M'Kay had found a room near Parker Street, Drury Lane, in which he
proposed to begin, and that night, as we trod the pavement of
Portland Place, he propounded his plans to me, I listening without
much confidence, but loth nevertheless to take the office of Time
upon myself, and to disprove what experience would disprove more
effectually. His object was nothing less than gradually to attract
Drury Lane to come and be saved.
The first Sunday I went with him to the room. As we walked over the
Drury Lane gratings of the cellars a most foul stench came up, and
one in particular I remember to this day. A man half dressed pushed
open a broken window beneath us, just as we passed by, and there
issued such a blast of corruption, made up of gases bred by filth,
air breathed and rebreathed a hundred times, charged with odours of
unnameable personal uncleanness and disease, that I staggered to the
gutter with a qualm which I could scarcely conquer. At the doors of
the houses stood grimy women with their arms folded and their hair
disordered. Grimier boys and girls had tied a rope to broken
railings, and were swinging on it. The common door to a score of
lodgings stood ever open, and the children swarmed up and down the
stairs carrying with them patches of mud every time they came in from
the street.
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