ca, you asked me, and the question was sublime: "Is she going
to travel all night?" You had heard people speak of travelling all night,
and that was all you knew of travel or any place that was not the Strand. I
asked you if you went to church, and you said "No, it makes my eyes bad." I
said, "But you don't read; you can't read." "No, but I have to look at the
book." I asked you if you had heard of God; you hadn't; but when I pressed
you on the point you suspected I was laughing at you, and you would not
answer, and when I tried you again on the subject I could see that the
landlady had been telling you what to say. But you had not understood, and
your conscious ignorance, grown conscious within the last couple of days,
was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you answered
that you couldn't go to church because it made your eyes bad. It is a
strange thing to know nothing; for instance, to live in London and to have
no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, except perhaps
that she is a rich lady; the police--yes, you knew what a policeman was
because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an organ-man or a Christy
minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark kitchen, grates, eggs and
bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours a day and to get cheated out
of your wages; to answer, when asked, why you did not get your wages or
leave if you weren't paid, that you "didn't know how Mrs. S---- would get
on without me."

This woman owed you forty pounds, I think, so I calculated it from what you
told me; and yet you did not like to leave her because you did not know how
she would get on without you. Sublime stupidity! At this point your
intelligence stopped. I remember you once spoke of a half-holiday; I
questioned you, and I found your idea of a half-holiday was to take the
children for a walk and buy them some sweets. I told my brother of this and
he said--Emma out for a half-holiday! why, you might as well give a mule a
holiday. The phrase was brutal, but it was admirably descriptive of you.
Yes, you are a mule, there is no sense in you; you are a beast of burden, a
drudge too horrible for anything but work; and I suppose, all things
considered, that the fat landlady with a dozen children did well to work
you seventeen hours a day, and cheat you out of your miserable wages. You
had no friends; you could not have a friend unless it were some forlorn cat
or dog; but you once spoke to