esence known by venting his ill-humour on a ragged
urchin, who, being unable to bring his face on a level with the counter
by any other process, has employed himself in climbing up, and then
hooking himself on with his elbows--an uneasy perch, from which he has
fallen at intervals, generally alighting on the toes of the person in his
immediate vicinity. In the present case, the unfortunate little wretch
has received a cuff which sends him reeling to this door; and the donor
of the blow is immediately the object of general indignation.

'What do you strike the boy for, you brute?' exclaims a slipshod woman,
with two flat irons in a little basket. 'Do you think he's your wife,
you willin?' 'Go and hang yourself!' replies the gentleman addressed,
with a drunken look of savage stupidity, aiming at the same time a blow
at the woman which fortunately misses its object. 'Go and hang yourself;
and wait till I come and cut you down.'--'Cut you down,' rejoins the
woman, 'I wish I had the cutting of you up, you wagabond! (loud.) Oh!
you precious wagabond! (rather louder.) Where's your wife, you willin?
(louder still; women of this class are always sympathetic, and work
themselves into a tremendous passion on the shortest notice.) Your poor
dear wife as you uses worser nor a dog--strike a woman--you a man! (very
shrill;) I wish I had you--I'd murder you, I would, if I died for
it!'--'Now be civil,' retorts the man fiercely. 'Be civil, you wiper!'
ejaculates the woman contemptuously. 'An't it shocking?' she continues,
turning round, and appealing to an old woman who is peeping out of one of
the little closets we have before described, and who has not the
slightest objection to join in the attack, possessing, as she does, the
comfortable conviction that she is bolted in. 'Ain't it shocking, ma'am?
(Dreadful! says the old woman in a parenthesis, not exactly knowing what
the question refers to.) He's got a wife, ma'am, as takes in mangling,
and is as 'dustrious and hard-working a young 'ooman as can be, (very
fast) as lives in the back parlour of our 'ous, which my husband and me
lives in the front one (with great rapidity)--and we hears him a beaten'
on her sometimes when he comes home drunk, the whole night through, and
not only a beaten' her, but beaten' his own child too, to make her more
miserable--ugh, you beast! and she, poor creater, won't swear the peace
agin him, nor do nothin', because she likes the wretch arter all