I look into rows of slaughter-houses. In many, retail dealers, who have
come here for the purpose, are making bargains for meat. There is
killing enough, certainly, to satiate an unused eye; and there are
steaming carcasses enough, to suggest the expediency of a fowl and salad
for dinner; but, everywhere, there is an orderly, clean,
well-systematised routine of work in progress—horrible work at the best,
if you please; but, so much the greater reason why it should be made the
best of. I don’t know (I think I have observed, my name is Bull) that a
Parisian of the lowest order is particularly delicate, or that his nature
is remarkable for an infinitesimal infusion of ferocity; but, I do know,
my potent, grave, and common counselling Signors, that he is forced, when
at this work, to submit himself to a thoroughly good system, and to make
an Englishman very heartily ashamed of you.
Here, within the walls of the same abattoir, in other roomy and
commodious buildings, are a place for converting the fat into tallow and
packing it for market—a place for cleansing and scalding calves’ heads
and sheep’s feet—a place for preparing tripe—stables and coach-houses for
the butchers—innumerable conveniences, aiding in the diminution of
offensiveness to its lowest possible point, and the raising of
cleanliness and supervision to their highest. Hence, all the meat that
goes out of the gate is sent away in clean covered carts. And if every
trade connected with the slaughtering of animals were obliged by law to
be carried on in the same place, I doubt, my friend, now reinstated in
the cocked hat (whose civility these two francs imperfectly acknowledge,
but appear munificently to repay), whether there could be better
regulations than those which are carried out at the Abattoir of
Montmartre. Adieu, my friend, for I am away to the other side of Paris,
to the Abattoir of Grenelle! And there I find exactly the same thing on
a smaller scale, with the addition of a magnificent Artesian well, and a
different sort of conductor, in the person of a neat little woman with
neat little eyes, and a neat little voice, who picks her neat little way
among the bullocks in a very neat little pair of shoes and stockings.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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