Grace could not go on for whimpering, and Jael cried, for company.  Henry left off carving, and turned away his head, touched to the heart by this sweet and sudden sympathy.

“How badly you read,” said Mr. Carden, and took the journal from her.  He read in a loud business-like monotone, that, like some blessed balm, dried every tear. “’Manly fellows who never shed a tear before:  this disposed of one alternative, and narrowed the inquiry.  It was not a personal feud; therefore it was a Trade outrage, or it was nothing.  We now took evidence bearing on the inquiry thus narrowed; and we found the assault had been preceded by a great many letters, all of them breathing the spirit of Unionism, and none of them intimating a private wrong.  These letters, taken in connection, are a literary curiosity; and we find there is scarcely a manufacturer in the place who has not endured a similar correspondence, and violence at the end of it.  This curious chapter of the human mind really deserves a separate heading, and we introduce it to our readers as

“The literature of outrage.”

“’First of all comes a letter to the master intimating that he is doing something objectionable to some one of the many Unions that go to make a single implement of hardware.  This letter has three features.  It is signed with a real name.  It is polite.  It is grammatical.

“’If disregarded, it is speedily followed by another.  No. 2 is grammatical, or thereabouts; but, under a feigned politeness, the insolence of a vulgar mind shows itself pretty plainly, and the master is reminded what he suffered on some former occasion when he rebelled against the trades.  This letter is sometimes anonymous, generally pseudonymous.

“’If this reminder of the past and intimation of the future is disregarded, the refractory master gets a missive, which begins with an affectation of coarse familiarity, and then rises, with a ludicrous bound, into brutal and contemptuous insolence.  In this letter, grammar is flung to the winds, along with good manners; but spelling survives, by a miracle.  Next comes a short letter, full of sanguinary threats, and written in, what we beg leave to christen, the Dash dialect, because, though used by at least three million people in England, and three thousand in Hillsborough, it can only be printed with blanks, the reason being simply this, that every sentence is measled with oaths and indecencies.  These letters are also written phonetically, and, as the pronunciation, which directs the spelling, is all wrong, the double result is prodigious.  Nevertheless, many of these pronunciations are ancient, and were once universal.  An antiquarian friend assures us the orthography of these blackguards, the scum of the nineteenth century, is wonderfully like that of a mediaeval monk or baron.