But one who lives at Heaven's gate does not live in Heaven, as the saying is. Old Goldfist kept neither horses nor carriages, nor did he give parties: I doubt whether he ever asked anybody to dine with him in his life; and as for his boys and his girl, all of whom were grown up, he kept them in such a mean condition that they were not company for genteel people. Everybody despised them, especially Cutclose the tailor, who turned up his nose at them, and called them rooterers, which, I am told (for I never troubled myself to study the modern languages, there being so many of them), is a French word signifying _low people_.[1] [1] Perhaps _roturiers_. Rooterers is, however, good America French --Printer's Devil. This old money-maker, who had a stoop in the shoulders, used to parade the street up and down before his own door every sunshiny day, in a thread-bare brown coat, to which he sometimes added a blue spencer roundabout, a silver-headed stick in one hand, and a yellow handkerchief in the other. The latter he was wont every two or three minutes to clap to his nose, producing thereby an explosion, which, notwithstanding the muffler over his nostrils, was prodigiously strong and sonorous; and once, to my knowledge, it frightened a young lady into the gutter. I could say a great deal more of this old gentle man, whom everybody despised, but whom every man took off his hat to, on account of his wealth; but I shall have occasion to speak of him hereafter. As for the rest of my neighbours, I do not think them worthy of notice. I might, indeed, except Mr. Periwinkle Smith, my opposite neighbour, spoken of before, whom I knew to belong to that order of aristocracy which is emphatically termed chip-chop, and who was of such pure blood that it had known no mechanical taint for three different generations, the nearest approach to such disgrace being found in a family of ragamuffins, who claimed to be Mr. Smith's relations, merely because they were descended from his grandfather, but who were very properly discountenanced by him. This old gentleman had a daughter who seemed to be universally admired, judging from the numbers of visiters of both sexes who besieged her father's door every morning. To do her justice, I must say she was very handsome; but she had the additional merit of being an only child, and therefore an heiress, as was supposed. I thought so myself, until Tim, who knew something of everybody's affairs, assured me that her father's estate was eaten up by mortgages, that he was poor as a rat, and would die insolvent.