My work—­if anything so pleasant and unforced can carry the name—­is done at a window that overlooks this park.  Were it not for several high buildings in my sight I might fancy that I lived in one of the older squares of London.  There is a look of Thackeray about the place as though the Osbornes might be my neighbors.  A fat man who waddles off his steps opposite, if he would submit to a change of coat, might be Jos Sedley starting for his club to eat his chutney.  If only there were a crest above my bell-pull I might even expect Becky Sharp in for tea.  Or occasionally I divert myself with the fancy that I am of a still older day and that I have walked in from Lichfield—­I choose the name at hazard—­with a tragedy in my pocket, to try my fortune.  Were it not for the fashion of dress in the park below and some remnant of reason in myself, I could, in a winking moment, persuade myself that my room is a garret and my pen a quill.  On such delusion, before I issued on the street to seek my coffee-house, I would adjust my wig and dust myself of snuff.

But for my exercise and recreation—­which for a man of Grub Street is necessary in the early hours of afternoon when the morning fires have fallen—­I go outside the park.  I have a wide choice for my wanderings.  I may go into the district to the east and watch the children play against the curb.  If they pitch pennies on the walk I am careful to go about, for fear that I distract the throw.  Or if the stones are marked for hop-scotch, I squeeze along the wall.  It is my intention—­from which as yet my diffidence withholds me—­to present to the winner of one of these contests a red apple which I shall select at a corner stand.  Or an ice wagon pauses in its round, and while the man is gone there is a pleasant thieving of bits of ice.  Each dirty cheek is stuffed as though a plague of mumps had fallen on the street.  Or there may be a game of baseball—­a scampering on the bases, a home-run down the gutter—­to engage me for an inning.  Or shinny grips the street.  But if a street organ comes—­not a mournful one-legged box eked out with a monkey, but a big machine with an extra man to pull—­the children leave their games.  It was but the other day that I saw six of them together dancing on the pavement to the music, with skirts and pigtails flying.  There was such gladness in their faces that the musician, although he already had his nickel, gave them an extra tune.  It was of such persuasive gayety that the number of dancers at once went up to ten and others wiggled to the rhythm.  And for myself, although I am past my sportive days, the sound of a street organ, if any, would inflame me to a fox-trot.  Even a surly tune—­if the handle be quickened—­comes from the box with a brisk seduction.  If a dirge once got inside, it would fret until it came out a dancing measure.

In this part of town, on the better streets, I sometimes study the fashions as I see them in the shops and I compare them with those of uptown stores.  Nor is there the difference one might suppose.  The small round muff that sprang up this winter in the smarter shops won by only a week over the cheaper stores.  Tan gaiters ran a pretty race.  And I am now witness to a dead heat in a certain kind of fluffy rosebud dress.  The fabrics are probably different, but no matter how you deny it, they are cut to a common pattern.