Household words, No. 26, September 21, 1850 : $b A weekly journal
General
Household words, No. 26, September 21, 1850 : $b A weekly journal
English literature -- Periodicals
Every sort of attraction which brings people of different nations,
and even of different counties, together--whether it be a German wool
fair, a music meeting, or a Swiss shooting-match--smooths away the
acerbities of caste, and strengthens the sympathies of individuals.
Let us, therefore, hope that the myriads of exotics which will be
attracted next year to the Great Industrial Conservatory in Hyde Park,
will receive new vigour and fresh intelligence from their temporary
transplantation; that they will learn that Englishmen and English women
are not quite the monstrosities they at present appear to believe them.
Foreigners will then have the advantage of seeing us at home, and in
a mass; and will thenceforth cease to judge us by those follies which
they observe in a few idle tourists from these islands. They will see
us as we are, reciprocating what we believe to be the general desire
here, in reference to them.
THE STEAM PLOUGH.
When the first experiments were being made with the Hay-making Machine,
now commonly used in some parts of the country, it happened that
Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, and Peacock, the author of “Crotchet Castle,”
“Headlong Hall,” and other works of pungent erudition, were walking
through a field where this strange-looking machine was in operation.
Instead of the pleasant sight of the rustic men and women with their
forks and rakes--a scene so full of indelible associations, from
childhood upwards--they saw this quaint monster rolling round the
field over the long swathes of hay, its rotatory forks, or rather
fingers on wheels, flinging up the hay on all sides as it went spinning
onwards. Meditating on the effect, if successful, this would, some
day, have on the vast numbers of poor people in England, to say
nothing of the summer invasions of Irish--whose sole dependence for
the year is the money they make in the English hay-season--Shelley and
the others walked onwards, and left the field. Presently they met a
clownish fellow, who was looking intently at the whirling and whisking
performance of the round-about machine in the hay-field. Shelley,
having no objection to find, in the then adjusted state of society
with regard to the labouring classes, that this machine was a failure,
said to the clown, in a sort of half contemptuous tone--“Now, tell
me,--does that thing answer at all?” The fellow looked Shelley full in
the face--“It answers a deuced deal too well,” said he; “I wish it was
working in the inside of him that made it!”
In this very unsophisticated reply, how vast a question is comprised!
But into it we cannot now enter; our present business is how to
plough by steam; and the smoke from the “nostrils” of a variety of
elegant ploughs, of various horse-and-man powers, is already inviting
our attention. Truly, it requires one to take one’s breath before
commencing the examination!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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