Smart, in the said comedy, discussing philosophically the social peculiarities of the Long Room, observes that assemblies so near town give us examples of all degrees. ‘We have Court ladies, all air and no dress; City belles, overdressed and no air; and country dames with broad brown faces like a Stepney bun; besides an endless number of Fleet Street seamstresses, that dance minuets in their furbeloe scarfs, and whose clothes hang as loose on them as their reputations.’ Arabella (another character in the same play) observes: ‘Well, this Hampstead is a charming place; to dance all night at the Wells, and be treated at Mother Huffs’;[237] to have presents made one at the raffling-shops,’ etc. Occasional visitors to the Wells on assembly nights might reasonably desire to dance the day-dawn in for safety’s sake; and the extension of the hours at the Long Room might possibly have originated in the perils of getting home from it. The roads, hazardous even by day, were doubly so after dark, especially in the neighbourhood of towns. The Hampstead coach had quite recently been stopped and robbed (1713), although a portion of the Hampstead road was just then unpleasantly occupied by the body of a murderer hanging in chains,[238] an object-lesson our forefathers were fond of exhibiting with deterrent intention, and with about as much practical result as from the suspension of criminal crows in a harvest-field. But to return to the Wells. Let us be thankful for the old newspapers and magazines, that in feeble type and quaintly-worded paragraphs and advertisements have yet preserved for us faithful transcripts of the ways and fashions of the times, so that with a file of old _Postboys_, _Mists_, and _Read’s Weekly Journal_, and the _Lady’s Magazine_, but little imagination is required to revivify the company in Well Walk (that focus of fashion whilst fashion clung to it), to reclothe them in the costumes they wore, and busy them again in all their old occupations and amusements. We can see in fancy the large, cumbrous, top-heavy coach toiling up the steep hill, tacking like a ship against a head-wind, until it landed its passengers at the coach office, the Bird-in-Hand,[239] or, higher up, at the Upper Flask. Say that it is the afternoon of a summer’s day in 1713-14. Amongst a crowd of other passengers, a lady in a little flutter of expectation, her head-dress a lace or muslin hood, with turnover (a species of fichu) ... and ruffles to match, steps out on the points of her high-heeled shoes, letting her hoop expand with a grace totally unknown to the modern wearers of crinoline.[240] Be sure she has in her netted or embroidered hand-bag a little of the famous ‘Bavarian red liquor,’ which gave such a ‘delightful blushing colour to the cheeks pale or white,’ and which is not ‘to be discovered as other than the natural colour by the most fine sight.’ Nor is she without a bottle of Hungary, or citron water, for being a fine lady she must have nerves.