seem to be neutral ground, on which no man may raise his hand against his fellow.

And now you might know—even if you had not witnessed it-by the eager and incessant swinging to and fro of the doors of the "Bull in the Pound" that those other doors have opened. Here they come, crowding in, not hilarious and boisterous with gladness, though there are a few cases of mutual delirious delight-including that of Mr. and Mrs. Maloney, and, strangely enough, of the bulky brute in the burglarious jacket, whose scowling eyes are moist as over and over again he shakes hands with a she gaol bird, a mere girl of nineteen or so-but as eager for drink as though deprivation of it was the very essence of the punishment the late prisoners had endured. A pot of beer for the men- -а full quart with a foaming head-and for the women, gin. Gin for the burglar's betrothed-she brought a good "tract" in her hand out of the prison with her, a parting gift of the hopeful chaplain, and now the quartern gin measure stands on it as it lies on the metal counter; gin for the virago who has just "served" three months for a murderous assault committed while in a state of mad drunkenness; gir for the lost gaol bird that has been looked for by the old hag, who for her own part pledges her restored captive in a big glass of neat brandy, and wishes her "better luck next time."

They do not stay long drinking at the bar of the " Bull in the Pound;" not one in half a dozen has the pot or glass replenished. The only remarkable part of the affair is that, almost without exception, discharged prisoners take to this "stirrup-cup" as a formality not to be set aside or dispensed with; as a sort of rebaptising, without which they would be ineligible to re-enter the world whence they have so long been shut out. I am not disposed to assert that there is any great harm in the ceremony, or that there would be less crime in the land if the "Bull in the Pound" were turned into a sweetmeat shop; but certainly it is not gratifying to know that these birds of peculiar feather habitually refresh their wings in gin or beer before they take flight back to their old hunting-grounds.

OUR DAILY BREAD.

He

He was neither a handsome nor a wholesome looking figure, as at five o'clock in the day he came slipshod over the sunny pavement, with a half-quartern loaf under his arm. looked like what was once a spick-and-span lilywhite baker, fit to figure on a twelfthcake, only in the prime of his youth he had fallen into a dusthole and grown old and grey there, and had that very afternoon, made his escape; too much depressed just now by his protracted and dismal experiences to rejoice and be glad.

"As tired as a dog," he said he was; and so by his very first utterance bespoke himself a modest man, whose word might be relied on. If appearances went for anything, my poor old journeyman baker was more tired than any dog that ever ran on four legs. The only dog that could have matched him for jadedness and weariness of aspect must have been one of the ancient turnspit breed, who, in consequence of the indisposition of a mate, had fagged through many hours of "overtime" before a roaring kitchen fire. Either that dog or another I have seen about lately--an unhappy wretch of a half-starved French poodle, whose companion and master is a bagpiping, drunken, dancing Scotchman. Through the livelong day the wretched beast, in a gay Glengarry cap, that mocks the eloquent sadness of its eyes, and of its mouth, which droops so woefully at the corners, foots it mincingly on its hind legs, the bagpiper himself dancing fiercely, and leading the steps. As the day advances, the bagpiper's nose glows under the influence of accumulated twopenn'orths of whiskey, and then, his steadiness failing to keep pace with his perspiring vigour, he has a habit of treading on the poodle's toes; causing the agonised animal to emit sounds that the thoughtless crowd applauds, mistaking it for the sagacious creature's imitation of the triumphant whoop the Scotchman occasionally indulges in.

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If the reader can picture that poodle at the close of a fatiguing day, and imagine the mire with which he is besmeared from head to foot to be dough-stains and flour-andwater splashes, he may form a tolerably correct idea as to the sort of tired dog my journeyman baker looked. He had no regular service, but was an odd man "—that is to say, an extra hand employed on the busiest day of the week, which is Saturday. There used to be a great deal of talk about slave-grown sugar being moistened with the tears of the poor enthralled black men who cultivated it. I should not be astonished if much of that saline flavour that is commonly found in cheap bread is due to the tears of the severely-worked and badly-paid odd men. "I've been at it, sir," said the old journeyman, with a yawn that caused the veneering of dough on his countenance to crackle like the glaze on an old white plate-"I've been at it since eight o'clock last night, and now its five (twenty-one hours), for three-and-sixpence and a half-quartern. That isn't the regular pay—it's four shillings; but when a man gets to my age he can't stick out for sixpence." So we went a little further, until we came on a snuggery known to him as celebrated for the quality of its porter and favourable to uninterrupted converse, and there we sat down, with the loaf on the table..

And here I may state that I was not altogether unprepared for the revelations my journeyman baker might make to me. I had already given some consideration to the poor man's loaf. Horrified as I was, and as thousands of fathers of families must have been, by the appalling rumour recently set floating-that the science of adulteration as regards bread had advanced a prodigious stride, and that, instead of comparatively simple alum, some deadly preparation of copper was now used by the murderous baker to give colour to bad flour-in order to test this alarming accusation, I caused to be obtained from six various poor neighbourhoods as many two-pound loaves, which were placed in the same able hands to which were entrusted for analysis the samples of gin and beer treated of some time since. Before I sought my baker, who in forty years of his practical life must have made tens of thousands of loaves, I had in my possession Professor

Attfield's report. What I was desirous of ascertaining was, in what degree a working baker's statement would correspond with the inexorable verdict of the man of

science.

"I have been a journeyman baker over forty years, and I dare say that in a regular service and as odd man I have worked in fifty shops in London at the very least, and I never knew anything but the regular alum to be used in the way of what you call adulteration. Never, except at- -'s, in the Kentish Town Road. There was something used there, but I don't know the name of it. It was kept locked up, and when we wanted to make a biling of it we had to go to the master, and he gave it us-about a pint of it. It was like fine salt, only shinier. We used to stir it in a copper of water till the copper-stick would stand upright in it, then it was ready for use. It's all nonsense. What in

terest has the baker got in poisoning people? All that he wants to do is to eke out his flour and make as much out of it as he can, or, if his flour is rather dicky, to make it pass. Nothing's better than alum; it certainly do work wonders with flour that isn't up to the mark. Sometimes too much is used, I dare say; but that isn't always the baker's fault.

“What do I mean by that? Why, that the baker is misled. The flour is very often doctored before he gets it. I won't say it of town millers, but I'll make bold to say it of country millers that it is quite a common practice with them to alum the flour. Country millers who have a lot of commission shops, go ahead with the alum worse than any of 'em. It's pretty much between some of the millers and some of the bakers as it is between the big brewers and the public-houses. There are hundreds of shops in London with the baker's name over the door, but it's no more his business than it's yours. That's where the mischief is. A baker gets into difficulties, and can't pay up; and, especially if it is a good cutting neighbourhood, in comes the miller, and takes the business over his head, allowing, say, five shillings a sack for making, and the bit of extra profit he may be able to make on rolls, and them sort of small things. The baker doesn't have a chance. They're wide-awake, them country millers

They know to a grain almost how much alum their flour will stand, and if the baker ventures on a little bit more, so as to make an extra few shillings on his own hook, as the saying is, why, you see, he very often makes a mess of it.

"Alum the flour strong-strong to bear water, as well as whitening it. It binds; and when you use a lot of rice and 'taters, you wants a binder for 'em."

"How much rice is used, say, to a sack of flour?"

"It depends on the neighbourhood-if it's a 'cutting' or a 'fair price.' You might take a pound of rice as commonly used to a sack of flour. No, it don't seem much; but think of the lot of water a pound of boiled rice sucks up if it's properly managed. Eight quarts it will suck up; and there's sixteen pounds' weight to begin with. There isn't any secret about bread-making-it's all a question of getting the article to stand as much water as possible. That's where the baker's profit is. He is a good baker who can get ninety-eight four-pound loaves out of a sack of flour with the other grievances -he meant "ingredients," but he called them grievances most distinctly." I'm speaking of country flour."

6

"A sack of town flour will make a hundred-and-two fourpound loaves. Country flour is always two and three shillings a sack cheaper than town. In knocking up a cheap loaf the management of the oven has a lot to do with it. Good bread will bake in a brisk oven in an hour and a quarter, but the other sort wants nursing. If your oven was too fierce, it would draw all the profit out—the water I mean, that you've been trying to get into it. It must be baked slow for two hours in a slack oven, and then you are able to draw it with the gravy in it,' as we say. We have to make a good allowance with this kind of bread for steaming off-an ounce to the pound. It will lose quite that, and perhaps a little more. It wouldn't do in poor neighbourhoods to make the bread full weight. They buy their bread out of the scale, and they would think they were cheated if they didn't get the bit over. People that deal at 'cutting shops' will have a tall loaf and a white loaf, and it is impossible to accommodate them at the price unless they will stand to the alum and the rest of the grievances.

"The quantity of salt isn't always the same. Generally it's