dust-heaps, and its coal-wharves, and the reek of the river sink
into you, and disturb your peace of mind.

Most holy night descends never upon Shadwell. The night life of any
dockside is as vociferant as the day. They slumber not, nor sleep in
this region. They bathe not, neither do they swim; and Cerberus in all
his hideousness was not arrayed like some of these. If you want to make
your child good by terror, show him a picture of a Swede or a Malay,
pickled in brown sweat after a stoking-up job.

Of course, the seamen of St. George's do not view it from this angle.
Shadwell is only fearful and gloomy to those who have fearful and gloomy
minds. Seamen haven't. They have only fearful and gloomy habits.
Probably, when the evening has lit the world to slow beauty, and a quart
or so has stung your skin to a galloping sense of life, Shadwell High
Street and its grey girls are a garden of pure pleasure. I shouldn't
wonder.

There are those among them who love Shadwell. A hefty seafaring Dane
whom I once met told me he loved the times when his boat brought him to
London--by which, of course, he meant Shadwell. He liked the life and
the people and the beer. And, indeed, for those who do love any part of
London, it is all-sufficient. I suppose there are a few people living
here who long to escape from it when the calendar calls Spring; to kiss
their faces to the grass; to lose their tired souls in tangles of green
shade. But they are hardly to be met with. Those rather futile fields
and songs of birds and bud-spangled trees are all very well, if you have
the narrow mind of the Nature-lover; but how much sweeter are the things
of the hands, the darling friendliness of the streets! The maidenly
month of April makes little difference to us here. We know, by the
calendar and by our physical selves, that it is the season of song and
quickening blood. Beyond London, amid the spray of orchard foam, bird
and bee may make their carnival; lusty spring may rustle in the
hedgerows; golden-tasselled summer may move along the shadow-fretted
meadows; but what does it say to us? Nothing.... Here we still gamble,
and worship the robustious things that come our way, and wait to find a
boat. We have no seasons. We have no means of marking the delicate pomp
of the year's procession. We have not even the divisions of day and
night, for, as I have said, boats must sail at all hours of the day and
night, and their swarthy crews are ever about. In