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Of course, there must be something for those who are down, for the barefooted beggars, knife-grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chimeras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow. They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread. He who has nothing else has the good. God. That is the least he can have.
Nobody dared to come out for Bonaparte, or for Louis XVIII., except the slaters and masons and knife-grinders, who could not lose their offices and who wished for nothing better than to see others in their places.
Itinerant knife-grinders are an old institution here, and in some obscure way possibly because of their thievish propensities are associated intimately with the devil; and so there is either a knife-grinder simple, or a devil with a knife-grinder's wheel.
Ten thousand paroquets shrieking passionately, like a hundred knife-grinders at work, is no joke; especially when their melodies are mingled with the discordant cries of herons, and bitterns, and cranes, and the ceaseless buzz and hum of insects, like the bagpipe's drone, and the dismal croaking of boat-bills and frogs, one kind of which latter, by the way, doesn't croak at all, but whistles, ay, better than many a bird!
"Have they really rung in Mahomet and all those other heathens?" "Yes they all had their message, and they all get their reward. The man who don't get his reward on earth, needn't bother he will get it here, sure." "But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him away down there below those shoe-makers and horse-doctors and knife-grinders a lot of people nobody ever heard of?"
Their white dresses and turbans, their dark but bright and expressive countenances, their jet-black hair, and strange language, give an air of romance to the scene. There are widows with children, traveling tinkers, and knife-grinders. All these are talking, laughing, shouting, singing, and crying in discordant chorus.
Yet M. Sven Hedin concluded his argument with the words: "When it has been further established that the transport of Russian troops to Finland has greatly increased and it is affirmed that there are already about 85,000 soldiers there and when we also bear in mind that for many years past Sweden and likewise Norway have been visited by so-called knife-grinders from Russia, no doubt can remain.
The -th regiment are stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most agreeable men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and scissor merchants to shame." It seemed to me that Mr. St. John's under lip protruded, and his upper lip curled a moment.
Or they travelled over the country, frequenting fairs, selling, or pretending to sell, knives, combs, and stay-laces. Or they were knife-grinders, tinkers, musicians, or mountebanks. As the winter approaches, they flock into the town in droves. There they obtain a precarious subsistence in ways unknown; some pick up the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table, others overcrowd the workhouses.
Ten thousand paroquets shrieking passionately, like a hundred knife-grinders at work, is no joke; especially when their melodies are mingled with the discordant cries of herons, and bitterns, and cranes, and the ceaseless buzz and hum of insects, like the bagpipe's drone, and the dismal croaking of boat-bills and frogs, one kind of which latter, by the way, doesn't croak at all, but whistles, ay, better than many a bird!
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