London (England) -- Fiction; Working class -- Fiction
One of the infatuated youths walked along with the train, and when Erb,
with a wistful look in his eyes, fell back, the youth aimed a packet of
chocolate, but either from nervousness or want of practice, missed the
compartment and sent it into the next, where four children pounced upon
it with a high scream of delight.
The violence of the paragraph concerning the Neckinger Road firm helped
to appease those on the Committee who showed uneasiness in regard to what
they called the “climb down.” True, some of them remarked that the
attacks on the Neckinger Road firm had nothing to do with the objects of
the society, and Erb, reckoning up, found that he had lost the confidence
of three, but a carman who had been discharged by the firm for slight
inebriety—“I’m a man that varies,” said the ex-carman. “Sometimes I may
’ave twenty pints, sometimes I may ’ave thirty pints, and then other days
I may ’ave quite a lot,”—came and begged permission to thank them for the
public service that the journal was doing, and assured the Committee,
with the air of one having exclusive information, that they would get
their reward, in this world or in the next, or in both. As the reports
from Rosalind at Worthing became less satisfactory, so the fierceness of
the attacks in “The Carman” increased; but it was not until a paragraph
appeared headed “Wilful Murder!” that Neckinger Road, after taking the
previous outbursts with a calm that suggested it was either deaf or
asleep, suddenly started up and took action in the most decided and
emphatic manner.
Information has been laid this day by for
that you, within the district aforesaid, did
unlawfully and maliciously publish a certain defamatory libel of and
concerning the said well knowing the same defamatory
libel to be false, contrary to the statute in such case made and
provided. You are therefore hereby summoned to appear before the
Court of Summary Jurisdiction sitting at the Southwark Police Court
on the twentieth day of October, at the hour of ten in the forenoon,
to answer to the said information. Signed with an indistinct
signature, one of the magistrates of the police-court of the
metropolis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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