Richard, for purposes of study, used the front parlour.  In drawing up the blind, he disclosed a room precisely resembling in essential features hundreds of front parlours in that neighbourhood, or, indeed, in any working-class district of London.  Everything was clean; most things were bright-hued or glistening of surface.  There was the gilt-framed mirror over the mantelpiece, with a yellow clock—­which did not go—­and glass ornaments in front.  There was a small round table before the window, supporting wax fruit under a glass case.  There was a hearthrug with a dazzling pattern of imaginary flowers.  On the blue cloth of the middle table were four showily-bound volumes, arranged symmetrically.  On the head of the sofa lay a covering worked of blue and yellow Berlin wools.  Two arm-chairs were draped with long white antimacassars, ready to slip off at a touch.  As in the kitchen, there was a smell of cleanlines—­of furniture polish, hearthstone, and black-lead.

I should mention the ornaments of the walls.  The pictures were:  a striking landscape of the Swiss type, an engraved portrait of Garibaldi, an unframed view of a certain insurance office, a British baby on a large scale from the Christmas number of an illustrated paper.

The one singular feature of the room was a small, glass-doored bookcase, full of volumes.  They were all of Richard’s purchasing; to survey them was to understand the man, at all events on his intellectual side.  Without exception they belonged to that order of literature which, if studied exclusively and for its own sake,—­as here it was,—­brands a man indelibly, declaring at once the incompleteness of his education and the deficiency of his instincts.  Social, political, religious,—­under these three heads the volumes classed themselves, and each class was represented by productions of the ‘extreme’ school.  The books which a bright youth of fair opportunities reads as a matter of course, rejoices in for a year or two, then throws aside for ever, were here treasured to be the guides of a lifetime.  Certain writers of the last century, long ago become only historically interesting, were for Richard an armoury whence he girded himself for the battles of the day; cheap reprints or translations of Malthus, of Robert Owen, of Volney’s ‘Ruins,’ of Thomas Paine, of sundry works of Voltaire, ranked upon his shelves.  Moreover, there was a large collection of pamphlets, titled wonderfully and of yet more remarkable contents, the authoritative utterances of contemporary gentlemen—­and ladies—­who made it the end of their existence to prove:  that there cannot by any possibility be such a person as Satan; that the story of creation contained in the Book of Genesis is on no account to be received; that the begetting of children is a most deplorable oversight; that to eat flesh is wholly unworthy of a civilised being; that if every man and woman performed their quota of the world’s labour it would be necessary to work for one hour and thirty-seven minutes