Charles Dickens

“ With thoughts like this, and with some vague design of travelling to a great distance among streams and mountains, where only very poor and simple people lived, and where they might maintain themselves by very humble helping work in farms, free from such terrors as that from which they fled--the child, with no resource but the poor man's gift, and no encouragement but that which flowed from her own heart, and its sense of the truth and right of what she did, nerved herself to this last journey and boldly pursued her task. ”

“ On mounds of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like tortured creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking in their rapid whirl from time to time as though in torment unendurable, and making the ground tremble with their agonies. ”

“ How many of the girls and boys--ah, men and women too--that are brought before you and you don't pity, are deaf and dumb in their minds, and go wrong in that state, and are punished in that state, body and soul, while you gentlemen are quarrelling among yourselves whether they ought to learn this or that? --Be a just man, Sir, and give me back my son.'
'You are desperate,' said the gentleman, taking out his snuff-box, 'and I am sorry for you.'
'I AM desperate,' returned the woman, 'and you have made me so. Give me back my son, to work for these helpless children. ”

“ Be a just man, Sir, and, as you have had mercy upon this boy, give me back my son!'
The child had seen and heard enough to know that this was not a place at which to ask for alms. She led the old man softly from the door, and they pursued their journey. ”