"Well then, if you have the mettle in you to stick to your book, which is hard work for a man of forty, I will spend an hour with you once or twice a week, and teach you." The poor rough looked astonished, wriggled in a strange manner, and then gave expression to his feelings, by exclaiming, "If you does, master, when I gets into work I'll treat you to a day in the country." His friend could but smile at this singular ebullition of grateful feeling, though he knew the force of its meaning. To men like him, pent up in the density of the mighty city, a day in the country is the greatest conceivable enjoyment, and to promise that showed that the man had a soul, and perhaps a latent taste for the beautiful. As it was necessary that the teacher should know where the man lived, he went with him down one of those narrow, dirty streets, where the people live in comfort as regards thieves: as they have nothing to be robbed of, they allow their doors to remain open all night. The man entered one of these open doors, and ascended the stair-case, in thick darkness; his step was evidently known, as a woman came out of the back attic, holding in her hand a blacking bottle, in which was a piece of candle. All doubts as to her being his wife was set at rest, by the rough introducing his new acquaintance in the following elegant language, "'Ere Sarah, 'ere's a gent I've picked up in a beer shop." To the embarrassment of the dirty, ragged woman, the visitor entered the room; and a deplorable room it was,--a drunkard's home. The floor was dirty, without a piece of carpet, and several of the panes of glass were broken and pasted over with pieces of brown paper, greased to admit a little light. There was only one broken chair, and a sieve-basket, covered with a rusty tea-tray, formed another seat. The table was evidently the safest piece of goods, as the wife invited her visitor to take a seat upon it. There was no bedstead, but an accumulation of rags in one corner covered two dirty little children. The poor woman had that crushed and wretched expression of face so common among the wives of this class of men. A quarter of an hour's conversation set her at ease and secured her good-will. Before leaving, the visitor, who had taken his seat upon the table, opened his Bible and read, while the woman stood with her light in the blacking bottle on one side of him, and her brutal but now subdued husband upon the other. [Illustration: The Back Attic]