From hurried scribbler to pale compositor, and behold, the news is
bawled all over London! Such work as this goes on for ever around the
church of St. Dunstan. Scribblers come and scribblers go; compositors
come to their work young and hopeful, they leave it bent and poisoned,
yet the work goes on. Each day the pace grows quicker, each day some new
means of rapid propagation is discovered, and each day life becomes
harder to live. One morning, perhaps, a scribbler is absent from his
post--"Brain-fever, complete rest; a wreck." For years his writings have
been read by thousands daily. A new man takes the vacant chair--he has
been waiting more or less impatiently for this--and the thousands are
none the wiser. One night the head compositor presses his black hand to
his sunken chest, and staggers home. "And time too--he's had his turn,"
mutters the second compositor as he thinks of the extra five shillings a
week. No doubt he is right. Every dog his day.

Nearly opposite to the church stands a tall narrow house of dirty red
brick, and it is with this house that we have to do.

At seven o'clock, one evening some years ago--when heads now grey were
brown, when eyes now dim were bright--the Strand was in its usual state
of turmoil. Carriage followed carriage. Seedy clerks hustled past portly
merchants--not their own masters, _bien entendu_, but those of
other seedy clerks. Carriages and foot-passengers were alike going
westward. All were leaving behind them the day and the busy city--some
after a few hours devoted to the perusal of _Times_ and
_Gazette_; others fagged and weary from a long day of dusty books.

Ah! those were prosperous days in the City. Days when men of but a few
years' standing rolled out to Clapham or Highgate behind a pair of