Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall “Christmas Stories”edition , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Ah! It’s pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dearthough a little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what withtrotting down, and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs isfor the builders to justify though I do not think they fully understandtheir trade and never did, else why the sameness and why not more conveniencesand fewer draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plasteron too thick I am well convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-potsputting them on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowingwhat their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much,except that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat ina straight form or give it a twist before it goes there. And whatI says speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all manner ofshapes (there’s a row of ’em at Miss Wozenham’s lodging-houselower down on the other side of the way) is that they only work yoursmoke into artificial patterns for you before you swallow it and thatI’d quite as soon swallow mine plain, the flavour being the same,not to mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top of your houseto show the forms in which you take your smoke into your inside.
Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy-chair in my ownquiet room in my own Lodging-House Number Eighty-one Norfolk StreetStrand London situated midway between the City and St. James’s—ifanything is where it used to be with these hotels calling themselvesLimited but called unlimited by Major Jackman rising up everywhere andrising up into flagstaffs where they can’t go any higher, butmy mind of those monsters is give me a landlord’s or landlady’swholesome face when I come off a journey and not a brass plate withan electrified number clicking out of it which it’s not in naturecan be glad to see me and to which I don’t want to be hoistedlike molasses at the Docks and left there telegraphing for help withthe most ingenious instruments but quite in vain—being here mydear I have no call to mention that I am still in the Lodgings as abusiness hoping to die in the same and if agreeable to the clergy partlyread over at Saint Clement’s Danes and concluded in Hatfield churchyardwhen lying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to ashes and dust todust.
Neither should I tell you any news my dear in telling you that theMajor is still a fixture in the Parlours quite as much so as the roofof the house, and that Jemmy is of boys the best and brightest and hasever had kept from him the cruel story of his poor pretty young motherMrs. Edson being deserted in the second floor and dying in my arms,fully believing that I am his born Gran and him an orphan, though whatwith engineering since he took a taste for it and him and the Majormaking Locomotives out of parasols broken iron pots and cotton-reelsand them absolutely a getting off the line and falling over the tableand injuring the passengers almost equal to the originals it reallyis quite wonderful. And when I says to the Major, “Majorcan’t you by any means give us a communication with theguard?” the Major says quite huffy, “No madam it’snot to be done,” and when I says “Why not?” the Majorsays, “That is between us who are in the Railway Interest madamand our friend the Right Honourable Vice-President of the Board of Trade”and if you’ll believe me my dear the Major wrote to Jemmy at schoolto consult him on the answer I should have before I could get even thatamount of unsatisfactoriness out of the man, the reason being that whenwe first began with the little model and the working signals bea