justice in the course of his
drive. There are three classes of animated objects which prevent your
driving with any degree of comfort or celerity through streets which are
but little frequented--they are pigs, children, and old women. On the
occasion we are describing, the pigs were luxuriating on cabbage-stalks,
and the shuttlecocks fluttered from the little deal battledores, and the
children played in the road; and women, with a basket in one hand, and
the street-door key in the other, _would_ cross just before the horse's
head, until Mr. Gabriel Parsons was perfectly savage with vexation, and
quite hoarse with hoi-ing and imprecating. Then, when he got into
Fleet-street, there was 'a stoppage,' in which people in vehicles have
the satisfaction of remaining stationary for half an hour, and envying
the slowest pedestrians; and where policemen rush about, and seize hold
of horses' bridles, and back them into shop-windows, by way of clearing
the road and preventing confusion. At length Mr. Gabriel Parsons turned
into Chancery-lane, and having inquired for, and been directed to
Cursitor-street (for it was a locality of which he was quite ignorant),
he soon found himself opposite the house of Mr. Solomon Jacobs.
Confiding his horse and gig to the care of one of the fourteen boys who
had followed him from the other side of Blackfriars-bridge on the chance
of his requiring their services, Mr. Gabriel Parsons crossed the road and
knocked at an inner door, the upper part of which was of glass, grated
like the windows of this inviting mansion with iron bars--painted white
to look comfortable.

The knock was answered by a sallow-faced, red-haired, sulky boy, who,
after surveying Mr. Gabriel Parsons through the glass, applied a large
key to an immense wooden excrescence, which was in reality a lock, but
which, taken in conjunction with the iron nails with which the panels
were studded, gave the door the appearance of being subject to warts.

'I want to see Mr. Watkins Tottle,' said Parsons.

'It's the gentleman that come in this morning, Jem,' screamed a voice
from the top of the kitchen-stairs, which belonged to a dirty woman who
had just brought her chin to a level with the passage-floor. 'The
gentleman's in the coffee-room.'

'Up-stairs, sir,' said the boy, just opening the door wide enough to let
Parsons in without squeezing him, and double-locking it the moment he had
made his way through the aperture--'First floor--