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"PASSING REMARKS."

"You know nothing at all about it in your class of life." This was the parting shot of a working man sent after the present writer in conclusion of an argument. The hand-worker had freely acknowledged that he had lately been deterred by irresponsible criticism from a course of conduct he greatly desired to pursue. "Remarks," he said, had been "passed" which he felt unable to disregard and of which he dare not challenge a repetition. The "remarks," so far as the brainworker was able to find out, emanated neither from his friends, his employers, nor his enemies, but from casual acquaintance whose opinions one would have thought could have no weight with him whatever. The case is typical. Everyone who knows anything of the poor has heard them express an absurd fear of "remarks." Only the other day the writer was told of a gardener who had offered to build a shed in his employer's garden. Some person unknown, strolling aimlessly up the road, looked over the fence and "passed a remark" to the effect that gardeners should confine themselves to their proper work and not take the bread out of the mouths of professional shed-builders. The gardener, who was unable to make a guess even at his critic's identity, begged to be allowed to leave the job unfinished, though he had undertaken it at his own suggestion and had to all appearance taken a keen interest in its progress. One more illustration occurs to the writer's recollection. A little while ago he inquired of a working man, in the course of conversation, whether he had lately been through the main street of a neighboring village. "No," he replied, "I don't walk that way now of a Sunday; there have been remarks passed." It was impossible not to

feel some curiosity as to the import of these "remarks" whose effect was potent to shut up to their object a whole mile of delectable road. Had the speaker been a bachelor, or even a less devoted husband and father, a romantic explanation might have suggested itself. But to one accustomed to meet the sober householder on his slow Sunday rambles, accompanied by his wife and children, no such interpretation could commend itself. Were the remarks personal-did they refer to his age, to his increasing weight, to his wife's appearance, or to the children's clothes; were they made directly or under cover of chaff, or were they repeated? It is impossible to decide. All we can be sure is that criticism, whether it come directly or roundabout, adds a terror to life as soon as you go below a certain level of cultivation.

A small amount of light is thrown upon this matter by the fact that the uneducated are slow at repartee and at parrying a question. The man whose conversational muscles have been trained knows far better how to defend himself than one who has not had his talking powers exercised every day from childhood up. The poor are very conscious of their weakness here. That, we think, is why it does not injure a poor man's honor to tell a lie when asked an awkward question by a man who regards himself as his superior. He will defend himself by falsehood, as many schoolboys will, because he knows that he has no other chance of escape. Among themselves we do not believe they do this. Not unfrequently, in repeating a conversation between themselves and a neighbor, they will explain how they gave an evasive answer "to pass it off." But sophisticated society knows a hun

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dred methods of "passing it off" to their one and is a thousand times harder to take in. To go back to the question of readiness, verbal defence requires so much more agility than attack. A man who wants to be offensive can always take his time, his victim must act on the spur of the moment or surrender. Another thing which one must always take into consideration in discussing the point of view of a society more primitive than one's own is that friendship is not very common among simple people. most all affection is expended within the family. If we heard a cultivated man or woman say "I have no friends," we should know that he or she spoke out of the bitterness of his or her heart. But poor people often make use of the expression, and they only mean to imply that they regard themselves as "superior." They do not, as we do, live "among friends," helpful and kind as they are to one another. They do not readily exchange ideas, and they cannot afford to exchange hospitality. The two chief incentives to friendship are lacking among them. The poor have, there is no doubt, an offensive and defensive alliance, but it is that, rather than what we know as sympathy, which keeps what is in many ways a close corporation together. Consequently they are suspicious of one another, though in the face of the stranger perfectly loyal. The art of give and take does not come by nature.

The most incomprehensible part of the whole matter is that as a rule a rough criticism from one of his own kind does not set up the poor man's back. He does not resent it, or not nearly so keenly as an educated man would. It is very seldom that he turns obstinate under criticism. he tries to avoid it. Is he less of an individualist than he becomes after a generation or two of intellectual exer

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cise? one wonders. To go back to the analogy of the schoolboy, the boldest boy will refuse to run counter to a fashion prevailing among his equals at his school. He regards his critics very much as a poor man regards his. It is difficult to analyze the nature of the coercion to which the boys bow. It is not necessarily accompanied by bullying. It is still more difficult to explain the submission of the working man. The brain-worker "knows nothing at all about it."

One more possible explanation, however, suggests itself to our minds: Do the rules against repeating run among the poor? We imagine not, and it is here perhaps lies the key to the matter. Half the confusion caused by the "passing of remarks" is no doubt caused by direct criticism, and has nothing to do with repetition, but direct criticism will always be inconsiderate where no criticism can be made in confidence. If what we say to Smith about Jones is sure to get to Jones sooner or later, we may as well say it straight. As to refraining altogether from criticism, you might as well tell a man to refrain from curiosity, or, indeed, from speech altogether. The cultivated, who have brought the art of life to a far higher point than the uncultivated, have protected their liberty by a social rule. They say what they like about every one, and it does not get to the ears of the man about whom they have said it.

Of course many cynics will deny this, and of course many things are repeated, but few men and women, we believe, if they search their memories, will be able to find many instances of serious harm done by repetition. It happens occasionally. Letters go wrong occasionally, but only in very exceptional cases. We have heard it said that in the small society which lives at leisure, and therefore gives itseif largely to the pursuit of pleasure,

the repetition of unkind criticism is more common than among brain workers. We have also heard this contradicted. Perhaps the explanation of the two accounts may lie in the fact that in such society sensitiveness is not very common. They are not dishonorable, but they are hardy. Criticisms are perhaps made and repeated among them which the brain worker could not endure. Sham fighting is a game which does not appeal to the working man, whether he work with his head or his hands. He has no need of an artificial outlet for his energies. There is, we think, no doubt that the daw against repetition is, even among the cultivated, more far-reaching than it was. There is a dim tradition, still preserved among elderly governesses, of a time when children were told to say nothing behind anyone's back which they could not say before his face. The Spectator.

Such a rule must have been invented to soften life when the repetition of unfavorable criticism was not utterly condemned. As things are, the majority of educated people have arranged to spare themselves. They avoid "passing" unkind "remarks," and they avoid passing them on. The poor have not yet got so far. We cannot imagine the doctor looking over the barrister's wall and saying "How dare you prescribe a mustard plaster for your little boy! It's taking the bread out of the mouths of the medical profession." The proof of the matter seems to lie in the fact that the poor are frightened by the bare thought of criticism, whereas we are not, the reason being, perhaps, that they have a franker criticism to fear, since they are plainly not greater cowards than we are.

THE GREAT UNKNOWN.

There are strange regions where the monotony of ignoble streets is broken only by an occasional church, a Board School, or a public-house. From the city's cathedral to every point of the compass, except the west, they stretch almost without limit till they reach the bedraggled fields maturing for development. They form by far the larger part of an Empire's capital. Each of them is, in fact, a vast town, great enough as far as numbers go, to make the Metropolis of a powerful State. Out of half-a-dozen of them, such as Islington, Bethnal Green, or Bermondsey, the County Council could build half-ascore of Italian republics, like the Florence or Pisa of old days, if only it had the mind. Each possesses a character, a peculiar flavor, or, at the worst, a separate smell. Many of them are traversed every day by thousands of

rich and well-educated people, passing underground or overhead. Yet to nearly all of us they remain strange and almost untrodden. We do not think of them when we think of London. Them no pleasure-seeker counts among his opportunities, no foreigner visits as essential for his study of the English soul. Not even Government officials, who talk so much about architecture, discuss their architecture in the clubs. Not one in a thousand of us has ever known a human soul among their inhabitants. To the comfortable classes the Libyan desert is more familiar.

At elections, even politicians remember their existence. From time to time a philanthropist goes down there to share God's good gifts with his poorer brethren, or to elevate the masses with tinkling sounds or a

painted board. From time to time an adventurous novelist is led round the opium-shops, dancing-saloons and docks, returning with copy for tales of lust and murder that might just as well be laid in Siberia or Timbuctoo. When we scent an East End story on its way, do we not patiently await the battered head, the floating corpse, the dynamiter's den, or a woman crying over her ill-begotten babe? Do we not always get one or other of the lot? To read our story-tellers from Mr. Kipling downward, one might suppose the East End to be inhabited by bastards engaged in mutual murder, and the marvel is that anyone is left alive for the subject of a tale. You may not bring an indictment against a whole nation, but no sensational writer hesitates to libel three million of our fellow-citizens. Put it in Whitechapel, and you may tell what lie you please.

About once in a generation some "Bitter Cry" pierces through custom, and the lives of "the poor" become a subject for polite conversation and amateur solicitude. For three months, or even for six, that subject appears as the intellectual "rôti” at dinner-tables; then it is found a little heavy, and cultured interest returns to its natural courses of plays, pictures, politics, a dancing woman, and the memorials of Kings. It is almost time now that the poor came up again, for a quarter of a century has gone since they were last in fashion, and men's collars and women's skirts have run their full orbit since. Excellent books have appeared, written with intimate knowledge of working life-books such as Charles Booth's "London" or Mr. Richard Free's "Seven Years Hard," to mention only two; but either the public mind was pre-occupied with other amusements, or it had not recovered from the lassitude of its last philanthropic debauch. Nothing has roused that fury of charitable curiosity which

accompanies a true social revival, and leaves its victims gasping for the next excitement. The time is, perhaps, now ripe, but we cannot foretell any more startling influence for Mr. Alexander Paterson's book, "Across the Bridges" (Arnold). Excellent though it is, its excellence, in fact, will exclude it from fashion. For it is written with the restraint of knowledge, and contains no touch of melodrama from beginning to end. Not by knowledge or restraint are the insensate sensations of fashion reached.

As his title shows, Mr. Paterson's experience has lain on the south side of the river, and the district possesses peculiarities of its own. On the whole, we think, the riverside streets there are rather more unhealthy than those in the East End. Many houses stand below water-level, and in digging foundations we have sometimes found the black sludge of old marshes squirting up through the holes, and even bringing with it embedded reeds that perhaps were growing when Shakespeare acted there. The population is more distinctly English than on the north side. Where the poverty is extreme it is more helpless. Work as a whole is rather steadier, but not so good. The smell is different and very characteristic, partly owing to the hop-markets. Life seems rather sadder and more depressing there, with less of gaiety and independence; but that may be because the present writer is more intimate with the East End, and intimacy with working people nearly always improves their aspect. It is, indeed, fortunate for our sensational novelists that they remain so ignorant of their theme, for otherwise murders, monsters, and mysteries would disappear from their pages, and goodness knows how they would make a living then!

It is not crime and savagery that characterize the unknown lands where

the working classes of London chiefly live. Matthew Arnold said our lower classes were brutalized, and he was right, but not if by brutality he meant cruelty, violence, or active sin. What characterizes them and their streets is poverty. Poverty and her twins, unhappiness and waste. Under unhappiness, we may include the outward conditions of discomfort-the crowded. rooms, the foul air, the pervading dirt, the perpetual stench of the poor. In winter the five or six children in a bed grow practised in turning over all at the same time while still asleep, so as not to disturb each other. In a hot summer the bugs drive the families out of the rooms to sleep on the doorstep. Cleanliness is an expensive luxury almost as far beyond poverty's reach as diamonds. The foul skin, the unwashed clothes, the layer of greasy smuts, the boots that once fitted someone, and are now held on by string, the scraps of food bought by the penny-, worth, of tea, condensed milk, fried fish, bread and "strawberry flavor," the coal bought by the "half-hundred," the unceasing noise, the absence of peace or rest, the misery of sickness in a crowd-all such things may be counted among the outward conditions of unhappiness, and only people who have never known them would call them trivial. But by the unhappiness that springs from poverty we mean far

worse.

The definition of happiness as "an energy of the soul along the lines of excellence, in a fully developed life" is ancient now, but we have never found a better. From happiness so defined, poverty excludes our workingclasses in the lump, almost without exception. For them an energy of the soul along the lines of excellence is almost unknown, and a fully developed life impossible. In both these respects their condition has probably become worse within the last century.

If there is a word of truth in what historians tell us, a working-man must certainly have had a better chance of exercising an energy of his soul before the development of factories and machinery. What energy of the personal soul is exercised in a mill-hand, a teapacker, a slop-tailor, or the watcher of a thread in a machine? How can a man or woman engaged in such labor for ten hours a day at subsistence wage enjoy a fully developed life? It seems likely that the old-fashioned workman who made things chiefly with his own hands and had some opportunity of personal interest in the work, stood a better chance of the happiness arising from an energy of the soul. His life was also more fully developed by the variety and interest of his working materia! and surroundings. This is the point to which our prophets who pour their lamentations over advancing civilization should direct their main attack, as, indeed, the best of them have done. For certainly it is an unendurable result if the enormous majority of civilized mankind are for ever to be debarred from the highest possible happiness.

The second offspring of poverty in these working regions of our city is waste. And we have called waste the twin brother of unhappiness because the two are very much alike. By waste we do not here mean the deathrate of infants, though that stands at one in four. No one, except an exploiter of labor, would desire a mere increase in the workpeople's number without considering the quality of the increase. But by waste we mean the multitudes of boys and girls who never get a chance of fulfilling their inborn capacities. The country's greatest shame and disaster arise from the custom whereby the line between the educated and the uneducated follows the line between the rich and the poor, almost without deviation. That a na

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