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The cockroaches of the carboniferous epoch are exceedingly similar to those which now run about our coal-cellars; and its locusts, termites and dragon-flies are closely allied to the members of the same groups which now chirrup about our fields, undermine our houses, or sail with swift grace about the banks of our sedgy pools.
The "Palace" was the last relic of a vanished age. The remains of its former grandeur were still to be seen in the smoke-blackened stucco and deep windows of the attics; but the large rooms had been broken up into sets of one or two rooms for people of small means, half the wide landing being boarded off for coal-cellars.
They were big clumsy residences in the earliest Victorian style, interminably high and with deep damp basements and downstairs coal-cellars and kitchens that suggested an architect vindictively devoted to the discomfort of the servant class.
"See here this was found in Mr. Denson's pocket." Plummer nodded sagaciously. "All in the plant," he said. "See it's brand new; clean as a new pin, and file marks still on it." "Take us to this back door, Hutt," Hewitt pursued. "We'll try this key. Is there a back staircase?" There was a small back staircase, leading to the coal-cellars, and only used by servants.
The cockroaches of the carboniferous epoch are exceedingly similar to those which now run about our coal-cellars; and its locusts, termites and dragon-flies are closely allied to the members of the same groups which now chirrup about our fields, undermine our houses, or sail with swift grace about the banks of our sedgy pools.
The pavements were three inches deep in a rich greasy deposit of mud and molten ice. Above the round glass or iron coverings of coal-cellars the foot-passengers slipped, "ricked" their backs, and swore as they stumbled, if they did not actually fall down, in the filth. Those who were in haste, and could afford it, travelled, at fancy prices, in hansoms with two horses driven tandem.
The landlady met us on the doorstep with the greeting that we were the fourteenth party she had turned away within the last hour and a half. As for our meek suggestions of stables, billiard-room, or coal-cellars, she laughed them all to scorn: all these nooks had been snatched up long ago. Did she know of any place in the whole village where we could get shelter for the night?
Genteel blinds and makeshifts were more or less observable as soon as their doors were opened; screens not half high enough, which made dining-rooms out of arched passages, and warded off obscure corners where footboys slept at nights with their heads among the knives and forks; curtains which called upon you to believe that they didn't hide anything; panes of glass which requested you not to see them; many objects of various forms, feigning to have no connection with their guilty secret, a bed; disguised traps in walls, which were clearly coal-cellars; affectations of no thoroughfares, which were evidently doors to little kitchens.
Or there is still another method which has been employed, and which will perhaps have a future before it in those approaching times when the coal-cellars of England shall be exhausted. Imagine on the sea-coast a large flat extent which is inundated twice every day by the tide. Let us build a stout wall round this area, and provide it with a sluice-gate.
'Then I'll come down to the boot-room at half-past six to-morrow morning and hear what you've got to tell me. 'Lor, miss, it's such a mucky place all among the coal-cellars. 'I don't mind, said Miss Pillby; which was quite true. There was no amount of muckiness Miss Pillby would not have endured in order to injure a person she disliked.
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