Half-naked children played in the foul gutters with the pigs, which roamed freely at large, and comfortably at home in the purlieus of the docks and the quarter of poverty.

Carts jostled by with hogsheads, and boxes, and bales; the red-faced carmen, furious with their horses, or smoking pipes whose odor did not sweeten the air, staring, with rude, curious eyes, at the lady making her way among the casks and bales upon the sidewalks.

There was nothing that could possibly cheer the eye or ear, or heart or imagination, in any part of the street--not even the haggard faces, thin with want, rusty with exposure, and dull with drink, that listlessly looked down upon her from the windows of lodging-houses.
The door of one of these was open, and Amy Waring went in.

She passed rapidly through the desolate entry and up the dirty stairs with the broken railing--stairs that creaked under her light step.

At a room upon the back of the house, in the third story, she stopped and tapped at the door.