f their abode
was worthy of its aspect. Mr. Hope drank, but not desperately. His
forte was the use of language so peculiarly violent that even in
Shooter's Gardens it gained him a proud reputation. On the slightest
excuse he would threaten to brain one of his children, to disembowel
another, to gouge out the eyes of the third. He showed much ingenuity
in varying the forms of menaced punishment. Not a child in the Gardens
but was constantly threatened by its parents with a violent death; this
was so familiar that it had lost its effect; where the nurse or mother
in the upper world cries, 'I shall scold you!' in the nether the phrase
is, 'I'll knock yer 'ed orff!' To 'I shall be very angry with you' in
the one sphere, corresponds in the other, 'I'll murder you!' These are
conventions--matters of no importance. But Mr. Rope was a man of
individuality; he could make his family tremble; he could bring lodgers
about the door to listen and admire his resources.

In another room abode a mother with four children. This woman drank
moderately, but was very conscientious in despatching her three younger
children to school. True, there was just a little inconvenience in this
punctuality of hers, at all events from the youngsters' point of view,
for only on the first three days of the week had they the slightest
chance of a mouthful of breakfast before they departed. 'Never mind,
I'll have some dinner for you,' their parent was wont to say. Common
enough in the Board schools, this pursuit of knowledge on an empty
stomach. But then the end is so inestimable!

Yet another home. It was tenanted by two persons only; they appeared to
be man and wife, but in the legal sense were not so, nor did they for a
moment seek to deceive their neighbours. With the female you are
slightly acquainted; christened Sukey Jollop, she first became Mrs.
Jack Bartley, and now, for courtesy's sake, was styled Mrs. Higgs.
Sukey had strayed on to a downward path; conscious of it, she abandoned
herself to her taste for strong drink, and braved out her degradation.
Jealousy of Clem Peckover was the first cause of discord between her
and Jack Bartley; a robust young woman, she finally sent Jack about his
business by literal force of arms, and entered into an alliance with
Ned Higgs, a notorious swashbuckler, the captain of a gang of young
ruffians who at this date were giving much trouble to the Clerkenwell
police. Their speciality was the skilful use, as an off