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The grown vagrants brought here for a time only are employed in washing, beating hemp, and picking oakum, and have no more to keep them than they earn, unless they are sick; and the boys are put out apprentices to seafaring men or artificers, at a certain age, and in the meantime have their diet, clothes, physic, and other necessaries provided for them by the house, which is supported by private charities, by sums raised annually by the City, or by the labour of the children, which last article produces seven or eight hundred pounds per annum.
There is no reason to suppose that the close relation subsisting in the old days between the master and his journeymen and apprentices was as a rule idyllically beautiful. No doubt the control of the master was often vexatious and despotic. The tyranny of a heartless employer under the old system was probably much more injurious than the apathy of the most vulgar plutocrat of to-day.
About two weeks before, the apprentices on Thornton estate, amounting to about ninety, had refused to work, and fled in a body to the woods, where they still remained. Their complaint, according to our informant, was, that their master had turned the cattle upon their provision grounds, and all their provisions were destroyed, so that they could not live.
The four grand distinctions of the people are these: The nobility and gentry; the merchants and first-rate tradesmen; the lawyers and physicians; and inferior tradesmen, attorneys, clerks, apprentices, coachmen, carmen, chairmen, watermen, porters, and servants.
In front of the house matters were little better: the orange girls going to and fro among the audience, interchanging jokes not of the most delicate character with the young sparks and apprentices, the latter cracking nuts or howling down some unfortunate actor who had offended their worships; sometimes pipes of tobacco were being smoked.
I believe those sort of people always feed together parents, children, apprentices and all." "I assure you, not always," said Christian, quietly. "At least I dined with the children alone," "Indeed! How very pleasant!" "It was not unpleasant. They were good little things; and, as you know, I always prefer having children about me at meal-times.
The number present, when we visited it, was about two hundred. There was, to say the least, as much manifestation of intellect and sprightliness as we ever saw in white pupils of the same age. Most of the children were slaves previous to 1834, and their parents are still apprentices.
And one last picture I have, standing out very clear and bright in the midst of vagueness before and blackness afterward. We the apprentices and I are swaying and clinging to one another under the stars. We are singing a rollicking sea song, all save one who sits on the ground and weeps; and we are marking the rhythm with waving square faces.
A few street-urchins allowed themselves this little diversion, as Pelle came running by with the other apprentices; otherwise all attention was concentrated on the one fact that the "Great Power" had broken out again! A certain festivity might have been noted on the faces of the hurrying crowd; a vivid expectation.
When his workmen, too, saw that he had got into tippling and irregular habits, and that his eye was not, as in the days of his industry, over them, they naturally became careless and negligent, as did the apprentices also.
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