together, and then, after insulting me by muttering
that they "suppose that there's nothing
better to be had," they decide to honour me
with a visit.

* I am not quite so confident on this point as my
worthy hostess, having occasionally, when getting
up in the morning, found certain marks upon me
resembling the chicken-pock. Mrs. B. says it is a
rash, but I doubt it.—J. B.

By the time the neat lodger has been in my
apartments a couple of hours he is as much
at home there as if he had had the advantage of
living in them all his life. It is perfectly
extraordinary how he makes every bit of room
available. At once there is a corner for his stick
and umbrella, a particular peg for his hat,
another for his great-coat—for the neat lodger
always takes care of his health—and another for
the straw-hat of his wife. His papers are all
arranged in the drawer of my beautiful rosewood
cabinet, his books are on the shelves, the
newspapers are placed in layers on the side-table, and
his boxes are unpacked and hidden under the
bed, so that there really is no sign of his being
a bird of passage. Why, I once found a neat
lodger with a hammer and tacks of his own,
nailing down that little bit of carpet which
always sticks up just by the door into the
bedroom and prevents it from opening!

The contrast to my neat lodgers presented by
my muddling lodgers—who come next in order
—is something perfectly extraordinary. If the
neat lodger shows himself for what he is, directly
he sets foot in my house, surely this is even
more the case still with the muddling lodger.

The muddling lodger has always a family of
children—which is far from being the case with
the neat lodger—and he and his wife, and the
nurse and the children, all come trooping into
the house in a strangling manner, leaving the
doors open behind them, and bawling to each
other through open windows, which they
continue to do all the time they are in the
apartments. They commence at once to monopolise
the staircase, and to treat it as if it was
their own property, spending an unconscionable
amount of time on it, and staring in indignant
surprise at any of the other lodgers whom they
may meet going up or down.

On entering the apartments which I have to
show them over, the muddling lodgers seem
always perfectly bewildered, and have never the
least idea whether they will suit or not. They
make the rooms look untidy directly they come
into them, for they always have all sorts of
parcels and wrappers in their hands, which they
put down on every available spot at once. They
thump down into chairs, too, directly, and begin
staring about them without seeing anything. And
the lady cannot sit down on a chair without
giving it a twist out of the line in which it was
originally placed, nor can the gentleman cross
the room to look out of window—which seems
his only idea of looking at the lodgings—without
blundering against some article of furniture
and knocking it away. By-and-by, the lady will
get up and find her way into the bedrooms,
where, after languidly staring about her for
some time and still seeing nothing, she will ask
me a silly question about insects.

The lodgings once taken, it really makes me
wretched to go into my beautiful apartments
and see how they are disfigured. What a sight
the round table in the middle of the sitting-room
is, for the eyes of its fond proprietress! What
a sight is the rosewood cabinet, the side-table,
the little occasional table with the telescope
on it in the window! All these things are
covered with the most uncomfortable and
incompatible objects that can be conceived.
Newspapers, torn Bradshaws, that melancholy
penny ink-bottle stopped with a screw of paper,
and a pen which has been dipped down too deep
into it and is blackened more than half way
up; bills receipted and unreceipted, letters,
bread with the traces of butter glistening on
the crumb, the butter itself in an oily state,
the knife having fallen, with plenty of butter
on the blade, upon the carpet. All these things,
together with half empty uncorked wine and
ginger-beer bottles—for the whole family is
always thirsty—are scattered in every direction,
and will even find their way occasionally through
the folding-doors into the best bedroom.

That apartment presents almost a more dreadful
spectacle than the sitting-room itself. The
muddling lodgers never unpack anything, but
live, if I may so speak, out of their boxes. The
chest of drawers is empty, and the boxes, which
are over full, will not shut. Articles of wearing
apparel have been dragged up by the roots, from
the bottom of those boxes, without lifting out
the objects which lay over them. The beds are
looked upon in the light of wardrobes, and are
covered with dresses, hats, bonnets, and not
unfrequently with boots and shoes. Will it be
believed that once I actually found the claw
of a lobster in the unmade bed? I shall never
forget it.

Oh, those muddling lodgers! what an existence
they have of it. How dreadful their meals
are. How immediately after I have set the
dishes down in their proper places are they
dragged out of them, and all the symmetry of
the table destroyed. They never ask for a dish
they want, but claw it to them across the
table; and then, there they leave it until some
other member of the family claws at it.
They leave great hairy limbs of prawn sticking
to the butter after breakfast; they will dine
with a walking-stick or a parasol lying on the
table, where, too, the children place their
favourite playthings during the meal. The
muddling gentleman walks about the room in
his stockings, having left his slippers behind
him in London, and the muddling lady never
has her boots laced up till an advanced hour of
the day, and never rises from her seat without
her dress catching in some article or other of
furniture, while she will sometimes drag a whole
set of fire-irons after her that have caught in
that immense noose at the bottom of her dress,
formed by half a yard or so of flounce which
has "come undone."

I solemnly declare, that when my muddling
lodgers go away—and they always make
numerous false starts, coming back to fetch this,
that, and the other, which they have left behind
—I declare that when I go up to put the rooms