Londons Underworld | Page 4

times, we have even known our
merry moments.
Though pathos has permeated all our intercourse, humour and comedy
have never been far away; though sometimes tragedy has been in
waiting.

But over one and all of my friends hung a great mystery, a mystery that
always puzzled and sometimes paralysed me, a mystery that always set
me to thinking.
Now many of my friends were decent and good-hearted fellows; yet
they were outcasts. Others were intelligent, clever and even industrious,
quite capable of holding their own with respectable men, still they were
helpless.
Others were fastidiously honest in some things, yet they were persistent
rogues who could not see the wrong or folly of dishonesty; many of
them were clear-headed in ninety-nine directions, but in the hundredth
they were muddled if not mentally blind.
Others had known and appreciated the comforts of refined life, yet they
were happy and content amidst the horror and dirt of a common
lodging-house! Why was it that these fellows failed, and were content
to fail in life?
What is that little undiscovered something that determines their lives
and drives them from respectable society?
What compensations do they get for all the suffering and privations
they undergo? I don't know! I wish that I did! but these things I have
never been able to discover.
Many times I have put the questions to myself; many times I have put
the questions to my friends, who appear to know about as much and
just as little upon the matter as myself.
They do not realise that in reality they do differ from ordinary citizens;
I realise the difference, but can find no reason for it.
No! it is not drink, although a few of them were dipsomaniacs, for
generally they were sober men.
I will own my ignorance, and say that I do not know what that little
something is that makes a man into a criminal instead of constituting

him into a hero. This I do know: that but for the possession of a little
something, many of my friends, now homeless save when they are in
prison, would be performing life's duties in settled and comfortable
homes, and would be quite as estimable citizens as ordinary people.
Probably they would prove better citizens than the majority of people,
for while they possess some inherent weakness, they also possess in a
great degree many estimable qualities which are of little use in their
present life.
These friends of mine not only visit my office and invade my home, but
they turn up at all sorts of inconvenient times and places.--There is my
friend the dipsomaniac, the pocket Hercules, the man of brain and iron
constitution.
Year after year he holds on to his own strange course, neither poverty
nor prison, delirium tremens nor physical injuries serve to alter him. He
occupies a front seat at a men's meeting on Sunday afternoon when the
bills announce my name. But he comes half drunk and in a talkative
mood, sometimes in a contradictory mood, but generally good
tempered. He punctuates my speech with a loud and emphatic "Hear!
hear!" and often informs the audience that "what Mr. Holmes says is
quite true!" The attendants cannot keep him silent, he tells them that he
is my friend; he makes some claim to being my patron.
Poor fellow! I speak to him kindly, but incontinently give him the slip,
for I retire by a back way, leaving him to argue my disappearance in no
friendly spirit with the attendants. Yet I have spent many happy hours
with him when, as sometimes happened, he was "in his right mind."
I, would like to dwell on the wonders of this man's strange and
fearsome life, but I hasten on to tell of a contrast, for my friends present
many contrasts.
I was hurrying down crowded Bishopsgate at lunch time, lost in
thought, when I felt my hand grasped and a well-known voice say,
"Why! Mr. Holmes, don't you know me?"

Know him! I should think I do know him; I am proud to know him, for
I venerate him. He is only a french polisher and by no means handsome,
his face is furrowed and seamed by care and sorrow, his hands and
clothing are stained with varnish. Truly he is not much to look at, but if
any one wants an embodiment of pluck and devotion, of never-failing
patience and magnificent love, in my friend you shall find it!
Born in the slums, he sold matches at seven years of age; at eight he
was in an industrial school; his father was dead, his mother a drunkard;
home he had none!
Leaving school at sixteen he became first a gardener's assistant, then a
gentleman's servant; in this occupation he saved some money with