ing-place in the Thames,
or a refuge in the gaol? They are no ordinary houses, those. There
is not a panel in the old wainscoting but what, if it were endowed
with the powers of speech and memory, could start from the wall and
tell its tale of horror--the romance of life, sir, the romance of
life! Commonplace as they may seem now, I tell you they are strange
old places, and I would rather hear many a legend with a
terrific-sounding name than the true history of one old set of
chambers."

There was something so odd in the old man's sudden energy, and the
subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick was prepared with
no observation in reply; and the old man checking his impetuosity, and
resuming the leer, which had disappeared during his previous
excitement, said,--

"Look at them in another light; their most common-place and least
romantic. What fine places of slow torture they are! Think of the
needy man who has spent his all, beggared himself and pinched his
friends to enter the profession, which will never yield him a morsel
of bread. The waiting--the hope--the disappointment--the fear--the
misery--the poverty--the blight on his hopes and end to his career--the
suicide, perhaps, or the shabby, slipshod drunkard. Am I not right
about them?" And the old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in
delight at having found another point of view in which to place his
favourite subject.

Mr. Pickwick eyed the old man with great curiosity, and the remainder
of the company smiled, and looked on in silence.

"Talk of your German universities," said the little old man. "Pooh!
pooh! there's romance enough at home without going half a mile for it;
only people never think of it.'"

"I never thought of the romance of this particular subject before,
certainly," said Mr. Pickwick, laughing.

"To be sure you didn't," said the little old man, "of course not. As
a friend of mine used to say to me, 'What is there in chambers in
particular?' 'Queer old places,' said I. 'Not at all,' said he.
'Lonely,' said I. 'Not a bit of it,' said he. He died one morning of
apoplexy, as he was going to open his outer door. Fell with his head
in his own letter-box, and there he lay for eighteen months. Everybody
thought he'd gone out of town.

"And how was he found out at last?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.

"The b