to architectural proportions.

I have from Saturday to Monday, as honoured guest, hung my clothes in
egg-boxes.

I have sat on an egg-box at an egg-box to take my dish of tea. I have
made love on egg-boxes.--Aye, and to feel again the blood running
through my veins as then it ran, I would be content to sit only on
egg-boxes till the time should come when I could be buried in an
egg-box, with an egg-box reared above me as tombstone.--I have spent
many an evening on an egg-box; I have gone to bed in egg-boxes. They
have their points--I am intending no pun--but to claim for them cosiness
would be but to deceive.

How quaint they were, those home-made rooms! They rise out of the
shadows and shape themselves again before my eyes. I see the knobbly
sofa; the easy-chairs that might have been designed by the Grand
Inquisitor himself; the dented settle that was a bed by night; the few
blue plates, purchased in the slums off Wardour Street; the enamelled
stool to which one always stuck; the mirror framed in silk; the two
Japanese fans crossed beneath each cheap engraving; the piano cloth
embroidered in peacock's feathers by Annie's sister; the tea-cloth
worked by Cousin Jenny. We dreamt, sitting on those egg-boxes--for we
were young ladies and gentlemen with artistic taste--of the days when we
would eat in Chippendale dining-rooms; sip our coffee in Louis Quatorze
drawing-rooms; and be happy. Well, we have got on, some of us, since
then, as Mr. Bumpus used to say; and I notice, when on visits, that
some of us have contrived so that we do sit on Chippendale chairs, at
Sheraton dining-tables, and are warmed from Adam's fireplaces; but, ah
me, where are the dreams, the hopes, the enthusiasms that clung like
the scent of a March morning about those gim-crack second floors? In the
dustbin, I fear, with the cretonne-covered egg-boxes and the penny fans.
Fate is so terribly even-handed. As she gives she ever takes away. She
flung us a few shillings and hope, where now she doles us out pounds and
fears. Why did not we know how happy we were, sitting crowned with sweet
conceit upon our egg-box thrones?

Yes, Dick, you have climbed well. You edit a great newspaper. You spread
abroad the message--well, the message that Sir Joseph Goldbug, your
proprietor, instructs you to spread abroad. You teach mankind the
lessons that Sir Joseph Goldbug wishes them to learn. They say he is to
have a peerage next year. I am sure he has earned it; and