The existence of a _victim_ is the most precarious thing, perhaps, in the world. He is a man with no continuing dinner-place. He dines, as the poor old Earl of Findlater used to say, at the sign of the Mouth. It is a very strange thing, and what no one could suppose _a priori_, that the necessitous are greatly indebted to the necessitous. People of this sort form a kind of community by themselves, and are more kind to each other mutually than is any other particular branch of the public to them as a class. Thus, the little that any one has, is apt to be shared by a great many companions, and all have a mouthful. The necessitous are also very much the dupes of the necessitous: they are all, as it were, creatures of prey, the stronger constantly eating up the weaker. Thus, a _victim_ in the last stage preys upon men who are entering the set; and all prey more or less upon poor tradesmen, such as the above Walter Brown or James Gowans, who are only liable to such a spoliation because they are poor, and anxious for business. We have known a _victim_, for instance, who had long passed the condition of being _jail-worthy_, live in a great measure upon a man who had just begun a career of victimization by being thrown into jail. This creature was content to be a kind of voluntary prisoner for the sake of sharing the victuals and bed of his patron. It would astonish any man, accustomed, day after day, to go home to a spread table at a regular hour, to know the strange shifts which victims have to make in order to satisfy hunger—how much is done by raising small hard-wrung subsidies from former acquaintance—how much by duping—how much by what the Scotch people very expressively call _skeching_—how much by subdivision of mites among the wretches themselves. Your _victim_ is often witty, can sing one good comic song, has a turn for mimicry, or at least an amusing smack of worldly knowledge; and he is sometimes so lucky as to fall in with patrons little above himself in fortune, but still having something to give, who afford him their protection on account of such qualifications. By way of illustrating these points, take the following instances of what may be called the _fag-victim_.