Not many years ago a gin-shop was a mean-looking, and by no means a spacious place, with a few small bottles, not bigger than a doctor’s largest vials, in the dusty window. But now, however poor many of the working classes may be, it seems to be their pleasure to squander their little remaining money upon a number of these palaces, as if they were determined that the persons whom they employ to sell them poison should dwell in the midst of luxury and splendor. I do not mean to say, that we have a right to throw all the blame upon the master or the mistress of a gin-shop. For my part, I should not like to keep one, and be obliged to get rich upon the money of the poor infatuated creatures who will ruin both soul and body in gin-drinking; but the master of the gin-shop may be heard to say, “I don’t force the people to drink; they will have gin, and if I do not sell to them somebody else will.” The story of “The Fools’ Pence,” which follows, is worth attending to.
A little mean-looking man sat talking to Mrs. Crowder, the mistress of the Punch-bowl: “Why, Mrs. Crowder,” said he, “I should hardly know you again. Really, I must say you have things in the first style. What an elegant paper; what noble chairs; what a pair of fire-screens; all so bright and so fresh; and yourself so well, and looking so well!”
Mrs. Crowder had dropped languidly into an arm-chair, and sat sighing and smiling with affectation, not turning a deaf ear to her visitor, but taking in with her eyes a full view of what passed in the shop; having drawn aside the curtain of rose-colored silk, which sometimes covered the window in the wall between the shop and the parlor.
“Why, you see, Mr. Berriman,” she replied, “our business is a thriving one, and we don’t love to neglect it, for one must work hard for an honest livelihood; and then you see, my two girls, Letitia and Lucy, were about to leave their boarding-school; so Mr. Crowder and I wished to make the old place as genteel and fashionable as we could; and what with new stone copings to the windows, and new French window-frames to the first floor, and a little paint, and a little papering, Mr. Berriman, we begin to look tolerable. I must say too, Mr. Crowder has laid out a deal of money in fitting up the shop, and in filling his cellars.”
“Well, ma’am,” continued Mr. Berriman, “I don’t know where you find the needful for all these improvements. For my part, I can only say, our trade seems quite at a stand-still. There’s my wife always begging for money to pay for this or that little necessary article, but I part from every penny with a pang. Dear Mrs. Crowder, how do you manage?”
Mrs. Crowder simpered, and raising her eyes, and looking with a glance of smiling contempt towards the crowd of customers in the shop, “The fools’ pence—’tis the fools’ pence that does it for us,” she said.
Perhaps it was owing to the door being just then opened and left ajar by Miss Lucy, who had been serving in the bar, that the words of Mrs. Crowder were heard by a man named George Manly, who stood at the upper end of the counter. He turned his eyes upon the customers who were standing near him, and saw pale, sunken cheeks, inflamed eyes, and ragged garments. He turned them upon the stately apartment in which they were assembled; he saw that it had been fitted up at no trifling cost; he stared through the partly open doorway into the parlor, and saw looking-glasses, and pictures, and gilding, and fine furniture, and a rich carpet, and Miss Lucy, in a silk gown, sitting down to her piano-forte: and he thought within himself, how strange it is, by what a curious process it is, that all this wretchedness on my left hand is made to turn into all this rich finery on my right!
“Well, sir, and what’s for you?”
These words were spoken in the same shrill voice which had made the “fools’ pence” ring in his ears.
George Manly was still in deep thought, and with the end of his rule—for he was a carpenter—he had been making a calculation, drawing the figures in the little puddles of gin upon the counter. He looked up and saw Mrs. Crowder herself as gay as her daughters, with a cap and colored ribbons flying off her head, and a pair of gold earrings almost touching her plump shoulders. “A glass of gin, ma’am, is what I was waiting for to-night, but I think I’ve paid the last ‘fools’ pence’ I shall put down on this counter for many a long day.”