A dim, dirty, smoky, tumble-down,
rotten old house it was, as anybody would desire to see; but there the
firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son transacted all their business and
their pleasure too, such as it was; for neither the young man nor the
old had any other residence, or any care or thought beyond its narrow
limits.
Business, as may be readily supposed, was the main thing in this
establishment; insomuch indeed that it shouldered comfort out of
doors, and jostled the domestic arrangements at every turn. Thus in the
miserable bedrooms there were files of moth-eaten letters hanging up
against the walls; and linen rollers, and fragments of old patterns,
and odds and ends of spoiled goods, strewed upon the ground; while the
meagre bedsteads, washing-stands, and scraps of carpet, were huddled
away into corners as objects of secondary consideration, not to be
thought of but as disagreeable necessities, furnishing no profit, and
intruding on the one affair of life. The single sitting-room was on
the same principle, a chaos of boxes and old papers, and had more
counting-house stools in it than chairs; not to mention a great monster
of a desk straddling over the middle of the floor, and an iron safe
sunk into the wall above the fireplace.
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