table looks as if it would go over the instant anything was rested
on it. The grate is cheerless, the wall-paper hideous. The ceiling
appears to have had coffee spilt all over it, and the ornaments--well,
they are worse than the wallpaper.

There must surely be some special and secret manufactory for the
production of lodging-house ornaments. Precisely the same articles are
to be found at every lodging-house all over the kingdom, and they are
never seen anywhere else. There are the two--what do you call them? they
stand one at each end of the mantel-piece, where they are never safe,
and they are hung round with long triangular slips of glass that clank
against one another and make you nervous. In the commoner class of rooms
these works of art are supplemented by a couple of pieces of china which
might each be meant to represent a cow sitting upon its hind legs, or a
model of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, or a dog, or anything else
you like to fancy. Somewhere about the room you come across a
bilious-looking object, which at first you take to be a lump of dough
left about by one of the children, but which on scrutiny seems to
resemble an underdone cupid. This thing the landlady calls a statue.
Then there is a "sampler" worked by some idiot related to the family, a
picture of the "Huguenots," two or three Scripture texts, and a highly
framed and glazed certificate to the effect that the father has been
vaccinated, or is an Odd Fellow, or something of that sort.

You examine these various attractions and then dismally ask what the
rent is.

"That's rather a good deal," you say on hearing the figure.

"Well, to tell you the truth," answers the landlady with a sudden burst
of candor, "I've always had" (mentioning a sum a good deal in excess
of the first-named amount), "and before that I used to have" (a still
higher figure).

What the rent of apartments must have been twenty years ago makes one
shudder to think of. Every landlady makes you feel thoroughly ashamed of
yourself by informing you, whenever the subject crops up, that she used
to get twice as much for her rooms as you are paying. Young men lodgers
of the last generation must have been of a wealthier class than they are
now, or they must have ruined themselves. I should have had to live in
an attic.

Curious, that in lodgings the rule of life is reversed. The higher you
get up in the world the lower you come down in your lodgings. On
the lodging-house ladd