The Observations of Henry | Page 8

there's a bit too much.' I'd been up since five that morning myself; and his own work, which was scouring milk- cans for twelve hours a day, didn't strike me as suggesting a life of leisured ease.
"'I don't mean that,' he says. 'I mean things worth doing.'
"'Well, what do you want to do,' I says, 'that this world ain't big enough for?'
"'It ain't the size of it,' he says; 'it's the dulness of it. Things used to be different in the old days.'
"'How do you know?' I says.
"'You can read about it,' he answers.
"'Oh,' I says, 'and what do they know about it--these gents that sit down and write about it for their living! You show me a book cracking up the old times, writ by a chap as lived in 'em, and I'll believe you. Till then I'll stick to my opinion that the old days were much the same as these days, and maybe a trifle worse.'
"'From a Sunday School point of view, perhaps yes,' says he; 'but there's no gainsaying--'
"'No what?' I says.
"'No gainsaying,' repeats he; 'it's a common word in literatoor.'
"'Maybe,' says I, 'but this happens to be "The Blue Posts Coffee House," established in the year 1863. We will use modern English here, if you don't mind.' One had to take him down like that at times. He was the sort of boy as would talk poetry to you if you weren't firm with him.
"'Well then, there's no denying the fact,' says he, 'if you prefer it that way, that in the old days there was more opportunity for adventure.'
"'What about Australia?' says I.
"'Australia!' retorts he; 'what would I do there? Be a shepherd, like you see in the picture, wear ribbons, and play the flute?'
"'There's not much of that sort of shepherding over there,' says I, 'unless I've been deceived; but if Australia ain't sufficiently uncivilised for you, what about Africa?'
"'What's the good of Africa?' replies he; 'you don't read advertisements in the "Clerkenwell News": "Young men wanted as explorers." I'd drift into a barber's shop at Cape Town more likely than anything else.'
"'What about the gold diggings?' I suggests. I like to see a youngster with the spirit of adventure in him. It shows grit as a rule.
"'Played out,' says he. 'You are employed by a company, wages ten dollars a week, and a pension for your old age. Everything's played out,' he continues. 'Men ain't wanted nowadays. There's only room for clerks, and intelligent artisans, and shopboys.'
"'Go for a soldier,' says I; 'there's excitement for you.'
"'That would have been all right,' says he, 'in the days when there was real fighting.'
"'There's a good bit of it going about nowadays,' I says. 'We are generally at it, on and off, between shouting about the blessings of peace.'
"'Not the sort of fighting I mean,' replies he; 'I want to do something myself, not be one of a row.'
"'Well,' I says, 'I give you up. You've dropped into the wrong world it seems to me. We don't seem able to cater for you here.'
"'I've come a bit too late,' he answers; 'that's the mistake I've made. Two hundred years ago there were lots of things a fellow might have done.'
"'Yes, I know what's in your mind,' I says: 'pirates.'
"'Yes, pirates would be all right,' says he; 'they got plenty of sea-air and exercise, and didn't need to join a blooming funeral club.'
"'You've got ideas above your station,' I says. 'You work hard, and one day you'll have a milk-shop of your own, and be walking out with a pretty housemaid on your arm, feeling as if you were the Prince of Wales himself.'
"'Stow it!' he says; 'it makes me shiver for fear it might come true. I'm not cut out for a respectable cove, and I won't be one neither, if I can help it!'
"'What do you mean to be, then?' I says; 'we've all got to be something, until we're stiff 'uns.'
"'Well,' he says, quite cool-like, 'I think I shall be a burglar.'
"I dropped into the seat opposite and stared at him. If any other lad had said it I should have known it was only foolishness, but he was just the sort to mean it.
"'It's the only calling I can think of,' says he, 'that has got any element of excitement left in it.'
"'You call seven years at Portland "excitement," do you?' says I, thinking of the argument most likely to tell upon him.
"'What's the difference,' answers he, 'between Portland and the ordinary labouring man's life, except that at Portland you never need fear being out of work?' He was a rare one to argue. 'Besides,' says he, 'it's only the fools as gets copped. Look at that diamond robbery in Bond Street, two years ago. Fifty thousand pounds' worth of jewels stolen,