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Updated: May 8, 2025
This examination of the railroad construction worker brought home to the listeners the truth of the little verse: "He built the road; With others of his class he built the road; Now o'er its weary length he packs his load, Chasing a Job, spurred on by Hunger's goad, He walks and walks and walks and walks, And wonders why in Hell he built the road!"
At mid-day some guns on Wynne's left front opened on the batteries, but not a shot was fired by the Boers in the trenches. Already one field battery had been detached from the left of the line of guns, the first movement in the real attack, and had taken up a position to cover the pontoon troop which was throwing a bridge across the Tugela near Hunger's Drift.
If one assumes for the moment that only twelve million people in Great Britain were living on hunger's extreme edge at that time, the picture I had of the sullen, angry crowd outside the baker's shop remains a sufficiently sinister one. As a matter of fact, I believe that particular baker was a shade premature, or a penny or two excessive, in his advance of prices.
Ten or twelve crippled-beggars had encamped outside. The healthiest of them resembled, to use an expression of Marryat's, "Hunger's eldest son when he had come of age"; the others were either blind, had withered legs and crept about on their hands, or withered arms and fingerless hands. It was the most wretched misery, dragged from among the filthiest rags.
As soon as the guns had driven the enemy into their trenches on Brakfontein, a pontoon bridge was to be thrown across the river south of Hunger's Drift, and the guns on Zwart Kop were to open on Vaalkrantz, and when this had been sufficiently bombarded, it would be carried by the infantry, and guns would be brought up to enfilade the Boer line; while the cavalry "when feasible" would push through under the ridge and threaten it from the rear.
I almost heard the words with my outward ears. I looked around the room. No one was with me. Stillness reigned in the house. "It takes Mr. Axtell a very long time to take his tea," I thought; "he must know more of hunger's power than I. I will look at the fire no more," I said, slowly, to myself, and closed my eyelids, somewhat willing to drop after all that they had endured that day.
Kafirs, coolies, Europeans of all nations, the wealthy the poor, and the lowly all struggled to procure the precious "permit," as if they were at all hazards determined to gain one week's respite before finally succumbing to hunger's pangs.
Bonbright did not know. He had wanted to know; had wanted the condition explained to him. Instead, he had been crushed into his groove humiliatingly. Bonbright was young, to be readily impressed. If his father had received his uncertainty with kindliness and had answered his hunger's demand for enlightenment with arguments and reasoning, the crisis probably would have passed harmlessly.
The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl at his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped the table with holiday food and Stuffy, with a sigh that was mistaken for hunger's expression, raised knife and fork and carved for himself a crown of imperishable bay. No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an enemy.
"I myself, not being built to eat, have no personal experience in such matters. But I remember that our great poet once said: 'To eat is sweet When hunger's seat Demands a treat Of savory meat." "Take this into consideration, friends of the Jury, and you will readily decide that the kitten is wrongfully accused and should be set at liberty."
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