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One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf

at dusk I had pulled down as far as Greenith the ebb tide, and

had turned with the tide It had been a fine bright day, but had becoy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel oing and returning, I had seen the

signal in his , All well

As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort

myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude

before ht I would afterwards go

to the play The theatre where Mr Wopsle had achieved his questionable

triuhborhood (it is nowhere now), and

to that theatre I resolved to go I are that Mr Wopsle had

not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather

partaken of its decline He had been oh the

play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of

noble birth, and a monkey And Herbert had seen him as a predatory

Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an

outrageous hat all over bells

I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house,

where there were maps of the world in porter-pot riravy on every one of the knives,--to

this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's

doraphical,--and wore out the ti in a hot blast of dinners By

and by, I roused myself, and went to the play

There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a h I could have wished his trousers not quite so

tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all