lue old spider. I took the shilling, and the spider hinting
that a dry bargain was likely to prove a bad bargain, I expended it in
two glasses of sherry at some neighbouring "wine shade," to which he
conducted me--the sort of institution which the Bodega Company has very
advantageously superseded. It was a dirty place, with rotting sawdust on
the floor, and little hollows beaten into the pewter counter, in which
were small lakes of stale wasted liquors of various kinds; and the smell
of it, also, is in my nostrils as I write. I was instructed to present
myself at St George's Barracks, Westminster, at eleven o'clock on the
following morning, and was told that if I failed in that respect I
should become in the eye of the law a rogue and vagabond, and should be
liable to summary indictment. I was dressed in my best, because I
was going out to tea that evening with an old family friend in the
Haymarket, a picture-restorer, whose shop and studio were next door
to the old Hay-market Theatre. My host told me that at the very last
appearance of Madame Goldschmit (Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale),
he had sat at his open window, and had heard her sing as clearly as if
he had been one of a paying audience who spent anything from a hundred
pounds to a guinea to enjoy that privilege; and I can well believe
him, because I heard easily the quaint chuckle of old Buckstone's voice
through the open windows of the studio. I am not sure at this distance
of time, but I think he was then playing the part of Asa Trenchard, with
Sothern, in _Dundreary Married and Done For_.

I got home that night without any interview with the dreaded landlady,
and made a bolt very early in the morning, leaving books, pictures, and
wardrobe to solve my bill. That night I slept in the great London
depot barracks. I know perhaps as well as anybody how Tommy Atkins has
improved in character and conduct since those days, but I can aver that
never before or since have I encountered a crew so wholly shameless and
abominable as I found that night at St George's, Westminster. It is
not a pretty thing to be the only decently bred and sober man amongst
a howling crowd of yokel drunkards, whose every phrase is built on a
foundation of hitherto unconceived obscenities. The night was enough;
and, with three half-crowns in my pocket, paid to me as subsistence
money for the three days ensuing between that date and the date of
my departure, I betook myself to a common lodg