audience, they, like other people, must contend for
mastery. Not that they care for the rights or wrongs of either question,
for both are prepared, as occasion serves, to take either side.
Religion, too, is excitedly discussed, for an animated couple are
discussing Christian Evidences, while the ventriloquist gives parsons
generally and bishops in particular a very warm time; even the Pope and
General Booth do not escape his scurrilous but witty indictments.

Meanwhile the street singers are practising songs, sacred and secular,
and our friend the street minstrel produces an old flute and plays an
obbligato, whilst the quivering voice of his poor old wife again wants
to know the whereabouts of her wandering boy.

There will be a touching scene when they do meet--may I be there! but
I hope they will not meet in a common lodging-house. Another street
minstrel is practising new tunes upon a mouth-organ, wherewith to soften
the hearts of a too obdurate public.

What a babel it all makes; now groups of card-players are getting
quarrelsome, for luck has been against some, or cheating has been
discovered; blows are exchanged, and blood flows! As the night advances,
men and women under the influence of drink arrive. Some are merry,
others are quarrelsome, some are moody and lachrymose. The latter become
the butt of the former, the noise increases, confusion itself becomes
confounded, and we leave to avoid the general MELEE, and to breathe the
night air, which we find grateful and reviving. Phew! but it was hot and
thick, we don't want to breathe it again. It is astonishing that people
get used to it, and like it too! But it leaves its taint upon them, for
it permeates their clothing; they carry it about with them, and any
one who gets a whiff of it gets some idea of the breath of a common
lodging-house. And its moral breath has its effect, too! Woe to all that
is fresh and fair, young and hopeful, that comes within its withering
influence. Farewell! a long farewell to honour, truth and self-respect,
for the hot breath of a common lodging-house will blast those and every
other good quality in young people of either sex that inhale it. Its
breath comes upon them, and lo! they become foul without and vile
within, carrying their moral and physical contagion with them wherever
they go.

A moral sepulchre, or rather crematorium, is the common lodging-house,
for when its work is done, nothing is left but ashes. For the old
habitue