CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter I. The Birth of the Prince and the Pauper
Chapter II. Tom’s Early Life
Chapter III. Tom’s Meeting with the Prince
Chapter IV. The Prince’s Troubles Begin
Chapter V. Tom as a Patrician
Chapter VI. Tom Receives Instructions
Chapter VII. Tom’s First Royal Dinner
Chapter VIII. The Question of the Seal
Chapter IX. The River Pageant
Chapter X. The Prince in the Toils
Chapter XI. At Guildhall
Chapter XII. The Prince and His Deliverer
Chapter XIII. The Disappearance of the Prince
Chapter XIV. “Le Roi Est Mort—Vive Le Roi”
Chapter XV. Tom as King
Chapter XVI. The State Dinner
Chapter XVII. Foo-Foo the First
Chapter XVIII. The Prince with the Tramps
Chapter XIX. The Prince with the Peasants
Chapter XX. The Prince and the Hermit
Chapter XXI. Hendon to the Rescue
Chapter XXII. A Victim of Treachery
Chapter XXIII. The Prince a Prisoner
Chapter XXIV. The Escape
Chapter XXV. Hendon Hall
Chapter XXVI. Disowned
Chapter XXVII. In Prison
Chapter XXVIII. The Sacrifice
Chapter XXIX. To London
Chapter XXX. Tom’s Progress
Chapter XXXI. The Recognition Procession
Chapter XXXII. Coronation Day
Chapter XXXIII. Edward as King
Conclusion. Justice and Retribution
內容試閱：
London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great
town—for that day. It had a hundred thousand inhabitants—some think double as many.
The streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part
where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge. The houses were of
wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the third sticking
its elbows out beyond the second. The higher the houses grew, the broader they
grew. They were skeletons of strong crisscross beams, with solid material
between, coated with plaster. The beams were painted red or blue or black,
according to the owner’s taste, and this gave the houses a very picturesque
look. The windows were small, glazed with little diamond-shaped panes, and they
opened outward, on hinges, like doors.
The house which Tom’s father lived in was up a foul
little pocket called Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed,
and rickety, but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty’s tribe
occupied a room on the third floor. The mother and father has a sort of
bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters, Bet and
Nan, were not restricted—they had all the floor to themselves, and might sleep
where they chose. There were the remains of a blanket or two, and some bundles of
ancient and dirty straw, but these could not rightly be called beds, for they
were not organised; they were kicked into a general pile, mornings, and selections
made from the mass at night, for service.
Bet and Nan were fifteen years old—twins. They were
good-hearted girls, unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant. Their
mother was like them. But the father and the grandmother were a couple of
fiends. They got drunk whenever they could; then they fought each other or anybody
else who came in the way; they cursed and swore always, drunk or sober; John
Canty was a thief, and his mother a beggar. They made beggars of the children,
but failed to make thieves of them. Among, but not of, the dreadful rabble that
inhabited the house was a good old priest whom the king had turned out of house
and home with a pension of a few farthings, and he used to get the children
aside and teach them right ways secretly. Father Andrew also taught Tom a
little Latin, and how to read and write; and would have done the same with the
girls, but they were afraid of the jeers of their friends, who could not have
endured such a queer accomplishment in them.
All Offal Court was just such another hive as Canty’s
house. Drunkenness, riot, and brawling were the order, there, every night and nearly
all night long. Broken heads were as common as hunger in that place. Yet little
Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it, but did not know it. It was the
sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he supposed it was
the correct and comfortable thing. When he came home empty-handed at night, he
knew his father would curse him and thrash him first, and that when he was done
the awful grandmother would do it all over again and improve on it; and that
away in the night his starving mother would slip to him stealthily with any
miserable scrap or crust she had been able to save for him by going hungry
herself, notwithstanding she was often caught in that sort of treason and
soundly beaten for it by her husband.
No, Tom’s life went along well enough, especially in
summer. He only begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against
mendicancy were stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of
his time listening to good Father Andrew’s charming old tales and legends about
giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and gorgeous kings
and princes. His head grew to be full of these wonderful things, and many a
night as he lay in the dark on his scant and offensive straw, tired, hungry,
and smarting from a thrashing, he unleashed his imagination and soon forgot his
aches and pains in delicious picturings to himself of the charmed life of a
petted prince in a regal palace. One desire came in time to haunt him day and
night: it was to see a real prince, with his own eyes. He spoke of it once to
some of his Offal Court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so
unmercifully that he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that.
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