cular
partiality for any particular line of business. It has been by turns a
print-shop, a stationer's, a circulating library, a toy-shop, a
Berlin-wool shop, a music and musical-instrument shop, a haberdasher's
shop, a snuff and cigar shop, and one other thing which has escaped
our memory--and all within the last seven years. Each retiring
speculator has left his stock-in-trade, along with the good-will, to
his successor; and at the present moment it is a combination of shops,
where everything you don't want is to be found in a state of
dilapidation, together with a very hungry-looking proprietor, who, for
want of customers upon whom to exercise his ingenuity, pulls away all
day long upon the accordion to the tune of _We're a' noddin'_. The
other end of Our Terrace has its butcher, its public-house, its
grocer, and a small furniture-shop, doing a small trade, under the
charge of a very small boy. Let thus much suffice for the physiology
of our subject. We proceed to record its history, as it may be read by
any one of the inhabitants who chooses to spend the waking hours of a
single day in perusing it from his parlour window.

It is a fine morning in the middle of June, and the clock of the
church at the end of the road is about striking seven, when the
parlour shutters and the street doors of the terrace begin to open one
by one. By a quarter past, the servant-girls, having lighted their
fires, and put the kettle on to boil for breakfast, are ostensibly
busy in sweeping the pathways of the small front-gardens, but are
actually enjoying a simultaneous gossip together over the garden
railings--a fleeting pleasure, which must be nipped in the bud,
because master goes to town at half-past eight, and his boots are not
yet cleaned, or his breakfast prepared. Now the bedroom-bell rings,
which means hot water; and this is no sooner up, than mistress is
down, and breakfast is laid in the parlour. At a quarter before eight,
the eggs are boiled, and the bacon toasted, and the first serious
business of the day is in course of transaction. Mr Jones of No. 9, Mr
Robinson of No. 10, and Mr Brown of No. 11, are bound to be at their
several posts in the city at nine o'clock; and having swallowed a
hasty breakfast, they may be seen, before half-past eight has chimed,
walking up and down the terrace chatting together, and wondering
whether 'that Smith,' as usual, means to keep the omnibus waiting this
morning, or whether he will come fo