Headnote Vignette
John McLenan
Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book II, Chapter 21, "Echoing footsteps"
Harper's Weekly ((3 September 1859): 565; appeared in UK on Saturday, 27 August, in All the Year Round]
[See below for passage illustrated]
Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham; text by PVA and George P. Landow.
This picture of Miss Pross and little Lucie in the garden would seem to be McLenan's attempt to convey something like the following:
That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh, and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her.
Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together, weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's step was strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden! . . . Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushed murmur — like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore — as the little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the morning, or dressing a doll at her mother's footstool, chattered in the tongues of the Two Cities that were blended in her life.
References
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities: A story of the French Revolution. Project Gutenberg e-text by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. Release Date: September 25, 2004 [EBook #98].
Last modified 28 November 2007