Such was the first public signification of my intentions; it was drawn
up by Mr. Sharpon, our lawyer, and considered by our friends as a
masterpiece: for, as my mother sagely observed, it did not commit me
in a single instance--espoused no principle, and yet professed what all
parties would allow was the best.

At the first house where I called, the proprietor was a clergyman of good
family, who had married a lady from Baker-street: of course the Reverend
Combermere St. Quintin and his wife valued themselves upon being
"genteel." I arrived at an unlucky moment; on entering the hall, a dirty
footboy was carrying a yellow-ware dish of potatoes into the back room.
Another Ganymede (a sort of footboy major), who opened the door, and who
was still settling himself into his coat, which he had slipped on at my
tintinnabulary summons, ushered me with a mouth full of bread and cheese
into this said back room. I gave up every thing as lost, when I entered,
and saw the lady helping her youngest child to some ineffable trash,
which I have since heard is called "blackberry pudding." Another of the
tribe was bawling out, with a loud, hungry tone--"A tatoe, pa!" The
father himself was carving for the little group, with a napkin stuffed
into the top button-hole of his waistcoat, and the mother, with a long
bib, plentifully bespattered with congealing gravy, and the nectarean
liquor of the "blackberry pudding," was sitting, with a sort of presiding
complacency, on a high stool, like Jupiter on Olympus, enjoying rather
than stilling the confused hubbub of the little domestic deities, who
eat, clattered, spattered, and squabbled around her.

Amidst all this din and confusion, the candidate for the borough of
Buyemall was ushered into the household privacy of the genteel Mr. and
Mrs. St. Quintin. Up started the lady at the sound of my name. The
Reverend Combermere St. Quintin seemed frozen into stone. The plate