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Peele's Coffee-House (Nos. 177 and 178, north side) once boasted a portrait of Dr. Johnson, said to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, on the keystone of the mantelpiece. This coffee-house is of antiquity, but is chiefly memorable for its useful files of newspapers and for its having been the central committee-room of the Society for Repealing the Paper Duty. The struggle began in 1858, and eventually triumphed, thanks to the president, the Right Hon. Milner Gibson, and the chairman, the late Mr. John Cassell. The house within the last few years has been entirely rebuilt. In former times
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Peele's Coffee-House was quite a house of call and post-office for money-lenders and bill-discounters; though crowds of barristers and solicitors also frequented it, in order to consult the useful files of London and country newspapers hoarded there for now more than a century. Mr. Jay has left us an amusing sketch of one of the former frequenters of
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Peele's --the late Sir William Owen Barlow, a bencher of the Middle Temple. This methodical old gentleman had never travelled in a stage-coach or railway-carriage in his life, and had not for years read a book. He came in for dinner at the same hour every day, except in Term-time, and was very angry if any loud talkers disturbed him at his evening paper. He once requested the instant discharge of a waiter at
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Peele's, because the civil but ungrammatical man had said,
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There are a leg of mutton, and there is chops.
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Green Dragon --Tompion and Pinchbeck--The _Record_--St. Bride's and its Memories--_Punch_ and his Contributors--The _Dispatch_--The _Daily Telegraph_--The
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Globe Tavern and Goldsmith--The _Morning Advertiser_--The _Standard_--The _London Magazine_--A Strange Story--Alderman Waithman--Brutus Billy--Hardham and his
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Green Dragon (No. 56, south) was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the new building set six feet backward. During the Popish Plot several anti-papal clubs met here; and from the windows Roger North stood to see the shouting, torch-waving procession pass along, to burn the Pope's effigy at Temple Bar. In the
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