The man Darius was first taken to work by his mother. It was the winter
of 1835, January. They passed through the marketplace of the town of
Turnhill where they lived. Turnhill lies a couple of miles north of
Bursley. One side of the market-place was barricaded with stacks of
coal, and the other with loaves of a species of rye and straw bread.
This coal and these loaves were being served out by meticulous and
haughty officials, all invisibly, braided with red-tape, to a crowd of
shivering, moaning, and weeping wretches, men, women and children--the
basis of the population of Turnhill. Although they were all
endeavouring to make a noise they made scarcely any noise, from mere
lack of strength. Nothing could be heard, under the implacable bright
sky, but faint ghosts of sound, as though people were sighing and crying
from within the vacuum of a huge glass bell.
The next morning, at half-past five, Darius began his career in earnest.
He was `mould-runner' to a `muffin-maker,' a muffin being not a
comestible but a small plate, fashioned by its maker on a mould. The
business of Darius was to run as hard as he could with the mould, and a
newly, created plate adhering thereto, into the drying-stove. This
`stove' was a room lined with shelves, and having a red-hot stove and
stove-pipe in the middle. As no man of seven could reach the upper
shelves, a pair of steps was provided for Darius, and up these he had to
scamper. Each mould with its plate had to be leaned carefully against
the wall and if the soft clay of a new-born plate was damaged, Darius
was knocked down. The atmosphere outside the stove was chill, but owing
to the heat of the stove, Darius was obliged to work half naked. His
sweat ran down his cheeks, and down his chest, and down his back, making
white channels, and lastly it soaked his hair.
When there were no moulds to be sprinted into the drying-stove, and no
moulds to be carried less rapidly out, Darius was engaged in
clay-wedging. That is to say, he took a piece of raw clay weighing more
than himself, cut it in two with a wire, raised one half above his head
and crashed it down with all his force upon the other half, and he
repeated the process until the clay was thoroughly soft and even in
texture. At a later period it was discovered that hydraulic machinery
could perform this operation more easily and more effectually than the
brawny arms of a man of seven. At eight o'clock in the evening Darius
was told that he had done enough for that day, and that he must arrive
at five sharp the next morning to light the fire, before his master the
muffin-maker began to work. When he inquired how he was to light the
fire his master kicked him jovially on the thigh and suggested that he
should ask another mould-runner. His master was not a bad man at heart,
it was said, but on Tuesdays, after Sunday, and Saint Monday, masters
were apt to be capricious.
Darius reached home at a quarter to nine, having eaten nothing but bread
all day. Somehow he had lapsed into the child again. His mother took
him on her knee, and wrapped her sacking apron round his ragged clothes,
and cried over him and cried into his supper of porridge, and undressed
him and put him to bed. But he could not sleep easily because he was
afraid of being late the next morning.
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