of nuts and fruit to places of
public entertainment, so that in time he laid by a considerable amount
of money. Brutus Billy was brimful of story and anecdote. He died in
Chapel Court in 1854, in his eighty-seventh year. This worthy man was
perhaps the model for Billy Waters, the negro beggar in _Tom and Jerry_,
who is so indignant at the beggars' supper on seeing "a turkey without
sassenges."

In Garrick's time John Hardham, the well-known tobacconist, opened a
shop at No. 106. There, at the sign of the "Red Lion," Hardham's
Highlander kept steady guard at a doorway through which half the
celebrities of the day made their exits and entrances. His celebrated
"No. 37" snuff was said, like the French millefleur, to be composed of a
great number of ingredients, and Garrick in his kind way helped it into
fashion by mentioning it favourably on the stage. Hardham, a native of
Chichester, began life as a servant, wrote a comedy, acted, and at last
became Garrick's "numberer," having a general's quick _coup d'oeil_ at
gauging an audience, and so checking the money-takers. Garrick once
became his security for a hundred pounds, but eventually Hardham grew
rich, and died in 1772, bequeathing L22,289 to Chichester, 10 guineas to
Garrick, and merely setting apart L10 for his funeral, only vain fools,
as he said, spending more. We can fancy the great actors of that day
seated on Hardham's tobacco-chests discussing the drollery of Foote or
the vivacity of Clive.

"It has long been a source of inquiry," says a writer in the _City
Press_, "whence the origin of the cognomen, 'No. 37,' to the celebrated
snuff compounded still under the name of John Hardham, in Fleet Street.
There is a tradition that Lord Townsend, on being applied to by Hardham,
whom he patronised, to name the snuff, suggested the cabalistic number
of 37, it being the exact number of a majority obtained in some
proceedings in the Irish Parliament during the time he was Lord
Lieutenant there, and which was considered a triumph for his Government.
The dates, however, do not serve this theory, as Lord Townsend was not
viceroy till the years 1767-72, when the snuff must have been well
established in public fame and Hardham in the last years of his life. It
has already been printed elsewhere that, on the famed snuff coming out
in the first instance, David Garrick, hearing of it, called in Fleet
Street, as he was wont frequently to do, and offered to bring it under
the publi