excludes the outer air. When I mount up to
my bed-room, a smell of closeness and flue
gets lazily up my nose like sleepy snuff. The
loose little bits of carpet writhe under my
tread, and take wormy shapes. I don't know
the ridiculous man in the looking-glass,
beyond having met him once or twice in a dish-
cover—and I can never shave him to-morrow
morning! The Dodo is narrow-minded as to
towels; expects me to wash on a freemason's
apron without the trimming; when I ask for
soap, gives me a stony-hearted something
white, with no more lather in it than the
Elgin marbles. The Dodo has seen better
days, and possesses interminable stables at
the back—silent, grass-grown, broken-
windowed, horseless.

This mournful bird can fry a sole, however,
which is much. Can cook a steak, too, which
is more. I wonder where it gets its Sherry!
If I were to send my pint of wine to some
famous chemist to be analysed, what would it
turn out to be made of? It tastes of pepper,
sugar, bitter almonds, vinegar, warm knives,
any flat drink, and a little brandy. Would
it unman a Spanish exile by reminding him of
his native land at all ? I think not. If there
really be any townspeople out of the churchyards,
and if a caravan of them ever do dine,
with a bottle of wine per man, in this desert
of the Dodo, it must make good for the doctor
next day!

Where was the waiter born? How did he
come here ? Has he any hope of getting away
from here? Does he ever receive a letter, or
take a ride upon the railway, or see anything
but the Dodo? Perhaps he has seen the
Berlin Wool. He appears to have a silent
sorrow on him, and it may be that. He clears
the table; draws the dingy curtains of the
great bow window, which so unwillingly
consent to meet, that they must be pinned
together; leaves me by the fire with my pint
decanter, and a little thin funnel-shaped
wineglass, and a plate of pale biscuits—in
themselves engendering desperation.

No book, no newspaper! I left the Arabian
Nights in the railway carriage, and have
nothing to read but Bradshaw, and " that way
madness lies." Remembering what prisoners
and shipwrecked mariners have done to exercise
their minds in solitude, I repeat the
multiplication table, the pence table, and the
shilling table: which are all the tables I
happen to know. What if I write something?
The Dodo keeps no pens but steel pens; and
those I always stick through the paper, and
can turn to no other account.

What am I to do? Even if I could have
the bandy-legged baby knocked up and
brought here, I could offer him nothing but
sherry, and that would be the death of him.
He would never hold up his head again if he
touched it. I can't go to bed, because I have
conceived a mortal hatred for my bedroom;
and I can't go away because there is no train
for my place of destination until morning. To
burn the biscuits will be but a fleeting joy;
still it is a temporary relief, and here they go
on the fire! Shall I break the plate? First
let me look at the back, and see who made
it. COPELAND.

Copeland! Stop a moment. Was it
yesterday I visited Copeland's works, and saw
them making plates? In the confusion of
travelling about, it might be yesterday or it
might be yesterday month; but I think it was
yesterday. I appeal to the plate. The plate
says, decidedly, yesterday. I find the plate,
as I look at it, growing into a companion.

Don't you remember (says the plate) how
you steamed away, yesterday morning, in the
bright sun and the east wind, along the
valley of the sparkling Trent? Don't you
recollect the many kilns you flew past, looking
like the bowls of gigantic tobacco pipes, cut
short off from the stem and turned upside
down? And the fires—and the smoke—and
the roads made with bits of crockery, as if all
the plates and dishes in the civilised world
had been Macadamized, expressly for the
laming of all the horses? Of course I do!

And don't you remember (says the plate)
how you alighted at Stoke—a picturesque
heap of houses, kilns, smoke, wharfs, canals,
and river, lying (as was most appropriate)
in a basin—and how, after climbing up the
sides of the basin to look at the prospect, you
trundled down again at a walking-match
pace, and straight proceeded to my father's,
Copeland's, where the whole of my family,
high and low, rich and poor, are turned out
upon the world from our nursery and seminary,
covering some fourteen acres of ground ? And
don't you remember what we spring from:—
heaps of lumps of clay, partially prepared
and cleaned in Devonshire and Dorsetshire,
whence said clay principally comes—and hills
of flint, without which we should want our
ringing sound, and should never be musical?
And as to the flint, don't you recollect that it
is first burnt in kilns, and is then laid under
the four iron feet of a demon slave, subject to
violent stamping fits, who, when they come
on, stamps away insanely with his four iron
legs, and would crush all the flint in the Isle
of Thanet to powder, without leaving off?
And as to the clay, don't you recollect how it
is put into mills or teazers, and is sliced, and
dug, and cut at, by endless knives, clogged
and sticky, but persistent—and is pressed out
of that machine through a square trough,
whose form it takes—and is cut off in square
lumps and thrown into a vat, and there
mixed with water, and beaten to a pulp by
paddle-wheels—and is then run into a rough
house, all rugged beams and ladders splashed
with white,—superintended by Grindoff the
Miller in his working clothes, all splashed
with white,—where it passes through no end
of machinery-moved sieves all splashed with
white, arranged in an ascending scale of fineness
(some so fine, that three hundred silk
threads cross each other in a single square