 of being in
the vicinity of Clare Market, and closely approximating to the back of New Inn,
Mr. Pickwick and Sam descended the ricketty staircase in safety, and issued
forth in quest of the Magpie and Stump.
    This favoured tavern, sacred to the evening orgies of Mr. Lowten and his
companions, was what ordinary people would designate a public-house. That the
landlord was a man of a money-making turn, was sufficiently testified by the
fact of a small bulk-head beneath the tap-room window, in size and shape not
unlike a sedan-chair, being underlet to a mender of shoes: and that he was a
being of a philanthropic mind, was evident from the protection he afforded to a
pieman, who vended his delicacies without fear of interruption on the very
door-step. In the lower windows, which were decorated with curtains of a saffron
hue, dangled two or three printed cards, bearing reference to Devonshire cyder
and Dantzic spruce, while a large black board, announcing in white letters to an
enlightened public that there were 500,000 barrels of double stout in the
cellars of the establishment, left the mind in a state of not unpleasing doubt
and uncertainty as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth, in which
this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend. When we add, that the
weather-beaten sign-board bore the half-obliterated semblance of a magpie
intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown paint, which the neighbours had been
taught from infancy to consider as the stump, we have said all that need be said
of the exterior of the edifice.
    On Mr. Pickwick's presenting himself at the bar, an elderly female emerged
from behind a screen therein, and presented herself before him.
    »Is Mr. Lowten here, ma'am?« inquired Mr. Pickwick.
    »Yes he is, sir,« replied the landlady. »Here, Charley, show the gentleman
in, to Mr. Lowten.«
    »The gen'lm'n can't go in just now,« said a shambling pot-boy, with a red
head, »'cos Mr. Lowten's a singin' a comic song, and he'll put him out. He'll be
done d'rectly, sir.«
    The red-headed pot-boy had scarcely finished speaking, when a most unanimous
hammering of tables, and jingling of glasses, announced that the song had that
instant terminated; and Mr. Pickwick, after desiring Sam to solace himself in
the tap, suffered
