“I got a dale of friends in London assist me (but only now and thin). If I depinded on the few ha’pence I get, I wouldn’t live on ’em; what money I get here wouldn’t buy a pound of mate; and I wouldn’t live, only for my frinds. You see, sir, I can’t be out always. I am laid up nows and thins continually. Oh, it’s a poor trade to big on the crossin’ from morning till night, and not get sixpence. I couldn’t do with it, I know.
“Yes, sir, I smoke; it’s a comfort, it is. I like any kind I’d get to smoke. I’d like the best if I got it.
“I am a Roman Catholic, and I go to St. Patrick’s, in St. Giles’s; a many people from my neighbourhood go there. I go every Sunday, and to Confession just once a-year—that saves me.
“By the Lord’s mercy! I don’t get broken victuals, nor broken mate, not as much as you might put on the tip of a forruk; they’d chuck it out in the dust-bin before they’d give it to me. I suppose they’re all alike.
“The divil an odd job I iver got, master, nor knives to clane. If I got their knives to clane, p’rhaps I might clane them.
“My brooms cost threepence ha’penny; they are very good. I wear them down to a stump, and they last three weeks, this fine wither. I niver got any ould clothes—not but I want a coat very bad, sir.
“I come from Dublin; my father and mother died there of cholera; and when they died, I come to England, and that was the cause of my coming.
“By my oath it didn’t stand me in more than eighteenpence that I took here last week.
“I live in —— lane, St. Giles’s Church, on the second landing, and I pay eightpence a week. I haven’t a room to mysilf, for there’s a family lives in it wid me.
“When I goes home I just smokes a pipe, and goes to bid, that’s all.”