into as many separate odors as Coleridge distinguished in Cologne,—­but I could easily identify aromatic vinegar, damp straw, lemons, and dyed silk gowns.  And, as each of the windows was carefully nailed down, there were no obvious means of obtaining fresh air, save that ventilator said to be used by an eminent lady in railway-cars,—­the human elbow.  The lower bed was of straw, the upper of feathers, whose extreme heat kept me awake for a portion of the night, and whose abundant fluffy exhalations suggested incipient asthma during another portion.  On rising from these rather unrefreshing slumbers, I performed my morning ablutions with the aid of some three teacupsful of dusty water,—­for the pitcher probably held that quantity,—­availing myself, also, of something which hung over an elegant towel-horse, and which, though I at first took it for a child’s handkerchief, proved on inspection to be “Chamber Towel, No. 1.”

I remember, as I entered the breakfast-room, a vague steam as of frying sausages, which, creeping in from the neighboring kitchen, obscured in some degree the six white faces of your wife and children.  The breakfast-table was amply covered, for you were always what is termed by judicious housewives “a good provider.”  I remember how the beefsteak (for the sausages were especially destined for your two youngest Dolorosi, who were just recovering from the measles, and needed something light and palatable) vanished in large rectangular masses within your throat, drawn downward in a maelstrom of coffee;—­only that the original whirlpool is, I believe, now proved to have been imaginary;—­“that cup was a fiction, but this is reality.”  The resources of the house also afforded certain very hot biscuits or breadcakes, in a high state of saleratus;—­indeed, it must have been from association with these, that certain yellow streaks in Mr. Ruskin’s drawing of the rock, at the Athenaeum, awakened in me such an immediate sense of indigestion;—­also fried potatoes, baked beans, mince-pie, and pickles.  The children partook of these dainties largely, but without undue waste of time.  They lingered at table precisely eight minutes, before setting out for school; though we, absorbed in conversation, remained at least ten;—­after which we instantly hastened to your counting-room, where you, without a moment’s delay, absorbed yourself in your ledger, while I flirted languidly with the “Daily Advertiser.”

You bent over your desk the whole morning, occasionally having anxious consultations with certain sickly men whom I supposed to be superannuated bookkeepers, in impoverished circumstances, and rather pallid from the want of nutritious food.  One of them, dressed in rusty black, with a flabby white neckcloth, I took for an ex-clergyman; he was absorbed in the last number of the “Independent,” though I observed, at length, that he was only studying the list of failures, a department to which, as it struck me, he himself peculiarly appertained.  All of these, I afterwards ascertained from your office-boy, were eminent capitalists; something had gone wrong in the market,—­not in the meat-market, as I should have supposed from their appearance, but in the money-market.  I believe that there was some sudden fall in the price of indigo.  I know you looked exceedingly blue as we walked home to dinner.