calls, and there we were
fixed. Long might we have remained in that unpleasant predicament had
not my foreseeing parent sagaciously provided herself with a piece of
ribbon of the popular colour, which she used to good effect by making it
up into a bow with a long, streamer and pinning it to a white
handkerchief, which she courageously flourished out of the window of the
hackney-coach. Huzzas {274} and "Go on, coachee!" were shouted from the
crowd and with no other obstruction than the full streets presented, we
reached Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand, the street in which we
resided.

There a new scene presented itself, which was very impressive to our
young minds. The street was full of soldiers, and the coachman said to
my mother, "I cannot go down." A soldier addressed my mother: "No one,
ma'am, can go down this street:" to whom my mother replied, "I live
here, and am going to my own home." An officer then gave permission for
us, and the coachman with our box, to proceed, and we were soon at our
own door. The coachman, ignorant of the passport which the handkerchief
and ribbon had proved, said, on setting the box down, "You see, ma'am,
we got on without my taking off my hat: for who would take off his hat
to such a set of fellows? I would rather have sat there all the day
long."

The assembling of the military in this street was to defend the
dwellings of Mr. Kitchener and Mr. Heron, both these gentlemen being
Roman Catholics. Mr. Kitchener (who was the father of Dr. Kitchener, the
author of the _Cook's Oracle_) was an eminent coal merchant, whose wharf
was by the river-side southward, behind Beaufort Buildings, then called
Worcester Grounds[1], as the lane leading to it was called Worcester
Lane: but Mr. Kitchener, or his successor Mr. Cox, endeavoured to change
it by having "Beaufort Wharf" painted on their wagons. Thus the name
"Worcester Grounds" got lost; but the lane which bore the same name got
no advantage by the change, for it received the appropriate title of
"Dirty Lane," used only for carts and horses, foot passengers reaching
the wharf by the steps at the bottom of Fountain Court and Beaufort
Buildings.

But to return to my narrative. My parents soon removed us out of this
scene of public confusion, to the house of a relative residing at St.
Pancras: and well do I remember the painful interest with which, as soon
as it got dark, the whole family of my uncle used to go on the roof of
the house and co