"As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner when the chief waiter was a boy, if he ever was a boy, which appeared to be improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without a flaw in their trimmings or cleaning; and at the comfortable green curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters, burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine below; and both England and the law appeared to me to be very difficult indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my bedroom to change my wet clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted apartment (which was over the archway leading to the inn, I remember) and the sedate immensity of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable gravity of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or on any such daring youth. I came down again to my dinner; and even the slow comfort of the meal, and the orderly silence of the place, were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles, and his small hopes of a livelihood for twenty years to come." We wonder if the staid men who conduct their business in those rooms to-day are conscious that they occupy one of London's historic old coffee-taverns and a noted Dickens landmark to wit. The Jolly Sandboys Inn, mentioned at the beginning of Chapter XVIII of _The Old Curiosity Shop_, is doubtless a purely imaginary one. It was "a small road-side inn of pretty ancient date, with a sign representing three sandboys increasing their jollity with as many jugs of ale and bags of gold, creaking and swinging on its post on the opposite side of the road." But, as we have no definite information as to the identical spot Codlin and Short had reached at that moment, no attempt can be made to identify it. The same remarks apply to the Valiant Soldier, the public-house where Nell and her grandfather took shelter from the storm, in Chapter XXIX, and where the old man gambled away Nell's last coin in a game of cards. CHAPTER VII MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT THE BLUE DRAGON--THE HALF MOON AND SEVEN STARS--TWO SALISBURY INNS--THE BLACK BULL, HOLBORN