Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner,
with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and
his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House. Our English friend
goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and
water, at the neighbouring inn. Or when he determines on having a night
of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the
order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and
being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has
a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to
be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a
tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his
hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats
himself at the instrument. The stout man sings, the young man plays, and
thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong
ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward their exertions.
Drinking goes on for some time, and waiters keep flying about with
dishes of all kinds, and the hairdresser becomes communicative to his
next neighbour, a butcher from Whitechapel, and they exchange their
sentiments about kidneys and music in general, and the kidneys and music
now offered to them in particular. In a few minutes, a gentleman with a
strange obliquity in his vision, seated in the middle of the
coffee-room, takes off his hat, and after a thump on the table from the
landlord's hammer, commences a song so intensely comic, that when it is
over, the orders for supper and drink are almost unanimous. The house is
now full, the theatres have discharged their hungry audiences, and a
distinguished guinea-a-week performer seats himself in the very next box
to the hairdresser. That worthy gentleman by this time is stuffed so
full of kidneys, and has drank so many glasses of brandy and water, that
he can scarcely understand the explanations of the Whitechapel butcher,
who has a great turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat the dramatic
performer to a tumbler of gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces
a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song,
where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers,
are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of
admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last,
time to go. He goes, an