When I hear some little Brick Lane Brother talking about the true faith, as taught in a tin chapel in Upper Tooting, I think of the star-readers of the Aryan hills, of the dead gods, and the obliterated beliefs of ancient conquerors, long since eaten by worms, and of the shrivelled corpse in the museum who has lain grinning in his sandhole for thirty thousand years, amongst his grave pots, and ghost charms, and the uneaten food for the long journey to the great beyond. When I hear honourable members prating in the House about "Imperial questions," I think of the famished seamstress, the unemployed docker, the girl with the phossy jaw, whom the honourable gentleman "represents." When I read of the gorgeous stage-management of the royal pageants, I remember the graves of the Balaclava men, in the Manchester workhouse field, where the sods were spread out level over the neglected dead. When I see beautiful sculptures and paintings of Greek womanhood, I remember how, coming out of the art gallery where I had been looking at the picture of Andromache, I saw a white-haired old Englishwoman carrying a great bag of cinders on her bent old back. When I hear the angelic voices of the choirs, and see the golden plate on cathedral altars, I ask myself questions about that Bridge of Sighs where London women drown themselves in their despair, and about that child in the workhouse school who tamed a mouse because he must have something to love. When a callow preacher babbles to his grown-up congregation about sin and human nature, I remember the men and women I have known: the soldiers, the navvies, the colliers, the doctors, the lawyers, the authors, the artists; I remember the dancing-rooms in the garrison town, and the girls, and how they were womanly in their degradation, and sweet in spite of their shame; and I wondered what the reverend gentleman would answer them if they spoke to him as they often spoke to me, in words that were straight as blades, and cut as deep.