Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/310

300[February 27, 1869]

We are willing, longing, to go,
 * And the far land calls in her strength,

"Come, children, why perish ye so?
 * Come lie in my bosom at length."

Yet ever the cry goes up,
 * Till it sounds as a tale that is told—

"Dear mother, this agony-cup
 * Is more than our hands can hold."

We yearn for your goodly dower,
 * And over the Western Sea,

The gospel of youth and power
 * Is bidding us all be free.

But how shall we quit our place,
 * Though it's only these icy flags;

And how shall we win the grace
 * That is waiting even for rags?

Ah, me! with hearts so strong,
 * And good men high in the land,

To think that the taint of the pauper throng
 * Seems worse than the felon's brand!

Yet surely the worst is past,
 * We have waited so long in vain,

That our very souls are aghast,
 * And hope is akin to pain.

Then back to the workhouse gate,
 * For there's starlight still in the sky,

And they tell me England is great,
 * With thousands worse off than I!

is one of my fancies that even my idlest walk must always have its appointed destination. I set myself a task before I leave my lodging in Covent Garden on a street expedition, and should no more think of altering my route by the way, or turning back and leaving a part of it unachieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating an agreement entered into with somebody else. The other day, finding myself under this kind of obligation to proceed to Limehouse, I started punctually at noon, in compliance with the terms of the contract with myself to which my good faith was pledged.

On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as my Beat, and myself as a higher sort of Police Constable doing duty on the same. There is many a Ruffian in the streets whom I mentally collar and clear out of them, who would see mighty little of London, I can tell him, if I could deal with him physically.

Issuing forth upon this very Beat, and following with my eyes three hulking garotters on their way home: which home I could confidently swear to be within so many yards of Drury Lane, in such a narrowed and restricted direction (though they live in their lodging quite as undisturbed as I in mine), I went on duty with a consideration which I respectfully offer to the new Chief Commissioner—in whom I thoroughly confide as a tried and efficient public servant. How often (thought I) have I been forced to swallow in Police reports, the intolerable stereotyped pill of nonsense how that the Police Constable informed the worthy magistrate how that the associates of the Prisoner did at that present speaking dwell in a Street or Court which no man dared go down, and how that the worthy magistrate had heard of the dark reputation of such Street or Court, and how that our readers would doubtless remember that it was always the same Street or Court which was thus edifyingly discoursed about, say once a fortnight. Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a circular to every Division of Police employed in London, requiring instantly the names in all districts of all such much-puffed Streets or Courts which no man durst go down; and suppose that in such circular he gave plain warning: "If those places really exist, they are a proof of Police inefficiency which I mean to punish; and if they do not exist, but are a conventional fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit Police connivance with professional crime, which I also mean to punish"—what then? Fictions or realities, could they survive the touchstone of this atom of common sense? To tell us in open court, until it has become as trite a feature of news as the great gooseberry, that a costly Police system such as was never before heard of, has left in London, in the days of steam and gas and photographs of thieves and electric telegraphs, the sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts! Why, a parity of practice, in all departments, would bring back the Plague in two summers, and the Druids in a century!

Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I overturned a wretched little creature who, clutching at the rags of a pair of trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair with the other, pattered with bare feet over the muddy stones. I stopped to raise and succour this poor weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but of both sexes, were about me in a moment: begging, tumbling, fighting, clamouring, yelling, shivering in their nakedness and hunger. The piece of money I had put into the claw of the child I had overturned, was clawed out of it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again out of that, and soon I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle in the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might be. In raising the child, I had drawn it aside out of the main thoroughfare, and this took place among some wooden hoardings and barriers and