The cab had conveyed me through Smithfield Market, and now rumbled up Barbican. My companion, the gentleman with the crab-stick (to whose care Mr. Aminadab had consigned me), beguiled the time with pleasant and instructive conversation. He told me that he had “nabbed a many parties.” That he had captured a Doctor of Divinity going to a Christmas, a bridegroom starting for the honeymoon, a colonel of hussars in full fig for her Majesty’s drawing-room. That he had the honor once of “nabbing” the eldest son of a peer of the realm, who, however, escaped from him through a second-floor window, and over the tiles. That he was once commissioned to “nab” the celebrated Mr. Wix, of the Theatres Royal. That Mr. Wix, being in the act of playing the Baron Spolaccio, in the famous tragedy of “Love, Ruin, and Revenge,” he, Crabstick, permitted him, in deference to the interests of the drama, to play the part out, stationing an assistant at each wing to prevent escape. That the delusive Wix “bilked” him, by going down a trap. That he, Crabstick, captured him, notwithstanding under the stage, though opposed by the gigantic Wix himself, two stage carpenters, a demon, and the Third Citizen. That Wix rushed on the stage, and explained his position to the audience, whereupon the gallery (Wix being an especial favorite of theirs) expressed a strong desire to have his (Crabstick’s) blood; and, failing to obtain that, tore up the benches; in the midst of which operation the recalcitrant Wix was removed. With these and similar anecdotes of the nobility, gentry, and the public in general, he was kind enough to regale me, until the cab stopped. I alighted in a narrow, dirty street; was hurried up a steep flight of steps; a heavy door clanged behind me; and Crabstick, pocketing his small gratuity, wished me a good-night and a merry Christmas. A merry Christmas: ugh! That night I slept in a dreadful place, called the Reception ward, on an iron bedstead, in a room with a stone floor. I was alone, and horribly miserable. I heard the Waits playing in the distance, and dreamed I was at a Christmas party. Christmas morning in Whitecross-street Prison! A turnkey conducted me to the “Middlesex side”—a long dreary yard—on either side of which were doors leading into wards, or coffee-rooms, on the ground floor, and by stone-staircases, to sleeping-apartments above. It was all very cold, very dismal, very gloomy. I entered the ward allotted to me, Number Seven, left. It was a long room, with barred windows, cross tables and benches, with an aisle between; a large fire at the further end; “Dum spiro, spero,” painted above the mantle-piece. Twenty or thirty prisoners and their friends were sitting at the tables, smoking pipes, drinking beer, or reading newspapers. But for the unmistakable jail-bird look about the majority of the guests, the unshorn faces, the slipshod feet, the barred windows, and the stone floor, I might have fancied myself in a large tap-room.