would not be the space of a pin's point
in all the streets and ways for the living to come out into. Not only
that, but the vast armies of dead would overflow the hills and valleys
beyond the city, and would stretch away all round it, God knows how
far.

When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the
night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such.
But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive at
such a time with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and ever
afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested) in
eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of loneliness is
profounder. Once--it was after leaving the Abbey and turning my face
north--I came to the great steps of St. Martin's church as the clock
was striking Three. Suddenly, a thing that in a moment more I should
have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at my feet with a cry of
loneliness and houselessness, struck out of it by the bell, the like
of which I never heard. We then stood face to face looking at one
another, frightened by one another. The creature was like a
beetle-browed hair-lipped youth of twenty, and it had a loose bundle
of rags on, which it held together with one of its hands. It shivered
from head to foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at
me--persecutor, devil, ghost, whatever it thought me--it made with its
whining mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a worried dog.
Intending to give this ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay
it--for it recoiled as it whined and snapped--and laid my hand upon
its shoulder. Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young
man in the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in
my hands.

Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful
company. The great waggons of cabbages, with growers' men and boys
lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden
neighbourhoods looking after the whole, were as good as a party. But
one of the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found in the
children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight
for the offal, dart at any object they think they can lay their
thieving hands on, dive under the carts and barrows, dodge the
constables, and are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the
pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their naked feet. A painful
and unnatural result comes of the compa