Near him were the singers: receiving, with professional indifference, the compliments of the company, and applying themselves, in turn, to a dozen proffered glasses of spirits and water, tendered by their more boisterous admirers; whose countenances, expressive of almost every vice in almost every grade, irresistibly attracted the attention, by their very repulsiveness. Cunning, ferocity, and drunkeness in all its stages, were there, in their strongest aspect; and women: some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you looked: others with every mark and stamp of
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Attraction of repulsion
The Three Cripples
- The ugly could be an attraction in its magnetic appeal to the middle-class tourists of the the day, whether they were
armchair readers of guides to the dens and sinks of vice, or whose who preferred to venture out under the protection of
a policeman. The repulsion of what was morally and epidemically dangerous was, paradoxically, its attraction
