keeps the pit in a roar, especially when he directs his wit to the three musicians who form the orchestra, and says ironically to one of them, “You could not drink a quartern of gin, could you?” and the way in which the allusion was received evidently implied that the enlightened but juvenile audience around me evidently had a very low opinion of a man who could not toss off his quartern of gin. Then we had the everlasting niggers, with the bones, and curiously-wrought long coats, and doubtful dialect, and perpetual laughter, which the excited pit copiously rewarded. One boy tossed a button on the stage, another a copper, and another an apple; and so pleasing was this liberality to the supposed young men of African descent, that they did not think it beneath them, or inconsistent with their dignity as professionals, to encourage it in every possible way. And well they might. Those gay blacks very likely had little white faces at home dependent on the liberality of the house for next day’s crust. But the treat of the evening was a screaming farce, in one act, in which the old tale of “Taming the Shrew” was set forth in the most approved Shoreditch fashion. A husband comes upon the stage, whose wife—I would not be ungallant, but conscientious regard to truth compels me sorrowfully to declare—is an unmitigated shrew. She lords it over her husband as no good woman ever did or wishes to do. The poor man obeys till he can stand it no longer. At length all his manhood is aroused. Armed with what he calls a persuader—a cudgel of most formidable pretensions—he astonishes his wife with his unexpected resistance. She tries to regain the mastery, but in vain; and great is the delight of all as the husband, holding his formidable instrument over his cowed and trembling wife, compels her to obey his every word. All the unwashed little urchins around me were furious with delight. There was no need for the husband to tell the audience, as he did, as the moral of the piece, that the best remedy for a bad wife was to get such another cudgel for her as that he held in his hand. It was quite clear the little Britons around me had resolved how they would act; and I fear, as they passed out to the number of about 200, few of them did not resolve, as soon as they had the chance, to drink their quartern of gin and to whop their wives.