Before the eyes of Mr. Jerry Cruncher, sitting on his little chair in Fleet Street, with his ugly son beside him, there moved, every day, long lines of vehicles and people. Who could sit on anything in Fleet Street during the busy hours of the day and not lose their ability to think or hear clearly just from watching those two great lines of movement, one going east, and one going west!
With a piece of straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher watched the two rivers of opposite movement like some uneducated farmer watching a little river on his land, for fear that it would dry up. But for Jerry, there was no thought that the movement would ever dry up. And he would have felt bad if it did, because from those two rivers he made a little money each day. He would lead shy women (most of them fat and old) from Tellson's side of the rivers safely across to the opposite side. In the short time that he was with these women, he would always show so much interest in them and be so moved by knowing them that he would say he wanted to have a drink to their good health, and they would give him money to be used to do it.
It happened one day that there were so few people on the street and so few women running late, and his money was so low that he started to think that Mrs. Cruncher must be throwing herself down on her knees again. And just then he looked up to see a strange group of people coming down Fleet Street. It was some kind of a funeral, and it seemed that there was a crowd of people who were angry about it.
"Young Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his son, "it's a burying."
"Hooray, father!" cried young Jerry.
For his father there was a secret meaning behind this shout, and he did not like it. So he hit the young man on the ear.
"What do you mean? What are you hooraying at? What are you trying to say to your father, you waste of a boy! This one boy is getting to be too many for me!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking young Jerry over. "Him and his hoorays! Don't let me hear no more of you, or you'll feel some more of me. You hear?"
"I weren't doing no hurt," young Jerry argued, rubbing his cheek.
"Drop it then," said Mr. Cruncher. "I won't have none of your no hurts. Get a top of that there seat and look at the crowd."
His son obeyed him, and the crowd came closer. They were shouting and making other angry noises around two dirty old coaches, one carrying the body, and one carrying only one friend of the dead person, dressed as one does when going to a funeral. The man in the second coach did not seem to be happy with what was happening, as more and more people moved around the coach, putting him down, making faces, and shouting out: "Go on! Selling secrets! Yeah, treason!" There were many other words that were too rough to print here.
Funerals were always interesting to Mr. Cruncher. He would always take special interest when one passed Tellson's. So one could understand that this one, with a wild crowd around it was of special interest. He asked the first man to reach him:
"What is it, brother? What's it about?"
"I don't know," returned the other man, putting his hands to his mouth all the same, and shouting with a surprising heat and the greatest feeling, "Treason, yeah! How awful!"
At length, another man, with more information about the case pushed into him, and from this person, he learned that the funeral was for one Roger Cly.
"Was he guilty of treason?” asked Mr. Cruncher.
"Old Bailey, treason, yes," returned the man. "How awful! Away with him! Old Bailey, treason!"
"What do you know!" Jerry said in surprise. "I've seen him before. Dead, is he?"
"Dead as meat," returned the other, "and he can't be too dead for that too. Pull him out, there! Both of them! Pull them out!"
What he was asking for was better than any other plan that the crowd had (because they had none), and so the people crowded around the two vehicles until they could no longer move. They too started shouting, "Pull them out! Pull them out!"
When they opened the door of the second coach, the man in it jumped out and was in their hands for a very short time. He was so alert and made such good use of that time that he was soon running up a side street, after losing his coat, hat, hand scarf, and other things that show one has come to cry at a funeral.
The people happily destroyed these pieces of his clothes, while the shop owners quickly closed up their shops. In those days, a crowd like this would stop at nothing, and it was feared by all. They had already opened the coach with the body in it when one of the smarter people in the crowd came up with a different plan: They would make a party out of burying it! Again, because there were so few thinkers there, any plan was happily received. Eight people jumped into the coach, with a dozen more outside it. As many as were able climbed on top of the coach with the body in it. One of the first ones inside the empty coach was Jerry Cruncher, who was careful to hide his messy head of hair from Tellson's by pushing into the far side of the coach.
The men driving the coach, who were there to do the burying, disagreed with these changes in the plans, but the river, being dangerously near, and someone from the crowd saying that the cold water in it could be used to bring some better thinking on the part of the drivers, it was not long before they changed their mind. The new plan called for a man who cleans chimneys to drive the first coach, with the real driver beside him to show the way. A man who sells pies was the new driver of the second coach, again with the real driver beside him. Before the group had moved far down the street they came to a man with a bear that could dance and do tricks. He and the bear were added to the crowd, and the bear, a black one, added a special touch to make the movement even more interesting.
So, with much beer drinking, pipe smoking, song singing, and many jokes about how sad they were, the wild crowd moved on, adding ever more people as they went, and forcing shops to close their doors and windows as they went. They were going to a church called Saint Pancras in the Fields. After some time they reached their target. They all forced their way into the burying ground and buried the body in their own way, to finish off their party.
With the job finished, and the crowd looking for other entertainment, another smart member (or maybe the same one as before) believed it would be fun to take hold of people on the street and say that they too had been found guilty of treason, just for the fun of scaring them. In this way, they ran after and roughly handled dozens of innocent people who had never been near the Old Bailey. From this it was easy for the wild crowd to change their sport to one of breaking windows, and then to breaking into pubs. At last, a few hours later, after a few summer houses had been pulled down and some fences broken to make weapons for the worst members of the crowd, word moved through the crowd that the police were coming. On hearing this, the crowd melted away, piece by piece. It is unclear if the police were coming or not, but this is the pattern for most such crowds.
Mr. Cruncher did not join in the other sports. Instead, he stayed behind in the church yard, to talk to and encourage the men who had been driving the coach before the trouble started. The place seemed to make him relax. He was able to get a pipe at a pub near there, and he smoked it while looking in through the bars on the fence around it, seriously studying the place where Roger Cly had been buried.
"Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher to himself as he often did, "you seed that there Cly that day in court, and you seed with your own eyes that he was a young one, and well made too."
Having finished his pipe and thought a little longer, he turned back, wanting to be at his place in front of Tellson's before closing time. It is not clear if his thinking about right and wrong had made him sick, or if he was not sick at all, or if he just wanted to visit an important man, but on his way home he stopped in to see an important doctor who he often visited.
Young Jerry had shown great interest in filling in for his father; he reported that no jobs had come up during that time. The bank closed, the very old men who worked there came out, the time was marked, and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea.
"Now, I tell you where it is!" said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on coming in. "If, as a honest worker my work goes wrong tonight, I will know that you have been praying against me, and I'll work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it."
Mrs. Cruncher shook her head sadly.
"Why, you're at it before my face!" said Mr. Cruncher, with signs of angry worry.
"I'm saying nothing."
"Well, then, don't think nothing. You might as well drop as think. You may as well go against me one way as another. Stop them both."
"Yes, Jerry."
"Yes, Jerry," repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to eat. "Ah! It is Yes, Jerry. That's about it. You may say Yes, Jerry."
Mr. Cruncher had no clear meaning in what he was saying, but he used her own words, as people often do, to let her see that he did not think they were good enough.
"You and your Yes, Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his bread and butter, and acting like he was adding something very special to it by picking up a very little piece that fell in the plate. "Ah! I think so. I believe you."
"You were going out tonight?” asked his good wife, when he took another bite.
"Yes, I am."
"Can I go with you, father?” his son asked quickly.
"No, you may not. I'm a going, as your mother knows, fishing.
"There's a lot of rust on your fishing stick, is there not, father?”
"Never you mind."
"Will you be bringing fish home, father?"
"If I don't, you'll have little to help you tomorrow," returned the man, shaking his head. "Anyway, that's questions enough for you. I'm not going out until long after you go to bed."
For what was left of the night, he kept a very careful watch over Mrs. Cruncher, keeping her busy with his angry talk, to stop her from thinking any prayers that could be used to hurt his plans. He encouraged his son to keep her busy with talk too, and made her life hard by saying anything bad that he could think of about her, just so she would not have time to think or pray. The most religious person could not show more faith in the power of prayer than he did in the way he feared his wife praying. It was like a person who does not believe in ghosts being afraid of a ghost story.
"And mind you!" said Mr. Cruncher. "No games tomorrow! If I, as an honest worker, am able to bring home a piece or two of meat, I'll have none of your not touching it and eating only bread. If I, as an honest worker, am able to buy a little beer, I'll have none of you saying that you only want water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be an ugly friend to you if you don't. I'm your Rome, you know."
Then he returned to talking about his problems.
"With you flying in the face of your own food and drink! I don't know how hard you will make it for us to get food and drink here, by your dropping tricks and your cruel actions. Look at your boy: he is yours, isn't he? He's as thin as a stick. Do you call yourself a mother and not know that a mother's first job is to fill her boy out?"
This touched young Jerry's heart, who pushed his mother to do her first job, and whatever else she did or did not do, above all things to give special interest to that first job of a mother, so kindly and wisely pointed to by his other parent.
This is how the evening went with the Cruncher family, until young Jerry was told to go to bed, and his mother was given the same rule. They both obeyed. Mr. Cruncher got through the first part of the night smoking pipes, and did not start his trip until one in the morning. About that time, he got up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cabinet, and brought out a bag, a strong iron bar of a good size to carry, a rope and chain, and other things like that to be used to do his 'fishing'. Pulling these things around himself in a way that was easy to carry, he said one more angry word to Mrs. Cruncher, put out the light, and left.
Young Jerry, who had not taken his clothes off when he went to bed, left a short time after his father. Under cover of darkness, he moved out of the room, down the steps, and out into the streets. He had no worries about getting back into the house later, because many people lived in it, and the door was always open.
Pushed on by a deep interest in knowing the secrets of his father's honest work, young Jerry stayed as close to walls and door openings as his eyes were to each other. He stayed close enough to see his loved parent without being seen himself. His loved parent had not gone far before he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two walked on together.*
(*Izaak Walton wrote a book on fishing at that time.)
In less than half an hour they were on an open road, past the winking eyes of lanterns and the more than winking eyes of the watchmen. Out here, another "fisherman" joined the first two so quietly that young Jerry could have believed that the second man had changed to two by magic.
The three went on, and young Jerry went on, until the three stopped where the ground on one side of the road was much higher than the road itself. There was a low brick wall on the high ground, with a low iron fence on top of that. The three turned up a narrow road leading to the side, where the low wall grew to be eight or ten feet high. Hiding at the corner, young Jerry saw, by the light of the moon, the shape of his loved parent climbing over an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground inside the gate, and lay there for a while, maybe listening. Then they moved away on their hands and knees.
It was now young Jerry's turn to move up to the gate, which he did. He looked in through the bars to see the three fishermen moving on all fours through some long grass! The white stones marking where people were buried there -- for this was a big church burying ground -- looked like ghosts watching the men. And the church tower looked over it all like a giant ghost. The men had not moved far before they stopped and stood up. And then they started to fish.
They fished with a spade at first. A short while later, the loved parent pulled out another tool. Whatever tools they used, they worked hard with them, until the ringing of the church bell filled young Jerry with such fear that he turned and ran, with his hair sticking up as much as his father's.
The great interest he had held for so long about what his father did when he went out at night soon stopped him in his run, and led him back to the gate. When he looked in, he could see that they were still fishing, but that they now had a bite. There were sounds of movement down below, and they were bent over as if pulling at something very heavy down in the hole. Little by little the weight broke away from the dirt that was still holding it down, and came to where young Jerry could see it. He knew what it would be, but when he saw his loved parent about to force it open, he became so filled with fear about what he would see that he ran off again and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.
Even then he would not have stopped for anything less important than breathing, it being a race with a ghost that he was running, and a race he wanted badly to finish in one piece. He could picture in his mind the box with the body in it standing up on its narrow end and jumping along after him as he ran. Always he could see it moving close behind him, and at times going by beside him, maybe reaching out to take hold of his arm. It was not a runner to let get near him. It was a devil that could be in many places at the same time too, so that at the same time that he believed it was running behind him, he also stayed out of the dark side roads for fear it would be hiding in them and would drop quickly on him like a wild kite without a tail. It was hiding in the openings for doors at the side of the road too. And in any shadows on the road, where it would lie on its back trying to make him fall over it. All this time it was still running after him, and getting closer and closer, so that when the boy reached his own door he had reason for being half dead. Even then it would not leave him, but followed him up to his room, jumping from step to step. It moved into the bed beside him, and was lying heavily on his chest when he fell asleep.
Sometime between the first sign of light and the sun coming up, young Jerry was pulled from his troubled sleep by the sound of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong, or so that is what young Jerry was thinking from seeing his father holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears and hitting her head against the board at the head of their bed.
"I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did."
"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" his wife begged.
"You put yourself against me making anything from my business," said Jerry, "and when you do that, me and the men I work with lose out. You was to love and obey; why the Devil don't you?"
"I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman argued with tears.
"Is it being a good wife to fight against his business? Is it loving your husband to hate his business? Is it obeying your husband to not obey him on things to do with his business?"
"You hadn't taken to that awful business back then, Jerry."
"It's enough for you," answered back Mr. Cruncher, "to be the wife of an honest worker, and not fill your female mind with thoughts about when he started his business or when he didn't. A loving and obeying wife would let his business alone. Call yourself a religious woman do you? If you're a religious woman, then give me one who isn't religious. You have no more feeling for what a wife should do than the bottom of this Thames River has for a building. In both cases, such a thing has to be knocked into place."
The argument was all done in a quiet voice, and ended with the honest worker kicking off his clay covered boots, and lying down on the floor. After taking a secret look at him lying on his back with his rust covered hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay himself back down too, and fell asleep again.
There was no fish for breakfast and not much of anything else either. Mr. Cruncher was angry, and kept the cover of an iron pot beside him to throw if he needed to stop Mrs. Cruncher from praying over the food. He was clean and dressed in time to head off with his son for what most people believed was his "honest work".
Young Jerry, walking with the seat under his arm at his father's side along sunny crowded Fleet Street, was a very different Young Jerry from the boy who ran home through the darkness the night before, in fear of the awful ghost that was running after him. His mind was sharp with the new day, and his fears from the night before were gone, two things that made him much like others walking down Fleet Street in London on that beautiful morning.
"Father," said young Jerry as they walked along, being careful to keep distance between himself and his father, with the chair between them, "What is a Dig it Up Man?"
Mr. Cruncher came to a stop before he answered. "How should I know?"
"I thought you knowed everything, father," said his rough son.
"Hmm, well!" returned Mr. Cruncher, moving on again, and lifting his hat to let his rough hair fall out. "He's a worker."
"What's he make, father?” asked the sharp young Jerry.
"What he makes," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, "is things to be used by scientists."
"Persons' bodies, isn't it, father?” asked the bright boy.
"I believe it is something like that," said Mr. Cruncher.
"Oh father, I would so like to be a Dig it Up Man when I'm quite growed up!"
Mr. Cruncher relaxed. But he shook his head like someone preaching about right and wrong. "It will rest on what you do with your abilities. Learn to never say no more than what you can help to nobody. Do this and there is no telling now what you may come to be then.” As young Jerry raced ahead to put the chair in place for his father, Mr. Cruncher added to himself, "Jerry, you honest worker, there's hope that the boy may one day be a blessing to you, and make up for the troubles his mother has brought."