coy him to an eating-house I remembered
near Covent Garden, where the waiter, for the better discharge of his
duties, goes about in his shirt-sleeves--and very dirty sleeves they
are, too, when it gets near the end of the month. I know that waiter.
If my friend gives him anything beyond a penny, the man will insist on
shaking hands with him then and there as a mark of his esteem; of that I
feel sure.

There have been a good many funny things said and written about
hardupishness, but the reality is not funny, for all that. It is not
funny to have to haggle over pennies. It isn't funny to be thought
mean and stingy. It isn't funny to be shabby and to be ashamed of your
address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty--to the poor. It
is hell upon earth to a sensitive man; and many a brave gentleman who
would have faced the labors of Hercules has had his heart broken by its
petty miseries.

It is not the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear.
Who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant? What cared
Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers? Did he wear trousers? I
forget; or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes? What did it
matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots? and what if
his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rain off? His
shabbiness did not trouble him; there was none of his friends round
about to sneer him.

Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the
sting. It is not cold that makes a man without a great-coat hurry along
so quickly. It is not all shame at telling lies--which he knows will
not be believed--that makes him turn so red when he informs you that
he considers great-coats unhealthy and never carries an umbrella on
principle. It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if
it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It's a blunder, though, and is
punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over; despised
as much by a Christian as by a lord, as much by a demagogue as by a
footman, and not all the copy-book maxims ever set for ink stained youth
will make him respected. Appearances are everything, so far as human
opinion goes, and the man who will walk down Piccadilly arm in arm with
the most notorious scamp in London, provided he is a well-dressed one,
will slink up a back street to say a couple of words to a seedy-looking
gentleman. And the seedy-looking gentleman knows this--no one
better--