On the whole how respectable
they are, how sober, how deadly dull! See how worn-out the poor
girls are becoming, how they gape, what listless eyes most of them
have! The stoop in the shoulders so universal among them merely
means over-toil in the workroom. Not one in a thousand shows the
elements of taste in dress; vulgarity and worse glares in all but
every costume. Observe the middle-aged women; it would be small
surprise that their good looks had vanished, but whence comes it
they are animal, repulsive, absolutely vicious in ugliness? Mark the
men in their turn: four in every six have visages so deformed by
ill-health that they excite disgust; their hair is cut down to
within half an inch of the scalp; their legs are twisted out of
shape by evil conditions of life from birth upwards. Whenever a
youth and a girl come along arm-in-arm, how flagrantly shows the
man's coarseness! They are pretty, so many of these girls, delicate
of feature, graceful did but their slavery allow them natural
development; and the heart sinks as one sees them side by side with
the men who are to be their husbands.
One of the livelier groups is surging hitherwards; here we have
frolic, here we have humour.
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