"If I had a nose like you I'd pay no more gas bills. You know your wife
emptied the water-jug on you that night when you were lying boozed,
because she thought it was a red-hot cinder on the floor."

And so on. The company part without any goodwill, and a night of odious
stupidity is over. Personally, I regard every hour I have spent in this
public-house as wasted. I never in my life heard a word of real fun, or
real sense, excepting from men who were merely casual visitors. The
person whose mind is satisfied by the parlour dullness of that nightly
foolery only becomes animated when he is indecent. In tracing the
natural history of a public-house I have found the respectable dullards
the most revolting of my subjects.

But the mere fact that our one wretched hole is stupid and sometimes
revolting by no means proves that all other places are of the same sort.
I know one quiet, cleanly room where many smart young fellows go; their
trade compels them to be decorous, and you see nothing but courtesy, and
hear much good-natured and sensible chat.

The riverside 'Arry is always an awful being, but the gentle, respectful
lad who takes his lemonade and enjoys himself in German fashion is nice
company. I have seen all sorts, and, while I would gladly burst a
13-inch shell in such a cankered doghole as The Chequers, I am bound to
say that there are a few cosy, harmless places whereof the loss would be
a calamity.

* * * * *

I grow weary now, and often at nights, when the vast shadow of the lamp
shudders on the ceiling and the wind moans hoarsely outside, I fall back
in sheer luxury on the fine, straight, cut-and-thrust of old Boswell's
conversations as a relief from the slavering babble which I often hear.
Being a Loafer is all very good so far; but some of the men (and women)
who address me use a kind of familiarity that makes me long to lie down
and die. A man never loses the dandy instinct, and when you come to be
actually addressed in familiar, or even impudent, terms by a sort of
promoted housemaid, it makes you long for the soft-voiced, quiet ladies
to whom a false accent or a shrill word would be a horror.

So long as you are a Loafer you must be prepared to put up with much.
The better-class artisan is always a gentleman who never offers nor
endures a liberty; but some of the flash sort are unendurable, and their
womenkind are worse. With costers and bargemen one can always get on
fa