"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2600, 13 January 1904, Page 63

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written fer tne Witness Ladies' Page.) THE LIGHTS 0' LOXDOX. COFFEE-STALL GAS JETS AND COSTERS' TORCHES.

"Fresh myde, lydie? Hi wouldn't chawge yer fur fresh-mydc if it worn't. You femiks sort 'er fancy korfee karn't be fresh myde outer the femile. All I mean ter sye is— try .it. Anywye yer needn't drink it if yer don't like it. Yer pyes yer tuppence an' yer 'as yer chise. Wort did I sye ? But in dealin' with a wornman it s best ter let 'er form 'er own opyinun. I don't want ter be rood, but there's no sense in argyin' with a femile. If she"s a rough 'un, she lets fly; if she's a quiet |un, she treats yer to sawcassim. Best let er form 'er own opyinun." The philosopher had only time to blink at me with his shrewd eyes before his attention was claimed by other customers. A demand for " 'ot pies"' kept him busy supplying the wants of a couple of hungry boys— work boys, "" evidently, by their greasy clothes and begrimed faces, who were taking a "snack" on the home-bound route or securing their supper before arriving.

"For the love of Gord!" The appeal was the usual whine with an unusual note of entreaty in it. A hacking cough followed. "Times are 'ard. I'm ill. You'd be ill if you "ad to stand about street corners nights like this." A gust of bitter east wind flapped her wretched shawl about her "I drink if I av> the chawnce, but you 11 give me the korfee V "Nar, none o' jthis at my stall," said the proprietor. "Well, yer py S yer money, an yer as yer chice." Everywhere in the world those who pay can choose, but is there anywhere the wide world over where it is more emphasised than in the London slums that he who cannot pay has no choice except between starvation, disgrace, or death ? Evolved from this darkest England is the London street Arab, than whom no cuter specimen of humanity ever lived. His existence depends upon his reading aright of circumstance and individual — and granted the professional fraud, there is a piteous, terrible tragedy of helpless,-hope-less suffering renewed every fall of England's year. Already the cry of the destitute is loud; already the call from public charitable institutions is for help. And this at the beginning of the winter. . A little above the penniless who depend upon charity for food and shelter is that other vast community, who must eke out every farthing to its amplest production. One of the cheap markets common in every poor district is an object lesson in more than the art of malting short and very frayed ends meet. No other world might exist outside one of these narrow streets, so absolutely are its denizens bound by their environment. There might be in some minds a spiritual or intellectual standard, but it is indistinguishable and ineffectual. It counts for i nothing here ; the one main moving spectacle is the animal instinct to get food. Bitter and cruel need has impoverished life to one level — the fight for existence. j If a colonial can be moved by any one j strange sight in this city of strange sights j it is in watching this gigantic struggle of i "the 'submerged tenth" for daily food. ] There is talent enough expended on the effort to lift a nation. The gutter crawls with living creatures, each one of whom has ingenuity and wit enough to exist against tremendous odds. The force and intellect which filch life from a daily threatened death are by no means inconsiderable nor to be despised ; a perverted zeal which has no memorial — except the perpetuation of poverty and disease ; men who creep furtively, old women with backs bent and suspicious eyes as sharp as needles ; old, wan, cute children, to whom childhood is unknown. The costermongers' barrows lining the pavement, the flare of gas jets, the noise and grime, meagre and wretched though they all be, are still above the reach of the homeless waif and stray, and to such a paradise of unpurchasable good. Coarse and dreadful though these surroundings be, there are worse straits than bargaining for a supper with the coster, greengrocer, or fishmonger. The baked potato brazier is as near as some come to a hot meal and a fire during the winter, although there is a lot of charity done in an ostentatious fashion which is little heard of. Many of the restaurants and hotels at the close of day sell scraps for a penny or so to applicants. These back-door customers receive quite a pile of food for their pence. The confectioners part with their stale goods in the same fashion, and some of the eating houses distribute scraps gratis in the early morning to the destitute. It is a weird and pitiable sight to see a line of these wretched creatures drawn up before one of these doors in the cold of the early dawn — gaunt shadows of a homeless night, through which they have wandered in the rain, their tattered overgarment of coat or cloak drawn to their ears waiting in that pathetic patience of an unowned "animal for the scrag ends that shall be thrown them of charity. Men and women and little children, old men or young, old women and girls, by whatever road they have come, standing with famished eyes watching for a crust. 'And some of those roads have led from happy homes and other lands. It is so easy to be swept off the feet by the push, ing millions, to be trodden down and forgotten. The world hears only of those who keep their feet ; the others (unless they are criminal) have no individual life among the flotsam and ietsam gi the slums.

The food at the meanest-looking barrow, or stall, though, uninviting to the dainty pallet, is wholesome, tor the powers that be are rigorous in enforcing the laws that regulate the public health. But the cheap meat stalls particularly give one the same idea as does a second-hand clothes shop of the meaner sort — the goods have a tumbled and stale appearance. The "block ornaments," an assortment of odds and ends of beef, mutton, or pork, whicl* are invitingly ticketed twopence per pound, are nothing worse than the outside cuts and ends of joints which exposure to the ! weather has darkened. ! Quite oblivious of criticism or of the outside world, aspiring purchasers examine the varied assortment and the various prices ; umvashed fingers leave the small joint for closer inspection before exchanging the precious pence of a rash investment in skin and bone ; the blue-smocked butcher meanwhile crying the delicacies at his disposal with a keen eye on his customers. An old woman in a hesitating manner points to an untempting-looking chop with her eagerness to become its possessor visible in her wrinkled face and jaded eyes. The salesman weighs the coveted morsel, and mentions its price. It exceeds by a half-penny the woman's pence. She sighs, and shakes her head. The man throws it back among its kind and touts for fresh customers, and r the woman turns away without a murmur, ' without protest, except her sigh. j If one should purchase her needed supper, and follow her and bestow it, leaving her ! with her extra pence for bread, she would be too astonished for thanks, for few siand side by side at the coffee-stall and costers barrows except those whom dire necessity forces. I But the tragedy of the London poor is not unrelieved by comedy. Compensating Nature has evolved relief from grotesqueness ; the cockney gutter walker is no puppet ; their language and sentiment are not refined, but their humour is true — caustic and sharp peihaps, — for the lawless poor are continua I ly at v, ar with law and order. Their humour is as true as i their squalid pathos, and the comic side i never goes a-begging for appreciative , laughter. Their fun is neither reticent nor elegant — but it is there. j And none, perhaps, have a better understanding of the fact than the keen-eyed cat-erers from stall and barrow. To "listen for half an hour is amusem-ent without offence. The cheap-jack is a master of the art of suggestion, and mesmerises his customers by his wit and what sounds like wisdom. The street — especially their own market street — is theatre and music hall and promenade alike to the poor, where their human plays are enacted and their t humanity burlesqued, and where the street 1 organ caricatures for them the songs ol Araby. i