| £ | s. | d | ||
| Guide-Book | 3 | 6 | ||
| Dinner at the Star and Garter | 10 | |||
| Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.) | 2 | 6 | 3 | |
| Gratuities | 4 | |||
| Hack | 4 | 6 | ||
| Thompson’s Seasons | 5 | |||
| Library | 1 | |||
| Boat on the river | 6 | |||
| Port wine and cigar | 4 |
And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:
Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.
Call upon Mr. Morille same day.
Leave card at Colonel Digby’s on Tuesday.
Theatre Friday night—Richard III. and new farce.
Present letter at Miss L——’s on Tuesday.
Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday.
Get my draft on London cashed.
Write home by the Princess.
Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt’s.
Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of the British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is “A Plan of the Town of Liverpool.” But there seems little plan in the confined and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks irregularly scattered along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along, a peaceful stream of shaded line engraving.
On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish white: a desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to populate it with all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space designated by that spot is now, doubtless, completely built up in Liverpool.
Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in all directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked “Riddough’s Hotel,” the house my father stopped at.
These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and penetrate with them into the narrowest courts.
By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a foreign land; but attended St. John’s Church near the Hay-market, and other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian, poet, and banker.
Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals, pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her head with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an oval sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this motto elastically stretched for a border—“Deus nobis haec otia fecit.”
The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary representation of a now extinct fowl, called the “Liver,” said to have inhabited a “pool,” which antiquarians assert once covered a good part of the ground where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird, and this pool, Liverpool derives its name.