On the same landing where Timmis (as he termed it) 'held out,' were five
or six closets nick-named offices, and three other boys. One was the
nephew of the before-mentioned Wallis, and a very imp of mischief;
another, only a boy, with nothing remarkable but his stupidity; while the
fourth was a scrubby, stunted, fellow, about sixteen or seventeen years
of age, with a long pale face, deeply pitted with the small-pox, and an
irregular crop of light hair, most unscientifically cut into tufts.

He, by reason of his seniority and his gravity, soon became the oracle of
the party. We usually found him seated on the stairs of the first floor,
lost in the perusal of some ragged book of the marvellous school--scraps
of which he used to read aloud to us, with more unction than propriety,
indulging rather too much in the note of admiration style; for which he
soon obtained the name of Old Emphatic!--But I must confess we did obtain
a great deal of information from his select reading, and were tolerably
good listeners too, notwithstanding his peculiar delivery, for somehow he
appeared to have a permanent cold in his head, which sometimes threw a
tone of irresistible ridicule into his most pathetic bits.

He bore the scriptural name of Matthew and was, as he informed us, a
'horphan'--adding, with a particular pathos, 'without father or mother!'
His melancholy was, I think, rather attributable to bile than
destitution, which he superinduced by feeding almost entirely on
'second-hand pastry,' purchased from the little Jew-boys, who hawk about
their 'tempting' trash in the vicinity of the Bank.

Matthew, like other youths of a poetical temperament, from Petrarch down
to Lord Byron, had a 'passion.'