The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE FREEMASONS DAUGHTER. CHAPTER I. Love and Love’s trials, virtue humbly born; Shunning temptation’s glittering bait, and shame, Though masked with gold and lap’d in luxury. On a gloomy day in that gloomiest of all months, November, the streets of Manchester, generally so thronged with busy faces, were deserted by all but the pale, sickly crowd of shivering artisans, hurrying to their unhealthy labour in the ill-ventilated factories of marts in which the grasping spirit of gain speculates alike on the strength of manhood and the weakness of infancy. Here and there a solitary clerk, closely buttoned to the chin, his hat pulled resolutely over his brows, his hands thrust into the pockets of the rough overcoat, which scarcely protected its wearer from the fine penetrating rain which fell incessantly, might be seen ‘hurrying along the wet and greasy pavement. The day was detestable ; the pitiless shower fell with that persevering steadiness, which, like a sullen temper, forbids all hope of accom- modation, and the thick black smoke from a hundred VoL, I. } B COUN Goo! SS (SO