How the poor live

              HOW THE  POOR LIVE.
57
" What are you going to do with it ? "
" Please sir," he stammered, '' I'm goin' to take it 'ome to
mother. She's ill and can't eat nothink, and I thought as
she might manage cake, sir."
In the train that brought those youngsters down came one
white-faced child, who looked faint and ill with the walk to
the station.
The head teacher, who has the history of child at her
fingers' end, saw what was the matter.
" Had no breakfast to-day, Annie ? "
" No, ma'am," was the faltering reply.
There was a crowd of poor mothers at the station come
to see the children off. One went out and presently returned
with a penny, which she pressed into the child's hand—to
buy herself something with. The woman had pawned her
shawl for a copper or two in sheer womanly sympathy.
Had she had the money about her she needn't have left
the station.
There was a good deal of pawning that morning, I know,
from an eye-witness, and all to give the little children a
copper or two to spend.
And what a struggle there had been to get them something
decent to wear for that grand day out! If all the
stories were written that could be told of the privations and
sacrifices endured by mothers, that Sally and Jane and Will
might look respectable at the treat, your heart would ache.
As I don't wish it to, we will not go into the matter.
CHAPTER XII.
To get an odd job at the Docks is often the last hope
of the labouring men who are out of regular employment,
and to whom the acquisition of a few shillings for rent, and
the means of subsistence for themselves and families, is a
task fraught with as much difficulty as were some of the
labours, the accomplishment of which added in no inconsiderable degree to the posthumous fame of Hercules.
When it is borne in mind that sometimes at the West
India Docks—taking one for example—as many as 2,500
hands can be taken on in the morning, it will be easily
understood that the chance of employment draws an immense
concourse of men daily to the gates.
The time to see what I venture to think is one of the
most remarkable sights in the world, is an hour at which the
general public is not likely to be passing by.
Sometimes the hands are engaged as enrly as four, but it
is generally about six o'clock that the quay-gangers ascend
the rostrums or elevated stands which are placed all along
the outside wall, and survey the huge crowd in front of
them, and commence to call them out for work and
send them into the different docks where the good ships
lie, with their vast cargoes, waiting for willing hands to
unload them.
The pay is fivepence an hour, and the day's work lasts for
eight hours.    It is miscellaneous, and a man is expected
to put his hand to anything in the shape of loading or
unloading that the occasion may require.
Stand outside the dock gates any morning about six, and
you will have plenty to study among the vast crowd of men,
more or less dilapidated and hungry-looking who fill all the
approaches and line the banks in front of the rostrums.
Many of them are regular men, who are called " Royals "
and who are pretty sure to be taken on, their names being
on the ganger's list and called out by him as a matter of
course. These men show signs of regular employment, and
differ very little from the ordinary labourer. The strangest
part of the crowd are the ragged, wretched, wobegone-
looking outcasts who are penniless, and whose last hope
is that they may have the luck to be selected by the ganger.
Many of these come from the distant parts of London, from
the  North,   and  the  South,  and  the  East,  and  the West.
Some of them have tramped all night, and flung themselves
down to sleep at the great dock gates in the early dawn,
determined to be in the front rank.
They are of all sorts, sizes, and conditions. Among them
is the seedy clerk, the broken-down betting-man, the discharged soldier, the dismissed policeman, the ticket-of-leave
man, the Jack-of-all-trades, the countryman, and the London
rough. An enormous proportion of the regular men are
Irish and of the ordinary labouring class, but now and then
a foreigner or a nejro crops up among the crowd. One
man there is among them who wears his rough jacket and
his old battered billycock with a certain air of gentility, and
whose features are strangely refined when compared with the
coarser lineaments of those around him.
In the Docks they call him " the nobleman." He is a
gentleman by birth and education; he can swear, I believe,
in four languages ; and as a matter of fact is the son of a