I don't like to say nothink unliberal or unvatermanlike, but this I vill say, the ruin of us is Them tarnation, smoking, steaming, fizzing, pothering, unnattaral-looking water-buses. Unnattaral, _I say_—for who ever meant wessels to go on wheels? or a nasty, long, curly, black, Stinking, pothery pennant o' smoke to take place o' the British Union Jack? And as if that vosn't enough, to spoil our trade and set all our poor old hearts a breaking, Mr. Brunel must come to finish us up, poor wretches! vith his horrid _under_-taking. Mister B. is a wery ambitious man, that's vot he is, and his work a wery great bore: But, thank heav'n! it'll be a long time before his tunnel (whatever his fame may do) reaches from shore to shore.
I never gets a sight o' nothink good now—beefsteaks, nor anything else that's nice: No ingins (except steam ingins), and you may count my ribs (tho' you can't the ribs of ice). I did a job for a confectioner t'other day, as vos a trying to larn to skate, But his heels tript up right bang, and down he fell on the back of his pate. Vell, up I vips him in my arms, and carries him straight off home in a trice. I _did_ think I should get a glass of grog for that job, but, says he, "Von't you take a ice?" "No, Sir," says I, walking off wery indignant, and looking jest as sour as sour crout, "Ven I takes a drop o' liquor I al'ys has it 'varm vith'—I doesn't like 'cold vithout.'"
But it's no use talking, for talking only makes one more hungrier and more drier: And the heat of argiment's wery unlike the heat of a good kitchen fire. I'm as dry as an old boat, vot ain't good for nothink in life but to knock up and burn; And so I sees plain enough suicide's the only side on vich I can turn. Bless you, I'm as hollow as a drum, and as thin as any poor devil of a church mouse; So here goes for the fatal plunge—what's a plunge more or less to a man as hasn't got a _sous_?
Here goes—but, oh, crikey! vhere _am_ I to go to find a drop o' vater un-froze? Vell, that's the cuttingest thing of all—to think as a man can't put a end to his woes In his own native element, as he vos bred and born to, and lived in, man and b'y, Uppards of thirty-six year come next Midsummer (vich it never vill come again to I). Vell, I've tuck my leave of the river, and my poor miserable little funny, so pretty and red: I shall never shoot Lunnun Bridge no more, so I'll go and shoot myself instead.