o. He looks decent, bewildered and
sorrowful; we know at a glance that some misfortune has tripped him
up, we see that self-respect is not dead within him. We know that if he
stays the night, breathing the foul air, listening to the horrid talk,
seeing much and realising more, feeling himself attacked on every side
by the ordinary pests of common lodging-houses, we know that tomorrow
morning his self-respect will be lessened, his moral power weakened, and
his hope of social recovery almost gone. Let him stay a few weeks, then
the lodging-house will become his home and his joy. So we feel inclined
to cry out and warn him to escape with his life. This is the great evil
and danger of common lodging-houses; needful as they undoubtedly are for
the homeless and the outcast, they place the unfortunate on an inclined
plane down which they slide to complete demoralisation.

I am told that there are four hundred large common lodging-houses in
London, many of them capable of holding several hundred lodgers, and
which night after night are filled with a weird collection of humanity.
And they cast a fatal spell upon all who get accustomed to them. Few,
very few who have become acclimatised ever go back to settled home
life. For the decencies, amenities and restraints of citizenship
become distasteful. And truly there is much excitement in the life for
excitement, at any rate, abounds in common lodging-houses.

Nothing happens in them but the unexpected, and that brings its joys and
terrors, its laughter and its tears. Here a great deal of unrestrained
human nature is given free play, and the results are exciting if not
edifying. Let us spend an evening, but not a night--that is too much to
ask-with the habitues.

We sit apart and listen to the babel of voices, but we listen in vain
for the lodging-house slang of which we are told so much. They speak
very much like other people, and speak on subjects upon which other
people speak. They get as excited as ordinary people, too.

Yonder is a lewd fellow shouting obscenities to a female, who, in an
equally loud voice and quite as unmistakable language, returns him a
Roland for every Oliver.

Here are a couple of wordy excitable fellows who are arguing the pros
and cons of Free Trade and Tariff Reform. They will keep at it till the
lights are put out, for both are supplied with a plentiful supply of
contradictory literature. Both have fluent tongues, equally bitter,
and, having their