the scorer, who wore a very large shirt collar
and a straw hat, and was at least a General
in America— mixed and sold "American
Drinks : " brandy cock-tails, gin slings, egg-
noggs, timber doodles, and mint juleps, which
last tasted like very bad gin-and-water, with
green stuff in it, which you were obliged to
suck through a straw instead of swigging in
the legitimate manner. A fine end for my
dry skittle-ground to come to !

It hadn't been open a month before Dick
the Brewer, Curly Jem Simmons and Jew
Josephs, all notorious skittle sharps, found
it out and made it a regular rendezvous for
picking up flats. They soon picked up young
Mr. Poppinson, the rich pawnbroker's son,
who had twenty thousand pounds and water
on the brain, and has since gone through the
court. They picked him up to some tune.
It wasn't the games he lost on the square
(which were few) or the games he lost on the
cross (which were many) or the sums he was
cheated of at the fine slate billiard table
upstairs, or the bottles of champagne he stood
(champagne at my old house in Leather
Lane!); it was the dreadful deal of money he
lost at betting:— fifties that Dick the Brewer
couldn't cross the alley in three jumps, ponies
that Curly Jem couldn't name the winners of
the Derby and Oaks for ten years running—
even fives that Jew Josephs couldn't turn up
a Jack four times out of four. Poor young Mr.
Poppinson! He ruined himself and his poor
child of a wife (a little delicate thing you
might blow away with a puff at most) and
his poor old widowed mother who sold herself
up, and pawned her comfortable little annuity
for her wayward son. I met him the other
day— he is but a boy still— flying in rags;
and said I to myself there are not many people
who pass this scarecrow who would believe
were they told it, that in two or three years
he managed to squander away twenty thousand
golden pounds, not in horse racing, not
at Crockford's, not on actresses and dancing
girls, not even in foreign travel, but between
the skittle alleys and billiard tables and tap
rooms of three or four low public houses. I
have seen life and a many phases of it, and
know how common these cases are. It is
astonishing how often those who spend the
most enjoy and see the least for their money.
I met a man the other day ragged, forlorn,
with no more fat upon him than would grease
a cobbler's bradawl. Now I had known this
man when he was worth ten thousand pounds.
He had spent every penny of it. " How on
earth did you manage it? " I asked him, for I
knew that he never drank or had any ambition
to be what you call a swell. " Ah," said
he with a sigh, " I played." " What at? " I
asked again, thinking of rouge-et-noir, roulette,
or chicken hazard. " Bagatelle," says he. Ten
thousand pounds at bagatelle— at a twopenny-
halfpenny game of knocking a ball about with
a walking stick, and that a child could play
at! Yet I daresay he told the truth. Just
similarly young Mr. Poppinson went to ruin
in J. Fishtail's American Bowling Alley ; and
when in desperation he gave Curly Jem
Simmons and Jew Josephs in charge for
swindling him (and they were discharged, of
course) people did say that J. Fishtail was in
league with Jew Josephs; stood in with the
whole gang, and had as much to do with
cheating Mr. Poppinson as anybody. At all
events he got a very bad name by the
transaction.

Just at this time, I think, I was taken very
bad with the rheumatism, and, lying up at
Hoxton, lost sight of J. Fishtail. I expected
to find him in the Gazette by the time I was
able to be on my feet and about again; but
the next time I looked in at my old house
I found him still in Leather Lane, and heard
that he was carrying on worse than ever.
He had been satisfied with barmaids for some
time, and saucy minxes they were too, all
ribbons and airs, together with a very fast
young barman who was always making up
his betting-book when he should have been
attending to the customers; and had ran
matches, so I heard— the wretch— upon a
turnpike road in pink drawers, with a ribbon
tied round his head. But what do you think
J. Fishtail's next move was? To have a
Giant as a barman! As I live, a Giant.

He was a great, shambling, awkward, bow-
legged, splay-footed brute, considerably more
than seven feet high, and as great a fool as
he was a creature. He had a head like an
ill-made slack-baked half quartern loaf,
inclining to the sugar-loaf form at the top; or
perhaps a bladder of lard would be a better
comparison. His little lack-lustre eyes were
like two of No. six shot poked into the dough
anyhow. His mouth was a mere gash, and
he slobbered. His voice was a shrill squeak,
with one gruff bass note that always turned
up when it wasn't wanted, and oughtn't to
have been heard. He had at least four left
hands, and spilt half the liquids that he drew,
and was always breaking his long shins over
stools or anything that came handy— as almost
everything seemed to do, in that sense. To
see him in his huge shirtsleeves, with his
awkward beefy hands hanging inanely by his
side, and his great foolish mouth open, was
disgusting: he was a pillar of stupidity, a
huge animated pump with two handles, and
not worth pumping. He took to wearing a
little boy's cloth cap at the back of his
monstrous ill-shaped head, which made him look
supremely ridiculous. What his name was I
never knew or cared to inquire; but he was
generally known as " Big Bill," or the "Giant
Barman." Of course he had been exhibited
before the Queen and the principal Courts of
Europe, and was patronised by all the royal
families extant; and a gigantic lithographic
representation of him in a full suit of black
with a white neckcloth, exhibiting his bigness
in the private parlour of Windsor Castle,
before her Majesty and a select assembly, all