It happened, fortunately for the fashionable visitors to the Wells, that the summer meetings of the Kit-Cat Club, which had been instituted a few years before (though some say after their opening) coincided with the period of drinking the Hampstead waters, and as people walked after dinner in those days, some one or other of the witty brotherhood would often saunter down from the bosky covert of the gardens of the Upper Flask, or across the Heath from the Bull and Bush, at Wildwood Corner (as Camden calls North End) to greet their friends in the Long Room or in the walks, or look in, as Steele was wont to do (with an eye to copy and the correction of morals), at the cheating play in the raffling-shops, the proprietors of which appear to have been knaves of the worst order. Steele took great pleasure in exposing them. It is to such a passing inquisition that the subscribers to the _Tatler_ in the summer of 1709 owed the witty paper that describes one of these rogues as ‘a person deep in the practice of the law, who, under the name of his maid Sisly, had set up this easier way of conveyancing and alienating estates from one family to another.’ Some years later, the _Spectator_ informs us—probably by the same hand—that ‘a Count figures amongst this fraternity, who is humorously described as “the errantist Count of all the Courts of England,” and who, believing the fair diversion-table at Hampstead to be all foul play, has vouchsafed to set up another himself, in imitation of it.’ The company, under these circumstances, became, we may be sure, considerably mixed; adventurers of both sexes found their way to the upland village, and the idle and profligate, as well as the invalid and ennuyé, mingled with personages of rank and fashion at the Wells. Card-playing went on all day in the Long Room, and dancing pretty well all night. But, then, card-playing was the general amusement of all classes in that day. At Hampstead it became a passion, especially with women, ‘who, possessed by excitement and avarice, and in the hope of winning seven guineas for one by giving the enamelled ball a graceful twirl to induce it to fall upon four cards nominated for luck’s sake, out of two-and-thirty, staked and lost money, diamonds, beauty, and reputation at the fair diversion,’ as our essayist calls it, all which had been translated from the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury and Red Lion Square to the Wells and raffling-shops of Hampstead. It is not until 1710 that I find in the _Postboy_ (April 18) the following advertisement: ‘As there are many weddings at Sion Chapel, Hampstead, five shillings only are required for all the church fees of any couple that are married there, provided they bring with them a license, or certificate, according to the Act of Parliament. Two sermons are continued to be preached in the said chapel every Sunday, and the place will be given to any clergyman that is willing to accept of it, if he is approved of.’