Original Penny Readings: A Series of Short SketchesFenn, George Manville
General
Original Penny Readings: A Series of Short Sketches
Fenn, George Manville
Fiction; Short stories
But, there, let's get on to another kind of war--war _with_ the knife--
knife and fork, you know--the battle of life for a living; for there's
no mistake about it, there is a regular battle going on for the daily
bread, and if a man hasn't been well drilled to it in his
apprenticeship, it's rather a poor figure he'll cut in amongst the rest.
Ah, you come across some rum fellow soldiers, too, in the course of
your life; here's one chap is asked to do a little extra job, and, as he
does it, goes on like our old sexton used down in the country when he
put up the Christmas holly in the church. "Ah!" he says to me--"Ah! you
see, I don't get nothing for doing this--_only my salary_." Men are so
precious frightened of making work scarce. Why, I remember soon after I
came up to London going into Saint Paul's for a gape round, when they
were going to fit up the seats for the Charity Children's Festival; and
do what I would I couldn't help having a hearty laugh to see how the
fellows were going it. Perhaps it was a scaffold pole wanted lifting;
when about a score of chaps would go crawling up to it, and have a look;
then one would touch it with his foot, and then another; then one would
stoop down and take hold on it, and give a groan, and then let go again;
next another would have his groan over it; then they'd look round, as if
they thought being in a grand church a miracle war going to happen, and
that the pole would get up of itself and go to its place.
It didn't though: so at last, groaning and grunting, they managed to get
it on their shoulders--the whole score of 'em trying to have a hand in
it; but puzzled sometimes how to manage it, for the short 'uns couldn't
hitch their shoulders up high enough to reach, and had to be content
with walking under it like honest British workmen as had made up their
minds to earn every penny of their money; while the tall chaps carried
the pole, and it didn't seem to hurt them much as they took it to its
place and groaned it down again; when they was all so faint that they
had to knock off for some beer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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