|In the narrowest part of the narrow precincts of Cloth Fair there once stood a long, rambling, low-roofed, gable-fronted hostelrie, with carved monsters frightfully deformed, and of hideous obesity, grinning down upon the passengers from every side. Its exterior colour was a dingy yellow; it had little antique casements, casting “a dim,” if not a “religious light,” within; the entrance was by a low porch, with seats on each side, where, on summer days, when leaves are green, the citizen in the olden time might breathe the fresh air of the surrounding meadows, and rest and regale himself! The parlour was panelled with oak, and round it hung The March to Finchley, the Strolling Players, and Southwark Fair, half obscured by dust, in narrow black frames, with a tarnished gold beading. An ancient clock ticked (like some of the customers!) in a dark corner; on the high grotesquely carved mantelpiece piped full-dressed shepherds and shepherdesses, in flowery arbours of Chelsea china; from the capacious ingle projected two wooden arms, on which the elbows of a long race of privileged old codgers had successively rested for more than three centuries; the egg* of an ostrich tattooed by the flies, and a silent aviary of stuffed birds, (monsters of fowls Î) which had been a roost for some hundreds of generations of spiders, depended from a massy beam that divided the ceiling; a high-backed venerable arm-chair, with Robin Hood and his merry men in rude effigy, kept its state under an old-fashioned canopy of faded red arras; a large fire blazed cheerfully, the candles burned bright, and a jovial party, many of whose noses burned blue, were assembled to celebrate for the last time their nocturnal merriments under the old roof, that on the morrow (for _improvement_ had stalked into the Fair!) was to be levelled to the ground. “Gentlemen,” said the President, who was a rosy evergreen, with “fair round belly,” and a jolly aspect, “a man and boy, for forty years, have I been a member of the _Robin Hood_, and fanned down my punch in this room! What want we with mahogany, French-polished, and fine chim-ney-glasses? Cannot every brother see his good-looking face in a glass of his own? Or a gas-lamp before the door, with a dozen brass burners? Surely our 'everlasting bonfire lights' will show us the way in! This profanation is enough to make our jovial predecessors, the heroes of the Tennis Court, the Mohocks, and Man-hunters of Lincoln's Inn Fields tremble in their tombs!--But I don't see Mr. Bosky.” It would have been odd if the President had seen Mr. Bosky; for he sat wedged betwixt two corporation members, whose protuberances, broad shoulders, and dewlaps effectually obscured him from view. “Here am I, Mr. President.” “But where is Uncle Timothy?”