Netherdom

A great gathering of the lost, the waste, " the drift of both banks," as my Officer-guide aptly puts it. It is, surely, a sight more for tears than wonder. Actual Netherdom.

It is a spectacle that ought to make the imps of netherdom tremble for their laurels — man.

But Olympian Homer keeps them submerged in his sunless Netherdom, from which however, he lets them peep forth once in a while with a dreadful eye-shot at his startled reader.

Still this lower world of the folk finds its due counterpart in the upper world of royalty and nobility, who are making a Pandemonium of mutual carnage out of Britain, and like fiends broken loose from Satan's Netherdom are hugely charactered with blood-guilt and blood-revenge.

A flash of lightning was swiftly followed by uproarious celestial laughter as I took leave of my parents solemnly as if I was leaving them forever, longer; as if I was embarking on some journey into the pitiless expanses of netherdom.