“A very narrow street, somewhere behind the Post Office, where every house was in the brightest summer morning very gloomy; and where light porters watered the pavement, each before his own employer’s premises, in fantastic patterns in the dog-days; and where spruce gentlemen, with their hands in the pockets of symmetrical trousers, were always to be seen in warm weather contemplating their undeniable boots in dusty warehouse doorways, which appeared to be the hardest work they did, except now and then carrying pens behind their ears.” Montague Tigg, Esq., the Chairman of the _Anglo-Bengalee Insurance Company_, lived in luxurious chambers in _Pall Mall_; and we may remember the morning when Jonas Chuzzlewit called at the residence of his chief, and was disagreeably surprised to find his friend in full possession of his secret history—with _Mr. Nadgett_ in attendance. Tom Pinch and his sister _Ruth_ lodged at “Merry Islington,” “in a singular little old-fashioned house, up a blind street,” where they were accommodated with two small bedrooms and a triangular parlour, the householder being the inscrutable _Mr. Nadgett_. In “Martin Chuzzlewit” are contained many pleasant episodes associated with these modest apartments; where, as we all know, little Ruth made her first culinary experiment, and was pleasantly surprised the next morning to find the merry present of a cookery-book awaiting her in the parlour (sent by John Westlock), with the beefsteak pudding leaf turned down and blotted out. DOMBEY AND SON. Polly Toodles (otherwise Richards) lived with her husband and her “apple-faced” family, at _Stagg’s Gardens_, _Camden Town_, at the time when the London and North-Western Railway was in course of construction— “As yet the neighbourhood was shy to own the railroad. One or two bold speculators had projected streets, and one had built a little, but had stopped among the mud and ashes to consider further of it. A bran new tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had taken for its sign the ‘Railway Arms;’ but that might be rash enterprise—and then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So the Excavators’ house of Call had sprung up from a beer-shop, and the old-established Ham and Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description.” In a later chapter of “Dombey” we read of Stagg’s Gardens having vanished from the earth—