And the poor respect their machines, as the poor always respect things that are not shoddy.
I have drawn no fancy picture, but one that holds true with regard to thousands.

Evils that I cannot enumerate and that imagination cannot exaggerate wait upon and attend these unfortunate, nay, criminal marriages; which very largely are the result of that one great all-pervading cause--the housing of the poor.
But in the underworld there are much worse kinds of married life than the one I have pictured, for those young people did start life with some income and some hopes.

But what can be said about, and what new condemnation can be passed upon, the marriage of feeble-minded, feeble-bodied, homeless wanderers?
United in the bonds of holy matrimony by an eager clergy, and approved in this deplorable step by an all-wise State, thousands of crazy, curious, wretched, penniless individuals, to whom even the hire system is impossible, join their hopeless lives.
Half idiots of both sexes in our workhouses look at each other, and then take their discharge after a mutual understanding.

They experience no difficulty in finding clergymen ready to marry them and unite them in the bonds of poverty and the gall of wretchedness.

The blessing of the Church is pronounced upon this coupling, and away they go! Over their lives and means of living I will draw a veil, for common decency forbids me to speak, as common decency ought to have forbidden their marriage.
But down in the underworld, and very low down, too, are numberless couples whose plight is perhaps worse, for they have at any rate known the refined comfort of good homes, but remembrance only adds poignancy to suffering and despair.
Read the following story, and after condemnation upon condemnation has been passed upon the thoughtless or wicked marriages of the poor, tell me, if you will, what condemnation shall be passed upon the educated when they, through marriage, drag down into this inferno innocent, loving and pure women?
It was Boxing Day in a London police-court.