After pausing at a porkshop, he is jogging
Eastward like myself, with a benevolent
countenance and a watery mouth, as though
musing on the many excellencies of pork,
when he beholds this doubled-up bundle
approaching. He is not so much astonished
at the bundle (though amazed by that), as
at the circumstance that it has within itself
the means of locomotion. He stops, pricks
his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares,
utters a short low growl, and glistens at
the nose—as I conceive, with terror. The
bundle continuing to approach, he barks,
turns tail, and is about to fly, when, arguing.
with himself that flight is not becoming in
a dog, he turns and once more faces the
advancing heap of clothes. After much
hesitation it occurs to him that there may
be a face in it somewhere. Desperately
resolving to undertake the adventure and
pursue the inquiry, he goes slowly up to
the bundle, goes slowly round it, and
coming at length upon the human
countenance down there where never human
countenance should be, gives a yelp of
horror, and flies for the East India Docks.

Being now in the Commercial-road
district of my Beat, and bethinking myself
that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my
pace that I may turn out of the road at
that point, and see how my small Eastern
Star is shining.

The Children's Hospital, to which I gave
that name, is in full force. All its beds
occupied. There is a new face on the bed
where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet
little child is now at rest for ever. Much
kind sympathy has been here, since my
former visit, and it is good to see the walls
profusely garnished with dolls. I wonder
what Poodles may think of them, as they
stretch out their arms above the beds, and
stare, and display their splendid dresses.
Poodles has a greater interest in the
patients. I find him making the round of
the beds, like a house-surgeon, attended by
another dog—a friend—who appears to trot
about with him in the character of his
pupil dresser. Poodles is anxious to make
me known to a pretty little girl, looking
wonderfully healthy, who has had a leg
taken off for cancer of the knee. A difficult
operation, Poodles intimates, wagging
his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly
successful, as you see, dear Sir! The patient,
patting Poodles, adds with a smile: "The
leg was so much trouble to me, that I am
glad it's gone." I never saw anything
in doggery finer than the deportment of
Poodles, when another little girl opens her
mouth to show a peculiar enlargement of
the tongue. Poodles (at that time on a
table, to be on a level with the occasion)
looks at the tongue (with his own
sympathetically out), so very gravely and
knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand
in my waistcoat pocket, and give him a
guinea, wrapped in paper.

On my Beat again, and close to
Limehouse Church, its termination, I found
myself near to certain "Lead Mills." Struck
by the name, which was fresh in my
memory, and finding on inquiry that these
same Lead Mills were identical with those
same Lead Mills of which I made mention
when I first visited the East London
Children's Hospital and its neighbourhood,
as Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved to
have a look at them.

Received by two very intelligent gentlemen,
brothers, and partners with their
father in the concern, and who testified
every desire to show their Works to me
freely, I went over the Lead Mills. The
purport of such works is the conversion of
Pig-Lead into White Lead. This conversion
is brought about by the slow and gradual
effecting of certain successive chemical
changes in the lead itself. The processes
are picturesque and interesting; the most
so, being the burying of the lead at a
certain stage of preparation, in pots; each pot
containing a certain quantity of acid
besides; and all the pots being buried in vast
numbers in layers, under tan, for some ten
weeks.

Hopping up ladders and across planks
and on elevated perches until I was
uncertain whether to liken myself to a
Bird, or a Bricklayer, I became
conscious of standing on nothing particular,
looking down into one of a series of large
cocklofts, with the outer day peeping in
through the chinks in the tiled roof above.
A number of women were ascending to, and
descending from, this cockloft, each carrying
on the upward journey a pot of
prepared lead and acid, for deposition under
the smoking tan. When one layer of pots
was completely filled, it was carefully
covered in with planks, and those were
carefully covered with tan again, and then
another layer of pots was begun above:
sufficient means of ventilation being
preserved through wooden tubes. Going
down into the cockloft then filling, I found
the heat of the tan to be surprisingly great,
and also the odour of the lead and acid to
be not absolutely exquisite, though I believe
not noxious at that stage. In other cocklofts
where the pots were being exhumed, the
heat of the steaming tan was much greater,