‘Note.—The beautiful modesty of their demand on life might teach even shepherds a lesson in content. Their simple attainable standard in wine, in woman, in music, in light, in joy. Their conversation—direct and plain, free from tortuous refinements of studied wit; their badinage, usually no more than the light play of the pewter on one another’s heads. All their pleasures of the same simple description. Will spend their leisure very contentedly in watching a dog worrying a pitfull of rats, or two men beating each other into insensibility with gloves that only seem to hurt. As childlike as the North American Indians, and not unlike them in the race type—high cheek bones; a wide mouth, massively lipped; slits for the eyes. See them on the great public days, pouring out in myriads to a horse race, boat race, or Lord Mayor’s Show; and own the wonders of a social and religious system that has suffered them to find satisfaction in this state, or us to find content.
‘Amplify admiration of the system, in the lyric vein—rhythmic prose, etc.
‘Their Women.—Like their North American sisters, fond of feathers and bright hues. No gaudier thing in nature than the coster girl in her holiday dress of mauve, with the cruel plume that seems to have been dyed in blood. Relation of female to male, singular survival of primitive state. Love-making always, in form at least, an abduction of the virgin. A meeting at the street corner in the dusk, for the beginning of the ceremony; then a chase round the houses, the heavy boots after the light ones, with joyous shrieks to mark the line of flight; after that, the seizure, the fight, with sounding slaps for dalliance that might knock the wind out of a farrier of the Blues. In the final clutch, skirts part in screeching rents, feathers strew the ground. Then the panting pair return, hand in hand, to the street corner, to begin again.
‘A Night Piece.—Nightfall brings the whole slum together, at the universal rendezvous, from every near or distant scene; men, and those that were once maidens, mumbling age and swearing infancy, stand six-deep before the slimy bar, till the ever flowing liquor damps down their fiercest fires, and the great city is once more at rest. The imagination of him that saw Hell could hardly picture the final scene.’
‘Are you ready?’
The voice came from the rock above, and it was hers.
‘Yes, pining for liberty—please let me out.’
‘Have you done your work?’
‘Yes.’