hion used by clerks, perched on tall, slim
legs, and companioned by a tall, slim stool. On a table before the fire
were scattered the remains of the nightly meal,--broiled bones, the
skeleton of a herring; and the steam rose from a tumbler containing a
liquid colourless as water, but poisonous as gin.

The room was squalid and dirty, and bespoke mean and slovenly habits;
but it did not bespeak penury and want, it had even an air of filthy
comfort of its own,--the comfort of the swine in its warm sty. The
occupant of the chamber was in keeping with the localities. Figure to
yourself a man of middle height, not thin, but void of all muscular
flesh,--bloated, puffed, unwholesome. He was dressed in a gray-flannel
gown and short breeches, the stockings wrinkled and distained, the feet
in slippers. The stomach was that of a portly man, the legs were those
of a skeleton; the cheeks full and swollen, like a ploughboy's, but
livid, bespeckled, of a dull lead-colour, like a patient in the dropsy.
The head, covered in patches with thin, yellowish hair, gave some
promise of intellect, for the forehead was high, and appeared still more
so from partial baldness; the eyes, embedded in fat and wrinkled skin,
were small and lustreless, but they still had that acute look which
education and ability communicate to the human orb; the mouth most
showed the animal,--full-lipped, coarse, and sensual; while behind one
of two great ears stuck a pen.

You see before you, then, this slatternly figure,--slipshod,
half-clothed, with a sort of shabby demi-gentility about it, half
ragamuffin, half clerk; while in strong contrast appeared the new-comer,
scrupulously neat, new, with bright black-satin stock, coat cut jauntily
to the waist, varnished boots, kid gloves, and trim mustache.

Behind this sleek and comely personage, on knock-knees, in torn shirt
open at the throat, with apathetic, listless, unlighted face, stood the
lean and gawky Beck.

"Set a chair for the gentleman," said the inmate of the chamber to Beck,
with a dignified wave of the hand.

"How do you do, Mr.--Mr.--humph--Jason? How do you do? Always smart and
blooming; the world thrives with you."

"The world is a farm that thrives with all who till it properly,
Grabman," answered Jason, dryly; and with his handkerchief he carefully
dusted the chair, on which he then daintily deposited his person.

"But who is your Ganymede, your valet, your gentleman-usher?"

"Oh, a lad about