CHAPTER I
--MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND
WENT OVER
Ah! It\'s pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a
little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting down,
and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to
justify though I do not think they fully understand their trade and never
did, else why the sameness and why not more conveniences and fewer
draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too thick I
am well convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots putting
them on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing what
their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much, except
that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a straight form
or give it a twist before it goes there. And what I says speaking as I find
of those new metal chimneys all manner of shapes (there\'s a row of \'em at
Miss Wozenham\'s lodging-house lower down on the other side of the way)
is that they only work your smoke into artificial patterns for you before
you swallow it and that I\'d quite as soon swallow mine plain, the flavour
being the same, not to mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top of
your house to show the forms in which you take your smoke into your
inside.