ry stenches, of
hopeless-faced women deformed by hardship, retaining of womanhood no
trait save weakness, while from the windows leered girls with brows of
brass. Like the starving bands of mongrel curs that infest the streets
of Moslem towns, swarms of half-clad brutalized children filled the
air with shrieks and curses as they fought and tumbled among the
garbage that littered the court-yards.

There was nothing in all this that was new to me. Often had I passed
through this part of the city and witnessed its sights with feelings
of disgust mingled with a certain philosophical wonder at the
extremities mortals will endure and still cling to life. But not alone
as regarded the economical follies of this age, but equally as touched
its moral abominations, scales had fallen from my eyes since that
vision of another century. No more did I look upon the woful dwellers
in this Inferno with a callous curiosity as creatures scarcely human.
I saw in them my brothers and sisters, my parents, my children, flesh
of my flesh, blood of my blood. The festering mass of human
wretchedness about me offended not now my senses merely, but pierced
my heart like a knife, so that I could not repress sighs and groans. I
not only saw but felt in my body all that I saw.

Presently, too, as I observed the wretched beings about me more
closely, I perceived that they were all quite dead. Their bodies were
so many living sepulchres. On each brutal brow was plainly written the
_hic jacet_ of a soul dead within.

As I looked, horror struck, from one death's head to another, I was
affected by a singular hallucination. Like a wavering translucent
spirit face superimposed upon each of these brutish masks I saw the
ideal, the possible face that would have been the actual if mind and
soul had lived. It was not till I was aware of these ghostly faces,
and of the reproach that could not be gainsaid which was in their
eyes, that the full piteousness of the ruin that had been wrought was
revealed to me. I was moved with contrition as with a strong agony,
for I had been one of those who had endured that these things should
be. I had been one of those who, well knowing that they were, had not
desired to hear or be compelled to think much of them, but had gone on
as if they were not, seeking my own pleasure and profit. Therefore now
I found upon my garments the blood of this great multitude of
strangled souls of my brothers. The voice of their blood cried ou