"A cause you get all the other floors' stinks up here as well as your own. Concentrated essence of man's flesh, is this here as you're a breathing. Cellar workroom we calls Rheumatic Ward, because of the damp. Ground-floor's Fever Ward--them as don't get typhus gets dysentery, and them as don't get dysentery gets typhus--your nose'd tell yer why if you opened the back windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward--don't you hear 'um now through the cracks in the boards, a puffing away like a nest of young locomotives? And this here most august and upper-crust cockloft is the Conscrumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceeds to expectorate--spittoons, as you see, perwided free gracious for nothing--fined a kivarten if you spits on the floor-- "Then your cheeks they grows red, and your nose it grows thin, And your bones they stick out, till they comes through your skin: "and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering bare backs of the hairystocracy-- "Die, die, die, Away you fly, Your soul is in the sky! "as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks." And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and pretended to die in a fit of coughing, which last was, alas! no counterfeit, while poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears fall fast upon my knees. "Fine him a pot!" roared one, "for talking about kicking the bucket. He's a nice young man to keep a cove's spirits up, and talk about 'a short life and a merry one.' Here comes the heavy. Hand it here to take the taste of that fellow's talk out of my mouth." "Well, my young'un," recommenced my tormentor, "and how do you like your company?" "Leave the boy alone," growled Crossthwaite; "don't you see he's crying?" "Is that anything good to eat? Give me some on it if it is--it'll save me washing my face." And he took hold of my hair and pulled my head back. "I'll tell you what, Jemmy Downes," said Crossthwaite, in a voice which made him draw back, "if you don't drop that, I'll give you such a taste of my tongue as shall turn you blue." "You'd better try it on then. Do--only just now--if you please." "Be quiet, you fool!" said another. "You're a pretty fellow to chaff the orator. He'll slang you up the chimney afore you can get your shoes on." "Fine him a kivarten for quarrelling," cried another; and the bully subsided into a minute's silence, after a _sotto voce_--"Blow temperance, and blow all Chartists, say I!" and then delivered himself of his feelings in a doggerel song: "Some folks leads coves a dance, With their pledge of temperance, And their plans for donkey sociation; And their pockets full they crams By their patriotic flams, And then swears 'tis for the good of the nation. "But I don't care two inions For political opinions, While I can stand my heavy and my quartern; For to drown dull care within, In baccy, beer, and gin, Is the prime of a working-tailor's fortin!