It is
hotel, boarding-house, or lodging-house, at its visitor's option.
It announces itself, in the new Railway Advertisers, as a novel
enterprise, timidly beginning to spring up. It bashfully, almost
apologetically, gives the traveller to understand that it does not
expect him, on the good old constitutional hotel plan, to order a
pint of sweet blacking for his drinking, and throw it away; but
insinuates that he may have his boots blacked instead of his
stomach, and maybe also have bed, breakfast, attendance, and a
porter up all night, for a certain fixed charge. From these and
similar premises, many true Britons in the lowest spirits deduce
that the times are levelling times, except in the article of high
roads, of which there will shortly be not one in England.
He eats without appetite, and soon goes forth again. Eastward and
still eastward through the stale streets he takes his way, until he
reaches his destination: a miserable court, specially miserable
among many such.
He ascends a broken staircase, opens a door, looks into a dark
stifling room, and says: 'Are you alone here?'
'Alone, deary; worse luck for me, and better for you,' replies a
croaking voice. 'Come in, come in, whoever you be: I can't see
you till I light a match, yet I seem to know the sound of your
speaking. I'm acquainted with you, ain't I?'
'Light your match, and try.'
'So I will, deary, so I will; but my hand that shakes, as I can't
lay it on a match all in a moment.
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