“What is this place, sir?”
“This, sir, is the Royal Assistenz Huus.”
“What may that be?”
“It is a place where needy people can have money lent on clothes. It enjoys a monopoly to the exclusion of all private establishments of the kind. If the goods are not redeemed within a twelvemonth, they are sold.”
A sale of this kind, I found, was now going on. Seated at a table, placed upon a sort of dais, were two functionaries, dressed in brown-holland coats, who performed the part of auctioneers. One drawled out the several bids, and another booked the name and offer of the highest bidder, and very hot work it seemed to be; the one and the other kept mopping their foreheads, and presently a Jewish-looking youth, who had been performing the part of jackal, handing up the articles of clothing, and exhibiting them to the buyers, brought the two brown-holland gents a foaming tankard of beer, which being swallowed, the scribe began scribbling, and the other Robins drawling again. A very nice pair of black trousers were now put up: “Better than new; show them round, Ignatius.” A person of clerical appearance seized them, and examined them thoroughly; then a peasant woman got hold of them; she had very dark eyes and a very red pippin-coloured face. A broad scarlet riband, passing under her chin, fastened her lace-bordered cap, while on her crown was a piece of gold cloth. One would have thought that the way in which her countenance was swaddled would have impeded her utterance; but she led off the bidding, and was quickly followed by the motley crowd round the platform. But the clerical-looking customer who had been lying by, now took up the running, and had it easy. He marched off in triumph with his prize, and I feel no doubt that he would preach in them the next Sunday.
Leaving these daws to scramble for the plumes, I passed into another large room, where I saw some nice-looking, respectable persons behind a large counter, examining different articles brought by unfortunates who were hard up. There was none of that mixture of cunning, hardness, and brutality about their demeanour which stamps the officials of the private establishments of the sort in England.
Hence we go to an old clothes establishment of another sort—I mean the Ethnographic Museum. Here you find yourself, as you proceed from chamber to chamber, now tête-à-tête with a Greenland family in their quaint abode; anon you are lower down Europe among the Laplanders, and among other little amusements you behold the get-up of a Lap wizard and his divining drum (quobdas). Hence you proceed eastward, and are now promenading with a Japanese beau in his handsome dress of black silk, now shuddering at the hideous grimaces of a Chinese deity. All this has been recently arranged with extraordinary care, and on scientific principles, by the learned Professor Thomsen.
“Herr Professor,” exclaimed a bearded German, “can’t we see the Museum of Northern Antiquities to-day? I have come all the way from Vienna to see it, and must leave this to-morrow.”
“Unmöglich, mein Herr,” replied the Professor. “To-morrow is the day. If you saw it to-day you would not see the flowers of the collection; and we will not show it without the flowers. The most costly and interesting specimens are locked up, and can’t be opened unless all the attendants are present.”