o visit Micawber, who not so many years later was to act as
the proud amanuensis of his son.

The next morning after I first met Bobby he was off duty. I met him by
appointment at the Three Jolly Beggars (a place pernicious snug). He was
dressed in a fashionable, light-colored suit, the coat a trifle short,
and a high silk hat. His large, red neckscarf--set off by his bright,
brick-dust complexion--caused me to mistake him at first for a friend of
mine who drives a Holborn bus.

Mr. 'Awkins (for it was he) greeted me cordially, pulled gently at his
neck-whiskers, and, when he addressed me as Me Lud, the barmaid served us
with much alacrity and things.

We went first to the church of Saint George; then we found Angel Court
leading to Bermondsey, also Marshalsea Place. Here is the site of the
prison, where the crowded ghosts of misery still hover; but small trace
could we find of the prison itself, neither did we see the ghosts. We,
however, saw a very pretty barmaid at the public in Angel Court. I think
she is still prettier than the one to whom Bobby introduced me at the
Sign of the Meat-Axe, which is saying a good deal. Angel Court is rightly
named.

The blacking-warehouse at Old Hungerford Stairs, Strand, in which Charles
Dickens was shown by Bob Fagin how to tie up the pots of paste, has
rotted down and been carted away. The coal-barges in the muddy river are
still there, just as they were when Charles, Poll Green and Bob Fagin
played on them during the dinner-hour. I saw Bob and several other boys,
grimy with blacking, chasing each other across the flatboats, but Dickens
was not there.

Down the river aways there is a crazy, old warehouse with a rotten wharf
of its own, abutting on the water when the tide is in, and on the mud
when the tide is out--the whole place literally overrun with rats that
scuffle and squeal on the moldy stairs. I asked Bobby if it could not be
that this was the blacking-factory; but he said, No, for this one allus
wuz.

Dickens found lodgings in Lant Street while his father was awaiting in
the Marshalsea for something to turn up. Bob Sawyer afterward had the
same quarters. When Sawyer invited Mr. Pickwick "and the other chaps" to
dine with him, he failed to give his number, so we can not locate the
house. But I found the street and saw a big, wooden Pickwick on wheels
standing as a sign for a tobacco-shop. The old gentleman who runs the
place, and runs the sign in every night, assured