The issue is told in a ballad written that same night at "_The Best End of the Scrag_;" which,--though inspired by Liberal ale, for "_The Scrag_" had not a drop left of its own, and was obliged to send across the road for it--is a poem of high merit; and my father was told upon the best authority that the poet, from first to last, received nearly fifteen shillings for it. Our house subscribed for sixpence-worth, and so did Mr. Windsor; and all the boys of the lower order, up to Grotto-day, were singing--no matter what their politics might be--and wrapping their bulls' eyes up in, "The lay of the soporific soap-boilers." The Radicals bore this satire well, having had their own way in everything, and laughed on the right side of their mouths; and even the men, who had been cased in grease, made a good thing of it, when they scraped themselves, by going to the rag-and-bone-shops. Yet, as bad luck would have it, the leading mind among them--that of Mr. Joe Cowl, the Master-sweep--was not content, and broke out into a summons at the Clerkenwell Police Court. For Mr. Cowl, meeting all the first of the discharges, before the stearine was well up in the hose, was a loser instead of a receiver of deposit. All the soot on his body was clean washed off; and nothing being left to fill the pores, the abnormal exposure of his system led to a pungent, pervasive, and radical catarrh. Mrs. Cowl sent for a doctor, but her husband Joe had still enough vitality to kick him out; and then jumping from the frying-pan into the fire, shouted loudly for a lawyer; and he recommended law. CHAPTER VIII. FOR CHANGE OF AIR. "But," said my father to Mr. John Windsor, who was urging him to leave home for a while, that Joe Cowl's anger might blow over; "people pretend not to understand it, John; but you know as well as I do what it is. How could I ever live, for a fortnight at a stretch, or even three weeks, as might be needful, without a breath of the air of the works, John?" "When I was obliged to spend a week in Parree," replied Mr. Windsor (who, as Mrs. Windsor said, had "acclimatised himself uncommon quick to the French style, and their accent"), "I thought I should have died for a day or two, from the downright emptiness of the air. But, my dear fellow, I found out some places, where the air was as nourishing, every bit, as it is at our works on an over-time day. Bubbly, I contrived to bilk the doctor, by going twice a day to a place with a hole in it, over some large cookery vapours. And you must contrive to find a place like that. I'll tell you what, go away to the seaside. At the seaside now, they are always making smells."