bristling thicket of chairs and table legs, to be
approached only on hands and knees after divers rappings. And back there
in the dark were strange boxes--strange boxes, stout and securely nailed.
But the garret has gone.

Whither have the pirates fled? Maybe some rumor of the great change
reached them in their fastnesses; and then in the light of early dawn, in
single file they climbed the ladder, up through the scuttle. And
straddling the ridgepole with daggers between their teeth, alas, they
became dizzy and toppled down the steep shingles to the gutter, to be
whirled away in the torrent of an April shower. Ah me! Had only the roof
been flat! Then it would have been for them a reservation where they might
have lived on and waited for the sound of children's feet to come again.
Then when those feet had come and the old life had returned, then from
aloft you would hear the old cry of Ship-ahoy, and you would know that at
last your house had again slipped its moorings and was off to Madagascar
or the Straits.

Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,
Wary of the weather and steering by a star?
Shall it be to Africa, asteering of the boat,
To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?

So a roof must be more than a cover. The roof of a boat, its deck, is
arranged for occupation and is its best part. Consider the omnibus! Even
it has seats on top, the best seats in fine weather. When Martin
Chuzzlewit went up to London it was on the _top_ of the coach he sat.
Pickwick betook himself, gaiters, small-clothes, and all, to the roof.
Even the immaculate Rollo scorned the inside seats. He sat on top, you may
remember, and sucked oranges to ward off malaria, he and that prince of
roisterers, Uncle George. De Quincey is the authority on mail coaches and
for the roof seats he is all fire and enthusiasm. It happened once, to
continue with De Quincey, that a state coach was presented by His Majesty
George the Third of England, as a gift to the Chinese Emperor. This kind
of vehicle being unknown in Peking, "it became necessary to call a cabinet
council on the grand state question, 'Where was the Emperor to sit?' The
hammer cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; and partly on that
consideration, but partly also because the box offered the most elevated
seat, was nearest the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved
by acclamation that the box was the Imperial throne, and for the scoundrel
who drove, h