For vividness of sense-suggestion—color, sound, smell, feeling—Joseph Husband’s smooth-flowing narration of a year’s experience in a soft-coal mine is worthy of study. The blackness which is 'absence of light rather than darkness,' the submerging silence, the seeping gas-vapors, the nervous consciousness of lurking danger—all these give indisputable atmosphere. What grim tragedy, awful in its heavy brutality, might not here be grimly enacted! Instead, there is work—the grimy, sweating work of the underground; hard muscles, and senses not too alive to material forces. An occasional superstition gives life to the blackness—a strange white phantom that dazzles the sight and blinds the understanding with unreasoning fear. But most vivid of all is the blackness and the work.
Suggested Points for Study and Comment
1. How does the author’s preface add to the interest in his narrative? Are your expectations of his added power borne out?
2. Do you find Mr. Husband more able in his descriptions of large scenes, masses of buildings, groups of people,—or in the individualizing of the single person or thing?
3. Is the setting for the work, or the work itself, the chief purpose of the narrative? Which do you find the more interesting?
4. Can you explain the author’s feelings of mortification as he first enters upon his duties?
5. What are some of the elements that make for the vividness of the scenes?
6. Why is the occasional mention of color so effective?
7. Contrast the mental occupations during a period of temporary leisure in a coal mine with a similar rest hour in the upper world?
8. From reading this narrative, can you offer any reasons why the ancient peoples believed mines to be inhabited by a race of gnomes?