; he didn't know as anybody could say how it was;
all he know'd was, that so it was.

When a man felt, on his own back and in his own belly, that poor he was,
that man (Mr Plornish gave it as his decided belief) know'd well that
he was poor somehow or another, and you couldn't talk it out of him, no
more than you could talk Beef into him. Then you see, some people as was
better off said, and a good many such people lived pretty close up
to the mark themselves if not beyond it so he'd heerd, that they was
'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down the Yard. For instance,
if they see a man with his wife and children going to Hampton Court in a
Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I thought you was poor,
my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how hard it was upon a man! What was
a man to do? He couldn't go mollancholy mad, and even if he did, you
wouldn't be the better for it. In Mr Plornish's judgment you would be
the worse for it. Yet you seemed to want to make a man mollancholy mad.
You was always at it--if not with your right hand, with your left. What
was they a doing in the Yard? Why, take a look at 'em and see. There
was the girls and their mothers a working at their sewing, or their
shoe-binding, or their trimming, or their waistcoat making, day and
night and night and day, and not more than able to keep body and soul
together after all--often not so much. There was people of pretty well
all sorts of trades you could name, all wanting to work, and yet not
able to get it. There was old people, after working all their lives,
going and being shut up in the workhouse, much worse fed and lodged and
treated altogether, than--Mr Plornish said manufacturers, but appeared
to mean malefactors. Why, a man didn't know where to turn himself for a
crumb of comfort. As to who was to blame for it, Mr Plornish didn't know
who was to blame for it. He could tell you who suffered, but he couldn't
tell you whose fault it was. It wasn't HIS place to find out, and who'd
mind what he said, if he did find out? He only know'd that it wasn't put
right by them what undertook that line of business, and that it didn't
come right of itself. And, in brief, his illogical opinion was, that if
you couldn't do nothing for him, you had better take nothing from him
for doing of it; so far as he could make out, that was about what it
come to. Thus, in a prolix, gently-growling, foolish way, did Plornish
turn the tangled skein of his estate a