Speaker 1: In the Workhouse Christmas Day by George R. Simms. It
is Christmas Day in the workhouse, and the cold bare
walls are bright with garlands of green and holly, and
the place is a pleasant sight for with clean washed
hands and faces. In a long and hungry line, the
paupers sit at the tables, for this is the hour
they dine. And the guardians and their ladies, although the
wind is eased, have come in their furs and wrappers
to watch their charges feast, to smile and be condescending,
put pudding on pauper plates to be host at the
workhouse banquet they've paid for with their rates. Oh, the
paupers are meek and lowly with their thank ye kindly mums.
So long as they fill their stomachs, what matter at
whence it comes but one of the old men and
mutters and pushes his plate aside. Great God, he cries,
but it chokes me, for this is the day she died.
The guardians gazed in horror. The master's face went white.
Did a pauper refuse the pudding? Could their ears believe aright?
Then the ladies clutch their husbands, thinking the man would die,
struck by a bolt or something by the outraged one
on high. But the pauper sat for a moment, then
rose mid a silence, grim, for the others had ceased
to chatter and trembled in every limb. He looked at
the guardians ladies, then eyeing their lords, he said, I
eat not the food of villains whose hands are foul
and red, whose victims cry for vengeance from their dank,
unhallowed graves. He's drunk, said the workhouse master. Or else
he's mad and raves. Not drunk or mad, cried the pauper.
But only a hunted beast, who torn by the hounds
and mangled, declines the vulture's feast. Keep your hands off me,
curse you, hear me right out to the end. You
come here to see how paupers the season of Christmas spend.
You come here to watch us feeding as they watch
the captured beast. Hear why a penniless spauper spits on
your paltry feast. Do you think I will take your
bounty and let you smile and think you're doing a
noble action with the perish's meat and drink. Where's my wife,
you traitors? The poor old wife you slew yes by
the God above us. My nance was killed by you.
Last winter my wife lay dying, starved in a filthy den.
I'd never been to the parish. I came to the perish.
Then I swallowed my pride in coming for ere the
ruin came. I heul up my head as a trader,
and I bore a spotless name. I came to the parish,
craving break for a starving wife, bread for the woman
who'd loved me through fifty years of life. And what
do you think? They told me, mocking my awful grief,
that the house was open to us, but they wouldn't
give out relief. I slunk to the filthy alley. Twas
a cold, raw Christmas Eve, and the baker's shops were open,
tempting a man to thieve. But I clenched my fists together,
holding my head awry. So I came to her empty
handed and mournfully told her why. Then I told her
the house was open. She had heard of the ways
of that, for her bloodless cheeks went crimson and up
in her rags. She sat crying by the Christmas Here, John,
we've never had one apart, I think I can bear
the hunger, the other would break my heart. All through
that eve I watched her holding her hand in mine,
praying the Lord, and weeping till my lips where salt
is brine. I asked her once if she hungered, And
as she answered no, the moon shone in at the window,
set in a wreath of snow. Then the room was
bathed in glory, and I saw my darling's eyes the
far away look of wonder that comes when the spirit flies.
And her lips were parched and parted, and her reason
came and went. For she raved of our home in Devon,
where our happiest years were spent, and the accents long
forgotten came back to the tongue once more, for she
talked like the country lassie I wooed by the Devon shore.
Then she rose to her feet and trembled, and fell
on the rags and moaned, And give me a crust.
I'm famished, for the love of God, she groaned. I
rushed from the room like a madman and flew to
the workhouse gate, crying food for a dying woman. And
the answer came too late. They drove me away with curses.
Then I fought with a dog in the street, and
tore from the mongol's clutches a crust he was trying
to eat back through the filthy bye lanes, back through
the trampled slush, up to the crazy garret, wrapped in
an awful hush. My heart sank down at the threshold,
and I paused with a sudden thrill, for there in
the silvery moonlight, my nance lay cold and still. Up
to the black and ceiling, the sunken eyes were cast.
I knew on those lips, all bloodless, my name had
been the last she called for her absent husband. Oh God,
had I but known, had called in vain and in anguish,
had died in that den alone. Yes, there, in a
land of plenty lay a loving woman dead, cruelly starved
and murdered for a loaf of the parish bread at
yonder Gate last Christmas, I craved for a human life.
You who had feast us paupers, what of my murdered wife? There?
Get ye gone to your dinners. Don't mind me in
the least. Think of the happy paupers eating your Christmas feast,
And when you recount their blessings in your smug, parochial
way say what you did for me too, Only last
Christmas Day. End of in the Workhouse Christmas Day by
George R. Simms