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One of Our Conquerors — Volume 3 by George Meredith
page 27 of 108 (25%)
process; they get it off the sight of the sun arising or a simple hen
submissive: but we have our hibernating bears among men, our yoked oxen,
cab horses, beaten dogs; we have on large patches of these Islands, a
Saxon population, much wanting assistance, if they are not to feel
themselves beaten, driven, caught by the neck, yoked and heavyheaded.
Blest, then, is he who gives them a sense of the pride of standing on
legs. Beer, ordinarily their solitary helper beneath the iron canopy of
wealth, is known to them as a bitter usurer; it knocks them flat in their
persons and their fortunes, for the short spell of recreative exaltation.
They send up their rough glory round the name of the gentleman--a
stranger, but their friend: and never is friend to be thought of as a
stranger--who manages to get the holiday for Wrensham and thereabout,
that they may hurl away for one jolly day the old hat of a doddered
humbleness, and trip to the strains of the internal music he has unwound.

Says he: Is it a Charity Concert? Charity begins at home, says he: and
if I welcome you gentry on behalf of the poor of London, why, it follows
you grant me the right to make a beginning with the poor of our parts
down here. He puts it so, no master nor mistress neither could refuse
him. Why, the workmen at his house were nigh pitching the contractors
all sprawling on a strike, and Mr. Radnor takes train, harangues 'em and
rubs 'em smooth; ten minutes by the clock, they say; and return train to
his business in town; by reason of good sense and feeling, it was; poor
men don't ask for more. A working man, all the world over, asks but
justice and a little relaxation--just a collar of fat to his lean.

Mr. Caddis, M.P., pursuing the riddle of popularity, which irritated and
repelled as constantly as it attracted him, would have come nearer to an
instructive presentment of it, by listening to these plain fellows, than
he was in the line of equipages, at a later hour of the day. The remarks
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