to my thinking, only met in his decadence
with his deserts. When I spoke of
"carcases" just now, I did not intend to imply
that Danks was a wholesale butcher. His
carcases were of bricks and mortar, and of
his own making. Danks was a builder. He
took the contract once for the Doleful-hill
Lunatic Asylum, by which he did so well—
notwithstanding the complaints of the architect
in respect to the bricks—that he was
enabled to build a large number of
semi-detached villas, and a still larger quantity
of "carcases," as a speculation of his own.
Had he been prudent—had common sense
or even common decency been his guides—
he might have made a fortune, and be living
at this day in his own house at South
Kensington, six storeys high, and with a belvedere
at one end, like the Eddystone lighthouse.
His wife might have had a box at
the opera in lieu of that sad witness-box at
the Divorce Court, and his sons might be
enjoying a college education instead of
being (as I know is the case with Tom) a
waiter at a chop house in Pope's Head
Alley, or suffering every kind of hardship
and privation (which I am afraid is Phil's
mournful lot) as cabin boy to that well-
known disciplinarian, Captain Roper, of the
ship Anne and Sarah Cobbum of Great
Grimsby. This misguided Danks might
have become rich, respected, and a member
of the Metropolitan Board of Works.
Instead of this—flying in the face of his reason
and experience, of which he should have
had a fair share, seeing that he weighed
nearly seventeen stone—he went and built
Wretchedville. And then, forsooth, the
man wondered that he was ruined.

The ground, to begin with, was the very
worst in the whole county. It was an ugly,
polygonal plot, shelving down from the
higher road that leads from Sobbington to
Doleful-hill: a clay soil, of course, but in
very bad repute for the making of bricks.
Indeed the clay did not seem to be fit for
anything, save to stick to the boot soles of
people who were incautious enough to walk
over it. When any rain fell, it remained
here for about seven days after the adjoining
ground had dried up. Then the clay
resolved itself into a solution of a dark red
colour, and the spot assumed the aspect of
a field of gore. When it was not clayey it
was marshy; and the neighbours had long
since christened the place "Ague Hole."
Danks in his frenzy, and with the Vale of
Health at Hampstead in his eye, wanted to
call it "Pleasant Hollow;" but the ground
landlord, or rather landlady, Miss Goole
(she went melancholy mad, left half her
fortune to the Doleful-hill Asylum, and the
will is still the subject of a nice little litigation
in chancery)—Miss Goole, I say, who
granted Danks his building lease, insisted
that the group of tenements he intended to
erect should be called Wretchedville. Her
aunt had been a Miss Wretched, of
Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

And Wretchedville the place remains to
this day. Danks did his best, or rather
his worst with it. He proposed to drain the
ground, the result of which was, that water
made its appearance in places where it had
not appeared before. He laid out a
declivitous road branching downwards from
the highway, and leading nowhere save to
the reservoir of the West Howlington
Gasworks; and a nice terminus to the vista did
this monstrous iron tub make. He spent
all his own money, and as much of other
people's as he could possibly borrow, on
Wretchedville, and then, as I have hinted,
Bacchus and he became inseparable
companions, and he continued to "wreathe the
rosy bowl" and "quaff the maddening wine
cup," the two ordinarily assuming the guise
of rum-and-water, cold, till he woke up one
morning in the Messenger's Office in
Basinghall-street, waiting for his protection.
Swamper, the great buyer-up of carcases, was a
secured creditor, and came into possession of
Wretchedville; but Swamper is the world-
known contractor, whose dealings with the
Bucharest Improvements, and the Herzegovina
Baths and Washhouses Company, have
been made lately the subject of such lively
public comment. He is generally oscillating
between his offices in Great George-street,
Westminster, and the Danubian provinces,
and has had little time to attend to
Wretchedville. He has been heard to
express an opinion that the place—the
confounded hole he calls it—will "turn up
trumps" some day; and, indeed, plans
for a new county prison, on a remarkably
eligible site between Doleful-hill and
Sobbington, have been hanging up for some
time, neatly framed and glazed, in his office.
Meanwhile the Wretchedville rents are
receivable by Messrs. Flimsy and Quinsy,
auctioneers, valuers, and estate agents, of
Chancery-lane; and Swamper's affairs
being, as I am given to understand, in
somewhat evil trim, it is not unlikely that
Wretchedville, ere long, will fall into
fresh hands. And I don't envy the man
into whose hands it falls.

How I came to be acquainted with
Wretchedville was in this wise. I was in