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"Oh! a' say," remarked a born East-Ender, for whom we are perfectly certain the Clyde and Thistle, according to his self-importance at any rate, had played their best on Barrowfield and Beechwood, "look at that; it's no' fair to gie the Vale a free kick for that; it's the auld way; gie't ta the yin that mak's the maist noise."
It was not many years before the War, to be a little more precise, though then I was unaware of the reason of the darkness, except common fog. Besides, why should a Londoner, and even an East-Ender whose familiar walls are topped by mastheads, believe in the nearness of the ocean? We think of the shipping no more than we do of the paving stones or of the warnings of the pious.
I tell you it's a pretty wise guy that can put one over on my Pa. "What's that gotter do with my face! Gee, but you oughter to be in the law you'd be the peach of a cross-exam'ner you would. But just so's to have no hard feelin's I'll tell you. I'm an East-ender myself, and I made some noise too.
But it may be, and it may even legitimately be, that since all these monsters have faded from the popular mythology, it is necessary to have in our fiction the image of the horrible and hairy East-ender, merely to keep alive in us a fearful and childlike wonder at external peculiarities.
An unhealthy generation has arisen among the more educated class at least that quarrels little, regards the function as a vice or a nuisance, as the East-ender does a taste for fine art or literature. We seem indeed to be getting altogether out of the way of it. Rare quarrels, no doubt, occur to everyone, but rare quarrelling is no quarrelling at all.
There was one W.A.A.C. Smith we will call her who could easily have made her fortune on the stage, she was so clever at imitations. She would "take you off" to your face and make you laugh in spite of yourself. She was an East-ender and witty in the extreme, warm of heart but exceedingly quick-tempered. I liked her tremendously, she was so utterly alive and genuine.
The attitude of the inland Corsican, even to this day, is that of a young East-Ender whom I knew. When he was asked to give evidence against his particular enemy, he replied, "But if I do, they'll jug him, and I won't be able to get even with him." He preferred handling the man himself. Yet nowadays Corsica has greatly changed from what it was in Paoli's time.
Sadly! sadly! indeed, was the deacon's cupidity excited by this account; a vivid picture of whales, or seals, having some such effect on the imagination of a true Suffolk county man, or more properly on that of an East-ender, as those who live beyond Riverhead are termed, as a glowing account of a prairie covered with wheat has on that of a Wolverine or a Buck eye; or an enumeration of cent per cent. has on the feelings of a Wall-street broker.
Had he not worn good clothes, adored a loving mother, been educated in his early days in those vain accomplishments which society demands from its children? And now he was an "East-ender," down at heel and half starved; and there were not three people in all the city who would care a straw whether he lived or died.
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