 impostors and deceptions. Be in time, be in time, be in time!«
 

                                 Chapter XXXIII

As the course of this tale requires that we should become acquainted, somewhere
hereabouts, with a few particulars connected with the domestic economy of Mr.
Sampson Brass, and as a more convenient place than the present is not likely to
occur for that purpose, the historian takes the friendly reader by the hand, and
springing with him into the air, and cleaving the same at a greater rate than
ever Don Cleophas Leandro Perez Zambullo and his familiar travelled through that
pleasant region in company, alights with him upon the pavement of Bevis Marks.
    The intrepid aeronauts alight before a small dark house, once the residence
of Mr. Sampson Brass.
    In the parlour window of this little habitation, which is so close upon the
footway that the passenger who takes the wall brushes the dim glass with his
coat-sleeve - much to its improvement, for it is very dirty - in this parlour
window in the days of its occupation by Sampson Brass, there hung, all awry and
slack, and discoloured by the sun, a curtain of faded green, so threadbare from
long service as by no means to intercept the view of the little dark room, but
rather to afford a favourable medium through which to observe it accurately.
There was not much to look at. A rickety table, with spare bundles of papers,
yellow and ragged from long carriage in the pocket, ostentatiously displayed
upon its top; a couple of stools set face to face on opposite sides of this
crazy piece of furniture; a treacherous old chair by the fireplace, whose
withered arms had hugged full many a client and helped to squeeze him dry; a
second-hand wig-box, used as a depository for blank writs and declarations and
other small forms of law, once the sole contents of the head which belonged to
the wig which belonged to the box, as they were now of the box itself; two or
three common books of practice; a jar of ink, a pounce-box, a stunted
hearth-broom, a carpet trodden to shreds but still clinging with the tightness
of desperation to its tacks - these, with the yellow wainscot of the walls, the
smoke-discoloured ceiling, the dust and cobwebs, were among the most prominent
decorations of the office of Mr. Sampson Brass.
    But this was mere still-life, of no greater importance than the plate,
BRASS, Solicitor, upon the door, and the bill, First floor to let to a single
gentleman, which was tied to the knocker.
