box gaiety, but rather in the dolours and silences of the
East. Long before I had adventured there, its very street
names--Whitechapel High Street, Ratcliff Highway, Folly Wall, Stepney
Causeway, Pennyfields--had thrilled me as I believe other children
thrill to the names of The Arabian Nights.

That is why I come sometimes to Shadwell, and sit in its tiny beershops,
and listen to the roaring of Jamrach's lions, and talk with the blond
fellows whose conversation is mostly limited to the universalities of
intercourse. I was there on one occasion, in one of the houses which
are, in the majority of cases, only licensed for beer, and I made the
acquaintance of a quite excellent fellow, and spent the whole evening
with him. He talked Swedish, I talked English; and we understood one
another perfectly. We did a "pub-crawl" in Commercial Road and East
India Dock Road, and finished up at the Queen's Theatre in Poplar High
Street. A jolly evening ended, much too early for me, at one o'clock in
the morning, when he insisted on entering a lodging-house in Gill Street
because he was sure that it was his. I tried to make him understand, by
diagrams on the pavement, that he was some half-mile from St. George's.
But no; he loomed above me, in his blond strength, and when he tried to
follow the diagram, he toppled over. I spent five minutes in lifting six
foot three and about twelve stone of Swedish manhood to its feet.

He looked solemn, and insisted: "I ban gude Swede."

I told him again that he must not enter the lodging-house, but must let
me see him safe to his right quarters. But he thrust me aside: "I ban
gude Swede!" he said, resentfully this time, with hauteur. I pulled his
coat-tails, and tried to lead him back to Shadwell; but it was useless.

"I ban gude Swede!"

There I left him, trying to climb the six steps leading to the
lodging-house entrance. I looked back at the corner. He turned, to wave
his hand in valediction, and, floating across the night, came a proud
declaration--

"I ban gude Swede!"

This is one of the few occasions when I have been gay in Shadwell.
Mostly you cannot be gay; the place simply won't let you be gay. You
cannot laugh there spontaneously. You may hear bursts of filthy laughter
from this or that low-lit window; but it is not spontaneous. You only
laugh like that when you have nine or ten inside you. The spirit of the
place does not, in the ordinary way, move you to cheer. Its mist, and
its