Israel Potter

Chapter 23

ISRAEL IN EGYPT.

It was a gray, lowering afternoon that, worn out, half starved, and

haggard, Israel arrived within some ten or fifteen miles of London, and

saw scores and scores of forlorn men engaged in a great brickyard.

For the most part, brickmaking is all mud and mire. Where, abroad, the

business is carried on largely, as to supply the London market, hordes

of the poorest wretches are employed, their grimy tatters naturally

adapting them to an employ where cleanliness is as much out of the

question as with a drowned man at the bottom of the lake in the Dismal

Swamp.

Desperate with want, Israel resolved to turn brickmaker, nor did he fear

to present himself as a stranger, nothing doubting that to such a

vocation his rags would be accounted the best letters of introduction.