Theobald's Row, South Lambeth, if not so desolate a neighborhood as Lamb's Terrace, was sufficiently depressing in its general aspect to cause one to resolve to give it a wide berth unless special business called him to the spot. There were sad, melancholy railway arches which might serve for a chapter in a modern "Inferno"; there were timber yards stacked high with discolored lumber, which appeared to be piled up not for purposes of trade, but to add one more melancholy feature to a worn-out, dilapidated locality; there were workingmen's lodging houses, whose flat surface of stone walls resembled prisons in which every vestige of brightness in life was hopelessly entombed; there were rows of houses as hopeless and despairing, and as poverty-stricken and irremediably shabby; and there was the most leaden atmosphere of which even London could boast. The men, women, and children I saw there were in keeping with their surroundings; the youngsters were playing listlessly and with no heart in their games; the men smoked pipes and haunted street corners or wandered in and out the beer shops and public houses; the worn-faced women conversed jadedly and dispiritedly; and everywhere the spirit of discontent proclaimed itself. Even the dogs nosing the gutters were infected with the prevailing gloom. In the center of Theobald's Row, which consisted of sixteen small houses, eight on each side, and all of a flat dead level, I came upon Dr. Cooper's place of business, a parlor window, with two large dust-covered bottles displayed therein, whose ghostly colors were green and red. Half a dozen ragged children were disporting themselves on the doorstep, and as I approached the shop a slatternly woman came to the door and swooped them all into the house. As she was turning to follow them I accosted her. "Is Dr. Cooper at home?" "What do you want of him?" she retorted. "I wish to see him on a matter of business." I had stepped into the shop, and as I looked around at the nearly empty shelves, dotted here and there with a few miserable fly-blown bottles, I thought that a man in search of health or of a remedy for a bodily ailment could not have found a more unlikely place for relief. "Is it opening medicine?" said the woman. "I can serve you." "My business is not professional," I replied. She cast a suspicious glance at me, and I guessed that she supposed me to be a dun. "It may be something of advantage to him," I observed. She brightened up instantly. "My husband is not in," she said; "but you may find him at the George." "At the George?" "Or the Green Dragon," she added. "Where are they? Far from here?" "Oh, no, not far; he has to keep himself handy in case he is called in anywhere. The George is at the corner of the next street, and the Green Dragon is at the opposite corner. If he is not at either of those places he is sure to be at the Britannia. Anybody will tell you where that is."