Smoking appears to have been allowed, for Dr. Soames observes that those who take tobacco ‘may do so with all safety’; only he politely suggests, ‘let them not offend the company, especially the ladies, who cannot well relish that smoke with their waters.’ He recommends his patients a ride of four or five miles one hour after drinking them, or, where there is an objection to riding, to divert themselves with the amusements of the place. These, as we have said, had considerably contracted since the days when the members of the Kit-Cat Club had mingled with the visitors in the walks, and exchanged smart repartees together, as was the fashion of the day, when the last bon-mot at Button’s was set against the newest scandal at the Wells. Dr. Soames’ regimen, it will be seen, consisted in early hours, temperance, pure air, invigorating exercise, and whatever tended to maintain a cheerful temper; these made the curative charm of the Hampstead waters, and for a time restored the reputation of the Wells. It is rather amusing to find the curate in league with the doctor, and setting himself forth as an example of the efficacy of the waters. ‘Could my pen convey to others the idea I have of them,’ exclaims this enthusiastic partisan, ‘and the advantages we should have in using them, we should see the walks crowded as heretofore, twenty or thirty years ago. And it is some pleasure,’ he adds complacently, ‘to be informed that this summer they have not been without a pretty number of visitors.’ [Illustration: _Old Cottages, North End_] If we add the amount of satisfaction felt by Mr. Watts, Curate and Lecturer of Hampstead, to that of the inhabitants whose tenements were at the disposal of the said visitors, we get the idea that Hampstead must have smiled all over this season with a satisfaction it had not known in many preceding ones. All the little green-fenced white cottages in the neighbourhood of South End and the Vale of Health (reminiscent in its very name of the Gibbons and Soames period), as well as those on the upper slope of the East Heath and Squire’s Mount (to which a then leafy lane ran up from the Wells), had had a fresh coat of spotless paint put on. The mistresses of them were nodding and smiling to one another at their doors, and asking if they were ‘all let,’ or ‘quite full,’ or some question or other, indicative of a personal and neighbourly interest, which left it without doubt that they themselves had not another room to spare; while the select houses in Pond Street, and Lower Flask Walk, with their better accommodation and superior landladies, received such an access of purification and polish, that the flashing of the fanlights over the hall doors, and the shining of brass knobs and knockers, and the superlatively white, neatly-festooned blinds to every window, were in themselves so many letters of recommendation writ large.