and fire, and a female attendant to help them, and to watch
that they do not neglect the cleansing of their hands before
touching their food. An experienced medical attendant is provided
for them, and any premonitory symptoms of lead-poisoning are
carefully treated. Their teapots and such things were set out on
tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I saw their room; and
it had a homely look. It is found that they bear the work much
better than men: some few of them have been at it for years, and
the great majority of those I observed were strong and active. On
the other hand, it should be remembered that most of them are very
capricious and irregular in their attendance.
American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before very long
white-lead may be made entirely by machinery. The sooner, the
better. In the meantime, I parted from my two frank conductors
over the mills, by telling them that they had nothing there to be
concealed, and nothing to be blamed for. As to the rest, the
philosophy of the matter of lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to
me to have been pretty fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I
quoted in my former paper: ‘Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon,
and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many,
niver; and ’tis all according to the constitooshun, sur; and some
constitooshuns is strong and some is weak.’ Retracing my footsteps
over my beat, I went off duty.
Page 220
Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
CHAPTER XXXVI – A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE
Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a pursuit (no
matter what), which could be transacted by myself alone; in which I
could have no help; which imposed a constant strain on the
attention, memory, observation, and physical powers; and which
involved an almost fabulous amount of change of place and rapid
railway travelling. I had followed this pursuit through an
exceptionally trying winter in an always trying climate, and had
resumed it in England after but a brief repose. Thus it came to be
prolonged until, at length – and, as it seemed, all of a sudden –
it so wore me out that I could not rely, with my usual cheerful
confidence, upon myself to achieve the constantly recurring task,
and began to feel (for the first time in my life) giddy, jarred,
shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch,
and dull of spirit. The medical advice I sought within a few
hours, was given in two words: ‘instant rest.’ Being accustomed
to observe myself as curiously as if I were another man, and
knowing the advice to meet my only need, I instantly halted in the
pursuit of which I speak, and rested.
My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the book
of my life, in which nothing should be written from without for a
brief season of a few weeks. But some very singular experiences
recorded themselves on this same fly-leaf, and I am going to relate
them literally. I repeat the word: literally.
My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence between
my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle’s as I find it
recorded in a work of fiction called LITTLE DORRIT. To be sure,
Mr. Merdle was a swindler, forger, and thief, and my calling had
been of a less harmful (and less remunerative) nature; but it was
all one for that.
Here is Mr. Merdle’s case:
‘At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known,
and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of Light
to meet the demand of the occasion. He had concealed a dropsy from
infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from
his grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every
morning of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the
explosion of important veins in his body after the manner of
fireworks, he had had something the matter with his lungs, he had
had something the matter with his heart, he had had something the