or cheese or butter with a bit of bread. But, these may be eaten in a
shop, a warehouse, a factory, far from any _fire_, and even in a
carriage on the road. The slops absolutely demand _fire_ and a
_congregation_; so that, be your business what it may; be you
shopkeeper, farmer, drover, sportsman, traveller, to the _slop-board_
you must come; you must wait for its assembling, or start from home
without your breakfast; and, being used to the warm liquid, you feel out
of order for the want of it. If the slops were in fashion amongst
ploughmen and carters, we must all be starved; for the food could never
be raised. The mechanics are half-ruined by them. Many of them are
become poor, enervated creatures; and chiefly from this cause. But is
the positive _cost_ nothing? At boarding-schools an _additional price is
given_ on account of the tea slops. Suppose you to be a clerk, in hired
lodgings, and going to your counting-house at nine o'clock. You get your
dinner, perhaps, near to the scene of your work; but how are you to have
the _breakfast slops_ without _a servant_? Perhaps you find a lodging
just to suit you, but the house is occupied by people who keep no
_servants_, and you want a servant to _light a fire_ and get the slop
ready. You could get this lodging for several shillings a week less than
another at the next door; but _there_ they keep a servant, who will
'_get_ you your breakfast,' and preserve you, benevolent creature as she
is, from the cruel necessity of going to the cupboard and cutting off a
slice of meat or cheese and a bit of bread. She will, most likely, toast
your bread for you too, and melt your butter; and then muffle you up, in
winter, and send you out almost swaddled. Really such a thing can hardly
be expected ever to become a _man_. You are weak; you have delicate
health; you are '_bilious_!' Why, my good fellow, it is these very slops
that make you weak and bilious; And, indeed, the _poverty_, the real
poverty, that they and their concomitants bring on you, greatly assists,
in more ways than one, in producing your 'delicate health.'