garbage in the gutters, under cover of
the night, and in violation of the city ordinance. A highly-perfumed
atmosphere surrounds this delightful abode, for the first floor
thereof is occupied as a livery stable, which constantly exhales
those sweet and pungent odors peculiar to equine habitations.

Pulling the sticky bell-handle with as dainty a touch as
possible, the Individual was admitted by a slatternly weak-eyed
girl of about eighteen, with her hair and dress as tumbled as
though she had just been run through a corn-shelling machine, and
who was so unnecessarily dirty that even her face had not been
washed. She was further distinguished by a wart on her nose of
such shape and dimensions that it gave her face the appearance of
being fortified by a many-sided fort, which commanded the whole
countenance.

This interesting young female welcomed her visitor with a clammy
"Come in," and led the way up stairs, he following, in due dread
of being for ever extinguished by an avalanche of unwashed
keelers and kettles, which were unsteadily piled up on the
landing, and which an incautious touch would have toppled over,
and deluged the stairs with unknown sweet-smelling compounds,
whose legitimate destination was the sewer. On the second floor,
directly, judging from the noise, over the stall of the balkiest
horse in the stable below, is the room of the Madame.

The customer took an observation:

The furnishings of the apartment showed an attempt to keep up a
show, which was by far too miserably transparent to hide the
slovenliness which peeped out everywhere through the tawdry
gilding. There were so many oil paintings on the walls, in such
gaudy frames, that it seemed as if the room had been dipped into
a bath of cheap auction pictures, and hadn't been wiped dry, or
had been out in a shower of them, and hadn't come in until it had
got very wet. A broad gilt window cornice stood leaning in the
corner of the room, instead of being in its legitimate place; a
pair of lace curtains were wadded up and thrown in a chair, while
the windows were covered with the commonest painted muslin
shades; a piano-stool stood in the middle of the room, but there
was no piano.

These were the indications of "better days;" these were the
shallow traps set to inveigle the beholder into a belief in the
opulence of the occupants of this charming residence.

But the little cooking-stove, on which two smoothing irons were
heating, the scraps o