The effect was strange.
And thus the whole private life of the street was threaded in lights.
There was a sense of indecent exposure, from so many backs.

He felt himself almost in physical contact with this contiguous stretch of back premises.

He heard the familiar sound of water gushing from the sink in to the grate, the dropping of a pail outside the door, the clink of a coal shovel, the banging of a door, the sound of voices.

So many houses cheek by jowl, so many squirming lives, so many back yards, back doors giving on to the night.

It was revolting.
Away in the street itself, a boy was calling the newspaper: "-- 'NING POST! -- 'NING PO-O-ST!" It was a long, melancholy howl, and seemed to epitomise the whole of the dark, wet, secretive, thickly-inhabited night.