Price Ten Cents. CHARLES DICKENS'S NEW CHKISTMAS STORY. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS. I. HOW MES. LlRRIPER CARRIED ON THE BUSINESS. II. How THE FIRST FLOOR WENT TO CROWLET CASTLE. III. HOW THE SlDE-EoOM WAS ATTENDED BY A DOCTOR. IV. How THE SECOND FLOOR KEPT A DOG. V. How THE THIRD FLOOR KNEW THE POTTERIES. VI. How THE BEST ATTIC WAS UNDER A CLOUD. VII. How THE PARLOURS ADDED A FEW WORDS. NEW YOKK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FKANKLIN SQUARE. 1863. LffiRIPER'S LODGINGS. i. HOW MBS. LIRRIPER CARRIED OS THE BUSINESS. WHOEVER would begin to be worried with letting Lodgings that wasn't a lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me my dear, excuse the familiarity but it comes natural to me in my own little room when wishing to open my mind to those that I can trust and I should be truly thankful if they were all man- kind but such is not so, for have but a Furnished bill in the window and your watch on the man- tlepiece and farewell to it if you turn your back for but a second however gentlemanly the man- ners, nor is being of your own s^x any safe- guard as I have reason in the form of sugar- tongs to know, for that lady (and a fine woman she was) got me to run for a glass of water on the plea of going to be confined, which certainly turned out true but it was in the Station-House. Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand situated midway between the City and St. James's and within five minutes' walk of the principal places of public amusement is my address. I have rented this house many years as the parish rate-books will testify and" I could wish my landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself, but no bless you not a half a pound of paint to save his life nor so much my dear as a tile upon the roof though on your bended knees. My dear you never have found Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand advertised in Bradshaw's Railway Guide and with the blessing of Heaven you never will or shall so find it. Some there" are who do not think it lowering themselves to make their names that cheap and even going the lengths of a portrait of the house not like it with a blot in every window and a coach and four at the door, but what will suit Wozen- ham's lower down on the other side of the way will not suit me, Miss Wozenham having her opinions and me having mine, though when it comes to systematic underbidding capable of being proved on oath in a court of justice and taking the form of " If Mrs. Lirriper names eighteen shillings a week, I name fifteen and six" it then comes to a settlement between your- self and your conscience supposing for the sake of argument your name to be Wozenham which I am well aware it is not or my opinion of you would be greatly lowered, and as to airy bed- rooms and a night-porter in constant attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms being stuffy and the porter stuff. It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirriper got married at St. Clement's Danes where I now have a sitting in a very pleasant pew with genteel company and my own hassock and being partial to evening service not too crowded. My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument made of hon- ey and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being in the commercial traveling line and trav- eling what he called a limekiln road "a drv road, Emma my dear," my poor Lirriper says to me "where I have to lay the dust with one drink or another all day long and half the night, and it wears me Emma" and this led to his running through a good deal and might have run through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that never would stand still for a single instant set off, but for its being night and the gate shut and consequently took his wheel my poor Lirriper and the gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a handsome figure of a man and a man with a jovial heart and a sweet temper, but if they had come up then they never could have given you the mellowness of his voice, and indeed I consider photographs wanting in mellowness as a general rule and making you look like a new-ploughed field. My poor Lirriper being behindhand with the world and being buried at Hatficld church in Hertfordshire, not that it was his native place hut that he had a liking for the Salisbury Arms where we went upon our wedding-day and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was, I went round to the creditors and I says "Gentlemen I am acquainted with the fact that I am not an- swerable for my late husband's debts but I wish to pay them for I am his lawful wife and his good name is dear to me. I am going into the Lodgings gentlemen as a business and if I | prosjjer every farthing that my late^busband owed shall be paid for the sake of trie love I bore him, by this right hand." It took a long time to do but it was done, and the silver cream-jug which is between ourselves and the bed and the mattress in my room tip-stairs (or it would have found legs so sure as ever the Fur- nished bill was up) being presented by the gen- tlemen engraved "To Mrs. Lirriper a mark of grateful respect for her honourable conduct" gave me a turn which was too much for my feelings, till Mr. Betley which at that time had the parlours and loved his joke says " Cheer up Mrs. Lirriper, you should feel as if it was only your christening and they were your godfathers and godmothers which did promise for you." And it brought me round, and I don't mind" con- fessing to you my dear that I then put a sand- wich and a drop of sherry in a little basket and went down to Hatfield churchyard outside the coach and kissed my hand and laid it with a kind of a proud and swelling love on my hus- band's grave, though bless you it had taken me so long to clear his name that my wedding ring MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS. was worn quite fine and smooth when I laid it on the green green waving gni>s. I am an old woman now and my good looks are gone but that's me my dear over the plate- warmer and considered like in the times when you used to pay two guineas on ivory and took your chance pretty much how you came out, which made you very careful how you left it about afterwards because people were turned so red and uncomfortable by mostly guessing it was somebody else quite different, and there was ouce a certain person that had put his money in a hop business that came in one morning to pay his rent and his respects being the second floor that would have taken it down from its hook and put it in his breast pocket you understand my dear for the L, he says, of the original only there was no mellowness in his voice and I wouldn't let him, but his opinion of it you may gather from his saying to it " Speak to me Emma!" which was far from a rational obser- vation no doubt but slill a tribute to its being a likeness, and I think myself it was like me when I was young and wore that sort of stays. But it was about the Lodgings that I was in- tending to hold forth and certainly I ought to know something of the business having been in it so long, for it was early in the second year of my married life that I lost my poorLirriper and I set up at Islington directly afterwards and aft- erwards came here, being two houses and eight and thirty years and some losses and a deal of experience. Girls are your first trial after fixtures and they try you even worse than what I call the Wandering Christians, though why they should roam the earth looking for bills and then com- ing in and viewing the apartments and stickling about terms and never at all wanting them or dreaming of taking them being already provided, is a mystery I should be thankful to have ex- plained if by any miracle it could be. It's won- derful they live so long and thrive so on it but I suppose the exercise makes it healthy, knocking so much and going from house to house and up and down stairs all day, and then their pretend- ing to be so particular and punctual is a most astonishing thing, looking at their watches and saying "Could you give me the refusal of the rooms till twenty minutes past eleven the day after to-morrow in the forenoon, and supposing it to be considered essential by my friend from the country could there be a small iron bedstead put in the little room upon the stairs?" Win- when I was new to it my dear I used to con- sider before I promised and to make my mind anxious with calculations and to get quite wea- ried out with disappointments, but now I says "Certainly by all means" well knowing it's'a Wandering Christian and I shall hear no more about it, indeed by this time I know most of the Wandering Christians by sight as well as they know me, it being the habit of each individual revolving round London in that capacity to come back about twice a year, and it's very re- markable that it runs in families, and the chil- dren grow up to it, but even were it otherwise I should no sooner hear of the friend from the country which is a certain sign that I should nod and say to myself You're a Wandering Chris- tian, though whether they are (as I have heard) persons of small property with a taste for regu- lar employment and frequent change of scene I cannot undertake to tell you. Girls as I was beginning to remark are one of your first and your lasting troubles, being like your teeth which begin with convulsions and never cease tormenting you from the time you cut them till they cut you, and then you don't want to part with them which seems hard but we must all succumb or buy artificial, and even where you get a will nine times out of ten you'll get a dirty face with it, and naturally lodgers do not like good society to be shown in with a smear of black across the nose or a smudgy eyebrow. Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a house half starved poor thing, a girl so willing that I called her Willing Sophy down upon her knees scrubbing early and late and ever cheerful but always smiling with a black face. And I says to Sophy "Now Sophy my good girl have a regular day for your stoves and keep the width of the Airy between yourself and the blacking and do not brush your hair with the bottoms of the saucepans and do not meddle with the snuffs of the candles and it stands to reason that it can no longer be" yet there it was and always on her nose, which turning up and being broad at the end seemed to boast of it and caused warn- ing from a steady gentleman and excellent lodger with breakfast by the week but a little irritable and use of a sitting-i*oom when re- quired, his words being "Mrs. Lirriper I have arrived at the point of admitting that the Black is a man and a brother, but only in a natural form and when it can't be got off." Well con- sequently I put poor Sophy on to other work and forbid her answering the door or answering a bell on any account but she was so unfortu- nately willing that nothing would stop her fly- ing up the kitchen stairs whenever a bell was heard to tingle. I put it to her "Oh Sophy Sophy for goodness goodness sake where does it come from ?" To which that poor unlucky will- ing mortal bursting out crying to see me so vexed replied "I took a deal of black into me ma'am when I was a small child being much neglected and I think it must be, that it works out," so it continuing to work out of that poor thing anen corner window on the second and me at my open corner window Oho other corner) on the third. Something merciful, some- thing wiser and better far than my own self, had moved me while it was yet light to sit in my bonnet and shawl, and as the shadows fell and the tide rose I could sometimes when I put out my head and looked at her window below see that she leaned out a little looking down the street. It was just settling dark when I saw her in the street. So fearful of losing sight of her that it almost stops my breath while I tell it, I went down stairs faster than I ever moved in all my life and only tapped with my hand at the Major's door in passing it and slipping out. She was gone already. I made the same speed down the street and when I came to the comer of Howard- street I saw that she had turned it and was there plain befo're me going towards the west. O with what a thankful heart I saw her going along ! She was quite unacquainted with London and had very seldom been out for more than an air- ing in our own street where she knew two or three little children belonging to neighbours and had sometimes stood among them at the end of the street looking at the water. She must be going at hazard I knew, still she kept the by- streets quite correctly as long as they would serve her, and then turned up into the Strand. But at every comer I could see her head turned one way, and that way was always the river way. It may have been only the darkness and quiet of the Adelphi that caused her to strike into it but she struck into it much as readily as if she had set out to go there, which perhaps was the case. She went straight down to the Terrace and along it and looked over the iron rail, and I often woke afterwards in my own bed with the horror of seeing her doing it. The desertion of the wharf below and the flowing of the high wa- ter there seemed to settle her purpose. She look- ed about as if to make out the way down, and she struck out the right way or the wrong way I don't know which, for I don't know the place before or since and I followed her the way she went. ' It was noticeable that all this time she never once looked back. But there was now a great change in the manner of her going, and instead of going at a steady quick walk with her arms folded before her,- among the dark dismal arch- es she went in a wild way with her arms opened wide, as if they were wings and she was flying to her death. We were on the wharf and she stopped. I stopped. I saw her hands at her bonnet-strings, and I rushed between her and the brink and took her round the waist with both my arms. She might have drowned me, I felt then, but she could never have got quit of me. Down to that moment my mind had been all in a maze and not half an idea had I had in it what I should say to her, but the instant I touch- ed her it came to me like magic and I had un- natural voice and my senses and even almost my breath. ' ' Mrs. Edson ! " I says ' ' My dear ! Take rare. How ever did you lose your way nn