The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 THE COURT OF LONDON and dangling amidst the necessaries and luxuries just enumerated, were divers bunches of candles, — sixes, eights, middling tens, and farthing rushlights. On the shelves behind the counter were a few canisters of tea and coffee, some jars of snuff and tobacco, and a mis- cellaneous assortment of tinder-boxes, tapes, laces, balls of cotton and worsted, papers of pins and needles, brushes, balls of twine, and “ rounds ”’ of matches with sharp yellow points looking like the beaks of callow birds, — “ lucifers ”’ not being invented in those times. The counter itself was furnished with drawers containing sugars of divers descrip- tions; and above it, to a horizontal beam, hung a further supply of candles, forming a thick fringe of tallow. At one end of the counter stood more loaves, a block of salt, a firkin of butter, and a tin treacle-can. Against the wall rested a nine-gallon cask of very small beer, with two or three measures in readiness to serve out the poor thin fluid; and in one corner of the shop was a group of mops, brooms, and brushes. A nest of little drawers, with the labels thumbed and fingered into perfect illegibility, but doubtless containing pepper, mustard, spices, and such like articles, was discernible in the other corner of this complete and interesting emporium of commerce. The sole proprietor of the establishment was Mr. William Taggarty, as the name above the street door irrefragably proved. But who was the happy owner of so compendious an assortment of articles, or, as the brokers’ advertisements in newspapers would have described it, this snug concern? We are bound, for truth’s sake, to admit that the appellation of Taggarty was merely an assumed one for convenience’ sake, and that the individual bearing it was none other than the Kinchin-Grand alluded to by Jack the Foundling in his conversation with Mr. Lawrence Sampson. Behind the shop there was a small parlour, a very tiny place, just capable of holding a little round table and three chairs, and quite filled whenever those chairs were all occupied. If we look into this parlour at about nine o’clock in the evening, on the day after the occurrences chronicled in the previous chapter, we shall find Mr. William Taggarty seated in earnest conversation with Richard and Sarah Melmoth. , These two last-mentioned individuals have already been COUN () IDoOaks (E(0)