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