I had been looking, yesternight, through the famous 'Dance of Death,' and to-day the grim
old woodcuts arose in my mind with the new significance of a ghastly monotony not to
be found in the original. The weird skeleton rattled along the streets before me, and
struck fiercely; but it was never at the pains of assuming a disguise. It played on no
dulcimer here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no plume, minced in no flowing
robe or train, lifted no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted no gold. It was
simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton, slaying his way along.
The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward of London, and giving on the impure river,
were the scene of this uncompromising dance of death, upon a drizzling November day.
A squalid maze of streets, courts, and alleys of miserable houses let out in single rooms.
A wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger. A mud-desert, chiefly inhabited by a tribe from
whom employment has departed, or to whom it comes but fitfully and rarely. They are
not skilled mechanics in any wise. They are but labourers, - dock-labourers, water-side
labourers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, such-like hewers of wood and drawers of water.
But they have come into existence, and they propagate their wretched race.
One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to play off here. It had stuck
election-bills on the walls, which the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags. It
had even summed up the state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters of one ruined house. It
adjured the free and independent starvers to vote for Thisman and vote for Thatman; not
to plump, as they valued the state of parties and the national prosperity (both of great
importance to them, I think); but, by returning Thisman and Thatman, each naught
without the other, to compound a glorious and immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is
nowhere more cruelly ironical in the original monkish idea!
Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman and Thatman, and of the public
blessing called Party, for staying the degeneracy, physical and moral, of many thousands
(who shall say how many?) of the English race; for devising employment useful to the
community for those who want but to work and live; for equalising rates, cultivating
waste lands, facilitating emigration, and, above all things, saving and utilising the
oncoming generations, and thereby changing ever-growing national weakness into
strength: pondering in my mind, I say, these hopeful exertions, I turned down a narrow
street to look into a house or two.
It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side. Nearly all the outer doors of the houses
stood open. I took the first entry, and knocked at a parlour-door. Might I come in? I
might, if I plased, sur.
The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long strips of wood, about some
wharf or barge; and they had just now been thrust into the otherwise empty grate to make
two iron pots boil. There was some fish in one, and there were some potatoes in the other.
The flare of the burning wood enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair or so, and
