fermented liquor.

The side-door for "jugs and bottles" gave on to a dirty and odoriferous
mews, down which my destination lay. The unbridled enthusiasm of eighteen
years can do much to harden or deaden the nervous system, but certainly it
required all my fortitude to withstand the sickening combination of beer
and damp horsy hay which greeted my nostrils. Neither could the cabmen and
stablemen, hanging round the public-house doors and the mews generally, be
calculated to increase one's democratic aspirations, but I walked
resolutely on, and turning to my left, dexterously avoiding an unsavoury
heap of horse manure, straw, and other offal, I clambered up a break-neck
ladder, at the top of which loomed the office of the _Bomb_.

The door was furtively opened in response to my kick by a lean,
hungry-looking little man of very circumspect appearance. He cast me a
surly and suspicious glance, accompanied by a not very encouraging snarl,
but on my mentioning Dr. Armitage he opened the door a few inches wider
and I passed in.

It took me some seconds before I could accustom my eyes to the fetid
atmosphere of this den, which was laden with the smoke of divers specimens
of the worst shag and cheapest tobacco in the metropolis. But various
objects, human and inanimate, became gradually more distinct, and I found
myself in a long, ill-lighted wooden shed, where type and dust and
unwashed human beings had left their mark, and where soap and sanitation
were unknown. Past the type racks and cases, which occupied the first half
of this apartment, were grouped benches, stools, packing-cases, and a few
maimed and deformed chairs for the accommodation of the assembly. Then
came a hand printing-press, on which were spread the remains of some
comrade's repast: the vertebral column of a bloater and an empty