The _strepitus_, however, of the High Street is not like that of Bankside. There is no tinkling of guitars: no singing before noon or after noon: no laughing: the country folk do not laugh: they do not understand the wit of the poets and the players. High Street has nothing to do with Bankside: the merchants and the squires know nothing about the Show Folk. There was one exception. Among the Show Folk was a certain Edward Alleyn, who was a man of business as well as a conductor of entertainments. He was on the vestry of St. Saviour's: he was also churchwarden, his name appears in the parish accounts of the period. He was a popular churchwarden: probably he had about him so much of the showman that he was genial, and mannerly, and courteous--these are the elementary virtues of the profession. For we find that when he proposes to retire his fellow members of the vestry refuse to let him go. It is melancholy to walk down the High Street and to reflect that all these inns, most of them so picturesque, were standing thirty or forty years ago, and that some of them were standing ten years ago. One of them is figured in the 'Pickwick Papers.' The courtyard is too vast: the figures are too small: the galleries are too large: but the effect produced is admirable. Now not only are the old Inns gone, but there is nothing to take their place: a modern public-house is not an Inn. The need of an Inn at Southwark is gone: there are no more caravans of produce brought up to the Borough: the High Street has become the shop and the provider of everything for the populations of the parishes of St. Saviour, St. Olave, St. Thomas, and St. George. CHAPTER XV THE DEBTORS' PRISON