active associates at
Long's or Stevens's, the Cider Cellar, or the Coal-hole! The general
introduction of gas throws too clear a light upon many dark transactions
and midnight frolics to allow the repetition of the scenes of former
times: here and there to be sure an odd nook, or a dark cranny, is yet
left unenlightened; but the leading streets of the metropolis are,
for the most part, too well illuminated to allow the _spreeish_ or
the _sprightly_ to carry on their jokes in security, or bolt away with
safety when a charley thinks proper to set his _child a crying_.{3} We
had crossed the road, in the direction of Chancery-lane, expecting to
have met with a hackney _rattler_, but not one was to be found upon the
stand, when Bob espied the broad _tilt_ of a _jarvey perched_ upon his
_shop-board_, and impelling along, with no little labour of the whip, a
pair of _anatomies_, whose external appearance showed they

3 Springing his rattle.

~340~~had benefited very little by the opening of the ports for oats, or
the digestive operation of the new corn-bill. "Hired, old Jarvey?" said
Echo, fixing himself in the road before the fiery charioteer. "No,
but tired, young Davey," replied the dragsman. "Take a fare to Covent
Garden?" "Not if I knows it," was the knowing reply; "so stir your
stumps, my tight one, or I shall drive over you." "You had better take
us," said Transit. "I tell you I won't; I am a day man, going home, and
I don't take night jobs." "But I tell you, you must," said Echo; "so
round with your drag, and we'll make your last day a long day, and give
you the benefit of resurrection into the bargain." "Why, look ye, my
jolly masters, if you're up to a lark of that 'ere sort, take care you
don't get a floorer; I've got a rum customer inside what I'm giving a
lift to for love--only Josh Hudson, the miller; and if he should chance
to wake, I think he'll be for dusting some of your jackets." "What, my
friend Josh inside?" vociferated Echo, "then it's all right: go it, my
hearties; mount the box one on each hand, and make him drive us to the
Finish--while I settle the matter with the inside passenger." Josh, who
had all this time been taking _forty winks_, while on his road to his
crony Belcher's, soon recognised his patron, Echo; and jarvey, finding
that all remonstrance was useless, thought it better to make a "virtue
of necessity;" so turning his machine to the right about, he, in due
time, deposited us in the p