told me she was married and i asked why she was not living with her husband in a sympathetic voice she told me but the reason of the separation i have forgotten in the many similar reasons for and which have since been confided to me the landlady resented our intimacy and i believe miss l was charged indirectly for her conversations with me in the bill i of a young man on the first floor there was a large sitting room and bedroom solitary rooms that were nearly always the landlady s parlour was on the ground floor her bedroom was next to it and further on was the entrance to the kitchen stairs whence ascended mrs s� � s brood of children and the ful servant with tea things many various smells that of ham and eggs i remember you � you are not to be forgotten � up at five o clock every morning washing dressing those infamous children seventeen hours least out of the twenty four at the and call of landlady and quarrelling children seventeen hours at least out of the twenty four in that horrible kitchen running upstairs with coals and and of hot water down on your knees before a grate pulling out the with those can i call them hands the sometimes threw you a kind word but never one that recognised that you were akin to us only the pity that might be extended to a dog and i used to ask you all sorts of cruel questions i was curious to know the depth of you had sunk to or rather out of which you had never been raised and generally you answered innocently and enough but sometimes my words were too crude and they struck through the of a young man thick hide into the quick into the human and you a little but this was rarely for you were very nearly oh very nearly an animal your temperament and intelligence were just those of a dog that has picked up a master not a real master but a master who may turn it out at any moment would or laugh over you i do neither i merely recognise you as one of the facts of you looked � well to be candid � you looked neither young nor old hard had the delicate of the ears and left you in round numbers something over thirty your hair was brown and your face wore that plain honest look that is so essentially english the rest of you was a mass of clothes and when you rushed upstairs i saw something that did not look like legs a horrible rush that was of yours a sort of like bound i have spoken angrily to you i have heard others speak angrily to you but never did that sweet face of yours for it was a sweet face � that sweet natural goodness that is so sublime � lose its expression of perfect and kindness words convey little sense of the real horrors of the reality life in your case meant this to be bom in a and to leave it to work seventeen hours a day in a lodging house to be a but to know only the in which you of a young man were bom and the few shops in the strand at which the landlady dealt to know nothing of london meant in your case not to know that it was not england england and london i you could not distinguish between them was england an island or a mountain you had no notion i remember when you heard that miss l was going to america you asked me and the question was sublime is she going to travel all night you had heard people speak of travelling all night and that was all you knew of travel or any place that was not the strand i asked you if you went to church and you said no it makes my eyes bad i said but you don t read you can t read no but i have to look at the book i asked you if you had heard of god � you hadn t but when i pressed you on the point you suspected i was laughing at you and you would not answer and when i tried you again on the subject i could see that the landlady had been telling you what to say but you had not understood and your conscious ignorance grown conscious within the last couple of days was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you answered that you couldn t go to church because it made your eyes bad it is a strange thing to know nothing for instance to live in london and to have no notion of the house of nor of a young man indeed of the queen except perhaps that she is a rich lady the police � yes you knew what a policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an organ man or a move on to know of nothing but a dark kitchen eggs and bacon dirty children to work seventeen hours a day and to get cheated out of your wages to answer when asked why you did not get your wages or leave if you weren t paid that you didn t know how mrs s would get on without me this woman owed you forty pounds i think so i calculated it from what you told me and yet you did not like to leave her because you did not know how she would get on without you sublime stupidity i at this point your intelligence stopped i remember you once spoke of a half holiday i questioned you and i found your idea of a half holiday was to take the children for a walk and buy them some sweets i 