As I came out, it was a great consolation to me to think that there are not many such places in London. The style of men thus created are, I fear, neither useful nor ornamental. They have a nasty ticket-of-leave look, and I would fain dispense with their company in quiet back streets during the small hours. One other thought may console you; the sporting public-house, once popular, now attracts but a few, and that few a weak and vicious class. Is not this matter of encouragement? THE PUBLIC-HOUSE WITH A BILLIARD-ROOM Is a great attraction in some places. We knew a whole town upset by the fact that the landlord of the “Swan” had fitted up a billiard-room. I and Wiggins and Foley and Jobson spent at one time, I regret to say, a good deal of time there. I am warning the reader against the follies of my youth; but Foley failed, and Jobson and Wiggins, after having had their debts paid three or four times by their friends, I believe are now following that eminently healthy occupation called gold-digging, somewhere in Australia. Then I think of that little town in South Wales, and of the “Angel,” under whose too hospitable roof we used to meet. One of us was an M.P’s son; he is now, I believe, dragging down a father’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Another of us bore a name dear to every Englishman; he, I believe, is pensioned off by his family, and lives as he can on the handsome allowance of a guinea a-week. But these London billiard-rooms are fifty times more pernicious. There are some five or six hundred connected with public-houses. There are in all our large thoroughfares separate rooms licensed for this game, but at these drinking often goes on. And thus the two excitements acting on the man, he is impelled downwards with an increasing power. I have seen in these rooms officers and secretaries of public companies in a night losing, I am sure, a quarter’s salary; I have seen young fellows completely ruined. There was not, when I first knew him, a more promising, gentlemanly young fellow than Smethwicke, and now, they tell me, he is in Marylebone Workhouse.