and other parts of London to which the poor resort of a Saturday night,
for laying out their wages. Many a family party, consisting of a man,
his wife, and sometimes one or two of his children, have I listened to,
as they stood consulting on their ways and means, or the strength of
their exchequer, or the price of household articles. Gradually I became
familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions.
Sometimes there might be heard murmurs of discontent, but far oftener
expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope,
and tranquillity. And taken generally, I must say that, in this point at
least, the poor are more philosophic than the rich--that they show a more
ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils
or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without
appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion
upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always
received indulgently. If wages were a little higher or expected to be
so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions
and butter were expected to fall, I was glad; yet, if the contrary were
true, I drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like
the bee, that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from
the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into compliance with the
master-key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances, for an
opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time; and sometimes in
my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my
eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage,
instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in
my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys,
such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without
thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters and
confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have
believed at times that I must be the first discoverer of some of these