A noise, as of shuffling of feet, and men being knocked up with violence against wainscoting, was heard: a hurried dialogue of 'Come out ?'--'I won't!'-- 'You shall!'-- 'I shan't!'-- 'Give me your card, Sir ?'--'You're a scoundrel, Sir!' and so forth, succeeded.

A round of applause betokened the approbation of the audience, and Mr.
Robert Smithers and Mr.Thomas Potter found themselves shot with astonishing swiftness into the road, without having had the trouble of once putting foot to ground during the whole progress of their rapid descent.
Mr.Robert Smithers, being constitutionally one of the slow-goers, and having had quite enough of fast-going, in the course of his recent expulsion, to last until the quarter-day then next ensuing at the very least, had no sooner emerged with his companion from the precincts of Milton-street, than he proceeded to indulge in circuitous references to the beauties of sleep, mingled with distant allusions to the propriety of returning to Islington, and testing the influence of their patent Bramahs over the street-door locks to which they respectively belonged.

Mr.
Thomas Potter, however, was valorous and peremptory.

They had come out to make a night of it: and a night must be made.

So Mr.Robert Smithers, who was three parts dull, and the other dismal, despairingly assented; and they went into a wine-vaults, to get materials for assisting them in making a night; where they found a good many young ladies, and various old gentlemen, and a plentiful sprinkling of hackney-coachmen and cab-drivers, all drinking and talking together; and Mr.Thomas Potter and Mr.Robert Smithers drank small glasses of brandy, and large glasses of soda, until they began to have a very confused idea, either of things in general, or of anything in particular; and, when they had done treating themselves they began to treat everybody else; and the rest of the entertainment was a confused mixture of heads and heels, black eyes and blue uniforms, mud and gas-lights, thick doors, and stone paving.
Then, as standard novelists expressively inform us--'all was a blank!' and in the morning the blank was filled up with the words 'STATION-HOUSE,' and the station-house was filled up with Mr.Thomas Potter, Mr.Robert Smithers, and the major part of their wine-vault companions of the preceding night, with a comparatively small portion of clothing of any kind.