That is the case with those fleeting crowds who so largely contribute
to its trade and prosperity; but the _habitue'_ of Liverpool, the
man who spends his days there, is a totally different order of being.
The stranger sees the great city most generally through mist and fog;
he regards the pavements as rough and slippery; he thinks the public
buildings large, but ugly. Liverpool to him is another London, but
without London's attractions. But the true Liverpool man looks at his
native town from a very different point of view. He is part and parcel
of the place, and he loves it for its size and ugliness, its great
commerce, its thriving active business life. Liverpool to its citizens
means home; they are proud of their laws and their customs; they like
to dispense charity in their own way; they like to support and help
their own poor; they have, to an extent absolutely unknown in London,
the true spirit of neighborliness. This spirit is shared by all alike,
the rich and the poor feel it, and it binds them together; they regard
their town as the world, and look askance at inventions and ideas
imported from other places. There are bad slums in Liverpool, and
wicked deeds committed, and cruel rough men to be found in multitudes;
but the evil there compared to London seems at least to be
conquerable--the slums can be got at; nobody who chooses to apply in
the right quarter need die of famine or distress.

Most of the men are dock-laborers; they are often taken on only for
half a day at a time, and in this way their work is precarious, and,
except for the most steady-going and respectable, at many periods of
the year very hard to get. Almost all the men either work at the docks,
or take to a sea-faring life. Thus sailors are coming and going, and
there is scarcely a family belonging either to high or low who has not
a son, a brother, or a father on the sea. Perhaps this is one of the
facts which binds the people to one another--the rich lady in her