But let that pass.

After all, there is a good deal of population in places between here and Hammersmith; nor have you seen the most populous part of the town yet." "Tell me, then," said I, "how is it towards the east ?" Said he: "Time was when if you mounted a good horse and rode straight away from my door here at a round trot for an hour and a half; you would still be in the thick of London, and the greater part of that would be 'slums,' as they were called; that is to say, places of torture for innocent men and women; or worse, stews for rearing and breeding men and women in such degradation that that torture should seem to them mere ordinary and natural life." "I know, I know," I said, rather impatiently.

"That was what was; tell me something of what is.

Is any of that left ?" "Not an inch," said he; "but some memory of it abides with us, and I am glad of it.

Once a year, on May-day, we hold a solemn feast in those easterly communes of London to commemorate The Clearing of Misery, as it is called.