Page 164 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

‘A—, that’s what you are, a——! Take that in your dirty
gob and suck it, you—! By—, I’ll smash you afore I’ve done
with you. A—, that’s what you are, a son of a—whore. Lick
that, you—! That’s what I think of you, you—, you—, you—
you BLACK BASTARD!’
Whereat he suddenly collapsed on a bench, took his face
in his hands, and began crying. The other man seeing that
public feeling was against him, went out.
Afterwards I heard Steve explaining the cause of the
quarrel. It appeared that it was all about a shilling’s worth
of food. In some way the old man had lost his store of bread
and margarine, and so would have nothing to eat for the
next three days, except what the others gave him in charity.
The stevedore, who was in work and well fed, had taunted
him; hence the quarrel.
When my money was down to one and fourpence I went
for a night to a lodging-house in Bow, where the charge was
only eightpence. One went down an area and through an al-
ley-way into a deep, stifling cellar, ten feet square. Ten men,
navvies mostly, were sitting in the fierce glare of the fire. It
was midnight, but the deputy’s son, a pale, sticky child of
five, was there playing on the navvies’ knees. An old Irish-
man was whistling to a blind bullfinch in a tiny cage. There
were other songbirds there—tiny, faded things, that had
lived all their lives underground. The lodgers habitually
made water in the fire, to save going across a yard to the
lavatory. As I sat at the table I felt something stir near my
feet, and, looking down, saw a wave of black things moving
slowly across the floor; they were black-beetles.

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