oncern I could not
shake.

And yet he was not a bad man. He was not inherently vicious and brutal.
He had normal mentality, and a more than average physique. His eyes were
blue and round, shaded by long lashes, and wide apart. And there was a
laugh in them, and a fund of humour behind. The brow and general
features were good, the mouth and lips sweet, though already developing a
harsh twist. The chin was weak, but not too weak; I have seen men
sitting in the high places with weaker.

His head was shapely, and so gracefully was it poised upon a perfect neck
that I was not surprised by his body that night when he stripped for bed.
I have seen many men strip, in gymnasium and training quarters, men of
good blood and upbringing, but I have never seen one who stripped to
better advantage than this young sot of two-and-twenty, this young god
doomed to rack and ruin in four or five short years, and to pass hence
without posterity to receive the splendid heritage it was his to
bequeath.

It seemed sacrilege to waste such life, and yet I was forced to confess
that he was right in not marrying on four pounds ten in London Town. Just
as the scene-shifter was happier in making both ends meet in a room
shared with two other men, than he would have been had he packed a feeble
family along with a couple of men into a cheaper room, and failed in
making both ends meet.

And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it is
criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry. They are the stones by
the builder rejected. There is no place for them, in the social fabric,
while all the forces of society drive them downward till they perish. At
the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble, besotted, and imbecile. If they
reproduce, the life is so cheap that perforce it perishes of itself. The
work of the world goes on above them, and they do not care to take part
in it, nor are they able. Moreover, the work of the world does not need
them. There are plenty, far fitter than they, clinging to the steep
slope above, and struggling frantically to slide no more.

In short, the London Abyss is a vast shambles. Year by year, and decade
after decade, rural England pours in a flood of vigorous strong life,
that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by the third
generation. Competent authorities aver that the London workman whose
parents and grand-parents were born in London is so remarkable a specimen
that he is rar