and Savile Row. Spinsters marry, widows
marry again; the son of sixteen plucks the
lined crutch from his grandsire, and goes into
business on his own account. Partnerships
are dissolved; and whilom staunch commercial
friends fill the advertising columns of the
newspapers with frantic denials of connection
with their quondam partners, and sternly
repudiate the untradesmanlike falsehood of
"it's the same concern." Men are divorced.
Belgrave Square is sold up, and is fain to
hide his head at the Spotted Dog in Strand
Lane. Number nine retires to his country-
house, and number ten goes to join his uncle
in America. Men go to the bad. to Boulogne,
to the Bench; men die; and all these are so
many variations in the pulse of the Great
Red Book, which it behoves Messrs. Kelly to
be on the watch for and to take their
measures by accordingly, so that the pulse
may beat helpful music: and that, ever on
the watch, they may be able to find out forty
thousand faults in any rival directory that
may dare to start in opposition; always for
the benefit of society at large, and not at all
for that of their own Great Red Book in
particular, of course.

For compiling the fresh number of the
Directory two distinct classes of persons are
employed. The first for the indoor, the
second for the outdoor work.

My friends the well-educated men, to the
number of about fifty, open the ball. On
the principle of Saturn destroying his own
children; of Penelope resolving her daily
crochet-work into mere Berlin wool again;
of the domino-player shuffling his neat
parallelograms of pieces into a salad of bones;
of the stoic throwing away his cucumber
just when it is dressed to the pink of perfection;
of the child upsetting the house of
cards which it had taken him so much time
and patience to build up; the educated
young men proceed deliberately and
ruthlessly to destroy their last year's work by
cutting up the whole of the commercial and
court directories into the separate lines
relating to each person. But like the victim of
the housemaid's broom, the spider, no sooner
is their web of sophistry destroyed than they
are at their dirty work again. If not dirty,
at least sticky; for the next step consists in
gumming the dissevered strips upon separate
sheets of blank paper, called query papers,
room being left for corrections. For know
ye that the principle on which the Great Red
Book is compiled is, that every portion ot
the work should be submitted in print to
the persons who are respectively described
therein. In the case of persons or firms
residing in the country, these marginal slips,
with a cabalistic printed inquiry, Is this
correct? are sent to them by post: a stamp
being enclosed to save the recipients expense
in transmitting a reply. The compilers of
the Great Red Book, besides keeping a keen
eye on their main chance of accuracy, show
some knowledge of human nature in the
adoption of this system. It imbues some
thousands of persons with the agreeable
notion that they have had a finger in the
editorship of a six-and-thirty shilling volume
bound in scarlet and gold. One likes to see
oneself in print, somehow. Besides, a man
likes to touch up his own portrait, shade off
his initials, sharpen his street number; and
if, like Dogberry, he desires to be written
down an ass, he may write himself down an
ass and welcome.

And now come into action another "well-
selected staff of educated men "—a
mysterious staff, an ubiquitous staff, a nomadic
staff, an invisibly inquisitive (for directorial
purposes) staff, who may be called canvassers,
collectors, inquirers, askers, or perhaps most
comprehensively, finders-out.

First, for the purposes of the office, the
districts comprised in the Directory are
divided into about seventy sub-districts to
each of which one outdoor collector,
canvasser, or finder-out is appointed.

About the month of May, this ingenious
man (I will take one as a sample) commences
the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.
He is furnished with the several papers
arranged in streets, and also with a supply
of blank forms, with his particular district
cut out of the map, and with a printed paper
of instructions. He starts on his peregrinations
at eleven in the morning and returns
to the office at five or six in the evening with
his day's work.

The work so brought in, is revised by the
well-educated men indoors to see that the
names are all written so clearly that it
shall be impossible for them to be mis-
read at any subsequent period of their
progress through the office; and also to ascertain
that there is no discrepancy between the
street directory and the separate papers. All
removals are referred to the corresponding
districts. Thus, if John Tonks is returned as
a new name in Oxford Street, removed from
the Strand, reference will be made to the
Strand to see that he is there taken out;
and at the same time the paper returned
from the Strand, which states that John Tonks
has removed thence to Oxford Street, will be
referred to that street, to verify Tonks being
entered there as a new name. The papers are
then divided into three parcels: those in which
no alterations have taken place, the "take
outs" and the new names. The "no alterations"
are done with; the two other classes
have to be sorted to the commercial and
court divisions, and arranged in strict
alphabetical order. This is an operation
requiring great care, as names pronounced
alike may, by a very trifling difference in
spelling be far removed from each other:
e. g., if Spigot were sorted as if it were spelt
Spigott, it would be entered seven names too
low; but if it were sorted as if spelt Spiggott,
it would be fourteen names too high.