dor of his den, surrounded by dusty ormolu and piles of empty
bottles, firing pistols for his diversion at the mantel-piece until his
clients come in! Is pistol-practice so common in Northumberland Street,
that it passes without notice in the lodging-houses there?

We spake anon of good thoughts. About bad thoughts? Is there some
Northumberland Street chamber in your heart and mine, friend: close to
the every-day street of life visited by daily friends: visited by people
on business; in which affairs are transacted; jokes are uttered; wine is
drunk; through which people come and go; wives and children pass; and in
which murder sits unseen until the terrible moment when he rises up and
kills? A farmer, say, has a gun over the mantel-piece in his room where
he sits at his daily meals and rest: caressing his children, joking with
his friends, smoking his pipe in his calm. One night the gun is taken
down: the farmer goes out: and it is a murderer who comes back and puts
the piece up and drinks by that fireside. Was he a murderer yesterday
when he was tossing the baby on his knee, and when his hands were
playing with his little girl's yellow hair? Yesterday there was no blood
on them at all: they were shaken by honest men: have done many a kind
act in their time very likely. He leans his head on one of them, the
wife comes in with her anxious looks of welcome, the children are
prattling as they did yesterday round the father's knee at the fire, and
Cain is sitting by the embers, and Abel lies dead on the moor. Think
of the gulf between now and yesterday. Oh, yesterday! Oh, the days when
those two loved each other and said their prayers side by side! He goes
to sleep, perhaps, and dreams that his brother is alive. Be true, O
dream! Let him live in dreams, and wake no more. Be undone, O crime,
O crime! But the sun rises: and the officers of conscience come: and
yonder lies the body on the moor. I happened to pass, and looked at the
Northumberland Street house the other day. A few loiterers were gazing
up at the dingy windows. A plain ordinary face of a house enough--and in
a chamber in it one man suddenly rose up, pistol in hand, to slaughter
another. Have you ever killed any one in your thoughts? Has your heart
compassed any man's death? In your mind, have you ever taken a brand
from the altar, and slain your brother? How many plain ordinary faces of
men do we look at, unknowing of murder behind those eyes? Lucky for you
and m