CHAPTER XIX.
A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES .-- AFTERNOON The 'Banks of Jordan' was a public-house in the city, which from its appearance did not seem to do a very thriving trade; but as it was carried on from year to year in the same dull, monotonous, dead-alive sort of fashion, it must be surmised that some one found an interest in keeping it open.
Charley, when he entered the door punctually at two o'clock, saw that it was as usual nearly deserted.

One long, lanky, middle-aged man, seedy as to his outward vestments, and melancholy in countenance, sat at one of the tables.

But he was doing very little good for the establishment: he had no refreshment of any kind before him, and was intent only on a dingy pocket-book in which he was making entries with a pencil.
You enter the 'Banks of Jordan' by two folding doors in a corner of a very narrow alley behind the Exchange.

As you go in, you observe on your left a little glass partition, something like a large cage, inside which, in a bar, are four or five untempting-looking bottles; and also inside the cage, on a chair, is to be seen a quiet-looking female, who is invariably engaged in the manufacture of some white article of inward clothing.

Anything less like the flashy-dressed bar-maidens of the western gin palaces it would be difficult to imagine.