To use a Briticism, it was “cruel”; the corresponding Americanism was more appropriate—­it was “fierce.”  I confess I began to grow incensed at this happy crowd streaming by, and to extract a sort of satisfaction from the London statistics which demonstrate that one in every four adults is destined to die on public charity, either in the workhouse, the infirmary, or the asylum.

I talked with the man.  He was fifty-four and a broken-down docker.  He could only find odd work when there was a large demand for labour, for the younger and stronger men were preferred when times were slack.  He had spent a week, now, on the benches of the Embankment; but things looked brighter for next week, and he might possibly get in a few days’ work and have a bed in some doss-house.  He had lived all his life in London, save for five years, when, in 1878, he saw foreign service in India.

Of course he would eat; so would the girl.  Days like this were uncommon hard on such as they, though the coppers were so busy poor folk could get in more sleep.  I awoke the girl, or woman, rather, for she was “Eyght an’ twenty, sir,” and we started for a coffee-house.

“Wot a lot o’ work puttin’ up the lights,” said the man at sight of some building superbly illuminated.  This was the keynote of his being.  All his fife he had worked, and the whole objective universe, as well as his own soul, he could express in terms only of work.  “Coronations is some good,” he went on.  “They give work to men.”

“But your belly is empty,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered.  “I tried, but there wasn’t any chawnce.  My age is against me.  Wot do you work at?  Seafarin’ chap, eh?  I knew it from yer clothes.”

“I know wot you are,” said the girl, “an Eyetalian.”

“No ’e ayn’t,” the man cried heatedly. “’E’s a Yank, that’s wot ’e is.  I know.”

“Lord lumne, look a’ that,” she exclaimed, as we debauched upon the Strand, choked with the roaring, reeling Coronation crowd, the men bellowing and the girls singing in high throaty notes:-

   “Oh! on Coronation D’y, on Coronation D’y,
   We’ll ‘ave a spree, a jubilee, an’ shout ’Ip, ’ip, ’ooray;
   For we’ll all be merry, drinkin’ whisky, wine, and sherry,
   We’ll all be merry on Coronation D’y.”

“‘Ow dirty I am, bein’ around the w’y I ’ave,” the woman said, as she sat down in a coffee-house, wiping the sleep and grime from the corners of her eyes.  “An’ the sights I ‘ave seen this d’y, an’ I enjoyed it, though it was lonesome by myself.  An’ the duchesses an’ the lydies ’ad sich gran’ w’ite dresses.  They was jest bu’ful, bu’ful.”

“I’m Irish,” she said, in answer to a question.  “My nyme’s Eyethorne.”

“What?” I asked.

“Eyethorne, sir; Eyethorne.”

“Spell it.”

“H-a-y-t-h-o-r-n-e, Eyethorne.’

“Oh,” I said, “Irish Cockney.”

“Yes, sir, London-born.”