he warm gray
frieze and blue worsted stockings of my country costume.

I listened attentively to the young officer's directions how I was to
walk his mare, and where; and then, assuming a degree of indifference
to sarcasm I was far from feeling, moved away from the spot in sombre
dignity. The captain--the title is generic--was absent about an hour;
and when he returned, seemed so well pleased with my strict obedience to
his orders that he gave me a shilling, and desired me to be punctually
at the same hour and the same place on the day following.

It was now dark; the lamplighter had begun his rounds, and I was just
congratulating myself that I should escape my persecutors, when I saw
them approaching in a body. In an instant I was surrounded, and assailed
with a torrent of questions as to who I was, where I came from,
what brought me there, and, lastly, and with more eagerness than all
besides,--what did "the captain" give me? As I answered this query
first, the others were not pressed; and it being voted that I should
expend the money on the fraternity, by way of entrance-fee, or, as they
termed it, "paying my footing," away we set in a body to a distant part
of the town, remote from all its better and more spacious thoroughfares,
and among a chaos of lanes and alleys called the "Liberties." If the
title were conferred for the excessive and unlimited freedoms permitted
to the inhabitants, it was no misnomer. On my very entrance into it I
perceived the perfect free and easy which prevailed.

A dense tide of population thronged the close, confined passages, mostly
of hodmen, bricklayers' laborers, and scavengers, with old-clothesmen,
beggars, and others whose rollicking air and daring look bespoke more
hazardous modes of life.

My companions wended their way through the dense throng like practised
travellers, often cutting off an angle by a dive through the two
doors of a whiskey shop, and occasionally making a great short-cut by
penetrating through a house and the court behind it,--little exploits
in geography expiated by a volley of curses from the occupants, and
sometimes an admonitory brickbat in addition.

The uniform good temper they exhibited; the easy freedom with which they
submitted to the rather rough jocularities of the passers-by,--the usual
salute being a smart slap on the crown of the head, administered by
the handicraft tool of the individual, and this sometimes being an iron
trowel or a slater's ha