Then the gentleman broke off into prose, and related how Napoleon, in the Island of 'Helber,' had bought a box of this very ointment of the seller's grandfather, who was under the British Government then, and had declared, if ever he got free, every soldier in the French army should have a box in his knapsack, and also gave certain humorous reminiscences of his own struggles to get the English people to believe in the specific. His eloquence was not thrown away, for he did a roaring trade, and at one time a perfect forest of hands was held up to secure the famous ointment. The crowd thins as closing-time comes, and the hawkers pack up what is left of their stock, strike their naphtha-lamps, and wheel off the ground. What they have left they will sell in the early market on Sunday morning. CHAPTER XI. |Looking over what I have written, I am struck by what seems to me an important omission. In driving home the nail of the miserable condition in which the poor are forced to live, I have perhaps led the reader to imagine that the better instincts of humanity have been utterly stamped out--that the courts and alleys are great wastes of weed, where never a flower grows. I should be loth to father such an idea as this. In the course of many years of the closest contact with the most poverty-stricken of our fellow-men, I have learnt to think better, and not worse, of human nature, and to know that love, self-sacrifice, and devotion flourish in this barren soil as well as in the carefully-guarded family circles, which are, or should be, forcing-houses for all that is choicest and most beautiful among human instincts. Braver than many a hero who comes back from foreign plains, with a deed of prowess to his credit and a medal on his breast, are some of the ragged rank and file who fight the battle of life against overwhelming odds, and never flinch or falter, but fight on to the end; and the end, alas! is rarely victory or renown--too often the guerdon of these brave soldiers is the workhouse, the hospital, or a miserable death from cold and slow starvation, in a quiet corner of the street, where they have sunk down to rise no more. It is often a matter of wonder--at least, I hope it is--to the good folks who skim their newspapers at the morning meal, and take their politics, their Court Circular, and their police intelligence at a single draught between their sips of coffee, what becomes of the children whose fathers and mothers are sent to prison for long or short periods. The State does not consider the innocent victims of crime; the law punishes the individual without taking thought of the consequences to those who may be dependent upon her or him for bread. I am not advocating any leniency to a culprit on the score of his value as a breadwinner; I am simply going to state a few facts, and leave my readers to draw any moral they please from the narrative.