fine tables are filled, all here met a fair and a
candid appreciation.

[Illustration: 159]

A little farther off, and towards the middle of the street, stood
another order of beings, who, with separate and peculiar privileges,
maintained themselves as a class apart; these were the horseboys,
half-naked urchins, whose ages varied from eight to fourteen, but whose
looks of mingled cunning and drollery would defy any guess as to their
time of life, who here sported in all the wild, untrammelled liberty of
African savages. The only art they practised was to lead up and down the
horses of the various visitors whom the many attractions of the Hotel
Rooney brought daily to the house. And here you saw the proud and
pampered steed, with fiery eye and swelling nostrils, led about by this
ambulating mass of rags and poverty, whose bright eye wandered ever
from his own tattered habiliments to the gorgeous trappings and gold
embroidery of the sleek charger beside him. In the midst of these,
such as were not yet employed, amused themselves by cutting summersets,
standing on their heads, walking crab-fashion, and other classical
performances, which form the little distractions of life for this
strange sect.

Jaunting-cars there were too, whose numerous fastenings of rope and
cordage looked as though they were taken to pieces every night and
put together in the morning; while the horse, a care-worn and
misanthropic-looking beast, would turn his head sideways over the shaft
to give a glance of compassionating scorn at the follies and vanities of
a world he was sick of. Not so the driver: equally low in condition, and
fully as ragged in coat, the droll spirit that made his birthright was,
with him, a lamp that neither poverty nor penury could quench. Ever
ready with his joke, never backward with his repartee, prepared to
comfort you by assurances of the strength of his car and the goodness of
his horse, while his own laughing look gave the lie to his very words,
he would persuade you that with him alone there was safety, while it was
a risk of life and limb to travel with his rivals.

These formed the ordinary _dramatis persono_, while every now and then
some flashy equipage, with armorial bearings and showy liveries, would
scatter the crowd right and left, set the led horses lashing among
the bystanders, and even break up the decorous conviviality of a
dinner-party gracefully disposed upon the flags. Curricles, tandems,
tilburies