for my voluntary services as porter and
boot-jack. I suppose it was a matter of
course with him. Such is life in St. Josse-
ten Noode!

Yet, with all this, St. Josse is remarkably
pious; and is, I am told, a model of the
strictest and most unquestioning Catholicism.
He distracts my attention almost as much by
his frequent religious processions as by his
eternal roaring drunken kermesses. I confess
I cannot understand St. Josse being a Roman
Catholic. He looks so like the very type of
hard-headed, objective, independent Scotch
dissent. Yet here, for the first time in my limited
travels, have I witnessed the phenomenon of
a Catholic place of worship regularly attended
by the male members of the community.
The proportion of shovel-hats and black
robes in the streets is greater than I
have ever noticed in any other country.
There must be an immense trade done here
in shovel-hats, for they must wear out
rapidly, having to be removed at every two
or three yards, in courteous acknowledgment
of the reverence paid to their wearer by all
classes. Statues of the Virgin and various
saints, in white-washed niches profusely
decorated in the old florid school of Flemish
ornament, are to be found at the corners of
nearly every street. And these, I notice, are
seldom passed with indifference.

Leaving the question of St. Josse's godliness
an open one, there can be no mistake as
to his faith in its accompanying minor virtue
—cleanliness. If ever you come to live in
St. Josse-ten Noode, take my advice, and stop
in-doors carefully every Saturday afternoon.
If you neglect this warning, you will simply
have a bucket of water thrown over you before
you have proceeded ten yards from your
doorstep. Scarcely will you have expressed your
indignation at this outrage, and proceeded
ten yards further, when you will have another
bucket of water thrown over you; and so on
at the same ratio, so long as you are so
unwise as to keep the streets while St. Josse-
ten Noode is undergoing his hebdomadal
sluicing. I think the matrons and domestics
of the district are rather fond of administering
these amateur shower-baths to unwary
passengers. At first, I was inclined to give them
credit for mere indifference, on an
understanding that it was the passenger's business
to look out for himself, on the sauve qui peut
principle. But I am now more than half
convinced that there is malice prepense in the
administration. I was struck, last Saturday
week—when I had been incautiously
entrapped into prolonging a walk beyond the
hours of public safety—by the uncommon
politeness of a young lady in sabots, who
arrested the progress of a bucketful of water
which she was about to hurl viciously at a
shop window, as I thought, in order to enable
me to pass in dry security. I was quite
mistaken. She had only waited for me to come
up with her, and that she might take her aim
with greater precision. Having had some
experience in this exciting national sport, I
was so fortunate as to escape with a simple
drenching of the left leg. A less wary subject
would have received the entire consignment
on his head and shoulders, and might
have thought himself lucky to avoid being
knocked down with the bucket itself.

From one o'clock till six in the afternoon
it is one incessant clatter of sabots, pails, and
brooms. I believe if the ladies of St. Josse-
ten Noode had the time they would beeswax
the pavement, sand-paper the fire-plugs, and
blacklead the lamp-posts. Their own tables
and dressers, I am convinced, they wash three
or four times a day with Windsor soap and a
nail-brush. What they want with so many
plates and dishes I cannot imagine when they
have floors so admirably adapted for eating a
dinner off. Their grocers' shops make you
wink as you enter them; such is their dazzling
brilliancy in the matter of scale and coffee-
mill. You never saw such transparent
window panes and lamp glasses, such blinding
caps, kerchiefs, tablecloths, and curtains, nor
yet human flesh so rasped, scrubbed, and
soaked into perennial cleanliness. I look
upon a St. Josse-ten Noodienne with the
same feeling of compassion as upon a searcher
after the philosopher's stone or the perpetual
motion. She must spend her entire life
looking for a single speck of dirt which she is
doomed never to discover.

I thought as much! The United Belgian
Skittlers, I think, judging from their colours.
Whoever they are, they have evidently come
to stop; and, as there seems to be about fifty
of them, including two clarionets and a trombone,
I had better leave off.

Now ready, in Twenty-eight pages, stitched, Price
Fourpence,
THE
HOUSEHOLD WORDS ALMANAC
FOR THE YEAR 1857.

Early in December will be published, price Threepence,
or stamped Fourpence,
THE
WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY;
Being the CAPTAIN'S ACCOUNT of the GREAT
DELIVERANCE OF HER PEOPLE IN AN OPEN
BOAT AT SEA: forming
THE CHRISTMAS NUMBER
Of HOUSEHOLD WORDS; and containing the amount
of One regular Number and a Half.