{"id":"01KG8AMAHVTVY5SXCJHG6E0113","cid":"bafkreietyzhwincu6ag7kubfswqearivgsyw3fpnhbtnd4rehv6pu7ftnu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5715,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":5658,"text":"                             TEMPLE SECOND\r\n\r\nA stranger in London on Saturday night and without a copper! What\r\nhospitalities may such an one expect? What shall I do with myself this\r\nweary night? My landlady won’t receive me in her parlour. I owe her\r\nmoney. She looks like flint on me. So in this monstrous rabblement must\r\nI crawl about till, say, ten o’clock, and then slink home to my\r\nunlighted bed.\r\n\r\nThe case was this: The week following my inglorious expulsion from the\r\ntransatlantic temple, I had packed up my trunks and damaged character,\r\nand repaired to the paternal, loving town of Philadelphia. There chance\r\nthrew into my way an interesting young orphan lady and her aunt-duenna;\r\nthe lady rich as Cleopatra, but not as beautiful; the duenna lovely as\r\nCharmian, but not so young. For the lady’s health, prolonged travel had\r\nbeen prescribed. Maternally connected in old England, the lady chose\r\nLondon for her primal port. But ere securing their passage, the two were\r\nlooking around for some young physician, whose disengagement from\r\npressing business might induce him to accept, on a moderate salary, the\r\npost of private Esculapius and knightly companion to the otherwise\r\nunprotected pair. The more necessary was this, as not only the voyage to\r\nEngland was intended, but an extensive European tour to follow.\r\n\r\nEnough. I came; I saw; I was made the happy man. We sailed. We landed on\r\nthe other side; when, after two weeks of agonised attendance on the\r\nvacillations of the lady, I was very cavalierly dismissed, on the score\r\nthat the lady’s maternal relations had persuaded her to try, through the\r\nwinter, the salubrious climate of the foggy Isle of Wight, in preference\r\nto the fabulous blue atmosphere of the Ionian Isles. So much for\r\nnational prejudice. _Nota Bene._--The lady was in a sad decline.\r\n\r\nHaving ere sailing been obliged to anticipate nearly a quarter’s pay to\r\nfoot my outfit bills, I was dismally cut adrift in Fleet Street without\r\na solitary shilling. By disposing, at certain pawnbrokers, of some of my\r\nless indispensable apparel, I had managed to stave off the more\r\nslaughterous onsets of my landlady, while diligently looking about for\r\nany business that might providentially appear.\r\n\r\nSo on I drifted amid those indescribable crowds which every seventh\r\nnight pour and roar through each main artery, and block the by-veins of\r\ngreat London, the Leviathan. Saturday night it was; and the markets and\r\nthe shops, and every stall and counter were crushed with the one\r\nunceasing tide. A whole Sunday’s victualling for three millions of human\r\nbodies, was going on. Few of them equally hungry with my own, as through\r\nmy spent lassitude, the unscrupulous human whirlpools eddied me aside at\r\ncorners, as any straw is eddied in the Norway Maelstrom. What dire\r\nsuckings into oblivion must such swirling billows know! Better perish\r\n’mid myriad sharks in mid Atlantic, than die a penniless stranger in\r\nBabylonian London. Forlorn, outcast, without a friend, I staggered on\r\nthrough three millions of my own human kind. The fiendish gas-lights\r\nshooting their Tartarean rays across the muddy, sticky streets, lit up\r\nthe pitiless and pitiable scene.\r\n\r\nWell, well, if this were but Sunday now, I might conciliate some kind\r\nfemale pew-opener, and rest me in some inn-like chapel upon some\r\nstranger’s outside bench. But it is Saturday night. The end of the weary\r\nweek, and all but the end of weary me.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJVQ8D7NW8GVW8QE4DYG9","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM4QJE0X33XDH3DXW5AAD","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:33.339Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:40.671Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}