M’Kay’s dreams therefore were not realised, and yet it would be a mistake to say that they ended in nothing. It often happens that a grand attempt, although it may fail—miserably fail—is fruitful in the end and leaves a result, not the hoped for result it is true, but one which would never have been attained without it. A youth strives after the impossible, and he is apt to break his heart because he has never even touched it, but nevertheless his whole life is the sweeter for the striving; and the archer who aims at a mark a hundred yards away will send his arrow further than he who sets his bow and his arm for fifty yards. So it was with M’Kay. He did not convert Drury Lane, but he saved two or three. One man whom we came to know was a labourer in Somerset House, a kind of coal porter employed in carrying coals into the offices there from the cellars below, and in other menial duties. He had about fifteen or sixteen shillings a week, and as the coals must necessarily be in the different rooms before ten o’clock in the morning, he began work early, and was obliged to live within an easy distance of the Strand. This man had originally been a small tradesman in a country town. He was honest, but he never could or never would push his trade in any way. He was fond of all kinds of little mechanical contrivings, disliked his shop, and ought to have been a carpenter or cabinetmaker—not as a master but as a journeyman, for he had no ability whatever to control men or direct large operations. He was married, and a sense of duty to his wife—he fortunately had no children—induced him to stand or sit behind his counter with regularity, but people would not come to buy of him, because he never seemed to consider their buying as any favour conferred on him; and thus he became gradually displaced by his more energetic or more obsequious rivals. In the end he was obliged to put up his shutters. Unhappily for him, he had never been a very ardent attendant at any of the places of religious worship in the town, and he had therefore no organisation to help him. Not being master of any craft, he was in a pitiable plight, and was slowly sinking, when he applied to the solicitor of the political party for which he had always voted to assist him. The solicitor applied to the member, and the member, much regretting the difficulty of obtaining places for grown-up men, and explaining the pressure upon the Treasury, wrote to say that the only post at his disposal was that of labourer. He would have liked to offer a messengership, but the Treasury had hundreds of applications from great people who wished to dispose of favourite footmen whose services they no longer required. Our friend Taylor had by this time been brought very low, or he would have held out for something better, but there was nothing to be done. He was starving, and he therefore accepted; came to London; got a room, one room only, near Clare Market, and began his new duties. He was able to pick up a shilling or two more weekly by going on errands for the clerks during his slack time in the day, so that altogether on the average he made up about eighteen shillings. Wandering about the Clare Market region on Sunday he found us out, came in, and remained constant. Naturally, as we had so few adherents, we gradually knew these few very intimately, and Taylor would often spend a holiday or part of the Sunday with us. He was not eminent for anything in particular, and an educated man, selecting as his friends those only who stand for something, would not have taken the slightest notice of him. He had read nothing particular, and thought nothing particular—he was indeed one of the masses—but in this respect different, that he had not the tendency to association, aggregation, or clanship which belong to the masses generally. He was different, of course, in all his ways from his neighbours born and bred to Clare Market and its alleys. Although commonplace, he had demands made upon him for an endurance by no means commonplace, and he had sorrows which were as exquisite as those of his betters. He did not much resent his poverty. To that I think he would have submitted, and in fact he did submit to it cheerfully. What rankled in him was the brutal disregard of him at the office. He was a servant of servants. The messengers, who themselves were exposed to all the petty tyrannies of the clerks, and dared not reply, were Taylor’s masters, and sought a compensation for their own serfdom by making his ten times worse. The head messenger, who had been a butler, swore at him, and if Taylor had “answered” he would have been reported. He had never been a person of much importance, but at least he had been independent, and it was a new experience for him to feel that he was a thing fit for nothing but to be
