bridges (on those which are free of toll at least) where
many stop on fine evenings looking listlessly down upon
the water with some vague idea that by-and-by it runs
between green banks which grow wider and wider until
at last it joins the broad vast sea--where some halt to rest
from heavy loads and think as they look over the parapet
that to smoke and lounge away one's life, and lie sleeping
in the sun upon a hot tarpaulin, in a dull slow sluggish
barge, must be happiness unalloyed--and where some, and
a very different class, pause with heavier loads than they,
remembering to have heard or read in some old time that
drowning was not a hard death, but of all means of suicide
the easiest and best.

Covent Garden Market at sunrise too, in the spring or
summer, when the fragrance of sweet flowers is in the air,
overpowering even the unwholesome streams of last
night's debauchery, and driving the dusky thrush, whose
cage has hung outside a garret window all night long, half
mad with joy! Poor bird! the only neighbouring thing
at all akin to the other little captives, some of whom,
shrinking from the hot hands of drunken purchasers, lie
drooping on the path already, while others, soddened by
close contact, await the time when they shall be watered
and freshened up to please more sober company, and make
old clerks who pass them on their road to business, wonder
what has filled their breasts with visions of the country.

But my present purpose is not to expatiate upon my
walks. An adventure which I am about to relate, and to
which I shall recur at intervals, arose out of one of these
rambles, and thus I have been led to speak of them by way
of preface.

One night I had roamed into the City, and was walking
slowly on in my usual way, musing upon a great many
things, when I was arrested by an inquiry, the purport of
which did not reach me, but which seemed to be addressed
to myself, and was preferred in a soft sweet voice that
struck me very pleasantly. I turned hastily round and
found at my elbow a pretty little girl, who begged to be
directed to a certain street at a considerable distance, and
indeed in quite another quarter of the town.

"It is a very long way from here," said I, "my child."

"I know that, sir," she replied timidly. "I am afraid
it is a very long way, for I came from there to-night."

"Alone?" said I, in some surprise.

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