sickness, and the want of water was worse than before; and the crowd
and the companionship of the court robbed them of the last shreds of
self-respect. The drink demon seized upon them. Of course there was
a public-house at both ends of the court. There they fled, one and
all, for shelter, and warmth, and society, and forgetfulness. And
they came out in deeper debt, with inflamed senses and burning brains,
and an unsatisfied craving for drink they would do anything to
satiate. And in a few months the father was in prison, the wife
dying, the son a criminal, and the daughters on the street. _Multiply
this by half a million, and you will be beneath the truth_.

No more dreary spectacle can be found on this earth than the whole of the
"awful East," with its Whitechapel, Hoxton, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green,
and Wapping to the East India Docks. The colour of life is grey and
drab. Everything is helpless, hopeless, unrelieved, and dirty. Bath
tubs are a thing totally unknown, as mythical as the ambrosia of the
gods. The people themselves are dirty, while any attempt at cleanliness
becomes howling farce, when it is not pitiful and tragic. Strange,
vagrant odours come drifting along the greasy wind, and the rain, when it
falls, is more like grease than water from heaven. The very cobblestones
are scummed with grease.

Here lives a population as dull and unimaginative as its long grey miles
of dingy brick. Religion has virtually passed it by, and a gross and
stupid materialism reigns, fatal alike to the things of the spirit and
the finer instincts of life.

It used to be the proud boast that every Englishman's home was his
castle. But to-day it is an anachronism. The Ghetto folk have no homes.
They do not know the significance and the sacredness of home life. Even
the municipal dwellings, where live the better-class workers, are
overcrowded barracks. They have no home life. The very language proves
it. The father returning from work asks his child in the street where
her mother is; and back the answer comes, "In the buildings."

A new race has sprung up, a street people. They pass their lives at work
and in the streets. They have dens and lairs into which to crawl for
sleeping purposes, and that is all. One cannot travesty the word by
calling such dens and lairs "homes." The traditional silent and reserved
Englishman has passed away. The pavement folk are noisy, voluble,