It was then, at the expiration of six months' trial of London, without having found one hour's employ, and when he had reduced his clothes till he looked "shabby," and had not half-a-dozen books left that would fetch him the value of another week's subsistence at the book-stalls;--it was then that young Ingram Wilson had "some curious thoughts as he stood looking at a very old and interesting dog, in one of the by-streets of the Borough." Ingram had been much disgusted with every dog-cart he had seen before; for he was driven to moralise, almost by necessity, as he wandered about from street to street; and he had made many a notch in his mind about costermongers riding on the front of their dog-carts in a morning, "four-in-hand," and all in a row, yelping as they galloped under the lash of the whip; and how much they must resemble Esquimaux emperors and Kamschatka princes, if there were any; and of the wicked glee of the rascally young sweeps who would rattle down Blackfriars' Road, and St. George's Road, and other roads of an evening, racing one against another--"taking home" the one-dog shay of some cat's meat man or dealer in greens, who had thus committed his chariot and animals to these sooty Jehus, while he himself staid at some favourite resort to smoke and tipple "heavy wet" till midnight. I say, young Ingram Wilson had made many a notch in his mind about these, and other dog-cart phenomena; but he had never felt so much melancholy interest in looking at a dog in a cart, as he felt in looking at this "very old and interesting dog."