MRS. LIRRIPER'S LEGACY


CHAPTER I--MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND WENT OVER


Ah! It's pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a little
palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting down, and
why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to
justify though I do not think they fully understand their trade and never
did, else why the sameness and why not more conveniences and fewer
draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too
thick I am well convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots
putting them on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing
what their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much,
except that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a
straight form or give it a twist before it goes there. And what I says
speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all manner of shapes
(there's a row of 'em at Miss Wozenham's lodging-house lower down on the
other side of the way) is that they only work your smoke into artificial
patterns for you before you swallow it and that I'd quite as soon swallow
mine plain, the flavour being the same, not to mention the conceit of
putting up signs on the top of your house to show the forms in which you
take your smoke into your inside.

Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy-chair in my own quiet
room in my own Lodging-House Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand
London situated midway between the City and St. James's--if anything is
where it used to be with these hotels calling themselves Limited but
called unlimited by Major Jackman rising up everywhere and rising up into