'Oh dear me, dear me!' sighs Mr Venus, heavily, snuffing the candle,
'the world that appeared so flowery has ceased to blow! You're casting
your eye round the shop, Mr Wegg. Let me show you a light. My working
bench. My young man's bench. A Wice. Tools. Bones, warious. Skulls,
warious. Preserved Indian baby. African ditto. Bottled preparations,
warious. Everything within reach of your hand, in good preservation.
The mouldy ones a-top. What's in those hampers over them again, I don't
quite remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated English baby.
Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle, warious.
Oh, dear me! That's the general panoramic view.'

Having so held and waved the candle as that all these heterogeneous
objects seemed to come forward obediently when they were named, and
then retire again, Mr Venus despondently repeats, 'Oh dear me, dear
me!' resumes his seat, and with drooping despondency upon him, falls to
pouring himself out more tea.

'Where am I?' asks Mr Wegg.

'You're somewhere in the back shop across the yard, sir; and speaking
quite candidly, I wish I'd never bought you of the Hospital Porter.'

'Now, look here, what did you give for me?'

'Well,' replies Venus, blowing his tea: his head and face peering out
of the darkness, over the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the old
original rise in his family: 'you were one of a warious lot, and I don't
know.'