and dirty-looking fish, while the vendors thereof howled the
nature and value of their wares with deliberate ferocity. Low
pawnbrokers (chiefly in the "slop" line) obtruded their seedy wares from
doors and windows halfway across the pavement, as if to tempt the naked;
and equally low pastry-cooks spread forth their stale viands in unglazed
windows, as if to seduce the hungry.

Here the population was mixed and varied. Busy men of business and of
wealth, porters and wagoners, clerks and warehousemen, rubbed shoulders
with poor squalid creatures, men and women, whose business or calling no
one knew and few cared to know except the policeman on the beat, who,
with stern suspicious glances, looked upon them as objects of special
regard, and as enemies; except, also, the earnest-faced man in seedy
black garments, with a large Bible (_evidently_) in his pocket, who
likewise looked on them as objects of special regard, and as friends.
The rats were much more circumspect in this locality. They were what
the Yankees would call uncommonly "cute," and much too deeply intent on
business to indulge in play.

In the lanes, courts, and alleys that ran still farther back into the
great hive, there was an amount of squalor, destitution, violence, sin,
and misery, the depth of which was known only to the people who dwelt
there, and to those earnest-faced men with Bibles who made it their work
to cultivate green spots in the midst of such unpromising wastes, and to
foster the growth of those tender and beautiful flowers which sometimes
spring and flourish where, to judge from appearances, one might be
tempted to imagine nothing good could thrive. Here also there were
rats, and cats too, besides dogs of many kinds; but they all of them led
hard lives of it, and few appeared to think much of enjoying themselves.
Existence seemed to be the height of their ambition. Even the kittens
were depressed, and sometimes stopped in the midst of a faint attempt at
play to look round with a scared aspect, as if the memory of kicks and
blows was strong upon them.

The whole neighbourhood, in fact, teemed with sad yet interesting sights
and scenes, and with strange violent contrasts. It was not a spot which
one would naturally select for a ramble on a summer evening after
dinner; nevertheless it was a locality where time might have been
profitably spent, where a good lesson or two might have been learned by
those who have a tendency to "consider t