Suspended from the point of
the canopy was a lamp of a dull red color, which with rain spatterings
and droppings, and a long-standing accumulation of cobwebs and dust
had grown barely translucent, and must have emitted but a sickly light
at night-fall. A worn and ragged rope-mat lay on the second step, and
across the upper half of the dilapidated door (which was of glass) a
faded screen was drawn that kept the inner room secure from the
curious gaze of passers-by.
Those who had been born and brought up under the shadow of this
ominous establishment, must have known many a tale of sorrow and woe
that owed its origin to that vile ground-floor.
I discovered, on closer scrutiny, that some faded letters across the
dirty lamp, intimated to the general public that this was the "Ace of
Spades." And in the money-till of the Ace of Spades, doubtless was the
price of many a poor man's toil, the bread and meat of his hungry
children squandered and sacrificed with a fiendish recklessness.
Within the dingy walls of the Ace of Spades was bartered the domestic
happiness of many a home that had been cheerless enough, God knows,
without this extra curse.
I shivered as I passed it by, to think that amid such haunts of misery
and starvation, a place like this could flourish, growing fat upon the
life-blood of famishing humanity, and a pity that is akin to a most
contemptuous hatred swelled my breast, when I asked myself: What sort
of being presides over this soul-trap? Can it be rational? Can it have
a soul? Can it ever understand what even animal sympathy is?
The gold that is stolen from the rich man's coffers has some claim to
respectability, over these ill-gotten coins that are so many mouthfuls
of bread snatched from the jaws of perishing hunger.
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