AN UNLAWFUL BUSINESS.

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size. The men who are employed as "flushers" to clean the sewers wear leather boots, the legs of which come up to the hips, and of thick leather, and when the rats make an attack on these men, they always flash their lanterns, which are fastened to leather belts around their waists, and this frightens the vermin away, as they are not accustomed to light, and will flee from it if not molested. The big leather boots of the "flushers" cannot be bitten through by the rats.

The trenches or water-tanks for the cleansing of the sewers, are chiefly on the south side of the Thames, and as a proof of the great danger incurred by sewer-hunters from these floods of water suddenly let in on them, I am told that when a ladder was put down a sewer from the street some years ago, on which a hod-carrier was descending with a hod of brick, the rush of water from the sluice struck the ladder, and instantly, ladder, hod-carrier, and all, were swept away, and afterward the poor man was found at the mouth of the sewer, all battered, torn, bruised, and dead.

Whenever a Sewer-Hunter passes through a sewer under a street grating, he is compelled to close his lantern, else the reflection of the light through the grating would call the attention of the police, and he would be taken before a magistrate. Dogs are never taken through the sewers, for the same reason, as their barking would be noticed, although they would be an excellent defense against the rats.

Occasionally skeletons of unfortunate cats have been found in the sewers, their bones completely cleared of flesh, and nothing but a little fur remaining. I should pity the cat that strayed into a sewer, as they do occasionally from house-drains and cesspools.

As the Sewer-Hunters go along in the sewers, they often pick money from between the crevices of the brick-work, and now and then a handful of sovereigns have been taken from these crevices. Sometimes a small pick is needed to recover metals or money from the crevices where they are wedged.

One man told me that he found a small leather bag with two hundred sovereigns and some shillings in it, that had no

doubt been washed out from a drain. He said that he had often found money, and that he was well satisfied with his luck in

general. He had been for twenty years searching the sewers, and had amassed considerable property. He told me his story as follows:

"The first night, ye know, that I went into a sewer, I had a pal with me, as is dead now. Steve Williams was his name— God rest his soul. I felt afcered when I went in and got lost two or three times, but Steve allers found me agin by hollering at me. I got the greatest fright that night I ever got in my life. We were somewhere in a sewer in old Smithfield, and there must have been a distillery somewhere there, for when I turned out of the main sewer into a branch one, I saw by the light of the lantern a thick steam beyond me. I was a little ahead of Steve, who had just got a haul of two silver tableknives and a watch chain of goold, and he was looking at the haul he made when I saw the steam a fillin of the sewer. I went along, when I got near it my head begun to get dizzy, and I fell back on my shoulders into the sewer. I got drunk in the steam from the distillery,-that's what ailed me-and it was so sudden like, that I would have lost my life. if Steve hadn't been there.

"Well, Steve saved my life agin the same night. We were pretty near the mouth of the sewer on the Thames, near Wapping, where we had a boat to take us off, for in those times the peelers never meddled with us like they does now.'

"Well, there was one place very ticklish in the sewer, that Steve had cautioned me about, and this place was all broken and in holes, and it was chuck full of rats. When we came by I was foolish enough to turn the light of my lantern on the broken place in the sewer, and sure enough, there was a reglar colony o' rats in a room-keeping house,-about two thousand of them-with a hall-way and a room gnawed out of the bricks, as large as the room I live in at home. There they were, all stuck together, with their eyes a glarin at me like winkin, and they all in a heap as big as a horse and cart. I never seed such a sight in my life. Steve told me to come on, and I was going, for the rats never said a word all the time, but looked at me and squealed-but just as I was turning around after Steve my foot slipped and I fell, and the lantern dropped into a pool and went out.

"I must have frightened the rats, for there was an awful

squcaling and scampering-but they didn't all run away, for I found a hundred of them fastened on my hands, legs, face, and body, when I fell. You may be sure I hollowed and yelled, for I wasn't used to these vermin then, and the more I hollowed and beat them, the more they squealed and bit me.

"In a few minutes Steve came running back with his lantern, and seeing I was down and couldn't get up, he drove at them with his pole and killed half a dozen of them, and then they left me and jumped at him. Then we went at it for a couple of minutes, battling for our lives, and when we did beat them off we were bitten all over our bodies. I am sure if it warnt for Steve and his lantern that time, I should have been eaten up by the rats. You see, Sir, they thought when I stumbled and fell that I attacked them, for I found out since that they never begin first if they can help it."

CHAPTER XXII.

BACCHUS AND BEER.

Tis an undeniable fact, that the English are the greatest beer-drinking people in the world. The assertion may be disputed in favor of the Germans (and their beverage, lager bier,) but who can compare the thin resin

ous beer of Munich and Vienna with

the heavy bodied, soporific, and sinewy London pale ale, Edinburgh ale, or Guiness Brown Stout, that has ever drank the latter malt liquors.

To believe in his native beer is a necessary part of the Englishman's religion, and it is with the proverbial Briton a trite saying, when an exile at Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Madrid, Constantinople, St. Petersburg, or Calcutta,

"You cawnt get a glass of hale in this blessed country-you knaw. You hawvent got the 'ops you knaw, and ye cawnt make it ye knaw."

English literature and English poetry are full of beer and redolent of malt and hops, from Chaucer and Shakespeare down to the present day. Tom Jones, Roderick Random, the Spectator, the Tatler, the Guardian, Fielding, Hume, Smollett, Pope, Addison, Dryden, Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson, never let slip a chance to prove the virtues and efficacy of beer, and 'Alf and 'Alf.

It was in a room in Barclay & Perkins' brewery in Southwark, then owned by Mr. Thrale, that Samuel Johnson, (who,