Passing by one of the presses at which a small man, meagre and hollow-eyed, was labouring with unequal force, as appeared by his paleness and big-dropping sweat, Ben touched with pity, offered to give him "a spell." As the pressman and compositor, like the parson and the clerk, or the coffin-maker and the grave-digger are of entirely distinct trades in London, the little pressman was surprised that Ben, who was a compositor, should talk of giving him "a spell." However, Ben insisting, the little pressman gave way, when Ben seized the press, and possessing both a skill and spirit extraordinary, he handled it in such a workman-like style, that the men all declared they should have concluded he had done nothing but press-work all his life. Palmer also, coming by at the time, mingled his applauses with the rest, saying that he had never seen a fairer impression; and, on Ben's requesting it, for exercise and health sake, he permitted him to work some hours every day at press.
On his entrance into Palmer's printing-office, Ben paid the customary garnish or treat-money, for the journeymen to drink. This was on the first floor, among the pressmen. Presently Palmer wanted him up stairs, among the compositors. There also the journeymen called on him for garnish. Ben refused, looking upon it as altogether an unfair demand, and so Palmer himself, to whom it was referred, decided; insisting that Ben should not pay it. But neither justice nor patronage could bear Ben out against the spite of the journeymen. For the moment his back was turned they would play him an endless variety of mischievous tricks, such as mixing his letters, transposing his pages, breaking down his matter, &c. &c. It was in vain he remonstrated against such injustice. They all with one accord excused themselves, laying all the blame on Ralph, for so they called a certain evil spirit who, they pretended, haunted the office and always tormented such as were not regularly admitted. Upon this Ben paid his garnish—being fully convinced of the folly of not keeping up a good understanding with those among whom we are destined to live.
Ben had been at Palmer's office but a short time before he discovered that all his workmen, to the number of fifty, were terrible drinkers of porter, insomuch that they kept a stout boy all day long on the trot to serve them alone. Every man among them must have, viz.
| 1 | A pint of porter before breakfast,—cost | d. | 1½ |
| 1 | A pint, with his bread and cheese, for breakfast, | 1½ | |
| 1 | A pint betwixt his breakfast and dinner, | 1½ | |
| 1 | A pint at his dinner, | 1½ | |
| 1 | A pint betwixt his dinner and night, | 1½ | |
| 1 | A pint after his day's work was done, | 1½ | |
| 6 | Total, three quarts!—equal to nine pence sterling per day! | 9 |
A practice so fatal to the health and subsistence of those poor people and their families, pained Ben to the soul, and he instantly set himself to break it up. But they laughed him to scorn, boasting of their beloved porter, that it was "meat and drink too," and the only thing to give them strength to work. Ben was not to be put out of heart by such an argument as this. He offered to prove to them that the strength they derived from the beer could only be in proportion to the barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was made—that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny loaf; and that if they ate this loaf and drank a pint of water with it, they would get more strength than from a pint of beer. But still they would not hearken to any thing said against their darling beer. Beer, they said, was "the liquor of life," and beer they must have, or farewell strength.
"Why, gentlemen," replied Ben, "don't you see me with great ease carry up and down stairs, a large form of letters in each hand; while you, with both hands, have much ado to carry one? And don't you perceive that these heavy weights which I bear produce no manner of change in my breathing, while you, with only half the weight, cannot mount the stairs without puffing and blowing most distressingly? Now is not this sufficient to prove that water, though apparently the weakest, is yet in reality the strongest liquor in nature, especially for the young and healthy?"
But alas! on most of them, this excellent logic was all thrown away.
"The ruling passion, be it what it will—
The ruling passion governs reason still."
Though they could not deny a syllable of Ben's reasoning, being often heard to say that, "the American Aquatic (or water drinker) as they called him, was much stronger than any of the beer drinkers," still they would drink.