except the pain, it gave one as near a notion
of the sensation of being shot as could be
attained without actually going through the
process itself.

As to the indications of character which were
to be got out of this deceased institution they
were as endless as they were infallible. All
other tests failing, here was one that could
always be relied on. Let a man conceal his
character as carefully as he would, it came out on
the door-step. I have known people, apparently
the meekest of the meek and the gentlest of the
gentle, and who had the credit of being so in
society, to expose themselves by a sharp and fierce
manner of knocking at one's door, and I have
never failed—having had my suspicions thus
aroused—to observe that under trying
circumstances ferocious traits of character have come
out in such persons.

Here, then, at the very entrance to our
domestic establishment the visitor proclaimed
himself for what he was. How desirable this was.
You might sit in your secret lair, the dining-room,
and form your opinion on the character of your
friend with perfect confidence, knowing that the
knocker-test would not fail. Here, for instance,
was Younghusband coming to look after your
daughter. It was natural you should want to
know all about him. " Rat, tat, tatity, tatity."
Away with him, the match must be broken off, a
man with such feebleness of character as that
will never do. " Tat, tat-tat-tat-TAT." The
passionate villain, he would break the poor girl's
heart in a fortnight. Bubbler again had spoken
to you about a certain investment, and had
described in glowing colours the certainty of its
success, and enlarged on the splendour of your
prospects if you went into it. He comes to talk
the matter over for the last time. " Ra, tatara,
tatara, tatara, tatara, tat, tat, tat." The shallow
impostor! The sanguine deceiver of himself and
everybody else! If you do not button up your
pockets after that knock, you deserve anything
you get.

The irritable man, the obstinate man, the
undecided man, the boastful man, all revealed
themselves as soon as they touched the knocker; and
so did the truthful, the amiable, the firm. It
required, however, great penetration and experience
to distinguish some of the finer shades of
character. It was not easy, for instance, to determine
to a rap where firmness ended and obstinacy
began, or to separate amiability from feebleness.
Still it was to be done.

The footman's knock must be given for the
benefit of antiquarians before we leave this
subject. What a terrible infliction that used to
be! In future ages it will hardly be credited
that a time, called civilised, existed, when one
of a pair of giants, with white powder on their
heads, used to descend from the back of a
carriage, and seizing a piece of heavy metal, used
to perform the following tune upon one's house
door. RAP, RAP, RAP—Rat a tittity, tittity,
tittity, tittity, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, TAT.
Yet it was so. The melody ran as above to a
note. There was never more, never less. And I
consider it a very important thing, and quite
worthy of a Small-Beer Chronicler, to leave on
record for future generations this exact statement
of the manners and customs of a period
already nearly obsolete.

I have recorded what, it is hoped, will be
useful to antiquarians who, ages hence, shall
dig up a knocker among the ruins of Bloomsbury,
and ask themselves, or write pamphlets
to ask other people, what on earth it was used
for? To silence one form of speculation,
by-the-by, which these wiseacres might otherwise
have gone into very deeply, I beg to state
plainly and authoritatively that this instrument
was in no way connected with the practice of
spirit-rapping.

I have now registered the death of the door-
knocker. It is all over with it. The knocker
manufactory can exist no longer. The new
houses that spring up in new neighbourhoods,
are knockerless, and the new generation of
iron-workers would not know how to set about the
construction of one of these instruments even
if such a thing were wanted. The saying,
"Dead as a door-nail," is still in existence,
but now and henceforth let it be, " Dead as a
door-knocker."

And among those who were wont to handle this
defunct piece of machinery have we no deaths
to record. There are classes of the human
species that die out and become extinct, just as
do the customs which distinguished them. I
speak not of the Red Indian. I am not going
to write an Elegy on the Last of the Mohicans.
I have to record the death of the old-fashioned
GENTLEMAN. He has a successor of whom I
shall have something to say, when dealing with
the Births, but the gentleman of the old school
is gone from among us.

A figure, tall and upright, clad in a square-cut
blue coat with metal buttons, and wearing
a buff waistcoat, grey trousers tight at the
ankle, gaiters, shoes, and a loose white neck-cloth,
rises before me. He had been something
of a dandy in his younger days, in the
time when buckskins and tops were the thing,
and I dare say remnants of such costume existed
still in his wardrobe up-stairs, in company with
a crush chapeau de bras, on an upper shelf, and
half a dozen under waistcoats of various colours.
He was a great farmer, but a deadly enemy to
steam agriculture. An early riser, and keen
sportsman, he regarded the battue system with
horror, and held the selling of game in mortal
aversion. He was a great favourite with the
poor people in the village, for every one of
whom he had a jolly word when he met them.
He enjoyed a glass of wine after dinner, and had
many a good story to tell over it of practical
jokes and obsolete achievements which took
place when " he was quartered with the depôt
of the—th in Ireland." He would now and
then season his conversation with a monosyllable
beginning with a d, which would cause him to
be promptly hushed by his relatives of the new
generation. Withal, he was a gentleman every
inch, and he is dead.