“Did you ever go to the dentist, mister?” he said, working at a loose tooth with his shrivelled fingers.  “I went to a dentist once, who professed to stop teeth without giving pain, and the beggar did stop my teeth without pain; but did they stay in, those stoppings?  No, my bhoy; they came out before you could say Jack Robinson.  Now, I shimply ask you, d’you call that dentistry?” Fixing his eyes on Shelton’s collar, which had the misfortune to be high and clean, he resumed with drunken scorn:  “Ut’s the same all over this pharisaical counthry.  Talk of high morality and Anglo-Shaxon civilisation!  The world was never at such low ebb!  Phwhat’s all this morality?  Ut stinks of the shop.  Look at the condition of Art in this counthry! look at the fools you see upon th’ stage! look at the pictures and books that sell!  I know what I’m talking about, though I am a sandwich man.  Phwhat’s the secret of ut all?  Shop, my bhoy!  Ut don’t pay to go below a certain depth!  Scratch the skin, but pierce ut—­Oh! dear, no!  We hate to see the blood fly, eh?”

Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were expected to reply; but the old gentleman, pursing up his lips, went on: 

“Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land.  Do ye think blanks loike me ought to exist?  Whoy don’t they kill us off?  Palliatives—­palliatives—­and whoy?  Because they object to th’ extreme course.  Look at women:  the streets here are a scandal to the world.  They won’t recognise that they exist—­their noses are so dam high!  They blink the truth in this middle-class counthry.  My bhoy”—­and he whispered confidentially—­“ut pays ’em.  Eh? you say, why shouldn’t they, then?” (But Shelton had not spoken.) “Well, let’em! let ’em!  But don’t tell me that’sh morality, don’t tell me that’sh civilisation!  What can you expect in a counthry where the crimson, emotions are never allowed to smell the air?  And what’sh the result?  My bhoy, the result is sentiment, a yellow thing with blue spots, like a fungus or a Stilton cheese.  Go to the theatre, and see one of these things they call plays.  Tell me, are they food for men and women?  Why, they’re pap for babes and shop-boys!  I was a blanky actor moyself!”

Shelton listened with mingled feelings of amusement and dismay, till the old actor, having finished, resumed his crouching posture at the table.

“You don’t get dhrunk, I suppose?” he said suddenly—­“too much of ’n Englishman, no doubt.”

“Very seldom,” said Shelton.

“Pity!  Think of the pleasures of oblivion!  Oi ’m dhrunk every night.”

“How long will you last at that rate?”

“There speaks the Englishman!  Why should Oi give up me only pleasure to keep me wretched life in?  If you’ve anything left worth the keeping shober for, keep shober by all means; if not, the sooner you are dhrunk the better—­that stands to reason.”

In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman where the old man came from.