is not altogether deceitful, of your own house.

The theory is admirable, but I think the system is in decay, though to
say this is something like accusing the stability of the Constitution.
Very likely if some American ghost were to revisit a well-known London
street a hundred years from now, he would find it still with the legend
of "Apartments" in every transom; and it must not be supposed that
lodgings have by any means fallen wholly to the middle, much less the
lower middle, classes. In one place there was a marquis overhead; in
another there was a lordship of unascertained degree, who was heard on a
court night being got ready by his valet and the landlord's whole force,
and then marking his descent to his cab by the clanking of his sword
upon the stairs, after which the joint service spent a good part of the
night in celebrating the event at a banquet in the basement. At two
lodgings in a most unpretentious street, it was the landlords' boast
that a royal princess had taken tea with their tenants, who were of the
quality to be rightfully taken tea with by a royal princess; and at
certain hours of the afternoon during the season it was not uncommon to
see noble equipages standing at the doors of certain apartments with a
full equipment of coachmen and footmen, and ladies of unmistakable
fashion ascending and descending by the carriage-steps like the angels
on Jacob's ladder. It could be surmised that they were visiting poor
relations, or modest merit of some sort, but it was not necessary to
suppose this, and upon the whole I prefer not.

The search for lodgings, which began before the season was conscious of
itself, was its own reward in the pleasures it yielded to the student of
human nature and the lover of mild adventure. The belief in lodgings was
a survival from an age of faith, when in the early eighteen-eighties
they seemed the most commodious and desirable refuge to the outwandering