wife and children.
They sold everything in his house--all his smart furniture and neat
little stock of plate; his wardrobe and his linen, "the property of a
gentleman gone abroad;" his carriage by the best maker; and his wine
selected without regard to expense. His house was shut up as completely
as his opposite neighbor's; and a new tenant is just having it fresh
painted inside and out, as if poor Dixon had left an infection behind.
Kirby and his wife went across the water with the children and Mrs.
Fanny--she has a small settlement; and I am bound to say that our mutual
friend Miss Elizabeth C. went down with Mrs. Dixon in the fly to the
Tower Stairs, and stopped in Lombard Street by the way.
So it is that the world wags: that honest men and knaves alike are
always having ups and downs of fortune, and that we are perpetually
changing tenants in Our Street.
THE LION OF THE STREET.
What people can find in Clarence Bulbul, who has lately taken upon
himself the rank and dignity of Lion of Our Street, I have always been
at a loss to conjecture.
"He has written an Eastern book of considerable merit," Miss Clapperclaw
says; but hang it, has not everybody written an Eastern book? I should
like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up to the second
cataract. An Eastern book forsooth! My Lord Castleroyal has done one--an
honest one; my Lord Youngent another--an amusing one; my Lord Woolsey
another--a pious one; there is "The Cutlet and the Cabob"--a sentimental
one; "Timbuctoothen"--a humorous one, all ludicrously overrated, in my
opinion: not including my own little book, of which a copy or two is
still to be had, by the way.
Well, then, Clarence Bulbul, because he has made part of the little tour
that all of us know, comes back and gives himself airs, forsooth, and
howls as if he were just out of the great Libyan desert.
When we go and see him, that Irish Jew courier, whom I have before had
the honor to describe, looks up from the novel which he is reading
in the ante-room, and says, "Mon maitre est au divan," or, "Monsieur
trouvera Monsieur dans son serail," and relapses into the Comte de
Montecristo again.
Yes, the impudent wretch has actually a room in his apartments on the
ground-floor of his mother's house, which he calls his harem. When Lady
Betty Bulbul (they are of the Nightingale family) or Miss Blanche
comes down to visit him, their slippers are placed at the door, and he
receives the
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