would have been worth fifty guineas, but
which, in its ghastly gleaming said plainly
"Sheffield" and "imposture." There was
a piece of butter in a shape, like a
diminutive haystack, and with a cow
sprawling on the top, in high relief. It was
a pallid butter, from which with
difficulty you shaved off adipocerous scales,
which would not be persuaded to adhere to
the bread, but flew off at tangents, and
went rolling about an intolerably large tea-
tray, on whose papier-mâché surface was
depicted the death of Captain Hedley Vicars.
The Crimean sky was inlaid with mother-of-
pearl, and the gallant captain's face was
highly enriched with blue and crimson foil
paper. As for the tea, I don't think I ever
tasted such a peculiar mixture. Did you
ever sip warm catsup, sweetened with
borax? That was something like it. And
what was that sediment, strongly resembling
the sand at Great Yarmouth, at the bottom
of the cup? I sat down to my meal,
however, and made as much play with the
cottage loaf as I could. Had the loaf been
varnished? It smelt and looked as though
it had undergone that process. Everything
in the house smelt like varnish. I was
uncomfortably conscious, too, during my
repast—one side of the room being all
window—that I was performing the part of a
"Portrait of the Gentleman in the first
floor," and that as such I was sitting to
Mrs. Lucknow at Number Twelve, opposite
—I know her name was Lucknow, for
a brass plate on. the door said so—whose
own half-length portrait was visible in her
breakfast parlour window, glowering at me
reproachfully because I had not taken her
first floor, in the window of which was, not
a group of wax fruit, but a sham alabaster
vase full of artificial flowers. Every window
in Wretchedville exhibited one or
other of these ornaments, and it was from
their contemplation that I began to understand,
how it was that the "fancy goods"
trade in the Minories and Houndsditch
throve so well. They made things there
to be purchased by the housekeepers of
Wretchedville. The presence of Mrs.
Lucknow at the glass case over the way
was becoming unbearable, when the
unpleasant vision was shut out by the
appearance of Mrs. Primpris's Alfred, who,
with his sister Selina, had been sent to
Sobbington for my bag. Alfred was a
boy with a taste for art. In the daytime
he was continually copying the head of a
Greek person (sex uncertain) in a helmet,
who reminded you equally of a hairdresser's
dummy in plaster, and of a fireman of the
Fire Brigade. He used to bring studies of
this party in white, red, and black chalk
to me, and expect that I would reward him
for his proficiency with threepenny pieces
"to buy india-rubber;" and then Mrs.
Primpris would be sure to be lurking
outside the door, and audibly expressing her
wish that some good, kind, gentleman would
get Alfred into the Blue Coat School, which
she appeared to look upon, as a kind of
eleemosynary institution in connexion with the
Royal Academy of Arts. I can't help
suspecting, from sundry private conversations
I had with Alfred, that he entertained a
profound detestation for the plaster person
in the helmet, and for the Fine Arts
generally; but, as he logically observed, he was
"kep at it," and "it was no use hollerin'."
As for his sister Selina, all I can remember
of her is that one leg of her tucked calico
trousers was always two inches and a half
longer than the other, and that for a girl of
thirteen she had the most alarmingly sharp
shoulder-blades I ever saw. I always used
to think when I saw these osseous
angularities, oscillating like the beams of a
marine engine, that the next time her
piston-rod like arms moved, the scapulæ
must come through her frock. Mrs. Primpris
was a disciplinarian; and whenever
I heard Selina plaintively yelping in the
kitchen, I felt tolerably certain that Mrs.
Primpris was correcting her, on her
shoulder-blades, with a shoe.

The shades of evening fell, and Mrs.
Primpris brought me in a monstrous
paraffin lamp, the flame of which wouldn't
do anything but lick the glass chimney, till it
had smoked it to the hue proper to observe
eclipses by, and then sputter into extinction,
emitting a charnel-house like odour.
After that we tried a couple of composites
(six to the pound) in green glass candlesticks.
I asked Mrs. Primpris if she could
send me up a book to read, and she
favoured me, per Alfred and Selina,
with her whole library, consisting of the
Asylum Press Almanac for 1860, two
odd volumes of the Calcutta Directory;
the Brewer and Distiller's Assistant; Julia
de Crespigny, or a Winter in London;
Dunoyer's French Idioms; and the Reverend
Mr. Huntington's Bank of Faith.
I took out my cigar-case after this, and
began to smoke; and then I heard Mrs.
Primpris coughing, and a number of doors
being thrown wide open. Upon this I
concluded that I would go to bed. My sleeping
apartment—the first floor back—was a