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RV 108 (LONDON AT LEISURE) hands. They had had five men like him already in the yard that same morning.

This particular man appealed to me—and upon the whole you cannot hope to find in London anything much more pathetic, in a small way, than the peculiar "action" of a genuine labourer seeking work, his slow and heavy movements, his vacant and undecided air, his evident not knowing what to do with his hands, and all the signs that go to tell of a hungry and undesired leisure, and the fact that, as a rule, you cannot do anything in the world really to help him. This man was one of a great many employees in a soap factory that the vagaries of one of our Napoleons of Finance had lately caused to "shut down". It was a hopeless bankruptcy at a time when trade was too slow to make it feasible for the debenture-holders to carry on the work. All the hands had been thrown as if out of a barrow to find other holes somewhere in London. This man had been for a fortnight without a job, and he said it seemed precious likely he wouldn't get one for a good bit.

He had walked that morning from East Ham way right across to Hammersmith but his case was not a particularly poignant one. He had a missis but no kids, and his missis did a bit of charing for a Mrs. North and a Mrs. Williamson. He had been, as a boy, a wagoner's mate—one of those boys who walk with a brass-bound whip beside a team either in the cart or in the plough—in Lincolnshire. But things had seemed a bit slow down there and he had come up to London 108