want; a forlorn
abandonment of every sort of pleasantness; what must it be to go in at
one of those doors? Matilda thought; and to live there?--the idea was
too disagreeable to dwell upon. Yet people lived there. What sort?
Dingy people, as far as Matilda could see; dirty people, and as
hopeless looking as the houses. It was not however a region of the
wretchedly poor through which her course lay; the windows were whole
and the roofs were decent; but it made the little girl's heart sick to
look at it all, and read the signs she could not read. Through street
after street of this general character the carriage went; narrow
streets, very full of mud and dirt; where the horses stepped round an
overturned basket of garbage in one place, and in another stopped for a
dray to get out of their path; where children looked as if their heads
were never brushed, and often the women looked as if their clothes were
never clean. Matilda could never _walk_ to see her sisters, that was
plain; she was glad nobody was in the carriage with her; and she was
much disappointed to see even a part of New York look like this.

In a street a little wider, a little cleaner, a shade or two more
respectable, the carriage stopped at last. It stopped, and Matilda got
out. Was this Bolivar street? But she looked and saw that 316 was the
number of the house. So she rang the bell.

It was the right place; and she was shewn into a parlour, where she had
to wait a little. It was respectable, and yet it oppressed all
Matilda's senses. The room was full of buckwheat cake smoke, to begin
with, which had filled it that morning and probably every morning of
the week, and was never encouraged, nor indeed had ever a chance, to
pass away. So each morning made its addition to the stock, till now
Matilda felt as if it could be almost seen as well as felt. It
certainly was in the carpet, the dingy old brown carpet, in which the
worn holes were too many and too evident to be hidden by rug or crumb
cloth or concealed by disposition of furniture. It wreathed the lamps
on the mantelpiece and the picture on the wall, which last represented
a very white monument with a very green willow tree drooping limp
tresses over it, and a lady in black pressing a white handkerchief to
her eyes. An old mahogany chest of drawers and a table with some books
on it did not help the effect; for the chest of drawers was out of
place, the cotton table cover was dingy and hung awry, and the