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Updated: May 1, 2025
On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street of Tom-all-Alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a door-step. He walks that way.
Dilating and dilating since the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking as that lamp, too, winks in Tom-all-Alone's at many horrible things. But they are blotted out.
"We have here among us, my friends," says Chadband, "a Gentile and a heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends," and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail, bestows an oily smile on Mr.
The boy, stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to shaking from head to foot. "You hear what she says!" Allan says to Joe. "You hear what she says, and I know it's true. Have you been here ever since?" "Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone's till this blessed morning," replies Jo, hoarsely.
For some time it seemed that no one would ever know, but at last, not so very long after this, a physician, Allan Woodcourt by name who had known something of Jo and his story was wandering at night in the miserable streets of Tom-all-Alone's, impelled by curiosity to see its haunts by gas-light.
Bucket has to take Jo by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him, without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln's Inn Fields. These arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone's.
As it seemed to Jo that the world was bounded on all sides by the events in Tom-all-Alone's, he was not at all surprised one day to have another stranger come to his crossing and ask him many questions concerning the dead man. He was glad to talk of him, to tell again all that he knew of his life and death, and to show where they had buried him.
And I an't had much of the sov'ring neither," says Jo, with dirty tears, "fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-Alone's, afore they'd square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved another five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it."
Ain't there nobody here but you, Mr. Woodcot?" "Nobody." "And I ain't took back to Tom-all-Alone's. Am I, sir?" "No." Jo closes his eyes, muttering, "I'm wery thankful." After watching him closely a little while, Allan puts his mouth very near his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, "Jo! Did you ever know a prayer?" "Never knowd nothink, sir." "Not so much as one short prayer?"
His job done, he sets off for Tom-all-Alone's, stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to produce the piece of gold and give it another one-sided bite as a reassurance of its being genuine. The Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my Lady goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls.
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