irst and last exploit
in the way of law and its rewards.

As I am just leaving my father's house for Park Village, and thereafter
Albury, here I will insert two little memories of past days when I lived
with my parents at No. 5. Here is one. Theodore Hook's famous Berners
Street hoax had lately made such exploits very catching among
schoolboys--and in my Charterhouse days it was repeated by "Punsonby &
Co." at my father's town-house. On a certain Saturday when I had my
weekly holiday at home, I marvelled to find the street crowded with
vans, coal-carts, trucks, a mourning coach, fishmongers, butchers, and
confectioners with trays, and a number of servants wanting places. All
these were crowding round No. 5, as ordered or advertised for by Mr.
Tupper: of course soon explained away, and rejected, to a general
indignation at the hoaxers. Now, as I had my suspicions, I sat unseen at
the front drawing-room window, and watched: and as more than once I had
noticed P. and his friends pass down the street on the opposite side, I
taxed them with their exploit on the Monday; and I rather think it cost
them not a trifling sum to satisfy that crowd of disappointed tradesmen.
Happily such practical joking is now long since (or ought to be) a
social outrage of the past; Hook's being first had the grace of original
humour,--but imitations are dull repetition, not to be excused. I only
once met Theodore Hook, and that was in his decadence; he looked puffy
and only semi-sober; but I recollect with how much deference and
expectation the "livener-up" was eagerly surrounded, and how sillily the
dupes laughed at every word he uttered, whether humorous or not.

* * * * *

For another last memory of No. 5, in the dining-room whereof Lord
Sandwich, who had once lived there, is said to have invented
"sandwiches," I will record this.

In those days of long ago, how well I remember our next-door neighbour,
old Lady Cork, "The Dowager-Countess of Cork and Orrery," as her
door-plate proclaimed, some of whose peculiarities I may mention without
offence, as they were notorious and (the physicians judged) innocent
and venial. Whenever she found herself alone (and she kept profuse
hospitality three or four days a week, with her vast illuminated
conservatory full of artificial flowers and grapes and oranges tied on
everything), when those famous routs were silent, and dance music no
longer kept us awake at night, the li