greeable localities are quite content with just looking down,
and then passing on, marvelling, it may be, to themselves how such
processes as washing and cooking can ever be carried on with the
slightest prospect of success in the midst of such grimy and unsavoury
surroundings. It was in such a street that James Barnes and his family
existed, rather than lived; for life is too vigorous a term to be
applied to the time dragged on by those who were unfortunate enough to
breathe so polluted an atmosphere. There are some places which, in
their very decay, remind you of better times now past and gone. It was
not so with the houses in these streets; they looked rather as if
originally built of poverty-stricken and dilapidated materials. And yet
none of them were really old, but the blight of neglect was heavy upon
them. Nearly at the bottom of one of these streets was the house
inhabited by the dismissed railway porter, and to this Thomas Bradly now
made his way.

Outside the front door stood a knot of women with long pipes in their
mouths, bemoaning Jim's dismissal with his wife, and suggesting some of
those original grounds of consolation which, to persons in a higher walk
of life, would rather aggravate than lessen the trial. Two of the
youngest children of the family, divested of all superfluous clothing,
were giving full play to their ill-fed limbs in the muddy gutter,
dividing their time between personal assaults on each other, and
splashings on the by-standers from the liquid soil in which they were
revelling, being occasionally startled into a momentary silence by a
violent cuff from their mother when they became more than ordinarily
uproarious.

The outer door stood half-open, and disclosed a miserable scene of
domestic desolation. The absence of everything that could make home
really home was the conspicuous feature. There was a table, it is true;
but then it was comparatively useless in its disabled state--one of the
leaves hanging down, and just held on by one unbroken hinge, reminding
you of a man with his arm in a sling. There were chairs also, but none
of them perfect; rather suggesting by their appearance the need of
caution in the use of them than the prospect of rest to those who might
confide their weight to them. A shelf of crockery ware was the least
unattractive object; but then every article had suffered more or less in
the wars. Nothing was clean or bright, few things were whole, and fewer