Dutch the Diver; Or, A Man's Mistake
Page 42
STORY TWO--VIOLETS IN THE SNOW.
On one side there was a square, with trees that tried to look green insummer, but in winter time stuck in scraggy form out of thesoot-peppered snow, with a beadle who wore a gold band round his hat andlived in a lodge, out of which he issued every morning with a thinrattan cane to keep away the boys; on the other side there was a row ofgoodly mansions, with a mews for the horses and carriages of thegrandees who inhabited those mansions; and down between square andmansions, hidden behind the mews, as if it was a brick-and-mortar snake,there was Gutter-alley.
People said, how could such a dirty, squalid, unhealthy,beggar-inhabited place get there between the mansions of the rich.People said so to the parish officers, and the parish officers shooktheir heads; not so much as to say that they did not know, but to implythereby, a great deal, as if the wickedness of the inhabitants hadsomething to do with it. Then people said so to the dwellers inGutter-alley in an ill-used fashion, to which Gutter-alley veryreasonably replied that it must get somewhere, which was perfectly true;that it squeezed itself up as much out of the way as it could, which wasalso quite true; that it--to wit, Gutter-alley--did not get between thesquare and the row of mansions, but that the square came and sat upon iton one side, and the row of mansions came and sat upon it on the other,which was true again; and lastly, Gutter-alley said, where was it to go,for it must have living room? Then people who knew its squalor saidthat it was all very shocking, and that a meeting ought to be held. Andit was very shocking, but a meeting was not held; and Gutter-alley stoodwhere it had stood before, in the year of our Lord 1862, when there wasa very great exhibition building very close at hand; and Gutter-alleyremained an exhibition itself, staying as it did where, without mucheffort, it could have thrown a stone into the grounds of a palace.