life; am " scoffed and snapped at, and used,
in short, with a great deal of ill manners."

My Civility-money being paid, I am charged
two shillings for my first night's lodging.
(The reader will be good enough to remember,
whenever money is spoken of, that the
value of a shilling, a century and a quarter
ago, was a very different thing from the value
of a shilling at the present day.) For every
night's lodging afterwards I am charged one
shilling, and for my firing one shilling also
per diem. This is about six times the real
value of the latter article of convenience;
and yet, forgetful of the large profit he gets
out of me, my excellent friend, the bailiff
(B. L., after calling him a Crocodile for five
pages, varies the epithet at the sixth, and
speaks of him as a Cannibal), comes in at
eight o'clock every night and puts out my
fire and extinguishes my candle, whether I
am ready to go to bed at that early hour or
not. Finally, when I retire for the night, it
is more than probable that I shall find I
have to share my bed with one— sometimes,
even, with two— of my fellow-debtors; the
cannibal's only object being to prey, to the
utmost possible extent, upon his prisoners'
purses, and to give them as little comfort and
convenience in return as he possibly can.

At breakfast, the next morning, I pay four
times as much as I ought for my tea, coffee,
or chocolate. I am charged a shilling for
bread, cheese, or butter. The regular
contract price for my dinner is two shillings, or
three shillings, or as much more as will
include the expense of the cannibal-bailiff's
meal along with mine. If he has a wife and
daughters I pay more, because the tea and
sugar for the ladies becomes, in that case, a
necessary part of my bill. If I complain,
dreadful threats of calling a coach and taking
me to Newgate forthwith, silence me in a
moment, I must object to nothing— not even
to the quality of the liquors of which I
consume such large quantities by deputy. Though
the brandy is " a composition of diverse
spirituous liquids," though " the Geneva is
fourpence per quartern, and short in
measure," though " the wine is horrid base," I
must still pay hugely for all, and be particularly
careful, on every occasion, to hold my
tongue. If I want to vent my repressed
feelings in a letter to a friend, I must first
beg and pray for liberty to compose that
document, and must then pay double price to
the messenger who takes it to its address. lf
I only give him a penny to put it into the
post-office, he indignantly puts it into the
fire instead. Even when I fee him liberally
he, or some other among the swine,
crocodiles, and cannibals of the establishment,
opens my letter and reads it, and declines to
deliver it if there is anything that he
happens to dislike, or to consider as personally
offensive in the contents. He takes a
precisely similar liberty with any letters which
my friends send to me, unless they are wise
enough to have them delivered straight into
my own hands. Last and sorest aggravation
of all, I am charged half-a-crown a day for
the luxury of having a bailiff's follower to
look me up in my room, with a shilling a day
extra for the victuals which the monster
eats.

Against this exposure of the cruelty and
extortion of a sponging-house, the Debtor's
Best Friend sets the companion-picture of the
hospitality, the economy, and the happiness
of Newgate; earnestly and affectionately
entreating all his embarrassed fellow-creatures
to flock to that delightful prison for
the future, whenever they are arrested by
their unfeeling creditors. How different are
the events, how varied is the scene on the
new stage! I am arrested, we will say, again
—or, no, let the reader take his turn now,
for the writer has surely suffered enough in
the sponging-house to justify him in resuming,
at this point of the narrative, his natural
character of a solvent man. With your kind
permission, therefore, you, reader, are arrested,
this time. You have read the inestimable
Treatise of B. L. Thanks to the warning of
that philanthropic man, you are too sharp to
be deceived as I have been; and when the
bailiff taps you on the shoulder, and asks you
where you will go, you answer with a promptness
that confounds the fellow: " Crocodile!
to Newgate. Cannibal! to my happy home
in my county gaol." You are taken to the
Lodge at Newgate, informing the inferior
swine all the way that not one of them will
get half-a-crown a day for keeping you. The
Turnkey advances to meet you, with friendly
sympathy beaming in every line of his
respectable and attractive face. You pay him
six shillings and sixpence, which is all the
Civility-money he expects from you. You
pass on to your Ward, and pay ten and
sixpence more to the Steward— generally selected
from among the ranks of the most charming
and accomplished men of the age in which he
lives. Out of this sum he distributes two
shillings among the Prisoners of your Ward
—who love you as their brother in return.
The remaining eight and sixpence goes into
the pocket of the steward, and for that small
sum he supplies you with good fires, candles,
salt, and brooms, during the whole time of
your imprisonment, no matter how long it
may be. Compare this with the sponging-house,
where I paid a shilling a day for my
fire and candle, and was left in the dark every
evening at eight o'clock!

As for your meals in Newgate, it is
a luxury only to think of them. You
mess sociably with the prisoners of your
Ward who have had your two shillings
divided among them, and who love you
like a brother in return. You have
an excellent dinner of roast or boiled;
you pay fourpence or, at most, sixpence for
it; and you order what you like to drink and
are not required to pay for a drop more than