Page:Letters from England.djvu/77

 The East End

T starts not far beyond the centre of the world, the Bank of England, the Stock Exchange and a regular jungle of other banks and financial establishments; this Golden Shore is almost washed by the black waves of East London. “Don’t go there without a guide,” said the denizens of the West End to me, “and don’t take much money with you.” Well, that is decidedly putting it too strongly: for my part I regard Piccadilly or Fleet Street as a worse haunt of savagery than the Isle of Dogs or Limehouse of ill repute, even with Chinatown, or than the whole of Poplar, lock, stock and barrel, with the Jews, the seamen, and the misery of Rotherhithe on the other side of the river. Nothing happened to me, but I came back feeling acutely depressed, although I have