"Better sing hymns," said Ellen.
"Hymns for * * * * * *?" answered the other, and then burst out into that peculiar, wild, ringing, fiendish laugh—has my reader never heard it?
I pulled out the two or three shillings which I possessed, and tried to make the girls take them, for the sake of poor Ellen.
"No; you're a working man, and we won't feed on you—you'll want it some day—all the trade's going the same way as we, as fast as ever it can!"
Sandy and I went down the stairs.
"Poetic element? Yon lassie, rejoicing in her disfigurement and not her beauty—like the nuns of Peterborough in auld time—is there na poetry there? That puir lassie, dying on the bare boards, and seeing her Saviour in her dreams, is there na poetry there, callant? That auld body owre the fire, wi' her 'an officer's dochter,' is there na poetry there? That ither, prostituting hersel to buy food for her freen—is there na poetry there?—tragedy—
"With hues as when some mighty painter dips
His pen in dyes of earthquake and eclipse.
"Ay, Shelley's gran'; always gran'; but Fact is grander—God and Satan are
grander. All around ye, in every gin-shop and costermonger's cellar, are
God and Satan at death grips; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or
Paradise Regained; and will ye think it beneath ye to be the 'People's
Poet?'"