there," he thought, "be anything repellent
in myself?" But a candid examination in one of the pier-glasses of the
drawing-room led him to dismiss the fear.

Something, however, was amiss. His vast and accurate calculations on the
fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of playbills, appeared to have been
an idle sacrifice of time. By these, he had variously computed the weekly
takings of the house, from sums as modest as five-and-twenty-shillings, up
to the more majestic figure of a hundred pounds; and yet, in despite of
the very elements of arithmetic, here he was making literally nothing.

This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his thoughtful
leisure on the balcony; and at last it seemed to him that he had
detected the error of his method. "This," he reflected, "is an age of
generous display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of Pears'
legendary soap, and of Eno's fruit salt which, by sheer brass and
notoriety, and the most disgusting pictures I ever remember to have
seen, has overlaid that comforter of my childhood, Lamplough's pyretic
saline. Lamplough was genteel, Eno was omnipresent; Lamplough was trite,
Eno original and abominably vulgar; and here have I, a man of some
pretensions to knowledge of the world, contented myself with half a
sheet of note-paper, a few cold words which do not directly address the
imagination, and the adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four
red wafers! Am I, then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with Eno? Am
I to adopt that modesty which is doubtless becoming in a duke? or to
take hold of the red facts of life with the emphasis of the tradesman
and the poet?"

Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of the very
largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his paints, proceeded to
compose an ensign that might attract the eye and at the same time, in
his own phrase, directly address the imagination of the passenger.
Something taking in the way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words,
and a realistic design setting forth the life a lodger might expect to
lead within the walls of that palace of delight: these, he perceived,
must be the elements of his advertisement. It was possible, upon the one
hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire,
blond-headed urchins, and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was
possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to
set forth the charms of an exi