TAILOR AND POET.

An Autobiography.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND.

MDCCCL.

HARVARD CYLLE RATI DEPOSITED BY THE LIBRARY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

JUN 21 1940

WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.

7178

13-15

ALTON LOCKE,

TAILOR AND POET.

CHAPTER I.

AN EMERSONIAN SERMON.

CERTAINLY, if John Crossthwaite held the victimof-circumstance doctrine in theory, he did not allow Mike Kelly to plead it in practice, as an extenuation of his misdeeds. Very different from his Owenite "it's-nobody's-fault" harangues in the debating society, or his admiration for the teacher of whom my readers shall have a glimpse shortly, was his lecture that evening to the Irishman on poor "It's all your own fault." Unhappy Kelly! he sat there like a beaten cur, looking first at one of us, and then at the other, for mercy, and finding none. As soon as Crossthwaite's tongue was tired, Mackaye's began, on the sins of drunkenness, hastiness, improvidence, over-trustfulness, &c., &c., and, above all, on the cardinal offence of not having signed the protest years before, and spurned the dishonourable