“Silver Tom.” [Illustration: ELEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.: AN EVENING PARTY.] Who is dead by this time, most probably; but I can still stand by the side of his successor, at the door of the great house, by the lamp and lantern’s glare, and see the gay company pass in and out. How the horses champ! how the dresses rustle! how the jewels shine! and what fair women and brave men are here congregated! Messrs. Weippert’s or Collinet’s band are upstairs; Messrs. Gunter’s men have brought the ices; there are flirtations in the conservatories, and squeezings of hands interchanged on the stairs. Vows of love are spoken, flowers from bouquets are given; and is it not, after all, the same old, old story, that boys and girls will love one another, and that the old people will look on with pretended severity, but with real contentment in their hearts, and that there will be present a few jealous and cankered ones, who will look on to envy the others because they are so happy? Drive envy from your hearts, ye who ride not in gilded chariots, and move not in the “fashionable circles.” There is as much truth, love, and gaiety at a “sixpenny hop,” between maid-servants and journeymen bakers, as at the most refined evening parties. MIDNIGHT.—THE HAYMARKET, AND THE SUB-EDITOR’S ROOM. Midnight: an awful sound. Supposing you were to be hanged at three o’clock in the morning, as I am doomed to be, in a literary sense, how would you like to hear twelve o’clock sound? But three hours more to live! In three hours “the sheriff he will come,” and the chaplain, and the hangman, as they came to Mr. Samuel Hall _en route_ for Tyburn. In three hours the clock will run down; the pendulum shall oscillate no more; Time shall rest on his scythe; the last grain of sand shall run out, and of these ephemeral papers you shall say _fuit_. We have clomb the hill together, and we will rest together at the foot.