What can it not do and undo?”
The cabbies are a strange caste—a kind of wandering mendicants always on the go, and high caste enough to look down on all their fares. I rather liked them, so good-natured when well tipped, but probably like other humans, the other thing when squeezed and why not? Some one told me this story. An old timer just returned from India going from a station, thought his cab was taking him round about to increase the mileage. Not thinking where he was, he shouted up in his India patois, “Turn sooar ka batchcha kidhar ko jaoge?” You son of a pig, whither are you going?
Cabby with as much force hurled down, “Tum gaddha ka bhai, ham khub jante hain.” You brother to a donkey we know very well; showing that he had also been in India.
We were soon at Vanity Fair and such it really was, a fair of vanity. I doubt if the sun anywhere else shines on such a scene. It was an after service aristocratic parade. “Miss Vavasor went to church, as it was the right thing to do. God was one of the heads of society, and his drawing rooms had to be attended,” so it seems to be good form as an adjunct to divine service to have this assembly. It was a big show to me, but I could not see the reason of it. It was a dumb performance, as very few appeared to talk,—a kind of pantomime. There may have been lots of fun in it—as it is said the English take even their pleasures very sadly—which my lack of education prevented me from seeing. It was probably a divine dress parade, as all seemed to wear clothes of the newest kind of cloth and the latest cut, especially the guanty jaunty young men who paraded back and forth. They may have been hired by some fashionable tailor to show his latest styles. There were castes, the high Brahmins on a certain set of chairs and so on, each set by itself. A profane low-class man outside the ring pointed out to me a dowager with the wise remark, “She’s taken many a nip by the looks of her mug.” Another of a duchess, “She’s a rum un.” This was as bad as the cabbie’s reply when I asked him on the way, “What is that building?” “Buckingham Palace, sur.” “Who lives there?” I queried. “The old cat,” he answered. I don’t like such talk. It’s “deucedly vulgar, you know,” and as bad as swearing. The fact is, I often needed an interpreter. The language and pronunciation were so peculiar, and yet they would have taken it in high dudgeon if I had requested them to speak to me in English.
At length the show dissolved or rather moved away as silently as it came, and without any one saying “To your tents, O Israel.”
The next scene was in another part of the Park, a meeting of strikers or the victims of “Sweaters” in some trade. The crowds! They came from every direction. There were also castes in numbers, each with a style of its own, but all evidently of the lowest grade, most of them in the cheapest clothes, rags and tatters, a wonderful contrast to the Vanity Fair party.
There were carts in different places from which speakers bawled out their grievances and made their demands. The hucksters, with their baskets and little stands, offered shrimps, winkles, pop, roasted chestnuts and other cheap stuff, with little success, as the crowd appeared as anxious to keep their pennies, if they had any, as these fellows were to get them. There were many strong, robust men, probably willing to labor, but compelled to idleness, their garments stitched and patched, yet not sufficient to conceal their nakedness. Such able-bodied men begging people to buy a pen’worth of something!
I cannot stomach the nakedness of a white person. There is something in it so leprous-like. I have heard travelers remark that a half-naked black or dark skinned person, is not at all repugnant compared to one of a white skin. Naturally I am inclined to a dark skin, and cannot but think that God knew what He was doing when He gave colored skins to people living in the tropics where clothes are a burden, that their dark complexions might take the place of clothes, and they be protectively colored.
On the same principle nature clothes animals and insects with the colors of their surroundings. Still, I think, human animals ought to get their color as well as their being in a legitimate way. I know this reflection is to mine own detriment.
All this poverty showed this one thing, at least, that the present organization of society is at fault, or that God had made a failure in creating these people. It may be, as Alexander Knox says, “The mass of these people in our towns are spawned upon the world rather than born into life.” Or as another has said: “Born into the world only to be a blight to it.”