England is the last civilised country whose law encourages the poor to live on credit, yet nothing is more true than this, that once start living on credit and you cannot get out of it. It is a downward path leading to the Slough of Despond. But until the law is amended we must be content to look on and see the poor in the cages of prison whilst those that set the traps and catch them wax fat and shine. And as soon as a boy or a girl begins to earn wages the Evil One, in the shape of some kind of tally-man, is at his or her elbow with a watch, or a ring, or a family Bible, or a musical instrument, or a shoddy sewing machine, the possession of which can be gloriously enjoyed on payment of the first instalment. I do not say that boys and girls must not buy their experience of the world and pay for it, but the law need not assist the knave in making it more expensive than is necessary. I have known several cases of young servants leaving good places and running off in terror because they have been served with a blue paper, "frightener" with a lot of law jargon about imprisonment upon it, threatening them with dire penalties because an instalment was due on a gold ring. More might certainly be done to prevent back-door trading, and there is no more reason why area touts should be allowed to infest the streets than the lower class of bookmakers. Well-to-do people have very little idea of the number of firms that employ travelling canvassers and touts to hawk their wares from door to door in the mean streets. I remember once a fairly well-to-do working man--he was the doorkeeper of a public institution in Manchester--had an action brought against him by a street tout because his dog, an Airedale terrier, had bitten the prowling fellow as he was coming in at the back door. The man was badly mauled, and the dog having been proved to have bitten several other people of a like nature, I had, much to my discontent, to give judgment for the plaintiff. About a year afterwards--having forgotten all about the matter--I was visiting the institution where the defendant was employed, when, as the gentleman I wished to see was engaged, the doorkeeper asked me to step into his lodge and sit down and wait. "I've often wanted to see you, Mr. Porry," he began, "about that there dorg case." "What case was that?" I asked. "That case where you fined me five pounds over an Airedale what tried to gobble up a tally-man." "I remember," I said doubtfully. "Well," he continued, "you seemed to sympathise with me like, but you found against me. You see I had bought that dorg for the very purpose of keeping those fellows off the premises whilst I'm away. So I said if the law don't let 'im bite 'em, what's the use of the dorg? and what I wanted to arsk you was, may my dorg bite 'em within reason or did I 'ave to pay five pounds 'cause 'e mauled 'im too much?"