Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the warning, I made
the best of my way to Fleet Street, and there got a late hackney chariot
and drove to the Hummums in Covent Garden. In those times a bed was
always to be got there at any hour of the night, and the chamberlain,
letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the candle next in order on
his shelf, and showed me straight into the bedroom next in order on his
list. It was a sort of vault on the ground floor at the back, with a
despotic monster of a four-post bedstead in it, straddling over the
whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fireplace
and another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little
washing-stand in quite a Divinely Righteous manner.

As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought me in,
before he left me, the good old constitutional rushlight of those
virtuous days.--an object like the ghost of a walking-cane, which
instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing could ever be
lighted at, and which was placed in solitary confinement at the bottom
of a high tin tower, perforated with round holes that made a staringly
wide-awake pattern on the walls. When I had got into bed, and lay there
footsore, weary, and wretched, I found that I could no more close my own
eyes than I could close the eyes of this foolish Argus. And thus, in the
gloom and death of the night, we stared at one another.