The Night Side of LondonRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
History
The Night Side of London
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
of others, in the stupidity of most, and in the foul language of all,
that the drink is producing its legitimate effect. That girl in satin
and rouge in another hour we shall see lying on the stone pavement with
an unmeaning grin, till she is borne by policemen on a stretcher to the
lock-up. That fine manly lad, out to see life, will sleep to-night where
the mother now praying for him in her dreams little imagines. _She_
would not have sunk so low, _he_ never would have blasted a mother’s
hopes, had it not have been for the drink. Come out with me into the
air. What a crowd there is round us, all looking pale and seedy in the
clear light of a summer morn! What has kept them out all night? What
has made them what they are but the drink? You start at that moving mass
of sores and rags. I remember her fair and beautiful, richly apparelled
and sumptuously fed; but the drink has been her bane, and will be, till
one of these calm summer mornings she will be carried insensible to the
nearest hospital, thence to be buried, unwept and unknown, in a pauper’s
grave. Away from this moral dunghill. In a few hours the police will
have retired, the debauchees will have gone home to bed, the
oyster-houses and gin-palaces will be deserted, the place will have a
serious and quiet business air, and bishops will ride past it in their
cushioned carriages to make speeches at meetings for the promotion of the
Gospel in foreign parts. As we go up Regent-street we see the lamps
being extinguished, and the milk carts going round, and the red newspaper
expresses tearing along to catch the early train, and the green hills of
Hampstead looking lovelier than ever. In the sober light of day our
night in the Haymarket will seem unreal, and when we shall tell our
experiences, we shall be told possibly that our picture is overdrawn.
THE CANTERBURY HALL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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