"Certainly; that is what I am after. There is more comfort in one glass of pure water than there is in a whole barrel of beer. Here is Watts, paying out four or five shillings every week for beer, when water would cost him nothing, and he would have that amount to spend for genuine comforts. Besides, beer unfits him to get real comfort out of any thing, even out of his home." "You are about right on that," replied Watts; "beer does make a class of men most miserable. But must I discard it because some men use it to their injury?" "Of course you must," Benjamin answered quickly and triumphantly. "There is where duty and right come in. The strong must bear the infirmities of the weak, or they won't amount to much in the world." "Many of them won't amount to much any way, beer or no beer," responded Watts. "Any of them will amount to more with water than they will with beer," retorted Benjamin, who felt competent to support his side of the question. He went on: "Look here: I am supplied with a large porringer of hot-water gruel, sprinkled with pepper, crumbled with bread, and a bit of butter in it, for just the price of a pint of beer, three half-pence. Now, honestly, is not this much better for me, or for yourself, than the same amount of filthy beer?" "Possibly; it is a new view of the case to me," was all that Mr. Watts could say, evidently conceding that Benjamin was about right. Benjamin exchanged the press-room for the composing-room, after a few weeks. "A treat now, Ben; that is the condition of admission here," said the men. "I guess not; I fulfilled that condition in the press-room," answered Benjamin. "Once will do in this establishment." "But you _will_," retorted a fellow-worker, enforced by a dozen voices. "The rule is irrevocable." "We will see about that," replied Benjamin, with coolness, but determination. "Yes, we _will_ see," chimed in a resolute voice. "And after all your seeing and blustering I shall not do it," added Benjamin, in a tone that indicated he meant what he said. "Ben is right," interrupted Mr. Watts, who had listened to the colloquy; "he has met that condition once in the press-room, and he will not be required to repeat it. I forbid his doing it." "It is a very foolish custom any way," said Benjamin, "and the sooner it is abandoned in England or anywhere else the better." After all he did not carry his point. His own words about the affair were as follows: "I stood out two or three weeks, was accordingly considered as an excommunicate, and had so many little pieces of private malice practised on me, by mixing my sorts, transposing and breaking my matter, etc., etc., if ever I stepped out of the room,--and all ascribed to the _chapel ghost_, which they said ever haunted those not regularly admitted,--that, notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself obliged to comply and pay the money; convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually."