ing because I'm always
sea-sick, and I scarcely know which end of a horse you put the bridle
on. Every man to his job. This is mine. I like it."

"I wonder whether holding down people suffering from _delirium tremens_
is my job," said I. "If so, I'm afraid I shan't like it."

"If it's really your job," replied Campion, "you will. You must. You
can't help it. God made man so."

It was only an hour or two later when, for the first time in my life, I
came into practical touch with human misery, that I recognised the truth
of Campion's perfervid optimism. No one could like our task that night
in its outer essence. For a time it revolted me. The atmosphere of
the close, dirty room, bedroom, kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room,
bathroom, laundry--all in one, the home of man, wife and two children,
caught me by the throat. It was sour. The physical contact with the
flesh of the unclean, gibbering, shivering, maniacal brute on the foul
bed was unutterably repugnant to me. Now and again, during intervals
of comparative calm, I was forced to put my head out of the window to
breathe the air of the street. Even that was tainted, for a fried-fish
shop across the way and a public-house next door billowed forth their
nauseating odours. After a while access to the window was denied me.
A mattress and some rude coverings were stretched beneath it--the
children's bed--on which we persuaded the helpless, dreary wife to lie
down and try to rest. A neighbour had taken in the children for the
night. The wife was a skinny, grey-faced, lined woman of six-and-twenty.
In her attitude of hopeless incompetence she shed around her an
atmosphere of unspeakable depression. Although I could not get to the
window, I was glad when she lay down and spared me the sight of
her moving fecklessly about the room or weeping huddled up on a
broken-backed wooden chair and looking more like a half-animated
dish-clout than a woman.

The poor wretch on the bed was a journeyman tailor who, when sober,
could earn fair wages. The cry of the wife, before Campion awed her
into comparative silence, was a monotonous upbraiding of her husband for
bringing them down to this poverty. It seemed impossible to touch her
intelligence and make her understand that no words from her or any one
could reach his consciousness. His violence, his screams, his threats,
the horrors of his fear left her unmoved. We were there to guard her
from physical danger, and that to her was all th