Nearly all of them succeed. The British public are a medicine-taking people by nature. There are not many diseases upon the island naturally, but the inhabitants create a very large number by their habits. The universal use of beer--and vile stuff it is--is not conducive to general health, and the Englishman is about the heartiest eater on the globe. He is more than hearty--he verges very closely upon the gluttonous. Consequently he needs medicines, and the manufacturers adapt themselves to the market. There are more than a thousand "after dinner pills," warranted to correct all the effect of "over-indulgence at the table," which means that it will do something toward keeping up a man who eats about four times what he ought to, and drinks enough every year to drive an American or Frenchman into delirium tremens. The market for these goods is world-wide, and enormous fortunes are amassed. I must say, however, that the trade is not in the best repute. Many brewers have been knighted, but no patent medicine man. In the matter of ennobling people the line must be drawn somewhere. Dickens' barber drew it at the baker--the English draw it at the brewer. [Illustration: THE OLD TEMPLE BAR.] CHAPTER IX. PETTICOAT LANE. There is no Petticoat Lane any more, some finnicky board having very foolishly changed the good old name to Middlesex street. There was something suggestive in the name "Petticoat Lane," for it indicated with great accuracy the business carried on there, but there is nothing suggestive about Middlesex street. It might as well have been called Wellington street, or Wesley street, or Washington street. I hate these changes. A street is a street, and calling it an avenue don't make it so. Why not Petticoat Lane? By any other name it smells as strong. It _is_ Petticoat Lane and always will be Petticoat Lane, and despite the edict of the board, the Londoner calls it by that title and always will. Petticoat Lane is a long, tortuous narrow street, properly a lane, (about the width of an ordinary alley in an American city,) in the heart of the city proper. It is probably the dirtiest spot on the globe. If there is a dirtier I do not wish to see it--or, more especially, to smell it. It is the very acme of filth, the incarnation of dirt, and the very top, the peaked point of the summit of rottenness. A friend of mine who had lost the sense of smell was condoled with on his misfortune. "Don't pity me," he said, "please don't. It is a blessing, and not a misfortune. In this imperfect world there are more bad smells than perfumes. If I am deprived of one delight I escape a dozen inflictions. If I can't enjoy the rose, I, at least, dodge the tan yard." Precisely so another friend who had his right leg torn off in a threshing machine during the war, reveled in his cork leg, because, having but one flesh and blood foot, he only took half the chances of ordinary mortals of taking cold from wet feet.