THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.

AN ADAPTATION.

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.


CHAPTER III.

THE ALMS-HOUSE.

For the purpose of preventing an inconvenient rush of literary
tuft-hunters and sight-seers thither next summer, a fictitious name must
be bestowed upon the town of the Ritualistic church. Let it stand in
these pages as Bumsteadville. Possibly it was not known to the Romans,
the Saxons, nor the Normans by that name, if by any name at all; but
a name more or less weird and full of damp syllables can be of little
moment to a place not owned by any advertising Suburban-Residence
benefactors.

A disagreeable and healthy suburb, Bumsteadville, with a strange odor of
dried bones from its ancient pauper burial-ground, and many quaint
old ruins in the shapes of elderly men engaged as contributors to the
monthly magazines of the day. Antiquity pervades Bumsteadville; nothing
is new; the very Rye is old; also the Jamaica, Santa Cruz, and a number
of the native maids. A drowsy place, with all its changes lying far
behind it; or, at least, the sun-browned mendicants passing through say
they never saw a place offering so little present change.