The Halifax Comet. — 1903-04-18 (Halifax, West Yorkshire, England)

MAN. An honest butcher, guoth the poet, is the noblest work of God. Proceeding to analyse the man what do we find? A ruddy complexion, a bright eye, a loud voice, a fancy for horse-flesh, a tongue that recapitulates frightful losses on" beeasts bowt," and that distinguishes Scotch. from Irish in the dark. There are all these manly virtues and more also in the butcher. A butcher is more than half a surgeon, but of the constructive rather than the destructive kind. He can pack 14 oz. of bone artfully into 17 oz. (sold as 1 lb.) of steak that a coroner could not tell how the feat was done.  The butcher who has been properly apprenticed can always get three legs of lamb out of a grandmotherly ewe. He can make veal by taking bull beef into the stable for a few moments. And if kidneys are required he can carve them to look far more natural than life out of any old chunk in the back premises. A qualified butcher can put his customers into such good humour that they dare not call their lives their own until they are out of the street. It is not an easy thing to be a butcher. You mast be a born fighter ; rEady to kick any man anywhere or to put out hie eye-sight with a single fist. For all that butchers are generally as mild as milk. A cat might play with them, but not with the steak. I know butchers of a perfectly lovable temperament. Chaffed wherever they go, they smile and pay again for everybody. With no consciousness of feelings of their own to be hurt by the witless, I ' have seen butchers exquisitely considerate of the feelings of others. Butchering is brutalising, the vegetarians say. Yet there are butchers with softer hearts than the most delicate of cabbages. The timid shiver over the blood and offal of the business then go out and eat like beasts of the field, a mess of murdered vegetables. Grass is so much more natural than cows you see. Butchers get their rewards. When the Town Council want a chairman for a Watch Committee they first try to get a butcher. Meat-dealing gives a man a rare insight into policemen's nature. Or if a Mayor or a Magistrate is required the butchering fraternity have a first chance of the vacancy. You can't be too careful in selecting beaks. If a man wants to buy a horse he always consults his butcher. Dead or alive the flesher knows all about horses and can even say what is good for the Chester Cup. Then a butcher has opportunities of studying philology. Instead of improving his mind by reckoning odds and form he may elsct to learn everything about names. Not bad names, but good local names of places and people. it is a singular thing,.which theologians may be better able to explain than myself, that some butchers insist upon proclaiming themselves " In the pink." "How d'ye do ? " say you, and the inevitable answer follows. That a butcher whose smock is blue of the naviest, and whose shop is yellow, and in a lane whose name gory bones and greasy cleavers should not draw from me; is so fatuous in saying he is in the pink amazes me. Any man can see that the contrary is the case. Perhaps his dreams are in the pink. The world probably does seem rosy to the butcher. A cruel fate has shut me out from the pure joys and handsome rewards of  Tpg  :-A `•,:;. 17 . •.; •  ;‘,