Mrs. Swiggs is seized with fear and trembling.  Surely she is in a world of darkness.  Can it be that so graphically described by Brother Syngleton Spyke? she questions within herself.  It might, indeed, put Antioch to shame:  but the benighted denizens with which it swarms speak her own tongue.  “It is a deal worse in Orange street.”

“Now called Baxter street Marm-a deal, I assure you!” speaks a low, muttering voice.  Lady Swiggs is startled.  She only paused a moment to view this sea of vice and wretchedness she finds herself surrounded with.  Turning quickly round she sees before her a man, or what there is left of a man.  His tattered garments, his lean, shrunken figure, his glassy eyes, and pale, haggard face, cause her to shrink back in fright.  He bows, touches his shattered hat, and says, “Be not afraid, good Madam.  May I ask if you have not mistaken your way?” Mrs. Swiggs looks querulously through her spectacles and says, “Do tell me where I am?” “In the Points, good Madam.  You seem confused, and I don’t wonder.  It’s a dreadful place.  I know it, madam, to my sorrow.”  There is a certain politeness in the manner of this man-an absence of rudeness she is surprised to find in one so dejected.  The red, distended nose, the wild expression of his countenance, his jagged hair, hanging in tufts over his ragged coat collar, give him a repulsiveness not easily described.  In answer to an inquiry he says, “They call me, Madam, and I’m contented with the name,—­they call me Tom Toddleworth, the Chronicle.  I am well down-not in years, but sorrow.  Being sick of the world I came here, have lived, or rather drifted about, in this sea of hopeless misery, homeless and at times foodless, for ten years or more.  Oh!  I have seen better days, Madam.  You are a stranger here.  May God always keep you a stranger to the sufferings of those who dwell with us.  I never expect to be anything again, owe nothing to the world, and never go into Broadway.”

“Never go into Broadway,” repeats Mrs. Swiggs, her fingers wandering to her spectacles.  Turning into Orange street, Mr. Toddleworth tenders his services in piloting Mrs. Swiggs into Centre street, which, as he adds, will place her beyond harm.  As they advance the scene becomes darker and darker.  Orange street seems that centre from which radiates the avenues of every vice known to a great city.  One might fancy the world’s outcasts hurled by some mysterious hand into this pool of crime and misery, and left to feast their wanton appetites and die.  “And you have no home, my man?” says Mrs. Swiggs, mechanically.  “As to that, Madam,” returns the man, with a bow, “I can’t exactly say I have no home.  I kind of preside over and am looked up to by these people.  One says, ’come spend a night with me, Mr. Toddleworth;’ another says, ’come spend a night with me, Mr. Tom Toddleworth.’  I am a sort of respectable man with them, have a place to lay down free, in any of their houses.  They all esteem me, and say,