t fancy the world's
outcasts hurled by some mysterious hand into this pool of crime and
misery, and left to feast their wanton appetites and die. "And you have
no home, my man?" says Mrs. Swiggs, mechanically. "As to that, Madam,"
returns the man, with a bow, "I can't exactly say I have no home. I kind
of preside over and am looked up to by these people. One says, 'come
spend a night with me, Mr. Toddleworth,' another says, 'come spend a
night with me, Mr. Tom Toddleworth.' I am a sort of respectable man with
them, have a place to lay down free, in any of their houses. They all
esteem me, and say, come spend a night with me, Mr. Toddleworth. It's
very kind of them. And whenever they get a drop of gin I'm sure of a
taste. Surmising what I was once, they look up to me, you see. This
gives me heart." And as he says this he smiles, and draws about him the
ragged remnants of his coat, as if touched by shame. Arrived at the
corner of Orange street, Mr. Toddleworth pauses and begs his charge to
survey the prospect. Look whither she will nothing but a scene of
desolation--a Babylon of hideous, wasting forms, mucky streets, and
reeking dens, meet her eye. The Jews have arranged themselves on one
side of Orange street, to speculate on the wasted harlotry of the
other. "Look you, Madam!" says Mr. Toddleworth, leaning on his stick and
pointing towards Chatham street. "A desert, truly," replies the august
old lady, nervously twitching her head. She sees to the right ("it is
wantonness warring upon misery," says Mr. Toddleworth) a long line of
irregular, wooden buildings, black and besmeared with mud. Little houses
with decrepit doorsteps; little houses with decayed platforms in front;
little dens that seem crammed with rubbish; little houses with
black-eyed, curly-haired, and crooked-nosed children looking shyly about
the doors; little houses with lusty and lecherous-eyed Jewesses sitting
saucily in the open door; little houses with open doors, broken windows,
and shattered shutters, where the devil's elixir is being served to
ragged and besotted denizens; little houses into which women with
blotched faces slip suspiciously, deposit their almost worthless rags,
and pass out to seek the gin-shop; little houses with eagle-faced men
peering curiously out at broken windows, or beckoning some wayfarer to
enter and buy from their door; little houses piled inside with the
cast-off garments of the poor and dissolute, and hung outside with
sm