the first fingering of the silver sixpence
deposited five fathom deep, for luck! What
bitter pain and humiliation we felt, when first
strutting forth abroad in them, rude,
contumelious boys mocked us, likened us to a
pair of tongs, aimed at our legs with peg-tops.
What agonies we suffered from that wicked
youth (he must have been hanged, or
transported for life in after years), who with a
nail—a rusty nail—tore the left leg of those
trousers into a hideous rent, and then ran
away laughing; what tortures during our
return home, at the thought of what our
parents and guardians would say! Those
premier pantaloons were snuff-coloured,
buttoning over the jacket, and forming, with an
extensive shirt-frill, what was then called a
"skeleton suit." They shone very much, and
had a queer smell of the snuff-coloured dye.
They gave the wearer something of a trussed
appearance, like a young fowl ready for the
spit. It was a dreadful fashion, as offering
irresistible temptations to the schoolmaster
to use his cane. You were got up ready for
him, and abstinence was more than he could
bear. We confess to a horrid relish in this
wise ourself at the present time. When we
see (rare spectacle now-a-days) a small boy
in a skeleton suit, and his hands in his
pockets, our fingers itch to be at him!

The first picture-book! We date from the
time of the Prince Regent, and remember
picture-books about dandies—satires upon
that eminent personage himself, possibly—
but we never knew it. In those times there
was a certain bright, smooth cover for picture-
books, like a glorified surgical plaster. It
has gone out this long, long time. The picture-
book that seems to have been our first, was
about one Mr. Pillblister (in the medical
profession, we presume, from the name), who
gave a party. As the legend is impressed on
our remembrance, it opened thus:

Mr. Pillblister and Betsy his sister,
Determined on giving a treat;
Gay dandies they call
To a supper and ball
At their house in Great Camomile Street.

The pictures represented male dandies in
every stage of preparation for this festival
holding on to bed-posts to have their stays
laced; embellishing themselves with artificial
personal graces of many kinds; and enduring
various humiliations in remote garrets. One
gentleman found a hole in his stocking at the
last moment.

A hole in my stocking,
O how very shocking!
Says poor Mr. (Some one) enraged.
It's always my fate
To be so very late,
When at Mr. Pillblister's engaged!

If we recollect right, they all got there at
last, and passed a delightful evening. When
we first came to London (not the least of our
primaries), we rejected the Tower,
Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul's, and the
Monument, and entreated to be immediately taken
to Great Camomile Street.

About the same period we tasted our first
oyster. A remarkable sensation! We feel
it slipping down our throat now, like a sort
of maritime castor-oil, and are again
bewildered by an unsatisfactory doubt whether
it really was the oyster which made that
mysterious disappearance, or whether we are
going to begin to taste it presently.

The first play! The promise; the hope
deferred; the saving-clause of "no fine
weather, no play;" the more than Murphian,
or H. P. of Bermondsey Square, scrutiny of
the weather during the day! Willingly did
we submit, at five o'clock that evening, to the
otherwise, and at any other time, detestable
ordeal of washing, and combing, and being
made straight. We did not complain when
the soap got into our eyes; we bore the
scraping of the comb, and the rasping of the
brush without a murmur: we were going
to the play, and we were happy. Dressed, of
course, an hour too soon; drinking tea as a
mere form and ceremony—for the tea might
have been hay and hot water (not impossible),
and the bread and butter might have
been sawdust, for anything we could taste
of it; sitting with petful impatience in the
parlour, trying on the first pair of white
kid gloves, making sure that the theatre
would be burnt down, or that papa would
never come home from the office, or mamma
prevented, by some special interference of
malignant demons, from having her dress
fastened; or that (to a positive certainty) a
tremendous storm of hail, rain, sleet, and
thunder would burst out as we stepped
into the cab, and send us, theatreless, to bed.
We went to the play, and were happy. The
sweet, dingy, shabby little country theatre,
we declared, and believed, to be much larger
than either Drury Lane or Covent Garden,
of which little Master Cheesewright—whose
father was a tailor, and always had orders
—was wont to brag! Dear, narrow,
uncomfortable, faded-cushioned, flea-haunted,
single tier of boxes! The green curtain, with
a hole in it, through which a bright eye
peeped; the magnificent officers, in red and
gold coats (it was a garrison town), in the
stage-box, who volunteered, during the acts,
the popular catch of—

"Ah! how, Sophia, can you leave
Your lover, and of hope bereave?"

—for our special amusement and delectation,
as we thought then, but, as we are inclined
to fear now, under the influence of wine!
The pit, with so few people in it; with
the lady, who sold apples and oranges,
sitting in a remote corner, like Pomona
in the sulks. And the play when it did begin
—stupid, badly acted, badly got up as it very