Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Life's Atonement, Vol. 3 of 3: A Novel
In rough working-dress, who lounge about with their hands in their pockets, kicking the pebbles on the highway in a listless fashion or leaning in listless fashion against the gate or the walls; or standing listlessly, with humped shoulders, on the kerb-stone, spitting at a mark on the road. They are for the most part sturdy fellows, with a general aspect of uneasy massiveness; an aspect strengthened by the cut and weight of their loose clothing. Suddenly the incurious traveller who observes these things is startled by a yell in which many voices mingle, and the lounging crowd is thrown into a state of mad activity. Every body converges to one point, and there is a fight to get there. At that point a head and shoulders appear above the high dock wall, and a hand showers down a little snow-storm of limp tickets. The snow-storm lasts for a second or two only, and every man in the crowd fights for a flake of it, for dear life. Like other flakes, it will melt in his hand, though somewhat more slowly than the common, since it will at least last until meat and drink are found. The scrambling fight goes on until the last ticket is rescued from the dust or mud. The winners in the fight range. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
