adging rascal
would very rarely have occasion to present himself as a casual pauper
at the Union workhouse, but had he done so, he and the unfortunate
watchmaker would have been treated on perfectly equal terms.

The whole system of casual poor law relief is about as rotten and as
stupid as it can be, and its administration is in itself a scandal.
There is no general rule throughout the country as to dietary or as to
the nature of the labour executed, or as to the hours over which that
labour shall be extended. The habitual loafer knows perfectly well the
places where life is made easy to him, and as a matter of course avoids
those in which the fare is poorest and the work most arduous. The honest
seeker after work knows nothing of these things and the whole iniquitous
and idiotic system is at once a direct bribe to the inveterate
work-shirker and a scourge to the honest and industrious poor. I
published the result of my own researches into it in the columns of
_Mayfair_ now nearly thirty years ago, and suggested a very simple and
easy remedy for its defects. I had some hope that I might be attended
to. The late Lord Lyttelton, Mr Gladstone's friend, was at one time
disposed to take the matter up, but his melancholy death put an end to
that, and recent inquiries assure me that the old intolerable methods of
casual relief are still unreformed.

Looking back now, I can see how very large a part that seven weeks'
experience played in my life as a novelist. For years afterwards it
cropped up as inevitably in my work as King Charles's head in Mr Dick's
Memorial, but at least it has enabled me to feel that few writers of
fiction in my time have gone nearer to reality in their studies than
myself. I certainly worked the little mine that I had opened for all
that it was worth, and readers of mine who give themselves the trouble
to remember will recall the wanderings of the hero of _Skeleton Keys_,
of Frank Fairholt, of Hiram Search and of young George Bushell. Speaking
of Hiram Search naturally reminds me of Charles Reade. I dedicated the
book in which Hiram appears to that great writer and sent a copy of
it to him with what I daresay was a somewhat boyish letter. I have the
terms of my dedication in mind still, and I remember that I wrote of a
great genius which has always been put to lofty uses. Reade's letter
in response has always held a place amongst my treasures. "It is no
discredit," he wrote, "for a young man to apprec