One becomes used to being hard up, as one becomes used to everything
else, by the help of that wonderful old homeopathic doctor, Time. You
can tell at a glance the difference between the old hand and the
novice; between the case-hardened man who has been used to shift and
struggle for years and the poor devil of a beginner striving to hide
his misery, and in a constant agony of fear lest he should be found
out. Nothing shows this difference more clearly than the way in which
each will pawn his watch. As the poet says somewhere: "True ease in
pawning comes from art, not chance." The one goes into his "uncle's"
with as much composure as he would into his tailor's--very likely with
more. The assistant is even civil and attends to him at once, to the
great indignation of the lady in the next box, who, however,
sarcastically observes that she don't mind being kept waiting "if it
is a regular customer." Why, from the pleasant and businesslike
manner in which the transaction is carried out, it might be a large
purchase in the three per cents. Yet what a piece of work a man makes
of his first "pop." A boy popping his first question is confidence
itself compared with him. He hangs about outside the shop until he
has succeeded in attracting the attention of all the loafers in the
neighborhood and has aroused strong suspicions in the mind of the
policeman on the beat. At last, after a careful examination of the
contents of the windows, made for the purpose of impressing the
bystanders with the notion that he is going in to purchase a diamond
bracelet or some such trifle, he enters, trying to do so with a
careless swagger, and giving himself really the air of a member of the
swell mob. When inside he speaks in so low a voice as to be perfectly
inaudible, and has to say it all over again. When, in the course of
his rambling conversation about a "friend" of his, the word "lend" is
reached, he is promptly told to go up the court on the right and take
the first door round the corner. He comes out of the shop with a face