“A house was soon found at number four, Gower Street North; a large brass plate on the door announced Mrs. Dickens’s establishment; and the result I can give in the exact words of the then small actor in the comedy, whose hopes it had raised so high: ‘I left at a great many other doors a great many circulars, calling attention to the merits of the establishment. Yet nobody ever came to school, nor do I recollect that anybody ever proposed to come, or that the least preparation was made to receive anybody. But, I know that we got on very badly with the butcher and baker; that very often we had not too much for dinner; and that at last my father was arrested.’ . . . Almost everything by degrees was pawned or sold, little Charles being the principal agent in these sorrowful transactions . . . until at last, even of the furniture of Gower Street, number four, there was nothing left except a few chairs, a kitchen table, and some beds. Then they encamped, as it were, in the two parlours of the emptied house, and lived there night and day.” Gower Street has been rearranged since that time (there is now no Gower Street North), and the houses are renumbered. No. 145, near _Gower Street Chapel_, and other houses adjoining, are now in the occupation of Messrs. Maple & Co.; and this No. 145 was the house then enumerated as No. 4 Gower Street North. Mrs. Dickens’s experience, it will be remembered, has been pleasantly referred to in the pages of “Our Mutual Friend;” the stately _Mrs. Wilfer_ therein making a similar experiment, with the same result. In chapter 4 we read of _Rumpty’s_ return home from business: when “Something had gone wrong with the house door, for R. Wilfer stopped on the steps, staring at it, and cried ‘Hal-loa?’ ‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Wilfer, ‘the man came himself with a pair of pincers and took it off, and took it away. He said that as he had no expectation of ever being paid for it, and as he had an order for another _Ladies’ School_ door-plate, it was better (burnished up) for the interests of all parties.’” On the opposite corner of the street is the _Gower Street Station_ of the Metropolitan Railway, at which train may be taken to _Baker Street_. On arrival, we turn to the right, by _Marylebone Road_, to Devonshire Terrace, consisting of three houses at the northern end of _High Street_,_ Marylebone_. No. 1, now occupied by a legal firm, was for twelve years the residence of Charles Dickens (when in town). It is described by Forster as “A handsome house with a garden of considerable size, shut out from the New Road by a brick wall, facing the York Gate into Regent’s Park.”