s, long before I was thought of, seem to have been really
frolicsome, or so I gather from James Greenwood. The chief inhabitants
of to-day are those little girls just mentioned. Walk here at any time
of the day or night, and you will find in every doorway and at those
corners which are illuminated, clusters of little girls, all of the same
age, all of the same height, their glances knowing so much more than
their little fresh lips imply. They seem all to be born at that age, and
they never grow up. For every boy and woman that you pass in that dusty
mile you will find dozens of pale little girls. There is a reason for
this local product, about which I have written more seriously elsewhere,
and if you saunter here, beware of sympathy with crying children. I
could tell things; curious things. But if I did you would not believe
them, and if you believed them you would be sick.

I have mentioned the peculiar darkness. It is provocative and insistent.
It possesses you. For you know that in this street, or rather, back of
it, there are the homes of the worst vices of the seagoing foreigner. It
is the haunt of the dissolute and the indigent; not only of the normal
brute, but also of the satyr. You know that behind those heights of
houses, stretching over the street with dumb, blank faces, there are
strangely lighted rooms, where unpleasant rites are celebrated.

I can never understand why artists and moralists paint Temptation
invariably in gaudy scarlet and jewels, tinted cheeks, and laughing
hair. If she were always like that, morality would be gloriously
triumphant; for she would attract nobody. The true Temptation of this
world and flesh wears grey rags, dishevelled hair, and an ashen cheek.
Any expert will prove that. I can never believe that any one would be
lured to destruction by those birds of paradise whom one has met in the
stuffy, over-gilded, and, happily, abortive night-clubs and cabarets. If
a consensus were taken, I think it would be found that wickedness gaily
apparelled is seldom successful. It is the subtle and the sinister, the
dark and half-known, that make the big appeal. Lace and scent and
champagne and the shaded glamour of Western establishments leave most
men cold, I know. But dirt and gloom and secrecy.... We needs must love
the lowest when we see it.

As far back as I can remember the Eastern parishes have been, to me, the
home of Romance. My romance was not in the things of glitter and
chocolate-