When all the districts have been corrected
once, and the information arranged in the
office, the street portion is handed over to the
printers, and all the corrections made in
print. Proofs of each street are pulled, and
handed to the canvassers, who again go over
their entire districts rapidly, and note any
alterations which may have been made since.

I have not quite done with the ingenious
"finder out" yet, I should like to convey a
notion of him physically as well as morally.
He is necessarily middle-aged, as a man of
experiences should be. He is inclined to be
bald-headed, for he knows things. He is
taciturn in responsion, but voluble in
interrogation. Such his vocation. I have a notion
that he wears a long great coat with many
pockets, from which ooze subscription books,
maps, note-books, " query papers," and
"new names." His hat is frayed with much
smoothing while waiting for replies, with
long lying on hall chairs and counting-house
brackets. He is the most disinterested and
most useful, yet the most pertinacious, of
Paul Prys. He hopes he doesn't intrude;
but, do you happen to know what your name
is, what your address, what your profession?
He is a silent daguerreotypist, forever taking
your portrait in his printed camera, and
asking you, " Is this correct? " Time and he
glide on noiselessly and surely together. As
each succeeding year brings good or evil
fortune, grandeur or decadence, he comes
with them, and chronicles your ups and
downs. As long as you keep out of the
workhouse he will be anxious to learn how
you are getting on; and when you die, he
will make a last register of your name, with
"Take out " affixed to it, and your name will
be erased from the book of London, and from
the book of life.

What may he have been before he took to
"finding out?" A broken merchant, a
speculator, a schoolmaster? What can he
be besides a '' Courier and Enquirer? " I
shudder to think. He must know more
about people and their whereabouts than a
postman, a detective policeman, a sheriff's
officer, an income-tax schedulist, or a begging-
letter writer. If you were to go through the
Insolvent Court to-morrow, he could describe
all your consecutive addresses and avocations
without halting. If your name were Johnson,
and you were a doctor and a lexicographer,
he could be your Boswell, and write your
biography with (at least local) faultless
accuracy.

He does not obtain his information without
considerable trouble, though. In the city and
mercantile parts of town great facilities are
given to him for correcting the Directory,
and he is seldom detained an unnecessary
time; but at the west-end, and more
particularly the suburbs, he has great difficulty
in obtaining information. The servant is
disposed to treat the canvasser as a species of
hawker, if not worse—to place him on a level
with the seedy man who solicits subscriptions
for the worn-out plates of " From Bungay to
the Bosphorus,'' or the "Illustrated Life of
Timour the Tartar;" with the industrial who
knocks a double knock, and politely inquires
if you want any lucifer matches; the calico
and lampblack lascar who sells tracts, and if
repulsed, frightens the little footpage into
convulsions, by the rolling of his bilious
eyeballs and the snaky bristling of his elfin
locks; or else wreaks a dire revenge by beating
a tom-tom, and yelping Bengalee ditties
before the parlour window; the diplomatic
man, with the confidential voice, who leaves
the box of steel pens, as if it were a protocol,
and mentions to the housemaid, as Nesselrode
might mention to Metternich, that he will
call for them the day after to-morrow; the
hearthing man; the bath-brick man; the
spurious taxgatherer, who knocks like the
water-rate, and hands in a paper, headed
"Fire, Fire;" or "Glorious News" relating
to Blabberscoat's pills, or a newly-opened
linen-draper's shop in the Walworth-road;
the ecclesiastical man with the white neckcloth
and the umbrella, who commences the
conversation with a reference to the Beast and
the battle of Armageddon, and ends with
enthusiastic encomia on and passionate
entreaties to you to buy Professor Tarpytch's
corn-plaister; the military man with the
dyed moustaches, who asks if Captain Seymour
lives at Number Nine, and while the
unsuspecting domestic is gone to enquire,
walks off with the barometer, a new silk
umbrella, and master's great coat. For all
these outcasts of commerce is the inoffensive
"finder-out" not frequently mistaken. Often,
too, is he stigmatised as " taxes; " often
unjustly suspected and vituperated as " bailiffs;"
very often met in his humble enquiries by
the stereotyped reply of domestic servitude:
"No; there's nothing wanted; " or " Not to-
day: I told you so before." Immediately
after which the door is slammed in his face.

Even when the servants are inclined to be
civil, and really understand the purport of
the canvasser's visit, they are frequently
unable to give anything approximating to the
correct spelling of their master's surname,
and seldom know his christian name at all.
How should they? The only head of the
establishment they recognise is " Missus."
She is all in all to them. She engages, she
discharges; she gives the Sunday out, she
objects to followers, denounces ringlets and
enforces caps; she scolds, pays wages, orders
the dinner, and is the recipient of the intelligence
of how much crockeryware the cat
breaks weekly. Missus is the Alpha and
Omega of the Household. Master is only an
inconsequential entity who grumbles when
dinner is late; leaves the house early in the
morning for the city, and comes home late at
night from his club, leaving his wellington
boots at the foot of the staircase. So, when
Betsy is asked the name of the occupier of