“Said I then to myself, here’s a lesson for me,” though I do not know with what favour Dr Watts would have looked upon such a misappropriation of his ode, and I then rose to leave the room, closely followed by my broker friend, who was strongly of opinion, when we reached the staircase, that he ought to drink my health. However, I did not agree with him, being so unimaginative as to consider that my health would not be in the slightest degree improved by being drunk, while that of my companion would decidedly suffer by potations such as are supplied in our London public-houses.
Chapter Twenty Three.
A Placard.
Now, you know, it wouldn’t matter a bit if it was only the publicans who gave short measure. Most of us know what their gin-glasses are—regular little humbugs of things—werry broad at the top, and werry solid at the bottom, and holding precious little in ’em; bad as the old-fashioned wine bottles, that have had such a kick as has sent the bottom right up inside ever so far, like a glass mountain, so that when you think the bottle’s half full, it’s three-parts empty. But it isn’t the publican so much as the street-sellers, who one way and the other do drop most terribly on to the poor man in what he buys; and yet that ain’t the worst of it, for there’s someone else as drops on to the poor man worse than anybody; cheats him; gives him short measure; and one way and another knocks twenty-five per cent, off his wages and the good they would do him; and I’m going to show you how; while “Who is it?” says you; “Why, himself!” says I. And now I’m going to prove it.
Now, I don’t know what you are as is reading this; but we’ll say you’re a working man, for once in a way, and say you and I settled down in London. You makes your three-and-thirty shillings a week at your trade! and I, being a bill-sticker, makes what I can—sometimes more, sometimes less—finds my own paste—makes it myself, you know; and though I says it as shouldn’t say it, you never see my bills a-going flip-flap in the wind, like some people’s as I knows, which ain’t neither here nor there, in a manner of speaking; though as regards a wall or hoarding, they are here and there. I allus make good paste, and though sometimes when I has one of them big posters to stick up a letter at a time, I do get a bit bothered with the spelling, it ain’t often. I ain’t ashamed of my faults, and having made myself a scholard off bills on walls, why, ’tain’t surprising as I blunders a bit sometimes, even if one’s reading has been a bit diversified. As I said before, it ain’t surprising, and I ain’t ashamed if, when I stuck them Star bills, I did putt the cart afore the horse, and instead of saying “War Correspondence” put it up as “Raw Correspondence,” which, seeing as it related to cutting up and butchering, warn’t so werry much out of place. But it warn’t me as stuck the Prince o’ Wales’s feathers upside down, and if I do have to put a letter up at a time I always makes them meet at the edges, and don’t put ’em over other folkses.
But this ain’t proving how pore men cheats and measures themselves out short; so, as I said before, we’ll suppose you and me to be working men settled in London. Well, rent we can’t say nothing about; but if we goes on as some people do, living from hand to mouth and back again, why, where are we? Now, this is what I always noticed—the poorer a man is, the dearer he buys his things.
“Get out,” says you; “how can that be?”
“Why, so,” says I, and in imagination, you know, I holds the bill up against the wall with one hand, stirs the brush round in my paste with the other, and then well lathers or lubricates the back of the paper, then turns him, claps him in his place, and touches him over with the brush so as he fits into all the crevices tight. “And now,” says I, “read,” and you read, or is s’posed to read, as follers, though of course it’s me speaking:—