the head of a long procession of idlers, having in the midst
the theatre and its proprietors. Straightway, the stage
would be set up in front of Mr. Brass's house; the single
gentleman would establish himself at the first-floor window;
and the entertainment would proceed with all its exciting
accompaniments of fife and drum and shout, to the exces-
sive consternation of all sober votaries of business in that
silent thoroughfare. It might have been expected that
when the play was done, both players and audience would
have dispersed; but the epilogue was as bad as the play,
for no sooner was the Devil dead, than the manager of the
puppets and his partner were summoned by the single
gentleman to his chamber, where they were regaled with
strong waters from his private store, and where they held
with him long conversations, the purport of which no
human being could fathom. But the secret of these dis-
cussions was of little importance. It was sufficient to know
that while they were proceeding, the concourse without
still lingered round the house; that boys beat upon the
drum with their fists, and imitated Punch with their tender
voices; that the office-window was rendered opaque by
flattened noses, and the key-hole of the street-door luminous
with eyes; that every time the single gentleman or either
of his guests was seen at the upper window, or so much
as the end of one of their noses was visible, there was a
great shout of execration from the excluded mob, who
remained howling and yelling, and refusing consolation,
until the exhibitors were delivered up to them to be attended
elsewhere. It was sufficient, in short, to know that Bevis
Marks was revolutionised by these popular movements, and
that peace and quietness fled from its precincts.

Nobody was rendered more indignant by these proceed-
ings than Mr. Sampson Brass, who, as he could by no
means afford to lose so profitable an inmate, deemed it
prudent to pocket his lodger's affront along with his cash,
and to annoy the audiences who clustered round his door
by such imperfect means of retaliation as were open to
him, and which were confined to the trickling down of
foul water on their heads from unseen watering-pots, pelt-
ing them with fragments of tile and mortar from the roof
of the house, and bribing the drivers of hackney cabriolets
to come suddenly round the corner and dash in among
them precipitately. It may at first sight be matter of sur-
prise to the thoughtless few that Mr. Brass, being a pro-

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