Again, many have noted in the vicinity of Clare Market, in Portsmouth Street, the old overhanging shop devoted to the sale of waste paper and bones. Some years ago it was boarded up and shored up, and it became known of a sudden that the original of Dickens’s “Old Curiosity Shop” was doomed to “demolition.” Then was witnessed one of those strange rushes after “fads” so peculiar to the Londoner. “All day long on Saturday the narrow pavements of Portsmouth Street--that quaint southwestern outlet from Lincoln’s Inn Fields--were besieged by a crowd of sympathetic sight-seers, who had journeyed there from all parts of London ‘to worship at the shrine of Little Nell.’ They stood four deep in front of the ‘Crooked Billet,’ staring curiously over the way at the rickety old timber house with a projecting story, on the plaster face of which was boldly inscribed, ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’, Immortalised by Charles Dickens. Here and there among them was an artist, busy with pencil and note-book taking down sketches of the tumble-down old place; and one could not fail to distinguish the noisy demonstration of the American traveller, as he demanded to know, with nasal eagerness, ‘If that really was the home of Little Nell.’ For a year or two past, at any rate, it had been one of the stock visiting places of American tourists. ‘They went there to worship,’ a neighbouring shopkeeper said; ‘took off their hats when they got through the doorway, and asked questions about Quilp and the Grandfather as if they had been actual persons. The ladies were the worst. I have known them get down on their knees and burst out crying about Little Nell.’ Miss Mary Anderson might have been seen there more than once, with her heart full of tenderness for the little maiden; and so delighted was the fair American with the ancient dwelling and its overhanging story that the doors of the Lyceum were opened to the fortunate occupant whenever she chose to go.” The place had been condemned by the Board of Works, but that body moved very slowly, or there had been a reprieve. With American shrewdness, the American actress, Lotto, brought this scene into an adaptation of the story she was about to play.