The Song of the Flea Read Online Free PDF

gynæcology.’ Yet many young men, thinking of the future, state quite clearly that they want to go in for dentistry—to probe, drill, and twist out of ulcerated gums the stumps of rotten teeth. There is money in it, yes: we cannot get along without dentists. But what kind of boy makes up his mind to scrape and bore a respectable living out of sepulchral mouths?
    Similarly, if you want to be a hangman you must make proper application for the job, and devote yourself to it—you must, literally, get to know the ropes. You must look at necks and consider them in relation to individual weights and muscular peculiarities. You must take an interest in your work, so that you may pride yourself on a workmanlike execution—a nice smooth drop and a good clean snap when your hooded client goes down through the trapdoor and jolts to death in thedimness below. Such work must be taken seriously: it is highly skilled work, and underpaid, so that hangmen generally run little businesses of their own on the side—cobblers’ shops, barber shops, and the like. Cobblers and barbers all over the world keep themselves and their families by mending shoes and cutting hair: before an ordinary tradesman thought of hanging his neighbour he would hang himself. And still staid, prim men go out of their way to become hangmen.
    Perhaps they enjoy the terror they inspire as agents of the Angel of Death.
    It is possible, also, that a pawnbroker’s clerk feels twice the man he might have been when he looks into the blinking eyes of some miserable little woman, glances down scornfully at her husband’s best suit—(she must get it out by Saturday, or God help her!)—and, with a weary shrug, says: “What, this one again? Let you have seven-and-six.” No one denies that he is a kind man at heart—kind, at least, to his wife and children, and a good provider who will work his fingers to the bone to send his boys to secondary school. This being the case, why doesn’t he use his wonderful sense of values in another kind of shop? Why does he want to be a pawnbroker? How does he manage to grow indifferent to the misery on which he lives and the fearful hate he inspires? How does he get that way?—that is what you ask yourself.
    *
    For two or three speculative minutes Pym played with the idea of an untried pawnbroker near Oxford Street. He turned and began to walk there. Then, remembering that it is better to have dealings with the devil you know than the devil you don’t know, went to McCormick’s. This was an austere establishment on a corner. Most pawnshops are: the façade on the main street is a shopfront, the window of which is full of secondhand fountain-pens, pitiful little opal engagement rings, musical instruments, and attractively-ticketed silver candlesticks and spoons. You walk into this part of the place like a buyer, with an arrogant lift to your head, slamming down your independent feet, because you have money in your pocket. Round the cornerthere is a dark, brown-painted doorway. Customers who go in that way dart rather than walk in. Watching from the other side of the street, between ten in the morning and noon, you will recognise three types. One, shabby-genteel, sidles guiltily along the back street, looking at his feet and carrying a little bundle: he darts in, darts out empty-handed, and creeps away. Another, well-dressed, strolls to the corner and looks around with the air of a man-about-town; examines the doorstep, looks up at the painted inscription on the lintel, swaggers in, and comes out—still swaggering—five minutes later without his overcoat; looks up and down the street, and strolls away humming a gay tune. The third, a woman, just goes straight in with a parcel and walks right out without it, and goes home.
    *
    Pym said: “I wonder if you’d care to lend me as much as you can on this till Friday?”
    The clerk said nothing: he opened the suitcase.
    “There’s a perfectly good suit, a pair of shoes, a valuable glass