They had a little savings, and they
thought they could get two decent rooms to live in. But the
inexorable land question met them in London. They tried the decent
courts for lodgings, and found that two rooms would cost ten shillings
a week. Food was dear and bad, water was bad, and in a short time
their health suffered. Work was hard to get, and its wage was so low
that they were soon in debt. They became more ill and more despairing
with the poisonous surroundings, the darkness, and the long hours of
work; and they were driven forth to seek a cheaper lodging. They
found it in a court I knew well--a hotbed of crime and nameless
horrors. In this they got a single room at a cruel rent, and work was
more difficult for them to get now, as they came from a place of such
bad repute, and they fell into the hands of those who sweat the last
drop out of man and woman and child, for wages which are the food only
of despair. And the darkness and the dirt, the bad food and the
sickness, and the want of water was worse than before; and the crowd
and the companionship of the court robbed them of the last shreds of
self-respect. The drink demon seized upon them.
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