Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/250

 were set up near the site of the first granary, and two or three hundred out-of-work labourers were requisitioned from Manchester.

Curiously enough, the stocks were a great success. The first slounger called upon to undergo punishment made light of it.

"Why, blimey!" he cried, "I could do this on me 'ead" (which, by the way, he couldn't; a man has to sit down when his ankles are in the stocks). "This is a bit of all right. I can smoke my pipe, read my paper, and 'ave a nap of sleep."

Indeed, taking it all in all, the punishment seemed childish in its mildness, but there is one thing that it takes a philosopher to stand, and few labourers dabble much in philosophy. This one thing is ridicule. During the noon hour, the man in the stocks found another side to the question. He was unmercifully chaffed; often so brutally that had his limbs been clear he would have knocked down the joker. He writhed in his helplessness, and quite unable intellectually to cope with the united wits of the company, he fell back on lurid profanity, which merely made his tormentors laugh the louder and goad him the more.

From this first trial the stocks became a terror that a man would do anything, even hard work,