"No, that's no use at all; you see he doesn't go hall the way down. He is afraid, is the snake, and if you cough he'll come up and draw himself up and coil in a bunch in your mouth. But the duffers who pay their money think that the snake is in your stomach. It stands to reason that he'd get sick. It makes a man retch, and the first snake I swallowed I threw up and had awful vomits, but the next one I rather relished it, and it did me a sight o' good, like an oyster does after ye 'ave been drinkin at night and take's tuppence worth of natives in the morning. Well, when I began snake-swallowing it was rather new, and I had it all my own way for a long time, but finally, lots of men began to swallow snakes, and coal swallowing was not as good as it used to be; so I took to ballad singing, Judy and I. By this time we had sixty pounds saved, and we were doing well, but I made the acquaintance of a lot of Doncaster men, who knew I had the money, and before I could say 'Jack Robinson,' the money was all gone. Judy was in her confinement then, and she took on so bad about it that she died in child-bed, and the kid as well, and I've been on the tramp ever since, and now I do an odd turn at anything that turns up, but mostly I sing ballads, and make sometimes a shilling a day, and sometimes eightpence and ninepence a day. Times have changed for me. Worse luck." Here the snake-swallower's story ended. "Slap-Up Peter, will you give us a song? and I'll give you a drink, me oul wiper," said the crippled Kicking Billy to the snake-swallower. "Well, Billy, I don't mind if I do," said Slap-Up Peter, draining the tin skillet to the last greasy drop. The thieves, loafers, and women gathered around the fire in a half circle, and Purty Bill heaped logs very liberally, while Slap-Up Peter chanted in a hoarse voice the song, an extract of which I give below, as near as I remember it with my recollections of the scene, the choking smoke, the blazing fire, and the band of outcasts and outlaws in the den in Whitechapel: 'Twas down in Whitechapel that once I used to dwell, And of all the coves that knocked about, I was the greatest swell, My highlows were the cheese, with breeches to the knees, Oh, my toggery was quite correct--my coat was Irish frieze, My togs from Bond street came, it's a nobby slap-up street, In a fashionable locality--the swells the girls there meet; Nicol's my man for shirts, with his I cut a shine, His shop's in far famed Regent street, he's a pal-o'-mine. Rum too-rul-um, Happy-go-Bill, Inyuns and greens who'll buy, Rum too-rul-um, Happy-go-Bill, Inyuns and greens who'll buy. "That's a fine melojous voice of yours," said Purty Bill to the singer. "He's used to it," said one of the women.