the beer-shop at the corner of our alley, I have
felt a cold sweat break out all over me, and
rushed outside to avoid fainting. Why tobacco
should serve me so, when other people enjoy it
so much, I cannot tell; but it has been all the
better for the old woman and the brats that I
spent no money upon that. Some of my mates,
who work for the same shop as I did, spend as
much as ninepence a week on the filthy stuff.
Ninepence a week would buy two loaves of
bread, or half a pound of coffee. So my nine-
pence a week was well saved. And it is not
only the beastly tobacco that costs money; it
is the extra drink that goes along with it. And
this makes the men sometimes beat their wives,
or otherwise renders their homes miserable.
Home is miserable enough, if it is but one dark
room, full of squalling brats, without a drunken
man, or, what is still worse, a drunken woman,
in it, to make it a hell upon earth. I don't
want to praise myself, but I do think my dislike
of tobacco—or the dislike of tobacco to me—
has made me a better man than I might have
been otherwise. My mates often joke and jeer
me for not smoking. Once, being foolhardy, I
blew a few whiffs of a pipe that was offered me,
and was as brave as a dragoon over it for about
a minute and a half. It was the last time, and
it's going to be the last time, if I live till I'm a
hundred."

"What happened?"

"I was sick—sick to death—and it served
me right. My mate thought I never would
recover, and vowed never to offer a pipe again
to anybody as long as he lived."

"Have you made up your mind what you are
going to do in Wisconsin?"

"I'll do anything. Work on my brother's
farm—dig the ground, cut down trees, feed the
pigs—anything. Or I'll set up in my own
business. It's a great business now, you know,
in America since Johnson became President.
Why people should laugh at tailors, as if their
trade were not as good as any other, I have
never been able to understand. Nobody laughs
at a saddler, who makes, as I may say, clothes
for horses, and yet they laugh at tailors, who
make clothes for men—nobler animals, I take
it, than horses."

"I imagine that the idea took its rise in
warlike times, when men were wanted for
fighting, and when none but women used the
needle. Consequently, a tailor was supposed
to do women's work."

"Possibly," said Mr. Crump; "and I for one
would not be sorry if none but women did the
tailoring of all the world. Still, I don't see
why tailors, as I said, are not to be considered
as good as saddlers, or shoemakers, or hatters,
or glovemakers, or stocking-manufacturers.
Nobody laughs at them. And as for the talk of
its taking nine tailors to make a man, it is my
opinion that it would take nine ordinary men to
make one such tailor as Andrew Johnson. He
don't allow the trade to be laughed at. He
confesses he was a tailor, and glories in the
fact."

"It shows his good sense not to be ashamed
of his trade; but I do not see why he should
glory in it."

"'Why not?" said Mr. Crump. " The trade
is as good as any other, and is the oldest in the
world. Look here," he continued, " at a
paragraph I cut out of a newspaper." Fumbling
in his pocket, he brought out an old purse, and
drew from it a scrap of print, which he handed
me to read. It was the account of an interview
of an American politician with President
Johnson, in which the latter declared to his
visitor that tailoring was the oldest of all the
arts of civilisation; but that Adam and Eve
were not competent to excel in it until a divine
hand showed them the material on which they
should work.

Mr. Johnson was reported in the paragraph
to have said that, "immediately after the Fall,
when our first parents first discovered that
they were naked, they sewed fig-leaves together
and made themselves aprons—poor stuff that
would not hold together. But did they invent
anything better? Not they. It needed the
teaching of Heaven to put them on the right
track."

When I had read it, and returned the paper
to Mr. Crump, he put it carefully into his purse
again, saying, "I borrowed a Bible when I
first saw this; that I might understand exactly
what the President meant, and I found in the
third chapter of Genesis, verse the twenty-first,
the words, which I got by heart. ' Unto Adam,
also and to his wife, did the Lord God make
coats of skins and clothed them.' Adam and
Eve, you see, only, knew how to make fig-leaf
aprons. The Almighty himself made the coats
of skins for them, and taught Adam to be
a tailor."

"You have had some education yourself, Mr.
Crump: have you given your children any?"

"My education has been very poor and
irregular, and amounts to little more than reading.
I write badly; but still I can write, and can
cypher as far as the Rule of Three. My father
was able to send me to a day school till I was
eleven or twelve years old. I have not been
able to do as much for my children, but on wet
Sundays, when I could not get out into the fields,
I have taught my little boys to read. And when I
get to Wisconsin they will be able to go to school.
That's the country for me, where every child is
taught, not by charity, but by right. That's
the system I like. That's the country for my
money!"

"But surely there are some schools in White-
chapel, where you could have sent your children
if you had chosen?"

"Yes; charity schools, ragged schools, and
such like; but poor as I am, I don't like
charity. I want justice, and though my children
are ragged, worse luck, I don't want anybody to
call them ragged. I've got some pride in me,
though I am only a tailor; but if my children
had a right to their education, as children have
in America, they should have gone to school,
ragged or not ragged; but at all events as