old clerk, I took out a return
ticket for the "Cities of the Plain." (For the old clerk had a
two-fold formula. When he was going to one village he said, "Return,
Sodom," but when he meant to go to the quarries beside the village he
said, "Return, Cities of the Plain.") It was to visit an old soldier
that I thus descended into the plains. He lives in a rookery in which
many families are crowded one on the top of the other--a rabbit-warren
infested by many and strange odours. He used to come up the slopes and
do odd jobs, tidying up gardens, and he loved to talk of

"unhappy far-off things
And battles long ago,"

in a language which I also could speak. So I got to know him. And as
I sat by his bed I heard a moan from the adjoining room. It began in a
low cry, and then rose into a wail that seemed charged with all the
woes of humanity. The old man sat up in bed trembling. The cry of woe
now changed into a chorus; other voices swelled it. It was the act of
a moment to open the door, and in the dim landing find the door of this
other room.

I opened it, and there I saw three children huddled before a grate
which contained nothing but ashes. On an iron bed, stretched on straw,
lay a woman sunk in sleep.... A foetid air was laden with the fumes of
alcohol.... There was no food.... A broken chair, a stool or two, and
a box that did duty for a table.... The old soldier told me what to
do, and I did it. A kindly woman brought coal and food, and the
wailing was silenced. The old man explained it all. The woman sunk in
the stupor is the wife of a soldier now in the trenches. She did not
belong to our parish; but only came a week or two before, swept before
the broom of the "social reformers" from the city. The mothers of the
Parish, the old soldier declared, were heroines. One such, when her
son asked her consent to enlist, said, "Eh, laddie, I dinna want ye to
gang; I dinna want ... but if I were ye I wud gang mysel'." Our own
wives and mothers were splendid--but those who came from the city,
flotsam and jetsam borne on the tide, staying for a little and then
carried away again, of whom there were three or four in the
village--these were different. They meet each other eager for news.
They are depressed, and feel the need for cheering. One suggests a
stimulant ... and the result is this.

He is no Puritan--the old soldier lying on his bed, his campaigning
done--and he spoke out of an understand