When Ishmael laid his aching head upon the pillow one night a week later
in the Tavistock Square house of Mr. Alderman Killigrew it carried
within a whirl of impressions so confused that days would have been
needed in which to sort them out. London--the London of the
'sixties--noisy with hoofs and iron-bound wheels upon its cobbles and
macadam, dark with slums that encroached upon its gayest ways,
glittering with night-houses and pleasure gardens that focussed light
till dawn, brightened as with clustered bubbles by the swelling skirts
of ladies of the whole world and the half, was, though smaller, ignorant
of electric light, and without half the broad spaces and great buildings
of the London of to-day, still more sparkling and gayer in its effect
because life was less hidden. The 'sixties were not squeamish, though
they were prudish; a man's own womenfolk were less noticeable than
to-day, not only in such minor detail as the exclusion of them from the
tops of omnibuses; but they, after all, were but a fraction of what went
to make up spectacular life. Those were the days of bloods--when an
officer and a gentleman went as a matter of course to all the cockpits
and gaming houses, the night clubs and rings sacred to the "fancy"; when
it was still the thing for a gentleman to spend his nights in drinking
champagne and playing practical jokes that were forgiven him as a
high-spirited young man who must sow his wild oats and garnish each word
of conversation with an oath. From the comparative respectability of
Cremorne and Motts, and the frankly shady precincts of the "Pie" and
the "Blue Posts" down to places considerably worse, London was an
enormous gamut of opportunities for "seeing life."

Killigrew, as a merchant's son, however well off, could not penetrate to
the most sacred precincts--Motts was more or less barred to him; but on
the other hand he was in the midst of what was always called the