J. Ewing Ritchie

“ Had Wentworth been taught the beauty of work—that life was a battlefield in which the victory was to the strong—that man was here to do the best he could for himself, to enjoy the world which the good God had made beautiful—that he was to aim high, to cherish noble expectations, to do manly deeds, to be true and honest and courageous, how different would have been his life! ”

“ Ah, when one is low, and wants to forget one’s wickedness, and poverty, and misery, there’s nothing like a drop of drink. It may be rather cowardly to take it, but we are not all heroes; and as long as the drink lasts, you are in a world of sunshine and good fellowship. There is a magic power in drink to make the old young, the sick whole, the poor rich. ”

“ Angry posters glared on you from every wall, which the police in vain tried to pull down. The great London newspapers sent down reporters; and not a little was the indignation aroused when a myrmidon of the law managed to serve the editor with a writ for debt, which was explained to be a political dodge on the part of the Government to muzzle the great man himself, whose invective on the subject it did all the people good to hear.
The Whigs were denounced as base, bloody, and brutal; the Tories were the devils in hell. The time had come for tyrants and oppressors to tremble. ”

“ It was a village nine days’ wonder. A time was to come when that young preacher was to modify very considerably his theology and enlarge his creed. It is to be questioned whether, however, afterwards he ever preached with more fervour, or left a pulpit in a happier frame of mind. When a man feels what he says, what place is there in which he can feel more joyous than in the pulpit? To men in such a mood it is the very gate of heaven. ”

“ A leading theatrical, in search of attractions for his theatre, got hold of her, and found how full she was of dramatic power. Rose had always been fond of the stage, even as it appeared in such a humble form as that in which it was revealed to her at Sloville, and the finished acting of the London theatre gave her immense satisfaction. At first the pay was small, and her work was hard; excellence on the stage, as excellence everywhere, is not to be won without steady work, but she was an apt learner, and made rapid progress. ”

“ Had our hero been equal to the situation, had he had a proper amount of backbone, had he not been trained to lead an emotional life, had he attained to the true dignity of manhood, he either would have never thought of love of one in every way so much superior, or he would have returned to England at once to fight the battle of life for himself and to fit him for her. ”

“ Carnegie, the great American capitalist, in order to give his friends an idea of England, and thoroughly to enjoy himself, packed them all on the top of a four-horse coach, and I can well believe that they saw a loveliness in this old land of ours as they drove past ancient castles and ivy-clad churches, and by the side of well-kept parks, with the mansions of our nobles peeping in and out among the trees, and through smiling villages and busy towns, and across wide commons scented with yellow furze or purple with heather, which they could have acquired in no other way. ”

“ In these degenerate days a first-class carriage in an express may be considered as the perfection of travelling, the balloon at present being unmanageable, and the sea as wilful and variable as woman. Time was when we rattled cheerily over the land on the top of a coach-and-four, but that was when men drank brandy-and-water, and wore many-caped coats, and were far more horsey than this smug and mild black-coated generation. ”

“ He would have recognised the actress, however, if his better-half had allowed him to do so. But, naturally, not a fascinating woman herself, she would save her lord and master from the snare of beauty, which is but skin-deep, after all, and passing as the smile of an April sun. Thus she was given to judge harshly of pretty women, especially such as had become connected with the theatrical profession. ”

“ Christian charity—while it relieved the undeserving, while it had feasted the reprobate—had passed by her, because, poor as she was, she was a real woman with all a woman’s self-respect and sensitiveness to shame, not a drunken, dissipated wretch of brazen face and fluent tongue. Her heart was broken already, and she fell an easy prey to the cold as it stiffened her withered limbs and stopped her poor heart’s action and dried up the feeble current of her blood. ”

“ No lady in the town had such a head of rich brown hair, none so downy a cheek of loveliest pink, none a blue eye so lustrous or sparkling, none a more melodious voice. Many a Belgravian maiden would have given a fortune to have had a hand as delicately formed, a waist as tempting, a step as elastic, a figure as fair, a carriage as superb, a smile as irresistible. ”

“ It was an awful sight to see the people sulking in the streets, starving in their wretched homes, cursing—in some of the lowest of the public-houses—all who were better off than themselves. ‘They were,’ they were told, ‘a down-trodden people, the victims of a haughty aristocracy, or of a bastard plutocracy, that had fattened on the blood and sinew of the white slaves.’ ‘Down with the capitalist!’ was the universal cry ”

“ Rose was but a poor dressmaker, barely eighteen, an age when to the young woman clings a good deal of the romantic folly of the girl. She was the pride of an indulgent mother who never restrained her little whims, and whose scanty means afforded but little relief to the dull monotony of her daily life. ”

“ He had lost the childish faith of his early home, and there came in its stead the grander and fuller one of a man who had put away childish things, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who had found peace and safety, not in the pleasant places, gay with flowers and musical with the song of birds, where we never dream of danger, but in the storm and tempest of the raging sea. ”

“ But Wentworth had seen in the rottenness of the surface gaiety, in the bitterness of its Dead Sea apples, in the hideousness of that laughter which is as the crackling of thorns under a pot, that it was not in that round of drunken revelry that happiness was to be found, or that man was to be elevated to his true sphere. ”

“ The songs of Circe are pleasant to listen to, and there are roses and raptures for the sinner as well as the saint, and the roses and raptures are now—not in a world to come. The world has a great fascination for a lad brought up in a pious home, to whom it has been represented as a waste howling wilderness, peopled with devils fearful to gaze on. When he steps into it, and finds how unfairly it has been drawn to him by the Church, the chance is that he runs to the other extreme. We have hardly yet emancipated ourselves from the morbid and monkish theology of the Romish Church. ”

“ If a profligate war was to be carried on—a war which was to slaughter thousands of honest lads, and to reduce thousands of homes to wretchedness and want—did not the Bishops consecrate the banners, and offer up the mockery of a prayer to heaven, as if God approved of such wanton slaughter? ”

“ What true benevolence! How it does shame us who are better off! How beautiful it is to see the poor so ready to help one another!’
‘Ah! it is little we can do, but we allus tries to do our duty,’ said Carroty Bill, with the look of a saint and the courage of a martyr, while the forlorn woman seemed the picture of resignation and despair.
‘I am sure we might leave a little money here as well,’ said the Vicar.
p. 12‘Oh, certainly,’ said both the curates who declared they had never seen more unmitigated poverty anywhere. ”

“ Respectability has quite enough to do to look after her own children, especially now that taxes and butchers’ bills and School Board rates, to say nothing of coals, run up to such formidable items, to give herself much trouble about the children of other people. I have myself little pity for the heartless vagabonds who bring children into existence merely that they may rot and die. ”

“ There were muscular young Christians who enjoyed that cold amazingly, as, well fed and well clad, bearing torches, they skated along the Serpentine, or in Regent’s Park, and laughed hugely when any of their weaker brethren or sisters complained. But, nevertheless, the night’s frost played sad havoc with the old, the feeble, and the tender. It crept into that attic in Parker’s Piece, where that poor needlewoman lived. ”

“ As if by magic, the news spread that the actress was walking to the station, and great was the joy of the young men who served in all the fine shops in the market-place, who had never seen a real live actress from London in the daytime before, and whose remarks were of a highly complimentary order. ”

“ It is well to tell such suffering ones that there is a better world, and a Father in heaven who shall wipe all tears from every eye, and where sorrow shall be unknown. But surely our rich need not be so very rich nor our poor so very poor, nor the cup of human suffering be, to many, so overflowing. ”

“ How could a farmer expect his men to work well if they were paid starvation wages? They even starved the horses. Many a farmer on a Sunday, or when the horses were idle, took off a feed of corn from the horses. Why, did not a farmer want his dinner on a Sunday when he was not working, and was it not the same with the horses? ”

“ The London orator especially headed all these anti-sympathetic demonstrations.
‘I am a parson,’ said Mr. Wentworth—then there was a tremendous burst of indignation—‘and I come here to show that a parson may feel for a poor man, and may aid him in his efforts to obtain political power. It is not all parsons who take tithes, but if you would abolish tithes to-morrow, the only effect would be that the landlord would be richer, that is all, as the difference would only go into the landlord’s pocket; but I come here to say, with you, that you must have political power ”

“ In London and in all our large cities were men who felt deeply their misery and poverty, and were labouring earnestly for the removal of their wrongs and the attaining of their rights. But there were professional agitators as well, paid agents of agitation, many of them mercenary wretches, who fattened on this state of things—men who preferred to talk rather than earn an honest living. ”

“ It seemed to me that the poor fellows had a good deal of bad advice given them, and I thought I would try and give them a little better. Their grievances are many, and so are the wrongs which they have to bear. You know that it is in consequence of the little sympathy that is shown them by the Churches of all denominations these people are getting not only to disbelieve Christianity, but to hate its very name. It seemed to me that it was right that I should tell them as best I could how they were mistaken in thus judging the Church. ”

“ It is hard to realise what a moral wreck that pitiable wretch had become—how with no real excuse for his drink and dissipation, now almost a necessity of his life, all hope had vanished from his horizon, all faith in God or man. ”

“ And thus it was that the churches were chiefly filled with ignorant women and old men, or with young people—who died early of consumption—who accepted everything they heard in the pulpit, who knew nothing of the world they denounced, to whom the language of passion and temptation was unknown. It is easy to be religious when all that is irreligious has worked itself out of the man—to lead a dull, decent, formal life, when the capacity for excess is gone, or the spendthrift has been turned into a miser ”

“ Nevertheless, a poor girl whose only dower is her beauty finds it often a perilous gift. Indeed, it was owing to this very possession that poor Rose had the world at a disadvantage. She had been spoilt by an indulgent father, and her fond mother was little fitted to act the part of a guide, philosopher, and friend in the perplexities and temptations of real life. ”

“ The more the poor girl reasoned on her condition the harder to her it seemed to be. It must be false what the parsons said; people who had money, who lived sumptuously, who were arrayed in purple and fine linen, must be happy—as she herself was when she had a crown-piece in her pocket, a dress a little smarter than usual, or a bonnet of the latest fashion. There was the senior deacon, who more fond of money than he? ”

“ Just at that moment up comes the policeman—the London policeman, whose chief occupation seems to be to watch men and women when they stop in the streets for a talk, and to keep out of the way when he is wanted to prop up the inebriate, or to lay hold of a pickpocket, or a burglar, or a rough. ”

“ He had been taught phrases, and he used them without ever thinking of their meaning, and when the meaning did not come he went on using them, believing it would come. ‘Preach faith till you have it,’ said an old divine to a young brother, ‘and then you will preach it because you have it.’ In Wentworth’s case the remedy did not answer. He preached because he thought it his duty. He did not preach because he felt it dishonesty to use terms of doubtful meaning utilized in the pulpit in one sense, understood in the pew in another. ”

“ I like to see the buttercups and daisies, and the green grass, and the blue sky, and the sunshine, which makes everyone feel happy; and when winter comes, how much do I love the sparkling diamonds on the frosted trees, and the pure white snow which robes the earth with a loveliness of which the dweller in towns has no adequate idea! ”

“ But let us return to the poor woman, weary with hard work, with disappointed hope; weary of the bitter past and of contemplating the dark future, on the black cloud of which she could see, as she gazed at it steadily from year to year, no silver lining. ”

“ A Chartist tailor took the chair—a man who had at one time done well, but who, since he had taken to politics and drink, had lost all his business, and who naturally cast an envious eye on his more successful fellow-tradesmen. He hinted at a plan for the equal division of property, which was received with immense applause, and which he assured his intelligent hearers would be realized as soon as the Charter was the law of the land.
A Chartist shoemaker followed. ”

“ I am sick of the cant ever uttered of population versus property; one is born of self-denial, industry, foresight, all the qualities which we as a nation require, while population is too often the result of unspeakable vice or consummate folly, qualities against which it becomes the nation to set its face. ”