Part 14

Seth and his wife could not listen, for a moment, to a proposal for leaving England, although they had experienced little but misery in it, their whole lives. The uncle, however, obtained from them a promise that they would not restrain any of their children from going out to Jamaica; and did not leave them till he had seen them fairly and comfortably settled, and beheld what he thought a prospect of comfort for them, in the future. Indeed, on the very morning succeeding that in which Seth's new fortune became known, the hitherto despised stockinger was sent for by the principal manufacturer of hosen, in Hinckley, and offered "a shop of frames," in the language of the working men; that is, he was invited to become a "master," or one who receives the "stuff" from the capitalist or manufacturer, and holds of him, likewise, a given number of frames,—varying from half-a-dozen to a score or thirty, or even more; and thus becomes a profit-sharing middleman between the manufacturer and the labouring framework-knitters. Seth accepted the offer, for it seemed most natural to him to continue in the line of manufacture to which he had been brought up; and his uncle, with pleasurable hopes for his prosperity, bade him farewell!—

"Well, my dear," said Seth to his wife, as they sat down to a plentiful dinner, surrounded with their neatly-dressed and happy children, the day after the uncle's departure, "we used to say we should never prove the truth of the old proverb, but we have proved it at last: times came to the worst with us, and began to mend."

"Thank God! we have proved it, my love," replied the wife; "and I wish our poor neighbours could prove it as well."

Seth sighed,—and was silent.——

Some years rolled over, and Seth Thompson had become a well-informed, and deep-thinking man, but one in whom was no longer to be found that passionate attachment to his native country which he once felt. The manufacturer under whom he exercised the office of "master," had borrowed the greater part of Seth's uncle's remittances, as regularly as they arrived; and as Seth received due interest for these loans, and confided that the manufacturer's wealth was real, he believed he was taking a prudent way of laying up enough for the maintenance of his old age, or for meeting the misfortunes of sickness, should they come. But the manufacturer broke; and away went all that Seth had placed in his hands. Every week failures became more frequent,—employ grew scantier, for trade was said to decrease, though machinery increased,—discontent lowered on every brow,—and the following sketch of what was said at a meeting of starving framework-knitters held in Seth Thompson's shop but a month before he quitted England for ever, may serve to show what were his own reflections, and those of the suffering beings around him.

About twenty working men had assembled, and stood in three or four groups,—no "chairman" having been, as yet, chosen, since a greater number of attendants was expected.

"I wish thou would throw that ugly thing away, Timothy!" said a pale, intellectual looking workman, to one whose appearance was rendered filthy, in addition to his ragged destitution, by a dirty pipe stuck in his teeth, and so short that the head scarcely projected beyond his nose.

"I know it's ugly, Robert," replied the other, in a tone between self-accusation and despair,—"but it helps to pass away time. I've thrown it away twice,—but I couldn't help taking to it again last week, when I had nought to do. I think I should have hanged myself if I had not smoked a bit o' 'bacco."

"Well, I'm resolute that I'll neither smoke nor drink any more," said a third: "the tyrants can do what they like with us, as long as we feed their vices by paying taxes. If all men would be o' my mind there would soon be an end of their extravagance,—for they would have nothing to support it."

"Indeed, James," replied the smoker, "I don't feel so sure about your plan as you seem to be, yourself: you'll never persuade all working-men to give up a sup of ale or a pipe, if they can get hold of either; but, not to talk of that, what's to hinder the great rascals from inventing other taxes if these fail?"

"They couldn't easily be hindered, unless we had all votes," said the first speaker, "we're all well aware of that; but it would put 'em about, and render the party more unpopular that wanted to put on a new tax."

"I don't think that's so certain, either," replied the smoker; "depend on't, neither Whigs nor Tories will run back from the support of taxes. D'ye ever read of either party agreeing to 'stop the supplies,' as they call it, or join in any measure to prevent taxes from being collected till grievances are redressed?"

"No, indeed, not we," chimed another, lighting his short pipe by the help of his neighbour's, and folding his arms, with a look of something like mock bravery; "and, for my part, I don't think they ever will be redressed till we redress 'em ourselves!"

"Ah, Joseph!" said the pale-looking man, shaking his head, "depend upon it that's all a dream! How are poor starvelings like us, who have neither the means of buying a musket, nor strength to march and use it, if he had it,—how are we to overthrow thousands of disciplined troops with all their endless resources of ammunition?—It's all a dream, Joseph! depend on't."

"Then what are we to do,—lie down and die?" asked the other; but looked as if he were aware he had spoken foolishly, under the impulse of despair.

"I'm sure I often wish to die," said another, joining the conversation in a doleful tone; "I've buried my two youngest, and the oldest lad's going fast after his poor mother; one can't get bread enough to keep body and soul together!"

"Well, if it hadn't been for Seth Thompson's kindness," said another, "I believe I should have been dead by this time. I never felt so near putting an end to my life as I did last Sunday morning. I've been out o' work, now, nine weeks; and last Saturday I never put a crumb in my mouth, for I couldn't get it, and I caught up a raw potatoe in the street last Sunday morning, and ate it for sheer hunger. Seth Thompson saw me, and—God bless his heart!—he called me in and gave me a cup of warm coffee and some toast, and slipped a shilling into my hand." And the man turned aside to dash away his tears.

"Ay, depend upon it, we shall miss Seth, when he leaves us," said several voices together.

"It's many a year since there was a master in Hinckley like him," said the man with the short black pipe, "and, I fear, when he is gone, the whole grinding crew will be more barefaced than ever with their extortions and oppressions of poor men. Seth knew what it was to be nipped himself when he was younger; that's the reason that he can feel for others that suffer."

"It isn't always the case, though," said another; "look at skin-flint Jimps, the glove-master; I remember him when he was as ragged as an ass's colt: and where is there such another grinding villain as Jimps, now he is so well off?"

"The more's the shame for a man that preaches and professes to be religious," said the smoker.

"It was but last Saturday forenoon," resumed the man who had mentioned Jimps, the glove-master, "that he docked us two-pence a dozen, again: and when I asked him if his conscience wouldn't reproach him when he went to chapel, he looked like a fiend, and said, 'Bob! I knew what it was to be ground once; but it's my turn to grind now!'"

"And they call that religion, do they?" said the smoker, with an imprecation.

"It won't mend it to swear, my lad," said the intellectual-looking man; "we know one thing,—that whatever such a fellow as this may do that professes religion, he doesn't imitate the conduct of his Master."

"I believe religion's all a bag of moonshine," said the smoker, "or else they that profess it would not act as they do."

"Don't talk so rashly, Tim," rejoined the other; "we always repent when we speak in ill-temper. Religion can't cure hypocrites, man, though it can turn drunkards and thieves into sober and honest men: it does not prove that religion is all a bag of moonshine, because some scoundrels make a handle of it. Truth's truth, in spite of all the scandal that falsehood and deceit brings upon it."

"Isn't it time we got to business?" said one of the group.

"I don't think it will be of any use to wait longer," said another; "there will not be more with us, if we wait another hour; the truth is, that men dare not attend a meeting like this, for fear of being turned off, and so being starved outright;—there's scarcely any spirit left in Hinckley."

"I propose that Seth Thompson takes the chair," said another, taking off his ragged hat, and speaking aloud.

A faint clapping of hands followed, and Seth took a seat upon a raised part of one of the frames at the end of the shop, and opened the meeting according to the simple but business-like form, which working-men are wont to observe in similar meetings, in the manufacturing districts.

"I feel it would scarcely become me to say much, my friends," he said, "since I am about to leave you. I thought, at one time, that nothing could have ever inclined me to leave old England; but it seems like folly to me, now, to harbour an attachment to a country where one sees nothing but misery, nor any chance of improvement. I would not wish to damp your spirits; but if I were to tell you how much uneasiness I have endured for some years past, even while you have seen me apparently well off and comfortable, you would not wonder that I am resolved to quit this country, since I have the offer of ease and plenty, though in a foreign clime. I tell you, working men, that I had power over Mr.——, by the moneys I had lent him, or I should have been turned out of this shop years ago. Week by week have we quarrelled, because I would not practise the tyrannies and extortions upon working men that he recommended and urged. It is but a hateful employ to a man of any feeling,—is that of a master-stockinger under an avaricious and inhuman hosier. But, if the master's situation be so far from being a happy one, I need not tell you that I know well, by experience, how much more miserable is that of the starved and degraded working-man. Indeed, indeed,—I see no hope for you, my friends,—yet, I repeat, I would not wish to damp your spirits. Perhaps things may mend yet; but I confess I see no likelihood of it, till the poor are represented as well as the rich."

It might produce weariness to go through all the topics that were touched upon by Seth and others. They were such as are familiarly handled, daily, in the manufacturing districts; ay, and with a degree of mental force and sound reasoning,—if not with polish of words,—that would make some gentlefolk stare, if they were to hear the sounds proceeding from the haggard figures in rags who often utter them. The "deceit" of the Reform Bill, as it is usually termed by manufacturing "operatives;" the trickery of the Whigs; the corruption and tyranny of the Tories; the heartlessness of the manufacturers and "the League;" and the right of every sane Englishman of one and twenty years of age to a vote in the election of those who have to govern him, were each and all broadly, and unshrinkingly, and yet not intemperately, asserted.

One or two, in an under-tone, ventured to suggest that it might be advantageous to try, once more, to act with the Anti-Corn Law men, since many of the members of the League professed democracy; and, if that were done, working men would not fear to attend a meeting such as that they were then holding. But this was scouted by the majority; and a proposal was, at length, made, in a written form, and seconded,—"That a branch of an association of working men, similar to one that was stated to have been just established at Leicester, should be formed." The motion was put and carried,—a committee, and secretary, and treasurer, were chosen,—and the men seemed to put off their dejection, and grow energetic in their resolution to attempt their own deliverance from misery, in the only way that they conceived it could ever be substantially effected: but their purpose came to the ears of the manufacturers on the following day, threats of loss of work were issued, and no association was established!

Seth Thompson took his family to the West Indies, pursuant to the many and urgent requests contained in his uncle's letters, and soon entered upon the enjoyment of the plenty in store for him. Hinckley stockingers remain in their misery still; and, perhaps, there is scarcely a place in England where starving working men have so little hope,—although "things," they say, "have come to the worst,"—that "they" will ever "begin to mend."

SAM SIMKINS, THE RUN-AWAY; OR, VILLAINY AS A REFUGE FROM THE TORTURES OF SOUR-GODLINESS.

Sam Simkins was a wild lad,—but whose fault was it that he became so? That was the significant question which uniformly followed the commemoration of his history among the old women of the village where he was born, and where, after the early death of his father and mother, he was apprenticed, by the parish, to Mr. Jonas Straitlace, the saddler and collar-maker. The village was not more than half-a-dozen miles from Birmingham; and to that town Sam usually trudged once or twice in the working part of the week on his master's business errands, and, invariably, accompanied his master thither twice on the Sunday, to attend the ministry of a Calvinistic teacher.

With the exception of a very restricted number of hours for sleep, these were the only portions of Sam's existence that could come within the name of relaxation. Some people gave Sam's master the title of a "money-grub;" but Mr. Jonas Straitlace himself modestly laid claim to the character of one who was "diligent in business, fervent in spirit, and——" the reader knows the rest. In brief, he was one of the too numerous description of folk who cast their sour into the sweets of innocent enjoyment on every occasion within their compass, and strive to throw a universal pall over the world by keeping their fellow-creatures in mind that the next life alone is worth a moment's thought,—and yet, daily and hourly illustrate their own gloomy lesson by grasping at the dirt called money as eagerly as if they believed they could carry it with them over the ford of the grave, and that it would be still more current coin in the next life than in this. Strict rates of charge to his customers in an age of competition prevented Straitlace from extending his business; but the consequence was, that he grew more pinching towards himself, and still more towards his apprentice, in allowing the body its proper amount of sustenance, or the general constitution its necessary share of healthful unbending. Sam was pinched in his measure of food, and watched while he ate it, lest the spoon should travel so slowly to his mouth as to prevent his return to labour after the lapse of an appointed number of minutes; he was "alarumed" up at five in winter, and at four in summer, and kept at the bench till eight; and what went down more hardly with Sam than either scant food and sleep, or unceasingly painful toil, was the fact, that his master's vinegared piety overflowed with such zeal for Sam's spiritual welfare as to compel him to spend the remaining time till ten, every working-day evening, in reading one book. Nay, the lad, in spite of the remembrance that every other apprentice in the village was allowed, at least, an hour's holyday-time, each day, would have felt it to be some amelioration of his captive lot, had he been allowed to derive such amusement from the book as it might afford; but Straitlace's zeal for Sam's happiness in the next life, taught him that he must use even this extreme resort to mortify the lad in the present state of existence, and, therefore, Sam must read nothing but the Prophets, in one division of the book, and the Epistles, in the other!

Such was the discipline to which Mr. Jonas Straitlace subjected Sam Simkins from the age of nine, when the parish placed the lad under his care, to fifteen. Straitlace had one invariable answer to all who remonstrated with him on the undue severity, the imprisoning strictness, he exercised towards his apprentice:—"Train up a child in the way he should go," he would say, quoting the whole text, "that's a Bible reason for what I do: it doesn't allow me to parley with flesh and blood: I must obey it."

Mr. Jonas Straitlace had found that fine moral pearl in the great Oriental treasure-house of the wisdom-jewels of ages, and he was too sordidly ignorant to know that the originator of the maxim never intended the "should go" to be left to the judicature either of brain-sick zealots and morbid pietists, or of rash experimenters and fanciful speculatists. But what cared Straitlace about the legitimate and fair interpretation of the text? His ready quotation of it served his purpose: it kept "meddlers," as he called them, at arm's length, and secured the links of that grinding slavery which held Sam to his task, and brought money into the till.

It would be a heart-sickening detail, that of the incidental miseries Sam experienced in these six years: suffice it to say, his chain was tightened till it snapped. He contrived to form an acquaintance in Birmingham who advised him to "cut" his tyrant-master, and "cut" him he did. Yet, Mr. Jonas Straitlace knew the value of Sam's earnings too well to be inclined to give up his bird without trying to catch it again. He set out for Birmingham, made inquiry, and learned that Sam, in spite of being minuted by his master's watch, had contrived, almost uniformly, on his errands, to spend a quarter of an hour in a certain low public-house, and that he had done this, habitually, for more than a twelvemonth past. Straitlace bent his steps to this resort, and, by his crafty mode of questioning, ascertained from the landlord that Sam had that very morning been in his house with one "Jinks,"—yet that was not the man's right name, the landlord added, but only a name he went by.

"And pray who is this Jinks?" asked Straitlace.

"He was once a man in great trust, sir," answered the landlord, with some solemnity: "he was head clerk in a first-rate lawyers's office in this town. But it was found out at last, that Jinks had 'bezzled a good deal o' money belonging to the firm; and so he was sent to gaol for a couple o' year; nay, he was very near being hanged. And so when he came out o' limbo, you understand, why nobody would trust, or hardly look on him; and he's now got from bad to worse."

"What mean you by that?" asked Jonas.

"The least said is the soonest mended," replied the landlord.

"I wish you could tell me where I could see this man," said Straitlace: "the lad is my apprentice, and this man will do him no good: besides, I am losing money by his absence."

The landlord stared, bit his lip, with a look that told he wished he had not talked so fast, and then made answer that he was busy that morning, and, besides, it was ten thousand to one whether Jinks could be found in his hiding-hole, if they were to go to it:—"and, more than all," he added, "there is no believing him, he is such a fellow to thump: he tells so many lies, poking his eyes into every corner, and never looking in your face all the while, that I often think Jinks must find it hard to invent new ones."

Straitlace was versed sufficiently in human character to discern that the prattling landlord was made of squeezable materials, and so he urged his questions and entreaties until he had won his point, and the landlord undertook to conduct him to "Jinks's hiding hole."

Threading an alley in one of the dingiest streets in the town, they wound through several crooked passages, and arrived at a paltry-looking small square. From a corner of this dirty and half-ruined quadrangle, the landlord advanced along a path that could scarcely be supposed to lead to a human dwelling. It was what is designated a "twitchel" in the midland counties, being barely wide enough to admit one person at a time,—and was the boundary line of two rows of buildings, the eaves of which overhung it, and rendered the passage as gloomy as if it were scarcely yet twilight. Straitlace scrambled with difficulty after his conductor, and over the heaps of cinders, broken pots, and oyster and muscle shells which lay along this dark tract; and when they came to the end of it, and had descended half-a-dozen stone steps, they arrived at what looked like the door of a cellar. Here the landlord shook his fist at Straitlace, and compressed his features, as a signal for his companion to keep strict silence. He then tapped, very gently, at the door; but, though he repeated his timid knock, no one answered.

"Jinks! Jinks! I say," he whispered through the key-hole, after he had knocked the third time.

"Who's there?" said a sharp, angry voice.

"It's only me, Jinks:—I want to speak t' ye," answered the landlord.

"You lie, Jemmy Jolter:—there's more than you only," retorted Jinks, with a snarl so sudden and crabbed that it flung the other entirely off his guard.

"Well—but—but," Jemmy stammered; "this person wants to see you about that youth that was with you this morning, Jinks, and——"

"Whew! Jemmy Jolter, you've let it out again," replied the strange voice within: "get home, ye long-tongued fool, get home! what fool is that beside ye to employ such a sieve to carry water?"

"Oh, very well, Jinks," said the weak landlord, turning round in dudgeon: "a time may come when you may want a good turn doing, you know."

"I'll let you in, by yourself, Jemmy, if you like," said the keeper of this questionable garrison, fearful of losing the good offices of the landlord; "or I'll admit that verjuice-faced fellow who stands beside you, with the white apron round him."

The outer party here looked at each other with some alarm, on finding they were each seen so plainly by one who was to them invisible.

"You don't think I shall advise a respectable man and a stranger to come into such a den as yours, alone,—do ye, Jinks?" said the other, in a voice of displeasure.

"Then you may both keep out," retorted the concealed speaker; "at any rate, you'll both be safe there. Twist my withers, if ever I admit two clients into chambers at once! No, no! it wouldn't do, Jemmy! What I say here goes into only one pair of ears besides my own."

"I'll venture alone, if he'll only admit me," said Straitlace, his eagerness to learn something of Sam, and, if possible, to recover the possession of him, subduing the repugnance he felt against trusting himself alone in such suspicious company.

The door was slightly opened in a moment; and before the landlord could remonstrate, Straitlace was admitted, and the bolts were again closed within. Jinks seized his visitor by the hand, and rapidly pulled him up a dark stair. Straitlace's mind misgave him, as he reached the top of the ascent: it conducted to a narrow apartment in which there was no furniture but a broken chair, and a strong wooden bench; while a bottle, and an earthen pot, with some discoloured papers, covered the end of a barrel which appeared to serve the wretched habitant of the room for a table. There was no fire in the dirty grate, and viewed through the murky light admitted by the small window which was half-obscured with papers, patching the broken panes, the appearance of the squalid chamber sent a shuddering feeling over Straitlace's skin.

"Well, and so now you are admitted to my _sanctum sanctorum_,—what's your will?" asked Jinks, with a grin of derision, and seating himself on the broken chair.

Straitlace was not a timid man; but the dark skin, projecting teeth, and overhanging brows of the figure before him, and, more than all, the diabolical fire of his eyes, really affrighted him, and he remained speechless.