Authors, English -- 20th century -- Biography; Reynolds, Stephen Sydney, 1881-1919
[12] On the moral aspect of cleanliness I have not touched. Miss
M. Loane, a Queen's Nurse, in her remarkable book _The Next
Street but One_, observes "Cleanliness has often seemed to me
strangely far from godliness. Where the virtue is highly
developed there is often not merely an actual but an absolute
shrinkage in all sweet neighbourly charities. If an invalid's
bedroom needs scrubbing and there is no money to pay for the
service, or if a chronic sufferer's kitchen is in want of a
'thorough good do-out,' if two or three troublesome children have
to be housed and fed during the critical days after an operation
on father or mother, do I look for assistance from 'the cleanest
woman in the street?' Alas, no; whether she be wife, widow, or
spinster, I pass her by, careful not to tread on her pavement,
much less her doorstep, and seek the happy-go-lucky person whose
own premises would be better for more water and less grease, but
from whose presence neither husband nor child ever hastens away."
16
[Sidenote: _JIMMY COMES HOOKING_]
The dawns are later now. We do not need to get up quite so early, and
usually, just as we are drinking our cup o' tay, we hear a pattering of
naked feet on the staircase. Jimmy, the Dustman still in his eyes,
appears at the door. He has an air of being about to do something
important. He picks out his stockings and old grey suit from the
corners where they were left to dry. He does not ask to have his boots
laced up nor complain of their stiffness. Then with his coat
exceedingly askew on his shoulders, he demands: "Tay! please."
"What do _yu_ want? Git up over to bed again."
"I be comin' hooking wiv yu."
"Be 'ee? Yu'll hae to hurry up then."
When the sea is not too loppy nor the wind too cold, Jimmy goes with
us. The soft-mouthed mackerel need hauling up clear of the gunwale with
a long-armed swing, beyond Jimmy's power to give, and therefore as a
rule he is not at first allowed to have a line; for fish represent
money and mackerel caught now will be eaten as bread and dripping in
the winter. Jimmy sits huddled up on the lee side for'ard. He becomes
paler, looks plaintively, and sighs a big sigh or two.
"What's the matter, Jim-Jim? Do 'er feel leery?"
If Jimmy volunteers a remark, nothing is the matter. But if he
merely answers "No-o-o!" he means _yes_, and in order to stave off
sea-sickness he must be given a line.
[Sidenote: _EDUCATION EVILS_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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