much of good as well as bad about it.  I am
not aware that the possession of money or
rank makes any very great difference in the
long run; unless in exceptional cases. There
are bad rich men and good poor men: just
as there are bad poor men and good rich
men."

"Well," said Mr. Gomm, "I don't want
to cry up the rich, or cry down the poor—
God forbid! But I look at the poor with
my own eyes, not theirs; or how d'ye think
I should be able to keep order in the House?
The poor, notwithstanding all the sentiment
that is talked and written about them,
are but a poor lot, morally as well as
physically. As a rule they are neither
strong in body nor in mind; at least such
is my experience."

He stopped as if he were not desirous to
say any more. I encouraged him to
proceed.

"Why you see," said Mr. Gomm, "in
the way of my business I have got to
dividing the world into three classes:
those who never come into the workhouse;
those who ought never to come into the
workhouse; and those who must come into
the workhouse."

"The first of your three classes, I
suppose, includes all the rich and
well-to-do?"

"Not necessarily the rich and well-to-do,
for they come to the workhouse sometimes;
but it includes, of course, the great bulk of
the people who pay poor-rates, those who
are born rich, those who know the knack
of keeping the money they have inherited,
and those who have the art of making it
as well as the art of taking care of it, and
all the ordinarily prudent, careful, and
well-conducted people of the upper and middle,
and some of the lower ranks. But my
experience does not lie among these. They
don't pass under my care. The class that
ought not to come into the workhouse, but
does come into it, is a troublesome one to
me, I can tell you. And yet I pity these
poor people very much, though I take
precious good care not to let them know it.
I have had, and still have, men in the
House, clad in the pauper dress, subject to
pauper discipline, and fed upon pauper
fare, who have possessed thousands, who
once mixed in the best society, and who are
gifted with abilities which they have not
learned to put to proper account, or which
they have used only to bring themselves
into mischief.  I won't mention any real
names; but there is one man—let me call
him Smith—who was once a fashionable
banker, a very fashionable banker indeed,
and lived in great style in Tyburnia. His
bank broke, partly by his mismanagement,
partly by that of his father and
grandfather.  He narrowly escaped a
criminal trial; but got off 'by the skin
of his teeth' and without a penny to help
himself in his old age. Some of the friends
and acquaintances of his better days
subscribed a few pounds occasionally to keep
him from want. He was too proud to
accept a clerkship which he might have got,
and which was offered him; but he was not
too proud to live upon charity. All the
same he took the charity as a hard thing,
and began to soften it with drink. Gin, the
poor man's friend, and a dreadful bad friend
too, the very worst of friends that I ever
heard of, became at last much more
plentiful in his cupboard than bread and cheese.
He and his old wife both soaked
themselves in it. They took to quarrelling—a
result not at all surprising to me—and
from bad went on to worse every day of
their miserable lives. Their friends soon
grew tired of them, and their little subscriptions
failed entirely. They are both in the
house now, clean, sober, in their right
minds, and tolerably useful. The old
gentleman helps with the accounts, and the
old lady is a tidyish cook enough; they
both seem to have a faint glimpse of
something like happiness, when a friend, a
true friend, I call him, who was once the
head cashier in the bank, sends the old
gentleman a pound of tobacco, and the old
wife a pound of tea. Now, I say, he's one
who ought not to have come into the
workhouse, and wouldn't except for his own
deficiency of moral strength.

"There was another man I had with me
for years. He died three months ago. Let
me call him Montague, for he had an
aristocratic name, as old as Montague, and as
high sounding. He had been a
parliamentary reporter for some great morning
paper or other, I don't know which; and
seemed to me, as if he could make speeches
as eloquent as any he had ever reported. A
capital mimic he was, and could speak by
the hour in the character of Dan O'Connell.
He gave the brogue perfect. The
fun was perfect, too, and real Irish. When
he was in the humour, he could speak like
Joe Hume, with all the hums and hahs,
and half-finished sentences; or he could
'orate' like a Yankee, till he made the
tears run done my cheeks with laughing.
Good company, and too much of it, was
the ruin of him. First step down the