Page:Navvies and Their Needs.djvu/27

 and pains which we have spent at L W, and one such case seems to me to proclaim with burning eloquence the needs of our navvy population. Neglected, degraded, brutalised men are a sight sad enough, but to see women in the same state moves one to deeper disgust, and to greater pity and remorse. The next case of sickness that awaits me is that of a young man, a navvy, struck down in the pride of life, and dying like the girl we have just left, of consumption. One gets into a way of thinking of navvies as strong above their fellows, and it is a pitiable sight to see one with pale sunken cheeks, and shrunken limbs. It happens, however, not unfrequently. The strong frame is over-taxed, the man works sometimes under a burning sun, sometimes in driving rain or snow, sometimes up to his middle in water. He generally perseveres long after he ought to have given in, and then gives in once for all. We find the sick man propped up in an arm-chair by the fire. He has a very bad weary look in his face. Time hangs heavily on his hands. He has absolutely nothing to do. He cannot read, and there is no one save occasional visitors like ourselves to read to him; he can do nothing but think—think of the health he has lost, of the sickness which is wasting him away, of his pains and of his weariness. Such thinking is apt to breed discontent. It seems hard to rebuke his murmuring; for the short time we can spend with him we must try our best to make him cheerful. We read to him a little, and he asks us to pray with him. This we do in the name of Him who, while he promised tribulation to His disciples, bade them also be of good comfort. Then we try to talk cheerfully about the supply of his present wants. It is