weeks, and then set up as an authority. Of course, the acute, sleazy
dogs whom he questioned kept back everything that was essential, and
filled their victim's mind with concoctions which amused professional
blackguards for a month. Could that literary adventurer only have heard
the criticism which daily met my ear, he would have found that many
eager souls were longing for a chance to plunder such an obvious "mug."
Another writer, whose works appear in a morning journal, professes to
make flying visits to various queer places, and his articles are
published as facts; but I had the chance of testing the truth of two
tales which dealt with official business, and I found that these two
were false from end to end. Not only were they false, but they
illustrate nothing, for the writer did not know the conditions of the
life which he pretended to describe, and his fiction misled many
thousands. Experience, then--sordid, miserable, long experience--is
needed before anyone can speak the truth concerning the life of what
Carlyle called "the scoundrel classes." The same experience only can
teach you anything about the poor. The scoundrels do not actually
confide in anybody, and I never yet knew one of them who would not turn
on a confederate; but they exhibit themselves freely before people to
whom they have become used. It unfortunately happens that the
scoundrels and the dissolute poor are much thrown together. A man may
be a hopeless drunkard without being a rascal, but the rascals and the
boozers are generally taken in the lump by persons of a descriptive turn
of mind. That is faulty natural history. The chances are always ten to
one in favour of the boozer's becoming a criminal; but we must
distinguish between those who have taken the last bad step and those who
are merely qualifying. And now for our history.