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Remarking this at a glance, with the quick observation of his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face - his face, which, like the faces of many of his order, by dint of long working with eyes and hands in the midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the concentrated look with which we are familiar in the countenances of the deaf - the better to hear what she asked him.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times for These Times, Oxford University Press, London, 1955, p.77
PLACE: Lancashire manufacturing town.
TIME: During the 1850s.
CIRCUMSTANCE: The effects on the other senses while working in a noisy environment have been observed as early as during the time of the Industrial Revolution.
The measured motion of their shadows on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods; while, for the summer hum of insects, it could offer, all the year round, from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels. Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times for These Times, Oxford University Press, London, 1955, p.111.
PLACE: Lancashire manufacturing town.
TIME: During the 1850s
CIRCUMSTANCE: Coketown (a fictitious name for an actually existing town) on a sunny midsummer day. Substitute for the shadows of rustling woods were the shadows of the "elephants" (the pistons of the steam engines).
Without a candle in the room, Mrs. Sparsit sat at the window, with her bands before her, not thinking much of the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by, the shutting-up of shop-shutters.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times for These Times, Oxford University Press, London, 1955, p. 123
PLACE: Lancashire manufacturing town.
TIME: During the 1850s
CIRCUMSTANCE: The sounds of evening in the town.
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