The People of the Abyss | Page 5

minute he asked my age,
height, and weight, and looked me over. And in the third minute, as we
shook hands at parting, he said: "All right, Jack. I'll remember you and
keep track."
I breathed a sigh of relief. Having burnt my ships behind me, I was now
free to plunge into that human wilderness of which nobody seemed to
know anything. But at once I encountered a new difficulty in the shape
of my cabby, a grey-whiskered and eminently decorous personage who
had imperturbably driven me for several hours about the "City."
"Drive me down to the East End," I ordered, taking my seat.
"Where, sir?" he demanded with frank surprise.
"To the East End, anywhere. Go on."
The hansom pursued an aimless way for several minutes, then came to
a puzzled stop. The aperture above my head was uncovered, and the

cabman peered down perplexedly at me.
"I say," he said, "wot plyce yer wanter go?"
"East End," I repeated. "Nowhere in particular. Just drive me around
anywhere."
"But wot's the haddress, sir?"
"See here!" I thundered. "Drive me down to the East End, and at once!"
It was evident that he did not understand, but he withdrew his head, and
grumblingly started his horse.
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.
Here the chief difficulty was in making the shopman understand that I
really and truly wanted old clothes. But after fruitless attempts to press
upon me new and impossible coats and trousers, he began to bring to
light heaps of old ones, looking mysterious the while and hinting darkly.
This he did with the palpable intention of letting me know that he had
"piped my lay," in order to bulldose me, through fear of exposure, into
paying heavily for my purchases. A man in trouble, or a high-class
criminal from across the water, was what he took my measure for--in

either case, a person anxious to avoid the