Resignation to God's will was the common device of these people in
the face of every duty and every emergency. There were no books in the
house; I doubt if either of them had retained the capacity for reading
consecutively for more than a minute or so, and it was with amazement
that day after day, over and above stale bread, one beheld food and
again more food amidst the litter that held permanent session on the
living-room table.
One might have doubted if either of them felt discomfort in this
dusty darkness of existence, if it was not that they did visibly seek
consolation. They sought this and found it of a Sunday, not in strong
drink and raving, but in imaginary draughts of blood. They met with
twenty or thirty other darkened and unclean people, all dressed in dingy
colours that would not show the dirt, in a little brick-built chapel
equipped with a spavined roarer of a harmonium, and there solaced their
minds on the thought that all that was fair and free in life, all that
struggled, all that planned and made, all pride and beauty and honour,
all fine and enjoyable things, were irrevocably damned to everlasting
torments.
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