e, threw a light on one point of the circle, and Lucian watched a
lank girl of fifteen as she came round and round to the flash. She was
quite drunk, and had kicked her petticoats away, and the crowd howled
laughter and applause at her. Her black hair poured down and leapt on her
scarlet bodice; she sprang and leapt round the ring, laughing in Bacchic
frenzy, and led the orgy to triumph. People were crossing to and fro,
jostling against each other, swarming about certain shops and stalls in a
dense dark mass that quivered and sent out feelers as if it were one
writhing organism. A little farther a group of young men, arm in arm,
were marching down the roadway chanting some music-hall verse in full
chorus, so that it sounded like plainsong. An impossible hubbub, a hum of
voices angry as swarming bees, the squeals of five or six girls who ran
in and out, and dived up dark passages and darted back into the crowd;
all these mingled together till his ears quivered. A young fellow was
playing the concertina, and he touched the keys with such slow fingers
that the tune wailed solemn into a dirge; but there was nothing so
strange as the burst of sound that swelled out when the public-house
doors were opened.

He walked amongst these people, looked at their faces, and looked at the
children amongst them. He had come out thinking that he would see the
English working class, "the best-behaved and the best-tempered crowd in
the world," enjoying the simple pleasure of the Saturday night's
shopping. Mother bought the joint for Sunday's dinner, and perhaps a pair
of boots for father; father had an honest glass of beer, and the children
were given bags of sweets, and then all these worthy people went decently
home to their well-earned rest. De Quincey had enjoyed the sight in his
day, and had studied the rise and fall of onions and potatoes. Lucian,
indeed, had desired to take these simple emotions as an opiate, to forget
the fine fret and fantastic trouble of his own existence in plain things
and the palpable joy of rest after labor. He was only afraid lest he
should be too sharply reproached by the sight of these men who fought
bravely year after year against starvation, who knew nothing of intricate
and imagined grief, but only the weariness of relentless labor, of the
long battle for their wives and children. It would be pathetic, he
thought, to see them content with so little, brightened by the
expectation of a day's rest and a goo