they seemed so greatly devoted to the Graces and the Muses, it was
but the images of the Parnassian Gods that they worshipped. For
in the purlieus of this fine town, horrible cruelties and abuses
were committed, yet none of the so-called poets lifted a cry of
reform. Every morning, early, before daybreak, there came through
the streets long and sad processions of meek-eyed oxen and bleating
lambs, harried by brutal drovers, with shouts and blows,--terrible
processions of innocent creatures going to die under the poleaxe
and the knife in order to provide the "pleasures of the table" for
dainty votaries of "sweetness and light." Before the fair faint
dawn made rosy the eastern sky over the houses, you might have heard
on every side the heavy thud of the poleaxe striking down the patient
heifer on her knees,--the heifer whose eyes are like the eyes of
Here, say the old Greek song-books, that were read and quoted all
day in this town of Culture and of Art.

And a little later, going down the byways of the town, you might
have seen the gutters running with hot fresh blood, and have met
carts laden with gory hides, and buckets filled with brains and
blood, going to the factories and tanyards. Young lads spent all
their days in the slaughter-houses, dealing violent deaths, witnessing
tragedies of carnage, hearing incessant plaintive cries, walking
about on clogs among pools of clotting or steamy blood, and breathing
the fumes of it. And scarce a mile away from the scene of all these
loathsome and degrading sights, sounds, and odors, you might have
found fastidious and courtly gentlemen, and ladies all belaced and
bejewelled, sentimentalising over their "aspic de foie gras," or
their "cotelettes a la jardiniere," or some other euphemism for
the dead flesh which could not, without pardonable breach of good
breeding, be called by its plain true name in their presence.