George Manville Fenn

“ Heigho, sir. It makes me sigh to lie here so long waiting to get well, till in the dusky evening time, when the gas lamps are shining up and the stars are peeping down, one gets thinking that it’s time to think of that little thing as I left out of the box; and then lying all alone one seems to have all the long years fall away from one, and get back into the old, old times, and often I have been fishing, and wandering, and bird’s-nesting again all over and over as it used to be. ”

“ Oh, sir, shut yourself up for a month in a dirty room in a close court, where you can hardly breathe—live from hand to mouth, and p’raps not have enough—and then go out into the bright sunshine and on the breezy hills, with the green, shady woods there, and the sparkling stream there—the bees humming about on the heath bells, and all pure, and bright, and golden with the furze and broom—and then feel how it all comes over you, choking like, as if you were so happy you must cry, for it’s all too sweet and beautiful to bear! ”

“ A nod is said to be as good as a wink to a blind horse; but leaving blind horses out of the question, the policeman’s nod is a great deal better than his wink. There is a majesty about one of his wags of the head that is sun-like in its powers; for as the snow dissolves, so melts away the crowd before that simple act. ”

“ There is something very humiliating for a noble swell of a policeman to have to march off four feet six inches of puerile mischief—powerful in its very weakness—a morsel which acts as a barbed and stinging thorn in Bobby’s side all the way to the station. We can easily imagine the grim smile of satisfaction which would ripple over the countenance of our hero if, in traversing that part of Holborn called High, like Tom Hood, he came into contact with a mother bewailing the loss of her beloved child. ”

“ Who, if a whistle known of old should rouse the culinary maid to beckon down the warrior bold to have his empty stomach stayed, who then would grudge the meal—the kiss—the small beer draught—the smile—embrace? They’re loved by others well, I wis, as him who wears the cotton lace—whose rolling eye—whose nostril wide, and towering form attractive draw, to inward thought—the fire’s warm side—the bliss of love—the chill of law. ”

“ Young wives, beware—take heed of the first stray hair and jealously prison it again, for by that single frail filament perhaps hangs yours, your husband’s, your children’s future welfare; so never let Tom be less proud of you than in the days of old.
What is a wife? The prop or stay of a man, the balance that shall steady him through life, and make him—the weaker vessel—give forth when struck a sonorous, honest, clear tone. He is the weaker vessel, and yours are the hands to hold him fast. ”

“ Now and then came a heavy crash, and the good ship shook and quivered beneath the tons of water poured sweeping along the deck; and once the news was somehow circulated among the helpless passengers, that three of the sailors had been swept overboard, and that the life-buoy, with its blazing light, had been cut adrift, when as it floated away, a man was seen clinging to it, with the glare shining upon his pale and agonised face. ”

“ We only used the water for the garden, and hard work it used to be to turn the moss-covered windlass, and drag up the heavy bucket at the end of a hundred feet of rope, when up it came full of greeny-looking water, with some times a frog for passenger. To look down and listen to the hollow drip of the water was enough to make any one shudder, so profound seemed the depth to where a ring of light could be seen, and in spite of its depth, carved as it was right out of the solid chalk, there was never more than some seven or eight feet of water at the bottom, and that none of the cleanest. ”

“ But, there, let’s get on to another kind of war—war with the knife—knife and fork, you know—the battle of life for a living; for there’s no mistake about it, there is a regular battle going on for the daily bread, and if a man hasn’t been well drilled to it in his apprenticeship, it’s rather a poor figure he’ll cut in amongst the rest. Ah, you come across some rum fellow soldiers, too, in the course of your life; here’s one chap is asked to do a little extra job, and, as he does it, goes on like our old sexton used down in the country when he put up the Christmas holly in the church. ”

“ He gazes upon the soldier as any game-loving squire would cast his eye upon a poacher even though encountered a hundred miles from his estate, for were the constable in power, Mars would be doomed to a life of celibacy. He forgives the maidens whom he knows to be attracted by the garish uniform, and he pities them for their weakness, but decides in his own mind that they require protection—such protection as a policeman could give them. Sometimes the soldier is encountered when promenading the pave with an eye upon some especial house in the policeman’s beat. ”

“ The deep blue sea is certainly beautiful, and it is interesting to watch the fish playing below the ship’s keel, far down in the clear water; the sunrise and sunset, too, are very glorious, when ship and rigging seem to be turned to gold, and the sea, far as the eye can reach, one mass of glorious molten metal, gently heaving, or here and there broken by a ripple. ”

“ Well, there are two sides to every question, and one reason for there being such wretched places is this:—Young folks get wed after the good old fashion invented some six thousand years ago, when Eve must have blushed and turned away her head and let her hand stay in Adam’s; and while the days are young all goes well, but sometimes Betsy—that’s the wife, you know—thinks there’s no call to be so particular about her hair now as she used to be before Tom married her, and so puts in the thin end of a wedge that blasts the happiness of her future life. ”

“ Every minute the pier would be left clear out of the water, which poured off its sides, and in one of these intervals a sailor was seen swimming strongly close alongside, riding up and down the huge billows, but fighting hardly for his life.
All at once I saw a man seize a life-buoy, one of those large yellow cork rings; and as the last wave left the stone pier free from water right to where the lighthouse rose, he dashed along it, running swiftly towards where the swimmer was striving to reach the shore. ”

“ Now, perhaps, every one don’t know that what we call the scupper is a sort of sink, or gulley-hole, by the ship’s side, to let off the water when the decks are washed, or a wave comes aboard; and though it may sound queer to catch rum and water that is sent down a sink-hole, you must understand that well out at sea the deck of a man-of-war is as clean and white as washing and scrubbing can make it—a drop of salt water being the foulest thing that passes down a scupper. ”

“ Now it’s all very well to say that truth is strange—stranger than fiction; but the saying won’t wash, it isn’t fast colours, but partakes of the nature of those carried by certain Austrian regiments—it runs; for there is no rule without an exception, and no person in the full enjoyment of his mental faculties will pretend to say that truth was stranger than fiction in the case of Mr Smith’s wig, for the fiction—the wig—was, to all intents and purposes, stranger than the truth—the genuine head of hair. ”

“ The unbrushed hair leads to other little acts of neglect which creep in slowly, but so surely; shoes get down at heel, dresses torn and unhooked, and then the disorder slowly spreads to the children, then to the furniture, and so on, step by step, till Tom stands leaning against the wall looking upon the wreck before him, and wondering how it is possible that the slovenly, half-dirty woman before him can have grown out of that smart, bright-eyed servant lass he once wed. ”

“ The warders of the castle walls had watched whether it was likely that the knight would come out again that night, and then gone to sleep in the room by the portcullis. The moon was not up, and all was still but the croaking of the frogs in the moat, when Sir Aylmer crept up to the edge, and putting his fingers in his mouth gave a long whistle. ”

“ She is the something who sits up for him and puts his drunken highness to bed; nurses his children; slaves for him worse than any drudge—ten times—no a hundred times, for money would not buy a soul to slave as some women do for their husbands. What is a wife? Why, often and often a poor, trusting, simple-hearted woman, toiling in hard bondage till there’s a place dug for her in one of the cemeteries and she goes to rest. ”

“ I was very proud of my post in the office, having just been emancipated from school, and always felt very manly and important whenever I could feel that Mr French had not his eye upon me—the effect of that eye being to make me turn to a boy in an instant. Fred and he were very intimate, and French often went up to the cottage to have a cigar and game of chess; and, somehow, I always used to feel jealous of his smooth, oily civilities, and could see that they were anything but agreeable to Annie. ”

“ I had long had my eye upon the policeman, for no one could gaze upon his face without feeling that those impressive features had a large fund of interesting matter concealed behind. “There must be something more than whiskers,” I said, and then I considered what a sensation novelist he would make if but of a literary bent. Truth is stranger than fiction; and what truths we should get from the man so often sworn to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” ”

“ I have very strange ways and ideas of my own, and have no hesitation in saying that I like to do as I please, and as seems me best. If what seems to me best is wrong, of course I do not own to it. Who does? and if I prefer insuring my furniture and house to my life, and this system is wrong, I’m not going to be convinced of its wrongness by a tall, gentlemanly-looking man who wishes to see me on particular business, and whom I have shown into the room I call my study, but which should be termed workshop. ”

“ Oh no, she is what we choose to make her: a constant spring of bright refreshing water, ready for us at all times during our journey through life—a confidant—one we can turn to for help when stricken down by some disease, or the wounds met with in the battle of life, ready to smooth our pillow, and cool the weary, aching head. ”

“ But, no; down, down, lower and lower. And now I began to smell the burnt, smoky air, but could still breathe freely, and tried to nerve myself to be on the watch for the strata of foul gas into which I felt I must be descending.
“Right, right,” I kept shouting; and still down, lower and lower, till it seemed that there could be no bottom; while the bucket kept turning round till it was impossible to keep from feeling giddy. ”

“ It seems like dying here, and being hurried away afterwards, with every one glad to get rid of you; but down in the old quiet parts it seems to me like watching the sun go down behind the hill, when the still, quiet evening comes on so soft and pleasant, and then you grow tired and worn-out and lie down to rest, taking a long, long sleep under the bright green turf. ”

“ Go at it, I says, and work with the master as if you take an interest in the job and feel a bit of pride in it. Why, bless your heart, ’tain’t only the three or six-and-thirty shillings a week a man ought to work for, but the sense of doing things well, so as he can stand up aside his fellow-man, and look at his work and say, “I did that, and I ain’t ashamed of it.” Why, I’ve known fellows that bowky about their jobs that they wouldn’t own to ’em afterwards. Sashes all knock-kneed, panelling out of the square, or painters with their paint all blistering and peeling off. ”

“ But the most I grumble at is this—the number of public-houses there is about London waiting with their easily-swinging doors to trap men. There’s no occasion to knock; just lean against the door, and open it comes; and there’s the grandly fitted-up place, and a smart barman or barmaid to wait on you, and all so nice, and attractive, and sticky, that there’s no getting away again; so that it seems like one of those catch-’em-alives as the fellows used to sell about the streets—and we poor people the flies. ”

“ Lower, lower, lower, with a sense of depression attacking one at every step, I persevered till I reached the bottom, to be assailed by a loud man sitting in the gas-lit chalet, which displayed the well-known lens of the popular penny peep-show of our youth. ”

“ Is she not the God-given blessing to cheer a working man’s home? and while working with her husband to make that home happy, is she not the sharer of his joys and sorrows,—the heart that he can trust and confide in, though all the world turn their backs upon him? ”

“ Every year hundreds taken, and every dead body with such a tale of sorrow, and misery, and wretchedness attached as would make your heart ache could you but read it. Ah, the sea is a great thing, and I as live by it knows it well. ”