----. Jack keeps a perfumer's shop not a hundred
miles from Gray's Inn, where, ensconced up to his eyes in delicate odors,
he passes his leisure hours--the hours when commerce flags, and people have
more pressing affairs to attend to than the delectation of their
nostrils--in the enthusiastic study of art and _virtu_. His shop is hardly
more crammed with bottles and attar, soap, scents, and all the _et
ceteras_ of the toilet, than the rest of his house with prints, pictures,
carvings, and curiosities of every sort. Jack and I went to school
together, and sowed our slender crop of wild-oats together; and, indeed,
in some sort, have been together ever since. We both have our own
collections of rarities; such as they are, and each criticises the other's
new purchases. On the present occasion, there was a new Van Somebody's old
painting awaiting my judgment; and no sooner did my shadow darken his
door, than, starting from his lair, and bidding the boy ring the bell,
should he be wanted, he bustled me up-stairs calling by the way to his
housekeeper, Mrs. Jones--Jack is a bachelor--to bring up coffee for two. I
was prepared to pronounce my dictum on his newly-acquired treasure, and
was going to bounce unceremoniously into the old lumber-room over the
lobby to regale my sight with the delightful confusion of his unarranged
accumulations, when he pulled me forcibly back by the coat-tail. "Not
there," said Jack; "you can't go there. Go into my snuggery."

"And why not there?" said I, jealous of some new purchase which I was not
to see.

"Because there's some body ill there; it is a bed-room now; a poor girl;
she wanted a place to die in, poor thing, and I put her in there."

"Who is she?--a relative?"

"No; I never saw her till Monday last. Sit down, I'll tell you how it was.
Set down the coffee, Mrs. Jones, and just look in upon the patient, will
you? Sugar and cream? You know my weakness for the dead-wall in
Lincoln's-Inn-Fields." (Jack never refuses a beggar backed by that wall,
for the love of Ben Jonson, who, he devoutly believes, had a hand in
building it.) "Well, I met with her there on Monday last. She asked for
nothing, but held out her hand, and as she did so the tears streamed from
her eyes on the pavement. The poor creature, it was plain enough, was then
dying; and I told her so. She said she knew it, but had no place to die in
but the parish workhouse, and hoped that I would not send her there.
What's the use of