{"id":"01KG8AM6NQYDZH6PEZ74706CFT","cid":"bafkreifm3y7yuar7lvdgdoaxjbydxolpy4dm4kmrguxwxzdn55magqja2e","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8466,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":8399,"text":"\r\n‘I am William Ford; let me in.’\r\n\r\n‘Oh, I cannot, I cannot! I am afraid of everyone.’\r\n\r\nIt _was_ Jimmy Rose!\r\n\r\n‘Let me in, Rose; let me in, man. I am your friend.’\r\n\r\n‘I will not. I can trust no man now.’\r\n\r\n‘Let me in, Rose; trust at least one, in me.’\r\n\r\n‘Quit the spot, or----’\r\n\r\nWith that I heard a rattling against the huge lock, not made by any key,\r\nas if some small tube were being thrust into the keyhole. Horrified, I\r\nfled fast as feet could carry me.\r\n\r\nI was a young man then, and Jimmy was not more than forty. It was\r\nfive-and-twenty years ere I saw him again. And what a change. He whom I\r\nexpected to behold--if behold at all--dry, shrunken, meagre,\r\ncadaverously fierce with misery and misanthropy--amazement! the old\r\nPersian roses bloomed in his cheeks. And yet poor as any rat; poor in\r\nthe last dregs of poverty; a pauper beyond almshouse pauperism; a\r\npromenading pauper in a thin, threadbare, careful coat; a pauper with\r\nwealth of polished words; a courteous, smiling, shivering gentleman.\r\n\r\nAh, poor, poor Jimmy--God guard us all--poor Jimmy Rose!\r\n\r\nThough at the first onset of his calamity, when creditors, once fast\r\nfriends, pursued him as carrion for jails; though then, to avoid their\r\nhunt, as well as the human eye, he had gone and denned in the old\r\nabandoned house; and there, in his loneliness, had been driven half mad,\r\nyet time and tide had soothed him down to sanity. Perhaps at bottom\r\nJimmy was too thoroughly good and kind to be made from any cause a\r\nman-hater. And doubtless it at last seemed irreligious to Jimmy even to\r\nshun mankind.\r\n\r\nSometimes sweet sense of duty will entice one to bitter doom. For what\r\ncould be more bitter than now, in abject need, to be seen of those--nay,\r\ncrawl and visit them in an humble sort, and be tolerated as an old\r\neccentric, wandering in their parlours--who once had known him richest\r\nof the rich, and gayest of the gay? Yet this Jimmy did. Without rudely\r\nbreaking him right down to it, fate slowly bent him more and more to the\r\nlowest deep. From an unknown quarter he received an income of some\r\nseventy dollars, more or less. The principal he would never touch, but,\r\nby various modes of eking it out, managed to live on the interest. He\r\nlived in an attic, where he supplied himself with food. He took but one\r\nregular repast a day--meal and milk--and nothing more, unless procured\r\nat others’ tables. Often about the tea hour he would drop in upon some\r\nold acquaintance, clad in his neat, forlorn frock-coat, with worn velvet\r\nsewed upon the edges of the cuffs, and a similar device upon the hems of\r\nhis pantaloons, to hide that dire look of having been grated off by\r\nrats. On Sunday he made a point of always dining at some fine house or\r\nother.\r\n\r\nIt is evident that no man could with impunity be allowed to lead this\r\nlife unless regarded as one who, free from vice, was by fortune brought\r\nso low that the plummet of pity alone could reach him. Not much merit\r\nredounded to his entertainers because they did not thrust the starving\r\ngentleman forth when he came for his poor alms of tea and toast. Some\r\nmerit had been theirs had they clubbed together and provided him, at\r\nsmall cost enough, with a sufficient income to make him, in point of\r\nnecessaries, independent of the daily dole of charity; charity not sent\r\nto him either, but charity for which he had to trudge round to their\r\ndoors.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJWC210G9NDV0J57XDTZE","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM6NQ2G8SWKRH2BCFE1WY","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:29.367Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:42.752Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}