We have had enough of the roughs for a time, and I want now to deal with a few of the wrecks that I see—wrecks that started their voyage with every promise of prosperity. Let no young fellow who reads what follows fancy that he is safe. He may be laborious; an unguarded moment after a spell of severe work may see him take the first step to ruin. He may be brilliant: his brilliancy of intellect, by causing him to be courted, may lead him into idleness, and idleness is the bed whereon parasitic vices flourish rankly. Take warning.

I was invited to go for a drive, but I had letters to write, and said so. A quiet old man who was sitting in the darkest corner of the bar spoke to me softly, "If your letters are merely about ordinary business, you may dictate them to me here, and I will transcribe them and send them off." I replied that I could do them as quickly myself. The old man smiled. "You do not send letters in shorthand. I can take a hundred and forty words a minute, and you can do your correspondence and go away." The oddity of the proposal attracted me. I agreed to dictate. The old man took out his notebook, and in ten minutes the work was done. We came back in an hour, and by that time each letter was transcribed in a beautiful, delicate longhand. I handed the scribe a shilling, and he was satisfied. The Gentleman, as we called him, writes letters for anyone who can spare him a glass of liquor or a few coppers; but I had never tested his skill before. There was no one in the bar, so I sat down beside the old man, and we talked.

"You seem wonderfully clever at shorthand. I am surprised that you haven't permanent work."

"It would do me little good. I can go on for a long time, but when my fit comes on me I am not long in losing any job. They won't have me, friend—they won't have me."

"You've been well employed, then, in your time?"

"No one better. If I had command of myself, I might have done as well in my way as my brother has in his. I could beat him once, and I was quite as industrious as he was; but, when I came to the crossroads, I took the wrong turning, and here I am."

"May I ask how your brother succeeded? I mean—what is he?"

"He is Chief Justice ——."

I found that this was quite true; indeed, the Gentleman was one of the most veracious men I have known.

"Does your brother know how you are faring?"

"He did know, but I never trouble him. He was a good fellow to me, and I have never worried him for years. I prefer to be dead to the world. I have haunted this place, as you know, for six months; to-morrow I may make a change, and live in another sty."

"But surely you could get chance work that would keep you in decent clothes and food."

"I do get many chance jobs; but if the money amounts to much I am apt to be taken up as drunk and incapable."

The sweet, quiet smile which accompanied this amazing statement was touching. The old man had a fine, thoughtful face, and only a slight bulbousness of the nose gave sign of his failing. Properly dressed, he would have looked like a professor, or doctor, or something of that kind. As it was, his air of good breeding and culture quite accounted for the name the people gave him. I should have found it impossible to imagine him in a police-cell had I not been a midnight wanderer for long.

"How did you come to learn shorthand?"

"My father was a solicitor in large practice, and I found I could assist him with the confidential correspondence, so I took lessons in White's system for a year. My father said I was his right hand. Ah! He gave me ten pounds and two days' holiday at Brighton when I took down his first letter."

"Have you been a solicitor?"

"No. I had an idea of putting my name down at one of the Inns, but I went wrong before anything came of the affair."

"You say you have had good employment. But how did you contrive to separate from your father?"

"Oh! I wore out his patience. I was so successful that I thought it safe to toast my success. We were in a south-country town—Sussex, you know—and I began by hanging about the hotel in the market-place. Then I played cards at night with some of the fast hands, and was useless and shaky in the mornings. Then I began to have periodical fits of drunkenness; then I became quite untrustworthy, and last of all I robbed my father during a bad fit, and we parted."

"And then?"

"I picked up odd jobs for newspapers, or sponged on my brother. At last I was sent to the House as reporter, and did very well until one night when Palmerston was expected to make an important speech. My turn came, and I was blind and helpless. Since then I have been in place after place, but the end was always the same, and I have learned that I am a hopeless, worthless wretch."

"But couldn't your brother, for his own credit's sake, keep you in his house and put you under treatment?"

"My good friend, I should die under it. I revel in degradation. I luxuriate in self-contempt. My time is short, and I want to pass it away speedily. This life suits me, for I seldom have my senses, and there is only the early morning to dread. I think then—think, think, think. Until I can scrape together my first liquor I see ugly things. I should be in my own town with my grandchildren round me. I might have been on the Bench, like my brother, and all men would have respected me as they do him. Sons and daughters would have gathered round me when I came to my last hour. I gave it all up in order to sluice my throat with brandy and gin. That is the way I think in the morning. Then I take a glass, or beg one, as I shall from you presently, and then I forget. Once I went out to commit suicide, and took three whiskies to string my nerve up. In two minutes I was laughing at a Punch and Judy show. If you'll kindly order a quartern of gin in a pint glass for me, I'll fill it up and be quite content all the evening. No one ill-uses me. I'm a soft, harmless, disreputable old ne'er-do-well. That is all."

We drank, and then the Gentleman said, "You come here a good deal too much. Your hand was not quite right yesterday morning. Usually you keep right, and I really don't know how far you are touched. If I had your youth and your appearance, I think I should save myself in time by a bold step. Join the temperance people and work publicly; then you are committed, and you can't step back."

"But you don't think that I am likely to go to the dogs? I loaf around here because I have no ambition, and my life was settled for me; but I have command over myself."

"You had command over yourself, you mean. I think you are in great danger—very great indeed. My good friend, there are no exceptions. Meet me to-night, or say to-morrow, as I am to be drunk to-night; go to the beer-house at the end of my street, and I'll show you something."

Just then the Ramper came up and hailed the Gentleman. "Here you old swine! Are you sober enough to scratch off a letter?"

"I'm all right."

"Well, then, write to the usual, and tell him to put me on half-a-quid Sunshine, and half-a-quid Dartmoor a shop—s.p. both."

Thus our conversation was stopped, and the brother of a judge earned twopence by writing a letter for a racecourse thief.

Next night I went to a very shady public-house, and the Gentleman led me into a dirty room, where a little old man was sitting alone. The man was crooked, wizened, weak, and his bare toes stuck out of both shoes; his half-rotten frock coat gaped at the breast and showed that he had no shirt on; his hat must have been picked up from a dustheap, for it was filthy, and broken in three or four places.

"For mercy's sake, give me a mouthful of something!" said this object, turning the face of a mummy towards me. His dim eyes were rheumy, and his chin trembled. An awful sight!

In a flash I remembered him, and cried, "What, Doctor!"

He said, "I don't know you; my memory's gone. Send for twopenn'orth or a penn'orth of beer. Pray do."

My young friends, that man who begged for a pennyworth of muddy ale was first of all a brilliant soldier, then a brilliant lawyer, then a brilliant historian. His doctor's degree—he was Doctor of Laws—was gained by fair hard work. Think of that, and then look at my picture of the sodden, filthy scarecrow! Yes; that man began my education, and had I only gone straight on I should not be loafing about The Chequers. You ask how he could have anything to do with my education? Well, long ago I was a little bookworm, living in a lonely country house, and I had the run of some good shelves. I was only nine years old, but a huge history in two volumes attracted me most. I read and read that book until I could repeat whole pages easily, and even now I can go off at score if you give me a start.

The Scarecrow wrote that history!

Years afterwards I was fighting my way in London, and had charge of a journal which made a name in its day. Sometimes I had to deal with a message from a Minister of State, sometimes with a petition from a starving penny-a-liner. One day a little man was shown into my room, which room was instantly scented with whisky. He was well introduced, and I said, "Are you the Doctor —— who wrote the 'History of ——'?"

"I am, sir, and proud I shall be to write for you."

"What can you do?"

"Here's a specimen."

The MS. was a bundle of bills from a public-house, and the blank side was utilised. The Doctor never wasted money on paper when he could avoid it. The stuff was feeble, involved, useless. My face must have fallen, for the piteous Scarecrow said, "I have not your approval."

"We cannot use this."

Bending forward and clasping his hands, he said, "Could you not give me two shillings for it? There are two columns good. A shilling a column; surely that can't hurt you."

"I'll give you two shillings, and you can come back again if you are needy, but the MS. is of no use to us."

He took the money, and returned again and again for more. I found that he used to put fourpence in one pocket to meet the expense of his lodging-house bed, and he bought ten two-pennyworths of gin with the rest of the money. He always asked for two shillings, and always got it. I was not responsible for his mode of spending it.

And now the Doctor had turned up in the region of The Chequers. He was piteously, doggishly thankful for his drink, and he cried as he bleated out his prayers for my good health. Men cry readily when they come to be in the Doctor's condition. I asked him to take some soup. "I'm no great eater," he said; "but I'd like just one more with you—only one."

"Where do you lodge, Doctor?"

"To tell you the truth, I'm forced to put up with a berth in the old fowl-house at the bottom of the garden here. They let me stay there, but 'tis cold—cold."

"Do you work at all now?"

"Sometimes. But there is little doing—very little."

"How did you come to cease practising at the Bar, Doctor?"

"How do I come to be here? 'Tis the old thing—the old thing—and has been all along."

This poor wretch could not be allowed to go about half-naked, so I let the potman run out and get him a slop suit. (The Doctor sold the clothes next day for half-a-crown, and was speechless when I went to see him.) A hopeless, helpless wretch was the Doctor—the most hopeless I ever knew. He entered the army, early in life, and for a time he was petted and courted in Dublin society. The man was handsome, accomplished, and brilliantly clever, and success seemed to follow him. He sold out of the army and went to the Bar, where he succeeded during many years. No one could have lived a happier, fuller, or more fruitful life than he did before he slid into loose habits. His only pastime was the pursuit of literature, and he finished his big history of a certain great war while he was in full practice at the Chancery Bar. Power seemed to reside in him; fortune poured gifts on him; and he lost all. In an incredibly short space of time he drank away his practice, his reputation, his hopes of high honour, his last penny.

Thus it was that my historian came to beg of me for that muddy penn'orth.

I may as well finish the Doctor's story. If I were writing fiction the tale would be scouted as improbable, yet I am going to state plain facts. A firm of lawyers hunted up the Doctor, and informed him that he had succeeded to the sum of £30,000. There was no mistake about the matter; the long years of vile degradation, the rags, the squalor, the scorn, of men were all to disappear. The solicitors dressed the Doctor properly and advanced him money; he set off for Ireland to make some necessary arrangements, and he solemnly swore that he would become a total abstainer. At Swindon he chose to break his journey, took to drinking, and kept on for many hours. It was long since he had had such a chance of unlimited drink, and he greedily seized it. When he went to bed he took a bottle with him, and in the morning he was dead. Suffocated by alcohol, they said. He had no living soul related to him, and I believe his money went to the Crown.

I have written this last fragment on separate sheets, and my journal is interleaved for the first time.

The Gentleman and I became very friendly. I never tried to keep him from drinking: it was useless. When he was sober his company was pleasant, and I was very sorry when he mysteriously migrated, and many of our crew missed his help badly.

Some time after the Gentleman's flight, I was in a common lodging-house in Holborn, and in the kitchen I met a delightful vagabond of a Frenchman with whom I had a long talk. He happened to say, "One of our old friends died last week. He was a good man, and very well bred. Figure it to yourself, he was brother of one of your judges!" Then I knew that the Gentleman had gone. I wish I could have seen him again. As I look back at the old leaves of my journal I seem to see that sweet, patient smile which he wore as he told the story of his fall. There are some things almost too sad to bear thinking about. This is one.

Our friend Dicky had a bad misfortune lately. I should say that Dicky is an oldish man, who drifted into this ugly quarter some time ago, and took his place in the parlour, which is a room that I now prefer to the bar. I was holding a friendly discussion with a butcher when a strident voice said, "You are absolutely and irredeemably ignorant of the rudiments of your subject." I started. Where had I heard that voice before? The man was clad in an old shooting-jacket; his trousers were out at the knee, and his linen was very dirty; yet there was a something about him—a kind of distinction—which was impressive. After launching his expression of contempt at us, he buried his face in his pot and took a mighty drink. Slowly my memory aided me, and under that knobby, pustuled skin I traced the features of Dicky Nash, the most dreaded political journalist of my time. Often I had heard that voice roaring blasphemies with a vigour that no other man could equal; often had I seen that sturdy form extended beside the editorial chair, while the fumes in the office told tales as to the cause of the fall. And now here was Dicky—ragged, dirty, and evidently down on his luck. I soon made friends with him by owning his superior authority, and he kindly took a quart of ale at my expense. This was a man who used to earn £2,000 a year after he resigned his University fellowship. He was the friend and adviser of statesmen; he might have ended as a Cabinet Minister, for no man ever succeeded in gauging the extent of his miraculous ability; he seemed to be the most powerful, as well as the most dreaded man in England. Woe is me! We had to carry him up to bed; and he stayed on until he spent a three-guinea cheque, which Mr. Landlord cashed for him.

I knew no good would come of his Fleet-street games, though he used to laugh things off himself. He would come in about seven in the evening, and seat himself at his table. Then he would hiccup, "Can't write politics; no good. Give us a nice light subject."

"Try an article on the country at this season of the year."

"Good. I can't hold the damned pen. You sit down, I'll dictate: In this refulgent season, when the barred clouds bloom the soft dying day, it is pleasant to wander by the purple hedgerows where the stars of the (What damned flower is it that twinkles now? What do you say? Ragged Robin? Not poetic enough. Clematis? That'll do. Damn it, ride on!)—the stars of the clematis modestly twinkle, and the trailing—(What the h—— is it that trails? Honeysuckle? Good. Weigh in!)—trailing honeysuckle flings down that rich scent that falls like sweet music on the nerves.'"

And so on. He managed in this way to turn out the regulation column of flummery, but I knew it could not last. And now he had come to be a sot and an outcast. Worse has befallen him. He screwed up his nerve to write an article in the old style, and I helped him by acting as amanuensis. He violently attacked an editor who had persistently befriended him; then he wrote a London Letter for that editor's paper; then he sent the violent attack away in the envelope intended for the letter. There was a terrible quarrel.

So far did the Gentleman, the Doctor, and Dicky come down. I may say that Dicky, the companion of statesmen, the pride of his university, died of cold and hunger in a cellar in the Borough. Oh, young man, boast not of thy strength!