itself with looking
into the Points from Broadway. What more would you ask of it?

Mrs. Swiggs is seized with fear and trembling. Surely she is in a world
of darkness. Can it be that so graphically described by Brother
Syngleton Spyke? she questions within herself. It might, indeed, put
Antioch to shame: but the benighted denizens with which it swarms speak
her own tongue. "It is a deal worse in Orange street,[3] Marm--a deal, I
assure you!" speaks a low, muttering voice. Lady Swiggs is startled. She
only paused a moment to view this sea of vice and wretchedness she finds
herself surrounded with. Turning quickly round she sees before her a
man, or what there is left of a man. His tattered garments, his lean,
shrunken figure, his glassy eyes, and pale, haggard face, cause her to
shrink back in fright. He bows, touches his shattered hat, and says, "Be
not afraid good Madam. May I ask if you have not mistaken your way?"
Mrs. Swiggs looks querulously through her spectacles and says, "Do tell
me where I am?" "In the Points, good Madam. You seem confused, and I
don't wonder. It's a dreadful place. I know it, madam, to my sorrow."
There is a certain politeness in the manner of this man--an absence of
rudeness she is surprised to find in one so dejected. The red, distended
nose, the wild expression of his countenance, his jagged hair, hanging
in tufts over his ragged coat collar, give him a repulsiveness not
easily described. In answer to an inquiry he says, "They call me, Madam,
and I'm contented with the name,--they call me Tom Toddleworth, the
Chronicle. I am well down--not in years, but sorrow. Being sick of the
world I came here, have lived, or rather drifted about, in this sea of
hopeless misery, homeless and at times foodless, for ten years or more.
Oh! I have seen better days, Madam. You are a stranger here. May God
always keep you a stranger to the sufferings of those who dwell with us.
I never expect to be anything again, owe nothing to the world, and
never go into Broadway."

[Footnote 3: Now called Baxter street]

"Never go into Broadway," repeats Mrs. Swiggs, her fingers wandering to
her spectacles. Turning into Orange street, Mr. Toddleworth tenders his
services in piloting Mrs. Swiggs into Centre street, which, as he adds,
will place her beyond harm. As they advance the scene becomes darker and
darker. Orange street seems that centre from which radiates the avenues
of every vice known to a great city. One migh