wishes to agonize him, and is shrewd enough to know that to “give in best,” as he would express it, is the way to get let off easy. But supposing that he were not overawed by the magisterial presence, and felt free to speak what is foremost in his mind unreservedly as he would speak it to one of his own set. Then he would say, “It is all very fine for you to sit there, you that have not only had a jolly good breakfast, but can afford to sport a silver toothpick to pick your teeth with afterwards, it is all very fine for you to preach to me that I never shall do any good, but one of these days come to something that’s precious bad, if I don’t cut the ways of thieving, and take to honest ways. There’s so many different kinds of honest ways. _Yours_ is a good ’un. I ain’t such a fool as not to know that it’s better to walk in honest ways like them _you’ve_ got into, and to wear gold chains and velvet waistcoats, than to prowl about in ragged corduroys, and dodge the pleeseman, and be a prig: but how am I to get into them sorts of honest ways? Will you give me a hist up to ’em? Will you give me a leg-up—I’m such a little cove, you see—on to the bottom round of the ladder that leads up to ’em? If it ain’t in your line to do so, p’raps you could recommend me to a lady or gentleman that would? No! Then, however am _I_ to get into honest ways? Shall I make a start for ’em soon as I leaves this ere p’lice office, from which you are so werry kind as to discharge me? Shall I let the chances of stealing a turnip off a stall, or a loaf out of a baker’s barrow, go past me, while I keep straight on, looking out for a honest way?—straight on, and straight on, till I gets the hungry staggers (_you_ never had the hungry staggers, Mr. Magistrate), and tumble down on the road? I am not such a fool, thank’e. I don’t see the pull of it. I can do better in dishonest ways. I’m much obliged to YOU. I’m sure of a crust, though a hard ’un, while I stick to the latter, and if I break down, you’ll take care of me for a spell, and fatten me up a bit; but s’pose I go on the hunt after them honest ways you was just now preaching about, and I miss ’em, what am I then? A casual pauper, half starved on a pint of skilly, or ‘a shocking case of destitution,’ and the leading character in a coroner’s inquest!” All this Master Timothy Mullins might urge, and beyond favouring him with an extra month for contempt of court, what could the magistrate do or say?