Elizabeth Gaskell Quote

Well! said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his likeness; I could laugh at a jest as well as e’er the best on ‘em, though it did tell agen mysel, if I were not clemming (his eyes filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), and if I could keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear ’em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th’ bottom o’ th’ canal, there — why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they’ve never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within ’em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God help us. John

Elizabeth Gaskell

Well! said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his likeness; I could laugh at a jest as well as e’er the best on ‘em, though it did tell agen mysel, if I were not clemming (his eyes filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), and if I could keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear ’em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th’ bottom o’ th’ canal, there — why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they’ve never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within ’em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God help us. John

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