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being near them about the time they were robbed, and did not scruple to insinuate that I ought to be detained and searched. This conversation naturally attracted the attention of the company immediately round us; but while it took place, all the parties were obliged by the pressure of the throng behind to continue descending, and we in fact quitted the theatre all together. Being arrived in Little Russell-street, the gentlemen surrounded me to the number of about a score, and our altercation became loud and vehement. Fortunately for me no police-officers happened to be near the spot; for although I had nothing to fear from a search, yet the circumstance would have made me personally known to the latter, and would of course operate to my disadvantage on my future appearance at the theatre. I exerted every art of expostulation, and finally had recourse, on my part, to threats, affecting to feel highly insulted by their insolent insinuations; declared myself a gentleman of character, which I would prove to their cost; offered to give my card of address, or to retire to a coffee-house, and send for respectable persons who knew me, but all my rhetoric proved ineffectual; some were for giving me in charge to an officer; others still more violent were for having me pumped. At this moment a person named G—ge W—k—n, now in this colony, who had been himself exercising his vocation in the pit of the theatre, happened fortunately to come up,
