upon by the Americans as vermin. It is a strange war, this
between John Chinaman and Sambo for the vassalage of the States; but in
poor England, the asylum of the alien, all nationalities have an equal
chance, and the nigger, the Chinaman, the Jew, and the German can walk
arm in arm, whether in the squalid streets of Spitalfields or the
aristocratic precincts of Pall Mall.

But there is a war going on in London between two races of different
colour, undisturbed and unseen, for the gory scenes of warfare are
enacted in the bowels of the earth. It is to the death, and has been
going on for years, the combatants being the red cockroach and the
blackbeetle. Both came to our shores in ships from distant lands. The
blackbeetles were first, and had possession of underground London, but
the cockroaches followed, disputed the right of territory, and thus the
war began. The latest reports from the seat of war assert that the
cockroaches are victorious all along the line as far as Regent's Park.

But this is digression. I merely made use of the cockroach simile
because it occurred to me as I traversed the Italian quarter and gazed
upon its denizens, an occasional accidental rub against one of whom made
me shudder. Innocent they may be, but they don't look it, and when I was
taken up a court--a horrible, dark, dank _cul-de-sac_--and shown the
identical spot which a few weeks beforehand had been the scene of a
murder, I made a sketch in the quickest time on record, keeping one eye
on the ghastly place and the other on a window where a ragged blind was
pulled quickly and nervously back, and a white face peered suddenly out
and as suddenly retreated.

I did the same, pulling my detective friend after me.

[Illustration: WHERE THE DEED WAS DONE!]

It is said that one-half the world does not know how the other half
lives, but not the ninety-ninth part knows how it dies. In the vicinity
of Mulberry Bend I was shown a house in which another bloody deed had
recently been perpetrated--another cockroach killed. The blood was as
fresh and visible as that of Rizzio in Holyrood Palace, but this excited
no curiosity among the passers-by--crimes are more plentiful than
mulberries here.

Paradise Park, The Bowery, New York, is a very high-sounding address. It
is one that any European might imagine as a retreat of aristocratic
refinement and sylvan beauty; there is nothing in the name to suggest
the Seven Dials of London in its old days; and