noblemen, and grand officials, who had been summoned from distant spots by artful lures to No. 54, and there battled with a crowd in vain only to find that there were hoaxed; people who had thus lost both time and money, can be neither described nor imagined.  It was not the idea of the hoax—­simple enough in itself—­which was entitled to the admiration accorded to ingenuity, but its extent and success, and the clever means taken by the conspirators to insure the attendance of every one who ought not to have been there.  It was only late at night that the police succeeded in clearing the street, and the dupes retired, murmuring and vowing vengeance.  Hook, however, gloried in the exploit, which he thought ‘perfect.’

But the hoaxing dearest to Theodore—­for there was something to be gained by it—–­was that by which he managed to obtain a dinner when either too hard-up to pay for one, or in the humour for a little amusement.  No one who has not lived as a bachelor in London and been reduced—–­in respect of coin—­to the sum of twopence-halfpenny, can tell how excellent a strop is hunger to sharpen wit upon.  We all know that

  ‘Mortals with stomachs can’t live without dinner;’

and in Hook’s day the substitute of ‘heavy teas’ was not invented.  Necessity is very soon brought to bed, when a man puts his fingers into his pockets, finds them untenanted, and remembers that the only friend who would consent to lend him five shillings is gone out of town; and the infant, Invention, presently smiles into the nurse’s face.  But it was no uncommon thing in those days for gentlemen to invite themselves where they listed, and stay as long as they liked.  It was only necessary for them to make themselves really agreeable, and deceive their host in some way or other.  Hook’s friend, little Tom Hill, of whom it was said that he knew everybody’s affairs far better than they did themselves, was famous for examining kitchens about the hour of dinner, and quietly selecting his host according to the odour of the viands.  It is of him that the old ‘Joe Miller’ is told of the ‘haunch of venison.’  Invited to dinner at one house, he happens to glance down into the kitchen of the next, and seeing a tempting haunch of venison on the spit, throws over the inviter, and ingratiates himself with his neighbour, who ends by asking him to stay to dinner.  The fare, however, consisted of nothing more luxurious than an Irish stew, and the disappointed guest was informed that he had been ‘too cunning by half,’ inasmuch as the venison belonged to his original inviter, and had been cooked in the house he was in by kind permission, because the chimney of the owner’s kitchen smoked.

The same principle often actuated Theodore; and, indeed, there are few stories which can be told of this characteristic of the great frolicker, which have not been told a century of times.