Manchurian Books

They should be grateful even for that;
that, one felt, was the theory of it all.
And I loafed about this wilderness of crowded dinginess, with young,
receptive, wide-open eyes, and through the blessing (or curse) of some
fairy godmother of mine, asking and asking again: "But after all, WHY--"
I wandered up through Rochester once, and had a glimpse of the Stour
valley above the town, all horrible with cement works and foully smoking
chimneys and rows of workmen's cottages, minute, ugly, uncomfortable,
and grimy. So I had my first intimation of how industrialism must live
in a landlord's land. I spent some hours, too, in the streets that give
upon the river, drawn by the spell of the sea. But I saw barges and
ships stripped of magic and mostly devoted to cement, ice, timber, and
coal. The sailors looked to me gross and slovenly men, and the shipping
struck me as clumsy, ugly, old, and dirty. I discovered that most sails
don't fit the ships that hoist them, and that there may be as pitiful
and squalid a display of poverty with a vessel as with a man.


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