No More Learning

"

Dick's business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the speaker
keenly. "That man means something," he said. "I'll do no business till
I've seen Torpenhow. There's a big deal coming. " So he departed, making
no promises, to his one little room by the Docks. And that day was
the seventh of the month, and that month, he reckoned with awful
distinctness, had thirty-one days in it! It is not easy for a man of
catholic tastes and healthy appetites to exist for twenty-four days on
fifty shillings. Nor is it cheering to begin the experiment alone in
all the loneliness of London. Dick paid seven shillings a week for his
lodging, which left him rather less than a shilling a day for food and
drink. Naturally, his first purchase was of the materials of his craft;
he had been without them too long. Half a day's investigations and
comparison brought him to the conclusion that sausages and mashed
potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best food. Now, sausages once or
twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant. As lunch, even, with
mashed potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner they are impertinent.
At the end of three days Dick loathed sausages, and, going, forth,
pawned his watch to revel on sheep's head, which is not as cheap as it
looks, owing to the bones and the gravy.
Then he returned to sausages
and mashed potatoes. Then he confined himself entirely to mashed
potatoes for a day, and was unhappy because of pain in his inside. Then
he pawned his waistcoat and his tie, and thought regretfully of money
thrown away in times past. There are few things more edifying unto
Art than the actual belly-pinch of hunger, and Dick in his few walks
abroad,--he did not care for exercise; it raised desires that could not
be satisfied--found himself dividing mankind into two classes,--those
who looked as if they might give him something to eat, and those who
looked otherwise. "I never knew what I had to learn about the human
face before," he thought; and, as a reward for his humility, Providence
caused a cab-driver at a sausage-shop where Dick fed that night to leave
half eaten a great chunk of bread. Dick took it,--would have fought all
the world for its possession,--and it cheered him.

The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with impatience,
he went to draw his money. Then he hastened to Torpenhow's address
and smelt the smell of cooking meats all along the corridors of the
chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and Dick burst into his room,
to be received with a hug which nearly cracked his ribs, as Torpenhow
dragged him to the light and spoke of twenty different things in the
same breath.

"But you're looking tucked up," he concluded.

"Got anything to eat? " said Dick, his eye roaming round the room.

"I shall be having breakfast in a minute. What do you say to sausages? "

"No, anything but sausages! Torp, I've been starving on that accursed
horse-flesh for thirty days and thirty nights.