At the Pewter Platter there were two arm chairs, one near the door and the other near the window, and both close by the fire, which were invariably occupied by the same gentlemen.  One of these was Mr. Bryant, citizen and stationer, but not bookseller, save that he sold bibles, prayer-books and almanacks; for he seriously considered that the armorial bearings of the Stationers’ Company displaying three books between a chevron, or something of that kind, for he was not a dab at heraldry, mystically and gravely set forth that no good citizen had occasion for more than three books, viz. bible, prayer-book and almanack.  Mr. Bryant was a bachelor of some sixty years old or thereabouts.  He had a snug little business though but a small establishment; for it was his maxim not to keep more cats than would catch mice.  His establishment consisted of only two individuals; a housekeeper and an apprentice.  His housekeeper was one Mrs. Dickinson, a staid, sober, matronly looking personage, who tried very hard, but not very successfully, to pass for about forty years of age; the good woman, though called Mrs. Dickinson, was a spinster, and according to her own account was of a good family, for her great uncle was a clergyman.  She was remarkable for the neatness of her dress, for the fineness of her muslin aprons, and the accurate arrangement of her plaited caps.  In one respect Mr. Bryant thought that she carried her love of dress too far, for she would always wear a hoop when her day’s work was done.  Mr. Bryant’s apprentice, who was at the period of which we are writing, nearly out of his time, was a high spirited young man, whom neither Mr. Bryant nor Mrs. Dickinson could keep in any tolerable order.  So far from confining his reading to bibles, prayer-books, and almanacks, he would devour with the utmost eagerness, whenever he could lay his hands upon them, novels, plays, poems, romances, and political pamphlets; he was a constant frequenter of the theatres, sometimes with leave and sometimes without, for Mr. Bryant was almost afraid of him; and to crown the matter he was a most outrageous Wilkite.

Mr. Bryant himself was a neat, quiet, orderly sort of a man, regular as clockwork, and steady as time, the very pink of punctuality and the essence of exactness.  He had been in business nearly forty years, in the same shop, conducted precisely in the same style as in the days of his predecessors; he lacked not store of clothes or change of wigs, but his clothes and wigs and three cornered hats were so like each other, that they seemed, as it were, part of himself.  His wig was brown, so were his coat and waistcoat, which were nearly of equal length.  He wore short black breeches with paste buckles, speckled worsted hose and very large shoes with very large silver buckles.  He was most intensely and entirely a citizen.  He loved the city with an undivided attachment.  He loved the sound of its bells, and the noise of its carts and coaches; he loved the colour of its mud