Packed rank of stores and shops, with family quarters overhead, stretched

Along both sides of it, from one bank of the river to the other. The Bridge was

A sort of town to itself; it had its inn, its beerhouses, its bakeries, its

Haberdasheries, its food markets, its manufacturing industries, and even its

Church. It looked upon the two neighbors which it linked together — London

And Southwark — as being well enough, as suburbs, but not otherwise

Particularly important. It was a close corporation, so to speak; it was a

Narrow town, of a single street a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a

Village population, and everybody in it knew all his fellow-townsmen

Intimately, and had known their fathers and mothers before them — and all

Their little family affairs into the bargain. It had its aristocracy, of course —

Its fine old families of butchers, and bakers, and what not, who had occupied

The same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great

History of the Bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange legends; and

Who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied in a

Long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way. It was just the sort of population to

Be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. Children were born on the Bridge,

Were reared there, grew to old age and finally died without ever having set a