A foggy evening in early December. Fogs are quick to gather and slow to disperse in the heavily laden air surrounding an assemblage of tall chimneys; and the manufacturing town of Wareborough, low-lying and flat, seemed to have a special attraction for them. Unprepossessing at its best, Wareborough was peculiarly so at this season and in such weather; it would, indeed, have been difficult to choose a day on which it could have less favourably impressed a stranger than the one just drawing drearily to a close. There was a good deal of confusion in the streets, for the fog greatly impeded the traffic. "What a place How can human beings be found willing to spend their lives here?" thought to himself, with a shudder at the bare idea, a young man seated in a rattling Wareborough fly, whose driver, notwithstanding constantly recurring risk of collision, was doing his best to keep his tired horse up to its usual speed. "Where in the world is the fellow taking me to?" was his next reflection. "It seems to me I have been hours in this wretched shandry-dan."