{"id":"01KG6G84B1ADN54MHZ6GR5YEF9","cid":"bafkreidtjorrf6xxoj2lcgw6l7c2366hpjshw7chsdoqvyvh5clkswvvdy","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":6433,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":6365,"text":"Avoiding the main entrance of the hall, which was barred, he took me\r\nthrough some private way, and we found ourselves in a rear blind-walled\r\nplace in the open air. I looked round amazed. The spot was grimy as a\r\nbackyard in the Five Points. It was packed with a mass of lean,\r\nfamished, ferocious creatures, struggling and fighting for some\r\nmysterious precedency, and all holding soiled blue tickets in their\r\nhands.\r\n\r\n‘There is no other way,’ said my guide; ‘we can only get in with the\r\ncrowd. Will you try it? I hope you have not on your drawing-room suit?\r\nWhat do you say? It will be well worth your sight. So noble a charity\r\ndoes not often offer. The one following the annual banquet of Lord\r\nMayor’s day--fine a charity as that certainly is--is not to be mentioned\r\nwith what will be seen to-day. Is it, ay?’\r\n\r\nAs he spoke, a basement door in the distance was thrown open, and the\r\nsqualid mass made a rush for the dark vault beyond.\r\n\r\nI nodded to my guide, and sideways we joined in with the rest. Ere long\r\nwe found our retreat cut off by the yelping crowd behind, and I could\r\nnot but congratulate myself on having a civic, as well as civil guide;\r\none, too, whose uniform made evident his authority.\r\n\r\nIt was just the same as if I were pressed by a mob of cannibals on some\r\npagan beach. The beings round me roared with famine. For in this mighty\r\nLondon misery but maddens. In the country it softens. As I gazed on the\r\nmeagre, murderous pack, I thought of the blue eye of the gentle wife of\r\npoor Coulter. Some sort of curved, glittering steel thing (not a sword;\r\nI know not what it was), before worn in his belt, was now flourished\r\noverhead by my guide, menacing the creatures to forbear offering the\r\nstranger violence.\r\n\r\nAs we drove, slow and wedge-like, into the gloomy vault, the howls of\r\nthe mass reverberated. I seemed seething in the Pit with the Lost. On\r\nand on, through the dark and the damp, and then up a stone stairway to a\r\nwide portal; when, diffusing, the pestiferous mob poured in bright day\r\nbetween painted walls and beneath a painted dome. I thought of the\r\nanarchic sack of Versailles.\r\n\r\nA few moments more and I stood bewildered among the beggars in the\r\nfamous Guildhall.\r\n\r\nWhere I stood--where the thronged rabble stood, less than twelve hours\r\nbefore sat His Imperial Majesty, Alexander of Russia; His Royal Majesty,\r\nFrederick William, King of Prussia; His Royal Highness, George, Prince\r\nRegent of England; His world-renowned Grace, the Duke of Wellington;\r\nwith a mob of magnificoes made up of conquering field-marshals, earls,\r\ncounts, and innumerable other nobles of mark.\r\n\r\nThe walls swept to and fro, like the foliage of a forest with blazonings\r\nof conquerors’ flags. Naught outside the hall was visible. No windows\r\nwere within four-and-twenty feet of the floor. Cut off from all other\r\nsights, I was hemmed in by one splendid spectacle--splendid, I mean,\r\neverywhere, but as the eye fell toward the floor. _That_ was foul as a\r\nhovel’s--as a kennel’s; the naked boards being strewed with the smaller\r\nand more wasteful fragments of the feast, while the two long parallel\r\nlines, up and down the hall, of now unrobed, shabby, dirty pine-tables\r\nwere piled with less trampled wrecks. The dyed banners were in keeping\r\nwith the last night’s kings; the floor suited the beggars of to-day. The\r\nbanners looked down upon the floor as from his balcony Dives upon\r\nLazarus. A line of liveried men kept back with their staves the\r\nimpatient jamb of the mob, who, otherwise, might have instantaneously\r\nconverted the Charity into a Pillage. Another body of gowned and gilded\r\nofficials distributed the broken meats--the cold victuals and crumbs of\r\nkings. One after another the beggars held up their dirty blue tickets,\r\nand were served with the plundered wreck of a pheasant, or the rim of a\r\npasty--like the detached crown of an old hat--the solids and meats\r\nstolen out.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6G7FZ2YNM1MSCTTZG34BXV","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6G84B1JXZA23YPBJV7F0DW","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.353Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:48:28.434Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}