shoemaker
from the shop round the corner, admire his eloquence, and enjoy the
luxury of pitying a parson and an aristocrat. How very numerous are the
representatives of this type, and how unspeakably odious they are! This
foul weed in dirty clothing assumes the pose of a bishop; he swears at
the landlord, he patronizes the shoemaker--who is his superior in all
ways--he airs the feeble remnants of his Latin grammar and his stock
quotations. He will curse you if you refuse him drink, and he will
describe you as an impostor or a cad; while, if you are weak enough to
gratify his taste for spirits, he will glower at you over his glass, and
sicken you with fulsome flattery or clumsy attempts at festive wit.
Enough of this ugly creature, whose baseness insults the light of God's
day! We know how he will end; we know how he has been a fraud throughout
his evil life, and we can hardly spare even pity for him. It is well if
the fellow has no lady-wife in some remote quarter--wife whom he can rob
or beg from, or even thrash, when he searches her out after one of his
rambles from casual ward to casual ward.

In the wastes of the great cities the army of the degraded swarm. Here
is the loose-lipped rakish wit, who tells stories in the common
lodging-house kitchen. He has a certain brilliancy about him which lasts
until the glassy gleam comes over his eyes, and then he becomes merely
blasphemous and offensive. He might be an influential writer or
politician, but he never gets beyond spouting in a pot-house debating
club, and even that chance of distinction does not come unless he has
written an unusually successful begging-letter. Here too is the broken
professional man. His horrid face is pustuled, his hands are like
unclean dough, he is like a creature falling to pieces; yet he can show
you pretty specimens of handwriting, and, if you will steady him by
giving him a drink of ale, he will write your name on the edge of a
newspaper in copper-plate characters or perform some analogous feat. All
the degraded like to show off the remains of their accomplishments, and
you may hear some odious being warbling. "_Ah, che la morte!_" with
quite the air of a leading tenor. In the dreadful purlieus lurk the poor
submissive ne'er-do-well, the clerk who has been imprisoned for
embezzlement, the City merchant's son who is reduced to being the tout
of a low bookmaker, the preacher who began as a youthful phenomenon and
ended by embezzling the Chr