So we would stroll towards
Hampstead or Highgate, the only drawback to these regions being the
squalid, ragged, half town, half suburb, through which it was
necessary to pass. The skirts of London when the air is filled with
north-easterly soot, grit, and filth, are cheerless, and the least
cheerful part of the scene is the inability of the vast wandering
masses of people to find any way of amusing themselves. At the
corner of one of the fields in Kentish Town, just about to be
devoured, stood a public-house, and opposite the door was generally
encamped a man who sold nothing but Brazil nuts. Swarms of people
lazily wandered past him, most of them waiting for the public-house
to open. Brazil nuts on a cold black Sunday morning are not
exhilarating, but the costermonger found many customers who bought
his nuts, and ate them, merely because they had nothing better to do.
We went two or three times to a freethinking hall, where we were
entertained with demonstrations of the immorality of the patriarchs
and Jewish heroes, and arguments to prove that the personal existence
of the devil was a myth, the audience breaking out into uproarious
laughter at comical delineations of Noah and Jonah. One morning we
found the place completely packed.
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