for, what would staid british responsibility and respectability have said to orange-trees in boxes in a bank courtyard, and even to a cupid over the counter? yet such things were. tellson's had whitewashed the cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to night. bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this young pagan, in lombard-street, london, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the slightest provocation. yet, a french tellson's could get on with these things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.