rison one is forced to
institute between the growth of corruption as displayed in the so much
improved and cared for fruits of the earth, and the growth of
corruption as displayed in these all uncared for (except inasmuch as
ever-hunted) savages.

There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and that
was more company--warm company, too, which was better. Toast of a very
substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though the
towzled-headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the
coffee-room, hadn't got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with sleep
that in every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew behind the
partition into complicated cross-roads of choke and snore, and lost
his way directly. Into one of these establishments (among the
earliest) near Bow-street, there came one morning as I sat over my
houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a high and long
snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of my belief, nothing
else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large cold meat pudding; a
meat pudding so large that it was a very tight fit, and brought the
lining of the hat out with it. This mysterious man was known by his
pudding, for on his entering, the man of sleep brought him a pint of
hot tea, a small loaf, and a large knife and fork and plate. Left to
himself in his box, he stood the pudding on the bare table, and,
instead of cutting it, stabbed it, over-hand, with the knife, like a
mortal enemy; then took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore
the pudding asunder with his fingers, and ate it all up. The
remembrance of this man with the pudding remains with me as the
remembrance of the most spectral person my houselessness encountered.
Twice only was I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in
(as I should say, just out of bed, and presently going back to bed),
take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his
pudding all up. He was a man whose figure promised cadaverousness, but
who had an excessively red face, though shaped like a horse's. On the
second occasion of my seeing him, he said huskily to the man of sleep,
"Am I red to-night?" "You are," he uncompromisingly answered. "My
mother," said the spectre, "was a red-faced woman that liked drink,
and I looked at her hard when she laid in her coffin, and I took the
complexion." Somehow, the pudding seemed an unwholesome pudding after
that, and I put myself in its way no more.