watering-place. . . . You may know it by its being always stopped up
with donkey chaises. Whenever you come here and see the harnessed
donkeys eating clover out of barrows drawn completely across a narrow
thoroughfare, you may be quite sure you are in our High Street"), with
villas standing in their own gardens, most of which are brightened by
summer flowers, notably the blue clematis (_Clematis Jackmani_) and by
those charming seaside evergreens the _Escallonia_ and the _Euonymus_.
As we near the sea, the shops become more numerous, and, on the
right-hand side, we have no difficulty in finding (although we heard it
had been altered considerably) the house "No. 12, High Street," in which
Dickens lived when he first visited Broadstairs. It is a plain little
dwelling of single front, with a small parlour looking into the street,
and has one story over--just the place that seems suited to the
financial position of the novelist when he was commencing life. The
house is now occupied by Mr. Bean, plumber and glazier, whose wife
courteously shows us over it, and into the back yard and little garden,
kindly giving us some pears from an old tree growing there, whereon we
speculate as to whether Dickens himself had ever enjoyed the fruit from
the same old tree. He appears to have lived in this house during his
visits in 1837 and 1838. We ask the good lady if she is aware that
Charles Dickens had formerly stayed in her house, and she replies in the
negative, so we recommend her to get her husband to put up a tablet
outside to the effect "Charles Dickens lived here, 1837," in imitation
of the example of the Society of Arts in Furnival's Inn. There can be no
doubt as to the identity of the house, for we take the precaution of
ascertaining that the numbers have not been altered.

Our efforts to discover "Lawn House," where Dickens stayed on his visits
from 1838 to 1848, are attended with some difficulty. First we are told
it lay this way, then that, and then the other; a smart villa in a new
road is pointed out to us as the object of our search, which we at once
reject, as being too recent. But we are patient and persevering,
feeling, with Mr. F.'s aunt, that "you can't make a head and brains out
of a brass knob with nothing in it. You couldn't do it when your Uncle
George was living; much less when he's dead!" Finally, we appeal to some
one who looks like the "oldest inhabitant," and obtain something like a
clue. We are eventually