The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1907-10-19
L0NDON's EAST SIDE.

Let me show you something which
is more terrible than tragedy and
more hideous than vice. Itisa close
wedged procession of thousands of
happy but shabby men and women
and children passing at crawl be-
tween shop windows and costermon-
gers barrows on a Saturday night in
southeast London. The wind from
the Thames blows hither and thither
the flames and naphtha lamps and
makes them tug and hiss at the greasy
burners. 1t is bitterly cold. Wo-
men draw their gray shawls closer
over their heads; men turn up their
coat collars, hump their shoulders and
thrust their hands deeper in their
pockets, and the blue faced children,
squeezed between thelegs of the crawl
ing multitude, shiver and shuttle as
they creep so slowly forward with chat
tering teeth and purple lips, which
twitch and shudder, half from cold
and half from hunger.
Look at some of the faces. The
women have their hair dragged back
from their foreheads. The eyes are
hardly visible. The noses are short
and broad. The biubber lips reach
across their swollen faces. The men
have shifty eyes. Their underjaws
project. There is nothing in their
faces which suggests dignity or kind
ness. On all the faces you read sat-
isfaction and content. Even the starv-
ing children peep about with excite
ment.
On the top rail of stall, stuck upon
hooks and just high enough to grin
above the multitude, are the heads of
two sucking pigs. The eyes are half
open and wear CLASSY smile. Round
the rim of the ears and at the edge OF
the open grinning lips is a line of
blood. They seem to hang there like
the presiding deities of the market, the
gods of this sordid festival.
Butchers stand before their open
windows, calling loudlyand briskly for
customers and reaching down joints
of meat from steel hooks, which they
fling to man inside to be weighed.
Children, bareheaded and in rags,
thrust themselves among the crowd,
offering beet roots on pieces of dirty
newspaper. The street is filled with
cries. There is a smell of fish and
fusty garments. Into Our faces as we
90 forward foul, fat women with
hoarse voices shove handfuls of animal
matter-things all bloody and dread
ful-and tell us that the cost is only
two-pence. At another barrow an
old woman and her three daughters,
are selling for pennies, twopences,
threepences and fourpences the loath-
some oddments from their rag shop.
Blouses, stays, petticoats, nightdress-
es, trousers, waistcoats and caps-all
of them so sodden and musty that we
doubt if they would burn-are snatch
ed up from the wide stall, fourished
in the light of the naphtha lamps and
flung across to the highest bidder for
a few coppers.
And, while this marketing is going
on and while the air is filled with the
hoarse shouts of the hucksters, out
from the public houses, like bees dis
lodged from a swarm, drop men and
women, many of them carrying babies
In their arms, and slouch away into
the darkness of some neighboring
court. The gin shops are crammed-
crammed with men, women and chill
dren. The more careful housewives
are lingering bits of meat scarce fit for
dogs and haunting the stalls till they
have collected enough for Sundays
dinner, but when this is done they,
too, fight their way into the gin shops
and drink till closing time. In and
out of the pawnbrokers' shops pass
the mothers who wish to rescue their
best clothes for the Sunday. The
money lenders doors are never still.
And the crowd in the street grows
denser and noisier. The smell of it
fills the soul with nausea.
A young man, with child or two
in his arms, comes out of public
house. His wife and girl friend fol.
low after him mocking him for going
home so early. The wife carries a
baby of three or four months in her
arms. In the middle of the road the
girls begin to dance and sing. The
husband turns round and laughs.
The child in his arms, with dazed
eyes, watches her mother singing
and dancing. The dirty linen cap on
baby's head slips off as the mother
whirls about, and we see the poor lit
tie bald head going round and round
in the glare of the naphtha. How that
tiny brain must swim How 1t must
wonder at the shrill laughter of its
swaying mother The baby is nc
larger than skinned rabbit. Round
and round, round and round, to the
shrieked tune of sally, Sally, Was
In the Ballet" while the husband
stands grinning and the girl friend
suddenly reels and goes down behind
a barrow, chuckling and cursing.-
Detroit Meas.