somewhat misleading, the title of Mr. Free's story of his
sojourn in the East End is none the less appropriate. Other men know the East End of London, the Millwall that Mr. Free laboured in, but none have shown us the heart of that mass of strenuous toilers so plainly as he has. He tells us very straightly that the fearful struggle for existence simply leaves no room for any thought but that of food, drink, and some reaction against the prolonged strain of the day's work and the foul atmosphere of the mill or the foundry. Alcohol is a sedative as well as a stimulant,— technically speaking, it is perhaps not a stimulant, hence its fatal fascination for men whose endurance and temper are tried to the utmost. Rowdyism is but a manifestation of physical energy, not unknown in the West End. "Funerals and fights are the chief recreations of the East-Ender," says Mr. Free. His great vice is drunkenness, and his great virtue good humour. "Man or woman, the East-Ender is nothing but a big rollicking baby." Next to his good humour and his humour Mr. Free ranks his "affectionate clannishness." We have always heard the same ; he sticks to his own, and is capable of any sacrifice ; but then his whole life is a sacrifice, conscious or unconscious. It is in his analysis of the mental limitations of the East-Ender that Mr. Free shows his real grip and his careful study of his subject. The Millwaller's ignorance is appalling. Existence outside Millwall, or his particular locality, is simply an unreal dream. He believes nothing that is told him, any more than he believes in a man who comes to live in his quarter for the purpose of ameliorating his condition. The thing is absurd, un- thinkable. The well-dressed stranger acts as a tonic on the East- Ender, according to Mr. Free, hence the uproarious welcome he gets. One of the East-Ender's limitations is his lack of tenacity ; it is this, says the author, and his terrible apathy, begotten of the exhausting struggle for existence, which kill the East End parson. The parson's complaint is taedium vitae, induced by the hopelessness of the task before him. While on the one hand the East-Ender is often the victim of a tyranny against which he dare not complain, on the other hand for the sake of asserting himself he will quarrel at a moment's notice with his bread-and-butter. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that he does not meet with honest treatment. Mr. Free makes this clear to us. The workers are blackmailed relentlessly, with an inhumanity that is more Oriental than European, and factory statutes are ridden through and through. "But for the children I should give up in despair," says the author in one chapter; and the children made life bearable, possessing the very qualities that are crushed out of them in their teens. East End humour must have lightened the struggle too. " Seaside ?" the Millwall boy will answer. "Not me I'd rather have a penn'orth of seabreeze off a whelk-stall." "My aunt Priscilla is a lady, and she associates with Earls," said the undertaker's daughter. "If your aunt was a real lady she'd associate with Countesses, not with Earls," was the retort ; from which it will be gathered that the East-Ender has both wit and humour. Mr. Free discusses the "roof- tree problem," and exclaims bitterly against those landlords who keep their land waste, paying nominal taxes for it, till the workers' cry for room forces the price up to so much a foot. He says hard things of soup-ticket philanthropy, and sums up the parochial work in the East End as a gigantic failure, cer- tainly from the religions point of view. When the boys and girls leave the schools, what becomes of them and their religion ? No one knows the real mind of the East-Ender, although with Mr. Free's eyes we can see as far into him as is possible in a few years. But he must be lived with, not for seven, but seventy years,—though, of course, he scarcely reaches even the mediaeval average of life. Seven Years' Hard is an impression, but a very able, a very true, a very biting impression eaten by a sharp acid, that of honest and fearless truth. Mr. Free's pen is facile, but very forcible, and he is intensely clear-sighted. Not all the East End is Millwall—for that we are thankful—but we must take care that it does not become a huge Millwall, something very liko an Inferno, not for damned, but for damning souls.
MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDER I.
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