e season, and because I prefer London most when
I can walk about where there is nobody to interrupt me. In the season, I
am allowed to walk into every body's house, very often get an invite to
fill up an odd corner, and as there generally is an odd corner at every
party, and I do not stand at a short notice, I eat more good dinners
than most people. I am not a fool, and yet not too clever, so that
poised in that happy medium, I hear all, see all, know a great deal of
what is going on, and hold my tongue. When people inhabit their town
houses, I spend the whole day going from one to the other. I consider a
house the only safe part of the metropolis. Were I to frequent the
street during the season, I am so apt to fall into a brown study, that
I'm certain to be jostled until I am black and blue--I have found myself
calculating an arithmetical problem at a crossing, and have not been
aware of my danger until a pair of greys sixteen hands high in full trot
have snorted in my face--I am an idler by profession, live at a club,
sleep at chambers, and have just sufficient means to pay my way and
indulge my disposition. But I've not stated why I particularly like town
when it is empty. It is because I feel relieved of all the fashionable
et ceteras. By the time the season is over I am tired of dinners, of
wine, of the opera, the eternal announcement of visiters at parties and
balls, the music, the exotics, the suppers, the rattling of carriages,
and the rattling of tongues. I rejoice at last to find London _en
deshabille_--I can then do as I please without any fear of losing my
character as a fashionable man. I consider that I can in London extract
more amusement in a given quantity of ground than at any other place. A
street will occupy me for a whole day: with an indifferent coat, and
nothing but silver in my waistcoat pocket, I stop at every shop-window
and examine every thing. Should it so happen that the prices are affixed
to every article displayed, I make it a rule to read every one of them.
I know therefore when Urling's lace is remarkably cheap, the value of
most articles of millinery, the relative demands for boots, shoes, and
hats, and prices of 'reach-me-downs' at a ready-made warehouse. At a
pawn-broker's shop-window I have passed two or three hours very
agreeably in ascertaining the sums at which every variety of second-hand
goods are 'remarkably cheap,' from a large folio Bible as divinity,
flutes and flageolets as m