force to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.

“‘We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we

common dogs are by those superior Beingstaxed by him without

mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our

corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our

wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame

bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when

we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door

barred and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it

and take it from usI say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and

were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing

to bring a child into the world, and that what we should most pray

for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable race

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

die out!’ “I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed,

bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in

the people somewhere; but. I had never seen it break out, until I

saw it in the dying boy.

“‘Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing at that

time, poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend

and comfort him in our cottageour dog-hut, as that man would

call it. She had not been married many weeks, when that man