262 THE OPEN AIB. 



night and sleeps by day : he lies yonder as calmly 

 as if in a quiet country cottage. The children 

 have no place to play in but the living-room or 

 the street. It is not squalor — it is crowded life. 

 The people are pushed together by the necessities 

 of existence. These people have no dislike to it at 

 all : it is right enough to them, and so long as 

 business is brisk they are happy. The man who lies 

 sleeping so calmly seems to me to indicate the 

 immensity of the life around more than all the rest. 

 He is oblivious of it all ; it does not make him nervous 

 or wakeful ; he is so used to it, and bred to it, that 

 it seems to him nothing. When he is awake he 

 does not see it ; now he sleeps he does not hear it. 

 It is only in great woods that you cannot see the 

 trees. He is like a leaf in a forest — he is not 

 conscious of it. Long hours of work have given him 

 slumber; and as he sleeps he seems to express by 

 contrast the immensity and endlessness of the life 

 around him. 



Sometimes a floating haze, now thicker here, and 

 now lit up yonder by the sunshine, brings out objects 

 more distinctly than a clear atmosphere. Away there 

 tall thin masts stand out, rising straight up above 

 the red roofs. There is a faint colour on them ; the 

 yards are dark — being inclined, they do not reflect 

 the light at an angle to reach us. Half -furled canvas 

 droops in folds, now swelling a little as the wind 

 blows, now heavily sinking. One white sail is set 

 and gleams alone among the dusky folds; for the 

 canvas at large is dark with coal-dust, with smoke, 

 with the grime that settles everywhere where men 



