of the street jerking at their cap brims, the men of the clubs lifting their hats

a wonder

ful, illuminating, and always-to-be-remembered object-lesson.

And then came the shock and with it the other lesson. At that same hour of the afternoon - within half a dozen blocks of where I sata band of assorted women carrying the banner of their cause, in an attempt to harangue a crowd, were set upon by the mob and barely rescued by the police, their clothes almost torn from their backs.

The two incidents afford food for thought; they also point a moral. But - and here 1 restrain myself - they cannot very well adorn a tale. Neither Emily's nor this one of my own, which must concern itself wholly with the genius of a great writer.

CHAPTER VIII

COVENT GARDEN MARKET, ONE OF THE HAUNTS OF TOM PINCH AND HIS SISTER RUTH; LITTLE DORRIT; MISS WREN, AND THE "BAD CHILD," AS DESCRIBED IN "OUR MUTUAL FRIEND"

ONE

NE must be up bright and early to enjoy.
Covent Garden Market.

At five o'clock, the open space surrounding the stalls fronting St. Paul's is almost impassable, so thickly massed are the carts and wagons. At eight o'clock one can get through with a little patience and the assistance of the police; at ten o'clock you can drive along at a trot; at noon the wide highway is swept clean, with here and there a van backed up to the sidewalk reloading the unsold truck.

I had, the year before, in seeking shelter from a driving rain, opened my stool and set up my easel under the portico of St. Paul's Church and from this coign of vantage had caught the vista ending in the Sporting Club known in Mr. Thackeray's time as Evan's Chop House, in

which he read the last chapter of "The Newcomes" to Mr. Lowell and cried over the colonel's death.

To-day, a June sun making it possible for me to get a wider range, I had with the permission of a gold-laced and bebuttoned porter (2 shillings and 6) placed my stool on the top step of the club's entrance, my back braced this time against a panel framing the door.

I could now see over the heads of the crowd which was rapidly thinning out - too rapidly, for the carts in my foreground were disappearing one after another, uncovering a space far too open for effective composition in black and white. So I hired a grocer's wagon to stand still, one with supplies for the club. I began negotiations by suggesting that it was about feeding time for man and beast; that my sketch would finish in half an hour; that the Bobby (I had, as usual, made friends with the authorities before I started to work) would take care that no one raided his stock; and wound up by stating that I had the price of a beer, with the necessary additions—either a chop or a dish of tripe at his good pleasure - somewhere about my clothes, if I could find it and I could. All of which worked like a charm, no one of us being better pleased than the rick

ΙΟΙ

ety, knock-kneed, spiral-spring-fed beast rooting for the last grain of oats hidden away in the bottom of his nose-bag.

With a strong dark now against my strongest light, I could indicate space and aerial perspective. I could also bring into their proper plane the rows of stalls fringing the market buildings from which Tom Pinch and his sister Ruth bought their vegetables when the two went to housekeeping.

"In most of these morning excursions Ruth accompanied him. As their landlord was always up and away at his business (whatever that might be, no one seemed to know) at a very early hour, the habits of the people of the house in which they lodged corresponded with their own. Thus, they had often finished their breakfast, and were out in the summer-air, by seven o'clock. After a two hours' stroll they parted at some convenient point: Tom going to the Temple, and his sister returning home, as methodically as you please.

"Many and many a pleasant stroll they had in Covent Garden Market: snuffing up the perfume of the fruits and flowers, wondering at the magnificence of the pine-apples and melons; catching glimpses down side avenues, of rows and rows of old women, seated on in

verted baskets shelling peas; looking unutterable things at the fat bundles of asparagus with which the dainty shops were fortified as with a breastwork; and, at the herbalists' doors, gratefully inhaling scents as of vealstuffing yet uncooked, dreamily mixed up with capsicums, brown-paper, seeds: even with hints of lusty snails and fine young curly leeches. Many and many a pleasant stroll they had among the poultry markets, where ducks and fowls, with necks unnaturally long, lay stretched out in pairs, ready for cooking; where there were speckled eggs in mossy baskets; white country sausages beyond impeachment by surviving cat or dog, or horse or donkey; new cheeses to any wild extent; live birds in coops and cages, looking much too big to be natural, in consequence of those receptacles being much too little; rabbits, alive and dead, innumerable. Many a pleasant stroll they had among the cool, refreshing, silvery fishstalls, with a kind of moonlight effect about their stock in trade, excepting always for the ruddy lobsters. Many a pleasant stroll among the waggon-loads of fragrant hay, beneath which dogs and tired waggoners lay fast asleep, oblivious of the pieman and the public house."