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HEN I first went to town I lived in a venerable time- 

 honoured portion of the village known as Cheyne 

 Walk, Chelsea, next door but one or two to the " Don 

 Saltero ; " in the parlour of which renowned hostelry 

 I have many times moistened my clay and tried to 

 look like a Grand Seignor, behind a churchwarden pipe a 

 yard long. There was an old-fasliioned courtesy about the 

 visitors to that parlour. They always addressed each other as "Sir," and 

 the chairman of the evening was a despotic sovereign whose will was law — 

 wliile discussion never became heated beyond high dignity point — " I don't 

 agree Avith you, sir," being perhaps the strongest form of dissent admissible. 

 And any one who should have retorted, " Very likely not, sir," would have 

 been looked on as bumptious, and guilty of a breach of good manners. The 

 whole place was quaint enough, with its stiff red brick houses, built of a 

 brick work such as one never sees now, and which was done before unions 

 and strikes and such rubbish, when workmen took a pride in their work, and 

 sought to rise by diligence, soberness, and attention ; not to sink down into 

 a slough of indifference and the worship of a beer barrel. The row of stiff 



