The pawnbroker’s shop window—the _étalage_, as our Parisian neighbours would term it—presents a medley of merchandise for sale; for I suppose the host of the three balls buys-in sundry articles at the quarterly sales of unredeemed pledges, of whose aspect you have already had an inkling in these pages, which he thinks are likely to sell in his particular neighbourhood. Of course, the nature and quality of the articles exhibited vary according to the locality. In fashionable districts (for even Fashion cannot dispense with its pawnbrokers) you may see enamels and miniatures, copies of the Italian masters, porcelain vases, bronze statuettes, buhl clocks, diamond rings, bracelets, watches, cashmere shawls, elegantly-bound books, and cases of mathematical instruments; but we are now in an emphatically low neighbourhood, and such articles as I have alluded to are likely to attract but few purchasers. Rather would there seem a chance of a ready sale for the bundles of shirts, and women’s gear, and cheap printed shawls; for the saws, and planes, adzes, gimlets, and chisels; for the cotton umbrellas; for the heavy silver watches that working men wear (though they, even, are not plentiful); for the infinity of small cheap wares, for sale at an alarming reduction of prices. Let us enter. Behold the Bezesteen of borrowed money. This, too, might be compared, with a grim mockery, to the theatre; for hath it not private boxes and a capacious stage, on which is continually being performed the drama of the “Rent Day,” and the tragi-comedy of “Lend me Five Shillings?” See the pawners, so numerous that the boxes can no longer remain private, and two or three parties, total strangers to one another, are all crowded into the same aperture. It is Saturday night, and they are deliriously anxious to redeem their poor little remnants of wearing apparel for that blessed Sunday that comes to-morrow, to be followed, however, by a Black Monday, when father’s coat, and Polly’s merino frock, nay the extra petticoat, nay the Lilliputian boots of the toddling child, will have to be pawned again. Certain wise men, political economists and pseudo-philanthropists, point at the plethora of pawnbrokers’ shops as melancholy proofs of the poor’s improvidence. But the poor are _so_ poor, they have at the best of times so very little money, that pawning with them is an absolute necessity; and the pawnbroker’s shop, that equitable mortgage on a small scale, is to them rather a blessing than a curse. Without that fourpence on the flat-iron, there would be very frequently no bread in the cupboard.