【资料下载】雾都孤儿 （英语原版）

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'Yes, sir,' replied Oliver, weeping bitterly.

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'What are you crying for?' inquired the gentleman in the white

waistcoat.  And to be sure it was very extraordinary.  What COULD

the boy be crying for?

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'I hope you say your prayers every night,' said another gentleman

in a gruff voice; 'and pray for the people who feed you, and take

care of you--like a Christian.'

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'Yes, sir,' stammered the boy.  The gentleman who spoke last was

unconsciously right.  It would have been very like a Christian,

and a marvellously good Christian too, if Oliver had prayed for

the people who fed and took care of HIM. But he hadn't, because

nobody had taught him.

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'Well!  You have come here to be educated, and taught a useful

trade,' said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.

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'So you'll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o'clock,'

added the surly one in the white waistcoat.

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For the combination of both these blessings in the one simple

process of picking oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of

the beadle, and was then hurried away to a large ward; where, on

a rough, hard bed, he sobbed himself to sleep.  What a novel

illustration of the tender laws of England!  They let the paupers

go to sleep!

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Poor Oliver!  He little thought, as he lay sleeping in happy

unconsciousness of all around him, that the board had that very

day arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material

influence over all his future fortunes.  But they had.  And this

was it:

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The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical

men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse,

they found out at once, what ordinary folks would nver have

discovered--the poor people liked it!  It was a regular place of

public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there

was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper

all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all

play and no work.  'Oho!' said the board, looking very knowing;

'we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll stop it all, in

no time.'  So, they established the rule, that all poor people

should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not

they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by

a quick one out of it.  With this view, they contracted with the

water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a

corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal;

and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a

week, and half a roll of Sundays.  They made a great many other

wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies,

which it is not necessary to repeat; kindly undertook to divorce

poor married people, in consequence of the great expense of a

suit in Doctors' Commons; and, instead of compelling a man to

support his family, as they had theretofore done, took his family

away from him, and made him a bachelor!  There is no saying how

many applicants for relief, under these last two heads, might

have started up in all classes of society, if it had not been

coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men,

and had provided for this difficulty.  The relief was inseparable

from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened people.

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For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed, the

system was in full operation.  It was rather expensive at first,

in consequence of the increase in the undertaker's bill, and the

necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers, which

fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week

or two's gruel.  But the number of workhouse inmates got thin as

well as the paupers; and the board were in ecstasies.