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In August I asked for a "match-girls' drawing-room." "It will want a piano, tables for papers, for games, for light literature; so that it may offer a bright, homelike refuge to these girls, who now have no real homes, no playground save the streets.
Presently, as the Cossitollah panorama flows on beneath our window, with all its bizarreness from the bazaars, its boxwallahs, and its pawn-makers, its peddlers of toys, its money-changers and shopmen, its basket-makers and mat-weavers and chattah-menders, its perambulating cobblers and tailors, its jugglers, gymnasts, and match-girls, its fellows who feed on glass bottles for the astonishment and delectation of the Sahibs, or who, if you have such a thing as a sheep about you, will undertake to slaughter and skin it with their teeth and devour it on the spot, its conjure-wallahs, who, for a few pice, will run sharp foils through each other's bodies without for a moment disturbing either health or cheerfulness, or will make mangoes grow under table-cloths, "all fair and proper," while Master waits, as the Brahmin still dodges the shadow of the Soodra, and the Soodra spits upon the footprint of the Pariah, the Baboo returns to his chariot; the fat and solemn coachman gathers up the reins, the burkarus assume their symmetrical attitudes on the box, the syces bawl, and the socas jump.
I was promptly threatened with an action for libel, but nothing came of it; it was easier to strike at the girls, and a few days later Fleet Street was enlivened by the irruption of a crowd of match-girls, demanding Annie Besant. I couldn't speechify to match-girls in Fleet Street, so asked that a deputation should come and explain what they wanted.
In thousands of cases, especially in the north, the places of the men were taken by the women; and, in addition to these, every woman and girl, from the match-girls of Whitechapel to the noblest and wealthiest in the land, found some work to do in the service of their country.
Just fancy, they had a horrid, stupid, slow dinner-party on Easter Monday, of all the burgomasters and great One-eyers, and would not let me go down and sing to the match-girls!" "You had the pleasure of a study of the follies of wealth instead of the follies of poverty." "Oh, to hear Mrs. Brown discourse on her troubles with her first, second, and third coachman!"
"We have really a parody of his which is going in The Girton Girl. Now, Emmie, won't you? You have told me such funny things about your match-girls." "I do not mean to let them be turned into ridicule by your prim, decorous swells.
Anti-Semitism. Why should London wait? or German waiters? Mr. Stead's revival of pilgrimages. Is Grimm's Law universal? The abuses of the Civil Service; of the Pension List. Dr. Barnardo. Grievances of match-girls; of elementary teachers. Are our police reliable? Is Stevenson's Scotch accurate? Is our lifeboat service efficient? The Eastern Question. What is an English fairy-tale?
Write an account of one of your hospital visits, or of the match-girls, for the Mouse- trap. Do! You know Gerald has written something for it." "He! Why he has too much sense to write for your voluntary schools. Or it would be too clever and incisive for you. Ah! I see it was so by your face! What did he send you? Have you got it still?"
I care about my neighbours, of course, after a sort, but the jolly city sparrows of the slums for me! I long to be away. What to say to this Lord Northmoor knew as little as did his nephew, and with some difficulty he managed to utter, 'Are not they very uncivilised? 'That's the beauty of it, said Bertha; 'I've spotted my own special preserve of match-girls, newsboys, etc., and Mr.
Whatever the ultimate effects of decreasing the demand for unskilled labour might be, the misery of the immediate effects could not be lightly set aside. This contradiction of the present certain effect and the probable future effects confronts the philanthropist at every turn. The condition of the London match-girls may serve as an illustration of this.
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