CHAPTER V.
ON THE VERGE OF THE ABYSS.
There is, unfortunately, no need for me to attempt to set out, however imperfectly, any statement of the evil case of the sufferers whom we wish to help. For years past the Press has been filled with echoes of the " Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with pictures of " Horrible Glasgow," and the like. We have had several volumes describing " How the -Poor Live," and I may therefore assume that all my readers are more or less cognizant of the main outlines of " Darkest England." My slum officers are living in the midst of it ; their reports are before me, and one day I may publish some more detailed account of the actual facts of the social condition of the Sunken Millions. But not now. All that must be taken as read. I only glance at the subject in order to bring into clear relief the salient points of our new Enterprise.
I have spoken of the houseless poor. Each of these represents a . point in the scale of human suffering below that of those who have still contrived to keep a shelter over their heads. A home is a home, be it ever so low; and the* desperate tenacity with which the poor will cling to the last wretched semblance of one is very touching. There are vile dens, fever-haunted and stenchful crowded courts, where the return of summer is dreaded because it means the unloosing of myriads of vermin which render night unbearable, which, nevertheless, are regarded at this moment as havens of rest by their hard-working occupants. They can scarcely be said to be furnished. A chair, a mattress, and a few miserable sticks constitute all the furniture of the single room in which they have to sleep, and breed, and die ; but they cling to it as a drowning man to a half-submerged raft. Every week they contrive by pinching and scheming to raise the rent, for with them it is pay or go ; and they struggle to meet the collector as the sailor nerves himself