and the windows were small, yet in the better parts,
nevertheless, handsome as well as massive and strong.

To the boy the great city was but a house of many rooms, all for his
use, his sport, his life. He did not know much of what lay within
the houses; but that only added the joy of mystery to possession:
they were jewel-closets, treasure-caves, indeed, with secret
fountains of life; and every street was a channel into which they
overflowed.

It was in one of quite a third-rate sort that the urchin at length
ceased his trot, and drew up at the door of a baker's shop--a
divided door, opening in the middle by a latch of bright brass. But
the child did not lift the latch--only raised himself on tiptoe by
the help of its handle, to look through the upper half of the door,
which was of glass, into the beautiful shop. The floor was of
flags, fresh sanded; the counter was of deal, scrubbed as white
almost as flour; on the shelves were heaped the loaves of the
morning's baking, along with a large store of scones and rolls and
baps--the last, the best bread in the world--biscuits hard and soft,
and those brown discs of delicate flaky piecrust, known as buns.
And the smell that came through the very glass, it seemed to the
child, was as that of the tree of life in the Paradise of which he
had never heard. But most enticing of all to the eyes of the little
wanderer of the street were the penny-loaves, hot smoking from the
oven--which fact is our first window into the ordered nature of the
child. For the main point which made them more attractive than all
the rest to him was, that sometimes he did have a penny, and that a
penny loaf was the largest thing that could be had for a penny in
the shop. So that, lawless as he looked, the desires of the child
were moderate, and his imagination wrought within the bounds of
reason. But no one who has never been blessed with only a penny to
spend and a mighty hunger behind it, can understand the interest
with which he stood there and through the glass watched the bread,
having no penny and only the hunger. There is at least one powerful
bond, though it may not always awake sympathy, between mudlark and
monarch--that of hunger. No one has yet written the poetry of
hunger--has built up in verse its stairs of grand ascent--from such
hunger as Gibbie's for a penny-loaf up--no, no, not to an alderman's
feast; that is the way down the mouldy cellar-stair--but up the
white marble scale