There I was and there I stayed in slow, mortifying idleness. _You_ get stranded in Kingsland Road for a fortnight ... I wish you would. It would teach you so many things. For it is a district of cold, muddy squalor that it is ashamed to own itself. It is a place of narrow streets, dwarfed houses, backed by chimneys that growl their way to the free sky, and day and night belch forth surly smoke and stink of hops. The poverty of Poplar is abject, and, to that extent, picturesque in its frankness; there is no painful note of uncomely misery about it. But the poverty of Kingsland is the diseased poverty of bead flowers in the front room and sticky furniture on the hire system. My first night was the same as every other. My window looked out on a church tower which still further preyed on the wan light of the street, and, as I lay in bed, its swart height, pierced by the lit clock face, gloated stiffly over me. From back of beyond a furry voice came dolefully-- Goo bay to sum-_mer_, goo bay, goo baaaaay! That song has thrilled and chilled me ever since. Next door an Easy Payments piano was being tortured by wicked fingers that sought after the wild grace of Weber's "Invitation to the Valse." From the street the usual London night sounds floated up until well after midnight. There was the dull, pessimistic tramp of the constable, and the long rumble of the Southwark-bound omnibus. Sometimes a stray motor-car would hoot and jangle in the distance, swelling to a clatter as it passed, and falling away in a pathetic _diminuendo_. A traction-engine grumbled its way along, shaking foundations and setting bed and ornaments a-trembling. Then came the blustering excitement of chucking-out at the "Galloping Horses." Half a dozen wanted to fight; half a dozen others wanted to kiss; everybody wanted to live in amity and be jollyolpal. A woman's voice cried for her husband, and abused a certain Long Charlie; and Long Charlie demanded with piteous reiteration: "Why don't I wanter fight? Eh? Tell me that. Why don't I wanter fight? Did you 'ear what he called me? Did you 'ear? He called me a--a--what was it he called me?" Then came police, disbandment, and dark peace, as the strayed revellers melted into the night. Sometimes there would sound the faint tinkle of a belated hansom, chiming solitarily, as though weary of frivolity. And then a final stillness of which the constable's step seemed but a part.