for anything they knew of the country; and walked
for some short distance along a busy street, bounded on one side by the
quays and shipping; and on the other by a long row of staring red-brick
storehouses and offices, ornamented with more black boards and white
letters, and more white boards and black letters, than Martin had ever
seen before, in fifty times the space. Presently they turned up a narrow
street, and presently into other narrow streets, until at last they
stopped before a house whereon was painted in great characters, 'ROWDY
JOURNAL.'

The colonel, who had walked the whole way with one hand in his breast,
his head occasionally wagging from side to side, and his hat thrown back
upon his ears, like a man who was oppressed to inconvenience by a sense
of his own greatness, led the way up a dark and dirty flight of stairs
into a room of similar character, all littered and bestrewn with odds
and ends of newspapers and other crumpled fragments, both in proof and
manuscript. Behind a mangy old writing-table in this apartment sat a
figure with a stump of a pen in its mouth and a great pair of scissors
in its right hand, clipping and slicing at a file of Rowdy Journals;
and it was such a laughable figure that Martin had some difficulty in
preserving his gravity, though conscious of the close observation of
Colonel Diver.

The individual who sat clipping and slicing as aforesaid at the Rowdy
Journals, was a small young gentleman of very juvenile appearance, and
unwholesomely pale in the face; partly, perhaps, from intense thought,
but partly, there is no doubt, from the excessive use of tobacco, which
he was at that moment chewing vigorously. He wore his shirt-collar
turned down over a black ribbon; and his lank hair, a fragile crop, was
not only smoothed and parted back from his brow, that none of the Poetry
of his aspect might be lost, but had, here and there, been grubbed up by
the roots; which accounted for his loftiest developments being somewhat
pimply. He had that order of nose on which the envy of mankind has
bestowed the appellation 'snub,' and it was very much turned up at the
end, as with a lofty scorn. Upon the upper lip of this young gentleman
were tokens of a sandy down; so very, very smooth and scant, that,
though encouraged to the utmost, it looked more like a recent trace of
gingerbread than the fair promise of a moustache; and this conjecture,
his apparently tender age went far to strengthen. He