enough to be confidential. 'Beggin' your pardon, sir, but the
genelman next door sir, seems to be gettin' quite comfortable and
pleasant about the chimley.'--'I don't think he is, Topping.'--'Yes he
is sir I think. He comes out in the yard this morning and says,
_Coachman_ he says' (observe the vision of a great large fat man called
up by the word) _is that your raven_ he says, _Coachman? or is it Mr.
Dickens's raven?_ he says. My master's sir, I says. Well, he says, It's
a fine bird. _I think the chimley 'ill do now Coachman,--now the jint's
taken off the pipe_ he says. I hope it will sir, I says; my master's a
genelman as wouldn't annoy no genelman if he could help it, I'm sure;
and my missis is so afraid of havin' a bit o' fire that o' Sundays our
little bit o' weal or wot not, goes to the baker's a purpose.--_Damn the
chimley, Coachman_, he says, _it's a smokin' now_.--It ain't a smokin'
your way sir, I says; Well he says _no more it is, Coachman, and as long
as it smokes anybody else's way, it's all right and I'm agreeable_.' Of
course I shall now have the man from the other side upon me, and very
likely with an action of nuisance for smoking into his conservatory."

A graver incident, which occurred to him also among his earliest
experiences as tenant of Devonshire Terrace, illustrates too well the
always practical turn of his kindness and humanity not to deserve
relation here. He has himself described it in one of his minor writings,
in setting down what he remembered as the only good that ever came of a
beadle. Of that great parish functionary, he says, "having newly taken
the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan parish, a
house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class family
mansion involving awful responsibilities, I became the prey." In other
words, he was summoned, and obliged to sit, as juryman at an inquest on
the body of a little child alleged to have been murdered by its mother;
of which the result was, that, by his persevering exertion, seconded by
the humane help of the coroner, Mr. Wakley, the verdict of himself and
his fellow-jurymen charged her only with concealment of the birth. "The
poor desolate creature dropped upon her knees before us with
protestations that we were right (protestations among the most affecting
that I have ever heard in my life), and was carried away insensible. I
caused some extra care to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to
be reta