It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the ingenious way in which the aldermen of London raised the money that built the Mansion House.

Pickwick walked on abstractedly, crossed opposite the Mansion House, and bent his steps up Cheapside.

The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.