expect to meet in this country: a relic of
eighteenth-century Grub Street,--a man who reads Latin and Greek, who can
quote pages of the Fathers, who has a high ideal of literature and
conscience in writing, and withal a victim to the demon whiskey that has
dragged him down to the very gutter. His life has been a mystery to me,
and some feeling of shame has kept him from ever telling me where and how
he lives. At intervals he comes shuffling into my office, with bleared
eyes and palsied hand, and for charity's sake I give him a book to
review--and not exactly for charity either, for he does his work well. Two
or three weeks ago our Simoniacal manager came into my office and asked me
who that tramp was whom he had seen several times go away with books. I
told him the whole story, thinking to arouse his sympathy. What was my
surprise when he broke out into a mild stream of abuse--the more startling
because he ordinarily says so little--against allowing such besotted
tramps to come into the offices! When a man drank himself into such a
state as that there was no doing anything with him, etc. O'Meara came back
in a day or two with his "copy," and I told him that the chief had ordered
me to cut him off. Poor wretch! he said never a word for himself, but
turned and shambled guiltily out of the room--I shall never forget the
sound of his trailing, despondent feet.

I heard no more from him until yesterday, when the office boy came in and
told me a beggar child insisted on seeing me. What was my astonishment
when it proved to be our goblin boy, who had been sent to ask me to come
to his father; and his father was O'Meara! It all seemed as unsubstantial
as a dream. I went with the child, of course. He guided me through the
dark entry where I had seen him so often, in behind a great printing
house, to a foul court hidden away from the street like some criminal
outlaw. I will not try to describe the noisomeness of that reeking hole. I
found O'Meara lying on a heap of sacks in a mouldering closet which was
entirely dark save for what little light came through the doorway.
Darkness, indeed, was his only comfort. He would not shake hands with me,
for he has, withal, the instincts of a gentleman, and it seemed as if the
shame of his whole degraded life lay with him before me in his misery. His
tragedy will have been played out in a day or two, I think; and I wish the
memory of it might also pass from my mind. What shall I do with the go