Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/119

 were two distinct classes of people in Australia, — those who had been convicted, and those who ought to be. The lecturer’s remarks, considering his short residence in the cities of Australia, remind one of a certain English  lord who visited this country. While walking down Broadway with a friend, he inquired if there was not  such a place in town as the Bowery.

"There is, and we will take a walk down there," was the reply.

Arrived there, the noble lord made known his wish, which was to see a Bowery boy. Mr. Seward pointed out Mose, on the other side of the way, leaning against  a lamp-post, with his right foot flat on the sidewalk, his  left resting over the right, his trousers rolled up to show  his red-topped boots. He wore a red flannel shirt, and on his head was perched a tall, black, beaver hat nearly  covered with crape. His hair hung in soap-locks down his cheeks, and a long-nine cigar was in his mouth. After eyeing him some little time, his lordship said:

"I will go over and speak with him."

"You had better not," replied his friend.

He went, however, while Mr. Seward walked slowly up the Bowery. When he came abreast of Mose, the Bowery boy, he scanned him from head to foot; then,  very politely raising his hat, he said:

"I am looking for Broadway, governor."

Carelessly withdrawing his cigar, and puffing a volume of smoke in his lordship’s face, Mose said:

"Why in don’t you find it, then?"

On his return to England, my lord published a book entitled "The Bowery and Bowery Boys."