And yet he was not a bad man.  He was not inherently vicious and brutal.  He had normal mentality, and a more than average physique.  His eyes were blue and round, shaded by long lashes, and wide apart.  And there was a laugh in them, and a fund of humour behind.  The brow and general features were good, the mouth and lips sweet, though already developing a harsh twist.  The chin was weak, but not too weak; I have seen men sitting in the high places with weaker.

His head was shapely, and so gracefully was it poised upon a perfect neck that I was not surprised by his body that night when he stripped for bed.  I have seen many men strip, in gymnasium and training quarters, men of good blood and upbringing, but I have never seen one who stripped to better advantage than this young sot of two-and-twenty, this young god doomed to rack and ruin in four or five short years, and to pass hence without posterity to receive the splendid heritage it was his to bequeath.

It seemed sacrilege to waste such life, and yet I was forced to confess that he was right in not marrying on four pounds ten in London Town.  Just as the scene-shifter was happier in making both ends meet in a room shared with two other men, than he would have been had he packed a feeble family along with a couple of men into a cheaper room, and failed in making both ends meet.

And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it is criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry.  They are the stones by the builder rejected.  There is no place for them, in the social fabric, while all the forces of society drive them downward till they perish.  At the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble, besotted, and imbecile.  If they reproduce, the life is so cheap that perforce it perishes of itself.  The work of the world goes on above them, and they do not care to take part in it, nor are they able.  Moreover, the work of the world does not need them.  There are plenty, far fitter than they, clinging to the steep slope above, and struggling frantically to slide no more.

In short, the London Abyss is a vast shambles.  Year by year, and decade after decade, rural England pours in a flood of vigorous strong life, that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by the third generation.  Competent authorities aver that the London workman whose parents and grand-parents were born in London is so remarkable a specimen that he is rarely found.

Mr. A. C. Pigou has said that the aged poor, and the residuum which compose the “submerged tenth,” constitute 71 per cent, of the population of London.  Which is to say that last year, and yesterday, and to-day, at this very moment, 450,000 of these creatures are dying miserably at the bottom of the social pit called “London.”  As to how they die, I shall take an instance from this morning’s paper.

   Self-neglect