example :—" Mrs. Glutch, this plate's dirty."
—" I am much obliged to you, sir, for telling
me of it."—" It isn't the first dirty plate I
have had."—" Really now, sir ? "—" You
may take away the fork ; for that is dirty
too."—" Thank you, sir."—Oh for one hour
of my little Parisian portress ! Oh for
one day's respite from the politeness of Mrs.
Glutch !

Let me try if I cannot get away from the
subject for a little while. What have I to
say about the other lodgers in the house?
Not much ; for how can I take any interest
in people who never make inquiries after
my health, though they must all know, by the
frequent visits of the doctor and chemist's
boy, that I am ill? The first floor is
inhabited by a mysterious old gentleman, and
his valet. He brought three cart-loads of
gorgeous furniture with him, to fit up two
rooms - he possesses an organ, on which,
greatly to his credit, he never plays—he
receives perfumed notes, goes out beautifully
dressed, is brought back in private carriages,
with tall footmen in attendance to make
as much noise as possible with the doorknocker.
Nobody knows where he comes
from, or believes that he passes in the house
under his real name. If any aged aristocrat
be missing from the world of fashion, we
rather think we have got him into Smeary
Street, and should feel willing to give him up
to his rightful owners on payment of a liberal
reward. Next door to me, in the second
floor back, I hear a hollow cough and sometimes
a whispering ; but I know nothing for
certain—not even whether the hollow cougher
is also the whisperer, or whether they are
two, or whether there is or is not a third
silent and Samaritan person who relieves the
cough and listens to the whisper. Above
me, in the attics, there is a matutinal
stamping and creaking of boots, which go
down-stairs, at an early hour, in a hurry,
which never return all day, but which come
up-stairs again in a hurry late at night. The
boots evidently belong to shopmen or clerks.
Below, in the parlours, there seems to be
a migratory population, which comes in one
week and goes out the next, and is, in some
cases, not at all to be depended upon in the
matter of paying rent. I happen to discover
this latter fact, late one night, in rather
an alarming and unexpected manner. Just
before bedtime I descend, candle in hand,
to a small back room, at the end of the
passage, on the ground floor (used all day for
the reception of general visitors, and empty,
as I rashly infer, all night), for the purpose of
getting a sofa cushion to eke out my scanty
allowance of pillows. I no sooner open the
door and approach the sofa than I behold,
to my horror and amazement, Mrs. Glutch
coiled up on it, with all her clothes on, and
with a wavy, coffee-coloured wrapper flung
over her shoulders. Before I can turn round
to run away, she is on her legs, wide awake
in an instant, and politer than ever. She
makes me a long speech of explanation,
which begins with " I beg pardon," and ends
with "Thank you, sir;" and from the substance
of which I gather that the parlour
lodgers for the past week are going away the
next morning; that they are the likeliest
people in the world to forget to pay their
lawful debts, and that Mrs. Glutch is going
to lie in ambush for them all night, in the
coffee-coloured wrapper, ready the instant
the parlour door opens, to spring out into
the passage and call for her rent.

What am I about? I am relapsing
insensibly into the inevitable and abhorrent
subject of Mrs. Glutch, exactly in accordance
with my foreboding of a few pages back.
Let me make one more attempt to get away
from my landlady. If I try to describe my
room, I am sure to get back to her, because
she is always in it. And, moreover, excepting
the fatal bedside shelf which first lured
me into inhabiting Smeary Street, there is
nothing in my London apartment worth
notice—nothing particularly new, nothing
particularly clean, nothing particularly
comfortable. Suppose I get out of the house
altogether, and escape into the street?

All men, I imagine, have an interest of
some kind in the locality in which they live.
My interest in Smeary Street is entirely
associated with my daily meals, which are
publicly paraded all day long on the pavement.
In explanation of this rather original
course of proceeding, I must mention that
I am ordered; to eat " little and often," and
must add, that I cannot obey the direction
if the food is cooked on the premises in
which I live, because (my stomachic sensibilities
being delicate) I have had the misfortune
to look down certain underground stairs and
to discover that in the lowest depth of dirt,
which I take to be the stairs themselves,
there is a lower deep still, which is the
kitchen at the bottom of them. Under these
peculiar circumstances, I am reduced to
appeal for nourishment and cleanliness in
combination, to the tender mercies (and
kitchen) of the friends in my neighbourhood,
to whom I have alluded at the outset of
this narrative. They commiserate and help
me with the readiest kindness. Devoted
messengers, laden with light food, pass
and repass all day long between their
house and my bedroom. The dulness of
Smeary Street is enlivened by perpetual
snacks carried in public procession. The
eyes of my opposite neighbours, staring out
of window, and not looking as if they cared
about my being ill, are regaled from morning
to night by passing dishes and basins, which
go westward full and steaming, and return
eastward eloquently empty. My neighbourhood
knows when I dine, and can smell
out, if it please, what I have for dinner. The
early housemaid kneeling on the doorstep can
stay her scrubbing hand and turn her pensive