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
us'd to in America, where presswork is mix'd 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 suppos'd,
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.
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