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Then he would entertain a dozen men at one of the best restaurants in London, tip cabmen and waiters with half-sovereigns, shower half-crowns as he walked through the streets, lend or give to anybody for the asking. Later, half-an-hour's dusty search would be rewarded with a single coin. It made no difference to him; he would dine in Soho for eighteenpence, smoke shag, and run into debt.
The cabmen of Paris form a distinct class, a separate society, composed of all sorts of elements a turbulent, indocile, rebellious set of men, always in revolt against their employers and against the law, which holds them with an iron and inflexible grasp.
I went everywhere and talked to everybody who might be of use to me; cabmen, porters, fruit dealers and tobacconists. I found much to interest me in the various Catholic institutions, and I was above all very fond of visiting the large, ugly gray building with the air of a penitentiary about it called the Grey Nunnery.
During the sessions Washington was overrun with "Smartness": Smart pages, smart messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace here, and Mr.
Every week, when it appeared, Cecilia, who for some reason carved on Sundays, regarded it with a frown. Next week she would really discontinue it; but when next week came, there it was, with its complexion that reminded her so uncomfortably of cabmen. And she would partake of it with unexpected heartiness.
But the philanthropic employer of the sort I describe is not a man of any manhood; in a sense he is not a man at all. He shows some consciousness of the fact when he calls his workers "men" as distinct from masters. He cannot comprehend the gallantry of costermongers or the delicacy that is quite common among cabmen.
But besides these, we had two vestry-men, a country postmaster, who devoted his talents to insulting the public instead of to learning the postal regulations, three cabmen and two 'fares, two young shop-girls from a Berlin wool shop in a town where there was no competition, four commercial travellers, six landladies, six Old Bailey lawyers, several widows from almshouses, seven single gentlemen, and nine cats, who swore at everything; a dozen sulphur-colored screaming cockatoos; a lot of street children from a town; a pack of mongrel curs from the colonies, who snapped at the human beings' heels, and five elderly ladies in their Sunday bonnets, with prayer-books, who had been fighting for good seats in church."
And yet with all our engines doing the work of millions of draymen and cabmen, with all our factory-machines doing the work of hundreds of thousands of weavers and spinners, with all our telegraphs and telephones taking the place of numberless messengers, runners, and errand boys, and with a population, too, vastly in excess of the population when old-fashioned methods prevailed, the fact stands out that labor has never been in greater demand and has never commanded higher wages than to-day.
They stood in the open air. There was a carriage passing, some idle cabmen on the stand with nothing to do but to stare at them, a gaping nursery-maid and her charges at the gate.
Aunt Mary gave her one awful look. "You get me some paper an’ my desk, Lucinda," she said. "I think it’s about time I was takin’ a hand in it myself. I’ve been pretty patient, an’ I don’t see as it’s helped matters any. Now I’m goin’ to write that boy a letter that’ll settle him an’ his cats, an’ his cooks, an’ his cabmen, an’ his Kalamazoo, just once for all.
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