Hilaire Belloc

“ For such things, if you will excuse me, happen to the poor also, as we all know they do to the rich, whether through drink or what-not I can't tell, whether for drink or what-not it is for them to determine. There was fate, and there was compulsion, and there was the profound ill-ease of the soul hovering over that dirty counter in the slums as they hover over the tables of politicians when similar bargains are toward in a larger world. James tied his bundle up again and went out without a word. ”

“ Such divergent issues disturb the great men of our time as well as wandering men bearing alien coats; they are at the root of modern affairs.
The more he thought of it the more did James determine by the feel that the bundle was clothes; why, then, his market was a shop in the Lydgate, an old quarter of the town, now full of slums, wherein dwelt a certain Pole of the name of Lipsky. This man, by common repute, was well with the police, and in our English towns that, with the poor, is everything. Tippy would not give him full value, but he could give him full security. ”

“ The old woman who chared for him was for calling a doctor. All Monday Lippy, weakening in his sick-bed, fought against the expense. As it was, he had been compelled to pay a doubtful boy—a non-Pole, and therefore ill suited to commerce—to mind the shop, and twice he left his bed, at the risk of his life, and tottered down to see that no harm was coming to his business. On each occasion as he neared that counter with its drawer and its secreted bundle a more violent trouble had returned, and he had had to be helped up dazed and trembling to his wretched bed and room above. ”