1851; Or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to enjoy themselves, and to see the Great Exhibition.Mayhew, Henry
General
1851; Or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to enjoy themselves, and to see the Great Exhibition.
Mayhew, Henry
Great Exhibition (1851 : London, England) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
The journey from Cockermouth to Workington per rail is by no means of an
agreeable character. The line being in none of the most flourishing
conditions, every means for economizing the “working expenses” have been
resorted to. The men engaged upon it have been cut down to boys; so that
the establishment has very much the look of a kind of railway academy,
where the porters on the platform are ever playing at marbles or
leapfrog, where the policemen all wear pinafores, and where the clerks
are taken to the station in the morning, and “fetched” in the evening by
the maids of their anxious parents. We _have_ heard the united ages of
the entire staff, but fear to mention the small amount, lest a too
incredulous public should accuse us of magnifying, or rather parvifying
the tenderness of their years. Suffice it that not a razor is used by
the whole establishment; and that the “staff,”—we have it on the best
authority—are allowed to give over work an hour earlier every Saturday
evening, in consideration of its being “tub-night.”
With a further view to effecting that financial reform which is so
popular at the present moment, the coal bills of the company recently
underwent a minute scrutiny, and the important discovery made—after
working several very difficult sums—that the heavy amount of eighteen
shillings and a fraction weekly could be saved by using coals instead of
coke; whereupon a resolution was immediately passed by the frugal
directors, declaring that nothing but the “best Lord Mayor’s” should
thenceforth be put into the company’s fires. The result of this wise
economy has been, that the engines on this line are perpetually smoking
in the faces of the passengers, and pouring forth so lavish a volcanic
eruption of “blacks,” that by the time the ladies and gentlemen reach
the end of their journey, they are generally as dark-complexioned as if
they had been unconsciously working or reading by the light of the very
best—patent—warranted infumible—camphine lamps.
At Workington, the Sandboys, who, on their arrival, much to the horror
of the cleanly Mrs. S., might have been taken for a family of Ethiopian
serenaders, having bleached themselves as well as possible with their
pocket handkerchiefs—Mrs. Sandboys standing on tiptoe the while to wipe
the nasty, filthy blacks from out the wrinkles and dimples of her dear
Cursty’s face—proceeded to make the necessary inquiries touching the
continuation of their journey to London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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