A Girl of the People | Page 7

voice. "The money is in the burying club for her, and she can be laid in the grave decent like. Then me and the boys, Nat and Thady, we're going away. I wanted to say that--I wanted to say that your ways aren't our ways, and so we'd best part company; and I wanted to say here, with you looking at mother's dead face, and her smiling back at you so awful and still, and the good God, if there is a God, listening, that I has promised mother that the boys Nat and Thady--the Cap'n and Gen'ral, as they're called here--shan't larn your ways, which are bad past belief; so when mother's buried, we're going away. That's all. You can go to the docks, now."
As Bet spoke she took a little white soft handkerchief, and laid it gently over her mother's face.
"You can go now," she repeated, and she opened the door for the man, who slunk out of the room. He was half-sober, half-stupefied. A burning rage, which was neither remorse nor repentance, and yet was a mixture of both, surged up in his heart. He said to himself, that he was sorry for Martha, who was dead, and quite beyond his reach any more; but he hated Bet, for she had humbled him and dared to defy him.

CHAPTER III.
In Liverpool there are, perhaps more than in any town in the world, all sorts and conditions of men. The very wealthy and the very poor are to be found within its precincts--also the very good and the very bad. Its slums are black and awful; but it also contains some of the finest public buildings, some of the most massive and comfortable houses, and without any exception the largest and greatest docks, in the world. All nationalities come to Liverpool. It sees life from beyond the seas, it has a population of people always coming and going-- Americans who go to the theatre in London and arrive in Liverpool about three in the morning, on their return to their own country; Irishmen, Scotchmen, dwellers in Africa; in fact, people from all parts of the civilized world find their way to Liverpool, to return from thence by way of the sea to their native lands. On certain days in the week the hotels and lodging-houses are packed to overflowing; the different piers present scenes of activity and bustle; the great ships come and go, and the people come and go with them--Liverpool is passed through and forgotten.
That is the case with those fleeting crowds who so largely contribute to its trade and prosperity; but the _habitue'_ of Liverpool, the man who spends his days there, is a totally different order of being. The stranger sees the great city most generally through mist and fog; he regards the pavements as rough and slippery; he thinks the public buildings large, but ugly. Liverpool to him is another London, but without London's attractions. But the true Liverpool man looks at his native town from a very different point of view. He is part and parcel of the place, and he loves it for its size and ugliness, its great commerce, its thriving active business life. Liverpool to its citizens means home; they are proud of their laws and their customs; they like to dispense charity in their own way; they like to support and help their own poor; they have, to an extent absolutely unknown in London, the true spirit of neighborliness. This spirit is shared by all alike, the rich and the poor feel it, and it binds them together; they regard their town as the world, and look askance at inventions and ideas imported from other places. There are bad slums in Liverpool, and wicked deeds committed, and cruel rough men to be found in multitudes; but the evil there compared to London seems at least to be conquerable--the slums can be got at; nobody who chooses to apply in the right quarter need die of famine or distress.
Most of the men are dock-laborers; they are often taken on only for half a day at a time, and in this way their work is precarious, and, except for the most steady-going and respectable, at many periods of the year very hard to get. Almost all the men either work at the docks, or take to a sea-faring life. Thus sailors are coming and going, and there is scarcely a family belonging either to high or low who has not a son, a brother, or a father on the sea. Perhaps this is one of the facts which binds the people to one another--the rich lady in her carriage, and the poor starved, gaunt woman who lives in one room up many pairs of stairs in a dismal back slum, look