f
it. Upon the completion of all repairs and decorations, two great
waggon-loads of furniture, distinguished by that old fashioned
clumsiness which is eminently suggestive of respectability, arrived
from the Euston-square terminus, while a young man of meditative aspect
might have been seen on his knees, now in one empty chamber, anon in
another, performing some species of indoor surveying, with a three-foot
rule, a loose little oblong memorandum-book, and the merest stump of a
square lead-pencil. This was an emissary from the carpet warehouse; and
before nightfall it was known to more than one inhabitant in
Fitzgeorge-street that the stranger was going to lay down new carpets.
The new-comer was evidently of an active and energetic temperament, for
within three days of his arrival the brass-plate on his street-door
announced his profession, while a neat little glass-case, on a level
with the eye of the passing pedestrian, exhibited specimens of his
skill in mechanical dentistry, and afforded instruction and amusement
to the boys of the neighbourhood, who criticised the glistening white
teeth and impossibly red gums, displayed behind the plate-glass, with a
like vigour and freedom of language. Nor did Mr. Sheldon's announcement
of his profession confine itself to the brass-plate and the glass-case.
A shabby-genteel young man pervaded the neighbourhood for some days
after the surgeon-dentist's advent, knocking a postman's knock, which
only lacked the galvanic sharpness of the professional touch, and
delivering neatly-printed circulars to the effect that Mr. Sheldon,
surgeon-dentist, of 14 Fitzgeorge-street, had invented some novel
method of adjusting false teeth, incomparably superior to any existing
method, and that he had, further, patented an improvement on nature in
the way of coral gums, the name whereof was an unpronounceable compound
of Greek and Latin, calculated to awaken an awful reverence in the
unprofessional and unclassical mind.

The Fitzgeorgians shook their heads with prophetic solemnity as they
read these circulars. Struggling householders, who find it a hard task
to keep the two ends which never have met and never will meet from
growing farther and farther asunder every year, are apt to derive a
dreary kind of satisfaction from the contemplation of another man's
impending ruin. Fitzgeorge-street and its neighbourhood had existed
without the services of a dentist, but it was very doubtful that a
dentist