It is interesting to note that the majority of Londoners speak much better nowadays, than, say, within the last ten or fifteen years. Among the younger outcasts the Cockney twang is very rare; their grammar may be faulty, but their intonation is astonishingly correct. For this reason, I suppose, my own accent did not raise comment, while as for manners and customs, nowhere is a more rigid code of etiquette exacted than in a common lodging-house⁠—as I shall have occasion to point out. To a great extent the same standard is observed in Mare Street. You ask no impertinent questions, you answer civilly when spoken to, and the newest comer waits to be addressed. At any rate, for whatever reason, I was never once challenged as to my origins. I was never asked by my companions if I had seen better days, or interrogated as to why I had come down. Personally, I found it infinitely stimulating to be reckoned up apart from the social value set by clothes and other trifles. In the bedrock of life, these things slip past you, and you are gauged by character alone.