For all this occurred ten times quicker in action than in relation.

Mr. Hawes’s conversion to noise came rapidly in a single sentence, after this fashion: 

“——­ you! hold your infernal noise.  Oh!  Augh!  Ah!  E E!  E E!  Aah!  Oh!  Oh!; E E!E E!  O O!O O!  O O!  O O!  O O!O O!”

So Fry and Hodges and Evans and Davis grinned.

For all these men had learned from Hawes to laugh at pain—­(another’s).  One man alone did not even smile.  He was an observer, and did not expect any one to be great at bearing pain who was rash in inflicting it; moreover, he suffered with all who suffer.  He was sorry for the pilloried biped, and sorry for the bitten brute.

He then gave them another lesson.  “All you want the poor thing to do is to suffer in silence.  Withdraw twenty yards from him.”  He set the example by retreating; the others, Hawes included, being off their guard, obeyed mechanically the superior spirit.

Carter’s cries died away into a whimpering moan.  The turnkeys looked at one another, and with a sort of commencement of respect at Mr. Eden.

“Parson knows more than we do.”

Hawes interrupted this savagely.

“Ye fools! couldn’t you see it was the sight of your ugly faces made him roar, not the jacket?  Keep him there till further orders;” and he went off to plaster his wounded hand.

Mr. Eden sat down and covered his face.  He was as miserable as this vile world can make a man who lives for a better.  The good work he was upon was so difficult in itself, and those who ought to have helped fought against him.

When with intelligence, pain and labor he had built up a little good, Hawes was sure to come and knock it down again; and this was the way to break his heart.

He had been taking such pains with this poor biped; he had played round his feeble understanding to find by what door a little wisdom and goodness could be made to enter him.  At last he had found that pictures pleased him and excited him, and awakened all the intelligence he had.

Mr. Eden had a vast collection of engravings and photographs.  His plan with Carter was to show him some engraving presenting a fact or anecdote.  First he would put under his eyes a cruel or unjust action.  He would point out the signs of suffering in one of the figures.  Carter would understand this because he saw it.  Then Mr. Eden would excite his sympathy.  “Poor so and so!” would Mr. Eden say in a pitying voice.  “Poor so and so!” would biped Carter echo.  After several easy lessons he would find him a picture of some more moderate injustice, and so raise the shadow of a difficulty and draw a little upon Carter’s understanding as well as sympathy.  Then would come pictures of charity, of benevolence and other good actions.  These and their effects upon the several figures Carter was invited to admire, and so on to a score of topics.  The first thing was to make Carter think and talk, which he did in the happy-go-lucky way of his class, uttering nine mighty simple remarks, and then a bit of superlative wisdom, or something that sounded like it.  And when he had shot his random bolts, Mr. Eden would begin and treat each picture as a text, and utter much wisdom on it in simple words.