astily out of the room; directing my way towards the fields, where
I intended to find some house to die in; or, if not, determined to
poison myself in a ditch, where I could meet with one sufficiently
retired."

* * * * *

Lloyd's Coffee-house was one of the earliest establishments of its
kind; it is referred to in a poem printed in the year 1700, called
the _Wealthy Shopkeeper, or Charitable Christian_:

Now to Lloyd's Coffee-house he never fails,
To read the letters, and attend the sales.

In 1710, Steele (_Tatler_, No. 246) dates from Lloyd's his Petition
on Coffee-house Orators and Newsvendors. And Addison, in
_Spectator_, April 23, 1711, relates this droll incident: "About a
week since there happened to me a very odd accident, by reason of
one of these my papers of minutes which I had accidentally dropped
at Lloyd's Coffee-house, where the auctions are usually kept.
Before I missed it, there were a cluster of people who had found
it, and were diverting themselves with it at one end of the
coffee-house. It had raised so much laughter among them before I
observed what they were about, that I had not the courage to own
it. The boy of the coffee-house, when they had done with it,
carried it about in his hand, asking everybody if they had dropped
a written paper; but nobody challenging it, he was ordered by those
merry gentlemen who had before perused it, to get up into the
auction pulpit, and read it to the whole room, that if anybody
would own it they might. The boy accordingly mounted the pulpit,
and with a very audible voice read what proved to be minutes, which
made the whole coffee-house very merry; some of them concluded it
was written by a madman, and others by somebody that had been
taking notes out of the _Spectator_. After it was read, and the boy
was coming put of the pulpit, the _Spectator_ reached his arm out,
and desired the boy to given it him; which was done according. This
drew the whole eyes of the company upon the _Spectator_; but after
casting a cursory glance over it, he shook his head twice or thrice
at the reading of it, twisted it into a kind of match, and lighted
his pipe with it. 'My profound silence,' says the _Spectator_,
'together with the steadiness of my countenance, and the gravity of