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You're built to win it. Welcome to snoozecast. The podcast is on to help you fall asleep. Find a set snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share it with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Garden Walls. Tonight we'll read the opening two, the lazy tour, Written in Collaboration by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Snuescast first read this story back in 2020. An instrumental event in Wilkie Collins' career was an introduction in 1851 when he was in his late 20s to Charles Dickens by a mutual friend. They became lifelong friends and collaborators. For example, first Collins acted with Dickens in a play together, among the audience were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Then, one of Collins' stories was published in Dickens magazine the next year. Later that year, Colin's went on tour with Dickens' company of amateur actors. The lazy tour reads as an autobiographical tour taken by the two of them in the north of Britain. What resulted is extremely whimsical, occasionally absurd, and it has to be said very much of its time. The book takes place in the year 1857 and provides insight into the friendship and adventures of the pair of Titans of Victorian literature. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now, take a few deep breaths. In the autumn month of September 1857, wherein these presents bear date, two idol apprentices exhausted by the long, hot summer, and the long, hot work had had brought with it, ran away from their employer. They were bound to a highly matorious lady, named literature, a fair credit and repute, though it must be acknowledged, not quite so highly esteemed in the city as she might be. This is the more remarkable. as there is nothing against the respectable lady in that quarter, but quite the contrary. Her family, having rendered eminent service to many famous citizens of London, it may be sufficient to name Sir William Wallworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard II, at the time of Wat Tyler's insurrection, and Sir Richard Wittington, which later distinguished man and magistrate was doubtless indebted to the lady's family for the gift of his celebrated cat. There is also a strong reason to suppose that they rang the high gate bells for him with their own hands. The misguided young men, who thus shirked their duty to the mistress from whom they had received many favors,

were interested by the low idea of making a perfectly idle trip in any direction. They had no intention of going anywhere in particular. They wanted to see nothing. They wanted to know nothing.

They wanted to see nothing. They wanted to know nothing. They wanted to learn nothing. They wanted to do nothing. They wanted only to be idle. They took to themselves the names of Mr. Thomas idle and Mr. Francis' goodchild, but there was not a moral pin to choose between them, and they were both Idle in the last degree. Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of character. child was laboriously idle and would take upon himself any amount of pains and labor to assure himself that he was idle. In short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless in industry. Thomas Eidl, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish, earning a Paulitan type, a passive idler, a born-in-bred idler, a consistent idler, who practiced what he would have preached if he had not been too idle to preach. The two idle apprentices found themselves within a few hours of their escape, walking down into the north of England, that is to say, Thomas was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway trains as they passed over a distant viaduct, which was his idea of walking down into the north, while Francis was walking a mildew south against time, which was his idea of walking down into the north. In the meantime, the day waned and the milestones remained unconquered. Tom said good child. The sun is getting low.

Up and let us go forward. Nay, quote, Tom's idle. I have not done with Annie Laurie yet. And he proceeded with that idle but popular ballot. To the effect that for the Bonnie Young person of that name he would lay him Dune indeed equivalent in prose to lay him down and die. What an idiot that fellow was cried good-child with the bitter emphasis of contempt. Which fellow Hello, asked Thomas Eidl? The fellow in your song. Lay him down and be. Finally he'd show off before the girl by doing that. A sniffler. Why couldn't he get up and punch somebody's head? Who's asked Thomas Eidl? Anybody's? Everybody's would be better than nobody's. If I fell into that state of mind about a girl, do you think I'd lay me doing indeed? No sir, proceeded good child, with the disparaging assumption of the Scottish accent. I'd get me up and peach into somebody, wouldn't you? I wouldn't have anything to do with her, yawned, Tom Masidl. Why would I take the trouble? It's no trouble, Tom, to fall in love, said good-child, shaking his head. It's trouble enough to fall out of it once you're in it, retorted Tom. So I keep out of it all together. It would be better for you if you did the same. Mr. Good-child, who is always in love with somebody, and not unfrequently with several objects at once, made no reply. He heaved a sigh of the kind which is termed by the lower orders of bellowessor, and then heaved Mr. Idol on his feet, who was not half so heavy as the sigh, urged him northward. These two had sent their personal baggage on by train, only retaining each a knapsack. I don't now plight himself to constantly regretting the train, to tracking it through the intricacies of Bradshaw's guide, and finding out where it is now, and where now, and where now, and to asking what was the use of walking when you could ride at such a piece as that. Was it to see the country? If that was the object, look at it out of the carriage windows. There was a great deal more of it to be seen there than here. Besides, who wanted to see the country? Nobody. And again, whoever did walk, nobody. Fellows set off to walk, but they never did it. They came back and said they did, but they didn't.

Then why should he walk? He wouldn't walk. He swore it by this milestone. It was the fifth from London. So far had they penetrated into the North, submitting to a powerful chain of argument, good child proposed a return to Metropolis,

and a falling back upon Eastern Square Terminus. Thomas ascended with alacrity, and so they walked down into the north by the next morning's express, and carried their napsacks in the luggage-van. It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must be. It bore through the harvest-country a smell like a large washing-day and a sharp issue of steam as from a huge brazen tea-earn. The greatest power in nature and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in the sight of people looking up from fields and roads, as smoothly and unreally as a light miniature plaything. Now, the engine shrieked in his sterics of such intensity that it seemed desirable that the men who had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her hands, and bring her to. Now. Burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn and undemonstrative energy, so confusing that the train seemed to be flying back into leaks of darkness. Here were station after station, swallowed up by the express without stopping. Here stations where it fired itself in like a volley of cannonballs, swooped away four country people, and three men of business, and fired itself off again, bang, bang, bang. At long intervals, were uncomfortable refreshment rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of beauty towards beast, the public, but to whom she never relented, as beauty did in the story towards the other beast. And where sensitive stomachs were fed, with a contemptuous sharpness occasioned in digestion. Here, again, were stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden razors set aloft on great posts shaving the air. In these fields, the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used to the thundering meteor and didn't mind. In those, they were all set scampering together, and a herd of pigs scoured after them. The pastoral country darkened, became coley, became smokey, became infernal, got better, got worse. Improved again, grew rugged, turned romantic, was a wood, a stream, a chain of hills, a gorge, a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place, a waste. Now, miserable dwellings, a canal, and sick towers of chimneys. Now, a trim garden, or the flowers were bright and fair. Now, a wilderness of hideous altars all ablaze. Now, the water Meadows with their fairy rings. Now, the Mangy patch of unlet-building ground outside the stagnant town, with the larger ring where the circus was last week. The temperature changed. The dialects changed. The people changed. God's got sharper. Manor got shorter. Eyes got shroeder and harder, yet also quickly. That the spruce guard in the London uniform and silver lace had not yet rumpled his shirt collar. Delivered half the dispatches in his shiny little pouch or read his newspaper. Carlyle Idol and good child had got to Carlyle. It looked delightfully idle. Something in the way of public amusement had happened last month, and something else was going to happen before Christmas. And in the meantime, there was a lecture on India for those who liked it, which idle in good child did not. Likewise, by those who liked them, there were impressions to be bought of all the vapid prints going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid books. For those who wanted to put anything in missionary boxes, here were the boxes. For those who wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers, artists' proof, 30 shillings, here was Mr. Podgers to any amount. Not less gracious and abundant. Mr. Podgers also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly to the now. Here were guidebooks to the neighboring antiquities and the Lake Country, in several dry and husky sorts. Here many physically and morally impossible heads of both sexes for young ladies to copy, in the exercise of the art of drawing here further, a large impression of Mr. Spurgeon, solid as to the flesh. The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up with their hands in their pockets across the pavements, four in six abreast and appeared much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idol to have nothing else to do. The working and growing young woman of Carlisle from the age of twelve upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening and rallied the said young men. Sometimes the young men rallied the young woman, as in the case of a group gathered round in a accordion player, from among whom a young man advanced behind a young woman for whom he appeared to have a tenderness and hinted to her that he was there and playful by giving her he wore clocks a kick. On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly and became to the two idle apprentices, disagreeably and reproachfully busy. There were its cattle market, its sheep market, and its pig market down by the river, with raw bone and shock-headed rob Royce hiding their lowland dresses beneath heavy plants prowling in and out among the animals and flavoring the air with fumes of whiskey. There was its corn market down the main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks. Who was its general market in the street too, with heather brooms on which the purple flower still flourished, and heather baskets, primitive, and fresh to behold. With woman trying on clogs and caps at open stalls and Bible stalls joining.

With Dr. Mantle's dispensary for the cure of all human maladies and no charge for advice, and with Dr. Mantle's laboratory of medical, chemical, and botanical science. Healing Institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board and one sunbind. With the renowned phrenologist from London begging to be favored at six pence each, with the company of clients of both sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations, enabling him or her to know themselves. Through all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting sergeant watchfully elbowed his way, a threat of war in the peaceful sky. Likewise, on the walls were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be in disposed to hear of a few fine-active young men, and that whereas the standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, growing lads of five feetven need not absolutely despair of being accepted. Sending the morning air more pleasantly than the buried majesty of Denmark did, Mr.'s idol and good child rode away from Carlisle at 8 o'clock on 4 noon, B for the village of Heskitt, new market, some fourteen miles distant. Good child, who had already begun to doubt whether he was idle, as his way always is when he has nothing to do, had read of a certain black Old Cumberland Hill or mountain called the Caric, or Caric fell, and had arrived at the conclusion that it would be the culminating triumph of isleness to ascend the same. Tom's idol dwelling on the pains inseparable from that achievement, had expressed the strongest doubts, and even of the sanity of the Enterprise, but good child that cared his point, and they rode away, uphill and downhill, and twisting to the right, and twisting to the left, and with old Skida who has vaunted himself a great deal more than his merits deserve, but that is rather the way of the Lake Country. Dodging the apprentices in a pleasant manner, good, weatherproof, warm pleasant houses, well white-limbed, scantily dotting the road. Clean children coming out to look, carrying other clean children as big as themselves. Harvest still lying out and much rained upon, here and there. Harvest still unreaped. Well cultivated gardens attached to the cottages, with plenty of produce forced out of their hard soil. Lonely nooks and wild, but people People can be born and married and buried in such nooks and can live and love and be

loved. But people can be born and married and buried in such nooks, and can live and love, and be loved there is elsewhere. Thank God, Mr. Good Child's remark. Buy and buy the village, black, coarse-stoned, rough windowed houses, Some with outer staircases, like Swiss houses, A stony gutter winding uphill and round the corner by way of street. All the children running out directly, Woman pausing and washing, To peep from doorways in very little windows. Such were the observations of Mr.'s idol and good child, as their conveyance stopped at the village shoemakers. Old Karak gloomed down upon it all in a very ill-tempered state, and rain was beginning. The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with Carrick. No visitors went up, Carrick. No visitors came there at all. The innkeeper had two men working in the fields, and one of them should be called in to go up the caric as guide. Mr.'s idle and good child, highly approving, entered the innkeeper's house to drink whiskey and eat oat cake. The innkeeper was not idle enough, was not idle at all, which was a great fault in him, but was a fine specimen of a North country man, or any kind of man. He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, and a men's hand, a cheery, out-speaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad look. He had a drawing-room, two upstairs, which was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells. This was Mr. France's good-child's opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Eidl did not concur. The ceiling of this drawing room was so crossed and re-crossed by beams of unequal lengths radiating from the center in a corner that it looked like a broken starfish. The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fire sign and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the house. What it most developed was an unexpected taste for little ornaments and knick-knacks of which it contained a most surprising number. In Gravings of Mr. Hunts Country Boy, before and after his pie, were on the wall, divided by a highly colored nautical piece, the subject of which had all her colors and more flying, was making great way through a sea of regular pattern, like a lady's collar. A benevolent, elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table, an appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife box, but when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David's harp packed for traveling. Everything became a knick-knack in this curious room, the copper tea kettle burnished up to the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the greatest possible distance from the fireplace, and said, by your leave, not a kettle, but a bejou. The stratfordshire-wear butter dish with the cover on got upon a little round occasional table in a window with a worktop and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed there as an aid to polite conversation. A graceful trifle in China to be chatted over by callers as they airily trifled away at the visiting moments of a butterfly existence in that rugged old village on the Cumberland Fells. The very footstool could not keep the floor, but got upon a sofa and there proclaimed itself in high relief of white and liver-colored wool, a favorite spaniel coiled up for it posed, though truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection, being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting down on the part of some corpulant member of the family. There were books too in this room. Books on the table, books on the chimney pace, books in an open press in the corner. was there was there, and small it was there, and steel and Addison were there in dispersed volumes. And there were tales of those who go down to the sea in ships for windy nights, and there was really a choice of good books for rainy days or fine. It was so very pleasant to see these things in such a lonesome bi place, so very agreeable to find these evidences of a taste. Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the two idle apprentices drifted out resiantly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain, got into the landlord's light dog cart and rattled off through the village for the foot of Carrick. The journey at the outset was not remarkable. The Cumberland Road went up and down like all other roads. The Cumberland Curves burst out from backs of cottages and barked like other curves. And the Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog cart amazingly as long as it was in sight, like the rest of their race. The approach to the foot of the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other mountains all over the world. The cultivation gradually ceased. The trees grew gradually rare. The road became gradually rougher. In the sides of the mountain looked gradually more and more lofty and more and more difficult to get up. The dog cart was left at a lonely farmhouse. The landlord borrowed a large umbrella and, assuming in an instant the character of the most cheerful and adventurous of guides, led the way to the Ascent. Mr. Goodschab looked eagerly at the top of the mountain and, feeling apparently that he was now going to be very lazy indeed, shown all over wonderfully to the eye. Under the influence of the contentment within and the moisture without, only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas Eidl did despondondency now hold her gloomy state. He kept it a secret, but he would have given a very handsome sum when the Ascent began to have been back again at the end. The sides of Carrick looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrick was hidden and missed. The rain was falling faster and faster. The knees of Mr. Idol, always weak on walking excursions, shivered and shook with fear and damp. The wet was already penetrating through the young man's outer coat to a brand new shooting jacket for which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town. He had no stimulating refreshment about him, but a small packet of clammy gingerbread nuts. He had nobody to give him an arm. Nobody to push him gently behind. Nobody to pull him tenderly in front. Nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent, the dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable folly of climbing,

undriven up any steep place in the world,

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