Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland by Joseph Tatlow
page 32 of 272 (11%)
page 32 of 272 (11%)
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modest income for a time the young couple lived. It was a runaway match;
on the girl's part an elopement from school. They lived in apartments, kept by an old lady, a widow who, being a woman, loved a bit of romance, and was very kind to them. He was a manly young fellow, a sportsman and renowned at cricket, and she was amiable and pretty, a little blonde beauty. The parents were well to do, and in due time forgave the imprudent match. At this we all rejoiced for he was a general favourite. Looking back now it seems to me the office staff was in some ways a curious collection and very different to the clerks of to-day. Many of them had not entered railway life until nearly middle-age and they had not assimilated as an office staff does now, when all join as youths and are brought up together. They were original, individual, not to say eccentric. Whilst our office included certain steady married clerks, who worked hard and lived ordinary middle-class respectable lives, and some few bachelors of quiet habit, the rest were a lively set indeed, by no means free from inclinations to coarse conviviality and many of them spendthrift, reckless and devil-may-care. At pay-day, which occurred monthly, most of these merry wights, after receiving their pay, betook themselves to the _Midland Tap_ or other licensed house and there indulged, for the remainder of the afternoon, in abundant beer, pouring down glass after glass; in Charles Lamb's inimitable words: "the second to see where the first has gone, the third to see no harm happens to the second, a fourth to say there is another coming, and a fifth to say he is not sure he is the last." Some of the merriest of them would not return to the office that day but extend their carouse far into the night; to sadly realise next day that it was "the morning after the night before." I do not think our ladylike chief clerk ever indulged in these orgies, but I never knew more than the mildest remonstrance being made by him or |
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