Excerpt from The Farce of Life, Vol. 1 of 3: A Novel Even in populous, busy London, there is something inexpressibly desolate in such an evening. To the thin-shod, houseless, half-famished wanderer, it is fraught with fever and with death; and the delicate lady of fashion seems to re coil from touching the ground, as she springs from her carriage to the open hall door, where Obsequious lacqueys are awaiting to usher her to the halls Of luxury. Few foot passengers were abroad in the streets at the west end Of the town, and the silence was only occasionally broken by the rumbling of a cab, with a wet driver in a shining hat, and a still wetter horse plodding on with bent down head, and a dripping halter on its neck; or by the heavy roll of an omnibus filled almost to suffocation. 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 state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.