He wore a very precise shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on his forehead, and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubt which precious possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy against it on part of all the clocks and watches in the City, and even of the very Sun itself.

Such as he was, such he had been in the shop and parlour behind the little Midshipman, for years upon years; going regularly aloft to bed every night in a howling garret remote from the lodgers, where, when gentlemen of England who lived below at ease had little or no idea of the state of the weather, it often blew great guns.
It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the reader and Solomon Gills become acquainted.

Solomon Gills is in the act of seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer.

The usual daily clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human tide is still rolling westward.

'The streets have thinned,' as Mr Gills says, 'very much.' It threatens to be wet to-night.