the si a mm s for a bed and sixpence for more an he generously proposed that we drink up the whole shilling my mate e cut up rough night he explained an the got m so you can in wi me say i said yes and by the time we had soaked our a man and the abyss selves ill a whole shilling s worth of beer and slept the night on a miserable bed in a miserable den i knew him pretty fairly for what he was and that in one respect he was representative of a large body of the lower class london workman my later experience he was london born his father a and a before him as a child his home was the streets and the he had never learned to read and had never felt the need for it � a vain and useless accomplishment he held at least for a man of his station in life he had had a mother and numerous brothers and sisters all crammed into a couple of rooms and living on poorer and less regular food than he could ordinarily rustle for himself in fact he never went home except at periods when he was unfortunate in his own food petty and begging along the streets and a trip or two to sea as mess boy a few more as coal and then a full he had reached the top of his life and in the course of this he had also out a philosophy of life an ugly and repulsive philosophy but withal a very logical and sensible one from his point of view when i asked him what he lived for he immediately answered a voyage to sea for a man must live and get the the people of the abyss and then the paying off and the big drunk at the end after that little in the from mates with a few left like myself and when was played out another trip to sea and a repetition of the but women i suggested when he had finished the sole end of existence he his pot upon the bar and is a thing my as learnt me t let alone it don t pay it don t pay s a man like me want o eh jest you tell me there was my mar she was enough a the about an the man mis when e come ome w was seldom i grant an fer w y o she didn t make is ome that was w y then there s the other ow do they treat a pore with a few s in is a good drunk is e s got in is a good long drunk an the skin im out of is money so quick e ain t ad a glass i know i ve ad my fling an i know s an i tell you where s is trouble � an on an a month s ard labor back of it all an no pay day when you come out m a man and the abyss but a wife and children i insisted a home i of your own and all that think of it back from a voyage little children climbing on your knee and the wife happy and smiling and a kiss for you when she lays the table and a kiss all around from the babies when they go to bed and the kettle singing and the long talk afterward of where you ve been and what you ve seen and of her and all the little at home while you ve been away and � i he cried with a playful of his fist on my shoulder s yer game eh a an in an kettle all on ten a month w en you ave a ship an four w en you t i ll tell you i d get on four ten � a no coal t make the kettle sing an the kettle up the that s i d get enough t make a well glad to be back t sea a for t make you mis jest take my counsel an don t ave em look at me i can ave my beer w en i like an no blessed an a for bread i m i am with my beer an mates like you an a good ship an another trip to sea so i say let s ave another pint an s good enough fer me without going further with the speech of this the people of the abyss young fellow of two and twenty i think i have sufficiently indicated his philosophy of hfe and the reason for it home life he had never known the word home aroused nothing but unpleasant associations in the low wages u the crow up of his father and of other men in the same walk in life he found sufficient reason for wife and children as and causes of misery an unconscious utterly and he sought the greatest possible happiness for himself and found it in drink a man and the abyss a young a premature wreck physical inability to do a s work the or the and the end � he saw it all as clearly as i but it held no terrors for him from the moment of his birth all the forces of his had tended to him and he viewed his wretched inevitable future with a and i could not shake and yet he was not a bad man he was not vicious and brutal he had normal and a more than average his eyes were blue and round shaded by long lashes and wide apart and there was a laugh � in them and a fund of humor behind the brow and general features were good the mouth and lips sweet though already developing a harsh twist the chin was 