Tales of Mean Streets

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Morrison Arthur. Tales of Mean Streets

INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION

INTRODUCTION

LIZERUNT

I. LIZER'S WOOING

II. LIZER'S FIRST

III. A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES

WITHOUT VISIBLE MEANS

TO BOW BRIDGE

THAT BRUTE SIMMONS

BEHIND THE SHADE

THREE ROUNDS

IN BUSINESS

THE RED COW GROUP

ON THE STAIRS

SQUIRE NAPPER

"A POOR STICK."

A CONVERSION

"ALL THAT MESSUAGE."

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This street is in the East End. There is no need to say in the East End of what. The East End is a vast city, as famous in its way as any the hand of man has made. But who knows the East End? It is down through Cornhill and out beyond Leadenhall Street and Aldgate Pump, one will say: a shocking place, where he once went with a curate; an evil plexus of slums that hide human creeping things, where filthy men and women live on penn'orths of gin, where collars and clean shirts are decencies unknown, where every citizen wears a black eye, and none ever combs his hair. The East End is a place, says another, which is given over to the Unemployed. And the Unemployed is a race whose token is a clay pipe, and whose enemy is soap: now and again it migrates bodily to Hyde Park with banners, and furnishes adjacent police courts with disorderly drunks. Still another knows the East End only as the place whence begging letters come; there are coal and blanket funds there, all perennially insolvent, and everybody always wants a day in the country. Many and misty are people's notions of the East End; and each is commonly but the distorted shadow of a minor feature. Foul slums there are in the East End, of course, as there are in the West; want and misery there are, as wherever a host is gathered together to fight for food. But they are not often spectacular in kind.

Of this street there are about one hundred and fifty yards – on the same pattern all. It is not pretty to look at. A dingy little brick house twenty feet high, with three square holes to carry the windows, and an oblong hole to carry the door, is not a pleasing object; and each side of this street is formed by two or three score of such houses in a row, with one front wall in common. And the effect is as of stables.

.....

"I dunno," Lizer responded hazily. "Wot's the time?"

"Time? Don't try to kid me. You git up; go on. I want my dinner."

.....