On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
riy ^ er , and had just completed witji - the fpoint of ? my stick a name upon the sand , which I came to myself soon enough
not : to leave there , when a hale cruiser offered a coasting , which I gave welcome to ere it arrived , by making room on the end of the bench .
Some of them pursue the occupation of holding horses at frequented haunts within reach , and others mount , upon three sticks , sorely bandaged , tubes
containing certain glasses , through which the cockney looks , having paid the needful , and sees the landscape diminished to the size of a
halfcrown . That one has a bright beetle with a pin through it under a glass , which he will show you for a penny , if you look " likely ; " but to some he will show it at once , and trust
for his modicum to manoeuvres afterwards . So you begin talking , or suffer it to be begun , as thus : — "It is a miserable thingmiserable , very—this sort of
life - i , < You hear of a storm or a battle , and then you hear of the unequal rewards of those who did the labour ; and so , you see , the value of money is , nothing like' now what it was when
Greenwich Hospital was first made i what it was ; and if the money that is spent on statues and pillars was given to the widows of thosewho lost
their litfes ^ it xwwald be . mdre sensible . T ^ Sotoie i ojE us * jyou see , have wives and families , and so we fare very hard ! The
Untitled Article
time mqy come when they"l want sailors , and then they won ' t get ' em . I hear Russia is getting great power ; their fleet , they say , is creeping up . I don ' t
think its , a right thing for a civilized country to stand by and see them getting on ; they let the Poles (' so they did' ) be used like un-Christian
beasts ; " and so forth . Why this is all a pure echo of the aspiration of those slips of naval gentility who pray for a ff sickly season and a bloody war
'VSo a Greenwich pensioner is solitary in . a crowd . He is coarsely sensual ; keenly selfish ; perfect in . low cunning ; - and heartily ready , did limbs remain to him , to subserve to
anjhviolence , to execute any bloodshed , for present pay ; for chance of plunder and prizemoney . His life is spent in a large proportion of listnessness ; another part goes in the prosecution of small means of small
acquisitiveness ; and the rest in the coarse consumption of the product . A Greenwich pensioner , then , is not happy— -and why not ? His own statement of his own grievances , —^ wa &t of more beer and more tobacco , — :
will not account for this . It is not so much that he has not what lie wants , as that fee wants not ; what he has aniopporjfcuMfcy of having * There is aQoWunificence in the provision for him , truly ; but the matter is not to , be < jnenctad by an
increase of his income * .,. . -., « t m > Who is it that has narrowed ,
Untitled Article
Greenwich ^ s Pensioners and its Pictures . 237
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 1, 1837, page 237, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1836/page/13/
-