On the mantel-piece were two of those huge shells in which the tropic deep is ever murmuring.

Who that has taken lodgings in London does not know them?
Who has not sometimes forgotten the commonplaces of his life in listening to those cold lifeless lips?
If you take them up on their own tropic shore, they will tell you of the roar of London streets.
There were two articles in the room, however, which were peculiar to itself.

The one was a human skull--to all appearance, the same as all other skulls, the virtue of which has gone out of them, though it had once belonged to no common man.

The second object could still less be termed an ornament than the first, although it was a picture.

It depicted a woman of frightful aspect, having but one eye, and a hare-lip; she was standing up, and appeared to be declaiming or dictating; while an old cripple, at a table beside her, took down her words in writing.