MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

THE EXTRA CHRISTMAS NUMBER OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
CONTAINING THE AMOUNT OF TWO ORDINARY NUMBERS.

CHRISTMAS, 1863. Price 4d.

INDEX.

I.
HOW MRS. LIRRIPER CARRIED ON THE
BUSINESS.

WHOEVER would begin to be worried with
letting Lodgings that wasn't a lone woman with
a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me my
dear, excuse the familiarity but it comes natural
to me in my own little room when wishing to
open my mind to those that I can trust and I
should be truly thankful if they were all
mankind but such is not so, for have but a Furnished
bill in the window and your watch on the
mantelpiece and farewell to it if you turn your back
for but a second however gentlemanly the
manners, nor is being of your own sex any
safeguard as I have reason in the form of sugar-
tongs to know, for that lady (and a fine woman
she was) got me to run for a glass of water on
the plea of going to be confined, which certainly
turned out true but it was in the Station-
House.

Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand—
situated midway between the City and St. James's
and within five minutes' walk of the principal
places of public amusement—is my address. I
have rented this house many years as the parish
rate-books will testify and I could wish my
landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself,
but no bless you not a half a pound of paint to
save his life nor so much my dear as a tile upon
the roof though on your bended knees.

My dear you never have found Number
Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand advertised in
Bradshaw's Railway Guide and with the blessing
of Heaven you never will or shall so find it.
Some there are who do not think it lowering
themselves to make their names that cheap and
even going the lengths of a portrait of the house
not like it with a blot in every window and a coach
and four at the door, but what will suit Wozenham's
lower down on the other side of the way
will not suit me, Miss Wozenham having her
opinions and me having mine, though when it
comes to systematic underbidding capable of
being proved on oath in a court of justice and
taking the form of "If Mrs. Lirriper names
eighteen shillings a week, I name fifteen and
six" it then comes to a settlement between
yourself and your conscience supposing for the
sake of argument your name to be Wozenham
which I am well aware it is not or my opinion
of you would be greatly lowered, and as to airy
bedrooms and a night-porter in constant attendance
the less said the better, the bedrooms
being stuffy and the porter stuff.

It is forty years ago since me and my poor
Lirriper got married at St. Clement's Danes
where I now have a sitting in a very pleasant
pew with genteel company and my own hassock
and being partial to evening service not too
crowded. My poor Lirriper was a handsome
figure of a man with a beaming eye and a voice
as mellow as a musical instrument made of
honey and steel, but he had ever been a free liver
being in the commercial travelling line and
travelling what he called a limekiln road—"a dry
road, Emma my dear," my poor Lirriper says to
me "where I have to lay the dust with one drink
or another all day long and half the night, and it
wears me Emma"—and this led to his running
through a good deal and might have run through
the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that
never would stand still for a single instant set
off, but for its being night and the gate shut
and consequently took his wheel my poor
Lirriper and the gig smashed to atoms and never
spoke afterwards. He was a handsome figure
of a man and a man with a jovial heart and a
sweet temper, but if they had come up then
they never could have given you the mellowness
of his voice, and indeed I consider photographs
wanting in mellowness as a general rule and
making you look like a new-ploughed field.

My poor Lirriper being behindhand with the
world and being buried at Hatfield church in
Hertfordshire, not that it was his native place
but that he had a liking for the Salisbury Arms
where we went upon our wedding-day and passed
as happy a fortnight as ever happy was, I went
round to the creditors and I says "Gentlemen
I am acquainted with the fact that I am not
answerable for my late husband's debts but I
wish to pay them for I am his lawful wife and