James Greenwood

“ Poor mites of things, hungry-eyed, sharp- shouldered, and with nothing ample in the matter of attire but their mud-bespattered cotton stockings, that hung in rucks and folds about their sticks of legs. Unhealthy-looking little creatures, with faces shrunken and shrewd as are the visages of women wrinkled with age, and of that complexion of greyish white that invariably denotes the child whose familiarity with butcher's meat is little more than a nodding acquaintance as it is displayed on the butcher's hooks, and who is bread-and-butter built from her weaning upwards. ”

“ The signal is given, the war-song commences, and the mass moves simultaneously as if it were but one man. Every arm is in motion; every head turns at once; the feet of all strike the ground in time with such force that the vibration is felt for more than two hundred yards. Every muscle is in movement; every feature distorted; the most gentle countenance assumes a ferocious and savage expression. The more violent the contortions, the more beautiful the dance is considered. ”

“ The same brutal, expressionless mouth, dead to everything but the intaking of brandy and gin and the outletting of foulest blasphemy, the same transparent mask of abandonment to the fun in progress, and through which unmistakably and invariably appeared a restless impatience of all frivolity that impeded business, and the cold, calculating sharp look-out for the main chance, and which was no more quenched or even tamed by the measures of strong drink, swallowed at the expense of the victims marked as fair prey, than fire may be quenched with oil. ”

“ On that bright Sunday morning, every form was as completely occupied as are the seats in the pit of a theatre when a popular piece is being played, and all by working folk, while scores of other work-people, too late for the front rows, sauntered over the hot asphalt, patiently waiting for a chance to sit down and enjoy at their ease the beauties of nature, and listen to the refreshing trickling of the plashing fountain. ”

“ I was considerably incommoded in this way myself but, if I felt it, how must it have been with Angelina and Augustus! Just imagine the mental condition of those twin souls of poetry, in such a crowd that it was impossible to count its number; but on board the Zephyr there must have been a least a dozen such unhappy pairs who were being "scrouged" and hustled about in the most deplorable manner; and if ever the human countenance wore an expression of hatred and disgust for all, except one, of humankind, that expression was visible in every agonized Augustus on the boat. ”

“ During the absence of the ambassadors the heavens had been as brass, and scarcely a passing cloud obscured the sky, which blazed with the dazzling rays of a vertical sun. But strange to relate the very day that the approach of the rain maker was announced, the clouds began to gather thickly, the lightning darted and the thunder rolled in awful grandeur, accompanied by a few drops of rain. The deluded multitude were wild with delight; they rent the sky with their acclamations of joy, and the earth rang with their exulting and maddening shouts. ”

“ But on Sundays, exchanges, squares, bazaars lanes and alleys, all are thrown open free to all corners and the amount of business transacted during Sunday morning church time can only be judged by personal observation of the immense concourse or patrons that flock to and block up every passage and avenue and outlet and inlet. Round about the exchanges and covered ways are streets innumerable, Cutler-street, Harrow-street, White-street, all long and narrow thoroughfares, and one and all literally crammed full, road and pavement. Such an amazing spectacle is to be found nowhere else. ”

“ I nodded back with as indifferent an air as I could assume, and certainly experienced some relief of mind. But, do as I would, when my curious glance returned to the spot, there was the lucky baker, in such a perspiration of delight, that when he took off his hat to wave it to me I could see that his hair was dabbed close to his forehead and temples like sticking plaster. Again he made arithmetical signs with his digits, but I would not gratify him by looking. I almost began to wish that I was the baker, and to wonder if men ever really were racing prophets without knowing it. ”

“ In short, what the old Thatcher had to tell, and what, with mouths agape and pipes grown cold in their nervous grasp, the seven middle-aged labourers for the first time in their lives listened to, was "Jack and the Beanstalk." Never did story-teller command a more attentive audience. They were with the thatcher every step of his way up the "ladder as high as the sky," and when Jack blew the horn that hung at the gate of the castle of the two-headed giant, every man wetted his lips with his tongue, as though in imagination he was taking a turn at it. ”

“ Perhaps, as a rule, they are amazed that the dilapidated old things should turn out so fresh and smart-looking after their long rest in the gaol wardrobe; perhaps, on the other hand, having yearned for several months for this happy day, when they should, for the last time, strip from their bodies the hateful linsey-woolsey, and encase themselves in their own unconspicuous clothes of honest cut, they are a little disappointed at finding them so wofully seedy and unsuitable for a start in that amended and respectable life they have for so long been resolving to adopt. ”

“ The beer-drinking public likes its liquor with a "body." It insists on an article that is "full in the mouth" - an article that, when swallowed, comforts the stomach as food comforts it. What can the beer-seller do? He has no fiendish desire to poison his fellow-creatures. If they would put up with the naked imposture it would be the same thing to him, and would save him a world of trouble; but since they insist on the disguise, all that he can do is to smother his conscience, and make it as pleasant tasting as possible. All this sounded terribly ominous for my seven pints. ”

“ There, to-day as yesterday, are to be seen in Dudley Street, Seven Dials, the deep black cellars, reached through a gap in the pavement, and by means of a steep ladder, and in each, at a greater depth in the earth than the sewers and the nests of the sewer rats, families of human beings - fathers, mothers, and little children-live and eat and drink, and make themselves at home. ”

“ In a purely mining district the crowd one encounters in the streets, when the day's or the night's labour is over, is certainly not a prepossessing one; but the "pit lad," be he old or young, with his face and all that is visible of his body as black and as polished as jet, and his coarse and patched frock and trousers of heavy flannels, is, at least, an individual capable of enjoying that state of life to which it has been his destiny to be called; and he is ever ready to go in heart and soul, when he is free to do so, for those sports and pastimes in which he takes delight. ”

“ With us it is anxiety as to hereafter that makes death terrible; with the savage death is detestable only as a gravedigger, a malicious spirit who snatches him away from the world—where his children and his wives are, and where tobacco grows, and palm-trees yield good wine,—who snatches him away from all these good things and every other, and shuts him in the dark damp earth to decay like a rotten branch. ”

“ Unfortunately, however, the well-behaved working man cannot have Hampstead-heath to himself at holiday time. That untamable and, from every point of view, objectionable animal, the London "rough," implacable in his animosity to the usages of decent society, must have his outing and enjoy himself. In doing so, however, he will consent to make no sacrifice of principle. He comes in his hob-nailed boots, with a hearty will to kick out of his path and trample on all weak and defenceless persons who for the moment, and however undesignedly, may stand in the way of his free and independent progress. ”

“ But the women are not to be baulked of a last look, and as suddenly as they were overcome they recover; and when the train moves, and there are handkerchiefs and faces white and wet at the window openings of that third-class carriage, there is a tremendous waving of "stroikin' colours" on the platform, and such a brave show of delight that, hard as it was to part, those who were left behind were, for their sakes, glad to see the others go, that one could but wish there was no make believe in it, but that it was entirely real. ”

“ THE north wind is raging abroad, ferocious as a savage with his teeth newly filed, seeking whom he may devour, while the land lies benumbed under the heavy hand of frost, and it seems impossible that tender green wheat and fragile flower stems should ever again force their way through the floor of rock. ”

“ I do not wish to hear again about the dead rising; the dead cannot arise; the dead must not arise.’ ‘Why,’ I enquired, ‘can so great a man refuse knowledge and turn away from wisdom? Tell me, my friend, why I must not speak of a resurrection.’ Raising and uncovering his arm, which had been strong in battle, and shaking his hand as if quivering a spear, he replied, ‘I have slain my thousands, and shall they arise?’ Never before had the light of divine revelation dawned upon his savage mind, and of course his conscience had never accused him ”

“ They were elderly men both, and their faces were well lined with age, and having to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow in a floury atmosphere, had imparted to their countenances the strange appearance of being made up of irregular bits neatly fitted together like the pieces of a child's puzzle. ”

“ It is generally agreed that the bane of drunkenness is never so hideous as when it is demonstrated in womankind, and no illustration of the disastrous effects of reckless indulgence in intoxicating liquors appeals to an audience with such telling force as that of the once sober and well-conducted female yielding by degrees to the terrible temptation until she at length sinks to the condition of a gin-soddened poor wretch, lost to every glimmer of self-respect, and capable even of starving herself and her children rather than forego her only remaining enjoyment in life. ”

“ A hideous sunken patch, hedged all about with mountains of jagged slag and pit refuse seething, boiling, and bubbling in the midst of dense smoke and steam, spurting up sudden and fierce in unexpected gusts like the jets from the touchholes of great cannon; while below all manner of fire seems to peep up out of the ground or leap a-tiptoe high up into the air as our flame-headed London monument. ”

“ Nobody asked the thatcher any question when he had done. Every man relit his pipe and took a drink of beer, and composed himself to silent cogitation until the clock struck ten, when, with a nod for "good night, they took their departure; to dream, I have no doubt, of the redoubtable Jack, and wake in a sweat at the scratching of a mouse, exaggerated in the ghostly stillness to the noise of Giant Blunderbore coming head first down the chimney. ”

“ As a rule, the insufficient bread-and-butter is munched up in a hurry, and then the troops of work-girls, poor, thoughtless little wretches! disperse through the streets, expending their halfpence in trash, and, as is the generous nature of the sex, bestowing it in part on factory boys who keep them company in their dinner-hour stroll, when the weather is fine, or join with them in frolic more or less innocent under market archways and such like shelter should it happen to rain or snow. ”

“ It is on this spear that they are perpetually spitting the unlucky possessor of a licence to sell spirits and beer, and holding him up to public execration as a fiend in human shape-a sort of bloated vampire, squatted on the bodies of his million victims, whose blood and sustenance he has devoured. ”

“ He does not appear to be a creature of flesh and blood. He seems as though he was stuffed with flour, which silts through the pores of his skin as mankind in general exude perspiration-provoking the absurd fancy that if you were to hang up and beat a baker as a carpet is beaten the ultimate result, when the floury clouds had cleared away, would appear in the shape of a shrivelled epidermis, empty, save for a few bones, brittle and broken, and of the consistence of a Captain's biscuit. ”

“ A negro is merely slate-coloured beside him, a chimney-sweep a person of dusky complexion; coal is black, but the pitman is blacker than coal, a shinier black; he has jetty grit in his hair and in his eyebrows, and it glistens in the very lashes of his eyes, heightening the contrast to his eyeballs, which roll in their orbits like marbles of white china. ”

“ There, however, is one king now existing whom, if with his life would end the hideous work of blood and carnage prevailing in his nation, might well be wished dead. I allude to the King of Dahomey, who, as a trafficker in human beings, dead and alive, is an ulcer on the face of the world; a man whose guilt is so black that it may never be washed away, though they laved him in rivers of water as deep as those of tears and blood that he has caused to flow. ”

“ There is so little to feel grateful for that he does not even lick his dry lips, nor does the merest twinkle in his leaden eyes denote that he has obtained what he bargained for. He feels no thrilling of his nerves, no gush of warmth in his veins, - he is as horribly sober as ever, and mean, miserable, despairing wretch that he is, with one quick glance of malignant envy on the mirthful beer-drinking crew about him, he vanishes stealthily as he came, to make a "call" at the next of Old Tom's renowned abiding places, and the next, and still the next ”

“ But, if he may be judged from his appearance, the pale-faced potter is a man of quite another kind. It is by no mean; a cheerful spectacle this turning out of pottery hands in the dusk of evening. One and all - and there seem to be as many women as men, and as many children as either - they are as white as bakers, as the most careless of journeymen, who recklessly splash their shabby clothes with flour slop, and are not at all particular as to how much flour finds lodgement in their hair and whiskers, and in the folds of their neckerchiefs. ”

“ At the same time, if you will make him the present, untrammelled by conditions, he will accept it; as by thrusting a tough stick up one of the barrels the revolver may be converted into a handy club, with which a man may kill his enemy in such a way that half a glance will show the manner of his death.
The club, then, is the universal weapon among the utterly savage; it is a weapon which may be procured without trouble; a round stone lashed to the end of a stick, the thigh-bone of a buffalo,—anything in fact of a handy length and with a heavy knob to it will suffice. ”

“ There are people, however, who are worse off than the mill hands, whose abiding places are the slums of Manchester. I should not have thought it possible, but so it is. There are toilers and sweaters for daily bread whose condition in life is worse even than that of the miner who delves in the bowels of the earth or the smelter of iron who works naked to the waist. A creature of goblin aspect, who wears a leather mask to keep his eyes from being melted in his head, as is the red ore in the melting-pot it is his business to feed and keep at a molten simmer. ”

“ The village gods, like those of the household, had all some particular incarnation; one was supposed to appear as a bat, another as a heron, another as an owl. If a man found a dead owl by the roadside, and if that happened to be the incarnation of his village god, he would sit down and weep over it, and beat his forehead with stones till the blood flowed. This was thought pleasing to the deity. Then the bird would be wrapped up, and buried with care and ceremony, as if it were a human body. ”

“ The king, although a vastly rich, is not a greedy man; and annually he makes presents to one and all of his loyal subjects; not in a hole and corner sort of way, but publicly—with the mob before him, and the riches, the cowries, the bales of cloth, the tobacco, and the kegs of rum in heaps and piles and pyramids at his elbow; and scrambles the astonishing gifts fairly and without favour—or so it seems. ”

“ With a roaring and rattling noise, with a body big as a tun, and with outstretched arms and forked fingers, the flames leap from the squat chimneys of the iron smelters, or the fires are smouldering, winking, and blinking in various colours - green, yellow, and crimson - and everywhere seemingly striving to tear a way through the heavy black pall that is stifling them. ”

“ There is my shark-tapu, and sure as ever you pilfer the goods that lie in the shadow of it, the very next time you go out to fish a shark will devour you. There is my thunder-tapu; despise its protective influence, and before you reach home with your plunder the lightning will overtake you and strike you dead. No one can remove a tapu but he who imposes it. ”

“ But his gratulations are premature, for soon he experiences sharp pricking sensations all over his body; the heat of the protecting sheet is insufferable, the agony is intense; he kicks off the sheet, the mosquitoes settle on him, again he seizes his pillow, and, until he sinks exhausted, frantically swings it round his head in the hope of overwhelming some of his unseen assailants. Wearily he rises, lights his candle, examines his limbs, and discovers minute black spots, each one itching mortally, and which are only sand flies. ”

“ These are their customs and modes of warfare, and I may conclude by saying, that though their trophies are more disgusting, yet their wars are neither so bloody, nor their cruelties so great, as those of the North American Indian. They slay all they meet with of their enemies, men, women, and children; but this is common to all wild tribes. They have an implacable spirit of revenge as long as the war lasts, retort evil for evil, and retaliate life for life: and as I have before said, the heads are the trophies, as the scalps are to the red men. ”

“ To see the dancing and yelling, and the air thick with spears, one would suspect the bloodiest carnage; but it will often happen that after a few hours’ battle, in which say two thousand are engaged, it is a great chance if more than about twenty on each side are slain and about double that number wounded.
Caffre warfare, too, is merciful, as well from deliberation as from ignorance; and one falling unarmed into the hands of the enemy is seldom or never put to death; the women and children equally have nothing to fear for their lives. ”

“ Without doubt, and as we have only to refer back to our own ancient barbarism to be convinced, the germ of perfect manhood lies in every savage, but like the ore of gold and iron, the true metal lies deep, and to free it from dross and make its lustre apparent is a process neither easy nor rapid. Again, like golden ore, in which the precious deposit shows here and there with a sheen that undoubtedly reveals its presence, does the savage’s mind manifest its existence in fitful flashes and glimmerings, that, alas! ”

“ He formed her nearly like what he had seen the man to be, and also covered her body with silver-glistening scales. Then he breathed life into her, and carried her across in his canoe to the other bank of the lake, telling her that if she wandered busily along the lake and looked about her, she would perhaps find something to please her. For days the squaw wandered about one shore of the lake, while the man was seeking herbs for food on the other. One day the latter went a little further, and, to his great surprise, saw footsteps in the sand much like those he himself made. ”

“ He keeps apart from his family, and, like a hermit, retires to a solitary lodge built expressly for the purpose. There he sits whole evenings on a mat, beating the drum and muttering gloomy magic songs, which he will break off to sigh and lament. He has all sorts of apparitions while lying in his bed; the spirits of his relatives murdered by the enemy visit him, and incite him to revenge. Other spirits come and show him the way into the enemy’s camp, promise him victory, tell him at times accurately where and how he will meet the foe and how many of them he will kill. ”

“ The audience is seated on the ground, each man having before him his shield, to which is attached a number of spears; a quiver containing poisoned arrows is hung from the shoulder; and a battle-axe is held in the right hand. Many were adorned with tiger skins and tails, and had plumes of feathers waving on their heads. In the centre a sufficient space was left for the privileged—those who had killed an enemy in battle—to dance and sing, in which they exhibited the most violent and fantastic gestures conceivable, which drew forth from the spectators the most clamorous applause. ”