Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS AN OLD ACTOR. CHAPTER I. 1815 To 1822. FT is my purpose to write of days gone by, and to call up from the past recollections of things, beings, and events long vanished from our gaze, and buried in the mists of the past. Dandy-horses have given way to bicycles, stage coaches, to trains, and couriers to telegrams; still those early days were merry days, and ladies of the past, leaving the ballroom, theatre, or tea party—" drum" or " conversazione"—though tossed and tumbled in their sedan chairs by drunken " bearers," and pestered in foggy weather by importunate linkmen with " Light, yer honour," had as much to tell on reaching home as your modern belle—in her carriage or brougham. To besure, you can travel or sleep now in more security than in the days when footpads and highwaymen plied their trade in broad daylight. It certainly is a comfort to know that a stalwart policeman, with military step, treads round your premises and the adjacent streets, instead of an infirm potterer, who rarely left his box, except to bawl, in tremulous accents, " Past one o'clock, and a cloudy morning." What changes I have seen in my day in all things! With gas came a wonderful transmutation. Where Regent Street now stands, we passed through wretchedly-constructed shops, covered with tarpaulin, and barely habitable; while off the pavement, and nearly to the middle of the street, hawkers carried on a brisk trade. In fact, small markets existed where stalls, laden with meat, vegetables, fried fish, pastry, and other edibles, rendered the roadway, on foot or in vehicle, almost impassable. The steady march of improvement swept away these rat-holes, and few that pass in these days Holborn Bars—the Strand, near Northumberland House then; now non-existent— have any ide... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.