"Well! we've broke the back of the day's work, and lucky if no one can say no worse of us!"
Later on, when the last newspaper-cart had been gorged and rattled away, and the last newspaper-boy had darted out with his armful, and his mouth open for the yell that would issue from it the moment his bare feet hit the pavement of Fleet Street, and the office of the Early Wire and all the other offices that had got off the Morning Issue had an air of dozing with blinking eyes and mouths half open—when the Evening Papers were at the height of strenuous effort,—Mr. Knewbit would arrange the limited supply of hair remaining on his cranium with a pocket-comb, titivate his whiskers by the aid of a tiny scrap of looking-glass nailed inside his desk-lid, dust the blacks off his collar, straighten his cravat—which boasted a breastpin that was an oval plaque of china, painted with a miniature of a young lady with flowing ringlets, rosy cheeks, white arms and shoulders, pink legs and a diaphanous tutu, dancing, crowned with roses in front of a sylvan waterfall,—and betake himself out to dine.
Sometimes he would patronize the "Old Cheshire Cheese" chop-house, where they gave you beefsteak puddings on Saturdays. Or "The Cock" would have his custom, or he would drop in at an eating-house in St. Paul's Churchyard, where Irish stew, boiled beef with dumplings and carrots, or tripe and onions were the staple dishes in winter months. In summer you got roast mutton and green peas and gooseberry tart with custard; but whatever the season or the dish, it was always washed down with whisky-and-water, or gin-and-lemonade, or the strongest of strong beer.
For this particular tavern was patronized by the penny-a-liners of Paternoster Row and the vicinity; out-at-elbows, and generally seedy-looking literary free-lances, who picked up a living by inditing touching tracts and poignant pamphlets for religious Societies bearing arresting titles, such as:
"STOP! YOU ARE OUT AT THE GATHERS! Or, The Tale of a Skirt," and "DEAD LOCKS FOR LIVE HEADS! By A Converted Hairdresser." Or biographical accounts of the brief lives and protracted deaths of Little E——, aged seven, or Miss Madeline P—— of X——.
Bearded men these, with bulbous noses, studded with ruby pimples; full of strange oaths, reveling in profane jest and scurrilous talk. Lanky youths with hollow eyes, uncut hair and crimson neckties, who boasted of having cast off all shackles, bonds and fetters, civil, social, moral and religious, and dreamed in their wilder moments of the inauguration of a second British Commonwealth, and the reign of a New Era of Socialism, and the planting of the Tree of Liberty in Buckingham Palace Courtyard....
And over their strong meats, and the stronger liquors with which they moistened them, these would discuss the plots of tracts, and so forth, seasoning their discourse with highly-spiced pleasantries and salacious witticisms, jesting in ribald sort at all things upon earth and elsewhere; until—as Mr. Knewbit frequently said—you expected the ceiling to come down and strike 'em speechless, and fancied you saw wicked little hellish flames playing about the cutlery.
"Not that I ever read any of their stuff, you know!" he explained to P. C. Breagh, "though I am a man that, to a certain extent, might be considered a reader. You've seen my library on the shelf by my bed-head, and though three books might be held—in the opinion of some people—to constitute rather a limited library, they're the three best books that ever were written or ever will be. Bar none!"
He was a Christian believer himself; of the easy-going, undenominational, non-Church-going kind. And when Sunday came round, Miss Ling, after seeing the beef and potatoes and Yorkshire-pudding safely into the oven, would charge him to watch over the same and guard them from burning; and put on her best bonnet and pop over to the Christian Mission Army Hall that used to be in Judd Street, W.C., for a supply of red-hot doctrine sufficient to stand her in a week of working-days, while Mr. Knewbit smoked, kept an eye on the cooking, and occasionally dipped into his library.
A popular edition of the Plays and Poems by one William Shakespeare, together with a stout and bulky volume, "Gallowglass's Encyclopaedia of Literary and Typographical Anecdote," and a worm-eaten, black-leather-bound copy of the Bible—as translated from the Latin Vulgate and published by the English College at Douay A.D. 1609, formed Mr. Knewbit's library. In the pages of these, their owner frequently stated it as his opinion, might be found the finest literature in the world. He always ended: