one in particular I remember to this day. A man half dressed pushed
open a broken window beneath us, just as we passed by, and there
issued such a blast of corruption, made up of gases bred by filth,
air breathed and rebreathed a hundred times, charged with odours of
unnameable personal uncleanness and disease, that I staggered to the
gutter with a qualm which I could scarcely conquer. At the doors of
the houses stood grimy women with their arms folded and their hair
disordered. Grimier boys and girls had tied a rope to broken
railings, and were swinging on it. The common door to a score of
lodgings stood ever open, and the children swarmed up and down the
stairs carrying with them patches of mud every time they came in from
the street. The wholesome practice which amongst the decent poor
marks off at least one day in the week as a day on which there is to
be a change; when there is to be some attempt to procure order and
cleanliness; a day to be preceded by soap and water, by shaving, and
by as many clean clothes as can be procured, was unknown here. There
was no break in the uniformity of squalor; nor was it even possible
for any single family to emerge amidst such altogether suppressive
surroundings. All self-respect, all effort to do anything more than
to satisfy somehow the grossest wants, had departed. The shops were
open; most of them exhibiting a most miscellaneous collection of
goods, such as bacon cut in slices, fire-wood, a few loaves of bread,
and sweetmeats in dirty bottles. Fowls, strange to say, black as the
flagstones, walked in and out of these shops, or descended into the
dark areas. The undertaker had not put up his shutters. He had
drawn down a yellow blind, on which was painted a picture of a
suburban cemetery. Two funerals, the loftiest effort of his craft,
were depicted approaching the gates. When the gas was alight behind
the blind, an effect was produced which was doubtless much admired.
He also displayed in his window a model coffin, a work of art. It