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