Ern himself, I need hardly say, is opposed to both callings. At present he has but one ambition, and that is to be a shover. His only real employment so far has been parcel-packing for Mr. Bemerton on the few days each month following the publication of his catalogue. Great days downstairs, I can tell you, and sometimes twenty telegrams in a morning. I have now described all the fauna of Bemerton's except one--the waterman--who, however, does not come indoors but lends redolence to the exterior. The waterman tends the cab rank and incidentally runs errands for the neighbourhood. London is rich in such wastrels, whose career is all behind them. They have no doubt begun reputably enough in this or that trade, drifted into the drink habit, and steadily filed through one employ after another until they have nothing left but the street corner when they are out of pence, and the public bar when pence come their way. This man alternately drinks and shivers. His clothes are thin useless things in which he wraps himself. He stands at the corner and beats his arms; looks up each street; walks a few steps; exchanges the time of day with a cabman; and disappears into the "Goat and Compasses" again. One of the enduring problems to the social observer is, Where do poor men find so much money for beer? When it comes to that, I suppose that the basic question of civilised life is, How on earth can the Blanks afford to live as they do? But the riches of the poor are only a little less astonishing than the riches of one's neighbours. This man seems to be dependent for his earnings on the good-nature of a few cabmen and very infrequent employment by the residents of the neighbourhood. I, for example, have given him odd tips for fetching me taximeter cabs. And yet he seems rarely to want the means to realise his one remaining and--considering how little he can have to remember with joy, I must confess--exceedingly reasonable ambition, which is to keep fuddled. When all is said against alcohol, there remains the unassailable fact that it is the poor man's best accessible anodyne. The poet's line-- "Let us be drunk and for a while forget," contains the whole philosophy of intoxication. Possibly the landlord of the "God encompasseth" is lenient with him in the matter of payment, for the waterman is certainly the cause of much forgetting in others. For with all his ruined air and deplorable condition he seems to be a companionable man. He has popularity in his way. Men at work he watches with extraordinary intelligence and camaraderie: no robin by a woodshed does it better. And he seems to know what to say to them. When the road was up for new electric wires, he was the life and soul of the party. I should not be surprised if he was the best after-breakfast talker in London.