“ The people themselves are dirty, while any attempt at cleanliness becomes howling farce, when it is not pitiful and tragic. ”
Jack London, The People of the Abyss (1903). copy citation
| Author | Jack London |
|---|---|
| Source | The People of the Abyss |
| Topic | howling |
| Date | 1903 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_People_of_the_Abyss |
Context
“No more dreary spectacle can be found on this earth than the whole of the awful East, with its Whitechapel, Hoxton, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, and Wapping to the East India Docks. The color of life is gray and drab. Everything is helpless, hopeless, unrelieved, and dirty. Bath-tubs are a thing totally unknown, as mythical as the ambrosia of the gods. The people themselves are dirty, while any attempt at cleanliness becomes howling farce, when it is not pitiful and tragic. Strange, vagrant odors come drifting along the greasy wind, and the rain, when it falls, is more like grease than water from heaven. The very cobblestones are scummed with grease. In brief, a vast and complacent dirtiness obtains, which could be done away with by nothing short of a Vesuvius or Mount Pelée.”
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