"I'm a 'earty man, I am," he announced. "Not like the other chaps at my
shop, I ain't. They consider me a fine specimen of manhood. W'y, d' ye
know, I weigh ten stone!"

I was ashamed to tell him that I weighed one hundred and seventy pounds,
or over twelve stone, so I contented myself with taking his measure.
Poor, misshapen little man! His skin an unhealthy colour, body gnarled
and twisted out of all decency, contracted chest, shoulders bent
prodigiously from long hours of toil, and head hanging heavily forward
and out of place! A "'earty man,' 'e was!"

"How tall are you?"

"Five foot two," he answered proudly; "an' the chaps at the shop . . . "

"Let me see that shop," I said.

The shop was idle just then, but I still desired to see it. Passing
Leman Street, we cut off to the left into Spitalfields, and dived into
Frying-pan Alley. A spawn of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for
all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry
pond. In a narrow doorway, so narrow that perforce we stepped over her,
sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at breasts grossly naked and
libelling all the sacredness of motherhood. In the black and narrow hall
behind her we waded through a mess of young life, and essayed an even
narrower and fouler stairway. Up we went, three flights, each landing
two feet by three in area, and heaped with filth and refuse.

There were seven rooms in this abomination called a house. In six of the