The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 214: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

184 THE COURT OF LONDON hunt ye down to the dogs. But the chase sha’n’t take place in my house, I can tell you. Besides, the tax-gatherer has already been and asked me why I keep such seditious, vickedly disposed people beneath my roof.”’ “You do not mean to turn us out?” exclaimed Mrs. Melmoth, casting a look of mingled terror and anguish upon the landlady. “Yes, but I do though,” was the withering, blighting response. ‘‘ So tramp, be off —”’ ‘““ Mercy! mercy!’ screamed the poor mother; ‘if not for me, at least for this innocent babe, and those unfortunate children. My God! mercy! mercy! ”’ “No, tramp, be off, out with ye!” vociferated Mrs. Thomas, working herself up into a perfect fury. ‘‘ Bundle, or Ill call in a constable.” ‘“Come, then, my poor children — courage! ’”’ murmured Mrs. Melmoth, in a stifling voice, for she felt as if her heart must break. ‘‘ Come, let us go forth into the street, and — and — beg.”’ As she uttered these last words, the poor woman staggered against the door-post and almost dropped the babe from her arms; for although she had often and often thought that to beggary her doom must lead, and although, for weeks and months past, her waking reveries by day and her dreams by night had depicted herself and all her children drawn up in a ghastly, ghostlike line in the public streets stretching forth the hand of mendicity, yet had she never dared breathe aloud the awful word itself until the present occasion. But now the appalling moment had arrived, the consummation of the calamity stared her in the face; she was already standing upon the threshold of that doom which she had so long foreseen and which now made her blood stagnate as if chilled in her veins. And forth went the unhappy family, the inhuman landlady overwhelming them with reproaches because they were poor. Oh, poverty is indeed a crime in this land of civilization and of Bible societies, in this country where religion is made so much of that there is a law to punish with the treadmill those who do not go to church, in this kingdom where a young lady at present reigns “ by the grace of God.” But it was in the time of that diabolical old monster, (G(@) ANC 6)(0)()