And I found myself questioning why this man and his mate, hard workers I knew from their talk, should have to seek a pauper lodging. He had pride, pride in his old woman and pride in himself. When I asked him what he thought I, a greenhorn, might expect to earn at “hopping,” he sized me up, and said that it all depended. Plenty of people were too slow to pick hops and made a failure of it. A man, to succeed, must use his head and be quick with his fingers, must be exceeding quick with his fingers. Now he and his old woman could do very well at it, working the one bin between them and not going to sleep over it; but then, they had been at it for years.
“I ’ad a mate as went down last year,” spoke up a man. “It was ’is fust time, but ’e come back wi’ two poun’ ten in ’is pockit, an’ ’e was only gone a month.”
“There you are,” said the Hopper, a wealth of admiration in his voice. “’E was quick. ’E was jest nat’rally born to it, ’e was.”
Two pound ten—twelve dollars and a half—for a month’s work when one is “jest nat’rally born to it!” And in addition, sleeping out without blankets and living the Lord knows how. There are moments when I am thankful that I was not “jest nat’rally born” a genius for anything, not even hop-picking,
In the matter of getting an outfit for “the hops,” the Hopper gave me some sterling advice, to which same give heed, you soft and tender people, in case you should ever be stranded in London Town.
“If you ain’t got tins an’ cookin’ things, all as you can get’ll be bread and cheese. No bloomin’ good that! You must ’ave ’ot tea, an’ wegetables, an’ a bit o’ meat, now an’ again, if you’re goin’ to do work as is work. Cawn’t do it on cold wittles. Tell you wot you do, lad. Run around in the mornin’ an’ look in the dust pans. You’ll find plenty o’ tins to cook in. Fine tins, wonderful good some o’ them. Me an’ the ole woman got ours that way.” (He pointed at the bundle she held, while she nodded proudly, beaming on me with good-nature and consciousness of success and prosperity.) “This overcoat is as good as a blanket,” he went on, advancing the skirt of it that I might feel its thickness. “An’ ’oo knows, I may find a blanket before long.”
Again the old woman nodded and beamed, this time with the dead certainty that he would find a blanket before long.
“I call it a ’oliday, ’oppin’,” he concluded rapturously. “A tidy way o’ gettin’ two or three pounds together an’ fixin’ up for winter. The only thing I don’t like”—and here was the rift within the lute—“is paddin’ the ’oof down there.”
It was plain the years were telling on this energetic pair, and while they enjoyed the quick work with the fingers, “paddin’ the ’oof,” which is walking, was beginning to bear heavily upon them. And I looked at their grey hairs, and ahead into the future ten years, and wondered how it would be with them.
I noticed another man and his old woman join the line, both of them past fifty. The woman, because she was a woman, was admitted into the spike; but he was too late, and, separated from his mate, was turned away to tramp the streets all night.