But if you still doubt, let us test the thing practically. In Bolt-court, Fleet-street, there is a tavern bearing the honoured name of Dr Johnson. Dr Johnson lived in this court, and hence, I suppose, the sign; but the Doctor was a total abstainer. He found he could not be a moderate drinker, so he verily gave up the drink altogether. He told that precious ass, Boswell, to drink water, because if he did that he would be sure not to get drunk, whereas if he drank wine he was not so sure; and Boswell, to whom the idea seems never to have occurred, prints the remark as an astonishing instance of his hero’s sagacity. But I pass on to modern times. In this Dr Johnson’s Tavern is situated “The City Concert Room.” I suppose the City does not care much about concerts, as I have generally found it very thinly attended. It is a handsome room, and perhaps there are about fifty or sixty gentlemen, chiefly young ones, present. You do not see swells here as at Evans’s. They are all very plain-looking people, from the neighbouring shops, or from the warehouses in Cheapside. Just by me are three pale heavy-looking young men, whose intellects seem to me dead, except so far as a low cunning indicates a sharpness where money is concerned. One of them is stupidly beery. Their great object is to get him to drink more, notwithstanding his repeated assurances, uttered, however, in a very husky tone, that he must go back to “Islin’ton” to-night. A lady at one end of the room, with a very handsome blue satin dress and a very powerful voice, is screaming out something about “Lovely Spring,” but this little party is evidently indifferent to the charms of the song. Just beyond me is a gent with a short pipe and a very stiff collar. I watch him for an hour, and whether he is enjoying himself intensely, or whether he is enduring an indescribable amount of inward agony, I cannot tell. A little farther off is another gent with a very red scarf, equally stoical in appearance. Behind me are two verdant youths, of limited means I imagine; but they have the pleasure of speaking to the comic singer, and take tickets for that interesting gentleman’s benefit. But the comic singer comes forward, and sings with appropriate action of the doings of a little insect very partial to comfortable quarters. That song I have known fifteen years. I have heard Sharp sing it, Ross sing it, Cowell sing it. Night after night in some drinking room in some part of London or other is a beery audience told— “Creeping where no life doth be, A rare old plant is the lively flea.”