ly couple who had possessed no home of their own for
years past, but who know London well, for the furnished lodgings of the
east, west, north and south are familiar to them.

He sells groundsel, she sells water-cress, at least they tell us so,
and point to baskets as evidence. But we know that groundsel business
of old. We have seen him standing in a busy thoroughfare with his
pennyworth of groundsel, and we know that though he receives many
pennies his stock remains intact, and we know also that pennyworths
of water-cress in the dirty hands of an old woman serve only the same
purpose.

Room 7. Here we find a younger but not more hopeful couple; she is
fairly well dressed, and he is rather flashy. They have both food
and drink. We know that when the shades of night fall she will be
perambulating the streets, and he like a beast of prey will be watching
not far away. So we might go through the whole of the colony. There is
a strange assortment of humanity in Adullam Street. Vice and misery,
suffering and poverty, idleness and dishonesty, feeble-mindedness and
idiocy are all blended, but no set-off in virtue and industry is to be
found.

The strong rogue lives next to the weak and the unfortunate, the
hardened old sinner next door to some who are beginning to qualify for a
like old age. The place is coated with dirt and permeated with sickening
odours. And to Adullam Street come young couples who have decided to
unite their lives and fortunes without any marriage ceremony; for in
Adullam Street such unions abound.

Young fellows of nineteen earning as much as twelve shillings a week
couple with girls of less age earning ten shillings weekly. It looks so
easy to live on twenty-two shillings a week and no furniture to buy, and
no parson to pay.

So a cheap ring is slipped on, and hand in hand the doomed couple go
to Adullam Street, which receives them with open arms, and hugs them
so long as six shillings and sixpence weekly is forthcoming in advance.
Their progress is very rapid; when the first child arrives, the woman's
earnings cease, and Adullam Street knows them no more.

Ticket-of-leave men, ex-convicts, heroes of many convictions, come
to Adullam Street and bring their female counterparts with them.
They flourish for a time, and then the sudden but not unexpected
disappearance of the male leads to the disappearance of the female. She
returns to her former life; Adullam Street is but an incident in her
life.