d doubtfully alive
against the bleak sky and the row of wretched-looking blue-slated
houses, although, by the way, the latter were the backs of a sort of
street of "villas" and not a slum; the road in front of the house was
sooty and muddy at once, and in the air was that sense of dirty
discomfort which one is never quit of in London. The morning was
harsh, too, and though the wind was from the south-west it was as cold
as a north wind; and yet amidst it all, I thought of the corner of the
next bight of the river which I could not quite see from where I was,
but over which one can see clear of houses and into Richmond Park,
looking like the open country; and dirty as the river was, and harsh as
was the January wind, they seemed to woo me toward the country-side,
where away from the miseries of the "Great Wen" I might of my own will
carry on a daydream of the friends I had made in the dream of the night
and against my will.

But as I turned away shivering and downhearted, on a sudden came the
frightful noise of the "hooters," one after the other, that call the
workmen to the factories, this one the after-breakfast one, more by
token. So I grinned surlily, and dressed and got ready for my day's
"work" as I call it, but which many a man besides John Ruskin (though
not many in his position) would call "play."

A KING'S LESSON

It is told of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary--the Alfred the Great
of his time and people--that he once heard (once ONLY?) that some (only
SOME, my lad?) of his peasants were over-worked and under-fed. So he
sent for his Council, and bade come thereto also some of the mayors of
the good towns, and some of the lords of land and their bailiffs, and
asked them of the truth thereof; and in diverse ways they all told one
and the same tale, how the peasant carles were stout and well able to
work and had enough and to spare of meat and drink, seeing that they
were but churls; and how if they worked not at the least as hard as
they did, it would be ill for them and ill for their lords; for that
the more the churl hath the more he asketh; and that when he knoweth
wealth, he knoweth the lack of it also, as it fared with our first
parents in the Garden of God. The King sat and said but little while
they spake, but he misdoubted them that they were liars. So the
Council brake up with nothing done; but the King took the matter to
heart, being, as kings go, a just man, besides being more valiant