often misapplied expression, in reference to the
elegant mansion in Beverly Square on that raw November night.

CHAPTER TWO.

ANOTHER LITTLE "SPARK."

Whistling is a fine, free, manly description of music, which costs
little and expresses much.

In all its phases, whistling is an interesting subject of study; whether
we regard its aptitude for expressing personal independence,
recklessness, and jollity; its antiquity--having begun no doubt with
Adam--or its modes of production; as, when created grandly by the
whistling gale, or exasperatingly by the locomotive, or gushingly by the
lark, or sweetly by the little birds that "warble in the flowering
thorn."

The peculiar phase of this time-honoured music to which we wish to draw
the reader's attention at present, is that which was exemplified one
November night (the same November night of which mention has been made
in the previous chapter) by a small boy who, in his progress through the
streets of London, was arrested suddenly under the shadow of St. Paul's
by the bright glare and the tempting fare of a pastry-cook's window.

Being hungry, the small boy, thrusting his cold hands deep into his
empty trouser-pockets, turned his fat little face and round blue eyes
full on the window, and stared at the tarts and pies like a famishing
owl. Being poor--so poor that he possessed not the smallest coin of the
realm--he stared in vain; and, being light of heart as well as stout of
limb, he relieved his feelings by whistling at the food with
inexpressible energy.

The air selected by the young musician was Jim Crow--a sable melody high
in public favour at that time--the familiar strains of which he
delivered with shrill and tuneful precision, which intensified as he
continued to gaze, until they rose above the din of cabs, vans, and
'busses; above the house-tops, above the walls of the great cathedral,
and finally awakened the echoes of its roof, which, coming out, from the
crevices and cornices where they usually slept, went dancing upwards on
the dome, and played around the golden cross that glimmered like a ghost
in the dark wintry sky.

The music also awakened the interest of a tall policeman whose beat that
night chanced to be St. Paul's Churchyard. That sedate guardian of the
night, observing that the small boy slightly impeded the thoroughfare,
sauntered up to him, and just as he reached that point in the chorus
where Mr Crow is supposed to wheel and turn him