selves in a whole shilling s worth of beer, and slept
the night on a miserable bed in a miserable den, I
knew him pretty fairly for what he was. And that
in one respect he was representative of a large body
of the lower-class London workman, my later ex
perience substantiates.

He was London-born, his father a fireman and a
drinker before him. As a child, his home was the
streets and the docks. He had never learned to
read, and had never felt the need for it a vain
and useless accomplishment, he held, at least for a
manpf his station in life.

He had had a mother and numerous squalling
brothers and sisters, all crammed into a couple of
rooms and living on poorer and less regular food
than he could ordinarily rustle for himself. In fact,
he never went home except at periods when he was
unfortunate in procuring his own food. Petty pil
fering and begging along the streets and docks, a
trip or two to sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as
coal-trimmer, and then, a full-fledged fireman, he
had reached the top of his life.

And in the course of this he had also hammered
out a philosophy of life, an ugly and repulsive phi
losophy, but withal a very logical and sensible one
from his point of view. When I asked him what
he lived for, he immediately answered, " Booze."
A voyage to sea (for a man must live and get the

[[35]]

p034 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p035w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p036

v?