tratford omnibuses, and
so had an opportunity of following, or rather joining in, the procession
as far as Whitechapel, where the "boat" turned off into Commercial Road.
For the whole of that space the footway was filled with one seething
mass of humanity, and the publicans were driving a rattling trade
outside and inside their establishments. As the glare of the coloured
fires lighted up the pale faces of the crowd with a ghastly hue, and I
heard the silly and too often obscene remarks bandied between the
bystanders and the returning revellers, I could not help agitating the
question, whether it would not be possible to devise some innocent
recreation, with a certain amount of refinement in it, to take the place
of these--to say the best--foolish revelries. In point of fact, they are
worse than foolish. Not only was it evident that the whole affair from
beginning to end, as far as adults were concerned, was an apotheosis of
drink; but amongst another section of the populace, the boys and girls,
or what used to be boys and girls--for, as the Parisians say, "Il n'y a
plus de garcons"--one must have been blind indeed not to see the
mischief that was being done on those East End pavements; done more
thoroughly perhaps, certainly on a vastly larger scale, than in the
purlieus of the forest. It is an uninviting subject to dwell upon; but
one could understand all about baby farms, and Lock Hospitals, and
Contagious Diseases Acts, out there that July night, in the crowded
streets of East London.

It would be unfair to dilate upon these evils, and not to mention an
organization which, for the last ten years, has been seeking to remedy
the mischief. Some hundreds of working men of a more serious stamp,
aided by a few gentlemen and ministers of various denominations, form
themselves into small bands of street preachers, and sallying forth in a
body, hold services and preach sermons at the most populous points of
the Fairlop route. Being curious to see the effect of their bold
labours--for it requires immense "pluck" to face a Whitechapel mob--I
joined one of these detachments, where the Rev. Newman Hall was the
preacher. Before starting, this gentleman gave it as the result of his
long experience with the British workman that there is no use in waiting
for him to come to church. If the church is to do anything with him, it
must go out and meet him in the streets and fields, as it originally
did. Mr. Hall gave some amusing illustr