most thoroughly feel that they are upon their honour with the
customers, as to the minutest points of administration. But,
although the American stoves cannot roast, they can surely boil one
kind of meat as well as another, and need not always circumscribe
their boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef. The most
enthusiastic admirer of those substantials, would probably not
object to occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton:
or, especially in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with
Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in holes. Another drawback on
the Whitechapel establishment, is the absence of beer. Regarded
merely as a question of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a
tendency to send the working men to the public-house, where gin is
reported to be sold. But, there is a much higher ground on which
this absence of beer is objectionable. It expresses distrust of
the working man. It is a fragment of that old mantle of patronage
in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering up and down
the moral world, are sworn to muffle him. Good beer is a good
thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Depot could give it
him good, and he now gets it bad. Why does the Depot not give it
him good? Because he would get drunk. Why does the Depot not let
him have a pint with his dinner, which would not make him drunk?
Because he might have had another pint, or another two pints,
before he came. Now, this distrust is an affront, is exceedingly
inconsistent with the confidence the managers express in their
hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short upon the straight
highway. It is unjust and unreasonable, also. It is unjust,
because it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken man.
It is unreasonable, because any one at all experienced in such
things knows that the drunken workman does not get drunk where he
goes to eat and drink, but where he goes to drink – expressly to
drink. To suppose that the working man cannot state this question
to himself quite as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that
he is a baby, and is again to tell him in the old wearisome,
condescending, patronising way that he must be goody-poody, and do
as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a manny-panny or a voter-poter,
but fold his handy-pandys, and be a childy-pildy.
I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self-Supporting
Cooking Depot, that every article sold in it, even at the prices I
have quoted, yields a certain small profit! Individual speculators
are of course already in the field, and are of course already
appropriating the name. The classes for whose benefit the real
depots are designed, will distinguish between the two kinds of
enterprise.
CHAPTER XXVI – CHATHAM DOCKYARD
There are some small out-of-the-way landing places on the Thames
and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling. Running water
is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
of running water for mine. I like to watch the great ships
standing out to sea or coming home richly laden, the active little
steam-tugs confidently puffing with them to and from the seahorizon,
the fleet of barges that seem to have plucked their brown
and russet sails from the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy
old colliers, light in ballast, floundering down before the tide,
the light screw barks and schooners imperiously holding a straight
course while the others patiently tack and go about, the yachts
with their tiny hulls and great white sheets of canvas, the little
sailing-boats bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure or
business, and – as it is the nature of little people to do – making
a prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these
objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or
even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour.
As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the