HOUSE HUNTING. THE OLD SHIP-MASTER. 121 



Instead of columns and a hand-rail, or a dead-wall on the 

 street side of the row, it is now and then contracted by a 

 room, which is sometimes occupied by a shop, and sometimes 

 seems to be used as a vestibule and staircase to apartments 

 overhead, for we see a brass plate with the resident s name, 

 and a bell-pull, to the door. 



On the inner side are frequent entrances to the narrow 

 passages that I mentioned, which may be long substitutes for 

 streets, communicating, after a deal of turning and splitting 

 into branches, with some distant alley or churchyard, or 

 other main street, with the front doors of wealthy citizens 

 houses opening upon them ; or they may be merely alleys 

 between two tenements leading to a common yard in the 

 rear; or again, if you turn into one, it may turn out to be a 

 private hall, and after one or two short turns end in a kitchen. 

 Never mind don t retreat ; put on a bold face, take a seat 

 by the fire as if you were at home, and call for a mug of 

 beer. Ten to one it will be all right. Every other house 

 keeper, at least, is a licensed taverner. 



We had great sport the first hour or two we were in town 

 hunting for lodgings. We were disposed to sleep under the 

 very oldest English architecture in which we could be conv 

 fortably accommodated. Many of the places at which we 

 applied were merely houses of refreshment, and had no spare 

 bedrooms. In one of these, &quot; The Boot Inn,&quot; we found an 

 old sea-captain, who, some twenty years ago, had traded to 

 New York, and enjoyed talking and making inquiries about 

 persons he had met and places he had visited. Fortunately 

 we knepisome of them, and so were constrained to sit down 

 to some bread and cheese and beer, and listen to some tough 

 yarns of Yellow Jack and Barbary pirates. At one end of 

 the kitchen was a table with benches on three sides of it, and 

 a great arm-chair on the other. Over the chair hung a union 



