dozen old inns, which have preserved their external features
unchanged, and which have escaped alike the rage for public
improvement and the encroachments of private speculation. Great,
rambling, queer old places they are, with galleries, and passages,
and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish
materials for a hundred ghost stories.... It was in the yard of one
of these inns--of no less celebrated a one than the White Hart--that
a man was busily employed in brushing the dirt off a pair of boots,
early on the morning succeeding the events narrated in the last
chapter. He was habited in a coarse-striped waistcoat, with black
calico sleeves, and blue glass buttons; drab breeches and leggings.
A bright red handkerchief was wound in a very loose and unstudied
style round his neck, and an old white hat was carelessly thrown on
one side of his head. There were two rows of boots before him, one
cleaned and the other dirty, and at every addition he made to the
clean row, he paused from his work, and contemplated its results
with evident satisfaction."

[Illustration: WHITE HART INN, SOUTHWARK.]


Who does not recognize Sam Weller, making his first appearance in
"The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"? And who has not
revelled in the lively scene in the White Hart when Mr. Pickwick and
his friends arrived in the nick of time to prevent the ancient but
still sentimental Rachael from becoming Mrs. Jingle? It is not
difficult to understand why that particular instalment of "Pickwick"
was the turning-point of the book's fortunes. Prior to the advent of
Sam in the courtyard of the White Hart the public had shown but a
moderate interest in the new venture of "Boz," but from that event