I did know the place, and remembered that it conveyed the idea that a Metropolitan Improvement Commission’s notions of street improvements consisted in demolishing some three or four hundred houses, and creating a wilderness of unfinished houses, yawning chasms, and heaps of rubbish. The place remained in that condition for several years, and was the rendezvous and free gymnasium of most of the gymnasts, acrobats, rope-dancers, and other professors of muscular sensationalism in the metropolis. ‘Well, we fixed our fakements up in the “ruins,” and when the evenings began to get dark we had candles. A lot of us used to be there—Frank Berrington, and Costello, and Jemmy Lee, and Joe Welsh, and Bill George, and ever so many more. There used to be all kinds of gymnastic exercises going on there; and there my partner and I went, night after night, until we could do a tidy slang on the trapeze, the rings, or the bar. Then we went to Roberts; he used to live in Compton Street then, and he and Maynard, in York Road, Lambeth, were agents for all the circuses and music-halls in the three kingdoms, and often had commissions from foreign establishments to engage _artistes_ for them. They get engagements for you, and you pay them a commission of fifteen per cent. on the salary they get for you; so it is their interest to get you as good a screw as they can, and it is your interest to keep the commission paid regularly, because if you don’t, you will have to look out for yourselves when you want another engagement. If you don’t act honourable, and you try to get another engagement without the intervention of an agent, the circus or music-hall proprietor or manager says, “I engage my people through Roberts,” or Maynard, as the case may be; and there you are—flummoxed! ‘Well, we went to Roberts, and had to wait our turn, while he did business with other fellows who were before us. We looked at the framed collections of photographs of gymnasts, acrobats, clowns, riders, jugglers, singers, and dancers which hung against the wall, and then we looked about us. There was Hassan, the Arab, a wiry-looking tawny man, black bearded and moustached, and wearing a scarlet fez, a blue zouave jacket, and baggy crimson breeches; and old Zamezou, with a broad-brimmed felt hat overshadowing his face, and his portly figure enveloped in the folds of a large blue cloak; and George Christoff, the rope-dancer, buttoned up in his over-coat, and looking rather blue, as if he had just stepped up from the chilly fog in the street; and Luke Berrington, looking quite the swell, as he always does; and one or two more that I didn’t know, or can’t remember. One by one, they dropped out, and others came in, till at last our turn came. ‘“Well,” says Roberts, who is a nice sort of fellow—a smart dark-complexioned man, with gold rings in his ears, “I want a couple of good gymnasts for Springthorp’s, at Hull; but, you see, I don’t know you: where have you been?”