tanks on
top.

One of these old mansions I saw had a fine copper roof that shone in the
sun like a monster Lake Superior agate. It stands a bit back from the
road, and on one great gatepost is a brass plate reading "Cardigan Hall,"
and on the other a sign, "No Admittance--Apply at the Office." So I
applied at the office, which is evidently the ancient lodge, and asked if
Mr. Cardigan was in. Four clerks perched on high stools, crouching over
big ledgers, dropped their pens and turning on their spiral seats looked
at me with staring eyes, and with mouths wide open. I repeated the
question and one of the quartette, a wheezy little old man in spectacles
and with whiskers on his neck, clambered down from his elevated position
and ambled over near, walking around me, eying me curiously.

"Go wan wi' yer wurruk, ye idlers!" he suddenly commanded the others. And
then he explained to me that Mr. Cardigan was not in, neither was Mr.
Jackson. In fact, Mr. Cardigan had not been in for a hundred years--being
dead. But if I wanted to look at goods I could be accommodated with
bargains fully five per cent below Lunnon market. The little old man was
in such serious earnest that I felt it would be a sin to continue a joke.
I explained that I was only a tourist in search of the picturesque, and
thereby did I drop ten points in the old man's estimation. But this did I
learn, that Lord Cardigan has won deathless fame by attaching his name to
a knit jacket, just as the name Jaeger will go clattering down the
corridors of time attached to a "combination suit."

This splendid old mansion was once the ancestral home of a branch of the
noble family of Cardigan. But things got somewhat shuffled, through too
many hot suppers up to London (being south), and stacks of reds and stacks
of blues were drawn in towards the dealer, and so the old mansion fell
under the hammer of the auctioneer. What an all-powerful thing is an
auctioneer's hammer! And now from the great parlors, and the library, and
the "hall," and the guest-chambers echo the rattle of spinning-jennies and
the dull booming of whirling pulleys. And above the song of whirring
wheels came the songs of girls at their work--voices that alone might have
been harsh and discordant, but blending with the monotone of the factory's
roar were really melodious.

"We cawn't keep the nasty things from singin'," said the old man
apologetically.

"Why should you?" I asked.

"Huh, mon! but they s