iver' wore off. The knees of the unmentionables, and the elbows
of the coat, and the seams generally, soon began to get alarmingly white.
The hat was once more deposited under the table, and its owner crept into
his seat as quietly as ever.

There was a week of incessant small rain and mist. At its expiration the
'reviver' had entirely vanished, and the shabby-genteel man never
afterwards attempted to effect any improvement in his outward appearance.

It would be difficult to name any particular part of town as the
principal resort of shabby-genteel men. We have met a great many persons
of this description in the neighbourhood of the inns of court. They may
be met with, in Holborn, between eight and ten any morning; and whoever
has the curiosity to enter the Insolvent Debtors' Court will observe,
both among spectators and practitioners, a great variety of them. We
never went on 'Change, by any chance, without seeing some shabby-genteel
men, and we have often wondered what earthly business they can have
there. They will sit there, for hours, leaning on great, dropsical,
mildewed umbrellas, or eating Abernethy biscuits. Nobody speaks to them,
nor they to any one. On consideration, we remember to have occasionally
seen two shabby-genteel men conversing together on 'Change, but our
experience assures us that this is an uncommon circumstance, occasioned
by the offer of a pinch of snuff, or some such civility.

It would be a task of equal difficulty, either to assign any particular
spot for the residence of these beings, or to endeavour to enumerate
their general occupations. We were never engaged in business with more
than one shabby-genteel man; and he was a drunken engraver, and lived in
a damp back-parlour in a new row of houses at Camden-town, half street,
half brick-field, somewhere near the canal. A shabby-genteel man may
have no occupation, or he may be a corn agent, or a coal agent, or a wine
merchant, or a collector of debts, or a broker's assistant, or a
broken-down attorney. He may be a clerk of the lowest description, or a
contributor to the press of the same grade. Whether our readers have
noticed these men, in their walks, as often as we have, we know not; this
we know--that the miserably poor man (no matter whether he owes his
distresses to his own conduct, or that of others) who feels his poverty
and vainly strives to conceal it, is one of the most pitiable objects in
human nature. Such objects,