Sabine Baring-Gould

“ The sky was obscure; the line where it ended and the horizon began was smurched with lurid flames from furnace chimneys, and punctured with gas lights from windows. Here and there a disregarded heap of cinders and small coal glowed, sent forth flickers and smoked. Here and there a steam puff trailed athwart the black heavens, partially illumined from below. Here and there flashed green and red and orange lamps.
Joan descended from a train on the North Staffordshire line, that crept from station to station, sown at such short intervals that the engine was unable to get up pace between them. ”

“ In ignorance is your bliss."
"But what of your sister Sibyll?"
Joan's hands were clasped in her lap; she compressed them, and looked down in trouble.
"How about her? Does she share your liking for this black hole?"
"No. She has a different nature from mine. Hers is one that revels only in sunshine. She is a butterfly that folds its wings and shivers under a leaf in darkness and rain and cold. Mine is more the nature of a grub. No, I cannot say that this life suits her." ”

“ Joan's supper was hardly ended before the gentleman in the hardware line came in, simultaneously with the chops he had commanded. Joan then put on her cloak and hat, and took her umbrella, to sally forth for a stroll. She was tired, for she had had a trying day, but she was not desirous of being drawn into more intimate discourse with the traveller, and she was curious to see something, of the place to which she had come, in its night aspect.
The street was alive with people—full of animation. The shops were doing a good business, especially those of the greengrocers and butchers. ”

“ It seems to me, Hector, that a new and grinding tyranny has to be fought; it is no longer royal despotism, nor feudalism, but it is the pressure of modern civilisation. That which the public demands is cheap fabrics and cheap ware of every kind; and cheap fabrication means the oppression of the worker. I presume that one of the most deadly of all pursuits is that of the rubber collector in the swamps of South America. No man engaged in that lives six years, and his life as a collector is one of solitude, famine, and torture from mosquitoes. ”

“ Joan took the lamp, went up to the speaker, and raising it above her head, looked down on him.
She saw little Tom, his cheeks flaming and his eyes as sparks of fire. The attempt to speak brought on a fit of coughing.
At once she took his hand. It was like a hot coal. She laid her palm on his brow and found that it was burning.
"He is in high fever," she said. "My dear little Tom, how came this about? Have you not had your new boots?" ”

“ This is, simply and solely, good money thrown away."
"But, my dear Sibyll!"
"I know what you are about to say—that you have bought it so as to accompany those girls in their singing. As it is—you do a great deal too much for them, much that is most uncalled for."
"My dear Sibyll, you are premature. Not a penny of our money has gone for this piano. They have clubbed their poor little savings together, and without a word to me have hired it for the winter months. It is most kind."
"Kind! really, Joan, you are bewitched. They have done it for themselves, for their own pleasure." ”

“ He who has seen you, knows what a lady is and can be wherever placed; and let him know that an English gentleman can be a gentleman everywhere and among all kinds of men. I do not doubt that, when we come to know each other intimately, we shall acquire a respect and a liking for each other. We shall melt into one another imperceptibly, sloughing off what is feeble and ephemeral and absurd, and intensifying every element that is good. See, Joan! I talk almost like you."
"Hector, in your case this will not do." ”

“ Do you hear that pale girl rocking? Did you see that other cripple with her dropped wrist? These are but samples. The whole place teems with tragedies; and such a place is unsuited for a butterfly."
"And it is for you?"
"Yes. I feel that I was created to be here."
"No one will persuade you to adopt a different opinion?"
"No one."
"And no consideration—no offer made to you of a bright, a happy life?"—
She shook her head.
"I fail to understand you."
"Julie said to me, on the one occasion that I met her, and I have never forgotten her words, though then I could not understand them. ”

“ Joan recognised, with a sister's pride, that Sibyll was very pretty, and this prettiness was enhanced rather than obscured by the costume adopted by the potters. Moreover, Sibyll could be very engaging in her manner. She did not usually trouble to ingratiate herself with those of her own sex; even from early childhood she had laid herself out to attract the admiration of men, and always with a success that had encouraged her in this course. To draw upon herself the observation of men, to be flattered and made much of, had finally become with her a necessity of existence. ”

“ There's lead in the dust, lead in the glost, and the lead gets into us through the eyes and ears and nostrils and the pores of the body; it gets into your hair; it gets into the lungs and into the blood, that turns to goulard water, and then you have the colic and are crippled with the palsy, and sometimes you die of it."
Joan looked at her with eyes dilated with horror. ”

“ My dear Joan,—You are intolerable. Who would ever have supposed that you were so sly as to send me out of the way to Pendabury—though, Heaven knows, I am delighted to be anywhere, so long as I am not in the Potteries—and to entice Hector Beaudessart away from his own mansion and compel him to take up his residence in the same horrible place that you are in? You good people are awfully deep. ”

“ The public is the Juggernaut of to-day, under whose wheels thousands of lives are ground into the earth, or, if the lives are spared, all beauty and joy of life are crushed out of them. Now what the workers need are men who can see both sides of every question, who can stand high enough to command the entire horizon, and who can use their cultivated energies and their skilled abilities to defend the workers against the tyranny of modern civilisation, and to force home on the mind of the general public the necessity for considering the artisan who ministers to its well-being. ”

“ Cissie shall be made sound, and when this weak member is whole our entire community will rejoice with it."
"I have no doubt but that you are wonderfully humane and Christian, and all that sort of thing; but I cannot go your length. Charity, I have ever heard, begins at home."
"And, never leaving it, becomes selfishness."
Cissie did bestir herself over the preparations for Christmas dinner.
She had Joan to assist her, but the sight, the smell of the goose were enough to stimulate the most languid faculties, and the steam of the plum-pudding to quicken the pulsation of the feeblest heart. ”

“ The white-haired lady kissed Joan affectionately. "You see," she said, "Julie is away, so I am very solitary. I could not retain her with me. She is boiling over with energy, and would eat her heart out if not given a wide sphere for work. Sibyll, accordingly, is just the one person I want as a bright and delightful companion and a comfort to me. And now—we have not much time to spare, as I want to be at Pendabury early. Run after your sister—she is in her room—and say good-bye."
Joan ascended, and found Sibyll before the glass. ”

“ He was flushed on one cheek that had been exposed to the fire.
Joan could hear little Tom coughing upstairs, and Cissie rocking her chair as she sat by him. Her back was to the window, and what light entered fell on Hector's face; a pleasant face, that of a man who could never do a mean or cruel thing, but careless and happy.
"You have a hospital here, apparently," said he lightly. "I hear that there is a sick lad overhead, down with congested lungs or pneumonia, and is being nursed, as I perceive, by an anaemic girl, whom I have seen, for she came to the door when I knocked. ”

“ Joan extended her hand on the table, and displayed the delicate taper fingers.
"Girls," she said, "I don't call this a pretty hand at all. It has been a useless hand, whereas your hands have earned your daily bread. Such are the truly lovely hands." She looked at her next-door neighbour and friend, and added, "Above all, that of my dear Polly, crippled with cruel poisonous work. That is the hand to love and respect—not the idle hand that has never done aught."
"My word, girls!" exclaimed Bessie, "ain't she now giving us butter?" ”

“ Well, Hector, there are thousands upon thousands in the manufacturing portions of England that are being used as blind tools for the production of certain indispensable articles—indispensable to our modern civilisation, and which the world will never do without. But the manufacture is stunting to the faculties of mind and soul, where not injurious to the body. It is destructive of all true enjoyment of life, and I take it God created every creature to be happy. Many of the workers are aware of this, and resent it; others jog on, crushed by a blind fatalism that forbids hope of escape. ”

“ Then the butler shut the door of communication between it and the dining-room.
Joan saw the groom awaiting her. He touched his forehead. The great hall was but partially lighted with one large coloured lamp, and she could not see the man's face distinctly.
"You have something to say to me, Thomas?"
"Beg pardon, miss," said he; "it's Fashion never could abide the smell or sight of a donkey. There's no vice in him, none at all, but he is terrible nervous." ”