Charles Morton, whose name must be imperishably associated with the transformation of the halls, was the least professional-looking manager in London. He was of short stature, wore ginger-coloured side-whiskers, dressed in a frock-coat and silk hat, and affected gold pince-nez. Asked to guess at his calling in life, a stranger would probably have put him down as the owner of a large suburban drapery establishment, who acted on Sundays as sidesman at the nearest church. And, truth to tell, Morton’s innate sense of decorum was so strong that his demeanour in the halls over which he presided would have done credit to a churchwarden. No man was ever half so respectable as Charlie Morton looked. His work was none the less efficient and permanent on that account. And it is satisfactory to reflect that he who had commenced the crusade against pornography at the Canterbury, on the other side of the water, should have lived to preside for years over the fortunes of the Palace, in the heart of the West End. In the seventies the Alhambra was not reckoned—as it is to-day—among the “’alls.” The Empire and kindred establishments were as yet undreamt of by the pleasure-hunter. And the Alhambra was a thing apart. Leicester Square, on the eastern side of which it is situated, was then the most disreputable spot of earth to be found in the centre of any capital in Europe. Here on the sunniest summer days might be found promenading some of the most villainous adventurers from the capitals of Europe. They cloaked themselves like brigands, glared at the passing shop-girls with wicked black eyes, twirled their fierce moustaches, and rolled cigarettes with a diligence which they gave to no other innocent pursuit. They were the off-scourings of Europe. The swindlers, gamblers, political rogues, the _souteneurs_, the craven shirkers of conscription, the European riff-raff that chooses London as its favourite dumping-ground, were all to be found promenading in Leicester Square. John Leech has fixed the type in the pages of _Punch_. The interesting _émigré_ may still be detected prowling about the vicinity. But he is a wonderfully ameliorated brigand—a tame and nearly normal invader. The improvement in the enclosure itself accounts for this. The squalor in which he throve as in his native element has gone. And the picturesque but filthy villain has happily gone with it. The “Lee-cess-tare Squar” of my salad days is no more!