 CHAPTER 7 OF OUR PARISH OUR NEXT DONGLE NEIGHBOR We are very fond of speculating as we walk through a street, on the character and pursuits of the people who inhabit it, and nothing so materially assists us in these speculations as the appearance of the house doors. The various expressions of the human countenance afford a beautiful and interesting study, but there is something in the physiognomy of street door knockers, almost as characteristic and nearly as infallible. Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we contemplate the features of his knocker with the greatest curiosity, for we well know that between the man and his knocker, there will inevitably be a greater or less degree of resemblance and sympathy. For instance, there is one description of knocker that used to be common enough, but which is fast passing away, a large round one, with the jolly face of a convivial lion smiling blandly at you, as you twist the sides of your hair into a curl, or pull up your shirt collar while you are waiting for the door to be opened. We never saw that knocker on the door of a churlish man, so far as our experience is concerned, it invariably bespoke hospitality and another bottle. No man ever saw this knocker on the door of a small attorney, or billbroker. They always patronize the other lion, a heavy ferocious looking fellow with a countenance expressive of savage stupidity, a sort of grand master among the knockers, and a great favorite with the selfish and brutal. Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker with a long, thin face, a pinched up nose, and a very sharp chin. He is most invoked with your government office people, in light drabs and starched cravats, little, spare, priggish men who are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions, and consider themselves of paramount importance. We were greatly troubled a few years ago by the innovation of a new kind of knocker without any face at all, composed of a wreath depending from a hand or small truncheon. A little trouble and attention, however, enabled us to overcome this difficulty and to reconcile the new system to our favorite theory. You will invariably find this knocker on the doors of cold and formal people, who always ask you why you don't come and never say do. Everybody knows the brass knocker is common to suburban villas and extensive boarding schools, and having noticed this genus, we have recapitulated all the most prominent and strongly defined species. Some phrenologists affirm that the agitation of a man's brain by different passions produces corresponding developments in the form of his skull. Do not let us be understood as pushing our theory to the full length of asserting that any alteration in a man's disposition would produce a visible effect on the feature of his knocker. Our position merely is that in such a case the magnetism which must exist between a man and his knocker would induce the man to remove and seek some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it that although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to launch it nevertheless as being quite as ingenious and infallible as many thousands of the learned speculations which are daily broached for public, good and private fortune-making. Entertaining these feelings on the subject of knockers, it will be readily imagined with what consternation we viewed the entire removal of the knocker from the door of the house, next door to the one we lived in some time ago, and the substitution of a bell. This was a calamity we had never anticipated. The bare idea of anybody being able to exist without a knocker appeared so wild and visionary that it had never for one instant entered our imagination. We sauntered moodily from the spot and bent our steps towards Eaton Square, then just building. What was our astonishment and indignation to find that bells were fast becoming the rule and knockers the exception? Our theory trembled beneath the shock. We hastened home and fencing we foresaw in the swift progress of events its entire abolition resolved from that day forward to vent our speculations on our next door neighbours in person. The house adjoining ours on the left hand was uninhabited, and we had, therefore, plenty of leisure to observe our next door neighbours on the other side. The house without the knocker was in the occupation of a city clerk, and there was a neatly written bill in the parlor window, intimating that lodgings for a single gentleman were to be let within. It was a neat, dull little house, on the shady side of the way, with new narrow floor cloth in the passage, and new narrow stair carpets up to the first floor. The paper was new, and the paint was new, and the furniture was new, and all three, paper, paint, and furniture bespoke the limited means of the tenant. There was a little red and black carpet in the drawing-room, with a border of flooring all the way round, a few stained chairs, and a Pembroke table. A pink shell was displayed on each of the little sideboards, which, with the addition of a tea tray and caddy, a few more shells on the mantelpiece, and three peacock's feathers tastefully arranged above them, completed the decorative furniture of the apartment. This was the room destined for the reception of the single gentleman during the day, and a little back room on the same floor was assigned as his sleeping apartment by night. The bill had not been long in the window when a stout, good-humoured-looking gentleman of about five and thirty, appeared as a candidate for the tendency. Terms were soon arranged, for the bill was taken down immediately after his first visit. In a day or two the single gentleman came in, and shortly afterwards his real character came out. First of all, he displayed a most extraordinary partiality for sitting up, till three or four o'clock in the morning, drinking whiskey and water and smoking cigars. Then he invited friends home, who used to come at ten o'clock, and begin to get happy about the small hours, when they evinced their perfect contentment by singing songs, with half a dozen verses of two lines each, and a chorus of ten, which chorus used to be shouted forth by the whole strength of the company, in the most enthusiastic and vociferous manner, to the great annoyance of the neighbours, and the special discomfort of another single gentleman overhead. Now this was bad enough, occurring as it did three times a week on the average, but this was not all. For when the company did go away, instead of walking quietly down the street as anybody else's company would have done, they amused themselves by making alarming and frightful noises, and counter-fitting the shrieks of females in distress. And one night a red-faced gentleman in a white hat knocked in the most urgent manner at the door of the powdered-headed old gentleman at number three. And when the powdered-headed old gentleman, who thought one of his married daughters must have been taken ill prematurely, had groped downstairs, and after a great steal of unbolting and key-turning opened the street door, the red-faced man in the white hat said he hoped he'd excuse him giving so much trouble, that he'd feel obliged if he'd favour him with a glass of cold spring water, and the loan of a shilling for a cab to take him home. On which the old gentleman slammed the door and went upstairs and threw the contents of his water-jug out of window, very straight, only it went over the wrong man, and the whole street was involved in confusion. A joke's a joke, and even practical jests are very capital in their way, if you can only get the other party to see the fun of them. But the population of our street were so dull of apprehension as to be quite lost to a sense of the drollery of this proceeding, and the consequence was that our next-door neighbour was obliged to tell the single gentleman that unless he gave up entertaining his friends at home, he really must be compelled to part with him. The single gentleman received the remonstrance with great good humour, and promised from that time forward to spend his evenings at a coffee-house, a determination which afforded general and unmixed satisfaction. The next night passed off very well, everybody being delighted with the change, but on the next the noises were renewed with greater spirit than ever. The single gentleman's friends being unable to see him in his own house every alternate night had come to the determination of seeing him home every night, and what with the discordant greetings of the friends at parting, and the noise created by the single gentleman in his passage upstairs, and his subsequent struggles to get his boots off the evil was not to be borne. So our next-door neighbour gave the single gentleman, who was a very good lodger in other respects, noticed to quit, and the single gentleman went away and entertained his friends in other lodgings. The next applicant for the vacant first-floor was of a very different character from the troublesome single gentleman who had just quitted it. He was a tall, thin, young gentleman with a profusion of brown hair, reddish whiskers, and very slightly developed moustaches. He wore a braided suit to, with frogs behind, light grey trousers, and wash-leather gloves, and had altogether rather a military appearance, so unlike the roistering single gentleman, such insinuating manners and such a delightful address, so seriously disposed, too. When he first came to look at the lodgings, he inquired most particularly whether he was sure to be able to get a seat in the parish church, and when he had agreed to take them he requested to have a list of the different local charities, as he intended to subscribe his might to the most deserving among them. Our next-door neighbour was now perfectly happy. He had got a lodger at last of just his own way of thinking, a serious, well-disposed man who abhorred gaiety and loved retirement. He took down the bill with a light heart, and pictured in imagination a long series of quiet Sundays, on which he and his lodger would exchange mutual civilities and Sunday papers. The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to arrive from the country next morning. He borrowed a clean shirt and a prayer-book from our next-door neighbour, and retired to rest at an early hour, requesting that he might be called punctually at ten o'clock next morning, not before, as he was much fatigued. He was called, and did not answer. He was called again, but there was no reply. Our next-door neighbour became alarmed, and burst the door open. The serious man had left the house mysteriously, carrying with him the shirt, the prayer-book, a teaspoon, and the bed-clothes. Whether this occurrence coupled with the irregularities of his former lodger gave our next-door neighbour an aversion to single gentlemen, we know not. We only know that the next bill which made its appearance in the parlor window intimated generally that there were furnished apartments to let on the first floor. The bill was soon removed. The new lodgers at first attracted our curiosity, and afterwards excited our interest. They were a young lad of 18 or 19, and his mother, a lady of about fifty, or it might be less. The mother wore a widow's weeds, and the boy was also clothed in deep mourning. They were poor, very poor, for their only means of support arose from the pittance the boy earned by copying writings and translating for book-sellers. They had removed from some country-place and settled in London, partly because it vauded better chances of employment for the boy, and partly, perhaps, with the natural desire to leave a place where they had been in better circumstances and where their poverty was known. They were proud under their reverses, and above revealing their wants and privations to strangers. How bitter those privations were, and how hard the boy worked to remove them no one ever knew but themselves, night after night, two, three, four hours after midnight, could be here the occasional raking up of the scanty fire, or the hollow and half-stifled cough which indicated his being still at work, and day after day could we see more plainly that nature had set that unearthly light in his plaintive face, which is the beacon of her worst disease. Actuated, we hoped, by a higher feeling than mere curiosity, we contrived to establish, first an acquaintance, and then a close intimacy with the poor strangers. Our worst fears were realized, the boy was sinking fast. Through a part of the winter and the whole of the following spring and summer, his labours were unceasingly prolonged, and the mother attempted to procure needlework, embroidery, anything, for bread. A few shillings now and then were all she could earn. The boy worked steadily on, dying by minutes, but never once giving utterance to complaint or murmur. One beautiful autumn evening, we went in to pay our customary visit to the invalid. His little remaining strength had been decreasing rapidly for two or three days preceding, and he was lying on the sofa at the open window, gazing at the setting sun. His mother had been reading the Bible to him, for she closed the book as we entered and advanced to meet us. I was telling William, she said, that we must manage to take him into the country somewhere, so that he may get quite well. He is not ill, you know, but he is not very strong, and has exerted himself too much lately. Poor thing! The tears that streamed through her fingers as she turned aside, as if to adjust her close widow's cap, too plainly showed how fruitless was the attempt to deceive herself. We sat down by the head of the sofa, but said nothing, for we saw the breath of life was passing gently but rapidly from the young form before us. At every respiration his heart beat more slowly. The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his mother's arm with the other, drew her hastily towards him, and fervently kissed her cheek. There was a pause. He sank back upon his pillow and looked long and earnestly in his mother's face. William, William! murmured the mother after a long interval. Don't look at me so. Speak to me, dear! The boy smiled languidly, but an instant afterwards his features resolved into the same cold, solemn gaze. William, dear William! Browse yourself! Don't look at me so, love! Pray don't! Oh, my God! What shall I do? cried the widow, clasping her hands in agony. My dear boy, he is dying! The boy raised himself by a violent effort and folded his hands together. Mother, dear, dear mother, bury me in the open fields. Anywhere but in these dreadful streets, I should like to be where you can see my grave, but not in these close, crowded streets. They have killed me. Kiss me again, mother. Put your arm round my neck. He fell back, and a strange expression stole upon his features, not of pain or suffering, but an indescribable fixing of every line and muscle. The boy was dead. End of Chapter 7 of Our Parish, From Sketches by Boz Chapter 1 of Scenes, From Sketches by Boz This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Peter Yersley Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens Illustrations by George Crookshank Chapter 1 of Scenes, The Streets, Morning The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer's morning, is most striking, even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive. The last drunken man, who shall find his way home before sunlight, has just staggered heavily along, roaring out the burden of the drinking-song of the previous night. The last houseless vagrant, whom penury and police have left in the streets, has coiled up his chilly limbs in some paved corner to dream of food and warmth. The drunken, the dissipated, and the wretched have disappeared. The more sober and orderly part of the population have not yet awakened to the labours of the day, and the stillness of death is over the streets. Its very hue seems to be imparted to them, cold and lifeless as they look, in the grey somber light of daybreak. The coach stands in the larger thoroughfares are deserted. The night-houses are closed, and the chosen promenades of profligate misery are empty. An occasional policeman may alone be seen at the street corners, listlessly gazing on the deserted prospect before him, and now and then a rakish-looking cat runs stealthily across the road, and descends his own area with as much caution and slowness, bounding first on the water-butt, then on the dust-hole, and then alighting on the flagstones, as if he were conscious that his character depended on his gallantry of the preceding night, escaping public observation. A partially opened bedroom window here and there bespeaks the heat of the weather, and the uneasy slumbers of its occupant, and the dim scanty flicker of the rush-light through the window-blind denotes the chamber of watching or sickness. With these few exceptions the streets present no signs of life nor the houses of habitation. An hour wears away. The spires of the churches and roofs of the principal buildings are faintly tinged with the light of the rising sun, and the streets, by almost imperceptible degrees, begin to resume their bustle and animation. Market carts roll slowly along. The sleepy wagoner impatiently urging on his tired horses, or vainly endeavouring to awaken the boy, who luxuriously stretched on the top of the fruit baskets, forgets in happy oblivion his long cherished curiosity to behold the wonders of London. Rough, sleepy-looking animals of strange appearance, something between ostlers and hackney-coachmen begin to take down the shutters of early public houses, and little deal-tables with the ordinary preparations for a street breakfast make their appearance at the customary stations. Numbers of men and women, principally the latter, carrying upon their heads heavy baskets of fruit, toiled down the parkside of Piccadilly on their way to Covent Garden, and following each other in rapid succession, form a long, straggling line from thence to the turn of the road at Knightsbridge. Here and there a bricklayer's labourer, with the day's dinner tied up in a handkerchief, walks briskly to his work, and occasionally a little knot of three or four schoolboys on a stolen bathing expedition rattle merrily over the pavement, their boisterous mirth contrasting forcibly with the demeanour of the little sweep, who having knocked and rung till his arm aches, and being interdicted by a merciful legislature from endangering his lungs by calling out, sits patiently down on the doorstep until the housemaid may happen to awake. Covent Garden Market, and the avenues leading to it, are thronged with carts of all sorts, sizes and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering wagon with its four stout horses, to the jingling costamunger's cart with its consumptive donkey. The pavement is already strewed with decayed cabbage leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable litter of a vegetable market. Men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, pie-men expaciating on the excellence of their pastry, and donkeys braying. These and a hundred other sounds form a compound discordant enough to a Londoner's ears, and remarkably disagreeable to those of country gentlemen who are sleeping at the hummums for the first time. Another hour passes away, and the day begins in good earnest. The servant of all work, who, under the plea of sleeping very soundly, has utterly disregarded Mrs's ringing for half an hour previously, is warned by Master, whom Mrs has sent up in his drapery to the landing-place for that purpose, that it's half past six, whereupon she awakes all of a sudden with well-famed astonishment, and goes downstairs very sulkily, wishing, while she strikes a light, that the principle of spontaneous combustion would extend itself to coals and kitchen range. When the fire is lighted, she opens the street door to take in the milk, when, by the most singular coincidence in the world, she discovers that the servant next door has just taken in her milk, too, and that Mr Todd's young man over the way is by an equally extraordinary chance taking down his master's shutters. The inevitable consequence is that she just steps, milk jug in hand, as far as next door, just to say good morning to Betsy Clark, and that Mr Todd's young man just steps over the way to say good morning to both of them, and as the aforesaid, Mr Todd's young man is almost as good-looking and fascinating as the baker himself. The conversation quickly becomes very interesting, and probably would become more so if Betsy Clark's is Mrs, who always will be following her about, didn't give an angry tap at her bedroom window, on which Mr Todd's young man tries to whistle coolly as he goes back to his shop much faster than he came from it, and the two girls run back to their respective places, and shut their street doors with surprising softness, each of them poking their heads out of the front parlor window a minute afterwards, however, ostensibly with the view of looking at the mail which just then passes by, but really for the purpose of catching another glimpse of Mr Todd's young man, who, being fond of males, but more of females, takes a short look at the males, and a long look at the girls, much to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. The mail itself goes on to the coach office in due course, and the passengers who are going out by the early coach stare with astonishment at the passengers who are coming in by the early coach, who look blue and dismal, and are evidently under the influence of that odd feeling produced by travelling, which makes the events of yesterday morning seem as if they had happened at least six months ago, and induces people to wonder with considerable gravity whether the friends and relations they took leave of a fortnight before have altered much since they have left them. The coach office is all alive, and the coaches which are just going out are surrounded by the usual crowd of Jews and nondescripts, who seem to consider heaven knows why, that it is quite impossible any man can mount a coach without requiring at least six penneths of oranges, a penknife, a pocketbook, a last year's annual, a pencil case, a piece of sponge, and a small series of caricatures. Half an hour more, and the sun darts his bright rays cheerfully down the still half-empty streets, and shines with sufficient force to rouse the dismal laziness of the apprentice, who pauses every other minute from his task of sweeping out the shop and watering the pavement in front of it, to tell another apprentice, similarly employed, how hot it will be today, or to stand with his right hand shading his eyes, and his left resting on the broom, gazing at the wonder, or the tally-ho, or the nimrod, or some other fast-coach, till it is out of sight, when he re-enters the shop, envying the passengers on the outside of the fast-coach, and thinking of the old red brick house down in the country, where he went to school. The miseries of the milk and water, and thick bread and scrapings, fading into nothing before the pleasant recollection of the green field the boys used to play in, and the green pond he was caned for presuming to fall into, and other schoolboy associations. Cabs with trunks and band boxes between the driver's legs, and outside the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets on their way to the coach offices or steam-packet-warfs, and the cab drivers and hackney-coachmen who are on the stand polish up the ornamental part of their dingy vehicles, the former wondering how people can prefer them wild-beast carowans of omnibuses to a regular cab with a fast trotter, and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into one of them crazy cabs, when they can have a spectable acne-coach with a pair of horses that won't run away with no one, a consolation unquestionably founded on fact, seeing that a hackney-coach horse never was known to run at all, except as the smart cab man in front of the rank observes, except one, and he run backwards. The shops are now completely opened, and apprentices and shopmen are busily engaged in cleaning and decking the windows for the day. The baker's shops in town are filled with servants and children waiting for the drawing of the first batch of rolls, an operation which was performed a full hour ago in the suburbs, for the early Clark population of Somers and Camden towns, Islington and Pentonville, are fast pouring into the city, or directing their steps towards Chance-Rey Lane and the Inns of Court. Middle-aged men, whose salaries have by no means increased in the same proportion as their families, plod steadily along, apparently with no object in view but the counting-house, knowing by sight almost everybody they meet or overtake, for they have seen them every morning, Sunday accepted, during the last twenty years, but speaking to no one. If they do happen to overtake a personal acquaintance, they just exchange a hurried salutation and keep walking on either by his side or in front of him, as his rate of walking may chance to be. As to stopping to shake hands or to take the friend's arm, they seem to think that, as it is not included in their salary, they have no right to do it. Small office lads in large hats, who are made men before their boys, hurry along in pairs with their first coat carefully brushed, and the white trousers of last Sunday, plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the day's dinner money in the purchase of the stale tarts, so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cook's doors, but a consciousness of their own importance, and the receipt of seven shillings a week, with the prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they accordingly put their hats a little more on one side, and look under the bonnets of all the milliners and stay-makers' apprentices they meet, poor girls, the hardest worked, the worst paid, and, too often, the worst used class of the community. Eleven o'clock, and a new set of people fill the streets. The goods in the shop windows are invitingly arranged. The shop men in their white neckerchiefs and spruce coats look as if they couldn't clean a window if their lives depended on it. The carts have disappeared from Covent Garden, the wagoners have returned, and the costamungas repaired to their ordinary beats in the suburbs. Clarks are at their offices, and gigs, cabs, omnibuses, and saddlehorses are conveying their masses to the same destination. The streets are thronged with a vast concourse of people, gay and shabby, rich and poor, idle and industrious, and we come to the heat, bustle, and activity of noon. The streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter's night, when there is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy, without cleansing it of any of its impurities, and when the heavy, lazy mist which hangs over every object makes the gas lamps look brighter, and the brilliantly lighted shops more splendid from the contrast they present to the darkness around. All the people who are at home on such a night as this seem disposed to make themselves as snug and comfortable as possible, and the passengers in the streets have excellent reason to envy the fortunate individuals who are seated by their own firesides. In the larger and better kind of streets, dining parlor curtains are closely drawn, kitchen fires blaze brightly up, and savoury steams of hot dinners salute the nostrils of the Hungry Wayfarer as he plods wearily by the area railings. In the suburbs the muffin boy rings his way down the little street, much more slowly than his wants to do, for Mrs Macklin of number four has no sooner opened her little street's door and screamed out, Muffins! with all her might, than Mrs Walker at number five puts her head out of the parlor window and screams, Muffins! too, and Mrs Walker has scarcely got the words out of her lips, then Mrs Peplow over the way lets loose Master Peplow, who darts down the street with a velocity which nothing but buttered muffins in perspective could possibly inspire, and drags the boy back by main force, whereupon Mrs Macklin and Mrs Walker, just to save the boy trouble, and to say a few neighbourly words to Mrs Peplow at the same time, run over the way and buy their muffins at Mrs Peplow's door, when it appears from the voluntary statement of Mrs Walker that her kittles just a bile in and the cups and sauces ready laid, and that as it was just such a wretched night out adores, she'd made up her mind to have a nice hot comfortable cup of tea, a determination at which by the most singular coincidence the other two ladies had simultaneously arrived. After a little conversation about the wretchedness of the weather and the merits of tea, with a digression relative to the viciousness of boys as a rule, and the amiability of Master Peplow as an exception, Mrs Walker sees her husband coming down the street, and as he must want his tea, poor man, after his dirty walk from the docks, she instantly runs across muffins in hand, and Mrs Macklin does the same, and after a few words to Mrs Walker, they all pop into their little houses, and slam their little street doors, which are not opened again for the remainder of the evening, except to the nine o'clock beer, who comes round with a lantern in front of his tray, and says as he lends Mrs Walker yesterday's tizer that he's blessed if he can hardly hold the pot, much less feel the paper for it's one of the bitterest nights he ever felt, except the night when the man was frozen to death in the brick field. After a little prophetic conversation with the policeman at the street corner, touching a probable change in the weather, and the setting in of a hard frost, the nine o'clock beer returns to his master's house, and employs himself for the remainder of the evening in assiduously stirring the taproom fire, and deferentially taking part in the conversation of the worthies assembled round it. The streets in the vicinity of the Marshgate and Victoria Theatre present an appearance of dirt and discomfort on such a night, which the groups who lounge about them in no degree tend to diminish. Even the little block-tin temple sacred to baked potatoes, surmounted by splendid design in variegated lamps, looks less gay than usual, and as to the kidney pie stand, its glory has quite departed. The candle in the transparent lamp, manufactured of oil paper, embellished with characters, has been blown out fifty times, so the kidney pie merchant, tired with running backwards and forwards to the next wine-volts to get a light, has given up the idea of illumination in despair, and the only signs of his whereabout are the bright sparks of which a long irregular trail is whirled down the street every time he opens his portable oven to hand a hot kidney pie to a customer. Flatfish, oyster, and fruit vendors linger hopelessly in the kennel, in vain endeavouring to attract customers, and the ragged boys who usually deport themselves about the streets stand crouched in little knots in some projecting doorway, or under the canvas blind of a cheese monger's, wear great, flaring gas lights, unshaded by any glass, display huge piles of bright red and pale yellow cheeses, mingled with little five-penny dabs of dingy bacon, various tubs of weakly dorset, and cloudy rolls of best fresh. Here their amusement sells with theatrical converse, arising out of their last half-price visit to the Victoria Gallery, admire the terrific combat, which is nightly encod, and expatiate on the inimitable manner in which Bill Thompson can come the double monkey, or go through the mysterious involutions of a sailor's hornpipe. It is nearly eleven o'clock, and the cold, thin rain which has been drizzling so long is beginning to pour down in good earnest. The baked potato man has departed. The kidney pie man has just walked away with his warehouse on his arm. The cheese monger has drawn in his blind, and the boys have dispersed. The constant clicking of patterns on the slippy and uneven pavement, and the rustling of umbrellas, as the wind blows against the shop windows, bear testimony to the inclemency of the night. And the policeman, with his oil-skin cape buttoned closely round him, seems as he holds his hat on his head, and turns round to avoid the gust of wind and rain, which drives against him at the street corner, to be very far from congratulating himself on the prospect before him. The little chandler's shop, with the cracked bell behind the door, whose melancholy tinkling has been regulated by the demand for quarters of sugar and half ounces of coffee, is shutting up. The crowds which have been passing to and fro during the whole day are rapidly dwindling away, and the noise of shouting and quarrelling which issues from the public houses is almost the only sound that breaks the melancholy stillness of the night. There was another, but it has ceased. That wretched woman, with the infant in her arms, round whose meagre form the remnant of her own scanty shawl is carefully wrapped, has been attempting to sing some popular ballad, in the hope of ringing a few pents from the compassionate passer-by. A brutal laugh at her weak voice is all she has gained. The tears fall thick and fast, down her own pale face. The child is cold and hungry, and its low, half-stifled wailing adds to the misery of its wretched mother, as she moans aloud, and sinks despairingly down on a cold, damp doorstep. Singing, how few of those who pass such a miserable creature as this, think of the anguish of heart. The sinking of soul and spirit, which the very effort of singing produces, bitter mockery, disease, neglect, and starvation, faintly articulating the words of the joyous ditty that has enlivened your hours of feasting and merriment. God knows how often. It is no subject of jeering. The weak, tremulous voice tells a fearful tale of want and famishing, and the feeble singer of this roaring song may turn away only to die of cold and hunger. One o'clock, parties returning from the different theatres, foot it through the muddy streets, cabs, hackney-coaches, carriages, and theatre-omnibuses roll swiftly by. Watermen with dim, dirty lanterns in their hands, and large brass plates upon their breasts, who have been shouting and rushing about for the last two hours, retire to their watering-houses, to solace themselves with the creature comforts of pipes and pearl. The half-price pit and box-frequenters of the theatres throng to the different houses of refreshment, and chops, kidneys, rabbits, oysters, stout, cigars, and goes innumerable are served up amidst a noise and confusion of smoking, running, knife-clattering, and waiter-chattering, perfectly indescribable. The more musical portions of the playgoing community betake themselves to some harmonic meeting. As a matter of curiosity, let us follow them, thither, for a few moments. In a lofty room of spacious dimensions are seated some eighty or a hundred guests, knocking little pewter-measures on the tables, and hammering away with the handles of their knives, as if they were so many trunk-makers. They are applauding a glee which has just been executed by the three professional gentlemen at the top of the centre table, one of whom is in the chair, the little pompous man with the bald head just emerging from the collar of his green coat. The others are seated on either side of him, the stout man with the small voice, and the thin-faced dark man in black. The little man in the chair is a most amusing personage, such condescending grandeur, and such a voice. BACE! As the young gentleman near us with the blue stock forcibly remarks to his companion, BACE! I believe you, he can go down lower than any man, so low sometimes that you can't hear him. And so he does. To hear him growling away gradually lower and lower down, till he can't get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world, and it is quite impossible to witness unmoved the impressive solemnity with which he pours forth his soul in My Arts in the Islands, or The Brave Old Hoke. The stout man is also addicted to sentimentality and warbles fly, fly from the world my Bessie with me, or some such song with lady-like sweetness, and in the most seductive tones imaginable. Pray give me your orders, gentlemen, pray give me your orders, says the pale-faced man with the red head, and demands for goes of gin and goes of brandy, and pints of stout, and cigars of peculiar mildness are vociferously made from all parts of the room. The professional gentlemen are in the very height of the glory, and bestow condescending nods, or even a word or two of recognition, on the better-known frequenters of the room, in the most bland and patronising manner possible. The little round-faced man with the small brown suit to white stockings and shoes is in the comic line. The mixed air of self-denial and mental consciousness of his own powers, with which he acknowledges the call of the chair, is particularly gratifying. Gentlemen, says the little pompous man, accompanying the word with a knock of the president's hammer on the table, gentlemen, allow me to claim your attention. Our friend Mr. Smuggins will oblige. Bravo! shout the company, and Smuggins, after a considerable quantity of coughing by way of symphony, and a most facetious sniff or two, which afford general delight, sings a comic song with a falderal-tolderal chorus at the end of every verse, much longer than the verse itself. It is received with unbounded applause, and after some aspiring genius has volunteered a recitation, and failed dismally therein, the little pompous man gives another knock and says, Gentlemen, we will attempt a glee, if you please. This announcement calls forth to mull to us applause, and the more energetic spirits express the unqualified approbation it avoids them by knocking one or two stout glasses off their legs, a humorous device, but one which frequently occasions some slight altercation, when the form of paying the damage is proposed to be gone through by the waiter. Scenes like these are continued until three or four o'clock in the morning, and even when they close, fresh ones open to the inquisitive novice, but as a description of all of them, however slight would require a volume, the contents of which, however instructive, would be by no means pleasing, we make our bow, and drop the curtain. The end of Chapter 2 of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. Chapter 3 of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Giesen. Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens. Illustrations by George Crookshank. Chapter 3 of Scenes. Shops and their tenants. What inexhaustible food for speculation to the streets of London afford. We never were able to agree with stern in pitting the man who could travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say that all was barren. We have not the slightest commiseration for the man who can take up his hat and stick, and walk from Covent Garden to St Paul's Churchyard, and back into the Bargain, without deriving some amusement. We had almost said instruction from his perambulation. And yet there are such beings. We meet them every day. Large black stocks and light wascots, jet canes, and discontented countenances are the characteristics of the race. Other people brush quickly by you, steadily plodding on to business, or cheerfully running after pleasure. These men linger listlessly past, looking as happy and animated as a policeman on duty. Nothing seems to make an impression on their minds. Nothing short of being knocked down by a porter, or run over by a cab, will disturb their equanimity. You will meet them on a fine day in any of the leading thoroughfares. Peep through the window of a West End cigar shop in the evening. If you can manage to get a glimpse between the blue curtains, which intercept the vulgar gaze, and you see them in their only enjoyment of existence. There they are, lounging about on round tubs and pipe boxes, in all the dignity of whiskers and guilt watch guards, whispering soft nothings to the young lady in amber with the large earrings. Who, as she sits behind the counter in a blaze of adoration and gaslight, is the admiration of all the female servants in the neighborhood, and the envy of every milliner's apprentice within two miles round. One of our principal amusements is to watch the gradual progress, the rise or fall, of particular shops. We have formed an intimate acquaintance with several in different parts of town, and are perfectly acquainted with their whole history. We could name offhand, 20 at least, which we are quite sure have paid no taxes for the last six years. They are never inhabited for more than two months consecutively, and we verily believe have witnessed every retail trade in the directory. There is one whose history is a sample of the rest, in whose fate we have taken is special interest, having had the pleasure of knowing it ever since it has been a shop. It is on the surrey side of the water, a little distance beyond the marsh gate. It was originally a substantial, good-looking, private house enough. The landlord got into difficulties, the house got into chanceery, the tenant went away, and the house went to ruin. At this period our acquaintance with it commenced. The paint was all worn off, the windows were broken, the area was green with neglect, and the overflowings of the water-pot. The but itself was without a lid, and the street-door was the very picture of misery. The chief pastime of the children in the vicinity had been to assembly, had been to assemble in a body on the steps, and to take it in turn to knock loud double knocks at the door, to the great satisfaction of the neighbours generally, and especially of the nervous old lady next door but one. Numerous complaints were made, and several small basins of water discharged over the offenders, but without effect. In this state of things the marine store dealer at the corner of the street, in the most obliging manner, took the knocker off and sold it, and the unfortunate house looked more wretched than ever. We deserted our friend for a few weeks. What was our surprise on our return to find no trace of its existence? In its place was a handsome shop, fast approaching to a state of completion, and on the shutters were large bills, informing the public that it would shortly be opened with an extensive stock of linen drapery and haberdashery. It opened in due course. There was the name of the proprietor and coe in gilt letters, almost too dazzling to look at. Such ribbons and shawls, and two such elegant young men behind the counter, each in a clean collar and white neckcloth, like the lover in a farce. As to the proprietor, he did nothing but walk up and down the shop, and hand seats to the ladies, and hold important conversations with the handsomest of the young men, who was shrewdly suspected by the neighbours to be the coe. We saw all this with sorrow. We felt a fatal presentiment that the shop was doomed. And so it was. Its decay was slow, but sure. Tickets gradually appeared in the windows. Then rolls of flannel with labels on them were stuck outside the door. Then a bill was pasted on the street door, intimating that the first floor was to let unfurnished. Then one of the young men disappeared altogether, and the other took to a black neckerchief, and the proprietor took to drinking. The shop became dirty, broken panes of glass remained unmended, and the stock disappeared piecemeal. At last the company's man came to cut off the water, and then the linen draper cut off himself, leaving the landlord his compliments and the key. The next occupant was a fancy stationer. The shop was more modestly painted than before, still it was neat. But somehow we always thought, as we passed, that it looked like a poor and struggling concern. We wished the man well, but we trembled for his success. He was a widower evidently, and had employment elsewhere, for he passed us every morning on his road to the city. The business was carried on by his eldest daughter. Poor girl, she needed no assistance. We occasionally caught a glimpse of two or three children in mourning like herself, as they sat in the little parlour behind the shop. And we never passed at night without seeing the eldest girl at work, either for them or in making some elegant little trifle for sale. We often thought, as her pale face looked more sad and pensive in the dim candle-light, that if those thoughtless females who interfere with the miserable market of poor creatures such as these knew but one half of the misery they suffer, and the bitter privations they endure in their honourable attempts to earn a scanty subsistence, they would perhaps resign even opportunities for the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of self-display, rather than drive them to a last dreadful resource, which it would shock the delicate feelings of these charitable ladies to hear named. But we are forgetting the shop. Well, we continued to watch it, and every day showed too clearly the increasing poverty of its inmates. The children were clean, it is true, but their clothes were threadbare and shabby. No tenant had been procured for the upper part of the house, from the letting of which a portion of the means of paying the rent was to have been derived, and a slow, wasting consumption prevented the eldest girl from continuing her exertions. Quarter-day arrived. The landlord had suffered from the extravagance of his last tenant, and he had no compassion for the struggles of his successor. He put in an execution. As we passed one morning the broker's men were removing the little furniture there was in the house, and a newly posted bill informed as it was again to let. What became of the last tenant we never could learn. We believe the girl is past all suffering, and beyond all sorrow. God help her. We hope she is. We were somewhat curious to ascertain what would be the next stage, for that the place had no chance of succeeding now was perfectly clear. The bill was soon taken down, and some alterations were being made in the interior of the shop. We were in a fever of expectation, we exhausted conjecture, we imagined all possible trades, none of which were perfectly reconcilable with our idea of the gradual decay of the tenement. It opened, and we wondered why we had not guessed at the real state of the case before. The shop, not a large one at the best of times, had been converted into two. One was a bonnet shape-makers, the other was opened by a tobacconist, who also dealt in walking-sticks and Sunday newspapers. The two were separated by a thin partition covered with tawdry striped paper. The tobacconist remained in possession longer than any tenant within our recollection. He was a red-faced, impudent, good-for-nothing dog, evidently accustomed to take things as they came, and to make the best of a bad job. He sold as many cigars as he could, and smoked the rest. He occupied the shop as long as he could make peace with the landlord, and when he could no longer live in quiet, he very coolly locked the door, and bolted himself. From this period the two little dens have undergone innumerable changes. The tobacconist was succeeded by a theatrical hairdresser, who ornamented the window with a great variety of characters, and terrific combats. The bonnet shape-maker gave place to a green grocer, and the histrionic barber was succeeded in his turn by a tailor. So numerous have been the changes that we have of late done little more than mark the peculiar but certain indications of a house being poorly inhabited. It has been progressing by almost imperceptible degrees. The occupiers of the shops have gradually given up room after room, until they have only reserved the little parlor for themselves. First there appeared a brass plate on the private door, with Lidey's school legibly engraved thereon. Shortly afterwards we observed a second brass plate, then a bell, and then another bell. When we paused in front of our old friend, and observed these signs of poverty, which are not to be mistaken, we thought as we turned away that the house had attained its lowest pitch of degradation. We were wrong. When we last passed it, a dairy was established in the area, and a party of melancholy-looking fowls were amusing themselves by running in at the front door, and out at the back one. End of Chapter 3 of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey. Chapter 4 of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Giesen. Sketches by Boz. by Charles Dickens. Illustrations by George Crookshank. Chapter 4 of Scenes. Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard is a small, a very small, tract of land, bounded on one side by the River Thames, on the other by the gardens of North Thumbeland House, a butting at one end on the bottom of North Thumbeland Street, at the other on the back of Whitehall Place. When this territory was first accidentally discovered by a country gentleman who lost his way in the Strand some years ago, the original settlers were found to be a tailor, a publican, two eating housekeepers, and a fruit pie maker. And it was also found to contain a race of strong and bulky men, who repaired to the wharfs in Scotland Yard regularly every morning, about five or six o'clock, to fill heavy wagons with coal, with which they proceeded to distant places up the country, and supplied the inhabitants with fuel. When they had emptied their wagons, they again returned for a fresh supply, and this trade was continued throughout the year. As the settlers derived their subsistence from ministering to the wants of these primitive traders, the articles exposed for sale, and the places where they were sold bore strong outward marks of being expressly adapted to their tastes and wishes. The tailor displayed in his window a lilypushean pair of leather gaiters, and a diminutive round frock, while each doorpost was appropriately garnished with a model of a coalsack. The two eating housekeepers exhibited joints of a magnitude, and puddings of a solidity, which coal heavers alone could appreciate. And the fruit pie maker, displayed on his well-scrubbed window-board large white compositions of flour and dripping, ornamented with pink stains, giving rich promise of the fruit within, which made their huge mouths water as they lingered past. But the choicest spot in all Scotland Yard was the old public house in the corner. Here in a dark, wainscoted room of ancient appearance, cheered by the glow of a mighty fire, and decorated with an enormous clock, whereof the face was white and the figures black, sat the lusty coal heavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay's best, and puffing forth volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and involved the room in a thick, dark cloud. From this apartment might their voices be heard on a winter's night, penetrating to the very bank of the river, as they shouted out some sturdy chorus, or roared forth the burden of a popular song, dwelling upon the last few words with a strength and length of emphasis, which made the very roof tremble above them. Here, too, would they tell old legends of what the Thames was in ancient times, when the patent-shot manufactory wasn't built, and Waterloo Bridge had never been thought of, and then they would shake their heads with portentous looks, to the deep edification of the rising generation of heavers, who crowded round them, and wondered where all this would end. Where at the tailor would take his pipe solemnly from his mouth, and say how that he hoped it might end well, but he very much doubted whether it would or not, and couldn't rightly tell what to make of it. A mysterious expression of opinion delivered with a semi-prophetic air, which never failed to elicit the fullest concurrence of the assembled company. And so they would go on drinking and wondering till ten o'clock came, and with it the tailor's wife to fetch him home, when the little party broke up, to meet again in the same room, and say and do precisely the same things on the following evening at the same hour. About this time the barges that came up the river began to bring vague rumours to Scotland Yard of somebody in the city having been heard to say that the Lord Mayor had threatened, in so many words, to pull down the old London Bridge, and build up a new one. At first these rumours were disregarded as idle tales, wholly destitute of foundation. Would nobody in Scotland Yard doubt it that if the Lord Mayor contemplated any such dark design he would just be clapped up in the tower for a week or two, and then killed off for high treason. By degrees, however, the reports grew stronger and more frequent, and at last a barge laden with numerous children's of the best wall's end brought up the positive intelligence that several of the arches of the old bridge were stopped, and that preparations were actually in progress for constructing the new one. What an excitement was visible in the old taproom on that memorable night. Each man looked into his neighbour's face, pale with alarm and astonishment, and read therein an echo of the sentiments which filled his own breast. The oldest heaver present proved to demonstration that the moment the piers were removed, all the water in the Thames would run clean off, and leave a dry gully in its place. What was to become of the coal barges, of the trade of Scotland Yard, of the very existence of its population? The tailor shook his head more sagely than usual, and grimly pointing to a knife on the table, bid them wait and see what happened. He said nothing, not he. But if the Lord Mayor didn't fall a victim to popular indignation, why, he would be rather astonished. That was all. They did wait, barge after barge arrived, and still no tidings of the assassination of the Lord Mayor. The first stone was laid. It was done by a duke, the king's brother. Years passed away, and the bridge was opened by the king himself. In the course of time the piers were removed, and when the people in Scotland Yard got up next morning in the confident expectation of being able to step over to Peddler's Acre without wetting the soles of their shoes, they found to their unspeakable astonishment that the water was just where it used to be. A result so different from that which they had anticipated from this first improvement produced its full effect upon the inhabitants of Scotland Yard. One of the eating housekeepers began to court public opinion, and to look for customers among a new class of people. He covered his little dining tables with white cloths, and got a painter's apprentice to inscribe something about hot joints from twelve to two in one of the little panes of his shop window. Improvement began to march with rapid strides to the very threshold of Scotland Yard. A new market sprung up at Hungerford, and the police commissioners established their office in Whitehall Place. The traffic in Scotland Yard increased. Fresh members were added to the House of Commons. The Metropolitan representatives found it a near cut, and many other foot passengers followed their example. We marked the advance of civilisation, and beheld it with a sigh. The eating housekeeper, who manfully resisted the innovation of tablecloths, was losing ground every day as his opponent gained it, and a deadly feud sprung up between them. The gentile one no longer took his evening's pint in Scotland Yard, but drank gin and water at a parlour in Parliament Street. The fruit pie maker still continued to visit the old room, but he took to smoking cigars, and began to call himself a pastry cook, and to read the papers. The old heavers still assembled round the ancient fireplace, but their talk was mournful, and the loud song and the joyous shout were heard no more. And what is Scotland Yard now? How have its old customs changed, and how has the ancient simplicity of its inhabitants faded away? The old tottering public house is converted into a spacious and lofty wine vaults. Gold leaf has been used in the construction of the letters which emblazern its exterior, and the poet's art has been called into requisition to intimate that if you drink a certain description of ale, you must hold fast by the rail. The tailor exhibits in his window the pattern of a foreign-looking brown siartou, with silk buttons, a fur collar, and fur cuffs. He wears a stripe down the outside of each leg of his trousers, and we have detected his assistants, for he has assistants now, in the act of sitting on the shop-board in the same uniform. At the other end of the little row of houses, a bootmaker has established himself in a brick box, with the additional innovation of a first floor, and here he exposes for sale boots, real Wellington boots, an article which a few years ago none of the original inhabitants had ever seen or heard of. It was but the other day that a dressmaker opened another little box in the middle of the row, and when we thought that the spirit of change could produce no alteration beyond that, a jeweller appeared, and not content with exposing gilt rings and copper bracelets out of number, put up an announcement which still sticks in his window, that Lady's ears may be pierced within. The dressmaker employs a young lady who wears pockets in her apron, and the tailor informs the public that gentlemen may have their own materials made up. Amidst all this change and restlessness and innovation, there remains but one old man who seems to mourn the downfall of this ancient place. He holds no converse with humankind, but seated on a wooden bench at the angle of the wall, which fronts the crossing from Whitehall Place, watches in silence the gambles of his sleek and well-fed dogs. He is the presiding genius of Scotland Yard. Years and years have rolled over his head, but in fine weather or in foul, hot or cold, wet or dry, hail, rain or snow, he is still in his accustomed spot. Misery and want are depicted in his countenance, his form is bent by age, his head is gray with length of trial, but there he sits from day to day, brooding over the past, and thither he will continue to drag his feeble limbs, until his eyes have closed upon Scotland Yard, and upon the world together. A few years hence, and the antiquity of another generation looking into some mouldy record of the strife and passions that agitated the world in these times, may glance his eye over the pages we have just filled, and not all his knowledge of the history of the past, not all his black letter lore or his skill in book collecting, not all the dry studies of a long life, or the dusty volumes that have cost him a fortune, may help him to the whereabouts, either of Scotland Yard, or any one of the landmarks we have mentioned in describing it. End of Chapter Four of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere Surrey. Chapter Five of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please contact LibriVox.org. Recording by Peter Yersley. Sketches by Boz. by Charles Dickens. Illustrations by George Crookshank. Chapter Five of Scenes. Seven Dials. We have always been of opinion that if Tom King and the Frenchman had not immortalised Seven Dials, Seven Dials would have immortalised itself. Seven Dials, the region of song and poetry, first diffusions and last dying speeches, hallowed by the names of Katnach and of Pitts, names that will entwine themselves with costamongers and barrel-organs, when penny-magazines shall have superseded penny-yards of song and capital punishment be unknown. Look at the construction of the place. The Gordian knot was all very well in its way. So was the maze of Hampton Court. So is the maze at the Bueller Spa. So were the ties of stiff white neck-cloths, when the difficulty of getting one on was only to be equaled by the apparent impossibility of ever getting it off again. But what involutions can compare with those of Seven Dials? Where is there such another maze of streets, courts, lanes and alleys? Where such a pure mixture of Englishman and Irishman, as in this complicated part of London? We boldly aver that we doubt the veracity of the legend to which we have adverted. We can suppose a man rash enough to inquire, at random, at a house with lodgers, too, for a Mr. Thompson, with all but the certainty before his eyes of finding at least two or three Thompson's in any house of moderate dimensions, but a Frenchman, a Frenchman in Seven Dials? He was an Irishman. Tom King's education had been neglected in his infancy, and as he couldn't understand half the man said, he took it for granted, he was talking French. The stranger, who finds himself in the Dials for the first time, I understand spells only like at the entrance of seven obscure passages, uncertain which to take, will see enough around him to keep his curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable time. From the irregular square into which he has plunged, the streets and courts dart in all directions until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour which hangs over the house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective uncertain and confined, and lounging at every corner, as if they came there to take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found its way so far, but is too much exhausted already to be enabled to force itself into the narrow alleys around, are groups of people whose appearance and dwellings would fill any mind but a regular Londoners with astonishment. On one side a little crowd has collected round a couple of ladies who, having imbibed the contents of various three-outs of gin and bitters in the course of the morning, have at length differed on some point of domestic arrangement, and are on the eve of settling the quarrel satisfactorily by an appeal to blows, greatly to the interest of other ladies who live in the same house and tenements adjoining, and who are all partisans on one side or other? Why don't you pitch into her, Sarah? exclaims one half-dressed matron by way of encouragement. Why don't you, if my husband had treated her with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I'd tear her precious eyes out, a wixen! What's the matter, ma'am? inquires another old lady who has just bustled up to the spot. Matter? replies the first speaker, talking at the obnoxious combatant. Matter? Here's poor dear Mrs. Sullywin, as has five blessed children of her own. Can't go out a-charring for one hour to noon, but what hussies must be a-coming, and chastin' away her own husband, as she's been married to twelve-year come next Easter Monday, for I see the certificate, then I've as a drink in a cup or two with her, only the worry-last blessed vensity, as ever was sent. I happen to say promiscuously, Mrs. Sullywin, says I. What do you mean by hussies? interrupts a champion of the other party, who has evinced a strong inclination throughout to get up a branch fight on her own account. Rawr! ejaculates a pot-boy in parenthesis. Put the car-bush on a merry. What do you mean by hussies? reiterates the champion. Never mind, replies the opposition expressively. Never mind, you go home, and when you're quite sober, mend your stockings. This somewhat personal illusion not only to the ladies' habits of intemperance, but also to the state of her wardrobe rouses her utmost ire, and she accordingly complies with the urgent request of the bystanders to pitch in with considerable alacrity. The scuffle became general and terminates in minor playbill phraseology with a rifle of the policeman, interior of the station house, and impressive denouement. In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin shops and squabbling in the centre of the road, every post in the open space has its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless perseverance. It is odd enough that one class of men in London appear to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts. We never saw a regular bricklayer's labourer take any other recreation, fighting accepted. Pass through St. Giles's in the evening of a weekday. There they are in their festy and dresses, spotted with brick dust and whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk through seven dials on Sunday morning. There they are again, drab or light corduroy trousers, butcher boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts. The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes to lean against a post all day. The peculiar character of these streets and the close resemblance each one bears to its neighbour by no means tends to decrease the bewilderment in which the unexperienced wayfarer through the dials finds himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty, straggling houses with now and then unexpected court, composed of buildings as ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that wallow in the kennels. Here and there a little dark chandler's shop with a cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce the entrance of a customer, or betray the presence of some young gentleman in whom a passion for shop tills has developed itself at an early age, others as if for support against some handsome lofty building which usurps the place of a low, dingy public house. Long rows of broken and patched windows expose plants that may have flourished when the dials were built, in vessels as dirty as the dials themselves, and shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen stuff, vye and cleanliness with the bird fanciers and rabbit dealers, one might fancy so many arcs but for the irresistible conviction that no bird in its proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever come back again. Brokers' shops, which would seem to have been established by humane individuals as refuges for destitute bugs, interspersed with announcements of day schools, penny theatres, petition writers, mangles, and music for balls or routes, complete the still life of the subject, and dirty men, filthy women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battle-doors, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomical fouls are its cheerful accompaniments. If the external appearance of the houses or a glance at their inhabitants present but few attractions, a closer acquaintance with either is little calculated to alter one's first impression. Every room has its separate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious dispensation which causes a country curate to increase and multiply most marvelously, generally the head of a numerous family. The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked gemmy line, or the firewood and hearthstone line, or any other line which requires a floating capital of 18 pence or thereabouts, and he and his family live in the shop and the small backpala behind it. Then there is an Irish labourer and his family in the back kitchen, and a jobbing man, carpet-beater and so forth, with his family in the front one. In the front one pair there is another man with another wife and family, and in the back one pair there is a young woman as takes in timbre work and stresses quite genteel, who talks a good deal about my friend, and can't a bear of anything low. The second floor front and the rest of the lodges are just a second edition of The People Below, except a shabby genteel man in the back attic, who has his half-point of coffee every morning from the coffee shop next door but one, which boasts a little front den called a coffee-room, with a fireplace, over which is an inscription politely requesting that, to prevent mistakes, customers will please to pay on delivery. The shabby genteel man is an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything beyond an occasional pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny-loaves, and apeths of ink, his fellow lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author, and rumours are current in the dials that he writes poems for Mr. Warren. Now, anybody who passed through the dials on a hot summer's evening, and saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would be apt to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more primitive set of people than the native dialers could not be imagined. Alas! the man in the shop ill-treats his family. The carpet-beater extends his professional pursuits to his wife. The one-pair front has an undying feud with the two-pair front, in consequence of the two-pair front persisting in dancing over his, the one-pair front's, head, when he and his family have retired for the night. The two-pair back will interfere with the front kitchen's children. The Irishman comes home drunk every other night and attacks everybody, and the one-pair back screams at everything. Animosities spring up between floor and floor. The very seller asserts his equality. Mrs. A smacks Mrs. B's child for making faces. Mrs. B, forthwith, throws cold water over Mrs. A's child for calling names. The husbands are embroiled, the quarrel becomes general, an assault is the consequence, and a police officer the result. End of Chapter 5 of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. Chapter No. 6 of Scenes from Sketches by Boz. This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Sketches by Boz. By Charles Dickens. Illustrations by George Crookshank. Chapter 6 of Scenes. Meditations in Monmouth Street. We have always entertained a particular attachment towards Monmouth Street as the only true and real imporium for second-hand wearing apparel. Monmouth Street is venerable from its antiquity and respectable from its usefulness. Hollywood Street, we despise. The red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly haul you into their squalid houses and thrust you into a suit of clothes, whether you will or not, we detest. The inhabitants of Monmouth Street are a distinct class, a peaceable and retiring race who emure themselves for the most part in deep cellars or small back parlours, and who seldom come forth into the world except in the dusk and coolness of the evening, when they may be seen seated in chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes or watching the gambles of their engaging children as they revel in the gutter, a happy troop of infantile scavengers. Their countenances bear a thoughtful and a dirty cast, certain indications of their love of traffic, and their habitations are distinguished by that disregard of outward appearance and neglect of personal comfort, so common among people who are constantly immersed in profound speculations and deeply engaged in sedentary pursuits. We have hinted at the antiquity of our favourite spot. A Monmouth Street laced coat was a byword a century ago, and we still find Monmouth Street the same. Pilot great coats with wooden buttons have usurped the place of the ponderous laced coats with full skirts. Embroidered waistcoats with large flaps have yielded to double-breasted checks with roll collars and three-cornered hats of quaint appearance have given place to the low crowns and broad brims of the Coachman School, but it is the times that have changed, not Monmouth Street. Through every alteration and every change Monmouth Street has still remained the burial place of the fashions, and such to judge from all present appearances it will remain until there are no more fashions to bury. We love to walk among these extensive groves of the illustrious dead and to indulge in the speculations to which they give rise, now fitting a deceased coat, then a dead pair of trousers, and anon the mortal remains of a gaudy waistcoat upon some being of our own cuddling up, and endeavouring from the shape and fashion of the garment itself to bring its former owner before our mind's eye. We have gone on speculating in this way until whole rows of coats have started and buttoned up of their own accord round the wastes of imaginary wearers. Lines of trousers have jumped down to meet them, waistcoats have almost burst with anxiety to put themselves on, and half an acre of shoes have suddenly found feet to fit them, and gone stumping down the street with a noise which has fairly awakened us from our pleasant reverie, and driven us slowly away with a bewildered stare, an object of astonishment to the good people of Monmouth Street and of no slight suspicion to the policeman at the opposite street corner. We were occupied in this manner the other day, endeavouring to fit a pair of lace-up half-boots on an ideal personage for whom, to say the truth, they were full a couple of sizes too small, when our eyes happened to a light on a few suits of clothes ranged outside a shop window, which it immediately struck us must at different periods have all belonged to and been worn by the same individual, and had now, by one of those strange conjunctions of circumstances which will occur sometimes, come to be exposed together for sale in the same shop. The idea seemed a fantastic one, and we looked at the clothes again with a firm determination not to be easily led away. No, we were right, the more we looked, we were convinced of the accuracy of our previous impression. There was the man's whole life, written as legibly on those clothes as if we had his autobiography engrossed on a parchment before us. The first was a patched and much-soiled skeleton suit, one of those straight blue cloth cases in which small boys used to be confined before belts and tunics had come in and old notions had gone out, an ingenious contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy's figure by fastening him into a very tight jacket with an ornamental row of buttons over each shoulder and then buttoning his trousers over it, so as to give his legs the appearance of being hooked on just under the armpits. This was the boy's dress. It had belonged to a town boy, we could see. There was a shortness about the legs and arms of the suit and a bagging at the knees peculiar to the rising youth of London streets. A small day-school he had been at, evidently. If it had been a regular boy's school, they wouldn't have let him play on the floor so much and rub his knees so white. He had an indulgent mother, too, and plenty of hapens, as the numerous smears of some sticky substance about the pockets, and just below the chin, which even the salesman's skill could not succeed in disguising sufficiently betokened. They were decent people, but not overburdened with riches. Or he would not have so far outgrown the suit when he passed into those corduroy's with the round jacket, in which he went to a boy's school, however, and learnt to write, and in ink of pretty tolerable blackness, too, if the place where he used to wipe his pen might be taken as evidence. A black suit and the jacket changed into a diminutive coat. His father had died, and the mother had got the boy a message-lads place in some office. A long-worn suit, that one, rusty and thread-bear before it was laid aside, but clean and free from soil to the last. Poor woman! We could imagine her assumed cheerfulness over the scanty meal and the refusal of her own small portion that her hungry boy might have enough. Her constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his growth, mingled sometimes with the thought almost too acute to bear that as he grew to be a man his old affection might cool, old kindnesses fade from his mind, and old promises be forgotten, the sharp pain that even then a careless word or a cold look would give her, all crowded on our thoughts as vividly as if the very scene were passing before us. These things happen every hour, and we all know it, and yet we felt as much sorrow when we saw, or fancied we saw. It makes no difference which. The change that began to take place now, as if we had just conceived the bear possibility of such a thing for the first time. The next suit, smart but slovenly, meant to be gay, and yet not half so decent as the thread-bear apparel, the idol lounge, and the black-eyed companions told us we thought that the widow's comfort had rapidly faded away. We could imagine that coat, imagine we could see it, we had seen it a hundred times, sauntering in company with three or four other coats of the same cut about some place of profligate resort at night. We dressed from the same-shot window in an instant half a dozen boys, off from fifteen to twenty, and putting cigars into their mouths and their hands into their pockets, watched them as they sauntered down the street and lingered at the corner with the obscene jest and the oft-repeated oath. We never lost sight of them till they had cocked their hats a little more on one side and swaggered into the public house, and then we entered the desolate home where the mother sat late in the night alone. We watched her as she paced the room in feverish anxiety, and every now and then opened the door, looked wistfully into the dark and empty street, and again returned to be again and again disappointed. We beheld the look of patience with which she bore the brutish threat, nay even the drunken blow, and we heard the agony of tears that gushed from her very heart as she sank upon her knees in her solitary and wretched apartment. A long period had elapsed and a greater change had taken place by the time of casting off the suit that hung above. It was that of a stout, broad-shouldered, sturdy-chested man, and we knew at once, as anybody would, who glanced at that broad-skirted green coat with the large metal buttons, that its wearer seldom walked forth without a dog at his heels and some idle ruffian, the very counterpart of himself, at his side. The vices of the boy had grown with the man, and we fancied his home, then, if such a place deserved the name. We saw the bare and miserable room, destitute of furniture, crowded with his wife and children, pale, hungry, and emaciated, the man cursing their lamentations, staggering to the tat-room from whence he had just returned, followed by his wife and a sickly infant, clamouring for bread, and heard the street wrangle and noisy recrimination that he's striking her occasioned. When then imagination led us to some metropolitan workhouse situated in the midst of crowded streets and alleys, filled with noxious vapours and ringing with boisterous cries, where an old and feeble woman, imploring pardon for her son, lay dying in a close, dark room, with no child to class per hand, and no pure air from heaven to fan her brow. A stranger closed the eyes that settled into a cold, unmeaning glare, and strange ears received the words that murmured from the white and half-closed lips. A coarse round frock with a worn cotton neckerchief and other articles of clothing of the Communist description completed the history a prison and the sentence banishment or the gallows. What would the man have given then to be once again the contented humble drudge of his boyish years to have been restored to life but for a week, a day, an hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable him to say one word of passionate regret too and hear one sound of heartfelt forgiveness from the cold and ghastly form that lay rotting in the paupers' grave. The children wild in the streets, the mother a destitute widow, both deeply tainted with the deep disgrace of the husband and father's name and impelled by sheer necessity down the precipice that had led him to a lingering death possibly of many years duration thousands of miles away. We had no clue to the end of the tale, but it was easy to guess its termination. We took a step or two further on and by way of restoring the naturally cheerful tone of our thoughts began fitting visionary feet and legs into a cellar board full of boots and shoes with a speed and accuracy that would have astonished the most expert artist in leather living. There was one pair of boots in particular, a jolly, good-tempered, hearty-looking pair of tops that excited our warmest regard, and we had got a fine red-faced jovial fellow of a market gardener into them before we had made their acquaintance half a minute. They were just the very thing for him. There was his huge fat legs bulging over the tops and fitting them too tight to admit of his tucking in the loops he had pulled them on by and his knee cords with an interval of stocking and his blue apron tucked up around his waist and his red neckerchief and blue coat and a white hat stuck on one side of his head and there he stood with a broad grin on his great red face whistling away as if any other idea but that of being happy and comfortable had never entered his brain. This was the very man after our own heart. We knew all about him. We had seen him coming up to Covent Garden in its green shea's cart with a fat, tubby little horse half a thousand times and even while we cast an affectionate look upon his boots at that instant the form of a cocketish servant maid suddenly sprung into a pair of Denmark satin shoes that stood beside them and we at once recognized the very girl who accepted his offer of a ride just on this side the Hammersmith Suspension Bridge the very last Tuesday morning into town from Richmond. A very smart female in a showy bonnet stepped into a pair of grey cloth boots with black fringe and binding that were studiously pointing out their toes on the other side of the top boots and seemed very anxious to engage his attention but we didn't observe that our friend the market gardener appeared at all captivated with these blandishments for beyond a big wink when they first began as if to imply that he quite understood their end and object he took no further notice of them his indifference however was amply recompensed by the excessive gallantry of a very old gentleman with a silver-headed stick who tottered into a pair of large list shoes that were standing in one corner of the board and indulged in a variety of gestures expressive of his admiration of the lady in the cloth boots to the immeasurable amusement of a young fellow we put into a pair of long quartered pumps who we thought would have split the coat that slid down to meet him with laughing. We had been looking at this little pantomime with great satisfaction for some time went to our unspeakable astonishment we perceived that the whole of the characters including a numerous corda ballet of boots and shoes in the background into which we had been hastily thrusting as many feet as we could press into the service were arranging themselves in order for dancing and some music striking up at the moment to it they went without delay it was perfectly delightful to witness the agility of the market gardener out went the boots first on one side then on the other then cutting then shuffling then setting to the Denmark satins then advancing then retreating then going round then repeating the whole of the evolutions again without appearing to suffer in the least from the violence of the exercise nor were the Denmark satins a bit behind hand for they jumped and bounded about in all directions and though they were neither so regular nor so true to the time as the cloth boots still as they seem to do it from the heart and to enjoy it more we candidly confess that we preferred their style of dancing to the other but the old gentleman in the list shoes was the most amusing object in the whole party for besides his grotesque attempts to appear youthful and amorous which were sufficiently entertaining in themselves the young fellow in the pumps managed so artfully that every time the old gentleman advanced to salute the young lady in the cloth boots he trod with his whole weight on the old fellow's toes which made him raw with anguish and rendered all the others like to die of laughing we were in the full enjoyment of these festivities when we heard a shrill and by no means musical voice exclaim hope you'll know me again imprints and on looking intently forward to see from whence the sound came we found that not from the young lady in the cloth boots as we had at first been inclined to suppose but from a bulky lady of elderly appearance who was seated in a chair at the head of the cellar steps apparently for the purpose of superintending the sale of the articles arranged there a barrel organ which had been in full force close behind us seized playing the people who had been fitting into the shoes and boots took to flight the interruption and as we were conscious that in the depths of our meditation we might have been rudely staring at the old lady for half an hour without knowing it we took to flight too and were soon immersed in the deepest obscurity of the adjacent dials and of Chapter 6 of Scenes from sketches by Boz