ed "Travellers' Wonders" in that volume which used
to be the delight of our childhood, when the rising generation was more
easily amused and not quite so wide-awake as at present. The point of
the narrative is, that a facetious old gentleman named Captain Compass
beguiles a group of juveniles--who must have been singularly gullible
even for those early days--by describing in mysterious and
alien-sounding terms the commonest home objects, such as coals, cheese,
butter, and so on. It would almost seem as though Hood must have been
perpetrating a kindred joke upon grown-up children when he wrote the
lines--

It's O to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian Work!

Was he aware that here, in the heart of Christian London, without going
farther east than Bethnal Green, there had existed from time immemorial,
as there exists still, a genuine Slave Market? Such there is, and
actually so named; less romantic, indeed, than that we read of in "Don
Juan," or used to see on the Adelphi boards in the drama of the
"Octoroon"--but still interesting in its way to those who have a
penchant for that grotesque side of London life where the sublime and
the ridiculous sometimes blend so curiously.

With only the vague address of Bethnal Green and the date of Tuesday
morning to guide me, I set out for Worship Street Police Court, thinking
it possible to gain some further particulars from the police. I found
those functionaries civil, indeed, but disposed to observe even more
than official reticence about the Slave Market. They told me the
locality precisely enough, but were even more vague as to the hour than
my own impressions. In fact, the sum of what I could gain from them was,
in slightly Hibernian language, that there was nothing to see, and I
could see it any time on a Tuesday morning when I chose to go down White
Street, Bethnal Green. Leaving the Court and inquiring my route to White
Street, I found that it ran off to the right some way down the Bethnal
Green Road from Shoreditch Station. Having turned out of the main
thoroughfare, you proceed down one of those characteristic East End
streets where every small householder lives behind an elaborate bright
green door with portentous knocker, going on until an arch of the Great
Eastern Railway spans the road. Arriving at this point any time between
the hours of eight and half-past nine on a Monday or Tuesda