Explore "The Croxley Master" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Work was struck at one o'clock at the coal-pits and the iron-works, and / the fight was arranged for three. From the Croxley Furnaces, from / Wilson's Coal-pits, from the Heartsease Mine, from the Dodd Mills, from / the Leverworth Smelters the workmen came trooping, each with his / fox-terrier or his lurcher at his heels. Warped with labour and twisted / by toil, bent double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or / half-blinded with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these / men still gilded their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to / sport. It was their one relief, the only thing which could distract / their minds from sordid surroundings, and give them an interest beyond / the blackened circle which enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all / these things were beyond their horizon; but the race, the football / match, the cricket, the fight, these were things which they could / understand, which they could speculate upon in advance and comment upon / afterwards. Sometimes brutal, sometimes grotesque, the love of sport is / still one of the great agencies which make for the happiness of our / people. It lies very deeply in the springs of our nature, and when it / has been educated out, a higher, more refined nature may be left, but it / will not be of that robust British type which has left its mark so / deeply on the world. Every one of these raddled workers, slouching with / his dog at his heels to see something of the fight, was a true unit of / his race.
It was a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers. / Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine made / up.