Stand outside the dock gates any morning about six, and you will have plenty to study among the vast crowd of men, more or less dilapidated and hungry-looking, who fill all the approaches and line the banks in front of the rostrums. Many of them are regular men, who are called 'royals,' and who are pretty sure to be taken on, their names being on the ganger's list and called out by him as a matter of course. These men show signs of regular employment, and differ very little from the ordinary labourer. The strangest part of the crowd are the ragged, wretched, woebegone-looking outcasts who are penniless, and whose last hope is that they may have the luck to be selected by the ganger. Many of these come from the distant parts of London, from the North, and the South, and the East, and the West. Some of them have tramped all night, and flung themselves down to sleep at the great dock gates in the early dawn, determined to be in the front rank. They are of all sorts, sizes, and conditions. Among them is the seedy clerk, the broken-down betting man, the discharged soldier, the dismissed policeman, the ticket-of-leave man, the Jack-of-all-trades, the countryman, and the London rough. An enormous proportion of the regular men are Irish and of the ordinary labouring class, but now and then a foreigner or a negro crops up among the crowd. One man there is among them who wears his rough jacket and his old battered billycock with a certain air of gentility, and whose features are strongly refined when compared with the coarser lineaments of those around him. In the Docks they call him 'the nobleman.' He is a gentleman by birth and education; he can swear, I believe, in four languages; and as a matter of fact is the son of a baronet, and has a right to be called 'sir' if he chose to demand it. Into the sad story which has brought about this social wreck it is no business of mine to enter, though to the friendly dock police and to the gangers the baronet is ready enough to tell it.