After partaking of a light breakfast of the kind Midúvelesko (Christ) and mongaméngro (beggars) eat, with my Romeni (wife), Racklé (sons), and Raklia (girls) at our plain-fare misáli (table), I began with some of “our boys and girls” to wend my way through poous (fields) and by-lanes and over rippling streams to Long Buckby. I had not got far down one of the lanes before I came upon a scissors-grinder (posh) gipsy, who, together with his joovel (woman) and their six nongo-peeró chiklo chavis (barefooted dirty children), were beshing (sitting) upon chiklo drom rig (muddy roadside) rokering (talking), chingaren (quarrelling), sovenholben (swearing), and eating their shooker manro (dry bread) for breakfast and paáni (water) out of the rippling stream for múterimongri (tea). Their yogoméskro (fireplace) was upon the chik (ground); their kair (house) was a barrow covered with rags. Although belonging to Anghitérra (England), and priding themselves on being Gaújokones (English), not one of the eight men, women, and children could tell a letter. Shóshi (rabbits) were not to be seen, and kanegrós (hares) were out of sight, where they Taned (camped). Rooks were “caw”-cawing overhead; baúro-chériklo (pheasants) and ridjil (partridges) had flown. After a chat with them I distributed a few pictures and little things to the chabis (children), and then bade them good (saúla) morning.
A further trembling stroll by the hedges, ditches, daisies, and buttercups brought me to the edge of the canal, where I sat down to watch the darting, jumping, and frisking of the mátcho (fish) as they shot to and fro before me. Every now and again a perch would pop up out of the clear water, as if anxious to have a peep and a game, and then it would, with a whisk of its tail, shoot off like an arrow. The lark was singing overhead. While meditating, musing, and observing upon the surroundings and unregistered and uninspected canal boats and cabins packed to suffocation with uneducated poor canal children, in face of an Act passed—for which I worked hard and long from 1872 and onward to to-day, to prevent this sad state of things—I began to aphorize, and entered into my pocket-book the following aphorisms:—
Some little-brained, over-sensitive, dwarfish mortals, who spend their time in running after little annoyances, may be compared to a policeman running with his staff after a fly which has been tickling the end of his nose on a summer’s sunny afternoon.
A clever man who has found his way into the gutter through his own misconduct may be compared to a piece of granite, with a rugged squarishness about him that would have enabled him to find his upward way into the world and good society; instead of which his ruggedness has been rubbed and kicked off, and to-day he is as a boulder upon the pavement, and undergoing the process of being kicked from pillar to post, with no reward for him but the gutter.
A man who builds up his fortune out of ill-gotten gains, and the grinding sweat of the poor, is feathering his nest in a dead carcase that will stink long in his nostrils, notwithstanding fine feathers, plausible excuses, and sanctimonious looks.
When present unhappiness is the outgrowth of honest conviction and hard-working strivings, a crop of immortal pleasures will be seen where least expected.
Immortal, golden fame is the everlasting perfume of eternal flowers, grown out of immortal deeds, sown upon immortal soil by unselfish hands, and watered by tears of sorrow shed in trial’s darkest hours.
When ignoramuses and fools mistake the artificial light of science for that of the sun, it may be taken for granted that they are in a fair way for having their fingers burnt in the candle.
A shallow headed trickster, with a hungry belly and an empty pocket, clothed in trickery, wringing the watery drops of sympathy and benevolence from his nature to paint virtuous smiles upon his face to deceive his friends while he lightens their pockets of gold, for which he has never worked, has earned the title of the devil’s grave-digger, with perfidus fraudulentus engraved upon the buttons of his coat.
Round boulder-stones are awkward things with which to build up new churches, so are the round members of the community, without principle, fidelity, and piety, awkward members of society to found new Christian churches.