It is believed by some, and was definitely stated to be a fact by a writer in the American magazine, the "Cosmopolitan," for May, 1893, and again by a writer in the "Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Queries," July, 1895, that Dickens in his bachelor days had apartments on the second floor of the hotel in the right-hand corner, and that in the latter years of its existence the walls of this same room were decorated with pictures of scenes and characters from his works. We have, however, been unable to find any authority for this statement. But it is quite possible that he frequented the hotel, and we may even assume that he and his friends, Hablôt K. Browne and Robert Young, who occupied rooms in Furnival's when they were executing engravings for Pickwick, would perhaps chat over details in a snug room in the hotel, when they would be joined by their other friend and engraver, Finden. Bearing all these ideas in mind, it is certainly a little strange that Dickens waited for his last book before he introduced the hotel into his writings. In that book we are told that Mr. Grewgious crossed over to the hotel in Furnival's Inn from Staple Inn opposite for his dinner "three hundred days in the year at least," and after dinner crossed back again. On one occasion, a very important interview between him and Edwin Drood took place in his chambers, and Edwin was pressed to stay for a meal. "We can have dinner in from just across Holborn," Grewgious assured him, and Bazzard, his clerk, was not only invited to join them, but asked if he would mind "stepping over to the hotel in Furnival's, and asking them to send in materials for laying the cloth.... For dinner we'll have a tureen of the hottest and strongest soup available, and we'll have the best made dish that can be recommended and we'll have a joint (such as a haunch of mutton) and we'll have a goose, or a turkey, or any little stuffed thing of that sort that may happen to be in the bill of fare--in short, we'll have whatever there is on hand." Bazzard, after bringing out the round table, accordingly withdrew to execute the orders. His return with the waiters gives Dickens an opportunity for one of his humorous descriptive passages which we make no excuse for quoting in full: