The town of Amherst is very much like the other towns in that part of the country. Close by the railway station lies the Railway Tavern, snug and comfortable, with a "quick draught" of homebrewed ale and bitter beer, thanks to the powers of suction of porters, guards, and admiring friends of both, who vent their admiration in "standing glasses round." Not a little of its custom does the Railway Tavern own to that small plot of waste ground in front of it, where, even on this desolate night, you might trace the magic circle left by the "ring" of Signor Quagliasco's Mammoth Circus on its visit last autumn, and the holes for the pole and tent-pegs, and the most recent ruts on which were left by the wheels of the cart of the travelling photographer who "took" the entire town at Christmas, and, in addition to the photograph, presented each sitter with a blue card embossed with a scarlet robin bearing in its mouth the legend, "A happy new year to you." Then villas; Mr. Cobb's, the corn-chandler and coal-merchant, with a speckled imitation-granite porch, white and black, as if it had been daubed with a mixture of its owner's flour and coal-dust; Mr. Lawson's, the attorney, with a big brass plate on its outer gate, and two stone pine-apples flanking the entrance; Mr. Charlton Biggs's, the hop-merchant, in all the gentility of a little chaise-house leaning against the street door, approached by a little carriage-drive so narrow that the pony had never yet walked up it properly, but had always been ignominiously "backed" into its tiny home. Then the outskirts of the town; the Independent Chapel, very square, very red-faced, and very compact, not to say sat upon; the Literary Institute, with more green damp on its stuccoed walls than had been originally intended by its architect, and with fragmentary bills of "Mr. Lens's Starry Carpet, or the Heavens at a Glance," fluttering in the night wind from its portico. Merton house comes next, formerly the stronghold of the Merton-Mertons, the great Kentish family, now Mr. Bompas's Classical and Commercial Academy, with a full view of the white dimity bedsteads through the open window, and with "Old Bompas's Blaggards" inscribed--by the boys of the National School, with whom the grand Bompasians waged constant warfare--on the doorpost. The commencement of the town, a mouldy old bay-windowed shop, known to Mr. Bompas's boys as "Mother Jennings's," and as the repository of "tuck," said tuck consisting of stale buns, hardbake, "all sorts," toffee, treacle, new rolls, sugar mutton-chops elegantly painted and gilt, sugar rum and gin bottles, whipcord, pegtops, and marbles; then Bullenger's, apparently a small ironmonger's, but in reality another lure for the money of Bompas's boys, for in a parlour behind his back shop Bullenger vended fireworks and half-crown detonating pistols, catapults, and cross-bows, and all sorts of such-like instruments dear to predatory boys.