I have been asked many times since, when, on a memorable occasion, I volunteered into the ranks of pauperism and assumed its regimentals, what was the one foremost thought or anxiety that beset me as I lay in that den of horror. Nothing can be more simple or honest than my answer to that question. This was it—_What if it were true_? What if, instead of your every sense revolting from the unaccustomed dreadfulness you have brought it into contact with, it were your lot to grow used to, and endure it all, until merciful death delivered you? What if these squalid, unsightly rags, the story of your being some poor devil of an engraver, who really could not help being desperately hard-up and shabby, were all _real_? And why not? Since in all vast commercial communities there must always exist a proportion of beggars and paupers, what have I done that I should be exempt? Am I—are all of us here so comfortably circumstanced because we deserve nothing less? What man dare rise and say so? Why, there are a dozen slippery paths to the direst ways of Poverty that the smartest among us may stumble on any day. Again, let us consider who are they who are most liable to slip. Why, that very class that the nation is so mightily proud of, and apt at bragging about! The working man, with his honest horny hand and his broad shoulders, who earns his daily bread by the sweat of his brow! We never tire of expressing our admiration for the noble fellow. There is something so manly, so admirable in an individual standing up, single-handed and cheerful-hearted, and exclaiming, in the face of the whole world, “With these two hands, and by the aid of the strength it has pleased God to bless me with, my wife and my youngsters and myself eat, drink, and are clothed, and no man can call me his debtor!” He is a fellow to admire; we can afford to admire him, and we do—for just so long as he can maintain his independence and stand without help. But should misfortune in any of its hundred unexpected shapes assail him, should he fall sick or work fail him, and he be unable to keep out the wolf that presently eats up his few household goods, rendering him homeless, _then_ we turn him and his little family over to the tender mercies of Mr. Bumble, who includes him in the last batch of impostors and skulkers that have been delivered to his keeping. I don’t say that, as matters are managed at present, we can well avoid doing so; but that does not mitigate the poor fellow’s hardship.