There was my aunt's best winter-candle still burning away in the daylight, for no one had taken any thought to put it out; and Mr. Bailiff melts the wax at it, till a drop of sealing-wax falls into the grease and makes a gutter down one side, and then there is a sweating of the parchment under the hot wax, and at last on goes the seal.

"By the bye, what is all this story about Raymond affronting Wil'sbro' by stirring up their gutters?

An active gymnast, or a sailor, could catch the gutter with a slight spring, and by it draw himself upon the roof.

The roofs are slightly pitched to the front edges, where they drain into gold-plated copper-gutters on plated wrought-iron brackets, with one side flashed up over the blocks, which raise the slabs from the beam-tops, to clear the joint gutters....

You pass a gateway, then mount a step, then go on a yard or two and encounter four steps, then breathe a little, then get into a somewhat sombre lobby two and a half yards wide, and inconveniently steep, next cross a little stone gutter, and finally reach a cimmerian square, surrounded by high walls, cracked house ends, and other objects similarly interesting.

It seems that a builder's man was ascending a ladder to examine a gutter on number 31, New Inn, when, on passing a second-floor window that was open at the top, he looked in and perceived a gentleman lying on a bed.

The rain pelted intermittently through a hazy, chilly atmosphere, filling the gutters and splashing heavily on the slippery pavements.

"Rain at last: too late, though, to flush out the gutters.

Just recall to mind the filthiest gutter that ever you saw in your life, with the numerous ends of cigars that you perfectly remember having observed sweltering in it, and then take another pull at your GUINNESS, sir, and I wish you joy of it, sir!"

Mr. Walkley, in an unintentionally despairing article in the Times, once maintained that the critics were powerless to stem the increasing flood that pours in upon us, like that hideous stream of babies that Mr. Wells once saw pouring down some gutter or rain-pipe.

From the delineation of this profoundly depressing milieu, by the aid of which, if the fate of London and Liverpool were to-morrow as that of Herculaneum and Pompeii, we should be able to reconstruct the gutters of our Imperial cities (little changed in essentials since the days of Domitian), Gissing turned his sketch-book to the scenery of rural England.

No other animal, except man, ever traverses this country, and his track cannot be mistaken, since none ever deviate from the beaten footpath, which was in consequence, in some places (where the soil was light), worn so deep as to resemble a gutter more than a road.

In a day or two their outline is blurred and blunted; in a few months they have melted away and run down the gutters.

Then all day quiet and silence throughout Nature except for the drops, tapping high and low the twinkling leaves; except for the new melody of woodland and meadow brooks, late silvery and with a voice only for their pebbles and moss and mint, but now yellow and brawling and leaping-back into the grassy channels that were their old-time beds; except for the indoor music of dripping eaves and rushing gutters and overflowing rain-barrels.

For as we leave the level land and flee to the mountains to spend our vacation, so will a child avoid the street and seek the gutter and the bank on the unimproved lot to enjoy its pastime."

"Dick nimbly skipped the gutter."Id.

"Dick nimbly skipt the gutter."Ib., p. 375.

And none of them seemed to see, as he could do, the drink-sodden wretchedness of the painted women at the corner, the ragged misery that sneaked along the gutters, the infinite futility of all this employment.

He treads the gutter.

Caesar passes the Rubicon, Mandrin bestrides the gutter.

Tyneside grenadier we had, Whom none could quell or decently constrain, For he was turbulent and sometimes bad, Yet, stout of heart, he dearly loved to fight, And spoke his fellows on a gusty night In some high barn, where, huddled in the straw, They watched the cheap wicks gutter on the shelf, How he was irked with discipline and law, And would fare forth to battle by himself.

And there's nothing Gard'ner does will drive them back; "Why, they'll choke up those roof-gutters if they start this nesting fuss; They've got a house," he says, "so I don't see" No, he doesn't know the secret, and there's no one does butus, All the pigeons, and the fairy-folk and ME!

'Besides, here's my master gets up to his work by five in the morning, and not back till seven at night, and by then he ain't in no humour to clean out gutters.