In the evening every man had his club or coffee-house. We know that Dr. Johnson was unhappy unless he had a club for the evening. There were clubs for every class: they met at taverns, they gradually superseded the coffee-houses for evening purposes. The City coffee-houses, however, became places where a great deal of business was carried on. Thus, at the Baltic was a subscription-room for merchants and brokers engaged in the Russia trade; the Chapter, of Paternoster Row, was the resort of booksellers; the Jamaica was a house of West Indian trade; Garraway's, Robins's, Jonathan's, the Jerusalem, Lloyd's, were all City coffee-houses turned into rendezvous for merchants. The clubs of the last century deserve a separate paper for themselves. The London citizen went to his club every evening. He there solemnly discussed the news of the day, smoked his pipe of tobacco, drank his punch, and went home by ten o'clock. The club was the social life of the City. For the ladies there was their own social life. Women lived much more with other women; they had their visits and society among each other in the daytime. While the men worked at their shops and offices, the women gadded about; in the evening they sat at home while the men went out. In one family of my acquaintance there is a tradition belonging to the end of the last century, that when the then head of the house came home at ten the girls all hurried off to bed, the reason being that the good man's temper at the late hour, what with the fatigues of the day and the punch of the evening, was by no means uncertain. [Illustration: VISITING CARD] A manuscript diary of a middle-class family belonging to the time of George the First shows anything but a stay-at-home life. The ladies were always going about. But they stayed at home in the evenings. There was a very good reason why the women should stay at home. The streets were infested with prowling thieves and with dangerous bullies: no woman could go out after dark in the City without an armed escort of her father's apprentices or his men-servants. In 1744 the Lord Mayor complains that "confederacies of evil-disposed persons, armed with bludgeons, pistols, and cutlasses, infest lanes and private passages," and issue forth to rob and wound peaceful people. Further, that these gangs have defeated, wounded, and killed the officers of justice sent against them. As yet they had not arrived at the simple expedient of strengthening the police. As for the dangers of venturing out after dark, they are summed up by Jonson: