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So I fled from Baltimore, pretty speeches, and starvation, to San Francisco, plain talk, and pure gold. And now see here, Sir! I carry these always about with me, lest the pretty pickings of this Tom Tiddler's ground should make my experience forget." He drew from his pocket an "illuminated" card, bearing a likeness of Queen Victoria, and a creased and soiled bit of yellow paper.
'An' what t' dickins had she to do wi' Philip? asked Kester, in intense surprise; and so absorbed in curiosity that he let the humbugs all fall out of the paper upon the floor, and the little Bella sat down, plump, in the midst of treasures as great as those fabled to exist on Tom Tiddler's ground.
"The Great Western!" What boundless ideas are suggested by this title, &c., &c. Well, never mind my reasons. I had made up my mind to go. That's enough. "Marlbrook s'en va t'en guerre," mais as MARLBROOK Junior I may say, "Je reviendrai." Politics to the winds! or, colloquially, Politics be blowed! I'm off to TOM TIDDLER'S ground. Nice fellow, TIDDLER. Knew him years ago.
The complexion of the buyer was ruddier than the cherry, for the tropic sun had beamed ardently on his peachy Scotch skin, proclaiming him a new-chum, a bright and shining new-chum. Because he was new he was alert to the value of money. Had he not come, as all new-chums do, to Tom Tiddler's ground to pick up gold and silver?
"Well, well!" said Mr. Traveller. "At any rate, let us see what a real live Hermit looks like." So, Mr. Traveller went on, and on, and on, until he came to Tom Tiddler's Ground. It was a nook in a rustic by-road, which the genius of Mopes had laid waste as completely, as if he had been born an Emperor and a Conqueror.
Dead are the fair fat women, with tender hearts, who waddled benignantly through life, ever ready to shed the sympathetic tear, best of wives, and cooks, and mothers; dead are the bald, ruddy old men, who ambled about in faded carpet slippers, and passed the snuff-box of peace: dead are the stout-hearted youths who sailed away to Tom Tiddler's ground; and dead are the buxom maidens they led under the wedding canopy when they returned.
The man who is ambitious and industrious turns his trick of writing into purely literary channels, and becomes a novelist. The man who is not ambitious and not industrious, and who does not relish the prospect of becoming a loafer in Strand wine-shops, writes advertisements. The gold-bearing area is always growing. It's a Tom Tiddler's ground.
It is true that a man I know, an enthusiastic amateur in astronomy, dubbed a lot of holes and corners in the moon after his private friends and acquaintances, myself amongst them: 'Snook's Crater, 'Smith's Bottom, 'Tiddler's Cove, and so on; but I regret to say the authorities declined to sanction his nomenclature."
Everybody was mad to go gold hunting; shepherds forsook their flocks; traders closed their stores; sailors ran away from their ships; servants threw up their situations; everybody was mad to visit this newly-discovered Tom Tiddler's ground, to pick up gold and silver.
It had not the power to stir the senses to a pitch of excitement like this veritable Tom Tiddler's ground, pitchforked into their very laps by one of Nature's freakish impulses. With this thought came something very like regret at the apparent richness of the find. Something must be done, and done without delay, to regulate the situation.
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