refuse." "'Brumm,'" I said, rather bitterly, "a teetotaller who lives in a common lodging house is to be heartily despised, for he shows himself to be satisfied with his conditions." With "Brummy" Tom and his friend for companions, I took a number of long sleeping draughts, and just after twelve o'clock that night was fast asleep in bed. The following morning some of the lodgers were telling of murder cries heard just after midnight, but I praised the power of Bacchus that I had not heard them. It was always a mystery to me that these men respected me and never failed in civility in their dealings with me, for I did everything that these men disliked. I wore a white collar, which they at once take to be a challenge that you are their superior. Few other men in the house, except they were fighting men, could have produced a toothbrush without being sneered at. True it induced Brown to ask the question whether I felt any actual benefit from cleaning my teeth; that he had heard so many different opinions that he did not know what or what not to believe; saying that he had often watched me, and wondered at so unusual a custom. They all detested the "Masher," because he was earning more than a pound a week on a good paper stand, and was also in receipt of a good pension; and they all cried shame on him for living in a common lodging house. This man, to my discomfort, showed so much inclination to confide in me, pointing out the different lodgers who owed him money, and calling them low vagabonds and ungrateful scamps, in a voice that was not meant to be a whisper, that I was almost afraid of losing their good will in listening to such words, without saying something on their behalf. Again I was almost a teetotaller, and that was the worst charge of all. In spite of all this, I do not believe that I made one enemy, and am certain that I never received other than kindness and civility from the lodgers of the Farmhouse. CHAPTER XXVI RAIN AND POVERTY