and breeding men and women in such degradation that that torture
should seem to them mere ordinary and natural life."

"I know, I know," I said, rather impatiently. "That was what was;
tell me something of what is. Is any of that left?"

"Not an inch," said he; "but some memory of it abides with us, and I
am glad of it. Once a year, on May-day, we hold a solemn feast in
those easterly communes of London to commemorate The Clearing of
Misery, as it is called. On that day we have music and dancing, and
merry games and happy feasting on the site of some of the worst of
the old slums, the traditional memory of which we have kept. On that
occasion the custom is for the prettiest girls to sing some of the
old revolutionary songs, and those which were the groans of the
discontent, once so hopeless, on the very spots where those terrible
crimes of class-murder were committed day by day for so many years.
To a man like me, who have studied the past so diligently, it is a
curious and touching sight to see some beautiful girl, daintily clad,
and crowned with flowers from the neighbouring meadows, standing
amongst the happy people, on some mound where of old time stood the
wretched apology for a house, a den in which men and women lived
packed amongst the filth like pilchards in a cask; lived in such a
way that they could only have endured it, as I said just now, by
being degraded out of humanity--to hear the terrible words of
threatening and lamentation coming from her sweet and beautiful lips,
and she unconscious of their real meaning: to hear her, for
instance, singing Hood's Song of the Shirt, and to think that all the
time she does not understand what it is all about--a tragedy grown
inconceivable to her and her listeners. Think of that, if you can,
and of how glorious life is grown!"