Chapter 26 - Page 2

the dread
of those hardships would have fixed him there till the peace. But now,
when hostilities were no more, so was his money. Some period elapsed ere
the affairs of the two governments were put on such a footing as to
support an American consul at London. Yet, when this came to pass, he
could only embrace the facilities for a return here furnished, by
deserting a wife and child, wedded and born in the enemy's land.

The peace immediately filled England, and more especially London, with
hordes of disbanded soldiers; thousands of whom, rather than starve, or
turn highwaymen (which no few of their comrades did, stopping coaches at
times in the most public streets), would work for such a pittance as to
bring down the wages of all the laboring classes. Neither was our
adventurer the least among the sufferers. Driven out of his previous
employ--a sort of porter in a river-side warehouse--by this sudden
influx of rivals, destitute, honest men like himself, with the ingenuity
of his race, he turned his hand to the village art of chair-bottoming.
An itinerant, he paraded the streets with the cry of "Old chairs to
mend!" furnishing a curious illustration of the contradictions of human
life; that he who did little but trudge, should be giving cosy seats to
all the rest of the world. Meantime, according to another well-known
Malthusian enigma in human affairs, his family increased. In all, eleven
children were born to him in certain sixpenny garrets in Moorfields. One
after the other, ten were buried.

When chair-bottoming would fail, resort was had to match-making. That
business being overdone in turn, next came the cutting of old rags, bits
of paper, nails, and broken glass. Nor was this the last step. From the
gutter he slid to the sewer. The slope was smooth. In poverty--"Facilis
descensus Averni."

But many a poor soldier had sloped down there into the boggy canal of
Avernus before him. Nay, he had three corporals and a sergeant for
company.

But his lot was relieved by two strange things, presently to appear. In
1793 war again broke out, the great French war. This lighted London of
some of its superfluous hordes, and lost Israel the subterranean society
of his friends, the corporals and sergeant, with whom wandering forlorn
through the black kingdoms of mud, he used to spin yarns about sea
prisoners in hulks, and listen to stories of the Black Hole of Calcutta;
and often would meet other pairs of poor soldiers, perfect strangers, at
the more public corners and intersections of sewers--the Charing-Crosses
below; one soldier having the other by his remainder button, earnestly
discussing the sad prospects of a rise in bread, or the tide; while
through the grating of the