the bar, in fact, till the taps are as inky as
they are beery. Each customer of The File
has his corner—a corner which he would not
lightly resign. Old Bags of the Twelve
Clerks' office, a high-dried old man, with a
struggling shirt-frill and a very large silver
chain, has his corner, where he reads the Law
Times with dreary assiduity, and mumbles
rather than smokes his cheroots. He imbibes
largely; but it is his peculiarity never to have
more than one glass of spirits and water
daily: artfully contriving, however, to have
the whisky-tap turned into it at stated intervals
—just to soften it, as he calls it. It is
my firm belief, so frequently are these "softenings"
resorted to, that he frequently gets to
a tumbler of raw whisky before the afternoon
is out. Bags is supposed to have once
amassed immense wealth through the
exercise of the somewhat anomalous profession
of "trustee." He is always being executor,
or guardian, or secretary, or auditor to somebody
or something; and his calumniators—
what good man is free from them?—declare
that he grinds the noses of widows, and skins
the flints that are the patrimony of orphans.
Little Stagg, Caveat and Emptor's runner,
asseverates that Bags "would rob an angel
of his flannel jacket."

Between Bags and the corner of the bar
where little Stagg (a measly little man
generally covered with bits of straw or flue,
and the cuffs and sleeves of whose coat glisten
with a greasy sheen brought about by much
leaning on pewter counters) drops in for what
he calls a "dandy," that is to say, twopennyworth
of gin—there hangs in a tarnished
frame stuck over with bulbous scrolls, much
chipped and cracked, a picture which has been
a considerable traveller in its time, has seen
some vicissitudes, and if the sums at which it
has occasionally been valued are to be taken
into account, would be entitled to think
anything but small beer of itself. The subject of
this performance leaves open a wide field for
conjecture either through the smoke and dirt
by which the canvas is obscured, the dubious
light in which it is hung, or a pervading
haziness of treatment. The only figure
plainly discernable is that of a patriarch in
a beard, a wide-awake hat, and a scarlet
gaberdine or Benjamin; and opinions are
divided, and connoisseurs vary, as to whether
this individual is intended to represent the
father of the prodigal son, one of the chaste
Susannah's senile admirers, Abraham turning
Hagar out of doors, or King Lear in the
storm. Bags—who is a matter-of-fact man,
without an ounce of poetry in his conformation
—declares the subject of the picture to be
the nocturnal irruption of a fox into a farmyard,
and that the patriarch is an indignant
farmer, roused from his peaceful couch. Mrs.
Casay is doubtful and timid of expressing an
opinion; but I think she privately leans to
the creed that the figure in the Benjamin is
Mother Redcap telling fortunes. This
ambiguous tableau has been what is called a
"discount" picture. It is supposed that Venere,
the broker of Tick Street, either picked [it] up
at Tompkin's weekly picture sale in Princes
Street, Soho, for a matter of half-a-dozen
shillings, or that it was an "execution " lot,
distrained for some non-forthcoming rent.
From Venere (who is a crack upholsterer now,
and sells stupendous articles of furniture to
confiding married couples, admirably suited
to the ever-occurring mutabilities of fashion,
for they never last more than six months)
this wondrous picture passed to Mr. Cephalus
Procriss, the famous bill discounter of Talavera
Place and Knaves Inn, who handsomely
presented it to young Sassafrass of the Life
Guards Puce, together with twelve dozen
of the Duke of Albufera's admired sherry,
several camels' bits, a Turkish yataghan, and
seventy-five pounds in cash, all on the sole and
fragile security of a slip of paper, stamped—
just as a matter of form—on which was
written some harmless nonsense about Sassafrass
promising to pay two hundred and
fifty pounds that day twelve months—harmless,
indeed to Sassafrass, for he never paid,
and never meant to pay; although, to be sure,
Procriss—(he has a magnificent series of
army lists, bound in scarlet morocco and
gold in his library, and knows the standing
of every man in the service as well as the
adjutant-general)—did contrive to extract the
two hundred and fifty out of the Dowager
Lady Marjoram, the guardsman's maternal
aunt. Sassafrass gave the picture to
Mademoiselle Friboulette of the corps de ballet.
She gave it to her admirer, Richard Bower,
twenty-eighth violin in the orchestra of the
Italian opera. He raffled it at the "Scrapers"
in Drury Lane for two pounds,
eleven and sixpence. It was won by Burleybumbo,
the violincello-player, who bartered it
it to his butcher (who had a taste for the fine
arts). He, coming to grief, pawned it for
fifteen shillings. Hence it passed into the
discount trade again; was made to represent
the value of hundreds of pounds, was
then sold and resold again for a few shillings
—for a suit of old clothes—for spirits and
tobacco. It has been called a Titian, a Guido,
a Correggio, a Guercino, and a Domenichino.
It has been "put in" at gentlemen's sales,
and has knocked about auction rooms, and
flapped in the wind outside brokers' shops.
Now, it is the temporary property of Mr. Grip,
sub-officer to the sheriffs. Mr. Grip would
like to sell it, or to raffle it, or to let it out
on hire, or to do anything with it by which
money could be obtained; but the scarlet
patriarch is so well known—so infamously
notorious, in fact—in the society with which
Mr. Grip mixes, that none of his acquaintances
can be persuaded to bid for it, or take a chance
in it, or hire it, or speculate in or upon it in
any manner whatsoever. So Mr. Grip has
hung it up here, at The File, in the vain hope
that some nobleman overtaken by a shower,