The heads clustered together, to gaze at and detect the likenesses.
"That's John Slater! I'd ha' known him anywhere, by his big nose.
Lord! how like; that's me, by G-d, it's the very way I'm obligated
to pin my waistcoat up, to hide that I've getten no shirt. That IS
a shame, and I'll not stand it."
"Well!" said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his
likeness; "I could laugh at a jest as well as e'er the best on 'em,
though it did tell agen mysel, if I were not clemming" (his eyes
filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with
a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), "and if I could
keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their
cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going
home, and wonder if I should hear 'em wailing out, if I lay cold and
drowned at th' bottom o' th' canal, there--why, man, I cannot laugh
at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make
game on what they've never knowed; as can make such laughable
pictures on men, whose very hearts within 'em are so raw and sore as
ours were and are, God help us.
Pages:
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390