tea on very long credit.

Money, too, is scarce, very scarce, yet harpies grow rich by lending
the inhabitants small sums from a shilling up to a pound at a rate of
interest that would stagger and paralyse the commercial world. Doctors
must needs to content with a miserable remuneration for their skilled
and devoted services, when paid at all! but burial societies accumulate
millions from a weekly collection of ill-spared coppers. Strangest of
all, undertakers thrive exceedingly, but the butcher and baker find it
hard work to live.

Yes, the underworld of London is full of strange anomalies and queer
contradictions. When I survey it I become a victim to strange and
conflicting emotions.

Sometimes I am disgusted with the dirt and helplessness of the people.
Sometimes I burn with indignation at their wrongs. But when I enter
their houses I feel that I would like to be an incendiary on a wholesale
scale. Look again! I found the boot-machinist widow that I have
mentioned, in Bethnal Green; she was ill in bed, lying in a small room;
ill though she was, and miniature as the room was, two girls aged twelve
and fourteen slept with her and shared her bed, while a youth and a boy
slept in a coal-hole beneath the stairs. Nourishment and rest somewhat
restored the woman, and to give her and the children a chance I took for
them a larger house. I sent them bedding and furniture, the house being
repaired and repainted, for the previous tenant had allowed it to take
fire, but the fire had not been successful enough! I called on the
family at midday, and as I stood in the room, bugs dropped from the
ceiling upon me. The widow's work was covered with them; night and day
the pests worried the family, there was no escaping them; I had to
fly, and again remove the family. How can the poor be clean and
self-respecting under such conditions!

For be it known this is the normal condition of thousands of human
habitations in London's great underworld. How can cleanliness and
self-respect survive? Yet sometimes they do survive, but at a terrible
cost, for more and still more of the weekly income must go in rent,
which means less and still less for food and clothing. Sometimes the
grossness and impurity, the ignorance and downright wickedness of the
underworld appal and frighten me.

But over this I must draw a veil, for I dare not give particulars; I
think, and think, and ask myself again and again what is to be the end
of it all! Are w