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At a table sat three slovenly-dressed females with old, coarse stockings in their hands, which they appeared to have been mending, and on the table near them were some children’s shirts, with needles, thread and a small basket. Not far distant from them was a cradle of a large size, half-covered by a thick mosquito net.

It was quite near and he sat down on an iron bench facing a pond. There were children walking up and down by the water giving pieces of bread to the swans. Now and again a labouring man or a messenger went by quickly; now and again a middleaged, slovenly-dressed man drooped past aimlessly: sometimes a tattered, self-intent woman with a badgered face flopped by him.

The dirty, untidy, ink-stained, and chemical-stained little boy grew up into a tall, lank, slovenly-dressed man, who kept entirely to himself, not because he cherished any dislike or disdain for his fellow-creatures, but because he seemed to be entirely absorbed in his own thoughts and isolated from the world by a barrier of dreams.

The grog-shops were open, in which men with bloody noses, and bruised and battered faces, obtained the necessary stimulus to continue the desperate struggle. Dirty, slovenly-dressed women stood in the door- ways or on the steps, swearing and denouncing both police and military in the coarsest language.