Gaslight and Daylight

Excerpt from Gaslight and Daylight: With Some London Scenes They Shine Upon It is commonly asserted, and as commonly believed, that there are seventy thousand persons in London who rise every morning without the slightest knowledge as to where they shall lay their heads at night. However the number may be over or understated, it is very certain that a vast quantity of people are daily in the above-mentioned uncertainty regarding sleeping accommodation, and that when night approaches, a great majority solve the problem in a somewhat (to themselves) disagreeable manner, by not going to bed at all. People who stop up, or out all night, may be divided into three classes: - First, editors, bakers, market-gardeners, and all those who are kept out of their beds by business. Secondly, gentlemen and 'gents, ' anxious to cultivate a knowledge of the 'lark' species, or intent on the navigation of the 'spree.' Thirdly, and lastly, those ladies and gentlemen who do not go to bed, for the very simple reason that they have no beds to go to. The members of this last class - a very numerous one - are said, facetiously, to possess 'the key of the street.' And a remarkably disagreeable key it is. It will unlock for you all manner of caskets you would fain know nothing about. It is the 'open sesame' to dens you never saw before, and would much rather never see again, -a key to knowledge which should surely make the learner a sadder man, if it make him not a wiser one. Come with me, luxuriant tenant of heavy-draped four-poster - basker on feather-bed, and nestler in lawn sheets. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses…