bowery summer aspect. They get crazy, they fall toward this side and that, they shrink in and down upon the outcast wretches that huddle in them, and the doorposts don’t keep the roof up, and the clods don’t keep it down. The nest is nothing but a furzy hole, such as, for comfort, any wild-beast may match anywhere, leaving cleanliness out of the question.” In each of these wretched lairs, the writer—who, be it borne in mind, was an eye-witness of what he describes—goes on to inform us, companies of these awful “birds,” varying in number from three to six, eat, drink, sleep, cook, and receive company. As regards the furniture and domestic utensils with which each hut is provided, “the most important piece of furniture was a wooden shelf running along the back of the nest, and propped on sticks driven into the earthen floor. Some mugs, some plates, some cups and saucers, a candlestick; two or three old knives and forks, battered and rusty; a few dull and dinted spoons; a teapot (this being rather a rich establishment), and several other articles of a like character, were displayed upon the shelf; and a grateful sight it was. I declare I was most thankful for the cups and saucers; and as for the teapot, it looked like an ark of redemption in crockery-ware. If they were not—as I told myself when my eyes first rested on them—the only human-looking things in the place, they did give one a comfortable assurance that these wretched and desperate outcasts had not absolutely broken with the common forms and habits of civilised life.