As they earn high wages, it is a fashion among them to keep dogs; and as rather a noble trait, we may mention that there have been several instances where 10_l._ has been in vain offered to “a navvy” to induce him to sell his dumb favourite. Generally speaking they are not addicted to poaching; but when not at work they usually amuse themselves by playing at skittles, at quoits, by drinking, and occasionally by fighting; and although the latter species of recreation is no doubt reprehensible, yet surely it is better for a man to walk homewards at night with a pair of black eyes and a bloody nose, than with an I O U cheque in his pocket for ten thousand pounds, gained by what the fashionable world terms “at _play_” from a companion whose wife he has made destitute, and whose children he has probably ruined! At a navvy’s funeral 500 of his comrades in their clean short white smock-frocks, with thin black handkerchiefs tied loosely round their throats, are seen occasionally in procession walking in pairs hand in hand after the coffin of their mate. In short, there exists among them a friendly “_esprit de corps_,” which not only binds them together, but renders it rather dangerous for any stranger to cheat, or even to endeavour to overreach them. During the construction of the present London and North-Western Railway, a landlady at Hillmorton, near Rugby, of very sharp practice, which she had imbibed in dealings for many years with canal boatmen, was constantly remarking aloud that no navvy should ever “_do_” her; and although the railway was in her immediate neighbourhood, and although the navvies were her principal customers, she took pleasure on every opportunity in repeating the invidious remark. It had, however, one fine morning scarcely left her large, full-blown, rosy lips, when a fine-looking young fellow, walking up to her, carrying in both hands a huge stone bottle, commonly called “a grey-neck,” briefly asked her for “half a gallon of gin;” which was no sooner measured and poured in than the money was rudely demanded before it could be taken away. On the navvy declining to pay the exorbitant price asked, the landlady, with a face like a peony, angrily told him he must either pay for the gin or _instantly_ return it. He silently chose the latter, and accordingly, while the eyes of his antagonist were wrathfully fixed upon his, he returned into her measure the half-gallon, and then quietly walked off; but having previously put into his grey-neck half a gallon of water, each party eventually found themselves in possession of half a gallon of gin and water; and, however either may have enjoyed the mixture, it is historically recorded at Hillmorton that the landlady was never again heard unnecessarily to boast “that no navvy could ‘_do_’ her.”