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beldame, making a last effort at youth--the mere child of immature form,
yet, from long association, an adept in the dreadful coquetries of her
trade, and burning with a rabid ambition to be ranked the equal of her
elders in vice; drunkards innumerable and indescribable--some in shreds
and patches, reeling, inarticulate, with bruised visage and lack-lustre
eyes--some in whole although filthy garments, with a slightly unsteady
swagger, thick sensual lips, and hearty-looking rubicund faces--others
clothed in materials which had once been good, and which even now were
scrupulously well brushed--men who walked with a more than naturally
firm and springy step, but whose countenances were fearfully pale, whose
eyes hideously wild and red, and who clutched with quivering fingers, as
they strode through the crowd, at every object which came within
their reach; beside these, pie-men, porters, coal--heavers, sweeps;
organ-grinders, monkey-exhibiters and ballad mongers, those who vended
with those who sang; ragged artizans and exhausted laborers of every
description, and all full of a noisy and inordinate vivacity which
jarred discordantly upon the ear, and gave an aching sensation to the
eye.
As the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for
not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its
gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly
portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder
relief, as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its
den,) but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle
with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over
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