directed to it by an intelligent greengrocer, who was standing at his shop-door and improving his mind by the study of that fearless champion of the wrongs of the oppressed and trodden-down British working man, _Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper_. It was he who put me on the right scent—not that he was exactly certain—but he indicated the house at which such proceedings were likely to take place, and as he was right in his conjecture, I take this opportunity of publicly returning him my thanks. Had it not been for him I should have had no Shakespeare, no Thackeray, no Hood, no Dickens, no feast of reason and flow of soul that Sunday night. As it was, it turned out as I expected, and I had very little of either to reward my painful search. As I have said, the nominal hour at which proceedings commenced was a quarter-past seven; in reality, it was not till nearly half-past eight that the celebrated dramatic reader favoured us with a specimen of his powers. It was true he was in the house, but he was down in the bar with a select circle, indulging in the luxuries generally to be found in such places. In the meantime I took stock leisurely of the room upstairs in which we assembled, and of its occupants. At that early hour the latter were not numerous. A little foreigner with his wife was seated by the fire, and him she led off before the dramatic readings commenced. Reasons, which a sense of delicacy forbids my mentioning, suggested the wisdom and the prudence of an early retirement from a scene rather dull—at any rate, quite the reverse of gay and festive. As to the rest of us, I can’t say that we were a particularly lively lot. A stern regard to truth compels me reluctantly to remark that we were unprepossessing looking rather than otherwise. The majority I of us there were lads with billycock hats and short pipes, who talked little to each other, but smoked and drank beer in solemn silence. The cheerfulest personage in the room was the potboy, who, as he stalked about with his apron on and his shirt-sleeves tucked up, seemed to be quite at home with his customers. Some of the lads had their sweethearts with them; at any rate I presume they were such from the retiring way in which they sat—she, after the manner of such young people in a large room, chiefly occupied in counting the ten fingers of her red and ungloved hands, while her male admirer sat smoking his short pipe and spitting on the sanded floor in a way more suggestive of perfect freedom than of grace. I could see but two decent-looking girls in the room, which, by the time the entertainment was over, contained as many as sixty or seventy. Evidently the class of customers expected was a low one, greengrocers’ and costermongers’ boys apparently, and such like. The tables were of the commonest order, and we had no chairs, nothing but long forms, to sit on. In the middle by the wall was a small platform, carpeted; on this platform was a chair and table, and it was there the