He, At Least, Like All The Educated Class, Did So
Much Homage To Industry As To Persuade Himself He Was Industrious.
But The Average Mechanic Recognises His Idleness With Effrontery;
He Has Even, As I Am Told, Organised It.
I give the story as it was told me, and it was told me for a fact.
A man fell from a housetop in the city of Aberdeen, and was brought
into hospital with broken bones.
He was asked what was his trade,
and replied that he was a TAPPER. No one had ever heard of such a
thing before; the officials were filled with curiosity; they
besought an explanation. It appeared that when a party of slaters
were engaged upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a
fancy for the public-house. Now a seamstress, for example, might
slip away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if these
fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would cease, and thus
the neighbourhood be advertised of their defection. Hence the
career of the tapper. He has to do the tapping and keep up an
industrious bustle on the housetop during the absence of the
slaters. When he taps for only one or two the thing is child's-
play, but when he has to represent a whole troop, it is then that
he earns his money in the sweat of his brow. Then must he bound
from spot to spot, reduplicate, triplicate, sexduplicate his single
personality, and swell and hasten his blows., until he produce a
perfect illusion for the ear, and you would swear that a crowd of
emulous masons were continuing merrily to roof the house. It must
be a strange sight from an upper window.
I heard nothing on board of the tapper; but I was astonished at the
stories told by my companions. Skulking, shirking, malingering,
were all established tactics, it appeared. They could see no
dishonesty where a man who is paid for an bones work gives half an
hour's consistent idling in its place. Thus the tapper would
refuse to watch for the police during a burglary, and call himself
a honest man. It is not sufficiently recognised that our race
detests to work. If I thought that I should have to work every day
of my life as hard as I am working now, I should be tempted to give
up the struggle. And the workman early begins on his career of
toil. He has never had his fill of holidays in the past, and his
prospect of holidays in the future is both distant and uncertain.
In the circumstances, it would require a high degree of virtue not
to snatch alleviations for the moment.
There were many good talkers on the ship; and I believe good
talking of a certain sort is a common accomplishment among working
men. Where books are comparatively scarce, a greater amount of
information will be given and received by word of mouth; and this
tends to produce good talkers, and, what is no less needful for
conversation, good listeners.
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