_Nutts._ And aren’t comfort and cleanliness? _Slowgoe._ It’s all very well, but I’m the friend of order, I am. I only hope the Government won’t find it out. Make poor people clean and spruce, and you don’t know what they’ll want next. All too fast, too fast. _Nutts._ Well, I wonder you ever use your legs. I wonder you don’t go upon all fours by choice, acause it’s slower. _Slowgoe._ Look here; keep people in dirt accordin’ to their station, and you’ll keep ’em quiet. A man as lives in a cellar, or in a house, for the matter of that, with ten or twelve in a room, without any talk of water, and air, and gas, and such stuff as was never talked of in St Giles’ afore--why, he never thinks o’ nothin’ but his drop o’ wholesome gin. All he wants is, like a wild beast, some place to hide his head in for the night, that he may go to the public-house the next mornin’. Well, he goes; and he gets his glass, and his glass; and every glass seems to put new clothes on his back, and drop new shillings into his pocket, and all about him looks gold and purple--a sort of glory. And though his wife is bone and skin, and kivered with rags; when he’s comfortable drunk, she looks like any queen in a silver petticoat. And if his children with their thin chalk faces do make a hullabaloo for bread, why, when he’s as drunk as he ought to be, they seem to him nothin’ more than crying cherrybims. _Nutts._ Well, but where’s the man’s heart all the while? _Slowgoe._ Heart! Nonsense: doesn’t feel no heart. If he takes gin enough, it’s all gone; burnt up like a bit o’ sponge in the burning spirits o’ wine. Water, and gas, and air, and wholesome lodging! Why, isn’t gin cheapest, when it makes a man do without ’em? _Nosebag._ Not a bit on it. Gin never made a man respectable; now, water, air, and all that does. _Slowgoe._ I’ve said I’m a friend to order---- _Nutts._ Order! Well, if ever they make a Order of the Pigsty--and there is, I believe, a Order of the Sheep-pen, or Fleece, or something of the sort--you ought to have it. _Slowgoe._ Nonsense. ’Thusyism is puttin’ the poor out o’ their proper places. I’ll just take the other tack. A poor man gets out of dirt and foul air, and all that. Gets raised in the scale, as the story of it goes. Why, there must be always somebody at the bottom of the steps, mustn’t there? _Nutts._ Why, yes. But then the steps themselves needn’t be in muck, need they? Why shouldn’t the lowest of us have plenty of sweet water, and God’s sweet air, and all be raised together?