t was our astonishment and
indignation to find that bells were fast becoming the rule, and knockers
the exception! Our theory trembled beneath the shock. We hastened home;
and fancying we foresaw in the swift progress of events, its entire
abolition, resolved from that day forward to vent our speculations on our
next-door neighbours in person. The house adjoining ours on the left
hand was uninhabited, and we had, therefore, plenty of leisure to observe
our next-door neighbours on the other side.

The house without the knocker was in the occupation of a city clerk, and
there was a neatly-written bill in the parlour window intimating that
lodgings for a single gentleman were to be let within.

It was a neat, dull little house, on the shady side of the way, with new,
narrow floorcloth in the passage, and new, narrow stair-carpets up to the
first floor. The paper was new, and the paint was new, and the furniture
was new; and all three, paper, paint, and furniture, bespoke the limited
means of the tenant. There was a little red and black carpet in the
drawing-room, with a border of flooring all the way round; a few stained
chairs and a pembroke table. A pink shell was displayed on each of the
little sideboards, which, with the addition of a tea-tray and caddy, a
few more shells on the mantelpiece, and three peacock's feathers
tastefully arranged above them, completed the decorative furniture of the
apartment.

This was the room destined for the reception of the single gentleman
during the day, and a little back room on the same floor was assigned as
his sleeping apartment by night.

The bill had not been long in the window, when a stout, good-humoured
looking gentleman, of about five-and-thirty, appeared as a candidate for
the tenancy. Terms were soon arranged, for the bill was taken down
immediately after his first visit. In a day or two the single gentleman
came in, and shortly afterwards his real character came out.

First of all, he displayed a most extraordinary partiality for sitting up
till three or four o'clock in the morning, drinking whiskey-and-water,
and smoking cigars; then he invited friends home, who used to come at ten
o'clock, and begin to get happy about the small hours, when they evinced
their perfect contentment by singing songs with half-a-dozen verses of
two lines each, and a chorus of ten, which chorus used to be shouted
forth by the whole strength of the company, in the most enthusiastic a