A mile away were
the green fields, the woods, the roadsides gay with flowers and
shrubs-loveliness was but over the wall, as it were; yet here the
barrack-like houses, the grey, harsh streets, seemed like prison walls,
and the people in them prisoners who, with every legal right to call
themselves free, were as much captives as the criminal on some small
island in a dangerous sea. Escape--where? Into the gulf of no work and
degradation?
They never lifted their eyes above the day's labour. They were scarce
conscious of anything beyond. What were their pleasures? They had
imitations of pleasures. To them a funeral or a wedding, a riot or a
vociferous band, a dog-fight or a strike, were alike in this, that they
quickened feelings which carried them out of themselves, gave them a
sense of intoxication.
Intoxication? David remembered the far-off day of his own wild rebellion
in Hamley. From that day forward he had better realised that in the
hearts of so many of the human race there was a passion to forget
themselves; to blot out, if for a moment only, the troubles of life and
time; or, by creating a false air of exaltation, to rise above them.
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