celerity of her movements, the dreadful automatic certainty of
her touch is almost maddening; we wait and watch, but all in
vain, for some false movement that shall tell us she is a human
and not a machine. But no, over her shoulder to the bed on the
left side, or over her shoulder to the bed on her right side, the
boxes fly, and minute by minute and hour by hour the boxes will
continue to grow till her task is completed. Then she will put
them together, tie them in dozens, and lay herself down on that
bed that contains the two children.

Need we continue? I think not, but it may give wings to
imagination when I say that in London's underworld there are at
least 50,000 women whose earnings do not exceed three halfpence
per hour, and who live under conditions similar to those
described. Working, working, day and night, when they have work
to do, practically starving when work is scarce.

The people of the underworld are not squeamish, they talk freely,
and as a matter of course about life and death. Their children
are at an early age made acquainted with both mysteries; a dead
child and one newly born sometimes occupy a room with other
children.

People tell me of the idleness of the underworld and there is
plenty of it; but what astonishes me is the wonderful, the
persistent, but almost unrewarded toil that is unceasingly going
on, in which even infants share.

Come again with me in the day-time, climb with me six dark and
greasy flights of stairs, for the underworld folk are sometimes