Every one in the theatre seemed to be on speaking terms with each and all of the performers, and, in some instances, the latter would answer the chaff back merrily, an incessant fire of replies and counter-replies being kept up that was amusing, if not edifying. While the dancing was going on an old woman made her entrance into the box where I was sitting, and asked if "I didn't want some porter or kidney pies." At the "Vic" it is the custom to eat during the performance, and drink porter or beer, which is brought by old women and boys between the acts, and sold at four-pence a bottle. Then the dancing girl retired gracefully amid great applause. She was succeeded by a comic singer, who sang, in a green coat and kerseys, a song, the burden of which was:
"Wait for the turn of the tide, boys,
For Rome wasn't built in a day:
Whatever through life may betide, boys,
Why, wait for the turn of the tide."
This concluded the performance, and the curtain went down, and the lights in the dirty lamps being extinguished, the roughest audience of the roughest play-house in London wandered right and left, up and down the New Cut to their homes, or else they stopped to drink and drain in the pot-houses, or choke the thoroughfare to buy in the street market, which was now—eleven o'clock—at the height of commercial prosperity. Eleven o'clock tolled from St. Paul's as I repassed Waterloo Bridge back to the city, and the Thames swam and bubbled calmly against the stone piers of the massive bridge.
BILLINGSGATE FISH MARKET.
