Looking round him he beheld a signboard on which the painter's art had delineated something remotely resembling a cerulean elephant with an aquiline nose in lieu of a trunk. Rightly conjecturing that this was the "Blue Boar" himself, he stepped into the house and enquired concerning his parent. Finding that his father would not be there for three-quarters of an hour or more, he ordered from the barmaid "nine penn'orth o' brandy and water hike, and the ink-stand," and having settled himself in the little parlour, composed himself to write that wonderful "walentine" to Mary. Just as Sam had finished his missive his father appeared on the scene, and he was invited by the dutiful son to listen to what he had written. Tony heard it through, punctuating it during the process with a running commentary and much advice on marriage in general and "widders" in particular. It was here, too, that Tony, with the laudable intention of helping Mr. Pickwick, offered the invaluable, and now historic, advice concerning an "alleybi," there being, as he asserted, "nothing like a' alleybi, Sammy, nothing." It was in the same parlour on the same occasion that Mr. Weller, senior, informed his son that he had two tickets "as wos sent" to Mrs. Weller by the Shepherd "for the monthly meetin' o' the Brick Lane Branch o' the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association." He communicated the secret "with great glee and winked so indefatigably after doing so," "over a double glass o' the inwariable," that he and Sam determined to make use of the tickets with the projected plan of exposing the "real propensities and qualities of the red-nosed man," the success of which is so well remembered. These facts in mind the "Blue Boar" ought not to be passed over lightly, even though it cannot be identified by name, or its existence traced in historic records. In those days the description of the locality given by Dickens was accurate enough; but although there were many inns and taverns in its district, topographers have never discovered a "Blue Boar," or learned that one ever bore such a sign. There was a "Bull" in Leadenhall Street at one time, and possibly this may have been the inn the novelist made the scene of the above incidents, simply giving it a name of his own to afford scope for his whimsical vein in describing it. However, the locality has changed completely from what it was when Tony Weller "used the parlour" of the "Blue Boar," and such coaching inns that flourished then have all been swept away with the "shabby courts and alleys." We find, however, a picture purporting to be the "Blue Boar" with its galleries, horses and stable boys all complete drawn by Herbert Railton, in the Jubilee edition of The Pickwick Papers. Probably this is purely an imaginary picture.