Or,
if you please, compare him with one of the better sort of young City
clerks; or, again, compare him with one of the lads who belong to the
classes now held in the building of the old Polytechnic; or with the
lads who are found every evening at the classes of the Birkbeck. First
of all, the young workman cannot play any game at all, neither
cricket, football, tennis, racquets, fives, or any of the other games
which the young fellows in the class above him love so passionately:
there are, in fact, no places for him where these games can be played;
for though the boys may play cricket in Victoria Park, I do not
understand that the carpenters, shoemakers, or painters have got clubs
and play there too. There is no gymnasium for them, and so they never
learn the use of their limbs; they cannot row, though they have a
splendid river to row upon; they cannot fence, box, wrestle, play
single-stick, or shoot with the rifle; they do not, as a rule, join
the Volunteer corps; they do not run, leap, or practise athletics of
any kind; they cannot swim; they cannot sing in parts, unless, which
is naturally rare, they belong to a church choir; they cannot play any
kind of instrument--to be sure the public schoolboy is generally
grovelling in the same shameful ignorance of music; they cannot dance;
in the whole of this vast city there is not a single place where a
couple, so minded, can go for an evening's dancing, unless they are
prepared to journey as far as North Woolwich.
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