Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/107

 —Would you assist me, Professor?

—With pleasure, Your Excellency.

—And you, Honorable Judge?

—Although I am not hungry—but with your leave—

—I may, perhaps, be suffered to—(the Abbot modestly speaks, his mouth watering.)

(The four seat themselves about the pig and silently they carve it greedily with their knives. Occasionally the eyes of the Professor and of the Abbot meet, and with swollen cheeks, powerless to chew, they are smitten with reciprocal hatred and contempt. Then choking, they ardently champ on. Everywhere small groups eating. Death produces a dry cheese sandwich from his pocket and eats in solitude. A heavy conversation of full-crammed mouths. Munching.)

London

(German poet and essayist, one of the most musical and most unhappy of singers; 1797-1856)

It is in the dusky twilight that Poverty with her mates, Vice and Crime, glide forth from their lairs. They shun daylight the more anxiously, the more cruelly their wretchedness contrasts with the pride of wealth which glitters everywhere; only Hunger sometimes drives them at noonday from their dens, and then they stand with silent, speaking eyes, staring beseechingly at the rich merchant who hurries along, busy and jingling gold, or at the lazy lord who, like a surfeited god, rides by on his high horse, casting now and then an aristocratically indifferent glance at the mob below, as though they were swarming ants, or, at all events, a mass of baser beings,