it was so in Taylor’s case.  I believe that he would have been patient under any inevitable ordinance of nature, but he could not lie still under contempt, the knowledge that to those about him he was of less consequence than the mud under their feet.  He was timid and, after his failure as a shopkeeper, and the near approach to the workhouse, he dreaded above everything being again cast adrift.  Strange conflict arose in him, for the insults to which he was exposed drove him almost to madness; and yet the dread of dismissal in a moment checked him when he was about to “fire up,” as he called it, and reduced him to a silence which was torture.  Once he was ordered to bring some coals for the messenger’s lobby.  The man who gave him the order, finding that he was a long time bringing them, went to the top of the stairs, and bawled after him with an oath to make haste.  The reason of the delay was that Taylor had two loads to bring up—­one for somebody else.  When he got to the top of the steps, the messenger with another oath took the coals, and saying that he “would teach him to skulk there again,” kicked the other coal-scuttle down to the bottom.  Taylor himself told me this; and yet, although he would have rejoiced if the man had dropped down dead, and would willingly have shot him, he was dumb.  The check operated in an instant.  He saw himself without a penny, and in the streets.  He went down into the cellar, and raged and wept for an hour.  Had he been a workman, he would probably have throttled his enemy, or tried to do it, or what is more likely, his enemy would not have dared to treat him in such fashion, but he was powerless, and once losing his situation he would have sunk down into the gutter, whence he would have been swept by the parish into the indiscriminate heap of London pauperism, and carted away to the Union, a conclusion which was worse to him than being hung.

Another of our friends was a waiter in one of the public-houses and chop-houses combined, of which there are so many in the Strand.  He lived in a wretched alley which ran from St. Clement’s Church to Boswell Court—­I have forgotten its name—­a dark crowded passage.  He was a man of about sixty—­invariably called John, without the addition of any surname.  I knew him long before we opened our room, for I was in the habit of frequently visiting the chop-house in which he served.  His hours were incredible.  He began at nine o’clock in the morning with sweeping the dining-room, cleaning the tables and the gas globes, and at twelve business commenced with early luncheons.  Not till three-quarters of an hour after midnight could he leave, for the house was much used by persons who supped there after the theatres.  During almost the whole of this time he was on his legs, and very often he was unable to find two minutes in the day in which to get his dinner.  Sundays, however, were free.  John was not a head waiter, but merely a subordinate, and