and make clothes--that he should have the
organs, so to speak, of a tailor; he must be put into a tailor's shop and
guided for a little while by someone who knew how and where to help him.

The rest of the day he spent in looking for a room, which he soon found,
and in familiarising himself with liberty. In the evening I took him to
the Olympic, where Robson was then acting in a burlesque on Macbeth, Mrs
Keeley, if I remember rightly, taking the part of Lady Macbeth. In the
scene before the murder, Macbeth had said he could not kill Duncan when
he saw his boots upon the landing. Lady Macbeth put a stop to her
husband's hesitation by whipping him up under her arm, and carrying him
off the stage, kicking and screaming. Ernest laughed till he cried.
"What rot Shakespeare is after this," he exclaimed, involuntarily. I
remembered his essay on the Greek tragedians, and was more I _epris_ with
him than ever.

Next day he set about looking for employment, and I did not see him till
about five o'clock, when he came and said that he had had no success. The
same thing happened the next day and the day after that. Wherever he
went he was invariably refused and often ordered point blank out of the
shop; I could see by the expression of his face, though he said nothing,
that he was getting frightened, and began to think I should have to come
to the rescue. He said he had made a great many enquiries and had always
been told the same story. He found that it was easy to keep on in an old
line, but very hard to strike out into a new one.

He talked to the fishmonger in Leather Lane, where he went to buy a
bloater for his tea, casually as though from curiosity and without any
interested motive. "Sell," said the master of the shop, "Why nobody
wouldn't believe what can be sold by penn'orths and twopenn'orths if you
go the right way to work. Look at whelks, for instance. Last Saturday
night me and my little Emma here, we sold 7 pounds worth of whelks
between eight and half past eleven o'clock--and almost all in penn'orths
and twopenn'orths--a few, hap'orths, but not many. It was the steam that
did it. We kept a-boiling of 'em hot and hot, and whenever the steam
came strong up from the cellar on to the pavement, the people bought, but
whenever the steam went down they left off buying; so we boiled them over
and over again till they was all sold. That's just where it is; if you
know your business you can sell, if you don't yo