I used to know Dick at a little station on the Far Eastern line when I was staying in the neighbourhood, and on leaving there I lost sight of him for five years, when one day in London I happened upon a cab driven by an exceedingly stout man, and to my utter astonishment I found that it was my old friend Dick.
“Why Masson,” I exclaimed, “is that you?”
“Yes, doctor,” he said with an unctuous chuckle, “half as much again of me now as there used to be. I were obliged to put up portering and take to something easier. This life suits me exactly. It’s hard on the horse, certainly, but I was obliged to take to something lighter.”
“Better have kept to a porter’s life, Masson,” I said; “You were much lighter then.”
“So I was doctor, so I was,” he said, “but I were awful heavy then, and when you’ve got to carry somebody’s trunk or portemanty, and your precious heavy self too, it’s more than a man can stand.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dick to me one day in conversation, for he begged for my address, and came and asked for a prescription just to ease off a little of the taut, as he called it; “yes sir,” he said, “I’m a working man though I do drive a cab. One o’ them strange individuals that everybody’s been going into fits about lately as to what they should do with us and for us, and a deal—a great deal more, how to legislate us and represent us. We don’t want legislating an’ representing. I tell you what we want, sir—we want letting alone. Some people runs away with the idea that your working man’s a sort of native furrin wild animal that wants keepers and bars an’ all sorts to keep him in order—that he’s something different to your swell that holds up a ’sumtive umbrelly at me when he wants a keb, and tells me, ‘Aw—to—aw, dwive to the Gweat Westawn or Chawing Cwoss.’ Well, and p’r’aps they’re right to some extent; for your working man, air, is a different sort of thing. Supposing we take your human being, sir, as a precious stone; well, set down your working man as the rough pebble, whilst your swell’s the thing cut and polished.
“Fine thing that cutting and polishing, makes the stone shine and twinkle and glitter like anything; but I have heard say that it takes a little off the vally of the original stone; while, if it’s badly cut, it’s old gooseberry. Now, you know, sir, I have seen cases where I’ve said to myself, ‘That stone’s badly cut, Dick;’ and at other times I’ve set down a fare at a club or private house, or what not, and I’ve been ready to ask myself what he was ever made for. Ornament, p’r’aps. Well, it might be for that; but, same time, it seems hardly likely that Natur’ had time to make things without their having any use. You may say flowers are only ornamental, but I don’t quite see that sir; for it always seemed to me as the smallest thing that grew had its purpose, beginning with the little things, and then going on right up to the big things, till you get to horses, whose proper use is, of course, to draw kebs.
“I’ve been most everything in my day, sir, before I took to kebs, but of all lines of life there isn’t one where you get so much knowledge of life, or see so much, as you do on a box; while of all places in the world, there’s no place like London. I’ve never been out of it lately, not farther than ’Ampton Court, or Ascot, or Epsom—stop; yes, I did once have eight hours at the sea-side with the missis, and enough too. What’s the good of going all they miles when you can smell the sea air any morning early on London Bridge, if the tide’s coming in; or, easier still, at any stall where they sell mussels or oysters?
“Talk about furrin abroad, give me London. Why, where else d’yer see such dirt—friendly dirt? Sticks to you, and won’t leave go. Where else is there such a breed of boys as ours, though they do always want cutting down behind? Where such pleecemen, though they are so precious fond of interfering, and can’t let a man stand five minutes without moving him on? No, sir, London’s the place for me, even if it does pour down rain, and plash up mud, till you tie a red cotton soaker round the brims of your hat to keep the rain water from trickling through and down your neck, for you see, it’s soft enough for anything.
“London’s the place, sir, for me; better than being a porter at Gravelwick though you mightn’t think it.