ing one, begin a fresh paragraph.

Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are a
walking book of fares, feeling ourselves, half bound, as it were, to be
always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular
watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be
almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that
district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind. We
take great interest in hackney-coaches, but we seldom drive, having a
knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as
great friends to horses, hackney-coach and otherwise, as the renowned Mr.
Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We keep no
horse, but a clothes-horse; enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of
mutton; and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the
hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of
depositing oneself upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach
stands we take our stand.

There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are
writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of
the class of vehicles to which we have alluded--a great, lumbering,
square concern of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with
very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented with
a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat, the
axletree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is
partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and
some extraordinary-looking clothes; and the straw, with which the canvas
cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of
the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The horses,
with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and
straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently
on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness; and
now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as
if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the
coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the
waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can
possibly go, is dancing the 'double shuffle,' in front of the pump, to
keep his feet warm.

The servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, op