market-labourer, Tom, the fish-porter, and the rest come home in a straggling way; and, if they can buy a pennyworth of coal, they boil the little kettle.  Then one of the children runs to the chandler’s and gets a halfpennyworth of tea, a scrap of bread, and perhaps a penny slice of sausage.  The men stint themselves in food and firing; but they always have a little to spare for gin and beer and tobacco.  There is no light in the evil-smelling room; but there is a place at the corner of the alley where the gas is burning as cheerily as the foul wreaths of smoke will permit.  The men go out and squat on barrels in the hideous bar; then they call for some liquor which may be warranted to take speedy effect; then they smoke, and try to forget.

What is the little child to do?  Go to bed?  Why, it has no bed!  If it were earning a little money, its parents might be able to provide a flock or straw bed with some sort of covering; but the poverty of these people is so gnawing and dire that very few lodgings contain anything which could possibly be pawned for twopence.  Usually the child seeks the streets; and in the dim and filthy haze he or she sports at large with other ragged companions.  Then the women—­the match-box makers, trouser-makers, and such like—­begin to troop in—­and they gravitate towards the gin-shop.  The darkness deepens; the bleared lamps blare in the dirty mist; the hoarse roar from the public-house comes forth accompanied by choking wafts of reek; the abominable tramps move towards the lodging-house and pollute the polluted air further with the foulness of their language; the drink mounts into unstable heads; and presently—­especially on Saturday nights—­there are hoarse growls as from rough-throated beasts, shrill shrieks, and a running chorus of indescribable grossness.  Drunken men are quarrelling in the street, drunken women yell and stagger, and the hideous discord fills the night on all sides.  No item of corruption is spared the children; and the vile hurly-burly ceases only at midnight.  The children will always try to sneak through the swinging doors of the gin inferno when the cold becomes too severe; and they will remain crouched like rats until some capricious guest sends them out with an oath and a kick.  There is not one imaginable horror that does not become familiar to these children of despair—­and they sometimes have a very good chance of seeing murder.  When the last hour comes, and the father and mother return to their dusky den, the child crouches anywhere on the floor; undressing is not practised; and, if any sentimental person will first of all go into a common Board school in a non-theatrical quarter on a wet afternoon, and if he will then drive on and pass through a few hundreds of the theatrical children, his “olfactories” will teach him a lesson which may make him think a good deal.