Charles Dickens' Industrialized England

(...) The smoke-serpents were indifferent who was lost or found, who turned out bad or good; the melancholy elephants, like the Hard Fact men, abated nothing of their set routine, whatever happened. Day and night again, day and night again. The monotony was unbroken. Even Stephen Blackpool's disappearance was falling into the general way, and becoming as monotonous a wonder as any piece of machinery in Coketown. (pp. 275)
Dickens, Charles, Hard Times, Penguin, London, 1969.