‘My dear friends, if you would only let us finish what we were saying——!–That’s right, give ’em a say. Don’t get on the argue!–No, no, you answer me. Can you show me God? You show ’im me, then I’ll believe in ’im.–Oh, shut up, don’t keep interrupting of ’em!–Interrupt yourself! F——polygamists!–Well, there’s a lot to be said for polygamy. Take the f——women out of industry, anyway.–My dear friends, if you would just…–No, no, don’t you slip out of it. ’Ave you seen God? ’Ave you touched ’im? ’Ave you shook ’ands with ’im?–Oh, don’t get on the argue, for Christ’s sake don’t get on the argue!’ etc. etc. I listened for twenty minutes, anxious to learn something about Mormonism, but the meeting never got beyond shouts. It is the general fate of street meetings.

In Middlesex Street, among the crowds at the market, a draggled, down-at-heel woman was hauling a brat of five by the arm. She brandished a tin trumpet in its face. The brat was squalling.

‘Enjoy yourself!’ yelled the mother. ‘What yer think I brought yer out ’ere for an’ bought y’a trumpet an’ all?. D’ya want to go across my knee? You little bastard, you shall enjoy yerself!’

Some drops of spittle fell from the trumpet. The mother and the child disappeared, both bawling. It was all very queer after Paris.

The last night that I was in the Pennyfields lodging-house there was a quarrel between two of the lodgers, a vile scene. One of the old-age pensioners, a man of about seventy, naked to the waist (he had been laundering), was violently abusing a short, thickset stevedore, who stood with his back to the fire. I could see the old man’s face in the light of the fire, and he was almost crying with grief and rage. Evidently something very serious had happened.

The old-age pensioner: ‘You——!’

The stevedore: ‘Shut yer mouth, you ole——, afore I set about yer!’

The old-age pensioner: ‘Jest you try it on, you——! I’m thirty year older’n you, but it wouldn’t take much to make me give you one as’d knock you into a bucketful of piss!’

The stevedore: ‘Ah, an’ then p’raps I wouldn’t smash you up after, you ole c——!’

Thus for five minutes. The lodgers sat round, unhappy, trying to disregard the quarrel. The stevedore looked sullen, but the old man was growing more and more furious. He kept making little rushes at the other, sticking out his face and screaming from a few inches distant like a cat on a wall, and spitting. He was trying to nerve himself to strike a blow, and not quite succeeding. Finally he burst out: