 stopping
up the pass; so that when a stray hackney-coach or lumbering waggon came that
way, they were the cause of such an uproar as enlivened the whole neighbourhood,
and made the bells in the next church-tower vibrate again. In the throats and
maws of dark no-thoroughfares near Todgers's, individual wine-merchants and
wholesale dealers in grocery-ware had perfect little towns of their own; and,
deep among the foundations of these buildings, the ground was undermined and
burrowed out into stables, where cart-horses, troubled by rats, might be heard
on a quiet Sunday rattling their halters, as disturbed spirits in tales of
haunted houses are said to clank their chains.
    To tell of half the queer old taverns that had a drowsy and secret existence
near Todgers's, would fill a goodly book; while a second volume no less
capacious might be devoted to an account of the quaint old guests who frequented
their dimly-lighted parlours. These were, in general, ancient inhabitants of
that region; born, and bred there from boyhood; who had long since become wheezy
and asthmatical, and short of breath, except in the article of story-telling: in
which respect they were still marvellously long-winded. These gentry were much
opposed to steam and all new-fangled ways, and held ballooning to be sinful, and
deplored the degeneracy of the times; which that particular member of each
little club who kept the keys of the nearest church professionally, always
attributed to the prevalence of dissent and irreligion: though the major part of
the company inclined to the belief that virtue went out with hair-powder, and
that Old England's greatness had decayed amain with barbers.
    As to Todgers's itself - speaking of it only as a house in that
neighbourhood, and making no reference to its merits as a commercial boarding
establishment - it was worthy to stand where it did. There was one
staircase-window in it: at the side of the house, on the ground-floor: which
tradition said had not been opened for a hundred years at least, and which,
abutting on an always dirty lane, was so begrimed and coated with a century's
mud, that no one pane of glass could possibly fall out, though all were cracked
and broken twenty times. But the grand mystery of Todgers's was the cellarage,
approachable only by a little back door and a rusty grating: which cellarage
within the memory of man had had no connexion with the house, but had always
been the freehold property of somebody else,
