HOW SOME PEOPLE LIVE.

Waikato Argus, Volume III, Issue 211, 18 November 1897, Page 3

HOW SOME PEOPLE LIVE.

In the struggle for life which is so keen at this end of the century, some people resort to strange expedients to get bread and cheese or to increase a pittance to a comfortable income. Inspector Livingstone, who was formerly in charge of the police at the Law Courts, tells a tragic story of a poor and briefless barrister who fought a long and grim battle with fate, and was beaten in the end. In the early hours of the morning he worked as a market porter at Covent Garden, ami then at ten o'clock adjourned to his chambers in the Temple, douned wig and gown, and attended the Courts waiting day after day to grasp the skirts of happy chance. Others as unknown to the world and friendless as he had their opportunity, but none presented itself to him, and in hope ever deferred his race was run.

A Somerset House clerk, who rushed into matrimony before he had properly counted tho cost, and found it difficult to run even a modest household on £l5O a year, especially after the arrival of a little stranger, got over the embarrassment by starting a coffee stall near Smithfield Market in the early morning. He kept his truck in the neighbouiliood, but brought down his stock of comestibles from his home in Camden Town. Fortunately his wife, who did her best to help on the enterprise, was a capital plain cook, and his mutton-pies and buns had a great reputation in the market. He was generally cleared out by eight o'clock, and no one would have thought of identifying him with the smart young man, silk hatted and top-coated, who two hours later crossed the Strand to Somerset House.

A rising author who is now sought by the publishers, but had a particularly hard struggle to find acceptance, tidod over the worst period by acting as a broker's roiau. Taken as a whole, he found it a most unpleasant experience, but he declares that he wouldn't hive missed it for the world, for it has supplied him with material for numbers of sketches and short stories. A Christmas story winch brought him a lot of praise, for iustunce, was a chapter from that experience, and well deserved the encomium of " very realistic " from the critics. A friend of the writer, who rejoices in what the police reports call " a very aristocratic appearauee," and has in addition excellent niamurs, adds euough to a sluider income to pay for the summer holiday of himself aud family, his tailor's and bootmaker's bills, and even his rent, by acting as a private detective at balls and receptions in Belgravia and Mayfair. Chance threw him in contact with the manager of a detective agency which docs a great deal of business of this kind, and his first job was, in fact, simply as a night's diversion at the invitation of the manager aforesaid. But so pleased was the lady of the house with his appearance and obliging courtesy that she made special mention ot it to the manager, who accordingly proposed to my friend that he should accept regular paid employment. He was nothing loth, and now has engagements almost every night during the season. Another curious case is that of a Nonconformist minister in the .South of London who doubles his slender salary by the profits of a flourishing photography business on the other side of the Thames. Originally he took up photography as a pastime, but acquiring considerable skill in the work, was pestered by people who wanted to get their portraits taken on the cheap. So he determined to gain instead of lose by his work, and taking convenient rooms at some distance from the scene of his ministerial labours, set up as a " photographic artist " under another name, his daughter acting as his assistant. Fortune favoured him, and the secret of his constant absence from home was fathomed by the curious of his flock he had made so pioir.ising a business that he stood in no awe of deacons or church, though, indeed, the former have taken a veiy sensible view of the matter, and admire rather than condemn his enterprise.—Cassell's Saturday Journal.