chair with a cushion, and sometimes wheezed so, for minutes
together, that he couldn't turn the key. When he was overpowered
by these fits, the debtor often turned it for him.
'You and me,' said the turnkey, one snowy winter's night when the
lodge, with a bright fire in it, was pretty full of company, 'is
the oldest inhabitants. I wasn't here myself above seven year
before you. I shan't last long. When I'm off the lock for good
and all, you'll be the Father of the Marshalsea.'

The turnkey went off the lock of this world next day. His words
were remembered and repeated; and tradition afterwards handed down
from generation to generation--a Marshalsea generation might be
calculated as about three months--that the shabby old debtor with
the soft manner and the white hair, was the Father of the
Marshalsea.

And he grew to be proud of the title. If any impostor had arisen
to claim it, he would have shed tears in resentment of the attempt
to deprive him of his rights. A disposition began to be perceived
in him to exaggerate the number of years he had been there; it was
generally understood that you must deduct a few from his account;
he was vain, the fleeting generations of debtors said.

All new-comers were presented to him. He was punctilious in the
exaction of this ceremony. The wits would perform the office of
introduction with overcharged pomp and politeness, but they could
not easily overstep his sense of its gravity. He received them in
his poor room (he disliked an introduction in the mere yard, as
informal--a thing that might happen to anybody), with a kind of
bowed-down beneficence. They were welcome to the Marshalsea, he