(which he is not at all likely to do), I should
have nothing to enter. I consider the
arrangements perfect. I would not even have
that skylight puttied, whose small panes,
lapping one over the other like the steel plates
of a frock of mail, let in a little water when
the rain is heavy. Why should I, to remove
a defect that does not annoy me (for I always
sit at the last box on the left), deprive old
Pedders of the pleasure of going over and
sitting directly under it, and making feeble
jests about having "got a drop too much"?
(He always puts up an umbrella, and says
"it's too bad;" but they know he don't mind
it in his heart.) The seats are so narrow,
that if you don't sit bolt upright you slide off;
but, when I first came to Cogswell's, they were
not at all too narrow for that diminutive
youth, who seems to me now to have no
connexion with my present self; and it is
sweet to be reminded of that time.

Ah! I remember well; I was the junior—
the minimus natu—in the counting-house of
Messrs. Drab and Gray, the corn-merchants;
where, under the pretence that I was learning
something useful, I was persuaded to give the
greatest amount of labour for the smallest
amount of salary that ever sweater or middleman
dreamed of in his Utopia. In those
awful granaries, where I was so small, and
everything else was so large; where there
were rats big enough to knock me down if
they had tried; where the barred windows
were so dirty or so choked up with heaps
of grain, that it was twilight everywhere;
where Drab, like Satan in the Book of Job,
was always walking to and fro, and going up
and down, I wished myself back at school
many a time; and thought I could even
bear to be a burden to my poor mother a
little longer, in order to put off the dreadful
day of "going and being" a clerk at old Drab's.
Young Gray was better; but the fear of old
Drab was upon him. He did not dare to
give anybody a holyday, although I believe, if
he had had his own way, he would have
considered that we were not Quakers, though the
firm was. He said to me, however, one day,
"The firm does not expect your mother to
give you money for dinner in the City. We
will allow you two hours, so that you may
walk over to Newington and dine at home."
I did not tell him that I always brought some
cold meat and bread in a paper, and went
down to eat it and watch the barges at
the landing-place at Queenhithe. I found
out at once a wretched coffee-shop, where
gentlemen were requested to pay on delivery
to prevent mistakes, and not to keep the
paper more than ten minutes after bespoke.
Here there was always a great fire, and
a hanger fixed to the bars, where any
customer might cook his own rasher of
bacon by the aid of an apparatus placed there
for that purpose; whose peculiar advantage
was, that it caught and preserved the fat that
must otherwise have fallen into the ashes
below. Here, calmly seated, beyond the
terrible jurisdiction of old Drab, and as yet
ignorant of the superior comforts of
Cogswell's, with the last "Figaro in London" in
hand, I tasted of a joy only slightly alloyed by
a fear of the proprietor, who would sometimes
come home drunk and insult his customers,
obliging his wife (whom everybody felt for)
to apologise afterwards, or even to call upon
a customer the next day, if she knew his
address. This man was a terror to me, but
he was nothing compared to old Drab, and
he did not get drunk every day. But they
found me out and told young Mr. Gray. I
don't know who saw me go in or come out
there; though I think it must have been
Skurry, the chief clerk, who liked to say that
I was a "born idiot, and not worth my salt."
I was accused of wasting my employers' time,
or, as Skurry called it, "kicking my heels
about in a low coffee-shop." I had to
promise that I would go home in future; but I
didn't go home. I did not dare to go to that
coffee-shop again; but I returned to Queenhithe,
and to the barges, and to the walks at
low water along a beach of oyster-shells and
broken tobacco-pipes, and to the amusement of
making "ducks and drakes" on the surface
of the river with bits of slate.

About this time, I found out Cogswell's.
I could tell you what day of the week it was;
whether wet or dry; where I was going, and
how I came to be sent there; and, being sent
there, how I happened, on my way back, to
turn down (I was just going to divulge the
name of the street) by where Cogswell lived;
and what induced me to go in; and how I
thought I would club the time I had been
gone upon my errand with my dinner-time,
and thus be away from Drab's for three
consecutive blessed hours. But these things are
not to you, reader, what they are to me; I
know I am prone to be garrulous about my
coffee-house.

I reconnoitred the place from the outside;
saw the name of the proprietor; read how
long it had been there, and was afraid
that so old established a place must require
more than I had in my pocket for the smallest
thing that I could demand: but I determined
to risk that. I brushed my shoes, and pushed
open the green baize door, dropped modestly
into the nearest box, and tapped with a
sixpence upon the table. Cogswell himself came
(I see him now) and took my order, and
brought me hot coffee in a cup shaped like a
flower-pot, with a hollow bottom; as well as
a roll and little dewy pat of butter, stamped
with a swan. Fourpence I paid for this—
being one halfpenny more than my old coffee-
shop charged. But what a difference! The
roll was a French roll, and the butter was
not cheesy-flavoured. I had a little tray, and
the milk and sugar (best loaf) were brought
separately in a doll's milk-pot and sugar-basin.
But the tranquillity, the gentle tone of the
place, were they worth nothing? I knew