Towards democracy

The Ploughboy 455

Then I goes out into the markets—Leather Lane and | the street-markets I mean—and sells them at sixpence a pair.

[Yes, and I mean to get a stamp and stamp ’em inside; | then they’ll be just like new.]

O it aint so bad in mild weather, but when it’s like this, » cold and rainy, folk won’t stop to buy nothing, they won't.”

And there were the gloves, shriveled, black, and hanging

=

in rows on stretched strings, like the corpses of weasels and

=

moles strung by gamekeepers in the woods; And there was the filthy suffocating odor of the den s and the chemicals, and the intelligent eye of the man wavering

‘— %)

in slavery to his protruding lower lip. “Lor!” he said, “I often stay here at nights as well

mI

“as days. I don’t live with my wife now. She’s a regular ! bad ’un!”

Tue PLoucugoy

HE blackbirds sing so sweetly in the morning ; They are building a nest yonder in the hedgerow,

y where I pass at sunrise: and I think their song is sweeter i-then than else at any time of day.

I take care not to disturb them: they work as hard as g anybody for their living.

And I think they know me now, they are that bold. {But they do not follow in the furrow, like the wagtails and irobins; they seem to hang to the grass-lands.

lt is pleasant then, in the morning: the air is so sweet. 30