rd nest, and you'll never get to it, unless you
ask the neighbouring folk," said a friend to us whilst talking about
the Revivalists' tabernacle. To the bottom of Pitt-street we then
went, and seeing two or three females and a man dart out of a dim-
looking passage beneath one of the side arches of the railway bridge
there, we concluded that we were near the "nest." Having sauntered
about for a few moments, and assured ourselves that this was really
the place we were in search of, we went to the arch, walked six or
seven yards forward, looked up a dark, tortuous, narrow passage on
the right, and entered it. In the centre of the passage there was a
hole, through which you could see telegraph wires and the sky, on
one side a grim crevice running narrowly to the top of the railway
bridge, and ahead a shadowy opening like the front of an underground
store, with a wooden partition, in the centre of which was a small
square of glass. Theseus, who got through the Labyrinth, would have
been puzzled with this mystic passage. We never saw such a time-worn
and dumfounding road to any place, and if those who patronise it
regularly had done their best to discover the essence of dinginess
and intractibility, they could not have hit upon a better spot than
this. A warm air wave, similar to that you expect on entering a
bakehouse, met us just when we had passed the wooden partition. In
the centre of the room there was a stove, almost red-hot. This
apartment, which was filled with small forms, was, we ascertained, a
Sunday-school. At the bottom end there were some narrow steps,
leading through a large hole into a room above--the "chapel." A fat
man could never get up these steps, and a tall one would injure his
head if he did not stoop very considerably in ascending them.
The chapel is about five yards wide, 15 yards long, very low on one
side, and moderately high on the other. It is plain, ricketty, and
whitewashed. The side wall of the railway bridge forms one end of
it. On the northern side, there is a door fastened up with a piece
of wood in the form of a large loadstone. This door leads to the top
of a pig-stye. The "chapel" will hold about 70. When we visited it,
the congregation consisted of 35 children of a very uneasy sort, 11
men, and five women. Every now and then railway goods trains kept
passing, and what with the whistling of the engines, the shaking
caused by the waggons, the barking of a dog in a yard behind, the
grunt
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