-off clothing _salons_.
And there are screeching Cockney women, raw and raffish, brutalized
children, and men who would survive in the fiercest jungle. Also there
is the Britannia Theatre and Hotel. The old Brit.! It stands, with
Sadler's Wells and the Surrey, as one of the oldest homes of fustian
drama. Sadler's Wells is now a picture palace, and the Surrey is a
two-house Variety show. The old Brit. held out longest, but even that is
going now. Its annual pantomime was one of the events of the London
Season for the good Bohemian. Then all the Gallery First Nighters boys
and girls would go down on the last night, which was Benefit Night for
Mrs. Sara Lane, the proprietress. Not only were bouquets handed up, but
the audience showered upon her tributes in more homely and substantial
form. Here was a fine outlet for the originality of the crowd, and among
the things that were passed over the orchestra-rails or lowered from
boxes and circles were chests of drawers, pairs of corsets, stockings,
pillow-cases, washhand jugs and basins, hip-baths, old boots,
mince-pies, Christmas puddings, bottles of beer, and various items of
lumber and rubbish which aroused healthy and Homeric laughter at the
moment, but which, set down in print at a time when Falstaffian humour
has departed from us, may arouse nothing but a curled lip and a rebuke.
But it really was funny to see the stage littered with these tributes,
which, as I say, included objects which are never exhibited in the light
of day to a mixed company.

But the cream of Hoxton is its yobs. It is the toughest street in
London. I don't mean that it is dangerous. But if you want danger, you
have only to ask for it, and it is yours. It will not be offered you
anywhere in London, but if you do ask for it, Hoxton is the one place
where there is "no waiting," as the barbers say. The old Shoreditch Nile
is near at hand, and you know what that was in the old days. Well,
Hoxton to-day does its best to maintain the tradition of "The Nile."

Now once upon a time there was a baby-journalist named Simple Simon. He
went down to Hoxton one evening, after dinner. It had been the good old
English dinner of Simpson's, preceded by two vermuths, accompanied by a
pint of claret, and covered in the retreat by four maraschinos. It was a
picturesque night. A clammy fog blanketed the whole world. It swirled
and swirled. Hoxton Street was a glorious dream, as enticingly
indefinite as an opium-sleep. Sim