ir conversation is painful in the extreme to any one who wishes to
retain a shred of respect for his own species. If you listen long, and
then fix your mind so that you can pick out the exact significance of
what you have heard, you become confounded. Take the scraps of "bar"
gabble. "So I says, 'Lay me fours.' And he winks and says, 'I'll give
you seven to two, if you like.' Well, you know, the horse won, and I
stood him a bottle out of the three pound ten, so I wasn't much in."
"'What!' says I; 'step outside along o' me, and bring your pal with you,
and I'll spread your bloomin' nose over your face.'" "_That_ corked
him." "I tell you Flyaway's a dead cert. I know a bloke that goes to
Newmarket regular, and he's acquainted with Reilly of the Greyhound, and
Reilly told him that he heard Teddy Martin's cousin say that Flyaway was
tried within seven pounds of Peacock. Can you have a better tip than
that?" "I'll give you the break, and we'll play for a bob and the
games." "Thanks, deah boy, I'll jest have one with you. Lor! wasn't I
chippy this morning? I felt as if the pavement was making rushes at me,
and my hat seemed to want a shoehorn to get it on or off for that
matter. Bill's whisky's too good." "I'm going out with a Judy on Sunday,
or else you'd have me with you. The girls won't leave me alone, and the
blessed dears can't be denied." So the talk goes steadily forward. What
can a bright lad learn there? Many of the assembly are very young, and
their features have not lost the freshness and purity of skin which give
such a charm to a healthy lad's appearance. Would any mother like to
see her favourite among that hateful crowd? I do not think that mothers
rightly know the sort of places which their darlings enter; I do not
think they guess the kind of language which the youths hear when the
chimes sound at midnight; they do not know the intricacies of a society
which half encourages callow beings to drink, and then kicks them into
the gutter if the drink takes hold effectually. The kindly, seemly woman
remains at home in her drawing-room, papa slumbers if he is one of the
stay-at-home sort; but Gerald, and Sidney, and Alfred are out in the
drink-shop hearing talk fit to make Rabelais turn queasy, or they are in
the billiard-room learning to spell "ruin" with all convenient speed, or
perhaps they have "copped it"--that is the correct phrase--rather early,
and they are swaggering along, shadowed by some creature--half girl