Nature with her terrible club, "Survival of the Fittest"; and Civilisation with her cruel sword, "Supply and Demand," beat them back, and they give way inch by inch, fighting to the end.

But it is in a dumb, sullen way, that is not sufficiently picturesque to be heroic.
I remember seeing an old bull-dog, one Saturday night, lying on the doorstep of a small shop in the New Cut.

He lay there very quiet, and seemed a bit sleepy; and, as he looked savage, nobody disturbed him.
People stepped in and out over him, and occasionally in doing so, one would accidentally kick him, and then he would breathe a little harder and quicker.
At last a passer-by, feeling something wet beneath his feet, looked down, and found that he was standing in a pool of blood, and, looking to see where it came from, found that it flowed in a thick, dark stream from the step on which the dog was lying.
Then he stooped down and examined the dog, and the dog opened its eyes sleepily and looked at him, gave a grin which may have implied pleasure, or may have implied irritation at being disturbed, and died.
A crowd collected, and they turned the dead body of the dog over on its side, and saw a fearful gash in the groin, out of which oozed blood, and other things.

The proprietor of the shop said the animal had been there for over an hour.
I have known the poor to die in that same grim, silent way--not the poor that you, my delicately-gloved Lady Bountiful and my very excellent Sir Simon DoGood, know, or that you would care to know; not the poor who march in processions with banners and collection-boxes; not the poor that clamour round your soup kitchens and sing hymns at your tea meetings; but the poor that you don't know are poor until the tale is told at the coroner's inquest--the silent, proud poor who wake each morning to wrestle with Death till night-time, and who, when at last he overcomes them, and, forcing them down on the rotting floor of the dim attic, strangles them, still die with their teeth tight shut.
There was a boy I came to know when I was living in the East End of London.

He was not a nice boy by any means.