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'Oh yes; Mary Marshall's is a very sad case; she has seven children, not one of them old enough to work for himself; and she is dying, poor creature, of consumption. Her husband is a navvy, and he is at work at Lewes; I believe he is pretty steady, and sends the greater part of his wages to his wife, but there are too many mouths to feed to allow of comforts; his old blind mother lives with them.
How is it possible to like living in a wilderness, with no conveniences around one, no society to chat with, no books to read, and, above all, no shops to go to, where one is obliged to drudge at menial work from morning till night, and one's boys and girls get into rags and tatters, and one's husband becomes little better than a navvy, to say nothing of snakes and scorpions in one's bed and boots, and the howling of wild beasts all night?
"One of them rich snobs!" said the laborers, grumbling; "all the laborers in town have to march out here so that he can pick himself the best. And he's beaten down the day's wages to fifty ore. He's been a navvy himself, too; but now he's a man who enjoys his hundred thousand a year. A regular bloodsucker, he is!"
The heavy rains continued, the country was already overrun with floods; the railway system daily required more hands, daily the superintendent advertised; but "the unemployed" preferred the resources of charity and rapine, and a navvy, even an amateur navvy, commanded money in the market.
Applehead, having plenty of reasons for avoiding publicity, had gone into retirement in the shade of a clump of brush, with Lite to keep him company while he smoked a meditative pipe or two and studied the puzzle of Ramon's probable whereabouts. "Can't trust a Navvy," he muttered in a discreet undertone to Lite.
"A stout man, a navvy, who said he had been one of the biggest drunkards in London, having briefly spoken, was followed by one known as 'Jemmy the butcher, who keeps a stall in the Whitechapel Road. Some one had cruelly robbed him, but he found consolation by attending the Mission Hall Prayer Meeting.
The tramp of a horse awakened me. I heard Jim calling Jones. Thinking it was time to eat I went out. The snow had all disappeared and the forest was brown as ever. Jim sat on his horse and Navvy appeared riding up to the hollow, leading the saddle horses. "Jones, get out," called Jim. "Can't you let a fellow sleep? I'm not hungry," replied Jones testily. "Get out and saddle up," continued Jim.
And indeed, if the Moral Life could be reduced to the simplicity of a slot-machine, it would still be necessary to put real pennies in. February 23. Some time ago a navvy working in Sussex came upon a round object like a cocoa-nut which he flung carelessly out of the way. It would soon have disappeared for ever.
Incredulous yet aghast the young man gave instant chase to the navvy, overhauling him with no great difficulty. For your horny-handed British working-man is apparently born with two golden aphorisms in his mouth: "Look before you leap," and "Haste makes waste." He looks continually, seldom, if ever, leaps, and never is prodigal of his leisure.
Peto and Brassey, was greatly pleased with his Danish labourers, but, on being pressed, said, "No man is equal to the British navvy; but the Dane, from his steady, constant labour, is a good workman, and a first-class one will do nearly as much work in a day as an Englishman."
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