“On my way home that night my hansom knocked down an old man.  He was not seriously hurt, and I drove him home.  On the way he stared at me curiously.  Every now and then he laughed—­unpleasantly.

“‘I have never seen any one out of your world before,’ he said.  ’I dare say you have never spoken to any one out of mine except to toss us alms.  Come and see where I live.’

“He insisted, and I went.  I found myself in a lodging-house, now pulled down and replaced by one of Lord Rowton’s tenement houses.  I saw a hundred human beings more or less huddled together promiscuously, and the face of every one of them was like the face of a rat.  The old man dragged me from room to room, laughing all the time.  He showed me children herded together without distinction of sex or clothing, here and there he pointed to a face where some apprehension of the light was fighting a losing battle with the ghouls of disease, of vice, of foul air, of filth.  I was faint and giddy when we had looked over that one house, but the old man was not satisfied.  He dragged me on to the roof and pointed eastwards.  There, as far as the eyes could reach, was a blackened wilderness of smoke-begrimed dwellings.  He looked at me and grinned.  I can see him now.  He had only one tooth, a blackened yellow stump, and every time he opened his mouth to laugh he was nearly choked with coughing.  He leaned out over the palisading and reached with both his arms eastward.  ‘There,’ he cried, frantically, ’you have seen one.  There are thousands and tens of thousands of houses like this, a million crawling vermin who were born into the world in your likeness, as you were born, my fine gentleman.  Day by day they wake in their holes, fill their lungs with foul air, their stomachs with rotten food, break their backs and their hearts over some hideous task.  Every day they drop a little lower down.  Drink alone keeps them alive, stirs their blood now and then so that they can feel their pulses beat, brings them a blessed stupor.  And see over there the sun, God’s sun, rises every morning, over them and you.  Young man!  You see those flaming spots of light?  They are gin-palaces.  You may thank your God for them, for they alone keep this horde of rotten humanity from sweeping westwards, breaking up your fine houses, emptying your wine into the street, tearing the silk and laces from your beautiful soft-limbed women.  Bah!  But you have read.  It would be the French Revolution over again.  Oh, but you are wise, you in the West, your statesmen and your philanthropists, that you build these gin-palaces, and smile, and rub your hands and build more and spend the money gaily.  You build the one dam which can keep back your retribution.  You keep them stupefied, you cheapen the vile liquor and hold it to their noses.  So they drink, and you live.  But a day of light may come.’”

Lord Arranmore ceased speaking, stretched out his hand and helped himself to wine with unfaltering fingers.