uite keen in their enthusiasm for, and remarkably instructed
in, the latest developments of horse-racing, football, and
prize-fighting. Likewise, they had retained an astonishingly fresh and
unimpaired interest in women, and still enjoyed the simple earth-born
pleasures of the glass and the pipe.

As he understood this, Henry began to feel more at home; and, as the
characters of his associates revealed themselves, he began to see that
there were amongst them several pleasant and indeed merry fellows, and
that, after all, fortune might have thrown him into much worse company.
They, on their side, making like discoveries in him, he presently found
himself admitted to their freemasonry, and initiated into their many
secret ways of mitigating their lot, and shortening their long days.
Thus, this chill, stern world of automata, which, on first sight, looked
as if no human word or smile or jest could escape the detection of its
iron laws, revealed, when you were once inside it, an under-world of
pleasant escapes and exciting truancies, of which, as you grew
accustomed to the risks and general conditions of the life, you were
able skilfully to avail yourself.

The main principle of these was to seem to spend twice as much time on
each task as it needed, that you might have the other half for such
private uses as were within your reach,--to elongate dinner-hours at
both ends so adroitly, and on such carefully selected propitious
occasions, that the elongation, or at least the whole extent of it,
would pass unobserved; and, in general, to gain time, any waste ends of
five minutes or quarter hours, on all possible occasions. If the reader
calls this shirking and robbery, he must. Technically, no doubt, it was;
but these clerks, without so formulating it, merely exercised the right
of all oppressed beings liberally to interpret to their own advantage,
where possible, the terms of an unjust contract which grinding economic
conditions had compelled them to make. They had been forced to promise
too much in exchange for too little, and they equalised the disparity
where they could.

Whether they spent the time thus hoarded in a profitable fashion, is a
question of personal definition. It was usually expended in companies of
twos or threes, with a pipe and a pot of beer and much spirited talk, in
the warm corners of adjacent taverns; and, so long as you don't drink
too much, there has perhaps been invented none pleasanter than that