they live.  They seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the street, without any preparation.  They leave their young families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily quarrel and swear and scratch and spit at street corners.  In particular, I remark that when they are about to increase their families (an event of frequent recurrence) the resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain dusty dowdiness down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up of things.  I cannot honestly report that I have ever seen a feline matron of this class washing her face when in an interesting condition.

Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower animals of shy neighbourhoods by dwelling at length upon the exasperated moodiness of the tom-cats and their resemblance in many respects to a man and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the fowls of the same localities.

That anything born of an egg and invested with wings should have got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar, and calls that going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in this connexion to wonder at.  Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls have become separated from all the birds of the air—­have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud—­have forgotten all about live trees and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers.  I wonder at nothing concerning them, and take them as they are.  I accept as products of nature and things of course a reduced Bantam family of my acquaintance in the Hackney Road, who are incessantly at the pawnbroker’s.  I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, for they are of a melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment they are capable of they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker’s side-entry.  Here, they are always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come down in the world, and were afraid of being identified.  I know a low fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment of wives, in single file, in at the door of the jug department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the company’s legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life.  Over Waterloo Bridge there is a shabby old speckled couple (they belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washingstand, and towel-horse-making trade) who are always trying to get in at the door of a chapel.  Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular denomination, or merely understands that she has no business in the building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the principal door; while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her and defying