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Notes and Queries, Number 27, May 4, 1850 by Various
page 44 of 92 (47%)
to say, when speaking of these ornaments, 'that my countrymen and women
were not _au fait_ in the art of conversation, and that instead of
recurring to their cards, when the discourse began to flag, the minutes
between the time of assembling and the placing the card-tables are spent
in an irksome suspense. To relieve this vacuum in social intercourse and
prevent cards from engrossing the whole of my visitors' minds, I have
presented them with objects the most attractive I could imagine--and
when that fails there are the cards.' Hanway was the first man who
ventured to walk the streets of London with an umbrella over his head.
After carrying one near thirty years, he saw them come into general
use."

_Downing Street._--"Baron Bothmar's house was part of the forfeited
property of Lee, Lord Lichfield, who retired with James II., to whom he
was Master of the Horse. At the beginning of the present century there
was no other official residence in the street than the house which
belonged, by right of office, to the First Lord of the Treasury, but by
degrees one house was bought after another: first the Foreign Office,
increased afterwards by three other houses; then the Colonial Office;
then the house in the north corner, which was the Judge Advocate's,
since added to the Colonial Office; then a house for the Chancellor of
the Exchequer; and lastly, a whole row of lodging-houses, chiefly for
Scotch and Irish members."

_Whitehall._--"King Charles I. was executed on a scaffold erected in
front of the Banqueting House, towards the park. The warrant directs
that he should be executed 'in the open street before Whitehall.' Lord
Leicester tells us in his Journal, that he was 'beheaded at Whitehall
Gate.' Dugdale, in his _Diary_, that he was 'beheaded at the gate of
Whitehall;' and a single sheet of the time reserved in the British
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