrary, a sort of humble prosperity attended him\r\nfor a time; insomuch that once he was not without hopes of being able\r\nto buy his homeward passage so soon as the war should end. But, as\r\nstubborn fate would have it, being run over one day at Holborn Bars,\r\nand taken into a neighboring bakery, he was there treated with such\r\nkindliness by a Kentish lass, the shop-girl, that in the end he thought\r\nhis debt of gratitude could only be repaid by love. In a word, the\r\nmoney saved up for his ocean voyage was lavished upon a rash\r\nembarkation in wedlock.\r\n\r\nOriginally he had fled to the capital to avoid the dilemma of\r\nimpressment or imprisonment. In the absence of other motives, the dread\r\nof those hardships would have fixed him there till the peace. But now,\r\nwhen hostilities were no more, so was his money. Some period elapsed\r\nere the affairs of the two governments were put on such a footing as to\r\nsupport an American consul at London. Yet, when this came to pass, he\r\ncould only embrace the facilities for a return here furnished, by\r\ndeserting a wife and child, wedded and born in the enemy’s land.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJRWNYCFCKFX5G6XWAGY","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKFKTX113ZA256JK3V7P5","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:05.754Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:18.857Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}