four A.M.
And certainly the spirit which moved me from within must have been strong that the flesh quailed not at the foul scenery amid which my destination lay . Half-way down one of the busiest , grimiest , and most depressing streets in the W.C. district stands a squalid public-house , the type of many hundreds and thousands of similar dens in the metropolis . The `` Myrtle Grove Tavern , '' pastoral as the name sounds , was not precisely the abode of peace and goodwill . From four A.M. , when the first of her _ habitués _ began to muster round the yet unopened doors , till half-past twelve P.M. , when the last of them was expelled by the sturdy `` chucker-out , '' the atmosphere was dense with the foul breath and still fouler language of drunken and besotted men and women . Every phase of the lower order of British drinker and drunkard was represented here . The coarse oaths of the men , mingled with the shriller voices of their female companions , and the eternal '' ' e saids '' and `` she saids '' of the latter 's complaints and disputes were interrupted by the plaintive wailings of the puny , gin-nourished infants at their breasts . Here , too , sat the taciturn man , clay pipe in mouth , on his accustomed bench day after day , year in year out , gazing with stony and blear-eyed indifference on all that went on around him ; deaf , dumb , and unseeing ; only spitting deliberately at intervals , and with apparently no other vocation in life than the consumption of fermented liquor .