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vociferous manner, to the great annoyance of the neighbours, and the
special discomfort of another single gentleman overhead.

Now, this was bad enough, occurring as it did three times a week on the
average, but this was not all; for when the company _did_ go away,
instead of walking quietly down the street, as anybody else's company
would have done, they amused themselves by making alarming and frightful
noises, and counterfeiting the shrieks of females in distress; and one
night, a red-faced gentleman in a white hat knocked in the most urgent
manner at the door of the powdered-headed old gentleman at No. 3, and
when the powdered-headed old gentleman, who thought one of his married
daughters must have been taken ill prematurely, had groped down-stairs,
and after a great deal of unbolting and key-turning, opened the street
door, the red-faced man in the white hat said he hoped he'd excuse his
giving him so much trouble, but he'd feel obliged if he'd favour him with
a glass of cold spring water, and the loan of a shilling for a cab to
take him home, on which the old gentleman slammed the door and went
up-stairs, and threw the contents of his water jug out of window--very
straight, only it went over the wrong man; and the whole street was
involved in confusion.

A joke's a joke; and even practical jests are very capital in their way,
if you can only get the other party to see the fun of them; but the
population of our street were so dull of apprehension, as to be quite
lost to a sense of the drollery of this proceeding: and the consequence
was, that our next-door neighbour was obliged to tell the single
gentleman, that unless he gave up entertaining his friends at home, he
really must be compelled to part with him.

The single gentleman received the remonstrance with great good-humour,
and promised from that time forward, to spend his evenings at a
coffee-house--a determination which afforded general and unmixed
satisfaction.

The next night passed off very well, everybody being delighted with the
change; but on the next, the noises were renewed with greater spirit than
ever. The single gentleman's friends being unable to see him in his own
house every alternate night, had come to the determination of seeing him
home every night; and what with the discordant greetings of the friends
at parting, and the noise created by the single gentleman in his passage
up-stairs, and his subsequent struggles to get his boots off