arbour at the end, is the pretty dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale,
sickly-looking, black-haired man, the very model of sober industry.
There he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at night.
An earthquake would hardly stir him: the illumination did not. He stuck
immovably to his last, from the first lighting up, through the long
blaze and the slow decay, till his large solitary candle was the only
light in the place. One cannot conceive anything more perfect than the
contempt which the man of transparencies and the man of shoes must have
felt for each other on that evening. There was at least as much vanity
in the sturdy industry as in the strenuous idleness, for our shoemaker
is a man of substance; he employs three journeymen, two lame, and one
a dwarf, so that his shop looks like an hospital; he has purchased the
lease of his commodious dwelling, some even say that he has bought it
out and out; and he has only one pretty daughter, a light, delicate,
fair-haired girl of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and playfellow
of every brat under three years old, whom she jumps, dances, dandles,
and feeds all day long. A very attractive person is that child-loving
girl. I have never seen any one in her station who possessed so
thoroughly that undefinable charm, the lady-look. See her on a Sunday
in her simplicity and her white frock, and she might pass for an earl's
daughter. She likes flowers too, and has a profusion of white stocks
under her window, as pure and delicate as herself.

The first house on the opposite side of the way is the blacksmith's;
a gloomy dwelling, where the sun never seems to shine; dark and smoky
within and without, like a forge. The blacksmith is a high officer in
our little state, nothing less than a constable; but, alas! alas! when
tumults arise, and the constable is called for, he will commonly be
found in the thickest of the fray. Lucky would it be for his wife
and her eight children if there were no public-house in the land:
an inveterate inclination to enter those bewitching doors is Mr.
Constable's only fault.

Next to this official dwelling is a spruce brick tenement, red, high,
and narrow, boasting, one above another, three sash-windows, the only
sash-windows in the village, with a clematis on one side and a rose on
the other, tall and narrow like itself. That slender mansion has a fine,
genteel look. The little parlour seems made for Hogarth's old maid and
her stunted fo