They do not spare the women, I assure you. Let us now turn towards Covent-garden. The debauchery of Covent-garden is not what it was. Obscenity is banished from the Cave of Harmony, and better hours are kept; but there are night coffee-houses about here, dirty, shabby places, patronised by dirty, shabby people. How weary and wayworn are the women! They have been walking the streets for hours—they have been dancing in neighbouring saloons—they have paraded their meretricious charms, and here they sit, hungry, tired, sleepy, and ’t is three o’clock in the morning. No home have they to go to but some wretched room for which they pay a sum equal to the entire rent of the house. There is little gaiety here; the poor comic nigger, with his banjo and his double entendre playing with all his might, in the hope that some gent will stand a cup of coffee and a muffin, can scarce raise a laugh. Timidly one asks, “Will you treat me to a cup of coffee, sir?” Yes, forlorn one. If your sin is great, so is your punishment; once you might have been a dainty little wife, and now what are you? I say it sorrowfully, the scum of the streets, garbage for drunken lust. Let us go a little further on, not into that house, there are only thieves and pickpockets there, and we might be bullied, which is not pleasant. Ah, here’s the house we are looking for; it has done a good trade this many a year, for is there not a cab-stand opposite, and cabby knows the value of a cup of coffee on a cold winter’s night. Never mind the smell; as business is carried on uninterruptedly during the twenty-four hours, and as the company belongs to that part of the population not guilty of an inordinate attachment to soap and water, and to whom cheap baths are a myth, it cannot be matter of surprise if there be about the place “an ancient and fish-like smell.” But here comes the landlord. “Good morning, gents;” in an under voice, “you had better mind your pocket; there are some strange characters here. A cup of coffee? Yes, sir. Now then, sir, you had better wake up, it is time for you to be off. You’ve had a good hour’s sleep.” “Why not let him sleep?” “Why, you see, sir, such fellows would stay here all night and fill up the house, and not spend a penny; and business is business.” A curious medley is here of sleepy, half-tipsy, sickly unfortunates. Yet even here the line is drawn; the door opens, and we dimly discern a mass of rags; so does our landlord, as he rushes to exclude the would-be customer. “What, you are trying it on again, are you? you know you can’t come here. Why, you see, sir, if we let such fellows in, the place would swarm with—,” (the reader must supply the blank). But we take the hint, and not unreluctantly depart.