l beerhouses. All of these houses have been
closed or pulled down.

At the corner of Smith Street was the house where Tommy Faulkner, who
wrote the history of Chelsea, carried on his business of bookseller,
library keeper, stationer and printer. There were some rich people at
that end of Paradise Row, several of them Quaker families, keeping two or
three servants. Near the corner of the alley leading into Durham Mews,
lived a doctor, a celebrated anatomist, and at the bottom of his garden
in the Mews stood a building with no window that could be seen. That had
the reputation of being the dissecting room. None of us boys would pass
it after dark, as it was reported that the body snatchers who robbed the
grave yards, would bring the bodies in a sack to sell to the doctor.

The present Children's Hospital was Miss Pemberton's ladies' school,
Gough House, with a lozenge-shaped grass plot and a carriage drive; an
avenue of elm trees led on each side to the house from the iron entrance
gates, by the side of which stood the coachhouse and stables.

A trip to Clapham was quite an undertaking, as there were no means of
getting there but by walking. Once a year I used to go with the mother
to pay the ground rent. We had to start after an early dinner and walk
over Battersea Bridge along the road, with fields on each side to the top
of Surrey Lane, pass Weller's Farm, and strike off to the left by a
pathway through cornfields to Long Hedge Farm--where the Chatham and
Dover works now stand--and pass through some water meadows with bridges
of planks across the dikes and penstocks, and up the hill by the side of
some old cottages that brought you out in the Wandsworth Road; across a
narrow footpath, a steep hill with steps cut in the gravel, called
Matrimony Hill, and through the old churchyard. A few doors to the left
was a ladies' school,--our destination. The lady we were to see was a
Miss Hart, a parlour boarder there. We were regaled with biscuits and a
glass of currant wine, which we quite appreciated, to help us on our way
home.

CHAPTER 2.--Schoolboy Escapades.

In Smith Street, at the corner of Durham Mews, stood Durham House School,
a large, square, rambling old building, without any pretence to
architectural design, apparently built at different times. It contained
over forty rooms and dormitories, with a large playground at the back
extending the whole length of the mews. It was strictly a boarding