-one shilling entrance.
More than fifty couples stood up for a contra-dance, and tore down the
middle and up outside, and cast off, as if they were all just out of a
lunatic hospital. And yet, as I have said before, I believe, there was
no drunkenness and no quarrelling.

* * * * *

_Shooting the Bridge._--Wanting to go to the Tower, I took a boat above
London Bridge at the wrong time of the tide, in spite of all
remonstrances, and came near being swamped. Not being a good swimmer,
and aware that people were often drowned there, I cannot understand what
possessed me; but as the watermen were not afraid, and asked no
questions, why should I be troubled? For aught they knew, I might be
made of cork, or have a swimming-jacket underneath my coat, or a pocket
life-preserver ready to be blown up at a moment's notice; and they were
sure of the fee. At the mouth of the St. John's River, New Brunswick,
they have a fall both ways, at a certain time of tide, through which and
up and down which boats and rafts plunge headlong so as to take away
your breath, while you are watching them from the bridge; but really,
this little pitch of not more than three or four feet under London
Bridge I should think more dangerous, and the people seem to think so
too, for they are always on the watch after the tide turns, and swarm
along the parapets, and rush from one side to the other, as the wherry
shoots through the main arch, with a feeling akin to that of the man who
followed Van Amburgh month after month to see him "chawed up" by the
lion or tiger.

* * * * *

_Major Cartwright._--Another fast friend of our country and the
institutions of our country, and always ready to take up the
quarter-staff in our defence. A great reformer, and honest as the day is
long. Wrote much in favor of American independence in 1774, and, with
Sir Francis Burdett and others, who chose to meddle with the British
Constitution wherever they found a fragment large enough to talk about,
has been visited by the government, and tried and imprisoned. His book
on the British Constitution is, though somewhat visionary, both original
and ingenious. He is six feet high, with a very broad chest; wears a fur
cap and blue cotton-velvet dressing-gown in the sultriest weather; is a
great admirer of Jeremy Bentham, Mrs. Wheeler, and Fanny Wright, by the
way.

* * * * *

_Woolwich