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_ One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock in the
forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view commanded by
the windows of my lodging an equestrian phenomenon. It was a
fellow-creature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner. The
fellow-creature wore high boots; some other (and much larger)
fellow-creature's breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a
baggy form; a blue shirt, whereof the skirt, or tail, was puffily
tucked into the waist-band of the said breeches; no coat; a red
shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military scarlet hat, with a
feathered ornament in front, which, to the uninstructed human
vision, had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock. I laid down
the newspaper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed the
fellow-man in question with astonishment. Whether he had been
sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of
'Sartor Resartus;' whether 'the husk or shell of him,' as the
esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey,
on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy
shop, on Guy Fawkes, on waxwork, on gold-digging, on Bedlam, or on
all,--were doubts that greatly exercised my mind. Meanwhile, my
fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on
the slippery stones of my Covent-garden street, and elicited
shrieks from several sympathetic females, by convulsively
restraining himself from pitching over his horse's head. In the
very crisis of these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment
when his charger's tail was in a tobacconist's shop, and his head
anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar
portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to
stumble and slide the more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian
triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their
three right hands as commanding unseen troops, to 'Up, guards! and
at 'em.' Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to
be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the
direction of the Surrey Hills.
Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I
threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satisfaction of
beholding it advancing along the streets. It was a Teetotal
procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was long enough to
consume twenty minutes in passing. There were a great number of
children in it, some of them so very young in their mothers' arms
as to be in the act of practically exemplifying their abstinence
from fermented liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink,
while the procession defiled. The display was, on the whole,
pleasant to see, as any good-humoured holiday assemblage of clean,
cheerful, and well-conducted people should be. It was bright with
ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if
those latter trophies had come up in profusion under much watering.
The day being breezy, the insubordination of the large banners was
very reprehensible. Each of these being borne aloft on two poles
and stayed with some half-dozen lines, was carried, as polite books
in the last century used to be written, by 'various hands,' and the
anxiety expressed in the upturned faces of those officers,--
something between the anxiety attendant on the balancing art, and
that inseparable from the pastime of kite-flying, with a touch of
the angler's quality in landing his scaly prey,--much impressed me.
Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the wind, and go about in
the most inconvenient manner. This always happened oftenest with
such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman in black,
corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of summarily
reforming a family, feeble and pinched with beer. The gentleman in
black distended by wind would then conduct himself with the most
unbecoming levity, while the beery family, growing beerier, would
frantically try to tear themselves away from his ministration.
Some of the inscriptions accompanying the banners were of a highly
determined character, as 'We never, never will give up the
temperance cause,' with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive
to the profane mind of Mrs. Micawber's 'I never will desert Mr.
Micawber,' and of Mr. Micawber's retort, 'Really, my dear, I am not
aware that you were ever required by any human being to do anything
of the sort.'
At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing members of the
procession, for which I was at first unable to account. But this I
discovered, after a little observation, to be occasioned by the
coming on of the executioners,--the terrible official beings who
were to make the speeches by-and-by,--who were distributed in open
carriages at various points of the cavalcade. A dark cloud and a
sensation of dampness, as from many wet blankets, invariably
preceded the rolling on of the dreadful cars containing these
headsmen; and I noticed that the wretched people who closely
followed them, and who were in a manner forced to contemplate their
folded arms, complacent countenances, and threatening lips, were
more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than those in front.
Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody an implacability
towards the magnates of the scaffold, and so plain a desire to tear
them limb from limb, that I would respectfully suggest to the
managers the expediency of conveying the executioners to the scene
of their dismal labours by unfrequented ways, and in closely-tilted
carts, next Whitsuntide.
The procession was composed of a series of smaller processions,
which had come together, each from its own metropolitan district.
An infusion of allegory became perceptible when patriotic Peckham
advanced. So I judged, from the circumstance of Peckham's
unfurling a silken banner that fanned heaven and earth with the
words, 'The Peckham Lifeboat.' No boat being in attendance, though
life, in the likeness of 'a gallant, gallant crew,' in nautical
uniform, followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that
Peckham is described by geographers as an inland settlement, with
no larger or nearer shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey
Canal, on which stormy station I had been given to understand no
lifeboat exists. Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, and came
to the conclusion, that if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of
pickled poetry, this WAS the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic
Peckham picked.
I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the whole
pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified expression with a
direct meaning, which I will now explain. It involves the title of
this paper, and a little fair trying of teetotalism by its own
tests. There were many people on foot, and many people in vehicles
of various kinds. The former were pleasant to see, and the latter
were not pleasant to see; for the reason that I never, on any
occasion or under any circumstances, have beheld heavier
overloading of horses than in this public show. Unless the
imposition of a great van laden with from ten to twenty people on a
single horse be a moderate tasking of the poor creature, then the
temperate use of horses was immoderate and cruel. From the
smallest and lightest horse to the largest and heaviest, there were
many instances in which the beast of burden was so shamefully
overladen, that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals have frequently interposed in less gross cases.
Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there
unquestionably is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that
therefore the total abolitionists are irrational and wrong-headed.
But the procession completely converted me. For so large a number
of the people using draught-horses in it were so clearly unable to
use them without abusing them, that I perceived total abstinence
from horseflesh to be the only remedy of which the case admitted.
As it is all one to teetotalers whether you take half a pint of
beer or half a gallon, so it was all one here whether the beast of
burden were a pony or a cart-horse. Indeed, my case had the
special strength that the half-pint quadruped underwent as much
suffering as the half-gallon quadruped. Moral: total abstinence
from horseflesh through the whole length and breadth of the scale.
This pledge will be in course of administration to all teetotal
processionists, not pedestrians, at the publishing office of 'All
the Year Round,' on the 1st day of April, 1870.
Observe a point for consideration. This procession comprised many
persons in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts, barouches, chaises,
and what not, who were merciful to the dumb beasts that drew them,
and did not overcharge their strength. What is to be done with
those unoffending persons? I will not run amuck and vilify and
defame them, as teetotal tracts and platforms would most assuredly
do, if the question were one of drinking instead of driving: I
merely ask what is to be done with them! The reply admits of no
dispute whatever. Manifestly, in strict accordance with teetotal
doctrines, THEY must come in too, and take the total abstinence
from horseflesh pledge. It is not pretended that those members of
the procession misused certain auxiliaries which in most countries
and all ages have been bestowed upon man for his use, but it is
undeniable that other members of the procession did. Teetotal
mathematics demonstrate that the less includes the greater; that
the guilty include the innocent, the blind the seeing, the deaf the
hearing, the dumb the speaking, the drunken the sober. If any of
the moderate users of draught-cattle in question should deem that
there is any gentle violence done to their reason by these elements
of logic, they are invited to come out of the procession next
Whitsuntide, and look at it from my window.
THE END.
The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens. _
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