The stock has not a very inviting appearance: comprising, for the most part, candles, mouse-traps, balls of twine, bars of yellow soap--so arranged as to be suggestive of prison-windows--and limbs and wings and dead bodies of flies. These latter seem to be the peculiar attribute of shop and parlour windows in Soho. One might almost be pardoned for the supposition that every discontented fly in London makes it a practice to go to Soho and die. The shop has its public entrance for customers, and its private entrance for the residents of the house--so private indeed, so circumscribed and squeezed up, that scarcely one out of fifty passers-by would know that it was there; and that one, seeing it by merest chance, might well be lost in wonder at the perplexing idea of a stout man struggling through the narrow passage into which the mockery of a door must necessarily open. Three bell-handles display themselves on each side of the door to snare and entrap the uninitiated; a goggle-eyed knocker (with a face so hideous that babies have gone into convulsions at the sight of it) also adds to the entanglement of ideas. For, knowing that the house contains many inhabitants who have no connection with each other, and some of whom may indeed be at variance, the uninitiated brings confusion upon himself by ringing the wrong bell or knocking the wrong knock. A woman, who lodged somewhere in the vicinity of the coal-cellar, was often the occasion of much distress to the knockers and ringers. This woman, who always made her appearance fresh from the washing-tub, and who came up-stairs invariably wiping her wet arms upon her apron, was afflicted with the perpetual conviction that a ring or a knock, whether single, or double, or treble, was certainly intended for her; and as her temper was none of the sweetest, unpleasant scenes occurred. Many a box on the ears did youthful knockers and ringers receive from the damp hands of the disappointed woman, and many an angry mother would make her appearance in the passage a few minutes afterwards and exchange shrill civilities with the bad-tempered castigator. Sometimes these angry mothers would go almost into hysterics because the woman below declined to comply with such invitations as, "Come up, and I'll show yer!" or, "Come up, and I'll scratch yer eyes out for yer!" or, "What d'yer mean by slappin' my boy Billy about on the 'ead, which was weak from a babby? What d'yer mean by it, yer minx?--What d'yer mean?" (This last _fortissimo_.) "Come up, and I'll tear the 'air out of yer 'ead!" After which challenges and defiances the angry mothers, with very white faces, would issue into the street, and form the centres of little knots of female neighbours only too willing to discuss the matter and express their opinions. A facetious person, who had called several times at the house, and who was never able to solve the mystery of the bells, once hit upon what he conceived to be a happy idea. He gave a postman's