learn it_? A man can learn to do anything when it's business and his
living depends on it. The people who crowd around me in the streets
cannot pronounce English decently; not one in a thousand here can say
_laugh_, except as a sheep says it. Suppose that you are a Cheap Jack
selling things from a van. About once in an hour some tipsy fellow tries
to chaff you. He hears your tongue going, and that sets his off. He
hears the people laugh at your jokes, and he wants them to laugh at his.
When you say you're selling to raise money for a burned-out widow, he
asks if she isn't your wife. Then you answer him, 'No, but the
kind-hearted old woman who found you on the door-step and brought you up
to the begging business.' If you say you are selling goods under cost,
it's very likely some yokel will cry out, 'Stolen, hey?' And you patter
as quick as lightning, 'Very likely; I thought your wife sold 'em to me
too cheap for the good of somebody's clothes-line.' If you show yourself
his superior in language awd wit, the people will buy better; they always
prefer a gentleman to a cad. Bless me! why, a swell in a dress-coat and
kid gloves, with good patter and hatter, can sell a hundred rat-traps
while a dusty cad in a flash kingsman would sell one. As for the
replies, most of them are old ones. As the men who interrupt you are
nearly all of the same kind, and have heads of very much the same make,
with an equal number of corners, it follows that they all say nearly the
same things. Why, I've heard two duffers cry out the same thing at once
to me. So you soon have answers cut and dried for them. We call 'em
_cocks_, because they're just like half-penny ballads, all ready printed,
while the pitcher always has the one you want ready at his finger-ends.
It is the same in all canting. I knew a man once who got his living by
singing of evenings in the gaffs to the piano, and making up verses on
the gentlemen and ladies as they came in; and very nice verses he made,
too,--always as smooth as butter. _How do you do it_? I asked him one
day. 'Well, you wouldn't believe it,' said he; 'but they're mostly
cocks. The best ones I buy for a tanner [sixpence] apiece. If a tall
gentleman with a big beard comes in, I strike a deep chord and sing,--

"'This tall and handsome party,
With such a lot of hair,
Who seems so grand and hearty,
Must be a _militaire_;
We like to see a swell come
Who looks