The Man in the Monument was quite as mysterious a being to Tom as the
Man in the Moon. It immediately occurred to him that the lonely creature
who held himself aloof from all mankind in that pillar like some old
hermit was the very man of whom to ask his way. Cold, he might be;
little sympathy he had, perhaps, with human passion--the column seemed
too tall for that; but if Truth didn't live in the base of the Monument,
notwithstanding Pope's couplet about the outside of it, where in London
(thought Tom) was she likely to be found!
Coming close below the pillar, it was a great encouragement to Tom to
find that the Man in the Monument had simple tastes; that stony
and artificial as his residence was, he still preserved some rustic
recollections; that he liked plants, hung up bird-cages, was not wholly
cut off from fresh groundsel, and kept young trees in tubs. The Man in
the Monument, himself, was sitting outside the door--his own door: the
Monument-door: what a grand idea!--and was actually yawning, as if there
were no Monument to stop his mouth, and give him a perpetual interest in
his own existence.
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