The exciting and romantic days of coaching were beginning to ebb away at the time _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was published; but so wonderfully does Dickens describe the scenes on the road, and so exhilarating are his word-pictures, the spirit of those times can better be visualized from its pages than from any history of the period. Not only are those days not allowed to be forgotten, but inns that have since been wiped out of existence have had their name and fame indelibly marked on the tablets of time for ever. [Illustration: THE BLACK BULL, HOLBORN _Drawn by L. Walker_] Such is the case of the Black Bull that once stood in Holborn. It was here that the two estimable females, Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig, professionally attended Mr. Lewsome in his illness. Mr. Lewsome, it will be remembered, was the young man who sold the drugs to Jonas Chuzzlewit with which old Anthony was poisoned, and who after the death of the latter made a voluntary confession of the fact, impelled to do so by the torture of mind and dread of death he himself endured by his severe sickness. This is Mrs. Gamp's announcement of her appointment: "There _is_ a gent, sir, at the Bull in Holborn, as has been took ill there, and is bad abed. They have a day-nurse as was recommended from Bartholomew's; and well I knows her, Mr. Mould, her name bein' Mrs. Prig, the best of creeturs. But she is otherwise engaged at night, and they are in wants of night-watching; consequent she says to them, having reposed the greatest friendliness in me for twenty year, 'The soberest person going, and the best of blessings in a sick room, is Mrs. Gamp. Send a boy to Kingsgate Street,' she says, 'and snap her up at any price, for Mrs. Gamp is worth her weight and more in goldian guineas.' My landlord brings the message down to me, and says, 'Bein' in a light place where you are, and this job promising so well, why not unite the two?'" Dickens then describes how Mrs. Gamp went to her private lodgings in Kingsgate Street close to the tavern, "for a bundle of robes and wrappings comfortable in the night season; and then repaired to the Bull in Holborn, which she reached as the clocks were striking eight. "As she turned into the yard, she stopped; for the landlord, landlady, and head chambermaid, were all on the threshold together, talking earnestly with a young gentleman who seemed to have just come or to be just going away. The first words that struck upon Mrs. Gamp's ear obviously bore reference to the patient; and, it being expedient that all good attendants should know as much as possible about the case on which their skill is brought to bear, Mrs. Gamp listened as a matter of duty." At a suitable moment she ventured the remark, "Ah! a rayal gentleman!" and, advancing, introduced herself, observing: