Sir?" The rest were made up of unfortunate women of the vilest and most
ragged description, aged itinerants, with features seared with famine,
bleared eyes, dropping jaws, shivering limbs, and all the mortal signs of
hopeless and aidless, and, worst of all, breadless infirmity. Here and
there an Irish accent broke out in the oaths of national impatience, and
was answered by the shrill, broken voice of some decrepit but
indefatigable votaress of pleasure--(Pleasure! good God!) but the chief
character of the meeting was silence;--silence, eager, heavy, engrossing;
and, above them all, shone out the quiet moon, so calm, so holy, so
breathing of still happiness and unpolluted glory, as if it never looked
upon the traces of human passion, and misery, and sin. We stood for some
moments contemplating the group before us, and then, following the steps
of an old, withered crone, who, with a cracked cup in her hand, was
pushing her way through the throng, we found ourselves in that dreary
pandaemonium, at once the origin and the refuge of humble vices--a Gin-
shop.

"Poor devils," said Dartmore, to two or three of the nearest and eagerest
among the crowd, "come in, and I will treat you."

The invitation was received with a promptness which must have been the
most gratifying compliment to the inviter; and thus Want, which is the
mother of Invention, does not object, now and then, to a bantling by
Politeness.

We stood by the counter while our proteges were served, in silent
observation. In low vice, to me, there is always something too gloomy,
almost too fearful for light mirth; the contortions of the madman are
stranger than those of the fool, but one does not laugh at them; the
sympathy is for the cause--not the effect.