te benefit of society,
not for any selfish reasons; so that to call Mr. Bull a pirate, as Dubois
does who keeps the toy-shop over the way, is manifestly absurd. Anyhow,
it is a very fine property, and would be bigger still if Jonathan C., a
cousin of the family, hadn't taken off a good slice which used to belong
to John.

As I was saying, this property is a very large straggling affair, most of
it a long way off from the shop. Its owner finds it very hard to look
after every part; all the more so, because this town has no regular
police, and is therefore continually troubled by gangs of roughs, who go
about breaking windows and even heads, and doing damage generally. They
are always giving a great deal of trouble to the Bull people; and what
makes it worse is that very often they are actually tenants on the
property, who ought to know better. One of these Hooligan crowds lately
made a dead set against poor John; it was all the harder because to my
personal knowledge he had shown himself most kind and forgiving to
various members of this particular gang; and once before, when they came
and broke his windows, he refused to prosecute, and simply gave them five
shillings to drink Mrs. Bull's health and not do it again. That is the
kind of man he is, sometimes. In spite of this indulgent and charitable
treatment, they came the other day and made a raid into an outlying
corner of his property and did all sorts of damage; and not content with
this, they actually squatted there on land which was no more theirs than
it is mine (I am thankful to say), where they insulted and even assaulted
innocent passers-by, and levied blackmail on John Bull's adjacent
tenants, and, in short, became the terror of the neighbourhood and a
disgrace to civilization. And when Mr. Bull's watchman (I told you there
is no regular police force, and everybody has to look after himself),
when Thomas Atkins, I say, came with orders to turn them out, they told
him to go--I hardly like to say where--and absolutely refused to stir;
quite the contrary; they hid themselves behind rubbish-heaps and
hoardings and such like, and threw things at Thomas; and when he tried to
catch them, they ran away and hid behind more hoardings, so that when you
thought they were in one place they were always somewhere else, and the
poor watchman got so knocked about with stones and brickbats that the
next morning, when he came round to the shop to report progress, he had a