The People of the Abyss | Page 7

saying that it is
an appeal for alms.
This brings me to a delight I experienced in my rags and tatters which
is denied the average American abroad. The European traveller from
the States, who is not a Croesus, speedily finds himself reduced to a
chronic state of self-conscious sordidness by the hordes of cringing
robbers who clutter his steps from dawn till dark, and deplete his
pocket-book in a way that puts compound interest to the blush.
In my rags and tatters I escaped the pestilence of tipping, and
encountered men on a basis of equality. Nay, before the day was out I
turned the tables, and said, most gratefully, "Thank you, sir," to a
gentleman whose horse I held, and who dropped a penny into my eager
palm
Other changes I discovered were wrought in my condition by my new
garb. In crossing crowded thoroughfares I found I had to be, if anything,
more lively in avoiding vehicles, and it was strikingly impressed upon
me that my life had cheapened in direct ratio with my clothes. When
before I inquired the way of a policeman, I was usually asked, "Bus or
'ansom, sir?" But now the query became, "Walk or ride?" Also, at the
railway stations, a third-class ticket was now shoved out to me as a
matter of course.
But there was compensation for it all. For the first time I met the
English lower classes face to face, and knew them for what they were.
When loungers and workmen, at street corners and in public- houses,
talked with me, they talked as one man to another, and they talked as
natural men should talk, without the least idea of getting anything out
of me for what they talked or the way they talked.
And when at last I made into the East End, I was gratified to find that
the fear of the crowd no longer haunted me. I had become a part of it.
The vast and malodorous sea had welled up and over me, or I had
slipped gently into it, and there was nothing fearsome about it--with the
one exception of the stoker's singlet.

CHAPTER II--JOHNNY
UPRIGHT

I shall not give you the address of Johnny Upright. Let it suffice that he
lives in the most respectable street in the East End--a street that would
be considered very mean in America, but a veritable oasis in the desert
of East London. It is surrounded on every side by close-packed squalor
and streets jammed by a young and vile and dirty generation; but its
own pavements are comparatively bare of the children who have no
other place to play, while it has an air of desertion, so few are the
people that come and go.
Each house in this street, as in all the streets, is shoulder to shoulder
with its neighbours. To each house there is but one entrance, the front
door; and each house is about eighteen feet wide, with a bit of a
brick-walled yard behind, where, when it is not raining, one may look
at a slate-coloured sky. But it must be understood that this is East End
opulence we are now considering. Some of the people in this street are
even so well-to-do as to keep a "slavey." Johnny Upright keeps one, as
I well know, she being my first acquaintance in this particular portion
of the world.
To Johnny Upright's house I came, and to the door came the "slavey."
Now, mark you, her position in life was pitiable and contemptible, but
it was with pity and contempt that she looked at me. She evinced a
plain desire that our conversation should be short. It was Sunday, and
Johnny Upright was not at home, and that was all there was to it. But I
lingered, discussing whether or not it was all there was to it, till Mrs.
Johnny Upright was attracted to the door, where she scolded the girl for
not having closed it before turning her attention to me.
No, Mr. Johnny Upright was not at home, and further, he saw nobody
on Sunday. It is too bad, said I. Was I looking for work? No, quite the
contrary; in fact, I had come to see Johnny Upright on business which
might be profitable to him.

A change came over the face of things at once. The gentleman in
question was at church, but would be home in an hour or thereabouts,
when no doubt he could be seen.
Would I kindly step in?--no, the lady did not ask me, though I fished
for an invitation by stating that I would go down to the corner and wait
in a public-house. And down to the corner I went, but, it being church
time, the "pub" was closed.