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"Well, I can hardly tell you, if you won't have Wagstaff, or Pugsby, or Sniggins, or Goldman, or somebody that's respectable, to do what's proper, the child sha'n't be christened at all. As for Prettyman, or any such raff no, never! I'm sure there's a certain set of people that poverty's catching from, and that Prettyman's one of 'em.
Poverty's eternal cordon is ever round the poor. "Ma, why didn't you sleep with Pap last night?" asked Bob, the seven-year-old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull red. "You hush, will yeh? Because I it was too warm and there was a storm comin'. You never mind askin' such questions. Is he gone out?" "Yup. I heerd him callin' the pigs. It's Sunday, ain't it, ma?"
With these words he crept down the dark staircase, which was only lighted up on Sundays, owing to the high price of gas, and, peeping through the glass door of the porter's lodge, saw Madame Loupins engaged in cooking; and, with the timid knock of a man who has learned his lesson in poverty's grammar, he entered.
I read then dreamily made marks on the margin with my pencil; thinking all the while of other things; thinking that "Jane" was now at my side; no child, but a girl of nineteen; and she might be mine, so my heart affirmed; Poverty's curse was taken off me; Envy and Jealousy were far away, and unapprized of this our quiet meeting; the frost of the Master's manner might melt; I felt the thaw coming fast, whether I would or not; no further need for the eye to practise a hard look, for the brow to compress its expense into a stern fold: it was now permitted to suffer the outward revelation of the inward glow to seek, demand, elicit an answering ardour.
The pawnbroker's shop was less than ten minutes' walk from the hotel, and stepping briskly along he soon reached its doors, entered, and went directly to the open counter instead of availing himself of one of the dirty, ill-smelling little confessional boxes wherein hapless creatures confess their poverty to Poverty's Father Confessor, mine uncle.
It is little compared to the wealth enjoyed by that low-born and nameless creature, Sir Oswald's widow. But it is much for one who has drained poverty's bitter cup to the very dregs as I have. Yes, to the dregs; for though I have never known the want of life's common necessaries, I have known humiliations which are at least as hard to bear."
To Mulberry Street Mott Street was a foreign foe from which no interference was desired or long endured. A tenant in "the back" had died in the hospital of rheumatism, a term which in the slums sums up all of poverty's hardships, scant and poor food, damp rooms, and hard work, and the family had come home for the funeral. It was not a pleasant home-coming.
Or, on some venial treason bent, Frame thyself a government, For thy crest a brirnless hat, Poverty's aristocrat! Nonne habeam te tristem, Planet of the human system?
"'Bon repos, M. le Marquis! beaux reves, et bel avenir." "'Bel avenir!" murmured the young man, bitterly, leaning his cheek on his hand; "what fortune fairer than the present can be mine? yet inaction in youth is more keenly felt than in age. How lightly I should endure poverty if it brought poverty's ennobling companion, Labour, denied to me!
When it was pointed out that his position involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the implacable conditions.
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