Fladdock, General. A corpulent American militia officer, starched and punctilious, to whom Martin Chuzzlewit is introduced at the Norrises in New York, as having come over from England in the same vessel with himself. The general does not recognize him ; and Martin is obliged to explain, that, for the sake of economy, he had been obliged to take passage in the steerage, - a confession which at once stamps him as a fellow of no respectability, who has gained an entrance into good society under false pretences, and whose acquaintance must forthwith be disavowed. xv, xvii. Gamp, Sairey. A professional nurse.

She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only showing the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond. In these dilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such occasions as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of veneration for the deceased, and invited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit of weeds, an appeal so frequently successful, that the very fetch and ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up, any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of the second-hand-clothes shops about Holborn. The face of Mrs. Gamp - the nose in particular - was somewhat red and swollen; and it was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits. Like most persons who have attained to great eminence in their profession, she took to hers very kindly; insomuch, that, setting aside her natural predilections as a woman, she went to a lying-in or a laying-out with equal zest and relish.

Mrs. Gamp is represented as constantly quoting or referring to a certain Mrs. Harris - -a purely imaginary person as an authority for her own fancies and fabrications. Thus, when Mr. Pecksniff says to her, that he supposes she has become indifferent to the distress of surviving friends around the bed of the dying and of the dead, and that "use is second nature,”

"You may well say second nater, sir," returned that lady. "One's first ways is to find sich things a trial to the feelings, and so is one's lasting custom. If it was n't for the nerve a little sip of liquor gives me (I never was able to do more than taste it), I never could go through with what I sometimes has to do. Mrs. Harris,' I says at the very last case as ever I acted in, which it was but a young person, 'Mrs. Harris,' I says, 'leave the bottle