Now, it is by this genial, generous feeling, which God has planted in the human breast, that many a worthy, striving young fellow has a timely shove up-hill-how or why he little dreams. But men like Philip are very wormwood to all earnest-minded men-so natural is our reluctance to find the drones faring as well as the busy bees of society, that most men would rather see them down in the world than up. But, unhappily, since making the above observations, time has passed on, and I have met Philip Wardlaw again. He has learnt the truth that your own kith and kin will tire at last, and that, as man never continueth in one stay," some die off, and others are widely scattered, and are no more seen. "Out of sight out of mind," is pre-eminently the fate of "the poor relation." So Philip finds himself alone in the wide wide world-that world in which, however wide, when a man cannot pay his standing, he very soon finds there is no room for him! Well, we met Phil in the Strand, looking very poor and very miserable; and being equally averse either to avoid his company or to be seen in it, we stepped aside with him into a chop-house. We were not a little moved by comparing what he was with what he had been, and "drops of compassion trembled in our eyelids" as we "bid him tell his pitiful story" :"You little thought ever to see me in my present sorry plight," he said, looking down upon his threadbare clothes; "but the last twelve months have wrought quite a revolution in my thoughts, and feelings, and ideas of things in general. Often as I had heard the common saying about one day coming to my senses,' I never knew what it meant while I had any one to keep me; but now my eyes are opened. I have awaked as from a dream and feel like the creature of another sphere: for, the world has changed with me altogether. Even the very streets are quite different; for ever since my clothes became seedy, and clean linen so scarce-you see I am forced to button-up in the dog-days-I have found myself instinctively keeping to all the lanes and alleys. I always cut Regent Street and go through Golden Square-not that anybody is very likely to come up to me-no-I walk the town as much alone as if I were dropped from a balloon in some town in Kamtschatka. "Various things strike me as queer and anomalous in the winter of my fortunes. It was easier far, while I could hold my head up, to be invited to all the luxuries of the season than it would be now to beg a loaf of bread. The same men who will spend pounds to be 'genteel,' won't spare a penny to be generous. Very strange, isn't it? There is nothing between turtle soup and starvation! "Time hangs very heavy when a fellow's poor. You see I have no home -only a small bedroom—a poor garret—and a man is not expected to be there in the day-time except once in a way. There are penny readingrooms-one in Leicester Square-but you can't stay there all the morning; they soon find out what you are after; and one of the waiters said he should have thought I had taken a lease of the premises! In fine summer weather I can do pretty well; but the winter is awful. I dread next winter. Last Christmas-day all the recollections that flooded upon my mind almost broke my heart. As to the idle man's usual resource, lounging into shops and looking about me, all that has now passed away. The shopman comes up to me and asks what I want? Even the Parks now can only be said to be half open to me. I only dare go there in the mornings, and as to loitering about Rotten Row, I should dread the very thought of such a thing—there are glances I might encounter which would pierce me to the soul. And as to the Serpentine, I have not been near it for weeks. The last time, one of the Humane Society men dodged me and eyed me so suspiciously I really believe he thought I wanted to drown myself. So, all I can do is to mope about under the trees, passing gaunt and wretchedlooking creatures like myself-men whose coats speak of West End tailors and of better days. Some of these men look at you sympathetically, as if poverty were itself an introduction, and we all belonged to the same sorry and stranded fraternity. One man above fifty years of age said he had been a gentleman commoner of Christchurch College, Oxford; another, only seven years before, had lived in Carlton Terrace, a dashing man in the Guards. You wonder to hear such things; but, save from an occasional begging-letter, you are never likely to hear of men like these, or what has become of them. If you were in such a condition you would feel a natural shrinking from all your former acquaintance; and as to your relations, they would take very good care no one should hear it from them." After finishing his mutton-chops, and warming into a yet more communicative humour over a pint of stout, he said he was much obliged by my kindness, and even the shilling it had saved him (of course I could not leave him without a more substantial assistance) was something to dwell on and to feel happy about all that day; for "a little happinesss goes a long way in these times." He then told me that all he had was twelve shillings a week, and even that depended on the life of a sister, or the caprice of her husband. He had one good, kind friend, an Irish reporter, who had let him into a little penny-a-lining. "I attend for him at Bow Street sometimes, when he has something more profitable elsewhere. I also have a reading ticket for the British Museum, and I once tried hard to find something ancient to freshen up for the publishers; but it was 'no go.' One after another in Paternoster Row-anything but Pater noster-anything but very fatherly-I found it: it is full of surly clerks, who pretend to go to the principals, and choke you off without seeing them-one after another of these fellows eyed me as if I were not a likely sort" (this of course showed their discrimination), "and said they could not enter on any proposals without an introduction of a literary kind. "My friend the reporter said he never had anything but what he worked for since he was eighteen years of age; but necessity made a man marvellously inventive, and whetted his eye-teeth-just what I experienced; and if I had been brought up as he had been, he thought I should have developed some marketable qualifications long before my time of life." I left Philip Wardlaw with all the more pain because I clearly saw that had he not been ruined by the cruel kindness of his friends, there really was some "marketable" stuff to be got out of him. However, I very plainly perceived that he would not live that hard life long. The following winter-it would appear that his fears of it were ominous-I received an imploring letter to visit him in Wardour Street. There I found him with a rheumatic attack of a serious kind-the cold and draughts of London streets had pierced the joints of nature's harness-inflammation of the heart followed, and poor Philip died! There is much reason to believe that the old expression, "Never say die," has actually no little to do with the issues of life. When a man's spirit is broken, I would not give much for his chance of length of days; and a cast-down gentleman soon becomes broken-hearted, and his system is lowered to a point that invites disease, with little vital power to bear up against it. Not long since, while fitting out a friend's cabin at the West India Docks, I had some talk with one of those Jew slop-sellers, ever touting with a list of "fixings" and of cabin furniture to remind the unwary traveller of far more wants than he ever thinks of before starting, or ever finds out afterwards; and I asked Moses concerning those gaunt gangs of dock labourers-many of them once having seen better days-who were said to find in unlading cargoes and working at the windlass that sphere for unskilled labour which poor gentlemen sought in vain in other places. He replied: "Yes, sir; they have tried it on in times past, but they can't stand the living-the common Irish drive them out of the market. Fill an Irishman's belly, never mind how hard the food, and he is all right; but that won't keep a gentleman's heart up. I know them well; their clothes soon come to hang loose about them; and then-the overlooker need but eye their shimbling shambling figures, and there's no more work for them." Philip Wardlaw seemed to me the lowest stage, but I soon learnt a lower still-still nearer the Isle of Dogs. William Ballard, a Cantab, having exhausted all his cash and all his credit, and all the patience of his friends besides, enlisted as a common soldier in a regiment going to India. One of the officers proved to have been his chum at Harrow, and smoothed the roughs of regimental life for him all he could-bad at the best and was the means of making interest for him at Madras, and removing him to an appointment on the Board of Works; but he wrote home that the loneliness was insufferable, and he should soon die-and shortly after, die he did! In this case—as is too common-the last stage was one of drink and delirium. Poverty, loneliness, and a broken spirit, soon lead a man to drown his misery in liquor: low diet, also, creates a craving for a stimulus. Then the more a man drinks the less he has to eat, and thus the lowest depths of degradation are reached by rapid strides. I have a lively recollection of the confessions of an unhappy friend-one who was eventually arrested in his downward course. He said, "I should have been assisted once before, but the man who inquired into my case mistook the casual intoxication from liquor taken from sheer exhaustion before I could eat anything, for habitual drunkenness, and reported that nothing could be done in a case so desperate." No doubt some ruined men are more callous and shameless than others, but these are generally of the younger sort. One day about four years since, as Lord Pwas going over a crossing in Regent Street, the sweeper, whom he had at first disregarded, appeared strangely familiar as well as importunate, and said, "Come, my lord, you'll give me a trifle for old acquaintance' sake." "You, indeed! Why, where can I ever have seen you before?" Lord P gave his old school-fellow a sovereign, and passed on. This Etonian came down to sweep a crossing before he was thirty years of age. Day had been a very popular fellow at Eton, and very rich in "leave books" when he left: though his ideas were very similar to those of an old fellow-collegian of ours, who said, the last morning he spent in Oxford, "Any gentleman may have a pick at my books, for now I have finished my education I never can want to set eyes on books again." The reason we called him "Jobber" was, that some one heard Day's father was a large cattle-breeder-so the fellows, never very complimentary, said he was a pig-jobber; and Jobber Day was his sobriquet ever after. Poor Day, I pity him, and with him many thousands like him who "go to the dogs" from the same cause. The misfortunes of such men date from the day of their birth-born with "a cell more in the heart, and one less in the head." Why, what can you hope or expect of a good, generous soul so constituted-I know just such a case-as to be allowing a sick person ten shillings a week, while writing, all round the family, to pay for the necessaries of life, for themselves, all the time! Day was like a man born (we used to say) with half a bottle of champagne in him, and who never got over the effervescence to the hour of his death. He had none of the Scotch temperament, and was very strong of the Irish: and between the two there is a very wide difference. The latter will feast and be merry with the bailiff in the house; the former will have no appetite for his dinner to-day, if he sees any doubt of another some years after date. At the present day, people called prudent look almost too far into the future to enjoy the present; and the devil-me-care temperament of men like Day is really deserving of a better fate. 366 Out of the World. PART I.. ONE afternoon Dr. Rich rode up as usual to the door of Dumbleton House; he passed in through the iron gates, came up the sweep along which the lilac-trees were beginning to scatter their leaves, and then he dismounted at the stone steps under the portico (it was a red brick house with a Grecian portico), rang at the bell, and asked if Miss Berners was at home. He was shown into the drawing-room-a pleasant, long, ground-floor room, full of comfortable chairs and sofas, with windows through which you saw the garden, the autumn flowers all a-glow, the sun setting behind the trees. One or two tall pictures of Dumbletons who had once lived in the long drawing-room and walked in the garden, but who no longer came and went, hung upon the walls. There was a pleasant perfume of hothouse flowers and burning wood. The room was hot, be-chintzed, beperfumed; Horatia, dressed in a black velvet gown, was sitting by the fire. She got up to welcome the doctor. He thought that this black-velvet lady, with the glowing window behind her, was like a picture he had seen somewhere; or had he read about it? or had he dreamt it? Somehow, he knew she was going to say, "We are going away; good-by!" And Horatia gave him her hand, and said,— "Oh, Doctor Rich -I am so sorry-my aunt tells me we are going away!" "Well," he said, wondering a little at this odd realization, "I am sorry to lose my patient. Though, in truth, I had meant to tell you to-day that you yourself can best cure yourself. All you want is regular exercise and living, and occupation. And this is physic I cannot tell the chemist to put up in a bottle and send you." "What makes you think I want occupation?" said Horatia, a little angry, and not over-pleased. "Don't most women?" said the doctor, smiling. "Don't I find you like prisoners locked up between four walls, with all sorts of wretched make-shift employments, to pass away time? Why, this room is a very pretty prison, but a great deal too hot to be a wholesome one." "You are right; I am a prisoner," said Horatia, in her velvet gown; "but I assure you I work very hard." The doctor looked doubtful. "Shall I tell you what I do?" she went on. "This is not the first time you speak in this way." "It is an old observation of mine," Doctor Rich said, " and I cannot help repeating, that women in your class of life have not enough to do." |