esirable.
Besides, his departure may be (nay, often is) extremely sudden. When in
quest of apartments, I have found tarnished cards in the windows
preferable. They imply a length of vacancy of the floor, and a consequent
relaxation of those narrow, worldly (some call them prudent) scruples,
which landladies are apt to nourish. Hints of a regular income, payable
four times a year, have their weight; nay, often convert weekly into
quarterly lodgings. Be sure there are no children in your house. They are
vociferous when you would enjoy domestic retirement, and inquisitive when
you take the air. Once (_horresco referens!_) on returning from my
peripatetics, I was accosted with brutally open-mouthed clamour, by my
landlady, who, dragging me in a state of bewilderment into her room,
pointed to numerous specimens of granite, which her "young people" had, in
their unhallowed thirst for knowledge, discovered and drawn from my trunk,
which, by some strange mischance, had been left unlocked! In vain I mumbled
something touching my love of mineralogy, and that a lapidary had offered I
knew not what for my collection. I was compelled to "bundle," as the
idiomatic, but ignorant woman expressed herself. To resume.

Let not the nervous or sensitive wit imagine that, in a vast metropolis
like London, his chance of securing an appropriate lodging and a confiding
landlady is at all doubtful. He might lodge safe from the past, certain of
the future, till the crash of doom. I shall be met by Ferguson's case.
Ferguson I knew well, and I respected him. But he had a most unfortunate
countenance. It was a very solemn, but by no means a solvent face; and yet
he had a manner with him too, and his language was choice, if not
persuasive. That the matter of his speech was plausible, none ever presumed
to deny. "It is all very well, Mr. Ferguson,"--_that_ was always conceded.
I do not wish to speak ill of the dead; but Ferguson never entered a
lodging without being compelled to pay a fortnight in advance, and always

[Illustration: EXPECTED TO BE OUT SHORTLY.]

3rd. _Of Good Dinners._--Wits, like other men, are distinguished by a
variety of tastes and inclinations. Some prefer dining at taverns and
eating-houses; others, more discreet or less daring, love the quiet
security of the private house, with its hospitable inmates, courteous
guests, and no possibility of "bill transactions." I confess when I was
young and inexperienced, wanting that wisdom