"That's John Slater! I'd ha' known him anywhere, by his big nose.
Lord! how like; that's me, by G-d, it's the very way I'm obligated
to pin my waistcoat up, to hide that I've getten no shirt. That IS
a shame, and I'll not stand it."

"Well!" said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his
likeness; "I could laugh at a jest as well as e'er the best on 'em,
though it did tell agen mysel, if I were not clemming" (his eyes
filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with
a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), "and if I could
keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their
cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going
home, and wonder if I should hear 'em wailing out, if I lay cold and
drowned at th' bottom o' th' canal, there--why, man, I cannot laugh
at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make
game on what they've never knowed; as can make such laughable
pictures on men, whose very hearts within 'em are so raw and sore as
ours were and are, God help us."

John Barton began to speak; they turned to him with great attention.
"It makes me more than sad, it makes my heart burn within me, to see
that folk can make a jest of striving men; of chaps who comed to ask
for a bit o' fire for th' old granny, as shivers i' th' cold; for a
bit o' bedding, and some warm clothing to the poor wife who lies in
labour on th' damp flags; and for victuals for the childer, whose
little voices are getting too faint and weak to cry aloud wi'
hunger. For, brothers, is not them the things we ask for when we
ask for more wage? We donnot want dainties, we want bellyfuls; we
donnot want gimcrack coats and waistcoats, we want warm clothes; and