Only conceive him, I say, drudging in such guise from morning till night, without any rational enjoyment but to beat the children.

Would you compare such a dog's life as that with your own--the happiest under heaven--true Eden life, as the Germans would say,--pitching your tent under the pleasant hedge-rows, listening to the song of the feathered tribes, collecting all the leaky kettles in the neighbourhood, soldering and joining, earning your honest bread by the wholesome sweat of your brow--making ten holes--hey, what's this?
what's the man crying for?
Suddenly the tinker had covered his face with his hands, and begun to sob and moan like a man in the deepest distress; the breast of his wife was heaved with emotion; even the children were agitated, the youngest began to roar.
_Myself_ .-- What's the matter with you; what are you all crying about?
_Tinker_ (uncovering his face) .-- Lord, why to hear you talk; isn't that enough to make anybody cry--even the poor babes?
Yes, you said right, 'tis life in the garden of Eden--the tinker's; I see so now that I'm about to give it up.
_Myself_ .-- Give it up! you must not think of such a thing.
_Tinker_ .-- No, I can't bear to think of it, and yet I must; what's to be done?
How hard to be frightened to death, to be driven off the roads.
_Myself_ .-- Who has driven you off the roads?
_Tinker_ .-- Who! the Flaming Tinman.
_Myself_ .-- Who is he?
_Tinker_ .-- The biggest rogue in England, and the cruellest, or he wouldn't have served me as he has done--I'll tell you all about it.

I was born upon the roads, and so was my father before me, and my mother too; and I worked with them as long as they lived, as a dutiful child, for I have nothing to reproach myself with on their account; and when my father died I took up the business, and went his beat, and supported my mother for the little time she lived; and when she died I married this young woman, who was not born upon the roads, but was a small tradesman's daughter, at Glo'ster.

She had a kindness for me, and, notwithstanding her friends were against the match, she married the poor tinker, and came to live with him upon the roads.

Well, young man, for six or seven years I was the happiest fellow breathing, living just the life you described just now--respected by everybody in this beat; when in an evil hour comes this Black Jack, this flaming tinman, into these parts, driven as they say out of Yorkshire--for no good, you may be sure.