There was a certain snugness about the Marshalsea which was not to be found in the Fleet. There the company was too numerous and heterogeneous to form any social combination. In the smaller prison a specie of club system was kept up. The tap-room, or snuggery, was a public room where meat and drink might be procured, and where a fire was maintained for the use of the prisoners who did not wish to cook in their rooms. The furnace was kept fed by assessment of those who used it. At the club, which met nightly, each man paid his own scot. The requisite for membership was the possession of the price of the potations served to the member. The club was of indefinite proportions and individuality. Its members came with the tipstaves and went with the orders of release issued by the courts. The general form of its management was that which used to be known as the "free and easy." If any person present was a mimic, a singer, a musician, or otherwise gifted with a pleasing or popular accomplishment, he might be called upon to display it for the general good. Poor debtors, who could do something to amuse, might have their beer free at the charge of the more solvent collegians whom they consented to divert. There is a legend of a comedian, broken down by drink, who was sent to the Marshalsea and who lived off the fat of the jail for several years, until he died of it, all through the discreet application of his mimetic and comic powers in the snuggery club. Once in a while the club would perform a piece of serious business. Sometimes it would draft a memorial against imprisonment for debt to the Throne or Judges, which neither Throne nor Judges saw or read, of course. Sometimes it would issue patriotic manifestoes to Parliament, of which Parliament remained equally ignorant. When a popular member secured his release the club would present him with a memorial, properly engrossed and framed, of its esteem. Mr. Dorrit received such a memorial when he came into his fortune and resigned his paternal supremacy over the college; and in return he treated the whole jail to a refection in the Pump Yard, as you may read in the last chapter of the first volume of the record of his prison patriarchy. But one drop of bitterness flavored the cup of the Marshalsea Club. Its festivities were limited by the public hours of the prison. The clangor of the jail bell announced the closing of the gates at ten o'clock at night, and warned all visitors to retire or be locked in until morning. Such experience befell Mr. Arthur Clennam when he made his first visit to the Dorrits' at home.