and the smell on a windy day has been known to reach as far as the Stock Exchange. The process of carving the pudding on Wednesdays and Saturdays is a solemn ceremony. The late proprietor, Mr. Beaufoy A. Moore, could be with difficulty restrained from rising from his bed, when stricken down with illness, to drive to the ‘Cheese’ and serve out the pudding. No one, he believed, could do it with such judicious care and judgment as he did. “Once, and once only was that pudding dropped. Alas, the sad day! In the room sat an expectant hungry army of fifty men. The waiter, bearing in triumph the pudding, appeared smiling on the scene. His foot slipped, he tripped, the pudding wavered, and then bowled along the floor, breaking up and gathering sawdust as it went. There was a breathless silence. The proprietor dropped the upraised carver, stood speechless for a moment, and then went out and wept bitterly. The occasion was too much for him. One after another the awed and hungry crowd put their hats on and departed, with sorrowful faces and watering mouths.” CHAPTER X MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA AND OTHERS ON THE “CHEESE” For he’s a jolly good fellow.—_Old Song._ The late Mr. George Augustus Sala, in an article entitled “Brain Street,” which is to be found in “Old and New London” (Cassell, Petter & Galpin), thus describes Wine Office Court and the Cheshire Cheese:— “The vast establishments of Messrs. Pewter and Antimony, type-founders (Alderman Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year ’46); of Messrs. Quoin, Case, and Chappell, printers to the Board of Blue Cloth; of Messrs. Cutedge and Treecalf, bookbinders; with the smaller industries of Scawper and Tinttool, wood-engravers; and Treacle, Gluepot, and Lampblack, printing-roller makers, are packed together in the upper part of the court as closely as herrings in a cask. The ‘Cheese’ is at the Brain Street end. It is a little lop-sided, wedged-up house, that always reminds you, structurally, of a high-shouldered man with his hands in his pockets. It is full of holes and corners and cupboards and sharp turnings; and in ascending the stairs to the tiny smoking-room you must tread cautiously, if you would not wish to be tripped up by plates and dishes momentarily deposited there by furious waiters. The waiters at the ‘Cheese’ are always furious. Old customers abound in the comfortable old tavern, in whose sanded-floored eating-rooms a new face is a rarity; and the guests and the waiter are the oldest of familiars. Yet the waiter seldom fails to bite your nose off as a preliminary measure when you proceed to pay him. How should it be otherwise when on that waiter’s soul there lies heavy a perpetual sense of injury caused by the savoury odour of steaks and ‘muts’ to follow; of cheese bubbling in tiny tins—the original ‘speciality’ of the house; of floury potatoes and fragrant green peas; of cool salads, and cooler tankards of bitter beer; of extra-creaming stout and ‘goes’ of Cork