The Project Gutenberg EBook of Put Yourself in His Place, by Charles Reade

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Title: Put Yourself in His Place

Author: Charles Reade

Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2497]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Donald Lainson

PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE

By Charles Reade

"I will frame a work of fiction upon notorious fact, so that anybody
shall think he can do the same; shall labor and toil attempting
the same, and fail--such is the power of sequence and connection in
writing."--HORACE: Art of Poetry.

CHAPTER I.

Hillsborough and its outlying suburbs make bricks by the million, spin
and weave both wool and cotton, forge in steel from the finest needle up
to a ship's armor, and so add considerably to the kingdom's wealth.

But industry so vast, working by steam on a limited space, has been
fatal to beauty: Hillsborough, though built on one of the loveliest
sites in England, is perhaps the most hideous town in creation. All ups
and down and back slums. Not one of its wriggling, broken-backed streets
has handsome shops in an unbroken row. Houses seem to have battled in
the air, and stuck wherever they tumbled down dead out of the melee. But
worst of all, the city is pockmarked with public-houses, and bristles
with high round chimneys. These are not confined to a locality, but
stuck all over the place like cloves in an orange. They defy the law,
and belch forth massy volumes of black smoke, that hang like acres of
crape over the place, and veil the sun and the blue sky even in the
brightest day. But in a fog--why, the air of Hillsborough looks a thing
to plow, if you want a dirty job.

More than one crystal stream runs sparkling down the valleys, and
enters the town; but they soon get defiled, and creep through it heavily
charged with dyes, clogged with putridity, and bubbling with poisonous
gases, till at last they turn to mere ink, stink, and malaria, and
people the churchyards as they crawl.

This infernal city, whose water is blacking, and whose air is coal, lies
in a basin of delight and beauty: noble slopes, broad valleys, wa