The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0059/00593.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 17KB | 305 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00593}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Hard Times
Chapter IV}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{friends
slackbridge
stephen
ha
oh
yo
himself
time
upon
aw}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Hard Times
Book:        Book The Second: Reaping
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter IV

Men And Brothers

     "Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown!  Oh my friends
and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and grinding despotism!
Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men!  I
tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One
united power, and crumble into the dust oppressors that too long have battened
upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour
of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious
rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!"

     "Good!" "Hear, hear, hear!" "Hurrah!" and other cries, arose in many
voices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close Hall,
in which the orator, perched on a stage, delivered himself of this, and what
other froth and fume he had in him.  He had declaimed himself into a violent
heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot.  By dint of roaring at the top of his
voice under a flaring gas-light, clenching his fists, knitting his brows,
setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had taken so much out of
himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop, and called for a glass of
water.

     As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink of
water, the comparison between the orator and the crowd of attentive faces
turned towards him, was extremely to his disadvantage.  Judging him by
Nature's evidence, he was above the mass in very little but the stage on which
he stood.  In may great respects he was essentially below them.  He was not so
honest, he was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted
cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid sense.  An
ill-made high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and his features crushed
into an habitually sour expression, he contrasted most unfavourably, even in
his mongrel dress, with the great body of his hearers in their plain working
clothes.  Strange as it always is to consider any assembly in the act of
submissively resigning itself to the dreariness of some complacent person,
lord or commoner, whom three-fourths of it could, by no human means, raise out
of the slough of inanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly
strange, and it was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of earnest
faces, whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could
doubt, so agitated by such a leader.

     Good!  Hear, hear!  Hurrah!  The eagerness, both of attention and
intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most impressive
sight.  There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle curiosity; none of the
many shades of indifference to be seen in all other assemblies, visible for
one moment there.  That every man felt his condition to be, somehow or other,
worse than it might be; that every man considered it incumbent on him to join
the rest, towards the making of it better; that every man felt his only hope
to be in his allying himself to the comrades by whom he was surrounded; and
that in this belief, right or wrong (unhappily wrong then), the whole of that
crowd were gravely, deeply, faithfully in earnest; must have been as plain to
any one who chose to see what was there, as the bare beams of the roof, and
the whitened brick walls.  Nor could any such spectator fail to know in his
own breast, that these men, through their very delusions, showed great
qualities susceptible of being turned to the happiest and best account; and
that to pretend (on the strength of sweeping axioms, howsoever cut and dried)
that they went astray wholly without cause, and of their own irrational wills,
was to pretend that there could be smoke without fire, death without birth,
harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from nothing.

     The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated forehead from
left to right several times with his handkerchief folded into a pad, and
concentrated all his revived forces, in a sneer of great disdain and
bitterness.

     "But, oh my friends and brothers!  Oh men and Englishmen, the
down-trodden operatives of Coketown!  What shall we say of that man - that
working-man, that I should find it necessary so to libel the glorious name -
who, being practically and well acquainted with the grievances and wrongs of
you, the injured pith and marrow of this land, and having heard you, with a
noble and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble, resolve for to
subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal, and to abide by the
injunctions issued by that body for your benefit, whatever they may be - what,
I ask you, will you say of that working-man, since such I must acknowledge him
to be, who, at such a time, deserts his post, and sells his flag; who, at such
a time, turns a traitor and a craven and a recreant; who, at such a time is
not ashamed to make to you the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will
hold himself aloof, and will not be one of those associated in the gallant
stand for Freedom and for Rights?"

     The assembly was divided at this point.  There were some groans and
hisses, but the general sense of honour was much too strong for the
condemnation of a man unheard.  "Be sure you're right, Slackbridge!" "Put him
up!" "Let's hear him!" Such things were said on many sides.  Finally, one
strong voice called out, "Is the man heer?  If the man's heer, Slackbridge,
let's hear the man himseln, 'stead o' yo." Which was received with a round of
applause.

     Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering smile; and,
holding out his right hand at arm's length (as the manner of all Slackbridges
is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there was a profound silence.

     "Oh my friends and fellow-men!" said Slackbridge then, shaking his head
with violent scorn, "I do not wonder that you, the prostrate sons of labour,
are incredulous of the existence of such a man.  But he who sold his
birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed, and
Castlereagh existed, and this man exists!"

     Here a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the man himself
standing at the orator's side before the concourse.  He was pale and a little
moved in the face - his lips especially showed it; but he stood quiet, with
his left hand at his chin, waiting to be heard.  There was a chairman to
regulate the proceedings, and this functionary now took the case into his own
hands.

     "My friends," said he, "by virtue o' my office as your president, I ashes
o' our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over hetter in this business,
to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Blackpool is heern. You all know
this man Stephen Blackpool.  You know him awlung o' his misfort'ns, and his
good name."

     With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and sat down
again.  Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot forehead - always from
left to right, and never the reverse way.

     "My friends," Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm, "I ha' hed
what's been spok'n o' me, and 'tis likly that I shan't mend it.  But I'd
liefer you'd hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my lips than fro onny other
man's though I never cud'n speak afore so monny, w'out being moydert and
muddled."

     Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his
bitterness.

     "I'm th' one single Hand in Bounderby's mill, o' a' the men theer, as
don't coom in wi' th' proposed reg'lations.  I canna' coom in wi' 'em.  My
friends, I doubt their doin' yo onny good.  Licker they'll do yo hurt."

     Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sa