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A man, a woman, and two small children crawled along the street; their eyes surveyed the upper windows. All were ragged and filthy; the elders bore the unmistakable brand of the gin-shop, and the children were visaged like debased monkeys. Occasionally a copper fell to them, in return for which the choragus exclaimed 'Gord bless yer!
By the way, if you happen to have sixpence about you I needn't ask for credit for the varnish. I hate debt as I hate the devil. Thank you, sir. This way. He rolled into a gin-shop, and called for 'a quartern and two outs, tendering Paul's coin in payment. Paul declined any share in the liquor. He was watchful, and as full of interest as a child.
There was not a creature in the street, and the public lamps were never lighted in the summer-time. A long way off the windows of a gin-shop cast a light upon the road, and nearer, on the opposite side, a red lamp burned. With a lingering glance of fear and pity at the recumbent figure, Paul sped towards the red lamp as fast as he could lift a leg.
"With great pleasure," answered I, bowing low, "since the act is a prelude to the pleasure of your acquaintance." My gentleman of the gin-shop opened his box with an air, as he replied "It is but seldom that I meet, in places of this description, gentlemen of the exterior of yourself and your friends. I am not a person very easily deceived by the outward man.
"Do you actually mean that that sewer is your only drinking water?" "Where else can we get any? Everybody drinks it; and you shall, too you shall!" he cried, with a fearful oath, "and then see if you don't run off to the gin-shop, to take the taste of it out of your mouth.
"You Englishmen go to work in a queerish kind of way," said he; "you send a parcel of soldiers to live on an island where none but sailors can be of use. You listen to all that those red coats tell you; they never thrive when placed out of musket-shot from a gin-shop: and because they don't like it, you evacuate the island.
And how can you wonder if their appetites, sickened with filth and self-disgust, crave after the gin-shop for temporary strength, and then for temporary forgetfulness? Every London doctor knows that I speak the truth; would that every London preacher would tell that truth from his pulpit! 'Then would you too say, that God punishes one class for the sins of another?
Yes; but there is not in all the city to-day an inebriate that did not begin with ale. "XXX:" What does that mark mean? XXX on the beer-barrel: XXX on the brewer's dray: XXX on the door of the gin-shop: XXX on the side of the bottle. Not being able to find any one who could tell me what this mark means, I have had to guess that the whole thing was an allegory: XXX that is, thirty heartbreaks.
There was a brief pause; suddenly a man staggered out of the gin-shop, smearing the back of his hand across his mouth as he came a massively built, ill-favoured brute, with a shock of uncombed red hair and small ferret-like eyes. He stared stupidly at the weeping Liz, then at Mother Mawks, finally from one to the other of the loafers who stood by. "Wot's the row?" he demanded, quickly. "Wot's up?
No balls, no concerts, no theaters, not even a museum or a picture-gallery open; every shop shut up but the gin-shop; and nothing moving but the church bells and the men who sell the penny ices. Hundreds of Frenchmen come to see me on their first arrival in England.
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