Hopeless, helpless lives are lived by human
creatures who are not much above the brutes. Alas, how much may be
learned from a journey through the Midlands! We may talk of merry frosty
days and starlit nights and unsullied snow and Christmas cheer; but the
potter and the iron-worker know as much about cheeriness as they do
about stainless snow. Then there is London to be remembered. A cheery
time there will be for the poor creatures who hang about the dock-gates
and fight for the chance of earning the price of a meal! In that blank
world of hunger and cold and enforced idleness there is nothing that the
gayest optimist could describe as joyful, and some of us will have to
face the sight of it during the winter that is now at hand. What can be
done? Hope seems to have deserted many of our bravest; we hear the dark
note of despair all round, and it is only the sight of the workers--the
kindly workers--that enables us to bear up against deadly depression and
dark pessimism.
_December, 1888._
_THE FADING YEAR_.
Even in this distressed England of ours there are still districts where
the simple reapers regard the harvest labour as a frolic; the dulness of
their still lives is relieved by a burst of genuine but coarse
merriment, and their abandoned glee is not unpleasant to look upon.
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