Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III VICES So much, then, for the East End child. What of the child grown old ? Well, let us acknowledge at once that the life of the East-ender is more or less a closed book to us. As our experience of him increases, our understanding of him seems to decrease. The problem is larger than we anticipated ; more intimate realisation of it confounds us. The East-ender's sorrows, his joys, his ambitions : what does the most experienced know of these, save in the most superficial way ? Keenly desirous as we are of entering into the inner meaning of the life of the toiler, the most sanguine can boast but very partial success. Brotherhood is as yet too new a word ; identity of interest has not yet become a reality. Nevertheless, the lights and shades of the picture stand out prominently. Like other people, East-enders have their virtues and their vices, their angelical moments as well as their diabolical. Certainly they are not altogether bad ; quite as certainly they are not altogether good. The besetting sin of the East-ender is intemperance. The drink habit is all but universal. If a dock labourer is invited to a "beano," he forthwith begins to devise the biggest possible " booze" at the highest possibleprice. Tell a factory girl that you are going to take her for an outing, and she immediately falls a-dreaming of unlimited " treats " of port wine. Boys on a holiday regard it as quite the correct thing to get drunk. And even women have very little notion of a day in the country apart from the bottle. Nevertheless, women are not so very culpable. For one intoxicated woman, you will probably find two intoxicated boys and three intoxicated girls. Christmas is the thankfully acknowledged time for the most glorious " drunk" of the whole year. Then our friend the working-m...