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LONDON'S UNDERWORLD.
London's great underworld to many may be an undiscovered country.

To me it is almost as familiar as my own fireside; twenty-five years of my life have been spent amongst its inhabitants, and their lives and circumstances have been my deep concern.
Sad and weary many of those years have been, but always full of absorbing interest.

Yet I have found much that gave me pleasure, and it is no exaggeration when I say that some of my happiest hours have been spent among the poorest inhabitants of the great underworld.
But whether happy or sorrowful, I was always interested, for the strange contrasts and the ever-varying characteristics and lives of the inhabitants always compelled attention, interest and thought.

There is much in this underworld to terrorise, but there is also much to inspire.
Horrible speech and strange tongues are heard in it, accents of sorrow and bursts of angry sound prevail in it.
Drunkenness, debauchery, crime and ignorance are never absent; and in it men and women grown old in sin and crime spend their last evil days.
The whining voice of the professional mendicant is ever heard in its streets, for its poverty-stricken inhabitants readily respond to every appeal for help.
So it is full of contrasts; for everlasting toil goes on, and the hum of industry ever resounds.