Rhodostephane; or, The Artist's Revenge

I LIVE in a terrace at the west end of town, the extreme west end. It is not a fashionable terrace, nor a particularly healthy terrace, nor a lively terrace, nor, my friends say, is it a terrace at all. They call it a Mews, and, with a momentary condescension to their peculiar style of wit, if it amuses them to call it so, so be it. But my landlord calls it a Terrace. It is true that the roadway is generally blocked for half its width by heaps of straw, that it is the exercise-ground of half a dozen horsebreakers, and that the carriages of my neighbours in the next square do often pass this way before taking up their load; but, as I said, my landlord calls it a Terrace, and so considers it in his rent.