Nowhere in the streets of London may one escape the sight of abject poverty, while five minutes’ walk from almost any point will bring one to a slum; but the region my hansom was now penetrating was one unending slum.  The streets were filled with a new and different race of people, short of stature, and of wretched or beer-sodden appearance.  We rolled along through miles of bricks and squalor, and from each cross street and alley flashed long vistas of bricks and misery.  Here and there lurched a drunken man or woman, and the air was obscene with sounds of jangling and squabbling.  At a market, tottery old men and women were searching in the garbage thrown in the mud for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables, while little children clustered like flies around a festering mass of fruit, thrusting their arms to the shoulders into the liquid corruption, and drawing forth morsels but partially decayed, which they devoured on the spot.

Not a hansom did I meet with in all my drive, while mine was like an apparition from another and better world, the way the children ran after it and alongside.  And as far as I could see were the solid walls of brick, the slimy pavements, and the screaming streets; and for the first time in my life the fear of the crowd smote me.  It was like the fear of the sea; and the miserable multitudes, street upon street, seemed so many waves of a vast and malodorous sea, lapping about me and threatening to well up and over me.

“Stepney, sir; Stepney Station,” the cabby called down.

I looked about.  It was really a railroad station, and he had driven desperately to it as the one familiar spot he had ever heard of in all that wilderness.

“Well,” I said.

He spluttered unintelligibly, shook his head, and looked very miserable.  “I’m a strynger ‘ere,” he managed to articulate.  “An’ if yer don’t want Stepney Station, I’m blessed if I know wotcher do want.”

“I’ll tell you what I want,” I said.  “You drive along and keep your eye out for a shop where old clothes are sold.  Now, when you see such a shop, drive right on till you turn the corner, then stop and let me out.”

I could see that he was growing dubious of his fare, but not long afterwards he pulled up to the curb and informed me that an old-clothes shop was to be found a bit of the way back.

“Won’tcher py me?” he pleaded.  “There’s seven an’ six owin’ me.”

“Yes,” I laughed, “and it would be the last I’d see of you.”

“Lord lumme, but it’ll be the last I see of you if yer don’t py me,” he retorted.

But a crowd of ragged onlookers had already gathered around the cab, and I laughed again and walked back to the old-clothes shop.