Charley, when he entered the door punctually at two o'clock, saw that it was as usual nearly deserted³. One long, lanky⁴, middle-aged⁵ man, seedy as to his outward vestments, and melancholy⁶ in countenance⁷, sat at one of the tables. But he was doing very little good for the establishment: he had no refreshment⁸ of any kind before him, and was intent only on a dingy⁹ pocket-book in which he was making entries with a pencil.

 

You enter the 'Banks of Jordan' by two folding doors in a corner of a very narrow alley¹⁰ behind the Exchange. As you go in, you observe on your left a little glass partition, something like a large cage, inside which, in a bar, are four or five untempting-looking bottles; and also inside the cage, on a chair, is to be seen a quiet-looking female, who is invariably engaged in the manufacture of some white article of inward clothing. Anything less like the flashy-dressed bar-maidens of the western gin palaces it would be difficult to imagine. To this encaged sempstress no one ever speaks unless it be to give a rare order for a mutton chop or pint¹¹ of

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