They brought 'im 'um an' laid 'im afore her werry eyes, an' the sight
throw'd 'er into high-strikes, an' arter that the name of "father"
allus throwed her into high-strikes, an' that's why I told 'em at the
studero never to say that word. An' I know you _must_ 'a' said it,
some o' your cussed lot must, or else why should my pore darter 'a'
'ad the high-strikes? Nothin' else never gev 'er no high-strikes only
talkin' to 'er about 'er father. An' as to me a-sendin' 'er
a-beggin', I tell you she liked beggin'. I gev her baskets to sell,
an' flowers to sell, an' yet she _would_ beg. I tell you she liked
beggin'. Some gals does. She was touched in the 'ead, an' she used to
say she _must_ beg, an' there was nothink she used to like so much as
to stan' with a box o' matches a-jabberin' a tex' out o' the Bible
unless it was singin'. There you are, a-larfin' and a-gurnin' ag'in.
If I wur on'y 'arf as drunk as you are the coppers 'ud 'a' run _me_
in hours ago; cuss 'em, an' their favouritin' ways.'

At the truth flashing in upon me through these fantastic lies, I had
passed into that mood when the grotesque wickedness of Fate's awards
can draw from the victim no loud lamentations--when there are no
frantic blows aimed at the sufferer's own poor eyeballs till the
beard--like the self-mutilated Theban king's--is bedewed with a dark
hail-shower of blood. More terrible because more inhuman than the
agony imagined by the great tragic poet is that most awful condition
of the soul into which I had passed--when the cruelty that seems to
work at Nature's heart, and to vitalise a dark universe of pain,
loses its mysterious aspect and becomes a mockery; when the whole
vast and merciless scheme seems too monstrous to be confronted save
by mad peals of derisive laughter--that dreadful laughter which
bubbles lower than the fount of tears--that laughter which is the
heart's last language; when no words can give it the relief of
utterance--no words, nor wails, nor moans.

'Another quid,' bawled the woman after me, as I turned away, 'another
quid, an' then I'll tell you somethink to your awantage. Out with it,
and don't spile a good mind.'

What I did and said that morning as I wandered through the streets of
London in that state of tearless despair and mad unnatural merriment,
one hour of which will age a man more than a decade of any woe that
can find a voice in lamentations, remains a blank in my memory.

I found myself at the corner