Bless you, I know scores who were
once as sweet as you who can now drink any costermonger of them all
under the stools in the Haymarket bar. The young men grin and wink as
that staggering portent lurches past: I do not smile; my heart is too
sad for even a show of sadness. Then there are the children--the
children of Drink they should be called, for they suck it from the
breast, and the venomous molecules become one with their flesh and
blood, and they soon learn to like the poison as if it were pure
mother's milk. How they hunger--those little children! What obscure
complications of agony they endure and how very dark their odd
convulsive species of existence is made, only that one man may buy
forgetfulness by the glass. If I let my imagination loose, I can hear
the immense army of the young crying to the dumb and impotent sky, and
they all cry for bread. Mercy! how the little children suffer! And I
have seen them by the hundred--by the thousand--and only helped from
caprice; I could do no other. The iron winter is nearing us, and soon
the dull agony of cold will swoop down and bear the gnawing hunger
company while the two dire agencies inflict torture on the little ones.
Were it not for Drink the sufferers might be clad and nourished; but
then Drink is the support of the State, and a few thousand of
raw-skinned, hunger-bitten children perhaps do not matter.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44