Lubbock's Shop Hours Bill in 1887 with an impartiality that borders on inconsistency, showing the other side of the question and the popular preference in poor districts for shopping in the evening, districts in which "St. Lubbock" was looked upon as a well-meaning but fussy philanthropist. [Sidenote: _"The Cry of the Clerk"_] As an individualist, a lover of independence, and an opponent of monopoly, _Punch_ was in a difficult position. Some, at any rate, of the monster shops led the way in the humane and considerate treatment of their assistants. But the freezing out of the small shopkeeper struck him as an undoubted hardship, and in 1886 he published a prophetic article describing an interview in the "dim and distant future" between a Stranger and the last shopkeeper in London. It is an allegory of the tyranny of capitalism and monopoly, of the cult of bigness and universality, the triumph of ubiquitous caterers. That "dim and distant future" has not yet arrived, and after thirty-five years the small shopkeeper is still going almost as strong as in the days when _Punch_ uttered his dismal prophecy. But his most impassioned plea in the 'eighties was not uttered on behalf of the working man or woman, or the small shopkeeper. It was reserved for the victims of State parsimony, underpaid clerks and Government officials. The campaign on behalf of these new _protégés_ of his opened with "The Cry of the Clerk," a long wail, charged with sentiment, uttered by an overworked and underpaid drudge:-- I don't growl at the working man, be his virtue strict or morality lax; He'd strike if they gave him my weekly wage, and they never ask _him_ for the Income-tax! They take his little ones out to tea in a curtained van when the fields are green, But never a flower, or field or fern in their leafy homes have my children seen. The case is different, so they say, for I'm respectable--save the mark! He works with the sweat of his manly brow, and I with my body and brain--poor Clerk! * * * * * Why did I marry? In mercy's name, in the form of my brother was I not born? Are wife and child to be given to him, and love to be taken from me with scorn? It is not for them that I plead, for theirs are the only voices that break my sorrow, That lighten my pathway, make me pause 'twixt the sad to-day and the grim to-morrow. The Sun and the Sea are not given to me, nor joys like yours as you flit together Away to the woods and the downs, and over the endless acres of purple heather. But I've love, thank Heaven! and mercy, too; 'tis for justice only I bid you hark To the tale of a penniless man like me--to the wounded cry of a London Clerk! [Illustration: TAKING THE LAW IN ONE'S OWN HANDS