Mean time, third-floor are sitting on the top landing, eating dry bread, their hands and faces very dirty through playing with the coal-scuttle, while their poor, pale, industrious mother is busy washing. But they will be taken out for a walk somewhere on Sunday, and for one day in the week be the happiest party under that roof. We are sorry that this savage-looking picture is true to nature; but on scanning it narrowly, there is not a single feature that we ought to soften down. Happy are they who can find lodging-houses in London in which they can feel "at home." That there are thousands of these comfortable places, we entertain no doubt of; the worst of it is, young men are too fond of shifting about, and have not patience to wait until they become accustomed to the ways of these really respectable people. "Slow" has become a bad word of late; and they are generally empty-headed, think-much-of-themselves, "fast," frothy fellows, who use it. "Slow and sure" was an old saying, often quoted by our wise forefathers. Considering how cheerless and comfortless many of these lodging-houses are, we cease to wonder at the number of taverns and coffee-houses which abound in London, and should be glad to see a few more such admirable institutions as the Whittington Club, for we here see at least one cause why they are so much frequented. How lonely seems a place (except to a man whose studious habits require solitude), on a long winter night, where a young man has to sit five or six hours without having a living soul to speak to. He lights his lucifer-match, and, as the faint blue speck slowly bursts into flame, he looks round upon the voiceless solitude, and sighs. He sets a light to the sticks and coal which the char-woman or the dirty Cinderella placed in the grate, after they had arranged his bedroom in the morning, and for a time the crackling of the fire seems like pleasant companionship. Then the church-clock tolls slowly and sadly, and he yawns while he thinks of the weary hours that have yet to pass away before bedtime. He makes his own tea--or, perchance, the little dirty servant, who has sixpence a week and her "wittals," brings it up: when he has finished, he rings the bell, the things are cleared away, and then he may hang himself if he pleases, quite certain that the deed would never be discovered until the morrow. Were he taken ill, and to ring the bell, the little servant would be sent to fetch a doctor, if the lodger had the wherewithal to pay; if not, they would advise him to go to one of the hospitals. If he required attendance, some old woman (fond of gin), who had perhaps been discharged from the hospitals for drunkenness, would be hired to nurse him, grumbling every time she entered the room, and declaring that she could not find a single thing she wanted in the house. Perhaps on the first day of his illness he would receive notice to quit the apartments at the end of the week: we have witnessed such conduct in a keen