reading in the brickfield; gone was the happy freedom of the
chartered libertine of the gutter. He was bound, a little slave,
like hundreds of other little slaves and thousands of big ones, to a
relentless machine. He entered the hopeless factory gate at six in
the morning and left it at half-past five in the evening; and, his
rough food swallowed, slunk to his kennel in the scullery like a
little tired dog. And Mr. Button drank, and beat Mrs. Button, and
Mrs. Button beat Paul whenever she felt in the humour and had
anything handy to do it with, and, as a matter of course,
confiscated his wages on Saturday and set him to mind the baby on
Sunday afternoons. In the monotony, weariness and greyness of life
the glory of the Vision began to grow dim.

In the factory he was not thrown into competition with other boys.
He was the skip, the drudge, the carrier and fetcher, the cleaner
and polisher for a work-bench of men devoid of sentiment and blind
to his princely qualities. He tried, indeed, by nimbleness of hand
and intelligence, to impress them with his superiority to his
predecessors, but they were not impressed. At the most he escaped
curses. His mind began to work in the logic of the real. Entrance
into his kingdom implied as a primary condition release from the
factory. But how could such release come, when every morning a
remorseless and insensate hook-just like a certain hook in the
machinery whose deadly certainty of grip fascinated and terrified
him, caught him from his morning sleep every morning of .his life,
save Sunday, and swung him inexorably into the factory? He looked
around and saw that no one was released, except through death or
illness or incompetence. And the incompetent starved. Any child in
Budge Street with a grain of sense knew that. There was no release.
He, son of a prince, would work for ever and ever in Bludston. His