In these circumstances, after an admiring glance at the famous Sparrowe's House in the Butter Market, close to the hotel, I frankly betook myself to an effort to follow the Wellers, father and son, Mr. Pickwick and his followers, through an eventful day. This stable-yard round the corner to the left, where the Panhard was now being furbished up, was the same on which Mr. Weller, senior, looked when, "in a small room in the vicinity," he discussed a pot of ale and the "gammoning" of Sam, and drank to the toast, "May you soon vipe off the disgrace as you've inflicted on the family name." The office in the courtyard was doubtless that at which he got his "vaybill." Walking about these very streets Sam wormed himself into the confidence of the lachrymose Job Trotter. In this inn parlour Mr. Peter Magnus, _alias_ Jingle, splendidly attired, made a hollow pretence of breakfasting with Mr. Pickwick; here the latter gave his simple hints on courtship and proposal, and here were seen "the joyous face of Mr. Tupman, the serene countenance of Mr. Winkle, and the intellectual lineaments of Mr. Snodgrass." In this room was enacted that memorable scene when Mr. Magnus presented Miss Witherfield to Mr. Pickwick and Miss Witherfield screamed, but neither she nor Mr. Pickwick was indelicate enough to mention the cause--his unwitting invasion of her chamber overnight. Rushing out of this room the lady, after bolting herself into her bedroom, went forth in search of Mr. Nupkins and apprised him of the forthcoming duel, which there was not really much reason to anticipate. Where exactly Miss Witherfield saw Mr. Nupkins I am unhappily not able to say, nor yet, and for the same reason, whither Grummer, with his myrmidon Dubbley and his "division," each with a short truncheon and a brass crown, conducted Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman in the old sedan-chair; but for all that it is easy to picture the whole of the never-to-be-forgotten scene, all the more memorable in that it never was enacted. In fact, it is no mean regret to me that, on that cold January morning, I was not able to find "the house with the green gate," with the "house-door guarded on either side by an American aloe in a tub." It has eluded me since also. Perhaps it is gone, like a good deal of old Ipswich; possibly some miscreant has had his gate painted white instead of green; perhaps I looked in the wrong place, in the vicinity of St. Clement's Church. It is even within the bounds of possibility that the house with the green gate never had any more real and substantial existence than Mr. Pickwick himself. All I know is that I could not find it.