chop-houses combined, of which there are so many in the Strand. He
lived in a wretched alley which ran from St. Clement's Church to
Boswell Court--I have forgotten its name--a dark crowded passage. He
was a man of about sixty--invariably called John, without the
addition of any surname. I knew him long before we opened our room,
for I was in the habit of frequently visiting the chop-house in which
he served. His hours were incredible. He began at nine o'clock in
the morning with sweeping the dining-room, cleaning the tables and
the gas globes, and at twelve business commenced with early
luncheons. Not till three-quarters of an hour after midnight could
he leave, for the house was much used by persons who supped there
after the theatres. During almost the whole of this time he was on
his legs, and very often he was unable to find two minutes in the day
in which to get his dinner. Sundays, however, were free. John was
not a head waiter, but merely a subordinate, and I never knew why at
his time of life he had not risen to a better position. He used to
say that "things had been against him," and I had no right to seek
for further explanations. He was married, and had had three
children, of whom one only was living--a boy of ten years old, whom
he hoped to get into the public-house as a potboy for a beginning.
Like Taylor, the world had well-nigh overpowered John entirely--
crushed him out of all shape, so that what he was originally, or
might have been, it was almost impossible to tell. There was no
particular character left in him. He may once have been this or
that, but every angle now was knocked off, as it is knocked off from
the rounded pebbles which for ages have been dragged up and down the
beach by the waves. For a lifetime he had been exposed to all sorts
of whims and caprices, generally speaking of the most unreasonable
kind, and he had become so trained to take everything without
remonstrance or murmuring that every cross in his life came to him as