The idleness and
uselessness of it, the precocious abuse of tobacco, the premature and
forced development of the emotions which should belong to love at a
later period, the loss of such intellectual attainments as had already
been acquired, the vacuous mind, the contentment to remain in the
lower depths--in a word, the waste and wanton ruin of a life involved
in such a youth, make the contemplation of this pair the most
melancholy sight in the world. The boy's early cleverness is gone, the
brightness has left his eyes, he reads no more, he has forgotten all
he ever learned, he thinks only now of keeping his berth, if he has
one, or of getting another if he has lost his last. But there is worse
to follow, for at eighteen he will marry the little slip of a girl,
and by the time she is five-and-twenty there will be half a dozen
children born in poverty and privation for a similar life of poverty
and privation, and the hapless parents will have endured all that
there is to be endured from the evils of hunger, cold, starving
children, and want of work.
This couple were thrown together because they were left to themselves
and uncared for; they marry because they have nothing else to think
about; they remain in misery because the husband knows no trade, and
because of mere hands unskilled and ignorant there are already more
than enough.
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