Page 182 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

never saw him strike one, and he used to lecture me for ex-
travagance when I struck mine. His method was to cadge a
light from strangers, sometimes going without a smoke for
half an hour rather than strike a match.
Self-pity was the clue to his character. The thought of his
bad luck never seemed to leave him for an instant. He would
break long silences to exclaim, apropos of nothing, ‘It’s hell
when yer clo’es begin to go up de spout, eh?’ or ‘Dat tay in de
spike ain’t tay, it’s piss,’ as though there was nothing else in
the world to think about. And he had a low, worm-like envy
of anyone who was better off—not of the rich, for they were
beyond his social horizon, but of men in work. He pined
for work as an artist pines to be famous. If he saw an old
man working he would say bitterly, ‘Look at dat old—kee-
pin’ able-bodied men out o’ work’; or if it was a boy, ‘It’s
dem young devils what’s takin’ de bread out of our mouths.’
And all foreigners to him were ‘dem bloody dagoes’—for,
according to his theory, foreigners were responsible for un-
employment.
He looked at women with a mixture of longing and ha-
tred. Young, pretty women were too much above him to
enter into his ideas, but his mouth watered at prostitutes.
A couple of scarlet-lipped old creatures would go past; Pad-
dy’s face would flush pale pink, and he would turn and stare
hungrily after the women. ‘Tarts!’ he would murmur, like a
boy at a sweetshop window. He told me once that he had not
had to do with a woman for two years—since he had lost his
job, that is—and he had forgotten that one could aim higher
than prostitutes. He had the regular character of a tramp—

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