PENZANCE LODGINGS. 183 



Triton, as she appeared entering an impossible harbour of 

 Marseilles, flanked by a portrait of the defunct husband, 

 master of the aforesaid brig, painted in the well-known style : 

 a resplendent shirt-front with a head attached, sternly inex- 

 pressive, on a mahogany background. The defunct mariner 

 seemed blank with astonishment at my courage in coming 

 to such a house — a ruin, not a lodging. Everything in it 

 was afficted with the rickets. The chair-backs creaked in- 

 harmonious threats, if you incautiously leaned against them. 

 The fire-irons fell continually from their unstable rests. The 

 bed-pole tumbled at my feet when I attemped to draw the 

 curtain. The doors wouldn't shut. Even the teapot had a 

 wobbly top, which resisted all closing. Nay — and this will 

 sm-prise you — in the moral world I noticed a sunilar dilapi- 

 dation. The discrepancies were painful. In the "bill," 

 arrangements were made which showed fiscal genius : and 

 when a suggestion was ofiered that the remains of yesterday's 

 fowl might serve for to-day's luncheon, a look of pained re- 

 proach passed over the widow's face, followed by a gTilp, and 

 a silence which was broken only by diversion of the dialogue 

 into quite other directions — the look, the gulp, the silence 

 expressed, as plainly as words, the mean opinion which the 

 widow entertained of her victim. Low as her opinion had 

 placed him before, it had not reached such depths as that ; 

 the request for a paltry remnant of fowl, indeed, was answer- 

 able only by profound silence. Thus it luas answered. I 

 never gazed upon that bird again. 



Weather-bound in such a place — the equinoctial gales 

 hurrying on — boxes corded, soul unquiet — you may imagine 



