ry clothes upon; and there were two or three tea-chests out there, full
of earth, with forgotten plants in them, like old walking-sticks.
Whoever climbed to this observatory was stunned at first from having
knocked his head against the little door in coming out; and, after that,
was for the moment choked from having looked, perforce, straight down
the kitchen chimney; but these two stages over, there were things to
gaze at from the top of Todgers', well worth your seeing, too. For,
first and foremost, if the day were bright, you observed upon the
house-tops, stretching far away, a long dark path--the shadow of the
tall Monument which stands in memory of the great fire in London many
years before: and turning round, the Monument itself was close beside
you, with every hair erect upon his golden head, as if the doings of the
city frightened him. Then there were steeples, towers, belfries, shining
vanes and masts of ships, a very forest. Gables, house-tops,
garret-windows, wilderness upon wilderness. Smoke and noise enough for
all the world at once.

After the first glance, there were slight features in the midst of this
crowd of objects, which sprung out from the mass without any reason, as
it were, and took hold of the attention whether the spectator would or
no. Thus, the revolving chimney-pots on one great stack of buildings
seemed to be turning gravely to each other every now and then, and
whispering the result of their separate observation of what was going on
below. Others, of a crooked-back shape, appeared to be maliciously
holding themselves askew, that they might shut the prospect out and
baffle Todgers'. The man who was mending a pen at an upper window over
the way became of vast importance in the scene, and made a blank in it,
ridiculously large in its size, when he went away. The fluttering of a
piece of cloth upon the dyer's pole had far more interest for the moment
than all the changing motion of the crowd. Yet even while the looker-on
felt angry with himself for this, and wondered how it was the tumult
swelled into a roar; the hosts of objects seemed to thicken and expand a
hundredfold; and after gazing round him, quite scared, he turned into
Todgers' again, much more rapidly than he came out; and ten to one he
told M. Todgers afterwards that if he hadn't done so, he would certainly
have come into the street by the shortest cut: that is to say,
head-foremost.

So said the two Miss Pecksniffs, when they cam