ff
his hat with an air of reverence founded on conviction. His men cleanse
their fingers on their woollen aprons before presuming to touch their
foreheads to Mr Boffin or Lady. The gaping salmon and the golden mullet
lying on the slab seem to turn up their eyes sideways, as they would
turn up their hands if they had any, in worshipping admiration. The
butcher, though a portly and a prosperous man, doesn't know what to do
with himself; so anxious is he to express humility when discovered by
the passing Boffins taking the air in a mutton grove. Presents are made
to the Boffin servants, and bland strangers with business-cards
meeting said servants in the street, offer hypothetical corruption. As,
'Supposing I was to be favoured with an order from Mr Boffin, my dear
friend, it would be worth my while'--to do a certain thing that I hope
might not prove wholly disagreeable to your feelings.

But no one knows so well as the Secretary, who opens and reads the
letters, what a set is made at the man marked by a stroke of notoriety.
Oh the varieties of dust for ocular use, offered in exchange for the
gold dust of the Golden Dustman! Fifty-seven churches to be erected with
half-crowns, forty-two parsonage houses to be repaired with shillings,
seven-and-twenty organs to be built with halfpence, twelve hundred
children to be brought up on postage stamps. Not that a half-crown,
shilling, halfpenny, or postage stamp, would be particularly acceptable
from Mr Boffin, but that it is so obvious he is the man to make up the
deficiency. And then the charities, my Christian brother! And mostly in
difficulties, yet mostly lavish, too, in the expensive articles of print
and paper. Large fat private double letter, sealed with ducal coronet.
'Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire. My Dear Sir,--Having consented to preside
at the forthcoming Annual Dinner of the Family Party Fund, and feeling
deeply impressed with the immense usefulness of that noble Institution
and the great importance of its being supported by a List of Stewards
that shall prove to the public the interest taken in it by popular and
distinguished men, I have undertaken to ask you to become a Steward on
that occasion. Soliciting your favourable reply before the 14th instant,
I am, My Dear Sir, Your faithful Servant, LINSEED. P.S. The Steward's
fee is limited to three Guineas.' Friendly this, on the part of the Duke
of Linseed (and thoughtful in the postscript), only lithographed by
the hundre