"Why, it is said there are places where a man's life isn't worth tu'pence." "The very places I wish to see," I broke in.
"But you can't, you know," was the unfailing rejoinder.
"Which is not what I came to see you about," I answered brusquely, somewhat nettled by their incomprehension.

"I am a stranger here, and I want you to tell me what you know of the East End, in order that I may have something to start on." "But we know nothing of the East End.

It is over there, somewhere." And they waved their hands vaguely in the direction where the sun on rare occasions may be seen to rise.
"Then I shall go to Cook's," I announced.
"Oh yes," they said, with relief.

"Cook's will be sure to know." But O Cook, O Thomas Cook & Son, path-finders and trail-clearers, living sign-posts to all the world, and bestowers of first aid to bewildered travellers--unhesitatingly and instantly, with ease and celerity, could you send me to Darkest Africa or Innermost Thibet, but to the East End of London, barely a stone's throw distant from Ludgate Circus, you know not the way! "You can't do it, you know," said the human emporium of routes and fares at Cook's Cheapside branch.

"It is so--hem--so unusual." "Consult the police," he concluded authoritatively, when I had persisted.
"We are not accustomed to taking travellers to the East End; we receive no call to take them there, and we know nothing whatsoever about the place at all." "Never mind that," I interposed, to save myself from being swept out of the office by his flood of negations.