To an indifferent
person either side of the gutter would have seemed
much the same---the houses equally mean, the
children as ragged and dirty, the carmen as brutal,
the whole forming the same picture of low life in a
deserted and impoverished quarter of a large city.
But to me, the gutter, or kennel, was what the
brook Kedron was to Shimei; death was denounced
against him should he cross it, doubtless because
it was known to his wisdom who pronounced the
doom, that from the time the crossing the stream
was debarred, the devoted man's desire to transgress
the precept would become irresistible, and he
would be sure to draw down on his head the penalty
which he had already justly incurred by cursing
the anointed of God. For my part, all Elysium
seemed opening on the other side of the kennel,
and I envied the little blackguards, who, stopping
the current with their little dam-dikes of mud, had
a right to stand on either side of the nasty puddle
which best pleased them. I was so childish as even
to make an occasional excursion across, were it
only for a few yards, and felt the triumph of a
schoolboy, who, trespassing in an orchard, hurries
back again with a fluttering sensation of joy and
terror, betwixt the pleasure of having executed
his purpose, and the fear of being taken or discovered.
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