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The wildflowers were blowing in these Dartford hedges, all those many summertimes; the larks were singing, high in air; the trees were rustling as they rustle today; the bees went humming by; the light clouds cast their shadow on the verdant fields.
Charles Dickens, with Mark Lemon, A Paper Mill, from Uncollected Writings from Household Words, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1968, p. 138.
TIME: 1830's (written), but describing "old Saxon days".
PLACE: England
CIRCUMSTANCE: Dickens thinks of the acoustic quality of past environments, aware of the present environment that the Industrial Revolution has shaped.
But, as I turn down by the hawthorn hedge into the valley, a sound comes in my ears - like the murmuring and throbbing of a mighty giant, labouring hard ... It is the noise of the Steam Engine.
Charles Dickens, with Mark Lemon, A Paper Mill, from Uncollected Writings from Household Words, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1968, p. 138-139.
TIME: 1830's
PLACE: England
CIRCUMSTANCE: hearing a Steam Engine while on the way to a paper mill.
I am taken to the Cutting Room.....and subjected to the action of large rollers filled with transverse knives, revolving by steam power upon iron beds ... Such a drumming and rattling, such a battering and clattering, such a delight in cutting and slashing, not even the Australian part in me has witnessed before.
Charles Dickens, with Mark Lemon, A Paper Mill, from Uncollected Writings from Household Words, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1968, p. 140.
TIME: 1840's
PLACE: England
CIRCUMSTANCE: Charles Dickens is in the section of the paper mill where rags are sliced up in preparation for eventual processing into paper.
At it these grinders go, "Munch, munch, munch!" like the sailor's wife in Macbeth who had chestnuts in her lap.
Charles Dickens, with Mark Lemon, A Paper Mill, from Uncollected Writings from Household Words, Blomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1968, p. 140.
TIME: 1840's
PLACE: England
CIRCUMSTANCE: a description of the grinding stage in the processing of rags into paper.
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