ney, which by some mistake had been left in. These were dexterously
taken out, tied up separately in a piece of thin lining kept for the
purpose, leaving a long loop. He would then string them on a dipping
rod, used for dipping the candles, place the rod across the coppers and
plunge them in the boiling fat. In about twenty minutes they were done,
and taken out, and the potatoes, beautifully baked, divided between us.
At times we were short of plates, but that did not trouble us, for an
inverted saucepan lid answered every purpose. We would then sit and tell
stories till we were obliged to go home. Charlie used to work all night
Tuesday and Friday, as on those days they got the fresh fat in from the
butchers.

In the summer there was the grass-boat, owned by an old man and his wife
and a grown-up daughter. It had been an old ship's jolly-boat, and had a
roughly-built half deck cabin about the size of a four-wheeled cab. The
three of them lived in it, and came twice a week to the draw-dock with
bundles of coarse rush grass cut in the marshes on the river's bank, to
sell to the local tradesmen to feed their horses, at three half-pence a
bundle; and all they had left was taken by the cowkeepers at a penny a
bundle. When there was no grass they would go sand-dredging, getting the
sand by a pole with a leather bag on an iron frame at the end, with a
rope to a block rigged up and attached to a windlass. The old man would
let down gradually the pole, and the wife and daughter would wind it up.
They were a terribly drunken lot; but the temptation to drink in those
days in Chelsea was very much greater than at present, for since I can
recollect, in that one road not much over a mile, from Battersea Bridge
to Ebury Bridge on the canal, there have been eighteen public houses
closed, and only one new license granted, and that is to the "Chelsea
Pensioner." The names of the thirteen houses that I alluded to were the
"Green Man" at the bottom of Beaufort Street, at the back of Luke Flood's
house, the "Adam and Eve," the "Cricketers," the "Magpie and Stump," the
"Don Saltero," the "Yorkshire Grey," the "King's Head," the "Old Swan,"
the "Fox and Hounds," the "Snow Shoes," the "General Elliott," the "Duke
of York" (that was the house in Wilkie's picture of the reading of the
news of the Battle of Waterloo), the "Rose and Crown," the "Cheshire
Cheese," the "Nell Gwynn," the "Marquess of Granby," and the
"Waterworks," and severa