第22章

ON THE DELIGHTS AND BENEFITS OF SLAVERY

My study window looks down upon Hyde Park, and often, to quote the familiar promise of each new magazine, it amuses and instructs me to watch from my tower the epitome of human life that passes to and fro beneath.At the opening of the gates, creeps in the woman of the streets.Her pitiful work for the time being is over.Shivering in the chill dawn, she passes to her brief rest.Poor Slave! Lured to the galley's lowest deck, then chained there.Civilization, tricked fool, they say has need of such.You serve as the dogs of Eastern towns.But at least, it seems to me, we need not spit on you.Home to your kennel! Perchance, if the Gods be kind, they may send you dreams of a cleanly hearth, where you lie with a silver collar round your neck.

Next comes the labourer--the hewer of wood, the drawer of water--slouching wearily to his toil; sleep clinging still about his leaden eyes, his pittance of food carried tied up in a dish-clout.

The first stroke of the hour clangs from Big Ben.Haste thee, fellow-slave, lest the overseer's whip, "Out, we will have no lie-a-beds here," descend upon thy patient back.

Later, the artisan, with his bag of tools across his shoulder.He, too, listens fearfully to the chiming of the bells.For him also there hangs ready the whip.

After him, the shop boy and the shop girl, making love as they walk, not to waste time.And after these the slaves of the desk and of the warehouse, employers and employed, clerks and tradesmen, office boys and merchants.To your places, slaves of all ranks.Get you unto your burdens.

Now, laughing and shouting as they run, the children, the sons and daughters of the slaves.Be industrious, little children, and learn your lessons, that when the time comes you may be ready to take from our hands the creaking oar, to slip into our seat at the roaring loom.For we shall not be slaves for ever, little children.It is the good law of the land.So many years in the galleys, so many years in the fields; then we can claim our freedom.Then we shall go, little children, back to the land of our birth.And you we must leave behind us to take up the tale of our work.So, off to your schools, little children, and learn to be good little slaves.

Next, pompous and sleek, come the educated slaves--journalists, doctors, judges, and poets; the attorney, the artist, the player, the priest.They likewise scurry across the Park, looking anxiously from time to time at their watches, lest they be late for their appointments; thinking of the rates and taxes to be earned, of the bonnets to be paid for, the bills to be met.The best scourged, perhaps, of all, these slaves.The cat reserved for them has fifty tails in place of merely two or three.Work, you higher middle-class slave, or you shall come down to the smoking of twopenny cigars; harder yet, or you shall drink shilling claret;harder, or you shall lose your carriage and ride in a penny bus;your wife's frocks shall be of last year's fashion; your trousers shall bag at the knees; from Kensington you shall be banished to Kilburn, if the tale of your bricks run short.Oh, a many-thonged whip is yours, my genteel brother.

The slaves of fashion are the next to pass beneath me in review.

They are dressed and curled with infinite pains.The liveried, pampered footman these, kept more for show than use; but their senseless tasks none the less labour to them.Here must they come every day, merry or sad.By this gravel path and no other must they walk; these phrases shall they use when they speak to one another.

For an hour they must go slowly up and down upon a bicycle from Hyde Park Corner to the Magazine and back.And these clothes must they wear; their gloves of this colour, their neck-ties of this pattern.

In the afternoon they must return again, this time in a carriage, dressed in another livery, and for an hour they must pass slowly to and fro in foolish procession.For dinner they must don yet another livery, and after dinner they must stand about at dreary social functions till with weariness and boredom their heads feel dropping from their shoulders.

With the evening come the slaves back from their work: barristers, thinking out their eloquent appeals; school-boys, conning their dog-eared grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of motley, cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to please their master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as, together, they plod homeward; the artisan; the labourer.Two or three hours you shall have to yourselves, slaves, to think and love and play, if you be not too tired to think, or love, or play.Then to your litter, that you may be ready for the morrow's task.

The twilight deepens into dark; there comes back the woman of the streets.As the shadows, she rounds the City's day.Work strikes its tent.Evil creeps from its peering place.

So we labour, driven by the whip of necessity, an army of slaves.

If we do not our work, the whip descends upon us; only the pain we feel in our stomach instead of on our back.And because of that, we call ourselves free men.

Some few among us bravely struggle to be really free: they are our tramps and outcasts.We well-behaved slaves shrink from them, for the wages of freedom in this world are vermin and starvation.We can live lives worth living only by placing the collar round our neck.

There are times when one asks oneself: Why this endless labour? Why this building of houses, this cooking of food, this making of clothes? Is the ant so much more to be envied than the grasshopper, because she spends her life in grubbing and storing, and can spare no time for singing? Why this complex instinct, driving us to a thousand labours to satisfy a thousand desires? We have turned the world into a workshop to provide ourselves with toys.To purchase luxury we have sold our ease.

Oh, Children of Israel! why were ye not content in your wilderness?