night shut up together. Through every
window I could see the same unwholesome
colour of the faces, the same turn-up bedstead
with the patchwork quilt, the same ricketty
deal table and chair, the same kind of glaring
coloured prints upon the walls. At one door,
a donkey harnessed to a long board upon
wheels, was waiting while his master was
employed in peeling off the withered leaves
to give a livelier appearance to a pile of yellow
cabbages. The withered leaves were dropped
at his own door-way, where they would lie
and rot. At some windows there were
men in shirt-sleeves smoking, and looking
on with an air of lazy satisfaction. The
donkey took advantage of his opportunity
to munch the outside of a cabbage that
had just been trimmed; and, being
unluckily caught in the act, was checked by a
sharp jerk of the bit, and three hard blows
over the head. Not the log which Giant
Blunderbore belaboured in the bed, could
have been more patient under blows than
that unhappy animal. Only a faint twitch of
one ear betokened that he was a living donkey.
His master, irritated, no doubt, with what
looked like a defiance of authority, cried
"Er-r-r-r-h, you brute!" and giving it an
extra kick in the ribs, watched for the effect
with a stern eye.

There were three outlets to this square. It
mattered not which I took. It was my whim to
wander in this labyrinth, asking no one to direct
me, until I should emerge once more into the
light of day. I got into long passages between
high walls of houses without any windows to
them, except here and there a hole; and here
and there, I passed under a narrow archway,
leading into other courts and rookeries
interminable. Strange beings met me here.
A shuffling woman passed me, with a face that
was born miserable, in clothes as jagged as a
saw, carrying a bundle of rushes to be knotted
and plaited for the wicks of night-lights. It was
the time for coming home from work. A tiny
boy—so set in shape that any one might see
that he would never grow bigger, ragged of
course, and covered with bits of flock and
feather—was on his way home from the bedding
factory at which he worked. Shouting out the
last cant phrase, of which he did not know
the meaning, and stamping as he went to keep
alive a constant ring and echo of his steps
between the walls, he did not seem to grumble
at his lot, or to think it hard. Then, I met a
man with long, black, greasy ringlets, in an old-
fashioned great-coat that had a marvellously
greasy collar; he was looking downward,
hurrying on with a strange nervous step, as
though he had been used to pick his way
barefoot over sharp flints. Next, I met an old man,
with thin grey hair—so old, that I think he
must have lived, when he was young, in some
more wholesome place—thin, tall, hollow-
chested, but not decrepid, with his skin so
tightly stretched upon his face and forehead,
that it seemed a very death's head that peeped
out above his shoulders. He carried leaves
of deal, cut in wafery thinness, to make bonnet-
boxes.

It was an awkward corner into which I
had got myself. I had to go back. Everybody
wondered why I ever came. I noticed
that they called the place "Leech's Rents;"
and in my heart I did not bless Leech, nor
envy his rents. But less cause to bless him
had that bricklayer's labourer who had been
laid up for six months, and unfit for work.
His complaint was in the lungs. He had
been very bad lately, he said, and was now
getting better. I should not like to tell him
so, but I feared those loosely-hanging clothes of
his would never fit him properly again. They
were all labouring men like himself up here, he
said. He agreed with me that it was a filthy
hole, not fit for a dog to live in, and then
his bit of energy set him coughing: when
the cough ceased, he went on to say—"Lord
bless you, sir! what you see now is nothing."
He didn't know why they lived up here, except
that it was cheap; perhaps they might get
cleaner places as cheap, if they tried; but
they didn't think about it. "Most of 'em don't
mind it, sir." He couldn't say who Leech
was. "The place belongs now to Skinner, the
builder."

There were not many shops. Now and
then there was a dingy beer-shop, with doors
from which the paint had been rubbed off
by dirty hands—the haunt of myriads of
flies, who got intoxicated on the sloppy
counter, and then staggered against the sticky
fly-papers about the walls. There were no
shining taps; no cabinet work; no vats;
no portraits in the window of an enormous
fat man explaining to lean blue teetotallers,
how he too was lean and blue-visaged
before the happy day when he discovered
that establishment, and drank of its pure malt
and hops; no programme of a goose-club,
showing the members of a discontented
family at dinner, who, having bought their
goose at a poulterer's were forced to carve
it with a saw; and side by side with them
the cheerful family, congratulating each other
upon having joined a goose-club; there was no
judge and jury club; no harmonic meeting,
admission free; there were no vans to start
to Hampton Court or High Beech at two
and threepence each person, to be paid for
beforehand by weekly instalments. Nothing
was there to allure the passer-by, or to tell
him what cheer might be found within; but,
a short red curtain, and a row of beer-barrels
inside, from which the beer was drawn direct.
No wonder that the "Educational Institute,"
seeing the enemy so weak just here, should
stick up a bill over the way offering for trifling
sums to instruct young men and women every
evening in "Tonic Sol Fa Singing," as well
as in French, and Model Drawing! But who
that could sing (tonically, or otherwise), talk
French and draw, had fixed his miserable
habitation there?