_In an informal, but practical way, a landlord is, and must be, a Justice of the Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders another tenant, the case passes beyond his jurisdiction: he has no power of the black cap. But if one tenant annoys another (which may eventually lead to homicide more or less justifiable), the case comes to his court: he is both jury and judge, and can in extremity pronounce sentence of eviction. But so many and subtile are the ways in which tenants annoy each other that to be a perfectly just landlord would demand a wisdom greater than Solomon's._--APARTMENTS TO LET.
On my consciousness are impressed the names of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) unmarried man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their husbands I hardly know at all; indeed, if Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp to me by that dear title,--as, for example, 'my husband, Mr. Hopp,'--I should hastily readjust my ideas and decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. Hopp, and Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Carrot. Charlie Wah Loo _may_ be married; he devotes his days to the washtub and ironing-board, and his nights (I like to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, author of "The Yellow Claw," mysteriously mentions as "ancient, unnamable evils." In feudal times, however, I should have known them all better. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that brave little company--
BUTTON HOPP CARROT BARBER KARSEN CAWKINS SMITH RANEE MAHONEY SIBLEY LE MAIRE TROLLEY BROWN MURPHY
--would have marched sturdily under my banner, each in his stout leathern jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, halberd, long bow, short bow, or arbalest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo would have trotted along by himself as an interesting human curiosity--or, perhaps, in a cage. Each in his time would have done me fealty, saying, "Know ye this, my lord, that I will be faithful and true unto you, and faith to you will bear for the tenements which I claim to hold of you; and that I will lawfully do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at the terms assigned. So help me God and his saints."