The English reformer's account of a six-day monkey boat journey from London to Leicester, which describes the living conditions of boatmen and families.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... "Mother dear, 0! can you tell me Why it is we're living so 1 Father, mother, sisters, brothers, Nine in all, as well you know, Ever floating on the water, Midst the curse of wicked men, Wretched, cruel, fierce, and drunken: Could I never sail again! "Can you tell to me, dear mother, Why to school we cannot go, Why our books and lovely pictures We are never taught to know? Oh! I wish that I could read them: How delighted I should be! Oh that someone would deliver, Make me happy, make me free! "Surely England soon will listen To the boatman's children's cry: See them scattered o'er the nation, --Can the nation let them die? Die to all that's good and useful, Die in everlasting shame 1 Train them for God and country, History then will speak thy fame!" PAET HE. THE BOAT CHILDREN'S CET STILL GOING UPWAED. A FTEE completing my journey, I began to consider what- j-plans I should adopt to cause the local authorities to take steps for enforcing the provisions of the Act, and the regulations of the Local Government Board. I tried the " oracle," with the hope of finding out a more easy, less boring, and troublesome way than writing letters to the press and my big friends. It is not pleasant to be always trespassing upon the good nature and forbearance of those you love and respect; but, with the results contrary to my hopes and wishes, I could see nothing upon the disc of fate but painted in large capitals, "Letters," "Letters." The same familiar face was to be seen with which I have been acquainted for so many years. The zodiacal signs to me appeared as they have always done, "hard work," "sleepless nights," "racked brain," at times "feeble health," "few friends," "poverty," "opposition," "spite," "malice," "misrepresentation," "fighting, ..".

Thousands of literary, popular, non-fiction and archival texts since the eighteenth century document the human experience of the British industrial canal. This book traces networks of literary canal texts across four centuries to understand our relationships with water, with place, and with the past. In our era of climate crisis, this reading calls for a rethinking of the waterways of literature not simply as an antique transport system, but as a coal-fired energy system with implications for the present. This book demonstrates how waterways literature has always been profoundly interested in the things we dig out of the ground, and the uses to which they are put. The industrial canal never just connected parts of Britain: via its literature we read the ways in which we are in touch with previous centuries and epochs, how canals linked inland Britain to Empire, how they connected forms of labour, and people to water.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.