THE OFFICE OF THE _TOCSIN_
To the ordinary citizen whose walk in life lies along the beaten track
there is a suggestion of Bohemianism about the office of any literary or
propagandist organ; but I doubt whether the most imaginative among them
in their wildest moments have ever conceived any region so far removed
from the conventions of civilised society, so arbitrary in its hours and
customs, so cosmopolitan and so utterly irrational as the office of the
_Tocsin_.
In other chapters I attempt to describe the most noticeable among the
genuine Anarchists who belonged to it, but I wish here to convey some
faint idea of the strange medley of outside cranks and _déclassés_ whose
resort it in time became. There appeared to be a magnetic attraction
about the place to tramps, _désoeuvrés_ cranks, argumentative people
with time on their hands, and even downright lunatics. Foreigners of all
tongues assembled in the office--Russians, Italians, French, Spaniards,
Dutch, Swedes, and before very long they practically swamped the English
element. The Anarchist and revolutionary party has always been more
serious on the Continent than in England, and what genuine Anarchists
there are here are mostly foreigners.
Trades and industries of the most heterogeneous kinds were carried on
at the _Tocsin_ by unemployed persons who could find no other refuge for
their tools nor outlet for their energies. In one corner old M'Dermott
settled down with his lasts and leather, and there industriously
hammered away at his boots, alternating his work with occasional
outbursts of Shakespearian recitation. In winter the old fellow was
positively snowed up in the office, where he crouched shivering over the
fire until the advent of spring revived him. On the first warm sunny
day he suddenly flung down his tools, and rushing out into the courtyard
amazed and terrified Mrs. Wattles and her colleagues by shouting at the
top of his voice, "Let me shout, let me shout, Richard's himself again!"
"'E gave me such a turn, Miss, with 'is carryin's on that I got the
spasims again, an' I don't know what ever I shall do if I can't find
the price of a 'alf-quartern o' gin." And I took the hint, for Mrs.
Wattles's alliance was no despicable possession among the savages of
Lysander Grove.
A shed was erected in the corner of the composing-room, which served by
night as a dormitory for numbers of otherwise roofless waifs, and here
during the daytime a young Belgian and his wife set up a small factory
of monkeys up sticks, which when completed they proceeded to sell in the
streets. In another corner two Italians settled down to manufacture a
remarkable new kind of artificial flower with which they traded when
opportunity permitted. Small plaster-casts of Queen Victoria and Marat
were also manufactured here. When the influx of starving Italians
necessitated it, a kind of soup-kitchen was inaugurated over which Beppe
presided, and very busy he was kept too, manufacturing _minestras_
and _polenta_, a welcome innovation to me, I may mention, after a long
régime of small and nauseous tarts, bread and jam, and cheese. In
short, the headquarters of the _Tocsin_, besides being a printing and
publishing office, rapidly became a factory, a debating club, a school,
a hospital, a mad-house, a soup-kitchen and a sort of Rowton House, all
in one.
When I look back on the scene now, and recall all the noise and hubbub,
the singing, the discussions and disputes, the readings, the hammerings
on this side, the hangings on that, the feeding, and M'Dermott's
Shakespearian recitations, I find it very difficult to realise the
amount of hard work which I and the other few serious and earnest
comrades got through.
The chief impediment to the progress of the work, however, was Short,
the compositor. On close acquaintance with this creature, I found that
he did not belie my first impression of him as the laziest and most
slovenly of men; and I soon realised the two dominant characteristics
which had made of him a Socialist--envy and sloth. So deeply was he
imbued with envy that he was quite unable to rest so long as anyone else
was better off than himself; and although he did not care one jot
for "humanity" of which he prated so freely, and was incapable of
regenerating a flea, he found in a certain section of the Socialist and
Anarchist party that degree of dissatisfaction and covetousness which
appealed to his degraded soul. Besides which the movement afforded him
grand opportunities for living in sloth and sponging on other people.
Short was not without his humorous side, however, when only you were in
the right mood to appreciate it. His envy of the superiority which he
noted in others was only equalled by his intense contempt for himself.
I can still picture the poor brute lying with his dog in a corner of
the office amid a heap of rubbish, unwashed, unkempt (he never divested
himself of his clothes), and verminous in the extreme. There he would
blow discordant notes on a mouth-organ, or smoke his rank old pipe, eat
jam tarts, and scowl his wrath and envy on the world. If he could get
hold of some unoccupied person to whom he could retail all the latest
bits of Anarchist scandal, or from whom he could ferret out some little
private secrets, he was contented enough, or, leaning out of the
office window he would deliver a short autobiographical sketch to the
interested denizens of the surrounding courts. A small bill, posted
outside the office door, announced that Short was prepared to undertake
extraneous jobs of printing on his own account; and this was responsible
for many of the queer customers who found their way to the office of the
_Tocsin_.
One of the queerest of all the queer oddities who haunted it was a small
man of hunted aspect, known to every one as the "Bleeding Lamb." He had
acquired this peculiar name from the title of a booklet which he had
written under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, a sort
of interpretation of the Apocalypse, wherein was foretold a rapid
termination of the universe. The printing of the "Bleeding Lamb" was
undertaken by Short, whose dilatoriness in executing his work doubtless
prolonged by a few years the existence of the terrestrial globe.
There was all the fervour of a prophet in the eye of the "Bleeding
Lamb," but inspiration ceased here, and even what there was of inspired
and prophetic in his eye was overcast by a certain diffident and
deprecating look. He was the victim, poor man, of a twofold persecution
in which heaven and earth joined hands to torment him--the archangel
Michael and the Metropolitan police being the arch offenders.
One of the first things that struck you about the Bleeding Lamb was the
helpless look of his feet. They were for ever shuffling and stumbling,
getting in the way, and tripping up himself and others. His hands too
had a flabby and inefficient expression, and his knees were set at a
wrong angle. His stature was insignificant, his colouring vague; longish
hair and beard of a colourless grey matched the grey of his prophetic
and persecuted eye.
He would enter the office furtively, and cast a rapid glance round as
though he almost expected to find the archangel Michael or an inspector
of the Metropolitan police lurking in a corner, and it would take
him some few seconds before he could muster up sufficient courage to
inquire, as was his invariable custom, whether anyone had been round to
ask after him. On being assured that no one had called for that
purpose he appeared relieved, and gradually, as he became more and more
reassured, he would warm to his subject of the coming cataclysm, and
launch out into prophecy. "Ah," he exclaimed to me one day after a long
discourse on the universal destruction at hand, "won't Queen Victoria
just shiver in her shoes when she receives the revised edition of the
'Bleeding Lamb.' Little does she dream at this moment of what is in
store for her." I recollect also that Nelson was in some way connected
with his prophecies and his perplexities, but in what particular
connection is not quite clear to my mind. The sympathy which he
apparently felt for the Anarchists was, I suppose, due to the fact that
they too were engaged--on a somewhat smaller scale it is true--on a
policy of destruction, and also to their avowed antagonism to the law
and the police, whether metropolitan or otherwise.
The Bleeding Lamb had a formidable rival in the field of prophecy in
the person of another strange frequenter of our office--a demure-looking
gentleman named Atkinson who professed to be the reincarnation of
Christ, and who preached the millennium. He was a less depressed-looking
person than the Bleeding Lamb--whom he treated with undisguised
contempt--and affected a tall hat and Wellington boots. The Lamb, on his
side, denounced the Messiah as a fraud, and went so far as to suggest
that he had only taken to prophecy when the alteration in the fashion of
ladies' pockets compelled him to abandon his original profession. "That
Lamb is not quite right in the upper storey," whispered Atkinson to
me one day; "he may even become dangerous, poor creature!" Shortly
afterwards I was taken aside by the gentleman in question who warned me
to keep my purse in safety as "that Messiah is no better than a common
thief."
The approach of either of these prophets was invariably the signal for a
stampede on Short's part, who, never having completed his work, dreaded
encountering the mournful scrutiny and reproachful bleating of the Lamb
no less than the sad, stern rebukes and potential Wellington boots of
the Messiah. Into no single item of the day's programme did he put
so much zest as into the grand dive he would make into any available
hiding-place, and he would lie for hours flat on his stomach under
M'Dermott's bed sooner than "face the music."
One day the perspiring Lamb entered the office red in the face and
considerably out of breath, rapidly followed by a lugubrious individual,
talking volubly in an argumentative monotone. This person seemed to be
very indignant about something.
"Marcus Aurelius was a just ruler and a philosopher," he was saying,
"and he saw the necessity for suppressing the Christian factions. He was
among the severest persecutors of the early Christians.--What does that
argue, you fool?"
"Nothing against my contention with regard to the seven-headed beast in
the Apocalypse," replied the Bleeding Lamb with a defiant snort.
"The seven-headed beast has nothing to do with the case," retorted his
interlocutor, putting all the warmth into his monotonous drawl of which
he appeared capable. "The seven-headed beast can't alter history, and
my case is conclusively proved in the course of this little work, to
the production of which I have devoted the best years of my life.
The seven-headed beast indeed! Pshaw for your seven-headed beast, you
dunder-headed dreamer!"
Whilst I gazed on dumbfounded at this little scene, making futile
efforts to grasp the vexed point under discussion, the strange
new-comer, whom the Lamb addressed as Gresham, deposited on the floor
a huge and shapeless brown-paper parcel, under whose weight he was
staggering, and sitting down by its side he carefully untied the string,
and dragged triumphantly forth tome after tome of carefully-written
MSS., which he proceeded to read out without further preamble.
"'Atheism _v._ Christianity,'" he drawled, commencing at the title,
"'being a short treatise on the Persecutions of the Early Christians,
the object of which is to prove that they were persecuted by the just
emperors and protected by the unjust; that, consequently, they were
wrong; that Christianity is wrong, and the Deity a palpable fraud;
by Tobias Jonathan Gresham,'--and let the seven-headed beast in the
Apocalypse put that in his pipe and smoke it!" casting a defiant glance
at the Bleeding Lamb.
As this concluding remark was made in the same monotone as the foregoing
sentence, I was at some loss to determine whether or not it formed part
of the title of that momentous work.
The Bleeding Lamb here cast me a knowing glance, which said as plainly
as words that his unfortunate acquaintance was mad, but that it was as
well to humour him, and so he magnanimously sat down on a stool facing
his rival, while the latter proceeded to read out his book, which was
destined soon to mount up the long list of Short's sins of typographical
omissions. This was but the herald of a long series of readings from
the "short treatise," which were carried on at intervals for some weeks.
Minute after minute and hour after hour Gresham drawled on from one
tedious reiteration to another, never raising his voice nor altering
its key, till a sense of dizziness overcame his audience, and his voice
became as the singing in one's ears which accompanies high fever or
heralds a faint. Indeed I have never suffered from fever or faintness
since that date without my sensations recalling Gresham's dreary,
argumentative drawl; then gradually his voice would grow fainter and
somewhat spasmodic, until at length it gave way to snores, as the weary
Lamb and the atheist Lion, like the kid and the leopard of Isaiah, sank
down together in a confused heap on the floor, and there slept out a
miniature fulfilment of the word of the prophet.
Then there was a Polish count who found his way to the _Tocsin_--a most
deplorable aristocratic débris, who might have stepped straight out of
the pages of Dostoievsky. I never set eyes on a more depressed-looking
mortal than Count Voblinsky. He looked as though he bore on his bent
shoulders the weight of all the ill-spent lives in Christendom. He was
a damp, unwholesome-looking man, whose appearance suggested long
confinement in a cellar. He was pale and hollow-eyed, and almost mouldy;
altogether a most cadaverous-looking person. He was always attired, even
at eleven A.M., in an old dress suit, green and threadbare with age, and
a furry tall hat, into which garments he seemed to have grown and taken
root. But despite the decay of his person and his attire, there was a
certain degree of aristocratic refinement about Voblinsky's features,
last ghastly traces of his ancient nobility. He vaguely recalled to my
mind a long-ago Continental trip of my childhood, and an unfortunate
elephant in the Marseilles Jardin des Plantes who, from long inactivity
in the corner of his cage, had become overgrown with moss. There was the
same incongruous touch of erstwhile nobility, the same decay, the same
earthy smell. By what shady and circuitous paths had the unfortunate
count reached this unhappy pass? Perhaps his wife was responsible;
for if ever woman was calculated not to lead her mate on to higher and
better things it was the Countess Voblinska. The countess was worse
than slovenly: she was downright dirty. Her tumbled, frowsy hair, with
patches of golden dye in it, was surmounted by an appalling hat of
incongruous dimensions and shape, trimmed with what appeared to be
archaeological relics, thick in dust. To approach it brought on a
perfect paroxysm of sneezing. Her clothes, which were very greasy and
never brushed, hung together by strings, tatters, and safety-pins. Her
hands and face were begrimed with several coats of dirt, and a top coat
of _poudre de riz_. No ordinary imagination dared speculate on what lay
hidden beneath those tattered rags she wore. She gesticulated much,
and discoursed on the subject of some lecture she was to give, in the
intervals of volleying forth abuse and swearing in Parisian argot at
her long-suffering husband, who received it all with most ludicrous
courtesy. Often a strong smell of gin mingled with the eloquent flow of
the countess's language.
On the whole, however, the Anarchists and their queer associates might
be regarded as a fairly temperate set. One of the most potent causes of
drink is the monotony of the existences led by most people, the hopeless
dreariness of their confined, narrow lives, the total lack of interest
and excitement. This is not the case in revolutionary circles, where not
only are there plenty of ideas afloat to occupy men's minds and distract
them from the narrow circle of their dreary domestic lives, but where
also the modern craving for excitement, factitious or otherwise, finds
plenty of nourishment.
The office of the _Tocsin_, however, did not lack the occasional
presence of the habitual drunkard. There was one queer fellow who
frequently put in a dissipated appearance for the purpose of complaining
of the ill-usage to which his wife's tongue subjected him. He looked
forward to the Social Revolution as the only escape from this thraldom,
and certainly no man ever made more strenuous, albeit ill-directed
efforts, on its behalf.
Then there was a bibulous Welshman who at times would startle the
unwashed denizens of the neighbouring slums by appearing in a tall
hat and irreproachable shirt front. He was a doctor by profession, who
succeeded in maintaining a certain reputation in polite circles, but an
alcoholic soaker by inclination, one of those men who somehow contrive
to keep ahead of ruin by sleeping out periods of financial distress in
friends' houses.
Our proof-reader was a benevolent old gentleman of obsolete customs, who
in an age of open-air cures still wore a mouth and nose respirator.
He was such an eminently respectable person that I never could quite
understand why he associated himself with anything so disreputable as
the _Tocsin_. I always half suspected that he came there principally
on my account, chivalrously determined that I should not be surrounded
_solely_ by scum. But besides this motive he had some pretensions
to being a man of advanced views, and was a purchaser of "advanced"
literature. The introduction of this into the precincts of his home was
a great trial to his better half, who had no kind of sympathy with such
leanings. New-fangled ideas of any description were tabooed by her,
and all preachers and holders of such she unconditionally consigned to
hell-fires. Her husband she regarded as a brand to be snatched from the
burning, and she and a few select female relatives worked hard to snatch
him. But although new-fangled ideas on social organisation and political
economy were bad enough, one thing alone was beyond all human endurance
to the mind of Mrs. Crawley, and that one thing was free-love.
One day Mr. Crawley brought home "The Woman Who Did," and neglected to
conceal it. It was found by his wife lying on the dining-room sofa.
"My fingers itched to seize and burn the impudent huzzy, lying there as
unconcerned as though she had been the 'Private Meditations and Prayers
of the Rev. Bagge,'" Mrs. Crawley confided to her Aunt Elizabeth, "but
it was a six-shilling book, and I knew how Crawley valued it, and for
the life of me I did not dare touch it."
It was a sore trial indeed to Mrs. Crawley to live under the same roof
with such a person, but she dared not so far outrage the feelings of
one whom she had sworn to love, honour, and obey, as to execute the
offending lady. She long meditated some revenge, some outlet for her
outraged feelings; it was long in coming, but come it did at last. The
"Man Who Didn't" followed in the footsteps of his irregular mate, and
in a fourpenny-halfpenny edition. This was more than the worthy matron
could stand, and either he or she herself must leave the house. She
summoned Aunt Elizabeth, a lady of irreproachable moral standard, the
whites of whose eyes had a habit of turning up spasmodically, and the
corners of whose mouth down, and to her she unburdened her feelings.
"My dear Eliza," she said, "I have too long tolerated 'The Woman Who
Did,' but when it comes to the 'Man Who Didn't,' that--er--well, that
disgusting 'Man Who Didn't'--and how am I to know that he didn't, the
brazen creature!--it is time I asserted my authority. I cannot and I
will not stand him."
The offending and irresolute gentleman was then seized upon with a
pair of tongs, carried in solemn procession to the remotest room in the
house, and burnt. The sanctity of matrimony had reasserted its rights.
A young bank clerk who accompanied Crawley to the office was a type of
what I might call the conscientiously unprincipled man. It being wrong
to steal, he made a point of annexing small objects. Cleanliness is next
to godliness, and he devoted himself heroically to dirt; it was not at
all his natural tendency, and the more disagreeable he found it the more
strenuous was he in its pursuit. Being by nature punctual, he made it an
absolute point of honour never to keep an appointment; and, as a lover
of domestic peace, he was for ever working his way into scrapes and
rows. He was a comical object, with his limp yellow hair brushed
ferociously on end, and his mild yellow eyes scowling defiance at
mankind.
When the Cuban revolution broke out a wave of sympathy for the oppressed
islanders passed over the whole civilised world, and nowhere did this
find a warmer echo than in the Anarchist party and the _Tocsin_ group.
Many Anarchists were in favour of going out to the assistance of the
insurgents. Opinion was divided on the question. Some said: "It is our
duty to remain in Europe to carry on the work of Anarchist propaganda
here. The Cuban revolution is a race struggle, and no concern of ours."
Others said: "We Anarchists are internationalists, and in whatsoever
part of the world there is revolt against oppression, and wherever the
revolutionary forces are at work, there is our opportunity to step in
and direct those forces into the proper course, towards Anarchism."
These Anarchists saw in the uprising of this small and comparatively
insignificant race against the Spanish throne the possible dawn of a
wider, vaster struggle, in which the whole world would join hands to lay
low thrones, altars, and judgment seats.
A small band of Italian comrades, led by an adventurous Sicilian, got
up a subscription for the purpose, and left the office of the _Tocsin_,
amid great revolutionary enthusiasm, to journey to the assistance of the
insurgent island. Only one of their number ever returned alive to
Europe to tell of the horrors and hardships of the fierce struggle there
endured, of the cruelty of the Spaniards, and the uselessness of the
fight from the Anarchist point of view.
The Cuban fever was very catching, and after the departure of this first
band there was a regular epidemic of departure at the _Tocsin_. Carter
and Simpkins turned up at the office one afternoon very much in earnest
about it all and persuaded that a little British grit was what was
needed in Cuba, "to keep things humming." Simpkins recalled his old
army days and the valour he had several times displayed when under the
influence of liquor. He waved an old belt appertaining to those times,
and would, I believe, have sung something about the Union Jack and the
beer of old England, had not his friend recalled him to a better sense
of his duty as an Anarchist and Internationalist. It appeared that
Carter had come into a small sum of money consequent on the death of an
uncle, with which he was bent on paying their passage out to Cuba. "What
is an Anarchist to do in this wretched country?" he asked. "I am tired
of lying in bed waiting for the revolution. It's too slow coming."
"Yah!" muttered Short under his breath to me, "the springs are out of
order, and he finds it hard. That's about how much he cares for the
revolution."
After Carter and Simpkins had taken their leave of the staff of the
_Tocsin_ I watched a very moving scene from the window, when they bade
good Mrs. Wattles farewell. The good lady was very deeply affected, and
with tears in her eyes she begged them to think again before betaking
themselves to "them furrin' parts" where she had heard "the drink was
something awful and not fit for a Christian stomach." She was only half
reassured when told that rum came from somewhere in that direction.
But Carter and Simpkins never reached Cuba. Some few minutes' walk from
the office of the _Tocsin_, at the corner of Lysander Grove, stood an
inviting house of call, the "Merry Mariners," where the valiant warriors
dropped in on their way, to refresh themselves, perhaps in anticipation
of the dreary prospect which Mrs. Wattles's words had opened before
them. When several hours later Short returned from his accustomed
evening stroll round the neighbourhood, he described with great relish
the pitiable termination of their voyage. He had found Carter just sober
enough to cart his incapacitated disciple home on a wheelbarrow, after
which he painfully betook himself to his bed, there to bemoan the
tardiness of the revolution, and the broken condition of the spring
mattress.
"And won't his guv'nor just give Simpkins a ragging when he gets home.
He'll give him Cuba," gloated the unsympathetic printer.
Another relief expedition from the _Tocsin_ met with scarcely more
brilliant success. Beppe and Meneghino set out under the guidance of old
M'Dermott, on tramp to Cardiff, whence they hoped to work their way
out to the insurgent island. They, too, set out full of brave hopes and
generous enthusiasm, but with too confident a trust in the beneficence
of Providence as caterer to their material needs on the journey. Before
a fortnight had elapsed, they also were back at the office, Beppe
bearing the poor old Irishman on his shoulders in a quite crippled and
exhausted condition. He had to be put to bed, and remained there
several weeks, before he was in a fit state to get about again. They
all complained bitterly of the inhospitality of the country-folk to whom
they had appealed for help, and of the uncourteous reception they had
met with in the Cardiff docks. Poor Meneghino reached London barefooted,
his faithful canvas bag hanging disconsolately over his shoulder--and
all with woefully vacant stomachs. They formed a comically dismal group
as they collapsed into the office in an exhausted heap.
* * * * *
Amid these many strange and dubious, ludicrous or pathetic characters,
some few heroic figures appeared. From time to time there came into our
midst Vera Marcel, the Red Virgin of the barricades, the heroine of the
Commune of Paris--a woman of blood and smoke and of infinite mercies
towards men and beasts. I can see her still, almost beautiful in
her rugged ugliness, her eyes full of the fire of faith and insane
fanaticism, her hair dishevelled, her clothes uncared for. I can hear
the wonderful ring of her tragic voice as she pleaded the misery of the
poor and suffering, of the oppressed, the outcast, the criminal, the
rejected, and as it rose higher and higher to invoke fire and sword and
bloodshed in expiation. Then I seem to hear its magic and inspired ring
as her wonderful faith conjured up visions of the future when the whole
of humanity shall live in peace and brotherhood, and the knife, which
in time of revolution had shed the blood of the oppressors, shall "cut
nothing deadlier than bread." A strange gaunt figure she was, a woman
who had never hesitated at shedding blood in the good Cause, nor feared
to face death for it; but with her friends, and especially with children
and dumb animals, she was as gentle as the gentlest of her sex; and no
words can describe the extreme sweetness of her voice.
As publication time approached, all-night sittings became necessary,
when all this heterogeneous assembly met together, and amidst Anarchist
song and Anarchist enthusiasm forwarded or hindered, each in his
degree, the publication of the _Tocsin_. I can see in my mind's eye the
much-littered, overcrowded office in all the confusion of those nights,
with its dark corners hidden in shadow, where slept tired fighters weary
of the fray, and its brightly-lighted patches, under the lamps, where
the work of the night was being carried on. Some dozen voices, more
or less musical, are chanting Anarchist war-songs, and the _Inno di
Caserio_ and the _Marseillaise_ ring out through the open windows to
the dormant or drunken denizens of Lysander Grove. The Reincarnation
is patiently turning the wheel of the printing machine, and rolling out
fresh _Tocsins_, thinking, no doubt, of that tocsin which, at no
distant date, shall ring out from a loftier sphere to rouse the deluded
inhabitants of this globe to a different millennium from that dreamed
of by Anarchists. But, whatever his thoughts, he grinds away with much
Christian endurance and fortitude. Wainwright, who is tired after a long
turn at the wheel, subsequent to a hard day's work in the brick-yard, is
relating to a few interested listeners the strange story of his life, or
discussing points of Anarchist principle and propaganda.
Then, somehow, the Bleeding Lamb would find his way in, and looking over
at his reincarnated rival at the wheel with undisguised contempt, he
whispers: "I know what sort of a wheel his unhallowed hoof ought to be
turning!"
Armitage and Kosinski at such times would be busy folding the papers,
both absorbed in their work, happy to think that they were thus
advancing the great Cause. And Short, shivering discontentedly at the
cold, or swearing amid much perspiration at the heat, would smoke his
pipe and eat his unattractive pastry, whilst crawling into his rugs and
banners, until Beppe, in an outburst of indignation, drags him out by
the scruff of the neck and compels him to lock up the forms.
One night there was a grand banquet, for Beppe had turned in, bearing
under his long cloak a prime conditioned tom-cat, whose disconcerted
mews were rapidly ended by a dexterous twist of the neck, and whose
plump person was before long stewing in wine and vinegar in the _Tocsin_
stockpot, after his liver had been previously fried for the private
consumption of the ever-hungry Beppe.
When this succulent repast had been disposed of towards 3 A.M. (all the
_Tocsin_ workers had admirable digestions) a brief respite from work
ensued, during which Beppe sang pieces of Italian opera, accompanied by
Gnecco on his mandolin, and M'Dermott treated us to brief recitations
from Shakespeare. Much stamping and gesticulation accompanied, I
remember, the soliloquy of Hamlet, and our flesh crept at the witches'
incantations from "Macbeth." The old cobbler delighted in Shakespeare
and dictionaries, between the perusal of which he spent most of his
time. "Like Autolycus in the 'Winter's Tale,'" he said to me one day, "I
am a 'snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,' and during the riots of 18--I
snapped up a sufficient number of these to enable me to set myself up
with a small library, and I did no work during eighteen months, devoting
my entire time to Shakespeare and Johnson's Dictionary."
Sometimes a phrenologist who had strayed into our midst would follow
on with a brief phrenological séance, and nothing afforded the comrades
more satisfaction than to be informed that their bumps showed undoubted
criminal propensities.
Then again the heavy roll of the machine would drown all lesser noises
with its monotonous grinding, as the most resolute and earnest among us
returned undaunted to the fray, whilst others, less energetic, curled up
on the floor in varying uncomfortable attitudes about the office--inside
the dormitory shed and out, propped against posts and type-racks, or
stretched on stacks of paper--and slumbered in blissful ignorance of the
future fortunes of the _Tocsin_.