I now began to think of getting a little money beforehand, and
expecting better work, I left Palmer's to work at Watts's, near
Lincoln's Inn Fields, a still greater printing-house. Here I continued
all the rest of my stay in London.
At my first admission into this printing-house I took to working at
press, imagining I felt a want of the bodily exercise I had been used
to in America, where presswork is mixed with composing. I drank only
water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers of
beer. On occasion, I carried up and down stairs a large form of types
in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands. They wondered
to see, from this and several instances, that the _Water American_, as
they called me, was _stronger_ than themselves, who drank _strong_
beer! We had an alehouse boy, who attended always in the house to
supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint
before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a
pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the
afternoon about six o'clock, and another when he had done his day's
work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he
supposed, to drink _strong_ beer that he might be _strong_ to labor. I
endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer
could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley
dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour
in a pennyworth of bread; and therefore, if he would eat that with a
pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer.
He drank on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his
wages every Saturday night for that muddling liquor; an expense I was
free from. And thus these poor devils keep themselves always under.
Watts after some weeks desiring to have me in the composing-room, I
left the pressmen: a new _bien venu_ or sum for drink, being five
shillings, was demanded of me by the compositors. I thought it an
imposition, as I had paid below: the master thought so too, and
forbade my paying it. I stood out two or three weeks, was accordingly
considered as an excommunicate, and had so many little pieces of
private mischief done me, by mixing my sorts, transposing my pages,
breaking my matter, etc., etc., if I were ever so little out of the
room,--and all ascribed to the chappel ghost, which they said ever
haunted those not regularly admitted,--that notwithstanding the
master's protection I found myself obliged to comply and pay the
money, convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is
to live with continually.
I was now on a fair footing with them, and soon acquired considerable
influence. I proposed some reasonable alterations in their chappel
laws, and carried them against all opposition. From my example, a
great part of them left their muddling breakfast of beer and bread and
cheese, finding they could with me be supplied from a neighboring
house with a large porringer of hot water-gruel sprinkled with pepper,
crumbed with bread, and a bit of butter in it, for the price of a pint
of beer; viz., three half-pence. This was a more comfortable as well
as cheaper breakfast, and kept their heads clearer. Those who
continued sotting with beer all day were often, by not paying, out of
credit at the alehouse, and used to make interest with me to get beer;
their _light_, as they phrased it, _being out_. I watched the
pay-table on Saturday night, and collected what I stood engaged for
them, having to pay sometimes near thirty shillings a week on their
account. This, and my being esteemed a pretty good _rigile_,--that is,
a jocular verbal satirist,--supported my consequence in the society.
My constant attendance (I never making a St. Monday) recommended me to
the master; and my uncommon quickness at composing occasioned my being
put upon all work of dispatch, which was generally better paid. So I
went on now very agreeably.