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The French Revolution was absolutely a strike, and a very terrible and relentless one, against ages of bad pay, unjust division of wealth-products, and the hoggish monopoly of a few, rolling in superfluity, against the vast bulk of the work-people, living in squalor.
He repelled people, growing more and more bitter against the world as his struggles became harder. What little money he had accumulated Heaven alone knew how: he came by it dwindled to nothing, and he was in actual squalor when, later, Bansemer found him in an attic in Baltimore.
Somewhere about the middle of this nineteenth century, a baby boy was born on the raging sea in the midst of a howling tempest. That boy was the hero of this tale. He was cradled in squalls, and nourished in squalor a week of dirty weather having converted the fore-cabin of the emigrant ship into something like a pig-sty.
The first thing to be done was to clean out the church, which was in such a state of dirt and squalor that people had some excuse for not wishing to enter it. He then turned his attention to the clergy already there. They were ignorant and easygoing men, for the most part, who thought a good deal more of their own amusement than of the needs of their flock, but they were not bad at heart.
He gave a whimsical shrug for the squalor of the neighboring houses, and said to himself rather than the boy who was with him: "It's curious, isn't it, how fond the poor people are of these unpleasant thoroughfares? You always find them living in the worst streets." "The burden of all the wrong in the world comes on the poor," said the boy. "Every sort of fraud and swindling hurts them the worst.
What to her had been the kindness of her clerical friend, or the stories brought to her from her early home, or the dirt and squalor of the life which she was leading? The moment that there was a question of bringing her back to the decencies of the world, she escaped from her friends and hurried back to the pollution which, no doubt, had charms for her.
Sit 'ere, Polly," with elbow jerk toward the bundle of sacks. "It's got its stummick full an' it'll go to sleep fast enough." So they sat again in the weird circle. Neither the strangeness of the group nor the squalor of the hearth were of a nature to be new things to the curate. His eyes fixed themselves on Dart's face, as did the eyes of the thief, the beggar, and the young thing of the street.
When the insolent demagogue Loud rants at this and that, Not less do I go singing round, 'Vive an aristocrat! Yes, &c. To the Devil, Equality! Your squalor I decline, With you I would no better be Nor sprung of older line. Yes, &c. March on, my comrades gay, Strike up the merry drums, And drink the Bourbons long, long life Whatever fortune comes. Yes, &c."
London meant for her in those days the dirt and squalor of the poor, the depravity of the rich, the fiendish triumph of the lust of man, and the horrible degradation of her own sex; but now that her mind was recovering its tone, and she could see with her own eyes, she discovered the good at war with the evil, the courage and kindliness of the poor, signs of the growth of better feeling in the selfish and greedy rich, the mighty power of purity at war with the license of man, and the noble attitude of women wherever injustice was rife, the weak oppressed, and the wronged remained unrighted; then her heart expanded with pity, and instead of the torment of unavailing hate, she began to revive in the glow of strengthening gleams of hope.
And then what then? Even now amid the squalor of London it is hard to imagine what it will be.