For them is no day, only the brief twilight of a winter
sky between the former and the latter night For them no aspiration;
for them no hope of memory in the dust; their very children are
wearied into forgetfulness. Indistinguishable units in the vast
throng that labours but to support life, the name of each, father,
mother, child, is as a dumb cry for the warmth and love of which
Fate so stinted them. The wind wails above their narrow tenements;
the sandy soil, soaking in the rain as soon as it has fallen, is a
symbol of the great world which absorbs their toil and straightway
blots their being.
It being Sunday afternoon the number of funerals was considerable;
even to bury their dead the toilers cannot lose a day of the wage
week. Around the chapel was a great collection of black vehicles
with sham-tailed mortuary horses; several of the families present
must have left themselves bare in order to clothe a coffin in the
way they deemed seemly. Emma and her sister had made their own
funeral garments, and the former, in consenting for the sake of poor
Jane to receive the aid which Mutimer offered, had insisted through
Alice that there should be no expenditure beyond the strictly
needful. The carriage which conveyed her and Kate alone followed the
hearse from Hoxton; it rattled along at a merry pace, for the way
was lengthy, and a bitter wind urged men and horses to speed.
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