daughter, named Morgiana, after that celebrated part in the "Forty
Thieves" which Miss Budge performed with unbounded applause both at
the "Surrey" and "The Wells." Mrs. Crump sat in a little bar, profusely
ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg,
Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic toe in 1805, down to the
Sylphides of our day. There was in the collection a charming portrait of
herself, done by De Wilde; she was in the dress of Morgiana, and in the
act of pouring, to very slow music, a quantity of boiling oil into one
of the forty jars. In this sanctuary she sat, with black eyes, black
hair, a purple face and a turban, and morning, noon, or night, as you
went into the parlour of the hotel, there was Mrs. Crump taking tea
(with a little something in it), looking at the fashions, or reading
Cumberland's "British Theatre." The Sunday Times was her paper, for she
voted the Dispatch, that journal which is taken in by most ladies of her
profession, to be vulgar and Radical, and loved the theatrical gossip in
which the other mentioned journal abounds.

The fact is, that the "Royal Bootjack," though a humble, was a very
genteel house; and a very little persuasion would induce Mr. Crump, as
he looked at his own door in the sun, to tell you that he had himself
once drawn off with that very bootjack the top-boots of His Royal
Highness the Prince of Wales and the first gentleman in Europe. While,
then, the houses of entertainment in the neighbourhood were loud in
their pretended Liberal politics, the "Bootjack" stuck to the good old
Conservative line, and was only frequented by such persons as were of
that way of thinking. There were two parlours, much accustomed, one for
the gentlemen of the shoulder-knot, who came from the houses of their
employers hard by; another for some "gents who used the 'ouse," as Mrs.
Crump would say (Heaven bless her!) in her simple Cockniac dialect, and
who formed a little club there.

I forgot to say that while Mrs. C. was sipping her eternal tea or
washing up her endless blue china, you might often hear Miss Morgiana
employed at the little red-silk cottage piano, singing, "Come where the
haspens quiver," or "Bonny lad, march over hill and furrow," or "My art
and lute," or any other popular piece of the day. And the dear girl sang
with very considerable skill, too, for she had a fine loud voice, which,
if not always in tune, made up for that defect by its great en