CHAPTER XXXII.

CASIMIR'S RECRUITS.

MUST now conduct the reader to

that squalid part of the town where

Casimir in former days had worked; and I must describe a man who was a very important personage in that quarter. His name was John Garlick, and he was an old man. When I say 66 old," I mean he was about the age when thriving barristers are inclined "to take silk," and when rising members of Parliament are spoken of as likely to be connected with the next administration.

But John Garlick had sedulously cultivated old age, and made the most of it as a means of maintaining his power. Being a wizened little

fellow, and slightly hump-backed, he was aided by nature in his effort to appear much older than he was. The profane and the scornful sometimes called him "Humpy;" but by far the greater number called him "wise old John." He really was a very clever man; but probably, without that cleverness, he would have attained his present high station by a phrase which he was always using. He was always saying, "Everybody is so hasty," or "you are all so hasty;" or "haste it is, that has done it," when anything was done which was not right. Not that John Garlick was at all conservative. He was, in fact, a determined Radical, and took a great part in the contests between the workmen and their masters; but he never joined any workman's club, for it was part of old John's policy to stand aloof, and to be the person to be consulted in all difficulties. Nothing came amiss to him in the way of consultation; and he was as ready to give his advice to lad and lass when they were meditating marriage, as he was to advise upon the best mode of resisting

"the masters."

Indeed he was universally consulted about love affairs; and when a marriage was approved by "wise old John," who thought that lads and lasses, like other people, were very hasty, the marriage was sure of general approbation.

Old John had not attained to this power and authority without much scheming for it. There are grand ambitions very low down in human life; and old John had struggled and schemed and waited for his position as the wise man of this suburb, quite as much as any Prime Minister has struggled and schemed and waited for his.

When Casimir Maremma had determined upon his enterprise of emigration, one of his first thoughts was to recruit largely for his emigrants in that quarter of the town in which he had lived as a workman. He knew those people well, both collectively and individually. There is nothing like working with a man for finding out what he is like and what he can do. We see this in the

higher classes of society.

You may meet a man

very often in what is called society without really

ascertaining anything of his character, or of his powers. But only sit in committee with him for a few hours, or have any other business to transact with him, and you soon find out what he is like and what he can do.

Casimir had not only taken great heed of the men with whom he had worked, keeping lists of them according to their several qualifications, but he had also paid great attention to the children, with whom "Gentleman George," as they called him, was an especial favourite. He had not mentioned any of these things in his letters to his father, which were always devoted to more serious topics; but he had, throughout his career as a workman, been very observant of all the different members of the population which surrounded him. Some of these I may now describe. There were two boys whose occupation was the selling lucifer matches. These two had especially attracted Casimir's notice. They were twins; they were very interesting and very intelligent boys, and would have been singularly handsome, but for one great defect.

Each of them had an eye misplaced, as it were. I do not know what their names were, but Casimir always called them Loucher senior and Loucher junior. Loucher senior's right eye was quite out of its proper place; and Loucher junior's left eye had the same untoward position. The intense affection of the children for one another was most touching. Casimir would give one of them some cherries or a tart, and he observed that the poor little fellow, however hungry he might be, never ate any of the tart or the cherries until he could find his brother and share it with him. The two little fellows went out to different railway-stations to sell their matches. Loucher senior was the more bold and pushing boy of the two. In fact, barring the slight accomplishments of reading and writing, there was hardly anything that a London boy of his age could say or do, that Loucher senior was not up to. Naturally, therefore, he was in general the better sales-boy of the two. It was a touching sight, which Casimir had often contrived to witness, to see the two children sitting on the kerbstone with