A little genius from the coal pits.

If a coal pit can be said to be handsome.

Traditionally, Geordie has been regarded as the accent of coal pits, poverty and little fishes on little dishes.

In those days, the black slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the side of our hill, not yet enough to mar the countryside, nor blacken the beauty of our village.

But the legislature, instead of a bounty, has imposed a tax of three shillings and threepence a ton upon coal carried coastways, which upon most sorts of coal is more than sixty per cent of the original price at the coal-pit.