It's all work."
"Surely you are mistaken, my good friend. Why I have come all
the way from England just to see the working of this great National
movement."
"I don't know where you're going to find the nation as moves to
begin with, and then you'll be hard put to it to find what they are
moving about. It's like this, sir," said Edwards, who had not quite
relished being called "my good friend." "They haven't got any
grievance--nothing to hit with, don't you see, sir; and then there's
not much to hit against, because the Government is more like a
kind of general Providence, directing an old--established state of
things, than that at home, where there's something new thrown
down for us to fight about every three months."
"You are probably, in your workshops, full of Eng'ish mechanics,
out of the way of learning what the masses think."
"I don't know so much about that. There are four of us English
foremen, and between seven and eight hundred native fitters,
smiths, carpenters, painters, and such like."
"And they are full of the Congress, of course?"
"Never hear a word of it from year's end to year's end, and I speak
the talk too. But I wanted to ask how things are going on at
home--old Tyler and Brown and the rest?"
"We will speak of them presently, but your account of the
indifference of your men surprises me almost as much as your
own.
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