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PASSAGES FROM A BOY'S EPIC VIII. The Dbe...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Iliswb&S M £L Wa«A©©Elgu I. Broeik-Stree...
three days . A passenger on board the steamboat told me that he went down to the sea side every year— "It is so wholesome ; " and he recommended me to drink pale ale , because it was wholesome . An outfitter , a kind of general dealer in clothes , recommended me a peculiar sort of flannel-waistcoat , as " very wholesome ; " and a bookseller showed me the last book " on wholesome diet . " I told him that where I lived , all diet was found to be wholesome ; on which , with an air of polite displeasure , he remarked , " Then , sir , you reside in a very favoured county ;"• and turned off to ask what he could do for a new customer . However , I will not _outrage Edwardes ' s professional feelings ; but go to bed . So God bless you both . October 12 .
Sunday in London is a common topic , especially with Parisian feuilletonists and the Londoners themselves ; but it is a more dreary affair in reality than in print ; and the subject so keenly discussed by the " Liberal " papers—the better observance of the Sabbath , does but touch the surface . I cannot tell you how a London Sunday astonishes a stranger . It would astonish the Londoners themselves if they could see it—at least , so one thinks . But Edwardes is not astonished . He does see it , and he takes it all as a matter of course . I believe that Londoners would take anything as a matter of course , not excluding even cannibalism , if you could once get it fairly " introduced . "
We breakfasted early this morning , in order that Edwardes might make the round of his patients . For disease does not know any Sabbath ; neither do the beasts of the field , obeying the instincts with which they are endowed ; nor the laws that sustain the stars , nor anything that is seen in the direct working of God ' s creation . I went with Edwardes , and a strange round it was . Our first visit was to a house hard by , a most decorous house in all respects—a quiet maid opening the door ; a quiet parlour , with a quiet family in it , quietly dressed , and quietly struggling into a little conversation , until , as if at an impromptu idea , the lady of the house suddenly started , and led Edwardes to some more quiet penetralia ; where he visited , as he afterwards told me , a young lady , who had nothing
particular the matter with her , but was getting gradually weaker . " Girls often go out in that way , " he observed , with the nonchalance of a well-bred necessitarian . The house was ventilated as he directed , and scrupulously clean ; and yet it had within it an air of exclusiveness wholly alienated from the outer world . The lady was actually a "femme _d'interieur , " a woman of interior . She bore up wonderfully . " I have my Bible , " she said , with a faint smile of resignation , rather than consolation . And from that carefullykept octavo its spirit was drawn , well laden with the perfume of morocco leather and aged paper . Pale , quiet , shut up , life was faint in that respectable abode ; and it had pleased God that death should knock often at that well-kept door .
Edwardes ' s well-appointed gig next invaded one of the narrow streets lying near Holborn ; which is one of the dingier and poorer thoroughfares of London , flanked with wretched bye lanes . I followed him into the house , and into the squalid parlour , itself the chamber of the sick . Here lay a lad ill with fever ; the mother , a housewifely sort of woman , with the usual dull English face weighed down by additional despondency , cooking something in a saucepan at the fire ; one or two children , who always seemed to be getting out of the way ; and the father , in his Sunday clothes , sitting with a neighbour , also shaved and clean , who had come for a chat . "There is always fever here , " said Edwardes to me as he entered . The
wife received us without ceremony ; and answered Edwardes's questions with a voice of settled wretchedness striving to be hopeful . The men were talking politics , and managed to pass the time in wielding great ideas within that cramped space . The father was a tailor , undergoing a continued decline of wages " by the competition of trade ; " he was obliged to live near his work ; and as numbers were equally obliged , his rent was high—so that little remained for the poor sick boy , or anybody else . The place is a standing illustration for sanitary reformers ; a sort of party , like the _hundreds of other parties in England , who have the privilege of talking on condition of never being allowed to do * anything .
After a few more visits , including one to a stalwart young fellow , who had nothing the matter with him , said Edwardes , if he would but live rationally , but who was going to the dogs as fast as he could—at which the patient himself laughed—wc drove to church ; " for I must show myself then ; occasionally , " said the rising surgeon . You remember the English church— -a S () rt of vast scullery with a portico before it , and pews inside , to shield tin ; Christians from contact with each other . The congregation was just pouring in—breathing the pleasant leisure audibly in the quiet ; iiequuintunces slightly noticing each other in a covert way . After we came out Kdwardes quizzed me for my attentive behaviour— " n model to socie ty . " He could not have extended the observation to the audience
generall y . A service read , mechanically , in a tone that mocked singing , as though the preacher had been asked to sing and were ashamed ; a sermon 111 vu , lt' » t language , on the distinction betweeu pnevenient and subvenient _giace by baptism ; an audience that seemed to be slyly dallying with ' _spouses , or pretending to listen ; a general air of trilling , non-reverence , _»» ul formal observance—such were the aspects that made me rather glad to K _« t out ol the building ; and thc audience generally looked relieved at ! _* 5 < rom , l _™ restraint , half-ashamed at its own want of earnestness . Ah ! " encd Edwardes , in answer to my remark , " thank God we have not _»« _gewgaws you have been used to , my boy ! There iB a deep devotional
Iliswb&S M £L Wa«A©©Elgu I. Broeik-Stree...
feeling in this country , which will always keep us sound . " " But "—it is curious to note how any antithesis enables an unsectarian Englishman to escape from the subject that is most embarrassing to him , religion— " I have several calls to make . " And make them we did , to various people , in various stages of drawingroom refinement ; with luncheon intermingled ; conversation more or less friendly , but always fragmentary— - part of the costume of the hour ; and
home to dress . - Sunday is a busy day in London , except among the poor ; but a skin is drawn over the whole community , like the shutters that cover up the wealth which lines each side of the shop streets . How little you would think that near that quiet church , all so well dressed , lie squalid poor , " eating their hearts , " with little to lose ! How near to all that wealth , seldom disturbed ! It was a relief to get home , and see Mrs . Edwardes ' s genuine face—where the real substance of humanity comes to the surface .
In the evening we went to dine with a Mr . Drake , a patient in good circumstances , with a generous gout , and an overflowing table . Abundance of well cooked food , on a well garnished table ; the best of dresses around it , male and female , with well conducted elbows and heads in them ; brilliant glass and plate , not brilliant conversation—it is surprising- how much time the " entertainment" was made to cover . " Why you have not done /" cried my host , as I desisted : " it is very wholesome—do not be afraid of it . " I said I had had enough ; and he succumbed . It is no longer polite in England to press your guests ; but Mr . Drake plunged into the feast again with a savage acharnement , evidently intended as a withering sarcasm by example . Not eating , I had leisure to observe , and I did note here and
there a true beaming in the eye , especially of the young , or a change of colour which indicated latent life ; but it is wonderful how well it is toned down , how rigidly the conversation is kept to trivialities and matters that could not concern anybody present . The ladies retired—for a change ; then politics , growing rather of a port wine colour , with conversation that surprised me by a certain pointlessness and cold blooded licence—for I had forgotten the English turn that way ; then tea in the drawing-room , and the energies of port wine struggling against drowsiness and decorum ; and then a hack cab home . There would have been music , for , although it was Sunday , " Drake is liberal in his ideas ; " but there was a clergyman in the company—who had much distinguished himself in the after-dinner facetiae . It is true that his statements interfered with no doctrinal question .
As we rode home , the public houses were disgorging then- contents , more or less noisy , under check of a watchful police . The working-man cannot give dinner parties ; museums and theatres are closed against Sabbath recreation ; the street is his only alternative to the public-house , and London on a Sunday night is not a pleasant field for contemplating human nature . However , the police keep order , and there is no rioting even in the worst of streets . " Good night , my dear fellow , " cried Edwardes , with a yawn ; " I am afraid you have found your first Sunday in London a dreadful bore . " Yseult said nothing as we shook hands .
How difficult it is , my dear Helen , to make even you , much more Giorgio , understand the desperate unreality of the whole day . How it has gone , and nothing remains of it ; except the sick people in their despondency—that was real enough . As I recover the familiar scuse of London , this unreality becomes more , instead of less , impressive . It is life by retail .
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Passages From A Boy's Epic Viii. The Dbe...
PASSAGES FROM A BOY ' S EPIC VIII . The Dbeds of Theseus . So throned in Athens shall the hero rule , And order all to one majestic end ; Mighty in arms , in laws , in arts of peace , And loved alike by mortals and by Gods . Yet shall the soldier-blood within his heart Flow faster , when he hears of martial deeds ; Nor will he always rest as cowards do , Who shun the Battle that brings manhood out , With might and right ; but in the after-days , When gray old men sit round and tell their sons How Theseus governed for the common weal , No less with burning words will tbey rehearse , How Theseus for the common weal did fight , In Epidaurus and by Corinth ' s strait ; And where a threadlike path o'cihangs the sea At Megara ; or where Poseidon ' s son Fell in _Eleusis . Many a lip will tell How Theseus slew the huge Palontides , When the great king of Athens knew his son , And saved him , doomed to death , while Envy stood With whiter lips , and Prince and People wept . And some will tell , how once from Pelion ' s heights , Where the tall pines touch heaven , the Ccntours came , And to the marriage of Ixion ' s son The Lapitha ; were bidden , and noble men , Whom god-like deeds made equal to the gods ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 21, 1852, page 21, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_21081852/page/21/
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