had thus solemnly recorded it over the hospitable gate of his hotel.

Crump married Miss Budge, so well known to the admirers of the
festive dance on the other side of the water as Miss Delancy; and
they had one daughter, named Morgiana, after that celebrated part in
the "Forty Thieves" which Miss Budge performed with unbounded
applause both at the "Surrey" and "The Wells." Mrs. Crump sat in a
little bar, profusely ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all
ages, from Hillisberg, Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic
toe in 1805, down to the Sylphides of our day. There was in the
collection a charming portrait of herself, done by De Wilde; she was
in the dress of Morgiana, and in the act of pouring, to very slow
music, a quantity of boiling oil into one of the forty jars. In
this sanctuary she sat, with black eyes, black hair, a purple face
and a turban, and morning, noon, or night, as you went into the
parlour of the hotel, there was Mrs. Crump taking tea (with a little
something in it), looking at the fashions, or reading Cumberland's
"British Theatre." The Sunday Times was her paper, for she voted
the Dispatch, that journal which is taken in by most ladies of her
profession, to be vulgar and Radical, and loved the theatrical
gossip in which the other mentioned journal abounds.

The fact is, that the "Royal Bootjack," though a humble, was a very
genteel house; and a very little persuasion would induce Mr. Crump,
as he looked at his own door in the sun, to tell you that he had
himself once drawn off with that very bootjack the top-boots of His
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and the first gentleman in
Europe. While, then, the houses of entertainment in the
neighbourhood were loud in their pretended Liberal politics, the
"Bootjack" stuck to the good old Conservative line, and was only