At first his way was through narrow streets inhabited entirely by the working classes. The clocks have just struck six, and the men are turning out from the neighbouring tan-yards and skinneries. Women are standing in front of their houses talking to each other, and looking out for their husbands’ return, and through the open doors can be seen the tables laid with white cloths, and the little trays with the tea-things standing there, and the bright fires with the kettles singing upon them. The men come trooping along boldly, and lustily whistling snatches of popular airs, laughing and joking together. All is bustle and cheerfulness. Now William Holl has turned off into a narrow lane, and has at once entered another atmosphere. There is no sound of whistling and light laughter here. Heavy surly men lean against door-posts and look sullenly out—men with heavy eyebrows and low foreheads, square jawbones and bull-necks—men on whom crime seems to have set a stamp, and whom instinct would lead you to avoid as you would a wolf or a tiger. Through some of the windows come sounds of quarrelling and blows, and foul imprecations of unspeakable horror, but no one heeds this; the men at the doorways do not even turn their heads to listen. The few women who are about, have for the most part an air of boldness and degradation indescribable. They are dressed in dirty tawdry garments, their faces show deep marks caused by misery and drink; whilst their mouths are full of language even fouler and more horrible than that of the men. The men seemed all of one stamp, but of the women there were two distinctly marked classes. A few were very different from those just described. Poor creatures, timid and shrinking; wretched worn-out women, who only a few years before had been bright happy girls in some quiet country village far from the misery and crime of London. They had seen their husbands, originally perhaps honest and industrious, go with rapid steps down the social ladder, beginning with drink and ending in a life passed in violence and crime. Through all this the wives had never once thought of leaving them, but had clung to them through good report and evil report, through curses and blows, through desertion and shame, through want and misery. These women looked with trembling and horror upon the life they were bound to. To them death would have been a relief, oh, how welcome! Their early life seemed to them now a glimpse of some far off, long lost Paradise upon which they hardly dared even to cast a thought back.