icles of perfumery, which he
had at an exceedingly low rate. Indeed, he was never known to pay Mr.
Eglantine one single shilling for those objects of luxury, and, having
them on such moderate terms, was enabled to indulge in them pretty
copiously. Thus Mr. Walker was almost as great a nosegay as Mr.
Eglantine himself: his handkerchief was scented with verbena, his hair
with jessamine, and his coat had usually a fine perfume of cigars, which
rendered his presence in a small room almost instantaneously remarkable.
I have described Mr. Walker thus accurately, because, in truth, it
is more with characters than with astounding events that this little
history deals, and Mr. Walker is one of the principal of our dramatis
personae.

And so, having introduced Mr. W., we will walk over with him to Mr.
Eglantine's emporium, where that gentleman is in waiting, too, to have
his likeness taken.

There is about an acre of plate glass under the Royal arms on Mr.
Eglantine's shop-window; and at night, when the gas is lighted, and the
washballs are illuminated, and the lambent flame plays fitfully over
numberless bottles of vari-coloured perfumes--now flashes on a case
of razors, and now lightens up a crystal vase, containing a hundred
thousand of his patent tooth-brushes--the effect of the sight may be
imagined. You don't suppose that he is a creature who has those odious,
simpering wax figures in his window, that are called by the vulgar
dummies? He is above such a wretched artifice; and it is my belief
that he would as soon have his own head chopped off, and placed as a
trunkless decoration to his shop-window, as allow a dummy to figure
there. On one pane you read in elegant gold letters "Eglantinia"--'tis
his essence for the handkerchief; on the other is written "Regenerative
Unction"--'tis his invaluable pomatum for the hair.

There is no doubt about it: Eglantine's knowledge of his profession
amounts to genius. He sells a cake of soap for seven shillings, for
which another man would not get a shilling, and his tooth-brushes go off
like wildfire at half-a-guinea apiece. If he has to administer rouge or
pearl-powder to ladies, he does it with a mystery and fascination which
there is no resisting, and the ladies believe there are no cosmetics
like his. He gives his wares unheard-of names, and obtains for them sums
equally prodigious. He CAN dress hair--that is a fact--as few men in
this age can; and has been known to take twenty po